2020 BBWAA Baseball Hall of Fame Ballot

"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 8^th 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 20^th 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.