Carlos Beltrán. Let’s start this column with him. When he debuted on the Hall of Fame ballot four elections ago, you could hear the trash cans banging in the distance. Now, as election night looms next Tuesday, it looks as if he’s about to hear a different sound: Welcome to Cooperstown.
Andruw Jones. When he first appeared on this ballot, back in 2018, he barely got enough votes to make it to Year 2. Now, just like all those fly balls he once ran down in the gaps, it’s possible he’s about to make up more ground than any Hall candidate in history.
Cole Hamels … Ryan Braun … Shin-Soo Choo … Nick Markakis. They’re all on a Hall of Fame ballot for the first time. Like the eight other first-time candidates, they had fantastic careers. But were they fantastic enough to get my vote? With one of those men in particular, that was a question that gobbled up far too much space in my brain for over a week.
So this is that column I write every year, the one where I take you inside the Hall of Fame ballot I sent in just a couple of weeks ago. There were nine names checked on my ballot. I believe I owe you an explanation for every one of those votes.
I’ve always felt it’s my responsibility, as a voter who cares deeply about the Hall, to pull back the curtain and let all of you in. So I won’t just spit out the names that made my ballot. I think it’s important to tell you why I voted the way I did.
Many of you thank me every year for doing that. Some of you have slightly different reactions. It’s almost as if there are people out there who don’t agree with me. I’m not sure how that’s possible, but hey, ain’t that America.
I’m looking forward to reading the story comments below, just so I can get a better grasp of how big a knucklehead I actually am. But before you start banging out those comments, remember one small thing: From the moment that ballot arrives until the moment I send it off, I’m obsessed with this.
Voting for the Hall of Fame is an important job. Only a few hundred people on Earth get to do it. So even if you think I got every one of these votes wrong, at least give me bonus points for how many gazillion hours I spent trying to get this right.
On that note, if you’re ready, I’m ready. How did I fill out my 2026 Hall ballot? Let me explain.
The nine names I voted for
I think most people’s scouting report would say that I’m more of a “Big Hall” voter than a “Small Hall” voter, but this actually makes three times in the last six years that I did not fill up the maximum 10 slots. Here’s why:
I’ve never thought our job as voters was to keep voting until we got to 10 names. Our job is to answer one very basic question: Do we think this player was a Hall of Famer or not? If the answer is yes, we should aspire to vote for him every year. But I also reserve the right to change my mind. So that’s how I got to these nine names.
I voted for 10 players last year, but three of them — Ichiro Suzuki, CC Sabathia and Billy Wagner — got elected. So that led me to …
Seven returnees from last year
Carlos Beltrán
Andruw Jones
Jimmy Rollins
Chase Utley
David Wright
Dustin Pedroia
Andy Pettitte
Plus …
Two players I voted for this year, for the first time
Félix Hernández
Torii Hunter
And a few more where I …
Couldn’t quite get there
Cole Hamels
Bobby Abreu
Mark Buehrle
Francisco Rodríguez
Not to mention …
No votes for the PED All-Stars
Álex Rodríguez
Manny Ramírez
So now, here come …
Thoughts on why I vote the way I do
When I first stared at last year’s Hall ballot, it was like watching a fireworks show. With Ichiro, Sabathia and one of the deepest first-year classes ever, the star power on that ballot was spectacular.
So how different did this year’s ballot feel? Here’s a little nugget that might sum it up. If you count what he accomplished in Japan, Ichiro fired off more career hits by himself than the top two hit machines on this ballot — Markakis and Braun — got combined.
Total career hits by Ichiro — 4,367
Total by this year’s top two — 4,351
Anyone else find that tidbit as crazy as I did? But it’s also quite revealing. It was the absence of first-timer firepower on this ballot that felt as if it turned down the volume on this whole process. You don’t get an Ichiro bursting through that Cooperstown door every year. But over the last dozen years, we’ve gotten spoiled.
As I wrote in November, we’ve been living through the golden age of first-ballot Hall of Famers. The baseball writers have elected 18 first-ballot icons in the last 12 elections, the most in any 12-year period in history. I think I can speak for our group when I tell you we love it when the votes come easy.
This year, on the other hand, it felt as if none of these votes came easy. Even the two players most likely to get elected — Beltrán and Jones — have clouds hanging over them that could make it uncomfortable for some voters to place a check mark by their names.
So how did I still find nine players to vote for? Here are the two words that I couldn’t get out of my head this year. I’ve used them before, in this very section:
Star power.
Over these last 12 years — and especially last year — Cooperstown was oozing with that star power on Induction Weekend. It was a reminder that they call it the Hall of Fame for a reason.
So I found myself thinking a lot, over the last few weeks, about the “fame” part of the Hall of Fame. And it’s increasingly factoring into how I vote.
If you’re a student of the game, you can see that the magic counting numbers of yesteryear are either fading or taking on a different context. So it’s logical that you’re also starting to see our philosophies, as voters, beginning to evolve.
We’d better not wait around for guys to show up on the ballot with 3,000 hits or 300 wins, or we’ll be looking at a lot of empty podiums in Cooperstown every summer. So you can already see the voters shifting in the direction of stars whose credentials look very different than the Hall of Famers of yesteryear. In my case, that means I’m now gravitating toward players who …
A. Had a peak of greatness so big that when we asked, who’s the best player in baseball, or who’s the best pitcher in baseball, they spent years in that conversation.
B. Were so good, in their peak, that when we asked, who’s the best (pick a position) in baseball, we couldn’t help but think of them.
C. Were team-changing figures whose powerful imprint was all over the winning their teams did.
So why did I vote for Jones, Utley, Pedroia, Wright and King Félix? You won’t find any of them hanging out in the clubhouses of the 2,000-Hit Club or 200-Win Club, let alone the 3,000-Hit or 300-Win Clubs. But that misses the essence of what they represented in this sport at their greatest.
I know what a star looks like when I see one. I know what a winner looks like when I see one. I know what I’m gazing at when I’m watching players who lift everyone and everything around them, year after year.
For a long, long time, Hall of Fame voters have penalized players like that if injuries blew up their beautiful roads to the plaque gallery. It’s time to rethink that.
So I voted for all five of those men — in some cases just to keep them on this ballot and in this conversation. And as I’ve written before, that’s partly because I’m looking over the horizon at what and who comes next.
On deck: Buster Posey will be on the 2027 Hall of Fame ballot. (G Fiume / Getty Images)
One year from now, Buster Posey arrives on the ballot. He feels like an easy first-ballot Hall of Famer to me. And I say that even though I’m well aware he got just 1,500 hits. So ask yourself this: What happens when we elect a player with those career totals?
Maybe we’ll say: He’s different. He was a catcher. But I think it’s more likely we’ll say: If he’s a Hall of Famer, isn’t Utley? Isn’t Pedroia? It has been more than 50 years since the writers elected a position player with under 2,000 hits. That could change as soon as next week if Jones gets elected, with “only” 1,933 hits. And ohbytheway, he wasn’t a catcher.
That will be one more sign that we appear to be on the cusp of dramatically redefining what a Hall of Famer looks like in the 21st century. But as long as they’re players with the kind of star power I just talked about, why is there a problem with that?
So I’m casting votes now to position ourselves for that shift. But I also think there’s still room in the Hall for men like Pettitte, Rollins and Hunter, whose credentials might seem more traditional but no less valuable. We should never lose our appreciation for the meaning of longevity, of dependability, of many seasons of excellence, especially when it was on display for all of us to see in multiple Octobers.
Our evolution as voters might seem to be pushing us in a different direction. But why can’t more than one thing be true? Just because we gain a different perspective on one thing, why should we stop valuing another thing? It’s part of what makes Hall of Fame voting such a fascinating process.
I’ll have more to say about all of this as I go through my ballot. So let’s do that now, starting with the man most likely to reserve his flight to Cooperstown in a few days.
Carlos Beltrán (70.3% last year, 19 votes short)
Carlos Beltrán: What couldn’t he do! (Dave Kaup / Getty Images)
I wish Carlos Beltrán had just retired after the 2016 season. He could have made this so simple.
He’d have been a first-ballot Hall of Famer. He would already have given his speech and joined baseball’s most exalted fraternity. So he’d be a figure of pure admiration. And he’d never have to hear those words, “trash can,” for the rest of his baseball life.
Oh, well. So that didn’t happen. What did, though, was baseball’s most notorious sign-stealing scandal of modern times. The 2017 Houston Astros happened. Beltrán’s well-documented ring-leading role in it happened. And his presence on this ballot has forced us to ask:
Is it OK to put “cheaters” in the Hall of Fame as long as their preferred form of cheating was sign-stealing, as opposed to muscling up and blowing holes in the greatest records in sports?
We’re about to get the answer, thanks to Beltrán. If Tuesday’s election returns go the way we think they’re going to go, the message will be clear.
Performance-enhancing drug “cheaters”: No Coop(erstown) for you.
Sign-stealing “cheaters”: Aw, whatever. High-tech gamesmanship!
I don’t know if that’s the right answer or not. I do know I’ve voted for Beltrán all four years he has been on the ballot.
He’d already had a Hall of Fame career, 19 years of excellence, before he ever put on the jersey of those 2017 Astros. And my fellow voters are clearly telling us they don’t look at what happened that year to be a Hall of Fame death sentence. So if we’re just going to focus on what Beltrán did as a baseball player, of course he’s a Hall of Famer. Here’s why:
He was a 70-win player. Beltrán’s career Baseball Reference WAR is computed at 70.0. That makes him one of only seven retired center fielders in history who have crossed that 70-Win threshold. You know what we call those men: Hall of Famers. They’re all in — except for Beltrán.
In fact, there are only 21 retired 70-Win outfielders in history. Besides Beltrán, just one of them is not in the Hall of Fame. That’s a fellow named Barry Bonds — for reasons I’m not going to waste time on here.
He had a historic offensive impact. How many people on Earth actually understand how wins above replacement are computed? I’m going to place that over/under at, hmmm, maybe 50? Luckily, Baseball Reference breaks down where every player’s WAR number comes from. What you’ll find, if you take a close enough look at Beltrán, is that he was one of the most productive offensive center fielders who ever lived.
He finished his career with 66.6 offensive wins above replacement. Check out this list of all the retired center fielders who matched or topped that number:
Ty Cobb … Willie Mays … Tris Speaker … Mickey Mantle … Ken Griffey Jr. … Joe DiMaggio … Duke Snider. Recognize anything those guys have in common? No? Then maybe you should ask about it the next time you’re passing through Cooperstown.
He was an ultra-elite base runner. We don’t value great base running nearly as much as we should. So let’s take a moment to salute the base running genius of this man. Want to guess how many players in history had a better stolen-base success rate than Beltrán (86.4 percent)? As always, zero would be a fabulous guess (at least among players with at least 200 stolen-base attempts).
What couldn’t he do? With some players, we ask: What was he good at? With Beltrán, a better question would be: What wasn’t he good at? According to Baseball Reference, he made an impact in just about every area we can measure:
Batting Runs above average: Plus-262
Fielding Runs above average: Plus-40
Baserunning Runs above average: Plus-55
Here’s every retired outfielder since 1900 with Plus-250 Batting Runs (or better), Plus-40 Baserunning Runs (or better) and Plus-40 Fielding Runs (or better), according to Baseball Reference/Stathead:
Willie Mays
Rickey Henderson
Joe DiMaggio
Henry Aaron
Barry Bonds
Larry Walker
Carlos Beltrán
Whoever they are!
October was his favorite page on the calendar — I don’t know how many extra-credit points we’re supposed to bestow upon players who rose to meet those huge October moments. But feel free to award Beltrán a giant wheelbarrow full of them. He played 65 postseason games in his career — and hit .307/.412/.609, with 16 homers and 11 steals in 11 tries. That seems good. Want to know how good?
Through the magic of Baseball Reference and Stathead, I learned that the entire .300/.400/.600 Club among players who made it into at least 40 postseason games looks like this: Carlos Beltrán and Babe Ruth!
There’s also this fun club, of players who had a .300 postseason average, with at least 10 home runs and 10 steals. The two players in that one: Beltrán … and Derek Jeter!
But also … We’re talking about one of the greatest switch hitters who ever lived. Only three other switch hitters in history rolled up at least 2,400 hits, 400 homers and a career OPS+ as good as Beltrán’s (119): Mickey Mantle, Chipper Jones and Eddie Murray. … We’re also talking about a man with a rare array of power/speed skills. He’s in that 300-Steal/400-Homer Club, a club with only four other members. … Talk about your true All-Stars: In eight All-Star games, Beltrán hit .389/.421/.556, and reached base in all but one. Only three other All-Stars in history played that many games with that sweet of a slash line: Jeter, Griffey and Steve Garvey… Finally, people love to ask: How long was this guy a great player? Beltrán is one of just two outfielders who can say they won a Rookie of the Year award at age 22 (or younger) and were still getting at-bats in the All-Star Game at 39 (or older). The other? Some guy named Mays.
So let’s just say that after reading all that, if you’re still shouting that there’s no way this guy was a Hall of Famer, you obviously have a more profound trash-can fixation than us Hall of Fame voters do.
Andruw Jones (66.2% last year, 35 votes short)
Andruw Jones is closing in on Cooperstown. He had a scintillating 10-year stretch from 1998-2007. (John Iacono / Sports Illustrated via Getty Images)
Every year around this time, the Braves aficionados in the Andruw Jones Fan Club start bombarding me with reminders that their man Andruw has to be the most clear-cut Hall of Fame center fielder since Willie Mays. OK, cool. Thanks for thinking of me.
They need to stay on top of me, though, because I was one of the last of the holdouts on Jones. I watched him ride the ballot rocket ship from 31 votes to 226, from 7.3 percent to over 58 percent, before I finally climbed onboard and voted for him — in his seventh election.
I had so many reservations then. I’m not 100 percent over them now, as he rolls into his ninth attempt to get elected.
None of this has changed: Off the field, there’s a disturbing 2012 domestic-violence arrest and his guilty plea to a related disorderly conduct charge, which would give anyone pause. … And on the field, Jones would have the lowest career batting average (.254) of any outfielder in the Hall of Fame. … His career barreled off a cliff after age 30, and his 1.7 total wins above replacement, from age 31 on, would be the fewest of any Hall of Fame outfielder, according to Baseball Reference. … I’m not even totally convinced his defensive peak lasted quite as long as people think it did.
Remember, Baseball Reference tells us that nearly 40 percent of his 62.7 WAR come from retroactive defensive metrics. So for Jones to be a “clear-cut” Hall of Famer, we have to trust that the computations of his defensive impact are as reliable as we need them to be. And face it, the metrics from his era aren’t nearly as exact as what we can measure today.
So why did it take me seven years to vote for this guy? That’s why.
But here’s what I tell the Andruw Jones Fan Club these days: Relax. I’m over it. (Mostly.)
Earlier in this column, I typed a lot of words laying out how I’ve evolved as a voter in recent years. So if I’m going to be shooting votes at players like Utley, Wright and Pedroia — based on their 10-year runs of greatness — then it would be hypocritical not to vote for Jones, too.
I’ll always wish that Jones was a better player in his 30s. But I spent enough time watching Young Andruw work his outfield magic in his 20s to know that that guy was special. I’m not hard-headed enough to ignore his 10 remarkable seasons from age 21 to 30 — because they looked like this:
HR — 34.5/year
bWAR — 5.8/year
Gold Gloves — 10 in 10 years
Only three center fielders in history had 10 years like that: Mays … Ken Griffey Jr. … and the pride of Curacao.
Then again, not many men, at any spot in the outfield, have matched Jones’ power/glove combo platter.
MOST YEARS WITH GOLD GLOVE AND 30+ HR
(Outfielders only)
Willie Mays — 8
Barry Bonds — 7
Andruw Jones — 7
And one more thing. It wasn’t as if Jones did what he did in baseball’s shadows. This was a man who abracadabra’d all those gappers into outs while playing behind the greatest pitching staff of his generation, for Braves teams that never stopped chasing October.
MOST OUTFIELD GOLD GLOVES FOR PLAYOFF TEAMS
Andruw Jones — 8
Torii Hunter — 6
Garry Maddox — 6
Side note: I’m glad that Hunter’s name appeared in this section, because the closer Jones gets to the plaque gallery, the more it inspired me to take another long look at the other famed center fielder on this ballot.
I’ll have more to say about Hunter momentarily. But for now, the Andruw Jones Fan Club can take a deep breath. I checked their hero’s box, and that won’t be changing, even if he’s back next year for one last shot to complete that long journey to Cooperstown.
Torii Hunter (5.1% last year) and Félix Hernández (20.6%)
What does Andruw Jones have to do with Félix Hernández’s Hall case? Maybe more than you think. (Jake Roth / Imagn Images)
Did you ever play that game, Connect the Dots, as a kid? Sometimes, when I look at my Hall of Fame ballot, I feel like I’m still playing it.
I didn’t vote for either Torii Hunter or Félix Hernández last year. One of the biggest reasons I did this year was that I found myself connecting the dots from both of them to Andruw Jones. I didn’t see that coming.
It’s obvious now that Jones is bound for Cooperstown and Hunter isn’t. That makes sense. You know what doesn’t — for me, at least? That one of these great center fielders is steaming toward election while the other might not even get the 5 percent of the vote he needs to keep him on the ballot next year.
Then there’s Hernández. Yeah, I noticed that he was a pitcher, not a center fielder. But take their positions out of the discussion, and their career arcs feel so similar to me, I concluded that it’s not logical to vote for one but not the other.
Confused yet? I think I can clear this up.
Connecting the dots from Hunter to Jones. As of Wednesday night, Ryan Thibodaux’s invaluable Baseball Hall of Fame Vote Tracker was reporting that Jones had raked in 84.7 percent of the publicly revealed votes so far … and Hunter was slightly behind him — at 4.8 percent. Here was my reaction: Why?
Was Jones a greater player, at his peak, than Hunter? Sure. But did one guy have a career that was so dramatically superior to the other’s that it explains why there’s such a gigundous gap between their vote totals? Call me crazy, but I’ll say no.
JONES HUNTER
bWAR
62.7
50.6
Off. WAR
39.8
47.5
Gold Gloves
10
9
OPS+
111
110
Hits
1,933
2,452
All-Star teams
5
5
MVP top 10’s
1
1
(Source: Baseball Reference)
Look beyond that list and you’ll find that Hunter also was a better base runner than Jones, had a career batting average 23 points higher and sustained his period of excellence so much deeper into his 30s, I felt as if I needed to do what I could to keep Hunter on the ballot.
Hunter was still making All-Star teams at age 37. Jones was done as a big leaguer, and hanging on as an overweight .221 hitter in Japan, at age 37. That stuck with me.
“There was never a time in his career,” said one player I spoke with, a longtime American Leaguer during Hunter’s heyday, “that Torii was not a good player.”
I’m not going to argue that Hunter was a better pure defender in center than Jones, because nobody from that era can make that claim. But was it as vast a difference as the retroactive defensive metrics make it appear? That same rival player took issue with that.
“Torii, to me, was freaking awesome out there,” he told me. “He was playing on the worst surface (in Minnesota’s dreaded Metrodome), the hardest turf in baseball, and he was flying around and diving — on a freaking parking lot. He knew what the toll was of doing that, and he never gave it a second thought. That guy was fearless.”
It’s Hunter’s sixth year on this ballot. I’d never voted for him before. But he was one vote from tumbling off the ballot into Hall purgatory last year. If he falls off this year, at least I’ll know it wasn’t my fault.
While Andruw Jones is flying toward election, fellow center fielder Torii Hunter is in danger of falling off the ballot. (Brian Bahr / Getty Images)
Connecting the dots from Félix to Jones. You’ll have to bear with me here, because I know King Félix hit 433 fewer home runs than Jones did. (Yes, the King did hit one!) But think this through.
Like Jones, Hernández charged into the big leagues before his 20th birthday. By age 21, he was the best pitcher on his team. By age 23, he was an inner-circle entry in the Best Pitcher in Baseball debate. And I’d stack up the brilliance of age 21-29 Félix-palooza against the artistry of nearly any great modern pitcher you could name at the same age.
• bWAR of Hernández from age 21-29: 45.9
• The only starters in the expansion era (1961-present) who topped that in their age-21-29 window: Roger Clemens, Tom Seaver, Clayton Kershaw, Pedro Martínez, Bert Blyleven and Greg Maddux.
Good group! But I also thought about Hernández’s greatness from a less data-driven place. I know not everyone takes awards voting seriously as part of their Hall of Fame deliberations. I take the opposite view.
Awards voting is incredibly meaningful if you understand what it’s telling us. It’s a window into what the baseball world thought of any player in his moment in time. Look, I love numbers. And I appreciate what the metrics of today reveal about every player on this ballot. But I couldn’t stop thinking about what Hernández’s Cy Young Award voting finishes reveal, in their own way.
Between 2009 and 2014 — his age-23-through-28 seasons — the King won one Cy Young Award (in 2010), finished second twice (2009, 2014) and came in fourth once (2012). You don’t see that much!
Only 10 starting pitchers have ever appeared on a Hall of Fame ballot who had any span of six seasons in which they A. Won at least one Cy Young, B. Had at least three top-two finishes and C. Had at least four top-four finishes. It’s possible you’ve heard of them:
Sandy Koufax
Warren Spahn
Steve Carlton
Jim Palmer
Randy Johnson
Greg Maddux
Pedro Martínez
Roy Halladay
Roger Clemens
Félix Hernández
(Source: STATS Perform)
There are all sorts of fun ways these days to measure a player’s peak. That’s just one of them. But it told me everything I needed to know about whether Hernández fit the fame part of the Hall of Fame.
His greatness and superstar charisma were undeniable. What a shame that, like Jones, he couldn’t sustain it into his 30s.
According to Baseball Reference, he was worth minus-1.4 WAR from age 31 on. He threw his last pitch at age 33. And his baseball demise felt as if it was full of parallels to everything that once troubled me about Jones’ candidacy.
But with both of those men, the vote I cast was for the brilliance they exuded in their 20s. And if they ever give speeches on that stage in Cooperstown, we won’t have any trouble feeling the star power.
Chase Utley (39.8% last year) and Jimmy Rollins (18.0%)
I’m from Philadelphia. So I had the best seat in the Hall of Fame Vote House to catch the Utley and Rollins Show, from 2003-15. In the mind of all of us Philadelphians who were around back then, they just go together — like Hewlett and Packard, like burgers and fries, like SpongeBob and SquarePants.
They were more than simply the National League’s longest-running double-play duo ever. They were the engine that drove the Phillies’ winningest teams of the 21st century — a juggernaut that won a World Series in 2008, blitzed to the top of the NL East five seasons in a row (2007-11), and won more games in every one of those seasons than the year before.
Utley and Rollins. Rollins and Utley. With all due respect to their excellent supporting cast, they were the two energizers who willed all that winning to happen. So I’ll always think of them together. All those Lou Whitaker-Alan Trammell fans in Detroit know what I’m talking about.
But you know who doesn’t seem to think that way? Hall of Fame voters. Just check the Hall of Fame Tracker.
Utley looks primed to charge past the 50-percent plateau this year, in his third go-round on the ballot. Which means that one of these years, he’s going to get elected. But surprisingly, he hasn’t helped propel his double-play partner into anywhere near that range. And you know who finds that confusing? The men they played with.
“I love comparing Jimmy and Chase,” one of their former teammates told me this month. “because Chase (in his peak) was better. I don’t think anyone is going to argue that. But I think Jimmy has the better (case).”
So is that true? Let’s dig in.
Chase Utley is surging in the voting despite lacking the counting numbers long-associated with the Hall. (L Redkoles / Getty Images)
The case for Utley. As my friend and Athletic teammate Tyler Kepner wrote this month, there might be no one on this ballot who better reflects how modern voters think than Utley. If you’re looking for the simple counting numbers of yesteryear, you’re looking at the wrong guy.
Has there ever been any such thing as a Hall of Fame infielder who didn’t even get 1,900 hits? (Utley finished with 1,855.) Matter of fact, there has. The writers elected a guy like that as recently as … 1962! His name was Jackie Robinson.
But luckily for Utley, we’re all about stars with big, candescent peaks now. And if that’s the new standard, welcome to Utleyville.
He ranks No. 2 on this ballot in a Baseball Reference metric known as WAR7, which totals up a player’s seven best seasons. Who’s ahead of him? Only A-Rod.
And while I think Utley’s peak of true greatness was really the six seasons from 2005-10, even if you extend that over 10 years, from 2005-14, only one player in the sport rolled up more bWAR than Utley over either of those spans. His name was Albert Pujols.
Heck, even if you take WAR out of it, just one second baseman in the last 85 years ever ripped off five straight seasons as an everyday player with a .900 OPS or better. Guess who?
So if today’s voters are all about climbing those peaks, it means they don’t mind ignoring the ho-hum counting numbers that would have blown up Utley’s candidacy in any other era. And if those former disqualifiers no longer apply, every other chapter of the Life and Times of Chase Utley seems to conjure up those magic words, Hall of Famer.
• He averaged 5.4 bWAR per 162 games. Only four Hall of Fame second basemen can say that. Among the ones who can’t: Ryne Sandberg, Roberto Alomar, Craig Biggio and the just-elected Jeff Kent.
• While Utley never won an MVP award, I often wonder how many he would have won if the voters of his era thought like the voters of this era. How many second basemen of modern times have ever strung together five straight seasons finishing in the top three in their league in WAR? I could find only one other in the last 60 years. His name was Joe Morgan.
• Then there was That Look that Utley flashed literally every day he ever spent playing baseball. That steely-eyed gaze said this wasn’t just a game. This was serious. I’ve said many times that when you watched this dude play, it felt like you were watching a man who thought every at-bat, every inning and every game was the most important at-bat, inning and game of his life.
• Plus, we’re talking about a guy who was the ultimate flame-spitting, dustball-stirring winner. Was it the five home runs he smoked in the 2009 World Series that announced that? Was it his .902 OPS over his five postseasons with the Phillies? Or was it this, the legendary (in Philly) Utley Play — a moment of sheer, visionary, creative defensive genius that essentially clinched the final game of the 2008 World Series.
When I wrote a retrospective on that play 10 years later, his teammate Jayson Werth fired off a quote that sums up the awe Utley evoked in nearly everyone he ever played with.
“He’s just got a master plan up there in his brain, always,” Werth said. “And that’s why, in my mind, he’s the best — the best player of his generation. Yeah, he’s had some injuries … but mentally, and preparation-wise, he’s it. If anyone ever asks me, ‘Who’s the best player you played with?’ I mean, not to take anything away from the many other great players I played with. But he’s an easy choice.”
And yet there’s a voice in my head that constantly reminds me not to forget his double-play partner, because if we were having this Hall of Fame discussion 20 years ago, I think we’d all be more fixated on …
The case for Rollins. It honestly confuses me that when modern Hall voters look at Jimmy Rollins, so few of them see what I see. I don’t know how many times I can say this, write this or illustrate this, but it’s still true. No other shortstop in history had this man’s career.
If you haven’t paid attention, you might think that’s hype. No sir. It’s just the facts. Here comes my annual recitation of why that’s 100 percent true.
• Rollins won an MVP, a World Series and four Gold Glove awards. You know how many other shortstops can say that? None!
• He’s the only shortstop in history with more than 2,400 hits, 200 homers, 400 steals and 800 extra-base hits.
• He owns the most hits in the history of his franchise (the Phillies).
• Want to guess who compiled the longest hitting streak by a shortstop (38 games) since 1894? Yup. It’s that guy.
• And you’re looking at the most durable 5-foot-7 shortstop who ever lived. He played 150 games or more in 10 different seasons. Only two shortstops in history had more seasons of 150-plus — two men named Jeter and Ripken (13 apiece).
Then there’s defense. You know what really ticks off his former teammates? When people cite Rollins’ defensive metrics to try to argue he wasn’t one of the elite defenders of his time.
I can tell you, as someone who has asked this question, that if the pitchers on his teams had to vote on which player on the field they wanted a ball hit to in the ninth inning, every one of them would have voted for Jimmy Rollins. Could someone please invent a metric that measures that? Maybe Fielding Trust Above Average? Thank you.
Why isn’t Jimmy Rollins getting more love from the voters? (Ben Warden / Icon SMI / Corbis / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
Finally, I’d also like to ask: What is winning worth? The year before Rollins became the everyday shortstop in Philadelphia, his team lost 97 games and finished 30 games out of first place. Boy, did that change. One big reason it changed was the irresistible positivity that flowed out of the new shortstop in town.
I heard him talking just last month, on The Phillies Show podcast, about the difference between “hope” and “belief.” His take: Contenders and pretenders have hope, but winners have belief. Rollins rolled into the park every day, thinking about how to exude — and spread — that belief. And if you don’t think that was a real thing, here is what one of his coaches once told me:
“When I start feeling nervous,” that coach said, “all I have to do is look at Jimmy and I think we’re gonna win.”
Are there reasons that so many of my fellow voters don’t see that? Apparently. I’d guess they’re starting their deliberations with the Wins Above Replacement column, where Rollins’ 47.9 bWAR doesn’t look like anything special.
I just know that I lived in Philadelphia every year of the careers of these two men. So I haven’t merely factored in the metrics that shape most people’s votes these days. I’m factoring in what it felt like to watch two electric, inventive, winning players change the fate of their franchise. It felt — in case I haven’t made this clear — like I was watching two Hall of Famers.
Dustin Pedroia (11.9% last year) and David Wright (8.1%)
David Wright’s first 10 seasons stack up impressively with those of third-base greats. (Jim McIsaac / Getty Images)
Honesty is the only policy you’ll get in this column. So I’m going to be totally transparent about why I vote for Dustin Pedroia and David Wright: They’re not going to tumble off this ballot on my watch.
Go back and read that Utley section. It’ll sound familiar. It has now been six decades since Hall of Fame voting by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America became an annual event. How many Hall of Fame infielders have we elected with under 1,900 hits in all that time? Not one.
So over that entire span, there has been no such thing as a Hall of Famer whose numbers looked like this:
WRIGHTPEDROIA
HITS
1,777
1,805
HR
242
140
bWAR
49.1
51.8
But that was yesterday. What about tomorrow? I’m doing my best to position myself for that upside-down new world that arrives as soon as Utley and Posey get elected. Will we even care then what Hall of Famers used to look like? I bet we’ll care a lot about how close Wright and Pedroia resemble Utley in particular.
PedroiaUtleyWright
HITS
1,805
1,885
1,777
OPS+
113
117
133
HOF MONITOR
94
94
74
5.0-WAR SEASONS
6
6
4
Ten years into their careers, all three of them were cruising along that Cooperstown Superhighway. We know what happened next.
Utley had to will himself to play through debilitating hip and knee issues. Spinal stenosis turned Wright into a shadow of his young self. Manny Machado slid into Pedroia at second base one night in 2017, and that didn’t end well.
Once upon a time in Cooperstown, that would have ended their Hall of Fame dreams. But aren’t we about to enter an age where we’re not going to care much anymore about distractions like injuries and the 2,000-Hit Club? Sure looks that way.
Is Utley about to serve as the bulldozer who clears the path for Wright and Pedroia to charge right on into the Hall? We don’t know yet. But would it shock you? So let’s think more about …
Pedroia’s peak. I have three items for your consideration.
• Before Machado went cannonballing into second base that night, Pedroia had played 11 full seasons for the Red Sox. Here’s what he had to show for them: an MVP trophy, a Rookie of the Year award, four Gold Gloves and two World Series rings. Just so you know, only two players in history can brag that they did all of that: Johnny Bench … and Dustin Pedroia.
• Also in those first 11 full seasons, Pedroia piled up almost 1,800 hits and 53.3 WAR, according to Baseball Reference. Only four second basemen in the expansion era accumulated that many hits and that much WAR in their first 11 full seasons: Sandberg, Alomar, Robinson Canó … and Pedroia.
• And you can decide for yourself how much credit you’d like to award Pedroia for all that winning the post-cursified Red Sox did — as opposed to, say, Big Papi. I just know that everything I said about the culture-changing impact of Utley and Rollins in Philly was every bit as true of Pedroia in Boston. All his teammates had to do was take one look at Pedroia, already in game-time mode at 11:30 in the morning for a night game, and they knew the deal.
“His mental toughness was like nobody I’d ever seen before,” Sean Casey, his former Red Sox teammate, told me last year. “It was just a constant ‘bring-it-on’ mentality. One of a kind!
With voters putting more priority on peaks, could Dustin Pedroia eventually be headed to the Hall? (Billie Weiss / Boston Red Sox / Getty Images)
Wright’s peak. If there were such a thing as Mets Rushmore — and I fully expect Steve Cohen to erect one on the nearest Queens mountaintop — do we even need to debate whether you’d find David Wright’s profile on it?
His tremendous first 10 seasons did more than just establish him as the face of Flushing-ball. They blew away the first 10 seasons of nearly every third baseman of the last 75 years.
• Want me to toss out just some of the third-base icons who compiled less WAR than Wright (46.5) over their first 10 seasons, according to Baseball Reference? How about Adrián Beltré, Brooks Robinson, Manny Machado, José Ramírez, Alex Bregman — and I’ll spare you the rest.
• And for those of you who are tired of hearing about WAR, check out the other numbers on Wright’s baseball card after those 10 seasons:
.301/.382/.506/.888 slash line
137 OPS+
2 Gold Gloves
222 HR
183 SB
How many third basemen in the live-ball era were averaging at least 20 home runs and 18 steals a season over the first decade of their career? Exactly one: David Wright.
And how many full-time third basemen in the live-ball era matched or topped Wright’s OPS+ over their first 10 seasons? That would be four: Mike Schmidt, George Brett, Wade Boggs and Eddie Mathews. You can learn more about those four the next time you’re in the mood to read a bunch of Hall of Fame plaques.
But yes, it’s true those four guys all kept going, until the numbers next to their name made them undeniable Hall of Famers. That isn’t how this went for Wright — or Pedroia.
After Machado’s slide, Pedroia got just three hits over the rest of his career. After those first 10 seasons, Wright hit only 20 more home runs, plus one magical World Series swing of the bat that no one in Mets Land will ever forget.
Mets captain David Wright hits a go ahead home run during Game 3 of the 2015 World Series.pic.twitter.com/0Tk0as50f4
— Baseball’s Greatest Moments (@BBGreatMoments) January 18, 2024
So if this were some other time, some other place, us Hall of Fame voters would have said: Aw, too bad. Good luck with the era committee. But we’re in a transitional moment, heading for a different time and a different place.
When we arrive at that place, I want to find Pedroia and Wright just where they are right now — holding their spot in the Hall of Fame waiting line until we can figure out the definition of a Hall of Famer in the 21st century. So they both got my vote — again. Where this conversation goes from here will be one of the most fascinating developments in modern baseball.
Andy Pettitte (27.9% last year)
Andy Pettitte pitched 18 seasons in the majors, and never had a losing record. (Stephen Dunn / Getty Images)
What do you think a Hall of Fame starting pitcher is going to look like 100 years from now — or even 15 years from now? Whatever you think that is, there’s one thing I bet we can agree on. It won’t look like Andy Pettitte.
I had no problem voting this year for Félix Hernández, for the uber-ace he was over six or seven or 10 years — however long you think his brilliant peak lasted. But do I think he has a better Hall of Fame case than Pettitte? Nope!
The reason I say that goes beyond the 87 more wins Pettitte collected than King Félix (256-169), or even the Wins Above Replacement column (60.2 bWAR for Pettitte, 49.8 for Hernández). This is more about qualities that Pettitte delivered to his teams that we don’t value enough anymore.
What’s the value of nearly two decades worth of reliability? Pettitte pitched 18 seasons in the big leagues. You know how many times, in those 18 seasons, he had a losing record? Zero would be a fine guess. I could only find two pitchers in the modern era (1900-present) who had 18 seasons or more with at least 10 games started and a losing record in none of them: Grover Cleveland Alexander … and Andy Pettitte.
He was the real Mr. October. It’s almost mind-blowing that this man made 44 postseason starts. Sure, that can happen when you’re a Yankee. But I saw so many of those starts firsthand, I couldn’t help but notice how much trust his teams always had when they sent him to the mound to pitch those games.
And no wonder! He started 12 times when his team had a chance to clinch a postseason series, the most in history. His teams won eight of those games, also the most in history. And his ERA in those eight clinchers was a dazzling 2.66. Who wouldn’t sign up for that?
Don’t tell me all he did was hang around the Bronx. Was it helpful that Pettitte spent most of his career pitching for the greatest Yankees teams since Mickey Mantle was hitting cleanup? No kidding. But was that the only reason Pettitte won all those games? I looked into that last year. Guess what I found.
Pettitte’s personal win percentage — .626 (256-153)
His teams’ win percentage in his starts — .608 (316-204)
His teams’ win pct. when anyone else started — .577 (1433-1052)
Get the idea? Turns out Pettitte’s personal winning percentage was significantly higher than his team’s record when literally anyone else took the ball. Verrrry interesting.
Oh, there’s even more to my thinking on this. I wrote a whole column about it last winter. And yes, I explained in that column how I factor in Pettitte’s hazy connections to the Mitchell Report and the PED era.
But mostly, I vote for this man because it’s now more apparent than ever that we’re never going to see starting pitchers like him again — and we don’t value guys like him nearly enough. That value can’t be measured in decimal points alone.
There’s an appreciation we all should have for the meaning of having a pitcher like him on your team — not just for one year, but for 18 of them. When it was Andy Pettitte’s turn to pitch, his teams never stopped thinking that was a good thing — from his early 20s all the way into his 40s, and from April all the way into October.
So how did I express that appreciation? With a Hall of Fame vote.
Why I didn’t vote for Hamels
Cole Hamels: “Durable … dependable … often great.” (Hunter Martin / Getty Images)
For more than a week, I found myself staring at three pages full of notes I’d scribbled on Cole Hamels. I had one open slot left on my ballot. If I was going to use it, I knew I was going to use it on him.
I couldn’t quite get there.
I’d seen more of his starts in person than I’d seen of any other pitcher on this ballot in the 2000s. So the first thing I did was write down the three qualities that I thought most defined him:
Durable … dependable … often great.
You know who else on this ballot I’d use the exact same words to describe? Mark Buehrle. I can’t quite convince myself to vote for him, either.
I thought to myself: Yeah, but Hamels started two no-hitters (one of them combined). Oh, wait. So did Buehrle (who finished both of his).
I thought to myself: OK, but what about October? In 2008, Hamels was the MVP for the Phillies in both the NLCS and World Series. I would never discount that. Oh, wait. There are three other pitchers who did that: Orel Hershiser, Livan Hernández and Madison Bumgarner. Hershiser and Hernández never came close to getting elected. I’m guessing it won’t be enough for MadBum, either.
I thought to myself: What about King Félix? Baseball Reference assigns a “Similarity Score” to every player. Hamels and Hernández rank No. 1 to each other. On the surface, you can see why:
Hamels — 163-122, 3.43 ERA, 59.0 bWAR
Hernández — 169-136, 3.42 ERA, 49.8 bWAR
But the raw numbers don’t tell you those men took different journeys to the same place. Remember in the beginning of this column, when I explained why I vote the way I do, especially with players who don’t have the traditional counting numbers? That applied here.
There was close to a decade where, if you asked, who’s the best pitcher in baseball, somebody said: King Félix. Hamels, on the other hand, couldn’t make that claim. He had only one top-five finish in Cy Young voting (and that was a fifth-place finish in 2011). So that dipped him below the King, who you’ll remember had four finishes better than that just in a span of six years.
I have tremendous admiration for Cole Hamels. I just couldn’t find any pitcher remotely like him who is in the Hall of Fame. When I tried assigning my own Similarity Scores, I placed him in a neighborhood with Tim Hudson and Roy Oswalt, with a dash of Josh Beckett and Cliff Lee mixed in there somewhere. All of those guys were great. Just not Hall of Fame great.
But am I sure I got this right? I’m never sure. There’s a reason I thrashed this around for a week. Next year, Jon Lester debuts on this ballot, with some striking similarities to Hamels. So who knows what I’ll conclude after I finish connecting those dots.
That, you see, is the best part about voting for the Hall of Fame. Every year is different. And every year, I hold that ballot in my hands and think about what a privilege it is to be able to do that.
