'Cooperstown Chances' is a new series that will examine the Baseball Hall of Fame case of one candidate each week. This spans the large number of players currently on the ballot for the Baseball Writers' Association of America, as well as active stars and long-retired players eligible for consideration through the Veterans Committee. This week: Trevor Hoffman , who will appear on the BBWAA ballot for the first time in 2016.
Who he is: After Mariano Rivera, Trevor Hoffman might rank as the most prominent closer yet to appear on the Hall of Fame ballot. The long-time Padres fireman recorded 601 saves over his 18-year career, second-best all-time behind Rivera, finishing in the top five for National League Cy Young Award voting three years.
Trevor Hoffman (Getty Images)
MORE: Who else is on the 2016 Hall of Fame ballot?
Enshrining closers is still a relatively new practice, with just four pitchers in Cooperstown who relieved 80 percent of their games according to Baseball-Reference.com. These men are Rollie Fingers, Goose Gossage, Bruce Sutter and Hoyt Wilhelm. Dennis Eckersley rates as an honorary fifth member of this group, though technically he won more than 150 games as a starter before becoming a closer. John Smoltz is in Cooperstown primarily as a starter, though his dominant mid-career interlude as a closer certainly didn't hurt his case.
Aside from those six, Lee Smith has garnered as much as 50 percent of the Hall vote from the Baseball Writers' Association of America and seems popular enough with former players to be a viable Veterans Committee candidate if nothing else. Mariano Rivera meanwhile looks like a shoo-in when he appears on the BBWAA ballot three years from now. Billy Wagner's got an interesting case sabermetrically , though it will be tough to get a majority of voters to buy in.
Then there's Hoffman, who will be newly eligible for Cooperstown through the BBWAA in a few months. It will be interesting to see what happens with Hoffman, whose Hall of Fame case suffers a little upon close scrutiny.
Cooperstown chances for Hoffman: 60 percent
Why: Where Lee Smith goes, Trevor Hoffman will likely follow. As we'll get into in a moment, the two are fairly similar statistically. And because Smith looks destined to eventually have a plaque — historically , it's unusual for players who top out with at least 50 percent of the BBWAA vote to not eventually get in Cooperstown — Hoffman will probably be honored at some point, too. Hall of Fame enshrinement shouldn't work this way, but on a number of occasions it has. Put a borderline candidate in, and one or two others are bound to follow.
Smith's Hall of Fame candidacy has been somewhat polarizing. While at least a couple of former players have spoken highly on MLB Network of Smith during past Hall of Fame voting seasons, many sabermetrically inclined analysts from Joe Posnanski to Jay Jaffe to Rob Neyer have been cool to offer support. Like Hoffman, Smith's case centers around his high career saves total, and the stat remains a controversial way to rate relievers.
As Posnanski wrote in 2014 :
Lee Smith was a superb closer for many, many years. His consistency still amazes. He led the league in saves four times and, when he retired, held the all-time saves record of 478. But the save record has since been smashed by Mariano Rivera and Trevor Hoffman, and anyway saves are a pretty flawed statistic. Smith was a specialist (he pitched fewer than 1,300 innings), and a first-class one. I just don’t see him as a Hall of Famer.
Smith has two more years of eligibility with the BBWAA and has seen his vote totals drop over the past few years as an influx of popular players has hit the ballot. The Veterans Committee, generally manned by Hall of Famers, baseball executives and veteran writers seems like Smith's province, though it will have a significant backlog of players to consider over the next 10-15 years.
On the chance the Veterans Committee tabs Smith while Hoffman is on the BBWAA ballot, Hoffman might see his stock rise with the writers. If, on the other hand, the committee is slow to act with Smith, there's a chance he and Hoffman could wind up on the same Veterans ballot several years from now, which could make for interesting discussion.
Statistically, Smith and Hoffman are more or less equal on basic sabermetric balance: 29.4 Wins Above Replacement, a 132 ERA+ and 2.93 FIP for Smith compared to 28 WAR, a 141 ERA+ and 3.08 FIP for Hoffman. Each falls short on Jaffe's Hall of Fame metric JAWS, with Smith weighing in at 25.4 JAWS, Hoffman 24 JAWS, and the Hall of Fame standard for relief pitchers 34.4 JAWS.
Then there's star power, where Hoffman seemingly has the advantage. Some of this is a facet of era — by Hoffman's prime, it was commonplace for closers to enter games with heavy metal blaring over stadium loudspeakers. Hoffman's "Hells Bells" intro remains iconic. Smith meanwhile merely seems like someone who nondescriptly accumulated a lot of saves. Interestingly, though, he had as many top-five NL Cy Young finishes as Hoffman, with three.
Of course the big difference is saves, with Hoffman recording 123 more than Smith, in exactly 200 fewer innings to boot. In being compared to Hoffman, Smith doesn't have the problem of a Dan Quisenberry, Kent Tekulve or John Hiller, to name three closers who did their best work in eras with far fewer save opportunities. Hoffman just had greater longevity than Smith, recording his last save two weeks before his 43rd birthday. Smith, meanwhile, quit being a full-time closer at age 37 and was out of baseball by 40.
Statistically, neither Hoffman nor Smith come anywhere close to Rivera, who Buster Olney suggested ought be the first unanimous selection to Cooperstown . Rivera's 652 saves and lifetime 205 ERA+ are best in baseball history and his 56.6 WAR is also tops among closers (though not that far beyond Wilhelm's 50.1 WAR). Rivera's in a class all his own as a closer. If he's Willie Mays, Hoffman is Duke Snider.
Then again, Hoffman and Smith have better numbers than at least one closer already in Cooperstown, Rollie Fingers. Perhaps neither candidate has anything to worry about long-term. Again, this shouldn't get a player in Cooperstown, but when it comes to the Hall of Fame, what should happen and what ultimately does happen are sometimes two different things.
Sporting News contributor Graham Womack writes regularly about the Hall of Fame and other topics related to baseball history at his website, Baseball: Past and Present . Follow him on Twitter: @grahamdude .