PHILADELPHIA — My hobby within my job is thinking about the Hall of Fame. I don’t wait for a ballot to show up. I don’t even wait for careers to end and then the five-year waiting period afterward.

It is a 365-day thing. During the season, I constantly find myself looking at the field and doing the calculus from there to Cooperstown. Who’s in, who’s out, who’s on the trajectory?

Of the 52 players active in the 118th World Series, there is just one who would make the Hall of Fame even if he never played another game. Brandon Marsh. … No, joking, it is Astros ace Justin Verlander.

In the period after Randy Johnson, Greg Maddux, Pedro Martinez and — if you would like to include the complicated case of Roger Clemens — Verlander and Clayton Kershaw have been the most dominant starters; with Max Scherzer a half-rung below that. The blemish on Verlander’s brilliant resume is an 0-6 record with a 6.07 ERA in eight World Series starts. He will get another chance to do something about that in Game 5 on Thursday.

But even if he doesn’t, so what? He has been the workhorse ace of the era; likely about to win a third AL Cy Young to go along with six other top-five finishes plus a 2011 AL MVP. He might make a run at 300 wins (he’s at 244). But Verlander does not have to throw another inning. He can work on his induction speech now.

The next two players in this World Series nearing the Hall of Fame borderline are Houston’s Jose Altuve and Philadelphia’s Bryce Harper. It is conceivable to see one, the other or both as already having amassed enough production and laurels to be viewed as Hall of Famers. I think both need more.

Harper suffers from entering the majors nearly simultaneously with Mike Trout, initiating relatively short-lived debate about who was better. Trout, to this point, has accumulated 82.4 Wins Above Replacement (Baseball Reference) and Harper 42.5. The difference of 39.9 is roughly what Carlos Correa (39.5) has totaled in his career.

Trout (not counting where he might finish this season) already has three AL MVPs, four seconds, one fourth and one fifth. Harper has won two NL MVPs, but his next highest finish is a 12th and six times in his first 10 years he did not receive a single MVP vote. Not one.

Still, he has 285 homers through his age-29 season. That is one more than Babe Ruth had through the same age, two more than Manny Machado (another interesting case brewing), five more than Darryl Strawberry and six more than Willie Mays. His 142 OPS-plus through 29 is the same as Hall of Famers Orlando Cepeda and Harmon Killebrew.

Harper’s powerhouse first three rounds helping the Phillies to the World Series will help his candidacy — but will anyone care that the Nationals won a World Series in 2019, the first year after the lefty slugger exited?

Altuve’s case is more compelling and controversial. He already is among the most productive second basemen in history. Even without the extra 100 or so hits he would have produced if not for a pandemic-shortened, 60-game 2020 schedule, Altuve’s 1,935 hits rank 67th all time through his age-32 season, just ahead of Hall of Famers such as Tim Raines, Brooks Robinson and Ted Simmons.

But what will future voters make of 2017?

Altuve won the AL MVP award in that infamous season when the Astros were found to have been illegally signaling to hitters what pitches were coming. However, both research done by Tony Adams listening for the trash-can bangs and anecdotal evidence from Astros players concur that Altuve received limited help from the scheme and did not want the alerts. The allegations that he was wearing a buzzer to alert him to pitches in 2019, including for the AL pennant-winning homer off Aroldis Chapman, falls largely into the conspiracy-theory bucket, fueled by the sport-wide paranoia that the Astros were a renegade organization that would do anything to win.

Altuve, though, has done something vital to enhance his Cooperstown chances that notably Robinson Cano did not. Cano, one of the most productive second basemen ever, was suspended for 80 games in 2018. He performed poorly for the Mets in 2019. He hit well in the shortened 2020 season, but was found to have used banned substances that year and was banned for all of 2021. He was terrible this season and is now likely done. So he was never able to show that he was a star hitter while clean.

Altuve did not perform well in the shortened season in the immediate aftermath of both the 2017 revelations and his 2019 pennant-winning homer. But the last two years — we assume without trash-can bangs or buzzers — he has performed to his career standards or better. He has done what Cano failed to do: demonstrate that he is brilliant without cheating.

Carlos Beltran, the only player named in the Commissioner’s report on the 2017 sign-stealing scandal, is up for the Hall of Fame this offseason. So we will get an idea what the current voting body thinks of a strong candidate with 2017 Astro ties. Chase Utley is up for election with the class of 2024 and Ian Kinsler and Dustin Pedroia for the 2025 class. So, there will be gauges of how the vote goes for second basemen who probably fall short of Altuve’s accomplishments.

Obviously, we still have a lot to learn. We actually do not have to vote now The hobby continues.