Before we get too far into the regular season, I’m going to add one more special edition update to this year’s Future Hall of Fame Series. However, if you missed the first few pieces in this series, you can start catching up on the Hitters here, and the Starting Pitchers here.
As I’ve said in the past, I don’t think it’s usually worth it to update my Future Hall of Fame predictions for closers every single season, in the way that I do for starters or position players. However, Billy Wagner’s induction this year seemed like a good excuse to revisit the topic; Wagner marks only the ninth closer in Cooperstown, and with such a small sample to build our Hall standards, I figured it was worth checking to see if things had shifted at all.
It also helps that I think Wagner will probably be the last closer added to the Hall of Fame for at least the foreseeable future. Now that he’s off the ballot, who’s the best reliever who isn’t already elected? Finding “the best X who isn’t already in” is usually a good way to determine a candidate who might start attracting new voters and building momentum for their case.
In fact, that’s actually what happened with Wagner himself; his first big jump in Hall polling came in 2020, which just so happened to come immediately on the heels of Trevor Hoffman, Mariano Rivera, and Lee Smith all being elected between 2018 and 2019. With all of those three out of the way, Wagner gained a few favorable comps in Cooperstown (mostly Smith and Hoffman), but perhaps more importantly, there was no obvious player that would make anyone say “Why should we put Wagner in the Hall if [this guy] isn’t in?”
So with Wagner no longer eligible, who takes up the mantle of “Best Closer Who Isn’t in the Hall of Fame”? It’s not totally clear, and any uncertainty in that answer is going to split momentum in a way that wouldn’t happen if there was a single obvious choice. But just about every potential choice has an additional big asterisk standing in their way on top of that.
A Baseball Blog - Scientific and Speculative Thoughts from Third Base
Friday, April 4, 2025
Wednesday, March 26, 2025
2025 Opening Day Astros Predictions
In honor of Opening Day tomorrow, I contributed my predictions for the 2025 Astros to The Crawfish Boxes’ Starting Nine! Go give it a look to see how everyone evaluated the team’s chances for this season. For posterity’s sake, I’ll re-post my blurb here, with a few extra thoughts:
It’s difficult to not feel like the 2025 Astros are worse on paper than the 2024 Astros. This was the most disappointing offseason for the team in recent memory, honestly probably since the mid-2000s? (Those early 2010 teams were bad, but most of the disappointment with them came from during the season rather than in between them.)
Trading Kyle Tucker made sense, but losing him a year before free agency made it sting more than other homegrown stars like Carlos Correa and George Springer actually leaving as free agents; it was like there was time to prepare yourself mentally with those, while this happened relatively all-at-once. Although speaking of that, we had another one of those cases in Alex Bregman leaving, but with the additional frustration of a brief window where it seemed like Houston might somehow manage bring him back on a short deal, hope that collapsed pretty rapidly. Ryan Pressly was dealt out, and Yusei Kikuchi and Justin Verlander signed elsewhere, all of which make sense in isolation but do bring back stark concerns of just how thin the pitching staff felt at times last year. Really, given the constant rumors swirling around Framber Valdez, it feels kind of shocking that there weren’t even more high-profile departures.
But on further reflection, there were some interesting additions. I keep forgetting that the team signed Christian Walker, since bringing in a big free agent clashed with the “everyone is leaving” vibes emanating the rest of the winter. Really, things weren’t nearly as dire as they felt at times. Isaac Paredes and Brendan Rodgers feel like they could be surprisingly solid pieces of a team this year (much has already been said about Paredes being a good fit for not-Minute Maid Park, and I feel like the Astros’ development side might be able to get more out of Rodgers* than the Rockies’), while Cam Smith^ and Hayden Wesneski feel like they could be longer-term pieces who still have a chance to make a big impact this year.
It’s difficult to not feel like the 2025 Astros are worse on paper than the 2024 Astros. This was the most disappointing offseason for the team in recent memory, honestly probably since the mid-2000s? (Those early 2010 teams were bad, but most of the disappointment with them came from during the season rather than in between them.)
Trading Kyle Tucker made sense, but losing him a year before free agency made it sting more than other homegrown stars like Carlos Correa and George Springer actually leaving as free agents; it was like there was time to prepare yourself mentally with those, while this happened relatively all-at-once. Although speaking of that, we had another one of those cases in Alex Bregman leaving, but with the additional frustration of a brief window where it seemed like Houston might somehow manage bring him back on a short deal, hope that collapsed pretty rapidly. Ryan Pressly was dealt out, and Yusei Kikuchi and Justin Verlander signed elsewhere, all of which make sense in isolation but do bring back stark concerns of just how thin the pitching staff felt at times last year. Really, given the constant rumors swirling around Framber Valdez, it feels kind of shocking that there weren’t even more high-profile departures.
But on further reflection, there were some interesting additions. I keep forgetting that the team signed Christian Walker, since bringing in a big free agent clashed with the “everyone is leaving” vibes emanating the rest of the winter. Really, things weren’t nearly as dire as they felt at times. Isaac Paredes and Brendan Rodgers feel like they could be surprisingly solid pieces of a team this year (much has already been said about Paredes being a good fit for not-Minute Maid Park, and I feel like the Astros’ development side might be able to get more out of Rodgers* than the Rockies’), while Cam Smith^ and Hayden Wesneski feel like they could be longer-term pieces who still have a chance to make a big impact this year.
Monday, March 24, 2025
Predicting Today's Future Hall of Fame Starting Pitchers, 2025 Edition (Part 2)
We’re back with Part 2 of the Starting Pitchers section of the Future Hall of Fame Series. We’ll once again be picking up right where Part 1 left off; if you missed that one or need to refresh your memory on the methodology, you can find it here. And for that matter, if you missed the Position Players portion of this update, you can find Part 1 here and Part 2 here.
I’m going to try and get one more piece finished for this year’s update, hopefully soon. If you would like to be notified right when that goes live, you can sign up for the Hot Corner Harbor mailing list using the box below (or in the similar box at the end of the article).
Age 29: 31.7 WAR Median; 38.78% of all players at this mark elected
Active Leader: Shane Bieber (17.7 WAR)
We have a couple of former Cy Young winners at the top of this group in Shane Bieber and Corbin Burnes (17.1 WAR). Both of them are pretty far off from Hall pace, in spite of those high peaks. Again, some of that is due to the specific quirks of bWAR, but only a bit; Fangraphs has both of them a little higher, but still only in the low 20s rather than high teens.
Since we’re at the end of the 20s, this seems like as good a place as any to talk about how the difference in quantity for modern pitchers really starts to add up. There are nearly 200 Liveball-era pitchers who have reached the 20 career WAR mark before their age 30 season, so way more than just the best of the best. Like I said earlier, part of the difference is that teams are more hesitant about calling up young arms than they used to be; there are a lot of debuts at Age 20 and 21 and even some 19s in that set of 200ish names, and 23s and later are harder to come by. But even among the pitchers who debuted at 23 (the same age that Bieber and Burnes got called up), you see a big difference. Just to give you a random mix of guys: Charles Nagy (debuted in 1990) got up to 1127.0 innings by this age, David Cone (1986) was at 1267.0, Andy Pettitte (1995) had 1449.2, Tim Lincecum (2007) was at 1411.2, Roy Oswalt (2001) sat at 1413.1, Jered Weaver (2006) was at 1320.1, Jose Quintana (2012) reached 1314.0, Jordan Zimmermann (2009) landed at 1094.0…
In comparison, Bieber is at 843.0, and Burnes is at 903.2. It’s not shocking that guys in the ‘80s and ‘90s threw more, but even seeing guys from a decade or two ago several hundred innings ahead is kind of shocking. Granted, some of that is external factors, like Bieber’s injury history, or Burnes taking several years to really stick in the majors… but that is part of the issue, right? Pitchers take longer to adjust to the modern game and aren’t trusted at young ages, they’re expected to go all out and wear themselves down more quickly, batters will adjust their entire games around driving up pitch counts and taking starters out of the game sooner… It all adds up in the aggregate. Looking at stuff like this is the kind of thing that makes me think future Hall voters will need a big shift how they think about these things.
Shohei Ohtani is also here with 15.0 WAR, but I already covered him back in the Hitters article.
I’m going to try and get one more piece finished for this year’s update, hopefully soon. If you would like to be notified right when that goes live, you can sign up for the Hot Corner Harbor mailing list using the box below (or in the similar box at the end of the article).
Age 29: 31.7 WAR Median; 38.78% of all players at this mark elected
Active Leader: Shane Bieber (17.7 WAR)
We have a couple of former Cy Young winners at the top of this group in Shane Bieber and Corbin Burnes (17.1 WAR). Both of them are pretty far off from Hall pace, in spite of those high peaks. Again, some of that is due to the specific quirks of bWAR, but only a bit; Fangraphs has both of them a little higher, but still only in the low 20s rather than high teens.
Since we’re at the end of the 20s, this seems like as good a place as any to talk about how the difference in quantity for modern pitchers really starts to add up. There are nearly 200 Liveball-era pitchers who have reached the 20 career WAR mark before their age 30 season, so way more than just the best of the best. Like I said earlier, part of the difference is that teams are more hesitant about calling up young arms than they used to be; there are a lot of debuts at Age 20 and 21 and even some 19s in that set of 200ish names, and 23s and later are harder to come by. But even among the pitchers who debuted at 23 (the same age that Bieber and Burnes got called up), you see a big difference. Just to give you a random mix of guys: Charles Nagy (debuted in 1990) got up to 1127.0 innings by this age, David Cone (1986) was at 1267.0, Andy Pettitte (1995) had 1449.2, Tim Lincecum (2007) was at 1411.2, Roy Oswalt (2001) sat at 1413.1, Jered Weaver (2006) was at 1320.1, Jose Quintana (2012) reached 1314.0, Jordan Zimmermann (2009) landed at 1094.0…
In comparison, Bieber is at 843.0, and Burnes is at 903.2. It’s not shocking that guys in the ‘80s and ‘90s threw more, but even seeing guys from a decade or two ago several hundred innings ahead is kind of shocking. Granted, some of that is external factors, like Bieber’s injury history, or Burnes taking several years to really stick in the majors… but that is part of the issue, right? Pitchers take longer to adjust to the modern game and aren’t trusted at young ages, they’re expected to go all out and wear themselves down more quickly, batters will adjust their entire games around driving up pitch counts and taking starters out of the game sooner… It all adds up in the aggregate. Looking at stuff like this is the kind of thing that makes me think future Hall voters will need a big shift how they think about these things.
Shohei Ohtani is also here with 15.0 WAR, but I already covered him back in the Hitters article.
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