We at Eye On Baseball are in the midst of breaking down the cases for each candidate on the BBWAA Hall of Fame ballot for 2015. We present the pros and cons as they relate to existing Hall of Fame standards and then wager a guess as to whether the candidate in question makes it in this time by earning the necessary 75 percent of votes. Up now is Gary Sheffield ... [Note: For previous players profiled, scroll to the bottom for all the links]
Remember when getting to 500 home runs was an automatic as far as getting players into the Baseball Hall of Fame? Gary Sheffield has 509 career home runs, and it looks like he might fall off the ballot in his first try.
The homers aren't the only measuring stick where Sheffield seems to fit the bill, either. In a career that spanned parts of 22 seasons, the bat-wagging Sheffield compiled 2,689 hits (66th all time), 467 doubles (89th), 509 homers (25th), 1,676 RBI (26th), 1,636 runs (38th) and even 253 stolen bases. He walked 1,475 times against 1,171 strikeouts in a time period where many batters were striking out upwards of 100 times more than they walked in a season.
The rate stats measure up, too. Sheffield hit .292/.393/.514 (140 OPS+). He hit over .300 nine times and regularly ranked among the league leaders in on-base percentage. He ranks 88th in career OBP and 74th in slugging. His .907 OPS is 58th in MLB history.
Baseball-reference.com has a fun tool (well, among many fun tools) in which it has similarity scores. That is, finding the players who are most statistically similar to each other. Sheffield's top 10 matches: Chipper Jones, Mel Ott, Reggie Jackson, Ken Griffey Jr., Fred McGriff, Mickey Mantle, Billy Williams, Frank Robinson, Frank Thomas and Al Kaline. Decent company.
A nine-time All-Star, Sheffield has a World Series ring (1997 Marlins) and finished in the top three of MVP voting three times.
All of this screams Hall of Famer. So why is Sheffield flirting with being five percented and in danger of falling off the ballot in his first try (he's tracking at 7.55 percent, but that could easily sag below five)? It's two-fold.
1. Sheffield was connected to PEDs via the Mitchell Report and has also been mentioned as having been applied with "the cream" (a la Barry Bonds) in 2001. Sheffield has denied that he had any knowledge of what the cream was and said his numbers didn't change after having used it, but any connection seems to be a scarlet letter among some of the voters and some fans alike.
2. Generally speaking, the part of the voting bloc that tends to be open to letting those with PED ties into the Hall is of the "new school" mindset. That group also heavily leans on all-around game and holds less tightly to career benchmarks in terms of counting stats. Sheffield's defense crushed him in WAR and it gets him to being below average compared to Hall of Fame right fielders in both career and peak measures, per JAWS. He ranks below Larry Walker, Dwight Evans, Reggie Smith, Ichiro Suzuki, Bobby Abreu and Bobby Bonds, among others.
Taking those two points in addition to the very crowded ballot and we have an answer as to why 509 homers doesn't seem to mean much for Sheffield. Even those who believe he should be in might rank him 15th or 16th on this ballot. With a 10-vote maximum, it's easy to see why Sheffield is getting so few votes.
As an unabashed "Big Hall" guy who wouldn't "punish" anyone without a league-mandated suspension for PEDs, I believe Sheffield is an obvious Hall of Famer. In addition to all the stats above, Sheff even has the fear factor. That is, remember when he stepped into the batter's box. Opposing teams got a bit weak in the knees because he was such a stud. It might sound silly, but it seems to me that was the basis of Jim Rice's election to the Hall. Some people like to say that you should be able to right away identify Hall of Famers based on name recognition and, absent the PED issue, I believe Sheffield long passed this test.
There's also this: I used baseball-reference.com's play index to see how many players ever topped 2,500 hits, 1,600 RBI, 1,600 runs and 500 homers. Cherry-picked and arbitrary numbers catered to Sheffield, sure, but I was curious. There were 13 players: Barry Bonds, Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, Alex Rodriguez, Ken Griffey Jr., Frank Robinson, Rafael Palmeiro, Jimmie Foxx, Ted Williams, Mel Ott, Eddie Murray and Sheffield. Again, decent company.
If nothing else, it's pretty remarkable that Sheffield could possibly fall off the ballot on his first shot at Cooperstown. He was one of the greatest right-handed hitters in baseball history.
More Hall of Fame candidates: Craig Biggio | Mike Piazza | Curt Schilling | John Smoltz | Larry Walker | One and dones | Jeff Bagwell | Tim Raines | Roger Clemens | Barry Bonds | Lee Smith | Edgar Martinez | Alan Trammell | Mike Mussina | Jeff Kent | Fred McGriff | Mark McGwire | Don Mattingly | Sammy Sosa
