Predicting Today's Future Hall of Fame Hitters, 2025 Edition (Part 2)

In an effort to make these very long articles more readable, I decided to split up this year’s Future Hall of Fame Hitters update into two roughly equal halves. Part 2 will be picking up right where Part 1 left off, starting at Age 30. If you missed that first article (which includes an introduction and an explainer for the methodology as well as the under-30 players), you can go back catch up on it here.

The next update, focusing on starting pitchers, should start going up soon. If you would like to be notified right when that goes live, you can sign up for the Hot Corner Harbor mailing list using the box below (or in the similar box at the end of the article).

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Age 30: 39.9 WAR Median; 75.00% of all players at this mark elected
Active Players: Francisco Lindor (49.6 WAR)

I’ve been banging the “Francisco Lindor is a Future Hall of Famer” drum for a while now; he’s made the list as a likely candidate every single year since he debuted. But last year, it felt like baseball writers who weren’t obsessed with trying to figure these things out way-too-early also started to notice. I saw a few writers before the 2024 season noting that Lindor was already in pretty historic company, the kind that tends to land you in Cooperstown, only for a number of fans on social media to push back.

In the end, those doubters wound up with egg on their face. 2024 felt like a tipping point for him, the kind that really starts to lock-in a player’s eventual ballot narrative, and in such a big way that even the less-observant start to take notice. Lindor was never winning the MVP over Ohtani’s legendary year, but he was the clear runner-up in the NL while leading the Mets to a surprise NLCS run. It’s kind of funny that this is the thing that convinced people, given that he’s finished top 10 in the MVP voting six times in nine-and-a-half seasons (the half was his late-call-up debut, where he only played in 99 games but came in second in Rookie of the Year voting); for some reason, a lot of people just hadn’t noticed how long and how good he’s been. Anyway, he should pass all of 50 WAR, 1500 hits, and 250 home runs in early April.

Alex Bregman is also almost here, just a hair shy of the median (39.6 WAR). A regular All-Star season could get him back over the mark for next year. We’ll see if that short-term deal for Boston drives him even higher than that, though; I imagine his main goal is to have a huge 2025 season with the Red Sox, then try the market for a longer contract next year (possibly one where half of the deal isn’t in deferred money). After Bregman is his former division rival, Corey Seager (36.8 WAR). It’s impressive that he’s actually made up ground on the Hall pace these last two years, despite missing a quarter of his potential games to injuries. He’s going to have to either keep that up or actually stay healthy for a few more years though, because it’s another two more years of 4+ WAR seasons before the Hall median starts to slow back down a little. Matt Olson (32.8 WAR) and Ketel Marte (31.2 WAR) are also both within 10 Wins of the median, although clearly neither is close enough to make all of that ground up in 2025. It’s going to have to be a multi-year catch-up plan for either of them; but on the other hand, they are both very talented and coming off some solid seasons, so I felt like I needed to at least mention them.


Age 31: 44.5 WAR Median; 79.82% of all players at this mark elected
Active Players: Mookie Betts (69.6 WAR)
Manny Machado (57.8 WAR)
José Ramírez (52.4 WAR)
Bryce Harper (51.1 WAR)

Over the years that I’ve been writing this series, I’ve always loved covering this cluster of players in particular. And not just because they’re an unusually large and consistent group of great players who have been fun to watch over their careers (although that’s true), but also because they’re kind of important to the mythology of this series. Way back in 2013, I was reflecting on the wave of impressive young players who had recently debuted, many of them around my age. I already had a fascination with writing about the Hall of Fame, so I decided to combine the two and investigate a little more, to put this star-studded freshman class into a better historical context. How rare were young players who started this strong? What did the similar historical cases to theirs look like? Did early success like that tend to indicate future Hall of Fame careers?

Manny Machado and Bryce Harper made that first list in 2013 coming off their Age 19 seasons, too young to really even have that many comparables, and they were already ahead of the Hall of Fame pace. Mookie Betts and José Ramírez joined them above the median after their rookie seasons two years later; Ramírez would briefly fall behind the pace for the next two seasons while still keeping it close, but he would fully climb back above the median again in 2018.

The full quartet has basically been locked in here ever since, a truly rare feat. That’s an astounding eight straight entries with all four, with the entire set already assured to return in 2026 and half of them good to go through 2027. I’ve had other age groups that have four above-median players, sometimes even more, and they’ll sometimes even string together two or three years where the whole group will return; but still nothing like this.

Those cases will usually include at least one member who is just barely above the Hall median, sometimes more, which leaves them vulnerable to getting injured and falling behind pace again, or else dropping out in the late 20s when the Hall pace picks up or their play slows down. Not this set, though; three of them have spent every season of their career above of the Hall median, and always several years ahead of pace, and the fourth joined them by age 24 (which was, despite multiple prior extended stints in the majors, technically still just his second season of more than 100 games) and never looked back.

Betts has already been past the overall Hall median for over a year, and I don’t imagine his future case getting many opponents at this point. Manny Machado could very likely join him this year; even repeating one of his two previous injury-hindered years would do it, but a full bounce back to his 2022 levels would shoot him well past the 60.4 Win mark that serves as the Overall Median for Hall of Fame position players. Machado will also likely pass the 2000 hit and 350 homer milestones this year, which should start to convince even the most traditional Hall voters.

Ramírez and Harper are a little behind those two, and neither is likely to reach 60 career WAR in 2025, but as mentioned, they’re both already in the clear through at least the 2026 season. And what’s more, they’re also coming off the two strongest seasons of the quartet, so there’s still a chance they manage to narrow the spread a little. Ramírez, who had the best 2024, is even coming off his seventh top-ten finish in MVP voting in the last eight years (of the other three, only Mookie has matched that streak, but his run came to an end with his 13th-place finish last year; José can still extend his).

And thinking back, it’s wild that Harper was hyped up as a future Hall of Famer as far back as his high school days, even wilder still that he basically lived up to that hype… and yet, still might not even rank as a top-three member of his age cohort. We’ll still have to wait and see on that, though. There’s plenty of time for these four to shuffle their order a little more.

What’s even more interesting is that, despite not having anyone else above the median line, this group is still deep enough to have multiple interesting runners-up. Xander Bogaerts (40.8 WAR) is first, and that one feels like a bit of a stretch right now. He’s coming off a down year and would need to have a historic year to come back by this time next year. But as a long-term project… his days of 5- and 6-WAR seasons aren’t that far behind him. And if he can return to that, Age 33 is where the Hall pace starts to slow down. A good season there will make up a lot of ground if you can manage it, but that feels like a wobbly, load-bearing “if” at the moment.

Matt Chapman (38.4 WAR) is after Bogaerts by quite a bit, but his case might be even more compelling. While Xander was a very young call-up (debuting at 20 and playing a full season at 21), Chapman was the exact opposite, not making his debut until his Age 24 season (and only an 84-game debut, at that). He’s played over 500 fewer games than Bogaerts, but only trails him by about 2 Wins thanks to several high-peak years. One of which was just last year, when Matt was worth 7.1 WAR by B-R’s estimation. Again, seasons like that will make up a lot of ground if you can still manage them at this stage in your career, and 12 WAR over the next two years would put him right at the Hall median.

That’s still a big ask, but the fact that it’s at least plausible is a testament to what Chapman has been able to accomplish in a reduced span of time. And 12 WAR over your ages 32 and 33 seasons certainly is a big ask, don’t get me wrong, but it’s still a plausible one for a player at Chapman’s level currently (in fact, we actually have a couple of real-life examples of what that looks like coming up in the next few blurbs!). For contrast, Trea Turner (36.3 WAR) is the next name down the list, and for as good as he’s been in the past, I still wouldn’t be gaming out this kind of hypothetical for him until I saw another season like his 2021-2022 run.


Age 32: 48.6 WAR Median; 79.09% of all players at this mark elected
Active Players: Mike Trout (86.2 WAR)
Aaron Judge (52.2 WAR)

Mike Trout was the other big name that inspired that original 2013 column, coming off that 2012 season where he won Rookie of the Year, finished runner-up in the MVP race, and totaled 10.5 bWAR. The twelve seasons since have been just as legendary, with Trout taking over the title of Active Leader in Wins Above Replacement following Albert Pujols’s retirement after the 2022 season. The last four years have been a lot rougher, with Trout missing nearly 60% of his team’s games, but he’s still good when he can stay on the field. Hopefully, he can manage a few more healthy seasons from here on out, but even if this is the beginning of the end, there’s little doubt he’ll end up in Cooperstown when he’s done.

Aaron Judge is another example of being almost the opposite of the player he’s listed alongside. Not even nine months younger than Trout, Judge won the Rookie of the Year Award a full five years after his contemporary, putting up an 8.0-Win season as a 25 year old in 2017. The amount of value he’s crammed into that shortened time frame is kind of incredible; even in last year’s article, while I was relatively optimistic about his chances to eventually catch-up to the Hall pace, I said it was more likely a two-year goal or something because he’d be unlikely to have another year like his 2022 campaign. Whoops. Anyway, after debuting later than something like 95% of all Hall of Famers, Judge still managed to catch-up to the Hall pace in just eight seasons (one of which was even shortened by COVID), and the season that got him over the line was so good that it even put him a year ahead of pace, so he can spend this season working towards his 2027 goal.

Runner-up Christian Yelich (41.9 WAR) is weird case. He used to be here, as recently as 2021! But it feels so much longer ago than that. Still, his solid, young start took him a long way, and he’s still within 7 WAR of the pace (and two-thirds of the way to the overall hitter median, if we zoom out a bit). In 2023, his bat seemed to wake up from the funk it was in from 2020 to 2022, and 2024 looked like it might have been a big comeback year, the kind that could have gotten him a lot closer to that 48.6 WAR mark. Except he re-injured his back, and didn’t play in any games after July, ending any hopes of that. It’s hard to shake the feeling that something could happen, given how far he’s already come and how good he still can be, even in his 30s; for example, an All-Star 2025 season would put him in an interesting position. But if he can’t stay healthy and on-the-field, none of that matters.

I’ll also mention Willson Contreras (27.1 WAR) since he’s a catcher and we’ve established they have some extra leeway… but I’m not sure they have that much leeway.


Age 33: 50.4 WAR Median; 76.99% of all players at this mark elected
Active Players: Nolan Arenado (56.7 WAR)

Nolan Arenado is within 4 Wins of the overall median for Hall of Fame hitters. He’s probably not going the rest of the way this year, as his bat and glove have lost a step the last two years, but there have also been weirder things than former stars having random good seasons in their mid-30s. And even if he doesn’t make it this year, just being above average would do him good. It’ll put him in position to cross the line next year, and probably get him over 350 home runs while getting him with striking distance of 2000 hits. I don’t think his Cooperstown chances could handle a total collapse in his play, but I also don’t know that he needs any more amazing years. I’d love to see a few more flashes of that 6-time Platinum Glove winner on the field, but really, a couple of just-good years to pad his career numbers would likely be enough to convince eventual voters.

I don’t know what to make of Marcus Semien’s (45.8 WAR) Hall chances, but I do think they are worth discussing. Semien is a classic late-bloomer, and that’s historically not been something that Hall voters have been keen on. Entering the 2018 season, Semien was a 27-year old with just 8.4 career WAR and really only one good season to his name. In the seven seasons since then, he’s picked up 37.4 WAR (an average of over 6 Wins a season, if you exclude 2020), 3 different third-place finishes in MVP voting, and a World Series. He still does feel kind of under-decorated in spite of that though, with just 3 All-Star selections, 2 Silver Sluggers, and a single Gold Glove. The delayed launch means that his counting numbers also aren’t super impressive yet.

He’s still got 4 seasons left on his Rangers contract; if he can average 4 Wins a year, that should get him a little over the Hall WAR median, and maybe something like 2100 hits and 320 home runs. None of that is shabby, it’s pretty close to what I was highlighting for Arenado! But Arenado is already 95% of the way to those numbers, while we’re projecting multiple good seasons for Semien to make that. And even then, he would still be well short of Arenado’s award shelf, even if voters started dumping honors on him.

Put another way, it would take a few more good years, but I wouldn’t be shocked if Semien winds up with the kind of career that I wind up writing about as very underrated yet still deserving when he hits the Hall ballot, a la Bobby Abreu or Mark Buehrle or Chase Utley. But even “very underrated candidate” is still not in the Hall of Fame; he would probably need his 30s to look more like Adrian Beltré’s to really win over a mass of BBWAA voters. But hey, that’s probably not a bad aspirational goal for him, either: another delayed-breakout infielder who went to the Rangers in his early 30s and had a number of successful seasons. It’s probably not likely when you add all of those “ifs” together, but Semien is still good enough right now that I don’t want to totally rule him out just yet.

J.T. Realmuto (36.3 WAR) is our active leader in bWAR among catchers, but he’s still pretty far off the mark. Even if he doesn’t need to hit 60 Wins, he probably does need to get kind of close, I’m not sure how many great mid-30s seasons we can expect here for him to make up the difference.


Age 34: 54.0 WAR Median; 77.68% of all players at this mark elected
Active Players: Freddie Freeman (60.7 WAR)

We have our third of four active players who are already above the overall median. I don’t know how much pushback you would have gotten before the season for saying “Freddie Freeman will be an easy Hall of Famer”, but 2024 seemed like the kind of thing that would have removed any straggling doubters. He picked up his eighth All-Star selection while shooting past the 60 WAR mark, he picked up his second World Series title, and got the Series MVP for his historic performance. At this point , he’s firmly into the milestone chase portion of his career, and as the active hit leader (2267), he’s probably the narrow favorite to be the next member of the 3000 hit club.

Jose Altuve (52.8 WAR) would be right after him on that list, though. He’s still technically only in the honorable mention portion for now, but he’s now firmly into the flat portion of the Win curve; from this point on, there are no more seasons where the Median Hall pace jumps by more than 2 WAR in a single season. If Altuve can repeat his performance from any of his last four seasons, he’ll be back over the mark next year (and that includes the one season where he broke his hand and missed 72 games). And even if he misses some time again and falls slightly short, it’s not like things pick up that much the year after. As for the 3000 hit chase, he’s currently at 2232. Both Freeman and Altuve feel so far away, but that’s part of what makes 3000 hits a big deal: you have to stay good for a long time to make it.

Giancarlo Stanton (44.7 WAR) isn’t nearly as close to the median as Altuve, but I feel compelled to at least mention him after his big October. He’s clearly still talented when he’s healthy and at his best, however rare that might be these days. And like… it wasn’t that long ago that he was ahead of Hall of Fame pace! He was still in the positive as recently as the 2021 update, and he was even still leading this age group just three years ago! And even if he can’t find a late-career second act, that still doesn’t necessarily rule out making the Hall of Fame anyway; again, this is still just the median we’re talking about, half of the inductees are below it. Stanton’s just 71 homers shy of 500, and nobody else looks nearly as close to that mark as he does right now. It probably wouldn’t be enough to convince 75% of the BBWAA, but who knows for sure? This chance of a comeback doesn’t seem impossible, but it also doesn’t seem very likely. (Edit: It of course doesn’t help that he does not seem to be able to stay healthy.)

Salvador Perez (35.5 WAR) also falls in this group. I think his candidacy will be interesting. I know people are skeptical on Yadier Molina’s chances once he hits the ballot in 2028, but I came around on his case before he retired. Maybe he’s not my most-overwhelming yes (as much as I loved watching him), but a yes is still a yes. But setting aside my own evaluation, I think Molina is going to sail in on the first ballot he’s eligible; a lot of voters seem to love his case.

Perez gets a ton of Yadi comps, and… I’m not sure he deserves them? There are a lot of signs that Yadier’s defense was something that we couldn’t fully measure, and on the stuff that we could measure, he came out pretty well too. Perez seems fine, but nowhere close to that level (tangible or intangible). However, his defensive reputation far outstrips what we have been able to measure, and moreover, he’s a better hitter than Molina, which I’m sure will make up the defensive gap for some voters. He has a good chance to reach 300 homers this season, something just seven primary-catchers have ever done! If I’m right and Yadier Molina goes in on the first ballot, I have a feeling Salvador Perez eventually makes it to Cooperstown on the BBWAA ballot as well, even with his stats where they are at the moment.


Age 35: 55.6 WAR Median; 75.65% of all players at this mark elected
Active Players: None

Starling Marte (38.6 WAR) leads this group in Wins Above Replacement, but he wouldn’t even rank in the top four for the age bracket immediately below him (Jason Heyward has 41.8 WAR, and he’s not particularly close to the Hall standard anymore).


Age 36: 57.6 WAR Median; 78.38% of all players at this mark elected
Active Players: Paul Goldschmidt (62.8 WAR)

Paul Goldschmidt is our fourth and final position player above the overall WAR median. While his 2024 season wasn’t good, it also wasn’t bad enough to be go into the negatives, so he was still moving in the right direction. If you’d like an idea of what it takes for a late-blooming player to make it all the way to the Hall of Fame standard, Goldschmidt is a good example; after an okay 48-game debut in 2011 at the age of 23, he would post a solid full rookie season the following year, then go on a decade-long tear. From 2013 to 2022, he was worth over 54 bWAR, topping the 6-Win mark for half of those season playing in 150 or more games eight times (both feats are even more impressive when you consider that span includes 2020, where he had no chance to make either but was still on-pace for both).

I have no idea if he’ll find any more gas in the tank this year as a member of the Yankees, although I wouldn’t be shocked; they seem to have a knack for getting bounce-back years out of aging veterans on one-year deals. And even if this is the end of the road, I still have to think he’ll make it to the Hall; voters have tended to like first basemen in the past, and I’ve even noted here before that he compares favorably to recent inductee Todd Helton and likely future inductee Joey Votto. Maybe it’ll take him a few tries, but I’d be he makes it in quicker than Helton did (if only because there’s no chance he debuts on a ballot as crowded as 2018). After Goldy, it’s a long way down to this age group’s runner-up, Tommy Pham (17.8 WAR).


Age 37: 59.4 WAR Median; 82.08% of all players at this mark elected
Active Players: None

Andrew McCutchen (49.3 WAR) was actually ahead of the median for his age way back in my first Future Hall of Fame piece back in 2013 (and it wouldn’t have been his first season above the line, had I started earlier). He’d go on to win the MVP Award that year too, and it looked like the sky was the limit, but… it was basically all downhill from there. That 2011-2015 stretch where he made five All-Star teams and put up 31.5 WAR looked like the start of Hall of Fame run, but that stretch is basically the entirety of his peak. It was a good enough run to keep him above the Hall median for his age for a few years, but he finally dropped below it after the 2018 season, which is coincidentally the last time Baseball-Reference said he was worth more than 2 Wins in a season. For his career, he’s still only about 10 WAR short of where he needs to be… two more years of his peak could have made that up, but I have no idea how he could do it now. It just feels disappointing, given how hot he started, not to mention how easy it is to root for McCutchen. At the very least, though, I think he’s likely to get his number retired in Pittsburgh.

McCutchen is at least signed for this year, though; I couldn’t even find any major rumors on anyone bringing in José Abreu (30.3 WAR) in, not even on a minor league deal. It’s understandable, given how bad his Astros tenure went, but I do actually think he has an interesting “What If” case as well. The Hall of Fame doesn’t really give any consideration to foreign league performance though, and his case would definitely need that.


Age 38: 59.9 WAR Median; 82.08% of all players at this mark elected
Age 39: 60.3 WAR Median; 83.65% of all players at this mark elected
Age 40: 60.3 WAR Median; 84.31% of all players at this mark elected
Overall: 60.4 WAR Median; 82.15% of all players at this mark elected
Active Players: None

The pickings are even slimmer for the rest of the 30s, and none of them have the history with this series that McCutchen does, so I’m just combining them all together into one smaller section. Carlos Santana (38.0 WAR) leads the Age 38 bracket; he’s never really been close to a Hall of Fame pace, but he’s had a respectable career. Also, it’s actually kind of amazing he’s almost made it to 40 Wins while never having more than 4.5 in a single season. Justin Turner (38.3 WAR) leads the age set above him, and is impressive in his own way; he didn’t even reach the majors until a 12-game debut at age 24, and he didn’t have his first 1-Win season until 2014, when he was 29! It’s wild to see how much he’s done since that late turn-around. No other position players from their age brackets even made it to the 2024 season, and both of them are penciled in for 2025, so extra kudos for that longevity.



That brings us to the conclusion of the first part of the Future Hall of Fame Series, 2025 edition. There’s still plenty more to cover with pitching, so if you’d like to be notified when that goes up, you can subscribe to the Hot Corner Harbor mailing list in the box below (or the ones above, they all go to the same place). And on a similar note, if you’d like to subscribe to my non-baseball writings over at Out of Left Field (mostly music and video games), I have a separate mailing list for that which can be found here.

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