Larry Walker and Baseball Hall of Fame Vote

[jerrym]

Larry Walker, who played for Montreal, Colorado and St. Louis, has his last chance to be elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame by the Baseball Writers Association of America this year in his tenth and last year on the ballot. After many years of scoring around 20%, Larry Walker has climbed 32.7% in the last two years, one of the largest increases ever over two years, as writers started paying more attention to advanced baseball stats that suggest that Walker deserves to be in the Hall. An excellent in depth review and advanced statistical analysis of his entire career can be seen at the url below.

The Hall of Fame vote will be announced on January 21st.

He still has to gain 20.4% to reach 75% this year, a very large one year jump. However, only one player, Gil Hodges, who reached 50% on the ballot, never got elected to the Hall eventually. If he fails to make it this year, he still has an excellent chance starting in 2022, where he would be one of the top candidates in the Today's Game Era Committee ballot.

If Walker is elected, he would only be the second Canadian elected, the other being Ferguson Jenkins, and the only Canadian to ever play for a Canadian team in the Hall.

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/jaws-and...-larry-walker/

[bannedforlife]

Larry Walker sees big jump in support in early Hall of Fame balloting
Sportsnet Staff Sportsnet January 6, 2020

Canada’s Larry Walker appears to be in a good position to be elected into Cooperstown in his last year of Hall of Fame eligibility with approximately one third of ballots now known, according to Ryan Thibodaux’s voting tracker.

Walker has 84.4 per cent of the vote as of Monday and needs 75 per cent support in order to be enshrined. It’s already a big gain for the Maple Ridge, B.C., native, who finished last year at 54.6 per cent.

Even with those significant gains, the 53-year-old still needs 195 more votes to be officially elected. The Baseball Writers’ Association of America will announce the balloting results on Jan. 21.

Walker finished his 17-year MLB career with a .313 batting average while hitting 383 home runs, driving in 1,311 runs and generating 72.7 wins above replacement. He was the 1997 NL MVP with Colorado Rockies, a five-time all-star and also played with the Montreal Expos and St. Louis Cardinals.

Roger Clemens, Curt Schilling, Barry Bonds and Sammy Sosa are some of the other 14 names returning to the Hall of Fame ballot this year. First-year entries for 2020 include Derek Jeter, Bobby Abreu, Jason Giambi and Cliff Lee.

Jeter currently leads the bunch with 100 per cent support while Bonds and Schilling also have over 75 per cent of the vote, as tracked by Thibodaux.

The Baseball Hall of Fame induction ceremony will take place on July 26.

[jerrym]

Congratulations Larry for making it into Baseball's Hall of Fame. I repeated the detailed review and analysis of his career from the first post because it is one of the best reviews of any athlete's career that I have seen.

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/jaws-and...-larry-walker/

[jerrym]

Below is a video of Larry Walker getting the call confirming that he is in Baseball Hall of Fame.

https://www.tsn.ca/mlb/video/the-mom...f-fame~1884861