Cooperstown Chances examines the Baseball Hall of Fame cases of former players each week. This week: Mike Piazza and Ivan Rodriguez.
Who he is: If early ballot returns are any indicator, Mike Piazza’s induction to the Baseball Hall of Fame next summer looks like a sure thing. My friend Ryan Thibodaux, who keeps track of publicly revealed votes, had Piazza at 91.1 percent of the vote with 79 of an estimated 450 ballots in. Players tend to get a higher level of support in public ballots than private ones, but it seems unlikely the former All-Star catcher will drop below the necessary 75 percent of the vote for enshrinement from the Baseball Writers' Association of America. We’ll know for sure on Jan. 6 when results come out.
If the BBWAA votes Piazza in, it could create an interesting scenario for next year. Another of the greatest catchers in baseball history, Ivan Rodriguez, will be newly eligible for Cooperstown, and it’s not unprecedented for the induction of one player to open the door for another. It tends to happen more with the Hall of Fame’s various committees than the it does with the BBWAA, though the writers have done it, too. Bruce Sutter’s induction likely helped get Goose Gossage in. Jim Rice helped pave the way for Andre Dawson.
Statistically, Piazza and Rodriguez rate as two of the best catchers ever. Piazza’s 35.7 Wins Above Average are third among catchers all time, trailing only Johnny Bench and Gary Carter. Rodriguez’s 33.1 WAA is sixth, just behind Carlton Fisk and Yogi Berra. Piazza might be the best-hitting catcher in baseball history. Rodriguez has an argument as the greatest defensive catcher all time, and unlike Yadier Molina, Pudge the second has the numbers to back it up.
Of course, Piazza and Rodriguez aren’t just similar statistically. Piazza has long been tied to performance-enhancing drugs, though, as with Jeff Bagwell, there’s no hard evidence Piazza used. Rodriguez’s name came up in the 2007 Mitchell Report, and former teammate Jose Canseco has written of him as a steroid user. Neither Piazza nor Rodriguez was ever suspended or disciplined for steroid use, though I imagine if the BBWAA were polled, a majority of voters would say both players used.
Canseco has said explicitly that at least one person already in the Hall of Fame used steroids, and others like Thomas Boswell have hinted at it. Voters seem to be easing up on the issue in general, with a number of older, presumably more conservative baseball writers purged from voting rolls this election. Still, it will be interesting to see what happens in a few weeks.
Cooperstown chances: 90 percent for Piazza, 60 percent for Rodriguez
Why: There are a few possibilities for Piazza’s groundswell of support. The first possibility is that the BBWAA is caring less about steroids than it has in years past when writers were sending in blank ballots and refusing to vote for anyone they thought had used. BBWAA member (and Omnisport editor) Marc Lancaster wrote recently about finally voting for Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens this year, saying, “I believe it’s time for me to stop attempting to read decades-old tea leaves when it comes to who cheated and who didn’t. Bonds and Clemens will be on my ballot this year.”
While Bonds and Clemens won’t come close to enshrinement this year, it’s starting to look like they might get into Cooperstown within the 10-year window for the writers. That seemed unfathomable even a year or two ago, when both looked destined for the Expansion Era Committee, but things change.
Hall of Fame voters function a bit like social media. Voters are more likely to support a candidate the more popular they become, and there’s a certain critical mass where induction becomes almost inevitable. Bonds and Clemens each may hit that point this year. Both are in their fourth year on the BBWAA ballot, with Thibodaux’s public ballot tracker having each polling at 49.4 percent of the vote. According to information I’ve culled from Baseball-Reference.com in the past, of the 102 players who’ve gotten 50 percent of the vote in their first five years on the Hall of Fame ballot, only Piazza, Bagwell, and Gil Hodges aren’t enshrined.
So that’s one possibility for Piazza’s rise, and it seems the most likely scenario to me. It’s simply becoming more socially acceptable to vote for possible or confirmed steroid users. In fact, Hall of Fame voting has functioned this way since long before steroids were ever an issue in baseball. So long as baseball allows anything other than a one-off vote for the Hall of Fame, I suspect writers will keep looking to their peers to see how to vote. And of course, the Internet is now helping writers get an idea of which way things are going before they cast their ballots.
The other possibility for Piazza’s rise in popularity, and this is worse for Rodriguez, is that the BBWAA is giving Piazza the benefit of the doubt since he never flunked a drug test or wrote a tell-all book detailing his use. In fact, Piazza put out a book expressly denying it. There’s nothing besides back acne and a rise to prominence after being selected in the 62nd round of the 1988 amateur draft that suggests Piazza used; it is particularly telling he didn’t appear in the Mitchell Report. The Mets were well-represented there thanks to former clubhouse employee and admitted steroid distributor Kirk Radomski. Evidence points more strongly to Rodriguez having used.
There’s something to be said for due process, even if the Hall of Fame has no recourse for removing a player who gets voted in and is later revealed to have used. That said, I doubt voters adhere rigidly to due process. There are limited guidelines for Hall of Fame voting, and if voters want to go strictly by their gut or whatever method they want, they can. I’m actually OK with this. I assume if enough Hall of Fame voters work independently in casting their ballots, the right things happen. We’ll see what those things are in a few weeks.Cooperstown Chances examines the Baseball Hall of Fame case of one candidate each week. Series author and Sporting News contributor Graham Womack writes regularly about the Hall of Fame and other topics related to baseball history at his website, Baseball: Past and Present. Follow him on Twitter: @grahamdude .