Carlos Delgado’s Cooperstown Case Roars Back to Life as the Former Blue Jays Icon Reenters the Spotlight .MH
The former Toronto Blue Jays slugger received nine votes from the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee.
The Hall of Fame is baseball’s highest honor. There are currently 10 players in the Hall of Fame who played for the Toronto Blue Jays, and on Sunday, another came close. Carlos Delgado was on the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee ballot and while he didn’t get in, his results were good news.
Delgado, one of the most prolific sluggers of his era, was one-and-done on the Hall of Fame ballot every baseball fan thinks of first. He didn’t get the support from the writers, but he wasn’t done getting chances.
The star first baseman received nine of the 12 votes needed this year, according to MLB.com, putting him at 56.3 percent (there are 16 total ballots). With his next chance coming in just a couple of years, it appears that Delgado, who was off the writers ballot after one year, now has a better shot of making it to Cooperstown eventually.
Delgado’s Hall of Fame Turnaround
From a numbers perspective, Delgado absolutley has the sort of numbers to get into the Hall of Fame. He hit 473 homers in his 17 year career, accumulating 1,512 RBIs and posting a career .929 OPS and 138 OPS+. From the left side, all the first baseman did was hit.
His Hall of Fame experience has been strange thus far. Delgado reached the ballot in 2015, but only received 21 votes, or 3.8 percent. A player needs five percent to stay on the ballot another season. Frankly, the 3.8 percent was far too low given his power numbers. He deserved far more consideration from the jump.
His career bWAR is 44.4, which is low by Hall of Fame standards, but the two time All-Star, seven time MVP vote getter and three time Silver Slugger has the power to be considered far more than he was.
Delgado had over 2,000 hits in his career and is 34th all time on the home run list. The two players below him, Chipper Jones and Dave Winfield, are both Hall of Famers. Everyone above him is either a current Hall of Famer, a future Hall of Famer or a player with the numbers to get in, but with the steroid asterisk.
From 1997-2007, the height of the steroid era, only five players had more home runs than Delgado and only two players had more RBIs.
He is also 55th all time in RBIs, directly behind new Hall of Famer Jeff Kent and just above Mickey Mantle and Vladimir Guerrero Sr.
That’s a pretty good Hall of Fame resume. Despite being off the ballot for 10 years, he is now getting more consideration. When a player is on the Eras Committee ballot, they need to receive 12 of the 16 votes in order to get inducted.
The committee is made up of former players, executives and writers, who sit in a room, debate who should make it in and vote.
Delgado’s nine votes on Sunday were the most of any player not elected, putting him on a great track for the future. He will be eligible for the same ballot again in 2028 when the committee votes again. Given his debut amount of votes, he is a player to watch when the time comes.
Far too overlooked on the writer’s ballot, the committee clearly felt a lot differently than the writers did about Delgado to give him over 50 percent of the vote. Whether or not the way the voting process is conducted had anything to do with him getting more consideration is an interesting question.
He was looked over in his career given the era and the stars of his time, didn’t win the awards the others did, but he has all of the numbers to warrant a much closer look. Seemingly, the committee saw that and wanted to keep Delgado on for at least another turn.
It’s hard to predict what the next turn will entail for Delgado, but what should be taken away is his newfound life on the ballot.
