The Atlanta Braves have an extensive history of Hall of Fame players, and there is a good chance that trend will continue.
It only makes sense for fans to want their favorite players to make it to the Hall of Fame. Freddie Freeman has rightly earned the title of “fan favorite” and has a real chance of making it into the Hall of Fame. Fortunately, Freddie is nothing if not consistent. He is on his 12th year in and has not shown many signs of regression yet.
Even if he is having a “down year” by his standards, his underlying metrics show that it is more due to bad luck than true regression. It is important to note, regression will happen. It’s just science.
Atlanta Braves connected voters are not the only ones who would vote for Freddie
Fortunately, voters seem to be coming around and actually looking at full bodies of work, and not just the stats that catch the eye. This helps Freddie’s chances, since, even though he does not have crazy eye catching stats, he has been very consistently well above average.
We have seen guys like Andruw Jones, who has the most defensive Wins Above Replacement (dWAR) of primary outfielders all-time, continue to garner more Hall of Fame votes every year. It is impossible to exactly why he is getting more votes without polling each voter, but one has to imagine it is due to the evolution of full body of work stats, like defensive metrics.
Of course, there is no pure formula of how players are voted into the Hall of Fame. Statistics are involved, the human element of different biases and valuing statistics or accolades differently are in play. There are players that are in the Hall of Fame that may not be voted in today, and vice versa.
With that being said, for players like Freddie Freeman, there can be an argument either way on if he is on pace for the Hall of Fame or not. There are some voters who are in “small hall” camp, and some who just want to vote in their favorite players.
There are also arguments on if only the best players of all-time should be in, the best players of their era, best players in general versus the best at their position, etcetera. The point is there is no exact science on how voters view potential candidates and who should be in.
Because of the human element, it is virtually impossible to predict the future of fringe future Hall of Fame candidates. Freddie Freeman is one of those guys.
What we can do is look at players who are in, and compare statistics and accolades to see if there is a chance if a player has a shot of making it in. It is important to not cherry pick players and say things like “well, if Harold Baines is in, then my favorite player is in” because there are always outliers.
Ideally what you want to do is get the largest sample size possible and go from there.
Before we do a deep dive on predicting how voters will vote, let’s look at Freddie Freeman’s statistics and see how he stacks up with other Hall of Famers.