Jacque Jones Got a HoF Vote, Seriously

I was reading a Fangraphs article, by Tony Blengino, about the recent changes to the Baseball Hall of Fame voting rules. His article focused on the large amount of players currently sitting in the HoF eligibility pool and whether the new rules will impact that pool's size. His article also provided a list of the players receiving votes in 2014. A different version of the 2014 HoF voting can be seen on Baseball-Reference.com. On this list there were 19 players in their first year of eligibility. 14 of these players did not receive enough votes to return to the ballot next year. Six players did not receive any votes. However the big shocker here was one of the players that did receive a vote, Jacque Jones.

Don't feel bad if you are asking yourself who exactly Jacque Jones is. Unless you are a fan of the Twins or Cubs, or you played a lot of 2000 MLB Showdown, you probably never had reason to know who he was. You might even think I am misspelling his first name repeatedly, but I am not. Let me enlighten you about Jones' baseball career. He was an outfielder with a career triple slash of .277/.326/.448 who spent the majority of his career in Minnesota. His best single year in the Bigs was 2002, when he batted .300 hit 27 homers, good for a 121 wRC+. He only spent 10 years in the majors and only had two, maybe three, years worthy of All-Star consideration. Those stats don't cry Hall of Famer to me. In fact they barely scream anything.

Whoever it was that voted for Jacque Jones must have had an ulterior motive. Maybe Jones' uncle is part of the BBWA and has a HoF vote. Maybe one of the Twins writers just really loved interacting with Jones during his tenure with the team. Who knows? The point is Jacque Jones actually got a HoF vote.