DENVER -- Larry Walker joined the conference call with reporters and quickly announced his arrival. "54.6 percent here," Walker, a longtime player with the Montreal Expos, Colorado Rockies and St. Louis Cardinals, cracked. That's his percentage in this year's Hall of Fame vote. Keep up this sort of jump, though, and he might be able to proclaim something different next season in his 10th and final year on the ballot: Hall of Famer. Walker's vote total rose 20.5 percent from a year ago, but the seven-time Gold Glove outfielder still fell short of the necessary 75 percent threshold. The 2019 Hall of Fame class elected Tuesday included reliever Mariano Rivera, designated hitter Edgar Martinez and pitchers Roy Halladay -- a Denver native who died in November 2017 when an airplane he was flying crashed -- and Mike Mussina. Walker took it all in stride. "I don't get set up for heartbreak or heartache if something doesn't happen," Walker said. "I'm a pretty level-headed guy." Still, Walker, 52, acknowledged being emotionally invested in the days before the vote was officially revealed. He saw on Twitter that at one point he was trending at nearly 66 percent on some of the ballots made public. In the end, he was on 232 of the 425 ballots cast. "I don't want to get too involved with that again next year, because your heart rate's going up and down," Walker said. "Part of me almost doesn't want to make it, because doing that speech in Cooperstown, probably would have a heart attack before I got up there to do it." Growing up in Canada, Walker was more interested in being an NHL goaltender than a baseball player. He didn't really learn the nuances of the game until he started out in the minor leagues. A quick study, he hit .313 with 383 homers and 1,311 RBI in 17 seasons. He won three batting titles and an NL MVP award. "It was never in my mind as a kid growing up: It was playing in Stanley Cup Finals, not talking about the Hall of Fame ballot," Walker said. "Baseball was never on my radar, until I was offered $1,500 U.S. ... I couldn't wait to sign that contract to get that 2-grand Canadian, and off I went." Walker thinks his surge is due in part to analytics, even if he really doesn't understand such stats as dWAR (defensive wins above replacement). "I remember telling somebody a couple weeks ago, dWAR, I don't even know if that refers to a pitcher or hitter," Walker said. "I'm kind of clueless on all those things." One thing he's hoping eventually changes: having Coors Field held against him. Walker was a lifetime .381 batter with 154 homers inside the hitter-friendly park. "I took advantage of Coors Field as good as I possibly could, and I'm glad I did it," Walker said. "I'm not sad about it one bit." Another Coors Field case study: Rockies first baseman Todd Helton, who received 16.5 percent in his first year on the ballot. Helton played 17 seasons with the Rockies and finished with a .316 lifetime average. "Todd was an amazing player," Walker said. "Unfortunately, if I'm falling into the Coors Field bias, then Todd falls into it more, because he spent his whole career there." Should Walker fail to get in next year, there's always the Today's Game Era committee, which voted in reliever Lee Smith and outfielder/DH Harold Baines. "I have some things that are Hall of Fame worthy, and I have some things that aren't," Walker said. "I've heard them all. I've seen them all. I've read them all. I'm good with both sides of the fence of it."<doc-sep>We are going to talk about Larry Walker in a moment, I promise. But first, a preamble. If you’ve followed baseball’s Hall of Fame process at all over the past several years, you’ve no doubt heard voters — including myself (often) — complain about a crowded ballot. And you’re probably annoyed by now, either at us grumbling voters or at the Hall, which has long limited eligible BBWAA voters to 10 check marks on a ballot that includes 30-something players who made the cut. MORE: Derek Jeter tops list of newcomers on 2020 HOF ballot And I get it. I do. Nobody likes a complainer. The ballot crunch, though, is a REAL THING for those of us who feel more than 10 players have careers worthy of a spot in Cooperstown. Try as we might, it’s impossible to fit 12 or 13 guys into 10 spots, and some deserving players wind up with blank boxes next to their names every year. Recently, I wrote a column about my Fred McGriff dilemma. I believe he will one day wind up with a spot in the hallowed Plaque Gallery, but I didn’t vote for him in my three years with a ballot. This was McGriff’s last chance to be elected by the BBWAA, his 10th year on the ballot. When I posted my column on Twitter, I included this line: “But I do think he belongs in Cooperstown, and I feel confident he will wind up with a bronze plaque in a couple years.” The reply below seemed to resonate with other Twitter users, receiving a slow but steady stream of likes over the next couple of hours. If you "think he belongs in Cooperstown" then you should vote for him to be "in Cooperstown". — Charles Bowman (@ccbiii2000) January 9, 2019 (Sigh.) If only the voting process was that simple. As I wrote in the column, few players — if any — were more impacted by the crowded ballot than McGriff, a consistently excellent slugger who wasn’t a no-doubt Hall of Famer, but certainly did enough to belong. I won’t rehash here. So now let’s talk about Larry Walker. For most of his eligibility, Walker wasn’t just stagnant, he was trending in the wrong direction. Players who spend multiple years with less than 25 percent of the vote don’t often sniff BBWAA election. He’s in his ninth year on the ballot — you only get 10 now, remember? — and these are his final vote totals the first eight years: 2011: 20.3 percent 2012: 22.9 percent 2013: 21.6 percent 2014: 10.2 percent 2015: 11.8 percent 2016: 15.5 percent 2017: 21.9 percent 2018: 34.1 percent You see the jump in 2018, right? And this year, Walker finished with a rather stunning 54.6 percent of the vote. For the first time in his time on the BBWAA ballot, there’s hope that he could actually be elected without the help of a veterans committee. Not just chip-and-a-chair hope, but pretty realistic hope. So what happened? Two factors played a role, one larger than the other. First: The ballot has cleared up. Finally. In the past two years, seven greats — first-year candidates Ivan Rodriguez, Chipper Jones and Jim Thome and holdovers Jeff Bagwell, Tim Raines, Vladimir Guerrero and Trevor Hoffman — have been elected by the BBWAA. Seven! That’s the equivalent to taking dynamite to a jammed river after a massive flood stacked up trees and debris against a bridge. The backed-up water finally can move forward. MORE: Ranking the top 79 MLB free agents for 2019 In Walker’s first seven years of eligibility, every ballot featured at least seven eventual Hall of Famers and as many as 12 Cooperstown-bound stars, and that list doesn’t include PED-associated Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Manny Ramirez and Sammy Sosa complicating matters, or guys like Curt Schilling, McGriff and Billy Wagner who could eventually get in, too. The question was never as simple as “Is Larry Walker a Hall of Famer?” The question was always, “Where does Larry Walker rank on your list?” Honestly, Walker doesn’t have a top-five-on-your-list resume. He has a Cooperstown-worthy resume, but that was never the question. My first Hall of Fame vote was for the class of 2017, and I did not find a spot for Walker. He was No. 11 on my list, and as I wrote in my column, I was just glad he was high enough on the tracker that he wouldn’t finish below five percent of the vote and fall off the ballot. I voted for Walker the next year, after the three-player class of 2017, and again this year, after the four-person class of 2018. I am not alone. Walker didn’t jump from 21.8 percent in 2017 to 54.6 percent in 2019 because 32.8 percent of the electorate finally had a come-to-Jesus moment concerning Walker. Like me, they just finally had a spot on their crowded ballots for a player with Walker’s Hall credentials. And it's worth noting that, after the four-person class of 2019 (Mariano Rivera, Edgar Martinez, Roy Halladay and Mike Mussina), only one sure-fire Hall of Famer (Derek Jeter) joins the ballot next year. Finally, with Walker, voters will be able to just say "Is Walker a Hall of Famer or not?" I believe a second factor is at play, too: Walker’s former Rockies teammate Todd Helton was on the ballot for the first time this year. Helton, who finished with 16.5 percent of the vote, adds Coors Field context. Context is so very important when judging a player’s Hall credentials. That’s what we’re trying to do, compare the candidates to the players already in the Hall. When there is no established baseline — major league baseball in the thin air of Denver didn’t exist — it can be a struggle. It’s the same thing with the DH: Edgar Martinez needed David Ortiz to retire and join the Hall conversation to add context to what a Hall of Fame designated hitter looks like. Walker was the first legitimate Hall candidate to wear a Rockies uniform for the majority of his career. Andres Galarraga, Dante Bichette and Vinny Castilla put up video-game numbers at Coors Field, but they weren’t serious Cooperstown candidates (all three fell off the ballot in their first year of eligibility). MORE: HOF president Jeff Idelson talks character clause, PEDs, ballot changes But Walker and Helton are different. Both have home/road splits that strongly favor the home numbers, of course. But so do lots of current Hall of Famers. So while it’s maybe easy to look quickly at, say, the gap between Walker’s home/road splits — 1.179 at home, .899 on the road during his Rockies career — and dismiss his overall numbers as inflated, maybe the focus should have been on the fact that an .899 road OPS is still really damn good. Adding Helton to the conversation means more focus should be on a better way to judge numbers produced by Rockies, instead of a quick “look where he played” dismissal. If Helton’s ballpark-neutralized numbers still stack up well with all-time first baseman — and they do, as Jayson Stark explains here — taking a second look at Walker’s numbers becomes a good idea, too. And a second look at his numbers — and space on the ballot — means that Larry Walker being part of the Hall of Fame class of 2020 is a very real possibility.<doc-sep>The Baseball Writers Association of America announced the 2019 Hall of Fame voting results on Tuesday. Four players -- Mariano Rivera (first-ever unanimous choice), Mike Mussina, Roy Halladay and Edgar Martinez -- were elected and will be officially inducted once July rolls around. Larry Walker again fell shy of the 75-percent threshold necessary for enshrinement, setting the stage for next winter, when he'll be on the ballot for the 10th and final time. Walker, whose main blemish as a candidate is the time he spent in Coors Field, received a vote on 54.6 percent of ballots. This marks the most vote share he'd ever received, and is a substantial improvement over his previous percentages. Take a look: 2011: 20.3 percent 20.3 percent 2012: 22.9 percent 22.9 percent 2013: 21.6 percent 21.6 percent 2014: 10.2 percent 10.2 percent 2015: 11.8 percent 11.8 percent 2016: 15.5 percent 15.5 percent 2017: 21.9 percent 21.9 percent 2018: 34.1 percent 34.1 percent 2019: 54.6 percent While that's good news for Walker, the bad news is he'll have to post a bigger year-to-year improvement next year if he's to earn entrance into Cooperstown. It's not impossible, but it does seem unlikely based on similar cause célèbre candidates. Edgar Martinez, for example, saw his percentage jump from 58.6 percent to 70.4 percent before being inducted this year with 85.4 percent. Tim Raines went from 55 percent to 86 percent in two ballots, but even his healthy 10th year gains (about 16 percentage points) wouldn't be enough to Walker into the Hall. Bert Blyleven, meanwhile, never improved by more than 15 percentage points. That four players were inducted this year should help thin out a crowded ballot, working in Walker's favor. Alas, it's not clear that an argument led by park factors -- a concept that might be deemed too esoteric for some voters -- will be enough to swing the naysayers. Walker should almost certainly be in the Hall of Fame for reasons we've laid out before. But we're not optimistic he's going to get in -- not by this process, anyway.<doc-sep>
Larry Walker took a large leap in his ninth year on the Hall of Fame ballot, while fellow Rockies great Todd Helton posted a decent showing Tuesday in his first year of eligibility. Walker finished with 54.6 percent of the vote, shy of the 75 percent needed but a big increase from the 34.1 percent mark the right-fielder received last year. Helton, meanwhile, got 16.5 percent of the vote, putting the first baseman about four percent shy of how Walker debuted in 2011. Most notably, Walker’s vote totals underscore a marked shift in how BBWAA voters are perceiving the three-time batting champion and 1997 National League MVP. In 2015 — halfway through his candidacy — Walker’s Hall prospects appeared bleak, as he only garnered 11.8 percent of the vote. Coors Field’s hitter-friendly reputation and recurring injuries hurt Walker’s chances. But, after incremental gains from 2016-18, Walker’s jump this year sets the stage for a realistic Cooperstown push in the 2020 voting, his final year of ballot eligibility. Over his 17-year career in Montreal, Colorado and St. Louis, Walker slashed .313/.400/.565 and hit 383 home runs. He had a .334 average and 258 home runs in nine-plus seasons with the Rockies, and will need another huge jump in voting to get in. If he’s elected next year, he’d be the sixth player to get inducted in his last year of eligibility, after Seattle’s Edgar Martinez this year. ”Obviously the jump was very gratifying, rewarding,” Walker said. “I was quite pleased with that. I don’t know if it’s enough to make that final leap next year. Probably not, in all honesty. But to see the way the needle moved this year was pretty incredible.” While some voters see Walker as a true five-tool player who stacks up among the best outfielders ever, to others his offensive numbers were unduly helped by playing at Coors Field and he lacked durability. All of which will make his final push next year all the more interesting, even if Walker himself insists he won’t feel slighted if he doesn’t get in. “I’m completely honored to be on the ballot for 10 years and to see my (vote) percentage climb like it has, for me that’s a big honor,” Walker told The Denver Post recently. “I can take that and live with that.” Helton, too, will likely face the hurdle of the Coors Field bias throughout his candidacy, especially considering he played the entirety of his 17-year career with Colorado. “I think with all of the analytics and the new numbers, those will start popping up and helping Todd as well,” Walker said. “Todd was an amazing player, but unfortunately if I am falling into the Coors Field bias, then Todd falls into it more because he played his whole career there. It’s something that might never go away.” The first baseman averaged .316 and belted 369 home runs for the Rockies, although the final four seasons of his career didn’t do much to help his case as his numbers dropped significantly. “I really don’t think about it that much,” Helton said in September. “Obviously, it’s the pinnacle of being a baseball player, but in the end, it’s out of my hands.”