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 |