The Hall Calls

On January 21, members of the BBWAA will reveal the results of the 2025 Hall of Fame balloting. Because we here at Coffee & Box Scores didn’t receive official ballots (surely they got lost in the mail), I will reveal my own personal choices in this space, with Roger to follow in his shortly after.

Although this is the first time I’m publishing a ballot reveal, I’ve been partaking in this exercise for as long as I can remember. It’s a fun puzzle for those of us who enjoy taking in our statistics with a side of historical context: How do the accomplishments of the candidates stack up against those of the luminaries deemed worthy of baseball’s highest individual honor?

My puzzle pondering has yielded seven players who deserve to pass through Cooperstown’s gilded gates this year. But before I get to them, some thoughts on a few guys who didn’t make the cut –

Álex Rodríguez/Manny Ramírez

They were two of the most gifted players of their time, but also two who got busted for PEDs after strict penalties were enacted to drive its usage from the sport. As such, there’s none of the moral ambiguity attached to users and suspects of the pre-testing era; Rodríguez and Ramírez got their lofty numbers, fame and money, but at the cost of what could have been Hall of Fame careers even without the enhancements.

Bobby Abreu

There’s a lot to like about Abreu’s resume: He had eight seasons of at least 100 runs scored, another eight of at least 100 RBI and eight in a row of 100 or more walks. He also combined 574 doubles and 288 homers with an even 400 steals, and finished with an impressive career .395 OBP. But missing within that statistical potpourri is the definitive seven- or eight-bWAR season that truly would have stamped Abreu’s place among the era’s premier players. The perception of him being very good but not quite great was reflected in his limited support for the All-Star Game (just two selections) and in MVP voting (zero top 10 finishes), and without the monster lifetime totals to bolster his case, it’s difficult to say he belongs among the game’s immortals.

Andy Pettitte

Pettitte also has a PED stain on his resume which automatically disqualifies him to some voters, but I’d rather judge his candidacy on his career merits. His supporters make the case that he was a vital cog to the great Yankees teams of the mid-1990s through the first decade of the 2000s, as evidenced by his 256 career regular season wins and a record 19 more in the playoffs. But for all his consistency, Pettitte was never consistently great; he had just three seasons of at least five bWAR and almost always finished with more hits allowed than innings pitched, fueling a middling lifetime 1.351 WHIP. As a Yankee fan, I look back on Pettitte’s career with great affection, but as a student of the game, I can’t justify putting him in the Hall.

David Wright

Wright’s career eerily mirrored that of Don Mattingly’s. Both played 14 seasons. Both were beloved captains of their respective New York ballclubs. Both put up huge seasons early in their careers and were looking like Hall of Famers by their late 20s. And both endured back injuries that robbed them of their All-Star abilities and left fans wondering what might have been.

Dustin Pedroia

Hands-down, the toughest omission from my ballot. Pedroia certainly had the peaks I like to see, with two seasons of at least seven bWAR and an MVP Award under his belt. He also was a Rookie of the Year, snagged four Gold Gloves and was a prominent member of two World Championship teams. But again, sometimes it just comes down to doing it for a long enough period of time, and I think Pedey falls short of that murky line of demarcation. Still, I wouldn’t be surprised to see him get the call from a future Veterans Committee.

And now for the guys who receive the Recollections seal of approval to pass from the limbo of retired star to the realm of all-time great. The envelopes, please –

Ichiro Suzuki

Ichiro’s candidacy needs little help from me: A slash-and-run throwback in an era of all-or-nothing sluggers, he won two batting titles and an MVP, set a single-season record with 262 hits and managed to top 3,000 for his MLB career despite a belated debut at age 27. The question isn’t whether he’ll get inducted, but whether he’ll become the second to earn the honor by way of unanimous vote … and I think he will.

Carlos Beltrán

I’m not sure why Beltrán isn’t already in the Hall of Fame, although I’m guessing it has something to do with his part in the Astros’ trash-can brouhaha. His numbers clear many of the traditional and newer barometers, as he combined both power (435 homers) and speed (312 steals) with quality center field defense (3 Gold Gloves) to rack up a sturdy lifetime 70.1 bWAR. Beltrán was also a Rookie of the Year, a nine-time All-Star and a noted postseason beast (.307/.412/.609 with 16 blasts in 65 games). Given that he was one of the few participants to actually endure punishment for the scandal (by way of losing out on his chance to manage the Mets), I think we can move past the issue and give him his due for an otherwise sterling career.

Billy Wagner

It can be difficult distinguishing between the short relievers who leveraged overpowering stuff to a string of outstanding seasons, but Wagner separated himself from the pack in some spectacular ways. Among all pitchers with at a minimum of 900 innings, the lefty ranks first with 11.92 strikeouts per nine, a 33.2 percent K rate and a .187 batting average against, while his 2.31 ERA and 187 ERA+ are second only to Mariano Rivera since 1920. Unfortunately, Wagner was decidedly un-Mariano-like in the postseason (10.03 ERA in 14 games), but I don’t think some playoff stinkers eclipse the dominance he displayed as an elite closer for nearly the entirety of his career.

Andruw Jones

I’m not overly enamored of Jones as a Hall candidate; he was largely unproductive by age 31 and his career OPS+ of 111 isn’t significantly removed from the league average. On the other hand, there aren’t many guys in the game’s history who provided his combination of power and breathtaking defense at a premium position. From 1998 through 2007, Jones topped 30 homers seven times (with a high of 51), 100 RBI five times and snagged 10 consecutive Gold Glove Awards. As easy as it was to take for granted the Braves’ run of dominance during that time period, they wouldn’t have steamrolled to division title after division title without this two-way standout leading the charge.

CC Sabathia

CC’s candidacy isn’t quite the slam dunk it seemed to be at the conclusion of his 12th season; he compiled just 8.7 bWAR and a 4.33 ERA from that point forward, resulting in a career 116 ERA+ that ranks behind the 117 mark fashioned by Pettitte and Mark Buehrle. Still, the big guy did more than enough in the seven seasons before his downturn, collecting a Cy Young and four more top five finishes over that stretch, and his late surges past 250 wins and 3,000 strikeouts provided the milestone numbers to safely put him over the top.  

Chase Utley

If you’re looking for milestone numbers in Utley’s portfolio, you’re not going to get very far. But if you’re looking for dominance, the evidence is there: From 2005-09, Utley posted a .301/.388/.535 slash line to go with 146 homers, 77 steals in 87 attempts and a whopping 39.7 bWAR. Even with his relatively short window of brilliance, Utley’s career total of 64.5 bWAR stands 15th all-time among second basemen, the Hall of Famers ranked both above and below testifying to his place among some of the best ever to play the position.

Félix Hernández

This was the candidate that really kept me thinking all night (OK, more like 30 minutes). I suppose it would be easier to just glance at his solid but not great lifetime numbers, find few Hall of Fame comps and call it a day. But to do so would overlook his impressive prime: From 2009-15, Hernández led the AL in ERA, shutouts and starts twice, and in bWAR, wins and innings once each. He also placed in the top eight of Cy Young voting six times in that seven-year span, with one win and two runner-up finishes to his credit. Hernández was clearly one of the best pitchers of his era, and to me, that’s enough to make him a Hall of Famer. I doubt that anywhere near 75 percent of the electorate will agree with me over the next few years, but eventually, when even the 200-game winners begin to dry up, I think he’ll get a longer look.

Thanks to Baseball Reference and its extraordinary research database, Stathead, for help in assembling this piece.