From the Toronto Star’s article on Carlos Delgado’s induction into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame: “Some have argued he may be the best player ever to be dropped from the ballot in his first year.” (“Some have argued” links to this Jayson Stark piece: http://espn.go.com/blog/jayson-stark/post/_/id/1051/delgado-deserved-far-better-in-hof-voting.)
So here’s a list of one-and-done position players since 1979. (I’ll put up a pitchers list shortly.) I can’t seem to pinpoint the exact moment when you get kicked off for getting less than 5% of the vote--even starting in ’79, there are guys who stay on the ballot even though they didn’t meet the 5% threshold (e.g., Curt Flood). But that’s the year when Baseball Reference starts putting x’s beside the names of people who were dropped for getting less than 5%.
I used WAR as a rough guide. I think the list includes everyone with at least 50 career WAR; below 50, I occasionally used some discretion. (Example: Johnny Callison had a higher career WAR than Frank Howard, but Howard is still sort of well known, and nobody much remembers Johnny Callison.)
Poll Results
| Option | Votes |
| Will Clark (2006) | 1 |
| Darryl Strawberry (2005) | 1 |
| Lou Whitaker (2001) | 1 |
| Carlos Delgado (2015) | 1 |
| Willie Randolph (1998) | 0 |
| Brian Downing (1998) | 0 |
| Jack Clark (1998) | 0 |
| Brett Butler (2003) | 0 |
| Tony Phillips (2005) | 0 |
| Frank Howard (1979) | 0 |
| Jose Canseco (2007) | 0 |
| Tony Fernandez (2007) | 0 |
| Mark Grace (2009) | 0 |
| Matt Williams (2009) | 0 |
| Robin Ventura (2010) | 0 |
| John Olerud (2011) | 0 |
| Kenny Lofton (2013) | 0 |
| Luis Gonzalez (2014) | 0 |
| Chet Lemon (1996) | 0 |
| Darrell Evans (1995) | 0 |
| Buddy Bell (1995) | 0 |
| Norm Cash (1980) | 0 |
| Boog Powell (1983) | 0 |
| Jimmy Wynn (1983) | 0 |
| Jim Fregosi (1984) | 0 |
| Roy White (1985) | 0 |
| Sal Bando (1987) | 0 |
| Reggie Smith (1988) | 0 |
| Bert Campenaris (1989) | 0 |
| Amos Otis (1990) | 0 |
| Ken Singleton (1990) | 0 |
| Al Oliver (1991) | 0 |
| Bobby Grich (1992) | 0 |
| Cesar Cedeno (1992) | 0 |
| Toby Harrah (1992) | 0 |
| Ron Cey (1993) | 0 |
| Ted Simmons (1994) | 0 |
| Jose Cruz (1994) | 0 |
| Brian Giles (2015) | 0 |
― clemenza, Saturday, 7 February 2015 18:18 (nine years ago) link