No rush to drop from HOF ballot
JOHNNY Damon, Andruw Jones and Johan Santana are in jeopardy of falling off the Hall of Fame ballot after one year of consideration. Each will struggle to reach the 5 percent of the vote necessary to remain.
Perhaps none are Hall of Famers, though Jones and Santana, in particular, have interesting cases. But I am still not sure why they have to fall off the ballot rather than receive future consideration.
There are thoughtful voters who believe if you do not get 5 percent of the vote you do not deserve to stay on the ballot. After all, as Jay Jaffe noted in his “Cooperstown Casebook,” since the modern era of voting (beginning in 1966), the lowest percentage ever received by a player to ultimately be elected was Bert Blyleven’s 14.1 percent in his second year of eligibility.
When a large majority of voters were selecting well short of the maximum 10 players allowed, the 5 percent rule made more sense. But the crowded ballot — namely created by having suspected steroid cheats get enough votes to stay eligible, but not get elected — has meant there may be more than 10 candidates a voter believes should be inducted, but not enough slots to honor them all. Therefore, there is some chance that stars who would get larger vote totals are falling off because of a modern predicament that did not exist when the 5 percent rule went into place.
Blyleven’s case is informative. He was championed mainly by those who rely on more modern analytics, suggesting a candidate could start with a low percentage and gain a groundswell.
Thus, I would advocate that if you get less than 1 percent of the vote you fall off the ballot in Year 1. Aside from that you could next fall off if you do not accrue a total of 15 percent in any three-year period. This would provide a longer period of consideration for those such as Jones and Santana. I do not understand the complaints about the ballot becoming even more crowded. Does it really matter if there are 33 names on the ballot (as there was this year) or 40?