The 2022 Baseball Hall of Fame Class has issues (part one)

This year three groups are eligible to be included in the 2022 Hall of Fame class. The Era Committees, formerly known as the Veterans Committee, put up eligible players, managers, umpires, and executives from eras no longer eligible for election by the BBWAA. This year they will choose from the Golden Days and Early Baseball committee candidates. The Golden Days era focuses on players who played between 1950 and 1969. The Early Baseball will select candidates who played before 1950. The two committees work differently than the BBWAA. Instead of baseball writers a group of sixteen people usually former players and managers meet and if twelve of the sixteen members agree, a player gets inducted.

Last year no one on the baseball Hall of Fame ballot received the mandatory seventy-five percent of the vote to get elected. Despite the addition of both committees, this could be the second year in a row that no one has been elected. Several of the eligible players have impressive resumes that would typically merit induction in the first year of eligibility if not for off-the-field issues. Other players without these issues don't have the longevity or statistics traditionally necessary to get in. For part one, we will take a look at four players in their tenth and last year of eligibility Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa, and Curt Schilling.

Barry Bonds career statistics are jaw-dropping. Over a twenty-two-year playing career, his triple-slash line was .298/.444/.607. He won the MVP award seven times and has more career home runs and walks than any other player. He was still a very productive player at age forty-two, but no team offered him a contract. All baseball seemed ready for Bonds to go away; he was no longer eager to watch him get his 3,000th hit, break the runs scored record, or become the first player to reach the 800-home run mark.

Among the reasons Bonds hasn't been inducted to the Hall of Fame are his links to performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs). In 2007, he was indicted on perjury charges and obstruction of justice for lying to a grand jury. The federal government was investigating a company that was producing steroids that didn't show up during drug tests. The perjury charges were later dropped, and the obstruction of justice charge was overturned in 2015. A childhood friend and personal trainer, Greg Anderson, went to prison for refusing to testify against Bonds on three separate occasions in 2006, 2007, and 2009. Anderson was released from prison in 2011. Bonds received 61.8% of the vote last year and is unlikely to get the seventy-five percent needed to get in this year.

Roger Clemens' career as a pitcher who played twenty-four seasons was equally impressive. Clemens won the Cy Young Award seven times, the MVP award in 1986, and was an eleven-time all-star. Among all pitchers, he is third all-time in WAR and strikeouts. He was a productive pitcher at the age of forty-four when he retired in 2007.

Like Bonds, the reason he isn't already in the Hall of Fame is his links to PEDs. Clemens' personal strength coach and former Yankees trainer Brian McNamee initially denied steroid use by Clemens, then later stated he injected Clemens with an anabolic steroid in 1998, 2000, and 2001. A grand jury also indicted Clemens. He was charged with one count of obstruction of justice, three counts of making false statements, and two counts of perjury. His first trial was declared a mistrial on the second day of testimony over prosecutor misconduct. In the second trial, Clemens was found not guilty of all six counts. This was largely due to McNamee's admitted inconsistencies in his testimony against Clemens. Clemens received 61.6% of the vote last year and, like Bonds, probably won't get to the seventy-five percent mark needed to get in.

Sammy Sosa had a slow start to his career. It took him six seasons before he appeared in his first all-star game. Even then, his plate discipline wasn't great as he didn't take many walks and struck out a lot. It wasn't until 1998, in his tenth season at the age of twenty-nine, that his career took off. That year he and Mark McGuire surpassed the single-season home run record of sixty-one set by Roger Maris in 1961. Sosa finished with sixty-six home runs that season and would hit sixty-three the following season, fifty in 2000 and sixty-four in 2001. Sosa finished his career with 609 home runs. The New York Times reported in June of 2009 that Sosa was on a list of players who tested positive for PEDs in 2003. Last year he received only 17.0% of the vote as sportswriters seem to attribute more of his career success to PED use compared to Bonds or Clemens.

Curt Schilling was just sixteen votes shy of getting into the Hall of Fame last year. Generally, in a case like this, the player would be a lock to make it in the following year. However, Schilling, who was fired from ESPN for inappropriate social media posts, has continued the practice, hurting his case. After last year's vote, Schilling lashed out at the press and asked that he be removed from this year's ballot, preferring to be voted in by the Era Committee in future years. The BBWAA has not honored his request, and Schilling is on this year's ballot. Schilling will likely receive less support than he did last year.

Next week I'll cover the players in their first year of eligibility for the Hall of Fame.