Three Former Brewers on the 2025 Hall of Fame Ballot

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Photo by Arturo Pardavila III via Wikimedia Commons

CC Sabathia pitching for the Yankees in 2016

CC Sabathia pitching for the Yankees in 2016

The 2025 MLB Hall of Fame ballot is out and this year three players who made at least a brief stop in Milwaukee are among those up for consideration.

All told 26 recently retired players will appear on the BBWAA’s (Baseball Writers’ Association of America) ballot this season, the same total as last year but down from as many as 30 in 2022. The list of players includes 14 who appeared on last year’s ballot and 12 newcomers selected by a screening committee for inclusion. As we noted last year, that screening committee has gotten more selective in recent years. 

The list of former Brewers who were eligible but not included on the ballot this season includes pitchers Marco Estrada, Matt Albers, Zach Duke and Carlos Torres, infielder Mark Reynolds and, perhaps most notably, 2010-15 Brewer Carlos Gomez.

Gomez was an often-frustrating Mets and Twins prospect before a trade brought him to Milwaukee just before his 24th birthday. An elite defender with excellent speed, Gomez was able to unlock some of his potential for an exceptional run with the Brewers, making All Star teams and appearing on MVP ballots in both 2013 and 2014. Baseball Reference estimates his career value at 24.4 wins above replacement, with more than half of it coming in those two seasons. That WAR total puts him right on the edge of ballot consideration, although it likely would have been enough to get him on in past years, and the committee opted to leave him off.

Another former Brewer who was on the ballot for a long time will not be for the first time this winter: 2024 was Gary Sheffield’s final season of eligibility and he received just 246 of the 289 votes he would have needed to be enshrined. Sheffield was a controversial candidate for a variety of reasons, but he gained momentum in his late years on the ballot, going from 11.1% of the vote in 2018 all the way up to 63.9% in his final season. His case will likely be considered again at a later date by one or more of the Hall’s special committees. Another longtime star and former Brewer, Dave Parker, is up for consideration through that process this year.

In the meantime, however, here are the three former Brewers appearing on this year’s BBWAA ballot:

Francisco Rodriguez

The lone returner among former Brewers on the ballot, Francisco Rodriguez is up for consideration for the third time and so far his support has trended in the wrong direction. He received support from 42 voters in his first year on the ballot (10.8%) but just 30 (7.8%) last year. Relievers have been a frequent topic of debate for Hall voters and enthusiasts, as they don’t log as many innings as starting pitchers but almost certainly impact a large number of games. Rodriguez came up just short of 1000 innings pitched for his career but had an ERA under 3 (nearly 50% better than league average during his time), pitched in six All Star games and has the sixth-most saves in MLB history, including a then-record 62 of them in 2008. The most puzzling thing about Rodriguez’s Hall of Fame candidacy to date is a seeming inconsistency among voters: Each voter needs to decide how they want to consider relievers, of course, but last year at least 254 of them chose to support former Astros, Phillies and Mets closer Billy Wagner but did not vote for Rodriguez despite the fact that he pitched longer and accumulated more saves.

CC Sabathia

At some point in the future Hall of Fame voters are going to have to grapple with the changing role of starting pitchers in the modern game and determine whether historic standards for evaluating starters need to be revisited for the current era. They won’t have to do that this year, however, because 19-year MLB starter, 250-game winner, 2007 American League Cy Young Award winner (and 2008 Brewer) CC Sabathia checks most of the traditional boxes.

Sabathia was perhaps one of the last reliable workhorse-style aces. From 2002-13 Sabathia averaged 216 innings per season, and there are only 23 pitchers who have logged that many innings in a season even one time in the eleven years since. Brewers fans will, of course, remember Sabathia’s finish to the 2008 season where he often pitched on short rest and finished the year with 253 innings, including 130 2/3 as a Brewer with a 1.65 ERA. There are only six Hall of Fame-eligible pitchers who played after 1900, accumulated more Wins Above Replacement than Sabathia and haven’t been enshrined yet: Roger Clemens, Curt Schilling, Kevin Brown, Rick Reuschel, Luis Tiant (up for reconsideration by a committee this year) and Tommy John.

Curtis Granderson

The other former Brewer on the ballot for the first time this year faces a more challenging path to induction but still had a career worth remembering. Curtis Granderson played 16 MLB seasons from 2004-19 for an array of teams, coming up as a Tiger before making extended stops with the Yankees and Mets and eventually finishing his tenure as a journeyman. One of the brief stops late in his career was with the 2018 Brewers, where he had an .846 on-base plus slugging in 19 stretch run games.

Granderson’s career offensive numbers are solid but not eye-popping: He batted .249 with a .337 on-base and .465 slugging and led the American League in runs scored and RBI just once, in 2011 when he came the closest to being his league’s MVP. During his early years he added a lot of value defensively, however, and that contribution is harder to quantify with the metrics of the era. Granderson played over 1,200 games in center field before mostly moving into the corners late in his career, and his offensive numbers match a trend we’ve previously displayed for center fielders: He was a significantly better hitter early in games (an .812 OPS in innings 1-3, .836 in innings 4-6) than late (.763 in innings 7-9, .692 in extras). Nonetheless, Granderson accumulated 47.2 wins above replacement over the course of his career, putting him right in range with ballot mainstays like Jimmy Rollins (15% of the vote last year) and Torii Hunter (7.3% last year).