It’s one of the most star-packed Hall of Fame induction weekends ever. Tomorrow, three of the greatest players of this era as well as its three finest managers will be inducted. Record crowds, maybe 100,000 people, are expected in Cooperstown. It’s the kind of magical weekend that seemed so far away just a year ago when barely 10,000 people attended Hall of Fame weekend after the Baseball Writers Association of America refused to induct anyone off its ballot.
It seemed after last year’s vote that the process was broken, that the Hall of Fame ballot would remain forever glutted with players from the Steroid Era and that even top stars might not be able to secure first ballot induction. Personally, I’ve wanted drastic changes to the voting process, such as the establishment of a committee to handle Steroid Era candidates and an end to the rule that allows voters to select a maximum of 10 players even in years where more worthy candidates might be on the ballot. Those changes may still occur, but it won’t be anytime soon. Today, the Hall of Fame announced its first changes to voting since 1991: shortening a recently-retired player’s eligibility with the BBWAA from 15 years to 10 and having BBWAA members sign a registration form and code of conduct.
Disaster may be the greatest catalyst for change in life, and in a sense, I wanted that with Hall of Fame voting this year. I wanted the voting results to be such a quagmire that the BBWAA or Cooperstown would be forced to take immediate substantial action. But then, Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and Frank Thomas were all voted in first ballot, and it became clear that top Hall of Fame candidates could make it through quickly, even with the current voting system. Several more of these inductees will follow in the next few years including Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez, and Ken Griffey Jr.
Baseball has one of if not the most talked about Halls of Fames in sports. The reason for this is its exclusivity, with roughly 300 members and only 72 living ones after tomorrow. This weekend, the Hall of Fame is looking to preserving this. The announced changes in voting will make it harder for the likes of Tim Raines, Mike Mussina, Edgar Martinez, and other arguably lesser greats to win induction, at least through the BBWAA, since six honorees have needed 11-15 years on the ballot to reach the needed 75 percent of votes. Tomorrow, a few irreproachable candidates will receive their plaques in front of a record crowd. We can expect more of the same in the immediate years to come.
For anyone who likes the Hall of Fame small, reserved for only the best of the best, this weekend is sweet vindication. For people like myself who would like to see Raines, Mussina, and Martinez receive their due now rather than 20 or 30 years on, today offers more of the same frustration of the past few years.
When I was in high school, there were a couple of local amateur meteorologists who claimed to have developed a system of predicting major snowstorms weeks in advance. They supposedly got seven correct in a row in virtual anonymity. So they landed a front-page newspaper article in the Poughkeepsie Journal, touting their success record, and predicting the next big blizzard: January 26, 1975. People circled their calendars and buzzed about it for weeks.
Then January 26 came, and it was 52° and rainy. As far as I know, that was the last anyone heard of the two meteorologists.
I thought of this many times as my Hall of Fame forecast reached print here last month, and went more-or-less viral. I’d been doing the forecasts for over 30 years – often in national publications like Baseball Digest, Sports Collectors Digest, and Sporting News – but usually just among a cult following of colleagues. I had a terrific track record, but I’d never gotten anything close to this much attention. Now here I was, being quoted by notable journalists around the country, and doing radio and TV interviews. I worried that this would be the year my forecast tanked.
And, unfortunately, I was right (about being wrong). My 2014 Hall of Fame election forecast was my worst ever.
As you know, I predicted that only Greg Maddux would make it to Cooperstown this year, while everyone else was saying there would be three to five inductees. Everyone else was right and I was wrong. Maddux of course made it, but so did Tom Glavine and Frank Thomas, and Craig Biggio just missed. There have been years I guessed wrong on one inductee, but never two, and never by as much as I missed on Glavine: I predicted 66%, he got 92%. That’s plain ugly.
So, what went wrong? And should I just go the way of the two weathermen?
First of all, other than Glavine, Thomas (predicted 63%, actual 83%), Biggio (61-75), and Mike Mussina (7-20), my forecast was quite accurate. But that’s kinda like saying, except for the four games they lost, the Cardinals did well in the 2013 World Series.
Part of it was timing. I write my forecasts in October, three months before the announcement. When Bobby Cox was elected by the Veterans’ Committee in December, that no doubt gave Glavine a boost. Writers liked the idea of inducting three long-time Braves – Cox, Maddux, and Glavine – together. Then, my article was published in mid-December, about half-way through the balloting process. It’s possible it influenced some voters to use more of their voting slots.
Whatever the reason, the writers used an average of 8.39 votes per ballot this year. That’s after not going above 6.87 since 1986, even in years there was a big crop of worthy candidates. In 1999, for example, newcomers Nolan Ryan, George Brett, Robin Yount, and Carlton Fisk joined holdovers Tony Perez, Gary Carter, Jim Rice, Bruce Sutter, and Bert Blyleven, among others, on the slate – yet writers used an average of just 6.74 votes per ballot.
So I didn’t foresee this year’s 8.39, and I don’t see how anyone else could, either (though apparently everyone else did). I projected 7.5, which I thought was going out on a limb. If I knew it was going to reach 8.39, I probably would have predicted both Glavine and Thomas to make it, though not with the lofty percentages they actually received.
The bottom line is, I struck out this year. But that won’t stop me from getting back in the batters’ box this fall, hopefully having learned from my mistakes. I can only hope you’ll still be interested in reading it.
_______________
Editor’s note: I was elated to have Bill’s predictions exclusive to this website for a second straight year and I expected they would get some attention. I never expected this much. Per Google Analytics, more than 13,000 people visited Bill’s post, spending an average of four minutes, 55 seconds on it; and those are just the people who clicked through from the myriad of prominent websites Bill was mentioned on. Rather than list all of these websites here, one after the other, check out these search results. It was unreal.
I will say two things. First, based on the amount of traffic and the wealth of respected sites that took interest, as well as the timing of Bill’s post two weeks before Hall of Fame voting closed, I imagine it skewed results. Polemical as I can sometimes be, I’m not wild about this. I know from talking to Bill that it wasn’t his intent. That said, it was my decision to publish Bill’s post when I did, and I take full responsibility for any effect on voting it may have had.
Bill has a place at this website as long as he wants. He’s a good writer and has a research background that’s perfectly in-line for what we try to do here. Should Bill choose to return next year, we’ll publish his predictions after voting closes, which is generally about a week before results come out. I believe Bill’s 30-year track record of generally being spot-on in his predictions speaks for itself and that his methodology for making picks is solid. I consider this year aberrational and believe that next year, Bill’s predictions will be back on course.
For four years, I’ve asked the same question here: Who are the 50 best baseball players not in the Hall of Fame? It’s not 50 players who need to be enshrined tomorrow or ever, necessarily, just the 50 best not enshrined. As founder and editor of this website, it’s my pleasure to present the latest answer to this question.
1) This project is strictly voter-driven, with 208 ballots this year. I do little to no active campaigning and invite people to set their own criteria.
2) Everyone who votes is required to vote for 50 players. Next to each player a person selects, the voter is asked to put a “Yes” or “No” designating if the player belongs in the Hall of Fame. The latter component has no effect on ranking and is meant, in part, to signify that a player can be among the 50 best not in Cooperstown while having no business holding a plaque there. That said, were it up to voters from this project, seven players would be enshrined this coming summer, all from the 2014 writers ballot. In alphabetical order, these players are: Jeff Bagwell, Craig Biggio, Tom Glavine, Greg Maddux, Mike Piazza, Tim Raines and Frank Thomas.
3) I offered a ballot of more than 500 players at the start of voting. Full voting results are posted below, in alphabetical order of last name.
That being said, voters are not restricted to the ballot. Any player who hasn’t appeared in the majors in five years is eligible for this project. A player need not have played 10 seasons or even in the majors to be eligible here. A player is eligible until he is enshrined at Cooperstown’s annual summer ceremony.
I will likely cut the ballot down next year, as it has become unwieldy and confusing. Thus far, though, my aim has been not to omit any worthy player.
All this being said, here’s how voting came out this year:
1. Tim Raines, 191 votes out of 208 (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 177 yes, 11 no, 3 N/A), written by Dan McCloskey of Left Field:
Only eight players in history have reached base 4,000 times, scored 1,500 runs, stolen 500 bases and were worth more than 60 Wins Above Replacement lifetime.
Six of them (Rickey Henderson, Joe Morgan, Barry Bonds, Ty Cobb, Eddie Collins and Honus Wagner) are unquestionably among the top five all-time at their respective positions. Of those six, only Bonds (due to PED questions) and Collins (due to the overcrowded ballot during the Hall’s early years) are not first-ballot Hall of Famers.
The seventh is Paul Molitor, who doesn’t quite fit into the top five all-time at his position category (unless you count DH), but is a first ballot inductee nonetheless.
The eighth, of course, is Tim Raines.
You can cherry-pick an argument for virtually any candidate, but there’s no reasonable debate against this straightforward comparison of Raines to seven upper tier Hall of Fame caliber players.
Lest anyone think he was just a compiler, his career WAR/162 of 4.455 ranks ahead of 55 Hall of Fame position players, including Brooks Robinson, Robin Yount, Reggie Jackson, Eddie Murray and Ernie Banks (h/t @BRefPlayIndex).
As the voters of this project have attested by ranking him in the top ten for the fourth year in a row, and No. 1 for the second straight year, Tim Raines is clearly one of the Hall of Fame’s most glaring omissions.
2. (Tie) Craig Biggio, 185 votes out of 208 (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 170 yes, 11 no, 4 N/A), written by Mark Kreidler, a voting member of the Baseball Writers Association of America. Kreidler explains here why he gave Biggio a vote in the BBWAA’s 2014 Hall of Fame election:
In an era of redrawn valuations, on a Hall of Fame list that grows more vexing each year, Biggio strikes me as one of the easiest Yes votes on the ballot – and he did so in 2013, when I voted for him in his first year of eligibility. A multi-position player whose up-the-middle metrics compare favorably with HOF standards, Biggio ranks 21st in MLB history in hits and 15th in runs scored, and he delivered more doubles than any RH hitter ever. (“Team guy” addendum: He was HBP more times than any player in the modern era.) He wound up with 3,060 hits, likely extending his career a year too long to do it – but even for those who aren’t milestone-fascinated, three thousand hits is something only 27 other players have achieved. It’s not nothing. And Biggio did this while earning four Gold Gloves, playing his entire career for a single organization, making 19 straight Opening Day starts, being honored as a Roberto Clemente Award recipient for community service, and being recognized – by teammate after teammate – as the lock-down, no-questions-asked leader of a Houston franchise that enjoyed its only run of sustained excellence on his watch. He goes in.
2. (Tie) Jeff Bagwell, 185 votes out of 208 (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 171 yes, 10 no, 4 N/A), written by Daren Willman of Baseball Savant:
Jeff Bagwell was the most dominant first baseman of the mid 90’s and is very worthy of the hall of fame. His numbers speak for themselves. In the 15 year period he played, he was second in RBI (1529), third in runs (1517), hits (2314), and walks (1401), and fifth in HR (449). Bagwell received MVP votes in 10 of his 15 years and won it in 1994. He’s one of only 12 players in MLB history to hit 400 HRs and steal 200 bases. While playing Bagwell was regarded as one of the smartest base runners in the league. His career stats compared to all players are equally as impressive 40th all-time in OBP, 36th in OPS+, and 63rd in career WAR. With all these things considered Jeff Bagwell should be a hall of famer.
4. Greg Maddux *New to ballot*, 183 votes out of 208 (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 179 yes, 1 no, 3 N/A), written by me:
Greg Maddux is the reason I will be trimming the ballot next year. I included more than 500 players on the ballot this year, making it somewhat unwieldy and indecipherable. On a clear, easy-to-read ballot, a player like Greg Maddux ought to get 100 percent of the vote. If the longtime Atlanta Braves ace, four-time Cy Young Award recipient and 355-game winner wasn’t the best pitcher of his generation or even baseball history, he isn’t far off.
5. Barry Bonds, 181 votes out of 208 (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 143 yes, 35 no, 3 N/A), written by Dan Szymborski of ESPN.com and Baseball Think Factory:
In a normal world, you would not be reading anything about Barry Bonds in this space. Based purely on the whole “playing baseball” thing, Bonds missing from Cooperstown is the equivalent of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame leaving out the Beatles. They did take creativity-enhancing drugs after all…
But just in case you need to be reminded of the excellence of Barry Bonds, let’s run down the crazier parts of his resumé. 762 homers. a .298/.444/.607 career line for an OPS+ of 182, the latter number behind only Babe Ruth and Ted Williams, two sluggers whose names you should at least vaguely recall. 7 MVP awards, 8 Gold Gloves, 12 Silver Sluggers, and if there existed an award with Platinum or Diamond in the name, Bonds would probably have 10 of those too. Before performance-enhancing drugs became a concern in baseball, a half-century after their introduction into the sport, Bonds was infamous among casual fans for not playing well in the playoffs, which he eventually rectified to finish with a .936 career postseason OPS.
Bonds is one of the greatest players to ever play baseball. Not greatest in the sense that one would say “Wow, that was totally the greatest sandwich I ever ate!” but the kind of greatness that inspires generations. To write the story of 1990s/2000s baseball and not talk about the feats of Bonds is like writing a history of the Civil War and not mentioning Ulysses S. Grant. Come back here in a year’s time and again, Barry Bonds will top this list.
6. (Tie) Mike Piazza, 178 votes out of 208, (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 165 yes, 10 no, 3 N/A), written by Mike Gianella of Baseball Prospectus:
Writers often engage in hyperbole when discussing Hall of Fame candidates, but despite Piazza’s amazing offensive numbers as a catcher he hasn’t generated the same excitement that some all-time greats have when they reach the ballot. Some of this is a result of all of the negativity surrounding PEDs (even though Piazza has never been linked to steroids in any way whatsoever), but most of it probably is due to a misunderstanding of his value. His rWAR of 59.2 is low for a Hall of Famer, but when you compare Piazza only to other catchers, he sits right up there with all time greats like Johnny Bench, Yogi Berra, and Carlton Fisk, at least with the bat. Piazza’s 427 home runs and .308/.377/.545 slash are amazing numbers for an everyday catcher and even when you adjust for his era his career offensive WAR is on a par with Bench’s. It’s easy to make a Hall case for Piazza even with “simpler” numbers; he hit 30 home runs or more nine years out of 10 and .300 or better for 10 consecutive seasons. Piazza belongs in the Hall, and despite the current ballot logjam should eventually find his way to Cooperstown.
6. (Tie) Roger Clemens, 178 votes (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 139 yes, 36 no, 3 N/A), written by Michael Clair, who will be doing a charity blogathon for Doctors Without Borders this month. In lieu of donating to this project, please consider donating to Michael’s worthy cause:
There are those that say the horned minotaur is simply a creature of fiction, of myth, that there is no way a creature with the head of a bull and the body of a man could exist. Those people clearly never saw Roger Clemens pitch.
The fact that Clemens, weighing in at 205 lbs of ground chuck, spit, and vinegar, remains on this list, earning only 37.6% of the vote last year, is a shame. He has seven Cy Youngs awards, 354 victories, a 3.12 ERA. Seven times he lead the league in shutouts, another seven in ERA. Five times he lead the league in strikeouts, twice in innings. His 140.3 JAWS is third behind Walter Johnson and Cy Young. He even has his own Nintendo video game.
Clemens also had two separate peaks, his early years from 1986-1992, going 136-63 with a 2.66 ERA and his comeback with the Blue Jays, going 149-61 with a 3.22 ERA between 1997 and 2005. Just one of those is enough for a Hall of Fame career, two is simply overwhelming.
So while his performance can’t be denied, only Clemens’ use of performance enhancing drugs is keeping him out of Cooperstown. Forget that Clemens is arguably the greatest pitcher of all-time despite playing the second half of his career in a heightened offensive environment. Forget that much of his competition was also using drugs. Because Clemens was so successful, arrogant, and bull-headed, the voters have decided to trap Clemens in a labyrinth of fuzzy moral logic and out of Cooperstown.
And that’s more absurd than a creature with a bull’s head and a man’s body.
8. Alan Trammell, 177 votes out of 208 (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 148 yes, 22 no, 7 N/A), written by Joshua Pease:
Alan Trammell is inexorably linked with Lou Whitaker, who now rather famously failed to reach the 5 percent threshold in his only year on the Hall of Fame ballot. Thankfully, Trammell remains on the ballot, though he is now in his 13th year of eligibility and has yet to hit even 40 percent of the vote. Trammell debuted in 1977 and manned shortstop for the Tigers for the next 20 seasons, retiring in 1996. Over the course of his career, he proved to be an excellent all-around talent. He was an above average hitter (111 wRC+ and 3 Silver Sluggers), had good power for a shortstop (185 HR), was a good baserunner (236 SB), and played excellent defense (22 dWAR on Baseball Reference and 4 Gold Gloves). He was a better hitter than Ozzie Smith, as good a fielder as Cal Ripken, and a similar all-around player to Barry Larkin. The fact the Trammell was very good at everything but otherworldly at nothing may very well be what has kept Hall of Fame voters from enshrining him thus far.
I would vote for Alan Trammell if I had a Hall of Fame ballot.
9. Tom Glavine *New to ballot*, 176 votes out of 208 (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 170 yes, 3 no, 3 N/A), written by Eno Sarris of Fangraphs:
The word is “frustrating.” Both the numbers and the eyes agree on that one. Tom Glavine spent most years striking out batters at a well-below average rate. His walk rate was only slightly better than average. His ground-ball rate, though only measured in the twilight of his career, was basically average. He gave up a ton of hits — almost 4,300 by the time he hung it up. Somehow, he spent a career doing average things and getting great results. You still can’t ignore the 3.54 career ERA or the 305 wins just because he was on good teams and over-performed his peripherals. At some point, you just have to believe. Remember how frustrating it was to watch him hit that outside corner with fastball and changeup, time and time again. Remember how he stretched that outside corner as far as the umpire would let him. Remember how he just didn’t give up home runs with runners on base. These things all contribute to the confounding gap between his peripherals and results, and they even inspire us to re-examine some of our assumptions about pitching. So really all that frustration is just food for inspiration.
10. Shoeless Joe Jackson, 174 votes out of 208 (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 143 yes, 36 no, 5 N/A), written by Christopher Kamka of Comcast SportsNet Chicago:
Shoeless Joe Jackson is a player often distorted by myth and legend, but is best appreciated by simply examining the facts.
Joe could never exist today. Perhaps this is why he remains one of the more intriguing figures in baseball history. Can you imagine a guy playing an actual game in his socks? Even in the minors? For that matter, who was the last illiterate superstar to grace the diamond?
Consider the circumstances under which his career ended. A group of players throwing a World Series because they’re underpaid? Jackson’s 1919 salary was $6,000. Calculating for inflation, that translates to roughly $80,000, while today’s league minimum is more than six times that. Forget about it.
Jackson’s last season was 1920; his age 32 season. Plenty of good baseball left. His first sniff of the live ball era. What would he have done with league production trending like this:
American League average BA/SLG for the last five seasons of Jackson’s career
1916 .248/.324
1917 .248/.320
1918 .254/.322
1919 .268/.359
1920 .283/.387
AL average BA/SLG for the first five seasons after Jackson
1921 .292/.408
1922 .285/.398
1923 .283/.388
1924 .290/.397
1925 .292/.408
How many more .400 seasons? In the inflated offensive era of the 1920’s, many doubles & triples would turn into homers. Would White Sox fans not have had to wait until Bill Melton in 1971 for the first 30-HR season in franchise history? It’s a compelling thought because of his limited but incredible body of work.
Jackson hit .408, .395 & .378 in his first three full seasons – but thanks to Ty Cobb, he finished second in the American League each time.
Amazingly, he put up a .356 lifetime average (3rd all-time) without a single batting title. He had a .423 OBP, good for 16th all-time. Struck out only 234 times against 519 walks.
Jackson’s career OPS+ of 170 is tied with Dan Brouthers for 7th all-time. Only Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Barry Bonds, Lou Gehrig, Rogers Hornsby, & Mickey Mantle are better.
He compiled 2,800 plate appearances for two original American League franchises (Indians & White Sox) and still owns the highest lifetime average for each (.375 for Cleveland, .340 for Chicago).
His game was not just limited to hitting. He could also run (202 SB), and throw (183 outfield assists).
This is a player who could conceivably make a list of the top 50 players period; not just limited to those not enshrined in Cooperstown.
Shoeless Joe Jackson (along with the other seven Black Sox) and John D. Rockefeller (a stunning $29 million fine imposed in 1907 on his Standard Oil in antitrust case) were the two most notable opponents taken down by Kenesaw Mountain Landis. The Standard Oil fine was overturned long ago. Isn’t it about time to give Joe his due?
11. Edgar Martinez, 170 votes out of 208 (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 134 yes, 31 no, 5 N/A), written by Bryan O’Connor of Replacement Level Blog:
We tend to talk about baseball players’ Hall of Fame candidacies in terms of greatness. The greatest players are cast in bronze, while the less great need a ticket to get into the museum. Greatness seems more closely tied to talent than it is to value, which reflects both talent and opportunity.
Taken on value, Edgar Martinez is a worthy Hall of Famer. His 68.3 WAR (per baseball-reference) rank 64th among eligible position players, well above the established standard and ahead of no-doubt Hall of Famers like Ernie Banks, Willie McCovey, and Dave Winfield.
Edgar’s case, though, is far stronger when measured by talent, irrespective of opportunity. Blocked by such legends as Jim Presley and Alvin Davis, Martinez didn’t crack the Mariners’ starting lineup until age 27 despite batting above .340 over his last three years in the minors. Defensively, he was an adequate third baseman, putting up positive Total Zone rankings more often than not until being banished to designated hitter duties in 1995, when Mike Blowers was ready to start butchering the position.
The original Papi’s 147 career OPS+ ranks 37th among Hall eligibles- 29th if we consider only players whose careers began after 1900. By this measure, he was a better hitter than Harmon Killebrew, Reggie Jackson, or Alex Rodriguez. He accumulated more adjusted batting runs than Carl Yastrzemski in more than 5,000 fewer plate appearances, and more than Hall of Famers Tony Perez and Johnny Bench combined.
Martinez, it seems, is outside the Hall of Fame now because he did not play in the field for three quarters of his career. McCovey and Killebrew were hitters of similar talent who cost their teams scores of runs by playing the field, only because the rules said they had to. His employers’ decisions should not cost Edgar Martinez the bronze bust he deserves.
12. Frank Thomas *New to ballot*, 168 votes out of 208 (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 158 yes, 7 no, 3 N/A), written by Dan Evans, currently a scout for the Toronto Blue Jays; former general manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers and assistant GM for the Chicago White Sox:
I was part of the White Sox staff involved in drafting Frank Thomas with the 7th selection overall in the 1989 draft. We thought his unique combination of zone awareness and power would develop into an impact bat. It turned out to be consistent excellence. Thomas had a legendary batting practice session in the old Comiskey Park shortly after signing in 1989 that tipped off his elite skills to others and seemingly NEVER gave up an at-bat. I worked for the White Sox through Thomas’s first 11 seasons and made sure I saw nearly every one of his plate appearances in that span.
One of the best right-handed hitters in MLB history, Thomas was a rare combination of high batting average, elite all-fields power, remarkable consistency, and an outstanding strike zone feel. His .301/.419/.555 career triple slash is matched or bettered in all three categories by only five players in history and his career .419 OBP is the best for a right-handed hitter since World War II.
Thomas is the only player ever with seven consecutive seasons of at least a .300 batting average, 100 walks, 100 runs, 100 RBI, and at least 20 homers, and it occurred in his initial seven full years (1991-1997). He won consecutive American League MVP Awards in 1993-94, placed in the top 10 in MVP balloting seven other times, and won the 1997 AL batting title. His .729 SLG and .487 OBP marks in 1994 were levels that had not been attained by an AL hitter since Ted Williams in 1957.
Nicknamed “The Big Hurt,” Thomas played the bulk of his career with the White Sox, and also played for Oakland and Toronto over his 19-year career. His 521 career homers rank 18th all-time, and more than one-half were hit to centerfield or right-center field. His #35 was retired by the White Sox in 2010.
Throughout Thomas’ career, he was outspoken about PED use among some of his peers. After hitting his 500th career homer, he said “This means a lot to me, because I did it the right way.” He was the only active player to voluntarily interview for the 2007 Mitchell Report.
I look forward to being in Cooperstown this summer when he is inducted into the Hall of Fame.
13. Pete Rose, 166 votes out of 208 (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 122 yes, 41 no, 3 N/A), written by Alex Putterman, assistant sports editor for the Daily Northwestern (Northwestern University):
Maybe Pete Rose belongs in the Hall of Fame — he’s the all-time hit king, of course, and achieved that distinction through an impressive peak and famous longevity. He is arguably the iconic player of his era, and Cooperstown is about nothing if not iconic players.
Or maybe he doesn’t belong in the Hall — he committed baseball’s cardinal sin, guilty of the most explicitly inexcusable offense of the time. He deserved punishment, and there’s no reason to commute his permanent sentence.
But the semantics of this project render that debate irrelevant. We’re looking for the best players not in the Hall, and all else aside, Rose is one of them. JAWs lists him as the fifth most Hall-worthy left-fielder ever (well ahead of Tim Raines, for example). He’s eighth among eligible non-Hall of Famers in WAR on Baseball-Reference and seventh in WAR on FanGraphs and in Hall Rating on HallofStats.com. Had Roseretired before a series of sub-replacement seasons he could rank even higher. It’s not unreasonable to argue using career value stats that he’s the fourth or fifth best player outside of the Hall.
Thus Rose, like a host of others here, is likely held down in voting for this project by non-baseball factors. Unlike those drug-accused others, his transgressions did not affect how good a baseball player he was.
This doesn’t necessarily mean Pete should have a place in the Hall of Fame. It does mean he should have a place very high up on this list.
14. Larry Walker, 161 votes out of 208 (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 119 yes, 37 no, 5 N/A), written by Brendan Bingham:
Most players perform better at home than on the road, but Larry Walker is an unusual case. His career numbers are dominated by the extreme park effects of pre-humidor Coors Field, making it difficult to compare him to other players of his day.
Limiting the analysis to road splits and choosing career slash line as the metric, let’s get a glimpse of the Larry Walker who would have existed had he never played for the Colorado Rockies. Slash line is a vast oversimplification, but it provides a quick and easy handle on hitting performance, especially when era and career length are controlled for. Like Walker, all of the players mentioned below played from the late 80s or early 90s through at least 2005, and all had at least 4000 plate appearances on the road.
As a hitter, Walker (.278/.370/.495) was a step ahead of Steve Finley (.273/.332/.447) and Ivan Rodriquez (.285/.322/.447), but no match for Manny Ramirez (.314/.409/.580), Frank Thomas (.297/.414/.511) or Jeff Bagwell (.291/.398/.521). Walker was somewhere in between, part of a cluster that includes Bernie Williams (.299/.378/.479), Luis Gonzalez (.283/.367/.489), Rafael Palmeiro (.291/.366/.502) and Ken Griffey, Jr. (.272/.355/.505).
Thanks to Coors Field, Walker was Superman at home and Jeff Kent (.290/.353/.504) on the road.
15. Mark McGwire, 158 votes out of 208 (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 99 yes, 56 no, 3 N/A), written by Susan Fornoff. Fornoff was instrumental in getting female reporters access to locker rooms and wrote a book about it. She covered McGwire and the Oakland Athletics’ beat for the Sacramento Bee in the 1980s and ’90s:
In the final round of a home-run derby pool in the spring of 1987, because no other name came to mind, I chose Mark McGwire. He wasn’t supposed to be a starter for the Oakland A’s that year, but, geez, he looked powerful and had hit three homers in an 18-game major-league cameo a year earlier. It was the last round, what the heck.
Needless to say, I cleaned up in that home-run pool when McGwire hit 49 homers, drove in 118 runs and hit .289 to coast to the Rookie of the Year award. All of us who watched him marveled at his seemingly limited potential.
We also marveled at his huge arms and neck the next spring. How on earth did he grow so much in just a few months?
McGwire excelled in the steroid era. If I represented him during so many years he stayed quiet thereafter, I probably would’ve advise him to just come out and say so. Say, “I’m sorry I used steroids. But I played in the era of the steroid. I did the best I could in the conditions of the game at the time.” Three years ago, he finally came clean.
With 15 seasons of 20 homers or more — and 12 of those over 30 — plus seven seasons of 100 RBIs or more, a respectable career batting average of .263 and a pretty nifty glove at first when he was healthy and at his best, McGwire deserves to be in the Hall of Fame. Apply a steroid tariff — 20 percent, even — and he’d make it in any other baseball era.
16. Curt Schilling, 157 votes out of 208 (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 127 yes, 27 no, 3 N/A), written by Amanda Gill:
Curt Schilling is most well known as a member of the Boston Red Sox for the infamous “Bloody Sock.” However, there was more to Schilling’s playing career than one postseason legend. Schilling spent time with five teams during his MLB career: the Orioles, Astros, Phillies, Diamondbacks, and Red Sox and he went to the World Series with the Phillies, Diamondbacks, and Red Sox, winning World Series Championships with Arizona (2001) and Boston (2004, 2007). Across his 20 years in the big leagues, Schilling amassed numerous impressive statistics including a career record of 216-146 with a 3.46 ERA, 3116 strikeouts to 711 walks, and an 11-2 record with a 2.23 ERA in postseason play. Schilling’s true lore lies in the postseason where he accumulated accolades including a NLCS MVP award with the Phillies in 1993, and a share of a World Series MVP with Randy Johnson when the Arizona Diamondbacks won in 2001. Curt Schilling deserves to be added into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. As a six-time All-Star and a three-time World Series champion, Schilling boasts a phenomenal combination of regular season and postseason success that he deserves to be enshrined for.
17. Dwight Evans, 155 votes out of 208 (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 98 yes, 51 no, 6 N/A), written by Dalton Mack of High Heat Stats:
Dewey never had the MVPs nor the widespread praise that outfield mates Fred Lynn or Jim Rice could lay claim to, was never the talk of Major League Baseball in his rookie season nor considered the “most feared hitter in baseball.” What Dwight Evans was however, was the 4th greatest position player in Red Sox history by Wins Above Replacement (WAR), behind only men named Williams, Yastrzemski and Boggs.
He only led the American League once in a traditional slash category (22 HRs in strike-shortened 1981), but where Evans excelled was in decidedly unsexy areas, like drawing walks and playing great defense. In fact, his 103 Fielding Runs from 1974-81 was, among outfielders, second only to Garry Maddox.
So why the lack of BBWAA support for Evans, who peaked at a tad over ten percent his second year on the ballot and fell off the following cycle? Likely for the same reason that keeps Alan Trammell from making Hall of Fame progress year after year—Evans did a host of things very well, without being truly outstanding at any particular one.
18. Dick Allen, 154 votes out of 208 (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 101 yes, 47 no, 6 N/A), written by Neal Kendrick of High Heat Stats:
The 1960’s and 70’s had some amazing players, all time greats like Mays, Aaron, & Frank Robinson. However there was one other great basher in that period that has largely been forgotten. Perhaps it’s because he was never a graceful fielder making dazzling plays, or maybe simply because he was traveling from city to city, but with the batDick Allen was right up there with anybody. Probably the best way to evaluate a player’s hitting ability is wRC+. It factors era, league, and home ballpark to give a true measure of a hitter’s performance, with 100 being average. Dick Allen had a 155 career wRC+. From 1963-1977, the length of Dick Allen’s career, that was tied with Frank Robinson for the best mark in baseball, ahead of pantheon guys like Mays, Aaron, Clemente, and Reggie Jackson. Allen was a dynamic all around hitter, who 3 times lead the league in Slugging Percentage, and twice in On-Base Percentage. He won an MVP award in 1972, receiving 21 of a possible 24 first place votes, in what arguably wasn’t even his best season. He had a slightly higher WAR in 1964 as a rookie. Dick Allen may not have been one of the most complete players of all-time, but he was certainly one of the best hitters of all-time. Across virtually the same timeframe Willie McCovey had .374 OBP and .515 SLG% with poor defense at first, while Dick Allen had a .378 OBP and .534 SLG% with poor defense at first and third. If McCovey can make it on the first ballot then Dick Allen should make it too.
19. Mike Mussina *New to ballot*, 150 votes out of 208 (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 125 yes, 22 no, 3 N/A), written by Jen Mac Ramos of Beyond the Box Score:
1999 was a good year for pitching. For one, Pedro Martinez was having a career year — one that lead to winning the AL Cy Young award. Everyone remembers Pedro. There’s Mariano Rivera, Bartolo Colon, David Cone, Jamie Moyer. They’re all easy to name. I know those were some of the first players I was aware of when I started following the game in 2007.
But then, there’s Mike Mussina. He kinda flew under the radar — pitching for the Orioles for more than half his career, and mostly on Orioles teams that were middlingin the AL East. That didn’t stop Mussina from throwing numbers worthy of the Hall of Fame: 3.68 ERA, 23 CGSHO, 3.58 K/BB, 0.95 HR/9, 82.8 RA9-WAR, 82.7 rWAR. He also averaged 34 games started for every 162 games his team played. Mike Mussina was a consistent pitcher, with some of the best numbers a career could have.
20. Lou Whitaker, 148 votes out of 208 (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 123 yes, 23 no, 2 N/A), written by Paul McCord of Braves Paul:
When “Sweet Lou” retired, he was one of only five second baseman ever with 200 homers, 1000 runs scored, and 1000 RBI (Alomar, Biggio, and Kent have since made Whitaker one of eight). His 74.8 career bWAR was highest among position players on the 2001 Hall of Fame ballot, including inductees Dave Winfield (64.0) and Kirby Puckett (50.8). He was clearly one of the best offensive second baseman in baseball history, and he was part of the most prolific double-play duo the game has ever seen. So why was Whitaker dismissed from Hall of Fame consideration so unceremoniously in his only year on the ballot?
Whitaker’s career numbers are remarkably similar to Ryne Sandberg’s (each is the other’s most similar batter in MLB history), which works well for this discussion since “Ryno” also played second base and wound up in the Hall of Fame. A comparison reveals that Whitaker’s consistency may actually have been his Hall of Fame weakness. He didn’t shine as brightly on consistently good Tigers teams as Sandberg did on consistently bad Cubs teams, and Whitaker’s lengthy peak that lasted late until his retirement simply lacked flair compared to Sandberg’s eye-popping numbers (and eventual flame-out).
21. Rafael Palmeiro, 146 votes out of 208 (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 80 yes, 57 no, 9 N/A), written by Mike Hllywa:
Let’s say you’re a General Manager, and you have the chance to add a player to your roster who averages a slash line of .288/.371/.515 for every 162 games played. That’s good for an OPS+ of 132. Would you do it? Of course you would. Who wouldn’t want an above average hitter with an above average walk-rate and above average power? And that is the type of hitter than Rafael Palmeiro was for the balance of his career.
But none of that is ever going to matter to the BBWAA because Palmeiro got busted when a urinalysis came back positive for steroids.
Was it the Ballpark in Arlington or the short walls at Camden Yards that played perfectly to the kind of swing that Palmeiro had? Or was it the anabolic cocktails that he was taking? We will never know. But we will always know this: From Palmeiro’s rookie season on, he never posted an OPS+ below 108, and that came in the final two seasons of his career. He wasn’t the best defender despite his fabled Gold Glove season in 1999. But with a bat in his hand, Rafael Palmeiro had few equals during his 20-year baseball career. Very few equals.
22. Sammy Sosa, 134 votes out of 208 (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 68 yes, 64 no, 2 N/A), written by Mauricio Rubio of Cubs Den and Baseball Prospectus:
When baseball was taken from me in my youth by a confusing labor dispute my passion for the game waned and I experimented with other sports. I wandered in the football and soccer territories but was called home by Sammy Sosa and 1998. We’ve learned a lot about what was behind those home run chases. The luster is gone but I do remember Sosa in a warmer light than most. His 609 HR total and career slash line of .273/.344/.534 isn’t as impressive as it seemed 20 years ago but those numbers still speak to a player who was great at his peak, even if the numbers were augmented by playing conditions (probable) and chemicals (likely).
Sosa is a polarizing figure whose greatness is overshadowed by what went on during his career, but I feel that history will be kinder to him in the long run. It’s irresponsible to pretend that he didn’t happen and we should make peace with his place in baseball history.
23. Luis Tiant, 133 votes out of 208, (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 85 yes, 42 no, 6 N/A), written by Andrew Martin of Baseball Historian:
Tiant is an interesting case. Although he had 229 wins, a 3.30 ERA and 2,416 strikeouts, he comes across as more of an accumulator because of his 19-year career. Make no mistake about it though, because he was a dominant pitcher.
A severe shoulder injury abbreviated his 1970 and 1971 seasons and caused him to reinvent himself in his prime, which prevented him from padding his already impressive resume.
The right hander’s record is one of contradictions. He won 20 or more games four times, led the league in ERA twice, and totaled an impressive 187 complete games and 49 shutouts. His career WAR of 66.1 is 40th all-time among pitchers according to BaseballReference.com. On the other hand, he made just three All-Star teams and never finished higher than fourth in Cy Young voting—both things Hall of Fame pundits typically hold in high regard.
Bert Blyleven (career ERA+ of 118), who was a similar accumulator and took 14 years of steadily increasing vote totals to finally get inducted, is a reason for Tiant (career ERA+ of 114) to have hope. However, since Tiant fell off the ballot in 2002, his fate rests in the hands of the Veterans Committee.
24. (Tie) Bobby Grich, 126 votes out of 208, (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 97 yes, 28 no, 1 N/A), written by Diane Firstman of Value Over Replacement Grit:
Robert Anthony Grich was a first-round draft pick of the Orioles in 1967 and played shortstop during his time in the minors before settling in at second in Baltimore in 1973 after the O’s traded away Davey Johnson.
Grich was a confident soul. Writer Phil Jackman recounted one day in 1970, Frank Robinson came by when Grich was talking about hitting and remarked: “What does a rookie like you know about hitting?” Grich replied to Robinson: “Tell you something, pal. I’ll be hitting for 10 years around here after you’re gone.”
1972 was the Grich’s first full season in the big leagues, and he compiled a 127 OPS+ (.278/.358/.415) while being named an All-Star and receiving a few down-ballot MVP votes. He quickly established himself as an excellent fielder, with good range, soft hands, a good arm, and skill turning the double play. He won four consecutive Gold Gloves from 1973-1976 and in 1973 he set an all-time major league fielding record with a .995 fielding percentage (he broke that record in 1985, with a .997). For his career he out-performed his peers in Range Factor (5.70 to 5.40 per 9 innings) and fielding percentage (.984 to .979).
He left the Orioles via free agency after 1976 and spent the next ten years with the Angels, logging a 124 OPS+, three All-Star appearances, two years with MVP votes, and a Silver Slugger award in the strike-shortened 1981 season. Despite all of his regular season success, he never played in a World Series. He himself batted a mere .182/.247/.318 in 24 post-season games.
How should we think of Bobby Grich now? Well of the top 10 second baseman in Jay Jaffe’s JAWS Hall of Fame metric, only Grich is missing from Cooperstown. His WAR, WAR7 (7 best seasons) and JAWS scores are all above the average of the enshrinees, and the WAR7 and JAWS scores are better than current “missing from the Hall” darling Lou Whitaker.
[Lofton is third from left. Photo from 1980 Senior League teammate Tony Puente.]
You don’t need me to tell you that Kenny Lofton was a six-time All-Star who won four Gold Gloves. It doesn’t take a third party to point out that the Hall of Stats has Lofton as the sixth-best center fielder in MLB history. And I hope it is obvious that Lofton’s falling off the Hall of Fame ballot in his first year of eligibility is one of the biggest mistakes the BBWAA has ever made.
But the stats don’t tell you that, for a baseball fan growing up in Cleveland, Lofton’s infectious energy came to define the great Indians teams of the 1990’s. With all due respect to fans of the many other teams he played for later in his career, those outside Northeast Ohio might not know what a joy it was to watch him flying across the dirt to steal a base or leaping into — or over — the wall to make a jaw-dropping catch.
I still look at Lofton with the same sense of childlike wonder that I did when my dad would take me to Jacobs Field as a kid. And I know I’m not alone.
26. Ted Simmons, 123 votes out of 208 (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 97 yes, 22 no, 4 N/A):
Former Hall of Fame senior research associate Bill Deane wrote for this project last year:
As a teenager in the mid-1970s, I’d hear people debating about who was the best catcher in baseball: Johnny Bench, Carlton Fisk, or Thurman Munson? I’d say, “What about Ted Simmons? The guy hit .332 with 100 RBI!” I’d get only puzzled looks from people who were barely aware that St. Louis had a team.
That exemplified Simmons’s problems in getting attention throughout his career: He played in media-Siberias and was overshadowed by two contemporary HOF catchers. But consider their average HR-RBI-AVG stats from 1971-80: Bench (27-93-.263), Fisk (16-57-.285), Simmons (17-90-.301). Simba was also unjustly regarded as a poor defensive catcher; I tackle this legend at length in my book, Baseball Myths. (Editor’s note: Page 375 of The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract notes: ‘Bill Deane has studied the records at great length, and demonstrated that Simmons threw out an above-average percentage of opposing base stealers in his prime seasons.’)
Ted Simmons retired as the all-time leader in hits and doubles among catchers, and ranked second in RBI behind only Yogi Berra. Only Ivan Rodriguez has surpassed him in those categories since. Yet, Simmons was dropped from the BBWAA HOF ballot after one try, then waited 16 years to be snubbed by the Veterans’ Committee. His next try is this December.
Simmons was one of the ten best all-around catchers in baseball history. He deserves serious consideration for Cooperstown.
27. (Tie) Keith Hernandez, 122 votes out of 208 (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 58 yes, 56 no, 8 N/A), written by Howard Megdal of Capital New York:
Usually, the list of players who aren’t in the Hall of Fame is filled with those who excelled, but cannot be called the best at anything. (Leaving the tiresome steroids arguments aside, that is.) Or if they managed to reach the absolute peak at some part of baseball, it’s a remarkably narrow one, and mitigated by other failings in their game. Lenny Harris and pinch-hitting, or Pat Tabler and bases-loaded situations come to mind.
But Keith Hernandez is the finest defensive first baseman I’ve ever seen, and I suspect will ever see. He came along just before defensive metrics allowed the baseball world to more completely factor this incredibly aspect of his game into total value, so it became almost a trivialized fact you’d find about him on the back of a Topps card: “Keith enjoys fishing, hunting, and playing first base as well as anyone, ever.”
Those lucky enough to have seen baseball when Vic Power or Gil Hodges or, when he was on the level, Hal Chase played it might disagree. But I’ve seen many first basemen since Hernandez-no one comes close.
We have no advanced defensive metrics from Hernandez’s time, though. So we are left with this fact, along with an offensive game that isn’t a blight upon his overall record, like Power’s or a man on the other side of the high brick wall to entry, Bill Mazeroski.
He was an astonishingly graceful hitter, with an offensive game notable for its breadth. Hernandez won an MVP in 1979, a year he hit .344 with 48 doubles, both league-leading marks. A year later, his .408 on-base percentage led the league as well. He recorded nine double-digit home run seasons, hitting 15 at age 23, 18 at age 33. He had a pair of top-ten NL finishes in triples. He walked 100 times one season, led the league in walks another season, and his team won the World Series both times.
I find OPS+ a terrific catch-all offensive stat. Hernandez, for his career, is at 128, a bit below Orlando Cepeda’s 133, a bit ahead of Tony Perez’s 122.
Both Perez and Cepeda, of course, are Hall of Famers. And nobody ever mistook them for Keith Hernandez in the field. There is that, the profound way Hernandez’s fielding could alter a game. It’s the kind of thing that should get a guy enshrined in Cooperstown.
“You look at two aspects of my career,” Tommy John said after being named the inaugural member of The Hall of Very Good™ two years ago. “You look at 26 years and you figure you’ve got to be doing something to be around for 26 years. You look at the wins, the complete games, innings pitched…and you couple that with coming back from Tommy John surgery, I think that my name should be up there with anybody.”
Pretty much sums it up, right?
The pride of Terre Haute, Indiana is probably known for two things…longevity and that surgery. Truth is, you don’t have one without the other.
We can sit here and talk about John’s 288 wins and how, when he retired in May 1989, they placed him 21st all-time and how Bobby Mathews was, at the time, only one Hall-eligible not in the Hall of Fame.
But it always comes back to that surgery, doesn’t it?
You know the story. It’s July 1974 and the 31-year-old was shelved with a pretty impressive career ERA of 2.97 and after putting up back-to-back seasons where he led the National League in winning percentage. 639 days later, the lefty would re-emerge on the mound for the Los Angeles Dodgers with a new arm. He’d go on and throw 2544 innings post-surgery and collect 164 wins along the way. Sure, the ERA was a little higher than before…but John’s overall control was better.
It sounds cliché, but John had two careers that a number of pitchers would be envious of and when you add them up, you find that he belongs among those enshrined in Cooperstown.
29. Dale Murphy, 114 votes out of 208 (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 46 yes, 65 no, 3 N/A):
Murphy’s son Chadwick wrote for this project last year:
Of course I’m a little biased, but I think there’s no doubt that my dad was one of the top 5 or so players of the 1980s (eerily similar to Gil Hodges in the 50s, in fact.) No matter which side of the peak vs. longevity debate you come down on, you can always find exceptions who are already in the Hall of Fame. Even with his late-career decline, my dad was 19th on the all-time home run list (just behind Duke Snider, I believe) when he retired.
The other important consideration (which I discuss at some length here) is all the intangibles he brought to the game: the way he inspired a generation of baseball fans, especially in the South; his long streak of consecutive games for a set of Braves teams that were, for the most part, truly awful; and, most importantly (in my opinion), the integrity he brought to the way he played the game. He’s a walking advertisement, in fact, for the very cliche but undoubtedly true notion that it’s not what you achieve that matters most but how you achieve it. So it’s not just that my dad was “a nice guy.”
True, being a model citizen off-the-field shouldn’t be totally relevant to HOF decisions, but these days the more pertinent character issue, I believe, is whether or not you cut corners for personal gain and by doing so compromised the integrity of the game. Not only did my dad make the correct decisions– for himself and for the game– but he also managed to put up impressive numbers in the process. If such a well-rounded career is not worthy of the top 50, not to mention the HOF, then we might do well to re-evaluate a few things.
30. Fred McGriff, 113 votes out of 208 (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 56 yes, 55 no, 2 N/A), written by Neil Paine of fivethirtyeight.com:
McGriff’s acquisition by the Braves in the summer of 1993 has always stood out as one of my favorite “you-can’t-make-this-stuff-up” stories from baseball history. On the evening of McGriff’s Atlanta debut, a freak press-box fire delayed Atlanta’s game by 2 hours; he went on to homer in the Braves’ win later that night, touching off a stretch run in which the Crime Dog hit .310/.392/.612 and Atlanta won 51 of the 68 games he played, overcoming a 10-game deficit in July to pass the Giants for the NL West crown on the last day of the regular season.
At the time, McGriff seemed to have a good chance at the Hall of Fame, with 262 career HR and a 153 OPS+ through age 30. But from 1995 onward, McGriff — while still good — was not the hitter he once was (with the exception of vintage late-career seasons in 1999 & 2001), even as contemporaries like Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire continued to hit like superstars.
Then again, this has come to be a point in McGriff’s favor in recent years, as McGriff’s name has remained clean while many of peers who outpaced him in their 30s were implicated in doping scandals. In the end, McGriff’s legacy will be as a key cog on the dynasty Braves of the 90s and one of the best clean power hitters of his era… There are worse marks to leave on the game.
31. (Tie) Jack Morris, 109 votes out of 208 (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 51 yes, 54 no, 4 N/A), written by Alex Putterman, assistant sports editor for the Daily Northwestern (Northwestern University):
Much (much, much) has been written about Jack Morris’s statistical inadequacy as compared to Hall of Fame precedents. The debate about the former Tigers ace’s Hall qualifications has essentially overwhelmed all other conversation about his career.
Truth is, Morris compares unfavorably to most pitching inductees of the last 40 years and to numerous non-Hall of Fame pitchers as well — using both stats conceived a century ago and formulas created yesterday. By the numbers, Morris’s lack of worthiness should be near-unanimous.
And yet…
Last year more than two thirds of BBWAA voters granted the righthander a Hall vote.
Morris has finished in the top 40 of this project three of its four years.
Knowledgeable and reasonable baseball people insist he belongs in Cooperstown.
I’m too young to have experienced Morris’s career in real time. All I have to evaluate him are those underwhelming statistics. That and the opinions of my elders.
So, as I figure, the best argument for Morris’s inclusion on this list and in the Hall is that a lot of people think he should be on this list and in the Hall.
31. (Tie) Jeff Kent *New to ballot*, 109 votes out of 208 (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 74 yes, 31 no, 4 N/A), written by Kyla Wall-Polin:
Jeff Kent might be the textbook borderline Hall of Fame candidate. 60 WAR is a number that’s often thrown around as the dividing line between the great and the really really good, and no matter how you calculate it, Kent falls just a little short, with roughly 56 WAR. Kent was an adequate defensive second baseman at best, and he is – apparently this matters to the voters – kind of a jerk, as well as the world’s worst truck detailer.
Great, got that out of the way. Kent is also one of the best hitting second basemen in the history of the game. That slightly less than 60 WAR? Good for the 17th best among all 2Bs. His 351 career home runs stands as the record at his position, and with a career slash line of .290/.356/.500, a wOBA of .367 and a wRC+ of 123, he was no three true outcomes slugger. Kent received MVP votes in seven seasons, winning in 2000. Hitting cleanup after Barry Bonds during his peak years, Kent was half of one of the nastiest one-two punches in baseball’s recent history, and like his teammate, he deserves to be honored in the Hall of Fame.
Graig Nettles was one of the greatest power-hitting third basemen in history (his 390 home runs rank 5th among players who spent most of their career at the position), but was overshadowed because he played in the same era as Mike Schmidt, the greatest power-hitting third baseman ever.
Nettles was also one of the greatest defensive third basemen in history (he’s among the top ten in fielding runs for third basemen at Baseball Reference and FanGraphs), but was overshadowed because he played in the same era as Brooks Robinson, the greatest defensive third baseman ever.
The hot corner is the most underrepresented position in Cooperstown, there are only 13 third basemen enshrined. Nettles’ 68 WAR beat the average of those 13 players’ totals, and are the most by any eligible third baseman not already inducted. Nettlesnever received more than 8.3% of the BBWAA Hall of Fame vote, and fell off the ballot after just four years. That’s a shame, because he’s now largely overlooked or unknown to modern fans, and he deserves much better.
34. Joe Torre, 104 votes out of 208 (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 79 yes, 20 no, 5 N/A), written by Stacey Gotsulias of It’s About The Money:
Joe Torre was elected into the Hall Of Fame last month and will be enshrined this summer primarily for his managerial accomplishments (2,236 wins and four World Series titles being among them.) Some baseball pundits would argue that Torre had a pretty strong case for going into the Hall of Fame merely for what he did as a player.
In 18 years of playing time in a strong pitcher’s era (1960-1977), Torre batted .297/.365/.452/.817, with a .364 wOBA, 129 wRC+ and he amassed a 57.4 WAR. Torre was also a nine-time All-Star and won the NL MVP award in 1971. That year, Torre led the National League with a .363 batting average, and he clubbed 230 hits while driving in 137 runs.
Torre’s WAR total places him 7th all-time for catchers on Baseball Reference’s list which puts him ahead of Hall of Famers Bill Dickey and Mickey Cochrane but the problem with Joe Torre according to the Hall of Stats is that even though he played the most behind the dish, that position only accounts for 41% of his playing time – he also played 36% of the time at first base and 26% of the time third base. And while it could be argued that Torre did a nice job at all three positions, players like that seem to be viewed differently than players who are known for one position for most of their career and it could be why Torre has been overlooked as a player.
35. Minnie Minoso, 100 votes out of 208 (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 76 yes, 20 no, 4 N/A):
Former Hall of Fame research librarian Gabriel Schechter wrote for this project last year:
A dynamic player who combined power and speed at a time when it was rare, Saturnino “Minnie” Minoso starred for the Chicago White Sox for the bulk of his lengthy career. The Cuban-born left fielder was the AL Rookie of the Year in 1951, batted .300 in eight All-Star Games, and won three Gold Glove awards. Consistent production was his hallmark. In the 11-year period from 1951-1961, he hit over .300 eight times, scored 90+ runs nine times, topped 100 RBI four times, and was always in double figures in home runs and stolen bases. He also led the AL in getting hit by pitches ten times and in stolen bases and triples three times each, a testament to the speed that electrified the league. The “Go! Go!” chant of White Sox fans early in his career became the mantra of the 1959 AL champs, and even though he had been traded to the Indians two seasons earlier, he remained so popular in Chicago that Chisox owner Bill Veeck gave him a World Series ring.
36. Kevin Brown, 99 votes out of 208 (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 54 yes, 40 no, 5 N/A), written by Geoff Young of Baseball Prospectus:
If he were friendlier and the winner of a memorable Game 7, Kevin Brown might have remained on the ballot long enough for voters to recognize his superiority to Jack Morris. Alas, Brown was neither and must settle for being one of the game’s dominant pitchers from 1992 to 2001, ranking fifth in ERA+ and bWAR among pitchers that decade (behind only Greg Maddux, Pedro Martinez, Randy Johnson, and Roger Clemens). The rest of his career was spent being merely very good, like Morris.
Brown led his league in ERA twice and wins once, and consistently ranked among the top ten in multiple pitching categories. He probably should have won the NL Cy Young Award in 1996 and 1998. Heck, he led MLB in bWAR and fWAR in ’98, and that includes position players.
Maybe if he had hugged babies instead of smashing toilets, things would be different. Even so, it’s hard to understand a process that elects Catfish Hunter in three tries and dismisses Brown without a thought. One ranks 109th in career bWAR and 46th in ERA+, the other ranks 460th and 535th. You can guess which is which and why Brown didn’t receive more serious consideration.
Hug babies. Don’t smash toilets. Don’t have a career that coincides with those of Maddux, Martinez, Johnson, and Clemens.
37. Jim Kaat, 97 votes out of 208 (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 58 yes, 35 no, 4 N/A), written by Brandon Warne of ESPN 1500:
Jim Kaat’s Hall of Fame credentials are a lot like a couple of other 200-plus game winners who also didn’t make Cooperstown in Luis Tiant and Tommy John. Tiant didn’t quite have the same number of innings or appearances as the other two did, but still hung around to win nearly 230 games in 1000-plus innings fewer than the other two.
Each had their phenomenal peaks. Four times Tiant won 20 games, and his 1.60 ERA in 258.1 innings paced the American League in 1968. John won 20 games three times, but won 10 or more games in 17 seasons as part of a testament to his longevity (26 years). It’s almost a shame John is likely known more for the surgery that bears his name than his on efforts on the field.
Kaat also won 20 games three times, and is one of just three Twins pitchers to throw 300 innings in a season (1966). Kaat had double-digit win totals in 15 seasons, and despite never leading the league in ERA, or really in anything other than hits allowed, hit by pitch, and wild pitches, he still has one of the best fWARs (69.8) of all non-Hall pitchers. That WAR actually ranks him 31st all-time.
38. Gil Hodges, 93 votes out of 208 (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 59 yes, 32 no, 2 N/A), written by Nick Diunte of Examiner.com:
Hodges is the leading vote-getter in BBWAA elections for the Hall of Fame that has yet to be elected. He finished third in the Hall of Fame balloting of 1976. Ten of the next 11 players behind him in votes were eventually elected to the Hall of Fame. Why is he not there?
By the time he played his last game, his 370 home runs set the record for right-handed hitters in the National League. He played Gold Glove caliber defense at first base, long before the award was created, and as a manager, he guided the Miracle Mets to the 1969 World Series Championship.
Sadly, his promising managerial career was cut short after he suffered a fatal heart attack during spring training in 1972. With this year’s election of Joe Torre, who compares very favorably as a player and a manager, it is further evidence that it is time to put Gil Hodges in the Hall of Fame.
39. Don Mattingly, 91 votes out of 208 (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 24 yes, 64 no, 3 N/A), written by William Juliano of The Captain’s Blog:
If nicknames were a voting criteria, Don Mattingly would be a first ballot Hall of Famer. Despite its simplicity, “Donnie Baseball” says more about Mattingly than any one statistic. A tireless worker, the Evansville native played the game the right way, and, as Captain of the Yankees, he imparted his baseball wisdom to countless others. In addition, the proliferation of #23 on the backs of the generation that followed was a testament to the admiration and respect he garnered from young fans around the country, not just in New York.
Mattingly’s greatness as a player isn’t simply defined by intangibles. With nine gold gloves, he is also one of the most decorated defensive first basemen in history. Oh yeah, he could also flat out hit. From 1984 to 1989, Mattingly’s 160 home runs, 684 RBIs, and .902 OPS all ranked at or near the top of the major league lead. In the midst of that run, he won an MVP and batting title, was named to six All Star teams, and, in a 1986 New York Times poll, was voted the best player in baseball by his peers.
Don Mattingly was never the same after the 1989 season. Hampered by a chronic back injury, his final six seasons were a relative struggle. Still, he was the Captain…a rare bright spot during one of the darkest periods in Yankees’ history. And, even though he’ll probably never make the Hall of Fame, Donnie Baseball will always be the epitome of a ballplayer, not to mention one the greatest to ever play the game.
40. (Tie) Ken Boyer, 90 votes out of 208 (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 54 yes, 34 no, 2 N/A), written by Christine Coleman of Aaron Miles’ Fastball:
The cover story in the March 1965 issue of Dell Sports magazine touted third basemen Ken Boyer and Brooks Robinson as “Hottest Ever at the Hot Corner” in a preview of the upcoming season. Boyer was the 1964 National League MVP and a key contributor to the St. Louis Cardinals World Series championship that year. The next spring, he and Robinson were described as “two of the best third basemen in baseball history. Possibly the best ever,” in the Dell Sports article by Dave Anderson. Robinson, of course, was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1983 and had a career line of .267/.322/.401 with 268 home runs, 1357 RBI and 80.2 WAR in a career that was eight years longer than Boyer’s 15 seasons. His big league debut was delayed two years due to service in the Army, and Boyer compiled a line of .287/.349/.462 with 282 home runs, 1141 RBI and 54.8 WAR while winning five Gold Gloves and being named an All-Star seven times. The Cardinals retired his number – a distinction typically bestowed by the team to Hall of Famers – in 1984, two years after his untimely death from cancer at age 51.
40. (Tie) David Cone, 90 votes out of 208 (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 41 yes, 42 no, 7 N/A), written by Dan McLaughlin of Baseball Crank:
The curveball was the first thing you noticed. In his second appearance with the Mets in 1987, David Cone entered a tense game with the bases loaded and froze Jack Clark with that jaw-dropping curve. Many more victims would follow in the years to come.
When Cone arrived in Queens from the Royals in 1987, he was a nervous, baby-faced 24-year-old, already in his seventh professional season; he had recovered slowly from a knee injury that cost him the 1983 season after a breakout 16-3, 2.08 ERA campaign in A ball and likely kept him from being a part of the young Royals staff that won the 1985 World Series.
Despite years of missed opportunities, bad timing, injuries and controversies, the career Cone actually had was pretty fantastic. His best year, a 16-5 Cy Young campaign with the Royals, was cut short by the 1994 strike. As a rookie, he had his pinky crushed by a pitch while bunting; the next year he went 20-3 with a 2.22 ERA, but shot his mouth off and got shelled in the NLCS. The Mets never recaptured 1986, but Cone got a ring after a midseason trade to Toronto in 1992 and three more with the Yankees, the first after missing two-thirds of the 1996 season with a shoulder aneurysm.
42. Bill Dahlen, 86 votes out of 208 (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 81 yes, 5 no), written by Adam Darowski, creator of The Hall of Stats:
In my role as chair of SABR’s Nineteenth Century Overlooked Legend Committee, my charge is to identify and campaign for candidates from over a century ago who have been denied entry to the Hall of Fame for a variety of reasons. In my other role as creator of the Hall of Stats, my obsession is identifying and campaigning for candidates who produced statistically at a Hall of Fame level but remain on the outside.
These two sets of candidates have very little overlap, but there are a pair of shortstops who played in the nineteenth century with overwhelming statistical cases—Jack Glasscock (who remains terribly underrated and didn’t make this list) and Bill Dahlen (who came two votes shy of the Hall of Fame in 2013 and has a strong chance of induction via the Pre-Integration ballot in 2016).
A century before there was Alan Trammell, there was Bill Dahlen. Both players are the most easily overlooked type of candidate—the one who was good at everything but didn’t dominate in one way. Like Trammell, Dahlen was a long-time shortstop who played the position so well that he was never removed from it. Dahlen’s 2,133 games at short rank 11th all time (Trammell had six more). The new-dangled defensive numbers (Total Zone runs, specifically) say Dahlen was an exceptional fielder. That’s backed up by Dahlen’s eight top three finishes in fielding percentage and ten top three finishes in range factor.
While Dahlen hit only .272, he paired his 2,461 hits with 1,064 walks, raising his OBP to .358. This leads to an OPS+ of 110, above average for all players but certainly for a shortstop.
Combining Dahlen’s longevity, well-above average offense, spectacular defense, and great baserunning (he stole 548 bases) makes him one of the very best eligible players outside of the Hall. And you’ll notice that the voters who know about him overwhelmingly support him.
43. Darrell Evans, 82 votes out of 208 (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 34 yes, 44 no, 4 N/A), written by Rob Neyer of SB Nation:
It’s one of baseball’s great historical coincidences: Two of the game’s all-time underrated players, both of them active in the 1970s and ’80s, shared the last name Evans and the same first initial. One almost wonders if Major League Baseball secretly decreed that Dwight and Darrell could never play on the same team. Because it just would have been too confusing for everyone involved.
A lot of smart people think that Dwight Evans, and not Jim Rice, was the 1980s Red Sox outfielder who belongs in the Hall of Fame. And you know what? Some of those same people think that Darrell Evans has been sadly neglected by Hall of Fame voters.
Neglected? “Ignored” is more like it. In Evans’ first and only appearance on the BBWAA’s ballot, he received EIGHT votes. He received eight votes despite finishing his career with approximately 60 Wins Above Replacement, which at the time (1995) placed Evans 12th all-time among major leaguers who spent at least half their career at third base.
Of course, the voters at the time didn’t have Wins Above Replacement. And even if they had, it wouldn’t have made much difference. Evans finished his career with a .248 batting average. That was more than balanced by his .361 on-base percentage, but voters at the time — and still today! — care very little about on-base percentage. Evans did hit 414 home runs when that meant something … but he drove in 100 runs just once in his whole career.
So it’s not surprising that DWIGHT Evans got only eight votes. It’s actually quite understandable. But that doesn’t make it right.
44. Dave Parker, 77 votes out of 208 (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 32 yes, 42 no, 3 N/A), written by Dan Epstein, Rolling Stone Magazine columnist and author of the upcoming Stars and Strikes:
During the spring training of 1979, Pirates right fielder Dave Parker announced that he had his sights set on his third straight batting title. “When the leaves turn brown,” The Cobra famously prophesied, “Dave Parker will have the batting crown.” It seemed a highly plausible prediction; likewise, one could have easily rhymed at the time that, when Parker’s career finally wound down, he would surely have his ticket punched to Cooperstown. But things didn’t quite play out like that…
If The Natural had been penned by George Clinton, Roy Hobbs would have turned out something like Dave Parker — a mountain of a man and true five-tool player with a lethal bat, a cannon arm and enough funky bravado and star quality to light up a Soul Train set all by his lonesome. One of the most thrilling players (and feared hitters) of the mid/late 70s, Parker had the goods to be one of the all-time greats, and he most likely would have been a shoo-in for the Hall if he hadn’t been derailed for a while in the early 80s by injuries, drugs and other distractions.
But if his star never again burned as brightly as it did circa ’75-‘79, The Cobra still managed to finish his 19-year career in 1991 with 2,712 career hits, a .290 batting average, a 1978 NL MVP trophy, two NL batting titles, one NL RBI title, three Gold Glove awards, three Silver Sluggers, two World Series rings, and a highlight reel to rival Shaft in both overall length and sheer badassery. (Editor’s note: On this website, badassery is and will always be a word.)
45. (Tie) Lee Smith, 76 votes out of 208 (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 45 yes, 28 no, 3 N/A), written by William Tasker of MLBDirt.com and It’s About the Money:
Lee Arthur Smith was born in Louisiana in 1957 and pitched eighteen years in the Major Leagues for eight different teams. Smith was drafted out of high school by the Cubs in the second round of the 1975 draft. After toiling in the minors for four seasons, the Cubs converted him to the bullpen and except for six Major League starts, he remained there for the rest of his career.
Smith led the league four times in Saves and Games Finished and retired as the all-time leader in both categories. Trevor Hoffman and Mariano Rivera eclipsed those totals and Smith now stands third all time.
Perhaps Smith’s best season was 1991 with the Cardinals when he led the league with 47 Saves and finished third in NL Cy Young Award voting.
Smith’s career view suffers in hindsight from Hoffman and Rivera who followed him and from his two losses in four post season appearances. But he was a top closer in the game during his era.
45. (Tie) Willie Randolph, 76 votes out of 208 (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 35 yes, 38 no, 3 N/A), written by Eugene Freedman of Baseball Prospectus:
OPS+ is an odd stat. It adds two things that aren’t based upon the same thing and then compares them to an average. Everyone who understands the stat fully recognizes that it undervalues On-Base Percentage and over values slugging. Guys like Willie Randolph take the biggest hit with OPS+. OPS+ saysRandolph’s just 4% better than the average hitter who played during the course of his career. That’s not a true picture. He was 8 times in the top 10 in Walks, leading the league once, and six times in the top 10 in OBP. Randolph’s .373 OBP came in an era with a league OBP of .325. Meanwhile he hit only 54 HR in over 8000 ABs, leading to a 41 point lower than league average SLG. But, OBP is worth almost half as much more than SLG, so Randolph was likely 10% more valuable as a hitter than his league and that’s without factoring in his solid baserunning. Randolph was also an outstanding defender. His 19.4 dWAR ranks him sixth all-time at 2B. Meanwhile his WAR is 11th among 2B nestled nicely between HOFers Ryne Sandberg, Roberto Alomar, Craig Biggio,* and Jackie Robinson.
47. Bobby Bonds, 74 votes out of 208 (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 23 yes, 48 no, 3 N/A), written by Peter Nash of Hauls of Shame:
Bobby Bonds never had the numbers to warrant his waltzing into Cooperstown and his claim to fame today is more for his ties to the ballplayer who did put up the best numbers in baseball history and likely won’t waltz into the Hall either. The father of Barry Bonds, however, was more than a sperm donor who created the game’s most controversial PED-fueled slugger, he was a notable ballplayer in his own right and number 47 on BBP&P’s 50 Greatest Players Not in the Hall of Fame.
Bonds was a gifted athlete who became one of the game’s great lead-off hitters and capitalized on his power and speed to become baseball’s first 30/30 player, hitting that mark five times. But Bonds’ lifetime batting average of .268 was far from Hall-worthy and aside from an All-Star Game MVP in 1973 his trophy case was devoid of all the major awards and milestones that his son compiled.
Still, Bonds was the San Francisco Giants star player at the peak of his career and he hit 332 home runs, stole 461 bases and once hit 35 homers batting leadoff setting a MLB record at the time. But Bonds was always unfairly compared to Willie Mays and was dogged by talk that he’d never quite reached his full potential. He once told the LA Times, “They said I was supposed to be the next Willie Mays.” He wasn’t. Bonds could never fill those shoes and thus remains on the outskirts of Baseball’s Hall of Fame.
Whenever I got double baseball cards of my favorite and best players, they would go into the spokes of my bicycle tires. Dave Stieb was one of those.
In the 1980’s, the bulk of his career, he was the best starting pitcher. From 1980-1990 Stieb lead all pitchers with 50.8 WAR and was a balance of durability and quality. He was also third in wins (158), tied for first with 29 shutouts in an high offensive era and led all starting pitchers with an ERA + of 128 during that time. After a decade of excellence the cherry on top was a 1990 no-hitter after coming close twice in consecutive starts in 1988 and a near perfect game in 1989.
Stieb amassed 57 WAR for his career, ranking him 67th all-time among pitchers. If he had started his pitching a decade later with this day and age of sabermetrics being viewed and accepted by a wider audience you have to think he’d get a better and longer look then falling off the ballot after one year.
But there’s also nothing wrong with being a very good pitcher at the highest level for a very long time. And Dave Stieb was clearly that.
48. (Tie) Thurman Munson, 71 votes out of 208 (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 40 yes, 29 no, 2 N/A), written by Aaron Somers of Call to the Pen:
Depth at the catching position was quite strong across the game in the 1970s – led most prominently be a trio of Hall of Fame catchers in Johnny Bench, Carlton Fisk, and Gary Carter. Work Ted Simmons and Gene Tenance into the mix and we’re now looking at five of the Top 15 leaders in career bWAR at the position, all playing in the same decade.
Not to be forgotten, the New York Yankees were also the benefactors of yet another star-caliber backstop who remains unique in his own right beyond his contributions on the field. Munson spent 11 years in New York, playing nine full seasons. Across 5,905 career plate appearances the right-hander batted .292/.346/.410 with 229 doubles, 113 HR, and a 116 OPS+. Munson played in seven All Star Games, won three Gold Gloves, was named AL Rookie of the Year in 1970, and three times finished in the Top 10 in MVP voting (including winning the award in 1976).
Munson was beloved in New York just as much for his trademark facial hair – worn despite the personal preference of George Steinbrenner and the Yankees organization – as he was for his on field production. Yet his candidacy for the Hall of Fame is best known due to the tragic accident that cut his career and life short during the 1979 season. Munson’s a prime candidate for special exemption to the Hall, due to his shortened career, but to date that pursuit has resulted in little support beyond a rabid segment of Munson fans and supporters that don’t plan on giving up their cause.
50. Bret Saberhagen, 69 votes out of 208 (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 28 yes, 36 no, 5 N/A), written by Bobby Aguilera of Baseball Reality Tour:
Voting resulted in a three-way tie for this 50th spot between three players of baseball’s recent past: Bret Saberhagen, Steve Garvey, and Orel Hershiser.
As for head-to-head anecdotal evidence, Steve Garvey never faced Bret Saberhagen. Orel Hershiser limited Garvey to one walk, a single, and a double in twenty-four plate appearances, striking him out seven times.
Garvey’s best story comes from Win Expectancy metrics:
WPA/LI
Saberhagen 27.0
Garvey 24.8
Hershiser 14.8
REW
Garvey 33.93
Saberhagen 25.50
Hershiser 11.54
Does it mean anything if WAR does not align with Win Shares?
avWAR
Bret Saberhagen 59 (4.6 per 200 IP)
Orel Hershiser 49 (3.1 per 200 IP)
Steve Garvey 38 (2.6 per 650 PA)
Career Win Shares
Garvey 279 (19.2 per 650 PA)
Hershiser 210 (13.4 per 200 IP)
Saberhagen 193 (15.1 per 200 IP)
Notice that Saberhagen outperformed Hershiser in Win Shares as a rate state. His 3.64 K/BB dwarfed Hershiser’s 2.00. Saberhagen also had a better ERA- (80) to Hershiser (89). In fact, Saberhagen’s 80 ERA- is tied with Curt Schilling and better than many Hall of Famers including Juan Marichal, Bob Feller, and Steve Carlton.
Either way, Saberhagen > Hershiser > Garvey or Saberhagen > Garvey > Hershiser
[V] Ellis Valentine *Write-In* 1 (DHB: 1N), Fernando Valenzuela 18 (DHB: 6Y, 11N, 1NA), George Van Haltren 13 (DHB: 10Y, 3N), Johnny Vander Meer 2 (DHB: 2Y), Hippo Vaughn 5 (DHB: 5Y), Mo Vaughn 3 (DHB: 1Y, 2N), Bobby Veach 7 (DHB: 4Y, 3N), Bob Veale *Write-In* 1 (DHB: 1N), Robin Ventura 20 (DHB: 5Y, 15N), Justin Verlander *Not yet eligible* 1 (DHB: 1N), Mickey Vernon 12 (DHB: 7Y, 5N), Frank Viola 4 (DHB: 4N)
[W] Billy Wagner *Not yet eligible* 1 (DHB: 1Y), Tim Wakefield *Not yet eligible* 1 (DHB: 1N), Fleet Walker 2 (DHB: 1Y, 1N), Todd Walker 1 (DHB: 1N), Bobby Wallace *In HOF* 1 (DHB: 1NA), Bucky Walters 13 (DHB: 6Y, 6N, 1NA), Daryle Ward 1 (DHB: 1N), Lon Warneke 3 (DHB: 1Y, 2N), Buck Weaver 5 (DHB: 5Y), Bob Welch *Write-In* 2 (DHB: 2N), David Wells 10 (DHB: 2Y, 8N), Vic Wertz 1 (DHB: 1N), John Wetteland 1 (DHB: 1Y), Gus Weyhing 3 (DHB: 1Y, 2N), Bill White 5 (DHB: 1Y, 4N), Deacon White *In HOF* 7 (DHB: 7Y (Note: I accidentally left White on the ballot this year. He was enshrined last summer.)), Frank White 7 (DHB: 2Y, 5N), Roy White 5 (DHB: 3Y, 2N), Will White 2 (DHB: 2Y), Bernie Williams 42 (DHB: 14Y, 26N, 2NA), Cy Williams 2 (DHB: 1Y, 1N), Ken Williams 4 (DHB: 2Y, 2N), Matt Williams 5 (DHB: 1Y, 4N), Woody Williams 1 (DHB: 1N), Ned Williamson 2 (DHB: 2Y), Vic Willis *In HOF* 1 (DHB: 1Y), Maury Wills 28 (DHB: 8Y, 18N, 2NA), Willie Wilson 6 (DHB: 2Y, 3N, 1NA), Nip Winters 1 (DHB: 1N), Tony Womack 1 (DHB: 1N), Smoky Joe Wood 26 (DHB: 16Y, 10N), Wilbur Wood 7 (DHB: 4Y, 3N), Tim Worrell 1 (DHB: 1N), Jim Wynn 42 (DHB: 22Y, 17N, 3NA)
[Y] Koji Yamamoto *Write-In* 1 (DHB: 1Y), Kazuhiro Yamauchi *Write-In* 1 (DHB: 1Y), Rudy York 3 (DHB: 1Y, 2N), Tom York *Write-In* 1 (DHB: 1Y), Eddie Yost 3 (DHB: 1Y, 2N), Dmitri Young 1 (DHB: 1N), Eric Young 1 (DHB: 1N)
Appeared on the ballot, received no votes: Edgardo Alfonzo, Bobby Avila, Dick Bartell, William Bell Sr., Bret Boone, Ken Boswell, Jeromy Burnitz, Jeff Burroughs, Jeff Cirillo, Roy Cullenbine, Jim Davenport, Kelly Downs, Damion Easley, Morgan Ensberg, Scott Erickson, Shawn Estes, Carl Everett, Ferris Fain, Jeff Fassero, Art Fletcher, Keith Foulke, Dave Foutz, Bob Friend, Scott Garrelts, Jim Gentile, Hank Gowdy, Danny Graves, Don Gullett, Rick Helling, Roberto Hernandez, Tommy Holmes, Ken Holtzman, Bob Horner, Pete Hughes, Kei Igawa, Larry Jackson, Sam Jackson, Geoff Jenkins, Charley Jones, Davy Jones, Eddie Joost, Brian Jordan, Bill Joyce, Darryl Kile, Ellis Kinder, Ryan Klesko, Johnny Kling, Mike LaCoss, Carney Lansford, Arlie Latham, Matt Lawton, Jon Lieber, Bob Locker, Elliot Maddox, Candy Maldonado, Mike Matheny, Sadie McMahon, Kent Mercker, Jose Mesa, Irish Meusel, Bill Monroe, Wally Moon, Matt Morris, Wally Moses, Bill Mueller, Mark Mulder, Terry Mulholland, Randy Myers, Jeff Nelson, Trot Nixon, Larry Parrish, William Perry, Bruce Petway, Johnny Podres, Jack Powell, Ernest Riles, Felix Rodriguez, Joe Rudi, Reggie Sanders, Elmer E. Smith, Mike Stanton, Dixie Walker, Rondell White, Todd Worrell
Every player who has finished in the Top 50 at least one year of this project
1. Aaron Somers, 3rd year voter, director of recruiting at FanSided, senior editor at Call to the Pen
2. Aaron Whitehead, 2nd year voter
3. Adam Darowski, 3rd year voter, SABR member, chair of the SABR Nineteenth Century Overlooked Legends Committee, creator of the Hall of Stats
4. Adam Hardy
5. Adam Penale
6. Akil Lindsey
7. Alan Manship, 2nd year voter
8. Albert Lang, 2nd year voter, former SABR member, writes h2h Corner and The Fantasy Fix
9. Alex Putterman 3rd year voter, journalism student, assistant sports editor for the Daily Northwestern (Northwestern University)
10. Alfred Scott, 2nd year voter
11. “ali maship”
12. Alvy Singer, 2nd year voter
13. Andre Lower, 2nd year voter, SABR member, author of three books, including Auditioning for Cooperstown: Rating Baseball’s Stars for the Hall of Fame; writes Baseball By Positions .com
14. Andrew Ball, SABR member, writes for Beyond the Box Score and Fake Teams
15. Andrew Martin, 3rd year voter, writes Baseball Historian
16. Andrew Nadig
17. Andy
18. Bart Silberman, 3rd year voter, MLB licensee since 1996, specializing in Cooperstown Collection vintage design
19. Ben Henry, writes The Baseball Card Blog
20. Bill Bumgarner
21. Bill Rubinstein, 2nd year voter, SABR member
22. Bob Finn, 2nd year voter
23. Bob Rittner, 2nd year voter
24. Bob Sawyer, 3rd year voter, SABR member, co-founder of SABR’s Games and Simulations committee
25. Bob Sohm, 2nd year voter
26. Bobby Aguilera, 3rd year voter, writes Baseball Reality Tour
27. Brad Howerter
28. Brendan Bingham, 4th year voter, SABR member, contributor to this website, authored chapter for Bridging Two Dynasties: The 1947 New York Yankees
29. Brendon Salatino
30. Brent
31. Brian Gramman
32. Brian Metrick, 2nd year voter
33. Bryan O’Connor, 2nd year voter
34. Bryan Walker
35. Buddy Stricker
36. Carl Punty
37. Charles Beatley, 3rd year voter, wrote Andre Dawson for the Hall of Fame
38. Charles Reinhard
39. Chip Buck, 3rd year voter, contributes to Firebrand of the American League
40. Chris Bacon
41. Chris Fluit
42. Christian Ruzich, founder of The Cub Reporter
43. Christine Coleman, writes Aaron Miles Fastball
44. Christopher Kamka, SABR member, researcher and producer for Comcast SportsNet Chicago; contributed to a soon-to-be-published group book on Old Comiskey Park
45. Chuck Modehringer
46. Collin Whitchurch
47. Craig Cornell, 4th year voter
48. Dalton Mack, 2nd year voter, SABR member, writes for High Heat Stats
49. Dan Evans, 2nd year voter, SABR member, professional scout with Toronto Blue Jays, former general manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers
50. Dan McCloskey, 4th year voter, SABR member, writes Left Field, contributes to High Heat Stats
51. Dan O’Connor, 3rd year voter
52. Daniel Shoptaw, 2nd year voter, founder and president of Baseball Bloggers Alliance, writes C70 At The Bat
53. Danny Fain, “I believe I have the world’s largest Craig Biggio baseball card collection (over 4000 different with all the variations, misprints, errors, etc.)”
54. Dave Cohen
55. Dave England, 2nd year voter, SABR member, writes juniusworth.tumblr.com
56. David Klopfenstein, Japanese baseball enthusiast
57. David Lawrence Reed, SABR member, occasional contributor to John Thorn’s Our Game blog
58. David Lick, 2nd year voter, writes Not Mad Sports
59. Dean Godfrey
60. Dean Sullivan, 2nd year voter
61. “dizzle729”
62. Don Fairchild
63. Domenic Lanza, 2nd year voter
64. Doug Bisson
65. Drew Barr, 2nd year voter, voter for the Hall of Merit at BaseballThinkFactory.org
66. Drew Phillips
67. Ed White, 3rd year voter, former news reporter, sportswriter, editor, and TV news manager; currently self-employed as freelance writer and editor (recently edited two books); athletic scout for national collegiate athletic scouting association
68. Ed Woznicki
69. Eric Casey, executive producer for “the Art Of” local television show for Channel 15, Rochester, New York; 2004 Billboard World Song Contest Winner for music production with R&B singer Charley Janel
70. Eric Chalek, 2nd year voter, writes The Hall of Miller and Eric
71. Eugene Freedman, 3rd year voter, writes for Baseball Prospectus
72. “faughnan”
73. Gabriel Egger, 2nd year voter
74. Gabriel Schechter, 3rd year voter, SABR member, author, researcher at the Hall of Fame library from 2002-2010; current freelance writer, researcher, and editor; writes Charles April.
75. Galen Andrews
76. Gary Bateman, 2nd year voter
77. Gary Passamonte
78. “GBulloc”
79. George Haloulakos, 2nd year voter, contributor to this website, financial book author, contributor to Galaxy Nostalgia Network
80. “gfulkerson”
81. Graham Hudson
82. Gregg Weiss, 3rd year voter
83. “hrgafford”
84. Jacob Thompson, 2nd year voter
85. Jake Rashbaum, junior at the University of Toledo
86. James Newburg
87. James Nicolls
88. James Smyth, former minor league baseball play-by-play broadcaster, has a website
89. Jason Hunt, 4th year voter, writes Fake Teams
90. Jason Lukehart, 2nd year voter, managing editor of Let’s Go Tribe, also writes at Ground Ball With Eyes
91. Jeff Larick, 2nd year voter, past SABR member
92. Jena Yamada, 3rd year voter
93. Jenny Mirabella
94. Jesse Achtenberg
95. Jesse Collings, sports editor for The Beacon (Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts) newspaper
96. Jim Bernstein
97. Jim Gross
98. Joe Mello, 2nd year voter
99. Joe Serrato, 2nd year voter
100. Joe Williams, 4th year voter, SABR member, former chair of SABR’s 19th Century Overlooked Legends Project (and current member of committee), contributor toSeamheads.com and has attended the last 27 induction ceremonies at Cooperstown
101. Joel Hammerman, 2nd year voter
102. Joey Bartz, 2nd year voter, SABR member, former freelance sportswriter for the Mississippi Press, PhD candidate
103. John
104. John Hussey
105. John Quemere, 2nd year voter
106. John Robertson, 3rd year voter, SABR member, author
107. John Sharp, 3rd year voter, writes John’s Big League Baseball Blog
108. John Sours, 2nd year voter
109. John Swol, 2nd year voter, SABR member, writes Twins Trivia, authored a book of the same name
110. John Tuberty, 2nd year voter, writes Tubbs Baseball Blog
111. John Znamirowski
112. Jonathan Stilwell, 2nd year voter, SABR member
113. Jonathan Wagner, 3rd year voter
114. Joseph Jordan
115. Josh
116. Kazuto Yamazaki, 2nd year voter, writes for Paranoid Fan
117. Ken Poulin
118. Ken S
119. Kevin Johnson, 3rd year voter, SABR member, creator of Seamheads Ballparks Database; received SABR Baseball Research Award in 2012; appeared on Bob Costas special, “Behind the Seams: The Ballpark Factor”
120. Kevin Mattson, 2nd year voter
121. Kevin Porter, 3rd year voter
122. Kristopher Kennedy
123. Larry Cookson, 2nd year voter
124. Lawrence Azrin, 2nd year voter, former SABR member, writes at High Heat Stats; seventh-most comments all-time on HHS and proud of it
125. Lee Domingue, 3rd year voter
126. Loren Flynn
127. Louis Smith, 3rd year voter
128. Lucas
129. Mark DeLodovico, SABR member
130. Mark Hausherr
131. Mark Taylor, writes Mark My Words
132. Matthew Aschaffenburg, 3rd year voter
133. Matthew Cornwell
134. Mauricio Rubio of Baseball Prospectus and Cubs Den
135. Michael Clair, 3rd year voter, SABR member, doing an upcoming charity blogathon for Doctors Without Borders (DONATE)
136. Michael Cook, 3rd year voter, past SABR intern, wrote at Pinstripe Alley
137. Michael Martin, 3rd year voter
138. Michael S
139. Michael Terilli, 2nd year voter
140. Michael Thomas
141. Mike Gross
142. Mike Huey
143. Mike Lackey
144. Mike Livingston, SABR member, publishes annual magazine for local Strat-O-Matic league
145. Mike Lortz, Tampa-based baseball writer, contributor to The Bus Leagues Experience Vol I, II, III
146. Mike S
147. Mike Schneider
148. Mike Walczak, 2nd year voter, “My kids call me the ‘Rain Man’ of baseball stats”
149. Mike Warwick
150. Mitch Lutzke, SABR member, author of The Life and Times of Kimber M. Snyder, A Soldier in the 78th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry; working on a history book of Williamston, Michigan, which will feature at least one chapter on baseball in 1895
151. Myles McDonnell
152. Nate Horwitz, 2nd year voter
153. “nerdboy4000”
154. Nick Diunte, 2nd year voter, SABR member
155. Pat Corless, 2nd year voter
156. Patrick, active member of Royals Review and other sites
157. Patrick Mackin, 3rd year voter
158. Paul Lanning, 2nd year voter
159. Paul Perilli, freelance writer, last won a home run derby contest at age 10
160. Paul Martin
161. Paul McCord, 2nd year voter
162. Pete Livengood, 2nd year voter
163. Peter Nash, 2nd year voter, author, writes HaulsofShame.com; wrote, produced and co-directed the Emmy-nominated documentary, Rooters: Birth of Red Sox Nation; former member of the Def Jam rap group 3rd Bass (here’s a fun Deadspin post about it)
164. Phil Dellio, 2nd year voter, has his own website
165. Ralph Peluso, SABR member, Yahoo News contributor, writing a fictional book on baseball
166. Ray Anselmo
167. Ricardo Lugo
168. Rich Dubroff, Orioles Insider, CSNBaltimore.com
169. Rich Lipinski, 2nd year voter
170. Rich Moser, SABR member, writing a book on the Hall of Fame
171. Richard Solensky
172. Robert Ewing, 2nd year voter
173. Robert Ulmschneider
174. Ross Carey, 2nd year voter, SABR member, hosts Replacement Level Podcast
175. Ruben Lipszyc, 2nd year voter, contributor to the Canadian Baseball Network
176. Ryan
177. Ryan Jameson
178. Ryan McCrystal, 3rd year voter, writes for It’s Pronounced Lajaway
179. Ryan Redimarker
180. Scott Lindholm, web columnist for 670 The Score in Chicago, writes at Beyond the Box Score
181. Sam Atwood
182. Scott Candage
183. Scott Crawford, writes Scott Crawford on Cards
184. Scott Jackson
185. Scott Stewart
186. Scott Taylor
187. Shawn Anderson, writes The Hall of Very Good
188. Shawn Weaver, 2nd year voter, has written Cincinnati Reds Blog since 2002
189. Stefano Micolitti, 2nd year voter
190. Steve Holtje
191. Steven Nichols
192. Steven Sheehan, 2nd year voter
193. “stevesusan90”
194. Swifty Washington
195. Ted Mulvey, 2nd year voter
196. Theo Gerome, 2nd year voter
197. Tim
198. Tim Deale, SABR member, writing nonfiction baseball book
199. Tom Crittenden, 2nd year voter
200. Tom Thrash, 3rd year voter, has seen games at 43 MLB ballparks
201. Tom Thress, SABR member, creator Baseball Player Won-Loss Records
202. Tom Tunison, working on a non-fiction baseball book
203. Triston Aprill, 2nd year voter
204. Victor Dadras, 4th year voter, SABR member
205. Vincent Sparagano
206. Vinnie, 4th year voter
207. William Schuth, SABR member, writes Walking Point
208. Wayne Horiuchi, 4th year voter, avid sports card collector who has one of the most extensive game-used/autograph Hall of Fame collections in America
Just a quick note to say I’ve decided to extend the voting deadline in my project on the 50 best baseball players not in the Hall of Fame to this Saturday, December 28 at noon PST. I realized between work and the holidays, I wasn’t going to do much on the project before then.
As of this writing, 176 people have voted, our highest turnout in the four years this project has run. I’m confident we’ll have our best project yet, as well as our most meaningful one. Actual Hall of Fame voting is a mess right now. I’d like to think on some small level we’re doing something that could help the process and foster more discussion.
I thank everyone who’s voted so far. If you’ve yet to vote and would like to, please check out this post for further instructions.
Editor’s note: I’m pleased to welcome Bill Deane back to the site. The former senior research associate at the Hall of Fame, Bill’s made a science of predicting voting results for more than 30 years. As a commenter noted, most of Bill’s predictions last year were close to dead-on. Once again, I’m proud to have Bill’s predictions exclusive to this website.
_______________
In 2013, for only the second time since 1971, the baseball writers failed to select anyone for enshrinement into the Hall of Fame. Most observers think this was an aberration, and that there may be as many as five people elected to the Hall in 2014, with plenty more to follow. After all, Craig Biggio and Jack Morris were each just 7% short of making it last time, Jeff Bagwell and Mike Piazza were not far behind, and newcomers Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, and Frank Thomas should be shoo-ins.
Yet, according to my crystal baseball, 2013 was the start of a clear trend on the writers’ ballot, and only one of these stars will make it to Cooperstown in ’14.
This is my 33rd year predicting Hall of Fame elections. I think the acid test of prognostication performance lies in guessing the fate of men who finish within 10% either way of being elected (i.e., who receive between 65-85% of the vote). Among such candidates, I have gone 50-12 (.806) in correctly predicting who would or would not make it over the years. I was one of the few who correctly, publicly forecast the 2013 shutout.
A review of the voting process: Members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America (BBWAA) do the voting. Late each fall, ballots are distributed to active and retired beat-writers who have been BBWAA members for ten years or more. The ballots, which are to be returned by the end of the year, list candidates in alphabetical order, instructing voters to choose up to ten players (the average writer selects about six). Eligible candidates include men who played in at least ten seasons in the majors, the last of which was not less than five nor more than 20 years prior to the election. Any candidate being named on at least 75% of the ballots is elected to the Hall; anyone receiving less than 5% of the vote is dropped from further consideration. The BBWAA honors an average of about two players per year. The 2014 results will be announced on January 8 at 2:00 EST.
More than half of the 37 players who were listed on the 2013 ballot are not on the 2014 version: Dale Murphy, who failed in his final attempt; and 19 others (Bernie Williams, Kenny Lofton, Sandy Alomar, Jr., Julio Franco, David Wells, Steve Finley, Shawn Green, Aaron Sele, Jeff Cirillo, Royce Clayton, Jeff Conine, Roberto Hernandez, Ryan Klesko, Jose Mesa, Reggie Sanders, Mike Stanton, Todd Walker, Rondell White, and Woody Williams) who were dropped for failing to reach the 5%-cutoff. These men collected just 177 votes in 2013, and the strong 2014 rookie class figures to amass many more than that. This means that most if not all of the 17 returnees are likely to drop down in the voting. There are a lot of new and returning candidates with Cooperstown credentials, but there are simply not enough votes to go around. Though each voter is permitted ten selections, the average voter uses considerably fewer than that. The number of votes per voter has been below seven every year since 1986, and sunk to a record low of 5.1 in 2012. Though I expect that number to soar to its highest level in three decades, it won’t be enough to unclutter the ballot
Many of the 2014 first-time eligibles are destined for just one try on the writers’ ballot, the consequence of being overshadowed and receiving less than 5% of the vote. Those include Moises Alou (332 home runs, .303 average, between injuries), Luis Gonzalez (2591 hits, 596 doubles, and 354 homers, including 57 in 2001), Sean Casey (.302 average), Kenny Rogers (219-156 record, including a perfect game), Richie Sexson (306 HR), Hideo Nomo (123-109, including two no-hitters), Ray Durham (2054 hits), Eric Gagne (187 saves, including 84 straight, and the 2003 NL Cy Young Award), and Keith Foulke (191 saves).
Here’s the way I foresee the rest of the election shaping up, with newcomers in bold and predicted percentages in parentheses:
Greg Maddux (94) – The winningest right-hander of the past century, Maddux went 355-227 with four straight NL Cy Young Awards (1992-95). He’ll make it to Cooperstown easily.
Tom Glavine (67) – Though seldom considered the ace of his own team, Glavine won two Cy Youngs himself while going 305-203. In this crowd in this year, that won’t be good enough for Cooperstown.
Frank Thomas (63) – The most fearsome slugger of the 1990s, The Big Hurt finished with 521 homers and a .301 average, winning the 1994 and ’95 AL MVPs. See the Glavine comment.
Craig Biggio (61) – An excellent but not dominant player who amassed 3060 hits, 1844 runs, 668 doubles, and 414 stolen bases.
Jack Morris (58) – The winningest pitcher of the 1980s, he went 254-186 in his career without ever posting an ERA below three or a Cy Young Award finish above third. This is his final try on the BBWAA ballot.
Mike Piazza (54) – The best offensive catcher of all time (419 homers, .308 average), he managed to survive steroids rumors and a poor defensive reputation.
Jeff Bagwell (48) – Batted .297 with 449 homers and 1529 RBI in just 15 seasons, winning the 1994 NL MVP Award.
Tim Raines (45) – Rock was an outstanding player whose credentials (including an 808-146 stolen base record) are only starting to be appreciated by voters.
Lee Smith (39) – Lost his all-time saves record (and his only persuasive Hall of Fame argument) in 2006 to Trevor Hoffman, who in turn lost it to Mariano Rivera in 2011.
Roger Clemens (29) – The most-accomplished pitcher of the past century, if not any century, Clemens won a record seven Cy Young Awards and seven ERA crowns while going 354-184 with 4672 strikeouts. His reputation has been skewered by well-documented accusations of steroids and HGH use, though he was acquitted of perjury on the subject.
Barry Bonds (29) – The most accomplished non-pitcher with the possible exception of Babe Ruth, Bonds won a record seven MVP Awards and set all-time marks for career homers (762, including a record 73 in 2001) and walks (2558, a record 668 of them intentional). For good measure, he added 514 stolen bases and eight Gold Glove Awards. But, like Clemens, his accusations of using performance enhancers in the second half of his career, along with his surly relationship with the media, will keep him out of Cooperstown for the foreseeable future.
Curt Schilling (27) – His won-lost record (216-146) is modest by Hall of Fame standards, but he had three second-place Cy Young Award finishes and 3116 strikeouts with a record 4.38 SO:BB ratio. Moreover, he starred for three different World Series teams, the 1993 Phillies, the 2001 D’backs (for whom he shared Series MVP honors), and the 2004 Red Sox (for whom he authored the gutsy “bloody sock” performance). Nevertheless, he’ll drop sharply from his strong 39% showing in his first try.
Edgar Martinez (26) – Though he didn’t become a big league regular until he was 27, the DH wound up with 2247 hits, 514 doubles, 309 homers, and a .312 average.
Alan Trammell (25) – A fine shortstop, overshadowed throughout his career by Cal Ripken and Robin Yount.
Larry Walker (16) – Hit 383 homers and batted .313, winning three batting titles and the 1997 NL MVP Award, though most of his damage was done a mile above sea level.
Fred McGriff (15) – Crime Dog had 493 home runs and 1550 RBI, winning homer titles in each league.
Mark McGwire (13) – Had 583 home runs, a .588 slugging average, and the highest homer percentage of all time, but has become the voters’ poster boy for players accused of using PEs.
Don Mattingly (10) – After a half-dozen years as one of the game’s most productive hitters, Mattingly was reduced to mediocrity by back problems. Still, he wound up with credentials eerily similar to 2001 first-ballot inductee Kirby Puckett’s.
Jeff Kent (9) – Kent set the record for most career home runs by a second baseman and won the 2000 NL MVP Award. The recent Survivor contestant finished with 377 homers and a .290 average, but will struggle to survive on this ballot.
Mike Mussina (7) – Moose went 20-9 in his final season to finish at 270-153. Since 1893, only 12 pitchers finished with more wins over .500, and just three have a higher career strikeout-to-walk ratio. Nevertheless, Mussina will be lucky to even make the 5% cut.
Rafael Palmeiro (5) – He was a slam-dunk Hall of Famer until a positive steroids test (shortly after his finger-pointing denial of steroids-use under oath) effectively ended his career. Voters remember that performance more than his 3020 hits, 569 homers, or 1835 RBI, and may just snub him off the ballot.
Sammy Sosa (5) – Slammed 609 home runs, including three 60-homer seasons and an MVP Award, in a career also tainted by performance-enhancer accusations. He too may be knocked off the ballot, after just two tries.
Looking ahead toward upcoming elections, it appears the ballot will only get more crowded. In 2015 the leading newcomers will be pitching aces Randy Johnson, John Smoltz, and Pedro Martinez (nine Cy Young Awards among them), along with sluggers Gary Sheffield and Carlos Delgado. The following year, Ken Griffey, Jr. and Trevor Hoffman will top the rookie list. The 2017 ballot will include Manny Ramirez, Ivan Rodriguez, and Jorge Posada. Jim Thome, Chipper Jones, Omar Vizquel, Johnny Damon, and Jamie Moyer will become eligible in 2018. And any ten-year veteran who played in 2013, but does not return next season – Mariano Rivera, Andy Pettitte, and Todd Helton, to name three – will join the 2019 ballot.
On December 2, I kicked off voting for my annual project on the 50 best baseball players not in the Hall of Fame. Due to a WordPress glitch, several posts on my site were destroyed including my call for votes. If you’ve already voted in my project: 1) Thank you; and 2) Your votes are safe and have been recorded in a Google document independent of this site.
To anyone just joining us, since 2010, we’ve made an annual thing here of this project. Here are the preceding three years: Version 3.0, Version 2.0 and the debut of this project. This year looks to be better than ever, with an unusually deep class of newly-eligible players on the ballot including Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and Frank Thomas.
I’d like to invite anyone interested to submit a ballot. To vote, please go here. A reference ballot of 526 players can be found here.
There aren’t too many rules for this, except:
1) You must vote for 50 players. Next to each player you select, please put a “Y” or “N” to signify if he belongs in the Hall of Fame. This project isn’t about designating 50 players who must be enshrined tomorrow, simply the 50 best players not in Cooperstown.
2) Anyone who hasn’t played in at least five years is eligible. A person need not have played for five years or even in the majors to be eligible. I encourage people to work independently and use whatever criteria they prefer for voting.
3) All votes are due by December 23 at 9 p.m. PST. No late ballots will be accepted. Results will be unveiled on January 6, two days before the Baseball Writers Association of America reveals the results of its Hall of Fame voting.
4) I prefer if people vote at the link provided above. That said, if anyone has problems with it, please feel free to email me at thewomack@gmail.com.
This being said, I look forward to seeing how everyone votes. Thanks and good luck!
Last year, I asked readers to vote on an inner circle for the Hall of Fame. I’ve run a few voter-driven projects, and while I enjoy getting to look at everyone’s ballot, it’s generally the same story. I doubt any two ballots are alike. Voters use a variety of rationales. And most every ballot has a glaring omission or imperfection– in the case of my inner circle project, no player received 100 percent of the vote, not Willie Mays, not Babe Ruth, not Honus Wagner. We’re not fools, it’s just the way these things work. Some voters consciously omit players. Others simply forget them. I don’t think this is a a bad thing. I set very few rules for voters, by design. If enough people vote independently, the right thing seems to happen. Unanimity’s a nice ideal, but it’s never been necessary here.
I’m reminded of all this by a piece Buster Olney has up at ESPN Insider, advocating that retiring New York Yankees closer Mariano Rivera be the first unanimous Hall of Famer. In the piece, mostly hidden behind a paywall link, Olney recounts the bizarre, implausible, unpalatable truth through more than 75 years of Hall of Fame voting– there’s never been a unanimous selection. Never. Ty Cobb, Nolan Ryan, Tom Seaver, and others have come within a handful of votes, but something always seems to prevent unanimity. One writer left Ryan off his ballot, for instance, because he wanted to make a stand about Don Sutton’s candidacy.
Olney writes:
Maybe it’s time for this embarrassing tradition to end. Maybe it’s time for this small handful of writers who want to turn themselves into a speed bump at the gates of the Hall Fame to stop making themselves the story….
Five years from now, there is no reason for any voter to not put a check mark beside Mariano Rivera’s name on a ballot, because his candidacy is pristine.
It’s a great idea, and I support it wholeheartedly, but it seems highly unlikely it will happen, not in five years, probably not ever. I imagine people responding to Olney’s piece will make this about Rivera, fixating on his worthiness or lack thereof as a relief pitcher, but the broader debate isn’t about Rivera or any other player. So long as the current process for Hall of Fame voting remains, I doubt there will ever be a unanimous selection. And I’m cool with that.
If an algorithm determined picks, it would stand to reason that a player could get in satisfying every requirement. But voting is still done by humans, through an electorate that continues to grow, with a record 581 ballots cast in 2011 and another 573 last year. Few requirements exist for making picks, with a basic set of rules that concern eligibility. Beyond that, voters are invited to set their own criteria. One writer from last year’s election told me he didn’t vote for Tim Raines, in part, because he only logged 13 full seasons. Again, I’m fine with this. I’d shudder if any one voter got to determine all the plaques in Cooperstown using this mindset, but I assume that with enough people casting ballots, the right thing will generally happen.
It doesn’t mean that questionable candidates won’t sometimes be enshrined, be it on the first pass or the 10th, with 98 percent of the vote or 75.2. But the point of the Hall of Fame isn’t perfection or unanimity. It’s about honoring the best moments in baseball history. More often than not, Cooperstown and its voters have honored this ideal.
Months ago, a friend asked me to make a personal Hall of Fame for a project he’s doing. It sounded like a fun idea. The Hall of Fame has been a topic of frequent discussion here in the past, and I annually do a project on the 50 best players not in Cooperstown. Off the top of my head, I can name 100-200 surefire Hall of Famers and another 50-100 who aren’t currently enshrined but make my list. It’s fun to make these kinds of lists. I guess it’s how my mind works, and I assume others who frequent this site think similarly.
An interesting thing happened when I started to write down names, though. After exhausting the obvious picks for me, I turned to Baseball-Reference.com and found a number of long-ago players I knew little about beyond stats. This threw me. Being into baseball history, I rely on statistics and basic sabermetrics to have a more complete understanding of the game, but I don’t like being utterly beholden to numbers, particularly when it comes to making a personal Hall of Fame. It kind of takes the fun out of it for me.
Faced with this dilemma months ago, I set my list aside and put off coming back to it. Recently, though, I had an epiphany that I’d rather share my personal Hall of Fame, imperfect though it may be than stay quiet. I talk myself out of writing posts to often for fear of being wrong or mediocre. I’m calling bullshit on this. I’d like to start writing more about baseball history again because I enjoy the process and it adds something to my life.
I will present the following names without comment besides to say a few things. One, I only considered players who’d been retired at least five years, though I’ve included a few guys who wouldn’t meet Cooperstown’s eligibility requirements. I also favor a big Hall of Fame; it wasn’t this way for me when I started this website a few years ago, though the more I’ve written about players not in Cooperstown, the more I’ve found guys worth celebrating. It doesn’t water down the institution to me to tell more of their stories. That being said, I imagine I neglected to include a few players here. If there’s one thing I know about Hall of Fame voting, it’s that it’s very easy to forget players. Even Babe Ruth only got 95 percent of the vote.
All this being said, here are the players for my personal Hall of Fame. Let me know who else belongs here:
Editor’s note: Please welcome Bill Deane, former senior research associate at the Hall of Fame and a longtime friend of the site. For more than 30 years, Bill has made a science of studying past voting results for Cooperstown by the Baseball Writers Association of America and predicting who will get in. He does this with great accuracy, including predicting Barry Larkin’s enshrinement last year. I’m honored to have Bill’s predictions exclusive at BPP, the night before BBWAA voting results are released. Let’s see how Bill does.
___________
The 2013 Hall of Fame ballot is the most star-studded and controversial since the very first one in 1936, with newcomers including arguably the best position player and the best pitcher of all time, along with four others with obvious Cooperstown credentials. Yet, according to my crystal baseball, none of these notables – nor anyone else – will be elected to the Hall this January, resulting in the first BBWAA shutout since 1996.
This is my 32nd year predicting Hall of Fame elections. I think the acid test of prognostication performance lies in guessing the fate of men who finish within 10% either way of being elected (i.e., who receive between 65-85% of the vote). Among such candidates, I have gone 48-12 (.800) in correctly predicting who would or would not make it over the years.
A review of the voting process: Members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America (BBWAA) do the voting. Late each autumn, ballots are distributed to active and retired beat-writers who have been BBWAA members for ten years or more. The ballots, which are to be returned by the end of the year, list candidates in alphabetical order, instructing voters to choose up to ten players (the average writer selects about six). Eligible candidates include men who played in at least ten seasons in the majors, the last of which was not less than five nor more than 20 years prior to the election. Any candidate being named on at least 75% of the ballots is elected to the Hall; anyone receiving less than 5% of the vote is dropped from further consideration. The BBWAA honors an average of about two players per year. The 2013 results will be announced on January 9.
More than half of the 27 players who were listed on the 2012 ballot are not on the 2013 version: Barry Larkin, who was elected; and 13 others (Juan Gonzalez, Vinny Castilla, Tim Salmon, Bill Mueller, Brad Radke, Javy Lopez, Eric Young, Jeromy Burnitz, Brian Jordan, Terry Mulholland, Phil Nevin, Ruben Sierra, and Tony Womack) who were dropped for failing to reach the 5%-cutoff. These men collected just 537 votes in 2012, and the stellar 2013 rookie class figures to amass many more than that. This means that most if not all of the 13 returning candidates are likely to drop down in the voting.
The problems facing the ballot rookies are (1) those with the best credentials have been tarnished by accusations or rumors of the use of performance-enhancers, and (2) there are simply not enough votes to go around. Though each voter is permitted ten selections, the average voter uses considerably fewer than that. The number of votes per voter has been below seven every year since 1986, and sunk to a record low of 5.1 in 2012.
Many of the 2013 first-time eligibles are destined for just one try on the writers’ ballot, the consequence of being overshadowed and receiving less than 5% of the vote. Yet, many have solid résumés, and will get some votes. Among these are David Wells (239-157 record, including a perfect game), Kenny Lofton (622 stolen bases, .299 average), Steve Finley (2548 hits, 304 homers, 320 SB), Julio Franco (2528 hits, the last at age 49), Shawn Green (328 HR, including four in one game), Reggie Sanders (305 HR, 304 SB), Roberto Hernandez (326 saves), Jose Mesa (321 saves), Sandy Alomar, Jr. (six All-Star selections), Jeff Conine (214 HR, .285), Ryan Klesko (278 HR, .279), Aaron Sele (148-112), Rondell White (198 HR, .284), Jeff Cirillo (112 HR, .296), Woody Williams (132-116), Mike Stanton (1178 games pitched), and Royce Clayton. White and Stanton were named as HGH-users in the Mitchell Report.
Here’s the way I foresee the rest of the election shaping up, with predicted percentages in parentheses:
Craig Biggio (72) – An excellent but not dominant player who amassed 3060 hits, 1844 runs, 668 doubles, and 414 stolen bases.
Jack Morris (63) – The winningest pitcher of the 1980s, he went 254-186 in his career without ever posting an ERA below three or a Cy Young Award finish above third.
Mike Piazza (58) – The best offensive catcher of all time (419 homers, .308 average), he managed to survive steroids rumors and a poor defensive reputation.
Jeff Bagwell (56) – Batted .297 with 449 homers and 1529 RBI in just 15 seasons, winning the 1994 NL MVP Award.
Tim Raines (46) – Rock was an outstanding player whose credentials (including an 808-146 stolen base record) are only starting to be appreciated by voters.
Lee Smith (45) – Lost his all-time saves record (and his only persuasive Hall of Fame argument) in 2006 to Trevor Hoffman, who in turn lost it to Mariano Rivera in 2011.
Roger Clemens (44) – The most-accomplished pitcher of the past century, if not any century, Clemens won a record seven Cy Young Awards and seven ERA crowns while going 354-184 with 4672 strikeouts. His reputation has been skewered by well-documented accusations of steroids and HGH use, though he was acquitted of perjury on the subject.
Curt Schilling (41) – His won-lost record (216-146) is modest by Hall of Fame standards, but he had three second-place Cy Young Award finishes and 3116 strikeouts with a record 4.38 SO:BB ratio. Moreover, he starred for three different World Series teams, the 1993 Phillies, the 2001 D’backs (for whom he shared Series MVP honors), and the 2004 Red Sox (for whom he authored the gutsy “bloody sock” performance).
Barry Bonds (35) – The most accomplished non-pitcher with the possible exception of Babe Ruth, Bonds won a record seven MVP Awards and set all-time marks for career homers (762, including a record 73 in 2001) and walks (2558, a record 668 of them intentional). For good measure, he added 514 stolen bases and eight Gold Glove Awards. But, like Clemens, his accusations of using performance enhancers in the second half of his career, along with his surly relationship with the media, will keep him out of Cooperstown for the foreseeable future.
Edgar Martinez (31) – Though he didn’t become a big league regular until he was 27, the DH wound up with 2247 hits, 514 doubles, 309 homers, and a .312 average.
Alan Trammell (30) – A fine shortstop, overshadowed throughout his career by Cal Ripken and Robin Yount.
Fred McGriff (22) – Crime Dog had 493 home runs and 1550 RBI, winning homer titles in each league.
Larry Walker (20) – Hit 383 homers and batted .313, winning three batting titles and the 1997 NL MVP Award, though most of his damage was done a mile above sea level.
Sammy Sosa (20) – Slammed 609 home runs, including three 60-homer seasons and an MVP Award, in a career also tainted by performance-enhancer accusations.
Mark McGwire (17) – Had 583 home runs, a .588 slugging average, and the highest homer percentage of all time, but has become the voters’ poster boy for players accused of using PEs.
Don Mattingly (14) – After a half-dozen years as one of the game’s most productive hitters, Mattingly was reduced to mediocrity by back problems. Still, he wound up with credentials eerily similar to 2001 first-ballot inductee Kirby Puckett’s.
Dale Murphy (14) – Two straight MVPs highlight a checkered résumé. This is his final try on the BBWAA ballot.
Bernie Williams (12) – The only 2012 first-year candidate to remain on the ballot, he helped the Yankees to four world championships in the midst of his eight straight .300-seasons, including the 1998 AL batting crown.
Rafael Palmeiro (10) – He was a slam-dunk Hall of Famer until a positive steroids test (shortly after his finger-pointing denial of steroids-use under oath) effectively ended his career. Voters remember that performance more than his 3020 hits, 569 homers, or 1835 RBI.
Looking ahead toward upcoming elections, it appears the ballot will only get more crowded. In 2014 the leading newcomers will be Greg Maddux, Frank Thomas, Tom Glavine, Mike Mussina, and Jeff Kent. The following year, Randy Johnson, John Smoltz, and Pedro Martinez will bring their nine Cy Young Awards up for consideration, joining Gary Sheffield and Carlos Delgado. In 2016, Ken Griffey, Jr. and Trevor Hoffman will top the rookie list. And the 2017 ballot will include Manny Ramirez, Ivan Rodriguez, and Jorge Posada. Any ten-year player active in 2012 who does not return in ’13 (Chipper Jones and Omar Vizquel, for two) will become eligible in 2018.
Recently on Twitter, someone asked my friend and fellow baseball writer Dan Szymborski how many people he’d enshrine off this year’s Hall of Fame ballot. I had to speak up. “Like 15,” I tweeted. It’s been a long time since the ballot has had this glut of talent, maybe 50 years if we go back to the 1960s when the Baseball Writers Association of America instituted modern voting rules and the Veterans Committee enshrined several players, greatly thinning the ballot. Perhaps the time has come for another rule change or mass induction.
This year at least, however, the opposite may happen. With the BBWAA a week away from announcing its picks for enshrinement this summer, I wouldn’t be stunned if no players are selected. No consensus picks seem to exist among the writers, with Baseball Think Factory’s monitoring tool having first-year candidate Craig Biggio leading in the early count at 71.6 percent of votes, which would place him just shy of the 75 percent needed for induction. The BBWAA continues to grapple with what to do over players suspected of using steroids, while holdover candidates like Tim Raines and Alan Trammell also remain on the ballot. It’s a mess.
All this in mind, I offer something to ease the confusion.
For the past three years, I’ve run an annual project at my website having people vote on the 50 best players not in the Hall of Fame– not 50 players who need to be enshrined tomorrow, necessarily, just the 50 best not enshrined. Voting has two components: 1) I ask people to vote on who they think are the 50 best players outside of Cooperstown, regardless of if they’d enshrine them; 2) Next to each of the 50 players a voter selects, I ask them to put a Y or N signifying if they belong in the Hall of Fame. The latter component doesn’t have any effect on rankings, though I might use it as a tiebreaker next year.
The 2010 debut of this project was a great success and last year’s project only built on this, taking on a sabermetric slant. I’m proud to say this year’s version is our best work yet, with 148 voters– about as many as the first two years combined (if I had remembered to vote, we would’ve had exactly as many.) We also had a crew of great writers to tackle the players involved. Writers include the son of one of the players we’re honoring as well as a BBWAA member who explains why he voted Barry Bonds (and Roger Clemens) for Cooperstown.
With the BBWAA’s deadline for voting having passed on December 31, it’s too late to affect change on this year’s ballot. That being said, I hope our work can help spur discussion and move toward easing this historic backlog. With Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, Jeff Kent and others due to become eligible for Cooperstown next year, I don’t expect the 2014 ballot to be any less packed.
All this being said, here are the 50 best baseball players not in the Hall of Fame as we voted:
1. Tim Raines, 130 votes out of 148 (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 116 yes, 11 no, 3 N/A), written by Dan McCloskey of Left Field:
The Hall of Fame worthiness arguments for Tim Raines frequently include comparisons to three players: Tony Gwynn, Rickey Henderson and Lou Brock. Relative to Gwynn, it’s suggested Raines was nearly as good, and since Gwynn received 98 percent support in his first year on the ballot, Raines is worthy of election as well. With regard to Henderson, the belief is that Raines is unfairly downgraded by comparison to one of the 25 greatest players of all-time. Alternatively, Brock—also a first-ballot inductee—was a clearly inferior player to Raines and, if 80 percent of voters thought he was worthy, just as many or more should be in Rock’s corner.
But, Raines’ Hall of Fame case stands on its own, as this project’s voters attest. He was arguably the best player in the NL from 1983-1987, accumulating 31.4 WAR and hitting .318/.406/.467 with 568 runs and 355 steals during that five-year peak. Looking at his entire career, the Hall of Stats ranks him as the 104th greatest player ever. If you prefer an approach that’s not purely stats-based, ESPN’s Hall of 100 places him 96th on their all-time list. As there are currently 208 members of the Hall inducted as players, Tim Raines clearly belongs.
(Raines’ places in first two years of this project: 2011 – 5th; 2010 – 7th)
2. Craig Biggio, *New to ballot* 128 votes (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 119 yes, 7 no, 2 N/A), Dan Szymborski of ESPN:
In the handicapping of this year’s Hall of Fame vote, it’s looking like an uphill climb for Craig Biggio to get elected into Cooperstown on his first ballot and as with his teammate, Jeff Bagwell, it will be an obvious mistake on the part of the voters.
For some reason, playing on the Astros in the 90s is a surefire way to be underappreciated. Of the Killer B’s, Biggio and Bagwell are easy picks that will still be out of the Hall, Carlos Beltran is closing in on a slam-dunk on merit, but is rarely connected with the Hall, and Lance Berkman, at least a borderline candidate worth discussion in a few years, is also likely to be dismissed.
Biggio’s case is very straightforward. A 281/363/433 line, good for a 112 OPS+ and 414 stolen bases over an extremely long career — his 12504 career plate appearance ranks 10th in MLB history — and doing it all as a second baseman, and before that, behind the plate. Biggio was a very ordinary defensive player and his glove doesn’t add much value beyond that, but that’s the career line of a Hall of Famer. By career WAR, that puts him smack-dab in the middle of the group consisting of Robert Alomar, Ryne Sandberg, and Jackie Robinson, easy Hall inductees that had very short waits.
Biggio had a peak run of 304/399/476 from 1993-1998 (135 OPS+), so nobody can claim he Don Suttoned his way to a solid career WAR.
Unfortunately, Biggio became eligible for the Hall at a time in which voting for the Hall is suddenly a gigantic problem, thanks to an electorate that has many voters reacting to eligible players with a steroid cloud being on the ballot by various tropes of anti-intellectualism, from throwing out the entire era to disqualifying players from their ballots with the most tenuous connections to steroids possible. Biggio was a teammate of Ken Caminiti, enough for him to be guilty in the eyes of a handful of bad actors among the voters.
Regardless, until Craig Biggio’s plaque is up on that wall in Cooperstown, the Hall will be missing one of this generation’s best second basemen.
(Biggio’s places in first two years of this project: Not yet eligible.)
3. Jeff Bagwell, 125 votes (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 115 yes, 9 no, 1 N/A), written by Bill Parker of The Platoon Advantage:
Jeff Bagwell is a Hall of Famer. This is not a topic on which there is room for reasonable people to disagree. Across his career, his bat — as measured by OPS+ or wRC+ — was a bit better, in comparable numbers of plate appearances, than Willie McCovey’s and Willie Stargell’s and Jim Thome’s, and unlike any of those guys, he also added value in the field and on the bases. If your own personal Hall of Fame has room for at least three or four first basemen in it, Jeff Bagwell belongs there.
(Bagwell’s places in first two years of this project: 2011 – 3rd; 2010 – 5th-Tie)
4. Shoeless Joe Jackson, 124 votes (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 98 yes, 25 no, 1 N/A), written by Jacob Pomrenke, web editor for the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR.org):
Shoeless Joe Jackson isn’t in the Hall of Fame for one reason: He accepted money from gamblers in the plot to fix the 1919 World Series. Whether he played his best for the Chicago White Sox in that Fall Classic against the Cincinnati Reds is a matter of conjecture — Jackson’s own testimony was confusing and contradictory at times, but you have to stretch the evidence to suggest he wasn’t trying — but any time Jackson appeared on a baseball field, from age 5 to age 50, he was one of the best.
Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb both called Jackson the greatest natural hitter they had ever seen. Ruth admired Jackson’s swing so much that he copied it. Jackson could hit (.356 batting average is still third-highest in history), he could run (led the AL in triples three times) and he could field (twice had 30-plus assists as a left fielder until opponents stopped testing his arm). His Hall of Fame ability has never been in question.
Should Jackson be honored in Cooperstown? For some, taking the money is reason enough to keep him out. But you can’t make a list of the 50 best players of all-time — let alone the 50 best players outside the Hall of Fame — without Shoeless Joe Jackson.
(Jackson’s places in first two year of this project: 2011 – 1st; 2010 – 5th-Tie)
5. Alan Trammell, 121 votes (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 107 yes, 11 no, 3 N/A), written by Dan Evans, former Los Angeles Dodgers general manager and current Baseball Prospectus writer:
Arguably among the best dozen shortstops ever, Alan Trammell was gifted both offensively and defensively, and one of the most fundamentally sound players of his era.
Trammell, who played all 20 years of his career (1977-1996) with the Tigers, collected more hits than two-thirds of the 21 Hall of Fame shortstops, and had more RBI than 12. Barry Larkin is the only “pure” shortstop in Cooperstown with more career home runs. Trammell’s career WAR (67.1), seven-year WAR peak of 43.3, and 55.2 JAWS are all above-average when compared to Hall Of Fame shortstops.
Selected by the Tigers in the 2nd round of the 1976 Draft out of San Diego’s Kearny High School, Trammell turned down a basketball scholarship to UCLA to sign, and was the American League’s youngest player when he made his Major League debut just 15 months later in 1977. He and Lou Whitaker played 1918 games together as Detroit’s keystone combination, the most ever in Major League history.
One of the first power hitting shortstops, Trammell (career .285/.352/.415) was a six-time All-Star, four-time Gold Glove winner, three-time Silver Slugger recipient, and hit .300 or better seven times. Primarily a #2 hitter, Trammell made quality contact, never fanning more than 71 times in a season, and was an excellent two-strike hitter. He finished second in the AL MVP in 1987 when he was moved to cleanup and responded with 28 homers and 105 RBI, posted an 8.0 WAR. Trammell was the 1984 World Series MVP, and batted .333 in two post-season appearances. Trammell was a scout’s dream, doing the “little things” exceptionally well.
Defensively, Trammell was textbook with an incredibly accurate overhand throwing action and superb athleticism. His career Range Factor is better than Omar Vizquel and superior to most of today’s top defenders like JJ Hardy and Jimmy Rollins.
Ironically, Baseball Reference lists Trammell as the most similar player to 2012 Hall of Fame inductee Barry Larkin. Trammell was a slightly better defender while Larkin has an edge offensively, and both have career 67.1 WAR.
Injuries and labor stoppages limited Trammell in the second half of his career, as he played at least 130 games just once in his final nine seasons.
Trammell, now the Arizona Diamondbacks’ bench coach for former teammate Kirk Gibson, is in his 12th year on the Hall of Fame ballot. He managed the Tigers from 2003-2005.
(Trammell’s places in first two year of this project: 2011 – 6th-Tie; 2010 – 4th)
6-Tie. Roger Clemens, *New to ballot* 119 votes (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 98 yes, 20 no, 1 N/A), written by Josh Wilker, author of Cardboard Gods:
Corporations cheat. Corporations hunger, expand, devour. Corporations employ lawyers and publicists to blur and beautify. Corporations are duplicitous, unknowable, emitting into the world that tolerates them noxious clouds of uncertainty. They’re the gods of our uncertain world. Funny then that Roger Clemens, that embattled enormous corporation, once centered an unprecedented certainty that stands as one of the more pleasurable feelings I’ve had as a fan. Whenever he took the mound during his breakthrough season in 1986, I was as close to certain as I’d ever be that my team was going to win. Amazingly, that season, which felt as it was happening like a once in a lifetime apotheosis, would prove to be more the norm than the exception for Clemens over his staggering 24-year career. Eventually, of course, he became a corporation, like A-Rod, like Bonds, and we haven’t figured out yet how to integrate these ambiguous financial behemoths into our sense of baseball history. Like many, I came to dislike Clemens intensely, intimately. Maybe he’s a scapegoat for our uncertainty; maybe he’s what we want to believe he is: a beady-eyed cheater, a prick. One way or another, he was also the best pitcher we’ve ever seen.
(Clemens’ places in first two year of this project: Not yet eligible.)
6-Tie. Pete Rose, 119 votes (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 89 yes, 28 no, 2 N/A), written by Cliff Corcoran of Sports Illustrated:
Pete Rose never knew when to quit. Through the first 17 years of his career, he hit .312/.381/.432 with 3,372 hits. He was the 1963 National League Rookie of the Year, the 1973 NL Most Valuable Player and the runner-up in 1968, won three batting titles, led the league in hits six times, in doubles and runs four times each, and on-base percentage twice, was a 13-time All-Star, and a two-time Gold Glove winner in right field, one of five positions he had played regularly. Over a seven-year span from 1970 to 1976, he helped the Big Red Machine finish in first place five times, reaching four World Series, winning twice, and was the MVP of one of the great World Series of all time in 1975. In 1978, at the age of 37, he set the modern National League record with a 44-game hitting streak. He was, at that point, the end of the 1979 season, 38-years-old and a slam-dunk first-ballot Hall of Famer.
Then he played for seven more seasons, hitting .274/.354/.333 as a first baseman while chasing Ty Cobb’s career hits record. He accomplished the feat in 1985, finally retiring after the 1986 season with 4,256 hits, still the record, but the impact of the record was diminished by the quality of his play in pursuit of it, an aggregate 2.5 wins below replacement over those seven seasons. Named the player-manager of the Reds when reacquired by the team in August 1984, he remained in that post beyond his retirement as a player only to bring real shame upon his name for gambling on baseball during that period, ultimately receiving a lifetime ban late in the 1989 season which left him ineligible for Hall of Fame thereafter.
(Rose’s places in first two years of this project: 2011 – 6-Tie; 2010 – 10th.)
8-Tie. Barry Bonds, *New to ballot* 117 votes (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 97 yes, 19 no, 1 N/A), written by Art Spander, a BBWAA member who tells us why he voted Bonds for Cooperstown this year:
Barry Bonds is a Hall of Famer. Which is why I voted for the man. Also for Roger Clemens. They almost certainly used performance-enhancing drugs, although we are not sure when they started using them.
We’ve seen the before and after photos of Bonds, lean then muscle-bound. While he was lean, until the mid 1990s, presuming he had yet begun with steroids or other PEDs, Bonds won the MVP award four times and Bonds became a 40-40 man, 40 steals, 40 home runs. Bonds already earned his place in the Hall.
Did he “cheat,” using steroids or human grown hormone to gain power and longevity? Apparently. But another former member of the San Francisco Giants, pitcher Gaylord Perry, was voted into the Hall and subsequently wrote a book how he applied a type of petroleum jelly to the ball. Isn’t that cheating?
The “character” clause is invoked by those who don’t want Bonds in the Hall. Same thing for Pete Rose – having recorded more hits than anyone in the history of the majors, he unquestionably belongs – because Rose wagered on baseball.
Bonds, Clemens and Rose pass the vision test. When we watched, what did we see? Men who were Hall of Fame players. The rest is incidental.
(Bonds’ places in first two years of this project: Not yet eligible.)
8-Tie. Edgar Martinez, 117 votes (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 96 yes, 18 no, 3 N/A), written by Joshua Dobner of Seattle Clubhouse:
Dusty Baker called Edgar Martinez “a professional, quiet, humble giant…one of the best right-handed hitters ever seen.” Dusty may have been onto something. In putting together a career .300/.400/.500 slash line along with 300 home runs, 500 doubles, and 1,000 walks, Martinez joined just nine other players, all of whom are now enshrined in Cooperstown.
Edgar was more than a great hitter, of course, earning the Roberto Clemente Humanitarian Award in 2004 for his work with countless organizations around the world. He spent his entire career with the Seattle Mariners, a rare modern star to not jump ship.
Perhaps the lone knock on Martinez’s Hall of Fame credibility is that he spent nearly three-fourths of his career as a designated hitter. Consider this, though. Cooperstown represents a platform void of judgment. Rather, it lionizes those who excelled on the diamond, regardless of color and nationality. It also captures baseball’s past. The designated hitter has been in baseball almost 40 years. It represents a significant chunk of baseball history. And Edgar Martinez might be the best DH in baseball history.
(Martinez’s places in first two years of this project: 2011 – 9th; 2010 – 9th)
10. Lou Whitaker, 115 votes (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 96 yes, 16 no, 3 N/A), written by Joey Bartz:
I can still hear the long and over drawn out “Looooooooooooou!” cheer in my sleep. It takes me back to a time of great baseball at the corner of Michigan and Trumbull Avenues. As a kid, I never realized that I was witnessing one of best second basemen in baseball history. I cannot justify why he is not in the Hall of Fame, but I can testify why he deserves his spot in Cooperstown.
Lou Whitaker earned Rookie of the Year honors in 1978 followed by five All Star nominations, four Silver Slugger Awards, and three Gold Gloves. In 1983, Whitaker finished an astonishingly 8th place in the MVP voting, whereas statistically only MVP winner Cal Ripken Jr. had a better year, both offensively and defensively. In 1984, Whitaker, Alan Trammell and cast would lead the Tigers to the World Series crown.
One only needs a single hand, presuming it has five fingers attached, to find out how many second basemen have had better career WAR (Wins above Replacement) numbers than Whitaker. Simply put, there are only five, and all five are enshrined in the Hall of Fame. Take Whitaker’s career WAR and divide it by his seasons played and he still ranks ninth all-time among second basemen, even ahead of 2011 inductee, Roberto Alomar.
(Whitaker’s places in first two years of this project: 2011 – 12th; 2010 – 14th)
11. Mike Piazza *New to ballot* 114 votes (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 105 yes, 7 no, 2 N/A), written by Cecilia Tan of Why I Like Baseball:
In a 16-year big-league career, Mike Piazza hit more home runs (427) than Johnny Bench, Yogi Berra, Carlton Fisk, or Gary Carter (the four hittingest catchers in the Hall of Fame). He also holds the top score for plate appearances per home run at 18.14. (Roy Campanella is next on the all-time catchers list with 19.90 PA/HR.) When Piazza was 15, his father built a batting cage in the backyard and enticed Ted Williams to come see the Pennsylvania prodigy. Williams, on seeing young Mike’s swing told father Vince, “I guarantee you that he will hit in the major leagues.” Piazza hit 35 homers in 1993 and won the NL Rookie of the Year, then went on to top 30 homers in nine of his 16 seasons, eight consecutive). And it wasn’t all home runs: 201 hits in 1997 were the most by a catcher in MLB since Joe Torre hit 203 in 1970, and the resulting .362 average tied Bill Dickey for second all time and best for a catcher since 1900. His first ten years in the big leagues he tallied OPS over 900. Piazza didn’t get much praise for his glove, but with a bat like that, he didn’t need it.
(Piazza’s places in first two years of project: Not yet eligible.)
12. Dick Allen, 111 votes (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 80 yes, 30 no, 1 N/A) , written by Matt Trueblood of Arm Side Run:
Dick Allen had a sheltered childhood in small-town Pennsylvania, encountering far less overt racism than most African-Americans of his age. When he signed with the Philadelphia Phillies, and when they immediately denied his request not to be sent to Little Rock, the culture shock posed a challenge he did not meet well. In many ways, Allen was rarely a man in the right place at the right time.
By the time Allen reached the majors, he was frustrated with the organization’s treatment. They asked him to play third base in 1964, for the first time in his life. He felt ill-suited to the position. They alluded to him as Richie and local papers followed suit. Allen bristled. The choice encouraged comparison to venerated Phillies star Richie Ashburn, wildly popular and shiny white. Allen called it “a little boy’s name.” He adopted apparent disinterest as a defense mechanism for criticism of his fielding. He became more glowering to dispel the connotations he feared the “Richie” moniker would attach to him.
This steeliness and hot-headedness came to a head when Allen and teammate Frank Thomas (a white man with a reputation for race-baiting) squared off. It began as a shouting match and escalated into a fistfight with Thomas hitting Allen in the shoulder with a bat. The Phillies released Thomas, but the fans only hated Allen the more thereafter.
As Allen’s relationship with the team continued to sour, his career soared. He swatted 80 extra-base hits in 1964, winning Rookie of the Year. From 1964-69, he batted .300/.388/.555, averaging 28 doubles, 10 triples and 30 homers. To put those figures in context, compare Allen in that span to the best six seasons of Manny Ramirez’s career. Ramirez hit .327/.428/.633 over that span, averaging 35 doubles and 39 home runs. Yet, adjusting for league and park factors, Ramirez was 69 percent better than the league-average hitter in those years, while Allen was 64 percent better.
Defense was an issue. Allen was a very good athlete and had good range, but committed 41 errors as a rookie at third base. Managers shuffled him around the field and he rarely responded well. He reported bizarre injuries, wore a batting helmet in the field in a nod to the fans’ penchant for throwing things at him and demanded a trade prior to the 1970 season.
Once he left Philadelphia, Allen got less flak. Jack Buck set the tone when Allen showed up in St. Louis, by referring to him as Dick, not Richie. Allen spent single seasons in St. Louis and Los Angeles, before landing in Chicago in 1972. He joined the White Sox who made him the regular first baseman and he embraced it. Allen led the AL in homers, RBI, walks, OBP and slugging, winning his third MVP. People began to see him as audacious slugger rather than brooding slacker. He would never have another season in that strata and was out of the game at 35 with 351 homers but that peak–1964-72– still makes Allen one of the underappreciated offensive studs of all time.
In his time, Allen exemplified the harder path black players faced and the dangers of failing to embrace the sycophantic sports media of the day. In historical perspective, Allen shows what gets lost in translation across eras. He ranks 57th all-time in OPS, but 19th (tied with Willie Mays, ahead of Aaron and DiMaggio) in OPS+, which adjusts for league context. Allen is most frequently compared to Albert Belle, another prickly African-American player who changed his name mid-career and mashed the ball, but could not defend. Fair enough, but Allen was better– much better.
If Dick Allen played during the 1990s, or if he had signed with most any other team besides Philadelphia in 1960, or if he were a nicer guy, he would have been in Cooperstown decades ago. He absolutely belongs.
(Allen’s places in first two years of project: 2011 – 4th; 2010 – 11th)
13-Tie. Dwight Evans, 109 votes (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 73 yes, 33 no, 3 N/A), written by Adam Darowski of The Hall of Stats:
It’s not that Dwight Evans was a unique hitter. His 352 (Baseball-Reference) WAR Batting Runs have been matched by 89 other players. His fielding skills weren’t very unique, either. 194 players have more WAR Fielding Runs than Evans’ 66. But only 18 players have surpassed him in both categories.
Bill James referred to this combination of skills when he wrote an open letter to the Hall of Fame about Dwight Evans. He touched upon other reasons the Sox right fielder has been overlooked—such as his low batting average (with high OBPs), his defensive value (which is still hard for many voters to wrap their heads around) and the fact that his best offensive seasons came in his 30s (when his reputation was already established). You can add that his best season was actually a strike-shortened one. In 1981, Evans led the league or tied in homers, walks, total bases, and OPS. His legacy might be a bit different if he had another season with MVP-caliber numbers.
(Evans’ places in first two years of project: 2011 – 10th; 2010 – 12th)
13-Tie. Rafael Palmeiro, 109 votes (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 67 yes, 41 no, 1 N/A), written by Jonathan Mitchell of MLB Dirt:
Rafael Palmeiro rarely seems to get his due despite an impressive resume. He is 12th all-time with 569 home runs, tied for 6th all-time with 1192 extra-base hits, 11th all-time with 5388 total bases, tied for 19th all-time with 4460 times on base, and a member of the 3000 hit club.
Despite collecting some of the best numbers in the history of the game, Palmeiro is often remembered more for his Congressional finger pointing and link to PEDs. Another argument against him is the lack of major peak. Palmeiro only eclipsed 6 rWAR thrice in his career but that is the same figure as Tim Raines who is regarded by many to be a Hall-of-Famer. The two are actually neck-and-neck in career rWAR and fWAR with Palmeiro slightly ahead in both (Palmeiro 66.0 and 74.3 to Raines 64.6 and 70.9).
This is not a knock on Raines but a reminder that Palmeiro’s hall of fame case is equally impressive, if not more.
(Palmeiro’s places in first two years of project: 2011 – 19th-Tie; 2010 – 28th-Tie)
15. Curt Schilling, *New to ballot* 107 votes (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 85 yes, 20 no, 2 N/A), written by Aaron Somers of Seedlings to Stars:
Over the course of a 20-year career there were often times where Curt Schilling wasn’t the best player on his team, let alone in all of baseball. But his consistency and overall track record are enough that he merits consideration for a place in Cooperstown. He won 216 games lifetime, including 20+ three separate times, while finishing with a 3.46 ERA and 3,116 strikeouts. He twice led his league in innings pitched, WHIP or strikeouts. Three times he led the way in games started.
Schilling’s postseason success, however, trumped it all. He went 11-2 in 19 starts with a 2.23 ERA and 0.968 WHIP, helping lead his teams to three World Series championships.
Schilling amassed 76.9 bWAR across his career and appeared in six All Star Games. Four times he’d finish in the Top 5 in Cy Young Award voting, coming in second three times. He was dominant, consistent and reliable. And he seemingly got better (particularly increasing his K/9 rate and lowering his BB/9 rates) as his career progressed.
(Schilling’s places in first two years of project: Not yet eligible.)
16. Mark McGwire, 105 votes (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 69 yes, 36 no), written by Jason Wojciechowski of Baseball Prospectus:
There is a sense in which Mark McGwire was a one-dimensional player: He couldn’t run and spent much of his career as a bad fielder. With a bat in his hands, though, he was more than a simple slugger: McGwire managed solid batting averages and, more importantly, he walked a ton, allowing him to rank in the top 100 all-time in on-base percentage. His power was gargantuan and his biceps bulged, but his eye at the plate was equally stunning.
The story of McGwire is only half about his batting, though. His frailty (such a word to apply to a 6’5″, 240-pound man!) is the other half. Give McGwire the 75 percent of his age-29 and -30 seasons that he lost to injury and he easily finishes over 600 homers and above the 62.3 bWAR the average Hall of Fame first baseman compiled. Injuries aren’t treated like time lost to the Army, though. Only what McGwire actually did counts and it’s hard to argue based on the record he accumulated on the field that pitchforks and torches should be raised if McGwire is ultimately denied a plaque in Cooperstown.
(McGwire’s places in first two years of project: 2011 – 14th-Tie; 2010 – 20th-Tie)
17. Luis Tiant, 104 votes (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 66 yes, 36 no, 2 N/A), written by Brendan Bingham of this website:
Luis Tiant, not Denny McLain, should be remembered as the AL pitcher whose 1968 performance epitomized the Year of the Pitcher. Tiant led the AL in ERA and shutouts and was second only to Dave McNally in WHIP, but McLain swept the Cy Young voting on the strength of his 31 wins. Tiant won only 21 for Cleveland. Never mind that the Tigers scored almost a run per game more than the Indians.
1968 was not the only season in which Tiant was a league leader. In 1972, he again led in ERA. In 1966 and 1974, he led in shutouts. In 1973, he led in WHIP. Interestingly, Tiant was a league leader in 1969, too, when he led the AL in losses and in home runs and walks allowed. Yes, I hold the contrarian view that accumulating negative stats is a badge of honor. Although Tiant might not have been at his best in 1969, Cleveland manager Alvin Dark never lost confidence, faithfully sending him to the mound for 37 starts.
A look at the all-time pitching lists finds Tiant rubbing shoulders with some Hall of Famers. His strikeouts exceed Juan Marichal’s and Jim Palmer’s. His ERA+ rivals Robin Roberts’ and Jim Bunning’s. His WHIP matches Bert Blyleven’s. His pitching WAR exceeds Bob Feller’s and falls just short of Palmer’s. In 15 years on the Hall of Fame ballot, Tiant somehow never received more than 31 percent of the BBWAA vote.
(Tiant’s places in first two years of project: 2011 – 19th-Tie; 2010 – 17th-Tie)
18. Larry Walker, 101 votes (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 70 yes, 28 no, 3 N/A), written by Andrew Fisher of Purple Row:
One would think a player with a .313/.400/.565 career batting line in 17 seasons would have no problem getting into the Hall of Fame, but Larry Walker’s peak coincided with two critical variables that voters still don’t know how to properly weigh. The best numbers of Walker’s career came during the offense-inflated so-called Steroid Era at pre-humidor Coors Field. Consequently, many voters throw up their hands at both factors and discount his offensive prowess.
However, a full 41 percent of Walker’s career games came with Montreal or St. Louis. And even if his bat wasn’t enough to earn induction (his blend of power and average yielded a career OPS+ that ranks sixth on the 2013 ballot), the Canadian brought more non-hitting contributions to the table than almost anyone in the game. As one of the smartest, most-efficient base-stealers in baseball during his career, Walker stole 230 bases at a 75 percent success rate. He was arguably the best defensive right fielder in the league during his tenure, racking up seven Gold Gloves. Injuries limited his ability to build up counting stats, but his resume over 17 years certainly makes him worthy of induction.
(Walker’s places in first two year of project: 2011 – 17th; 2010 – 15th)
19-Tie. Joe Torre, 90 votes (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 68 yes, 21 no, 1 N/A), written by Dave England of Aerys Sports and MLB Dirt:
When Joe Torre made his two at-bat appearance for the season debut for the Braves in 1960, my father was still putting baseball cards in the spokes of his bicycle. The next summer Torre would start an everyday career that would last until 1977 when my father took me to my first baseball game.
Joe Torre is remembered as a manager with 2,326 wins and his four World Series titles. Before that, Torre was an All Star catcher and first baseman, winning the 1971 National League MVP award when he led the circuit with 230 hits, 137 runs batted in, and a .363 batting average. Lifetime, he hit .297, all the more impressive considering the 18 years Torre spent in the majors were largely ruled by pitchers.
According to Baseball-Reference, Torre ranks 7th in all-time WAR for catcher. Of the six in front on him, four are in the Hall of Fame already. The other two are Mike Piazza and Pudge Rodriguez. Torre ranks just ahead of Hall of Fame catchers Bill Dickey and Mickey Cochrane. Of the 14 catchers in Cooperstown already the average WAR for career is 49.3 and JAWS [Jay Jaffe WARP score system] is 40.7. Torre is above those criteria with 54.2 and 44.7 respectively.
Joe Torre will one day be inducted as a manager. It appears he may have been overlooked as a player.
(Torre’s places in first two years of project: 2011 – 11th; 2010 – 20th-Tie)
19-Tie. Bobby Grich, 90 votes (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 68 yes, 21 no, 1 N/A), written by Dan Turkenkopf of Baseball Prospectus:
There are two reasons Bobby Grich isn’t in the Hall of Fame: a .266 lifetime batting average and Darrell Evans Syndrome. Come to think of it, that’s probably why Darrell Evans isn’t in the Hall of Fame too, but that’s a different story.
If you want to make Cooperstown and have a batting average that low, you’d better be a 500+ home run hitter, the GOAT defensively or a catcher. Bobby Grich is none of those things. What he is, is an extremely well-rounded player. Despite the batting average, Grich’s .371 on-base percentage is around average for any Hall of Famer (not just middle infielders.) His .158 ISO places him in the midst of players like Ryne Sandberg, Don Mattingly and Roberto Clemente. And while Grich won plaudits (and four Gold Gloves) for his excellent fielding percentage, he had some range too– leading to 8+ defensive wins.
That leads us back to Darrell Evans. Bill James once used Evans to illustrate how well-rounded players received less fanfare than players who had a noticeable trait. So, how did well-rounded Bobby Grich do in HOF voting? 11 votes in 1992, a quick exit from the ballot and a hope the Veterans Committee will someday be kinder. Thus far, it hasn’t.
(Grich’s places in first two years of project: 2011 – 18th; 2010 – 22nd-Tie)
21-Tie. Sammy Sosa, *New to ballot* 89 votes, (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 48 yes, 41 no), written by Alex Putterman of this website:
Sammy Sosa’s Hall of Fame case comes down to power– the power needed to blast home runs and the power of round numbers and recognizable milestones. Slammin’ Sammy is the only player to ever hit 60 home runs in three different seasons and one of eight to crack 600 long balls in his career. But as Sosa got older and his offensive numbers soared, the right fielder’s defensive and base-running abilities shriveled, until he was essentially a one-dimensional masher. In the end, Sosa’s candidacy comes down to personal voter philosophy.
If you believe the Hall should be empty of steroid users, you won’t support Sosa. If you believe voters should consider the effects of steroid use on a player’s career, you probably won’t support Sosa. If you judge a player strictly on his overall production (Baseball-Reference credits Sosa with 54.8 career WAR), you might not support Sosa. If you believe that anyone who hits 600 home runs belongs in Cooperstown, that certain headlines and historic accomplishments warrant enshrinement regardless of all else, that this is the Hall of Fame, not the Hall of Productivity, then you certainly will support Sosa.
(Sosa’s places in first two years of project: Not yet eligible.)
21-Tie. Ted Simmons, 89 votes (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 65 yes, 22 no, 2 N/A), written by Bill Deane, author of Baseball Myths and former senior research associate at the Hall of Fame:
As a teenager in the mid-1970s, I’d hear people debating about who was the best catcher in baseball: Johnny Bench, Carlton Fisk, or Thurman Munson? I’d say, “What about Ted Simmons? The guy hit .332 with 100 RBI!” I’d get only puzzled looks from people who were barely aware that St. Louis had a team.
That exemplified Simmons’s problems in getting attention throughout his career: He played in media-Siberias and was overshadowed by two contemporary HOF catchers. But consider their average HR-RBI-AVG stats from 1971-80: Bench (27-93-.263), Fisk (16-57-.285), Simmons (17-90-.301). Simba was also unjustly regarded as a poor defensive catcher; I tackle this legend at length in my book, Baseball Myths. (Editor’s note: Page 375 of The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract notes: “Bill Deane has studied the records at great length, and demonstrated that Simmons threw out an above-average percentage of opposing base stealers in his prime seasons.”)
Ted Simmons retired as the all-time leader in hits and doubles among catchers, and ranked second in RBI behind only Yogi Berra. Only Ivan Rodriguez has surpassed him in those categories since. Yet, Simmons was dropped from the BBWAA HOF ballot after one try, then waited 16 years to be snubbed by the Veterans’ Committee. His next try is this December.
Simmons was one of the ten best all-around catchers in baseball history. He deserves serious consideration for Cooperstown.
(Simmons’ places in first two years of project: 13th both years)
23. Keith Hernandez, 87 votes (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 46 yes, 40 no, 1 N/A), written by Julian Levine of Bay City Ball:
Few first basemen throughout history have excelled on both sides of the game as Keith Hernandez did. From 1978 to 1988, Hernandez won eleven consecutive Gold Glove awards; to this day, he remains the only player ever to win more than ten Gold Gloves at first base. By Total Zone, Hernandez is estimated to have saved nearly 120 runs on defense over his career. On the offensive side of things, he finished his 17-year career with a .296/.384/.436 line, a 130 wRC+, and more walks (1070) than strikeouts (1012). In 1979 at the age of 25, Hernandez appeared in all but one game, mashing to the tune of .344/.417/.513 (155 wRC+). For his efforts that season, he took home the NL batting title and shared MVP honors with Willie Stargell.
Kenny Lofton’s legacy is hurt by his having been an almost exact contemporary of Ken Griffey Jr., the greatest centerfielder of the last 40 years. Griffey captivated fans and media members in a way few players in history have, forcing Lofton to work in his vast shadow. During his prime (1992-1999) Lofton had a slash line of .311/.387/.432. He terrorized pitchers by getting on base at a high clip and stealing more bases than anyone in baseball, with an 80 percent success rate. He played Gold Glove caliber defense too. Per Baseball-Reference, Lofton was worth 45.8 wins in those years, 6th best in baseball. He deserved the 1992 Rookie of the Year Award and perhaps the 1994 MVP. In the final six years of his career Lofton bounced around, playing for nine different teams. He was a worth an average of 2.4 wins in those seasons, but rather than being viewed as a strong decline phase, they led to him being remembered by many as merely a well-traveled journeyman, a grave mischaracterization. He wasn’t quite Griffey, but Lofton was a good hitter, a great fielder, and a base thief with few peers in history. In short, he was tremendous.
(Lofton’s places in first two years of project: Not yet eligible)
25. Tommy John, 81 votes (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 50 yes, 30 no, 1 N/A), written by William Juliano of The Captain’s Blog:
To many baseball fans, Tommy John is an operation. Mention his name and, undoubtedly, what will pop into the minds of most is the elbow ligament replacement surgery that now bears his name. However, the left hander was more than just a medical pioneer.
Although never dominant, John was a model of a durability and consistency. His 26 major league seasons trail only Nolan Ryan in terms of longevity, while his 18 qualified campaigns with an above-average adjusted ERA rank behind only three of the game’s elite (Clemens, Maddux, and W. Johnson). With 288 victories (124 before the surgery and 164 after), John also owns the highest win total by any modern pitcher not elected to the Hall of Fame. And, for the more sabermetrically-inclined, his fWAR of 78.7 is the 28th highest in big league history, just a hair behind Warren Spahn. If John is judged by the company he keeps, perhaps he should be enshrined in Cooperstown along side them?
John’s longevity brought him to the threshold of the Hall of Fame, but his lack of a dominant peak is probably what kept him out. And, that’s really not such a bad place to be. Even without a plaque in the Hall of Fame Gallery, the left hander still merits a hallowed place in baseball history, because of both his remarkable ability to capitalize on a second chance as well as the role he played in ensuring one for countless others.
(John’s places in first two years of project: 2011 – 26th; 2010 – 25th – Tie)
26-Tie. Fred McGriff, 78 votes (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 40 yes, 37 no, 1 N/A), written by Michel Lim of Baseballs Deep
When he retired in 2004, I thought Fred McGriff was a pretty solid bet to gain eventual enshrinement in the Hall of Fame. His overall mark of 493 home runs ties him with the immortal Lou Gehrig at tenth currently all-time for first basemen (Pujols should pass them both sometime in 2013.) His 2,239 games played as a first basemen place him third all time. In his fifteen seasons as a full-time player from 1988 to 2002, his 458 home runs, 1460 RBI, 2329 hits and 59.5 fWAR rank third, second, third and fifth respectively among first basemen. A five-time All-Star, McGriff was somehow not named an All-Star in 1989 and 1993, seasons in which he later won the Silver Slugger award. McGriff also won the Silver Slugger award in 1992. Though he never won an MVP award, McGriff did finish in the top ten of the voting six times.
At this time though, McGriff seems more likely to be inducted into the infomercial hall of fame than into Cooperstown. The time capsule that was his television commercial endorsement of a baseball instructional video set first aired in 1991 and aired over 100,000 more times unchanged as recently as 2006.
(McGriff’s places in first two years of project: 2011 – 22nd-Tie; 2010 – 16th)
26-Tie. Bill Dahlen, 78 votes (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 72 yes, 5 no, 1 N/A) 78 Joe Williams, chair of the Overlooked 19th Century Baseball Legends Project, Nineteenth Century Committee, SABR:
If you ask a baseball historian to throw a few names at you who have long deserved a plaque in Cooperstown, Bill Dahlen’s name is almost always mentioned. He played in both the 19th Century and the Deaball Era, performing well in both eras while setting offensive and defensive marks along the way.
First, he set the consecutive game hitting-streak record in 1894 with a 42-game mark. He immediately followed that streak with a new 28-game hitting streak, thus getting a hit in 70 of 71 games. The 42-game streak would be broken by Willie Keeler in 1897, but still ranks fourth all-time.
At retirement, “Bad Bill” ranked second all-time in games played (2,444) behind only Cap Anson. He also had 1,590 runs (13th), 2,461 hits (15th), 413 doubles (11th), 163 triples (14th), 84 homers (13th), 1,234 RBI (12th), 1,064 bases on balls (2nd), 548 stolen bases (10th) and 140 hit by pitches (8th)—all totals not too shabby for a shortstop.
On defensive, he retired as the all-time leader in games played at shortstop with 2,133, currently ranked eleventh. He also was the career leader at shortstop in putouts with 4,856 (currently second) and assists with 7,505 (currently fourth). He was also the first player with 8,000 career assists at all positions with 8,138 (currently fourth).
Not only did he pile up stats, he was a winner. He contributed to NL championships in 1899 and 1900 with Brooklyn, and 1904 and 1905 with New York. New York won the World Series in 1905.
SABR’s Nineteenth Century Committee named him the 19th Century Overlooked Baseball Legend for 2012–a 19th-century player, manager, executive or other baseball personality not yet inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Dahlen missed election to the Hall a few weeks ago when he fell two votes short when the Pre-Integration Era Committee met at MLB’s Winter Meetings.
(Dahlen’s places in first two years of project: 2011 – 32nd-Tie; 2010 – 40th-Tie)
28-Tie. Darrell Evans, 74 votes (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 29 yes, 43 no, 2 N/A), written by Eugene Freedman, a regular at Baseball Think Factory:
Darrell Evans played the majority of his games at third base. Third base is one of the most underrepresented positions in the Hall of Fame, if not the most. The Baseball Writers Association of America has admitted Mike Schmidt, Eddie Mathews, Wade Boggs, George Brett, Brooks Robinson and Pie Traynor. The Veterans Committee has admitted Home Run Baker, Jimmy Collins, Freddie Lindstrom, George Kell and most recently, Ron Santo. Meanwhile, the BBWAA has admitted 10 second basemen, with the Vets enshrining another nine. The BBWAA alone has put in as many shortstops as there are third basemen in Cooperstown.
Third base requires fielding and hitting. If you can’t field the position (Jim Thome), you are moved to first or DH (Edgar Martinez.) Players who are great hitters, even if they can field the position, are moved when their defense falters (George Brett and Paul Molitor.) For whatever reason, careers seem relatively short at third base. There are only 20 players with 1200 or more games played at third. Darrell Evans ranks somewhere between 10-15 among the group depending on which version of WAR you use. Granted a lot of the players ahead of Evans also aren’t in the Hall of Fame and Evans has more games played and plate appearances than all of them, but that said, shouldn’t there be more than 11 third basemen in the Hall?
If you don’t like Graig Nettles or Buddy Bell or Ken Boyer or Stan Hack or Robin Ventura or Ron Cey or Sal Bando or all of them shouldn’t you at least take the guy with the most HR by a considerable margin? Heck, I’m not sure one of these players is any better or worse than the others by a significant margin, but I can say this, after Chipper Jones gets in, I feel badly for Scott Rolen and Adrian Beltre because they’re going to be in the running with Evans and the rest for best third baseman not in the HOF. They’re all better than Lindstrom, Collins, Kell and Traynor.
While I’m not arguing we should lower HOF standards to the worst among these, I do think voters need to reevaluate how they make positional adjustments. Maybe that adjustment has been made appropriately with other positions for the most part. Every SS better than Alan Trammell is in the HOF (but for ARod and Jeter.) If the cutoff is the top 12 at any position, then maybe Trammell doesn’t belong. But, if the cutoff is the top 12 then third base is still well underrepresented and Evans needs to be considered against Nettles and Bell and Boyer and Hack and Ventura and Cey and Bando for spots 8-12 because only the top six plus Baker are in the Hall right now.
(Evans’ places in first two years of project: 2011 – 32nd-Tie; 2010 – 40th Tie)
28-Tie. David Cone, 74 votes (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 33 yes, 40 no, 1NA), written by William Tasker of The Flagrant Fan:
David Cone, the 29th best player not in the Hall of Fame? Sure. David Cone compiled a WAR of 58+ on both major stat sites. He finished in the top ten in CY Young Award voting four times and won it once. He finished with a .606 career winning percentage and it would have been .638 before his three hang-on seasons. He added another eight wins in the post season for a .727 winning percentage there. And he was 2-0 in the World Series. Cone compiled 22 shutouts in an era of relief specialization and one of those shutouts was a perfect game.
Cone won twenty games in a season twice, 1988 and 1998 (going 40-10 in those two seasons.) He led the league three times in strikeouts per nine innings and allowed only 7.8 hits per nine innings for his career.
Cone did not compile enough stats for the Hall of Fame, but for ten seasons, was one of the best pitchers in baseball. And best of all, he is an ex-jock who uses sabermetric stats as a broadcaster. That just seals the deal.
(Cone’s places in first two years of project: 2011 – 32nd-Tie; 2010 – 49th-Tie)
29. Don Mattingly, 73 votes (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 22 yes, 51 no), written by Stacey Gotsulias, deputy editor of MLB for Aerys Sports:
Don Mattingly is the reason I became such a rabid New York Yankee fan.
When I attended my first games, a doubleheader in 1983, he served primarily as a part-time first baseman and outfielder. I started regularly going to games the following season and that’s when Mattingly got his chance to shine.
He became the full-time first baseman after the Yankees traded Steve Balboni to Kansas City before the 1984 season. In that first full season, Mattingly won the batting title with a .343 average. He also had a league-high 207 hits.
Mattingly won the American League Most Valuable Player award the following season after finishing with 35 home runs and 145 RBI. He was well on his way to a legendary career until a fluke back injury in June 1987. That same season, he still managed to homer in eight-straight games and hit six grand slams. Amazingly, they would be the only grand slams of his career.
Mattingly finished with 100+ RBI from 1984 – 1988, a streak that ended in 1988 when he collected 88 RBI.
His back problems flared up again in subsequent seasons and he could never regain his power stroke. After 14 respectable seasons with the Yankees and a .307 career average, Mattingly retired at 34.
(Mattingly’s places in first two years of project: 2011 – 22nd-Tie; 2010 – 27th)
31. Graig Nettles, 72 votes (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 42 yes, 27 no, 3 N/A), written by Joe Giglio of WFAN and Joe Giglio Sports:
The slick fielding, power hitting Graig Nettles might be the greatest third baseman — outside active players– to not be enshrined in Cooperstown. In addition to a reputation as a great defender, Nettles hit 390 home runs and displayed excellent plate discipline.
Unfortunately for the former Yankee, his greatest attributes weren’t properly identified by voters during his opportunity for enshrinement. His 62.7 Wins Above Replacement ranks above HOFers such as Andre Dawson, Dave Winfield and Harmon Killebrew. Although Nettles topped out at 5th in any individual MVP vote, he finished 4th in MLB in ‘76 WAR. During the 70’s, Nettles walked during 10.2 percent of his PA’s, compared to an 11.1 K percentage. That discipline formula rated better than more heralded teammates like Munson, Jackson and Rivers.
Many referred to Nettles as “dependable” or “sturdy” during his time in the Bronx Zoo. As the years moved on, it’s clear that he was an underappreciated star who contributed heavily to five World Series appearances. Ironically, a modern day Nettles — Adrian Beltre — has started to receive Hall conversation. As times passes, it’s likely that more players of the Nettles-Beltre ilk will receive consideration for Cooperstown.
(Nettles’ places in first two years of project: 2011 – 40th; 2010 – 44th-Tie)
32. Jim Kaat, 71 votes (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 46 yes, 24 no, 1 N/A), written by Brandon Warne of Fangraphs:
Long before Jim Kaat was a well-liked broadcaster, he was a pretty darn good pitcher whose career spanned four decades (1959-1983). And while Kaat gets a lot more credit for longevity than quality — including 162-game averages of 13-11 record, 3.45 ERA, and a 108 ERA+ in his 25-year career — his 71.2 WAR via FanGraphs paints the picture of a true fringe candidate. By JAWS, Kaat is on the outside looking in, but one could be forgiven for inducting him on the basis of nearly 300 wins, 16 Gold Gloves, and the fact that despite pitching in a non-strikeout era, he’s still 34th on the all-time list.
But in the end, Kaat falls short, and that’s probably a fair assessment.
(Kaat’s places in first two years of project: 2011 – 27th-Tie; 2010 – 28th-Tie)
33. Minnie Minoso, 71 votes (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 43 yes, 25 no, 3 N/A), written by Gabriel Schechter of Never Too Much Baseball:
A dynamic player who combined power and speed at a time when it was rare, Saturnino “Minnie” Minoso starred for the Chicago White Sox for the bulk of his lengthy career. The Cuban-born left fielder was the AL Rookie of the Year in 1951, batted .300 in eight All-Star Games, and won three Gold Glove awards. Consistent production was his hallmark. In the 11-year period from 1951-1961, he hit over .300 eight times, scored 90+ runs nine times, topped 100 RBI four times, and was always in double figures in home runs and stolen bases. He also led the AL in getting hit by pitches ten times and in stolen bases and triples three times each, a testament to the speed that electrified the league. The “Go! Go!” chant of White Sox fans early in his career became the mantra of the 1959 AL champs, and even though he had been traded to the Indians two seasons earlier, he remained so popular in Chicago that Chisox owner Bill Veeck gave him a World Series ring.
(Minoso’s places in first two years of project: 2011 – 21st; 2010 – 31st-Tie)
34. Will Clark, 68 votes (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 21 yes, 46 no, 1 N/A), written by Peter Hartlaub, pop culture critic and blogger for the San Francisco Chronicle:
Will Clark’s biggest obstacle to getting into the Hall of Fame was always Will Clark.
The first baseman coasted on natural ability, a stranger to offseason workouts and (apparently) the concept of a side salad. Fans loved the good ol’ boy persona, but he made enemies among baseball writers. And after an epic comeback season – and within striking distance of the Hall-friendly 300 homer mark – the six time All-Star chose to hunt, fish and do other Will Clark things rather than play out the end of his career.
Clark didn’t make a case for himself, so we must dig a little to make the case for him. There’s his lifetime .303 batting average and gaudy .384 on-base percentage. He made 8,283 plate appearances and grounded into just 100 double plays.
He was the catalyst that brought back the San Francisco Giants franchise, electrifying the team and its fanbase with his perfect swing and swagger, then hitting .650 in the team’s landmark 1989 NLCS victory over the Chicago Cubs. A solid defensive first baseman, and an exceptional situational hitter. A legend in college, who hit .429 in the Olympics. Definitely the guy you want on your side in a fight.
And then there was that final season, filling in with injured Mark McGwire’s St. Louis Cardinals. With just 171 at-bats, the 36-year-old Clark hit 12 homers and 42 RBIs with a .345 batting average. An exclamation point on a Hall-worthy career.
(Clark’s places in first two years of project: 2011 – 14th-Tie; 2010 – 17th-Tie)
35-Tie. Dale Murphy, 67 votes (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 37 yes, 30 no), written by his son, Chad Murphy:
Image used with permission from Chad Murphy
Of course I’m a little biased, but I think there’s no doubt that my dad was one of the top 5 or so players of the 1980s (eerily similar to Gil Hodges in the 50s, in fact.) No matter which side of the peak vs. longevity debate you come down on, you can always find exceptions who are already in the Hall of Fame. Even with his late-career decline, my dad was 19th on the all-time home run list (just behind Duke Snider, I believe) when he retired.
The other important consideration (which I discuss at some length here) is all the intangibles he brought to the game: the way he inspired a generation of baseball fans, especially in the South; his long streak of consecutive games for a set of Braves teams that were, for the most part, truly awful; and, most importantly (in my opinion), the integrity he brought to the way he played the game. He’s a walking advertisement, in fact, for the very cliche but undoubtedly true notion that it’s not what you achieve that matters most but how you achieve it. So it’s not just that my dad was “a nice guy.”
True, being a model citizen off-the-field shouldn’t be totally relevant to HOF decisions, but these days the more pertinent character issue, I believe, is whether or not you cut corners for personal gain and by doing so compromised the integrity of the game. Not only did my dad make the correct decisions– for himself and for the game– but he also managed to put up impressive numbers in the process. If such a well-rounded career is not worthy of the top 50, not to mention the HOF, then we might do well to re-evaluate a few things.
(Murphy’s places in first two years of project: 2011 – 27th-Tie; 2010 – 17th-Tie)
35-Tie. Kevin Brown, 67 votes (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 38 yes, 27 no, 2 N/A), written by Bill Ivie, president of the Baseball Bloggers Alliance:
Kevin Brown is an interesting case when we look at “bubble” Hall Of Fame candidates. He carries with him a pedigree of postseason success, a frequency of “that other guy” accomplishments, and statistical success that is on par with elite players during his time.
Taking a bit deeper look, we can see that Brown achieved the status of All Star six times in his career, spanning both leagues with one appearance in the American League and five in the National League. His career spanned 19 seasons and he accomplished over 200 wins during that time span. His career numbers boast over 200 wins (211), over 2,300 strikeouts (2,397), an impressive career earned run average (3.28) and over 3,200 innings pitched (3,256.1). While we are into a generation of pitchers that will, most likely, struggle to ever produce another 300 win pitcher, a player with more than 200 suddenly becomes in the discussion of the true “elite.”
Brown was never able to accomplish the pinnacle of awards as a pitcher, however, he did finish with second (1996), third (1998) and sixth (1992, 1999, 2000) in Cy Young voting during his career. Add to that, he was able to place in the top 25 in Most Valuable Player voting twice (1996, 1998).
He sports the coveted World Series Champion title, having won with the Florida Marlins in 1997 as well as finding his way back to the post-season as a member of the Padres in 1998 and the Yankees in 2004.
Is Brown truly a Hall Of Famer? Probably not. Is he among the best players that are not in Cooperstown? Very much so.
(Brown’s places in first two years of project: 2011 – 35th; 2010 – 38th-Tie)
37. Ken Boyer, 65 votes (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 41 yes, 23 no, 1 N/A), written by Christine Coleman of Aaron Miles’ Fastball:
Perhaps the best measure of whether Ken Boyer belongs in the Hall of Fame comes from the St. Louis Cardinals themselves. Traditionally, the team retires numbers only for Hall of Famers – or, in the case of Tony La Russa whose No. 10 was retired in 2012, those sure to be inducted. Gracing the left field wall at Busch Stadium are the photos and numbers of the Cooperstown inductees: Stan Musial, Dizzy Dean, Red Schoendienst, Bruce Sutter, Whitey Herzog, on and on … plus Ken Boyer’s No. 14. Boyer’s number was retired in 1984, two years after his untimely death from cancer at age 51.
Boyer was the National League MVP in 1964, as well as a key contributor during that year’s Cardinals World Series championship. He was a seven-time All-Star and five-time Gold Glove third baseman whose numbers for his 15-year career – .287/.349/.462 with 282 home runs, 1141 RBI, 58.7 WAR – are comparable to those of Hall of Famer Ron Santo over his 15-year career. Of course, Santo’s journey to the Hall was long and winding, but ultimately resulted in induction. And the sentiment of long-time Cardinals fans, with this being one example, is that the same should hold true for Boyer.
(Boyer’s places in first two years of project: 2011 – 27th-Tie; 2010 – 35th)
38. Jack Morris, 64 votes (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 30 yes, 34 no):
Joe Posnanski wrote today, “I’ve said way too much already about Morris as a Hall of Fame candidate. I admire the career, but I think there are many other better pitchers who are not in the Hall of Fame. But that’s an old story now.”
I couldn’t have said it better.
(Morris’s places in first two years of project: 2011 – 52nd-Tie; 2010 – 36th-Tie)
39. Wes Ferrell, 62 votes (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 44 yes, 16 no, 2 N/A), written by Adam Darowski of The Hall of Stats:
Wes Ferrell didn’t win 200 games and had an ERA over 4.00. How is he even in a Hall of Fame discussion? He just might be the most unique pitcher in history. Ferrell’s 8-year peak took place when the league ERA was 4.50. Ferrell’s ERA during those years was 3.72. Add the fact that he played in two hitters parks (in Cleveland and Boston) and his ERA+ during that run was 128. For his entire career, his ERA+ was still an impressive 116—better than Hall of Famers Steve Carlton, Fergie Jenkins, and Nolan Ryan (among several others).
Ferrell’s peak was tremendous, as he won 20 games six times and compiled 46.0 (Baseball-Reference) WAR on the mound (the rest of his career was below replacement level). Then there’s his bat. Ferrell was the best hitting (exclusive) pitcher of all time. His 100 wRC+ led to 12.1 WAR at the plate. Ten wins came during his peak, meaning he was worth 56.0 WAR, or 7.0 WAR per season. That is a Hall of Fame-level, Koufaxian peak. It just isn’t a traditional one.
(Ferrell’s places in first two years of project: 2011 – 45th-Tie; 2010 – 86th-Tie)
Any fan of American League baseball in the late 1980s knew his favorite team would have its hands full a few times a year when future Hall-of-Famer Bret Saberhagen came through town. Saberhagen’s career took such a turn for the worse, though. Not only is he not bronzed in Cooperstown, he didn’t even crack this list either of the past two years.
In 1989, Saberhagen won his second AL Cy Young Award, leading the league in innings pitched (262 1/3), ERA (2.16), and wins (23). We would later learn that Saberhagen also led the league in WHIP (0.961) and WAR (9.2, per baseball-reference), each for the second time.
Saberhagen’s Hall case was derailed by inconsistency and injury. He pitched like an ace in ’85, ’87, and ’89, but failed to throw 200 innings in ’86 and ’90 and led the league in hits allowed in ’88.
Coming off a solid season in 1991, he signed a massive deal with the Mets (on which he’s still collecting). In New York, he made just 74 starts over the next 3 1/2 years before being traded to the Rockies in midseason 1995.
Saberhagen enjoyed a minor comeback with the Red Sox in his mid-thirties before retiring in 2001, having accumulated more career WAR (56) than Hal Newhouser, but fewer than Tommy John, and more wins (167) than Sandy Koufax, but fewer than long-time teammate Kevin Appier, whose Hall case is similar to Saberhagen’s despite a far quieter career.
(Saberhagen’s places in first two years of project: 2011 – 58th-Tie; 2010 – 86th-Tie)
The first three Bobby Bonds cards I ever owned were all in the 1976 Topps set. #380 showed him in Yankee pinstripes, looking muscular and intense with a bandaged right hand that spoke of untold hours in the batting cage; “AL All-Star Outfield,” read the star in the lower left-hand corner. #2 was a “’75 Record Breaker” card, which featured a pic from the same photo session and celebrated the fact that Bonds now had more leadoff homers (32) and more 30-30 seasons (3) to his name than anyone in MLB history. And then there was #380T, which showed him in an airbrushed California Angels cap and sported the headline “Yankees Trade Bonds To Angels”.
And that, folks, is pretty much The Bobby Bonds Story in a nutshell. Barry’s late dad had tremendous power, speed and ability, yet — after playing his first seven seasons in San Francisco — seemed condemned to wander the baseball map like Kwai Chang Caine in Kung Fu. From 1975 through 1981, Bonds played for seven different teams, never quite living up to the “next Willie Mays” tag that had been hung on him. Injuries were a problem, alcoholism more so, and his career was all but over by the time he turned 34. Still, a man with 332 homers, 461 stolen bases, five 30-30 seasons (a record he now shares with his son), three Gold Gloves, and a .353 career OBP despite striking out essentially once every four at-bats deserves better than to be remembered as a mere underachiever. For much of his career, Bobby Bonds was a badass — and as Master Po might have said, better to be a flawed badass than to never be a badass at all.
(Bonds’ places in first two years of project: 2011 – 22nd-Tie; 2010 – 54th-Tie)
41-Tie. Gil Hodges, 59 votes (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 31 yes, 27 no, 1 N/A), written by Andrew Martin of The Baseball Historian:
Making a top-50 case for Gil Hodges is a lot easier than some. Not only was he an excellent player, he was also a World Series winning manager.
The right-handed hitting Hodges is an all-time great based on his bat alone. In an 18-year career, spent mostly with the Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers, the first baseman hit .273 with 370 home runs and 1,274 RBI. He was also an eight-time All-Star, three-time Gold Glove winner and ranks 72nd all-time in home runs, 170th in extra base hits and 119th in RBI. The Dodgers failed to finish first or second only three times during his 14 years as a regular.
Hodges’s career managerial losing record (660-753) must be split into two eras. He spent five seasons helming the Washington Senators in the second division. However, he brought magic to the hapless New York Mets. Still in their first decade of existence, they were a laughing stock and had never won more than 66 games in a season. Hodges had three winning seasons in the four he spent in Flushing, including leading the iconic 1969 World Series winning Amazin’ Mets.
Few figures in baseball history can match the record of excellence and success of Gil Hodges.
(Hodges’ places in first two years of project: 2011 – 25th; 2010 – 24th)
43. Reggie Smith, 58 votes (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 26 yes, 31 no, 1 N/A), written by Dalton Mack of High Heat Stats:
Taken by author’s father
To borrow a page out of the Four Tops’ book and duly make an awful pun, Reggie Smith simply was “Standing in the Shadows of Glove” for the entirety of his career—overshadowed by Carl Yastrzemski during his time in Boston (rightfully so) and Steve Garvey in Los Angeles (less rightfully so.)
Never once did Smith have a full season with an OPS+ under 100; in fact, aside from his rookie year, it never dipped below 116. While never recording any truly eye-popping seasons, he managed to post nine seasons with 4 or more WAR and retired from Major League Baseball (he would go on to play in Japan) with a final season OPS+ of 134 for San Francisco, barely below his career average.
Splitting his time between center and right field, Smith was arguably one of the top-ten fielders at his position between 1965 and 1985, and compares favorably in overall value to many HOF outfielders, from Tommy McCarthy to Dave Winfield. To me, he’s slightly above a borderline case— maybe undeserving of a vote on a stacked ballot like this year’s, but far more worthy than the 0.7 percent he received in 1988.
(Smith’s places in first two years of project: 2011 – 43rd-Tie; 2010 – 54th-Tie)
44. Dave Stieb, 57 votes (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 20 yes, 35 no, 2 N/A), written by Sean Lahman:
Dave Stieb wasn’t perfect, but he came close. In 1989, he came within one out of a perfect game against the Yankees. He took no-hitters into the ninth inning in back-to-back starts in 1988, and he finally got his no-hitter against the Indians in 1990.
No-hitters aren’t enough to punch your ticket to the Hall of Fame, but these games give a glimpse at how dominating a pitcher Stieb was at his peak. He was a seven time all-star, starting for the American League in back to back games in 1983 and 1984.
Stieb got just a smattering of HOF votes in his only year on the ballot, but you have to think he’d have enjoyed much stronger support if he had reached the big leagues two decades later. Stieb didn’t fare well in the traditional statistics like wins and strikeouts which were considered important at the time. Toiling for an expansion team in the baseball wilderness of Canada didn’t help his feats get the appropriate exposure, either
Looking back now, the sabermetric stats help provide some context for his dominance. His WAR7 – his annual Wins Above Replacement score for his best seven seasons – is 42.7, well ahead of contemporaries like Nolan Ryan (41.0), Jack Morris (30.8), or Dwight Gooden (37.2).
Stieb led the American League in WAR for pitchers for three consecutive seasons, from 1982 to 1984, and finished second in 1981 and 1985.
He’s often compared to his contemporary Jack Morris, a perennial HOF candidate who was the only pitcher who compiled more wins than Stieb during the 1980s. But Stieb’s career WAR is much better, 53.5 versus 39.3, illustrating how much the case for Morris relies on traditional statistics, longevity, and the differences between playing for a playoff contender rather than an expansion team.
(Stieb’s places in first two years of project: 2011 – 73rd; 2010 – 65th-Tie)
45. Willie Randolph, 57 votes (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 29 yes, 25 no, 3 N/A), written by Mike Gianella of Roto Think Tank:
Ask a baseball fan about second basemen that should perhaps be in the Hall of Fame and Bobby Grich and Lou Whitaker are immediately mentioned. One name that doesn’t get bandied about quite so much is Willie Randolph’s…although maybe it should.
The greatest argument against Randolph’s enshrinement is his lack of home run power. His 54 home runs would rank him one hundred and twenty-first among the 148 current hitter inductees, with only four of those inductees playing most of their careers in the Post World War II era.
But Randolph’s game didn’t revolve around power. His speed, defense and on-base skills are what made him great. Randolph’s steady play around the keystone, base stealing abilities, and his ability to work the count and take a walk made him into one of the best second basemen of his time and one of the top 15-20 second basemen of all time.
Randolph might very well fall on the “wrong” side of the HOF bubble. But as with his contemporaries Grich and Whitaker, it is a shame that Randolph was one and done on the ballot. Whether he is a Hall of Famer or not, Randolph’s case is most definitely underappreciated.
(Randolph’s places in first two years of project: 2011 – 52nd-Tie; 2010 – 65th-Tie)
46. Thurman Munson, 55 votes (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 26 yes, 27 no, 2 N/A), written by Peter Nash of Hauls of Shame:
When I was reading Dan Epstein’s 2012 book, Big Hair and Plastic Grass I knew there would have to be some reference made to Yankee catcher Thurman Munson’s personal grooming preferences and sure enough Epstein noted that the Yankee captain “who seemed to sport a perpetual three-day scruff as prickly as his personality” grew a full beard in 1977 much to the chagrin of owner George Steinbrenner. Munson was a hard-nosed and mustached throwback that reminded me of the ancient Buck Ewing’s and King Kelly’s of the game and how could George have been upset with a guy who as a catcher was never (ever) on the disabled list. In a brief career cut short at the age of 32 by the tragic airplane crash that found him burned to death in the cockpit of his own plane, Munson’s name is often bandied about as a possible Hall of Fame candidate with a past precedent set by the enshrinement of another tragic figure, Cleveland pitcher Addie Joss whose career fell short of the Hall’s ten year career requirement. In 1977 the HOF Board of Directors bent the rules and passed a special resolution to pave Joss’ way to immortality in the plaque gallery.
Joss pitched only nine years and compiled a record of 160-97 with an ERA of 1.89, pitching two no hitters and a perfect game before his life was taken by a bout with meningitis in 1911. Comparably, Munson’s career lasted eleven years with only nine full seasons and had his last one cut short after playing 97 games in 1979. In his prime, Munson led the woeful Yankees back to prominence with an AL Pennant in 1976 and two World Championships in 1977 and 1978. His lifetime BA was .292 with 1,558 hits and along with HOFers Carlton Fisk and Johnny Bench was undoubtedly considered one of the top catchers in the game. As Graham noted in 2010, Munson “made seven All Star appearances in the decade along with winning three Gold Gloves and the 1976 American League Most Valuable Player award.” Not too shabby.
Still, Munson falls way short of the dominance of fellow catcher Roy Campanella, whose career was also cut short, and his showing in the BBWAA voting was less than stellar after he first appeared on the ballot in 1981. Munson’s only shot for the Hall with the Veteran’s Committee is no doubt an uphill battle with many standing in line in front of him including fellow catcher Gil Hodges who received more votes than him back in 1981. Munson still has his devoted supporters, though, and a website devoted to his enshrinement.
(Munson’s places in first two years of project: 2011 – 37th-Tie; 2010 – 47th)
47-Tie. Rick Reuschel, 52 votes (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 28 yes, 23 no, 1 N/A), written by Cyril Morong of Cybermetrics:
Rick Reuschel may never have seemed like a Hall of Famer, but he excelled at the two things a pitcher directly controls the most: HRs allowed and strikeout-to-walk ratio. He was also a work horse, being one of only 83 pitchers to reach 3000 IP from 1920-2011 (3,548 IP).
Among that group, he was 16th in preventing HRs relative to the league average, giving up about 27% fewer HRs than the norm, pitching mainly in Wrigley Field! Wrigley was a great HR park during his Cub years, allowing 42% more HRs than average.
He is also 34th in strikeout-to-walk ratio relative to the league average, being 31% better than the norm.
He ranks ahead of the following Hall of Famers in both stats:
Burleigh Grimes
Jesse Haines
Waite Hoyt
Catfish Hunter
Ted Lyons
Phil Niekro
Jim Palmer
Warren Spahn
Early Wynn
Some of them pitched more innings. Palmer for example, had 3,948. But Palmer was only 33rd in HRs prevented, being 14% better than average. In strikeout-to-walk ratio he was 63rd, being 9% better than average. Palmer got in on the 1st ballot with 92.6% of the vote. So Reuschel’s candidacy must be taken seriously.
(Reuschel’s places in first two years of project: 2011 – 52nd-Tie; 2010 – 103rd-Tie)
47-Tie. Jimmy Wynn, 52 votes (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 24 yes, 27 no, 1 N/A), written by David Pinto of Baseball Musings:
Jimmy Wynn played at the wrong time in the wrong stadium. Wynn posted a high OBP and a high isolated power for his career, but his batting average came in low in an era when most commentators saw that as a very important statistic. Wynn played for Houston, spending many years in the Astrodome, which reduced his power. A look at his splits shows him hitting 137 home runs in his home parks, 154 away. If you look at Wynn’s road stats during his 12 years as an everyday player, he compares favorably with Billy Williams, a Hall of Fame outfielder who played in a much better hitter’s park.
My favorite Wynn stat comes from his defense. While he was only about average defensively, the Toy Cannon could throw. In just 290 games in leftfield, Wynn collected 34 assists. As a matter of comparison, Alex Gordon leads ML leftfielders with 37 assists in 308 games over the last two seasons. All in all, Wynn threw out 139 runners from the outfield. Wynn’s powerful bat and arm helped make him one of the most underrated players of all time.
(Wynn’s places in first two years of project: 2011 – 37th-Tie; 2010 – 44th-Tie)
49-Tie. Albert Belle, 51 votes (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 16 yes, 33 no, 2 N/A), written by Ashley Varela of West Coast Fangirl:
In 1995, on the eve of Game Three of the World Series, Albert Belle’s episodic rage surfaced in the Indians’ dugout. Spewing profanities, he drove media members from the benches, redirecting his attacks to NBC’s Hannah Storm while she braved the outburst.
In 1995, Albert Belle became the only player in MLB history to reach 50 home runs and 50 doubles in a single season. He led the league with 121 runs, 126 RBI, and a .690 SLG, missing the MVP nod by a single vote and, perhaps, a temper tantrum or two.
Over 12 seasons, Albert averaged 143+ hits, 30+ home runs, and 100+ RBI per season. He posted an OPS+ over 100 each year, topping out at 194 in 1994. His defensive value was a liability, reaching a high of -0.6 dWAR in 1995 and tanking at -2.3 in ’99. A bout of degenerative arthritis forced Belle into an early retirement with career totals of .295/.369/.564, a .933 OPS, and 36.9 bWAR.
Sports Illustrated’s Michael Bamberger once described Belle this way: “He wants to be measured solely by his baseball accomplishments.” Although he has since been knocked out of Hall of Fame contention, it’s a mantra voters would do well to remember.
(Belle’s places in first two years of project: 2011 – 31st; 2010 – 31st-Tie)
49-Tie. Dave Parker, 51 votes (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 20 yes, 30 no, 1 N/A), written by Tara Franey of Aerys Sports:
Dave Parker’s career is really best told through briefer moments. His career batting and WAR numbers are great, but borderline. Bring it down to the season level, and you get an MVP award, two batting titles, three gold gloves, three silver sluggers, and seven all-star appearances. Come down a level further and you have a treasure trove of some of the era’s more memorable moments. Remember that time he broke his face and wore that crazy black and yellow goalie mask? Remember that throw home in the 1979 All-Star game? Remember that time he literally hit the cover off of the dang ball? …Remember the cocaine?
But in between those times – both after his heyday in Pittsburgh, and after his resurgence in Cincinnati – there were some rough periods for Parker, and it’s hard to say whether some combination of his career numbers and awards, and the other stuff: like his great moments, style of play, or loud personality, should merit inclusion into the hall. He never got strong support from the voters before dropping off the ballot last year, but he seems like a guy who could have better luck with the Veterans Committee.
(Parker’s places in first two years of project: 2011 – 36th; 2010 – 28th-Tie)
New to the Top 50 this year: Craig Biggio, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Kenny Lofton, Jack Morris (in Top 50 in 2010), Mike Piazza, Willie Randolph, Rick Reuschel, Bret Saberhagen, Curt Schilling, Sammy Sosa, Dave Stieb.
Players who were in the Top 50 last year, but aren’t this year: Barry Larkin (Finished 2nd, now in HOF); Ron Santo (Tied for 6th, now in HOF); Harold Baines (45th-Tie); Bob Caruthers (45th-Tie); Dave Concepcion (45th-Tie); Steve Garvey (41st-Tie); Ron Guidry (41st-Tie); Orel Hershiser (41st-Tie); Roger Maris (45th-Tie); John Olerud (45th-Tie); Tony Oliva (30th); Bernie Williams (37th-Tie);
Players who were in the Top 50 in 2010, but haven’t been in since: Bert Blyleven (Finished 1st, now in HOF); Roberto Alomar (Tied for 2nd, now in HOF); Dan Quisenberry (38th-Tie); Buck O’Neil (44th-Tie); Bill Freehan (48th.)
Beyond the Top 50
30-50 votes: Harold Baines 39 (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 8Y, 31N), Sal Bando 43 (DHB: 18Y, 23N, 2NA), Buddy Bell 48 (DHB: 21Y, 26N, 1NA), Jose Canseco 31 (DHB: 3Y, 28N), Bob Caruthers 38 (DHB: 26Y, 10N, 2NA), Eddie Cicotte 44 (DHB: 16Y, 27N, 1NA), Dave Concepcion 35 (DHB: 13Y, 21N, 1NA), Bill Freehan 32 (DHB: 16Y, 16N), Steve Garvey 46 (DHB: 21Y, 25N), Jack Glasscock 34 (DHB: 22Y, 11N, 1NA), Dwight Gooden 31 (DHB: 8Y, 23N), Ron Guidry 46 (DHB: 15Y, 31N), Orel Hershiser 44 (DHB: 14Y, 30N), Sherry Magee 49 (DHB: 30Y, 18N, 1NA), Roger Maris 33 (DHB: 11Y, 21N, 1NA), Tony Mullane 34 (DHB: 23Y, 11N), Buck O’Neil 35 (DHB: 31Y, 3N, 1NA), Sadaharu Oh* 30 (DHB: 25Y, 4N, 1NA), John Olerud 36 (DHB: 9Y, 27N), Tony Oliva 50 (DHB: 25Y, 24N, 1NA), Billy Pierce 34 (DHB: 24Y, 9N, 1NA), Vada Pinson 36 (DHB: 13Y, 23N), Lee Smith 49 (DHB: 30Y, 19N), Bernie Williams 43 (DHB: 11Y, 31N, 1NA)
20-29 votes: Kevin Appier 26 (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 7Y, 18N, 1NA), Vida Blue 26 (DHB: 10Y, 16N), Pete Browning 21 (DHB: 15Y, 5N, 1NA), Joe Carter 28 (DHB: 11Y, 17N), Norm Cash 25 (DHB: 5Y, 20N), Cesar Cedeno 28 (DHB: 5Y, 23N), Willie Davis 21 (DHB: 6Y, 15N), Dom DiMaggio 22 (DHB: 8Y, 12N, 2NA), Curt Flood 29 (DHB: 19Y, 10N), Stan Hack 26 (DHB: 16Y, 10N), Indian Bob Johnson 24 (DHB: 11Y, 13N), Mickey Lolich 29 (DHB: 8Y, 20N, 1NA), Fred Lynn 27 (DHB: 6Y, 20N, 1NA), Lefty O’Doul 23 (DHB: 12Y, 9N, 2NA), Al Oliver 23 (DHB: 13Y, 8N, 2NA), Dan Quisenberry 27 (DHB: 14Y, 13N), Urban Shocker 24 (DHB: 11Y, 12N, 1NA), Rusty Staub 24 (DHB: 9Y, 15N), Darryl Strawberry 21 (DHB: 2Y, 19N), Deacon White 27 (DHB: 24Y, 3N), Maury Wills 22 (DHB: 10Y, 11N, 1NA), Smoky Joe Wood 23 (DHB: 6Y, 16N, 1NA)
10-19 votes: Sandy Alomar 10 (DHB: 2Y, 8N), Ross Barnes 12 (DHB: 11Y, 1N), Don Baylor 12 (DHB: 3Y, 9N), Charlie Bennett 12 (DHB: 9Y, 2N, 1NA), Tommy Bond 16 (DHB: 11Y, 5N), Bob Boone 10 (DHB: 2Y, 7N, 1NA), Bill Buckner 17 (DHB: 3Y, 14N), Charlie Buffinton 11 (DHB: 9Y, 2N), Ellis Burks 10 (DHB: 0Y, 10N), Ron Cey 15 (DHB: 1Y, 13N, 1NA), Jack Clark 18 (DHB: 2Y, 16N), Rocky Colavito 12 (DHB: 5Y, 7N), Vince Coleman 10 (DHB: 2Y, 8N), Gavy Cravath 13 (DHB: 7Y, 6N), Eric Davis 16 (DHB: 0Y, 16N), Chuck Finley 12 (DHB: 3Y, 9N), George Foster 13 (DHB: 4Y, 9N), John Franco 17 (DHB: 8Y, 9N), Julio Franco 16 (DHB: 4Y, 12N), Andres Galarraga 19 (DHB: 5Y, 14N), Kirk Gibson 17 (DHB: 3Y, 14N), Juan Gonzalez 16 (DHB: 4Y, 12N), Mark Grace 13 (DHB: 1Y, 12N), Paul Hines 12 (DHB: 11Y, 1N), Elston Howard 14 (DHB: 3Y, 10N, 1NA), Frank Howard 14 (DHB: 5Y, 7N, 2NA), Bo Jackson 10 (DHB: 3Y, 7N), David Justice 11 (DHB: 1Y, 10N), Charlie Keller 11 (DHB: 6Y, 5N), Dave Kingman 10 (DHB: 1Y, 9N), Ted Kluszewski 10 (DHB: 3Y, 7N), Bill Madlock 15 (DHB: 8Y, 7N), Marty Marion 10 (DHB: 3Y, 7N), Dennis Martinez 14 (DHB: 6Y, 8N), Bobby Mathews 17 (DHB: 13Y, 4N), Carl Mays 11 (DHB: 7Y, 4N), Jim McCormick 19 (DHB: 15Y, 4N), Don Newcombe 16 (DHB: 7Y, 8N, 1NA), Lance Parrish 11 (DHB: 3Y, 7N, 1NA), Allie Reynolds 16 (DHB: 10Y, 5N, 1NA), J.R. Richard 11 (DHB: 3Y, 8N), Al Rosen 11 (DHB: 5Y, 5N, 1NA), Jimmy Ryan 13 (DHB: 11Y, 2N), Vern Stephens 16 (DHB: 6Y, 10N), Harry Stovey 15 (DHB: 13Y, 2N), Frank Tanana 13 (DHB: 4Y, 9N), Gene Tenace 17 (DHB: 5Y, 11N, 1NA), Fernando Valenzuela 16 (DHB: 3Y, 13N), George Van Haltren 14 (DHB: 11Y, 3N), Robin Ventura 19 (DHB: 5Y, 14N), Bucky Walters 11 (DHB: 6Y, 5N), David Wells 14 (DHB: 4Y, 10N), Wilbur Wood 15 (DHB: 5Y, 9N, 1NA)
5-9 votes: Babe Adams 6 (DHB: 3Y, 2N, 1NA), Matty Alou 6 (DHB: 0Y, 6N), Dusty Baker 9 (DHB: 3Y, 6N), John Beckwith 7 (DHB: 6Y, 1N), Mark Belanger 8 (DHB: 1Y, 7N), Bret Boone 5 (DHB: 1Y, 4N), Larry Bowa 9 (DHB: 4Y, 5N), Tommy Bridges 8 (DHB: 6Y, 2N), Lew Burdette 6 (DHB: 3Y, 3N), Jeff Burroughs 5 (DHB: 1Y, 4N), Brett Butler 9 (DHB: 0Y, 9N), Hal Chase 5 (DHB: 2Y, 3N), Cupid Childs 6 (DHB: 5Y, 1N), Jeff Cirillo 5 (DHB: 0Y, 5N), Royce Clayton 5 (DHB: 0Y, 5N), Cecil Cooper 5 (DHB: 2Y, 3N), Jeff Conine 5 (DHB: 0Y, 5N), Wilbur Cooper 7 (DHB: 4Y, 3N), Lave Cross 6 (DHB: 4Y, 2N), Mike Cuellar 9 (DHB: 3Y, 6N), Bob Elliott 5 (DHB: 3Y, 1N, 1NA), Steve Finley 6 (DHB: 0Y, 6N), Carl Furillo 5 (DHB: 2Y, 3N), George Gore 9 (DHB: 4Y, 5N), Shawn Green 6 (DHB: 0Y, 6N), Ken Griffey Sr. 5 (DHB: 1Y, 3N, 1NA), Heinie Groh 5 (DHB: 5Y, 0N). Mel Harder 6 (DHB: 3Y, 2N, 1NA), Tommy Henrich 7 (DHB: 1Y, 5N, 1NA), Babe Herman 9 (DHB: 4Y, 5N), Roberto Hernandez 5 (DHB: 1Y, 4N), Dummy Hoy 5 (DHB: 3Y, 2N), Home Run Johnson 8 (DHB: 7Y, 1N), Jerry Koosman 9 (DHB: 5Y, 4N), Harvey Kuenn 6 (DHB: 2Y, 4N), Chet Lemon *Write-In* 5 (DHB: 2Y, 3N), Dick Lundy 6 (DHB: 6Y, 0N), Sparky Lyle 8 (DHB: 3Y, 5N), Greg Maddux *Write-in, not yet eligible* 5 (DHB: 5Y, 0N), Pepper Martin 5 (DHB: 3Y, 1N, 1NA), Tino Martinez 5 (DHB: 1Y, 4N), Tug McGraw 8 (DHB: 5Y, 3N), Denny McLain 7 (DHB: 1Y, 6N), Cal McVey 7 (DHB: 4Y, 3N), Bobby Murcer 7 (DHB: 2Y, 5N), Paul O’Neill 7 (DHB: 0Y, 7N), Alejandro Oms 5 (DHB: 5Y, 0N), Dickey Pearce 6 (DHB: 6Y, 0N), Deacon Phillippe 6 (DHB: 2Y, 4N), Lip Pike 5 (DHB: 5Y, 0N), Spottswood Poles 6 (DHB: 5Y, 1N), Boog Powell 7 (DHB: 2Y, 5N), Jack Quinn 5 (DHB: 4Y, 1N), Johnny Sain 7 (DHB: 3Y, 4N), Wally Schang 9 (DHB: 7Y, 2N), Mike Scott 5 (DHB: 0Y, 5N), Ken Singleton 5 (DHB: 1Y, 3N, 1NA), Joe Start 5 (DHB: 4Y, 0N, 1NA), Riggs Stephenson 5 (DHB: 1Y, 4N), Cecil Travis 8 (DHB: 5Y, 2N, 1NA), Bobby Veach 5 (DHB: 4Y, 1N), Mickey Vernon 5 (DHB: 1Y, 4N), Frank White 6 (DHB: 1Y, 5N), Cy Williams 7 (DHB: 4Y, 3N), Ken Williams 6 (DHB: 3Y, 3N), Matt Williams 9 (DHB: 0Y, 8N, 1NA), Eddie Yost 6 (DHB: 1Y, 5N)
3-4 votes: Joe Adcock 3 (DHB: 0Y, 3N), Edgardo Alfonzo 4 (DHB: 0Y, 4N), Wally Berger 3 (DHB: 0Y, 3N), Lyman Bostock 4 (DHB: 2Y, 2N), Jeromy Burnitz 4 (DHB: 0Y, 4N), Dolph Camilli 3 (DHB: 1Y, 2N), Bert Campaneris *Write-In* 4 (DHB: 1Y, 3N), Vinny Castilla 3 (DHB: 0Y, 3N), Phil Cavarretta 3 (DHB: 3Y, 0N), Jack Coombs 3 (DHB: 1Y, 2N), Jose Cruz Sr. 4 (DHB: 0Y, 3N, 1NA), Al Dark 3 (DHB: 3Y, 0N), Jake Daubert 3 (DHB: 2Y, 1N), Paul Derringer 3 (DHB: 1Y, 2N), Brian Downing 4 (DHB: 0Y, 4N), Luke Easter 4 (DHB: 2Y, 2N), Jim Edmonds *Write-in, not yet eligible* 4 (DHB: 3Y, 1N), Del Ennis 4 (DHB: 1Y, 3N), Cecil Fielder 3 (DHB: 0Y, 3N), Dave Foutz 3 (DHB: 1Y, 2N), Jim Fregosi *Write-In* 3 (DHB: 1Y, 2N), Tom Glavine *Write-in, not yet eligible* 3 (DHB: 3Y, 0N), Hank Gowdy 3 (DHB: 2Y, 1N), Dick Groat 4 (DHB: 1Y, 2N, 1NA), Ozzie Guillen 4 (DHB: 1Y, 3N), Guy Hecker 3 (DHB: 1Y, 2N), Tom Henke 3 (DHB: 1Y, 2N), Jeff Kent *Write-in, not yet eligible* 3 (DHB: 3Y, 0N), Ryan Klesko 3 (DHB: 0Y, 3N), Johnny Kling 3 (DHB: 2Y, 1N), Mark Langston 3 (DHB: 1Y, 2N), Don Larsen 3 (DHB: 1Y, 2N), Tommy Leach 3 (DHB: 3Y, 0N), Sam Leever 4 (DHB: 2Y, 1N, 1N), Davey Lopes 4 (DHB: 0Y, 4N), Greg Luzinski 3 (DHB: 2Y, 1N), Sal Maglie 4 (DHB: 1Y, 3N), Firpo Marberry 4 (DHB: 4Y, 0N), Oliver Marcelle 3 (DHB: 2Y, 1N), Pedro Martinez *Write-in, not yet eligible* 3 (DHB: 3Y, 0N), Gil McDougald 3 (DHB: 1Y, 2N), Sam McDowell 3 (DHB: 1Y, 2N), Stuffy McInnis 3 (DHB: 1Y, 2N), Dave McNally 4 (DHB: 1Y, 2N, 1NA), Hal McRae 3 (DHB: 2Y, 1N), Jose Mesa 4 (DHB: 0Y, 4N), Dobie Moore 3 (DHB: 3Y, 0N), Mike Mussina *Write-in, not yet eligible* 3 (DHB: 2Y, 1N), Buddy Myer 3 (DHB: 1Y, 2N), Tip O’Neill 4 (DHB: 2Y, 1N, 1NA), Jesse Orosco 3 (DHB: 2Y, 1N), Dave Orr 3 (DHB: 1Y, 2N), Ted Radcliffe 3 (DHB: 3Y, 0N), Jeff Reardon 4 (DHB: 2Y, 2N), Dick Redding 3 (DHB: 3Y, 0N), Ed Reulbach *Write-In* 3 (DHB: 1Y, 2N), Hardy Richardson 3 (DHB: 2Y, 1N), Dave Righetti 4 (DHB: 2Y, 2N), Schoolboy Rowe 4 (DHB: 1Y, 3N), Tim Salmon 3 (DHB: 0Y, 3N), Reggie Sanders 3 (DHB: 1Y, 2N), Jimmy Sheckard 4 (DHB: 1Y, 3N), Gary Sheffield *Write-in, not yet eligible* 3 (DHB: 1Y, 2N), John Smoltz *Write-in, not yet eligible* 3 (DHB: 3Y, 0N), Jack Stivetts 3 (DHB: 2Y, 1N), Ezra Sutton 4 (DHB: 3Y, 1N), Kent Tekulve 4 (DHB: 1Y, 3N), Frank Thomas *Write-in, not yet eligible* 3 (DHB: 3Y, 0N), Bobby Thomson 3 (DHB: 1Y, 2N), Hal Trosky 4 (DHB: 1Y, 3N), Quincy Trouppe 3 (DHB: 3Y, 0N), Johnny Vander Meer 3 (DHB: 0Y, 3N), Hippo Vaughn 3 (DHB: 1Y, 2N), Mo Vaughn 3 (DHB: 0Y, 3N), Fleet Walker 3 (DHB: 3Y, 0N), Roy White 4 (DHB: 0Y, 4N), Ned Williamson 3 (DHB: 2Y, 1N)
1-2 votes: Ted Abernathy *Write-in* 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Newt Allen *Write-in* 1 (DHB: 1Y, 0N), Felipe Alou *Write-in* 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Buzz Arlett 2 (DHB: 1Y, 1N), Bobby Avila 2 (DHB: 0Y, 2N), Dick Bartell 2 (DHB: 1Y, 1N), Joe Black 2 (DHB: 1Y, 1N), Ken Boswell *Write-in* 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), George H Burns 2 (DHB: 0Y, 2N), George J Burns 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Jack Chesbro *Write-in, already in HOF* 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Harlond Clift 2 (DHB: 1Y, 0N, 1NA), Tony Conigliaro *Write-in* 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Jose Cruz *Write-in* 2 (DHB: 0Y, 2N), Roy Cullenbine 2 (DHB: 1Y, 1N), Chili Davis *Write-in* 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Tommy Davis *Write-in* 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Bingo DeMoss 2 (DHB: 1Y, 1N), Rob Dibble *Write-in* 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), John Donaldson 2 (DHB: 2Y, 0N), Mike Donlin 2 (DHB: 0Y, 2N), Patsy Donovan 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Fred Dunlap *Write-in* 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Mark Eichhorn 2 (DHB: 1Y, 1N), Scott Erickson 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Carl Erskine 2 (DHB: 2Y, 0N), Carl Everett 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Roy Face *Write-in* 2 (DHB: 1Y, 1N), Ferris Fain 2 (DHB: 0Y, 2N), Jeff Fassero 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Tony Fernandez *Write-in* 2 (DHB: 0Y, 2N), Charlie Finley *Write-in* 1 (DHB: 1Y, 0N), Freddie Fitzsimmons 2 (DHB: 0Y, 2N), Art Fletcher *Write-in* 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Jack Fournier 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Chuck Foster *Write-in* 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Bud Fowler 2 (DHB: 1Y, 1N), Bob Friend 1 (DHB: 1Y, 0N), Ned Garver 2 (DHB: 1Y, 1N), Jim Gentile 1 (DHB: 1Y, 0N), Brian Giles *Write-in, not yet eligible* 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Kid Gleason *Write-in* 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Luis Gonzalez *Write-in, not yet eligible* 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Mike Greenwell *Write-in* 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Ken Griffey *Write-in, uncertain if Sr or Jr* 2 (DHB: 2Y, 0N), Ken Griffey Jr *Write-in, not yet eligible* 1 (DHB: 1Y, 0N), Charlie Grimm 2 (DHB: 2Y, 0N), Marquis Grissom 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Jerry Grote *Write-in* 1 (DHB: 0Y, 0N, 1NA), Pedro Guerrero 2 (DHB: 0Y, 2N), Vladimir Guerrero *Write-in, not yet eligible* 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Don Gullett *Write-in* 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Isao Harimoto *Write-in* 1 (DHB: 1Y, 0N), Toby Harrah *Write-in* 2 (DHB: 1Y, 1N), John Hiller 1 (DHB: 1Y, 0N), Larry Hisle *Write-in* 1 (DHB: 1Y, 0N), Trevor Hoffman *Write-in, not yet eligible* 1 (DHB: 1Y, 0N), Bob Horner *Write-in* 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Willie Horton 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Randy Johnson *Write-in, not yet eligible* 2 (DHB: 2Y, 0N), Smead Jolley 2 (DHB: 0Y, 1N, 1NA), Chipper Jones *Write-in, not yet eligible* 1 (DHB: 1Y, 0N), Doug Jones 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Fielder Jones *Write-in* 1 (DHB: 1Y, 0N), Sad Sam Jones 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Eddie Joost *Write-in* 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Brian Jordan 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Bill Joyce 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Wally Joyner 2 (DHB: 0Y, 2N), Masaichi Kaneda *Write-in* 1 (DHB: 1Y, 0N), Jimmy Key 2 (DHB: 1Y, 1N), Darryl Kile 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Ellis Kinder *Write-in* 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Silver King 2 (DHB: 2Y, 0N), Ray Knight *Write-in* 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Chuck Knoblauch *Write-in* 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Ed Konetchy *Write-in* 1 (DHB: 1Y, 0N), Arlie Latham *Write-in* 1 (DHB: 1Y, 0N), Matt Lawton 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Bill Lee 2 (DHB: 1Y, 1N), Al Leiter 1 (DHB: 1Y, 0N), Jose Lima 2 (DHB: 0Y, 2N), Bob Locker 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Herman Long 2 (DHB: 2Y, 0N), Javy Lopez 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Dolf Luque 2 (DHB: 1Y, 1N), Garry Maddox *Write-in* 1 (DHB: 1Y, 0N), Mike G. Marshall *Write-in* 1 (DHB: 1Y, 0N), Dick McBride 2 (DHB: 2Y, 0N), Frank McCormick 2 (DHB: 0Y, 2N), Lindy McDaniel *Write-in* 1 (DHB: 1Y, 0N), McDowell *Write-in, not sure if Sam, Jack, Roger or Oddibe* 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Willie McGee 2 (DHB: 1Y, 1N), Ed McKean 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Bob Meusel 2 (DHB: 2Y, 0N), Levi Meyerle *Write-in* 1 (DHB: 1Y, 0N), Clyde Milan 1 (DHB: 1Y, 0N), Kevin Mitchell 1 (DHB: 1Y, 0N), Bill Monroe 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Jeff Montgomery *Write-in* 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Wally Moon 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Manny Mota *Write-in* 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Terry Mulholland 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), George Mullin *Write-in* 2 (DHB: 1Y, 1N), Jim Mutrie *Write-in* 1 (DHB: 1Y, 0N), Randy Myers *Write-in* 1 (DHB: 1Y, 0N), Robb Nen 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Phil Nevin 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Joe Niekro 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Amos Otis 2 (DHB: 0Y, 1N, 1NA), Milt Pappas *Write-in* 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Camilo Pascual 2 (DHB: 0Y, 2N), Roger Peckinpaugh *Write-in* 1 (DHB: 1Y, 0N), William Perry *Write-in* 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Rico Petrocelli *Write-in* 1 (DHB: 1Y, 0N), Bruce Petway 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Tony Phillips *Write-in* 1 (DHB: 1Y, 0N), Darrell Porter *Write-in* 1 (DHB: 1Y, 0N), Brad Radke 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Manny Ramirez *Write-in, not yet eligible* 1 (DHB: 1Y, 0N), Ivan Rodriguez *Write-in, not yet eligible* 2 (DHB: 2Y, 0N), Red Rolfe 1 (DHB: 0Y, 0N, 1NA), Charlie Root *Write-in* 1 (DHB: 1Y, 0N), Nap Rucker *Write-in* 1 (DHB: 1Y, 0N), Joe Rudi 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Red Ruffing *Write-in, already in HOF* 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), George Scales *Write-in* 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Herb Score 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), George Scott *Write-in* 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Aaron Sele 2 (DHB: 0Y, 2N), Richie Sexson *Write-in, not yet eligible* 1 (DHB: 1Y, 0N), Bob Shawkey *Write-in* 2 (DHB: 1Y, 1N), Ruben Sierra 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Roy Sievers 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Chino Smith 1 (DHB: 1Y, 0N), Smith *Write-in, not sure if Lee or Reggie* N 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Elmer E. Smith *Write-in* 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Germany Smith 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Al Spalding *Write-in, already in HOF* 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Mike Stanton 2 (DHB: 0Y, 2N), Victor Starffin *Write-in* 1 (DHB: 1Y, 0N), Steve Stone *Write-in* 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Jesse Tannehill 2 (DHB: 1Y, 1N), Frank Thomas (62 Mets) 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Roy Thomas 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Robby Thompson 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Andre Thornton *Write-in* 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Luis Tiant Sr. 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Dizzy Trout 2 (DHB: 2Y, 0N), George Uhle *Write-in* 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Frank Viola *Write-in* 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Dixie Walker 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Todd Walker 2 (DHB: 0Y, 2N), Lon Warneke 2 (DHB: 1Y, 1N), Buck Weaver *Write-in* 2 (DHB: 2Y, 0N), John Wetteland *Write-in* 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Gus Weyhing 2 (DHB: 2Y, 0N), Bill White *Write-in* 1 (DHB: 1Y, 0N), Rondell White 2 (DHB: 0Y, 2N), Will White 1 (DHB: 1Y, 0N), Woody Williams 2 (DHB: 0Y, 2N), Vic Willis *Write-in, already in HOF* 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Willie Wilson 2 (DHB: 0Y, 1N, 1NA), Nip Winters 1 (DHB: 1Y, 0N), Tony Womack 2 (DHB: 0Y, 2N), Tim Worrell 1 (DHB: 0Y, 1N), Rudy York 2 (DHB: 0Y, 2N), Eric Young 1 (DHB: 1Y, 0N)
Appeared on the ballot, received zero votes: Dale Alexander, Hank Bauer, William Bell Sr., Ollie Carnegie, Ben Chapman, Walker Cooper, Jim Creighton, Jim Davenport, Kelly Downs, Larry Doyle, Scott Garrelts, Danny Graves, Mike Griffin, Rick Helling, Tommy Holmes, Ken Holtzman, Pete Hughes, Larry Jackson, Sam Jackson, Sam Jethroe, Charley Jones, Davy Jones, Joe Judge, Benny Kauff, Ken Keltner, Terry Kennedy, Mike LaCoss, Carney Lansford, Vern Law, Duffy Lewis, Elliot Maddox, Candy Maldonado, Mike Matheny, Sadie McMahon, Irish Meusel, Wally Moses, Bill Mueller, Jeff Nelson, Bill Nicholson, Joe Page, Mel Parnell, Larry Parrish, Jim Perry, Johnny Podres, Jack Powell, Vic Power, Joe Randa, Mike Remlinger, Ernie Riles, Don Robinson, Felix Rodriguez, Pete Runnels, Manny Sanguillen, Cy Seymour, George Stone, Jose Uribe, Vic Wertz, Todd Worrell
For the “Best of the Rest”, let’s focus on “The Next 50.” Players #51 through #100 of the voting results each received between 18 and 50 votes. The list features players supported through both a traditional lens [Lee Smith (T-51st), Tony Oliva (T-51st), Steve Garvey (55th), Harold Baines (60th)] and a sabermetric lens [Sherry Magee (53rd), Buddy Bell (54th), Sal Bando (T-59th), Bob Caruthers (61st)]. I’m going to pick a few to touch upon briefly.
Buck O’Neil led this group in Hall-worthy percentage. While only 35 voters placed him on the ballot, 91 percent believed he belongs in the Hall of Fame. I didn’t vote for Buck and I’m absolutely ashamed of that. I had my head stuck too far in the spreadsheets and didn’t think of him. I’m really not sure anyone outside of the Hall of Fame deserves induction more than Buck O’Neil.
Sadaharu Oh also received a high percentage of support, with 86% of the people who named him vouching for his Hall-worthiness. I also did not vote for Oh, but I’m not sure this was an oversight. Everyone in the Hall of Fame is enshrined for their play in the North America. Should it be opened up to players from different continents? If so, Oh and his 868 home runs, 2786 hits, 2170 RBI, 1967 runs, 2390 walks, and .301/.446/.634 slash line are a great place to start.
Deacon White did not finish in the top 50, but of the 27 who voted for him, nearly 90 percent stated that he was Hall-worthy. White, of course, was recently inducted by the Veterans Committee. His low placement on the list is probably due to the fact that he was inducted during the voting, but also a general under-appreciation for 19th century pioneers.
Jack Glasscock is the player who missed the top 50 who ranks the highest according to Hall Rating (my metric used at the Hall of Stats). Bill Dahlen received a lot of support on this list and I’m happy he did. But the only thing that really separated Dahlen from Glasscock is playing time. Dahlen had +137 WAR Batting Runs (by Baseball-Reference). Glasscock had 155. Dahlen had +139 WAR Fielding Runs. Glasscock had 149. Dahlen had a 110 OPS+. Glasscock’s was 112. I love Dahlen and think he’s exceptionally Hall-worthy. But I also think (like two thirds of the people who voted for Glassock) that Pebbly Jack is also Hall-worthy.
Switching back to modern times, Buddy Bell is the top 20th century player by Hall Rating who misses the Top 50. Bell has to be the closest player in history to Brooks Robinson. Bell was the better offensive player (though some may find that controversial). Robinson was peerless in the field, but Bell ranks second all time among third basemen (according to Total Zone). Bell won a half-dozen Gold Gloves, but was also competing with Robinson and Graig Nettles (6th all time in 3B Total Zone runs).
Voters
1. Aaron
2. Aaron Somers
3. Aaron Whitehead
4. Adam Arnold
5. Adam Darowski
6. alanm6380
7. Alfred Scott
8. alower
9. Alvy Singer
10. Andrew Lacy
11. Andrew Martin
12. Andrew Milner
13. Andrew Shauver
14. Andrew Sussman
15. Alex Putterman
16. axl666axl666
17. barbini
18. Bart Silberman
19. Bill Johnson
20. Bill Rubinstein
21. Bob Sohm
22. BobFinn
23. Brendan Bingham
24. Brendan Evans
25. Brian Metrick
26. Bryan Grosnick
27. Bryan O’Connor
28. cclittle
29. Cecilia Tan
30. Chip Buck
31. Chris Jensen
32. Chris Esser
33. Clifford Smith
34. Craig Cornell
35. Cynphin
36. Dalton Mack
37. Dan Evans
38. Dan McCloskey
38. Dan O’Connor
39. Daniel
40. Dave England
41. David Lick
42. Dean Sullivan
43. Derek
44. Dick Clark
45. Drew Barr
46. Ed White
47. Eric Cockayne
48. Eric R. Pleiss
49. Eugene Freedman
50. Gabriel Egger
51. Gabriel Schechter
52. Gary Bateman
53. Gary Gray
54. geo3993
55. George Bullock
56. Gilbert Chan
57. Greg Kyrouac
58. Gregg Weiss
59. hotcornerharbor
60. hrosen38
61. Izzy Hechkoff
62. James Decker
63. Jason Hunt
64. Jason Lukehart
65. Jeff Angus
66. Jeff Larick
67. Jeremy Rigsby
68. Jim Price
69. Joe Mello
70. Joe Serrato
71. Joe Weindel
72. Joe Williams
73. Joey Bartz
74. John Raimo
75. John Robertson
76. John Sharp
77. John Sours
78. John Tuberty
79. Jonathan Stilwell
80. Jonathan Wagner
81. Kazuto Yamazaki
82. Keith Menges
83. Ken Poulin
84. Kevin Graham
85. Kevin Johnson
86. Kevin Mattson
87. Kevin Porter
88. kingmatthew78
89. Kris Gardner
90. Larry Cookson
91. Lawrence Azrin
92. Lee Domingue
93. louis louismas_2000
94. mariners360
95. Matthew Aschaffenburg
96. Mel Patterson
97. Michael Martin
98. Michael Caragliano
99. Michael Cook
100. Michael Rapanaro
101. michaelt4252
102. migross76
103. Mike Gianella
104. Mike S.
105. Mike Walczak
106. Mike Schneider527
107. Mike Scott
108. Nate Horwitz
109. Owen
110. Owen Wilson
111. Patrick Schroeder
112. Pat Corless
113. Patrick Mackin
114. Paul
115. Paul Lanning
116. Paul McCord
117. Pete Livengood
118. Peter Nash
119. Phil Dellio
120. PJ Brown
121. Rich Lipinski
122. Robert Ewing
123. Robert McConnell
124. Robert Rittner
125. Ross Maute
126. Ross Carey
127. Ruben Lipszyc
128. Scott Jackson
129. Sean Lahman
130. Sean O’Connell
131. Steve Cushman
132. Ted Mulvey
133. Tom Thrash
134. Tim Goldschmidt
135. Todd
136. Tom Crittenden
137. Tom Thayer
138. Tom Thompson
139. Victor Dadras
140. Vinnie
141. Wayne Horiuchi
142. William Tasker
143. William McKinley
144. William Miller
145. Unknown 1
146. Unknown 2
147. Unknown 3
148. Unknown 4
