hall of fame, next vote...

solid argument for mauer:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/jaws_C.shtml

No idea where voters' heads will be at 15 years from now, but I think Mauer may end up having an Andruw Jones problem, where almost all his career value is compiled before he's 30. He's working on his third consecutive season of a sub-.400 SLG, especially deadly for a converted 1B/DH.

He has a higher OPS this year than Adrian Gonzalez, Jose Abreu, and Joey Votto

Yadier Molina's name pops up a lot in HOF discussions, and many people think he'll eventually get in for his defense, leadership, playing ball the Cardinal Way, great taste in shoes, etc.

It's interesting to see that he's below Buster Posey, Russell Martin, and Victor Martinez (!) on the JAWS list.

(xpost) True, but doesn't that say more about the other three guys having sub=par years than it does about Mauer? .758 is very mediocre for a first baseman.

Forgot about Molina. Was never sure about him, and I find catchers tough to gauge unless they're really obvious. Ages ago, I thought Sundberg and Boone had an outside shot, but I was giving way too much weight to their defense; Sundberg was one-and-out, Boone lasted five ballots but never got over 8%.

yeah Posey has to be in the rising list.

one other name to toss in there in ryan braun but obviously the PED thing and how he handled it is gonna wreck his shot.

ortiz is closer to sure thing than wild card imo, those old baseball dudes aren't all dead yet

was cynical about those pitchers but there was some thing a while back that showed something like most HOF pitchers amassed the majority of their WAR in their 30s and 40s. longevity is a huge factor for pitchers, also impossible to predict. i reckon there's at least one 0_o dude in his late 20s right now who will eventually end up with the credentials.

Bonds, Clemens and A-Rod will be in inside 40 years if C'town is not under water

kind of on this topic, i was looking at the active HR leaders list and 500 HR used to be a guarantee for HOF election (not lately for a couple reasons, obv.) but it looks like the 500 HR club won't see many new members for awhile after cabrera (almost definitely) and beltre (maybe? 50/50 shot?)

i'm thinking beltran and teixeira could have a couple more years with decent HR totals but i don't know about hitting well enough for long enough to get to 500.

not sure about the rest of these clowns. i used the 200+ club as an arbitrary cutoff.

Carlos Beltran (19, 39) - 402
Mark Teixeira (14, 36) - 397
Ryan Howard (13, 36) - 365
Prince Fielder (12, 32) - 313
Jose Bautista (13, 35) - 296
Adrian Gonzalez (13, 34) - 294
Matt Holliday (13, 36) - 282
Edwin Encarnacion (12, 33) - 277
Curtis Granderson (13, 35) - 271
Ryan Braun (10, 32) - 263
Robinson Cano (12, 33) - 253
Nelson Cruz (12, 35) - 251
Nick Swisher (12, 35) - 245
David Wright (13, 33) - 241
Mark Reynolds (10, 32 - 239)
Chase Utley (14, 37) - 238
Brian McCann (12, 32) - 231
Jimmy Rollins (17, 37) - 231
Jay Bruce (9, 29) - 216
Matt Kemp (11, 31) - 215
Hanley Ramirez (12, 32) - 214
Chris Davis (9, 30) - 213
Evan Longoria (9, 30) - 213
Mike Napoli (11, 34) - 212
Victor Martinez (14, 37) - 206
Ryan Zimmerman (12, 31) - 206
Jayson Werth (14, 37) - 204
Adam Jones (11, 30) - 201
Hunter Pence (10, 33) - 201
Troy Tulowitzki (11, 31) - 201
Josh Hamilton (9, 35) - 200

Trout, Harper, and Stanton would seem like solid bets for the under 200 crowd. Stanton is barely under 200, he's at 193. Goldschmidt? I don't know.

so, i was wondering about Santana the other day (I was playing OOTP baseball and when the HOF vote came up I was giving him some serious thought). his career counting stats aren't close to what you would hope for, he dropped off quickly with his injuries. but for about 6 years he was insanely dominant. it's crazy how good he was. i don't think he'll get in, but his peak from '03-'08 was hard to ignore.
another name that looked surprising good looking back: Jason Giambi.

If you're going to have a 5- or 6-year peak, it has to be Koufax-level. Gooden's career counting stats have as good or better a case as Johan's, I think?

Oh we're not talking about Ervin Santana?

no, Danny.

True, but doesn't that say more about the other three guys having sub=par years than it does about Mauer? .758 is very mediocre for a first baseman.

Clearly he's not a slugger, but he's a good contact hitter, has superb plate discipline, and is a good defender. That's why he's currently third-best among 1B in WAR. Obviously he's wouldn't be a Hall of Famer as a 1B but he's a Hall of Fame caliber catcher who unfortunately should not play catcher anymore due head injuries. But despite that he's still a solid starting player at a very offensively-demanding position. He has the same 2016 OPS as ILB-anointed Hall of Famer Buster Posey! (who is well on his way to becoming a 1B himself)

so, i was wondering about Santana the other day (I was playing OOTP baseball and when the HOF vote came up I was giving him some serious thought). his career counting stats aren't close to what you would hope for, he dropped off quickly with his injuries. but for about 6 years he was insanely dominant. it's crazy how good he was. i don't think he'll get in, but his peak from '03-'08 was hard to ignore.
another name that looked surprising good looking back: Jason Giambi.

― Mad Piratical (The Cursed Return of the Dastardly Thermo Thinwall), Thursday, May 26, 2016 4:50 PM (25 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i'm not sure you really get how the hall of fame works

Jason Giambi's peak WAS surprising, I wonder how he did that

i'm not sure you really get how the hall of fame works

ok...

CC's having a pretty good year two months along. Maybe he needs to be moved from "slipping" to "not dead yet"--he's 35, and theoretically has enough time to log three or four solid seasons.

Would definitely add Jose Altuve to Kevin's "rising" group: 26-year-old second baseman, one batting title, headed for third straight 200-hit season, big jump in power and walks this year.

uh old news i declared altuve a future HOFer like 2 years ago and literally every minute of every day since get with it

cc passed glavine in strikeouts today fwiw

yeah altuve is a riser for sure

altuve making the hall of fame should be something the ilx's baseball clan cheerleads for the rest of his career

Will mention this in passing: because of an early jump, the Favorite Toy gives Elvis Andrus a 15% shot at 3,000 hits (which may or may not mean anything 20 years from now).

http://espn.go.com/mlb/stats/billjames/_/age/27/careertotal/1158/yearone/154/yeartwo/163/yearthree/168/goal/3000

Expect he'll end up in the Jose Reyes/Steve Sax around-2,000 group. Altuve's currently at 28%.

http://espn.go.com/mlb/stats/billjames/_/age/26/careertotal/890/yearone/200/yeartwo/225/yearthree/177/goal/3000

the still-only-26 yo starlin is at 12%

actually wrong, going by his age last year he's at 15%. he is 100% 26 this year though, so not sure that matters.

i'm wondering if all 3 of bagwell/raines/hoffman will get in on the next ballot. none of the other holdovers will come close imo. there's no grassroots campaigning for mussina and schilling (the latter being a tedious right winger won't help either) and the PED dudes will miss out again or fall off the ballot (i bet sosa get 4%.) no one seems to really care about edgar, walker, mcgriff, or kent.

i-rod, manny, and vlad are interesting test cases.

it's tough for anyone who went to college to get to the hall these days imo. kris bryant is nine months older than bryce harper, but harper has an extra three years in the majors. rick porcello is the epitome of a league-average pitcher, but he has 92 wins in his age-27 season because he got an early start and pitched for some good teams.

and circumstances play such a huge role -- not that he's a likely hall of famer, but gary sanchez has been a top-100 prospect for five full years now. he's still only 23, but maybe if the yankees hadn't signed brian mccann to a huge contract, he'd have been in the majors for three years now.

not that that takes anything away from altuve, etc., but they were so fortunate to get the opportunities they did

HOF-ers are usually great players well into their 30's though. If a HOF candidate needs 8-10 great years and a few more good ones to pad his stats, then a college player who breaks in at age 22-23 only needs to play until age 36-37 to have a decent HOF case.

I think the advantage of starting younger is that you can flame out somewhat but still recover and hang on for enough years to have a decent HOF case. If Andruw Jones hadn't fallen apart after age 30 and had hung on as a DH for 3-4 more years, then he could have had 500 HR, 70+ WAR, and been remembered as an all-time great defender. He'd probably have been a shoo-in for election. Even *with* falling apart and having a couple of the worst years ever, he still come back (sort of) and had a couple of decent years before flaming out again and going to Japan. After a couple of good years there he had a reasonable chance for another MLB comeback -- he was still in his late 30's! And despite all that he still has a case as a borderline HOFer.

IOW, starting younger probably helps the borderline HOFers more than the ones who clear the bar with room to spare. A guy with 12-15 great years will stay great until his late 30's and it won't matter as much if he was a rookie at age 21 or age 24. Whereas a guy who started at age 21, had 6-8 great years followed by ten years of hanging around as a 1-1.5 win player might actually compile enough stats to convince people that he's a HOFer.

Maybe the two most famous examples of guys getting inexplicably late starts (both had clearly established they were ready at least two or three years earlier): Boggs gets his first full season in at 25, Edgar Martinez at 27. Boggs made it a moot point with eight or nine years of Ty Cobb; Edgar should be in the HOF, I (and many people) believe, but those missed years have probably kept him out. Hard to say, but if he had been given the third base job at 22, he maybe ends up with 3,000 hits and 400 HR.

Not disagreeing that in most cases, that early three-year window ultimately doesn't matter much re the HOF. Martinez might be an exception--his rate stats should be good enough, but along with the DH issue they haven't.

possibly relevant thing that came out of the urias hoopla is boras saying that pitchers with 650+ innings on their arms before they turn 24 aren't productive after they turn 30. which seems to be the case so far with CC and the rapidly declining felix, and it makes me hella nervous for kershaw (and madbum's there too). matt cain turned to shit at 28.

there are 19 pitchers since 1975 who fit that bill and 2 HOFers -- maddux and eck. list also includes valenzuela, gooden, avery, saberhagen, tanana. expand it to the top 50 and it looks like you add one more HOFer, smoltz with 503 IP (though i'm being sneaky, clemens is at 51).

maybe the high school thing only really applies to hitters.

But nearly all of those guys pitched before teams started paying attention to pitch counts and high inning workloads, especially for young pitchers. It was also an era (late 70's and all the of 80's) where pitchers of all ages flamed out. Jack Morris somehow ended up as the last man standing and almost made the HOF because there was almost nobody else from his era who had a long career. Something weird was happening to pitchers' arms in the 80's and I'm not sure it's connected to the mileage on their arms when they were young.

Felix hasn't had a serious injury in his entire career, I don't think he belongs in the discussion. After ten years of dominating this might be the start of a natural decline phase, not something injury related.

guys like felix and kershaw are putting up similar IP numbers and throwing harder than most of these 70s/80s pitchers. can't say they're really being handled carefully, except that one time kershaw got hurt and they played it safe.

i don't think it's really about injuries, it's just about putting miles on those arms. this is tough because the sample is so small but look at the velos of felix and CC. steeper declines at younger ages than you'd expect, by several years. sabathia went from 94 to 90 in three years and he's dropped another 3 this year. felix has lost 2 MPH on everything this season, which is the type of decline i'd expect from a 36 year old, not a healthy guy that just turned 30.

compare it to guys like scherzer, hamels, lester, cueto, zimmermann, all guys in their 30s aging pretty gracefully velo-wise. those are the types i'd have pegged as potential HOFers (the first 3 at least), guys who could just keep being good for another decade+.

it's all small sample size though, maybe someone's done an article about it.

It's definitely about putting miles on arms. Scherzer still throws hard at age 31, but let's see how hard he throws in another 3-4 years when he's pitched as many innings as Felix.

Just about every pitcher, even the best ones, lose velocity as they age. But maybe we're entering another transition period -- in the past, pitchers could lose several MPH but still throw mid to high 80's and still be effective for years if they made adjustments. Now, the hitters are too good and will murder almost any fastball thrown under 90. Pitchers need to figure out how to cope with that to extend their career. In the old days he'd have switched to long relief, or developed a new pitch or two. Maybe those things are due for a comeback? (especially the long relief role, which has all but vanished in today's game)

Yusmeiro Petit has a chance!

i think the thing boras is trying to get across is the question of whether or not putting miles on those arms at a young age when the body is still in development mode sets the body up to fail at an exponentially higher rate than it would otherwise at younger ages.

but even if it's a straight shot -- start your career 4 years earlier than average, start decline 4 years earlier than average (though that certainly doesn't work both ways) -- we take it for granted. teenage phenoms come up and we assume they're getting a four year boost and they're more likely to hit these major milestones because of it. might be reasonable for hitters but probably not pitchers.

*otherwise and at younger ages, that came out weird

changes to the veterans committee voting procedures. there are now 4 official eras: "early baseball" (1871-1949), "golden days" (1950-1969), "modern baseball" (1970-1987), and "today's game" (1988-present). candidates from "early baseball" will be considered once every 10 years; those from the "golden days" once every 5 years, and those from the "modern" and "today" twice every 5 years

lol none of that matters until you force them at gunpoint to vote one player in from 1990->now and even then you're gonna get stuck with an Eckstein

One of these guys responsible for inventing "today's game."

http://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/MLB/1988-rookies.shtml

I'll go with Jack McDowell for being all over grunge.

lolsmoltz 3 WAR for batting

what do you all think of chase utley's chances?

11th among 2B by JAWS

bWAR: 63.9 -15th among 2B, approaching HOF Biggio (65.1), less than non-HOF Bobby Grich (70.9).

for those that care about such things, he has the single team thing going for most of his career, and was part of the Phillies 2008-09 team in the WS.

but unfortunately for largely the same group of people who care about such things, he only has a .278 BA, 248 HR, and 1770 hits.

i think he's on the edge, but it doesn't help that Cano is already nipping at his heels in many ways and is 4 years younger

if i had a vote, he'd get it without question. and i think in 15-20 years or so when he's nearing the end of his eligibility, he'll get in as voters get younger and smarter. but i think he'll suffer from some obvious problems in the beginning
- no counting stats
- plays second base
- lots of value from defense and base running
- overshadowed in his prime by two clearly inferior players on his own team

that 5-year run he had to start his career has to be in the top 5 of any 2B's best 5-year run ever. dude was amazing, and continued to be super valuable even when his big hitting numbers started to decline

the other obvious reason is all the time he missed. never mind of course that he was insanely valuable when he did play

utley > cano too, imo

utley > cano too, imo

otm but i love cano too and hope he makes the hall

same