David Ortiz Is A Hall of Famer. Which Red Sox Player Will Be Next?
Yes I know Alex wrote this piece last week and I'm sure his is better, but I already started so
The election of David Ortiz to the Baseball Hall of Fame last Tuesday marks the latest in a long line of Red Sox achieving Cooperstown induction. Ortiz joins a lot of people. If you’re curious, you can read the complete list on the Red Sox website. Suffice it to say it’s a long and distinguished group. But, is it about to get longer?
I mean, yes. Yes of course. Of course it is. It’s just a matter of time, like all things up to and including our own death, it’s inevitable. This is just a tad bit of a happier topic. The Red Sox have had more than a few guys don their uniform who could earn entrance into the Hall in the near future. Who? Read on!
First, I should note that this is the Sox Outsider newsletter, and I’m Matt Kory. I run this joint. Meaning I choose the words and put them in the right order, or as right an order as I can. Thanks for reading. I’d love it if you’d subscribe. It’s free and easy. Just click the button. I appreciate it.
There are three general groups. Because I’m not trying to monopolize your whole day, I’m breaking this up into three parts. Today we’ll do the players on the ballot right now. Tomorrow we’ll hit the players who have already retired but haven’t hit the ballot yet, and later in the week we’ll cover the players who are still active but have a shot at the Hall when they do call it quits.
A quick note before beginning. I saw Alex Speier of the Boston Globe wrote a similar piece on Friday, at least conceptually. I haven’t read his yet (it’s here) so as to not bias my writing (and to avoid the inevitable depression caused by comparing his work to mine). I started writing this last Thursday so despite the fact that the topic is being written about elsewhere by one of the best in the business, I figured I’d just finish it. It’s not like there’s a backlog of Red Sox news to cover. I hope you won’t mind any repetition between his article and this. I’m sure Alex’s is fantastic and you should definitely read it at The Boston Globe. Anyway. Let’s get to it.
Currently On The Ballot
Manny Ramirez
Manny was a Hall of Famer, if for no other reason than this fantastic headshot he had taken somewhere around the beginning of the 2004 season.
The dead eyes pointed in different directions, the fact that he hasn’t shaved in a week, the extremely off-center hat placed far too gently on the head… it’s all so perfect. My God it’s beautiful. It sums up Manny in so many ways. He was amazing and wonderful and bizarre and mercurial and funny and haphazard, and extremely and at all times fully himself.
He was also one of the greatest hitters in baseball history. He hit .312 with 555 career homers, a .411 career on-base percentage, and otherworldly defense in left field.
I said “otherworldly”, I didn’t say good.
But seriously, folks, Ramirez is one of the best right-handed hitters in baseball history. He’s not in the Hall because he failed two PED tests leading to a 50 game ban and a 100 game ban, the second of which effectively forced his retirement. The PED thing is a Hall problem, but what Ramirez did on the field is legitimately otherworldly in the best sense. He’s tied for 13th among outfielders in baseball history in wRC+. The two he’s tied with are Frank Robinson and Hank Aaron. Oh, and he’s a point (for what that’s worth) ahead of Joe DiMaggio.
Manny has it all, the All Star appearances, the World Series MVP, the Silver Slugger awards, and eight consecutive years of finishing top-10 in the MVP voting. He was recognized in his time as one of the best players in baseball and that’s because he was. He’s a shoe-in if you look at the different Hall of Fame tests on Baseball Reference including Jay Jaffe’s indispensable JAWS score. Despite all that, it seems clear the voters have made a determination, one that applies to all suspected and admitted PED users, which basically boils down to PEDs=Nope. Doesn’t matter what else you’ve done in your career. If they think you did PEDs, you’re out. That means Manny and others of his era need to buy their own tickets if they want to visit the baseball Hall.
It’s not over for Manny though. He has four more shots at getting in via the BBWAA before his 10 times on the ballot expire. Maybe voters will change their collective minds sometime before 2026, though that seems like a long shot. Perhaps the Veterans Committee will, eventually, take up Manny’s cause, but it doesn’t seem especially likely given how many of them have railed against PED users. Given all that, Manny is probably on the outside looking in for a long time. That’s a sad thing given his place in the game and in the record books. If you ask me, and nobody did but this is my newsletters so here goes, the Hall is a lesser place without Manny Ramirez.
Billy Wagner
Billy Wagner qualifies for this list based on two things. The 13.2 innings he threw for the 2009 Red Sox and the fact that he is one of the greatest relievers ever. Wagner currently ranks sixth in WAR by a relief pitcher in all of baseball history according to FanGraphs. Admittedly WAR is a flawed stat to use for relievers, but I do think it gives a sense of the unusual longevity and quality of Wagner’s career. Wagner was an extreme strikeout guy before that was The Thing. He struck out just over 33 percent of the hitters he faced in his career of 16 years. That means Wagner struck out every third hitter for 16 years. That’s nuts.
So Wagner was very good when he was in the game. The problem, as with all relievers, is he wasn’t in the game very much. He only threw 900 innings in his career, which is a lot compared to, say, me, but not much for someone who played for 16 seasons. For context, John Lackey pitched in the big leagues for 15 seasons, one fewer than Wagner, and pitched more than 1,900 more innings than Wagner. Lackey threw the equivalent of two Wagners plus 1,000 more innings! Were Lackey’s innings as good as Wagners? No, Wagner’s were better, but they weren’t 3.3 times as good. And keep in mind, as we’ll discuss here tomorrow, John Lackey is very likely not a Hall of Famer. So Wagner would have to not only be three times better on a per-inning bases than Lackey but, in fact, he’d have be even better than that.
So you can’t vote for John Lackey, but if you vote for Billy Wagner you have to vote for John Lackey, which you can’t do, so you can’t vote for Billy Wagner, except Wagner was one of the greatest relievers ever. How do you parse that?
It’s almost as if you have two options. First, either accept relievers as their own thing and admit them when they reach some newly established standard, say something like 0.8 Riveras, a standard Wagner would reach, by the way. Or, second, accept that all but they very best relievers are vital to the game, but not good enough for the Hall. In which case, it’s good-bye to Wagner and just about every other relief pitcher in baseball history beyond Rivera.
I’m not sure there’s an answer to this conundrum yet. Given that the Hall voters aren’t of one mind on really anything I don’t expect a solid conclusion on this question any time soon.
Back to the more concrete and less conceptual: Hall voters (of which I am not one, to be clear) are warming to Wagner. He got 51 percent of the vote this year, his seventh on the ballot. Next year with the ballot cleared of Bonds, Clemens, Schilling, Ortiz, and Sosa, five big vote hogs, Wagner may make his move towards 75 percent. If he gets close next season, say to 65 or even 70 percent that could be enough momentum to push him over the top the following season, even though that ballot will be more crowded with Adrian Beltre (we’ll get to him soon!), Carlos Beltran, Joe Mauer, Chase Utley, and David Wright.
Tomorrow we’ll discuss retired ex-Sox who will be on the ballot in the next five seasons. Thanks for reading, everybody!