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Notable baseball writers believe Edgar Martinez should and eventually will make HOF

Jan 19, 2017, 4:49 PM | Updated: 5:05 pm

The case of Tim Raines gives plenty of reason to believe Edgar Martinez will make the Hall of Fame....

The case of Tim Raines gives plenty of reason to believe Edgar Martinez will make the Hall of Fame. (AP)

(AP)

After the 2017 class of Baseball Hall of Fame inductees were announced Wednesday, a class that again didn’t include Mariners great Edgar Martinez, several notable baseball journalists joined 710 ESPN Seattle shows to discuss Martinez’s career and his chances of making the Hall before falling off the ballot in 2020.

Martinez garnered 58.6 percent of voters’ approval in the 2017, which was a significant improvement from the 43.4 percent he received in 2016 but still 73 votes shy of the 75 percent required for induction. The good news: 2017 inductee Tim Raines had a similar rise from his seventh to eighth years of eligibility, going from 46.1 percent to 55 percent. So in that respect, Martinez is actually ahead of where Raines was with two years left on the ballot.

That’s something that gives SI.com’s Jay Jaffe, who has been one of Martinez’s most ardent supporters, hope that he will find his way to Cooperstown in the next two years.

“I look at what just happened to Tim Raines. Raines went from 55 percent two years ago to above 86 percent this year and got in. A great groundswell of support there,” Jaffe told “Danny, Dave and Moore” on Wednesday. “Edgar is in slightly better shape … so he’s a little bit closer to the goal line, so to speak.”

Something that stands in the way of Martinez are players who will be added to the ballot next year, which will include a couple of likely new Hall of Famers.

“He does have a fairly crowded ballot ahead of him with a bunch of new guys coming in with Chipper Jones and Jim Thome,” Jaffe said. “If he can cut the distance in half next year, I think it all bodes well for him getting in in his final year, and they don’t distinguish what year you got in when they say you’re a Hall of Famer, so 10th year will be just great.”

Here’s a look at what else Jaffe and other baseball writers had to say about Martinez’s credentials:

ESPN’s Jayson Stark on “Brock and Salk” (audio of interview)

Stark had a pretty clear-cut reading of what Martinez’s jump in vote percentage this year means. “Last year he had the biggest jump in percentage of the vote of any position player on the ballot. This year he was the second-biggest jump. A 32-percent jump just about in two years – that’s enormous. It should tell everybody in Seattle, Edgar’s gonna be a Hall of Famer.”

ESPN’s Tim Kurkjian on “Bob, Groz and Tom” (audio)

When it comes to hitting statistics, it’s hard to find players with better numbers. Kurkjian is especially fond of Martinez’s slash line, which is made up of his .312 batting average, .418 on-base percentage and .516 slugging percentage. “The bottom line is, when you get into the high-50s like this, history tells us with a little bit more time, you eventually get to 75 percent. And he’s obviously running out of time, but I think people are starting to understand, you just look at that slash line – batting average, on-base (percentage) and slugging – that five Hall of Famers – five, total – have the numbers that Edgar Martinez does in those three categories. That is stunning. It’s like the five greatest hitters of all-time.”

Jaffe on “Danny, Dave and Moore” (audio)

Jaffe pointed to Martinez’s 68.3 career WAR (wins above replacement), which is 77th all-time among position players and right behind Hall of Famers Raines, Tony Gwynn, Al Simmons and Ivan Rodriguez, as a reason why he belongs in Cooperstown even as a player who primarily didn’t play in the field.”Wins above replacement already docks players for what’s called a position penalty when it comes to DH, which means he has to be even better than the average outfielder, let’s say, in order to make up the ground. … He is the kind of guy who has benefited from people like me shining a spotlight using advanced statistics to show that yes, this guy was really this good. And in his case, we’re talking one of the top 30 hitters of all-time.”

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Notable baseball writers believe Edgar Martinez should and eventually will make HOF