Scott Rolen vacuumed almost every ball that got hit in his direction in a 17-year major-league career spent with four teams, including the Phillies.
Tuesday night, he reeled in enough votes to be elected to the Hall of Fame.
In his sixth year on the ballot, Rolen received 76.3% of the vote from nearly 400 longstanding members of the Baseball Writers Association of America, narrowly surpassing the three-quarters majority required for election, the Hall of Fame announced. He will be the 18th third baseman to be inducted after a remarkably meteoric rise in balloting from 10.2% in 2018 to 17.2% in 2019, 35.3% in 2020, 52.9% in 2021, and 63.2% in 2022.
Rolen and slugger Fred McGriff, elected last month in a vote of a 16-member era committee, will by honored July 23 in Cooperstown, N.Y.
It wasn’t immediately known which team’s hat will be featured on Rolen’s plaque. He won a World Series with the St. Louis Cardinals in 2006 but spent more seasons with the Phillies (seven) than any team before asking to be traded in 2002.
Rolen, 47, has his baseball roots with the Phillies. They drafted him in the second round in 1993, and he was named National League Rookie of the Year in 1997. In an interview with MLB Network after his election, he credited late Phillies coach John Vukovich with turning around his career.
In a statement, Phillies owner John Middleton congratulated Rolen and said the team will honor him at Citizens Bank Park “this season at a date to be determined.”
“Philadelphia was privileged to have witnessed the beginning of his extraordinary baseball career,” Middleton said. “In addition to being one of the most impactful offensive and defensive players of his era, Scott played the game the right way. Whether taking an extra base with a headfirst slide or diving for a ball in the hole, his hard-nosed effort and selfless attitude resonated with our fans. Along with his on-field contributions, Scott was a great teammate and a tremendous representative of the Phillies off the field.”
Todd Helton, a franchise icon with the Colorado Rockies, fell just short of election with 72.2% of the vote in his fifth year on the ballot. Momentum continued to grow for dominant closer Billy Wagner, who reached 68.1% in his eighth appearance. Candidates may remain on the ballot for a maximum of 10 years.
Neither Jimmy Rollins (12.9%) nor Bobby Abreu (15.4%) came close to 75%, but the former Phillies did surpass the 5% required to remain on the ballot for another year.
Alex Rodriguez (35.7%) and Manny Ramirez (33.2%) have the numbers to merit Hall of Fame enshrinement. But their candidacies are stained by multiple positive tests for performance-enhancing drugs, transgressions that disqualify them in the minds of a majority of voters. Carlos Beltrán (46.5%) also has Hall-worthy achievements but was named as the ringleader in the Houston Astros’ sign-stealing scandal in 2017.
What put Rolen over the top this year? In revealing their ballots before the election results were announced, many voters who stuck with him or came around this year cited his combination of offense and superior defense. He won eight Gold Glove awards and hit the second-highest total of homers (296) among third basemen from 1997 to 2010, trailing only Hall of Famer Chipper Jones.
Rolen finished with 2,077 hits, 316 homers, and an OPS that was 22% above league average factoring in ballpark and league.
But Rolen also wasn’t a slam dunk candidate. In the hour leading up to the announcement, he was tracking at 80.7% according to the publicly available ballots collected by Ryan Thibodaux, whose accounting shows that percentages tend to drop once the final vote comes in.
