Schilling is a borderline candidate.

I think this is an accurate take. I think Schilling's personality and outrageous tweets are keeping him out of the HOF.

But Schlling is hardly a shoo-in.

He's Kevin Brown with memorable playoff performances. 

On the other hand, why isn't Orel Hershiser in if we care so much about memorable playoff performances?

 

I'll put this another way.

I tend to agree that Schilling had a better career than Brown and crossed a HOF threshold that Brown didn't cross. This is mostly based on Schilling's superior performance in playoff games. Small but important sample size.

So it's not that Schilling will make the HOF and Brown won't.

It's that Schilling gets to be outraged at receiving only 74% of the vote ... while Brown received 2% of the vote.

The sock game was worth 72 HOF percentage points?

Heck, clear the way for Hideki Matsui and David Freese.

 

Ultimately, it's hard to fit any HOF voting patterns into a narrative, because the votes are all over the place.

This is what happens when you let Jack Morris in; when you let Harold Baines in.

David Cone, Ron Guidry, Dale Murphy, Fred McGriff, Al Oliver, Jeff Kent, Lou Whitaker, and dozens of others are pounding on the windows and screaming that they have never even used twitter.