Hall of Fame debate: 5 pass/fail metrics to decide if Kyle Schwarber is on HOF highway

What is a pitcher’s worst nightmare? I don’t know for sure, but Kyle Schwarber stepping up to the plate has to be pretty high on the list.

Schwarber has been a known source of home runs since his arrival in the MLB. However, as formidable as he’s been, he’s never ranked high in the annual MVP voting. Luckily, you don’t need to win an MVP award to qualify for another one of baseball’s highest honors. That brings us to today’s topic. Is this fearsome slugger on a Hall of Fame trajectory?

To start, is it too early to discuss Schwarber’s HOF viability? Yes, he still has plenty of baseball to play. But that’s not the point. Our goal is to determine if Schwarber’s current achievements already qualify him for the ultimate honor.

What qualifications entitle a player to spot in Cooperstown?

To be a Hall of Famer, a player needs to have an indelible impact on the sport for a certain amount of time. People should hear their names and immediately associate them with an era in their sport or vice versa.

There is no set checklist of qualifications that one must fulfill to ascend to the hall of baseball greatness (beside the service time, waiting period, and ballot eligibility period outlined in the BBWAA website), but that can make it hard to justify whether Kyle Schwarber is making this era of baseball memorable. After all, there are some questions as to why some players are in the Hall of Fame and others aren’t. Al Oliver, for example, spent 18 years in the majors with 219 career home runs and a .303 batting average but is not in the Hall of Fame.

So, to start, let’s set some parameters.

For one, the only actual parameter set by the BBWAA is a minimum of ten years of activity. Schwarber is in his tenth year, but has suffered injuries which have kept him from playing the majority of the 2016 season among others. Still, he is eligible.

For this hypothetical scenario, we’ll assess Schwarber’s yearly numbers rather than career numbers. Five years’ worth of HOF-type numbers should be sufficient to land him in the hall. After all, one year of excelsior, MVP numbers doesn’t make a HOF career no matter how great.

Now, we get into the statistical part which will help us determine if Schwarber has five Hall of Fame years under his belt. But what metrics should we use to determine what a HOF year is? I don’t claim to be an expert on this type of thing and HOF voting is usually inconsistent to the point where it is almost arbitrary as I explained with Al Oliver, but I think these five pass/fail criteria should sway just about any voter.

Should Schwarber nail any two criteria in a single year, a HOF case for that particular year should be hard to dispute. Let's dive in.

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1. 40+ home run total

Hitting 40 or more home runs in a single year is a trait shared by only the elite power hitters. As we’ve seen before with others, being a home run hitter can get you into the HOF. I think the best example of this would be Harmon Killebrew. Killebrew is one of only three position players in the HOF with a career batting average lower than .260 (the other two, Rabbitt Maranville and Ray Schalk, played a decent amount of their time during the dead ball era which meant poorly lit ball parks, soft overused baseballs, deep ball fields, and pitchers could doctor the balls and even pour tobacco juice on them to make them darker). Killebrew finished his career with a .256 average.

That isn’t to say Killebrew didn’t have years where he hit for a decent average, but his claim to fame was his power. Killebrew posted eight years of 40+ home run baseball topping out at 49 twice. But what about Schwarber?

Kyle Schwarber mashed over 40 home runs only twice in his career, but he hasn’t spent 22 years in the majors like Killebrew did. Schwarber hit 46 home runs in 2022 and 47 last year. Schwarber has dealt with injury this season and only has 28 home runs on the season. It is doubtful he will make to 40 this year. So far, that is two years of HOF home run totals. Still, how should we address the shortened season of 2020?

Schwarber hit 11 home runs in 2020 tying him for 40th in the MLB. While not bad, it was not a HOF-worthy amount.

2. .300+ batting average

There are plenty of players that can’t put up home run totals like Killebrew, but that might not matter. Let’s take Richie Ashburn for example. Ashburn only hit 29 home runs in his 15-year career. However, he finished his career with a .308 average and thus became a HOFer. Ashburn put up nine seasons of .300+ baseball. So, how about Schwarber?

Kyle Schwarber has never hit .300 before. His highest average came in 2021 when he hit .266. Most other seasons, he has hit in the low .200s and high .100s.

Thus far, nothing about Schwarber’s batting average has been HOF-worthy. He currently owns a .229 AVG which lags all hitters in the HOF.

3. Combination of really good batting average and really good home run total  

Okay, so not every player is going to hit 40 homers or hit for a .300 average every year. But do not despair, there is always a chance for those who can put up decent numbers.

Let’s take a look at HOFer Tony Perez. In 1970, he hit 40 home runs to the tune of a .317 average. Excluding that year, he hit more than 28 homers only once and, likewise, hit over .300 once (with a qualifying number of plate appearances).

While a HOFer doesn’t need to put up astronomical numbers every year, they still need to put up very good numbers for at least five years out of their career. For instance, a .290+ average with 25+ home runs, a .280+ average with 30+ home runs, or a .275+ average with 35+ home runs should be sufficient.

Perez only meets my standards four years out of his 23-year MLB career. But perhaps my standards are a little strict. Perez was a very good player for a long time. Still, one would think if quality was valued this highly that Jorge Posada would have received a little bit more consideration, but that’s just the complexity of HOF voting.

Let’s get back to Schwarber. Does he have any quality sub-40 home run seasons worth considering? Let’s give this snapshot of his stats a look.

None of these really meet my standards, but these are still good numbers. Whether they are HOF-worthy numbers or not is at the discretion of the voters. For now, we’ll say they are not. But we’ll come back to this later.

4. 5.0+ WAR

The WAR metric is an attempt to find a player’s overall value on the field. Personally, I don’t rely too heavily on WAR as it tends to value defense a little too heavily and every site calculates it differently, but it’s not a bad measuring stick.

So, how does Kyle Schwarber measure up? (All WAR values from FanGraphs, 2015 and 2016 omitted for lack of qualifying plate appearances)

To start, it might be quite easy to see how WAR greatly undervalues players like Schwarber.

A second thing I will note is that 2020 was a shortened year and accounts for that microscopic WAR value. But, as it seems, Schwarber does not meet this criteria, which is honestly a little surprising in my opinion.

5. X factor

Not every player makes into the HOF based on just one thing they do very well. Rickey Henderson had eight years where he hit over .300, but aiding his case was his record 1406 stolen bases, his record 2295 runs, an outstanding .401 on-base percentage, and his Gold Glove as an outfielder.

Kyle Schwarber is not a plus-defender and doesn’t steal bases, but he does have a tendency to get on base a lot and that is worth something. A player who can consistently get on base has the potential to create a ton of runs for his team. The average career OBP for a HOF hitter is .377. So, let’s set the on-base percentage for a HOF season at anything above .370, perhaps a bit arbitrary, but it's a good start.

After a brief look, we see Schwarber posted a .374 OBP in 2021 and maintains a .375 OBP this season. While not high enough to be uniquely qualifying for a spot in the HOF, an on-base percentage as good as his for both years is a plus. This should come in handy in determining which seasons are HOF seasons.

Conclusion

Before we discuss the sum total of his qualifications, let’s look at the scorecard.

Remember, just because it looks like someone should be a HOFer doesn’t mean they will be, case in point: Al Oliver, who hit for a .300+ average (with a qualifying amount of plate appearances) 11 times in his 18-year career.

However, in this case, it doesn’t seem that Schwarber is a HOFer based on his current standings.

Still, because his on-base percentage in 2021 exceeded my standards and coincided with decent numbers (refer back to the 2021 stats in the third section), I might just give it to him (keep in mind this is at the discretion of HOF voters and not me).

That said, Schwarber has at most, three HOF seasons, and that’s only if his .197 AVG in 2023 isn’t disqualifying. This year is still ongoing and Schwarber still has plenty of baseball to play. Perhaps this would be a good topic to revisit five or six years from now.

As things stand today, Schwarber is not a guaranteed HOFer.