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The Hall of Fame voting came in yesterday afternoon, and Barry Larkin was elected with 86% of the vote. Congrats to Barry - not that he'll necessarily read this, but he's definitely a deserving candidate and it's great to see him get in. One of these days I'm going to need to get back up to Cooperstown again...
Nobody besides Larkin came particularly close to getting inducted, although Jack Morris (67%) and Jeff Bagwell (56%) are within hailing distance. Morris seems likely to get in next season, unless he gets screwed up by the bottleneck of talent that's going to join the ballot. Bagwell, Tim Raines, and Alan Trammell all saw large increases in their vote total from last season, so here's hoping that means those guys will get in eventually.
This always strikes me as strange, but nine ballots were left blank. Nine? You're telling me that nine writers thought there was nobody in this class that was worthy of the Hall? I suppose they could be making some sort of moral stand, but my guess is they were voters that fell into the "Nobody should get a unanimous vote" category and wanted to preserve the Hall's "history" of voting. Luckily nine votes is only 1.5% of the total vote and wouldn't have changed if any player got in or not...it's just interesting.
- Joe Poz wrote about Barry Larkin getting into the Hall, which should be all you need to know.
- Yesterday morning, Dave Cameron argued why the Hall of Fame should be large, not small. I love his proposal at the end about splitting the Hall into tiers, although I'm sure there'd be trouble implementing it.
- The Cubs and Tigers are reportedly far along in discussions about a Matt Garza trade. If it keeps Garza away from the Red Sox, Yankees, or Blue Jays, I'd be okay with that.