The good news for Carlos Beltran is that if history is any guide the Texas Rangers slugger has a fairly good shot at the Baseball Hall of Fame, at least at some point down the road.
The 39-year-old has 70.1 Wins Above Replacement to go with 419 home runs and a .281 batting average. Of the 38 position players in baseball history retired at least five years with between 65 and 74.9 WAR, 26 of them are in the Hall of Fame. Good cases could be made for many of the dozen players who aren’t, such as Bobby Grich, Alan Trammell, and Dwight Evans.
There’s a caveat for Beltran, though. Few of the position players in his class of WAR were slamdunk Hall of Famers. On average, each of the 38 men spent at least five years on the ballot for Cooperstown for the Baseball Writers Association of America. Five of the men were one-and-done candidates, meaning they appeared just once on the ballot and received less than 5 percent of the vote.
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The players who got in relatively quickly to the Hall of Fame with the writers, for the most part, hit antiquated statistical milestones such as 3,000 hits or 500 home runs, or they had images that suggested more value than they had sabermetrically. That’s not Beltran, who’s built much of his Hall of Fame case around consistency and longevity.
Beltran supporters can be encouraged with his Hall of Fame chances. They just will probably need to be patient.
Cooperstown chances: 50 percent
Why: Best case, Beltran could be the next Duke Snider, who rates fairly similarly by a number of different sabermetric measures: JAWS, with 57.2 for Beltran and 58.2 for Snider; Hall Rating, with 131 for Beltran and 130 for Snider; and WAR, with 70.1 for Beltran and 66.5 for Snider. Expect a lot to be made about the similarities between Beltran and Snider, particularly as Beltran becomes eligible for Cooperstown five or six years from now depending on how much longer he plays.
The thing to know about Snider is that the Duke was no easy selection for Cooperstown. Hampered by an injured knee in the second half of his career, the Brooklyn Dodgers great declined preciptously and finished well off the mark of contemporaries Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle. Snider debuted with just 17 percent of the BBWAA vote for Cooperstown in 1970 and needed 11 years on the writers’ ballot to achieve the necessary 75 percent. It’s a wonder he even made it in that amount of time.
Beltran doesn’t have Snider’s image, though. No one ever wrote songs about Willie, Mickey, and the Beltran, after all.
At his peak in the early 1950s, Snider was arguably the best offensive player in baseball. That’s never been Beltran, who had times he might have been one of the five or 10 best position players in the game, but was never in a class all his own. That shouldn’t be a standard for the Hall of Fame, as numerous inductees could never claim it, but it could still work against Beltran. Cooperstown voters are unforgiving to players who are simply very good for a lot of years.
The name to fear for Beltran’s supporters could be Dwight Evans. Similarly underrated, Evans lasted just three years on the writers ballot and peaked at 10.4 percent of the vote in 1998. The longtime Boston Red Sox right fielder has had baseball luminaries like Bill James step up to make his Hall of Fame case in recent years, but, for whatever reason, nothing much seems to be doing with his candidacy. He’ll be eligible again in a year for Cooperstown with the Modern Era Committee, which could have a very deep ballot.
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Will Beltran be the next Dwight Evans for Hall of Fame candidates? The two are close in WAR, JAWS, and Hall Rating, with Beltran enjoying a slight edge in all three. The two players share fairly similar narratives, as solid, unsung contributors to many winning teams. They even share some of the same deficiencies, ranking as two of the best defensive outfielders in baseball in their early seasons before declining steeply in their 30s. The key differentiator could be that Beltran played in an offensive era that inflated his peak stats somewhat. This should help him a little with voters.
Hall of Fame voters have also evolved a bit in the past 20 years. If Evans debuted on the Cooperstown ballot today, he’d probably do a bit better. That said, it’d still be hard to see Evans making a run at enshrinement with the writers. That 75 percent remains one of the most difficult numbers in all of sports. Some things don’t change that much and never have in the 80-year history of Hall of Fame voting. That number’s always been tough.
Beltran could also be the next Larry Walker, the Colorado Rockies legend and former National League MVP who at last check was struggling to stay above 10 percent in the writers’ vote for Cooperstown. Walker actually rates far above Beltran by Hall Rating and is roughly comparable by JAWS, though if he gets in the Hall of Fame, it seems likely to come via committee. Former Rockies seem to fall into their own special class of candidates.
The best thing Beltran could do for his candidacy is keep playing as long as possible, as long as it takes him to get the 390 hits he needs for 3,000. His sabermetric value would drop. But he’d be automatic for Cooperstown.
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