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

"If It Ain't Broke"—Or Is It Broke?

As I have outlined, there are enough qualified candidates for the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2014 to populate a voting ballot that allows a maximum of ten candidates nearly twice over. Last year, I identified 14 candidates qualified for the Hall (all except Kenny Lofton collected at least five percent of the vote to stay on this year's ballot), and of course not one received enough votes to enter the Hall. That was the first time since 1996 that the BBWAA was unable to cast enough votes for a candidate to elect him to the Hall of Fame.

Was last year simply an aberration? The confluence of many qualified candidates and the opprobrium concerning players known to have used, or suspected of having used, performance-enhancing drugs that came to a head with Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, the two biggest high-profile PEDs players, on the ballot for the first time? Or will both conditions, many qualified candidates and PEDs-associated players, continue to affect Hall of Fame voting?

If the issue is PEDs, then the voters will continue to exercise their sanction based on their attitude toward the issue. The PEDs issue is undoubtedly a heated one, with questions pertaining to the degree of cheating—if that is how PEDs usage is regarded—and its very morality sparking intense debate that has already made itself known through the unencouraging vote totals for players marked by PEDs. The larger question is whether, to use the cliché, a few bad apples will spoil the whole barrel, and whether any player who played during the Steroids Era regardless of suspicion will be able to be elected. You may not be able to legislate morality, but voters can exercise it with their voting patterns, and this could be an unresolvable issue for some time to come.

If, however, the issue is the abundance of qualified candidates—which will only continue as the next few years will bring even more potential Hall of Famers—then there are some remedies. Increase the number of votes that can be cast. Introduce a weighted voting system. Introduce a run-off system in which the top vote-getters are placed on a second ballot and voted on again. Restrict the number of overall candidates on a ballot. Decrease the percentage required for induction.

I do not think that any of those remedies, and any others not listed above, are necessary. Call me a Pollyanna, but I think last year's vote was simply an aberration. Not that the current system is perfect, but in the earliest days, when Hall of Fame voting began in 1936, those ballots were much larger, with three-plus decades' worth of talent to choose from. Since then, the voters have had years in which no candidates were elected even though those ballots did contain many eventual Hall of Fame players.

Last year's storm has passed. This year's ballot brings five marquee names with no PEDs associations, increasing the number of candidates whom voters can consider to be "clean." Although I do not expect to see a lot of players receive the necessary minimum of 75 percent to be elected (the single largest number of players voted into the Hall in any given year was five, in the inaugural year of 1936), and predictions are usually a fool's errand, here are mine regardless:

1. Greg Maddux (95 percent)

2. Craig Biggio (81 percent)

3. Jack Morris (76 percent)

Let's see what the results are in January.