Braves great Dale Murphy has been placed on the 2017 Modern Era Hall of Fame ballot

There are one a few ways to get into the Baseball Hall of Fame. There is, of course, the vote of the BBWAA writers each year that has strict guidelines as to what percentage of writers must include a given player on their ballots for induction. During the 15 years that former Braves’ great Dale Murphy was on the ballot, he did not get particularly close to the 75% needed to get into Cooperstown. Despite a lot of love from fans due to his very high value at his peak in addition to multiple MVP awards, Murph got just 18.9% in his final year of voting with his vote totals never going over 23% during his years on the ballot.

However, that does not mean that all is lost for Murphy, as there is another way he COULD get in...although the odds remain long.

There are several interesting names on this ballot, in particular Jack Morris and Alan Trammell in addition to Murphy that will garner some consideration. That being said, the process that was formerly known as the Veteran’s Committee was not particularly generous in letting players in and the Modern Era Ballot, which will function similarly but with a smaller pool of players, could be a tough road to go with some arguably better candidates on the ballot or at the very least comparable ones.

With a career 44.3 fWAR and some unfortunate valleys in addition to some lofty peaks during his career, it will be interesting to see how close Murphy gets to getting in. If history is any indication, it will be a hard hurdle to get over...but at the very least we will get to reminisce about all the good things Murphy did as a Brave during a tumultuous time for the franchise.