By admin 
It’s the National League’s turn to play the future Hall of Famer game! We’re evaluating the Cooperstown candidacies of at least one player per team this week (some admittedly a little more unlikely than others) in advance of the inductions of Carlos Beltran, Andruw Jones and Jeff Kent scheduled for Sunday.
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We tackled (wrong sport!) the American League East on July 22. the AL Central on July 24 and the AL West earlier today. Now up: The NL East.
Atlanta Braves: Chris Sale, Matt Olson, Ronald Acuna Jr.
It’s taken just two-plus seasons in Atlanta for Sale to go from one of the all-time what-ifs to a rock-solid Hall lock. Incredible how that always works out for the Braves. You just know if the Mets got him, he would have fallen into the Springfield Mystery Spot and never been seen again.
Anyway, Sale’s resurgence earned him his long-awaited first Cy Young, three more All-Star Game berths and an impressive 13.6 in WAR – and counting in the midst of what may be his best season yet.
Sale, at age 37, is 11-6 with a 2.19 ERA (for an ERA+ of 193, meaning he’s 93 percent better than the league average) and a 1.05 WHIP while striking out 10.9 batters per nine innings and whiffing 5.15 batters per walk. That’ll play.
Sale’s second act has also reminded us just how great a resume he’d already built. He had six top-5 Cy Young finishes and seven All-Star nods before a nightmarish five-season stretch from 2019 through 2023 in which he posted a 4.16 ERA and 4.7 WAR while making just 56 starts due to variety of injuries. He needed a little more, as I wrote somewhere else in 2020, and has done a lot more than that.
If you like nice round numbers and symbols of a player’s legacy, Sale is within shouting distance of 175 wins and 3,000 strikeouts and will be the best active starter in the game whenever he retires. He’s Hall of Fame-bound and you can probably bet the mortgage he’ll go in wearing a Braves hat. (Don’t bet the mortgage)
Speaking of only the Braves…only the Braves could allow franchise icon Freddie Freeman to walk and replace him with someone else building a case for Cooperstown. You just know if the Mets did this they would dump Pete Alonso and replace him with Jorge Polanco. Hold on, I am being told something.
Anyway, these are two interesting comparisons. First, Matt Olson’s career numbers in the midst of his age-32 season stacked against Freeman’s numbers through his age-32 season in 2022:
- Matt Olson: 314 HRs, 868 RBIs, .860 OPS (135 OPS+), 43.2 WAR
- Freddie Freeman: 292 HRs, 1,041 RBIs, .895 OPS (140 OPS+), 49.3 WAR
And now Olson vs. Freeman since the Braves made the swap in 2022:
- Matt Olson: 172 HRs, 495 RBIs, .861 OPS (135 OPS+), 24.2 WAR
- Freddie Freeman: 111 HRs, 432 RBIs, .900 OPS (149 OPS+), 23.7 WAR
We’ll get into Freeman in the NL West breakdown. But four more seasons like his first four in Atlanta will get Olson over 60.0 WAR, which is usually the magic number for first basemen, and into the 450-homer range. And maybe Olson, who has played in 886 consecutive games, will play in every game not wiped out by the lockout and author the third-longest Ironman streak of all-time behind Cal Ripken Jr. and Lou Gehrig, Those are the types of things that can get a candidacy over the top.
Rotten injury luck has unfortunately become the norm for Acuna, who suffered season-ending torn ACLs – one to each knee – in 2021 and 2024 and has played as many as 120 games in a season just twice. But in those seasons – 2019 and 2023 – Acuna hit .309 with a combined 82 homers, 207 RBIs, 276 runs scored (!!!), 110 stolen bases and 13.6 WAR. He may never be that player again, but it’s impossible to rule out a Cooperstown surge by someone with that type of ceiling.
Miami Marlins: Eury Perez
Sandy Alcantara is a former Cy Young Award winner, but he’s already 30 years old and has been more workhorse than ace since his return from Tommy John surgery last year. So let’s toss a dart at Perez – who is 17-19 with a 3.65 ERA and 317 strikeouts in 278 1/3 innings – in hopes pulling him from a perfect game, keeping him healthy long enough to craft a case as a modern ace worthy of enshrinement! (But first let’s get him to throw 100 innings in a season)
New York Mets: Juan Soto, Francisco Lindor
With Soto, Lindor and Marcus Semien, the Mets are one of three teams with three players ranking amongst the top 24 in active WAR along with the New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers. Wow, they must be having a great year!
David Stearns’ masterclass in how to completely screw up a contender while squandering almost half a billion dollars in the process is wasting another prime season for Soto, who is the only 20-something with at least 30.0 career WAR. He’s also the only 20-something with at least 40.0 career WAR.
Soto, at 45.2 WAR, is putting together an all-time career. He ranks 29th all-time in WAR through the age-27 season behind 23 Hall of Famers as well as Albert Pujols, the active Mike Trout and Mookie Betts and the PED-tainted Alex Rodriguez and Barry Bonds.
His .948 OPS ranks 28th through age 27 behind 21 Hall of Famers plus Pujols, Trout, Rodriguez, Manny Ramirez, Shoeless Joe Jackson and…Nomar Garciaparra. Soto just needs good health to make the Hall of Fame. Oh, by the way, he has a nagging left calf injury. Sigh, the Mets.
More MLB:
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Lindor looked like an inner-circle Hall of Famer when he surged past 50.0 career WAR during his age-31 season last year. Amongst the seven shortstops with at least 50.0 WAR through their age-31 season, only Rodriguez is not in the Hall of Fame.
But the last 12 months have been weird for Lindor. After being one of the symbols of the Mets’ collapse last season, he’s on pace for the worst and most injury-interrupted season of his career this year. That’d be mostly fine if he didn’t look like he was playing in a fog most of the time.
Lindor is at 56.3 career WAR, which places him on the doorstep of becoming pretty close to a sure thing. Only three of the shortstops with 60.0 WAR or more are not in the Hall of Fame. Maybe all he needs is a change of scenery, and it’d be a very Mets thing if they trade Lindor now or in the winter and he authors a finishing kick that sends him to the Hall of Fame wearing someone else’s hat.
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Philadelphia Phillies: Bryce Harper, Kyle Schwarber, Zach Wheeler, J.T. Realmuto, Trea Turner
Harper is the closest thing to a sure thing amongst this quintet. He’s also the closest thing to baseball’s LeBron James – the teenage phenom who has met the hype while displaying an exhausting need for attention.
Harper, 33, has yet to win a title and might be beginning his decline phase – he might start wearing a T-shirt to mock me, but Harper has posted just one .900 OPS season since 2022.
But he’s also collected two MVPs and 384 homers while posting a .902 OPS and generating 55.7 in WAR as his age-33 season begins winding down. He’s in really good company there.
Fifteen of the 18 Hall of Fame-eligible players with at least 384 homers through their age-33 season are enshrined, with only the PED-tainted Rodriguez, Manny Ramirez and Barry Bonds on the outside looking in,
Forty-three of the 64 Hall-eligible players with a .900 OPS or better through age 33 are enshrined. And of the 85 Hall-eligible players with at least 55.7 WAR through their age-33 season, 74 are in Cooperstown. Harper is probably pretty safely in, but a couple more near-prime seasons and a long-awaited championship couldn’t hurt.
With an .857 OPS, a career .232 average and 22.1 in WAR during his age-33 season, Schwarber’s profile does not usually scream Hall of Famer. But you know what screams, a lot? The baseballs Schwarber launches out of stadiums.
Schwarber is at 373 homers and has already reached 30 homers for the eighth time. Some of Schwarber’s predecessors with at least 373 homers through age 33 include Adam Dunn and Juan Gonzalez, so the dinger pace doesn’t necessarily have him on the Cooperstown path.
But Schwarber has eight 30-homer seasons, which puts him on the doorstep of the elite all-time power hitters. Of the 25 Hall-eligible players with at least nine 30-homer seasons, the only non-inductees are the PED-linked Rodriguez, Bonds, Ramirez, Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire and Rafael Palmeiro along with Carlos Delgado, Adam Dunn and Mark Teixeira, Amongst the players with at least 10 30-homer seasons, the only non-PED linked non-Hall of Famer is Delgado.
Schwarber has hit 23 postseason homers while being a key part of 10 playoff teams. His reputation as a great teammate is also a nice intangible in his favor. He needs at least one more 30-homer campaign, but he’s a lot closer to Cooperstown than the base stats would indicate.
Wheeler might be authoring the most unlikely Hall of Fame case of all-time. The right-hander missed the 2015 and 2016 seasons recovering from Tommy John surgery and was 44-38 with a 3.77 ERA and a 1.29 WHIP while averaging 8.7 strikeouts per nine innings and 2.7 whiffs per walk over 749 1/3 innings when he left the Mets following the 2019 season.
He’s gone 79-39 with a 2.84 ERA and a 1.00 WHIP while averaging 10.1 strikeouts per nine innings and five whiffs per walk since. Wheeler, at age 36, is in the midst of his best season (10-2, 2.16 ERA, 0.88 WHIP) AFTER undergoing thoracic outlet syndrome surgery, which is usually a career-threatening ailment.
And now Wheeler, who has stuck around long enough to pitch in the peak era phase, smells the Hall of Fame. His lack of traditional counting stats – he has 123 wins and 1,937 strikeouts – and longevity will not be held against him by an increasingly younger electorate.
Wheeler initially planned to retire after his current contract expires following the 2027 season, but over the last few weeks, he has repeatedly left the door open to continuing his career. When he turned down an All-Star Game invite after being snubbed multiple times in the process, Wheeler said he knew that being an All-Star carries “…something to it, especially after your career.” At this rate, he’s not going to need the 2026 All-Star Game on his resume.
Realmuto and Salvador Perez landing on the ballot around the same time will make for some interesting debates. Perez has more counting stats and a World Series ring, but Realmuto has more WAR (39.3-35.1) and a higher OPS (.768-.751). They may also be the last catchers to make 1,500 appearances at the position (Realmuto ranks second with 1,353 games at catcher, 69 behind Perez). Both are slowing down, understandably so, and might not cross the Cooperstown finish line, But if one does, shouldn’t the other?
Turner has a few interesting points on his resume – two batting titles, two stolen base crowns and a championship with the 2019 Washington Nationals – as one of the better top-of-the-order hitters and shortstops of his generation. But he’s produced a Blutarsky in WAR this season at age 33 and needs a pretty impressive comeback to get into the 60.0 WAR neighborhood that is usually the standard for Hall of Fame shortstops. He’s signed through 2033, so he’ll get plenty of time.
Washington Nationals: James Wood
Say this for Mike Rizzo: He knows talent. When Rizzo was forced to trade Soto in 2022, the former Nationals general manager landed Wood (and CJ Abrams, who also has a case as a long view candidate for this list) from the San Diego Padres.
Wood was perfectly fine in his first season-plus, but at 23 this year, he’s dramatically improved his plate judgment (he leads the NL with 81 walks and has whiffed 143 times after recording 85 walks and 221 strikeouts last season) while hitting 28 homers (three shy of last year’s total) and raising his OPS more than 100 points to .943. He’s not Soto, but he’s pretty damn good, and someday he might have a Soto-like Hall of Fame case.
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This story was originally published July 26, 2026 at 7:05 AM.