VEB Community votes on the Hall of Fame - 2022

Three years ago, the VEB Community voted on the Hall of Fame. I made a Google Form, listed the players and asked people to follow the same rules as the Hall of Fame ballot - which was simply to vote for up to 10 people. Pretty simple rules really. We received 374 responses, which is frankly a really good sample.

Back in 2019, four players were inducted into the Hall of Fame - Edgar Martinez, Mariano Rivera, Roy Halladay, and Mike Mussina. The VEB Community was a bit harsher than the BBWAA. They only voted in three players, and two actual Hall of Famers I mentioned were not voted in. Rivera and Halladay made the cut. Mussina and Martinez did not. Scott Rolen was the third player inducted of course.

So hopefully, you actually read this before you vote, because important note: THIS IS NOT THE SAME BALLOT AS THE ACTUAL HALL OF FAME BALLOT. I’ll explain why. Three years ago, VEB voted on the Hall of Fame. The results are officially gospel. Scott Rolen is a Hall of Famer. We no longer need to vote on that. VEB has already decided that question.

Rolen not being on the ballot is not the only difference. VEB differed from the actual results in a few ways. The most prominent of which being that they did not vote in either Mussina or Martinez. Edgar Martinez was in his 10th year of eligibility in 2019, so he will not be on this year’s ballot. Mussina was in just his sixth so everyone gets another chance to vote him in.

Another player VEB did not vote in (but came pretty close) was Larry Walker, who got elected the following year in real life in his final year of eligibility. Since VEB did not vote that year and since Walker had another year of eligibility, he will be on the ballot for the final time. Seems only fair. Two other players got at least 5% of the vote in 2019 who in real life fell off the ballot: Roy Oswalt and Lance Berkman. They are on the ballot as well.

One other player that is also included is Derek Jeter. Who has never been on a VEB Hall of Fame ballot. I will not however be including any player who was introduced on either the 2020 or 2021 Hall of Fame ballot, but fell off due a lack of votes. I did look and there is not a Jim Edmonds in that group as far as I can see, so it’s nobody VEB would have realistically voted in anyway. It’s also frankly simpler that way.

Hopefully you’re still reading, but when you choose your selections, you’ll notice some players have something after their name. Any name with (VEB) after it means they are only on the VEB Hall of Fame ballot - due to the reasons said above. Any name with an asterisk after it means it’s their first time on the ballot. I think that’s about the extent of explanation necessary before you dive in.

Here are the results from three years ago:

Rolen - 93.4%

Rivera - 79.7%

Halladay - 77.4%

Walker - 71.9%

Bonds - 59.6%

Clemens - 59.3%

Martinez - 59.3%

Mussina - 54.2%

Schilling - 44.2%

Berkman - 36.1%

Jones - 35%

Helton - 33%

Ramirez - 27.5%

McGriff - 21.5%

Sheffield - 16.9%

Sosa - 15.2%

Kent - 13.8%

Pettite - 11.5%

Wagner - 11.2%

Vizquel - 8%

Oswalt - 7.7%

The italicized names are off the ballot, having spent 10 years on the ballot when VEB voted on the 2019 results. Sorry to Martinez and McGriff, but you are not recognized Hall of Famers by the VEB Community.

To somewhat reflect the expanded ballot, I am upping the amount of people you can vote into the Hall of Fame to 11. I wanted to keep it at 10, but three actual Hall of Famers being on this ballot is probably too much. This will probably mean some people will not be voting in someone they want to - but well that reflects the real Hall of Fame too.

If you vote in more than 11 people, your ballot will not be counted. Double and triple check that it’s 11 and not 12. If you’re voting that many people in at least. If i remember correctly, at least a few people voted in more than 10 people last time and I had to discard their ballots. I don’t want to, but since there’s no ordering of preference, I can’t decide on my own which player’s vote to ignore. So we throw them all out.

The deadline to vote will be Tuesday night. I will be aiming to turn off responses at around 9 pm that night, though there’s a good chance it won’t be exactly that time. Then I’ll tabulate the responses and have the results up by next Thursday. In the meantime, vote!