Visions of Johan

I used to write about the Hall of Fame a lot--I think I’m quoting Bill James there, possibly even the opening sentence of his HOF book. “A lot” is a stretch for me; once every decade or so. You can find three roundups of candidates on this blog, one from 2001 (when I think the concept was still relatively novel on the internet; such roundups are ubiquitous now, and not even confined to the weeks leading up to the yearly vote), from 2010, and, most recently, from 2018. (It would be more accurate to say I post about the Hall of Fame a lot, on the I Love Baseball message board--that much is true.) Joe Posnanski recently reevaluated some HOF prognosis he did for Baseball Digest back in the mid-’70s, when I’m guessing the idea was virtually unheard of. Joe knew that one day he’d be writing a Substack on the internet, so he took great care when thinking through his predictions.

I usually start by taking a look at what I wrote last time. Quickly:

• of my seven “100% Locks,” one is in (Adrian Beltre), and the other six will follow soon.
• I designated eight players as “Good Bets;” the one who has since retired, Buster Posey, is almost a sure-thing now, and of the seven who are still active, I’d say six are going in. Giancarlo Stanton is very much up in the air but fading fast.
• there were a bunch more categories I won’t go over individually, but out of players mentioned, two have gone in--Sabathia (“Hard to Say”) and Mauer (“Probably Not”--really goofed there)--three are almost certainly going in (Greinke, Harper, and Soto), Acuna is still a very good bet, and a bunch have seen their windows close. Kind of funny from the vantage point of 2026: nowhere did I mention Aaron Judge (then already close to 100 HR into his career) or Shohei Ohtani (the year of his rookie season).

Which is again where I’ll start this year’s slate, 100% Locks, which can almost be subdivided into three smaller groups:

1) Judge and Ohtani, with one small caveat: I’m not entirely convinced that, somewhere down the road, some enterprising reporter won’t revisit Ohtani’s gambling scandal and turn up something that resurrects that story.

2) Generational Starters: Kershaw (just retired), Verlander, and Scherzer. Verlander gets his first start of 2026 tomorrow. Something I continue to believe, although people on the message board think I’m insane: I haven’t ruled out 300 wins. At 42, he’s got 266…what if everything fell into place this year (he’s on a good enough team that he wouldn’t have to pitch spectacularly) and he picked up 15 wins? 280 wins at 43? And a guy who’s announced his desire to make it to 300 many times?

3) The Rest: Betts, Freeman, Goldschmidt--the last two used to march in lockstep; Freeman has moved ahead, but PG still seems like a sure thing--Trout, Machado, Ramirez, Harper, Lindor, Arenado. You could, I suppose, say that they’re not all past the finish line yet, in which case please contact me and we can make a bet for a large sum of money…well, I might balk a bit on the last two myself; we can bet a smaller sum of money on them.

Peak Is the New Career: I was wrong on Mauer because the growing preference for (or at least acceptance of) peak value vs. career value hadn’t yet, in 2018, taken hold. After Mauer and then Andruw Jones (with Posey on deck), I think it has, and with that in mind, Chris Sale is going in. From 2012 to 2018 he was 99-59, had an ERA and FIP that were both under 3.00, his WHIP was just over 1.000 and K/BB ratio over 5.5, and he finished in the Top 6 in Cy Young voting every year. When he shocked everyone with his comeback Cy in 2024, that pretty much sealed it, I think, even with last year's injury.

Best Bets Still Under 30: I haven’t forgotten about Soto, who has accumulated over 40 WAR before his 28th birthday. Barring anything unexpected, a lock--but under 30, lots could still happen, so I’ll put him in a separate category. Joining him, you’ve got Acuna (28 WAR at 28), Vlad (26 WAR at 27), and, farther behind, Alvarez (24 WAR at 29). Tatis has 27 WAR at 27, right there with Acuna and Vlad, but--first thing I thought of when he got nailed (as in, “How could you be so stupid?”)--PEDs will keep him out, short of the damn-break that never comes.

Starters: Looking past the easy ones (the big three plus Sale), and mindful of how drastically the nature of starting pitching has changed the past few years--and also how we evaluate starters--there’s more guesswork here than anywhere, I think. 1) deGrom: one of the strangest HOF cases ever (I wrote about him here). He’s 37 now, stuck on two Cy Youngs, shy of 50 WAR and 100 wins (not that important anymore, but I’ll say that again: shy of 100 wins), and apparently hurting again. 2) Gerrit Cole: coming off his Cy Young in 2023, looked to be a near-lock. Has pitched 95 innings in the two seasons since (TJ surgery), may be back in June. 35 now, 43 WAR. 3) Skubal and Skenes: inarguably the two best pitchers in baseball are separated by almost six years, so their HOF cases are positioned very differently on a timeline. Skubal has two Cy Youngs, but he’ll turn 30 after this season. When and if he picks up a third, that should secure his induction; but, like deGrom, he just doesn’t have enough time to compile career stats that would bolster his case significantly (unless the whole peak/career thing tilts so drastically towards peak in the next few years that the standard career benchmarks undergo an inverse reevaluation). Skenes, with one Cy and a ROY, has all the time in the world; he’ll turn 24 this May. Who has the stronger case, I’m not sure--I’m leaning Skenes, but Skubal’s two Cys are already secure, and he looks primed for a third this season. (Skenes’ first 2026 start was disastrous, but reportedly he was victimized by some poor defense and bad luck.) 4) Blake Snell--the poor man’s Jacob deGrom (or Johan Santana). Also two Cys, but has even fewer wins, hasn’t received a single CY vote in seasons where he didn’t win (deGrom drew support in five other seasons), has registered exactly one complete game for his career, is on his fourth team in 10 years, and, possibly related, does not seem to be the world’s most likeable person (I may be projecting after his World Series smarminess last year). Needs a third Cy to be viable. 5) The field, which at this point I might reduce to Max Fried, who all of a sudden--did anyone think of him a HOF’er going into 2025?--looks plausible. At 32 he’s 94-41 with a career ERA of 3.00, is edging close to 30 WAR (he’ll have to pick up the pace there), has made a few AS teams and finished second, fourth, and fifth in Cy voting (no wins), and is off to a great start in 2026. I’d have to look, but I bet I could find one or two HOF pitchers who had less of a foundation than that going into their age-33 season. But he needs some foreground; he needs at least one of those flashy seasons where he transforms into the Other Max. Last year was as close as he’s ever gotten, and he wasn’t all that close.

Closers: same old story: you’re looking at the same three guys--Chapman, Kimbrel, and Jensen--who’ve been the only realistic candidates the past decade to satisfy the more stringent post-Mariano HOF bar for closers. And it looks like Jensen is the guy who’s broken through. Chapman was awesome last year, but he’s going to fall woefully short in the character-counts department (and it does these days: cf. Curt Schilling and Omar Vizquel, for starters). Kimbrel hasn’t been the same pitcher since leaving Boston seven years ago; his 440 saves and 2.58 career ERA would have made him a cinch two decades ago, but he bounces around, no one seems to like him (for reasons I’ve never quite understood), and his post-season resume’s not great. Jensen, meanwhile, has more saves than Kimbrel (closing in on 500), has been pretty consistent the past few seasons, has a very good career post-season line, and doesn’t have any of the baggage of the other two.

Everyone Else: There are definitely other future HOF’ers active right now who I haven’t yet mentioned--there always are.

1) Infielders: Jose Altuve, Corey Seager, Trea Turner, Carlos Correa, Alex Bregman, Matt Chapman, Marcus Semien, Xander Bogaerts--my guess is two or three of those guys will go in. If not for bang-a-gong, I might have put Altuve in with the sure-things; he’s got a shot at 3,000 hits, but he’s a little light on WAR. Now that Beltran’s in, though, I can’t see the scandal keeping him out. Altuve, 36, leads that group in WAR with 53; the other seven are bunched between 49.5 (Semien--surprised, aren’t you?) and 41.7 (Turner), and between 35 (Semien again) and 31 (Correa) years old. So nothing is decided yet. As a Blue Jay fan who spent two seasons tearing my hair out watching Matt Chapman at bat, I’m not enthusiastic about the idea of him one day going in.

2) Catchers: Salvador Perez, Will Smith. What happens with Molina may line up well with Perez’s chances: Molina was low on WAR (42) but famous for his defense and an acknowledged team leader; Perez is even lower (36), but is still hitting well at 36, has over 300 HR (his 48 was briefly the single-season record for catchers) and numerous AS games and GG on his resume, and is an acknowledged team leader. Their cases seem roughly comparable. Will Smith is the longest of longshots right now, with a case that will be largely determined by how far the Dodger dynasty extends; if he remains a mainstay and builds up some other credentials, you never know. Mind you, that same dynamic didn't help Jorge Posada get to a second ballot. Alejandro Kirk is already in my personal Blue Jays Hall of Roly-Poly Catchers Who Are Worth the Price of Admission Just to See Them Run Out a Double (I have, twice), but I think he’ll fall short of Cooperstown.

3) Pete Alonso/Kyle Schwarber: I’ll give them a category of their own. Alonso’s 31 and has 265 career HR; Schwarber’s 33 and has 342. Alonso doesn’t have any post-season heroics that I remember; Schwarber has many. If either or both get to 500 HR, you can start to look at their chances then.

4) Outfielders: Christian Yelich, George Springer. Yelich looked like a good bet coming out of his back-to-back monster years just before COVID; he’s been fairly consistent since then, but at a much lower level of ~ 3.0 WAR per season. Springer’s great comeback season last year brought him back onto the radar; winning the WS would have helped, but he’s once again, I think, in longshot range. With guys like him, my thinking goes something like this: before you play yourself into the HOF, you have to not play yourself out of it. And I don’t think he has, not yet.

After all that, you can be sure I’ve missed someone--a player who’ll do things over the next five-seven seasons that will have people asking “Geez, is this guy a HOF’er?” Or maybe I’ve simply forgotten someone who’s obvious already. In any event, I’ll be checking back here in 2034 to see how I did, at which time I fully expect the whole HOF experience--committees, voting, induction day, everything--to be a subsidiary of BetMGM, with John Hamm installed as the new face of Cooperstown.