Former Angels pair heading into yet another controversy

In case you thought the Angels didn’t have enough plates currently spinning in the air, between the management and coaching overhaul, the offseason generally, the Tyler Skaggs trial and the pending stadium audit, their owner and a previous GM have somehow managed to set themselves on a flight path headed straight into another controversy – albeit one not of their own making, for a change.

MLB.com have revealed the names of the 16 voters on this year’s Hall of Fame Contemporary Baseball Era Committee, and two of them are current Angels owner Arte Moreno, and former GM Tony Reagins. This is the committee tasked with deciding if players who had careers after 1980, and failed to get into the Hall of Fame via the regular ballot, deserve to be there. There are 8 players up for consideration this time around, but two of them have dominated the conversation – Barry Bonds, and Roger Clemens.

When the results are revealed on Sunday, whichever way the votes land for these two players, all hell is likely to break loose.

Every pothole in Bonds and Clemens’s roads to the Hall has been exhaustingly mapped already. Statistically, they’re the greatest position player of all time, and one of the greatest pitchers ever. The all-time homerun king, and the only guy to ever throw two 20-strikeout games. Seven MVP awards vs seven Cy Youngs (oh, and an MVP for Clemens himself, in 1986.) With a combined 25 All-Star selections, there’s no doubting the impact they had on their era, and the history of the game.

The doubts come elsewhere, from their impossible to ignore association with PED’s and the lasting fallout from baseball’s steroid era. So whichever way this committee votes, it’s going to make waves, and elicit anger from either the “the best players should be in the hall” lobby or those who think even the taint of steroid use is an unforgivable sin.  

Moreno and Reagins have, at least in Halo territory, enough of their own baggage already. The blame for the last decade of mediocrity falls squarely on Moreno’s shoulders, and Reagins, despite being the GM who drafted Mike Trout and signed Torii Hunter, is best remembered for resigning in 2011 in the wake of sending Juan Rivera and Mike Napoli to Toronto in exchange for Vernon Wells, widely considered one of the worst trades in history.  

Obviously, Bonds and Clemen’s fate is not entirely down to them. There are 16 voters on the committee, and 12 of those (75%) will need to agree in order to induct either player into the HOF. There are another six players on the ballot, with plenty of debate to go along with their own nominations for various other reasons. But the timing, in the middle of an organisational shakeup, a civil trial focused on the Angel’s official approach to drugs, and even the recent hiring of Brady Anderson as hitting coach, whose standout 50-homer season in 1996 has been subject to plenty of speculation (although to be crystal clear, with no official evidence to back anything up), is, at the absolute least, unfortunate.