Hall of Fame streaks

During a discussion at the SABR mailing list (SABR-L) the following question was (analogously) asked:
Which are the MLB teams with the longest streaks of future hall of famers on their rosters ?
It was noted that the Baltimore Orioles had at least one HoF'er on their roster since the early sixties with Brooks Robinson, Jim Palmer (among others) and now Cal Ripken Jr. (assuming Cal makes The Hall, which should be as much of a sure thing as there is.

I investigated the above question in some detail, using Sean Lahman's excellent database. The following links provide tables for the current National and American League teams with the future Hall of Famers shown for each year. Please note:

The future HoF'er (FHoF) must have been on the player's roster of the respective team. Managers, front office etc don't count.
The FHoF must have batted or pitched at least at one point of the respective season of the respective team. I.e., he may have been traded, retired, on the disabled list etc for parts of the season.
The method of induction to The Hall (BBWAA, veteran's committee, committee on Negro Leagues) is not relevant.
Also not relevant is whether the player was inducted primarily for his on-field achievements (as most players are) or for other contributions (e.g. Branch Rickey).

Now here's the data:

From this tables the longest HoF streak for each current franchise can be calculated.

The next step I took was re-doing the analysis including the 'potential' hall of famers which are currently active or have retired in the last few years, making them ineligible for selection up to now. Of course, there's a lot of uncertainty involved. Besides the 'locks' like Roger Clemens and Rickey Henderson (to name a couple) there a the may-or-may-not cases like Tim Raines or Jose Canseco. I included those players who are currently scoring at least 75 points on the 'Hall Of Fame Monitor' invented by Bill James. The data for the HoF monitor was taken from Baseball Reference. As you may know, a score of 100 on the monitor means a good possibility of election, a score of 130 or above is a virtual lock. Of course, it's possible some old-timers are selected into the Hall Of Fame by the recently modified veterans committee, closing a 'gap' in the HoF streak of one team or another. I didn't include this because it would be pure speculation. So, now here are the Hall Of Fame streaks for each current MLB franchise, including 'hypothetical' Hall Of Famers:

Based on the hypothetical HoF streaks I investigated the longest hypthetical HoF streak for each current franchise.

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Author:Peter Uelkes

Last modified: Mon Feb 14 16:59:38 CET 2011