Jim Thome: Class of 2018?

Hall of Fame selections will be released today, not coincidentally, our most recent series analyzing potential Indians’ Hall of Famers wraps up with possibly the most deserving of any player from the mid-90’s teams. Jim Thome played  22 seasons in Major League Baseball, with his best years coming as a member of some of the greatest Indians teams in organization history. While he’s already enshrined in Cleveland Indians lore as the greatest slugger of all-time, a question still remains as to whether he’ll be selected to be forever enshrined among the greatest baseball players of all-time.

Jim Thome’s Hall of Fame credentials can be supported by both traditional stat analysis as well as modern day analytics. When taking a look at Thome’s JAWS score and WAR totals, he’s clearly qualified to be elected. Of the 19 first basemen currently enshrined in Cooperstown, the average career WAR totals for them equals 65.9. The average WAR totals of their 7 best seasons equals 42.4. The JAWS score, or average of the previous two numbers, is 54.2. For Thome’s career, he earned a total of 72.9 wins above replacement, his 7 best WAR seasons total 41.5, and his JAWS score was 57.2. Other than his 7 year best totals, Jim Thome exceeds those averages, and in fact only 7 Hall of Famers are ahead of him in this respect. This is a compelling case for Thome’s admittance on an analytical level.

Despite the growing rise in acceptance and use of analytics in baseball, there is still a large number of members of the BBWAA who believe they are complete hokum. Luckily for Thome, he is near the top of one of the most prestigious lists in all of baseball with 612 career home runs. As the 7th leading home run hitter in baseball history, Thome is in rare air.

It used to be the case that if you achieved a major statistical milestone, your odds of being inducted into the Hall of Fame rose dramatically. For instance, those who have hit 500 home runs, 3,000 hits, career .300 hitters, 300 win pitchers, multiple MVP and Cy Young award winners, etc. The older baseball writer crowd tends to gravitate to these numbers, some rightfully so, in order to achieve any of these marks, one has to be a tremendous ballplayer. Under this mode of selection, Jim Thome would be a shoe in, unfortunately the vaunted Steroid Era changed everything.

Before 1999 there were 15 members of the 500 Home Run Club. Since then, 12 players have been added to that list. This has greatly devalued the 500 home run mark in the eyes of many, mainly because many of the players that have joined the club in this time are admitted or suspected steroid users. There is also a feeling of guilt by association attached to many of the major home run hitters of that era, whether rightfully or wrongfully so.

Unfortunately for Thome, he has to deal with the fact that he achieved his lofty home run hitter status while playing in the Steroid Era. Due to this fact alone, some writer could very well choose not to vote for him and to discredit his achievements. Fortunately for Thome, there has never been any indication that he himself was ever a steroid user. While the stigma has certainly attached to players like Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire, and Rafael Palmeiro, all suspected or known steroid users, the same stigma has avoided players like Ken Griffey, Jr. and Frank Thomas, who are commonly seen as some of the more upstanding players of the era. Thomas, and Griffey, who hasn’t been elected yet but is seen as a lock to be elected this year, are proof that players from this era can overcome the stigma and make their way into Cooperstown by being completely free of any indication of steroid use. So while Thome may have earned his fame by hitting home runs during the most disgraced era in all of baseball, he did it without reproach.

A number of Hall of Fame ballots have already been released which indicate that there has been a shift toward electing those who had previously been shunned during their time on the ballot. If this trend toward forgiving Steroid Era players of their transgressions, whether real or imagined, holds true for years to come, Jim Thome’s chances at being elected increase substantially. Thome will become eligible for election in 2018, hopefully by that time much of the current logjam will be cleared up and the voters will see through the cloud of steroid allegations that surround many of the players of Thome’s era. I believe he is going to be elected into the Hall, maybe not on his first time on the ballot but certainly after one or two trips through the ringer. Regardless of when, it will be great to have an Indians great memorialized in large part for his work as an Indian.