David Lennon's 2021 Baseball Hall of Fame ballot
San Francisco Giants outfielder Barry Bonds gestures to a teammate before a game against at the Colorado Rockies on July 10, 2003. Credit: AP/David Zalubowski
My Baseball Hall of Fame ballot for the Class of 2021 doesn’t really need much additional explaining since we’ve been discussing this particular matter for more than a decade (it only feels like forever).
That said, I’m also down to just those two players this year: Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens.
These somewhat radioactive candidates -- linked to PEDs but never punished by MLB -- have become less controversial selections with each passing winter. Both have appeared on my ballot every year of their eligibility, and they continue to gain traction as some BBWAA members change their minds and newer voters enter the fray with a more liberal view of the PED era.
In an effort to navigate some of this gray area, any player who has been disciplined by MLB for PED offenses is disqualified in my mind. Sorry, Manny Ramirez.
I’ve detailed my reasoning on this repeatedly, so here’s an excerpt from my 2018 column on the subject, which I feel summed things up pretty well.
As for Bonds and Clemens, we’ve already been over this a million times. Obviously, both fit the description as transcendent, once-in-a-generation players as well as being among the greatest to put on a uniform. For the record, neither one was ever disciplined by Major League Baseball for performance-enhancing drugs, and in an extremely complicated era for all sports, that’s the threshold I go by when it comes to their Cooperstown eligibility.
It’s also worth noting that the BBWAA — the same organization that has kept both from the Hall thus far — voted Bonds the MVP seven times, including four straight from 2001-04, regardless of whatever suspicions floated around him. Clemens earned both the MVP and Cy Young Award from the BBWAA in 1986, and the writers voted him six more Cy Young Awards before his retirement in 2007.
I’ve never wavered on Bonds and Clemens since they first appeared on the ballot in 2013, but plenty of others have flipped on them since, which is partly the reason why both have climbed from the high-30s percentage-wise to the high-50s last year [up to 60.7 and 61.0, respectively, in Class of 2020 voting]. Given that neither has played a game during that period, a philosophical shift (or bending to backlash?) can be the only explanation.
Yankees starting pitcher Roger Clemens against the Tampa Bay Rays on April 13, 2003. Credit: Newsday/David L. Pokress
Beyond those two undeniable baseball immortals, there are cases to be made for others on the ballot, and voters are allowed to pick 10. But I re-examined my own process in 2018 after Harold Baines got in by a 12-vote majority cast by the Today’s Game Era committee. No offense to Baines, but that sort of nudged me toward more of a "small hall" mentality — something I had wrestled with since I first started voting 14 years ago — and my past three ballots now reflect that.
Careers are dissected more thoroughly now than ever before, and advances in statistical analysis have provided us with a multi-dimensional snapshot of a player’s performance. That’s definitely elevated a number of players in recent years, and good for them. I’ve just chosen to focus on those at the top of Olympus rather than the group being evaluated on the margins.
Barry Bonds' Hall of Fame vote totals
2013: 36.2%
2014: 34.7%
2015: 36.8%
2016: 44.3%
2017: 53.8%
2018: 56.4%
2019: 59.1%
2020: 60.7%
Roger Clemens' Hall of Fame vote totals
2013: 37.6%
2014: 35.4%
2015: 37.5%
2016: 45.2%
2017: 54.1%
2018: 57.3%
2019: 59.5%
2020: 61.0%
David Lennon is an award-winning columnist, a voter for baseball's Hall of Fame and has covered six no-hitters, including two perfect games.
