2017 Reds Hall of Fame Ballot

It's that time of year again ... the ballot for the Reds Hall of Fame has been released. Every other year, fans get to vote in one player from the "modern era" and the year after the vote is held, said player is inducted. Here's who made the ballot this year ...

Aaron Boone, 1997-2003 (7 seasons)

Aaron Boone is part of baseball royalty. He's brother to Bret Boone, son to Bob Boone (who managed him during his Reds tenure), and grandson to Ray Boone.

Boone made his debut for the Reds in 1997 and anchored third base until he was traded to the Yankees in 2003. In 668 career games over seven seasons he hit .271/.334/.450 and was the team MVP in 2002, tying for the NL lead in games played with 162. In 2003, he made his only All-Star team and was traded to the Yankees at the trade deadline that year. 

After his brief half-season stint with the Yankees, he was injured for the 2004 season, came back in 2005 and bounced around from the Indians, Marlins, Nationals, and finally 10 games with the Astros in 2009 before calling it a career.

Adam Dunn, 2001-2008 (8 seasons)

Where to start with Adam Dunn?

Let's start with him slugging a minimum of 40 homers a year from 2004-2007 and 32 more in 2008 before being traded to Arizona. He finished 4th in Rookie of the Year balloting in 2001, made the All-Star team in 2002, and finished in the top 30 of MVP voting in 2004 and 2005. He's ranked 4th on the Reds all-time home run list, and ranks 3rd in Reds history in both slugging percentage and OPS.

In August of 2008, the Reds traded him, along with a minor leaguer to the Diamondbacks, getting Wilkin Castillo and Micah Owings in return. After leaving Arizona, he spent the next two seasons with Washington, then 4 years with the White Sox, and finished up with Oakland in 2014.

John Franco, 1984-1989 (6 seasons)

I don't remember much about John Franco's tenure with the Reds as that was before a time where I actively followed them.

He debuted in 1984, appearing in 54 games that season while accumulating 4 saves. From there, he would become the Reds top reliever in the mid-to-late 1980s. Over his time in a Reds uniform, he logged 148 career saves (3rd in Reds history), was a three time All-Star (1986, 1987, 1989), and finished his stint with a 2.49 ERA (6th lowest in Reds history).

After the 1989 season, the Reds traded him to the Mets for Kip Gross and Randy Myers, who helped solidify the bullpen for the 1990 World Series team. Franco would pitch the next 14 seasons for the Mets and then one more season with the Astros before calling it quits with 424 career saves, good for 5th all-time.

Danny Graves, 1997-2005 (9 seasons)

Danny Graves was arguably the best Reds relief pitcher of the late 90s to early 2000s. I remember when he would come in, it would be lights out.

Graves was acquired from Cleveland in 1997 and by the next season, he established himself as a dominant member of the bullpen. He really found his stride in 1999, racking up 27 saves with a 3.03 ERA in 111 innings pitched for a surprising team that won 96 games that season. He was a two-time All-Star (2000, 2004), is the Reds all-time saves leader (182), won the team MVP award in 2000, and pitched in 465 games over his Reds career.

Unfortunately, during the 2005 season, the relationship went south as did his performance and he was released mid-season. He was scooped up by the Mets, spent two months with them, and was released in August. The next year he appeared in 13 games with Cleveland and that was it for his big league career.

Scott Rolen, 2009-2012 (4 seasons)

I remember when the Reds traded for Rolen at the 2009 trade deadline. In exchange, they sent Edwin Encarnacion and a minor league pitcher to Toronto. At the time, I didn't like Encarnacion, so I was happy to see the Reds get a veteran like Rolen.

In the three full seasons he played for the Reds (2010-2012), the team made the playoffs twice but never made it out of the divisional series. Rolen was a two-time All-Star while with the Reds (2010 and 2011), is the only Reds third baseman to win a gold glove. Unfortunately, his last appearance for the Reds was in game 5 of the 2012 Division Series where he struck out to end the game and allowing the Giants to advance.

Before finishing his career with the Reds, he played for the Phillies, Cardinals, and Blue Jays and was a five-time All-Star, won 7 Gold Gloves, and was the 1997 NL Rookie of the Year.

Reggie Sanders, 1991-1998 (8 seasons)

The final nominee on the list this year is long time outfielder Reggie Sanders, who was the right fielder when I started following the team.

While playing in 9 games in 1991, his true rookie season was 1992 where he finished 4th in Rookie of the Year voting. He made his only All-Star game appearance in 1995 and was the starting right fielder on a Reds team that made it all the way to the NLCS that year, the last Reds team to do so. He also finished 6th in MVP voting that year. Over 8 seasons with the team, he hit .271/.353/.476 with 125 HRs (good for 20th in Reds history) and 431 RBIs.

After the 1998 season, he bounced around to seven different teams until he finally retired in 2007. In his overall 17-year career, he hit 305 HRs, had 983 RBIs and a career slash line of .267/.343/.487

As for who's getting my vote from this batch, I always enjoyed watching Aaron Boone play so that's who I'm going towards. As far as who will get elected, I think it'll be either Adam Dunn or Scott Rolen.

You've Got Mail #55: Waiting 'Til Next Year

Everyone's favorite blogger from P-Town, Tom, was doing a cardboard clearance of sorts recently. I happened to be the beneficiary of some his unwanted cardboard of both Reds and Indians, to which I was elated. While I won't show everything that was included, because if I did, you'd be here until next Tuesday reading this, I'll hit the highlights.

Here are some cards from the early 2000s in the form of 2002 Diamond Kings and 2000 UD Ionix. The number of sets that were out back then was mind boggling and most, if not all of the sets like these, I'd forgotten about. The Diamond Kings cards are everything you expect them to be with the artistic look and the white border. The most interesting thing that I noticed on these is that the artist is not Dick Perez, it's someone named Tano, which I couldn't find any information on after a quick search. Perhaps someone out there knows about this mysterious Tano?

UD Ionix is a set I barely remember as it showed up at the tail end of my initial collecting barrage. Come the late 90s/early 2000s I wasn't into cards as much as I had been before as I was in high school and I started working so cards sort of fell to the background. These cards are pretty cool though with the filmstrip deal at the bottom. The backgrounds seem very busy though with weird designs behind the players and being red on one half and white on the other. Regardless, I'm very happy to add these to my collection, especially considering they're of two of my favorite players from the era, Aaron Boone and Sean Casey.

These horizontals are really nice, the Larkin card especially with the big MLB logo in the background and the All-Star Game stamp on the front. However, the card I really want to talk about there is the managers card with Buck Rodgers and Tony Perez. One of these two didn't make it through the 1993 season. I'll give you a hint, it wasn't Buck Rodgers. Perez was hired to replace Lou Piniella who departed for Seattle after the 1992 season. After 44 games and a respectable 20-24 record, Perez was given the boot and replaced with Davey Johnson. To this day, no one is really quite sure what happened to cause Perez to be unceremoniously canned but as far as I know, this might be the only card that shows Perez as the Reds manager. In 2001, he got a second chance as manager of the Marlins going 54-60 in 114 games at the helm.

Since word has gotten out that I collect the Indians as well as the Reds, people have been more than happy to dump off their unwanted Indians cards to me and I've been more than happy to accept them. Everything from 1980s Sportflics cards to 2016 Heritage minors was included. With the Ramirez Donruss rookie, I think I now have every Manny rookie card there is to be had from the 90s. 

Now the three really, really cool things that were in this package. First, this from the 1981 Perma-Graphics credit card line. At first, I though it was some sort of membership card to a fan club or something. It's definitely a really cool oddball from a season where the Reds missed the playoffs despite having the best overall record in the National League.

Finally, my two favorite cards of the package. First up this Tony Perez card from the 1992 Kellogg's All-Star line. These would come out of boxes of Corn Flakes and I clearly remember having the Willie Stargell and the Mike Schmidt from this set as well. Sure, it didn't scan all that great but you'll just have to take my word for it that it's an awesome cards. Seeing this card (still in it's wrapper by the way), has inspired me to eventually chase down the other nine cards from the set, especially the two I had way back when. Oh, the times I wish I still had my childhood collection. 

Then there was this, a Nap Lajoie card from the 2014 Panini Hall of Fame 75th Anniversary set. The Crusade cards were an insert set in the product and came in many different colors and some, in fact, were die cut. The blue cards were just the basic cards of that insert set and I'm just happy to have it. I don't care that its not one of the colored parallels, it's just a nice card of a turn of the century star that you definitely don't come across every day. I might actually take this card and stick it in a penny sleeve and top loader and drop it in my box of "good stuff".

A big thanks to Tom for clearing out his closet and sending these my way. These were some great additions to my collection.

You've Got Mail #12: Wes (jaybarkerfan)

Well, this happened. My mailbox was unsuspectingly attacked once again by the legendary JBF (well, legendary amongst us card bloggers) during his most recent bombing campaign. As it stands, I'm at least the 850th person this week to write about what I received but, undaunted, I shall carry on and show off some of the goodies I got.

This Zack Cozart was actually on my COMC watch list and I was just waiting for the price to drop on it to pull the trigger. Receiving this in the package was really, really nice. Here's hoping that Cozart can have a nice bounce back year after the devastating knee injury he suffered last summer.

The other autograph thrown in the package was that of Heath Murray. Who's Heath Murray you ask? Good question because I don't know either! According to Baseball Reference, he pitched four years in the bigs (97, 99, 01-02) for the Padres, Tigers, and Indians. He had a career 2-15 record with a 6.41 ERA in 88 games. Not exactly the kind of career line that will get you into Cooperstown. He was with the Reds in spring training of 2000 but never appeared in an official game for them. Therefore, that makes this a zero-year autograph card!

Reds cards made up the majority of this package, including both the 2014 Topps Billy Hamilton and its brother, a blue Wal-Mart only parallel.

There were also some Johnny Bench cards and these were the best of the lot. I really like the Cooperstown field generals card and Gypsy Queen is really staring to grow on me, especially the 2015 version.

Of course, it can't be a JBF bombing without some oddballs! These are from the Reds team set issued by Kahn's hot dogs in the late 80s. As a side project some day, I might try to track down as many of these I can find as I was never lucky enough to be at the stadium on team set giveaway day.

Here's another good variety mix of Reds. I'm really considering adding Aaron Boone to the list of guys I collect. He was a really solid player for the Reds while he was here and has made a really nice second career of calling baseball games for ESPN. I'm really happy that he was recently named one of the analysts for Sunday Night Baseball this year, which is just about the only thing I watch on ESPN anymore.

Again, a nice mixed batch here. I've mentioned before that I love getting old timey players on modern products and Heinie Groh is really someone who hardly ever gets any cardboard love. The Arroyo card just below in really pops with the Red background. Not exactly sure what that would be called but it's really cool.

There was also a heaping helping of 84 Topps to add to my ever growing set build. I really need to get my checklist for that updated, set aside any duplicates, and get what I've got into a binder.

This was all just fantastic stuff ... now I just have to get it organized.