Fun House Mirrors, Colorado Peaks, and Fat Elvis: A 2019 HOF Ballot
Rivera, Halladay, Pettitte among notable newcomers
Mariano Rivera: Forget saves. When it comes to assessing value, saves are about as accurate as a fun-house mirror. In Mariano Rivera’s case, those record 652 career saves are maybe the fifth or sixth most impressive thing on his resume.
Closers don’t really belong in the Hall of Fame. Except Mariano Rivera. Mariano Rivera belongs in the Hall of Fame.
Roy Halladay: From 2002–2011, Roy Halladay led all pitchers in WAR (63), Wins (170), complete games (63; the next man on the list had 33), shutouts, FIP, and K/BB ratio. He was second in innings (despite having his 2004 and 2005 seasons cut in half by injuries), ERA, ERA+ (trailing Johann Santana 150–148) and WHIP; fifth in strikeouts.
The only argument against Halladay is the relative brevity of his career — but if ten years as the best or second-best pitcher on the planet isn’t enough for voters, what is? Halladay is an easy pick for the Hall.
Todd Helton: Even at his absolute peak, Todd Helton wasn’t quite as good as you remember. Which isn’t to say Helton wasn’t very, very good: He was an excellent hitter before shoulder injuries robbed him of his power, and despite a lengthy decline phase, finished his career with a fine 135 OPS+ (which again, is probably lower than you remember — Helton doesn’t crack the career top-100 in this category). He was also an excellent defender, saving his teams 72 runs over the course of his career as compared to an average first baseman.
He was never considered anything close to the best or most valuable player in baseball; his fifth-place showing in the 2000 MVP vote was a career best (though he deserved better). Even at his absolute best, he was never as good as his teammate Larry Walker — and Walker has languished on the ballot for eight years and counting (more on Walker later).
Helton hit about as well as Will Clark, which is to say he was an excellent hitter; he fielded his position about as well as Mark Grace, which is to say he was an excellent fielder. In terms of career value, he was about as good as Keith Hernandez, which is to say Helton has a case as one of the 20 best first baseman in the game’s history. It’s something to be very, very proud of; it’s just not quite a case for the HOF.
Andy Pettitte: Pettitte presents an interesting case for what he represents.
No, not that. Sure, his admitted use of HGH for off-label, “therapeutic” reasons will probably stick in the craw of a writer or two — but of all players implicated in the PED era, Pettitte seems to have escaped with the bulk of his reputation intact. There are probably several reasons for this: 1) He never challenged or broke any of baseball’s hallowed records; 2) He never laid claim to the best pitcher in the game; 3) He seemed to strike people as a nice guy who showed at least a flicker of contrition (read into that what you will).
Pettitte presents an interesting case because he was a very-good-but-rarely-great pitcher (117 ERA+ over 3316 career innings, exactly as good as Mark Buehrle); he holds a clutch of career post-season records (despite the fact that he was exactly as good in the post-season as he was in the regular season); and in every way that matters, he’s significantly better than Jack Morris.
Being better than Jack Morris doesn’t qualify one for the HOF; there are scores of pitchers who had better careers than Jack Morris who aren’t in the HOF. Pettitte played with and against a ton of pitchers who were better than Jack Morris who aren’t in the HOF. Hell, Pettitte played with several pitchers who were better than he was who aren’t in the HOF.
Pettitte doesn’t get this vote, and the guess here is that he garners, oh, 40% of the BBWAA vote in this, his first year of eligibility. That seems about right for a pitcher with his very-good-but-not-great resume. But there is an eventual path to Cooperstown for Andy Pettitte, and it’s a trail blazed by Jack Morris.
Lance Berkman: As his career 144 OPS+ shows, Berkman was a hell of hitter. Albert Belle-Jason Giambi-Gary Sheffield good. Like those three sluggers, Berkman’s deficiencies with the glove and on the bases limited his overall value: His career 52 WAR falls well short of HOF standards for left fielders. But a hell of a hitter (and “Fat Elvis” easily makes the Nickname HOF).
The Holdovers
Barry Bonds: It’s not a question of whether or not Bonds was the greatest player of his generation. He was. The more interesting and salient question: Is Barry Bonds the best position player of all time? He probably is. And the best player of all time (or second-best, if you insist on Ruth, or third-best, if Mays is your man) belongs in the Hall of Fame.
Roger Clemens: Based solely on his performance, there’s really no compelling argument to be made that Roger Clemens isn’t the greatest pitcher who ever lived. And the greatest pitcher who ever lived belongs in the Hall of Fame.
Mike Mussina: With a fifth consecutive year of HOF voting gains (63.5% of the vote in 2018), Mussina seems a safe bet for induction sooner rather than later. Certainly by most objective standards, he’s at least as accomplished as the vast majority of pitchers already enshrined (we include John Smoltz in the table above for illustrative purposes).
Mussina might not “feel” like a HOFer (at least not yet; as Bert Blyleven’s circuitous route to the canon proved, feelings can change with time), but voters should bear in mind that Mussina left the game on his own terms, in full command of his pitching faculties (his final season line: 20–9/3.37 ERA/131 ERA+/5.1 WAR). Does he “feel” like a HOFer if he held on for another 2–3 seasons, in a diminished capacity, to reach 300 wins? As it stands, WAR rates Mussina as essentially equal to Nolan Ryan (324 wins) and Steve Carlton (329 wins) in terms of career value, and superior to Tom Glavine (305 wins), Don Sutton (324 wins) and Early Wynn (300 wynns).
Mussina’s 83 WAR places him among the game’s top-20 pitchers since 1900. If that feels like a stretch — and we’ll concede that it might — bump him down 10 places on that list. Are you going to keep one of the best 30 pitchers of the last 116 years out of the Hall?
Curt Schilling: The HOF is populated by cheaters, gamblers, racists, drunks, and abusers of women. It’s also filled with kind, decent, generous men. One’s view on where Schilling lands on this character spectrum is irrelevant when assessing his qualifications as a player. Schilling is worthy of induction even if he had never pitched an inning in the post-season — and as the record shows, there were few better when the stakes were highest.
Manny Ramirez: When he played the outfield, he looked like a man trying to remember where he left his keys. But Manny Ramirez is one of the 20–25 greatest hitters to ever step in the box.
Manny presents an interesting and ongoing dilemma. With 23% and 22% of the vote his first two years on the ballot, HOF voters seemed to have slotted him into a PED purgatory of sorts between Bonds/Clemens camp (i.e., seemingly destined for enshrinement) and the Palmeiro/Sosa camp (forgotten shams of their era and their suppliers). Ramirez produced a HOF offensive dossier; that much is beyond dispute. But voters will continue to view his career as more artifice than art. The best guess here is that Ramirez sees a drop in his vote totals, holds onto his eligibility for another two or three years, and fades from the official ballot.
Edgar Martinez: The assumption as we began this exercise was that if Manny gets the vote, Edgar gets the vote. After all, they were essentially equals as hitters.
But they weren’t. Not really. WAR estimates that as compared to a league-average hitter, Edgar was worth 531 additional batting runs (rBat) over the course of his career. Manny was 651 runs better than the average hitter. This isn’t an insignificant delta to cross: Manny was about 20% more productive with the bat than Edgar (some of this can be attributed to playing time: Manny garnered about 1000 additional plate appearances, and because of his abrupt and shameful exit from the game, avoided a meaningful decline phase).
Of course, being 20% less productive than Manny Ramirez still makes you a great hitter. And Edgar Martinez, as you doubtlessly know, was a great hitter.
There’s also the matter of defense. As noted, Manny was brutal. Among the worst ever (but also among the most entertaining):
WAR estimates that Manny cost his teams about 129 runs (and 23 wins) as compared to an average defender. This is bad. Very, very bad. Edgar, because he almost never took the field for the final 10 years of his career, is actually rated a net positive on defense for the work he did in his youth (though positional adjustments dock him -128 runs as a DH).
Is it fair to penalize Manny for taking the field, while rewarding Edgar for sitting? [2] And if we do that, does it mitigate the gap between the two as hitters? (Edgar rates ever-so-slightly “superior” as the baserunner, i.e., he was terrible while Manny was really terrible).
Edgar Martinez is the best DH to ever grab a bat. So good was Edgar with the lumber that WAR rates him essentially on par with Tim Raines and Tony Gwynn in terms of overall value. Manny Ramirez should have been a DH, but circumstances beyond his control dictated he play the field (i.e., the Red Sox needed to get David Ortiz into the lineup).
In the past, I’ve argued that full-time DHs that hit like Edgar don’t warrant enshrinement, while train-wreck leftfielders who hit like Manny Ramirez do. This isn’t an intellectually consistent position, so I’ve changed my mind: Edgar deserves a call from the Hall.
Larry Walker: Considered one of the best all-around players of his time, Walker’s HOF support crested last year when he captured 34% of the vote. With just two years left on the ballot, he’s run out of time.
It’s a shame.
Walker’s lack of support comes down to 1) playing time; and 2) playing conditions. He’s obviously the victim of altitude bias, having spent his, ahem, peak in Colorado, and he simply wasn’t able to take the field enough (Walker averaged 119 games per season from 1995–2005) to accumulate many of the milestone stats expected of a corner outfielder. Lack of playing time (and counting stats) is one thing, but the anti-Colorado bias is unfair. We can properly adjust for park and league effects — and with those adjustments, Walker was 40% more productive than a league-average hitter. When one considers his superior base-running and solid defense, Walker was clearly a HOF talent (though it’s admittedly less clear that his body of work makes him a slam-dunk candidate).
One way to look at it: Walker was at least the equal of his fellow Les Expos de Montréal alumnus (and 2018 HOF inductee) Vlad Guerrero at the plate — and much better in every other facet of the game. Walker receives this vote.
Scott Rolen: Did anyone ever look the part of a third baseman more than Scott Rolen? The eye black, the perpetual squint, the hulking frame coiled to stab every howling liner that had the misfortune to be headed his way. Rolen just looked like a major-league third baseman.
Of course, style points don’t count. And that’s ok. He doesn’t need them.
Even though he was often compromised by injury, Scott Rolen was better than you remember. Quite a bit better, probably. As measured by WAR (70), he’s the eighth most valuable third baseman of all-time, slotting in between Ron Santo –who’s in the HOF — and Graig Nettles — who probably should be. Defensively, he’s as good as anybody who ever manned the hot corner (well, anybody not named Robinson or Beltre): His 175 defensive runs saved is the third-best career mark for the position. You might also be surprised to learn Rolen’s 122 OPS+ ranks sixth all-time at the position (min. 1800 games played); his 316 home runs are the ninth-most for a third baseman; his 1287 RBI the 10th most (for what that’s worth).
Third base is one of the most difficult assignments on the diamond. By any measure, Scott Rolen is one of the best handful of third baseman to ever play. One of the best third baseman to ever play deserves a plaque in Cooperstown.
Your 2019 HOF Class: Rivera, Halladay, Bonds, Clemens, Ramirez, Mussina, Walker, Martinez, Schilling, Rolen
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Jeremy Lehrman is the author of Baseball’s Most Baffling MVP Ballots. For more baseball writing, click here.
All statistics provided by Baseball-Reference.com
