The last time MLB experienced a lockout during the winter of 2021-22, the Baseball Hall of Fame’s election played an outsized role in filling the void left by the work stoppage.
That winter David Ortiz was elected to Cooperstown in his first year on the ballot, and this year several former Red Sox greats will be up for consideration as well, including Dustin Pedroia and Jon Lester.
But as far as the Era Committee ballot is concerned, there probably won’t be a lot of drama.
Earlier this week the Baseball Hall of Fame announced its eight-person non-player ballot that will be considered by the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee. The non-player ballot features managers, umpires and executives whose primary contributions to the game have come since 1980, and this year’s ballot includes Sandy Alderson, Dusty Baker, Bruce Bochy, Joe Maddon, Lou Piniella, Brian Sabean, Ted Turner and Bill White.
All eight candidates can make a strong case, but two stand out as obvious frontrunners.
Bochy and Baker each rank among the winningest managers in MLB history, and everyone else in the top-10 is already enshrined in Cooperstown.
Bochy will likely be a unanimous selection, his 2,252 wins ranks sixth all-time and he’s one of only six managers in MLB history to win at least four World Series titles. Bochy led the San Francisco Giants to three titles in five years through the first half of the 2010s, and then in 2023 he came out of retirement and led the Texas Rangers to their first World Series after four years away from the game. Overall he managed 28 seasons and won Manager of the Year in 1996.
Baker could potentially be elected unanimously as well. The baseball lifer ranks eight with 2,183 wins and capped off his remarkable career with his first World Series victory as a manager in 2022 with the Astros. Before that he was a three-time Manager of the Year recipient, a three-time runner-up and won 10 division titles in his 26 seasons as a manager.
Because of the way the Era Committee vote is structured, it’s mathematically improbable that more than two candidates will earn induction in the same year.
In order to earn enshrinement a candidate needs to appear on 75% of the total ballots, which in this case would be 12 of the 16 voters. The trouble is voters are also limited to only three names per ballot, so if most (or all) voters include Bochy and Baker, that would leave a small number of remaining votes available for the other six candidates to split.
That will be a problem for guys like Maddon and Piniella, deserving candidates who each won a World Series and three Manager of the Year awards but whose body of work otherwise falls short of Bochy and Baker, as well as the four executive candidates who are each likely to draw from different pockets of supporters.
Houston Astros manager Dusty Baker is seen during batting practice before Game 7 of the baseball AL Championship Series against the Texas Rangers Monday, Oct. 23, 2023, in Houston. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)
The Contemporary Baseball Era Committee will meet on Dec. 6 in San Diego and the results of their vote will be announced on MLB Network that night at 8 p.m. ET.
Regardless of the outcome, this year’s vote shouldn’t be controversial, which probably won’t be the case in the coming years. Next winter’s Classic Baseball Era Ballot is likely to include the late Pete Rose, MLB’s all-time hits leader who was recently reinstated from the permanently ineligible list after being banned for years for betting on baseball.
Then down the road in 2031 Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, the two most prominent stars tarred by allegations of performance-enhancing drug use, will be eligible for the Contemporary Baseball Era player ballot again. Both received fewer than five votes last year, which means they’ll be skipped on the next ballot in 2028 and if they receive scant support again they will be shut out of Cooperstown for good.