Just One More Good Year

Sandy Koufax's bifurcated Major League career would have made Henry Jekyll proud: the mediocre first half (seven years, 36-40, 4.06, six wins against replacement) and the spectacular second half (six years, 129-47, 2.24, 44 wins against replacement.) 

Considering the totality of his career achievements, Koufax is a pale shadow of the average Hall of Fame hurler. Yet omitting the Left Arm of God from Cooperstown is unthinkable. His peak years, in which he posted ERAs an astonishing 43%, 59%, 86%, 60% and 90% better than league average, were the equal of anyone's, ever.

Where Koufax's career was an avalanche, Don Sutton's was the inexorable drip, drip, drip of a waterfall in drought. Sutton truly excelled in just three seasons, but his reliably good performance across 23 years earned him a bust in the Hall as well.

Thus the premise for the widely used "JAWS" rankings for Hall of Fame contenders: both full career value and peak value are relevant. Whereas some players earn their ceremony for sustained excellence, others get in with bursts of greatness.

This is why 2013 is so important for Robinson Cano's Hall of Fame resume. Cano has not played nearly long enough to accumulate the career numbers for the Hall, but another eight-win season catapults him to average peak WARP for Hall of Fame second basemen. After that, it would just be a matter of accumulating the remaining 30 WARP or so over the second half of his career. That feat is accomplished by playing well, if not spectacularly, for another six-seven years before tailing off in his late 30s.

It's not quite fair to say Cano's age-30 season is a make-or-break campaign for his Hall of Fame resume. He's young enough, after all, to slip for a year or two before rebounding in another season. The Hall is filled with gentlemen who were absent from the discussion at age 30 but sprang into it thereafter. Paul Molitor jumps to mind: although he was a seriously fine player in his first nine seasons, he'd never cracked .842 in OPS before his age-30 campaign. In his 30s, he perenially batted above .300, crossing .850 OPS six times, including three seasons above .900. Molitor also contributed value to the Brewers - and then Toronto and Minnesota -- every year through his age-40 season.

More numerous are the meteors who start their career on fire but flame out just when this discussion might have begun. Dwight Gooden found his cliff at age 25, but Fred Lynn posted five 4+-win seasons in his first seven years, then starting after age-30 never reached that height again.

So it's premature to place the burden of Robby Cano's Hall of Fame case on the shoulders of 2013. But another performance like last year's, or the year before or the year before that, begins to put him in the rarefied air that is breathed only along Otsego Lake.

Injuries limited Roy Halladay to 156 innings and a 4.49 ERA in 2012, adding almost nothing to his Hall pass. A bounce-back 2013 would really solidify the case for old Harry Leroy, because he's right at the standards on both career and peak. He owes some of his voluminous value to durability -- 220 innings or more in each of the six years previous to last -- which Hall voters and the general public seem to esteem less than actual greatness. Another top-five pitching performance this year would make it difficult to deny Halladay entrance in 2020, or whenever. The question is whether at 36 he possesses the might to once again throw 230 frames of sub-3.00 ERA. (There is this hope: it's a contract year for Halladay.)

The noodle just began wrapping around this question and these two names emerged from the goo. If you are thinking of a player whose ticket might be one more good year from getting punched, put his name in the comment section and we'll dig in.