Poor Ernie Lombardi. The heavyset and heavy-hitting Hall of Fame catcher, who owns two of the position’s eight batting titles, was the player hardest-hit by Baseball-Reference’s latest update to their version of Wins Above Replacement. B-Ref rolled out a whole series of adjustments, both to current players and long-retired ones, into one big release earlier this week, which it explained via a Twitter thread on Tuesday morning and expounded upon at the site. Thanks to additional play-by-play baserunning and caught stealing data, Lombardi, whose career spanned from 1931-47, saw his career WAR total drop from 46.8 to 39.5. Well, he didn’t actually see it, as he’s been dead since 1977, but you know what I mean.

B-Ref’s version of WAR is different from that of FanGraphs, of course, though you may have noticed that our site also updated its Defensive Runs Saved totals after Sports Info Solutions made major changes to its flagship stat, in part to account for defensive shifting. I’ll get to that aspect in a separate follow-up post, but for the moment my concern is how the B-Ref changes affect my JAWS system for Hall of Fame evaluations. The overall answer is “not a whole lot,” though individual player WAR and JAWS, and thus the standards at each position, have shifted a bit, creating a ripple effect throughout my system. With no new baseball for the foreseeable future, it’s worth taking an inventory of these changes, in part because they give us a chance to dig into some baseball history and provide a bit of an escape from our current realities.

Incidentally, the Hall of Fame itself closed indefinitely as of Sunday, March 15, and has already canceled its 2020 Hall of Fame Classic Weekend, which was scheduled for May 22-24. Among other things, that weekend was to feature a seven-inning legends game featuring Hall of Famers and former major leaguers and a “Night at the Museum” program. Induction Weekend, scheduled for July 24-27, is still on the calendar and will hopefully take place as planned, but right now, there are no guarantees. Given that the advanced ages of many Hall of Famers put them at the highest risk for COVID-19 infections, attendance among the game’s legends could be more sparse than usual. Read the rest of this entry »

As I’ve written several times in recent weeks, the past seven years have seen a flurry of candidates elected to the Hall of Fame — a record 22 by the BBWAA over that span, with another five by the various Era Committees. Eleven of those 22 were first-ballot selections by the writers, while another three made it in during their final year. Of the five committee selections, three spent a full 15 years on the writers’ ballot while the other two slipped below the 5% mark and fell off.

The mix of quick selections and long-awaited ones has been dizzying, and it’s significantly altered the landscape when it comes to the best players outside the Hall of Fame — the ones who might be considered in the on-deck circle. As it’s been a long time since I took a spin around the diamond in this context, I thought it would be a good way to close the books on this year’s election cycle. What follows here is a JAWS-driven spin in which I’ve identified both the best eligible candidate and the best who’s awaiting eligibility. That’s not to say that they’re all Hallworthy, or that I’d vote for all of them; in some cases, I’m merely pointing out the dearth of strong candidates. For the “eligible” category, the player must have been retired at least five years, even if he wasn’t on a 2020 ballot, and no, he can’t be under a lifetime ban, nor can he be stuck in that awful limbo between falling off the writers’ ballot with less than 5% of the vote and awaiting his 10-year eligibility window to expire. For the “not yet eligible” category, the player may be active, retired too recently to appear on a ballot, or stuck in that post-5% limbo. As I’ve written relatively recently about many of these players — and less recently at other sites about some of them — I’m going lightning-round style, with pointers to where I’ve expounded at greater length. Read the rest of this entry »

Derek Jeter and Larry Walker have punched their tickets to Cooperstown, and this year’s Hall of Fame election is in the books, but before the circus leaves town, it’s time engage in my seventh annual attempt to gaze into the crystal ball to see what the next five elections will hold. As I note annually, this exercise requires some amount of imagination and speculation, and while it’s grounded in my research into the candidates and the history and mechanics of the voting, the changes to the process that have occurred during the time I’ve been conducting this exercise raise the question of how valuable that history is from a prognostication standpoint. It’s tough to get a fix on the horizon when the earth keeps shaking.

Make no mistake: when it comes to the BBWAA’s voting patterns and process over the past seven years, the earth has moved. The writers’ streak of electing multiple candidates for seven consecutive years is unprecedented, as is the surge of 22 honorees in that span. We’ve had three quartets elected over the past six years, compared to two (plus the original quintet) over the previous 78 years. All of this has happened amid changes to both the terrain and the rules. A logjam of qualified candidates unprecedented in modern voting history contributed to the Hall unilaterally truncating candidacies from 15 years to 10 via a 2014 rule change, less to clean up the ballots than to move the intractable debate over PED-related candidates out of the spotlight. With the BBWAA’s subsequent proposals to adjust the longstanding 10-slot rule and to publish every ballot both rejected by the Hall’s board of directors, voters have responded by setting and breaking records for slots used per ballot, percentage of ballots filled to the max, percentage of ballots revealed to the public either before or after the election, and the highest share of the votes for a given candidate. It’s been a wild ride. Read the rest of this entry »

For an unprecedented seventh year in a row, and as part of a still record-setting surge, the BBWAA elected multiple candidates to the Hall of Fame with the 2020 ballot. Derek Jeter and Larry Walker had very different playing careers and voting paths, but both gained entry via results that carried a fair bit of drama into Tuesday evening’s announcement, as the questions of whether the former would join former teammate Mariano Rivera as the second unanimous selection in as many years, and of whether the latter would end up on the right side of 75%, were both up in the air.

We now know the answers, of course, and I’ve already delved into the ballot’s big take-home points. What follows here is my look at how each candidate fared, with a few lumped together for obvious reasons. Having written so much about the two honorees, I’m starting at the bottom of the results and working my way to the top, though of course I do hope you stick around to the end, if only to meet Robinson Canoe. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s back to business as usual for the BBWAA’s Hall of Fame voting, the results of which were announced on Tuesday evening. The messy and occasionally exasperating tradition of non-unanimity, which took an unprecedented one-year vacation when Mariano Rivera was elected with 100% of the vote last year, has returned. While Derek Jeter appeared on track to join Rivera in that exclusive club, one as-yet-unidentified voter from among the 397 ballots cast in this year’s election chose to throw a wrench in the works. No matter. Ol’ No. 2 will have to settle for the second-highest vote share in Hall history (99.75%) as well as the requisite bronze plaque in Cooperstown. He’ll have some company in the Class of 2020, as the writers also elected Larry Walker with 76.6% of the vote. Walker, the first Canadian-born position player ever elected, follows Tim Raines (2017) and Edgar Martinez (2019) as the third candidate in the last four election cycles to be chosen in his 10th and final year of eligibility.

With “only” two honorees this year, the writers’ unprecedented streak of electing at least three candidates annually has ended at three years; the last time they elected two was in 2016, when Ken Griffey Jr. and Mike Piazza were chosen. Even so, this is the seventh consecutive election in which the BBWAA has tabbed multiple candidates; that breaks a tie with the 1951-56 span, which was bracketed by back-to-back shutouts on either side. The 22 candidates elected over the past seven cycles is a record, far outdoing the 16 from the 1950-56 or 1951-57 stretches.

What follows here is my big-picture look at this year’s results; I’ll be back with my candidate-by-candidate breakdown on Wednesday. Read the rest of this entry »

When a player first comes up on the Hall of Fame ballot, their career is likely still fairly fresh in a voter’s mind. It’s possible, however, that the fresh appearance can cloud the memory. After all, if a player is up for Hall of Fame consideration, they probably played 15-20 years, and the last eight of those seasons were likely out of that player’s prime. As we are now more than 15 years away from Scott Rolen’s prime, it is possible misconceptions and incorrect narratives are forming around the type of player Scott Rolen was when he played. He was dominant in his prime, but beginning his career on a team averaging 90 losses the first four seasons of his career and then moving to a team with Albert Pujols in a league with Barry Bonds tended to obscure Rolen’s dominance. His value as an all-around performer further hid his greatness.

While Rolen has taken a major step forward this season in Hall of Fame voting, he still needs another boost before he gets elected, so it is worth clearing up any misconceptions about his career. Looking at Rolen’s overall body of work, it’s not hard to see that he was a consistent performer at an All-Star level. As Jay Jaffe noted in his examination of Rolen’s case:

Rolen cracked the league’s top 10 in WAR a modest four times, but had six seasons of at least 5.0 WAR, tied for 10th at the position, and 11 of at least 4.0 WAR, tied for third with Boggs, behind only Schmidt and Mathews. That’s particularly impressive considering his career length. Take away his cup-of-coffee 1996 season, his injury-wracked 2005, and the two at the tail end of his career; in 11 of the other 13 seasons, he was worth at least 4.0 WAR, which is to say worthy of All-Star consideration. Only in 2007 and ’08 did he play more than 92 games and finish with less than 4.0 WAR.

Using FanGraphs WAR, Rolen actually has five top-10 finishes in league WAR. Those six seasons of at least 5.0 WAR help paint the consistently good picture, but it leaves a little out of the story. Let’s take a look at Rolen’s prime, which we’ll start with his first top-10 finish in WAR and go through his best season in 2004. Read the rest of this entry »

Later today, the Baseball Writers’ Association of America (BBWAA) will announce the results of its 2020 Hall of Fame election. So far, three players have been checked on more than 75% of the 210 ballots counted in Ryan Thibodaux’s Ballot Tracker (the tracker is maintained by a four-person team of which I am a part), thus clearing the threshold for induction: Derek Jeter in his first year, Larry Walker in his final year, and Curt Schilling in his eighth year. While Schilling is expected to tail off and may even come in under 70%, the other two have at least a chance to hear their name called. Here are the candidates to receive at least 5% of the vote (the percentage needed to stay on the ballot) in the Tracker so far:

Since the 2013 shutout, the BBWAA has opened their doors to an unprecedented six-year flood of 20 inductees, capped by Mariano Rivera’s unanimous selection a year ago. The result has been a cleared ballot and a realistic path to induction for many candidates who have previously struggled to gain any traction. Read the rest of this entry »

Hey, remember the Hall of Fame voting? If your outrage over illegal sign-stealing — Banghazi, perhaps? — needs some redirection, the results of the voting on the BBWAA’s 2020 ballot will be announced later today. When they are, Derek Jeter may well become the second player in as many years to be elected unanimously by the 400-plus BBWAA voters, though FanGraphs readers did not accord the former Yankees shortstop quite the same level of Re2pect in our second annual Hall of Fame Crowdsource balloting. Of course, they did “elect” him with the highest percentage of any of this year’s candidates, and they were almost certainly more generous than the actual electorate will be when it comes to the ballot’s other top luminaries.

As with last year, registered readers of our site (and participating staff, this scribe included) were allowed to choose up to 10 candidates while adhering to the same December 31, 2019 deadline as the actual voters, but unlike the writers, our voting was conducted electronically instead of on paper. This year, 1,440 users participated, a 19% increase relative to last year, our inaugural foray. Slightly over half of the participants (50.6%) used all 10 slots on their ballots, well down from last year’s 77.6% but still well ahead of the 29.5%% of actual voters who have published their ballots in Ryan Thibodaux’s Hall of Fame Ballot Tracker as of 12:01 AM Eastern on Tuesday morning. Our voters averaged 8.37 names per ballot, down a full notch and then some from last year’s 9.41, but again well ahead of the Tracker’s 7.30.

All of which provides an interesting window into our electorate. I’ll press my nose to the glass on such topics below, but chances are that you’re here because you really want to know who we actually chose. Getting back to Jeter, the ballot’s top newcomer, not only did he not receive 100% in our polling, he didn’t even break 90%, and barely beat out the second-best supported candidate, Larry Walker, edging him by just half a percentage point, 89.9% to 89.4% — seven total votes! The other two candidates we “elected” were the gruesome twosome, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, who like Walker also cleared the 75% bar last year in our unfortunately non-binding poll. If that quartet seems like a lot, consider that last year, the FanGraphs crowd tabbed seven candidates, with the aforementioned trio of holdovers joining the four players the writers actually elected (Roy Halladay, Edgar Martinez, Mike Mussina, and Mariano Rivera, who got only 91.1% of our vote, compared to 100% of the real thing). Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2020 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 I sketched out a plan to tackle the 14 one-and-done candidates on this year’s Hall of Fame ballot, I found unifying themes to group them together even as the profiles themselves expanded: oft-injured infielders, sluggers who finished their careers concurrently with the White Sox, Dominican-born players who took unorthodox routes to the majors, starting pitchers for the 2003 champion Marlins, late-blooming relievers. When I reached the final pair, reliever José Valverde and slugger Raúl Ibañez, I was ready to concede that they were simply leftovers — but I had momentarily forgotten that during the 2012 ALCS, I had witnessed a moment firsthand that permanently tied them together:

In addition to that moment from the 2012 ALCS, both of these players seemed to have nine lives as they kept their grips on baseball — or vice versa, to invoke Jim Bouton’s famous line — for a long, long time. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2020 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.

Batch five hundred thirty-seven — no, wait, it’s just batch five, the rest of that was my daughter’s drawing — of my completist series features a pair of hard-throwing relievers who took a long time to get a shot at the majors, and even longer to become closers. Not much went right for either of them as Mets, and by the time they crossed paths in Arizona, both had seen better days, but somewhere in the middle of all of that, they became All-Stars. We could quibble as to whether they should be on this ballot, but why not celebrate two guys who made the most of their relatively brief careers?

Heath Bell

It took Heath Bell until he was nearly 27 years old to reach the majors, and he turned 31 before he claimed the closer’s job. Big-bodied (6-foot-3 and as much as 275 pounds) and with a big personality, he radiated joy on his best days, showing his exuberance with his signature sprints to the mound, making three straight All-Star teams, converting 41 straight save opportunities at one point, and netting a big deal in free agency — not too bad for a guy who was a 69th-round draft pick by the Devil Rays. Read the rest of this entry »