Baseball Hall of Fame 2018: Will Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Sammy Sosa Ever Reach Cooperstown?

Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, two of MLB’s most legendary and controversial names, may yet make the Baseball Hall of Fame.

But their window is closing fast. Bonds and Clemens each have four more years of eligibility to make it to Cooperstown after the 2018 Hall of Fame results were revealed on Wednesday evening.

A player needs 75 percent of the vote to enter the Hall of Fame. But Bonds, the MLB single-season home run record holder who became embroiled in the BALCO performance-enhancing drugs scandal towards the end of his career, received 56.4 percent of the votes cast by the Baseball Writers Association of America. Clemens, a seven-time Cy Young winner, received 57.3 percent of the vote. The former Red Sox and Yankees pitcher has always denied allegations made by the Mitchell Report that he used anabolic steroids.

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Bonds’s chances of reaching the Hall looked good last year, after his vote percentage rose from 44.3 percent in 2016 to 53.8 percent in 2017. Clemens, too, saw a significant increase in his popularity from 2016 to 2017 according to Yahoo Sports.

Voter apathy towards Bonds and Clemens may be indicative of a wider trend in 2018. While Bonds and Clemens saw minor increases, Sammy Sosa’s vote decreased. The great, controversial former Chicago Cubs slugger tested positive for a performance-enhancing drug in 2003, according to a 2010 New York Times report. Sosa has never admitted to using P.E.D.s and has always denied the allegations.

Yahoo reported that voting percentages for Manny Ramirez and Gary Sheffield also went down this year. Both players have been connected to performance-enhancing drugs scandals. Ramirez, twice a World Series winner with the Red Sox, was suspended twice in his career for testing positive for banned substances.

Chipper Jones, Vladimir Guerrero, Jim Thome and Trevor Hoffman all made it into the Hall of Fame this year.