Once again, we’re at the point in the offseason where I predict active players’ chances at making the Hall of Fame. And even more notably, this year marks the tenth anniversary of my first entry in the series, from all the way back in 2013! It doesn’t feel like it’s been that long, but it has.
And I guess part of the reason it doesn’t feel that long is that the Hall of Fame kind of moves at a glacial pace. For example, the youngest stars I wrote about back in 2013? They’re entering their age 30 season this year (and they’ve posted a remarkable track record in that time, but more on that later!). In fact, very few of the players from my first article have even reached a Hall ballot, since I only covered players 30 and under in that entry.
A number of those players have retired, sure (not all of them, though!), but it kind of serves as a real-time demonstration of how dramatically slow the Hall’s process is; you need to play for at least ten seasons (so even the 2013 thirty-year-olds likely needed a few more years to be eligible), then you need to wait five seasons after retiring, then you can finally be considered in that sixth year. I think the only names from those first articles to appear on the BBWAA ballot so far are Prince Fielder and Carl Crawford; how long has it been since you’ve thought about either of them?* You get a few more if you expand it the 2014 article, since I raised the bar to 35 that year, but on the other hand, that one also included Albert Pujols, who was of course so young that he was an All-Star as recently as last year!
*Side note that I just had to drop somewhere: I casually glanced at Crawford’s Wikipedia page to see what he’d been doing since retirement, and it is a lot to take in. The high points include things like his son going in the first round of the draft last year, and the record label he founded signing hip-hop superstar Megan Thee Stallion. The low points include a lot of violence and getting sued by Megan over that contract. I was expecting maybe one or two small notes, not all of that. Fielder didn’t even get a post-career section on his page, and he had a cooking show!
Anyway, with all of the sentimental stuff out of the way, let’s do a quick refresher of the method I use here. First, I take every Hall of Fame position player, 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 players 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).
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.
Let me know in the comments if you have any questions. Otherwise, let’s jump right in:
Age 20: 0.4 WAR Median; 23.91% of all players at this mark elected
Active Players:
None
There just really weren’t that many 20-year-old position players in the league last year. Only Francisco Álvarez and Ezequiel Tovar saw any playing time at all, totalling just 14 games and 49 plate appearances between them. That might sound normal, but it’s actually a little surprising, since the low WAR total helps offset the small player pool; in fact, 2022 is the first full season (so excluding 2020) since 2017 that we haven’t had an active 20-year-old who made it to the Hall median for the age!
Age 21: 2.0 WAR Median; 35.76% of all players at this mark elected
Active Players:
Julio Rodriguez (6.2 WAR)
Wander Franco (6.1 WAR)
Michael Harris II (5.3 WAR)
In contrast with the Age 20 bracket, Age 21 is already packed with over-the-line players. We of course have our two reigning Rookies of the Year in Rodriguez and Harris, plus Franco, who makes it despite really only having two half-seasons under his belt so far. And even that set is only scratching the surface here.
After them, you also have a pair of former first-round picks in Riley Greene and Corbin Carrol, who made it over halfway to 2.0 Wins in under 100 games (1.4 and 1.2, respectively), plus Gunnar Henderson (0.9) and Vaughn Grissom (0.8) just missing the halfway point despite neither hitting a major league roster until August (in fact, Henderson still maintains his Rookie status for 2023!). Given that the median bar is still fairly low for age-22 players, don’t be surprised if this age group has five or six names over the line when the next edition of the series rolls around.
