Major League Baseball announced the new Hall of Fame ballot with 15 new players and 17 returnees. Here they all are (an xindicates a newly eligible player):

Bert Blyleven
x-Joe Carter
Dave Concepcion
x-Danny Darwin
Andre Dawson
x-Doug Drabek
x-Dennis Eckersley
x-Jim Eisenreich
x-Cecil Fielder
Steve Garvey
Rich Gossage
Keith Hernandez
Tommy John
x-Jimmy Key
x-Dennis Martinez
Don Mattingly
x-Kevin Mitchell
x-Paul Molitor
Jack Morris
Dale Murphy
x-Randy Myers
Dave Parker
x-Terry Pendleton
Jim Rice
x-Juan Samuel
Ryne Sandberg
Lee Smith
x-Dave Stieb
Bruce Sutter
x-Bob Tewksbury
Alan Trammell
Fernando Valenzuela.

Last year I ran an analysis of the 2003 ballot as it was released, and I want to do something similar this year.

First, let's look at the categories that Bill James developed in his multi-titled Hall-of-Fame book. They are:
The Black Ink test: Represents the number of times a player led his league in a major category. So named for the boldface used to denote league-leaders in the baseball encyclopedias. The average for Hall of Famer fell from 40 to 27 in the last year (clearly because of the difficulty that expansion-era players have in securing a league lead in a category with the added competition).

The Grey Ink test: Represents the number of times a player appears among his league's top ten in a major category. The average for Hall of Famer fell from 185 to 144 in the last year.

Hall of Fame Standards: Awards points for various career achievements. The average HoFer is a 50 on the scale and the max is 100.

Hall of Fame Monitor: Awards points for various career and seasonal achievements and is weighted per position to reflect actual HoF makeup.

[For the specifics of each test, check out (Baseball-Reference.com, the source I used for these data.]

For each test, I will compare the given player against the Hall average to determine if he is a deserving candidate.

Next, I will take a look at each player's most similar batters/pitchers and how many are in the Hall right now. If it's over 50%, one would expect that the player's plaque wouldn't look out of place in the Hall. (I realize that this does not take into account similar players who are active or who are not yet eligible for the Hall, but nothing's perfect. As a very wise bathroom stall once said my freshman year, "Always a critic. Never a cricket.")

In addition, I will list the all-time Win Shares ranking for each player. Given that there are now 209 players in the Hall who were elected as players, either by the writers or veterans, if the given player is ranked among the top 209 all-time, one would think that he would fit in at the Hall, Pete Rose notwithstanding.

Finally, I will assess each player according to how well he performs in all of these tests.

And away we go…

Sorry, had to break up the table:

By this Herculean task list, it appears that the strongest candidates are Molitor, Blyleven, Dawson, Murphy, John, Morris, Parker, Rice, Sandberg, Eckersley, and Trammell.

Unfortunately, that does not reflect the writers' voting over the last few years. Here are the 2002 and 2003 voting results for each of the candidates with their all-time high and my assessment of their chances for enshrinement:

Note that of the 17 new names peppering the 2003 ballot, all but four—Sandberg, Smith, Valenzuela, and Eddie Murray, who was elected—were dropped for failing to meet the 5% criterion, i.e., that a player receive 5% of the vote to remain on the ballot for subsequent elections.

Next, I would like to run some players who are no longer eligible for the baseball writers' ballot, including Jim Kaat who ran out of options last year. I believe that there are a number of strong candidates that have fallen through the cracks, so I selected a handful among the higher Win Shares ranks:

There are a good number of strong candidates in the list although very few received much attention from the writers:

These are generally speaking players who did many things well but their achievements did not necessarily translate into the countable stats that voters love. I don't think any would be out of place in the Hall—that's not to say that I support all of them being enshrined. Though it appears unlikely that any other than Kaat, Santo, and Allen will be rescued by the veterans—the first two being broadcasters with pretty compelling cases (Rizzuto anyone?) and Allen having superior stats that will eventually overcome his bad rep. I personally have a soft spot for the Evanses, Grich, and Sweet Lou among the rest. Reggie Smith may be the most underrated player of all time.

If I had a vote in the writers' election, I would vote for Molitor, Blyleven, Sandberg, Eckesley, and Gossage, probably in that order.

Bruce Sutter is probably the single most important reliever in baseball history. That is, if one were telling the story of relieving (which I have) and one had to reduce that story to one pivotal person, then Sutter would be the guy. He was the first modern reliever. If that's not deserving of a plaque, I'm not sure what is. Morgan Bulkeley and Candy Cummings did far less to earn theirs, that's for sure. Both Sutter and Gossage suffer from the constantly changing standards for relievers.

Then I would pad out the rest with borderline guys like Dawson, Rice, John, Murphy, Parker, or Trammell.

Huh, why do that? Doesn't it cheapen the Hall?

I've got news for you folks: the Hall was cheapened within a decade of opening its doors, back in the Forties, thanks to the old Veterans' Committee, then called the Permanent Committee. While greats like Lefty Grove and Jimmie Foxx couldn't get the writers' time of day, the Permanent Committee was Tinkering-to-Evering-to-Chancing with the results to get flotillas full of olde-tyme players in and very often not the best players.

I see the austerity of today's voters as a direct reprisal to the elections of such non-greats as Travis Jackson and Ross Youngs. Ideals are all fine and good, but until they start kicking out the riffraff, I'm making sure that the heroes of my youth that fit the de facto Hall standard get in.

One last thing—there are a number of candidates floating on the periphery that will have a couple of elections to sell their cases. In 2005, Wade Boggs is a no-brainer but unless you're a big Chili Davis fan there's not much else. In 2006, Will Clark appears to be the best of the lot, though the busted careers of Daryl Strawberry and Dwight Gooden will be open to review (I love the Eighties, strikes back). 2007's class features Tony Gwynn, Mark McGwire, and Cal Ripken, all of whom should be first-ballot types. Then were back to one candidate for the next two years (Tim Raines in 2008, who may have an unduly hard time, and possibly just Roger Clemens in 2009, though Rickey Henderson could join that class).