A 2021 Hall of Fame Ballot of Your Own — and a Schedule of Profiles
My annual Hall of Fame series is well underway, and now that we’re past the Thanksgiving holiday, it’s time to launch what’s become a yearly tradition at FanGraphs. In the spirit of our annual free agent contract crowdsourcing, we’re inviting registered users to fill out their own virtual Hall of Fame ballots via a cool gizmo that our developer, Sean Dolinar, built a couple of years ago. We’re also going to use this page to lay out a tentative schedule for the remainder of the series.
To participate in the crowdsourcing, you must be signed in, and you may only vote once. While you don’t have to be a Member to do so, this is a good time to mention that buying a Membership does help to fund the development of cool tools like this — and it makes a great holiday gift! To replicate the actual voting process, you may vote for anywhere from zero to 10 players; ballots with more than 10 won’t be counted. You may change your ballot until the deadline, which is December 31, 2020, the same as that of the actual BBWAA voters, who have to scare up a postage stamp and schlep their paper ballot to the mailbox.
As for the schedule, it’s below, broken into five-day weeks, as we’re not planning to publish these on weekends, or on the several days around Christmas and New Years Day, during which the site will be dark. Please keep in mind that the schedule is verrrry tentative and subject to change, particularly when it comes to the new profiles (denoted with asterisks), which take time to do justice. I’m keeping one day a week open so that I can weigh in on trades, signings, or other current events, and may move things around within the week to accommodate that.
As for those One-and-Dones — the candidates with no real shot at election or even making it to next year’s ballot — since I started the JAWS project with the 2004 ballot, I’ve covered every single BBWAA candidate, at least in brief, and I’m not about to miss any now.
Nov. 16: Intro
Nov. 17: Scott Rolen
Nov. 18: Omar Vizquel
Nov. 19:
Nov. 20: Tim Hudson*
Nov. 23: Andy Pettitte
Nov. 24: Todd Helton
Nov. 25-27: Thanksgiving break
Nov. 30: Mark Buehrle*
Dec. 1: Billy Wagner
Dec. 2:
Dec. 3: Bobby Abreu
Dec. 4: Barry Zito*
Dec. 7: Andruw Jones
Dec. 8: Torii Hunter*
Dec. 9:
Dec. 10: Manny Ramirez
Dec. 11: One-and-Dones, Part 1*
Dec. 14: Gary Sheffield
Dec. 15: One-and-Dones, Part 2*
Dec. 16:
Dec. 17: Barry Bonds
Dec. 18: Roger Clemens
Dec. 21: Jeff Kent
Dec. 22: One-and-Dones, Part 3*
Dec. 23: Sammy Sosa
Dec. 24-25: Christmas Break (site dark)
Dec. 28: Curt Schilling
Dec. 29: My Virtual Actual Ballot*
