Freeman’s Hall to Fame

On October 27, 1991, before more than 55,000 fans in the Metrodome and another 50-plus million enthralled by their televisions, Jack Morris accomplished the unprecedented:  an extra-inning shutout in a winner-take-all World Series game.  As difficult as it would have been to predict such an exceptional and striking showcase, it’s equally as simple to proclaim we’re never going to see that again.  And somewhere in the middle of those two statements lies a fascinating thought-exercise:  did the right-hander stamp his Hall of Fame induction with that 126-pitch masterpiece?  If you choose to interpret a Hall of Fame plaque’s introductory sentence as the most crucial summation of a player’s qualifications, then perhaps the answer is yes.  Morris’ reads:  “Intense competitor with a spirited drive and determination who propelled his teams as staff ace.”  If those letters were a code, they might translate into “A 10-inning shutout in Game 7 of the 1991 World Series.”

Narratives, especially those constructed during October baseball, can and do have a lasting effect on how we recall and organize greatness, and how those recollections can shape a player’s legacy.  I was thinking about this equation a lot as Freddie Freeman used the latest Dodgers-Yankees World Series installment to add topography to his ever-evolving chronicle.

The two-out, erase-a-lead, game-ending grand slam to send Los Angeles to a jubilant Game 1 victory.  The quieter, but still crucial home runs in Game 2 and 3 wins.  The he-did-it-again? longball in Game 4 to go (yard) where no one has gone before.  Pitch, swing, launch, give the Dodgers a jolt:  it was a chorus repeated four times in this World Series, a refrain that – after he stayed in the ballpark but contributed another two RBI in the clinching Game 5 – elevated Freeman’s prominence and got me thinking about the question, “How much did Freddie Freeman – now a two-time world champ and 2024 World Series MVP – alter his path toward eventual induction into the Hall of Fame?”  

Entering this year’s Fall Classic, Freeman hadn’t been much of the star in the 2024 postseason, posting a .461 OPS with no extra-base hits in the eight games he played.  But it had been only eight contests, a mere week-plus that could be swallowed by the 2,032 regular season games he’d experienced.  In that extensive sample size – which began in 2010 when he was still just 20 years old – the first baseman had recorded 2,267 knocks with 882 of them coming in the form of a double, triple or home run.   Those stats alone are enough of a foundation for pondering entry into immortality, for they connect Freeman to a small collection of capital T(alent):  those who, through their own age-34 seasons, reached those two statistical benchmarks.  

Aside from Freeman, 12 players have built this bedrock to support the next stages of their immense careers.  Nine of the 12 are enshrined in the Hall of Fame, and two others (Miguel Cabrera and Albert Pujols) are on the outside simply because the necessary waiting time hasn’t quite elapsed.  The other looking in is a conspirator in weaving the bad kind of narrative, the one where the numbers ride shotgun to the questions of how they were achieved:  Álex Rodríguez.  If not for those questions, he would be in.  

Yes, the list originates from Freeman’s floor and is designed to draft off exactly where the eight-time All-Star stands today.  Admittedly, this props the Dodgers star into an overly gilded stratum; still, Freeman has assembled the kind of numbers at this stage that portends a likeness being hung in a special space housed in central New York, rooming with the likes of Lou Gehrig and Jimmie Foxx and Stan Musial and Hank Aaron and Willie Mays (all individuals in that above-referenced collection).  Right now, he, in this focused area of hits and those going for extra bases, is on a Hall of Fame path.  Not quite the hare or tortoise, Freeman has simply stridden along with a high-level (but almost never stratospheric) constancy that can either sharpen one’s appreciation and evaluation of status or blunt the wow-ness.  

In this way, Freeman has walked in the footsteps of another Hall of Famer, a first baseman who made consistency an art form and platform to immortality:  the aptly dubbed “Steady” Eddie Murray.  Freeman’s main Baseball Reference page – like the overview player pages for thousands and thousands of performers – includes the super-fun and often-provocative Similarity Scores component, a way to compare a player to others in terms of their statistical profiles.  One of the ways this is done is through “Most Similar by Ages” and in the case of the 2024 World Series MVP, this is where his strides eerily match the footprints created by Murray.

Freeman’s most similar match for every age-season from age-21 through age-32 is Murray (then it switches to Rafael Palmeiro, with Murray sliding to the second-most similar).  If not strictly literally, Freeman is replicating the Hall of Fame path trod by “Steady Eddie.”  The overall counting numbers are fascinating to review, as is the consistency when looking from season to season.  

From his debut year through his age-32 season, Murray posted an overall OPS+ of 141, with a high of 157 and a low of 120.  There were even three straight years of Murray completing the season with a 156.  Freeman’s presentation through that same endpoint is not that far off:  an overall OPS+ of 140, with a high of 187 (in the shortened 2020 campaign; otherwise it would be a 157) and a low of 113.  In general, never too high, never too low, just right.  During this stretch, Murray made seven All-Star teams, finished in the top-five in MVP voting five times and took home a Rookie of the Year award.  For Freeman, he made six All-Star teams, finished in the top-five in MVP votes four times (including a win in 2020) and finished second in Rookie of the Year voting.  The numbers and narratives speak of peas in a pod.  The closeness remains intact when the review expands and peers at Murray and Freeman from their first seasons through their age-34 campaigns.