Baseball Hall of Fame: Does Trevor Hoffman belong?

The Current Ballot

There are four closers on this year’s Baseball Hall of Fame ballot: Trevor Hoffman, Billy Wagner, Jason Isringhausen and Brad Lidge. Kerry Wood is also on the ballot, but he was only a closer for a couple of seasons. Let’s look at the statistics for these four closers. The Wins Above Replacement shown below is from Baseball-Reference. The statistic ERA+ shows how much better that pitcher was in ERA compared to league average. For example, Trevor Hoffman’s ERA+ of 141 means he was 41 percent better than league average.

• 1089.3 IP, 601 SV, 2.87 ERA, 141 ERA+, 28.0 WAR—Trevor Hoffman
• 903.0 IP, 422 SV, 2.31 ERA, 187 ERA+, 27.7 WAR—Billy Wagner
• 1007.7 IP, 300 SV, 3.64 ERA, 115 ERA+, 12.2 WAR—Jason Isringhausen
• 603.3 IP, 225 SV, 3.54 ERA, 122 ERA+, 7.8 WAR—Brad Lidge

Neither Isringhausen nor Lidge has received a Baseball Hall of Fame vote. This is appropriate because neither deserves a vote. They were fine pitchers who had some good moments in their careers but are not worthy of the Baseball Hall of Fame. What about Hoffman and Wagner?

Based on Baseball-Reference WAR, Hoffman and Wagner were nearly equal in value over their respective careers. Hoffman racked up more saves, but that has more to do with opportunity than anything. Hoffman also pitched about three seasons worth of innings more than Wagner, but Wagner was better at preventing runs by a significant margin.

This is important to note when it comes to these two pitchers. Hoffman pitched 1089.3 innings with an ERA of 2.87. Wagner pitched 903 innings with an ERA of 2.31. If Wagner had stuck around for three more seasons, he could have had an ERA of 5.56 in 186.3 innings and ended up with the same innings pitched and ERA as Hoffman.

In his final season, Wagner pitched 69.3 innings with a 1.43 ERA. He retired while still one of the best relievers in baseball (104 strikeouts in those 69.3 innings). Yet, he could have added three terrible seasons and ended up with the same run prevention numbers as Hoffman. That’s how much better he was at preventing runs.

Despite this fact, Hoffman currently leads Wagner in the publicly-released Hall of Fame ballots, 78.2 percent to 10.7 percent. This makes no sense at all. If a closer is worthy of the Hall of Fame, I don’t see how you can put Hoffman in and leave Wagner out. There’s not enough separating them to justify the discrepancy we see in their vote totals. This would be like putting the right Twix in the Candy Hall of Fame but leaving the left Twix out.

The real question for me is: do either Hoffman or Wagner belong in the Hall of Fame? Again, I go back to the idea that closer isn’t a position, it’s a role. The position is a pitcher. I prefer to compare relievers to all pitchers, which sets the bar for entry into the Hall of Fame much higher.