Mark Buehrle survives toughest year on Hall of Fame ballot

For better or for worse, there were no surprises in Tuesday’s Hall of Fame voting results. David Ortiz took a hit from his public ballot percentage to private, but still managed to clear the 75-percent threshold with a couple points to spare. The guy who best embodied the Red Sox’s revival gained entry into Cooperstown on his first ballot with 77.9 percent of the vote.

He has no company, at least among the ballot dealt with by the Baseball Writers Association of America. Barry Bonds (66 percent), Roger Clemens (65.2) and Scott Rolen (63.2) all finished in the 60s, but Rolen is the only one for whom that represents progress, rather than the last stop. Bonds and Clemens are off the ballot, as well as Curt Schilling (58.6) and Sammy Sosa (18.5), all of whom came up short in their 10th and final year of eligibility.

There are other encouraging developments down the line, but regarding players within our purview, Mark Buehrle getting 5.8 percent of the vote is the biggest. A player needed 20 votes to clear 5 percent and remain eligible for next year’s ballot, and Buehrle received 23.

It’s a blow in terms of year-to-year progress, as it’s just about half of the support he garnered in his first year. Then again, this year figured to be a giant mess, what with the glut of controversial candidates getting their last chance, Ortiz likely to be on most ballots, and Alex Rodriguez messing things up the only way he can. Depending on their attitudes, voters could easily come up with 10 worthy names before getting to Buehrle.

The picture clears up considerably next year. Five players with HOF-worthy numbers are leaving the ballot, and Carlos Beltran is the only new guy who has such a case. Beneath Buehrle, Joe Nathan (4.3) and Tim Hudson (3.0) fell off the ballot. That leaves Billy Wagner (46.4) and Andy Pettitte (13.7) as the only other pitchers on the ballot. Wagner won’t be compared directly to Buehrle — although with 2,300 innings separating them, he should be — and Pettitte has his own PED baggage that suppresses his case.

There won’t be a pitcher with a better argument for election until CC Sabathia in 2025, so Buehrle has an opening to make an argument for refreshed starting pitcher standards. And with Bonds and Clemens off the ballot, there will be enough oxygen to sustain one.

Here’s the year-to-year chart:

Everybody else failed to clear 5 percent. A.J. Pierzynski received two votes, which seems appropriate for a player who managed to be so memorable.

The exclusion of Bonds and Clemens has a lot of fans fuming, and there’s a big-picture reason to be miffed. It’s weird to have a Hall of Fame that excludes the sport’s best player ever, as well as one of its best pitchers. It’s also strange that the Hall of Fame ushered in figures like Bud Selig and Tony La Russa, both of whom profited from the era’s excesses, only to shut the door on some players who actually provided the supercharged product. For those like me who became fans of baseball during the time because I happened to be born in the 1980s, it’s dumb and counterproductive to pretend like the era irreparably damaged the game.

Alas, the situation is such that there is no naturally hospitable electorate for them. Throw bricks at the BBWAA all you want, but a cross-section of fans wouldn’t support them at a 75-percent clip, and neither would living Hall of Famers, at least if there are as many Frank Thomases are there are Mike Schmidts. The museum itself has already made its opinion known, putting the thumb on the scale by reducing their eligibility from 15 years to 10 despite objections from the BBWAA. It doesn’t seem like it’s going to go out of the way to form committees that give them a generous hearing.

Bonds and Clemens could have made plenty of better choices on and off the field. The game’s leadership could have done more to address the problem as it happened while defending its best players, rather than letting the spectacle get out of hand, then throwing the players to the wolves when Congress came calling. Instead, all parties involved pursued their self-interest to such severe degrees. Some players unlocked paths to insane stats, while the league stumbled upon a wedge issue that weakened the MLBPA. A lot of voters chose cognitive dissonance across decades, not thinking enough of PED usage to investigate it while it happened, but hammering players merely suspected of it afterward. You can even include Schilling, who would’ve been in years ago had he not been so enthusiastic about poisoning his brain. So here we are.

With the ballot’s biggest mess behind it, the museum is probably banking on any one player’s absence being overstated, and it’s probably correct. Theoretically, it’s fundamentally wrong to have a Baseball Hall of Fame without Barry Bonds, but baseball is a local pursuit at heart, Bonds is not a naturally sympathetic figure, and it’s going to be damn near impossible for future players to fall into his fate.

Let’s bring the discussion back to Buehrle. Say there’s a tectonic shift in how voters approach starting pitching, and Buehrle’s support shoots from 5.8 percent in 2022 to 75.8 percent in 2023. Is the honor any cheaper because Clemens isn’t there first? Maybe in a scholarly sense, but the Venn diagram of baseball fans invested in both pitchers probably only overlaps a sliver. Just like Harold Baines’ surprise induction, whatever part of my brain objects to the order of things will eventually be overruled by the part that says it’s silly to shoot down a reason to hold a party.

Likewise, the people following the upward marches of Scott Rolen, Todd Helton and Andruw Jones won’t be all that irked that Bonds isn’t there to meet them. The number of fans grousing will be grossly outnumbered by the fans who want to celebrate, and the Hall makes its money off the later. It’s as cynical as it is romantic, and now I better understand why the Field of Dreams Game was such a success.

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