Predicting Today's Future Hall of Fame Closers

I recently ran my annual look at which hitters and starting pitchers are on pace for the Hall of Fame, and in them, I mentioned the idea of switching things up and looking at relief pitchers as well. After all, there’s been something of an explosion in relief talent in Cooperstown over the last two years; after being stuck at five closers in the Hall for a decade, we’ve seen three new ones added in Mariano Rivera, Lee Smith, and Trevor Hoffman. Plus, Billy Wagner continues to hang around the ballot, and may see his support continue to climb in the coming years.

Now obviously, eight closers still isn’t anywhere near the body of evidence we have to work with when trying to predict position players or starters, but it might be fun to play around with, and see if we can spot any sort of nascent trends in who the Hall is electing.

It’s not a lot to work with, but there are some fun things I noticed while looking into things: