Yesterday, the increasingly broken voting system for baseball’s Hall of Fame announced its voting results for 2011. Our favorite shortstop, Barry Larkin, did not get voted in. The winners were Roberto Alomar and Bert Blyleven.

I didn’t pay attention to baseball much in the 1990s, so I missed the bulk of Alomar’s career. I knew he was a fantastic defensive second-baseman, but the only other thing I knew of him was the bizarre spitting incident. I didn’t realize he had been good enough to get in in just his second year of being on the ballot.

Blyleven was on the ballot for the 14th time, and finally managed to get in. Him, I knew. He was an outstanding pitcher for some terrible, terrible, undeserving teams. I’m glad that finally he wasn’t penalized for that.

In third place was the greatest shortstop of all-time (not that I’m biased), Barry Larkin. Like Alomar, he was also on the ballot for the second time. Unfortunately he fell short, but just as predicted by Chris Jaffe of the Hardball Times, he jumped from the 50s to the 60s this year, getting 62% of the votes. 75% of votes are required for entry, so things are looking good that another Red will enter the Hall of Fame next year.

The only other player with Reds ties on the ballot was Dave Parker. He had some awesome slugging years with the Reds in the 80s and also was involved in the trade that brought Jose Rijo to Cincinnati. He appeared on the ballot for the last time, and although he wasn’t quite good enough to get into the Hall, he certainly had lots of Hall of Fame moments with the Reds.