For now anyway, Wright is a keeper

Historically, election to the Hall in a player’s first year of eligibility has served as best-of-the-best-of-the-best recognition. To honor that status, some voters err on the side of skepticism.

But that approach risks dropping standout candidates below the 5 percent threshold needed to stay on the ballot and gain greater appreciation. Lou Whitaker, Kenny Lofton, Jim Edmonds, Bobby Grich, Kevin Brown . . . plenty of Hall-worthy players had candidacies end almost as soon as they began.

In my three years as a Hall voter, one of the joys of the responsibility is the opportunity to revisit, reconsider, and more deeply study and appreciate candidates. I find it unnecessarily — and wrongly — limiting to suggest that a view of a player should be static, particularly given that we’re permitted a finite number of votes.

Our understanding of historical events and figures evolves over time. The same can and should be true of how players’ careers are assessed. But in order to allow perspectives to reshape, the players have to stay on the ballot — in a time when the window to gain appreciation as Hall-worthy has been narrowed from 15 years (a duration that allowed Jim Rice to gain a place) to 10.

With that notion in mind, after voting again for my six holdovers (Carlos Beltrán, Todd Helton, Andruw Jones, Andy Pettitte, Gary Sheffield, Billy Wagner), I took an increasingly expansive view of first-year candidates.

I happily checked off Adrián Beltré, not only the possessor of incredible career milestones but also one of the most compelling players I’ve ever watched during a shorter-than-it-should-havebeen Red Sox career. I also voted for Joe Mauer, who had one of the greatest two-way, 10-year stretches of all time behind the plate from 2001-10, and Chase Utley, whose accomplishments (arguably as good as anyone except Albert Pujols in the NL over a nine-year span from 2005-13) were amplified by epic postseason moments as well as reverence among teammates for building championship cultures in Philadelphia and Los Angeles.

That was nine checkmarks — one short of the maximum. I considered sending in my ballot without using all my votes. I thought about adding Mark Buehrle in recognition of the brutal under-recognition of starting pitchers in Hall voting. I gave thought to recognizing the multidimensional excellence of Torii Hunter and Jimmy Rollins over long tenures. (I did not consider Alex Rodriguez, Manny Ramirez, or Bartolo Colon, all of whom were suspended for PED use long after doing so came with clear penalties.)

But in the end, my last vote was framed with thoughts of Dustin Pedroia — a player who isn’t even on this year’s ballot.

To me, a vote is not determined simply by statistical accomplishments. How important is a player in telling the story of his franchise and of a game’s era? How many years of greatness merit recognition for their enduring fame?

I’m not sure how I’ll answer those questions when Pedroia becomes eligible next year, but I’ve been mulling it for years. And in doing so, I almost invariably thought of David Wright (below) — the greatest position player in Mets history, probably behind only Pujols and Utley as the best player in the NL from 2005-13, but with a career whose second act was truncated by devastating back injuries.

Are nine years of greatness followed by a crashing halt enough to merit enshrinement? I’m not sure. But Wright’s contributions were memorable and enduring enough that I feel he’s at least worthy of further consideration — something that becomes possible only if he sticks around for a second year of voting. I may or may not vote for Wright again, but at the least, I wanted to cast a vote in hopes of buying more time to consider his case.