{"id":530761,"date":"2026-01-21T11:40:17","date_gmt":"2026-01-21T11:40:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/530761\/"},"modified":"2026-01-21T11:40:17","modified_gmt":"2026-01-21T11:40:17","slug":"the-baseball-hall-of-fame-in-2027-land-of-the-giants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/530761\/","title":{"rendered":"The Baseball Hall of Fame in 2027: Land of the Giants"},"content":{"rendered":"

Editor\u2019s note: Got Hall of Fame questions? Submit them here<\/a> for Jayson Stark\u2019s subscriber mailbag.\u00a0<\/p>\n

COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. \u2014 We\u2019ve made it through another Hall of Fame election<\/a>, as recently as, let\u2019s see now \u2026 Tuesday. So what better time than, well, one day later, to look ahead to the next one.<\/p>\n

All right, what do we see in our Cooperstown crystal balls as we gaze at the stage in 2027? Hmmm, is that the pastoral hillsides of upstate New York or \u2026 the Golden Gate Bridge?<\/p>\n

There\u2019s good reason to wonder, you know. If there aren\u2019t a lot of current and former San Franciscans delivering Hall of Fame speeches on July 25, 2027, we\u2019ll need to take our crystal ball into the shop ASAP.<\/p>\n

A fellow named Buster Posey is the biggest attraction on the writers\u2019 ballot next year. And he\u2019s now the ultimate modern-day San Francisco Giant.<\/p>\n

Won three World Series as a player. Now running the show in their front office. He may not have the traditional numbers once associated with first-ballot Hall of Famers, but he has every other ingredient a first-ballot icon ought to have.<\/p>\n

Then there is the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee, which will meet in December to vote on managers, executives and umpires. The co-favorites to be elected by that group are two gentlemen named Bruce Bochy and Dusty Baker. Any guesses what those two men have in common? Here\u2019s one thing: Every World Series game played by the Giants in the 21st century has been managed by one of them.<\/p>\n

So the first prediction we\u2019d like to make about the 2027 Induction Weekend is, we foresee a lot of pop-up sourdough stands on Main Street in Cooperstown.<\/p>\n

But what else do you need to know? Let\u2019s preview the 2027 Baseball Writers\u2019 Association of America election.<\/p>\n

BUSTER POSEY \u2014 On one hand, Posey is kind of a tricky candidate. He finished with only 1,500 career hits. And the writers haven\u2019t elected anybody with fewer than 1,600 hits since 1962. The man they honored that year? A legend named Jackie Robinson.<\/p>\n

But if you\u2019re just staring at Posey\u2019s hits column, or his Wins Above Replacement column (he\u2019s at 45.0 on Baseball Reference, 57.9 via the more catcher-friendly FanGraphs WAR), you\u2019re missing the big picture.<\/p>\n

Here are the selling points that should propel Posey into the Hall on the first ballot:<\/p>\n

\u2022 An MVP award<\/p>\n

\u2022 A Rookie of the Year award<\/p>\n

\u2022 Three World Series rings<\/p>\n

\u2022 A Gold Glove award<\/p>\n

\u2022 A batting title<\/p>\n

He may not be the first player ever with a Gold Glove, batting title, multiple World Series triumphs and both an MVP and Rookie of the Year trophy, but \u2026 you can count the entire group without needing a whole hand\u2019s worth of fingers:<\/p>\n

Pete Rose (won three World Series)
Frank Robinson (won two World Series)
Albert Pujols (won two World Series)
And Buster!<\/p>\n

You\u2019ll be reading that list again when the ballot gets announced next November. We promise.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n Jon Lester had a .631 career winning percentage and a sterling postseason resume. (Ezra Shaw \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n

JON LESTER \u2014 Lester might not seem like a slam-dunk Hall of Famer, but he probably has a more compelling collection of credentials than you think.<\/p>\n

\u2022 A 200-117 career won-lost record, with a higher winning percentage (.631) than Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine or John Smoltz.<\/p>\n

\u2022 A 3.66 career ERA and a 117 ERA+ \u2014 which is a tick better than the 116 ERA+ of the last left-hander elected to the Hall, CC Sabathia<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Are you into awarding postseason bonus points? Lester gets a slew of those. He pitched for nine playoff teams, started games for three World Series champs (2007 Red Sox, 2013 Red Sox, 2016 Cubs) and went a dazzling 3-0, with a 1.77 ERA, in six World Series games. But also \u2026<\/p>\n

\u2022 He\u00a0ranks No. 1 in history\u00a0in both postseason ERA (2.51) and WHIP (1.019) among starting pitchers with at least 20 games pitched and 75 career postseason innings.<\/p>\n

Maybe his 43.5 bWAR will derail Lester with some voters. But it\u2019s more likely we\u2019ll be spending a lot of time comparing him with the other three left-handed starters on the ballot: Andy Pettitte, Mark Buehrle and Cole Hamels.<\/p>\n

OTHER FIRST-YEAR CANDIDATES \u2014 There are no other obvious Hall of Famers keeping those two guys company next year. But the rest of the new position-player class is headlined by Brett Gardner, Ryan Zimmerman, Kyle Seager and Jay Bruce. Plus we\u2019ll have ballot debuts from a former Cy Young Award winner (Jake Arrieta) and the closer for a Royals team that won the 2015 World Series (Wade Davis). So we won\u2019t lack for stuff to talk about.<\/p>\n

The Holdovers\u00a0\"\"<\/p>\n

\n Chase Utley will be the highest returning vote-getter, at 59.1 percent. (Nick Laham \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n

CHASE UTLEY \u2014 It\u2019s always helpful to be the highest returning vote-getter. And the longtime Phillies second baseman\u00a0is that guy, coming off an election in which he attracted 59.1 percent of the vote in his third year on the ballot.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a big leap from 59.1 percent to 75 percent, so 2027 might be a longshot for election. But if Posey is about to get elected with only 1,500 hits, Utley\u2019s 1,855 won\u2019t feel like much of an obstacle anymore. Here\u2019s a guess that nobody on the ballot will be helped more by Posey\u2019s arrival than Utley.<\/p>\n

F\u00c9LIX HERN\u00c1NDEZ \u2014 Hern\u00e1ndez will be appearing on his third ballot, and he isn\u2019t that dissimilar to Utley. King F\u00e9lix\u2019s whole case is built around a stellar peak \u2014 which lasted anywhere from six years (2009-14) to nine years (2007-15), depending on how you define his greatness.<\/p>\n

Will more traditional voters be skeptical of a starting pitcher who won \u201conly\u201d 169 games and was essentially done as a productive starter at age 31? That could happen. But we didn\u2019t see evidence of it this year, when he tied for the biggest one-year voting jump<\/a> (from 20.6 percent to 46.1 percent) in history.<\/p>\n

COLE HAMELS \u2014 Hamels was the biggest surprise of the 2026 election, attracting 23.8 percent of the vote in his first year on the ballot, from voters who looked past his career won-lost record (163-122).<\/p>\n

Hamels has a decade and a half of consistency and durability going for him, plus a World Series MVP award, an LCS MVP award, a no-hitter and a 123 ERA+ that obviously impressed a lot of voters. To this voter, there is more Roy Oswalt there than Roy Halladay, which puts him in my Great But Not Hall of Fame Great class. But we might find reason to re-evaluate that because of the debut of Lester, who had a very similar career.<\/p>\n

ANDY PETTITTE \u2014 It will be Year 9 on the ballot for Pettitte, so he\u2019s running short of time and still hasn\u2019t topped 50 percent of the vote. So if he\u2019s going to get elected, his best source of inspiration needs to be the case of Larry Walker, who got in on his final try in 2020.<\/p>\n

Since the Hall of Fame shortened each candidate\u2019s election window to a maximum of 10 years (instead of 15), only three men have needed all 10 years to get elected: Walker, Tim Raines and Edgar Martinez. Here, alongside Pettitte, is how they compared:<\/p>\n

PETTITTEWALKER\u00a0RAINES MARTINEZ<\/p>\n

YEAR 8<\/p>\n

48.5%<\/p>\n

34.1%<\/p>\n

55.0%<\/p>\n

58.6%<\/p>\n

YEAR 9<\/p>\n

?<\/p>\n

54.6%<\/p>\n

69.8%\u00a0<\/p>\n

70.4%<\/p>\n

YEAR 10<\/p>\n

?<\/p>\n

76.6%\u00a0<\/p>\n

86.0%<\/p>\n

85.4%<\/p>\n

The bad news for Pettitte is that clearly, Raines and Martinez were polling way ahead of him at this stage. The better news is that Pettitte has already changed enough minds to charge from just 13.5 percent two years ago to 48.5 percent this year.<\/p>\n

But no one \u2014 not even Walker \u2014 has ever even been more than 60 percentage points away from election with four years left and then made up all that ground. So if there\u2019s an induction speech in Pettitte\u2019s future, next year is a pivotal election.<\/p>\n

OTHER HOLDOVERS TO WATCH \u2014 What happens to the rest of this field if Posey gets elected and rewrites the definition of a Hall of Famer in the 21st century? Good question. But three guys who potentially could benefit are Dustin Pedroia, David Wright and Jimmy Rollins. I\u2019ve been voting for all of them<\/a>, just to keep them on the ballot long enough to find out if they\u2019ll fit that definition.<\/p>\n

It will be the sixth election for Rollins, the fourth for Wright and the third for Pedroia. So is Posey going to open the door for players like that \u2014 men who had star power, winning pedigree and more modest WAR numbers that didn\u2019t (used to) fit the Cooperstown mold? Those answers are coming.<\/p>\n

The 2027 election will be the window into what will\u00a0come next, and who will reap the benefits. We don\u2019t know for sure yet what we\u2019ll learn. But we can\u2019t wait to find out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Editor\u2019s note: Got Hall of Fame questions? Submit them here for Jayson Stark\u2019s subscriber mailbag.\u00a0 COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. \u2014…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":530762,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2290],"tags":[22,46,47,5,48,24,49,50,51,52,53,54,55,56,57,58,59,60,4,61,62,63,25,64,18,66,65,67,68,69,70,71],"class_list":{"0":"post-530761","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-baseball","8":"tag-arizona-diamondbacks","9":"tag-atlanta-braves","10":"tag-baltimore-orioles","11":"tag-baseball","12":"tag-boston-red-sox","13":"tag-chicago-cubs","14":"tag-chicago-white-sox","15":"tag-cincinnati-reds","16":"tag-cleveland-guardians","17":"tag-colorado-rockies","18":"tag-detroit-tigers","19":"tag-houston-astros","20":"tag-kansas-city-royals","21":"tag-los-angeles-angels","22":"tag-los-angeles-dodgers","23":"tag-miami-marlins","24":"tag-milwaukee-brewers","25":"tag-minnesota-twins","26":"tag-mlb","27":"tag-new-york-mets","28":"tag-new-york-yankees","29":"tag-oakland-athletics","30":"tag-philadelphia-phillies","31":"tag-pittsburgh-pirates","32":"tag-san-diego-padres","33":"tag-san-francisco-giants","34":"tag-seattle-mariners","35":"tag-st-louis-cardinals","36":"tag-tampa-bay-rays","37":"tag-texas-rangers","38":"tag-toronto-blue-jays","39":"tag-washington-nationals"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=530761"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530761\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/530762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=530761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=530761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=530761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}