The Crawfish Boxes: All Posts by Theo GeromeAstros baseball: we've got uniforms and everything.https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/community_logos/11437/crawfishboxes-fv.gif2024-01-23T20:46:25-06:00https://www.crawfishboxes.com/authors/theo-gerome/rss2024-01-23T20:46:25-06:002024-01-23T20:46:25-06:002024 Hall of Fame Results: Beltre, Helton, and Mauer in, Wagner Just Misses, & Looking Further Ahead
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<img alt="Houston Astros v Minnesota Twins" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/XiN8CgE1KpKuDvMTxoRyPXBkW-Q=/0x0:4077x2718/1310x873/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/73080104/595458816.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>New Hall of Famer Joe Mauer chats with Jose Altuve | Photo by Brace Hemmelgarn/Minnesota Twins/Getty Images</figcaption>
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<p>Looking at the three new Hall of Famers, plus looking at what’s in store in the near future</p> <p id="pQ1iHC">As is becoming tradition, <a href="https://bbwaa.com/24-hof/">the BBWAA delivered mixed results on this year’s Hall of Fame ballot</a>. There are a lot of good things here, including three deserving new members of Cooperstown, but it’s also not hard to imagine how things could have gone even better. </p>
<p id="AenjCC">Let’s start with the three big positives from the election: specifically, the three members of the Cooperstown Class of 2024. Adrian Beltre and Joe Mauer both made it on their first ballots, while Todd Helton finally broke through on his sixth attempt. As a quick update and refresher, we had 385 ballots submitted this year, meaning that to reach the 75% needed for induction, a candidate needed to get 289. I’m clarifying that because these figures will actually be important later.</p>
<p id="yYxbak">Beltre was the no-doubter of the bunch. Early results from <a href="http://tracker.fyi/">Ryan Thibodaux’s Ballot Tracker</a> had him constantly above 99%, and while he didn’t finish quite that high, his 95.1% is still going to rank as one of the top twenty results in the Hall’s history. I was kind of shocked the former Ranger had 2 “No” votes in the early tracking, so I’m even more surprised that 17 additional voters found a way to leave off a third baseman with 5 Gold Gloves, 3166 hits, and 477 home runs. Maybe some of them were just trying to make space for other players, since he was so far over the line? Perhaps that’s giving them too much credit, though. Either way, it’s largely just an academic difference at this point; Cooperstown is Cooperstown, and first ballot is first ballot.</p>
<p id="oKuooz">The second plaque wound up going to Todd Helton, in something of a shock, with the first baseman finishing at 79.7%. The induction wasn’t the surprising part; Helton had been running comfortably above the 75% line in tracking (finishing at 82.6%), and in his fifth ballot last year, he only missed by 11 votes. And his stats pointed to his induction, with 2519 hits, 369 homers, and a .316/.414/.539 batting line (a 133 OPS+). No, the surprising part was that the longtime Rockie passed Mauer in the final results.</p>
<p id="6T11Nc">Joe Mauer spent basically the entire ballot tracking season running neck-and-neck or better with Helton, even finishing at 83.4% before the results. I had been saying <a href="http://www.hotcornerharbor.com/2024/01/first-look-2024-baseball-hall-of-fame.html">for a while</a> that I was concerned that late ballot reveals and especially private voters (i.e. ones who never share who they chose) would sink his candidacy, and while his pre-reveal margins were big enough that those concerns basically subsided, goodness did they end up making things close. The Twins backstop finished at 76.1%, clearing the bar for 75% by only 4 votes.</p>
<p id="QUr3FM">It was another deserving induction in my mind, and only the third time a catcher has made the Hall of Fame on their first ballot. His career was a little short, cut down by the usual injuries that whittle away at catchers, but was it ever a high peak: 2009 MVP, three-time batting champ (a record for the position), six-time All-Star, three-time Gold Glove, five-time Silver Slugger, and a .306/.388/.439 career batting line (124 OPS+). The fact that Mauer saw such a drop off in the results is kind of a sign of the type of squeeze that hit this year’s overly-stuffed ballot. </p>
<p id="zLj1FK">Unfortunately, that effect was out in full force on the top runner-up, Billy Wagner. In his ninth and penultimate go-around, the former Astros closer landed at 73.8%, just five votes shy of the 289 that he needed. It’s not the closest miss in the Hall’s history (Craig Biggio missing by 2 votes in 2014 springs to mind), but it’s not far off from that, and it’s still just as frustrating. Wagner will get one more shot on next year’s ballot, and he’s almost certain to get the five votes he needs, but I doubt that’s going to make it any less anxiety-inducing for Wagner himself.</p>
<p id="VDxcWh">Adding on to all of this is how much of the issue is caused by the Hall of Fame shooting itself in the foot with stubbornness. For years, they were reaching out to different parties about ways to alleviate their crowding on the ballot, and routinely ignored all of them. They even outright rejected a proposal from the BBWAA themselves to expand the ballot from ten spots to twelve several years ago. Just glancing down the Ballot Tracker again, I can see a few voters who wanted to vote for Wagner but ran out of spots (listed in Column AE). I wouldn’t be shocked if that change by itself would have gotten him over the line.</p>
<p id="D7krxQ">From there, the drama in the results drops off. Gary Sheffield placed fifth at 63.9%, quite the drop-off from his 74.2% in the pre-reveal polling. That was the second-biggest fall among players on the ballot, although it was probably to be expected; in addition to being stingier with their votes, the late and private voters are traditionally much harsher on players with ties to PEDs. Sheffield will now age off the ballot, and in his ten years, he managed to rise almost to Barry Bonds/Roger Clemens-levels of support, which is kind of a feat in and of itself. </p>
<p id="epWK5h">After that, we have Andruw Jones, who finally broke the 60% threshold in his seventh year. A 61.6% finish is only a moderate improvement over his 2023 results (58.1%), but forward progress in a ballot this crowded is still a big deal, and I have a feeling things will start to snowball from here for him.</p>
<p id="PfHDSS">Ballot sophomore Carlos Beltran posted the single largest improvement over his 2023 results, going from 45.5% to 57.1%. A 10-point leap in this environment is huge, and like Andruw, I have a feeling that his case will start to snowball next year, even if induction might take longer (more on that in a bit). </p>
<p id="2EjHO0">Continuing down the results, Alex Rodriguez (34.8%) and Manny Ramirez (32.5%) stalled out, with both candidates less than 1% lower than in 2023. Newcomer Chase Utley debuted with 28.8% of the vote, a decent number but also a little disappointing given that he was consistently tracking around 40%.</p>
<p id="vpjDP8">From there, we get to the players who were especially impacted by the ballot limits. Bobby Abreu (14.8%), Andy Pettitte (13.5%), Mark Buehrle (8.3%), Francisco Rodriguez (7.8%), and Omar Vizquel (17.7%) all lost somewhere between 0.5% and 4.0% each from 2023 (although Vizquel’s continued drop <a href="https://go.redirectingat.com?id=66960X1516590&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Ftheathletic.com%2F2254716%2F2020%2F12%2F16%2Fomar-vizquel-domestic-abuse%2F&referrer=sbnation.com&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.crawfishboxes.com%2F2024%2F1%2F23%2F24048717%2F2024-hall-of-fame-results-beltre-helton-and-mauer-in-wagner-just-misses-looking-further-ahead" rel="sponsored nofollow noopener" target="_blank">may also be attributed</a> <a href="https://nypost.com/2023/12/31/sports/omar-vizquel-speaks-out-after-autistic-batboys-sexual-harassment-claim/">to his various misconduct</a>). Shockingly, Jimmy Rollins (7.8%) and Torii Hunter (7.3%) actually rose a little, but less than 2% each. And David Wright reached 6.2%, meaning he’ll get at least one more election. Nobody else reached the 5% threshold necessary for that. </p>
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<p id="iTojwe">So, what does all of this mean going forward? As mentioned, the obvious thing is that Billy Wagner will very likely be going in next year. A five-ballot shortfall is a gimme, and on top of that, players usually see an extra bump in their tenth and final ballot. There are numerous other factors in his favor that make a 2025 call almost certain, but I feel like that’s not going to be much of a consolation for Wagner in the meantime.</p>
<p id="bG1Gp5">Things beyond that will be fairly open at the top of the 2025 ballot, thanks to our three inductions this year plus Sheffield aging off. Which is good, because next year’s class of newcomers has quite a few intriguing names. Ichiro Suzuki will be taking Beltre’s role as “obvious first-ballot choice”, and CC Sabathia will presumably be getting a lot of support as well. I think he’s a deserving selection, but Hall voters have been struggling to handle starting pitchers for years now, so I don’t know that he’ll be a first ballot choice. </p>
<p id="jDZHfA">Beyond those two big names, there will be Felix Hernandez, who will be hoping that a high peak will be enough to keep him on the ballot for a few years. I think he at least deserves a second look, but that recent Hall history with starters makes me skeptical that he’ll get it. And Russell Martin and Brian McCann will definitely generate a lot of discussion; both are lacking in traditional numbers, but their framing stats are fantastic. Will voters care enough about that to give them a second look? </p>
<p id="3ATtS4">Even with all of those names, I think 2025 on the whole is technically a less crowded year than 2024. Ichiro makes a neat replacement for Beltre as mentioned, but I don’t know that Sabathia does as well as Mauer did, nor do I think that the combination of Martin, McCann, and Hernandez’s vote totals will measure up to the absence of both Helton and Sheffield.</p>
<p id="UtSMom">And that is good news for the guys who will be coming back under Wagner. Andruw Jones and Carlos Beltran in particular are strong candidates to see a big jump next year. I don’t think either gets a big enough jump to join Ichiro and Wagner on the stage in 2025 (although I’ll reconsider that if they’re tracking super well on early ballots). But come 2026, when the biggest newcomers will be Cole Hamels* and Ryan Braun? That’s my prediction right now, at least one of them goes in, but maybe both (although that might depend on how CC Sabathia is trending at that point). </p>
<p id="aEFHFI"><em>*Like with Felix, I think that Hamels at least deserves a deeper, second look as a candidate. But I am again skeptical that the voters will give it to him. </em></p>
<p id="hN2SX5">A-Rod and Manny are probably a little too controversial to benefit from this opening, but I wouldn’t be shocked if Chase Utley takes advantage of it as well. 28.8% is not a bad debut, and we have seen recent candidates rise to election from even lower than that (Scott Rolen, Todd Helton, and soon-to-be Billy Wagner among them). </p>
<p id="GIhosX">His case is probably going to take some evangelizing from the advanced stat set, but with nine more years of ballot eligibility and a relatively light set of newcomers for the foreseeable future (2027 will only add the likely Buster Posey and the much less-likely Jon Lester), he certainly has an opening to start building momentum. And maybe people will get too sidetracked by the pitch framing debates, or maybe A-Rod/Manny discourse flares up and overwhelms all other discussion, but all of that totally crowding him out seems doubtful. I don’t know that Utley will make it in by 2027, but even if he’s only up to 50-60% by then, he’ll still have another six years to make it the rest of the way to 75%. </p>
<p id="TCQHKj">Whether any of that will translate to guys even further down the ballot, like Bobby Abreu or Mark Buehrle or Andy Pettitte, I can’t say. Their vote percentages are much worse, and they don’t quite have as long as Utley does, so I’ll say it’s unlikely. But like I said, voters are going to have more room to work with, so I also won’t call it impossible just yet. </p>
<p id="AhIYja">But in the meantime, the next big Hall of Fame moment will be the ceremony in July, when Jim Leyland will join Adrian Beltre, Todd Helton, and Joe Mauer in getting their Cooperstown plaques, and Billy Wagner and Ichiro Suzuki can start counting down until the next ballot cycle takes over.</p>
https://www.crawfishboxes.com/2024/1/23/24048717/2024-hall-of-fame-results-beltre-helton-and-mauer-in-wagner-just-misses-looking-further-aheadTheo Gerome2024-01-23T07:00:00-06:002024-01-23T07:00:00-06:002024 Hall of Fame Announcement Day Preview
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<img alt="Billy Wagner" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/ESAu2w70lNFbeKEr7uOgjSrUhww=/0x0:3060x2040/1310x873/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/73077690/324728.0.jpg" />
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<p>Which candidates should be expecting good news this evening?</p> <p id="9tuksN">After weeks of speculation and ballot reveals, this Tuesday finally marks the culmination of Hall of Fame season: at 5 PM Central Time (in a presentation broadcasted on MLB.com and the MLB Network), we will learn who will be added to the hallowed halls of Cooperstown at this summer’s induction ceremony. </p>
<p id="RXeqs7">Or, rather, who else will be added; we already know that longtime manager <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/l/leylaji99.shtml?utm_medium=linker&utm_source=www.baseball-reference.com&utm_campaign=2024-01-23_br">Jim Leyland</a> will be there, <a href="http://www.hotcornerharbor.com/2023/12/jim-leyland-hall-of-fame-2024-election.html">after he was elected by the Veterans Committee</a> back in December (not to mention broadcaster Joe Castiglione and writer Gerry Fraley, for the Ford C. Frick and BBWAA Career Excellence Awards, respectively). However, it’s looking like the BBWAA will be sending several players along as well. So, with under 24 hours to go, how are things shaping up?</p>
<p id="S7PtZD">Well, for anyone who hasn’t been keeping up with <a href="https://onedrive.live.com/view.aspx?resid=F2E5D8FC5199DFAF%2154244&authkey=!AGrU1OUsbz4WHyU">Ryan Thibodaux’s Ballot Tracker</a>: just last night, we learned of our 200th ballot, meaning we already know how likely just over half of the electorate has voted (there were <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/awards/hof_2023.shtml#all_hof_BBWAA">389 votes for the 2023 election</a>, but that total fluctuates year-to-year). Those are the numbers that I’ll be working with for this piece; however, please note depending on what time you’re reading this, these numbers may already be outdated compared to what’s in the Tracker, since so many writers wait to release their votes until the morning of. I’m largely going to be speaking about trends in the voting anyway, so it won’t matter too much for the analysis. </p>
<p id="ewDXKK">Right off the bat, there are two things about this evening’s announcement that I feel like I can say for certain. One is that multiple people will be getting the call this year, and the second is that ballot newcomer <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/b/beltrad01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&utm_source=www.baseball-reference.com&utm_campaign=2024-01-23_br">Adrian Beltre</a> will be leading the pack. The 3000-hit third baseman sits at 99% right now, well above the 75% of the vote that a player needs to hit to secure a plaque. </p>
<p id="uNyPWB">I’m really not sure how anyone could object to his case, and I suppose I could look up the two “No” votes and interrogate their reasoning, but quite frankly, I only have so many hours in a day and they won’t make all that much of a difference. <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Hall_of_Fame_Voting_Percentages">Here’s the all-time leaderboard in highest voting percentage</a> if you’d like to follow along at home; we know Beltre isn’t going to be the second unanimous choice in Hall history (after <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/r/riverma01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&utm_source=www.baseball-reference.com&utm_campaign=2024-01-23_br">Mariano Rivera</a> back in 2019), but 99% would put him at fourth-best ever, if it holds.</p>
<p id="4ZiyGK">Second place right now goes to another first-time candidate, <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/m/mauerjo01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&utm_source=www.baseball-reference.com&utm_campaign=2024-01-23_br">Joe Mauer</a>. The former MVP catcher and three-time batting champ is sitting at 83.5% right now, and I think he’s another very deserving choice. I was a little concerned that voters might hesitate on his selection; for the longest time, the only catcher to get elected on the first ballot was <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/b/benchjo01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&utm_source=www.baseball-reference.com&utm_campaign=2024-01-23_br">Johnny Bench</a> way back in 1989 (he got 96.42% of the vote), and generally, the position was just undervalued by voters.</p>
<p id="Xk7vkr">There are some signs of change, though. <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/search/search.fcgi?pid=rodriiv01,rodrig008iva&search=Ivan+Rodriguez&utm_medium=linker&utm_source=www.baseball-reference.com&utm_campaign=2024-01-23_br">Iván Rodríguez</a> finally became the second first-ballot catcher back in 2017 (albeit just barely, at 76.0% of the vote), and longtime snub <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/s/simmote01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&utm_source=www.baseball-reference.com&utm_campaign=2024-01-23_br">Ted Simmons</a> was finally inducted by the Veterans Committee back in 2020. Those, combined with Mauer’s early returns, make it look like the Minnesota hometown hero will become just the third first-ballot backstop. Technically, a very poor performance on the unrevealed ballots could do him in, but we don’t have any reason to suspect that just yet, so I’ll hold off on that hypothetical.</p>
<p id="pb16bE">Right behind Mauer is our first returning candidate, <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/h/heltoto01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&utm_source=www.baseball-reference.com&utm_campaign=2024-01-23_br">Todd Helton</a>. After finishing last year at 72.2%, just 11 votes shy of induction, Helton is currently at 82.0%. As a reference, <a href="https://twitter.com/NotMrTibbs/status/1749612513988391069">through 200 ballots last year</a>, the longtime Rockie was at 79.0%, so this is a definite step forward; if he holds on to a flat 3% increase, he’s in! But there are a couple of other encouraging signs for Helton, on top of that; he’s flipped more voters to his cause than he’s lost (a net change of +2 right now), he’s done well with new voters (13 out of 16), and <a href="https://www.hotcornerharbor.com/2023/01/2023-Hall-of-Fame-Preview-Projection-rolen-helton.html">as I found last year</a>, finishing over 60% typically inspires voters who keep their ballot private to flock to a candidate.</p>
<p id="7vE0CZ">However, I wanted to check on some other details, just to get a sense of historical precedence. Ryan Thibodaux has been tracking ballots for eleven years’ worth of elections*, and he does a pretty comprehensive job of breaking down how players did on ballots that were revealed both before and after the election. Almost every candidate drops from the final results, but the amounts they drop are not always equal. The highest a player has ever finished in a year where they fell short of induction was 76.4%, which <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/search/search.fcgi?pid=martied01,martin006edg,martin008edg&search=Edgar+Martinez&utm_medium=linker&utm_source=www.baseball-reference.com&utm_campaign=2024-01-23_br">Edgar Martínez</a> did back in 2018 (he would fall to 70.4% that year, and get inducted the following year).</p>
<p id="1LQadg"><em>*There are also a few earlier years in the tracker compiled by other users, but those were a little different and less complete, so I’m not including them for now.</em></p>
<p id="AqGjA0">Coincidentally, that ballot cycle also brings us the inverse case: inductee <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/h/hoffmtr01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&utm_source=www.baseball-reference.com&utm_campaign=2024-01-23_br">Trevor Hoffman</a> finished at 78.6% of the pre-results vote, the lowest a candidate has finished in an election where they still passed the 75% mark (in fact, Hoffman that year was one of the rare candidates who went up from there, finishing at 79.9%). That looks like a good sign for Mauer and Helton, but it also leaves us with about 2% of completely uncovered territory, from 76.4%-78.6%.</p>
<p id="JfUv4h">And wouldn’t you know it, our fourth candidate, <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/w/wagnebi02.shtml?utm_medium=linker&utm_source=www.baseball-reference.com&utm_campaign=2024-01-23_br">Billy Wagner</a>, falls smack dab in that no-man’s land; right now, the former Astros closer is polling at 78.0% of the vote. After finishing 2023 at 68.1%, Wagner’s fate will be in flux right up until the announcement. Jason Sardell, a leading forecaster in Hall of Fame polling, <a href="https://twitter.com/sarsdell/status/1749618204060610714">put him at an 18% chance of induction is his most recent results</a>, although that’s roughly where <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/r/rolensc01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&utm_source=www.baseball-reference.com&utm_campaign=2024-01-23_br">Scott Rolen</a><a href="https://twitter.com/sarsdell/status/1618018127308296192/photo/1">landed last year at this point</a> (Rolen, of course, made it in). Wagner is exactly 6% ahead of where he was <a href="https://twitter.com/NotMrTibbs/status/1749612513988391069/photo/3">last year through 200 votes</a>, but adding 6% to his last result still leaves him less than 1% short of induction. He’s at a net change of +6 in flipped voters, plus he’s gone 14-for-16 with new voters, but that still puts him shy of the 27 votes he missed by last year. </p>
<p id="qGQLlU">This will probably be the thing to watch the closest throughout the day, for anyone who needs a distraction. There were more than a dozen ballots added to the tracker over the course of the announcement day last year, so we could potentially see Wagner pick up or drop a few points along the way to 5 PM. </p>
<p id="SxAb9m">But of course, the final verdict is going to heavily rely on all of the voters who don’t reveal prior to the announcement, a group that will likely add up to over two-fifths of voters. Some will share their ballots over the rest of the week, others will never show their work, but both groups are usually stingier than the ones who reveal their ballot in the lead-up to the announcement. The more of a buffer that Wagner can get now, the better. </p>
<p id="OhqHTQ">If there are any consolations here, it’s these: Wagner also reached 60% last year, and <a href="https://www.hotcornerharbor.com/2023/01/2023-Hall-of-Fame-Preview-Projection-rolen-helton.html">like I said during the Helton section</a>, that has historically boded well for players’ chances the following year. And relievers have historically done a little better with the late and secret voters; there’s a reason that I noted that Hoffman in 2018 was one of the few cases who went up from pre-release numbers. Maybe Wagner will see less of a bump due to his lower save totals, but maybe not. If he does miss out this time, Wagner will get one more year on the BBWAA ballot before aging off, but I’m sure that <a href="https://twitter.com/BBisntBoring/status/1749411871348642169">he’d rather not have to go through yet another year of this</a>. I’m hoping he can pull it off this time around.</p>
<p id="zrc6Ke">After them, there will still be some things to keep an eye on. <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/s/sheffga01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&utm_source=www.baseball-reference.com&utm_campaign=2024-01-23_br">Gary Sheffield</a> is sitting right on the border, at 75.0%. As was noted earlier, that historically hasn’t been enough to get over the line (just since 2013, we’ve had four different players finish at 75.0% or better in the tracker but fall short in the final results), and you have to figure that a player with steroid ties isn’t going to be the one to change that. But I also never expected him to do this well in the first place, so who knows! I’m curious to see where he ultimately winds up, and if it will end up meaning anything once he starts hitting the Veterans Committee ballots. </p>
<p id="IcIOXu">There are a few other promising players who aren’t going to get in this time, but who will nonetheless be worth watching. <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/j/jonesan01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&utm_source=www.baseball-reference.com&utm_campaign=2024-01-23_br">Andruw Jones</a> is up to 70.5%, and <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/search/search.fcgi?pid=beltrca01,beltra003car&search=Carlos+Beltr%C3%A1n&utm_medium=linker&utm_source=www.baseball-reference.com&utm_campaign=2024-01-23_br">Carlos Beltrán</a> is at 66%, both of which are improvements over their 2023 results. And <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/u/utleych01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&utm_source=www.baseball-reference.com&utm_campaign=2024-01-23_br">Chase Utley</a> is tracking at 40.0% in his first election. I’ll expand more on what those numbers could mean down the line once we have the full results, but for now, you should have everything you need to know heading into the final countdown. </p>
https://www.crawfishboxes.com/2024/1/23/24047722/2024-hall-of-fame-announcement-day-preview-beltre-mauer-helton-wagnerTheo Gerome2024-01-10T13:50:38-06:002024-01-10T13:50:38-06:00Checking in on the Most Interesting Astros on the Hall of Fame Ballot
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<img alt="Los Angeles Angels v Houston Astros" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/9X4SsKODHFtKjati1507v5F5sgs=/0x0:3057x2038/1310x873/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/73042619/1615314586.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Photo by Bob Levey/Getty Images</figcaption>
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<p>Ex-Astros Billy Wagner and Carlos Beltrán are off to impressive starts in voting</p> <p id="kmzYXE">We just passed the two-week mark until the 2024 Hall of Fame results are relieved; the evening of January 23rd will have the usual results show airing at 5 PM Central Time on MLB.com/the MLB Network.</p>
<p id="tx6L0z">Of course, for those who don’t want to go in blind, there are of course<a href="http://tracker.fyi/"> the yearly efforts of Ryan Thibodaux’s Ballot Tracker team</a> (available at tracker.fyi), where volunteers record and total writers’ ballots as they make them known. So far, they’ve amassed over 130, which works out to just over one-third of the expected total, and there are likely dozens more to come in our lead-up to the results.</p>
<p id="bsV9kO"><a href="https://www.hotcornerharbor.com/2024/01/first-look-2024-baseball-hall-of-fame.html">I already released a longer, initial look last week at how those results were shaping up</a>, but this week I wanted to do a more focused update looking at two prominent former Astros on this ballot, <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/w/wagnebi02.shtml?utm_medium=linker&utm_source=www.baseball-reference.com&utm_campaign=2024-01-10_br">Billy Wagner</a> and <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/search/search.fcgi?pid=beltrca01,beltra003car&search=Carlos+Beltr%C3%A1n&utm_medium=linker&utm_source=www.baseball-reference.com&utm_campaign=2024-01-10_br">Carlos Beltrán</a>. As it turns out, these two have some of the more interesting and nuanced cases, so if you want to know what to look for in the coming days, it might help to have more context.</p>
<p id="DDnZUX">Let’s start with where they both stood coming into this year. For those not in the know, the basics of the Hall election are: roughly 400 current and former members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America (BBWAA) will vote in this year’s election. If 75% of them vote for a player, they’re in. If a player gets 5% of the vote, they get to stick around for the election next year; otherwise, they’re off the 2025 ballot. Voters are capped at voting for ten players in a year, and players are capped at ten attempts on the BBWAA ballot before they get dropped (at which point the Veterans Committee can take a look at them, but that’s a whole other can of worms).</p>
<p id="zzNiKZ">Both Wagner and Beltrán are returning candidates from the 2023 ballots. Wagner, in his eighth election, reached a personal high mark with 68.1% of the vote, or just 27 votes shy of induction. He’ll have this year and (should he fall short) one more chance after that to pick those up. Beltrán, meanwhile, was in his first year on the ballot, and reached a respectable 46.5% of the vote.</p>
<p id="KNoFQU">Also I’ll mostly be covering their Hall of Fame votes and chances of election here rather than their cases, but I just want to note that I think both are deserving picks. I<a href="https://www.hotcornerharbor.com/2019/12/is-billy-wagner-best-closer-not-in-hall.html"> laid out the case for Wagner several years ago</a>. I haven’t done anything that straightforward with Beltrán, but I also think his resume is much more overwhelming: a Gold Glove centerfielder with 435 homers, 565 doubles, 2725 hits, 312 steals (against only 49 time caught stealing!), a .279/.350/.486 batting line, a 119 OPS+… there’s a reason Baseball-Reference’s Wins Above Replacement has him as a 70-WAR player (a line that usually marks an obvious Hall selection). His struggles so far are pretty obviously backlash to his role in the 2017 sign stealing scandal.</p>
<p id="PhORCu">So, how are things shaping up for them in 2024? We’ll start with Wagner, since he’s polling ahead of Beltrán right now. Right now, he’s in fourth place on the ballot, behind newcomers <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/b/beltrad01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&utm_source=www.baseball-reference.com&utm_campaign=2024-01-10_br">Adrián Beltré</a> and <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/m/mauerjo01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&utm_source=www.baseball-reference.com&utm_campaign=2024-01-10_br">Joe Mauer</a>, plus returning runner-up <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/h/heltoto01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&utm_source=www.baseball-reference.com&utm_campaign=2024-01-10_br">Todd Helton</a>. Back at the end of December, he crossed the 75% in the Ballot Tracker <a href="https://twitter.com/NotMrTibbs/status/1740856154442670439/">for the first time since he became a candidate</a>. He’s held strong in the 60ish ballots revealed since then, even crossing the 80% mark for a stretch of time. However, he has seen a little bit of backsliding recently, dropping down to 78.7% just last night.</p>
<p id="PGw8tD">Despite that bad news, he is still above where he was at this time last year, which is a promising sign. And what’s more, he’s actually won over votes: the tracker has documented seven 2023 voters who were “no”s on him last year but have changed their vote. On the whole, he’s at a net change of +5 in flips (he’s also lost two “yes”es), but on a crowded ballot like this year’s, that’s actually not bad; in fact, it’s third among players on the ballot (put a pin in that thought for now).</p>
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<p id="V2dAiv">If you go by the 27 votes he fell short last year, that means he’d only need to pick up 22 votes on the remaining 250 or so ballots. Except that there’s some extra good news here: Wagner has also gone 9-for-10 among new voters. That’s not as good as nine flips*, nor will we know exactly how much it helps until we learn how many voters there are this year, but it does mean that his path is a little less rough.</p>
<p id="aq0Xox"><em>*If you’d like an example for why this is: consider a case of 2 votes, with 1 yes and 1 no. Adding a new yes vote just gets you to 2/3, while flipping the no would get you to 2/2.</em></p>
<p id="1wjPXv">It will be difficult for Wagner to pick up the 20-ish converted votes he still needs from pre-announcement ballots; a net +27 just from early reveals would be a challenge to hit in a year with an empty ballot, but this year’s ballot is much more crowded than that thanks to the additions of Beltré, Mauer, and <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/u/utleych01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&utm_source=www.baseball-reference.com&utm_campaign=2024-01-10_br">Chase Utley</a> (among others).</p>
<p id="EdeJKi">Thankfully, he doesn’t necessarily need to do that; just under half of Hall voters either wait until after the results to share their ballot, or never release it at all. The obvious downside there is that we won’t have any idea how those look until we already know the results. We generally know that they’ll be stingier than the voters who reveal their ballots early, and we generally know that those groups aren’t necessarily opposed to Wagner’s case; he reached 69.6% and 52.9% with late and private voters last year (compared to 72.3% with early public voters). If he can stay around 79% prior to the announcement, according to the calculator I built last year, he would only need to reach around 75% with late voters and 66% with private voters.</p>
<p id="hZ0DRT">That might seem extreme, but if you want a final ace-in-the-hole for Wagner, it’s that he passed 60% of the vote last year. Hall voters are actually <strong>very </strong>susceptible to momentum arguments, <strong>especially </strong>the ones who keep their ballots secret. <a href="https://www.hotcornerharbor.com/2023/01/2023-Hall-of-Fame-Preview-Projection-rolen-helton.html">This is actually something I discovered last year</a> while writing about <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/r/rolensc01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&utm_source=www.baseball-reference.com&utm_campaign=2024-01-10_br">Scott Rolen</a>’s chances; hitting the 60% mark has, in recent memory, been an indicator of a big jump in private ballots, in a way that hitting, say, 50% isn’t. Sure enough, Rolen saw a big enough jump among late and (especially) private voters to get him over the line, following early returns that looked like they could go either way.</p>
<p id="7t2Ivp">I’m curious to see if that finding holds up this year, on a crowded ballot where one other candidate (Helton) will also be counting on that 60% bump, but I think the precedent seems encouraging. And worst case scenario, if he misses this year, it just gives him a layup induction next year (but I’ll wait to get into that until we know it’s happening).</p>
<p id="aOFkvj">So what about Carlos Beltrán? As mentioned, he was pretty far off from induction last year at 46.5%. But it was also pretty clear that he was being dinged for character clause-related reasons, and there’s been a lot of difficulty in predicting how those cases play out. The most recent example for most people is obviously going to be players tied to steroids, but even those have had a variety of outcomes, with some players (like <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/m/mcgwima01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&utm_source=www.baseball-reference.com&utm_campaign=2024-01-10_br">Mark McGwire</a> or <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/s/sosasa01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&utm_source=www.baseball-reference.com&utm_campaign=2024-01-10_br">Sammy Sosa</a>) stalling out hard, while others (like <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/b/bondsba01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&utm_source=www.baseball-reference.com&utm_campaign=2024-01-10_br">Barry Bonds</a>, <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/c/clemero02.shtml?utm_medium=linker&utm_source=www.baseball-reference.com&utm_campaign=2024-01-10_br">Roger Clemens</a>, and perhaps most bafflingly, <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/s/sheffga01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&utm_source=www.baseball-reference.com&utm_campaign=2024-01-10_br">Gary Sheffield</a>, who currently sits at 75.0% on his tenth and final ballot) continue climbing year after year.</p>
<p id="RhhNZC">Of course, there are actually a few non-steroid cases to refer to as well, which might be more instructive here. <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/p/perryga01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&utm_source=www.baseball-reference.com&utm_campaign=2024-01-10_br">Gaylord Perry</a> (inducted 1991) took three tries to get inducted largely due to his prominence as a spitballer. <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/j/jenkife01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&utm_source=www.baseball-reference.com&utm_campaign=2024-01-10_br">Fergie Jenkins</a> (1991) took three tries as well, and I’ve seen some writers attribute that to his suspension for cocaine.* <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/m/maricju01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&utm_source=www.baseball-reference.com&utm_campaign=2024-01-10_br">Juan Marichal</a> (1983) was another one that took three attempts, apparently due to anger over him hitting <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/r/rosebjo01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&utm_source=www.baseball-reference.com&utm_campaign=2024-01-10_br">John Roseboro</a> <a href="https://www.mlb.com/video/marichal-roseboro-brawl-examined-c409390583">in the head with a bat during a brawl</a> (the two would later reconcile, and <a href="https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/john-roseboro/">Roseboro’s support helped lead to Marichal’s election</a>). The most recent case is <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/a/alomaro01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&utm_source=www.baseball-reference.com&utm_campaign=2024-01-10_br">Roberto Alomar</a> (2011), who narrowly missed on his first attempt as writers cited him spitting on umpire John Hirschbeck as a reason to wait on voting for him. Alomar would make it on his second ballot, jumping from under 74% to a full 90% in one year (although despite the induction, as it turns out, <a href="https://www.mlb.com/news/mlb-puts-roberto-alomar-on-ineligible-list">he still wasn’t a great guy</a>).</p>
<p id="rOl8Ng"><em>*I have no idea how that’s factored into the cases for players like </em><a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/r/raineti01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&utm_source=www.baseball-reference.com&utm_campaign=2024-01-10_br"><em>Tim Raines</em></a><em>, </em><a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/m/molitpa01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&utm_source=www.baseball-reference.com&utm_campaign=2024-01-10_br"><em>Paul Molitor</em></a><em>, </em><a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/p/parkeda01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&utm_source=www.baseball-reference.com&utm_campaign=2024-01-10_br"><em>Dave Parker</em></a><em>, or </em><a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/h/hernake01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&utm_source=www.baseball-reference.com&utm_campaign=2024-01-10_br"><em>Keith Hernandez</em></a><em>. The first two obviously made it in, although Raines took fifteen tries and Molitor got just 85% on his first vote despite his 3319 hits. Parker stuck around for a full fifteen years plus a few Veterans Committee ballots, while Hernandez fell off after nine tries. But I also haven’t seen a ton of evidence linking any of them to a cocaine backlash. It might also be relevant that Jenkins pre-dates most of them by several years, and got a brunt of the reaction as a result.</em></p>
<p id="Ska3Ln">I saw some people speculating that Beltrán would get stuck in the same limbo that steroid players did after he failed to hit 50% last year (none of Perry, Jenkins, Marichal, or Alomar dropped that low), but that doesn’t seem to be the case so far. He’s in seventh place right now, but it’s a strong seventh, one that sees him trending at 64.7%.</p>
<p id="H5y8FT">Not only that, but he’s far and away leading the pack in converted voters. 18 former “no”s have changed their vote to yes, giving him a net change of +12, both of which give him a big lead on the next-best performer in those fields, Gary Sheffield (9 pickups and no losses, likely due to the bump candidates get on their final ballot). Even Beltrán’s lost voters have promising signs; three of the six dropped him because their ballots were at their ten-person limit, meaning they should be easy pick-ups next year, once Beltré, Sheffield, and some combination of Helton, Mauer, and Wagner are cleared out.</p>
<p id="eMZUYB">There’s a very real chance that Beltrán enters the 2025 ballot as the top returning candidate, and even his worst-case scenario at this point looks like “third place behind Wagner and <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/j/jonesan01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&utm_source=www.baseball-reference.com&utm_campaign=2024-01-10_br">Andruw Jones</a>”. A 2025 Induction might be a big ask (although not totally out of the question), especially given that a few new candidates will likely be taking up some attention. But even then, it’s still just Beltrán’s third ballot, giving him plenty of time (and a few weaker classes) to build momentum. Even if he drops down into the 50%-60% range on the final results, I’d probably build my expectations going forward off of the non-steroid cases rather than the Bonds/Clemens purgatory.</p>
<p id="CMawb0">That should cover the major details to keep in mind for these two over the next thirteen days. Right now, I’m positive on both cases, although there’s still a lot that we’ll learn as more ballots come out. And even if things go south for Wagner from this point, it still looks like the Astros will have some good news on the Cooperstown horizon.</p>
https://www.crawfishboxes.com/2024/1/10/24033394/astros-on-2024-hall-of-fame-ballot-billy-wagner-carlos-beltranTheo Gerome2023-08-08T09:39:20-05:002023-08-08T09:39:20-05:00The Astros Paid a Steep Price at the Trade Deadline, but Their Recent Prospect Development Successes Might Offset Those Losses
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<img alt="MLB: Cleveland Guardians at Houston Astros" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/wJuc1ndWP4znCVE1WQYpXe4AWrM=/0x30:4573x3079/1310x873/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72524878/usa_today_21127443.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Troy Taormina-USA TODAY Sports</figcaption>
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<p>The Astros traded away a lot of prospects this Trade Deadline, but the future might not be as rough as it looks right now</p> <p id="FkJn7E">I started looking at a question several weeks ago, just out of curiosity. It was a complicated question, and I don’t know that I found a conclusive answer; but then, it was a tough question, and I was hardly the first person to take a stab at it. If nothing else, I at least found a lot of interesting bits of trivia, and it seemed like it would maybe be interesting to write about them… except I still never really found a central hook to build it all around. </p>
<p id="8hDzez">See, my basic question was: Have the Astros been doing a better-than-expected job at converting young prospects into useful big leaguers lately? I mean, it’s an interesting question, but there weren’t any factors making it especially pressing to sort through.</p>
<p id="mIXGJT">And then, we had the trade deadline, with the Astros sending away two players who were very likely their top prospects (Drew Gilbert and Ryan Clifford) in order to re-acquire Justin Verlander from the Mets. This came just days after sending away Korey Lee, another prospect with some hype behind him, in order to re-acquire Kendall Graveman. As you might figure, those have taken a toll on a farm system that was already regarded as one of the weakest in the majors. </p>
<p id="bl4U35">There’s a lot going on here; losing big prospects is tough, especially when things are already thin. And part of that is the limitless potential of young players; <em><strong>of course </strong></em>they’ll all succeed, and keep your team competitive indefinitely through several cost-effective, All-Star quality years. Until they try and fail (a few times), there really isn’t a reason for fans to think otherwise (unless they like being pessimistic, or something). </p>
<p id="1FyOvd">Of course, in reality, a lot of prospects fail, and a key reason to have a good farm system is to trade bits of it for established players. In fact, as I sit here on the evening of the Trade Deadline (writing this intro, at least), I began the day thinking that I would actually be working on something to that effect, a sort of capstone on <a href="http://www.hotcornerharbor.com/search/label/2022%20Orioles%20Rebuild%20Series">my series comparing the Orioles’ and Astros’ rebuilds</a>. In fact, I had this big thing planned, where I would point out how weird it was that a second Mike Elias-guided team with a deep farm system acquired a reigning <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/y/youngcy01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&utm_source=www.baseball-reference.com&utm_campaign=2023-08-07_br">Cy Young</a> runner-up with two and a half years of control left from an underperforming AL Central team, but then the White Sox just held on to Dylan Cease.</p>
<p id="pCbJu2">But actually, that 2017 Justin Verlander trade isn’t a bad point of comparison, for those feeling the doom-and-gloom side of things right now. In exchange for those stellar 2017 to 2019 season (all that was guaranteed when they acquired him), the Astros gave up three prospects for JV, two who were generally considered top 100 prospects and another who would go on to play in the Futures Game. Except that, as of 2023, Franklin Perez is 25 and still hasn’t made it to AAA, Daz Cameron is on the Orioles’ AAA team after Detroit waived him last November, and Jake Rogers (the least-heralded of the trio at the time) is finally, in his third season in the Majors, looking like he can be an average MLB catcher.</p>
<p id="FDf42G">Or take the last time the Astros acquired an aging, Cooperstown-bound starter. Back in 2019, Zack Greinke came over from Arizona. In return, the Astros sent over: Corbin Martin, who is 0-4 with a 7.28 ERA since the trade and missing the entire 2023 season due to injury; Seth Beer, who has spent the majority of his age-26 season at AA; J.B. Bukauskas, who is on the Brewers’ AAA team after being waived by two different teams this year; and Josh Rojas, who is 29 and generally spent his time in Arizona bouncing around just above replacement level before being traded to Seattle at the deadline this year. Going just off of value, Houson clearly won that trade outright (Baseball-Reference has it at 3.5 WAR for Greinke in Houston to 0.6 WAR for everyone in Arizona, while Fangraphs has it at 5.2 WAR to 1.3), and you don’t even need to get into all of the extenuating circumstances that tilt it even further in their direction.</p>
<p id="2oPdgk">I could keep going on here. I’ve been meaning to take a more comprehensive look at this for a while, and I still might later. And there are obvious counter-examples, of course; for instance, <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/b/bagweje01.shtml">arguably the best player in the Astros’ history</a> came on them winning a deadline deal like this. But you can’t get too attached to unproven prospects, especially when you’re still trying to win.</p>
<p id="tfwTAG">We could also go on about the process that led to this. After all, the Astros were negotiating with Verlander as a free agent just months ago, and that wouldn’t have required losing prospects. Except several months ago, they were looking at a much deeper, less-injured rotation, while the contract Verlander was asking for was… honestly, probably a little unreasonable. Even as someone who thinks teams should be more willing to cross the luxury tax threshold, it makes perfect sense to me why those talks back then didn’t work out. </p>
<p id="vmJOJk">Of course, things changed, and that depth in the Astros’ rotation slowly disappeared. Meanwhile, Verlander’s deal wound up being for 2 years and $86.7 million deal (3 years and $121.7 with a 2025 option), and in the end, <a href="https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2023/08/mets-trade-justin-verlander-astros.html">the Mets will end up paying over half of that</a> (between the payments they’ve already made and what they’ve committed to covering going forward), which seems much more in-line with the value the Astros can expect from Verlander here. In a perfect world, I probably would have preferred that the Astros take on a bit more money to save on the prospect side, especially if the impetus for that came from the Astros’ ownership. But it’s also possible the Mets wouldn’t have accepted that offer, so until we have confirmation one way or the other, this is all just hypothetical.</p>
<p id="SIQVEX">Yeah, this piece has kind of become a backdoor evaluation of the trade… I think I’ve come down on “It’s a tough pill to swallow, but probably a fair balance of risk and reward given the Astros’ 2023 needs and beyond, and getting Verlander back triggers the warm-fuzzies so the risk feels less bad”. </p>
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<p id="BGHQHB"><strong>BUT!</strong> You may recall that none of that is why I started writing this piece! So, back to the question: Have the Astros been doing a better-than-expected job at converting young prospects into useful big leaguers? Again, it’s debatable how much looking at the history here matters given that the Dana Brown era is still new and could prove a shift, but trying something is better than just giving up.</p>
<p id="wSj7T6">There are a lot of ways we could look at this problem, but this is the one I came up with: I used Baseball-Reference to search every team over the last ten years and see how many players in their first four seasons put up 1.0 Win Above Replacement or better. I probably could have tweaked these numbers around the edges, but these seemed like the best balance. </p>
<p id="wQGUNX">Four seasons felt like a good quantity to ensure regular turnover in players, as well as limit teams bolstering their numbers by acquiring other team’s developed players (which of course becomes even more common as players hit their arbitration years and get more expensive). And 1 WAR felt like a good balance to use. </p>
<p id="R5skh5">Stars are important, but I didn’t want to look exclusively at them. You do also need to develop regular starters and bit players, too (not to mention that this helps account for things like late call-ups or the 2020 season). Plus, you probably don’t need to be bringing up stars that frequently; ideally, if you develop a really big star, you lock them up and have them lead the team for more than just their first four years (not to mention that if we’re just focusing on stars, I don’t know that it really matters if you develop them in-house or pick them up via trade or signing; just having them is the important part). But of course, if you want to test any of these assumptions yourself, feel free to tweak my method and share your results! Part of why I’m writing is because I feel like I’ve taken the idea as far as I can for the time being. </p>
<p id="nzmHdJ">Okay, so with all of that out of the way, how many Year One-to-Four 1-WAR players did the Astros run each season over the last decade?</p>
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<p id="GH8RYK">(Note: All rankings were ties. And 2023 totals are not finalized, obviously.)</p>
<p id="W6UX6q">As you can see, all in all, it’s been a great run! They’ve been in the top half of the league for basically this entire span (you could argue the 2019 team doesn’t count since it was a big seven-way tie for the fifteenth spot, but maybe they deserve the tiebreaker there, since they won 107 games and the AL Pennant), and the top third for everything outside of 2018-19.</p>
<p id="nkxJwL">(And while I’m talking about exceptions, you can also easily see how the 2023 team could be doing even better than it already is; Luis Garcia was well on his way to qualifying before his injury, Yordan only lost his status this year because his true “second” season was that 2-game 2020 campaign, Jose Siri qualifies for the Rays this year and is still eligible next year despite Houston doing a lot of the developmental heavy lifting there… I can’t truly compare all of these exceptions, since I didn’t want to do this for every single player on every other single team, but still, I feel like this has to be one of the stronger extra credit cases in the league this year.)</p>
<p id="vi0DLd">So, if you had to guess based on this chart, at which point would you say that, per industry popular perception, the Astros’ farm system took a sharp downturn? I mean, a lot of you reading this might already know, but if all you were going on was the rate that they’ve been churning out young players, there doesn’t really appear to be any end. There was a brief dip around 2019, but as we pointed out, the 2019 team was a juggernaut, in large part because the 2015-2018 crop had graduated out of our rankings without any real need to replace them yet. And besides, we would probably expect a drop in prospect rankings to come <em>before </em>the drop in successful major leaguers, so that would put our dip based on the results somewhere in the 2017-18 range? </p>
<p id="0UVWFI">The answer, of course, is 2020. Going back through the farm system rankings of MLB.com, Fangraphs, The Athletic, Bleacher Report, and others, most of them still had the Astros towards the top going into 2019, while they’ve rarely escaped the 20-to-30 range since then. And if you want to be precise, the 2019 Trade Deadline was the real inflection point. Evaluators universally dropped them after all they gave up there, headlined by the four prospects they sent over Zack Greinke trade; take a moment to refer back to my earlier paragraph on that trade, and see how that ended up.</p>
<p id="Fvz4W6">I say that not to dump on the prospect evaluators; it’s a tough job, and misses are to be expected! Instead, I’m saying it to highlight my two key points: </p>
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<p id="tP6bS8"><strong>1) </strong>Trading prospects to get established major leaguers is one of the big benefits of having a top-rated farm system; you might lose a deal sometimes, but you’re also losing out if you just hoard them all, given the failure rate of prospects.</p>
<p id="1ZjQKa"><strong>2) </strong>The Astros as of late <em>do </em>seem to have some kind of talent for regularly churning out useful major leaguers, despite predictions to the contrary. </p>
<p id="MdHDBA">There are, of course, ways a team can game this methodology; believe me, I found <em>all </em>of them while looking over my results, you don’t need to bring up counterfactuals. And the results don’t guarantee success or anything; there’s no one way to build a good team. (Actually, if anything, the Astros are bucking the trend here a little; a lot of other strong teams over the last decade have looked more like the 2019 team, falling more towards the middle of the pack following several recent “graduations”.)</p>
<p id="Fja2Je">The individual data points are less interesting than the trends here: the Astros have been <em>consistently </em>at the top of the list (on average, the only team to finish higher up in the ranks than the Astros over the last decade is the Rays), while consistently competing in a way that doesn’t usually guarantee a plethora of spots for newcomers. They’ve been able to produce a strong recurring cast, and they’ve been able to supplement it by filling out the margins of the roster with bit players who provide more than expected.</p>
<p id="9rw8h0">Really, even that “strong recurring class” bit is worth investigating more, because even a lot of the core young stars the Astros have produced the last five years were not the most heralded of their class. Kyle Tucker was routinely rated towards the top of prospect lists for several years; but Yordan Alvarez, in contrast, was rated a consensus top-50 prospect, but more in the 30-50 range, and for only one year. Ditto for Hunter Brown (although Fangraphs was higher on him than their peers for a few years before that). Some evaluators put Jeremy Peña in the top 50 as well, but he was divisive, and some rankings had him more towards the back end of their top 100. Jose Urquidy and Yainer Diaz were back-end top-100 guys on a few lists at the end of their prospect tenures, but not all of them.</p>
<p id="4W7VuI">Of course, that leaves Jose Urquidy, Framber Valdez, Christian Javier, Chas McCormick, Jake Meyers, and J.P. France; none of them appeared on a top 100 prospect list, as best as I can tell? Certainly not one of the major ones that I checked. And despite that, five of them have appeared on this list for two or more of their first four seasons (France is still in his first season, but you can substitute in Myles Straw here, if you want another recent Astros product that fits this pattern).</p>
<p id="EebHN0">Again, please don’t take this as some “the Astros have cracked player development!” take; they have plenty of failures here, too. Forrest Whitley was regularly appearing above Kyle Tucker on those prospect lists, and they have plenty of other high-profile flops over the years, from Frances Martes to Mark Appel to AJ Reed. </p>
<p id="3HhgDn">All I’m trying to do is point out that the Astros seem to have found a way to avoid letting those flops or limitations (from things like low draft positions or frequent prospect trades) set them back too much when it comes to finding, training, and graduating young talent to the majors. Maybe their frequent front office turnover means this won’t continue forever. But in the meantime, it is giving me some pause in bemoaning yet another round of selling off big-name prospects at the Trade Deadline. </p>
https://www.crawfishboxes.com/2023/8/8/23823059/astros-steep-price-at-the-trade-deadline-but-prospect-development-successes-might-offset-lossesTheo Gerome2023-06-15T12:32:39-05:002023-06-15T12:32:39-05:00Jose Abreu’s Career Is Even Greater Than the Sum of 1500 Hits
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<img alt="MLB: Washington Nationals at Houston Astros" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/MHE3DIQ89l2dP1noXMIVtvK50HQ=/0x0:5472x3648/1310x873/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72373711/usa_today_20892731.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Erik Williams-USA TODAY Sports</figcaption>
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<p>Following the slugger’s career milestone, let’s take a look back at his <em>entire </em>career</p> <p id="CJgQD6"></p>
<p id="3cYV5J">If you were watching Tuesday’s night’s game against the Nationals, you might have caught a neat milestone: José Abreu collected his 1500th career hit (as well as his 1501st, but that one doesn’t end in a 0, so it got a smaller call-out). Abreu is 21st among active Major Leaguers in hits and, at the halfway point to 3000, stands somewhere in the mid-600s all-time. His start with the Astros hasn’t been the best, and while I hope he manages to turn it around, it’s still cool to appreciate a big moment like that!</p>
<p id="pEPUCn">Of course, that also got me thinking… Abreu’s path to the majors has been very non-standard. For those that don’t know, his 2014 Rookie of the Year campaign came at the relatively late age of 27, thanks to Abreu being born in Cuba. In fact, he was a ten-year veteran of the Cuban National Series before defecting after the 2013 World Baseball Classic.</p>
<p id="hUudx0">And players like that, with interesting and unique careers, have always fascinated me. I actually wrote about <a href="https://www.crawfishboxes.com/2019/9/26/20884873/appreciating-yuli-gurriel-2019-season-cuba">another one like that a few years ago</a>, Astros’ unlikely batting champ and postseason hero Yuli Gurriel. And before that, I took a deep look at Hiroki Kuroda, who was <a href="http://www.hotcornerharbor.com/2017/09/hiroki-kuroda-international-japan-NPB-MLB-Hall-Fame.html">much better than you might remember</a> (or might have ever realized at the time!). </p>
<p id="OGrRIM">I had always thought about doing that for another player down the line, and Abreu always seemed like one of the favorites. So I thought, in honor of Jose Abreu’s 1500th hit, why not go back and take a look at his total career? For basically all of this, I’ll be pulling from Baseball Reference’s extensive library of foreign league stats. </p>
<p id="eJmi3B">In the Cuban National Series, Abreu debuted with his hometown Elefantes de Cienfuegos back in the 2003-04 season. They were somewhere in the range of middling-to-bad for most of his early career, and Abreu’s first two seasons were similarly fairly rough, sporting OPSes of .674 and .676. However, there are some big caveats there: the CNS is a noted pitchers league, Abreu didn’t really have a set position yet (he mostly played right field but also spent time at center field and all three bases), and perhaps most importantly, he was only 16 when the season started. So what if the offense he later became noted for was still in its early stages? We can’t really calculate a comprehensive WAR for this time, but it’s still possible that he was a net neutral just based on his defense and versatility. </p>
<p id="ngL3R1">From there, though, he began to settle in. He more or less solidified as a right fielder who could flex to third base, and his OPS jumped up to .961 in the 2005-06 campaign. It would drop to a still-solid .830 the next year and then climb back to .992 in 2007-2008. 2008-09 saw him improve a little more, crossing the 1.000 OPS mark for the first time, and he finished in the top ten in the Series in both slugging (.630) and home runs (19). </p>
<p id="x2P2R2">It’s worth reiterating that this big breakout 08-09 year, Abreu’s sixth in Cuba, was still only his age 21 season. Cienfuegos was still splitting him between right and first base but would move him to first full-time for the 2009-10 campaign, although I’m not sure if that was decided before the season or just something that happened naturally as it went along. Either way, the subsequent 2009-10 season was also the year where he first looked like the phenom who would have MLB teams salivating in five years. </p>
<p id="kiXQso">That season, Abreu became the clear best player in the CNS. He would post a 1.376 OPS, meaning that his improvement from 2008-09 to 2009-10 was even bigger than his improvement from his debut at age 16 to 2008. He would lead the league in OBP and slugging and fell just 5 points short of the batting title, giving him an overall triple slash line of .399/.555/.822. He also finished second in home runs (30) and eighth in RBI (76).</p>
<p id="3obSY3">Abreu would follow that up by actually winning the Triple Slash Crown the following two seasons, hitting .453/.597/.986 in 2010-11 and .394/.542/.837 in 2011-12. He also led the league in homers the first of those seasons (33), but fell 6 RBI short of a traditional triple crown at 93 (the second season, he finished second in both, at 35 and 99); despite that, he was still named the league MVP in 2011. His 2012-13 campaign was less overwhelming than those two seasons, “only” leading the league in homers (19), but he still finished second in slugging (.617) and landed in the top ten in average, OBP, and RBI. Again, despite this strong resume, at this point, Jose Abreu was still only 25!</p>
<p id="rhuUXa">After a strong performance for Team Cuba at the 2013 World Baseball Classic, Abreu defected, and ended up sitting out 2013 (which would have been his age 26 season) in hopes of signing with an MLB team. That wound up being the Chicago White Sox, although <a href="https://www.sbnation.com/mlb/2013/10/16/4845848/mlb-rumors-jose-abreu-white-sox-astros-rangers-cuba">the Astros surprised a lot of people at the time by finishing second in the sweepstakes</a> despite coming off their third straight 100-loss season. Reflecting on that, it’s a weird alternative universe to consider: just think about the past decade, but a version where Abreu arrived more or less right in time with the Astros’ ascendancy to their current preeminent status. Either way, Abreu immediately debuted at the MLB level in 2014 (he still hasn’t played in a minor league game) and won the Rookie of the Year award, and you know the rest.</p>
<p id="pjOmw0">So let’s go back to those Cuba numbers again. It’s easy for me to rattle off stats for a foreign league, but it can be hard to appreciate. The CNS is just a different environment, after all. What about if we normalized it, in a way similar to OPS+? We can’t account for park factors (from what I can tell at a glance, Cienfuegos seemed fairly neutral?), but calculations that compare it to a league-average 100 baseline are easy enough.</p>
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<p id="cuCFqt">With that context, that four-year run at the end is even more eye-popping. A four-year stretch where you are, at worst,<strong> twice as good as a league-average hitter</strong>? A peak OPS+ of <em><strong>276?? </strong></em>Sure, the Cuban National Series isn’t as high a level of talent as MLB, but knock 80 points off of those years, and you’re still looking at, like, peak Miguel Cabrera-type numbers. Knock 100 off, and he looks a bit like Yordan Alvarez at those ages. In that context, it makes sense that even after his year off from competitive play, Abreu was still able to come back and immediately lead the AL with a 173 OPS+. </p>
<p id="0VvKPI">Add it all together, and you’ve got an Abreu that has played in 2108 games and totaled (as of the morning of 6/15/23) 2388 hits, 476 doubles, 425 homers, 1480 RBI, and a .306/.388/.538 slash line. And sure, there are a whole lot of caveats there, but they do cut both ways; Abreu wouldn’t have debuted nearly as early if he could have signed with an MLB team from the start, but he also would not have been left to put up OPSes well over 1.000 in minor league half seasons or miss the entire 2013 season, either. </p>
<p id="4sC4Ys">It seems realistic to guess that he might have arrived at the same time as, say, Evan Longoria and Andrew McCutchen? That lines up age-wise, at least, and it certainly makes sense that he would be ahead of them in both hits and homers. And for added context, McCutchen was the league MVP in 2013, the year before Abreu debuted, so it’s hardly unthinkable that he might have missed out on some really good years in that missing stretch.</p>
<p id="1kz7mm">I don’t know that there’s a larger point at this moment. I don’t think that Abreu’s career is quite finished yet (Wednesday night’s game raised his wRC+ by eight full points!), so anything that tries to wrap it all up right now will be incomplete. So let’s just leave it here for now as a greater, more comprehensive appreciation for a player who has already had an incredibly unique career, one that many people might not have fully noticed because of all of its quirks.</p>
https://www.crawfishboxes.com/2023/6/15/23761819/jose-abreu-1500-hits-career-appreciationTheo Gerome2023-01-25T09:43:51-06:002023-01-25T09:43:51-06:00Scott Rolen Snags a Hall of Fame Plaque, Plus a Breakdown of the Rest of the Results
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<img alt="St. Louis Cardinals v San Francisco Giants" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/H4bqt1DplrJ7FP6dzs0Sp_wjaD0=/0x15:3600x2415/1310x873/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/71904401/1213025375.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Photo by Focus on Sport/Getty Images</figcaption>
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<p>The third baseman edges past the 75% mark, and several other players set themselves up for 2024</p> <p id="Bfs5I7">The Hall of Fame announced the results of the BBWAA election on Tuesday. With 76.3% of the vote, third baseman Scott Rolen will be <a href="https://www.hotcornerharbor.com/2022/12/2023-hall-of-fame-election-fred-mcgriff-veterans-committee.html">joining Veterans Committee selection</a> Fred McGriff on the Cooperstown stage this summer.</p>
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<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/8EfvPmFRZXD_7GpRtTJ-PDUw5Hw=/400x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24384370/2023_Hall_Voting_Results.JPG">
<figcaption>Full results from the 2023 election</figcaption>
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<p id="hbT8al">This is exciting news, for a lot of reasons. First of all, Rolen is a strong selection, and was deserving of induction years ago (2023 was his sixth ballot). He’s easily one of the top ten third baseman of all-time, with a top-fifteen bat and a top-five glove, the kind of two way star at the position only matched by Mike Schmidt and Adrian Beltre. In fact, “top five at third base” might be underselling his skill with the leather; Total Zone Rating, for instance, puts him twenty-fifth <em>all-time </em>in runs saved, across all positions. Having over 2000 hits, 300 homers, and 500 doubles on top of that is just icing on the cake. </p>
<p id="7ZlNWO">Before moving on, feel free to take a minute and review some of Rolen’s defensive highlights:</p>
<div id="kWY6sp"><div style="left: 0; width: 100%; height: 0; position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/TZ44m_hdgEA?rel=0" style="top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute; border: 0;" allowfullscreen="" scrolling="no" allow="accelerometer; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share;"></iframe></div></div>
<p id="cHzMcw">Beyond just that, he helps bolster Cooperstown at third base, easily the position the Hall is the thinnest at. Rolen is only the eighteenth third baseman to be elected, the fewest at any position besides Designated Hitter, and just the tenth to earn the nod from the BBWAA. And on top of all of that, Scott set a new record; after debuting with just 10.2% of the vote back in 2018, he has now supplanted Duke Snider as the Hall of Famer who had to climb the furthest to gain the writers’ nod (Snider started at 17% and took eleven tries before winning their approval). It’s a good sign of all the ways the voting body has become more willing to re-evaluate players that they’ve initially underestimated. </p>
<p id="ELtO3z">If you were following <a href="http://tracker.fyi">the pre-announcement ballot tracking</a>, you might have seen that things looked a little dicey for Rolen’s chances. He was trending downwards in the last days before the announcement, and it looked like he needed some good luck to make it over the finish line. <a href="https://www.hotcornerharbor.com/2023/01/2023-Hall-of-Fame-Preview-Projection-rolen-helton.html">In my last piece</a>, I noted that he would likely need to reach at least 50% among writers who don’t reveal their vote (a group where he failed to crack even 35% in 2022). Jason Sardell, who’s done some great work forecasting these results over the last few years, <a href="https://twitter.com/sarsdell/status/1618018127308296192">even had Rolen missing on his final projections</a>.</p>
<p id="OSlQPj">But in the end, Rolen ended up clearing the 75% bar with a little room. Not much (he had 5 votes to spare, the closest election since Iván Rodríguez made it by just 4 votes back in 2017), but that’s better than it looked like he would do for a while, and it seems to indicate that he had healthy support among private voters. </p>
<p id="dABwMc">We won’t know the exact numbers of how he did among private voters for a little bit, since some voters will inevitably release their ballots in the coming days and the Hall itself will publish the ballots of anyone who didn’t opt out in early February. However, I’m doing some back-of-the-envelope calculations, and it seems almost certain that Rolen’s percentage among private voters jumped at least 22%. Depending on how he does among late-public voters, he might have even come close to a 25 or 26 point improvement. </p>
<p id="sJTFZ3">In that last piece, I noted that players who crack 60% of the vote overall (excluding the obvious outliers like Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens) tend to see a noted increase in support among private voters the following year, in a way that wasn’t particularly apparent when they hit, say, 50%. This is especially the case as of late, the further we move from the 2013-era ballot logjam, and I think that Rolen’s election provides more evidence to that idea. </p>
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<h2 id="o6AguE"><strong>The Rest of the Ballot</strong></h2>
<p id="ypjaii">So, with that in mind, let’s move down the ballot. Todd Helton finished second this year, at 72.2% of the vote. That’s just 11 votes shy of induction, a very frustrating place to finish given that he ended up with nearly 79% of the early vote, but also impressive considering it represents a 20-point increase over his 2022 performance. You have to figure he’s a likely 2024 inductee at this point (and even if he isn’t, Helton will have another four years on the ballot after that).</p>
<p id="d8dUPG">Billy Wagner is the more interesting case to watch. He ended up 27 votes shy, at 68.1%, another big improvement from 2022 (51.0%). Picking up 7% in his final two tries seems doable, but what will be interesting to see is if he can do it in one. Crossing the 60% mark would seem to be a good indicator, at the very least. I’ll be curious to see how he does with late public votes versus private ones once that data comes out; if the latter group especially is low, it could represent an easy bunch of pick-ups next year, if those voters behave similarly to how they did with Rolen (and we’ll of course have another entire season of ballot tracking before we need to consider that anyway; if Wagner is constantly above 80% in the early voting, his performance with the other groups become much less critical). </p>
<p id="RlCoFM">In fourth place, Andruw Jones came close to hitting 60% as well, finishing his sixth ballot with 58.1%. Gary Sheffield also made it over 50%, jumping to 55.0% on his ninth try. Carlos Beltrán debuted at 46.5%, tying him with Jeff Kent, who finally aged off the ballot. I imagine that, like McGriff, Kent will make for a popular choice with Veterans Committee voters, and I would not be shocked to see them induct him at their first opportunity (which I believe is slated for 2026 at the moment, although that’s always subject to change).</p>
<p id="MH6kV2">Below them, and in contrast to most of the candidates, Álex Rodríguez and Manny Ramírez saw fairly minimal gains, landing at 35.7% and 33.2%, respectively. Omar Vizquel finally dropped below 20%, the only returning candidate to lose votes this year and the third straight election where he’s lost votes (all of which were following late-2020 reports on serious domestic violence and sexual harassment cases against him).</p>
<p id="8lFQQm">There are actually some interesting notes at the bottom of the ballot this year. Andy Pettitte (+6.3), Bobby Abreu (+8.4), Jimmy Rollins (+3.5), Mark Buehrle (+5.0), and Torii Hunter (+1.6) will all be sticking around for next year, with Abreu and Buehrle in particular nearly doubling their 2022 showing. And Francisco Rodríguez joins Beltrán as the only first-ballot players who will return for a second showing. </p>
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<h2 id="C94JFp"><strong>Looking Forward</strong></h2>
<p id="XDbbdW">So, where does that leave us for next year? </p>
<p id="1YaY91">The weak set of first-time candidates this year was a good sign for the backlog, as the big jumps in votes indicate, but that’s not going to be the case in 2024. Adrián Beltré is a surefire first-ballot type and another third baseman to follow Rolen, and he’s headlining a fairly deep class, both factors that indicate spare votes will be harder to find. </p>
<p id="fSCwaa">Joe Mauer will also be debuting. <a href="https://www.hotcornerharbor.com/2020/02/future-hall-of-fame-extra-catcher-standards.html">I personally think he’s worthy of the Hall of Fame</a>, but I’m not sure if the BBWAA will induct him immediately. Catcher is also fairly under-represented in the Hall (only ahead of third base), and only two catchers <strong>ever </strong>have been inducted on their first ballot (Johnny Bench and Iván Rodríguez). Add in that Mauer’s more of a “high-peak” candidate than a “career-totals” one (2123 hits), something that voters haven’t always liked, and he might need two or more tries to make it. </p>
<p id="FT6zik">But they aren’t the only ones joining. Chase Utley will also be added, another candidate that I think is deserving of votes but who will almost certainly struggle with less-advanced writers. I don’t think he’s going to drop off the ballot, but I also don’t think he’s going to reach Beltrán’s numbers this year, at least not in his first try. </p>
<p id="Zhri43">David Wright, Bartolo Colon, Matt Holliday, and José Bautista might also pick up some votes. I wouldn’t be shocked if any of those four are one-and-done or if they inch past 5% for a second go-around. I think Colon probably has the most upside of them, but Hall voters have been very stingy when it comes to starting pitchers for the last few decades; to paraphrase a comment I left in my last article, I have a hard time seeing why Colon would get a second chance when David Cone, Bret Saberhagen, Dwight Gooden, Kevin Brown, Tim Lincecum, Johan Santana, Dave Stieb, Roy Oswalt, Cliff Lee, and Jamie Moyer (really, you can do this all day) all went one-and-done. But then again, Buehrle has managed to hang on for at least four years. Maybe we can split the difference on Colon, and he’ll join Orel Hershiser and Tim Hudson in the two-and-through group? We’ll see. </p>
<p id="ItRm7r">So how do the returning candidates slot into this? I think Helton is basically assured, barring any last-minute disasters. I also think Wagner is set up well for 2024; the crowded ballot might hurt his potential for a big gain, but since he only needs about 7% and enters the cycle as the returning runner-up, I think he can pull it off. So, my too-early prediction for next year is that the 2024 class is Beltre, Helton, and Wagner, with Wagner and Mauer the two to watch most closely in the next iteration of the Ballot Tracker. </p>
<p id="7DOYmD">Andruw Jones will be trying to cross the 60% mark (which shouldn’t be hard to do from 58%) and set himself up for induction in either 2025 or 2026. If he pulls that off, he would break Rolen’s record for lowest total for an eventual-BBWAA-inductee, having started on that same 2018 ballot at just 7.3%. </p>
<p id="vpv6Ij">After him, I’m kind of shocked Gary Sheffield managed to pick up nearly 15% this election, especially given that he was completely stagnant last year? I don’t think much will come of it, given that he only has one more try and 20% to make up, not even getting into the fact that he hasn’t reached the 66% barrier that seemed to kill Bonds and Clemens’ chances. But if you asked me ten years ago which steroid-linked player would have the best Hall of Fame showing outside of those two, Sheffield probably wouldn’t have been my guess. I can’t even begin to guess whether that will hold up once he gets to the Veterans Committee. </p>
<p id="oJOVw5">Beltrán is another semi-wild card. Voters seem to have reacted negatively to his role in the sign stealing debacle, given that he was being described as a likely Hall of Famer when he retired. However, there’s a wide range of possibilities for what happens next. Stagnating would be rough, but we might also see something like what happened with Roberto Alomar; voters held back to deny him a first-ballot election, but he picked up nearly 17% on his second try. Something like that would land Beltrán around where Jones is now on his second try, with a pretty straightforward road to Cooperstown. Or you might see something like Fergie Jenkins or Gaylord Perry, both of whom took 3 tries (with Jenkins picking up ~10% per year and Perry closer to 5%), which would put him somewhere in the 5-to-7-ballot range. Or maybe he even outdoes Alomar, since there are more voters he can flip in year two? That one seems unlikely, but either way, he’ll be one to watch. </p>
<p id="9gqfUd">2025 will be another rough ballot, with Ichiro Suzuki and CC Sabathia headlining and a whole bunch of other interesting candidates joining the margins (including Dustin Pedroia, Ian Kinsler, Félix Hernández, and Troy Tulowitzki, among others). Maybe Andruw can swing an induction by then, but if not, he and any other holdovers (some mix of Mauer/Beltrán/Utley/Sabathia, I’d bet) should have an easier time come 2026, which has an even weaker class of candidates than this year (Cole Hamels? Ryan Braun?). Expect more clean up at the top of the ballot, plus if any of the players in the 10%-20% range this year (or any of the also-rans from the 2024 and 2025 classes) are still hanging on by then, this will probably be their best opportunity to make some noise. At this point, nothing is impossible.</p>
<p id="LLUzRB">I’m going to stop there because it already feels pretty far out, but if you want to talk about the 2027 ballot in the comments (Buster Posey, Jon Lester), godspeed to you. </p>
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https://www.crawfishboxes.com/2023/1/25/23570565/scott-rolen-snags-a-hall-of-fame-plaque-plus-a-breakdown-of-the-rest-of-the-resultsTheo Gerome2023-01-20T08:30:47-06:002023-01-20T08:30:47-06:00Previewing Next Week’s Hall of Fame Announcements
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<img alt="Divisional Series - Tampa Bay Rays v Houston Astros - Game Two" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/6NvhGQxu68xwpGhsfuKkGSzMdhM=/0x32:2929x1985/1310x873/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/71887284/1179267251.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Billy Wagner is one of three players over 70% among early Hall Voters | Photo by Bob Levey/Getty Images</figcaption>
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<p>Scott Rolen, Todd Helton, and Billy Wagner all have the early vote numbers, but what do their chances at induction this year actually look like?</p> <p id="MwbAz4">We are less than a week from learning the results of the 2023 Hall of Fame election; the official announcement is next Tuesday at 6 PM Eastern Time. Voters have continued revealing their ballots, and the <a href="http://tracker.fyi">Ballot Tracker</a> team has continued tabulating the early releases, so where do we stand now, since the last time I talked about this <a href="https://www.hotcornerharbor.com/2023/01/Scott-Rolen-Hall-of-Fame-voting-2023.html">just over two weeks ago</a>?</p>
<p id="sCTwAy">Well… mostly in the same place. The candidates are basically still in the same order.Their vote percentages are generally close to where they were. And at the top, even when there is minor fluctuation, it’s stable; Scott Rolen and Todd Helton are basically +10% and +22% over where they were in 2022, <a href="https://twitter.com/NotMrTibbs/status/1614812599711076352">moving up and down at basically the same times</a>. </p>
<p id="hYYX09">So basically, we don’t have that much more information than we did two weeks ago. Ballot reveals have kind of slowed down, and likely won’t pick up again until right before the announcement. At the moment, it’s difficult to imagine Rolen and Helton <em>not </em>finishing pre-release around 80%, which has historically been a good indicator for election. Except that both of them (Rolen in particular) are especially vulnerable to the whims of the remaining unknown ballots, which is why <a href="https://twitter.com/ShutTheDore/status/1614824412624343041">most</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/sarsdell/status/1615132697265074176">projections</a> have them teetering right around that 75% cutoff point for induction. </p>
<p id="mSzrEb">See, for those of you who didn’t read my last breakdown, one of the ways that we can look at the Hall of Fame voting nowadays is by when we learn of their ballots. Of the 400 or so voters in the BBWAA pool each year, a little over half will reveal who they voted for at any point prior to the results. Another 30% will reveal who they voted for, but not before the official results are revealed, and the remaining just-under-20% will never say. Generally, that’s also the order for how stingy each group of voters is; players will see their overall percentage of yeses decrease from early voters to late voters to private voters.</p>
<p id="wQ8uIc">And it’s also what’s making predicting these two so hard; they’re incredibly dependent on late and especially private voters. The late public voters are a little less of an issue; it’s not unreasonable to expect them to generally follow along with the early ones. Helton has had the two finish close together in his four years on the ballot (last year was the biggest gap, with him performing 7.1% better with early voters). </p>
<p id="RqIBx3">Rolen, meanwhile, hasn’t seen the two groups finish that close, but they are usually at least correlated. In fact, a small sample size disclaimer applies, but his late vote gains each year look like his early vote gains from the year prior (so he’ll gain 10 percent in early voting from Year 1 to Year 2, then 10 percent in late voting from Year 2 to Year 3). By that logic, he should see just over a 10% gain among late voters this year. </p>
<p id="uqv9hG">The private votes don’t generally line up that well, in either case. Neither player has ever gone <em>down </em>among private voters, but both of them have also seen their year-to-year percentages increase anywhere from less than 2% to over 21%. If we’re trying to forecast a full fifth of the vote, that’s a wide window to use, considering we have basically no other information to go off of.</p>
<p id="KgmHxw">Just to help myself visualize what each player is facing, I ended up building an easy calculator, built around combining the different percentages among these groups. We’re assuming that each subset remains at the same percentage of the whole that they were at for simplicity’s sake, but of course that can change slightly if a few private voters abstain or if a number of new voters swell the early ballot rates. I just wanted a quick way to see what the situation looked like. </p>
<p id="3BTzx4">For example, if Scott can manage a 10% increase in each of the three subsets, he lands at 73.10%. Even if you want to bump up his late-public vote to match his early-public rate, he still doesn’t quite make it (74.27%). If you raise his early voter rate to 82.2%, right around the highest that he’s tracked at? That’s still only a 74.79% result.</p>
<p id="HWi6jm">Basically, if you want to see Rolen in Cooperstown this year, he has to come close to 50% among private voters. If you give him good public numbers among both early and late voters, he can make it in while only hitting about 48% on private ballots, but that’s probably as low as he can go. Like I said last time, it’s really rare to see this size of split among private and public voters, but there is still hope. Of course, as I mentioned earlier, Rolen has improved as much as 21% among unrevealed votes; <em>that </em>type of improvement would get him to about 55% and certainly put him over the line. </p>
<p id="cyxhEN">Granted, if our less outgoing voters have something against Rolen’s candidacy specifically, it’ll be an issue to rise that much, but as of right now, I don’t see a reason to jump to that conclusion. Maybe if he stagnates there for another year, but let’s wait for that to happen before we consider that a possibility, let alone state it as a fact. Especially given that we have another confounding variable in the form of Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa, and Curt Schilling all leaving the ballot and presumably freeing up a lot of space for votes. </p>
<p id="1Y61Ml">One other thing that I wanted to consider was momentum; it actually matters in Hall voting, as some number of voters will be persuaded as their colleagues start voting for a player en masse. It’s a big part of how some candidates will build to 75% over a number of years, really. I looked at some of those players in recent memory, then highlighted the years where the eventual-inductee hit 50% and 60% overall to see if that led to larger gains later. </p>
<p id="SoTYEv">My list here was non-first ballot inductees, so Larry Walker, Edgar Martinez, Mike Mussina, Vladimir Guerrero, Trevor Hoffman, Jeff Bagwell, Tim Raines, Mike Piazza, and Craig Biggio. Obviously, Rolen looks more like some of these players than others, but we already don’t have a large data set to go off of, so I kept all of them. </p>
<p id="96gAZz">There are a lot of asterisks here that make it difficult to draw any hard and fast conclusions. For instance, the 2013 ballot (and the few after it) were crowded in a way that made it harder to pick up votes, which is fundamentally just not going to be an issue this year. And the pool of total voters has shrunk over that time, as the BBWAA cleaned its rank of inactive writers. <a href="http://tracker.fyi">Ryan Thibodaux’s ballot tracker</a> was only started in 2013, so I wasn’t always able to separate out late revealed ballots; seasons prior to that just had private and public votes, with no need to differentiate between pre- and post-announcement votes. Raines, Walker, and Martinez all faced additional haste in their cases, being that it took them the full ten times to be elected (Rolen is currently only on attempt six).</p>
<p id="TdOTe7">With all of that said… There were some things I noticed. Most prominently, not every candidate saw a ton of private voters convert to their cause after they passed the 50% mark (the situation Rolen found himself in last year). Some of them did, but not all. <em>However</em>, hitting the 60% mark pretty frequently preceded a big jump among private ballots. This has especially held true the further away from the 2013-15 extreme logjam you get. Martinez, Bagwell, and Raines each flipped over 20% (as did Walker, who only passed 60% on his final ballot), Mussina gained ~14%, and even Guerrero went up nearly 17.5% despite starting at an already-overwhelming 71.1 %. </p>
<p id="BROuVl">It will also be interesting to see how Helton plays out in comparison; sure, he only hit the 50% mark overall last year, rather than the 60% one. But that doesn’t necessarily <em>rule out </em>the chance of a jump among the group, either; we are dealing with a small and inconsistent data set after all, plus there’s all that freed-up ballot space. Another X-factor here is that Helton <a href="https://twitter.com/NotMrTibbs/status/1615744202255798272">is already posting one of the biggest single-year increases since ballot tracking began</a>, sitting at +28 net votes; if that carries through to late voters, there’s even a chance he passes Rolen, given that he finished about 7 points better than the third baseman with private voters last year. </p>
<p id="xOzJw6">Of course, it might also indicate that he’s just already flipped the easiest pick-ups among late and secret ballots, and he’ll struggle this year (before picking up more votes next year after he inevitably cruises past 60% overall on this ballot). Plus, we don’t know for sure that the early vote will correlate to the other two groups; I think they’ll all increase a decent amount, but we definitely can’t count on historic gains with both of them. Either way, his case looks a lot more standard than Rolen’s given his more even distribution, and his chances of making it in this year aren’t out the window yet (not even getting into that he has five more tries after 2023). And if he does pull off that 22% increase among all of them? It gets him over 74% overall, just a smidge short for next year.</p>
<p id="Dx1Rwd">Billy Wagner might also prove an interesting case. He also only hit the 50% mark last season, but he has a number of things in his favor: the aforementioned emptier ballot; the fact that he’s also flipping a lot of former-nos (he’s just behind Helton, at +26) and is already trending over 70% on early voting; the fact that he actually did better with post-announcement votes than early voters last year; the fact that closers have traditionally done pretty well among private voters… I don’t think this is his year, but I think it’s basically guaranteed he passes the 60% overall mark this year, with an outside chance at passing 70%. And while he has fewer chances left after 2023 than Helton, picking up 10% of the vote in 2 years while everyone ahead of you gets voted in is not a bad place for a Hall of Fame candidate to be.</p>
<p id="6g3qVJ">After them are Andruw Jones and Gary Sheffield, and while their cases are interesting, this article has run pretty long and I can’t imagine either of them passing the top three, so we’ll put their discussion on hold until we have results next week. Sixth place Carlos Beltrán is probably the more interesting one, given that he’s a unique case on his first ballot and we have even more unknowns. A 56.3% rate among early voters is not a bad place to be, but we’ll see if late and private voters are harsher or more lenient towards him, and by how much. Either way, even in a worst-case scenario, it’ll be hard for him to drop below 40% overall, and that’s not a bad place to be your first time around.</p>
<p id="mFdzWp">For as slow as the last few weeks have been, things should pick up again before Tuesday. As we get closer to the big day, ballot drops should resume, so we might get a lot of new information leading up to the big moment of truth. I can’t guarantee that I’ll have the time to write something else before then, but hopefully, I’ve laid out enough of the possibilities that you’ll be able to follow along yourself as more news comes in. </p>
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https://www.crawfishboxes.com/2023/1/20/23563626/previewing-next-weeks-hall-of-fame-announcementsTheo Gerome2022-12-03T11:40:54-06:002022-12-03T11:40:54-06:00Previewing the 2023 Veterans Committee Announcement
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<img alt="MLB: Kansas City Royals at Houston Astros" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/E76RAhfv1RAeWUrxLP_2mlzeT70=/0x0:3839x2559/1310x873/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/71705349/usa_today_9245724.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Former Astro Roger Clemens is among the eight players getting another shot at Cooperstown | Troy Taormina-USA TODAY Sports</figcaption>
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<p>The first part of annual Hall of Fame voting takes place this Sunday! Here’s how things are shaping up:</p> <p id="TbKthx">This Sunday, the Hall of Fame’s <a href="https://www.hotcornerharbor.com/search/label/Veterans%20Committee">most complicated institution</a>, the Veterans Committee, will once again convene and decide if they’ll be sending any players to the Cooperstown stage in 2023 to accompany… still to-be-determined (but probably Scott Rolen and <em>maaaybe </em>some combination of Billy Wagner, Todd Helton, or Carlos Beltran). The ballot is eight players this time rather than the ten-to-twelve it’s been lately, for some reason or other (<a href="https://www.hotcornerharbor.com/2022/04/veterans-committee-new-rules-2022.html">maybe related to that bizarre rule change from back in April that slipped under most people’s radar?</a>). The best argument I can muster for that is that a smaller ballot would reduce the competition and might help cut down on the kind of vote splitting that likely kept Dick Allen out in 2022, except that the vote limit was also lowered from four names per voter to just three, so at least some of that benefit is being immediately lost.</p>
<p id="YP4TLc">Whatever, confusing moves is the norm for the VC. As usual, candidates will need 12 out of 16 votes to get elected to Cooperstown, with the voting body actually meeting to discuss things before they vote. We’ll see if they use that to try and match their votes up again (which is almost certainly why their last meeting produced so many inductees). Our eight nominees this time are:</p>
<p id="XvgeWN">Albert Belle, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Don Mattingly, Fred McGriff, Dale Murphy, Rafael Palmeiro, Curt Schilling</p>
<p id="8h9s8b">I’ve written about all of their cases over the years, and given that none of them has played in a Major League game in the last fifteen years, their stats haven’t really changed. You might even have a pretty good idea of them yourself! To give a quick summary, though: Belle and Mattingly probably fall a little short, McGriff and Murphy are right around where I tend to see as the Hall’s borderline (with McGriff just over it and Murphy probably just under it, but close enough that I wouldn’t be mad if he made it), and the other four all clearly over the line statistically but here for non-playing reasons (which I generally tend to view as less of a deal-breaker than most voters, although I also acknowledge it’s a complex subject that can vary player-to-player).</p>
<p id="86PepC">The more interesting thing for Hall voting, especially on Veterans Committee ballots, where so many of the players have been so extensively covered, is to try and break down the various forces pushing them towards or away from induction. Momentum may only be as good as next day’s pitcher in-game, but it’s a very real phenomenon when it comes to Hall of Fame voting (among other factors).</p>
<p id="TmZglp">And to that end, we also know the sixteen-person voting body for this year, comprised of Hall of Fame players, baseball executives, and a few writers and historians. The 2022-23 electorate will be: </p>
<p id="WWVP07">Chipper Jones, Greg Maddux, Jack Morris, Ryne Sandberg, Lee Smith, Frank Thomas, Alan Trammell, Paul Beeston, Theo Epstein, Arte Moreno, Kim Ng, Dave St. Peter, Ken Williams, Steve Hirdt, LaVelle Neal, Susan Slusser</p>
<p id="mxGsF5">So, let’s start with the writers, since we actually know how they’ve voted in the past. Well, two of them, at least; Hirdt has never released his BBWAA ballots publicly, although he does have a vote. Neal and Slusser have voted for Bonds, Clemens, and Schilling before (and they went 5 for 6 in their final appearance last year, with Slusser dropping Schilling and Jeff Kent after 2021 to make room for new arrivals David Ortiz and Alex Rodriguez). I couldn’t find any evidence of either of them voting for Mattingly, McGriff, Murphy, or Palmeiro, although their final ballots were exceptionally crowded, so they might have run out of space (and Belle pre-dated the ballot tracker entirely).</p>
<p id="CS75EM">While we’re talking about past voting, it’s probably worth mentioning how all of these candidates did on their BBWAA ballots. All of them but Palmeiro and Belle maxed out their years on the ballots. Bonds, Clemens, and Schilling all peaked at over two-thirds of the vote, with Schilling reaching up to 71% at his best. McGriff had the next-best finish, topping the 40% mark, while Murphy and Mattingly peaked in the 20-30% range, and Palmeiro and Belle topping out at 12.6% and 7.7% before eventually dropping below 5%. </p>
<p id="Q1ew6a">Also, Mattingly, Murphy, and Belle actually have prior Veterans Committee results, unlike the other five first-timers. None of the results have been that strong, though; according to Adam Darowski and Graham Womack’s <a href="http://www.darowski.com/vets/">VC Ballot Results Tool</a>, none of them has fallen above the reporting threshold, with Belle falling in the “less than five votes” bucket in 2017 and 2019 and Mattingly and Murphy coming in at “less than seven” and “less than four” in 2018 and 2020, respectively. All of that definitely points to the idea that the momentum is on the side of the newcomers. </p>
<p id="WwzAh4">Actually, that last factoid is worth another look. Belle is a weird choice, but maybe he has some hidden momentum; on his last ballot, the only candidates who did well enough to have their vote totals reported were Lee Smith, Harold Baines, and Lou Piniella; the former two were inducted, and Piniella has been exiled to the new non-players ballot. I’d rather discuss Orel Hershier or Will Clark or Mark McGwire or any number of other players who didn’t make that ballot, since I think Belle is pretty clearly short and the others are just better candidates, but maybe the voters are on a different page and see something that I don’t. I generally doubt it, but it is still a possibility.</p>
<p id="MVSqya">But Murphy and Mattingly seem pretty baffling? We know at least six names finished better than them on their previous ballots, and while some of them have been inducted (Ted Simmons, Marvin Miller) or shuffled to other ballots due to the new rules (Dave Parker, Steve Garvey), that wasn’t the case for Dwight Evans and Lou Whitaker. Both debuted on the 2020 ballot after being completely overlooked on the BBWAA ballots (Evans fell off after three years, Whitaker went one-and-done), and they did very well! Evans got eight votes and finished third behind two inductees, while Whitaker got six votes. Those are strong first go-arounds!</p>
<p id="NSYYL9">But for some reason, neither made it this year. Instead of seeing if these two can build off their first real Hall discussion, we get the third appearance in five years of two guys who sat on the ballot for fifteen years before that, all while never really seeing their support grow. This might have been an especially great year for Whitaker, too, given his two long-time teammates who are actually voting this time. </p>
<p id="19iyMm">That seems like a good segue to our next question: who else might this voter body benefit? The most obvious answer is Fred McGriff. I’ve long held the opinion that McGriff is the ideal Veterans Committee candidate, the type of resume that would play especially well with their type of voters even if the BBWAA didn’t bite, but the group somehow tilts things to his corner even more.</p>
<p id="k7obwJ">Just to start, you have the obvious overlap in careers from his time in Atlanta with Chipper Jones and Greg Maddux. McGriff arrived in Atlanta mid-1993, the same season Maddux signed with them and the first time Chipper was called up (albeit briefly). All three were on the championship 1995 squad as well. On top of that, Paul Beeston was a part of the Toronto front office when they acquired McGriff from the Yankees as a prospect. I’m not saying that these connections mean that any of them will fail to remain impartial here as voters (shoot, I don’t even know if they like the guy personally; I don’t know them); it’s just worth noting that personal relations like that have played into VC elections in the past, especially since part of the process is voters discussing and advocating for their choices.</p>
<p id="ChyIik">Outside of McGriff, there are a few other connections as well. Beeston also signed Roger Clemens as President of the Blue Jays. Theo Epstein notably brought Curt Schilling to Boston. Slusser is a long-time Bay Area writer, dating back to Bonds’ time in San Francisco. Rafael Palmeiro debuted on the Cubs the same year as Maddux, with Sandberg and Smith already on the roster (although I’ve seen some rumors that his trade to Texas after three seasons was in part due to issues with Sandberg?). I’m mostly working off memory, so I might be missing some (especially less notable connections). Again, nothing is guaranteed for any of these, but it is something to keep in mind.</p>
<p id="Hnfw6e">Another angle to think about is steroids, since it affects a full half of the ballot. Again, it doesn’t seem to bother Slusser or Neal enough to completely scare them off, based on their prior votes for Bonds and Clemens, but I can’t find anything from Hirdt. Sandberg, Thomas, and Morris have all been vocal about steroid users in the past, though, and in a system where ballot spots are tight you can only miss four times… I wouldn’t be shocked if the steroid candidates miss out once again. </p>
<p id="XpmNK9">One final element that I checked was head-to-head performance against the voting players; maybe they’ll consider voting for a candidate if they struggled badly against them. A lot of the results were rather unremarkable. The things that stood out most were Barry Bonds dominating (especially Greg Maddux, his most frequent foe) as usual, although who knows how much it will help him given the rest of his case; and Fred McGriff doing pretty well against Morris and Maddux. Nothing especially dominant, but given that I think he’ll be pretty close to the line… maybe keep an eye out. </p>
<p id="BWekTI">The Veterans Committee really is kind of its own unique beast, and no one can ever know for certain what they’ll do until they do it… but if I <em>had </em>to make a guess, this really seems like Fred McGriff’s year. I’ve said that he looked like a VC-kind of pick anyway, and every other bit of evidence seems to be lining up in his favor. I don’t think any other player on the ballot has as much in their favor, plus the lower vote limit will make it even harder to get more players in, so the two most likely outcomes are probably “Only Fred McGriff” and “No one, with McGriff as the closest miss” (and likely well-positioned to make it his next time around). </p>
<p id="PW9UcJ">If the voters <em>really </em>plan around their tighter limits, I think they could add Curt Schilling <strong>or</strong> the set of Bonds and Clemens (I’m not really sure how you separate those two), but getting all four of them will be incredibly difficult. And that’s not even getting into how all three of them will have the same issues they ran into on the BBWAA; I still wouldn’t put either scenario over the “Only McGriff” or “No one, McGriff Leading” proposals. In any case, we should know by the end of the weekend. Happy Hall Season, everyone!</p>
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https://www.crawfishboxes.com/2022/12/3/23491122/previewing-2023-veterans-committee-hall-of-fameTheo Gerome2022-01-26T15:00:00-06:002022-01-26T15:00:00-06:00David Ortiz is the BBWAA’s Lone 2022 Inductee, but Several More Poised to Follow
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<figcaption>Photo by Elsa/Getty Images</figcaption>
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<p>Only David Ortiz met the threshold for induction this year, but the outlook is bright for some who fell short. </p> <p id="FllYxn">On Tuesday, we finally got the final part of the Class of 2022 for the Hall of Fame. On his first ballot, <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/search/search.fcgi?pid=ortizda01,ortiz-003dav&search=David+Ortiz&utm_campaign=Linker&utm_source=direct&utm_medium=linker-">David Ortiz</a> reached induction, appearing on just shy of 78% of ballots.</p>
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<figcaption>Official 2022 results from the BBWAA</figcaption>
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<p id="cevg5J">I have a variety of thoughts on Ortiz’s induction, and they’re pretty much all positive. I don’t know that you could tell the story of baseball in the 2000s without mentioning David Ortiz. His bat was fantastic, but he was also a key fixture of the postseason, and a huge personality within the game. You could probably say he wasn’t the best player on the ballot this year, but as I’ve said in the past, I’ve largely given up on caring about the order candidates go into Cooperstown; as long as they’re deserving, it’s fine.</p>
<p id="BUOGa2">Really, if I have any comments, it’s that I was a little surprised that BBWAA writers were willing to put him in without waiting. I figured that his status as a pure DH might scare off some first-time voters, but after seeing the love he got from writers the last few years and his early returns on Ryan Thibodaux’s <a href="http://bit.ly/hof2022">Ballot Tracker</a>, I adjusted my expectations (I’m learning, following my shock at <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/g/guerrvl01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&utm_source=direct&utm_medium=linker-">Vladimir Guerrero</a>’s strong debut a few years ago; I really thought he would be another guy who would have to claw his way in).</p>
<p id="S0luYn">Ortiz will be joining <a href="https://www.hotcornerharbor.com/2021/12/2022-hall-of-fame-election-veterans-committee.html">the six Veterans Committee inductees announced back in December</a>, <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/o/olivato01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&utm_source=direct&utm_medium=linker-">Tony Oliva</a>, <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/k/kaatji01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&utm_source=direct&utm_medium=linker-">Jim Kaat</a>, <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/m/minosmi01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&utm_source=direct&utm_medium=linker-">Minnie Miñoso</a>, <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/h/hodgegi01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&utm_source=direct&utm_medium=linker-">Gil Hodges</a>, <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/o/oneilbu01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&utm_source=direct&utm_medium=linker-">Buck O’Neil</a>, and <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/f/fowlebu99.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&utm_source=direct&utm_medium=linker-">Bud Fowler</a>. And of course, if you were here the other day for <a href="https://www.hotcornerharbor.com/2022/01/new-sporcle-quiz-hall-of-famers-by.html">the launch of my latest Sporcle quiz</a>, <a href="https://www.sporcle.com/games/piano_guitar/mlb-hall-of-famer-by-place-of-birth">Hall of Famers by Birthplace</a>, I’ve updated that as well.</p>
<p id="ZTh7dH">So what of the rest of the ballot? <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/b/bondsba01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&utm_source=direct&utm_medium=linker-">Barry Bonds</a> and <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/c/clemero02.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&utm_source=direct&utm_medium=linker-">Roger Clemens</a> saw their percentages take their largest leaps in years, landing right around two-thirds of the vote. If they still had fifteen years on the ballot, they might have made it; they’ve been trending upwards with newer voters, and I imagine that would only continue. Unfortunately, thanks to the rule change from a few years ago, this was their final go-around on the BBWAA ballot.</p>
<p id="myGzv6">However, nothing ever really ends in Hall of Fame debates. They’ll be eligible for the “Today’s Game” ballot of the Veterans Committee starting this December. Their upwards trend with newer voters probably won’t mean much there; I imagine that group will be voters on the older side of things. And this isn’t even getting into the fact that the Hall seems to have much more direct control over that voting body; I wouldn’t be shocked if they don’t even make the official ten-person ballot, as awkward as that’s going to look for them.</p>
<p id="GG6aw9"><a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/s/sosasa01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&utm_source=direct&utm_medium=linker-">Sammy Sosa</a> and <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/s/schilcu01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&utm_source=direct&utm_medium=linker-">Curt Schilling</a> also aged off the ballot. Between those four, plus <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/p/palmera01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&utm_source=direct&utm_medium=linker-">Rafael Palmeiro</a>, <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/search/search.fcgi?pid=brownke01,brownke04,brownke03,brown-013kev&search=Kevin+Brown&utm_campaign=Linker&utm_source=direct&utm_medium=linker-">Kevin Brown</a>, and <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/l/loftoke01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&utm_source=direct&utm_medium=linker-">Kenny Lofton</a> (all of whom are VC-eligible for the first time as of this December, I believe), things might get crowded on the ten-person ballot… which is probably why we won’t see most of them. And I don’t even want to know how having even one or two players cuts into everyone else’s vote totals, given how tight the budget of votes is in the process. Either way, I’m excited to see the gradual progress the Veterans Committee has made over the last few years suddenly slam to halt! Or maybe I’m being too pessimistic.</p>
<p id="pMuLGI">Let’s move on to more encouraging developments. <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/r/rolensc01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&utm_source=direct&utm_medium=linker-">Scott Rolen</a> was once again the biggest winner of the non-inducted set, seeing his percentage jump by double-digits for the third year. Sure, his 10.3-point increase is smaller than his last two years, but this was also a stronger debut class than the last few years (at least, just going by the number of first-year candidates getting votes). He’s just 11.8% shy of induction, and given that the 2023 debuts look closer to the 2020-21 classes than this year (plus there will be a lot more room on the ballots, given all of the names aging off)… there’s a very real chance he’s inducted next year.</p>
<p id="VCDgFZ">Continuing down the ballot, <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/h/heltoto01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&utm_source=direct&utm_medium=linker-">Todd Helton</a> jumped past <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/w/wagnebi02.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&utm_source=direct&utm_medium=linker-">Billy Wagner</a>, and will be going into the 2023 election as the returning runner-up. Like Rolen, his pick-up wasn’t as big as the last two seasons (just 7.1%), but it was still good enough to tie for the second-biggest pick-up this year, and it got him past the 50% mark. Historically, that’s been a very good indicator for future candidate induction. 23% is probably a little much to make up in one year, so we’ll likely be waiting until 2024 or beyond… although again, we’re going to be seeing pretty unprecedented clearing of ballot spaces next year in a weak debut class, so weird things may happen.</p>
<p id="GlpLHK">After him, Billy Wagner also passed that 50% line in his seventh try; he now has three more tries to pick up 24% of the vote. For some perspective, three years ago, he was only getting 16.7%. I think it’s pretty likely he gets in on the BBWAA ballot now, especially once you factor in that players in their final year usually get an extra boost from voters, on top of what they normally get from trends. That will hopefully be enough to cancel out any crowding from stronger debut classes.</p>
<p id="kKcSti">10% after Wagner, we have <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/j/jonesan01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&utm_source=direct&utm_medium=linker-">Andruw Jones</a>, who passed <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/s/sheffga01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&utm_source=direct&utm_medium=linker-">Gary Sheffield</a> and tied Helton for the second-biggest gain of the year. He’s about 34% shy of induction, which is coincidentally almost exactly what he’s picked up over the last three seasons. Of course, Jones is only in his fifth ballot appearance, so he even has some wiggle room there. Again, I feel extremely confident that his case continues to build to an eventual induction.</p>
<p id="OUvVFu">Everything after that is a much more open question. Gary Sheffield didn’t make up any ground in try number eight, even ignoring that he likely has a ceiling somewhere around where Bonds and Clemens topped out. <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/search/search.fcgi?pid=rodrial01,rodrig021ale,rodrig023ale,rodrig034ale,rodrig031ale,rodrig026ale,rodrig029ale&search=Alex+Rodriguez&utm_campaign=Linker&utm_source=direct&utm_medium=linker-">Alex Rodriguez</a> debuted at 34.3%, which is coincidentally right around where Bonds and Clemens started out. <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/k/kentje01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&utm_source=direct&utm_medium=linker-">Jeff Kent</a> and <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/r/ramirma02.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&utm_source=direct&utm_medium=linker-">Manny Ramírez</a> both gained less than a single percent in attempts number nine and six, respectively; I imagine Kent at least will eventually go in front of a much more receptive Veterans Committee. And <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/v/vizquom01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&utm_source=direct&utm_medium=linker-">Omar Vizquel</a> saw one of the biggest single-year voting drops in history (-25.1%), following a year of reports on his horrendous behavior (including <a href="https://go.redirectingat.com?id=66960X1516590&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Ftheathletic.com%2F2254716%2F2020%2F12%2F16%2Fomar-vizquel-domestic-abuse%2F&referrer=sbnation.com&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.crawfishboxes.com%2F2022%2F1%2F26%2F22903262%2Fdavid-ortiz-is-the-bbwaas-lone-2022-inductee-but-several-more-poised-to-follow" rel="sponsored nofollow noopener" target="_blank">domestic abuse allegations from his ex-wife</a>, which MLB is still investigating; and the revelation that his firing from minor league coaching a few years ago was tied to sexual harassment of a team batboy, <a href="https://go.redirectingat.com?id=66960X1516590&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Ftheathletic.com%2F2757738%2F2021%2F08%2F07%2Fomar-vizquel-sued-for-sexual-harassment-by-former-birmingham-barons-batboy%2F&referrer=sbnation.com&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.crawfishboxes.com%2F2022%2F1%2F26%2F22903262%2Fdavid-ortiz-is-the-bbwaas-lone-2022-inductee-but-several-more-poised-to-follow" rel="sponsored nofollow noopener" target="_blank">which Vizquel and the Birmingham Barons are still facing a lawsuit over</a>).</p>
<p id="RnVbiG">And then, we have the bottom of the ballot. <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/p/pettian01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&utm_source=direct&utm_medium=linker-">Andy Pettitte</a> dropped 3% of the vote, landing around 10%. <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/r/rolliji01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&utm_source=direct&utm_medium=linker-">Jimmy Rollins</a> debuted at 9.4%, which is honestly better than I expected on a still relatively-crowded ballot. I expect he’ll hang around a few more years. <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/a/abreubo01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&utm_source=direct&utm_medium=linker-">Bobby Abreu</a> remained relatively stagnant as well; it’s probably not a great sign that Rollins passed him on his first try, but who knows, maybe he’ll pick up more votes next year from big-Hall voters having more room.</p>
<p id="BxDqwU"><a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/b/buehrma01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&utm_source=direct&utm_medium=linker-">Mark Buehrle</a> and <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/h/hunteto01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&utm_source=direct&utm_medium=linker-">Torii Hunter</a> just finished above the 5% threshold, ensuring they’ll see a third year on the ballot. Meanwhile, <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/h/hudsoti01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&utm_source=direct&utm_medium=linker-">Tim Hudson</a> lost 2% and fell off in his second year, and <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/n/nathajo01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&utm_source=direct&utm_medium=linker-">Joe Nathan</a> didn’t quite make it to the line in his first try. <a href="https://www.hotcornerharbor.com/2020/12/hall-of-fame-pitchers-pettitte-buehrle-hudson.html">I’ve written about Hudson in the past</a>, and it’s a shame he won’t be back. Meanwhile, I’m a little more indifferent to closers in Hall voting at this point, and I don’t know that Nathan is an egregious miss. On the other hand, there’s a reasonable argument he’s the best non-Wagner closer not in the Hall right now, and a 45% difference between them like we see in the voting seems extreme. But back on the first hand, there is still a ballot crunch, and using two of your ten spots on closers with this many good options feels like a hard sell. I don’t know what to make of all that.</p>
<p id="rTseQj">Either way, no one below those two will be back next year. Speaking of, as I mentioned, it’s a weaker ballot. <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/b/beltrca01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&utm_source=direct&utm_medium=linker-">Carlos Beltran</a> leads first-time names, and like I said last time, I really don’t know what to expect. His numbers are obviously, but I have no idea how voters will treat him after the Astros’ sign-stealing scandal. My guess is that if it affects voters’ opinions at all, it will be closer to the one-year penalty <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/a/alomaro01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&utm_source=direct&utm_medium=linker-">Roberto Alomar</a> endured than the indefinite purgatory that Bonds and Clemens have seen, but I also don’t really have anything to go off of at this point other than a gut reaction.</p>
<p id="pMH0eM">After him, there are a few interesting names, but nobody I expect to see serious traction (<a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/l/lackejo01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&utm_source=direct&utm_medium=linker-">John Lackey</a>, <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/w/werthja01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&utm_source=direct&utm_medium=linker-">Jayson Werth</a>, <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/w/weaveje02.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&utm_source=direct&utm_medium=linker-">Jered Weaver</a>, etc.). I’m curious if that, plus all of the spots opened up by Bonds/Clemens/Schilling/Sosa leaving, leads to large gains up and down the ballot, even for cases that likely ultimately fall short (like Sheffield and A-Rod).</p>
<p id="N6sTtp">2024 is the much busier year, with <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/b/beltrad01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&utm_source=direct&utm_medium=linker-">Adrian Beltre</a> at the head as the likely first-ballot choice. <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/m/mauerjo01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&utm_source=direct&utm_medium=linker-">Joe Mauer</a> will also get a lot of support, and should be inducted eventually, but catchers have notoriously generally not been first-ballot elections. <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/u/utleych01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&utm_source=direct&utm_medium=linker-">Chase Utley</a> is also there, and while he should be a Hall of Famer someday, he’s so underrated by large swaths of the baseball press that I wouldn’t be shocked if he lands somewhere in the low 20s for a few years (maybe even lower). <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/w/wrighda03.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&utm_source=direct&utm_medium=linker-">David Wright</a> is an interesting might-have-been, and might make it to a second ballot. Given all of those names, plus the relative lack of age-outs in 2023 (only Jeff Kent), I wouldn’t be shocked if the backlog candidates see smaller gains, more akin to what they got this year.</p>
<p id="jSchb5">And 2025 will likely be more of the same, with <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/s/suzukic01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&utm_source=direct&utm_medium=linker-">Ichiro Suzuki</a> (easy first ballot) and <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/s/sabatc.01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&utm_source=direct&utm_medium=linker-">CC Sabathia</a> (maybe not first-ballot, but I think the writers elect him eventually) debuting alongside a few other interesting names who might pick up some votes. <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/p/pedrodu01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&utm_source=direct&utm_medium=linker-">Dustin Pedroia</a>, <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/k/kinslia01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&utm_source=direct&utm_medium=linker-">Ian Kinsler</a>, <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/h/hernafe02.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&utm_source=direct&utm_medium=linker-">Felix Hernandez</a>, <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/t/tulowtr01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&utm_source=direct&utm_medium=linker-">Troy Tulowitzki</a>, <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/m/martiru01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&utm_source=direct&utm_medium=linker-">Russell Martin</a>, <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/m/mccanbr01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&utm_source=direct&utm_medium=linker-">Brian McCann</a>, <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/z/zobribe01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&utm_source=direct&utm_medium=linker-">Ben Zobrist</a>, and <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/g/grandcu01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&utm_source=direct&utm_medium=linker-">Curtis Granderson</a> all feel like guys who should at least get something in the 5-10% range. I don’t know if I personally would induct any of them (maybe Martin and McCann? I need to think about their framing value a little more; and maybe Felix for his peak?), but they all feel like they deserve a few years of discussion?</p>
<p id="vWkeVH">Of course, that’s a lot of guys to keep around for only two or three ballots, and I wouldn’t be shocked if they all cancel out. Maybe there will be a bit of room, though, between Rolen, Helton, Beltre, and maybe some combination of Wagner (2025 will be his final year), Jones, Beltran, and Mauer going in by this point. Either way, there isn’t much in the pipeline for the year after that (<a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/h/hamelco01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&utm_source=direct&utm_medium=linker-">Cole Hamels</a>, if he can’t make a comeback? <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/g/gordoal01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&utm_source=direct&utm_medium=linker-">Alex Gordon</a>? <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/search/search.fcgi?pid=braunry02,braunry01&search=Ryan+Braun&utm_campaign=Linker&utm_source=direct&utm_medium=linker-">Ryan Braun</a>???), so it’s not like there’s a lot of pressure to clear out names at that point.</p>
<p id="HHYy2K">That will bring us to <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/p/poseybu01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&utm_source=direct&utm_medium=linker-">Buster Posey</a> and <a href="https://www.hotcornerharbor.com/2021/11/buster-poseys-retirement-accentuates.html">the players who are retiring this year</a>, which we technically don’t yet have a complete list of, so we should probably cut things off there. In the meantime, congratulations again to David Ortiz and the other 2022 inductees!</p>
<p id="IREN0a"><small>(This piece is also published and available on </small><a href="http://www.hotcornerharbor.com/2022/01/david-ortiz-is-bbwaas-lone-2022.html"><small>Hot Corner Harbor</small></a><small>.)</small></p>
https://www.crawfishboxes.com/2022/1/26/22903262/david-ortiz-is-the-bbwaas-lone-2022-inductee-but-several-more-poised-to-followTheo Gerome2021-01-27T07:01:00-06:002021-01-27T07:01:00-06:002021 Hall of Fame Results are a Shut Out
<figure>
<img alt="Divisional Series - Tampa Bay Rays v Houston Astros - Game Two" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/17w9sONNOCOmkGl4sx4ZvThmGpk=/0x107:1572x1155/1310x873/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/68726832/1179266069.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Photo by Tim Warner/Getty Images</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>No one got in this time, but things look promising for a number of players on this year’s ballot</p> <p id="22umrY">Tuesday afternoon saw the results announcement for 2021 Hall of Fame balloting, and there’s a lot to break down on this year’s ballot. Let’s jump right in.</p>
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<p id="MdBVcV">First off, no one made it in off the BBWAA ballot, the first time this has happened since 2013. That’s not terribly shocking, since no one was trending over the necessary 75% on <a href="http://bit.ly/hof2021">Ryan Thibodaux’s ballot tracking project</a>. More shocking was that fourteen writers turned in a blank ballot, which is apparently a record. This ballot was less packed than it has been the last few years, but I still think there were a number of deserving candidates on it.</p>
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<p id="w0m7wP">Leading the pack was Curt Schilling, who finished at 71.1%, just 16 votes shy of induction. That is still an improvement on 2020, when he finished at 70%, which is a little surprising when you consider that the pre-vote tracking had him <em>down </em>3 votes from 2020. In total, that means he went from 278 ballots in ’20 to 285 this year. Another year like this won’t be enough to get him over the line. Maybe he’ll get a bigger boost from it being his tenth and final year, something that does happen regularly with candidates, but refraining from spouting <a href="https://cupofcoffee.substack.com/p/cup-of-coffee-bonus-the-case-against">gross bullshit</a> for a year would probably also do enough to win him the votes he needs. Who knows if he’s capable of that, though?</p>
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<p id="KqA3rk">Another major story from the year, as it is every year, was the candidacies of Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens. 2021 also represented their penultimate chances at election, and has long been the trend, there wasn’t a lot of movement for either. Bonds finished at 61.8%, while Clemens was just below him at 61.6%.</p>
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<p id="mmsDXX">Both marks are within 2% of their 2020 finishes, which means they’ll need a little over 50 voters to flip from no to yes to make the leap. The only way that seems especially likely is if there are a number of voters who deliberately planned on waiting until their last ballot to support them. It’s more plausible that there are voters considering that strategy for them than it is for some candidates, but it still doesn’t strike me as a group with over 50 constituents. As mentioned, 2022 marks their final year on the BBWAA ballot, after which point they will officially become the hottest topic the Veterans Committee has to deal with (of course, the BBWAA won’t be <em>totally </em>relieved of controversial all-time greats at that point either, but more on that later).</p>
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<p id="XxJZY3">But the more interesting story than the top of the ballot this year was actually the middle of the ballot, which saw some substantial gains for a number of players. And not only that, but for a number of them, <a href="https://www.crawfishboxes.com/2020/1/22/21076612/2020-hall-of-fame-election-recap-and-what-to-expect-going-forward">it was the continuation of a trend from last year</a>.</p>
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<p id="Xnk6NJ">Leading the pack is Scott Rolen, who followed up last year’s 18-point jump with another 17.5-point leap to 52.9%. That repetition, combined with finally breaking the 50% mark, puts him in a very good spot; he just needs a little over 22% of the vote, and he has six-years to make up that gap, with none of the baggage that the three players above him have (not even mentioning the four extra years he has without them starting in 2023). I think right now, you can put him down for a 2023 ETA, although maybe two straight years of big jumps convinces a few more voters to check the box next year and he goes in a year earlier.</p>
<p id="2nZoYN"></p>
<p id="goSvju">Rolen made the biggest jump, but multiple other players also saw their percentages increase by double digits. Billy Wagner, in attempt number six, jumped from 31.7% to 46.4%, the third biggest leap of the day. That means that, over the last two cycles, he’s improved nearly 30 full points. In other words, in his last four years on the ballot, he just has to match his improvement over the last two years to secure a plaque. It’s not a sure thing, but with Mariano Rivera, Trevor Hoffman, and Lee Smith all in Cooperstown, there are no other closers competing with him for limited spots. I think he does it, although I wouldn’t be shocked if he’s a year or two behind Rolen.</p>
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<p id="GlJ8aj">You also have to feel pretty good about the chances for Todd Helton. In his third go around, he fell just shy of 45% of the vote, at 44.9%. That places him right between Rolen and Wagner, in terms of improvement, at a 15.7-point jump. Again, that’s a little behind Rolen, but Helton also has an extra year on the ballot. Barring any big changes, he’ll probably be going in sometime around those two.</p>
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<p id="Txi440">Gary Sheffield (40.6%) and Andruw Jones (33.9%) also had big leaps, although their cases aren’t quite as rosy as Rolen, Wagner, and Helton. Sheffield, in his seventh attempt, has seen some major improvement over the last two years (from 13.6% in 2019 to 30.5% last year to this year), but given his steroid ties, I don’t know how he gets past the ceiling that Bonds and Clemens seem stuck at. I expect he stops making leaps of this size in the next year or two, but given that I also didn’t expect him to pick up 27% in two years, I don’t know how confident I am in that prediction. Is there a big group of voters who check “No” on Bonds and Clemens but would consider Sheffield? I haven’t heard of one, but there are some pretty idiosyncratic voters, so I guess it’s possible.</p>
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<p id="OZac1z">Jones’s case, meanwhile, started from a much worse place than most of these other players. In 2018, he debuted at 7.3% of the vote, and only improved to 7.5% the next year. Granted, those were crowded ballots, but that’s still pretty low. Since then, though, he’s improved to 19.4% in 2020, and then that 33.9% mark this year. I’m not ruling his candidacy out at all, but it’s hard to see him making it in in two to three years when compared to the Rolen/Wagner/Helton trio. If Jones gets in, it’ll probably be in the last three years of his eligibility on the BBWAA ballot (or via the Veterans Committee, if that falls through for some reason). Two more years like the last two gets him to over 60%, though, and it’s hard to make that trajectory, with a few more ballots to spare after, look bad.</p>
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<p id="i7Eet9">Omar Vizquel (49.1%) is the one player in this bunch that doesn’t look good, largely due to the fact that he’s the only returning player on the ballot to see his vote total decrease from 2020 to 2021. In slipping from 52.6%, he even fell behind Rolen, who he led last year. Vizquel has always been a marginal candidate, and multiple voters likely balked at voting for him again following <a href="https://go.redirectingat.com?id=66960X1516590&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Ftheathletic.com%2F2254716%2F2020%2F12%2F16%2Fomar-vizquel-domestic-abuse%2F&referrer=sbnation.com&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.crawfishboxes.com%2F2021%2F1%2F27%2F22251629%2F2021-hall-of-fame-results-are-a-shut-out" rel="sponsored nofollow noopener" target="_blank">The Athletic’s recent reporting on his off-field issues</a> (including allegations of domestic violence against his wife, as well as separate accusations about conduct toward a coworker from his time as manager Birmingham Barons that apparently led to his early termination back in 2019). Breaking 50% is usually seen as a positive indication of future induction (whether by BBWAA vote or Veterans Committee), but Vizquel also wouldn’t be the first borderline Hall case to tank his own candidacy through poor off-the-field behavior (Steve Garvey also leaps to mind).</p>
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<p id="tTJ9WL">Moving down the list, Jeff Kent (32.4%, +4.9) improved, but not enough, given that he only has two more go-arounds. I think the VC will give him strong consideration once he ages off the ballot, but I can’t see him picking up the 40% he needs before then. Manny Ramirez (28.2%) didn’t see any change from 2020, so it could have been worse for him, I guess. The still doesn’t mean much. And Sammy Sosa’s chances (17%, +3.1) look pretty dead in the water, with only two years to go.</p>
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<p id="l6eRxG">Five other players crossed the 5% threshold needed to return on the 2022 ballot: Andy Pettitte (13.7%), Mark Buehrle (11.0%), Torii Hunter (9.5%), Bobby Abreu (8.7%), and Tim Hudson (5.2%). I <a href="https://www.hotcornerharbor.com/2020/12/hall-of-fame-pitchers-pettitte-buehrle-hudson.html">recently wrote about</a> how Pettitte, Buehrle, and Hudson deserve more consideration, and I <a href="https://www.hotcornerharbor.com/2020/01/also-posted-over-at-crawfish-boxes-were.html">had similar thoughts last year</a> about Abreu, so that’s good to see, at least, even if their chances of climbing to 75% are low. My thoughts on Hunter are a lot weaker, but it’s not like he was a bad player.</p>
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<p id="xIIXBp">In addition to all of these names, <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/awards/hof_2022.shtml">2022</a> will serve as the Hall of Fame ballot debut for Alex Rodriguez and David Ortiz, for those of you worried that Bonds and Clemens falling off the ballot would mean an end to the performance enhancing drug discussion we get each winter. It’s hard to say how they’ll do until we start seeing some early returns next winter, but my gut says “strong debut at over 50%, but not first ballot”. Meanwhile, Mark Teixeira and Jimmy Rollins will attempt to follow in Hudson, Buehrle, and Hunter’s footsteps and reach 5%.</p>
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<p id="gGuhwk">So overall, the next crop of newcomers isn’t as weak as this year’s, but it’s also not overwhelmingly strong, either. I expect another year of forward movement from this year’s big gainers, which could set the stage for another big leap in <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/awards/hof_2023.shtml">2023</a>, when Bonds, Clemens, Schilling, and Sosa all age off and are replaced by a class led by Carlos Beltran and… John Lackey, I guess? Weak ballots are good for holdovers, so I feel extra confident about Rolen, Wagner, and Helton’s chances in that stretch (as well as Andruw’s odds to set himself up for an election down the line).</p>
https://www.crawfishboxes.com/2021/1/27/22251629/2021-hall-of-fame-results-are-a-shut-outTheo Gerome