This year’s baseball winter meetings were anything but dull for the Orioles, offering good face time with new manager Craig Albernaz, the pursuit of Kyle Schwarber and eventually the blockbuster signing of Pete Alonso.

Before things really started to cook, though, I found my mind wandering to what could have been.

Second baseman Jeff Kent’s selection to the Hall of Fame by the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee meant he did a press conference in the massive media work room that week. Presumably, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and anyone else on the committee’s ballot would have, too, had they been elected.

I imagined something similar to what a wrestling heel would say, with either of those omitted inductees calling out the baseball writers who had declined to enshrine them on the traditional ballot — and I, for the thousandth time, thought about what I’d have done if I had a vote when they were on the ballot.

Because I do now.

A decade in the Baseball Writers Association of America means this year’s ballot arrived at my house in the fall, and while I can’t rewrite history or relitigate the group’s decisions, I can help shape the Hall going forward.

My ballot included the following, in alphabetical order: Bobby Abreu, Carlos Beltrán, Cole Hamels, Félix Hernandez, Andruw Jones, Dustin Pedroia, Andy Pettitte, Manny Ramirez, Alex Rodriguez and Chase Utley.

I don’t know that I’ll always vote for the maximum 10 players. I’m not sure, if more new candidates come on in future years, that I’ll always vote for these 10. I tried to set myself up on a path to consistency going forward, though, and here are some of the themes that hopefully endure.

The elephant in the room

This ballot has several players who were punished by MLB for violating its performance-enhancing drug policy, most notably Rodriguez and Ramirez, with Pettitte admitting to using human growth hormone before it was banned by the sport in 2005.

There’s not as much debate about these players as there was around the Bonds/Clemens generation, some of whom played the bulk of their careers before the rules were in place. But there is a carryover of voters who vowed never to enshrine someone implicated in a PED scandal and are still following through on that, and that might keep these players out as a result. I just decided not to be party to that.

In the cases of Rodriguez and Ramirez, they were punished by MLB, and no one walking through the Hall if they got in (it feels like they won’t anyways) would notice their plaques without mentioning their respective scandals within the first 10 seconds of seeing them. I’d be OK with them being in because it wouldn’t be letting them off the hook for what the league punished them for. The punishment will endure as long as the plaques do.

I’m going to judge the peaks

There are plenty of really good players in the Hall of Fame whose cases were bolstered by their longevity and ability to play well into their 30s, boosting some counting stats in the process. I basically came of age watching the sport as that changed, and while drug testing probably had something to do with it, I think the economics of the game and how it has skewed younger (acknowledging that both of those things are related, too) make it harder for players to have the successful back-half of their career that might make someone a surefire Hall of Famer.

As such, players like Jones, Pedroia and Hernandez, who were among the game’s best before they hit 30 and didn’t make as much of an impact after that, resonate with me as Hall of Famers. Since 1990, Jones had the fifth-highest wins above replacement (WAR), according to FanGraphs, of any hitter up to his age-30 season. Pedroia has an MVP to his name, to go with two World Series titles, and was a standout defender. Hernandez had the third-highest fWAR among pitchers before turning 30 in that period, behind Pedro Martinez and Clayton Kershaw.

Chase Utley played well deeper into his 30s than some of these others but fits the same mold of having a peak that makes him worthy of the Hall of Fame. That’s something I found challenging — comparing someone like Utley who had a five-year prime where he had 7.2 fWAR or higher to someone who had a longer career.

You can still reward that longevity, though

I still feel like it’s important, however, to honor those who played deep into their 30s and were part of winning baseball teams while doing it. That’s where players like Beltrán and Abreu come in. They weren’t era-defining players — maybe Beltrán was at a point — but they represent an era that’s, quite frankly, going to end up underrepresented in the Hall of Fame based on some of the exclusions we’ve seen. Their resumes and primes check plenty of boxes for me.

The Hall of Fame will announce the election results at 6 p.m. Tuesday night on MLB Network.