That Harold Baines is now one of the more pivotal figures in the history of the Hall of Fame voting is beyond improbable, because he would never, ever advocate for himself, publicly or privately. Baines is reserved and polite, a man who would have continued to live with the utmost dignity in a good life even if he had never been called by Cooperstown.
But his election last winter, championed by Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf and former manager Tony La Russa, changes everything about qualifying for induction. The new threshold might as well be called the Harold Baines Standard that all candidates will be measured against, including the group that will be considered by a special committee this weekend.
Baines accumulated 2,866 hits and 384 home runs during his 22-year career, and his 38.7 WAR (as calculated by Baseball-Reference.com) is tied for 354th all-time. That's less WAR than former Yankee right fielder Paul O'Neill, less than former Rays outfielder Carl Crawford, less than longtime middle infielder Rafael Furcal.
As measured against Baines then, Dwight Evans -- perhaps the best of the candidates being assessed this weekend -- should be a slam dunk. Evans reached base via hit, walk or hit by pitch 3,890 times, had 941 extra-base hits, scored 1,470 runs, and won the Gold Glove in eight different seasons. His career WAR: 67.0.
The WAR for Steve Garvey is almost identical to that of Baines, at 38.1, and Garvey won an MVP Award in 1974 and finished in the top six in the voting in five different years. Thurman Munson beat Garvey's Dodgers in the World Series in 1977 and 1978, won an MVP in 1976 and finished in the Top 10 for that award three times -- and his career WAR was 46.1.
Don Mattingly's WAR, according to Baseball Reference: 42.4, which is higher than Baines or Garvey. There was a time, before he hurt his back, that Mattingly was in the conversation for the game's best player. In the six years of 1984-1989, Mattingly batted .327, generated an Adjusted OPS+ of a staggering 147, averaged 114 RBI and 203 hits per season. He won the MVP in 1985, and finished second in 1986.
Now that Harold Baines has been inducted, then unquestionably, Mattingly should be as well. And Evans. And Garvey.
Baseball's quietest person may now provide the opportunity for more speeches than anyone else working under MLB's umbrella.
Among the other Hall of Fame questions for 2020:
• How much progress will Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens make in the voting? This will be the eighth year of ballot eligibility for both players, who are polling at under 60 percent, and in almost every other case, players who reached that number with multiple years left in their candidacy eventually moved across the finish line.
But Clemens and Bonds are in a unique category, as the best and most prominent players linked to performance-enhancing drugs. They should have already been voted in, and many former players privately laugh at the absurd reality that the greatness of Clemens and Bonds probably overshadowed the PED use of some inductees -- who managed to avoid scrutiny in part because they weren't as good as Bonds or Clemens.
There remains a block of writers who won't consider Bonds or Clemens, which will make it difficult for either to achieve the 75 percent needed for induction.
• How many voters are there who cast a ballot for Bonds but not for Clemens, or vice versa? Somehow, Clemens seems to have one or two more votes than Bonds does annually, which seems very strange. If you'd vote for one, of course you should vote for the other.
• How much closer will Curt Schilling get to induction? Last year, his voting percentage spiked to 61%, so it seems only a matter of time that he'll reach the 75% threshold. He has offended many with some of his Tweets and comments, but as written here last year, none of that has anything to do with his playing career, on which his candidacy should be judged. A total of 4,457 days have passed since he threw his last pitch in a big league game, in 2007.
• Will Larry Walker, in his last year of eligibility on the writers' ballot, get to 75%? Prior to the 2018 balloting, he had never polled higher than 22.9%, but as the steroid era candidates have begun to cycle off the ballot, the runway seems to be clearing for Walker.
By the way: Walker's career WAR is 72.7, which is almost double that of Harold Baines. So yeah, he should get in.
• Will Derek Jeter become the second player to gain unanimous selection, matching his teammate Mariano Rivera? Among the relatively small number of ballots collected by the Hall of Fame tracker Ryan Thibodaux, Jeter has been named by every voter. But there's a long way to go.
News from around the major leagues
Ben Cherington, the Pirates' new general manager, has spent his first days on the job filling staff vacancies -- the hiring of Derek Shelton to be manager, for example -- so the winter meetings will be an opportunity for Pittsburgh's restructured front office to dig into what's possible in the market. The Pirates managed just 69 wins in the highly competitive National League Central last season, and it's not as if they're one or two key pieces from challenging the Cardinals and other teams at the top of the division, so Pittsburgh will be open to any trade ideas that other teams present about players on their roster.
With such a high premium on starting pitching this winter, it figures that teams that miss out on the likes of Zack Wheeler and Kyle Gibson could reach out to the Pirates about some of their veteran starters. Perhaps Chris Archer, the 31-year-old right-hander who is under contract for 2020 at $9 million, with a club option on his deal for 2021 at $11 million. Or Joe Musgrove, who has become a leader in the Pittsburgh clubhouse; the right-hander, who turned 27 last season, has an effective slider, but he was hurt on his fastball over 170 innings last season. Musgrove will be eligible for arbitration this winter for the first time.
• One executive liked the Rangers' signing of Kyle Gibson to a three-year, $28 million deal because of the potential upside in the right-hander. Gibson is 32 years old and had a 4.84 ERA in 2019, allowing 175 hits in 160 innings, but all the while, he managed to work through the effects of ulcerative colitis, after being infected with E. coli on a missionary trip. Gibson lost 15 to 20 pounds during last season, and as Twins manager Rocco Baldelli acknowledged, he didn't always have the best endurance, or his best stuff. "He's a good bounce-back guy for me," said one evaluator.
The Rangers' organization has a lot of working knowledge about colitis, a problem that plagued left-hander Jake Diekman when he was with the team, until he underwent corrective surgery -- and two of the Texas minor leaguers also have to cope with that particular illness. Gibson has received help from specialists at the Cleveland Clinic, and the Rangers expect he'll be able to manage it in his time with the team.
As Texas prepares to move into its new ballpark, it has constructed a competitive rotation built around experienced starters signed to manageable contracts. Mike Minor just finished the first-year of a two-year, $19.67 million contract, collecting some support for the Cy Young Award after posting a 3.59 ERA in 208 ⅓ innings. Lance Lynn has two years remaining on the three-year, $30 million deal he signed last winter. And following their agreement with Gibson, the Rangers signed Jordan Lyles to a two-year, $18 million deal. After struggling with the Pirates in 17 starts in 2019, Lyles was traded to Milwaukee and performed much better, generating a 2.45 ERA in 11 outings.
The Rangers will land another difference-maker in their lineup, in all likelihood -- other teams view them as the favorites to land Anthony Rendon, the best position player available, and they have also been in the conversation with free-agent third baseman Josh Donaldson.
• Lyles and Drew Pomeranz are among the recent examples of pitchers who have gone to Milwaukee and been revitalized before parlaying their Brewers' success into big contracts. A common denominator for Milwaukee has been the deployment of catchers who fare really well in pitch-framing statistics -- like Yasmani Grandal, who also earned big dollars this offseason, $73 million over four years from the White Sox, after spending time in Milwaukee. Last year, Grandal ranked third of 113 in the catching metrics assessed by Baseball Prospectus.
Manny Pina, the Brewers' other catcher, ranked 14th. In 2018, Pina ranked 19th of 117, and then-Brewer Erik Kratz was eighth.
It's very interesting, then, that the Brewers acquired a catcher, Omar Narvaez, who posted some of the worst framing statistics in the majors last season. Narvaez is close to new teammate Pina, and he has expressed the desire to get better at this particular skill, something apparently taught well in the Milwaukee organization by Marcus Hanel, the team's bullpen catcher, and Pat Murphy, the Brewers' bench coach, as well as their minor-league instructors.
Narvaez has shown he can hit in the big leagues -- he had an .813 OPS for the Mariners last year -- and if he improves defensively, Milwaukee may again have some of the game's best catching. And if Narvaez doesn't adapt in his work behind the plate to the Brewers' satisfaction, Milwaukee could always pivot to other options, like 24-year-old Jacob Nottingham.
• An evaluator with another team liked the Padres' acquisition of the left-handed hitting Jurickson Profar and Trent Grisham, because the deals helped to balance a San Diego lineup that had one of the lowest rates of advantageous platoon matchups -- that is, left-handed hitters against right-handed pitchers, or right-handed hitters against left-handed pitchers. As Sarah Langs of MLB.com notes, the Indians had the highest MLB rate of advantageous matches, 70 percent of their plate appearances -- Francisco Lindor and Jose Ramirez are both switch-hitters, which helps that number a whole lot -- and the Padres ranked 29th of 30 teams, at 42%.
• The visceral reaction of Blake Snell to the Tommy Pham trade is just another reminder that if there's brinkmanship and the threat of a strike in the summer of 2021, it's going to be a very different challenge for the players' union to hold together in this era of social media. Individuals can now offer their reactions publicly to shifts in negotiations in a way they could not in 1994. Back then, whenever anybody had opinions that ran counter to that of the union leadership -- and there were players who disagreed with the approach that turned out to be successful for the Players Association -- they would be tamped down before word got out.