On Monday, the Baseball Writers Association of America released its 2020 Hall of Fame ballot, with 14 holdovers, four of whom received at least 50% last year, joined by a group of 18 newcomers headlined by Derek Jeter. Lately, the writers have been working through a massive backlog of candidates, producing an unprecedented flood of 20 honorees in the past six cycles, including four apiece in each of the past two years. The flood is about to begin receding, however. If not for Jeter, this would rate as the weakest ballot for first-time candidates since 2012, when Bernie Williams was the only first-year candidate who even broke 5%. This year’s two top returnees, Curt Schilling (60.9%) and Larry Walker (54.6%), the latter in his final year of eligibility, are hardly slam dunks for immediate election.

Over the next six weeks, I’ll profile all 32 candidates, either at length or more in brief, examining their cases in light of my Jaffe WAR Score (JAWS) system, which I’ll be using to break down Hall of Fame ballots in an annual tradition that began at Baseball Prospectus (2004-12), then moved to SI.com (2013-18), which gave me an opportunity to go into greater depth on each candidate; last year, I brought the series to FanGraphs. The candidate profiles will begin later this week, after I complete my series covering the Modern Baseball Era Committee ballot. Today I’ll offer a quick look at the biggest questions attached to this year’s election cycle.

First, a review of the basics. To be eligible for election to the Hall of Fame via the BBWAA ballot, a candidate must have played in the majors for parts of 10 years (one game is sufficient to be counted as a year in this context), been out of the majors for five years (the minors or foreign leagues don’t count), and then been nominated by two members of the BBWAA’s six-member screening committee, which is usually a formality but can create some head scratching omissions down the ballot. Since the balloting is titled with respect to induction year, not the year of release, the current slate of players will have last appeared in the majors in 2014. Each new candidate has 10 years of eligibility, a reduction from the 15-year period that was in effect from 1936-2014. The last candidate grandfathered into the full run was Lee Smith, whose eligibility expired in 2017; six current candidates (Walker, Schilling, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Jeff Kent, and Sammy Sosa) had their tenures unilaterally reduced mid-candidacy by the Hall.

To be elected, candidates must receive at least 75% of the ballots cast, and in this case, they don’t round up; 74.9% won’t cut it. Likewise, candidates who don’t receive at least 5% fall off the ballot and can then only be considered for election by the Today’s Game Committee, an entirely separate process — but not until what would have been their 10-year run of eligibility expires. Read the rest of this entry »

This post is part of a series concerning the 2020 Modern Baseball Era Committee ballot, covering executives and long-retired players whose candidacies will be voted upon at the Winter Meetings in San Diego on December 8. For an introduction to JAWS, see here. Several profiles in this series are adapted from work previously published at SI.com, Baseball Prospectus, and Futility Infielder. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

A five-tool player whose power, ability to hit for average, and strong, accurate throwing arm all stood out – particularly in the Pirates’ seemingly endless and always eye-catching assortment of black-and-yellow uniform combinations — Dave Parker was once considered the game’s best all-around player. In his first five full seasons (1975-79), he amassed a World Series ring, 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, a great nickname (“The Cobra”), and a high regard for himself. “Take Willie Mays and Roberto Clemente and match their first five years up against mine, and they don’t compare with me,” he told Roy Blount in a 1979 Sports Illustrated cover story.

Parker, who had debuted with the Pirates just seven months after Clemente’s death and assumed full-time duty as the team’s right fielder a season and a half later, once appeared to be on course to join the Puerto Rican legend in Cooperstown. Unfortunately, cocaine, poor conditioning, and injuries threw him off course, and while he recovered well enough to make three All-Star teams, play a supporting role on another World Series winner, accrue hefty career totals and play past the age of 40, his game lost multiple dimensions as he aged. Hall of Fame voters greeted his case with a yawn; he debuted with just 17.5% on the 1997 ballot, peaked at 24.5% the next year, and while he remained eligible for the full 15 seasons, only one other time did he top 20%. He made appearances on both the 2014 Expansion Era ballot as well as the ’18 Modern Baseball one, but even after going public with his diagnosis of Parkinson’s Disease, he didn’t come close to election. Aside from the precedent set by Harold Baines‘ election last year — a small committee can throw us a wild card now and then — there’s little reason to believe his fate will be different this time. Read the rest of this entry »

This post is part of a series concerning the 2020 Modern Baseball Era Committee ballot, covering executives and long-retired players whose candidacies will be voted upon at the Winter Meetings in San Diego on December 8. For an introduction to JAWS, see here. Several profiles in this series are adapted from work previously published at SI.com, Baseball Prospectus, and Futility Infielder. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

In a span of just over 10 years, Thurman Munson hit just about every high note a ballplayer could. A first-round draft pick in 1968, he made his major league debut the following summer, and won AL Rookie of the Year honors in 1970. He made his first of seven All-Star teams in 1971, won the first of three Gold Gloves in ’74, and claimed AL MVP honors in ’76 while helping the Yankees to their first pennant in 12 years. They lost that year’s World Series to the Reds, but won back-to-back championships over the Dodgers in 1977 and ’78. Through it all, Munson stood out as an exceptional two-way player, a natural leader and a fiery competitor. He was tough and durable, with a gruff disposition towards the media and certain teammates, but a soft underbelly. As Gabe Paul, the Yankees’ general manager from 1973-77, said of him, “Thurman Munson is a nice guy who doesn’t want anybody to know it.”

Less than a year after the Yankees won the 1978 World Series, it was over — not just Munson’s stellar career but his life. Munson had taken up flying in the spring of 1978, earning his pilot’s license and flying home to his wife and three children in Canton, Ohio on his off days. On August 2, 1979, while practicing takeoffs and landings at the the Canton-Akron airport, Munson crashed his Cessna Citation twin engine jet — which he had purchased less than a month prior — 870 feet short of the runway after approaching at too steep an angle. His two passengers, one of them a flight instructor, escaped, but Munson, who was wearing his safety belt but not his shoulder harness, was paralyzed from the neck down. The wreckage was engulfed in flames before he could be rescued. He was less than two months past his 32nd birthday.

Unlike Roberto Clemente in 1973 and Roy Halladay in 2019, Munson was not posthumously elected to the Hall of Fame at the first opportunity. In fact, he never came close, debuting on the 1981 ballot (via a rule that waived the otherwise-mandatory five-year waiting period, adopted in the wake of Clemente’s death) with 15.5% of the vote and lingering for the full 15 years without again reaching 10%. His candidacy was further ignored when he was on the ballots of the expanded Veterans Committee in 2003, ’05, and ’07, but like Lou Whitaker and Dwight Evans, he’s finally getting his chance this year via the smaller committee format. His career is ripe for reevaluation. While his counting stats are understandably short given his premature death, his WAR totals — specifically his number eight ranking in seven-year peak and his number 12 ranking in JAWS — suggest that he would be a good fit for Cooperstown, particularly at an underrepresented position. Read the rest of this entry »

This post is part of a series concerning the 2020 Modern Baseball Era Committee ballot, covering executives and long-retired players whose candidacies will be voted upon at the Winter Meetings in San Diego on December 8. It is adapted from a longer version included in The Cooperstown Casebook, published in 2017 by Thomas Dunne Books. For an introduction to JAWS, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Ted Simmons was one of baseball’s true iconoclasts. He denounced the Vietnam War, wore his hair long, nearly became a test case for the Reserve Clause, and was as conversant in 18th century fireplace utensils (yes, really) as he was the tools of ignorance and the curveballs of opposing pitchers. Oh, and he could switch-hit well enough to rank among the position’s best offensively. With eight All-Star appearances, he was hardly unheralded, but Simmons nonetheless tended to get lost among the bounty of great catchers from the 1970s. Seven of the top 16 in the JAWS rankings hail from that decade, including three of the top four, namely Johnny Bench, Gary Carter, and Carlton Fisk. Simmons wasn’t quite their equal, but he ranks 10th, just ahead of Modern Baseball ballot-mate Thurman Munson (12th), with Gene Tenace (13th) and Bill Freehan (16th) not far behind.

Such a concentration of top-tier players at a single position in a given time period is hardly unprecedented, even among those already enshrined. Using the Hall’s own definition of activity — at least one game played in a given season — five enshrined catchers were active every year from 1929-37 except ’30. Every other position except third base (which like catcher, has just 15 enshrinees, the lowest at any position besides relievers) has stretches with six or seven active players, with the seven left fielders from 1975-76 the largest of the recent concentrations. Read the rest of this entry »

This post is part of a series concerning the 2020 Modern Baseball Era Committee ballot, covering executives and long-retired players whose candidacies will be voted upon at the Winter Meetings in San Diego on December 8. It is adapted from a longer version included in The Cooperstown Casebook, published in 2017 by Thomas Dunne Books. For an introduction to JAWS, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Lou Whitaker made baseball look easy. No less a writer than Roger Angell marveled over his “ball-bearing smoothness afield and remarkable hand-speed at bat.” But to some, the ease with which the game came to the Tigers’ longtime second baseman suggested that he lacked effort, hard work, or passion for the game, and it didn’t help that Whitaker wasn’t one for self-promotion. He let his performance do the talking, and for the better part of his 19 seasons in the majors, that performance spoke volumes. A top-of-the-lineup spark plug and an outstanding defender, he paired with Alan Trammell to form the longest-running double-play combination in history. He earned All-Star honors five times and won three Gold Gloves along the way, solid totals that nonetheless undersell his contributions.

Whitaker retired one year before Trammell did, and thus reached the BBWAA Hall of Fame ballot a year earlier. Shockingly, a player hailed as a potential Hall of Famer during his career received just 2.9% in 2001, which ruled him out from further consideration by the writers and prevented his inclusion on Veterans Committee or Expansion Era Committee ballots during the remaining 14 years that he could have been on the writers’ ballot. Trammell wasn’t elected by the BBWAA either, but after spending 15 years on the ballot, he and longtime Tigers teammate Jack Morris were tabbed by the Modern Baseball Era Committee in 2018, the first living ex-players elected to the Hall by any small-committee process since 2001. Their eligibility raised Whitaker’s profile, and this year, for the first time, he’s on a committee ballot as well. That doesn’t guarantee his election, but based upon the weight of his accomplishments, the honor is long overdue.

Read the rest of this entry »

This post is part of a series concerning the 2020 Modern Baseball Era Committee ballot, covering executives and long-retired players whose candidacies will be voted upon at the Winter Meetings in San Diego on December 8. For an introduction to JAWS, see here. Several profiles in this series are adapted from work previously published at SI.com, Baseball Prospectus, and Futility Infielder. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Tommy John spent 26 seasons pitching in the majors from 1963-74 and then 1976-89, more than any player besides Nolan Ryan, but his level of fame stems as much from the year that cleaves that span as it does from his work on the mound. As the recipient of the most famous sports medicine procedure of all time, the elbow ligament replacement surgery performed by Dr. Frank Jobe in late 1974 that now bears his name, John endured an arduous year-long rehab process before returning to pitch as well as ever, a recovery that gave hope to generations of injured pitchers whose careers might otherwise have ended. Tommy John surgery has somewhat obscured the pitcher’s on-field accomplishments, however.

A sinkerballer who relied upon his command and control to limit hard contact, John didn’t overpower hitters; the epitome of the “crafty lefty,” he was so good at his craft that he arrived on the major league scene at age 20 and made his final appearance three days after his 46th birthday. He made three All-Star teams and was a key starter on five clubs that reached the postseason and three that won pennants, though he wound up on the losing end of the World Series each time.

Born in 1943 in Terre Haute, Indiana, John excelled in basketball as well as baseball in high school, so much so that the rangy, 6-foot-3 teenager was recruited by legendary Kentucky coach Adolph Rupp, and had over 50 basketball scholarship offers but just one for baseball (few colleges gave those out in those days). Reliant on a curveball learned from former Phillies minor leaguer Arley Andrews, a friend of his father, he pitched to a 28-2 record in high school despite his lack of top-notch fastball, signing with the Indians out of high school in 1961, four years before the introduction of the amateur draft. Read the rest of this entry »

This post is part of a series concerning the 2020 Modern Baseball Era Committee ballot, covering executives and long-retired players whose candidacies will be voted upon at the Winter Meetings in San Diego on December 8. For an introduction to JAWS, see here. Several profiles in this series are adapted from work previously published at SI.com, Baseball Prospectus, and Futility Infielder. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Don Mattingly

See here for a more in-depth profile dating to Mattingly’s time on the BBWAA ballot.

Don Mattingly was the golden child of the Great Yankees Dark Age. He debuted in September 1982, the year after the team finished a stretch of four World Series appearances in six seasons, and retired in 1995, having finally reached the postseason but nonetheless departing a year too early for their run of six pennants and four titles in eight years. A lefty-swinging first baseman with a sweet stroke, “Donnie Baseball” was both an outstanding hitter and a slick fielder at his peak. He made six straight All-Star teams from 1984-89, and won a batting title, an MVP award, and nine Gold Gloves. Alas, a back injury sapped his power, not only shortening his peak but also bringing his career to a premature end at age 34.

Born in 1961 in Evansville, Indiana, Mattingly was not only naturally talented when it came to baseball, but was also ambidextrous. In Little League, he switch-pitched occasionally, throwing three innings righty and three more lefty. By the time of the 1979 draft, he had committed to attend Indiana State University on a scholarship, but the Yankees chose him in the 19th round, and he surprised his family by deciding to sign for a $23,000 bonus. Early in his minor league tenure, his lack of speed and power concerned the organization to the point that they considered moving him to second base because of his ability to throw right-handed. Even so, Mattingly clearly demonstrated he could hit, topping .300 at every stop in the minors with good plate discipline and outstanding contact skills, even if he never exceeded 10 homers. Read the rest of this entry »

This post is part of a series concerning the 2020 Modern Baseball Era Committee ballot, covering executives and long-retired players whose candidacies will be voted upon at the Winter Meetings in San Diego on December 8. For an introduction to JAWS, see here. Several profiles in this series are adapted from work previously published at SI.com, Baseball Prospectus, and Futility Infielder. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

From his matinee-idol good looks as he filled out his red, white, and Dodger blue uniform to the round-numbered triple-crown stats on the back of his baseball card, Steve Garvey looked like a Hall of Famer in the making for much of his 19-year playing career (1969-87). A remarkably consistent and durable player, he had a clockwork ability to rap out 200 hits, bat .300 with 20 homers, and drive in 100 runs, all while maintaining perfectly-coiffed hair and never missing a game. He holds the NL record for consecutive games played (1,207 from September 3, 1975, to July 29, 1983), a streak that’s still the majors’ fourth-longest after those of Cal Ripken Jr., Lou Gehrig, and Everett Scott. He was the most heralded member of the Dodgers’ legendary Longest-Running Infield alongside second baseman Davey Lopes, shortstop Bill Russell, and third baseman Ron Cey, earning All-Star honors in each of the eight full seasons (1974-81) the unit was together while helping the team to four pennants and a championship. After moving on from Los Angeles, Garvey made two more All-Star teams while helping the Padres to their first pennant.

As the most popular player on my favorite childhood team, and the one who seemed to shine most brightly on the biggest stages, Garvey felt larger than life. An Adidas poster of him standing upon what was supposed to be the moon, captioned, “The harder you hit it, the further it goes,” hung on the wall of my younger brother’s bedroom. Yet when I began reading Bill James in the early 1980s, I was struck by the extent to which the new numbers took Garvey down a peg, though to be fair, he’d entered his mid-30s already beginning his decline, postseason heroics aside. Likewise, when I began writing about the Hall of Fame in early 2002, Garvey’s lack of traction on the ballot in his nine previous tries stood out. While I don’t think particularly highly of his chances or his case, I felt it was worth expanding beyond the two or three paragraphs I’ve devoted to him countless times over the years (he was on the writers’ ballot through 2007, and this is his fourth committee appearance).

Born in Tampa, Florida in 1948, Garvey connected with the Dodgers when he was just seven years old. In 1956, his father Joe, a Greyhound bus driver, was assigned to drive charter buses for the defending world champions at their Vero Beach spring training base, and arranged for his son to serve as a bat boy for the team, a position he occupied for the next six springs. Garvey idolized first baseman Gil Hodges and dreamed of playing for Los Angeles. Though small for a high school athlete (5-foot-7, 165 pounds; he would grow to 5-foot-10, 192 pounds), he excelled at baseball and football. Bypassing a chance to join the Twins after being drafted in the third round in 1966, he drew a scholarship to Michigan State University. Read the rest of this entry »

“What about Whitaker?” That question, which has been on my mind for nearly two decades, came to the fore two years ago when longtime Tigers teammates Jack Morris and Alan Trammell, both of whom spent 15 often contentious and sometimes agonizing years on the BBWAA’s Hall of Fame ballot, were finally elected to the Hall by the Modern Baseball Era Committee. With five All-Star selections, three Gold Gloves, and a central role on the Tigers’ 1984 championship squad, Lou Whitaker had accumulated similarly strong credentials to Trammell while forming the other half of the longest-running double play combo in major league history, one that did a fair bit to prop up Morris’ wobbly candidacy. Yet Whitaker, who ranks 13th in JAWS among second basemen, did not get his 15 years on the writers’ ballot because in his 2001 debut — the last Hall of Fame election cycle that I did not cover, but a pivotal one in many ways — he failed to receive at least 5% of the vote from the BBWAA and thus fell off the ballot. Like so many other candidates who have suffered such a fate, he had never received a second look from a small-committee process. Until now.

Whitaker is one of 10 candidates on the 2020 Modern Baseball Era Committee ballot, which was announced on Monday and which covers players and other figures who made their greatest contributions to the game during the 1970-87 timeframe. He’s not the only one emerging from limbo, either. This marks the first small-committee appearance for longtime Red Sox right fielder Dwight Evans, an eight-time Gold Glove winner who lasted just three cycles on the ballot (1997-99) and peaked at 10.4%, and for late Yankees catcher Thurman Munson, a former MVP who lasted 15 years on the ballot (1981-95) but only in his debut year broke double digits. Munson was virtually ignored on the 2003, ’05, and ’07 ballots voted upon by an expanded Veterans Committee consisting of all living Hall of Famers (and assorted stragglers), receiving just 12 votes out of a possible 243 across those three cycles.

The other seven candidates — former Major League Baseball Players Association executive director Marvin Miller, and ex-players Steve Garvey, Tommy John, Don Mattingly, Dale Murphy, Dave Parker, and Ted Simmons — have each been considered before, some of them multiple times via the 2018 Modern Baseball ballot and its predecessors, the ’11 and ’14 Expansion Era Committee ballots. Indeed, while this slate includes candidates long overdue for a bronze plaque in Cooperstown, a good chunk of ballot space is occupied by candidates who have repeatedly failed to gain much traction with the voters and who fare poorly via JAWS. The extent to which they have crowded out better candidates has been frustrating. Read the rest of this entry »

Wearing his emotions on his sleeve start to finish — from the moment that he walked through the bullpen door to chants of “Let’s go, Félix!” to his own tearful salute to the fans upon being pulled with one out in the sixth inning — on Thursday night at T-Mobile Park in Seattle, Félix Hernández made the 418th and likely final start of his 15-year run with the Mariners. He tipped his cap to the King’s Court upon entering, fell behind early while struggling with his command and control, strutted a bit after a strikeout, exulted in Dylan Moore’s spectacular, run-saving catch to end the fifth inning, competed like hell with a tenacity that far outstripped his stuff, and then bowed to the frenzied crowd of 20,921 before exiting the field. Some 2,800 miles way in Brooklyn, watching the outing on my office TV as I pecked out an article full of objective measures regarding his place in history, I struggled to keep it together. I can only imagine how Mariners fans felt.

It’s an understatement to say that the parting of Hernández — whose seven-year, $175 million contract has run its course — and the rebuilding Mariners is a bittersweet moment for the pitcher, the team, and their long-suffering fans, or fans of great baseball players in general. There’s certainly plenty of reason to ponder the peaks of his run and recall the good times, the hopes he represented as a teenaged arrival on a team whose championship aspirations had been so often thwarted. 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, a perfect game, and 2,524 strikeouts. He arrived as “King Félix,” and grew into the moniker. From 2009-14, he was the best pitcher in the American League by ERA, FIP, strikeouts, and WAR.

For as cool as all of that was, the reality is that this sendoff is as much about Hernández’s decline as his stardom, and the ache and sorrow over close calls and missed opportunities that have deprived him of a chance to test his mettle in the postseason. He’s no Ernie Banks, hanging around into his 40s in a reduced role at a new position. This parting is all happening more than six months before the pitcher’s 34th birthday, an age when he should still be a productive major leaguer if not necessarily one at the pinnacle of his career. Perhaps he still can be, but his recent performance doesn’t suggest it, not with a season ERA that has almost literally tripled since 2014, when he netted his second ERA title and finished as the runner-up in the AL Cy Young voting for a second time. For the first 12 years of his career, he was clearly on a Cooperstown-bound path, but there’s little to indicate he can continue traveling that road.

The rare 21st century pitcher to debut before his 20th birthday — Dylan Bundy, Elvis Luciano, and Julio Urías are the others — Hernández got an early start towards stardom. While pitchers who debut at that tender age have a leg up when it comes to reaching the Hall of Fame just as their position-playing counterparts do, the effect is not as great. I noted in connection with Ronald Acuña Jr.’s debut last year that 25 of the 244 players who had at least one plate appearance in their age-19 seasons (10.2%) wound up in Cooperstown, about 8.7 times the overall rate (1.18%). For pitchers active in their age-19 seasons, the total is 17 (not counting Babe Ruth, who converted to position playing) out of 296 (5.7%), about 4.9 times the overall rate. It’s a reasonable assumption that the difference between the two rates owes a fair bit to some combination of injury rates and workloads as they relate to young pitchers, but that’s a question for another day. Read the rest of this entry »