Players to be Discussed

Let’s take a look at the names I will be examining here over the coming days, weeks, months, years. 

Those players who will be returning to the ballot next year include (with this year’s percentage):

Barry Larkin                  62.1

Jack Morris                  53.5

Lee Smith                     45.3

Jeff Bagwell                41.7

Tim Raines                   37.5

Edgar Martinez         32.9     

Alan Trammel            24.3

Larry Walker                20.3

Mark McGwire          19.8

Fred McGriff               17.9

Don Mattingly           13.6

Dale Murphy              12.6

Rafael Palmeiro         11.0

Juan Gonzalez            5.2

These players are will be at least briefly talked about in the coming weeks.  When the ballot comes out for next year, I will cover any others listed as well.  I am guessing that these guys will be listed and hope to cover them in the coming weeks:

Bernie Williams

Brad Radke

Tim Salmon

Brian Jordan

Edgardo Alfonzo

Javy Lopez

Bill Mueller

I will be using two websites heavily for this project:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/

http://www.fangraphs.com/

I cannot recommend these sites more than enough.  I am sure most fans of the game know them well.  BR has a larger list for the 2012 HOF ballot.  I used a soft cut off of around 30 bWAR to decide on players to cover before the ballot is listed. 

bWAR is WAR on Baseball Reference

fWAR is WAR on FanGraphs

2013 Newbies:

Barry Bonds

Roger Clemons

Curt Schilling

Craig Biggio

Kenny Lofton

Sammy Sosa

Mike Piazza

David Wells

Julio Franco

Steve Finley

Reggie Sanders

Jeff Cirillo

Shawn Green

Ryan Klesko

Jeff Conine

Roberto Hernandez

2014:

Greg Maddux

Frank Thomas

Mike Mussina

Tom Glavine

Jeff Kent

Luis Gonzalez

Kenny Rogers

Moises Alou

Ray Durham

2015:

Randy Johnson

Pedro Martinez

John Smoltz

Gary Sheffield

Carlos Delgado

Brian Giles

Nomar Garciaparra

Tom Gordon

Bartolo Colon

As well as future ballots, I will go back and highlight some players I feel merited more discussion for the hall of fame.  Ron Santo in particular but three fell off the ballot this year that I think deserved more consideration:

Harold Baines

John Franco

Kevin Brown

I hope this eventually becomes more readable.  I am working at it.  My stream of conscience probably gets old.  

I am willing to take any suggestions of baseball topics as well.  I will definetely get a post in eventually about my favorite all-time player, the great Robin Ventura.  I do not necessarily think he was a Hall of Famer (Favorite player, cannot be rational) but I feel he should have had more consideration.