'Cooperstown Chances' examines the Baseball Hall of Fame case of one candidate each week. This week: Mets RHP Bartolo Colon.
Who he is: In some alternate reality, 2005 is only the beginning for Bartolo Colon. In this universe, Colon parlays a 21-win Cy Young season into a late career renaissance that gets him close to 300 wins and the Hall of Fame. There is no series of injuries that costs him most of five seasons and maybe 60 wins if we look at his averages the rest of his career. Colon doesn’t ever have to emerge from the scrap heap, pitch effectively into his 40s, and become a lovable caricature. That’s part of Colon’s charm, granted, but it’s also a consolation prize for what might have been.
Baseball history is filled with players like Colon, ones who might have been Hall of Famers without a significant injury or if they’d played in eras more conducive to their skill sets or if something else hadn’t gone wrong for them. They’re the Nomar Garciaparras, Jim Wynns and Dwight Goodens of baseball, and if the Hall of Fame dealt more in hypotheticals, they might have a shot at enshrinement. The best thing that can be said for Colon is that he hasn’t fully joined this group yet. He’s still playing and can still add to his Hall of Fame bid.
Colon will turn 43 next spring. His chances for Cooperstown hinge on how much longer he remains serviceable. At this point, he’s given no indication he’ll retire. If he doesn’t pitch for the New York Mets next season, he could be in a starting rotation somewhere else.
Colon’s coming off a 14-13 season with a 4.16 ERA, -0.6 Wins Above Average, and 194.2 innings. According to Baseball-Reference.com’s Play Index tool, seven pitchers since 1980 have logged at least 180 innings in their age 43 season or beyond: Phil Niekro, who did it five times; Jamie Moyer, who did it three times; Charlie Hough and Gaylord Perry, who each did it twice; and Tommy John, Randy Johnson, and Nolan Ryan, who each did it once.
So the odds are slim Colon can build a statistical case for the Hall of Fame, and that doesn’t even factor in how his 2012 suspension for performance enhancing drugs will certianly cost him with voters. But it’s not totally inconceivable Colon could make a run at Cooperstown. Niekro was 240-216 on his 43rd birthday in 1982, going on to win 78 more games and pitch until he was 48. Ryan, Perry and Johnson were short of 300 wins as well when they turned 43.
Colon sits at 218-154 with a 3.97 ERA currently and doesn’t have sabermetric stats or a narrative that can bolster his underwhelming traditional numbers. He looked a little like Ralph Branca as the last pitcher in the 2015 World Series while the Kansas City Royals put a decisive end to things. That Addison Reed technically got charged for the three runs that scored when Colon surrendered a Lorenzo Cain double and made the score 7-2 seems somewhat insignificant. Colon looked as forlorn as the rest of the Mets.
But if Colon keeps logging close to 200 innings and 12-14 wins annually for at least a few more years, his Hall of Fame case could get interesting.
Cooperstown chances: 10 percent
Why: So much for the Hall of Fame still depends on traditional stats. This calculus has of course changed dramatically with candidates from the Steroid Era and the BBWAA shunning Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and Rafael Palmeiro among others. Still, there’s nothing to stop other committees within the Hall of Fame from eventually enshrining them all. There’ve been murmurs of sympathy, too, within the baseball establishment for candidates like Clemens. Colon was never Clemens on his best day, but if he keeps winning, he has a shot.
Again, it’s a long, long shot, and one would be foolish to bet on Colon’s enshrinement, as entertaining as that induction ceremony might be. Still, don’t count it out entirely. Crazier things have happened in baseball history.
Regardless of if Colon gets in Cooperstown, though, he might have been the closest thing to a Hall of Famer in the 2015 World Series. While both teams featured several good young players, this Fall Classic could go down as the first one in baseball history without any future Hall of Fame players on either side. It will depend on the health of players like David Wright, Matt Harvey or Johnny Cueto for the Mets and Royals to change this.
Ignoring the past 20 years to allow for active and recently retired players to become eligible, every World Series between 1903 and 1995 featured at least one future Hall of Famer (including managers). This makes sense. Bill James wrote in his 1994 book The Politics of Glory that historically, Hall of Famers have accounted for about 10 percent of at-bats. Even assuming that just two percent of players are destined for Cooperstown, that would still mean at least one future inductee out of the 50 players on rosters every World Series. Generally, there have been more Hall of Famers in most Fall Classics, which also stands to reason: The best teams have deeper wells of talent.
Paul Swydan noted for Fangraphs in January 2014 that nearly all World Series winners will have a Hall of Famer on their roster. For all world champs between 1903 and 1996, Swydan found in his research, only the 1981 Los Angeles Dodgers and 1984 Detroit Tigers don’t have a Hall of Fame player, at least not yet. The Veterans Committee could honor Steve Garvey, Jack Morris, Alan Trammell and Lou Whitaker among others at some point. But it’s hard to see a Hall of Famer among the champion Royals. If one exists, he hasn’t made his case yet.
This doesn’t mean that players like Colon and many others who appeared in the recent World Series aren’t worth celebrating. Maybe the Bartolo Colons of baseball aren’t Hall of Famers, but they belong somewhere in the sport’s lore.
'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 .