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

My 2015 Hall of Fame Ballot (If I Had One)

Were I to be a Baseball Writers' Association of America member with the privilege to cast a Hall of Fame ballot, my strategy this year would be to clear the ballot. Plain and simple. That means voting for the universally obvious Hall of Fame candidates and the candidates who I think are obvious Hall of Famers even if many voters do not—and I would cast a couple of "protest" votes besides.

Ten votes maximum, and in my view more than ten qualified candidates. For the record, I think there are 17 qualified Hall of Famers, which is a small victory as I counted 18 last year. Three of them were elected, and one did not receive the five percent minimum required to stay on the ballot; this year, only three first-time candidates qualify.

So, in reverse order, here are my ten choices:

10. Larry Walker (fifth year on the ballot)

To me, Larry Walker is an obvious Hall of Fame right fielder. Jay Jaffe's JAWS system places him 10th among all right fielders all time, with the nine players above his ranking all Hall of Famers, and three of the four ranked just behind him also Cooperstown residents, with one, Joe Jackson, sure to have been voted into the Hall had not his gambling notoriety precluded that. Walker's bWAR, WAR7 (his seven best season by bWAR; they do not have to be consecutive), and JAWS (a blended computation based on career bWAR and WAR7) are right at the average for the 24 right fielders already in the Hall of Fame.

As for Coors Field, Walker's home field while he was with the Colorado Rockies, get over it. Yes, all but two of his nine-plus seasons there were before the Rockies began using a humidor to store baseballs and thus counter the effects of altitude, although it is actually the dry air—not the thin air—that was as much to blame for unusual ball travel. (Dry air hardens balls and makes the transfer of kinetic energy from a swung bat more efficient at the moment of impulse, or impact, and thus propels them farther. The humidor softens balls with moisture and makes them less elastic, decreasing impulse efficiency and thus reducing ball travel. See? Geek. Call me, ladies.)

In any case, Walker played 30 percent of his home games overall at Coors, and of the 49 home runs he hit in 1997—before the humidor was in use—29 of those dingers were hit on the road. The follow-on effect to the perception of an unfair home-field advantage enjoyed by Walker, if that is what the resistance is here, is how Todd Helton, who played his entire career with the Rockies (albeit the majority of it after the humidor was introduced), will fare when he first lands on the Hall of Fame ballot in 2019.

9. Mike Piazza (third year on the ballot)

Look, Mike Piazza is the best-hitting catcher in Major League history, and considering his surprisingly good showing on two ballots already, let's just elect him and clear space on the ballot. Jaffe's JAWS ranks Piazza fifth all-time among catchers, and of the top eight, only Ivan Rodriguez, who is not even eligible for the Hall until 2017, is not in the Hall yet.

Unless those "women" suddenly get second thoughts about their Plan-B guy and now consider him to be a bad-boy Freak. If that's the case, then we are in real trouble with respect to the ballot.

Oh, perish the thought. Although I have now thrown it out into the cosmos. . . .

8. Mike Mussina (second year on the ballot)

An indication of how saturated this ballot is, Mike Mussina comes in at Number Eight on my ballot. Mussina is ranked 28th all-time among starting pitchers by JAWS, keeping in mind that there are 59 starting pitchers enshrined in the Hall of Fame, and last year's first-ballot crush Tom Glavine is ranked 30th.

Falling 30 wins shy of 300, with a 3.68 ERA, Mussina will be more of a Bert Blyleven than a Glavine, although Blyleven at least had two top ten rankings among his counting numbers (fifth in strikeouts with 3701, and ninth in shutouts with 60), and Blyleven was on less-crowded ballots than is Mussina. Still, who would you rather pitch a big game for you, Hall of Famers Burleigh Grimes, Early Wynn, or Rube Marquard? Or Mike Mussina? Yeah, I'd hand the ball to Moose too.

7. Craig Biggio (third year on the ballot)

Another example of the overstuffed ballot: Craig Biggio is a 3000-hit guy; he got those hits cleanly; only he, Ty Cobb, and Tris Speaker have ever combined at least 3000 hits, at least 600 doubles, at least 400 stolen bases, and at least 1800 runs scored in a career—and I have to place him seventh on a ballot?

Maybe we can blame JAWS for this one, as Biggio is ranked 14th all-time among second basemen. On the other hand, there are 19 second sackers in the Hall, and even if Biggio's JAWS scores are about four wins behind the aggregate average, he still ranks ahead of Bobby Doerr, Nellie Fox, and Tony Lazzeri, let alone Johnny Evers, Red Schoendienst, and . . . Bill Mazeroski?

6. Curt Schilling (third year on the ballot)

In some ways, Curt Schilling is another Mike Mussina. JAWS ranks Schilling 27th all-time among starting pitchers, just ahead of Mussina. In one way, Schilling falls behind Mussina: With 216 career wins, Schilling is 54 wins behind Mussina on the career wins list, exactly 20 percent fewer than Moose.

If wins are any indication of how good a pitcher is, that is—and I've argued previously that they are not. What matters more is run prevention, and Schilling was Hall of Fame-good in that department. His 3.46 ERA is excellent in his high-offense era, but his 3.23 FIP is even more telling. Schilling may have been susceptible to the long ball—his career 347 home runs allowed is tied for 28th all-time (Mussina's 376 is 18th all-time, by the way)—but with respect to the other two True Outcomes that drive FIP, walks and strikeouts (home runs being the third), Schilling is almost without peer. Schilling walked only 711 in 3261.0 innings for a stingy 2.0 walks per nine innings, and he struck out 3116 (15th all-time) for a gaudy 8.6 strikeouts per nine innings—but that is nothing compared to his insane 4.38 strikeouts-to-walks ratio, the best mark in the live-ball era, which began nearly a century ago.

And you want big-game pitcher? His performances in the 2001 World Series, which got him named Series co-MVP with Randy Johnson, and the legendary "bloody sock" in the 2004 American League Championship Series, go without saying, but we tend to forget that Schilling, although he got tagged for the loss in the opening game of the Philadelphia Phillies' 1993 World Series against the Toronto Blue Jays, pitched the Phillies to their second victory in Game Five with a gem, a five-hit shutout that—don't forget—came on the heels of the Phillies' collapse in the previous game when, leading 14 to 9, they gave up six runs in the eighth inning as the Jays nipped them in a wild win. Schilling made that Series closer than it could have been.

I'd stated above that for a big game I'd hand the ball to Mike Mussina over any number of pitchers already in the Hall of Fame. But if Curt Schilling were available, he'd get the nod with no second thought. That's Hall of Fame-good.

5. Jeff Bagwell (fifth year on the ballot)

While Hot Crush Frank Thomas got elected in his first year last year, Jeff Bagwell is still awaiting his turn on this, his fifth ballot. JAWS ranks Bagwell as the sixth-best first basemen all-time while Thomas is ranked ninth-best, and every eligible first baseman in the top 12 has been elected to the Hall of Fame except for Rafael Palmeiro, and we know what his problem is.

So, with Bagwell, it's put-up-or-shut-up time: If there is any evidence that Jeff Bagwell used performance-enhancing drugs, let's see it. Otherwise, there is no reason why he should not be elected to the Hall.

4. Roger Clemens (third year on the ballot)

This is first of my two "protest" votes. I sincerely doubt that the voting writers will, collectively and telepathically, decide that Roger Clemens, along with Barry Bonds, has been "punished" enough, and that they will then vote for him (and Bonds) in sufficient numbers to elect him to the Hall.

And I'm not going to go into yet another discourse about the murky environment of PEDs, their alleged effects, and equally nebulous rules and penalties prior to a consensus being reached by the mid-2000s. Nor am I going to split hairs once more about whether Clemens would have been a Hall of Famer before he most likely began using PEDs.

I will simply note that at least by JAWS rankings for starting pitchers, Roger Clemens ranks third. At some point in the future, provided that he (or Bonds) are not elected to the Hall, fans will wonder why so many players at or near the top of the leaderboards are not in the Hall of Fame. Baseball will need to answer that, but my suspicion is that there is no way to respond without looking like the Morality Police.

3. Barry Bonds (third year on the ballot)

This is the second of my "protest" votes.

Barry Bonds ranks first all-time among JAWS rankings for left fielders. By the way, Pete Rose ranks fifth among all left fielders.

What does it say about Major League Baseball that its all-time leader in hits, Pete Rose, is not in the Hall of Fame and never will be barring a reversal in policy, and that its all-time home run leader, Bonds, may never be voted in despite being eligible—and ridiculously over-qualified?

We can blame the individual all we want, scold them for making poor decisions, and in the case of Bonds, withhold a merit privilege as a way to punish bad behavior. But neither Bonds nor Rose created the environment in which they performed. That environment is the institution of baseball, and at some point that institution is going to have to take responsibility either for attracting reprobate players such as Bonds or Rose (and many more like them throughout its history) or for creating or fostering the environment in which they became reprobates—if indeed "reprobate" is what they are.

Baseball is hardly a wholesome and innocent institution; it never has been. From its inception, it has fostered gambling, collusion, discrimination, racism, and anti-labor practices while trying hard to paint itself as a fundamental slice of Americana, its "national pastime."

Arguments pointing this out, and I've made a few, are as tiresome as the reasons for the arguments in the first place. As Dan le Batard pointed out with his protest ballot last year, the Hall of Fame has become the Hall of Morality, promoting an illusion instead of reality, and that reality is that PEDs happened—is still happening despite the increased vigilance and penalties—and that baseball collectively was slow, even reluctant, to address the issue. Now, through the BBWAA Hall of Fame vote, it is applying its punishment retroactively.

And Dan le Batard was punished merely for protesting that.

2. Pedro Martinez (first year on the ballot)

Pedro Martinez is ranked 21st by JAWS among starting pitchers all-time. He is worth about 10 wins more than the average bWAR and JAWS ratings of 59 pitchers already in the Hall of Fame.

It is possible that with "only" 219 wins (against only 100 losses for an elite .687 winning percentage in any case), Martinez may not look like a Hall of Famer, or at least a first-ballot one, to a number of voters. But for those voters not trapped in the 20th century, the ones who realize that wins are a team effort and that in an age of interventionist bullpens it is harder for a starting pitcher to get the "win," and who understand that run prevention is a much more accurate measure of a pitcher's effectiveness, they may instead notice that:

1. Martinez's 2.93 ERA is exceptional for his era. Neither first-ballot pitcher last year, Tom Glavine and the sublime Greg Maddux, has a career ERA under 3.00 (and Glavine's 3.54 ERA is much closer to Mike Mussina's).

2. Martinez's FIP is 2.91, actually just a bit better than his ERA. That is not surprising as he allowed just 239 home runs in 2827.1 innings pitched, just 760 walks for an outstanding 2.4 walks allowed per nine innings, and struck out 3154 batters (13th all-time) for a remarkable 10.0 strikeouts per nine innings while his unreal strikeouts-to-walks ratio of 4.15 is second only to Curt Schilling's in the live-ball era.

3. Martinez's ERA+ of 154 is second only to Mariano Rivera's 205—and Martinez accomplished that in more than twice the innings pitched by Rivera.

1. Randy Johnson (first year on the ballot)

Randy Johnson is ranked ninth by JAWS among starting pitchers all-time. Of the top 25 pitchers on that list, only Roger Clemens, Pedro Martinez, and 19th-century dead-ball pitcher Jim McCormick are not yet in the Hall of Fame.

Do we really need to examine Johnson's qualifications?

"It Was Broke, So We Fixed It." Or Did We?

Last year, I closed by speculating whether, in the wake of no candidates having been elected in 2013, the Hall of Fame voting process was broken. If it was, I listed a number of approaches the Baseball Hall of Fame might take to remedy the situation.

Intriguingly, one that I did not specify is one that the Hall introduced for balloting this year and for subsequent ballots: Shortening the maximum term a candidate may remain on a ballot from fifteen years to ten years. As I noted previously, this "remedy" is a short-term one that ultimately puts the burden of deciding about "problematic" candidates in the hands of the Expansion Era Committee—and as we have seen just recently with the election held by this committee's sister committee the Golden Era Committee, it elected no candidates from the Golden Era. So, in essence, the writers have had their gatekeeping function reduced.

However, last year's vote showed that the process was not broken completely. The BBWAA voters did elect three candidates, only the seventh time since 1937 that the writers have elected as many as three candidates in a single year. That is the good news; the unspoken message, though, was that with last year's election of first-time-eligible candidates Tom Glavine, Greg Maddux, and Frank Thomas, voters have a bias toward candidates without even the slightest hint of a connection to performance-enhancing drugs—and in the case of Thomas, that candidate had been outspoken about his opposition to PEDs. (As has Curt Schilling, although we'll open that can of worms some other time.) This stance was reinforced by the lack of support for Rafael Palmeiro, only the fourth man to collect at least 3000 hits and 500 home runs, but who failed to collect at least five percent of the vote in 2014 and was thus removed from the 2015 ballot.

But despite the Hall's rule change and the continuing moralism concerning PEDs, the issues of the ballot logjam and of players associated with PEDs may have been swept under the rug temporarily but they are still evident by their conspicuous lumps on the floor. Perhaps the best we can expect from the BBWAA's voters this year is to elect as many qualified candidates as possible.

And despite reports of voters (such as ESPN's Buster Olney) who will be submitting blank ballots signifying varying stances or protests, I am optimistic that there will be a few elected candidates. I am not optimistic that they will be any Friend Zones or Bad First Impressions, let alone any Freaks or Geeks, but even electing Hot Crushes and Plan-B's will alleviate the ballot logjam to a small extent.

And although predictions are usually little more than SWAGs (Silly Wild-Ass Guess), here are mine:

3. Craig Biggio (84.3 percent)

2. Pedro Martinez (91. 7 percent)

1. Randy Johnson (98.6 percent)

Or to rework the famous observation made by Hall of Fame shortstop Ernie Banks, it's a great day for a Hall of Fame election—let's elect a few more! There are certainly plenty of candidates from whom to choose.