The Atlanta Braves are World Series champions and now baseball is in the middle of its first work stoppage since the 1994-95 strike. MLB and the MLBPA were unable to agree to a new collective bargaining agreement prior to the Dec. 1 deadline, so the owners locked out the players, and the hot stove has been put on hold for the foreseeable future.
Throughout the offseason the CBS Sports MLB experts will bring you a weekly Batting Around roundtable breaking down pretty much anything. The latest news, a historical question, thoughts about the future of baseball, all sorts of stuff. Last week we debated the number of teams that should be allowed into the postseason. This week we're going to tackle the Hall of Fame chances of two all-time greats.
Will Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens ever get into the Hall of Fame?
R.J. Anderson: Yeah, I believe both will. The main arguments against both of them always hinge on steroids rather than invoking the character clause for, say, Bonds being accused of domestic violence. If that remains the case, then I think the animosity toward the Steroids Era will fade as people conclude there's no real way -- shy of a positive test, of course -- to know for sure who used and who didn't. Maybe I'm wrong and those two -- plus Alex Rodriguez, I suppose -- will remain the faces of the era; that's just my gut feel.
Dayn Perry: While I think both should go in, I'll say no. As Matt has noted, they may get a pretty quick look by the relevant Era Committee after falling off the writers' ballot, but I don't think that will provide enough time for the narrative to shift. I'll further go out on a limb and say that narrative never shifts. I'm not sure I foresee any Era committee in the foreseeable future being populated by enough voters -- i.e., 75 percent -- who are willing to go against the value judgments of the BBWAA. Era committees tend to go against the grain when it comes to assessments of on-field value, but this kind of situation doesn't have much of a precedent.
Matt Snyder: If they do, it's going to be a long, long time. The Hall of Fame looks like it's getting the intended effect of the 2014 rule change from a player getting 15 years on the ballot down to 10. There was always a behind-the-scenes movement from current Hall of Famers bubbling to keep these guys out, and Joe Morgan wrote a letter in 2018 urging voters to avoid them. The way Bonds and Clemens are trending with the voting body changing every year, inching forward as "old school" voters lapse and "new school" voters earn their vote after the 10-year waiting period, these extra five years likely would have seen both make 75%. Would the Hall of Fame succumb to pressure from its members only to turn around and appoint an era committee voting bloc that would let them in? By no means do I think it's a conspiracy, but I think they'll be a lot more concerned with Kenny Lofton and Fred McGriff types getting a look than these two.
I guess my final answer here will be, yes, they will get in eventually, but I'm talking decades down the road. It's not going to happen in the next several years. It might not even happen while they are alive (or we are).
Mike Axisa: Ever is a long time, so I'll say yes. The system is set up to give candidates a lot of bites at the apple -- they spend 10 years on the BBWAA ballot then are eligible to go through the various eras committees in perpetuity -- and they only need to cross the 75 percent threshold once. I'm not saying Bonds and Clemens will get in soon. It could be 10, 20, 30 years for all I know. But I think they'll eventually get in when the makeup of the one of the eras committees falls in their favor (i.e. it includes several former teammates or managers who convince the others to vote a certain way, kind of like Tony La Russa going to bat for Harold Baines a few years ago). Bonds' and Clemens' cases are way too strong for me to believe they will be kept out of the Hall of Fame forever. At some point they'll get in. I don't know when, but it'll happen.
