Starts & Stops

It’s Hall of Fame consideration season.  For the rest of the calendar year, Connections will be looking at some of the names on the 2025 ballot.  

When the 2009 regular season had stopped adding box scores, 25-year-old Hanley Ramírez owned a Rookie of the Year Award, a pair of All-Star selections and a couple of Silver Slugger nods and a duo of 50-steal campaigns, a batting title and a second-place finish in MVP voting.  The shortstop had crammed a career’s worth of accomplishments into his first five seasons, a start that also amounted to a 23.3 bWAR. That statistical foundation, those accolades, his age – in many respects, the Marlins’ star was swinging and running and dazzling along a golden path.

Now, seeing his name among the others gracing a Hall of Fame ballot for the first time and expecting it’ll be the only time it’ll appear, it’s striking to recall Ramírez’s beginning and how overwhelmingly it looms over anything else that followed. After those first five years, he played across another decade while managing one additional All-Star selection, one top-10 MVP finish (eighth in 2013) and accumulating 14.7 bWAR, or 63% of what his first five years yielded.  The golden, gleaming, nearly pristine road was replaced with potholes and divots and ruts.  Goodbye, Hall of Fame path; hello, “What might have been.” 

Ramírez’s start and how his career stopped pointing toward the extra-special generates a couple of simultaneous reflections:  how oft-told this type of tale is and how the ringtone it produces is so tied to a player’s age.  On the first matter, consider all position players – by position – through their first five seasons.  If the focus starts and stops after the top five by bWAR, how many of those elite beginners went on to write a Hall of Fame career?  Below, the results of that organizing exercise are shown:

Through 2009:  Top-Five bWAR By Position, A Player’s First Five Seasons

SS:    Arky Vaughan, Cal Ripken, Jr., Nomar Garciaparra, Derek Jeter, Hanley Ramírez 

C:     Mike Piazza, Johnny Bench, Thurman Munson, Jason Kendall, Joe Mauer 

1B:   Johnny Mize, Frank Thomas, Jeff Bagwell, Will Clark, Mark Teixeira 

2B:   Joe Gordon, Snuffy Stirnweiss, Tony Lazzeri, Chase Utley, Roberto Alomar, Fred Dunlap

3B:   Wade Boggs, Eddie Mathews, Dick Allen, Mike Schmidt, Home Run Baker 

LF:    Ted Williams, Barry Bonds, Charlie Keller, Ralph Kiner, Rickey Henderson

CF:   Joe DiMaggio, Ken Griffey, Jr., Mickey Mantle, Oscar Charleston, Andruw Jones 

RF:   Ichiro Suzuki, Paul Waner, Chuck Klein, Bobby Bonds, Ty Cobb 

*Overall:  Ted Williams, Albert Pujols, Arky Vaughan, Wade Boggs, Joe DiMaggio

↓

I wanted to do an overall top-five list as Albert Pujols didn’t have a high enough percentage of his games at any one specific position

Positionally, the exercise reveals that there’s commonly going to be one or two players who launch into prominence early on and then are unable to maintain that dash and brilliance.  Each non-immortal has his own story – one perhaps derailed by injury or compromised by outside circumstances.  Sometimes, a player simply hits the pinnacle early, eschewing a more fluid rhythm.  It’s this scenario – an apex arriving close to the start of a career – that strikingly echoes within Ramírez’s story, for his ascendancy arrived and peaked when he was so young.

When that earlier lens – any player’s first five seasons, organized by bWAR – is capped by only considering players whose first five campaigns came and went before their age-26 season, Ramírez holds onto the 35th best mark overall.  He’s directly below 19th century second baseman Fred Dunlap, Roberto Alomar and Derek Jeter, and just above one of the game’s current superstars, Juan Soto.   

(Incidentally, a couple of the recent Connections’ subjects – David Wright and Andruw Jones – come in at 20th and 21st, respectively, on this list).

Ramírez’s magnificent start – made all the more vibrant by the fact that his first year comprises two plate appearances and a -0.1 bWAR – falls short of the ultra-elite beginnings proffered by some.  The top 35 can be split into two almost equal tiers, where the first 16 populate a class that combined for 33 MVP awards and will, soon(ish), be made up of 15 Hall of Famers.  A dozen are already in:  Joe DiMaggio and Stan Musial and Ted Williams, along with Mickey Mantle, Rickey Henderson, Cal Ripken, Jr., Frank Robinson, Braves teammates Eddie Mathews and Hank Aaron, Ken Griffey, Jr., Arky Vaughan and the latest, Dick Allen.  Albert Pujols awaits enshrinement in 2028, and active players Mike Trout and Mookie Betts can start their no-doubt clocks whenever they are ready to hang ‘em up.  One name among the 16 is left (out):  Barry Bonds.  

After those 16, the next 19 are more of a scattered cast, and it seems like Ramírez fits well inside that grouping.  While Ty Cobb, Rogers Hornsby, Willie Mays and Derek Jeter highlight the next tier, coulda beens like César Cedeño, Charlie Keller, Wright and Jones also make up the roster.  Ramírez is a good match for Vada Pinson, another young rocket whose thrust emptied early after launch.

There’s been a lot of name-dropping in this piece, perhaps too much and not enough about the 2006 NL Rookie of the Year*.  And maybe this approach ultimately feels right, this purported profile of Ramírez being more about the names his own start made us consider:  another all-time shortstop like Ripken or Jeter? The next brilliant blend of power and speed like Henderson? A super-young, do-so-much talent like Alomar?  When it all slowed and stopped, though, he was none of these, just a burst whose trailing vapor disappeared before our eyes and dissolved in our minds.  

If that’s the case and Ramírez’s initial turn on the ballot proves to be his last, this final abrupt start and stop feels fitting, an appropriate symbol of his 15-year career.  The joy of that start on the diamond apes the effervescence of seeing his name on the ballot and having the chance to recall when it seemed reasonable to imagine limitless skies; the expected ephemerality of his stay mirrors his too-quick fade.  So it goes, and we’ll still have that start to trumpet – one that in itself, was remarkable enough to make him a Hall of Fame nominee all these years later. 

*Well, one more stat-story.  Ramírez is one of 175 players ever to hit at least 100 homers through his first five seasons (he tallied 103).  Among this bash-full collection, three of them produced more steals in their first half-decade than the Marlins’ sensation did in his (he swiped 164 bags):  Eric Davis had 191; Bobby Bonds had 179 and his son Barry followed in his father’s footsteps with 169.

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