IF I HAD A VOTE IN THE 2014 BASEBALL HALL OF FAME ELECTION

Ten for the 2014 Baseball Hall of Fame Ballot

Given the already-overloaded ballot that only got heavier with five legitimate Hall of Fame candidates added this year, which meant that candidates whom I had identified as Hall of Fame candidates in previous years could get edged back depending on their degree of excellence, I approached selection of the ten I would vote for using the old "FIFO" method I learned about way back in accounting class: In inventory terms, "FIFO" stands for "first in, first out," so if a player had been a top-ten pick on one of my previous ballots, he remained so. In other words, none of the first-time candidates made it onto this top-ten ballot—with one exception, which we will see soon enough.

10. Alan Trammell (thirteenth year on ballot)

Are there players whose votes I've deferred who could—and maybe should—be ahead of Alan Trammell? You bet—Tom Glavine and Frank Thomas are two obvious ones. But this is not a normal ballot. It is overstuffed. I maintained that the shortstop was a Hall of Famer last year, and nothing has dissuaded me since then. Most importantly, Alan Trammell is nearing the end of his eligibility, and the ballot does not promise to be any easier next year, or the year after, which will be Trammell's last chance. Frankly, the odds do not look good: Last year, Trammell polled 33.6 percent of the vote, losing 3.2 percent of the vote from 2012. Realistically, Trammell will most likely not be voted in by the BBWAA, and he will have to hope that a future Expansion Era committee remembers him (along with his keystone mate Lou Whitaker, but that is another story). Trammell, though, was in some ways the prototype of the "super-shortstop," excellent both offensively and defensively, even if he didn't post numbers like Cal Ripken, Jr., or Derek Jeter. Positional scarcity is the biggest factor in Alan Trammell's favor, and that earns my vote.

9. Larry Walker (fourth year on ballot)

Boy, am I getting sick of talking about Larry Walker for the Hall of Fame. I discussed the five-tool right fielder in my very first column in 2011, and of course his credentials received attention in 2012 and exhaustively last year, when I tried to put the bias against Walker based on his playing in Denver's Coors Field into perspective. As an example of that, in his 1997 MVP year, Walker posted a .346/.443/.733 slash line on the road while hitting 29 of his 49 home runs in other ballparks; despite hitting 30 of his 46 doubles and all four of his triples in Coors, he actually slugged better on the road. In 1997, Walker swung a hot bat anywhere he played, not just in Denver. And his total games at Coors Field account for roughly 30 percent of his total career games. Walker is another classic 3-4-5 slash-line hitter (.313/.400/.565) who collected 2160 hits, 471 doubles, 383 home runs, 1355 runs, and 1311 RBI. His peripherals include a 141 OPS+, a 140 wRC+, and a .412 wOBA. A strong-armed right fielder who also stole 230 bases, Larry Walker is a Hall of Famer.

8. Mike Piazza (second year on ballot)

Despite his admission to having taken androstenedione ("andro") early in his career, Mike Piazza still collected 57.8 percent of the vote, the fourth-highest total, on last year's ballot. That is an encouraging sign for the best-hitting catchers in baseball history, a lifetime .308 hitter (.313 as a catcher) with 427 home runs (396 as a catcher, the career leader for the position). Last year, I asked whether Hall voters would consider Piazza to be a Cinderella, alluding to his unlikely journey to the Major Leagues (he was drafted in the 62nd round in 1988 essentially as a favor to family friend Tommy Lasorda), or a wicked stepsister, given the presumption of Piazza's involvement with PEDs in some capacity. (I also had Piazza as one of the five "tough sells" based on the crowded ballot.) One year on the ballot does not indicate a trend. The questions this year are, was last year's showing the initial burst of support that will begin to decline? Or is it an indication that support will grow? As a defensive catcher, Piazza was a tremendous hitter (although his defensive WAR of 1.0 is respectable), and with peripherals such as a 147 OPS+, a 140 wRC+, and a .390 wOBA, Mike Piazza is a Hall of Fame hitter.

7. Craig Biggio (second year on ballot)

You would think that since just 28 men in the history of the sport have collected as many as 3000 hits, that accomplishment would be worthy of getting a player elected in his first year of eligibility. (Unless your name is Pete Rose, the all-time hit king, who agreed to be marked as ineligible for his gambling allegations, or Rafael Palmeiro, who is being blackballed for his PEDs usage.) Actually, Eddie Collins, Nap Lajoie, Tris Speaker, and Paul Waner all had to wait at least a year before being voted into the Hall. Craig Biggio has to wait at least a year as he was not elected last year, but the second baseman (and catcher and center fielder) did receive the highest number of votes with 388, representing 68.2 percent of the total vote. As with Mike Piazza (and any player with only one year on the ballot), it is impossible to detect a trend based on one data point. But let's venture a guess and say that Biggio will be elected to the Hall of Fame sometime in the near future. Considering that the only two players other than Craig Biggio to have combined more than 3000 hits, more than 600 doubles, more than 400 stolen bases, and more than 1800 runs scored in their careers are Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker, I'd say that he is in some pretty good company.

6. Tim Raines (seventh year on ballot)

File Tim Raines under the Sabermetric Darling category along with Alan Trammell. As I related last year, I had Tim Raines pegged as a Hall of Famer in 2002, just as he was retiring. Granted, I didn't think even then that he would be an obvious choice although it was pretty obvious to me that he was the poor man's Rickey Henderson; I plugged for Raines in my very first column and for the 2012 ballot. Along with Larry Walker, I have been singing this refrain for some time now. Raines is fifth in lifetime stolen bases with 808, and he ranks 13th in stolen base percentage with an 84.7 percent success rate. But Raines was hardly one-dimensional. In 2502 games played, he banged out 2605 hits including 430 doubles and 170 home runs while adding 1330 walks, giving him a slash line of .294/.385/.425 as he scored 1571 runs and drove in 980.

Here are Tim Raines's qualitative statistics compared to Rickey Henderson's:

	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS	OPS+	wOBA	wRC+
Rickey Henderson	.279	.401	.419	.820	127	.372	132
Tim Raines	.294	.385	.425	.810	123	.361	125

Henderson is the lifetime leader in runs scored and stolen bases (and times caught stealing), and in 500 more games than Raines he did reach 3055 hits including 510 doubles and 297 home runs while collecting 2190 walks. Henderson was a first-ballot Hall of Famer. The good news is that apart from a slight dip on his second year on the ballot, in 2009 (coincidentally the same year in which Henderson was elected), Tim Raines has had an upward trend to the point that he polled 52.2 percent of the vote last year, an uptick of 4.5 percent and the biggest increase of any player on a packed, contentious ballot. He still has a big gap to overcome, but he deserves to make it.

5. Curt Schilling (second year on ballot)

Curt Schilling is the kind of pitcher Jack Morris's proponents want Morris to be—the big-game pitcher whose regular-season record supports handing the ball to him in crucial postseason games. Sure, Morris won 38 more regular-season games, in 91 more starts, than did Schilling. Come the postseason, Morris has the 1984 World Series with the Tigers and of course Game Seven of the 1991 Series with the Twins. Schilling has the 2001 World Series with the Diamondbacks and of course the bloody sock in the 2004 American League Championship Series with the Red Sox. Schilling is the last of my "tough sells" from 2011, and last year I emphasized how he managed to be overshadowed by some high-powered company (Randy Johnson, Johan Santana) even as he held his own in that company. Schilling's ERA is 3.46 while his FIP is 3.23, and a big part of his own heavy lifting comes from being one of only 16 pitchers with at least 3000 strikeouts (Schilling's 3116 ranks 15th), but combined with his stingy 711 bases on balls, he owns a tremendous K/BB ratio of 4.38, the best mark since the beginning of the 20th century. Tom Glavine and perhaps Mike Mussina could squeeze past Schilling, but Curt Schilling is every bit as much a Hall of Fame pitcher.

4. Jeff Bagwell (fourth year on ballot)

On the one hand, first baseman Jeff Bagwell has had a positive trend on the three ballots he has already been on, starting with 41.7 percent of the vote in 2011, shooting up to 56.0 percent in 2012, and moving up to 59.6 percent last year, the third-highest showing on a packed, contentious ballot. On the other hand, Bagwell has not reached the 75 percent necessary to get into the Hall of Fame in three whole tries. What is the delay? Wait—what is that whispering? He took PEDs? Where is the evidence? Last year, I noted how if Bagwell did use PEDs, he must have been the smartest player to do so because he never hit an eye-popping number of home runs in a season, certainly not in the Astrodome and not even when he and the Houston Astros moved into the bandbox first called Enron Field and then Minute Maid Park. His decline corresponds with the normal decline of any player not using performance-enhancing drugs. In fact, the biggest knocks against Bagwell are that he never led the league in home runs and that he didn't reach 500 home runs in his career, falling 51 shy of that. Compared to his other offensive exploits, including being the only first baseman to hit at least 400 home runs and steal at least 200 bases, Jeff Bagwell has otherwise proved his worthiness for the Hall of Fame, as I have explained in my very first column and for the 2012 vote.

3. Roger Clemens (second year on ballot)

Roger Clemens was awarded the Cy Young, which recognizes the league's top pitcher in a season, seven times, more than any other pitcher. He should have won it in 1990, when he was the runner-up to Bob Welch, and possibly in 1992 and 2005, when he came in third each time. He won four of those Cy Youngs from 1997 on, when he was very probably already using PEDs, but three of those awards are from before 1992, when he was regarded as being "clean." I'm not making Clemens's Hall of Fame case based solely on Cy Young awards, but as I noted last year, the same body that votes for Cy Young award winners and Most Valuable Player award winners, the Baseball Writers' Association of America (BBWAA), is also the same body that votes for Hall of Fame candidates. Last year the collective vote by the BBWAA for Clemens, who I explained last year was a Hall of Fame pitcher even before PEDs, was 37.6 percent of the vote. Was last year simply the punishment year? Or will Roger Clemens continue to be denied? Perhaps the BBWAA had grown a collective conscience between Clemens's final Cy Young in 2004—by which time PEDs accusations about many players were rampant—and Clemens's first appearance on the ballot in 2013, but how could this body, the BBWAA, decide that Clemens was the best pitcher in at least two years in which he was suspected of using PEDs, but then not vote Clemens, whose pitching record is among the greatest in baseball history, into the Hall of Fame? What about this year?

2. Barry Bonds (second year on ballot)

Barry Bonds is on the flipside of the same coin as Roger Clemens. The left fielder has won an unprecedented seven Most Valuable Player awards, four of them consecutively from 2001 to 2004, when Bonds was suspected of using PEDs. Bonds should have won another MVP in 1991, when he was runner-up to Terry Pendleton, and possibly in 2000, when he was runner-up to Giants teammate Jeff Kent. Again, the BBWAA is the voting body for MVP awards, as it is for Cy Young awards, and for that body to have endorsed Bonds for MVPs and then to provide him with 36.2 percent of the vote on last year's ballot is an about-face comparable to Clemens's experience. Given the magnitude of Bonds's accomplishments, though, coupled with his equally stellar propensity to be disliked, will Bonds experience a vendetta throughout his time on the ballot? And do we need to enumerate Bonds's accomplishments? Yes, he is the all-time home run king, the all-time walk king, the all-time intentional walk king, with more than twice as many intentional passes, 688, than the next man on the list, Hank Aaron (297). In a 1998 game against the Diamondbacks, Bonds was walked intentionally with the bases loaded as Arizona manager Buck Showalter decided that Bonds's driving in one run on a walk was less costly than having him hit the ball. For Barry Bonds not to be in the Hall of Fame is an indictment of baseball in ways that I detailed last year.

1. Greg Maddux (first year on ballot)

When I listed Greg Maddux as the first of the no-brainer Hall of Fame choices, I may not have been as effusive as I should have been. On the other hand, if I let that go unchecked, I will lapse into blathering fandom. Quite simply, Greg Maddux is a great pitcher—one of the greatest to have ever played the game. His counting numbers look like those of a dead-ball era hurler: 355 wins (8th all-time), including an unprecedented streak of 17 consecutive seasons with 15 or more wins; 740 games started (4th all-time); and 5008 innings pitched (13th all-time)—all remarkable accomplishments in our modern era. Maddux ranks 10th in lifetime strikeouts with 3371, doubly impressive because Maddux was never a power pitcher but pitched by guile and location, which earned him the nickname "The Professor" for his cerebral approach to pitching. If his complete-game and shutout totals are those of a modern-era pitcher—his 109 complete games are 355th while his 35 shutouts are 71st—they are still exceptional for a contemporary pitcher. Greg Maddux is the bellwether for the 2014 Baseball Hall of Fame ballot: He has absolutely no PEDs taint, and he is—in any year, among any company—a genuine first-ballot Hall of Famer. Jay Jaffe's JAWS (Jaffe WAR Score System) has Maddux ranked 10th all-time among starting pitchers. If Maddux does not get elected to the Hall on this year's ballot, we may indeed wonder whether Hall of Fame voting has become problematic. Besides, in 2011 I made this breezy prediction: "In 2014, Greg Maddux will waltz into Cooperstown in his first year of eligibility. You can take that to the bank." That is a bank that is too big to fail.