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.

Given their propensity for injuries, even the best pitchers will break your hearts. The impact of so many hard throws takes its toll on the body, and no matter how talented, not every pitcher can survive long enough to build a resumé worthy of Hall of Fame consideration. In the latest installment of my completest series, two big righties who could dial it up to the high 90s with their fastballs teamed up at the outset of their careers to help the Marlins capture an unlikely championship, and while both excelled further, to the point of making multiple All-Star teams, the ups and downs of the job took their toll, sidelining both by their mid-30s.

Josh Beckett

At his best, when healthy, Josh Beckett was an All-Star, a Cy Young contender, and a championship-caliber pitcher who offset his high-90s heat with a filthy, knee-buckling curve. Indeed, he played a vital role on two World Series winners, first the upstart 2003 Marlins and then the ’07 Red Sox. Alas, injuries — particularly recurrent blisters and shoulder woes — limited him to just four seasons of at least 30 starts, and prevented him from reaching the heights expected of him. The grind of pitching was just too much for his body to stay in working order for two years in a row, and sometimes even for a full season; he developed a notable tendency to excel in odd-numbered years while struggling in even-numbered ones. But when he was good, he was very, very good. 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 three of my completist series features a pair of Dominican-born sluggers whose unorthodox paths to the majors stand in stark contrast to those of their countrymen — not better or worse, just different, and eye-opening. Both players beat long and circuitous paths around the majors and had power galore, topping out at 46 homers apiece, but their approaches at the plate were night and day, as were their secondary skills.

Carlos Pena

Dominican-born but American-raised, Carlos Peña was a first-round pick who struggled to live up to that billing, passing through the hands of five teams in eight years before landing in Tampa Bay. While he joined a cellar-dwelling club that had known no previous success, he played a key part in their turnaround while establishing his own foothold in the majors. For a few years, he ranked among the league’s top sluggers, and among its most patient. 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 two of my completist series features a pair of 400-homer sluggers who spent their final four years as teammates on the South Side of Chicago, that after having briefly crossed paths — in an organizational sense, at least — in Cincinnati in 1998. While both routinely put up big home run and RBI totals — reaching 40 homers eight times between them, and driving in 100 runs 12 times — their lack of speed and subpar defense made for surprisingly low WAR totals that quashed any real debate about Hallworthiness. Which isn’t to say that they didn’t have their moments during compelling careers…

Adam Dunn

At 6-foot-6, 240 pounds, Adam Dunn was built like a football player — and he was, to the point of signing a letter of intent to play for the University of Texas — but he could pulverize a baseball as well. In a 14-year career (2001-14), “The Big Donkey” reached 40 homers in a season six times, and 30 in a season another three times; he homered with a frequency topped by just a dozen players in baseball history. An exceptionally disciplined hitter, Dunn wore pitchers out, walking at least 100 times in a season eight times. He racked up his share of strikeouts as well, at one point breaking Bobby Bonds‘ single-season record, and in fact retired as the King of the Three True Outcomes — the player who either homered, walked, or struck out in the highest share of plate appearances of anybody with at least 4,000 career plate appearances, and the exemplar of a set of trends that for better or worse has come to define 21st century baseball. Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s Note: Mark Newman is the author of the No. 1 bestseller Diamonds from the Dugout and Yankee Legends, and was most recently a writer for MLB.com from 2002-18. On the occasion of his 20th Hall of Fame vote, we’re happy to host his ballot reveal column.

There were 499 total ballots submitted by baseball writers for the Hall of Fame Class of 2000. I was one of those, helping Carlton Fisk and Tony Perez into Cooperstown’s hallowed gallery of plaques that summer. It was my first such privilege after having met the required 10 consecutive years of membership in the Baseball Writers’ Association of America, a membership that began when I was covering the Giants for the San Jose Mercury News at gusty Candlestick Park.

In the 20 years since I mailed back that first ballot of check marks, 41 major league greats have been elected via the BBWAA vote, most in a record-smashing torrent of inductions since the 2013 shutout. As Mariano Rivera and Edgar Martinez symbolized last year – and as Derek Jeter and Larry Walker might replicate next summer — some of those 41 selections were no-brainers and others were add-ons in their final year of eligibility. This is the business of retrospection, and in hindsight I can see how thankful I am that Jim Rice and Andre Dawson were elected without my help, how badly we failed Kenny Lofton and Lou Whitaker, among others, how tumultuous these two decades have been thanks to PEDs and overreaction, and how much things have changed for the better in our process.

The results have always been the same: Awestruck faces gazing at a wall, heads tilted like in the Louvre at the bronze visage and text on each new plaque in an upstate New York hamlet, allowing fans who make the pilgrimage to relive the wonders of their youth while sharing heroic stories with their children as a rite of passage. Now I am commemorating my own 20th anniversary by observing some voting trends while checking the boxes of these 10 legends, in order: Barry Bonds, Derek Jeter, Roger Clemens, Larry Walker, Scott Rolen, Curt Schilling, Todd Helton, Andruw Jones, Andy Pettitte, and Billy Wagner. 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.

It’s “no such thing as a perfect ballot” season. As far back as 2013, my second year at SI.com, I’ve used that refrain to describe the difficulty of winnowing a nearly unmanageable backlog of plausible Hall of Fame candidates down to 10, the maximum allowed per voter. With an unprecedented flood of 20 players elected over the past six cycles, and just one obvious choice among the newcomers, the backlog has abated, which should make the process of voting easier. Nonetheless, with my annual exercise in filling out a virtual ballot comes an acknowledgement of the numerous subjective choices that go into even the most objective-minded ballots. As with so many other endeavors, perfection may be unattainable, but that’s not to say it’s not worth pursuing.

Despite the work I put into Hall of Fame research in general, and into my annual series in particular, I still don’t have a vote, but after breaking down ballots for 19 election cycles — 17 since introducing the system that became JAWS, and nine since gaining admission to the BBWAA — I’m just one year away. At this time next year, I’ll be explaining my actual ballot and reporting it to Ryan Thibodaux and the Tracker troupe. Whether filling out a virtual ballot or an actual one, my process is still the same. I perform this exercise to illustrate the hard choices a voter faces, and to do so by the ballot submission deadline (December 31). As always, I am guided by my JAWS system, but not enslaved by it, for there are considerations that a comparative Wins Above Replacement-based methodology — which can account for the widespread variations in scoring from era to era and ballpark to ballpark (producing the occasional double-take) — can’t capture, including pennant race and postseason contributions, awards and honors, and historical importance.  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.

For better or worse, I’m a completist. In 16 years of analyzing Hall of Fame ballots using my JAWS system, I’ve never let a candidate pass without comment, no matter how remote his chance of election. From the brothers Alomar to the youngest Alou and the elder Young, I’ve covered ’em all. Thus it’s my sworn duty to tackle the minor candidates on the 2020 BBWAA ballot in addition to the major ones — of which there were 18 this year. That leaves 14 to go.

To be eligible for election, a player must appear in games in at least 10 major league seasons, with a career that ended at least five calendar years ago, and then be nominated by at least two members of a six-member screening committee — a step that can produce some arbitrary results, as I’ve noted in the past. Getting this far is a victory unto itself, but these candidates aren’t going any further; given that none has received a single vote from among the 50 ballots published so far, it’s fair to say that none is going to get the 5% necessary to remain eligible, let alone the 75% needed for election. Just the same, these one-and-done candidates were accomplished players who deserve their valedictory, and in this series, they’ll get it.

Our first batch covers a quartet of infielders who intermittently played up to All-Star levels (not that they were always recognized for doing so). But once they reached their 30s, their careers began to fall apart, with injuries generally playing a prominent role. Be forewarned: these are not the happiest tales in this series.

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.

Like Johan Santana, Roy Oswalt, and many a great pitcher before them, Cliff Lee burned brightly but briefly. Though he lacked a high-velocity fastball, the 6-foot-3, 205-pound lefty — “lean like a knife blade, with a club fighter’s big jaw,” as Pat Jordan described him in 2011 — had a deceptive delivery and precision command of a broad arsenal of weapons. His mid-career addition of a cut fastball, inspired by — who else? — Mariano Rivera turned him from an innings-eater into an ace.

From 2008-13, Lee was arguably the best pitcher in baseball. His 36.8 WAR over that span was nearly four full wins ahead of the second-ranked Clayton Kershaw, who to be fair was a late-May call-up at the start of that stretch (by fWAR, Lee had a 1.5-WAR lead over second-ranked Justin Verlander). Over that six-year span, Lee had the majors’ second-lowest ERA (2.89), the lowest FIP (2.85) and walk rate (1.33 per nine), and the highest strikeout-to-walk ratio of any pitcher with at least 600 innings. During that time, which began when Lee was 29 and fresh off the sting of having spent a good chunk of the previous season in Triple-A while his teammates came within one win of the AL pennant, he won a Cy Young award, pitched for two World Series teams, was traded three times, made four All-Star teams, and signed the third-richest deal for a pitcher to that point.

Lee threw 1,333.2 innings in that span, the fifth-highest total in baseball. Unfortunately, his elbow could only handle so much. A flexor pronator strain limited him to 13 starts in 2014, his age-35 season, and aside from a single spring training outing in 2015, he never pitched in a game again. As I noted in the context of Oswalt’s Hall of Fame case last year, Lee’s total of 2156.2 innings is fewer than all but one enshrined starter — not Sandy Koufax but Dizzy Dean. While not truly a viable candidate for Cooperstown, he nonetheless merits a full-length entry in this series.

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The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2020 Hall of Fame ballot. Originally written for the 2013 election at SI.com, 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.

Like Mark McGwire, his rival in the great 1998 home run chase, Sammy Sosa was hailed at the height of his popularity as a hero, a Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year, and a great international ambassador for baseball. In the same year that McGwire set a new single-season record with 70 home runs, Sosa hit 66 and took home the National League MVP award. Three times in a four-year stretch from 1998 to 2001, he surpassed Roger Maris‘ previously unbreakable mark of 61 homers, and he hit more homers over a five- or 10-year stretch than any player in history. In 2007, he became just the fifth player to reach the 600-home-run milestone after Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, and Barry Bonds.

As with McGwire, the meaning of Sosa’s home runs changed once baseball began to crack down on performance-enhancing drugs, with suspicions mounting about his achievements. He was called to testify before Congress in 2005, along with McGwire, Rafael Palmeiro, and several other players. Sosa denied using PEDs, but while he never tested positive once Major League Baseball began instituting penalties for usage, The New York Times reported in 2009 that he was one of more than 100 players who had done so during the supposedly anonymous survey tests six years prior. 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.

No less an authority than Sports Illustrated anointed Jason Giambi “The New Face of Baseball” on the cover of its July 17, 2000 edition. At a time when balls were soaring over fences in record numbers, the wet, hulking slugger with his bulging biceps and flaming skull tattoo was midway through a season in which he would hit 43 homers while batting .333/.476/.647. His performance not only garnered him the AL MVP award, it helped the upstart A’s win the AL West.

Having gone through lean times since their 1988-92 heyday, the small-market A’s had returned to contention thanks to their resourcefulness and their signature belief in plate discipline. Giambi, a protégé of Mark McGwire who was blessed with extraordinary eyesight and a cerebral approach that belied his hard-partying persona, was just about the the most disciplined hitter in the game, at least this side of Barry Bonds. In 2000, his 137 walks, .476 on-base percentage, and 187 OPS+ all led the AL. He would hit the trifecta again the next year, with league highs of 129 walks, a .477 on-base percentage, and a 199 OPS+ to go with his 38 homers.

Giambi would remain one of the game’s faces during less happy times as well. In early 2004, two years into his seven-year, $120 million contract with the Yankees, his name surfaced in connection to the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative, which stood accused of distributing PEDs to athletes in several sports. In grand jury testimony that had leaked, Giambi confessed to having injected human growth hormone and testosterone as well as using “the clear” and “the cream,” two undetectable “designer” steroids distributed by BALCO.

Since baseball did not yet have a testing and suspension regimen, Giambi was never punished, but he was cast as a villain for awhile. Unlike so many other high-profile players associated with PEDs, however, he managed to find a way back into the good graces of both fans and the industry after publicly admitting to having used the drugs. He made a non-specific apology in 2005 so as to avoid further legal hassles, but got more specific two years later. The Yankees tried to free themselves of his contract multiple times to no avail, and commissioner Bud Selig threatened to fine and suspend him if he did not speak with former senator George Mitchell for his investigation into the game’s drug problems. Those heavy-handed attempts to shame him instead turned him into something of an antihero. He became a fan favorite all over again in New York, then spent six more seasons bouncing from Oakland to Colorado to Cleveland as a respected clubhouse sage and quasi-coach, finally retiring at age 43 following the 2014 season.

Though he made five All-Star teams, won an MVP award, and hit 440 homers — reaching 20 homers 11 times, 30 homers five times, and 40 homers three times — Giambi doesn’t have strong qualifications for Cooperstown via either traditional or advanced statistics, though he’s not as far off as one might think. He fares much better via WAR and JAWS than this ballot’s other first base/designated hitter types, but that doesn’t mean he’s likely to get enough support even to remain on the ballot, or that he merits it. Note that as with Bonds and McGwire, I don’t see his PED usage as disqualifying, as it’s confined to the period before MLB and the players’ union implemented a testing program.

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. It was initially written for The Cooperstown Casebook, published in 2017 by Thomas Dunne Books, and subsequently adapted for SI.com and then FanGraphs. 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.

It happened so quickly. Freshly anointed the game’s top prospect by Baseball America in the spring of 1996, the soon-to-be-19-year-old Andruw Jones was sent to play for the Durham Bulls, the Braves’ Hi-A affiliate. By mid-August, he blazed through the Carolina League, the Double-A Southern League, and the Triple-A International League, and debuted for the defending world champions. By October 20, with just 31 regular season games under his belt, he was a household name, not only the youngest player ever to homer in a World Series game — breaking Mickey Mantle’s record — but doing so twice at Yankee Stadium.

Jones was no flash in the pan. The Braves didn’t win the 1996 World Series, and he didn’t win the ’97 NL Rookie of the Year award, but along with Chipper Jones (no relation) and the big three of Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, and John Smoltz, he became a pillar of a franchise that won a remarkable 14 NL East titles from 1991-2005 (all but the 1994 strike season). From 1998-2007, Jones won 10 straight Gold Gloves, more than any center fielder except Willie Mays.

By the end of 2006, Jones had tallied 342 homers and 1,556 hits. He looked bound for a berth in Cooperstown, but after a subpar final season in Atlanta and a departure for Los Angeles in free agency, he fell apart so completely that the Dodgers bought out his contract, a rarity in baseball. He spent the next four years with three different teams before heading to Japan at age 35, and while he hoped for a return to the majors, he couldn’t find a deal to his liking after either the 2014 or 2015 seasons. He retired before his 39th birthday, and thanks to his rapid descent, has barely survived his first two years on the Hall of Fame ballot, with shares of 7.3% and 7.5%.

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