Cooperstown Chances examines the Baseball Hall of Fame case of one candidate each week. This week: Giants star Buster Posey.
Who he is: The good news for Buster Posey is that by this point in his career, he’s already ensured he’ll be in the eventual conversation for the Hall of Fame.
The 2012 National League MVP and three-time World Series champion finished last season with 19.1 Wins Above Average for his career so far. According to the Baseball-Reference.com Play Index tool, 125 players in baseball history have racked up at least 19 WAA through their age-28 seasons.
Sixty-eight of these players are Hall of Famers. Another 14 are active with several strong cases among them. The remaining 43 aren’t enshrined, but most have their supporters. The members of the last group are players like Will Clark, Nomar Garciaparra and Cesar Cedeno.
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If Clark, Garciaparra and Cedeno highlight something else, it’s that anything can happen for baseball players. The same 29-year-old star can be, for any number of different reasons, a washed-up or retired 36-year-old. This holds especially true for catchers, baseball’s most physically taxing position.
Posey’s one of just six catchers in baseball history with at least 19 WAA through his age-28 season. Of the others, Johnny Bench, Gary Carter and Mike Piazza are Hall of Famers, Ivan Rodriguez could get in if voters continue to mellow about steroids, and Joe Mauer has a better case than his critics give him credit for.
Posey’s career thus far suggests he’s on rare trajectory. But Giants fans are going to want to hold off on pre-planning their trip to his induction weekend.
Cooperstown chances: 55 percent
Why: Mauer could retire today, and he’d probably get votes. With 1,719 hits and a .313 lifetime batting average over 13 seasons, Mauer has enough to impress at least some voters. He probably needs a few more years and at least 2,000 hits himself, which will come at first base, to secure his plaque. All the same, Mauer’s Hall of Fame case is further along than many people might think.
Posey has further to go than Mauer, with 867 hits and a .309 batting average over eight seasons. If he retired today, he’d have less than the minimum 10 seasons required for Hall of Famers, so his eligibility would be a moot point. He’d be Ross Barnes. Even if Posey retired at the end of the 2018 season after three banner seasons to conclude his career that would leave him with something in the neighborhood of 1,400 hits, which won’t be enough for the vast majority of voters.
All of this isn’t to say that hits and batting average should decide if a player’s a Hall of Famer. They just too often do. There hasn’t been a player who’s retired since 1959 with less than 2,000 hits who’s in the Hall of Fame now. At some point, a candidate like Thurman Munson, Bobby Grich, or Mauer might buck this trend, though if and when they do this, they’ll be exceptions, not precedent-setters.
So Posey likely needs another 1,133 hits or so to satisfy the majority of Hall of Fame voters. Can he do this? He’s averaged 170 hits over the past four seasons. If he can stay healthy and hold to these averages, he’d cross the 2,000 hit barrier near the end of the 2022 season at 35. That seems reasonably doable for Posey, especially if he migrates more and more to first base as catchers generally do.
Of course, health’s a big if for players, catchers in particular. While Posey’s averaged 148 games a season over the past four years, his averages drop substantially if we include his 2011 season which ended after 45 games and inspired a rule change due to a violent collision at home plate with Scott Cousins of the Marlins.
Freak injuries are difficult to predict, but for the sake of argument, let’s say Posey sustains a serious injury every five years. That would mean an average of 128 games and 145 hits per season, if we use his 2011 to 2015 numbers as a gauge. That would put Posey on pace to cross 2,000 hits near the end of 2024 at 37. Again, it’s doable, but we’re also starting to get into the territory where Posey could suddenly quit or play less if his overall production’s lagging.
There’s always the chance Posey could be the next Ted Simmons, one of his closest comparisons through age 28. As mentioned, Posey finished last season with 19.1 Wins Above Average. Simmons had 18.9 WAA through his age-28 season, according to Baseball-Reference.com, as well as a .298 batting average and 1,427 hits. While Munson, Bench, and Carlton Fisk got more attention, Simmons was one of the finest baseball’s finest catchers through 1978.
The remaining 10 seasons of Simmons’ career were a different story, though, with him hitting .268 with 1,045 hits and a cumulative -0.1 WAA. People like baseball researcher Bill Deane talk about Simmons being maligned for his defensive reputation, which might have been much better if sabermetrics was more widely accepted in the 1970s and ‘80s. Still, the lackluster second half of Simmons’ career appears to have cost him more with voters. In fact, Simmons got just 3.7 percent of the Hall of Fame vote in 1994, his only year on the ballot.
Simmons has a fair amount of support for the Hall of Fame in the sabermetric community, with Adam Darwoski including Simmons in his Hall of Stats. Simmons might get in Cooperstown at some point, he might not, though it will take more of a concerted effort from people like Darowski and St. Louis Cardinals fans for his induction to happen.
The best thing that can be said for Posey’s Hall of Fame chances is that if the second half of his career resembles that of Simmons, it’s pretty much a worst-case scenario for him. More than likely, Posey will be able to add to his Hall of Fame case at least a bit more.
Cooperstown Chances examines the Baseball Hall of Fame case of one candidate each week. Series author and 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.