The BBWAA ballot was announced on November 26, 2013. The BBWAA was authorized to elect players active in 1994 or later, but not after 2008; the ballot included the following categories of players: • Candidates from the 2013 ballot who received at least 5% of the vote but were not elected, as long as their first appearance on the BBWAA ballot was in 2000 or later. • Individuals chosen by a screening committee whose last game appearance was in or before 2008. All 10-year members of the BBWAA were eligible to vote, and had until December 31, 2013, to return their ballots to the Hall. The ballot consisted of 17 of the 18 candidates who received at least 5% of the vote in the 2013 election, plus 19 first-time candidates. (The other candidate who received 5% or more of the 2013 vote,
Dale Murphy, dropped off the ballot after 15 years.) Voters were instructed to cast votes for up to 10 candidates. Under BBWAA rules, write-in votes were not permitted. Results of the 2013 election by the BBWAA were announced on January 8, 2014. Any candidate who received votes on at least 75% of the ballots would be inducted.
ESPN.com columnist
Jim Caple noted in the days before the announcement of the 2012 results that the PED issue and the BBWAA's limit of 10 votes per ballot was likely to result in a major backlog in upcoming elections:
Jeff Bagwell (who never tested positive, but was the subject of PED rumors during his career), and
Rafael Palmeiro (who tested positive for
stanozolol shortly after denying that he had ever used steroids). Players who were eligible for the first time who were
not included on the ballot were:
Tony Armas Jr.,
Gary Bennett,
Joe Borowski,
Jose Cruz Jr.,
Mike DiFelice,
Damion Easley,
Scott Elarton,
Shawn Estes,
Sal Fasano,
Keith Foulke,
Scott Hatteberg,
Geoff Jenkins,
Jason Johnson,
Ray King,
Jon Lieber,
Esteban Loaiza,
Kent Mercker,
Matt Morris,
Trot Nixon,
Abraham Nunez,
Odalis Perez,
Tomas Perez,
Mark Redman,
Alberto Reyes,
Ricardo Rincon,
Dave Roberts,
Rudy Seanez,
Shannon Stewart,
Tanyon Sturtze,
Mark Sweeney,
Salomon Torres,
Steve Trachsel,
Javier Valentin,
Jose Vidro,
Daryle Ward, and
Dmitri Young.
Controversies Following the vote, a number of writers expressed concern about what they viewed as a flawed election process.
Jayson Stark of
ESPN.com noted about this election,It wasn't exactly a perfect day for any of us who care about this process, because it sledgehammered home this painful reminder of the enduring Hall of Fame crisis of the 21st century: We still have no idea how to resolve the fate of many of the greatest players of all time. Now do we?...Is this what we want -- a Hall that attempts to pretend that players who just happen to hold some of the greatest records in the entire record book are now invisible to the naked eye? Jonah Keri, writing for the ESPN outlet
Grantland, remarked,Short of dropping the required share of the vote well below 75 percent, I think there's a good chance that the voters' failure to elect candidates who not only match but raise the bar on existing inductees has put us in an intractable position. That position will leave many obviously worthy players at the mercy of the Expansion Era Committee, or whatever the veterans committees will be called 10 or 12 years from now. And not to be overly dramatic about it, but there's a reasonable chance that some of those players will either never make it in or be dead by the time they do, the way
Ron Santo was when he got his
long-overdue induction. He was subsequently permanently stripped of his Hall of Fame voting privileges. ==Expansion Era Committee==