The Five Different Types of Hall of Fame Ballots

The Pro-WAR Ballots

For those who may not know, WAR stands for Wins Above Replacement. WAR is a framework for determining the value of a player based on the things he does on the field, such as hitting, fielding, pitching, and base running. All of these components are put together to create a number that reflects the player’s total wins above a theoretical replacement-level player.

The replacement-level player is a guy who could be brought up from Triple-A and perform at a baseline level. Baseball analyst Tom Tango has often cited Willie Bloomquist as a career replacement-level player. Bloomquist played 14 seasons in the major leagues and had between -1.0 and 1.3 wins above replacement every single year. He had eight seasons in which he was within 0.5 wins of replacement level (above or below) and five seasons in which he was within 0.2 wins of replacement level (above or below). He’s the guy you plug in when one of your starters gets injured. The great thing about Willie Bloomquist is that he could play multiple positions adequately. Not good, mind you, but adequate.

The metrics used in creating WAR include adjustments for the league and ballpark of the player. This way, a player who played during the high-offense eras of the 1930s or the mid-1990s can be compared to a player who played during the low-offense eras of the first part of the 20^th century (the “dead ball” era) and the 1960s.

There are two main versions of WAR—Baseball-Reference WAR (bWAR) and FanGraphs WAR (fWAR). The main differences between these two versions of WAR are in how defense is measured and how the runs allowed by a pitcher are incorporated. The details can be found here. Despite the differences, most players have comparable numbers in both versions of WAR.

Before there was WAR, Hall of Fame voters likely used more traditional statistics when completing their ballots, like batting average, home runs, RBI, pitcher wins, and ERA. There was also a big “feels like a Hall of Famer” component. This is the subjective “eyeball” test. When you watch baseball, which players “feel” like Hall of Fame players? As the demographics of the Hall of Fame voter has evolved over time, more voters are looking at advanced metrics, including WAR

With that in mind, here are the top 15 players on the current Hall of Fame ballot sorted by the most Baseball-Reference WAR first and FanGraphs WAR second:

Baseball-Reference WAR

1. Barry Bonds, 162.4
2. Roger Clemens, 140.3
3. Mike Mussina, 83.0
4. Curt Schilling, 79.9
5. Jeff Bagwell, 79.6
6. Larry Walker, 72.6
7. Manny Ramirez, 69.2
8. Tim Raines, 69.1
9. Ivan Rodriguez 68.4
10. Edgar Martinez, 68.3

1. Gary Sheffield, 60.3
2. Vladimir Gerrero, 59.3
3. Sammy Sosa, 58.4
4. Jeff Kent, 55.2
5. Fred McGriff, 52.4

FanGraphs WAR

1. Barry Bonds, 164.4
2. Roger Clemens, 133.7
3. Mike Mussina, 82.2
4. Jeff Bagwell, 80.2
5. Curt Schilling, 79.8
6. Ivan Rodriguez 68.9
7. Larry Walker, 68.7
8. Manny Ramirez, 66.4
9. Tim Raines, 66.4
10. Edgar Martinez, 65.5

1. Gary Sheffield, 62.1
2. Sammy Sosa, 60.1
3. Fred McGriff, 56.9
4. Jeff Kent, 56.1
5. Vlaidmir Guerrero, 54.3

Both lists have the same players in the top 10. The differences are: Bagwell and Schilling switch spots between fourth and fifth, Ivan Rodriguez moves up from ninth to sixth, and Larry Walker moves down from sixth to seventh. It should be noted that there are error bars around WAR. We can’t possibly know to the decimal point how many wins above replacement a player was worth, so a difference of 2-3 WAR over the course of a 15-20 year career shouldn’t be considered a major difference.

I like the idea of looking at these top-10s in tiers. You have the Barry Bonds tier, then the Roger Clemens tier. Mussina, Schilling, and Bagwell are all close enough to be a tier of their own. Then you have the bottom five, who are separated by around four wins total from sixth to tenth on the ballot. In case you were wondering, the next group starts three-to-five wins below Edgar Martinez and would include Gary Sheffield, Vladimir Guerrero, and Sammy Sosa.

I used the Baseball Hall of Fame Ballot Tracker to see if there were any ballots that had the exact 10 names listed above. These are the “Perfect WAR Ballots”. I found five voters with those exact 10 names listed: Mark Bradley (Atlanta Journal-Constitution), Ken Davidoff (New York Post), Sam Mellinger (Kansas City Star), C. Trent Rosencrans (Cincinnati Enquirer), and Michael Silverman (Boston Herald).

 This is as by-the-numbers as you can get. Line them up by WAR and there are your 10 Hall of Famers. With just five voters out of the 216 tracked so far, this shows that very few voters go solely by WAR. Many likely use WAR as a baseline, but with their own individual adjustments.