The 2017 Baseball Writers Association of America’s Hall of Fame ballot features copious talent with a mix of position players, pitchers, ballot veterans, as well as 21 first-time ballot members. One such ballot veteran is Hall of Fame hopeful Edgar Martínez, currently on his eighth HOF ballot. With players needing 75 percent of the BBWAA’s vote to be elected to the HOF, the question remains as to whether Edgar will be elected this year, or even at all.
Martínez, currently working as the hitting coach for the Seattle Mariners and a career .312 hitter, posted what many consider to be HOF worthy numbers in his 18 seasons with the Mariners. Martínez is well-known as a designated hitter, with over 1,400 career games as the designated hitter, and the award for the top designated hitter named after him. However, Martínez started his career as a third baseman, posting a .986 fielding percentage at third base in 564 games (532 starts) at third throughout his career.
The seven-time All-Star Martínez looks to break his somewhat stagnate performance on the ballot, having only gained 7.2 percent since his first time on the ballot in 2010, when he garnered 36.2 percent of the vote. So how likely is Martínez to be elected? Bill James created a statistic (HOFm) that attempts to measure how likely players are to be elected into the HOF. The stat works as an over or under style, with 100 being the benchmark. Martínez sits at a 132, meaning that he is more likely to be elected.
There are other ways to measure if Martínez should be in the HOF, such as another Bill James statistic that measures how players on the current ballot stack up against current Hall of Famers. The stat (HOFs) is a scale of 0-100, with a 50 meaning the player is comparable to the average Hall of Famer and Martínez sits right at 50 on this scale.
Only three position players have been elected to the HOF with a HOFs lower than 50 in the last ten years. However, the main issue is that there are no other players in the HOF that were primarily designated hitters, so it becomes difficult to compare Martínez to another player in the HOF.
So is Martínez a Hall of Fame contender? The numbers lean towards yes, with 309 career home runs, a lifetime .418 on-base percentage, 514 doubles, 1,261 runs batted in, and 2,247 hits would seem to be enough to be considered a HOF caliber player. However, voters may have a hard time voting in the HOF’s first primary designated hitter. In any case, Martínez will have a tough hill to climb, needing to gain 31.6 percent more votes on a ballot that is packed with talent and no doubt future Hall of Famers. If Martínez is not elected this year, he will have two more years on the ballot to garner the needed 75 percent or he will be eliminated from the ballot.
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