Hall of Stats

Today the Baseball Hall of Fame inducted four new players. The Hall of Stats also welcomes a new class with five new candidates exceeding the borderline:

• Chipper Jones (170)
• Scott Rolen (142)
• Jim Thome (137)
• Andruw Jones (127)
• Johan Santana (108)

This gets a little complicated, so bear with me. The Hall of Stats grows at the same rate as the Hall of Fame, so there are now 226 inductees. Chipper and Thome are the only two players entering both the Hall of Fame and Hall of Stats this season. The Hall of Fame also inducted Vladimir Guerrero, but he entered the Hall of Stats last season. We use his slot to induct Rolen. Cooperstown also welcomes Trevor Hoffman, but his Hall Rating isn’t high enough for the Hall of Stats. His slot is used on Andruw. We still need to induct Santana but have run out of Cooperstown inductees, so the lowest ranked member of the Hall of Stats—Jerry Koosman—is given the boot.

Another four candidates inducted must clear some of the backlog for next year, right? Sadly, that is again not the case.

Fifteen players will return to the ballot next year and twelve of them exceed the Hall of Stats borderline. There will also be five newcomers with Hall Ratings over 100:

• Roy Halladay (139)
• Mariano Rivera (132)
• Todd Helton (121)
• Andy Pettitte (110)
• Roy Oswalt (106)

Lance Berkman is also close (his Hall Rating rounds up to 100). Hopefully Michael Young doesn’t become 2019’s Omar Vizquel.

In the end, the result isn’t a huge surprise thanks to the work done by Ryan Thibodaux (@NotMrTibbs) and his Ballot Tracker. The most disappointing thing to me is that Santana deserved better. Instead, he ranks as one of the great one-and-done players in history.