In Defense of the Hall of Very Good

Like most of you, I’ve spent all winter with one eye on the Hall of Fame ballot tracker run by Ryan Thibodaux, Anthony Calamis, and Adam Dore.

As an aside: I love the tracker, partly because it’s in the best traditions of citizen journalism/archivism, and has been made essential within its niche by the enthusiasm and thoroughness of the people who run it. It reminds me of The Himalayan Database, which is considered the definitive list of all the climbers who have summited the highest mountains in the world. The Database was founded and run not by a sponsor or NGO, but by a single journalist, Elizabeth Hawley, who tracked, verified, and published ascents from the 1960s until her death in 2018. In this age of corporatization, conglomeration, and misinformation, it’s invigorating to see a single trusted list of Things That Happened published online somewhere by people who care about the historical record.

Anyway, last week, I noticed a fresh shipment of ballots from voters representing the Philadelphia BBWAA chapter, which included a swell of support for Jimmy Rollins’ candidacy. By Sunday, as I was looking over Inquirer columnist Marcus Hayes’ ballot, I found myself experiencing an unexpected combination of emotions.

For those of you who don’t know, Jimmy Rollins is my favorite baseball player of all time. He was one of the best players on my favorite team during a period I’d describe as “formative” if the better word for it weren’t “long.” I was 13 when Rollins made his major league debut, and by the time the Phillies traded him away, I was 27 years old and working as a professional baseball writer.

In the intervening 14 years, Rollins made three All-Star teams, won four Gold Gloves, and was named NL MVP in 2007. He was a leadership figure on a team that dominated the National League East from 2007 to 2011, winning a World Series in 2008, another NL pennant in 2009, and posting the best record in baseball in both 2010 and 2011. In the spring of 2007, he declared the Phillies — a team that hadn’t made the playoffs in 14 years — “the team to beat” in the NL East. In my highly biased eyes, that should go up there among the all-time great called shots in American sports history, and it set the tone for the next five years.

Rollins was great when I was doing what most people do in their teens and early 20s: figuring out who I was as a person. I latched onto him immediately as a callow, sheltered, and practically innumerate middle schooler, and remained his biggest fan through the end of his tenure, by which point almost everything else about me — and the outside world — had changed.

What I loved about Rollins was his dynamism. He played exceptional defense and stole bucketloads of bases at a historically efficient clip. At 5-foot-7, he had a monster throwing arm from the hole. Despite his size, he retired with 857 career extra-base hits, and while his bat produced more punch than power, he was a rare pure switch-hitter. Especially now, small middle infielders who switch hit often have a limited, punch-and-Judy swing from their weaker side. Not Rollins, who produced almost identical slash lines from each side of the plate.

He was athletic, aggressive, unafraid of conflict or controversy — a nearly ideal position player from an aesthetic perspective. I don’t think there will ever be a player who means as much to me personally as Rollins. At the ballpark, I try to comport myself with a quiet, unobtrusive sense of professionalism, but the most egregious breach of etiquette I’ve ever seriously considered was when I came across Rollins in the Giants’ clubhouse late in his career, and I had to stop myself from walking up to him and asking for a hug.

As I write, Rollins is in his fourth year on the BBWAA Hall of Fame ballot, and he’s trending upward, having gained 11 votes from last year. It brings me great satisfaction to see 42 voters (and counting) extend the ultimate honor to my favorite player.

I’ll get a Hall of Fame ballot a few years from now, and I can already tell which are going to be the toughest questions. Félix Hernández is the tip of the spear in what I expect to be a near-total revamping of established statistical standards for starting pitchers. Then there’s the character clause, ignored by voters for almost a century, then dusted off to wield against suspected PED users. How, then, to weight players’ on-field achievements against off-field transgressions? I don’t know yet.

I don’t anticipate spending much time agonizing over Rollins. As it stands, I won’t be voting for him.

Every voter has a unique outlook on the Hall of Fame — its role, its standards, the relative importance of numbers and celebrity and “you had to be there”-type intangibles. For me, it’s a club whose membership ought to be determined on merit. While the statistical record isn’t the only consideration, the numbers, within context, tell most of the story for me.

And Rollins just isn’t there. I tend to use 60 career WAR as the first guideline for whether a player had a Hall of Fame career; Rollins is at 49.7. His career wRC+ is 95. His peak WAR and JAWS are both short of average, for a Hall of Fame shortstop, by double digits.

Hall of Fame writer Jayson Stark wrote about Rollins and his longtime double play partner, Chase Utley, as a package deal in his ballot explainer column at The Athletic. Stark voted for both, calling them a modern-day Lou Whitaker and Alan Trammell.

[Rollins] was The Energizer on those teams — but also a force for positivity with a whole different aura from his double-play partner… What Rollins doesn’t have is a collection of data points that connect with today’s voters. His total wins above replacement (47.6) are fewer than Utley rolled up just in his seven-year peak (49.3). So it’s hard to explain to voters who didn’t watch them that Rollins’ defensive impact, in particular, was so much greater than the public metrics of his time would lead you to believe.

I agree with all of that. Rollins was special. There was something intangibly great about him. The list of players who did more for the Phillies than Rollins is vanishingly short — and most of those guys are in the Hall of Fame. But the statistical gap is too great for me to feel comfortable fudging the difference on gut feeling.

Which is fine with me. Because while I consider the Hall of Fame to be the ultimate validator of general greatness, it’s borderline irrelevant when it comes to personal or even regional significance. And we don’t have to treat it as such, or to act like it’s a slap in the face if your favorite player, or a franchise legend, gets left out.

Thanks to the aforementioned ballot tracker, the BBWAA is set to induct a large class: Ichiro Suzuki and CC Sabathia definitely, Billy Wagner probably, and Carlos Beltrán possibly. Either three or four would be a bumper crop for the writers. And yet this ballot features an even larger group of players I’d describe as Hall of Very Good who are just as revered in their home markets as Rollins, if not more so.

In addition to Rollins and King Félix, there’s David Wright, Torii Hunter, Mark Buehrle, Adam Jones, Brian McCann, Dustin Pedroia, and the Colorado duo of Troy Tulowitzki and Carlos González. These are long-tenured players with closets full of individual hardware and hours-long highlight reels. In their time, their jerseys were on the backs of every kid in the local schools, and local talking heads talked about them with awe and reverence.

These players — who will never have to buy a meal in their home cities, but fall short of Hall of Fame standards — present a problem to which there is a specific solution: Teams should honor their legendary players more freely.

There are limits. When I mused about the Rollins Hall of Fame issue on Bluesky on Sunday, Jacob Pomrenke — a walking encyclopedia of baseball history knowledge — sent me pictures of the 71 plaques hanging on the Brewers’ Wall of Fame. The Phillies will certainly add Rollins to their Wall of Fame someday soon, but with 46 names up there, it’s not the most exclusive honor. There must be a middle ground Rollins occupies that’s under Mike Schmidt, but above Willie “Puddin’ Head” Jones.

For players like Rollins, or Wright, or Pedroia, it might be appropriate to name a stadium feature after a franchise legend, or, let’s keep things simple: Retire their number.

The Phillies are one of several teams that has no official policy for number retirement, but in practice only retires the numbers of players who are in the Hall of Fame. I said earlier that enshrinement in the Hall of Fame should be as objective as possible and based on universal values. Retiring a number should be the opposite: Subjective, and based mostly on the connection between player and team.

I know this is the case because the Phillies overrode that policy to honor Dick Allen in 2020. After Allen had been passed over repeatedly by the Hall of Fame, the Phillies said, “Enough is enough,” and put his no. 15 on the wall, even though he wouldn’t be inducted into Cooperstown for another five years.

The Dodgers, who have a similar policy on retiring numbers, did the same for Fernando Valenzuela in 2023. Valenzuela fell short of Hall of Fame standards, but how many players have meant more to the Dodgers, especially in a Los Angeles-specific context, and even more especially considering Valenzuela’s contributions as a broadcaster? After years of limbo in which no. 34 was kept out of circulation, the Dodgers finally cut the charade and retired it for real.

Most of our favorite ballplayers won’t make the Hall of Fame. That’s as it should be. Only a tiny fraction of players make a lasting impact on their club, and an even tinier fraction wind up with a plaque in Cooperstown. But the Hall of Fame isn’t the sole method for validating a local legend. Not when there’s so much space available on the outfield wall.