Season 55

Last year was a great year in terms of Hall of Fame voting as we elected four very deserving candidates, but we had enough of a backup that several worthy players still remain unelected. As before, both this blog segment and my ballot will be guided by a combination of the previous season's results and career Wins Above Replacement.

Thanks to a little help from merritr, who put me onto the positional adjustment formula, I have been able to tweak my WAR formula to a more accurate representation of a player's true value over the course of their career with a few simple calculations. I can then combine the new and improved formula with the following scale to evaluate the candidacy of various players:

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

To figure out where to start this year's analysis, I first look back at last year's results which can be seen below:

That list tells me that the top five players by vote total who weren't elected last year were Hisashi Hasegawa (11 votes), Tony Vizquel (10 votes), Josias Castro (8 votes) and then there was a four way tie for fourth at two votes between Eswalin Valentin, Bengie Chantres, Ivan Osoria and Wilfredo Sanchez. Here's how that group of seven players stacks up against the HOF benchmarks I mentioned above:

Slam Dunk HOF Choices =

Definite HOF'ers = Tony Vizquel (89 Career WAR), Ivan Osoria (72), Hisashi Hasegawa (71),

Strong HOF Cases =

Weak HOF Cases = Eswalin Valentin (38)

The other three are not currently on the HOF ballot, and with only three of the four who are on the ballot worthy of the Hall I still have two votes left to use. In order to figure out who else to use those votes on, I have evaluated the candidates that have been mentioned the most on world chat using the same system:

Slam Dunk HOF Choices = Rob Sterns (100)

Definite HOF'ers = Virgil Tatis (84)

Strong HOF Cases = Bruce Latham (69), Juan Santana (68), Harry Reynoso (66), Tucker House (66), Alex Mack (51)

Weak HOF Cases = Hooks Collins (49), Charlie Hoffman (48), Malachi Calhoun (42), Alex Arroyo (39), Landen Anderson (32), Felipe Moya (30), Tony Barry (29), Brady Dillard (17), Derek Schmidt (7)

These results have led me to use my last two votes on Sterns and Tatis. However, there will still be a backlog of worthy candidates even if we elect all five guys this year.