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Sizing Up the Hall of Fame Candidacies of the St. Louis Cardinals

On November 9, the 2016 BBWAA Hall of Fame ballot was officially released. The ballot consists of 32 names and includes shoo-ins like Ken Griffey Jr., perpetual candidates like Alan Trammell, and participants like Brad Ausmus. As Cardinals fans surely know by now, there are a number of former Cardinals on the ballot, including four viable candidates whose resumes are within striking distance of current Hall of Fame players—Jim Edmonds, Lee Smith, Larry Walker, and Mark McGwire. These are the kinds of players that, even when they do not make the Hall of Fame, are associated with Hall of Fame candidacies.

But also on the Cooperstown ballot are former Cardinals Troy Glaus, David Eckstein, Mark Grudzielanek, and Randy Winn. Now, none of these four are going to even come close to receiving enough votes to make the Hall of Fame—maybe one of them gets a token vote, but the 75% threshold is a different story. This isn't to knock them: they've all come infinitely closer to making the Hall of Fame than I have, and these four men will arrive only one step short of the Hall of Fame, as many steps short as Barry Bonds will likely fall this year. And while the 2015 St. Louis Cardinals may not have a Ken Griffey Jr. who will glide into the Hall of Fame without an earnest fight to keep him out, they do have several players who will wind up on ballots five years after their retirement. Here is a look at the theoretical Hall of Fame candidacies of the Cardinals.

Yadier Molina: Molina is a unique case among the Cardinals, and may well be a unique case among all baseball players. Although player value metrics take Molina's defense into account, and universally regard Molina as an elite defensive catcher, a commonly held perception is that his impact on his team cannot be properly measured—that he provides a psychological boost for his pitchers, that his ability to shut down opposing baserunners has an effect on minds which goes beyond caught-stealing rates, etc. And we could argue for days about just how good this makes Yadier Molina: Does it make him a little bit better than Wins Above Replacement says he is, or does it make him the most valuable player in the game? The conclusion you draw, in this context, is irrelevant—that baseball writers believe it (or will believe it, five years past his retirement) is what matters.

That said, Bengie Molina made the Hall of Fame ballot. Nobody on the planet believes Bengie Molina is better than Yadier Molina. With most players, you can at least throw in the old "his mother probably believes (Bengie's) the best", but this doesn't even work here! Assuming the Hall of Fame exists when Molina becomes eligible, there's no question Yadi at least makes the ballot. At the moment, Yadier Molina has 30.4 career WAR on Baseball Reference (this is the variant of WAR I will primarily use, since it's the one most often cited in discussions for awards and the Hall of Fame and seemingly would reflect the most accurately on what voters will value). He is presently tied with Frank Lary and Sherm Lollar for 787th in career WAR, neither of whom are in the Hall of Fame. If he matches his future Baseball Prospectus WARP projections (projections which are notoriously conservative, mind you) through his age 39 season, he will finish with 34.1 WAR, which ties him with the current WAR of...John Lackey. The intangible factors, however, will almost certainly play a role in his Hall of Fame candidacy. Whether Molina gets in or not remains to be seen, but given increasing respect for catchers for their overall value, I wouldn't count him out.

Jhonny Peralta: Peralta, 33, seems like a long shot at best. He is at 32 WAR, more than Molina but lacking a strong argument that he transcends WAR any more than anyone else. If he can duplicate his 2015 WAR in the remaining two years of his contract (aging curves and all that, but it is difficult to imagine him being worse than he was in the second half of last season), he will conclude his age-35 season at 35.6 WAR, a bit below Troy Glaus, who I said earlier would need a minor miracle to receive a Hall of Fame vote. However, there are 12 candidates on this year's ballot with fewer career WAR than Glaus. Given that Peralta has been suspended for PEDs and given that the greatest hitter and pitcher post-World War II are lingering in ballot purgatory with less ironclad proof than an actual, real-life suspension, it's almost impossible for Peralta to make the Hall of Fame. But as weird as his career trajectory has been, it wouldn't shock me if he made an interesting run at it.

Matt Carpenter: Seemingly, it's way too early to speculate on Matt Carpenter's candidacy. However, the deceptively old Carpenter (he turns 30 on Thanksgiving) has played so well in the last three seasons (and he wasn't exactly bad in 2012, either) that he makes for an interesting discussion. With that said, he has a long way to go in a relatively short period of time. His 14.1 WAR before the age of 30 would rank 5th lowest among Hall of Fame position players. The four behind him include Jackie Robinson, whose MLB career began artificially late and was a player whose career WAR doesn't even come close to defining his importance; Sam Rice, who played until he was 44; Tommy McCarthy, who is almost uniformly considered the weakest Hall of Famer; and Bill Terry, a late bloomer who gives some hope to Matt Carpenter's Hall of Fame candidacy, though he is certainly the exception to the rule. The 10th best career WAR of the current ballot is Edgar Martinez, with 68.3; in order to reach that threshold, which would barely put him on the ballot of a big-Hall, WAR-based voter, Carpenter would need an age-30 and beyond which was had by fourteen position players in MLB history. It's not impossible, but it's not likely.

Matt Holliday: Holliday turns 36 this offseason and is probably nearly finished adding to his Hall of Fame candidacy. Although he only has one Top-10 MVP finish (in 2007, as a Colorado Rockie, when they made the World Series, in a season I'm not convinced actually happened even though I totally saw it happen), the metronomic consistency of his career doesn't hurt. It just doesn't necessarily help as much as one could argue it should. But on straight WAR, Holliday's in the vicinity of deserved candidacy. His 44.1 WAR puts him closest on the current ballot to Nomar Garciaparra, 44.2, who received 5.5% of the vote last year. Just a shade below him on the career WAR leaderboard is Travis Jackson, Hall of Famer, at 44.0. If his 4.8 projected WARP for the next four years (given his age and recent injuries, this is pretty optimistic by Baseball Prospectus standards) translates to Baseball Reference WAR, his career 48.8 WAR put him in a tie with another Hall of Famer, Bob Lemon. In short, Matt Holliday will probably crack the ballot but looking at some of the names ahead of him in career WAR among current players (Mark Teixeira, David Wright, among others), election is unlikely.

Jason Heyward: I know, I know, he's not currently a Cardinal (anymore/yet). And Heyward, who turned 26 in August, does not have nearly a deep enough resume to merit Hall of Fame discussion. But through his age-25 season (note: the age of one's season is defined as their age on June 30), Heyward ranks 31st among position players in WAR. Of the 30 ranked above him, 21 are in the Hall of Fame. Another will be very soon (Griffey). Three are active (Alex Rodriguez, Mike Trout—who still has two more seasons to add to his under-25 total, Albert Pujols). Another is not yet eligible (Andruw Jones). Another has clear Hall of Fame numbers but as a result of steroid speculation, is on the outside looking in (Barry Bonds). Only three other players on the list are not in the Hall of Fame—Cedar Cedeno, Vada Pinson, and Sherry Magee. And for what it's worth, the next two guys below Heyward are also in the Hall of Fame—Roberto Alomar and Joe Medwick. Heyward, wherever he signs this offseason, is well on his way if he keeps up his current pace.

Adam Wainwright: The 34 year-old Wainwright is part of an era in which the way the Hall perceives starting pitchers is going to have to change. 300 wins can no longer be a benchmark (never mind that it never should have been in the first place). His 36.6 WAR could best be compared to his pitching contemporaries—it is 0.7 WAR better than Josh Beckett, 0.2 WAR lower than the year-younger Jered Weaver, and 0.9 WAR better than Freddy Garcia, who is five years older but whose Hall of Fame candidacy I had never even considered in jest until right now. I wouldn't think any of these three in Waino's company get in, and I doubt Wainwright himself gets in, but it's worth mentioning that he was not a starting pitcher until his age-26 season and did miss nearly two full seasons in the meantime. WARP is interestingly optimistic in Wainwright's aging curve, giving him 0.6 wins in his age 42 season of 2024 (his next nine seasons follow a predictable downward slope with the bizarre exception of 2020, where he is projected for negative WARP). If he manages to duplicate that win total, add 10.7 WAR, for a grand total of 47.3 WAR (and that's not even counting his perhaps competent 2025, not to mention his future glory as a robot in a not-too-distant dystopia in which he is forced to pitch BP to the attackers from The Running Man, or something). At 47.3 WAR, he's tied with Hoyt Wilhelm, a Hall of Fame reliever. He already surpasses the career WAR of Hall of Fame candidate Mike Hampton, and like Holliday, I think he's likely to make the ballot, but unlikely to make the Hall itself.

John Lackey: Lackey is 37 and just pitched one of the best seasons of his career. But unlike Wainwright, who has enough career left that he could, in some level of the multiverse, earn his way into the Hall of Fame, John Lackey is probably out of time. Even if he signs a three-year deal somewhere and, over each season, duplicates his 2015 in which he received a Cy Young vote, he would finish with 51.2 WAR, which would tie him with Vada Pinson, a very good player and former Cardinal that many of you have certainly heard of but, as was specifically mentioned earlier in comparing him to Jason Heyward, is not in the Hall of Fame. And this is the end result of John Lackey's absolute best-case, 99th percentile turn of events. A nice career, but not one in which John Lackey will wind up in Cooperstown.

As for the younger generation of St. Louis Cardinals—Michael Wacha, Carlos Martinez, Trevor Rosenthal, Randal Grichuk, Stephen Piscotty, Kolten Wong, among many others—only time will tell. Anything can happen. And if none of these players becomes the next Greg Maddux or Ken Griffey Jr., perhaps they can at least have the honor of becoming the next Mike Hampton or Mark Grudzielanek.