No Unanimity? No Problem. The Hall Calls for Suzuki, Sabathia, and Wagner
As Derek Jeter goes, so goes Ichiro Suzuki. For the second time in the history of the National Baseball Hall of Fame, a candidate with an impeccable résumé has missed unanimous selection by a single vote from among nearly 400 ballots, leaving Mariano Rivera as the only player to run the table. Nonetheless — and far more importantly — Suzuki is Cooperstown-bound. In the voting results that were announced on Tuesday evening, Suzuki received 99.7% of the vote, and was joined by two other honorees, namely first-year candidate CC Sabathia (86.8%) and 10th-year candidate Billy Wagner (82.5%), the latter after missing election by just five votes last year.
Based upon the 216 ballots published in the Ballot Tracker prior to the announcement of the results, the only questions that carried real suspense were whether Suzuki would be unanimous and whether third-year candidate Carlos Beltrán would clear 75%. Beltran received 81.5% of the vote on published ballots, but finished with 70.3%, still a healthy 13.2-point jump from last year. Eighth-year candidate Andruw Jones, whose Tracker share hovered just below 75% for most of the cycle, finished with 66.2%. No other candidate received more than 40%, with second-year candidate Chase Utley (39.8%) the closest. Beltrán and Jones are well-positioned for election with next year’s slate, which lacks any candidate likely to be honored in his first year; Cole Hamels and Ryan Braun head that class.
This is the second year in a row that the writers have tabbed three candidates, after last year’s trio of Adrian Beltré, Todd Helton, and Joe Mauer, and the seventh time in the past 12 cycles that the writers have elected more than two candidates. Over the 2014–25 span, the writers have elected 30 candidates, that despite one shutout (2021) and two cycles with just a single honoree (’22 and ’23).
What follows here are a few quick take-home points from the electoral results. I’ll have a candidate-by-candidate breakdown in my next installment.
Not Unanimous, But Close
In the first Hall of Fame election in 1936, Ty Cobb received the highest share of the vote (98.2%), but he was still left off four of the 226 ballots cast by the writers. Babe Ruth and Honus Wagner, who tied for the second-highest share (95.1%), were each left off seven ballots, while Christy Mathewson (90.7%) was absent from 21 and Walter Johnson (83.6%) from 37. The fact that not even these all-time greats could attain unanimity from those grizzled voters set a precedent that was upheld for over 80 years by self-appointed gatekeepers within the BBWAA. Not even Stan Musial, Willie Mays, or Henry Aaron could reach 100% despite their incredible resumés. Would you believe that 23 clowns left Mays off their ballots?
A funny thing happened along the way to the 2020s, however. With the vast majority of ballots published in the Tracker, either ahead of the announcement or afterwards, voters and other interested parties have come to expect transparency and accountability. At the direction of the Hall’s board of directors, and despite the wishes of the BBWAA itself — which has voted twice to publish every ballot, as is done with the annual awards — voters aren’t obligated to reveal their ballots, and so we don’t know exactly who omitted Mays, Aaron, Jeter, or Suzuki, or what their motives might have been. Prior to 2016, the only candidate since Cobb who came within five votes of election was Tom Seaver in 1992. In 2016, Ken Griffey Jr. was named on all of the ballots published prior to the announcement, and likewise for Rivera in ’19, Jeter in ’20, and Suzuki this year. All but Rivera wound up with at least one still-anonymous voter omitting them.
Since the 2020 electorate had two more voters than this year’s, Suzuki’s share of the vote ranks “only” third:
| Rk | Player | Year | Votes | % of Ballots | Missing |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mariano Rivera | 2019 | 425 | 100.00% | 0 |
| 2 | Derek Jeter | 2020 | 396 | 99.747% | 1 |
| 3 | Ichiro Suzuki | 2025 | 394 | 99.746% | 1 |
| 4 | Ken Griffey Jr. | 2016 | 437 | 99.31% | 3 |
| 5 | Tom Seaver | 1992 | 425 | 98.82% | 5 |
| 6 | Nolan Ryan | 1999 | 491 | 98.78% | 6 |
| 7 | Cal Ripken Jr. | 2007 | 537 | 98.51% | 8 |
| 8 | Ty Cobb | 1936 | 222 | 98.23% | 4 |
| 9 | George Brett | 1999 | 488 | 98.16% | 9 |
| 10 | Henry Aaron | 1982 | 406 | 97.78% | 9 |
While it would have been nice if the individual who left Ichiro off their ballot hadn’t done so, ultimately voting share is just trivia for tables like the one above. The Hall doesn’t note a candidate’s voting percentage on his plaque, and those plaques aren’t hung any higher based on their share. Instead of letting that single vote spoil the fun, let’s celebrate the first election of a Japanese-born player to the Hall. With the Rookie of the Year and MVP combo, two batting titles, membership in the 3,000 hit club, and a run of 10 straight seasons in which he earned All-Star honors and won Gold Gloves after coming stateside at age 27, Suzuki was a lock for the Hall even before considering his status as one of the game’s great global ambassadors. Turnout in Cooperstown for his induction on July 27 is going to be a sight to behold.
The Start of Something?
Given his 251 career victories, 3,093 strikeouts (the third-highest mark for a left-hander), six All-Star appearances, a Cy Young and a World Series ring, Sabathia already possessed credentials that far surpass those of many Hall of Famers, not to mention a compelling narrative arc that included his remaking himself as a finesse pitcher after his fastball had faded, and his very public battle with alcoholism. Heading into this cycle, his election on the first ballot was hardly a certainty. Yet his support was quite robust from the outset, remaining at or above 90% in the Tracker for all but one brief interval. Like most candidates, Sabathia’s support wasn’t quite as strong on the unpublished ballots (79.8% by my back-of-the-envelope math), but he nonetheless became the first starter elected by the writers since Roy Halladay and Mike Mussina in 2019.
That six-year interval feels like a long time, particularly given the evolution of starting pitcher trends, especially since the pandemic, but it’s actually half as long as the gap between the writers’ elections of Ryan (1999) and Bert Blyleven (2011), the latter of whom was the first starter with fewer than 300 wins to be elected since Fergie Jenkins (1991). Voters have grappled with shifting standards before, and while the upcoming quartet of Zack Greinke, Clayton Kershaw, Max Scherzer, and Justin Verlander will breeze into Cooperstown once they become eligible (Greinke perhaps as soon as 2029 since he didn’t pitch last season), it’s an open question as to which starters will follow in their wake.
One look at the BBWAA’s track record when it comes to electing starters shows that this kind of ebb and flow is nothing new. Here are two decade-by-decade breakdowns that look quite different depending upon where one draws the dividing line, but in both cases, the most recent stretch isn’t unprecedented:
by Decade
| Period | # | Period | # | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1950–1959 | 3 | 1946–1955 | 6 | |
| 1960-1969 | 2 | 1956–1965 | 1 | |
| 1970–1979 | 6 | 1966–1975 | 5 | |
| 1980-1989 | 4 | 1976–1985 | 5 | |
| 1990–1999 | 8 | 1986–1995 | 6 | |
| 2000–2009 | 0 | 1996–2005 | 3 | |
| 2010–2019 | 8 | 2006–2015 | 6 | |
| 2020–2025 | 1 | 2016–2025 | 3 |
For all of that, the general consensus is that the BBWAA’s standards for starers have become too high because certain common milestones — not just 300 wins, but even 250 or 200 — are increasingly inaccessible given 21st-century usage constraints. Sabathia, who was born in 1980 yet threw more innings (3,577.1) than any pitcher born after 1966, didn’t suffer so much due to those constraints, but with the possible exception of Verlander, who’s currently 161.2 innings shy of Sabathia’s total, we just aren’t going to see anyone shoulder that kind of workload again.
As for the other starters on the ballot, Félix Hernández debuted with 20.6%, more than enough to keep him around for an extended discussion of standards, and Andy Pettitte more than doubled his support relative to last year, from 13.5% to 27.9%. Mark Buehrle gained about three points, to 11.4%. There’s more to come on this topic, I promise.
A Final Save for Billy Wags
In gaining entry on his 10th ballot, Wagner — the most dominant reliever ever in terms of strikeout rate and opponent batting average among pitchers with at least 900 innings, and the best reliever outside the Hall by R-JAWS — completed quite a comeback. In part because the 2016 ballot was overcrowded and because he debuted alongside the pitcher who had previously held the all-time saves record (Trevor Hoffman), Wagner’s candidacy started slowly. With his election, he now owns the second-lowest first-year voting percentage of any modern (post-1966) candidate elected by the writers:
| Player | Year | % | Year Elected | YoB |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scott Rolen | 2018 | 10.2% | 2023 | 6 |
| Billy Wagner | 2016 | 10.5% | 2025 | 10 |
| Todd Helton | 2019 | 16.5% | 2024 | 6 |
| Duke Snider | 1970 | 17.0% | 1980 | 11 |
| Bert Blyleven | 1998 | 17.5% | 2011 | 14 |
| Larry Walker | 2011 | 20.31% | 2020 | 10 |
| Mike Mussina | 2014 | 20.32% | 2019 | 6 |
If you’ve followed my work for the past two-plus decades, you’ll note that all but Snider are candidates whose causes were aided by advanced statistics such as ERA+, WAR, and JAWS. Thanks to an evolving electorate that’s been both increasingly receptive to the use of such metrics and increasingly transparent about whom it supports, we’ve seen these candidates overcome their slow starts and get to 75% with a frequency that was once unimaginable.
Again, it’s worth noting that low first-year percentages don’t happen in a vacuum, and they aren’t always a direct judgment regarding the candidates themselves but rather the product of the stiff competition for space given the 10-candidate voting limit. Here’s a graph showing the annual counts of how many candidates cleared the JAWS standards at their positions, and how many reached 50 JAWS (40 for catchers):
Wagner debuted on the 2016 ballot alongside 11 players who meet the JAWS standards and 14 with at least 50 JAWS (40 for catchers). Even with some voters excluding PED-linked candidates, that’s a lot of traffic to overcome.
Meanwhile, Wagner also joined the growing list of candidates elected in their final year of BBWAA eligibility. Four of the eight have happened in the past decade:
of BBWAA Eligibility
| Player | Ballots | Debut | Elected | % of Ballots |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Red Ruffing | 15* | 1948 | 1967 | 72.6%** |
| Joe Medwick | 8* | 1948 | 1968 | 84.8% |
| Ralph Kiner | 13* | 1960 | 1975 | 75.4% |
| Jim Rice | 15 | 1995 | 2009 | 76.4% |
| Tim Raines | 10 | 2008 | 2017 | 86.0% |
| Edgar Martinez | 10 | 2010 | 2019 | 85.4% |
| Larry Walker | 10 | 2011 | 2020 | 76.6% |
| Billy Wagner | 10 | 2016 | 2025 | 82.5% |
* Total does not include run-off elections (1949, ’64, ’67) in cases where no candidate reached 75%, or years with votes received while still active.
** Elected via run-off
Unlike Wagner, the three previous 10th-year selections from the past decade hit the ballot when candidates still had 15 years of eligibility, but the Hall unilaterally changed that rule in 2014, and it didn’t grandfather any of them in. Rice, meanwhile, had the full run of 15 years of annual balloting. The three honorees before him had candidacies that dated back to the brief period when the writers were voting biennially, when eligibility windows were even longer, and when run-off elections were conducted if no candidate reached 75%. In fact, Medwick and Ruffing tied for the top spot with 72.6% in 1967, but in the second round of balloting featuring the top 30 candidates (31 actually, due to a tie), Ruffing outpolled Medwick, 86.9% to 81%, and got the lone spot. Medwick was the only candidate elected by the writers the following year.
Thanks for No Blanks
A total of 394 ballots were cast during this cycle, nine more than last year — which had the lowest total of ballots since 1983 — and 187 fewer than in 2011, when a record 581 ballots were cast. Tough times in media have shrunk the electorate, with the Hall of Fame’s 2015 decision to sunset honorary voters once they’re 10 years removed from active coverage playing a part as well. It’s all a reminder that it’s a privilege to participate in the process, one that shouldn’t be taken lightly, and for however off base you may think a given voter’s ballot is, their presence within the electorate is hard-earned.
This year’s 6.77 votes per ballot and 24.9% of voters using all 10 slots were both well within the range of what we’ve seen over the past half-dozen cycles:
| Year | Votes | Votes Per Ballot | All 10 | Elected | Blank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2012 | 573 | 5.10 | N/A | 1 | 9 |
| 2013 | 569 | 6.60 | 22% | 0 | 5 |
| 2014 | 571 | 8.39 | 50% | 3 | 1 |
| 2015 | 549 | 8.42 | 51% | 4 | 1 |
| 2016 | 440 | 7.95 | 41.6% | 2 | N/A |
| 2017 | 442 | 8.17 | 45.2% | 3 | 2 |
| 2018 | 422 | 8.46 | 50.0% | 4 | 1 |
| 2019 | 425 | 8.01 | 42.8% | 4 | 0 |
| 2020 | 397 | 6.61 | 20.5% | 2 | N/A |
| 2021 | 401 | 5.87 | 14.5% | 0 | 14 |
| 2022 | 394 | 7.11 | 33.8% | 1 | 6 |
| 2023 | 389 | 5.86 | 13.9% | 1 | 8 |
| 2024 | 385 | 7.00 | 24.4% | 3 | 0 |
| 2025 | 394 | 6.77 | 24.9% | 3 | 0 |
For the second year in a row, not a single voter returned a blank ballot, according to the BBWAA. Note that there are couple years above where the organization didn’t report whether any blanks were received, notably the ones where Griffey and Jeter just missed unanimity. Blanks do count in the denominator of the vote total and thus require three “yes” votes apiece to offset.
Everybody Gains… Except Torii
As was the case in my year-to-year comparisons of our crowdsourced balloting, every returning candidate except Torii Hunter received a higher share from the voters in 2025 than in ’24. Hunter fell by 2.2 points, and was one ballot away from slipping below 5%. Ten candidates did receive less than 5% and are ineligible for further consideration by the BBWAA, including two I voted for on the basis of their elite pitch framing metrics, Russell Martin and Brian McCann (ouch). Only three candidates were shut out, though one of them, Ben Zobrist, not only led his league in WAR once but also changed the way rosters were constructed. At the other end of the spectrum, three candidates posted double-digit gains, namely Pettitte, Beltrán, and Utley. With the exception of Wagner, all of the other gains amounted to less than five points:
| Player | YoB | Votes | 2025% | 2024% | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ichiro Suzuki | 1 | 393 | 99.7% | — | — |
| CC Sabathia | 1 | 342 | 86.8% | — | — |
| Billy Wagner | 10 | 325 | 82.5% | 73.8% | +8.7% |
| Carlos Beltrán | 3 | 277 | 70.3% | 57.1% | +13.2% |
| Andruw Jones | 8 | 261 | 66.2% | 61.6% | +4.7% |
| Chase Utley | 2 | 157 | 39.8% | 28.8% | +11.0% |
| Alex Rodriguez | 4 | 146 | 37.1% | 34.8% | +2.3% |
| Manny Ramirez | 9 | 135 | 34.3% | 32.5% | +1.8% |
| Andy Pettitte | 7 | 110 | 27.9% | 13.5% | +14.4% |
| Félix Hernández | 1 | 81 | 20.6% | — | — |
| Bobby Abreu | 6 | 77 | 19.5% | 14.8% | +4.7% |
| Jimmy Rollins | 4 | 71 | 18.0% | 14.8% | +3.2% |
| Omar Vizquel | 8 | 70 | 17.8% | 17.7% | +0.1% |
| Dustin Pedroia | 1 | 47 | 11.9% | — | — |
| Mark Buehrle | 5 | 45 | 11.4% | 8.3% | +3.1% |
| Francisco Rodríguez | 3 | 40 | 10.2% | 7.8% | +2.4% |
| David Wright | 2 | 32 | 8.1% | 6.2% | +1.9% |
| Torii Hunter | 5 | 20 | 5.1% | 7.3% | -2.2% |
| Ian Kinsler* | 1 | 10 | 2.5% | — | — |
| Russell Martin* | 1 | 9 | 2.3% | — | — |
| Brian McCann* | 1 | 7 | 1.8% | — | — |
| Troy Tulowitzki* | 1 | 4 | 1.0% | — | — |
| Curtis Granderson* | 1 | 3 | 0.8% | — | — |
| Adam Jones* | 1 | 3 | 0.8% | — | — |
| Carlos González* | 1 | 2 | 0.5% | — | — |
| Hanley Ramirez* | 1 | 0 | 0.0% | — | — |
| Fernando Rodney* | 1 | 0 | 0.0% | — | — |
| Ben Zobrist* | 1 | 0 | 0.0% | — | — |
I’ll have a look at every candidate’s performance in my next installment.
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.
Now give me a loogy … hall of meh
I would say I am relatively agnostic on the question of relievers in the hall compared to some on here, but calling Wagner a loogy is deranged. He is one of the handful of best per-inning pitchers in the history of the game!
But that’s partially because he pitched so few innings per outing. The best of the best are almost always used as starters. How would the top starters look per inning if they had been used as relievers?
For example:
Pitcher A: 2.31 ERA, 2.73 FIP. 903 innings
Pitcher B: 2.81 ERA, 3.03 FIP, 954 innings
Pitcher A is better, right? Expect Pitcher A was throwing 1.06 innings per outing whereas Pitcher B was throwing 7.11 innings per outing.
Pitcher A is obviously Wagner. Pitcher B is Felix Hernandez from 2009-2012.
Now granted, that’s a bit unfair to Wagner since I’m looking at his full career which includes ups and downs whereas I’ve included Felix’ best 4 consecutive year stretch. Still I think it’s interesting that the difference in outcome is relatively small whereas the difference in innings pitched per outing is enormous.
Don’t forget that Pitcher A was pitching in Houston and Philadelphia, while Pitcher B was in SafeCo.
Also, Felix never entered a game mid-inning, with runners on
fWAR says a pitcher who gives up a double then gets two strikeouts is more valuable than one who gets a double play.
RE24 says the pitcher who got the GIDP is more valuable.
Wagner rates above Félix in RE24, a counting stat, despite pitching 1/3 the innings.
Ichiro had a .900 OPS against the first ballot pitcher being inducted with him. That’s how friggen good he was
Embarrassing that Wagner made it, but hopefully he’s the last of the relievers. The next crop of Kimbrel, Chapman, etc is a ways off. Unfortunately it seems like voters have already created a space for relievers to have separate lesser standards.
Surprised Sabathia was 1st ballot, he’s a fringy HOFer snd it wasn’t long ago that the much better Mussina struggled for entry despite similar IP, wins.
Disappointed that Beltran couldn’t get in, I think he’s a low end HOFer and not someone I’m especially ecstatic about but he’s deservedly getting in next year or the year after and they should just get it over with and clear space.
Interesting that Ichiro and Jeter were near unanimous but not Beltre who was better w/ 3000 hits. Jeter’s a lowend fringy Hofer IMO and Ichiro’s not a HOF just by US stats, is only a HOF by historical significance and Japanese stats & even if he played his whole career he wouldn’t be an inner circle guy (like 80-90 WAR in 3000-3500 games probably so above average HOF but not elite). Neither guy was ever really an MVP type player or in argument for greatest all time. Wonder if Pujols is first unanimous hitter.
Hope Andruw Jones and Utley continue to gain they’re better candidates imo than Sabathia & Beltran by a decent bit.
Hate how many writers are in hangover mode from the mid 2010s backlog and cramming their ballots, including writers on this site. Even with the ped guys there aren’t 10 deserving hofers on the ballot. Too many people nowadays just go for everyone w/ 60 WAR and don’t stop to look whether the guy was anything more than a good compiler.
Mussina was a deserving HOF but those guys who talked about not voting for players who never seemed like best in the league had the right idea even if they had bad methods for evaluating players. Bobby Abreu was one of my favorite players when I was younger and I liked Andy Pettitte but come on man.
Relievers are part of the game, there should be a benchmark for excellence for them on what merits Hall Consideration, much like Designated Hitters. Clearly Edgar Martinez and David Ortiz belong and now they’ve set the standard. Likewise I don’t think Hoffman/Mariano/Wagner is a bad standard to set on the reliever end, and I don’t see the bar being lowered too much from them given Wagner’s struggles to get inducted.
Relievers are a really important part of the game.
I do wonder if there is an argument that could be made in great relievers, like Wagner’s, favour. We all know reliever performance is very volatile. How many guys have a great season in the bullpen, and then were ineffective the following season, and get released? Loads, happens all the time.
But Wagner’s career? Very rare. He had one season with an ERA- above 100. One. His 2nd worse season by ERA- was 72. He was consistently great, at a position were often the only consistent thing is the inconsistency of their performance.
I do agree it should be very hard for relievers to make the hall – they just pitch so few innings – however the very best of them do belong. Having a long, consistently great career as a reliever is incredibly rare, and I think that shows that what Wagner accomplished is incredibly difficult.
Yep – paraphrasing what someone in the Athletic comment section said, Wagner’s case has become a lot more straightforward now it’s become clear that Kimbrel, Chapman, and even Jansen aren’t going to catch him.
For that matter, I wouldn’t bet on any of those three to catch Joe Nathan.
Joe Nathan, another sure-fire Hall of Famer.
Fact that no one’s pounding the table for Joe Nathan to make the Hall would be the point, my guy.
But sure, let’s go with HoF comparisons.
RE24 is my preferred relief metric, because it’s the only historically available value measure that accounts for inherited runners.
(Tango’s Batting and Pitching “Run Value” numbers on Statcast use RE288, which includes the count)
Wagner is as far ahead of Hoffman as Hoffman is ahead of Keith Foulke.
Wagner is as far ahead of Smith as Smith is ahead of Kimbrel.
Oh…and Wagner’s also ahead of Gossage, despite pitching literally half as many innings.
Everyone’s a part of the game, that doesn’t mean everyone gets in.
I don’t really care at all about the HOF, I care about it as a reference for how people view player value, so if the logic is truly that there’s just an entirely different measure by which we’re going to value some players despite valuing many other players at the same position and every player at every other position by about the same measure then that’s fine. Don’t see the logic but so be it.
But I’m pretty sure there are a lot of guys who argue that relievers were as valuably as starters over their career, which just isn’t true. I think that’s the main motivation behind the big jump in support for relievers.
With all due respect to Jay Jaffe, you can see this in his article where he comes to the inevitable conclusion that Wagner doesn’t warrant entry by even traditional reliever standards then brings in junk stats like WPA & shit to argue he actually does. Same w/ people talking about his rate stats even though running a 3.5 ERA in 2500 IP saves way more runs then a 2.3 in 900. If you think 25 WAR in 1000 innings is the bar for reliever entry just say so, don’t muddy the waters of player evaluation.
You sure seemed to care when you typed out your previous comment.
Are you incapable of reading full sentences?
Are you incapable of writing a logical sentence? You completely contradicted yourself by saying you didn’t care “at all” while also saying you do care as a reference for player value.
I don’t care about the votes or elections themselves, I care about what they say about how people evaluate players. I don’t care about the sanctity of the hall.
I see why there are so many comments–one smoothbrain.
Citation desperately needed
Relievers aren’t as technically valuable, but they are just as important as starters when constructing a modern winning roster.
(For argument’s sake, the same is not true for bench players, who would be starters if they were good enough. However, while some failed starters do become relievers, the same cannot be said for the BEST relief pitchers, not counting guys like Eckersley and Smoltz who transitioned for non-performance related reasons, who have a significantly different skillset than starting pitchers.)
Every so often in the postseason, it happens that one of the best teams in baseball is at the end of a series (often the world series), in an absolute must win game, and the manager has a choice, put in the closer (the best short reliever the team has), or put in his ace on short rest.
Most managers seem to go with the ace on short rest, sometimes for multiple innings, because it WORKS, the ace is simply a MUCH better pitcher than even the best reliever. Not all relievers are failed starters, but every starter can move to the bullpen and be a good reliever, and any ace could move to the bullpen and be a topflight reliever, teams don’t do that because starters are more valuable, and the position is PITCHER, and starters are the best pitchers.
Until we start putting EVERY playoff team’s number 1 starter into the hall, I’ll maintain that very, very few relievers should be in.
And yet Wagner (a former top starting prospect) was pretty firmly a better relief ace than Smoltz, during the latter’s years in the pen.
But also! I’m perfectly fine with putting in every player who spent ~15 years as a contender’s top starter – that’s an incredibly impressive run of sustained excellence!
By the way, take a look at the teams doing that – they tend not to have had bona fide relief aces.
No one has ever mistaken Byung Hyung Kim and Sergio Romo for Jonathan Papelbon, much less Billy Wagner.
They can only do that BECAUSE it’s a do or die game, and sometimes it doesn’t work due to him being on short rest or being unused to relieving. They can’t act like that in the regular season and expect to win enough games to make the playoffs in the first place.
The idea that any successful starter can move to the bullpen and continue being successful is absolutely false! While many starters can or could make the transition, there are also many who can’t.
Also, while the closer may not be a better pitcher than the team’s best starter, he’s still generally the second or third best pitcher on the team. In the case of the best relievers who are worthy of the Hall of Fame, they usually are the best pitcher on the team including all of the starters, unless he just so happens to be teammates with an even better Hall of Fame pitcher.
Individual relievers aren’t as valuable or as important. Importance and value are the same thing.
Relievers would be starters if they were good enough. Their skillset isn’t identical to starters but is less valuable than starters. Look how many teams try to shift even successful relievers to the rotation.
Career relievers rarely if ever started.
Wagner’s entire career was as a closer.
And quite a few college pitchers are getting slotted as closers to get them to the show fast.
And, as a matter of fact, the shortage of healthy dominant pitchers has led to SF and Atlanta both taking good relievers into the rotation with good results. So the narrative that good relievers can’t start fails the recency test.
The analogy with DH is the best way to look at closers; not all DHs are incapable of fielding but often the team prefers to deploy them as such even if they can do a reasonable job in the field. Likewise with closers.
Roster construction is about putting the players where they can do the most for the team, *as constructed*.
Basically every team in the history of baseball would select a 4-5 WAR SP over a 2 WAR RP. Relievers are almost exclusively pitchers teams aren’t confident would make good starters.
Not to enter in the middle of an inning with men on base in a close game, though…which is an out WAR (by design!) treats as identical to pitching from the windup with the bases clean.
It depends on their needs. If they already have a good rotation led by a couple of 3-4 WAR starters but don’t have quite as good of a bullpen, then they absolutely would take that reliever.
Yes, they won’t make good starters, but the best relievers are still better or just as good of pitchers as most starters BECAUSE they’re relievers while filling just as important of a role.
In an age when starters rarely make it to the seventh inning, deep bullpens and shut down closers are the difference between the playoffs and an early winter vacation.
Only if they already have a good bullpen.
Do you have a favorite team?
Ever see what a bad bullpen does to a season and a team that regularly fights for 8 innings only to see the pen burn it all down with a pitch or two?
You are absolutely wrong, as those two words are simply NOT synonymous in terms of team sports!
No, they wouldn’t, since most relievers can’t pitch that many innings each game every 5 games. However, most starters wouldn’t be able to pitch mostly clean innings one to two innings at a time with appearances around every one in three games and often n back-to-back games.
They are simply different roles with different skillsets, but as long as managers insist on not overusing their starters (as they shouldn’t), both roles are both almost equally important for actually winning games.
Only certain relievers with the right skillset are ever considered to be converted to a starter and almost never the team’s closer / best reliever. It’s also only rarely attempted.
Utility infielders and backup catchers are also part of the game, but they should not be inducted into the HOF. Relievers are failed starters. We can appreciate their accomplishments and marvel at the ridiculous stats they’re able to rack up in single-inning appearances where they don’t have to worry about a diversity of offerings or preserving their stamina, but we shouldn’t pretend that they’re part of the same conversation as CC Sabathia, let alone Tom Seaver.
The BEST relievers are NOT failed starters. In the modern game, they are two significantly different skillsets.
Well, let’s start with the relievers who have already been inducted–all those guys are failed starters. Deliberately developing pitchers as relievers started later. Some failed in the minors and reached the majors as full-time relievers, and some failed in the majors and got converted. Rivera started 10 games in his rookie season and was overall lousy before finding immediate success upon transitioning to the bullpen.
Now, as to modern conditions…my contention is that every pitcher who is able to maintain an MLB rotation slot over multiple seasons would be an extremely successful one-inning reliever, because they can refine their arsenal and also throw max effort. We can see occasional examples of this…look at Andrew Miller, who was a mediocre SP who became one of the best RPs in the league. So while it’s fair to say that there are significantly different skillsets, the reliever skillset is a limited, inferior version of the starter skillset. (I am not saying that no relievers can start–sometimes a player is not given a fair initial opportunity, or their skills improve after their debut and they become capable of pitching well enough to start.)
Tom Seaver could have saved 600 games, but Mariano Rivera could never have struck out 3000 batters.
Do you know a great example of a reliever who came up as an SP prospect and never failed as a starter, but was deemed too valuable to take out of the pen over a 15 year run of sustained excellence?
That’s a stupid question, since they would most likely just be brought up a RP prospect instead. As such, they were always successful relievers rather than failed starters.
Oh, I’m referencing someone very specific, here.
Short lefty – ended up in the Hall.
Andrew Miller is a good example of the “failed starter, relief ace” type. However, I think you are down playing how good Wagner was, for how long.
Peak Miller manager a four season stretch, 2014 to 2017, where his ERA- was below 54. That was Billy Wagner’s career average.
If you look at the leaderboard for 2014-2017, min 100IP, sorted by ERA-, it is full of guys who had a dominant run for a few years, but they couldn’t keep it going for anywhere near as long as Wagner did. Maybe the guy in 8th place, Kenley Jansen, might make the Hall, but we’ll see.
Oh, there is one starting pitcher in the top ten. Clayton Kershaw, from 2014 to 2017, had an ERA- of 52. I think he’s got a shot of HoF induction one day.
And that is why Wagner is headed to Cooperstown; 15 years as good as other good closer’s five year peak.
Sustained excellence at a hard job.
No, they aren’t. Eckersley and Smoltz were good starters, while almost the rest were never failures at all, BECAUSE they developed as career relievers instead.
Being able to pitch well while refining your arsenal and throwing at max effort IS one of the skills that a good reliever possesses. Many starters can’t actually do that. A reliever is also generally better than a starter at getting strikeouts, pitching with runners on base, entering a game with runners on base, entering later in a game, and pitching more often in short stints. Ground ball specialists are better than most starters at getting ground balls. Lefty relievers are better than even most left starters at getting lefty hitters out. That is not a limited nor inferior skillset and one that many starters CAN’T duplicate.
Tom Seaver most likely could not have saved 600 games.
I really dislike the “relivers are failed starters” argument as to why relivers shouldn’t be in the HoF.
Most position players start off at premium defensive positions. Are we not going to vote for Miggy Cabrera because he is a “failed” shortstop? Or Bryce Harper because he is a “failed” catcher? David Ortiz failed at first base!
If they failed so hard that they became part time players who only actually appeared in 1/3 of the games (like relievers) absolutely they would not get HoF votes. That is not even remotely debatable.
You are quite literally making the other guys point without even realizing it lol.
Just wait til you find out what fraction of games that starters appear in – those guys should never make the hall!! (Apparently?!)
So we have gone from saying switching positions = being a reliver to “starters barely play either”. You realize a SP will face more batters in a year than most guys have PA’s right?
This just keeps getting dumber lol.
I’m not saying switching positions is the same as changing from a starter to a relief pitcher.
What I am said was I really dislike the argument “relievers failed at starter, so shouldn’t be in the HoF”. I think “relief pitchers pitch so few innings, and that should be held against them as HoF candidates” is a perfectly valid argument.
When discussing the HoF, the defensive position a position player plays is essential to their case. No one is making the argument that Ozzie Smith isn’t a HoF because he didn’t hit like Edger Martinez. Likewise, the greatest ever defensive 1st baseman isn’t getting in if he ran a 90wRC+, like Smith.
And, yes, we do realise that SPs tend to (still) have more batters faced than hitters will have PAs… but that wasn’t the argument you made in your first reply. Your argument was that relivers only play in a 1/3 of the games… (and how can you not be pedantic about the baseball HoF?)
Oh my god dude, obviously he was talking about relative playing time (relievers at 1000IP vs SP’s at 3000IP).
You must be fun at parties
Ichiro, notably, won an MVP award.
And Steve Bedrosian won a CY. You obviously know what I’m saying. I was even going to add that qualification but figured people on this site were smart enough to get what I meant.
Bedrosian didn’t win anything else save for a single Rolaids Relief Award, while Ichiro also won 10 Gold Gloves, 3 Silver Sluggers, 2 Batting Titles, and 2001 AL Rookie of the Year.
So what? Bedrosian wasn’t a CY caliber player despite winning a CY, and Ichiro was never really an MVP type player despite winning one. He was a great player obviously but was more a perennial AS than an MVP. Best fWAR season was 7.1, then a bunch of 5-6 WAR seasons.
Not putting him down just stating a fact.
A wrong fact! Ichiro was absolutely an MVP caliber player. His MVP was fully deserved with Top 10 finishes in 3 other seasons.
A 5-6 WAR season IS MVP level in many years, and he even had a 9.2 WAR season by bWAR.
I stopped reading after “Jeter’s a lowend fringy HoFer”. By just about any metric, he’s one of the best shortstops of all time. It’s a very weird take, but one I’ve seen before. My guess is it’s people who read headlines (like “Derek Jeter is bad at defense”) but don’t actually read the articles or look at the numbers themselves.
Like if you want to construct a new museum/club that only has the top 3 players at each position of all time, be my guest. But that’s not what the hall of fame is or ever has been. And Derek Jeter is such an obvious no-brainer HOFer by any standard that’s rooted in what the HOF actually is.
This/that is basically a view that the Hall should have only 75-100 players.
Though it’s weird to then argue for Jones, Beltran, and Utley who aren’t on par with Jeter and Ichiro.
Beltran’s comparable to Jeter IMO.
Ichiro’s better but is an extreme longevity vs peak guy with Japanese stats factored in. Also he’s a clear HOF especially w/ historical significance. Not sure how a 50 WAR in 2500 game guy is a HOFer otherwise.
Jeter’s at 30 WAA, Utley’s at 40. 35.8 WAA in 9758 PAs predecline vs Utley 43.6 in 6183. Over that frame Jeter WAR per 162 games: 5.2 WAR per 745 PAs, Utley 4.9 WAA per 698 PAs.
I think there should be like 10-15 HOFers per position, maybe a bit more for some positions. Calling Jeter fringy was excessive, I meant that he’s in the bottom third of players I think should be in. He’s not the last guy I’d vote for.
Haha, talk about cherry picking stats to make an objectively bad argument
What did I cherrypick?
I disagree with the “he shouldn’t be in” assessment in every case from the contrarian poster. I like that’s there a contrarian view. It’s important to see commentary from someone who disagrees with the majority. However, the acidity of the words drowns out the merits, which I feel are incorrectly applied, of the arguments.
With rancor and ugliness pretty much everywhere else on line, I’m hoping fangraphs will be a place where people can disagree in a kind, thoughtful manner.
So once the Hall hits 10-15 per position they should just close up shop? Stop holding elections? Every player that comes after that point has no chance of having a better career?
No, obviously that’s not what I meant.
No but if someone new gets in the top 10-15 guy, the bottom guy gets the boot! Or #14 and #15 have to mud wrestle in a “loser leaves town” match
(presumably)
Is Ichiro an ‘extreme longevity’ guy though? If Ichiro retired after 2010 (his 10th MLB season and the end of his time as an above average regular) he’d have accrued 2200 career hits and 53 fWAR. He’d still be a HoFer.
The 3K MLB hits was due to longevity and coupled with additional context (Japanese star, ROTY, MVP, GGs, batting titles, all-star, etc.) makes him a first ballot guy, but he’s still getting in at some point if he retires after 2010 since sufficient supporting context was accrued by that point.
Utley’s absolute peak was higher than Ichiro’s (5 seasons of 7+ fWAR), but they both accrued 90%+ of their career value and were above average regulars over the same length of time (age 26-35 for Utley vs. 27-36 for Ichiro) during which they accrued comparable value (57.8 vs. 53.3 fWAR). If Utley is a peak over longevity guy, I don’t really see how Ichiro is an ‘extreme longevity’ guy, unless you’re basing his entire candidacy on his 3K hits.
I’m accounting for his Japanese career, which I believe people are doing when they say he should’ve been unanimous. If he was in the big leagues his entire career he’d probably have had a 15+ year stretch of heathy 5 WAR seasons but no huge 8+ WAR seasons.
Regarding which, his 9 bWAR season was clearly a fluke w/ outlier dWAR and not representative of his actual performance that year. His 7 fWAR’s more accurate IMO.
So MLB career alone he’s worse than Utley, Japan+MLB wise he’s better but still not an alltime great inner circle guy.
Lol – love the “Ichiro’s one season that doesn’t fit my narrative is obviously a fluke” argument
I knew someone was going to say this.
I didn’t say it doesn’t fit my narrative. WAR uses defensive stats which are subject to fluctuations and mostly stabilize over large sample sizes. bWAR’s defensive stats are especially bad with this.
Ichiro’s 9 bWAR season is largely on the back of extreme outlier defensive stats. His fWAR for that same season was 7.1. He likely wasn’t actually a 9 WAR player is my point, regardless of the listed bWAR for that season.
There’s a difference between a unanimous selection and an inner circle HoFer though. Unanimous just means “yeah, based on all the context we have, there is no disagreement that this guy is a HoFer.”
Mariano isn’t an inner circle HoFer and he’s the only unanimous selection. Being unanimous, first ballot just means there’s unanimous agreement the guy is a HoFer. Fun fact: No current inner circle HoFer was a unanimous selection.
And regarding Ichiro vs. Utley. Sure, Utley had a more valuable career than Ichiro by WAR, but it’s not the “Hall of Stats,” it’s the Hall of Fame. Ichiro was an enormous figure in baseball culturally and a large part of his first ballot, near unanimous selection is recognition of that alongside his MLB stats. I don’t think anyone here is arguing that Ichiro is an inner circle HoFer, you’re equating two concepts that aren’t equivalent.
And just a piece of unsolicited advice, if you often find yourself saying things like “that’s obviously not what I meant” over and over it’s almost definitely a reflection of how you’re communicating and not a reflection of everybody else’s ability to interpret you.
ICHIRO’S JAPANESE STATS DON’T FREAKING COUNT. How many other players debuted at 28 yrs old and got 3000 hits. I’ll wait. For a guy who knows nothing about baseball and claims not to care, you certainly have demonstrated your HOF troll status.
Yeah he’s certainly one of the best of all time at getting hits. I wouldn’t think most people on this site would consider that a compelling argument for HoF entrance though, or justification for obvious unanimous enshrinement.
For members of the 3,000 hit club? Yes, that alone is good enough for most fans and voters, even on Fangraphs. That is such a hard number to reach and ties in pretty closely with so many other offensive stats that anyone who gets there can be assumed to have had a Hall-worthy career based on his hitting alone.
For example, Ichiro’s career numbers also include a slash of .311/.355/.402 with 362 Doubles, 96 Triples, and 1,420 Runs Scored.
That’s even before considering his baserunning and defense, which were also both excellent and then pushed his candidacy into inner circle status with a chance at unanimity.
Harold Baines was 150 hits away from I’m pretty sure most here would agree that tacking on one more peak year to his career doesn’t make him a HoF worthy guy.
There’s a strong correlation between 3,000+ hits and HoF level of career offense. But it’s absolutely not a guarantee.
Ichiro is absolutely at least a borderline guy just based on MLB numbers. But we have good stats which account for all the production you’re talking about, and those stats don’t argue deserving lock either.
For example, I think it’s pretty hard to argue that Ichiro helped his MLB teams more than Utley, and Utley is probably going to make it, but he was considered borderline for a long time (might still be)
Ichiro isn’t an inner circle HoFer, but Ichiro’s place in baseball culture gives him an enormous boost that, alongside his borderline MLB stats, made him a HoF lock.
If he hadn’t disgraced himself gambling, would Pete Rose belong in the HOF? Pretty much all he did was get singles.
(Career ISO .106)
He wasn’t particularly good in the field, either.
Turns out getting hits is pretty valuable.
Whodathunk.
The argument is clearly not that it’s impossible to build a HoF case primarily on singles. It’s that having a large number of singles doesn’t automatically guarantee induction. It’s only part of the overall career production.
This one is kind of moot because when you have 80 career WAR you’re getting in the HoF unless you’re blackballed.
It’s wild to look at but from age 24 to 38 Rose was never worth fewer than 3.4 fWAR in a season and never had a wRC+ lower than 118 in the same span. For being the hit king, he actually walked at a pretty high clip and is a sneaky 2nd all-time in career doubles.
I don’t actually hate the idea of a separate “Inner Circle” at the Hall for the best 100. But that means removing guys who are passed, which would never happen.
The old Bill Simmons Pyramid idea with levels..Interesting & fun to talk about, but, pretty hard to actually do in reality.
Logistics, the politics of bumping people up/down would make the current HOF arguments look tame.
100 is way too many for an inner circle IMO. We’re talking the top handful of players from a given generation. Guys who have an argument to be the greatest player during their era for multiple seasons. Just going down the career WAR list it doesn’t take long to start questioning whether someone deserves ‘inner circle status.’
By RA/9 WAR Billy Wagner is the third best reliever of all time. Only Rivera and Gossage were better. He absolutely deserves to be in.
I don’t think Goose Gossage belongs in either.
LOL. I’m not a Jeter apologist, but saying he’s a “low-end fringey HOFer” has to be one of the worst takes ever seen in the comments here, which is really saying something.
3400 hits and 73 WAR is not fringey. He’s 6th among SS.
Okay, well just looking at WAR without accounting for playing time or peak or anything else is a dumb way to measure career value.
He grades out to very close to average HoF SS by JAWS, but you have to get down to #104 (Michael Young) to find one with lower dWAR.
I suppose the argument I could see might be that he was one of the best offensive short stops of all time (oWAR), but his defense was so far down that it might suggest that he was miscast as a SS?
I think he’s a HOF, but he’s like the 13th best SS of all time once/if Lindor puts up another great season or otherwise caps his career off well and is the last SS I’d absolutely vote for on merit alone. I’d vote for Ernie Banks for historical significance and maybe on merit and maybe Ozzie Smith but that’s probably it.
Yes, peak should also be considered, but WAR is a counting stat, so it DOES account for playing time or longevity.
Ichiro had over 3,000 hits and won a truckload of awards after coming to the U.S., including MVP. He is absolutely a Hall of Famer by his MLB credentials alone.
Weird to say the best modern players have “lesser standards.” Based on what? Whitey Ford would be lucky to get a cup of coffee in today’s MLB based on his actual pitching ability. There’s no way of describing the position that we should just stop electing starting pitchers other than astonishingly stupid.
I don’t think they have lesser standards, not sure where I said that.
I stopped reading that guy’s comments, but I did downvote them all.
Relievers are both vastly overrated from a quality perspective and tremendously important to the game.
Either way, the Hall has been opened to them, and Wagner is (much) better than a few peers who have already been enshrined. He raises the average quality of relievers in the Hall, rather than lowering it. I personally would be fine if he was the floor, but he’s not, so he should be in.
What will be less exciting is the next batch of relievers.
What is embarassing is how you wrote so many words showing the world how little you know about baseball history.
“next year’s slate, which lacks any candidate likely to be honored in his first year; Cole Hamels and Ryan Braun head that class”
That is, uh, quite the understatement 😀
Following up on that – with three candidates elected this year and a historically weak crop of first time eligibles, we should see Beltran sail in and possibly Andruw as well; and perhaps considerable bumps for Pettitte and Utley again.
If Utley’s going to gain a ton of ground next year is the year to do it.
Votes per ballot pushed back below 7 this year, I would fully expect that to be below 6 next year.
Spitballing but could be way lower than that. Ichiro, Sabathia, and Wagner got 2.7 votes per ballot. There’s not a new player worth voting for though I don’t think that class will average 0.0. So we’re talking about people who voted for 10 and would have voted for more, plus some people who flip after many years. Might be really close to 5.
If this many people managed to convince themselves to vote for Felix, Hamels should have no problem sticking around.
He’s Pettitte with a peak.
I think Hamels will possibly stick around on the ballot but don’t expect him to approach Felix’s vote share from this year
We’ll see – he’s just a much better candidate by every measure other than “Who had a better career year?”
Alas, I suspect many people are going to find a way to vote for Felix (and Pettitte) but not Hamels. Teh Fame goes a long way.
Hamels has that ‘08 postseason run (NLCS MVP+WS MVP) and plunking Harper…also, he has more career Ks and a higher ERA+ than Felix/Petitte/Buehrle.
I honestly think/hope the folks handwringing about the “Modern SP Standard” will be all aboard the Hamels train once they take a proper look at the numbers next offseason and realize how well he stacks up next to Sabathia…particularly with Hernandez as a reference point.
He stack up well to Sabathia by bWAR (62 to 59). But by most other measures (including fWAR, where it’s 66.5 to 51.6), he falls well short, which is why Sabathia is in and Hamels will not be.
Oh, he certainly won’t be first ballot…but I think you’re underestimating how much voters want a “modern model” of a HoF SP.
And, much more importantly, how thoroughly HoF Voters who have heard of FanGraphs agree with the FanGraphs’ glossary on the efficacy of fWAR in evaluating career performance, namely that:
“FIP and other DIPS metrics are generally better at predicting things in smaller samples, while in the long-run RA9 tends to be the best. ”
The rest of the analytical crowd just uses JAWS…which has Hamels a hair behind CC and well ahead of Félix/Pettitte/Buehrle.
If you think Jayson Stark is mad for Jimmy Rollins, wait till you see what he does for an actual borderline guy.
Eh, I know you’re not in favor of the fWAR/FIP model for careers, but many are and Felix is clearly (imo) better off there.
Felix also has the better ERA- peak (3 full years below 60 while Hamels’ lowest was 68)
Sure, I’m just quoting the FanGraphs Glossary on the appropriate usage of FIP and RA9-WAR, my friend.
I expect voters to take fWAR gap between Félix and Hamels every bit as seriously as they have Andy Pettitte’s similar advantage over Tom Glavine, CC Sabathia, and Zack Greinke.
The next two slates are rather weak, and 2027 has only Albert Pujols and Yadier Molina as a stone-cold lock. I could see the next couple of years being lean for inductees (unless the committees vote to include more past players).
Everyone says Molina is a lock, so I guess he is, but he feels much more borderline. A HOFer is a HOFer, so maybe marking him as a borderline candidate is unfair, but if he was on the ballot this year, I think he would be below Andruw Jones in the vote count.
Here’s to Yadi’s 42 rWAR getting him a bunch of STL votes.
STL voters think he gets 100%.
I think the fact that McCann and Martin didn’t manage 5% between is possibly a bad sign for Molina. Yes, Molina ranks the highest out of the three by fWAR and bWAR (they all are much lower in bWAR, but Molina takes the smallest hit, and McCann really doesn’t do well in bWAR, only 32, while Molina has 42). Martin actually has a higher WAA than Molina – and that’s using baseball reference, so doesn’t including framing.
Perhaps the narratives will pull Molina through, but I do think his case would’ve helped by having Martin and McCann remaining on the ballot. Are those voters who thought those two weren’t even worth a second consideration going to think Molina, who isn’t obviously a better candidate, intangible narratives aside.
Hall. Of. Fame.
Molina has the reputation and, as far as modern catchers go, the numbers. He might even go first ballot.
Like CC he has the narrative on his side.
Yeah, I think you’re probably right.
Unlike CC, his only statistical case is built on a premise the writers rejected wholesale this year.
What’s narrative did Martin and McCann bring to the ballot?
I just said it’s not just the numbers.
The voters like the guys with a story.
I think that’s partially true but not completely true. Molina will appeal to traditional voters in a way that McCann and Martin didn’t.
If you look at Bill James HOF Monitor – which is a good measure of what traditional voters value – here’s how they rank:
Molina: 169
McCann: 84
Martin: 54
A score of 100 is considered a likely HOFer. Molina is clearly above the threshold for traditional voters whereas McCann is a bit below it and Martin isn’t close.
The question for Molina is how will non-traditional voters view him. They clearly rejected Martin and McCann and might do the same with Molina.
We do have a recent example of this happening. Omar Vizquel has a HOF Monitor score of 120. Traditional voters loved him but the non-traditional ones thankfully kept him out of the HOF.
They also kept Jack Morris (123 HOF Monitor) out of the HOF until the Eras committee intervened.
Posey’s election will change that tho. I agree Molina is not a slam dunk (and I am a huge Cards fan) but he will get in, likely on Albert’s coattails and a “well, he did more than Posey.”
I don’t see him as a HOF player.
Molina is a borderline candidate who is also a HOF lock.
The 2026 ballot at least has Buster Posey set to debut.
As for the 2027 ballot, Molina should get in, but he’s far from a lock to make it on his first ballot.
I think the narrative of Molina and Pujols being inducted together will push Yadi over the top on his first ballot. I’m not entirely sold on his Hall-worthiness (and I’m a lifelong Cards fan), but catchers are underrepresented (along with 3B) in general, and other than Posey he’s probably the best of the bunch from the past ~30 years or so.
They said the same about Sabathia.
The voters are media so the narrative matters. The same thing keeping juicers and jerks out helps others.
Look beyond the numbers, especially in lean years.
Molina is no sure thing. His 96 ops+ shows the kind of hitter he was. His defense was similar to McCann and Martin. I wouldn’t vote for him.
He was a catcher.
How many catchers muster 96 ops+ over 2200 games and over 18000 innings?
Judge him as a career catcher not a 1B.
Martin managed a 101 and McCann managed a 110….
In 25% less innings as a catcher.
That Mariano Rivera remains the only unanimous election of the Hall says everything I need to know about the BBWAA
And yet somehow they do a better job than the Veterans/Eras committees….
I don’t understand this garbage about non-unanimity. What is the issue with the collective consciousness that we need to “reserve” unanimity for almost no one? How is Derek Jeter (as much as I, a Mets fan, hate him) not a unanimous selection? How is Ichiro not a unanimous selection? Who decides, “Ichiro? Nah, not a Hall of Famer.”?!?!?!
Can someone explain this to me? I know there are several HoF voters on staff here at Fangraphs. Do writers talk about this before they vote? Does someone potentially not check a box out of protest? Do they feel like, “Well, Ichiro is going to get selected, so I’ll instead use my vote on David Wright to ensure he gets the 5% he needs to stay on the ballot”?
I really don’t understand how anyone could not vote for Ichiro, and I want to understand why this might happen.
Writers have indeed explained omissions in the past by reference to this kind of strategic voting, it’s really the only acceptable explanation I’ve heard (and highlights the stupidity of the 10-player maximum in the first place).
And yet, strategic voting was not in play this year. Unless they wanted CarGO and the like to hang around.
Even getting to 8 was a reach.
That’s your hof. I saw more than 10 this year to vote for. Everyone has their own idea of the Hof in their head. For some Rollins , Beltre, walker , mussina are not good enough over the years. For others Pedroia and Wright should be in .
No chance it’s strategic voting. If you have 11 names, maybe you feel compelled to vote for Wagner, Sabathia and Beltran who might need the vote. But then you have 7 spots to fill with either Ichiro or guys who aren’t getting elected and aren’t getting close.
Could be an accidental omission. Could be someone who doesn’t think anyone should be unanimous. Could be someone with a super high standard for “first ballot” Hall of Fame. Could be someone with a ballot who doesn’t really follow baseball and think Ichiro was just a singles hitter who wasn’t very good. Basically it’s nonsense or spite.
I think it may be strategic voting. That’s a good call. I’d like to think that it’s not some crazy, fanatical purist who doesn’t think anyone should be unanimous or a first-ballot hall-of-famer. That’s ridiculous to hold yourself as so important that you deny that right to others. Also, if Jeter and Ichiro aren’t first-ballot Hall-of-Famers, then what in Ruth’s name do you have to do to become one!?
Be Ohtani?
That’ll be an interesting vote one day!
“No chance” seems way too strong.
I would vote for PED guys, so that already gets me to 8: Ichiro, Beltran, Wagner, Arod, Manny, Utley, CC, Andruw. If I wanted to vote for Pettitte and Abreu (which I don’t but isn’t unreasonable), I can’t vote for anyone else to try to keep them on, like Felix, the two catchers, Wright, etc.
Knowing Ichiro is definitely getting in would mean choosing between him being unanimous (which is silly and no one cares about) and keeping a guy on that might otherwise fall off.
A reach, knowing the bulk of the voters won’t ever consider known juicers.
That’s not strategic. At best messaging, at worst posturing.
It could be someone who doesn’t care if a player gets 75 or 100 % . But does care that Russell Martin stays on the ballot because he was as good as Yadi was . In fact many writers have said this in the past. It’s on the HOF for limiting the ballot to 10. If that wasn’t the case you would see a few more 100% guys .
Very good point – thank you for explaining this. This lessens my outrage a bit.
The one that gets me is Aaron. Just finished reading Posnanski’s book The Baseball 100. Aaron missed by 9 votes: The HR and RBI King himself wasn’t unanimous. One voter voted with a ballot that only included Luis Aparicio, as some kind of statement about Latin American players. Weird and frustrating but… eh, whatever.
Being unanimous is not an *achievement* of some kind. It depends on people’s (writers) behavior and has nothing to do with a player’s deservingness. We should not get worked up about it. Ichiro is in, Aaron is in. Mays and Ruth and Rivera are all just…in.
This is maybe counter-intuitive, but I wonder if the Hall process would benefit from less transparency, not more. Instead of publishing vote totals each year, it should just be “Yes” they crossed the 75% threshold or “No” they didn’t, and “Yes” they are on the ballot next year or “No” they aren’t.
Then instead of worrying about 5 or 10 votes that are exactly why we have a 75% threshold and not a 99% threshold, we could just talk about how good Ichiro was.
I agree, although with Aaron, racism was likely involved.
I totally agree that it’s not an achievement. What it makes me question is the right of that voter to BE a voter if they aren’t going to vote for an obvious shoe-in like Jeter or Ichiro. If you don’t vote for them to be in the Hall, then really, what are you doing with a precious HoF vote?
A message voter.
It happens.
And how is Mariano Rivera of all people the only player immune from this?
He was good to the media.
Rivera was outstanding, yes. More outstanding than Hank Aaron? Than Ken Griffey, Jr.? Than Willie Mays?
Just randomly happened that year. Again, it’s not an achievement. I think Rivera should be a Yes vote for everyone. A lot of guys should be. But the last few votes to get to 100… It’s just random luck that nobody decided to do something strange.
Well, it’s not a “collective” decision. It’s just one person.
Right, but I would imagine that several people consider “I want to vote for X player to keep them over the 5% threshold and thus withhold my vote from a deserving no-doubter like Ichiro” but I would imagine that they talk in an unofficial context and must say, “I’m leaning toward not voting for Ichiro” – not to suggest collusion, of course, but I’m sure conversations happen, and some voters have an idea of the way that other voters are leaning, and thus Voter A can say, “I think Voter B is going to not vote for Ichiro, so I don’t need to make my statement vote because Voter B is going to.”
I don’t think this is an organized thing, I just think it’s human nature to figure out who likes which players when conversations are had (every day, every year) about people’s HoF candidacy.
Ben Zobrist isn’t a Hall of Famer, but he’s on a par with Vizquel (on the field), Pedroia, and Hunter.
Given how he changed the game and has the biggest hit in Cubs history and a World Series MVP, I’d argue he has a better case, i.e. similar stats with more fame, than any of those.
He might be the best player in MLB history to get 0 votes.
I can see him sticking on the ballot, but I wouldn’t say he is more popular than those guys
He got less than 5% (0%, actually), so he is not staying on the ballot
Better than Pete Rose?
For the <5% crowd, tough to top Kenny Lofton (3.2%) in his only year on the ballot
Johan and Edmonds are there, too – Brown’s enough of an obvious steroid guy to make me not as annoyed about that one.
I was thinking about Edmonds too – didn’t pass 2000 hits, but hopefully gets an extended look with the Veterans Committee. Santana is an interesting case – great peak, though likely doesn’t have the longevity. Will join Bret Saberhagen, Felix Hernandez, David Cone in the hall of very good.
Y’all gotta stop putting Felix in that tier, haha – he only had 4 years with an ERA+ over 125.
Roy Oswalt had 7.
Saberhagen had 6, Stieb had 7, Cone had 8, and Johan had 9.
Felix just played in SafeCo and the AL West in the years of unbalanced schedules, so his 121 ERA+ came with a shiny 3.04 ERA.
I forgot how good Roy Oswalt was. If he played another 5 years, I bet he would have been a HOF. Either way, Stieb, Cone, Johan, and Saberhagen deserve second looks at the HOF. Johan for sure…similar to the Buster Posey case. Short career but all peak.
Shit, give him another three.
Really glad Sale (6 ERA+>125 seasons) is getting out of that purgatory.
Agreed that some people overrate Felix but 4 125 ERA+ years is underselling him. Interestingly FG’s RA/9 WAR is higher on all 3 of Felix, Hamels, and Sabathia than BRef’s.
It’s not underselling or overselling him. It’s just what he did.
A 3.00 ERA in SafeCo with an AL West-heavy schedule was about the same as a 3.40 in the Bronx with an AL East heavy schedule.
Dude had 3 bonkers full years (over 170!) then 3 very good years (120-125 range), then 3 good ones…then he was pretty much done.
Hell of a career!
Up there with Oswalt, Guidry, and Gooden – ahead of Cliff Lee!
Vis a vis RA9-WAR – it explicitly doesn’t account for defensive performance or opponents, the way rWAR does.
Just park factors and the league average.
Didn’t realize that. Never really used it because it’s inconvenient w/o custom tables. Hope they develop their own RA/9 WAR w/ defense & WAA because FG’s defensive stats are much better than bref’s.
Holding out hope that they’re waiting for Tango to make per-pitcher FRV splits available to make a *proper* defense-independent pitching WAR.
I’ll die on the hill that Jordan Zimmerman was better than Ricky Nolasco, haha!
Lol I don’t disagree but a part of me dies every time you drag my guy! I knew you’d be here somewhere in the comments knocking the wind out of my sails seeing King Felix getting 20%+
Final argument: it’s the Hall of Fame, not the Hall of Value, and King Felix was so much cooler than anyone in that tier 😀
Santana is Koufax. One sailed in and one got tossed aside.
thats missing so much context it’s absurd lol.
Koufax was an absolute mutant in his time. He was essentially the greatest pitcher MLB had ever seen when he retired. He was running K%’s that would be considered great in 2025 at a time when the rest of the league was struggling to hit double digit K%’s.
In 1962 Koufax struck out nearly THIRTY PERCENT OF THE BATTERS HE FACED (184 innings, which was like half a season for him lol). You know what the league K% was in 1962? It was 14%. Imagine if a starting pitcher struck out 45% of batters next year. Thats the equivalent of what Koufax was doing in the 50’s/60’s.
In 1965 he struck out 383 batters in 335 IP on his way to a 10……yes 10 WAR season. To this day one of only 7 season where a pitcher has cracked 10 WAR. Koufax looked like he was from another planet. When he retired he had a 25.2 K%. The highest in history and only one other guy in history even had a K% over 20 (and it was just barely at 20.4%).
from 1963-1966 Sandy Koufax threw almost 1200 innings and had an ERA- of 58. 58!!!! (He finished his career at a mere 75 btw lol.) So he had an ERA 42% lower than avg and was striking out guys almost 2x as much as avg.
If Babe Ruth was the genesis of modern hitting, Koufax was arguably the genesis of modern pitching. To compare him to Santana is borderline offensive lol.
Yeah, there’s only one proper frame of reference for Koufax’s run:
Pedro.
You could make an argument for late 90’s/Early 2000’s Randy Johnson but yeah, Pedro is the obvious one.
They were just monsters at their peak. So far ahead of anyone else its comical.
And now we can add Martin and McCann to that list. I don’t think framing is so valuable that either of them actually have a real Hall of Fame case, but it’s valuable enough that like Santana it makes them among them among the biggest snubs to go one-and-done.
Lou Whitaker’s 75 bWAR and 2.9% on his one and only shot with the BBWAA is quite a bit worse.
Lofton, Brown, Edmonds, and Grich all belong in that conversation as well, with Edmonds the least egregious, and he’s still well above literally half of enshrined CF in all of WAR, WAR7, and JAWS. He got utterly screwed by appearing on his lone ballot with Griffey and literally 19 other statistically deserving candidates. Off the top of my head it was him, 6 steroid guys/Schilling, and 13 current HoFers.
That’s a really interesting case for Zobrist that I would not have thought of.
Willie Davis and Javier Vazquez weren’t even on the ballot…
That totally boggles my mind. Along with Randy Johnson, Vazquez was one of only two pitchers in the 2000-09 decade to strike out at least 2000.
Let us not forget that there are HOF voters in Cleveland. Ichiro would probably punch himself in the face if he found out he was getting votes from them.
See?
Now that is a better explanation: spite. 😁
I continue to be surprised that K-Rod has so much support
Kimbrel and Chapman aren’t going to catch him.
Jansen and Robertson are like 30/70.
Kimbrel has faded but don’t sleep on Chapman.
The legend of his (peak) fastball might help.
Not many averaged 100 mph before him.
I think Chapman joins his compatriot K-Rod in purgatory.
He might. He’s not well loved.
But he might just as easily hang around long enough to sneak in.
Look at his numbers: career starter, 15 years, 437 saves. 16 WAR.
Just not Wagner-class dominant. So more of a compiler as far as closers go.
Again, the narrative maters.
And part of the narrative in Wagner’s favor is that Chapman and Kimbrel have been passed by David Robertson in R-JAWS.
Really sticks a machete in the whole slippery slope narrative.
Uh, make that career closer.
Have we ever before had the situation where two guys who were 1-2 in the Rookie of the Year balloting went 1-2 in the HoF balloting when they both had retired the same year?
Just the year Walt Weiss and Chris Sabo got in, but nothing else comes to mind
Chris Sabo’s 1988 Score Update was quite the hot card for a while.
One didn’t think about such things at the time, but the fact that Sabo was a very old rookie (26) really limited his window of productivity. He was a really good player for a few years though.
I tried searching through a bunch of historical ROY votes – I did find that Maddux and Glavine finished 1-3 in ROY and then went into the HOF together, but couldn’t find anything else that jumped out at me. Pretty neat!
Very few things bring out the dick in baseball fans like Hall of Fame voting. It’s as if they’re determined to keep the barbarians from the gate, instead of being what they are – little people who’ll have to pay to get into what is, after all, a museum. There are several examples in this comment thread alone.
Very few things bring out the dick in some BBWA members like Hall of Fame voting. There is no shortage of people love to observe and openly mock people who just can’t help but expose themselves as being idiots, bigots, or narcissists.
“The Hall doesn’t note a candidate’s voting percentage on his plaque, and those plaques aren’t hung any higher based on their share.” Interestingly, in the first hall class of 1936, the 5 plaques of that class are arranged in the gallery with Ty Cobb in the center with the 4 others surrounding him for the reason that Cobb received the most votes. This was per my tour guide at the Hall. Just an interesting anecdote apropos of nothing.
I was very surprised to see CC not only get the call, but on the first ballot.
Not me. Only 19 pitchers in baseball history have 3,000 strikeouts (and only 3 of them are lefties).
Easy accomplishment for voters to hang their hat on.
I unanimously select myself to replace the tool who didn’t vote for Ichiro
You might have to move to Cleveland.
Two Outfielders:
A: 57.5WAR, 2653 games played, 10734 PA
B: 62.4WAR, 2103 games played, 9234 PA
One is Ichiro who sailed in 1st ballot with people complaining it should have been unanimous, and the other didn’t get to 5% and fell off 1st ballot.
is player B Jim Edmonds or Kenny Lofton?
Kenny.
Might as well throw Jim in as player C:
C: 64.5WAR, 2011 games played, 7980 PA
Much as I agree Lofton got SHAFTED (in neon lights!).
Ichiro has his Japan years greasing the skids.
As long as the Japanese league is rated Major, those numbers count.
Lofton and Edmonds both got shafted. (Although Edmonds will have to find someone other than me to carry the standard for him, as I personally witnessed him being rude to small children. Unfair of me I know, but it is what it is.)
Jim Edmonds, being a dick?
Next you’ll tell me Pat Burrell liked college bars!
The thing that’s always annoyed me about Lofton being one and done is the number of stupid votes that year.
Sandy Alomar: 16 votes
Julio Franco; 6 votes
David Wells: 5 votes
Steve Finley: 4 votes
Shawn Greene: 2 votes
Aaron Sele: 1 vote
Sure, some of those guys were decent players but none were even close to Lofton. I mean, how does Sandy Alomar end up with only 2 fewer votes than Lofton???
Also, looking at the 200+ votes in the Ballot Tracker, the average voter only voted for 6.57 candidates. So while it was a stacked ballot, they could have easily saved Lofton had they wanted to.
wagner lololol this vote is now officially offically a joke
Here is the list of pitchers, minimum 500IP, with a better ERA-:
Mariano Rivera.
(Now, the no. 3 name on the list, Jonathan Papelbon, doesn’t help my case, but he did pitch 180 innings less, and his ERA- is closer to no. 6 on the list than Wagner.)
I do think Wagner sets a good floor for a HoF reliever – he was dominant as a reliever for a long time. It is very hard for a relief pitcher to have as good a career as Wagner, but not impossible.
If ZIPS actually forecast a pitcher to have a 15 year career that looked like Billy Wagner’s, and that player came on the open market, he would receive a staggeringly large contract. If the returns were *certain,* I think teams would pay more for Wagner’s career than Buerhle’s similar length career for example.
I’m genuinely happy for all three guys, it’s fun seeing guys go in whose entire careers I enjoyed watching.
I think I’ve seen enough comments along the line of “well, if relievers get into the HoF, then utility players or backup catchers should”. That did get me thinking, what would pinch hitter have to look like, in order to be comparable to Billy Wagner.
So this is some very crude maths, using fWAR.
Wagner had 903 IP, so that’s basically 15 full years of a relief pitcher’s load of 60IP. He put up 24 fWAR, so we get 1.6 fWAR per season.
My HoF PH, Statt Mairs, is going to play for 15 years, and get 150 PA per year, and so needs to get to 1.6fWAR. He’s going to put up no defensive value, and he’s on the bench for his bat, not as a pinch runner.
Ohtani in 2024 put up 9.1fWAR in 731PA, which is 1.87 fWAR/150PA. Ohtani was terrific on the bases this year, so we can know that down a bit, so he’s probably something like 1.68 fWAR/150PA from his bat. Ohtani had a wRC+ of 181 in 2024, so Statt is going to have a wRC+ of 170.
How would Statt Mairs do in the HoF voting? A guy who had a 170wRC+ across a 15 year career? Sure, he only had 150PA per year, but he’d probably have numerous walk offs or other massive hits per year. Would that be worthy of enshrinement, I have absolutely no idea.