How Big Should the Hall of Fame Be, Part 2: What Would a More Appropriately-Sized Hall Look Like?

I know I’ve done a lot of Hall of Fame stuff lately. This will be the last piece for now, at least in this vein. This is more or less the direct sequel to “How Big Should the Hall of Fame Be?”.

As a quick recap, I looked at historical trends in the Hall of Fame voting and determined that voters just aren’t inducting players like they used to. At least, not at the same rate. I then decided to predict who would make the Hall of Fame among active players, applying the standards of past times. It was fun, and highly speculative, but it didn’t match up with the original premise.

I wanted to say “What types of players would we be inducting if we applied past Hall standards?”. Speculation is fun, but I should have been doing something more analytic. If we just went by old standards and inducted the top 4%/5%/etc. of players in given years, who exactly would we be inducting? What would a Hall of Fame with those sets of players look like?

In that sense, I should have been straying towards more established players. Modern players are always fun, but there’s too much prediction and projection involved. If I took a year and added the top 37/50/64/however-many players to Cooperstown, what would that get us, Hall-of-Fame-wise? In that sense, I’m going to try one more thing: what active players in 2000 would make the Hall, now that we have sizable careers to use for comparisons?

Who Are the Hall of Famers Playing Today? 2012

First, I looked at the Hall of Fame and determined that it may not be inducting enough players, compared to years past. Anywhere from 40 to even as high as 90 active players at any one time may be Hall of Fame-worthy, going by past standards. So, I looked at the active players in 2006 to come up with a list of (40 to) 80 players who fit the bill as most likely future Hall of Famers. As stated in the last article, starting with 2006 was three-fold; it let me examine the up-coming Hall ballots while lowering the amount of guesswork needed in projecting players, and it gave me a start on looking at this year’s players. If you have any questions on why I put a player somewhere and there’s nothing present here, go check to 2006 articles.

Who are the Hall of Famers Playing Today? 2006, Part 3

Finally, after a two day delay (who knew that so much news would happen on the trade deadline?), we return to the Future Hall of Fame topic.

Okay, so a quick recap. First, I looked back and determined that the Hall of Fame had sort of stopped inducting players at a reasonable rate (at least, compared to what they had done historically). Then, I decided to look at some players who were active in 2006 to get an idea of candidates to make the Hall in the future, that way we might get an idea of what a slightly larger Hall might look like. However, my two-part retrospective didn’t really organize the players in any way, other than the order that they came to me.*

*If you were able to pick up on an order, please let me know. I’ve been trying to figure it out for years now with minimal luck.
However, that order may not be the order that they’re most likely to be inducted into the Hall. And so, I took that list and decided to organize it into something shorter and more coherent here. Also, in case you’re curious/don’t want to go find the numbers in the older pieces: 37 players is the traditional average and about 3% of the players at the moment; 43 and a half is 3.5%; 50 is 4%; 62 is 5%; 74 and a half is 6%; and 82 anda half is 6.643%, the average from 1901 to 1982.