This post is for voting and discussion in the 44th round of balloting for the Circle of Greats (COG). This round begins to add those players born in 1934. Rules and lists are after the jump.
Players born in 1934 will be brought on to the COG eligible list over two rounds, split in half based on last names — the top half of the born-in-1934 group by alphabetical order this round and the bottom half next round. This round’s new group joins the holdovers from previous rounds to comprise the full set of players eligible to receive your votes in this round of balloting.
As usual, the new group of 1934-born players, in order to join the eligible list, must have played at least 10 seasons in the major leagues or generated at least 20 Wins Above Replacement (“WAR”, as calculated by baseball-reference.com, and for this purpose meaning 20 total WAR for everyday players and 20 pitching WAR for pitchers).
Each submitted 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 added future rounds of ballot eligibility (unless they appear on 75% or more of the ballots, in which case they win six added eligibility rounds). Players who appear on 25% or more of the ballots cast, but less than 50%, earn two added future rounds of ballot 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 EST Thursday, January 30, while changes to previously cast ballots are allowed until 11:00 PM EST, Tuesday, January 28.
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: COG 1934 Round 1 Vote Tally. I’ll be updating the spreadsheet periodically with the latest votes. Initially, there is a row in the spreadsheet 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-1934 group will be added to the spreadsheet as votes are cast for them.
Choose your three players from the lists below of eligible players. The 15 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 1934 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. In total there were 26 players born in 1934 who met the “10 seasons played or 20 WAR” minimum requirement. Thirteen of those are being added to the eligible list this round (alphabetically from Hank Aaron to Al Kaline). The thirteen players further down in the alphabet will be added next round.
Holdovers:
Lou Whitaker (eligibility guaranteed for 10 rounds)
John Smoltz (eligibility guaranteed for 6 rounds)
Bob Gibson (eligibility guaranteed for 4 rounds)
Craig Biggio (eligibility guaranteed for 2 rounds)
Bobby Grich (eligibility guaranteed for 2 rounds)
Harmon Killebrew (eligibility guaranteed for 2 rounds)
Sandy Koufax (eligibility guaranteed for 2 rounds)
Juan Marichal (eligibility guaranteed for 2 rounds)
Edgar Martinez (eligibility guaranteed for 2 rounds)
Willie McCovey (eligibility guaranteed for 2 rounds)
Ron Santo (eligibility guaranteed for 2 rounds)
Dick Allen (eligibility guaranteed for this round only)
Kenny Lofton (eligibility guaranteed for this round only)
Eddie Murray (eligibility guaranteed for this round only)
Ryne Sandberg (eligibility guaranteed for this round only)
Everyday Players (born in 1934, ten or more seasons played in the major leagues or at least 20 WAR):
Hank Aaron
Al Kaline
Luis Aparicio
Roberto Clemente
Norm Cash
Bob Allison
Gene Freese
Jackie Brandt
Chuck Hinton
Joey Amalfitano
Billy Consolo
Pitchers (born in 1934, ten or more seasons played in the major leagues or at least 20 WAR):
Turk Farrell
Steve Hamilton
Aaron, Clemente, Sandberg
Interesting how Clemente had a relatively late peak, which coincided with the heart of the 2nd deadball era.
Somewhere in a thread way back, JA found that Clemente was about the only guy besides Barry Bonds to double his batting runs late in his career (from a rate perspective). Cherry-picking the age:
Clemente age 20-31: 15.3 Rbat/650 PA
Clemente age 31-on: 42.3 Rbat/650 PA
For Bonds age 34 was his fountain of youth (or his Cream & Clear):
Bonds age 21-33: 44.6 Rbat/650 PA
Bonds age 34-on: 82.3 Rbat/650 PA
Clemente also is one of those really rare players to amass more fielding runs in the second half of his career than the first (according to Total Zone numbers, at least). Mark Belanger and Brooks Robinson pulled the trick also.
Voting early. Voting straight.
Hammer
Hoot
Bob Clem
Well, this is probably the biggest ballot there is. 3 top-notch candidates and a couple of other good ones as newbies, besides the already-historically-great holdover list. Either the house of cards that is the million-way tie for whateverith place collapses, or they’re good to go forever. I know, there’s more to come in 1931. But this is crunch time. I’ve vowed to vote only for the 3 ‘best’ candidates in the 30s, but I might consider switching my vote to voomo’s ‘break ties to thin the ballot’ strategy.
Anyway, I rank players on cumulative rankings of 3 measures: WAR, WAA+, and JAWS. A ranking of 3 means a player is ranked #1 on the ballot in all 3 categories, a ranking of 60 means a player is ranked #20 (yes, there are 20 candidates to consider) on all 3 measures. Lesson in this round – Hank Aaron was an insanely awesome ballplayer. More WAA+ than anyone else had WAR. If he had stopped at 712 HRs or something, he might be the most underrated all-time great ever.
Okay, rankings (ranks in WAR, WAA+, JAWS in parentheses):
Aaron 3 (1 1 1)
Clemente 7 (2 2 3)
Kaline 10 (3 3 4)
Gibson 10 (4 4 2)
Grich 17 (6 5 6)
Santo 18 (7 6 5)
Whitaker 21 (5 7 9)
Martinez 27 (9 8 9)
Smoltz 30 (8 9 13)
Lofton 32 (11 10 11)
Sandberg 32 (12 12 8)
McCovey 37 (14 11 12)
Murray 39 (10 15 14)
Biggio 41 (13 13 15)
Allen 47 (17 14 16)
Killebrew 49 (16 16 17)
Koufax 55 (19 18 18)
Aparicio 57 (18 20 19)
Cash 59 (20 19 20)
Well, top 2 are clear, but Kaline and Gibson are tied for 3rd (can’t believe one of them isn’t making the vote). Kaline has a clear advantage in 2 of the measures, whereas Gibson has the clear advantage in 1. So, advantage Kaline. But taking into account intangibles, it’s too close to call, postseason performance being primary among them. Gibson has a totally insane 8 CGs in 9 post-season appearances, with otherworldly WHIP and ERA in 1967 and 68. Such a legendary resume has to tie it up. Kaline did have a .379/.400/.655 slash line in the 1968 series, though.
Let’s make the tiebreaker the ’68 series, shall we? Kaline went 3/12 (.250) in 3 games vs. Gibby with 2 doubles, but 5 SO and no BB. Gibby did pretty well, and also went 1/8 in the series, but with a 2-run HR. On the strength of pitching alone, though, I’ll give it to Bob.
Aaron
Clemente
Gibson
Turk Farrell’s 1962
is one of 14 seasons
with at least 20 losses
and a 7+ WAR.
His 10-20 record is by far the worst.
I’ve started to notice that whenever a pitcher has a ton of losses but a really high WAR, it’s usually because his defense was terrible. Sure enough, Farrell’s Houston were awful in that department.
Ever since bstar introduced me to the idea of a defense-adjusted ERA+ (back in JA’s most recent Whitaker/Trammell post) I’ve been toying around with it a bit. Applying it to Farrell, who played in front of poor defences his whole career, we see his career ERA+ go from 104 to 115.
Actually, 1) Farrell had been used strictly in relief prior to that year; 2 ) In 1962 he started 29 games and had decisions in 25, going 8-17. In fifteen of those decisions his teammates provided him with 2 runs or fewer and he lost all fifteen. So I’d say it wasn’t just poor fielding that kept his record down. The team finished last in runs scored, 25 behind the pathetic 40-120 Mets, but finished eighth out of ten, ahead of the Cubs and Mets, mainly on the basis of pitching.
I actually remember him being interviewed in some publication where he pointed out that a pitcher has to be very good to lose so many games, otherwise he would be dropped from the rotation or even the team.
And in fact, Farrell was by far the best pitcher on the team, so he went from relief to a starting role very early in the season.
Good points nsb, I shouldn’t have implied it was solely his defense.
On the flip side, there have been four seasons where a pitcher won 20 games, with a WAR under 1.
Worst is Ray Cladwell, 20-10 for the 1920 Indians
0.4 WAR, and lasted 1/3 of an inning in his WS start.
Notable – Christy Mathewson.
His 24-13 record in 1914 came with an 88 era+
and a barely-replacement level 0.7 WAR
For position players, only 8 WAR season with a BA under .250:
Barry Bonds, 1989
…with 37 Rfield
Lowest WAR, while batting .350+
2.2
Tony Gwynn, 1996
and that is with a positive (3) Rfield !
Lowest WAR with at least 50/40/30 HRs:
3.6, Prince Fielder, 2007 (-15 Rfield)
0.4, Adam Dunn, 2006 (-18 Rfield)
-2.3, Dante Bichette, 1999 (-34 Rfield)
That same year (1989), Ozzie Smith put up the only 7-WAR season with an OPS+ under 100 (97 OPS+, 7.3 WAR, -2 Rbat but 32 Rfield).
The 5th worst pitching season of all-time.
Dave Tomlin, 1978
-3.1 WAR
9 wins
1 loss
Ohhh, I’ve resisted all these years going anywhere near the b/r play index.
Here’s one more.
Only pitcher with 5 WAR in under 100 innings:
Papelbon
And he did it in 68.1
Grrreat find about Papelbon, Voomo. Highest WAR per inning, 50+ IP:
Jonathan Pap, BOS 2006 – .073
John Hiller, DET 1973 – .065
Terry Fox, DET 1962 – .062
Jose Mesa, CLE 1995 – .061
Mo Rivera, NYY 2008 – .061
Bruce Sutter, CHI 1977 – .061
mosc made a great comment in last week’s COG thread about how it *might* be easier to accumulate pitcher WAR in a hitter’s park (regarding Koufax vs. Pedro). All six of these guys had seasons where their PPFp (weighted average of park factors) was over 100.
Made my day BSTAR!
Yeah, I think it’s an issue of weighting to the average, especially with higher than average strikeout guys. A strikeout is rather ballpark agnostic.
It’s also a common statistical problem with outliers in general. They’re off the mean so far that they skew results and their own results are hard to put in context. I certainly agree with giving some context for the raw numbers but I think in recent years baseball fans tend to overdo it. Sometimes it works well, sometimes it doesn’t. My biggest worry is that the statistics that are manufactured become self-validating.
Harmon Killebrew, Sandy Koufax, Hank Aaron
Aaron, Clemente, Kaline
Hank Aaron
Roberto Clemente
Al Kaline
Aaron, Lofton, Santo
Birtlecom, were you adding the 75% rule this round? I didn’t see it in the rule breakdown.
Good point — I’ll fix it.
As I mentioned in the 1935 thread, we’ve never had a 2nd place finisher receive 75% of the vote, and from the early returns it looks like we may not this round, either – there are so many overwhelmingly qualified candidates that they’ll probably split the votes.
By the way, the rules currently have “more than 75% of the ballots” as the criterion for gaining 6 rounds of eligibility – “75% or more” would be consistent with the other cutoffs.
I’ve fixed the 75% reference — good catch, D.H..
Now that we have 25% = 2 rounds, 50% = 4 rounds, 75% = 6 rounds, we could go whole hog and have 37.5% = 3 rounds and 62.5% = 5 rounds. But that might be a bit of overkill….
Aaron, Clemente, Kaline.
This is my first ballot not voting for Biggio. I’ll likely do it as a vote change later but it seems an insult to NOT vote for one of these guys. I feel ridiculous enough not voting for Gibson.
Ugh. I meant to change my vote to get another for Biggio. Looks like it won’t matter anyway.
This 1934 ballot is easy, it could not be anyone other than than these three all-time greats;
Hank Aaron
Al Kaline
Roberto Clemente
Aaron, Kaline, Whitaker
Aaron, Gibson, Marichal
Hank Aaron, Roberto Clemente, Al Kaline.
This is my 29th ballot, and the first one that doesn’t have Sweet Lou on it, and it may be quite a while before he returns.
Aaron
Koufax
Clemente
and of course I think Gibson and Kaline belong…
Aaron, Kaline and Gibson
Aaron, Koufax, McCovey
Hank Aaron, Roberto Clemente, Sandy Koufax
Most Wins Above Average, excluding negative seasons:
Aaron 95.4
Clemente 59.3
Kaline 58.6
Gibson 50.0
Grich 43.6
Santo 43.3
Whitaker 42.7
Martinez 41.3
Smoltz 40.1
Lofton 39.3
McCovey 38.9
Sandberg 38.8
Biggio 36.3
Allen 35.9
Murray 34.9
Killebrew 33.0
Marichal 32.7
Koufax 32.3
Aparicio 24.4
Allison 17.2
I never thought the first time I didn’t vote for a pitcher (since the initial round, I think) would come with Gibson and Koufax on the ballot.
Aaron. Clemente. Kaline.
Norm Cash was worth 26.7 positive WAA, by the way.
Cash holds a dubious record. After his.361 title BA in 1961 his average dropped to .243 in 1962. That .118 decline is the largest for a batting champ’s ensuing season.
Richard, was Chipper Jones second on that list? He dropped a hundred points after hitting .364 in 2008.
Second is George Sisler at .115. After batting .420 in 1922 he missed the 1923 season due to his eye and sinus problems. When he returned in 1924 he batted .305. Third is Julio Franco who dropped .107 and Chipper Jones is fourth with that .100 drop.
He didn’t win a batting title, but Scott Brosius dropped 101 points and then rose 97 in 3 successive seasons (1996-98). The roller-coaster continued with a 53 point drop (1998-99) followed closely by a 57 point rise (2000-01).
Rico Carty from ’66 – ’75 (he missed all of ’68 and ’71):
.326
.255, -71
.342, +87
.366, +24 (led league)
.277, -89
.229, -48
.363, +134 (only 98 AB)
.308, -55
George Scot went from .303 in 1967 to .171 in 1968 (but with 387 PA, it’s hard to qualify with a BA that low.)
Andres Galaragga went from .243 in ’92 (only 347 PAs) to .370 in ’93 in the Rockies’ first year.
Something in the back of my mind tells me maybe we covered this and Galaragga’s 127 point difference is the largest, but who knows.
Harry Walker went from .237 in 1946 (385 PA) to .363 in 1947, a .126 difference.
Hank Aaron, Roberto Clemente, Al Kaline
This is almost absurd. There are 4 players on this ballot who would have won if they had been on the ballot for at least half of the elections we’ve had so far.
I has been my approach to vote for whoever I feel is the best player on the ballot plus 2 others that I am absolutely convinced belong in the COG but who may not be the 2nd or 3rd best players on the ballot.
Al Kaline is my second favorite player of all time. He’s maybe not the best player on this ballot but he certainly doesn’t deserve to be hanging on the bubble until this backlog clears up either. Hammerin’ Henry, Roberto and Gibby will have to do without my support this time around.
It’s unlikely that Aparicio will garner much support on this ballot and he’s a real stretch for the COG but he was highly regarded back in the day.
Norm Cash was a better player than many, including myself, used to give him credit for. But he never reached the stratospheric levels of ’61 again and playing in the second deadball era and missing 10 to 20 games a year made his Triple Crown slash line appear far less impressive than it actually was.
I’m pretty sure that every 10th card that Topps printed in 1963 was Joey Amalfitano. At one point in time I must have had a dozen of ’em or more.
Kaline, Santo, Sandberg
Poor Hammerin’ Hank was polling at 100% before your vote, Hartvig! I doubt he’ll get elected now…
If you’ll excuse the diversion… Joey Amalfitano played for the Houston Colt .45’s, and whilst looking at the Colt .45’s roster I noticed George Brunet’s name, who appeared on the last ballot.
This gets me to my point: Brunet is one of only two players to play for both the Colt .45’s and the Seattle Pilots, the other being backup catcher Merritt Ranew. Ranew only played five seasons in the majors, three of them with Brunet (they also played together for the ’65 Angels).
RJ:
Brunet was 20th in ERA (and ERA+) among pitchers with 800 innings for the period 1965-1968 after spending little time prior to age 29 compiling ML innings.
He pitched in Mexico for many years, well into his 40’s, and I believe he may have managed there, too. He finished there, as well, as he died at age 56 in Mexico 🙁
Almafitano turned 80 years old yesterday. On the 1963 Giants he was one of three guys who played on that club who had also played for the Giants when they were still based in New York: Willie Mays, Amalfitano and pitcher Jim Constable. Amalfitano at 80 still works for the Giants: http://sanfrancisco.giants.mlb.com/team/coach_staff_bio.jsp?c_id=sf&coachorstaffid=110213.
Amalfitano had only played for the Giants in New York because he was one of those bonus babies we were discussing in the last COG thread who were required to be on MLB rosters as youngsters because of the size of their initial contracts.
Allen
McCovey
Sandberg
I’ll hope Hartvig is converted & changes his vote to make Hank Aaron unanimous:
Hank Aaron
Sandy Koufax
Bob Gibson
(Apologies to Clemente, Kaline & Marichal who also belong)
When Hank got done Tweeting his support for Richard Sherman he sent me one saying that he was OK with it.
I’m not voting yet. waiting to see what develops for strategic reasons.
But I’m seriously considering voting straight this time, since there are 4 candidates clearly above the rest and 3 of them are new and needing to build up support.
Henry Aaron probably doesn’t need my help, but it feels just wrong to have him go in with something less than 95%, given how stratospheric his value was compared to the other options here (even the 3 other really obvious COG selections.
How crazy is it that we have 4 players on this ballot who are head and shoulders above about half the current COG roster and all of the other holdovers, but we can only vote for three of them? One of these guys could be on the bubble next round, or even drop off, even if everyone voted straight.
________________________
Also crazy that the holdover ballot is larger than the year-ballot.
Aaron, Grich, Biggio
Winner: Aaron
Needs more eligibility rounds: Gibson
Bubble Boy: Lofton
Aaron, Clemente, Marichal
Apropos of nothing, I notice that you can compose a pretty fair starting lineup out of the holdovers with 1 or 2 rounds of eligibility:
C: Biggio
1B: McCovey
2B: Sandberg
SS: Grich
3B: Santo
LF: Allen
CF: Lofton
RF: Killebrew
DH: Martinez
SP: Marichal, Koufax
A little weak defensively in places, and a rather right-hand heavy batting order, but I guess I could live with those flaws.
You could probably pick up an all-glove/no-hit backup infielder and backup outfielder cheap to save on payroll. Probably even at catcher. The outfielder could double as a pinch runner. Then maybe a lefty with an OK stick who can’t play the field to be your pinch hitter. Even if you had to sign these guys as free agents you could probably get by without spending much.
Which you’re probably going to have to do because in todays market that starting 9 and 2 aces are likely to run you north of $250 million, at least if they’re anywhere near their peaks.
Forgot to mention – Eddie Murray is the main pinch hitter!
As for the price tag at current rates – hopefully some of these guys are in their early/cost-controlled years, e.g. Biggio played catcher his first few years, so let’s pretend he’s in that phase of his career.
Aaron, Gibson, Koufax.
If I were not limited to exactly three candidates, who would get one of my votes….
Lou Whitaker (10) — Trammell needs a roommate
John Smoltz (6)
Bob Gibson (4) — He could’ve beaten McLain in game 7, but the Tigers threw Lolich
Craig Biggio (2) — RH doubles, leaning into pitches, C/2b/of
Bobby Grich (2) — 2b led AL in HR
Harmon Killebrew (2) — helped the Twins to their first pennant in over 30 years
Sandy Koufax (2) — another good Dodger pitcher
Juan Marichal (2) — better than Drysdale head-to-head
Edgar Martinez (2)
Willie McCovey (2)
Ron Santo (2)
Dick Allen — don’t call him Richie
Kenny Lofton
Eddie Murray — switch-hitter, most HR by a switch-hitter not named Mantle
Ryne Sandberg — rookie 3b, slugging 2b
Hank Aaron — HR, AB, RBI, second only to David Aardsma alphabetically
Al Kaline — so powerful, they named a kind of battery after him
Luis Aparicio — Venezuelan shortstop, cursed the White Sox when traded to Baltimore (It’ll be another 40 years before you win the pennant again [he was right]); Rudy Law was wearing #11 when they retired it for Little Looie
Roberto Clemente — finished his career with exactly 3000 Hits
Norm Cash — .361/.487/.662, 41 HR (2nd on team, 6th in league) with a corked bat in 1961; last Tiger to win batting title until Ordoñez in 2007
Bob Allison
Gene Freese
Jackie Brandt
Chuck Hinton
Joey Amalfitano
Billy Consolo
Turk Farrell
Steve Hamilton
I’ll come back later to vote.
And here is my vote:
[X] B.Gibson
[X] H.Aaron
[X] L.Aparicio
and somewhat surprisingly for me,
[ ] C.Biggio
[ ] E.Murray
[ ] R.Clemente
[ ] R.Sandberg
Aaron, Clemente, Kaline
Did Kaline ever do a battery commercial?
Aaron, Koufax, Kaline
Gibson, Koufax, Aaron
Aaron Clemente Kaline. In 1954. the Detroit free press ran a contest for kids to give a nickname to the Tigers new phenom. The kid who won got a new bike for “bee- line”. I submitted the same name and never heard from the paper. A valuable early lesson in the fairness of life . The big winner, of course was Kaline , who never had to wear the silly moniker.
Aaron, Gibson, Clemente
Aaron, Clemente, Lofton
Aaron, Clemente, Koufax.
Hank Aaron, Bob Gibson, Juan Marichal
If I was doing the best 3 it’d be some combo of Aaron, Gibson, Clemente, and Kaline. However I feel Marichal absolutely belongs and don’t want him dropping off the ballot, and I feel Smoltz does too, so giving Gibson more votes and reducing the overload of pitching talent will help Smoltz longterm.
Aaron
Clemente
Kaline
Hank Aaron, Roberto Clemente, Bob Gibson
Roberto Clemente, Hank Aaron, Juan Marichal.
I just — what?
Aaron
Clemente
SANTO DAMMIT
Aaron
Gibson
Clemente
I think next week might be my last vote in CoG. I’m sick of seeing people with their “strategic votes” to keep the tenth-best player in the running when they could instead weigh in on an actual debate. Aaron will almost certainly win this week, but I don’t think there’s a clear favorite in a ballot with Gibson, Koufax, Clemente, and Kaline. Yet will that stop self-important commenters from either ignoring all of them, or voting the one they like the most and then two bubble boys? Not at all.
Aaron
Gibson
Kaline
Unfortunately, the rules are designed to encourage strategic voting. If we could vote for more players, or there were more redemption rounds, I’d probably vote straight most of the time, and I’m guessing so would a lot of other people. But in order to keep the ballot filled with the best holdover candidates for the low years ahead, strategic voting is necessary. It will be ludicrous if some of this years top contenders were to drop off for that reason, but plenty of people vote straight or close so it’s very unlikely.
Also, there’s really no debate about Aaron this round. The interesting debate at the top will come next round, when Gibson, Clemente and Kaline are all on the ballot, and all very clear COGers with fairly similar WAR totals. Yet there can be only ONE!
That’s why I’m probably done after next week as opposed to this week- I can understand people throwing their votes at lesser candidates because they assume Aaron will win this round running away. While I disagree with people who do that, I definitely don’t blame them. It’s the next round, when there will be “Martinez, Sandberg, Allen” ballots, that will probably give me my fill of this exercise.
Also, note that having all those great players at the top has encouraged a lot more straight voting this time. Only two players outside the top 4 have gotten 10% of the vote so far: Koufax and Marichal.
If there were any evidence that the process is disabling the best candidates from being inducted or disabling a very solid group from remaining on the ballot (arguably, the best possible group, with a small handful of inevitably controversial exceptions), I might agree with you. But the process so far shows that we can successfully accomodate several different priorities at once — both regarding the top of the ballot and and lower down. The idea is to create interesting choices for voters with each ballot. I recommend chilling out about how other people handle their ballots, unless and until you see actual failures by the process as a whole to induct the players that belong — that’s when we would have to start to worry.
I’ve been voting ‘straight’ lately too, but I think that there are multiple ‘debates’ (I mean, usually people write 3 names, so it’s not much debate) that can be had about players, and those are valuable too. I’d love to see the ballot trimmed a bit (if nothing else, it makes the discussion on the redemption rounds more interesting), but I don’t understand what it is that you see as being ruined by people voting for strategic reasons.
Also, as someone who has voted strategically in the past, I feel a bit defensive… just wondering what you mean by ‘self-important’? It’s not like this is the Hall of Fame and we’re announcing publicly that we’re refusing to vote for the best players, or refusing to vote for anyone – to me that is self-important. Keeping Eddie Murray in a tie for 9th place in a process that’s designed for fun just seems, well, like a bit of fun to me.
I don’t have a problem with strategic voting because the results have almost always selected the best (or arguably the best) player on the ballot, and I think there is an extended and useful debate when there’s a close call. We have also has some very good discussions about specific players (like Koufax) peak vs. sustained value, the accuracy of things like defense metrics, the value of WAR, steroids impact on stats, etc. Net net, I learn things from others and sometimes rethink some of my long-held assumptions (nothing, however, will ever make me like Curt Schilling.)
To be frank, at the beginning of the COG process I was apprehensive about the role strategic voting would play. In theory I still am sort of. But I have to balance that theoretical apprehension against the fact that apart from a few liminal candidates, most every player thus far who has been elected pretty clearly belongs. At the liminal level, I have some issues with the elections Ozzie Smith, Alan Trammell, and Tim Raines. But it’s not like I find their elections completely untenable. Going further, I have deeper issues with Barry Larkin’s election. And the only player I’m completely confidant does not belong is Larry Walker. But all in all, two flubs (in my opinion, needles to say), is not that bad of a clip to be hitting at.
Going forward, I’m less concerned with strategic voting as such than two other components of the voting process:
1)I’ve discussed this before, but I think the fact that we are going backward in time has enabled certain players to make it in who otherwise might not have (e.g. some of the players I noted above). There was just less competition for the players born in the first years of our voting process than there is now. Does anyone think Larry Walker would have been elected with the holdover list we have now? Bear in mind that the answer of course wouldn’t have been necessarily to start with 1880, say, since we would have ended up electing inferior candidates from baseball’s early years.
2)There is going to be the tendency to get increasingly less objective as we move backwards in time, particularly with guys who played their careers during the deadball period. All of our perennial hold-overs are probably going to get elected if we go back far enough in time.
Has anyone raised the possibility a maximum amount of years one can be on the holdover list? I think that would be a valid change to the rules — I mean, if you haven’t been elected, but have been held over for 40 years, doesn’t that reveal something about whether or not you truly belong? No offense to Sandberg or Whitaker fans, but if one of them gets elected to the COG in the 1883 year of voting or something, I’m going to be inclined to see that as one weak affirmation of their worthiness to be in the COG.
Last point (sorry for the long post): How far are we going back? Has that been established? If we were to do COG just for players from the liveball era, I don’t think the holdover issue would pose any problem; but my impression is that the process is meant to include players who go back as far as Cy Young (1867); if that’s the case, there are going to be a lot of (relatively speaking) subpar players elected. Which is the very thing we wanted to avoid in the first place by initiating this process.
Well, the year Larry Walker was elected we had:
Glavine, Gwynn, Larkin, Smoltz, Raines, Biggio, Alomar, Sandberg, Trammell, Lofton, Edgar, and Kevin Brown as holdovers, and Lou Whitaker joined the ballot.
Looking at the holdovers now: OK, he’s not beating Bob Gibson, but if being better than Bob Gibson is the standard we need to use then we need to kick out a bunch of people. And he’s not beating Aaron, Clemente, and Kaline who have just joined the ballot. But this is a really weird round, and 1931 will likely be the only weirder round.
The players currently on the ballot as holdovers who did not go head-to-head with Walker in at least one round (other than Bob Gibson): Murray, Allen, McCovey, Marichal, Koufax, Killebrew, Santo, and Grich.
Personally, I’d have Walker ahead of all the position players except maybe Santo, even Willie McCovey. And if you had asked me prior to this process if that was so my answer would have been “Larry Walker ahead of Willie McCovey – are you nuts?” But when I looked at the Coors Field stuff, and then got past my own biases of these 1950s and 1960s players as SO MUCH BETTER than players today, it became clear to me that I had underrated some current players.
I’d put Walker in ahead of Koufax even though Koufax had a brilliant 4 year stretch. I’m not sure about Marichal and Walker.
I don’t see the harm in having players stay on as long as they are able – sometimes people look at new evidence and change their minds. Previously I thought what Lou Whitaker did was fairly pedestrian, but now I’m convinced (after looking at some things spurred on by JA’s mini-series) that he’s a lot better than I gave him credit for, and had a ridiculously unique consistency level. I had been voting for Alomar over Whitaker, but once we finish sorting out the 1931 birth year I’ll very likely start voting for Whitaker (even if Alomar comes back on the ballot).
paget, in your last point you have asked how far back we expect to go. Well, our goal at the moment is to induct 115 players. If we continue to do double-rounds every third year, as we’ve been doing, and keep that going until the 1900 birth year, that will get us to 89 inductees to that point. If we then drop the double-round years and just do one round per year for the 19th century birth years, we should have a full complement of 115 by the early 1870s voting. I expect we will include a few multiple-birth-year rounds near the very end so that Cy Young will be eligible. If it looks like the talent coming in from the early 20th century or 19th century rounds seems to be inferior to players who have dropped off the ballot, we will either increase the number of redemption rounds or the number of players returned to the ballot in each redemption round (or both), to make sure that the inductees are not merely an artifact of the procedure but are in fact the guys the voters would choose as the greatest.
As to your concern about thinner talent at the beginning of the process producing inductees who would not otherwise have been chosen: It may be difficult to separate out your own personal preferences from a judgment about whether inductions reflected a process issue rather than a conscious choice by the voters as a whole that these are among the greatest 115 players to play in the tie frame we are considering. As Artie Z points out, the guys you suggest are not induction-worthy were in fact selected in direct voting competition with guys you do consider induction-worthy. That sounds more like a disagreement between you and the other voters (and every one of us is going to have that kind of disagreement at some point) than an issue with the procedure.
Adam D.’s Hall of Stats ranks Larry Walker 66th among all players in MLB history, based on Walker’s Wins Above Replacement and Wins Above Average numbers. That’s completely independent of the fact that Walker’s birth year was near the beginning of our voting cycle. You may not agree with that kind of ranking but many of the voters here apparently did.
Yes! We get to argue about Larry Walker some more!
By Total Zone Runs:
As good a Right Fielder as Hank Aaron
By Power/Speed:
As good a double threat as Ken Griffey Jr.
By WPA:
As clutch as Reggie Jackson
By OPS:
As valuable as… Todd Helton
All fair points, birtelcom. And, also, thanks for the clarifications about the system as you’ve set it up.
I probably should have left out my comments about Walker; in the end they seem to distract from my larger points about the process of COG voting in general (which, I repeat, has proven really effective and resilient to potential problems thus far). I do maintain that there would be a benefit to having some kind limit on how long you can stay on the ballot without being elected; my hunch is that holdovers closer to us in history are going to have a lot easier of a time competing against players from true baseball antiquity who are nothing but total abstractions to all of us. But I could be very wrong about this; we will see if it pans out that way!
I was starting to get aggravated with the strategic voting, too.
And to that end, last month I employed it myself, to try and avoid an 8-way tie for 9th place.
And what did we get?
An 8-way tie for 9th place.
Which tells me that this process is actually successful.
This has been a collectivist effort for over a year, and the group mind is doing what it does… better than Murray Chass and the rest of the Addams Family on the BBWAA are doing.
Here’s the next seven rounds of winners:
Aaron
Clemente
Gibson
Kaline
Mays
Mantle
Mathews
…and there will be plenty of worthy candidates on the ballot left to consider.
The strength of this project is in the conversations that come out of it.
The voting is almost secondary.
I think, although I’m not sure, that after 1932 (where you have Kaline winning) that the ‘M’s will be left out of the 1931 part 1 ballot, which will make that one quite interesting. I’m looking forward to the conversations about the crazy top-level talent we have now, as well as conversations of the ‘leftovers’ after.
Yep, it looks like all three of the M’s will be on the part 2 ballot in 1931.
I see. Ernie Banks!
And it will be interesting to see Boyer vs Santo.
Well, if that match were in Lucha Libre, Santo would totally kick Boyer´s rear end. 🙂
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0763803/
Booyaka! Booyaka!
The object of this exercise- as birtelcom pointed out @ 94- is to figure out who we think are the 115 best players in the history of the game and see if we can do a better job of it than the BBWAA.
It’s not to figure out who the 3 best players are on any one particular ballot. It’s not to “honor” someone by naming them on 100% of the ballots. It’s not to do a whole bunch of things.
It’s to look at all the people who have played the game over the past 125 years or so and see if we can come to a consensus about who those 115 guys are. The format that birtelcom has chosen allows us to evaluate virtually every player who had a major league career of any significance based on the year that they were born.
I think it has worked extremely well.
In some up-coming ballots we are going to be looking at Nellie Fox, Jackie Robinson, Bobby Doerr and Frankie Frisch. People may try to make the case for any or all of them vs. the holdovers that are still on the ballot- and the good part about that is we will have the option of picking who we feel is best.
There are maybe 30 or 40 players that virtually everyone will agree on. There are about that same number that a strong majority will agree on. And virtually all of those guys will get in fairly quickly. But when you get down to those last 30 or 40 spots there’s going to be a lot more disagreement about who belongs and who doesn’t.
To me the more options we have when making those decisions about who the last 30 or 40 players who belong are the more likely we are to make the right choice.
No one is likely to agree with 100% of the decisions that we make in the end. I guarantee that virtually every one of us will have a few players that we feel should be on the list and aren’t and some that we feel that are undeserving but are. That’s just the nature of the beast. If I had to guess that is probably going to lead to a lot more discussion when this is all over. Maybe even a few more votes. I can already see the article headlines now: “Who are the 10 most deserving players who didn’t get into the Circle of Greats?”, “Who are the 10 least deserving players in the Circle of Greats?” and “Poll: We vote on the 10 most/least deserving players for the Circle of Greats.”
And to me, that’s where this all gets even more interesting than it already is. How do you compare a center fielder to a pitcher? Or a catcher to other position players? How to you compare someone who played in the early 1900’s to someone who played 100 years later? Do you discount a players performance because of segregation? Do you give someone credit for time lost to military service? How do you adjust for a pitchers record before the mound was moved to 60’6″?
Some of these questions have already been touched on. A lot of others really haven’t. I think when these subjects do come up for discussion we’ll probably hear from a lot of different viewpoints. And when that happens I know that almost always I feel that I have a better understanding or perspective on whatever it was we were talking about. And I’m happy that when that happens I won’t have to say: “Gee, I wish that I had though about or known that earlier when I had to chance to vote for player X”.
Birtelcom designed a system that gives the individual voter a lot of flexibility.
And as far as I’m concerned the voters have so far used that flexibility wisely and the system has worked remarkably well.
In the nine receding years between 1931 and 1921, when Warren Spahn shows up, the only really strong new candidates are Robin Roberts and Yogi Berra. Whitey Ford might make a weak third. A second tier of Nellie Fox, Duke Snider, Hoyt Wilhelm, Larry Doby, Ralph Kiner, Minnie Minoso, And Roy Campanella, all very worthy players, stand no chance, I’d say, while the backlog good players from earlier years gets sorted out. The 1920s group will just join the ranks of Koufax, Marichal, Santo, etc. as victims of poor timing. Roberts and Berra might not even make it over time, whereas Larry Walker has already been admitted to Valhalla.
When asked why he wasn’t in the COG, Berra said, “No one gets in there anymore. It’s too crowded.”
Yogi also said that 90% of the voters are half mental. 🙂
If you (the universal “you”) think Dick Allen is one of the best 115 players in baseball history, you must have grown up a preeeeetty big Dick Allen fan.
Personally, I will not be voting for Dick Allen, but people have made credible arguments for him in the past and I, for one, value their contributions.
Dick Allen amassed 430 batting runs in his 11-consecutive-year prime, 1964-1974.
How good is that? By my count, I can only find 31 other position players since 1901 whose bats were as strong or stronger than Allen’s over an 11-year period.
Sure, that’s cherry-picking. It’s putting extra stock in a consecutive-year period. And Allen did virtually nothing before and after those 11 years. And he was dreadful defensively.
Still, it doesn’t seem a stretch to want to elect Allen on the strength of his bat alone. I’m personally not convinced Dick Allen belongs in the top 115 either, but I’ve voted for him multiple times in an attempt to keep him alive so I can compare him to other players who I think are right on the borderline of the 115.
BTW, here’s a partial list of great players who didn’t accomplish the feat described above (430+ batting runs over an 11-year period):
Schmidt, McCovey, Killebrew, Reggie, Kaline, Yaz, Boggs, Brett, Jr. Griffey, Larry Walker, Winfield, Stargell, Nap Lajoie.
Aaron
Kaline
Aparicio – Because he was too good to be one and done
Aaron, Clemente, Gibson.
The Hammer, Globe Trotter Gibby, Roberto “Cannon” Clemente.
It’s interesting that Clemente has a substantial lead on Kaline at the moment. As exact contemporaries who played the same position, it is pretty easy to compare them head-to-head. It seems to me that Al has meaningfully better hitting stats than Roberto (Clemente’s batting average was higher, but Kaline had a better eye and more power). B-ref’s fielding WAR suggests, what was widely understood during their careers: that these were two of the greatest defensive right fielders in baseball history, but that Clemente was probably even more valuable than Kaline. The WAR numbers don’t show that Clemente’s edge on defense makes up for Kaline’s edge on offense, unless and until you adjust for what I think is b-ref’s assumption that the NL was simply a better league during the era when Clemente and Kaline were playing, and therefore Roberto deserves an edge for having faced tougher competition.
I was just thinking about this myself. I bet that some/many voters are also taking into account Clemente’s untimely demise. If he wasn’t exactly at the height of his powers in 1972, it seems, nevertheless, that he clearly had a lot of productive ball left in him when he died. His last year was, after all a strong one.
I’d take Clemente over Kaline based only on what we have of their respective careers (consider that it took Kaline over 1000 more PAs to arrive at the same amount of WAR). But I’ll definitely take Clemente when I take into account his tragically shortened career.
Yes, I agree that there is probably an element in Clemente’s support derived from the fact not just of his untimely death but of the nature of his death — en route taking relief supplies to earthquake victims (he apparently chose to be on the flight personally in the hope that his presence would avoid the relief being misdirected by corrupt officials).
When I looked at the numbers for Clemente and Kaline, I was careful to compare their respective numbers just for the period 1955-1972, the years of Clemente’s career. I ignored for this purpose the very beginning and the tail end of Kaline’s career. Doing that gives you virtually the same number of PAs. It still looks to me like Kaline would come out ahead in WAR except for the bump Clemente gets for playing in the better league.
Only final seasons with higher WAR than Clemente’s 4.8
5.6 Oscar Felsch
7.6 Joe Jackson
Both for the 1920 Chicago AL team.
Highest final position player season that did not have ‘circumstances’:
4.6 Jackie Robinson
next:
4.3 Roy Cullenbine, whose circumstances were that they didn’t list Walks on the back of the bubble gum card.
While I’m here…
The same deal, for pitchers:
10.3 Koufax
_______________
6.1 Win Mercer
Mercer did that in 1902.
And then…
“After the conclusion of the 1902 season, the Tigers appointed the 28-year-old Mercer to be their player-manager for 1903.
However, on January 12, 1903, after a barnstorming tour through the west, Mercer checked into the Occidental Hotel in San Francisco and killed himself by inhaling illuminating gas at age 28.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Win_Mercer
___________________
5.2 Eddie Cicotte (Black Sock)
5.2 Mike Mussina
4.5 Red Donahue, 1906
4.4 Dutch Ulrich, 1927
Ulrich died 16 months after his final game.
Cant find any info about it relating to his retirement.
4.2 Britt Burns
Only Koufax, Burns, and Moose had 18+ wins in their final season.
Well, Roberto has the most career Rfield of any outfielder overall, except Andruw Jones, so to find him leading for any particular tw-year subset of that wouldn’t be surprising. Most rField age 36-37, by a player who played an outfield position more than any other position during that period:
Clemente 30
Fred Clarke 18
Yaz 16
Bing Miller 15
I was wondering if any of Clemente’s support is not only from the memorable circumstances of his death, but also because he was kind of ground-breaking in terms of being a Latin American baseball idol. I just remember a documentary (probably Ken Burns) where they talked about how he was such an idol and so cool to many young Latin American kids. But of course that’s in retrospect; any sense from folks who were fans when Clemente was playing if this was a notable aspect of his fame at the time?
Kaline age 36-37: .400 OBP/.467 SLG/.867 OPS/146 OPS+
Clemente age 36-37: .364 OBP/.492 SLG/.856 OPS/141 OPS+
Immediately after the end of 1972 (that is, after the seasons above ended), I don’t know that there was any reason to think that one of these guys would be more productive than the other at bat going forward. In retrospect we know that Kaline’s numbers dropped off dramatically after 1972 (that can happen to anybody at that age) and that Clemente died after the ’72 season. But as of the ’72 season itself, I’m not sure how easy it would have been to foresee different levels of hitting success for the two going forward.
There was a 30 difference in their RFIELD those two years which translates into a 2.9 vs 8.8 WAA 71+72 difference. Clemente was incredibly athletic even as an older player. The eye test seems to agree with RFIELD, they were not comparable in value those two years and likely going forward either.
Fair point, mosc. I’d also mention that my family lived in the Pittsburgh area in the latter years of Clemente’s career, and it was kind of a family joke how much of a crush my mother had on Roberto. This was before People magazine, but Clemente would have been her nominee for sexiest man alive, aside from my father — maybe. It was a very sad day in our house when Clemente died.
Ages 38 – 41 from 1946 – 1976 (POST-WAR, INTEGRATION, EXPANSION). I figured I’d take this out to 1976 considering Clemente’s potential age:
dWAR
3.6 Appling
2.5 Brooks R.
2.3 Aparicio
1.6 Wills
1.0 Reese
0.8 Jurges
oWAR
21.2 Williams
16.7 Mays
12.8 Appling
11.3 Aaron
8.5 Musial
4.8 Vernon
4.5 F. Robinson
I imagine there’s the potential for Clemente to produce on offense like Vernon and Frank Robinson, but I doubt he’d turn into any of the other outfielders on the first list. Further still, all the “dWAR” leaders are infielders. On the other hand, he probably still had more to give than Kaline if it wasn’t for Managua, Nicaragua.
Is it fair to say Clemente was the best defensive outfielder aged 36 to 37 in the history of baseball? I mean if not he’s damn close.
I was just looking at that too, paget. One thing I’m struck by is that they both played from ages 20-37, while Kaline book-ended Clemente’s career with 2 seasons before (ages 18 & 19) and two after (ages 38 and 39).
But Kaline, typical of players both good and bad, wasn’t worth that much when he broke in at age 18 and when he faded out in his late thirties. His combined value for those 4 years (ages 18-19 and 38-39) was only 2.0 WAR.
This illustrates a problem with rate stats (WAR per PA on a career level). Clemente did get about the same WAR as Kaline in fewer PAs, but it’s mainly because Kaline broke in earlier and finished later.
Focusing on the years they both were active:
R Clemente age 20-37: 94.3 WAR, 10211 PA, 5.5 WAR per 600 PA
Al Kaline age 20-37: 90.6 WAR, 10054 PA, 5.4 WAR per 600 PA
Couldn’t be much closer. Also, Adam’s Hall of Stats has Kaline at 185 and Clemente at 187.
For those of us who consider peak in COG voting, Clemente has an advantage (depending, of course, on how one defines peak). I usually take all player seasons and line them up from best to worst. In their top 14 seasons, Clemente leads in bWAR in all of them but #2 (-0.1), #9 (tied at 5.4) and #10 (-0.2). That all adds up in those top 14 years to an 8.8-WAR advantage for Clemente. Again, I know there are as many positions on peak-weighting as there are voters in the COG, but that may be part of the case.
For the record, close as they are, I have Bob Gibson and his massive peak sliding in between them to take the #3 spot on my ballot.
I looked at fWAR and Kaline leads Clemente by about 8 career WAR. It appears to me that’s mainly from extra PAs for Kaline and Fangraphs’ decision to not give Clemente extra replacement runs for playing in the tougher league.
*Maybe* that is at least partially offset by fWAR computing league averages in batting runs using entire MLB instead of AL/NL.
Anyway, they’re still really close. Dr. Doom: their Nth best season graph looks eerily identical using fWAR. Here’s their WAR graphs:
http://www.fangraphs.com/graphsw.aspx?players=1006678,1002340
Clemente does have that interesting arc to his 18-season career:
1st six seasons: -5 Rbat
2nd six seasons: 171 Rbat
3rd six seasons: 207 Rbat
Peak is a big part of it for me. I also think Clemente was a better older player than Kaline, or well, nearly anybody else ever born. I think at age 37, he had a bunch of baseball left in him where other guys would not due to that.
I think both of their rfield numbers are unbelievably high, but I agree that Clemente was a little better. Even with a substantial cut in rfield, both guys had incredible production for a very long time.
And I do think Clemente should get a little extra credit for both his role as a pioneer for Latin players in baseball and also for his charitable work.
So peak, still had production left, good guy, RFIELD is overrated (not a factor here for once), and I think Clemente is well ahead of Kaline.
Clemente (career) 2,433 G 10,211 PA 130 OPS+
Kaline (1955-’72) 2,428 G 10,054 PA 140 OPS+
Clemente(1959-’72) 1,911 G 8,108 PA 141 OPS+
Kaline (1955-1968) 1,927 G 8.166 PA 142 OPS+
Coupled with the fact Clemente was not prone to walking, we have an adjusted RC/27 (per AIR on b-ref) for their peaks of 7.2 for Kaline versus 7.05 for Clemente. The difference is larger, obviously, for the larger sample.
While it might be argued that Kaline would be the 3rd best RF if he had played his career in the NL, I believe the same is actually true of Clemente.
Here’s a graph of Clemente vs Kaline – it uses fWAR, which likes Kaline a little better than rWAR does:
http://www.fangraphs.com/graphsw.aspx?players=1002340,1006678
Hank Aaron, Al Kaline, Bobby Grich
Vote Change (having decided that my old methodology was no longer working: Hank Aaron, Roberto Clemente, Bob Gibson
Sandberg
Allen
Santo
Aaron, gibson, killebrew
Aaron, Gibson, Clemente
Hank Aaron, Luis Aparicio, Dick Allen
I, too, think Aparicio is better than one and done. Then again, i was the lone vote for Belanger, so I admit my bias towards defense, especially when dWar and reputation match up.
As for Allen, I said I would keep voting for him until he falls off the ballot – even if I thought that was going to be last round.
and for the top of the ballot, I wanted to vote for Clemente, but in the end I just couldn’t leave Hank Aaron off, knowing I will have another chance to vote for Clemente.
That makes yours a Triple A ballot, though not in the minor league sense.
The alliteration probably would have clinched my Aaron vote earlier, if I had noticed…
Aaron…and because I have to vote for two others, Clemente and Kaline
Anyone who didn’t vote for Hank is either on drugs or just doesn’t like the idea of a unanimous elected player, either way it’s ridiculous not to vote for Aaron. Just my personal opinion here.
@121/JH,
I think that the idea of voting strategically to save COG candidates who are on-the-bubble is pretty well-established by now. So – there’s nothing peculiar, unusual, or wrong in any way about not voting for even overwhelming candidates such as Aaron (as I did not this time).
Paradoxically, though, the system might fall apart if there wasn’t a core group of voters who feel fairly strongly the way Jeff H. does. Strategic voting itself is only possible if it happens in a sort of orbit around the core of voters who don’t vote strategically (or at least not entirely strategically) and may be motivated by a strong view that one shouldn’t vote strategically (or at least not entirely strategically). So perhaps tolerance for a certain amount of intolerance is also called for.
For the 1934-Part One election, I’m voting for:
-Ryne Sandberg
-Hank Aaron
-Roberto Clemente
Other top candidates I considered highly (and/or will consider in future rounds):
-Smoltz
-Biggio
-Martinez
-Whitaker
-Grich
-Lofton
-Santo
-McCovey
-Murray
-Gibson
-Kaline
Aaron, Clemente, Killebrew.
That’s like an all-time dinner table lineup right there, though I’d probably put Smoltz pretty high on that list.
Aaron
Clemente
McCovey
Because of the extraordinary concentration in voting in the top five names, strategic voting is likely to have a disproportionate impact. But, because of the quality of the names, I couldn’t do it. Aaron, Gibson, and Clemente. Regrets to Kaline, one of the great outfielders of my youth.
Better late then never, Aaron clearly wins this round,and does not need my help. So I am going to vote for my all Baltimore team:
Murray
Grich
?Kaline?
I know Little Louie is sitting there but he only played 5 seasons with my O’s and 10 with the pale socks, and he was never a favorite of mine. Ironically his BBref page shows he wearing Orange and Black, go figure, Right?
Kaline was the second best hitter born in Baltimore, second to some guy named Ruth (what kind of girlie name is that?). And according to Rfield, he is the second best defensive outfielder born in Baltimore, just 1 run worth of career Rfield behind the amazing athlete Brian Jordan.
While I agree with you Birt, Kaline is second best behind that girly Ruth girl….Maryland as a whole has some nice names associated with it for such a small state. Double X was born on the eastern shore of Maryland along with another border line hall of famer with very similar counting stats to one Al Kaline, Mr. Harold Baines. Even Reggie Jackson lived (or family lived) in Baltimore around the time of his draft. Then there was this guy from Harford Co. MD who went on to break some game played streak set by the Iron Horse, his name eludes me? and Finally the Evil Empires 1st baseman Mark Teixeira grew up in MD capital city and home of the Naval Academy, Annapolis MD. Tex even went to Mt Saint Joe HS which would be the rival school of Cardinal Gibbons HS (St Mary’s Industrial College) in western Baltimore MD or in other words the same school George Herman Ruth attended when he was a young lad.
I hear that Ruth character was a babe.
Whitaker, Gibson, Hammerin’ Hank.
As of right now, there are a whole lot of guys keeping a round of eligibility. 10% is 6 votes right now, which only 5 people are getting; however, the “top 9” is a long list:
1. Aaron – 50
2. Clemente – 32
3. Gibson – 20
4. Kaline – 17
5. Koufax – 9
6. Sandberg – 5
7. Santo – 4
Marichal -4
9. Lofton – 3
Allen – 3
McCovey – 3
Killebrew – 3
Aparicio – 3
14. Whitaker – 2
Grich – 2
Please change my vote from:
Aaron, Clemente, Sandberg
to:
Martinez, Murray, Sandberg
The “9th place” rule is surely going to come into effect again this round. Will we end up with another massive tie for 9th?
I think there are a bunch of voters *trying* to get that big tie for 9th to happen.
_____________________
Pretty sure we’ll have a 20-person holdover ballot soon.
And is that a bad thing?
Eh.
It is the system.
Systems are made to be worked.
You know why you’re allowed to declare bankruptcy only once over seven years?
Walt Disney.
Figured out the system and went bankrupt seven years in a row.
Interesting that David H.’s revised vote is the first one cast for Edgar so far.
I considered casting an entirely strategic vote right from the start, but even though I’m firmly convinced that strategic voting is an essential part of this process I couldn’t quite bring myself to do – I was posting the first vote, and even though I disagree with those who disdain strategic voting, I didn’t want to rile ’em up too much by putting “Murray, Sandberg, Santo” (or similar) right at the top of the thread.
Not to belabor the issue, but I wanted to make one more point in support of the value of strategic voting.
The lion’s share of our perennial holdovers have needed strategic help from time to time to stay on the ballot; part of me has often said to myself, “Oh come on, enough already, just let them fall off the ballot. They don’t belong in the CoG if they need this kind of fanciful help to stay on.”
But the thing is, just because you aren’t one of the three best players in any given year doesn’t mean that you don’t deserve to be elected at some point.
Consider the following situation: imagine that everyone votes “straight” (only the three best players on the ballot) from years 1935 through 1931. Apart from Whitaker there would basically be no holdover list left as all of our current crop would have have been knocked off by the clearly superior talent stretching from Gibson and Robinson through Mantle/Mays/Matthews. Fine. But where would that leave us in, say, the 1929 election? Whom would you vote for, Elston Howard? What about the 1924 election Gil Hodges? Al Rosen? There are several players on our present holdover list who don’t belong in the COG in my opinion; but, on the other hand, there isn’t a single player on our holdover list who doesn’t have a stronger career than anyone born in, say, 1924, 1929, 1930 (among other upcoming years).
I’d actually make the case that at no point is strategic voting (especially in the form of last minute vote changes) more valid or important than in a year (like this one) where there are three or four players who are in a class by themselves.
birtlecom thought this through from the beginning, paget. In your scenario of everyone voting for the top 3, there would be an across the board tie for 4th-9th place.
There will never be less than 8 holdovers.
And that is very much to birtlecom’s credit that will at least be the case.
On the other hand when we do get to that point I think it would be extremely telling to see who would come out on top between say Whitaker, Sandberg, Grich & Biggio rather than having a couple of them drop off the ballot a few rounds before after having survived over 40 ballots and then getting only 5 votes instead of 6 like their compatriots did.
However it shakes out I think it will be fine because redemption rounds will redeem at least the strongest candidates and I imagine the worst case scenario would be only a slightly less worthy candidate getting in ahead of a slightly more worthy one not currently on the ballot.
And in the end that’s still a significant improvement over the likes of Rabbit Maranville, Catfish Hunter and Jim Rice.
Keeping the hope alive for three on-the-bubble guys:
– Kenny Lofton
– Ryan Sandberg
– Dick Allen
Like last round, submitting a bit late and liable to change my vote within a few minutes of submitting this initial ballot.
Initial vote:
1. Hank Aaron (7.8 WAR/162 during 19-yr peak of 1955-73)
2. Roberto Clemente (7.3 WAR/162 during 15-yr peak of 1958-72)
3. Al Kaline (6.8 WAR/162 during 13-yr peak of 1955-67)
To be honest, if neither Aaron nor Clemente had been in the top 3 by my peak WAR/162 methodology, I probably would have said “screw it, I’m voting for them anyway.” Hank Aaron is, well, Hank Aaron and Roberto Clemente is a personal hero of mine.
That being said, ranking of the others:
4. Bob Gibson (6.9 WAR/162 during 12-yr peak of 1961-72)
5. Ron Santo (7.0 WAR/162 during 10-yr peak of 1963-72)
6. Kenny Lofton (6.7 WAR/162 during 8-yr peak of 1992-99)
7. Sandy Koufax (7.8 WAR/162 during 6-yr peak of 1961-66)
8. Juan Marichal (7.1 WAR/162 during 7-yr peak of 1963-69)
9. Bobby Grich (6.6 WAR/162 during 12-yr peak of 1972-83)
10. Dick Allen (6.6 WAR/162 during 9-yr peak of 1964-72)
11. Ryne Sandberg (6.2 WAR/162 during 9-yr peak of 1984-92)
12. Craig Biggio (5.8 WAR/162 during 9-yr peak of 1991-99)
13. Willie McCovey (6.7 WAR/162 during 8-yr peak of 1963-70)
14. Lou Whitaker (5.5 WAR/162 during 15-yr peak of 1979-93)
15. Harmon Killebrew (5.3 WAR/162 during 12-yr peak of 1959-70)
16. Eddie Murray (5.7 WAR/162 during 9-yr peak of 1978-86)
17. Edgar Martínez (6.4 WAR/162 during 7-yr peak of 1995-2001)
18. Norm Cash (6.0 WAR/162 during 5-yr peak of 1961-65)
19. John Smoltz (5.8 WAR/162 during 5-yr peak of 1995-99)
What a round this is. Now to check the spreadsheet and possibly come back with a vote change…
Oh dear… as it stands now, Allen, Lofton, and Sandberg make it through but Murray is out… so at least for now, I’m dropping Kaline for Murray.
My current ballot: Aaron, Clemente, Murray
for anyone’s reference, here’s the current standing (not yet updated on spreadsheet) of the bubble guys:
Sandberg: 6 votes (6th place, only bubble guy above 10%)
Lofton: 4 votes (t-7th place)
Allen: 4 votes (t-7th place)
Aparicio: 3 votes (t-11th place)
Murray: 3 votes (t-11th place)
I wil check back later and possibly change my vote again if Lofton or Allen is endangered, as I rank them both significantly higher than Murray.
Vote Change!
Dropping the Hammer
___________________
from
Aaron
Clemente
Gibson
to
Lofton
Clemente
Gibson
Aaron, Clemente & Murray
I guess I’m a sucker for numbers, but 3000+ hits and 500+ HR’s makes it tough for me not to vote for Murray, but that will continue to get tested as the ballot keeps getting stronger.
Aaron, Allen, Murray
Lofton, Allen, Murray
That officially raises the bar to 6 votes to not lose eligibility and of the 9 players short of that mark only 2 have as many as 4 votes. We could easily be looking at a dozen players on the bubble going into the next ballot.
Since the strongest new candidates in part 2 of 1934 are going to be Roger Maris or Camilo Pascaul I would guess that we won’t be adding anyone new then and the same goes for 1933 where Rocky Colavito has a 20 WAR lead on whoever is in second. 1932 is even weaker, with only Maury Wills anywhere near 40 WAR. Then we come to the first half of 1931 where we see Ernie Banks, Ken Boyer and Jim Bunning- better than the last 3 rounds certainly but not better than the majority of our holdovers, at least as far as I’m concerned.
Then we come to 1931 Part 2.
Banks I think is comparable to our holdovers. Less WAR than most but a very strong peak. He’d be a very reasonable COG selection. He should get some votes, and I’d put him in before 4-5 people on our current list. Bunning and Boyer are close, but no cigar, and not worth spending votes on, IMO.
Yeah, I don’t think so either and I really didn’t say that clearly enough. I think Banks belongs as well (and that Bunning & Boyer very probably don’t) but I also think that at a minimum maybe 5 or 6 of the guys on the bubble or close to it are probably even more deserving.
From the looks of things it appears that most of them will at least get thru this round but I’m unsure how things will shake out in the next 3 rounds since there are still 3 candidates on the ballot that stand out above the rest (at least to me).
So far the strategic voters this round seem very focused on making sure the bubble candidates don’t drop off.
Not sure how well that’s going to work as if we don’t manufacture a bigger ninth place tie, it looks like we will have 8-12 on the bubble next round. Plus 3 at the top that are very close will draw a lot of straight votes as there is no clear top candidate.
Yeah, this is fascinating; if voting stopped now, next round EVERYONE bar Koufax with 2 rounds would be on the bubble, along with current bubble candidates. Then we’d really have to pick who our favorites were to stay on the ballot. I kind of hope it just ends that way, it would be a big stratification, like there would be a referendum on who was the best of the extremely high-level guys, and then almost a pre-redemption round vote to see who stays on.
Bob Gibson, Dick Allen, Kenny Lofton
Aaron, Grich, Martinez
All right, I want to see Grich and Santo not on the bubble next round, so I’m working to bring them up to 6 votes, currently what will make a tie for 9th. Those two are probably my top picks among the bubble or 2 round eligibility candidates, so I don’t want them dropping off next round if I can help it.
Aaron, Grich, Santo
Looks like with Low T’s vote below that you (and me) got our wish on Santo at least.
Still that leaves 3 guys on the bubble that I am absolutely certain belong (including Grich) and another 6 that I range from somewhat to almost certain about.
Murray, Aaron and Clemente
Aaron is locked in as the winner. Clement is locked in for 4 extra rounds. Gibson is getting 2 extra rounds.
So my next three most deserving picks are Kaline, Marichal, and Santo.
Aaron, Kaline, Murray
_________
Congratulations to Michael Young on a fine long career.
And now, some stat nerd snark:
2003
One of 14 seasons with 200+ hits and an ops+ under 100.
Sharing that distinction with the aptly named Taylor Douthit, whose 87 is (un)surpassed by only Doc Cramer and Juan Pierre.
Pierre is on this list THREE times.
______________
2004
Thanks to hellacious defense, one of only 17 seasons with 200+ hits and a WAR under 2.0.
Those 2004 Rangers up the middle?
Fielding Runs:
-25 Young
-20 Soriano
His 216 hits that year is 2nd most with under 2WAR.
The statistically confusing Dante (Inferno-Glove) Bichette had 219 in a 1.0-WAR season.
2005 Yankees up the middle:
Jeter -27
Cano -22
Bernie -26
Those Yanks teams that took down 4 titles in 5 years put the idea that you need defensive strength up the middle right on its head.
What do the 2005 Yanx have to do with the teams that won from 96-00?
By ought-five they were a collection of aging overvalued free-roiding agents.
Nothing to do with the svelte team-role players of the dynasty years.
True?
Well, let’s look:
1996
-14 Jeter
-3 Duncan
-14 Bernie
1998
+2 Jeter
-4 Knobs
-14 Bernie
1999
-11 Jeter
-15 Knobs
-16 Bernie
2000
-23 Jeter
-10 Knobs
-3 Bernie
Well fuck.
I should have said the 1996-2000 Yanks were similar to that 2005 team in that they didn’t have good defenders up the middle either, so I didn’t word that one too well.