The Baseball Writers Association of America surprised almost everyone on Tuesday, perhaps even itself, when the results of its annual Hall of Fame voting revealed that former closer Bruce Sutter had been elected to Cooperstown. With a record 520 members voting and 390 votes needed to achieve the 75-percent approval required for election, Sutter earned 400 votes for 76.9-percent support. The National League’s 1979 Cy Young Award winner and four-time Rolaids Relief Man of the Year became just the fourth pitcher – after Hoyt Wilhelm, Rollie Fingers and Dennis Eckersley – chosen for the Shrine after a career spent mainly in the bullpen. Sutter also is the first pitcher ever elected to the Hall with zero career starts, having pitched all of his 661 appearances in relief.

Without doubt, Sutter’s election brought a sigh of relief to Hall of Fame trustees, as most informed observers expected that no one would be elected by the writers this time. If that had happened, and with no Veterans Committee voting this year, player-wise the annual induction ceremony would have been limited to whatever long-dead Negro leaguers may be chosen in March by a special committee to examine their credentials on a one-time-only basis. It’s no secret that, to boost attendance, the Cooperstown trustees like having a breathing ex-player to induct at their annual gig.

But Sutter surprised almost everyone, increasing his support by 10.2 percentage points and becoming only the fourth man since 1980 to climb from 66.7-percent support or less one year to 75 percent or better and election in the next. There is no doubt his election was fueled by the relative weakness of this year’s class of ballot first timers, among which only Orel Hershiser (58 votes and 11.2-percent support) and Albert Belle (40 and 7.7) received the minimum 5-percent support required to remain on the ballot for 2007. As noted in my preview article for this year’s voting, which appeared on this web site earlier this month, support for ballot holdovers tends to rise when the first-year class is weak. In this instance, that trend was evidenced by the fact that 13 of the 15 holdovers from the 2005 ballot saw their support percentages increase. Overall, the average support-percent increase for the 15 holdover candidates was 4.8 percentage points, with pitcher Bert Blyleven’s 12.4-percentage points jump (to 277 votes and 53.3 percent) the largest among the group.

As predicted here last weekend, the pecking order for the rest of the ballot remained virtually the same as in 2005. Although all of them improved over their 2005 scores, the next 10 men behind Sutter – Jim Rice, Goose Gossage, Andre Dawson, Blyleven, Lee Smith, Jack Morris, Tommy John, Steve Garvey, Alan Trammell and Dave Parker – all retained the same relative positions they earned last year, behind 2005 inductees Wade Boggs and Ryne Sandberg. Only outfielders Dale Murphy and Willie McGee saw their support levels decline, with McGee falling below the 5-percent cutoff for future BBWAA eligibility.

Beyond Sutter’s election, the only other surprise in the voting was first baseman Will Clark’s failure to earn the 5-percent support needed to remain on next year’s ballot. As noted by fellow CREATiVESPORTS.com contributor Bill Gilbert, Clark had the highest career Win Shares total among this year’s crop of ballot newcomers. Given that, plus a .303 career batting average, .384 OBP and 1,205 ribbies, one had every right to expect Will the Thrill would remain on the ballot for more than one try at Cooperstown. Instead, only 23 of the scribes found him HOF-worthy.

The table below gives a complete rundown of this year’s Hall of Fame voting results. In addition to each player and his position, the data columns include the number of times each candidate has been on the BBWAA ballot (TOB), his 2005 raw-vote total and support percentage (05V and 05%), the support percentage predicted for him in last week's vote preview (Pred), his 2006 vote total and support percent (06V and 06%), and finally the plus-or-minus change in his support percentage relative to 2005 (+/-Chng).

Player	Pos	TOB	05V	05%	Pred	06V	06%	+/-Chng
Bruce Sutter	RP	13	344	66.7	71.0	400	76.9	10.2
Jim Rice	OF	12	307	59.5	67.0	337	64.8	5.3
Goose Gossage	RP	7	285	55.2	58.0	336	64.6	9.4
Andre Dawson	OF	5	270	52.3	56.0	317	61.0	8.7
Alex Fernandez	SP	1	-	-	0.0	0	0.0	-
Bert Blyleven	SP	9	211	40.9	48.0	277	53.3	12.4
Lee Smith	RP	4	200	38.8	42.0	234	45.0	6.2
Jack Morris	SP	7	172	33.3	39.0	214	41.2	7.9
Tommy John	SP	12	123	23.8	25.0	154	29.6	5.8
Steve Garvey	1B	14	106	20.5	22.0	135	26.0	5.5
Alan Trammell	SS	5	87	16.9	21.0	92	17.7	0.8
Dave Parker	OF	10	65	12.6	15.0	76	14.6	2.0
Dave Concepcion	SS	13	55	10.7	12.0	65	12.5	1.8
Don Mattingly	1B	6	59	11.4	14.0	64	12.3	0.9
Orel Hershiser	SP	1	-	-	7.0	58	11.2	-
Dale Murphy	OF	8	54	10.5	13.0	56	10.8	0.3
Albert Belle	OF	1	-	-	9.0	40	7.7	-
Will Clark	1B	1	-	-	14.0	23	4.4	-
Dwight Gooden	SP	1	-	-	1.5	17	3.3	-
Willie McGee	OF	2	26	5.0	4.0	12	2.3	-2.7
Hal Morris	1B	-	-	0.0	5	1.0	-
Ozzie Guillen	SS	1	-	-	<1.0	5	1.0	-
Gary Gaetti	3B	1	-	-	1.5	4	0.8	-
John Wetteland	RP	1	-	-	<1.0	4	0.8	-
Rick Aguilera	RP	1	-	-	1.0	3	0.6	-
Doug Jones	RP	1	-	-	1.0	2	0.4	-
Gregg Jefferies	1B	1	-	-	0.0	2	0.4	-
Gary DiSarcina	SS	1	-	-	0.0	0	0.0	-
Walt Weiss	SS	1	-	-	<1.0	1	0.2	-

As for the accuracy of my annual predictions, the “Pred” numbers above were intended to identify the center point in a plus-or-minus three-point range. So, for example, the 71.0 percent predicted for Sutter was designed to indicate he would fall somewhere between 74.0 and 68.0 percent support. That 71.0 center point was 5.9 percentage points lower than Sutter’s actual figure, so my prediction missed the mark, involving a raw error of 5.9 points. The total raw error for the 29 candidates was 69.6 percentage points, with an average error of 2.4 percentage points per-man that is within the intended ±3.0 range. All the same, as evidenced by the fact that seven of the top 10 candidates (Sutter, Gossage, Dawson, Blyleven, John, Garvey and Trammell) improved their 2005 scores by more than the 3-percent margin of error in the predictions, I obviously underestimated the degree to which the weak freshman class would benefit players near the top of the ballot’s pecking order. My biggest error was the negative 9.6 percentage-point variation between the predicted and actual support received by Clark.

Garvey is the only candidate on this year’s ballot who will be in his last year of BBWAA eligibility in 2007, although Dave Concepcion will make his 14th appearance, and Rice and John will be listed for the 13th time. Garvey’s support will likely show a marginal increase next time, due to a long-standing habit among some BBWAA voters to show sympathy for a candidate in his last year on the ballot. But no one has ever actually been elected as result of such final ballot sympathy, and – at just 26.0-percent support for 2006 – the gap between reality and Garvey’s possible election is just too wide.

Beyond that, and as noted in last week’s election preview, none of the holdovers has any real chance at election in 2007, because the freshman class includes 3,000-hit men Tony Gwynn and Cal Ripken, Jr., both of whom are certain first-ballot selections. In fact, most of the holdovers’ support scores are likely to decline marginally next year, as usually happens on ballots with multiple de facto candidates. Boding even worse for Garvey, et. al, Gwynn and Ripken head a strong group of newcomers that includes Mark McGwire, Harold Baines, Paul O’Neill, Bret Saberhagen and Jose Canseco, among others.

Without a doubt, the most interesting, and hard-to-predict aspect of next year’s voting will be the degree to which McGwire’s otherwise certain election as a de facto candidate (583 home runs) will be damaged by his vague and evasive testimony to Congress during the steroids hearings last March, and how he fares relative to Gwynn, Ripken and (especially) Canseco. Right now, and subject to change, it’s my guess that the now widespread suspicion McGwire used more than just androstenedione during his playing days will cost him first-ballot election. It’s also my expectation, however, that the steroid controversy will have died down sufficiently that McGwire will still be elected by the scribes by 2010, if not sooner.