The Royals had nine potential honorees on last year’s ballot. I made a case that at least eight of them could deserve to be elected, even though we were restricted to only voting for five. Because of that restriction, I chose to intentionally leave off Wade Davis and Alex Gordon because I felt it was obvious they would be elected, and I was worried others would fall off the ballot. Ultimately, I voted for Billy Butler, Carlos Beltrán, Joakim Soria, Kelvin Herrera, and Jarrod Dyson. My vote for Dyson proved to be the most divisive among readers.
Sadly, as I feared, Dyson did not meet the 10% threshold and fell off the ballot. Now, if he is ever to be included, it will be up to the Royals’ version of the Veterans Committee. It’s a true shame.
Team Hall of Fames should have very different criteria from the MLB Hall of Fame. Which is to say, anyone who is good enough to get into the MLB Hall of Fame and played for a reasonable period of time for the team in question should get into the Team Hall, but there should be room for more of the guys who are only in the Hall of the Very Good. That’s why it makes sense that Alex Gordon was elected to the Royals Hall of Fame last year but will almost certainly not meet the 5% threshold to remain on the MLB ballot after this year.
Additionally, I think people discount the narrative of baseball far too much when voting for Hall of Famers. This isn’t the Hall of the People With Very Good Statistics. It’s the Hall of Fame. As in famous people. The most famous of the famous. It’s for that reason that I argued for electing Fernando Valenzuela to the Hall of Fame when the Modern Era committee voted recently. He doesn’t have a statistical case for inclusion, but he’s one of the most famous ball players to ever don a uniform, and he completely changed the face of both MLB fandom and even the composition of the sport itself with Fernandomania.
Jarrod Dyson doesn’t have the statistics, but without him, the Royals don’t make it out of the 2014 Wild Card Game. If they don’t make it out of that game, do they even make the playoffs in 2015? Maybe lots of guys get traded away because David Glass doesn’t feel like the team did enough for how much money he spent. We certainly saw the spending draw down rapidly after they faltered in 2016 and 2017.
Beyond that, Dyson was one of the faces of those teams. Again, he wasn’t a starter, and he didn’t have the stats, but he was everywhere in interviews and memorable moments. He should be in the Royals Hall of Fame. It breaks my heart that in 20 years, Royals fans may not have a clue who he was.
That’s in the past, though, so I suppose let’s chat about the people I am voting for this time. As I noted last year, the ballot is only becoming more crowded, so some guys who are deserving won’t be getting my votes and may not be getting in. But here we go.
I voted for him last year; I’ll vote for him again this year. One of the best to ever appear in Royal blue. He could very well be elected to the MLB Hall of Fame, too. It would be patently ridiculous for Beltrán to make it into the MLB Hall but still excluded from the Royals’ version.
You knew I had to be voting for him when you saw the image I chose for this article. Beltrán might be the best centerfielder the Royals have ever employed, but Cain could be the second-best. He’s in the top 5, at the very least. He’s the only player other than Bobby Witt Jr. to make it to the top 3 of MVP voting in the lifetime of my fandom.
Kelvin Herrera, Wade Davis, and Greg Holland controlled the back half of a baseball game so thoroughly for a period just over a year that they completely changed the way playoff rosters were constructed for YEARS after they did it. We’ve all seen their gaudy numbers. The moment that always stands out in my mind, though, is Game 7 of the 2014 World Series. I know the Royals ultimately lost that one, in part because the shell of Jeremy Guthrie had to start the game for KC and in part because Madison Bumgarner had a transformative pitching outing. But if the Royals had won, we would have been talking about how well those three pitched in the same way people talk about Bumgarner now.
Kelvin Herrera pitched 2.2 innings of shutout ball. Yes, he allowed an inherited runner to score, and if he hadn’t, who knows how the game might have changed. But he came into it with runners at first and third with only one out. To escape that without allowing a run would have been nearly miraculous. Wade Davis added two shutout innings of his own, striking out three and allowing only a single baserunner. Greg Holland pitched the ninth and struck out a pair in a 1-2-3 inning. You have to think he would have come back out for the tenth if the Royals had managed to tie it up against Bumgarner, and you have to think the Royals would have been favored in that inning if he had.
Holland is fourth all-time on the Royals’ saves list. Herrera is sixth. Davis is tied for tenth. (Weird note, if Carlos Estévez holds on to the Royals’ closer job for the entire season, it’s entirely probable he’ll finish the season in fifth place.) But their contributions go beyond the saves they earned, because, of course, Herrera and Davis did so much of their pitching in non-save situations ahead of Holland.
I don’t think you should have any one of these three without the others. You can’t ever talk about any of them without mentioning the others. It would be really cool to see all three of them elected at the same time. Make it happen, KC!
So with those five receiving my votes, that means I’m leaving off Alcides Escobar, Yordano Ventura, Billy Butler, and Joakim Soria. I voted for Butler and Soria last year, but as I feared, the ballot is just getting too dang crowded to vote for them again. It makes me glad for the Veterans Committees because I fear that these four – all deserving players with the potential discount of Ventura – could fall off the ballot in the coming years as more of the heroes from the last glory days of the Royals before now become eligible.
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