Are you suggesting that Palmeiro’s Gold Glove wasn’t legitimate?!
(To be clear, I am very much joking. His Gold Glove is maybe the most hilarious post-season award of all time.)
Looking at Baseball Reference’s ranked list of players by WAR, it seems like a career WAR of around 70 to 75 is the break point for “undeniably a Hall of Famer.”
There are only 12 post-1900 players with a bWAR of 75+ who aren’t in the Hall - of them, four are still active, three have not been retired long enough to be eligible, four aren’t in due to behavior (steroids, gambling, general asshole behavior), and one – Lou Whitaker – just has not ever gotten elected.
- Barry Bonds (162.8, steroids)
- Roger Clemens (139.2, steroids)
- Albert Pujols (101.2, not yet eligible)
- Mike Trout (87.5, still active)
- Justin Verlander (81.7, still active)
- Clayton Kershaw (80.9, not yet eligible)
- Pete Rose (79.6, gambling)
- Curt Schilling (79.5, asshole)
- Zack Greinke (77.4, not yet eligible)
- Max Scherzer (75.6, still active)
- Mookie Betts (75.2, still active)
- Lou Whitaker (75.1)
Between 70 and 74.9, there are three who aren’t in, and only one – Bobby Grich – is on the outside without extenuating circmstances:
- Rafael Palmiero (71.9, steroids)
- Bobby Grich (71.1)
- Carlos Beltran (70.0, cheating)
There are, of course, a lot of players – even modern-era players – who are in the Hall with a sub-70 WAR; most of those are in the mid-to-high 60s.
I was looking at list of Hall players and WAR and I got to thinking that if you kicked out everyone under 67 WAR, I’d be cool with it. Exceptions would be made for Ichiro, Robinson and a few catchers. Possibly a few others I haven’t considered.
The case for Whitaker is unusual. A compiler? Well, sure, but that doesn’t tell the whole story. Excelling for an unusually long time is a feat of greatness, imho.
Looking at the list (which, by the way, is here), there are a few guys under 67 who are in, and who I think belong in, but who aren’t covered by those exceptions:
- Andre Dawson (64.8)
- Willie McCovey (64.5)
- Richie Ashburn (64.3)
- Roy Halladay (64.2)
- Dave Winfield (64.2)
- Bob Feller (63.4)
YMMV, of course. 
Hmmm, looks like I set the bar too high at 67, although I’d be comfortable if Dawson and Ashburn were out. Feller gets special dispensation for military service smack dab in the middle of an awesome peak.
Your list is missing Alex Rodriguez (117.4)
Thank you for the catch!
Well… so, you wouldn’t really be cool with it, you’d not agree with some of the exclusions. Nor would I; a Hall without Larry Doby, Sandy Koufax, Ichiro, Hank Greenberg, or Mariano Rivera seems to be missing something.
I mean, I’m more than fine leaving out Pete Rose, who’s almost at 80. I really don’t think one number can ever be the only answer.
It’s Carlos Beltan and Andruw Jones.
Beltran received 84% of the votes, Jones 78%.
The rest of the ballot:
- Chase Utley (59%)
- Andy Pettitte (49%)
- Felix Hernandez (46%)
- Alex Rodriguez (40%)
- Manny Ramirez (39%; 10th and final year on the ballot)
- Bobby Abreu (31%)
- Jimmy Rollins (25%)
- Cole Hamels (24%)
- Dustin Pedroia (21%)
- Mark Buehrle (20%)
- Omar Vizquel (18%)
- David Wright (15%)
- Francisco Rodriguez (12%)
- Torii Hunter (9%)
Less than 5%, and dropped from future ballots: Ryan Braun, Edwin Encarnacion, Shin-Soo Choo, Matt Kemp, Hunter Pence, Rick Porcello, Alex Gordon, Nick Markakis, Gio Gonzalez, Howie Kendrick, Daniel Murphy
Reading up on it over the last few weeks convinced me of Andruw Jones’ case. I don’t have a problem with either of these. Of course by far the most deserving one on the ballot was Arod but that’s not going to happen.
The Felix Hernandez movement is interesting, as he jumps to 46% from 21% in his second year on the ballot. If he makes it in, which other shorter-career guys might be re-examined? Johan Santana? Urban Shocker? Perhaps Jacob DeGrom, depending on his health and effectiveness the next few years.
Agreed. His total has gone up a bit over the past two years, but he’s still a long ways away.
I think Santana definitely deserves another look. The problem is he only played for 10 years. His 7-year peak is definitely on par with other HOF pitchers. I value peak over longevity, but man he really doesn’t have much outside that peak. I probably think he’s correctly out, but he deserved more of a look than he got.
DeGrom, I think, is similar but has 500 fewer IP and even less overall value than Santana.
I actually think Santana might be more worthy than Felix Hernandez…
I’m OK with both Betran and Jones being in. I think Beltran is a no-doubter without the cheating scandal. Jones I’m not as sure - so much comes from defensive value and I’m still not sure how much a trust that. That 24.4 dWAR is by far the most by a CF ever. I know he was good, but was he 15% better than every other CF ever?
Same reason I’ve skeptical of Utley. JAWS puts him right in line with other HOF second baseman, but a decent amount of that value comes from his defense. I never really thought of him as an elite defensive 2B, but I guess the metrics say he was. I suppose if the new standard is “Jeff Kent” then yes Utley should be in.
I will say that if Andruw Jones is in I’d love an explanation as to why Jim Edmonds dropped out on the first ballot with 2.5% of the vote.
Great comparison, and a good question. I think it has to do with context of the ballot that year. Jones got in during a pretty weak stretch in HOF voting. Edmonds’ only year on the ballot was shared with Griffey Jr. and a bunch of other really good OFs (Bonds, Sosa, Raines, Walker, Sheffield).
I’d also like to express some delayed frustration with Jeff Kent’s vote from the Veterans’ Committee. They waited a whole 2 years after he fell off the 2023 ballot! What was the reasoning for even considering him?
Same reason why Kenny Lofton did-the ballot crunch of a decade ago, thanks to a lot of the roiders hanging on when they normally would have been first ballot.
I likewise am not convinced that either Jones or Utley are worthy, since so much of their value depends on their defense. Dustin Pedroia was a helluva defensive player, but is 70 runs behind Utley (170 to 100) in about the same career length (using Baseball Reference’s Defensive Runs Saved). That Utley so impressed Gold Glove voters that they never felt arsed to give him a single solitary award remains massively puzzling-and it isn’t like he was losing out to the likes of Bill Mazeroski or such. Note he loses a whopping 110 of those runs when switching to Total Zone (Pedroia by contrast gains 38)–for Fangraphs it’s 106 (86 for DP).
For Jones enough doubt has been cast that it seems he fell off what was a brief but stellar defensive peak early in his career, and may have coasted on catching discretionary fly balls for several years after that. But there have been much worse electees lately than him.
I don’t put any stock at all in Gold Glove awards - but you’re right that he didn’t ever seem to be mentioned as a top glove during his career. He had a 5 year stretch where he was the best hitting 2B, and even with an average glove would elevate him to a superstar - but not long enough for serious HOF consideration.
And this is the problem with defensive stats - different systems create massively different results.
I’m reasonably confident we know how to value offensive contribution. And certainly some sort of weighting of the various defensive metrics can differentiate great fielders from good fielders from bad ones. But trying to balance offensive number with defensive ones across eras feels impossible at this time.
I’m not opposed to Andruw Jones by any means - I think there were plenty of us that felt we were watching a future HOFer during his peak.
Honestly I think a bit of it was a middle finger to Bonds. “Look we hate you so much we are going to elect the guy that hit behind you and was a fraction of the player you were. Take that!”.
No, they aren’t a perfect barometer of defensive excellence, and there have been more than a few mistakes over the years (Palmiero ahem), but the voters in question do serve as contemporary witnesses who saw these athletes play day in and day out, something pundits from decades later will be lacking. If Utley so thorougly unimpressed them that he never got a single one, but is shown by one set of numbers to be the greatest defensive 2B of all time, that means these voters were first-hand witnesses to said historical excellence-and it somehow completely escaped their notice. That is an accomplishment that no other top defender at any other position can claim (once GG’s were a thing of course). It has to count for something.
Exactly. What pisses me off is when they trot out someone’s defensive WAR values, as if they are holy writ and are conclusive and definitive proof that the player in question was indeed a defensive superstar. If Gold Gloves are no good, and the various defensive metrics don’t agree with each other, what else are you going to rely on?
An interesting roundtable article on ESPN, with commentary from four of their baseball writers, on this year’s voting, and them trying to read the tea leaves on what this all means.
The big takeaways:
- The big jumps in votes for Felix Hernandez and Chase Utley strongly suggest that they’ll get voted in, probably sooner rather than later.
- Hernandez’s support suggests that voters are beginning to evaluate starting pitchers differently – as they’ll need to, due to starters not piling up the “counting stats” which they used to, because they’re used differently now, and it may mean that guys like Cole Hamels and Jon Lester could make the Hall. @BlankSlate : it certainly may also mean that a guy like Johan Santana gets considered differently when he comes up with the Contemporary Era Committee.
- The voters’ position on PEDs isn’t moving. Between Manny and A-Rod being unable to get more than 40-ish percent of the votes, and Ryan Braun (who was not only a PED user, but also an asshole) falling off the ballot after one year, it’s clear that any hope that the juicers will have will be with the Veterans’ committees…except for maybe Andy Pettitte, who saw a big bump in his votes this year, and whose contrition may be seen as more sincere.
- The big new names in the next two elections will be Buster Posey (next year) and Albert Pujols (in '28).
Pettitte jumping from 28% last year to 49% this time around was unexpected. I’m not sure what it means. Perhaps conducting yourself professionally and coming across as a nice guy helps? Accountability? There is no purity in the Hall of Fame. Just put in the greats from that era and be done with it. Especially if they plan to put Pete freaking Rose back on a ballot.