Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and Frank Thomas all received more than 75% of the vote and have been elected into the Baseball Hall of Fame as part of the 2014 class.
Maddux received 97.2% of the vote
Glavine received 91.9% of the vote
Thomas received 83.7% of the vote
This is the first time since Nolan Ryan, George Brett and Robin Yount in 1999 that we have three first-ballot Hall of Famers.
There are several interesting notes from the 2014 ballot.
– Greg Maddux failed to receive 2.8% of votes means 15 others than Ken Gurnick — 16 people total — did NOT vote for him.
– Jack Morris received 61.5% of votes and is now off the ballot since his 15 years have passed. It will take the veteran’s committee to get him elected now.
– Craig Biggio received 74.8% of the vote — they don’t round up — and missed election by 0.2% (two votes). I think he’s a Hall of Famer, but I’m just wondering why voters found him to be so much better of a player to vote for than say Mike Piazza or teammate Jeff Bagwell. All three are Hall of Famers in my opinion, and I don’t see why Biggio would receive more votes than either of the two others. That seems to be a clear case of writers penalizing based on PED suspicion, which is unfair.
– Rafael Palmeiro, who has 3,000 hits and 500 home runs which used to be automatic entrance numbers, only received 4.4% of the vote and is now off the ballot.
– Both Barry Bonds (34.7%) and Roger Clemens (35.4%) received less votes than last year
– JT Snow somehow received two votes. Whoever voted for him needs to be stripped.
– Jacque Jones received a vote. Whoever voted for him also needs to be stripped.
It’s a joke that Glavine received 8.2% more votes than Thomas, who was a much better player.
Also, the biggest point here, is that you can’t have a baseball hall of fame and not include two of the greatest players in history — Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens. That’s just absurd. I’ve been saying that the Hall just needs to put up a separate wing or wall within the actual Hall of Fame room and call it the “Steroids Era Wall” or “Steroids Era Wing” and put all the most qualified players from that era in. You can’t pick and choose. How does it make any sense that Biggio gets more votes than Bagwell?
