BASEBALL HALL OF FAME: UPCOMING BORDERLINE CANDIDATES, PART 1

Evaluating the Borderline Candidates

So, in evaluating candidates slated to appear on the next five ballots, from 2015 to 2019, we will dispense with players expected to be elected even on an overstuffed ballot and with players whose association with PEDs is so pronounced that it will very probably sully the player's chances for the Hall even with ironclad credentials. Well, as you will see below, there are two players evaluated who are tainted with the PEDs brush but whose credentials divorced from that still put them at the borderline.

In this two-part series, the players we will evaluate, by year of eligibility, are:

2015: Carlos Delgado, Nomar Garciaparra, Gary Sheffield

2016: Garret Anderson, Jim Edmonds, Trevor Hoffman, Billy Wagner

2017: Vladimir Guerrero, Magglio Ordonez, Jorge Posada, Edgar Renteria

2018: Johnny Damon, Andruw Jones, Jamie Moyer, Scott Rolen, Omar Vizquel

2019: Lance Berkman, Todd Helton, Roy Oswalt, Andy Pettitte, Michael Young

In Part One of this series, we will examine the 11 candidates slated to be on the Baseball Hall of Fame ballot for the next three years, from 2015 to 2017. However, for comparative purposes for all five years, we will look briefly at the relative value of all 21 players.

The following two tables list these 21 upcoming candidates for the next five ballots who are on the borderline for the Hall of Fame, 16 position players and 5 pitchers. They are ranked by their career Wins Above Replacement from Baseball Reference (bWAR) along with other representative qualitative statistics (explained below each table).

Here are the 16 position players, ranked by bWAR. Players under discussion in this article are in bold.

Position Players , Ranked by bWAR
Position Player	Slash Line	wOBA	bWAR	fWAR	OPS+	wRC+
Rolen, Scott	.281/.364/.490	.368	70.0	69.9	122	122
Jones, Andruw	.254/.337/.486	.352	62.8	67.6	111	111
Helton, Todd	.316/.414/.539	.405	61.5	55.3	133	132
Edmonds, Jim	.284/.376/.527	.385	60.3	64.0	132	132
Sheffield, Gary	.292/.393/.514	.391	60.2	62.4	140	141
Guerrero, Vladimir	.318/.379/.553	.390	59.3	56.5	140	136
Damon, Johnny	.284/..352/.433	.344	56.0	42.9	104	105
Berkman, Lance	.293/.406/.537	.400	51.8	55.5	144	144
Vizquel, Omar	.272/.336/.352	.310	45.3	42.0	82	83
Delgado, Carlos	.280/.383/.546	.391	44.3	43.5	138	135
Garciaparra, Nomar	.313/.361/.521	.376	44.2	41.5	124	124
Posada, Jorge	.273/.374/.474	.367	42.7	44.9	121	123
Ordonez, Magglio	.309/.369/.502	.375	38.5	37.8	125	126
Renteria, Edgar	.286/.343/.398	.327	32.1	35.5	94	95
Anderson, Garret	.293/.324/.461	.334	25.6	23.5	102	100
Young, Michael	.300/.346/.441	.342	24.4	26.9	104	104

Slash Line: Grouping of the player's career batting average, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage.
wOBA: Weighted on-base average as calculated by FanGraphs. Weighs singles, extra-base hits, walks, and hits by pitch; generally, .400 is excellent and .320 is league-average.
bWAR: Career Wins Above Replacement as calculated by Baseball Reference.
fWAR: Career Wins Above Replacement as calculated by FanGraphs.
OPS+: Career on-base percentage plus slugging percentage, league- and park-adjusted, as calculated by Baseball Reference. Positively indexed to 100, with a 100 OPS+ indicating a league-average player, and values above 100 indicating the degrees better a player is than a league-average player.
wRC+: Career weighted Runs Created, league- and park-adjusted, as calculated by FanGraphs. Positively indexed to 100, with a 100 wRC+ indicating a league-average player, and values above 100 indicating the degrees better a player is than a league-average player.

Here are the five pitchers, ranked by bWAR. Pitchers under discussion in this article are in bold.

Pitchers, Ranked by bWAR
Pitcher	W-L (S), ERA	bWAR	fWAR	ERA+	ERA–-	FIP–-
Pettitte, Andy	256-153, 3.85	60.9	68.5	117	86	84
Moyer, Jamie	269-209, 4.25	50.2	48.0	103	97	103
Oswalt, Roy	163-102, 3.36	50.2	49.8	127	79	78
Hoffman, Trevor	61-75 (601), 2.87	28.0	23.0	141	71	75
Wagner, Billy	47-40 (422), 2.31	27.7	23.6	187	54	63

W-L (S), ERA: Grouping of the pitcher's career win-loss record (and career saves, if relevant) and career earned run average (ERA).
bWAR: Career Wins Above Replacement as calculated by Baseball Reference.
fWAR: Career Wins Above Replacement as calculated by FanGraphs.
ERA+: Career ERA, league- and park-adjusted, as calculated by Baseball Reference. Positively indexed to 100, with a 100 ERA+ indicating a league-average pitcher, and values above 100 indicating the degrees better a pitcher is than a league-average pitcher.
ERA–: Career ERA, league- and park-adjusted, as calculated by FanGraphs. Negatively indexed to 100, with a 100 ERA– indicating a league-average pitcher, and values below 100 indicating the degrees better a pitcher is than a league-average pitcher.
FIP–: Fielding-independent pitching, a pitcher's ERA with his fielders' impact factored out, league- and park-adjusted, as calculated by FanGraphs. Negatively indexed to 100, with a 100 FIP– indicating a league-average pitcher, and values below 100 indicating the degrees better a pitcher is than a league-average pitcher.

The table below combines both position players and pitchers into a ranking by bWAR with their fWAR values also listed. Players under discussion in this article are in bold.

All Players, Ranked by bWAR
Rank	Player	bWAR	fWAR
1	Rolen, Scott	70.0	69.9
2	Jones, Andruw	62.8	67.6
3	Helton, Todd	61.5	55.3
4	Pettitte, Andy	60.9	68.5
5	Edmonds, Jim	60.3	64.0
6	Sheffield, Gary	60.2	62.4
7	Guerrero, Vladimir	59.3	56.5
8	Damon, Johnny	56.0	42.9
9	Berkman, Lance	51.8	55.5
10	Moyer, Jamie	50.2	48.0
11	Oswalt, Roy	50.2	49.8
12	Vizquel, Omar	45.3	42.0
13	Delgado, Carlos	44.3	43.5
14	Garciaparra, Nomar	44.2	41.5
15	Posada, Jorge	42.7	44.9
16	Ordonez, Magglio	38.5	37.8
17	Renteria, Edgar	32.1	35.5
18	Anderson, Garret	25.6	23.5
19	Young, Michael	24.4	26.9
20	Hoffman, Trevor	28.0	23.0
21	Wagner, Billy	27.7	23.6

As with previous assessments that use WAR as a ranking tool, WAR is not the be-all-and-end-all statistic although it is a fair assessment of player value: It measures a player's contribution to his team's wins, and it is the only qualitative statistic that enables comparison between position players and pitchers.

As a rough rule of thumb, position players and starting pitchers with a bWAR of 60 or more typically garner serious consideration for the Hall while relief pitchers generate the same consideration at 40 or more. Players with a bWAR of 50 or more do tend to sit on the bubble, with many other factors deciding whether they are legitimate Hall of Famers. That rough rule of thumb is in force in the individual assessments below—although there may be a surprise or two—as we examine the 11 borderline Hall of Fame candidates expected to appear on ballots in the next three years. Let's start with the three "bubble" candidates for the 2015 ballot.

2015: Carlos Delgado, Nomar Garciaparra, Gary Sheffield

With three superstar pitchers slated for the 2015 ballot—Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez, and John Smoltz—anyone else on the ballot is sure to be overshadowed, and we will see if these three candidates will be unfairly overlooked.

A fixture on the Toronto Blue Jays for 12 of his 17 Major League seasons, a club for which he established several batting records, Carlos Delgado was an excellent power hitter—but his misfortune is being a power hitter at a position, first base, that is amply represented in the Hall of Fame by power hitters. For Delgado to make it into the Hall, he would have needed to be a dominant power hitter—and as Delgado was a typically deficient defensive first baseman who stole fewer than one base per season, his legacy rests on his hitting.

Delgado is one of only six players in baseball history to hit 30 or more home runs in 10 consecutive seasons, and for 13 seasons, from 1996 to 2008, he hit at least 25 home runs in all but one of those seasons, falling one shy of that in 2007, his age-35 season. His prime coincided with the Steroids Era, but Delgado has never been associated with PEDs, and his home run totals reflect those of a "clean" hitter, with the 44 round-trippers he hit in 1999 representing his single-season best. During that stretch, Delgado posted a .282/.386/.552 slash line, essentially equivalent to his career .280/.383/.546 line, while averaging 36 doubles, 35 home runs, 92 runs scored, and 112 runs batted in every year. His seasonal average OPS+ of 140 practically matches his career OPS+ of 138.

The consistent first baseman finished within the top five for Most Valuable Player voting twice. In 2000, he finished fourth and led the American League in doubles with 57 and total bases with 378 while slugging 41 long flies, driving in 137 runs, and posting an outstanding .344/.470/.664 slash line—his OPS+ of 181 was the best of his career. In 2003, he was the runner-up MVP to Alex Rodriguez with a record that in several categories was virtually indistinguishable from the Texas Rangers' shortstop; Delgado led the AL in RBI (145), OPS (1.019), and OPS+ (161) while batting at a .302/.426/.593 clip with 42 homers. The 2003 season also saw Delgado hit four home runs in a single game against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, and he is the only player of the 16 all-time to accomplish this feat to hit his four dingers in only four at-bats.

With his 473 career home runs and 1512 career RBI, Delgado looks a lot like Fred McGriff, another left-handed slugging first baseman who got his start in Toronto. But McGriff, who has yet to reach 25 percent of the vote on any of the five ballots on which he has appeared since 2010, finished with a 52.4 bWAR, nearly 8 wins better than Delgado's 44.3. Jay Jaffe's JAWS ranking places Delgado 35th all-time among first basemen—McGriff places 27th—while both fall significantly short of the average bWAR of 65.9 for the 19 first basemen already in the Hall. Carlos Delgado was an excellent offensive first basemen, but without clear dominance during his heyday or gaudy counting numbers, Delgado is just another excellent power hitter a long way from Cooperstown.


Career-wise, first baseman Carlos Delgado looks a lot like Fred McGriff, who is being overlooked on the Hall of Fame ballot.

A textbook example of how fate can derail a baseball career at any time while illustrating how hard it is to get into the Baseball Hall of Fame, shortstop Nomar Garciaparra looked to be a superstar and a probable Hall of Famer right from his winning American League Rookie of the Year honors with the Boston Red Sox in 1997 when he led the league in hits (209) and triples (11), garnishing that with a .306/.342/.534 slash line, 30 home runs (the most ever hit by a rookie shortstop), and 98 runs batted in. After all, Garciaparra, famously fidgety while at the plate, followed that up with a 1998 campaign that included a .323/.362/.584 line with 35 homers and 122 RBI, good enough to be runner-up to the Texas Rangers' Juan Gonzalez in MVP voting, while in 1999 and 2000 Garciaparra became the first right-handed batter since Joe DiMaggio to lead the league in batting in two consecutive years.

Garciaparra batted .357 in 1999 and .372 in 2000, and having finished in the top 10 in MVP voting from 1997 to 2000, he seemed set for an auspicious career, a solid defensive shortstop and a potent offensive one, and a budding folk hero in a New England that knew him affectionately as "NO-mah!" His 1999 season included a .418 on-base percentage and a .603 slugging percentage to go with that league-leading .357 batting average, adding 42 doubles, 27 home runs, 103 runs scored, and 104 RBI while his OPS+ was 153. He posted his career-best OPS+ of 156 the following year, which saw him with a .372/.434/.599 slash line, 51 doubles, 21 home runs, 104 runs scored, and 96 RBI while leading the league in intentional walks (20).

Then Garciaparra broke his wrist early in the 2001 season; he played in only 21 games that year. He seemed to rebound the following year with a .310/.352/.528 line, collecting 197 hits in 635 at-bats, his most since 1997, including a league-leading and career-high 56 doubles along with 24 home runs, 101 runs scored, and 120 runs batted in. He posted similar numbers in 2003, but he saw limited action with Boston in 2004, not helped by trade machinations that soured Garciaparra's attitude toward the Red Sox. He was traded to the Chicago Cubs after the 2004 All-Star break, and in 2005 a groin injury sidelined him for half the season. Signing with the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2006, for whom he made a successful transition to first base, Garciaparra continued to battle injuries even though he made his sixth and final All-Star Game in 2006, also the last season in which he hit .300 with a .303 average in 469 at-bats. But 2007 found him falling below minimum standards—his 80 OPS+, well below league-average, was the lowest of his career—and following two part-time seasons, he limped to retirement following the 2009 season that he'd spent with the Oakland Athletics.


Famously fidgety shortstop Nomar Garciaparra had a brilliant start to his career, at least with the Boston Red Sox.

Nomar Garciaparra shot out of the gate as one of the "super-shortstops," manning one of the toughest defensive positions while also posting offensive numbers like a marquee hitter. But injuries and the cavalier attitude shown by the Boston Red Sox at the end of his tenure there marred the remainder of his career. Garciaparra did retire with a .313/.361/.521 slash line, good for a 124 OPS+, a 124 wRC+, and a .376 wOBA, but his 44.2 bWAR (41.5 by FanGraphs' calculation of WAR) falls conspicuously short of Hall of Fame excellence. Jaffe's JAWS puts Garciaparra in 23rd place among shortstops, ahead of Hall of Famers such as Joe Tinker, Travis Jackson, Phil Rizzuto, and Rabbit Maranville, although whether those are legitimate Hall of Fame shortstops is another story. Had Garciaparra posted a few more superlative seasons, he could have been a dark-horse contender for the Hall. But his actual record simply underlines what might have been.

Had Gary Sheffield's name not appeared in the Mitchell Report, examination of his bona fides for the Hall of Fame would be less problematic. As it stands, Sheffield is truly on the bubble, having compiled an impressive if not dominating batting record over the course of his 22-year career, toiling for eight different teams, that saw a number of other controversies besides the PEDs issue cloud his on-field performance.

Sheffield played the corner outfield positions, primarily right field, and had come up as a third baseman with the Milwaukee Brewers, but apart from a strong throwing arm he has always been a defensive liability; his defensive WAR (Baseball Reference version) for his career is –28.6. He did steal 253 bases, at a 70.9 percent success rate, including three years with 20 or more swipes—with one of those being 22, while being caught just five times, as a Detroit Tiger during the 2007 season, his age-38 year—so Sheffield is a bit more than a one- or even two-dimensional player, but his Hall of Fame case does rest on his hitting.

In that respect, Sheffield had been a fearsome—if not dominant—hitter during his prime. He finished with a .292/.393/.514 slash line, representing 2689 hits (66th all-time), 467 doubles (89th all-time), 509 home runs (25th all-time), 1636 runs scored (38th all-time), and 1676 runs batted in (26th all-time), while his 1475 bases on balls (20th all-time) is balanced against only 1171 strikeouts (175th all-time), a remarkable feat in the free-swinging, no-shame-to-fan modern era, and one that belied the distinctive bat-wiggle in Sheffield's swing—he always looked as if he couldn't wait to come out of his shoes as he stood poised at the plate—that actually indicated impressive plate discipline.

In his first year in the National League with the San Diego Padres in 1992, Sheffield led the league in batting with a .330 average, the only Padre aside from Tony Gwynn ever to lead the league in that category. Sheffield also flirted with the Triple Crown that season as he slugged 33 homers, one behind Barry Bonds and two behind league-leader Fred McGriff, while his even 100 RBI was fifth-best in 1992, just nine behind eventual leader Darren Daulton. Sheffield also led the NL in total bases that year with 323 as he finished third in Most Valuable Player voting, the first of three top-five finishes in MVP voting, and he was selected to his first of nine All-Star berths.

For a 16-year period, from 1992 to 2007, Sheffield posted a .301/.408/.543 line generated from a seasonal average of 140 hits including 24 doubles and 29 home runs, 252 total bases, and 80 walks against only 59 strikeouts; he averaged, per season, 88 runs scored and 90 runs driven in. Sheffield's OPS+ during this period was 150; his career OPS+ is 140, 74th all-time and tied with Hall of Famers Jesse Burkett and Duke Snider. Sheffield was part of the 1997 Florida Marlins team that won the World Series, and it was with Florida, for whom he played six seasons, his longest tenure in his career, that he led the National League in on-base percentage (.465), OPS (1.090), and OPS+ (189) in 1996; he walked 142 times, 19 of those intentional, against only 66 strikeouts as he finished ninth in MVP voting and made the All-Star team.

After a four-year stint with the Los Angeles Dodgers from 1998 to 2001, Sheffield was traded to the Atlanta Braves, with whom he played two seasons before signing as a free agent with the New York Yankees in 2004. This four-year period, from his age-33 to age-36 seasons, saw him post a .304/.399/.542 line while averaging, per year, 169 hits including 30 doubles and 34 homers, 107 runs scored and 115 RBI. He was off to a similarly strong start in 2006, but a wrist injury sustained in an in-game collision sidelined him for much of the season. Sheffield made three All-Star squads during this time, and he finished in the top ten in MVP voting in three of those seasons; he was runner-up to Vladimir Guerrero in 2004.

In a phase of a ballplayer's career when he should be slowing down, Gary Sheffield displayed a resurgence that suggested performance-enhancing drugs. Sheffield was implicated in the Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative (BALCO) scandal that has dogged Barry Bonds, and it was during a 2001 workout with Bonds that Sheffield's trainer applied "the cream," a topical application reputedly containing steroids, to ripped stitches that had resulted from surgery on Sheffield's knee in an attempt to heal the ripped stitches. Sheffield was later named in the Mitchell Report as having received PEDs from BALCO. There is little doubt that the PEDs issue will color the evaluation of Gary Sheffield's qualifications for the Baseball Hall of Fame. Sheffield's hot temper and his accusations of racism and poor management over the years will likely receive play as well.


Will slugger Gary Sheffield's association with PEDs sully his Hall of Fame chances?

As a ballplayer, Sheffield compiled an excellent career, although it lacks the standout, dominant moment often associated with a Hall of Fame-caliber player. Sheffield's bWAR of 60.2 and fWAR of 62.4 merits his serious consideration for the Hall, but without a distinguishing characteristic it is hard to consider him a Hall of Famer. He did reach the 500-homer plateau, but over a 22-year career that smacks more of a compiler than a superstar. Jay Jaffe's JAWS ranks him 23rd among right fielders, ahead of Hall of Famers Willie Keeler, Enos Slaughter, and Sam Rice, among others, but behind Hall of Famers Paul Waner, Sam Crawford, Tony Gwynn, and Dave Winfield, as well as sabermetric darlings Dwight Evans and Reggie Smith, both hoping for a future Expansion Era Committee nod.

That may be Gary Sheffield's best hope as well, as his PEDs notoriety, the overstuffed ballot, and his own lack of a clear-cut Hall of Fame case will find him languishing on the 2015 ballot and beyond.