Pat ‘The Bat’ Burrell and Stairs on 2017’s Hall of Fame eligible vote list

Pat Burrell is one of the most popular Phillies in the history of the team, his swing was legendary

Wow, it’s been 5 years since Pat Burrell retired, and this year ‘The Bat’ is on the 2017 Hall of Fame voting list. Matt Stairs also is on the list to be voted on by the BBWAA. How did Pat and Matt get on the list?

Both players were nominated by the writers for this year’s election along with 17 other players in their first year of eligibility.

Is Pat Burrell a candidate that could make it to the Hall? He’s had 292 HR and 976 RBI over his career. Baseball-Reference.com has a Hall of Fame monitor that keeps a numerical score as to how worthy a player is to make it to the Hall. Burrell unfortunately doesn’t add up to Hall numbers, but it is an honor to make the list.

Another ex-Phillie, Matt Stairs, had a long career in baseball (19 seasons), and this year he will be the Phillies hitting coach. Stairs career was a few years longer than Burrell’s but he didn’t hit as many HR’s (265) or drive in as many runs (899) as Burrell did in only a 12 year career. One reason for that is that Stairs was a DH for a long time in his career.

Stairs’ numbers on the Hall of Fame statistics over at Baseball-Reference.com says he is even much lower than Burrell on the measurement scale, and he is compared to Burrell among others on a ‘similar batters’ comparison over a career.

It’s a great honor to even make the list to be voted on, players must get more than 5 percent of the vote to make it on the list next year. We’ll have to see if either player can surpass that in the vote. The vote is announced on January 28th, 2017.

Here’s the ballot list for the 2017 Hall of Fame:

 

Rk Name YoB % of Ballots
1 Jeff Bagwell 7th 71.6%
2 Tim Raines 10th 69.8%
3 Trevor Hoffman 2nd 67.3%
4 Curt Schilling 5th 52.3%
5 Roger Clemens 5th 45.2%
6 Barry Bonds 5th 44.3%
7 Edgar Martinez 8th 43.4%
8 Mike Mussina 4th 43.0%
9 Lee Smith 15th 34.1%
10 Fred McGriff 8th 20.9%
11 Jeff Kent 4th 16.6%
12 Larry Walker 7th 15.5%
13 Gary Sheffield 3rd 11.6%
14 Billy Wagner 2nd 10.5%
15 Sammy Sosa 5th 7.0%
16 Ivan Rodriguez 1st
17 Manny Ramirez 1st
18 Vladimir Guerrero 1st
19 Mike Cameron 1st
20 J.D. Drew 1st
21 Jorge Posada 1st
22 Magglio Ordonez 1st
23 Derrek Lee 1st
24 Tim Wakefield 1st
25 Edgar Renteria 1st
26 Melvin Mora 1st
27 Carlos Guillen 1st
28 Casey Blake 1st
29 Jason Varitek 1st
30 Orlando Cabrera 1st
31 Pat Burrell 1st
32 Freddy Sanchez 1st
33 Arthur Rhodes 1st
34 Matt Stairs 1st
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 12/13/2016.

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