Predicting Today's Future Hall of Fame Starting Pitchers, 2023 Edition (Tenth Anniversary, Part 2!)

In the ten years and eleven sets of articles that I’ve been looking at Future Hall of Fame odds for starting pitchers, there’s been a clear downward trend. In my piece last year, I even talked about the decline in the number of starting pitchers who were passing the median Wins Above Replacement for their ages and speculated about the causes.

Returning to the issue this year, things don’t look substantially better; we’re still pretty devoid of players who hit those marks, but looking at it once again, it definitely looks to me like it’s due to teams putting stricter workload limits on young pitchers. Compare things even to a decade ago: we had one pitcher in the league at all under the age of 22 last season, compared with nearly a dozen in 2012. The number of under-23 pitchers basically halved, the under-24s dropped, and so on.

I went and picked some other years from the 1990s and 2000s, and 2022 fell under basically all of them. There did seem to be something of a ceiling here, surprising; there weren’t uniformly more 22-year-olds throwing in 1990 compared to even 2012 (when discussion of innings limits were certainly more wide-spread). If anything, there seemed to be kind of a hard limit, and the quantity from year-to-year would vary below that; I suppose at a certain point, it’s difficult to justify throwing out more young arms than that soft limit just on a talent level. But the overall number of young pitchers went down, and the innings they were being given certainly went down. Sure, innings counts are down on the whole and I’m not positive if the effect is equal across ages, but the end results is still that there are definitely fewer young pitchers racking up 100 or even 200 innings in a season.

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Will it work at reducing injuries? I suppose there’s not really a way to tell other than waiting and seeing, but I will say, going back and looking at 22 year olds who threw 150-to-200 innings in a year sure does turn up a lot of non-famous names that ring a bell, either because they were supposed to be good but never stayed healthy or who were good for a bit but suddenly fell out of the game after 8 or 9 seasons, so… I don’t know, maybe the old methods weren’t working out so great.

Pitching in general just seems to be more in flux than hitting, even beyond just the immediate scope. But that makes it difficult to use a system like this, which is entirely based around precedent. And given that WAR is a counting stat, and young pitchers are playing less, it’s an immediate disadvantage that they basically spend their careers coming back from; it’s a big part of why “being successful in your 30s” has become basically a necessity for pitchers making it to Cooperstown (not even getting into how modern Hall voters are mostly ignoring all but the most obvious candidates). Of course, innings totals have been dropping at the top too, which might make putting up a big season and making up ground even harder too…

I’ll do my best to work to combat all of this, listing some of the major leaders in each age group even if they aren’t especially close to the Hall median line. Take the values then as more of a guide for what they need to do to reach the Hall, like “how long do they have to keep this up” or “how good do they need to be to stay in the discussion”.

As a reminder for how my methodology in this series works: first, I take every Hall of Fame starting player (so anyone who’s started in 10% or more of their appearances, and limited to just the post-1920 Liveball pitchers since the Deadball era was even more unrecognizable), and look at all of their career Wins Above Replacement totals* (Baseball-Reference version) at each age. Then, I take the median for each year, to form a sort of “Median Hall of Famer Pace” to follow. From there, I look at how many starting pitchers (with the same 10% limit) in history have been above the pace at each age, Hall member or not. I get the percentages for each age from just doing a simple calculation, (Number of Hall of Famers above the median pace) divided by (Total number of players above the median pace).

*Also, for pitchers, I only use their Pitching WAR, since their value as batters hasn’t typically factored into their Hall chances even before considering the new universal DH.

So (to make up an example with fake numbers), if there were 100 Hall of Famers, and their median WAR at age 30 was 40.0 Wins, then I’d look at how many players in history had 40.0+ WAR by the same age. Say it was 100 players total, with 50 of them being in the Hall, we’d say players with over 40.0 WAR at that age have a 50% chance of induction. Also, I group players by their listed age the previous season, so players in the age 20 group will be playing in their age 21 season in 2023.

With that all out of the way, let’s start looking at players:

Age 20: 0.9 WAR Median; 14.81% of all players at this mark elected
Age 21: 1.9 WAR Median; 10.28% of all players at this mark elected
Active Players:
None

There was exactly one player under the age of 22 who pitched at all in 2022: 21-year-old Simeon Woods Richardson, who made exactly one 5.0 inning start for the Twins. You’ll no doubt be shocked to learn that wasn’t enough to get him 2 full WAR. There aren’t usually a lot of pitchers this young seeing innings in the majors, but there are usually at least more than this. Maybe this is a particular extreme brought about by the pandemic and the special havoc it wrought on player development (remember, it canceled the entire minor league season and most college and high school seasons on top of shortening the Major league schedule), but I also wouldn’t be shocked if we just don’t see this number tick back up much over the next few years.



Age 22: 4.0 WAR Median; 14.74% of all players at this mark elected
Active Players:
None

No one over the median here, but we do at least have players with meaningful playing time now! Hunter Greene (2.3 WAR) and Reid Detmers (2.1) both made it over the halfway mark.



Age 23: 6.5 WAR Median; 15.09% of all players at this mark elected
Active Players:
None

You can already start to see the effects of the later call-up times. 6.5 Wins is a tough but manageable total to reach for a player who was called up at 21 or 22; for players who start at 23, it basically means your first year needs to be Cy Young caliber. For example, Spencer Strider just had a great first year and managed a close second-place finish in the Rookie of the Year voting thanks to 202 strikeouts and a 2.67 ERA (152 ERA+), but also didn’t really compile enough innings (131.2) to enter the Cy Young conversation. As a result, he was worth 3.7 WAR, meaning he’ll basically need to stay healthy and put up a full Cy Young campaign in 2023 to pass the Hall median.



Age 24: 9.8 WAR Median; 16.83% of all players at this mark elected
Active Players:
None

Or take Alek Manoah. His debut half-season in 2021 was solid, strong enough to pick up some Rookie of the Year votes. He followed that up last year with an All-Star campaign that saw him finish third in Cy Young voting. And all of that gets him… 8.6 WAR, just short of the Hall median for his age. Closer Emmanuel Clase is 2 Wins behind Manoah, but relievers get a different Hall standard than starting pitchers, so our actual runner-up here is Clase’s teammate Triston McKenzie at 5.6 Wins.



Age 25: 12.35 WAR Median; 17.76% of all players at this mark elected
Active Players:
Julio Urías (12.8 WAR)


We finally have our youngest above-median player in the other third place Cy Young finisher from last season. It probably helps that Urías has been in the majors since 2016, allowing him some early totals to build off of. In fact, the only other pitcher within 200 innings of him is his Giants rival and the age-25 bracket runner-up, Logan Webb (8.4), but Webb is still trailing him by over 160 innings.



Age 26: 18.15 WAR Median; 26.39% of all players at this mark elected
Active Players:
None

Reigning NL Cy Young Sandy Alcantara is close enough here (16.7 WAR) that you can probably blame his miss on the shortened 2020 season; a healthy All-Star level season this year should be enough to get him on the next edition of this list. His former teammate Zac Gallen isn’t anywhere near that close, but is still second place here (12.5 WAR). Also, note that even for pitchers who are over the median here, we only just broke 25% odds for induction. In comparison, hitters over the line at this age (which is nearly 3 full WAR higher) are already looking at Hall chances over 56%.



Age 27: 21.55 WAR Median; 27.14% of all players at this mark elected
Active Players:
None

Germán Márquez (15.7) and Shane Bieber (15.3) lead here, but aren’t even up to Alcantara’s WAR total.



Age 28: 26.45 WAR Median; 34.55% of all players at this mark elected
Active Players:
None

Max Fried finished runner-up behind Alcantara in the Cy Young voting last year, making it his second top-five finish (after 2020). And yet, he’s still only at 17.1 WAR for his career, far enough away that even giving him a generous estimate for the missed time of the pandemic year still wouldn’t get him all that close to the line.



Age 29: 31.2 WAR Median; 38.00% of all players at this mark elected
Active Players:
None

Aaron Nola (29.9 WAR) is also close enough that he probably would make it if you credited him for the rest of 2020. But unlike Alcantara, he faces a much steeper climb next year, needing a 6.4 Win season in 2023 to get above the line. Granted, that’s not too far from his performance in 2022, but we’ll also need to wait and see if he sees a drop-off following his extended October workload. Luis Castillo (19.3) is a distant second place.



Age 30: 36.3 WAR Median; 52.78% of all players at this mark elected
Active Players:
None


Castillo’s new teammate Robbie Ray leads here, but he’s not even up to Castillo’s WAR totals yet (17.9). New Yankees’ mega-signee Carlos Rodón is even further behind (16.6).



Age 31: 41.2 WAR Median; 54.29% of all players at this mark elected
Active Players:
None

Gerrit Cole leads this age bracket with 33.7 WAR, putting him just over the halfway mark to median career WAR for the Hall. It’s probably worth mentioning, for those who haven’t realized it yet, that the median for starting pitchers is about 5.5 Wins above the median for hitters, which combined with the slightly slower start gives pitchers a pretty aggressive pace if they have to play catch-up. It’s why he hasn’t really made up much ground despite his solid run the last few years, and why I’ve more and more come to describe this in terms of being about who can stay effective the longest. Cole also has a pretty sizable lead over his nearest competitors, Kevin Guasman (19.7) and Marcus Stroman (19.6), but if one of them can have a strong run in their 30s, I suppose they could also move themselves into the conversation too.



Age 32: 44.7 WAR Median; 57.58% of all players at this mark elected
Active Players:
None

Madison Bumgarner is on top here with 33.3 WAR, and no, adding in his hitting value doesn’t help all that much (included, it gets him up to 38.1). I used to think that, given his postseason heroics, Bumgarner could build up enough of a case to win over voters if he held on until 200ish pitching wins and 45-50 WAR; maybe not a first-ballot case, but something to get him in on his final BBWAA ballot, or an early Veterans Committee one. His years in Arizona have been pretty rough though, which calls all of that into question. And not just because of the lower quality, but also because I’m not sure about his future once his contract ends after 2024; you can’t really pad your counting stats if no one wants to sign you. He’ll probably get at least one more chance after that if he wants to keep going, but that’s not really saying a lot given how desperate teams are to find pitching. At this point, I wouldn’t be shocked if Zack Wheeler (24.5 WAR) ends up ahead of him on the leaderboard. (Technically, Sonny Gray is between the two of them for the moment at 25.1 WAR, but he hasn’t been nearly as dominant as Wheeler the last three seasons, so I don’t expect that to last forever).



Age 33: 51.6 WAR Median; 82.61% of all players at this mark elected
Active Players:
None

Chris Sale (45.6 WAR) was ahead of the median line for a while, but between the pace’s relentless increase and Sale’s string of injuries (just 48.1 innings over the last three seasons), he’s fallen behind. If he can pick back up where he was in 2018-19, he’s of course got a chance (although it might take him a while to get back to the median given that the median pace doesn’t really drop off for two more years). And of course, for as rough as Sale has had it the last three years, it could always be worse: runner-up here is Stephen Strasburg (30.9 WAR), one of the few major league pitchers who has thrown fewer innings than Sale the last three seasons.



Age 34: 54.4 WAR Median; 82.61% of all players at this mark elected
Active Players:
Clayton Kershaw (73.1 WAR)

For the first time since waaaayyyy back in the age 25 bracket, we have a player over the Hall median, and it’s a teammate of Urías at that. Kershaw also serves as our first of four pitchers who’s already surpassed the career Hall median WAR for starting pitchers, although I think just about anyone could have told you that. Is there anyone at this point who would seriously argue against his induction? I feel like even if he retired tomorrow, he’d still get over 90% of the vote on his first ballot. But until he does decide to hang it up, we get to see him start hitting big milestones over the next few seasons (200 pitching wins should come this season, and he might reach 3000 strikeouts this year with very good health)

We also have a notable runner-up here as well, in the form of Jacob deGrom. I have no idea what to make of his case. Despite his late start (his Rookie of the Year 2014 season came at the age of 26), deGrom has still managed to put up 41.1 WAR so far. And that’s even with injuries and pandemics over the last three years; he’s only thrown 224.1 innings in the 2020s, but still added 8.5 WAR in that span, according to Baseball-Reference. If he can stay healthy and pitch at his current rate, reaching the Hall median won’t be an issue, but that pace is so good that even if he isn’t healthy, he still might make it! I mean, you’d still rather take the healthier option there just to be safe, but some careers just wind up kind of weird. And of course, on top of all of those possibilities he also only has 82 career wins. If he makes it to 70 career WAR and 2500+ strikeouts but only reaches 130ish wins, how will BBWAA voters react to that? There are enough statistically-minded voters at this point that he’d definitely have a voting bloc with that line, but how big would the hardline Pitching Wins counter-bloc be? Would they give him an exemption for peak success, in the vein of Sandy Koufax, or would they ignore him? We’re already multiple conditionals in at this point, so I’ll leave it there for now, but definitely expect to see his blurb here evolve in the coming years.



Age 35: 59.85 WAR Median; 95.00% of all players at this mark elected
Active Players:
None

We’re right back to no players above the median, although you might note that the pitchers over the mark here are basically “the most obvious Hall of Fame choices plus Roger Clemens”, so this mark is really just for the best of the best anyway. I don’t think Lance Lynn (31.4 WAR) will make it here; his 2019-2021 run looked like it could be the start of a “late bloomer” arc, but I’d definitely want to see a rebound from his rough 2022 before considering that possibility any further.

Yu Darvish (30.2 WAR) is right behind Lynn, and he might be an interesting candidate when he hits the ballot. Of course, part of that is that Darvish is still posting good seasons, but it also helps that he has a confounding factor in the form of his pre-MLB days. As I mentioned in the last article while talking about José Abreu, I think players with good performance in foreign leagues before coming to America should get some sort of extra credit towards their Hall of Fame cases. I mean, sure, the NPB isn’t as tough as Major League Baseball, but I still feel like Darvish throwing 7 seasons of 1.99 ERA should count for something when discussing his career, even if I don’t have an exact conversion rate just yet.



Age 36: 60.2 WAR Median; 82.61% of all players at this mark elected
Active Players:
None

Again, no one over the line here. Johnny Cueto leads with 38.7 WAR. Corey Kluber (right behind, at 34.7 WAR) might have a stronger argument on “peak value” thanks to his two Cy Young Awards, but I still can’t see him getting as much support as the one-and-done Johan Santana (who got just 2.4% of the vote back in 2018, less than half of what’s needed to stay on the ballot).



Age 37: 61.3 WAR Median; 82.61% of all players at this mark elected
Active Players:
Max Scherzer (70.7 WAR)

Our third pitcher who qualifies as “on pace” is another pitcher who I’m not sure will have any detractors come his time on the ballot. Scherzer is once again already over the median WAR for starters in the Hall, and while he could theoretically accrue enough negative WAR to drop below the mark, I just can’t see that changing anyone’s mind on his overall case. He’s firmly in the “just enjoy the next few years” category (although he’s already over 3000 strikeouts and 200 wins, so any further milestones are pretty far off).



Age 38: 62.05 WAR Median; 82.61% of all players at this mark elected
Active Players:
Zack Greinke (71.4 WAR)

I don’t know if Greinke is going to reach the vote percentages of Kershaw or Scherzer, since I think they’ll both be in the upper 90s and hard to top, but I still think he’s still going in on his first BBWAA ballot anyway. He’s another player that I’ve thought of as worth of induction for a while now but who has definitely locked down his election recently, where the last few years has been watching his case shift from just the more statistically-minded fans and writers, to the more average writers and voters starting to refer to him as “Future Hall of Famer Zack Greinke”. Like, I think his case won’t have Kershaw or Scherzer’s big stand-out hooks and it’ll be a little easier for the perpetual naysayers (always a frustratingly large chunk of the BBWAA electorate) to leave him off, but getting in with 80% of the vote still counts. And if you want a milestone to watch for in his final years, Greinke is currently 118 strikeouts away from 3000; that’s probably two seasons away based on his rate last year, but he did strike out 120 as recently as 2021, so it’s not totally out of the question for this year.

Also, Cole Hamels (58.0 WAR) has once again signed a minor league deal, this time with his hometown Padres. Hamels has only thrown one game in the past three years due to a myriad of injuries, so projecting anything from him this year seems premature, but it would be great to see him come all the way back from that. Also, it’s easy to forget, but he was still useful in his last full season back in 2019, and basically tracing the median Hall WAR in the years before that. I wonder if a strong comeback year or two here would give his case a strong narrative hook that wins him some more supporters?



Age 39: 63.5 WAR Median; 79.17% of all players at this mark elected
Active Players:
Justin Verlander (78.1 WAR)

Our final “on pace” player is the active leader in WAR for pitchers, Justin Verlander. Again, “will he make the Hall” just doesn’t feel like an interesting question at this point. If you want a real tough call, maybe try “will he last long enough to reach 300 wins”. Sure, he’s 56 away and he just turned 40, but he is the reigning AL Cy Young, so who knows? It would be kind of funny if, despite all of the changes to pitching and the constant hand-wringing about the death of 300 Wins, we somehow just keep having pitchers occasionally sneak into the club like that.



Age 40: 65.7 WAR Median; 79.17% of all players at this mark elected
Age 41: 66.8 WAR Median; 82.61% of all players at this mark elected
Overall: 67.2 WAR Median; 82.61% of all players at this mark elected
Active Players:
None

And we finally reach the two oldest pitchers in the league, Adam Wainwright (42.4 WAR) and Rich Hill (17.5 WAR). Who knows how much longer either of them has in the league (I think Wainwright has indicated that it might be his final year?), but they were both decent back-end starters last year (with Wainwright a little better than Hill), and if nothing else, there will always be teams looking for that should either of them decide to play in 2024 and beyond. The Hall median is almost certainly out of the question for both of them, but they’ve still had remarkable careers.

That brings to the end of the starting pitchers, but I might have another bonus Future Hall of Fame piece coming up soon. And if that falls through, I still have at least one more big post that I’d like to finish before the season properly begins. If you’d like to be notified when those go up, consider subscribing to the newsletter below!

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