Hardball Times projects five players to be inducted into the Baseball HOF

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Although the numbers below can and will change, as of this writing, the model forecasts that five players—the biggest class since the very first one in 1936—will be elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame: Jeff Bagwell, Tim Raines, Iván Rodríguez, Trevor Hoffman and Vladimir Guerrero. Almost as notably, Edgar Martínez, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens will see significant (~20-point) jumps from their 2016 support, putting them in line for eventual election. Meanwhile, Curt Schilling’s support will slip noticeably, and Lee Smith will drop off the ballot in his 15th year of eligibility. Although Jorge Posada will be a close call, the model currently does not expect any serious candidates to fall beneath the five percent support threshold.

Rodríguez correlates pretty well with Bonds and Clemens, but there’s another candidate from Hall of Fame elections past who’s an even better match. Like Rodríguez, Mike Piazza was a catcher well above his position’s standards for enshrinement but dogged by the shadow of PED accusations; it’s little surprise that his and Rodríguez’s supporters strongly overlap. Rather than settle for a less robust correlation, I opted to treat Rodríguez as if he were simply Piazza reincarnated on the ballot; his -8.5 percent adjustment is what Piazza’s would have been had he not been elected last year.

Guerrero is this year’s trickiest call. Not only is he the player closest to the 75 percent threshold for induction, but he isn’t a clear statistical doppelganger for any other candidate on the ballot. His strongest correlation is with Hoffman and his old-school supporters, but it’s not as dramatic as the other rookies’: 81 percent of Hoffman voters so far have opted for Guerrero, but 67 percent of non-Hoffman voters have too. That currently calculates out to a slender 1.2-point gain for Guerrero on private ballots, but there’s a large margin of error. For the candidate over whom there is the most suspense this year, that’s not ideal.

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