Rafael Palmeiro is on the Hall of Fame ballot. He was voted onto the ballot recently along with a host of other former players hoping for induction into the Hall. He joins numerous other players who are holdovers from previous ballots. The holdovers receive between five and 74 percent of the vote.
Palmeiro is hoping to be elected on the first ballot. Upon first glance his chances seem good, given his 569 home runs and 3,020 hits. But throw in the steroids that he's no-doubt-about-it taken, and his chances dim quite a bit. Palmeiro failed a drug test in 2005 shortly after recording hit number 3,000. In the previous offseason he infamously waved his finger at members of Congress and denied his involvement with steroid use as described in Jose Canseco's book Juiced.
Palmeiro's chances probably aren't good. Former steroid users have been summarily rejected from the Hall. Mark McGwire has been denied entrance into the Hall since 2006, never gaining anymore than 25 percent of the vote. Still, McGwire has gotten enough support to consistently stay on the Ballot. That's better than other admitted and confirmed steroid users like Canseco and Ken Caminiti who were each voted off the ballot on their first tries in 2006. Caminiti died of heart failure brought on by a variety of causes in 2004. Among those causes was improper use of anabolic steroids.
McGwire was caught with a questionable substance in his locker in 1998 and again in 2000. Both substances were available over-the-counter and not on the banned substance list at the time. In the years since, however, both have been banned by the FDA and added to Major League Baseball's list of banned substances.
He came dangerously close to exercising his fifth amendment rights in the now infamous congressional hearing brought about by Canseco's book. McGwire's phrase "I'm not here to talk about the past" became fodder for baseball purists and helped to launch MLB's vendetta against performance-enhancing drugs.
Last year McGwire finally admitted his steroid use in an interview on ESPN but attempted to say that he would have broken Roger Maris' single-season home run run record in 1998 and belted over 500 in his career (he eventually hit 583) without the drugs. Most have found this statement to be ludicrous. LeRoy has devised a confidential formula to calculate career totals of confirmed PED users. Our formula has McGwire at about 452 career home runs, well shy of 500 and about 131 less than he actually hit. 1998 totals yielded a 60-home run season, lending some credence to McGwire's claim.
Most other experts agreed with figures similar to these and assessed that McGwire was thereby not a first-ballot Hall of Famer. Some expected him to be voted in on the second ballot, or at least receive a substantial increase in votes on future ballots. Instead, McGwire has received an almost identical amount of votes in the ensuing years.
Now that he has admitted his transgression some expect McGwire to once again receive a large increase in votes. However, others suspect that the 25 percent of voters who did vote for him were just giving him the benefit of the doubt and that he will fail to receive the necessary five percent of the votes to remain on the ballot.
Palmeiro is not in McGwire's boat. He still claims that his positive test was the result of a tainted B12 vitamin supplement. This statement is particularly damning for Palmeiro, as it is now all but confirmed to be a lie. Miguel Tejada was convicted of federal perjury (a misdemeanor at the federal level) after he denied any knowledge of steroid use by Palmeiro. As it turns out, Tejada knew plenty. So either the Congress strong-armed Tejada into telling them what they wanted to hear, or Palmeiro is as guilty as sin. Who should be the judge? Unfortunately, the BBWAA will likely have the final say here.
Something to chew over: LeRoy's formula yields only about 385 home runs for Palmeiro without steroids, about 184 less than he actually hit. However, the same formula yields about 3,395 hits, around 375 more hits than Palmeiro recorded. The sad thing being that he probably would have been a first-ballot Hall of Famer without the drugs.
LeRoy's verdict: McGwire and Palmeiro probably won't get elected to the Hall of Fame. Will voters forgive McGwire's transgression now that he has admitted his guilt? Unlikely. Palmeiro figures to be waving his finger at the BBWAA for years to come.
Note: Of the six players who testified before Congress about their involvement with steroids in the now-infamous 2005 Canseco hearings, none have been elected into the Hall of Fame. Jason Giambi is still playing, Jeremy Giambi failed to play the necessary ten seasons in the Major Leagues to qualify for induction into the Hall of Fame, Canseco was voted off of the ballot on his first try, McGwire has continuously failed to gain support in his Hall campaign, Palmeiro will be on the ballot for the first time, and Sammy Sosa will become eligible for induction in 2012 (aka the end of time).
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