hall of fame, next vote...

Next five ballots: https://www.mlb.com/news/future-baseball-hall-of-fame-ballots-preview

Ichiro, Posey, Pujols, and Cabrera are first ballot inductees i bet. Molina, hard to tell. Sabathia? I'm maybe slightly agnostic on him; as far as lefty starters go he's probably closer to David Wells than he is Clayton Kershaw, but might have to dig in deeper considering the era he pitched in.

guys like Lester and Wainwright had nice careers, not dissimilar at all, but they should be in their team HOFs, not the MLB one.

really kinda curious to see where Granderson, Hernández, Kinsler, and Pedroia wind up in the voting next year. they were all great players to varying levels, though i don't think they would or necessarily should get voted in.

Jimmy Key (among my favourite Jays ever) and Russell Martin into the Canadian Baseball HOF.

https://www.sportsnet.ca/baseball/article/martin-key-among-six-inductees-to-enter-canadian-baseball-hall-of-fame/

Paul Godfrey, I should mention, was instrumental in getting Toronto a franchise. He engineered the deal that almost landed us the Giants in '76, before George Moscone rescued them and kept them in San Francisco.

Comparison graphics frequently turn up on my FB wall. Some of them are far-fetched special pleading--someone trying to make a case that Dale Murphy was better than Reggie Jackson, stuff like that. One caught my eye today: John Smoltz vs. Kevin Brown. The graphic provided overall stats, i.e. including Smoltz's years as a closer, and their career lines were very similar. Just as starters:

Smoltz: 209-149, 3.40, 7.90 K/9, 2.92 K/BB, 1.192 WHIP, 3211.2 IP
Brown: 210-143, 3.26, 6.60 K/9, 2.67 K/BB, 1.219 WHIP, 3237.2 IP

Again, very close. I thought Brown might actually come out looking better, but I think there's a small but clear edge there to Smoltz. When you add 1) Smoltz's three seasons as a first-rate closer (a role that, if I remember correctly, he volunteered to step into), 2) Smoltz's stellar post-season record (overall, Brown was mediocre in the post-season in a much smaller sample), and 3) Brown's PED associations, it's more clear-cut why Smoltz in the HOF and Brown isn't than I thought it would be.

Only because he came up on a different thread today, I looked up Davey Johnson's one year on the HOF ballot (as a player; I think he was on the VC ballot as a manager this year). Three votes. You know who else got three votes that year? Jim Bouton!

Agree with Posnanski here:

With Sale, though, the story goes beyond this year. This guy was one of the best pitchers in baseball from 2012 to 2018. He finished top-six in the Cy Young voting in each of those seven seasons, and he piled up almost 50 WAR (both Baseball-Reference and FanGraphs), and you know what? He’s 35. If he can pitch like this for three or four more years--even close to this level--and maybe take one Cy Young Award, he’s going to the Hall of Fame.

Of course, that last sentence there is loaded with a million question marks. But I do think he's still viable. And I had totally written him off.

Jason Stark's (read a really annoying book by him a few years ago) "tiers," explanations of which are found in a long Athletic piece:

IN RIGHT NOW

Mike Trout
Justin Verlander
Max Scherzer
Freddie Freeman*

(*new to the In Right Now Club)

INJURED LIST DIVISION OF THE “IN RIGHT NOW” CLUB

Clayton Kershaw
Joey Votto

IN THE RED ZONE

Mookie Betts
Paul Goldschmidt
Bryce Harper
Nolan Arenado
Manny Machado

ACROSS THE 50 (FUN NEW CATEGORY!)

Aaron Judge
Shohei Ohtani
Jose Altuve

MOVING THE CHAINS

Gerrit Cole
Juan Soto
José Ramírez
Francisco Lindor
Carlos Correa

GET BACK TO ME IN FIVE YEARS

Ronald Acuña Jr.
Bobby Witt Jr.
Gunnar Henderson
Adley Rutschman
Julio Rodríguez
Vladimir Guerrero Jr.
Fernando Tatis Jr.
Rafael Devers
Kyle Tucker
Yordan Alvarez
Corbin Carroll
Emmanuel Clase

LET’S TALK NEXT YEAR

Jacob deGrom
Corey Seager
Christian Yelich
Alex Bregman
Marcus Semien
Andrew McCutchen
Xander Bogaerts
Yu Darvish

STILL ALIVE (SOMEHOW!)

Giancarlo Stanton
Chris Sale

CLOSERS CORNER*

Craig Kimbrel
Kenley Jansen
Aroldis Chapman
Josh Hader

(*could all be sending thank-you cards to Billy Wagner next January)

CATCHERS CORNER

Salvador Perez
J.T. Realmuto

GRADUATED

Miguel Cabrera
Adam Wainwright
Zack Greinke
Evan Longoria
Nelson Cruz
Madison Bumgarner

NOT PICTURED ANYMORE

Wander Franco

I like Correa's chances a little more than Lindor's; same career WAR, Correa has a year on him. Lindor's been accumulating WAR with the Mets, but he doesn't seem like the same player: .285/.346/.488 in Cleveland, .252/.329/.447 in New York.

GRADUATED

Miguel Cabrera 1st year
Adam Wainwright no
Zack Greinke yes
Evan Longoria *
Nelson Cruz *
Madison Bumgarner no

very different players, but longoria and cruz are kind of flipped versions of each other in terms of how their early and late careers went. longoria did all his outstanding stuff in his 20s, and provided average value throughout his 30s with a bunch of injuries. cruz didn't cruz until his late 20s going into early 30s, and then had an absolutely outstanding 30s. but...he was a dh, so the bar for his career offensive output is higher

Cruz also got suspended for 50 games for buying drugs from the Biogenesis clinic

(xpost to myself) Lindor has a much better narrative-profile, though--Ernie Banks, basically, as opposed to scandal-damaged and then the failed-physicals debacle--so Lindor's is in fact the better bet.

Cruz also got suspended for 50 games for buying drugs from the Biogenesis clinic

damn, had totally forgotten about that. helps to explain how he had a .328 ISO as a 39-year-old

I am once again asking the @SFGiants to offer Barry Bonds a pro-rated league minimum deal and an opportunity to pinch-hit in one game at the end of the season so that his Hall of Fame eligibility clock resets.

— Ryan M. Spaeder (@theaceofspaeder) August 1, 2024

I guess I should have known, but I didn't realize you could reset the clock once your ballot window had expired. I don't think they'd be doing Bonds a favour, though, just setting him up for another 10 years of purgatory.

Lads i have just been to the hall of fame. I had fun

First time?

Second walk, timely DP.

Oops.

Ya first time; may never need to go again unless im reaaaaaly close bc its a shitfuck to get here

Corey Seager has really picked it up after a slow start. He's 30 now, and getting close to good-bet territory, I'd say (giving him some extra credit for his post-season heroics). Needs maybe two or three AS-level seasons, and two or three scenery seasons after that?

Noticed that Salvador Perez now has 269 HR and 900 RBI. Catchers with 300/1000: Piazza, Fisk, Bench, Berra, Parrish, Rodriguez, Carter. All of them in the Hall except Parrish (can't remember how long he lasted on the ballot). If Perez gets to 300/1000--he's only 34, so he should--and you add in the five GG, numerous ASG, and the WS win, I have to believe he'll go in, even though his WAR will likely be under 50.

I thought Perez was way older than 34!

Double checked: 34 years, 107 days. Came up when he was 21.

I have to believe he'll go in, even though his WAR will likely be under 50.

ooooooof, i don't know. WAR isn't everything, and of course it's especially a work in progress for catchers. but i just looked up perez, expecting to see like 30 or 40, and he's at 17.6 fWAR! for comparison, yadi wound up at 55.6. more importantly, perez ranks behind 5 other active catchers in fWAR, including grandal with 39 (!), realmuto, the elder contreras, d'arnaud and will smith.

war doesn't end any discussion, there are many factors in the HoF that about more than stats, and i think that's a good thing. but, i think WAR is helpful when it leads you to look closer at a player beyond the headline stats and consider WHY they're being penalized in a stat or fare worse in it than others. for perez, you're right, he has nearly 300 HR, nearing 1000 RBI, those are the big round numbers that i once paid attention to, as well. so, why is perez already behind 5 other active catchers in fWAR, despite his long career and home runs
and playing all the time?

his hitting has been about average (103 wRC+) over the course of his career. great power in recent years, but like yadi, he can't take a walk and he's slow as fuck. you might think "yes, but that's good hitting for a catcher", and yes, that's right, i think carrying an average hitting line is great for a catcher (yadi wound up with a 97 wRC+ despite some superlative offensive seasons in the early 2010s). the problem is, "for a catcher" implies that the catcher is a plus defender. perez was an average to below average catcher, defensively, consistently not great for his entire career and of course getting worse as time passes. he looks bad in career WAR because he didn't provide above-average production on offense or defense. he just hit a bunch of HRs

it's his defense. it has long graded out as average to slightly below average. catcher, more than any other position, is tilted toward defensive value - it's hard to find a great, above-average, or elite defensive catcher who can also hold their own at the plate. so if you hang at catcher and you're below average defensively, you have to be an offensive machine. perez has been great in some years, he has great power and

it's not his defense. overall, it has graded out to be worse than an average MLB catcher. since catcher is a weak batting position, relative to the rest of the lineup, usually defense is the

oops, please delete the last two paragraphs - meant to erase those before posting. believe it or not i sometimes do little drafts before these horrible posts

it's weird, bWAR dings Yadier a bit, he's around 42, and Salvy is around 35(!). maybe his HOF path will depend on which site the voters visit.

it also grades him as a good defender, which probably shows some level of imperfection in how defense is measured behind the plate.

Will have to revisit...he does okay with bWAR: ~35 right now, should end up around 45-50.

yeah, i'd be curious what people who saw perez play more frequently have to say about his defense! i only got to see him play a handful of times

fWAR did a big revamp to catching WAR a year or two ago, and i remember that yadi got a huuuuuuuge boost for certain seasons. in particular, his 2012 season suddenly became monstrous and MVP-like because of a boost to his DEF.

i don't think perez fared well in that change to fWAR/catcher value

At the very least, he seems like a guy who'd go in via the VC down the road.

anyway, sorry to drag it into WAR crap - like i mentioned, i do understand and respect that the HoF is about more than all that. and perez has been a lifelong royal, heavy respect for that

That's what I think will give him an edge with the VC (along with the round numbers and the GG/ASG/WS honours): reputation as a team leader, and maybe the one-team career, which I suspect is a positive. The VC has rescued a couple of WAR guys (Ted Simmons and Trammell), but mostly it catches players who fall short on WAR but were thought at one time to be headed for the HOF (McGriff, Hodges, Kaat, Oliva, etc.--long list).

Salvy is far below Posada and slightly below contemporary JT in JAWS. Munson is 11th all time and not in.

I fully expect Munson to be reevaluated when Posey goes in; they are so similar in so many ways.

Except the death and being unpleasant part

Wasn't he the lovable curmudgeon on a high-priced glamour team?

i would say he was an unpleasant redass on a high-priced team of psychos but flags fly forever

Found this old SI piece: "prickly."

https://vault.si.com/vault/1976/09/13/hes-a-dish-only-behind-the-plate

Actually just ordered Dan Epstein's book on Ron Blomberg and Munson a few days ago.

Anyway, outside of personalities (think I posted about this when Posey retired):

Posey - ROY, MVP (1.63 MVP share), 3 WS, 1 GG, 5,607 PA, 44.8 bWAR (5.3/162 games)
Munson - ROY, MVP (1.50 MVP share), 2 WS 3 GG, 5,344 PA, 46.1 bWAR (5.2/162 games)

Posey was the better hitter, for sure.

an unpleasant redass on a high-priced team of psychos

I would watch this miniseries

You're in luck: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bronx_Is_Burning.

Well shit! 7.8 on IMDB!

I've seen it. It held my attention (had already read the book), but as I remember it, some laughable performances in there.

Some FB thing, easy to cut and paste:

https://i.postimg.cc/DzPxhCnW/hof.jpg

Obviously they're too cautious re "could retire today"--you could add another five from the "probably" group--and some from their bottom group could be moved up. Don't think I'd put any closer above "there's a chance" at this point.

Not looking fwd to janssen and kimbrel discourse

Also yelich is a hard no way. Hes not there in peak, war total or jaws qnd dont see him moving that needle

Also a PED issue, no?