MLB: If the League Ended Today, Who Would be a Hall of Famer?
By Jason Reed
Some select players have already done enough in their career to merit a hall of fame inclusion. With that being said, if MLB ended today, which current players have done enough to get into Cooperstown?
Outside of the coveted World Series trophy, the Baseball Hall of Fame is the most sought after accomplishment for players. Getting included into the Hall makes you immortal, puts yourself head and shoulders above the rest. Some players in the current landscape of MLB could already make a case for the Hall of Fame. Even if these guys retired today, or say the league shut down, these players would have done enough to earn that prestigious honor. Yes, there are young guns like Mike Trout that arguably could already enter the hall, but he is something beyond earth and truly is a special case. We cannot hold the same account for Kris Bryant or Bryce Harper.
Instead, we will be using Baseball Reference’s Wins Above Replacement statistic. Yes, this method is flawed, but gives us a good gauge on the statistics it takes to make the hall of fame. There are outliers on both sides, extremely high WAR’s and pretty low WAR’s that made it into the Hall based on paving the way for the rest of baseball. Admittedly, we cannot justify a player to be a hall of famer solely on WAR, but it is interesting to see who would make the cut if we were to do so.
The average WAR for position players in the hall of fame is 69, while the average for pitchers is 70. Of course, there are players under this threshold that make the list, so we must make a judging line for our choices. I set the bar at 50.9 for position players, and 53.17 for pitchers. These two WAR’s are Kirby Puckett‘s and Sandy Koufax‘s, respectively. Both men had a relatively short career, both due to misfortunes, but are considered solid members of the Hall. Some of these inclusions, or exclusions, may not make sense as they don’t seem like hall of famers. Keep in mind we are using WAR as our gauge to generate an interesting discussion.