The 2017 Hall of Fame class wont include Vladimir Guerrero, and that ain’t right

Well, that was a bust. Every Angels fan in the world (ok, and every Expos fan) were crossing their fingers and toes today, in hopes of hearing that Vladimir Guerrero was voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility. Unfortunately, Vlady is going to have to wait another year.

Vlad’s chances actually looked pretty good for the first few weeks of vote tabulation, but all the “small hall”, cranky voters were sandbagging their votes, I guess, and in the past week, Vlad’s percentage of votes took some big hits. The guys that had some good news today were Jeff Bagwell, Ivan Rodriguez (also a first timer) and Tim Raines.

I’ve got no problem with those guys getting in, but Vlad belongs to be right there with them, and the fact that he’s now got to wait til next year makes me want to endlessly question the electorate’s sanity.

This is, after all, the same process that has writers sending in blank ballots as some sort of statement of principles, while others just abstain altogether. If you’re looking at this list of former MLB greats and saying “NONE OF THESE GUYS ARE WORTH IT!” then you shouldn’t have a vote. The electorate is full of snakes, and today they bit Vladimir Guerrero hard and pumped him full of their grumpy venom.

The good news: Players that get as close as Vlad (71.7%) always end up in the HOF...just a matter of “when”, not “if”. But I wanted this guy to get his due by being a 1st ballot stud, and today that hope blew away in the breeze.

Here’s the full vote tally:

Votes

381 Jeff Bagwell 86.2%

380 Tim Raines 86.0%

336 Ivan Rodriguez 76.0%

327 Trevor Hoffman 74.0%

317 Vladimir Guerrero 71.7%

259 Edgar Martinez 58.6%

239 Roger Clemens 54.1%

238 Barry Bonds 53.8%

229 Mike Mussina 51.8%

199 Curt Schilling 45.0%

151 Lee Smith 34.2%

105 Manny Ramirez 23.8%

97 Larry Walker 21.9%

96 Fred McGriff 21.7%

74 Jeff Kent 16.7%

59 Gary Sheffield 13.3%

45 Billy Wagner 10.2%

38 Sammy Sosa 8.6%

17 Jorge Posada 3.8%

3 Magglio Ordonez 0.7%

2 Edgar Renteria 0.5%

2 Jason Varitek 0.5%

1 Tim Wakefield 0.2%

0 Corey Blake 0.0%

0 Pat Burrell 0.0%

0 Orlando Cabrera 0.0%

0 Mike Cameron 0.0%

0 J.D. Drew 0.0%

0 Carlos Guillen 0.0%

0 Derrek Lee 0.0%

0 Melvin Mora 0.0%

0 Arthur Rhodes 0.0%

0 Freddy Sanchez 0.0%

0 Matt Stairs 0.0%