During a recent trip home, I got to discussing with my dad which current MLB
players are headed for the Hall of Fame. We reached the consensus that
there are fewer than 10 current players who are clear first-ballot Hall of
Famers, based on their career trajectories. I settled on a list of eight
players:
Alex
Rodriguez, Albert Pujols, Adrian Beltre, Miguel Cabrera, Ichiro Suzuki, Mike
Trout, Felix Hernandez, and Clayton Kershaw
Even in this list, there are concerns about most of the
players’ chances. Alex Rodriguez, for example, may not be elected to the HOF,
unless a significant portion of the voters decide to relax their stance on
steroid users (which is an argument for another post). Ichiro is an interesting
case, because he started his MLB career at age 27, but I think his
accomplishments in Japan and his importance as one of the first Japanese starts
in MLB will propel him into the Hall. Mike Trout is currently in his age-23
season, meaning that he likely has three-quarters of his career left (if not
more), but is on pace to have the highest career fWAR through his age-23 season of any batter in history. Kershaw and Hernandez are
pitchers under 30, which implies a certain level of risk about the rest of
their careers. Given all of these concerns, I would give Pujols and Cabrera the
best chances of being elected, as of now. Below is a list of the top 15 current players, by Baseball Reference WAR.
That brings us to the curious case of Adrian Beltre, who is
not as highly regarded as the other seven players on my list. Beltre has a
higher career WAR than all but Albert Pujols and Alex Rodriguez, per FanGraphs
and Baseball Reference. While WAR is not an exact measure of a player’s talent and
contribution to his team, Beltre’s standing in both leaderboards warrants a
greater public perception of his Hall of Fame candidacy. Beltre did not follow
the traditional career trajectory, where a player’s peak occurs in his late
20s. Beltre’s best season was in 2004, which was his age 25 season. His five
next best seasons occurred from age 31 to age 35, when he experienced a
resurgence in Boston and Texas. Between 2010 and 2014, he had the fifth-highest fWAR among position players, and made the all-star team in four out of those
five seasons. The unique career trajectory of Adrian Beltre may have affected
our perceptions of his greatness.
Part of this lack of recognition for his greatness, I
believe, is the timing of his career. Beltre was a great fielder during his
years with the Dodgers and the Mariners, and has remained an above-average
fielder into his mid-to-late 30s. However, I don’t think we knew how much value
he provided during his defensive peak, because there wasn’t as much public
awareness of the importance of advanced defensive statistics. In 2008, the
Tampa Bay Rays reached the World Series, and were renowned for their
development of new defensive metrics that allowed them to build a successful team.
Jonah Keri’s The Extra 2%, which
chronicled the Rays’ rapid rise to success, came out in 2011, and led to an
increased awareness of the value of defense. Beltre's defensive ability, though still above-average, had declined by the time this came out, and thus did not benefit from the awareness as much as he could have.
The other flaw in our perception of Adrian Beltre is a
result of his amazing 2004 season, in which he was the best player in baseball
who wasn’t intentionally walked 120 times. The Mariners signed him to a lucrative 4-year, $48 million
deal, and expected production closer to his 2004 season than to league average.
As a Mariners fan, I was certainly guilty (at the time), as a Mariners fan, of
getting caught up in his lack of offensive production. Safeco Field’s status as
an extreme pitcher’s park, especially with right-handed hitters, is
well-documented. However, adjusting for park effects still shows a merely
average to above-average hitter, not an all-star. That was a significant
upgrade over Jeff Cirillo, but we expected a great deal more from such a
high-priced free agent signing. We didn’t realize just how great of a defensive
third baseman Beltre was. By any of the advanced metrics, Beltre rated as one of the best third baseman in recent memory,
and has sustained an above-average level of fielding into his 30s.
Determining candidacy for the Hall of Fame is not an easy
task, and everyone has their own interpretation of the best way to look at a
player’s career. Personally, I like to consider a combination of career
production and peak production. Well-known sabermetrician Jay Jaffe developed
JAWS, the Jaffe
WAR Score system, which averages a player’s career WAR and the cumulative
WAR of his best seven seasons. Beltre rates as a Hall of Famer in the JAWS system, per Baseball Reference:
By fWAR,
Beltre ranks among the top 10 third basemen in baseball history, and is still
adding to his resume:
The point of all this is to say that there are very few
future Hall of Famers in the game at any time. We need to appreciate those who
are playing. Take some time to watch his defensive highlights.
Here’s to Adrian Beltre, the maniac without a cup. Let’s remember him as one of the greatest defensive
third basemen of all time and a future Hall of Famer.
