On Tuesday at 6:00p ET, the Hall of Fame will announce the names of any players who got at least 75% of the vote on the BBWAA (Baseball Writers Association of America) ballot for the Baseball Hall of Fame. Adrian Beltre, the brilliant third baseman for the Texas Rangers and others, is a lead-pipe cinch to be a first-ballot inductee, while Joe Mauer of the Minnesota Twins and Todd Helton of the Colorado Rockies have excellent chances of clearing the 75% bar as well. Relief ace Billy Wagner has an outside chance of making it a quartet of inductees to Cooperstown this summer.
Beltre and Mauer are two of the twelve first-time candidates for the BBWAA ballot. Second baseman Chase Utley, best known for his years with the Philadelphia Phillies, is also on the ballot; he won’t make the Hall of Fame, but he’s a strong candidate with some passionate supporters. David Wright, the popular third baseman for the New York Mets whose career was cut short by injuries, is a weaker candidate. It’s a question about whether he’ll even get the 5% minimum necessary to appear on next year’s ballot.
The eight other first-time candidates for the Hall of Fame will only appear on the ballot this year because none of them will get close to 5%. These players (Bartolo Colon, Adrian Gonzalez, Matt Holliday, Jose Reyes, Jose Bautista, Victor Martinez, Brandon Phillips, and James Shields) all had excellent careers but did not have the longevity or the excellence to merit serious consideration for Cooperstown.
In this piece, however, I’ll pay tribute to these eight terrific baseball players who weren’t good enough to make it to the Hall of Fame but good enough to make the ballot.
Cooperstown Cred: Bartolo Colon (SP)
- Indians (1997-2002), Expos (2002), White Sox (2003), Angels (2004-07), Red Sox (2008), White Sox (2009), Yankees (2011), Athletics (2012-13), Mets (2014-16), Braves (2017), Twins (2017), Rangers (2018)
- Career: 247-188 (.568 WL%), 4.15 ERA, 2,535 strikeouts
- Career: 106 ERA+, 48.2 WAR
- 2005 A.L. Cy Young Award winner (21-8, 3.48 ERA)
- 4-time All-Star
Bartolo Colon was one of the most colorful characters in the game. In his later years, this was a 5’11”, 285-pound man with a gut that belonged in a softball beer league and donned the nickname “Big Sexy.” He exhibited pure joy as he plied his trade.
Colon was able to pitch into his 40s because he always displayed impeccable control, walking just 2.5 batters per 9 innings in his 21-year career. There are 46 pitchers since 1969 who logged at least 2,000 innings. His strikeout/walk ratio (2.67) was the 14th best of those 46 pitchers, behind seven Hall of Famers, a pair of “should be’s” (Roger Clemens and Curt Schilling), a trio of “will be’s” (Zack Greinke, Justin Verlander, and CC Sabathia), and David Wells, probably the best “comp” for Big Sexy.
Here are some other quick stats about Bartolo Colon’s 21-year MLB career:
- His career 48.2 WAR is higher than 14 Hall of Fame pitchers, including Dizzy Dean, Catfish Hunter, and the recently-inducted Jack Morris and Jim Kaat.
- His 247 career wins are more than 28 Hall of Fame starters, including Juan Marichal, Pedro Martinez, Whitey Ford, Roy Halladay, and Sandy Koufax.
OK, now that the fun is over, his career ERA was 4.12, which would make him the only pitcher above 4.00 in the Hall, so he obviously isn’t going to get in.
Speaking of fun, as a hitter with the New York Mets (2014-16), his at bats became must-see TV. In 2016, Colon’s first (and only) career home run elicited this announcer call from SNY’s Gary Cohen that it was one of the “great moments in the history of baseball.”
Colon played on 11 different teams in his 21-year career. Interestingly, he never played for the expansion teams of 1977, 1993, or 1998, so he actually appeared for almost half of the 24 teams that existed in Major League Baseball when he was born in 1973.
For more on Colon’s colorful career, please enjoy this tribute that I wrote on his 45th birthday in 2018.
And, for even more, please click here for Jay Jaffe’s FanGraphs tribute.
Cooperstown Cred: Adrian Gonzalez (1B)
- Rangers (2004-05), Padres (2006-10), Red Sox (2011-12), Dodgers (2012-17), Mets (2018)
- Career: .287 BA, .358 OBP, .485 SLG, 317 HR, 1,202 RBI, 2,050 Hits
- Career: 129 OPS+, 43.5 WAR
- 5-time All-Star, 4-time Gold Glove Award winner, 2-time Silver Slugger Award winner
One year before Joe Mauer was taken as the #1 overall pick in the 2001 player draft, Adrian Gonzalez was drafted #1 overall by the Florida Marlins. Unlike Mauer, who spent his entire career with the Minnesota Twins, Gonzalez never played in Miami. He was traded in 2003 to the Texas Rangers and then four more times in the future.
It was in San Diego that the left-handed hitting Gonzalez became a starting first baseman and a star, a big enough star to become the centerpiece of a trade to the Boston Red Sox in the 2010-11 offseason. After the Sox collapsed in September 2011 and had a miserable start to the 2012 campaign, he was a part of a contract dump (with Josh Beckett and Carl Crawford) to the Los Angeles Dodgers, where he spent several productive years.
During a strong nine-year peak (2007-15), Gonzalez averaged a slash line of .291/.366/.501 (138 OPS+) with 29 HR, 106 RBI, and a 4.5 WAR. He received down-ballot MVP votes eight times in those nine years, his best finishes being in 2010 with San Diego (4th), 2011 in Boston (7th), and 2014 in Los Angeles (7th).
Gonzalez was only 33 at the end of the 2015 campaign. If he had been able to continue his existing productivity into his late 30s, he could have had a shot at the Hall of Fame. Alas, he regressed in 2016 and was released by the New York Mets a couple of months after his 36th birthday in 2018, ending his MLB career.
For what it’s worth, analytics are in the eye of the beholder (or creator of the formula). His career 43.5 WAR is only the 19th best of the 26 players on the 2024 Hall of Fame ballot, but sabermetric pioneer Bill James is more favorable. Gonzalez has 286 Win Shares in the James system, which is the 11th most on the current ballot and higher than the totals for Torii Hunter (277), Andruw Jones (276), or David Wright (267), and barely behind Chase Utley (291).
For more on Adrian Gonzalez’s career, please click here for Jay Jaffe’s FanGraphs profile.
Cooperstown Cred: Matt Holliday (OF)
- Rockies (2004-08), Athletics (2009), Cardinals (2009-16), Yankees (2017), Rockies (2018)
- Career: .299 BA, .379 OBP, .510 SLG, 316 HR, 1,220 RBI, 2,096 Hits
- Career: 132 OPS+, 44.5 WAR
- Finished 2nd in 2007 N.L. MVP vote: .340 BA, 36 HR, 137 RBI, 216 Hits
- 7-time All-Star, 4-time Silver Slugger Award winner
Matt Holliday was drafted out of high school in the 7th round of the 1998 player draft by the Colorado Rockies. He turned down several scholarship offers from college programs to play quarterback to instead pursue a career in Major League Baseball. Holliday, at 6’4″ and 240 pounds, war born to mash.
Thanks in part to needing Tommy John surgery on his right arm, Holliday spent six seasons in the minor leagues before making his MLB debut with the Rockies in 2004. He quickly earned the job as the team’s starting left fielder and made the first of his seven All-Star teams in 2006 and the first of his four Silver Sluggers.
In 2007, he had the best year of his career. Aided by his home park (Coors Field), the right-handed-hitting Holliday led the National League in batting (.340), hits (216), doubles (50), and RBI (137). He finished 2nd in the MVP balloting, barely finishing behind Jimmy Rollins.
The ’07 Rockies won 14 of their last 15 games to earn a spot in the playoffs, with Holliday hitting .442 with 17 RBI during that stretch. It was Holliday’s triple to deep right field (off Hall of Famer Trevor Hoffman) that helped Colorado erase an 8-6 in the bottom of the 13th against the Padres in the playoff tiebreaker game. He scored the winning run on a controversial slide two batters later. The Rockies advanced to the World Series but were swept by the Boston Red Sox.
Holliday never could match his 2007 campaign but remained a top-flight hitter for the next seven seasons. Overall, during his nine-year peak (2006-14), Holliday slashed .309/.390/.527 while averaging 26 HR, 101 RBI, 100 Runs, and an average WAR of 4.5. He spent eight productive seasons in St. Louis, enjoying six trips to the postseason, including the 2011 World Series title.
Thanks in part to injury and illness, Holliday declined in his age 35 to 38 seasons, ending the chances that he might complete a Cooperstown-worthy career.
For more on Matt Holliday’s career, please click here for Jay Jaffe’s FanGraphs profile.
Cooperstown Cred: Jose Reyes (SS)
- Mets (2003-11), Marlins (2012), Blue Jays (2013-15), Rockies (2015), Mets (2016-18)
- Career: .283 BA, .334 OBP, .427 SLG, 2,138 Hits, 517 SB
- Career: 103 OPS+, 37.5 WAR
- 4-time All-Star, 2006 N.L. Silver Slugger Award
- Led the National League in triples four times, stolen bases three times
Jose Reyes, a speedy shortstop from the Dominican Republic, made his MLB debut with the New York Mets on June 10, 2003, one day before his 20th birthday. He bounced up and down to and from the minor leagues in ’03 and ’04 before becoming the team’s full-time starter in 2005.
Reyes had four seasons (2005-08) when he looked like he might become a future Hall of Famer. For those four seasons, he hit .287, averaging 195 hits, 113 runs scored, 32 doubles, 16 triples, and 64 stolen bases per year. His career WAR at this point was just 20.2, but he was only 25 years old, so the future was bright.
Reyes was sidelined for most of 2009 due to a torn right hamstring tendon, limiting him to 36 games and he never was quite the same player again. After a middling campaign in 2010, Reyes had a huge 2011 (his free-agent walk year), winning the N.L. batting title (.337) while stealing 39 bases, legging out 16 triples, and scoring 101 runs.
The 28-year-old switch hitter signed with the Miami Marlins but only spent one year in Florida before being packaged in one of the franchise’s many fire sales in a deal with the Toronto Blue Jays. Reyes had a couple of decent seasons with the Blue Jays but was dealt in 2015 to the Colorado Rockies in a trade that brought Troy Tulowitzki to Toronto. Neither player worked out in their new home.
In October 2015, Reyes was arrested for domestic violence and missed the first third of the 2016 campaign due to a suspension imposed by MLB. He was released by the Rockies before he could return to the majors. The Mets welcomed their star from yesteryear back to Queens, and he spent the 2016-18 with the Mets. He couldn’t find a job in 2019 and officially retired in July at the age of 36.
For more on Jose Reyes, please click here for Jay Jaffe’s profile on FanGraphs.
Cooperstown Cred: Jose Bautista (OF)
- Orioles (2004), Devil Rays (2004), Royals (2004), Pirates (2004-08), Blue Jays (2008-17), Braves (2018), Mets (2018), Phillies (2018)
- Career: .247 BA, .362 OBP, .475 SLG, 344 HR, 975 RBI
- Career: 124 OPS+, 36.7 WAR
- 6-time All-Star, 3-time Silver Slugger Award winner
- Finished in the top 10 of the A.L. MVP vote 4 times
- Led all MLB in home runs twice
Jose Bautista, another native of the Dominican Republic, is the most unlikely player to have a spot on the 2024 BBWAA Hall of Fame ballot. I say this only because he didn’t figure out how to hit until he was 29 years old.
In his first nine MLB seasons, Bautista was a .238 hitter who hit just 59 home runs in 2,038 plate appearances. His OPS+ was just 91 for those six campaigns. During those six years, Bautista was a Rule 5 draftee, waived, sold, and traded three times.
The lightbulb went off for Bautista in 2010. As Jay Jaffe describes it, “He turned the page on that difficult stretch of his career thanks to a swing change, one that prefigured the launch angle revolution that would come into vogue a few years later.”
After hitting those 59 home runs in the equivalent of three full MLB campaigns, Bautista swatted an amazing 54 taters in 2010, which was enough to lead all of Major League Baseball. The 2010 campaign began a six-year stretch in which he was an All-Star every year and one of the top players in baseball.
From 2010-15, Joey Bats slashed .268/.390/.555 with an average of 38 HR, 97 RBI, a 156 OPS+, and an average WAR of 5.9. By WAR, he was the 6th best player in the league for those years, behind Mike Trout, Robinson Cano, Miguel Cabrera, Adrian Beltre, and Joey Votto.
In the last of those six magnificent campaigns, Bautista led the Jays to their first postseason appearance since 1993. In the ALDS against the Texas Rangers, Bautista ended the series in Game 5 with a massive three-run walk-off home run that included one of the most famous (or notorious) bat flips in MLB history.
Bautista started to decline in 2016 (.234 BA, 22 HR, 69 RBI) and really struggled in 2017 (.203 BA, 23 HR, 65 RBI). He spent his final campaign (2018) hitting .203 with 13 home runs with the Braves, Mets, and Phillies.
Overall, Bautista played for eight teams in his 15-year career, playing for four teams in his first season and three in his last.
To read more about Jose Bautista’s career, please click here for Jay Jaffe’s FanGraphs profile.
Cooperstown Cred: Victor Martinez (C)
- Indians (2002-2009), Red Sox (2009-10), Tigers (2011-18)
- Career: .295 BA, .360 OBP, .455 SLG, 246 HR, 1,178 RBI, 2,153 Hits
- Career: 118 OPS+, 32.0 WAR
- 5-time All-Star, 2-time Silver Slugger Award winner
Born in Venezuela, Victor Martinez was a big-bodied catcher for the Cleveland Indians and Boston Red Sox who became almost exclusively a designated hitter late in his career for the Detroit Tigers.
It wasn’t until he was 25 years old (in 2004) that Martinez became the Indians’ full-time backstop. He was an All-Star in his first season as a starter and also the A.L. Silver Slugger Award winner. For the next six years, V-Mart was arguably the second-best catcher in Major League Baseball, behind only Joe Mauer. From 2004-07, he hit .302 while averaging 21 HR and 99 RBI.
Martinez missed half of the 2008 season due to in-season surgery to remove bone chips from his right elbow, an injury which sapped his production as well. With the Indians floundering in 2009, he was traded to the Red Sox midseason, splitting time between catcher and first base.
After becoming Boston’s primary catcher in 2010, Martinez signed a four-year free-agent contract with the Tigers. Detroit had a promising young backstop (Alex Avila), so Martinez became the team’s DH. His best season, at the age of 35, was in 2014 when he slashed .335/.409/.565 (172 OPS+) with 32 HR and 103 RBI, which was good enough for a runner-up finish in the MVP voting to Mike Trout.
Victor Martinez spent the first nine years of his career (with the Indians and Red Sox) as a catcher and the last seven years as primarily a designated hitter with the Tigers. If he had remained a catcher for his entire career, he might have had a chance at the Hall of Fame. His overall batting statistics are quite favorable when compared to Hall of Fame catchers. His career 118 OPS+ is better than that of Ted Simmons, Carlton Fisk, Gary Carter, and Ivan Rodriguez. His 1,178 career RBI are more than all but nine Hall of Fame backstops.
The problem is that only 44% of V-Mart’s appearances came behind the dish. If you were to ask, but what about Mauer, who had only had 49.5% of his appearances as a catcher? The difference is that Mauer’s offensive performance as a backstop put him in the top tier of all MLB hitters, not just among catchers.
It also didn’t help Martinez’s Cooperstown chances that he didn’t become a regular until he was 25 and that he missed all of 2012 due to a knee injury. Martinez had a really good career, but it’s not close to Hall of Fame worthy.
To read more about Victor Martinez, please click here for Jay Jaffe’s FanGraphs profile.
Cooperstown Cred: Brandon Phillips (2B)
- Indians (2002-05), Reds (2006-16), Braves (2017), Angels (2017), Red Sox (2018)
- Career: .275 BA, .320 OBP, .420 SLG, 211 HR, 951 RBI, 2,029 Hits
- Career: 95 OPS+, 28.4 WAR
- 3-time All-Star, 4-time Gold Glove Award winner, won the 2011 N.L. Silver Slugger
Like Victor Martinez, Brandon Phillips’ career as a full-time player didn’t commence until his age 25 season. Phillips was initially drafted by the Montreal Expos in 1999 but was dealt to the Cleveland Indians three years later in a blockbuster deal that also sent Cliff Lee and Grady Sizemore to the Indians, with Bartolo Colon going to the Expos.
Phillips was given the opportunity to be the Indians’ starting second baseman in 2003, but he struggled mightily (OPS+ of just 48 in 393 plate appearances). Phillips spent almost all of 2004-05 in the minors before getting a fresh start with the Cincinnati Reds in 2006.
Phillips flourished in Cincinnati; he was the team’s starting second sacker for eleven seasons. He slashed .279/.325/.429 (99 OPS+) in those eleven campaigns, averaging 17 HR, 77 RBI, and 80 Runs scored. He also won four Gold Gloves during those years, although his defensive metrics were uneven overall.
The Braves traded Phillips to the Atlanta Braves in February 2017; he was traded again (to the L.A. Angels) in August and played in nine games with the Boston Red Sox in 2018 at the end of his career.
In his profile about Phillips, Jay Jaffe notes that the free-swinging Phillips “wound up at the center of a battle over old school/new school thinking within baseball’s culture war, pitted against teammate Joey Votto,” who was an on-base machine who was sometimes criticized for being too selective at the plate.
As a Hall of Fame candidate, Phillips’ career WAR (28.4) is depressed by his low on-base percentage (.320) and defensive metrics that were strong in three of his four Gold Glove campaigns but pedestrian otherwise.
To read more about Brandon Phillips, please click here for Jaffe’s FanGraphs profile.
Cooperstown Cred: James Shields (SP)
- Rays (2006-12), Royals (2013-14), Padres (2015-16), White Sox (2016-18)
- Career: 145-139 (.511 WL%), 4.01 ERA, 2,234 strikeouts
- Career: 102 ERA+, 30.4 WAR
- 3rd place in 2011 A.L. Cy Young voting (16-12, 2.82 ERA)
- 2011 All-Star
James Shields was a 16th-round pick by the Tampa Bay Devil Rays in 2000. He toiled in the minor leagues for five years (while missing all of 2002 due to shoulder tendonitis) before finally making his MLB debut in May 2006.
In 2007, Shields began a streak of nine straight seasons in which he logged at least 200 innings, something that is increasingly becoming a rarity in Major League Baseball. Tampa Bay took the “Devil” out of the team’s name in 2008, and Joe Maddon’s Rays had the franchise’s first winning season ever.
Shields, who earned the moniker “Big Game James,” went 2-2 in the 2008 postseason with a 2.88 ERA. The Rays outlasted the White Sox in the ALDS and the Red Sox in the ALCS before succumbing to the Phillies in the World Series.
The Rays returned to the playoffs in 2010 and 2011 but lost both years to the Texas Rangers in the ALCS. “Big Game James” didn’t come up big in either of his two starts in those years, losing both with a 10.61 ERA. The loss in 2011 was a bitter disappointment after a brilliant regular-season campaign, a season in which he was third in the Cy Young voting to Justin Verlander and Jered Weaver.
After the 2012 season, the Rays traded Shields and Wade Davis to the Kansas City Royals in a seven-player deal that brought Wil Myers and Jake Ordorizzi to Tampa Bay. Big Game James made it back to the postseason with Kansas City in 2014. The Royals made it all the way to Game 7 of the World Series against the San Francisco Giants; Shields went 1-2 with a 6.12 ERA in 5 postseason starts, while Madison Bumgarner truly owned the “big game” mantle in one of the greatest postseason runs for a pitcher in history (4-1, 1 Save, 1.03 ERA in 7 appearances).
Shields was a free agent after the 2014 season and signed with the San Diego Padres. After 1 1/2 middling campaigns, he was dealt to the Chicago White Sox in a trade that sent Fernando Tatis Jr. to San Diego. In 2+ seasons on Chicago’s south side, he struggled badly (16-35, 5.31 ERA).
James Shields was one of the last workhorses in Major League Baseball. From 2007 to 2015, his 1,988 innings pitched were the most in baseball. He also had the fifth most complete games (21) and the fifth most shutouts (9). He’s obviously not a Hall of Famer, but he was a solid innings-eater who helped the Rays and Royals make the playoffs during his peak years.
To read more about James Shields, please click here for Jay Jaffe’s FanGraphs profile.
That’s it, the capsule looks at the eight players who will appear on one and only one Hall of Fame ballot.
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