The Envelope Please: Our 2020 Hall of Fame Crowdsource Ballot Results
Hey, remember the Hall of Fame voting? If your outrage over illegal sign-stealing — Banghazi, perhaps? — needs some redirection, the results of the voting on the BBWAA’s 2020 ballot will be announced later today. When they are, Derek Jeter may well become the second player in as many years to be elected unanimously by the 400-plus BBWAA voters, though FanGraphs readers did not accord the former Yankees shortstop quite the same level of Re2pect in our second annual Hall of Fame Crowdsource balloting. Of course, they did “elect” him with the highest percentage of any of this year’s candidates, and they were almost certainly more generous than the actual electorate will be when it comes to the ballot’s other top luminaries.
As with last year, registered readers of our site (and participating staff, this scribe included) were allowed to choose up to 10 candidates while adhering to the same December 31, 2019 deadline as the actual voters, but unlike the writers, our voting was conducted electronically instead of on paper. This year, 1,440 users participated, a 19% increase relative to last year, our inaugural foray. Slightly over half of the participants (50.6%) used all 10 slots on their ballots, well down from last year’s 77.6% but still well ahead of the 29.5%% of actual voters who have published their ballots in Ryan Thibodaux’s Hall of Fame Ballot Tracker as of 12:01 AM Eastern on Tuesday morning. Our voters averaged 8.37 names per ballot, down a full notch and then some from last year’s 9.41, but again well ahead of the Tracker’s 7.30.
All of which provides an interesting window into our electorate. I’ll press my nose to the glass on such topics below, but chances are that you’re here because you really want to know who we actually chose. Getting back to Jeter, the ballot’s top newcomer, not only did he not receive 100% in our polling, he didn’t even break 90%, and barely beat out the second-best supported candidate, Larry Walker, edging him by just half a percentage point, 89.9% to 89.4% — seven total votes! The other two candidates we “elected” were the gruesome twosome, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, who like Walker also cleared the 75% bar last year in our unfortunately non-binding poll. If that quartet seems like a lot, consider that last year, the FanGraphs crowd tabbed seven candidates, with the aforementioned trio of holdovers joining the four players the writers actually elected (Roy Halladay, Edgar Martinez, Mike Mussina, and Mariano Rivera, who got only 91.1% of our vote, compared to 100% of the real thing).
Here are the full results as well as a comparison to the results from the 210 reported ballots in the Tracker as of 12:01 AM Eastern on Tuesday morning:
| Player | Votes | Crowdsource | Tracker | Dif |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Derek Jeter | 1295 | 89.9% | 100.0% | -10.1% |
| Larry Walker | 1288 | 89.4% | 83.3% | 6.1% |
| Barry Bonds | 1182 | 82.1% | 71.9% | 10.2% |
| Roger Clemens | 1165 | 80.9% | 71.0% | 9.9% |
| Scott Rolen | 1060 | 73.6% | 48.1% | 25.5% |
| Curt Schilling | 965 | 67.0% | 79.0% | -12.0% |
| Andruw Jones | 794 | 55.1% | 23.8% | 31.3% |
| Manny Ramirez | 763 | 53.0% | 31.4% | 21.6% |
| Todd Helton | 705 | 49.0% | 31.9% | 17.1% |
| Gary Sheffield | 673 | 46.7% | 36.2% | 10.5% |
| Billy Wagner | 592 | 41.1% | 34.8% | 6.3% |
| Sammy Sosa | 335 | 23.3% | 17.1% | 6.2% |
| Andy Pettitte | 290 | 20.1% | 10.5% | 9.6% |
| Bobby Abreu | 289 | 20.1% | 6.2% | 13.9% |
| Jeff Kent | 266 | 18.5% | 33.3% | -14.8% |
| Omar Vizquel | 160 | 11.1% | 49.0% | -37.9% |
| Cliff Lee | 80 | 5.6% | 0.5% | 5.1% |
| Paul Konerko | 49 | 3.4% | 0.5% | 2.9% |
| Jason Giambi | 35 | 2.4% | 0.5% | 1.9% |
| Adam Dunn | 27 | 1.9% | 0.0% | 1.9% |
| Alfonso Soriano | 17 | 1.2% | 0.0% | 1.2% |
| Eric Chávez | 8 | 0.6% | 0.5% | 0.1% |
| Josh Beckett | 5 | 0.4% | 0.0% | 0.4% |
| Raúl Ibañez | 5 | 0.4% | 0.0% | 0.4% |
| Heath Bell | 4 | 0.3% | 0.0% | 0.3% |
| Rafael Furcal | 4 | 0.3% | 0.0% | 0.3% |
| Carlos Peña | 3 | 0.2% | 0.0% | 0.2% |
| Chone Figgins | 2 | 0.1% | 0.0% | 0.1% |
| José Valverde | 2 | 0.1% | 0.0% | 0.1% |
| Brad Penny | 1 | 0.1% | 0.0% | 0.1% |
| Brian Roberts | 1 | 0.1% | 0.0% | 0.1% |
| J.J. Putz | 1 | 0.1% | 0.0% | 0.1% |
Remarkably, all 32 candidates received at least one vote from our crowd, which — wait, really? While it’s amusing to imagine a single user filling out a completely rogue ballot with the 10 lowest-polling candidates, I can tell you from poring over the reports of each combination that the breadth of support appears to be more a matter of voters running out of what they believed to be strong candidates and using the remaining space to throw a bone to a personal favorite or two — or to be a stick in the mud. For example, the lone ballot that included Penny, apparently cast by somebody unwilling to include most of the PED-linked candidates, also had Abreu, Helton, Kent, Rolen, Sheffield, Walker… and Furcal, but not Jeter. Dunn popped up on two of the most deliberately bizarre ballots, one in which he flew solo (the ol’ One and Dunn) and then a ballot that also included Ibañez and Furcal alongside Helton, Jones, Ramirez, Rolen, Sheffield, Vizquel, and Wagner — but no Jeter or Walker, and of course no Bonds or Clemens. Okay, bud.
Unlike last year, we had blank ballots — two of ’em, likely from voters who simply wanted to ensure that Jeter wasn’t unanimous in our poll. No, I did not get access to voter IDs, but let’s face it, if that was noted blankety-blanker Murray Chass, you’d think he might be a bit more inclined to vote for Jeter.
The biggest surprise below the top four in voting share is Rolen — who’s making enough headway among the writers that he’s poised to at least double last year’s actual share of 17.2% — handily outpolling Schilling. Now that I look back, though, the same was true last year: Rolen had a 61.1% to 59.0% edge on the Big Schill. Relative to the 2019 crowdsource, Jones leapfrogged Ramirez while Helton and Sheffield closed the gap on both; last year, their respective shares here were 44.1% for Manny, 43.3% for Andruw, 26.5% for the Toddfather, and 20.8% for Shef. Billy Wags more than doubled last year’s crowdsource share of 17.3%, and has a shot at doing the same regarding his actual share of 16.7%. That’s a possibility for Helton (16.5%), Sheffield (13.6%), and Jones (7.5%), too.
While Jeter is the only one of this year’s 14 newcomers who is a sure thing to receive more than 5% of the actual vote, our crowd felt that both Abreu (who could make the cut) and Lee (who won’t) were as well. In the real world, that would mean they retain their eligibility, but of course, our results are non-binding.
As to where our voters differed the most relative to the ballots published ballots thus far, the elite defenders who carried big sticks also carried the day. Jones, a 10-time Gold Glover who leads all center fielders in fielding runs (+236), had the largest positive gap between his crowdsource share and his Tracker one, followed by Rolen, an eight-time Gold Glover who’s third in fielding runs (+175) among third basemen. The pattern kind of falls apart after that, given that Ramirez, Helton, and Abreu, the three other candidates who outdid the Tracker by at least 10 points, were a decidedly mixed bag defensively.
Looking at things from the other direction, there should be little surprise that the largest underperformer among our voters was Vizquel, who despite his defensive excellence does not fare very well via WAR or JAWS and who actually received just 4.9% from our crowd last year, which would have disqualified him on the real ballot. He more than doubled that meager level of support from our voters, but that’s not saying much; his gap relative to the Tracker is over 24 points greater than that of any other underperformer, with Schilling and Kent closely bunched together, followed by Jeter.
Per developer Sean Dolinar, who deserves a hat-tip not only for building our crowdsource ballot but also providing me with the voting data in several shapes and forms that I didn’t even know I wanted, there were 861 different ballot combinations including the blank, 201 more than last year. A whopping 676 of them appeared just once, while 13 appeared at least 10 times. All of the combinations within that baker’s dozen had our top five vote-getters, all but one also included Schilling, and all but two used the full 10 spots. Here are the variations, ranked:
| Combination | Total | % |
|---|---|---|
| Helton, Jones, Ramirez, Schilling, Sheffield | 28 | 1.94% |
| Helton, Jones, Ramirez, Schilling, Wagner | 22 | 1.53% |
| Jones, Ramirez, Schilling, Sheffield, Wagner | 20 | 1.39% |
| Helton, Jones, Wagner, Schilling, Sheffield | 20 | 1.39% |
| Helton, Jones, Ramirez, Schilling, Sosa | 19 | 1.32% |
| Jones, Ramirez, Schilling, Sheffield, Sosa | 18 | 1.25% |
| Abreu, Helton, Jones, Schilling, Wagner | 14 | 0.97% |
| Helton, Ramirez, Schilling, Sheffield, Wagner | 13 | 0.90% |
| Jones, Pettitte, Ramirez, Schilling, Sheffield | 12 | 0.83% |
| Abreu, Helton, Jones, Ramirez, Schilling | 10 | 0.69% |
| Schilling | 10 | 0.69% |
| Jones, Schilling | 10 | 0.69% |
| Helton, Jones, Ramirez, Sheffield, Wagner | 10 | 0.69% |
While there’s a bit of a lag time in the Tracker’s “Ballot Twins” section, which logs each individual combination of choices, through the 186 ballots recorded there as of 9 AM ET on Tuesday, our most popular ballot is tied for the second-most popular one there, where it’s been cast four times. The Tracker’s most popular ballot to that point is a cross between small-Hall and PED-agnostic in its orientation, a four-candidate slate containing Bonds, Clemens, Jeter, and Schilling; that combo has been cast five times by actual voters but chosen just three times by our readers. Advantage, FanGraphs.
As for my virtual ballot, which relative to the most popular one swaps out Ramirez (on the grounds that he was suspended twice for PED violations) in favor of Wagner, it’s tied for third among FanGraphs readers — some of whom clearly have exquisite taste — but was matched just twice by actual voters.
We hadn't seen this ballot all month but you, @DanHayesMLB, and @jay_jaffe (virtual) have all bestowed it upon us in the last 36 hours. Thanks again, Tim!
— Ryan Thibodaux (@NotMrTibbs) December 29, 2019
Here’s our breakdown of ballots by the number of slots used, and how it compares to the Tracker:
| Votes | Crowdsource | Pct | Tracker | Pct |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 | 729 | 50.6% | 62 | 29.5% |
| 9 | 151 | 10.5% | 23 | 11.0% |
| 8 | 147 | 10.2% | 26 | 12.4% |
| 7 | 126 | 8.8% | 25 | 11.9% |
| 6 | 110 | 7.6% | 18 | 8.6% |
| 5 | 70 | 4.9% | 18 | 8.6% |
| 4 | 62 | 4.3% | 22 | 10.5% |
| 3 | 25 | 1.7% | 7 | 3.3% |
| 2 | 8 | 0.6% | 6 | 2.9% |
| 1 | 10 | 0.7% | 3 | 1.4% |
| 0 | 2 | 0.1% | 0 | 0.0% |
As noted above, our voters were far more inclined to use all 10 spots than the actual voters reporting to the Tracker. Unsurprisingly, the latter group’s reluctance to do so created a trickle-down effect, as they were more likely than the crowd to use any other number of slots except zero. Three actual voters did turn in Jeter-only ballots, up from two revealed before last year’s results were announced; the BBWAA’s post-election ballot release — the elective publication of one’s ballot two weeks after the results are announced — revealed two more. Like clockwork, one of this year’s three one-candidate ballots came from former Spink Award winner Dan Shaughnessy, whose ballot release might as well be called Shanksgiving given its potential effect on any candidate who could really use that extra vote.
If there’s any consolation when it comes to the stray one-candidate ballots, it’s that our voters got slightly more creative. In addition to half a dozen Jeter-only ballots and the aforementioned One and Dunn, we had a Bonds-only ballot, a Clemens-only one, and a Ramirez-only one. I’m not sure how any of those voters thought that such hair-splitting made actual sense given that all three have some icky non-baseball stuff alongside their outstanding stats; perhaps I’m simply rewarding their look-at-me grandstanding by mentioning this. I will note that a honkin’ 64 crowdsource voters (4.4%) submitted ballots of any size with either Bonds or Clemens but not both; Bonds had the edge there, 41 to 23. Among actual voters, just two split the baby like that, with both including Bonds but not Clemens.
Anyway, it’s all food for thought as we await Tuesday night’s results. Despite the relative weakness of this year’s newcomer class besides Jeter, and the fact that we’ve already seen roughly half of the ballots that will be cast, there’s no shortage of suspense regarding the outcome. No, it doesn’t really matter whether Jeter is unanimous so long as he gets that 75%, and he certainly will. There’s far more intrigue when it comes to which side of the line Walker winds up on; I’m guessing that he’s within eight votes — about 2% — on either side of 75%, and won’t stop sweating bullets until I know that answer, for better or worse. The momentum of Bonds, Clemens, and Schilling is of great interest, and the sizable surges of Rolen, Helton, Sheffield and others will be something to ponder as well. Of course, I’ll be here to break down the results, both with regards to the big picture on Tuesday night and candidate by candidate on Wednesday. It’s the most wonderful time of the year.
Brooklyn-based Jay Jaffe is a senior writer for FanGraphs, the author of The Cooperstown Casebook (Thomas Dunne Books, 2017) and the creator of the JAWS (Jaffe WAR Score) metric for Hall of Fame analysis. He founded the Futility Infielder website (2001), was a columnist for Baseball Prospectus (2005-2012) and a contributing writer for Sports Illustrated (2012-2018). He has been a recurring guest on MLB Network and a member of the BBWAA since 2011, and a Hall of Fame voter since 2021. Follow him on BlueSky @jayjaffe.bsky.social.
As if Baseball Twitter hasn’t been crazy enough this past week, imagine what will happen if Walker misses out by only a handful of votes. Oh man, I’m not ready for that, please just let him in.
Nice work here voters and crossing fingers for Walker to get in!
Can someone confirm this for me? I vaguely remembering – reading (possibly from Jaffe) – that a candidate who has gotten 20% support from the BBWAA has a 50% chance of making it into the Hall of Fame (either by the voters or the Vet’s Committee). Does this sound correct?
That sounds about right – of the top ten vote-getters on every HoF ballot in history, only 27 have failed to eventually be inducted, five of whom are still on the ballot. Typically the tenth-place player on the ballot is floating between 15 and 20 percent.
If I’m reading the tracker correctly, Peter Gammons voted for 6 players this year. This is the first year he voted for Jeff Kent (7th year on the ballot) and he did not vote for two players that he voted for last year even though he had room on his ballot (Larry Walker and Todd Helton – both are Rockies’ players) – WTF!!!?
If you really want to hurt your head, in an interview about his ballot, he stated that he hopes that Walker doesn’t miss it by one vote. Despite not using his vote.
Really? That makes no sense!
He said Walker did not play enough games each season, something along the lines of “great players are there daily to help their teams”. Why is that now the case this year, his most crucial year, rather than last year?
I really do think there needs to be a conversation about changing how players are elected to the HOF
He expects him to be there daily, but yet even with limited time he still contests Derek Jeter for value? Where’s his process?
He doesn’t have a process.
Matt said what we all were thinking
HOF has become a joke. Its not exclusive anymore. They let half a dozen people in every year. its ridiculous. Only the greatest should be in….not guys with good careers. In the last 10 years alone, the HOF grew ~25% (2010-2020). Flat out stupid what its become.
Its also one of the greatest sporting events out there, yet MLB doesn’t market it, its barely even an event. It should be a huge huge deal, think red carpet, think musicians…..lets make it bigger than some back yard bbq on some grass.
The main issue I think is a lot of the BBWA voters do not even write about baseball. Many of them haven’t written one article ever…..yet they get a vote? Who are these people. Who is in charge of this? Ridiculous. Common sense, the voters should be the most knowledgeable….their should be a much stricter criteria to be a voter.
They also should put a cap on the size of the HOF….only 2 or 3 in a year max, and only 200 or 250 max players in the HOF (currently has 233 players). What that means is if someone gets in, they have to kick someone out, its fluid. The best of the best will get in that situation.
Maybe thats a little extreme, but we have to do something to fix it before its totally ruined.
That’s not the best system to use. In 100 years that could mean Ruth or Aaron or Gehrig out of the HOF.
Maybe its extreme, but something needs to be fixed before its ruined.
At this pace, In the next 10 years, the HOF will be 2x the size it was in 2010. Flat out dumb. Not exclusive and ruined.
Its the “Hall Of Fame”, not “Hall of Exclusivity”. There’s going to be Hall worthy players by the dozens for every generation, so setting a limit just doesn’t work.
I’m not saying i agree with the OP but this is a pretty poor argument.
“Fame” and “exclusivity” kind of go hand in hand. The Hall of Fame restricts access to all but the greatest players. Even if greatness is somewhat subjective it makes the Hall of Fame, by its very nature, extremely exclusive.
Why is it a poor argument? IT ISN’T supposed to get more and more exclusive very year. And that is what limiting it a certain number would make it. Instead of 250 to of, say 12,000 all time MLB members years ago, it would be 250 out of 16,000 now.
Why do people think that just because they have an internet account, THEY get to decide what the purpose of the Hall of Fame is about? IT is like the idiots whining that America’s Got Talent wasn’t supposed to be just another show for singers to win. They feel THEY get to decide what Simon Cowell was thinking when he created the show. Same with trying to equate two words like fame and exclusivity. Your poor grasp of the English language (those two words definitely DO NOT have to go together.)
As long as they keep playing the game, yes, the number of people in the HOF SHOULD get larger. To say otherwise is the poor argument.
Yeah I get that. But we cant ONLY let groundbreaking elites in. I know its exclusive, but having a LIMIT makes it more exclusive than it should
how about we change it to the top 1% of players based off of Jaws or War? That would mean it would increase as the total player number increased. Currently their has been 19600 MLB players all time. That would put the hall at 196. Its currently at 233. That means we have 37 more players in right now than their should be using this mehtodology. I garuntee you we could find 37 players we all could agree on right now to kick out.
lol no it wouldn’t
With the exception Harold Baines(!?), the recent inductees are not the problem. The Lloyd Waners and Heinie Manushes and Herb Pennocks are the problem. If you ignore the egregious errors of past voters, the Hall contains about the top 1% of all time. That’s not exclusive enough for you?
Hey now…Jim “#Feared” Rice is pretty damn bad!
thats my whole point. kick them out. Should be fluid, or their has to be a Black and White metric that you achieve and you are automatically in. Call it war or jaws or something. You hit the metric. You are in. Take the voters out of it. It also takes the large market teams bias out of the voters. You have 70 war in your career. Automatically in. pretty simple really.
Sounds boring.
O my god…you are whining about how it works now , and you actually want to use WAR or JAWS? Look little millennial boy…if you think WAR is a good indicator, then you obviously don’t understand baseball, or sports in general. So why are you her at all? I bet you also love it when ESPN gives “catch probability, “exit velocity” “launch angle” and route efficiency” and think they matter at all. (Go ahead. You can admit it. We are already laughing at you.)
Scott Rolen only got 48%? Come on
I’m glad to see 26 other people decided to reward Adam Dunn with a spot on their ballot. Sadly, he missed the 5% cutoff, so we’ll have to wait for the FG Veteran’s Committee to decide his fate.
While the regular voters may not be aware, at least the Veteran’s Committee will consider the accomplishments of 25 Adam Dunns. #BringBackNotGraphs https://not.fangraphs.com/dangerous-experiment-a-roster-of-25-adam-dunns/
This was my logic too. I mean, this *is* a simulated Hall of Fame ballot. Why wouldn’t we include the results of a simulation where Adam Dunn put up 23.2 wins in a single season, AND also had 24 other versions of him playing?
Again, please tell me where you THINK you are getting this silly 23.2 WAR in one year.
Also, this exercise needs to be repeated with the new rules. Though perhaps as a technical matter, a team with all position players may have to forfeit now.
adam dunn in the HOF? lol That guy only put up 25 total war in his career. I’m shocked he even got 1 vote. Is he even in the reds hof?
Adam Dunn put up 23 WAR in a single year, and also played every position on the diamond that year and put up WAR there too! He’s a legend, that one.
Won Gold Glove in CF
Dee Gordon was robbed.
Which one?
Dee Gordon is no better than Dee Gordon defensively
WRONG. not according to fangraphs he didn’t. Only put up 25 total war in his career. No one will argue he should be in the HOF. No one.
sadtrombone (and the 14 idiots who upvoted him)…I don’t think you know what WAR is. (Granted, it IS a stupid stat, so it is not a big deal…but then don’t talk about it.) You really think ANYONE has put up a 25+ WAR in a single year? You DO realize that 8 is considered a monster year.
Its a reference to an article from an archived blog.
https://not.fangraphs.com/dangerous-experiment-a-roster-of-25-adam-dunns/
I have a new respect for HOF voters — I couldn’t resist the down-ballot, local fan favorite Konerko vote. I always thought I’d be perfectly objective, but, nope, I’m just as flawed as everyone else.
Yeah, I only had 9 guys make my cut…so I threw Pettitte in as my 10th.
lOlmar Vizquel
Derek Jeter is not a Hall of Famer.
At. All.
Always surprised at the love Andruw Jones gets in these types of conversations.
He was the greatest defensive CF of the last 50 years, and hit over 400 HRs.
Same career fWAR as Manny…and his peak lasted longer than Sandy Koufax’s.
Firmly on the right side of the cutoff, for me.
I agree with you that Jones is probably deserving but invoking Koufax is a bit strange. Yes he didnt have a long peak (or career) but what set Koufax apart was just how much better he was than pretty much everyone around him and even before him. You could legitimately argue Koufax was the best pitcher in history when he retired. No sane person would do the same for Jones and OF.
Given the results here, I have to wonder who the non-Bonds/Clemens voters think they’re protecting.
You do realize that most people don’t want them in right? AS with everything, you are very much all alone in this. We get it…you have been a failure at everything in life, especially keeping hair and women. So you think that cheating is OK. But don’t project that on everyone.
CHONE FIGGINS! JJ PUTZ!!!
P.S. That ballot looks like it was drawn up by a third grade teacher on her lunch break for a class president election about which she doesn’t give a shit.
I didn’t vote for Rivera last year. The ballot was crowded and other candidates needed support. Sure enough, Rivera got in the FG Hall just fine without my vote. I didn’t feel that crunch this year so I voted for Jeter.
I suspect a lot of the wierd no or one vote ballots were user error. I know I thought I had the thing filled out and almost sent in an empty ballot.
I didn’t vote for Jeter so I could vote for 10 guys that weren’t shoe ins. However, I’d think that a certain chunk of pretend voters left Jeter off because they are haters, idiots, or both.
I only had 9 “firmly worthy” guys (Big Five + Schilling, Sheffield, Jones, Wagner), so I threw a bone to Pettitte.
Jaysus – someone’s downvoted me twice for saying I used my 10th spot as a “Keep him on the ballot” vote for Pettitte.
I’d honestly love for them to articulate their objection – are they a diehard Helton/Kent guy?
Do they think that Pettitte’s PED admission puts him on the same level as Manny, who failed twice after testing, meaning that Ramirez’s superior career should take precedence?
Do they object to sympathy votes as such?
I genuinely don’t know!
If only there were some sort of “Reply” button in this comments section, which someone could utilize to rebut comments they disagree with, rather than anonymously downvoting them!
TKDC…or looked at his stats and realized that without the quarter BILLION dollar payroll surrounding him (literally 50% higher than the NEXT highest team) helping him get to the World Series all those years, Jeter wouldn’t even be a first year selection AT ALL, let alone a unanimous one. IT is amazing that Yankee fan incels like you whine like b*tches over this when there are literally DOZENS of players with far far far far better stats than Jeter and only one has been unanimous. It is why Yankee fans ARE incels.
You can call me an incel all you want (I am married, after all), but I’ll be damned if I’ll sit here with continence at being called a Yankee fan. You, sir, are a dead man.
Someone just learned a new word, didn’t they?
Jay, outstanding article with great insight and lots of humor!!! FG needs more humor!
Perhaps even a section of the website devoted to it?