On Tuesday, January 23, the Baseball Hall of Fame will announce its next members voted in by the writers. Right now, it looks like there could be four new players inducted to go along with former manager Jim Leyland.
There are 26 players on this year’s ballot. Writers can vote for at little as zero or as many as ten. Every time I’ve done this little exercise, I aim to “vote” for the maximum. Of course, ten players won’t get in. A player needs 75% of the vote to get into the Hall of Fame.
Here is my imaginary ballot for this year along with some thoughts. The players are listed in no particular order.
- Adrian Beltre
- Alex Rodriguez
- Joe Mauer
- Carlos Beltran
- Gary Sheffield
- Andruw Jones
- Todd Helton
- Manny Ramirez
- Torii Hunter
- Chase Utley
No Pitchers
One odd thing about my ballot: there are no pitchers on it. Of the 26 on the ballot, there are only six pitchers listed, four of them starting pitchers and two of them closers. I strongly considered the two closers (more on that later) but not the starting pitchers.
Among the starters, the best is Andy Pettitte, the former Yankee southpaw who won 256 games but had a pretty mediocre ERA+ and only racked up the wins due to playing for 15 of his 18 years with the dominant Yanks. (He won five World Series.)
The other starting pitchers on the ballot:
Bartolo Colon–fun, yes, but not a Hall of Famer.
Mark Buehrle–another solid lefty, but had very similar numbers to Pettitte.
James Shields–as a Royals fan, I love the guy, but he probably won’t even garner a single vote.
Closers
Then there are the two closers on the ballot: Billy Wagner and Francisco Rodriguez. Wagner has a real shot at making it this year, his 9th on the ballot, with K-Rod, as he was known, is just above 7%. A player needs 5% of the vote or he’s dropped.
Billy Wagner: 47-40, 2.31 ERA, 187 ERA+, 0.998 WHIP, 422 saves, 903 innings pitched, 1,196 strikeouts, 27.7 bWAR, 7 All-Star teams, one Reliever of the Year Award.
Francisco Rodriguez: 52-53, 2.86 ERA, 148 ERA+, 1.155 WHIP, 437 saves, 976 innings pitched, 1,142 strikeouts, 24.2 bWAR, 6 All-Star teams, two Reliever of the Year Awards, one World Series
Why is Wagner about to make it when Rodriguez might fall out of favor completely?
Honestly, I’m asking, because it doesn’t make sense to me. I’d put Rodriguez in over Wagner. As it is, I decided to not vote for either of them. Their stats are just too similar to favor one over the other, which, I guess, cancels them out.
Philadelphia Middle Infield
Finally, another interesting comparison is between two middle-infielders who played the bulk of their careers for the Phillies and were teammates from 2003 to 2014: shortstop Jimmy Rollins and second baseman Chase Utley.
By bWAR (which is Wins Above Replacement according to Baseball-Reference, which is calculated differently than is Wins Above Replacement according to FanGraphs, i.e., fWAR), it’s clear who was the better player: Utley. His bWAR is 64.5 compared to Rollins’s 47.6.
But was Utley really that much better than Rollins, especially since he played a less important position on the diamond? It seems so. While Rollins left Utley in the dirt when it come to stolen bases (470 to 142), Utley had the superior slashline of .275/.358/.465 to Rollins’s .264/.324/.418.
They both won the 2008 World Series with the Phillies, they both made a handful of All-Star Games (Utley made six, Rollins three), they both collected at least one Silver Slugger Award, but Rollins also won the MVP in 2007 and collected four Gold Gloves. Utley never won a Gold Glove and never once finished in the Top-5 of MVP voting.
Like the aforementioned closers, I bet these two cancel each other out some in the eyes of the real voters. I give a slight edge to Utley, but in reality, neither one of them is going to make the Hall this year.
doctorjekelpresents 