Roger Rubin's Class of 2023 Baseball Hall of Fame ballot
In three seasons with the Yankees, Gary Sheffield hit .291 with 76 home runs and 269 RBI. Credit: Newsday/Paul J. Bereswill
Filling out my Baseball Hall of Fame ballot this year turned out to be a journey. Embarking, I had a pretty good idea of where I was going. That wasn’t where I ended up.
Some could see the ballot I’ve cast for the Class of 2023 as a sea change on how I evaluate candidates. It’s an understandable conclusion, given that I voted for four players that I had not voted for previously. That's really not the case.
More, it’s about a change in attitude. Allow me to explain.
It’s natural to have seen a player during his career, think “this guy is a Hall of Famer” and then contemplate when they will retire and subsequently reach the ballot. That might have happened for me with Carlos Beltran when he played for the Yankees.
It felt right. He was consistently among the best players in the game and strong in virtually every department – hitting, power, speed and defense. He was a nine-time All-Star; his aggregate postseason numbers showed he performed well on the biggest stage; he finished with 565 doubles, 435 homers and 312 stolen bases and was the most-successful base stealers of his era at 86.4%.
But in his final season in 2017, he was part of the Astros’ sign-stealing scandal, a huge affront to anyone who cares about the game. In MLB's report on the scheme, Beltran was the only player named because he was retired when the report was released in 2020. Beltran apologized for his role in the scandal, and it cost him his job as manager of the Mets before he ever managed a game.
To this voter, Beltran had been the only newcomer to the ballot that deserved consideration.
A year earlier my ballot had four entries: David Ortiz, Curt Schilling, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens (I’ve not voted for players disciplined for PEDs and, after five seasons of withholding votes on Bonds and Clemens and seeing other suspected users inducted, I wasn’t going to hold two guys responsible for the entire so-called "Steroid Era").
Ortiz got in. The other three are no longer on the ballot. And now the thinking was not to vote for Beltran. So where did that leave me: sending in a blank ballot? Not sending a ballot at all? I decided to give Beltran some more thought.
I spoke to several voting colleagues, who suggested that I’ve been gripping the bat too tightly when stepping into the box to vote. And so I decided to revisit some decisions I’d made in past years.
It started with taking another look at Todd Helton. One could make several arguments against Helton, among them earning All-Star sections just five times in 16 full seasons and mediocrity in the postseason. But my biggest issue had always been his home/away splits – how much better he performed at Coors Field than when his Rockies played road games.
After reconsidering his candidacy in total, it occurred that it’s not fair to hold a player's team and home field against him. His career .316 batting average (.345 home, .287 away) and career .953 OPS (1.048 home, .855 away) both clearly rank with the best who have played the game. And it didn’t hurt that he’d won four Silver Sluggers at a premier offensive position and three Gold Gloves for defense. A new look changed my mind about Helton.
Scott Rolen has been an interesting case since he first appeared on the ballot, especially because he played third base and the list of Hall of Fame-worthy third basemen has been fairly short. While no one has been the fielder in the hot corner that Brooks Robinson was, few have been as good as Rolen. That deserves a hard think. He also was an All-Star nine times in 16 seasons and a very good hitter with an .855 career OPS.
The counter-point was two-fold: he missed a lot of games due to injuries and he was never “the guy” on the teams he played for. If one looks at how he played in his prime seasons, he statistically sits right in the center of the crop of Hall of Fame third basemen. History will see him as having belonged in the Hall and so I voted for him. too.
Next was Billy Wagner. There are only eight relief pitchers in the Hall, and the candidacy of the position is evolving. Wagner ranks sixth all-time with 422 saves, however the value of that stat is very subjective. Now look at some Wagner numbers that are not subjective. He struck out 33.2% of the batters he faced for a clip of 11.9 per nine innings and both of those numbers are among the best of all-time. Opposing hitters batted .187 against him, which is outstanding. His ERA was 2.31, also outstanding. Add to that he was an All-Star seven times in 15 seasons.
The arguments that he wasn’t the best reliever of his era – impossible when Mariano Rivera and Trevor Hoffman were playing – and that he only pitched 903 innings? They’re starting to seem silly. The Hall needs more closers – they’ve been part of the game for decades now.
I also voted for Gary Sheffield this time around. Always in his favor were the .907 career OPS, the 509 home runs, the six top-10 finishes in MVP voting and the nine All-Star selections. And most of all, he struck fear into opposing teams. But he has been followed by his association with Bonds and close links to the BALCO scandal. He was never disciplined by MLB for PED use and, for the same reasons I changed my mind on Bonds, I am changing it on Sheffield.
And that brings us back to Beltran. My guess is that the electorate feels he belongs but can’t vote for him on this first-ballot appearance. Why go through the ceremony of leaving him off a time or two? I’d always planned to vote for him, so I checked that box.
Roger Rubin returned to Newsday in 2018 to write about high schools, colleges and baseball following 20 years at the Daily News. A Baseball Hall of Fame voter since 2011, he has covered 13 MLB postseasons and 14 NCAA Final Fours.
