Article seems to be a little short on pitchers. Outside of Rivera no active pitcher got a mention. I imagine that Halladay, Sabathia deserved at least some consideration. Of course also no mention of Rolen, Helton or even Beltran, but he did make sure to have Damon and Vizquel in there.

He mentioned Halladay and CC in the "Cooperstown, circa 2025" section.

Derek Jeter, Jim Thome, Vladimir Guerrero and Mariano Rivera look like locks, and Chipper Jones, Ichiro Suzuki and Ivan Rodriguez are among those who appear to be good bets.

Chipper Jones is only a "good bet" for the HoF?

As far as I'm concerned, Mauer is in when he plays his 10th season in the big leagues. Even for a regular position player I'd probably say that, but for a catcher any possible short career problems are lessened greatly.

Albert Pujols, 31, already has three MVPs and more than 420 homers. It's going to be hard to keep him out. The same can be said for Ryan Howard, 31, who has averaged 45 homers over his five full seasons

The fact that this guy puts these 2 players in the same tier completely invalidates the entire article.

Also, Scott Rolen has a stronger HOF case than several of the players mentioned.

Ortiz's Baseball Ref page is unsponsored? And it costs $540???

I didn't know he was within striking distance of 1500 RBI's. I give him a 2% chance of getting in as opposed to the 0% I had before.

Halladay has to be lock city at this point, Sabathia looks pretty good and then everyone else (among starters) has work to do still. Then there's Hudson, Buehrle and Oswalt. I'm thinking the line might be somewhere mixed in those three, and I'd prefer Oswalt at this point though who knows which one has more in the tank. Maybe all three go in. Buehrle doesn't 'seem' like a HOFer but there's an awful lot of remarkable things about his career, his durability obviously being chief among them.

Ortiz's Baseball Ref page is unsponsored? And it costs $540???

I think that BB-Ref sponsorships are run as a Dutch auction. The price keeps going down until someone finally bites.

The idea that Ortiz has any chance, but Edgar isn't a lock just strikes me as wrong.

There is plenty to quibble with this article, but this bit really bugged me:

Jim Thome is a throwback in the best sense. When he becomes the eighth player in baseball history to hit 600 homers, he will do it without a whiff of suspicion about performance-enhancing drug use.

Let me start by saying I'm a fan of Thome's and don't have any reason to think he used any PED's. However, I don't like the inference that his HoF chances are enhanced by the lack of "whiff of suspicion." My beef with that is the obvious opposite end of that comment which is a player with a "whiff of suspicion" should have their career evaluated differently. Guys like Piazza and Bagwell never tested positive and have never had a credible accusation made against them. However they have both had irresponsible "journalists" tossing around thinly veiled suspicions of usage. It doesn't matter that good and decent people dismiss Murray Chass and his ilk, their word amounts to at least a whiff of suspicion. Reasonable people can disagree about whether a failed test should leave someone outside Cooperstown, but no one's career should be evaluated negatively based on a "whiff of suspicion" or more positively because of the absence of a whiff.

Buehrle doesn't 'seem' like a HOFer but there's an awful lot of remarkable things about his career, his durability obviously being chief among them.

Buehrle will have to get there on career (not your kind of guy). And given the type of pitcher he is, I think he can pitch effectively for a very long time and would put him behind only CC among active pitchers on the likelihood of winning 300 games. A key question is how likely he is to want to stay around that long. While other guys make occasional remarks about walking away early, he's beaten that drum fairly steadily.

I, for one, hope he does stick around. He's my favorite player in baseball, non-knuckleball division.

I've often wondered about Johan Santana. He seems a test case for the "how good for how long do you have to be outside your peak?" rhetorical question. Just in terms of black ink, dominance, awards, and such, he is vaguely like the Koufax of his generation. If Bret Saberhagen is in the HOM, shouldn't Santana be a candidate? Yet if he never pitches again, Santana seems to have no HOF shot at all.

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Article seems to be a little short on pitchers.

This disparity is consistent with HOF Monitor scores, however. Among active pitchers, only Rivera and Halladay score above 100, while active position players who score over 100 include: Alex Rodriguez, Derek Jeter, Albert Pujols, Ivan Rodriguez, Manny Ramirez, Vladimir Guerrero, Ichiro Suzuki, Chipper Jones, Todd Helton, Miguel Tejada, Jim Thome, Omar Vizquel, Magglio Ordonez, Andruw Jones, Jason Giambi, David Ortiz, and Michael Young.

Notice below also that the 50th ranked position player scores 72 on the HOF Monitor, while the 50th ranked pitcher scores only 38. I do not know whether off-hand whether this is an accurate reflection of HOF chances in the aggregate, but it is worth noting.

While the method has not been updated for the recent years of high run-scoring environments, it's still interesting IMO.

From B-R's Leaderboard Glossary:

Hall of Fame Monitor
All-Time and Active Leaders

This is another Jamesian creation. It attempts to assess how likely (not how deserving) an active player is to make the Hall of Fame. It's rough scale is 100 means a good possibility and 130 is a virtual cinch. It isn't hard and fast, but it does a pretty good job.

From B-R's Hall of Fame Monitor Leaders:

(Bold = mentioned in TFA)

Batting Leaders Not Yet Eligible
Rank Score Player
1 370 Alex Rodriguez
2 336 Barry Bonds
3 302 Derek Jeter
4 254 Albert Pujols
5 235 Ken Griffey
6 226 Ivan Rodriguez
7 222 Manny Ramirez
8 207 Mike Piazza
9 207 Vladimir Guerrero
10 206 Ichiro Suzuki
11 201 Sammy Sosa
12 194 Frank Thomas
13 176 Chipper Jones
14 169 Craig Biggio
15 162 Todd Helton
16 156 Gary Sheffield
17 148 Miguel Tejada
18 146 Jim Thome
19 122 Jeff Kent
20 120 Omar Vizquel
21 112 Nomar Garciaparra
22 112 Magglio Ordonez
23 110 Carlos Delgado
24 108 Jason Kendall
25 108 Andruw Jones
26 104 Jason Giambi
27 104 David Ortiz
28 103 Michael Young
29 102 Luis Gonzalez
30 98 Miguel Cabrera
31 98 Jorge Posada
32 97 Matt Holliday
33 95 Lance Berkman
34 94 Ryan Howard
35 94 Edgar Renteria
36 94 Bobby Abreu
37 91 Kenny Lofton
38 90 Johnny Damon
39 90 Mark Teixeira
40 88 Jim Edmonds
41 86 Carlos Beltran
42 83 Scott Rolen
43 82 Alfonso Soriano
44 80 Joe Mauer
45 80 Brad Ausmus
46 79 Jimmy Rollins
47 79 Moises Alou
48 77 Carlos Lee
49 73 Chase Utley
50 72 Garret Anderson


Pitching Not Yet Eligible
Rank Score Player
1 332 Roger Clemens
2 331 Randy Johnson
3 254 Greg Maddux
4 241 Mariano Rivera
5 206 Pedro Martinez
6 176 Tom Glavine
7 176 Trevor Hoffman
8 171 Curt Schilling
9 167 John Smoltz
10 129 Billy Wagner
11 123 Andy Pettitte
12 121 Mike Mussina
13 118 Roy Halladay
14 113 Jose Mesa
15 96 Troy Percival
16 93 Roberto Hernandez
17 89 CC Sabathia
18 88 David Wells
19 82 Johan Santana
20 82 Francisco Rodriguez
21 78 Todd Jones
22 77 Francisco Cordero
23 76 Joe Nathan
24 73 Armando Benitez
25 66 Kenny Rogers
26 66 Mike Stanton
27 64 Jonathan Papelbon
28 62 Roy Oswalt
29 60 Bob Wickman
30 58 Bartolo Colon
31 58 Brad Lidge
32 58 Tim Lincecum
33 56 Chris Carpenter
34 56 Jamie Moyer
35 56 Jason Isringhausen
36 54 Cliff Lee
37 50 Tim Hudson
38 50 Derek Lowe
39 49 Mike Timlin
40 49 Eddie Guardado
41 48 Justin Verlander
42 47 Tom Gordon
43 46 Josh Beckett
44 46 Eric Gagne
45 44 Jose Valverde
46 41 Brian Fuentes
47 41 Jason Schmidt
48 39 Mark Buehrle
49 38 Brian Wilson
50 38 Keith Foulke


He's got peakish stuff going on. Been in the Top 10 in pitcher WAR six times including a 3rd and a 4th. Is within shouting distance this year of making it a 7th top 10. The interesting thing about Buehrle is that for an AL pitcher a big part of his value isn't pitching: his fielding and his complete stoppage of the running game (due to being allowed to balk, but I digress).

I don't like a guy with one or two good years and 15 years of average-ish stuff mixed in. That's not Buehrle. He's been well above average more often than not. He's not Jamie Moyer in other words.

He's definitely borderline, that's for sure. I'm not sure how many pitchers per era I want in, so I suppose it depends on that.

14 113 Jose Mesa

I'm thinking the monitor might need to head to the repair shop with relievers. Mesa might not even get in _with_ a ticket.

his fielding and his complete stoppage of the running game (due to being allowed to balk, but I digress).

Lefty pitchers who don't have a balk move are a disgrace to the species. Hell, I spent hours working on my balk move in high school and I wasn't a pitcher. Or lefthanded.

Buehrle will have to get there on career (not your kind of guy). And given the type of pitcher he is, I think he can pitch effectively for a very long time

Which kind of pitcher is that? Is he like Tom Glavine? Jamie Moyer? Roger Clemens? Randy Johnson? Do we know what kind of pitcher tends to pitch into their 40's?

Lefty pitchers who don't have a balk move are a disgrace to the species

Buerhle's a special kind. I'm pretty sure his landing foot lands in the same spot whether he throws home or to first. Why they let guys get away with this is beyond me, but Buerhle's is absurd.

Which kind of pitcher is that? Is he like Tom Glavine? Jamie Moyer? Roger Clemens? Randy Johnson? Do we know what kind of pitcher tends to pitch into their 40's?

I see him as a Wells, Moyer type. Durable lefties with good control. Not dependent on velocity, but strike out enough guys to get by. Also pretty good natural athletes (Wells, despite his girth, struck me as a pretty athletic guy). CC's something of a similar pitcher, though he throws harder. I also like his chances of hanging around.

Another writer who lets Pudge slide on steroids ... which is fine with me but some consistency would be nice.

Thome's in but ask McGriff how much good it does to be suspicion-free.

And he doesn't seem to have noticed how bad a season Vlad is having. His chances now at 500 HR and 3000 hits are close to zero. I think he gets in with his 318 BA but his objective case is far from a lock given the number of borderline guys on or soon to be on the ballot. It wouldn't surprise me in the least but for the writers to elect Vlad on the first ballot but Bagwell not would be ridiculous.

Chipper is more of a lock than Vlad at this point.

I don't think there is any legitimate issue that Chipper is the better player than Vlad, and WAR and HOF Standards agree, but HOF Monitor gives Vlad a significant edge.

I think Ortiz has done a lot to resurrect his HOF chances with his resurgence since 2009. He definitely has the "narrative" "clutch" and "larger than life" aspects going for him. If he can keep it going another couple of years, and particularly if the Sox bring in another title, he would have a decent shot.

Thome's in but ask McGriff how much good it does to be suspicion-free.

It would help McGriff if, in addition to being suspicion free, he was also as good a player as Thome.

Ortiz also has a "whiff of suspicion," and is 3,000 PA and 17,000 defensive innings short of being as good a player as McGriff.

I know it's just a toy, but I don't get how this:

Pitching Not Yet Eligible
Rank Score Player
1 332 Roger Clemens
2 331 Randy Johnson
3 254 Greg Maddux

order makes any sense at all. Even ignoring steroids, how do you figure that the Big Unit is almost equally likely as Clements and significantly more likely than Maddux to get elected?

I am probably overthinking this.

The Monitor gives weight to things like number of high strikeout seasons, total strikeouts and number of Cy Young awards, where Big Unit gets some push over Maddux

how do you figure that the Big Unit is almost equally likely as Clemens and significantly more likely than Maddux to get elected?

Among other stuff, the Monitor assigns beaucoup points for 250- and 300-strikeout seasons. That may skew the rankings among the overqualified guys, but it probably picks up on the elements of Curt Schilling's case (e.g.) that make him a better bet than someone with the same career numbers but different shape to them

Pitching Not Yet Eligible
Rank Score Player
1 332 Roger Clemens
2 331 Randy Johnson
3 254 Greg Maddux



order makes any sense at all. Even ignoring steroids, how do you figure that the Big Unit is almost equally likely as Clements and significantly more likely than Maddux to get elected?

I am probably overthinking this.

What Srul said. In addition, at a certain level, more points are meaningless. Both Maddux and Johnson are 100% sure to be elected, barring outside circumstances. Neither is more likely than the other, because the max likely you can get is 100%, and after about 200 or so monitor points, everyone is 100%.

Wonder what the steroids penalty should be for the HOF Monitor? Minus eleventy gazillion?

Another writer who lets Pudge slide on steroids ... which is fine with me but some consistency would be nice.

Serious question: is there the slightest smidge of evidence that IRod used steroids? I can't recall anything at all.

Serious question: is there the slightest smidge of evidence that IRod used steroids? I can't recall anything at all.

The word of Canseco and what appeared to be serious between-season weight loss at or around when testing was implemented. How seriously you or others view that as evidence is another matter.

is there the slightest smidge of evidence that IRod used steroids?

Named prominently by Canseco, who has had an annoying tendency to be right about such things.

But no, nothing direct. People talk about Pudge going from being a miniature version of Arnold Schwarzenegger to being a much scrawnier guy after testing came in; I would actually put no stock in that at all, because too many different body types have coexisted with too many different drug regimens among athletes to know what might have been going on just from such appearances.

Ah, please accept this Coca-Cola, SoSH U.

I suppose the Canseco accusation counts as "evidence." I place zero weight on "weight loss." (And would going from training with steroids to training without steroids have caused significant weight loss in just 4-5 months?)

On another board we are having a hof discussion about current players, it's a primarily a Phillie board, and they are taking exception to me not listing Rollins on my list of potential hofers. Heck they are even saying he's a strong possibility for 3000 hits etc. They think he's currently on pace for hof status and is an elite level player, they seem to be upset that I just don't see it.

I suppose the Canseco accusation counts as "evidence." I place zero weight on "weight loss." (And would going from training with steroids to training without steroids have caused significant weight loss in just 4-5 months?)

Depends. It can, of course, but it doesn't automatically follow.

Phillies fans are just plain insane.

Named prominently by Canseco, who has had an annoying tendency to be right about such things.

I allege that every player since the creation of steroids has been using steroids. Everyone caught is evidence I'm right, but there can never be evidence that I'm wrong (since it's impossible to prove a negative). Therefore, since we only have data points in my favor, we should say I have a tendency to be right about such things, and just regard everyone in the last 40 years as a known steroid user.

I should also note that Black Ink is supposed to predict who gets voted into the Hall of Fame, not tell us who deserves to be.

Hey, don't sell Jimmy short. He's only 32, and in 6 years he has a chance to be 38.

/Stengel.