Right-hander Rick Porcello, who won an American League Cy Young Award and the 2018 World Series with the Boston Red Sox, is one of 12 major leaguers making their debut on the Baseball Hall of Fame ballot this year.
Election will be an uphill battle for Porcello, 36, who spent 12 years in the majors with the Detroit Tigers, Red Sox, and New York Mets between his 2009 debut and the COVID-shortened 2020 season, but retired after his age-31 season.
Drafted out of New Jersey’s Seton Hall Prep in the first round (27th overall) of the 2007 June Amateur Draft, Porcello quickly became a reliable back-end starter in Dave Dombrowski’s Detroit rebuild era. He cracked the ‘09 Tigers’ Opening Day roster less than four months after his 20th birthday and made 31 starts and finished third in AL Rookie of the Year voting that season.
Dombrowski traded Porcello to the Red Sox in December 2014, but they were reunited the following August when Dombrowski accepted the club’s president of baseball operations job. In Boston, the two ex-Tigers were able to achieve what had eluded them in Detroit: winning it all. After back-to-back AL East titles and first-round exits in ‘16 and ‘17, the Red Sox won a franchise record 108 regular-season games and bulldozed the competition in the postseason.
Porcello pitched to a career-best 3.15 ERA and won an MLB-leading 22 games in 2016 to become the fourth Red Sox Cy Young-winner, joining Jim Lonborg (‘67), Roger Clemens (‘86, ‘87, ‘91) and Pedro Martinez (‘99, 2000), but the victory was not without controversy. He became the first AL pitcher (third overall) to win without receiving the most first-place votes; he received eight, while runner-up and former Tigers rotation-mate Justin Verlander received 14. Left off two ballots altogether, Verlander finished with 132 points to Porcello’s 137, the second-closest point differential of any BBWAA election since 1970.
The pendulum swung from great to bad in 2017, when Porcello led the majors with 17 losses, and for the second time in his career, gave up the most hits in the AL.
Porcello rebounded in 2018. He pitched to a 4.28 ERA – nearly 40 points better than the year before – and for the third consecutive year, made exactly 33 starts. That October, he made three starts and two relief appearances. The 16th and ultimately final postseason performance of his career came in what turned out to be the longest game in World Series history; Porcello allowed one earned run over the first 4.2 innings of a Game 3 that went to the bottom of the 18th before the Dodgers won 3-2.
In this era of near-constant pitching injuries, Porcello’s career numbers tell the tale of a pitcher whose best attribute was availability. Over 355 career regular-season games (351 starts) totaling 2,096.1 innings he pitched to a 4.40 ERA (99 ERA+), 4.06 FIP, and 1.316 WHIP. Between his rookie and penultimate seasons, he averaged 31.2 games and 185.2 innings per year.
But there is little to no Hall of Fame precedent for a pitcher with Porcello’s résumé. He retired with exactly 150 career wins. Among Hall of Fame starters with a minimum of 1,000 career innings, only six had 150 wins or fewer on their résumé; the first was Babe Ruth, who retired in 1935 but spent the majority of his prodigious career as a hitter. The most recent was Dizzy Dean, who also won 150, and whose final big-league season was 1947.
Not a single Hall of Fame starter or reliever (min. 1,000 innings) was elected with a career ERA as high as Porcello’s, or even remotely close. The worst mark by any Hall of Fame pitcher with quadruple-digit innings belongs to Jack Morris, who posted a 3.90 over 18 seasons.
Porcello was never an All-Star, either. There are 28 MLB starters in the Hall of Fame with a minimum of 300 career games who can say the same, according to Stathead. None, however, pitched after 1938. (The inaugural All-Star Game was in 1933.)
Every other first-time candidate has a higher career bWAR (Baseball Reference’s Wins Above Replacement) than Porcello’s 18.8. In fact, only one pitcher with at least 100 career MLB games was elected with a lower bWAR, and he only fits the criteria in a skewed, stringent way; Satchel Paige accumulated 10.2 bWAR over parts of six years in the majors between 1948-65 – his age 41-58 seasons – after he racked up 36.7 bWAR during his 16 years in the Negro Leagues from 1927-47.
Porcello joins returning Red Sox candidates Manny Ramirez, in his tenth and final chance, and Dustin Pedroia, who garnered 11.9% as a first-timer last year. Players get up to 10 years on the ballot, but must get at least five percent of the vote each year to remain eligible. None of the 12 newcomers are expected to gain election on their first ballot, which requires 75%.
Fellow first-time candidate Matt Kemp has a lesser-known, indirect tie to the Red Sox. When the Dodgers traded him to the Reds in December 2018, the three-player return included infield prospect Jeter Downs. Barely a year later, Los Angeles flipped Downs to Boston in the infamous Mookie Betts trade.
Hall of Fame voting results will be announced live on MLB Network on Jan. 20, 2026.
