When will Machado and Harper sign?

Maybe Machado deserves his own thread, I don't know...He just passed 50 bWAR. He's 64 days past his 30th birthday, so he may have gotten there before turning 30; that must be a fairly select group. In his career box, this counts as his age-29 season.

At the end of age-29 season:

A-Rod - 80.6
Trout - 76.1
Pujols - 73.8
Aaron - 73.8
Mays - 68.1
Bonds - 66.5

So he's not up there. But:

Ripken - 57.8
Brett - 54.9
Yount - 52.5
Schmidt - 50.3
Reggie - 48.4
Jeter - 40.4
Clemente - 37.3

So he's in the mix with some pretty great players.

harper turns 30 next month; he's at 42.6

Cabrera was at 47.3

Andruw Jones 58

is there another player, other than Jones, who did more to build a hall of fame case in his 20s before falling off completely in his 30s and not making it?

Just picked a few names for context--many paths ahead there.

Mattingly and Nomar can't match Jones in WAR, and their downfall was injuries, but in terms of public perception, those two come to mind.

Correa will be close to 40 after this season (age 27), so, even with the injuries and interruptions, he should be over 50 in two more years.

fangraphs and baseball reference seem to value correa very differently. by fWAR he's at 30.1 right now.

dunno. at any rate, i think assuming that he'll put up 5+ WAR for both 2023 and 2024 is a lot to assume. maybe for Trout. Correa's great when he's on the field, but the biggest contributor to hall of fame / WAR stuff is longevity and staying on the field.

the JAWS average for shortstops is 55.4. a couple modern SS's that topped that were jeter and larkin, a couple who didn't quite make it were garciaparra and jimmy rollins. this is switching to fWAR, but here are a couple comparisons of these players:

https://i.imgur.com/Uty9rff.png

https://i.imgur.com/Y6mVheX.png

larkin and jeter made it because they kept going strong through their early to mid thirties. that's the gauntlet

never even remotely though of Correa as a HOF'or before.

I definitely did early on, then he hit some bumps. Getting hurt in 2017 may have cost him an MVP. I think he's on track, though--with the unknown of how the sign-stealing story will be viewed down the road.

This is Mookie Betts' age-29 season: 56.1 and counting.