Ten Choices for the 2015 Hall of Fame

It’s New Year’s Eve, the due date for the return of the nearly 600 ballots sent out to members of the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA) who are given the privilege and honor of voting for the Class of 2015 of the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Of course, I don’t have a ballot (I wouldn’t have one if I still worked for ESPN either), but I have strong opinions and have spent hours researching the 34 candidates on the ballot, from which a voter can select as few as none but no more than ten.  A player must appear on 75% of the submitted ballots to gain the honor of enshrinement into the Hall.

As I’ve written about before, this is one of the most star-studded ballots since the early days of the Hall of Fame (https://www.chrisbodig.com/?p=178). 24 of the 34 names on the ballot have a legitimate argument for induction into Cooperstown.  23 of these 24 men have superior credentials to several other players who have already have plaques honoring their careers in the Hall’s museum.  For most writers, to choose only ten names from these choices is a gut-wrenching task.  Many columns have already been written by BBWAA voters lamenting the names of the players who didn’t make the cut in their top 10.  While it’s true that there are some stingy voters who only vote a handful of candidates, the majority will put the full 10 names on their ballots.

In order to whittle the list to ten names, I considered the following factors among others:

• Who are the 10 best players, period?
• Is a player linked to Performance Enhancing Drugs (PED’s)? It’s been proven over the last several years that these men will not gain even close to the needed 75% of the vote and therefore, in my opinion, it’s a waste to vote for any one of them.  I’m referring specifically to Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa.  You can see my reasoning in my last blog post (https://www.chrisbodig.com/?p=197).
• When comparing players to each other, were they better than multiple players already in the Hall who played the same position? Were they as good as or better than a “legend” of the game?
• Did the player do heroic deeds on the diamond or did they merely accumulate statistics? Specifically, did the player help his team(s) win pennants or championships?  We are talking here about the Hall of Fame, not the Hall of Accumulated Statistics.
• For a significant period of time, was the player one of the best in baseball or one of the best at their position?
• Is the player who is worthy of induction running out of time? Until a year ago, a player could remain on the ballot for 15 years provided they kept receiving at least 5% of the writers’ votes.  This July, Hall reduced this to 10 years (with the “grandfathered” exceptions of Don Mattingly, Alan Trammell and Lee Smith, who had already been on the ballot for more than 10 years).  This means that McGwire, in his 9^th year of eligibility, only has this year and next instead of seven more chances.
• Is the player who is worthy of induction in danger of receiving less than the needed 5% to stay on the ballot because they’re getting squeezed by all of the quality players?

While considering those factors, I’ve grouped the 24 names into several categories.

• The proven PED rejects (4): Bonds, Clemens, McGwire, Sosa
• The PED “whisper” group (2): Jeff Bagwell, Mike Piazza. They have not been linked to anything but some writers are suspicious of the physiques they displayed during their playing days.
• The “running out of time” group (4): Tim Raines, Mattingly, Trammell, Smith (McGwire is also in this group of course)
• The superb but so-far underappreciated group (3): Curt Schilling, Mike Mussina, Edgar Martinez (Raines and Trammell certainly below here too)
• The “danger of dropping below 5% group (3): Jeff Kent, Fred McGriff, Larry Walker (McGwire and Sosa are also in this group)
• The “almost there” group of one (1): Craig Biggio, who was two votes shy of induction last year.
• The first ballot “no-brainers” (2): Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez
• The first ballot “solid candidate” group (2): John Smoltz, Gary Sheffield (Sheffield is a complex case; he has links to PED’s which put him in danger of not getting 5% this year).
• The first ballot “Hall of Excellent but Not Quite Good Enough” group (3): Carlos Delgado, Nomar Garciaparra, Brian Giles.

Confused yet?

The task here is to get from 24 names to 10, so let’s start by dropping Bonds, Clemens, McGwire, and Sosa.  Barry and the Rocket are two of the best players in the history of baseball; Big Mac and Slamming Sammy are two of the most famous home run bats, but voters have been rejecting these players.  They’re not getting into Cooperstown so a vote for any makes another worthy player collateral damage for their misdeeds.

OK, so we’re now down to 20 names, still twice too many.

The next cuts are pretty easy, the “Hall of Excellent but Not Quite Good Enough” group: Carlos Delgado, Nomar Garciaparra and Brian Giles.  You can add Don Mattingly and Lee Smith to this list, which drops us to 15.  Nomar and Donnie Baseball had fantastic peak years but simply didn’t have the career longevity to make this cut.  A couple of years ago, it seemed like Smith was possibly gaining momentum to be inducted when he earned just over 50% in 2012.  Unfortunately for him, he’s been one of the casualties of the bloated ballot, watching his support sink to under 30% last year.  Smith was the all-time saves leader when he retired and is still 3rd behind Mariano Rivera and Trevor Hoffman, who joins the ballot next year.

Delgado is a very hard drop for me, given his 473 career home runs.  He’s similar in many ways to Fred McGriff, who is right on the border-line for the Top 10 in this group.  But on a ballot with so many power bats, I don’t see how he has chance to even stay on the ballot with 5%.  He is NOT one of the ten best players on this ballot but deserves to hang around for a few years; he won’t and that’s a shame.

So how do we get from 15 to 10 names?  Painfully.  My next drop would be Gary Sheffield, owner of 509 career home runs but also mentioned in the George Mitchell report on steroids.  Sheffield admitted using “the cream” before and during the 2002 season, supplied by BALCO.  I have a hard time lumping him in the PED group because he actually admitted using the drug, claiming he didn’t know it was a steroid; Sheffield was one of the early advocates for league-wide testing.  These players are not scientists; it is not beyond belief that one (or several) unknowingly took banned substances.  With all of the legal supplements available these days, I am certain that there are some players who have been suspended in the last 10 years who did not realize they were using PED.

Nevertheless, regarding Sheffield, his link to BALCO will hurt him tremendously with the voters and the truth is, as good as he was, he’s not one of the ten best players in this group of superstars.  He achieved his 509 home runs in 9,217 at bats, a whopping 1,934 AB’s than it took Delgado to hit his 473 blasts.  And Delgado’s OPS was 22 points higher!  So if Delgado is one and done, Sheffield should be too.

My next cut would be Alan Trammell.  Ouch!  The Tigers’ shortstop has been unfairly overlooked for years and deserves to be in Cooperstown but this is his 14th year on the
ballot; a year ago he only received 21% of the vote so it seems impossible that he would skyrocket all the way to 75% with just two more cycles of voting.  If you measure Trammell next to Barry Larkin, their careers are remarkably similar; for whatever reason, Larkin sailed into Cooperstown on his third bite at the ballot apple while Trammell has never even cracked 40%.  He peaked at 37% two years ago but has dropped since then, a casualty of the over-crowded ballot.  Now we’re at 13.

Next on the block is Jeff Kent.  It’s hard to cut the player who hit 377 home runs, more than any 2nd baseman in MLB history by a wide margin, but that’s where we are with this galaxy of stars.  There is a very legitimate case to be made that Kent was a better player than Craig Biggio, who nearly made the Hall a year ago with 74.8% of the vote (a mere two shy), while Kent garnered just 15%.  Biggio’s advantage is longevity, which enabled him to accumulate over 3,000

hits and the 5th most doubles (668) in the history of the sport.  The 3,000 hit mark has long been a magic number for Hall of Fame honors, just like 500 home runs used to be.  Neither Kent nor Biggio were great glove men (although Biggio was awarded three Gold Gloves).  Biggio also stole 414 bases, which helps his case.

With much regret, my last two cuts would be Larry Walker and Mike Mussina.  I believe that both players are absolutely Hall of Fame-worthy (as I feel about Kent, Trammell, Sheffield, and of course Bonds and Clemens).   That means my ballot would look like this (in order, by the way, not that the writers need to put them in order):

1. Randy Johnson
2. Pedro Martinez
3. Curt Schilling
4. Jeff Bagwell
5. Tim Raines
6. Mike Piazza
7. John Smoltz
8. Craig Biggio
9. Edgar Martinez
10. Fred McGriff

For the WAR-mongering members of the sabermetric community, Mussina and Walker are both Top Ten players in this group.  Mussina’s career Wins Above Replacement is 83.0 (5th best on this ballot and 3rd for players not named Bonds or Clemens); Walker’s total is 72.6 (8th best or 6th excluding B & C).

Larry Walker has been on the ballot for four previous years and has received very little support: for three years he received just over 20% of the vote; last year his support plummeted to 10%.  Clearly, there is an anti-Coors Field bias at work here.  The Canadian-born outfielder known as Booger spent nearly ten seasons hitting in the thin air in Denver.  From 1995 to 2002, his first eight seasons in Colorado, Walker hit a best-in-the-majors .341 with an OPS of 1.062 (second only to Bonds).  Aaah, but the Coors effect: when using the advanced metric OPS+ (which adjusts for his favorable home park), Walker drops to 10th during that eight-year period (behind fellow 2015 ballot members Bonds, Edgar, Sheffield, Piazza and Bagwell).   In his entire career (which started in Montreal and finished in St. Louis), Walker hit .380 in Colorado and .282 everywhere else.  Walker has a high WAR because, besides his hitting prowess, he a seven-time Gold Glove winner and a very good base runner.  Still, with 383 career home runs in a home-run hitting era and that massive Denver-vs-everywhere-else disparity in his numbers, I think he falls just short of the best ten on this ballot.

As for Mike Mussina, this is a really tough call and it’s a reflection of the historic confluence of so many fantastic starting pitchers who have gained HoF election eligibility in the last two years.   Click here for a full breakdown of the 5 fantastic starting pitchers on this year’s ballot.  https://www.chrisbodig.com/?p=226

Anyway, when you have so many worthy Hall of Fame candidates, pragmatism plays a role as well as performance.  The rules say you can only pick ten names even if there are fifteen that you feel belong.  So if your goal is to see all of these men inducted eventually, the best thing for Schilling, Mussina and the many other currently overlooked candidates is for more names to clear off the ballot.  If Johnson, Martinez, Biggio and Smoltz all get into Cooperstown this year, it will clear more space on future ballots.  The early publicly released voter ballots show Smoltz’s support at a surprisingly high 89.5%.  There’s a fun site that actually combs the internet and conducts surveys of Hall of Fame voters.  As of about noon on New Year’s Eve, they’ve found 105 ballots (less than 20% of all voters) and, if those results hold, there would be five new members in Cooperstown (Johnson, Martinez, Smoltz, Biggio and Piazza), which would be great.

http://www.baseballthinkfactory.org/newsstand/discussion/the_2015_hof_ballot_collecting_gizmo

Smoltz’s 89.5% total is close to the 92% that his teammate Tom Glavine got a year ago.  I doubt Smoltz gets that high a total in the end but it’s a promising enough total that, if you feel he belongs in the Hall, it’s sensible to give him your vote to push him over the 75% threshold.  The worst thing that can happen in this back-logged scenario we’re currently in is for a player to fall a couple of votes shy as Biggio did a year ago.  So if you’re in a coin-flip scenario between Smoltz and Mussina, pick the guy who has a chance to win this year to make it easier for the other to gain induction in the next year or two.

(It should be noted that it is very likely that the public ballots are more liberal and include more names than the ballots from the writers who don’t want to reveal their selections)

Anyway, here are some quick thoughts on my ten choices:

1. Randy Johnson: the most intimidating and fearsome pitcher I’ve ever seen. At 6’10”, he had a wingspan unseen in
   

   RANDY JOHNSON

   the major leagues.  The Big Unit didn’t really learn how to pitch until 1993 (at the age of 29) when a chat with Nolan Ryan helped him harness his control (he had led the league in walks the previous three seasons).  His 4,875 career strikeouts are second only to Ryan (he led his league in K’s nine times).  Besides winning 5 Cy Young Awards, he finished in the Top 3 on four other occasions.  With his height, the left-hander’s pitches almost looked like they were coming from right field.  For years, managers decided to give all but the best left-handed hitters the day off against Johnson.  Although about a third of all batters hit from the left side, only 12% of Johnson’s career batters faced were lefties, and he held them to a .199 average.

2. Pedro Martinez: he was nearly a foot shorter than Johnson and, not surprisingly, not as durable. Johnson pitched until the age of 45; Pedro was finished before his 38th birthday. But when he was at his best, nobody was better than Martinez.
   

   PEDRO MARTINEZ

   During his Koufax-ian 7-year peak (from 1997 to 2003), Pedro went 118-36 (.766) with a 2.20 ERA, pitching all but one of those years in the AL East with the Boston Red Sox.  He won 3 Cy Young Awards during that peak with two other Top 3 finishes (missing only in 2001, when injuries limited him to 116.1 innings).  Again, during that seven-year peak, his ERA+ was 213, which means he was 113% better than the average pitcher!  His career mark of 154 is the best for a starting pitcher in the history of baseball.  (ERA+ is a measure, with 100 being average, which puts a player in the context of the ballparks they pitched in and the era they pitched in).

3. Curt Schilling: on the ballot for the third time, overshadowed by Johnson in Arizona and Martinez in Boston, Schilling was pure money in October and highly underrated overall. See a full breakdown in the accompanying piece that covers Schilling, Smoltz and Mussina.
4. Jeff Bagwell: he’s on the ballot for the fifth time and he’s hovered between 54% and 60% support for the last three years, likely being held back by
   

   JEFF BAGWELL

   unsubstantiated suspicions about the possibility of PED use. Because injuries ended his career at the age of 37, he fell short of the magic 500 home run number that is typically expected of a first baseman but he performed at an exceptionally high level for all but the last of his 15 major league seasons.  His ranks during that period, for position players with at least 7,500 plate appearances:

   1. 5th in OPS+ (behind Bonds, Frank Thomas, Sheffield and Edgar Martinez)
   2. 5th in Home Runs (behind Ken Griffey Jr. and PED-tainted Bonds, Sosa, and Palmeiro)
   3. 2nd in RBI (behind only Palmeiro)
   4. 3rd in Runs Scored (behind only Bonds and teammate Craig Biggio)
   5. 3rd in Hits (behind only Biggio and Palmeiro)
   6. 2nd in Runs Created (behind only Bonds) (this is an advanced metric)
   7. 2nd in Wins Above Replacement (WAR) (second only to Bonds)

If you take Bonds, Sosa and Palmeiro out of the mix, Bagwell is the leader in three key offensive categories and 2nd in three years, 2nd only to Biggio and future Hall of Famer Griffey (who will certainly be a first-ballot choice next year).  That sure looks like a Hall of Famer to me.

5. Tim Raines: in the history of Hall of Fame balloting, players are compared not only to previous inductees at their
   

   TIM RAINES

   position but also to their current peers. Raines, known as “Rock,” is on the ballot for the 7th time.  He was the 2nd greatest leadoff hitter of the 1980’s and one of the best ever but he always performed in the shadow of the best leadoff hitter ever, Rickey Henderson.  Raines received 46% of the Hall of Fame vote last year, dropping from 52% from the previous year due mostly to ballot crunch.  His 808 steals are the 5th best in the history of baseball (behind only Hall of Famers Henderson, Lou Brock, 19th century player Billy Hamilton, and Ty Cobb).  But while he’s got the fifth most steals, he was only caught stealing 146 times, 26th most in history (Henderson and Brock are #1 and #2 in caught stealing, records are incomplete for Cobb or Hamilton).  Of the 36 players since 1951 with 350 or more steals, Raines’ 85% success rate is the best of all of them.  (1951 is the first year where Baseball Reference considers the caught stealing tallies to be complete and valid).  This 85% success rate is extremely important.  Stolen bases are valuable for any team, but being caught stealing is even moredamaging.  The loss of an out is nearly three times more punishing than the benefit or an extra base closer to home plate.  By comparison, Henderson succeeded 81% of the time (still excellent) and Brock was successful on 75% of his attempts, which is not great (actually only 28th out of the 36 players).  One other note when comparing Raines to Brock, who was elected to the Hall of Fame on his try in 1985: one of Brock’s chief Cooperstown credentials is his career total of 3,023 hits.  Raines only had 2,605 hits.  HOWEVER, Raines walked 1,330 times compared to Brock’s 761.  So, Raines reached base by hit or walk 3,935 times, Brock 3,784 times, a margin in the Rock’s favor of 151.  And he did this with 881 fewer plate appearances!!  If Lou Brock is a Hall of Famer (which I’ve never seen anybody doubt), Tim Raines absolutely belongs with him.

6. Mike Piazza: on the ballot for the 3rd time, he gained 58% two years ago and improved to 62% so he has an off chance of getting into Cooperstown this year.  Like with Bagwell, some writers are suspicious of the physique he showed off
   

   MIKE PIAZZA

   during his career.  But also like Bagwell, he hasn’t been linked to anything, even by the exhaustive report on steroids by George Mitchell.  What Piazza certainly was is one of the greatest hitting catchers in the history of the sport.  He was not a great defensive player but his prowess with the stick more than made up for any deficiency in that category.  Take a look at how he compares to players who spent two-third of their careers behind the plate:

   1. #1 all-time with a 143 OPS+
   2. #1 all-time with 427 Home Runs
   3. 4th most RBI (behind Yogi Berra, Ted Simmons, and Johnny Bench)
   4. 6th most Runs Scored (behind Ivan Rodriguez, Carlton Fisk, Berra, Bench, Simmons)
   5. 3rd most Runs Created (behind Rodriguez and Fisk)
   6. 5th best WAR (behind Bench, Gary Carter, Rodriguez and Fisk)
7. John Smoltz: first time on the ballot. He’s like Dennis Eckersley in that his career included both stints as a starter and as a reliever.  Unlike the Eck, his main claim to fame is from starting games.  See a full breakdown of Smoltz, Schilling and Mike Mussina in the accompanying article.
8. Craig Biggio: he’s on the ballot for the third time, having fallen a painful two votes shy of 75% a year ago so it would be stunning and unprecedented if he doesn’t make it this year. In the entire history of the Hall of Fame ballot, any player who achieved at least 70% of the vote got over the 75% the following year.  Biggio
   

   CRAIG BIGGIO

   played two key defensive positions (starting as a catcher before settling in at 2nd base for the final 16 years of his long career).  Biggio’s chief selling point is his long-term sustained performance: besides being a member of the 3,000 hit club, he’s 15th all-time in runs scored (the only players in the top thirty all time in runs scored who are NOT in Cooperstown are Bonds, Pete Rose, Alex Rodriguez, and Derek Jeter).  He is 5th all-time in doubles, behind only Tris Speaker, Rose, Stan Musial and Cobb.  Finally, Biggio was always willing to “take one for the team”: only one player in history reached base via a hit batsmen more than he did.

9. Edgar Martinez: on the ballot for the 6th time, Edgar has never gained more than 36.5% of the vote, so he is the first long-term long-shot on this list. Martinez’ candidacy suffers from two things: he was mostly a Designated Hitter with no defensive value and he didn’t become a full time player until the age of 27, which kept his overall numbers a little low.  A .312 career hitter with a .418 on-base%, I feel he’s been tremendously undervalued: this was a pure, professional,
   

   EDGAR MARTINEZ

   dangerous hitter.  During his best ten years (1992 to 2001), only Bonds and Frank Thomas bested his 159 OPS+.  His career 147 OPS+ means that he was 47% better than the average hitter and is identical to the career OPS+ of Hall of Famers Mike Schmidt, Willie McCovey, and Willie Stargell.  Edgar’s finest moment came in the fourth and fifth games of the 1995 Division Series, when he almost single-handedly lifted the Seattle Mariners (in the playoffs for the first time in their history) into the ALCS by defeating the Yankees.  Edgar hit a 3-run HR and Grand Slam in Game 4, the latter of which (off closer John Wetteland) broke a 6-6 tie in the 8thh inning.  Of course, in Game 5, he hit the 11th inning double down the left field line immortalized by Ken Griffey Jr.’s amazing dash around the bases and “Kid” smile as the M’s celebrated.

10. Fred McGriff: on the ballot for the 5th time, McGriff is getting lost in the ballot crunch. After gaining 24% of the vote in 2012, he’s plummeted to 12%.  Perhaps more than any other player, the Crime Dog has been collateral damage in the Cooperstown conversations during the steroid era.  Consider this: at the point of his retirement after the 2004 season, McGriff’s 493 career home runs were good enough for 21st on the all-time list, behind 15 Hall of Famers, future inductee Griffey and four PED-tainted sluggers (Bonds, McGwire, Sosa and Palmeiro).  McGriff is listed on his Baseball Reference profile as 6’3” and 200 pounds and that sounds about right for his entire 19-year career. McGriff was lean and wiry as a rookie in 1987 and as a 40-year old veteran in 2004.  Unlike many of his contemporary sluggers (steroid tainted or otherwise), he didn’t turn into the Incredible Hulk over the course of his career.  Look at the two photos (one from 1987 with the Blue Jays, the other from 2003 with the Dodgers).  
    

Here is how McGriff ranked among his peers from his rookie year of 1987 through 2004.

1. 6th in Home Runs (behind only Bonds, McGwire, Sosa, Palmeiro, Griffey)
2. 3rd in RBI (behind Bonds and Palmeiro)
3. 5th in Hits (behind Palmeiro, Hall of Famer Roberto Alomar, Biggio and Bonds)
4. 8th in Runs Scored (behind Bonds, Palmeiro, Biggio, Alomar, Bagwell, Henderson, Sosa)
5. 5th in Runs Created (behind Bonds, Palmeiro, Bagwell, and Thomas)
6. 11th in OPS+ for players with 7,500 or more plate appearances, the one category where he falls short of some contemporaries (including ballot-mates Bagwell, Edgar, Sheffield and Walker) but still ahead of Palmeiro and Sosa.

Besides these statistical measures, McGriff also has post-season pedigree.  In the Atlanta Braves lone World Series title during the glory years (1995), the Crime Dog posted a 1.065 OPS. He was a great player who still shines in spite of getting lost statistically in the steroid years.

Well, if you’re still awake, you can see how hard it is for hundreds of members of the BBWAA who actually have a vote to make to cut down to ten names.  For these writers, these choices are gut-wrenching because they impact the actual vote totals.

To make a prediction, here’s what I think will actually happen with the 24 names I’ve mentioned.  I think it’s almost certain that Johnson, Martinez and Biggio will be elected.  I’m not as sure about Smoltz.  The early voting returns are showing him with a surprising 89.5% vote.  It just doesn’t seem right, given how close he compares to Schilling and Mussina.  So I’m guessing he falls a bit short, although I hope I’m wrong.  I do believe that Schilling and Mussina make significant gains this year.  At the same time, I would expect Bonds and Clemens to drop ever so slightly.  I would expect virtually nobody who did not support them to change their mind and a handful of people to change from “yes” to “no.”  Finally, I think the party’s over for Sosa and may very well be for McGwire and Sheffield as well.

1. Randy Johnson 97%
2. Pedro Martinez 95%
3. Craig Biggio 79%
4. John Smoltz 71%
5. Mike Piazza 67%
6. Jeff Bagwell 63%
7. Tim Raines 55%
8. Curt Schilling 46%
9. Mike Mussina 37%
10. Barry Bonds 31%
11. Roger Clemens 31%
12. Alan Trammell 30%
13. Edgar Martinez 22%
14. Lee Smith 16%
15. Jeff Kent 14%
16. Fred McGriff 13%
17. Larry Walker 8%
18. Gary Sheffield 6%
19. Mark McGwire 5%

Off the ballot by failing to reach 5%

20. Don Mattingly 4%
21. Sammy Sosa 4%
22. Carlos Delgado 1%
23. Nomar Garciaparra 1%
24. Brian Giles 0%