Candidates being considered by the Hall of Fame’s Contemporary Baseball Era Committee (1980-present) were announced on Monday. The eight-player ballot will include Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Carlos Delgado, Jeff Kent, Don Mattingly, Dale Murphy, Gary Sheffield, and Fernando Valenzuela.
Snubs aside (Lou Whitaker? Kenny Lofton? Dwight Evans?), it’s a strikingly talented group.
Players must be named on 75% of the ballots from a 16-member committee (the members are usually announced in late November; each member may vote for up to four players on the ballot) to gain induction into the Hall of Fame. Results will be announced on December 7.
As a means to offer a path into Hall of Fame induction separate from the BBWAA writers’ vote, the Hall of Fame provides three rotating era committees — the Contemporary Era (1980-present), the Contemporary Era manager/executive/umpire (also 1980-present), and the Classic Baseball Era (everything pre-1980, including the Negro Leagues) — with each meeting once every three years.
Candidates chosen for each ballot are picked by an 11-member Historical Overview Committee, which is made up of BBWAA members and approved by the HOF’s board of directors.
The HOF announced a change to the committee ballots in March. Beginning this year, if a candidate receives fewer than five votes, they may not appear again in the next voting cycle. If a candidate returns to the ballot and receives fewer than five votes a second time, they will be considered ineligible for future ballots of any kind.
A reasonable argument could be made for each one of the eight candidates — and no, I won’t dig deep into each case here, as I could probably find a way to drop 1,000 words with relative ease, and for the most part, these things don’t need to be repeated — but the results will prove interesting.
One could likely assume that Bonds and Clemens will fall short. BBWAA voting trends have shown that a newer generation of members is less punitive when it comes to evaluating players from the Steroid Era. Still, it feels as though the general voting collective doesn’t believe enough time has passed yet to recognize them. Bonds and Clemens will likely need to wait longer for their moment.
All things considered, there could be a realistic chance that a pair of the 1980s’ greatest hitters finally get the proper recognition they deserve. Don Mattingly and Dale Murphy have both long stood as prime examples (along with Whitaker and Lofton) of players who should have fared better in BBWAA voting and should already be in the Hall of Fame. The duo combined for three MVP Awards, 14 Gold Glove Awards, seven Silver Sluggers, and 13 All-Star appearances — while Mattingly led the AL in hits twice and won a batting title, and Murphy had more total bases than any other player in the 1980s.
Fans of the Yankees and Braves have waited a long, long time to celebrate these two players in Cooperstown.