No former Toronto Blue Jays elected into Hall of Fame

The 2022 Baseball Hall of Fame results were announced this week and no Toronto Blue Jays alumni made the cut.

It wasn’t unexpected, especially with so much controversy and also competition around the likes of players bigger-than-life such as Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Alex Rodriguez and others. Truth be told, quite a few players eligible this year by all rights should have been elected but were not. When all was said and done, only David Ortiz, aka Big Papi, will be inducted into this year’s class.

Ortiz was named on 77.9 percent of the votes, which seems low in and of itself as well. That said, no ex-Blue Jays will join the nine others who have been elected in the Hall, most recently Roy Halladay posthumously in 2019.

Of the 30 players on the ballot this year, five were on Blue Jays’ teams: Clemens, Scott Rolen, Omar Vizquel, Jeff Kent, and Mark Buehrle. This year’s vote was especially interesting because Clemens, Bonds, Sammy Sosa and Curt Schilling were all in their tenth and final year of eligibility. Despite some hardcore Twitter campaigns, all fell short, with the greatest hitter in the history of baseball ending at 66 percent. Bonds was within 36 votes necessary to make the cut, but the “Steroid Era” controversy overshadowed his incredible achievements.

Roger Clemens

Clemens was the top vote-getter behind Ortiz and Bonds, ending his final year of eligibility at 61.6 percent, nearly four percent higher than in 2021. Clemens spent the 1997 and 1998 seasons with the Blue Jays, winning the Cy Young award both years amidst a run of nearly two decades of all-star years. It was two out of an incredible seven Cy Young awards. He was also an 11-time All-Star, was one of only seven pitchers (at the time) to win an MVP award and a Cy Young in the same season and was in the top three of strikeouts in a season twelve different times.

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table

Clemens, who also pitched for the Boston Red Sox, New York Yankees and finally the Houston Astros, is near the top of too many pitching records to count, but my favourite is third-most strikeouts all time, behind only Nolan Ryan and Randy Johnson. Another favourite is throwing more than 200 innings in 15 different seasons – simply incredible. The Blue Jays, for their part, won 88 games in 1998 and finished third in the division, the 88 wins being the mark to beat for 17 seasons until 2015.

The Rocket, however, seemed unfazed by falling off the Hall of Fame ballot, posting this on Twitter on Tuesday evening: