How many Hall-of-Famers do the Red Sox have on their roster?
Let me clarify that question a little. I'm not trying to guess how many players on the Red Sox could waltz into the plaque room in Cooperstown if they retired tomorrow. With David Ortiz enjoying his first year of retirement, the Red Sox don’t have any players who are obvious selections for the Hall-of-Fame. There is no one like Albert Pujols or Adrian Beltre or Miguel Cabrera on the team.
What I want to know is how many players on the Red Sox are within careers that could reasonably be viewed as having a Hall-of-Fame trajectory. That is, how many of these guys are doing things at twenty-three or twenty-eight or thirty-five years old that wouldn’t look out of place on a Hall-of-Famer’s page on Baseball-Reference.
How many Red Sox seem like they’re in Hall-of-Fame careers?
A lot.
* * *
This thought came to me the other day, as I was watching Chris Sale blow past the Mariners a week ago. Chris Sale was looking the part of a Hall-of-Famer that afternoon, and he’s looked the part for most of this year. Unless something drastic happens, he’s going to win the AL Cy Young Award. He might win the AL MVP.
You would have to think that Sale is on a solid trajectory to a plaque in Cooperstown. He’s twenty-eight this year, and he’s received Cy Young votes every single year he’s been a regular in the majors. He’s going to score a shiny trophy this year, and he’s going to get some Black Ink in a few of the important pitching categories.
None of that makes Chris Sale a lock for the Hall of Fame, of course, but he’s doing everything he could be doing to build a case. He’s been a remarkably steady player, and his career seems to be hitting its natural peak. He’s the best pitcher in the American League right now.
What struck me, watching Sale, that a lot of the Red Sox players are in the same boat: there are a lot of players in Boston whose career trajectories look like the trajectories you’d expect from a Hall-of-Fame player.
Like Mookie Betts.
Mookie Betts is a long way away from being a serious candidate for the Hall of Fame. He’s in third year of his career, so it’s premature to start collecting bronze for his plaque. That said, Mookie Betts has one a lot to build his case going forward. He won’t be twenty-five until the season is over, but he’s already accumulated more WAR at his age than most outfielders in the Hall of Fame. He’s won a Gold Glove and he put up an elite season that would have won hardware in any league that didn’t have Mike Trout residing in it. Mookie is a year away from reaching triple digits in career homeruns and stolen bases, and his batting average should tick across the .300 line. He’s recognized as the best player on a team that is going to contend for the next couple of years. It’s a nice start.
And Mookie just feels like the kind of player who is going to have a good career. He’s very smart, and he seems to play within himself, to be contained. This is just an observer’s intuition, but it never seems like Mookie carries one bad at-bat over into another one. His defense doesn’t slip when he’s putting up an 0-fer. He doesn’t get picked off or make a mistake on the bases when the hits aren’t dropped. His many skill sets exist distinctly of one another. And while I’m sure that he plays baseball with passion, his passion is always controlled. He just never seems to get outside of himself too much: he plays with the understand that a baseball season is a long span, with ebbs and flows of the tide. I don’t think Mookie Betts has quite as much pure talent as Bryce Harper, but I would bet that he will have a longer career than Harper, for that reason.
Xander Bogaerts is doing pretty well. He’s the same age as Mookie Betts, and though his batting line isn’t nearly as impressive, Xander is a decent defensive shortstop who will have amassed close to 700 hits by the season’s end.
The thing about having a Hall of Fame is that there are a lot of ways to slip off the rails. With players who haven’t yet reached their peak seasons, one of the big markers is whether they’ve just been good for most of their years. Xander hasn’t been great yet, but he hasn’t slipped either. He’s not a surefire Hall-of-Famer, but he has the pedigree and the background of a Hall-of-Famer…now he needs to put in the big seasons.
Dustin Pedroia, in my opinion, is already about 85% of the way to the Hall: he just has to stay reasonably healthy (and keep his average above .300), and he’ll be a comfortable ‘yes.’ Pedroia had a lot of hardware (ROY, MVP, four Gold Gloves), and he does pretty well by the advanced metrics.
Phrased differently: he’s an Alan Trammell candidate. Alan Trammell got very little support from the BBWAA voters, but he (and teammate Lou Whitaker) are discussed as two of the most overlooked players in baseball. I don’t think that Pedroia will be overlooked nearly as much: for traditional voters, he gets ticks for winning an MVP and being a ‘grit’ player. For those of us on the sabermetrics side, Pedroia has a decent case.
Hanley Ramirez probably isn’t going to the Hall of Fame. That said, his career numbers, through Age-33, eerily parallel the numbers of Paul Molitor:
Player X
|
G
|
R
|
H
|
HR
|
RBI
|
BA
|
OBP
|
SLG
|
OPS+
|
WAR
|
Han-Ram
|
1562
|
1007
|
1743
|
257
|
858
|
.293
|
.365
|
.493
|
127
|
38.4
|
Molitor
|
1540
|
1053
|
1870
|
131
|
626
|
.299
|
.361
|
.437
|
121
|
49.6
|
Hanley, like Molitor, was a high-impact player whose young numbers were limited by injuries. Molitor had a remarkable renaissance when he crossed into his mid-thirties, and it is very unlikely that Hanley Ramirez will have the same success in his waning years. But there is a chance of it happening: you can’t say that about most thirty-three-year-old players.
This is just an aside, but one thing that has surprised me about Hanley Ramirez since he’s come to Boston is how much fun he seems to have during games. He almost always joking with fans, or goofing off in the clubhouse, or grinning at the camera. If you watch a Red Sox broadcast and look for it, you’ll see him laughing in the corner of a dugout shot at least once a game.
When Hanley was coming up through the Red Sox system, the rumor was that he had a little bit of an ego problem. Maybe he did: it was a long time ago, and I’m too lazy to research the background. It doesn’t matter: he’s having fun now.
It occurs to me that there’s more than one way to mature in this life…that maturity isn’t always a line towards an increasingly somber mode of existing in the world. Sometimes maturity can be realizing the great fortune of your life, and enjoying that fortune. Hanley has had a fine career in the majors, and he’s still a helluva hitter. It’s nice that he’s enjoying it so much.
That’s five guys: Sale, Mookie, Xander, Dustin, and Hanley. I think on most teams that would be a good amount of players tracking to the Hall-of-Fame.
Just checking that…let’s look at the rest of the AL East.
The Rays probably have one player who has any shot at the Hall-of-Fame, and that’s Evan Longoria. Chris Archer is a fine pitcher, but he is twenty-eight, and his record still has more losses than wins. Maybe Jacob Faria has a chance. Logan Morrison has started a bit too late. Two players, one a really long shot.
Baltimore has Manny Machado and Adam Jones as potential candidates, though Jones would’ve been a better candidate in another era. Jonathan Schoop, in the middle of a breakout year, has a shot, I suppose. All the starting pitchers have to buy their tickets. Three?
The Yankees have Judge and Sanchez to look forward to, and Starlin Castro is a sneaky candidate to get to 3000 hits, so we shouldn’t discount him. Sabbathia was a HOF’er in his twenties, something else in his thirties…there’s still time for a rebound, and he certainly has a case even now. I like Luis Severino, though he’s still a long way off. Matt Holliday is going to fall off the ballot in his first year of eligibility, but he’s had a fine career. Ellsbury and Gardner were born three weeks apart, and it remains to be decided which one of them will have the better career when all is said and done. That said, neither one of them is getting a plaque. Ellsbury had the peaks, but Gardner’s had better health, and he’s more productive right now, so you could probably make a Hall-of-Fame career from the two of them. The Rickey/Raines of their generation, I suppose. That five players in the Bronx.
Toronto’s best candidate might be Osuna, though that’s really premature. Donaldson has had a HOF peak, and just has to fill in the years to make him a candidate before time runs out. Bautista is on the decline, and isn’t really a candidate. Russell Martin is an interesting candidate…if you’re partial to Yadier Molina, Martin deserves your attention. Stroman hasn’t gone off the rails, but he’s a pitcher, so there’s plenty of time. Tulo is an 100-game Hall-of-Famer: he plays like a HOF’er for about a hundred games a year.
So that’s the rest of the division: the teams have two or three or five potential candidates, but no one who really leaps out at you.
Back to Boston.
David Price is not a crazy candidate, though he probably hasn’t done himself any favors with the Veterans’ Committee this year. Price has a 126-68 record at the moment, and he’s just thirty-one years old: if he can manage to avoid the DL and pitch effectively into his thirties, he could build a case.
I’m not confident he will, though….I’m just saying that he could. I think Price’s recent bickering with Red Sox announcer Dennis Eckersley suggests that David Price isn’t going to have a particularly effective career going forward.
Let’s just think about the context of all of it. David Price is the highest-paid player on the Red Sox, and he’s struggling. He’s working to come back from injuries, trying to figure out how to pitch.
So what does he decide to focus on, given that context?
He focuses on a television broadcaster making some critical comments about one of his teammates getting hammered in a minor league assignment, and that broadcaster’s more generalized tendency to tell the truth to fans watching a broadcast. That’s what Price decided to get riled up about: Eck saying that giving up seven runs in a rehab start isn’t a cause for optimism. That’s what got Price’s knickers in a twist.
I think it’s important to note that we’re not talking about a one-and-done flash of anger. I mean, I could get that. We all have moments where we’re less than our best selves, and I wouldn’t hold that against David Price, not for a second.
What I hold against Price is that he has opted, at every single turn since the first, to make it a big damned deal about it. What I hold against him is that we’ve had to listen to endless crap about who is on what side, and who is apologizing and who won’t apologize, all because he doesn’t know how to shut up and be decent about it.
And the first incident showed Price as a coward. Price accosted Eckersley on the team charter, Price surrounded by his teammates, Eck just trying to make his way to the back of the place. That’s a really brave move, harassing a non-player in a crowd of teammates. Cussing out a sixty-two year man trying to board a plane. All of it showed real guts.
Just me, I’m not betting on David Price having a Hall-of-Fame career. A lot of pitchers struggle through their early thirties, when they lose some miles-per-hour on their fastball and struggle to figure out a new way to pitch. The guys who get through that struggle…the guys who come out the other end still pitching effectively…are the one who can prioritize that challenge over secondary concerns. David Price got distracted for a month because a broadcaster editorialized on some facts: just my sense, but I don’t think a guy like that is going to have the focus to get the job done. I hope that I’m wrong.
Anyway, David Price’s career record was 86-51 through his Age-28 season. Rick Porcello, at the same age, is sitting at 112-96…a lesser winning percentage, but he’ll have about thirty more wins in the bank by the year’s end.
I don’t think that Rick Porcello is going to make the Hall-of-Fame, mostly because I think the strikeout rate is too low for him to be an effective pitcher for long enough to hit the big pitching benchmarks. That said, his strikeout rate isn’t that bad, and he has the benefit of an early start. And he’s been extremely healthy. He has a much better chance of winning 300 games than David Price, and he’s probably a little better positioned than Sale (112 wins to 87, both men being the same approximate age), though that could change pretty quickly.
I think Porcello is a longshot for the Hall-of-Fame, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he was the active leader in career wins at some point in his career. And if he hits the ballot with 240 career victories (and is surrounded by guys with 140 or 160 wins), it’s possible he’ll get support as the best pitcher in a weak class.
Craig Kimbrel has a career ERA that is comfortably under 2.00, and he’ll be tipping close to 300 saves by the year’s end. I have no idea what the Hall-of-Fame measures for relief pitchers will be going forward, but if you were going to pick one reliever to get in, Kimbrel would be your guy. He is about eight or nine years away from the all-time saves record, though Kimbrel probably doesn’t need to pass Mariano to get elected.
The last two guys are at the start of their careers, so we’re being premature in talking about their chances for Cooperstown. Andrew Benintendi is a twenty-three year old outfielder who can hit and run, and whose walk and strikeout rates are both ticking in the right direction. Rafael Devers, a couple years younger than Benintendi, is hitting like George Brett on a hot streak.
And I suppose we could count Eduardo Rodriguez, who just turned twenty-four. Rodriguez has a record of 17-16 and an ERA of 4.21, so there’s not a lot of evidence that he’s going to be a star. That said, he’s a) a southpaw, and b) someone who can strike hitters out. Randy Johnson was barely in the majors at 25, and didn’t figure out his wildness until he was twenty-nine. Lefties are weird. He’s a wild card.
So that’s eleven players on the Red Sox who have an established chance of winding up in the Hall of Fame. Just off-the-cuff, my view of their chances:
Dustin Pedroia – 85%
Chris Sale – probably 45%. Goes up across 50% if he wins the MVP.
Craig Kimbrell – 40%
David Price – 35%
Mookie Betts – 30%. This is going to climb pretty quick.
Xander Bogearts – 18%
Rick Porcello – 15%
Hanley Ramirez – 10%
Rafael Devers – 7%
Andrew Benintendi – 4%
Eduardo Rodriguez – 1%
I think those numbers are about right. We can sort of think them through.
Pitcher
|
Age
|
W-L
|
ERA
|
WAR
|
Chris Sale
|
28
|
87-54
|
2.96
|
35.9
|
David Price
|
31
|
126-68
|
3.24
|
33.3
|
Let’s assume Sale wins three more games this year. Going forward, He would have to go 36-14 over the next three seasons to match David Price in career victories…that’s a 12-5 record every year. It’s possible that Chris Sale won’t do that, but it is more probable that Chris Sale will exceed those totals: he’s been pretty sharp so far as a Red Sox. And he’s already ahead of Price according to WAR…we’re just waiting for the traditional numbers to match the sabermetric ones. I think most of us would take the over on those traditional numbers, so Sale is a better candidate for the Hall than Price.
Hanley Ramirez is thirty-three, and he was a great hitter as recently as last year. We wouldn’t expect a great hitter to have an extended run of effective hitting through their late 30’s, but it’s not that uncommon. David Ortiz and Paul Molitor went from ‘fringe’ to ‘first-ballot’ at that age. Dwight Evans had productive hitting years in his thirties. We’re not anticipating that happens for Hanley….we’re just saying there’s a 1-in-10 chance that it happens.
I put Rafael Devers at 7%: he’s played nine games so far. Maybe that’s a little high.
And maybe it’s not. Devers has posted a WAR of 0.7 in those nine games. In the history of baseball, only 20 players have posted a WAR of 0.7 or higher as a twenty-year old third baseman: Manny Machado, Rogers Hornsby, Jimmie Foxx, Adrian Beltre, Freddie Lindstrom, Milt Stock, Buddy Lewis, Eddie Mathews, Bob Horner, Cap Anson, Bob Bailey, Cecil Travis, Gregg Jefferies, John Ward, Ezra Sutton, Bruno Betzel, Joe Evans, Miguel Cabrera, Ryan Zimmerman, and…Rafael Devers.
You’ve heard of some of those guys, right?
That list is a little bit of a cheat, of course. Rogers Hornsby posted a 5.3 WAR as a 20-year old. Eddie Mathews hit 25 homers. They don’t compare to Devers: they were much better than Devers.
But it’s not just the guys ahead of Devers that make a case for him. Ron Santo played 95 games as a 20-year old….not so great on defense or the bases, but he hit a little bit. He’s a bit behind Devers. Brooks Robinson played 50 games, and was a positive contributor in a short stint. The list of twenty-year old third basemen who do something positive is crowded with a) Hall-of-Famers, b) future Hall-of-Famers, and c) guys who had pretty good major league careers. If you adjust to only count guys who hit at least a pair of homeruns, the worst player on the list is Gregg Jefferies.
It’s too early to give Devers much more than a 7% chance to make the Hall of Fame, but he is a twenty-year old who has enough hitting ability to produce at the major league level. That’s a rare thing.
Dave Fleming is a writer who used to live in New Zealand. He lives in western Virginia now, somewhere along the Waffle House/IHOP faultline. He can still be reached at dfleming1986@yahoo.com.