Hall of Fame

The Best and Worst One-and-Done HOF Candidates

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A .J. Pierzynski places in the 98th percentile of all MLB players ever. As a left-handed hitting catcher, he lasted 19 seasons and averaged 495 PA over a 15-year stretch from 2001-2015. By contrast, only four catchers surpassed 495 PA at all in 2021. His offense was nothing special, but his career 92 wRC+ was slightly above average for the position. By any measure, he’s one of the 100 best catchers in the history of baseball…

…But he’s not going to be a Hall of Famer. There are only 18 catchers in the HOF altogether, and while some might say that number should be closer to 25 or so, there’s no room for the guy finished 71st in JAWS— a metric designed by Jay Jaffe as a benchmark for HOFers. He’s on the 2022 ballot though, meaning voters have to give him at least passing consideration. Inevitably, he’ll succumb to the 5% rule, which removes players from future ballots if they don’t receive at least 5% of the votes.

In last year’s election, eight of the 25 players on the ballot failed to reach that threshold, all of whom were in their first year of eligibility. Five of them earned no votes at all. That’s nothing to be ashamed of; it’s an incredible achievement to be named on the ballot in the first place. Nevertheless, the 5% rule claims roughly one-third of eligible players as one-and-done victims every year.

In most cases, the 5% rule prunes the ballot and prevents it from becoming overgrown. For example, there was no reason to give Michael Cuddyer a second year of HOF consideration after he received no votes last year. However, since the inception of the rule in 1979, there have been some instances when it claimed an untimely victim who should’ve gotten more HOF support.

Measuring One-and-Done

There are no perfect ways to measure the quality of a player, especially reflecting back years or decades in the past. This gets even more complicated because each of the hundreds of voters in any given election has their own personal criteria, and one voter’s ballot rarely matches another’s. Additionally, the tools and metrics at our disposal didn’t exist until relatively recently. For example, 23 out of 432 voters in 1979 didn’t vote for Willie Mays! The benchmark of what a HOFer looks like is a moving target that changes rapidly and somewhat arbitrarily over time.

Before we delve any further, the best player by any measure to be cast off by the 5% rule is Pete Rose. Rafael Palmeiro isn’t far behind him. Obviously, both of these players have extenuating circumstances. Whether or not you believe either or both players belong in the HOF, it’s inarguable that they would be enshrined purely on the basis of their statistics had they not cheated. Besides, Rose lasted for three ballots and Palmeiro was named on four, so even though they were 5% victims, they weren’t one-and-dones. For the purposes of this exercise, they don’t count.

JAWS evaluates potential HOFers by averaging a player’s longevity (career bWAR) and peak (WAR7, or their seven best seasons). By this measure, Ron Santo is the most egregious one-and-done, having received 3.9% of the vote in 1980. His 62.1 JAWS is only 0.1 behind Rose. Voting rules often have bizarre twists and turns though, and he somehow got back on the ballot in 1985, remained on every ballot until 1998, then was inducted by the Veterans Committee in December 2011— a year after his death. Given that he was ultimately listed on 16 ballots and eventually became a HOFer, he doesn’t really fit our criteria either.

The Best One-and-Dones

The best true one-and-done by JAWS is Bobby Grich, who received 2.6% of the vote in 1992. His 58.7 JAWS ranks eighth best out of all second basemen. With the exception of one active player (Robinson Canó), all of the players above him are in the HOF. So are the three immediately below him— Frankie Frisch, Jackie Robinson, and Ryne Sandberg.

If we just use career bWAR, Grich actually isn’t the best one-and-done at his position. Lou Whitaker‘s 75.1 is 4.1 higher than Grich’s as well as the most ever by any one-and-done candidate. His bWAR ranks seventh all-time among second basemen. Of the players in the top 12, only he, Grich, and Canó are not HOFers, yet he received only 2.9% of the vote in 2001.

JAWS and bWAR are modern inventions though. Most HOF voters used more traditional or crude statistics to evaluate players. HOF Monitor, a statistic developed by Bill James, predicts how likely a player is to reach the HOF based on traditional markers, such as batting average, pitcher wins, All-Star appearances, Gold Gloves, black ink, etc. By HOFm, the best one-and-done was Miguel Tejada, likely due to his PED connections. Behind him was Ted Simmons, who was recently enshrined by the Modern Baseball Era Committee in 2020. The best clean one-and-done who never reached the HOF was Al Oliver, who received 4.3% of the vote in 1991.

The “One-and-Done” Team

You had to know a 26-man roster was coming, didn’t you?

Lineup:

Bench:

Pitching Staff:

The Worst One-and-Dones

Just having your name printed on a HOF ballot is an incredible achievement, even if you don’t get any support. At the very least, it means you played ten seasons in MLB. For a while, that was the only prerequisite for getting on the ballot. There were 54 players to choose from in 1979 and 61 in 1980.

Comically large ballots in the early years of the 5% rule included a handful of negative-bWAR players. The lowest career bWAR of anyone on a ballot since 1979 was John Kennedy, a journeyman utility infielder from 1962-1974 who slashed .225/.281/.323, accumulated -2.9 bWAR, and only surpassed 300 PA in a season once. By JAWS, John Stephens‘ -1.4 was even worse. He was a backup catcher from 1964-1973 who averaged 108 PA per season over the course of his career, hitting .216/.271/.296.

Naturally, neither Kennedy nor Stephens got any love from the voters… but shortstop Hal Lanier did! With a .228/.255/.275 career triple slash, he is the only player with negative bWAR (-0.9) to receive a HOF vote, landing on one person’s ballot in 1979. Alphabetically, he was sandwiched between Harvey Kuenn and Don Larsen. Neither of those players reached the HOF, but they clearly had stronger cases than Lanier, receiving 14.6% and 12.3% of the vote, respectively. Perhaps Lanier’s voter simply checked the wrong box on accident.

The “Someone Voted for That Guy?!?” Team

All of these players received at least one vote, somehow.

Lineup:

Bench:

Pitching Staff:

1936

We often tend to think of HOF voting as a monolithic tradition, unchanging and resolute as passed down from the elders. This couldn’t be further from the truth. HOF voting rules are tweaked regularly, including several major changes over the years. It’s unrecognizable from the way it began in 1936.

The first HOF class inducted six players, including Babe Ruth who had only retired a few months prior. Here are the top four vote-getters who didn’t reach the 75% threshold on that ballot:

More than half of the voters didn’t think Cy Freaking Young was worthy of the HOF! There were 50 people on that initial ballot, 43 of whom eventually made it in. Only three received zero votes. Two of them were Gabby Hartnett and Charlie Gehringer, both of whom were not only still active, but in their primes. Gehringer would win the AL MVP the following season. Had the 5% rule existed back then, 26 people would have been kicked off the ballot for good, including 19 current HOFers. Voting would have looked a lot different, and presumably would’ve excluded active players from the get-go.

With 20.9 JAWS, Pierzynski won’t make the HOF. More than likely, he won’t even receive a single vote, but if someone does check his name, the blowback that voter will face on social media will be monumental. In either case, he won’t be the most glaring one-and-done in HOF voting annals— a history in which Hal Lanier received a vote, Jim Wynn didn’t, and Bobby Grich and Lou Whitaker never made it to a second ballot.

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