How many times do you need to be great to become immortal?
More than ever before, that's the question that has weighed on my mind this winter as I follow the progress of the 2025 Hall of Fame voting. Actually, it's two questions: How many great seasons does a player need to put up before he's a Hall of Famer? And once he has recorded those seasons, can he then play his way out of the Hall?
There is no perfect way to answer the first question, though with the second question, I've emphatically landed on "no" as the answer. That is, once a player has put up a Hall of Fame performance, he can't then un-Hall himself on the field.
Let's consider the career patterns of two players on the current HOF ballot:
Player A: First 10 full seasons: 57.9 bWAR; Remainder of career: Six seasons, 4.7 bWAR
Player B: First 10 full seasons: 54.8 bWAR; Remainder of career: Nine seasons, 5.2 bWAR
Before we reveal the players, let's put the measurements in some historical context: Both players are hitters. When you compare the 10-year numbers to every 10-year chunk of any player in history, those figures both land in the top percentile -- Player A is at 99.5; Player B at 99.4. The median Hall of Famer has a peak 10-year measurement that slots in with a percentile rank of 99.1. In other words, in this first step of taking the empirical temperature of these two careers, both are clearly above the line.
Now, who are the players?
Player A is Andruw Jones, who is teetering on the brink of an eighth straight winter of falling short on the balloting. As of now, he clocks in at 72.6%, a figure that is likely to fall when final results are revealed. Last year, Jones' number dropped about 3% once anonymous ballots were folded in.
Player B is Ichiro Suzuki, who stands a solid chance to become the second-ever unanimous Hall selection. If that happens, it's deserved -- he's a no-brainer Hall pick.
But what I can't understand is how Jones, in the minds of so many voters, has somehow played himself out of the Hall while literally none of them think that Ichiro did the same thing.
How does that happen? It's a fascinating case study in what makes a Hall of Famer.