Rolling through the Hall of Fame ballot here this December continues and unfortunately sometimes that includes negativity. Today’s entry falls under that subheading. We are going to discuss three holdovers on the ballot with what appear to be helpless and, in at least one case, flailing candidacies.
No reason to waste any time. Let’s get into it.
Alex Rodriguez
The three-time MVP has a statistical case rivaled by only the greatest players in history.
A career .295/.380/.550 (140 OPS+) hitter, he ended up with 3,115 hits, 548 doubles, 696 home runs, 2,086 RBI, 2,021 runs and 329 stolen bases. He ranks eighth in career runs, 23rd in hits, seventh in total bases, 33rd in doubles, fifth in home runs, fourth in RBI and 16th in times on base. He’s 12th in WAR among position players, trailing only Honus Wagner at shortstop. The top six most statistically similar players to A-Rod are Willie Mays, Albert Pujols, Ken Griffey Jr., Frank Robinson, Barry Bonds and Hank Aaron. The only players to ever top 2,000 runs and RBI are A-Rod, Aaron and Babe Ruth.
So, yeah, we get the idea.
And yet, A-Rod’s voting percentages so far:
- 2022: 34.3
- 2023: 35.7
- 2024: 34.8
There’s no momentum there at all. No changing electorate or clearing of the ballot is going to get him home. He’s not even halfway there and hasn’t really moved up in three tries.
Obviously the disconnect between his on-field case and vote totals would be the PEDs. A-Rod was found by MLB to have been using PEDs and skirting the rules for years and he was suspended for 211 games because of it.
This isn’t a case where a player is borderline with his stats and could build momentum via an Internet campaign like we’ve seen happen with players like Edgar Martinez, Larry Walker and Scott Rolen. Everyone’s mind is pretty much already made up with Rodriguez. To gain 40 percentage points is a pipe dream.
It’s hard to see things changing, which means he’s just going to wait out his 10 years on the ballot for 10 years and come up emptyhanded.
Manny Ramirez
Ramirez is in a similar boat to A-Rod, though without the excellent defense. He’s now been on the ballot eight times and has been between 22% and 33.2%. He lost support last year, falling almost a percentage point to 32.5%.
Ramirez had nine top-10 MVP finishes and was one of the most feared sluggers in baseball for most of his 19 years. He retired with a slash line of .312/.411/.585 (154 OPS+) in addition to 2,574 hits, 547 doubles, 555 home runs and 1,831 RBI. He also won two rings and World Series MVP for the Red Sox. In his 111 career playoff games, he hit .285/.394/.544 with 19 doubles, 29 home runs and 78 RBI. He’s still the career leader for postseason home runs. The five most statistically similar players to Manny? Frank Thomas, Jimmie Foxx, David Ortiz, Ted Williams and Ken Griffey Jr.
It would be an open-and-shut case, but the PEDs are back in the discussion. Ramirez was suspended in 2009 for 50 games for failing a drug test, then again in 2011.
He’s an inferior player to A-Rod, but sits around the same percentage in votes. It’s pretty simple. Everyone who pays attention to baseball knows that the on-field cases are both easy and obvious. We’re simply looking at around 65% of the voting body that doesn’t want to put in a player suspended for PEDs. The players need 75% of the vote to get in. The math just doesn’t work.
Basically, Manny is on the ballot two more times and then he’ll fall off.
Omar Vizquel
Here’s a totally different case. The only similarity is that Vizquel, like Manny and A-Rod, isn’t getting in the Hall of Fame.
In Vizquel’s case, there’s a vocal group — it looks like we were the minority — that doesn’t believe his on-field case was ever good enough to make the Hall of Fame. He was, however, tracking toward getting in. He got 37% of the vote his first year then rose to 42.8 then 52.6. What did him in were a series of personal revelations in 2020-21, including a lawsuit that alleged that he exposed himself to a teenage bat boy who has autism.
The vote percentages since then:
- 2022: 23.9
- 2023: 19.5
- 2024: 17.7
This is his eighth year on the ballot, so he’s done and flailing. He might even fall off the ballot before his 10th year.
In parts of 24 years, Vizquel hit .272/.336/.352 (82 OPS+) with 2,877 hits, 456 doubles, 77 triples, 80 home runs, 951 RBI, 1,445 runs and 404 steals. He was an 11-time Gold Glover with the reputation of an exceptional defender. Sure enough, he ranks ninth in career defensive WAR. Factoring in the offense, though, hurts Vizquel greatly. He was a singles hitter without a great batting average and, as such, wasn’t overly productive many years. He sits 45th in JAWS at shortstop with players like Hanley Ramirez, Mark Belanger, Andrelton Simmons and Rafael Furcal in his range.
I would have been prepared to argue more vehemently against him, but it doesn’t much matter at this point. He’ll never get in.
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