Former Miami Marlins star Gary Sheffield had some controversial things to say

Gary Sheffield is not going to the Hall of Fame. This was Sheffield's final chance to make it in through the regular voting process, after an eventful career. The 9 time All-Star won a World Series with the Miami (then Florida) Marlins in 1997. He also made controversial comments throughout his career and has been accused of taking steroids. Should he have went in? Were the voters correct? Sheffield had some thoughts on that, speaking on "Audacy’s The Bret Boone Podcast"

Gary Sheffield feels that he was wrongly kept out of the Hall of Fame.

Should Gary Sheffield have been elected to the Hall of Fame? He has a 60.5 career WAR, 6 top 10 career MVP finishes (topping out at #3), 9 All-Star Game selections and a World Series win in 1997. This is impressive and does fit the WAR criteria according to Fangraphs. That criteria is 50-70 WAR by the way as a minimum. I of course focus on "bWAR", so for reference his "fWAR" is 62.1.

Based on performance alone, I would vote for Sheffield as a Hall of Famer. The steroids are an issue however. Personally, I would need to know exactly how much they affected his performance and how much WAR for example he would've accumulated without them. Sheffield claimed that he used them in 2002. He had 41.9 WAR for his career at that point and was 33 years old. It's definitely up in the air what he would've accomplished after.

Players have a limited amount of chances to get voted into the Hall of Fame by the writers. They have to be on 5% of ballots to be eligible for another vote the following year, and must not have failed to be voted in after 10 years. Sheffield reached the 10 year limit this year and now his only chance to get in is a special veteran's committee.

Gary Sheffield said in the aforementioned interview that he wanted to get in this year. He was confident about it and was upset about not getting in. He thinks that steroids were used against him in an unfair way and that the voters used their personal biases against him. Those statements are in line with Sheffield's tendency to make controversial comments.

Sheffield also claims that the voters were affected by not having seen him play daily, and by focusing too much on statistics. The latter is a bit silly, as statistics are obviously the best way to see if someone is Hall of Fame worthy, as the "eye test" has its own biases involved.

Here's an excerpt: “For me, there’s no one way that is going to fix this problem, but I can tell you that reporters are human beings, and the fact that they can tell you that they’re not biased, I don’t believe that. Whoever believes that is believing a fool because I just know for a fact that they are biased, and they do what they want to do and how they want to do it."

It remains to be seen if the player's committee sees things differently and votes Gary Sheffield into the Hall of Fame.