The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2024 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

The 2024 Hall of Fame election is in the books, with three newcomers — first-year candidates Adrián Beltré and Joe Mauer, and holdover Todd Helton — crossing the 75% threshold. It was a bit of a nailbiter, as Mauer cleared the bar by just four votes while Billy Wagner missed by five, but after just two candidates were elected by the writers over the past three cycles, it’s a welcome crowd of honorees, and it should make for a raucous weekend in Cooperstown when they and their families, friends and fans join those of Contemporary Baseball Era Committee honoree Jim Leyland for induction into the Hall on July 21. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2024 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Add a few more chairs to the dais. For the first time since 2020, BBWAA voters have elected multiple players to the Hall of Fame — three, in fact. Not only was Adrián Beltré elected as expected, with a hefty 95.1% of the vote, but fellow first-year candidate Joe Mauer and holdover Todd Helton cleared the 75% bar as well, making this the largest class since 2019 and the sixth of this millennium with more than two candidates elected. Though it appeared possible that Billy Wagner could join them, producing the fourth quartet of the past decade and the seventh class of more than three since the institution’s inception in 1936, he missed by just five votes.

While Beltré’s election was a foregone conclusion given that he received 216 out of 218 votes from among those published in Ryan Thibodaux’s indispensable Ballot Tracker prior to the announcement, the outcomes for Mauer (83.5% in the Tracker), Helton (82.6%) and Wagner (78.4%) all carried varying degrees of suspense up to the point when Hall president Josh Rawitch announced the results on Tuesday evening. Mauer’s high share of votes from among the “small Hall” ballots appeared to make his election a strong likelihood, but neither Helton nor Wagner had generated the volume of flipped votes — from no to yes — from among those public ballots that would have reduced their amount of uncertainty. In a pre-election forecast delivered Tuesday afternoon on MLB Now, Jason Sardell — whose probabilistic model has been the industry’s most accurate for the past several cycles — projected Mauer with a 99.9% chance of election, Helton with “about a 90% chance” (up from 71% Monday night), and Wagner with “about a one-in-four chance” (up from 18% Monday night). Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2024 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

If the BBWAA voters are only as generous as the FanGraphs readers who participated in this year’s Hall of Fame crowdsource ballot, just two candidates will get the nod when the Hall announces the election results on Tuesday, January 23 at 6 PM Eastern — both of them newcomers. In this year’s edition of our annual polling, which drew the highest turnout of the six years in which we’ve conducted this exercise, Adrián Beltré and Joe Mauer both topped 75%, while five other candidates received at least 64% but fell short. That group includes Todd Helton and Billy Wagner, both of whom have reasonable shots at getting their tickets to Cooperstown punched this week. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2024 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Content warning: This piece contains details about alleged domestic violence. The content may be difficult to read and emotionally upsetting.

During the Mets’ run of relevance in the mid-2000s, José Reyes looked like a superstar in the making. Through 2008, his age-25 season, the electrifying and charismatic shortstop had already led the National League in triples and steals three times apiece while collecting at least 190 hits for four straight seasons. Before that run, however, he had also demonstrated a propensity for leg injuries that cost him significant time. Those injuries eventually soured the increasingly cost-conscious Mets ownership on him despite his All-Star level play, and to be fair, Reyes was never really the same after departing New York via free agency following the 2011 season. By the time he returned five years later, he was not only a considerably diminished player but something of a pariah, having been suspended for violating the league’s new domestic violence policy and then released by the Rockies. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2024 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Though he carried himself with a decidedly modern swagger, Brandon Phillips styled himself as a throwback, so much so that he wound up at the center of a battle over old school/new school thinking within baseball’s culture war, pitted against teammate Joey Votto. If the flashy, free-swinging Phillips wasn’t everybody’s idea of the ideal second baseman of the post-Moneyball era, his combination of power and above-average baserunning and defense made him a valuable and entertaining player. In a 17-year major league career that took a while to get off the ground, Phillips won four Gold Gloves, made three All-Star teams and — along with Votto and Hall of Famer Scott Rolen — helped the Reds to three playoff appearances in a four-season span.

Brandon Emil Phillips was born on June 28, 1981 in Raleigh, North Carolina, into a very competitive family. His parents, James and Lue Phillips, were both athletes at Shaw University, a Raleigh-based historically Black university. James played football and baseball before going on to work as a sales representative for the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, while his mother played basketball. Jamil Phillips (b. 1975), the oldest of James and Lue’s four children, played collegiate baseball at Johnson County (Kansas) Community College and Southern University before being drafted by the Rangers as an outfielder in the 34th round in 1993. P.J. Phillips (b. 1986) was a second-round pick by the Angels out of Redan High School in 2005 and spent five seasons in the Angels’ organization, one in the Reds’ organization, and four in independent leagues before becoming an indy-league manager. Porsha Phillips (b. 1988) played basketball at Louisiana State and the University of Georgia before spending the 2011 season with the WNBA’s San Antonio Stars. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2024 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Given that he made just one All-Star team in his 13-year major league career (2006–13), and only once finished higher than 11th in the Cy Young Award voting, it’s tough to argue that James Shields was a star. The 6-foot-3, 210-pound righty was a reliable, high-quality workhorse for most of his career, totaling 200 or more innings 10 times and making 33 or more starts nine times, five of which included an ERA+ of 110 or higher. He earned — or rather borrowed from NBA legend James Worthy — the nickname “Big Game James” for strong performances in high-profile spots, and while it wasn’t always apt, he was renowned for his work ethic and competitiveness, viewed as a player who could mentor younger pitchers and help to transform the culture of a team. Shields helped both the 2008 Rays and 2014 Royals come out of nowhere to reach the World Series, and wound up at the center of a couple of pivotal trades. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2024 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

For a seven-season period from 2010–16, nobody in baseball hit more home runs than José Bautista. The Blue Jays slugger led the American League in dingers in back-to-back seasons, with 54 in 2010 and 43 a year later, and with those soaring totals began a streak of six straight All-Star selections. Remarkably that run didn’t begin until Bautista was in his age-29 season, after he spent most of the first six years of his major league career (2004–09) barely hanging on to a roster spot while passing through the hands of five different teams. He turned the page on that difficult stretch of his career thanks to a swing change, one that prefigured the launch angle revolution that would come into vogue a few year later. With it, “Joey Bats” helped drive the Blue Jays back to relevance, an effort capped by one of the most memorable postseason home runs of the era.

José Antonio Bautista was born on October 19, 1980 in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. His father, Americo Bautista, was an agricultural engineer who ran a poultry farm while his mother, Sandra Bautista, was an accountant and financial officer. Both had graduate degrees, and so theirs was a middle-class family that could afford to send José and his younger brother Luis to a private Catholic school. A good student, José excelled at math and science, and took extra classes to learn English beginning when he was eight years old. In the evenings, he played baseball with friends, and though undersized — he was nicknamed “The Rat” because he was small and had big ears — he excelled. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2024 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

It began with a torn labrum in my right shoulder, the result of a swimming pool mishap that ultimately sent me under the knife about six weeks before my 34th birthday and took whatever remaining gas there was out of my fastball. This is how I wound up in a shoulder sling in December 2003, first at the Winter Meetings in New Orleans and then with my family in Salt Lake City, watching the snow fall as everyone else went skiing.

I’d gone to New Orleans to meet several members of Baseball Prospectus, who had invited me to write something for them about the 2004 Hall of Fame ballot given the positive reception my expansive breakdowns of the previous two ballots had gotten at my own Futility Infielder blog. On January 6, 2004, I debuted at BP, introducing a metric cryptically called WPW (and soon WPWt, for WARP Weighted) that I defined as “an attempt to cobble together a simple, easy-referenced figure which considers both career and peak; it’s simply an average of the WARP3 and PEAK figures.” The astute reader will recognize this as the basic definition of JAWS, particularly on the occasion of my celebrating the 20th anniversary of the introduction of my Hall of Fame fitness metric. Welcome to the party! Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2024 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

At his listed size of 6-foot-4, 240 pounds, Matt Holliday was built like a football player. He could easily have gone in that direction, having excelled as a quarterback in high school and received scholarship offers from big-time college programs. Holliday came from a baseball-rich family, however, and his heart was on the diamond, so he chose to follow in the footsteps of his father and older brother, both of whom played professionally. He surpassed both not just by reaching the majors but by becoming a star, making seven All-Star teams in a 15-year career spent with the Rockies, A’s, Cardinals, and Yankees. He won a Coors Field-aided batting title as well as NLCS MVP honors while leading the Rockies to their only World Series berth in 2007. Winning seemed to follow Holliday, or perhaps it was the other way around; nine times in those 15 seasons his teams made the playoffs, with three trips to the World Series including a championship in 2011.

Matthew Thomas Holliday was born on January 15, 1980 in Stillwater, Oklahoma. His father, Tom Holliday, spent a year in the Pirates’ organization before pursuing coaching at the collegiate level. From 1978–96, he served as Oklahoma State University’s pitching coach and recruiting coordinator, then took over as head coach from ’97–2003. His oldest son, Josh Holliday (b. 1976), starred at Stillwater High School ahead of Matt; the two played on the same team in 1995. Josh was drafted by the Twins in the 14th round in 1995 but instead chose to go to Oklahoma State, where he played for his father and helped the team to the College World Series in ’96 and ’99. Drafted again by the Blue Jays in the ninth round in 1999, he spent two seasons playing professionally before going the college coaching route; he took over as Oklahoma State’s head coach in 2013, and still holds the job. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2024 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Joe Mauer isn’t the only number one pick on this year’s ballot. In 2000, one year before the Twins took Mauer with the first pick, the Marlins used the top pick to select Adrián González out of Eastlake High School in Chula Vista, California. He would turn out to be one of the more successful number one picks, making five All-Star teams, winning four Gold Gloves, and receiving MVP votes in eight different seasons in his 15-year major league career spent with the Rangers, Padres, Red Sox, Dodgers, and Mets. He never played a major league game for the Marlins, however, and was traded five times, including twice at the center of his era’s biggest blockbusters. Along with his two older brothers, he also continued the legacy of his father, David González Sr., by representing Mexico in international competition.

Adrián Sabin González was born on May 8, 1982 in San Diego, California, the youngest of three sons of David and Alba González. His father had been a star first baseman in his own right for the Mexican National Team, and when the family lived in San Diego, he commuted daily across the border to Tijuana, Mexico, where he owned a successful air conditioning business. All three of the couple’s sons were born in the United States and all three would play baseball. The oldest, David Jr., was a shortstop who made it as far as college baseball but injured his arm and never played professionally. The middle son, Edgar (b. 1978), had a 15-year professional career himself (2000-15), including two seasons as Adrián’s teammate in San Diego. Read the rest of this entry »