MLB Hall of Fame voting results will be announced on January 23rd. It’s an exciting time of year for MLB alumni with a realistic chance at baseball immortality. This is officially the first year that former Jay Jose Bautista is eligible to be chosen. So realistically, what are the chances that he will get in?
What does a Hall of Famer look like?
Nowadays, player evaluation starts and ends with WAR. For consistency sake, I will just use one WAR, bWAR (Baseball reference) rather than fWAR (Fangraphs).
Bautista played major league baseball for all or part of 15 seasons and accumulated 36.7 bWAR. I found two dozen or so Hall of Fame position players with bWAR “in the ballpark” of Bautista’s 36.7 or lower. The thing is, most of them played decades ago. Of that group, George Kell (37.7 bWAR) played in the major leagues most recently, in 1957. Rick Ferell (30.8) was last seen in a major league uniform in 1947.
Not that “WAR” itself even existed as a measuring tool for ball players in those days. The concept of WAR was first used in baseball back in the 1990s. I can only assume that while stats have always been important to baseball analysts, that overall the criteria for baseball immortality was a bit lower, decades ago.
So I looked at position players inducted to the Hall over the last 20 years. There were 32 of them. The average bWAR of those players was 68.05. Unfortunately, Bautista is nowhere near that. In terms of range of scores, the highest belongs to the great Rickey Henderson at 111.2 (note to those who think stolen bases are of little value in today’s game, it’s worth re-thinking). The lowest belongs to Harold Baines at 38.8.
A Closer Look at Baines and Comparing him to Bautista
Baines’ career total bWAR of 38.8 is only slightly higher than Bautista’s 36.7. The other noteworthy fact is that Baines played 22 seasons in MLB, Bautista only 15. Looking at Bautista’s and Baines’ best years in the game, the numbers aren’t close. Bautista was an all star for 6 straight seasons, from 2010-2015 during which time he accumulated 35.3 bWAR, an average of 5.88 per season. Baines had one season of 4.3 bWAR (1984), 3.4 in 1982 and every other season he played his bWAR was sub 3.0.
With all due respect to Baines, I have to question whether he truly belongs in the Hall. His biggest achievement seems to have been staying in the game long enough to have the stats to be considered and ultimately get in. While longevity is one of the official criteria for selection (minimum 10 years) I don’t believe it should be the deciding factor, as it seems to have been for Baines.
So what does all of this mean for Jose?
It’s possible that the voters who eventually gave Baines the nod will also do so for Bautista, assuming that he receives the minimum 5% of the vote needed to remain on the ballot. It’s safe to say that won’t be happening this year. At the very least, Bautista and his fans will need to wait.
In plain English, when Bautista was good, he was very very good. In my opinion, if he had managed 2-3 more seasons comparable to those he had from 2010-2015, then sooner or later he would get the call to the hall. But he was a late bloomer. His run of all star seasons began at age 29. During that time I believe his performance was hall of fame caliber, sadly I don’t think he sustained that quite long enough to get in.
Conclusion
Like many Blue Jays fans I am a HUGE Joey Bats fan. I heart would absolutely love to see him recognized with Hall of Fame honours. Unfortunately my head thinks that it probably won’t happen.
If it doesn’t, I will console myself with the following information. If Bautista had the numbers for Cooperstown, it probably would have been because he became the superstar player he ultimately became a few years earlier than he did. Had that been the case, it’s much less likely that he ever would have worn a Blue Jays uniform.
Bautista was a huge part of the Jays return to the playoffs in 2015 after over 20 years of non-playoff teams. The bat flip moment that was the difference in the clinching game of the 2015 ALDS will live forever in Toronto sports history.
So what ultimately could be Bautista’s loss in term of the HOF was definitely the Blue Jays’ gain.