The Envelope Please: Our 2025 Hall of Fame Crowdsource Ballot Results and a Preview of Election Day
Based upon the early returns, BBWAA voters appear likely to hit another trifecta on Tuesday when the results of this year’s Hall of Fame election are announced at 6 p.m. Eastern — and there’s even an outside chance that a fourth candidate could crash the party. But if the FanGraphs readers who participated in this year’s crowdsource ballot had their way, only two players would make the cut. In this year’s edition of our annual polling, which for the second year in a row set a new record for turnout, first-year candidates Ichiro Suzuki and CC Sabathia were the only ones who topped 75%. Billy Wagner fell short despite the strong likelihood of his getting the call from the Hall in his 10th and final year on the ballot, and Carlos Beltrán — who has polled above 80% on the ballots released publicly thus far — missed out as well.
I’ll take a closer read of the tea leaves based upon the writers’ ballots that have been revealed, but first, let’s consider the readers’ entries. Registered users who participated in our poll were each allowed to submit one ballot with up to 10 candidates by the end of the day on December 31, just like roughly 400 BBWAA voters did for this year’s actual election — only we ink-stained wretches had to get to a mailbox with a prepaid envelope, where our users voted electronically. After more than tripling our turnout from 2023 (an unusually low year) to ’24 to set a record, we added another 344 votes this time around, a 20.7% increase:
| Year | Votes | Votes Per Ballot | # Elected | Honorees* |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 1,213 | 9.41 | 7 | Martinez, Rivera, Mussina, Bonds, Clemens, Halladay, Walker |
| 2020 | 1,440 | 8.37 | 4 | Jeter, Walker, Bonds, Clemens |
| 2021 | 1,152 | 7.65 | 3 | Rolen, Bonds, Clemens |
| 2022 | 1,018 | 8.62 | 3 | Rolen, Bonds, Clemens |
| 2023 | 548 | 7.55 | 3 | Rolen, Helton, Sheffield |
| 2024 | 1,657 | 7.96 | 2 | Beltré, Mauer |
| 2025 | 2,001 | 7.92 | 2 | Suzuki, Sabathia |
Our largest electorate actually matched the total for the smallest number of honorees in the seven cycles for which we’ve run this exercise. That’s not to say that these voters were ungenerous, as they averaged 7.91 names per ballot, down only slightly from last year’s 7.96; for the duration of this exercise, our readers have averaged at least 0.96 more names per ballot than the official electorate, though last year was the first time the margin slipped below 1.4. In terms of the extremes, 41.8% of our voters used all 10 slots, down slightly from last year’s 43% and the high of 59% in 2022, but well ahead of the 29.6% mark from ’23; in that department, our crowd has generally run about 15 or 20 points ahead of the actual electorate, including private ballots. Meanwhile, just 5.6% of our voters used three or fewer slots, compared to 7.9% last year and a high of 8.9% in 2022. Puzzlingly enough, last year’s crowd produced 14 blank ballots, up from one in 2023, but this year’s total was back down to three.
Here’s the full rundown, with comparisons to each candidate’s totals in the last two cycles — not just last year but also 2023:
| Player | YoB | 2023 Crowd | 2024 Crowd | 2025 Crowd | 2024–25 Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ichiro Suzuki | 1 | — | — | 97.1% | — |
| CC Sabathia | 1 | — | — | 82.3% | — |
| Billy Wagner | 10 | 69.9% | 64.1% | 71.8% | +7.7% |
| Carlos Beltrán | 3 | 72.4% | 66.4% | 70.7% | +4.3% |
| Andruw Jones | 8 | 74.5% | 68.0% | 68.1% | +0.1% |
| Alex Rodriguez | 4 | 65.5% | 60.6% | 61.3% | +0.7% |
| Chase Utley | 2 | — | 56.1% | 59.9% | +3.8% |
| Manny Ramirez | 9 | 58.8% | 50.3% | 53.1% | +2.8% |
| Felíx Hernández | 1 | — | — | 43.3% | — |
| Bobby Abreu | 6 | 45.6% | 37.7% | 41.9% | +4.2% |
| Andy Pettitte | 7 | 28.1% | 20.2% | 30.3% | +10.1% |
| Mark Buehrle | 5 | 18.8% | 10.8% | 14.8% | +4.0% |
| Dustin Pedroia | 1 | — | — | 14.6% | — |
| David Wright | 2 | — | 11.5% | 14.5% | +3.0% |
| Russell Martin | 1 | — | — | 13.4% | — |
| Jimmy Rollins | 4 | 9.5% | 8.2% | 13.2% | +5.0% |
| Brian McCann | 1 | — | — | 9.5% | — |
| Francisco Rodríguez | 3 | — | 7.3% | 8.4% | +1.1% |
| Ben Zobrist | 1 | — | — | 4.8% | — |
| Omar Vizquel | 8 | 3.8% | 3.6% | 4.5% | +0.9% |
| Torii Hunter | 5 | 4.6% | 4.9% | 4.2% | -0.7% |
| Curtis Granderson | 1 | — | — | 2.6% | — |
| Ian Kinsler | 1 | — | — | 2.4% | — |
| Troy Tulowitzki | 1 | — | — | 1.7% | — |
| Adam Jones | 1 | — | — | 1.6% | — |
| Hanley Ramirez | 1 | — | — | 0.9% | — |
| Fernando Rodney | 1 | — | — | 0.5% | — |
| Carlos González | 1 | — | — | 0.5% | — |
Suzuki, who has been included on all 200 BBWAA ballots published via the Tracker thus far (an estimated 51% of the electorate), wasn’t unanimous with our crowd. Fifty-nine voters did not include him, including seven who voted for a single candidate, some of them longshots. (Kinsler and Martin each had one ballot to themselves.) Cherry-picking some of the oddities among the multi-candidate ballots that left Suzuki off, we had a González-Martin ballot, a Beltrán-Pettite-Wright one, a Beltrán-Pettitte-Vizquel one, a Tulowitzki-Utley-Wagner one, an Abreu-Beltrán-Wagner one, and an Abreu-Hunter-Pettitte-Zobrist one. I can’t read much logic into any of those combos, but since none of them even amounts to a rounding error in the percentages, it doesn’t really matter.
More strikingly, while last year every returning candidate except Hunter received a lower share of the vote from our crowd than in 2023, this year, everybody except Hunter received a higher share, though as you can see, Hunter’s share didn’t move by much in either year. In his final year on the ballot, Wagner’s crowd share grew by the second-largest amount behind only that of Pettitte, yet he still fell short. Dandy Andy was the only candidate whose share increased by double digits, whereas half a dozen candidates did so from 2022 to ’23.
While none of the seven candidates I included in the “one-and-done” portion of my ballot series (González, Granderson, Adam Jones, Hanley Ramirez, Rodney, Tulowitzki, and Zobrist) has received a vote on a published ballot yet, every candidate received at least 11 crowdsource votes, and a couple of first-year candidates, Martin and McCann, received shares above 5%, though they don’t appear likely to do so from among the actual electorate. On the other hand, Hunter and fellow holdover Vizquel both fell short of 5% here; the latter is already safe according to the ballots published by the Tracker, but the former is in danger of being eliminated from further consideration.
If there’s a trend to be spotted, it’s that our voters may be in the midst of expanding their understanding of what makes a Hall of Fame career. None of the four starting pitchers on the ballot have 300 wins or are above the JAWS standard — things that make for easy first-ballot election — but the strong debuts of Sabathia and Hernández and the gains of holdovers Pettitte and (to a lesser extent) Buehrle illustrate some rethinking of the yardsticks by which we measure these hurlers, not that anyone (myself included) has come up with easy answers. Likewise when it comes to the support of the aforementioned pair of catchers, whose pitch-framing data place their WARs and JAWS in the neighborhood of recently elected backstops Joe Mauer and Ivan Rodriguez, not to mention upcoming candidates Yadier Molina and Buster Posey.
In all, we received 1,274 different combinations of ballots, including 518 different 10-man combos; without looking, I’d guess both of those set records given the size of our electorate. The most common ballot, which was used 46 times (2.3% of the vote overall) was a 10-man slate that included Abreu, Beltrán, Hernández, Andruw Jones, Manny Ramirez, Alex Rodriguez, Sabathia, Suzuki, Utley, and Wagner. By comparison, the most common ballot last year appeared 4.4% of the time. The second-most popular ballot this year, appearing 27 times (1.3%), simply swapped Pettitte in for Hernández. Seven other voters from our crowd matched my choice of 10 (Abreu, Beltrán, Hernández, Andruw Jones, Martin, McCann, Sabathia, Suzuki, Utley, and Wagner), down from eight last year but still more than I expected given that nobody from among the 200 published ballots thus far has done so.
On that note, here’s the comparison between our crowdsource and what was in the Tracker at 9:00 a.m. ET on Tuesday morning, about nine hours before the scheduled announcement of the results:
| Player | YoB | 2025 Crowdsource | 2025 Tracker | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Billy Wagner | 10 | 71.8% | 84.5% | 12.7% |
| CC Sabathia | 1 | 82.3% | 92.5% | 10.2% |
| Carlos Beltrán | 3 | 70.7% | 80.5% | 9.8% |
| Omar Vizquel | 8 | 4.5% | 13.5% | 9.0% |
| Jimmy Rollins | 4 | 13.2% | 20.5% | 7.3% |
| Andruw Jones | 8 | 68.1% | 72.0% | 3.9% |
| Ichiro Suzuki | 1 | 97.1% | 100.0% | 2.9% |
| Andy Pettitte | 7 | 30.3% | 32.5% | 2.2% |
| Ian Kinsler | 1 | 2.4% | 3.5% | 1.1% |
| Dustin Pedroia | 1 | 14.6% | 14.5% | -0.1% |
| Francisco Rodríguez | 3 | 8.4% | 8.0% | -0.4% |
| Carlos González | 1 | 0.5% | 0.0% | -0.5% |
| Fernando Rodney | 1 | 0.5% | 0.0% | -0.5% |
| Hanley Ramirez | 1 | 0.9% | 0.0% | -0.9% |
| Adam Jones | 1 | 1.6% | 0.0% | -1.6% |
| Troy Tulowitzki | 1 | 1.7% | 0.0% | -1.7% |
| Torii Hunter | 5 | 4.2% | 2.0% | -2.2% |
| Curtis Granderson | 1 | 2.6% | 0.0% | -2.6% |
| Mark Buehrle | 5 | 14.8% | 12.0% | -2.8% |
| David Wright | 2 | 14.5% | 10.5% | -4.0% |
| Ben Zobrist | 1 | 4.8% | 0.0% | -4.8% |
| Brian McCann | 1 | 9.5% | 3.5% | -6.0% |
| Chase Utley | 2 | 59.9% | 52.0% | -7.9% |
| Russell Martin | 1 | 13.4% | 3.5% | -9.9% |
| Manny Ramirez | 9 | 53.1% | 36.5% | -16.6% |
| Bobby Abreu | 6 | 41.9% | 25.0% | -16.9% |
| Félix Hernández | 1 | 43.3% | 24.5% | -18.8% |
| Alex Rodriguez | 4 | 61.3% | 41.0% | -20.3% |
Obviously, there’s a high correlation between the voting shares from the two sources; in fact, 15 of the 28 candidates are off by no more than four percentage points in one direction or the other. The largest gaps on the positive side show the writers — or at least the ones who have published their ballots — as being more strongly supportive of the top-polling candidates, which probably owes something to the transparency of the process; after all, nearly all of those voters have attached their names to their selections. Note that a couple of candidates whose credentials appeal more to old-school voters than new-school ones — Vizquel (ugh) and Rollins — have the fourth- and fifth-highest gaps between their actual and crowd shares. This tracks, given that the voters tend to be more mainstream than the average FanGraphs reader.
At the other end of the spectrum, the two candidates who served PED suspensions have two of the largest negative gaps between public ballots and our crowd. Four other candidates whose support among the actual votes is at least six points lower (Abreu, Martin, Utley, and McCann) all have some very specific stathead appeal, and they do reasonably well by JAWS (framing-inclusive JAWS for the catchers). Hernández, with the second-largest negative gap, may seem harder to classify — his S-JAWS is well below the standard, for one thing — but I think we can include him among the stathead favorites as well given the way his winning the 2010 AL Cy Young Award despite a 13-12 won-loss record shook up the industry.
As for what it all means for Tuesday, historically speaking, every candidate who has polled above 80% on the ballots published before the results announcement has been elected, which suggests that Suzuki, Sabathia, and Wagner are locks, and would seem to be good news for Beltrán. The caveat is that Beltrán is just barely above the line, and one or two dozen more ballots could be released between now and the announcement, bumping those pre-election percentages down while keeping the streak intact; last year, for example, 217 ballots were published prior to the official results. Tracker troupe leader Ryan Thibodaux pointed to a few notable close calls the other day:
Re: Beltrán, now @ 80.6%. We've never had a candidate >=80% in the Tracker at the results announcement fail to be elected. However:2024 Mauer – 83.4% to 76.1% (7.3% ?)2020 Walker – 83.2% to 76.6% (6.6% ?)2022 Ortiz – 83.4% to 77.9% (5.5% ?)And:2023 Helton – 78.6% to 72.2% (6.4% ?, not elected)
Helton’s 78.6% pre-election share in 2023, the ballot before he was elected, is the highest of any candidate to miss, but as Anthony Calamis pointed out last week, candidates polling below 80% pre-announcement have been elected, namely Trevor Hoffman in ’18 (78.2%) and Ivan Rodriguez (79.5%) in ’17.
Turning to the forecasting work of Jason Sardell, it appears Beltrán has about a 1-in-6 chance of getting in this year. Sardell’s probabilistic model has been the most accurate predictive system in the industry for several years running; it groups voters based upon the number of candidates they include on their ballots (“small Hall” and “large Hall” voters) and their electoral stance on PED users. Here’s a look at his projections based upon 188 ballots:
Updated Hall of Fame projections with less than 24 hours to go and 188 ballots in @notmrtibbs.com's Tracker. Beltrán's likelihood of being elected has slipped in the past 24 hours but he could still join Ichiro, Sabathia, and Wagner in Cooperstown if he slightly overperforms current trends
— Jason Sardell (@sardell.bsky.social) 2025-01-21T00:53:31.679Z
While it could be a nailbiter regarding whether Beltrán is elected on Tuesday — which would make this for the fourth four-man election in the last 11 years, compared to just three in the Hall’s first 28 years, and none in the 1956–2014 span — the stakes are comparatively low. He’s only in his third year of eligibility, leaving him plenty of time to get to 75%, and what’s more, next year’s class of first-year candidates doesn’t have anyone likely to get in on the first ballot, with Cole Hamels and the PED-tinged Ryan Braun the top two candidates by WAR and JAWS. It would be a good year for Beltrán and possibly Jones (in his ninth year of eligibility) to gain entry.
After weeks of speculation regarding what might happen — possible unanimity for Ichiro, a likely 10th-year entry for Wagner, some fretting over whether King Félix would avoid the one-and-done oblivion into which Johan Santana was cast in 2018 — the suspense is almost over. I’ll be back later on Tuesday with my quick take on the results, followed by a candidate-by-candidate breakdown as soon as my fingers allow it.
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.
Some people really do want to watch the world burn.
If you can’t find Russell Martin appreciators at FanGraphs, where would you?
Martin and McCann are both within 1.5 fWAR of Mauer for their careers, and both of them had more than 1000 fewer PA. Martin and McCann are on track to get knocked off the ballot on their first time through while Mauer sailed through on the first try.
Now do bWAR!
OK! Martin has 38.9, McCann 32.0, and Mauer has 55.2.
FWar is the only one fair to catchers!
Okay, unlike some of you other anonymous voters that are hiding from scrutiny, I’ll make my results public. I voted only for Fernando Rodney.
As much as people moan about how some writers vote, based on fan results it’s a good thing fans don’t control the voting.
Like the all star game fan voting? That could be pretty epic, but it would lose its charm fairly quickly.
I don’t get why Bobby Abreu doesn’t receive more love on the ballot. A consistently great player with no PED record, which should make his numbers pop that much more.
My best guess is that it’s a combination of: (a) played on several teams, (b) his calling card is OBP, which is super valuable but doesn’t excite sports writers in their nethers, and (c) is kind of a borderline candidate to begin with.
He also put up +50 fielding runs in the five years before we have BIS data and either -7 or -30 runs over the next five years…and four of those years are included in his peak.
Call him +10 instead of +28 in 1998, and that knocks him below 50 JAWS.
I love Bobby, but he’s just on the wrong side of borderline for me…even before I noticed the year his power fell off a cliff and checked his PCL power numbers for reference.
If his power hadn’t fallen off a cliff in 2006, after taking a big leap from AAA to the MLB in the late 90s, he probably racks up the counting stats to make it straight up.
I’m way more annoyed about Utley. I know he has a real shot of him getting elected but he can’t even get elected on the FanGraphs crowdsource ballot so that’s not a good sign.
Bad job by us
I’m not surprised that CC is going in on the first ballot, but am a little surprised at the broad level of support he’s receiving (90%+). Will be curious to see if Beltran makes it tomorrow, but certainly if he does not he’s a shoo-in next year. Not surprised that the FG readership is higher on some “not traditional HOF numbers” guys like Abreu, Utley, and Felix than the votership at large.
Feel like it’s not fair to Abreu and (especially) Utley to lump them in with Felix…whose “metrics driven” case boils down to “Tim Hudson without the longevity.”
By fWAR, Felix’s best 11 years are all better than Hudson’s best 11. Felix’s best 4 years were better than anything Hudson ever put up.
https://www.fangraphs.com/graphsw.aspx?players=921,4772
By fWAR, a pop up caught by Anthony Volpe on the outfield grass can only be explained by random variation, while the same batted ball caught by EDLC three steps further in is solely pitcher skill.
By fWAR, Spencer Strider walking more people, striking out fewer people, and allowing more homers while pitching from the stretch compared to pitching from the windup can only be attributed to random variation.
Meanwhile, the FG glossary estimates 2000 BIP as significant for indicating a pitcher’s true talent.
Hudson had nearly 10,000 on his career.
I’m quite comfortable dying on the hill that Andy Pettitte wasn’t as good as CC Sabathia, much less Tom Glavine and Zack Greinke.
Are you happy to claim the opposite, mate?
I feel strongly about Utley, but recognize he’s relatively new on the ballot, and so some may leave him off to get those who are getting on in years into play. Not sure I’d vote for Felix over him, for example, but if it were somehow down to Wagner or Utley for me, I’d go Wagner, right?
Entirely fair!
Blank ballots from registered FG users? What in the entire fuck?
That’s gotta be people creating accounts just to screw with the numbers. Anyone who can look at pretty much any HoF ballot and not see at least 5 deserving candidates simply does not understand the game, its history, and the thresholds for induction that have existed for nearly a century at this point. Obviously we don’t want it to be “anyone better than Harold Baines, Bill Mazeroski, Rabbit Marranville, and Jack Morris” but there’s a lot of space between that floor and the “only if they have 300 W/3000 K/3000 H 500 HR.”
FTR, off the top of my head my ballot here was Ichiro, Beltran, CC, Wagner, Jones, Abreu, Buehrle, Utley, Pettitte, Martin.
Swap in McCann for Abreu and you have mine.
I’ve noticed over the years that you and I tend to think along the same lines, and neither of us wanna go to no dance unless we gonna rub some tit. On an unlimited ballot McCann would have my vote as well, but the 10 vote limit requires some triage most years.
Perfectly valid – dropping Abreu’s tactical as much as anything on my part; I know he’s safe and feel more strongly about Pettitte, Jones, and Buehrle among my no-hopers!
I voted for Pedroia as a “give the guy a vote on his first ballot” nod to a player I loved on my favorite team. That might mean more if I were an actual baseball writer voting for the actual HOF and not a random guy on a website, but still.
I don’t think he actually deserves induction or will make it in the end, but I am pleasantly surprised that he’s gotten around 15% of the vote here and in the actual election. Maybe everyone had the same idea of giving him a first-year vote, or maybe a HOF talent receiving a career-ending injury close to his peak is an easier narrative to vote for than someone like Nomar Garciaparra (5.5% on his first ballot), whose peak was much higher but faded because of various injuries instead of one cataclysmic event.
Anyway, I’ll be curious to see whether Pedroia sustains these totals next year, when there aren’t any big newcomers on the ballot, at which point he could be an interesting hanger-on over the next eight years. I can’t imagine he’d ever get all the way to 75%, but if Harold Baines and co. are Hall of Famers now, anything can happen.
How can I pay money to FanGraphs to ban the accounts that omitted Ichiro
No shit. If you’re motivated enough to participate, give it your best shot. They’re trolls…period.
I disagree with them too, but imagine how empty your life must be to create an account to lower Ichiro’s vote total on a baseball fan website that isn’t the ACTUAL HoF election. Not being one of those people is, in fact, the reward of a life well-lived
Small-hallers prevail here.
I think I voted for seven…I don’t think it’s a stretch to get to 10, but it’s not as robust a ballot as some previous years. For instance I would’ve voted for four guys who were on last year’s ballot who no longer appear (Beltre, Helton, Mauer, Sheffield) and I only voted for two newcomers (Ichiro and CC) so the ballot composition alone is leaving me at a -2 just from turnover.
Was a freaking logjam back some years ago particularly if you weren’t above voting for the steroids era guys – they were never getting enough support to get in, but always getting enough support to clear 5%. I was always a supporter of Clemens, Bonds, A-rod, and Manny so 40% of my ballot slots were those guys annually. Two now gone, the other two leaving soon enough so we’re almost finally fully clear from that era from a ballot perspective.
Yeah, I have 6 “definitely” guys, as a “No” on Manny and A-Rod (Ichiro, Beltran, CC, Utley, Wagner, Jones).
Then it’s a matter of sorting through my “Keep on the Ballot” guys (Pettitte, Buehrle, Abreu, Martin, McCann, Pedroia, Wright) via a combo of gamesmanship (Martin/McCann this year) and sentimentality (Pettitte/Buehrle).
This is just like IRL Hank Aaron, who lost at least one vote to the voter who voted with a ballot that was just Luis Aparicio and nobody else.
Relievers are bench players and should be treated like every other bench player. Putting them in the hall of fame is absurd.
Fight me!
Defensible position.
But whole career closers have a case to make.
As long as the game sets aside a specific role for closers and DHs they need to be judged by the rules of the position.
Wagner, like Rivera wasn’t “just a bench guy” like the rest of the pen but a specialist assigned a specific function and judged by how well they perform it.
A clear present day example is (premature though it is) Clase.
He is a closer.
He has (virtually) never been anything else.
You can’t judge him as a starter just like you can’t judge him as a hitter.
You judge him by his job and how well he does it relative to others in the same role.
Another example, this from the hall itself, is Smoltz. If you judge his entire career by the standards of a starter in his era he looks okay but not a first ballot candidate.but you add 150+ saves and he is unique.
It can get tricky: some guys end up as closers because they failed as starters but others got there for being uniquely suited to that specific role and if they excel historically well, they end up in the hall.
All I can say is keep an eye on Clase.
He’s only been around 4.5 years but those years match up to some of the best closers ever. He’s only 26 and first he needs to survive long enough (pitchers get hurt) but there’s no telling where he ends up if he does.
(Other than LA or NY.)
It’s also worth noting that Smoltz, a bona fide ace, was worse than Wagner during the years he came out of the pen…and then went back to being a bona fide ace when he returned to the rotation.
Closer is a specialty.
Not everybody can do it regardless of repertoire quality.
By WAR (I think bWAR), Wagner wasn’t in the top 20 of those on the ballot.
To me, he’s far short of the impact of not just CC, but Felix, Pettite, any other starter whose been on the ballot in recent years. But a lot of voters, especially those in BBWAA, are obsessed with closers.
By WAR, a reliever entering the game with two outs and the bases loaded and giving up a double before getting a strikeout had a fine outing.
Hell, he’s got a negative FIP!
rWAR and fWAR genuinely aren’t fit for purpose, when it comes to measuring what makes relievers valuable.
That’s why Tango uses RE288 (RE24 adjusted for count) for Statcast’s “Run Value” metric – this year, Smith and Clase’s gross PRV landed right between Skenes and Burnes.
The Tanner Scott contract makes a lot more sense when you see that he’s put up the same total PRV as Corbin Burnes, over the last two years
Different ways to measure value for different roles.
Pre-universal DH, NL starters weren’t discounted for facing pitchers over 10% of the batters. It was part of the game.
So are closers.
As is, career closers are few and far between. Pitchers get hurt and closer usage (bullpen pitches count and getting two, three days in a row for all out efforts can be as taxing as 100 pitch starts) degrades and breaks down even the best of them.
Few manage to excel at the role for 15 years like Wagner or say, Chapman, or even survive that long as a closer. Look at Chapman now vs his peak in Cinci. And he is notorious for taking care of himself.
Indeed, Chapman is an interesting question coming up: zero starts, 335 saves, 23 war at age 36 after 14 years. Would he be HALL worthy if he retires today? What if hangs around collecting saves and half-WAR seasons? He might be close to Wagner after 4 more years.
We now have benchmarks for what career closers look like in modern MLB so you can judge them by their role. What they are, not what they aren’t.
And with some dominant closers looking to transition to starters (bigger contract!) the career closer might be as much at risk as the complete game starter.
The game evolves.
Yeah, the folks who (loudly, repetitively) shout about John Smoltz and No Closers in the Hall never seem to have a rebuttal to the fact that Smoltz, a Top 5-7 starter, was “only” a Top 3-5 closer when he moved to the pen…or that WAR doesn’t measure the most important way relievers prevent runs.
WAR’s an article of faith to some of these folks, rather than a constantly evolving model made by people…which makes it really hard to have a proper discussion.
So are baseball teams.
And they’re the ones that define the roles.
The role of closer and how it’s used is as much part of the evolution of the game as the DH and the 6 inning quality start.
You can’t ignore career DHs or career closers any more than short start pitchers.
If you favor the likes of King Felix, Johan Santana, Pedroia and even David Wright, you have to allow for exceptional closers in the Hall.
The game evolves over time.
The hall has to keep up.
So in the end one voter left Ichiro out.
CC got 86%
Wagner 82%
Beltran ended up at 70%.
Abreu at 19% and Pedroia at 12%.
David Wright hit 8% and Hunter 5%.
No real surprises.
There’s always the one guy…
The moralistic ninny schoolmarms prevail again, and A-Rod is denied.
I am nearly certain He was juicing in high school!
Did you honestly expect something different?
In 30 years when the fighting is over covert cybernetic enhancements, maybe ARod gets a committee pass.
But not anytime soon.
I did not vote for CC, but I did vote for McCann, Martin , Abreu, Jones, Wagner, and Utley. Ichiro and I forget who else.
Having slept on it, really no surprise that Wagner didn’t get in with the FanGraphs crowd vote. I’m almost surprising he did that well.
The nature of being on FanGraphs makes the voters much, much more analytically minded than BBWAA or average baseball fans. And honestly it’s hard to look at the guy with the 25th highest bWAR on the ballot, and presumably similar rank in fWAR, and say that’s a Hall of Famer. As has been said, you essentially have to throw the criteria out the window and simply look at precedent to vote for a relief pitcher.
And the precedent is that closers and modern catchers can’t be judged by the same yardstick as infielders or outfielders.
Like, how many pre-Bench catchers would even stay at the position if they were playing today? Of how about old school 3B? Aurelio Rodriguez.lasted 16 years and only once was an above average hitter, ending with a career WAR of 13. In today’s game he’d be a utility at best, unemployed at worst.
Likewise, catchers like Mauer and Martin need to be compared to current era catchers not old school guys like, say Bill Dickey.
I generally dislike stuff like “the best of the decade” as a reason to promote HOF candidacies but the game does break down into clearly different eras and that does need to factor in along with the raw numbers.
Now to wait for next year’s crop.