 |
| "Now batting, number 2, the shortstop, Derek Jeter." (Said in the oldest, plummiest WASP accent this side of George Plimpton.) |
 |
| The underrated Bobby Abreu. |
 |
| Raul Ibanez: Just turtle-y enough for the Turtle Club. |
Yesterday the 2020 Hall of Fame ballot was announced. The
biggest name appearing on the ballot for the first time is Derek Jeter. I’m
going to go out on a limb here and say I think there’s a strong possibility
that Derek Jeter could get elected. (That’s a joke.) Obviously, Jeter will sail
into the Hall. The only question to ponder is what will his percentage be? I’m
going to predict that Jeter will get 95% of the vote. I think it’s unlikely
that he’d be a unanimous choice, but then I was surprised last year when
Mariano Rivera was named on all the ballots, becoming the very first unanimous
Hall of Famer.
Let’s look at the returning candidates, before taking a look
at some of those players on the ballot for the first time.
Curt Schilling: Last year, Schilling reached a high of being
named on 60.9% of the ballots. And that was with a very stacked ballot. I’m
going to predict that this year Schilling will make the jump and be elected. As
a player, Schilling absolutely deserves to be in. As a person, meh, not so
much.
Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens: I’m going to discuss Bonds
and Clemens together, since their arguments are essentially the same. If you
want Bonds and Clemens in, your argument is simply that they were among the
greatest players ever, and since they never failed a steroid test, well, we
just don’t know if they were juicing or not. (Or you don’t care if they were
juicing or not.) There is a valid argument there, as no one can argue that
Bonds and Clemens weren’t two of the best players ever. The question is: how
much of that greatness was aided by chemicals?
Bonds and Clemens’ vote totals have moved together in
lockstep fashion, making it clear that if you support one, you support the
other. This is their 8th year on the ballot, and it will be
fascinating to see what happens. I’m not going to offer a prediction, since I have
no idea. They were both at 59% last year, and they need to make a substantial
jump, to say, 67%, to be in a position to one day get elected by the writers.
What people have overlooked about Bonds and Clemens’ rising
vote totals is the number of voters they’re actually gaining. Clemens gained 11
votes in 2019, and Bonds gained 13 votes. If they keep growing by those
numbers, they’re not going to make it, assuming the number of BBWAA voters
holds steady at around 420-430.
Larry Walker is in his last year on the ballot. He made a
huge leap forward in 2019, gaining 20% of the vote to end up at 54.6%. He’ll
need another 20% jump to gain entry in 2020. It’s possible, as this year’s
ballot is weaker than last year, and nearly every player gains votes in their
last year on the ballot. (Except for Jack Morris, who then had to wait for the
Veterans’ Committee to elect him.)
Omar Vizquel had a nice showing last year, his second on the
ballot, at 42.8%, and I predict he’ll move closer to 50% this year, making it likely
we’ll see him in the Hall in a few years.
Manny Ramirez will continue to tread water in the Dave
Parker/Dale Murphy territory of 20-30%.
Jeff Kent is in the same category as Ramirez, holding
steadily above 5% to remain on the ballot, but not making meaningful progress
towards 75%. Kent is an excellent candidate, and it’s interesting that he hasn’t
gained more support.
I don’t have strong feelings about Scott Rolen, Billy Wagner,
Todd Helton, and Gary Sheffield. They all deserve to stay on the ballot as we
continue to scrutinize their careers. Maybe one of them will break through and
have a significant gain.
Andy Pettitte, Sammy Sosa, and Andruw Jones will all be
hoping to stay above 5% and remain on the ballot. Will Jeter’s appearance lead
to more people voting for Pettitte? Possibly, and the fact that there are no
strong first-year pitchers on this ballot could lead to an uptick for Pettitte.
New candidates for 2020:
Okay, so there’s that Jeter guy, who I think will do okay.
Besides Jeter, who else debuts this year? The strongest candidates are Bobby
Abreu, Jason Giambi, and I’d say Paul Konerko, even though WAR doesn’t agree
with me.
Bobby Abreu: He’s a fascinating candidate for the Hall of
Fame. Abreu has a more compelling case for the Hall than you probably remember.
Abreu finished his career with 60 WAR, and JAWS ranks him as the 20th
best right fielder. That’s below the Hall of Fame standard for right fielders,
but that’s also skewed a little bit by how great the top three right fielders
were: Babe Ruth, with 162.1 WAR, Hank Aaron, at 143, and Stan Musial at 128.2.
Nobody is going to match up to those guys. Abreu’s JAWS score of 50.8 puts him
just below Dave Winfield and Ichiro Suzuki, but it also puts Abreu above Hall
of Famers Vladimir Guerrero, Enos Slaughter, and Sam Rice, among others.
Abreu was good at a lot of things: he hit for power, he
scored lots of runs, he had a lot of RBIs, he walked a lot, he was a great base
stealer. But there isn’t one stat that jumps out and screams, “Hall of Famer.” Abreu
is one of just six players with more than 250 home runs and more than 400
stolen bases. The others? Barry Bonds, Bobby Bonds, Rickey Henderson, Craig
Biggio, and Joe Morgan. That’s a very impressive group to be a part of. I hope
that Abreu does well enough on the ballot to show that he’s a serious
candidate.
Jason Giambi: Giambi had an excellent career, leading the
league in OBP three times, and winning the AL MVP in 2000. Unfortunately, he
also took steroids. Giambi might get more than 5% of the vote, but seeing how
other steroid users, and suspected steroid users, have fared on the ballot,
Giambi probably won’t emerge as a serious Hall of Fame candidate. Man, Giambi
just hung around forever as a pinch-hitter. Those last five years of his career
didn’t really add much value, but they did allow Giambi to surpass 2,000 hits.
Paul Konerko: On paper, Konerko looks like a possible Hall
of Famer. He finished his career with 2,340 hits, 439 home runs, and 1,412
RBIs. But WAR tells us that he simply wasn’t an elite player, finishing with
27.7 WAR, putting Konerko right around players like Garry Templeton, Roy
Smalley, Hal McRae, Terry Steinbach, Clete Boyer, and Lloyd Moseby.
WAR is curious. How is it possible that Paul Konerko was as
valuable as Lloyd Moseby? Paul Konerko hit 270 more home runs than Lloyd
Moseby. He crushes Moseby in the slash line stats: .279/.354/.486 to .257/.332/.414.
Huh.
Konerko will always strike fear in my heart because I was
almost hit by a home run he hit at the Metrodome. My Dad and I were sitting out
in the left field bleachers. I didn’t have a glove with me, and I could tell
the ball was coming right towards me. I got out of the way. The ball clanked
off of the seat I had been sitting in, and bounced several rows away. I didn’t
even get the ball. I don’t know the exit velocity of that home run, but I can
tell you, it was hit hard, and I did not want it to hit me in the chest.
Konerko is probably too similar to a lot of other first
basemen, both in and out of the Hall of Fame, to be a strong candidate. It’ll
be interesting to see how he does on the ballot. I think he deserves to get 5%
of the vote, but he might fall short of that.
Cliff Lee: He had a nice career, but due to injuries, he was
done at age 35. He’s not a Hall of Famer, but he had some good runs in the
postseason: 7-3 with a 2.52 ERA.
There are some other notable names on the ballot, like Brian
Roberts, who looked for a while like he might be the new doubles leader. (Not
really, since the leader is Tris Speaker, with 792.) Still, Roberts had three
seasons of 50 or more doubles. There’s Alfonso Soriano, who smacked 412 home
runs. (I saw Soriano’s last major league game at Target Field on July 5, 2014.)
There’s Adam Dunn, who crushed 462 home runs and saw his career fade out in a
burst of Chris Davis-like futility, as he hit .159 in 2011. I was always
secretly hoping that Dunn would play a couple more years and break the all-time
strikeout record. Dunn was only 218 strikeouts shy of Reggie Jackson’s record, so
he really only had to play one more year. There’s Raul Ibanez, who had a solid
career, despite not becoming an everyday player until he was 30. Although he’s
not a Hall of Famer, Raul Ibanez was just turtle-y enough for the Turtle Club.
To sum up, my bold prediction is that Derek Jeter and Curt
Schilling will be voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2020.
No comments:
Post a Comment