Thoughts on the 2026 Contemporary Baseball Era Hall of Fame Ballot

The 2026 Contemporary Baseball Era Committee Hall of Fame ballot was recently released. It features 8 players: Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Carlos Delgado, Jeff Kent, Don Mattingly, Dale Murphy, Gary Sheffield, and Fernando Valenzuela. It’s the first appearance on an Era Committee ballot for Delgado, Kent, Sheffield, and Valenzuela.  

Let’s start with Bonds and Clemens, since their cases are the same. They both received fewer than 4 votes on their first Era Committee ballot in 2023. I don’t think they’ll get in this year. Do they deserve to get in? Of course, if they had played clean and their accomplishments were untainted by performance enhancing drugs. But that wasn’t the case. I don’t understand why Bonds and Clemens don’t just tell the truth about their steroid use. Well, I do; denial is a powerful thing. But until they come clean, their reputations will always be sullied. Some people say, “You can’t tell the story of baseball without Bonds and Clemens!” They’re right. And you can still find artifacts from Bonds and Clemens’ careers in the Hall of Fame. They just don’t have plaques in the Hall of Fame Plaque Gallery. The new rule for the Era Committee this year is that if candidates receive fewer than 5 votes, they will not be eligible for the ballot the next time the Contemporary Era is looked at. This means Bonds and Clemens might not make it onto the 2029 ballot.  

Carlos Delgado was a great slugger for the Blue Jays. He had some monster years, like 2003 when he led the AL in RBI’s with 145. Delgado put up some excellent career numbers: 473 home runs, 1,512 RBI’s, but he never won an MVP award and was only a 2-time All-Star. Delgado was on a Hall of Fame trajectory when he suffered a hip injury in 2009 that essentially ended his career. He only appeared on the BBWAA ballot once in 2015, and he dropped off after getting just 3.8% of the vote. I always liked Delgado, so I’m happy to see him get another chance at the Hall. That being said, I don’t think Delgado really needs to be in the Hall of Fame.  

Jeff Kent should be in the Hall of Fame, in my opinion. Kent has the most home runs of any second baseman, with 351 of his 377 homers coming at second. Kent’s HOF candidacy was finally starting to gain some traction during his last few years on the ballot, and in his last appearance on the BBWAA ballot, he got 46.5% of the vote, his highest total. DWAR doesn’t rank Kent highly, so that might hurt his case. But still, Kent got 2,461 hits, 377 home runs, 1,518 RBI’s, and finished with a .290 batting average, phenomenal numbers for a second baseman.  

Don Mattingly was on a Hall of Fame trajectory. One of the best players in the game from 1984 to 1989, Mattingly’s career was derailed by back injuries. Mattingly’s career batting average through the 1989 season was .323. After 1989, Mattingly only batted .300 once more, hitting .304 in the strike-shortened 1994 season. From 1984-1989, Mattingly had 5 seasons of 4 Offensive WAR or higher. From 1990-1995, the highest Offensive WAR Mattingly complied in a season was 2.4. He was still a good hitter, but he wasn’t the superstar he was in the 1980’s.  

Mattingly is very similar to Kirby Puckett, with the difference being that Puckett’s value was spread out more evenly throughout his career, while Mattingly’s value was concentrated in his 6 great seasons from 1984-1989.  

Everybody likes Don Mattingly, and for fans of my era, (I was born in 1981) Donnie Baseball holds a special place in our collective memories and nostalgia. Mattingly’s rookie cards, especially his 1984 Donruss card, were like Holy Grails for collectors during the 1980’s. To give you some idea of the hold Don Mattingly has on 1984 cards, 95,000 1984 Topps cards have been sent to PSA for grading. Of those 95,000 cards, 24,884 of them are Don Mattingly’s rookie card. That’s amazing. Like every other baseball fan of my age, I was thrilled when Mattingly finally made it to the World Series this year as a coach for the Blue Jays.  

I’d be fine with Mattingly getting into the Hall of Fame, but if he gets in, then Dale Murphy really needs to get in as well. And maybe the mustachioed first baseman of the 1980’s from New York’s other baseball team should get in too. (Keith Hernandez, if you didn’t pick up my reference.)  

Dale Murphy, like Mattingly, had a stretch where he was one of the best players in baseball. From 1982-87, Murphy was fantastic. His average OPS+ for those seasons was 145. Murphy won back-to-back MVP awards in 1982 and 1983. But after a great 1987 season, Murphy’s production just fell off a cliff. From 1988 onwards, Murphy’s highest OPS+ for a season was 106. From 1982-87, Murphy’s lowest OWAR was 4.4. From 1988 to 1993, the highest OWAR he put up was 1.7. I remember my dad saying in the late 1980’s that he thought Murphy had a shot at hitting 500 home runs. Murphy ended up retiring in 1993 with 398 home runs.  

Is there a compelling argument to put Dale Murphy in the Hall of Fame? I don’t know, but I’d sure like to see him in the Hall of Fame. From everything I’ve read about Dale Murphy, he sounds like a fantastic person, and his off-the-field reputation is impeccable. Murphy’s squeaky-clean image could help him. It feels weird to say that I’d rather see Dale Murphy in the Hall of Fame than Barry Bonds, when I know that Bonds was overall a better player than Murphy. Shouldn’t it be an impersonal discussion of the stats and what the players did on the field, without personality entering into it? But the reality of life is that personality does enter into it. Personality affects the kind of player and person you are. And I’d rather give Dale Murphy a couple of extra points for being a great person than elect jerks like Bonds and Clemens, where you have to say, “He was a great player, but not a great person.”  

The Era Committees have started electing more players who had fantastic peaks but didn’t reach some of the counting stats that have usually guaranteed election to the Hall of Fame. In just the last few years, we’ve seen 3 players get in with fewer than 2,000 career hits: Gil Hodges, Tony Oliva, and Dick Allen. And the BBWAA might elect Andruw Jones this year, who fell short of 2,000 hits. This should work in favor of players like Don Mattingly and Dale Murphy, who had amazing peaks, but fell short of major milestones like 2,500 hits.  

Gary Sheffield is a player that I have mixed feelings about. He was a great hitter, and a terrible fielder. As I’ve written before about Sheffield, he’s in the very strange position of being punished for presumed steroid use without ever having failed a drug test. Like Jeff Kent, Sheffield finally started to gain traction on the BBWAA ballot in his final years, peaking at 63.9% of the vote in 2024. Players who have so much support on the BBWAA ballot usually get voted in by the Era Committees, so we’ll see what happens with Sheffield.  

Fernando Valenzuela captured the hearts of baseball fans in 1981 when he got off to an 8-0 start, throwing an incredible 5 shutouts during his first 8 games. During the strike-shortened 1981 season, Fernando led the NL with 11 complete games, 8 shutouts, 192.1 innings pitched, and 180 strikeouts. He won the Rookie of the Year and the Cy Young Award, and he’s still the only pitcher to ever do that. To top it all off, Valenzuela went 3-1 in the expanded 1981 postseason as the Dodgers won the World Series. Fernandomania ruled Los Angeles, and Valenzuela became the rare baseball player to become a cultural phenomenon.  

It would be hard to overstate the impact Fernando Valenzuela had on baseball in the early 1980’s. Major League baseball has had many great Latin stars after the game finally integrated, but Fernando was by far the biggest star to come from Mexico. Valenzuela’s impact is still felt in Dodger Stadium a year after his death, as huge murals of Fernando decorate the stadium.  

Valenzuela made 6 straight All-Star teams from 1981 to 1986. From 1982 to 1987, Fernando never pitched fewer than 251 innings in a season, and he averaged an incredible 266 innings a season! After 1987, which was his age 26 season, Valenzuela's career record was 113-82, putting him ahead of many Hall of Famers at that same age. In 1988, he suffered a shoulder injury and missed the Dodgers’ postseason, which saw them win another World Series. It’s perhaps hyperbole to say that Fernando was never the same pitcher after 1987, but his record for the rest of his career was 60-71.  

Fernando ended his career with the Cardinals in 1997, with a career record of 173-153, 113 complete games, 31 shutouts, 2,930 innings pitched, and 2,074 strikeouts. He didn’t get much attention from the BBWAA, only lasting 2 years on the ballot.  

Should Valenzuela join the Hall of Fame? I’d say no. Fernando has a compelling story, and he was a charismatic pitcher who enjoyed several excellent seasons. But a career record of 173-153 just isn’t worthy of induction. Baseball Reference lists the 10 most similar pitchers to Valenzuela: excellent pitchers like Ken Holtzman, Camilo Pascual, Mark Langston, Frank Viola, and Dave Stieb. None of them are in the Hall of Fame or got anywhere close to being voted in by the writers. Another obvious comparison to Valenzuela is his Dodgers teammate, Orel Hershiser, who isn’t among the 10 most similar pitchers, but who had a similar career.  

If I had a vote on this committee, I would vote for Jeff Kent, Don Mattingly, and Dale Murphy. It’s hard to predict what Era committees will do, but I’ll predict they elect Don Mattingly and Dale Murphy to the Hall of Fame.  

Book Review: The Steep Ascent, a novel by Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1944)

The paperback cover of The Steep Ascent. (Photo by Mark C. Taylor)

The Steep Ascent, published in 1944, was Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s first novel. Her first two books North to the Orient and Listen! The Wind had been non-fiction accounts of flights with her husband, the famous aviator Charles Lindbergh. Morrow Lindbergh also unfortunately published a short book in 1940 titled The Wave of the Future, a defense of American non-intervention in World War II that didn’t really renounce fascism.  

The Steep Ascent was apparently based on a real incident during a flight the Lindberghs took over the Alps. I can’t help but wonder if Morrow Lindbergh’s decision to turn the flight into a novel was informed by the unpopularity of Charles and Anne’s embrace of isolationism. As World War II dragged on, I doubt there were people clamoring to read any non-fiction by either Lindbergh. Framing the story as a novel and setting it in the pre-World War II era was perhaps an attempt to make the book less tied to current events.  

It’s always a curious experience to read a novel that you know is very closely connected to real life. It’s hard not to see the characters of “Eve” and “Gerald” as the real people Anne and Charles. Morrow Lindbergh does make a slight attempt to differentiate Gerald from Charles, as Gerald is British. But when we read about the resentment Eve has towards Gerald when they follow the wrong valley in the Alps, it's easy to think that it’s actually Anne’s resentment towards Charles.  

Morrow Lindbergh was an excellent writer, and there are excellent passages throughout The Steep Ascent. As frustrated as Eve is about packing for their journey, she realizes that if Gerald ordered her to stay behind, “Why—all the delicate structure of their marriage would tumble, like those glasses that are shattered, without a human hand touching them, by a single note ringing at precisely the right vibration.” (p.23)  

There are excellent descriptive passages about flying throughout the novel, as you might expect, given the extent of Morrow Lindbergh’s experiences with flight. One of my favorite passages was this one about taking off: “There comes a moment in a take-off, long before the wheels leave the ground, when you know you are going to get off. It is as though at some indefinable point the plane shifts its allegiance from earth to sky.” (p.47) 

There are lots of spiritual and Biblical allusions throughout The Steep Ascent, perhaps a foretelling of Morrow Lindbergh’s most famous book, Gift from the Sea, published in 1955.  

Because Eve can’t communicate very easily with Gerald, thanks to the roar of the plane’s engine, nearly all of the novel takes place within her stream of consciousness. I really liked this beautiful passage: “To appreciate life, Eve was beginning to realize vaguely, you must take it at all its levels; at its top crust, at its middle everyday layer, and then at some deeper inner core she wasn’t quite sure of and couldn’t analyze and had only felt once or twice in her life, in great moments.” (p.64)  

Morrow Lindbergh started writing the novel in late 1942. She wrote in her diary entry for November 17, 1942: “I find it is quite painful to push open that inner door. It is not that the experiences then were painful nor yet that they were so happy that I look back with too much longing on them. It’s just that I feel it—life—so vividly, almost more vividly than I did then, and its very vividness is a kind of anguish.” (War Within and Without, p.270-1) So it often goes for artists, who feel so deeply.  

In her diary entry for February 4, 1944, Anne is faced with bad news: “C has seen Harcourt, Brace, who report that the Book-of-the-Month Club has turned down my book—apparently because they have received a number of fanatical letters saying that if the club took my book they’d resign...Harcourt, Brace has planned a 25,000 first edition (half of what the first edition of Listen! The Wind was.)” (War Within and Without, p.361) This shows us the very real difference between the world of 1938 and 1944, and how public perception of the Lindberghs had shifted greatly during that time.  

The Steep Ascent is an interesting little book, at 128 pages it’s really more of a novella length, but worth reading for people interested in the Lindberghs.