Happy Baseball Hall of Fame Post Day!

The votes have been counted and in a stunning upset, Donald Trump has been elected to the HOF, despite a complete lack of qualifications.

OK, now that two-thirds of you have fled, screams of anguish dopplering into inaudibility in your wake, I’ll admit the truth.

DT was not elected to the HOF. In fact, he failed to make the 5% cutoff and, as a result, will not appear on next year’s ballot. Which shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone, since he wasn’t on this year’s ballot either.

Those who were elected–Jeff Bagwell, Tim Raines, and Ivan Rodriguez–are all worthy candidates, and it’s great to see Raines get in this year, since it was his final year of eligibility. Making him wait until the Today’s Game Era Committee could get around to considering him would have been more than a bit of a farce.

The middle of the list is the most interesting part, as usual. Edgar Martinez continues to gain ground, jumping from 43.4% to 58.6%. His chances of making up the remaining 16.4% of the ballots in his last two years of eligibility are still–unreasonably!–slim, but there are an awful lot of people who never thought he’d crack 50%. Stay tuned.

As has been widely reported, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens picked up large numbers of voters. Voters’ willingness to ignore the steroid question is widely attributed to the elevation of former commissioner Bud Selig to the HOF. “If the man who did little to prevent steroid use is there, why can’t the players who used them be there as well?” If that’s really the primary driver, I wouldn’t expect them to gain much more ground: everyone who finds that a convincing argument will have already made the switch.

Curt Schilling’s vote total dropped by seven percentage points in the wake of his recent general assholery. I’m betting the numbers go back up next year, especially if he keeps his mouth shut. By all reports, nobody had any complaints about his character during his playing days, and I think that’s what’s important in considering him for the Hall. Punish him now for his actions now, absolutely, but don’t ignore what he did then because you can’t see past his recent actions.

Then there’s the bottom of the ballot. As usual, a few players got what can only be described as sympathy votes. Tim Wakefield (one vote), Jason Varitek and Edgar Renteria (two votes each), and Magglio Ordonez (three votes) all had distinguished careers, but I doubt any of them expected to make it into the Hall.

As I said earlier, any player who gets less than five percent of the vote gets dropped from the ballot. For the third time in his five years of eligibility, Sammy Sosa had the fewest votes of any player who exceeded five percent. He’s up to 8.6% (38 votes) this year. Hang in there, Sammy! You’ve still go five more shots at it.

All joking aside, next year’s ballot is going to be very interesting. In the name of openness and transparency, all of the ballots will be made public starting with the 2018 election.

I have mixed feelings about that. Sure, it would have been interesting to know who voted for Tim Wakefield this year, and even more interesting to have found out who the three people who didn’t vote for Ken Griffey last year were. But is there really any benefit to opening voters up to demands that they justify themselves?

Knowing ballots will be inspected by the world at large is inevitably going to influence the vote. Say, for example, that Edgar isn’t elected. His supporters are going to target those who don’t vote for him, hoping to change some minds before Edgar’s last year of eligibility. Will people vote for him solely to avoid a deluge of “EdgarHype”? On the flip side, will they decline to vote for Schilling to avoid the barrage of “Why the [expletive] are you supporting that [expletive]?” messages?

Interesting times, my friends. Interesting times.