My Mock 2017 BBWAA Hall of Fame Ballot

Barry Bonds
Bonds is both the career (762) and single-season (73 - 2001) leader in home runs. He is also the all-time leader in walks and intentional walks. He won 7 MVPs, more than any other player. He was a 14-time All-Star, an 8-time Gold Glove winner, and a 12-time Silver Slugger recipient. During his career, he scored over 2200 runs, and came just shy of 3000 hits and 2000 RBI. He is the only player with 500+ home runs and 500+ stolen bases. Arguably the greatest player in Major League Baseball history, the only reason he has not already been inducted is his alleged PED use.

Roger Clemens
Clemens won 354 career games (9th all-time) and struck out 4672 batters (3rd all-time). He won 7 Cy Young Awards, more than any other pitcher. He was the 1986 American League MVP, and was a 2-time World Series champion with the New York Yankees (1999 and 2000). He was an 11-time All-Star, starting the game three times. Arguably one of the five greatest pitchers ever, like Bonds the sole reason he has not yet been inducted is his alleged PED use.

Ivan Rodriguez
The strongest candidate among the first-year eligibles, Pudge is one of the greatest catchers of all-time. He is the all-time leader among catchers in games played, plate appearances, at bats, runs scored, hits, and doubles. The 1999 American League MVP, he won a World Series title in 2003 with the Florida Marlins. He was a 14-time All-Star, a 13-time Gold Glover, and a 7-time Silver Slugger.

Jeff Bagwell
A lifetime Houston Astro, Bagwell was one of the greatest first basemen of all-time. He hit 449 career home runs, with over 1500 runs scored and 1500 RBI. Due to his tremendous hitting, he ranks top-25 all-time in OPS. He was the 1991 National League Rookie of the Year, and the 1994 NL MVP. He was selected to 4 All-Star games and won 3 Silver Sluggers, along with a Gold Glove in 1994.

Tim Raines
Raines was one of the greatest base stealers of all-time. He led the National League in steals in each of his first four full seasons, and ranks 5th all-time with 808 for his career. He also collected over 2600 hits and scored over 1500 runs. In 1986 he won the NL batting title, receiving a Silver Slugger award for his efforts. He was a 7-time All-Star and a 2-time World Series champion (1996 and 1998).

Curt Schilling
Schilling was one of the greatest strikeout pitchers of all-time, ranking 15th with 3116 for his career. He had three 300-strikeout seasons. He was also a tremendous postseason pitcher, going 11-2 with a 2.23 ERA in 19 career postseason starts. He won World Series titles in 2001, 2004, and 2007, and was named co-MVP of the 2001 series. He was a 6-time All-Star, starting the game twice.

Mike Mussina
Across his 18-year career, Mussina won 270 games, including 20 in his final season at age 39. He ranks in the top 20 all-time with 2813 strikeouts, and is 22nd in career strikeout-to-walk ratio. He was selected to five All-Star games, and received 7 Gold Glove awards. Although he never won the award, he did receive Cy Young votes nine times, including a runner-up finish in 1999.

Manny Ramirez
One of the game's greatest run producers, Manny slugged 555 home runs (15th all-time) and drove in 1831 RBI (18th all-time) during his career. A greatly feared hitter, he ranks 12th with 216 intentional walks. One of the greatest players in postseason history, he won the 2004 World Series MVP as he led the Red Sox to their first championship in 86 years; he won a second title in 2007. His popularity led to 12 All-Star selections and 9 Silver Sluggers. However, he was suspended for PED use toward the end of his career.

Edgar Martinez
Having spent his entire career with the Seattle Mariners, Martinez was one of the greatest designated hitters of all-time. A lifetime .312 hitter, he won American League batting titles in 1992 and 1995. He ranks 21st all-time with a .418 OBP, having led the AL in that category three times. He was selected to 7 All-Star games, and won 5 Silver Slugger awards.

Larry Walker
A lifetime .313 hitter, Walker was a 3-time batting titlist, all won while a member of the Colorado Rockies. In 1997 he led the National League with 49 home runs and 409 total bases, and was named NL MVP that year. He was selected to 5 All-Star games and won 3 Silver Sluggers for his offensive prowess. He also won 7 Gold Gloves due to his defense in right field

John Fulgham: The Best Pitcher Who Never Was

It is pretty rare nowadays for me to stumble across a quality major league player who I've never heard of, especially for players from recent decades. However, that is exactly what happened last night. In continuing to review Keith Hernandez's career, I took a look at the 1979 Cardinals, a team for whom he won the National League MVP. I noticed they had a young pitcher by the name of John Fulgham who had had a very solid season, going 10-6 with a 2.53 ERA in 146 innings. I then discovered he was a rookie that season, at age 23. Despite his numbers he did not receive a single vote for National League Rookie of the Year, an award won by Rick Sutcliffe.

Generally speaking, Fulgham is not a well-remembered major leaguer; a quick Google search did not turn up very much. Most of what has been written about him on the Internet regarded his supposed 39-pitch complete game on August 17, 1979, which if true would have been a major league record (it was not). Otherwise, these articles mostly just mention that Fulgham was a promising young starter whose career was cut short by a torn rotator cuff (an injury whose onset apparently produced a scuffle with Keith Hernandez).

In doing some more digging, however, I believe that no starting pitcher who was as good as Fulgham ever had so brief of a career. First, let's look at Wins Above Replacement. According to Baseball-Reference, Fulgham had 3.5 WAR in his rookie season, and 1.4 in 1980, for a total of about 5.0. As the table below shows, of all starting pitchers since 1901 with 5+ WAR in their first two seasons combined, only George Kaiserling, who pitched exclusively in the short-lived Federal League, also failed to pitch a third season:

Keith Hernandez: A Hall of Fame Case

At first glance, Keith Hernandez seems like a pretty solid candidate for the Hall of Fame. He was both a good contact hitter (career .296 BA, 2182 H) and a decent on-base guy (.384 OBP, 1070 BB). He could both score runs and drive them in (1124 R, 1071 RBI). He was a batting titlist and MVP (both in 1979) and the starting first baseman for two World Series winning clubs (the ‘82 Cardinals and ‘86 Mets). He was recognized as one of the best players of his era, having been selected to five all-star games, winning two Silver Slugger awards, and receiving MVP votes in eight straight seasons. Sabermetrically speaking, he posted a 60.0 career WAR and a 128 OPS+, both of which are right at the borderline for a career first baseman. Above all, he is arguably the greatest defensive first baseman of all time, standing as that position's all-time leader in Total Zone Runs and backed up by his 11 consecutive Gold Gloves.

However, there’s seemingly one big problem: he wasn’t a power-hitter, despite playing a position largely defined by power. He hit less than 200 career home runs (162 to be exact), and his career ISO was only .140. He doesn't exactly look like your typical Hall of Fame first baseman. In fact, he looks more like a Mark Grace, or a John Olerud, or even a Will Clark, and those other non-power-hitting first basemen don’t exactly have a great track record of getting into the Hall. Accordingly, although Hernandez's name appeared on nine Hall of Fame ballots, he never received more than 10.8% of vote, nowhere near the 75% he needed for induction.

With that being said, one must consider the era in which Hernandez played. The 1970s and 1980s were not exactly the heyday of big-time slugging first basemen; in fact, it is pretty clear that there was a significant power drought at the position during this period. Taking a closer look, there were only three 40-home run seasons by a first baseman between 1969 (when Harmon Killebrew and Willie McCovey both won the MVP) and 1987 (Mark McGwire's rookie season). None of those seasons were by a career first baseman; the three players to do so were Hank Aaron and Carl Yastrzemski (traditionally outfielders) and Darrell Evans (who played much of his career at third base). 

It wasn't as if there were no other players hitting home runs then. Overall, there were 27 40-home run seasons from 1970 to 1986. That means that only about 11% of those were by a first baseman. By contrast, the rate was about 28% (30 of 108) from 1920 to 1969 and a little under 32% (59 of 128) since 1987. Looking at the overall percentage of home runs hit by first basemen, that rate was at about 18-20% from 1969-1971, peaking at 22% in 1972. From there the percentage declined precipitously, falling to below 14% in 1983-84, before rebounding to over 17% by the end of the decade.

Looking at ISO numbers instead, we see a similar pattern. The ISO of the average first baseman was about 40-50% higher than the league average from 1969-1971, also peaking in 1972 at 57%. This number then also declined, to below 15% by 1984, then rebounding to over 30% within a few years. These trends are graphed on the chart below, with the red line representing the home run percentage and the blue line representing the relative ISO.

Additionally, we can see that this period was low on individual players with high ISO seasons, especially compared with other periods. The percentage of qualified players who had an ISO greater than .200 who were first basemen between 1973 and 1986 was only 17.5%. This was far lower than it was from 1920 to 1972 (24.7%) or than it would be from 1987 to 2015 (22.6%). As the next graph shows, this period saw more qualified first basemen with ISOs less than .200 than any other; indeed, Hernandez's MVP season of 1979 was the peak year.

In other words, Hernandez played in an era with few, if any, elite power-hitting first basemen. And among the group of primarily contact hitters, he was right toward the top. In terms of batting runs from 1970 to 1994, Hernandez was behind only Rod Carew and Eddie Murray, both of whom are already Hall of Famers (it should also be noted that Carew played second base through 1975). Over the span of his career, 1974 to 1990, Hernandez was just behind Murray (63.2) and ahead of Carew (54.0) in total WAR. Of all first basemen who played entirely in the second half of the twentieth century, Hernandez ranks behind only Murray and McCovey, and ahead of Hall of Famers Tony Perez and Orlando Cepeda.

Hernandez will never be placed among the ranks of Gehrig, Foxx, Mize, Greenberg, and McCovey who came before him, or McGwire, Bagwell, Thomas, Palmeiro, and Pujols who came after, but he doesn’t have to be to be a Hall of Famer. He did exactly what an elite first baseman of his era would be expected to do offensively, and that, combined with his all-time great defense, should be enough to put him into Cooperstown.

(As a side note, it would be interesting to see what cap he would be given on his plaque in Cooperstown were he to be inducted. His best seasons clearly came with the Cardinals, but he has generally been associated with the Mets in his post-playing career, particularly in being a part of the legendary Mets broadcasting crew alongside Gary Cohen and Ron Darling.)