The 2022 Hall of Fame Ballot

By MARK SIMON

With no one elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2021, we can now look ahead to the 2022 voting class.

Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and Curt Schilling all enter their 10th and final year on the Hall of Fame ballot (though Schilling has asked to be taken off the ballot). Whether any of these candidates close the remaining gap of voter support for induction has nothing or little to do with statistics, so we’ll put them aside for now.

Scott Rolen's, Billy Wagner's, and Todd Helton’s candidacies continue to gain momentum and are the names worth watching in the coming years. Rolen’s vote share jumped from 35% in 2020 to 53% in 2021. Wagner’s went from 32% to 46%. Helton’s from 29% to 45%. A player needs to receive 75% of the vote to be elected so each of the three is headed in the right direction but still has a long way to go to reach the magic number.

Alex Rodriguez and David Ortiz lead the class of newcomers on next year's ballot. Similar to Bonds and Clemens, voter feeling on PEDs rather than statistics will be the deciding factor on the vote totals of those players.

Moving past those two, there are a couple of intriguing candidates without any known off-field issues. Shortstop Jimmy Rollins had 2,455 hits and 470 stolen bases during a 17-year career in which he was a three-time All-Star, four-time Gold Glove Award winner and 2007 NL MVP. He’s hurt by a .743 OPS that was below average when considering ballpark factors and the era in which he played.

Nonetheless, Rollins comes up very close to the threshold for election in the Bill James-created stat, Hall of Fame Value, at 493.4. Hall of Fame Value is calculated as Win Shares plus four times his Baseball-Reference Wins Above Replacement total. To learn more about the stat and why 500 is Bill’s Hall of Fame standard, click here.

If you take into account that Rollins was a key player on the Phillies' World Series-winning team in 2008 and that he was a winner of the Roberto Clemente Award (two things not factored into Hall of Fame Value), there’s a better case for him to be receiving votes than you might think.

By the way, a similar sentiment could be shared about Rollins' former teammate, Bobby Abreu, who scores about 100 points higher than Rollins, but who received only 9% of the votes cast in the 2021 election.

First baseman Mark Teixeira hit 409 home runs and won five Gold Gloves and is another candidate on the Hall of Fame borderline. Teixeira falls a bit below Rollins in the pecking order with a Hall of Fame value of 468.4. He’s hurt by being a first baseman, a position at which a player's offensive numbers are typically strong, which brings his value relative to others down a little.

There are plenty of options for Hall of Fame voters, just as there were on the 2021 ballot. Here’s a list of each player likely to appear on the 2022 ballot with a Hall of Fame Value of at least 450.

Highest Hall of Fame Value Score
Among Candidates Likely on 2022 Hall of Fame Ballot

To see the Hall of Fame Value for your favorite player, go to Bill James Online.