2025 Baseball Hall of Fame Ballot Deep Dive - Part III
An analysis of the four starting pitchers on this year's HOF ballot, and how they stack up against those already in Cooperstown.
This is the last of our three-part series examining this year’s Hall of Fame ballot. First, we analyzed the twenty position players on the ballot, stacked them up against the current position-player inductees, and assessed who is worthy of enshrinement in Cooperstown.
Last week, we did the same with the three relief pitchers on the ballot: Billy Wagner, Fernando Rodney, and Francisco Rodriguez.
This week, we examine the four starting pitchers on the ballot: C.C. Sabathia, Felix Hernandez, Andy Pettitte and Mark Buerhle. Pettitte and Buerhle return for their 7th and 5th year on the ballot, respectively, both earning less than 14% of the vote in 2024. ‘King Felix’ and C.C. Sabathia appear on the ballot for the first time, with Sabathia widely considered a more promising candidate and having a resume worthy of induction.
Comparing to Current Inductees
Same as with relievers, I compared several key stats of these players to what an 'average' Hall of Fame reliever (using the median) achieved.1 Most of the stats, such as Wins Above Replacement (WAR), ERA-, K/9+, and other '+' or '-' metrics, are adjusted for league and era.2
Pettitte and Sabathia hold career WAR totals, WAR/200IP, Wins, Winning Percentage, K/9 rates, and FIP- better than that of an average Hall of Fame starting pitcher. Buehrle and Hernandez, however, do not stack up quite as well. Felix Hernandez is an interesting case, as his 10-year peak places him as one of the best pitchers of his generation. However, he drastically declined beginning with his age 30 season and garnered just -0.1 bWAR in the final four years of his modest 15-year campaign. It is important to keep in mind that the role of the starting pitcher has changed immensely over the past decade-plus, and it may be best to compare Hall of Fame candidates to their contemporaries and players of the same generation already in the hall when assessing their candidacy.
Rankings Among Current Inductees
Another way to view this is by examining how players rank in key stats among the starting pitchers in the Hall of Fame. Below is a comprehensive table ranking the players on the ballot in key stats, which I selected largely based on the findings from my recent article predicting this year’s Hall of Fame class. Note that the pitcher with the most WAR is not on this list, that’s because that ranking goes to the non-Hall of Famer Roger Clemens.
Using these rankings, I developed a 'Hall of Fame Meter', similar to Jay Jaffe’s JAWS and Bill James’s Hall of Fame Monitor and Standards. The calculation is as follows:
This is the geometric mean of the rankings, minus the average geometric mean of rankings for a current Hall of Famer (160.2), subtracted again by 160.2 to generate a score relative to current Hall of Fame inductees. This is then multiplied by 0.62 so the baseline (i.e., ‘average’ Hall of Famer) is represented by an easy-to-interpret score of 100. This is similar to the calculation for relief pitchers I discussed in last weeks article.
Based on this, Felix Hernandez and C.C. Sabathia, and even Andy Pettitte appear to have an outside chance at Cooperstown, while Mark Buerhle’s case is a bit less promising. It is still important to mention that, given how much the role of the starting pitcher has evolved, this score may not be quite as indicative as it was for position player or relievers. The keen eye may notice some gaps in all-time rankings at the top of this table. That is because Roger Clemens, who is not in the Hall of Fame due to PED controversy, ranks fourth, while active players Clayton Kershaw, Jacob DeGrom, Max Scherzer, Chris Sale, and Justin Verlander rank 5th, 14th, 15th, 16th, and 24th, respectively. Needless to say, we will have some stellar starting pitcher inductions down the road.
Similarity Scores
Lastly, I love how Baseball Reference has similarity scores on all player pages, but it is not super statistical as it just takes sums of differences in player stats. I calculated my own similarity scores, among all qualified relievers in MLB history, using a k-means clustering algorithm, with the eight stats referenced in the rankings table above as the inputs.3 The degree of similarity—and thus the similarity score—is the Euclidean distance between each player and the others as determined by the k-means algorithm. A lower score (lower Euclidean distance) indicates greater similarity. Here are the top three most similar SP’s for each 2025 nominee, along with the similarity score. Players in bold are Hall of Fame inductees, and active players are italicized.
Felix Hernandez
Cole Hamels - SP 0.39
Kevin Appier - SP 0.61
Billy Pierce - SP 0.78
C.C. Sabathia
Andy Pettitte 0.83
Luis Tiant 1.14
Jack Morris 1.15
Andy Pettitte
C.C. Sabathia 0.83
Tom Glavine 1.40
Bartolo Colon 1.50
Mark Buehrle
Ted Lyons 1.15
Mel Harder 1.17
Milt Pappas 1.20
It is interesting that Pettitte and C.C. are each other’s most similar player. Also, these lists aren’t super impressive, with just two inductees, Morris and Galvine, appearing on anyone’s (Sabathia’s and Pettitte’s) list. Is this a factor of the changing nature of the starting pitcher in Major League Baseball, or that this class of SP’s just isn’t that strong? It may be a few years before we can better answer that question. For now though, we wait to see if C.C. Sabathia will get the phone call most expect, and if any of the three underdog candidates will join him.
Hall of Fame voting will be revealed tomorrow (January 21st) at 4pm EST on MLB Network. Tune in to see if the BBWAA voters agree with the stats I’ve laid out over the past three weeks.
I defined “starter” as a pitcher who started at least 60% of the games they pitched in across their career.
Stats which include ‘+’ or ‘-’ compare a player's performance to a league average set at 100. A plus (+) stat indicates that a player is performing higher than average, while a minus (-) stat indicates their performance is below average. For example, an ERA- of 90 means that the pitcher’s ERA is 10% below the league average (good in the case of ERA), while a K/9+ of 115 translates to their K/9 being 15% higher than league average (good in the case of strikeout rate). Typically, these are adjusted for era and ballpark to put all players on a level playing field. For more info and explanation on stats, see the FanGraph’s Glossary.
Again, I defined “starter” as a pitcher who started at least 60% of the games they pitched in across their career.