The votes are in and two players are set to join baseball’s immortals in Cooperstown, NY this year.
Bert Blyleven and Roberto Alomar were elected to baseball’s Hall of Fame on Monday, each getting more than the 75% of votes required for admission. Blyleven pitched for 22 years, 11 of them with the Minnesota Twins and was one of the best pitchers in the 1970’s and 1980’s. He finished his career with 287 wins and a 3.31 ERA.
Blyleven will probably go down as one of the less remarkable Hall-of-Famers, as nothing he did really stands out. In his career, he won 20 games just once, was an All-Star just twice and never finished higher than third in Cy Young voting. He was, however, one of the most consistent pitchers of his era, winning 10 or more games in 17 different seasons.
It took Blyleven 14 times on the ballot to get into the Hall of Fame.
Alomar, like Blyleven, nearly got into the Hall in 2010 but missed by a just a handful of votes. One of the greatest second basemen of all time, Alomar was on twelve All-Star teams, won 10 Gold Gloves and four Silver Sluggers. He batted over .300 for 10 consecutive seasons in his prime and finished with a career batting average of .300. Showing a combination of power and speed with two 20-20 seasons, Alomar was a key member of two World Series Championship teams in Toronto.
Barry Larking finished third in voting as he was listed on 62.1 percent of ballots, and likely will be the leading candidate to go into Cooperstown in 2012. Jack Morris (53.5) was the only other player to be named on more than half of the ballots.
Jeff Bagwell did the best out of the first timers on the ballot, finished with 41.7% of the vote. Larry Walker was listed on 20.3 percent of ballots, showing that the voters will hold Coors Field against him.
Confirmed PED users suffered in the 2011 election. Mark McGwire saw his vote percentage drop, by 3.9% to 19.8 and Rafael Palmeiro was named on just 11% of ballots despite having over 500 homeruns and 3000 hits. This doesn’t bode well for other known users (i.e. Bonds and A-Rod) as Palmeiro would have been a first ballot Hall-of-Famer if only his stats were looked at.
Juan Gonzalez was the only other first timer to remain on the ballot, as fifteen newcomers were dropped. Harold Baines was the only non-first timer dropped, as he fell to 4.8% of the vote.
Blylevin and Alomar will officially be inducted into the Hall of Fame on July 24th.
Used with permission of the author.
Along with contributing to Sports Climax, Brett Kettyle is the Atlanta Braves Community Leader on Bleacher Report and maintains a Braves column for MTR Media. Follow Brett on Twitter.
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