A 2023 Hall of Fame Ballot of Your Own – and a Schedule of Profiles
Hall of Fame season is underway, and I’ve already completed my review of the eight Contemporary Baseball Era Committtee candidates and gotten a start on the annual BBWAA ballot. With the latter, it’s time to launch what’s become a yearly tradition at FanGraphs. In the spirit of our annual free agent contract crowdsourcing, we’re inviting registered users to fill out their own virtual Hall of Fame ballots using a cool gizmo that our developer, Sean Dolinar, built a few years ago. I’m also going to use this page to lay out a tentative schedule for the remainder of the series as well as links to the profiles that have been published.
To participate in the crowdsourcing, you must be signed in, and you may only vote once. While you don’t have to be a FanGraphs Member to do so, this is a perfect time to mention that buying a Membership does help to fund the development of cool tools like this — and it makes a great holiday gift! To replicate the actual voting process, you may vote for anywhere from zero to 10 players; ballots with more than 10 won’t be counted. You may change your ballot until the deadline, which is December 31, 2022, the same as that of the actual BBWAA voters, who have to schlep their paper ballot to the mailbox.
The ballot is here and contains all 28 candidates (sorry, no write-ins for those fixated on Pete Rose). We’ve got tables of career stats for the ballot’s position players and pitchers, if that helps, as well as a checkbox that allows you to see the stats of those already enshrined. As with last year, I’ll write up the crowdsourcing results sometime before the announcement of the official results on January 24.
As for the schedule, I’m still piecing it together, so what is sketched out below is incomplete and should be regarded as tentative. I do anticipate many of the first-year candidates with no shot at election — the one-and-dones — running sometime in early January, which allows me to focus on the stronger cases before the ballot deadline while continuing to pitch in with our coverage of free agent deals and other winter news. This also lets me go a bit longer with the profiles of those one-and-done candidates, for whom just appearing on the ballot after an impressive career is its own reward. With a smaller ballot than last year as well as less schedule creep from the Era Committee ballot, I don’t anticipate having to double or triple up with brief summaries of the holdovers as I did with the Barry Bonds/Roger Clemens/Curt Schilling/Sammy Sosa quartet — now mercifully off the writers’ ballot — and the Mark Buehrle/Tim Hudson/Andy Pettitte trio. Hopefully, they’ll all get a fresh coat of paint, so to speak.
Rest assured that I’ll be covering every candidate at length or in brief, in keeping with what I’ve done since the start of my JAWS-flavored coverage in 2004 (making this the 20th election cycle for JAWS). I’m not about to miss any now. New profiles below are denoted with asterisks.
Nov. 21: Intro
Nov. 22: Scott Rolen
Nov. 28: Todd Helton
Nov. 29: Jeff Kent
Dec. 1: Billy Wagner
Dec. 2: Jimmy Rollins
Dec. 6: Carlos Beltrán*
Dec. 7: Andruw Jones
Dec. 8: Bobby Abreu
Dec. 12: Gary Sheffield
Dec. 13: Andy Pettitte
Dec. 14: Francisco Rodríguez*
Dec. 15: Mark Buehrle
Dec. 16: Torii Hunter
Dec. 19: John Lackey*
Dec. 20: Alex Rodriguez
Dec. 22: Manny Ramirez
Dec. 23: Omar Vizquel
Dec. 29: My Ballot
Jan. 4: R.A. Dickey*
Jan. 5: Jacoby Ellsbury*
Jan. 6: Andre Ethier*
Jan. 9: Jhonny Peralta*
Jan. 10: J.J. Hardy*
Jan. 12: Matt Cain*
Jan. 13: Jered Weaver*
Jan. 17: Jayson Werth*
Jan. 18: Mike Napoli*
Jan. 19: Huston Street*
Jan. 20: Bronson Arroyo*
Brooklyn-based Jay Jaffe is a senior writer for FanGraphs, the author of The Cooperstown Casebook (Thomas Dunne Books, 2017) and the creator of the JAWS (Jaffe WAR Score) metric for Hall of Fame analysis. He founded the Futility Infielder website (2001), was a columnist for Baseball Prospectus (2005-2012) and a contributing writer for Sports Illustrated (2012-2018). He has been a recurring guest on MLB Network and a member of the BBWAA since 2011, and a Hall of Fame voter since 2021. Follow him on BlueSky @jayjaffe.bsky.social.
If it weren’t already, the backlog is officially dead. No matter how you view the character clause and even if you are a big-hall enthusiast, no reasonable person truly needs more than the 10 spots anymore.
It is nice that we are getting close to the point where at least the PED question will be fairly clear cut. Guys coming onto the ballot now spent all or the vast majority of their careers during testing and punishment. For those that want to punish PED use in voting, this to me makes it much easier as you have a much better chance of correctly identifying who should be excluded. While not perfect, it makes no sense to exclude anyone because you “think they were on PED” if they played for 15 years of testing without getting a single positive.
Of course, I’m probably being naive as the human mind has a great ability to be ridiculous and hypocritical.
David Ortiz, who tested positive for PEDs, is in the Hall of Fame.
Am I necessarily going to turn that into “he definitely juiced?” Eh, but the simplest argument in the world to make is that MLB already made a personal exception for him because they like the guy.
The Hall of Fame is never going to be objective or lacking in hypocrisy, so I have bad news about the objectivity of the ballots going forward.
My point is for players moving forward. Besides the guys that are being kept out for alleged (almost certain) use like Bonds and Clemens that never failed a test, and Sheffield, for instance who had a murkier case and has been kept out, others like Piazza and Bagwell had a tougher time getting in due to “whispers.”
Ortiz is a perfect example of the counter to what I was talking about. The new crop of PED guys won’t have anonymous positive tests when there were no suspensions. Guys like Braun, Cruz, and Tatis will have positive tests and suspensions. However voters want to deal with that, it seems cleaner. And it sure seems a lot less likely that some player (let’s say Trout) could be dinged because “I don’t know, he’s awfully strong and someone said he had backne.”
Again, how people want to treat this is to me a personal decision. But the facts are a lot cleaner in today’s testing/suspension era than it was in the past.
I have 11 guys I’d support, and that doesn’t include Billy Wagner, who has an easy argument given current HoF closer standards.
Care to share that list?
I have four that I think “belong,” but a Big Hall type who doesn’t care about cheating can get to 11 pretty easily, even without Wagner:
ARod
Manny
Beltran
Rolen
Sheffield
Jones
Helton
Pettitte
Abreu
Buerhle
Hudson
(Especially if you’re a Yanks fan like cookie, haha)
Well, I think I’ve identified at least one issue. Tim Hudson is not on the fan ballot. That definitely skews my thinking a tad.
And upon further reflection, maybe it isn’t crazy to include all three of the hangers on, and also the steroid guys, too. Adding Hudson, I’m at 11, and would likely leave Francisco Rodriguez off if I had to.
Tim Hudson only got 3% last year. He is not on the real ballot this year.
This year I would support ten candidates and next year, more. I’m in favor of the following players being voted into the Baseball HoF by the BBWAA:
Bobby Abreu
Carlos Beltran
Todd Helton
Andruw Jones
Andy Pettitte
Manny Ramirez
Alex Rodriguez
Scott Rolen
Gary Sheffield
Billy Wagner
In the likely event no candidate is elected, and due to the fact that all ten would be holdovers. There would. be a surplus of HoF worthy candidates because there are three HoF worthy candidates making their debut on the ballot in 2024, next year:
Adrian Beltre
Joe Mauer
Chase Utley
Even if Scott Rolen and/or Carlos Beltran and/or Todd Helton is elected this year, there will be more than ten HoF worthy candidates on the ballot in 2024. There may be more than ten this year if one favors a Jeff Kent, Francisco Rodriguez or Mark Buehrle.
Yeah, I think my mistake was putting the trio of starting pitchers outside of reasonable, which isn’t really fair.
I get 7 guys who I consider clearly belonging, 2 more borderline cases I decided to support, which leaves me 1 vote which goes to my favorite player of the last 30 years, RA Dickey.
I love it when a guy like Dickey gets a vote. No, I doubt anyone really thinks he should be enshrined. But it’s a free way to tip your cap to the guy for a career that might belong in the Hall of Very Good.
Happy JAWSiversary, Jay!
Voted Rolen, Sheffield, Jones. Wagner, plus Buerhle/Pettitte/Abreu to keep them on the ballot.
No to A-Rod, Manny, and Beltran because they’re cheaters who were told “Stop doing this, it’s cheating” then kept cheating anyway.
No to Helton because he’s been getting more votes than my pet HoVG guys despite a lower career fWAR total.
My list is similar to yours, or at least could be similar to yours. I’m a definite yes on Rolen. Voted for Abreu and Buehrle just because I’d want to keep them on. Still thinking about Jones, he was a definite for me until I was reminded of his domestic violence incident. A big maybe to Sheffield, still don’t know what I think about his steroid use. I had him on the past, might put him on again.
Not really in on Wagner, I don’t think closers typically are hall of famers. Dennis Eckersley and Mariano Rivera and Goose Gossage, sure, but not really in on the rest. No on A-Rod, Manny, Beltran, and Helton for the same reasons.
Would like to work up the nerve to put Jacoby Ellsbury on, just to see people ask who put Jacoby Ellsbury on their ballot?!
I’m all in on Sheff – we only know about the roids because he testified against Bonds and his trainer for tricking him into taking roids.
I’m also pro-“Relievers in the Hall,” especially as we see the position grow in the modern game…and I rate Wagner as the perfect measuring stick.
He should be the RP version of Andre Dawson!
I consider myself almost a hardliner on steroids compared to a lot of Fangraphs commenters (and writers) but Sheffield is an easy yes for me. His transgressions, at least as far as we know, were murky and minor and also were from before testing. Ortiz in and Sheffield out makes no sense at all.
I feel like I change my position on Sheffield every year. But I also am a PEDs hardliner of sorts and he’s basically the only one I consider.
#1-Rolen-thought he should’ve been a 1st ballot guy. I’m not sure what’s more surprising: the fact that 90% of the writers thought he didn’t belong his first year, or that 53% changed their minds since then
#2-Wagner-He’s a bit of an oddball. I think he was about as good as anyone but Rivera. Hoffman got more saves, but I don’t think he was as good statistically.
#3-I picked Jones, but not with a lot of feeling. I do think he was slightly better than Beltran and Helton, and Beltran got caught cheating. I could go either way on Jones, Helton & Beltran.
Well, this will be the second year where “only” ten slots is not an impediment. There will be a lot of three and four person ballots this year. The guys who had been struggling with that issue will find their baseline. I suspect there weren’t as many hidden votes as was thought at the time.
I went with yeses on six: A-Rod, Rolen, A. Jones, Sheffield, Manny, and Wagner.
Also gave long consideration to Beltran and Pettitte but ultimately went with no for now. Abreu, Helton, and Buehrle are, for me, “Hall of Very Good” players.
Buehrle is also very, very hard for me to spell.
I did not hold that against him.
Submitted:
Abreu
Beltran
Helton
Jones
Kent
Pettitte
Manny
A-Rod
Rolen
Sheffield
Cheers.