The system for voting players into the Baseball Hall of Fame is broken, and this year's results are just more proof of that
The inductees for the 2014 Baseball Hall of Fame class were announced today. Congrats to Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and Frank Thomas.
Way, way down at the bottom of the results is former Arizona Wildcat J.T. Snow, who picked up two votes.
Alright, so what's the big deal? Two votes? Snow will not be on the ballot next year, since he was on less than 5% of the ballots. This is the same fate that another Arizona great suffered last year, when Kenny Lofton was on just 3.2% of the ballots.
But Snow receiving two votes speaks to a larger issue with the Baseball HOF.
Voters are allowed to name ten players on their ballots, and if players are on more than 75% of the ballots, they get in. This year, Craig Biggio fell just two votes short of the required 75%.
So let's just hope that Snow wasn't the guy who replaced Biggio on the two ballots that he showed up on.
But when you look at the players that were eligible, how can anyone in their right mind think that J.T. Snow is one of the ten best players on the ballot?
Snow was a career .268 hitter with the Yankees, Angels, Giants and Red Sox in his 16 year career. Yes he did win six straight gold gloves at first base, but those were six years when all first basemen did was hit home runs.
He hit over .300 just once in his career, when he hit .327 while playing in just 107 games for the San Francisco Giants in 2004. He had over 100 Ks in a season three separate times. Just would like to point out that Barry Bonds did it once: his rookie year in 1986.
Biggio did strike out over 100 times in seven seasons, but for his career, drove in nearly 300 more runs that Snow, stole 400 more bases, and hit over .300 four times.
Just look at some of the players that were eligible besides Maddux, Glavine, Thomas and Biggio. Barry Bonds, Mike Piazza, Jeff Bagwell, Curt Schilling, Jeff Kent, Mike Mussina, Fred McGriff, Larry Walker, Edgar Martinez, Jack Morris, Tim Raines. Snow doesn't even come close to touching those guys. There's no way you can call him a top-ten player on this list.
When you just look at Bonds and Kent, Snow was the third best player in the middle of the order on his own team for nearly an entire decade. That shows up in his zero All-Star Game appearances.
Zero All-Star Games.
That ain't Hall of Fame material. Sorry.
At least Lofton had six All-Star appearances.
Arizona fans can look forward to 2016 when Trevor Hoffman is up for induction for the first time. He should be the first former Wildcat to make the Baseball HOF.
