2024 Hall of Fame Season, Part 6

The Remaining Seven Returning BBWAA Candidates

Okay, we finally get to the final seven returning candidates on the ballot. This will finish the reviews of everyone from this year’s BBWAA ballot, and tomorrow I get to reveal my utterly unsurprising faux ballot.

As stated yesterday, for the most part nothing has really changed with the cases of the players who were on the ballot in previous years. Consequently, don’t be shocked to see that I’m basically cutting and pasting my comments from last year, with a few updates as needed.

Álex Rodríguez

The most similar player in baseball history to Álex Rodríguez is Willie Mays.

You may want to pause here and read that again. No really, go ahead…

Okay, I can feel your disbelief. So here is some evidence:

I didn’t say A-Rod was as good as Willie Mays, or that he was better. I said they were “similar,” and it’s undeniably true that they are similar in terms of their career statistics. Similar homers, and steals, and hits, and slugging percentage, and so on.