David Ortiz Still The Leading Hall Of Fame Vote-Getter, But Outlook May Not Be Great For First-Year Induction
BOSTON (CBS) -- In the quest for David Ortiz to become a first ballot Hall of Famer, there is some positive news. But there's also some potentially bad news.
On the plus side, based on public votes revealed and compiled by Ryan Thibodaux for bbhoftracker.com, Ortiz is still the most popular player on voters' ballots this year.
Of the 123 ballots that have been made public, Ortiz has received 81.3 percent of the vote. Considering just 75 percent of the vote is needed for induction, this is very good news for Ortiz.
But based on history, it's unlikely to get Ortiz into the Hall of Fame -- not this year, anyway.
That's an assumption, but it's based on the history of voting percentages dropping significantly once all the ballots are counted. And with just 31.4 percent of the votes publicly known, it seems safe to assume that trend will impact Ortiz the way it's impacted others before.
For example, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens are on the ballot for the 10th and final time this year. They happen to currently be the only other players above the 75 percent threshold. (Nobody else is even close.)
Bonds is at 80.5 percent, and Clemens is at 78.9 percent. But as tracked by Thibodaux, both players dropped more than 11 percent from the final tally of publicized votes to the final tally of all votes last year. Bonds dropped 11.9 percent (to 61.8 percent) while Clemens dropped 11.6 percent (to 61.6 percent).
In that regard, Ortiz needs to be on 72.1 percent of the remaining ballots. That's a 9.2 percent difference from the public ballots. Again, both Bonds and Clemens dropped over 11 percent from the public ballots to the private ballots last year, so Ortiz would have to end up better in that department in order to be a first ballot Hall of Famer.
Whether he can do it is anyone's guess ... but the Hall might be rooting for Ortiz to get in, just to avoid a second straight year with no inductees.
Curt Schilling came close last year, leading the way with 71.1 percent of the vote. He might have gotten enough in this, his final year in the ballot, if not for a letter in which he requested to be removed from the ballot while denigrating the writers who vote for the Hall of Fame. He's currently at 56.9 percent in 2022 public ballots.
After that, Scott Rolen (69.9 percent), Todd Helton (53.7 percent), Andruw Jones (48 percent), Gary Sheffield (48.8 percent), Billy Wagner (45.5 percent), Alex Rodriguez (47.2 percent), and Manny Ramirez (42.3 percent) don't stand much of a chance at earning enshrinement this year.
Really, the only player with a good chance of getting in is David Ortiz, and even he'll need a stronger-than-usual showing in the private ballots to earn his plaque this year.
Ortiz -- and the rest of the world -- will learn the news when the Hall of Fame announces results on Jan. 25.