You guys are doing an awful lot of debating and arguing for nothing. With 16 voters having 3 votes each, that comes to 48 total votes. And as someone already pointed out, with 12 votes needed for induction, the most number of players that could possibly be inducted from the 8 that are on the ballot are just 4 (48 / 12 = 4). And based on the probabilities and numbers, that isn't even remotely likely to happen. If I had to guess, I'd say they may be lucky to elect 1 new inductee, with the chance of a 2nd being elected being remote, at best. So a lot of this debating is going to end up being mute, with maybe no one getting in on this ballot.

Another issue/problem is we have no idea yet who the 16 committee members doing the voting will be, and thus no idea of their thoughts on alleged PED users, those who may have cheated in other ways, or how they view those who weren't always the nicest of humans.

And some of you mention how the committee put the 8 players they did on this Contemporary Era ballot, and thus it seems they have some obvious reasons/desires to want them on it and may therefore plan to vote for them. But remember, it is not the Committee doing the voting that picked and put these 8 players on this Contemporary Era ballot. To my knowledge no one has been selected for the 16-person voting committee yet, and I would assume (and hope) that no one involved in picking the 8 players on the ballot is included as part of that committee either.

Late to the party on Evans, but I'm fairly sure the Hall would put him in the pre-1980 grouping. Whitaker I think would have been on the Contemporary ballot if he'd been selected by the committee.

As in Lou Whitaker?

What other Whitaker do you think a person might propose as a hall of fame candidate?

The whole idea of these committee is to review guys who have been talked about to death. We just spent a decade talking about Bonds and Clemens. How many chances did Gil Hodges need to get in? All I'm saying is that if you're going to revisit guys who have been through the BBWAA process, pick some guys that haven't been recently discussed.

I agree with you on that point. There should be more time between Falling off the ballot and showing up so soon on the next committee ballot. Perhaps a waiting time of 5 years

I don't disagree. I also think someone like Mattingly had their shot too. I would also like to see guys like Kenny Lofton and Jorge Posada get a second look over Bonds.