Is Alexander Enmanuel Rodriguez a HOF candidate?

[opes]

In the similar vein on the main board regarding Ortiz, does Arod's numbers get him in regardless of this steroid use?
His numbers are obviously ridiculous, but will he ever get in?

 

[WenZink]

He's certainly a candidate, meaning that he'll always have enough votes to stay on the ballot, year after year.  But I think he'll always have more than 25% of the writers against him for being a cheat and a perpetual liar about it.

 

[glennhoffmania]

Not in a million years, unless there's a massive change in the voters' views on PEDs.  There's no way they can elect someone who was suspended for a year for PED use while not electing Bonds, Clemens, etc.

 

[smastroyin]

In my own personal HoF yes, easily.  But I would also have Bonds and Clemens and McGwire and even Bagwell.

 

[opes]

Not in a million years, unless there's a massive change in the voters' views on PEDs.  There's no way they can elect someone who was suspended for a year for PED use while not electing Bonds, Clemens, etc.

 
I agree.  Being banned for a year is the last nail in the coffin.  He might have gotten a pass on the first PED occurrence.  But if you repeatedly cheat at a game, I cant see you then given the games highest honor.

 

[jon abbey]

Yep, not unless Bonds and Clemens get in first. 

 

[Average Reds]

Of course he's a candidate.  And the reality is that he probably should be a first ballot guy.  But he's never getting in. 
 
Hell, I would not be surprised if he dropped off the ballot shortly after becoming eligible..

 

[Rovin Romine]

 
I agree.  Being banned for a year is the last nail in the coffin.  He might have gotten a pass on the first PED occurrence.  But if you repeatedly cheat at a game, I cant see you then given the games highest honor.

 
He went on national TV and admitted to doing PEDs, but said he only did them during his TX years.  
 
And he wasn't just banned, he independently admitted to using PEDs again.   http://espn.go.com/new-york/mlb/story/_/id/11825652/alex-rodriguez-new-york-yankees-admitted-dea-used-peds
 
Considering his public lies on the matter, I don't see how anyone can reasonably assume A-Rod couldn't be concealing greater PED usage from years other than 2001, 2010, 2011 and 2012.

 

[mauf]

If A-Rod retires when his current contract expires, he'll hit the ballot in 2023. A lot is likely to happen between now and then:
 
-- Piazza will probably be inducted in 2016 or 2017, becoming the first PED-era player who is widely assumed to have used to be enshrined.
-- Assuming they don't get in sooner, Bagwell's last year on the ballot will be 2020; Clemens's and Bonds's will be 2022. Their candidacies will shape the course of the debate.
-- Manny will become eligible in 2017. I don't think he'll get in, but I expect he'll get enough support to be still on the ballot in 2023.
 
I think it's crazy to predict what the climate will be like when A-Rod becomes eligible. Who would've thought a decade ago that Barry Bonds would be on the outside looking in?

 

[rembrat]

He'll get in.

 

[Mighty Joe Young]

In my own personal HoF yes, easily.  But I would also have Bonds and Clemens and McGwire and even Bagwell.

This is an easier , and a more sensible approach as opposed to reading what the tea leaves will be 6 or 7 years from now.

In MY personal HOF he never gets in .. It's quite probable that he's never played a clean inning above t-ball level.

 

[SaltLakeSox]

We don't know who used PEDs and who did not, except for the few that were caught, like A-Rod. I assume a large percentage of MLB was using PEDs for a long time, and I assume many players still are--like A-Rod.
 
I think the fairest approach is to vote for anyone that performed like a Hall of Famer, regardless of chemical-enhancement suspicions or evidence. Like many of you, I would vote for A-Rod, Bonds, and Clemens if I had a vote.
 
Clearly most of the HoF voters don't feel this way at this time.

 

[Rovin Romine]

We don't know who used PEDs and who did not, except for the few that were caught, like A-Rod. I assume a large percentage of MLB was using PEDs for a long time, and I assume many players still are--like A-Rod.
 
I think the fairest approach is to vote for anyone that performed like a Hall of Famer, regardless of chemical-enhancement suspicions or evidence. Like many of you, I would vote for A-Rod, Bonds, and Clemens if I had a vote.
 
Clearly most of the HoF voters don't feel this way at this time.

 
It probably has something to do with cheating and illegal drug use.   Maybe in a "sending a message to children" who go to the HOF context. 
 
The middle ground might be hard to find, but I don't think we should be rewarding guys who are cheaters, nor punishing guys who should be given the benefit of the doubt.  

 

[opes]

We don't know who used PEDs and who did not, except for the few that were caught, like A-Rod. I assume a large percentage of MLB was using PEDs for a long time, and I assume many players still are--like A-Rod.
 
I think the fairest approach is to vote for anyone that performed like a Hall of Famer, regardless of chemical-enhancement suspicions or evidence. Like many of you, I would vote for A-Rod, Bonds, and Clemens if I had a vote.
 
Clearly most of the HoF voters don't feel this way at this time.

 
I dont actually think that is the majority here.

 

[johnmd20]

 
It probably has something to do with cheating and illegal drug use.   Maybe in a "sending a message to children" who go to the HOF context. 
 
The middle ground might be hard to find, but I don't think we should be rewarding guys who are cheaters, nor punishing guys who should be given the benefit of the doubt.  

 
I find it's usually best to assume most players are doing something. Then you don't have to pretend, like HoF voters do, to occupy some hazy moral high ground. It's the same in all sports where the reward for being amazing at your job is millions of dollars and adulation from many.
 
Clemens should be in the hall. So should Piazza. And Bagwell. And, of course, Bonds. And ARod. 

 

[Saints Rest]

 
I find it's usually best to assume most players are doing something. Then you don't have to pretend, like HoF voters do, to occupy some hazy moral high ground. It's the same in all sports where the reward for being amazing at your job is millions of dollars and adulation from many.
 
Clemens should be in the hall. So should Piazza. And Bagwell. And, of course, Bonds. And ARod. 

 
Of this list of the infamous [alleged] users, who gets in first?  And do any of them get in before either Shoeless Joe or Pete Rose?

 

[johnmd20]

 
Of this list of the infamous [alleged] users, who gets in first?  And do any of them get in before either Shoeless Joe or Pete Rose?

 
Good question. The first should be Bonds. By a mile.

 

[Ramon AC]

I agree, let them in. Clemens, Bonds, McGwire, Piazza, ARod, et al, they have my vote. Bonds and Clemens first, of course.

Rose and Jackson, no.

 

[Bigpupp]

I've heard many HOF voters say that Bonds should be in because he was probably a HOFer before he started juicing. When Arod admitted to juicing in Texas he made that argument impossible to make. IF he gets in it will be a veterans committee that MLB puts together to look at the steroid era.

 

[FormerLurker]

Someday a player is going to get in who has been uncaught, even unsuspected, but was secretly a user.   It may well have happened already, and if it hasn't, it will soon.  (I have no specific person in mind, but I have doubt that it will happen, whoever it may be.)  Because of that, I am sympathetic to the idea of an amnesty for all pre-2005 steroid-era players.  There will never be any way to separate the guilty from the innocent. 
 
A-Rod, though, is not merely a known PED user from the pre-2005 era of an unenforced no-teeth rule; he is the leader of a ring of PED users who brazenly defied a clear and enforced post-2005 rule and then lied about it repeatedly.  The character clause of the Hall has been pretty much a dead letter (except for Shoeless Joe Jackson prior to the 1991 rule formally excluding banned players), but if it applies to anyone, it should apply to Rodriguez.

 

[jasail]

Yes. He deserves to be in there just like Bonds, Clemens, Palmeiro and Mac. However, the mothball smelling moral arm of the BBWA will see to it that none of the "PED guys" get in until after they leave this mortal coil or the BBWA changes the way they do business.

 

[Leather]

Palmeiro? Eh.

And I'm not sold on McGwire, either.

 

[Average Reds]

 
Of this list of the infamous [alleged] users, who gets in first?  And do any of them get in before either Shoeless Joe or Pete Rose?

 
I'm guessing Piazza and Bagwell get in fairly soon.  I don't think Clemens, Bonds or A-rod will ever be voted in by writers.
 
Shoeless Joe and Rose are never getting in, so yes, they do.

 

[opes]

what is so different from bonds, clemens, et al, vs. rose and jackson?