The MLB will announce its 2017 Hall of Fame class at 4 p.m. MT time Wednesday, but you don't need to wait around until then to find out that Colorado Rockies great Larry Walker is not going to get in.
Thanks to this invention called the internet and a website called Twitter.com, which in my understanding is a medium where people watch sports highlights and complain about things, we know that Walker is receiving less than a quarter of the vote on publicly available ballots.
Ryan Thibodaux keeps track of all Hall of Fame ballots writers make public. As of 11:30 a.m. Wednesday, Walker was receiving a "yes" just 22.8 percent of the time on the roughly 57 percent of ballots Thidoaux tracked. Players need at least 75 percent of the vote to get in.
This is the seventh year Walker has appeared on the ballot. He's never received more than 22.9 percent of the vote. Players can remain on the Baseball Writer's Association of America ballot for 10 seasons or until they get less than 5 percent of the vote.
If you take the time to sift through the #takes out there, the pro- and anti-Walker camps agree that his rate stats are Hall of Fame-worthy. Walker managed a .313 batting average, .400 0n-base percentage and .565 slugging across 17 seasons. Only 14 Hall of Famers have ever recorded career .300/.400/.500 slash lines.
The major knocks against him are injuries and how hitter-friendly playing in the mile-high air is.
Walker averaged 117 games per season, meaning he missed more than a quarter of all the regular-season games in his career. Walker also spent 10 seasons playing half his games at altitude. The disparity in his home-road splits are stark because of that. (Walker would be far from the first home-heavy hitter to get in, for what it's worth.)
Gun to my head, I think Walker should get in. However, it should be noted that 57 percent of my decision was made because Walker once did this facing Randy Johnson in an All-Star Game.
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