Either baseball players have become better in recent years or baseball writers have become dumber.

I reach this conclusion based on the results of the writers’ Hall of Fame voting for 2018, announced Wednesday evening. Exactly half of the 422 voting writers checked off the maximum 10 players on their ballots. That 50 percent ratio was virtually the same as last year’s 50.4 percent.

“In recent years, we have been in the 50% range,” said Jack O’Connell, secretary-treasurer of the Baseball Writers Association. “Also, this year nobody voted for just one guy. That never happened before in the years I have been doing this, since 1995.”

In other words, writers are eager to vote early and often, voting for more players than writers had voted for previously. There was such a rabid desire to vote for more players that a year ago the BBWAA adopted a motion calling for an increase from 10 to 12 in the maximum number of players writers could vote for. However, the Hall of Fame’s board of directors rejected the motion.

While I reject the HOF rejection – if the writers are going to do the voting, I believe, they should set the standards – I don’t understand the desire to vote for more than 10. But then, I don’t understand why anyone would vote for as many as 10.

In my view the Hall of Fame should be for only the very best players, the elite of the elite. Do writers vote for 10 because they can’t decide who of the 10 are the absolute best? I’m afraid that is the answer.

Writers scrutinize the 33-man ballot and immediately knock off 10 or 15. They look at the ballot again and this time delete another 5. Now they’re down to 13. But they scour the ballot again and can’t drop anymore. Being 3 over the maximum, they grudgingly delete 3 more and now they have the 10 they are allowed.

I would ask a question, though. Do they truly think their 10 selections are equal and equally deserving of Hall of Fame status? Or is it that they can’t be bothered deciding whom they think are the best of the 10?

The most curious bloc of voters, I believe, are the mlb.com writers. Thirteen of them voted, and nine filled up their ballots with 10 names. However, whether they voted for 10 or fewer, 12 of the 13 voted for Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, Major League Baseball’s most notorious cheats.

In the over-all voting in the sixth year of their 10-year eligibility, Clemens received 57.3 percent of the ballots and Bonds 56.4 percent. Within the mlb.com writers bloc, though, each one received 92.3 percent. If they weren’t following instructions, perhaps they were following the lead of their former boss, Bud Selig, by ignoring steroids.

Clemens and Bonds looked last year like they might be making a move toward the magic 75 percent mark, breaking the 50 percent barrier for the first time in their five years on the ballot. However, their upward movement this year was slight. Clemens went from 54.1 percent to 57.3, Bonds from 53.8 to 56.4. They each have four more chances.

As in their previous appearances, I didn’t vote for them. I voted for three of the players who were elected – Chipper Jones, Vladimir Guerrero and Jim Thome – but not the fourth – Trevor Hoffman. I also voted for Edgar Martinez, who missed election by 20 votes and has one year of eligibility left.

This year’s election was a lot cleaner than last year’s when Jeff Bagwell, Tim Raines and Ivan Rodriguez were elected. None of the three was ever caught using steroids, but Bagwell and Rodriguez were long connected to their use and Raines, an admitted cocaine user, testified in a Pittsburgh drug trial in 1985 that he slid into bases head first because he carried a packet of cocaine in his back pocket and didn’t want to mess it up sliding feet first.

Besides the increase in the number of players receiving votes, I am troubled by fans’ use of analytics to bolster a player’s candidacy. Bert Blyleven gave a fan credit for enhancing his status with analytics when he was elected in 2011.

I’m not saying a fan is wrong for developing reasons to vote for a player, but I am questioning the writers for needing that sort of impetus. They have been covering baseball for some amount of years and shouldn’t need fans to tell him who was good.

Just the other day the Wall Street Journal had an article about a fan’s efforts on behalf of Martinez. This fan, an active U.S. Marine, sent a barrage of tweets and e-mail to writers who didn’t vote for Martinez last year. I don’t know if I should feel left out. I didn’t vote for Martinez last year, and I didn’t receive an e-mail.

But the campaign apparently worked because Martinez climbed from 58.6 percent to 70.4 percent. A similar boost next year would catapult Martinez into the Hall of Fame.