Cliff Floyd Not Elected To Baseball Hall Of Fame
Cliff Floyd was not elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame on Tuesday.
Floyd earned 0 votes, therefore 0.0 percent of the votes. To get in the Hall of Fame, a candidate must appear on 75 percent of the 571 ballots from the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA).
He fell 429 votes shy.
Tony Clark‘s percentage was also equal to John Blutarsky’s grade point average.
Other former Mets to fall short included Carlos Delgado, Gary Sheffield, Jeff Kent, and Mike Piazza. Hard to believe that Delgado, whose career slugging percentage of .546 was fourth-highest among all players on the ballot, received only 21 votes, and therefore — along with Floyd and Clark — removed from future ballots. I didn’t think Delgado would be voted a “Hall of Famer,” but I did think he’d get enough votes to qualify for next year’s ballot. Oh well. Piazza, Kent, and Sheffield are all still eligible to appear on the next ballot.
Meanwhile, former Met Pedro Martinez DID get elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Apparently those “Vote for Pedro” T-shirts were a good idea. Or maybe it was this dance supporting his candidacy that sealed it:
Floyd earned 0 votes, therefore 0.0 percent of the votes. To get in the Hall of Fame, a candidate must appear on 75 percent of the 571 ballots from the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA).
He fell 235 votes shy.
That’s some funny stuff.
I think the reason that not many people voted for Delgado is because (1) he overlaps with the steroid era and his stats pale in comparison to (for example) McGwire, Palmeiro, Bagwell, and maybe a couple other 1B, and (2) the maximum number of guys that a voter can vote in favor of is 10, and there are many, many qualified guys right now. With respect to (2), if voters think there is no way that a guy will get elected they aren’t likely to burn a vote on him (unless there is a small minority of voters that seem to vote for guys as something of a ceremonial “he was a good player and should get at least a handful of votes” type of thing).
Like I said in another post, I think at a minimum Schilling, Mussina, Trammell, Bagwell, Piazza, Edgar Martinez, and Lou Whitaker should be in the HoF.
I didn’t get the “235” joke, though. Where did that number come from?
I have weird memories of Delgado:
When he came to the Mets, I heard about how, in Toronto, he didn’t stand for the U.S. anthem to protest missile testing in Puerto Rico, and I heard about how, as a free agent, he objected to Bernazard trying to court him with street lingo. And so I was happy to be getting a guy with integrity and principles. And all the other Mets always said the same thing about him: “Total pro.”
But then, once he lost his love for Willie Randolph, he basically dogged it in the field until Willie was fired, which was inexcusable to me. And as an interviewee, he was hypersensitive, often coming off as angry and paranoid and insecure.
As a hitter, he had a double toe-tap that threw off his timing and made him an automatic out for about 18 months, but before and after that problem, he was an absolute force at the plate, racking up more truly crushed HRs than any Met in recent memory.
So, my recollections are a big ol’ mixed bag.
Pedro, on the other hand, was an absolute joy to have in the orange in blue. He provided a clinic in pitching until he got hurt*, and was the best interview I’ve ever seen.
*His final 2006 stats are ugly, but before falling in the dugout while fixing his wardrobe against the Marlins, he held opponents to a .167/.234/.312 line with a 10.6 K rate.
My recollection of Delgado is similar, and was similarly chronicled through the years here at MetsToday.
One more thing in my memory is that he came up through the Toronto system as a CATCHER (of course I’d remember that). Can you imagine? It’s hard, I know.
It’s pretty clear that the reason he received so few votes was because no one wants to vote for a slugger who played in the ‘PED era’.
One guy who is even better than I thought he was is Olerud. The guy has similar fWAR numbers to Keith Hernandez. Both are Hall of Very Good inductees.