What this is –

The concept of what a Hall of Famer is lives within the imaginations of everyone. It’s all about feel. Long story short, I didn’t want that. I wanted to know what players were having careers that gave them a good shot at the Hall of Fame by the end of their career.

To do that, I looked at the fWar of every player, and – because the Hall of Fame has some misses too – I lopped off the bottom 33%. That’s a full 1/3 of Hall of Famers eliminated. I figure, once you have a WAR better than 1/3 of all Hall of Famers, you have a real shot – at least from a career standards perspective.

From there I looked at how WAR was divided up by age.

And then, to grab any player that was close – I included any player within 2 years of that Hall of Fame standard. In other words, if a player is 30 years old, and has enough WAR to be ahead of 1/3 of HOF in their age 28 season, he’s included here. It doesn’t mean he’ll make it naturally – but if he ages well, you never know. It happens.

At the end of the year, I go crazy, and I write an essay on each player’s Hall chances. It’s more than a book length of analysis when it’s all said and done. During the year, I try to update 10 times with short comments for each player. Unfortunately life happens, and this year I was hit with plagues, and I didn’t get to all 10, but 7 are there. You can read last year’s list, and find all of the updates here:

MLB HOF Tracker 2022
MLB HOF Tracker 2023

This page will tell you what players have made this year’s list – and as a new essay is completed, you will be able to link to it from here. Enjoy!