Tony DeMarco

The only mystery left to Rickey Henderson’s Hall of Fame candidacy is how close he’ll come to going in unanimously.

His set of base-stealing and leadoff-hitter accomplishments makes him that much of a first-ballot lock. A 90-to-95 percent approval rate seems likely.

So that makes the story of this Hall ballot — the results of which will be announced Monday — a continuation of the quests of a handful of long-time candidates led by Bert Blyleven and Jim Rice.

Toss Andre Dawson, Jack Morris, Lee Smith, Tommy John, Tim Raines, Alan Trammell and others into the mix, and you have that vast gray area that makes Hall of Fame voting — complete with all its quirks and conundrums — one of the game’s great annual debates.

Here’s one view:

Blyleven: Now that Goose Gossage finally is in, no candidacy is harder to comprehend. How Blyleven has lasted this long (12 years) on the ballot is beyond me. Here’s the company he keeps:

He’s fifth all-time in strikeouts with 3,701. And given who’s ahead of him, every Hall of Fame pitcher except two (Nolan Ryan and Steve Carlton) struck out fewer hitters.

He’s ninth all-time in shutouts with 60. Among the rest of the top 20 in this category are 19 Hall of Famers. That’s right, Blyleven is the only one among the top 20 who isn’t in the Hall of Fame.

He’s 11th in starts with 685 — and seven of the top 10 are Hall of Famers, with two others being Greg Maddux (No. 4) and Roger Clemens (No. 7).

He’s 14th in innings with 4,969.1 — the top 12 are Hall of Famers and No. 13 is Maddux.

And he’s 26th in wins with 287. No it’s not 300, but it’s time to put that thinking to rest. Because when Randy Johnson becomes the 25th member of the 300 club this season, he will be the last for a generation.

You want postseason success? Blyleven played on two world champions, went 3-0-2.59 in LCS play and 3-1-2.35 in the World Series.

And along the regular-season way, there were three shutout titles, two innings pitched titles and one strikeout title. And one more — career ERA: 3.31.

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He is anything but a borderline candidate, yet that’s how his candidacy has played out. And that’s because of a .535 career winning percentage, only one 20-win season, two All-Star selections and four top-seven Cy Young Award finishes.

Ah, but here’s where Blyleven has to be rated No. 1 — in the hard-luck-pitcher category.

In his 11 sub-3.00-ERA seasons — yes, 11 — he had two .500 W/L records and one sub-.500 W/L record. And here’s the clincher:

In his first eight seasons (1970-77), Blyleven made 82 quality starts in which he either lost or got a no-decision (and by quality start, I mean at least six innings/two or fewer earned runs, or at least seven innings/three or fewer earned runs — not the lame standard MLB uses).

His ERA in those 82 starts? 2.19. And his record? 0-53! No misprint, folks — 0-53. Here are two most-galling year-by-year results: 1972 with Minnesota: 0-9 with a 2.35 ERA in 13 of the aforementioned starts, and 1974 with Minnesota: 0-8 with 1.80 ERA in 10 of the aforementioned starts.

Somewhere in all that should have been the 13 wins he needed to reach 300, and we wouldn’t be having this discussion. But it’s time for Blyleven’s luck to change. I didn’t circle the box next to his name on my ballot, but I did black it in completely. He’s a Hall of Famer.

Rice: The fact that he’s down to his 15th and final chance tells you there are a lot of doubters out there. He is, in fact, the quintessential borderline candidate, not one of the ‘elite of the elites’, but certainly a dominant force in his era.

Since he missed by only 16 votes at 72.2 percent last time, the feeling is he’ll get in on his last try. How have his vote totals steadily risen over the years from the 30-percent range?

Two things: An intense lobbying effort by longtime Red Sox front-office member Dick Bresciani has helped, bringing to light accomplishments such as Rice leading the AL in homers and RBI during his 16-year career.

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And, his numbers are known to be legit — and while not eye-popping, have grown in stature with the revelations of the steroids era — the same revelations that are keeping Mark McGwire’s vote totals in the 25-percent range.

Following the path of many fellow voters who have come around to Rice’s side over the years, I think this set of accomplishments should be enough: .298 career batting average, one MVP award, five top-10 MVP finishes, eight All-Star selections, four AL total-base titles, three AL home run titles, two AL RBI titles, seven .300 seasons, eight 100-RBI seasons, four 200-hit seasons, the most total bases in a season (406 in 1978) since Stan Musial in 1948, one of only 30 players with 350-plus homers and a .290-plus batting average, and the only player in history with three consecutive seasons of 200-plus hits and 35-plus homers.

As for the down-the-line candidates who aren’t likely to get in this time — if at all — I voted for Andre Dawson, Jack Morris, Lee Smith and Alan Trammell.

Dawson keeps getting closer, and reached the 65.9 percent level in his seventh try last year. But the .279 career batting average and .323 career on-base percentage always will work against him.

His eventual fate likely will boil down to that nebulous question of who is a Hall of Famer? If your answer is only one of the true greats (and that standard already has been spoiled), then ‘The Hawk’ isn’t getting in. But if you’re in the camp that the Hall is for the outstanding and dominant in an era, then he eventually will.

Morris and Smith reached the low-40-percent level last year, and may or may not take that leap to serious consideration in the next couple of years. But their candidacies certainly deserve to be kept in that mix.

Trammell hasn’t reached the 20-percent level in seven tries, and admittedly is a long-shot. His career paralleled that of Ozzie Smith, who went in — and rightfully so — with a resounding 91.7 percent approval rate. Try as much as you like, but you’ll never convince me there was that much different between the two players.

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