AGAINST HALL ODDS
Analyzing Cooperstown chances for NYC stars
THIS SEEMED to be the right week to mention that there are a lot of Hall of Famers roaming major league fields right now.
Clayton Kershaw, Max Scherzer, Mike Trout and Justin Verlander are players who will have a chance to get 100 percent of the vote when their day comes (the same for Miguel Cabrera, who retired after last season).
There will be arguments about Zack Greinke and Joey Votto receiving the necessary 75 percent of the vote, but I suspect they will gain Cooperstown entrance.
Nolan Arenado and Manny Machado are en route to having the kinds of two-way third base careers better than Scott Rolen and on par, perhaps, with Adrian Beltre — and Rolen and Beltran were elected to the Hall the past two years. Paul Goldschmidt looks a lot like Jeff Bagwell. Freddie Freeman stands with newly elected Todd Helton — only better since Freeman is doing this at sea level.
Mookie Betts is a super-sized version of Carlos Beltran, who I think gets in eventually, and when he does that will make it easier for his teammate in the 2017 Astros scandal, Jose Altuve, to pretty much waltz in.
Remember a decade back when we argued who would have the better career, Trout or Bryce Harper? Trout is going to end up with the better metrics, but Harper is going to have the career you want out of those two (unless you prefer never to have an October moment).
There are plenty of others, notably among those who have yet to reach the mandatory 10 years of service needed for consideration, such as Shohei Ohtani. I always caution that a player could look on a certain trajectory at one moment — Don Mattingly, Dwight Gooden and
Darryl Strawberry come to mind — and never get to where you had initially expected.
With this in mind, I wanted to take a look at five New York-centric cases:
1. Pete Alonso: Of the players listed here, he is going to have the toughest road because:
lHis career did not begin until he was 24, and though he has set the MLB rookie homer record in 2019 and should finish this season among the top three homer hitters in Mets history (with an outside chance of being No. 2), he ranks just tied for 68th alltime with 192 homers through his age-28 campaign.
lOne of those he is tied with at 192 homers through age 28 is Rolen, but Rolen was an elite two-way player at a time when Wins Above Replacement (which attempts to assess the full contribution of a player) has become the dominant metric among those who have joined the voting ranks in the past 10 years. And though Alonso has 15 more homers than any player since entering the majors, he ranks just 29th in
WAR (Baseball Reference), coming in between Willy Adames and Tommy Edman.
Alonso’s Hall candidacy, thus, has overtones to, say, Ryan Howard and Mo Vaughn — sluggers who did not play full-time until their mid-20s, had high peaks (both won an MVP) but faded with age/injury/lack of athleticism. Both failed to get the requisite 5 percent necessary to stay on the ballot in their first year of Hall eligibility.
Alonso is durable (so was Howard through 31, though). He works hard on defense and his body. He still needs to play in five more seasons to reach Hall eligibility. And to have a Cooperstown chance, he will need one or perhaps a combo of these: 1. Voters care less about batting average than ever. Still, Alonso’s .217 last season must be an anomaly. He needs to be in what had been a more familiar .260 range. 2. He gets to 500 homers. 3. He wins an MVP or at least has a few top-five finishes (his best so far is seventh). 4. He has big postseason moments.
2. Gerrit Cole: If his career ended today, would Cole have a chance at election with one Cy Young, two seconds, two fourths and a fifth, plus a 2.93 ERA in 17 postseason starts? He certainly would get votes, albeit perhaps not 75 percent.
Cole is having something that looks like Scherzer’s career, and if that continues — durability and high-level excellence — for even, say, three more seasons, he should be a cinch.
And consider how counting numbers have changed in this era. Verlander, Grienke, Kershaw and Scherzer are above 200 wins (Adam Wainwright retired at the end of the season with exactly 200). The next most among active players is Cole’s 145. If/when he reaches 200 — forget 300 — it is going to be a very long time until the next pitcher gets there.
There are 10 active pitchers with even more than 100 wins, and there is close to zero chance any reach 200 due to age — Johnny Cueto, Lance Lynn, Charlie Morton, Chris Sale, Corey Kluber, Wade Miley, Carlos Carrasco,
Kyle Gibson, Yu Darvish and Dallas Keuchel. The most wins by a pitcher who finished last season 30 or younger was 90 by Aaron Nola.
Cole’s 200-plus may feel like 300 by the time he is up for election.
3. Aaron Judge: He has the Alonso age problem, since he was 25 in his first full season. Here comes the huge but: Though he has hit 23 more homers than anyone since 2017, Judge is second in WAR in that time to Betts, plus briefly held the rookie homer record, does hold the AL homer record with his iconic 2022 campaign, and has an MVP plus a second-place finish and a fourth.
He’d be a fascinating case if his career ended today. Three more high-level seasons should go a long way toward Cooperstown — though injury concerns hover over his career. His blemish is a postseason in which he has hit just .211 while striking out in one-third of his plate appearances. A huge October (or two) also would be a finishing Hall touch.
4. Francisco Lindor: His career numbers have a clone-ish look to the player with whom he longed shared the left side of the Cleveland infield:
Jose Ramirez. Lindor: 1,223 games; 5,427 plate appearances; 787 runs; 1,323 hits; 215 homers. Compared to Ramirez: 1,293 games; 5,404 plate appearances; 784 runs; 1,327 hits; 216 homers.
That leaves Ramirez shy at third base (but on a good track) compared to Arenado and Machado. But as a shortstop, consider Lindor has 42.7 WAR through his age-29 season compared to the 40.4 of Jeter (which was the same that Ramirez had through his age-29 season).
The player that Lindor most reminds me of is Beltran — switchhitter, middle-of-the-diamond, varied high-level skills. Beltran had big postseason moments, which would help Lindor — who has two Gold Gloves and five top-nine MVP finishes, but three of those are ninth and there are none in the top four.
5. Juan Soto: Baseball Reference has a category determining which batters a player is most similar to statistically. Judge’s No. 1 comparison is Soto. But here is the thing: Judge is entering his age-32 season, Soto has all that accumulation and is entering his age-25 campaign.
Judge has played just 835 games, which is why at his age and with his injury history there is still a chance for his career to tail in a direction that could keep him from Cooperstown. Soto has played in 779 games, and his 3,375 plate appearances are the 16th most in history through an age-24 season. And to just get an idea of his trajectory, his 157 OPS-plus ranks him 13th best through age-24 between Rogers Hornsby (158) and Willie Mays (155). His 160 homers are tied with Albert Pujols for ninth through 24 between Frank Robinson and Orlando Cepeda.
Soto, who still needs to play in four seasons to be Hall eligible, has a second, fifth, sixth and ninth in MVP voting, and was second for the 2018 NL Rookie of the Year to Ronald Acuna Jr., who is on a similar Hall path.
Acuna joined Trout and Alex Rodriguez as the only players to reach 150 homers and 150 steals through their age-25 season. Julio Rodriguez, entering his age-23 season, has a chance to join that over the next few years — yet another reminder that across the MLB landscape there are a lot of players steadily building intriguing Hall cases.