This post is for voting and discussion in the thirteenth round of balloting for the Circle of Greats. This round adds those players born in 1957 (and a couple of special guests). Rules and lists are after the jump.
As always, each ballot, if it is to be counted, must include three and only three eligible players. The one player who appears on the most ballots cast in the round is inducted into the Circle of Greats. Players who fail to win induction but appear on half or more of the ballots that are cast win four future rounds of ballot eligibility. Players who appear on 25% or more of the ballots, but less than 50%, earn two years of extended eligibility. Any other player in the top 9 (including ties) in ballot appearances, or who appears on at least 10% of the ballots, wins one additional round of ballot eligibility.
All voting for this round closes at 11:00 PM EDT on Friday, March 29, while changes to previously cast ballots are allowed until 11:00 PM EDT Wednesday, March 27.
If you’d like to follow the vote tally, and/or check to make sure I’ve recorded your vote correctly, you can see my ballot-counting spreadsheet for this round here: 1957 COG Vote Tally . I’ll be updating the spreadsheet periodically with the latest votes. Initially, there is a row for every voter who has cast a ballot in any of the past rounds, but new voters are entirely welcome — new voters will be added to the spreadsheet as their ballots are submitted. Also initially, there is a column for each of the holdover players; additional player columns from the new born-in-1957 group will be added as votes are cast for them.
Back when we first started the Circle of Greats, we debated whether to include some players on the ballot even if they fell short of the Hall of Fame’s 10-seasons-of-play minimum for getting on the baseball writers’ ballot for induction. After discussion, the rule was set at either 10 seasons in the majors or, for those with fewer than ten seasons, at least 20 career Wins Above Replacement (using baseball-reference.com’s version of WAR). This round, Teddy Higuera qualifies despite pitching in only nine seasons in the majors because baseball-reference has him at a career WAR of 28.9 (it would have been over 30 if he had retired in 1991 after seven seasons instead of trying to come back after missing the 1992 season). Also, in re-checking the numbers I realize that two guys from previous-round birth years also should have been on a previous ballot under the 20 WAR rule: Orlando (El Duque) Hernandez and Shane Mack. So all three of these guys are being included in the eligible list this round. I think it’s pretty unlikely any of these guys will garner enormous support. But it was agreed to allow them to be eligible, they are at least as qualified as many who have previously appeared as eligible — and so they are here.
Choose your three players from the lists below of eligible players. The 13 current holdovers are listed in order of the number of future rounds (including this one) through which they are assured eligibility, and alphabetically when the future eligibility number is the same. The new group of 1957 birth-year guys are listed below in order of the number of seasons each played in the majors, and alphabetically among players with the same number of seasons played.
Holdovers:
Tom Glavine (eligibility guaranteed for 6 rounds)
Tony Gwynn (eligibility guaranteed for 6 rounds)
John Smoltz (eligibility guaranteed for 6 rounds)
Barry Larkin (eligibility guaranteed for 5 rounds)
Craig Biggio (eligibility guaranteed for 4 rounds)
Larry Walker (eligibility guaranteed for 4 rounds)
Roberto Alomar (eligibility guaranteed for 3 rounds)
Tim Raines (eligibility guaranteed for 2 rounds)
Ryne Sandberg (eligibility guaranteed for 2 rounds)
Alan Trammell (eligibility guaranteed for 2 rounds)
Kevin Brown (eligibility guaranteed for this round only)
Kenny Lofton(eligibility guaranteed for this round only)
Edgar Martinez (eligibility guaranteed for this round only)
Everyday Players (born in 1957, ten or more seasons played in the major leagues or at least 20 WAR):
Lou Whitaker
Alfredo Griffin
Tony Pena
Brett Butler
Kirk Gibson
Tim Wallach
Carney Lansford
Danny Heep
Alex Trevino
Glenn Hubbard
Ed Romero
Max Venable
Steve Balboni
Tim Flannery
Damaso Garcia
Dan Gladden
Steve Lake
John Moses
Greg Brock
Bob Dernier
Leon Durham
Bob Horner
Clint Hurdle
Rick Leach
Johnny Ray
Willie Upshaw
Pitchers (born in 1957, ten or more seasons played in the major leagues or at least 20 WAR):
Jesse Orosco
Lee Smith
Tom Candiotti
Doug Jones
Dave Stewart
Dave Stieb
Buddy Black
Bob Ojeda
Don Robinson
Steve Bedrosian
Mike Boddicker
Tony Fossas
Jerry Gleaton
Craig Lefferts
Dave Schmidt
Steve Trout
Pascual Perez
David Palmer
Teddy Higuera
Also eligible this round:
Orlando Hernandez
Shane Mack
Gwynn
Biggio
Walker
Smoltz, Alomar and Gwynn.
Larkin, Trammell, Smoltz
Biggio, Raines, Alomar
Alan Trammell
Lou Whitaker
Ryne Sandberg
I was sorely temped to give Kirk Gibson the last spot in honor of those wonderful Tigers teams of the 80’s but there are just too many people that I feel belong and too few votes to go around. Sandberg is my only concession to anything resembling “strategic” voting this round. In my rankings, Larkin is a hairs-breadth ahead of Sandberg, but he has 5 years eligibility accrued vs. 2 for Sandberg. Glavine is somewhere in the mix as well.
I think both Martinez & Lofton belong in the COG but for this round at least someone else will have to do the heavy lifting there if they are to move forward. Right now on the ballot I think there are 11 people on the ballot who belong in the COG & 2 more that I’m leaning towards- although the gaps is so narrow that a well crafted argument could move just about any player up or down in my rankings 3 or 4 spots.
The first double-play combo ballot. Over the 14 consecutive seasons that Trammell and Whitaker were the primary SS and 2B for the Tigers, the guys who were the main starting first basemen they were throwing to, for at least one full season, were: Jason Thompson, Richie Hebner, Enos Cabell, Dave Bergman, Darrell Evans, Ray Knight and Cecil Fielder.
Gwynn, Raines, Larkin
Larkin, Alomar, Raines
Martinez, Walker, Glavine
For the 1957 election, I’m voting for:
-Tony Gwynn
-Tom Glavine
-Ryne Sandberg
Other top candidates I considered highly (and/or will consider in future rounds):
-Biggio (Hopefully only temporarily off ballot)
-Alomar (Hopefully only temporariliy off ballot)
-Martinez (Hopefully only temporarily off ballot)
-Smoltz
-Walker
-Trammell
-Larkin
-Raines
-Lofton
-Brown
-Whitaker
Sentimental favorite former Brewers:
–Teddy Higuera
-Jesse Orosco
-Doug Jones
I wouldn’t be surprised if this ended in a 10-way tie for 1st.
Amazing how similar some of Trammell and Whitaker’s stats are.
They are within 4 hits of one another.
And they both have 77 Rfield.
Tom Glavine, John Smoltz, Craig Biggio
Whitaker, Raines, Gwynn
Larry Walker
Tom Glavine
Lou Whitaker
Larry Walker, Craig Biggio, Barry Larkin
This is the former qx, I was in need of a name change
I’m absolutely set on voting for Walker. But as for my next two spots, I have Brown, Trammell, Larkin, and Sandberg in just about an absolute tie. So I’m not really sure how to go. I think I’m gonna go with Brown (because his eligibility is going to run out if people don’t vote for him) and Larkin (because he’s my favorite non-Brewer ever). So to recap:
Larry Walker
Kevin Brown
Barry Larkin
My first (and probably only) homer vote:
Trammell, Sweet Lou Whitaker, Smoltz (could’ve been a Tiger)
I completely blanked about Smoltz!
One of the all-time cost/benefit trades in history. Alexander did everything that the Tiger’s could have hoped for and then some during the regular season. The wheels fell off in the playoffs but those things happen in short series. And for a great as Smoltz turned out to be, he probably wouldn’t have seen post-season play with Detroit unless he hung around until 2006.
Alomar, Gwynn, Raines
Gwynn, Raines, Biggio.
Larry Walker (guy who should win this round vote)
Lou Whitaker (most deserving new player vote)
Ryne Sandberg (Cubs fan vote)
Holy cow this is difficult. I’m going to get my vote in now and then think on it some more over the week.
Larkin
Whitaker
Trammell
Career Wins Above Average, excluding negative seasons:
Walker 48.6
Larkin 45.5
Trammell 45.1
Brown 43.2
Whitaker 43.1
Glavine 42.2
Martinez 41.6
Smoltz 40.2
Lofton 39.5
Sandberg 39.1
Alomar 37.3
Raines 37.2
Gwynn 36.8
Biggio 36.7
I’m excited to be able to vote for Larkin this time, while still supporting my two primary causes. Although, if I were allowed, I might replace Larkin with Sweet Alan Tramaker.
Walker, Larkin, Brown
I think Larkin was a better player than the detroit combo. I know that’s not a popular opinion but Larkin was a freak of an athlete and had no weaknesses in the profession of Baseball. He had some bad luck with injuries, but still accumulated a decent length career. I think a lot of players on this ballot deserve to get in, but for middle infielders we have left, I think Larkin was a step above. A step faster, too.
Gwynn was something special. He did not have power and didn’t do much OB-in’ but exceptional skills stand the test of time better than a more complete but less dramatic player.
I’ve voted for Raines, Smoltz, and Glavine before. They’re all deserving. I see a lot of late 80s atheletics veterans on there. It’s nice to point them out to remember it wasn’t just the bash brothers keeping those teams in contention. Dave Stuart was always a personal favorite. I never liked Lee Smith, I for some reason associate him personally with the move for closers of 2IP to 1IP per outing. I still think it’s a waste. You lose say a third of the games from your closer, but you get twice as many innings per game. Seems like a much more valuable proposition to me.
So I’ll do this round like a draft board:
Gwynn, Larkin, Stieb
Stieb? So much talent. Lets take a moment to remember that.
Agreed on Larkin over Trammell, but it’s by a hair. WAR tells us they were practically the same player. Raw stats tell us Larkin hit a little more and was a better baserunner, but lagged just behind Trammell in defense. I’d break the tie by stripping back some of the park adjustments and celebrating that Larkin hit more doubles and homers and stole more bases, even if his ballpark and era helped him out a bit.
In my mind it’s not as close. I see Trammel as more above average for a long period of time . Larkin’s WAA is probably comparable only due to injury. If he had Trammel’s health, he would have a more substantial peak. When they were on the field (granted, getting there is most of the battle) Larkin was a step better. Whitaker never had the impressive arm strength shown by so many shortstops in that era. I also think I missed Lou’s real peak of 34-38 years old (91-95): .287/.389/.478/.868 in 2249 PA. I remember more the younger slick fielding whitaker whacking a slappy and less dominant (77-87): .279/.355/.406/.761
Glavine, Biggio, Walker
Gwynn, Smoltz, Biggio.
You guys are slowly turning me to Walker, just not quite there yet.
Larkin, Glavine, Whitaker
Look at the road splits. Look at Bichette. Don’t give in.
I agree on the splits, it’s the reason I haven’t voted for him. I still may not pull the trigger. I see Molitor and Murray are up next year so he’s definitely out then (he won’t replace Larkin or Glavine). Yount comes after that. Smith, Carter & Eckersley after that. So in my case it seems unlikely for at least the next 3.
By all means, do look at Bichette. You’re bound to recognize how vastly superior were Walker’s numbers while with Colorado:
– Bichette, .316 BA, .352 OBP, .892 OPS
– Walker, .334 BA, .426 OBP, 1.044 OPS
In Colorado:
– Bichette, .396 OBP, 1.046 OPS (1993-99)
– Walker, .464 OBP, 1.179 OPS (1995-2004)
Away, while with Colorado:
– Bichette, .309 OBP, .736 OPS (1993-99)
– Walker, .385 OBP, .899 OPS (1995-2004)
Offensive WAR per 162 games:
– Bichette, 2.1 oWAR/162
– Walker, 6.1 oWAR/162
Now, I don’t care if anyone votes for Walker or not. I don’t know if I’ll vote for him myself.
But if something about Bichette’s numbers makes you reject Walker, I think that amounts to saying that no Rockies player can ever be considered great, no matter what he does.
I think we sometimes fail to make distinctions between numbers that both surpass some “magic threshold” such as 1.000 OPS. But there really is a big difference between 1.179 (Walker in CO) and 1.046 (Bichette in CO). That’s roughly the same difference as between Babe Ruth and Hank Greenberg — and that’s a big difference.
I checked out all those players about a month ago: Burks, Bichette, Castilla, Galarraga, even Helton and Holliday. As for Bichette, I never thought he and Walker were equivalent players anyway, but each one of those guys I mentioned has an equivalent upsurge at Coors. So if there’s any doubt in my mind, considering the talent on these lists, it’s easy to ignore someone who may have a case, even a strong one despite the advantageous conditions they played in.
The point of Bichette is to show you you can expect a serious OPS swing for that type of hitter to the tune of 300 points which is not sufficiently reflected in RBAT, and because of that WAR. If you assume at least one of those rockies sluggers was equally good on the road and at home, pick any one, then you toss the inflation of their stats based on that formula, you are gunna take another 10WAR off of Walker.
I’d also take away another 5 WAR from him due to inflated values on the defense of a career right fielder…
Not Saying 55 WAR is anything to sneeze at, but it’s a far cry from 70 WAR. I’d still put Walker above several guys on this ballot at 55 WAR.
But Rbat doesn’t really rate Bichette. From 1996-1999 he bats .313, averages 28 HRs, 39 2Bs, 128 RBI and 99 Runs but averages only 6 Rbat per year. Do you think Bichette’s Rbat should be much lower? Negative?
RJ, it breaks the scale. The correction is a fixed subtraction per at bat. The subtraction is not valid as it should scale with the skill of the player. Because of this, if you put a good fly ball hitter like Walker there, the correction is not holding up.
Here here…don’t be fooled by Coors field and all it’s advantages it gives.
Walker, Gwynn and Smoltz.
Biggio, Glavine, Gwynn
Glavine, Walker, Trammell.
Pretty fine hairs to split with this group, with Whitaker joining the “backlog”. I’ve changed between this group a few times already, when I participate.
By WAR at least, Whitaker is a touch ahead of our current pack of infielders and the only player on the ballot with 70 WAR, save Tom Glavine (whose batting WAR pushes him over 70). But as you say, it’s mostly splitting hairs.
In the defensive statistics (which i’m coming around to appreciating because of the discussions on this site), is the value of the extra bases that a corner outfielder with good range saves part of the calculations?
Regarding the discussion of Larry Walker… part of the ‘Coors Effect’ should be an appreciation of outfielders who get it done out there in the vast high tundra.
At least according to DRS, absolutely the value of squelching XBH is included, Voomo. Here’s a good rundown of what exactly goes into outfield DRS, using newly-minted Brave Justin Upton as the framework. If you completely doubt the veracity of advanced fielding metrics for outfielders, this one might turn your head a bit:
http://espn.go.com/blog/statsinfo/post/_/id/60793/defensive-issues-hurting-uptons-value
Was it included in Total Zone runs re: Walker to the same extent? I don’t know that.
@32…you mean the appreciation for the outfielders who get to watch the ball fly over their heads?
Eligible players by Actual Value calculation defined in 1959 round:
Glavine 107.1
Walker 104.3
Whitaker 101.4
Larkin 98.7
Trammell 97.2
Smoltz 97.0
Sandberg 94.5
Lofton 94.5
———–
I’m not going to list the rest; there’s no point. A strong enough case has been made for Walker that I think I could take his numbers at face value. We have three players with an AV over 100 and no clear-cut leader, so I’m just going to vote for a straight top-3 ticket.
My ballot: Glavine, Walker, Whitaker.
larkin, trammell, whitaker
(sorry raines!)
Wow. How do you sift out the nuggets from
Alomar
Biggio
Larkin
Sandberg
Trammell
Whitaker ?
I was on the Alomar and Biggio train early in the voting, but now I’m looking for players who get it done everywhere -at the bat, with glove, and on the bases.
So, how about the
Rbat
Rbaser
Rfield for all of them?
Biggio
254
57
-100
Alomar
242
54
-38
Larkin
200
80
18
Sandberg
192
30
60
Trammell
132
25
77
Whitaker
209
32
77
Well, the outliers here are Biggio’s defense and Trammell’s offense.
And then, I have to call into question just how accurate the defensive stats really are.
I know that the same voters who gave a DH a Gold Glove gave ten of them in eleven years to Robby Alomar, but was he really worth -14 fielding runs during that time?
Let’s say yes, and eliminate him.
If you simply add the three numbers together you get:
318 Whitaker
318 Larkin
282 Sandberg
Of course, Ryno played three less seasons.
Edge to Larkin for playing shortstop?
Edgar Martinez
532
-18
17 (in 592 games)
Alfredo Griffin
-290
-11
-28
Rbat
Rbaser
Rfield for outfielders:
Gwynn
403
23
6
Walker
420
40
94
Raines
291
115
-7
Lofton
140
78
108
Butler
188
38
-84
Gibson
176
30
-6
Can someone explain Lofton’s Rbat and Rbaser numbers?
Look at 1995 and 1996
Especially 1996.
He stole 75 bases at an 82% clip.
He was 24/27 stealing 3rd.
His XBT% was 65%.
And he’s only worth 9 runs over average?
Over what, the average cheetah?
…
Well, looking at the other players, I’m seeing the same trend.
Tim Raines was worth 13 runs over average in 1983, with
90 steals @ 87% and 133 runs
I do not fully understand how these stats are calculated, but everywhere in this world of sabermetrics I’m finding elite baserunning to be undervalued (according to my lifetime-intuitive perception).
I was wondering how valuable steals of 3B were. I looked at that 1996 season (I did this manually and missed one of the steals, so apologies). Following those steals of third:
10 times he didn’t score.
3 times he would have scored from second anyway.
4 times he would have scored later in the inning.
6 times he wouldn’t have scored had he not been on third base.
The three caught stealings were fairly irrelevant.
So about 25% of those steals of 3rd resulted in a run that would not otherwise have been scored.
Right. Great work.
That sounds about right.
But as for the Rbaser stat, is it calculated based upon when the runner steals or takes an extra base that ACTUALLY leads to an extra run?
Or is it calculated based upon the increased PROBABILITY of a run as a result of the baserunning?
I’d assume the latter and Ed’s link probably explains this below (I’m far too tired to making sense of that right now). But of those steals that I looked at, only two were in the top 5 WPA events of the game (5th both times if I recall), and both of those were in conjunction with a walk for the batter.
Voomo , I heartily concur, and I think the basic reason is that. Baserunning runs are calculated by counting events. , primarily SB and CS , whereas the art of baserunning consists primarily in avoiding events – not getting picked off, not getting thrown out by a outfielder, not being out at second or third on a fielders choice when a better runner would have forced them to make a play at first. A great baserunner scores runs. Consider. Paul Molitor – over a long career, he reached base 4226 times when not hitting a homer, and scored 1782 runs, 234 via the trot and 1548 otherwise, a .366 clip , which is outstanding.. Your average major leaguer scores about 30% of the time when reaching base – if Paul had done that, he would have scored 280 fewer runs than he did . BRef has him at 78 runs for his career. Granted, part of the difference is due to being good enough to bat at the top of the order, with RBI men coming up, but I think Doubling the 78 runs ( giving him 8 runs per year rather than 4 is a much better guess at his value).
I check the RS% over a career. To make mental adjustments for non-event baserunning in extreme cases in can be worth +- 4 WAR or so
Well said.
And the guy who scored 2295 runs,
who had 1071 (net) SB at 81%,
who was 322/69 stealing 3rd,
who was 229/31 stealing in the 8th inning or later,
Rickey was worth only 144 runs above average in 20+ years on the bases?
Perhaps you’re not considering the deleterious effects a CS can have on an inning. They’re pretty much inning-killers, aren’t they?
Plus, with a lefty at the plate, you kill the ~30 point BA increase the batter has from the first baseman opening up the hole on the right side of the infield when he’s holding a runner on and you steal second. So there’s that, too. (although I don’t think Rbaser considers this)
No matter how many bags you swipe, if you’re only around 75% successful, the actual net run value is not as significant as one might think.
Plus there’s much more to baserunning than stealing bags (see Ed’s link).
Is 14+ WAR for baserunning not enough?
bstar, wait a minute, regarding the lefty’s batting average with a runner on 1st vs a runner on 2nd, are you suggesting that Rickey was less likely to score a run from 2nd base than from 1st base?
You make a lot of good points worth responding to – but can you clarify/expand on that one?
No, I’m suggesting that a LHB’s BA is 30 points higher when the first baseman is holding a runner on because it opens up the gap between the first and second sacker. When you steal second, you lose that advantage (so this is just saying that stealing second IS a positive event, but not as positive an advantage as we might think).
I got this from Bill James’ work in the ’80s. Here’s the relevant quote:
“…The stolen base, it is argued, puts pressure on the pitcher, breaks up the infield, and takes the double play out of order.
While all of these benefits are real, it is my belief that in general, in the normal case, the hidden benefits of the stolen base are canceled out (sometimes more than canceled out) by hidden costs of the running game.
The running game can create a balk, and it can create an error on the pitcher; it can also lead to a runner being picked off first base without being charged with a caught stealing, a hidden cost which doesn’t show up in the box score. The running game can distract the pitcher; it can also distract the hitter. Hitters who take pitches to allow the runner to steal often find themselves behind in the count, and for that reason the aggregate batting average of all hitters following a stolen base attempt is awful.
The stolen base attempt can break up the infield and allow a hit to get through, but if the runner just stays on first base he’ll add 30 points to the batting average of a left-handed hitter by forcing the first baseman to stay close to the bag. If you steal second you give those 30 points back. In general, it’s a wash; the negatives and positives balance out…
It was James’ belief that a greater portion of the Cards’ success in the ’80s wasn’t so much from their ability to steal a base as it was from their ability to GET on base.
I say this with a bit of regret, because I share your passion for the real burners of the game, the transcendent speedsters who swipe 80 bags and lead the league in triples.
Brock was before my time, but Mickey Rivers, Willie Wilson, Raines, Henderson, Lofton, Bourn, the ’80s Cards,…I just love(d) watching those guys play.
You don’t have to have regret.
You can simply disagree with Bill James.
30 points in BA is 38 less hits every 600 at bats.
Okay. Let’s say that 600 of Rickey’s steals led to 38 less hits from a left-handed teammate. Well, a third of those grounders to the right side would have occurred with zero outs, which would put Rickey on third base…
… I’m not going to be pedantic and flesh out the hypotheticals.
Simply put, the point of offense is the advance around the bases and step on home plate. The guy who stole more bases than anyone also scored more runs than anyone.
That may be logic that is too simplistic for Bill James’ world, but it works for me just fine. Stealing bases is a wash? Maybe. But I’d rather die with the wind in my face.
Voomo @83 — OK, but the guy who stole the 2nd-most bases ranks 46th in career runs.
I like steals. But I don’t want to boost a guy’s metrics because I like his style of play.
Apologies if I’ve missed something in this thread, but — getting ON base is the most important offensive skill, miles and miles ahead of baserunning. Take a leadfoot with a .400 OBP and a blazer with a .300 OBP and bat them both leadoff, the slow guy will score more runs and his team will score even more — every time.
Take Omar Moreno and the 1978 Pirates. They were 4th in scoring overall, and Omar led the majors with 71 steals and a fine percentage. But they were 9th of 12 in runs from the leadoff spot, because Omar had a lousy OBP.
The ’78 Reds scored just a few more runs than Pittsburgh overall, and their leadoff men (Rose mainly) stole just 13 bags — but those leadoff men scored 21 more runs than Pittsburgh’s, because of a 46-point edge in OBP.
Rickey’s 144 WAR runs from baserunning is more than the career *batting* runs of Carlos Lee, Vada Pinson, Adrian Beltre, Kenny Lofton, and a couple of back-door HOFers, Bobby Doerr and George Burns. It’s hardly a pittance, and it seems about right to me.
Rickey’s greatest value was getting on base.
Corrrection.
It is 18 hits per 600, not 38.
That is 3 hits per 100 at bats.
Rickey averaged 74 steals / 162.
So that is about two hits a season that Rickey denied his left-handed teammate by stealing 2nd.
JA, I’m certainly not arguing against on base percentage.
–Back in 2005, Tom Ruane of Retrosheet looked at all the PAS in the majors from 1960-2004, and found that with a man on first and no other men on, batters averaged a slash line of .274 BA/.327 OBP/.412 SLG/.739 OPS, whereas with a man on second an no other men on batters averaged .244 BA/.360 OBP/.368 SLG/.728 OPS. So hitters overall perform somewhat less well with a man on second than a man on first.
–But that certainly doesn’t mean that teams are better off with a man on first than a man on second. Tom Tango studied all the PAs from 1950 through 2010 and found that the average number of runs a team scores in an inning increases by about a quarter of a run (.25 runs) if there is a man on second and no out, compared to a man on first and no out. With one out, the increase is about .17 runs, and with two outs the increase is about .11 runs. The disadvantage for the batter is more than offset by the fact that it is much easier to score a runner from second than from first.
–This recent Fangraphs article http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/the-changing-caught-stealing-calculus-2/ argues that the break-even point for the value of stolen bases to offset the loss from caught stealings has changed from about a 70% SB success rate in 2000 at the height of the home run explosion to about 66.6% in 2012.
birtelcom,
it doesnt look to me like batters perform less well with a runner on 2nd as opposed to 1st.
BA down
SLG down
OBP up
It looks like batters get less good pitches to hit with a base open.
And more often the resulting situation is runners on 1st and 2nd.
Which yes, may be a wash, because it would be preferable to get a single and have runners on 1st and 3rd.
But if your base stealer is elite, having him on 2nd is not such a bad deal, strategically or psychologically.
_________
In 1988, Rickey was worth 17 Rbaser
He stole third 31 times, caught twice.
Yes, that a stat taken in isolation.
And no, I dont know how many times that happened with less than 2 out..
Point is, baserunners should be awarded value for Creating Opportunities to score. The math is a bit beyond me (or beyond my time and patience, perhaps), but my sniff test tells me the Stat is a bit under-ripe.
Voomo — I knew you weren’t saying anything *against* OBP.
I just meant that, when sniff-testing Rickey’s Rbaser as a percentage of his total RAA, 22% seems about right to me. Because to me, the bulk of his value was in his OBP — .401, against an adjusted league average of .327.
Another point is that, as we’d expect, Rickey’s Rbaser is concentrated in his first 10 full seasons, ages 21-30, in which he averaged 10 Rbaser, equal to about 1/3 of his Rbat.
JA, I can’t argue with your math.
I’m just in agreement with the points that BryanM is making below – that there are a lot of intangibles to baserunning that the math isn’t covering.
I was a teenager in NYC in the 80’s –
I easily watched 130 Yankees games a year (TV and from the RF Bleachers) –
And Rickey changed the complexion of the game every single time he reached base. There’s no way I can buy into the idea that his baserunning was worth ONE extra run every two weeks.
-one extra run over the average player, I should specify.
One extra run every two weeks more than a 34 year old Gary Ward.
birtelcom @93–great link! What I find most interesting is that the “break-even” point fluctuates from team to team, based mainly on the number of home runs hit.
So even though the league average break-even point is 66.6%, in 2012 it varied from a low mark of 64.5% for the homer-less Giants to a high of 72.1% for the longball-happy Yanks.
I like RE24. I like it a lot. I want RE24 to be used to give an exact rbase. You get caught stealing from first with no outs? You’ve just shifted the RE24 from 0-0-0-1 to 1-0-0-0 and you are charged whatever the run probability change is. Steal third with one out? You get the difference of 1-1-0-0 minus 1-0-1-0. Reward guys who steal at appropriate times.
Sorry if a little late to the Rickey party. I got a lot of players’ autographs at County Stadium in my youth and many, many players were just complete jerks and refused to sign an autograph for me and a few of my other 12 year old friends…including Rickey, but Rickey got out of his cab, dressed in a complete pimp uniform, I mean blue velvet suite, silk vest, chest showing, flashy necklace and a pimp hat. I mean snoop dog would have been wagging his tail at the sight of this spectacle. Then Rickey walked past, looked at us and said while laughing, “Rickey don’t sign kids”, but with such style it was great, I couldn’t even be mad at the guy. You just had to be there, he was just so smooth, I value that story more than his actual autograph.
Anyways, a big problem I have with WAR is that it is all based on averaged, the context is 100% removed. But I think the players played differently depending on the context. Rickey’s rbaser is just based on how much an SB was worth for the exact average situation every single time, and just given the fact Rickey was stealing in front of the sluggers those were probably above average value situations.
It would be very interesting to just go 1 by 1 through all his steals for a season and just keep track of the number of times the team would not have scored that inning without his SB attempt. For CS just assume the leadoff AB of the next inning would have happened with Rickey on first the previous inning etc. I wonder how close those numbers would be to his rbaser values? For things like stealing 2nd and then scoring on a double, you could assume his career rate of scoring from first on a 2B 109/212 = 51% of the time.
An interesting thing about Rickey which seems to be luck but actually contributed to his perceived value, the reason he was a leadoff man was because he stole bases, not because he had the nice OBP. Even today managers can’t resist putting fast guys at the top of the order (Carlos Gomez has had almost an entire seasons worth of PAs (521) from the leadoff spot with his #1 spot .274 OBP). So I think a big reason Rickey is the run king is because of his SBs allowed his high OBP to hit at the top of the order which greatly helped his teams.
Voomo: There’s a full accounting of baserunning WAR at this link:
http://www.baseball-reference.com/about/war_explained_position.shtml
There seem to be two glaring gaps in the method, both of which suppress the range of baserunning runs . One is there is no count of infield fielders choices – man on first, ground ball to IF . How often is the lead runner safe? The second is when the ball is not fielded cleanly by the catcher and no movement is made by the runner – what is the scoring? I may be wrong, but I think it’s a non event , Bad baserunners have more of these non events .
JA @ 86. No one denies getting on base is much much more important than skill at scoring once on base. I , and perhaps others, think that A couple of runs per year. Should in general be taken away from the walks of the slow #5 hitters, which lead to fewer actual runs than walks to guys further up the order, and added to the best runners , who tend to reach. second on a ground ball a little more often.
BryanM @92 I did some searching and it appears that you’re right about your first point. I can’t find any evidence that those sort of plays are factored into WAR. But it hardly seems glaring to me. I can’t imagine that it makes more than a few runs difference over the course of someone’s career. I could be wrong though.
Don’t understand scenario #2.
Ed . Maybe glaring is a bit of an overstatement, but I think it could be easily. 30-40 runs over a long career. To revert to my poster boy for this argument. , in 1991 the 34 year old Paul Molitor had 19 SB and 8 CS , for -1 BR runs. But wait, he hit 17 HR and scored 133 runs , so 116 times He touched the plate without driving himself in. sure the vast majority of the runs he scored would have been scored by anybody given what happened in the lineup behind him. But does it really seem such a stretch to say that an average baserunner. Would have scored, say 128 runs that year, all else being equal? How often do you see a2B go to his left, or a 3B or SS to his right, check the lead runner, and then take the sure out at first. Quite frequently , I think. The run expectancy difference is about. .55 runs vs a DP. This is no different than great range by an infielder – anticipate the play, get and extra step or two , and once every Ten games or so , It will create or save a run.
Ed point 2 is this . Bad base runners are not penalized for no calls.
1 bases empty , ball rolls 20 feet from catcher – no play.
2 Paul Konerko on first, ball. Rolls 20 feet from catcher – same thing; but an even competent baserunner would have created a PB
No biggie, I think this is small compared to the inverse of my #100, 2B goes to his left, and is pleased to discover that Paulie is still 45 feet from second, easily gets the lead runner .
ByranM – One small correction. Molitor had +2 baserunning runs in 1991 not -1. Perhaps you were looking at the Double Play column?
Anyway, I think what you’re talking about is what frustrates some people (myself included) about WAR. In a comment on his Larry Walker article, Adam defended Baseball Reference and the amount of info they’re providing re: calculating WAR. Myself and others disagreed. And I think this is a perfect example. At the end of the day, we’re being asked to take a lot on faith. We’ve been given the framework of WAR, but not its guts. We’re not being given the raw data needed to look through Paul Molitor’s 1991 season and say “Okay, I get it now, I understand why he only has 2 baserunning runs for that year”. And until BR and Fangraphs starts giving more of the “guts” there are going to be lots of WAR disbelievers.
Sorry , somehow got the 1989 number . Astigmatism / senility in some proportion. Thanks for correction . I’m giving him 120 runs for his career rather than 78 until I understand WAR. A bit better
Bryan @101, you make some great observations. And I know this run scoring data has been your thing, which is great.
But I THINK (emphasis on think) that Rbaser does cover passed balls. By simply tallying the number of advances on passed balls, aren’t we also capturing the non-advances? If Paul Konerko rarely advances on a PB, isn’t he going to have a low total compared to the league, and be docked for it? Can’t we trust the aggregate total for successful PB advances enough? Doesn’t a low total of PB advances inherently suggest that there were a lot of non-advances?
This is point #11 in Ed’s link.
Bstar @ 110. On rereading the explanation in BRef, I am now convinced you are right, and that fielders choices are the main non events not counted. For the most part, I’m ok with WAR. As the best estimate we have of player value.
I do think that baserunning is a little compressed, and that OBP needs to be adjusted for habitual batting order position. , in other words, a walk to a #7 hitter is worth less than a walk to a #2 hitter, on average, all things being equal. Pitchers know this, and pitch accordingly . And Yeah , I guess that run scoring is sorta the point, I recognize that once a player reaches base, whether or not he scores is largely, but not totally, up to the guys coming up behind him. In the 70’s the RBI men used to get all the love , and the guys who scored in front of them were treated as passengers. We’re more sophisticated now, but I like to give a little shout to the run scores once in a while all the same.
The slight qualification I’d give to Tony Gwynn’s Rfield total is that it doesn’t show that he was fantastic for half his career and then pretty bad for the rest. I guess 6 Rfield is 6 Rfield for everyone, but if you like peak, then you’d probably go with the guy who was elite and then bad over the guy that was merely consistently OK.
That’s a really, really good point. If we’re going to place so much emphasis on peak value, why haven’t we been considering peak value in defense?
Outfielders’ Rfield / Rfield through age 32
Gwynn
6 / 76
Raines
-7 / 24
Lofton
108 / 114
Walker
94 / 62
more reason to cast doubt on walker’s dwar right there…
But because I somewhat trust defensive metrics ( a lot of smart people are trying to measure something very difficult ), While recognizing that they can and will be improved. But don’t trust position adjustments ( BRef says they are plugs developed from averages). I’m inclined to see the data as reason to increase my mental value of Lofton. I saw Walker play a lot when he was in Montreal, and I already had him pegged as a seriously plus defender, so no change there. I thought. Gwynn was a seriously awful outfielder in the few times I saw him play but it’s too small a sample to question the slightly above average score he has.
But because I somewhat trust defensive metrics ( a lot of smart people are trying to measure something very difficult ), While recognizing that they can and will be improved. But don’t trust position adjustments ( BRef says they are plugs developed from averages). I’m inclined to see the data as reason to increase my mental value of Lofton. I saw Walker play a lot when he was in Montreal, and I already had him pegged as a seriously plus defender, so no change there. I thought. Gwynn was a seriously awful outfielder in the few times I saw him play but it’s too small a sample to question the slightly above average score he has.
Bryan M – Where does B Ref say that re: position adjustments?
Ed , @ 152 , if you scroll down your own link @ 58 , you will see an explanation and a table , the explanations states explicitly that the estimates are based on averages, and the numbers in the table don’t change often, certainly not from year to year, as you would expect from the outcome of a statistical formula
Bryan M – Three comments:
1) Of course they’re based on averages. Lots of components of WAR are based on averages. What alternative are you suggesting?
2) Sample size is generally too small to make year to year changes.
3) This article is worth a read. It’s written by Sean Smith who of course was the originator of Baseball Reference’s WAR. I have no idea if BR still uses the position adjustments laid out in this article. But it does give an idea of how things have changed over time.
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/historical-position-adjustments/
Sorry, Ed , compressed my remark- should have said based on hitters averages, which is peculiar for a fielding stat. I agree that we need to adjust for the “difficulty” of playing each position, it’s just that the actual method chosen looks full of plugged numbers, and is not based on the concept of Replacement, which is central to WAR in the first place. Thanks for the link, I learned a lot from it , but I am , if anything , more dubious about the numbers than before I read it.
Bryan M – I’m certainly no expert on the issue but I’m not sure that’s true. At best I’d say the language in the BR link is ambiguous.
Anyway, Sky Kalkman (who sometimes posts here) looked at this issue a few years ago and didn’t find much difference between position adjustments based on offense vs. defense. The biggest differences are between 3rd base and DH:
http://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2008/12/22/698572/comparing-offensive-and-de
And this is what Tom Tango said re: position adjustments when reviewing the most recent version of BR’s WAR:
“Since I myself change the values every few years by a couple of runs here or there, I’m going to always consider such positional adjustments as a work-in-progress. The numbers in the chart are certainly justifiable for the recent years, and for the most part in prior years. Like I said, we can talk about this for hours, and just take one step forward maybe.”
http://www.insidethebook.com/ee/index.php/site/comments/war_updated_on_baseball_reference/
Thanks for those links. Good reading. I still don’t have any higher of an opinion on the current state of defensive metrics. To me, the main missing piece is weighting based on fielding opportunities by position. In other words, stop with the extremes on non-defensive positions.
Ed , thanks again for the links, and it’s a thorny issue, no doubt, I respect those who are trying to improve defensive value metrics, but the outcome of this is an excellent defensive 1B will have negative dWar almost all the time. Just seems a little odd when the best player in the league at his position can have negative value .
Bryan – But they will have positive Rfield which seems to me to be the more important thing. As I understand it, the negative dWAR is simply reflecting the fact that most first basemen can’t play elsewhere in the field.
Because I still don’t trust defensive metrics at all…
Gwynn, Brown, Stieb
If you watched all these guys play at age 27 and wondered who would finish their career on top of the WAR list, I bet Stieb would have gotten pretty high on that list. We can visualize an angry Stieb circling the rear of the mound saying “Cmon Dave, get it together. Keep that fastball inside. Don’t let it wander back. How else are you going to make him swing at that slider?”
Larry Walker, Lou Whitaker, Tom Glavine
Glavine, Walker, Gwynn.
Back to middle infielders:
– Whitaker
– Trammell
– Sandberg
I agree with other people upthread, this is getting harder and harder; I count at least 16 players that deserve serious consideration. Two separate votes for 1958 players made only a tiny dent in the backlog.
I’m keeping the same central aspects of my methodology of “peak” WAR/162, but I’m altering the tiebreaker rules for when Player A has more “peak” WAR/162 than Player B when B’s peak is longer than A’s peak. I determined that I needed more emphasis on length of peak and less on sabermetrics related to WAR in these tiebreakers. As you will see, this change directly influenced my vote in this round.
Here is my initial vote for 3 players:
T1. Larry Walker (6.6 WAR/162 during 12-yr peak of 1992-2003)
T1. Barry Larkin (6.6 WAR/162 during 12-yr peak of 1988-99)
3. Kenny Lofton (6.5 WAR/162 during 8-yr peak of 1992-99)
Ranking of other HOF-caliber candidates:
4. Dave Stieb (6.7 WAR/162 during 6-yr peak of 1980-85)
5. Ryne Sandberg (6.6 WAR/162 during 5-yr peak of 1988-92)
6. Tim Raines (6.5 WAR/162 during 5-yr peak of 1983-87)
7. Alan Trammell (6.2 WAR/162 during 11-yr peak of 1980-90)
8. Craig Biggio (5.6 WAR/162 during 9-yr peak of 1991-99)
9. Lou Whitaker (5.4 WAR/162 during 11-yr peak of 1982-92)
10. Edgar Martínez (6.1 WAR/162 during 7-yr peak of 1995-2001)
11. Roberto Alomar (5.7 WAR/162 during 6-yr peak of 1996-2001)
12. Kirk Gibson (5.7 WAR/162 during 5-yr peak of 1984-88)
13. John Smoltz (5.6 WAR/162 during 5-yr peak of 1995-99)
14. Tom Glavine (5.3 WAR/162 during 6-yr peak of 1995-2000)
15. Tom Candiotti (5.0 WAR/162 during 8-yr peak of 1986-93)
Wow, this ballot is stacked. 15 who meet my criteria for being HOF-caliber (5+ WAR/162 over a minimum peak of 5 years) is definitely more than ever before in the COG. As I mentioned, my method change affected my vote, as Lofton skipped ahead of Sandberg and newcomer Stieb for the ballot slot opened by Boggs’ election last round. Also, Whitaker placed several spots higher than he would have under my previous method, meaning that in any strategic vote change he would be considered for a ballot slot earlier than under my previous method.
I’m contradicted on what to do here. Do I change my vote or not?
Pros of a vote change: Stieb and Martínez, two players who are definitely HOF-worthy and probably COG-worthy, are at risk of falling off the ballot, and dropping Walker and Larkin for those two should help save them and Lofton, who is also probably COG-worthy.
Cons of a vote change: I don’t think Tony Gwynn or Tom Glavine is COG-worthy (Gwynn isn’t even HOF-worthy — his peak is too short), therefore I should keep my votes for Walker and Larkin to help prevent either Gwynn or Glavine from winning. Also, I have little to no preference between Walker and Larkin, so I’ll take either as a winner (but I
This is what’s so great about the current “locked votes” tonight: it keeps you wondering what you should do rather than continuously switching votes at the end of voting.
Ultimately, I’ve decided I’m voting to try to save Stieb, and my overall vote change is posted in a new comment to ensure that it goes through.
#201 –
“Gwynn isn’t even HOF-worthy — his peak is too short” WHOAH! I am not going to let that statement go by unchallenged. There is simply _no_ player with Gwynn’s credentials who have not easily been elected to the HOF. Granted, some of that centers around his BA/batting titles, but even if you do not consider that, he’s got a lot going for him.
Some contrarian New England fans made the same case against Carl Yastrzemski when he was up for the HOF – that he was “merely” a very good player, who happened to have a few great seasons and played forever, which allowed him to get way over 3.000 hits. But – he wasn’t a “real ” HOFer. Needless to say, I don’t believe that for a second.
If Gwynn and Yaz do not belong in the HOF, we need to cut the size of the HOF by at least 70%.
Yaz: 7.0 WAR/162 during 9-yr peak of 1962-70
Gwynn: 6.6 WAR/162 during 4-yr peak of 1984-87
A 4-year peak isn’t enough; I’m looking for 5-year peaks. Of course, once the latest change in WAR is rolled out at B-R, with lowered replacement levels to meet Fangraphs’ raised ones in the middle, this could very well cause me to redefine Gwynn as an HOFer, according to this method.
INH,
Yes, I understand your methodology (which you have been kind enough to explain in serious detail), but I am not bound to the altar of WAR, or a strict minimum of a five-year peak.
By almost any conventional evaluation, Tony Gwynn passes the HOF bar quite easily. The situation here at HHS, where Raines and Walker are perceived as roughly equal,would indicate to me that Raines and Walker are also deserving HOF candidates, rather than that Gwynn is _not_ a desrving HOFer.
If you look at Gwynn’s 9 best years, non-consecutive, he totaled 46.6 WAR over those years, about 5.2 a year on average. I’m not sure why if Tony had exactly the same set of WAR seasons as he did in real life, except that instead of those nine seasons being spread across his career they came in a row, that should be the difference between being a Hall-of-Famer and not. It seems like the same value-creating career one way or the other.
Gwynn, Larkin, Walker and Whitaker all within two votes to this point, and Glavine just one more vote behind that group. This is one of those rounds to join in the voting if you like competitive elections.
I’m just putting this out here but if Walker is voted in before ANY CURRENT HOF players than this whole COG is pointless.
@57…Why are you giving a 12 year peak for Walker in WAR here when he had 4 years(’93,’96,’00,’03) of average play at best and definitely under his real peak? I mean seriously, even 1992 was an average season at best(.301/.353/.506).
I just can’t wrap my head around people voting for Walker over players like Gwynn, Alomar, Sandberg and Larkin who are all actual members of the HOF. I get it if he was your favorite player or even one of them but still…
Jeff, as I have said many times before, here’s how I define a peak:
1. It starts with a year of 4+ WAR.
2. It contains no consecutive seasons of less than 4 WAR, where one of the consecutive sub-4 WAR seasons has less than 3 WAR.
3. It ends with a year of 4+ WAR.
Walker had 5.2 WAR in 1992, and only two seasons (1996 and 2000) of less than 4 WAR during those 12 years. As you can see, they are nonconsecutive.
Why 4 WAR? Because 5+ WAR is always accepted as All-Star-caliber, but 4+ WAR usually is enough for All-Star-caliber. So, 5+ WAR/162 during the peak is necessary for HOF-caliber (in my mind), and 4+ WAR is used for determining the peak.
If you still have a problem with it, then !#&%ing agree to disagree. Larry Walker was a great player, far superior to Gwynn and Alomar, possibly better than Sandberg and on par with Larkin (as you can see, Walker and Larkin tied at the top of my list).
Okay, I see where your coming from now, thanks.
Jeff. , you are entitled to your opinion, that walker was not as good as the four guys you mention , I happen to think he was better, in Alomar s case a lot better, but we can agree to disagree. I don’t see how finding out that a majority of people disagree with you invalidates the point of voting- surely that is the point of voting.
My understanding is that the whole point of the COG voting process- since it’s based on the same number of inductees that the BBWAA voted into the HOF- was to see precisely where High Heat Stats readers opinions differ from that of the BBWAA. I’m not quite as sold on Walker as some but at this point in time at least the arguments for his inclusion have me convinced that he belongs. But even if I should somehow be later convinced otherwise but he were to be voted in by HHS voters anyways he still wouldn’t be near as big a clunker as say Jim Rice or Rabbit Maranville or several others that the BBWAA have chosen to enshrine.
Looking at Walker’s ref page he’s listed as…by age comparable:
24.Bernie Carbo (979)
25.Mel Hall (980)
26.Austin Kearns (972)
27.Leon Durham (971)
28.Danny Tartabull (961)
29.Richard Hidalgo (962)
30.Magglio Ordonez (945)
31.Matt Holliday (942)
32.Matt Holliday (932)
33.Magglio Ordonez (915)
34.Chuck Klein (900)
35.Chuck Klein (911)
36.Chuck Klein (905)
37.Ellis Burks (896)
38.Ellis Burks (884)
Not seeing a lot of HOF players here.
Vlad Guerrero’s on the other hand look like this:
23.Willie Mays (946)
24.Manny Ramirez (945)
25.Willie Mays (937)
26.Willie Mays (938)
27.Willie Mays (942)
28.Manny Ramirez (937)
29.Willie Mays (928)
30.Manny Ramirez (920)
31.Manny Ramirez (914)
32.Duke Snider (900)
33.Duke Snider (880)
34.Duke Snider (878)
35.Gary Sheffield (866)
36.Rafael Palmeiro (888)
Jeff, you seem to ignore the severe limitations of those similarity scores:
1. They are 100% offense, 0% defense.
2. They’re based on conventional offensive stats, mainly counting stats. Even something as fundamental as OBP is not a factor.
3. There is no adjustment for context — a .300/30/100 season in Coors Field in 2001 is treated exactly the same as .300/30/100 in Dodger Stadium 1968. Which is insane, obviously.
A notable disclaimer appears on the B-R page explaining Similarity Scores:
“This doesn’t mean that Vladimir Guerrero was as valuable as Willie Mays over his first three seasons – just that their numbers are similar. The league’s offensive levels and defensive value affect those measurements.”
http://www.baseball-reference.com/about/similarity.shtml
In reality, Similarity Scores are fun, but they’re almost useless for any sort of analytical comparison.
And making judgments on the number of “similars” who were HOFers can compound the problem. If HOF representation is biased towards, say, slugging corner outfielders, and high-average hitters from 1920-40 — which is obviously true — then those asterisks on the similarity list don’t necessarily mean a lot.
Take Ichiro. I happen to support him for the HOF — but it’s not because his counting stats are similar to those of Lloyd Waner, Edd Roush and Kiki Cuyler. I don’t think any of those guys belongs in the Hall.
I had no idea those similarity scores were lacking so much. Why in the world are they even listed if they don’t provide sufficient statistical knowledge?
It does prove one thing though, Vlad Guerrero was a better hitter than larry Walker.
Actually, based on numbers alone, Walker is probably a more valuable batter than Guerrero. During Vlad’s peak (which I place as 10 years, 1998-2007), he had 5.4 oWAR/162 to Walker’s 5.7 peak oWAR/162. Looking at their full careers, Walker’s 5.3 oWAR/162 defeats Guerrero’s 4.5. Of course, Guerrero spent several years in a pitcher’s park with the Angels, while Walker spent several years at Coors Field. So if you wish to consider park factoring (which I don’t, believing it to be too inexact of a science) then it’s highly debatable.
Inh @ 91?, I beleive park factoring is already built into the oWAR numbers you quote
BryanM – That was my reaction as well upon reading INH’s #91.
About the only thing I think is left of worth in B-Ref’s sim scores is that a lot of the time you will get comparisons with players who play the same position. If you’re a catcher, you often end up being compared to a lot of other catchers.
But then you start to look at the careers of these catchers, and you realize the actual value of their careers are often vastly divergent, despite similar counting stats. So is that even worth anything?
Due to the high number of problems with these scores as detailed by JA, I’m of the opinion that they should be removed from players’ individual pages and put in the “Fun & Frivolities” section of the site along with the EloRater.
BTW, for a more relevant take on sim scores, check out Adam’s value-based numbers on his Hall of Stats site.
OK then, I actually didn’t know that. So then Walker IS a more valuable hitter than Guerrero. What I don’t understand, then, is why people see his park-adjusted WAR numbers and still discount him for the Coors Field factor. THAT’S where I get off the “park factoring” bandwagon.
Glavine, Larkin, Gwynn
Larkin, Trammell, Sandberg
But it’s getting ridiculous. We are splitting hairs. I could just as easily picked three others, and the choice would be easily justifiable. Or another set of three.
With all the talk of how comparatively poor Walker supposedly was in Montreal, I never realised he actually put up 20.1 WAR in his time there. If you project that rate of WAR accumulation across the rest of his career, assuming the same number of games, you arrive at a career total of exactly 60 WAR. This assumes no gain from either entering his peak years or hitting better by taking advantage of his surroundings. So if you assume park effects aren’t doing their job and that the Montreal years represent Walker’s true value, maybe that’s a reasonable estimation of his career worth.
Walker’s Ref page says his overall WAR is 69.7 but his oWAR is only 59.6 and his dWAR is 1.5, where is the extra 9.9 WAR coming from?
Anyone…Anyone…Bueller?
oWar and dWar are apparently numbers that don’t refer to anything but themselves.
Total WAR is composed of:
Batting Runs
Baserunning Runs
Runs added or lost due to Grounding into Double Plays in DP situations
Fielding Runs
Positional Adjustment Runs
Replacement level Runs (based on playing time)
http://www.baseball-reference.com/about/war_explained_position.shtml
Both oWAR and dWAR include the position adjustment. So in Walker’s case, his negative position adjustment is being counted in both his oWAR and his dWAR which is why they add up to less than his total WAR. If you look at someone who has a positive position adjustment (Ozzie Smith for example) you’ll see that his oWAR plus his dWAR add up to more than his total WAR.
oWAR is for people who don’t trust the defensive stats. It assumes that everyone was an average fielder. dWAR I kind of understand but I’m not sure I’d be able to explain it to other people.
And for people who don’t like position adjustments, I guess you can take WAR + (WAR – oWAR – dWAR) since that would have 2 plus and 2 minus pa’s
Tram Sweet Lou and walker
Tony Gwynn, Roberto Alomar, Lou Whitaker.
Best “pure” hitters on this ballot? I would say Walker, Martinez, and Gwynn. Of those 3 Larry Walker was the only “complete” ballplayer.
Best “all-around” players on the ballot? Walker, Larkin, Trammell, Sandberg, and Whitaker.
My vote:
1. Walker
2. Larkin by a very slim margin over Trammell
3. Sandberg over Whitaker due to greater peak
Walker, Stoltz, larkin
Stoltz’ performance in ‘Mask’ really was remarkable.
Such method to embody that character.
“Mask”. Nice catch,
Lou Whitaker, Kenny Lofton, Dave Stieb
Martinez, Gwynn, Glavine
I think I’m going to give a shout-out vote to Dave Stieb. When you look at the numbers for the ’80s, it’s difficult to not come to the conclusion that Stieb was the best pitcher of the decade.
Stieb (45) is about 10 WAR ahead of second-place Bert Blyleven (35) for the ’80s. The only guys he trails in ERA+ for the decade debuted in 1983 or later, and he’s second to Jack Morris in IP.
Sadly, the ’80s were pretty much it for Mr. Stieb, as he succumbed to injury/declined and only posted 6.6 WAR in the ’90s. I can’t give him a Hall of Fame vote, but he deserves to be remembered.
Glavine, Trammell, Stieb
Whitaker, Lofton, Martinez
Trammel
Witaker
Smoltz
Walker, Smoltz, Stieb
Votes for Dave Stieb seem to have started in the “shout out” mode, but he is now over 10%. Meanwhile, Edgar Martinez, Lofton and K.Brown, who have been surviving one round at a time, are all well short at the moment of the 10% needed to remain eligible.
That’s why I love voting early. We’ve gotten lots of guys to 10% for one year, they usually don’t get any votes the next.
This is one messy ballot. I can’t see any particular quality that raises Whitaker’s numbers over any of the other middle infielders, so it’s time for a throwback vote:
Gwynn
Glavine
Alomar
Agreed. It seems odd that Whitaker has 16 votes and Biggio, Alomar, and Sandberg have a total of 20. I think some people get caught up with voting for a new player.
Well, based purely on b-ref’s WAR (or on the Hall of Stats application of WAR and Wins Above Average), Whitaker ranks higher than Biggio, Alomar and Sandberg (or any other everyday player on the ballot). Those methods are certainly not gospel, but to the extent some voters use them, or come to conclusions similar to the ones those methods lead to, there may be something more than just the “new guy” effect going one here.
There’s also an overabundance of Tigers’ fans on this site. So that probably has an impact as well.
Like the old saying that one can never be too thin or too beautiful one can never have an overabundance of Tigers fans
Yeah, let’s say a “disproportionate number” rather than an overabundance.
There’s also the stiff-arm that the Hall of Fame has given to both of these Tigers infielders, which I admit is fueling my vote for at least one of them.
If the Hall screwed them over so bad, I feel a stronger urgency to get them into our Circle than I do for others of similar value who are already in the Hall.
They’re not getting voted off the island anytime in this process bstar. I think there’s a difference between keeping them around and saying they’re better than Barry Larkin. That’s where I draw the line.
I definitely feel a bit lonely as an Indians’ fan on this site. There used to be a poster named “Cursed Clevelander” but I haven’t seem him in a while. So I think I’m it at least among the regular posters.
Just curious, and I get that my question is much larger than I want it to be, but per Bill Jame’s historical Abstract he ranked Biggio, Alomar, and Sandberg all higher than Whitaker. Why is the consensus here so contrary? For that matter why did Win Shares never catch on all that well?
As I understand it James knew there were some issues with Win Shares- in particular in how it dealt with & measured defense- but before he could resolve the problems he was hired by the Red Sox & since then almost all work on refining Win Shares has pretty much come to a halt. At least that how I understand the issue although there may well be other who know more than I.
As far as why Whitaker is getting more votes this round than the other 3 second basemen I think is largely answered in posts 123, 124 & 130 above. JAWS does see Sandberg as being half a step ahead of Whitaker but sees both Whitaker & Sandberg a notch above Biggio & Alomar. There are limits to all of these ranking systems- such as only Win Shares takes post-season play into account & then only in a fairly crude & subjective way- and my guess is that in a year or two they’ll probably be dividing up the vote a little more equally among them.
It’s also Whitaker’s first time on the ballot, so Chris I think you may be reading too much into this particular vote.
The Biggio/Alomar/Sandberg crowd already have years guaranteed on the ballot, but Whitaker doesn’t have any, so there’s a stronger push for him this time. A similar dynamic happened with Trammell in the ’58 vote.
So I wouldn’t say this community is necessarily favoring Whitaker over the others, they’re just doing it for this vote.
bstar @134 has it I think. I mean, remember when Tim Raines almost beat Schilling for CoG nomination on his first time on the ballot? That was only 3 votes ago, but Raines is an afterthought in this election to a bunch of guys he was voted better than in 1959.
I wouldn’t get too dismissive of Whitaker however- you can make a case for his being the best player on the ballot pretty easily.
His WAR total is the second highest of any player on the ballot (Glavine)
He ranks 2nd in the Hall of Stats (Walker)
He ranks 6th in JAWS (Glavine, Walker, Trammell, Larkin, Sandberg)
All of the margins are pretty close. You can certainly make the case that WAR doesn’t perfectly measure the exact value of a pitcher verses a hitter and no regular reader of this site needs reminding of the debates surrounding the Coors factor.
As far as I’m concerned when you take everything into account there are about 9 players that you could pretty reasonably make a case for being the best player on the ballot.
And the case for Whitaker is as strong as any.
Chris @132:
–Bill James’ short note on Whitaker in the New Historical Abstract emphasizes the extent to which he was, despite being a great player, an airhead who needed a push to be able to focus. In contrast, the note on Biggio emphasizes how he was perhaps the greatest player ever at doing the “little things” to add wins for his team.
–Part of the problem with Win Shares from the outset, as James himself knew, is that it had no “above replacement” aspect the way WAR and WARP do, it’s sort of W without the AR. James has fitfully teased his readers with examples of his “Loss Shares” calculations to balance “Win Shares”, but has never issued those numbers systematically — perhaps because WAR and WARP, an the Win Shares Above Bench stat that The Hardball Times developed, already serve a similar purpose. That being said, Win Shares was a brilliant innovation, that inspired all the more recent uberstat efforts, and it is still worth looking at.
–Perhaps more directly to your point than the Whitaker votes is the Gwynn vs. Walker battle at the top of the the current balloting. Though Walker has more WAR (b-ref and fangraphs) than Gwynn, Gwynn leads Walker in Baseball Prospectus’s WARP (Wins Above Replacement Player) as well as in Win Shares and Win Shares Above Bench (WSAB). According to the Baseball Gauge, Gwynn has 197 WSAB and Walker 168.2.
–Happy 47th birthday, Tom Glavine (181.8 WSAB).
Glavine, Walker, Larkin
Glavine
Gwynn
Smoltz
Walker, Sandberg, Trammell
Glavine, Gwynn, Raines.
Smoltz, walker & raines
Very tough decisions, so I’m sticking with 3 players I have voted for previously
Glavine, Walker, Larkin
This ballot, more than most, is showcasing a main point of the CoG – to see how differently we view all-time great candidates than the BBWAA does. The top vote-getters so far are: a guy who’s been mired in 20-25% of the ballot for his few years on the HoF ballot, a guy who was a slam-dunk almost unanimous HoF choice, a guy whose 15 years are about to run out without getting significant support, a guy who got voted in the second year, a guy who was one-and-done, and one guy who hasn’t come up for eligibility just yet.
Raines, Larkin, Gwynn
Walker, Trammell, Sandberg
I love how difficult this vote is.
_____________________________
Glavine, Smoltz, Brown?
Would you want Glavine’s long-term consistency?
Smoltz’ postseason focus and adaptability?
Brown’s dominant peak?
I can’t unravel them.
____________________________
I can’t pull the trigger on Edgar Martinez, even with his 569 adjusted batting runs (30th all time).
Too many great players on this ballot who could run and catch and throw.
___________________________
I can’t unravel
Sandberg, Whitaker, Trammell, Biggio, Alomar, Larkin.
Perhaps in the coming weeks the learned writers who populate this portal will posit swaying arguments to the benefit of the above middling sextuplets. Until then…
___________________________
Until then I’m roaming the outfield…
I want Lofton as my leadoff hitter and centerfielder.
I want Larry Walker and all five of his tools.
Which leaves the choice between Raines and Gwynn.
With all of the persecution of athletes who chose to enhance their physiques with various steroids and growth hormones, it seems that the Cocaine Era of the 80’s has been neatly swept under the astroturf.
If we’re going to sniff at the homerun totals of the ‘roiders, we have to look warily at the speed numbers of the coke fiends. Sorry Rock.
Gwynn and his .372 BA at age 37 works for me.
_________________________________
Booger Walker
Kenny Lofton
Tony Gwynn
Raines, Trammell, Whitaker
Lofton
Raines
Sandberg
So close to giving Stieb a vote. I really enjoyed watching him pitch in the 80’s. It’s just too bad he didn’t last longer, maybe there’d be a Jack Morris type wave of supporters for him instead.
Biggio Walker Martinez
Alomar, Gwynn, Glavine–just keep writing me in for those three until Reggie shows up.
Sandberg, Biggio, Alomar
Please change my vote from Larkin, Alomar, Raines to:
Larkin, Glavine, Gwynn.
This is an admittedly anti-walker vote. He was a fine player & all, but IMO not one of the top 112 of all time (top 175 or so, sure), so I’m throwing my support to a couple of guys who are close to him in the voting who I think are CoG material.
One general comment, now I grew up a baseball fan in the 90s and I liked baseball card counting stats. For example, I though Juan Gonzalez probably should have won some MVPs because of those RBI numbers. Nowadays I understand the error of my ways and how foolish it was for me to enjoy baseball without knowing specific formulas that prove I was infact enjoying it incorrectly.
I understand the park factors, OBP, positional value etc and I can easily let go of any previous thoughts I may have had about how to value players. However, one of the biggest surprises the sabr world has given me is the anaylsis that not only was Roberto Alomar not a great defender, he was below average!?! Even in his prime? Can someone else back me up on this, or am I too fixated on a few memories of amazing diving plays in shallow right field that are clouding all the other times Robbie let average grounders past him?!?
Also, do people feel that the rfield values account for infielders playing on turf home fields fairly? I guess the obvious quick check is that rfield loves Ozzie as it should so the answer to my question is probably yes.
Your comment brought to mind a second baseman from when I was growing up named Tito Fuentes. From everything I’ve read if such a thing as SportsCenter had existed back then he would have been a regular on the highlight reels but, at least according to the sportswriters, a little careless when it came to the routine stuff. I didn’t see him play on television enough to have any sense of how true that was but at least according to his dWAR he was generally a good but not great second baseman.
Hartvig – Just to clarify, Rfield shows that Fuentes was a below average second baseman (-28 Rfield). Though obviously he was better in some years than others.
As for Alomar, I would say he’s Exhibit A for why some people don’t trust the advanced defensive statistics. But isn’t that why we have those stats in the first place? Because often we’re fooled by our eyes and we only see what we want to see. For example, we know that the difference between a .250 hitter and a .300 hitter is only one hit a week. If no statistics were kept, most people wouldn’t be able to differentiate between the two even if they watched all the games. And if the .250 hitter had a nicer looking swing, they might be fooled into thinking that the .250 hitter had a .300 batting average, and the .300 hitter had a .250 average.
You’re right about why we need defensive metrics, but comment 171 below w/r/t Olerud’s skills are why I put no faith whatsoever in them. Batting metrics are simple enough; the hitter has a lot of control over what happens. Yes, the manager could call for a hit-and-run or a bunt or to try for a sac fly or whatever, but generally speaking the guy with the bat controls how good his batting stats are. Plus, we have fairly reliable methods of accounting for park factors, hitting environments, league-wide comparisons for offense, etc…
I am not a mathematician so I can’t provide any assistance in the battle for quality defensive analytics, but right now it’s hard to say that this SS was good and this 3B was bad on the same infield even, much less across teams/eras/positions. For example, we don’t really know what to make of players like Brett Lawrie who have high DWAR – is it all about positioning and defensive shifts? Are we even accounting for that?
What weight should errors play compared to total chances/range? How do we account for # of chances when a team has more groundball or flyball pitchers? Etc…. maybe some of these have been resolved, but not enough for me to treat DWAR or any other defensive metrics as anything more than a work-in-progress*.
*Yes, I know all the advanced stats are perpetually in progress, but they certainly are a lot better at passing the sniff test.
Brp – BryanM put forth an interesting theory in #171 but it doesn’t really hold up to scrutiny. A few points:
1) Almost all of Olerud’s top Rfield seasons came with the Mets and the Mariners, not with the Blue Jays.
2) Alomar’s best Rfield (+11) came in 1998 when his first baseman was Rafael Palmeiro. Palmeiro had an Rfield of +16 that year. Seems like Alomar and Palmeiro were able to co-exist and both put up solid defensive numbers that year. In fact, Palmeiro’s +16 that year was better than any season by Olerud.
3) Alomar also had a +7 in 2000 with Jim Thome as his first baseman. Thome was +6 that year which is higher than almost all of Olerud’s seasons with Alomar.
I’m not disagreeing that defensive stats need to be improved. But I’m not seeing any evidence that Alomar was hurt by his first basemen.
Ed @ 176 Good work , but I see Alomar jumping to +11 runs in his first season at BAL as further evidence of a large error band in defensive metrics.
He was bad for 4 seasons with the Jays and then good? I’m willing to abandon my guess about Olerud, although not on evidence of what happened in Baltimore, which after all can neither prove nor disprove anything that happened in Toronto
Bryan M – It was actually Alomar’s 3rd season in Baltimore, not his first. His first two seasons he had negative Rfield. Palmeiro was his first baseman those years as well and also posted lower Rfield.
Anyway, as I said I’m not disagreeing with the broader point. Looking at Alomar and comparing his defensive numbers on Baseball Reference and Fangraphs, he has the exact same season by season Rfields through 2000. So presumably both are using the same defensive system up to that point. After that, Alomar’s defensive numbers diverge. Baseball Reference has him at -38 Rfield for the final few years of his career whereas Fangraphs has him at “only” -17. Which just goes to show that the defensive system does matter.
Unfortunately, any improvements to defensive statistics will likely only be applied forward and not backward since the data won’t exist for earlier seasons.
Ed, yes.
It’s TZ on both sites through 2001.
On Fangraphs it’s UZR for 2002 and beyond.
On B-Ref it’s DRS for 2003 and beyond.
brp @174,
UZR has never considered plays made far out of the zone of where the fielder normally plays, so there’s no credit there for plays made in the overshift.
DRS DID include these plays up until sometime last year but realized the error of their ways when Lawrie’s crazy fielding numbers were sparking a controversy across the sabermetric world. DRS fixed it, and Lawrie’s numbers fell back in line (although he’s still rightfully listed as one of the league’s better fielders).
So, Bill James had this interesting comment on his website a few weeks ago, and I think it germane to this discussion:
“If you look at Brooks Robinson’s Runs Created vs. an Average hitter, beginning in 1961, you have -4, +21, -4, +37, +21, +15, +16, +9, -13, +11, +11, -1, -14, +16. That might look very inconsistent, but Robinson was always perceived as a consistent player, a consistent hitter. A zero-centered stat is always going to look more inconsistent because the base is taken out.”
That could be some food for thought for this discussion, I think.
On the other hand, if you look at Brooks Robinson’s Rbat starting in 1968 you get 16, 17, 13, 13, -8, 10, 10. So he did have a very consistent stretch.
Ed, very ironic that we end up talking about Brooks Robinson and his Rbat, because one of the studies you linked to in that article about, errr, that guy who played RF for the Rockies for awhile, is all about Brooks’ career Rbat and how a lot of sabermetricians question Rally’s final number for Robinson’s career.
Apparently a lot of people’s estimation of Robinson’s hitting value is higher than what rWAR suggests:
http://walksaber.blogspot.com/2010/11/curious-case-of-brooks-robinsons.html
Bstar – Wow, my memory is definitely shot! I had completely forgotten about that even though it was only last week.
Anyway, remember that Baseball Reference is no longer using rWAR. (there may still be elements of rWAR embedded in bWAR but I wouldn’t begin to know which.)
Anyway, bWAR gives Robinson a total of 43 Rbat, up from the 20 Rbat that rWAR credited him with. And much closer to Fangraphs (for example) which has him at 61. An 18 run difference might seem like a lot but over a career as long as Robinson’s we’re talking basically one run a year difference.
Dunno , Topper. IMHO. We have to take admittedly imprecise defensive metrics and combine them with impressions of those who saw someone play to get a true picture. All his contemporaries saw Robbie as a plus defender, and they did give him 8 GG. I now the GG voting is far from perfect , but it is not nothing. Meanwhile, in his prime with the Jays, he had a young John Olerud beside him, who created 97 fielding runs over his career. Did a young , agile 1B , who could play further off the bag than the average aging. 1B/DH in the league make plays that Robbie would have made anyway, and thus hurt his range factor? I don’t know , but I’m inclined to treat him as at least an average defender mentally, and thus add about 4 war to his career total.
Walker, Sandberg, Larkin
Raines, Larkin, Gwynn
Raines, Whitaker, Trammell
I’ve been on the road over the last day or so, but am back in touch and the voting spreadsheet is back up-to-date. Current leaders,through 64 ballots cast:
Walker 26
Gwynn 24
Glavine 21
Larkin 20
Vote changes can be made through tomorrow night, voting closes for the round on Friday night.
Walker, Larkin, Trammell
I’ve supported Walker on several ballots, I’ve been a big fan of his for awhile, and I do kind of think of him as the best player on the ballot (it’s close with a bunch of guys, I’m always changing my mind, but I usually come back to Walker). Still, faced with his lead and possible induction into the CoG, I’m a little hesitant to vote for him. I dunno, I really liked Adam’s piece on him and I think it’s timely with all the debate here about Walker and Coors in the last few months, but I can’t help but feel he’s getting a push to be a bit overvalued from the recent and central post about him. Maybe I’m not giving people enough credit and worrying that folks are going to be temporarily swayed by a recent argument. But I’d rather be convinced that people’s minds have changed long-term and see him elected in a few weeks’ time. On the other hand, that’s kind of a silly reason to not vote for him. Hmm, I might carry this one out until the last day…
I’ve not felt right about undervaluing Roberto Alomar based upon his defensive stats.
I’ve come around to believing in the accuracy of the defensive metrics TODAY, but the technology was still in its toddler years in Alomar’s time.
I was voting for him early in the process, and I’m going back.
CHANGE OF VOTE:
Lofton
Walker
Gwynn to
LOFTON
WALKER
ALOMAR
(yes, i’m doing this in part to help Walker win
(both to heighten the discussion about him…. and to give the discussion a chance to end)).
Ha! I think that last sentence was the tipping point to convince me to vote Walker. That’s kind of how I felt about Schilling, in a reverse way, just wanted to stop talking about him.
I needed that, dont mean to gloat, but just got back from the most wonderful vacation. Now let me relax my collar and unbutton the top button and attack this, “The 57′ Ballot”. Once again I will not vote for any hold overs or the two questionable add-ons (Shane Mac and Orlando Hernadez) I won’t even ask why these two are on this ballot? well I guess I just did, didn’t I? The first two are pretty obvious. Whitaker and Steib, the other strangely enough has not received even one vote up till now. This man has received more respect from the baseball writers then from the baseball bloggers/fans. The past 11 years on the hall ballot he has averaged more then 40 percent of the vote and is arguably the best closer not named Rivera or Hoffman. It would seem at the time of my post Larry Walker will win this round with just above 40 percent of the ballot, Ironic, wouldn’t you say. My ballot this round is Whitaker, Steib and Lee Smith.
Long way to go before anyone wraps this up.
I can see Atlanta homers coming out of the hills and pushing Glavine over.
…And people who like 300 game winners.
At the time of my post there are 67 votes, and probably another 5 to 10 votes to go before this ballots conclusion. Glavine would need a huge boost from the Atlanta Bloc to tie or win this ballot. There are no definitive winners on the 56′ ballot(Molitor, E. Murray, D. Murphy) but there is another Atlanta Stud that shows up on the 56′ ballot that could surprise everyone. The Murph is a fan favorite and many fans were disappointed that he was not selected to the Hall in his final year of eligibility. Maybe if Glavine is given a story and debate ala Larry Walker’s “Responsible Park Factoring” Glavine and Murph could slip into the COG together.
Trammell, Whitaker, Glavine
Middle infielders all: Larkin, Trammell, Alomar
Making a slight change to my vote:
My vote was: Biggio, Raines, Alomar
Please change to: Biggio, GWYNN, Alomar
If an OF is going in I’d rather it be Gwynn than Walker.
birtelcom,
Could you please change my ballot from Glavine, Walker, Whitaker to Glavine, Walker, Lofton?
Kenny needs a little push to stay in.
Thanks,
GM
I’d like to change my vote to
Exicardo Cayones and
Kramer Sneed
As the Angels like to say, all’s well that ends Wells.
Brian Cashman has been heard recently muttering the same thing.
Walker, Larkin, Trammell
I’d change my vote from Stieb to Glavine if he had a shot of passing Walker…
Walker, Raines, Trammell
Vote change: My vote is now for Larry Walker, Kenny Lofton, and Dave Stieb.
I ALMOST voted for Edgar Martínez, and I will vote for him in the next Redemption Round if he doesn’t make it through (and I don’t think he will).
It’s also a shame that I have to drop my vote for Barry Larkin, but I give Walker a slight edge over Larkin anyway, so I guess I’d rather see Walker win this round than Larkin.
this ballot is tight. All the holdovers are clear HOFers but borderline COGers, and they are pretty tightly packed.
the new entrants only contain two guys worth consideration, one who fits right in with the pack in waiting, and one that deserves some recognition but really falls clearly short of the COG line. I think Steib is borderline at best for the HOF, and clearly doesn’t belong in COG.
So I vote Whitaker to keep him on the ballot. Also, I think you can make a fairly easy case that he’s a top 3 candidate.
I wanted to not vote Glavine because we’ve got more than our fair share of pitchers so far, and he’s such a slam dunk HOF candidate despite being not clearly better than some guys who’ve been unceremoniously dumped from the BBWAA ballot.
That said, I think he might be the top player in waiting. In sorting through the pack, I might put sandberg and Larking just the *tiniest* smidge ahead of Larry Walker, but they get their due, and LW deserves somebody to recognize him. Plus I’m sick and tired of seeing innumerate know nothing who are just sure his numbers can’t mean shit because he played in coors. Once he’s in, that debate will be over, and it looks like he’s got a real shot.
So that’s my ballot:
Glavine, Walker, Whitaker.
There have been good arguments made on all sides and from different perspectives in the Walker-related discussions. All votes are welcome, but the language of insult should be avoided. It adds nothing to the discussion to aim merely pejorative language at commenters you disagree with. If you disagree, make a counter-argument.
Well you’ve got to give him credit.
“Innumerate” is just about the highest form of insult he could deliver.
It’s like the Euclidian inverse of “RBI Guy.”
Walker is getting a leg up this round in part because of the large number of middle infielders splitting up votes between them.
I don’t understand peoples’ infatuation with Tony Gwynn and Tim Raines, and their dismissal of Kenny Lofton.
Kenny Lofton: Career WAR – 64.9 – 17 yrs – avg/yr – 3.8 – per 162 – 5.0
Tim Raines – Career WAR – 66.2 – 23 yrs – avg/yr – 2.9 – per 162 – 4.7
Tony Gwynn – Career WAR – 65.3 – 20 yrs – avg/yr – 3.3 – per 162 – 4.7
Dave Steib is getting some love this round, as he should, but Kevin Brown is probably going to fall off the ballot…again.
And Edgar Martinez is also headed off the island. Why? Because he was a DH? So was Frank Thomas. How are people going to vote when Paul Molitor comes on the ballot.
So, for whatever it’s worth, I’m voting for Lofton, Brown, and Martinez.
Good point about Martinez/Thomas.
Frank Thomas had the advantage of being on the first ballot.
He wasn’t up against 15 worthy candidates when he was elected.
Their numbers really are comparable.
But in the greater context of how they are perceived, Thomas thumped the ball right out of the gate, and for the first 7.5 years of his career he was in the conversation of ‘most dangerous/best hitter’.
Martinez slowly evolved, wasnt a regular until age 27, and never had the peak that Hurt had.
Some changes to WAR!!!:
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/unifying-replacement-level/
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/war-changes-and-updates/
Some of these are specific to Fangraphs’ WAR, other apply to both Fangraphs and BR. Haven’t seen any announcements on BR yet so not sure they’ve rolled out the changes.
Interesting… if I’m reading right, this means that Fangraphs (who upped their replacement levels) will see long-career players lose WAR generally, whereas B-R (who lowered their replacement levels) will see long-career players improve their WAR generally, and of course vice-versa.
With regards to this exercise, I’m glad this comes in the middle of the CoG discussion and am interested to see how it impacts the way people think about these players – it’ll be nice to keep us on our toes a bit instead of drifting towards looking at the top 112 WAR players to see if they belong or not. Not that we’re necessarily doing that, but as time goes on I find there’s a tendency to take some things for granted.
Interested to see what will happen on B-R.
Bells – Based on the comments on the fangraphs article, I believe your first paragraphs is correct. There’s also mention of making the WAR split 57/43 between position players and pitchers. BR currently uses 59/41 so assuming that’s also part of BR’s changes, that will mean more WAR for pitchers and less for position players.
In one of the comments, Dave Cameron said he expected BR to roll out their changes later today.
I’m still not understanding the love Walker is getting here. More importantly, over guys who were actually voted into the HOF in either their first or second years on the ballot(Gwynn, Larkin, Alomar).
Larry Walkers voting totals: Edgar Martinez voting totals:
Year: rank overall Year: rank overall
2010: not on ballot 2010: 7th, 195 votes(36.2%)
2011: 10th, 118 votes(20.3%) 2011: 8th, 191 votes(32.9%)
2012: 9th, 131 votes(22.9%) 2012: 7th, 209 votes(36.5%)
2013: 12th, 123 votes(21.6%) 2013: 10th, 204 votes(35.9%)
Now if Walker was such a badA**, why isn’t he gettting the 32-36% vote totals that Martinez is getting? Wasn’t he a DH which is a negative factor in HOF voting? Wasn’t Walker a superior base stealer and fielder than Martinez? If all of that is true…why is Edgar killing him in vote totals every year?
“I’m still not understanding the love Walker is getting here.”
Why not, Jeff? The reasons have been stated many times, many ways. You disagree, obviously, and I completely respect your opinion. But you should be able to understand the other side.
As to Larry Walker vs. Edgar Martinez in the HOF voting, that’s a false dichotomy, and an appeal to authority. (Excuse me for referencing my old debate terms.) I don’t owe the HOF voters any obeisance in forming my opinion, and I don’t have to choose between Walker and Edgar.
While I’m still not quite convinced that we have Walker’s value pegged with perfect precision pretty much the whole purpose for the Circle of Greats containing 112 players and our voting is to see how HHS readers differ in their views from the BBWAA as to who belongs in the Hall of Fame.
Jeff: I suspect that at least two things are in play in the relative lack of support for Walker in the Hall voting.
One is that, as Bill James and others have pointed out over the years, guys who are very good at a bunch of different things (like a Tim Raines, a Buddy Bell, a Dwight Evans) rather than super-extremely good at one thing, tend to be underrated by the writers in votes for stuff like MVP and HOF. All-around guys are simply less noticeable (or were until the invention of uberstats such as Win Shares and WAR, which help the reputation of those all-around guys among those who, like many here at HHS, follow such uberstats) and thus garner fewer votes among the writers whose main day job it is to focus on the popularly noticeable. Larry Walker’s high WAR number is the result of a very strong all-around profile — very good eye, very good power, very valuable defense, very valuable on the base paths for a corner outfielder. It all adds up, but not in as noticeable a way as an Edgar Martinez, who was a better hitter than Walker but not much of a contributor in other ways.
The second reason for Walker’s more favorable reception here than in the HOF voting is the same reason you are skeptical: the Coors factor (and the related “PEDS era” factor). Bill James among others emphasized the importance of adjusting for home parks, and historical era, in his work 30 years ago and it has certainly sunk in. Fans and writers certainly get that one has to look very skeptically at Walker’s raw hitting stats given that he played for years in perhaps the most extreme high run-scoring environment in baseball history (Coors, late 90s, early 2000s). But it’s also important to account for the fact that 30+ years after Bill James early writings we have developed a whole tool shed of ways to adjust for that kind of effect, and the best up-to-date stats try carefully to take into account the effect of environment on the value of a player’s contributions to his team’s ability to win. Are such adjustments perfect? Are they the final answer to every question? Of course not. But they are finer-grained tools than just throwing out a player’s hitting value because it was achieved in a high-run-scoring environment. Chuck Klein was probably overrated for a long time because fans and writers were not properly adjusting his raw stats to reflect his high run-scoring environment. But fans and writers can be guilty of the same mistake — overcompensating for the environment — if they don’t take advantage of the best available measurement tools. HHS readers and commenters and voters are always on the lookout for those best tools, in a way that the HOF writers aren’t always.
Take your park factors and adjusted bric-a-brac and do whatever you want with them. When playing at Coors Field, Larry Walker hit 40% of his career home runs in 31% of his career at-bats (if you adjusted his AB/HR rate not including Coors and applied it for his Coors at-bats, he’d have FIFTY-ONE fewer homers, and 332 is not nearly as attractive number as 383). In the thin air, his batting average was .068 higher, and his OPS was .207 higher.
It’s also a lot easier to get counting stats when you have teammates to get on base before you come to the plate and get you home after you come to the plate- in his MVP season of 1997, Walker hit 49 homers with 130 RBIs and a .366 average, and while these are unquestionably great numbers regardless of where you play, Andres Galarraga had 41/140/.318, Vinny Castilla had 40/114/.304, Dante Bichette had 26/118/.308, and Ellis Burks had 32/82/.290 in just 119 games. (This was also Todd Helton’s rookie season, so he wasn’t even a factor yet.) By comparison, when Chipper Jones- who I use as a comparison because he was also a power-hitter who never had PED charges hurled at him, and because I’m a Braves fan- won MVP in 1999, he had four teammates with 20+ homers but none with more than 26, only one teammate eclipse 85 RBIs (Brian Jordan, who actually led the team), and no everyday teammate hit .300 or better.
I’m not saying he wasn’t a great player- he absolutely was, and I have nothing against him nor the Rockies franchise- but without playing in Coors, and without a bunch of teammates who could hit almost as well as he could, we would not be having this conversation about Larry Walker, plain and simple.
But Mike, I think you are preaching to the converted with respect to Walker’s raw hitting stats. I think most COG voters are similarly skeptical of his raw hitting totals. His COG support seems largely arising from the conclusion that he was a very fine hitter (though not nearly as great as his raw stats would imply) while also being a very valuable player defensively and on the basepaths, producing a combination that is, to many voters, COG-worthy. Continuing to argue that his raw hitting stats give a misleading sense of his actual hitting value, a matter about which almost every COG voter would agree, is sort of beside the point of the debate, I think.
Mike HBC: “In the thin air, [Walker’s] batting average was .068 higher, and his OPS was .207 higher.”
Mike, this is true. But there’s been a MLB team in Denver for 20 years, and it will probably continue for as long as the league exists.
So this situation is not going away. All Rockies hitters — whether good or bad, great or Bichette — are going to have inflated raw stats from playing in Denver.
Unless you want to ban them all from the Hall of Fame, presumptively, then you really do have to figure out how to adjust for Coors. Better break out the bric-a-brac.
It’s ultimately pointless to note that Walker’s BA was .068 higher in Colorado. What if Babe Ruth or Ty Cobb had spent their careers in an extreme hitter’s park? Surely you concede that Cobb would have hit at least .068 higher in Coors than elsewhere.
In 50+ games as a visitor to Coors, Jeff Kent and Mike Piazza both had OPS over 1.100, much better than their overall rates. If they’d played their careers there, would we write them off as HOF candidates?
As for comparing the teammates of Walker & Chipper in their MVP years — It seems to me that big RBI numbers by Galarraga, Bichette & Castilla would tend to lower Walker’s RBI total, while the lack of same for Chipper would tend to increase his RBI.
Also, in that MVP year, Walker’s road OPS was 1.176, *better* than his home mark. The lineup overall was weak on the road, but Walker still thrived. Meanwhile, Chipper in ’99 hit *much* better at home — BA .365/.275, OPS 1.199/.955. Walker on the road had 29 HRs and 62 RBI, while Chipper had 20 and 51 (including 2 and 7 in 6 games in Coors). So I don’t think their MVP years help your argument at all.
Lastly, it is simply not true that Walker had “a bunch of teammates who could hit almost as well as he could.” Such a careless statement must be challenged:
– Walker is the franchise’s runaway career leader in BA, SLG and OPS. Even compared to Helton, Walker’s career BA and OPS with Colorado were better by .014 and .080, respectively.
– Or just take the 3 years 1995-97, when Galarraga, Castilla, Bichette and Burks were all there and productive. Walker’s OPS bested Burks by .082, Galarraga by .125, Bichette by .143 and Castilla by .150. That’s not “almost as good” by my definition.
– In his MVP year, Walker led the team’s #2 man (Galarraga) by .048 in BA, .063 in OBP and .098 in OPS. That’s not close.
Walker qualified for the batting title 7 times while with the Rockies. In 4 of those years, he hit .350 or higher. All other Rockies combined have just 3 such years (2 by Helton, 1 by Galarraga). He also had 5 of their top 10 OPS seasons.
I have no hope of changing your view of Walker. But I hope others will look more closely at some of these hard facts before reaching their conclusions.
You know what, John? I’ve greatly enjoyed your blogging over the years. I think you’re a smart guy.
This comment has made me lose absolutely all respect I ever had for you. I said a few weeks ago that I was done participating in this goofy exercise except for just saying three names, and I broke that vow so I could write a reasoned post. It might not be YOUR reasoning, and it might not be the best possible reasoning, but it’s valid reasoning nonetheless. Meanwhile, your comment is so childish- saying that my argument is “pointless” and “careless” and noting that people should look at “hard facts” as if looking at his AB/HR rate wasn’t also a hard fact- that, while you have no hope of changing my view on Walker, you certainly changed my view on you.
I’m back to being done with this process, aside from coming here, typing out three names, and leaving. I’m sorry we all can’t devote our lives to studying every single minutiae of baseball, but your elitist comment shows me that some people don’t consider others’ opinions valid unless they’ve done just that. Thank god there are other writers on this site who have the same level of intelligence without the same standoffish attitudes.
As a post-script, after you probably spent a half-hour or so trying to knock me down, you voted for guys simply because they were on your favorite team, without even attempting to rationalize it otherwise (and there are absolutely cases to be made for those players, but you didn’t feel the need to bother). So whose reasoning is flawed here?
Mike @248 — I’m sorry that I’ve hurt your feelings, Mike. I was impolite to call you careless, and I regret that. I should have just stuck with the facts as I saw them. I hope you’ll come back.
I thought that your opening was provocative, indicating that you wouldn’t mind engaging in a bit of a dust-up. I guess I misread that, so I’m sorry.
I didn’t set out to knock you down, personally. I set out to knock down your argument.
Since you’ve read some of my blog stuff, Mike, you know that I value facts and accuracy above all. Every time someone corrects me on a post, I thank them, even if I don’t think the point is essential. For sure, I’m ego-involved in my arguments, and I do sometimes feel hurt by criticism, but ultimately I want to put the truth ahead of my ego.
As for my COG votes for personal favorites, two things:
1. I’ve laid out my arguments for Whitaker and Trammell so many times that I didn’t think another go-round was needed. Here’s a post about Whitaker:
http://www.highheatstats.com/2012/11/the-most-consistently-good-player-ever-part-1/
It also doesn’t seem like a controversial position that needs defending. Both Whitaker and Trammell are way high up on any career list of whatever you want to measure at their positions.
2. I’ve never knocked anyone for voting his heart in these ballots. But if someone offers an actual argument for why a player should or should not be honored, I feel that’s fair game for response.
I have no problem with your disagreement, your thought process, your statistical methods, nor engaging in a discussion (nor even being called wrong- seeing as I’m human, I’m wrong all the time, and I’m quite possibly wrong about Larry Walker). Your tone was what offended me, not your argument.
One point Bill James made in the HBA is that most baseball people adjust for park factors only in the most dramatic cases, and in oversimplified ways.
Because Coors is the most extreme case, perhaps ever, it can’t be ignored. But you hear far less about the extreme parks of Texas, Arizona or Cincinnati.
In the last 20 years, among players with 2,000+ PAs, the leaders in home/away OPS disparity include Nelson Cruz and Ian Kinsler of the Rangers (nos. 3-4), Justin Upton of the D-backs (#5), and Jay Bruce & Drew Stubbs of the Reds (nos. 7 and 11).
So Walker gets the scrutiny, while others mostly skate by. Furthermore, he gets lumped in with this core group of early Rockies, the rest of whom were clearly not great players, but had some big numbers to the naked eye — and even though Walker’s *park-adjusted* numbers were better than theirs, he gets branded the same as them: “phony.”
I think there’s some intellectual laziness involved in this pattern, honestly.
Well, if you’re going to bring up Bill James, it’s time to bring up his opinion on Larry Walker and the Hall of Fame.
He said quite clearly on MLB Network about a month ago that he’d, “…be in no hurry to elect..[Walker]..to the Hall of Fame..” because of his crazy splits at Coors/away from Coors.
And that’s pretty much a direct quote. Sound familiar?
There’s also this quote from one of his abstracts, which I’m going to re-post here:
“Ballparks create gigantic illusions in player statistics.”
My argument (and it’s getting harder to tell who’s arguing what anymore) has been that the illusion here is so strong that it’s really impossible to tell who Larry Walker really was as a player. Or we could just look at his career when he wasn’t a player with Colorado, and doing that really supports the idea that he wasn’t quite as great as his overall numbers suggest.
When your OPS split at one ballpark/everywhere else is 141/59, come on. Of course we need to talk about that.
JA, if Ian Kinsler stays in Texas for most of his career and puts together a borderline Hall of Fame case, of course we’re going to bring up his home/road splits. Shouldn’t we?
If we simply sweep it under the rug and take the park-adjusted numbers at face value without discussing the matter, isn’t that also intellectual laziness?
bstar, I agree with almost everything you said.
I’m up for discussing the details of park adjustments. My position is that Sean & Co. at B-Ref have earned a presumption of general accuracy. So an argument against their validity will have to be well reasoned, citing chapter and verse. I have no patience for shallow and fallacious arguments (not yours), like how Walker had all these teammates whose numbers were almost as good as his.
It really does seem to me that there’s a camp who essentially dismiss ALL hitters based in Coors, but they won’t come right out and say it.
To reiterate my own position: I’m in no rush to appoint Walker to the Hall, either. My mind is open to the case against him. As Lawrence in particular has noted, Walker’s lack of durability is a strong point against him.
But getting back to park factors … What do you think about the 170 OPS+ credited to Josh Hamilton for 2010, his MVP year? On the road, he hit .327 but with just 10 HRs, 43 RBI. His home OPS was almost 0.300 higher. I mean, it never occurred to me to question that OPS+, but now that we’re opening that can o’ worms, it seems pretty fishy.
Now, about that “141/59” split you cited for Walker:
I assume that was tOPS+. First of all, I don’t think you can infer the “59” from the “141”, since both ends are meant to be measured against the overall figure, and his Colorado PAs were less than 1/3 of his total. If the Coors part was 141, the “rest” would be more than 59, because of the proportions. (If I’m wrong about this, I hope someone will set me straight.)
Secondly, I think tOPS+ is useless for this sort of extreme-case analysis. Consider this hypothetical player:
— At home, he hits a home run every time up.
— On the road, he hits exactly like Babe Ruth did overall.
When you calculate that guy’s tOPS+, the road figure will be puny — but ONLY because he was so incredible at home. The actual road performance was spectacular in its own right.
Now, I’m not claiming that Walker’s road performance was spectacular. But it’s still true that everyone who spends a good part of their career in Colorado is going to wind up with a lopsided tOPS+ split, even if their road hitting was well above the league.
One last thing about Walker: Just for a moment, throw out Coors Field, throw out his home/road splits. Here’s his OPS for the *other 5 parks* where he had at least 300 PAs (in order of most PAs):
– Stade Olympique, .890
– Busch, .926
– Qualcomm, .927
– Wrigley, 1.002
– Dodger, .808
Just a small piece of evidence, but since we’re trying to look under the hood of B-R’s park adjustments, I thought it might be useful.
Bstar – Bill James also said that Todd Helton is clearly a Hall of Famer. Which kind of begs the question as to what criteria Mr. James is using to determine who is and who isn’t a HOFer.
Personally I’ve reached the point of ignoring almost everything Bill says anymore. Reading his blog the past year, I’ve lost a lot of respect for him. He definitely deserves credit for all of his groundbreaking work. But what I’ve seen on his blog is him repeatedly dismissing other people even whey they bring facts, numbers, analysis, etc and Bill offers nothing in return. Other than his own clearly biased opinion. Bill his become, in my opinion, the type of person he fought against early in his career.
Sorry…didn’t mean to turn this into an anti-Bill James rant…
Ed @254 — I’m not trying to start something, this is an honest question: Do you have a beef with BJ’s opinion of Helton? Or are you just drawing a contrast between his views of Walker and Helton?
A quick check shows Helton’s 61.7 WAR as:
– just above the median of the 17 HOF first basemen, and
– 13th all-time among 1Bs, including those not yet elected.
On WAR/PA, he ranks 16th among all 1Bs with 6000 PAs.
And FWIW, Adam’s Hall of Stats has him well above the line.
The contrast John. I fail to see how someone could say that Todd Helton is clearly a HOFer while also being indifferent to Larry Walker’s HOF case. And just to be clear, these statements were made about a week apart from one another.
But as I said, that seems to be par for the course for Bill these days. I’ve seen him respond to someone’s fact based, logical argument with a statement like “that’s just stupid”.
Being a Red Sock employee is probably an impediment to sustained inspired thinking.
JA @237
Richard C said the same thing to me about tOPS+, but I will disagree with you both.
By definition, a pair of tOPS+ splits will always add up to 200 (or 199 or 201 due to rounding).
If you want to say that Walker’s Coors/everywhere else split is less persuasive of an argument than an overall home/road 50/50 split, I’d agree with you.
But this in no way completely invalidates the glaring disparity of his numbers at Coors as opposed to elsewhere. You can’t just whisk these numbers away because the split isn’t exactly 50/50 for PA’s.
As you say, Walker’s PA’s in Coors comprise about a third of his career total. So I think that looking at a split that is (one-third of PAs/two-thirds of PAs) DOES still have a lot of meaning left to it. It’s not like I’m using a split with 20 PA in one park and then comparing it to the rest of his work or anything like that.
The numbers still stand:
Walker at Coors (2501 PA): 1.172
Walker elsewhere (5529 PA): .771 (during the steroid era? .771 for a power-hitting RF’er?)
Which number is more informative, the one compiled in one ballpark that comprises a third of his career, or one compiled in 37 other ballparks, comprising two-thirds of his career?
Bstar @259 “By definition, a pair of tOPS+ splits will always add up to 200 (or 199 or 201 due to rounding).”
I’m no expert on the topic but that doesn’t appear to be true. Taking a look at some other Walker splits, he had a 106 tOPS against RHP and 88 against LHP. In wins, it was 132, whereas in losses it was 65. Or an extreme example…as a starter it was 101, as a sub 49.
If you add up the PAs in non-Coors ballparks where Walker had a tOPS below 59, it’s fewer than 1,000 PAs. On the other hand in non-Coors ballparks where he had a tOPS above 59, he had more than 4,000 PAs.
BTW, there’s no way that .771 OPS for Walker outside of Coors is correct. In parks where Walker had an OPS below .771 he only had 739 PA. In non-Coors parks where he had an OPS above .771, he had 4,790 PAs.
Walker’s tOPS outside of Coors is 82, not 59.
The formula is 100*((split OBP/total OBP) + (split SLG/total SLG) – 1).
Walker had an overall OPS of .400 and SLG of .565. Outside of Coors those numbers were .372 and .501. Just plug in the numbers and out pops 82.
You’ve got me, Ed. Actually JA and RC got me too. .771 is wrong. Let me try and compute by hand what his actual “everywhere else” numbers are.
Walker not at Coors:
OBP = .372
SLG = .501
OPS = .873
So the actual split is 1.172 Coors/.873 elsewhere. I’m a little confused about how to relate this to tOPS+ terms. Can you do that, Ed?
But that’s still a 300-pt decrease for over two-thirds of his career. Again, I think the second number is a better indicator of his true ability (let’s remember this “elsewhere” number includes his home games in Montreal also).
Oh, I see. I wasn’t aware they were computing OBP and SLG separately and adding them together and then subtracting 1.
I thought tOPS+ was just as the definition implies on the player page: “OPS for split relative to overall OPS”. They should change that, I think.
Well you just plug the numbers into the equation.
100*((.372/.400 + .501/.565)-1)
which reduces to
100*(.93+.89-1)
which reduces to
100*.82
#227/JA –
People used to say the same thing about Ted Williams and Fenway Park, especially in the late 40s, when the RS scored
tons of runs, but couldn’t quite win the the pennant. They said “sure, Williams is a great hitter, but how much of his great stats are due to playing half his games in Fenway?”
I think that there’s a point where you make all the park adjustments you can, and if a batter still has the numbers, you have to acknowlege their greatness. To me, Walker and to a lesser degree Yodd Helton are still great players even after the air is taken out of their numbers, unlike Castilla, Bichette,and Galaragga.
A major difference between those three and Walker and Helton, is that Walker and Helton were willing to take a walk.
I’ve stated this here before, but I’d hold Walker’s lack of durability against him, as much as his numbers being inflated by Coors.
That’s what I’m doing, also. I’m mentally docking him 5 WAR for the “I just don’t know how good this guy really was” thing and another 5 WAR for lack of durability/relatively unimpressive career totals/retiring with gas left in the tank. So he goes from ahead of the pack of guys in the Circle of Greats process to just behind the pack.
That’s it.
Whitaker, Trammell, Gwynn.
The discussion on Walker prompted by Adam ten days ago threw new and positive light on him, but, from my perspective, not enough to raise him over the bar these players establish, without more definitive analysis.
That said, if you add Whitaker to the holdover list, what strikes me is the rough comparability in value I see among a lot of this group of players. Most of them are what I’d think of as very solid but not super HoF players (even though some will almost certainly not ever be in the Hall). The differences among may of them seem to pertain to issues of position, park, and the individual quirks of career paths, rather than to demonstrations of sustained excellence at HoF level (but not at inner-circle level). There are about a dozen of these guys whom I’d feel comfortable voting for, and I’d guess that for each one of them a well-crafted argument would persuade me to cast my vote for that one, until the next argument came along. I think Walker may be benefitting here from the fact that he was the most recent focus of a well-crafted HHS argument. If so, though, no damage done – he was clearly outstanding.
Lofton, Steib, Martinez
That may be enough to keep Stieb and Lofton on the ballot; Edgar’s still at high risk. Kevin Brown is going down, as Dr. Seuss might say.
Whit and Tram + Gar = Whittramgar
And the plot thickens…
I briefly considered switching my vote from Sandberg to Martinez (since Sandberg was a lock at that point for a 1 year extension and had no shot at 2) before the deadline but after watching the dance of the deck chairs on the Titanic that went on when someone did that for Walker I thought the better of it. Now it comes down to how many votes are still out there and will any go Martinez way? I’m betting the answer is yes.
No matter what it was a really amazing race this time. Only 1 vote away at the moment from being tied for the closest race we’ve had but instead of 2 or 3 guys in contention there were 6. Add 233 comments to this point and I’d say you’ve got a pretty successful little project going here birtelcom.
Edgar Martinez, Kevin Brown, and Kirk Gibson
Tony Pena was arguably one of the top 5 defensive catchers of all time.
Kevin Brown was arguably one of the top 25 pitchers of all time.
John Smoltz led the league in wins twice, K’s twice, AND saves once, not to mention the great postseason resume.
Oops, guess I should clarify that this is my vote.
Pena, Brown, Smoltz
Apparently a little difference of opinion or controversy is not a bad thing.
Not only are we hearing from some new voices but we have a shot at reaching 80 ballots cast for only the 3rd time (Bonds & Mussina/Schilling were the first 2). KBrown is suddenly back in contention needing to be on only 2 of the next 3 ballots. But also equally possible is that a 4th ballot could knock 4 guys out of the next election.
I’m finding it all pretty exciting anyways.
Gwynn
Glavine
Smoltz
Walker, Brown, Alomar
Well, voting’s almost over, I guess my waiting and reading the comments kind of puts me in a meaningless voting position always, but really, I learn so much from this site that it’s fine with me. My votes:
Walker – looks like he’s getting in, and I’m happy. The talk has been illuminating in recent weeks, but for me it comes down to the fact that despite his home/road splits, it’s how he compares to other players that’s important to me more than how he compares to himself. And I think he’s better.
Glavine – possibly stronger than Walker as a candidate in my mind. Or maybe I just really, really like guys that started their athletic careers playing ice hockey.
Any other hockey players on the ballot? Well, I guess I’ll just vote for Smoltz then.
Hmm, I guess this puts at at 80 votes with 4 guys at 8 each. What’s it gonna be, next potential voter? Who do you want to save? Or is your best option to wait and hope no one else votes either? I guess there is a bit of meaning to voting at the end.
Larry Walker was definitely a hockey player, so at least you’re consistent here. 🙂 Smoltz, being from Michigan, may have slapped the puck around a little too.
But let’s talk more about Walker’s case, because I don’t think enough has been said yet.I know this isn’t the HOF voting, I understand that. I also get that we are all totally different than the guys who get to vote and probably have completely conflicting ideals about the voting process and it’s inherent results. With that said, I can’t change people’s minds and I’m not trying to, all I’m doing is putting the raw numbers out there.
Larry Walker will get in the COG while averaging around 20-23% of the real HOF voting whereas Four current HOF members will not at this time(Gwynn, Larkin, Alomar or Sandberg). With Glavine, Smoltz and Biggio all waiting their eventual turns to get in I can’t stress how disappointed I am in electing Walker into the COG.
I admire everyone’s passion for this beloved sport and it’s players we love to watch, and even the friendly banter that comes with it. I just can’t stop shaking my head at this election. I look forward to the COG ’56 voting.
I know this isn’t the HOF voting, I understand that. I also get that we are all totally different than the guys who get to vote and probably have completely conflicting ideals about the voting process and it’s inherent results. With that said, I can’t change people’s minds and I’m not trying to, all I’m doing is putting the raw numbers out there.
Larry Walker will get in the COG while averaging around 20-23% of the real HOF voting whereas four current HOF members will not be elected into the COG at this time(Gwynn, Larkin, Alomar or Sandberg). With Glavine, Smoltz and Biggio all waiting their eventual turns to get in I can’t stress how disappointed I am in electing Walker into the COG(not by my vote).
I admire everyone’s passion for this beloved sport and it’s players we love to watch, and even the friendly banter that comes with it. I just can’t stop shaking my head at this election. I look forward to the COG ’56 voting.
Don’t worry Jeff, the whole thing has been an elaborate April Fools joke. Come Monday, birtelcom will reveal that he is in fact Larry Walker and set up the entire Circle of Greats just so he could get elected. 🙂
Jeff, just wanted to say that this post is much appreciated. I certainly haven’t debated directly with you, but I’ve read every thread here for the last few months and you’ve come across as possibly the most blunt Walker detractor in this discussion. To see you say ‘oh well, let’s get on to the next vote’ is classy, and in the spirit of this place of feisty debate but respectful dialogue.
Well, I waited a “year” so I could cast this vote the only way it was ever meant to be, ever since September 9, 1977:
Lou Whitaker
Alan Trammell
and … because the rules require a 3rd …
Barry Larkin
I was waiting for your Whitaker-Trammell vote! I knew you wouldn’t disappoint.
I think I’m after the deadline — time zones confuse me — but in case I’m not:
Gwynn
Trammell
Raines