It’s time to tackle the Baseball Writers' Association of America's 2017 Hall of Fame ballot, which was released last Monday, with 19 newcomers—headed by Ivan Rodriguez and Vladimir Guerrero—joining 15 holdover candidates. For the 14th year in a row, I’ll be evaluating each candidate’s career in light of both the popular perception of his candidacy and a sabermetric reckoning via my JAWS system. But rather than crowding each evaluation with a description of my system, I’ll lay out the nuts and bolts in this space so that readers can refer back to it as needed.
For the uninitiated, JAWS is short for Jaffe Wins Above Replacement Score.