I’m pretty sure that nobody thinks about Hall of Fame voting more than Chris Jaffe. And he, like some others, has been wondering if the huge backlog of terrific Hall of Fame candidates might lead to a bizarrely counter-intuitive happening: nobody getting elected by the BBWAA in one more years in the near future.
Chris Jaffe: No Empty Summers In Cooperstown
Fortunately for the Cooperstown Chamber of Commerce, that probably won’t happen:
Biggio should go in next year. No one else should. If Fisk couldn’t get elected as the fourth-best new guy in 1999, Piazza won’t in 2012. Schilling will finish further down, and Sosa may be under 10 percent. As for the backloggers, Morris probably won’t move up enough because it is such a strong batch of new guys. I think he’ll get close but ultimately have to go to the VC.
Jaffe also sees Greg Maddux and probably Tom Glavine getting elected in 2014, Randy Johnson and perhaps Frank Thomas in 2015, and Ken Griffey in 2016.
In other words, the Hall of Fame’s nightmare scenario -- a summer without a BBWAA enshrinee -- will not happen.
Still, the Hall -- hey, thanks BBWAA! -- is going to have sort of a problem in 2016; just check out Jaffe’s article to see how jammed the ballot’s going to be that year. Some really excellent candidates might get less than five percent on that ballot, and fall off forever.
Not that that hasn’t happened before.
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