Beltre, Mauer, Utley among newbies on Hall ballot
-
David Schoenfield, ESPN Senior Writer
Adrian Beltre, Joe Mauer and Chase Utley headline the list of newcomers to the 26-player Baseball Writers’ Association of America Hall of Fame ballot, it was announced Monday.
Players must receive 75% of the vote to gain induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame, with the top holdovers from last year’s vote including Todd Helton (72%), Billy Wagner (68%), Andruw Jones (58%), Gary Sheffield (55%) and Carlos Beltran (46.5%).
It’s the 10th and final year on the ballot for Sheffield, while Wagner is on the ballot for the ninth time.
Alex Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez, both of whom received PED suspensions during their careers, also return to the ballot.
Beltran returns for the second time after his vote total might have been held down in his initial appearance due to his involvement in the 2017 Houston Astros cheating scandal.
Other newcomers are David Wright, Bartolo Colon, Matt Holliday, Jose Bautista, Adrian Gonzalez, Jose Reyes, Victor Martinez, James Shields and Brandon Phillips.
A look at the top newcomers:
• Beltre should be a lock as a first-year candidate after finishing with 3,166 hits, 477 home runs and 93.5 WAR while capturing five Gold Gloves. He ranks third in WAR among third basemen, behind only Mike Schmidt and Eddie Mathews. He had his career season with the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2004, when he led the National League with 48 home runs and finished second in the MVP voting, but his best run came in his 30s with the Texas Rangers from 2011 to 2018, when he had four 30-homer seasons and hit .304.
• Mauer is the first of the trio of catchers from the late 2000s and 2010s with strong credentials to hit the ballot, with Buster Posey and Yadier Molina coming in future years. Mauer has the highest career WAR (55.2) among the three and ranks ninth among all players who played at least half their games at catcher. The eight in front of him are all Hall of Famers, as are the two immediately behind. Mauer won three batting titles, including a remarkable .365 average with the Minnesota Twins in 2009 when he won the MVP Award. No player has hit for that high of an average since. Mauer should be viewed as a solid-to-strong candidate, but concussions forced him to move to first base his final five seasons and, unlike Posey and Molina, he never won a World Series, so he’s unlikely to make it on the first ballot.
• Utley promises to generate a contentious Hall of Fame debate. He was a stat-head favorite as one of the top all-around players in the majors from 2005 to 2010, when he averaged 7.6 WAR per season, and his 64.5 career total ranks 14th among second basemen. His lifetime counting stats are a little thin, however, as he finished with 1,885 hits, 259 home runs and 1,025 RBIs. His WAR total also relies on some extremely positive defensive metrics, even though Utley was never considered an elite defender while active and never won a Gold Glove.
• Wright was on a Hall of Fame path with 46.5 career WAR through his age-30 season, but back injuries shortened his career and he played just 211 games after turning 31. His counting stats aren’t much different from Utley’s with 1,777 hits, 242 home runs and 970 RBIs, but he might not get the 5% of the vote needed to remain on the ballot.
• Colon became a fan favorite late in his career, and he finished with 247 wins and won a Cy Young Award with the Angels in 2005, but his career ERA of 4.12 is a little high for serious consideration.
• Holliday played in three World Series with the Colorado Rockies and St. Louis Cardinals and was MVP runner-up in 2007, when he led the NL in batting, average, RBIs, hits and doubles. He finished with a .299 career average and seven All-Star appearances, but his career numbers are a little short (44.5 WAR, 2,096 hits, 316 home runs) for a corner outfielder.
• Bautista had a nice run from 2010 to 2015 as the game’s top power hitter — he led the AL with 54 home runs in 2010 and 43 in 2011, and his 227 home runs over those six seasons were 28 more than Miguel Cabrera to lead all hitters — but he was late bloomer and didn’t do enough on the front end or back end of his career, and Hall of Fame voters tend to reward longevity over peak value.
• Gonzalez (43.5 WAR) falls into the “Hall of Very Good” category, with just over 2,000 hits, 317 home runs and seven 100-RBI seasons, but the offensive bar is high for first basemen.
Of the holdovers, Helton will likely get elected after coming so close in last year’s vote. Wagner also has a strong chance after improving from 51% to 68%. Sheffield saw a 15% increase last season but will need to make a 20% leap to get in.
Other holdovers are Omar Vizquel, Andy Pettitte, Bobby Abreu, Jimmy Rollins, Mark Buehrle, Francisco Rodriguez and Torii Hunter. After years of electing multiple candidates, the BBWAA has elected just one each of the past two years — Scott Rolen in 2023; David Ortiz in 2022 — and didn’t elect anyone in 2021.
Earlier, the Hall of Fame announced its Contemporary Era Committee ballot, which this year considered managers, executive and umpires. The eight candidates on that ballot are managers Jim Leyland, Lou Piniella, Cito Gaston and Davey Johnson; executives Hank Peters and Bill White (who was also a fine player); and umpires Joe West and Ed Montague.
-
Ryan S. Clark
Many of Mikko Rantanen’s greatest moments have come in a Colorado Avalanche sweater. It’s just that the most defining moment of his career came at their expense.
It wasn’t enough that the Dallas Stars were trailing by two goals. It was also the fact that Rantanen scored a hat trick in a string of four unanswered goals that saw his current team, the host Stars, eliminate his old team, the Avalanche, in a 4-2 win Saturday in Game 7 of the Western Conference quarterfinals at the American Airlines Center.
“Obviously, the feeling was incredible to win a series,” Rantanen said in his postgame media availability. “This series was not exactly what I expected. I expected a seven-game series, even before Game 1. The ups and downs in the series. … Belief was there with the group the whole time. Obviously, I was able to make a pay to get the first one and the crowd started to roll.”
The Stars, attempting to reach the conference finals a third straight time, will advance to the semifinal round in which they will await the winner of series featuring the St. Louis Blues and Winnipeg Jets. That encounter will be decided Sunday in Game 7 in Winnipeg.
Soon, the Stars’ collective focus will shift to another Central Division foe. But for now? The attention before, during, and after the game, was on Rantanen.
Part of what made the Avalanche-Stars series arguably the most intriguing first-round series in either conference was the fact it placed two 100-point teams that are in championship window against each other. But, it also came with several subplots with the notable being the team that traded quite a bit to land Rantanen — with the hope he could win them a Stanley Cup now — needed him to defeat the team that he won a championship with back in 2022.
With one assist through the first four games, there was a discussion about if the Stars could manage to win with a sputtering Rantanen on top of the fact they were already without two of their best players in defenseman Miro Heiskanen and forward Jason Robertson.
Rantanen responded with a three-point performance in Game 5, and a four-point performance in Game 6 only to then have a hand in each goal on Saturday. His first goal came on the power-play with 12:12 remaining in the third period when he found enough space to fire a wrist shot that beat MacKenzie Blackwood.
Then came the game-tying goal and the significance it carried. The Stars went on the power play went Avalanche forward Jack Drury was called for holding. Drury part of the trade package the Carolina Hurricanes used to get Rantanen in late January before they would trade him to the Stars.
Drury’s penalty opened the door for Rantanen to score a game-tying goal that might be one of, if not, his signature salvo. Rantanen skated into the Avalanche zone in a 1-on-3 before he split two players before going around the net for a wrap-around goal that went off the skate of Samuel Girard with 6:14 left.
Three minutes later, the Stars received another power-play opportunity that saw Rantanen along with another former Avalanche forward in Matt Duchene work together to find Wyatt Johnston for the game-winning goal.
In the final minute, the Avalanche pulled Blackwood in the attempt to grab a late goal and force over time. Instead? Stars goaltender Jake Oettinger withstood a barrage that officially ended when Stars forward Tyler Seguin got the puck out of the zone only for Rantanen to skate in on an open net for the hat trick with three seconds left.
“I couldn’t care less who scored for them, I really couldn’t,” Avalanche captain and left winger Gabriel Landeskog said when asked about what it was like to watch Rantanen score a hat trick. “Mikko is one of my best friends and I love him, but I couldn’t care if he scored or if somebody else scored.”
For eight full seasons, Rantanen was part of a homegrown movement that saw the Avalanche go from finishing with what was then the worst record in the salary cap era back in 2016-17 to become a perennial favorite to win the Stanley Cup, which did they did in 2023, while also becoming a model for the need to build through the draft.
Building through stars such as Cale Makar, Nathan MacKinnon, Landeskog and Rantanen allowed the Avalanche to become a success. As did the moves they made to get other key figures like Valeri Nichushkin and Devon Toews.
Like all teams in a championship window, the Avs were facing the prospect of possibly making a difficult decision. They had yet to agree to a new contract with Rantanen, who was a pending unrestricted free agent. Then, came the blockbuster trade that few throughout the league saw coming.
The Avalanche traded Rantanen in a three-team trade that saw them get Martin Necas and Drury along with two draft picks. Rantanen’s time with the Carolina Hurricanes was limited to just two goals and six points in 13 games.
Despite the fact the Hurricanes are also among that cadre of championship contenders, Rantanen struggled to find cohesion in Raleigh. Rather than run the risk of watching leave for nothing in free agency, the Hurricanes put out feelers to a few teams with the Stars being one of them.
A long-time admirer of Rantanen, the Stars packaged two first-round picks, three second-round picks and former prized prospect Logan Stankoven to get Rantanen. They then signed him to an eight-year contract worth $12 million annually.
“It’s two things: It’s where our team’s at, and it’s Mikko Rantanen,” Stars general manager Jim Nill told ESPN back in March.
Rantanen finished the regular season with five goals and 18 points in 20 games prior to the showdown with his former team.
Not only did Rantanen’s hat trick condemn his former team to their second first-round exit since winning the Stanley Cup, but it continued a theme of former Avalanche eliminating their previous employers.
The Avalanche and Stars faced each other in last season’s Western Conference semifinal that saw Duchene, a former Colorado first-round pick, score the game-winning goal.
A year later, it was another former Avalanche first-round pick who delivered the devastating blow.
“It seems pretty fitting,” Johnston said about Rantanen. “Obviously, we want to win for each other and I think that goes a little extra when it’s a guy like that who is such a big part of our team and was there for a long time and everyone knows the trade that went on. It’s so awesome. We’re so happy as a group for him.”
As if Rantanen scoring a hat trick in a four-goal comeback wasn’t enough, there’s also the fact that this is now the ninth consecutive Game 7 that Stars coach Peter DeBoer has won his career.
DeBoer’s nine wins in Game 7s broke a tie with Darryl Sutter for the most in NHL history. It was also DeBoer’s third game 7 wins with the Stars.
“I felt something was going to happen,” DeBoer said. “But I could not have predicted that.”
-
Sports3 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports1 year agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports2 years agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports4 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment2 years agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike
-
Business3 years agoBank of England’s extraordinary response to government policy is almost unthinkable | Ed Conway