The 1994 BBWAA Hall of Fame Ballot

Steve Carlton at the Hall of Fame press conference on January 13, 1994. Despite his rocky relationship with the press, Carlton gave interviews for more than two hours.

Ted Simmons in 1976.

When Ted Simmons was elected to the Hall of Fame last week, I took a closer look at the 1994 BBWAA Hall of Fame ballot, the only writers’ ballot that Simmons appeared on. It’s a pretty odd ballot, for reasons I’ll explain. The writers voted in late 1993, and the results were made public on January 12, 1994. The only player elected by the writers that year was my favorite baseball player: Steve Carlton, who was named on 95.6% of the ballots. At the time, Carlton’s percentage was one of the top ten in the history of the Hall of Fame. Carlton was a slam-dunk case for the Hall of Fame: he won 329 games, he was the second pitcher to ever strike out 4,000 batters, he won 4 Cy Young Awards, and he was a 10-time All-Star. Pretty open and shut. 

Other than Carlton, there are now 8 players on the 1994 ballot who were subsequently elected to the Hall of Fame. They are: Orlando Cepeda, Phil Niekro, Tony Perez, Don Sutton, Ron Santo, Bruce Sutter, Joe Torre—who was elected for his accomplishments as a manager—and Ted Simmons. That’s a pretty stacked ballot. Oddly enough, it includes two 300-game winning pitchers, Phil Niekro and Don Sutton, who were NOT first-ballot Hall of Famers. It ended up taking Niekro and Sutton FIVE tries to make it into the Hall. It’s bizarre to think of two 300-game winners somehow not being first ballot Hall of Famers. 

I don’t know if any of the voters have a thing about not voting for someone on their first ballot, and then voting for them the second time—separating the Hall into “first ballot” guys and everyone else,  but that’s the only reason I can think of for not voting for a 300-game winner the first year they’re eligible. Yes, Tom Seaver and Steve Carlton were better than Don Sutton, but it doesn’t mean that Sutton doesn’t deserve to be in the Hall of Fame. 

I suppose someone could object to Phil Niekro because he lost so many games—274, 5^th on the all-time list. Niekro led the NL in losses four years in a row, from 1977-1980, but that’s more a reflection of the crappy Braves teams he was pitching for than his pitching talents. In 1979, Niekro led the NL in both wins and losses, in addition to also leading the league in games started, complete games, innings, hits, home runs, walks, hit by pitch, and batters faced! Niekro didn’t achieve the same level of fame as some of the other pitchers of his generation. Niekro never played in a World Series, never won a Cy Young Award, and won 20 games in a season “only” 3 times. Back in the day, when pitcher wins were VERY important, this might have made a difference to some voters. In contrast, Fergie Jenkins, who won 34 fewer games than Niekro over his career, won 20 games in a season seven times, including six years in a row. Seaver won 20 games five times, Carlton won 20 games six times, and Jim Palmer, who won 50 fewer games than Niekro, was an eight-time 20 game winner. 

Fortunately, WAR and other sabermetric stats have proven Niekro’s value as a pitcher. If Niekro were hitting the ballot for the first time in 2019, I think he’d sail into the Hall of Fame. 

It's almost like Don Sutton decided to win 324 games in the most low-key way possible. His season high for wins was 21, achieved in 1976, the only year that Sutton won 20 games. Sutton never won a Cy Young Award, and only led the league in a Triple Crown pitching statistic once, when he led the NL in ERA in 1980. Sutton is 7^th all-time in strikeouts, but the closest he came to leading the league was two 4^th place finishes. Sutton just pitched forever, never got hurt, and won like 16 games every single year. Sutton won 15 games or more in a season 12 times, which is impressive. Sutton still managed to be effective after he turned 40. Steve Carlton turned 40 in December of 1984, and Sutton turned 40 in April of 1985. Despite Carlton’s rigorous training regimen, and excellent physical health, in 1985 he went on the disabled list for the only time in his career with a rotator cuff strain and missed more than two months of the season. In short, Carlton was never the same pitcher after that injury. From 1985 to the end of their careers in 1988, Sutton’s record was 44-38, while Carlton’s was 16-37. 

Anyway, back to the 1994 ballot. During this historical period, it seems as though the writers were really stuck on electing just one player at a time. It’s like Reggie Jackson, Steve Carlton, and Mike Schmidt were just so amazing that they couldn’t even focus on the statistics of the other players. The writers didn’t even elect anyone in 1996, when the ballot had no first-ballot Hall of Famers on it. (The best players to debut on that ballot were Bob Boone, Fred Lynn, and Keith Hernandez.) 1996 should have been a time for them to clear the backlog on the ballot and elect Niekro, Sutton, and Tony Perez in one fell swoop. 

In addition to all the future Hall of Famers, the 1994 ballot was also full of excellent players who still haven’t made it into the Hall of Fame but have been considered by various iterations of the Veterans’ Committee. Those players include: Steve Garvey, Tony Oliva, Jim Kaat, Dick Allen, Ken Boyer, Minnie Minoso, Luis Tiant, and Dave Concepcion. There was certainly an embarrassment of riches for the writers to choose from in 1994. 

The 1994 ballot was the last time that anyone wrote Pete Rose’s name down for Hall of Fame. Rose had been banned from baseball since 1989, and in 1991, just before Rose would have hit the ballot, had he not been banned, the Hall of Fame made it clear that players on the ineligible list (Rose) could not be considered for induction into the Hall of Fame. But some sportswriters wrote Rose’s name on their ballots anyway, and Rose was named on 9.5% of the ballots in 1992, the highest total of his three years being written in. In 1994, Rose was written in on 19 ballots, getting 4.2% of the vote. So, more sportswriters wasted their votes on a protest for Pete Rose than voting for Ted Simmons, who needed their help to stay on the ballot. 

In addition to the banned Hit King being written in, there were other oddities in 1994. While Ted Simmons only got 17 votes, for 3.7%, and was dropped from future ballots, other players under 5% somehow reappeared the following year. George Foster, Vida Blue, and Don Baylor all received fewer votes than Simmons, and yet they all were on the 1995 BBWAA ballot. How did this happen? Sloppy proof-reading? Both Baylor and Foster got less than 5% of the vote on the 1995 ballot, and were dropped from future ballots. Vida Blue actually got more than 5% of the vote on the 1995 ballot, at 5.7%, but he was still dropped too. That just seems like adding insult to injury. 

I don’t think Vida Blue is a Hall of Famer, despite his Hall of Fame name, but he was an excellent pitcher. With 191 victories after 1982, his age 32 season, Blue might have projected to someday join the Hall of Fame. However, Blue didn’t win a single game in 1983, and the Kansas City Royals released him in August. Blue had cocaine problems during this period as well, and in addition to serving a jail term, he was banned from baseball for the 1984 season by Commissioner Bowie Kuhn. Blue made a comeback with the Giants in 1985 and 1986, winning his 200^th game and getting his 2,000^th strikeout. I’m not going to say that Vida Blue was better than Don Drysdale, but I will point out that Blue has a slightly better won-loss record. Blue finished his career at 209-161, and Drysdale was 209-166. Given how amazing the Dodgers were throughout Drysdale’s career, it’s surprising his winning percentage wasn’t higher. 

Vida Blue is also the answer to two fun trivia questions: he was the first pitcher to start All-Star games for both leagues, and he remains, 48 years later, the last switch-hitter to win the AL MVP. I met Vida Blue at a baseball card show in 2017, and he was a very nice guy. He remembered my name when I bumped into him walking around the show an hour after I got his autograph, so that was cool. 

I also met Don Baylor at a baseball card show when I was a kid. It must have been shortly after he retired as a player. He was a nice guy, and he was always a player I really liked. Someone said of Don Baylor, “He just looked like an RBI, standing up there at the plate.” Baylor drove in 1,276 RBI’s during his career, so that was an apt quote. He was also unafraid of taking one for the team, as he was hit by 267 pitches. Once he was on the bases, Baylor was a threat to steal, as he racked up 285 steals, with a high of 52 in 1976. 

One of the random facts I learned from the 2001 edition of The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract is that 8-time Gold Glove winning shortstop Mark Belanger had three books on his desk: “A baseball encyclopedia, Marvin Miller’s autobiography, and Don Baylor, by Don Baylor.” (p.624) I don’t know how Bill James knew this, but it’s interesting. Baylor and Belanger were teammates on the Orioles in the early 1970’s, so that perhaps explains why the book found a place on Belanger’s desk. I read Don Baylor’s autobiography when I was a kid and I remember enjoying it, although I couldn’t tell you anything specific about it. It’s never been one of the top three books on my desk. Maybe I should read it again. 

I’ve always been struck by how Don Baylor’s career is kind of a reverse image of Reggie Jackson’s. Granted, Baylor never climbed the ladder of super-duper stardom the way that Reggie did, but Baylor played for all the same teams that Reggie did. Jackson and Baylor were part of the blockbuster trade that sent Reggie from the A’s to the Orioles in April of 1976. Jackson played only one year for the Orioles, while Baylor only played one year for the A’s. While Reggie went to the Yankees and then to the Angels, Baylor went to the Angels and then to the Yankees. Jackson and Baylor were teammates for one year, on the 1982 Angels. Jackson led the AL in home runs that year with 39, while Baylor added 24 home runs of his own. Adding to the symmetry of their careers, both played their last season for the Oakland A’s: Jackson in 1987, Baylor in 1988.

The 1994 ballot also featured yet another veteran member of the 1987 Minnesota Twins besides Steve Carlton and Don Baylor: Joe Niekro, Phil’s younger brother. Joe was a pretty solid pitcher, tying his brother for the NL lead in wins in 1979, and winning 221 games in his career. Joe was released by the Twins in May of 1988, just a week after the team let Steve Carlton go. In his only appearance on a Hall of Fame ballot, Joe got six votes. 

But Joe Niekro still fared better than his longtime Houston Astros teammate, Jose Cruz, who only received two votes. Cruz wasn’t a Hall of Famer, but he was a very good player who put together a nice career. 

At the very bottom of the ballot were five players who didn’t receive any votes for the Hall of Fame: Scott McGregor, one of those very good pitchers that the Baltimore Orioles seemed to turn out like clockwork in the 1970’s and 1980’s, Bob Horner, one of the few players to never spend a day in the minor leagues, Mario Soto, who had back-to-back seasons of 274 and 242 strikeouts in 1982 and 1983, and Chris Chambliss and George Hendrick.

Chris Chambliss just has one of those names that sticks with you. The alliteration, the way the “is” at the end of “Chris” is echoed by the “iss” at the end of “Chambliss.” Also, “Chambliss” sounds like a fancy champagne. Ordering the Chambliss is always going to impress your date. For the record, Chris Chambliss’ full name is Carroll Christopher Chambliss. That’s wonderful. Also, I’m pretty sure that Chris Chambliss invented the soul patch. (Okay, he probably didn’t, but he’s the first baseball player who had one.) I’m kind of surprised that some New York sportswriter didn’t give Chambliss a vote just because of his walk-off home run in Game 5 of the 1976 ALCS, which brought the Yankees their first pennant since 1964. 

Chris Chambliss had a “nice career,” which I officially define for a position player as achieving one or more of the following: 1,000 runs, 2,000 hits, 200 home runs, and 1,000 RBI’s. The only one of these milestones Chambliss achieved was 2,000 hits, as he finished his career with 2,109 hits, but it still qualifies him for a “nice career.” 

George Hendrick, like Steve Carlton, was known for not talking to the press. The joke going around in the early 1980’s was that the worst thing that could happen to a sportswriter would be to have to cover a game where Steve Carlton pitched a one-hitter, and the player who got the one hit would be George Hendrick, meaning that you wouldn’t be able to get a quote out of the two main participants of the game. 

The San Diego Padres made an odd decision in trading Hendrick to the St. Louis Cardinals in May 1978. Hendrick was coming off a season where he hit 23 home runs and batted .311. (According to the sabermetric stats WAR and OPS+, both of which hadn’t been invented yet, it was Hendrick’s best season.) The Padres traded Hendrick straight up for pitcher Eric Rasmussen. The most exciting thing about Eric Rasmussen is that during the 1976-77 off-season he changed his legal name from Harold to Eric. Rasmussen went 22-30 for the Padres over three seasons. Hendrick played for the Cardinals through 1984, was a two-time All-Star with the Cards, won two Silver Slugger Awards, and had an OPS+ of 125. Rasmussen has been a minor league pitching coach for the Minnesota Twins organization since 1991, a fact that I’m embarrassed I didn’t know until today. Random George Hendrick fact: former MLB player, and insightful commentator Doug Glanville credits Hendrick with starting the trend of players wearing longer pants and not showing any sock. Since I’m a stirrup sock guy, I have to dock George Hendrick a point for starting this uniform trend. However, since Hendrick hit 267 home runs and drove in 1,111 RBI’s, he does get points for having a “nice career.” 

So that’s a look at the 1994 BBWAA Hall of Fame ballot. Like every Hall of Fame ballot, it was full of superstars and interesting players.