2018 Baseball Hall of Fame Ballot is out

The 2018 Baseball Hall of Fame ballot has been released, and there are 33 players eligible to be voted on -- 19 newcomers and 14 players who received at least five percent of the vote last year, but not enough to be elected.

The returning players are Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Vladimir Guerrero, Curt Schilling, Trevor Hoffman, Fred McGriff, Billy Wagner, Sammy Sosa, Jeff Kent, Manny Ramirez, Edgar Martinez, Mike Mussina, Larry Walker and Gary Sheffield.

The newcomers are Chipper Jones, Andruw Jones, Hideki Matsui, Jim Thome, Johan Santana, Omar Vizquel, Chris Carpenter, Johnny Damon, Livan Hernandez, Orlando Hudson, Aubrey Huff, Jason Isringhausen, Carlos Lee, Brad Lidge, Kevin Millwood, Jamie Moyer, Scott Rolen, Kerry Wood and Carlos Zambrano.

You can check out the entire ballot here.

By my count there are seven former Rangers on the ballot, with Vlad the only one who seems likely to actually make it in this year.

The most interesting guys on the new ballot, to me, are Andruw Jones and Johan Santana — both clearly had Hall of Fame peaks, but the shortness of their careers makes them less-than-obvious choices, and how much support they get early on will be interesting to monitor..

Chipper Jones, Jim Thome, and Scott Rolen are, among the first-time-eligibles, clearly Hall of Fame worthy, to me.