An Atlanta Braves legend is really getting dissed

The process is broken. I said so last year and it’s still true today. We’re almost resigned to Fred McGriff getting shorted on Hall of Fame votes, but this year is reaching new levels of disrespect.

There are one or two bright spots in the Hall of Fame balloting thus far. One, that one Atlanta Braves legend – Chipper Jones – is getting votes on 98% of the known ballots thus far.

Another encouraging sign is that the average number of votes being cast per ballot is up to 9.02, suggesting that voters holding to the “small induction classes are better” philosophy may be dwindling.

I do expect this vote rate to decrease as ballots continue to roll in, but this 9.02 figure is still well above 2017’s rate (roughly 8.1) and 2016’s (about 7.9).

Still, there’s room for both improvement and for voter error.

At current pace – despite 9 votes per ballot, Ryan Thibodaux’s tracker spreadsheet is showing these trends:

Chipper Jones is a lock.
Jim Thome is a lock
Vladimir Guerrero is a lock. All three of these are above 93%.
Edgar Martinez is looking solid (83%)
Trevor Hoffman is looking good (80%)
Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Mike Mussina, and Curt Schilling occupy the next tier: 69-72%, with 75% being necessary for election. Interesting.

But it’s the bottom of the ballot that annoys me. McGriff’s totals are what they are, and this being the penultimate trip on the ballot for him, his 16% rate isn’t going to get it done. That’s a crying shame, but we’ve been fighting this battle for years now.

Same thing goes for Billy Wagner. He’s mired at under 10%.

The Tally

But it’s tally for the other Jones on the sheet that really burns me right now: the greatest center fielder in the history of the game is is danger of not surviving his first balloting round.

Out of the 95 votes made public thus far – that’s 22.6% of the total number of ballots expected to be received – players need 312 for induction.

Andruw Jones currently has 8 votes. They are from:

Mark Bradley of the AJC
Art Davidson, NY Daily News
Jay Dunn, the Trentonian (NJ)
Jorge Ebro, Miami Herald
Jon Heyman, FanRag sports
Marc Lancaster, Washington Times and Sporting News
Sadiel Lebron, Telemundo
Adam Rubin, New York Times (whose primary thing these days is in writing picture books for children… even he knows that Andruw is a hall of famer)

To these writers: thank you. If the Hall of Fame means anything, then the best player are every position needs to be recognized.

Andruw clearly gets there for defense with 10 straight Gold Gloves… and that award still mostly meant something in the early 2000s.

His offense wasn’t to be sneezed at either, of course; but even if you didn’t think he did enough at the plate for long enough, his play in the field should trump whatever shortcoming you’d see as a voter.

Bottom of the Chart

More from Tomahawk Take

There are 21 names on the HOF ballot this year… Andrew’s vote tallies rank in a tie (with Gary Sheffield) for 16th/17th.

Andruw needs 13 more votes to hit the 5% threshold and guarantee his place on the ballot next year. Hopefully somebody figures out that he seriously needs help – even if that means perhaps taking a vote away from Chipper on an otherwise full sheet and giving that vote to Andruw.

The Hall truly needs to lift the restriction on votes per ballot. This restriction of 10 votes per year is not useful.

The net effect of that rule is making voters choose between ‘greater’ and ‘lesser’ deserving players… which seems to suggest that there are a lot more deserving of the honor than will actually get it.

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