Gary Sheffield and intriguing Hall candidates,
Derek Jeter won’t be the first player elected to baseball’s Hall of Fame in unanimous fashion. His Yankees teammate, Mariano Rivera, beat him to that distinction just a year ago.
While advanced metrics and a general sense he was merely an average defensive shortstop have haunted Jeter the past two decades, he is objectively, overwhelmingly qualified. With 3,465 hits and a .310 batting average over 20 seasons and a postseason dossier extensive enough to comprise a 21st season, Jeter has more than enough ammo to quiet the naysayers.
Ballots are tallied, results are announced Jan. 21 and induction ensues July 26 in Cooperstown, New York.
With Jeter a virtual shoo-in, Sports Weekly looks at intriguing candidates:
Gary Sheffield
Case for: Sheffield’s greatest calling card is a combination of Hall-worthy statistics – such as 509 home runs – mixed with periods of dominance that put to rest any notion he was merely a “compiler” of statistics.
His 22-year career spanned several eras, and he wore even more hats in that time – shortstop and third baseman, outfielder, eventually a DH and a dabbler, intentionally or not, in performance-enhancing drugs (more on that later).
By 23, he was the 1992 National League batting champion and an All-Star, a third-place MVP finisher and well-established as an intimidating presence in the batter’s box.
That was the first of 12 seasons in which his adjusted OPS was at least 40 points above league average and the first of a half-dozen seasons in which he finished in the top 10 in MVP voting.
Some of his greatest work was buried in the homer-happy ’90s, an unprecedented offensive environment laced with chemically enhanced sluggers.
Sheffield’s greatest overall season was probably 1996, when he led the NL in on-base percentage (.465), OPS (1.090) and adjusted OPS (189) while slamming 42 home runs in Miami’s pitcher-friendly Pro Player Park.
He finished sixth in MVP voting that season, despite outpointing winner Ken Caminiti in nearly every key offensive category. Caminiti, who carried the Padres to an NL West title that season, admitted six years later that anabolic steroids helped fuel his MVP season.
Case against: Sheffield’s career body of work comes with the qualifier that he, perhaps unknowingly, took PEDs before the 2002 season. In leaked grand jury testimony during the BALCO trial, Sheffield says that during winter workouts, Bonds urged Sheffield to take substances later found to be known as the “clear” and “cream” designer steroids developed by BALCO. The immediate effects seemed negligible – Sheffield actually dipped in almost every offensive category in 2002 – though he enjoyed a large bounceback in 2003. Sheffield finished second in AL MVP voting in 2004 and hit 34 homers and finished eighth in 2005 – the first full year of drug testing with penalties in the majors.
While Sheffield was versatile, athletic and explosive on the offensive end, he was never a great defensive player, ranking in the red in available defensive metrics of his era.
Consenus: Sheffield’s career timing is not ideal, but it also could be worse. He established his bona fides as an elite offensive player before the power deluge of the mid-1990s but also had many of his finest seasons overshadowed by players whose greatness was far less enduring.
Consequently, his timing on the Hall ballot is also suboptimal, but his fortunes might be changing. With 11 players earn
ing induction via the writers’ vote the past three years, a ballot backlog is easing. Tolerance, or at least nuance, is more often applied to the PED question among many voters, which might reduce the number of voters who omit Sheffield in the name of unknowable purity.
Scott Rolen
Case for: Rolen was a seventime All-Star, a Silver Slugger and an eight-time Gold Glove winner at third base. Among third basemen, only Hall of Famers Brooks Robinson (16) and Mike Schmidt (10) have more Gold Gloves than Rolen.
By advanced metrics, Rolen has the ninth best WAR (70.2, Wins Above Replacement) among third basemen in the history of the game, according to baseball-reference.com. Seven of the eight players with a higher WAR are already enshrined in Cooperstown. Adrian Beltre, a sure-bet Hall of Famer, is not eligible until 2024.
And for comparison with Ron Santo, who was voted in by the Veterans Committee in 2012:
Offensively
Santo: .277/.362/.464 slash line, 342 home runs, 1,331 RBI, 70.5 WAR
Rolen: .281/.366/.490 slash line, 316 home runs, 1,287 RBI, 70.2 WAR
Accolades
Santo: five Gold Gloves, nine All-Star appearances
Rolen: eight Gold Gloves, seven All-Star appearances Case against: Rolen played in era when offensive numbers were inflated. And while he does have good rate statistics, his overall traditional numbers never measured up to his counterparts like Chipper Jones and Vinny Castilla. Injuries hampered his career stats. He played 150 games five times, but never after the 2003 season.
Offensively, Rolen never led the majors in any major statistical category. In 2004, he did finish second in the NL with 124 RBI, but that came in the best offensive season of his career.
Over parts of 17 seasons, Rolen collected 2,077 hits. No position player has been elected with fewer than that total since Johnny Bench in 1989 – and he’s considered one of the greatest catchers all time.
X factors: When analyzing a player’s Hall of Fame credentials, voters tend to look at their peak years. For Rolen, his eightyear span from 1997 to 2004 were dominant. During those years, he collected a WAR of 46.3, which was third best among hitters behind Barry Bonds (71.2) and Alex Rodriguez (62.4), but both who have been linked to performance-enhancing drugs.
Much of his WAR can be attributed to his defense, but he also hit 222 home runs and drove in 813 RBI during that span. Consensus: Rolen is also one of the best third basemen in Cardinals history and was inducted into their Hall of Fame this past summer. He was an integral part of the club that won it all in 2006, batting .421 with a 1.213 OPS in the World Series. While it is unlikely that he gets in this year, the once-crowded ballot is now getting thinner, making his chances better with eight more years on the ballot.
— Scott Boeck
Omar Vizquel
Case for: First and foremost, Vizquel was a master with the glove. His 11 Gold Gloves at shortstop are second only to Hall of Famer Ozzie Smith. Six times he led his league in fielding percentage at shortstop and 13 times he finished top-three.
Vizquel’s career fielding percentage of .985 is the best in history among shortstops with at least 500 games played.
If you prefer more advanced metrics, his 29.5 career WAR (Wins Above Replacement) on defense alone ranks ninth all time at any position.
At 5-9 and 180 pounds, Vizquel made up for what he lacked in power with excellent bat control, striking out an average of just 45 times a season and leading the league four times in sacrifice hits. Case against: Although he hit over .290 in five different seasons, Vizquel’s impact on offense was nowhere close to his value on defense.
His career slash line of .272/ .336/.352 with 80 home runs in 24 seasons translates into a well below-average 82 OPS+.
He enjoyed a lengthy career that enabled him to accumulate impressive career totals, but there’s still a sizable gap between Vizquel’s 45.6 career WAR (Wins Above Replacement) and the 67.0 average of the 22 other shortstops already enshrined in Cooperstown.
X factors: In almost any previous era, Vizquel would likely have cruised into Cooperstown on the strength of his defensive wizardry. But as he broke into the majors, a new generation of shortstops who could play defense and hit for power – Cal Ripken and Barry Larkin, for example – had begun to redefine the position. Consensus: Vizquel’s career is more than just the numbers. His highlight-reel defensive plays and his leadership both on and off the field bolster his candidacy.
Only one native of Venezuela (Luis Aparicio) has been elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. But Vizquel’s rise above the 40% mark in just his second year on the ballot is an indication he could soon be the second.
— Steve Gardner
Curt Schilling
Case for: One of only six players in history with at three 300-strikeout seasons, Schilling ranks 15th on the all-time list with 3,115 – behind 13 Hall of Famers and Roger Clemens.
Schilling’s career was largely defined by his postseason performances, and the numbers back up the hyperbole. Schilling was 11-2 with a 2.23 ERA in 19 career postseason starts.
After surrendering six earned runs in his 1993 World Series debut, Schilling gave up just five more across his next 412⁄3 innings in the Fall Classic, helping the Diamondbacks (2001) and Red Sox (2004 and 2007) win titles.
Schilling was 3-0 with a 1.37 ERA in five career elimination games, most famously sporting a bloody sock as he helped Boston force a Game 7 in the legendary 2004 ALCS. His 56 strikeouts during Arizona’s 2001 run remains the most ever in a single postseason.
Dealt three times in his first six years as a pro, Schilling didn’t become a regular part of a rotation until 1992, his age 25 season. He tossed 10 complete games in just 26 starts that year, a preview of what the workhorse would do throughout his career. From 1988 to 2007, Schilling’s 83 complete games trail only Randy Johnson and Greg Maddux. Case against: Schilling never won a Cy Young award, finishing second on three occasions. This isn’t particularly surprising, but illustrates that he wasn’t considered to be on the same level as some of his contemporaries.
In a 2017 interview, Schilling admitted that he might not measure up to Hall of Fame standards – at least in his book. “I think I was pretty good,” Schilling said. “I think I was better than anybody else in the history of the game in October, but do I think I’m a Hall of Famer, in my Hall of Fame? No.”
X factors: With almost 40% of the ballots tracked by the Ryan Thibodaux, Schilling has gathered 79.5% of the vote. Some voters will continue to omit him from their ballots for “character” concerns – as is their right – but the tide is rising. Still, Schilling saw a substantial 8.9% drop-off between the pre-tracked ballots and the actual 60.9% received last year. A similar number in 2020 might indicate a firmly entrenched opposition unwilling to come around on his candidacy.
Consensus: Even if he doesn’t hit 75% of the vote this year, Schilling has two more chances and will almost certainly cross the threshold before 10 years are up.
— Jesse Yomtov