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Not yet a third of the votes have been made public. The announcement will be made on January 24.
With 114 ballots revealed/~28.9% known:
Rolen – 80.7%
Helton – 77.2%
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Jones – 70.2%
Wagner – 70.2%
Sheffield – 64.9%
Beltrán – 55.3%
Kent – 49.1%
A-Rod – 46.5%
Ramírez – 43.0%
Abreu – 21.1%
Pettitte – 19.3%
Buehrle – 12.3%
Rollins – 12.3%
Vizquel – 8.8%
K-Rod – 7.0%— Ryan Thibodaux (@NotMrTibbs) January 3, 2023
75% is the magic number, correct? I’ll see what the boys from Jasper have to say tonight. Jasper, Indiana is Rolen’s home town.
r/Esteemed Rat
You’ve got to think Rolen is in decent shape. No one else looks like they have a chance to get in this year. Would be fun for Scott to go in the year before Beltre.
If I’m reading this right, Rolen’s going to get a HOF plaque. That’s good. I think Helton should get one too, although Matt Carpenter may disagree. Sneaky tricks at 1B and all…
Yes, 75% is required for induction. Remember this is only about 29% of the vote, so nothing is assured at this time, but as of now, Rolen is above the line and in the lead.
Definitely hope rolen gets in this year. Helton I don’t know if he should but he was a really great hitter.
Looking up heltons numbers he probably deserves it. His back injury is most likely the reason for him not getting 3000 hits. For a while he was up in rarified air with Ruth, Cobb, and Gehrig I think far as homers, rbis, average and something else I believe but his career average took a tumble at the end. He also seemed to hit well away from Coors field as well.
Helton was no joke with the glove too, Willie. I don’t guess it matters too much anymore, but I also give him a point or two for playing his entire 17 year career with the Rockies. I think Molina will be helped by the same principle. At any rate, I view Helton as the best hitter the Rockies ever had and they’ve had quite a few guys that could hit over the years.
Yeah, he sure was, Bling. Nado flashes a bit more razzle-dazzle over there, but at this juncture I genuinely think I was more comfortable when the baseball was hit to Mr. Rolen at 3B. No kidding.
Walker was really good, but the fact that he played the first 6 years of his career in his native country tipped the scale to Helton for me.
Seeing Beltran’s name on the list of candidates brings back a lot of memories. Everyone remembers the final out of the ’06 NLCS. However, I’ll never forget the missle show that Beltran and Pujols featured in the ’04 NLCS. Talk about two heavyweights trading blow for blow. Pujols/OPS 1.563…Beltran/OPS 1.521. They were both something else in that 7 game series.
I recall that series as well…that was a great series. I was in college and hanging on every pitch, just about. That 2004 team was a Carpenter injury away from probably beating Boston in the World Series. Pretty sure they’d have taken game 1 and all the momentum from the Red Sox.
Yeah, it’s a shame. That ’04 team dominated the NL throughout the regular season. Edgar Renteria was my favorite Redbird at the time and then he defects to another team for ’05. The Red Sox…Haha!
Arenado is a bit more nimble than Rolen around the hot corner. In watching him quite lot with the Rockies and now as a Redbird, he is a bit better defensively than Rolen. But you cannot go wrong with either one.
Rolen is built a bit like my avatar player, Ken Boyer. Both big husky dudes. Back in the day they said as good as Ken was defensively, his brother was even better. Some said Clete was better than Brooks Robinson even.
Helton was also really good, both offensively and defensively. There was a time where he and Pujols were about even. Then Todd had the back issues and eventually Albert had the foot problems and both were compromised.
I am good with both Rolen and Helton getting in, if that comes to pass.
Helton was really good and I feel he’s a HOF’er, but I don’t think I’d place him in the same category as Albert Pujols. Of course, there are many great hitters that I wouldn’t mention in the same grouping with Albert. I agree than Nado is not only more nimble, but can probably complete more seemingly impossible plays for an out than Rolen could. He seems inhuman at times. However, at this juncture, for some reason I feel that Rolen was less likely to mispaly an easy out or make an error in judgement. Rolen played really smart both at 3B and on the basepaths. In any case, as you pointed out, you can’t go wrong with either player at 3B.
Both Rolen and Arenado are HOF caliber but I think I would choose Rolen over Arenado. He seemed to be the more steady player to me. Arenado can make the more spectacular play but sometimes muff the easy play and can also be very hot and cold with the bat. Rolen was consistently very good.
I wasn’t overwhelmed by Aranado’s performance vs top shelf competition in the WC series. Hall of Famers don’t get pancaked by the tough guys, they are the tough guys.
Especially in the disastrous visitor half of the 9th in the opening game. That ground ball that skipped under his glove and found it’s way into LF led to 2 more runs. It should have been the 2nd out. Without the error in judgement, the out would have negated both the run scoring on that play and Schwarber’s SF in the ensuing AB.
I looked up Baseball Reference’s dWAR statistic and put a calculation together ranking a few third baseman. Based on that Arenado is right there with Brooks Robinson in defensive value. Clete Boyer was indeed fabulous as well.
For the comparison, I took the dWAR number and divided it by games played. The numbers are below, with the decimal point moved over a couple of places to make it more understandable:
Arenado 1.358
B Robinson 1.350
CBoyer 1.258
Rolen 1.040Numbers about what I expect. The problem with numbers like this, they are determined by what people put in. Arenado is a great third baseman but from the eye test as I’ve gotten to watch him and rolen, it favors rolen in my eyes. I think arenado is capable of more wow stuff but the basic plays favor rolen. Rolen had natural instincts far as knowing when to come in when to step back and when to stay pat, and I never saw him hardly ever miss a routine play. I’ve seen arenado miss quite a few. Now some would call it a tie but in my eyes if you are a great fielder, you should almost always make the easy play. It should be like 99 percent. Also errors are called different now. There can be time a balls right there for an easy field and they don’t give the error cause I guess it was hit so hard. Used to be the old adage of if you got leather or was in position to get leather on a ball and didn’t make the play, you got an error. That was still true back in rolens day for the most part. Now not so much and they value plays where a player has a lower percentage of making the play higher than they discount with errors or seems to be. I’m just not of that mind set. Both are and were great though
The routine and great plays should be baked into the numbers, but there is always room for personal judgement. From what I have seen, Arenado is the best third baseman I have ever witnessed. But I saw him a lot out here when he was a Rockie as well.
The two things about Scott that bothered me were that he was a little fragile. For being a big, strong guy he was a bit injury prone. And second, I did not like they way things were when he was dealt away – that spat with LaRussa and all. I think Tony was more to blame for that than Rolen, but neither one did themselves any favors in the way they carried on their little feud.
Having said that. Scott was my favorite Cardinal during his time here, and is a sure fire Hall of Famer in my opinion. I was disappointed in the way things were at the end though.
One other comment about those stats – Scott’s numbers are for a full career, whereas Nolan is still playing. As he ages I expect Arenado’s metrics will come down some, as he loses a bit of range.
Willie…You’re not kidding about the large increase in what the official scorers will tolerate before judging a bad fielding play to be an E. At times it almost seems like a defensive player has to literally kick the baseball with both feet prior to be charged with an E. I’d have to guess that pitchers must sometimes feel like paying a visit to the scorer’s booth between innings and having some of these guys explain why they thought a relatively routine play was judged to be a base hit.
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