NJ sports columnist Steve Politi criticized for voting Rick Porcello to Hall of Fame

There might not be an organization in sports so precious as the Baseball Writers’ Association of America (BBWAA), the body of journalists who are bestowed the great honor of deciding who’s in and who’s out of Cooperstown.

So it’s no surprise that every year, when this esteemed body of voters assemble their ballots to decide who will be the next class of individuals inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, someone will be outraged about something. This time around, much of the outrage has been directed at one Steve Politi, a columnist for NJ.com and a self-proclaimed “Jersey propagandist.”

Politi took his New Jersey homerism to a new level with his Hall of Fame ballot, selecting Morristown, NJ, native Rick Porcello for Cooperstown with one of his 10 allotted votes.

A Rick Porcello Hall of Fame vote is crazy pic.twitter.com/9VBQxs3Wh3

— AT (@YankeeWRLD) January 18, 2026

Porcello, of course, was a solid pitcher during his time in the big leagues, winning a World Series with the Boston Red Sox in 2018 and edging out Justin Verlander for the AL Cy Young in 2016.

But his resume falls well short of what would typically considered a strong Hall of Fame case. For example, Porcello’s career WAR is just 18.8, well below the generally accepted benchmark of 60.0 to be enshrined in Cooperstown. And Politi knew this. In fact, the columnist explained that his vote was more symbolic than anything, simply honoring a local legend the one chance he might get.

“This no doubt will lead to some social media vitriol, but when you’re the sports columnist for a New Jersey website, every now and then, you get to salute one of your people,” Politi wrote in a column about his ballot. “Porcello, a former Seton Hall Prep ace, is likely going to drop from consideration after one year. I had room on my ballot, and so I’m tipping my cap to the Jersey guy on a tremendous career.”

Fair enough, but if every writer treated their Hall of Fame ballots like this, it wouldn’t exactly be a Hall of Fame, would it? It’d be a Hall of Players We Liked.

What Politi is trying to do is not that egregious. Porcello, in all likelihood, will only be on the ballot one time. Honoring him with a Hall of Fame vote is a cool way to acknowledge the great career of a local hero. It’s not going to change anything regarding who gets into Cooperstown, or who gets left out. In that way, it’s harmless.

The irony lies in how self-serious the BBWAA generally behaves. This is the same group of writers who refuse to let stars like Alex Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez into the Hall because of their ties to performance-enhancing drugs. Now, to be fair, Steve Politi isn’t one of those voters (he selected both of the aforementioned players on his ballot this year). But the body as a whole has a reputation, and it generally doesn’t see well to voters that fall outside of their orthodoxy.

It’s the inconsistencies of individual voters that make it so easy to pick apart the BBWAA year after year. And ballots like Politi’s certainly don’t help that reputation.