The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2025 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, and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball Reference version unless otherwise indicated.
Russell Martin was sneaky good. At the plate he combined a compact swing and mid-range power with strong on-base skills and (early in his career, at least) the ability to steal the occasional base. Behind the plate, he was exceptional. Shifted from third base after his first professional season, he took to the new position with the zeal of a convert. Martin combined outstanding athleticism — a strong arm, extraordinary lateral mobility, and elite pitch framing — with an intense competitive drive, an off-the-charts baseball IQ, and a natural leadership ability that was already apparent during his 2006 rookie season with the Dodgers.
The 23-year-old Martin’s arrival went a long way toward turning that squad around. In his first four seasons, he helped the Dodgers to three playoff appearances, including their first two trips to the National League Championship Series since their 1988 championship run. When the tight-fisted team nonsensically non-tendered him after an injury-wracked 2010 season, Los Angeles missed the playoffs in each of the next two years. Meanwhile, the nomadic Martin helped spur his subsequent teams — the Yankees (2011–12), Pirates (2013–14), and Blue Jays (2015–18) — to a total of six straight postseasons.
That wasn’t a coincidence. The general managers of those three teams (New York’s Brian Cashman, Pittsburgh’s Neal Huntington, and Toronto’s Alex Anthopoulos) all recognized that in addition to the softer factors that made Martin such a great catcher and leader, he was consistently among the game’s best at the newly quantifiable and highly valuable art of turning borderline pitches into strikes — an area that landed in the public spotlight with Mike Fast’s 2011 Baseball Prospectus article, “Removing the Mask.” Building on previous research by Dan Turkenkopf and others using PITCHf/x data, Fast showed that the difference between a good framer and a bad one could amount to something on the order of four wins per year, and identified Martin as having accrued more value via framing over the 2007–11 span (71 runs) than any backstop besides Jose Molina. Read the rest of this entry »
Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon! And welcome to (finally) my first FanGraphs chat of December 2024. It has once again been too long, and as evidence for how rusty I am, I promoted this on the socials for being at 2 pm (ye olde slotte) instead of noon. So, thank you to those who figured it out without my help.
12:03
Jay Jaffe: I had a great time with my FG colleagues at the Winter Meetings last week. After illness and other issues cut into our group last year, we had a very full lineup, and we ate well and had a lot of laughs.
Jay Jaffe: The Russell Martin one is planned for tomorrow.
12:04
Rich Allen and the Ebonistics: Finally!
12:08
Jay Jaffe: Dick Allen’s election was so overdue that I felt more relief than joy. It’s a bittersweet moment — he’s gotten the recognition he deserves, but isn’t around to enjoy it. In retrospect, the Phillies’ move to retire his number in September 2020, just a few months before his death, looms large as he did at least get that moment in the sun. And for whatever my perturbances are when it comes to squaring Dave Parker’s lackluster JAWS with his election, I’m glad he’s around to accept the honor because these post-death elections are really not the best way to do it.
The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2025 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 and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.
Before he’d ever thrown a major league pitch, cracked a prospect list, or reached legal adult status, Félix Hernández had a nickname: King Felix. Dubbed as such by U.S.S. Mariner blogger Jason Michael Barker Dave Cameron on July 17, 2003, when he was just a 17-year-old in the Low-A Northwest League, he was already overpowering much older hitters. Still a teen when he reached the majors, he quickly came to represent the hopes and dreams of a franchise that had fallen short of a World Series despite four playoffs appearances from 1995–2001; parted with superstars Randy Johnson, Ken Griffey Jr., and Alex Rodriguez along the way; and capped that run with a record-setting 116 wins but a premature exit in the ALCS.
Though slow to embrace the royal moniker, Hernández grew into it. His dazzling combination of an electrifying, darting sinker, a knee-buckling curve, and a signature hard changeup propelled him to a Cy Young Award, two ERA titles, six All-Star appearances, and a perfect game. From 2009–14, he was the best pitcher in the American League by ERA, FIP, strikeouts, and WAR, parlaying that into a contract commensurate that made him the game’s highest-paid pitcher. Unfortunately, a heavy workload — more innings than any pitcher 23 or younger since Dwight Gooden two decades earlier — sapped the sizzle from his fastball, with injuries and a cavalier approach to conditioning taking their toll as well. The Mariners struggled to surround him with a quality roster, and changed managers and pitching coaches every couple of years. The team didn’t reach the playoffs once during Hernández’s career, finishing above .500 just five times, with a pair of second-place showings in the AL West as good as it got. Read the rest of this entry »
The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2025 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 and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.
The fourth and final multi-candidate pairing of this series is by far the heaviest, covering two candidates who have both been connected to multiple incidents of domestic violence. Read the rest of this entry »
The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2025 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 and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.
Before Joe Mauer began starring for the Twins, there was Torii Hunter, and before Chase Utley began starring for the Phillies, there was Jimmy Rollins. Hunter, a rangy, acrobatic center fielder who eventually won nine Gold Gloves and made five All-Star teams, debuted with Minnesota in 1997 and emerged as a star in 2001, the same year the Twins chose Mauer with the number one pick of the draft. The pair would play together from 2004 to ’07, making the playoffs twice before Hunter departed in free agency. Rollins, a compact shortstop who carried himself with a swagger, debuted in 2001 and made two All-Star teams by the time he and Utley began an 11-year run (2004–14) as the Phillies’ regular double play combination. The pair helped Philadelphia to five NL East titles, two pennants, and a championship, with Rollins winning NL MVP honors in 2007 and taking home four Gold Gloves.
Hunter and Rollins both enjoyed lengthy and impressive careers, racking up over 2,400 hits apiece with substantial home run and stolen base totals. From a Hall of Fame perspective, both have credentials that appeal more to traditionally minded voters than to statheads, but in their time on the ballot, they’ve gotten little traction. Hunter debuted with 9.5% in 2021 but has yet to match that since, finishing with 7.3% on the ’24 ballot. Rollins debuted with 9.4% in 2022 and has gained a little ground in each cycle since, with 14.8% in ’24. Both have been outdistanced by their former teammates, whose advanced statistics are much stronger despite comparatively short careers; Mauer was elected this past January, while Utley debuted with 28.8%, nearly double Rollins’ share. Still, it appears that this pair will persist on the ballot for awhile, with enough support for us to keep reliving their careers and discussing their merits on an annual basis. There are far worse fates for Hall of Fame candidates. Read the rest of this entry »
Two days after coming up short in their bid to retain Juan Soto, the Yankees made their first major move of the offseason, landing left-hander Max Fried via an eight-year, $218 million contract. The deal is pending a physical, a nontrivial matter for a pitcher who has made 30 starts just once in the past four seasons while landing on the injured list seven times, though only one of those absences was for longer than three weeks.
Though he was chosen by the Padres in the first round of the 2012 draft out of Harvard-Westlake High Schol in Los Angeles, Fried — who will turn 31 on January 18 — has spent his entire eight-year big league career with the Braves, helping them to seven playoff berths, including a 2021 World Series victory; in fact, he helped seal the deal by throwing six shutout innings in the Game 6 clincher against the Astros. After making just 14 starts in 2023 due to a forearm strain that cost him three months and then a blister that limited him to 10 innings (four in the postseason) after September 12, he returned to take the ball 29 times in ’24, throwing 174.1 innings with a 3.25 ERA, a 3.33 FIP, and a 3.64 xERA. While those were his highest marks in each category since 2019, his ERA still ranked fifth among National League qualifiers and his FIP seventh.
Those numbers were not only quite respectable at face value, they were more impressive once you account for his early-season struggles. In his first turn on March 30, Fried retired just two of the seven Phillies he faced while throwing 43 pitches, walking three and allowing three runs before getting pulled. In his second start, against the Diamondbacks on April 6, he yielded six first-inning runs including a leadoff homer by Ketel Marte (who added an RBI double in the same inning) but hung around until the fifth, when he got into a jam and was charged with two more runs. But from that point to the end of the regular season, he posted a 2.82 ERA and 3.26 FIP, and at times he was downright unhittable. Read the rest of this entry »
The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2025 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 and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.
David Wright is the greatest position player in Mets history, a face-of-the-franchise player who holds the team leads in plate appearances, hits, runs, RBI, total bases, walks, and WAR. A first-round pick out of high school in 2001, the Virginia native spent his entire career with the team, making seven All-Star teams, winning two Gold Gloves, and helping the club to a pair of playoff appearances, including their 2015 pennant.
Though he was surrounded by dysfunction in Queens under the late stages of the Wilpon family’s ownership — the financial tight-fistedness in the wake of the owners’ involvement in the Madoff scandal, the endless micromanagement of injuries, the tone-deaf approach when it came to public relations — Wright stood apart from all of that. Charismatic, exceptionally talented on both sides of the ball, with an off-the-charts work ethic, he was Queens’ answer to Derek Jeter, an icon who avoided scandal, almost invariably said the right thing, and never did anything to embarrass himself or the franchise. Small wonder that he was named team captain in the spring of 2013, and even acquired the nickname “Captain America” while playing for Team USA in that year’s World Baseball Classic. Read the rest of this entry »
DALLAS — The collision of human mortality and baseball immortality is a jarring one that has resonated throughout the history of the National Baseball Hall of Fame, and Sunday night’s announcement of the voting results of the Classic Baseball Era Committee was yet another reminder. Four years after dying of cancer at the age of 78, and three years after falling one vote short for his second straight ballot, Dick Allen finally gained entry. Also elected was 73-year-old Dave Parker, who has been rendered frail while waging a very public battle with Parkinson’s Disease in recent years.
The two sluggers were the only candidates from among a slate of eight elected by the 16-member committee, which met on Sunday at the Winter Meetings here in Dallas. The panel was charged with considering candidates from an overly broad swath of the game’s history. By definition, all eight candidates made their greatest impact prior to 1980, but weighing the merits of John Donaldson, who pitched in the major Negro Leagues from 1920–24 (and for Black baseball teams predating the Negro Leagues as early as 1915), against the likes of Parker, whose major league career ran from 1973–91, is a nearly impossible task, particularly within the limitations of a format that allows each voter to choose a maximum of three candidates from among the eight.
Parker, who had fallen short on three previous Era Committee ballots, received the most support from the panel, totaling 14 votes out of 16 (87.5%), while Allen received 13 (81.3%). Tommy John received seven (43.8%) in his fifth Era Committee appearance. The other five candidates — Ken Boyer, Donaldson, Steve Garvey, Vic Harris, Luis Tiant — each received less than five votes, according to the Hall.
To these eyes, Allen was the most deserving of the non-Negro Leagues candidates on this ballot. In a 15-year-career with the Phillies (1963–69, ’75–76), Cardinals (’70), Dodgers (’71), White Sox (’72–74), and A’s (’77), he made seven All-Star teams; led his league in OPS+ three times, in home runs twice, and in WAR once; and won NL Rookie of the Year and AL MVP awards (’64 and ’72, respectively) while hitting 351 homers and batting .292/.378/.534. Among players with at least 7,000 plate appearances, his career 156 OPS+ is tied with Hall of Famer Frank Thomas for 14th all time.
Allen accrued just 1,848 hits, and so he joins 2022 Golden Days honoree Tony Oliva as the only post-1960 expansion era players in the Hall with fewer than 2,000 hits. The marker has served as a proxy for career length, for better or worse, and in doing so has frozen out players whose careers were shortened for one reason or another, as well as those who built a good portion of their value via on-base skills and defense. BBWAA voters have yet to elect one such player, though Andruw Jones (1,933) is climbing toward 75%, and Chase Utley (1,885) made a solid debut on the 2024 ballot.
Not a particularly adept defender, Allen bounced from third base to left field to first base while traveling around the majors. He accrued his most value while playing third; he’s 17th in both WAR (58.7) and JAWS (52.3) at the position, slightly below Boyer (62.8 WAR, 54.5 JAWS), who had the advantage of a much less controversial career.
Allen’s career was shortened by what seemed to be a constant battle with the world around him, one in which the racism he faced in the minor leagues and in Philadelphia played a major role. Six years after governor Orval Faubus called in the Arkansas National Guard in order to prevent the court-ordered desegregation of Little Rock Central High School, the Phillies sent the 21-year-old Allen to become the first affiliated Black professional baseball player in the state. Faubus himself threw out the first pitch while picketers carried signs with slogans such as “Don’t Negro-ize baseball” and “N***** go home.” Though Allen hit a double in the game-winning rally, he was greeted with a note on his car: “DON’T COME BACK AGAIN N*****,” as he recounted in his autobiography, Crash: The Life and Times of Dick Allen.
The Phillies themselves — the NL’s last team to integrate, 10 years after Jackie Robinson debuted — were far behind the integration curve, as was Philadelphia itself. Allen quickly became a polarizing presence, covered by a media contingent so unable or unwilling to relate to him that writers often refused to call him by the name of his choosing: Dick Allen, not Richie.
Allen rebelled against his surroundings. As biographer Mitchell Nathanson wrote in God Almighty Hisself: The Life and Legacy of Dick Allen, “He refused to pander to the media, refused to accept management’s time-honored methods for determining the value of a ballplayer, and, most explosively, refused to go along with and kowtow to the racial double standard that had evolved within Major League Baseball in the wake of the game’s integration in 1947.”
Allen struggled for support during his 1983–97 run on the BBWAA ballot, never reaching 20%, and he similarly lagged in the voting of the expanded Veterans Committee from 2003–09. However, thanks in part to a grassroots campaign by former Phillies groundskeeper Mark Carfagno, he received a fresh look from the 2015 Golden Era Committee and fell just one vote short of election. The change in Era Committee formats meant that his case wasn’t scheduled to be reconsidered until the 2021 Golden Day Era Committee ballot, but the COVID-19 pandemic led the Hall to postpone that election. In a cruel blow, Allen died of cancer on December 7, 2020, one day after his candidacy would have been considered. Crueler still for his family, he again fell one vote short when the committee finally met in December 2021. Thus his election is a bittersweet moment, one that would have been greatly enriched by his being able to enjoy it.
Whatever quibbles there are to be had with the election of Parker, we can be grateful he’s still around to savor it. A five-tool player whose power, ability to hit for average, and strong, accurate throwing arm all stood out, he spent 19 years in the majors with the Pirates (1973–83), hometown Reds (’84–87), A’s (’88–89), Brewers (’90), Angels (’91), and Blue Jays (’91). He hit 339 homers and collected 2,712 hits while batting .290/.339/.471 (121 OPS+) and making seven All-Star teams, and at his peak, he was considered the game’s best all-around player. In his first five full seasons (1975-79), he amassed a World Series ring (in the last of those years), regular season and All-Star MVP awards, two batting titles, two league leads in slugging percentage, and three Gold Gloves, not to mention tremendous swagger and a great nickname (“The Cobra”).
A 14th-round draft pick out of Cincinnati’s Courier Tech High School — he fell from the first or second round due to multiple knee injuries that ended his pursuit of football, his favorite sport — Parker debuted with the Pirates in July 1973, just seven months after the death of Roberto Clemente. He assumed full-time duty as the team’s right fielder a season and a half later, and appeared to be on course to join the Puerto Rican legend in Cooperstown, but cocaine, poor conditioning, and injuries threw him off course. While he recovered well enough to make three more All-Star teams, play a supporting role on the 1989 World Series-winning A’s, and compile hefty career totals while playing past the age of 40, his game lost multiple dimensions along the way.
Parker debuted with just 17.5% on the 1997 BBWAA ballot and peaked at 24.5% the next year, but only one other time in his final 13 seasons of eligibility did he top 20%. In appearances on the 2014 Expansion Era ballot and ’18 and ’20 Modern Baseball ones, only in the last of those did he break out of the “received less than X votes” group; he got seven (43.8%) that year.
Because his defense declined to the point that he was relegated to DH duty, Parker ranks just 41st in JAWS among right fielders (38.8), 17.9 points below the standard. Still, this is not Harold Baines Redux. While Baines collected 2,866 hits — and might have reached 3,000 if not for the two players’ strikes that occurred during his career — he never put up much black ink or finished higher than ninth in MVP voting, spent the vast majority of his career as a DH, and ranks 77th in JAWS among right fielders (30.1). He was never close to being considered the best hitter in the game, let alone the best all-around player. His 2019 election was a shock, and a result that felt engineered given the makeup of the panel.
As I noted in my write-up of Parker, the contemporary whose case bears the most resemblance to his is that of Dale Murphy, for as different as the two were off the field — and you can’t get much further apart than the distance between Parker’s drug-related misadventures and Murphy’s wholesome, milk-drinking persona. A two-time MVP, Murphy — who fell short on the 2023 Contemporary Baseball ballot and will be eligible again next year — had a peak that’s vaguely Hall-caliber, but he’s ranks 27th in JAWS among center fielders, 14.4 points below the standard, because myriad injuries prevented him from having much value outside that peak.
I had Allen atop my list as the most deserving non-PED-linked position player outside the Hall. While I was lukewarm on Parker, it’s impossible not to feel some amount of empathy for his hard-won wisdom — his autobiography Cobra: A Life in Baseball and Brotherhood, written with Dave Jordan, is frank and poignant — and his battle with Parkinson’s, not to mention his prominent role in raising money to fight the disease. Again, it is far better that he is alive to enjoy this honor than to have it granted posthumously, as would have been the case for Tiant, who died in October at age 83. Boyer died in 1983 at age 52. John is 81, Garvey 75. For as tiresome as it may sometimes feel to see their candidacies reheated every three years or so, one can understand the desire to honor them while they’re alive — but then again, the same goes for the candidates they’re crowding off the ballot.
The most frustrating aspect of this election is how little traction the two Negro Leagues candidates had, as they were the top returning members from the 2022 Early Baseball ballot, with Harris — the most successful manager in Negro Leagues history — having received 10 votes (62.5%) and Donaldson — a legendary pitcher who spent most of his playing years barnstorming endlessly out of economic necessity — getting eight (50%). The 16-member panel did include two bona fide Negro Leagues scholars in Larry Lester and Leslie Heaphy. However, in my opinion and those of many Negro Leagues experts, it would be far better for a full panel of such researchers and scholars to consider these candidates and the unique and difficult context of their careers without having to battle for attention and space with much more famous players from a relatively recent past.
Appointed by the Hall’s board of directors, this ballot’s 16-member committee consisted of Hall of Famers Paul Molitor, Eddie Murray, Tony Perez, Lee Smith, Ozzie Smith, and Joe Torre; major league executives Sandy Alderson, Terry McGuirk, Dayton Moore, Arte Moreno, and Brian Sabean; and veteran media members/historians Bob Elliott, Steve Hirdt, and Dick Kaegel as well as Heaphy and Lester. In contrast to years past, this group had far fewer obvious connections to candidates, with Torre having played with Allen in St. Louis in 1970, Alderson serving as the general manager of the A’s when they traded for John in mid-’85 and Parker in December ’87, and Sabean in the scouting department of the Yankees when John had his second go-round with the team starting in ’86. [Update: As readers have pointed out, I missed that Perez and Parker were teammates in Cincinnati from 1984–86, and Molitor and Parker were teammates in Milwaukee in ’90.] Where both the 2023 and ’24 Contemporary Era Committees (the latter for managers, executives, and umpires) had just three media members/historians, this one had five.
The Era Committee process is an imperfect one, and by some measures these were imperfect candidates. If they weren’t, they probably wouldn’t have been relegated to Era Committee ballots in the first place, though not necessarily through their own fault. The voting results won’t please everyone, but hopefully even critics of the process can see some value in Sunday’s result.
The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2025 Hall of Fame ballot. Originally written for the 2020 election, it has been updated to reflect recent voting results as well as additional research. 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 and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.
Bobby Abreu could do just about everything. A five-tool player with dazzling speed, a sweet left-handed stroke, and enough power to win a Home Run Derby, he was also one of the game’s most patient, disciplined hitters, able to wear down a pitcher and unafraid to hit with two strikes. While routinely reaching the traditional seasonal plateaus that tend to get noticed — a .300 batting average (six times), 20 homers (nine times), 30 steals (six times), 100 runs scored and batted in (eight times apiece) — he was nonetheless a stathead favorite for his ability to take a walk (100 or more eight years in a row) and his high on-base percentages (.400 or better eight times). And he was durable, playing 151 games or more in 13 straight seasons. “To me, Bobby’s Tony Gwynn with power,” said Phillies hitting coach Hal McRae in 1999.
“Bobby was way ahead of his time [with] regards to working pitchers,” said his former manager Larry Bowa when presenting him for induction into the Phillies Wall of Fame in 2019. “In an era when guys were swinging for the fences, Bobby never strayed from his game. Because of his speed, a walk would turn into a double. He was cool under pressure, and always in control of his at-bats. He was the best combination of power, speed, and patience at the plate.” Read the rest of this entry »
The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2025 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 and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.
When it comes to a 6-foot-6 power pitcher with a weight on par with an NFL offensive lineman, everything can seem outsized. Such was the case with CC Sabathia, who reached the majors as a fireballing 20-year-old lefty, refined his craft, and shouldered significant workloads while evolving into one of the game’s true aces. Over the course of a 19-year career (2001–19) with Cleveland, the Brewers, and the Yankees, Sabathia helped his teams reach the playoffs 11 times, made six All-Star teams, won a Cy Young award and a World Series ring, signed a record-setting contract, and reached milestones that may be unattainable for those following in his considerable footsteps.
Such stature doesn’t make even the most large-hearted person invulnerable, however. While at the height of his considerable success, Sabathia carried a huge secret: alcoholism. As he later explained through his own accounts, interviews, and a 2021 HBO documentary, from the time he was 14 years old, Sabathia was prone to binge drinking. He used alcohol to dull the pain and anger caused by the absence of his father, who dropped out of his life while he was in high school, re-emerged early in his professional career, and died prematurely in 2003. The pressure of living up to his seven-year, $161 million contract with the Yankees only exacerbated his problem, particularly as wear-and-tear injuries sapped his performance. Finally, in October 2015, with the Yankees about to play in the AL Wild Card Game, Sabathia sought help, entering a rehabilitation program and soon going public with his alcoholism as a way of holding himself accountable. Read the rest of this entry »
Jay Jaffe
