A Candidate-by-Candidate Look at the 2024 Hall of Fame Election Results
The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2024 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.
The 2024 Hall of Fame election is in the books, with three newcomers — first-year candidates Adrián Beltré and Joe Mauer, and holdover Todd Helton — crossing the 75% threshold. It was a bit of a nailbiter, as Mauer cleared the bar by just four votes while Billy Wagner missed by five, but after just two candidates were elected by the writers over the past three cycles, it’s a welcome crowd of honorees, and it should make for a raucous weekend in Cooperstown when they and their families, friends and fans join those of Contemporary Baseball Era Committee honoree Jim Leyland for induction into the Hall on July 21.
Beyond the topline results, there’s plenty to chew on, so as promised, here’s my candidate-by-candidate breakdown of the entire slate of 26 candidates.
José Reyes, James Shields (1st year on the ballot, 0.0%)
As Vin Scully liked to remind viewers, “They also serve who only stand and wait.” According to Baseball Reference, 217 players last appeared in the majors in 2017. Just 12 of them (5.5%) lasted long enough and had careers substantial enough to make it onto this ballot. So this bears repeating annually: There is no shame in being shut out on a Hall of Fame ballot. A checkbox next to these players’ names is the reward for their unique, impressive careers, and with every year that I do this, my appreciation for the endurance, perseverance, and good luck it takes just to get to this point grows.
Admittedly in the case of Reyes, that sentiment is tempered by more than a bit given his 2016 suspension for violating the game’s domestic violence policy. Nonetheless, I learned a great deal while writing about his career, and at the very least, I came to appreciate that he did a better job of expressing remorse and taking accountability for his actions than numerous other players who have been connected to such incidents, whether via suspensions or allegations that predate the period when MLB could enforce such discipline. That’s not nothing.
Brandon Phillips (1st, 0.3%), Adrián González (1st, 0.8%), Matt Holliday (1st, 1.0%), Bartolo Colon (1st, 1.3%), José Bautista (1st, 1.6%), Victor Martinez (1st, 1.6%)
Again, there’s no shame in going one-and-done in this process. These guys received one to six votes, not because some voter truly believed they merited a plaque in Cooperstown but as a small courtesy, a gesture of respect or gratitude. When the ballots were overstuffed a few years ago, such gestures drew the ire of those spending too much time watching the Ballot Tracker (myself included), but on ballots with more breathing room, they’re a bit of goodwill that I’ve come to appreciate. This time around, I even considered doing so myself, mulling a vote for Colon before deciding that a) it would compromise the consistency of my stance on PED violations (I haven’t voted for anyone who’s been suspended); and b) the 10th slot on my ballot could be put to more constructive use via a pitcher with stronger credentials.
David Wright (1st, 6.2%)
Wright was another candidate who I considered for my 10th slot, in part to help keep him from slipping off the ballot. I might have felt a bit of regret if he’d missed the cut, but I was reasonably sure that he wouldn’t, particularly once I saw The Athletic’s Jayson Stark stumping for him early in the cycle. Wright was more or less on a Hall of Fame path before injuries wiped out his career in his early 30s, but my wish list for electing third basemen (Dick Allen, Ken Boyer, Graig Nettles, Sal Bando, and Buddy Bell) is already long, and I don’t know that I’d put him ahead of any of those players given their strong résumés.
Torii Hunter (4th, 7.3%, up 0.4%)
In every year of his candidacy, Hunter has languished below the 5% cutoff prior to the results being announced, and every time he’s squeaked through; this time, his 6.7% public-versus-private differential — 4.6% on those revealed prior to the announcement, 10.8% on the unpublished ones — was the cycle’s second-largest. Maybe he’s going to become the center field version of Harold Baines, who somehow lasted six ballots without topping 6.1%, then fell off and was elected by the Today’s Game Era Committee eight years later. Hunter still hasn’t even replicated his own first-year share of 9.5%; while his combination of counting stats (2,452 hits, 353 homers, 195 steals, nine Gold Gloves) could be appealing to a future Era Committee, he’ll have to battle for ballot space with candidates who got shares of the vote six or seven times his peak share.
Francisco Rodríguez (2nd, 7.8, down 3.0%)
If you were expecting some kind of closer-related coattail effect as Wagner nears election, here’s evidence to the contrary. Only one candidate experienced a larger drop from 2023 than Rodríguez, who has more saves than Wagner but trails him in just about every other meaningful way, and only one returning Wagner voter who has published a ballot thus far added K-Rod.
Mark Buehrle (4th year, 8.3%, down -2.5%), Andy Pettitte (6th year, 13.5%, down 3.5%)
It was not a great year for starting pitchers on this ballot. In fact, I wonder if the 89 votes they combined to receive (23.1%) is the lowest in modern voting history, particularly with the two holdovers losing ground. After much discussion and experimentation with regards to how Hall voters should handle pitching standards, I decided to put my money where my mouth is with my 10th ballot slot by voting for Pettitte – who’s a fair distance below the S-JAWS standard — for the first time.
Meanwhile, other voters appear to have strategically dropped one of these workhorse lefties. In fact, six of the eight returning voters who dropped Buehrle after voting for him last year did so while voting for 10 candidates, though only three of the eight returnees who dropped Pettitte could say the same; both drew a handful of mentions from voters who said they would have been included if they could do so for more than 10, and I more or less said the same about Buehrle in my explainer. With CC Sabathia and Félix Hernández both debuting on the ballot next year, the topic of starters and standards will be at the forefront… but the top of the ballot will be a crowded one. Real progress is going to take time.
[Update: In the last couple minutes of my spot discussing this year’s results on Wednesday’s MLB Now with Brian Kenny, we discussed my choice of Pettitte for my ballot as well as the need to reconsider our pitching standards.]
Bobby Abreu (5th, 14.8%, down 0.6%)
You probably have to be something of a “large Hall” voter — if trying to maintain historically similar levels of representation can be said to be large Hall — to view Abreu as a strong choice for Cooperstown in the first place. Thus it shouldn’t come as a surprise that of the seven returning voters who dropped Abreu, five did so while voting for 10 candidates, generally while saying they were removing him for strategic purposes in their ballot explainers. But even if none of the seven voters who dropped him had done so, he still wouldn’t have cleared 20% for the first time. He also went just 2-for-103 among public voters who included seven or fewer names on their ballots. Sigh.
Jimmy Rollins (3rd, 14.8%, up 1.9%)
The addition of Rollins’ longtime double play partner Chase Utley produced something of a coattail effect, though it was a modest one. Seven returning voters added Rollins after not voting for him last year, with four of those also voting for Utley. Meanwhile one Utley voter actually dropped Rollins, which, ouch, and the second baseman nearly doubled the support of the shortstop, which, double-ouch. And unlike Hunter, Rollins didn’t have significantly more support on unpublished ballots than on published ones, with just a 0.4% public-versus-private differential.
Omar Vizquel (7th, 17.7%, down 1.8%)
With the domestic violence charges against him dropped and the lawsuit against him for sexually harassing an autistic minor league batboy settled out of court, Vizquel mounted something of an effort to rehabilitate his image, making himself available on Twitter and for any puff pieces that might blow in his direction. Absent from his effort was any attempt at introspection or accountability (“My conscience is clean and clear that I’m not the kind of person that they are saying about Omar,” he told USA Today’s Bob Nightengale), so it didn’t exactly work. Vizquel lost ground for the fourth straight cycle, though not in as dramatic a fashion as when he fell from 49.1% to 23.9% from 2021 to ’22, producing the largest drop in modern BBWAA voting history. Having received 26.5% worth of support from unpublished ballots compared to 11% from those revealed prior to the announcement, his 15.5% public-versus-private differential was by far the largest of any candidate. That number will change as more ballots are published post-election, but it tells me that most voters aren’t enthusiastic about voicing their support for him, and that his candidacy is pretty much dead even if he has enough support to remain on the ballot.
Chase Utley (1st, 28.8%)
On the one hand, Utley’s final level of support may seem disappointing given that he received 60% from the first 30 published votes, was in the mid-40s at the 160-ballot mark, and was above 40% until the last batches of ballots were published. On the other hand, in last year’s post-election Tracker VIP poll, I predicted he’d get just 17%, and for as meager as his support was, it was larger than the first-year shares of Helton (16.5% in 2019) and record-holder Scott Rolen (10.2% in 2018) put together. His -24.2% public-versus-private drop (39.3% public, 15.1% private) was the largest of any candidate.
All of which tells us that his supporters have work to do to convince the rest of the electorate that he’s worthy. Even given that he’s short of the 2,000-hit mark — below which the BBWAA hasn’t elected a candidate whose career crossed into in the post-1960 expansion era — the progress of Andruw Jones and the looming candidacy of Buster Posey could deal that precedent a solid one-two punch in the coming years. Rolen and Helton were both elected in their sixth year of eligibility, so I think something like a 2029 election for Utley is possible.
Manny Ramirez (8th, 32.5%, down 0.7%), Alex Rodriguez (3rd, 34.8% down 0.9%)
Timing and nuance matter to some voters, which is why the two suspended sluggers aren’t making any real progress toward 75% while the BALCO-implicated Gary Sheffield, whose bat wasn’t quite their equal, at least crossed the 60% threshold in his final year on the ballot. At this point neither of these guys have very large public-versus-private differentials (-4.1% for the former, -6.1% for the latter), suggesting that they don’t have a subgroup of voters producing some small amount of momentum in their favor.
Carlos Beltrán (2nd, 57.1%, up 10.6%)
Beltrán was the ballot’s biggest gainer among the returning candidates, and the only one with a double-digit percentage gain, as at least some of the voters who left him off last year did not view his involvement in the Astros’ 2017 electronic sign stealing scandal as permanently disqualifying. I did find it particularly notable that Tom Verducci — a high-profile PED hardliner who didn’t even add Mike Piazza to his ballot until 2016, and who hasn’t voted for Sheffield since at least ’21 — not only flipped but included Beltrán on his five-person ballot. His -20% public-versus-private drop-off (66.4% to 46.4%) was the third-largest of the cycle, suggesting that not everybody is ready to let go of his transgression so soon, and it may be that there’s a hard cap on his support that could slow his progress upward. Still, he has eight years of eligibility remaining, which leaves a lot of time for turnover within the electorate, so as a supporter I’d view the glass as half-full here.
Andruw Jones (7th, 61.6%, up 3.5%)
After three double-digit jumps in the last four cycles — including 16.7% last year — Jones made only a modest gain this year, which probably owes something to the traffic. He received a couple “more than 10” mentions in ballot explainers, and a few of his drops by returning voters (including one by colleague David Laurila) were from those who included 10 candidates. That said, I know of at least a few voters who left him off because of his domestic violence arrest and guilty plea, and it may be that some voters view that as disqualifying. He had the fourth-largest public-versus-private drop-off (-18.4%, via 69.4% public and 51% private), and notably went just 2-for-27 on ballots that included four or fewer candidates, compared to 6-for-27 for Beltrán and Sheffield. I still think he’ll get in via the writers’ ballot, but it’s not going to be the smoothest sailing.
Gary Sheffield (10th, 63.9%, up 8.9%)
As expected, Sheffield had too far to climb and too strong a headwind against him in his final go-round to reach 75%; in fact, he got less than half of the 20-point gain that he needed, and had the second-largest public-versus-private drop-off (-22.3%, via 73.5% public and 51.2% private). He was entertaining and revealing in his publicity tour, noting that he was called as a witness to testify in front of the BALCO grand jury, not as a culprit, and that he called for commissioner Bud Selig to investigate PEDs within the sport. Unsurprisingly, he couldn’t resist revisiting old beefs such as his one with former Yankees manager Joe Torre regarding the 2004 ALCS, because it’s Festivus every day for a man willing to air his grievances.
Anyone who understands nuance should be able to see the separation between Barry Bonds, for whom we have voluminous evidence of PED usage, albeit at a time before MLB had testing and penalties in place, and Sheffield, for whom we have much less evidence as well as the aforementioned testimony that he stopped training with Bonds and Greg Anderson once he learned that what he was being given was illegal. But in late 2022 we saw the way that the Hall of Fame’s choice of Era Committee members guaranteed the burial of Bonds and Clemens to the point that they received “fewer than four votes” despite their statistical superiority. That’s why, despite the vocal respect of peers such as former teammate Fred McGriff, I’m not wildly optimistic that Sheffield will break through via that route anytime soon, even though a 63.9% share would normally be a robust one to take into the process. Still, I’m fond of reminding people that “never” is a very long time when it comes to the Hall of Fame, and I think that someday, Sheffield and his 509 home runs and menacing bat waggle will have their place on a bronze plaque.
Billy Wagner (9th, 73.8%, up 5.7%)
I was braced for this disappointment, noting at the outset of this cycle that only 14 of the 30 candidates who received between 65% and 70% and still had eligibility remaining were elected the next year. Wagner seems to have been braced for it as well, forgoing the usual sit-by-the-phone routine advised by the Hall for candidates who could get the call they’ve been waiting for. “It’s not like I can say that I’m definitely going to be in so I can have friends over [Tuesday] for the announcement and celebrate,” he told the New York Post. “I can’t do any of that. I will look like a big jackass if I have people over and I don’t get a call.” Instead Wagner spent the afternoon coaching high school varsity baseball.
Still, I ache for him and any candidate who misses by such a narrow margin, and I’m disgusted by one voter ostentatiously dropping Wagner after supporting him in 2023, and then even more ostentatiously writing a column about the blowback (which was about more than just how he handled Wagner). If there’s a silver lining, it’s that Wagner was dropped by only three public voters, and that he tied Helton for the second-highest rate of support (92.3%) from among the 13 first-time voters. Whether he closes the gap next year or has to wait for an Era Committee, he’s too close not to be elected someday soon, and I expect a year from now we’ll be celebrating his great comeback story.
Joe Mauer (1st, 76.1%)
Though he made it by a mere four votes, Mauer did become just the third catcher to be elected by the writers on the first ballot, after Johnny Bench (1989) and Ivan Rodriguez (2017, by just four votes as well). You know what they call guys who do that?
Hall of Famers.
I get that Mauer’s credentials, for as strong as they were, were hardly perfect given that he caught just 921 games and spent the last five years of his career as a more-or-less league average first baseman. I get that Mauer’s Twins went 0-and-10 in the postseason while he slashed a meager .275/.341/.300. He still had a long enough stretch where he absolutely kicked ass as a catcher like few in the game’s history — he’s the only backstop to win a slash-stat Triple Crown, the only one to win three batting titles, and one of two to lead the league in on-base percentage twice. He’s seventh in JAWS and fifth in seven-year peak (all from his years as a catcher). That’s worthy of Cooperstown, and I’m glad he won’t clog the ballot with a few years of drawing 60-some percent before getting in.
On the subject of the postseason, MLB Network researcher extraordinaire Jessica Brand offered some interesting insights, noting that Mauer is either the 13th or 15th player to be elected without having participated in a single victory, depending upon whether one counts pitchers who lost their World Series appearance but were on the winning side. The last one was Phil Niekro, who was elected in 1997, and the company also includes Ernie Banks, another player who finished his career as an average first baseman after a stellar run at a much more important position.
As noted within my initial reaction piece, Mauer may have benefited from something of a reverse coattail effect in relation to Posey, much as Edgar Martinez benefited while David Ortiz’s candidacy loomed. “[I]f Mauer gets in, he owes steak dinners to Bay Area scribes, who are using him as Buster’s setup man,” wrote the San Francisco Chronicle’s Scott Ostler in his ballot explainer, while editor Christina Kahrl penned a whole article on the topic. Within an electorate of nearly 400 voters, I’m sure they’re not alone in thinking that way.
Todd Helton (6th, 79.7%, up 7.5%)
Helton’s advancement past last year’s 72.2% wasn’t as easy as expected, at least based upon the sluggish net flip rate among public voters; he missed by 11 votes overall last year, then received nine adds and five drops from among returning voters. In the end, he made it by 18 votes, which was enough for him to post a higher share than Mauer. As noted on Tuesday night, he moved into second place behind Rolen for the lowest first-year percentage received by a modern (1966 or later) candidate who went on to gain entry via the writers, at 16.5%.
That Helton needed “only” six years where former teammate Larry Walker needed the full 10 may be evidence of the increased acceptance of advanced statistics, at least when it comes to Coors Field. It’s worth noting that Walker, whose candidacy ran from 2011–20, got bogged down early amid some of the strongest ballots of modern voting history, but I bet we won’t have to wait even six years or expend nearly as much breath debating Nolan Arenado when he eventually lands on the ballot.
Adrián Beltré (1st, 95.1%)
My guess that we’d be able to count the number of ballots that Beltré was left off on one hand proved to be off base, a rare example of me wildly overestimating the support a candidate would receive instead of underestimating it. His pre-announcement public-versus-private drop of 9.3% (from 99.1% to 89.8%) still wasn’t nearly as steep as those of Pedro Martinez (17.7%, from 98% to 80.3% in 2015) or Roy Halladay (17.2%, from 92.2% to 75%), to cite a couple of examples, but good gravy, it doesn’t speak well of a voter when 3,166 hits, 477 home runs, and defense like Beltré’s isn’t good enough either to vote for or to put one’s name beside.
Still, that shouldn’t lessen the joy of Beltré’s election. The former all-time leader in hits among players born outside the United States — he overtook Ichiro Suzuki in 2018 and then was surpassed by Albert Pujols in ’22 — is for now the owner of the second-highest share of the vote by any non-U.S. born player behind Rivera. Even if Ichiro supplants him next year, their plaques will still hang in close proximity.
As for those upcoming ballots, I’m already very much looking forward to next year when we’ll have the careers of Ichiro, CC, King Félix, and more to delve into, hopefully while watching Billy Wags get over the hump. I’ll be back in my next installment with my five-year electoral outlook.
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.
RE: Beltre drop for unpublished voters – this likely wouldn’t apply to all unpublished voters, but if I am waiting til the last moment to vote and also not writing a column to try and defend myself, I think it makes sense to not vote for Beltre when you see he is tracking at ~99 with 40% of ballots in. He’s going to get in, he won’t get 100%, so might as well add someone to your ballot who you otherwise would leave off.
Again, this likely doesn’t apply to all or maybe even most of the unpublished, but I think the strategy makes sense and it is what I would do if I were a voting member in a class with 10+ vote-worthy candidates.
I’m not sure how many people really do this. Does anyone think helping David Wright limp over the line will allow him space to turn the electorate. I could maybe see that with a Buerhle who has a legit case, but this type of voting can’t be common.
I agree, it’s probably not a huge population, but if even 5 writers who don’t publish have this psychology, it would explain the big drop.
I think it could have been a real thing ago back when the backlog was huge. Kenny Lofton or Jim Edmonds easily have gained support but were lost in the shuffle. Andruw Jones is likely to get voted in, and he could have similarly been cut with voters making slightly different choices in his first year.
Lofton falling off after one year continues to piss me off. Yeah, there were lots of names on the ballot but here’s a list of people who got votes that year: Sandy Alomar (16), Julio Franco (6), David Wells (5), Steve Finley (4), Shawn Green (2), Aaron Sele (1). That’s 34 votes wasted on candidates who were nowhere near as good as Lofton.
Some of these writers are idiots. Rolen and Wagner were both at about 10% when this started. HOF Ted Simmons didn’t make it past the first year. Grich, with the 7th highest fWAR for 2Bs, and the 5th best fWAR/PA, got even less.
To be fair, most advanced metrics weren’t created yet back when Simmons and Grich were on the ballot.
David Wells probably doesn’t belong in the Hall of Fame. But he was not a ridiculous person to vote for. His peak is low, but his 58.3 career fWAR is higher than Todd Helton, Joe Mauer, Jim Palmer, Sandy Koufax, and many other legit Hall of Famers.
Yeah, David Wells is very much in the Pettitte/Buehrle/Jack Morris HoVG vein.
& Steve Finley is not a HOF’er either, but, if you look at traditional stats (which more voters did in 2012-13), he had 2500 plus hits, over 300 HR, over 300 SB & won 4 GG in CF.
More of a compiler than a star & advanced stats don’t like him or his defense like they do Lofton or Edmonds, but, his raw #’s were surpisingly high.
That said, not sure how a person votes for Sandy Alomar or Sele or Lofton.
It’s really a shame about Petitte and Buehrle. They both should be in the HOF.
Every year, in real baseball, we see how valuable really good starting pitching is. How expensive it is and how hard it is to acquire.
If we’re not voting in these guys what starting pitchers are we gonna vote in?
Verlander, Sabathia, Kershaw, Scherzer, Greinke? That’s it? De Grom?
That’s so strange.
I don’t think we have to worry about not inducting Pettitte or Buehrle. Verlander, Scherzer, Kershaw, Sabathia, and Greinke are all clearly better candidates. It’s what happens after those guys that worry me.
One thing that’s struck me (and I mentioned this in another article about a week ago) is that the average fastball velocity is now 94. In the 80s that was elite velocity. The average fastball was ~high 80s. It was also when people thought no one would hit 50 HRs in a season ever again.
It’s no wonder all these guys are out of games and IP so much earlier. They’re just working so much harder. The HOF will have to adjust. I expect a great deal of kicking and screaming.
Yeah, future pitching votes may have to be on the basis of hardware and peak performance rather than milestones. I expect every other pitcher of this era to get screwed, though. The adjustment won’t be fast.
I’d love to see Jay do a piece on HOF odds for current starting pitchers. After the Verlander/Scherzer/Kershaw/Greinke group who out there has > 50% odds of making it? I’d say Cole and deGrom do (assuming continued health for Cole and voters weighing deGrom’s insane peak) but it’s a steep drop from there where you find yourself hoping Nola/Wheeler/Gausman have a few more great years in them.
I read that they changed where they measured velocity — closer to the mound — which added 3-5 MPH to everyone’s fastball.
Besides Sabathia, who I expect to get in within 2-3 cycles; Felix Hernandez, Cole Hamels, Jon Lester and David Price are the top starting pitchers debuting over the next few years. I don’t see any of them getting in.
Hamels should stick around for a while as the standout of that group (like it or not, analytical voters use rWAR).
All ballots have to be mailed by 12/31, so no one is looking at the tracker with 40% counted deciding how to vote.
The theory that people leave off slam dunk candidates to make room for someone else has been kicked around for a while. But no one has ever released a ballot with 10 names, not including the 95+% guy, or publicly explained such a strategic non vote.
It’s almost certainly a sincere (if misguided) view that Beltré is not a Hall of Fame player or perhaps he’s not a FIRST BALLOT Hall of Famer. If you believe that the Hall should have fewer than 100 players or that Beltré isn’t in the top 100, you should give up your Hall of Fame ballot.
The ballot deadline is before many (if any) ballots get published. Exactly at what point was it confirmed that he wasn’t getting 100% of the votes?
I’m slightly annoyed because Carter and Piazza both had to wait years to be elected, and both had stronger resume’s than Mauer in every way.
On the other hand, this is progress, and two wrongs don’t make a right.
Mauer being a big batting average darling helped his case more than people admit.
So did only playing for one franchise in his career. It’s a cool thing, a great thing for fans of that team, but some people really overstate the value of that. Ludicrously so.
It’s not the “Hall of Accrued Value.”
There’s nothing wrong with giving borderline players a Rule of Cool bonus.
The fact that catchers basically never win batting titles besides Joe Mauer does stand out; batting average is a mediocre stat, but it’s still a significant demonstration of talent when *everyone* who plays your position has been unable to do it. Anyway, Carter and Piazza were better than Mauer, but also didn’t accrue the MVP hardware, etc, and that stuff matters.
Carter likely should have won in ’82 (led entire league in WAR, finished 12th, with a bat-only teammate in Al Oliver finishing 4th), while Piazza had 2 2nds and a third tho he wasn’t the clearcut leader in any of those seasons.
It is shocking, though, how easily Mauer coasted in. He had a great peak, but even during those years he did not catch as many games as the HOF peers he is compared to- he only started 120 games or more as a catcher once in his career, compared to 10 for Bench, Rodriguez, and Carter, or 7 for Piazza. From age 30 on, he was basically a compiler. He had some unique accomplishments for a catcher, but it feels wrong to compare him to guys who caught twice as many game or more.
His career overlaps with Wright, debuting in 2004 and ending in 2018; and though Wright never won an MVP or batting titles, he put up more fWAR from 2004-2018. Wriight is dinged for not reaching certain milestones because he barely played from 2015-2018; meanwhile, Mauer is healthy enough to be a warm body for those final four years and rides the narratives into Cooperstown.
I’m a big Hall person, so congrats to Mauer, it’s just weird.
I’m pretty surprised as well. I thought his relatively short time behind the plate would keep him out for a couple ballots at least
I’m mostly indifferent to him getting in. I largely stopped caring about the HoF when steroids ruined everything and just turned it into an exercise in arguing. Mauer isnt egregious enough to break me out of my indifference.
Even a small-Hall fan should welcome Mauer to the Hall.
It is possible to be happy for Mauer while still acknowledging that he had almost-certainly the weakest resume of anyone to be inducted in their first year. He was compared to other catchers even though he caught nowhere near the number of games that other HOF catchers did.
He is celebrated for single-season accomplishments and a peak that was basically a couple of great seasons and a few really good ones; and he’s given a pass for all of the other seasons that were roughly league average and lasted just long enough to get him to 2000 hits.
He is emblematic of the fact that, as much as people like JJ try to analyze candidates scientifically, HOF elections are a popularity contest. Players with much stronger resumes wait for years to be inducted. Mauer was bland and clean and lucky.
It’s still funny that you’re going on about Mauer being an accumulator relative to Wright when you posted above that Mauer had a 6.8 WAR/650 as a catcher to Wright’s 4.9 as a 3B.
Mauer’s the precise type of supermegastar peak guy that “people like JJ [who] try to analyze candidates scientifically” have spent years working to reframe the HoF conversation to include.
Maybe he does, but getting in on the first ballot doesn’t actually matter as long as you do get in at some point (although preferably while you’re still alive to enjoy it). There are absolutely no extra awards or official distinction for being a first ballot Hall of Famer, so it shouldn’t bother you that he did get in so soon.
Also, his entire peak was full of great seasons, not just a couple of them.
It’s not shocking at all. Joe Mauer’s HOF candidacy was head and shoulders above that of David Wright.
Was it, though? I brought up Wright as a point of comparison because their careers spanned the exact same years.
It’s easy to argue for Mauer’s candidacy ahead of Wrights, but is it really “head and shoulders above”? It seems pretty clear that Mauer benefited greatly from being able to accumulate stats as a DH/1B in his later years.
It’s never apples to apples, of course, because Mauer was a catcher. As a catcher, from 2004-2013, Mauer was clearly the best catcher of that period. There’s a pretty easy argument, though, that Wright was the best 3B of that same period. He produced more fWAR playing at the 3B position than anyone else from 2004-2013. Or look at the span of Wright’s entire career, from 2004-2018, including the 4 lost years; the only player to put up more fWAR playing 3B in that period was Adrian Beltre.
Mauer stopped catching in his age 30 season, but the last time he caught as many as 100 games in a season was his age 27 season. I don’t blame him for needing to move away from the position; but if take half of your career PA at another position, you should be good at those positions. Mauer had a career 104 wRC+ as a 1B, and a 117 wRC+ as a DH. Basically, he was great as a catcher– for a much shorter period than anyone else elected as a catcher– and he was a league-average stat-padder for a full half of his career.
Wright, FWIW, played his entire career as a 3B except for 8 innings as a SS and 3 games as a DH.
I apologize if this reads as trolling to any Mauer fans. I never meant to fall down this rabbit hole.
Mauer’s seven year peak WAR is 5th all time among catchers, Wright’s seven year peak WAR is 23rd all time among 3B.
Seven years does not a career make.
Mauer’s 55.2 career WAR ranks 9th among catchers, just above the 53.7 HoF average for the position.
Wright’s 49.2 career WAR ranks 28th among 3B, well below the 69.4 HoF average for the position.
Mauer put up only 41.5 fWAR as a catcher; Wright put up 51.6 fWAR as a 3B.
Yes, Mauer did put up 41.5 fWAR in his 3943 PA as a catcher!
(That’s 6.8 WAR/650, for those keeping track at home)
It’s interesting that you think Wright putting up 51 fWAR in 6846 PA (4.9 WAR/650) as a 3B is a point in his favor, proving that Mauer was just an accumulator, haha.
Totally agree but that also speaks to how crazy-high the HOF standards have been for 3B.
Yeah – as someone who would place Wright and Longo in a group with guys like Andrew McCutchen on the wrong side of the borderline…we need more 3B in the Hall, haha.
Give us Graig Nettles, dammit!
Yes, Mauer’s candidacy really is Head and Shoulders above Wright’s. I don’t even need stats to prove it.
I present to you exhibit A: https://youtu.be/_B2DK2mYrpQ?si=yndtC7-f120s31GI&t=150
I think Rolen and Beltre were better 3B during certain parts of Wright’s peak, especially in 2004 for both of them.
Rolen and Beltre are both HOFers; saying that they were better does not preclude Wright from being HOF-worthy. Also: in 2004, Wright was a 21 year-old rookie who played in 69 games.
Basically, health matters quite a bit. While Mauer was only a shadow of his former self late in his career, he was still about a league average player, which is FAR more than you can say about Wright during that period. As such, it does indeed make the difference in their Hall of Fame cases.
Health absolutely does make a difference in their cases- it allowed Mauer to accumulate value and reach milestones like 2000 hits- which he accomplished in his final season, as the 17th most valuable 1B in the league that year.
From 2014-2018, Mauer’s wRC+ was 103 in 2900 total PA. Wright’s was 109 in 927 PA. Mauer wasn’t better, but he was indisputably able to suit up for a lot more games as an average player. That’s a third of his career, from his age 31 season forward, when that’s all he was, an average player.
Mauer was probably slightly better than Wright during their respective primes; but not by much. And there is value to being a league average player. However, most players who are league average for as long as Mauer was don’t sail into the HOF in their first year of eligibility.
Those last four to five years for Mauer still matter quite a bit, and even then he was a lot more valuable than just a “warm body.”
You’re right, he was better than that. But also: there were more than 150 position players who put up more fWAR than him during that period. From 2014-2018, he put up a wRC+ of 101 as a 1B, and 106 as a DH. That period accounts for more than a third of his career PA, and it’s technically “above average”, but also not distinguished at all.
I always thought Carter having to wait so long was puzzling.
But Piazza was hurt by unproven PED speculation and stacked ballots. His first ballot, no one was elected but 18 candidates got enough votes to continue. The next ballot was one of the greatest first ballots ever with Maddux, Glavine, Frank Thomas, Mussina, and Kent plus all the holdovers. And then came another one of the greatest first ballots ever: Randy Johnson, Pedro, Smoltz, and Sheffield. After that he got elected.
For some reason, he just wasn’t liked. IIRC, he was a big self-promoter that really rubbed people the wrong way.
Add in coming on the heels of Johnny Bench & constantly being compared to him (& not measuring up because no one could) & you have a guy that was unfairly delayed.
He was certainly a great player & a big name. 11x AS, many years of MVP votes, including finishing 2nd & 3rd. Also, caught for a WS champ & got the 1st hit in the famous Game 6 comeback.
Mauer had one key edge on Piazza:
He was never connected to PEDs.
The good news for Jones, Utley, Beltran, and others is that after next there’s hardly anyone coming onto the ballot:
2026: Cole Hamels and no one else
2027: No one
2028: Posey
2029: Pujols and Cano
2026-27 really does seem like the prime opportunity for Jones. Beltran might still be cooking along at that point, and I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if he laps Jones in voting % next year.
You are missing Molina who has a sneakily good chance of being a 1st ballot HoFer together with Pujols.
You’re right. I blame my wife who had the audacity to interrupt me while I was writing my comment. SMH 🙂
Seriously, I was looking at Baseball Reference and Molina didn’t jump out to me since his bWAR isn’t that high since they don’t include framing.
I know a good divorce attorney
Cano was twice suspended for PEDs. He doesn’t stand a hope in hell of collecting votes from more than 33% of the electorate.
Your count is off. Hamels is correct, but Posey will be on the 2027 ballot, while Pujols and Cano (as well as Molina) will be on the 2028 ballot.
Had to look up the writer who dropped Wagner and wrote a column about the blowback…man Marcos Breton is firmly in “old man yells at cloud” territory. Reading his column and looking at his voting history it seems like he randomly decided one year to stop voting for a lot of candidates for no real reason, and he admitted he forgot it’s Sheffield’s last year of eligibility. I wonder how many of the voters would be badly exposed if forced to write a column every year defending their choices.
I read Breton’s column a few weeks ago. Basically, he’s decided he only wants to vote for “sure fire” HOFers and not for borderline ones.
I mean, I’m not sure what a borderline HOFer is. A guy is either a HOFer or not. Yeah, some guys are easy calls and other ones are harder calls. But this guy has been entrusted with the privilege of making those tough calls. And it sounds like he’s no longer willing to do that. So why even vote if you’re not willing to do the hard work of deciding who is and who isn’t a HOFer?
Very much comes off exactly the same way entitled athletes like Deandre Ayton and A-Rod do. Such a loser, Breton is.
r/oddlyspecific
Exactly. If you’re a Small Hall guy and genuinely believe only one or two guys each year are worthy, fine. I may not agree but it’s at least a stance. However he seems to have gotten too lazy to do a little research and form an opinion. If that’s the case just retire from voting.
He’s gotta be the first voter ever to go from a 10 person ballot to a 2 person ballot in a single year.
It’s fine being a big Hall guy, it’s fine being a small Hall guy but pick which one you are and stick with it.
Thanks for the info. I read the column, and what I saw is someone who can’t stand being criticized. A big blubbering baby whose widdle feewings were hurt by mean people calling him stupid. You’d think at his age he’d be used to it by now.
“lawsuit against him for sexually harassing an autistic minor league batboy settled out of court, Vizquel”
what the hell is this about? What the fuck did this guy do?
Former batboy sues Omar Vizquel alleging sexual harassment | AP News
Turns out Omar Vizquel is a very bad man.
I think there’s some added insult that he did it in the context of baseball but realistically that doesn’t change the crime. It’s just an insult against baseball too in addition to anyone who cares about human dignity.
Indeed, I have family members who are special needs, what an extreme level predator
Knowing this now I can’t wait until we hear of Vizquel’s passing
Dark times are these in which Vizquel got more votes than did Abreu
I’m happy for these cats, but I will never understand the rationale for some players. For example, Helton in but Lance Berkman out on his first ballot. Not saying Berkman should be in, but I am saying that Berkman was as good or better by just about every stat (except R and RBI) despite a worse run environment, and had a higher WAR in fewer seasons.
I just don’t get it. Helton looks a lot like a bunch of “hall of very good” players who didn’t get a sniff. Utley, Abreu, even Holliday (by some measures) look pretty comparable on paper.
Helton is marginal, but putting him in is defensible. There are some guys who aren’t in who have at least as good a case as he does, but I don’t know that he deserves to be punished for that.
I never understood Lance Berkman being out on the first ballot, nor will I understand it.
The ‘Single Team’ effect is definitely real and holds weight for some votes, most of whom I’d guess are from the older school who might have not voted for Helton otherwise. I’d imagine there was a non-insignificant pool of votes who wouldn’t have voted for him had he played a few years elsewhere.
The Helton – Berkman comparison is going to annoy me for a while. They have very similar cases, and it’s crazy that one dropped off the first ballot and the other one is going to be a Hall of Famer.
There are a lot of guys who are kind of similar in terms of their hall of fame case and some take off and some don’t. Helton, Berkman, Olerud, and in the corner outfield you also have Abreu and Vlad Sr. These guys all kind of are in the same boat for me.
Berkman was on a tough ballot. 4 players got elected, 4 others got more than 50%, 8 others got more than 10%, and 3 others got enough to continue on the ballot. By a straight JAWS ranking, he was tied with Jeff Kent for the 15th best on the ballot. If voters weren’t limited to 10 votes, it’s possible he would have continued on.
It’s interesting because Helton debuted on the same ballot. Berkman is ahead by a nose on fWAR, but considerably behind on bWAR. Berkman’s peak was longer, Helton’s peak was a touch higher.
My gut tells me that the difference was those huge BAs Helton put up, especially early in his career. Yes they were Coors-aided, but when a guy puts up crazy BAs for a decade+ it creates a certain perception of them.
Helton has 1,600 more PAs, equivalent of 3 seasons. That ain’t not nothing since career totals matter, such as Helton producing ~700 more hits + walks than Berkman.
Not that Berkman’s shouldn’t have lasted on the ballot longer, just saying I think at least one distinction between the two players is evident.
I have seen Vladimir Guerreo Classic pop up a few times the past few days in the context of questionable Hall Of Famers. I gotta say, I dont get that.
Guy had 450 HR (ok 449 if you want to be a stickler) and a career .318/.379/.553 slash. By wOBA and wRC+ he is one of the 15 best hitting OF since WWII. In my lifetime (1981) he is the fifth best hitting outfielder and the 3 guys ahead of him all have some pretty big issues (Bonds, Manny, Sheffield with steroids and Larry Walker with Coors Field.)
I dont think he is borderline at all.
Vlad Sr. was Manny-lite, but without the baggage. He’s an easy HOFer as a hitter, but those defensive numbers, especially later in his career, really drag him down.
All that being said, I don’t know that the OP was saying he isn’t Hall-worthy, just that if Vladdy, why not Abreu (for example)? (FWIW we know the reason: home runs, and the narrative that sprung up around Abreu’s defense.)
Yeah this. I’m not against Helton being in the HOF. I’m also not a “big hall” guy. However, I am a “non arbitrary hall” guy, and the who’s-in, who’s out at the margins seems very arbitrary. Vlad, Berkman….these are either HOF guys or they aren’t, but if they aren’t, how is Helton in?
The ~55-65 career WAR territory seems to be the true borderline where other factors, fairly or unfairly, weigh heavily on a player’s Hall chances. For those players things like counting stats, postseason record, personal likability/memorability, awards, etc. really matter. FWIW I grew up watching Vlad Sr. and Berkman, and Vlad always “felt” like a superstar while Berkman, although he was really good, did not. However, looking at the stats objectively it is hard to make the case that Vlad deserved to cruise in to the Hall while Berkman fell off the ballot immediately.
I don’t think it’s a bad thing that players like Vladdy get extra credit for being “Awesome,” compared to guys with similar WAR/JAWS totals.
The “narrative…around Abreu’s defense” was pretty definitively confirmed by the advent of UZR and DRS, haha.
He’s a reverse Sheffield:
If you think his advanced defensive numbers from 28-30 are more indicative of his actual performance from 24-27 than the TZ numbers, it knocks 4-5 WAR off of both his peak and career JAWS, and takes him onto the wrong side of borderline.
I feel like you are really downplaying the gap between Vladdy and Abreu when it comes to HR. Abreu had 1000 more PA’s than Guerrero but hit 161 fewer HR’s. Thats a pretty huge difference.
Abreu could hit home runs. He just wasnt an elite home run hitter. He hit a lot of line drives which is why he is top 25 all time in doubles and has nearly 100 more than Guerrero. Abreu also did something that Guerrero never did: maintain a .300/.400/.500 slashline over a decade. In fact, Abreu is just 1 of 18 players among those eligible for the HOF since WWII to do that.
Also, the main problem people have with Abreu’s candidacy is that all of his numbers when isolated do not scream “Hall of Famer”. However, when taken together he is a HOFer in my opinion. For example, in 2009 he became just the 6th player ever with 250 HRs, 2,000 H, 1,000 R, 1,000 RBI, 1,000 BB, and 300 SB. Individually, none of those stats are Hall-worthy but together they make something special. That is Bobby Abreu. For those interested, there are now 9 members of this club (Barry Bonds, Willie Mays, Derek Jeter, Craig Biggio, Rickey Henderson, Carlos Beltran, Alex Rodriguez, Bobby Abreu and Joe Morgan). Pretty elite club.
I feel like you are really downplaying the gap between Vladdy and Abreu when it comes to HR. Abreu had 1000 more PA’s than Guerrero but hit 161 fewer HR’s. Thats a pretty huge difference.
Yes – like I said in my original post, that’s why Abreu isn’t in the Hall and Guerrero is. Even though Abreu has more bWAR and fWAR than Guerroro.
…is your point that Guerrero was a far more exciting and memorable to watch than Abreu, in a way that WAR fails to capture?
Because I agree!
Glad we’re on the same page.
I’m pretty sure he wasn’t one of the 15 best hitting OFs since WW2 by WRC+. He’s ranked 39 for me when I set the starting year to 1946 and set primary position to OF and is around a lot of non-HOFers like Holliday, Braun. Brian Giles, Stanton, Strawberry, Ken Singleton, and Frank Howard.
He was also terrible defensively and one of the worst baserunners of all time and the worst since WW2. Hence why he has 54.5 WAR in 9059 PAs.
Because you didnt set any limit on PA’s. So you are getting guys like Roy Cullenbine and Augie Galan (whoever they are lol) and many others who only had 1000-2000 PA”s in that time frame included in your result.
If you set the min PA’s to a more relevant 8000, yes, he is 15th by wRC+.
Not to mention that UBR/wGDP stats don’t start until 2002, making any claim about a player’s “All-Time” standing in that regard deeply silly.
8000 PAs is a very high threshold. Only 292 players in MLB history and 88 OF’s post-WW2 have that many PAs. Matt Holliday, Ryan Braun, and Brian Giles didn’t hit 8000 PAs. At 6000 PAs he drops to 26th.
Regarding UBR I didn’t realize that, though that probably helps Guerrero a good bit as well because it cuts off 1997-2001 (including leading the league in GDPs in 2001).
I mean, we are talking about the Hall of Fame, the standard should be high. Having said that, 8000 PA’s is not really that high at all. Assuming you avg 600 PA’s a year, which is a pretty reasonable assumption, thats only a ~13 year career. Realistically, you could hit 8000 PA’s in 11-12 years. Under 8000 PA’s and you are probably struggling to even meet the 10 year service time requirement (or were injured alot which also tanks your HoF chances).
You say “only” 292 players in history have had 8000 PA’s? Guess what, only 273 players are in the Hall of fame. And probably a third of those are pitchers (IE: didnt hit regularly) and another third played 100 or more years ago when the game was very, very different. So your only 292 players mark is actually probably double the amount of hitters that are actually in the hall of fame.
More importantly, someone with under 8000 PA’s probably never had to go through a decline phase (or only had a very short one) which dragged their overall numbers down. For example if you cut Vladdy’s career off at 6000 PA’s he has a 144 wRC+, Nearly 10% higher than his actual career mark of 136. Which would actually make him the 9th best hitting OF since WWII. Someone like Brain Giles didnt make it to 8000 PA’s (let alone the 9000+ Guerrero had) because he wasnt good enough too. No one would give him a job. If he had been allowed to soldier on for 2 or 3 more years his career numbers would almost certainly look very different, and not in a good way.
I haven’t looked but I would guess you would be hard pressed to find any non catcher who played in the past 50 years and was elected to the HoF with less than 8000 PA’s. And for good reason.
Near as I can tell, the list is Kirby Puckett.
Matt Holliday had 14 years of service time and 7981 PAs without being especially injury prone.
Brian Giles had 7836 PAs and Vlad had 9059 PAs.
Giles had 1223 fewer PAs than Vlad. In Vlad’s final two seasons he had 1233 PAs, a 108 WRC+, and .5 WAR. If Vlad was so bad in his final seasons so as to drop his career mark 8 points then why are we excluding other people who didn’t put up all that negative value? Are those 1233 PAs of .5 WAR ball really what put him over?
Also the other people on that list did have decline phases, just not as long or pronounced as Vlad.
Giles had a 143 WRC+ career mark through his first 6000 PAs. Through his first 5998 he had a 144 same as Vlad.
The game log’s not working for me right now but Braun had a 142 WRC+ through his first 5819 PAs, Berkman had a 147 WRC+ through 6355 and 144 overall at 7814, Holliday 140 through 6119, Albert Belle 143 through 6054.
Vlad was a very good hitter but he was a bat only player whose bat puts him around a lot of non-HOFers.
Beyond the fact that Brian Giles was as steroidy a steroids guy as has ever steroided:
It’s.
Not.
The.
Hall.
Of.
Stats.
What “put him over” guys with similar career WAR numbers, beyond round numbers like 400 HR or 2500 Hits, is how much goddamn fun it was to watch him homer off pitches at his ankles and at his eyes.
And that’s a good thing!
If it’s not the hall of stats then why did he argue his case by talking about hrs, triple slash, and WRC+? Just comes across as bad faith when people talk big about a player’s numbers then revert to this when they obviously aren’t up to snuff.
Don’t think steroids are what kept Giles out of the HoF either.
A) The homers and triple slash are both Rule of Cool things – dude’s power/contact combo was fundamental to how fun he was to watch.
B) There’s absolutely a statistical baseline for the Hall.
C) Do we really think the DV had nothing to do with cocktail of unprescribed drugs in his system?
I would not bet large sums that Vladimir Guerrero did not do roids.
…
…
Iffy body.
Kept hitting for power after testing.
Fell off a cliff at 33.
It’s difficult to image a player profile more diametrically opposed to “Steroid Guy” than Vladi, haha.
Anyone who spends an average (even just the median) amount of time on the DL/IL isn’t going to average 600 PAs per year. As mentioned, there are guys like Holliday who didn’t reach 8,000 PAs despite having pretty long and relatively healthy careers, including a normal decline phase. While Giles crashed and burned really fast, he still played for 14+ years until he was 38, which isn’t that unusual for non-catching position players in the Hall of Fame.
Being able to better compare candidates led me to create a 10-point ranking system where I could look at and compare candidates side by side. Caveat to say this was strictly a “for fun” exercise to amuse myself and provide some crude tool as a basis for comparison.
10: “inner circle” HOF. Generally top-3 at position (top 0.1% of players)
9: Sure thing/no brainer HOF. Superior HOF credentials. Generally top-10 at position (next 0.25% of players)
8: Would strongly support. Probable HOF. Satisfactory HOF credentials. Generally top 20 at position (next 0.9% of players)
7: Would generally support. Acceptable HOF credentials. Perhaps slightly below HOF standard at position, but within range. Lesser support from small-hall voters. (next 1.75% of players)
6: Would generally support if ballot not full. Would not meaningfully weaken HOF at that position. Scant support from small-hall voters. (next 2% of players)
5: On the fence. Not upset if voted in or out. Weaker than average HOF at position. (next 3% of players)
4: Would generally not support but would not be upset by inclusion. May have appeal in areas not traditionally recognized by HOF. Support generally limited to large-hall voters. (next 3.5% of players)
3: Would not support. Questionable HOF credentials or strength in areas largely not recognized by voters. Almost exclusively supported by large-hall or hometown voters. (next 3.5% of players)
2: Very limited/sparse HOF credentials. Too-low career totals or too-short peak. (next 5% of players)
1: Not a HOF in no uncertain terms. (last 80% of players)
I then took a look at a slug of late 90s-early 00s outfielders through this lens and rated them thusly:
M Ramirez 9; Larry Walker 8.5; Vlad Guerrero 8; Gary Sheffield 7; Carlos Beltran 6; Sammy Sosa 6; Andruw Jones 5.5; Bobby Abreu 5; Kenny Lofton 3.5; Jim Edmonds 3; Brian Giles 2; Magglio Ordonez 2.
My personal ratings were strictly based on their on-field numbers, i.e., no penalties applied for off-field stuff, PEDs, domestic violence, whatever.
I want to work through first basemen of the era soon also. Anyway sorry for the long post, I just wanted to share a crude tool for HOF comparisons.
I really like this framing…but I’d put Beltran/Sheff at 8 and Kenny/Edmonds at 6 or 7.
Did you forget about defense, or do you just not value it anywhere near as much as most people? I think defense is overrated most of the time, and even I think that guys like Jones, Lofton, and Edmonds deserve higher rankings due to it and Guerrero and Sheffield lower rankings.
You have to also consider giving Helton back some points in wRC+, and WAR for fighting through the Coors Hangover Effect.
It’s very simple really, Berkman had less than 2,000 hits so most voters didn’t even consider him in their initial sort and because he didn’t make the second ballot, he never had the opportunity to build support.
Helton met the minimum counting stat thresholds, had the big early 2000s seasons, and was a one team guy. That got enough eyeballs on him that he made the second ballot and was able to build a case.
Andruw Jones might make the hall while Johan Santana probably won’t because their first year Jones got 21 more votes and had a chance to build a case.
Man, I said the exact same thing in the other thread and got downvoted like crazy. Glad you’re getting the upvotes here!
You’re the Berkman to his Helton.
There can be only one.
Yep – he’s just Olerud playing in a funhouse.
Hmm. “Mr. Vizquel, say you indeed did punch out your live-in and/or sexually harass that autistic ballboy, and with such introspection and accountability, watch those HoF votes just roll in!” Hmm.
Jay, good thing you didn’t pick Public Relations for a career!
(note: making fun of your tinnest-of-tin-ears grasp of PR, not suggesting or even hinting at anything else)
Beltran’s pre release vote vs post release is stunning and makes one wonder if he can overcome that. The pre – release numbers suggested he got a one year penalty but it’s not clear the post -release voters are ready to forgive and forget
The Twins tortured their fan base for years. Usually they played against the Yankees who would come say hi and then proceed to absolutely vaporize them.
Yet the Yankees themselves haven’t had a lot of postseason success since early this Century. They’ve only won a single Pennant (and Championship) since 2003 despite making the playoffs almost every single year.
Reyes was my favorite player back during his early years with the Mets, so I am confessedly biased here, but
18% for Omar Vizquel and zero votes for Jose Reyes makes no sense to me. Vizquel was a worse ballplayer and (by all appearances) a worse human being
Reyes is much worse by bWAR than fWAR. Wonder if most voters go by bWAR.
Yep, I remember this from back in the day haha, I was always quite annoyed by it
DRS always hated his defense, as I recall
I imagine some of it has to do with being a popular player in a lot of different cities. Lots of different sportswriters had experiences with him.
I think the varying outcomes for the players in the mid 40s to low 50s range in fWAR are really interesting. Reyes gets no votes. Holliday and Colon fall off the ballot. Wright and Hunter barely hang on. Vizquel and Rollins will stay on for 10 years and could build a case for a committee induction in the Hall. Vizquel is the worst of these players and the worst of these people and he gets the most votes. 25 years ago one could have made a prettty good case for Colon as deserving and he is one and done. I don’t think any of these guys are deserving but it is interesting how different the results are for this group and how little the voting seems to refelect the quality of these players.
Some of the people who got more votes than David Wright, it’s like… okay yeah I get it, David isn’t really a HoFer (although I don’t think it’s insane to argue otherwise, especially given the Kirby Puckett precedent), but he’s behind… Francisco Rodriguez??? Rollins, than whom he was unambiguously better (including in Rollins’s MVP season)? Sheesh!
90% of confusing HOF voter decisions can be explained by raw counting stats in traditional categories. Wright didn’t get close to 2,000 hits while Rodriguez got 400 saves. Rollins won an MVP and has almost 2,500 hits.
People (at least in these parts) seem to forget that there is still a significant part of the electorate that still thinks about baseball in purely eye test and back of the baseball card terms.
So much of it is narrative. Vizquel got a ton of press in the early 2000s when the Joe Buck’s and Tom Verducci’s of the world decided he was an all-time defensive wizard (and TBF he was extremely good). Being super duper known for one thing is a great way to get recognition above and beyond your actual value.
Vizquel also got extremely close to 3,000 hits by virtue of hanging around forever, despite being a poor offensive player. And he was a bit of an “F-you, stat geeks” candidate early on, which is probably propping him up a bit still now.
And when you are very good at almost everything, it’s easy to get overlooked. It’s a pattern we’ve seen over and over.
Great recap. Take a day of rest, Jay.
I don’t know that the Bay Area writers really needed to boost Mauer in order to prepare the grounds for Posey, not that Mauer was undeserving.
Posey doesn’t have crazy career WAR totals, but everything else screams lock. Only 10-WAR season by a catcher ever. Statistically the best defensive catcher of his era, while simultaneously putting up a career .830 OPS. Wasn’t even washed when he retired, put up 5 WAR his final season, and retired due to pain, which no one is going to begrudge him.
Old school voters might like him even more. 3x WS champ, 7x AS, 1 MVP, 2x Comeback Player, spent his whole career with one team, career .300 hitter, even has a rule in the book with his name on it.
Agreed, although I wonder whether his 44.8 career bWAR might hurt him. Somehow despite a 129 OPS+ his case is very reliant on framing.
He is 14th in JAWS at least, but voters do generally seem to be terrible at understanding that catchers just rack up fewer counting stats by virtue of the position. I hope the impeding Yadi Molina candidacy might help him as Yadi has even lower WAR totals without framing, so in justifying Yadi they are forced to concede Posey’s worthiness as well.
The thing that voters are adjusting to and the rest of us have to as well is that catchers are not going to have the same 60ish WAR standard if we’re being fair because *catchers don’t play as often* and accrue less of the counting stat.
Posey will get there in a somewhat unconventional way, but 45-50 WAR catchers are peers with 60-65 war guys at on the positions, because most catchers only play about 3/4 of the games in a season, and their performance suffers when they play more than that.
They need to be compared to their peers, and the standard isn’t the same.
I think Posey will do fine, and that given his history he’ll be a guy who gets injury credit rather than it being a demerit. He has a ton of hardware, all the respect in the world, strong numbers, and the All-American boy thing going for him which sportswriters absolutely love. His name is freaking Buster. He’ll go in.
Posey’s HoF candidacy started the day he retired, and I think he’ll get in just fine (not first ballot, but not 10th, either). The question for me is 1) What happens with Martin and McCann and 2) whether there will be another look at Munson and Posada once Posey gets in?
Not sure about “I won’t vote for someone who was suspending for peds but I will vote for Andy Pettitte who merely admitted using them” as a standard
I very much appreciate the fact that Jay has elucidated a standard that he holds to and holds to it.
Yeah, I have a hard time with that as a line, but it’s a defensible one. My moral conflict is wanting to vote for Sheffield and not for Pettite, which is hard to square. Humans are gonna be human about things.
I think the defensible lines are either “I don’t care” or “no conjectures, if we know you did it you’re out”. It seems weird to give guys a pass just because they didn’t get caught in the act.
This is why Ortiz bugs me as well.
“they’re a bit of goodwill that I’ve come to appreciate.”
Absolutely no. I thought about a write-in vote for my daughter for president, just to say she’s received votes. But i didn’t because it cheapens the process. Giving votes for someone because you are friends with them or covered them (Griffin/Bautista) (Evan Grant/Michael Young) cheapens the entire process. You should vote for people because you think they should have a plague, not because you like them.
Life is much less serious than this. It is OK to vote for your daughter for president and it is OK to vote for David Wright for Hall of Fame. It doesn’t cheapen the process because this stuff has always been a part of the process.
I am willing to believe your daughter would be a better president than either of the two likely candidates
Not sure why this is being downvoted – I am willing to believe almost anyone (including OP’s daughter!) would be a better president than either of the two likely candidates
(Yet here we are rolling merrily along toward the matchup no one wanted…)
I wouldn’t vote for anyone to have a plague. That’s nasty (and contagious!)
Especially after the last few years.
And I take issue with the Pettitte commentary, or lack thereof. You mentioned issues with the PED-related guys. You mentioned issues with the DV-related guys. Why isn’t Pettitte likewise referenced? It feels just a little like a likeable, pretty white boy thing.
He wrote a whole article about Pettitte and another whole article about his final ballot decision.
It’s literally linked at the top of the article; cmon man: Andy Pettitte + Mark Buehrle
My respect for Sheffield’s bat is tremendous. Amazing hitter. One of the best handful of his era. I was a little shocked when I looked up his career defensive numbers on Fangraphs. He was worth -300.9 defensive runs over his career. That’s the all-time worst. That’s removing a Luis Aparicio from the field in defensive value.
I still support his candidacy. It’s not his fault he played in an era without an NL DH. If he had, he might easily have had a more undeniable WAR total.
A lot of them are from an era where the still-existant fuzziness around defensive metrics was much, much fuzzier.
That having been said, he was a truly awful fielder.
Yep – TZ numbers shouldn’t be weighted equally to UZR/DRS numbers, any more than those two metrics should be weightedly equally to RAA.
Jay’s column on Sheffield goes into this in really good detail; I’m sold on him as an HoFer
I wonder if someday Holliday will be on the list of best “one and done” players.
I don’t think he’s a Hall of Famer. But he’s as good as Rice, a lot better than Baines — albeit being better than the worst player in the Hall is the bare *minimum* bar — and better than Hunter and Vizquel who are getting enough support to remain on the ballot.