Jayson Stark knows baseball. I've been reading the man for decades and when he puts together a list like his recent piece at The Athletic on active players who are locks for Cooperstown, you take it seriously. He's earned that over a lot of years. But even the best of us miss a guy now and then, and I think Stark left a couple of names on the table that belong on that list.

Start with what we agree on. Mike Trout is a lock, and if you want to argue that, meet me outside. Shohei Ohtani is doing things we compare to Babe Ruth and the comparisons aren't casual. Clayton Kershaw has the resume, the dominance, the peak. Mookie Betts is building a case that gets harder to poke holes in every year. Stark got those right. I'm not here to tear down his work, I'm here to fill in the gaps.

Justin Verlander is the one that jumped out at me immediately. A Cy Young winner, an MVP, a frontline starter who pitched into his forties at a level most guys never reach in their prime. That separates the greats from the inner-circle greats. I remember watching his early years in Detroit when he was throwing gas deep into games and making hitters look like they showed up to a gunfight with a spork. How he's not a stone-cold lock on every list is beyond me.

Then there's Max Scherzer. Multiple Cy Youngs. A career that spanned multiple eras of baseball and stayed elite through all of them. The numbers say Hall of Fame and the way he competed on the mound says first ballot. He was the kind of pitcher who'd take the ball with his body falling apart and still give you seven innings of pure stubbornness. That reputation isn't fan talk, it's earned.

The Hall of Fame debate is the best argument in sports because it forces you to weigh peak against longevity, statistics against narrative, era against era. I've been having these arguments for decades, back when people would tell you with a straight face that Dale Murphy was Cooperstown-bound. The criteria shift. The standards evolve. Some things don't change, though. When a guy dominates for more than a decade and redefines what's possible at his position, you don't need a spreadsheet to tell you what your eyes already know.

Stark's list is good. It's just not complete. In the barstool tradition of sports arguments everywhere, that's where the rest of us come in.