Ken Griffey Jr. sets record for highest Hall of Fame voting percentage
With 99.3 percent of the BBWAA vote, Ken Griffey Jr. has broken Tom Seaver's record.
By
Matt Snyder
•
1 min read
The 2016 Baseball Hall of Fame class is Mike Piazza and Ken Griffey Jr. We found out as much on Wednesday evening. Further, we found out that there's a new record-holder when it comes to the percentage of the BBWAA Hall of Fame vote. It's Junior, as he was named on 437 of the 440 votes, or 99.318 percent.
The former record-holder was Tom Seaver at 98.84 percent of the vote.
Here's the new top 20, in tenths of a percent with the year elected:
1. Griffey, 99.3, 2016
2. Seaver, 98.8, 1992
3. Cal Ripken, 98.5, 1999
4. Ty Cobb, 98.2, 1936
5. George Brett, 98.2, 1999
6. Hank Aaron, 97.8, 1982
7. Tony Gwynn, 97.6, 2007
8. Randy Johnson, 97.3, 2015
9. Greg Maddux, 97.2, 2014
10. Mike Schmidt, 96.5, 1995
11. Johnny Bench, 96.4, 1989
12. Steve Carlton, 95.6, 1994
13. Babe Ruth, 95.1, 1936
14. Honus Wagner, 95.1, 1936
15. Rickey Henderson, 94.8, 2009
16. Willie Mays, 94.7, 1979
17. Carl Yastrzemski, 94.6, 1989
18. Bob Feller, 93.8, 1962
19. Reggie Jackson, 93.6, 1993
20. Ted Williams, 93.4, 1966
[NOTE: Luke Appling got 94 percent of the vote in a run-off election and Lou Gehrig got 100 percent in a special election -- though he only got 22.6 percent in the original vote in 1936]
One thing that jumps out to me: We're slowly getting rid of the "look at me" vote, because of how many of the top 20 vote-getters all-time are in the very recent past. This isn't a ranking system of how great the players. We have much better methods in determining that, so refusing to vote for someone just because Babe Ruth didn't get 100 percent of the vote -- in a very different vote, mind you, since it was the first ever (note Gehrig's aforementioned percentage in that vote) -- is pretty dumb. Finally almost 100 percent of the voting body agrees.
