The Major League Baseball Hall of Fame has grown in the past week with the addition of three players to the prestigious club.

Along with the three positional players, three managers were also added in December.

This year’s six inductees all deserve this great honor. Yes, there will always be arguments with every selection. Last season the Baseball Writers’ Association of America did not vote in any players.  With the PEDs leaving a dark cloud over baseball, it is not shocking no one was selected.

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It is difficult to come up with three names as deserving as the three voted in last week.

Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and Frank Thomas (Check out the stats for each new Hall of Fame inductee at Baseball-Reference by clicking their names) were all able to get 75 percent of the vote required. It actually was not even close. Thomas was the lowest and still had 83.7 percent.

Maddux had 97.2 percent, the eighth-highest percentage of all time. Former New York Mets great Tom Seaver has the highest at 98.84 percent. It’s insane to believe there were 16 writers who thought Maddux was not a hall of famer. His stats are ridiculous. Maddux won 18 Gold Gloves, meaning he was the best fielding pitcher in the league he was in 18 times. He would not blow hitters away with a 100 mph fastball, but he was efficient. Maddux finished his career with 355 wins and a 3.16 ERA, which in the steroid era is amazing.

Maddux was a part of one of the most dominant pitching staffs in the ‘90s. Maddux along with Glavine helped the Braves win the 1995 World Series where Glavine was named the World Series MVP.

From 1991-1998, someone not named Glavine or Maddux won only two Cy Young Awards in the National League.

Glavine had 12 consecutive winning seasons as a member of the Braves and led the National League in wins five times. Glavine finished his stellar career with 305 wins and 203 losses. In 2006, Glavine was 40 and a member of the Mets, and still had 15 wins and only seven losses.

A teammate of the duo, John Smoltz, is eligible for the hall next season and is a no doubt first-ballot name.

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Thomas, a Chicago White Sox great was the only positional player to be elected. Known as “The Big Hurt,” Thomas only had 2468 hits but his impact on the game cannot be measured. He even had his own line of athletic shoes.

He was a five-time all-star and won back-to-back American League MVPs in 1993 and 1994.

Former Houston Astro, Craig Biggio, was close enough to the hall he could have almost tasted it. Biggio received 74.8 percent and was 0.2 percent shy. It is a travesty Biggio did not get it. It was his second year on the ballet and he was a great infielder who was a part of the “Killer B’s” in Houston. Biggio along with Lance Berkman and Jeff Bagwell helped make the Astros a contender in the late ‘90s and 2000s.

The MLB Hall of Fame is in itself a national pastime. It is located in Cooperstown, NY and is filled will different levels of baseball memorabilia.

Tyler Dixon can be reached at [email protected], on Twitter @tdixon_DE or by phone at 563-3311 ext. 256.