The Today’s Game Era committee of the National Baseball Hall of Fame convened on Sunday night at the winter meetings in Las Vegas, NV to vote on this year’s collection of former players, managers, and executives who were involved in the game from 1988 and later, with enshrinement in Cooperstown hanging in the balance for nearly a dozen men.
This year’s player candidates were Harold Baines, Albert Belle, Joe Carter, Will Clark, Orel Hershiser, and Lee Smith. Managers on the ballot were former Mets skipper and 1986 World Series champion Davey Johnson, Charlie Manuel, and Lou Pinella. Late Yankees owner George Steinbrenner was the lone executive candidate.
A candidate needs to receive 75 percent of the votes of a sixteen-member committee for induction. Any candidate who does receive the necessary votes needed for election will be inducted into the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown this coming July.
After three hours of deliberation and voting on Sunday evening, the committee selected Harold Baines and Lee Smith. Smith was voted in unanimously, receiving 16-of-16 votes. Baines hit 75 percent on the nose with 12 votes.
Pinella fell just short with eleven votes, and Belle, Carter, Clark, Hershiser, Johnson, Manuel and Steinbrenner all received less than five votes each.
The committee that voted was comprised of Hall of Famers Roberto Alomar, Bert Blyleven, Greg Maddux, Joe Morgan, Ozzie Smith, Joe Torre, Tony LaRussa, Pat Gillick, John Schuerholz, Al Avila, Paul Beeston, Andy MacPhail, Jerry Reinsdorf, Steve Hirdt, Tim Kurkjian, and Claire Smith (voting results and committee as per David Lennon of Newsday).
Baines played 22 MLB seasons (1980 to 2001), racking up 2,866 hits, 384 home runs, 1,628 runs batted in, 488 doubles, and a 121 OPS+ rating. The Maryland native spent the first 14 seasons of his career with the Chicago White Sox before moving on to Texas, Oakland, Baltimore, back to the Sox, back to Baltimore, Cleveland, then stopping back in Baltimore and Chicago –for good measure, of course — before retiring in 2001.
Smith spent 18 seasons in Major League Baseball, bouncing around the league as well, but having the bulk of his success with the other Chicago team, the Cubs. Smith owned a 3.03 ERA over 1,022 career appearances (1,289.1 innings), racking up a then-MLB record 478 saves (held until 2006, Trevor Hoffman) with 1.256 WHIP, a 2.93 fielding independent pitching rating, a 2.57 strikeouts-to-walks ratio, and a 132 ERA+ rating.
Baines and Smith will join whomever the Baseball Writers Association of America inducts when their voting results are released in January.
