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Feature photo by Jeffrey Hayes. Wikimedia Creative Commons License.
We’re back with the second half of this year’s Future Hall of Fame Hitters breakdown, picking up right where we left off last time. If you missed that one (or need a refresher on the methodology), covering younger players up through age 31, you can catch up on it here! Today, we’re looking at the much more established players.
The first part of the starting pitcher piece should hopefully be coming out by the end of this week as well; once again, if you’d like to be notified right when it happens, you can subscribe to the Hot Corner Harbor email list below! The only emails I send on it are when a new article gets published, so it’s a minimal load on your inbox (and if you are subscribed but aren’t seeing them in your inbox, make sure to check your spam folder).
Age 32: 48.7 WAR Median; 79.46% of all players at this mark elected
Active Players: Mookie Betts (75.2 Wins Above Replacement)
Manny Machado (61.7 WAR)
José Ramírez (57.6 WAR)
Bryce Harper (54.0 WAR)
To kick things off, we finally have our first players above the overall Hall of Fame median. Mookie Betts has been here for a couple of years now, and I think that he’s far enough over the line now that even if he has a sudden and sharp, Andruw Jones-style drop-off in his play, I think he still makes it into the Hall. Well… technically, I guess that kind of collapse didn’t even stop Jones himself, given that he was finally elected to Cooperstown this year, but I think this hypothetical Collapse-Betts would make it in much more quickly than Jones, possibly even first ballot. Most of it is that he’s better overall than Jones. But I also think there’s a certain level of narrative building that needs to happen once a player hits the statistical profile of a Hall of Fame, a sort of mythologizing that helps to win over the stingier voters, and that can take a little bit of time. But I think once you reach the point where even the less plugged-into-Hall-history voters start describing a guy as “Future Hall of Famer”, it’s basically the end result of that process. I think we’re about at that point with Mookie now.
In contrast, Manny Machado might need a couple more seasons, since he just passed the median career WAR for Hall of Fame position players last year. If he had that sudden collapse in 2026, I think he’d probably have to settle for an Andruw-like crawl to the Hall. But I don’t think it will take too much longer to reach the next stage of the narrative-building. He’s already starting to reach some big milestone numbers, like passing 2000 hits and 350 home runs this past season. A couple more big seasons will speed things up even more, but even a normal drop-off and a few seasons of stat-padding at the end will probably be more than enough to solidify his first-ballot status.
José Ramírez looks likely to be our next player to cross the Overall Hall Median, although his former teammate Francisco Lindor could challenge him there. Either way, Ramírez should make it this year, if he plays anywhere close to his last few seasons and avoids injuries. I think that exceptional consistency has also done a great job of narrative-building for his case; I’ve seen more and more people talking up things like his run of eight top-ten finishes in MVP voting in the last nine seasons, or his 30 homer-30 steal prowess. And like Machado, he’s starting to hit the big, round numbers: 300 home runs and 1000 RBI should come this year. Even if he does slump or miss a lot of time in 2026, he’s not on a tight deadline or anything. He’ll have plenty of opportunities to come back and pick up those final three-and-a-half Wins.
While he’s a solid fourth place in this quartet, I think Bryce Harper has established his merits pretty clearly as well. Even if the other three have outdone him, I just don’t think you can retell the last decade and a half of baseball without him. For example, did you realize that Harper has twice as many MVP Awards as Betts, Machado, and Ramírez combined? That sounds wrong, and a lot of that is just due to bad timing on the other three’s parts, but it is still true. Harper’s injury history seems to have slowed him down a lot more than the other three, but he still might be capable of ripping off one more of those great years. And even if he can’t, like José, he still has plenty of time left to string together good seasons and finish the climb to the Hall median.
We actually have three interesting runner-up cases here, and in a wild coincidence, they’re all separated by 0.2 WAR, at least by Baseball-Reference’s calculations. Xander Bogaerts leads the trio at an even 42 WAR, but his Cooperstown chances are probably the worst of the bunch. He’s simply been on the wrong trajectory the last few years. It’s hard to see a path to the Hall for him that doesn’t involve at least one season as good as his peak years back in Boston (likely more than that, but we’ll start with just one), and he just has not looked like that player in San Diego. Maybe this will be the year he has a full, healthy season and puts it all together again, but I’d have to see it to believe he still has a chance.
In contrast, Trea Turner is just behind him at 41.9, but his candidacy feels like it’s going the other way. 2025 was one of his best seasons ever, certainly his best since going to Philadelphia, and it brought him his second batting title and a fifth-place MVP finish. He’s still got some ways to go of course, but it’s much easier to see a way forward for a guy coming off a 5-Win season. It helps that Age 32 is the flattest increase in the Hall of Fame pace in years, so anything he can muster above 1.7 Wins will go to reducing that deficit. And of course, even if he doesn’t pick up all of the 20 WAR needed to match the Hall median… well, definitionally, half of inductees technically fall below that mark anyway. If you get close enough, you still might win voters over, even if it takes a few years. And if you’re a marginal case like that, having accolades like those batting titles and MVP finishes doesn’t hurt!
Matt Chapman is at the back with 41.8 WAR, but he’s actually been the best on a rate basis; he has over 100 fewer games than Turner and over 500 fewer than Bogaerts, thanks to not debuting until halfway through his age-24 season. And like Turner, Chapman is currently in the midst of a strong run of seasons, although his 2024 was stronger than his 2025. A couple more All-Star-level seasons would do a lot for his case. I also wonder if it helps that Chapman will have a pretty clear narrative once he does hit the ballot: he’s been a little under-awarded in things like All-Star selections and MVP voting, but he’s cleaned up in Gold Glove voting, winning five of those as well as two Platinum Gloves. More advanced metrics tend to line up with that evaluation, too. There’s a real chance he finishes as one of the ten or so best gloves at the hot corner in history. Even if Chapman falls a little short in the end, a strong narrative hook like that could keep him on the ballot and potentially help him build momentum over several elections.
Age 33: 50.45 WAR Median; 76.72% of all players at this mark elected
Active Players: Mike Trout (87.5 WAR)
Aaron Judge (62.3 WAR)
My first “Future Hall of Fame” article came out back in 2013, in the middle of Trout’s sophomore campaign (and in-part inspired by his, Harper, and Machado’s hot starts). He crossed the Overall Hall Median back in 2018, making this the eighth edition of the series where he was already above that mark. It’s unfortunate that he’s slowed down to the extent he has over the last few years, mostly because seeing a generational talent struggle deprives us of seeing great baseball, but also a little bit because it makes it harder to write about him in fresh ways. In a weird way, he’s kind of gone from “Part of Why I Started This Series” (I wanted to highlight how Hall of Fame careers looked in real time and compare it to modern young players to get a greater appreciation and contextualization for their amazing performances) to “The Other Part of Why I Started This Series” (I was a little sick of seeing other “Future Hall of Fame” articles that played all of their guesses so safe; like, of course we knew by 2013 that Derek Jeter and Albert Pujols and Ichiro Suzuki were going to Cooperstown, give me some more interesting predictions!).
Following that depressing Trout thought with one of the starkest contrasts in an age cohort: a running theme in these articles the last few years has been me saying “Wow, Aaron Judge looks like he’ll reach the Hall median despite a relatively late start to his career, but it’ll probably be a few years down the road because we can’t simply expect another 9-WAR season from him”, and then he goes and puts up a 9-WAR season again and I get to move the projection up a few more years. Anyway, that ends this year, because Judge’s 2025 MVP campaign actually got him the rest of the way over the Overall median, despite entering the season with over 8 Wins to go. It’s wild to think that last season was the first time he was ever above the Hall Median Pace, and he got the rest of the way there in just a single go. And while I am usually loath to admire a member of the Yankees, I have to say, it’s been kinda cool to see a player who I first saw way back during his Cape Cod League days go on a historic tear.
Our first honorable mention in this age group is Christian Yelich (45.1 WAR), who was once upon a time keeping above the Hall pace. It’s been quite a while since those days, as injuries have limited his numbers, but he keeps chugging along to some degree, following up his 2024 All-Star Campaign (albeit another injury-shortened one) with a 3.1-Win 2025 that actually saw him pick up some MVP votes. Ultimately, Yelich’s peak is just a little too light (unless he can somehow put together a really good and healthy season suddenly? Seems doubtful…), but it seems like he’ll be hanging around and adding to his numbers for a few years at least. Maybe a long run of good seasons into his late 30s will make him the kind of case that Veterans Committee voters love. There are still a lot of big “ifs” in that hypothetical, though.
I mentioned last time that catchers (even the ones in Cooperstown) are rarely above the Hall median, and have just been calling out the ones with high WAR totals when we come across them. To that end, I’ll mention Willson Contreras here. He’s pretty far behind pace at just 29.2 Wins (and his framing numbers don’t really help there), but again, catchers usually don’t keep to the pace anyway. Contreras is still productive, so there’s a good chance he adds to his offensive numbers, but he seems to be moving off catcher, which may negate any extra consideration he’d get. I also wonder if he’ll get any extra credit from voters for being a part of the historic 2016 Cubs? For a while, I thought that being a part of that squad would get a lot of guys bonus credit once they came up in Hall voting, but every other member of that core kind of flamed out (speaking of, Kris Bryant is the next player in this age group at 27.4 WAR, but his back issues seem pretty debilitating). Maybe Contreras (or Kyle Schwarber, if he hangs on until he reaches 500 homers or something?) will get some extra support from voters as one of the only ones to go on to a long career afterwards, but it’s also possible they just write off the entire group too.
Age 34: 54.25 WAR Median; 78.76% of all players at this mark elected
Active Players: Nolan Arenado (57.8 WAR)
Nolan Arenado had a pretty rough 2025. He came into the year already above the Hall Pace for his next two seasons and almost within striking distance of the Overall Median, all while playing for a team that had finished second place in arguably the most open division in baseball. It seemed like a good chance for a rebound year. Instead, he ended up getting hurt and seeing a drop in his play, then missing a large chunk of time when he got hurt again while trying to play through the first injury, leading to mediocre end results on a Cardinals team that wound up collapsing and turning to their first fire-sale in ages. He’s at the age where injuries might make you a little nervous, but hopefully an offseason of rest and healing plus a clean start out west with the Diamondbacks gets him another good season or two to really sew things up.
But at the same time… is he already a Hall of Famer? Obviously, you’d take a few more good seasons as insurance in any case, but realistically, if his next seasons are disappointing and he ends up retiring, would that be enough to sink his case? Practically speaking, the difference between a 58-Win player and a 61-Win player is negligible (especially given that at least part of that shortfall was because Arenado missed a large chunk of his age-29 season to the Pandemic). And while historically dual-threat third basemen have gotten overlooked by Hall voters, things like Scott Rolen’s election make me think that’s changing. Even then, Arenado has hardly been overlooked in the moment, either; he’s got 8 All-Star selections, 5 Silver Sluggers, 10 Gold Gloves (plus another 6 Platinum Gloves), 6 different Top-10 finishes in MVP voting, over 350 home runs, likely 2000 hits this year… that kind of resume simply does not sound like your traditional “overlooked” Hall candidate. I suppose there’s no sense in settling on a definitive answer just yet when there’s so much still up in the air. But for now, I do think it’s at least an interesting hypothetical, which is part of the point of this series: can you pinpoint the exact moment a player crosses over from “Maybe a strong Hall of Fame candidate?” to “Definite Hall of Famer”. Has Nolan Arenado hit that point yet, or no?
Our runner-up here is another veteran with a large contract who was moved this offseason, Marcus Semien (49.2 WAR). He’s actually going to be an interesting case to keep an eye on. We’re basically beyond the steep part of the Hall of Fame pace; from here on out, there’s only one more season left where it increases by more than 2 Wins. If Semien can play as well as he has the last two seasons and stay healthy in Queens, he’s going to catch-up to that WAR line pretty quickly. And if he can surprise everyone and put up one more season like his stretch from 2021 to 2023, he’s basically made up the entire difference all at once.
“One more great season or two-to-three good ones” can be a tall ask for a player in his mid-30s, but it’s not unthinkable either. I think it does kind of make Semien an interesting parallel to Arenado in some other ways, sort of like the flip side to the question of “at what point does a star player become a future Hall of Famer?” Because unlike Arenado, I definitely don’t think he’s there yet… but that does highlight the differences between them. Is it the awards? Semien is definitely much less decorated, with just 2 Gold Gloves and Silver Slugger Awards, 3 All-Star seasons, and exactly 3 third-place finishes in MVP voting (one of which was not an All-Star season, interestingly). If Semien popped off and had one more third-place MVP season in him, would that really be enough to move me to “that guy’s a definite Hall of Famer”? If he had just started his career at second base (where he’s been a great fielder) instead of shortstop (where he was kinda mediocre), would we have spent more time thinking of him as a dual-threat, offense-and-defense guy, and laying the ground for a Hall of Fame narrative? I have no idea. Again, I suppose this question is a case of “we’ll cross that bridge when we get there”, there’s a chance Semien’s age catches up to him and invalidates all of this. But the in-the-moment wondering is I think one of the interesting things of watching a long-running career and its story slowly develop and take shape in the public consciousness in real-time.
And while we’re mentioning catchers, J.T. Realmuto is sitting at 38.7 WAR. That’s a little surprising to me, but I guess it makes some sense; there actually aren’t that many catchers who stick at the position as long as he has while hitting as well as he does, for example. But I suspect he’s still got quite a ways to go; “Maybe Top-25 All-Time at the Position?” is still pretty light for a Cooperstown resumé. Maybe if he had a few more All-Star seasons and was a little higher up that list, but his peak seems kinda light as of right now.
Plus, Catchers have traditionally struggled to get into the Hall, and at this point, I think there are just too many better backstops he’d need to jump in line to be considered, like Bill Freehan or Thurman Munson (or, if we want to go more recent, it would be cool to see pitch framing stars like Russell Martin and Brian McCann get a second look). But it is interesting that, even if he was elected right now in some bizarre hanging-chad ballot mix-up or something, Realmuto probably wouldn’t be the worst catcher in the Hall. That really hasn’t been how I’ve thought of him up until now. And if he adds a couple more solid seasons to his resume and has a big October moment along the way (or something like that), he might actually look like a Jack Morris- or Bill Mazeroski-style candidate. That’s a pretty specific series of events that’s not especially likely to happen… but it’s a less unthinkable scenario than I gave him credit for before looking at his numbers.
Age 35: 55.95 WAR Median; 76.72% of all players at this mark elected
Active Players: Freddie Freeman (64.2 WAR)
Despite only having one player over the Hall median here, we’ve got a lot of names to cover for this age bracket. And at the top of it all is our fifth active player who’s already above the Overall Hall Median, Freddie Freeman. Freeman is another one who only joined that club last season, but it was closer to a technicality, as he entered the season within half a win of his goal and stormed past that target. I’m not really sure how many more voters he needs to convince at this point, he already seems like a pretty safe bet for a first-ballot induction, something that I’m sure will only solidify further as he enters the milestone chase portion of his career (most notably, he’s the active leader with 2431 hits, so a chase for 3000 seems likely).
Our runner-up is technically below the median pace, but I don’t think it’ll matter very much for a variety of reasons. Jose Altuve sits at 53.4 WAR, close enough that one All-Star level season could catch him back up to the Hall Pace, but a few more good seasons would also do the trick. He’ll certainly be around and playing those seasons anyway, with just over 600 hits to go to 3000 (2388) and four more years on his current contract. And like I was saying during the Nolan Arenado blurb, this feels like a case where finishing slightly below the median isn’t going to drag a player’s chances at induction down too much. Again, half of the Hall is below the median anyway, so finishing at the top end of the bottom half doesn’t seem that far away from being in the dead center.
But also, there are a lot of other factors that look like they’re going Altuve’s way. If he does stick around and make it to 3000 hits, that will obviously be a big deal. But even if he falls a little short, he’s still extremely well-decorated, with his awards cabinet including three batting titles, 7 Silver Sluggers, 9 All-Star selections, an MVP Award and three other top-10 finishes, two World Series titles and a boatload of other postseason moments, and so on. And that’s all in addition to him being one of the more memorable players of the 2010s; the “Fame” part of the Hall of Fame still matters to some extent. Additionally, given Carlos Beltran’s election to the Hall this year, it seems like being a member of the 2017 Astros won’t sink his chances beyond the chance of a possible one- or two-year delay.
Also, any concerns about him being just short of the median may all be over nothing anyway. Altuve’s WAR estimates actually have a pretty major split based on how you evaluate his defense; while Baseball-Reference thinks his fielding the last few years has been rather atrocious, Fangraphs’s version thinks it’s just been regular levels of bad. That may not sound like much, but it actually results in a swing of over 6 Wins between the two, putting him at 60.0 fWAR. I’m not going to completely redo my calculations and make a second Fangraphs’ version (at least, certainly not on short notice for this year), but I think we can take it as a sign that Altuve is generally about where he needs to be right now.
Things are a little more complicated for the next player on the list, Giancarlo Stanton (46.8 WAR, and unlike Altuve, there isn’t really a major divergence across versions). I really don’t know what to make of his chances, and I keep going back and forth the more I think about it. At his peak, he certainly felt like a Hall of Famer, a larger-than-life figure who loomed over the game both literally and figuratively as he mashed home runs. But then, I go back and look at his stats, and wow, that peak was a lot shorter than I remembered: basically just his Marlins years and his first season in the Bronx (and even in that stretch, there were a few “just okay” years sprinkled in). It feels like he had a ton of big, star-making moments, both in and out of that span, like playoff successes and All-Star highlights and all that. And he does have those, but tallying them up, it’s again less than I had in my memory: a Home Run Derby victory and an All-Star Game MVP in just 5 selections; some good playoff numbers and even an ALCS MVP, but also some stretches of injuries and ineffectiveness; an MVP season in 2017 and a second-place finish in 2014, but only three other seasons where he got even a few down-ballot votes.
Again, definitionally, at least some Hall of Famers have to fall below the median. But is Stanton worthy of that? I think those types of guys typically need some sort of extra credit in their favor, and I think that you could argue that he deserves some amount of it for all those things that I listed… but is it enough to get him the rest of the way?
The other issue here is that, while Stanton is getting older, he can still be quite good when he’s healthy enough to hit the field! He was worth nearly 2.0 bWAR last year despite missing over 80 games on the season, and still managed to mash 24 homers. And on that note, he’s sitting at 453 homers, more than any active player (and it’s not even close, Trout is the only other guy within 50 of him, at 404). He has a very real chance at 500 homers, and that does seem to matter to voters (as long as you don’t get caught for PEDs, of course). It feels like there’s still a lot of uncertainty in where he’ll land, but I can imagine an upper end scenario where he finishes with a WAR in the low-to-mid-50s and comfortably over 500 homers. Would that be enough for Cooperstown? You may disagree, but historically, “corner-position guy who hit really well and got a lot of homers, but had an underwhelming career value because that was kind of all he did” is an archetype with quite a bit of success among Hall voters. Among others, you’ve got Ralph Kiner, Jim Rice, Fred McGriff, Orlando Cepeda, maybe guys like David Ortiz or Tony Perez or Bill Terry or Harmon Killebrew if you want to stretch the definitions a little bit… The bigger point is, if Stanton is coming up short, it looks like it still might be in a way that doesn’t totally rule out his chances. Maybe it’ll take him a few times on the ballot, but I think even creeping his way just over 500 home runs guarantees him, at the minimum, the full ten years on the writers’ ballot plus a few shots with the Veterans Committee, and who can say how things will develop from there?
The next two players aren’t really serious candidates, but I wanted to talk about them at least a little. Thanks to his resurgent 2025 campaign, George Springer (42.3 WAR) finally claimed the fourth spot in this age bracket, passing Jason Heyward (41.5 WAR) as well as the recently-minted broadcaster Anthony Rizzo (40.4 WAR). And really, while there’s nothing official yet, Heyward’s playing days are looking pretty over as well, with no one picking him up after the Padres DFA’ed him last June. It’s kind of wild seeing that kind of movement on the leaderboard still happening, with Heyward exploding out to such an early lead (29.9 WAR through his age-25 season) and Springer not even debuting until halfway through his age-24 season. Actually, if you could staple Heyward’s five years in Atlanta (2010-2014) to Springer’s 2015-on, you might have a pretty decent Hall of Fame-level career between them. We’ll see how much longer Springer can keep this reinvention up, even if his odds of building a serious Hall case are still very minimal. I’m not really sure I have a larger point here other than wistful nostalgia.
And finally, we’ve got one more catcher to cover in Salvador Perez. His career 35.5 WAR is again low, but we’ve already established that doesn’t always matter for backstops. Perez has some impressive numbers to his case, like 5 Gold Glove awards and 303 homers (he became just the eighth catcher to reach the 300 home run mark last year, and he has a real shot to move up another three spots on the leaderboard this year). I still think he falls a little short of the Hall standards for catchers… but I think this is also a case where voters will go for him on the basis of those more intangible factors.
It’s a combination of things: Perez will almost certainly retire as a one-team star, one who played a key part in ending his long-suffering team’s three-decade title drought, at that. He’s got plenty of awards, including those Gold Gloves, another five Silver Sluggers, that World Series MVP, a Clemente Award, and nine All-Star Game selections. And whenever Perez reaches the ballot, it will very likely be coming on the heels of a Yadier Molina election. There’s a lot about catcher defense that’s still less explored, and I actually think Molina was good enough at it that I don’t mind him getting that extra credit from voters. Perez, from what we can tell, isn’t really close to Molina’s level… but like Yadi, Perez’s defensive reputation has still kind of outstripped the things that we actually could measure. Maybe it won’t be in his first year on the ballot, but eventually, I think Perez gets a little bit of a halo effect from Molina’s induction and builds momentum into Cooperstown. I might be totally misreading how much Hall voters like Perez’s case, but right now, that’s the sense I get seeing the more legacy-minded writers talk about him, and I bet that view won’t be uncommon among the electorate.
Age 36: 58.1 WAR Median; 79.46% of all players at this mark elected
Active Players: None
There’s no one over the Hall line for this age cohort, nor anyone particularly close. However, they will at least be represented in the 2026 season, as active WAR leader for the set Starling Marte (39.3) signed a one-year deal with Kansas City after Spring Training started. This has always been a rather thin set of players too, rather than a case of younger hotshots flaming out in their early 30s; even going back to my earlier versions of these lists, this age bracket was always just “How long can Elvis Andrus ride out the headstart he got from good seasons in his early 20s?” Sometimes, a random distribution of talent is uneven, it happens.
Age 37: 59.5 WAR Median; 82.41% of all players at this mark elected
Active Players: Paul Goldschmidt (63.8 WAR)
We finally complete our set of a half-dozen active position players above the Overall Hall Median with Paul Goldschmidt. He made it over the line back in 2024, so everything last season was just extra icing on the cake WAR-wise. And while Goldy’s 2025 wasn’t amazing, he was still a net-positive contributor to the Yankees, so he’ll be back this year in a part-time role. He’s not close to any major milestones like 3000 hits or 500 home runs, and even some of the minor ones (like 2500 hits or 400 homers) are probably out of reach without him playing in 2027 and even 2028.
That puts him in a no-man’s land that’s actually a little boring for 2026. I’m not sure that Goldschmidt will do anything that moves him up a tier or anything, but I still think that he’ll cruise into the Hall fairly easily whenever he does reach the ballot. Todd Helton looks like a kind of similar case numbers-wise, and he made it into Cooperstown relatively smoothly on his sixth try despite debuting in the latter years of the Great 2010s Ballot Logjam. I think Joey Votto is also pretty similar, and right now, I’d bet he goes in on his first ballot in 2029. If Votto has a low debut and spends a few years on the ballot, I’ll re-evaluate my Goldschmidt prediction, but I think it’s unlikely at the moment.
Since I looked back at retired players in the last set, I might as well bring it up here again. Second place after Goldschmidt is Justin Upton, which I had totally forgotten. Despite being the same age and both starting in Arizona, I don’t really think of them as overlapping, likely because Upton debuted so young and Goldschmidt relatively late. They really only had one full season together, 2012, before Upton was traded ahead of his free agency. And coincidentally, Upton’s final season in the Majors (which was already several years after his last full, productive season) coincided with Goldschmidt’s 2022 MVP campaign.
Age 38: 60.0 WAR Median; 81.65% of all players at this mark elected
Active Players: None
We have another age with no representatives. However, Andrew McCutchen signed a non-roster invite with the Rangers, so he could still appear this season. He kept above the Hall of Fame pace for some time, but that finally ended in 2019 after years of slowing down; right now, he sits at 49.0 career WAR. That’s probably not going to get the writers to elect him, but it might be enough to keep him on the ballot for a few years. Guys like Torii Hunter, David Wright, Dustin Pedroia, and Jimmy Rollins are all in that range and have gotten multiple tries in the last few years, at least. And if he hits the Veterans Committee sometime waaaay down the line, who can even say what will happen?
Also from this age group: Buster Posey, who’s set to debut on the Hall ballot next year. That kind of snuck up on me. You’d think the years of writing about McCutchen and Posey back-to-back in this context would have helped me remember that they were contemporaries from the same age-bracket, but that already feels like a completely different time.
Age 39: 60.4 WAR Median; 83.18% of all players at this mark elected
Active Players: None
Carlos Santana (39.3 WAR) is the last man standing here, and seems guaranteed to see at least some playing time this year after signing with the Diamondbacks. That’s impressive in its own right! But he has no real chance of catching up to the WAR Leader Emeritus for this age bracket, Evan Longoria, who finished shockingly close to the Hall median (58.9 WAR) and is set to debut on the 2029 ballot (which looks like it might actually be fairly crowded).
Age 40: 60.4 WAR Median; 82.41% of all players at this mark elected
Overall: 61.1 WAR Median; 83.96% of all players at this mark elected
Active Players: None
There were only two hitters in their age 40 season or above last year, Justin Turner (38.7 WAR) and Yuli Gurriel (12.3 WAR, although if you account his pre-MLB days, his full career is pretty compelling!). Obviously, neither stands a chance of getting elected to Cooperstown, and it’s not even likely they’ll both play this year at the Major League level. But the fact that they made it to this age at all is pretty amazing when you think about it; after all, they’re the same ages as guys like Troy Tulowitzki, Ryan Braun, and Dustin Pedroia, all of whom have been retired long enough to actually hit Hall ballots. The modern game is less forgiving to older players than ever, and it’s a minor miracle they’ve fought against that current for so long.
And that brings the 2026 Hitters entry to a close. Once again, part one of the Starting Pitchers version should be following shortly, and you can subscribe below to get an email when that happens! Also, since you’ve made it this far, I’ll also mention that I have a separate email list for all of my non-baseball articles here.
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