Congratulations to the Hall of Fame Class of 2018; Plus What Does Voting Look Like the Next Few Years?

First things first: congratulations to new Hall of Famers Chipper Jones, Vladimir Guerrero, Jim Thome, and Trevor Hoffman. They are all very deserving, and with Alan Trammell and Jack Morris going in thanks to the Veterans Committee at the same time, you could argue that this is one of the strongest classes in the Hall’s history.*

*It depends on how you feel about quantity over quality and how you feel about including managers, umpires, and executives in a class versus just counting the players elected, but it definitely seems like an argument that you could make.

But at the same time, it’s hard not to be a little disappointed as well. A lot of the surprise of who makes it has gone away as the tracking of ballots improved, and those four seemed pretty safe the entire cycle. Really, probably even before the election cycle began, if we’re being honest; Thome and Jones seemed like obvious first-ballot guys, and Guerrero and Hoffman were so close last year that it was hard not to see them making it.

Instead, we found out in the announcement that Edgar Martinez, who was above 75% on Ryan Thibodaux’s ballot tracker basically since the 2018 edition launched, wound up falling 20 votes shy of induction, and Mike Mussina, who poked into the low-70s as late as a few days ago, dropped all the way down to 63.5%.

Of course, it might not be all bad news, either. What are the longer-term implications of this year’s induction?

My (Hypothetical) Ballot for the 2018 Hall of Fame Election

I’ve said it before, but there are a ton of good players on the Hall of Fame ballot this year. It’s actually been just a little bit overwhelming trying to determine a way to even approach breaking this year’s candidates, and in the end, I decided to combine several different methods.

First, just as a starting place, let’s look at my ballot from last year’s election. I did all that work already, after all, and most of those players are returning to the ballot.

Jeff Bagwell, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Edgar Martinez, Mike Mussina, Tim Raines, Manny Ramirez, Ivan Rodriguez, Curt Schilling, Larry Walker

The good news: Jeff Bagwell, Tim Raines, and Ivan Rodriguez were all inducted, and that’s a lot of ballot space freed up! Yay! The bad news: Chipper Jones, Jim Thome, Scott Rolen, and Andruw Jones are just the head of this incredibly stacked class of newcomers (which I’ve been predicting for five years now). That’s…definitely more than three slots, at least. Curse you, 10-player limit!

What happens if we line everyone up by WAR? That’s a pretty good way to start, take a broad survey of what kinds of players we’re dealing with. Remember, usually, 50+ WAR is in the conversation, 60+ is a strong candidate, and 70+ is usually a lock.

How Badly Has Third Base Been Snubbed in Hall of Fame Voting?

Let’s start with the obvious: third base is wildly underrepresented in the Hall of Fame. I could have sworn that I had written a full article about this at some point in Hot Corner Harbor’s history (it’s even right there in the name!), but apparently not. I’ve definitely referenced it in the past, but never devoted a full piece to it, so with two great third basemen on this year’s Hall ballot in Chipper Jones and Scott Rolen (the latter of whom is incredibly deserving but clearly being overlooked), now seems like a good time to lay it all out.

The straight quantity of inductees is as good a place as any to start. I’m going with JAWS’ definitions for convenience’s sake; in building his Hall-evaluating system, Jay Jaffe included just players who were inducted specifically for their MLB playing careers (ignoring pioneers, executives, coaches, and Negro League stars). By those standards, the tally of Hall inductees for each position looks like this:


Catcher: 15
First Base: 20
Second Base: 20
Third Base: 13
Shortstop: 21
Left Field: 20
Center Field: 19
Right Field: 24


It’s pretty obvious just from that listing that something is unusual, right? Every position but catcher and third base has at least nineteen. But if it’s missing inductees that other positions have, one question worth asking in order to look deeper might be: what type of players is it missing?

The Hall of Fame Ballot's Math Problem

The Hall of Fame is suffering from its refusal to expand the ballot. I wrote about this some last year, but now that we have some hard numbers rather than an abstract word problem to work with. What we’re seeing is the problem with the current Veterans Committee voting, but on a larger scale.

First, let’s start with the positives: the early balloting this year is looking mega-promising. Ryan Thibodaux’s amazing yearly ballot-tracker is a must-follow for any baseball fan, tallying any and every ballot published by a voter prior to the official announcement. Right now*, the gizmo has 88 of them, a little over a fifth of the expected voting body, and the early returns are good. Nine different players are at 69% or higher, something that would be historic if it held through to the final tally.** Five players (first-timers Chipper Jones and Jim Thome, plus hold-overs Vladimir Guerrero, Trevor Hoffman, and Edgar Martinez) are all currently above the 75% threshold needed for induction***, with Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Mike Mussina, and Curt Schilling all right behind them.

*As of writing, on December 22, 2017. The exact figures will quickly be out of date as more ballots continue to trickle in, but the overall percentages and underlying issues won’t change much at all.

**It won’t, because the early results always run high, but it’s worth noting that even in the context of past ballot-tracking, this is still really, really good.

***This one might actually carry through, although it will be close. Almost every player sees their votes drop between the final pre-announcement tally and the results; the voters who don’t reveal their ballots tend to include fewer names than those who do. But Jones, Thome, and Guerrero are all polling above 90%, which has historically been pretty safe, and Martinez is sitting at over 86% with the Mariners launching a large campaign for his induction. Hoffman will be close, sitting at 78.4%, but closers are historically one of the few types of players who actually see their total increase for the final results. If they all make it, they would represent the first 5-person class for Cooperstown since the inaugural one way back in 1936.

The biggest problem with this, though, is that the ballot has waaaay more than just those nine overqualified stars. In fact, I think you could make a convincing argument for twenty different players on this year’s Hall ballot. Larry Walker, Scott Rolen, and Andruw Jones are just some of the players around who would raise the median for Cooperstown inductees while escaping the stain of steroids scandals. Those three currently sit at 40.9%, 11.4%, and 9.1%, respectively. They’ll all probably make it around to the next ballot, but those totals are still wildly out of line with how good those players actually were. Billy Wagner is Trevor Hoffman’s equal in just about every way but save total, yet he sits at just 9.1%. And these are just half of the cases you could be making.

Scott Rolen: Reflecting on an All-Time Great

There hasn’t been an official announcement yet, but each day further along the season gets, the less likely it gets that Scott Rolen will play in 2013. He was flip-flopping on whether to hang his cleats up all winter, with even the last news from him being uncertain (although leaning towards retirement). Unless the Dodgers or some other team realizes that their third base hole is worse than they thought midseason, he’ll probably be sitting this year out. It is somewhat fitting though, if upsetting, that one of the best and most underrated players ever can’t even be the best third baseman to retire this season.

Top Ten Players by Decade 2000-2012, at a Glance

So last week, David Schoenfield wrote about Jimmy Rollins and his chances to make the Hall of Fame, noting that he was one of the top ten players from 2003 to 2012, going by WAR. That was surprising, but it made me wonder: how good is it to be one of the top ten players in a decade?

Well, I mean, it’s obviously good. But what effect does it have on someone’s Hall of Fame chances? Well, one thing that I disagreed with was that Schoenfield only used a specific set of years-namely, decades that started in years that ended with a 3. As in, 2003 to 2012, 1993 to 2002, and so on. You need to use rolling decades; 2003 to 2012, 2002 to 2011, and so on. That will give you the full scope of who you’re dealing with.

So, with that in mind, what do the top ten batters in Fangraph’s WAR over a decade typically look like?

Retired Numbers Series: Post-Script 3

Well, I guess I got this one done just in time; the Braves are retiring Chipper Jones’ number in June. 

To be fair, that wasn’t a huge leap of a prediction, but it’s still right. So, with that, my updated predictions for the Braves:

Retired Numbers Series: Atlanta Braves

The Braves are a challenging team to cover for in the Retired Numbers Series. Only one team-the Cubs-can compare to them in age; both teams got their start in 1876, making them the two oldest teams in existence. Thanks to their long and storied history, they have a wealth of candidates for future retirement. What does the future hold for them? Well, there’s at least one obvious candidate. Let’s begin.

Could the 2018 Hall Ballot Newcomers Match the Class of 2013?

Well, it’s been a few days since the Hall of Fame announcement that no one is going in for 2013. And, by now, you’ve surely heard about how this problem won’t be going away next year, with easy-choice Hall of Famers Greg Maddux, Frank Thomas, Tom Glavine, and Mike Mussina all joining the ballot, as well as borderline case Jeff Kent. And then the year after that, Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez, John Smoltz, and Gary Sheffield all get added on.

The 2016 and 2017 ballots seem to relax a little from 4+ candidates per year-2016 sees Ken Griffey and Jim Edmonds join the ballot (as well as Trevor Hoffman, depending how you feel about closers), while 2017 brings Ivan Rodriguez, Manny Ramirez, and Vladimir Guerrero (among others) on the ballot. But surely, this onslaught of candidates will stop, right?

Actually, it might not. Just based on how the offseason so far has been going. The 2018 Cooperstown ballot might be the deepest of any of these next five, actually. It lacks the a Maddux or Johnson at the top, but while it may not reach the peak that those ballots do, it definitely comes close at the top, and runs just as many names deep.

Yes, You Can Overrate Someone Who Is a Lock for the Hall of Fame

I’m watching SportsCenter right now, and they mentioned how Derek Jeter went sixth in his draft. It is kind of impressive, I guess. But not too impressive. Good players go later in the first round all the time. It's just part of the nature of the MLB Draft. Heck, going by WAR, Jeter isn’t even the best #6 overall pick of all time (he’s second, but not really close to the best).

Then, they went and said how it’s incredible how so many teams passed on “arguably the greatest player of his generation”. Oh boy. They were doing so well there. At least they threw the “arguably” in there, right?

Comparison: Ken Griffey, Jr. vs. Chipper Jones

So, ESPN has an interesting thought experiment going. Chipper Jones and Ken Griffey, Jr. are both excellent players, former number 1 picks, and future Hall of Famers. Steve Berthiaume recently posed this question over at ESPN: if you could have just one, Jones or Griffey, for their ENTIRE career (yes, injuries and all), which one would you take? I thought it sounded like an interesting prompt, and decided to read on. What I found out, though, is that it really isn’t close; I would much rather take Chipper.