Cooperstown Notebook: The 2025 Progress Report, Part I

Last week, Kenley Jansen did his best to make life harder for his former team. Pitching for the Angels against the Dodgers in Anaheim, the 37-year-old closer secured the final three outs in a 7-4 victory on Monday, August 11. He gave up the go-ahead run in the ninth inning of a tied game on Tuesday by allowing a breathtaking solo homer to Shohei Ohtani, but the Angels came back, tying the score in the bottom of the ninth and winning in the 10th. On Wednesday, Jansen secured a sweep for the Angels by retiring Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman, and Will Smith in order. The loss knocked the Dodgers out of first place for the first time since August 27.

That the Dodgers have retaken the top spot doesn’t detract from what’s been a banner season for Jansen. Pitching for the sub-.500 Angels — his third team in four years since departing the Dodgers in free agency — he’s posted a 2.68 ERA, his lowest mark since 2021. While his 24.6% strikeout rate is a career low and his 4.01 FIP is just off a career high, he’s notched 23 saves in 24 attempts and is now fourth all-time at 470, eight saves shy of Lee Smith’s 478, which stood as the major league record from late 1997 until Trevor Hoffman surpassed it in late 2006. Smith and Hoffman are now in the Hall of Fame, and Jansen has solidified his position as the next reliever due for serious consideration for Cooperstown. Not only does he have a legitimate shot at becoming the third pitcher to reach 500 saves following Hoffman (who finished with 601) and Mariano Rivera (603), but he’s closing in on 2025 enshrinee Billy Wagner’s no. 6 ranking in Reliever JAWS (R-JAWS).

Admittedly, relief pitching is a strange place to start my annual Hall of Fame progress series, but for reasons that will soon become apparent, opening this rundown with the starting pitchers made less sense, and when I began writing this roundup, Jansen’s jump in JAWS surprised me as much as that of any player. At the end of 2023, Jansen was tied for 14th with Craig Kimbrel, but he climbed to 10th by the end of ’24 and is now seventh, closing in on Wagner. So we’re beginning here; in this batch, I’ll get to the starters and catchers as well. Unless otherwise indicated, all statistics are through Monday, August 18.

Relief Pitchers

With the induction of Wagner, Jansen now ranks as the best reliever outside the Hall by R-JAWS, which uses Baseball Reference’s version of WAR, Win Probability Added, and Situational Wins (WPA/LI):

Like Wagner, Hoffman, and even Rivera, Jansen doesn’t have a volume of innings on par with some of the older enshrined relievers, but when we factor in the high-leverage nature of his work, he gains ground. In fact, only Rivera, Hoffman and Gossage have higher WPAs among relievers than Jansen, and he’s closing in on the Goose. He’s reached this point with 915.1 innings, 12.1 more than Wagner, who was dinged by many Hall voters for having a smaller workload than any previously enshrined AL/NL pitcher. Jansen has additionally surpassed Wagner’s career strikeout rate as the highest at the 900-inning cutoff (34.9% to 33.2%), though that’s a product of this high strikeout era. Wagner has the edge if you adjust for league rates using our Plus Stats, index stats where 100 represents average. Wagner’s 190 K%+ is 90% above the league average for his career, well beyond Jansen’s 163, though neither can hold a candle to Dazzy Vance’s 225.

Might as well bring these guys into the discussion:

Both Chapman (39.9% strikeout rate, 187 K%+) and Kimbrel (38.8% strikeout rate, 184 K%+) have higher actual and adjusted strikeout rates than Jansen, but each has thrown at least 100 fewer innings than the converted catcher from Curaçao, and lately their fates have diverged. The 37-year-old Chapman, an eight-time All-Star, has vaulted from 23rd to 15th in R-JAWS this season while posting a microscopic 1.15 ERA for the Red Sox; his 22 saves have run his career total to 357, 14th all-time. The 37-year-old Kimbrel, a nine-time All-Star whom the Orioles released in late September of last season, has made just one appearance this year, a cameo for the Braves, with whom he spent the first five seasons of his major league career (2010–14). He’s slipped from 17th to 18th in R-JAWS, and is stuck at 440 saves, fifth all-time; considering he reached 400 just 16 days after Jansen in May 2023, you can see he’s quickly lost a fair bit of ground. Currently closing for the Rangers’ Triple-A Round Rock affiliate, Kimbrel’s walking too many hitters for his own good and may not get another save chance in the majors.

When the time comes, R-JAWS, strikeout rates, and save totals won’t be the only factors voters consider. Credentials such as All-Star appearances (Jansen has four, well behind Kimbrel’s nine and Chapman’s eight), Reliever of the Year awards (two apiece for Kimbrel and Jansen, one for Chapman), and league leads in saves (four for Kimbrel, two for Jansen, none for Chapman) will be considered, as will their postseason performances. While each of these closers has won a World Series ring (two for Chapman), none closed out a championship, for various reasons. Jansen (2.20 ERA, 20 postseason saves) and Chapman (2.37 ERA, 10 saves) both have a leg up on Kimbrel (4.50 ERA, 10 saves) in October. Chapman, with his 2016 suspension for violating the league’s domestic violence policy, also has a notable mark against him, which may hurt him with some voters.

Moving on, while Robertson is just above Kimbrel in the R-JAWS rankings, his comparative lack of saves (177 for his career) suggests he won’t be much of a factor when it comes to Hall voting. We’re a ways away from any other active relievers entering the discussion; 31-year-old Josh Hader (15.9 R-JAWS) ranks 33rd all-time, but could crack the top 25 next year if he’s healthy… but right now he’s got bigger concerns.

Starting Pitchers

In the interest of space, I’m batching Justin Verlander, Clayton Kershaw, and Max Scherzer together and taking the express route. All three of these guys are future first-ballot Hall of Famers who have already won three Cy Youngs, at least one World Series ring, and at least 200 games (263 for Verlander, 219 for each of the others). As of July 2, when Kershaw reached the milestone, all three have over 3,000 strikeouts, with Verlander now ninth all-time (3,511) and Scherzer 11th (3,459).

These guys could each walk away today and be assured of their plaques. As it is, all three have spent time on the injured list this year, though they’re back and still battling. The 42-year-old Verlander is 1-9 for the Giants but has a semi-respectable 4.23 ERA in 106.1 innings. The 41-year-old Scherzer is 3-2 with 3.83 ERA in 54 innings for the Blue Jays, while the 37-year-old Kershaw is 7-2 with a 3.01 ERA in 77.2 innings; he’s allowed just two runs over his last three starts totaling 18 innings, the last of which helped the Dodgers halt a four-game losing streak and reclaim a share of first place in the NL West. Kershaw’s performance has been strong enough that he’s projected to surpass Verlander for 19th in S-JAWS by the end of the season; Scherzer is 27th.

If you’re wondering about Zack Greinke, who last pitched in 2023, I covered him in last year’s roundup. Though he walked away just 21 strikeouts short of 3,000, it appears as though we need them more than he does. With 225 wins and an S-JAWS of 62.9 (25th all-time), he’s in fine shape for the Hall and shouldn’t have too much trouble getting elected.

Chris Sale hasn’t pitched for the Braves since June 18, when he fractured his rib cage trying to make an acrobatic play, though the 36-year-old southpaw is finally nearing a return. While his numbers this season (5-4, 2.52 ERA, 114 K, 2.5 WAR) haven’t done a lot to pad his career totals, he’s made a ton of progress since last year’s update by checking off several boxes. Most notably, he finally took home a Cy Young award after finishing among the top five six times. He won the Pitching Triple Crown on the strength of his 18-3 record, 2.38 ERA, and 225 strikeouts, and led the NL with 6.2 WAR. That’s a lot of new black ink, including his third strikeout title. With 143 wins as he nears the end of his age-36 season, he’s no real threat to get to 200, but he does have 2,528 strikeouts, and a 58% chance of reaching 3,000 according to ZiPS. He’s packed a lot into his 2,047.2 innings.

At this juncture last year, Sale’s S-JAWS was 44.6. He’s now up to 48.8, which puts him within hailing distance of 2025 inductee CC Sabathia (62.3/39.4/50.8), and he’s got the higher peak score of the two southpaws. Aside from 2027 candidate Cole Hamels (59.0/37.4/48.2) and the three guys above, he’s the only upcoming BBWAA candidate within 10 points of the standard. When we think about what the cases of future starting pitching candidates will look like, with their comparative lack of volume (particularly in terms of wins and innings), this might be as good as it gets.

Jacob deGrom is back from his second Tommy John surgery, and pitching well, going 10-4 with a 2.76 ERA, 148 strikeouts, and 2.9 WAR in 140 innings. He’s also 37, skipping a turn due to shoulder fatigue, and has over 500 fewer innings (1,507), 49 fewer wins (94) and less black ink than Sale. Even with a second Cy Young, his Hall of Fame Monitor score — a metric devised by Bill James that dishes out credit for the achievements that traditionally have swayed voters — is just 54 to Sale’s 101. As you’d expect from a pitcher whose career lacks volume due to a late start and so many injuries, deGrom’s peak score has some low-hanging fruit; this year projects to be his sixth-best (3.8 WAR), and even with it, he also has seasons of 4.6 WAR and 3.4 WAR within that seven-year score, so he could gain traction if he can remain on the field. If he’s to convince voters that he’s some kind of Koufaxian exception, we’re going to need to see the performance.

It’s a long way down from Sale (64th in S-JAWS) and deGrom (100th) to Cole (152nd) and Wheeler (161st), with Nola (210th) and Snell (409th) even further away; I’ve bypassed Sonny Gray (248th), Yu Darvish (260th), Jose Quintana (282nd), Max Fried (336th), and Logan Webb (507th) because they haven’t even laid the kind of foundations that this quartet has. You’re better off putting money on Paul Skenes, who’s totaled 11.7 WAR in two seasons and figures to add this year’s Cy Young to last year’s Rookie of the Year award.

Following five previous top-five finishes, Cole won the AL Cy Young in 2023 while claiming his second ERA crown and first WAR lead. Alas, his case has stalled since then, as he was limited to 17 starts last year due to a nerve issue and edema in his elbow, and is missing all of this season due to Tommy John surgery. Still, he’s about 17 months younger than Sale (Cole turns 35 on September 8), is ahead of him in wins (153), and has a 42% shot of reaching 3,000 strikeouts according to ZiPS (he has 2,544). He’s got a pair of 2.6-WAR seasons weighing down his peak score, so he could climb the rankings quickly with even a modest return to form.

After placing second in the NL Cy Young voting for the second time last year, Wheeler was in the midst of another fine season — his third as an All-Star — when doctors discovered a blood clot near his right shoulder. Fortunately it was caught early, but at the very least his season is on the line. A late bloomer who lost 2 1/2 seasons to Tommy John surgery, flexor tendon repair, and a stress reaction in his right arm, he had just 21 wins, 352 strikeouts, and 2.0 WAR through his age-27 season, but he’s now up to 113 wins and 1,820 strikeouts in 1,728.1 innings.

More importantly, Wheeler’s 33.2 WAR (including offense) from 2018–24 led the majors (Cole’s 31.4 is second). Even if he doesn’t throw another pitch this season, he’s got a bigger lead over Cole and company for ’19-25 (34.6 to 26.4), and a massive head start on the field for the ’20–26 stretch (30.7 to Fried’s 22.2). Such rolling seven-year WAR leads might become useful tools in identifying Hallworthy starters as workloads decrease. As old friend Mike Petriello has pointed out, that achievement tends to be the province of future Hall of Famers. In the Wild Card era, the only other hurlers with rolling seven-year leads are Pedro Martinez, Randy Johnson, Curt Schilling, Johan Santana, Roy Halladay, Verlander, Kershaw, and Scherzer. Counting those last three as slam dunks, 80% of post-integration starters who’ve accomplished the feat at least once are or will be enshrined.

Nola put his Hall of Fame case on the map thanks to his 9.2-WAR 2018 season, but he’s added just one additional campaign worth more than 4.0 WAR (5.7 in 2022), and he’s been injured and ineffective this year, with an ERA that ballooned to 6.92 thanks to a drubbing by the Nationals this past Sunday. He’s still just 32, and has 105 wins and 1,835 strikeouts in 1,673.1 innings, so he’s got some runway if he can recover his front-of-rotation form. Not that you should bank on it.

I mention Snell only because he’s a two-time Cy Young winner; among such pitchers, his 23.0 S-JAWS is much closer to Tim Lincecum (21.7) than to Corey Kluber (34.4), to say nothing of Santana (48.3) or Bret Saberhagen (50.6). He’s just 32 but only has 1,121.2 innings under his belt, including just 129 since his second Cy/ERA crown/WAR lead 2023 season. ZiPS estimates he has a 27% chance of reaching 3,000 strikeouts, which ain’t nothin’, but those odds are lower than those of Skenes (34%) and Tarik Skubal (39%), the latter of whom may bank his second Cy/ERA crown/WAR lead season in as many years and is already gaining on Snell, with an S-JAWS of 17.0 and as many seasons worth more than 2.2 WAR as Snell has.

Catchers

After playing just 99 games last year due to a midseason meniscectomy on his right knee, J.T. Realmuto has been healthy and available in 2025, but at 34 years old, he’s clearly removed from his heyday. He’s hitting .276/.329/.401 (102 wRC+), marking his third straight season just above league average with the stick, and if he finishes as projected, his 2.8 WAR will be his lowest full-season mark since 2016.

That’s the Baseball Reference version of WAR, which doesn’t incorporate pitch framing. I’ve argued — and will continue to argue until the cows come home — that we can’t properly evaluate catchers from the past couple of decades without such data, particularly with framing maestros Buster Posey and Yadier Molina hitting the BBWAA ballot in 2027 and ’28. I still feel that way despite the travesty of two other fine framers, Russell Martin and Brian McCann, going one-and-done on the 2025 ballot with less than 5% of the vote. Including their offense, defense, and baserunning, their career fWARs, which do include pitch framing, are right in line with the framing-inclusive values of the recently elected Ivan Rodriguez and Joe Mauer (some of which was calculated using Baseball Prospectus’ Retroframing methodology) as well as the aforementioned upcoming duo.

For all of that, Realmuto’s current framing-inclusive line isn’t far off from his “traditional” one: 36.6 career fWAR, 30.8 peak fWAR, 33.7 fJAWS. Early in his career, he was well below average as a pitch framer (-31.5 runs by FanGraphs’ methodology in 2015–16), but after improving to the point of being 8.6 runs above average as recently as 2021, he’s back to 23.3 runs below average over the last three seasons, including -3.7 this year. With just three All-Star selections and two Gold Gloves (no small task in a league with Molina), he’ll have to hit his way to Cooperstown, and I’m not so optimistic he can.

Rightly beloved by Royals fans given that he was the MVP of the 2015 World Series and a foundational piece of the team’s back-to-back pennants, Salvador Perez has a résumé topped by nine All-Star selections and five Gold Gloves. His 48-homer 2021 season started some arguments; he holds the record for most homers in a season by a player who caught at least 50% of his games, but 15 of those homers came during his 40 games as a DH. Both that mark and the actual “record for home runs by a catcher” (42 by Javy Lopez in 2003) might soon fall into the hands of Cal Raleigh, who has 38 homers as a catcher and 47 overall this year.

Anyway, the 35-year-old Perez is showing his age, hitting .244/.288/.449 (97 wRC+) with 0.1 WAR while catching 69 times, playing 28 games at first base, and 27 at DH. He’s nowhere close to the catching standard via traditional JAWS, but his real problem is that he’s got the second-lowest total of framing runs (-120.1) among all catchers since 2008, which is to say that he’s nearly 270 runs worse than Molina in that span alone, though still 45 runs ahead of poor Ryan Doumit. That data can’t simply be waved away now that we have it; this isn’t Derek Jeter’s terrible defense offset by 3,465 hits and five championships. Perez’s career fJAWS line, with that data incorporated into his valuation, is just 19.1 career fWAR, 16.0 peak fWAR, and 17.6 fJAWS, miles behind the framing-inclusive marks of Posey (57.9/47.7/52.8), Molina (59.3/37.6/48.6), and Mauer (57.8/42.7/50.3), not to mention Martin (59.1/40.8/49.9) and McCann (50.6/37.2/43.9).

Among other catchers, Raleigh is at already at 7.0 fWAR this year and — elevated by 39.5 career framing runs — has 20.9 career fWAR and counting as he hits the stretch run of his age-28 season. That’s well behind Mauer (36.6 fWAR) and Posey (36.2 fWAR) at the same stage, but it’s not nothing; between his rest-of-season projection (1.4 WAR) and the five-year ZiPS (24.1) from last month’s Trade Value Series (where he ranked ninth), the Big Dumper could soon emerge as the era’s most viable catching candidate for Cooperstown. Meanwhile, 30-year-old Will Smith is in the midst of a career year that has him vying for the batting average and on-base leads in the NL (.302/.408/.508) while hitting for a 157 wRC+ with 3.9 WAR thus far. He’s in just his seventh season, but the first two of those were shortened by a midseason call-up and then the pandemic. While he’s totaled 22.1 fWAR, he’s 16 runs in the red framing-wise over the past two seasons, including -6.5 this year. He’ll need to clean that up in order to stand out as a viable candidate.

I’ll be back next week with the next installment.