Hall of Fame Ballot: The Contenders (Part 1)

Well, Tuesday is Hall of Fame Day… as usual, we will do a YouTube Livestream after the results are in, to go over the entire ballot, talk about the winners and losers, surprises and expecteds, the whole thing. We’ll probably start it around 7 p.m. Eastern Time, and I’ll post the link here once I re-figure out how to actually do any of this.

In the meantime, there are 15 players on this year’s Baseball Hall of Fame ballot we haven’t talked much about yet. And I voted for 10 of them. Which 10? You probably know (though there might be a surprise or two this year!), but I’ll give you my full list tomorrow in our final Hall of Fame post.

For today, let’s start running down the 15 contenders—we’ll go in the order of the players’ percentages on NotMrTibbs’ essential Hall of Fame Ballot Tracker, which now has 175 or so ballots. Here we go!

David Wright (11.4%)

Played for the Mets from 2004 to 2018.

It does look like Captain America will make it to a second ballot, which is a good thing… I’ve been thinking a lot lately about BAT candidates—with BAT standing for “Below Age Thirty.”*

*Technically, BAT stands for “Below Age Thirty-One,” since I’m going through age 30… but I think you get the point. 

I’ll write more about BAT at some point in the next little while, but let me briefly explain what I’m thinking about. I looked at all position players with 5,000-plus plate appearances), and I used Baseball-Reference’s Win Above Average (WAA, not WAR).

OK, there are 171 position players in the Hall of Fame.

The median WAA for Hall of Famers is 31 wins above average.

OK, what does that 31 WAA mean? Good question. Here are your top five:

Top WAA in the Hall Of Fame:

1. Babe Ruth, 125 WAA

2. Willie Mays , 110 WAA

3. Ty Cobb, 102 WAA

4. Roger Hornsby, 97 WAA

5. Henry Aaron and Ted Williams, 93 WAA

And here are the most average players in the Hall of Fame:

1. Harold Baines, 2 WAA

2. Lloyd Waner, 3 WAA

3. George Kelly, 4 WAA

4. Bill Mazeroski, 5 AAA

5. Rick Ferrell and Dave Parker, 7 WAA

OK? So you can see that WAA in the Hall of Fame can range from 2 all the way to 125—and the main concentration of players is right around 31. Some of the Hall of Famers in that range include Robbie Alomar, Bill Dickey, Willie McCovey, Derek Jeter (because of his awful defensive numbers), Craig Biggio, Vladdy Guerrero and so on.

That should give you a decent idea about the range. But here’s where it gets interesting, at least for me. We know the median WAA for Hall of Famers is 31. But what is the median BAT—that is to say, what is the median Wins Above Average for players after their age-30 season?

The median BAT for Hall of Famers is 23.

Hmm. That probably lines up more or less with what you’re expecting—the median Hall of Famer accumulates about 75% of his career value through age 30. Now, there are some Hall of Famers who are actually way better AFTER they turn 30—here are the five Hall of Famers who accumulated the highest percentage of their value after 30:

1. Willie Stargell, 77%

2. Bill Terry, 76%

3. Jackie Robinson, 73%

4. Edgar Martínez, 70%

5. David Ortiz, 68%

Stargell spent his 20s kicking around Pittsburgh, bouncing from position to position and watching so many of his home runs die in the huge Forbes Field outfield. In 1971, when Pops was 31, the team moved full-time to Three Rivers Stadium, and he had the season of his life, bashing a league-leading 48 home runs and slugging .628. Two years later, he led the league in home runs again. He had just six WAA through age 30 and he posted 21 WAA after that.

Bill Terry wasn’t really a regular until age 28. Jackie Robinson, well, we know the story of his 20s. Edgar Martínez has his first full season at 27 and Big Papi, as we know, spent most of his 20s trying to convince Minnesota that he was worth putting in the lineup.

And the Hall of Famers who put up the lowest percentage of their value after 30?

1. Dave Parker, minus-207%

2. Rabbit Maranville, minus-81%

3. Harold Baines, minus-74%

4. High Pockets Kelly, minus-71%

5. Jim Bottomley, minus-56%

Well, everybody knows the Dave Parker story. But the truth is that 30 Hall of Famers either put up little to no value above average in their 30s or, as you can see, put up NEGATIVE value. They weren’t even average.

There’s a lot of stuff about all this that’s interesting to me, but we’re focusing here on David Wright, so let me tell you this: There are eight eligible players in baseball history (nine, if you consider Shoeless Joe to be eligible) who put up at least 5 WAA about the median Hall of Fame number by the time they turned 30. Most of these names will look achingly familiar:

1. Alex Rodriguez, 58.8 (+25.8 BAT)

2. Barry Bonds, 54.8 (+21.8 BAT)

3. Andruw Jones, 39.1 (+16.1 BAT)

4. Chase Utley, 31.1 (+8.1 BAT)

5. Bobby Grich, 30.4 (+7.4 BAT)

6. Sherry Magee, 30.1 (+7.1 BAT)

7. César Cedeño, 29.3 (+6.3 BAT)*

8. David Wright, 28.8 (+5.8 BAT)

There’s nothing more to say about A-Rod and Bonds. Andruw and Utley are both trending toward the Hall of Fame. Grich is one of the more famous snubs in Hall of Fame history, Magee was a Deadball Era player who has popped up on the veterans ballot and Cedeño was called the next Willie Mays, but his personal demons and notorious temper haunted him and his career.

And there’s Captain America. He wasn’t just Cooperstown-bound at 30, he was in the upper-middle class, with guys like Eddie Murray and Andre Dawson and Rod Carew and Robin Yount and Vladdy Guerrero and so on. If he’d had just one more excellent season—or sprinkled together a few productive and above-average ones—he’s probably going to the Hall.

As it was, he got only about 900 plate appearances because of an unreasonable series of injuries—neck injuries, back injuries, shoulder injuries—and he added nothing to his Hall of Fame case. It’s one of the real bummers in recent baseball history, because David Wright in his 20s was absolutely awesome. He was a .300 hitter with power and speed and brilliant defense. He’s the only third baseman to ever have a 30-30 season and win a Gold Glove. He pulled that specific feat just once, but had four or five other years about as good.

The question I think we should ask is this: Why should David Wright need a little bit more from his decline years to be a Hall of Famer? How important is that last bit when thinking about the Hall of Fame and greatness? If David Wright was a clear Hall of Famer at age 30—and I think he was—shouldn’t he be a Hall of Famer? These are the sorts of questions I wish we’d ask more.

Mark Buehrle (11.9%)

Played for the White Sox, Toronto and Miami from 2000 to 2015.

Mark Buehrle was a joy to watch pitch; he’d get the ball and throw. His games were famously fast. No drama. No fuss.

I’ve thought a lot about why Buehrle pitched that way, and I’ve come up with a theory: Pitchers famously obsess over what pitch to throw in what situation. Is the batter looking fastball? Is the batter sitting on the changeup? Do I need to bust him inside to move him off the plate? Or is he looking to pull? So much of what makes baseball is that mental battle between pitcher and hitter; every single decision a pitcher makes feels like an epic one, especially when John Smoltz is calling the game.

Buehrle never seemed too concerned about any of that. Get the ball. Pitch. Get the ball. Pitch. I’m sure he was playing the mental game in his own way, I’m sure he wanted to throw the right pitches in the right spots.

But I also think he knew himself; he had a remarkable sense of self-awareness. He knew that he was not getting a lot of strikeouts. He knew that he would likely give up a lot of hits—four times, he gave up more hits than any pitcher in the league.

And he didn’t worry too much about it, because:

1. He was a great fielder, so he trusted himself and his teammates to get out of jams with their gloves.

2. He had such an absurdly good pickoff move—and he was so fast to the plate—he knew that nobody would dare try to steal a base on him.

Knowing those two things seemed to give him a free-flowing confidence that oozed out of him whenever he pitched. He boldly pitched and was unafraid of the result. Maybe the guy would hit a single. So what? Buehrle induced more double plays than any pitcher this century—and he started a bunch of those himself. Maybe the batter would hit a home run, Buehrle gave up a bunch of those, but, again, so what? It’s not like Buehrle could be anybody else. He wasn’t going to suddenly throw Verlander’s fastball or Halladay’s cutter. When you pitch like Mark Buehrle, you give up home runs. C’est la vie. Who’s up next?

Dustin Pedroia (14.6%)

Played for Boston from 2006 to 2019.

If you look at Dustin Pedroia’s Baseball-Reference page, you will see his height listed at 5-foot-9.

Dustin Pedroia was not 5-foot-9.

Dustin Pedroia was also not 5-foot-8. He was also not 5-foot-7.

I once began my Sports Illustrated column this way:

I did have one person tell me, “If I told you how short Dustin Pedroia really is, without spikes on, you wouldn’t believe me.”

This seemed an odd thing to say, since I’ve stood over Pedroia in interviews—I like to tell people I’m 5-foot-9, even if I’m not—and I, indeed, did stand OVER him. He was a tiny and muscular man with below-average tools and way-above-average soul. He swung from his heels but rarely struck out. He couldn’t really run, but he’d steal you 20 or 25 bases. He was so small that people wouldn’t even tell you his actual height, but he’d smash doubles off the wall and bang his share of balls over it He had a so-so arm, but he was great on the double play and won four Gold Gloves.

In his MVP season, 2008, he hit .326, led the league in doubles, stole 20 of 21 bases, led the league in hits, won the Gold Glove, won the Silver Slugger*. He was about that good in four other years—he might even have been BETTER in 2011.

*I’ve got a big piece coming on the Silver Slugger Award. I think it will be fun! All part of the new JoeBlogs… coming soon!

Jimmy Rollins (22.2%)

Played for Philadelphia, the Dodgers and the White Sox from 2000 to 2016.

There are five players in the expansion era who had 500 doubles and 100 triples in their careers. How many of them can you name? I’ll wait…

….

….

OK, I’m done waiting. The five, in order of total hits, are:

1. Paul Molitor

2. George Brett

3. Robin Yount

4. Johnny Damon

5. Jimmy Rollins

Rollins has more than 300 fewer hits than Damon… and almost 900 fewer hits than Molitor. It’s the strangest thing: Rollins had more doubles in fewer at-bats than Rickey Henderson, Andre Dawson, Jeff Bagwell or Gary Sheffield, to name but a few. He had more triples in fewer at-bats than Molitor, Ichiro or Dave Winfield. Heck, he had more home runs in fewer at bats than Robbie Alomar or Tim Raines.

What Jimmy Rollins did not do was hit singles. Among the 87 players in baseball history with at least 10,000 plate appearances, Rollins’ 1,598 singles ranks him near the bottom, with a whole bunch of people who don’t look much like him. It probably wouldn’t surprise you to know that the 16 players with the fewest singles on the list are:

1. Mike Schmidt

2. Jim Thome

3. David Ortiz

4. Eddie Mathews

5. Frank Thomas

6. Darrell Evans

7. Graig Nettles

8. Barry Bonds

9. Dwight Evans

10. Reggie Jackson

11. Babe Ruth

12. Fred McGriff

13. Bobby Abreu

14. Luis Gonzalez

15. Ernie Banks

16. Ken Griffey Jr.

What the heck is Jimmy Rollins doing at 17th on THAT list? Those top 16 were all sluggers, RBI men, swing-for-the-fences or swing-and-miss types. I mean, there’s Reggie. There’s Junior. There’s Schmidt. There’s the Thomenator. Rollins was a leadoff hitter, for crying out loud. He was fast enough to steal 40-plus bases four times in his career, leading the league once. He was 5-foot-7 and maybe 170 pounds.

And yet he didn’t walk. And he didn’t hit singles.

JRoll was just a slightly odd player; it’s hard to get a good read on him. He was a great defender, he had all those extra-base hits, he was a key to two World Series teams, he was a leader, and I think Philadelphia really loved him. He seems to be making small but steady gains in the Hall of Fame voting as people try to come to grips with his baseball legacy.

Bobby Abreu (25%)

Played for Houston, Philadelphia, the Yankees, the Angels, the Dodgers and the Mets from 1996 to 2014.

In the end, can we escape our gut? I could make every statistical argument in the world for Bobby Abreu as a Hall of Famer. But, somehow, for some reason, I never quite feel like doing it.

I mean, Abreu had it all. Power. Speed. Patience. Through age 34, he was a .300/.400/.500 career hitter. He walked 100-plus times eight years in a row, and do you know how many other players have done that? Two. One was Frank Thomas. The other was a Depression Era walk machine named Max Bishop, who played for the old Philadelphia Athletics and walked 100-plus times every year from 1926 through 1933. Bishop also had one of the game’s all-time great nicknames. They called him “Camera Eye.”

I tried to give Bobby Abreu a nickname, too—I called him MBGPIB, pronounced “Mbgpib.” It stood for “Most Boring Great Player in Baseball.” Every Bobby Abreu at-bat felt like another watching of “A Wrinkle in Time.” Every Bobby Abreu at-bat felt like a Kevin Stefanski press conference. Every Bobby Abreu at-bat felt like a reopening of Al Capone’s vault.

The nickname, despite its catchiness, did not catch on, and it wasn’t fair to Abreu, who played every day and got on base and crashed extra-base hits and stole bases and often played a great outfield (before he seemed to shy away from walls). But, yeah, part of the Hall of Fame is that feeling in your gut, and he just didn’t spark that, for whatever reason. It’s not fair.

Félix Hernández (25%)

Played for the Mariners from 2005 to 2019.

When we talk about the Hall of Fame here, we talk A LOT about timing.

Timing is, to me, by far the most underappreciated part of the Hall of Fame process. Some players, like Catfish Hunter, have great timing—they get on the ballot at exactly the right time and get voted in. Some players, like Luis Tiant, have terrible timing. They get on the ballot at exactly the wrong time, and they never gain any momentum in the voting.

I think Félix Hernández might have excellent timing.

There is a chance that only 12 players this year will advance on to next year’s ballot. It will likely be between 12 and 14, depending on: (1) If Carlos Beltrán gets elected; and (2) If K-Rod manages to keep himself on the ballot for another year. If only 12 make it next year, that will be the lowest carryover total since 2009.

And here’s the thing about the 12 who carried over in 2009: Eight of them are now in the Hall of Fame:

• Andre Dawson was voted in by the BBWAA.

• Bert Blyleven was voted in by the BBWAA.

• Lee Smith was voted in by the veterans committee.

• Jack Morris was voted in by the veterans committee.

• Tim Raines was voted in by the BBWAA.

• Alan Trammell was voted in by the veterans committee.

• Dave Parker was voted in by the veterans committee.

• Harold Baines was voted in by the veterans committee.

The four carryovers not yet voted into the Hall of Fame include Tommy John, Mark McGwire, Don Mattingly and Dale Murphy. All of them, with the current PED exception of McGwire, still have a reasonable shot of getting elected someday soon.

Here’s the point: When the ballot thins out, as it did in 2009, players get a much better look than they do when the ballots are overrun. Luis Tiant got swamped by a torrent of 300-game winners coming on the ballot. Johan Santana and Kenny Lofton couldn’t get anybody to pay attention to them because those mid-2010s ballots were bonkers.

King Félix won just 169 games in his career. Do you know how many starting pitchers over the last 35 years have made it to a second ballot with fewer than 170 wins? One. Smoke Stewart in 2001. He got 7.4% of the vote. And even Stewart was a reliever for the first half of his career.

Other than Stewart, the top vote getters for pitchers with fewer than 170 wins:

1. Jim Abbott, 13 votes, 2005

2. Johan Santana, 10 votes, 2016

3. Tim Lincecum, 9 votes, 2022

4. Bret Saberhagen, 7 votes, 2007

5. Darryl Kile, 7 votes, 2003

I mean, it’s rough out there for the sub-170-win pitchers—dominant pitchers like Jake Peavy, Dan Haren, Jose Rijo, these guys didn’t get any votes at all.

But King Félix is looking at a much longer runway. There are a couple pitchers on the ballot—Buehrle and Andy Pettitte—who have quite a few more wins than he does, but neither of them won a Cy Young, and neither of them sparked that aura of dominance that Hernãndez did.

And here’s the thing: Nobody’s coming on the ballot in the foreseeable future who will clearly be better than King Félix. There are no Tom Seavers or Jim Palmers or Steve Carltons on the horizon. Cole Hamels joins the ballot next year, and he has his own strong case—particularly because of his 2008 postseason work—but I don’t think he outshines King Félix. Who, then? Jon Lester was really good. but, no, not quite there. Rick Porcello? David Price? Stephen Strasburg? Corey Kluber?

No… King Félix will be absolutely the best pitcher on the ballot until 2029, when Zack Greinke comes on. That’s three more years to win people over to his case. Keep an eye on the King.