If there is an award for Most Improved Ballot for the Hall of Fame, it might be the one filed by this voter for the Class of 2018.
Two of the four inductees announced Wednesday night — Jim Thome, Vladimir Guerrero, Chipper Jones and Trevor Hoffman — were names I checked off. Those names were Guerrero and Jones. Thome and Hoffman did not make my personal cut, but they made almost everybody else's ballot.
If you think that that many voters can’t possibly be wrong, check the almanac to see how much Herbert Hoover won by in 1928. The three candidates I supported who did not make it were Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Manny Ramirez.
This year’s .400 average is way better than last year’s, which was .200. I felt like Deven Marrero. I voted for Jeff Bagwell for the Class of ’17 as well as Clemens, Bonds, Ramirez and Guerrero, the latter just missing election.
Jones was on 97.2 percent of the 422 ballots, Guerrero on 92.9, Thome on 89.8 and Hoffman on 79.0. Edgar Martinez, with one year of eligibility left, is closing in on Cooperstown with 70.4 percent.
Clemens got 57.3, Bonds 56.4, Ramirez 22.0. Curt Schilling received 51.2.
The 422 ballots cast were the fewest since 1993, and the Hall of Fame officials keep shrinking the electorate, winnowing out baseball writers who are voting more on memory than observation. There were 442 ballots last year, and the 422 this year is way down from the Hall high of 581 in 2011.
Martinez made a huge jump, up from 58.6 last year, and the odds are now in his favor of getting in next year. I have never voted for him and won’t jump on the We Want Willkie bandwagon next year, but Mariners fans take this very seriously and generally bombard me with nasty letters and email messages.
This year, one message said, “I hope you have a rotten, lousy, miserable Christmas — the worst one ever.” Someone did get to the last piece of cherry pie before me on Christmas night, which was pretty rotten, and I did see a car with a Washington plate driving down my street.
Why not vote for Hoffman? And why vote for Guerrero and not Thome?
Hoffman is easy. Closers are dreadfully overrated. Most times, they come into games with a two- or three-run lead and nobody on base, and because what they do has been quantified with the word “save,” they have become more important than they really are.
Wasn’t it Thomas Jefferson who wrote, “All innings are created equal?” Or maybe that’s what he would have written if bullpens had been around in 1776.
Thome is a statistical Hall of Famer, but not an emotional one — at least not for me. Put it this way — if I were in the back of the Fenway press box getting an organic Milky Way out of the vending machine, and somebody said, “Hey, Thome is up,” my reply would be, “Let me know what happens.”
If the same pal said, “Hey, Guerrero is up,” I would respond, “Be right there.”
Strictly subjective, strictly gut instinct and probably different for everybody.
Clemens and Bonds were both up only marginally from last year and appear increasingly unlikely to get in. That is obviously PED-related, and my opinion on that has been expressed several times. We are the Baseball Writers Association of America, not special prosecutors. If the wins and RBIs count, that’s good enough for me.
Schilling did noticeably better, too, going from 45 percent last year to 51.2. He has five years of eligibility left, and if he gains 5 percent a year from now until then, he’ll squeak in.
Mike Mussina is building momentum, too, and made a significant jump this year, from 43 percent to 63.5 percent. That is an unusually big jump. Why that happened, I have no idea, unless somebody discovered that he was shortchanged by 50 wins somehow, or there was a misprint, and his ERA was actually 2.68 and not 3.68.
At 22 percent, Ramirez is a hopeless case. Jim Rice made it in even though he started out at 29.8 percent in 1995, but had 14 years to do it. Ramirez has eight.
So, in the best baseball traditions, it is wait till next year for the next round of Hall of Fame dissent.
—Contact Bill Ballou at william.ballou@telegram.com. Follow him on Twitter @BillBallouTG.