In our Introduction, we reviewed some of the issues attendant with the salary arbitration system. Today, we begin to examine solutions. As the system exists currently, I would argue that the largest difference between salary arbitration in baseball and arbitration of the type you see in other disputes is the requirement that the arbitrators must select the position of one side or the other in toto, a feature that seems at odds with arbitration’s goal of helping the parties reach compromise. As MLB’s online glossary explains (emphasis mine):

If the club and player have not agreed on a salary by a deadline in mid-January, the club and player must exchange salary figures for the upcoming season. Unsurprisingly, the club files a lower number than the player does. After the figures are exchanged, a hearing is scheduled in February. If no one-year or multi-year settlement can be reached by the hearing date, the case is brought before a panel of arbitrators. After hearing arguments from both sides, the panel selects either the salary figure of either the player or the club (but not one in between) as the player’s salary for the upcoming season.

This “either/or” approach is unique not just in sports but in arbitration generally. Even the National Hockey League, the only other major North American sport to utilize an arbitration system, doesn’t bind the team and player to only those two options. As one NHL agent explained:

Hockey, unlike baseball, does not have final offer arbitration whereby an arbitrator is bound to pick one side’s proposal or the other. The arbitrator, under current guidelines, is free to pick their own level of compensation anywhere between the two requests.

Hockey’s system, by allowing more freedom to arbitrators in selecting salary figures, granting award rejection rights (in many, but not all, arbitration settings, the losing party has the right to reject the award, at which point various other means ranging from litigation to mediation to a second arbitration are used to reach a resolution), and setting caps on the number of arbitration hearings allowed per team, is substantially more in line with traditional arbitration in other settings. It’s therefore no surprise that hockey has substantially fewer arbitration hearings each year than baseball does.

So why does the ability to select a different number matter? Because the current system in baseball actually incentivizes teams to proceed to hearings, a reality that many teams are now taking advantage of with “file-and-trial” approaches. Consider: as attorney Justin Sievert explained for the Sporting News, when an arbitrator is bound to choose one number or the other, “the panel will choose the offer that is closer to what they believe is the player’s true arbitration value.” To show how this creates issues, let’s look at Dellin Betances‘ 2017 arbitration hearing with the Yankees – the one that had Randy Levine so riled up. Betances asked for $5 million; the Yankees countered with $3 million. Let’s say that the panel had concluded Betances was worth $3.95 million. Under current rules, the Yankees win the hearing – and, by extension, are able to pay Betances less than what he has been deemed worth as a result of submitting a lowball figure.

Now you might think that players also benefit from this margin of error: after all, teams that lose arbitrations arguably end up overpaying their players. But that’s not really how it ends up working, for several reasons. First, teams are allowed by the league to confidentially coordinate arbitration filings and salaries, the effects of which can linger long after an individual player’s case is resolved. Per Jeff Passan:

While MLB works diligently and impressively to coordinate the arbitration targets of its 30 teams — this behavior is sanctioned under the collective bargaining agreement and not considered collusive — agents occasionally make far-under-target settlements. The effect, in a comparison-based system, is devastating: A bad settlement can linger and depress prices at a particular position for years.

Why do we care that teams coordinate filings? Because agents, who are in competition for the same clients, clients with disparate individual interests, don’t achieve the same level of cohesion. Imagine, if you will, that you’re an employee looking for a job. You’ve received three offers from three different employers for roughly the same position. Now imagine that those three employers talked amongst themselves, and decided to make you exactly the same offer for each position. And, to make things more interesting, imagine that they are also collaborating to set the salaries for the other candidates, too. You wouldn’t have much in the way of leverage to make salary demands. The three employers have set the market for your salary, and your ability to effectively counteroffer has been essentially rendered moot.

Now, you might point out that, unlike our job example, arbitration isn’t a free market. The Cubs can’t compete with the Nationals over Kyle Barraclough. But what the Cubs can do is agree with the Nationals on what a Kyle Barraclough is worth. Why do we care? Because arbitration is a comparisons-based system. The current system allows teams to, in essence, work together to set the prices for the comparables their own players will cite. The teams are coordinating amongst themselves to drive down prices for all players, because every player is a comparable for someone, and the teams have set prices for everyone.

The trouble is that agents have no way of knowing what those internal calculations are until after all of the arbs are finished in a given year. Another way to look at this is to consider that teams are building their own valuation tool in arbitration, one that is universal across teams, is position- and comparable-adjusted, and – most importantly – is internally consistent and predictable. Agents’ numbers don’t have that level of cohesion. So when teams enter arbitration with consistent numbers, and players don’t, it’s the players’ requests that appear out of step with the realities of the market. The either/or arbitration system facilitates that trend.

This knowledge gap creates a structural mismatch in favor of teams, a mismatch that shown itself in arbitration outcomes. Players who went to arbitration last winter did fairly well in their cases, and Passan cited an oft-used statistic that “[t]he league historically has won well more than 50 percent of cases.” But in reality it’s much more lopsided than that. In March of last year, attorney Christopher Deubert noted that:

[there] seems to be an increasing willingness of clubs to challenge a rise in player salaries by pursuing salary disputes through the conclusion of the arbitration process – albeit, in many instances, unsuccessfully – as reflected in the aggregate arbitration hearing records.  In 43 years of salary arbitration:

• In 32 of those years (74.4%), clubs won the majority of salary arbitration hearings;
• In 10 of those years (23.3%), players won the majority of salary arbitration hearings; and
• In 1 year, all the cases settled.

That teams won a majority of cases in three-quarters of the years for which data is available is pretty remarkable, and demonstrates just how lopsided the present either/or system is when confronted with the knowledge gap created by team coordination. Teams are incentivized to offer lower numbers, knowing that, because all other teams are doing the same, they are likely to succeed. For a player, proceeding to arbitration has meant that they are more likely than not to be underpaid relative to the figure they submit to the arbitrator, which generally serves to incentivize settlements and drive down overall player earnings. Given that the likelihood of winning is priced into settlements, a midpoint between the two figures is no longer the ideal settlement posture; players are incentivized to accept a number closer to the team’s figure just to take every dollar they can. And players, their agents, and the MLBPA have far fewer resources at their disposal for hearings, a problem that is compounded as file-and-trial method results in more cases reaching arbitration. From Passan:

Going to trial can be pricey, particularly for smaller agencies that do not have in-house lawyers with enough expertise or experience to argue an arbitration case. Hiring outside counsel costs up to $55,000, an expense that falls on the agent. And when the spread, or the difference between the sides, is minimal and the 5 percent fee on the difference won’t come close to covering the attorney fees, the incentive is clearly to settle — a fact that teams know and leverage.

So why would eliminating the either/or system help? First, it incentivizes numbers closer to the player’s actual worth, rather than basing a result on resource allocation and structural features. Second, it allows arbitrators leeway to avoid outliers – the current system incentivizes extremes, whereas scrapping the either/or system allows arbitrators to push the parties towards compromise. And third, it creates organic salary movement as arbitrators begin to make their own determinations regarding player worth, requiring them to become more educated in baseball vernacular. And better educated arbitrators are good for everyone, a fact that will be the focus of my next piece.

In 2018, for the first time in more than a decade, player salaries went down from the previous year. At one point, there was some thought that this offseason’s free agent class might reverse the course charted last offseason. For years, we’ve been hearing about the monster class of free agents that would sign this winter. Here’s Jeff Passan back near the beginning of the 2017 season:

For those who have yet to hear about the free-agent class of 2018-19, here’s a sampling: Bryce Harper, Manny Machado, Clayton Kershaw, Josh Donaldson, Daniel Murphy, Dallas Keuchel, Charlie Blackmon, Andrew Miller, Zach Britton, Craig Kimbrel. There are dozens more. Teams will guarantee $3 billion to players that winter. The number could exceed $4 billion.

Two years later, that free agent class isn’t quite as good as we expected. When we put up our Top-50 free agents, along with crowdsourced contract expectations, the expected outlay to 66 potential free agents didn’t come close the $3 billion assumed; the crowd predicted a number that was just about half of $4 billion that was thought possible about 20 months ago. Our readers provided estimates for 66 players, including Joe Mauer and Adrian Beltre, who have since retired. Of the remaining 64 players, 36 have signed contracts so far. Here’s how the contract totals compare to the crowdsourced average.

So far, free agents have signed for roughly 15% less combined than predicted. It’s interesting to note that the discount is being taken almost entirely in the length of the contracts, as both the predicted and actual AAV are around $12 million. Now that many players have reached agreements to avoided arbitration and a good number of players have signed free agent deals, we can take a look at where teams’ Opening Day payrolls stand at this point in the offseason. There are obviously a few huge contracts to go, with five of the top six contract projections still unsigned, so these numbers are nowhere near final. As of this writing, here’s what Opening Day payrolls look like for every team.

The Red Sox are well out in front of everybody, just like they were last season. The Cubs payroll is up compared to where it was. It might be somewhat difficult, if not impossible, to tell how every team’s payroll has moved based on the graph above. For reference, here’s a graph showing each team’s change in payroll from Opening Day last season.

Some of this will change in the coming months, though a lot of those teams at the bottom aren’t really expected to move the needle much. Last year’s Opening Day payroll average came in at around $136 million. Keep in mind, these numbers don’t include benefits or players on the 40-man roster. Last year, the end-of-season payroll average including those numbers went up to around $152 million. Right now, the average 2019 Opening Day payroll comes in at close to $128 million. In total, the difference between last year’s combined Opening Day payrolls and payrolls right now is $243 million. If we take a look at how much spending is left to be done, we might be able to approximate payroll for next season.

Here are the remaining crowdsourced free agents, their projected total salaries and the average annual value of each deal.

If the crowd is correct and $296 million in salaries are added to the 2019 season, we’ll be looking at around a $50 million increase over last season. That probably won’t happen, though. Last season when I did this same exercise, I was overly generous in my estimates, giving the players the crowdsourced money, and adding in another $60 million for all the other players for whom we did collect estimates. By the time Opening Day rolled around, I was more than $100 million off, and instead of a potential 1% increase in payroll, teams moved down 1% from the previous year.

If the rest of this offseason is anything like the remainder of last offseason, we are going to be looking at flat Opening Day payrolls. Even more troublesome for the players is that while Opening Day payroll was down about one percent from 2017 to 2018, when the end of season numbers were calculated, that figure was closer to 2.5%. While not definitive yet, there seems to be a pretty good possibility that major league payrolls will go down for the second consecutive season.

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about Ben and Travis Sawchik finishing their new book, The MVP Machine, Willians Astudillo‘s MVP voting results, the Kyler Murray baseball/football decision and why it’s unusual for players in his situation to have leverage, Manny Machado rumors, and Yasmani Grandal‘s comments about the contract he didn’t sign, then answer listener emails about why baseball players don’t hold out and Rickey Henderson’s base-stealing today, plus Stat Blasts about the biggest gaps between best and second-best years and the giant New York Yankees.

Audio intro: The Decemberists, "Midlist Author"
Audio outro: Cake, "Open Book"

Link to preorder The MVP Machine
Link to Astudillo results
Link to Jeff’s Garcia post
Link to hitter height data
Link to Grant’s Little League WAR article
Link to article about baseball terms in Spanish

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There’s a report out today about Manny Machado:

Manny Machado remains unsigned, but the Chicago White Sox have made at least one pitch to the superstar shortstop.

Multiple sources told ESPN’s Buster Olney that the White Sox have a seven-year, $175 million offer on the table for Machado.

I do think there’s something important to understand here. Machado hasn’t yet signed anywhere. The idea that he would sign for $175 million seems almost preposterous, but then again, he hasn’t signed for $175 million. If the reported terms are true, they do seem too small, but that’s how a negotiation is conducted. The player side asks for X, which is ultimately too high. The team side proposes Y, which is ultimately too low. If an agreement is reached, it’s for Z. We’re going to learn the most information when Machado actually has a new employer. Then, and only then, will we have a fuller understanding of what his market looked like. Said understanding still won’t be complete.

So Machado is still out there, available. Bryce Harper is also still out there, also available. Machado’s age is 26 and six months. Harper’s age is 26 and three months. There was thought that, through free agency, they might be able to reach some record contracts. Those contracts might still be out there in front of them. Increasingly, however, it feels like they might not be. Which is why this little post is going up.

Read the rest of this entry »

Arbitration season is upon us. This winter, Mookie Betts‘ contract set a record for a second-time arbitration-eligible player after agreeing to a $20 million deal with the Boston Red Sox to avoid arbitration. NL Cy Young winner Jacob deGrom set some records of his own with his $17 million agreement with the Mets. But other players didn’t fare as well. Aaron Nola and the Phillies were over $2 million apart; a smaller but still significant gap exists between the Yankees and Luis Severino. We’ve talked before about the problems inherent in the current system of salary arbitration for major league baseball players. With a growing number of cases going to arbitrators, and with those cases proving to be seemingly quite contentious, I thought it would be useful to explore solutions to an increasingly thorny problem. This piece will serve as a refresher of the basics; we’ll offer some fixes in the days to come.

Often, analyses of MLB salary arbitration focus on the fact that the hearings typically only consider traditional, “old school” statistics.

Another quirk to the arbitration process is that it usually only factors in “baseball card statistics” rather than more sophisticated metrics. While teams signing free agents are typically up to speed on sabermetrics, the arbitration process does not account for them. Counting stats are important, as is playing time in general. Since labor lawyers typically sit on arbitration panels, the concept of “making it to work every day” is something that holds value.

That last sentence is something else important to focus on: salary arbitrators are typically randomly selected labor lawyers. And while some have a comprehensive knowledge of baseball, it isn’t their day job: arbitrators usually hear many different types of cases, with many different fact patterns. That means that a baseball salary arbitrator may well also arbitrate cases on entirely different matters.

Now, the 2016 Collective Bargaining Agreement does allow for the use of some publicly available advanced metrics.

Only publicly available statistics shall be admissible. For purposes of this provision, publicly available statistics shall include data available through subscription-only websites (e.g., Baseball Prospectus). Statistics and data generated through the use of performance technology, wearable technology, or “STATCAST”, whether publicly available or not, shall not be admissible.

But, often, salary arbitrators aren’t well versed in sabermetrics or advanced analytics. As a result, the statistics being used tend to be basic – very basic. In developing their arbitration projection model, Matt Swartz and MLB Trade Rumors noted as much.

Hitters are typically evaluated using batting average, home runs, runs batted in, stolen bases and plate appearances. There are some positional adjustments, but typically the added defensive value of a shortstop relative to a first baseman is not as important in arbitration hearings as it is on the free agent market. Hitters also can receive larger arbitration awards if they have unique accomplishments, such as winning an MVP award. Pitchers typically are evaluated using innings pitched and earned run average. Starting pitchers are rewarded for wins, and relievers are rewarded for saves and holds. Unique accomplishments, such as Cy Young Awards, matter for pitchers as well.

Still, despite its flaws, the arbitration system was, for some time, considered a great success. After all, while it’s generally accepted that free agency led to rising salaries for major league players, there’s at least some evidence that salary arbitration – the process by which players who are not yet free agents, but have at least three years’ service time, have their salaries determined – has also led to improved compensation. Over the last few years, however, salary arbitration has devolved from a system teams and players can leverage to obtain a negotiated contract into a viable means for teams to contest players’ salary demands in the hopes arbitrators side with teams’ lower salary figures.

The concept of “file-and-trial” – that of a team electing not to negotiate with players after arbitration figures are submitted and exchanged – has become so commonplace that Major League Baseball has a glossary entry defining and explaining it. This method has an effect on the strategies employed by players and their representatives, who find themselves at an obvious resource deficit compared to teams. As Craig Calcaterra detailed:

There is certainly an advantage to file-and-trial for a team. It makes the player and the agent work harder and earlier in order to be prepared to negotiate with the club before the file deadline. It also makes them work a lot harder to come up with a defensible filing number given that, rather than merely being an opening salvo in an extended negotiation, it’s something that they will certainly have to defend in open court. It’s also simple hardball. Teams have greater resources than the players and the agents and it’s less painful for them to pay for lawyers and hearing prep and to conduct the actual hearing. There’s risk to the team, of course — they might lose and pay more than a settlement would’ve cost — but teams are obviously concluding that the risk is worth it.

Ken Rosenthal wrote late last year that the MLBPA feared that every team would soon adopt the “file-and-trial” approach. And while that didn’t happen this offseason, the number of arbitration hearings continue to rise, and they are increasingly acrimonious, as Michael Baumann noted for The Ringer.

For years, it was generally accepted that it was undesirable for a team to let arbitration-eligible players actually go to a hearing over salary, since a hearing would force the team to bad-mouth a player; the morale costs outweighed the potential financial gain from holding a hard line. Last year, more arbitration cases went to a hearing than in any year since 1990.

Yankees executive Randy Levine famously ripped Dellin Betances‘ arbitration request of $5 million in the media, comparing Betances’ submission analogous to Levine calling himself an astronaut. Blue Jays righty Marcus Stroman took to Twitter to remark that “[t]he negative things that were said against me [in the hearing], by my own team, will never leave my mind.” The salary arbitration system, initially designed to encourage settlements between team and player, is now driving wedges between the parties, though it is worth noting that whether those wedges persist once players make free agency decisions isn’t a settled question.

What we can say is that the salary arbitration system isn’t working optimally: it doesn’t reflect what we actually know about baseball by excluding publicly available advanced metrics, and it’s further damaging player-team relationships. With this in mind, it’s no surprise that agents are starting to take a harder line on arbitration.

In a mission statement distributed among some players, Jeff Berry, who helps run the baseball division at CAA, outlined a number of steps he believes are necessary to rectify the imbalance of power in the relationship between MLB and the union. It was no surprise that his first target was arbitration. “[A]ttacking the arb system,” Berry wrote in the memo, which was obtained by ESPN’s Buster Olney, “is an ideal battleground for MLBPA/players/agents to take a unified stand and to feel empowered and proactive rather than victimized.”

There’s no doubt that the current arbitration model suffers from some deep structural problems. Over the course of the next few days, we’re going to take a look at how to fix them.

When I interviewed him for Baseball Prospectus in March 2007, Curtis Granderson was a young outfielder coming off a promising first full season with the Detroit Tigers. He’s since made three All-Star teams, bashed 332 home runs, and accumulated 48.7 WAR. Still active at age 37, Granderson has had a very good career.

How much has his approach — and the game itself — changed since our bygone spring training conversation? Wanting to find out, I approached Granderson with an idea this past summer: what if I were to ask him the exact same set of questions I did more than 11 seasons ago?

Granderson was amenable. Standing by his locker, I pulled a copy of the old interview out of my back pocket and proceeded to revisit the past.

———

Q: Cutting down on your strikeouts has been a main focus for you this spring. What adjustments are you making?

Granderson: “I think we’re all facing that in today’s game. Strikeouts are at an all-time high. Part of it is the talent that pitchers have now. Speaking 11 years later, they throw harder. Guys have more movement. Guys are bigger, more physical, and there are more of them doing different things — they have different pitches.

“It’s a constant battle to keep your strikeouts down. How to do that? Hopefully not getting yourself in too many two-strike counts. There really isn’t too much more you can do, except that when you do get to two strikes, just continue to battle. Fight.” Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for more than half a decade. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Kansas City Royals.

Batters

The Royals have an extremely bifurcated offense, with three players projected to be solidly above league-average in Adalberto Mondesi, Salvador Perez, and Whit Merrifield, and a fairly large gulf before the next tier of KC hitters. If the Royals were really going the full rebuild route, you’d see Perez and Merrifield — entering their age-29 and -30 seasons respectively — on other teams’ lists, but the Royals seem content to go the “sorta” rebuild route.

Given how thin their talent is, it’s hard to see them having much success going this route and as such, Perez and Merrifield are likely to be either in their declines or in other organizations by the time the performance matters. Winning 72 games instead of 64 in 2019 isn’t going to jumpstart anything.

I’m sure there will be some gnashed teeth about O’Hearn’s projection, given that he hit .262/.353/.597 in the majors in 170 plate appearances in 2018. He also had a .713 OPS in 406 PA in the Pacific Coast League, which is abysmal for an offensive prospect.

Pitchers

This group won’t be as bad as some people think in 2019, and it wouldn’t take a lot of breaks for the team to achieve their pointless Quest for 75 Wins, which is a little like bragging to your drinking buddies that you can deadlift 125 pounds. Danny Duffy isn’t a lost cause and Brad Keller was good enough in 2018 that it couldn’t all have been a fluke. ZiPS absolutely loves Richard Lovelady, but the rest of the bullpen is a big digital yawn. The Trevor Oaks projection isn’t exactly impressive, but I can’t remember the last time ZiPS didn’t actually hate a pitcher with as low a strikeout rate as he is projected to have.

Bench and Prospects

Troubling and not seen in full here is that ZiPS simply projects very few of the hitting prospects in the upper levels of the organization as good bets to be relevant by the time the Royals are good again. It’s essentially Adalberto Mondesi and Nicky Lopez. Khalil Lee and Emmanuel Rivera are the only two other offensive prospects on this list for whom ZiPS gives even an over/under of three WAR over their major league careers. Now, it’s not quite as bad as that considering a couple of the names I’m not yet projecting are Seuly Matias and Nick Pratto, but it’s certainly less than ideal for a team that really ought to be 2 1/2 years into a rebuild by now.

One pedantic note for 2019: for the WAR graphic, I’m using FanGraphs’ depth chart playing time, not the playing time ZiPS spits out, so there will be occasional differences in WAR totals.

Ballpark graphic courtesy Eephus League. Depth charts constructed by way of those listed here at site.

Disclaimer: ZiPS projections are computer-based projections of performance. Performances have not been allocated to predicted playing time in the majors — many of the players listed above are unlikely to play in the majors at all in 2019. ZiPS is projecting equivalent production — a .240 ZiPS projection may end up being .280 in AAA or .300 in AA, for example. Whether or not a player will play is one of many non-statistical factors one has to take into account when predicting the future.

Players are listed with their most recent teams, unless I have made a mistake. This is very possible, as a lot of minor-league signings go generally unreported in the offseason.

ZiPS’ projections are based on the American League having a 4.29 ERA and the National League having a 4.15 ERA.

Players who are expected to be out due to injury are still projected. More information is always better than less information, and a computer isn’t the tool that should project the injury status of, for example, a pitcher who has had Tommy John surgery.

Both hitters and pitchers are ranked by projected zWAR — which is to say, WAR values as calculated by me, Dan Szymborski, whose surname is spelled with a z. WAR values might differ slightly from those which appear in full release of ZiPS. Finally, I will advise anyone against — and might karate chop anyone guilty of — merely adding up WAR totals on a depth chart to produce projected team WAR.

Editor’s Note: As we approach the January 22 Hall of Fame announcement, we’ll be featuring a few pieces from Anthony Calamis and Adam Dore, members of Ryan Thibodaux’s excellent team that tracks public Hall of Fame ballot. This is the second such piece. Be sure to check out the ballot tracker, which is an indispensable tool for any Hall of Fame enthusiast.

To get the obvious point out of the way, the Cooperstown stage is going to be crowded at this year’s Baseball Hall of Fame induction ceremony on July 21. All signs point to the trio of Mariano Rivera, Roy Halladay, and Edgar Martinez earning induction and joining Lee Smith and Harold Baines — both of whom were elected to the Hall of Fame by the Today’s Game Committee this past December — in the 2019 Hall of Fame class. It is also possible that Mike Mussina will join them as well.

This year’s class will, in all likelihood, have the unique distinction of being the first class ever comprised of two or more first-ballot selections (Rivera and Halladay) to go along with one candidate (Martinez) who received at least 75% of the vote in his final year of eligibility. On two previous occasions, the BBWAA selected one first-timer and one other inductee whose eligibility window was set to expire: the 2017 induction class featured Ivan Rodriguez (first year on ballot, 76.0%) and Tim Raines (10th year, 86.0%), while the Class of 2009 consisted of Rickey Henderson (first year, 94.8%) and Jim Rice (15th year, 76.4%).

As of Tuesday morning, we have published 177 ballots in our Hall of Fame Ballot Tracker, and it is clear that Fred McGriff and Larry Walker have gained the most ground of any of the returning candidates since the last voting cycle. McGriff has picked up 34 votes so far from writers who did not include him on their ballots last year – against just two drops – while Walker has seen a net gain of 37 new votes as of this writing. McGriff is in his 10th and final year of BBWAA eligibility and will not get the call from Cooperstown next week. Walker, in his penultimate year on the ballot, had a case that appeared dead in the water, garnering just 21.9% of the vote in 2017, his seventh year on the ballot. Heck, his candidacy was probably written off by almost everyone, even with a 12.1% jump in 2018.

Just how far can Walker’s surge take him? Well, his current showing of 66.7% through 177 public and anonymous ballots is sure to falter, as ballots revealed early have historically been more favorable toward the vast majority of candidates than those revealed later or kept private. In order to determine the likelihood of the Canadian former slugger finishing with a portion of the vote high enough to set him up for a real possibility of 2020 enshrinement, I investigated how Walker fared on ballots of varying sizes last year.

Since 2017, I have kept a public spreadsheet detailing the trends in Hall of Fame ballots of varying vote quantities, and how each candidate fares when ballots are broken into five different size groups. The 10-player and 9-player ballots are categorized individually, while 7-8 vote and 5-6 vote ballots make up two separate groups; the remaining ballots, which consist of four or fewer votes, make up the fifth and final category. This sheet, made possible by Ryan Thibodaux’s work, breaks down each of the five size classifications into two additional groups: ballots including both Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, and ballots that exclude one or both members of that duo.

For the sake of reducing space below, I’ve lumped ballot sizes into two basic groups: 10-player ballots and ballots which have fewer than the maximum 10 names checked.

On ballots with all 10 slots filled:

And ballots on which fewer than 10 names are checked:

Four candidates have experienced an increase of at least 10% on 10-player ballots revealed prior to the announcement, with Omar Vizquel just off the pace. Walker is securely out in front of the pack, with a whopping 30% increase on such ballots from last year. Bear in mind that half of the 422 ballots cast in 2018 had awarded votes to 10 players. That Walker has appeared on over 80% of full ballots after receiving votes on just over half of them in 2018 is astounding. Having four names cleared from the ballot certainly opened up more opportunities for electors to cast a vote for Walker, as they may have done last year had the BBWAA allowed unlimited votes.

The even more jaw-dropping statistic is this: Walker’s vote share on sub-10 ballots has more than doubled since last cycle, up to 45.1%. Yes, that’s right. He appeared on just 19.4% of ballots that left at least one open spot last year, but has since seen that number skyrocket faster than the number of likes on a funny cat video gone viral. Walker has also gone 6-for-29 thus far on “Small Hall” ballots of six names or fewer. That might not sound like much, but that 20.7% is nearly identical to the 20.8% of all public sub-10 ballots that included his name. (For what it’s worth, Walker appeared on only two of the 44 publicized ballots that consisted of fewer than seven names last election cycle.)

What does all this mean for this year’s results? Consider the following: through the first 177 publicly revealed 2018 ballots, 53.8% of the 104 writers who checked 10 names cast a vote for Walker. That figure dropped down to 51.4% among all 317 public or anonymous ballots – including 173 full ballots – accounting for a rate decrease of 4.5% from the original vote share (I’m referring to the rate of change, which is different than simply the 2.4% decrease in percentage). Conversely, Walker only appeared on 16.9% of the 71 ballots that consisted of fewer than 10 names at the 177-vote mark, but that mark rose to 20.8% once all public ballots – 144 of which had fewer than the maximum number of slots filled – were uncovered. The rate of increase here was about +23%.

Let us make a few conservative assumptions:

1) The total number of ballots revealed in 2019 will be somewhere in the neighborhood of the 317 made public last year. Let’s say +/- 10 from that mark.
2) The previous year’s four-man induction class will lower the average number of candidates strongly considered by the voters, resulting in 10% fewer ballots with votes for 10 players. This would give a 45:55 ratio of full ballots against those selecting nine or fewer candidates.
3) Walker’s strong showing on full ballots thus far is inflated by early-exit-poll bias, and he will finish with a vote share that is just 90% of what it is currently on such ballots. Such a rate of decrease will get him 74.2% of the vote on public 2019 10-player ballots, just shy of election.
4) The 45.1% share Walker currently holds on smaller ballots will drop slightly by a net -2.0% (for an overall 43.1% vote share) despite increasing by 20% from this point last year and an overall change of +3.6%.
5) Points 2-4 factor in estimates for the portion of the voting body who chooses to keep their votes private.

Factoring in all of these assumptions, Walker would reel in a vote total of approximately 57.1%, which would represent a colossal increase of +23.0% in a single election cycle.

Last week, FanGraphs’ own Jay Jaffe explored the largest single-year gains in BBWAA voting history. In the event Walker does finish at exactly the aforementioned 57.1% figure, he would require an 18.0% increase in his final year of eligibility. Sounds steep, right? Perhaps, but gaining 18% in one year is far from unprecedented, and it would rank as just the 15th largest increase ever — tied with Ralph Kiner’s jump from 24.5% to 42.5% in 1967. It should be noted that a much more recent candidate, Vladimir Guerrero, jumped 21.2 percentage points, from 71.7% to 92.9%, in 2018.

Remember, I’m calling 57.1% of the vote for Walker a rather conservative estimate. There is certainly a chance he could come much closer or even exceed a three-fifths majority of the vote. In fact, the most recent model of Jason Sardell pegged 57% as the median estimate.

It certainly appears that we will have some drama on our hands in 10 months’ time when Walker hits the BBWAA ballot for the final time. A weaker ballot and the recent surges in vote totals for players late in their eligibility is sure to provide some additional excitement to the ballot tracking process next year. I would expect that every Walker fan will have run out of fingernails to bite come announcement day in 2020.

Even if Walker doesn’t get elected next year, he and fellow 2019 ballot-mate Fred McGriff might ultimately have a rather smooth road ahead of them. In the last two Eras Committee elections, we have seen three candidates who had gathered solid support during their tenure on the BBWAA ballot sail into Cooperstown upon their first introduction to one of these committees.

2018: Jack Morris, 14 of 16 votes, Modern Baseball
2018: Alan Trammell, 13 of 16 votes, Modern Baseball
2019: Lee Smith, 16 of 16 votes, Today’s Game

Each of these three former players received at least 40% of the BBWAA vote in at least one appearance on the ballot. Historically, many players who have received a relatively high vote share eventually made it to Cooperstown through some ideation of the committee structure. There are only 13 players – excluding those currently on the ballot – in Hall of Fame history who have accrued at least 30% of the overall Hall of Fame vote from the BBWAA who have not since been inducted to the Hall.

(Disclaimer: Yr on Ballot refers to how many appearances on the ballot the candidate had made at the time his highest vote percentage was received. The BBWAA voting process has evolved greatly from a time when elections were biennial and the 5% minimum threshold did not exist. Some players appeared on the ballot more than 15 times while others were cast off prior to reaching 15 appearances. The * denotes players who appeared on the ballot before several more recent rule changes were instituted. For more on the evolution of Hall of Fame voting, see Jay Jaffe’s The Cooperstown Casebook.)

Note that only six of these players have ever even reached 40.0% of the vote, and just 4 of the 13 exited the ballot with a vote share above 35%. With McGriff currently tracking at 36.2% through 177 ballots, is it likely that he joins this group, considering that he has been favored by private voters more so than public voters each year since the massive purge of the voting body prior to the 2016 election. It is conceivable that the Crime Dog crosses 40.0% of the vote this year, and probable that he – like Morris, Trammell, and Smith – is easily elected by the next Today’s Game Committee, which will meet in December of 2021 to determine which candidates should receive a bronze plaque the following July.

I will touch only briefly on Mussina here, as fellow member of the Tracker team Anthony Calamis thoroughly explored Mussina’s chances for FanGraphs recently. Mussina ranks fourth – behind the three near surefire inductees – in votes on full ballots, missing only seven out of 102 tallied thus far. Along with the three most likely inductees and Curt Schilling, Moose has also gotten the nod on more than 75% of 9-player ballots as well as the 7-or-8-vote group. He is the only candidate besides Rivera – who remains unanimous – to appear on all 19 of the 9-player ballots to date.

At first glance, it would appear as though Mussina’s luck runs out once we get to the true “Small Hall” ballots, which I will label as those containing six votes or fewer – he is just 9-for-30 on those. If we eliminate the “Tiny Hall” 0-4 player ballot category — votes on these ballots are most likely to be awarded to the candidates with the highest vote shares (there is only one public ballot that has named exactly four players) — on which ballots Mussina has been shut out, his vote total share is 39.1% (9 of 23) on remaining Small Hall ballots.

As Calamis mentioned, the average number of votes per ballot is sure to drop precipitously among private voters, who notoriously are far less likely to cast a vote for Bonds and Clemens. In my estimation, a large number of private ballots will fit into the Small Hall demographic. I also believe that the current breakdown of 5-or-6-player ballots – 11 including both Bonds and Clemens (on which Mussina has failed to earn a vote), 12 excluding them – will begin to shift greatly towards the latter as more votes are made public; my guess is that trend will also hold true among private voters. If this is true, Mussina has a chance to remain close to the 75% mark (9 of 12) he holds on such ballots because, as Calamis indicates, he was the second-ranked ballot holdover behind Martinez in terms of 2018 vote percentage. It remains to be seen whether the man known as Moose will have enough gas in the tank to cross the proverbial finish line this year, or if he will have to wait it out until 2020.

Several other players will be covered in greater detail in a subsequent piece next week, but for now I will leave you with a brief overview of some other interesting trends gathered from my Ballots by Quantity sheet.

Scott Rolen, who ranks 12th on the Tracker in overall vote percentage, has gathered votes on 33 of the first 102 full ballots – not a bad showing for a second-year candidate who barely eclipsed 10% of the overall vote when all was said and done last year. However, Rolen has the rather puzzling distinction of being a paltry 4-for-75 on any other ballots, a mark which only bests Andruw Jones’ among candidates likely to remain on the ballot in 2020. Similarly, Rolen was polling at just 3.9% on less-than-10 ballots on all 2018 pre-announcement ballots.

I was rather stunned to see the remarkable consistency of first-timer Todd Helton’s vote distribution. Excluding the stingiest group of Tiny Hall ballots from the mix, Helton’s vote percentage has ranged from a lower bound of 17.4% to an upper bound of 23.1% in each of the remaining four size categories through the first 177 revealed ballots. Naturally, he has benefited substantially more from ballots of the anti-Bonds and Clemens variety.

For a candidate who received just an 11.1% vote share in 2018, eight new supporters for Billy Wagner so far is a step in the right direction (he was also dropped from one ballot, but that ballot included 10 names and Wagner is almost certainly going to earn that vote back in the coming years). Closers historically have received a small boost among the un-published ballots, so the possibility exists that Billy The Kid’s final percentage can be a few ticks higher than where it stands currently. I have long believed that 2020 would be the year that things could really begin to take off for Wagner. He will finally be able to stand alone as the top relief pitcher on the ballot and out of the shadows of Smith, Trevor Hoffman, and Rivera. Wagner will also – at least in the opinion of this observer – have the distinction of being the greatest reliever outside of Cooperstown, period.

If Walker can total 15.5% in his sixth year of eligibility and we are – just three years later – discussing how he might actually have a chance at 75% in his final year, perhaps hope is on the horizon for Wagner, set to reach the 15.5% threshold two years earlier. Only time will tell.