\n
\t\tImage credit:
\n\t(Photo by Houston Astros\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n
For most of my life, I thought of myself as a \u201cSmall Hall\u201d person.<\/p>\n
Like most big baseball fans, the Hall of Fame was a key part of my fandom as a child. I knew who was in and who wasn\u2019t. I always thought that it was wonderful that there was a place where Ted Williams, Cy Young and the greatest of the greats could be part of a very special club.<\/p>\n
As I entered adulthood, studied the Hall more and read significant written works like Bill James\u2019 The Politics Of Glory, I realized that there were a lot I may have missed as a child.<\/p>\n
Thanks to the various veterans committees, there were players who made it into the Hall of Fame more because of who they were friends with or teammates with than their contributions to the game. Meanwhile, more deserving players were left on the outside. The Hall, it turns out, has never been all that small.<\/p>\n
On top of that, it\u2019s taken several decades of work to try to bring some level of equanimity to honoring Negro League stars.<\/p>\n
But more than any of that, I\u2019ve come to realize there\u2019s a major difference between honoring a living player, coach or front office official and honoring someone after they have passed. While both carry the same honor, there is something much more significant about allowing a person to bask in the glow of being feted in Cooperstown, rather than honoring someone years after they have passed.<\/p>\n
It was excellent to see Dick Allen finally honored as a Hall of Famer, but how much more significant would it have been to have honored him when he was still alive?<\/p>\n
So, I can now say that I think of myself as a \u201cMedium Hall\u201d person. I don\u2019t think the Hall of Fame should only be reserved for automatic first-ballot Hall of Famers and the truly elite of the elite. The doors were thrown open way too wide many years ago for that to be true.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s unfair to hold this generation to a standard that no previous generation of players has ever lived up to when it comes to Hall of Fame admission. I\u2019m not for letting every fringe candidate in, but when it comes to my voting, I\u2019m now inclined to say \u201cyes\u201d on borderline cases more often than I say \u201cno.\u201d<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s also in line with the explanations I spelled out with my first-ever HOF ballot last year, when I said I would vote strategically<\/a>. Being a more permissive voter is in line with that.<\/p>\n With the way the Hall of Fame voting standards are set up (a 75% threshold for admission and a 5% threshold to stay on the ballot), if I am part of a group with a mixture of \u201cSmall Hall\u201d voters and \u201cMedium\/Big Hall\u201d voters, those pickier votes effectively carry more weight than the votes of a \u201cBig Hall\u201d voter.<\/p>\n Any ballot that comes in with zero or just one or two players selected has the equivalent power to multiple ballots where 10 players are selected. For example, if I and another 10-player voter have a player on our ballot, and a one-player voter does not, that player sits at 66%, below the threshold. For every zero ballot voter, it takes three other voters to lift a player over the vote threshold.<\/p>\n In many cases, I am voting for players who I know have no chance to make the Hall of Fame on this year\u2019s ballot. As I explained last year, the example of Kenny Lofton<\/a> is why I will be willing to vote for players I consider to be borderline candidates. I\u2019d rather a player have multiple years on a ballot to be considered than be dropped after just one shot. Brian McCann<\/a> from last year\u2019s ballot is an example of a player I would have liked to have seen make it to year two, even if he didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n So, with that explanation in my mind, here is my ballot for 2026. I carried over votes for all players I voted for last year who remained on the ballot. Again, be sure to read my HOF story from last year<\/a> for further explanation as to why I have some of these players on my ballot.<\/p>\n J.J. Cooper\u2019s 2026 Hall of Fame Ballot<\/p>\n I only have 10 spots, but with the logic I laid out above, I could have easily voted for 12 or 13 players. In particular, the case for Hamels vs. Mark Buehrle<\/a> is a difficult one. If you prefer longevity, Buehrle wins out. But Hamels was more impactful, in my opinion, at his best. I believe both have solid cases.<\/p>\n If you are wondering why I left off Alex Rodriguez<\/a> and Manny Ramirez<\/a>, as I spelled out last year, the PED discussion is a very complicated one.\u00a0<\/p>\n Here\u2019s where I currently stand: I treat PED use after it was codified by baseball rules as being as clearly illegal differently than the wild west days of the pre-testing era. In both Rodriguez\u2019s and Ramirez\u2019s cases, they were suspended (Ramirez twice) well into the testing era. Players suspected of PED usage (or even confirmed) from the pre-testing era, I treat differently.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Image credit: (Photo by Houston Astros\/Getty Images) For most of my life, I thought of myself as a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":382816,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,591,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-382815","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-mlb","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=382815"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382815\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/382816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=382815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=382815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=382815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}