Former St. Louis Cardinals third baseman Scott Rolen gets call to Cooperstown
Scott Rolen, who won three Gold Gloves and the 2006 World Series in his six seasons as a St. Louis Cardinal, was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in the class of 2023 by the voters of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America.
Fred McGriff, elected unanimously by the Contemporary Baseball Era committee in December, will be the other inductee of the class of 2023 this summer in Cooperstown, New York. Rolen and McGriff will be joined by BBWAA Career Excellence Award winner John Lowe, formerly of the Detroit Free Press.
In his sixth year of ten on the ballot, Rolen finished just across the finish line, accruing 76.3% of the vote. A player must reach 75% to be inducted; Rolen was inducted by a margin of five votes.
He becomes just the second primary third baseman elected — joining Chipper Jones — since Wade Boggs in 2005. He’s the 18th third baseman to be honored by the Hall.
Carlos Beltrán received strong support in his first year of eligibility, but was ultimately stymied by his involvement in the sign stealing scandal surrounding the 2017 Houston Astros. The scandal first cost him his employment as manager of the New York Mets and now threatens to keep him from the Hall of Fame, despite a career which saw him record more than 400 home runs, 300 stolen bases, and 2700 hits while also winning three Gold Gloves.
According to Baseball Reference, Beltrán’s three most similar hitters are Andre Dawson, Billy Williams and Al Kaline; each is in the Hall of Fame.
Former Cardinals John Lackey and Jhonny Peralta were included on the ballot as assembled by the Hall of Fame, eligible after reaching ten years of service time. As neither cleared the five percent threshold (Lackey received one vote, Peralta none), both will be removed from the ballot moving forward.
Rolen is the first player who spent a significant portion of his career as a Cardinal to do so since the late Bruce Sutter, who was elected in 2006. Ted Simmons was elected by the Modern Baseball Committee in 2019, and Tony La Russa was elected by the Veterans Committee in 2013.
His exclusion from the Hall of Fame until his sixth ballot reflects the challenges in being elected as a third baseman. He paired more than 300 home runs and 2000 hits with eight Gold Gloves, a Silver Slugger, and the 1997 NL Rookie of the Year award.
He is above the average of Hall of Fame third basemen in every player value metric, and by Jay Jaffe’s JAWS system, is the tenth-most valuable third baseman of all time. Of the nine players ahead of him, eight are in the Hall of Fame. The outlier, Adrian Beltré, is not eligible for election until this coming winter, and is expected to cruise to Cooperstown in his first attempt.
Rolen is sixth all-time in defensive wins above replacement for third basemen, trailing Brooks Robinson, Beltré, Buddy Bell, Clete Boyer and Graig Nettles. He exceeds four of those six in offensive wins above replacement, trailing only Beltré (71.6) and tied with Nettles at 52.8.
