Season 54

The HOF voting chatter started very early this season (which I'm a fan of for sure!), so I am going to focus my attention on those names that have come up on World Chat at the moment and if I have time I will add more on the higher vote totals from previous seasons. As before, I will use Wins Above Replacement as the primary evaluation and then look at other metrics for any tie-breaks that are necessary. Here's what we are looking at for the moment:

Hisashi Hasegawa (RF) ; 57.17 Career WAR {71.14 positional adjusted}

Tony Vizquel (RF) ; 59.34 Career WAR {89.08 positional adjusted}

Wladimir Blasco (1B) ; 87.79 Career WAR {62.09 positional adjusted}

Cliff Zobrist (C) ; 106.76 Career WAR {55.90 positional adjusted}

Wilkin Sanchez (1B) ; 77.47 Career WAR {60.47 positional adjusted}

Maximo Allen (P) ; 38.98 Career WAR

Based on what I have read about the MLB Hall of Fame, the following is a rough guideline of HOF worthiness based on Career WAR:

100+ WAR = Slam Dunk HOF Choice

70-99 WAR = Definitely HOF Worthy

50-69 WAR = Worthy of Strong Consideration

49 or fewer WAR = Needs a lot of help from other statistics/circumstances

If we apply that to the candidates I have evaluated so far we end up with the following:

Slam Dunk Candidates =

Candidates Who Are Definitely Worthy = Tony Vizquel, Hishashi Hasegawa

Candidates Worthy of Strong Consideration = Wladimir Blasco, Cliff Zobrist, Wilkin Sanchez

Candidates Who Need A Lot of Help =

However, as I stated in a previous version of this post (which has now been deleted) I believe that Allen is a must-vote based on other factors such as career milestones and personal accolades. That means that one of the five players from the tiers above him will have to wait another year to make room on my ballot for him...and since Vizquel has been waiting longer than Hasegawa (who I do think should go in eventually) I will probably go with a ballot of Zobrist/Sanchez/Blasco/Vizquel/Allen for now.

***

Nobody in the rest of the field has gotten more than a single vote in previous seasons, so rather than using previous vote totals as a guide for who to look at first I am going to use OVR rating (as flawed as it is.) Here are the results, which will be incorporated into the tiered results once I have park adjusted totals rather than estimates for them:

• Junior Nunez ; 39.32 Career WAR

• Malachi Calhoun ; 48.48 Career WAR

• Ivan Osoria ; 43.56 Career WAR

• Josias Castro ; 76.53 Career WAR

• Tucker House