The Steroid Era Did These Players No Favors

With another year of Hall of Fame voting behind us and another year to discuss who should be in, who shouldn’t be in, who took what, who should be able to vote, who the judge, jury and executioner should be and who is really being helped and who is being hurt by the whole steroid era ahead of us I wanted to focus on a little something different today. All the talk surround the steroid era and the Hall of Fame is focused on players who got an unfair advantage and “cheated” the sport that cheated them in 1994 with the strike and work stoppage but what about the players that are being cheated by the steroid era? Players like Mike Piazza until recently and a few other standouts from this year’s class that didn’t get in. names like Jeff Kent, Gary Sheffield, Jim Edmonds, Sammy Sosa, Carlos Delgado, Fred McGriff and Larry Walker. What about them? 

Carlos Delgado finished his MLB career with 473 home runs and a .929 OPS but spent just one year on the ballot, not because he was elected in his first year of eligibility but because he didn’t garner 5% of the vote in his first year and will forever be left off the ballot. Fred McGriff on the other hand thankfully garnered his 5% in his first year of eligibility but it still on the outside looking in despite 493 home runs and a career .886 OPS.  

Then you have more current names like Jeff Kent, Jim Edmonds, Gary Sheffield and Larry Walker who all received around 10% of the vote despite stunning numbers in their careers. In Sheffield’s case specifically he was listed on the Mitchell Report explaining the lack of interest in electing him into baseball’s hall of immortality but the rest of the group is still puzzling. Jeff Kent is possibly the best hitting second baseman of all-time but he played in an era where players took steroids and played beside the most notorious suspected steroid user of all in San Francisco, Barry Lamar Bonds.  

Sammy Sosa has 609 career home runs and Rafael Palmeiro had over 500 home runs and 3000 hits, neither are in the hall or on the ballot. Palmeiro failed a drug test and waived his finger in front of Congress, Sosa did not. Sosa did suddenly forget how to speak English but that’s a thing, right? It’s not even important if you used or not anymore, what’s important now to many of these voters (it seems anyway) is when you played. Steroids may or may not have helped these players during their playing career but they damn sure aren’t helping them now, that much is for sure. 

I’ll probably never get a Hall of Fame vote and it’s probably for the best, I am too vocal and too friendly towards the steroid era. I want these players in because I am 100% sure there are players that used steroids before testing was implemented in the mid-2000’s that are still in the Hall. What’s good for one is good for them all and it’s a shame that Delgado, Kent, Sheffield, Palmeiro, Edmonds, Walker and McGriff may never get into the Hall because of the era they played in, not the stats and such that they compiled while playing.