Tag: Explain

The night before Ken Griffey Jr. and Mike Piazza were inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2016, I was lucky enough to be in the plaque room in Cooperstown, N.Y., standing behind Cal Ripken Jr. in line to get a drink.

As I looked around the room, I saw Randy Johnson pointing out his plaque to friends, a smile on his face that was never seen on the field. I saw Pedro Martinez and Juan Marichal sitting at a table talking, and wished I were a Spanish-speaking fly on the wall to hear that conversation. As I nursed a beer in the corner, Barry Larkin came over and asked how I was doing.

“Dude, I shouldn’t be here,” I said to Larkin, whom I’d covered briefly late in his Hall of Fame career, while looking around at so many of the game’s legends. “I don’t belong here.”

“I know what you’re saying,” Larkin said.

I was incredulous and pointed in the direction of his plaque: “Barry, you can’t. Your face is over there.”

“Bro,” Larkin said, dead serious. “I get it. I don’t feel like I belong here either.”

That interaction stuck with me, and I remember it every year when the Hall of Fame ballot arrives in November.

The ballot itself is an unremarkable piece of office paper and comes with simple instructions. There are 30 or so names (28 this year) with boxes beside them, and a place to sign the ballot, making it official.

Some scoff at the Hall using paper ballots, delivered by mail and returned in a pre-paid envelope. But the fact that it’s an actual, tangible piece of paper makes the already weighty assignment feel heavier.

I have been voting for the Hall of Fame since the 2015 election, marking Pedro Martinez and Randy Johnson on my first ballot among eight other names. Each time has been an honor. Over the years, I’ve also had countless discussions with other voters, Hall of Famers and people in the game about what makes a Hall of Famer.

I have my own beliefs, but so do the roughly 400 other voters, each with their own reasoning and bar to clear. It’s difficult to get a consensus of 75 percent of the voters to agree on anything, but nearly every year the baseball writers find someone worthy to reach that threshold. Even here at The Athletic, we have different ideas about Hall voting; each, I believe, is well thought out, with the process taken seriously — so seriously, in fact, that we believe we should show you how we voted, but also why we voted as we did.

The 2025 Hall of Fame class will be announced next Tuesday and immortalized, along with Dick Allen and Dave Parker, this summer in Cooperstown. Here are the ballots of 12 of The Athletic’s Hall of Fame voters and, in their words, more on their selections. — C. Trent Rosecrans

---

Daniel Barbarisi’s ballot

Carlos Beltrán, Andruw Jones, CC Sabathia, Ichiro Suzuki, Billy Wagner

When Hall of Fame season was getting underway this past fall, I got a message from one of the guys I was a Red Sox beat writer with in the late 2000s, someone who had covered Dustin Pedroia at the same time I did. He asked, pointedly, are you voting for Pedey?

Pedroia is something of a cause célèbre among a group of voters, and I get that. He was fun to cover, he was relentless and productive and more than all of that, he was inspiring. This was a guy who clearly wasn’t supposed to be there, who made his life’s work about getting in the faces of people who didn’t believe in him and showing them that he could kick as much ass as the next player, and probably more, because he wanted it more.

Writers will sometimes pose the (imperfect, incomplete) question: Does it feel like I’m watching a Hall of Famer? With Pedroia, in the late 2000s, it did. Elite, distinctive, rose to the moment, delivered consistency and impact at the plate and in the field, won awards, won World Series, made things feel bigger than they were. The peak was there. But it didn’t last.

Look over his counting stats — 1,805 hits, 140 home runs, 138 steals, 725 RBIs, and so on — and they are hallmarks of a career that feels incomplete. One moment Pedroia was a metronomic presence at the heart of the Red Sox lineup, and the next he was just … gone, replaced by a new generation of stars, supposed to be the bridge from the 2007 group to the up-and-comers who won the 2018 title, but in reality he was largely absent after a devastating 2017 knee injury.

Was that a singular moment that wrecked an otherwise Hall of Fame career? Yes and no. It was the injury he couldn’t come back from, but there were numerous others before that, wear-and-tear injuries, pushed-too-hard injuries, the problems that come from putting that level of torque and that level of himself into every ferocious hack. I think back on Pedroia’s swing and the word that comes to mind is violence. It looked like he was summoning everything he had for the fifth pitch of the third at-bat of the night for a 2009 Tuesday night game against the Orioles, and he did that every single game, always. That adds up.

I grew up in New York thinking Don Mattingly was both the greatest ever to play and a clear Hall of Famer, and the similarities between the two cases are pretty obvious. As a kid or even a young adult, you don’t really understand why someone like Mattingly doesn’t make the cut, and feel a slight resentment about that. But years ago, I remember hearing Mattingly discuss his own candidacy with remarkable clarity: how grateful he was to be considered, and how he was acutely aware that he was not a Hall of Famer. The numbers weren’t there. That peak matters, but so does longevity; he had one at a Hall of Fame level and not quite the other.

Pedroia’s career is impressive enough that it shouldn’t be seen in the context of What Could Have Been. But when it comes to the Hall of Fame, it’s hard not to wonder.

Tim Britton’s ballot

Bobby Abreu, Carlos Beltrán, Félix Hernández, Dustin Pedroia, Andy Pettitte, CC Sabathia, Ichiro Suzuki, Chase Utley, Billy Wagner, David Wright

Look, I cover the Mets, so I understand one fan base’s case against Chase Utley’s Hall of Fame candidacy. But to me, Utley is an easy call. He produced like a legitimate MVP candidate for five seasons and like an All-Star for 10. He was the ringleader for a team that won five divisions, two pennants and a championship. He was baseball’s best second baseman for a decade, and he should not be dispatched into a group with Bobby Grich and Lou Whitaker as should-be Hall of Famers at second base who haven’t made the cut.

Utley leads a group of similar candidates who excelled for around a decade but lacked the longevity to reach the counting stats of traditional Hall of Famers. David Wright was right there with Adrián Beltré as the sport’s premier third basemen for a decade. Dustin Pedroia took the mantle at the keystone from Utley. And Félix Hernández was historically good through his 20s — good enough to mitigate the abruptness of his decline in his 30s. The sport has changed, most obviously for starting pitchers, leading me to place an even higher value on a player’s peak, especially when it extends for nine or 10 seasons.

(For what it’s worth, Andruw Jones would fall into this category as well. However, I do not vote for Jones because of his 2012 arrest on battery charges in a domestic assault incident.)

Daniel Brown’s ballot

Bobby Abreu, Carlos Beltrán, Andruw Jones, Manny Ramirez, Alex Rodriguez, CC Sabathia, Ichiro Suzuki, Chase Utley, Billy Wagner

Here’s hoping we can avoid the “which” hunt this year — as in, Which freaking voter kept Ichiro from being a unanimous selection? The 10-time All-Star looks poised to accomplish what another former Mariners outfielder, Ken Griffey Jr., barely missed when three voters left him off the ballot in 2016.

Ichiro would be the first position player to get 100 percent of the writers’ vote and just the second player behind reliever Mariano Rivera, who went 425 for 425 in 2019. And if Ichiro isn’t unanimous, well, that’ll be just as hard to explain as the voters who snubbed immortals such as Willie Mays (left off 23 ballots), Mickey Mantle (43) and Yogi Berra (59).

My favorite Ichiro stat: Among batters with at least 2,000 plate appearances, he is the only left-handed hitter in MLB history with a reverse platoon split. He batted .329 against lefties and .304 against righties.

As for my other checkmarks: I continue to struggle with players linked to performance-enhancing drugs, but once Bud Selig, Tony La Russa and other leaders who profited from that era were welcomed into Cooperstown, it complicated the equation.

CC Sabathia stands out from the starting pitcher pack on this ballot. As Jay Jaffe noted on FanGraphs, Sabathia leads pitchers from this class in WAR, WAR7-Adj and S-Jaws. I also agree with Jaffe that “we won’t see his kind again; nobody born after 1966 has topped his 3,577 1/3 innings, and Sabathia was born 14 years later.”

Steve Buckley’s ballot

Carlos Beltrán, Andruw Jones, Dustin Pedroia, Andy Pettitte, Jimmy Rollins, CC Sabathia, Ichiro Suzuki, Chase Utley, Billy Wagner, David Wright

CC Sabathia is a lock to be elected to the Hall of Fame in this, his first year on the ballot. That’s as it should be.

What we also know, thanks to the ceaseless sleuthing from the crew at Baseball Hall of Fame Vote Tracker, is that the big lefty will not be a unanimous selection. And that’s a head-scratcher, frankly.

Tell you what I’m going to do: Rather than make the Cooperstown case for Sabathia by rolling out all kinds of charts, diagrams and View-Master slides, I’ll just invite you to google “CC Sabathia,” “Hall of Fame” and “duh,” and that’ll take you where you need to go. (I tried it. It works!)

What I’d like to do with my turn, here on The Athletic’s Open Mic Night (Baseball Hall of Fame edition), is address the appointment viewing that occurred whenever Sabathia was on the mound during his 19 seasons in the big leagues. You know what appointment viewing is when it comes to pitching, right? That’s when a team has a pitcher whose stuff, whose presence, whose personality, is such that you make it your business to always know when he’s doing his business. That’s what you do with the great ones: A note is made, either in the head or in a little gizmo, about when the next start will be. And you don’t miss it. If the manager has reshuffled the rotation due to an off-day or rainout, you adjust your own schedule accordingly.

When I was growing up in Cambridge, Mass., it was Luis Tiant. Much later on, when I was writing about the Red Sox for a living, it was Roger Clemens and then Pedro Martinez, along with a dash of Curt Schilling, even before the bloody sock. Sabathia is in their company, mostly because of his stellar pitching but also because, sure, he’s a big fella who sometimes wore his cap tilted over the right eye. You could have dropped out of the sky, new to baseball, and instantly recognized Sabathia’s importance.

I loved watching Sabathia pitch. I admired him for what struck me as an off-the-charts earnestness, as though he wasn’t just pitching for his team but for whatever city he happened to be based in at the time. Though born and raised in the Bay Area, he was a Cleveland guy when he was pitching for the Indians, a Milwaukee guy during that magical half season with the Brewers, and, yes, absolutely, a New York guy during his 11 seasons with the Yankees.

Media people aren’t supposed to root for this or that player, but it’s perfectly acceptable to admire the artistry. In fact, I encourage it. And CC Sabathia, artist in residence in Cleveland, in Milwaukee, in New York, was someone every ballplayer should strive to be. In this age of openers and pitch counts, we just don’t have enough of his type anymore.

GO DEEPER

Why Dustin Pedroia has a checkmark on my Hall of Fame ballot

Marc Carig’s ballot

Carlos Beltrán, Félix Hernández, Andruw Jones, CC Sabathia, Ichiro Suzuki, Billy Wagner

One afternoon before a game, I was chatting with CC Sabathia in the Yankees’ clubhouse, where the franchise’s retired numbers are displayed for all to see. He motioned toward the array of numerals — shorthand for the idea of greatness in the Bronx —  and uttered a phrase that over the years became one of his mantras: “The pinstripes are heavy.”

Yet, Sabathia spent a career meeting expectations that were as outsized as his talent and personality. He starred in Cleveland, a franchise long dependent on its ability to be right about its young talent. Sabathia was a first-rounder and subsequently pitched like it. Upon his deadline trade to the Brewers in 2008, Sabathia pitched on short rest in the heat of a pennant race, even though he knew his Milwaukee tenure was likely a three-month pit stop ahead of free agency. It’s a feat that only grows more impressive over time. Then, Sabathia arrived in New York before the 2009 season as the jewel of a $423 million offseason, a spasm of Steinbrenner-esque spending that represented the franchise’s desperation to end a nine-year title drought.

That investment paid off immediately. Months later, Sabathia and the Yankees were headed up the Canyon of Heroes. Sabathia was brought in to be an ace and a leader, and needed just one season to accomplish the goal.

Hall of Famers should be dominant for a long period of time. For me, it’s the primary prerequisite. Sabathia fulfilled that requirement, all while shouldering the weight of expectations. He was an ace, and for a long time, he pitched like it.

As did Félix Hernández. We can debate the breadth of King Félix’s career accomplishments, but this feels clear: Hernández was so dominant that he’s precisely the kind of player we should want to celebrate.

Billy Wagner made his mark as a reliever. Few players have been so far ahead of their time, and Wagner racked up strikeouts at a staggering rate for his era. Carlos Beltrán as an all-around player was a sight to behold — gifted both physically and intellectually. Andruw Jones’ greatness in center did not require the aid of advanced metrics to appreciate. And Ichiro’s inclusion requires little commentary: simply one of the best to ever swing a bat.

Dan Hayes’ ballot

Carlos Beltrán, Andruw Jones, CC Sabathia, Ichiro Suzuki, Chase Utley, Billy Wagner

Here’s hoping Carlos Beltrán continues trending in the right direction toward Hall of Fame election.

This is Beltrán’s third year on the ballot. Last year, he jumped 10.6 percent from his 2023 debut, garnering 57.1 percent of the vote. In 2023, Beltrán received only 46.5 percent approval, which was likely an indication some voters were punishing him for his leading role in the 2017 Houston Astros’ sign-stealing scandal.

Perhaps it was collective fatigue from 2022, when the Baseball Writers’ Association of America turned away Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Curt Schilling (I voted for all three every time), but I checked “yes” for Beltrán in 2023. I don’t condone what Beltrán did in Houston and understand why others might have chosen to leave his name unchecked in that first year.

But maybe the electorate is open to changing its mind on a very worthy player.

No other Astros players were punished and A.J. Hinch and Alex Cora have returned to the dugout. Beltrán has paid more for his role than anyone else involved. Since the Mets fired him as their manager in 2020, no other team has considered him for any type of coaching role.

Beltrán was amazing throughout his career. He arrived with authority, winning the 1999 Rookie of the Year Award, and rarely slowed down. After he was fortunate enough to be traded from Kansas City in 2004, Beltrán lived up to the hype almost everywhere he went.

His first postseason is one of the greatest performances of all time. His overall postseason play was incredible, slugging 16 homers and nabbing all 11 stolen bases he attempted. Beltrán conquered New York with the Mets. He was a five-tool stud for the first 10 years and a great hitter after that.

I’m just hoping we don’t exclude yet another amazing player.

Chad Jennings’ ballot

Bobby Abreu, Carlos Beltrán, Andruw Jones, Russell Martin, Dustin Pedroia, CC Sabathia, Ichiro Suzuki, Chase Utley, Billy Wagner, David Wright

There seems to be a theory — maybe it’s more of a hot take — that if you must ask whether a player is a Hall of Famer, then he’s not a Hall of Famer. It sounds profound, but it’s cheap, lazy and wrong. We don’t always know greatness when we see it, and the Hall of Fame deserves more than gut instinct.

All of which is to say that I, too, never thought Russell Martin was a Hall of Famer when he was playing. I covered him in New York, but it never once crossed my mind that I would one day vote for him to be enshrined in Cooperstown.

Now, I wonder if I simply didn’t recognize Martin’s impact as it was happening. It’s possible, of course, that I’m putting too much emphasis on his pitch framing ability, but it’s also possible that framing is so valuable — and so revered — that it’s going to determine the sport’s next technological breakthrough. Current data shows that Martin was on the leading edge of that skill set, and if your gut says that Yadier Molina (55.6 WAR per FanGraphs) is going to be a Hall of Famer in a few years, then you need to think long and hard about Martin (54.5).

Of course, that doesn’t make Martin a can’t-miss case, but such players are few and far between. (Ichiro is probably the only one on this ballot.) It takes almost 300 votes for a player to be elected, which has led me to be more of a “Big Hall” voter, and high-peak players fit my vision of Cooperstown. It turns out, so do some players I didn’t recognize as Hall of Famers until it came time to vote.

Keith Law’s ballot

Carlos Beltrán, Andruw Jones, Alex Rodriguez, CC Sabathia, Ichiro Suzuki, Chase Utley

I believe this is my smallest ballot since I became a Hall voter, but I’ve always been a “Small Hall” person. There was just too big of a backlog of players because of voter squeamishness over anyone with a possible connection to PED usage that, when I first started voting, I didn’t have enough room for everyone I wanted to check off. All of those candidates either got in or reached their 10-year limit on the ballot, and now we get one or maybe two easy yeses in each year — and some years, we get none.

Of the six players I did check this year, only Ichiro is a no-brainer; even if someone wanted to quibble with his MLB performance, his impact on the global game is more than enough to make him an inner-circle Hall of Famer. CC Sabathia is the other new candidate for whom I voted, and he just squeaks over the line for me; his performance is quite comparable to that of Andy Pettitte, for whom I have never voted, but Sabathia’s reputation around the game as a clubhouse leader and the way he has used his voice and stature after his playing career to speak out about racial inequities in the game are separating factors for me. Our sport needs more CC Sabathias. We were, and still are, lucky to have him.

Stephen J. Nesbitt’s ballot

Bobby Abreu, Carlos Beltrán, Andruw Jones, Andy Pettitte, Manny Ramirez, Alex Rodriguez, CC Sabathia, Ichiro Suzuki, Chase Utley, Billy Wagner

As a first-time Hall of Fame voter, choosing the boxes to check on your maiden ballot brings with it an amalgam of anticipation, remember-some-guys nostalgia and pressure to firmly plant your flag. And after year upon year of reading writers’ lengthy throat clearing at the start of ballot explainers, I will skip straight to the bullet points.

• I voted for 10 players. It’s harder than ever to become a Hall of Famer. I will not make that more difficult by delighting in showing off my selectivity.

• I voted for the steroid guys. Many writers refuse to vote for any player reported to have used PEDs. Others put Alex Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez in a distinct category because they were suspended multiple times after MLB established clear rules. There are cheaters of many forms in the Hall of Fame. If a player is on the ballot, and therefore eligible for election, I will judge them on the factor this game has always held most sacred: numbers. Rodriguez and Ramirez were greats. They have my vote and will surely still fall far short of 75 percent.

• I voted for Bobby Abreu. That he wasn’t thought of as a future Hall of Famer during his playing career means nothing. It is only an indictment of what was valued at the time.

• I voted for Andy Pettitte, with my final vote, over Félix Hernández and Mark Buehrle, a threesome I had never expected to consider side-by-side-by-side. There are already too few starters making it to Cooperstown, and that trend will only worsen with current pitching trends. (The longevity-versus-peak debate cannot function once longevity is no longer an option.) All three of these starters had a career 117 ERA+. I enjoyed that. Hernández had the peak, and I expect to vote for him in future years. Buehrle lasted longer, won four Gold Glove awards and a World Series ring. But it’s past time for the induction of Pettitte, whose résumé includes longevity, cold hard stats, postseason success and five World Series titles.

GO DEEPER

Stark: Why I voted for Andy Pettitte for the Hall of Fame for the first time

David O’Brien’s ballot

Carlos Beltrán, Andruw Jones, Brian McCann, CC Sabathia, Ichiro Suzuki, Chase Utley, Billy Wagner

Andruw Jones is considered by many to be the greatest defensive center fielder in a half-century or more. Couple his 10 consecutive Gold Gloves with 434 career home runs, and it’s understandable why so many former players, along with Braves fans, find it unfathomable that Jones hasn’t been elected to the Hall of Fame in seven tries.

I get why some writers leave him off their ballots. It’s his modest .254 career batting average and 111 OPS+, and the precipitous decline after his age-30 season, his last with Atlanta. He hit .210 with 66 homers and a 95 OPS+ over his final five seasons with four other teams.

But dig deeper and realize Jones debuted at 19. In a 10-year stretch beginning at age 21, he averaged 34 homers, 103 RBIs and 158 games played while slugging .504 and winning a Gold Glove every season. To repeat, he averaged 34 homers and 104 RBIs while winning Gold Gloves every season for a decade.

Now, what if he debuted at, say, 22, and had that 10-year stretch from ages 24 through 33? How many would use a sharp decline in his ages 34-38 seasons as a reason to keep a perennial Gold Glover and prolific middle-of-the-order hitter out of Cooperstown? With some, perception has overridden a staggering decade of performance by Jones, the likes of which we’ve seen from few center fielders not named Mays, Mantle or Griffey.

Perhaps I’m stunned Jones is not in the Hall because I covered so many games during his peak years — first, as a Marlins beat writer who watched Jones routinely erase potential Florida runs and drive in so many for the Braves beginning in his first full season in 1997. Then as a Braves beat writer beginning in 2002, I saw him win countless games with his glove and bat through 2007.

Consider: Jones finished with about 50 more Defensive Runs Saved than the immortal Willie Mays, and 30 more than cannon-armed Roberto Clemente. Those icons are the only two outfielders with more Gold Gloves than Jones; Mays and Clemente won 12 apiece after the award began in 1957.

Besides Jones, the only players to win at least 10 Gold Gloves and hit 400 or more homers: Mays, Ken Griffey Jr. and Mike Schmidt, three first-ballot Hall of Famers.

This is Jones’ eighth year on the ballot, and it looks as if he’s going to miss again, albeit by a smaller margin than seemed likely a few years ago when he was named on barely 40 percent of ballots. Jones inched his way up to 61.6 percent in 2024, and this year he’ll likely move closer to the 75 percent threshold required for election, based on the publicly released ballots as of Monday (72.6 percent).

But voting percentages typically drop at least 5 percent after all ballots are counted, including those not made public before the big announcement, so Jones probably will fall short. If so, he would have two more chances to get in through the writers’ vote.

It’s going to be close, but I think he’ll be voted in by the writers a year from now or in his final year of eligibility. If not, it’ll be up to an Era Committee to vote Jones into the Hall. And I’m confident they would, given the makeup of those committees, which typically include plenty of former players and managers.

C. Trent Rosecrans’ ballot

Bobby Abreu, Carlos Beltrán, Andruw Jones, Andy Pettitte, Manny Ramirez, Alex Rodriguez, CC Sabathia, Ichiro Suzuki, Chase Utley, Billy Wagner

One of the criticisms I hear about Hall of Fame voting is, how can a player not be worth a Hall of Fame vote one year and then be worth a checkmark the next year? You’re a Hall of Famer or not, right?

But each year has a different electorate after gaining and losing voters, usually replacing older voters with younger ones. That not only changes who is voting, but also how we view the game and our evaluation tools. And each year is a different ballot with different names, but the same limit of 10 choices among those listed.

Each voter deals with the rule of 10 in their own way. Some never have to consider it because they wouldn’t vote for that many players. Others have to make a distinction between two players with similar cases. Still others look at trends and try to navigate more rules, weighing which players could drop off the ballot if they don’t receive the required 5 percent of the vote or which players are nearing the end of their 10 years of eligibility.

Bobby Abreu and Billy Wagner are on their sixth and 10th years on the ballot, respectively. For the second time, I voted for Abreu. For the third time, I voted for Wagner. That means I didn’t vote for Abreu four times and didn’t vote for Wagner seven times. At no point did either man’s statistics change.

There are easy names on the ballot most years, like Ichiro Suzuki this year, but the rest are more difficult to decide. I always believed both Abreu and Wagner were great players with great careers, but before my more recent Hall of Fame research work, I had them below the line for entrance. Over the years, I’ve changed my stance, even if that hasn’t always meant they got my vote. On the ballot for the 2023 class, I voted for both; last year, I only voted for Wagner; this year, I again voted for both.

In 2024, Wagner came within five votes of election.

Although he was once again around my line of demarcation to make the Hall, Wagner was an easy pick in his final year of eligibility. In the end, I’d rather be the reason someone gained entrance into the Hall of Fame than the reason they were kept out.

Will I continue this way? I don’t know. Each year is its own discussion and each ballot has its own context. I always take that into consideration, an imperfect solution to an imperfect process.

Eno Sarris’ ballot

Bobby Abreu, Carlos Beltrán, Félix Hernández, Andruw Jones, Brian McCann, Andy Pettitte, CC Sabathia, Ichiro Suzuki, Chase Utley, Billy Wagner

Framing is on the ballot for the first time.

Whether you think of framing as “stealing strikes” or “presenting,” the skill has real value. When Russell Martin, Yadier Molina, and Brian McCann were catching, baseball was just figuring out how to assign a number to how much framing was worth. The trio ended up being the three best framers in the history of the statistic, as a result of their excellence — but also because the rest of the league hadn’t caught up yet.

When those three were getting called strikes on more than half of the pitches they received in the shadow zone — the borderline space that’s half-in, half-out of the strike zone — there were also catchers who were getting strike calls on only a third of those opportunities. The trio racked up framing stats because the worst framers at the time were terrible. The worst regular catcher this year (Korey Lee) got strikes on 43 percent of the takes he saw in the shadow zone; the best (Patrick Bailey) got strikes on 53 percent. The league has figured this out. Framing is valued.

Consequently, if you re-racked the careers of this trio of great defensive catchers and started them now, even with the same work on the field, they wouldn’t achieve the same relative value when compared to their peers. The framing numbers that put all three into the top 15 catchers of all time by FanGraphs’ WAR would no longer be there for them.

But this happens all the time. Babe Ruth hit 54 homers in a year when second place hit 19 homers. We don’t take that value away from him just because the league hadn’t quite figured out the value of slugging. Dazzy Vance struck out guys way before that was in vogue — he leads in career-adjusted strikeout percentage, and he’s in the Hall of Fame. The sport usually rewards trailblazers.

All that said — and even though catcher is the most under-represented position in the Hall — I balked at Martin’s offensive stats. A career .248/.349/.397 line with 191 homers and 101 steals didn’t pass my sniff test. McCann hit .262/.337/.452 with 282 homers and was nearly the same framer, so he got my vote.

But I hope Martin makes it to another ballot. For all the bellyaching I did about his offense, I made an uncomfortable realization late in the process — Molina’s career OPS was worse than Martin’s. And Molina will get my vote.

---

Hall of Fame ballot columns from The Athletic

Ken Rosenthal’s and Tyler Kepner’s respective ballot columns published last week. Jayson Stark’s ballot column will be published later this week.

GO DEEPER

Rosenthal: Why CC Sabathia received my Hall of Fame vote this year and Andy Pettitte did not

GO DEEPER

Kepner: Why Félix Hernández fell just short on my Hall of Fame ballot — and why I’m grateful he’s still in play

---

GO DEEPER

Five things to watch on the 2025 Baseball Hall of Fame ballot

GO DEEPER

Baseball Hall of Fame reader survey results: How Ichiro, Wagner, Sabathia and more fared

GO DEEPER

A salute to Ichiro, CC Sabathia and the other 12 newcomers to the Baseball Hall of Fame ballot

GO DEEPER

Baseball Hall of Fame tiers: Which active players are on course for Cooperstown?

(Top image: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic. Photos: Ichiro Suzuki: Tom DiPace / Sports Illustrated / Getty Images; CC Sabathia: Rich Pilling / MLB Photos / Getty Images; Billy Wagner: Jonathan Daniel / Getty Images)