Hall of Famers, as a percentage of those eligible

We know how many players are in the Hall of Fame. But have you ever wondered what percentage of eligible players is represented by those inductees?

I did, so I decided to figure it out. Click through for my results.

 

As best I can tell, about 8% of eligible players have been inducted into the Hall of Fame.

Here’s how I arrived at that figure:

HOF Players: The easy part. To date, 208 have been inducted as players on the basis of their MLB careers (i.e., not by the Negro Leagues Committee):

  • 145 HOF Position Players
  • 63 HOF Pitchers

Eligibles: The only formal requirements for HOF eligibility are (a) playing in at least 10 seasons, (b) being retired for 5 years, and (c) staying off the ineligible list. How many have met these HOF requirements? Approximately 2,614 players. (Counts are necessarily inexact.*) The breakdown of eligibles:

  • 1,661 eligible Position Players
  • 973 eligible Pitchers
  • minus ~20 on the ineligible list

The HOF/eligible breakdown (without adjusting for ineligibles):

  • Position players: 145/1,661 = 8.7%
  • Pitchers: 63/973 = 6.5%

_____ Note * In order to target players who have already appeared on a HOF ballot, I searched for Active=No (didn’t play in 2012) and Years=1871-2006 (because of the 5-year waiting period, players on the latest ballot had to be inactive for 2007-11), and counted the number of players with 10+ seasons. Then I subtracted those who had 10+ years through 2006 but were still active in some year from 2007-11.

These results are inexact for a number of reasons. The main problem is limitations in the Play Index for the task of finding those with 10+ years played, which forced me to do separate searches for position players and for pitchers. And there’s just no satisfactory way to specify a position-player season; I settled on a standard of at least 20% of games as a non-pitcher position in a given season. Consequently, I’ve failed to count some two-way players with 10+ years in total but not 10+ years in either role (e.g., Hal Jeffcoat), while double-counting at least one (Babe Ruth) who both pitched in 10+ years and had 10+ years as mainly a position player.

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Another kind of comparison: The fewest games for any HOF position player inducted for his MLB career is 1,215 by Roy Campanella; the fewest IP for a HOF starting pitcher is Dizzy Dean’s 1,967, and the fewest for a HOF reliever is Bruce Sutter’s 1,042. If we round those off as de facto minimums for the HOF — 1,200 games for a position player, 2,000 IP for a SP or 1,000 IP for a reliever — what percentage of those players is in the HOF?**

  • TOTAL: 14.0% (208 HOFers/1,484 meeting HOF minimums for G or IP)
  • Position players: 145/1,005 = 14.4%
  • Starting pitchers: 58/397 = 14.6%
  • Relief pitchers: 5/82 = 6.1%

_____ Note ** For this portion of the study, I used the unadjusted number of retired players who met the games or IP requirements through 2006. (Why? Because this wasn’t my main focus, and I’ve spent too much time on this post already.) Also, I defined relievers by the default P-I standard of 80% of games in relief (but still included Eckersley in the count of HOF RPs); I defined starters as anyone with 2,000+ IP who wasn’t a reliever.

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Lastly, here’s a breakdown of HOF position players by primary position,*** compared to the number of HOF-eligible players who (a) played at least half their games at that position and met the Games/IP standard described above (again using unadjusted numbers; see note ** above):

  • C — 13/91 = 14.3%
  • 1B — 20/115 = 17.4%
  • 2B — 18/107 = 16.8%
  • SS — 21/116 = 18.1%
  • 3B — 11/101 = 10.9%
  • OF — 61/392 = 15.6%
  • DH — 1/6 = 16.7%

Totals: 145/928 = 15.6%.

(As spotted by marc in comment #1, this total and percentage is different from those of the previous section. The discrepancy is because those previous figures did not have the requirement of 50% of career games at any one position.)

_____ Note *** Primary position = the position they played most. All but six HOF position players had at least half their games at one position; the exceptions are Rod Carew, Harmon Killebrew and Ernie Banks (primary is 1B), Buck Ewing (C), Monte Ward (SS), and Paul Molitor (DH — the only HOF “DH” doesn’t meet the 50% threshold).

P.S. All corrections are welcome, but please remember that complete precision is beyond the scope of this inquiry.

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marc
marc
11 years ago

I’m pretty tired, so I might be missing something here–but isn’t the breakdown short by 100 players? It says above that 1005 position players are eligible, but the primary position totals only add up to 905. And the primary position percentages seem high given that the total position percentage is only 14.4.

Hartvig
Hartvig
11 years ago

These numbers seemed high at first but a few moments thought put them into perspective. Almost everyone who manages a 10 year Major League career is a pretty decent player, with the possible exception of a few left handed relievers, in at least one aspect of the game. Yes there is no way anyone can justify Bill Bergen being what was essentially a full-time catcher for the era in which he played but he was still an outstanding defensive player. When you consider the number of players- some of them quite good for a few years- who never made it… Read more »

Ed
Ed
11 years ago
Reply to  Hartvig

And several 3rd basemen!

MikeD
MikeD
11 years ago
Reply to  John Autin

Being in the top ten percent of players who have played for ten years certainly doesn’t feel wrong. Seems to suggest for a loosening of the standards slightly so that any player recognized as being in the top 10% of all time, having played at least ten years, is a HOFer. Then again, I suppose some will argue for 5%!

no statistician but
no statistician but
11 years ago
Reply to  John Autin

JA: This probably isn’t a new idea in general terms and it will never fly for countless reasons (rather like my solution to the fiscal cliff problem—raise everyone’s taxes some including mine and yours, cut military spending by 50%, and be ready to stand the gaff) but: When I look at Adam’s Hall of Stats listing, going from the top down, what I see is pretty much what I remember seeing when we had the top 50 Hall of Fame vote a few months ago, namely, that there are around 25-35 guys who belong in a different class altogether from… Read more »

no statistician but
no statistician but
11 years ago

Not even if I get to pick the stats,

MikeD
MikeD
11 years ago

Hey, someone like me who thinks everyone’s taxes should be raised. End of political comment.

Mike L
Mike L
11 years ago

Interesting. It’s a higher percentage than I would have expected. Presumably playing in ten seasons means you meet a minimum standard. One question and one hypothetical. What’s the rough average of ops+ and era+ of the qualifiers. And second, with the rise of salaries and arbitration, tenders, etc. will there be fewer ten year players in the future?

Mike L
Mike L
11 years ago
Reply to  John Autin

Thanks, John A. Interesting-less than ten percent of the players in the searchable data base make the criteria, and of that grouping they are marginally above 100 OPS+ and ERA+. Exactly what you would expect. A career of very slightly above average productivity makes for a long one. I’m going to bet the trend line over the next twenty years will be downward. There will be fewer long average careers, because average players are fungible and ultimately will be valued at cost instead of experience.

Dr. Doom
Dr. Doom
11 years ago

Aaaaaaaand here’s where someone asks an annoying (and incredibly time-consuming-to-answer) question. How much has this changed over time? Like, since 1939? My guess is that this is the most exclusive the Hall has been since the first or second class.

Adam Darowski
11 years ago
Reply to  John Autin

John & Dr. Doom—I did something related to this a while ago.

It was called “The Hall of Fame and the Myth of Exclusivity”

http://darowski.com/hall-of-wwar/exclusivity/

Ed
Ed
11 years ago
Reply to  Adam Darowski

Pretty sad that the Veteran’s committee has elected more “undeserving” players than “deserving” players.

Adam Darowski
11 years ago
Reply to  Ed

It’s worth noting that that’s based off an old version of wWAR.

But, at the same time, it’s probably not a surprise.

brp
brp
11 years ago
Reply to  Ed

I have an issue with NFL & MLB special committees in general. For the most part, my feeling is if the voters in that era didn’t recognize a player’s greatness, maybe they don’t deserve to be in the HOF. Yes, there are exceptions to that comment, but it’s not like Cub fans would have forgotten about Ron Santo had he not gotten elected… besides Ron said he didn’t want to go in posthumously. I also don’t think we need any more players from 50, 60, or more years ago in the Hall because it’s laughable to me to argue that… Read more »

Bryan O'Connor
Editor
11 years ago
Reply to  John Autin

Here’s another look at the (d)evolution of Hall of Fame standards over time, with some graphs that make it pretty clear that it’s far harder to make the Hall today than at any point in the past.
http://hotcornerharbor.blogspot.com/2012/07/how-big-should-hall-of-fame-be.html

MikeD
MikeD
11 years ago
Reply to  Dr. Doom

Bingo. I’m glad you asked it first!

My gut also says that it’s more difficult now to make the HOF, yet it’s not just an easy percentage question since players from fifty, sixty, seventy etc. years ago are still being inducted all these years later, as we saw recently with Joe Gordon. That means the percentage of old-time players will keep rising. So we should expect a lower percentage of more recent players in the Hall, yet by how much I don’t know.

scott-53
scott-53
11 years ago

208 players is a very small percentage when you consider over 15,000 men have played Major League Baseball. The 6th edition of the “The Baseball Encyclopedia” (1985) lists 13,000. I have not seen one in years. I guess they put out a 7th,8th,and 9th edition. First edition was 1969.

scott-53
scott-53
11 years ago
Reply to  scott-53

Thanks John, Fast as usual. “The Baseball Encyclopedia” made it to at least the 10th edition in 1996 according to (Amazon.com).

kds
kds
11 years ago
Reply to  scott-53

The front page of B-ref has 17,943.

Adam Darowski
11 years ago
Reply to  kds

Huh, I used their data so I wonder where the discrepancy is.

Adam Darowski
11 years ago

Since I just pulled all this data for the Hall of Stats, I suppose I can share some numbers I have… 🙂

17.939 have played major league baseball.
208 in the Hall of Fame.
1.16% of all players.

2,575 players have had either 3000 PAs or 1000 IP and are eligible for the Hall of Fame (by years retired, not counting lifetime bans)
208 in the Hall of Fame.
8.1% of this subset of players.

kds
kds
11 years ago

In his HoF book, Bill James gave historical figures for % of ABs by inductees. Noting that for a lot of the time it was about 10%, but rose to over 20% in the era most dominated by the Veterans Committee, 1924-34, with a peak of 24% in 1929.

Adam Darowski
11 years ago
Reply to  kds

Yes, not to be a troll, but I updated that too. 🙂 I thought AB was not the right way, so I went by PA (and I did IP, too).

http://darowski.com/hall-of-wwar/hofpct/

kds
kds
11 years ago
Reply to  Adam Darowski

I agree that PA is better than AB. Did the relevant edition of the Baseball Encyclopedia not have PA info when James was writing? I generally prefer PA=BFP numbers, and here it would give a better way to ask if we have too many pitchers compared to batters. However, I think IP is a better way to compare pitchers to other pitchers, as the fewer batters faced per IP by better pitchers gets hidden if we use BFP.