The Porkchop Express said:
Yordan would need to basically never have another injury season, or at least not until when he's past age 35, lead the league in several categories, and win 2-3 MVPs to make the Hall of Fame down the line. I love Yordan to death, but he's in the Hall of Good / Very Good in the grand scheme of things right now. The post-season stuff would certainly help if he's on the cusp, but you need giant, consistent, league-leading #s over and over to make the HOF. Not playing much defense won't help him either.
Not that WAR is everything, but just for a starting point the average HOFer has 4.8 WAR per 162 and Yordan has 6.1...so by that standard his quality is far above even HOF averages.
The key is, like you said, staying healthy. I can see him being productive as a DH into his late 30s and that's probably what it would take to get to the total counting stats that the idiot voters like. There are a lot of HOFers (even DH-first guys) that didn't have MVPs or a lot of league-leading numbers. But yes, I think you either need to have those or play long enough to have impressive totals.
I do think that the standards will change with this generation that isn't juicing and therefore you're not going to get the Nelson Cruz types peaking in their mid 30s.