We have a new group of Baseball Hall of Famers: Adrian Beltre, Joe Mauer and Todd Helton all passed the 75 percent threshold required by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America to advance to Cooperstown.
Even though Beltre was the only slam-dunk selection in the class, it’s still a fun group, with Mauer and Helton both spending their entire careers with one team and becoming franchise icons for the Minnesota Twins and Rockies from Colorado. Beltre, meanwhile, has aged so wonderfully that he became one of the game’s most popular players during his time with the Texas Rangers, his fourth MLB team.
How and why were they elected? Let’s take a look at each player.
Why Adrian Beltre is a Hall of Famer
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When Beltre became a free agent after the 2009 season, after five seasons with the Seattle Mariners after beginning his career with the Los Angeles Dodgers, he hardly looked like a future Hall of Famer. He had just finished his age-30 season, hitting .265/.304/.379 and missing six weeks after surgery to remove bone spurs from a shoulder and another two weeks after a bad jump left him with a swollen testicle. He had been a good player in Seattle, and had a monster 2004 season when he finished second in MVP voting in Los Angeles, but he wasn’t exactly in high demand after that down year and settled for a one-year contract. with the Boston Red Sox.
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His career changed in Boston, however. He hit .321 with 28 homers and 49 doubles and signed a big contract with Texas, where he would spend his final eight seasons and build his Hall of Fame resume with remarkable production in his 30s. Through age 30, Beltre ranks 91st in WAR among position players (still impressive, although he reached the majors at age 19); from age 31, he ranks 14th. He finished with 3,166 hits, 477 home runs, 1,707 RBIs and five Gold Gloves. He ranks 26th among position players in WAR (93.5), between Roberto Clemente and Al Kaline, and third among third basemen, behind Mike Schmidt and Eddie Mathews.
What happened in your thirties? Here are three reasons Beltre became a Hall of Famer:
1. He left Seattle.
In his five seasons with the Mariners, he hit just .254/.307/.410 at home, while hitting .277/.326/.472 on the road with 40 doubles. “It’s a beautiful stadium,” Beltre said upon returning to Seattle’s Safeco Field for a series in 2010. “But it’s no secret that offensively, when you try to hit in this stadium, it It’s a bit hard for you.”
It wasn’t just about leaving Seattle. Beltre became a better hitter, with help from then-Red Sox manager Dave Magadan, in 2010. Beltre’s strikeout rate with the Mariners was 16.2%; over the rest of his career, although strikeouts increased in the majors, they were only 12.3%. It also became a little less sweater-centric. Until age 30, his OPS+ was 105; after 30 years it was 130.
JOUEUR
VOTES
PCT. (%)
Adrian Beltré
366
95.1
Todd Helton
307
79,7
Joe Mauer
293
76.1
Billy Wagner
284
73,8
Gary Sheffield
246
63,9
Andrew Jones
237
61,6
Carlos Beltrán
220
57.1
Alex Rodriguez
134
34,8
Manny Ramírez
125
32,5
Chase Utley
111
28,8
Omar Vizquel
68
17.7
Bobby Abreu
57
14.8
Jimmy Rollins
57
14.8
Andy Pettitte
52
13.5
But he also went to his personal parks where he thrived. In his last nine seasons with Boston and Texas, he hit .330/.385/.555 at home; on the road he hit .284/.332/.476 (not much different from his road numbers when he was with the Mariners).
2. He remained a solid defensive player.
Beltre already had an elite defensive reputation when he left Seattle, even though he only won two Gold Gloves. “He’s the best I’ve ever seen,” former Mariners teammate Raul Ibanez told the Boston Glove in 2010. “He’s got great instincts at third,” said Terry Francona, then the Red Sox manager. “But he takes more ground balls than anyone I’ve ever seen.”
While many third basemen eventually move to first base – assuming their bat is good enough – or even DH, Beltre stayed at third and added three more Gold Gloves. Baseball-Reference credits Beltre with 216 defensive runs above average in his career, the fifth-highest total at any position (and second only to Brooks Robinson among third basemen). This continued defensive excellence has helped fuel Beltre’s high career WAR total.
3. Sustainability.
Beltre averaged 148 games per season between the ages of 31 and 37, with only a leg injury limiting him to 124 games in his first year at Texas lowering that average. Since reaching the majors at such a young age, he ranks 15th all-time in games played, second in games at third base, and 18th in plate appearances. WAR is a cumulative stat, so just showing up and playing well creates value. Maybe Beltre isn’t really an inner circle guy — certainly, at best, I’d take Schmidt, Mathews, George Brett and probably Chipper Jones above Beltre among third basemen — but he’s a member Hall of Famer, and the vote totals reflect it.
Why Todd Helton is a Hall of Famer
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Helton was a two-way baseball star at Tennessee and once started at quarterback on the football team ahead of a freshman named Peyton Manning. The eighth overall pick in the 1995 draft, Helton reached the majors in 1997, and over his first seven full seasons he hit .340/.434/.620 with an average of 35 homers and 118 RBIs. Along the way, he joined Hall of Famers Lou Gehrig and Chuck Klein as the only players with two seasons with 100 extra-base hits.
Of course, those seasons took place at Coors Field during the height of the steroid era, when many hitters were putting up absurd numbers. At the time, it was difficult to make sense of it all, even for first-generation statistical analysts. Comparing Helton to Sandy Koufax, Baseball Prospectus once wrote: “Both players are very good, among the best in the game, but it is easy to overestimate their quality, because their statistics are extremely distorted.” It would be interesting to ask these people how they rank Todd Helton, because Helton 2000-03 has a lot in common with Koufax 1963-66.”
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While Helton would play 17 seasons and finish with a lifetime batting average of .316, back problems slowed him considerably in the second half of his career, leaving him short of 3,000 hits (2,519) or even 400 circuits (369). His Hall of Fame case has been difficult to parse on several fronts, and he received only 16.5% of the vote in his first year on the ballot, in 2019. In his sixth year, however, he has succeeded. Here’s why:
1. The crowded ballot cleared the spot for Helton.
Timing can be everything for a candidate; it can sometimes depend on who else is on the ballot, especially in your position.
The Hall of Fame election logjam that existed for most of the 2010s cleared up partly in 2019, but it still featured many strong and borderline candidates. In 2019, four players entered: Mariano Rivera, Roy Halladay, Edgar Martinez and Mike Mussina. Helton’s former Rockies teammate, Larry Walker, was still there. Fred McGriff was there during his final season. Curt Schilling, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens were on their seventh ballot. Helton finished only 15th in the votes.
When Walker entered the Hall the next season, it clearly helped: Walker had overcome the stigma of Coors Field, so maybe Helton could too. Then the vote became clearer. In 2021, the BBWAA managed a shutout, but Helton’s vote total jumped to 44.9%. There was a lack of strong new candidates entering the ballot (David Ortiz did so in 2022), and when Schilling, Bonds and Clemens left the ballot after 2022, the ballot was the weakest in decades. Helton’s numbers or value haven’t changed, but the perception of him has changed compared to the other candidates.
2. An appreciation of its heyday.
Coors Field or not, Helton’s performance over five years, from 2000 to 2004, was remarkable: .372, .336, .329, .358, .347. These are similar averages to Tony Gwynn, with a lot more power and walks. With WAR, we can make the appropriate adjustments at Coors Field and Helton still shines. Among first basemen, Helton’s five best seasons total 37.6 WAR, ranking fourth all-time behind Gehrig, Albert Pujols and Jimmie Foxx, and represent a large portion of his career (61.8 total) .
During his career, Helton hit .345 at Coors Field. But he still hit an excellent .287/.386/.469 on the road. And during his dominant five-year stretch, from 2000 to 2004, he hit .314/.418/.556 from altitude, the ninth-highest OPS during those years. Only Bonds, Jason Giambi and Manny Ramirez had a higher road OBP during that stretch, and no one hit more doubles. Factor in the Coors Field penalty that Rockies players face – the brain must re-adapt to pitches that move more on the road – and Helton still emerges as one of the best hitters of his era.
3. A lifetime batting average of .316 looks impressive in 2024.
Yes, voters are paying more attention to analytics than ever before. But the BBWAA bloc still has old-school stat voters who don’t care about a player’s WAR — and a career average of .316 looks more impressive with each passing season. The only player since 1900 with at least 6,000 plate appearances and a higher lifetime average than Helton who is not in the Hall of Fame is Babe Herman. Essentially, young, analytical voters liked Helton’s high peak, and older, less analytical voters couldn’t ignore that .316 average.
Why Joe Mauer is a Hall of Famer
Jason Miller/Getty Images
When the Twins selected Mauer…
2024-01-25 00:41:43
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