MLB: Did Andruw Jones play to be left out of the Hall of Fame?

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If Andruw Jones had retired after 10 seasons, he would be a sure candidate for Cooperstown, but he didn’t. What’s next?


How many times do you need to be great to become immortal?

More than ever, that’s the question that has weighed on my mind this winter as I follow the progress of the 2025 Hall of Fame voting. Really, it’s two questions: How many great seasons does a player need before he’s a member? of the Hall of Fame? And once he’s logged those seasons, can he play his way out of the Hall of Fame?

There is no perfect way to answer the first question, although with the second, I have emphatically settled on “no” as an answer. That is, once a player has had a Hall of Fame-worthy performance, he can’t get out of it 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; Rest of career: six seasons, 4.7 bWAR

Player B: first 10 full seasons: 54.8 bWAR; Rest of career: nine seasons, 5.2 bWAR

Before revealing the names of the players, let’s put the measurements in historical context: they are both hitters. When we compare the 10-year numbers to every 10-year period for any player in history, both numbers rank in the top percentile: Player A is at 99.5; Player B, at 99.4. The average Hall of Famer has a 10-year maximum measurement that falls in the 99.1 percentile range. In other words, in this first step of taking the empirical temperature of these two races, they are both clearly above the line.

Now who are these players?

Player A is Andrew Joneswho is teetering on the brink of an eighth consecutive winter of falling short in the ballots. So far, Jones has a 72.6 percent praise rating, a number that will likely drop when final results are revealed. Last year, Jones’ figure dropped 3 percent once anonymous ballots were included.

Player B is Ichiro Suzukiwho has a solid chance to become the second unanimous selection in history for the Hall of Fame. If that happens, he deserves it: he’s an obvious choice for immortality.

But what I can’t understand is how Jones, in the minds of so many voters, somehow made it out of the Hall of Fame while literally none of them think Ichiro did the same thing.

How does that happen? It’s a fascinating case study in what makes a Hall of Famer.

The arguments in favor of Ichiro are obvious. He surpassed 3,000 hits despite not debuting in the majors until he was 27 years old. During those first 10 seasons, he hit .331 while averaging 224 hits, 38 steals and 105 runs. He won the Gold Glove in all of those 10 seasons.

If Ichiro had resigned at that time, he would already be in the Hall of Fame. Few would question his worth. His days as an impact player were over at that point, but that’s okay. Nobody beats time.

When Jones’ first 10 seasons were completed (not counting his 31-game debut in 1996, although his playoff performance that year is a major part of his Hall resume), he had an aggregate OPS+ of 117. Ichiro in his 10 year mark? Exactly the same. Like Ichiro, Jones won 10 consecutive Gold Gloves.

I would posit this: Just as Ichiro would already be enshrined if he had retired after his first 10 seasons, so would Jones. It would not be an obvious choice and the debate would be hot. But I’m sure it would be inside.

Because? Bottom line: He had already logged enough Hall of Fame-worthy seasons and voters had yet to witness his not-so-pleasant decline. But he had the audacity not to retire in his prime as Sandy Koufax either Jim Brown. Instead, he soldiered on, bouncing from team to team, his once otherworldly athleticism fading and his offensive numbers plummeting.

Among the short list of requirements for possible inclusion in the Hall of Fame is that a player must have participated in at least 10 seasons. However, race numbers tend to be influential, even when recognition of peak value measures has become widespread, as in the JAWS system. Round number milestones for race count totals can mean automatic entry (PED issues aside).

For Jones and players like him, the biggest problem is some sort of situation James Dean/Marlon Brando and one that behavioral scientists might call the difference between the experiencing mind and the remembering mind. We tend to forget the pleasure we experienced with something and remember only our last encounters with it. Because Dean died young, he’s iconic in a way that Brando can’t be because we saw his decline.

Those who watched Jones dominate center field during all those years in Atlanta experienced something special during that time: a truly unique player. But last impressions (and career numbers) tend to dominate in the remembering mind, and we have easier access to that aspect of our memory. In Jones’ case, we remember flashes of who he was at the beginning, but we can’t let go of the player he was at the end.

Heck, we still do it with Babe Ruth! The man was one of the most dominant athletes who ever lived for 20 years, but you can’t read any kind of biography about him that doesn’t focus on his lackluster partial final season with the Boston Braves.

A player’s legacy is not built on his mediocre and bad seasons, but on what he did during his best campaigns. Sure, it takes a body of work: one or two seasons of your career won’t do it. And there is certainly something to be said for durability and sustained excellence: the race-type Adrian Beltre. It’s greatness, no doubt, but greatness comes in different forms.

While career standards and epic statistical milestones are essential to the fabric of baseball history, I’m not sure we give enough credit to the players who largely define an era of the game, not if they didn’t reach some of those final standards. Those players are rare, and recognizing them in the Hall of Fame won’t cause a huge rush of borderline players.

Let’s consider those 10-year statistics again. Jones’ 57.9 bWAR, as mentioned, has a 99.5 percentile rank. To put it another way: Only 0.5 percent of all players, in history, have had a better decade than Jones had in his prime.

There are 96 players who have had a better 10-year stretch than that, at least in bWAR. There are not many if we take into account that the database I work with has 20,783 players. Among that group of Jones’ peers, 77 are already in the Hall of Fame.

Not all of those 77 made it to Cooperstown because they did so much beyond that 10-year peak. Certainly, some did, the senior members like Ruth, Walter Johnson and Willie Mays. Jones would be in the bottom quadrant of this group in non-peak bWAR, but 15 of its members had totals lower than his 5.2.

As a group, these 77 Hall of Famers compiled 75.3 percent of their career value during their 10-year peaks. With few exceptions (the best of the best), those years of excellence are when legacies are built.

If we move past 77, that leaves 19 10-year standouts on the wrong side of some kind of Cooperstown threshold. Let’s start by eliminating the 19th century pitchers, whose bWAR totals are inflated due to the huge differences in the game during those early days. There are six of the 19, which leaves us with 13.

Now, let’s eliminate those who are ineligible because they were banned from baseball. There are two more: Shoeless Joe Jackson and Pete Rose. We have 11 left.

Then there are Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Curt Schillingwho have also not been excluded for performance reasons. We have eight left.

More eliminations: Well, two of them are on the ballot with Jones. one is Alex Rodriguezwhich fits with the previous group of deletions. The other is Chase Utleyand we’ll talk more about it in a moment. We have six left.

Well, five of those remaining six are easy, because they are either active (Max Scherzer, Clayton Kershaw, Mike Trout, Mookie Betts) or not yet eligible (Albert Pujols). All of those players are going to end up in Cooperstown.

So we’re left with one player in Jones’ peer group who isn’t in the Hall: the Depression-era pitcher Wes Ferrell. I would support Ferrell, but that’s not what we’re here for. The point is that rewarding Jones for the decade of excellence he did present isn’t cheapening the Hall, it’s recognizing someone who met most of the same standards as those already there.

Jones will have two more chances after this year, this is Utley’s second year on the ballot. He has even better five- and ten-year measurements than Jones and Ichiro, and his career value is also above the Hall average. Utley isn’t getting in this year, but the growth of his support from about 33 percent in 2024 to 55 percent this time around suggests he’ll be there soon. And it should.

Let’s hope that’s the case for Jones as well. Even if his support doesn’t give an unexpected surge when the voting results are announced on Tuesday, he is getting close enough to be the center of attention in debates for the next year or two. Maybe we can focus those debates on what was, not how it ended.

How many years do you have to be big to be immortal? There will never be a precise answer, but is 10 years enough? They always have been. It’s unclear why it wouldn’t be the same for Andruw Jones.