After a seesaw battle with Frank Thomas, Jeff Bagwell won induction as the second member of the Circle of Greats, joining Mike Piazza. Bagwell played his last game in 2005, completing what was then perhaps the greatest career at first base in modern National League history. After the jump, you’ll find a table of the top NL WAR totals for 1900 through 2005 by guys who played at least half their career games at first base.
[table id=87 /]
74 ballots were cast in this second round of COG voting (up from 61 in the first round). As has already been noted in the comments to the voting post, in addition to Bagwell winning induction, Frank “the Big Hurt” Thomas wins another four rounds of ballot eligibility (taking him through the 1960 round). John Smoltz appeared on exactly 50% of the ballots, winning, with not a vote to spare, four rounds of eligibility through the 1963 round). Mike Mussina fell three votes short of the 50% level, but stays alive into the next round as do Robbie Alomar, Kenny Lofton, Trevor Hoffman, Jeff Kent and Omar Vizquel. Kevin Appier, Jim Abbott, John Olerud, Sammy Sosa, Hideo Nomo and Matt Stairs all appeared on a least one ballot over the first two rounds, but did not receive enough support to remain eligible going forward. Under revised rules that will go into effect next round, Mussina and Alomar (each appearing on over 25% of the ballots this round) would have won two years of extended eligibility instead of just one, but it would not be fair to the voters to change the rules mid-round, so Moose and Robbie get only the one-year extension this time, pursuant to the rules announced at the beginning of the round.
I suppose that voting “Mussina, Mussina and Mussina” next round would invalidate my vote.
I shouldn’t resent the fact that Smoltz is more popular, even though Mussina racked up edges of 15.5 WAR and 10.8 WAA in just 90 more IP. And truly, I’ll be glad whenever Smoltz is enshrined. But I still think the Moose was a little better.
I voted for Mussina over Smoltz also, but as far as the WAR discrepancy it’s important to remember that Smoltz’s years as a reliever, despite his excellent performance, suppressed his career WAR and WAA totals. Relievers, no matter how good, just don’t accumulate as much WAR as a good starter. In his 3 1/2 seasons as a closer Smoltzie accumulated only 7.1 WAR, but in his 3 subsequent seasons as a starter he produced over double that amount (14.6 WAR), at the ages of 38-40!
Judging from the voting here, though, it looks like Smoltz received plenty of credit for switching to the bullpen for a couple of years (and a lot of well-deserved credit for his fantastic postseason play). I think he’s a lock to get into the Hall because the BBWAA has shown a propensity over the years for awarding pitchers with great postseason records.
It was thought at the time that Smoltz was made a reliever that the decision to put him in the bullpen was a necessary one. It was believed that this was the only way his career could continue with his balky elbow. Smoltz eventually revealed after a couple years of closing that his arm actually responded better to 4 days rest than zero or one day’s rest, and he was given the option of returning to the rotation, which he accepted.
A lesser known fact about Smoltz’s move to the bullpen was that the decision was partly based on the Braves’ need to find a pitcher who could adequately and consistently fill the role of a top-flight closer, something they had lacked for much of their extended playoff run. He was seen as the possible missing piece of the puzzle that Atlanta needed to win another World Series, when in reality his talent would have been far better utilized as a starter (once his arm fully healed).
bstar, I’m not sure if you’re quarreling with how WAR treats relievers who work 60-80 IP a year. As for me, I’m fine with it. IMHO, saying that relief work depressed Smoltz’s WAR and WAA is like saying that pinch-hitting depressed Gates Brown’s WAR in 1968 and ’71 — both true and just.
Incidentally, if you take out Smoltz’s years a reliever, his ERA+ comes out just a tad worse than Mussina’s.
I still love Smoltzie, of course.
By the way, given that he had never pitched in relief in the big leagues before game 2 of the 1999 NLCS, and that his 1998-99 starting workload had been limited by injuries, I find the following curious:
— In game 2, he worked an inning to save a 4-3 win.
— On 2 days rest, he started game 4 and went 7.1 IP with no-D in a game the bullpen lost.
— After 2 days rest, Smoltz came into game 6 to begin the 7th inning with Atlanta up 7-3. He coughed up 4 runs in a flash (double, double, out, single, HR) and was pulled, but the Braves wound up winning anyway.
Win Probability Added, by emphasizing leverage over IP, puts starters and relievers on a more level playing field. Mussina and Smoltz have virtually identical career WPA numbers. Top career pitcher WPA since 1980:
Clemens 77.7
Maddux 59.4
Mariano 54.0
Pedro 53.7
Big Unit 53.2
Mussina 40.6
Smoltz 40.5
Halladay 38.8
Glavine 35.5
Schilling 35.2
Hoffman 34.1
K. Brown 33.5
Tim Hudson 30.1
Billy Wagner 29.0
I don’t endorse using career WPA to compare SPs and RPs. Raw WPA substantially favors a good late-inning reliever over a good starter, since the leverage is much higher in late innings. Two especially dubious ratings from the list you provided:
1) Mariano Rivera = Pedro Martinez? I think I worship Mariano more than most saberists, but to compare him to Pedro — no.
2) Trevor Hoffman = Kevin Brown? Brown’s got 3 times the innings, and the difference in ERA+ is just 141/127.
For cross-role comparisons, I think WPA/LI is the better tool. The top 25 since 1980 by WPA/LI:
Rk … Player … WPA/LI
1 … Roger Clemens … 73.277
2 … Greg Maddux … 61.774
3 … Pedro Martinez … 52.905
4 … Randy Johnson … 50.909
5 … Mike Mussina … 41.824
6 … Curt Schilling … 40.643
7 … John Smoltz … 40.236
8 … Kevin Brown … 36.061
9 … Roy Halladay … 35.600
10 … Mariano Rivera … 32.441
11 … Tom Glavine … 32.281
12 … Bret Saberhagen … 29.957
13 … Tim Hudson … 29.398
14 … Johan Santana … 27.459
15 … CC Sabathia … 26.923
16 … David Cone … 26.605
17 … Jimmy Key … 24.546
18 … Dave Stieb … 24.531
19 … Roy Oswalt … 24.281
20 … Andy Pettitte … 24.272
21 … Kevin Appier … 22.107
22 … Nolan Ryan … 21.753
23 … Justin Verlander … 21.280
24 … Orel Hershiser … 20.249
25 … Trevor Hoffman … 19.479
And since we started out talking Mussina/Smoltz … This measure does flatten out a lot of their WAR and WAA gap, but still leaves Mussina a measurable tick ahead.
No, JA, I have no qualms at all with how WAR treats relievers. They’re already given a leverage index increase, after all. My point was that Smoltz’s career WAR would have been higher if he’d only closed, say, that first half-season in 2001 and then gone back to starting in 2002.
I actually don’t remember Smoltz pitching in relief in 1999. I do have memories of that very long game 5, though. I remember not really caring that much as the innings total piled up whether or not the Braves would outlast the Mets in that game.
As for Smoltz coming into game 6 in the 7th, the only thing I can see is that set-up man Mike Remlinger pitched Fri, Sat, and Sun in games 3-5 and perhaps Bobby Cox thought Smoltz would be a better option on Tuesday than a tired Remlinger (even though Remlinger looks like he was forced into duty to mop up for Smoltz in that game).
Well you could cast two votes for Alomar (one for Robbie, one for Sandy).
So far I have absolutely no quibbles with any of the results- no realistic candidates have fallen by the wayside, 2 clearly deserving candidates have been selected and it’s reasonable to expect that going forward the most deserving candidates will remain on the ballot.
I’m already hunting around for the list high WAR 1966 nominees that I remember someone posting so I can start planning my vote for the next round.
I do. If you look at the arguments made above regarding Mussina, and the way the voting system is set up to give him only this one more year of eligibility instead of the three he deserves based on his vote total, it’s pretty clear that he’s getting the raw end of the deal more than anyone else. Alomar to a lesser degree.
There’s a trade-off in this sort of project between “fairness” and the interest in competition and risk that motivates readers to participate, debate and follow the results. “Arbitrary” thresholds are part of what makes competitions interesting and entertaining. In baseball standings, a ten-run loss counts the same as a one-run, extra-inning loss. That’s not “fair” in some sense, and the one run loser might be said to be getting a “raw deal”, but the pure win-loss duality at the end of each game creates a tension that is an essential part of the sport and that would be uh lessened if we simply counted up the runs scored at the end of the game for each side and used those as the basis for the standings. The stakes need to be high for a competition to be interesting. A smooth progression in voting rewards such as you suggest has a certain appeal on the fairness side but I worry that it would reduce the stakes and interest. Watching Smoltz hover in this past round around the key dividing point of 50% was interesting in part because of the stakes involved. Reduce the stakes with smoother transitions, reduce the interest.
Without even looking up other 1966 candidates, hard to believe the winner of the next round won’t be Greg Maddux.
And I agree. However since strategic voting has been deemed acceptable- and I have no problem with that- I might want some time to think about just how I’m going to vote.
But that does bring one issue to mind and that is retroactively changing votes. I do feel that Bagwell was more deserving of selection than Thomas by a small but still significant margin but I don’t know that having people switch their votes in the future won’t lead to some problems.
One scenario that immediately springs to mind would be a couple of people changing their votes late in the game so player X is kept on the ballot but that excludes player Y so a couple of other people change their votes and then the voting is over and it turns out that player Z didn’t make the cut even though he is clearly superior to both players X & Y. Plus I can see where that could lead to a whole lot of extra work for birtelcom if a lot of people start doing it. Might be worth thinking about before we move forward anyways.
Well there’s a two day gap between when you can change your vote and when the voting ends. So that should minimize any extreme gamemanship via vote switching.
Anyway, I plan on waiting this vote out and seeing how things look before casting my ballot.
But doing that is gamesmanship itself isn’t it? I mean, the vote tally is public, so you can make your vote based upon it at 11:59:59.9 if you want. Which brings up the issue of whether there’s any way too make it confidential.
I suppose but voting late means I won’t be able to change my vote. And I still only have one vote just like everyone else. One vote out of 70+ ultimately won’t make much difference.
But I do agree with you re: confidential vote. I would have preferred that but that would be up to Birtelcom to set up.
I said in the voting I thought Smoltz would have the higher peak but when I checked it out I was surprised to see he doesn’t at all so I went with Mussina. And BTW I’m a Smoltz fan.
that was meant for a comment under #1
Jeff Bagwell is one of 12 players with BA under .300 but OBP over .400 (min. 5,000 PAs).
Until 1999, there had never been more than 2 of those 12 players active in any season — Lu Blue and Max Bishop overlapped from 1924-33, and Mickey Mantle and Eddie Stanky overlapped from 1951-53.
But from 1999-2003, 7 of the 12 were active — Bagwell, Berkman, Bonds, Giambi, Giles, R.Henderson and Thome.
Just a note on your expression, “greatest career at first base in modern National League history.”
The three years that Mize lost to WWII, in this particular instance, have to be taken into account, I think, when deciding on “greatness,” unless we assume that WAR accumulation is the only thing that matters. In fact, either way you look at it, WAR per game or per season played, Mize comes out ahead, independent of the fact that three prime years are absent from his totals.
To be more accurate, his years played should be listed as 1936-1942, 1946-1949. Or so I think.
I didn’t notice this earlier but John Mize played through 1953 with a WAR of 67.8.
Richard: Yes, but he was in the AL after the Yankees purchased him from the Giants in 1949, so those late years don’t count as part of an NL career. And NSB: I did qualify the claim about Bagwell with ‘perhaps’ the greatest NL career at first base (pre-Pujols). Does Bagwell’s 9,431 PAs deserve heavy weight compared to Mize’s 6,396 PAs in the NL, in judging who had the greater NL career? Was Mize the greater hitter? Yes. Did Mize actually have the greater NL career? I’m not convinced, but I get why you might disagree.
Sorry birtelcom, I read the table without reading the text above it.
Taking a fresh look at Mize after NSB’s remarks, a couple of things jumped out:
1) Wow, what a great hitter. The list of players who began their careers with 10 straight years of OPS+ 150 or better (and at least 100 games) is short and sweet and Cardinal red: Mize and Pujols. Williams had 9 such out of his first 10, four other legends had 8 of 10.
Seeing such consistency at such a high level — and not just scraping over the 150 mark, he averaged 168 for those 10 yeras — you have to infer some pretty big numbers for the 3 years lost to WWII in the midst
of that stretch.
2) How much Mize value did the Cardinals leave in the minors because they already had Ripper Collins at the initial sack? Mize reached the highest minors in the second half of his age-20 season, and after murdering every lower level, he murdered the I.L., too (.352 BA, .610 SLG, both right up in the leaders). That was 1933. He played there all of ’34 and ’35 as well, staying among the leaders in BA and SLG. He took his first big-league cuts in 1936 at age 23 and was immediately one of the best.
Ironically — or just par for the Branch Rickey course? — Ripper Collins himself served an overlong bush-league apprenticeship before being allowed to strut his own big-league stuff at the age of 27. I guess you can’t fault how the Cards handled their talent, since they won 5 pennants from 1926-34, but it does seem that Mize would have been a MLB star at least one and possible two years before he actually hit the scene.
Just wanted to mention that Todd Helton is now up to 58.4 WAR, into 4th place all-time among NL first basemen. Like Keith Hernandez (whom Helton just passed in WAR), he will probably not be a HOFer, but a very nice career nonetheless.
For whatever reason it just struck me that Helton’s career is remarkably similar to that of Ernie Banks- a very nice 6 or 7 year peak early on followed by a slightly longer stretch of relative mediocracy that the characteristics of their ballparks superficially masked. There are some contextual differences differences because of the era’s in which they played and the type of hitters that they were but in relative value they were almost identical.
And yet Banks was a first ballot Hall of Famer and I would guess that Helton will find it difficult to remain on the ballot.
And I would think that a very large part of that will have to do with the contract that Helton signed just as his numbers were about to take a dive.
Doug – I assume you have Pujols, Bagwell and Mize ahead of Helton. But what about McCovey? Shouldn’t he be on the list as well? He played a little in the OF, but the vast majority of his career was as a 1st baseman. Although maybe you’re only counting WAR earned as a 1st baseman?
As for Hartvig’s Banks/Helton comparison, there is a similarity in terms of how their counting stats fell off. But Banks has two obvious advantages over Helton: 1) most of his WAR came as a shortstop, 2) he hit 500+ homeruns in a time when that was still considered a rare feat.
You’re right about that of course and I do feel that Banks clearly does belong in the HOF while I’m not certain that I would vote for Helton if I had the opportunity to do so. But I do think that the contract that Helton signed will factor in- if only subconsciously- in how people vote for him and that plus a couple of really deep classes of newly eligibles coming up coupled with a handful of well qualified holdovers could make for a very short stay on the ballot for him.
If Bagwell’s going to struggle to get into the real HOF, then I don’t see how Helton gets in. Bagwell has clear advantages in OPS+, WAR, performance in MVP votes, HR, RBI, runs scored, etc.
You’re right, Ed. Helton currently ranks fifth, not fourth. He’s signed through the coming season, so he has a shot to catch McCovey this season (needs 1.5 WAR).
Looking ahead – and I realize that it’s not particularly valuable to do this in TOO much detail – I’m excited about some future periods of election. From here to 1960, it’s going to be a brawl for sure, with tons of good candidates. But looking farther forward, in less than a year (assuming the week/vote ratio) we have the early 1930s, where we have Frank Robinson and Bob Gibson in 1935, and then a stacked 1934 with Aaron, Kaline, Clemente, and then whatever survivors there are duking it out with Mays and Mantle (not to mention Matthews) in 1931. And a year on from that, we get the 1880s, where the Grey Eagle has a leg up by being born in 1888, a year ahead of Walter Johnson, Pete Alexander and Eddie Collins, with the losers getting to face Ty Cobb in 1886. Yipes. Should be interesting all the way through.
One thing I’m curious about – does the poll just stop in 1857, or will there be aggregate elections to encompass the relative lack of great players born in years around then? It seems odd that Cap Anson, Pud Glavin and several other players would either be ignored or lumped in together.
That will be fun but I’m more curious if there will be any stretches where some of the marginal types like say Roberto Alomar- who’s maybe in a small group of players who might be around the 10th best player at their position- might finally sneak in. Or will they be condemned to forever linger on the ballot until all of the front line candidates are gone or will they get brushed aside first by a particularly deep class somewhere along the line.
I’ll be very interested to see how it all unfolds.
I think Thomas will go before Alomar and if he doesn’t get in next year he’ll likely have to wait until 1961 at least. Which means the wait for Alomar will be longer assuming he continues to survive the cut.
I absolutely agree- in fact I would be pretty stunned if the Big Hurt somehow failed to make the cut.
Now Alomar, on the other hand…
Here’s some of the bigger names coming up in the 50’s:
1959 Ryne Sandberg, Tim Raines
1958 Rickey Henderson
1957 Eddie Murray, Dale Murphy
1956 Robin Yount
1955 Gary Carter
1954 George Brett, Keith Hernandez, Jim Rice, Dan Quesenberry
1953 Fred Lynn
1951 Dave Winfield
(I stole the above information from the Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract-2000 edition and can’t claim that it’s all inclusive)
I do see a couple of places where there might be a couple of years there where someone currently on the ballot might breakthru – assuming they haven’t done so already, of course, and that they are still around on the ballot. I could pretty easily see Alomar getting in ahead of Freddie Lynn.
The question is: who else will still be waiting to get in at that point?
Because if it’s someone like Mussina or Smoltz, he’s also going to have to overcome current voting trends to beat them out at that point as well.
From the same source, here are a few of the names coming up in the 60’s:
1965- no names listed in the book but I know Craig Biggio will be on the ballot
1964 Barry Bonds, Dwight Gooden, Jose Canseco
1963 David Cone- for some reason James doesn’t even list Randy Johnson
1962 Roger Clemens, Darryl Strawberry, Don Mattingly
1961 no one’s is listed
1960 Cal Ripken, Tony Gwynn
I have a hard time imagining that anyone being carried forward is going to beat out Bonds, Johnson, Clemens or Ripken unless there’s some kind of steroid backlash. That leaves 2 years for someone to breakthru (assuming Bill and I aren’t overlooking someone).
And I would be that Frank Thomas will be one of them.
After that, I haven’t a clue.
Yes, next election (1965) will be interesting because you have Biggio and Kevin Brown as the highest-WAR entrants, so it’s Big Hurt vs. Biggio and Brown vs. every other good pitcher on the ballot now (Mussina, Smoltz, Glavine, Schilling). We shall see when the dust settles, but by the time we get to 1961 we might see all of the above pitchers and Alomar in a holding pattern (not to mention others like Barry Larkin, who I believe is 1964 as well). Those ‘free-for-all’ years are going to be alot of fun – a year like 1966 with a clear frontrunner like Maddux is interesting for ballot-jockeying, but when the stakes are entry into the Circle, it becomes more intriguing.
A few additions:
64: Larkin and Palmiero
63: Edgar Martinez, McGwire
60: Puckett
58: Boggs, Trammell
57: Whitaker
56: Molitor
54: Ozzie, Willie Randolph, Dawson, Eckersley
51: Dwight Evans, Buddy Bell, Blyleven
Some of your years are wrong by the way. Or maybe it’s Bill whose wrong.
Fred Lynn is ’52, Brett, Hernandez, Rice and Quisenberry are ’53, Carter is ’54, Yount is ’55, Murray and Murphy are ’56.
Will be very interesting to see how things play out. I assume either Thomas or Biggio wins the next election. But there’s no real “gap” till ’61 when one of the holdover candidates will likely get elected. But then it’s a while till there’s another “gap” in which a holdover candidate will be the presumptive favorite.
So it’s hard to see where Alomar can get in. Right now he’s running behind Thomas, Glavine, Schilling, Smoltz and Mussina (and barely ahead of Walker).
Next year basically comes down to Thomas vs. Biggio. I don’t have a sense as to who the favorite would be but there may be a push to finally “clear” Thomas off the ballot. The pitchers though are going to have a hard time. There’s really nothing to distinguish Brown, Smoltz, Glavine, Schilling, and Mussina from one another and everyone has their favorite. Hard to see any of those guys getting in as long as they’re all still on the ballot.
It was me who was wrong- there was no one listed for 57 and I got off by a year going down the list.
I would guess next will will be Big Hurts if only because Glavine/Mussina/Smoltz/Schilling/Brown will have no clear front runner.
61 & 57 might clear the log jam a little but by then there’s going to be a whole stack of well qualified candidates piled up and I just don’t see how they all make it thru the process.
And not only will part of that log jam be a stack of well qualified pitchers but at shortstop you’ll have Larkin/Trammell/Yount/Smith (assuming Ripken makes it in 60)- in a span of 6 years you get arguably 5 of the 10 best not-currently-retired shortstops available.
Ed @39, I’m curious as to why you think Biggio is going to receive more support than Roberto Alomar, Larry Walker, etc. Biggio is third out of those three in WAR, WAA, etc and has a perfectly dreadful postseason resume, and Alomar already is in the Hall. Is it the 3,000 hits that you think is going to push Biggio over these two and close to Thomas?
I love Biggio as much as anyone, but I’m not sure he’s one of the 112 best players in MLB history. I think he’s right on the edge of that.
Two points Bstar:
1) I wasn’t actually presuming that Biggio would outpoll the players you listed though I can understand why it sounds that way. My point is that no one on the current ballot is going to outpoll Thomas. Which means that the only people who could beat him in the ’65 vote are newcomers, the best two of which are Biggio and Brown. My presumption is that Biggio will outpoll Brown.
2) That being said, Bill James online just completed their 2013 HOF vote. In their voting, Biggio ended up the top vote getter as he was named on 97.1% of the ballots. Finishing in a somewhat distant second place was Mike Piazza (87.4%). Biggio also got more votes than Bonds, Clemens, Schilling, Walker (49.5%), Lofton (25.2%) and Brown (18.4%), among others. Granted they use a more traditional voting process of allowing 10 names per ballot but I think that vote shows that Biggio will be a fairly strong candidate. And I assume that the voters on Bill James online are drawn from a similar pool of people as the HHS voters.
Biggio isn’t going to do well on this ballot unfortunately. My count has him getting less than half the vote, which is ludicrous.
Which ballot are you referring to Andy? He’s not on our ballot yet. Are you talking about the real HOF vote?
Actually one more point re: Bstar’s question for me (@41). While it’s true that Biggio trails Walker and Alomar in Baseball Reference WAR, it’s not true of other systems. In the fangraphs version, he’s ahead of Alomar though behind Walker. In the Baseball Prospectus version, he’s ahead of both of them. And in Bill James’ win shares Biggio also comes out on top (which may partially explain the results in their election). Obviously most people at this site will lean on the BR version but anyone who takes a more holistic approach may come to different conclusions about the relative ranking of those three.
Ed, thanks for the response but I tend to agree with Andy here. I think Biggio is going to get dinged for no MVP, very poor and sporadic postseason play, and possible steroid-use concerning his rising HR rate into his late 30s (his career high in HR was reached at the age of 39).
Fair to question steroid use? Probably not, but when you play on the same team as Ken Caminiti and another suspect-without-proof, Jeff Bagwell, rumors are going to persist. And I do think reaching a career high in long balls at age 39 is a little suspicious, far more suspicious than any numbers Jeff Bagwell put up.
I read the Bill James ballot also, but remember these are sabermetric-based voters in the vein of HHS readers, not BBWAA members who actually possess a real vote.
I think Biggio’s voting results for the HOF are going to be similar to Barry Larkin and Roberto Alomar, but with the huge wave of superstars in his midst, it may take Biggio longer than the two years it took Alomar and Larkin to get in.
Edit: it took Barry Larkin **three** years to get into the Hall, not two.
Thanks for your comments Bstar but I have to admit to come confusion. I thought we were talking about Biggio relative to our Circle of Greats election. But your comment (#47) sounds like it’s talking about the real HOF. Did I miss something?
Ed, I am convinced Andy was talking about the real Hall of Fame, and I was explaining my agreement with his assessment of Biggio’s chances.
I assumed your point #2 @42 about the Bill James vote was also about the real Hall of Fame. I think this is what also prompted Andy’s response.
You’re right, our HHS Circle of Greats is another question entirely, but you cleared up the confusion from your @39 post about what you actually meant by saying it would boil down to Thomas vs. Biggio in the next round, so I didn’t feel it was necessary to argue that point any further.
Gotcha Bstar. My 42 and 46 were completely about our Circle of Greats election. Neither had anything to do with the real HOF election.
I prefer the 3 vote process over the 10 vote system. It’s the buckshot vs marksman approach. Mussina, Glavine, Smoltz and Schilling being a good example. Which to pick next time (assuming I take Thomas and Biggio)? The more I look at their numbers, the more Schilling comes out ahead on 3 and 5 year peak, though Mussina and Glavine may have the better overall careers? I need to look at it some more, but overall I don’t see any of these guys making it into the Circle. My only criticism is that if more than two players get, say, 80% + in an election then they should both go. After all, this is a tough, discerning crowd to get a vote from and to get 4 out of 5 is something special.
Bells – There was some discussion of this issue in the comments of the original post, but I never saw a resolution of the issue. Presumably, by the time we finish, there will be a few more people elected into the real HOF, which will extend our process by a few years. But that probably won’t get you back to Anson’s year of birth. So I’m not sure what Birtelcom has in mind.
We’ve got a while before we have to worry much about pre-1857, but generally my goal was to mimic both the size and scope of the BBWAA version of the Hall of Fame, but with an alternative voting process and with HHS-quality voters. The BBWAA essentially left responsibility for most of the 19th century players to the various veterans committees, so I have assumed the Circle would wrap up before we got heavily into the 19th century guys. But if we’re still at it, and folks are still interested, when we get that far, I’d be open to continuing further back, perhaps with an adjusted format.
Great. We shall see, then, it’s probably good to not have it set in stone now anyway, I mean we’re only 1/56th in.
alexdombroff@alexanderdombroff.com