Derek Jeter and Larry Walker Elected to the Hall of Fame

Earlier this evening Tim Mead, the new President of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, announced that Derek Jeter and Larry Walker have been voted into baseball’s most exclusive club and will have plaques unveiled this summer in Cooperstown, New York. Jeter was elected to the Hall of Fame by the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA) with 99.7% of the vote, earning a “yes” on 396 out of the 397 ballots.

Although he did not match his longtime teammate Mariano Rivera as a unanimous selection, Jeter does have the second highest vote percentage in the history of the balloting. Jeter is the 13th first-ballot Hall of Fame to be elected in the last 7 years.

The entire world knew that Jeter would be elected to the Hall of Fame today but whether Walker would make it remained a mystery. As soon as Mead announced “we have two new Hall of Famers” the good news was obvious, that Walker had made the Hall. The former five-tool outfielder for the Montreal Expos, Colorado Rockies and St. Louis Cardinals made it into the Hall with 76.6% of the vote, with just 6 more votes than the bare minimum he needed to cross the 75% minimum threshold required for induction. Walker’s election was historic: he became the first player since 1956 to zoom up from under 55% to over 75% in just year (Walker got 54.6% of the tallies in 2019).

Walker becomes the first former player of the Rockies to be inducted into Cooperstown. The last time a franchise had its “first ever” Hall of Famer was in 2011, when Roberto Alomar became the first alumnus of the Arizona Diamondbacks to get the Hall call. Walker is also the 7th former member of the Montreal Expos to make the Hall of Fame since 2015, an impressive feat for a franchise that moved to Washington before the 2005 season. Walker joins Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez, Tim Raines, Vladimir Guerrero and Lee Smith as former Expos to make it to Cooperstown in the last six years.

Jeter and Walker will be a part of a four-man Hall of Fame Class of 2020, joining catcher Ted Simmons and former Major League Players Association chief Marvin Miller as new Cooperstown inductees. (Miller will be inducted posthumously).

As for the other players on the 2020 ballot, Curt Schilling jumped up from 60.9% of the vote in 2019 to 70.0% this year, making him the most likely candidate to get a Cooperstown plaque in 2021. Schilling can sleep well knowing that the last 13 players to earn at least 69% of the vote with at least one more year of eligibility were elected to the Hall of Fame the next year.

The news wasn’t quite so good for two of the greatest players of all-time, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens. The two superstars, both linked to steroid use, were on the ballot for the 8th time and barely increased their vote share over the previous year. With only two years of ballot eligibility left for each star, the odds have grown longer for either to make it to Cooperstown.

Here are the final vote tallies:

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Cooperstown Cred: Derek Jeter (SS)

1st Year on the BBWAA Ballot: Elected with 99.7% of the vote

• New York Yankees (1995-2004)
• Career: .310 BA, .377 OBP, .440 SLG. 260 HR, 1,311 RBI, 358 SB
• 3,465 career Hits (6th most in baseball history)
• 1,923 career Runs Scored (11th most in baseball history)
• Career: 115 OPS+, 72.4 WAR (Wins Above Replacement)
• 14-time All-Star
• 5-time Gold Glove Award winner
• 5-time Silver Slugger
• 1996 A.L. Rookie of the Year, 2000 World Series MVP
• Won 5 World Championships with the New York Yankees
• Most Hits (200), Doubles (32) and Runs (111) in postseason baseball history
• Career postseason: .308 BA, .374 OBP, 20 HR, 61 RBI

(cover photo: Newsday/Sports Illustrated)

Here is the list of the players with the highest Hall of Fame voting percentages in the history of the BBWAA voting, with Jeter and Rivera standing at the top:

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Jeter is the 41st former New York Yankee to make the Hall of Fame and the 4th former member of the Yanks to be elected to Cooperstown in the last two years, following the 2019 election of Rivera, Mike Mussina and Lee Smith (remember him in pinstripes in 1993?).

He’s also the 9th Yankee to make the Hall after spending his entire career in pinstripes.

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If you’re a fan of the Yankees or Derek Jeter, I strongly encourage you to take a look at this piece. It’s long but worth bookmarking as it contains 42 YouTube pop-ups featuring the highlights of the Captain’s career, one filled with memorable moments.

Cooperstown Cred: Larry Walker (RF)

10th year on the ballot: Elected with 76.6% of the vote

• Montreal Expos (1989-94), Colorado Rockies (1995-2004), St. Louis Cardinals (2004-05)
• Career: .313 BA, 383 HR, 1,311 RBI
• Career: 141 OPS+, 72.7 WAR (Wins Above Replacement)
• 7-time Gold Glove winner
• 5-time All-Star
• 1997 MVP with Rockies (.366 BA, 49 HR, 130 RBI, 178 OPS+)
• From 1997-2002, averaged .353 with a 157 OPS+
• 3-time batting champion (1998, 1999, 2001)
• 9th most double plays turned as RF (40) in MLB history

With his election to the Hall of Fame today, Larry Walker will become just the second Canadian-born player to be honored with a plaque in Cooperstown, joining pitcher Fergie Jenkins.

Walker also joins Edgar Martinez and Tim Raines as the third player in the last four years to gain induction in his 10th and final year on the ballot. In July 2014, the Hall of Fame announced that it was reducing the timeline of each player’s eligibility on the BBWAA ballot from 15 years to 10. At the time, it was widely considered to be the Hall’s way of shrinking the window of eligibility of players linked to Performance Enhancing Drugs (PEDs). Many writers at the time worried that the new rule would have the collateral damage of making it too hard for second-tier Hall of Fame candidates to build year by year momentum and get to Cooperstown as the tortoise rather than the hare.

In reality, in the age of public vote disclosure through the Ryan Thibodaux Hall of Fame Tracker, the collective body of the BBWAA has learned to shrink the timelines and rally around candidates that are surging and to accelerate the process. Take a look at how Walker, Martinez and Raines fared in their 5th through 10th years on the ballot.

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As you’ll notice clearly, with each of these players the BBWAA writers have moved the designated “player for a cause” up the ladder with increasing year-by-year speed. Incidentally, the writers also moved the chains forward quickly for pitcher Mike Mussina, who was elected a year ago in his 6th year on the ballot. Mussina zoomed up from 24.6% in Year 2 to 76.7% in Year 6 during his time on the ballot.

Here are a couple of additional nuggets regarding the speed in which Walker’s numbers skyrocketed:

• Walker is the first player to go from less than 25% to over 75% in the span of four voting cycles since pitcher Herb Pennock, who went from 18.2% in 1945 to 77.7% in 1948.
• Walker is the first player to make the jump from under 60% to over 75% the next year since Ralph Kiner in 1975.
• Walker is also the 8th player to make the jump from under 55% to over 75% one year later and the first since Joe Cronin in 1956.

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For more on what makes a Walker a worthy Hall of Famer, please enjoy this piece, one of my personal favorites on the site.

Curt Schilling: 70.0%

Curt Schilling would probably have made the Hall of Fame years ago if it were not for his controversial political views and the occasional ill-advised post on Twitter. Some writers have been slow to forgive and others were never impressed with his 216 career regular season victories. Still, the pitcher who is arguably the greatest postseason ace of the LCS era, moved up significantly from his 60.9% vote total in 2019 to 70.0% this year. This puts him in “scoring position” to earn a Cooperstown plaque in 2021.

This is what happened one year later to the 14 most recent players to earn at least 69% of the ballot while falling short of the magic number of 75%.

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The last time a player with at least one year of eligibility left got 69% of the vote or higher without getting into the Hall of Fame the next year was in 1988. Jim Bunning got 74.2% of the vote in 1987, falling 4 votes shy of a Cooperstown plaque. Normally that would have made the Senator from Kentucky a slam dunk to make the Hall in ’88. Unfortunately for Bunning, two significantly better starting pitchers hit the ballot in ’89 (Gaylord Perry and Fergie Jenkins). With Johnny Bench and Carl Yastrzemski also hitting the ’89 ballot, Bunning got squeezed. He had to wait until 1996 when he was inducted by the Veterans Committee.

There are no Perrys or Jenkins’ hitting the 2021 ballot to block Schilling. The top new pitchers are Tim Hudson and Mark Buehrle, solid hurlers but not remotely in Schilling’s class.

Roger Clemens (61.0%) and Barry Bonds (60.7%)

For reasons I detailed in this piece, which I updated a couple of days ago, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens have stalled and it’s looking more and more unlikely that the BBWAA will vote them into the Hall of Fame.

Take a look at their vote totals and percentages on a year by year basis.

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Repeating what I wrote in my vote prediction piece, there but there are a couple of things that could turn the tide in the next two years:

• Does the cheating scandal involving the Houston Astros give any writers a second thought about denying two all-time greats plaques in the Hall of Fame? After all, most pitchers will tell you that an opponent knowing what he’s going to throw is a vastly more significant advantage than using Performing Enhancing Drugs.
• The 2021 ballot does not have any obvious first-ballot candidates. As noted previously, the top first-timers are pitchers Buehrle and Hudson and outfielder Torii Hunter. With the most wide-open ballot in years and Schilling the only likely player close to 75% this year, might a handful of writers decide to create a “rogues gallery” Hall of Fame class of Bonds, Clemens and Schilling? (In case you’re confused, Schilling has never been accused of using steroids but he is a pariah to some writers for his espoused political views on Twitter).
• The 2022 ballot is the final year of eligibility for Bonds and Clemens. Are some writers deliberately making them wait the full 10 years as a form of punishment? Also, Alex Rodriguez and David Ortiz join the ballot for the first time which might alter the decision-making calculus of some of the writers.

Omar Vizquel: 52.6%

This was fairly obvious to me since he debuted on the ballot in 2018 with 37% of the vote but I am now nearly 100% certain that Omar Vizquel will eventually be granted a plaque in the Hall of Fame. Now that he has cleared 50% of the vote, the slick-fielding shortstop’s eventual enshrinement is inevitable. Excluding players who are still on the ballot, Gil Hodges is the only player in the history of the Hall of Fame vote who earned over 50% on the ballot without eventually getting inducted into Cooperstown either via the BBWAA or by the Veterans Committee.

Because of his low career WAR (Wins Above Replacement), it’s possible that Vizquel may not ever clear 75% with the collective body of the BBWAA but if he doesn’t, he’s the kind of “eye test” player that will undoubtedly get the nod from whatever future version of the Veterans Committee exists when he’s eligible for that second chance vote.

Scott Rolen: 35.3%

Scott Rolen headlines a sextet of players who enjoyed a significant surge in his voting support from 2019 to 2020, no doubt because of a ballot far less stacked. A year ago, the BBWAA elected four players to the Hall of Fame (Rivera, Martinez, Mussina, and the late Roy Halladay) and Fred McGriff completed his 10th year without getting the Hall call. Anyway, that’s five players on the ’19 ballot who were not there in ’20 with Jeter the only newcomer to receive any significant support.

The math is simple. For “large Hall” voters who like to fill in all 10 slots on their ballots, there was finally some room for players like Rolen, who isn’t an obvious candidate but has a strong Cooperstown case based on both his hitting and defensive prowess.

Best of the Rest

Among next six players on the ballot, the most surprising player to enjoy a surge is Gary Sheffield (30.5%), who has now significantly surpassed both Manny Ramirez and Sammy Sosa among the “2nd tier” PED linked players. As I explained in this piece about him, Sheffield is the rare PED player who admitted what he did shortly after it happened and explained that he took a steroid unwittingly. Considering that Bonds and Clemens are stuck in the low 60’s, one does have to wonder if Sheffield is going to have a lower ceiling than that. Despite his gains, it’s highly unlikely Sheff will make the Hall of Fame.

Billy Wagner (31.7%), Todd Helton (29.2%) and to a lesser extent Andruw Jones (19.4%) are players with enough ballot eligibility left that they can feel hopeful that they’ve started the long climb to 75%.

Jeff Kent‘s vote gain of 18.1% to 27.5%, while an increase of more than 50%, is perhaps the most disappointing. The raw vote percentage increase of 9.4% was just 8th most among all of the candidates on the ballot. What this means is that, with only three years of eligibility on the ballot remaining, Kent is getting left behind.

For Sammy Sosa (13.9%), it’s over. He did better than in previous years but, with only three years left of eligibility, he has no chance.

The news was also bad for Andy Pettitte (11.3%). With all of the extra space available on the 2020 ballot, his 1.4% increase was the lowest among all of the players who cleared 5%.

Speaking of clearing 5%, although he finished with the 16th most votes, Bobby Abreu can at least take solace with the fact that he earned 5.5% of the vote, just barely enough to qualify for the 2021 ballot.

Sayonara

Every year of course there are many first-year candidates who fail to get 5% on the ballot and are therefore eliminated from future consideration by the BBWAA. Among the 17 “one and dones” on the 2020 ballot are 4 members of the 400 home run club (Adam Dunn, Jason Giambi, Paul Konerko, and Alfonso Soriano). Konerko was the leader among the “one and dones” with 10 votes (out of 397); a minimum of 20 votes were required to be eligible for future ballots. Giambi and Soriano got 6 votes each while Dunn got one.

Eric Chavez, an excellent defensive third baseman and solid hitter, didn’t play regularly long enough to deserve serious consideration but he did get two votes. Additionally, Cliff Lee was a superb pitcher for several seasons who just didn’t throw the volume of innings to be a legitimate candidate but 2 voters did check his name on their ballot.

Raul Ibanez, Brad Penny and J.J. Putz were also on the ballot and did not get shut out, earning one vote each.

Finally, I’ll repeat the “look ahead” to 2021 and beyond that I shared in my “virtual ballot” preview feature:

Looking Ahead to 2021

At this point we know for certain that Derek Jeter and Larry Walker will no longer be on the Hall of Fame ballot in 2021. 14 other players will return to fight another day.

On the 2021 ballot, there are no obvious first-ballot Hall of Famers, the first time this has happened since 2012, when the top new candidate was Bernie Williams. The top three first-timers in 2021 are pitchers Tim Hudson and Mark Buehrle and outfielder Torii Hunter. All three men had fine careers but none look like serious Cooperstown candidates. It’s possible that one or more of them will make it to 5% next year but only because of the relative weakness of the overall ballot compared to recent years. Assuming that Curt Schilling doesn’t make it this year, I would predict that he crosses the finish line in ’21.

So, here is theoretically what my 2021 virtual ballot would look like:

1. Barry Bonds
2. Roger Clemens
3. Curt Schilling
4. Jeff Kent
5. Scott Rolen
6. Gary Sheffield
7. Todd Helton
8. Manny Ramirez
9. Andy Pettitte
10. Bobby Abreu or Billy Wagner or Andruw Jones or Omar Vizquel or nobody

Clearly, we can see how the road is starting to clear for some of the candidates languishing at the bottom of the current ballot. I’m not currently a supporter of any of the candidates I’ve put in the #10 spot but I might change my mind. Regardless, the latter three players already have advocates. Vizquel in particular has a chance to make it into the Hall sooner rather than later thanks to the less clogged ballot.

The 2022 ballot

The 2022 BBWAA ballot will be a fascinating one. It’s the final year of eligibility for Bonds, Clemens and Sosa and the first year of eligibility of Alex Rodriguez and David Ortiz. Are there a bunch of writers who have been voting “no” for Bonds and Clemens just to make them wait the full 10 years? How will A-Rod do? He’s clearly in the “all-time great” category of Bonds and Clemens but has the significant blemish of serving a one year suspension for using Performing Enhancing Drugs.

As for Ortiz, he was named in a New York Times report about a failed 2003 “survey test” but Commissioner Rob Manfred has in essence given Big Papi a pass. He told reporters that there were at least 10 questionable samples and, since no penalties were in place at the time, no due diligence was done to verify the veracity of the results.

There are three other solid Cooperstown candidates coming to the ballot in 2022: Mark Teixeira, Jimmy Rollins, and Joe Nathan. To me, none of the three are Hall of Fame material but they will all likely have their advocates.

Assuming that Schilling is already in the Hall, here is tentatively what my virtual ballot would look like:

1. Barry Bonds
2. Roger Clemens
3. David Ortiz
4. Alex Rodriguez
5. Jeff Kent
6. Scott Rolen
7. Gary Sheffield
8. Todd Helton
9. Manny Ramirez
10. Andy Pettitte

2023 & 2024

In 2023, there’s only one viable new candidate on the ballot. It’s Carlos Beltran, who I have long felt is a Hall of Famer but is now severely tainted by his prominent role in the recently revealed scandal of sign-stealing by the Houston Astros.

Finally, looking ahead to 2024, there’s a slam-dunk first-ballot Hall of Famer in Adrian Beltre plus three other solid candidates: Joe Mauer, Chase Utley and David Wright. In my opinion, Mauer is a likely and deserved Cooperstown inductee. Utley will be a sabermetric favorite while Wright will fall short because of his injury-shortened career.

Phew. Hall of Fame season is now over. Congratulations once again to Derek Jeter and Larry Walker for being elected to one of the world’s most prestigious clubs, baseball’s Hall of Fame.

Thanks for reading. Please follow Cooperstown Cred on Twitter @cooperstowncred.