Culture
Why Luke McCaffrey is such an intriguing draft prospect
A quarterback who switches to receiver midway through college? Anquan Boldin knows a thing or two about the maneuver.
The one-time San Francisco 49er started out as a quarterback at Florida State, moved to wideout and ended up playing both in his collegiate swan song, the 2003 Sugar Bowl, a game in which he caught a touchdown in the second quarter, then threw one in the third.
When he finally settled into one position, he became such a consistent route runner and reliable target that he sits in ninth place on the NFL’s all-time catch list.
Which is why Boldin, 43, was a particularly strong match for one of the young wideouts he worked with at XPE Sports in South Florida earlier this year, Rice’s Luke McCaffrey.
This past season, two years after playing quarterback for the Owls, McCaffrey grabbed the attention of NFL scouts by hauling in one impossible catch after another and finishing with a team-high 992 receiving yards and 13 touchdowns. He stood out in the Senior Bowl in January, then aced the NFL Scouting Combine in February. His 4.02-second short shuttle — it measures how quickly a player changes direction — was the fastest for his position.
.@mccaffrey_luke notches a 4.47u
📺: #NFLCombine on @nflnetwork
📱: Stream on #NFLPlus pic.twitter.com/RkThcL1xA6— NFL (@NFL) March 2, 2024
Boldin, however, was most impressed by another trait.
“He just wanted to learn,” he said in a recent phone interview. “A lot of guys, especially with his background, would have the attitude that, ‘You can’t tell me anything; I know it all.’ He was the complete opposite. He was the guy who sought me out, the guy who asked a lot of questions. He was the guy who was always looking for more, even when the session was over.”
McCaffrey said his late start to the position means he’s had to play catch-up. Which is why he jumped at the chance to work with Boldin, who teaches draft hopefuls the finer points of route running.
Said McCaffrey: “For me, as somebody trying to make up experience faster than other people have to, when you get somebody like (Boldin) in the room, it’s the most valuable thing in the world.”
That McCaffrey nearly reached 1,000 receiving yards in 2023 and yet still might only be at mid-ascent at his new position makes him one of the more intriguing prospects in next week’s draft, and he’s projected to be taken somewhere in the middle rounds.
Despite his inexperience at the position, Luke McCaffrey had 13 touchdowns and nearly 1,000 yards last season at Rice. (Troy Taormina / USA Today)
The 49ers seem to be a strong contender considering their need for a young wideout, their glut of mid-round picks — including three in Round 4 — and Kyle Shanahan’s well-established fondness for the McCaffrey clan.
To review: As a boy, the 49ers coach worshiped former Denver Broncos receiver Ed McCaffrey to the point of wearing his number 87 when he became a college receiver. Shanahan invited the oldest of Ed’s four sons, Max, to 49ers training camp in 2018 and 2019. And in 2022, he traded for the second son, Christian, the NFL’s reigning Offensive Player of the Year.
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Now Shanahan has a chance to add the youngest, Luke, who got his start at quarterback in part because his oldest brother needed someone to throw him the ball.
Growing up in the McCaffrey household meant that you were in constant competition. And a big chunk of those competitions occurred on a golf course near the family home outside of Denver. No, they weren’t working on their short game. They played football. Every day. On the 14th fairway.
“There wasn’t a lot of flag or two-hand touch back there,” their mom, Lisa, said. “It was a lot of tackle. It was game on.”
“We didn’t grow up golfing or anything so we didn’t know the etiquette,” Luke said. “We just thought of it as our field. We didn’t think of it as a golf course. We probably added a couple of divots of our own to that course, and it wasn’t from playing golf.”
The McCaffrey boys were born roughly two years apart. To make the teams even, Luke usually was paired with Max, and the middle boys, Christian and Dylan, played on the same team. The youngest boys were the quarterbacks.
“Max is an incredible athlete and now he’s an incredible coach,” Luke said with a laugh. “He does a lot of things really well. Throwing the ball isn’t one of them. So it kind of naturally got (left) to me to be the guy that would throw the ball when it was us two on a team together.”
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The position stuck. Growing up, Luke loved running quarterbacks like Denard Robinson and Lamar Jackson, and he went to Nebraska where he played for another former running quarterback, Scott Frost.
In 2021, he transferred to Rice. The Owls didn’t shine that season and neither did McCaffrey. He appeared in nine games, starting three, and completed 50 percent of his passes with two touchdowns and four interceptions.
“For various reasons, it didn’t go well here in 2021 at quarterback,” Rice coach Mike Bloomgren said. “Some of it was the cast of characters around him. And some of it was the stress he put on himself — stress to be perfect.”
The quarterback position never quite worked out for Luke McCaffrey, the youngest of the four McCaffrey brothers. (John Gutierrez / USA Today)
After the season, Bloomgren told McCaffrey he’d support any move he wanted to make. If he wanted to remain at quarterback, that was fine. There was also talk of switching to running back and even safety, a spot McCaffrey had played in high school and where he’d taken some practice snaps during the season. It didn’t matter to Bloomgren. He just wanted McCaffrey — and all the hustle, smarts and leadership that came with him — on the team.
He wound up moving to wide receiver, and perhaps not surprisingly, he was a quick study. He had 58 catches for 723 yards and six touchdowns in 2022.
“My joke coming out of spring ball that year was: Yeah, it was a pretty easy transition,” Bloomgren said. “It looks like he has a dad who played in the National Football League for 13 years.”
More noteworthy to Bloomgren, however, were the strides McCaffrey made between his first and second seasons at his new position. In Year 1, his natural athleticism, competitiveness and, yes, the knowledge passed on from his dad, carried him a long way. The next season, his drive to learn the nuances of the position was evident.
He hit up everyone on the team, from quarterback JT Daniels to the Owls’ defensive backs, for tips. He sent tape home for Ed and his brothers to dissect. He relentlessly played a hand-eye coordination game he came up with in which he’d throw a tennis ball off a wall and try to make increasingly high-degree-of-difficulty grabs. The real challenge: He’d have a teammate draped all over him, determined not to let McCaffrey make the catch.
“The best thing about a tennis ball is it’s portable,” McCaffrey said. “You can take it wherever you want — whether it’s before a meeting in the receiver room, in the weight room after the workout, whether it’s in the car.”
He played it relentlessly with his closest friend group: running back Dean Connors, fullback Geron Hargon and kicker Tim Horn. It’s no coincidence they composed a quartet.
Luke McCaffrey celebrates a touchdown with Rice fullback and close friend Geron Hargon. (Thomas Shea / USA Today)
“These guys kind of served the roles that my brothers did growing up,” McCaffrey said. “They were kind of my crew that I hung around with and we would just compete in every aspect of life and we enjoyed doing it. … I didn’t major in psychology or anything, but I’m sure there’s some sort of science behind how I grew up. That was how I learned — playing games and competing.”
The result: His statistics jumped in every category in 2023, and as the season went on, Rice’s quarterbacks trusted him in increasingly tough situations. McCaffrey ranked ninth in the nation in Pro Football Focus’ contested targets statistic with 28 on the season. His contested catch percentage on those throws — 60.7 — was second best among receivers with 25 or more such targets. The only receiver with a better one, 75 percent, was Washington’s Rome Odunze, who’s expected to be a top-10 pick next week.
“In 2023, any ball that went into his general vicinity — we all believed he was going to catch it without a doubt,” Bloomgren said.
A one-handed snag for @mccaffrey_luke 👀 @RiceFootball pic.twitter.com/2RaMkm8FuB
— NFL Network (@nflnetwork) February 3, 2024
Luke is the second McCaffrey that Bloomgren has coached. A decade ago, he was Stanford’s offensive coordinator, which meant he was on hand when Christian arrived in 2014. The McCaffrey work ethic and athleticism were evident right away with Christian. So was another McCaffrey characteristic.
During his freshman and sophomore years, Bloomgren said, Christian learned some wildcat plays. If he messed up a play call in the huddle or didn’t have the right timing on a motion, it drove him wild and would stay with him for the next couple of snaps. Luke is the same way.
“And I actually think one of the hardest things for Luke was to go to the next play as a quarterback and trying to be perfect,” he said. “And it’s virtually impossible to be perfect at the quarterback position. And I think that was a negative. Because it’s not like Luke didn’t have the talent to play quarterback. I think he was just so hard on himself to a fault.”
“And that’s a McCaffrey trait,” he continued. “It is largely a positive in terms of how critical they are on themselves and how it drives them. But there are times that it’s something they’ve got to work through.”
The neverending quest for perfection was a better fit at receiver. And it was something that Boldin and XPE founder Tony Villani quickly picked up on when McCaffrey arrived in early January.
Boldin is decidedly old school when it comes to the receiver position. He doesn’t want to see a lot of dancing and extra movement at the top of the route. His message to McCaffrey, Washington’s Ja’Lynn Polk, Central Florida’s Javon Baker, Virginia’s Malik Washington and the other would-be rookies was to make everything as clean and consistent as possible so the quarterback knows what to expect on every route.
Villani said he used video analysis to measure the consistency of all the routes a player would run. McCaffrey stood out with a 90 percent correlation.
“He was the most efficient route runner we had,” he said. “It was the consistency of how he changed directions. The quality of changing direction was what stood out — they were great and they didn’t differ from one rep to another where everyone else differed quite a bit.”
Now the question is how that collection of traits — combined with McCaffrey’s inexperience at receiver — translates to the draft. Neither 49ers general manager John Lynch nor his longtime right-hand man Adam Peters, now the Washington Commanders general manager, would tip their hand on where they thought Lisa and Ed McCaffrey’s youngest son would end up being taken.
“He’s relatively new to that position, but I don’t ever count out a McCaffrey,” Lynch said at the combine. “What I know is the kid’s got great bloodlines.”
Said Peters: “Anytime you can get a McCaffrey, you’re not gonna go wrong.”
Both noted that Christian, who plans to be in Colorado next week to watch the draft with his brother, would talk up Luke at every opportunity — in the cafeteria, before practice, whenever he could. And those who know them both well say they are very similar in how they think and how they prepare.
“I know it sounds like I’m just talking about everything good when it comes to this kid,” Bloomgren said of Luke. “But that’s who he is. He’s everything good. You want an opportunity to coach this kid. You want an opportunity to have this kid as a member of your team.”
(Top photo: Kara Durrette / Getty Images)
MALAGA, Spain — Rafael Nadal’s professional tennis career is over, his final match a 6-4, 6-4 defeat to Botic Van de Zandschulp of the Netherlands at the Davis Cup.
That defeat, coupled with Carlos Alcaraz and Marcel Granollers losing the doubles rubber 7-6(4), 7-6(3) to Wesley Koolhof and Van de Zandschulp, saw Spain eliminated from the Davis Cup. With that came the end for Nadal, one of the sport’s most successful players of all time, who in October confirmed that he would retire at the event.
Nadal had flashes of his old self during the loss to Van de Zandschulp, but they were all too brief. A couple of aces in crucial moments. A snapped backhand overhead. A scampering chase after a lob that he got back with a spinning overhead while running away from the net.
Ultimately his game proved too meek to survive a powerful, modern player like Van de Zandschulp. Strokes that once would have pelted balls through the court ended up short, allowing the Dutchman to take the initiative off Nadal’s racket.
With Nadal out it was left to Carlos Alcaraz to save him and to save Spain. Alcaraz got halfway there, winning his singles match, but then he and Granollers fell to Van de Zandschulp and Koolhof in straight sets as Nadal sat with his teammates courtside, urging Granollers and Alcaraz on. He stood and pumped his fists two at a time, trying to get them to hang in and give him one more chance at the court.
The match came down to two tiebreaks. Koolhof and Van de Zandschulp played some their best tennis when it counted most, with the weight of saving Nadal’s career for another few days pressing down on the Spaniards. The Dutch took the first tiebreak 7-4. In the second, Van de Zandschulp turned it on with a lunging stab of a volley that nicked the outside of the sideline and a blazing passing shot that sent the Dutch on to the win. Koolhof, 35, is also retiring here. He was not ready to go. He sank to his knees with joy.
Nadal stood and folded his arms. The end had come.
Rafael Nadal retires from tennis
Rafael Nadal won four Davis Cups with Spain. This one was not to be. (Clive Brunskill / Getty Images)
When it was over, he tried to address the crowd in Spanish. The “Rafa, Rafa, Rafa” chant that has followed him around the world drowned him out. Then they let their hero speak.
“I have felt super fortunate to receive so much,” he said.
“It has been an incredible privilege, an honor that we have enjoyed. We achieved so many things,” he said, addressing members of Spain’s tennis team past and present. Alcaraz looked crestfallen on the sidelines.
“Nobody ever wants to arrive at this moment — I am not tired of playing tennis,” Nadal said.
“My body has arrived at a place where it cannot play anymore. I feel privileged to have extended my career longer than I expected. Thanks to life and to my team,” he added.
Video tributes came in from legends and rivals: Serena Williams, Andy Murray, Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer, Conchita Martinez, Juan Martin del Potro. Spanish sporting royalty, including Ballon d’Or holder Rodri, former Spain captain and goalkeeper Iker Casillas and striker Raul, and golfer Sergio Garcia lent their voices. David Beckham addressed Nadal – in Spanish.
“I have tried to achieve my goals with respect, humility and appreciation for the good things I have experienced. I have tried to be a good person and I hope you have felt that. I leave the world of professional tennis having found many friends,” Nadal said.
Later, Alcaraz offered his own tribute on X, also in Spanish. “There will be many more Davis Cups. There is only one Rafa.
“I have become a professional tennis player thanks to you. It has been a blessing to live through your career, as a child for whom you were an idol and then as a teammate! The best possible ambassador, who leaves an eternal legacy,” he wrote.
It is an end that has been coming for two years, with Nadal struggling for form and fitness since his last Grand Slam title at the 2022 French Open.
He retires with 22 Grand Slam titles, second only to Djokovic in men’s tennis history with 24. He also won two Olympic gold medals — one in singles and one in doubles — and four Davis Cups, with a final total of 92 career singles titles.
Now 38, Nadal made his debut in professional tennis in 2001 at a Futures event, which is the third rung of the ATP tour. He started playing Challengers (a rung up but still one below the main ATP Tour) towards the end of 2002, and then made his main tour and Grand Slam debut the following year, reaching the Wimbledon third round.
Two years later he won his maiden Grand Slam at the French Open, the first of 14 titles at an event where he retires with a record of played 116, won 112, lost four. He won four French Opens in a row between 2005 and 2008, and after that fourth title he won his first non-clay major a few weeks later by beating Roger Federer at Wimbledon in a classic of the 2000s.
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Nadal won his first Australian Open in January 2009, but that year he also suffered his first-ever defeat at Roland Garros, to Robin Soderling in the fourth round. He responded by winning five more French Opens in a row between 2010 and 2014 and completing the “career Grand Slam” at 24 by winning the 2010 U.S. Open.
Injuries and a crisis of confidence saw him endure two barren years in 2015 and 2016, but with new coach Carlos Moya in tow he rebounded to win a 10th French Open and third U.S. Open in 2017. That “La Decima” title in Paris began another run of four straight Roland Garros titles, between 2017 and 2020, the last of which was a straight-sets battering of Djokovic, so often his bete noire.
In 2022 he moved ahead of Federer in the men’s Grand Slams leaderboard by winning a 21st and 22nd major at the Australian and French Opens, with that 14th title in Paris proved to be his final Grand Slam.
Though best known for a ferocious and indomitable will to win, Nadal was also one of the great shotmakers in tennis history and perhaps the most complete baseliner the sport has ever seen alongside Djokovic, propelled by his ripped forehand with so much topspin that it kicked high off the court and bamboozled opponents. His rivalries with Federer and Djokovic, who came to be known as the ‘Big Three,’ created some of the most memorable and high-quality matches in tennis history, each pushing the other to greater heights and creating three of the greatest players in the history of men’s tennis in the process.
Two of them have now bowed out.
(Top photo: Oscar J. Barroso / Getty Images)
ST. LOUIS — U.S. men’s national team star Christian Pulisic became the latest professional athlete to celebrate on the field by doing the Donald Trump dance trend, moving his arms and hips similarly to the signature moves of the president-elect after scoring the opening goal in the United States’ 4-2 win over Jamaica on Monday night.
“Well obviously that’s the Trump dance,” Pulisic said when asked whether he intentionally celebrated with viral moves. “It was just a dance that everyone’s doing. He’s the one who created it. I just thought it was funny.”
Teammates Weston McKennie and Ricardo Pepi also joined Pulisic in the celebration.
Several other athletes across sports have done the viral dance in the last few days, including UFC fighter Jon Jones, with Trump ringside for his match, Las Vegas Raiders tight end Brock Bowers and several other college and NFL football players, including Tennessee Titans wide receivers Calvin Ridley and Nick Westbrook-Ikhine and Detroit Lions defensive players Za’Darius Smith and Malcolm Rodriguez.
“I saw everyone doing it yesterday in the NFL, I saw Jon Jones do it,” Pulisic said after the game. “We’re just having a bit of fun, so I thought it was a pretty fun dance.”
As the trend has taken off across sports, it’s unclear whether the celebration is a political endorsement or just a dance players think is amusing. Though Pulisic said he was only having a “bit of fun.” His celebration quickly gained attention on social media platforms, including from former U.S. men’s national team defender and Fox analyst Alexi Lalas, as well as Outkick founder Clay Travis, among others.
But the U.S. goal scorer said he wasn’t concerned with whether people on social media reacted to the dance as more than he intended.
“No, not at all,” Pulisic said. “It’s not a political dance. It was just for fun. I saw a bunch of people do it and I thought it was funny, so I enjoyed it. I hope some people did, at least.”
(Photo: Bill Barrett / Getty Images)
Woohoo. It’s that time again. Hall of Fame election time.
Baseball’s 2025 Hall ballot was announced Monday — featuring one guy destined for an all-time landslide (Ichiro Suzuki) and 27 other names you know all too well.
We’ll learn who made it — besides Ichiro, that is — in two months. So as the suspense builds, here come Five Things to Watch on the 2025 Hall of Fame ballot.
1. Ichiro’s unanimous decision?
Ichiro won’t need to hold his breath on election day. But will it be unanimous? (Otto Greule Jr. / Getty Images)
Here we go again. From the same group that decided Babe Ruth, Willie Mays and Henry Aaron couldn’t possibly be unanimous Hall of Famers, what the heck are the baseball writers going to do about Ichiro Suzuki?
After nine decades of voting by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America, Mariano Rivera remains the only player elected unanimously. But zero unanimous position players in almost a century? Think how hard it’s been to pull that off. But our esteemed association is innovative like that — apparently.
Just last winter, I thought Adrian Beltré had an outside shot to be unanimous. Nope. He somehow got left off 19 ballots. Nineteen!
Before that, I figured Derek Jeter was almost a lock to be unanimous in 2020. Oh, man. He missed by one vote. Then there was Ken Griffey Jr. in 2016. How could he not show up on every ballot, I thought. But what was I thinking? His name went unchecked on three of them.
So now it’s Ichiro’s turn. Everyone from Topeka to Tokyo knows Ichiro is a Hall of Famer. So come on, people. What reason could any voter possibly have not to vote for a guy who collected a staggering 4,367 hits on two continents — with 3,089 of them coming on this side of the Pacific (all after age 27)?
Or what logical justification would any voter have for not checking the name of the only player in history to spin off 10 seasons in a row with 200 hits and a Gold Glove Award? Nobody else who ever lived even had five seasons in a row like that.
Or how about this: How huge an all-around force was Ichiro? According to Baseball Reference, he finished his big-league career with 84 Batting Runs above average, 121 Fielding Runs above average and 62 Baserunning Runs above average.
Did you know only two outfielders in history had a career remotely like that — with at least 80 Batting Runs, 110 Fielding Runs and 50 Baserunning Runs? One was Ichiro. The other? Willie Mays.
So how is any voter going to explain why he didn’t vote for that guy — a global baseball icon, one of two players in American League/National League history to win MVP and Rookie of the Year awards in the same season and — let’s just mention this again, OK? — the man who got more hits than anyone who ever played baseball in the two greatest leagues on Earth?
History tells us we should always take the “under” if the category is “unanimous Hall of Famer.” But if Ichiro Suzuki doesn’t get there, it’s not just embarrassing. It’s practically an international incident waiting to happen.
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2. Billy Wagner: 10 and in or 10 and done?
Close call: Billy Wagner got 73.8 percent of the vote last year. (Mike Fiala / AFP via Getty Images)
Five votes away. That’s where everybody’s favorite diminutive smoke-balling closer, Billy Wagner, stood when the voting dust had settled after last year’s election. Five votes from the plaque gallery. So of course he’s going to round up those five votes this time, right?
Or is he?
Logic would tell us that we’ve put him through enough torture. It’s his 10th (and final) year on the writers’ ballot. So nobody needs to remind him that the climb to the summit of Mount Cooperstown can feel more precarious than a jaunt up Mount Kilimanjaro.
In his first three orbits on this ballot, Wagner never got more than 47 votes in any election. In his last three, he reeled in 201, 265 and 284. That means he has added 158 votes just in the past four elections. So how could he not attract five more votes to reach the necessary 75 percent threshold this time, when everyone knows his Hall of Fame legacy is on the line?
But that’s the logical part of our brains talking. When my fellow voters look at closers, they’ve been known to apply a whole different set of standards. So am I positive that the most unhittable left-handed reliever in history is going to be giving an induction speech next July? No!
On one hand, Wagner’s claims to historic greatness haven’t changed. He still ranks No. 1 in the modern era among all left-handed pitchers in ERA, WHIP, strikeout rate, opponent average and opponent OPS. (Minimum: 900 innings.) Is that Cooperstown-y enough? Seems like it. That’s why I vote for him, anyway.
On the other hand, all those voters who ask, “How’d he do in October?” haven’t gone away, either. They’re stuck on Wagner’s 10.03 postseason ERA, and they can’t get past it.
Look, I get it. October matters. So I’ve taken a deep, game-by-game dive into those outings – and found enough strange stuff in those games to conclude they’re not as disqualifying as that ERA makes them appear.
But that’s me. And I only get to vote once. So while I think Wagner is going to clear this bar — and join Larry Walker, Edgar Martinez and Tim Raines as the most recent members of the prestigious Elected in Their Last Shot Club — nothing would shock me.
As I wrote last January, after he’d just missed getting elected, it’s a good thing this guy was a closer for a living — because nobody knows better than a closer that the last out is always the hardest to get. Can Billy Wagner close this deal? We’ll let you know in two months.
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3. Is there a third Hall of Famer in the house?
Can Andruw Jones snare enough votes to get elected? (John Iacono / Sports Illustrated via Getty Images)
I know the premise of that question assumes that we’ll even have a second Hall of Famer (Wagner) elected from this ballot. But let’s just go with that – OK? — and look at whether anyone among the remaining 26 candidates has a shot to get to 75 percent.
It feels as if there are only three realistic possibilities: Andruw Jones, Carlos Beltrán and CC Sabathia. Let’s discuss them.
Andruw Jones (61.6 percent — 62 votes short last time)
Hard to believe it’s Jones’ eighth year on the ballot, but it’s true. So you’d think we’d have a clear view of whether he has a safe path to Cooperstown by now, wouldn’t you? But do we? Not from my scenic overlook, we don’t.
The good news is, he got more votes last time than any returning position player. And if you’re a modern-metrics kind of voter, you can’t help but have noticed that, according to Baseball Reference, Jones rolled up more career wins above replacement (62.7) than two of the three guys who got elected in 2024, Todd Helton and Joe Mauer.
But …
Jones’ dramatic decline after age 30 is shaping up as a mammoth roadblock for those 148 voters who still aren’t checking his name. After adding over 200 votes and zooming from under 8 percent to more than 58 percent in just four years (2020-21-22-23), he added only 11 votes last year (and 3.5 percentage points).
Does it seem significant that that was the smallest jump of anyone on the upper tier of the ballot? I think it does.
So can he now flip 62 more “no” votes to “yes” this year after flipping only 11 last year? I’m no Steve Kornacki, but I’m a “nay” on that.
Carlos Beltrán (57.1 percent — 69 votes short last time)
It’s Year 3 of this derby for Beltrán, who is now the answer to this cool trivia question:
Who owns the most career WAR of anyone on this ballot not known as “A-Rod”?
That’s Carlos Beltrán, all right, at 70.1. But now comes a harder question: What did this guy’s first two rides on the ballot tell us?
In Year 1, Beltrán got 46.5 percent of the vote — a clear indication that many, many voters could still hear those Astros trash-can lids banging. But then a funny thing happened in Year 2:
He soared to 57.1 percent. And if you were paying attention, you might have detected that it happened to be the largest jump (10.6 percentage points) of any returning player.
So does that mean he’s now going to be treated like a “normal” candidate? Does it say that lots of voters were just imposing a temporary purgatory on him for that messy (but brief) Houston portion of his career, but now they’re over it? Hey, I don’t know. I just read the tea leaves.
But if those 2024 tea leaves are telling the story I think they’re telling, there’s a Hall of Fame speech in Beltrán’s future.
Over the past 50 elections, five other players have debuted on the ballot at 40 percent or higher and then jumped by at least 10 percentage points the next year. Those five: Jeff Bagwell, Ryne Sandberg, Barry Larkin, Ferguson Jenkins and Catfish Hunter. Want to guess why we mention that?
Yep, it’s because we know how the voters treated all five of those guys after that. Namely … they elected every one of them. So if that’s telling us anything about how they’ll treat Beltrán, I’d pick 2026 as Carlos Beltrán’s Induction Weekend. But we’re just guessing — until this 2025 election tells us how voters really look at him.
CC Sabathia (first year on the ballot)
I can’t wait to see Sabathia’s Year 1 vote total. I wouldn’t be shocked if it’s 76 percent. I wouldn’t be shocked if it’s 46 percent — or pretty much any other number you’d like to pick out of his cap.
That’s because it’s hard to think of any candidate quite like CC.
If you close your eyes and don’t spend any time looking at his Baseball Reference page, he feels like a Hall of Famer. He walks and talks like a Hall of Famer. And he definitely has the spectacular highlight reel of a Hall of Famer.
But does he have the actual numbers of a Hall of Famer? Um, it depends on which numbers you look at.
If you’re a yes, maybe it’s because he’s one of only three left-handed pitchers in the live-ball era (since 1920) in the 250-Win, 3,000-Strikeout Club. The others: Randy Johnson and Steve Carlton.
But if you’re a no, it’s because you’re staring at Sabathia’s 3.74 career ERA. Incredibly, that would be the highest of any left-handed starter in the Hall of Fame (not to mention third-highest overall, behind Jack Morris’ 3.90 and Red Ruffing’s 3.80).
Then there’s also CC’s place on this ballot alongside two other left-handers who blew past 200 wins and had long, distinguished, reliable careers: Andy Pettitte and Mark Buehrle.
| Pitcher | W-L | ERA+ |
|---|---|---|
|
Pettitte |
256-153 |
117 |
|
Buehrle |
214-160 |
117 |
|
Sabathia |
251-161 |
116 |
(Source: Baseball Reference)
Ooh. So what are we to make of that, huh? Did it feel, as you were watching them, that there was that little separation between those three guys? I’d say no. But there they are, on the same ballot all of a sudden. And who knows what that will mean.
Maybe it boosts Pettitte and Buehrle more than it dings CC. But Pettitte and Buehrle have spent a combined 10 years on this ballot and neither one has come within 150 votes of getting elected. So what about that fact suggests that CC is about to sail in on the first ballot? Not much!
To be clear, I think CC Sabathia is a Hall of Famer. But is he two months from getting elected? That uncertainty explains what he’s doing in this part of the column.
4. How many first-timers make it to Year 2?
Dustin Pedroia is part of a special first-year class. (Billie Weiss / Boston Red Sox / Getty Images)
Check out these names. They’re all making their debut on the Hall of Fame ballot in this cycle. You’ve heard of them.
Ichiro … CC … Dustin Pedroia … Félix Hernández … Troy Tulowitzki … Ben Zobrist … Ian Kinsler … Curtis Granderson … Hanley Ramirez.
Now … are you ready for a breaking news bulletin that’s almost sure to shock you?
Those nine players make up one of the most historic first-year ballot classes in modern voting history.
So how is that, you ask? Here’s how: Only one other time, in the six decades since Hall of Fame voting became an annual event, have we had that many first-timers with a big enough peak that they had at least two seasons worth 6.0 WAR or more, according to Baseball Reference.
Baseball Reference research whiz Kenny Jackelen checked this out for us, and it’s true. The only other year, under the modern voting system, when nine players like that debuted on any ballot was in 2013, when all these men arrived:
Barry Bonds (16 six-win seasons), Roger Clemens (11), Curt Schilling (five), Mike Piazza (four), Kenny Lofton (three), Shawn Green (three), Craig Biggio (three), Sammy Sosa (two) and Julio Franco (two).
The breakdown this year: Sabathia and Tulowitzki had four 6.0-WAR seasons. Pedroia had three. And everyone else had two. And yes, that includes Ichiro.
But wait. We have an asterisk. And it brings Brian McCann and Russell Martin into the argument.
Those two are also making their ballot debuts. And while Baseball Reference rates them as having zero 6.0-WAR seasons, the FanGraphs version of WAR says Martin had two of those seasons and McCann had four. We think that’s worth noting, if only because there are so many catcher fans who think FanGraphs’ WAR uses a better formula for valuing a catcher’s defensive impact.
So if you also add in someone like Carlos González, who was just short of two 6.0-WAR seasons himself, that’s a dozen new players on this ballot who had a run, for at least a couple of seasons, that made you say: That guy’s a star. Rest assured, ballots like this don’t come along very often.
But nobody’s going to the Hall of Fame based on two or three great years. So here’s the big question: How many of these first-timers have enough volume to make it to Year 2 on this ballot?
It takes at least 5 percent of the vote to pull that off. And for what it’s worth, only two first-timers cleared that bar last year: Chase Utley (28.8 percent) and David Wright (6.2).
I’ll predict that this year’s class beats that — with Sabathia, Pedroia and King Félix all finishing north of 5 percent. And maybe Tulo (who had a six-year run in the Best Player in Baseball conversation) and Kinsler (one of the two second basemen in history with two seasons in the 30-30 Club) join them.
It’s been over a decade since more than three first-timers got enough votes to make it back for another election. (That 2013 class produced six of them.) But if it’s ever going to happen again, this feels like the year.
5. Is there Cooperstown life after the Roaring 20s?
Chase Utley got 28.8 percent of the vote in his first year on the ballot. Jimmy Rollins, who is on the ballot for the fourth time, has an even steeper hill to climb. (Hunter Martin / Getty Images)
Hall of Fame voting would be easy if everyone on the ballot were like Ichiro. We’d just fire a few hundred votes their way and move on to the next living legend.
Except, of course, that’s not how this goes at all. So just in the last eight years, we’ve elected five players who once had vote percentages that were in the 20s — or lower:
| Player | Year Elected | Lowest % |
|---|---|---|
|
Todd Helton |
2024 |
16.5 |
|
Scott Rolen |
2023 |
10.2 |
|
Larry Walker |
2020 |
20.3 |
|
Mike Mussina |
2019 |
20.3 |
|
Tim Raines |
2017 |
22.6 |
Does anyone else find that fascinating? Thought so! It means that voters’ perspectives on all those players evolved so dramatically that every one of them had to (at least) triple their vote total to make it onto that stage in Cooperstown. And you know what — that’s OK with me.
It says we never stop thinking about what a Hall of Famer is and isn’t. Why is there a 10-year window for every player on the ballot? That’s why. Because snap judgments aren’t necessarily the most accurate judgments.
So what does that have to do with the 2025 Hall of Fame ballot? It’s a reason to ask: So who’s next?
Maybe that answer is obvious: Billy Wagner. Like Rolen, he was once as low as 10.2 percent. Nowadays, the ballot isn’t as crowded as it was when he debuted. And it’s possible we view closers through a different lens. So boom, here he is, on the verge of getting elected.
Then there’s Andruw Jones. In his first year on the ballot, he got a mere 7.3 percent! And now he, too, has a shot at election.
But what about the nine players returning to this ballot who got between 6 percent and 29 percent of the vote last year? Are any of them positioned to follow this path? Here are three who could:
Andy Pettitte (Year 7) — I’ve already predicted that Sabathia is headed for Cooperstown one of these years. And we’ve seen, in this very column, how similar Pettitte’s numbers are to CC’s. The road to Cooperstown isn’t supposed to begin with six straight elections in which a player gets 17 percent of the vote or less. But you know what causes voters’ perspectives to change? When a very similar player arrives on the ballot — and winds up in the plaque gallery!
Chase Utley (Year 2) — Here’s another prediction. Utley is going to get elected. He got only 28.8 percent last year, so he was 178 votes away. And his counting numbers (1,885 hits, 259 homers) seemed to act as blinking red lights for the traditionalists in this voting crowd.
But there’s a major voting shift coming, one that’s already begun, in fact — away from those traditional magic counting numbers and toward guys with dominant Hall of Fame-type peaks, who also had a big impact on winning. And you know when that shift will hit home? When Buster Posey (1,500 hits, 158 homers) shows up on the ballot in two years. I can’t think of anyone on this ballot whose candidacy will be helped by Posey more than Utley.
Jimmy Rollins (Year 4) — And you know whose Hall of Fame case should then get a boost from Utley? How ’bout Rollins, his longtime double-play partner in South Philly.
The truth is, Rollins actually has a better Hall case than Utley, even though he got about half as many votes as his former teammate last year. Why? An MVP trophy. A World Series trophy. More than 2,400 hits. Four Gold Gloves. Not to mention 200 homers, 400 steals and 857 extra-base hits. He’s the only shortstop in history who had that career. Plus, he combines a big peak and those traditional counting numbers.
What he lacks is Utley’s huge sabermetric cred. But the last decade of Hall voting is overflowing with examples of how one player’s election can magically elevate another, just by connecting their dots. (Ask Larry Walker and Todd Helton.) So it’s bound to happen again. And you know where we can look for clues?
When those 2025 Hall election results are announced, two months down another Cooperstown road. I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait.
GO DEEPER
The Athletic’s 2025 Baseball Hall of Fame reader survey: Vote for your picks
GO DEEPER
A salute to Ichiro, CC Sabathia and the other 12 newcomers to the Baseball Hall of Fame ballot
GO DEEPER
The case for — and against — each of the Classic Baseball Era Hall of Fame candidates
GO DEEPER
Baseball Hall of Fame tiers: Which active players are on course for Cooperstown?
(Top photo of Ichiro Suzuki: Otto Greule Jr. / Getty Images)
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