Doubt we’ll be seeing Cooperstown beckoning this year…
While we’re here… last chance to vote for the:
Pop quiz, hotshot. Who was the first Diamondback player inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame? The answer is… not Randy Johnson. The honor actually goes to Roberto Alomar, who was part of the class of 2011, four years before the Big Unit made it into Cooperstown. Of course, Alomar was not inducted as a Diamondback. But he did play for Arizona. You would be forgiven for forgetting it though, since it was during the woeful 2004 season. He also spent as much time with the D-backs on the injured list, thanks to a broken hand. Roberto consequently only played 38 games here, before getting traded to the White Sox, with whom the future Hall of Famer finished out his big-league career.
But even outside of Alomar, almost every year there are some players who have at least a tangential connection to the Diamondbacks on the Hall of Fame ballot. 2004 would have been the earliest year anyone who played here could have appeared in the ballot, that being the first year when those who appeared in our debut 1998 season were eligible. But it actually took until 2007, when Devon White and Bobby Witt were listed. Neither received a vote. So far, Alomar and Johnson remain our only players to reach the 75% threshold for induction. Most don’t even make it to a second appearance on the ballot. Of the fourteen players on the ballot for a second or later time this year, none played for Arizona.
This year, there are two such players, and I’m also going to write about a third, who could have been a Diamondback.
Adam Jones
If you’d forgotten he played for us, you’re not alone. But he was the everyday RF for Arizona during the 2019 campaign, after signing with us deep into spring training. We were short on outfielders – that was the year Ketel Marte played 96 games in center – and paid Jones a base salary of $3 million, with potential incentives of $2 million. But the team discovered why Jones was still unsigned a couple of weeks before Opening Day. He posted an OPS+ of 87 across 528 PA, his lowest in more than a decade, and was so bad on defense that his overall value that year was well below replacement level (-0.8 bWAR/-0.5 fWAR). We missed a wild-card by four games that year. A decent right fielder might have been the difference.
However, he did have a solid career to that point, largely with the Baltimore Orioles. With them, he picked up five All-Star appearances, four Gold Gloves, a Silver Slugger and a high of sixth place on the AL MVP ballot. That game in 2012, when he appeared in every game, and hit .287/.334/.505, with 32 home-runs, for a career-high .839 OPS (125 OPS+). He reached the post-season three times in Baltimore, but during fourteen playoff games, batted a weak .155. After Arizona, he spent two years in Japan with the Orix Buffaloes, and became known as “Mr. Thanksgiving” for a game-winning homer on that day, in Game 5 of the 2021 Japan Series. He retired an Oriole, after a one-day contract in 2023.
Fernando Rodney
He probably hasn’t been forgotten, being an integral part of the D-backs when they reached the post-season in 2017. You may also remember his celebration, firing an imaginary arrow into the sky after closing a game [it was a tribute to a village near his Dominican hometown called La Flecha, which is Spanish for “the arrow.” Despite a pedestrian 4.23 ERA, Rodney got to unleash it a lot – his 39 saves that year hasn’t been matched since for Arizona. Not bad given his cost, including incentives, was $4.25 million. He then closed out the monumental wild-card game against Colorado, despite it not being a save situation, but didn’t get into the NLDS against Los Angeles.
He left as a free-agent and, despite being aged forty, Rodney was able to pitch two more years for the Oakland A’s. That ended a 17-year major-league career in which he pitched 951 times, putting him in the top 20 all-time, with a 3.80 ERA (110 ERA+). He was a three-time All-Star, and also received Cy Young and MVP votes in 2012, when he was the Rays. That season, he pitched 76 times and allowed just five earned runs for an ERA of 0.60. It’s the lowest ERA in baseball history ever posted by any pitcher with 70+ IP. He then was the closer on the Dominican team that won the World Baseball Classic in 2013. Fernando was still pitching in the winter league there as recently as last year, at the age of 46.
Ian Kinsler
While Kinsler never played for the Diamondbacks, it wasn’t for want of trying. He’s very likely the best baseball player from the state of Arizona, having been born and brought up in Tucson, and he went to Canyon del Oro High School. That’s where the D-backs first tried to draft him, in the 29th round of the 2000 draft, but he opted not to sign. Kinsler remembers, “I was about 170 pounds soaking wet maybe. I felt like I wasn’t ready to go.” The following year, when he was at Central Arizona College, the team tried again, this time in the 26th round, but Ian still couldn’t be had. Then scouting director Mike Rizzo said, “With the money we were talking about, it was ridiculous that we didn’t get him signed either time.”
Kinsler transferred to the University of Missouri, and two years later, he finally did sign – with the Rangers after being picked in the 17th round. What might have been for Arizona. Because over his first six seasons with Texas, Ian was worth 27.6 bWAR and twice became an All-Star, peaking with a seven-win campaign in 2011. Rizzo has never forgotten. “It was a good lesson for us as a young scouting staff at the time. I’ve used it from those years on: If you like a player, you’ve got to sign the player… We loved Ian, we loved his ability, we thought he was going to be a great player, but we couldn’t get together on the terms of the deal. That was a mistake that I made twice in a row with him and I’ve never made since.”