The BBWAA have elected four players into the Hall of Fame and they are Craig Biggio, John Smoltz, Pedro Martinez, and Randy Johnson.
Biggio received 82.7 percent of the votes (549 ballots cast). Johnson was 97.3, Martinez 97.1 and Smoltz at 82.9. It is the first time since 1955 that four players have been elected the same year.
Piazza got just 69.9 percent of the vote. Also, Carlos Delgado got less than 5 percent of the vote and was knocked off the ballot.
Total bummer….
Among some of those who didn’t cast a vote for Piazza are Joel Sherman and Jon Heyman.
The only positive to take away is that Piazza continues to trend upward for the second year in a row. Like Biggio this year, Piazza goes into 2016 with the highest percentage among all those returning on the next HOF ballot.
9:00 AM
Mike Piazza continues to slip. This morning’s latest tally of 188 public Hall of Fame ballots as tracked by Baseball Think Factory, now have him at 76.1 percent of the vote.
In a span of two weeks, Piazza has seen his support slide from 81.0 to 79.5 percent to 78.1 on Monday to the 76.1 this morning. It is still slightly ahead of the 75 percent threshold Piazza needs to get into Cooperstown, but it seems most are predicting that he’ll get shutout again.
All 571 ballots from the Baseball Writers Association of America will be tallied and announced live on MLB Network and MLB.com at 2 PM.
Piazza remains optimistic. In a an interview with MLB.com he said:
“I can only say that there’s been a lot of great players throughout history that have had to wait their turn. Joe DiMaggio had three ballots. Yogi Berra had three ballots. And that’s part of the process. For me, it’s not really my place, I feel, to start campaigning. I can only say that I’m proud of my work and I’m proud of my career. I’ll put my numbers against a lot of players in history, and I feel that’s all I can do.’’
Piazza remains one of the greatest offensive catchers of all time, setting the MLB record of 396 home runs as a catcher while with the Mets. Over 16 seasons with the Dodgers, Marlins, Mets, Padres and A’s he finished with 427 homers, 1,335 RBI, and a .308 batting average.
A 12-time All-Star and 10-time Silver Slugger Award winner, he spent eight years with the Mets and helped take them to the postseason in 1999 and all the way to the World Series the following season.
Mike has said he would go into the HOF wearing a Mets cap, becoming the only position player ever to do so.
Thoughts from John Delcos
As a Hall of Fame voter, I received emails from several teams over the years lobbying for my vote for one of their players. Seattle wrote me about Edgar Martinez and Boston did likewise for Jim Rice.
There were others.
However, I never received a note from the New York Mets regarding Mike Piazza and I don’t know why.
Surely, it reflects positively on the organization if one of their own gets to Cooperstown. Piazza is one of the more popular players in franchise history, so where’s the love?
I can’t believe the organization doesn’t care, because they’ve gone out of their way to include him in team events in the past.
The only thing I can immediately think of is they are afraid of being embarrassed if he gets in and the PED accusations are later proven true. Or, perhaps they don’t want to be connected to a player with any chance of being linked to steroids.
I voted for Piazza and I didn’t need any lobbying from the Mets. The voting figures to be close, but early reports have Piazza falling short. The announcement will come this afternoon.
Could any stumping by the Mets closed the gap? Hopefully not, but maybe the Mets will get another chance next year.
