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On November 3rd, the National Baseball Hall of Fame revealed the eight players who would appear on their Eras Committee ballot at the start of the 2025 Winter Meetings. The successor of the more well-remembered Veterans Committee, this particular group will consider eight players who made their biggest impact on the game from 1980 onward — and who are not in the current 10-year window of BBWAA ballot consideration, à la Andruw Jones, Andy Petttitte, etc.
As Jeff Middleton wrote for us, three former Yankees will be on the ballot: Don Mattingly, Roger Clemens, and Gary Sheffield. Barry Bonds, Jeff Kent, Carlos Delgado, Dale Murphy, and the late Fernando Valenzuela comprise the other five. The to-be-announced 16-member committee will meet a month from now, and with a maximum of three spots per ballot, they’ll talk and see if any of the players can earn at least 12 total votes (75 percent, the same as the BBWAA threshold) to earn a belated enshrinement.
The latest Reacts survey offered Pinstripe Alley readers a chance to make their own hypothetical ballots known. While some would certainly induct other nominees, we kept the focus on the Yankees and let fans choose any permutation of the three alums for their entries. Now, we can check out the results.
One out of every three ballots we received was a straight Mattingly submission, making it the most popular pick. Donnie Baseball was also on each of the next three most common entiries as well, with Clemens right behind him.
The graphic only shows the most common ballots. With the full results from behind the scenes beyond just the top six indicated, we can reveal the percentage of total ballots that included each of the three former Yankees. For those curious, only 3.8 percent of respondents said that they wouldn’t list any of the trio (still a fair position).
Don Mattingly: 85%
Roger Clemens: 52%
Gary Sheffield: 33%
So going by the same threshold for admission, only Mattingly surpassed 75 percent to earn virtual enshrinement from Pinstripe Alley. I think there’s at least a decent chance that another member of the MLB-wide octet under consideration would have passed the 75-percent bar as well had we included them, but again, we wanted to see what Yankees fans in particular thought of the Bombers on the ballot.
As detailed by Hall fof Fame expert Jay Jaffe, the Mattingly case has always been tricky, as it’s heavily reliant on his mid-1980s peak while also being forgiving of his injury history — something that hasn’t always been extended to the top players on a given ballot. He did get half of the 16 votes during his last time on an Eras Committee ballot in 2023, and as the World Series coverage of him as Toronto’s bench case indicated, the game will generally always have a soft spot for him (especially among Yankees fans). Will that be enough to get him over the hump, or is he simply below the line due to his early decline and retirement? We’ll find out on December 7th.
As for Clemens and Sheffield (and Bonds), the story is well-known at this point. They all have Hall of Fame numbers—and extremely obvious ones in the cases of Clemens and Bonds—but they’re all connected to PED usage. Regardless of how you personally feel about it, the Hall of Fame itself does not seem particularly inclined to give these guys the light of day and for better or for worse, that can clearly be the deciding factor for a plaque.
After falling off the BBWAA ballot, Clemens and Bonds were on the aforementioned previous Eras Committee ballot as Mattingly, and the 16-member committee assembled by the Hall didn’t give either of them more than three votes apiece. Recent Hall of Fame rule changes have made it so that they might be permanently ineligible if they follow suit and again receive a paltry number of votes. This doesn’t feel like a coincidence, and while this is Sheffield’s first Eras Committee appearance, it feels like a foregone conclusion that he’ll meet the same fate. I’m in the Jaffe camp of finding this all a bit heavy-handed, but that’s where we are.
