FanPost

Get Jake Arrieta into the Hall of Fame


Let me get this out of the way up front: Jake Arrieta will not be elected to the Hall of Fame.

I would like to be proven wrong, and I'm going to spend the rest of this article explaining how that could happen. I want to make clear that I'm not advocating or predicting that Jake should or will make it. We're talking about a guy who's had one great season in his career. There is, however, some recent precedent for him to finish his career with the necessary qualifications.

Let's start with WAR, everyone's favorite number to hate on. Using the Fangraphs version, Arrieta finished 2015 with 15.0 career WAR. That was his age-29 season.

Here's two other guys through their age-29 seasons. One is in the Hall of Fame. The other is on the ballot and stands a good chance of eventually being voted in.

Player WAR through 29 GS (29) IP (29) ERA (29)
Randy Johnson 17.1 163 1073.1 3.78
Curt Schilling 18.2 121 988.1 3.49
Jake Arrieta 15.0 130 795.1 3.70

None of these guys are perfect comps for the others. Schilling had pitched almost half his appearances in relief at this point in his career. Johnson had more starts and innings, but his awful control made his overall numbers fairly pedestrian. Arrieta is the only one of the three to have put together two really good seasons in a row through age-29.

The three men do have one big thing in common: They didn't get out of the gate strong. As they turned 29, no one was talking about any of them as potential Hall of Famers. So how did Johnson and Schilling do it?

Let's start with Johnson, since he's actually in the Hall of Fame. By the time his 2001 season ended (with a World Series win), Johnson had raised his career WAR to 86.9, which puts him above the average for pitchers already in the Hall. At this point, he had a career ERA of 3.13 (141 ERA+), 3412 strikeouts, an amazing 11.2 K/9 rate, and exactly 200 wins. If he'd retired then, he definitely would have gone out on top. Probably not a first ballot guy, but he wouldn't have been casually dismissed either.

Johnson's seven-year peak was 1998 - 2004. During that time, he amassed 57.1 WAR. Note that this includes three years after 2001 -- which, of course, is why he didn't just squeak in.

Schilling gets up to 77.8 WAR after the 2006 season. Though he has an average season in 2007, the '06 season is probably what puts him over the top. His career ERA hasn't changed much, as it's 3.44 by this point (128 ERA+), but he now has over 3000 strikeouts and has 207 wins.

Schilling's seven-year peak was 1997 - 2003, for which he accumulated 46.5 WAR. That looks paltry compared to Johnson's total, but Johnson was otherworldly during that stretch.

Johnson was 37 in 2001. Schilling was 39 in 2006.

Arrieta's peak would presumably include 2015, so let's assume he matches Schilling and tallies up around 39 WAR from 2016 - 2021. That's 6.5 WAR/year, and takes him through his age-35 season. That gets him to 54 career WAR. He probably needs at least 20 more, so he's got to average 4.0 from ages 36 - 40. Now he's at 74 -- less than Schilling, but at least in the conversation.

A 6.5 WAR season looks like Max Scherzer in 2015:

Player IP SO BB ERA FIP
Max Scherzer 228.2 276 34 2.79 2.77

But to really make a Hall of Fame case, that's probably got to be the baseline. Arrieta needs more great seasons, where he's one of the consensus best two or three pitchers in the league. And he probably needs some post-season heroics to build on the narrative (though Schilling can tell you, even that might not be enough).

So ... maybe three more seasons where he can make a good case as the Cy Young winner, three more where he's an All Star, and another five where he's basically John Lackey from last year. He probably needs a benchmark like 3000 strikeouts, which will be hard to get unless he pitches well into his 40s.

This is a tall order. Schilling shows it's at least possible without having the best K/9 rate of all time. But Arrieta's chances would be better -- obviously -- if the rest of his career resembled Johnson's more than Schilling's. But don't forget, the odds were against both of those guys when they were at the stage of their careers Arrieta is at now.

He's not going to make it. But he could.

FanPosts are written by readers of Bleed Cubbie Blue, and as such do not reflect the views of SB Nation or Vox Media, nor is the content endorsed by SB Nation, Vox Media or Al Yellon, managing editor of Bleed Cubbie Blue or reviewed prior to posting.