The Envelope Please: Our 2023 Hall of Fame Crowdsource Ballot Results and a Preview of Election Day
The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2023 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule, and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.
It’s no secret that this year’s BBWAA Hall of Fame ballot hasn’t captured the public imagination in the same manner as recent ones. Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Curt Schilling, and Sammy Sosa all “graduated” after contentious 10-year runs that spurred widespread public debate — often lively, at times prickly, perhaps even exasperating. In their stead arrived a crop of 14 newcomers, none of whom was a slam dunk. Just one has a strong shot at eventual election, namely Carlos Beltrán, and only one other (Francisco Rodríguez) is likely to receive enough support even to remain on the ballot, whose official results will be announced on Tuesday, January 24, at 6 PM ET on MLB Network.
Given that turnover and the possibility that the ballot’s top returnees, Scott Rolen and Todd Helton, might not get to 75% — thus leading to the second shutout in three years from the writers — it’s understandable why this ballot hasn’t been at the center of attention the way recent ones have. Throw in a lively early free agent season (particularly when compared to last year’s lockout and the previous year’s post-COVID fallout) and our site largely going dark for a much-needed break between Christmas and New Years, and it’s not hard to understand why participation in our annual Hall of Fame crowdsource ballot tailed off.
Where last year 1,018 registered users filled out ballots — which can include up to 10 candidates and are due by the end of December 31, just like actual voters — just 548 did this year. That’s still about 150 more votes than are expected from this year’s BBWAA voters (394 votes were received last year). Our 548 votes also constitute a useful sample in comparing voting trends based on those ballots in Ryan Thibodaux’s indispensable Ballot Tracker.
Our crowd chose three candidates, one of whom was a repeat from last year and two of whom were newcomers:
| Player | YoB | 2023 Crowdsource | 2022 Crowdsource | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scott Rolen | 6 | 91.8% | 84.8% | 7.0% |
| Todd Helton | 5 | 80.5% | 66.1% | 14.4% |
| Gary Sheffield | 9 | 75.0% | 53.5% | 21.5% |
| Andruw Jones | 6 | 74.5% | 61.7% | 12.8% |
| Carlos Beltran | 1 | 72.4% | — | — |
| Billy Wagner | 8 | 69.9% | 53.4% | 16.5% |
| Alex Rodriguez | 2 | 65.5% | 67.7% | -2.2% |
| Manny Ramirez | 7 | 58.8% | 52.8% | 6.0% |
| Bobby Abreu | 4 | 45.6% | 25.6% | 20.0% |
| Jeff Kent | 10 | 36.7% | 22.3% | 14.4% |
| Andy Pettitte | 5 | 28.1% | 16.0% | 12.1% |
| Mark Buehrle | 3 | 18.8% | 9.1% | 9.7% |
| Francisco Rodríguez | 1 | 10.2% | — | — |
| Jimmy Rollins | 2 | 9.5% | 5.5% | 4.0% |
| Torii Hunter | 3 | 4.6% | 2.1% | 2.5% |
| Omar Vizquel | 6 | 3.8% | 4.0% | -0.2% |
| R.A. Dickey | 1 | 2.4% | — | — |
| Matt Cain | 1 | 1.3% | — | — |
| John Lackey | 1 | 0.9% | — | — |
| Jered Weaver | 1 | 0.7% | — | — |
| Jacoby Ellsbury | 1 | 0.7% | — | — |
| Andre Ethier | 1 | 0.7% | — | — |
| Huston Street | 1 | 0.7% | — | — |
| J.J. Hardy | 1 | 0.5% | — | — |
| Bronson Arroyo | 1 | 0.5% | — | — |
| Jayson Werth | 1 | 0.4% | — | — |
| Mike Napoli | 1 | 0.4% | — | — |
| Jhonny Peralta | 1 | 0.2% | — | — |
In both 2021 and ’22, our readers elected Rolen, Bonds, and Clemens, but with the Gruesome Twosome (and Schilling, Sosa, and the actually-elected David Ortiz) no longer under the writers’ purview, and no longer occupying space within those precious 10 spots, they’ve moved on to support other candidates. Indeed, seven candidates increased their levels of support by at least 10 percentage points, three by at least 15 points, and two by at least 20 points; the holdovers averaged a gain of 9.9%. Even Rolen’s share of the vote — which didn’t have a lot of room for improvement compared to the others (an issue that we’ve observed with the published ballots in the Tracker) — increased to push him above 90%. With Bonds (82.9% last year), Clemens (79.8%), Ortiz (71.9%), Schilling (40.9%), and Sosa (36.3%) coming off the real ballot, our voters suddenly had an average of 3.1 slots to fill, and they used most of them. Only two of the returning candidates — Rodriguez and Vizquel — received lower shares from our crowd this year than last, and neither by much.
Along with Rolen, Helton made it across the 75% threshold, while Sheffield landed exactly on it; I can say my vote was the deciding factor, and likewise so can the other 410 of you who voted for him. Meanwhile, if only another three of you had found room for Jones, you could have put him over the line as well. Beltrán missed by only 14 votes, more on which shortly.
Speaking of my vote, four participants in our crowdsource matched my seven-man slate (Abreu, Beltrán, Helton, Jones, Rolen, Sheffield, Wagner). So far, I know of just one actual voter who has done so, The Athletic’s Chad Jennings.
All told, this year’s crowdsource voters weren’t as generous as last year’s, averaging 7.55 votes per ballot, down from 8.62, and slightly lower than the average of 7.65 from 2021 as well. They were, however, more generous than the 179 voters whose ballots were added to the tracker as of 11:00 AM ET on Monday morning. Those voters have averaged just 6.28 votes per ballot. Where 29.6% of our voters used all 10 slots (down from a whopping 59% last year), just 17.9% of those in the Tracker have maxed out. At the other end of the spectrum, where just 6.4% of our voters used three or fewer slots (down from 8.9% last year), 15.1% of Tracker voters have done so. We had just one blank ballot submitted this year, compared to five last year, where we’ve seen four blanks already from actual voters this year, and the final total will certainly be higher.
In terms of comparing our crowdsource results to the ballots in the Tracker, just four candidates are receiving lower shares than from the writers:
| Player | YoB | 2023 Crowdsource | 2023 Tracker | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bobby Abreu | 4 | 45.6% | 19.0% | 26.6% |
| Alex Rodriguez | 2 | 65.5% | 40.2% | 25.3% |
| Manny Ramirez | 7 | 58.8% | 37.4% | 21.4% |
| Carlos Beltran | 1 | 72.4% | 55.9% | 16.5% |
| Scott Rolen | 6 | 91.8% | 79.3% | 12.5% |
| Gary Sheffield | 9 | 75.0% | 63.7% | 11.3% |
| Andy Pettitte | 5 | 28.1% | 17.3% | 10.8% |
| Mark Buehrle | 3 | 18.8% | 10.1% | 8.7% |
| Andruw Jones | 6 | 74.5% | 67.6% | 6.9% |
| R.A. Dickey | 1 | 2.4% | 0.6% | 1.8% |
| Torii Hunter | 3 | 4.6% | 2.8% | 1.8% |
| Francisco Rodríguez | 1 | 10.2% | 8.9% | 1.3% |
| Matt Cain | 1 | 1.3% | 0.0% | 1.3% |
| Todd Helton | 5 | 80.5% | 79.3% | 1.2% |
| John Lackey | 1 | 0.9% | 0.0% | 0.9% |
| Andre Ethier | 1 | 0.7% | 0.0% | 0.7% |
| Jacoby Ellsbury | 1 | 0.7% | 0.0% | 0.7% |
| Jered Weaver | 1 | 0.7% | 0.0% | 0.7% |
| Bronson Arroyo | 1 | 0.5% | 0.0% | 0.5% |
| J.J. Hardy | 1 | 0.5% | 0.0% | 0.5% |
| Jayson Werth | 1 | 0.4% | 0.0% | 0.4% |
| Mike Napoli | 1 | 0.4% | 0.0% | 0.4% |
| Jhonny Peralta | 1 | 0.2% | 0.0% | 0.2% |
| Huston Street | 1 | 0.7% | 0.6% | 0.1% |
| Billy Wagner | 8 | 69.9% | 73.2% | -3.3% |
| Jimmy Rollins | 2 | 9.5% | 12.8% | -3.3% |
| Omar Vizquel | 6 | 3.8% | 8.9% | -5.1% |
| Jeff Kent | 10 | 36.7% | 50.3% | -13.6% |
It’s not all that hard to ascertain why that particular quartet might be the ones trailing among our voters. Kent’s appeal as a candidate has always rested upon his traditional stats and accomplishments rather than the advanced stats that may appeal more here (he’s the all-time leader in home runs by a second baseman but just 21st in JAWS, for example). I don’t expect him to wind up over 50%, but I do expect him to improve upon last year’s 32.7% and wind up somewhere in the 40s, which should set him up for a longer look from an Era Committee to be named later, à la Fred McGriff. Along the same lines but with much less support is Rollins, who has good counting stats for a shortstop but ranks just 32nd in JAWS. Wagner might be at the upper end of statheads’ tolerances for closers in the Hall; advanced statistics don’t make a great case for the value of relief pitchers — even elite ones — relative to starters, though I’d bet that he winds up with a higher percentage from our readers than from actual voters.
As for Vizquel, his case has always relied upon traditional merits and a dismissal of the advanced stats that clearly show his flashy fielding didn’t compensate enough for his limp bat to put him in the pantheon. Our readers weren’t buying that point of view even on the 2020 crowdsource ballot (11.1%), which took place before allegations surfaced of both domestic violence against his wife and sexual harassment of a batboy while managing in the minors. He reached 52.6% from BBWAA voters in 2020, but shed more than half of that support over the next two cycles, receiving just 23.9% last year. Even with both cases apparently closed on a legal front, he’s received single-digit support on the published ballots so far, and it marks the second year in a row he’s finished below 5% in our crowdsource.
Our voters were more forgiving of PED-linked candidates, both those who were suspended (Ramirez and Rodriguez) and those more tenuously connected (Sheffield, Pettitte). I’m hopeful that Sheffield can put himself in position for a 10th-year surge on the 2024 ballot, but with a much stronger crop of newcomers next year (Adrián Beltré, Joe Mauer, Chase Utley) and the possibility of Rolen, Helton, and Wagner being near-misses this year, we could be facing a real logjam.
Regarding Beltán, our voters were generally forgiving of his involvement in the Astros’ 2017 sign stealing — more so than actual voters, though if he comes anywhere close to his published 55.7%, I think he’ll be all right. Then again, as we’ve seen with Bonds, Clemens, Schilling, and Vizquel, the “Rule of 50%” may not apply to a candidate with such significant baggage, as there may well be a large enough bloc of voters dead set against him to prevent his election.
As for what all of this means for Tuesday’s official results, I’m afraid we are facing a second shutout in three years. While Helton and Rolen are both at 79.3% in the Tracker, the past nine years have illustrated that isn’t enough. Of the 23 candidates elected from 2014 onward, only Ivan Rodriguez (79.5% in 2017) and Trevor Hoffman (78.2%) had shares below 80% in ballots published prior to the election results. Of the 14 candidates who received 75% to 85% via ballots published prior to the results, the average differential between those shares and their final results was a drop of 5.6% overall, and 4.4% if I exclude Bonds/Clemens/Schilling. The only candidate to receive at least 70% from pre-election shares and wind up with a higher final share was Hoffman, in both 2017 (from 72.% to 74.0%) and ’18 (from 78.2% to 79.9%).
If my reading of the tea leaves isn’t unsettling enough, the latest estimate from Jason Sardell, the most accurate prognosticator of Hall results for several years running now, published an estimate on Sunday that gave the writers only about a 15% chance of avoiding a shutout:
We'll know the Baseball Hall of Fame election results in two days, but here's where each player would finish if add/drop trends with 176 public ballots in @NotMrTibbs's Tracker continue to hold. pic.twitter.com/uVkCPVUGHQ
— Jason Sardell (@sarsdell) January 22, 2023
Gulp. I hope he’s underselling the odds of at least Rolen getting elected. Getting across the line from last year’s 63.2% doesn’t seem like it should be that hard given the gains he’s posted in recent cycles, but the problem is that even with the 2022 graduations creating more space, many of those voters had already carved out a spot for Rolen, and this isn’t a new phenomenon. From my profile of him earlier in this cycle:
[S]ince the writers returned to voting annually in 1966, candidates besides Rolen have received between 61% and 65% and still had eligibility remaining 22 times. Of those, seven were elected in the next year, 12 needed two years, two needed three years, and one needed four years. If I limit the results to candidates who landed in that range within their first five years, the breakdown is four out of 11 elected in the following year (Eddie Mathews, Mike Mussina, Barry Larkin, and Ryne Sandberg), with the other seven needing two years.
It’s obviously a much bigger task for Helton to get home from last year’s 52.0%; the closest precedent in modern voting history is former Rockies teammate Larry Walker jumping from 54.6% to 76.6%, and right now that 2.6-point gap between Helton’s and Walker’s shares looks huge. The good news is that time is on both Rolen and Helton’s sides, and maybe we’ll be in for a bumper crop of honorees on the 2024 ballot, as we saw so often from 2014-19. As for this year, it may not be in the cards.
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.
Thank you Jay, very cool!
I’m for Andruw Jones, Carlos Beltrán, Alex Rodriguez, Manny Ramirez, and Andy Pettitte easily. I probably voted for Mark Buehrle also. In addition to the top 3.
If you support Jones the you need to support the fact that Jim Edmonds needs to be in the hall too but somehow only got 2.5% of the vote on his only year on the ballot. Look at their careers Edmonds was a much better hitter and they have negligible career WAR difference that is entirely based on crappy defensive metrics from the 90s and 2000s
Sure but he’s not on the ballot
I’m curious to see what Utley gets. I think he could follow a Rolen-type path because so much of his value is wrapped up in defense and baserunning. But he was also has a “winner’s” aura, so maybe he gets in a lot sooner.
As for Rolen, I was hoping he would get in before Beltre hit the ballot but it seems increasingly unlikely.
He’s also really the only viable candidate from that venerable late-aughts/early teens Phillies offense (taking nothing away from Bobby Abreu, who I would vote for personally, but has virtually no chance).
At the time, he never felt like the leader of that offense, he never won an MVP while Howard and Rollins did, but he clearly had the best career, overwhelmingly so from a sabermetrics standpoint.
I think that bodes well. I think he gets in and I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s faster to get in than Rolen.
I’m not sure that he is going to be voted in by the writers.
While I personally support Utley, I’m not optimistic. Traditionalists are likely to hate him: less than 2,000 career hits (a cutoff that Jay has noted), never really led the league in much of anything, didn’t do that well in MVP voting, etc). And I’m not sure how much support he’ll even get from the non-traditionalists. It’s not like he has an overwhelming amount of WAR (64.5 bWAR, 61.6 fWAR). He’s basically Scott Rolen lite and we see how that’s gone.
The 49.3 7 year peak WAR is just so dominant though. If the writers don’t make an exception here than they never will
This to me is what sells me on his candidacy. Utley’s peak was crazy. I do agree that a lot of traditionalists are going to be no’s at first but he will do very well in JAWS and he will have some momentum if the more analytically minded voters get behind him.
It’ll be the analytically minded voters for sure. Utley’s case is a lot like Bobby Grich’s, so swaying traditionalists will be a tough slog.
Whether or not it *should* matter, Utley has remained in baseball and in the public eye with a solid reputation (aside from some Mets fans), and that’s going to push some fence sitters over for him that won’t go for, say, Abreu
He should easily make it but as you say might not make the 5%
Wait, what? You think Utley may not hit the 5% threshold? I wouldn’t have thought that was even in play
I’ll continue to pound the proverbial table for Abreu. It looks like a decent chance he’ll remain for next season, but I suspect he’ll fall off next year with a bunch of new strong candidates coming aboard.
Shameful showing for Abreu on a supposedly analytical site. Get it together Fangraphs voters, Abreu is well past the borderline.
or…analytically minded fans look at his body of work and land in a different place than you did. He’s by no means a slam dunk, “supposedly analytical” or not.
(or, Stan Musial he ain’t.)
There are now 278 players in the HOF and there is simply no argument that Abreu is not one of the top 278 HOF-eligible players. Folks need a more rigorous understanding of the borderline. JAWS is no help with its excessive focus on the average.
If you are using the borderline as your standard then there would be about a thousand HOFers, give or take. You simply cannot, cannot, cannot use the lowest possible bar as your qualification standard, unless you want to make room for Gary Gaetti, Placido Polanco, Jake Peavy, Tom Candiotti, Carl Crawford, Jason Heyward, Eric Chavez, Mark Gubicza…(and scores and scores of others).
Always use the median HOF for a position as your starting standard. I think everyone would agree that just about anyone above the median for a position should be enshrined (setting aside the steroids quagmire, that’s a topic for another day). For those that fall between the borderline and the median (like Abreu) I think reasonable arguments can be made either way and there is clearly no “correct” answer.
You are not comprehending what I am saying. There are currently 278 players in the Hall of Fame. Therefore any discussion of adding someone new should start with the question “does he have a credible claim to being one of the top 278 HOF-eligible players of all time?” That does not include “thousands” of players, in point of fact it includes about 278. This is a standard Abreu easily clears. This is why I don’t like JAWS because it focuses on the median so guys who are below the median but still well above the borderline are not given due consideration. People just hand-wave them and say “oh below the median is a quagmire, who is to say.” No, that is wrong, Abreu is at least a good 10% above the borderline and should therefore be in.
Agreed, same here.
I was watching MLB Now and people on that show (not Brian Kenny) keep making the argument that Bobby Abreu was similar to Tony Gwynn and therefore he is a HOFer. This is such a dumb comparison because they were totally different hitters and does not highlight was what so unique about Abreu, or Gywnn for that matter. In fact, Abreu was a better all around hitter than Gwynn (they got on base at roughly the same rate but Abreu was doing more damage by slugging at a higher rate).
1) Abreu was essentially a unicorn in terms of power/speed combo. In the last 95 years, only 2 players have achieved 400 steals and a SLG% of .475 or higher (Bonds and Abreu). Stolen base rate was right around 76%.
2) Abreu maintained a .300/.400/.500 slashline for a decade (1998-2007). Only 18 others have accomplished this feat since 1945 (min 5000 PA over 10-year span). Nearly all not associated with PEDs are in the Hall of Fame (Bernie Williams, Todd Helton, and Lance Berkman).
3) Had the most fWAR among all RF over the 10-year period of 1998-2007. This ranked 4th among all OF.
4) 1 of 32 players all-time with 10,000 PAs and a WRC+ of 125 or higher. All others not associated with PEDs are in the Hall of Fame except for Abreu and Dwight Evans.
A-Rod and Manny remain two of the very best players I’ve ever seen in my life. It remains weird to me to think that I could be an old man describing the best players I’ve seen and several will not be Hall of famers.
Well part of your story could include the “why” or perhaps in a couple of decades when the vet committee is largely made up of their peers, they’ll get in that way.
But it’s not a mystery, right? They took a banned substance (and then decided to set their reputations on fire by how they handled it) and got caught. Manny got caught twice, right? Whether you agree or not, it’s not like this is some kind of arbitrary or capricious thing. They don’t need to be in the HoF to have their statistics remembered, and Manny will always be Mannylocks to me…but FAFO
I didn’t say it was a mystery nor arbitrary. I’m fully aware why and I generally don’t have a strong feeling about how someone wants to vote on them. I was just saying it feels weird that if someone asks “who are the best players you ever saw?” several of the people I would cite in my top 10 will not be hall of famers
Honestly if Rolen doesn’t get in this year I suspect that there are simply enough jerks dead set against him to keep him out until his first Committee appearance. There have been a lot of crap on a clown shoe ballots publicized this year.
So….your view is the correct one, and anyone that disagrees with you is a “jerk”. Wow.
Did Scott Rolen or Todd Helton’s lifetime stats CHANGE over the past year?
Usually it is more about who else is on the ballot.
Is this your first time? With very few exceptions it takes multiple ballots for players to be elected.
Why? If a person is HOF worthy when he is first eligible, why does he have to wait? There is no limit on how many can be inducted each year is there?
You’re thinking about this from the perspective of a single voter, rather than a group of voters who influence each other. And also, so many people were locked in on the steroid guys that there was a logjam.
You did not answer my question. Isn’t a player HOF worthy from Day 1? His stats won’t change, so his HOF worthiness shouldn’t change. (Appears to be a bunch of people who just like to argue.)
I was trying to explain how this works, and how it makes sense that his vote goes up over time. But since you are asking for a yes/no answer: he’s been a Hall of Famer from day 1. Hope that answers your question.
There is a limit to how many players a voter can choose on a single ballot. So if a voter thinks there are more than 10 worthy candidates on a ballot, he might need to prioritize. Like voting for Sheffield and Wagner over Abreu and K-Rod, since the latter 2 have many more years remaining on the ballot, and don’t appear to be in danger of the 5% rule.
I always found it kinda weird when player’s vote totals change significantly from year to year. Like voters, was he a HOFer or not? His stats are the same…
There are exceptions, like if time reveals a scandal (Vizquel) or you did not have enough slots on your ballot (but how many folks put in 10 votes) or someone makes a point in their arguments for or against a guy that changes your mind. And I know the electorate is slightly shifting year to year. But most of the time, if I had a vote, I would change my list only very very infrequently.
I continue t find it amusing how a player’s vote totals can go up as his TEN year shot at induction rolls along. The guy hasn’t swung a bat or thrown a pitch since he retired, but somehow his stats improved over the years??? Are these baseball players we are talking about or fine wines? Did they somehow get better as they aged on the shelf? IMO, you are in or you are out from day one. And don’t worry about mistakes. After-all, both Babe Ruth and Harold Baines have the same type of plaque. LOL
Love that the Fangraphs community is getting behind Bobby Abreu!
Indispensable indeed.
Andruw Jones has gained 24 votes and lost 0 from last year. Feels like that sort of momentum bodes well for next year.
Yet somehow Jim Edmonds got 2.5% of the vote in his only year on the ballot. Just shows how incompetent ALL of the voters are
Wagner has picked up a lot of support from last year also, which bodes well for his election in the next two cycles
Yay, MLB hall of fame voting, where writers get to decide which players used PEDs based on zero information. And sometimes those writers decide steroid users are perfectly fine despite being a limited player (David ortiz).
I do find it funny that out of all the major steroid guys, the guy with arguably the weakest career credentials is the guy that writers voted for
First sentence, you snark on “deciding which players used PEDs based on zero information”. Second sentence, you then call Ortiz a “user” based on a leaked unsubstantiated test. I think your argument about being a limited player is the one that holds water on Ortiz. Really doesn’t deserve to be in any more than Sheffield, but I don’t think he needs to be lumped in with A Rod, Manny and the proven cheaters.
“Get to”? I would guess it is something that the voters have to hate having to consider. More like a burden, where you have to make a decision based on limited evidence. It’s a lot easier and more fun to just consider their HOF status based on their performance.
After a certain amount of days are you not allowed to leave comments on the articles above? I clicked on a few of the names and wasn’t able to leave a comment.
I believe comments close after 2 weeks, not sure why, maybe a moderation thing to stop old articles from getting spammed.
What’s the rationale behind people who wait a few ballots to vote for someone? “First ballot” snobbery?
A lot of votes were going toward Bonds, Clemens, Schilling, etc. which are now freed up and available to support other candidates
I want a real answer how can anyone vote for Andruw Jones and not Jim Edmonds? Their career WAR is not meaningfully and entirely comes down to old defensive metrics.
Jones had built up an almost Ozzie Smith level rep on his defense, and by the time he hit 30 he had already accumulated a lot of good counting stats on offense, plus he had the association with those great Braves teams.
Edmonds was a late bloomer who had none of those going for him, and like Kenny Lofton was cursed to enter HOF eligibility on a ballot so loaded that he only lasted one year.
So that’s why Jones has gotten more love from the HOF voters.
Though tbh, Edmonds wasn’t nearly as good as Jones defensively. Jones does have a legit edge, but Edmonds deserved a longer look from HOF voters than the flawed rules allow for.
I just flat out don’t buy that Jones was worth 4 or 5 times more drs or total zone (or whatever your flawed defensive metric of choice from the 90s and early 2000s) than Edmonds. They all say Edmonds was an average to above average field which just bullshit.
I think the biggest difference is Jones played for an East Coast team and Edmonds played in California and then St Louis before the devil magic mythos started.
Lol, if you go to bbref and look at Edmonds’ advanced defensive stats, he would have had about 20 more defensive runs credited to him if Total Zone (no relation) had been the metric for WAR instead of DRS. Jones still had a better defensive resume than Edmonds, but looking at the detailed numbers Jones’ edge was pretty much driven by a spectacular peak run during his early 20s (which also happens to be what comes to mind for most of the general perception).
This must really grind your gears given that its your third comment to that effect on this article!
I think most on here agree with you & I’m not sure who you’re talking to with the constant “How can you vote for Jones over Edmonds” posts. It’s not like the Fangraph’s readers controlled the HOF voting the one year Edmonds was on the ballot 6-7 years ago.
Personally, if it was me, I’d take Edmonds over Jones. More well rounded player & as you note, the main stats in Jones favor (defensive stats) are much shakier & less reliable from that era than the offensive stats.
BTW, Edmonds won 8 GG’s, so he WAS clearly considered a great CF. I think the BBWAA just whiffed on him due to not having 400 HR or 2,000 hits & totally discounted his .376 OBP
Rolen finally gets in. Bobby Abreu drops to 15% of the vote. Jeeez Louise! Abreu gets no love