Jeter should. His stats are better than almost anyone else’s on the list. To boot, he and Rivera both played in Albany County before landing in the big leagues.
Barry Bonds (59.1% of the ballots last year) and Roger Clemens (59.5%) are both on the ballot for the eighth time. If I could vote, I’d pick them too, for reasons explained last year. Receiving 75% of the sportswriters’ votes is required for induction.
Curt Schilling (60.9%) is also on the ballot for time #8. It’s not the taint of steroids but his quite terrible politics, specifically “his xenophobic, transphobic and conspiratorial memes.” I’d bump him if there were lots of other candidates of a similar caliber, but there aren’t.
A pair of Rockies
Larry Walker (54.9%) is on the ballot for the 10th and final time. He suffered because he played in Colorado, where people believe his stats were inflated by the thin air. Put him in, and stop yanking him around!
Todd Helton (16.9%, 2nd year) Five-time All-Star. I think he also suffers from having played with the Colorado Rockies.
Andy Petitte (9.9%, 2nd year) holds all-time postseason records for wins, innings pitched and games started. He too was a member of the Albany-Colonie Yankees in the early 1990s.
Jeff Kent (18.1%, 7th year) – why does he get overlooked? He “snuck up on the baseball world as a Hall of Fame-caliber player… Kent was an average player at best for five seasons in the major leagues before blossoming into a star in San Francisco.”
Omar Vizquel (42.8%, 3rd year) was a defensive wiz who occasionally also hit well.
I suspect that Jeter, Walker, and maybe Schilling will get in.
Jeter is wildly overrated, and is only famous because he played for the Yankees. He was a defensive liability for most of his career and accumulated a lot of “counting stats” simply because he played a long time. I’d put him in, because it’s the Hall of “Fame” and he’s famous, but he’s nowhere near the best player of his era, and if he gets unanimously, it will be a travesty (it’s already a travesty that Rivera was the first, despite deserving enshrinement far more than Jeter).
I hope Schilling gets in despite his politics. There are so many racists in the Hall (probably not Ty Cobb, though, which is interesting) and other people whom no one would want to hang out with, and Schilling isn’t any worse than they are. Plus, he deserves it almost for his postseason stuff alone – he’s the biggest reason the Phillies got as far as they did in 1993, which people forget because of his later playoff heroics!
I was most impressed, though, with Jeter in a couple of defensive heads up plays. One was the play at the plate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApoJk9X7Vto. The other was the play in the stands. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seC63AEk4-8 He played like a Yankees captain.
It’s always amazing to me the number of great players who don’t make it to the Hall of Fame. Personally I think they need to loosen up the criteria quite a bit. I think they could do so and not water down the quality of the players selected.