Three Former Brewers on the 2023 Hall of Fame Ballot

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Gary Sheffield 1992 Brewers baseball card

While no former Brewers are likely to be elected to the MLB Hall of Fame this winter, two newcomers and one longstanding candidate are up for consideration.

Fourteen first-time candidates and fourteen returning candidates are on the ballot for election this winter, with the results scheduled to be announced on January 24. Three of those players are former Brewers and a fourth, former Cy Young Award-winning pitcher R.A. Dickey, played in the minors for the Brewers organization in 2007.

Gary Sheffield

The lone holdover on the ballot is 1988-‘91 Brewer Gary Sheffield, who is up for consideration for the ninth time. Players remain on the ballot if they receive a minimum of 5% of the vote the previous year, a bar Sheffield struggled to clear at first but has since distanced himself from. Sheffield’s candidacy bottomed out at 11.1% of the vote in 2018 but has climbed since, reaching 40.6% in both 2021 and 2022.

Sheffield’s Hall of Fame case has not changed significantly in the last year or the year before that, hence his somewhat stagnant vote totals. He remains arguably the most controversial Brewer of all time, and even without that history he would continue to have a complicated legacy as a member of six postseason teams, a player who ranks among the sport’s all-time leaders in several offensive categories and a figure shrouded by the specter of suspected use of performance enhancing drugs.

The only thing that’s really changed about Sheffield is the issue of time: Players only get 10 years on the ballot, and this is Sheffield’s ninth. This year and next represent something of a final reckoning regarding his candidacy and may cause some longtime “no” voters to revisit his case. Sheffield got more votes in his eighth year than Larry Walker did, for example, and Walker gained enough ground to make the Hall of Fame in his 10th year.

Francisco Rodriguez

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Photo by Keith Allison via Wikimedia Commons

Francisco Rodriguez with the Orioles in 2013

Francisco Rodriguez with the Orioles in 2013

The BBWAA has a mixed history when it comes to enshrining closers in Cooperstown, and that creates a wide array of possible voting outcomes for 2011-‘15 Brewer Francisco Rodriguez. Rodriguez was a six-time All Star, including as a Brewer in 2014 and 2015, holds the MLB single season record for saves with 62 in 2008 and saved 437 games across his 16-year career, the fourth most in MLB history. His standing on that list puts him directly on something of a line for Hall of Fame voters: The three pitchers ahead of K-Rod (Mariano Rivera, Trevor Hoffman and Lee Smith) are all Hall of Famers, although Smith was selected by the Today’s Game Era Committee and not the BBWAA. The top two pitchers behind Rodriguez on the list, John Franco and Billy Wagner, are not in the Hall.

Franco and Wagner perhaps demonstrate how voters’ opinions on closers have changed in recent years. Franco’s first year of eligibility was in 2011 and he fell off the ballot immediately, getting just 4.6% of the vote. Wagner, meanwhile, was eligible for the first time in 2016 and has been on seven ballots with support peaking as high as 51% in 2022. Rodriguez pitched in more games and logged more saves than Wagner and he also has the 62-save season, 18 more than Wagner’s career best. The two pitchers almost certainly deserve a comparable level of consideration, if not a little more for Rodriguez. Jay Jaffe of FanGraphs, a long-established expert on the Hall of Fame and Hall of Fame balloting, said Rodriguez is “the only other newcomer besides (Carlos) Beltrán with a statistical case that’s at least comparable to players already enshrined.”

J.J. Hardy

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Photo by Keith Allison via Wikimedia Commons

J.J. Hardy batting with the Orioles

J.J. Hardy batting with the Orioles

The second former Brewer among newcomers on the ballot is a long shot for consideration but still a player whose career is worth remembering. Hardy, who was a Brewer for his first five MLB seasons from 2005-‘09, is also a two-time All Star, three-time Gold Glove Award winner, the American League Silver Slugger at shortstop from the 2013 season and a member of five teams that played in the postseason.

Hardy played over 1500 games in the majors with a skill set that might be better appreciated now than it was then: He was never a flashy defensive shortstop or an extremely athletic player but was consistently positioned well and showed excellent instincts in the field. FanGraphs estimates he was worth at least 10 extra runs defensively on every team he played for over a span of nine consecutive seasons from 2007-‘15. Per their metrics he had the best season of his career in 2011, a year when he batted .269 with just a .310 on-base but hit 30 home runs and was worth 15 extra runs on defense.

The end of Hardy’s Brewers tenure is perhaps historically notable as one of the first glaring cases of an issue that would gain prominence later: Hardy was a 2007 All Star and a 4 plus year MLB veteran when the Brewers optioned him to the minors in August of 2009 and kept him there just long enough to prevent him from getting a full year of MLB service time. The move delayed his eventual free agency by a full year. Service time manipulation has since become a much broader topic of debate across the sport, but Hardy was impacted by it before it was a common practice.

Hardy is one of just 66 players in known MLB history to play at least 1500 games at the shortstop position, and 16 of the others are in the Hall of Fame. He finished his career with less than 1500 hits and under 200 home runs, but Hardy nonetheless made a lot of teams better across his 13-year MLB career. He’s unlikely to get the 5% of votes needed to get another year of consideration in 2023, but he nonetheless had a career worthy of this acknowledgement and remembrance.