Former Seattle Mariners designated hitter Edgar Martinez lost ground in the latest vote for baseball’s Hall of Fame, announced Wednesday, although the smaller percentage was hardly a death sentence to his chances of eventually making it.
Martinez received 191 votes (32.9 percent), four fewer votes than last year when he was listed on 36.2 percent of the ballots by 10-year members of the Baseball Writers Association of America. Herald writer Kirby Arnold, who covers the Mariners, voted for Martinez a second straight year.
Only infielder Roberto Alomar and pitcher Bert Blyleven received the needed 75 percent of the vote.
“The fact his total went down is disappointing, but we hope it’s a one-year thing,” Mariners president Chuck Armstrong said of Martinez. “Blyleven went down a number of years and came back up. Jim Rice went down a number of years and came back up.”
Blyleven, in fact, started with a much lower percentage of the vote than Martinez in his first year of eligibility. Blyleven got 17.5 percent in 1998 and fell to 14.1 percent the following year.
Three other former Mariners didn’t get the needed 5 percent to remain on the ballot next year. Tino Martinez got six votes, John Olerud four and Bret Boone one.
The debate over whether a designated hitter should be considered for the Hall of Fame was one of the up-front discussion points on a national scope going into the vote last year. This year, most of the discussion dealt with Blyleven’s chances after he fell just short (74.2 percent) last year and the argument on whether steroid-era players such as Mark McGwire and Rafael Palmeiro deserved votes.
McGwire, who admitted before last season that he used steroids, lost ground in the vote, falling from 23.7 percent to 19.8 percent. Palmeiro, who told Congress that he did not use steroids but failed a MLB drug test, got 11 percent of the vote in his first year on the ballot.
Martinez finished his career with 309 home runs and 2,247 hits, both short of the popularly accepted standards of 500 homers and 3,000 hits that would ensure Hall of Fame status. He also became the focal point of those who argued that as a DH who didn’t play in the field, he was only half a player.
Still, Martinez is among 20 players in major league history whose lifetime batting average is better than .300 (his is .312), on-base percentage is over .400 (.418) and slugging percentage tops .500 (.515). Of the players eligible for the Hall of Fame with numbers that strong, only Joe Jackson and Lefty O’Doul aren’t in. Every player in history to finish with at least 300 home runs, 500 doubles, 1,000 walks, a .300 batting average and a .400 on-base percentage is in the Hall of Fame (Stan Musial, Rogers Hornsby, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Ted Williams).
Martinez had the highest average of any DH at .314 (Paul Molitor is next at .308), most RBI at 1,003 (leading Harold Baines’ 978) and highest on-base percentage at .428 (Frank Thomas, .394).
In 2004, commissioner Bud Selig announced that baseball’s annual award honoring the top DH each year would be renamed the Edgar Martinez Award.
“He’s the epitome of the DH,” Armstrong said. “With the record he established, I think he deserves to be in the Hall of Fame. Even the commissioner thinks he was the greatest DH of all time.”
Read Kirby Arnold’s blog on the Mariners at www.heraldnet.com/marinersblog. He also files updates on the Mariners via Twitter at @kirbyarnold.
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