Kicking Off the 2023 Hall of Fame Voting with the Veterans Committee!

Now that I’ve gotten the announcement about Hot Corner Harbor’s new mailing list out of the way, it’s time to return to baseball. And the biggest upcoming news (here, at least) is the upcoming Veterans Committee announcement.

That’s right: this Sunday, the Hall of Fame’s most complicated institution will once again convene and decide if they’ll be sending any players to the Cooperstown stage in 2023 to accompany… still to-be-determined (but probably Scott Rolen and maaaybe some combination of Billy Wagner, Todd Helton, or Carlos Beltran). The ballot is eight players this time, for some reason or other (maybe related to that bizarre rule change from back in April?). The best argument I can muster for that is that a smaller ballot would reduce the competition and might help cut down on the kind of vote splitting that likely kept Dick Allen out in 2022, except that the vote limit was also lowered from four names per voter to just three, so at least some of that benefit is being immediately lost.

As usual, candidates will need 12 out of 16 votes to get elected to Cooperstown, with the voting body actually meeting to discuss things before they vote. We’ll see if they use that to try and match their votes up again (which is almost certainly why their last meeting produced so many inductees). Our eight nominees this time are:

Albert Belle, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Don Mattingly, Fred McGriff, Dale Murphy, Rafael Palmeiro, Curt Schilling

I’ve written about all of their cases here over the years (and most of them are even tagged appropriately, in the right-hand column of the site!), and given that none of them has played in a Major League game in the last fifteen years, their stats haven’t really changed. To give a quick summary, though: Belle and Mattingly probably fall a little short, McGriff and Murphy are right around where I tend to see as the Hall’s borderline (with McGriff just over it and Murphy probably just under it, but close enough that I wouldn’t be mad if he made it), and the other four all clearly over the line statistically but here for non-playing reasons (which I generally tend to view as less of a deal-breaker than most voters, although I also acknowledge it’s a complex subject that can vary player-to-player).

The more interesting thing for Hall voting, especially on Veterans Committee ballots, where so many of the players have been so extensively covered, is to try and break down the various forces pushing them towards or away from induction. Momentum may only be as good as next day’s pitcher in-game, but it’s a very real phenomenon when it comes to Hall of Fame voting (among other factors).

2021 Hall of Fame Results are a Shut Out, but the Long-Term Chances for Several Players Look Good

Tuesday afternoon saw the results announcement for 2021 Hall of Fame balloting, and there’s a lot to break down on this year’s ballot. Let’s jump right in.

First off, no one made it in off the BBWAA ballot, the first time this has happened since 2013. That’s not terribly shocking, since no one was trending over the necessary 75% on Ryan Thibodaux’s ballot tracking project. More shocking was that fourteen writers turned in a blank ballot, which is apparently a record. This ballot was less packed than it has been the last few years, but I still think there were a number of deserving candidates on it.

Leading the pack was Curt Schilling, who finished at 71.1%, just 16 votes shy of induction. That is still an improvement on 2020, when he finished at 70%, which is a little surprising when you consider that the pre-vote tracking had him down 3 votes from 2020. In total, that means he went from 278 ballots in ’20 to 285 this year. Another year like this won’t be enough to get him over the line. Maybe he’ll get a bigger boost from it being his tenth and final year, something that does happen regularly with candidates, but refraining from spouting gross bullshit for a year would probably also do enough to win him the votes he needs. Who knows if he’s capable of that, though?

Another major story from the year, as it is every year, was the candidacies of Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens. 2021 also represented their penultimate chances at election, and has long been the trend, there wasn’t a lot of movement for either. Bonds finished at 61.8%, while Clemens was just below him at 61.6%.

Both marks are within 2% of their 2020 finishes, which means they’ll need a little over 50 voters to flip from no to yes to make the leap. The only way that seems especially likely is if there are a number of voters who deliberately planned on waiting until their last ballot to support them. It’s more plausible that there are voters considering that strategy for them than it is for some candidates, but it still doesn’t strike me as a group with over 50 constituents. As mentioned, 2022 marks their final year on the BBWAA ballot, after which point they will officially become the hottest topic the Veterans Committee has to deal with (of course, the BBWAA won’t be totally relieved of controversial all-time greats at that point either, but more on that later).

But the more interesting story than the top of the ballot this year was actually the middle of the ballot, which saw some substantial gains for a number of players. And not only that, but for a number of them, it was the continuation of a trend from last year.

Leading the pack is Scott Rolen, who followed up last year’s 18-point jump with another 17.5-point leap to 52.9%. That repetition, combined with finally breaking the 50% mark, puts him in a very good spot; he just needs a little over 22% of the vote, and he has six-years to make up that gap, with none of the baggage that the three players above him have (not even mentioning the four extra years he has without them starting in 2023). I think right now, you can put him down for a 2023 ETA, although maybe two straight years of big jumps convinces a few more voters to check the box next year and he goes in a year earlier.

Rolen made the biggest jump, but multiple other players also saw their percentages increase by double digits. Billy Wagner, in attempt number six, jumped from 31.7% to 46.4%, the third biggest leap of the day. That means that, over the last two cycles, he’s improved nearly 30 full points. In other words, in his last four years on the ballot, he just has to match his improvement over the last two years to secure a plaque. It’s not a sure thing, but with Mariano Rivera, Trevor Hoffman, and Lee Smith all in Cooperstown, there are no other closers competing with him for limited spots. I think he does it, although I wouldn’t be shocked if he’s a year or two behind Rolen.

You also have to feel pretty good about the chances for Todd Helton. In his third go around, he fell just shy of 45% of the vote, at 44.9%. That places him right between Rolen and Wagner, in terms of improvement, at a 15.7-point jump. Again, that’s a little behind Rolen, but Helton also has an extra year on the ballot. Barring any big changes, he’ll probably be going in sometime around those two.

Gary Sheffield (40.6%) and Andruw Jones (33.9%) also had big leaps, although their cases aren’t quite as rosy as Rolen, Wagner, and Helton. Sheffield, in his seventh attempt, has seen some major improvement over the last two years (from 13.6% in 2019 to 30.5% last year to this year), but given his steroid ties, I don’t know how he gets past the ceiling that Bonds and Clemens seem stuck at. I expect he stops making leaps of this size in the next year or two, but given that I also didn’t expect him to pick up 27% in two years, I don’t know how confident I am in that prediction. Is there a big group of voters who check “No” on Bonds and Clemens but would consider Sheffield? I haven’t heard of one, but there are some pretty idiosyncratic voters, so I guess it’s possible.

Jones’s case, meanwhile, started from a much worse place than most of these other players. In 2018, he debuted at 7.3% of the vote, and only improved to 7.5% the next year. Granted, those were crowded ballots, but that’s still pretty low. Since then, though, he’s improved to 19.4% in 2020, and then that 33.9% mark this year. I’m not ruling his candidacy out at all, but it’s hard to see him making it in in two to three years when compared to the Rolen/Wagner/Helton trio. If Jones gets in, it’ll probably be in the last three years of his eligibility on the BBWAA ballot (or via the Veterans Committee, if that falls through for some reason). Two more years like the last two gets him to over 60%, though, and it’s hard to make that trajectory, with a few more ballots to spare after, look bad.

Omar Vizquel (49.1%) is the one player in this bunch that doesn’t look good, largely due to the fact that he’s the only returning player on the ballot to see his vote total decrease from 2020 to 2021. In slipping from 52.6%, he even fell behind Rolen, who he led last year. Vizquel has always been a marginal candidate, and multiple voters likely balked at voting for him again following The Athletic’s recent reporting on his off-field issues (including allegations of domestic violence against his wife, as well as separate accusations about conduct toward a coworker from his time as manager Birmingham Barons that apparently led to his early termination back in 2019). Breaking 50% is usually seen as a positive indication of future induction (whether by BBWAA vote or Veterans Committee), but Vizquel also wouldn’t be the first borderline Hall case to tank his own candidacy through poor off-the-field behavior (Steve Garvey also leaps to mind).

Moving down the list, Jeff Kent (32.4%, +4.9) improved, but not enough, given that he only has two more go-arounds. I think the VC will give him strong consideration once he ages off the ballot, but I can’t see him picking up the 40% he needs before then. Manny Ramirez (28.2%) didn’t see any change from 2020, so it could have been worse for him, I guess. The still doesn’t mean much. And Sammy Sosa’s chances (17%, +3.1) look pretty dead in the water, with only two years to go.

Five other players crossed the 5% threshold needed to return on the 2022 ballot: Andy Pettitte (13.7%), Mark Buehrle (11.0%), Torii Hunter (9.5%), Bobby Abreu (8.7%), and Tim Hudson (5.2%). I recently wrote about how Pettitte, Buehrle, and Hudson deserve more consideration, and I had similar thoughts last year about Abreu, so that’s good to see, at least, even if their chances of climbing to 75% are low. My thoughts on Hunter are a lot weaker, but it’s not like he was a bad player.

In addition to all of these names, 2022 will serve as the Hall of Fame ballot debut for Alex Rodriguez and David Ortiz, for those of you worried that Bonds and Clemens falling off the ballot would mean an end to the performance enhancing drug discussion we get each winter. It’s hard to say how they’ll do until we start seeing some early returns next winter, but my gut says “strong debut at over 50%, but not first ballot”. Meanwhile, Mark Teixeira and Jimmy Rollins will attempt to follow in Hudson, Buehrle, and Hunter’s footsteps and reach 5%.

So overall, the next crop of newcomers isn’t as weak as this year’s, but it’s also not overwhelmingly strong, either. I expect another year of forward movement from this year’s big gainers, which could set the stage for another big leap in 2023, when Bonds, Clemens, Schilling, and Sosa all age off and are replaced by a class led by Carlos Beltran and… John Lackey, I guess? Weak ballots are good for holdovers, so I feel extra confident about Rolen, Wagner, and Helton’s chances in that stretch (as well as Andruw’s odds to set himself up for an election down the line).

2020 Hall of Fame Election: Results and Recap

[Also up over at The Crawfish Boxes.]



What we discussed this morning is now official: Derek Jeter and Larry Walker are the newest members of the Baseball Hall of Fame. For the seventh year in a row, multiple players are going to Cooperstown off the BBWAA ballot, making it 22 in the last seven years. Both are far and away records.

Let’s start with Jeter: the long-time Yankees shortstop went in on his first try, falling one vote shy of unanimous support. We’ll probably never know who that one voter was, but to be honest, it doesn’t really matter. Sure, it would have been just the second unanimous induction in Hall history, but it’s not like they print the vote percentages on the plaques or anything. All it is in the end is trivia.

And for as much as it feels like Jeter is overrated to some degree, it’s hard to argue that he wasn’t a first-ballot Hall of Famer. He’s sixth all-time in hits (3465), made the All-Star team fourteen times, and posted a 119 wRC+ over 20 seasons while playing shortstop. For all of the holes in his game, none of them were big enough to overcome that strength.

Walker was also a close call, but in the other direction: he cleared the bar for induction by just six ballots, ending with 76.6% of the vote. Walker was a five-tool player, carrying a .313/.400/.565 batting line along with one of the ten or so best gloves in right field history. His induction was long-deserved, but he finally made the mark in his tenth and final year on the writers’ ballot.

That 76.7% is still shocking, in some ways. Just six years ago, Walker was stuck beneath a ton of other snubbed candidates, and pulling in just 10.2% of the vote. Even as recently as three years ago, Larry was getting just under 22% of the vote. Last year alone saw him jump 20.5%, the ninth-biggest single-year increase in modern Hall of Fame voting, and then he topped that this year by increasing another 22.0%, tying him for seventh all-time with Don Drysdale. That combined two-year gain also falls just a hair behind Luis Aparicio’s record 42.7% increase from 1982 to 1984.

Outside of those two, what happened down the rest of the ballot, and how does it bode for the 2021 election? It may seem too early to be asking that, but we already know who will be eligible, and what their final career numbers are. The only other major variables are how they finished in voting this year. And given next year’s relatively weak class of newcomers (Mark Buehrle, Tim Hudson, and Torii Hunter are the biggest newcomers), we could very well be seeing a lot of improvement in the vote totals for the returning players.

At the top of the backlog is Curt Schilling, who finished with 70.0% of the vote. 2021 will mark his ninth year on the ballot, meaning he has two tries to pick up 5%. He’s done that each of the last three years (including topping 9% each of the last two years), so it seems likely he’ll be standing on the stage in 2021.

Following him were Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds, at 61.0% and 60.7%. As high as those percentages are, it’s hard to be optimistic about their chances of making it in. Like Schilling, they only have two more tries, but unlike Schilling, they’ve only been adding about 2% each of the last few seasons. Picking up nearly 15% in two seasons seems like a tall order given that, unless a large number of voters suddenly change their mind on steroids. The last time either of them saw an increase that big was 2017, but that year featured Bug Selig getting elected, likely causing some voters to question what the point of punishing steroid users was if the architect of said era was going in. Nothing of that magnitude seems to be coming down the pipeline, so Clemens and Bonds will likely need the support of the Veterans Committee if they’re to make it one day.

Omar Vizquel converted nearly 10% of voters, and finally broke 50% of the vote in his third year on the ballot. Now at 52.6%, I find it very likely he gets elected eventually, although I can’t say I’m a huge supporter of his campaign. I have no idea how long it will take for him to make it in from here, if his lack of advanced stats will slow his growth or if passing 50% causes BBWAA members to consolidate around him even quicker than they have been. But given that he has seven more tries to pick up just 22.4% of the vote, he doesn’t exactly need to be improving each year by leaps and bounds the way Walker did.

Somehow, Scott Rolen might be both the most positive and negative surprise of the day? I’m a big supporter of his candidacy, and I don’t know how exactly to feel about it. On the one hand, it’s hard to feel too upset; Rolen finished his third go-around at 35.3%, over double the 17.2% he got last year. That means he’s almost halfway to that fabled 75%, and maybe a big jump like that sets him up for a next few years similar to Walker’s past few; election in two or three years doesn’t seem at all out of the realm of possibility!

But on the other hand, Rolen entered today trending around 50%, which we all knew would be high compared to the final totals, but a 15-point drop is rough. Publicly released ballots were nearly split down the middle on him, but private ballots only went his way 20% of the time. Of course, while that might not seem like much of an improvement, it’s worth noting his public-private split last year was 21%-9%, so this is still an improvement either way. Maybe the big jump he got this year will spur another big jump in 2021?

Immediately after Rolen were Billy Wagner (31.7%, fifth election), Gary Sheffield (30.5%, sixth), and Todd Helton (29.2%, second). Like Rolen, Wagner nearly doubled his support, from 16.7% in 2019. Unlike Rolen, Wagner is two years further along in the process, meaning two fewer chances to make up the 40%+ he still has to go. Right now, I’d rate his chances as “feasible”, though; another double digit gain next year and he’s looking a lot more likely.

I’m more encouraged by Todd Helton’s performance than either Wagner’s or Sheffield’s, though. I think Sheffield has a ceiling near wherever Clemens and Bonds end up, so I don’t know that we can expect another 17-point gain next year. On top of that, he’s a year further along than even Wagner. Helton, meanwhile, just took a major step forward from his 16.5% debut last year, and he has eight more tries to go. It might take him a while, but with an even emptier ballot next year, it’s very possible he makes another double-digit jump. And Walker going in also likely helps his case by helping to remove some of the Coors Field stigma (although I’m not sure if that’s the biggest factor hurting either of them, it’s probably not helping things either). I think he’s looking at a Tony Perez-like campaign, taking several years, but not quite pushing things to the wire like Walker.

And that’s really all of the major movement downballot. Manny Ramirez still hasn’t broken 30%, and will likely lag behind even Sheffield from here on out. Jeff Kent jumped up nearly 10%, but he’s still only at 27.5% with three more tries to go; he’s technically closer than Larry Walker was at this point, but he also isn’t the player Walker was. Let’s see him at least make a 12% jump in year eight before we start using Walker as the blueprint here (although I think Kent will find a more receptive audience in the Veterans Committee, so it’s not all doom and gloom).

Andruw Jones more than doubled his prior support, but that only takes him to 19.5%. Jones is a legendary fielder, so it feels a little silly he’s trending so far behind Vizquel. Then again, it’s at least good to see voters are open to considering him, and maybe Vizquel’s candidacy will lead to greater appreciation of Jones’s glove. With seven more tries, he’s not done yet, but I don’t feel as confident about his chances as I do Rolen or Helton.

The only other players to clear 5% and secure a place on the 2021 ballot were Sammy Sosa, Andy Pettitte, and Bobby Abreu. Sosa’s eighth time (13.9%) around marked both a new personal best and the first time he broke double digits since his debut back in 2013. So yeah, he’s basically just playing out the string at this point. Pettitte’s second ballot saw him jump from 9.9% all the way to 11.3%. I feel like he’ll be on the ballot for a while, if nothing else. And really, at 5.5%, I’m just glad Abreu is sticking around; like I said earlier, he’s more deserving of an extended hearing than most people give him credit for. He’s at least gotten a second year, now.

And with that, we can close a book on this year’s Hall of Fame election. Congratulations again to Derek Jeter and Larry Walker, as well as Ted Simmons and Marvin Miller, who are your new Hall of Fame Class of 2020. To everyone else, we’ll see you again next year.

2020 Hall of Fame Announcement Day Preview

[Also over at The Crawfish Boxes!]

This Tuesday, three weeks after the Baseball Writers of America requires Hall of Fame voters to have sent in their ballots for the year, we will finally learn the names of the players who will be joining Ted Simmons (and possibly the family of Marvin Miller) on stage this July. The event starts at 5 PM Central Time, for those who want to follow along in real time with the MLB Network announcement or online (although, be warned, it usually takes them a while to get around to actually announcing the names).

In preparation for this evening, let’s go through what we know already. There’s of course the ballot itself. We’ve been covering the ballot here for several weeks, with breakdowns of various candidates on the ballot. And perhaps most critically, there’s Ryan Thibodaux and his team collecting ballots as writers release them and compiling them in their amazing Ballot Tracker. As of this writing, we already have over half of the ballot accounted for, with even more ballots liking being added throughout the day. So let’s dive right in:

The Hall of Fame's Historic Class of 2019, Plus a Preview of 2020's Ballot

I was super excited to see another four person class going in to Cooperstown today, and wrote about the players, as well as how it sets things up for next year's ballot over at The Crawfish Boxes. Go check it out!

2019 Hall of Fame Ballot and 50 Best Players Not in the Hall of Fame

I realized the other day that it’s been 3 years since the last time I did a “50 Best Players Not in the Hall of Fame” piece, and even that was a reduced 25-player ballot. The last proper 50-player list was five years ago. It seems Graham Womack had ceased work on the project, but I still find the subject interesting, so I wanted to pick it up again and see what my list today would look like.

After all, with so many players going in over the past few years (18 inducted over the past five cycles, with likely another five or six joining them this year), there must be a lot of turnover, right? Let’s start by looking at my list from last time (sorted by Hall Rating); as a reminder, players are eligible even if they’re on their first ballot this year and haven’t gone through a election cycle yet:

Old-Age Success Is Crucial for Starting Pitchers' Hall of Fame Candidacies: A Brief Study (Part 1)

Writing about one thing frequently leads me down a random path that can inspire my subsequent articles. For instance, in writing about Chase Utley, I began looking at other players on the 2008 Phillies. It’s rare for championship-winning teams to end up with no Hall of Famers, but that might be the case with them. Utley has the clearest case, but as I mentioned last time, is severely underrated by the body that is in charge of voting. Jimmy Rollins fizzled out shy of 3000 hits, his likeliest ticket to Cooperstown, while Ryan Howard’s body gave out before he could rack up an impressive-enough home run total to overcome the numerous weak points in his game.

But then I realized that there is one other possibility that I forgot. Cole Hamels has reliably shown up in my yearly Future Hall of Fame series, although I imagine that most people don’t think of him that way. It looks like he could possibly continue to beat the Hall median for pitchers too. That got me thinking about the difference between Hall of Fame starters and position players; if there’s one thing years of doing this has shown me, it’s that Hall of Fame pitchers aren’t clear anywhere as early as Hall of Fame hitters.

There’s an interesting reason for this; I think it was Joe Posnanski (although I can’t find the original article now) who once observed that Hall starters are made in their 30s. Essentially, there are too many false starts and career-wrecking injuries to trust early returns, like you can with hitters, but the best of the best starters, the ones who generally make it to Cooperstown, generally keep up with their stellar performance into their later years.

For a numerical example, there have been 40 liveball-era pitchers (post-1920) inducted into the Hall, 34 or 35 of which were starters, depending on how you want to count Dennis Eckersley. Of those 40, 23 of them were worth 12 or more WAR from their age 33 season on. That doesn’t seem like a high bar to clear, but only 96 Hall-eligible liveball pitchers have done that at all.

Think about that: knowing literally nothing else about their career, just knowing that a player managed 12 WAR from their age 33 season on, a total that’s maybe a fifth of what they’d need overall to even begin meriting Hall discussion, gives them about a 25% chance of being a Hall of Famer.* And of course, it’s ignoring that a lot of the Hall of Famers who didn’t make it to 12 WAR still had some interesting later seasons that contributed a lot to their induction case.**

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.

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.

Predicting Future Hall of Famers 2017 Follow-Up: The Disappearance of Below-Median Starters

In the previous post, I was discussing active pitchers above the median Wins Above Replacement for Hall of Famers by age when I noted something interesting at the end: there are only two starters* above the overall median who are eligible for the Hall but not inducted or still on the ballot. Kevin Brown and Rick Reuschel both cleared the median by less than a full Win. Other than them, everyone above the median has made it.

*As defined last time, this is pitchers who began post-1919 with 10% or more of their total games as a starter. See last time for the reasoning on that, although I'll be jumping back and forth in this one between "Live Ball" starters and "Total" starters; I'll make the distinction clear when those shifts happen.

This makes for an interesting contrast with the hitters. Limiting ourselves to just post-1919 debuts so that we're working with comparable sets of players, the median WAR for hitters is 65.1 (held by Craig Biggio)*, just a bit lower than the pitchers' mark of 67.95 (between Jim Palmer and Carl Hubbell). While there are only two pitchers above the median not yet in or still on the ballot, there are nine such hitters, ranging from Rafael Palmeiro (71.6 WAR) to Willie Randolph (65.5). And if we expand this to include players on the ballot, it becomes five starters to thirteen position players (plus the ineligible Pete Rose). And while those three pitchers all look likely to get inducted, the four hitters are much more uncertain, with Barry Bonds and Edgar Martinez looking likely to get inducted before they age out but Larry Walker and Manny Ramirez looking like long shots.

*Note that this is a little different than the median I used in the previous piece; that’s because I did not limit that median to post-1919 batters. However, I wanted the two to be on a level playing field here, so there’s a slight upwards shift as a result.

That's an interesting level of uniformity. Maybe this is a sign of those pitchers all being particularly obvious? But let's look at the flip-side; how have players below the median done? After all, the median is the middle point, not the end-all, be-all. We should be seeing at least some below-median names getting inducted, right? Well, that's the interesting part: we really aren't for pitchers.

The 2017 Hall-of-Fame-a-Palooza (featuring over 20 guys up for induction, plus my ballot)

When we last left off, I was writing about my thoughts on the Veterans Committee election, albeit a little late. It’s a shame, too, because maybe my random article on the internet would have filtered up to someone on the committee, and they could have shared it with the other fifteen voters to spread my wisdom. I should probably write about the BBWAA ballot before the results are announced to avoid a similar tragedy.

The easiest way is to probably just look at last year’s ballot and look for what I would change. So, without further ado, last year’s ten-person ballot:

Jeff Bagwell
Barry Bonds
Roger Clemens
Jim Edmonds
Edgar Martinez
Mike Mussina
Mike Piazza
Tim Raines
Curt Schilling
Larry Walker

Yep, I did the “don’t vote for Ken Griffey, Jr. because he’s a lock so you can spread the votes around”. Clearly, the BBWAA did not find my article last year, as Jim Edmonds couldn’t lock up the requisite votes to stick around another year. That, plus the election of Mike Piazza, freed up two spots for me this year, which is good, because we got four solid candidates in Ivan Rodriguez, Manny Ramirez, Vladimir Guerrero, and Jorge Posada. So, we can just add those names and be done with…

Nope, never mind, I did that math wrong; four is more than two. I’m gonna have to do some parsing of the names. And I forgot all the holdovers I couldn’t vote for anyway; even with Alan Trammell and Mark McGwire aging off, there are still plenty of interesting names remaining.

Let’s start with the most simplistic ranking: if we just line up everyone by Wins Above Replacement (WAR, Baseball-Reference edition), what does that top ten look like?

Bonds-162.4
Clemens-140.3
Mussina-83.0
Schilling-79.9
Bagwell-79.6
Walker-72.6
Ramirez-69.2
Raines-69.1
Rodriguez-68.4
Martinez-68.3

That’s…not too bad, actually. It’s basically my ballot from last year, with first-timers Pudge and Manny thrown in to fill those open spots. And not only that, but there’s a pretty clear demarcation there-Gary Sheffield is next, a full 8 Wins below Edgar, with the rest of the ballot below 60. If we were trying to draw a line somewhere between those four names between 68 and 70 WAR, that would be one thing, but this is a lot more noticeable break.

And I do think some positions need some upward adjustments to their WAR totals; notably, catcher and relievers. But Rodriguez made it on his own, while Posada is the lowest non-reliever I think of as “in consideration”, with only 42.7. A 25+ WAR boost is just ridiculous. Posada is right where I would consider the borderline for catchers, so I’m not too bent out of shape by omitting him anyway. With the Hall already missing catchers like Ted Simmons, Thurman Munson, and Bill Freehan, I’m much more comfortable leaving him off my list.

Then, there are the relievers. We’re basically looking at Lee Smith, Trevor Hoffman, and Billy Wagner. And I can see them all having a case for Cooperstown, but given how crowded the ballot is, I wouldn’t want to vote for more than one. So which one do I go with? Let’s line them up, and include some other stats, excluding their save totals to make who is who less clear:

A: 29.6 bWAR, 26.6 fWAR, 1289.1 IP, 2.93 FIP, 1251 K, 8.73 K/9, 1.256 WHIP, 82.3 SV%
B: 28.4 bWAR, 26.1 fWAR, 1089.1 IP, 3.08 FIP, 1133 K, 9.36 K/9, 1.058 WHIP, 88.8% SV%
C: 28.1 bWAR, 24.1 fWAR, 903.0 IP, 2.73 FIP, 1196 K, 11.92 K/9*, 0.988 WHIP, 85.9 SV%

*This would be the all-time record, if C had enough innings to qualify.
So…which one do you pick? Because honestly…they all look too similar to me. I just can’t vote for one of them and feel like it wasn’t made somewhat arbitrarily. And I’m still not convinced that any of them deserves a spot over the other ten.

(For reference, A was Smith, B was Hoffman, and C was Wagner.)

Let’s look at things a different way, though; how does our list look when we use Wins Above Average? For reference, WAA is basically WAR, with the baseline set at 2 rather than 0 (that is to say, to calculate a player’s WAA for a season, subtract 2 from their WAR). This gives us a better sense of dominance, how much better the players were than just some random starter. For that, we’ve got:

Bonds-124.5
Clemens-94.5
Schilling-54.1
Bagwell-51.8
Mussina-48.6
Walker-48.2
Martinez-38.4
Ramirez-35.6
Raines-35.0
Rodriguez-33.1
Guerrero-29.4
Sammy Sosa-28.0
Jeff Kent-26.3
Sheffield-25.7
J.D. Drew-25.0
Mike Cameron-20.8
Fred McGriff-19.6
Posada-17.3
Wagner-16.5
Hoffman-13.7
Smith-13.7

First things first: not a great look for those last five, falling below Drew and Cameron (at the same time though, good on those two; they had great but underrated careers, even if they fell a little short overall). And this further cements my belief that I can scratch off all three closers.

Once again, the same ten names are at the top, albeit in a shuffled order. And once again, there’s a decently-sized gap between ten and eleven. I feel like I can say that the top six are locks, because of how far ahead of the rest they are. There’s just no question that they’re the cream of this crop.

Plus, Rodriguez made the top ten in both cases despite all of the lack-of-playing-time penalties that double-count against catchers. I think it’s safe to say he’s easily the best catcher not in Cooperstown too, so he’s in. And this is Raines’s final year on the ballot before he ages off, and he’s right on the cusp, so I feel obligated to throw him a vote. So that gives me eight names.

So, those last two spots seem like they come down to Edgar, Manny, Vlad, Sammy, and Sheff, with those first two the favorites. This is a good group to look at too, as it’s four corner-outfielders who were got most or all of their value from their bat alone, plus a designated hitter.

If you want to compare them, here’s a custom Fangraphs leaderboard. To be honest…I’m kind of inclined to stick it out with Manny and Edgar. They were far and away the best hitters, with Sheffield the next closest. Vlad probably has the best “intangible” arguments, given how notable he was and the steroid ties for Ramirez, Sosa, and Sheffield. But at the same time, he’s far and away the weakest candidate, to the point where he’d be noticeably among the weaker outfielders in the Hall.

So that’s the final ballot: Bagwell, Bonds, Clemens, Martinez, Mussina, Raines, Ramirez, Rodriguez, Schilling, and Walker. If I were feeling clever, I would probably drop Manny and Walker in favor of Hoffman and Guerrero; based on the early returns, those two are riding the knife’s edge, currently at 75.0% and 73.3% on 175 ballots as I type. Meanwhile, the rest of my ballot is over 50% and needs help building momentum, while Ramirez and Walker are just sorta languishing in the low-20s. The more people we get in this year, the more cleared out the ballot is next year, meaning we can work to getting even more people inducted.

And we’re gonna need those spots next year. Because outside of Bagwell, Raines, Hoffman, Rodriguez, and Guerrero, everyone else I mulled over is basically a lock to return next year, plus we’ll be adding Chipper Jones, Jim Thome, Scott Rolen, Andruw Jones, and Johan Santana, all of whom I have strong opinions about (plus Omar Vizquel, who I personally don’t but many other people will). A five person induction class would reduce so many headaches going forward (and it would match the largest Hall class ever, which would be cool). So godspeed, five guys getting over 70% of the vote; let’s hope we all see you in Cooperstown this summer.

Predicting the Future of the Hall of Fame, 2017-2019

The 2016 Hall of Fame election is finally in the rearview mirror, with Ken Griffey, Jr. and Mike Piazza on the other side. Not joining them is a gaggle of similarly-qualified stars, though, and most of them (outside of Jim Edmonds, Mark McGwire, and Alan Trammell) will be back at this next year once again. Some of those qualified stars even came remarkably close this year, with Jeff Bagwell, Tim Raines, and Trevor Hoffman falling 15, 23, and 34 votes shy (respectively). So, let’s take this opportunity to look towards the future; where does the Hall of Fame vote go from here?

2016 Hall of Fame Ballot and 25 Best Players Not in the Hall

After a one-year hiatus, Graham Womack has returned to his 50 Best Players Not in the Hall of Fame project, and I have once again decided to contribute. One twist is that, this year, he had to trim his list down to just the 25 Best Players. I might still name a Top 50 to match years past, but for now, I’ll just go over my ballot for the top 25 and save the rest for another day. Once I do that, it shouldn’t be too difficult to whittle that down to my 10-person Hall list for 2016.

My methodology for my ballot was pretty straightforward. I used my past years’ ballots as starting points, saw how many openings I had, then decided what changes I needed. The top spots were easy to decide, and the only really difficult choices came down to the last four or five slots. As usual, I noted on Graham’s ballot that I’d vote for all of my choices for the real Hall of Fame, as all 25 easily clear the standards set forth by Cooperstown (as I’ve shown in the past, usually, the top 50 or so players not in the Hall are still as good as the median Hall of Famer, if not better, as the Hall includes far more than just the Willie Mayses as Babe Ruths of the game).

Since my last ballot on this matter, four players have gotten the call: Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, Frank Thomas, and Joe Torre. That means I’ll need to cut at least 21 players to get to the appropriate number. How many newcomers do I have to account for? Certainly Ken Griffey, Jr., as there’s clearly no argument against him. Also Jim Edmonds; I can’t see any argument that he isn’t on of the 50 Best players not inducted yet, although we’ll need to see if he makes the top 25. I’m not sure I’d add Trevor Hoffman or Billy Wagner to the list, but they’d be in the conversation. My uncertainty stems more from how to treat the general position of relief pitcher (if we decided we need to elect some eligible reliever to Cooperstown right now, Hoffman and Wagner would be my choices 1 and 1A). So at least two of our open slots are filled.

Next, I need to whittle my rough, ~48-person list down to just 25. This seems like it might be a difficult task, but it winds up being easier than you might think. While the ballot itself never requires ranking, it would be a lie to say that I don’t consider some players on my list stronger candidates than others. I’ll start with the more “obvious” choices, as they generally take less explanation to get through.

My 2015 Hall of Fame Ballot

Once again, it’s time for me to cast my vote in the Baseball Bloggers Alliance’s Hall of Fame election. This year, they switched to a binary “Yes/No” choice for each player, rather than keeping the BBWAA’s system of a ten-person limit. That saved me the trouble of trying to decide whether to leave off the top choices to make room for the down-ballot players. So, briefly, here are my thoughts on each player.

Out of the Park Baseball 15 and the Orioles' New Big Three

As long-time readers may remember, last year, I got a chance to review Out of the Park Baseball 14. And once again, for Out of the Park 15, the company once again reached out to the Baseball Bloggers Alliance to test the game. OotP has long been my favorite simulator, not only for upcoming seasons, but also for simulating past hypotheticals. And as it just so happened, I had the perfect situation to test out.

Back during Hall of Fame season, Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine being up for election at the same time got me thinking about the Braves’ Big Three. And somehow, I got to wondering: could another team have won more (games or World Series) with a similar Big Three in their rotation?

And it wasn’t difficult to pick a team to test this out with. I already had a Big Three in mind: I wanted Hall-level pitchers from the 1990s to run concurrent with the Braves. Specifically, I wanted Mike Mussina, Curt Schilling, and Kevin Brown. All three have been overlooked for Cooperstown, and yet, cumulatively, they are only 13.4 Wins Above Replacement (Baseball-Reference) behind the Braves’ trio. That comes out to a difference of 4.5 WAR per player per career, all of which were close to 20 seasons. That’s not a big difference at all.

As for what team to use, I picked the one franchise that all three played on: the Orioles. I started in 1991, the year Mussina was called up and the first season following the trade that sent Schilling (still a young reliever just getting started) to Houston. Kevin Brown is the only one with experience from this batch so far, and he’s not scheduled to come to Baltimore for a few more seasons.

Examining the Hall of Fame Vote for Starters

Well, the Hall of Fame votes were finally released. There are a lot of ridiculous things I could cover (like Craig Biggio’s exclusion, missing by two votes and largely caused by the artificial 10-person limit), but I won’t. Instead, I want to look at something else. Pitchers, specifically.

There were eight starters up for election this year. If you were to rank them, Greg Maddux and Roger Clemens would undoubtedly be options 1 and 1A. Hideo Nomo and Kenny Rogers would probably bring up the rear (although Rogers is probably better than at least a couple pitchers already in the Hall; that’s not really a huge help for his candidacy, though).

Really, I want to look at the middle four, those being Tom Glavine, Jack Morris, Mike Mussina, and Curt Schilling. Really, I want to keep it to just this year’s ballot, otherwise I would throw in John Smoltz and Kevin Brown as well, but let’s just keep it simple.

First, let’s see how they did in voting:
Glavine: 91.9%
Morris: 61.5%
Schilling: 29.2%
Mussina: 20.3%

I find this interesting for a lot of reasons. Mostly, the voting doesn’t really seem to reflect performance terribly well in my mind. If I had to rank these guys, I’d probably put them Schilling/Mussina/Glavine in a tight bunch but in that order, followed by a far lagging Jack Morris. A 70+ point spread doesn’t seem at all justified. So, just for fun, here are some comparisons. I’ll award each pitcher points based on where they finish in the group; first gets 4, last gets 1. I haven’t run this experiment, so I don’t know if it’ll turn out like I expect, but let’s see.

My Hall of Fame Ballot, Part 2

I know I’ve harped on the Ballot backlog enough, but I’m always finding new ways to put it in to number form. For example, take my ballot for the 50 Best Players not in Cooperstown. I said I would put all 50 players in. I’ve pointed out before how it wouldn’t actually water down the Hall, but here’s another way to think about it.

Adam Darowski has an objective look at the Hall of Fame in his Hall of Stats and its Hall Rating system. I’ve explained it enough before, but the highlights: based on Baseball-Reference WAR (rWAR), on a scale like OPS+ (so 100 is Hall minimum, 200 is equal to 2 Hall of Famers worth of value, etc.). My ballot this year had an average Hall Rating of 137.7. That would slide comfortably into 70th place (out of 208) in the real Hall of Fame, which itself only has an average Hall Rating of 132.9 (you can check the numbers from his site if you want, they’re available for download).

This year’s ballot is even stronger. As I said last time, there are 18 players I would vote for this year. Those 18 average out to a 164.6 Hall rating, nestled nicely between Steve Carlton (167) and Carlton Fisk (158).* Even if you want to throw out Barry Bonds as an outlier, you get 152.9. Bonds and Roger Clemens? 144.1. Bonds, Clemens, and Greg Maddux? 139.1.

*Those two aren’t right next to each other, but I liked the symmetry.

Basically, I want to get across that this ballot is incredibly deep. Which is going to make whittling it down to ten for my Baseball Bloggers Alliance ballot even harder. First, which eighteen am I focusing on?

Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Greg Maddux, Curt Schilling, Jeff Bagwell, Mike Mussina, Larry Walker, Tom Glavine, Mike Piazza, Alan Trammell, Frank Thomas, Edgar Martinez, Tim Raines, Craig Biggio, Rafael Palmeiro, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, and Jeff Kent

I hate having to ask “Why wasn’t this person Hall-worthy?” It feels so negative. Unfortunately, it seems like that might be how I have to go about this part, since I have to cut almost half of the names off. I’ll then list any mitigating factors to their negatives, things like titles, extreme stats, or other variables. Let’s start:

Retired Number Spin-Off: Going Where No Retired Numbers Have Gone Before, or Why Do Baseball Players Hate 8?

One cool thing about doing the Retired Number Series was all of the ideas for spin-offs I got. However, I wanted to wait until I finished the main series to work on those. Now that that’s out of the way, though, I can work on these side projects.

One thing that I always thought was interesting was the breadth of numbers worn. I remember seeing this chart from Flip Flop Fly Ball and thinking about teams needing triple digit numbers and all the numbers that would have to be out of use to get to them. And from there, I for some reason thought of how that span would look.

Basically, after doing 30 retired number pieces, you get to notice that some numbers show up more than others. In case you were wondering, 20 showed up more than any others, with nine occurrences.* In total, 51 useable numbers have been retired (this disqualifies Cleveland’s 455). They span from 1 (seven times) to 85 (once, Augie Busch). 72 was the highest one that was actually worn by a player (Carlton Fisk).

*Luis Gonzalez, Monte Irvin, Lou Brock, Pie Traynor, Mike Schmidt, Frank White, Don Sutton, and Frank Robinson twice

Seeing stuff like this made me wonder what the lowest unretired number was. When I began, it was 28. Since then, the Twins have honored Bert Blyleven. Apparently though, players don’t like the 8’s. The now-lowest unretired number is 38.

So what as-of-yet-unhonored numbers may someday join these illustrious ranks? Well, Baseball-Reference has introduced a cool tool (at least, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t around when I started). Clicking on a player’s jersey will take you to a list of all the players to wear a jersey in that team’s history (for example, see the Astros’ page). From there, you can navigate to each individual jersey’s page (again, see 20’s page for reference).

Now with a purpose, I investigated each number without a represented player to see what may eventually become the new lowest not-retired number.

BBA Hall of Fame Ballot, 2012

My Hall of Fame ballot for the Baseball Bloggers Alliance vote is due soon, and since I just covered the 50 Best Players Not in the Hall, it seemed like a good time to continue on the topic. Heck, I even had an entire post just about the players on this year’s ballot. But that brings up an important question:

In my article, I had 14 players from this year’s ballot listed as worthy. The "real" voters only get 10 spaces to vote, though. It’s a stupid rule, but it still applies. So, if I were voting for the BBWAA instead of the BBA, who would I cut?

50 Best Players Not in the Hall of Fame 2012

You might remember that last year, I participated in Baseball Past and Present’s 50 Best Players Not in the Hall of Fame. This year, Graham Womack is running the project again, and I once again decided to participate. The process was much easier this year, as I had last year’s list to work off of. However, this year’s influx of candidates did mean that I needed to do some difficult rearranging.

And that seems like the best place to start. There were fourteen players on this year’s ballot that I count among the 50 best players not in Cooperstown, seven of them new, as well as two more that made the Veterans Committee ballot. And again, I would support the induction of all 50 players that I named.

So, without further ado (Players are listed with their teams by games played, their position, and their Hall Rating* from the Hall of Stats, with the new players on the ballot italicized):

*The Hall Rating uses Wins Above Replacement and Wins Above Average from Baseball-Reference to determine a player’s worthiness. The Hall Rating is a combination of the two, on a scale like OPS+. 100 is the Hall minimum, 110 represents 10% than the minimum, and so on. It’s more for the sake of quick comparison. All Hall Ratings have been updated to reflect the induction of Deacon White.