Tuesday, January 06, 2015

Pedro. Unit. Biggio. Smoltz.

For the first time since 1955, four players were elected to the Hall of Fame today, as Pedro Martinez, Randy Johnson, Craig Biggio and John Smoltz will all be enshrined in Cooperstown this coming July.

Johnson was the top vote-getter with 97.3% of the 549 votes cast. It is the 7th highest percentage ever.

Pedro was second at 91.1%. 49 writers did not for him. There were some writers who left Pedro and Johnson off their ballots simply because they felt they were both a synch to make it, and wanted to include more than 10 maximum they could vote for. (This is the reason the ballot must be expanded to 12 or 15 maximum.)

Smoltz and Biggio both received over 82% of the vote. Mike Piazza just missed this time, getting 69.9%. With just Ken Griffey Jr. the only sure bet to be elected to the Hall, Piazza's chances next year are very good for election. Jeff Bagwell, Tim Raines and Curt Schilling all did better than last year, and they trending upwards to an eventual Hall of Fame election.

Both Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens did slightly better than in 2014, but are still in the upper 30% range, still nowhere close. Mark McGwire got just 10% of the vote in his next-to-last time on the ballot. Nomar Garciaparra got just 5.5% in his ballot, and he figures to be like Don Mattingly, a great player who was a "shooting star" who will never get in.

Congratulations to one of the greatest Red Sox players of all-time, and to the other three very worthy newest Hall of Famers.

Here are the official results, courtesy of baseballhall.org:

Ballots Cast: 549Needed for Election: 412
VotesPlayerPercentage
534Randy Johnson97.3%
500Pedro Martinez91.1%
455John Smoltz82.9%
454Craig Biggio82.7%
384Mike Piazza69.9%
306Jeff Bagwell55.7%
302Tim Raines55.0%
215Curt Schilling39.2%
206Roger Clemens37.5%
202Barry Bonds36.8%
166Lee Smith30.2%
148Edgar Martinez27.0%
138Alan Trammell25.1%
135Mike Mussina24.6%
77Jeff Kent14.0%
71Fred McGriff12.9%
65Larry Walker11.8%
64Gary Sheffield11.7%
55Mark McGwire10.0%
50Don Mattingly9.1%
36Sammy Sosa6.6%
30Nomar Garciaparra5.5%
21Carlos Delgado3.8%
4Troy Percival0.7%
2Aaron Boone0.4%
2Tom Gordon0.4%
1Darin Erstad0.2%
0Rich Aurilia0.0%
0Tony Clark0.0%
0Jermaine Dye0.0%
0Cliff Floyd0.0%
0Brian Giles0.0%
0Eddie Guardado0.0%
0Jason Schmidt0.0%
*All candidates in italics received less than 5% of the vote on ballots cast and will be removed from future BBWAA consideration

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