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We have a new group of Baseball Hall of Famers: Adrian Beltre, Joe Mauer and Todd Helton all exceeded the 75% threshold required from the Baseball Writers’ Association of America to gain entry to Cooperstown.

While Beltre was the only slam-dunk selection of the class, it’s still a fun group, with Mauer and Helton both spending their entire career with one team and becoming franchise icons for the Minnesota Twins and Colorado Rockies. Beltre, meanwhile, aged so wonderfully that he became one of the most popular players in the game during his time with the Texas Rangers, his fourth MLB team.

How and why did they get elected? Let’s take a look at each player.


Why Adrian Beltre is a Hall of Famer

When Beltre became a free agent after the 2009 season, following five seasons with the Seattle Mariners after starting his career with the Los Angeles Dodgers, he hardly looked like a future Hall of Famer. He had just finished his age-30 season, hitting .265/.304/.379 and missing six weeks after surgery to remove bone spurs in a shoulder and another two weeks after a bad hop left him with a swollen testicle. He had been a good player in Seattle, and he had enjoyed a monster 2004 season when he finished second in MVP voting in L.A., but he wasn’t exactly in high demand coming off that rough walk year and settled for a one-year contract with the Boston Red Sox.

His career turned around in Boston, however. He hit .321 with 28 home runs and 49 doubles and signed a big deal with Texas, where he would spend his final eight seasons and build his Hall of Fame résumé through a remarkable run of production in his 30s. Through age 30, Beltre ranks 91st in WAR among position players (still impressive, although he did reach the majors at age 19); from age 31 onward, he ranks 14th. He finished with 3,166 hits, 477 home runs, 1,707 RBIs and five Gold Gloves. He ranks 26th among position players in WAR (93.5), between Roberto Clemente and Al Kaline, and third among third basemen, behind Mike Schmidt and Eddie Mathews.

What happened in his 30s? Here are three reasons Beltre turned into a Hall of Famer:

1. He left Seattle.

In his five seasons with the Mariners, he hit just .254/.307/.410 at home, while hitting .277/.326/.472 on the road with 40 more doubles. “It’s a beautiful ballpark,” Beltre said when he returned to Seattle’s Safeco Field for a series in 2010. “But it’s no secret that offensively when you try and hit in this ballpark, it’s a little tough on you.”

It wasn’t just leaving Seattle. Beltre did become a better hitter, with help from then-Red Sox hitting coach Dave Magadan in 2010. Beltre’s strikeout rate with the Mariners was a low 16.2%; over the rest of his career, even as strikeouts rose across the majors, it was just 12.3%. He also became a little less pull-centric. Through age 30, his OPS+ was 105; after age 30, it was 130.

But he also went to home parks where he thrived. In his final nine seasons with Boston and Texas, he hit .330/.385/.555 at home; on the road, he hit .284/.332/.476 (not much different than his road numbers when he was with the Mariners).

2. He remained a strong defensive player.

Beltre already had an elite defensive reputation when he left Seattle, although he had somehow won just two Gold Gloves. “He’s the best I’ve ever seen,” his former Mariners teammate Raul Ibanez told the Boston Glove in 2010. “He’s blessed with some great instincts at third,” then-Red Sox manager Terry Francona said. “But he takes more ground balls than anybody I’ve ever seen.”

While many third basemen eventually move to first base — assuming their bat is good enough — or even DH, Beltre remained at third and added three more Gold Gloves. Baseball-Reference credits Beltre with 216 fielding runs above average in his career, the fifth-highest total at any position (and second behind Brooks Robinson among third baseman). That continued defensive excellence helped fuel Beltre’s high career WAR total.

3. Durability.

Beltre averaged 148 games per season from age 31 through age 37, with only a leg injury that limited him to 124 games his first year in Texas cutting into that average. Since he reached the majors at such a young age, he ranks 15th all time in games played, second in games at third base and 18th in plate appearances. WAR is a cumulative stat, so the simple act of showing up and playing well creates value. Maybe Beltre isn’t quite an inner circle guy — certainly, at their best, I’d take Schmidt, Mathews, George Brett and probably Chipper Jones above Beltre among third basemen — but he is a slam-dunk Hall of Famer, and the vote totals reflect that.


Why Todd Helton is a Hall of Famer

Helton was a two-way baseball star at Tennessee and once started at quarterback on the football team ahead of a freshman named Peyton Manning. The eighth pick in the 1995 draft, Helton reached the majors in 1997, and over his first seven full seasons, he hit .340/.434/.620 while averaging 35 home runs and 118 RBIs. Along the way, he joined Hall of Famers Lou Gehrig and Chuck Klein as the only players with two seasons with 100 extra-base hits.

Of course, those seasons came at Coors Field in the peak of the steroid era, when many hitters were putting up absurd numbers. At the time, it was difficult to make sense of it all, even from those first-generation statistical analysts. Comparing Helton to Sandy Koufax, Baseball Prospectus once wrote, “Both players are very good, among the best in the game, but it’s easy to overestimate how good, because their stats are wildly distorted. There are people who have an emotional attachment to the idea that Sandy Koufax was one of the greatest pitchers in baseball history, rather than a good one with a high peak and some fortuitous timing. It would be interesting to ask those people how they rank Todd Helton, because Helton 2000-03 is going to have a lot in common with Koufax 1963-66.”

While Helton would play 17 seasons and finish with a .316 lifetime batting average, back problems slowed him considerably in the second half of his career, leaving him short of 3,000 hits (2,519) or even 400 home runs (369). His Hall of Fame case was a difficult one to analyze on several fronts, and he received just 16.5% of the vote his first year on the ballot, in 2019. In his sixth year, however, he made it. Here’s why:

1. The crowded ballot cleared up room for Helton.

Timing can be everything for a candidate; it can sometimes come down to who else is on the ballot, especially at your position.

The Hall of Fame ballot logjam that existed throughout most of the 2010s had cleared up some by 2019, but it still featured a lot of strong and borderline candidates. In 2019, four players got in: Mariano Rivera, Roy Halladay, Edgar Martinez and Mike Mussina. Helton’s former Rockies teammate Larry Walker was still there. Fred McGriff was there in his final season. Curt Schilling, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens were on their seventh ballots. Helton finished just 15th in votes.

When Walker made it into the Hall the following season, it clearly helped: Walker had overcome the Coors Field stigma, so maybe Helton could, as well. Then the ballot thinned out. In 2021, the BBWAA threw a shutout, but Helton’s vote total climbed to 44.9.%. There was a lack of strong new candidates entering the ballot (David Ortiz made it in 2022), and when Schilling, Bonds and Clemens left the ballot after 2022, it was the weakest it had been in decades. Helton’s numbers or value didn’t change, but the perception of him did in comparison to the other candidates.

2. An appreciation of his peak.

Coors Field or not, Helton’s five-year run from 2000 to 2004 was remarkable: .372, .336, .329, .358, .347. Those are Tony Gwynn-like averages, with way more power and walks. With WAR, we can make the appropriate Coors Field adjustments and Helton still shines. Among first basemen, Helton’s best five seasons total 37.6 WAR, ranking fourth all time behind only Gehrig, Albert Pujols and Jimmie Foxx, and accounts for much of his career 61.8 total.

Over his career, Helton hit .345 at Coors Field. But he still hit an excellent .287/.386/.469 on the road. And during his dominant five-year stretch from 2000 to 2004, he hit .314/.418/.556 away from altitude, the ninth highest OPS over those years. Only Bonds, Jason Giambi and Manny Ramirez had a higher road OBP during that stretch, and nobody hit more doubles. Factor in the Coors Field penalty that Rockies players have to deal with — the brain has to readjust to pitches that move more on the road — and Helton still comes out as one of the best hitters of his era.

3. A .316 lifetime batting average looks awesome in 2024.

Yes, voters pay more attention to analytics than ever. But the BBWAA bloc still features old-school stats voters who don’t care about a player’s WAR — and a .316 career average looks more impressive with each passing season. The only player since 1900 with at least 6,000 plate appearances and a higher lifetime average than Helton who is not in the Hall of Fame is Babe Herman. In essence, the young, analytical voters appreciated Helton’s high peak value, and the older, less-analytical voters couldn’t ignore that .316 average.


Why Joe Mauer is a Hall of Famer

When the Twins selected Mauer with the first pick in the 2001 MLB draft, it was viewed as a bit of a compromise choice: They were selecting the local high school hero over USC right-hander Mark Prior, who was considered the greatest college pitcher ever after a dominant junior season, just to save money. The Twins, after all, had failed to sign first-round picks Jason Varitek in 1993 and Travis Lee in 1996.

“Twins did not draft best player,” read the headline in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. “The Twins passed on the best player in the amateur baseball draft,” columnist Dan Barreiro wrote. “They blinked, they surrendered, they choked, they conceded. … Understand that money is the one and only reason the Twins went the direction they did.” And this was Mauer’s hometown newspaper criticizing the selection.

Indeed, while Mauer signed for a hefty $5.15 million signing bonus, the Chicago Cubs took Prior with the second pick and signed him to a five-year, $10.5 million major league contract. The Twins insisted Mauer was a worthy No. 1 overall choice, while Prior’s father blasted the franchise after a team official claimed the Prior camp had asked for $20 million.

While we’ll never know if Prior would have become a Hall of Famer had he stayed healthy, Mauer is now heading to Cooperstown. Here are three key reasons:

1. Tremendous peak value as a catcher.

While Mauer played just nine full seasons behind the plate before concussions necessitated a move to first base, it was a tremendous run. His seven-year peak WAR of 39.0 ranks fifth all time among catchers, behind Gary Carter, Johnny Bench, Mike Piazza and Ivan Rodriguez. Mauer won three batting titles along the way, including posting a .365 mark in 2009 that no hitter has reached since. One under-the-radar factor that helps a player get elected is the idea of being the best in his league at his position. While the National League had Buster Posey and Yadier Molina, Mauer was clearly the best catcher in the American League during his time. Even the voters who might not pay attention to WAR can appreciate that distinction.

2. His MVP season in 2009 was one of the best ever for a catcher.

Given that Mauer’s career counting stats don’t stand out — 143 home runs, 923 RBIs, 2,123 hits — it helped that he had that astronomical MVP season in his bio (and three other top-10 MVP finishes). He hit .365/.444/.587 with 28 home runs and 96 RBIs while winning a Gold Glove. He led the AL in all three triple-slash categories, and his adjusted OPS trails only two Piazza seasons among catchers, while Mauer’s 7.8 WAR ranks as the fifth highest ever for a catcher. Best in the game — even if for only one season — is a nice argument for your Hall of Fame consideration.

3. His career WAR is high enough.

With 55.2 WAR, Mauer ranks ninth among players who were primarily catchers — meaning the top 11 catchers in WAR are now all Hall of Famers. Yes, some of Mauer’s value was earned after his move to first base, but in combination with his peak value, it was enough to get in. Consider his ranking among those 11 catchers:

  • Batting average (.306, fourth)

  • OBP (.388, second)

  • OPS+ (124, seventh)

  • Hits (2,123, sixth)

  • Doubles (428, third)

  • Batting runs above average (239, fifth)

He wasn’t a power hitter, and he didn’t last long, but the voters got it right: Mauer compares favorably to the other Hall of Fame catchers.

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Buffs coach: Stars ‘should be going 1-2’ in draft

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Buffs coach: Stars 'should be going 1-2' in draft

BOULDER, Colo. — For the horde of NFL talent evaluators and some bleachers full of fans, Colorado coach Deion Sanders said Friday that they all got to see the top two players available in this year’s NFL draft.

Quarterback Shedeur Sanders and Heisman Trophy winner Travis Hunter were among the 16 Colorado players who took part in the school’s showcase event for scouts, coaches and personnel executives from every NFL team. And Deion Sanders said the two marquee players confirmed what he has known for a long time.

“It’s tremendous,” Sanders said. “… They should be going 1-2 [in the draft], that’s the way I feel about it. They are the two best players in this draft. … The surest bets in this draft are those two young men, and I didn’t stutter or stammer when I said that.”

Neither Shedeur Sanders nor Hunter took part in most of the position drills or physical testing, but Sanders had a throwing session for just under an hour and Hunter was one of the wide receivers who participated. Neither player worked out at the scouting combine earlier this year, so it was the first time Sanders had thrown in such a setting since the end of the season. He showed some full seven-step drops and play-action from the shotgun and under center.

“I think I did pretty good, to my expectations,” said Sanders, who set the career FBS accuracy mark in his two years at Colorado (71.8%) to go with his 4,134 passing yards and 37 touchdowns last season. “I know I did the best in college football right now, for sure.”

Asked after the throwing session whether he believed he was the best quarterback in the draft, Sanders said: “I feel like I’m the No. 1 quarterback, and that’s what I know. But at the end of the day, I’m not stuck on that because it’s about the situation, so whatever situation, whatever franchise believes in me, I’m excited to go. … I’m comfortable in any situation.”

Players Hunter, who did not speak to the media after the workout, and Sanders met with the Cleveland Browns contingent, including team co-owner Jimmy Haslam, on Thursday night in Boulder.

“They got me really full,” Sanders said. “I definitely needed to go to the sauna after that. … It was a good vibe.”

Said Deion Sanders said: “[I] spoke to the owner, truly delightful. He was engaging. … I think one of those guys is going to be there [at No. 2].”

Hunter, the No. 1 player on Mel Kiper Jr.’s Big Board, did not do any defensive drills Friday, but he ran a full assortment of routes.

Colorado safety Shilo Sanders, Shedeur’s brother, offered plenty of encouragement, shouting commentary and clapping after each throw, including “not a lot of quarterbacks can make that throw” after one deep completion.

The highly attended event — by NFL representatives as well as fans packing small bleachers — had a festive atmosphere. Deion Sanders named it the “We Ain’t Hard 2 Find Showcase,” complete with a large lighted “The Showcase” sign next to the drills.

Hunter, who has said he wants to play offense and defense in the NFL, won the Chuck Bednarik (top defensive player) and Fred Biletnikoff (top receiver) awards in addition to the Heisman. He said whether he will primarily be a wide receiver or a cornerback in the NFL depends “on the team that picks me.”

On Friday, Deion Sanders said “ain’t nobody like Travis.”

Hunter had 96 catches for 1,258 yards and 15 touchdowns as a receiver last season to go with 35 tackles, 11 pass breakups and 4 interceptions at cornerback. In the Buffaloes’ regular-season finale against Oklahoma State, he became the only FBS player in the past 25 years with three scrimmage touchdowns on offense and an interception in the same game, according to ESPN Research.

He played 1,380 total snaps in Colorado’s 12 regular-season games: 670 on offense, 686 on defense and 24 on special teams. He played 1,007 total snaps in 2023.

Shilo Sanders, who hoped to show teams more speed than expected, ran a 4.52 40-yard dash after he measured in at 5-foot-11⅞, 196 pounds. He did not participate in the jumps or bench press that opened the workout, citing a right shoulder injury.

With all NFL eyes on the Colorado campus to see Shedeur Sanders throw, one player who made the most of it was wide receiver Will Sheppard. Sheppard, who measured 6-2¼, 196 pounds, ran the 40 in 4.56 and 4.54 to go with a 40½-inch vertical jump and a 10-foot-11 broad jump.

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O’s Henderson off IL; will make ’25 debut vs. KC

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O's Henderson off IL; will make '25 debut vs. KC

Baltimore Orioles All-Star shortstop Gunnar Henderson was activated from the 10-day injured list and will make his season debut Friday night against the Kansas City Royals.

Henderson has been sidelined with a right intercostal strain and missed the first seven games of the big league campaign.

The 23-year-old Henderson will lead off and play shortstop against the host Royals.

Henderson was injured during a spring training game Feb. 27. He was fourth in American League MVP voting last season when he batted .281 and racked up career bests of 37 homers and 92 RBIs.

Henderson completed a five-game rehab stint at Triple-A Norfolk on Wednesday. He batted .263 (5-for-19) with two homers and four RBIs and played four games at shortstop and one as the designated hitter. He did commit three errors.

“I think everybody’s looking forward to having Gunnar back on the team,” Baltimore manager Brandon Hyde said Thursday. “The rehab went really, really well. I talked to him a couple days ago, he feels great swinging the bat. The timing came, especially the last few days. He just had to get out there and get some reps defensively and get some games in, and it all went well.”

Baltimore optioned outfielder Dylan Carlson to Triple-A Norfolk to open up a roster spot. The 26-year-old was 0-for-4 with a run and RBI in two games this season.

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Life after OMG: Can 2025 Mets replicate their 2024 vibes?

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Life after OMG: Can 2025 Mets replicate their 2024 vibes?

When New York Mets president of baseball operations David Stearns attempted to assemble the best possible roster for the 2025 season this winter, the top priority was signing outfielder Juan Soto. Next was the need to replenish the starting rotation and bolster the bullpen. Then, days before pitchers and catchers reported for spring training, the lineup received one final significant reinforcement when first baseman Pete Alonso re-signed.

Acquiring a player with a singing career on the side didn’t make the cut.

“No, that is not on the list,” Stearns said with a smile.

Stearns’ decision not to re-sign Jose Iglesias, the infielder behind the mic for the viral 2024 Mets anthem “OMG,” was attributed to creating more roster flexibility. But it also hammered home a reality: The scrappy 2024 Mets, authors of a magical summer in Queens, are a thing of the past. The 2025 Mets, who will report to Citi Field for their home opener Friday, have much of the same core but also some prominent new faces — and the new, outsized expectations that come with falling two wins short of the World Series, then signing Soto to the richest contract in professional sports history.

But there’s a question surrounding this year’s team that you can’t put a price tag on: Can these Mets rekindle the magic — the vibes, the memes, the feel-good underdog story — that seemed to come out of nowhere to help carry them to Game 6 of the National League Championship Series last season?

“Last year the culture was created,” Mets shortstop Francisco Lindor said. “It’s a matter of continuing it.”

For all the success Stearns has engineered — his small-market Milwaukee Brewers teams reached the postseason five times in eight seasons after he became the youngest general manager in history in 2015 — the 40-year-old Harvard grad, like the rest of his front office peers knows there’s no precise recipe for clubhouse chemistry. There is no culture projection system. No Vibes Above Replacement.

“Culture is very important,” Stearns said last weekend in the visiting dugout at Daikin Park before his club completed an opening-weekend series against the Houston Astros. “Culture is also very difficult to predict.”

Still, it seems the Mets’ 2024 season will be all but impossible to recreate.

There was Grimace, the purple McDonald’s blob who spontaneously became the franchise’s unofficial mascot after throwing out a first pitch in June. “OMG,” performed under Iglesias’ stage name, Candelita, debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Latin Digital Songs chart, before a remix featuring Pitbull was released in October. Citi Field became a karaoke bar whenever Lindor stepped into the batter’s box with The Temptations’ “My Girl” as his walk-up song. Alonso unveiled a lucky pumpkin in October. They were gimmicks that might have felt forced if they hadn’t felt so right.

“I don’t know if what we did last year could be replicated because it was such a chaos-filled group,” Mets reliever Ryne Stanek said. “I don’t know if that’s replicable because there’s just too many things going on. I don’t know if that’s a sustainable model. But I think the expectation of winning is really important. I think establishing what we did last year and coming into this year where people are like, ‘Oh, no, that’s what we’re expecting to do,’ makes it different. It’s always a different vibe whenever you feel like you’re the hunter versus being the hunted.”

For the first two months last season, the Mets were terrible hunters. Lindor was relentlessly booed at Citi Field during another slow start. The bullpen got crushed. The losses piled up. The Mets began the season 0-5 and sunk to rock bottom on May 29 when reliever Jorge Lopez threw his glove into the stands during a 10-3 loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers that dropped the team to 22-33.

That night, the Mets held a players-only meeting. From there, perhaps coincidentally, everything changed. The Mets won the next day, and 67 of their final 107 games.

This year, to avoid an early malaise and to better incorporate new faces like Soto and Opening Day starter Clay Holmes, players made it a point to hold meetings during spring training to lay a strong foundation.

“At the end of the day, we know who we are and that’s the beauty of our club,” Alonso said. “Not just who we are talent-wise, but who each individual is as a man and a personality. For us, our major, major strength is our collective identity as a unit.”

Organizationally, the Mets are attempting a dual-track makeover: Becoming perennial World Series contenders while not taking themselves too seriously.

The commemorative purple Grimace seat installed at Citi Field in September — Section 302, Row 6, Seat 12 in right field — remains there as part of a two-year contract. Last week, the franchise announced it will feature a New York-city themed “Five Borough” race at every home game — with a different mascot competing to represent each borough. For a third straight season, USA Today readers voted Citi Field — home of the rainbow cookie egg roll, among many other innovative treats — as having the best ballpark food in baseball.

In the clubhouse, their identity is evolving.

“I’m very much in the camp that you can’t force things,” Mets starter Sean Manaea said. “I mean, you can, but you don’t really end up with good results. And if you wait for things to happen organically, then sometimes it can take too long. So, there’s like a nudging of sorts. It’s like, ‘Let’s kind of come up with something, but not force it.’ So there’s a fine balance there and you just got to wait and see what happens.”

Stearns believes it starts with what the Mets can control: bringing positive energy every day and fostering a family atmosphere. It’s hard to quantify, but vibes undoubtedly helped fuel the Mets’ 2024 success. It’ll be a tough act to follow.

“It’s fluid,” manager Carlos Mendoza said. “I like where guys are at as far as the team chemistry goes and things like that and the connections and the relationships. But it’ll continue to take some time. And winning helps, clearly.”

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