JAWS and the 2024 Hall of Fame Ballot: Torii Hunter and Jimmy Rollins
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 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.
Before Joe Mauer began starring for the Twins, there was Torii Hunter, and before Chase Utley began starring for the Phillies, there was Jimmy Rollins. Hunter, a rangy, acrobatic center fielder who eventually won nine Gold Gloves and made five All-Star teams, debuted with Minnesota in 1997 and emerged as a star in 2001, the same year the Twins chose Mauer with the number one pick of the draft. The pair would play together from 2004 to ’07, making the playoffs twice before Hunter departed via free agency. Rollins, a compact shortstop who carried himself with a swagger, debuted in 2001 and made two All-Star teams by the time he and Utley began an 11-year run (2004–14) as the Phillies’ regular double play combination. The pair helped Philadelphia to five NL East titles, two pennants, and a championship, with Rollins winning NL MVP honors in 2007 and taking home four Gold Gloves.
Hunter and Rollins both enjoyed lengthy and impressive careers, racking up over 2,400 hits apiece with substantial home run and stolen base totals. From a Hall of Fame perspective, both have credentials that appeal more to traditionally-minded voters than to statheads. But in their time on the ballot, they’ve gotten little traction, with Hunter topping out at 9.5% in his 2021 debut and Rollins only breaking into double digits in ’23. Not much has changed regarding their electoral outlooks this time around; both are likely to be far outdistanced by their former teammates, whose advanced statistics are much stronger despite comparatively short careers. Still, these two may persist on the ballot, with enough support for us to keep reliving their careers and discussing their merits on an annual basis. There are far worse fates for Hall of Fame candidates.
Torii Hunter (6.9% in 2023)
| Player | Career WAR | Peak WAR | JAWS |
|---|---|---|---|
| Torii Hunter | 50.6 | 30.8 | 40.7 |
| Avg. HOF CF | 71.6 | 44.7 | 58.1 |
| H | HR | SB | AVG/OBP/SLG (OPS+) |
| 2,452 | 353 | 195 | .277/.331/.461 (110 OPS+) |
From the 2023 profile intro:
Torii Hunter could go get it. Fluid and graceful while patrolling center field, he was renowned for his leaping, acrobatic catches and his willingness to sacrifice his body. He made a strong enough impression upon those who watched him that he won nine Gold Gloves during his 19-year career, more than all but three center fielders, namely Willie Mays, Ken Griffey Jr., and Andruw Jones. Hunter earned the nickname “Spider-Man” for his ability to climb outfield walls to steal home runs — something he did more than just about anybody else during his career — though one attempt to do so at Fenway Park left him with a broken ankle, and another a concussion.
“I’ll do anything to get that little white ball. I’ll put my life on the line,” Hunter told Sports Illustrated’s Albert Chen in 2005, sounding very much like the football player he was during his high school days in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Hunter rose from difficult circumstances in Pine Bluff, including a father who was addicted to crack cocaine and friends who fell into the dead-end life of drugs, guns, and gangs. His athleticism helped him escape, though when he entered professional baseball as a first-round pick of the Twins in 1993, his talent was more raw than most.
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More here.
Jimmy Rollins (12.9% in 2023)
| Player | Career WAR | Peak WAR | JAWS |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jimmy Rollins | 47.6 | 32.6 | 40.1 |
| Avg. HOF SS | 67.7 | 43.2 | 55.4 |
| H | HR | SB | AVG/OBP/SLG (OPS+) |
| 2,455 | 231 | 470 | .264/.324/.418 (95 OPS+) |
From the 2023 profile intro:
Few players have ever been more central to the Phillies than Jimmy Rollins. In fact, with the exception of Mike Schmidt, no player spent more time in a Phillies’ uniform than Rollins, and even counting the Hall of Fame third baseman, none collected more hits or stole more bases. The pint-sized shortstop — 5-foot-7, 175 pounds according to Baseball Reference — spent 15 of his 17 major league seasons with Philadelphia, where he was at the center of the team’s return to contention following a slide into irrelevance at the outset of the Wild Card era.
Rollins was the starting shortstop on the Phillies’ five straight NL East champions from 2007-11, including their ’08 World Series winning squad — just the second in franchise history — and ’09 pennant winner. A slick fielder who offered speed and pop from both sides of the plate atop the lineup, he garnered the nickname “J-Roll” from legendary Phillies broadcaster Harry Kalas. J-Roll projected a confidence that bordered on cockiness, and carried himself with a swagger. “We’re the team to beat,” he said at the outset of the 2007 season, all but thumbing his nose at the reigning NL East champion Mets, who had outdistanced the Phillies by 12 games.
After losing their first three games and 10 of their first 13 to start the 2007 season — including two out of three at Shea Stadium, where he was booed lustily by New York fans — the Phillies didn’t spend a day in first place until September 27, when they tied the Mets with three games remaining. While they took two out of three from the Nationals, the Mets dropped two of three from the Marlins. Not only was Philadelphia back in the playoffs after a 14-year absence, setting off a run during which the team became just the fifth to win five straight division titles, but Rollins took home NL MVP (Most Valuable Prognosticator) honors. A year later, he added a World Series ring to a collection that also grew to include four Gold Gloves.
More here.
Brooklyn-based Jay Jaffe is a senior writer for FanGraphs, the author of The Cooperstown Casebook (Thomas Dunne Books, 2017) and the creator of the JAWS (Jaffe WAR Score) metric for Hall of Fame analysis. He founded the Futility Infielder website (2001), was a columnist for Baseball Prospectus (2005-2012) and a contributing writer for Sports Illustrated (2012-2018). He has been a recurring guest on MLB Network and a member of the BBWAA since 2011, and a Hall of Fame voter since 2021. Follow him on BlueSky @jayjaffe.bsky.social.
Rollins especially seems like someone who will be voted in during his first go-round on the Veterans Committee. I think he falls short, but his being in the Hall of Fame wouldn’t diminish the place or hurt anything, I don’t think. (This is not to say that I think he deserves to be in, but more to say what I think will happen.)
Rollins’ 2007 MVP award was based on hitting an interesting collection of nice round numbers – 30 2B, 20 3B, 30 HR, 40 SB – but it really bothered me at the time. As a Yankee fan, I was still annoyed at Justin Morneau beating Derek Jeter for the 2006 AL MVP (Jeter was 2nd in the AL in fWAR that season to Grady Sizemore, but that’s another story). It seemed like Rollins was more an interesting collection of statistics than a truly great player, although his defensive numbers are certainly eye-catching. Neither one of these two ever felt like a Hall of Fame player to me, which is fine. Nothing wrong with being a very good MLB player for a long time.
Rollins in 2007 set the all time single season record for plate appearances at 778. He beat former Phillie’s Lenny Dykstra’s record of 773 set in 1993.
Not that things like this matter anymore, but Rollins’s case was also bolstered by his declaration that the Phils were the “team to beat” before the season, despite coming up short many many years before this. He was unquestionably a team leader and had one of the all-time great “back it up” seasons. It was a legacy of a better era when narratives mattered.
That Rollins MVP win was maybe the first time I was extremely passionate about an awards case. I felt so strongly that Holliday should win and truly couldn’t wrap my head around how anyone could see it differently. Now I can look back and just appreciate how both players had fantastic seasons that brought their cities a lot of joy and it makes me happy.
Torii Hunter always brings up Bernie Williams, in my mind since they both won a bunch of gold gloves while the numbers were saying they weren’t as good as they were getting credit for. Hunter seemed like actually a solid to good defender who tricked people into thinking he was amazing with some spectacular plays. Bernie was legitimately not good in center. But they ended up within 1 fWAR and 1.1 bWAR of each other.
Exceedingly dumb that he’s stayed on the ballot longer than Lofton, Edmonds, and Bernie. Not sure if Torii still sucks at not hating people, either.
While guys like Lofton and Edmonds should’ve gotten longer looks, Torii’s long leash is more than justified. Hunter won 5 more GGs, and1 more SS, while not benefitting from biased writer’s voting like Williams was in NY. I’d take the guy with more HR’s, Hits, doubles, and ribbies.
Hunter’s best season wouldn’t be included in the WAR7 of Williams’ fJAWS haha.
Torii put up 4.7 fWAR, that year.
Bernie put up 4.8 in his 7th best season.
Fair play to Hunter, though – he nearly caught up to Bernie’s career WAR, by being a useful player until he was 39…because Bernie was worth -3.7 WAR after age 33.
Those late career defensive numbers for Bernie have always stuck me as fishy. Not to say that he was good, by any means, he was bad, but… look at the 2005 Yankees defensive numbers from Fangraphs for starters at every position:
C: Posada, 8.9
1B: Martinez, -6.1
2B: Cano, -19.7
SS: Jeter, -8.1
3B: Rodriguez, -0.2
LF: Matsui, -22.0
CF: Williams, -30.2
RF: Sheffield, -34.1
And for the sake of completeness, here’s everyone else who fielded at least 10 games at a non- pitching position that year for them (some of this thrown off by DHing, but the point stands):
Giambi, 78 games at 1B: -18.0
Womack, 24 games at 2B; 66 games in OF: -16.5
Sierra, 18 games in OF: -8.3
Crosby, 67 games in OF: 0.5
Lawton, 19 games in OF: -5.7
Sanchez, 20 games across infield: -1.2
Phillips, 22 games, mostly 1B: -1.0
Flaherty, 45 games C: 1.1
Johnson, 22 games all over: -0.8
So here’s the thing: this team won 95 games! How can you be not just bad, but historically bad, everywhere across the diamond, have an offense that was good but not historically great, have a mediocre pitching staff whose FIP numbers weren’t that much better than their actual results (except for Kevin Brown), and win 95 games? Something is off here.
I dunno, I watched a lot of those games and I woulda told you every one of those starters was bad defensively (including posada, but that was mostly because he was a bad thrower. I’m open to the possibility he was better at the dark arts of catching). The outfielders were all, no doubt about it bad. And even tho jeter and cano looked smooth as hell at times, they were obviously failing to cover ground that better infielders would have covered.
I don’t trust the fielding metrics enough to say these are definitively, exactly how bad they were. But there’s not one guy there where I’m like “hey, that guy looked good, that doesn’t track…”
So this says one of two things, or possibly some of both. A. Defensive metrics are essentially useless, or B. Defense doesn’t REALLY matter in terms of putting together a winning baseball team.
For whatever it’s worth, I think A is more closely aligned with reality.
Well, defense certainly does matter in putting together a winning team, but I’ve always said that defense doesn’t matter as much as WAR (either version) thinks it does.
Meanwhile, we all know that we can only trust defensive metrics so far.
So anyway, I’d say it’s some of Column A and some of Column B.
(Also! Torii Hunter was a very good player for a very long time, before you even get into how much fun he was to watch!)
Bias cat alert! Hunter was clearly the better defender but I think both were overrated. Bernie was bad when people thought he was good and Torii was pretty good when people thought he was Andruw Jones.
Offensively, there’s no comparison. If you cite Torii’s HR, RBI, Hits, doubles and RBI (what website are we on here?), I can cite that Bernie had more Runs, a higher BA by 20 points, a higher OBP by 50 points(!), and more triples since we care about specific subsets of extra base hits for some reason. Oh, and Bernie won the World Series 4 times to Torii’s zero. Bernie had 8 seasons that were better by wRC+ than Torii’s single best season.
They ended up being pretty similarly productive despite arriving there in very different ways
Bernie was a classic Joe Shlabotnik fielder. He made spectacular catches of routine fly balls, because he’d take two steps in the wrong direction and then make up for it with his speed. But they’d never show those first two steps on SportsCenter, so you’d just see a really nice dive and not the 98% catch probability when the ball came off the bat.
Honestly, the best reference points for Bernie are folks like Fred Lynn and Andrew McCutcheon (they even all have a wRC+ of 129!).
Clear HoF peak…but just couldn’t sustain that production into their mid-30s.
What?
I know it is impossible to quantify that something extra that only a few players bring to the field and carry with themselves throughout their career. Jimmy Rollins was one who always seemed to possess that “je ne sais quoi”. There weren’t many metrics floating around when Rollins was a star, but make no mistake, he was a STAR in capital letters. Being an easterner I saw Rollins play many times and, while it wasn’t difficult to see that Utley, Howard and even Carlos Ruiz were key contributors it was Rollins who was seen as the key to the Phillies success by most of the public. The OPS+ numbers don’t correspond to what he did for the offense. Take 2006 for example, 61 extra base hits, 41 steals in 46 attempts does not equate to a 97 OPS+. He was an All-Star in his first full season and was definitely one of the faces of baseball throughout his Phillies career and he stirred the drink in a way that only a few have done.
Yup. I feel like most people thought Rollins was a better player than Utley in real time, and then the narrative flipped post-career to call Utley the key cog. Said differently, if you had asked me at their retirements as to which had a better HOF argument, I would have said Rollins.
Thank you for explaining why Jim Rice got into the Hall 8 years before Tim Raines, haha.
No disagreement from me but what I see is a problem with measuring the importance of each of the components of what makes up a baseball player. If one is realistic he will accept the fact that the hit tool, especially when combined with the power tool, is worth many times the run tool. If you can rake you can be great and I only have to offer up David Ortiz to establish that fact. In defense of Jim Rice, he was the most feared hitter in the game for several years. Regarding his defense, defensive metrics, so flawed as to be virtually useless, are at their worst when attempting to measure the range of a man playing left field in Fenway Park.
Jim Rice was the most feared hitter in the game, with the source of this “claim” being perhaps the worst baseball writer of his or any generation, and definitely nothing tangible.
I wouldn’t mind Jimmy getting in.
I am suspicious that the advanced stats underrate him, Though I can’t exactly peg where or if it’s a combo f his offense being too lowly rated due to the era/PED guys early in his career, not enough credit for his baserunning or defense, etc.
He’s the type of guy that if he had come along 20 years earlier, he would have been a no brainer.
If he had come along 20 years earlier, his baserunning would’ve been overshadowed by guys like Rickey Henderson and Vince Coleman and his defense overshadowed by Ozzie Smith.
Naturally, OPS(+) and wOBA/wRC+ don’t include baserunning, so his overall offensive value was quite a bit higher, but I don’t think it pushes him that much higher to say he was clearly a better player than Utley or Howard in their primes. Let’s also not forget that Utley was also a very good defender and baserunner.
What I said, and Tomera Fan agreed with, was that during the period that Rollins, Utley and Howard played together there was quite a strong consensus that Rollins was the top dog. Times have changed and modern theory now puts Utley ahead but Rollins was seen as the STAR and was instrumental in the great run that the Phillies had
I’m just wondering what the public saw at the time that would give them that indication, as it should’ve been clear even back then that Utley was the better player.
Meanwhile, I think Ryan Howard was actually the best player of the three and would’ve been the most deserving Hall of Famer if he hadn’t been crushed by injuries in his 30s even more badly than Utley was. He was just never the same after he got hurt at the very end of the 2011 NLDS.