MAKE YOUR VOTE FOR THE 2018 MLB HOF

Only 4 get my vote

Clemens, Bonds, Sheffield, Schilling, Mussina, Wagner, McGriff, Vlad, Chipper, and Thome.

Wagner is the best left handed reliever in the history of baseball and should get more votes then the 11 percent he's getting right now with BBWAA.

I couldn't put Edgar over McGriff. McGriff had a longer career and actually played a position for longer. Edgar had a great but shorter career. His career numbers don't jump out to me. His dominance in the time of the league is unquestioned though.

I have a hard time voting for Clemens and Bonds. People seem to think they know when they took steroids but you honestly don't know. The players never came out and said hey I did steroids from this time to this time so my numbers before I did were worthy of the Hall of Fame. Again so I have a hard time deciding what to do about steroid users we know took them.

I'll take the longer career of Fred McGriff personally. Edgar's stats probably go way down if he plays longer (good assumption on my part).

Ortiz gets in because of the postseason.

The poll is missing Larry Walker, who is a definite yes from me.

Sorry you're right

I would vote for maybe 13-14 guys if Walker was on the list and I wasn't limited to ten. I don't know how you get down to four.

If you eliminate the people with steroid and character issues and go for perenial great as opposed to very good, it isn't that difficult. For me, one, Mussina, is borderline in and one Guerrero is borderline out. My others were Chipper Jones, Edgar Martinez & Jim Thome.

Ortiz would be borderline for me but probably in. Vlad was my toughest decision because he's also very likable.

ADD: Just seeing it. I'd vote for Larry Walker as well.

Bonds
Clemens
E Martinez
C Jones
Schilling (postseason)
Mussina
Manny (yes)
Rolen (3rd base underrepresented)
Thome
Vlad

I would have strongly considered Crime Dog and Wagner but ran out of votes. Larry Walker worth a better look too. McGriff might suffer from "too many teams" syndrome, as might Sheffield.

I voted C. Jones, Thome, Guerrero, Martinez, Hoffman, Mussina, Schilling, McGriff, Rolen, and Wagner, although if only allowed 10 ballots I'd remove Wagner and replace him with Larry Walker - so make that 8 votes for Larry Walker.

If allowed to vote for 12 guys which I think they should do, I'd re-include Wagner and add Jeff Kent.

I'd like time to think about/study more about Andruw Jones and Gary Sheffield, who has the BALCO thing but I'm not convinced he was knowingly guilty of anything.

Can't bring myself to vote for Clemens or Bonds for obvious reasons although it's also obvious they were 1st ballot HOFers if not for you know what.

Eventually I would also want to study Vizquel closer. Unfortunately Damon lost it a little sooner than I would have liked and I think I have him being just short - in the Harold Baines/Vada Pinson category unfortunately.

Other than "I can only vote for 10," what reason do people have leaving Jeff Kent off their list? Look at his numbers compared to other second basemen:

First in HR
Top 3 in Slugging, RBI, Doubles, XBH, OPS
Top 5 in TB

And he has a better career WAR than 8 second basemen who are already in the HOF.

I just don't get why he isn't already in.

Because he was rarely great. He built up a lot of value over a long time, which he gets credit for, but he had only five 4.0+ bWAR seasons. Jay Jaffe's JAWS standard, which averages career WAR and the WAR of a players seven best seasons (not necessarily consecutive) places him 20th all-time among second basemen, ahead of Bobby Doerr but behind Dustin Pedroia, Ian Kinsler, and Willie Randolph. He's a fair borderline candidate and not someone I'm going to get bent out of shape over, but he's a no from me.

Far better candidate than Omar Vizquel, though.