Hall of Fame voting committee makes huge mistake and snubs Blue Jays legend again

Make it make sense! Toronto Blue Jays legend Carlos Delgado missed the cut for the Hall of Fame by just a few votes. He was eligible for Cooperstown by way of the Era's Committee and Delgado got nine total votes for 56.3% of the ballots, just three votes shy of induction. Another former Blue Jay, Jeff Kent, did get in receiving 87.5% of the vote.

Delgado will remain on the ballot the next time the Contemporary Baseball Era Players Committee gets to vote in three years, but for a guy that was one of the premier sluggers in the history of the game, who was never connected to steroid use, it's a shame he didn't get voted in this time around.

Hall of Fame voting committee makes huge mistake and snubs Blue Jays legend again

Being connected to steroids seemed to play a major role in this years voting. Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Gary Sheffield were also on the ballot and all three of them, along with Fernando Valenzuela, received less than five votes each. Those three players were heavily connected to steroid use, while Valenzuela was just in an unfortunate spot on this ballot. Valenzuela was a very good player but didn't quite reach HOF numbers.

The other three absolutely did have HOF numbers. Bonds is the all time leader in career and single season home runs. Clemens has seven Cy Young awards, the most in MLB history. Sheffield reached 500 home runs, one of the bench marks that used to mean automatic induction. But that clearly no longer is the case and in fact the only player that was inducted by this committee was Kent, a player who was one of the most outspoken against PED use during his playing days.

The most hypocritical part of this whole voting process is that the person who allowed steroids to run rampant in MLB has a plaque in Cooperstown. Longtime Commissioner Bud Selig, who reluctantly dragged the game out of the stone ages and into the 21st Century, was inducted in 2017. That induction alone should mean the players who were tied to PED use shouldn't have that count against them since he was the one who allowed it, and turned a blind eye until he was pressured into making a change.

With all of that said, Delgado himself was never linked to any kind of PED and he was still one of the best sluggers of his generation, when it felt like everybody else around him was. Delgado finished his career with 473 home runs in 17 seasons. He drove in 1512 runs, slashed .280/.383/.546 with an OPS of .929. He hit 24 home runs or more for 13 consecutive seasons.

Those home runs are the 14th most all-time by a primary first baseman, sandwiched between Fred McGriff (493) and Jeff Bagwell (449) and both are in Cooperstown. Hall of Famers Tony Perez, Orlando Cepeda, Gill Hodges and Todd Helton are behind Delgado in that category. While the home run numbers alone won't get you to the Hall of Fame (as Bonds and Sheffield painfully realize) he was one of the most consistently productive and under rated power hitters of his era.

From 1997-2006 he averaged 37 home runs, 116 RBI, a slash line of .287/.397/.571 with a .969 OPS, 148 OPS+ and 4.2 bWAR. He's also the only left-handed hitter who is not in the Hall of Fame (and not connected to PED use) who has a career .380 OBP and has more than 450 home runs.

Some of the knocks against him are that he never won an MVP award, although he probably should have as he had three top six finishes throughout his career. He also only made it to the playoffs once, in 2006 when he was with the New York Mets. Delgado had a productive playoff run once he made it, hitting .351/.442/.727 with four home runs and a 6:6 walk to strikeout ratio, with 13 hits in 37 at-bats as the Mets went to Game 7 of the NLCS, losing to the eventual World Series champion St. Louis Cardinals.

While it feels like a huge missed opportunity to not induct Delgado, there is also the positive side that he almost got there, considering he was a one-and-done ballot member when he was first eligible, getting only 3.8% of the votes. Delgado's candidacy will stay alive and his calls for the Hall of Fame should only continue to grow as his case just keeps making more and more sense as time goes on.