Some Quick Thoughts on Predicting Active Players' Hall of Fame Chances

Since I write a lot about future Hall of Famers, especially among active players, I wanted to expand on some comments I left on William Metzger’s article on Jose Altuve’s Hall of Fame candidacy over at The Crawfish Boxes. Generally, my stance is that we can start talking about players being future Hall of Famers well before we normally do. Metzger does a good job of looking at what Altuve has to do to have Hall-caliber stats, but how likely a player is to do that is a different question.

As a simple example, I looked at every second baseman in history who was within 10 WAR of Altuve at the same age; specifically, that means anyone between 25 and 35 WAR by the end of their age-28 season. That leaves us with a group of 22 other players; two of them are the also still-active Robinson Cano and Dustin Pedroia.

Of those 20 retired examples to work from, 12 went on to the Hall of Fame. Simple enough, then, right? Altuve has something like a 60% chance to stay on a Hall-pace.

But the remaining 8 players aren’t a list of players who started strong and then broke down, like you might think. One of them is Pete Rose, who has…let’s say some mitigating factors that you might be aware of, but he put up a Hall-quality back-half to his career, if nothing else.

There are a few other weird cases as well, though. For example, Larry Doyle walked away after a 3-WAR age-33 season to go manage a minor league team in Toronto closer to his home. Maybe he could have a few more good seasons if he stuck it out, but he didn’t feel like it, so we’ll never know. And then, there’s Fred Dunlap, who broke his leg on a slide during his age-32 season in 1891. However, it wasn’t the injury that ended things; it was the ensuing dispute with the team over (essentially) disability play for the injury that got him to walk away.

That’s not to say weird, unaccountable things couldn’t still spring up for Altuve. But, at the same time, we know that at least the Dunlap scenario won’t happen today, and Rose is the only gambling-related permanent ban in over seven decades. Despite the weirdness of all of those scenarios, and the low chance of them recurring, they still make up a significant portion of our Altuve comps, because there are so few players good enough to actually use as a comparison!

Then, three of the remaining five Hall-outsiders are Bobby Grich, Lou Whitaker, and Willie Randolph, all of whom had Hall-level numbers for their career but just didn’t get any electoral support. I know there are still large groups of people saying that they were snubbed, and they might still even get in via the Veterans Committee! But even if you don’t want to account for the unpredictable VC, they pretty clearly didn’t “fall apart” or anything; they held up their end of the deal and played well, the voters just didn’t see how good they were.*

*Also, there’s a question of whether Altuve can even be grouped with them anymore; he already has as many career All-Star selections as any of them, and he has as many top-ten MVP finishes as all three of them combined. If attention from fans and writers is what doomed that trio, it doesn’t seem like Altuve will be facing that issue, particularly if he plays as well as they did in their second career-halfs.

All told, that just leaves us with two stereotypical “Hall-trajectory player falls apart and plays himself out of Cooperstown” cases from the twenty players similar to Altuve, Chuck Knoblauch and Cupid Childs. There are actually more players in the “weird, unpredictable, non-injury stuff” category than there are these guys.

All of that gets me to my main point: players who are this good, this young, to the extent that someone like Altuve is, are in a class of their own. They’re more likely than not to finish out a career that gets them to Cooperstown, and even if they don’t make it to the Hall, almost all of them end up at least playing at a Hall-of-Fame-level the rest of the way. Being good but going unrecognized is about as common, or even more so, than totally falling apart. Just a thing to keep in mind when having “future Hall of Famer” discussions

50 Best Players Not in the Hall of Fame 2012, Part 4

For the second year, I’m participating in Baseball Past and Present’s 50 Best Players Not in the Hall of Fame project. First, I covered players still on the ballot. Then, I started on to the backlog of candidates. He’s the third part of the older candidates. Each player is listed with their teams (in order of games played), position, and Hall Rating from the Hall of Stats (which works similar to OPS+; 100 is the baseline for a Hall of Famer).


Sherry Magee, Phillies/Braves/Reds, LF, 109-Magee was one of the premier sluggers of his (early) time. Among players to debut before 1910, he ranks ninth in home runs with 83. He also ranks twelfth in slugging percentage in the same group. His 137 OPS+ (from a .291/.364/.427 batting line) puts him in the same territory as players like Will Clark, Todd Helton, Joe Medwick, and Al Simmons. Add in that he was a moderately above-average fielder in left, and you have someone that clears the Hall standards, with 55.8 bWAR and 73.2 fWAR. I would still put him in the Hall, but he’ll probably be one of the first to go next year when even more worthy candidates are added and only one or two are cleared off of this list.


Minnie Miñoso, White Sox/Indians/Senators/Cardinals, LF, 99-Miñoso is a little like Magee; he was good, but he might need to be one of the first to go next year when I need to add four or five more candidates. Also, with only twelve full seasons, part of his candidacy is dependent on assumptions (how he would have done if he got an earlier start without the Negro Leagues, how he would have done if his age was, in fact, reported wrong, which it might not have been, etc.).

In any case, he was still a good player. In his shortened career, he managed a 130 OPS+ thanks to a .298/.389/.459 batting line. In addition to being good at getting on base , he also managed 205 steals and played solid defense in left. Fangraphs gives him 58.2 WAR, while Baseball-Reference has him at 47.5.

Retired Numbers Series: Cincinnati Reds

As we enter into July, the Hall of Fame induction ceremony is right around the corner. And Barry Larkin, a more-than-worthy player, will finally see his name added in Cooperstown. With the history and importance behind such an event, it seemed natural to focus on his team next in the Retired Numbers Series.

The Reds are the oldest team I’ve covered yet (and the third oldest in MLB), meaning there’s a lot of history to cover. Let’s get to it.

50 Best Players Not in the Hall of Fame Ballot Explanations, Part 3

A quick continuation of explaining my ballot for the 50 Best Players Not in the Hall of Fame project. These players are the final nine from my first round of additions; again, I wrote on my ballot that I supported every one of these players becoming Hall of Famers. To see the earlier parts of my ballot, see Part 1 and Part 2.

Keith Hernandez, Cardinals/Mets/Indians, 1B - Hernandez isn’t like the now-common model of slugging first basemen, but he could still hit well and get on base (426 doubles to go with 162 homers, a .296/.384/.436 line, a 128 OPS+). On top of this, he’s arguably the best fielding first baseman of all-time; both Baseball-Reference and Fangraphs put him in the range of 12 to 13 wins just from his fielding. Going by Total Zone Runs, Keith Hernandez saved 117 runs, most all-time for first basemen (and really, only three others are close: Albert Pujols at 114, Todd Helton at 100, and John Olerud at 97. More on this in a bit). Overall, his career and peak seem to match the Hall’s standards: 61.0 bWAR, 61.8 fWAR, and 90.8 bWAR.


Shoeless Joe Jackson, Naps(Indians)/White Sox/Athletics, LF - As a side note, I always forget that Shoeless Joe spent more time in Cleveland than he did in Chicago. Anyway, I don’t really know that Jackson’s playing days are the problem for his candidacy. For example, his career batting line of .356/.423/.517 is good for a 169 OPS+, good for ninth all-time. Despite really only playing for nine full seasons, Jackson amassed 62.9 bWAR and 67.0 fWAR in his career.

Anyway, I get the feeling that Jackson’s problem is with his banishment. First of all, the Hall of Fame is not actually included in the gambling banishment. The Hall separately added a clause banning players on MLB’s banned list years afterwards. MLB’s ban just prevents these players from holding a position in MLB like player or manager.

But, more than that, the Hall of Fame is supposed to be a museum to remember the game’s best players. That applies to Jackson. At the very least, the guy’s been dead for over six decades. Let it go already; make it a lifetime ban. I feel like the Hall is losing more by not letting him in than he is by being kept out at this point.