Opening Day 2026 is fast approaching, but before we get there, I have one more major offseason piece to publish: my annual Future Hall of Fame Series! It feels like the last few editions have all been special occasions that beget nostalgia, like anniversaries or major milestones, but this year in contrast looks rather quaint in comparison; this entry isn’t a round number, and while one of this year’s two BBWAA inductees was once again a former inclusion in this series, it was Carlos Beltran, who already had a pretty solid case and was nearing the end of his career by the time he was featured here. There are still a few more guys on the ballot who retired too early for me to cover them here, but that number continues to drop every year. I’ll cover that when we get there, though. For now, let’s dive right in!
(Note: Once again, this piece got rather long, so I’ll be splitting it up into multiple parts, with the second half to follow next week. Be sure to check back for that! And if you’d like to be notified when that piece and the eventual pitcher pieces go live, a reminder that I also have an email list for Hot Corner Harbor that you can sign up for below!)
The Methodology
Before we start going over the players, let me give a quick explanation for how my system works. It’s a bit of a multi-step process.
First, I find the Median Hall of Fame Pace, to help give an idea of what a sort of generalized Hall of Fame hitter’s career “could” look like. That’s easy enough, just going through Baseball-Reference’s Stathead search, looking at every Hall of Fame position player, going age by age, and looking for the exact midpoint to find the median Wins Above Replacement for that age-season.* So, to use fake numbers for an example: if there were 25 Hall of Famers, we’d be looking for the WAR total of the 13th one, right in the middle, at age 23, then 24, then 25, and so on. Simple enough. These are the Medians that we’ll be comparing active players too; if a modern player is above that total, they have more WAR than half of the Hall of Famers did at the same age.
*Side note: since part of this series is to be predictive, I limit my numbers to just AL and NL stats, since it’s the most similar to the game today. Also, I only look for the median of Hall members who were active through that age, so anyone who debuted at, say, 23 isn’t included in the age 22 pool.
Second, we find the rough Hall of Fame chances for players above that Median at every age. To do that, I look at how many players in history have attained that median WAR total by that age. Then, I just compare that to the number of Hall of Famers. So, going back to our fake numbers, if there are 12 Hall of Famers above the Age 23 median, and 8 unelected players in history were above that total too, then we have (12 Hall of Famers) divided by (12 Hall members plus 8 non-Hall, or 20 total), giving us a 60% chance of players ahead of the Hall of Fame pace at that age actually going on to Cooperstown.
There are of course a lot of caveats to those odds. Sometimes players fall short on their own merits, but sometimes they get excluded for non-playing reasons (like, say, steroids). And sometimes, they end up Hall of Fame level anyway and just get overlooked! All of that gets treated the same, for simplicity’s sake; you’re either in, or you aren’t, since the one true definition of “A Hall of Famer” is being elected to the Hall. The one exception I make is that I remove players who aren’t eligible yet eligible for the Hall or who are still on the ballot from the overall pool, to limit the odds to players who have at least gotten a fair shake at induction.
Of course, there’s the other side of the equation. Definitionally, half of the members of the Hall of Fame will be below the Hall of Fame median, so falling short doesn’t mean a player is doomed. Also, with the time scale the Veterans Committee operates on, there’s always a chance that formerly excluded players one day get elected anyway, changing these numbers completely. That’s partly why I refer to them as rough guidelines; this whole process is about showing you what a Hall of Fame career looks like at the year-to-year level, and comparing that to active players to demonstrate how they’re measuring up each year.
The other big caveat is that players are listed by their ages during the 2025 season; to stay on or catch up to the pace in 2026, they’ll have to reach the WAR totals listed in whatever group comes after them. With all that explained, let’s start at the very beginning, with our youngest players in the game today:
The Players
Age 20: 0.55 WAR Median; 31.48% of all players at this mark elected
Active Players: None
This lack of players isn’t terribly surprising given that only two 20-year-olds saw at-bats at all in 2025, Samuel Basallo in Baltimore and Bryce Eldridge in San Francisco. Both come with top prospect pedigrees, but their first cracks at the majors were tough, and both finished at -0.2 WAR. A minor setback, but nothing that can’t be overcome with a decent 2026.
Age 21: 2.0 WAR Median; 35.67% of all players at this mark elected
Active Players: Jackson Chourio (6.0 WAR)
Junior Caminero (5.1 WAR)
Roman Anthony (3.1 WAR)
Last year’s extraordinarily solid 20-year-old class, meanwhile, has continued along admirably. Jackson Chuorio technically had a “sophomore slump” after his rather historic 2025, but that still amounted to over 2.0 WAR while missing a month of time (and of course, some of that drop was due to a worse evaluation of his defense, which might just be a momentary flux). He’s still going to start this year working towards his very-manageable goal for the 2027 season.
Junior Caminero just crept over the line last year thanks to decent results in small call-ups across 2023 and 2024, which meant he wasn’t eligible for Rookie of the Year support. However, in his first full year, he placed ninth in AL MVP voting while also making a name for himself at the All-Star Game and Home Run Derby, almost catching him up to Chourio in the process. And Roman Anthony joined them, finishing third in AL ROTY voting despite only playing 71 games on the season, making this class even more exciting.
First runner-up here is Jackson Holliday, who finished just within 1 WAR of the mark (1.1) after showing a lot of progress this year. A breakout 2026 could get him over the line for 2026.
Age 22: 4.25 WAR Median; 39.55% of all players at this mark elected
Active Players: Jackson Merrill (7.2 WAR)
Nick Kurtz (5.4 WAR)
James Wood (4.8 WAR)
Like the Jackson leading the previous group, Jackson Merrill followed up his landmark 2024 with a less-good, more-injured 2025… but one that was still worth nearly 3 Wins in under 120 games. He should still clear the Age 23 median this year with ease, leaving him a lot of time to start working on his 2027 total.
We’ve already covered a lot of strong rookie seasons here, but unanimous 2025 winner Nick Kurtz is our first Actual Rookie of the Year member here. I’m not sure anyone will be shocked to learn his season was good enough to get him over the Hall median for his age, and with quite a bit of room to spare.
James Wood might be a little more surprising, though. His 2025 was definitely a breakout, including a first All-Star selection, but it was a little under 4 Wins on the whole. What got him the rest of the way was actually his strong half-season call-up back in 2024. It’s good enough for now and the next few seasons, but he will eventually need to take the next step to, say, a Kurtz-like level to stay on pace. And injuries are a huge pitfall given his smaller buffer.
Speaking of injuries, our first honorable mention here is Evan Carter. His 4.1 WAR is impressive given that it’s only happened in 131 games; less encouraging is that those 131 games are spread out over three seasons, thanks largely to injuries. And to give the Astros a shoutout, Cam Smith is also doing well in this age group. He’s likely too far away to make up that gap in a season (1.9 WAR), but he’s not far enough away yet to make it unthinkable.
Age 23: 7.75 WAR Median; 44.89% of all players at this mark elected
Active Players: Wyatt Langford (9.5 WAR)
Elly De La Cruz (9.5 WAR)
Pete Crow-Armstrong (8.1 WAR)
It’s kind of funny that Wyatt Langford sits tied for the lead here, given that he’s the least-heralded of this trio; his accolades at this point are limited to a couple down-ballot votes in the 2024 AL Rookie of the Year race. It makes sense in some ways, given that he’s doing it in a pretty traditional underrated way: consistency, a great batting eye to make up for lower averages, and a very good glove at a bat-first position. We’ll see if 2026 is the year that changes and he starts getting more support.
In contrast, De La Cruz and Crow-Armstrong both have top-10 finishes in MVP races (Elly in 2024, Pete last year). Both of them are arguably more glove-heavy candidates too*, although given that they play up-the-middle positions, that skill is more likely to be recognized by Awards (and, eventually, Hall of Fame) voters. Nobody here is in the clear for 2026 already, but all of them are close enough that they can make it over the line with even fairly average years. Also, just to drive home this theme, our tied runners-up (6.5 WAR) for this age group are another pair of NL Gold Glove shortstops with below-average bats: Ezequiel Tovar and Masyn Winn.
*Technically De La Cruz’s pure fielding is worse, but it’s decent enough to keep him at shortstop, so I’ll count it for now.
Age 24: 11.1 WAR Median; 44.32% of all players at this mark elected
Active Players: Julio Rodriguez (22.9 WAR)
Gunnar Henderson (21.4 WAR)
Corbin Carroll (15.7 WAR)
Michael Harris II (14.0 WAR)
Zach Neto (11.8 WAR)
We reach a pretty significant jump at Age 24, going from no players with double digit Win totals to two guys well past 20, and they’re accompanied by a cavalcade of other guys over the Hall median line. And perhaps not coincidentally, we also have four Rookies of the Year Emeritus here, including both 2022 and 2023 winners.
At the top of the pile is Julio Rodríguez, who arguably had the best season of the 2025 bunch as well (certainly, if you include team results in the consideration). After a down 2024, Julio rebounded to his earlier level, picking up his second 30-30 season and third top-10 finish in MVP voting in just four years, all en route to 6.8 WAR. He’s past the Hall median through age 26, which corresponds to the 2027 season for him. It’s going to be hard to build up that buffer any further since that’s the point in the aging curve where the year-to-year increases get very aggressive, but it does at least mean that Rodríguez has a little extra wiggle room in case of emergencies like injuries.
It is kind of surprising that Gunnar Henderson is as close to Julio as he is, only one and a half Wins back, given that his rookie campaign was a year later and he had his own year-three slump to battle through in 2025. However, that “slump” was still good for 5.3 WAR; that’ll happen when you’re a shortstop who can hold down the position while hitting 20% better than league average. He’s also going to be working towards his 2028 goals this year.
It’s a drop-off after Julio and Gunnar, with everyone else still working towards the Age 25 goal in 2026. That being said, Corbin Carroll still looks to be well positioned, coming off his best season by bWAR at 5.8; that’ll happen when you’re a plus-glove right fielder who can steal 32 bases and hit 17 triples while also hitting 31 homers. Injuries could still derail him (and certainly throw a wrench in his ability to stay above the Hall median down the line, as it continues to jump), but Carroll only needs about half a win to secure his place on next year’s list at least, so that at least seems like a pretty safe bet.
I’m not sure you could say the same about Michael Harris II; in fact, just repeating his 2025 season leaves him a hair short of the cutoff. Harris has struggled to replicate the success of his 2022 rookie campaign, but last year was a new low for him, only posting 2.2 WAR despite playing 160 games. It could have been even worse too, as he had an OPS of just .551 through the first half of the season, but fought in the second half to bring that all the way up to .678. I think anyone hoping for the optimistic case for him would need that second half to be the new normal, because even returning to just his 2024 levels of offense isn’t going to get him the type of value he needs to stay on track for the Hall in the long-term.
Neto doesn’t have the plaudits of that quartet, not even picking up an All-Star selection in 2025 despite leading the Angels in Wins. The AL was just too overloaded with good shortstops last season, and missing time at the start of the year probably hurt his case. That injury is probably the biggest concern here too, since he doesn’t really have much of a buffer built up (he only has 2.5 seasons in the pros, to the rest of these guys’ three or four seasons). But if he can stay healthy, sure-fielding shortstops who can hit about 15% better than a league-average hitter tend to rack up a lot of WAR.
We’ve also got a few honorable mentions who came within a Win of that 11.1 mark. Riley Greene was close, finishing at 10.7 WAR, and he’d need a career-best season to make it over the Hall median in 2026. Also, in the long-term, he’s going to have to figure out how to hit left-handed pitching to actually make a serious run at Cooperstown, that nearly 250 point spread of OPS that he saw in 2025 was kind of nuts. I’m not sure what the biggest platoon split is among Hall of Fame position players (and now I kind of want to look), but I imagine if you want to make the Hall with that kind of disparity in your batting line, the lower end of the split is going to have to be a lot better than .620. We also have CJ Abrams around here (10.4 WAR), but he’s yet to put up a season above 4 WAR. Maybe he can bring his game up to the next level, and the bulk in games played from his early start would at least help mitigate the lack of a high peak so far… but you do need that kind of peak eventually.
Age 25: 16.25 WAR Median; 52.80% of all players at this mark elected
Active Players: Bobby Witt Jr. (21.5 WAR)
For those who may not have noticed, Age 25 represents a bit of a milestone: it’s the point where being above the Hall of Fame pace for your age passes the 50% mark. In the grand scheme of things, it’s not a huge jump from year-to-year, and it shows even the best players on the hottest of starts have a coin’s flip chance of missing out on the Hall. But at the same time, given that most of these players are still a decade or more away from finishing up their careers, I think it’s also impressive to know the odds are already as high as they are.
Sandwiched in between all of these deep classes of players, we have the outgoing Age 25’ers, with just one over-the-median representative. That does start to happen as the median pace jumps and the guys without multiple great years start to fall away, but we aren’t quite to that point. This looks more like one of those random fluctuations that just happens on occasion; sometimes you get groups with five or six early-bloomers, and sometimes you get a group to balance that out.
Our lone representative here is another one of those young shortstops making waves, and from the extra-crowded AL side: Bobby Witt Jr. 2025 ended up being a perfect follow-up to his MVP runner-up 2024 season, as he picked up his second All-Star nod, Gold Glove, Silver Slugger, and top-4 finish in MVP voting (not to mention his third top-10 finish in only four seasons). The last three seasons have been quite the run for him, going from an unremarkable debut season where he finished fourth in Rookie of the Year voting (and I didn’t even mention him in that year’s Future Hall entry) all the way to being one year ahead of the curve this year.
The honorable mention is yet another shortstop in 2025-breakout Geraldo Perdomo, who mirrored Witt by finishing fourth in MVP voting on the NL side. However, at just 13.5 career WAR, not even repeating his stellar campaign will get him to the median for next year. I’ll also give a shout-out to his teammate out in Arizona, Gabriel Moreno; catchers almost never keep up with the Hall median, even the ones actually in Cooperstown, so I usually find it’s best just to highlight anyone towards the top of their age’s leaderboard. Even still, Moreno’s 9.1 Wins is rather slight, and his injury history the last two seasons is a little concerning (even if taking a beating is an expected part of catching.
Age 26: 21.05 WAR Median; 57.33% of all players at this mark elected
Active Players: Juan Soto (42.6 WAR)
Fernando Tatis Jr. (27.2)
Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (25.9)
Juan Soto is one of those fun cases where I just get to throw impressive factoids at you. Did you realize 2026 will already be his ninth major league season, despite also being his age-27 year? Would you believe he’s already covered the Hall median for the rest of the decade? He’s already surpassed the age-30 median, which will be 2029 for him, meaning he’s starting this year working towards his 2030 goal! I started this series in part to help give people more context on just how far along younger players are in their journey to Cooperstown, but Soto is the rare case that doesn’t need it; everybody, even the most conservative of fans, probably realizes that he’s well on his way to the Hall (barring all the usual caveats, of course).
But speaking of the usual caveats… what do we make of Fernando Tatis Jr.’s odds at this point? Because I’m not sure if I know yet. Obviously, there’s a lot of time left there, things can change for both the positive and negative. But since returning from his PED suspension in 2022, Tatis has continued to play well, make All-Star Games, pick up awards and place high in MVP voting… Predicting how the Hall will feel about steroids in two decades feels like a fool’s errand, and even Tatis’s specifics feel pretty unique on top of that; there haven’t really been players who got caught early on, then returned to a string of good seasons where they might (potentially) give people time to forget their suspension. I do suspect he’s going to have to clear the Hall median pretty comfortably to stand a chance, though; I have a feeling that if he finishes, say, in the 58.0-to-65.0 career WAR range, he’s going to be deliberately overlooked a la Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa.
And then, we get to finish out the group with the much more simple and clean case of Vladimir Guerrero Jr. 2025 wasn’t technically his best season, but it was still an All-Star year that parked him right on the Hall median for this coming season. And of course, that was on top of all the intangibles this year added to his case, like a massive contract that locked him in with the Blue Jays team that drafted him for the foreseeable future (Hall voters do tend to love one-team guys) and a hot postseason run that nabbed him an ALCS MVP and the AL Pennant. That’s all stuff that feels like it starts to shape his narrative. Yeah, he only has one year of buffer for the Hall pace, and there’s a long way to go in his career still, but this still felt like a big step forward for his chances.
Of course, that pennant run wasn’t just the work of Vlad Jr., and we’ve got a couple of his teammates for honorable mentions. Unfortunately, Andrés Giménez (19.4 WAR) went the wrong way in 2025, dealing with injuries and a collapse of his bat. He was still valuable thanks to his strong glove, but he actually went from above the median last year at this time to looking like a long-shot to make it back over the line. The road to Cooperstown is littered with all-glove middle infielders who burnt out thanks to a lack of a bat, and he’ll need to return to at least his 2023 levels over the long-term to have a shot. I might actually like the chances of Alejandro Kirk (11.3 WAR) more, since backstops have a little more leeway on the totals. Kirk will still definitely need to string together a run of All-Star years to have a shot, but at least he has some bonus factors in his favor (like his strong pitch framing skills).
Age 27: 25.9 WAR Median; 60.42% of all players at this mark elected
Active Players: Ronald Acuña Jr. (28.6 WAR)
It’s going to be some time before we see a player ahead of Juan Soto on the career leaderboards, just as a heads up. Anyway, I mentioned last year that Ronald Acuña Jr. was an example of the precarity of this position. After all, a 60% chance is better than a coinflip, and feels like a major marker for a player who’s likely over a decade away from appearing on a Hall ballot; but a 40% chance of not reaching the Hall is actually still a pretty significant chance of falling off.
2026 was another mixed bag for Acuña that continued to drive home this idea. He was very strong when he played, even garnering an All-Star nod, but still wound up playing under 100 games in total. All together, It was enough to get him over the Age-27 median line and set him up well to stay ahead of the pace this year even in the event of more missed time. But sooner or later, he will need a full and healthy season. A long injury history like his is where that 40% rate of falling short starts to make a lot of sense; sure, they could strike anyone down, but the guys with extensive injury histories already while still in their mid-20s quickly start to look like extra risky bets.
A lot of the honorable mentions have similar issues. Met mega-signing Bo Bichette (21.0 WAR) was actually staying on pace prior to his injury-wrecked 2024 season, and his 2025 wasn’t a big enough bounceback to make up for it. Jeremy Peña (18.6 WAR) is third in the age group, and actually has the start of a solid career peak thanks to hitting the ground running. His primary issue is that he didn’t debut until age 24, which is actually kind of late for a Hall debut and means he has to play catch-up even compared to the guys who got smaller starts at 22 or 23. Those missing 40ish games from last year would have helped a lot there.
Steven Kwan (16.5 WAR) has a similar issue to Peña , not debuting until his age-24 season. But he also gets a lot of his value as an average-bat/good-glove corner outfielder, which is not something that has typically excited Hall voters as much as a good-fielding shortstop and may limit his potential to just move to easier positions as he ages. And while we’re being thorough, we should again bring up our leading catchers here, William Contreras and Adley Rutschman, who are virtually tied in career value (15.2 and 15.1 WAR, respectively); they’re definitely not ahead of pace, and their cases would need to be built over the long-haul, but you can at least imagine them having a strong multi-year run like that and building a case from this foundation.
Age 28: 31.4 WAR Median; 67.18% of all players at this mark elected
Active Players: None
Acuña was the start of a trend, and the next few age groups are going to be filled with a lot of injuries, question marks, and “well, maybe…” cases from guys who will be needing to play catch-up. This offseason’s biggest free agent signing, Kyle Tucker, leads the group with 27.3 WAR. Better health in 2024 or 2025 might have gotten him the rest of the way to the median (although it’s a long-shot), and it also probably doesn’t help his total that his first “full” season was the Pandemic-shortened 2020. That’s a lot of bad breaks, but again, the number of recent major injuries here would still probably be a bit of a red flag here even if he was closer to the median.
Rafael Devers moved into second place last season, with 26.7 WAR. He was actually the opposite of an injury case, posting just the 34th season in history of 163 Games Played or more (and first since Justin Morneau back in 2008). The concern here is more that he’s limited defensively, and now that he seems to be playing 1B/DH for good, he’s going to need to take his offense to another level to reach the offensive numbers he needs for Cooperstown.
After him we get another Astro to cover, Yordan Alvarez at 24.3 WAR. Unfortunately, 2025 was basically a lost season for him due to injuries. He didn’t look right prior to going on the IL in early May (with a .646 OPS at that point), and while his fiery return (1.031 OPS) assuaged some fears of a deeper issue, that tear ended early in a freak baserunning injury. Again, if he can stay healthy in the long-term, he clearly has the bat to build a case for himself.
For contrast, we also have a pair of Braves in Ozzie Albies (24.1 WAR) and Austin Riley (22.5 WAR). Albies was above the Hall median for years, but it was largely due to his early and strong start. That bought him a lot of leeway, but he still hasn’t hit the kind of peak Hall of Famers need, and catching up now that he’s fallen behind will be difficult unless he makes that jump. Riley, on the other hand, has the kind of peak seasons you’d like to see, but his last two years have failed to match up to that. Some of it is definitely injury-related (he’s missed over 100 games between the two years), but even when he came back from the IL, he hasn’t looked like his old best-self. Maybe this will finally be the year he returns and stays at 100%, but even then, he’ll need multiple seasons like his 2021-to-2023 stretch to make up for lost time now.
The strongest candidate in the age bracket right now might actually be Cal Raleigh? There’s probably a little bit of recency bias at play there, but given the major questions everyone else here has going into 2026, it’s at least a nice change of pace to have someone coming off a historic 2025 instead. Currently, Raleigh’s 18.8 WAR is on the low side, but again, catchers generally fall below the median anyway, and Cal’s strong framing is another strong X-factor in his favor. Yeah, he’s still got a ways to go, but he has a strong starting point at the moment.
Age 29: 35.85 WAR Median; 73.95% of all players at this mark elected
Active Players: None
And continuing with our theme, we have yet another age group with nobody ahead of the Hall median, with the leading candidate having fallen off from an amazing start to their career. Cody Bellinger (30.5 WAR) has turned it around after his wild collapse from 2021 and 2022, posting a 5.1-WAR season last year and securing a big deal from the Yankees this winter. He’s still going to have an uphill climb to get back to Hall of Fame pace, since the next few years see the Hall median continue to climb by All-Star levels of WAR each season. However… he is technically about halfway to the median career WAR for position players in Cooperstown. It’s still unlikely, as he’s going to need to play really well for several years into his 30s, but I also wouldn’t call it unthinkable compared to where he was a few years ago. His case seems fairly unprecedented in either direction, really.
Even back at Bellinger’s peak, this age group was always a little on the thin side. The only other player even halfway to that 35.85 Hall median is Willy Adames at 25.1 WAR, still over 10 Wins short.
Age 30: 40.0 WAR Median; 75.42% of all players at this mark elected
Active Players: Carlos Correa (45.7 WAR)
Shohei Ohtani (35.4 WAR if you only count his batting WAR, 51.5 if you add his pitching)
We’re now back to some heavy hitters, with Carlos Correa being our first player to surpass Juan Soto’s career WAR total. And he’s not just above the Hall median, he’s a year ahead of pace too, meaning all of his 2026 value will go towards building another buffer for next year. Correa is also in that class of player who’s great when he’s healthy, but misses a lot of time, meaning his potential Cooperstown chase is going to come with a bunch of caveats.
But I also think that he’s still in a better place than a lot of those other guys that we’ve already covered, for a couple of reasons. First, he’s still maintaining that one-year advantage, which buys him a lot of leeway in the event of more injuries; even a half-season like his 2024 campaign could set him up through 2027. Really, it’s kind of nuts that he’s still one year ahead of the Hall median, when you look at the relentless pace it increases at from the ages of 25 to now. Having that kind of lead at age 27 is nice, but once you’re through your age 30 season, there are really only two or three more big jumps the rest of the way. The other (related) issue is that he’s technically three-quarters of the way to the median Hall of Fame position player’s WAR total. That might not sound like a huge deal, but it takes a lot of uncertainty out of the equation (and it may help explain why players above the mark at this age are already at 75% odds of eventual induction; they are about two-thirds of the way to the overall median mark for position players, after all).
Actually, the bigger concern for Correa might be that, even if he makes it the rest of the way to the Hall median, he may get overlooked for other reasons. He’s a little under-awarded relative to that career value; just 3 All-Star selections to date, only one top-ten finish in MVP voting while receiving votes two other years, a single Gold Glove (which, incidentally, came the year he also won the Platinum Glove for best overall fielder)… I can’t say off the top of my head how much of that was him getting snubbed versus bad luck and unfortunate timing, but it will probably come up when he hits the ballot either way, and I’m not sure how many more accolades he can expect from here even if he finishes his career relatively strongly.
The “runner-up” here feels like the safer bet; technically, if you just search Baseball-Reference for Hitter WAR, Shohei Ohtani will fall behind Correa and Soto. That might sound wild given his dominance of the 2020s so far, but it’s worth remembering that he didn’t debut until his age 23 season, and he didn’t have his first truly great offensive season until his fourth year, back in 2021.
However, if you include his pitching WAR in the mix, he jumps ahead of them. I don’t really see a reason not to do that here, as it will absolutely factor into his eventual case for Cooperstown. I don’t usually include batting WAR when evaluating pitchers*, but it seems silly not to do so here; it’s such a big part of the story around Ohtani that of course it’s going to become a major factor once he’s eligible. And really, with 4 MVPs already, the peak value and his general stature within the game mean that he’s probably already a lock, even if he just decided to retire tomorrow (technically he’s still two seasons shy of the “10 season” minimum for the Hall, but the Hall could also waive that if they wanted, so let’s not get bogged down in an extreme hypothetical here). His only real concerns at this point are the general baseline concerns affecting everyone (e.g. “Don’t get busted for steroids”, “Don’t gamble on the game”, etc.).
As an honorable mention here, I’ll also include Ohtani’s batterymate Will Smith, who’s at 23.0 WAR. Yes that’s low, but again, he’s a catcher, so it’s to be expected. He has a strong start to build off of, the important thing that makes or breaks his case will be the run he manages in his 30s. And to that end, his current stretch of three straight All-Star seasons isn’t bad, not to mention the Dodgers committing to him through 2033. His weak framing skills might be a liability going forward, though. And I skipped over Pete Alonso (23.3 WAR), who’s technically over halfway to the WAR median for this age, but first basemen typically don’t have all the extenuating circumstances that catchers do.
*For a quick explanation of why, for anyone interested: it’s because it generally didn’t seem to factor in when Hall voters are considering a pitcher’s career. Just take a look at the leaderboard for Most Batting WAR by Pitchers. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone use “they hit well for a pitcher” to help recent edge-case guys, like Orel Hershiser or Dwight Gooden. Even in a few Veterans Committee cases where I think it could actually be an interesting X-factor for guys on the fringe (like Wes Ferrell, Don Newcombe, or Jim Kaat prior to his induction), it either doesn’t come up or hasn’t worked. Probably in part because the replacement bar for pitchers batting is so low that you could pick up 5 Wins over your career with an OPS+ of 30, and that typically just doesn’t wow the voters. But even the actually-good Ferrell (100 career OPS+) hasn’t benefited yet.
Age 31: 44.6 WAR Median; 79.46% of all players at this mark elected
Active Players: Francisco Lindor (55.7 WAR)
This is another year with only one over-the-median player, but a whole bunch of interesting honorable mentions to cover as well. It might also be worth noting that these guys’ age 26 season fell in the shortened 2020 Pandemic campaign, and those missed games may have just dropped them below the pace line.
The one actually on-pace guy, though, is Francisco Lindor, who clears it comfortably. Not only is he a stone’s throw away from the Age 35 median of 55.95 WAR (which would put him in the clear through 2029), but having another season on par with his last three could actually get him above the overall Hall median for position players, 61.1. From there, it’s just locking in his first-ballot credentials. Also, one fun fact is that Lindor passed the halfway mark to both 3000 hits and 500 home runs in 2025, finishing with 1664 and 279. Obviously, making either club is unlikely, even the best of the best miss out of those, but shortstops who can even threaten either group are rare. In fact, Francisco is already fifth all-time in homers by a shortstop, behind Alex Rodriguez, Ernie Banks, Cal Ripken Jr., and Miguel Tejada (and the first two guys technically played over half their games away from shortstop).
The first runner-up is new Cubs signee Alex Bregman, who finished last year just short at 43.1 WAR; those missing 48 games last year hurt. Although realistically, I’m not sure that the odds drop that much if you go down a mere one and a half wins; the actual Hall median makes for a nice anchoring point, but being that close is practically keeping pace, for all intents and purposes (and again, half of all inductees fall below the median anyway). Either way, one great season in 2026 could get Bregman officially back on pace, but even if he falls a little below what he needs, we’re almost to the point where the Hall pace flattens out significantly. As long as his new deal doesn’t turn into a full-on bust, he’s probably keeping up with the median.
Everything that I said about Bregman probably also applies to Corey Seager, who’s basically tied with him in Baseball-Reference’s version of WAR at 43.0 (Fangraphs puts Bregman about 2 Wins ahead, for what it’s worth). Honestly, Seager might have the better chance of induction, though. He’s been better on Bregman on a per-rate basis, as Bregman’s played about 450 more games. And while that worse health could work against Seager, the position difference might cancel it out; Hall voters have typically gone for shortstops at a much higher rate than even slick-fielding third basemen. And that’s not to mention that Seager has the pair of World Series MVPs that will certainly catch voters’ eyes and help set a narrative for him. Of course, for as much as setting them up as a comparison feels natural right now, there’s also nothing saying that only one of them can make it to Cooperstown. In fact, there’s a real chance they don’t even intersect on the ballot, if one of them just retires a year or two earlier and gets inducted quickly. Sometimes things that look parallel in the moment don’t wind up that way, you know?
Matt Olson is even further off the pace at 39.7 WAR, but he’s put up 6 or more Win in two of his last three seasons, so I’d be remiss not to mention him. A weird quirk in his case is that a good chunk of his value is driven by a really good glove, and unfortunately, “good defense at first base” is not something that Cooperstown voters have usually gone crazy for. Just look at John Olerud and Keith Hernandez; or shoot, even Jeff Bagwell and Todd Helton struggled for support despite having solid defense to go with strong bats. And on that note, Olson is looking a little low on the “traditional” batting stats that they expect of first basemen (like 1155 hits and 288 homers). But hypothetically, he could also go on a strong run in his 30s and end with somewhere way above 400 homers and catch voters’ attention that way. It’s perhaps unlikely, but we’ll just have to wait and see how this develops.
Ketel Marte is after those four, landing at 35.6 WAR. I’d normally consider that just barely on the fringe of consideration, but Marte has broken out in a big way the last few years, including that third place finish in 2024 MVP voting. He’s going to need a strong run of All-Star or MVP-level seasons across his early 30s for sure, and while that’s never particularly likely, it’s also not unheard of. That’s one of the things that separates the Hall of Famers from the borderline guys, I suppose.
We’ll break things off there. Check back next week as we start to cover the players who are really solidifying their Cooperstown chances. And once again, if you’d like to be notified right when that follow-up goes live, you can also sign up for email updates below!
A Baseball Blog - Scientific and Speculative Thoughts from Third Base
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