Average WAR for 2012 Hall of Fame Candidates

December 18, 2011 by TheUmpire

Jeff Bagwell tops the list again for Baseball Hall of Fame candidates. None of the first-year 2012 candidates makes the cut.

Brian Jordan leads the pack of non-worthy rookies, largely due to an impressive defensive WAR.

Tony Womack looks to be this year’s Lenny Harris.

We have converted a baseball player's career Wins Above Replacement (WAR) into a rate statistic which indicates the average number of wins above replacement a player would give his team per single season (avgWAR). Baseball-Reference.com uses the following scale for WAR values:


It is our proposal that players having an avgWAR of 5.0 or higher are worthy of induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

Player Avg WAR
Jeff Bagwell 6.02
Larry Walker 5.48
Mark McGwire 5.45
Edgar Martinez 5.30
Barry Larkin 5.12
Alan Trammell 4.73
Tim Raines 4.18
Rafael Palmeiro 3.78
Brian Jordan 3.73
Bernie Williams 3.69
Brad Radke 3.68
Tim Salmon 3.64
Don Mattingly 3.61
Fred McGriff 3.33
Dale Murphy 3.28
Juan Gonzalez 3.21
Bill Mueller 3.01
Javy Lopez 3.01
Jack Morris 2.48
Phil Nevin 2.12
Lee Smith 1.96
Jeromy Burnitz 1.68
Eric Young 1.59
Vinny Castilla 1.43
Ruben Sierra 1.01
Terry Mulholland 0.49
Tony Womack 0.15

Stats from Lahman's Baseball Database and Baseball-Reference.com.