Colorado Rockies: My (hypothetical) Hall of Fame ballot

Scott Rolen

Schilling’s former teammate with the Philadelphia Phillies under a future Hall-of-Fame manager for some terrible teams in the late 1990s is a much less controversial pick and this year, he is getting a lot more steam behind him as he has gained dozens of votes in the last two years and that is Scott Rolen.

70 WAR player, World Series Champion, 7-time All-Star, 8-time Gold Glove Winner, Silver Slugger Winner, averaged 25 home runs, 102 RBI, and an OPS+ of 122 every 162 games is a Hall of Famer. The main con to Rolen is that, like his former teammate Larry Walker, he was a bit injury prone. In his 17 seasons in the majors, he only played in 140+ games seven times and 130+ games eight times. But when he did play, he was one of, if not, the best players on the field.

In my book, he’s a Hall of Famer.

Billy Wagner

Billy Wagner is a guy that’s borderline for me because he was atrocious in the postseason (10.03 ERA in 11 2/3 career innings in the postseason) and he simply didn’t pitch as much as everybody else.

His 903 career innings would be second-to-last among pitchers in the Hall of Fame. The only pitcher lower is Satchel Paige, and that’s only the case because MLB wasn’t integrated in his prime in the 1920s and 1930s. No other Hall of Famer has less than 1,000 innings.

However, in those 903 innings, Wagner was dominant. Career 2.31 ERA, 187 ERA+, 7-time All-Star, ranked in the top ten in Cy Young voting twice, and he ranked in MVP voting twice. He also had a career 0.995 WHIP and struck out nearly 12 batters per nine innings.

Those numbers put him over the top for me.