Future Hall of Famers
With the announcement that Bruce Sutter will be the only inductee into the Hall of Fame in 2006, I thought I’d post my list of hitters still playing or too recently retired to be eligible whom I predict will be in the Hall of Fame. The methodology I use is the same one I used to examine which eligible players who should be in the HOF. Here they are, with their probabilities of getting in. This list is only for hitters.
Player P(in HOF) Barry Bonds 100.00% Rickey Henderson 99.80% Frank Thomas 97.44% Ken Griffey 95.63% Larry Walker 95.03% Cal Ripken 91.22% Roberto Alomar 88.01% Jeff Bagwell 86.85% Rafael Palmeiro 83.96% Barry Larkin 81.51% Alex Rodriguez 74.10% Ivan Rodriguez 66.90% Edgar Martinez 64.03% Tim Raines 63.32% Fred McGriff 62.86% Gary Sheffield 60.90% Tony Gwynn 60.78% Mark McGwire 58.73% Craig Biggio 56.77% Juan Gonzalez 55.64% Sammy Sosa 51.77%
There you have it. I don’t think there are too many surprises here.
I guess I’m surprised not to see Derek Jeter, based solely on offense. What is your estimate of his percentage chances?
He hasn’t played long enough. The model assumes the player’s career is over. I should also add that the model does not include 2005 stats. The new Lahman just came out yesterday.
Nice to see Larry Walker near the top of that list. He was a great hitter, and a pretty good defender to boot. I hope the voters look past his playing much of his career in Colorado, because he would have been a HOF-caliber hitter anywhere he played.
I’m a little surprised not to see Piazza. He’s in.
Good catch (no pun intended). I am surprised too. He’s definitely a lock. The model has his chances below 50% but he’s not far off given his career length. He has a shorter career than the average Hall of Famer (mean=17, median=18), and the model includes career length as one of the determinants. The data I’m using does not include 2005 stats. Counting 2005 and 2006, he would be on the list.
“Nice to see Larry Walker near the top of that list.”
Walker’s chances are clearly far below 95%, and far below Ripken’s. He might make it, but I won’t be surprised if he doesn’t.
The model’s going to miss on him for (at least) two reasons:
1) played a lot of seasons, but had fewer than 500 AB in many of them (unusual pattern), so he gets more longevity credit than he should (using G rather than seasons would fix that);
2) the CO park factor is so extreme that I doubt the regression model will effectively correct for it. Plus, today’s voters likely take more account of that than in past.