When the veterans committee (VC), officially convening as the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee for players, meets December 7 at the Winter Meetings in Orlando, Florida, the only burning question is whether it will elect Don Mattingly, Dale Murphy, or both to the National Baseball Hall of Fame since this ballot repeats the VC's 2023 charade of gaming that ballot to ensure that Fred McGriff was elected to Cooperstown.

Joining this anointed pair are Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, who had joined the M & M boys on the 2023 VC ballot, along with first-timers Carlos Delgado, Jeff Kent, Gary Sheffield, and Fernando Valenzuela. Kent and Sheffield recently exited the Baseball Writers' Association of America (BBWAA) ballot after ten fruitless years, with Delgado a one-and-done in 2015 and Valenzuela, who died in 2024 at age 63, gone in 2004 after two marginal appearances.

By paring the number of candidates to be considered by the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee to a lean-and-mean eight, and if trends by recent iterations of the National Baseball Hall of Fame Veterans Committee continue, the odds look very good for Fred McGriff to be making an induction speech in Cooperstown, New York, in July 2023 when the committee announces its results during the baseball winter meetings to be held on December 4, 2022.

Why should McGriff start preparing his induction speech? Because the Screening Committee that selected the eight players whose careers began after 1980 to be considered by the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee of the Hall of Saints—sorry, make that the Hall of Fame—have gamed the ballot to, in essence, eliminate half of its candidates right off the bat, leaving the slugging first baseman as the most viable candidate for consideration ahead of, in order of descending likelihood, Don Mattingly, Dale Murphy, and Albert Belle.