Slimming Down: The Next Five Years of BBWAA Hall of Fame Elections
The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2025 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball Reference version unless otherwise indicated.
Last week, for the second year in a row, BBWAA voters elected a trio of players to the Hall of Fame, namely first year candidates Ichiro Suzuki and CC Sabathia, plus 10th-year candidate Billy Wagner. Carlos Beltrán and Andruw Jones both finished within 10 points of election as well, setting themselves up for 2026. With that in mind, it’s time to look ahead to what the next five ballots have in store.
This is the 12th time I’ve broken out my crystal ball in such a manner, dating back to the wrap-up of my 2014 election coverage at SI.com. As of last year, I’ve now done this more times at FanGraphs than Sports Illustrated. That first edition was so long ago that candidates still had 15 years of eligibility instead of 10, and so I could afford to project Tim Raines for election in 2018, his 11th year of eligibility. The Hall’s unilateral decision to truncate candidacies to 10 years would come just months later, though thankfully voters accelerated their acceptance of Raines, who was elected in 2017.
This exercise has always been more art than science, requiring some amount of imagination and speculation. Changes to the election process over the past decade have rendered some of my research into the candidates, as well as the history and mechanics of the voting, less useful for prognostication purposes. The dynamics of Hall candidacies have certainly changed, as evidenced by the elections of slow-starting candidates such as Wagner. From 1966 to 2005, only three candidates recovered from debuts below 25% and eventually reached 75%, even with 15 years of eligibility: Duke Snider (17.0% in 1970, elected in ’81), Don Drysdale (21.0% in 1975, elected in ’84) and Billy Williams (23.4% in 1982, elected in ’87). With Wagner’s election, seven players have made it to 75% since 2006 despite such slow starts, including five in the past decade. From the 15-year eligibility period came Bruce Sutter (23.9% in 1994, elected in 2006) and Bert Blyleven (17.5% in 1998, elected in 2011), and then once the eligibility window was shortened — less to clean up the ballots than to try moving the intractable debate over PED-related candidates out of the spotlight, and give voters less time to soften their attitudes — Raines (24.3% in 2008, elected in ’17), Mike Mussina (20.3% in 2014, elected in ’19), Larry Walker (20.3% in ’11, elected in ’20), Scott Rolen (10.2% in 2018, elected in ’23, the lowest debut share of any modern candidate elected by the writers), Todd Helton (16.5% in 2019, elected in ’24) and now Wagner (10.5%). With 7.3% in 2018 and 66.2% this year, Jones has a real shot at not only joining this group but at supplanting Rolen.
Revising this annually is a necessity because I am routinely wrong, sometimes happily so, as in those instances where I’ve underestimated how quickly a given candidate might gain entry. Circa 2019, I estimated that David Ortiz would need until ’23 to gain entry, and didn’t foresee Rolen getting elected within five years. A year later, I projected Rolen to gain entry in 2025. In 2022 and ’23, I projected Joe Mauer for ’25 election. On the other hand, in 2019 and ’20 I still believed — albeit with some caveats — that Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Curt Schilling stood at least some chance of election before their window closed. Regardless of which direction it goes, every incorrect assumption has a ripple effect. The presence of a high-share holdover means less space for and less attention paid to the mid-ballot guys, so clearing one from the ballot can have ramifications that won’t be felt for a few years; likewise, a more rapid election than predicted can accelerate other candidates’ timelines.
For the sake of this exercise, I am assuming that the basic mechanics of these elections will remain in place: 10 votes per ballot, with a 5% minimum to avoid falling off, and 10 years of eligibility for new candidates. Note that each ballot’s year refers to the year of induction; that ballot is released in November of the previous year, with ballots due on December 31. To be eligible, a candidate must not have played in the majors for five full seasons, but his eligibility year will actually be six years after his last appearance.
2026
Top newcomers: Cole Hamels, Ryan Braun, Alex Gordon, Shin-Soo Choo, Edwin Encarnación, Nick Markakis
Top holdovers: Beltrán, Jones, Chase Utley
Most likely to be elected: Beltrán
Falling off: Manny Ramirez
The 2020 season left us short in many areas, including the retirement department, perhaps because few players wanted to end their careers following such a strange campaign. From this group, Braun owns the highest WAR (47.1) of any position player. Braun made six All-Star teams, won the NL Rookie of the Year and MVP awards, and hit 352 homers, but he was caught violating MLB’s drug policy twice. The first time, an arbitrator overturned his suspension, that after Braun publicly smeared the sample collector — alleging anti-Semitism — in an unparalleled bit of ugliness within the annals of baseball’s efforts to fight PEDs. Countless players have denied knowledge of how illegal substances got into their bodies, and some (Rafael Palmeiro comes to mind) tried to cast blame elsewhere, but nobody else took a page from the Lance Armstrong playbook by trying to ruin the reputation of an innocent bystander in such a manner. The second time Braun was caught, as part of the Biogenesis investigation, he served a 65-game suspension. He’s nowhere near as strong a candidate as Ramirez, who will be in his final year, or Alex Rodriguez. By now it’s pretty clear that Hall-wise, anyone who was suspended isn’t getting to Cooperstown anytime soon.
In the wake of multiple comeback attempts that didn’t even reach the competitive stage due to the ongoing shoulder woes that had limited him to one game since 2019, Hamels finally announced his retirement in August 2023. In his 15-year career, he made four All-Star teams, spun one complete-game no-hitter and did the heavy lifting of a combined one, and won a World Series while helping the Phillies to another pennant as well. His 48.2 S-JAWS ranks 71st, 0.1 point and two spots below two-time Cy Young winner Johan Santana, who went one-and-done on the 2018 ballot and isn’t even eligible for an Era Committee ballot until 2032. In terms of S-JAWS, Hamels is slightly ahead of Mark Buehrle (47.4) and Andy Pettitte (47.2), and solidly ahead of Félix Hernández (44.1), who drew 20.6% in his debut this year. Hamels didn’t win a Cy Young, but his 123 ERA+ is six points better than Hernández in about 32 fewer innings. He also has a very good postseason résumé (3.43 ERA in 100.1 innings) and was the MVP of both the NLCS and World Series in 2008. Of the starting pitchers on next year’s ballot who don’t check all the boxes the way the Hall of Fame starters of previous generations did, his is the candidacy I have the easiest time getting on board for, Hernández included. We’ll see where that goes.
Encarnación, with 424 homers and some big postseason moments, might seem to have a case as the next designated hitter after Ortiz. His career didn’t really take flight until his late 20s, however, and his 35.5 WAR is about 20 fewer than Ortiz, plus he hit just .216/.324/.360 in the postseason overall. It’s not happening for him any more than it is for Choo, Gordon, or Markakis, who fell 612 hits short of 3,000, finally laying a perennial hypothetical question to rest.
With no newcomers likely to be elected, this is a golden opportunity for Beltrán, who appears to have overcome the initial resistance to his candidacy created by his involvement in the Astros’ electronic sign-stealing scandal. In his third year of eligibility, he gained 13.2% to reach 70.3%. As noted in my candidate-by-candidate breakdown, 22 of the past 26 candidates to reach 70% and still have eligibility remaining were elected the next year, the exceptions being Jim Bunning and Schilling twice apiece, the former due to bad timing but the latter entirely by his own spectacular (un)doing. Jones has a shot as well after receiving 66.2% this year, but he’s gained just 8.1% over the past two cycles. Candidates receiving between 65% and 70% with eligibility remaining have been elected the next year just 14 of 31 times since 1966, but 22 out of 31 times within two years; Wagner (68.1% in 2023, 73.5% in ’24, elected in ’25) followed that latter path. As for Utley, who jumped from a 28.8% debut to 39.8% in 2025, he’s got a very good shot at getting to 50% here.
2027
Top newcomers: Buster Posey, Jon Lester, Brett Gardner, Kyle Seager, Ryan Zimmerman
Top holdovers: Jones, Utley, Pettitte, Hamels, Hernández
Most likely to be elected: Posey, Jones
Falling off: Omar Vizquel
Posey’s sudden retirement at age 34, after his strongest offensive performance in at least half a decade, left him with just 1,500 career hits, but his seven All-Star appearances and three championships, not to mention MVP, Rookie of the Year, and Gold Glove awards and a 129 OPS+, make for a full enough résumé for Cooperstown. All that’s missing is watching him break down, and who really needs to see that? By JAWS, his 36.6 peak score is tied for ninth all-time, nearly two full wins above the standard, and that’s without considering the impact of his elite pitch framing. He’s fifth in our version of the metric covering the 2009–21 span of his career and second in that of Baseball Prospectus. In both, he’s just ahead of Yadier Molina, who caught roughly twice as many innings (though only 44% more in the window covered by our metric). What’s more, he’s third in my Framing-Inclusive JAWS (frJAWS) behind only Mike Piazza and Ivan Rodriguez, ahead of Mauer, Russell Martin (sigh), and Molina. Even given the brevity of his career, I believe he’ll join Mauer, Rodriguez, and Johnny Bench on the ridiculously short list of catchers elected on their first ballot.
Of the other newcomers, the one who will generate significant discussion is Lester. With his 200 wins, three championship rings, and big-game reputation (9-7, 2.51 ERA in 154 postseason innings), his candidacy will get some attention, but his 43.4 WAR is about 15-17 WAR lower than the Pettitte/Buehrle/Hamels trio of holdovers, and he’s 153rd in S-JAWS, 98 spots (and 12 points) below Sabathia and just 12 spots above Jack Morris. Gardner, Seager, and Zimmerman each spent their careers with one franchise and deserve their spots in the hearts of fans, but none had the value, the accomplishments, or the staying power to make a dent in Hall voting.
This is where Vizquel drops off the ballot. Allegations of multiple incidents of domestic violence against his wife and sexual harassment of an autistic batboy led to him setting a modern record with a 25.2% drop on the 2022 ballot, from 49.1% to 23.9%. He’s lost further ground since, while embarking upon a PR campaign that lacked any hint of introspection or accountability. His situation is without parallel in the annals of Hall of Fame voting, but it’s now abundantly clear he’ll remain a lower-tier candidate through his remaining eligibility, unable to regain the ground or the respect that he lost.
The back-to-back ballots lacking in obvious choices (aside from Posey) will open an opportunity for all kinds of holdovers who have hung around in the lower reaches to take steps forward. By this point, Utley should be above 50%, and some of the others who have generated less heat — Pettitte in his ninth year, Bobby Abreu in his eighth, maybe even Jimmy Rollins in his sixth or Dustin Pedroia in his third — might be pushing towards the 40% range, which could create some appeal as an Era Committee candidate. Likewise for Hernández and Hamels, though they could even have enough time to hope for bigger things from the writers… eventually.
2028
Top newcomers: Albert Pujols, Robinson Canó, David Price, Molina
Top holdovers: Utley, Pettitte, Hamels, Hernández
Most likely to be elected: Pujols, Molina
Falling off: Pettitte
Though he spent more than nine years of his 10-year, $240 million deal disappointing in Anaheim, Pujols enjoyed a strong finish to his 22-year major league career, pushing his home run total to 703 (fourth all-time), his hit total to 3,384 (10th all-time, and the most by a player born outside the United States), and his career WAR back into triple digits (101.7), while making his 11th and final All-Star team during a victory-lap season in St. Louis. While it won’t erase all the memories of his diminishing returns, going out on a high note should goose Pujols’ share of the vote into the high 90s.
The celebration may well help Molina get to 75% by riding his coattails. A 10-time All-Star and nine-time Gold Glove winner, he earned a reputation as one of the best at handling pitchers, both in terms of framing and game-calling. We have metrics to back up the first of those assertions, in that he’s third in our version of framing runs dating back to 2008 (152) and fourth in BP’s version, which goes back to 1988. As for the second, we have a lot of anecdotes as well as the fact that he was a part of 13 playoff teams, the starter on two World series winners and one more pennant winner, but we don’t have a real means of quantifying that value in runs. He’s just 22nd in JAWS among catchers, well below all but three Hall of Famers, but as with Martin, McCann, and Posey, I don’t think off-the-shelf JAWS is the right thing to use; as noted above, I have him fifth in frJAWS. Combine that with the industry consensus of his future in Cooperstown and I think he’ll have enough momentum to get in.
An eight-time All-Star who collected 2,639 hits and 335 homers, Canó ranks seventh in JAWS among second basemen, but his Hall of Fame chances are as dead on arrival as those of Ramirez and Rodriguez given his two PED suspensions, an 80-gamer in 2018 and a full season in ’21. He’ll get enough support to stick around the ballot, though.
As a former Cy Young winner (and two-time runner-up) who made five All-Star teams, pitched for nine playoff teams, and helped the Red Sox win a championship in 2018, Price certainly packed a lot into his 14-year career. Elbow problems and the pandemic limited him to just one 30-start season past his age-30 campaign, however, leaving him with 157 wins, a 123 ERA+, 40.1 WAR, and the no. 180 ranking in S-JAWS. Even with some adjusted expectations for starters in the coming years, I suspect that’s too low to merit much consideration.
This will be Utley’s fifth year on the ballot. As noted in my post-election coverage, he received a higher share of the vote in his first year (28.8%) than Rolen and Helton combined — and both were elected in their sixth year. Both of those players grew their shares of the vote against the backdrop of some lean years for newcomers, whereas Utley’s tenure looks more crowded. As for Pettitte, after a slow start to his candidacy, I expect he will finish somewhere in the 40-50% range, positioning himself to draw interest via the Era Committee process.
2029
Top newcomers: Miguel Cabrera, Joey Votto, Zack Greinke, Evan Longoria, Josh Donaldson, Adam Wainwright, Nelson Cruz, Corey Kluber, Madison Bumgarner
Top holdovers: Utley, Hamels, Hernández, Pedroia, Buehre
Most likely to be elected: Cabrera, Votto, Greinke
Falling off: Abreu
Like Pujols, Cabrera struggled for most of the period covered by his big contract (eight years and $248 million from 2016–23), but even so, he became the seventh player to reach the dual milestones of 3,000 hits and 500 home runs after Henry Aaron, Willie Mays, Eddie Murray, Palmeiro, Rodriguez, and Pujols — elite company. He’ll sail into Cooperstown easily.
As for the rest of the list of newcomers, it’s gotten considerably longer since my last version of this exercise, as several notable players wound up either not pursuing jobs in 2024 or not making it back to the majors. After a 17-year run in Cincinnati, Votto signed with the Blue Jays and went yard in his Grapefruit League debut on March 17, but then rolled his right ankle upon returning to the dugout and was sidelined for nearly three months. After scuffling while rehabbing at three minor league stops, he retired in mid-August. While his 2,135 hits and 356 home runs might look light for a first baseman, he’s a former MVP, a six-time All-Star, and a seven-time on-base percentage leader whose .409 OBP and 144 OPS+ are exceptional. His 55.7 JAWS ranks 12th, 2.2 points above the standard at the position and 1.5 points ahead of Helton. Ballwriters love them some Joey Votto, so I think he’ll make it on the first ballot.
The same is true for Greinke. While he didn’t return in 2024 to collect the 21 strikeouts he needed to reach 3,000, I suspect that shortfall bothers me more than it does him; this is a man who said he didn’t want the “hassle” of a no-hitter, so you can imagine what he thinks about milestones. His 225 wins and 121 ERA+ are impressive, as is his 62.9 S-JAWS, which ranks 25th all-time between Hall of Famers Fergie Jenkins and Tom Glavine, with Max Scherzer two spots and 1.4 points below him.
Longoria and Donaldson are two third basemen who had exceptional seven-year peaks (41.9 for the former, 41.7 for the latter) but are short of the JAWS standard at the position. Longoria was the Rays’ lineup center piece for a decade, a former Rookie of the Year who made three All-Star teams and won three Gold Gloves. Had he done more upon leaving the Rays than produce just 7.5 WAR from ages 33–37 for the Giants and Diamondbacks, we’d be talking about him as Cooperstown material; his 50.3 JAWS is a respectable 19th but about three to five points below the likes of Graig Nettles, Ken Boyer, Buddy Bell, and Sal Bando. Donaldson, a converted catcher, didn’t have 300 plate appearances in a season until age 27; he made three All-Star teams, won an MVP award, and placed third in the AL in WAR three straight years (2013–15), but he fizzled out at age 37, that after becoming one of the game’s most unpopular players for calling Tim Anderson “Jackie.”
Cruz spent 19 years in the majors with eight different teams, playing past his 43rd birthday. Along the way he made seven All-Star teams, played for seven squads that reached the postseason, and clubbed 464 home runs with his boomstick, topping 40 three times and leading the league once. For all of that, he totaled just 42.2 WAR while spending more than half of his games as a DH, and for as widely respected as he was throughout the game, his 2013 PED suspension will doom his chances here.
Unlike Pujols and Molina, the 41-year-old Wainwright chose to return for one more season, but it turned into an absolute slog due to age and injury. He finished with a 7.40 ERA and -2.0 WAR — and that was after winning his final two starts to reach an even 200 for his career. Given his four top-three finishes in the Cy Young voting and his role in helping the Cardinals to nine playoff appearances and two World Series, it might be a surprise that he ranks just 133rd in S-JAWS at 40.6, comparable to Bartolo Colon and Brad Radke (both 40.8). He pitched just 2,668.1 innings, however, missing all of 2011 due to Tommy John surgery, all but seven appearances in ’15 due to surgery to repair a torn Achilles tendon, and all but eight appearances in ’18 due to elbow inflammation. He banked four seasons of at least 6.0 WAR, but the other three seasons rounding out his peak score feature WAR totals of 4.0, 3.5, and 3.0 (including offense). I think he’ll linger on the ballot, but he’s a significant cut below Hamels and Hernández.
Kluber won two Cy Young awards, but between his late start and a slew of injuries, he threw 100 or more innings in a season just seven times, totaling 1,641.2 innings and 116 wins. Bumgarner helped the Giants win three World Series and put together an 8-3, 2.11 ERA line in 102.1 innings in the postseason, but his regular season numbers (134 wins, 110 ERA+, 32.5 WAR) are unremarkable, and he netted -0.5 WAR in his 30s after leaving the Giants.
Previously I figured this might be the year for Utley, but with Votto and Greinke both apparently in the mix, this ballot is too crowded up top. I think he’ll be well set up for 2030.
2030
Top newcomers: Elvis Andrus, Charlie Blackmon, Brandon Crawford, Kevin Kiermaier
Top holdovers: Utley, Hamels, Hernández, Pedroia, Buehre, Longoria
Most likely to be elected: Utley
Falling off: Buehrle
Barring a sudden and likely injury-driven decision to retire from Scherzer, Clayton Kershaw, or some other star, this is looking like an exceptionally weak first-year class, with players whose one-and-done valedictories are as far as they’ll get. Kiermaier won four Gold Gloves and accumulated 175 DRS and 36.5 WAR – not to mention one hell of a highlight reel — but he didn’t even rack up 1,000 hits or 100 homers. Crawford, who helped the Giants to two championships and two other playoff appearances, made three All-Star teams and won four Gold Gloves, but his 54 DRS and 29.4 WAR won’t keep him around the ballot. Likewise for Andrus, who helped the Rangers to two World Series and five postseason berths. He had more WAR than Crawford (34.2) but just an 86 OPS+ and two All-Star appearances, and he never won a Gold Glove.
Blackmon, the most recent Rockies player to win a Coors Field-assisted batting title (he hit .391 at home and .331 overall in 2017), had some big years while making four All-Star teams, but his defensive metrics in center field were pretty bad (-54 DRS in 692 games) and he was barely a league average hitter in the last half-decade of his career. He’ll take his place alongside Carlos González and Troy Tulowitzki among the Rockies’ recent one-and-done stars.
Kershaw (212 wins, 2,968 strikeouts, 156 ERA+) is a three-time Cy Young winner who ranks 21st in JAWS but is coming off a season in which he threw just 30 innings. Right now, it appears that he plans to return to the Dodgers, but given his issues staying healthy, and how stacked their rotation is, you just never know. Likewise with Scherzer (216 wins, 3,407 strikeouts, 133 ERA+), a free agent job-seeker who threw just 43.1 innings last year and who turns 40 on July 27. Both would be easy first-ballot selections if they never threw another pitch, though we’ll be delighted if they return in 2025, even if only to give us a chance for a proper goodbye.
This, I think, will be Utley’s time. With the exception of A-Rod, everybody else who might still be on the ballot has polled no higher than Hernández’s 20.6% thus far, so it’s difficult to project any of them as having real momentum, but I would expect the conversations will continue regarding Pedroia and Hamels.
Leaving aside the highly speculative suggestion that Kershaw and/or Scherzer could be done, that’s nine players elected over the next five years, down one from last year but matching the total I projected from 2021–25 half a decade ago, and one more than was actually elected over that span.
Beyond the numbers, the end of Pettitte’s candidacy in 2028 will close the door on the Wild West era of PED usage as far as the BBWAA is concerned. The remaining PED-linked candidates either currently on the ballot or scheduled to debut, namely Ramirez, Rodriguez, Braun, Canó and Cruz, were all suspended at least once. If one counts the leaked results of the survey test and Braun’s arbitration turnover, all but Cruz were connected to PEDs multiple times, removing the excuse that they merely made one-time mistakes. That won’t end every debate about their suitability, but it will make the writers’ jobs a little easier and could improve the tenor of the conversation around the ballot.
My track record in this exercise is shaky enough to know that I haven’t gotten everything correct. The fun (hopefully) is in watching all of this unfold and depart from the script. Go back to my 2021–25 projection, which included Bonds, Clemens, Schilling, and Vizquel getting elected over that span; while each has proven too unsavory to pass muster with the writers for one reason or another, their fades have been offset by some pleasant surprises, such as Sabathia’s first-ballot entry and the aforementioned holdover candidates rallying from sluggish early showings — none of which I predicted in 2020. If I’ve learned nothing else from 20-plus years of following Hall of Fame elections, it’s that they retain the capacity to surprise us.
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.
Looks like Utley is too far away to get in for 2026 and has a shot but not a great one to get in by 2027. And if he misses that then he goes up against Pujols in 2028 and Cabrera / Votto in 2029 and probably has to wait until 2030.
I think Beltran is very likely to get in next year and Jones has a decent shot too. If both get in then you could see Utley by 2027 going in with Posey. But otherwise he probably waits.
I don’t have a huge problem with McCann and Russell Martin falling off the ballot after one round, nor do I have a huge problem with Yadier Molina getting elected on his first, but I do have a problem with both of those things happening. I just don’t buy that Molina is a Hall of Famer without the framing, and with the framing guys like McCann and Martin look a whole lot better.
The Hall standard at catcher has always been weird and inconsistent. From Simmons weird 1 and done BBWAA performance to Carter taking a few ballots to get in despite being an obvious top 5 catcher and obviously the inconsistencies with Molina, Martin and McCann the Hall and the BBWAA just don’t know how to evaluate the position.
Agreed. You can add in Joe Torre not getting in with similar #’s (He got in as a manager) to Simmons & Carlton Fisk ALSO taking a couple of years.
It was like the writers from 1975 on were using Johnny Bench as the minimum standard for 30 years.
Torre also played ~60% of his games on the infield corners, not C.
Not saying his playing career wasn’t Hall worthy on its own, but I’m sure moving out from behind the plate was a factor. Plus even prior to 1975 the writers and various committees were extra hard on both C and 3B, basically not electing anyone from either position who didn’t have superlative offensive numbers.
Ted Simmons’ and Carlton Fisk’s HOF pathways are quite different.
Fisk was elected in this second year. In his first year, Fisk had to compete for votes with Nolan Ryan, George Brett, and Robin Yount. Yogi Berra not being a first balloter is much more surprising.
Ted Simmons was inducted into the HOF 32 years after he retired, by the veterans committe.
I know, I starting comingling guys together (Darn ADD). Here’s how I view them:
Torre/Simmons are similar to me- good hitting catchers, so-so defensive reps. Torre was moved away from catching much earlier than Simmons, but, had a higher peak & his best years WERE at catcher. (Not sure how he’s not a catcher in JAWS, he played the most games AND had the most value there). Both got criminally underrated & should have made the HOF much sooner (or in Torre’s case, as a player).
Fisk/Carter are similar- Both SHOULD have been 1st ballot guys. When they retired, both were top 5 catchers all time behind Bench, Berra (WAR rates him lower, but, in the 80
s/90’s, he was #2..& he wasn’t 1st ballot either, as you noted) & both should have been 1st ballot. I didn’t realize all the guys on Fisk’s ballot, still he was deserving of being a 1st ballot guy & likely would have been if it happened now.. As for Carter– he wasn’t liked. Was thought of as a guy looking for publicity all the time. I think this colored the perception of how good he was or some didn’t vote for him right away doe to that. Stupid reason, I know, but, before WAR, sometimes that stuff mattered more than it does now.
It all ties into my initial statement of catchers being held to an insane standard by the HOF. Top 5 at the position players taking multiple years to get in. Top 10-15 players going 1 & done & having to get in on the VC committee vote..
I think the biggest differentiator between Molina and the others is his ability to absolutely shut down the running game. There was an article on here a while back comparing SB/CS/attempts between the Cards and the rest of the league during his career and it was utterly ridiculous
And of course the Narrativium that’s surrounded him for over a decade, plus the fact that he’s on the ballot with Pujols.
Exactly. Molina’s arm needs to be mentioned in ANY discussion about his HOF candidacy. No one catcher stopped another team’s running game like Yadi.
Yadier Molina just has a lot more “HOF bullet points.”
He has way more Gold Gloves than McCann and Martin combined, he has over 2000 hits and the other two players are not even close to 2000, and he won the WS twice, while between the other two, only McCann has the tainted 2017 WS.
Yeah, I don’t know if I’d vote for Molina but he’s clearly a notch above those guys. 10 All Star games, 9 gold gloves, and a couple of top-5 MVP finishes is not nothing.
In terms of traditional voting criteria, yeah, that’s enough. In terms of actual value? No, I don’t think that matters much. People make him out to be like Pudge Rodriguez but he’s nowhere close to that without the framing. His JAWS score is like Jason Kendall’s.
Not offensively, but Molina was pretty darn close to Pudge’s value defensively.
Yep, I pointed this out elsewhere but Molina does really well by the Bill James HOF Monitor, which is a good gauge for how traditional voters see things. 100 points is considered a “likely HOFer” and Molina is well above that with 169. (McCann had 84, Martin 54).
The question is how will non-traditional voters see Molina. They clearly didn’t buy into framing stats when it came to McCann and Martin so there’s a chance they’ll do the same with Molina.
But, even just defensively, Molina isn’t just a one-dimensional framer like the other two. He’s the entire defensive package, elite at throwing and blocking in addition to framing!
There’s lucroy, Kendall, posada (maybe), Martin, McCann, Molina, Mauer and posey in this era. They can’t really all be HOFrs.
Molina, Mauer and Posey feel right. Posada I think should have gotten more consideration.
Left off Piazza. Piazza and Pudge were the catchers of their generation with Kendall and Posada a tier below.
Posey and Mauer were the catchers of their generation with Yadi and McCann/Martin a tier below.
I put Yadi on the Posada level–they provided their value in completely opposite ways–but they’re very similar in terms of narrative and franchise impact.
Also, let us not forget Charles Johnson underrated all world catcher. Overshadowed in his day by Pudge as a defender he was still Special behind the dish.
No, Molina is in the same tier as Posey and Mauer.
Molina has a similar defensive advantage over Mauer as Mauer does offensively at the position where defense is just as valuable as offense if not more so, not to mention that Mauer moved to 1B for much of his career, further slicing away at his defensive value.
Posey would be a tier ahead had he not retired early, but he did, so he doesn’t have the longevity of the other two despite being the best offensively and also really good defensively in their primes.
Posey and Molina with Mauer a tier below because he spent half his career away from Catcher.
I’m not quite sure that Yadier is worthy of the Hall, but I’m quite sure he’s going to be in the Hall. He’s one of those dudes who both stat guys and traditionalists will make a (very different) case for, and the combo will make for a pretty easy ride.
With the framing, Molina is still the significantly better candidate. Molina was better at blocking and throwing than either of other two, plus he had significantly better longevity. Offensively, the three are generally comparable, but Molina had better counting stats thanks to that longevity.
Without the framing, Molina is still one of the best defensive catchers ever, a premium defensive position (arguably second or third best to Pudge and maybe Bench), with decent enough offense that he deserves entry on the Ozzie Smith argument.
Molina literally has negative offensive WAR for his career. McCann’s wRC+ is 12 points higher, and Martin’s is 7 points higher.
Absolutely none of this makes sense. All of the things you are saying are accounted for in multiple versions of WAR and there is very little debate as to their measurement, unlike framing. Without framing, his case is like Jason Kendall with a good PR firm.
At least Jason Kendall has the broken leg to point to as a “What if,” haha!
Molina literally has negative offensive WAR for his career.
You might want to rethink that statement, as it is complete bollocks.
Right – it’s negative offensive value, not negative “oWAR.”
He was a bad hitter, and arguably the worst base runner in recorded history, given the lack of on-base opportunities (I’d still give it to Billy Butler), but replacement’s even below *that*.
Yeah, I mean… Molina is a catcher with a career 97 wRC+. Isn’t the average for a Catcher like 90? Even back in the earlier stages of his career they weren’t expected to run a league-average bat. That’s not to say he was a good hitter by any stretch, but neither was Ozzie Smith and his 90 wRC+. Ozzie was better at SS than Molina was at Catcher, but not by that much. Ozzie also had about two seasons worth of games more to accrue value. The difference between them is mostly baserunning.
I get the framing argument buffing McCann and Martin, but they weren’t the same type of player. Yadi’s entire game was defense and he stuck around forever because he was the best at it. Martin and McCann couldn’t. It’s very much an Ozzie situation. Maybe Omar Visquel without scandals if you’re really nitpicking, but Visquel was not on the level of the best ever at his position defensively, while Molina arguably is, and Molina was a better hitter.
He has a -109.9 value under the Off column on his player page. Is that better?
He wasn’t a bad hitter but man was he a bad baserunner. Sixth worst BsR value over a career. That’s not unusual for catchers, the worst baserunners are almost all catchers and guys on the 1B/DH border. But everyone except Yadier and Bengie Molina and AJ Pierzynski also hit a lot better…
Just to sum up the arguments here:
Argument #1 is that Molina is a Hall of Famer because his stellar framing numbers make him the second best catcher of the 21st century, behind Buster Posey. This, incidentally, sticks Russell Martin in between Molina and Mauer as the third best catcher of the 21st century, and puts McCann just barely behind Mauer. Making this argument means making an argument for Molina and McCann.
Argument #2 is that there is too much error around the framing measures to include them. This knocks Martin, McCann, and Molina down to the point where they are clearly not Hall of Famers. Yes, Molina was an outstanding defensive catcher, one of the best. But all of that is accounted for in multiple versions of WAR and there’s no disagreement over how they are measured or their includes. His offense doesn’t put him anywhere close to a Hall of Famer. He’s 22nd in JAWS, right by Jason Kendall and Darrell Porter (I had literally forgotten that Darrell Porter was a player). No matter what you do, you cannot make this argument without framing. Unless…
Argument #3 is that people saw him as a Hall of Famer when he played, so he’s a Hall of Famer. This is objectively true in because we create the reality we live in, if you say someone is a future Hall of Famer enough times and give them enough hardware eventually he is because that’s what we collectively decided. And it’s also a terrible argument because it’s a tautology used as justification. It’s probably why he’s going to get elected, but it comes down to Russell Martin and Brian McCann not having as good PR people.
Maybe the *real* Best Fans in Baseball are Yadi fans!
This is pretty much where I’ve come down. If framing does matter to the extent that FG values it, then Yadi, McCann, and Martin all deserve serious consideration. If it doesn’t, then the more “traditional” metrics mean that Yadi specifically doesn’t merit induction – especially a quick one.
I did see a lot of “Martin and McCann never felt like Hall of Famers when I watched them, so they don’t deserve a vote,” type statements, which I felt was dumb because if we knew how to value pitch framing when they played, they might have seemed more impressive! Somebody might have pointed out that they were the best in the league (or near to it) during their playing days, and their profile would be larger. It’s like we’re punishing players for not understanding their strengths. Meanwhile, Yadi gets all the benefit of the doubt for his “intangibles” and “immeasurables”.
I’m not 100% on board with how pitch framing interacts with WAR, and I think maybe McCann and Martin aren’t really HoFers but they deserved more time on the ballot and specifically deserves a direct comparison with Yadi on the same ballot.
I suspect Lester will overperform some of the “top holdovers” that Jay has listed. The odds are not with him making the Hall via BBWAA, but they’re not single digits either. His vibe is like “Andy Pettitte but easy to cheer for”. (Granting that Pettitte racked up significantly more value – just talking vibes here.)
I’ll be curious to see if/how Lester’s inability to throw to first might harm voters’ perception of him. He was obviously still good at stopping the run game but such a prominent and well-documented mechanical flaw is hard to forget.
I know you’ve talked about Felix vs Hamels a few times, but I honestly don’t think it’s at all accurate to say they had comparable peaks, as you mentioned on EW – Felix’s five best seasons by fWAR are all better than Hamel’s best season, and over those top 5 five peak years Felix was more than 8 wins more valuable, which is why he has meaningfully more Cy Young shares than Hamels and is in fact 18th all time in Cy Young shares.
I also think it’s maybe a bit inaccurate to just cite career IP totals when looking at the two – Felix threw an absolutely insane number of MLB innings at a very young age – 84 as a midseason call-up at age 19 and 190 each at 20 and 21. He was very good for his age in those seasons but they still are well below his peak years.
bWAR like Hamels a lot more than fWAR and Felix a lot less. Jay uses bWAR for JAWS for consistency, so that is where it is coming from. By bWAR, their 7 year peak is only separated by 1 WAR.
Fair, but given where Jay works it might be worth mentioning that this site doesn’t see them as particularly close – and again, neither did voters
Yeah….you’ve got this a bit backwards.
Awards Voters weren’t looking at Felix’s FIP, haha – they weren’t adjusting his ERA for the run environment.
Hell, the FanGraphs glossary specifically says that it’s inappropriate to use FIP-based WAR to assess career performance.
Yeah, fWAR isn’t particularly useful for career assessment, given that it relies on FIP, which is a better tool for projecting the future, whereas ERA is an actual record of what occurred. By the time you’re having a HOF discussion, what does it matter to say, “Well, this pitcher was better at doing the things that should have prevented more runs … but didn’t”?
It gives context about what kind of support they had behind them defensively. It lets you know that Hernandez with Hamels defense would have been that much better than his ERA reflects or vice versa. It really doesn’t matter much in this case though since Hernandez’s ERA and FIP are within points of each other career.
No, it doesn’t.
In fact, it doesn’t even try to – it treats the difference in outcomes between a laser off the Monster and a pop fly to LF as random variation.
It does the same for a player who gets fewer strikeouts and gives up more walks and HR with men on base.
Do you know what does try to give context for defensive performance, while assessing pitcher value?
rWAR.
FWIW, bWAR does adjust for team defense and it has their career adjustments almost identical.
Johan should be in, or at the very least should be on the ballot for proper consideration.
Jay expressly made the exercise dependent on the current rules. I think there would be strong support for Johan’s case being a leading one for changing those rules. Unfortunately, none of us get to vote on that.
If for no other reason than we get a few more Johan Santa links.
My only disagreement is that I think it will take longer than 1 year for Joey Votto to get into the Hall of Fame. I suspect he’ll take 2-3. The electorate has changed, and will continue to do so, but his career numbers are so light compared to what we’re used to that I just don’t see him crossing the threshold immediately. He reminds me a bit of Todd Helton, where the advanced stats screamed Hall of Famer, but enough of his career and ‘normal’ stats (along with Coors Field) screamed ‘eh’ enough to delay it. That being said: the ballot is thinned out, and the electorate is changed, so I predict a quicker turnaround.
If the dropping of stand…I mean “rethinking” of starters from the electorate continues I would predict the pileup comes from guys like Hamels, Lester and Felix taking up more space than people think.
I think writers love Joey Votto so much it isn’t going to matter. But you are correct that while he is almost certainly above the HoF line, his case is not overpowering like, say, Miguel Cabrera’s.
Writers…and also me.
I noticed the subtle name change.
Yeah I think his popularity among the writers tips it over.
Do you feel that the 10 year limit instead of the original 15 is a good thing? What would you say to tweaking the system to where any player who exceeds 60% at any time in their candidacy gets an additional 5 years back to the original 15? And voting for players who have earned bonus years don’t count against the 10 player cap. This could eliminate the need for strategic voting, as you are more likely to keep the guys at 5% much easier without withholding votes from guys who deserve them. Also eliminates the rush for guys to get 12% in their final year, and keeps guys off the crowded ERA Committee ballots that are likely to get elected by the Writers given the 5 extra years.
Given that the change to a 10-year limit was made only to push Clemens and Bonds off the ballot faster, the HOF itself doesn’t care about any of your considerations.
They could also just have allowed 15 votes per ballot like the writers asked for instead of creating convoluted rules to work around an easily solvable problem they intentionally created.
I think both Beltran and Jones are more likely to make it than not next year given the otherwise weak ballot.
Why stop at the high-90s for Pujols? He’s the next guy who has a chance to go in unanimously.
I’d be very surprised. He had some infamously bad years in Anaheim, and regardless of the overall resume, at least one voter will say “he wasn’t always great.” Which is true.
I mean… even if you literally take his career WAR, statistics, whatever from the age of 34, he’s still objectively a Hall of Fame player by every metric, even for the traditionalists.
I don’t expect him to get unanimous votes because there’s always some idiot who gets a say, but if there’s any player on that ballot who deserves it, it’s Pujols.
Is lying about your age a character clause violation, haha?
He said he had faced Octavio Dotel as a 13 year old, 28 years before…in 2018.
How much more sense does his career arc make, if he signed with the Angels at 35?
I mean, unless you have a bunch more evidence than Pujols mixing up the dates of a largely unimportant marker in his life, that seems like it belongs in the realm of hearsay. I’m not going to say it’s impossible, but I will say that wouldn’t convince me of jack.
Dotel’s told the same story about giving up a bomb to a 13 year old Pujols, when he was 16.
Maybe Dotel is secretly 48!
(I’m also, y’know, taking the piss about possible reasons NOT to vote Pujols, who should be unanimous by any sane standard)
You’ve never been around an older adult, have you? My peers are lucky if they get within a decade of reality with their recollections. Heck, my mother-in-law used to talk about playing pac-man on mainframe computers in the 1950’s.
…do you think that 35-40 year olds are “older adults,” haha?
Do you think they’re incapable of performing the mental math to get back to the age of 13, specifying 28 years ago rather than saying “About 25,” or remembering that someone with whom they grew up is 3 years younger than them?
Do you not get confused about dates when they’re that long ago? Because I definitely do and I’m only in my 30s. Kudos for your excellent memory if not.
Maybe you’d realize later, but that’s not likely to be something any party to those conversations cares about.
I’m also in my thirties, mate…but Pujols didn’t “get a date wrong.”
He said “When I was 13,” paused, thought about it for a second, then said “So, 28 years ago” during an interview in 2018.
Like I said above, I don’t actually care whether Pujols lied about his age, I was just mocking a hypothetical bitter Angels writer…but it is funny to see folks come out of the woodwork.
Feel free to enter back into the woodwork
I mean…here’s the 2018 quote:
It’s pretty goddamn funny to see folks “defending” his honor by claiming it’s either unreasonable to expect him to handle basic arithmetic in his head and/or unreasonable to expect someone that age to know old he is.
Well worth the imaginary internet points I’m losing.
I know you actually won’t consider this thought experiment because you have already decided that a singular quote is more than enough evidence to find someone guilty of age fabrication, but:
Don’t you think that if Pujols was in the midst of a lifelong bit of fraud and was careless enough to make this mistake once, there would be more instances of this mistake or others like it?
IMO Pujols is the greatest first baseman of all time. I know it’s sacrilegious to say that stuff before integration was done against weak competition and should be discounted because guys like Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig are practically deified, but Pujols has the highest career fWAR of any first baseman between 1951 and the present and 4 of the top 12 seasons by a first baseman in that stretch. Best peak. Best career totals. Best ever at first base.
Lou Gehrig is #1 and always will be regardless of integration. Absent of getting sick and robbing him of probably 3 more good seasons, he would have been the first 3000 hit 500 home run guy. Pujols had two halves of a career, one great and one really poor. Gehrig was consistent until the very end.
This is ridiculous. The reason that integration is relevant to this conversation is because Pujols undoubtedly performed against the very best baseball players in the world. Gehrig didn’t. Not only the Negroe Leaguers but also without players from Korea, Japan and Latin America. The game is played at a MUCH higher level now that attracts nearly all of the best players in the world. Gehrig’s era of MLB did not.
This is the main reason. Gehrig didn’t have to face the Kansas City Monarchs’ rotation in 1927, much less all of the other great pitchers there. Even if you think that only a quarter of the best players were excluded from MLB (which I think is about right), that waters down the competition you’re facing quite a bit.
But all these stats are normed based on the competition too. In recent years, this is useful, especially with all the messing around with the ball, and also for comparing pre- and post 1968. For example: Lou Gehrig had a whopping 205 wRC+ in 1927. Sounds very good, he was twice as valuable as the average hitter. But out of 74 hitters with at least 500 PAs, only nine of them had more than 15 homers. In 2024, that was 96 out of 130. No wonder Gehrig got on base half the time.
Lou Gehrig was 24 in 1927. If he was born in 2000 and had access to all of the nutrition and training that someone would have in the 21st century, he very well might become a Hall of Famer. But there is no way he is going to be putting up a 205 wRC+. We’re looking at him probably having a Freddie Freeman-type, Bryce Harper-type, Manny Ramirez-type of offensive impact.
I completely agree, I just think it’s clear he will be left off at least one. Especially, as noted below, if he once made a flub while telling a story.
If someone doesn’t they are weighing the end of his career too much. Pujols is one of the best to have played the game and should be an inner circle HoF. His peak was off the charts. I took a look at the position player WAR7 from JAWs. Pujols is 15th of all time on peak. However, if you only take player from integration years onwards (so last 70 years), he is 6-8 depending on if you count Bonds (I would) or A-rod (a no from me), so 7 in my book.
I hope people don’t do the same with Trout when he is in the HoF voting phase as well. Trout would be 2-4 in WAR7 with Mays, Bonds, and A-Rod above him. We have been very fortunate to get to see Pujols dominate the 2000’s and Trout the 2010’s. Both were clearly the best player each decade and deserve a unanimous vote.
The sliming down is why I wish Johan Santana wasn’t one and done. It was an uphill climb for him but he was worth a longer debate especially with in a soon to be fallow period.
Slimming down, unless they are doing the induction on Nickelodeon now (come to think of it, I would love to watch a good sliming of Ichiro)
donaldson is annoying but tim anderson literally said he felt like the modern day jackie robinson
Cruz shouldn’t make it in, but it is funny how out of all the steroids guys mentioned who got popped with a test, he’s pretty much the only one where no one seemed to care. I remember attending his first game after the suspension was announced (while on appeal) and he hit a monster bomb, and the crowd just went nuts. And this is still in Texas where even after the outfield messup in 2011 he’s still really well liked.
Greinke also gets the benefit of his 5.6 fWAR from elite offense, let’s not forget!