For Fred McGriff and Dale Murphy, Contemporary Baseball Era Peers Could Mean Hall Of Fame Call-Up

As we’ve been reminded countless times, there are no sure things in life. But even before the members of the electorate were revealed on Monday, there were few things more nearly certain than the Players of the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee electing at least one candidate when it meets and votes today at its winter meetings in San Diego.

Even counting the post-Bill Mazeroski drought—there were no Veterans Committee candidates from 2002 to 2007—the Veterans Committee, or whatever nickname the Hall of Fame bestows upon it, has elected at least one candidate 50 times in the 60 years which has met since 1960. There was no election in 2020, when the pandemic didn’t allow for an in-person meeting of the Golden Days and Early Baseball Era committees.

Choosing 1960 as the cut-off date for this exercise isn’t just a matter of finding a nice round number of years. Discounting 2020 – when the Baseball Writers Association of America launched a closing but there was still a ceremony in Cooperstown in September 2021 honoring the class of 2020, whose original ceremony was postponed due to the pandemic – last time that no one was inducted into the Hall of Fame was… 1960.

And with no legitimate first-ballot chances on ballots distributed to eligible BBWAA voting members, and with only one returning candidate (Scott Rolen at 63.2%) receiving at least 60% of the vote last year, chances are good whether it’s the contemporary baseball era or the bust.

And let’s face it: Whether or not it’s talked about in the room, it’s pretty clear that the Baseball Hall of Fame isn’t about not inducting someone.

So while there are no certainties, it is almost certain that someone will be elected today. And it’s a little less certain that someone – or that someone – will be longtime Braves stars Fred McGriff and/or Dale Murphy.

Although neither McGriff nor Murphy came close to being inducted during their time on the BBWAA ballot, the former slackers looked like the candidates with the best chance of getting in even before the first two people named in the Hall of Fame press release were Hall of Famers and Braves icons Chipper Jones and Greg Maddux.

The presence of Jones and Maddux is not enough to blow McGriff and/or Murphy out of Cooperstown: a candidate must be nominated in 75 percent of the 16 votes, which even those of us who have failed anything resembling advanced math can understand is 12 votes . But even just a couple of potentially positive voices for a candidate within these small electorates can be the deciding factor, as the controversial elections of Mazeroski and Harold Baines in 2000 and 2018, respectively, demonstrated.

Jones and Maddux could be especially beneficial to McGriff, who played the duo on the Braves’ 1995 World Series-winning team and finished with 493 homers — tied for 29th all-time — but never hit more than 39.8 percent of votes in 10 years on the vote of the writer.

Yet McGriff was considered clean compared to most of his peers with whom he shared eras. McGriff hit 191 homers in the pre-steroid boom from 1987 to 1992, third among the bigs behind Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco. He then hit 287 homers from 1993 to 2002, 15th in the majors behind such PED-related players as Sammy Sosa, Barry Bonds, Rafael Palmeiro, McGwire, Juan Gonzalez, Manny Ramirez, Mo Vaughn and Alex Rodriguez.

McGriff has also been good enough long enough that it’s hard to narrow down his peak. Was it when he hit 319 homers from 1988 to 1997 (behind only McGwire and Bonds)? Was it when he fired a .914 OPS from 1987 to 1996, fourth among players with at least 1,000 games played behind Bonds, Ken Griffey Jr. and McGwire? O was when he amassed 993 RBI from 1991 to 2000, 10th behind a group that included a trio of Hall of Famers (Frank Thomas, Griffey, and Jeff Bagwell) and five PED-connected players (Albert Belle, Juan Gonzalez, Palmeiro , Bonds and Sosa)?

After a decade-long stretch in which eight players with more homers than McGriff either went off the ballot or showed no real traction due to their credible ties to PED use, McGriff — who also has a connection in the electorate to the executive Paul Beeston, who was the president of the Blue Jays when McGriff was traded to the Padres after the 1990 season — presents an opportunity to thread a delicate needle into inducting someone from the steroid era without inducting someone directly related to the steroid era.

Similarly, Murphy offers the possibility of a pleasant introductory story after a long period of ambivalence regarding the writer’s ballot candidates. Murphy looked like a surefire future candidate when he became the youngest player to win back-to-back MVPs when he earned NL honors at ages 26 and 27 in 1982 and 1983.

He did not place in the top 5 again, but finished the 1980s with the second most homers (308), between Hall of Famers Mike Schmidt and Eddie Murray, and tied with Schmidt for second most by RBI (929) trailing only Murray (996). Murphy ranked only 19th in the majors in OPS during the 1980s but led all major leaguers in games played (1.537) and at bats (5.694).

But Murphy was already in decline by the end of the decade. After hitting .227 with 44 homers and 161 RBI in 1988-89, Murphy hit just .245 with 17 homers and 55 RBI in 1990, when he was traded to the Phillies. He finished his career hitting .236 with 20 homers in parts of the next three seasons with the Phillies and Rockies and retired with 398 homers, which ranked him 27th all-time and behind 24 current Hall of Famers or future.

When Murphy first appeared on the writers ballot in 1999, he had dropped to 32nd place. And when his eligibility ran out in 2013, he’d slipped to 54th. He never got more than 23.2% of the vote from the BBWAA electorate.

Murphy received fewer than four votes during the 2019 modern baseball era ballot. But perhaps his spotless reputation as one of baseball’s good guys and the inclusion of two famous fellow former Braves – as well as Hall of Famers , Lee Smith and Alan Trammell, all of whom have been inducted via recent iterations of the Veterans Committee and may be able to appreciate Murphy and McGriff’s struggles – this time will result in a much closer look.

Having Morris, who led the majors in hits (162) and innings pitched (2,443 2/3) while ranked third in strikeouts (1,629) during the 1980s, but tied for 41st in ERA ( 3.66) among pitchers who have thrown at least 1,000 innings – could be especially helpful to Murphy’s hopes of being billed as one of the best of his decade.

With such a small and unpredictable electorate, there’s always the chance that a surprise candidate will emerge. Don Mattingly, another 1980s superstar and all-around decent person who received fewer than four votes via modern baseball era voting in 2019, could also benefit from closer scrutiny conducted largely by peers. of him. Curt Schilling stands a far better chance of his post-career nonsense being rendered irrelevant by this electorate, but let’s not forget that Schilling—once dubbed a horse’s back end by his own CEO—was a handful to his contemporaries. in the pre-social media era.

The biggest surprise would be one of the steroid-era candidates — Bonds, Belle, Palmeiro, and Roger Clemens — getting the necessary 12 votes in a non-voting ballot supervised by board chairwoman Jane Forbes Clark. A slightly lesser surprise would be that Atlanta was not represented on stage at the Clark Sports Center on July 23rd.