BTRTN: The Best MLB Hall of Fame Predictors

Tom on how we did in our BTRTN baseball Hall of Fame predictions.

We weren’t perfect, but we did pretty darn well.  We were correct in forecasting that Mariano Rivera, Edgar Martinez and Mike Mussina would be elected to the Hall of Fame.  We missed on Roy Halladay, but we had him close – at 65% -- and acknowledged right up front that he could very well make it in given the tragic circumstances that forwarded his nomination.  And in terms of returnees to next year’s ballot, we got everyone right except Lance Berkman.

In our predictions for the percentages for individual players, we were off by a mere 3.3 percentage points on average, our best showing since a 2.9 in 2015 (last year we achieved a 4.8, and the two prior years were each 5.9). 

Apart from Halladay, we were a bit off on the size of Larry Walker's jump in his penultimate year on the ballot, and Fred McGriff's in his final year.  And we overshot the mark on Todd Helton in his first year.  Otherwise, we were about as close as you can get.

And we bested Nate Silver on the Moose – even though Nate was using the public vote data that we ignored for “purity.”  (This is akin to predicting a political election with 50% of the precincts reporting versus predicting it before the polls open.)  This allowed Nate to “accurately forecast” that Roy Halladay would make the HOF, because at that point, with 50% of the HOF vote in, Halladay was a “yes” on 92% of the ballots!  Not too tough!   But Nate thought Moose would fall short -- even though he had access to actual voting data -- and the Moose made it, and we were right on that one.

So, rather immodestly, we are claiming the title of “Best MLB Hall of Fame Predictors” --although we welcome others to come forward with evidence of better results!

2019	Year on Ballot	WAR	Should be in HOF?	BTRTN Proj. %	Actual %	Act vs Proj  pp diff.
Mariano Rivera	1	56	Yes	99	100	1
Edgar Martinez	10	68	Yes	81	85	4
Roy Halladay	1	64	Yes	65	85	20
Mike Mussina	6	83	Yes	76	77	1
Curt Schilling	7	80	Yes	58	61	3
Roger Clemens	7	140	PED	60	60	1
Barry Bonds	7	163	PED	59	59	0
Larry Walker	9	73	Yes	40	55	15
Omar Vizquel	2	46	No	40	43	3
Fred McGriff	10	53	Yes	28	40	12
Manny Ramirez	3	69	PED	21	23	2
Jeff Kent	6	55	Yes	16	18	2
Todd Helton	1	61	Yes	40	17	24
Billy Wagner	4	28	Yes	11	17	6
Scott Rolen	2	70	Yes	14	14	0
Gary Sheffield	5	61	PED	9	14	5
Andy Pettitte	1	60	PED	8	10	2
Sammy Sosa	7	59	PED	6	9	3
Andruw Jones	2	63	Yes	7	8	1
Lance Berkman	1	52	No	6	1.2	5
Miguel Tejada	1	47	No	2	1.2	1
Roy Oswalt	1	50	No	4	0.9	3
Placido Polanco	1	42	No	1	0.5	1
Kevin Youkilis	1	33	No	1	0.0	1
Derek Lowe	1	34	No	1	0.0	1
Michael Young	1	25	No	1	0.0	1
Freddy Garcia	1	34	No	0	0.0	0
Vernon Wells	1	29	No	0	0.0	0
Ted Lilly	1	27	No	0	0.0	0
Travis Hafner	1	25	No	0	0.0	0
Jason Bay	1	25	No	0	0.0	0
Jon Garland	1	23	No	0	0.0	0
Darren Oliver	1	22	No	0	0.0	0
Juan Pierre	1	17	No	0	0.0	0
Rick Ankiel	1	5	No	0	0.0	0
				754	795	114
				# on ballot		35
				off per player		3.3