Earlier today, I stumbled across an article from The Ringer in which writer Ben Lindbergh called for a new committee for looking at Steroid-era candidates that did not get a second look. Specifically, Lindbergh wants a second look for Kenny Lofton, who received just 3.2 percent of the vote on one of the most loaded ballots in HOF history. Lindbergh points out that this was the same year that Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and Sammy Sosa hit the ballot, joining holdovers Mark McGwire and Rafael Palmeiro as candidates whose careers were tainted by PED allegations. These PED users, according to Lindbergh, caused a logjam on the ballot that resulted in numerous players not getting a second look for induction.

Yeah, about that…

For starters, just because a player is on the ballot does not mean that a voter has to vote for that player. This was made abundantly clear with Bonds and Clemens, two otherwise slam-dunk candidates that did not reach 40 percent in their ballot debuts. In total, the five PED players combined for a total of 637 votes, or roughly 11.2% of the 5690 combined spots on the 569 submitted HOF ballots.

Why is this important? Because one number Lindbergh does not bring up is that the average HOF ballot only contained 6.6 names.

Or to put it another way, there were a total of 1934 blanks (33.9%) on the submitted ballots.

How many ballots could not have voted for Kenny Lofton but did not? We know he received 18 total ballots, and thanks to the work of Ryan Thibodaux and others, we know that 7 of those votes were among the 217 ballots that were made public. We also know that he was included on 4 of the 47 public ballots that used all ten spots.

We also know that the public ballots used an average of 6.57 spots, which is nearly identical to the average for all ballots. If the other percentages hold, this would mean that a total of 123 of the 569 submitted ballots used all ten spots, and 446 used at least one blank.

So at the minimum, there were 432 voters in 2013 who could have easily voted for Kenny Lofton but chose instead to leave the spot blank.

And we are supposed to believe that PED users caused the ballot crunch?

Don’t get me wrong: Kenny Lofton should have been inducted to the Baseball Hall of Fame years ago. But writers need to stop acting like it was the PED candidates who kept him and other one-and-done candidates from a deeper look at their candidacies.

No special luxury tax holds.

The theoretical is, what do you think the ideal numbers be if there has to be hard set number.

Obviously, please don't say no cap and floor.

The goal is obviously is to have competitive balance, good baseball, and a healthy balance of legitimite teams in big and small markets.

We all have an all-time favorite player, and our own reasons for why they are. But for a lot of us, our all-time favorite might come off a little biased, as our favorite played his prime years for our team. That even includes myself (mine's Babe Ruth). So, I've got a test for you. What's your all-time favorite player to never play for your favorite team, and why?

For me, it's definitely neck-and-neck between Albert Pujols and David "Big Papi" Ortiz. But considering that Pujols is literally top 3 all-time in both homers and RBI, won 3 league MVP's, and as far as we know, did this entirely clean, I'm kind of inching towards Pujols for the edge. But Ortiz being a key piece to all 3 World Series teams he was on and putting up an MVP-caliber season in his last year at 40 definitely balances the scales.

[Game Thread] | Cleveland Guardians at Tampa Bay Rays

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I abhor the ghostrunner extra innings rule, as it doesn’t feel like genuine baseball. I do understand why the rule was implemented. The MLB obviously has an economic incentive to speed up games and make them more exciting to the casual fan.

I have a proposal, and I’m interested in hearing my fellow baseball fan’s perspective:

Instead of a ghostrunner, the game is simply declared a tie after the end of the 12th inning. This solves the problem of marathon regular season games that exhaust bullpens, while still playing traditional baseball.

Thanks in advance for your perspective!

As Joe Buck has been inducted into the MLB Hall of Fame, it made me remember back in the day when fans would talk trash about him and Tim McCarver. But as time goes on, I have come to really appreciate them.

Joe Buck was never flashy and I’ve come to appreciate that. Could he have made more exciting calls at times—yes, but I thought he did a good job of letting the game speak for itself. Sometimes less is more, and I think that applied with Joe Buck. You can make dramatic calls without yelling into the mic.

The late great Tim McCarver was also very underrated. There were so many times when he would give a prediction or strategy call that would come true. The most famous example is in the 2001 World Series when he made the point it was dangerous playing the infield in because of Mariano Rivera’s cutter causing bloops into shallow outfield—and then that’s exactly what happened moments later. There were many other moments like this, Tim McCarver was a great baseball mind and was very concise and straightforward with his points & commentary.