IF I HAD A VOTE IN THE 2015 BASEBALL HALL OF FAME ELECTION

Group One: The Hot Crushes

This group has the "men" that make "women" swoon. Pure and simple. These guys are the "front-door test," the guy whom your wife, girlfriend, significant other, plus-one, friend with benefits—whatever—would leave you for should he ever ring your doorbell and declare his desire for her.

Last year, the hot crushes were Tom Glavine, Greg Maddux, and Frank Thomas, and voters fell hard enough for them to vote them into Cooperstown in their first year of eligibility.

This year, Randy Johnson and Pedro Martinez are definitely the hot crushes, and John Smoltz is probably one too. In 2011, I identified all three as "no-brainer" Hall of Fame selections, likely to be elected in their first year of eligibility, and I hate to say I told you so but the other two "no-brainers" I identified were Tom Glavine and Greg Maddux. (I did have Frank Thomas pegged as a "tough sell" Hall of Famer, but he proved to be not such a tough sell after all; good thing he never rang my doorbell.)

Even without having made their cases previously, even without seeing where they land in the table above, there isn't much that needs to be said for either Randy Johnson or Pedro Martinez and their qualifications for the Hall.

Randy Johnson is a tall, homely Brad Pitt with a mullet. He is probably the last man we will see in our lifetime reach 300 wins (unless Clayton Kershaw or Madison Bumgarner go on a prolonged tear), and even in this strikeout-rich environment we may never see another pitcher reach 4000 strikeouts. Pedro Martinez does not have those gaudy numbers, but this homely Johnny Depp in Jheri curls was a defiant David staring down a host of steroid-fueled Goliaths and simply mowing them down, one by one. Pedro's seven-year stretch from 1997 to 2003, right in the teeth of the Steroids Era, may be the most dominant stretch for any starting pitcher ever—and, yes, I know who Cy Young, Christy Mathewson, Pete Alexander, Walter Johnson, Lefty Grove, Bob Feller, Warren Spahn, Sandy Koufax, Bob Gibson, Tom Seaver, Nolan Ryan, Greg Maddux, and Roger Clemens are.

Meanwhile, John Smoltz is a versatile Bruce Willis (notice that I did not have to add homely) who won 213 games and saved 154 games, and even if he may not come off as big a front-door stud as Johnson or Martinez, just throw in those 3084 strikeouts—and those pretty impressive 8.0 strikeouts per nine innings and 3.05 strikeouts-to-walks ratios—and voters just may start to swoon. It is possible that Smoltz may have to wait until next year for Hall admission, but he won't have to wait long, hot crush that he is.

Group Two: The Plan-B's

Okay, so a woman (voters) may never get her hot crush—there is always the Plan-B guy, the guy who may not be as hot but is steamy enough to qualify as the fallback. On our ballot, that is still a select group.

First up is Craig Biggio, top vote-getter in the bust that was the 2013 election and the top vote-getter again in 2014 among candidates not voted into the Hall. Boy, 74.8 percent of the vote. Can you say blue ball—well, never mind.

Biggio is one of many candidates on the 2014 whom I am sick of writing about, so I'll simply note that I presented his case as a Hall of Famer in 2013 and listed him seventh on my hypothetical ballot, and last year I had him listed again at the Number Seven spot.

Next is Mike Piazza, who has a touch of the bad boy about him (admitting to an early and brief use of PEDs) but otherwise is wholesome and desirable—he placed fourth in voting in 2013 with a respectable 57.8 percent, and he was the only non-elected candidate in 2014 besides Biggio to see an uptick in his voting percentage, collecting 4.4 percent more votes to nudge above the 60-percent line (although he didn't get the royal tease as did Biggio). I had Piazza listed at Number Eight on my hypothetical ballot in 2013 and again at that position in 2014. And back in 2011 Piazza was among my five "tough sells" as a Hall of Famer. (I didn't even bother profiling Biggio back then because I assumed he would be a shoo-in to the Hall. But you know what happens when you assume.)

Both Biggio and Piazza are attractive enough and fresh enough on the ballot to be Plan-B guys. But as for our next group . . .

Group Three: The Friend Zone

Guys, you know that when you are trying to seduce a woman, you have a window of opportunity in which to seal the deal—and if you don't make the impression sooner rather than later, you are going to wind up in the dreaded "friend zone."

That is the case for our unfortunate fellows in this group. They are clean with respect to PEDs, they are—at least in my estimation—legitimate Hall of Famers, and some of them have made a decent showing on the ballot—but, unfortunately, they have already been on a few ballots and have not impressed voters sufficiently to garner that coveted 75 percent.

Foremost in this group is Jeff Bagwell, who in four rounds on the ballot has yet to crack 60 percent of the vote, although he came close in 2013 with 59.6 percent. Bagwell is one guy I'm getting tired of writing about because I wrote about him as a Hall of Famer in my very first article for this site. In 2014, I had Bagwell listed fourth on my ballot; in 2013, I had him tagged at Number Three; and even though I did not do a ranking in 2012, Bagwell was one of the eight I would have voted for.

Next up is Larry Walker, who has yet to do better than 22.9 percent in four years on the ballot. Walker is another one whose case I stated in my first article, again in my unranked assessment in 2012, and who placed sixth in my 2013 ranking, and ninth in my 2014 ranking. Edgar Martinez is another one who is not turning enough voters' heads. In five ballot tries Martinez has done better than Walker, polling in the low- to mid-30-percent range in his first four ballots although he dropped 10.7 percent last year; he was among my eight in 2012, I had him ranked 11th in 2013 and ranked 13th in 2014.

And while he is coming up on just his third ballot appearance, Curt Schilling may have already passed into the friend zone. I did anticipate that Schilling would be a "tough sell" as a Hall of Famer, but his 38.8 percent on his first ballot was surprisingly disappointing (I had him ranked at fourth place on my ballot), and he dropped nearly ten points on last year's ballot (I had him ranked fifth on that ballot).

Group Four: The Bad First Impressions

Even though you've combed your hair, checked your breath, checked your fly, tried to come up with your most sincere opening line, and smiled as you approached her, sometimes you just don't make that good a first impression on a woman. That seems to be the case for our two poor saps here.

Perhaps that is not too surprising in the case of Jeff Kent: At first glance he is a borderline case (he is the fourth of my five "tough sells"), I had him ranked 15th on my ballot for 2014, his first year on the ballot, and in fact Kent grabbed only 15.2 percent of the vote.

But that overstuffed ballot is a great leveler. Even though Mike Mussina was the last of my five "tough sells," and I could rank him no higher than 14th on my 2014 ballot, he has a much stronger case than does Kent, and perhaps his 20.3 percent of the vote on his inaugural ballot is just another example of too many choices to fill too few slots.

Group Five: The Freaks

You knew the PEDs boys had to land somewhere, and here they are: Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Mark McGwire, Gary Sheffield, and Sammy Sosa. Jeff Bagwell is sometimes cast into this group, but unlike the others, there is no material evidence to merit his inclusion.

In eight years on the ballot, McGwire has failed to impress a full quarter of the voters—his best showing was 23.7 percent in 2010—and if he does not get elected this year, he has one more chance under the new rules before being removed permanently. I wouldn't hold my breath, but I did call McGwire a Hall of Famer in 2012, again in 2013—although he didn't make the top ten that year—and again in 2014, although he dropped to 17th place among the 18 players I thought were Hall-worthy.

Sosa, I will admit, has been at the tail-end of my picks for the Hall, 14th of 14 in 2013 and 18th of 18 in 2014, and with a mere 7.2 percent of the vote in only his second ballot last year, a 5.3 percent drop from his premiere in 2013, he may in fact fail to get five percent of the vote this year and thus become the first eligible candidate with 600 or more career home runs to lose his bid for the Hall of Fame. That would be a dubious capper to an already-controversial career.

Of course, some women like the bad boys: Both Clemens and Bonds have managed to impress about a third of the voters in the two years they have been on the ballot. Both of course are ridiculously overqualified for the Hall of Fame. I ranked Clemens at Number Two on the 2013 ballot, and at Number Three on the 2014 ballot. Bonds topped my 2013 ballot, and was at the second slot in 2014.

Sheffield is making his first appearance on a Hall of Fame ballot this year; as a borderline candidate I profiled him in depth just recently, and although I concluded that he falls just below the threshold, it will be his being named in the Mitchell Report—and his association with Bonds and the Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative (BALCO) scandal—that will be the Scarlet Letter that will turn off voters.

Group Six: The Geeks

You know who these guys are—women may respect them for their skills and abilities, but they are hardly sex symbols and generally do not merit a first look, let alone a second, in that department. Such is the case with sabermetric darlings Tim Raines and Alan Trammell, whom the stat-crunchers have been touting as Hall of Famers but to most voters their secret numbers are just that—secret. Others may say that they are qualified, but they just don't look like it.

Sure, some women like the nerdy type—after all, both Raines, on his eighth ballot, and Trammell, on his fourteenth, have managed to attract enough votes to stay eligible. Raines has had a better time of it, having gone from about a quarter of the vote to roughly half. Trammell has worked his way up from about 16 percent on his first time out to a third of the vote in 2013 before dropping down to around 20 percent last year, and this is after being on the ballot for nearly twice as long as Raines. Raines does have one gaudy statistic—he is fifth all-time in stolen bases with 808. But after all this time, and on such an overstuffed ballot, both would be happy just to make it to the Friend Zone—at least that would tell them that they really do exist.

Both Raines and Trammell got my hypothetical vote in 2012. In 2013, Raines was at Number Five on my ballot, and in 2014 I put him at Number Six, while for Trammell, he was at the Number Ten spot both in 2013 and in 2014. Yes, I'm a geek too.

However, as I will explain below, my voting strategy this year (were I to have a ballot) has changed, and as part of that change I would not vote for either one. Not that I think that they are no longer Hall of Famers, but that they do not make the top ten. This really hurts with respect to Raines, whom I had pegged as a Hall of Famer (albeit a borderline one) all the way back in 2002, in his final year as a player.

Group Seven: The Nice Guys

Although it's true that these nice guys are not actually finishing last (and leaving aside that Leo Durocher's deathless observation had been misquoted from the start), they are hardly at the front of the line, and like the Geeks, they would be happy just to make it to the Friend Zone.

In this group are ballot old-timers Don Mattingly and Lee Smith, ballot veteran Fred McGriff, and ballot rookies Carlos Delgado, Nomar Garciaparra, and Brian Giles.

I have written recently about Delgado and Garciaparra as borderline candidates on this year's ballot, and how each does not rise to the level of a Hall of Famer.

As for Giles, superficially, he looks surprisingly viable. He came pretty close to a classic (and Hall of Fame-worthy) 3-4-5 slash line, reaching two-thirds of that with a .400 on-base percentage and a .502 slugging percentage with only his batting average falling short—although not many hitters would complain about a .291 average over the course of their career. And in a free-swinging era in which hitters are unfazed by high strikeout totals, Giles walked about 350 more times than he fanned, leading the National League in walks (119) in 2005, the same year he finished with his only top-ten showing in Most Valuable Player voting; Giles walked 1183 times in his career while striking out just 835 times in 6527 career at-bats. And as his .502 slugging average suggests, Giles wasn't a banjo hitter—he finished with 411 doubles (163rd lifetime, and just ahead of Hall of Famers Mike Schmidt and Ernie Banks), 55 triples, and 287 home runs (152nd all-time), while he had a four-year peak in that department as he hit at least 35 home runs from 1999 to 2002.

But Giles had neither a dominant peak nor substantial counting numbers—his 1897 hits are 326th all-time, just behind Royce Clayton—and like Delgado, Garciaparra, Mattingly, McGriff, and Smith, he posted an excellent record but one that falls short of the Hall. Not last, but hardly first, either.

Group Eight: The Nonentities

This group rounds up everyone else on the 2015 ballot who has not been mentioned yet.

These are the guys who women vaguely suspect exist but do not think twice about although one or two may "sign the yearbook" with "have a great summer!" or in other words, a voter may cast the hometown vote for the candidate. However, on an overstuffed ballot such as this one, they might not even get that one vote.