Jay Jaffe’s 2025 Hall of Fame Ballot

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2025 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.

“What do I do about Félix Hernández?” Even before my 2025 Hall of Fame ballot arrived in the mail in late November, that question loomed over my plans to fill it out. Anticipating a crunch for space but knowing that the former Cy Young winner — who’s on the ballot for the first time this year — is significantly short of the S-JAWS standard, the easy answer of leaving him off was always right there. Yet given years of discussion regarding the changing landscape for starting pitchers (and by extension, starting pitcher candidates), I decided to sit with the possibility of voting for him right up to the point where I reached for my pen.

I’ll take you through my process regarding the Félix question soon enough. This is my fifth year with an actual ballot, but filling one out and having it count still feels like a novelty in the context of 24 years of analyzing Hall of Fame elections, and 22 of doing so while armed with the system that became JAWS (the official 20th anniversary of the metric’s introduction was in January). With so many mentors, peers, and colleagues having come and gone in this racket, I’m grateful to have stuck around long enough to have earned the right to vote, and it’s a privilege I look forward to, even with the accompanying scrutiny and criticism.

In the weeks since the Hall unveiled this year’s 28-candidate slate, I’ve analyzed the top 21 candidates at length in my series. I’ve still got seven one-and-done stragglers to cover in early January, none of whom I seriously considered for my ballot; indeed, none of those seven has secured a single vote from among the 64 ballots published in the Ballot Tracker as of 12:01 AM ET Monday, but their careers deserve a proper valedictory. While I’ve mostly known whom I planned to include, as always, I’ve gone through my full process before finalizing my ballot, just as I did with my virtual ones. Particularly given my recent attempts to update the pitching side of JAWS, it never hurts to take another look.

After electing just four candidates from 2020–23, last year the writers elected three, helping to clear some of the backlog among those within range of election. This year’s crop of newcomers compelled me to reflect upon my own process, particularly with regards to starters and catchers, whose pitch framing data paints them in a new light.

The ballot isn’t nearly as crowded as it was before. Circa 2014, 14 candidates met or exceeded the JAWS standards at their respective positions, and 17 had a JAWS of at least 50.0 (or 40.0 for catchers), thus requiring all but the most small-Hall-minded voters to perform triage to winnow the field down to 10 candidates who could fit on their ballots. This time around, only two candidates meet or exceed the JAWS standards at their position, though two are within two points, eight are at 50.0, and the two catchers are at 40.0 using my experimental, framing-inclusive version of JAWS.

Even with those numbers reduced relative to their recent peak, there’s still no such thing as a perfect ballot. With my annual exercise has always come an acknowledgement of the numerous subjective choices that go into selecting even the most objective-minded slate. How much leeway to grant if one is using WAR and JAWS? How much emphasis to put on postseason performance, awards, and less quantifiable considerations? Where to draw the line when it comes to performance-enhancing drugs or off-field issues, subjects that may or may not fall under the umbrella of the character clause? What to do about the declining workloads of starting pitchers, or the wealth of data we have for recent catchers that we did not have for those of yesteryear? Perfection may be unattainable, but it’s still worth pursuing. If we don’t get there… well, we do the best we can.

With that ample preamble out of the way, here’s how the subset of 21 candidates stacks up via JAWS:

As noted, I’ve used my workload-adjusted S-JAWS for starting pitchers (detailed here), which brings the above starters closer to the standard but still leaves even the highest-ranked ones, Buehrle and Pettitte, more than nine points off the pace. Likewise, I’ve used my leverage-adjusted R-JAWS for relief pitchers (explained here), and while that doesn’t push Wagner past the standard, it makes him the top reliever outside the Hall.

The yellow cells show where candidates meet or exceed the career, peak, or JAWS standards at their positions, and as you can see, the table is pretty light relative to years past. Last year, Adrian Beltré and Joe Mauer both exceeded all three, but both were elected; also elected was Todd Helton, who exceeded two of three (peak and JAWS). But while we’re left a scant crop that clears the standards strictly speaking, we’ve got a few spots where a player is within one point, which is close enough for my tastes, and in building my ballot I’ve taken a somewhat looser approach, as I’ll detail below.

Let’s start with the “integrity, sportsmanship, [and] character” section of the voting rules. Until Mark McGwire landed on the 2007 ballot, that clause was never really used to exclude anyone; meanwhile, the various electoral bodies have admitted a parade of spitballers, sign-stealers, racists, cheaters, and abusers. The clause was the brainchild of Kenesaw Mountain Landis, who brimmed with such integrity that he spent his entire 24-year term as commissioner upholding the game’s shameful color line. The history of that hypocrisy and so many others — witness the election of Bud Selig, himself steeped in the collusion of the 1980s as well as the overseeing of the so-called Steroid Era — leads me to avoid putting any stock in the clause, but I do have my own ways of dealing with the darker aspects of players’ candidacies.

As I’ve said for over a decade regarding candidates connected to PEDs, I draw a line between those whose allegations date to the time when the game had no testing regimen or means of punishment (i.e., prior to 2004) and those who came afterwards. With no means of enforcing a paper ban, and with players flouting such a ban being rewarded left and right amid what was truly a complete institutional failure that implicated team owners, the commissioner, and the players union as well as the players, I simply don’t think voters can apply a retroactive morality to that period.

That distinction was why I voted for the likes of Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and Gary Sheffield, but with Shef’s BBWAA candidacy expired, this ballot’s only PED-connected players were ones who drew suspensions, namely A-Rod and Manny. On a performance-only basis, both would get my vote, and likewise if their failing the supposedly anonymous 2003 survey test were their only PED-related transgression, but both decided to press their luck and are paying the price. A-Rod is one of seven players with at least 3,000 hits and 500 homers, and he ranks 12th in WAR among all position players, but his full-season suspension for using PEDs bought from the Biogenesis clinic from 2010–12 is a black mark I can’t overlook. Likewise with regards to Manny, one of the greatest hitters of all time; his 154 OPS+ ranks 20th among players with at least 7,000 PA, but I still can’t get past the two failed tests, not when better players who never tested positive are being kept out. Every year, I consider whether it’s time to take a new approach with such candidates, but I’m not changing my mind this year.

Note that I have not used allegations of domestic violence to disqualify candidates from consideration, though such matters are far more serious than PEDs. I can certainly understand voters choosing to rule such candidates out.

As for who’s on my ballot, the navigation widget above links to their profiles, where I go into much greater detail than I can here. For the players who have gone unmentioned, likewise you can read about my reservations within their profiles linked in the widget above. To begin, the two high-profile newcomers get my nod:

Ichiro Suzuki (17th among right fielders in JAWS)

Suzuki clears only the peak standard, but that’s mainly because he didn’t make his stateside debut until after his 27th birthday, having won three Pacific League MVP awards in Japan. His 10 All-Star appearances, 10 Gold Gloves, 3,089 hits, and two batting titles are more than enough to justify voting for him, and so far everybody who’s published their ballot has. He was a joy to watch and to cover, a great global ambassador for the sport.

CC Sabathia (55th among starting pitchers in JAWS)

A six-time All-Star, Cy Young winner, and just the third left-hander to reach 3,000 strikeouts, Sabathia was a workhorse the likes of which we probably won’t see again. Nobody born after 1966 has topped his 3,577 1/3 innings, and Sabathia was born 14 years later. While he’s a bit short of the S-JAWS standard, he stands out relative to his contemporaries given his full résumé, which includes a stellar performance during the Yankees’ 2009 championship run and a larger-than-life performance in carrying the Brewers to their first playoff appearance in 26 years the season before. Combine his numbers and accomplishments with a very human and very public story of addiction and recovery, not to mention a spotlight as one of the most prominent Black voices in the game, and this one is an easy call.

From there it’s on to three candidates who clear at least one standard, all holdovers from my previous ballots:

Chase Utley (12th among second basemen in JAWS, 28.8% in 2024)

Despite not drawing more than 300 plate appearances in a season until age 26, Utley is just 0.1 points shy of the JAWS standard at the keystone, and ninth in peak as well thanks to the tremendous impact of his fielding and baserunning, which reflected his high baseball IQ. His late arrival contributed to his finishing with just 1,885 hits; even with the Era Committee election of Tony Oliva, the writers have yet to elect anybody from the post-1960 expansion era who finished with fewer than 2,000. Between that shortage and voters’ failure to recognize him on MVP ballots and in the Gold Glove awards — he was bypassed for the former in favor of teammates Rollins and Ryan Howard, and somehow never won the latter — he’s been left with an uphill battle for election. Still, his first-year share was higher than those of recent honorees Helton, Tim Raines, Scott Rolen, and Larry Walker, and per the Tracker, it looks like he’s gaining some ground.

Carlos Beltrán (9th among center fielders in JAWS, 57.1% in 2023)

The quintessential five-tool player, Beltrán is one of eight with at least 300 homers and 300 steals, and owns the highest stolen base success rate (86.4%) of any player with at least 200 attempts. He’s a bit below all three standards at a very top-heavy position, but he’s the best eligible center fielder outside the Hall and one of the top 10 all time.

Beltrán might already be enshrined if he hadn’t been at the center of the Astros’ illegal sign-stealing scandal, which nipped his managerial career in the bud. While his own performance didn’t benefit, he did something against the rules, and it continued through a postseason in which his team won a championship. Not every player was comfortable with it (McCann, for one, asked him to stop), but if we’re to believe the various reports, nobody stood up to him firmly enough to derail the scheme. Given that manager A.J. Hinch reportedly destroyed two monitors in response to the scheme, it’s worth questioning both his leadership capability and the convenient scapegoating of Beltrán as a lone actor; the asymmetry of Hinch and bench coach-turned-Red Sox manager Alex Cora returning to the dugout after one-year suspensions while Beltrán hasn’t even gotten another interview ought to raise an eyebrow as well. It’s also worth noting that like spitballing/ball-doctoring, sign-stealing is a behavior that exists along a continuum of baseball history that stretches back nearly a century and a half. The fan in me empathizes with that great 2017 Dodgers team being cheated out of a title, but the industry professional in me knows that the Astros were merely the most extreme example of a team stealing signs electronically, some of which were ultimately reported and others just whispered about.

Long story short, after spending hours talking about Beltrán’s case with friends and fellow writers (some of them voters), I returned to the framework of my PED policy: If the commissioner couldn’t punish him for what he did, I’m not going to play the vigilante and administer frontier justice on behalf of MLB or the Hall, hence my continued inclusion of Beltrán. At this writing, he’s actually above 75% in the Tracker; while I don’t expect that to hold up, it’s clear he’ll be on his way to Cooperstown soon.

Andruw Jones (11th among center fielders in JAWS, 61.6% in 2024)

If 2018 Hall of Fame honoree Chipper Jones was the Braves dynasty’s offensive cornerstone, Andruw Jones was its defensive one, an elite flychaser who won 10 Gold Gloves and ranks first at the position in fielding runs (+235). He could hit, too, bopping 434 career homers. His career collapsed at age 31, however; he played just 435 games over his final five seasons, disappearing from the majors at age 35, and so while he’s well above the peak standard, he’s short on the career one and in JAWS. I’m not so bothered given his relative ranking and the fact that the standards in center and right field are a few points higher than every other position. After two years in the mid-7% range, he added more than 50 percentage points over the next four cycles, and while his progress slowed last year, he’s got a very good shot at eventual election by the writers; currently, he’s polling above 70%.

One other holdover is an easy call:

Billy Wagner (6th among relievers in R-JAWS, 73.8% in 2023)

The holder of the all-time records for strikeout rate and opponent batting average, albeit at just a 900-inning threshold, Wagner is short of the admittedly slapdash standard established by the eight enshrined relievers. Since I’ve never been entirely satisfied with how JAWS handles that small group, I’ve remained open-minded, seeking alternate ways to evaluate relievers. By R-JAWS, which incorporates Win Probability Added (WPA) and situational or context-neutral wins (WPA/LI) as well as WAR, Wagner is the top reliever outside the Hall, trailing only Mariano Rivera, Dennis Eckersley, Hoyt Wilhelm, Rich Gossage, and Trevor Hoffman. After debuting at 10.5% in 2016 and gaining little ground in the next three cycles, his support more than quadrupled from 2019 to ’23. Last year, he fell five votes short of election, and now, in his final year of eligibility, he’s already flipped five no votes to yes. He’s almost certainly on his way.

All that is the easy part. Setting aside two other potential holdovers for the moment, I’ve got three first-year candidates who are in gray areas:

Russell Martin (28th among catchers in traditional JAWS, fifth in framing-inclusive JAWS)

A four-time All-Star and Gold Glove winner, Martin was underappreciated within the mainstream during his career, but groundbreaking studies quantifying the value of pitch framing revealed him to be among the game’s elite receivers. Acting upon that, both the Pirates and Blue Jays viewed him as a potentially transformative addition, prioritized signing him, and were rewarded with multiple playoff appearances, ending droughts of longer than two decades. In fact, Martin’s teams made the playoffs 11 times in his 14 seasons, and that’s not a coincidence.

Martin is the career leader in FanGraphs’ version of framing runs, 0.1 ahead of McCann. Since Baseball Reference’s version of WAR does not include framing, but since that area of the game has been shown to be so impactful — with much wider spreads from top to bottom than blocking or throwing out baserunners — I believe we’re doing 21st-century candidates a disservice if we fail to incorporate this crucial area into our analysis. Thus, for Martin and McCann, I’ve used a FanGraphs-based version of WAR and JAWS that incorporates Baseball Prospectus’ framing values for the years before 2008 as the main value metric; call them frWAR, frPeak, and frJAWS. Voìla:

While I wish we had framing numbers for more catchers, league-wide pitch-by-pitch data for balls and strikes — and thus the ability to determine called strikes above average, the basis for pre-PITCHf/x framing estimates — doesn’t exist before 1988. So we’re left to compare the ones we do have, and everyone in the table above is head and shoulders above the rest of the pack, with the next-highest ranked catcher, Yasmani Grandal, at 36.8 frJAWS but no longer very productive.

Martin was the fifth-most valuable position player in the majors from 2006–16, with 50.6 fWAR; that trails only Miguel Cabrera (62.5), Albert Pujols (52.7), Beltré (52.1), and Utley (51.8). The similarity of Martin’s frJAWS score to that of Mauer and the upcoming Posey and Molina tandem leads me to conclude he’s worth a vote, and I’m even more certain that voters need to consider this stuff with regards to 21st century catchers, particularly since the automatic ball and strike system isn’t going to render this skill obsolete. The pitch-by-pitch usage of ABS was roundly rejected by Triple-A players, coaches, and managers last summer in favor of a challenge system limited to a few calls per game, and it’s not even clear when that will reach the majors. I don’t think Martin will reach 75% anytime soon; I just hope he can pull 5% so we can continue this discussion next year.

Brian McCann (35th among catchers in traditional JAWS, seventh in framing-inclusive JAWS)

A seven-time All-Star who bashed 282 home runs, McCann was a better hitter than Martin (110 to 101 in terms of OPS+), and the two are more or less deadlocked in our version of framing runs (165.7 to 165.6 in Martin’s favor). Baseball Prospectus’ pre-PITCHf/x data shows that while Martin arrived in the majors as an excellent framer, McCann was initially a lousy one; he quickly improved, but the two are 63.3 runs apart for 2005–07, as the above table shows, and six points apart in frJAWS. Again, I think this discussion is worth continuing in the coming years, and feel it’s particularly important to include both on my ballot, even if that requires me to do a bit of juggling.

Félix Hernández (97th in S-JAWS)

King Félix is at the root of my ballot-crowding problem. From 2007–15, he was third in the majors with 45.9 WAR (including offense) behind only Clayton Kershaw (49.4, despite not debuting until May 25, 2008) and Zack Greinke (47.0), two future Hall of Famers, and from ’09–15, he was the best pitcher in the American League by ERA, strikeouts, and WAR. In that latter span, he made six All-Star teams, won a Cy Young, finished second twice, and fourth, seventh, and eighth in three other years. He was just 19 when he debuted, and was worked so hard that through his age-29 season (2015), he’d thrown more innings than any other starter who debuted after 1972 except for Fernando Valenzuela. He never reached the postseason and was just 33 when he threw his last competitive pitch; his fastball had lost its zip and he was unable to make the adjustments necessary to further his career.

By S-JAWS, it’s easy enough to dismiss Hernández’s candidacy, but in light of the workload changes that will have to dial down our expectations for starters, it’s worth considering other approaches. I tried a few on for size; the closest I’ve come to being convinced is based on Mike Petriello’s look at WAR across seven or 10 consecutive seasons, something I tried myself on the occasion of two-time Cy Young winner Corey Kluber’s retirement. For the 2005–14 stretch, Hernández did have the highest WAR of any pitcher, and as Petriello notes, of the 19 pitchers who can make a similar claim for any 10-year period going back to 1950, 13 are in the Hall, two more are on their way (Kershaw and Max Scherzer), and one would be in if not for PED allegations (Clemens). That leaves Dave Stieb, Ron Guidry, and Hernández — three pitchers with great but short careers — to reckon with.

I’m not saying I believe all three belong in the Hall, and I’m not yet convinced Hernández does, but I do know that I don’t want him to fall off the ballot and be cast into a decades-long limbo alongside two-time Cy Young winner Johan Santana, who received just 2.4% on a very crowded 2018 ballot. I’m voting for Hernández to help ensure he reaches 5% and maintains eligibility, which would give voters — myself included — at least another year to let his candidacy marinate.

With apologies to Pedroia and Wright, two great players whose careers just weren’t long enough, the choice comes down to two other players for my 10th spot. I’ve included one on all four of my previous ballots:

Bobby Abreu (22nd among right fielders in JAWS, 14.8% in 2024)

A five-tool player with dazzling speed, a sweet left-handed stroke, and enough power to win a Home Run Derby, Abreu was a stathead favorite thanks to his otherworldly plate discipline. He posted on-base percentages of .400 or higher eight times (.395 for his career) thanks to his ability to take a walk (100 or more eight years in a row). Yet despite routinely reaching traditional seasonal plateaus — a .300 batting average (six times), 20 homers (nine times), 30 steals (six times), 100 runs scored and batted in (eight times apiece) — he was ridiculously underappreciated by the mainstream, making just two All-Star teams and winning one Gold Glove. He barely scraped by in his 2020 ballot debut with 5.5%, but broke into double digits for the first time in ’23 (15.4%), then stagnated in ’24.

The other option is a pitcher whom I included last year for the first time, in his sixth year of eligibility:

Andy Pettitte (81st among starting pitchers in S-JAWS, 13.5% in 2024)

Though he only made three All-Star teams and never finished higher than second in the Cy Young voting, Pettitte was a rotation mainstay on five championship teams, eight that reached the World Series, and 14 that reached the playoffs. His postseason totals of 44 starts, 19 wins, and 276.2 innings are all records, thanks in part to the expanded format, and his 3.81 postseason ERA is a ringer for his 3.85 regular season mark, which equates to a 117 ERA+, which is ahead of 22 enshrined starters and tied with two others. His postseason résumé provides some separation between him and the otherwise similar Buehrle, pitchers whose S-JAWS falls in the 27th and 28th percentiles relative to those already enshrined.

I tabbed Pettitte last year to round out my ballot at 10, a nod to the notion of continuing the discussion of starting pitching standards, and of grappling with the volume of postseason data for 21st century players (Sam Miller has written some thought-provoking stuff on this).

In the end, having already made one reach beyond my usual analytical range in the pitching department (Félix), I decided not to make a second; Pettitte misses my cut this year. He’s already clinched a berth on next year’s ballot based on the votes in the Tracker, whereas Abreu has not. I’ll continue to consider Pettitte and the weight of his postseason work for future ballots.

Again, another imperfect ballot in the books and the mailbox:

Once again, I’m gratified that after covering baseball and analyzing Hall of Fame elections for so long on the outside, I get to cast a ballot. It’s still just one vote from among nearly 400, less impactful than my work to sway actual voters and help the likes of Raines, Edgar Martinez, Mike Mussina, Walker, Rolen and others find homes in Cooperstown, but it’s also symbolic.

I say this every year but it bears repeating: I’m standing on the shoulders of giants in the field of baseball analysis, people who entered this industry without going through traditional newspaper outlets and who either were never admitted into the BBWAA or didn’t last long enough within it to vote. I’d prefer a voting process that found room for them and for other experts from beyond the mainstream, but so long as it doesn’t, I’ll do my best to represent.