I'm always happy with the Baseball Hall of Fame ballot is announced as it means content for my blog! I'll be doing profiles on each the first year nominees over the next few weeks but before I get to what I wanted to talk about in this entry, here are links to old profiles I did for the returnees on this year's ballot listed in order of where they finished in the voting last year.

1. Jim Rice 72.2% (15th and final year)

2. Andre Dawson 65.9% (8th)

3. Bert Blyleven 61.9% (12th)

4. Lee Smith 43.3% (7th)

5. Jack Morris 42.9% (10th)

6. Tommy John 29.1% (15th and final year)

7. Tim Raines 24.3% (2nd)

8. Mark McGwire 23.6% (3rd)

9. Alan Trammell 18.2% (8th)

10. Don Mattingly 15.8% (9th)

11. Dave Parker 15.1% (13th)

12. Dale Murphy 13.8% (11th)

13. Harold Baines 5.2% (3rd)

If a player played ten seasons in the Majors they are eligible for nomination on the baseball writer's ballot but believe it or not there actually is a screening process for the HOF ballot. I always find it interesting to see what players didn't make the cut and originally thought about making brief comments on each player but there were more players than I expected so this is just going to be a random list. Whole lot of back up catchers and middle relievers but there's a few decent players in there.

Mike Bordick

John Burkett

Omar Daal

Joe Girardi

Mark Guthrie

Joey Hamilton

Bill Haselman

Darren Holmes

Trenidad Hubbard

Todd Hundley

Brian L Hunter

Felix Jose

Chad Kreuter

Graeme Lloyd

Keith Lockhart

Albie Lopez

Pat Mahomes

Al Martin

Orlando Merced

Charles Nagy

Denny Neagle

Troy O'Leary

Lance Painter

Craig Paquette

Tom Prince

Jeff Reboulet

Rick Reed

Rich Rodriguez

Terry Shumpert

Luis Sojo

Dave Veres

Matt Walbeck

Mike Williams

Kevin Young