It has been a while since I've written anything for the blog, and some vibrant HOF discussions both in some of my other worlds and on potential suggestions on how to change up the process in the future on the Hardball Dynasty Discord server got me wondering what those might look like here. The two most notable potential changes: shifting away from "percent of 32 owners" to "percentage of owners who have voted" as well as having a criteria for staying on the ballot at all to mimic the MLB process.
As a case study to see how this would work (and how I feel about it in practice), let's look at how the results of this year's HOF voting would have changed if those two rules were in place. Let's start by reminding ourselves of the results from this year's voting:
What does that tell us? First of all, there were a total of 114 HOF votes cast this year, which represents 22.8 five-vote ballots. In other words, 23 of our 32 owners voted this year and one of those 23 people only used four of their available five votes. So how would that change things? Let's take it one step at a time, and start with the good vibes.
If we say that a player needs 50% of the owners who voted to be elected to the HOF, this year the bar would be 23 * 50% = 11.5, or rounded up to 12 votes in order to gain election. Our class of Walker, Yarbrough, and Salas all still get in (but do so comfortably rather than Salas just squeaking in)...but now Almanzar is just one vote short rather than six. That all feels pretty right to me.
Now comes the less happy, but to me more interesting, angle: Who would come off the ballot if we were to institute a cut line? The MLB requirement is to show up on 5% of ballots cast to stay next season. So in our case 23 voters * 5% = 1.15 votes, meaning anyone who got either 0 or 1 vote this season would be dropped next year.
Where does that leave us exactly? With a pretty clear (and luckily fairly short) list of players who received between 5% and the needed 50% of votes to stay on the ballot but did not get "the phone call" this season. Those guys are:
- Luigi Almanzar: 11 of 23 votes
- Felipe Soria: 9 of 23 votes
- Christopher Prades: 7 of 23 votes
- Henderson Jackson: 5 of 23 votes
- Quinton Strickland: 4 of 23 votes
- Tyson Cowgill: 3 of 23 votes
- Edward Coomer: 3 of 23 votes
- Walt Smith: 2 of 23 votes
- Jensen Gonzalez: 2 of 23 votes
- Bruce Cosart: 2 of 23 votes
- Jeremy Kershaw: 2 of 23 votes
Those eleven names, plus any first-year candidates in Season 73 are the guys that I feel we should focus on when trying to determine who to elect to the Plumpy HOF next year. I'm not (necessarily) saying they all deserve to get in...I haven't taken that deep a dive yet. But these are the guys whose names would show up on your ballot if Plumpy were to adopt MLB's voting rules.
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