This post is for voting and discussion in the 70th round of balloting for the Circle of Greats (COG). This round adds to the ballot those players born in 1915. Rules and lists are after the jump.
This round’s new group of 1915-born players joins the holdovers from previous rounds to comprise the full set of players eligible to receive your votes this round.
The new group of 1915-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. 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 11:59 PM EDT Friday, September 12, while changes to previously cast ballots are allowed until 11:59 PM EDT Wednesday, September 10.
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 1915 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 candidates; additional player columns from the new born-in-1915 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 eleven 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 1915 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:
Whitey Ford (eligibility guaranteed for 7 rounds)
Kenny Lofton (eligibility guaranteed for 7 rounds)
Craig Biggio (eligibility guaranteed for 3 rounds)
Lou Boudreau (eligibility guaranteed for 2 rounds)
Kevin Brown (eligibility guaranteed for 2 rounds)
Harmon Killebrew (eligibility guaranteed for 2 rounds)
Eddie Murray (eligibility guaranteed for 2 rounds)
Roberto Alomar (eligibility guaranteed for this round only)
Roy Campanella (eligibility guaranteed for this round only)
Dennis Eckersley (eligibility guaranteed for this round only)
Minnie Minoso (eligibility guaranteed for this round only)
Everyday Players (born in 1915, ten or more seasons played in the major leagues or at least 20 WAR):
Walker Cooper
Jeff Heath
Bob Swift
Hal Wagner
George Case
Joe Gordon
Eddie Stanky
Roy Weatherly
Stan Spence
Stan Spence makes it on to the eligible list with just nine years in the majors, based on a career 22.5 Wins Above Replacement. Among center fielders in the 1940s, only the DiMaggios, Joe and Dom, had more WAR.
Pitchers (born in 1915, ten or more seasons played in the major leagues or at least 20 WAR):
Dizzy Trout
Max Lanier
Ken Heintzelman
Kirby Higbe
Sid Hudson
Red Barrett
Buck Ross
Ted Wilks
Whitey Ford, Roberto Alomar, Eddie Murray
(For the early voting lead)
Kevin Brown, Craig Biggio, Whitey Ford
This year’s tidbits.
– Walker Cooper’s nickname of “Walk” was evidently an abbreviation of his name, as walking was something Cooper didn’t do. Among pre-expansion live ball hitters with 5000 PAs and more strikeouts than walks, Cooper’s 309 BBs are the second lowest total, trailing only Pete Suder’s 288 free passes (25 years later, after the free-swinging late 70s and early 80s, Cooper was outside the top 10 on that list).
– Dizzy Trout’s 33 CG in 1944 is the Tigers’ franchise record for the live ball era. Trout and teammate Hal Newhouser each logged 300+ IP and won 25 that season, the only time a live ball era team has had two such pitchers. After 5 years out of baseball, Trout made a quixotic age 42 comeback with the 1957 Orioles, marking a forgettable career finale by pitching to teenage catcher Frank Zupo, more than 24 years Trout’s junior. Which three batteries included a teenager and had an even greater age difference than Trout and Zupo?
– Bob Swift is the only player with a 3000 PA career, including a lone 400 PA season in his first year. Who is the only other player with a 3000 PA career and a lone 400 PA season in his rookie year?
– Max Lanier and Tex Hughson jointly became (in 1946) the first live ball era pitchers with ERA and FIP both under 3.00 in 1000 IP through their age 30 seasons. Only eleven other retired pitchers have since matched that feat. Which three of those eleven, like Lanier and Hughson, are not in the HOF and not on the prospective 2015 HOF ballot?
– Jeff Heath had a .500 career SLG mark and shares with Ted Williams the distinction of being the only players to slug .600 in a final season of 100+ PAs. That final campaign (1949) included a .905 WPA on Aug 27th when Heath belted a 9th inning pinch-hit HR to tie the game, and a two-out solo shot in the 10th for a walk-off win. Who is the only other player with a searchable pinch-hit HR in the 9th inning or later and a following walk-off HR?
– Ken Heintzelman is the only pitcher to start more than half of 150+ games pitched, for both the Pirates and Phillies. Who are the only relievers with 150 pitched games for each of those two teams?
– Sid Hudson led the AL with 17 losses in 1949. Hudson’s other 17 loss season came in 1942 when he earned All-Star recognition on the strength of his stinginess in allowing walks and home runs. Who are the only post-war pitchers who, like Hudson, lost 17 or more with a W-L% under .400, while posting BB/9 under 3.00 and HR/9 under 0.5 in 200+ IP?
– Hal Wagner is the answer to the trivia question “Who did Frankie Hayes replace when he caught every game of the 1944 season?”. Wagner posted a .000/.000/.000 slash with no runs scored in 10+ PA in the 1946 World Series, joining Birdie Tebbetts (1940) as catchers with those totals for a losing World Series team. Who is the only catcher to do the same on a winning World Series team?
– Kirby Higbe allowed 100+ walks on 6 occasions, leading his league in that category 4 times, including once (1941) when he also led the NL in wins (Bob Feller did the same in the AL that season, the only time each league has had such a pitcher). Who are the only pitchers this century with a season leading in both walks and wins?
– Eddie Stanky launched 29 career home runs, a mere 700 and change fewer than Barry Bonds, the only other player with 3 seasons of 125+ hits and at least as many walks. That home run total would be even more modest if not for a late career power surge that saw Stanky go deep 21 times in the space of 772 PA in 1950-51, after only 8 bombs over the first 4000+ PAs of his career.
– Joe Gordon returned from military service in 1946 only to suffer through an injury-plagued season, the worst of his career. On the wrong side of 30, Gordon was cut loose by the Yankees, seldom criticized for sticking too long with a player past his prime. Gordon showed the Bombers and the rest of baseball that he was still a force to be reckoned with, turning in back-to-back campaigns for Cleveland of 7.0 and 6.6 WAR, both marks eclipsing the total WAR for those seasons by Snuffy Stirnweiss, Gordon’s replacement in the Bronx. After Gordon and Stirnweiss combined for four straight seasons (1942-45) of 6.5 WAR, only one Yankee second baseman before Robinson Cano would log even one such campaign. Who is he?
– George Case recorded his sixth season of 20 doubles and more stolen bases in 1946, 19 years after Max Carey became the first to do so in the live ball era. It would be 18 more years before Luis Aparicio became the next to join this club, which today numbers 26 players (it will be 27 unless Jimmy Rollins stops running and starts raking the rest of this season). Who are the only players like Carey to compile 6 such seasons aged 31 or older?
– Red Barrett posted a career best 23-12 record in 1945, the only pitcher with exactly one winning season of 10+ starts to lead his league in wins.
– Ted Wilks led his league in 1944 in W-L% and WHIP, the only time a rookie has done so. Wilks also failed to allow an unearned run that year, the first of only 6 pitchers to do so in a 200+ IP season. Who are the other five?
– Roy Weatherly was the last player to deliver a walk-off hit in his first game as a Yankee, until Chase Headley did the same earlier this season. Weatherly leads all players since 1914 with 31 multi-hit games in the first 50 games of a career. Who are the only players with more 3-hit games than Weatherly in the first 50 games of a career?
– Buck Ross is the only pitcher to start a career with 6 consecutive seasons of 10+ starts and a W-L% below 0.400. Who are the only live ball era pitchers with a career W-L% lower than Ross’s in 150+ starts?
– Stan Spence is the last player to have 5 seasons in CF with 2.5 WAR, 125 OPS+ and fewer than 20 home runs (the four other players to do so since 1908 are in the HOF). Which players since Spence have had 4 such seasons?
Ken Heintzelman question: Kent Tekulve is one of the relievers to pitch 150+ games with both the Phillie and the Pirates.
Kirby Higbe question: Russ Ortiz (2003) and Carlos Zambrano (2006) led the league in wins and walks.
Dizzy Trout question: neither of the catchers were teenagers, but when Jack Quinn pitched to Al Lopez on the ’31-’32 Dodgers the age difference was 25 yrs 1 mo, and when Jamie Moyer pitched to Wilin Rosario on the 2012 Rockies the difference was 26 yrs 3 mos.
Good stuff, David.
I wasn’t thinking of the two batteries you mentioned when I stipulated a teenager. Rather it was to avoid the easy one of Satchel Page and whoever he pitched to in 1965 (it was Billy Bryan, 32 years younger than Satch).
Other non-teenager batteries that best Trout/Zupo are these from 1971:
– Hoyt Wilhelm/Earl Williams (just shy of 26 years)
– Hoyt Wilhelm/Bob Didier (26 yrs, 7 months)
Wilhelm was also just shy of 24 years older than Tom Egan when they played together on the 1969 Angels.
Jack Quinn and Jimmie Foxx came close on 7-19-26. Quinn pitched 8 innings and was removed from the game. Foxx caught the 9th inning. Their age difference was 24 years, 3 months and 21 days.
But those two did hook up on 7-11-27 (both started the game) when Foxx was still shy of his 20th birthday.
So, that’s two of them. One more.
Nolan Ryan pitched to Ivan Rodriguez in 1991. I-Rod was 19 and the age difference was 24 years and 10 months.
Tekluve is the right answer. There is one more.
Does it have to be relief appearances? Grant Jackson pitched 150+ games for both Keystone State teams, but he had 70 starts for the Phillies.
Yes, Jackson is the other one.
I was calling Jackson a reliever as that was his primary role for his career and for his time with the Pirates. But, as a Phillie, he had two years in relief, one as a starter and one as a swingman (mostly as a starter that year until he fell from favor and was first dropped from the rotation, and then shipped to Baltimore).
“Who is the only other player with a searchable pinch-hit HR in the 9th inning or later and a following walk-off HR?”
Are we counting Raúl Ibañez in the 2012 postseason?
Brian McCann did it on 5-17-11. He hit a game-tying HR in the bottom of the 9th and the game-winner in the bottom of the 11th, Braves over Astros.
“Wagner posted a .000/.000/.000 slash with no runs scored in 10+ PA in the 1946 World Series, joining Birdie Tebbetts (1940) as catchers with those totals for a losing World Series team. Who is the only catcher to do the same on a winning World Series team?”
Billy Sullivan! I’ve had his player page bookmarked for ages because of his interesting postseason line, but I’ve never had cause to bring it up before now. I can’t believe it’s finally paid off, hah.
Additional tidbits:
Kirby Higbe hit walk-off HR while playing for the Pirates on 9-11-47 and 8-27-48. That makes him one of two pitchers with more than one such game. Wes Ferrell is the other, he also had two such games.
Jeff Heath is one of 7 players to have 20+ 2B, 3B and HR in the same season. He did it in 1941, 32 2B, 20 3B and 24 HR.
Walker Cooper had 10 RBI on 7-6-49. That is the game record for catchers.
Bob Swift is the first searchable player to have a walk-off HBP after the end of WWII. It occurred on 6-17-52 versus the Yankees. Given the 7 year gap between 1945 and 1952, it seems quite possible that there may have been more such occurrences due to missing data but there also was a 7 year gap from 1979 to 1986 when records are complete.
George Case, while a member of the Indians, engaged in a 100 yard dash against Jesse Owens between games of a Browns-Indians DH on 9-8-46. That race was the brainstorm of Indians owner Bill Veeck. They ran it on the outfield grass wearing baseball uniforms and spikes. Owens completed the race in 9.9 seconds while Case came in at 10.0 seconds. Case was the fastest runner in the ML at the time.
http://www.thenationalpastimemuseum.com/article/big-race-owens-vs-case
Joe Gordon is one of only two second basemen to accumulate 30+homers, 30+ doubles and 10+ triples in a season. He did it in 1940. Rogers Hornsby did it twice.
Sid Hudson is the only 10+ season pitcher to have a winning record with 15+ wins in his first season and never have another winning season.
Eddie Stanky, in 1950, led the NL in HBP and BB. The only other players to do that for either league are Dummy Hoy, 1901, Johnny Mostil, 1925, Elbie Fletcher, 1940, Gene Tenace, 1972, Dan Driessen, 1980 and Jason Giambi, 2003.
Roy Weatherly was the first player to hit two triples in his debut game, 6-27-36. Since then Willie McCovey and John Sipin have done the trick.
Stan Spence is one of 6 players to have 5 singles and 1 HR in a game, 6-1-44.
Emil Verban did not make the list due to only 7 years played. But he did not hit his first ML HR until his 2424th AB from the start of his career. Only Al Bridwell has gone longer, his 3247th AB.
That’s a great story about George Case and Jesse Owens. I’m slightly suspicious of the race time though, given that Owens’ world record at the time was 10.2 seconds!
might have been a running start
But Owens would’ve run a 10.2 hundred METERS; this race was in YARDS. Stands to reason it’d be faster, even without running his hardest.
Oops! Didn’t spot that. Makes more sense now.
well, he probably wouldn’t run a 10.2 100m in baseball spikes on outfield grass in a exposition race. But I’d guess he could manage a 10.8 which would be the equivalent of a 9.9 100y.
Another question could be how accurate was that 100 yard distance.
Stan Spence: Kirby Puckett might not count. If you had said, “20 or fewer,” then he’d be an answer, so I’m using him for “extra credit.”
Not sure if Kiki Cuyler counts, but I’ll venture him as a guess. He definitely meets the batting requirement; not sure if he meets the positional one (depends a bit on what your parameters were to be counted as a CF).
I’ll throw out one that MUST be right: Tris Speaker.
Robin Yount is another one, but that’s a SNEAKY answer, Doug. Almost skipped him because it’s so hard to think of him as a CF.
Well, that’s four names. How am I doing?
Actually, the question was to name players since Spence with 4 such seasons. So that rules out Cuyler and Speaker (Tris is one of those four HOFers who preceded Spence and matched him on that stat line though he, of course, had way more than 5 of those seasons).
The positional requirement is 50% of games in CF. Neither Yount nor Puckett are right.
Okay. I see. I guess my reading comprehension is poor.
I still want half credit on Puckett, though. He’s REALLY close to getting there. Cesar Cedeno is another that’s really close, but doesn’t get there. He’s actually not QUITE as close as Puckett.
Also, Ken Griffey (Sr.) is one of them. Chet Lemon is another. That’s all I’ve got. That’s two; how many left?
Lemon is one. But not Griffey Sr. who had only one season (1981) when he was primarily in CF.
There are two more.
Lenny Dykstra and Al Oliver are the others.
Bob Swift question: Clyde McCullough is the answer. 463 PA in his rookie year in 1941, 3461 PA career-wise.
Doug:
Sorry to be a nit-picker, but Gordon had 84 RBIs in 1949, and only made the century mark four times. Maybe you got your columns mixed up.
In 1951, though, Gordon, at age 36, led the PCL in HRs with 43 and RBIs with 136 while managing the Sacramento team—to a 7th place finish, unfortunately.
Thanks for spotting that, nsb.
I sure butchered that one. About the only thing I got right was Kent having 8 seasons of 100 RBI. But, he’s the ONLY second baseman to do that.
Gordon had 103 OPS+ in 1949, not 103 RBI. But, still not sure what query I might have been running to make him the 5th second baseman doing something.
So, I’ll come up with something else for Joe.
This is a bit of stretch since Gordon missed two wartime years right in the middle, but Joe has nine consecutive seasons played of 12 fielding runs or more. No other fielder in history has been that consistent.
It’s even more impressive considering Gordon played in the pre-PBP era. Defensive numbers from that era are more heavily regressed, so we’re really getting a bottom estimate of how good Gordon was in the field. DRA has him at +190 runs, BTW.
One of these players has this single-season batting line:
.271/.317/.429/.745 OPS /107 OPS+ / AS,MVP-2 with a homerun percentage of 3.76%
Dizzy’s bat was no wet fish. Trout homered in 11 consecutive seasons (1942-52). Only pitchers with longer homer streaks were Bob Lemon (12), Red Ruffing (15) and Warren Spahn (17).
Bob Swift was the catcher when Eddie Gaedel had his famous base-on-balls as Bill Veeck’s midget in 1951. In 1966, he replaced Chuck Dressen as interim manager for the Tigers. Both Dressen and Swift passed away that same year.
Re Jeff Heath:
When I was looking at his player page I had two thoughts: 1) AL Rookie of the Year for 1938; 2) This looks just like Vada Pinson’s player page, except for the SB and CS columns.
Heath, as Bill James discusses in the NBJHBA, performed a revolting racist act in 1947 concerning a landmark event, the first HR by a former Negro League player in American League history. Willard Brown hit it with a bat borrowed from Heath. Afterwards Heath smashed the bat to pieces and probably destroyed Brown’s big league career as he did so. What makes me think this? A look at Brown’s Negro League stats and his post-1947 minor league career. Example: for Houston in the AA Texas League in 1954, on a team crammed with younger talent—Don Blasingame, Bob Boyd, Hal Smith, and Ken Boyer—Brown lead the team at AGE 39 with 35 HRs, 121 RBIs and an OPS of .919, batting .314 and leading the team in outfield assists.
Interest for the quizzes seems to have died out so here are some more answers.
Ted Wilks question: Dice-K, Kelvim Escobar, Curt Schilling, Rick Sutcliffe and Dick Ruthven
Roy Weatherly question: Joe D. and Orlando Cepeda
George Case question: Lou Brock and Ichiro
More answers.
Dizzy Trout question: 3rd battery (after Quinn/Foxx and Ryan/Rodriguez) incl. a teenager with age difference > 24 yrs, 2 mos – Von McDaniel and Walker Cooper on 8-18-57.
Max Lanier question: retired post-war non-HOFers (and not on 2015 HOF ballot) with ERA and FIP below 3.00 in 1000+ IP thru age 30 – Ron Guidry, Dean Chance, Gary Peters
Sid Hudson question: post-war pitchers losing 17 in 200+ IP with W-L% under .400, BB/9 under 3.0 and HR/9 under 0.5 – Joe Magrane (1990), Steve Rogers (1976), Ken Johnson (1963). Johnson is the only one to also have ERA under 3.00.
Joe Gordon question: Yankee second basemen between Stirnweiss and Cano with a 6.5 WAR season – Willie Randolph (1980)
Buck Ross question: live ball era pitchers with lower career W-L% than Ross (.371) in 150+ starts – Jason Johnson, Matt Young
PaWaa
Here is Wins Above Average, expressed as a rate stat,
by dividing it into Plate Appearances (PaWaa):
166.4 … (7304) Lou Boudreau
176.2 … (6537) Joe Gordon
241.8 … (9235) Kenny Lofton
267.8 … (5436) Eddie Stanky
287.8 … (7712) M Minoso
288.0 … (5559) Jeff Heath
306.7 … (4815) Roy Campanella
322.0 … (10400)Rob Alomar
350.0 … (9833) Harmon Killer
435.7 … (12504)Craig Biggio
467.9 … (4445) Stan Spence
474.8 … (12817)Steady Eddie
483.4 … (5076) Walker Cooper
____________________________
IpWaa:
80.3 …. (3256) Kevin Brown
102.5 … (1619) Max Lanier
107.3 … (912) .Ted Wilks
107.4 … (3286) Dennis Eckersley
107.7 … (2726) Dizzy Trout
109.3 … (3170) Whitey Ford
Joe Gordon was in the military during his ages 29 and 30 seasons. Over a third of Boudreau’s WAA was accumulated during those age seasons. Excluding those two years of Boudreau’s career, their career WAA totals are 37.1 for Gordon vs 28.1 for Boudreau. As a rate stat, Gordon ranks higher as well.
I’m not sure Gordon belongs but I’m fairly confident he was a better player than Boudreau, or at least maintained his best level a lot longer.
Boudreau was Gordon’s Manager, while they were double play partners.
This stat obviously favors fellas who didn’t have a long decline
(Boudreau and Gordon with roughly 7000 PA).
And it points out the player with the “long” career (Lofton),
who remained valuable throughout.
So, a couple of things.
First, here is Lofton through the season
where his PA is in between Gordon and Boudreau:
166.4 … (7304) Lou Boudreau
176.2 … (6537) Joe Gordon
199.6 … (6825) Kenny Lofton
Not too shabby.
Now, here are the other “long” career guys on our ballot (our accumulators), through the season closest to Kenny’s 9235 PA:
241.4 … (8957) Roberto Alomar
241.8 … (9235) Kenny Lofton
268.4 … (9125) Eddie Murray
272.8 … (9274) Craig Biggio
321.9 … (9464) Harmon Killebrew
It took only 2.5 crummy years from Alomar to crash his PaWaa.
Eddie Murray was looking great before those last 7 years.
And Craig Biggio was really bad, and played every single day, for a very long time.
__________
Put another way, Kenny Lofton played for 9 franchises in his last 5 years.
That is astounding.
These were all teams that wanted him.
During all that moving, from age 35-40, here’s his PaWaa:
530.0 … (3021) Lofton
And everybody else from 35-40:
-1.8 WAA … (2197) Killer
-1.8 WAA … (4047) Biggio (-3.8 ! at age 41)
-3.4 WAA … (788). Alomar (done at 36)
-5.4 WAA … (3507) Murray
____________
There are 19 other players who, from age 35-40, had at least 3000 PA
and a PaWaa under 550
Mostly Hall of Famers, plus:
Chipper, Edgar, Bob Johnson, Darrell Evans, Brian Downing, and Mickey Vernon.
Joe Gordon seems a good candidate to me; taking into account time lost to the war, he seems on a par with the other 2nd-tier second basemen either in the CoG (Grich, Sandberg, Whitaker) or on the ballot (Alomar, Biggio). I’m a little leery of taking his defensive numbers at face value, but as far as I know his defense has always been well-regarded.
But what I’m wondering is, how many second baseman are we going to put in the CoG? We’ve already elected 6: Carew, Grich, Morgan, J Robinson, Sandberg, and Whitaker. Collins, Hornsby, and Lajoie are mortal locks, and surely Gehringer will make it, too. That’ll give us 10.
And then we have Alomar and Biggio on the ballot, Gordon perhaps to join them, not to mention Frankie Frisch a couple dozen elections down the road. Personally I think all of them would be worthy CoG members – but 14 second baseman seems a tad excessive….
David, does it really matter if we have 14 second basemen? We shouldn’t expect the distribution of great players across history to be perfectly spread across all positions equally. I think it’s more random variation than anything.
For all we know, we could re-run the past 100 years or so of baseball and have 14 SS make our list, or 14 third basemen. I wouldn’t expect it to be first basemen, as they are generally less well-rounded players and don’t have much value beyond hitting.
I suppose whether it matters or not is up to each individual voter. I certainly don’t expect we’ll end up with the same number of players for each position, but it also seems to me like the numbers shouldn’t get *too* imbalanced. I guess this is a something of an esthetic preference on my part.
Peak naturally values players that can contribute in multiple areas more naturally than those who contribute in fewer areas longer. If you want to have lots of guys that were at the very top of the league in value, you’re going to favor productive hitters who could also contribute at a defensively significant position.
I tend to think we give too much RFIELD to outfielders as it stands. A lot of them have considerably inflated stats (hi Walker) or unduly punished (Winfield) by very suspect measuring. Infielders do get some stat increases from being behind a ground ball pitcher but I tend to think that mostly averages out. I think a lot of the high RFIELD numbers for middle infielders are justified. Looking at that with their noticeable positional value means yes, we should generally favor middle infielders. If your left fielder had a glove and an arm, he’d play the infield. He’s a flawed player even if he’s Ted Williams.
David H – I’m not sure I’d consider all of those guys second baseman, even if that’s the position they primarily played in the majors (Carew was actually evenly split between 2nd and 1st, both in terms of games and value).
Robinson was a shortstop in the Negro Leagues but there was obviously no way the Dodgers were going to make Reese move to accommodate Robinson. Had he signed with another team and continued playing short, I’m 99.9% certain he’s still be in the COG.
Grich was also a shortstop originally. He was moved because the Orioles had one of the greatest defensive shortstops ever in Mark Belanger. The limited data we have on Grich as a shortstop shows that he was more than capable of handling the position. Again, I have a strong feeling he’d be in the COG either way.
Biggio of course came up as a catcher. The Astros originally looked at moving him to the outfield (they used him in left and center in ’89 and ’90, in addition to his 100+ games as a catcher). I’m not sure why they ultimately decided to move him to second. But I’m guessing it’s because they were already set in the outfield. The year he moved to second, the outfield was Luis Gonzalez, Steve Finley, and Eric Anthony, all aged 24-27. Had the Astros instead moved him to the outfield, it’s certainly possible that he’d still be a solid COGer (it’s not like his second base defense is doing him any favors).
Joe Gordon is another. He moved from short to second because the Yankees already had Frank Crosetti.
There may be others but I think you get the picture. A lot of these guys may have played second in the majors but under different circumstances, they would have played another position and probably still have been COG worthy.
True, many of these players either could have played or did play different positions, and there’s nothing that says we have to categorize a player by his primary position. That’s just how I like to do it. 🙂
Every kid’s either a shortstop, center fielder, or a catcher. Very few guys come up thinking they’re really something other than those.
mosc, I wouldn’t say “very few.” I mean, the naturally big kid who can hit a country mile is a 1B or corner guy. I doubt Prince (or Cecil, for that matter) Fielder came up thinking, “I know for sure I’m gonna be a shortstop.” But I’d agree with the basic sentiment. Either you’re a catcher (for which you could have any body type), a big guy (destined to play on one of the “corners”), or an athlete, in which case you come up as a SS or CF. I believe it’s still true that there’s never been a 2B taken in the first round of the draft – that’s because they figure that if you’re good enough to play 2B in the majors, you’re almost certainly the best SS on your high school or college team.
Dr. Doom – Baseball Reference lists 23 second baseman taken in the first round, with Chase Utley being by far the best of the bunch and Rickie Weeks (#2) being the highest drafted.
As a comparison, there have been 11 shortstops taken with the overall #1 pick.
Great point, DavidP! So the number of COG second basemen will likely end up being high, but that’s at least partially because a couple of those guys very well may have been shortstops had they played for another team.
To throw my hat into the ring, if everything WERE even, we’d end up with about 10 at each position. I guess if one 3B, one LF, one RF, and one 1B all go to 2B, I don’t see why that’s a problem. We should expect some of that. I can’t imagine we’ll get anywhere NEAR 10 catchers, so I guess I just don’t see 14 2B as any sort of gross injustice.
Well, I wouldn’t call it an injustice…we may well end up with only 7 third baseman (we have 6 now, but there’s really only one decent candidate coming up down the road, and no 3Bman has received significant redemption-round support).
Anyway, I don’t feel *strongly* about the question of positional scarcity, but I figured it was at least worth bringing up for discussion.
I haven’t given up on Nettles
I’d like to see Nettles make it, too, but I think he’s a long shot.
David, I’m taking the blame for you being painted as a guy who feels strongly about this. I think my @11 comment was the driver here. Sorry.
No worries, bstar. We generated some interesting discussion along the way, and one of the things I really value about this site is that if people beg to differ with you, they do so in a civilized manner.
I once made an comment about how if we were to keep the same ratio of position players to pitchers that the HOF has that would work out to roughly an 80/30 split, or 10 players for each position. When I made a comment that there seemed to be a bit of a dearth of qualified center fielders even though that was one of the “best athlete” positions mosc pointed out that a number of players started there careers there (Barry Bonds, Al Kaline, Andre Dawson, Sam Crawford and many others) only to switch positions either when an even better fielding player came along or they lost a stop due to age or injury.
The same thing applies at second base. Rod Carew actually played more games at first base than he did at second. Sandberg started out as a shortstop and then a third baseman before settling in at second. Biggio started as a catcher and later played over 2 full seasons in the outfield. I think Collins started out at shortstop. Robinson played all over the place.
Fact is that there are more COG-qualified players at 2nd, short & RF and that means that the other positions are going to have fewer at least if we count the position where they had their most value.
What position do we consider Pete Rose? 1B, LF, 3B, 2B, RF? Is Stan Musial a 1B or LF or RF? What about Paul Molitor – I’m loathe to just say he’s a DH when the guy played 1B, 2B, 3B in his career. Is Yount a CF or SS? Is Banks a SS or 1B? Is Frank Robinson a RF or LF?
I’m not entirely certain how much it matters. It doesn’t seem to me like we’ll wind up with some horrible imbalance with like 20 RFs and 6 catchers, so I think it’s fine.
Back before birtelcom gave up on positions, I campaigned for Molitor to get listed as UI, utility infielder. I’d discount time at first base in particular as guys get stashed there so I’d consider Carew and Banks 4 and 6 respectively. I’d consider most outfielders as OF rather than LF/CF/RF but there are a few guys who spent >75% of their career in center I’d call center fielders rather than outfielders. There were guys that played almost exclusively in right (Walker) or left (Williams) but to me that’s just outfield anyway.
brp @ 46 –
Rose I consider a utility player; Musial, LF, Molitor DH (which I lump together w/1B), Yount and Banks SS, Robinson RF. This is just my own way of looking at it.
Banks seems easy to me, despite the even split in games played. If you split his career after 1961, he is two guys:
Guy 1 is an absolute lights out inner circle level performer with a very short career at SS and only a few games at 3rd or OF, one who is an easy hall of famer (if eligible) and borderline COGer on those 8 years and a cup of coffee alone. 54.8 WAR (at 6.8 per full year) and 35.7 WAA. Basically 8 straight years of MVP/nearMVP production.
Guy 2 is more like Joe Carter than like a hall of famer — hits some key homers, has good TC stats, but only a bit above average with the bat, and as a decent but not super fielding 1B (with occasional utility play elsewhere) that makes him basically average, collecting 12.7 WAR and negative WAA over that span.
So something like 80% of his value came when playing SS. And he only “looked like a hall of famer” while playing 1B, because he was chasing 500 homers and we all already knew he would be one.
He’s a shortstop.
That said, I agree with the idea that we shouldn’t try to lock ourselves into 10-10-10… since there’s no rule that says talent will be distributed fairly.
OTOH, when I see a big imbalance between positions, I question whether something in my analysis is wrong and I should be looking to push borderliners at the positions with fewer entries instead of those with many.
Looking at the BBWWAA hall by position suggests that they undervalue the mid value defensive positions, looking at how many OF and SS they put in the hall relative to CF/3B/2B. And then there are catchers. The fact that using plain old bWAR or hall rating gives a better positional spread confirms it for me.
Campy
Minnie
Dizzy
Lofton (a strong second place last time and no obvious newcomer)
Brown (Looks like the best pitcher on the ballot to me)
Killebrew (I’ve voted for him off and on, back on this time)
Brown ford biggio
Alomar, Campanella, Minoso
Whitey Ford; Harmon Killebrew; Roy Campanella
My third spot is between two guys for whom WWII becomes an issue. I’m interested to read the discussion this round, because my ballot could definitely change. For now, I’m voting:
Kevin Brown
Craig Biggio
Joe Gordon
Ahhh!!!! I’m insanely in need of a vote change! I guess I had Biggio on the mind when I wrote this, but he wasn’t supposed to be on the ballot. Here’s the change:
Kevin Brown
Kenny Lofton (not Biggio)
Joe Gordon
Walker Cooper led all catchers in WAR in the 1940s, with 19.4. I would guess that figure is the of the lowest totals for a player who led the league in their position over a decade.
Wally Schang had 23+ WAR in the 1910’s but played a fair bit of positions other than catcher as well. Ray Schalk played only catcher but only had 18.9 WAR. Roger Bresnahan had a little more than 11 WAR in the 10’s.
But Chief Meyers played only catcher and had 22 WAR during the decade. So you’re probably right about Cooper but not by as large a margin as I would have imagined.
Killebrew, Campanella, Eckersley
Killebrew, Campanella, Gordon.
Kevin Brown, Joe Gordon, Kenny Lofton
Most Wins Above Average, excluding negative seasonal totals:
Brown 43.3
Boudreau 42.3
Lofton 39.3
Gordon 37.1
Alomar 37.1
Biggio 36.3
Eckersley 34.3
Murray 33.7
Killebrew 33.0
Minoso 30.6
Ford 29.3
Trout 26.2
Campanella 19.2
Cooper 15.0
Gordon might’ve sacrificed 10 WAA during WWII and was done at 35. He belongs with the other 2B we’ve elected.
Brown, Gordon, Boudreau
Gordon has slightly more ‘WAA excluding negative seasons’ than Biggio in roughly half the number of Plate Appearances.
Gordon was an insanely consistent player delivering value in all areas of play. He was also a genuinely nice human being who liked taking younger players under his wing. Doby credits him with a lot of his success in MLB.
from ages 24 to 33 Gordon put up a very consistent 4 WAA and 6 WAR I think it’s safe to say he was missing at least that over those two years. 45 WAA gets you in the COG as far as I’m concerned, no questions asked. That’s somewhere in between Whitaker and Carew… while retiring after age 35 (11 seasons + 2 war years vs 19).
I think you’re being wildly inconsistent regarding Gordon and Boudreau.
Here you’re suggesting Gordon should get 100% of the credit for those missed years. 100% WAR, 100% WAA. Yet when it comes to Boudreau, you have lobbied to strike all of Lou’s WAA from 1943-45.
Either players get credit for those years or they don’t. Giving it to Gordon but denying it for Boudreau is blatantly unfair.
Sure, we have to discount the numbers a bit for those who played those years, but no one has argued that we shouldn’t do that.
I showed two threads ago how an appropriate discount gives Boudreau almost exactly the credit we would have given him had he missed those years (http://www.highheatstats.com/2014/08/circle-of-greats-1916-part-1-balloting/#comment-86526). We can’t have the discount be so sharp that Boudreau actually is penalized for playing those years.
Or maybe we could discount it that much, but where is the evidence to suggest that big of a discount is appropriate? If you have a numbers-based study, please share it with the community. I’d personally love to read it.
“45 WAA gets you in the COG as far as I’m concerned, no questions asked.”
I think you’re right, but we could probably move the line to 40 WAA as an auto-yes. Unless I’m mistaken, every player we have encountered thus far with 40+ WAA is either in the COG or currently on the ballot (Boudreau, Brown). Boudreau still has 40 WAA even with his war years discounted.
I think you CAN actually both boost Gordon, and discount Boudreau. They’re two separate arguments. You should deduct WWII credit for Newhouser, Trout, Boudreau – anyone who played through the war, because they were playing in a depleted league. We would EXPECT their performance to be better than usual, so we deduct appropriately.
Gordon, on the other hand, needs to be adjusted for what he would/could/should have done in his league in normal circumstances. I suppose, if one were so inclined, one could adjust Reese’s stats for a war-time league – but that would mean an extra adjustment up, which is fine, but I don’t know why you’d do that.
Look, a .300 batting average in Houston in 1968 needs to be adjusted up to be historically “normal.” A .300 batting average in Colorado in 1999 needs to be adjusted down. But you can make BOTH of those adjustments, and far from being inconsistent, it’s the responsible way to make a comparison.
Well there is an inconsistency or whatever you want to call it. He wants to strike Boudreau’s war seasons entirely. Then in comment #25 above, he wants to strike Boudreau’s age 29 and age 30 seasons because Gordon was in the war at those ages.
Geez, why don’t we just strike Boudreau’s entire career? Just seems like he has a huge ax to grind against Boudreau.
I’m not arguing against adjustments, Doom. I’m saying we can’t boost one guy’s numbers and completely omit the same years for the other guy when he actually played those years.
What you suggested is actually what I would do, boost Gordon and appropriately adjust Boudreau.
I don’t think we’re in disagreement here.
Apples to apples. You want to look at “only achieved” numbers for Gordon, compare them against Boudreau with his war years stripped. You want to compensate gordon, you STILL have to doc Boudreau because his performance those years was abnormally high by his own standard.
Basically, Strip Boudreau of 43 to 45 and compare him to other guys who missed wartime. If you want to give him some credit back, give him credit by the same method: back calculate his numbers. He was a 4 WAR player in 41 and 42 and a 4 WAR player in 46 and 47. I’m betting he’s a 4 WAR player in the war years, not 7.9. More than a third of his WAA is from those three years. He would have generated some WAA to be sure if the league was normal those years, he was a good player, but he didn’t hit THAT much better than Reese outside of one season and his career was over much too soon.
So yes, I think you should actually doc Boudreau about 7WAA and boost Gordon’s. Toss 43-45, and make it an average of 41+42+46+47. This method results as follows:
Gordon’s WAA+ excluding 43-45 is 32.3. His average of the 4 surrounding years is 3.825. Give him 3 years of that plus his 32.3 and you get: 43.7 WAA
Same process on Boudreau lowers him to 27.5 WAA, with an average on the surrounding years of 3.325 for a calculation of 37.5 WAA
Exactly consistent method that tosses depleted league stats and fills them in equally for both guys.
Reese, using the same method, hits a WAA+ of 33.4 plus an average rate (I excluded 41, he was only 22) 3.633 for a calculation of 44.3 WAA+
I have both guys clearly better than Boudreau. They were all of similar quality in similar times but Boudreau basically just stopped being productive at a much younger age.
And to add, all of that is a WAA argument. If you use WAR, it’s far less flattering to Boudreau who simply did not play that long.
Here’s another one. “Great” seasons are an artifical cutoff but lets say 5WAR. Outside of 43-45, how often did these guys reach 5 WAR?
Gordon: 7 (5 straight before leaving for war)
Reese: 8
Boudreau: 3
Boudreau’s either a 2 season wonder or a hall of famer mattering on how you look at 1943 and 1944. I already discussed Dizzy Trout’s batting line in 1944 and there are lots of examples showing the general level of competition in the league. I put Boudreau in the middle. He’s a borderline HOFer and not good enough for the COG. We’ve passed on better infielders than this before.
Reese and Gordon are clear standouts with peak years cut away they still produced.
mosc, in your post 165 you say Boudreau “was a 4 WAR player in 41 and 42 and a 4 WAR player in 46 and 47. I’m betting he’s a 4 WAR player in the war years, not 7.9”. But you’re cherry-picking to avoid Boudreau’s best non-WWII years. If instead of two years before 1943 and two years after 1945 you count three years before 1943 and three years after 1945, Boudreau is a 6 WAR player per season, not 4. Cutting Boudreau from 8 to 6 for 1943-1944 is the most I can see fairly cutting him. Given that he was age 25-26 in 1943-44, and might be expected to be at or close to peak, and that the best study I’ve seen suggests a 10% cut for WWII era performance might be the right range, a cut from 8 to 7 might be more appropriate. Treating a guy who, in non-WWII conditions had a 10.4 WAR year at age 30, a 7.5 WAR at age 29 and a 6.0 WAR year at age 22, as a true-talent 4 WAR guy at age 25-26 is underestimating him, I think.
Boudreau clearly changed quite a bit at the plate at age 29. The age 22 6.0 WAR season you mentioned he had 13 RBAT and outside of the war inflated years, that’s about all he hit (13,8,14,14,12 in 40, 41, 42, 46, 47) If we didn’t have any wartime numbers for Boudreau, if you simply erased them, you would have a hard time explaining why you think that 22 at age 29 and the astounding 58 the following year followed by a high of 3 the rest of his career was anything more than a player catching lightning in a bottle. You’d fill in his 43, 44, and 45 with 12 RBAT each and feel pretty good about it. He’s a shortstop, and a pretty good fielder but not a guy with speed.
Looking at that 6WAR number in 1940 paints a different picture than the consistency his bat showed through his 20s besides a big spike from wartime pitching and a late surge. Now I agree to some extent he may simply have played well during the war and had a bad year in 1946 with the bat following the injury shortened 1945 campaign. You could take 43-44 and 47-48 and paint a picture of a guy who would average 30 RBAT throughout his career when healthy. I see that side of it too, I just don’t think you’re penalizing the guy that much by saying “you know what, you hit 12 RBAT the three years before the war so I’m going to assume you’d have hit about that DURING the war. And look at that, you hit 12 RBAT exactly in 1946 when the boys came home. Imagine that”
Here’s another way of looking at it. If we take Boudreau’s non-way years Rbat/PA and apply it to his PAs during the year, we get 38.6 Rbat.
He actually produced 75. Now, that 38.6 Rbat likely is an underestimate since the war just happened to coincide with Boudreau’s likely peak years. So let’s day 45 Rbat, a reduction of 30 in total.
How about fielding? During the war, Boudreau avereged 7 Rfield per year. That’s less than his full career average of 7.9 Rfield per season, which includes two “seasons” of fewer than 5 PAs. Based on that I’d estimate that the war had little to no impact on Boudreau’s Rfield.
So we’re left with a reduction of about 30 Rbat which translates into a reduction of about 3 WAR. Which is about the same as the 10% suggested by the study Birtelcom mentioned.
David P, I think those are pretty close to the numbers I used. I view his WAA as inflated by about 5. His WAR by about the same number only slightly higher. Giving Gordon credit during his 2 years off though you don’t have to lower Boudreau much to see a decent sized gap. As I mentioned in the results thread, I think Boudreau was a similar value player to Enos Slaughter more than he was the equal of Reese and Gordon.
@171 David P: I also ran those numbers earlier in the day and came to a similar conclusion. The most conservative estimate of what Boudreau may have produced during those years under normal conditions still leaves him with 38 or so WAA, which is more than any other position player on the ballot besides Lofton (and Gordon + war credit).
You say 38, I back calculated 37.5. Not much difference there. He had a lot of WAA. From a WAR perspective though, he’s pretty damn low. He’s only got 63 to begin with. A wartime correction of say 45 RBAT would knock him under 60 WAR. You’re talking Koufax territory for a guy that certainly didn’t come anywhere near averaging >9WAR for 4 seasons of peak.
I’ll take Biggio instead. His WAA is almost at that level and his performance above replacement level production over nearly 20 years is not just meaningless. It’s a lot more than a WAA+ tie breaker to me. His WAR+ is 67.2 and his WAA+ – WAR+ is about twice what Boudreau’s is. I love the WAA approach to this analysis but that level of longevity difference does need to factor into the comparison, at least when the difference is that extreme.
Mosc – I would agree that Gordon and Reese should be slotted ahead of Boudreau. That being said, we do disagree on Boudreau’s COG-worthiness. Part of it is because I believe he deserves some extra credit for managing while playing. That’s obviously a judgment call and reasonable people can disagree on how something like that should be handled.
Thought you slipped Mike Trout on there for laughs for a second before remembering we had Dizzy Trout on the ballot.
WAA Trout vs Trout:
26.2 vs 20.1
Mike would have to put up two more seasons like 2014 to pass him. Though he’d still be only 24 years old when he did it. Dizzy Trout didn’t even Debut until he was 24 years old.
My god.
Anyway, DIZZY trout is another guy like Boudreau we need to consider had unusual wartime numbers his 1943 season exceeds all his others in WAA considerably. Outsize of 1942 to 1946 he was barely above league average. Granted those are his ages 27 to 31 seasons to take away from him but he clearly did not ever look good against the wartime greats, nor an integrated league.
I know I’m entertaining myself here but look at Dizzy Trout’s 1944 BATTING line:
.271/.317/.429/.745, 5 HR 24 RBI in 144 PA. This is a guy even including his inflated war year batting that had a career 56 OPS+. Now you want to tell me how the level of competition in the war years was anything like normal?
Kevin Brown
Lou Boudreau
Kenny Lofton
Killer
Campy
Alomar
Ford, Campanella, Gordon
Lofton
Gordon
Murray
Murray, Campanella, & Eckersley
Welcome to the voting!
Biggio, Eckersley, Murray
Ford, Alomar, Minoso
Biggio, Eckersley, Ford
Murray, Biggio, Boudreau
Here’s the vote according to my statistical methodology. I take four measures of player value as a gauge of how players compare across advanced metrics that value things slightly differently. Then I give them a cumulative rank with all players on the ballot over 50 WAR, adding their ranking of each measure. Here are the measures:
WAR – the ‘classic’ way of measuring a player’s value over a player the team could have gotten to replace the player, over that player’s career, to show how ‘good’ that player was.
WAA+ – adding the wins above average players (rather than replacement) for that player’s positive seasons (ie. tossing out the negative seasons), to measure how great that player was when he was great.
JAWS – a weighted WAR score to incorporate both peak and career performance by weighting a player’s best seasons.
WAR*WAR/162G (250 IP for pitchers) – this is a fun construction I saw John Autin use awhile ago that takes into account peak and career performance, but using games played as a unit rather than seasons.
My hope is that ranking this will give a bit of an overall picture of player value. Here are the cumulative rankings, in order (a ’4′ would rank first in all 4 categories):
Brown 4
Lofton 12
Boudreau 14
Alomar 18
Murray 21
Gordon 24
Biggio 26
Eckersley 28
Killebrew 34
Ford 41
Minoso 42
Campy 48
It’s difficult to juggle the war-year conundrum, but I’ve mentioned before that I think Boudreau would drop down to about Murray level in my mental adjustment. Gordon would definitely come up, and probably be on my ballot, but I’d like a round to consider him first, so my vote will be:
Brown, Lofton, Alomar
I’m almost not voting for Brown simply because I don’t like him but I think he at least belongs on the ballot. It’s kind of a tension of ‘would I rather keep seeing him on the ballot or just try to get him elected and have it done?’ I’ve settled on the latter, as his statistical accomplishments are too big for me to ignore. Now, onto the project of getting the redemption voters to recognize Reuschel…
LOFTON, Brown, Boudreau
Joe Gordon, Harmon Killebrew, Craig Biggio
Boudreau, Eck, Murray
Biggio, Ford, Campanella.
Ford, Killebrew, Campanella.
Lofton, Campy, Minoso
Eck, Boudreau, Killebrew
Gordon, Campanella, Minoso
By the numbers, Brown probably has the best case but I just can’t bring myself to vote for him.
I’m surprised by the support Campanella is getting this round — suddenly he’s the leader and with only 30 ballots cast, he already has more votes than I’ve seen him get since his first time on the ballot.
That’s okay, I have him in, so good on you voters so far.
Gordon looks like he probably belongs. WAR total is a bit short and he’s got 2 years when lots of guys were in WWII, OTOH his WAA is COG level, and he missed two years to the war himself. I think he probably belongs.
Trout OTOH, seems to be pretty far short, especially considering that two of his best years were in a depleted league.
I was thinking the same things about Campy! Strange are the ripple effects following an election. We JUST had this happen with Kenny Lofton, now with Campanella. I am endlessly fascinated by our voting patterns.
Alomar, Campanella, Gordon
I’m pleasantly surprised by how well Campanella’s doing, too – I’ve voted for him every time he’s been on the ballot but one.
I’m another longtime Campanella supporter.
I think people need to keep in mind with him that he started catching professionally very young. He was an early bloomer and his best years were not in the MLB, which is saying a lot considering he won 3 MVP’s there.
He caught games in the negro leagues but he was also a popular draw for exhibition games and barn storming tours. It’s possible Campanella caught more games of baseball than anyone else in history outside of MLB. I think it does his legend a great disservice to discount the uniqueness of his situation. This was a guy before the age of 20 who won an MVP in the negro leagues and who much later in life would play 9 MLB seasons with 100 GS at catcher, an unthinkable total considering how bad their gloves were and how much he’d caught prior to his MLB career.
I think there’s well a case to be made that Campanella was the greatest catcher ever and among the very best to ever put on a glove. The old shadow of Campanella is a borderline case. The young Campanella won MVP’s in the negro league, two different minor league levels, and 3 in the majors. There wasn’t many who saw him play in his 20s who didn’t think they were looking at the greatest catcher in the world, skin color aside.
This is a minor point, but it’s not clear to me that Campy won MVPs at 2 minor league levels – wikipedia shows Hank Sauer as the 1947 IL MVP, albeit without citing a specific source, and Baseball Almanac agrees.
Of course whether Campanella did or didn’t win the award is hardly going to be the deciding factor in making him CoG worthy or not…
See my comment @ #154. Apocryphal awards do no receiver any service.
Oh, yes, sorry, forgot to give credit where credit is due, it was nsb’s post @ 154 that sent me searching for some sort of official record of who the 1947 IL MVP was.
Anyway, I didn’t find anything definitive – Minor League Baseball’s website doesn’t seem to have the info, and it’s not clear where wikipedia or Baseball Almanac got their info. The SABR bio of Hank Sauer says he was named Minor League Player of the Year by The Sporting News in 1947, but makes no mention of a league MVP.
Apocryphal awards indeed. I just see a guy who was as good as anybody in negro league baseball at 19 years old and who lead the league in CS% ages 26-30. I’ve always held catcher’s defensive values are chronically underrated, as is any semblance of durability from baseball’s most demanding position. In my mind, he has Ozzy Smith level career defensive value and with that in your head it’s hard to say his bat was anything less than productive. Study.
Here I think you’re definitely overstating your case Mosc. That age 19 season by Campy was far better than anything he did in the surrounding seasons.
And from what I can tell, the talent distribution was quite lopsided in the Negro Leagues. Sure there were some talented players, but depth was quite limited.
On the hitting end, there are 58 players listed as getting 50+ PAs in 1941. Eleven of them have an OPS lower than .500. On the pitching side, I’m seeing lots of pitchers with RA/9 over 5 and several over 7. Many of these are among the league leaders in innings pitched.
Beyond that, we know that there’s lots of missing data from the Negro Leagues. I just don’t see how anyone can draw any conclusions re: Campy based on what we know of the Negro Leagues and the available data.
mosc @ 221 –
I’m willing to believe that Campanella was a fine defensive catcher, but I just don’t think that we can be confident he was as good a defensive catcher as Ozzie Smith was a defensive SS.
Campy had a good defensive reputation, to be sure, but the eye test of contemporary observers is a shaky foundation on which to build (cf. Jeter’s 5 GGs).
I don’t think CS% is a very good proxy for overall defensive catcher ability, especially in an era where the running game was relatively insignificant. In the years Campy led the NL in CS% the average number of steals per team were 56, 46, 47, 57, 50. That’s fewer steals than Dee Gordon has this year, not to mention that SB success rates in the late ’40s/early ’50s were in the neighborhood of 55%.
So however good Campy’s arm was, it just wasn’t saving that many extra runs for the Dodgers compared to the average catcher – it meant a handful or two more runners thrown out over the course of the season.
Now, maybe he was a fantastic pitch framer, fabulous at blocking balls in the dirt, outstanding at fielding bunts, and so on. But we have to kind of take that on faith, it seems to me. I’d prefer more evidence to faith, but alas historical catcher defense is a particularly tough nut to crack.
David P. in 222
“And from what I can tell, the talent distribution was quite lopsided in the Negro Leagues. Sure there were some talented players, but depth was quite limited.”
How dare you?!
Was wondering how “short” a career Boudreau and Gordon had, in a greater historical context, and for our purposes of honoring the top 85 or so position players.
That ponder led to this…
__________________________
100th place all-time, in every counting stat:
(also, how many active players in the top 100)
WAR
69.9 … Gary Carter (4 in the top 100)
WAR Position Players
63.0 … Lou Boudreau (6)
PA
9692 … Willie McCovey (5)
Runs
1359 … Brett Butler (6)
Hits
2490 … Fred McGriff (6)
Total Bases
3881 … Gary Gaetti (9)
Doubles
453 …. George Davis (14)
Triples
119 …. Carl Crawford and Hugh Duffy (1)
HomeRuns
335 …. Daryl Strawberry (13)
RBI
1323 … Roger Connor (11)
BB
1042 … Roy Thomas (8)
SO
1350 … Robin Yount (16)
SB
363 … Hal Chase and Tony Womack (5)
XBH
823 … Orlando Cepeda (14)
_________________________
Plate Appearances
Rank, alltime:
7 ….. Eddie Murray
10 …. Craig Biggio
57 …. Roberto Alomar
90 …. Harmon Killebrew
131 … Kenny Lofton
311 … Minnie Minoso
414 … Lou Boudreau
501 … Joe Gordon
1000+ . Roy Campanella
__________________
The five “active” players who are in the top 100 for PA:
Alex Rod, Jeter, Abreu, Beltre, Manny
Great idea, Voomo! #100 in each stat category — love it.
Craig Biggio, Harmon Killebrew, Dennis Eckersley
Brown, Eckersley, Lofton
Seeing Ken Heintzelman’s name reminded me of a discussion we had on HHS a while back. When Saltalamacchia and Middlebrooks were Red Sox teammates we were wondering if they were the two teammates with the greatest combined number of letters in their surnames, which is 26 in their case. I don’t remember what the conclusion was. But I do remember that Heintzelman was once a teammate of Ken Raffensberger, a total of 24 letters. I wondered if perhaps they were the two pitcher teammates with the greatest number of combined letters. I got a list of every ML pitcher from Fangraphs and with one click of a button I placed it into an Excel spreadsheet. Then by manipulating that spreadsheet I was able to calculate the number of letters in each pitcher’s surname. Then I sorted by the number of letters in each name. There are 8 pitchers with 13 letters, including Raffensberger, and 28 with 12 letters. I compared the 13 letter guys with each other and none were teammates. So there are no such teammates with 26 letters. To find teammates with 25 letters there are 224 combinations which is too many to manually check so I stopped right there. But it is interesting to know what one can do with Excel spreadsheets.
The story goes that the White Sox signed Dave Wehrmeister because someone in the front office asked for a “big-name pitcher.” I saw a Sox-Brewers game at County Stadium where another big-name pitcher got in the game; the scoreboard, with the player’s name and position, listed him as CLUTTERBUCKP .
My recollection is that Jason Stark addressed something about teammates with long last names once and Mark Grudzielanek (12 letters) was prominent in that column. I just cannot remember who the teammate was.
It was probably Todd Hollandsworth (13 letters).
In light of my vote change @100, here’s an updated standings:
13 – Roy Campanella
10 – Kevin Brown
9 – Whitey Ford, Joe Gordon, Harmon Killebrew, Kenny Lofton
8 – Craig Biggio, Dennis Eckersley
6 – Roberto Alomar, Lou Boudreau, Eddie Murray
5 – Minnie Minoso
1 – Dizzy Trout
A theory: Joe Gordon is taking away Kenny Lofton’s votes. Lofton should have easily paced this group, based on our last ballot. Yet, with one one significant newcomer (Gordon), Lofton has moved back in the pack. It’s still early, admittedly, but it looks like what’s going on to me. Six of Gordon’s votes do not have a Lofton vote on the same ballot.
Another complicating (and perhaps relevant to the Lofton discussion) factor is possibly that Pee Wee Reese had been taking votes away from Roy Campanella. That would explain his major surge already. Campy ALREADY has more votes than he’s had in any round since his first (1921), in which he garnered only 14. He should easily surpass that this round. Also, it would be crazy if we inducted two of the Boys of Summer Dodgers in a row!
Dr. Doom – Theories are easily tested. 🙂
Looks like it’s simply a matter of Campy voters showing up early and Lofton voters not showing up yet. All 9 people who voted for Campy last time have already voted in this election. He’s gained 2 votes from people who didn’t vote in the last election, one entirely new voter, and 1 vote from a person who voted for Reese and Slaughter last time.
As for Lofton, he’s only “lost” one vote so far. Interestingly, that person had Slaughter on their last ballot which means that they dropped Lofton and added two people to their ballot (neither of whom was Gordon). The vast majority of Lofton supporters from last simply haven’t voted yet.
“Theories are easily tested.”
True; IF one is willing to actually go back and test them. But I didn’t wanna. I’d rather speculate wildly and allow you to do the dirty work. 🙂
Thanks for the insights.
As a fellow half-sicilian, I’ve always been a fan of Poochinella.
But…
okay, black guy at the dawn of integration, I get it.
Tragic car accident paralyzed him, I get it.
But six good years to get into the Circle of Greats?
We already did that for a Dodger.
The 1955-1957 Dodgers have four members in the COG already. Campy would be their fifth, if elected, following Snider, Koufax, Reese, and Jackie Robinson. They are tied as our most-represented team.
They’re actually tied with the 1970-71 Orioles: Frank Robinson, Brooks Robinson, Jim Palmer, and Bobby Grich.
The 1976 Orioles also show up with four: Reggie Jackson, Brooks Robinson, Jim Palmer, and Bobby Grich.
The 1964 Milwaukee Braves have four, as well: Eddie Mathews, Hank Aaron, Warren Spahn, and a rookie named Phil Niekro.
The most impressive, though, has to be the 1962-1971 Giants: Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, Gaylord Perry, and Juan Marichal. Seriously; that’s amazing.
Teams with three members:
1954-1964 (yeah, I know I listed them already, but c’mon – eleven years!!!) Milwaukee Braves, with Hank Aaron, Eddie Mathews, and Warren Spahn.
1966-1971 Cubs, with Ron Santo, Ernie Banks, and Fergie Jenkins. Rick Reuschel wouldn’t extend the length of this group, since he and Banks did’t overlap, but he has received support and could help make a DIFFERENT foursome of Cubs. Billy Williams also got some support, and could make this a group of five.
1974 Red Sox with Carl Yastrzemski, Juan Marichal, and Carlton Fisk.
1972-1978 Reds with Pete Rose, Joe Morgan, and Johnny Bench.
1979-1983 Phillies with Mike Schmidt, Pete Rose, and Steve Carlton
1993-1999, 2001-2002 Atlanta Braves with Tom Glavine, John Smoltz, and Greg Maddux. Smoltz sat out 2000. One imagines that Chipper Jones will add a fourth name to this list (although his addition would remove 1994); Gary Sheffield might add a fifth Brave from this time period. But that’s a BIG “might.”
1989-1998 Mariners with Ken Griffey, Jr., Randy Johnson, and Edgar Martinez.
2001-2003, 2007 Yankees with Mariano Rivera, Mike Mussina, and Roger Clemens. Clemens wasn’t around 2004-2006. One imagines that Jeter (and probably A-Rod, but who knows about him?) will be joining this group one day.
And, my best find:
1989 Expos with Larry Walker, Tim Raines, and Randy Johnson.
I did all this manually; did I miss anyone? Let me know!
No 20th Century Yankee teams. How the heck did they ever beat those Boys of Summer in five out of six WS? Oh, I know, it was Yankee Stadium and the the defense of Gil McDougald playing short, second and third simultaneously.
Whitey’s still on the ballot, the Mick is already in, and Berra will cakewalk to election once he’s on the ballot. Who else is a viable candidate from the ’50s Yanks? McDougald/Allie Reynolds aren’t really that close.
bstar, Berra’s already in. Ford will probably get there. But that’s the brilliance of Stengel, isn’t it? Not only did they beat those Boys of Summer that much; they also beat the above-listed Braves one out of two.
Edit: Berra is already in also. Me and my failing memory…
The 1981 Phillies actually had 4 CoG members: Carlton, Rose, Sandberg, and Schmidt
The 1983 Phillies also had 4: Carlton, Morgan, Rose, and Schmidt.
Some more triads:
1976-77 Red Sox: Fisk, Jenkins, Yaz
1979 Angels: Carew, Grich, Ryan
1984 Expos: Carter, Raines, Rose
Thanks a bunch! I was doing a lot of manual checking, and I just knew I’d miss some.
That Angels one is KILLIN’ me. I kept thinking, “Half these guys played for the Angels; there must be SOME combination of them that played together for a year.” Couldn’t find it, though.
The ’84 Expos I thought of, but just forgot to write down.
I expect there are more we’ve missed. Whoops, just found one:
1982-85 Angels: Carew, Grich, Jackson
There are a lot of pairs with a potential 3rd, e.g. Blyleven/Carew (Killebrew), Ripken/Palmer (Murray), Boggs/Clemens (Evans), et al.
If Lofton makes it in, he’ll be a 4th for the ’97 Braves and a 3rd for the ’04 Yankees, and maybe for some other teams.
It seems like Rickey Henderson ought to be on this list. If Alomar makes it in, then the ’93 Blue Jays will have 3 (Alomar, Henderson, Molitor).
Another interesting Alomar one would be that he would make for a third among the 1996-1998 Baltimore Orioles (Ripken and Mussina). Eddie Murray played half a season with the O’s in 1996, so if BOTH get in, that would make four from the 1996 O’s.
Actually Robinson retired after the ’56 season. So it’s just the 55-56 Dodgers.
The thing is that LONG before Campanella had “six good years” with the Dodger’s he was already a great ballplayer.
But for reasons beyond his control they weren’t in the major leagues.
And for my money that needs to be treated differently than a career shortened by injury.
All ballplayers risk injury when they play.
But only certain ones were told “You can’t play here.”
Hartvig:
By calling Campy “a great ballplayer” prior to his time with the Dodgers, I think you’ve made a sizable claim that isn’t really substantiated by the record we have. In 1946 playing in the class B New England League he was a very good player, batting .290 and slugging .477 in 113 games. His age was 24. In 135 games at triple A Montreal the following year, he hit 13 HRs, drove in 75, and batted .273. A very good player, yes. 1948 is the year he realized his potential: in only 35 games for St. Paul he slugged 13 HRs, drove in 39, and batted .325. He was 26 years old.
As a comparison, Yogi Berra at age 21 played half a season at triple A Newark. In 77 games he 15 HRs, drove in 59, and batted .314.
No doubt Campy was a better backstop, but . . ..
Regarding his Negro League record, except for the 1944 year, in which he batted .440, there is little evidence to call him a great player. A very good player, yes. But in 1945 he came down to earth, batting .256.
I think it is better to say that Campanella, had he benefitted from the discipline of the organized minors leagues from an earlier age, would have become a great player somewhat sooner.
Keep in mind that the Negro Leagues, too, suffered from player shortages from 1943-1945, which takes that .440 down a bit. Additionally, while there can be no doubt that some of the greatest players of all-time were Negro Leaguers, the difference in talent between best and worst was probably more akin to WWII MLB than it was to non-War-time MLB. I think Campy would have been a capable backstop in his early twenties, had he been in MLB; I personally doubt that he would’ve been above average. But, that being said, reasonable people can disagree on such matters, and I have no problem with those who value Campy more highly than I do.
Keep in mind that the Negro Leagues, too, suffered from player shortages from 1943-1945, which takes that .440 down a bit. Additionally, while there can be no doubt that some of the greatest players of all-time were Negro Leaguers, the difference in talent between best and worst was probably more akin to WWII MLB than it was to non-War-time MLB. I think Campy would have been a capable backstop in his early twenties, had he been in MLB; I personally doubt that he would’ve been above average. But, that being said, reasonable people can disagree on such matters, and I have no problem with those who value Campy more highly than I do.
This is from Rick Swaine’s article on Campanella from the SABR Bioproject on their website:
“By 1939 the precocious 17-year-old youngster had taken over the regular catching chores and helped lead the Giants to playoff victories over the Newark Eagles and Homestead Grays. Soon he was challenging the legendary Josh Gibson’s status as the best catcher in Negro baseball. While still a teenager, he won MVP honors as the star of the 1941 Negro League East-West All-Star Game. ”
http://sabr.org/bioproj/person/a52ccbb5
This is from the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum website:
“Campy started playing for the Baltimore Elite Giants as a fifteen-year-old youngster, learning his trade from the great Biz Mackey, he developed into an outstanding catcher, earning a spot on the East squad in the 1941 All Star game being voted the game’s MVP. After missing the next two East-West games because cause of his ventures into showcasing for the major eagues and playing in the Mexican League, Campy made two more All Star appearances, in 1944 and 1945, seasons in which he finished in the top half-dozen hitters in the league. In 1944 he led the league in doubles and compiled a .350 batting average”
And I’m guess those Negro League All-Star teams would have beaten the Major League All-Stars in a best of 7 in about any year you would care to name.
Hartvig:
Just some other comparisons than Berra to put Campanella’s minor league performance in context with reference to 1) age; 2) level of play:
At age 20 Willie Mays played 35 games in triple A and produced triple crown stats of 8-30-.477.
Mantle at age 19: 40 games—11-50-.361.
Snider at age 20: 66 games—12-46-.316.
Sherm Lollar at age 22: 111 games—16-64-.280.
At age 25 Campanella in 135 games: 13-75-.273.
Sherm Lollar was a darn good player, but he never went on to have the big years the others had, and yet, in the same year, 1947, being three years younger than Campanella and playing at the same level of competition, his batting performance was, if anything, a little more impressive than Roy’s, coming out ahead in OPS+ .844 to .803.
So I stand by my position that, despite the rose colored biographies of Campanella’s early years, had he been a GREAT player then his minor league stats would show it more clearly—at least as clearly as his Major League stats do.
Wait a minute nsb. You’re throwing out comparisons to Mays and Mantle, and looking just at the bat!
Nobody is suggesting that Campanella was remotely close to those guys with the bat. His rbat per PA was .0263 for his career, while Mays’s was .0647 and mantle’s even higher.
And yet, what he *did* do with the bat, while playing catcher very well, might have been enough if he’d had a full career, to get him into COG consideration. It’s ridiculous to discount his younger ability simply because he didn’t look like Willie Mays with the bat in the minors. He didn’t look like Willie Mays in the majors either, and neither did many of our other borderline candidates.
Let’s compare instead to Gary Carter, a catcher who wasn’t really borderline, but isn’t in the inner circle pantheon either. his batting line at age 19 in AA was .254/.351/.394/.745.
Michael S:
My argument isn’t about that. It is about whether or not Campanella was a “great” player as opposed to being a good one, prior to say, age 26. So I think it is fair to compare his performance to that of certifiably “great” players of that approximate era, under the assumption that the competition at the triple A level was fairly consistent between 1946 and 1951. It might not have been, true, but, playing in the same league the same year, 1947, Sherm Lollar—not a “great” player, put up similar stats to Campy’s, even though he was 3 years younger, and three “great” players, Willie, Mickey, and Duke, put up far better numbers at a much younger age and advanced to the majors post haste in the case of Mickey and Willie, and half a year later in case of Snider. Arguing backwards, if Campy’s stats at 25 didn’t come close to matching those of the three CFs at 19-20, it seems unlikely that they would have matched them when he was 19 or 20.
Then look at Yogi’s stats: after two years away from baseball in combat duty, Yogi tore up the league. At age 21.
nsb @ 136 –
Note that Lollar and Campanella’s 1947 minor league OPS figures are *not* park-adjusted – they’re simply raw OPS, not OPS+.
Granted, this probably doesn’t make much difference unless one or both of their home parks were outliers, but just thought I’d note it.
MS @ 146 –
Similarly, I’d be hesitant to compare performances in the 1947 International League to the 1973 Eastern League – a lot had changed in that quarter century, from the draft to integration to the growth of players from Latin America, and so on.
This is just a general comment about human nature, but it is directed at Rick Swine’s SABR biography of Campanella, which, the more I look into it, reminds me of the outrageous distortions one would hear in Bill Stern’s radio sports commentaries back in the dim dead days beyond recall. Swaine says Campanella was the New England League MVP in 1946. Other sources say he was the team MVP. There doesn’t seem to have been a league MVP, but my guess is that Mo Mazalli’s 19 HRs and .356 BA for Manchester would have trumped any other player in the league. Swaine goes on to promote Campanella to MVP of the International League the following year, displacing the winner according to all other sources, Hank Sauer (50 HR, 144 RBIs, etc.). B-Ref shows Campy with 13 HRs in 1946, Swaine Gives him 14, plus 96 RBIs, although there seems to be no record of either runs scored or driven in for the league.
My point is that this kind of invention, exaggeration, and fantasizing in the SABR biographies may make people feel better, it may reinforce legends, it may seem to right some injustices, but all it does for me is to make me question the veracity of the rest of the biographer’s comments. If Swaine is such a hero worshipper of his subject that he can’t get the IL 1947 MVP story right, how can we trust his reports of Campy’s Negro League career? Did he see “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence” at an impressionable age, and took up the idea that you print the legend, not the fact?
All other issues aside, one thing that caught my eye looking at Campy’s 1946 numbers with Nashua is that Walter Alston was not just his manager there but also his teammate. Alston was at the tail end of his long playing career in the minors but had already been managing in the Dodgers system for a few years.
1939. Age 19. Campanella was a catcher and put up the 4th best OPS in the negro leagues according to surviving records bbref includes. The three guys ahead of him are all in the hall of fame. He spent the 1940s playing wherever he could and it’s hard to say more than that.
He lead the league in CS% ages 26-30. I THINK he had the defensive chops to contribute a little before that, don’t you?
I think Campanella was a major leaguer at age 19. He missed 7 productive seasons and it’s hard to not agree that he was one of the best defensive catchers in the history of baseball.
Craig Biggio, Kenny Lofton, Eddie Murray
Alomar, Boudreau, Killebrew
birtelcom – the spreadsheet for the current COG membership needs some updating. Pee Wee isn’t on there yet. Not trying to be critical – just something I noticed.
Thanks for the reminder, I’d forgotten to take care of that. I suppose I’m guilty of Reese discrimination. Must rectify that sort of thing promptly.
Kenny Lofton, Whitey Ford, Lou Boudreau
We cannot reduce Lou Boudreau to his stats, because the story is too good.
Player manager at age 24.
That is so mind boggling that it is perhaps easy to gloss over.
The man was the manager of a baseball team from ages 24-34.
While being arguably the best shortstop on the planet at the time.
The modern version of that would be if in 2000, the Mariners fired that grouchy old bastard Lou Pinella and instead lured Alex Rodriguez away from free agency by giving him the job.
So, when Boudreau was 29, Larry Doby joins the team.
Mr. Doby and Cleveland get overlooked in all the 42 hoopla.
The heartland was a different nut to crack than Brooklyn.
And the following year, at age 30, Boudreau has one of the greatest alltime shortstop seasons, and the Naps (Shufflefoots) win it all.
Boudreau in 1948, Speaker in 1920.
That’s about as much as you can accomplish in a baseball year.
(love their parallel SO/BB rates: 98/9 – 97/13)
@130/VZ;
I’d probably choose Boudreau/1948 over Speaker/1920. Boudreau was clearly the AL MVP, while Speaker would’ve finished behind Ruth and probably Sisler,in a group with Bagby and Coveleski of the top Indians players (that is, if there _were_ an MVP vote/award in 1920…). Fred Clark/1909 and Frank Chance/1907 also get an honorable mention.
I didn’t realize that Boudreau also had the ridiculously low K total in 1948 – is he the only player besides Tommy Holmes in 1945 (28 HR) to have that many HR with ‘K’s in single digits? Yogi came close in 1950 with 28 HR/ 12 K.
Vote:
Lou Boudreau
Kevin Brown
Kenny Lofton
Boudreau, Brown, Alomar
Ford, Killer and Boudreau. And allow me a little space. My son took me to Yankee Stadium today, There was a threat of rain, but it didn’t. It was supposed to be really hot, but it wasn’t. We rode up on a crammed subway with a bunch of very cheery Royals fans (although there seemed to be a little dispute over which college football team to root for.) swapping stories. We had great seats, field level behind first base, but back enough to be shaded. The game started badly with the injury to Danny Duffy, but there were several excellent fielding plays, some clutch hitting, the fans standing each time Jeter came to bat, and RBI single from a pinch-hitting Ichiro (which caused the three Japanese sitting behind me to go nuts and wave the flag of the rising sun. Gutty performance by Brandon McCarthy, who gave up several BB’s, but they were tracked down, and made good pitches when he had to. Nice job by 21 year old Brandon Finnegan, who threw two perfect innings for KC in his major league debut. Happy crowd joining in singing God Bless America in the seventh inning stretch. Multiple announcements of birthdays, anniversaries, and a marriage proposal (renew vows type.) My son, who’s never been a baseball fan, wanting to stay until the end. Watching the last few weeks of Jeter, seeing what everyone else sees, a seriously diminished player, but a focal point for respect. The hugeness of Betances. The talents of some of the younger KC players. A beer vendor handing a free one to an attractive woman in front of us. The grounds-crew doing the silly WMCA thing. The special pleasure of a Yankee game without the play by play of John Sterling. Elsbury’s athleticism. Little kids with mitts, and a very happy baby boy in a Jeter jersey. I’m sure these scenes play out wherever there is baseball played, and remind me of the tremendous emotional hold the game has on so many of us.
Good stuff, Mike L. I kinda got all goose-bumpy, but I’m an emotional sort.
Somehow this Marlins-Braves game on DVR with 1400 people in the stands isn’t quite having the same effect. 🙂
Nothing beats a live MLB game. Thanks for sharing, Mike.
Really nice story Mike but don’t you mean “the silly YMCA thing”?
I do mean YMCA. Interesting Freudian slip, though. WMCA actually broadcast New York (Baseball) Giants games, then top 40, later broadcast Yankee games, had the young and noisy John Sterling as a talk show host. Now it’s a religious-themed station.
Killebrew, Gordon, Eckersley.
Kevin Brown, Roberto Alomar, Eddie Murray
Lofton, Biggio, and Killebrew
Roberto Alomar, Kevin Brown, Craig Biggio
Four candidates now within a single vote, and three more just two votes behind that group.
For everyone’s edification:
14 – Kevin Brown
13 – Roy Campanella, Harmon Killebrew, Kenny Lofton
11 – Craig Biggio, Lou Boudreau, Whitey Ford
10 – Roberto Alomar, Joe Gordon
9 – Dennis Eckersley
8 – Eddie Murray
5 – Minnie Minoso
1 – Dizzy Trout
I’m changing my vote to Boudreau, Brown, Gordon
All the following stats are for second baseman only:
– Joe Gordon has 150 Rbat and 150 Rfield (rounding to nearest integer).He is the ONLY second baseman with at least 150 runs above average in both those categories. Only three others have even 100 Rbat and Rfield (Frisch, Randolph, Utley).
– Gordon has 264 doubles, 52 triples and 253 homers. Others with 250 doubles, 50 triples and 250 homers: Hornsby, Morgan, Sandberg and Biggio. Dropping the requirements to 230, 30, 230 brings in Whitaker and Kent.
– Gordon had seven 20+ homer seasons. Only Biggio (8) and Kent (12) have more.
– Gordon hit home runs in four different World Series, a record for second baseman. His 4 WS homers are tied for third best for the position (thanks Raphy! – http://www.baseball-reference.com/blog/archives/3186 – Utley would hit two more homers after that post was written).
None of the other retired players I’ve named here had fewer than 9000 PAs. Gordon had 6537.
Ford, Minoso, Murray
CBiggio
MMinoso
HKillebrew
Lofton, Boudreau, Minoso
Assuming everybody else has been counted, Hub Kid’s vote creates a three-way tie with Lofton (14 votes), Killebrew (14 votes), and KBrown (14 votes).
Briefly, an hour-and-a-quarter after your post, there was a FOUR-way tie, including Campy. Now, Campy is back on the outs, and we’ve returned to a “boring” three-way tie.
Whitey, Kenny, campy
Lofton, Brown, Gordon
Killebrew, Alomar, Miñoso.
Kevin Brown, Eddie Murray, Harmon Killebrew for me.
Alomae, Minoso and Killebrew
Lofton, Gordon, Killebrew.
I’m not sure Killebrew belongs, but a vote for The Killer is a vote against Kevin Brown.
VOTE CHANGE:
I’ve read, and re-read, the arguments for and against Boudreau and Killebrew. I’m still not sold on Boudreau belonging, but I am convinced he’s a better candidate than Killebrew.
Changing from Lofton, Gordon, Killebrew to:
Lofton, Gordon, Boudreau
Still four days to go and 10-20 ballots, but the results so far are crazy:
18 – Harmon Killebrew
17 – Kenny Lofton
16 – Kevin Brown
14 – Roy Campanella
13 – Whitey Ford, Joe Gordon
12 – Craig Biggio, Lou Boudreau
11 – Roberto Alomar
10 – Minnie Minoso, Eddie Murray
9 – Dennis Eckersley
1 – Dizzy Trout
Facts, with old-school-baseball-card-style ellipses separating them from one another.
Everyone’s safe, and earlier than usual… This is the most support Minnie Minoso has gotten since his first round on the ballot… Harmon Killebrew has tied his personal high for votes (last round)… The last player to debut on the ballot with more votes than Gordon’s current 13 was Boudreau with 15 in 1917.
Gordon has a shot at 20 votes without being elected. The last time that happened to a first-timer was Eddie Mathews (42 votes lost to Mantle’s 57). Whitey Ford had 19 in his debut round, and was topped by Lou Whitaker’s 26.
@177;
“…the results so far are crazy…”
Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together… mass hysteria!
I know that I’ve engaged in all of the above since first saw them; are you saying you haven’t?
Killer, Steady Eddie, Minnie
All this sudden love for Killebrew is strange, and it may just be that he is the benefactor of being the third choice on lots of ballots where other players are really preferred. In any case Killebrew being chosen for a positive award ahead of Lofton, Brown, Campanella, Ford, Boudreau Murray, or Eckersley (just barely) strikes me as a jest of the gods. He was a one-dimensional player and a liability in the field and on the basepaths, not just a mediocrity, the first three tedious outcomes player to have a long career.
Disclosure: One summer while I was playing league ball the webbing of my beloved Mickey Mantle glove ripped loose while my brother and I were playing burn-out the morning before a game. I was the only lefty on the team, so I couldn’t count on borrowing a glove. A race to the local sporting goods store ensued, where the only decent left-handed fielder’s mitt available was branded “Harmon Killebrew.” I still have it. Darn good glove. Wish it were true of Harmon.
@180/nsb;
Nothing strange about it; when there is no obvious COG candidate, the votes got spread out amongst a number of players. Killebrew has been on the ballot quite a while, and has built up a constituency of supporters, including me.
I think a one-dimensional player can still be better than an all-around player, if he is considerably better at that one dimension. Willie Mays was certainly a better all-around player than Babe Ruth, but many people take Ruth over Mays (not that Mays wasn’t a great, great hitter; Ruth’s dominance over Mays at offensive value is just too great).
Killer:
11th in Homeruns
67th in Xtra Base Hits
That’s pretty one dimensional, alright.
65 percent of his extra base hits were homeruns.
_______
Players with less than 1.6 Extra Base Hits per Home Run
Minimum 10 XBH:
887/573 … Killebrew
841/583 … Mark McGwire
707/442 … Dave Kingman
279/176 … Ron Kittle
194/123 … Ken Phelps
105/67 …. Johnny Blanchard
62/39 ….. Frank Fernandez
53/35 ….. Earl Wilson
31/20 ….. Kevin Robertson
29/20 ….. George Springer (active)
28/18 ….. Norm Sherry
28/21 ….. Jack Harshman
18/12 ….. Mike Olt (active)
14/9 …… Dave Staton
14/9 …… Jim Breazeale
12/9 …… Zach Walters (active)
12/8 …… Greg Perkl
11/10 ….. Luis Medina
I’d take Jay Buhner.
Can you really be one-dimensional if you’re 11th all-time in HR and 15th in walks?
Killer’s OBP (.376) was 45 points higher than what an average ballplayer would have done in his ballparks (.331).
143 OPS+. That’s 43 points above 100. 15 points for OBP, 28 for SLG. That’s two dimensions.
We’ve almost got every position naturally covered with this ballot.
Alomar gets a bit more pasture to roam:
1. CF … Lofton
2. SS … Boudreau
3. 2B … Joe Gordon
4. C …. Campanella
5. 3B … Killebrew
6. 1B … Eddie Murray
7. LF … Minoso
8. RF … Alomar
9. P …. Kevin Brown
Whitey Ford … Long Man
Eckersley ….. Closer
Craig Biggio .. Utility
And I agree with #180.
Killebrew is only 5th in my imaginary lineup due to my effort to make it look “traditional”. Sluggers in the middle.
My actual lineup would have him 8th.
Why would you bat Killer 5th? His OBP is solid, and he’s got the best bat of anyone on the list. He should be batting either 2nd or 4th by modern sabermetric analysis, and 4th by traditional standards. I like Lofton ok for leadoff even though he’s the weakest bat of the bunch due to his high OBP and great speed.
After Killer, Minoso, Murray, Alomar and Campy are the next best bats. Alomar also has good speed and high OBP so he’s a natural #2. That puts Murray at 3 and Minoso 5 and Campanella at 6. Gordon 7 and Boudreau 8.
Great Lineup — when Kenny Lofton is your weakest batter (except the pitcher), you’re going to score a lot of runs. I could also easily be convinced to put Lofton at 8, give Alomar the leadoff spot, and bat Gordon at #2 and bump Boudreau one.
Please change my vote from:
Alomar, Campanella, Gordon
to:
Campanella, Gordon, Lofton
I’d rather see Lofton win than Killebrew, although I don’t have a major objection to Killebrew. More to the point, I’m a card-carrying member of the ABB (Anybody But Brown) faction, so I’m giving another vote to someone who I think belongs, and who stands a fair chance of beating him.
Killebrew, Murray, Alomar
mosc @165: I do appreciate your attempt to better explain your position. Unfortunately, your fleshing-out of your point reveals a method still fraught with inconsistencies, rampant cherry-picking, and a generally poor lack of reason.
I think most of us have stayed away from the “slice-and-dice” method of cutting away at an opposing opinion’s comments, a strategy ubiquitous on internet forums everywhere. But, throwing aside civility for a few moments, I’m going to do that this time simply to point out how many errors in judgment you’re making.
-“He was a 4 WAR player in 41 and 42 and a 4 WAR player in 46 and 47.”
This is a good example of cherry-picking to bolster your argument. Boudreau was better in 1940 than 1941 or 1942, and of course he had his ethereal career-year in 1948. From a mile away, it’s easy to see you’ve conveniently cherry-picked only two years before/after the war to avoid having to deal with Boudreau’s better production in 1941 and 1948. It’s just too obvious, mosc.
I feel like I’ve printed this three or four times now, but once again:
Boudreau 1940-42: 14.9 WAR. Lou was a 5-win player.
Boudreau 1943-45: 19.8 WAR. Adjusted by 10%, that’s 18 WAR. Lou was a 6-win player.
Boudreau 1946-48: 22.0 WAR. Keeping it simple, Lou was a 7-win player.
5 wins from from ages 22-24, 6 wins from 25-27, 7 from 28-30. There is nothing about this progression of production that is remotely Stirnwiessian. This is not a picture of an average ballplayer who greatly benefited from the war, it’s simply a natural progression from very good player in his early 20’s to great player in his late 20’s. Let’s move on.
-“I’m betting he’s a 4 WAR player in the war years, not 7.9.”
Let’s hope that’s Monopoly money you’re betting with, because at no point of his prime was Lou Boudreau merely a 4 WAR player. Also, you cherry-picked the highest value of Boudreau’s three wartime years as a representation of his average production over those three years. Again: just too obvious. You’re better than this.
-“You want to look at ‘only achieved’ numbers for Gordon, compare them against Boudreau with his war years stripped. You want to compensate gordon, you STILL have to doc Boudreau because his performance those years was abnormally high by his own standard.”
Who are you replying to here, Dr. Doom @118 or me? Neither of us are advocating to look at “only achieved” years for Gordon, and both of us have said (I’ve done it repeatedly) we would dock Boudreau’s production. So these two sentences of yours are a reply to a strawman; literally no one has suggested what you’re arguing against.
-“Exactly consistent method that tosses depleted league stats and fills them in equally for both guys.”
mosc, we simply cannot “toss” actual stats for a player and replace them with estimations and hope to remain objective. But, as I’ve said before, even if we do that our opinion of Boudreau remains unchanged.
estimated Boudreau 43-’45: 18.5 WAR (5 WAR three years before, 7.3 three years after)
adjusted Boudreau 1943-45: 17.8 WAR (90% of 19.8 WAR)*
Virtually identical. No wartime bonus, none. In fact, using an estimation (why would we do this when the guy actually played?) gives Boudreau a touch MORE credit.
*This study has been linked to at least three times. When it comes to estimating wartime production, I’m going to trust the numbers-based study of a SABR pioneer (Clay Davenport) who’s actually worked in MLB over what amounts to shot-in-the-dark guessing.
At the end, I suspect your Boudreau-bashing is rooted in your passion for NYC baseball. I respect anyone who votes for players from their favorite teams, but turning that zealousness against other players who didn’t wear pinstripes or Dodger blue is kind of going off the rails from an objectivity standpoint. I think by any reasonable standard this has devolved into a smear campaign.
Well I must say this post upset me. I enjoy the discussion here and I certainly never intended to troll someone into a post like this. Comments about the relative value of various athletic accomplishments many of which are long passed do not seem worth accusations of a vendetta, personal bias, and disruptive content.
Anyway, I don’t think we really disagree that much. Your correction is 90%, mine is not that different. As discussed, it’s mostly an RBAT issue. 90% is a good general gauge when you’re talking about an average bat player but when you’re talking about one of the best hitters of the war era (43 to 45) the correction is a little larger (not a ton, but a little). Tommy Holmes put up 3x the RBAT in 1945 than he would the next year as pitchers returned, or at any point before 43 or after 45 yet from a WAA perspective, 90% works quite well because he was not a premiere defender at a premiere position. Boudreau’s added RBAT goes straight to WAA since at an average bat level, he’s already a productive major leaguer.
My adjustment is not purposely created to screw over Boudreau, just as a rough idea that can be applied to several of these guys (Gordon, Reese, Slaughter, etc). I didn’t mean to overly penalize him, I meant to answer the question of “boosting one while penalizing the other inconsistently”. I consistently applied a method to both. The method is inherently flawed like all methods but hardly a meticulously created attempt to screw over one or the other.
To me, I feel more comfortable tossing 43-45 and looking at Reese, Gordon, and Boudreau through that lens. It doesn’t tell you much about the three compared to say Biggio but it’s consistent as well.
My unbelievable bias leads me to Boudreau as a weaker candidate than Gordon, but not close to the weakest candidate on this ballot or a guy beyond consideration. I also have a personal bias against extreme outfield RFIELD variations and negro league accomplishments not being recognized. I have boudreau higher in WAA than almost everyone on this ballot save Gordon who I view as only slightly better than this very evenly matched pack of players. I don’t think that’s so extreme as to warrant this type of talk.
Boudreau’s WAA in 43 to 45 came 26 runs from position, 31 from defense, 75 from the bat, and 50 from replacement level. I’d probably lob 45 off of the bat, if I was being as harsh as I think you could stretch my comments into being, which equates to a 75% rule rather than a 90% rule. Sheesh.
Agreed — everybody back to their corners for a deep breath. Things have gotten a little less dispassionate and a little more ad hominem than we do here at HHS. Partly my fault for throwing around the “cherry-picking” phrase in an earlier response to you mosc — it’s a phrase with overly accusatory connotations, and I should have avoided it. Withdrawn.
You know it’s a very interesting subject when it comes to prediction how many years you look at and how you weight those years. If you’re a general manager in 1943 with no war going on and the full bevy of modern knowledge and statistical accumulation at your fingertips, how would YOU predict Boudreau’s performance? Would you look at just 1942? factor in his age? Include 41 at the same weight as 42 or less? How much, if any, would you factor in 1940?
This comes up to me because I screw around with player ability scores in MLB: the show based on what I feel is a more appropriate expectation. I go with a stat that is 1/7th 3 years ago, 2/7th 2 years ago, and 4/7th last year as sort of a base and then factor in age on a bell curve from there. My bell curve I try to adjust for “talent” level, lower talent guys tend to have much lower and earlier curves. It never works worth a damn because you have injuries and guys moving in and out of starting lineups all the time but it does bring up roughly how relevant I think, in a general context, recent years are to expected performance.
In this context, we have data on either side of the war from these players. They played both before and after so that’s a pretty nice window. 4/7ths, 2/7ths, and 1/7th on either side is pretty messy to calculate but I think averaging the most recent two years before and after gets you pretty close to it.
For Boudreau, because that is the crux of this, using 4/2/1 on either side of 43-45 gives 5.34 WAR and 3.54 WAA. That’s pretty damn close to 5.15 WAR and 3.325 WAA I used to come up with the 37.5 WAA+ I listed. It’s about a half a WAA low.
OK, 4/2/1 is one way. I’ve always heard 5/4/3, at least for projections, and something like +0.5 WAR if you’re under age 27 and -0.5 if you’re over 27 for projecting the upcoming year. I don’t think you gave Boudreau the +0.5 WAR increase every year, since he was under 27. We would have expected him to get better up to his peak, which he slowly did.
I don’t really think this is a straight-up projection, though. We have data before AND after the 3-yr period in question, so a typical weighting used for projecting may not be as effective as just taking the average of the three-year periods and dividing that by 2. One of the studies I looked at called this the “shoulder method”. I had estimated I think 40 WAA using that; I can’t remember.
But, really, it doesn’t matter, because:
1. Boudreau actually played those years
2. see rule #1
And, luckily, with 10% off his actual production, it’s a moot point anyway because his adjusted production is so similar to what we would have estimated.
I can’t really understand why you’ve taken the extreme viewpoints on Boudreau you’ve taken if you actually think his WAA only needs to go down to 38.
I can live with it, but it sure seems to me that there are better ways to support those you favor than continually casting a great player in a negative light.
BTW, every position player we’ve encountered so far with 38 WAA is already in the Circle of Greats except for Lofton, and his chances seem brighter than a couple of months ago.
mosc: thanks for your calm, reasoned response. The fact that it upset you is not something I am proud of; in fact, I feel terrible. I am not a person who revels in causing others to feel bad. I had a knot in my stomach last night realizing what I had done. I just get carried away, caring way too much about this stuff, but this has been bubbling inside me for almost a month now.
The final straw was your comment @165, which I feel was directed at me personally. There was also a snide comment @32. Since I provided a link titled, “Wartime Baseball: Not That Bad”, or whatever, I feel that the last sentence of that post was also personally directed at me. These two comments pushed me past the breaking point. You are not blameless here. I think you can even admit that some of your comments are constructed at least partially to elicit a response.
I can’t understand why you compared Boudreau to Enos Slaughter earlier but now you’re saying Lou’s one of the better candidates on the ballot. Those are two vastly different positions. Frankly, it’s a big 180 from your earlier stand. So maybe my comment, despite its poor tone, helped finally give us your actual opinion about Boudreau, which really seems at odds with everything you’ve said about Lou up to this point.
So the overall tone of what I said was bad, and I will learn from it. I AM genuinely sorry that I went too far. But I wonder if the majority of the content wasn’t some sort of necessary evil here. Despite the poor tone, some things just needed to be said.
Also, the NY thing is hard to deal with in this era. You have a huge variation between good and bad teams before the modern draft and NY had 3 of what were routinely the best out of a MUCH smaller 16 team league. NY paid nearly 20% of the players in the league, far higher percentage if you included the minors, and if you include players that stopped by one of those three teams at some point or another the percentage is daunting.
Pulling a number out of the air here but I’d wager in the 16-team WWII era until expansion that about 50% of the players who had a 5WAR season at one point or another played for a NY team. New York WAS the center of baseball. When I say how much better I think Johnny Mize was than, say Eddy Murray and Harmon Killebrew am I showing a NY bias or a St. Louis bias? It’s not like I haven’t campaigned for Smoltz, Gwynn, Santo, and Biggio through these rounds either none of which ever played in NY. I also tried to vote against Mussina.
Toxic.
I usually wait to vote to hear what others are saying, and I wish I had this time, with all the discussion over Joe Gordon vs. Boudreau. But, for those of us who are Ford voters and think that WAR unfairly penalizes him, I noticed something interesting about Allie Reynolds, who was traded to the Yankees from the Indians for Gordon. In 1952, over 244 IP, Reynolds was 20-8, led the league with a 2.06 ERA and 161 ERA+, also led in strikeouts and shutouts, and finished 2nd in MVP voting. Also 6th in WHIP, 3rd in H/IP, 5th in k/BB, 4th in re24, 2nd in WPA, and he even added 6 saves (4th!), All for the grand total of 4.8 bWAR. He finished 6th among AL pitchers in WAR, behind, among others, Bob Porterfield,(5.3) who’s ERA was .66 higher, ERA+ 30 lower, and trailed Reynolds in virtually every other category. Yes, I know WAR is Occam’s Razor for everything, but…
The largest component on which WAR moves Porterfield ’52 compared to Reynolds ’52 is their respective team defenses. Reynolds was, as WAR sees it, pitching with by far the best team defense in the league behind him, while Porterfield was pitching with the league’s second worst. WAR figures that difference was worth about half a run in RA or ERA of an advantage for Reynolds. Then there is another .1 or .2 or RA/ERA of advantage for Reynolds in getting to pitch against Washington for about a sixth of his starts while Porterfield had to pitch against the Yankees for that sixth. All in all, WAR figures an average pitcher in Porterfield’s circumstances would have allowed 4.3 runs per 9 IP, while a pitcher in Reynolds’ circumstances would have allowed 3.52. Thus Porterfield’s (small) lead over Reynolds in pitcher WAR that season.
I appreciate the analysis, Birtelcom. There’s an article by Dave Cameron on Fangraphs that acknowledges some of the shortcomings of WAR, including on the defense side, and asks for suggestions for improvements. You can find it at http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/a-discussion-about-improving-war/
I’m not denying WAR’s usefulness. I just don’t see it as a perfect product. For me, at least, it can’t be both the starting and ending point. If it were, there would be nothing to talk about on COG.
Tango, in a nice article, talks about just this debate. Posted yesterday:
http://tangotiger.com/index.php/site/article/you-make-me-laugh-but-be-funnier-still
Dr. Doom:
Read the “nice” article by Tango, didn’t find anything nice about it, although I think part of that was the fact that he seemed to be making a reply, not starting off fresh.
At any rate, all that came through to me was the exquisite humility of the true believer as he tells the sinful wayward that they should simply shut up and suck it up. He also seems to be lost in false dichotomy land, where those who ain’t for us are agin us.
Lots of us think WAR is a useful evaluating tool—except for fWAR— without believing that we should abandon the use of our own brains in exploring both a wider and a narrower view of looking at performance. Example of wider view: looking at a player’s whole package—how did he run, hit, field, and throw throughout his career—how many tools did he bring to the game? Example of narrower view: checking out a player’s home/road stats in a particular year, or first half/second half stats. There are other factors, too, that come into play that can’t be quantified: the pressure J. Robinson was under in 1947; the appendix problem S. Musial suffered that same year; etc.
What is the driving force of sabremetricians to work it all out to the last decimal place anyway? There’s an interesting story by Nathaniel Hawthorne called “The Birthmark.” I recommend it as a “nice” take on the subject.
True, Tango is always “replying,” because his site is basically just an ongoing saga.
I think you may have missed some of the points he was making. He was saying that there’s no purpose in complaining about something that’s not perfect.
I would agree with you 100% that we shouldn’t abandon our own brains or looking at the minutiae of player performance. The point I want to make, I guess, is that “WAR’s not perfect, therefore I won’t use it” is poor reasoning – NO statistic is perfect. And the point that Tango regularly makes is that we ALL create our own “one number” at some point or another if we’re ranking players (which this exercise necessitates). Therefore, it’s good to have a guide like WAR.
I don’t see a point to looking for “the last decimal point” as you call it. But the problem is that MANY people will complain about WAR unless it DOES find “the last decimal point.” So you have people unhappy with WAR on both ends – those who think that the obsession with properly weighting the smallest of things is pointless, and the people on the other side who refuse to accept something that has ANY level of uncertainty.
Indeed, my own explanation of how WAR ends up with Porterfield ’52 (slightly) ahead of Reynolds ’52 was purely a surface-level explanation of how the mechanics of WAR applied in this case, and is not intended as an endorsement of the result. Intuitively it seems correct that Porterfield should be adjusted upward from his raw stats if he was working with a worse defense and was facing a tougher set of opponents, and from that point of view the Porterfield/Reynolds result seems to be the result of intuitively correct concepts. But precisely how those adjustments are made in practice and the extent to which they are being accurately calculated is a whole separate question. Fangraphs, for example, gives Reynolds more 1952 WAR than Porterfield.
Just an interesting point: Washington finished 78-76 that year. Porterfield finished 13-14, or 14-17 in games in which he started. The following year Porterfield finished with his non-WAR career year at 22-10, while the team finished at 76-76. He pitched 9 shutouts. But his WAR was 1.3 lower.
I know that the Yankees could have had a rotation of Harpo, Chico, Groucho, Zeppo, and Gummo in 1952 and still won the pennant. They would have done even better with Larry, Moe, Curly, Stan, and Ollie on the mound. I’d like to give up and just tell Mike L to assume the lotus position and chant the mantra, Om-WAR, Om-WAR, Om-WAR until he achieves a state approaching nothingness.
But I can’t.
A more interesting point: in 1952, Washington scored 2.76 runs per start for Porterfield. They were shut out in 7 of his 29 starts (24%). The following year, he received 5.18 runs per start, and Washington was only shut out in one of his 34 starts (3%).
I’m going to go out on a limb and say that’s why his record improved from 13-14 to 22-10, regardless of what his WAR was. Just a hunch….
It’s my impression that pitching WAR has nothing to do with a W-L record. In 1937 Lou Fette of the Braves had a 20-10 W-L record and a WAR of 3.9. Eddie Smith of the A’s had a W-L record of 4-17 and had the same WAR, 3.9. Pitching WAR is based mainly on runs allowed, runs scored by the pitcher’s opposition, team defense and park factors.
Part of the issue about WAR for Yankees pitchers in the 50s is that Yankee Stadium was an extreme pitcher’s park. In 1952, the PPF for Yankee Stadium was 90, which makes Yankee Stadium more of a pitcher’s park than Dodger Stadium ever was in the 60s. Yankees pitchers tend to have a very low PPFp as a result–Reynolds has a PPFp of 93 in 1952, while Porterfield’s was 97.4 (PPFp is park factor weighted for a particular pitcher).
Yankees pitchers in the 50s had three effects on their WAR:
(a) an extreme pitcher’s park
(b) a very good defence
(c) a manager (Stengal, especially in the later 50s) who seems to have platooned his pitchers by stadium.
As for point (c), Ford, for example, in 1958, did not pitch at all in either Fenway Park or Tigers Stadium, which certainly helped his league-leading 177 ERA+. Stengal rarely started Ford in either Fenway Park (5 starts under Stengal) or Tigers Stadium (10 starts under Ford).
Nice post –bill. You did leave off one important factors. Yankees pitchers never had to face the Yankee offense, which was year-in an year-out, the best in the AL. In a league with only 8 teams, that can have a large impact.
bill, actually the HOME park factor for Yankee Stadium in 1952 was more like 82. The 90 you’re quoting is an average park factor for all Yankee games, home and road.
You can get the exact park factor for any stadium by finding a cup-of-coffee pitcher whose only appearances were in that park.
We got lucky. Art Shallock. Two appearances, both in Yankee Stadium. His PPF was 82 for 1952.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/s/schalar01.shtml
Correction: 82 is the multi-year park factor for 1952 Yankee Stadium, not for 1952 alone. Multi-year park factors are used in WAR calculations.
So I don’t think when people have a problem with these stats that they’re saying the total yankee WAR is too low, or the total yankee defense (pitching included) is too low. I think they’re mostly just not agreeing with the split between pitching and defense. Yes, the yankees defense was pretty good but maybe their combined RFIELD is a little exaggerated? If that’s true, the pitchers they played behind are the ones they took the credit from. I think we can all hopefully see where the numbers are coming from but I think the larger question is do you think it’s reasonable that so much value is being given to the defenders and not the pitchers?
I wouldn’t say that the Yankee total WAR was too low, I would say that the ratio of position player WAR to pitcher WAR was unusual. The 52 Yankees were 95-59, which matched their pythag. Total batting WAR was 38.3, and pitching WAR was 6.2. Cameron talks about a target of 57% position player value, and 43% pitcher value. the 52 yankees are way out of whack. The type of team that most resembled this sort of putatively ‘ok’ pitching and a great lineup was the the Big Red Machine, The 75 Reds had 40.6 hitter WAR and 11.4 pitcher WAR. 76 Reds were 43.7/10.2. By contrast, the 1970 Orioles had a 37.1/19.8 ratio. The 1936 Yankees, a real powerhouse team, had a similar ratio: 37.2/18, and that 2/1 ratio was mirrored by high successful Yankee teams through the 30’s. Would love to see a study of the ratio of the top performing teams.
The ’52 Indians, who finished second to the Yankees, had a similar split with 32.7 hitting WAR and 8.9 pitching WAR. Other teams showed a skew in favor of pitching WAR. And others were near the 57/43 expected split.
Obviously, the 57/43 split that Cameron mentioned applies to the league as a whole. You can’t really expect it to apply to every single team in the league.
Mike L, this just highlights that the strength of both the ’50s Yanks and the Big Red Machine was their position players and not their pitchers. It doesn’t mean WAR is treating them wrongly.
Finding a large disparity between hitter and pitcher WAR from a team whose strength lies in their everyday lineup is a normal thing.
DavidP is right: the 57/43 split has nothing to do with individual teams.
Bstar and David, I think we are going to have to disagree. I’m not on some defend-the-Yankees crusade. Nor am I suggesting that every team should have the 57/43 breakdown. But, to hone in on those 1952 Yankees again, what WAR does, both to Reynolds and to the Yankees as a whole, and reflects itself in Ford’s lifetime WAR, is to seriously rejigger traditional stats. The 1952 Yankees had the 2nd lowest RA/9 in all of MLB, and the second lowest team ERA. They also had the fewest hits, and in a series of other counting/ratios they are near the top. All for the very low price of only 6.2 WAR. Even the 1976 Reds pitchers have more, and their stats are closer to league average. I’ll buy that the Yankees are better than the average bear in the 1950’s. I find this to be anomaly. I’m obviously not convincing people that WAR could be anything less than 100% perfect 100 % of the time, but, if you want to see a demonstration of why more traditional viewers scratch their heads at WAR-worship, the radical adjustments made to Yankee pitcher stats in the 50’s, which seem to deviate so much from success on the field and in traditional stats, would be a very good example.
I just got a lot clearer on why this doesn’t work the way you think this does, but I think you’ll be better off letting Tango explain it. This thread from just today tells why it is that the numbers just don’t add like that: regressing the fielding is probably going to some value to the offense of position players as well as to the pitchers, after everything is recalculated and settles down.
Here’s the thread, and pay special attention to Tango’s comments #17 and #21:
http://tangotiger.com/index.php/site/comments/improving-war-by-admitting-things-we-dont-know-into-its-own-bucket#comments
Finally Nathaniel Dawson at 24 in the same thread, addresses what you want to do directly. If you put everything on the pitchers, then it doesn’t just affect Whitey Ford, it affects every pitcher who played in front of very good or very bad defenses. Suddenly Jim Palmer looks like an inner-circle guy. Heck, if you squint real hard, you might even get Catfish to look like a HOFer. And that Blylevelen guy was overrated by WAR, as is Reuschel — he never looked like a hall of famer anyway did he.
So the fact is, doing this will probably make a lot of pitchers look more like they were evaluated by traditionalists, at the expense of fouling up pretty well founded relationships between the value of offense vs. pitching.
That kind of adjustment doesn’t pass the sniff test for me. Traditionalists liking pitchers who played in front a great defenses in pitcher’s parks better than similar pitchers who played in front of terrible defenses in hitter’s parks is much more easily and satisfactorily explained by the fact that they watched the latter pitchers give up more hits and runs, and didn’t think much further than that.
If you made an adjustment that popped up *different* pitchers as HOF worthy, that neither current WAR, nor traditionalists would have chosen, and where a closer look reveals real value, I’d think you were more likely to be on to something.
Brilliant!
Basically, if we regress team defense, we’re trading accuracy for easier digestibility of defensive numbers. How is that scientific?
Also, a reminder that fielding numbers from the ’50s are heavily regressed. If this same Yanks team played during the 2000s, their defensive run saved totals would almost certainly be even higher. We’re already getting a regressed estimate of the value of their D!
RFIELD just has too much variation, that’s the issue. The 1952 yankees accumulated 6.4 DWAR while their pitching staff was at -3.5 WAAP. Together they are 3 wins better than average on defense but the question of if that is allocated correctly remains. Those player’s RFIELD being so high in front of such poor pitchers is hard to justify.
Would it be possible to put together a historical perspective on this? Teams that had such a large variance (~10 WAA) between their team DWAR and their team WAAP?
I’m going to work on this question @262 in the most recent thread.
Whitey Ford, Joe Gordon, Minnie Minoso
I’m running out of guys i’m interested in voting for, they all either make it or drop off the ballot. Maybe my taste is flawed.
Whitey Ford, Roberto Alomar and Dennis Eckersley.
Lofton, Biggio, Campy
Lofton for the win, Gordon and Alomar for an extra year.
Killebrew, Boudreau, and Eckersley.
FTW:
– Harmon Killebrew
for an extra round:
– Roberto Alomar
– Roy Campanella
All I’m sayin’ is goddang, people really HATE Kevin Brown.
WTF, I know he’s a jerk, but so is Schilling and so are a bunch of other great players. Why does Brown specifically get the “I know his numbers rate it but I just refuse to vote for him anyway” treatment so much more than others? Is it just that he’s just close enough to the borderline that you can kinda squint hard and find a way to justify leaving him out, while leaving out Schilling is just clearly bogus? Or am I missing something he did that was really far over the line?
I’m hoping it’s merely that people believe he’s a borderline candidate and that PEDs cloud the issue. If it’s a character issue, well… we’re going to elect Ty Cobb aren’t we?
Well, but Cobb is an overwhelming candidate, while Brown is a decent candidate but far from a no-brainer.
Which means there’s a level at which a player becomes good enough for us not to hold their racism against them. It’s weird.
(I’m referring to Cobb with that racism comment.)
I would put it as, “there’s a level at which a player becomes good enough that character issues are essentially irrelevant.” Pete Rose was elected on his 3rd appearance on the ballot, for example.
The fact that Cobb’s issues are race-related…well, that has nothing to do with his play on the field, besides which his views were hardly unique for someone of his time & background.
Anyway, to get back to Brown, I couldn’t even articulate why I don’t like the guy – I acknowledge that my feelings about him are fundamentally irrational. If he were farther above the borderline, I’d probably hold my nose & not try to vote against him. But since he’s a good-but-not-great candidate, I’m OK with leaving him out in favor of others who fall within a similar range of value.
Rose tied with Ryan on one of his ballots.
I suspect that Brown’s issues are 3-fold:
1) It’s only advanced metrics that really make him look qualified- without them he looks like Don-Drysdale-lite.
2) He’s linked to steroids in multiple ways: by the Mitchell report, by Canseco, by guilt-by-association, by his career path
3) I think the fact that he’s an ahole is kind of the “final straw”- if you discount his performance at all because of 1 or 2 he becomes at best a marginal candidate where he gets lumped into a group where there are about half a dozen pretty much equally qualified candidates for each spot and if it comes down to who to vote for between someone who is universally known as a nice guy like the Killer or Campanella and someone like Brown it’s human nature to vote for the nice guy.
I know we’ve hashed the PED issue over ad infinitum but I suspect that there are a pretty significant number of people who still view the issue as I do: if I think they were good enough to get in without them like Bonds or Clemens then I’ll vote for them but if it’s questionable then I’m probably not going to.
And as big an ahole as Cobb was, I think we also have to admit that kind of racism was fairly commonplace at the time. I’d be more inclined to hold it against someone like Cap Anson who actually played a fairly significant role in the decision to exclude players by the color of their skin.
Hartvig: I had some other thoughts on the things working against Brown in an old post:
http://www.highheatstats.com/2014/03/circle-of-greats-redemption-round-4/#comment-76379
Nothing “advanced” about these metrics:
Curt Schilling: 216-146, 3261 innings, 3116 Ks, 3.46 ERA
Kevin Brown: 211-144, 3256.1 innings, 2397 Ks, 3.28 ERA
Don Drysdale: 209-166, 3432 innings, 2486 Ks, 2.95 ERA
And, just in case it comes up:
Schilling: 10-2 postseason
Brown: 6-2 postseason
Drysdale: 3-2 postseason
I don’t know that ANY of these is really that distinguishable from another. We elected Schilling, we passed on Drysdale, we’re hovering on Brown. That sounds about right – this is (roughly speaking) our collective pitcher borderline. I don’t know that it’s “just” sabermetrics that make Brown look good; I think his career accomplishments look good because… they DO look good, much like Drysdale and Schilling.
Drysdale would be a legit candidate for us. I wasn’t sure why he dropped off the ballot so fast so I went back and checked. His birth year wasn’t especially stacked with only Killer and Maz receiving votes besides Drysdale, but there were a lot of holdovers on the ballot: 14, 10 of whom have moved on into the circle, and only one, Dick Allen, who has fallen off and is no longer on the ballot.
Drysdale got 6 votes, which was one short of the 10% requirement. In another year where we were trying to keep fewer guys on the ballot.
My thought is that he’s behind Brown (barely) and a couple guys I’d like to see win a redemption round, but he’s about even with Eck, and I have him slightly ahead of Ford, who has plenty of supporters here.
I guess, given that Don is on the borderline — if Brown is Drysdale “lite” then he wouldn’t be in, but that doesn’t seem supported by the numbers, unless you are really looking at pure raw numbers. But if you do that, then Drysdale looks better than a lot of guys in the 90s/00s and 30s who are/were/should-be slam dunks. Doh! That’s why we adjust the numbers.
In any case, maybe there are some who feel that Drysdale really doesn’t belong in this group, and I vaguely remember writing some pompous crap in 1936 about how he falls clearly in the hall but clearly out of the COG and failed to vote for him, thus deciding his fate my own self. But I now expect we may well end up electing a not quite as good pitcher or two before it’s over, because a number of guys I have in ahead of him are getting zero play.
What’s interesting to me is that we’ve had very little discussion re: the merits of Kevin Brown. Instead we discuss his perceived greatness, his PED use, and reasons to hate him.
I do see him as similar to Sandy Koufax who received lots and lots of discussion. Brown had a 5 consecutive year peak that was better than what he did the rest of his career. And he received lots of help from his home parks.
He is an interesting candidate but it seems like people either support him or they don’t.
I’d rather vote for Palmero, Sheffield, and McGuire than Brown. Maybe even Sosa. No, not Sosa that would never happen.
Michael S. – I can’t speak for others but I don’t hate Kevin Brown. I consider him a “maybe” for two reasons:
1) He wasn’t considered great during his time. It was more of an after the fact greatness following the invention of WAR. It’s just hard for me to break that sort of bias and see him in a different way.
2) In some ways, he’s the Larry Walker of pitchers. He has a home RA of 3.23 per 9 innings and a road RA of 4.33 per 9. Meanwhile his park factor is 97.2, which is higher than I would expect, given his home/road split. It makes me wonder if the benefit he received from his home parks is being fully accounted for. (Jim Palmer, as an example, has the exact same park factor and only a .45 RA/9 difference in his home/road splits).
I think most of the backlash started when he got paid.
_______
“Brown was the first player in baseball history to sign a deal worth a cumulative $100 million, when in December 1998, he signed a 7-year, $105 million deal with the Los Angeles Dodgers.
In the two seasons prior to signing the deal, he had built a reputation as one of baseball’s premier clutch pitchers, successively leading the Florida Marlins and the San Diego Padres to unexpected World Series appearances in 1997 and 1998 respectively. “
Interesting. I completely disagree that Brown wasn’t considered a great player in his own day. I remember regularly discussing whether he was in the Maddux-Johnson-Martinez tier, or just below that in the Schilling-Glavine tier. This would’ve been circa 1998-99.
As for your #2, it was a pretty extreme time for runs, to the point that a road RA over 4 in half your starts ain’t bad, and a home one on the 3s is outstanding.
I would say that receiving a 2.1% HOF vote percentage speaks volumes about how great someone was perceived. Particularly when the only other starting pitcher of note on the ballot was Jack Morris.
As for his home/road RA splits, it’s about twice that of Sandy Koufax (with a similar park factor). Koufax gets regularly dinged for taking “unfair” advantage of his home park. Yet no one mentions Brown’s split being much higher.
My only real point was that I considered Brown to have been a great pitcher before the invention of WAR. I stand by that claim. I think quoting his HOF vote % as proof obfuscates the issue a bit, because that came after the Mitchell Report. If Curt Schilling had been on the Mitchell Report, he probably wouldn’t have topped 5%, either, so I’m not sure that proves anything.
Now, as for whether players who take “extra” advantage of their home park deserve an “extra” penalty for doing so, that’s a different discussion that I don’t really feel like having, but it’s something to think about.
Another major difference between the HoF and the CoG is that most of the players we’re electing don’t know about the CoG. I personally believe that the HoF should recognize the greatest players, regardless of their shortcomings in character, but I understand why people don’t want to give Barry Bonds a chance to stand in front of thousands of fans and accept the honor of induction.
After historical perspective and a more sophisticated lens through which to view players’ accomplishments, the CoG’s biggest advantage may be its quest to elect the greatest players, with no character clause.
I don’t personally discount players much for known or suspected steroid use because I don’t know who used, when, and how much it helped, but I can accept the position that Brown is at or just over the borderline only because he got help from PEDs. I see less of a justification for holding his disposition against him, since we don’t have a complete view of the personal lives of all the players we’re considering.
I’m certain that we’ve elected a lot of jerks. I’m almost as certain that those jerks have no idea they were elected. Electing them was consistent with the mission of the project. I’ll keep voting for Kevin Brown until I see three better players on the ballot.
Interesting to be having an extended discussion on Kevin Brown’s negative personal reputation, given that the current leader this round, Harmon Killebrew, was renowned during his career and ever since as one of the nicest guys ever to be a major league baseball star.
Ok, I’ll say it. Hate is too strong of a word for a person I don’t know personally, but I severely dislike the man. I watched him in the early 90’s be an absolute ass to anyone who got within 30 feet of him. He got particularly nasty (and dominating) during 1992-93 right about the time Jose Canseco showed up with his bag of needles. Maybe I’m small minded on this subject, but I can’t separate the ass from the steroids from the dominating pitcher, and I refuse to vote for him.
Well, discussion this round is certainly electric. That’s awesome. If it wasn’t my busiest week of the year, I’d join the fun, but it’s enough to just read, phew.
I’m going to make a vote change. Please change from
Brown, Lofton, Alomar
to
Lofton, Alomar, Gordon
I said in my initial vote that I was voting for Kevin Brown to get him off the ballot. But he’s not going to win this round and seeing the ‘anybody but Brown’ bandwagon going, along with simultaneous support for Killebrew who I don’t think belongs, I think maybe my best bet is to take a vote away from Brown in the hopes that it makes people less likely to defensively vote for Killebrew. Nothing against him personally, but I just rate Lofton much higher than him and would like to see Kenny elected. Perhaps it’s late going to influence things, but I’m all for Lofton this round.
Funny sidenote – the strange reasoning behind my vote change reminded me of the other time I voted in a really weird way, which was my only vote for Killebrew… I voted for him to keep him on the ballot because I was afraid he’d fall off and take a redemption spot from a more deserving candidate the next redemption round. Hmm, makes it seem like I have it out for the guy.
As we have worked our way through the “lower-hanging fruit” choices of accumulated holdovers over 70 rounds, the remaining holdover candidates are inevitably more “gray area” guys. It is interesting that what we seem to be seeing is at that level, there grows a kind of negative-side concern, that certain candidates don’t belong, as opposed to just debating who more belongs.
That may be partly a function of one aspect of both the Hall of Fame and the COG. For both, there are appeal mechanisms for guys who fall off the ballot (veterans committees, redemption rounds), but there is no appeal for those who believe an unworthy candidate has been inducted. Once in, always in. That may create a certain edge to the opposition to a candidacy that doesn’t arise in the same way in support of a candidacy.
In light of that, I’m thinking about whether there should be, at the end of the process of inducting the 115 or so COG members that would match the BBWAA’s number of HOF inductees, a “reconsideration round” to give one last second thought to whether the least popular group of inductees should be replaced by others. We could, for example, have a ballot in which voters vote for the two COG inductees they would most like to see replaced. Then we would have one final redemption vote to pick two candidates to go up against the two reconsideration guys. Then lastly a vote among those four for the ultimate final two spots in the COG. At least that would give those concerned that an unworthy candidate has been inducted a sense that there will be an appeal process for those concerns.
I’ve been thinking about that, too – how to do a “proofread” of our elections. I’m actually not in favor of it, from the perspective that we have already decided certain things as a body, and I don’t think those perspectives should be overridden. On the other hand, I (generally) really like the COG, so getting more of it seems like a nice idea.
Your idea is a good one, but it leads to a couple of questions: why stop at two? Why not 3? Or 5? It’s hard.
I think it would be kind of fun to find a way to have the electorate “rank” the whole lot, and then find the “natural” dividing line… meh. This is STILL like a year away, so let’s not worry about it too much now. But yeah; it’s on my mind, too.
Agreed it’s a little early to be thinking about the post-weekly voting. My only reason for mentioning it now is to let voters know that there may be an outlet for their concerns that we might be making an otherwise irreversible induction mistake with a particular player.
I think it makes sense to ‘close in the circle’, so to speak. We should have some first out and last in player identified. If they get swapped in the final list or not probably doesn’t matter but I do think talking about it is valuable. I would limit it to 1 guy, I kind of agree with Dr. Doom that the whole “starting in the recent past and going backwards” gets lost if you keep going back over players. 1 Guy also makes it a round like any other, vote for 3, one guy wins, runoff if you have to. Though I suppose one guy looses if you get voted off the island…
Fearing the day when we will all be experiencing COG withdrawal, I think that any innovation that brings us more COG is a good thing (per Dr. Doom, 251). I would be in favor of identifying some small set of members who would be the first to be ousted and a similarly sized set of non-members whom we would most like to see take their place.
I agree with mosc (263) that perhaps it doesn’t matter whether we actually switch the “last-ins” for the “first-outs.” As with the HOF, sometimes just the discussion is enough.
I think it would be a good idea to revisit a few of our selections.
This is a complicated thing that we’re trying to do.
Comparing pitchers to position players. Infielder/catcher vs. 1st baseman/outfielder/DH. Peak vs. career. Great hitter vs. very, very good at everything. Different eras. Expansion. Segregation. War.
And that’s just for the holdovers and guys on the current ballot.
Maybe you can compare a player to others at their position not on the current ballot.
But to everyone yet to come and everyone eligible for the redemption rounds as well?
We’re almost certain to have some “buyers remorse” at the end of the process.
I’d say have a few extra rounds to narrow down the “best” of the candidate not in the COG.
Maybe a couple of rounds to pick 2 to 4 from the whole field then maybe by position to give us 12 to 15 “holdovers” to choose from.
Then use some combination of criteria- lowest %, fewest votes, narrowest margin- or by vote or a combination of the 2 to choose 1 to 5 players that we think should be reconsidered.
Update:
22 (36.67%) – Harmon Killebrew
20 (33.33%) – Kenny Lofton
16 (26.67%) – Roy Campanella, Joe Gordon
15 (25.00%) – Kevin Brown, Whitey Ford
14 (23.33%) – Roberto Alomar
13 (21.67%) – Craig Biggio, Lou Boudreau
12 (20.00%) – Minnie Minoso, Eddie Murray
11 (18.33%) – Dennis Eckersley
1 (1.67%) – Dizzy Trout
Everyone has a chance to pick up another round of eligibility, depending on how these last few days of voting go.
I really don’t understand why Killebrew over Murray. With McCovey at least there was a peak argument – I don’t see any such peak argument for Killebrew. Is it more HRs in less PAs? Does Murray seem too much like an accumulator (though he accumulated a bunch of not very good seasons at the end that didn’t really help his WAR total)? I grant that Killebrew had a better bat, but Murray was pretty much better everywhere else (he does have a worse position adjustment, playing 1B and DH, while Harmon played 3B and the OF in addition to 1B and DH – but Murray played 1B well). And Murray played the field in just as many games as Killebrew (so there is not really an Edgar Martinez/Frank Thomas DH issue as I see it).
If Killebrew over Murray, why not Sheffield over Killebrew?
Anyone have any thoughts?
If I thought Sheffield was clean I would take him very high. His OWAR is historic. I completely agree with your points here. I have Killebrew below the line. I was leaning towards yes on McCovey and unsure on Eddy Murray. I don’t see Killebrew over Murray either. Murray was a good defender and although he may not have had the sheer power of Killebrew and walked at about half his rate, he played a very long time. I like WAA as a comparison for players with similar length careers. Killebrew wasn’t a short career guy but Murray was historic in longevity. WAR substantially favors Murray and their WAA+ isn’t really that far apart. Murray wasn’t as good a hitter but he was a much more complete player and frankly the uniqueness of Murray’s longevity exceeds the uniqueness of Killebrew’s bat.
I suspect the argument against Murray as an accumulator is along the lines of “Yeah, he got 500 home runs, but he never hit 35 in a season”. Sort of like the criticism of Don Sutton reaching 300 wins, but only winning 20 once.
Killer fit the stereotype of the lumbering slugger, so he was appreciated for being just that. Murray didn’t fit any stereotype particularly well.
I’ve been voting for Killebrew as a “keep him on the ballot” guy (and a put him on the ballot again vote) for quite a while, and although I think he likely belongs, I’m surprised he’s picked up so much support in the last month. The voting patterns here really are fascinating sometimes.
The war years and the negro leagues make it really hard to figure a lot of guys right now. I’ve gone back and forth between giving full mental credit to this missed time, to none at all, to partial credit. And some players got to play (or were integrated into the league earlier/later), so I want to be consistent, but I’m not sure how to be.
In part response to Artie Z @265, I probably missed it, but I haven’t seen much debate over Killebrew, which is interesting for a player saved by a Redemption Round. I will try to put the case together as I see it (flawed as that may be):
For:
1. great slugger w/
-great oWAR
-great HR total
2. famous also for being a likeable, decent guy, & played almost entirely for 1 franchise
Against:
1. low (negative) dWAR (& low relative WAR to correspond)
2. low relative WAA
I am pretty much on the fence, although un-sabermetrically I find it hard to hold a lowish WAR and HallofStats ranking against a HOF slugger with that much power over a long career played in DC and Minnesota.
“Un-sabermetrically speaking,” he does have a few things going against him. Very low BA (.256), a LOT of value tied up in walks (OBP is .120 higher than BA; led the league four times and topped 100 BB three times beyond that, and 90+ three MORE times), and doing that while playing pedestrian defense at low-value defensive positions. Plus, he played in an era which was lacking in run-scoring, depressing all of his numbers. It’s not hard to imagine a Killebrew-type coming along 25 years later and hitting 600-625 HR. And while he hit A LOT of homers, he’s WAY farther down on the all-time list than he was 20 years ago, which makes 573 look a little more “meh.”
“Un-sabermetrically speaking” on the “pro” side, though, I see a LOT of good stuff, even beyond the basic value provided by HR and RBI. An MVP win, a runner-up, two thirds, and two fourths – that’s among the best MVP resumes we have for any player on the ballot. If we give points retroactively the way that MLB does the scoring for MVP, here’s how the current group stacks up (14 points for a win, 9 for 2nd, 8 for 3rd, 7 for 4th, etc.)
Harmon Killebrew, 54 points
Eddie Murray, 51 pts
Roy Campanella, 43 pts
Lou Boudreau, 39 pts
Minnie Minoso, Dennis Eckersley 31 pts
Roberto Alomar, 30 pts
Joe Gordon, 27 pts
Whitey Ford, 14 pts
Craig Biggio, 13 pts
Dizzy Trout, 9 pts
Kenny Lofton, 7 pts
Kevin Brown, 0 pts
Even if you make a 1st place 10 instead of 14, he’s just a point behind Murray. Basically, the MVP voters of his time LOVED Killebrew. Plus, the year he won his MVP, he switched positions to 3B, which hadn’t been his primary position in years. There’s a lot of respect for a player who’s willing to move positions to accommodate his teams needs, which Killebrew did ALL THE TIME, including that MVP season. Additionally, his teams during his prime were excellent. Those late-1960s Twins are one of the most under-appreciated great teams ever. Finally, there’s just the fact that, for most of us voters, Killebrew was a “name” before we were born, or at least before we followed baseball. He was already considered an “all-time great” before some of these other guys. I always think that chronological boost is a BIG advantage when considering two players who built roughly equal resumes. When in doubt, go with the one who was immortal before you knew much about baseball.
I met the guy, about a year before he died; he was wonderful. I have never voted for him, and I don’t intend to. That being said, I think a case can be made, sabermetrically perhaps, but “traditionally” FOR SURE, that Killer belongs.
We kinda did have a guy that batted a lot like Killebrew that came along in a later high scoring era: Mark McGwire. .264 BA but .394 OBP and 163 OPS+. Looking over his bref page, I see I didn’t remember just how brittle he was. Which is why he didn’t power past 600 HRs. If he’d been as effective as he was but for as many PAs as killer he would have had 752 HRs and given Aaron a run. McGwire was a better hitter than Harmon, but a worse fielder, and they end up with similar WAR totals, with MM having a bit more WAA since he did it in less playing time.
Here’s the biggest pro I know for Killebrew from the traditionalist side:
For many of us in our 40s and 50s, we remember his name despite the fact that he was older or already retired when we started watching baseball. Why do we know his name? Because I saw it all the time on the list of the top career home run hitters, back when Reggie Jackson was chasing that list, then Mike Schmidt, and later McGwire.
He was #5 when he retired, and he held that #5 postion until 2001. That counts for a lot in memory and fame. The guy who beat him out for #4 was an inner-circler, and the others ahead of him were the legends, 3 of the 5 or 6 greatest offensive players to ever play the game. Nobody put Killebrew in their company as overall players, or even as hitters, because his BA was so mediocre, but his name showed up right below theirs in newspaper clip after newspaper clip as they chronicled the end of career HR feats of great players who came after him.
Back then, I would not even have called myself a baseball fan. I liked basketball and Hockey a lot more than baseball, and sabermetrics as we know it today was but a twinkle in the eye of Bill James and other pioneers. I’d never heard of it. Harmon Killebrew retired when I was 7 and I never watched him play in a single game. Not even on television except an occasional blurry retro clip. But for the whole time I was growing up in the late 70s and 80s and as a young adult in the 90s, if you’d asked me how many HRs Harmon Killebrew had hit in his career, 573 would have flown off my tongue as readily as if you’d asked me to name my favorite basketball player.
Killebrew and Home Run were synonymous in the eyes of this very casual fan. What did Harmon Killebrew do? Why he hit home runs, that’s what he did. 573 of them to be exact, more than all but 4 other players in the history of baseball, and I could have told you all that at age 9 or 10 pretty easily. I can’t imagine anyone who was a true baseball fan at the time wouldn’t have been able to do the same.
So this marks us, those middle aged of us who seem to make up the bulk of the commentariat here at HHS. I’d guess we all knew that Harmon Killebrew hit home runs and 573 of them to boot. Even if in the crush of the steroid era and players breaking 500 who we knew didn’t deserve it, we forgot some of those lesser magic numbers. Not 714 or 755, but what was Mays again? When I looked at the list again a year or two ago, I thought “OH! Of course! 573! How could I have forgotten?”
For sure the traditional case is good for Killebrew.
If I had to have dinner with Killebrew or Kevin Brown – I’m picking Killebrew.
I agree that it is really difficult at times to think of legends from “before your time” (everyone can define “your time” how they choose) on equal footing with some of today’s players. That Eddie Murray could be the equal of McCovey and Killebrew and outshine Stargell still seems a little odd.
The one quibble I will make is that while the 1960s were a depressed run scoring environment, they were not really a depressed HR environment. In 1956 HR/G in the AL jumped up to 0.86. By “games” I mean “team games” so a Yankees-Red Sox game counts “twice” (it doesn’t really matter for the point I’m trying to make, but I just want to be clear). It had very rarely ever been above 0.75 (0.78 in 1955 and 0.78 in 1950 is all that I see) and HR/G would stay above 0.83 through 1966 (and from 1961-1964 was above 0.9). It dipped in 1967 and 1968 (to 0.74 and 0.68) but then rebounded above 0.83 in 1969 and 1970, after which time it tailed off. The rest of the 1970s was always below 0.8 until 1979 when things more or less returned to their 1960s level until 1985-1987 (there were a lot of HRs then), and then took off in 1993. So for most of Killebrew’s career he played in an unusually high HR environment – though run scoring was depressed. Of course in a slightly different environment he might have hit 600 HRs (he was only 27 away), but I don’t think the 1960s were a bad HR environment (and yes, this argument draws a parallel to James’ argument about the Polo Grounds being a great HR park but not a great hitter’s park). I really think that if baseball had not gone through a HR drought in the 1970s (and kind of the late 1980s-early 1990s) the HR numbers in the mid-1990s would have made less of an impression on people.
Of course with a better run scoring environment perhaps Killebrew hits .280 for his career with more doubles and basically the same amount of HRs and walks and looks even better by traditional methods.
Some more positives for Killebrew:
– Bill James had him easily in his top 100 at #63, right behind Eddie Murray (61) and Johnny Mize (62) and just ahead of Rod Carew (64), Hank Greenberg (68) and Willie McCovey (69)
– playing mostly in a low offense era he got on base and hit with power.
– it wasn’t really his choice to play third base or the outfield
– He was really well regarded when he was active- 11 times an All-Star and 6 times in the top 4 for MVP (still 27th all-time for career MVP shares 40 years after he retired)
I’m actually on the fence about him but I can certainly see that he has a case.
And I’m much more comfortable with how WAR sees him as an offensive force than how it views him or Lofton defensively.
I mentioned this in a previous thread, but I’ll say it again: the only two shortstops in history with both 100+ Rbat and 100+ Rfield are Cal Ripken and Lou Boudreau (197 and 181 for Cal, 193 and 118 for Lou).
Actually, there are 3 other shortstops who clear the 100 Rbat and 100 Rfield hurdles: Jack Glasscock, George Davis, and Bill Dahlen.
Thank you for the correction David. My mistake was using the 1901 default start point on my PI search.
@255;
Older Rfield values are somewhat regressed to the mean, especially if we go back to the dead-ball era, so I don’t think that a one-to-one comparison between modern SS and older SS is equivalent.
Sure, agreed, the defensive metrics for old-timey players have to be taken with a large grain of salt. If you want to recast RJ’s original statement as, “the only 2 SS in the live-ball era to accumulate 100+ Rbat and 100+ Rfield are Boudreau and Ripken,” that’s fine with me.
Trammel accumulated more than 100 RFIELD in his career at short, he just also had some negative RFIELD when he was very young and very old. His RFIELD+, so to speak , is ~107
Honus Wagner and Bobby Wallace would also qualify if we looked only at their Rfield+ and Rbat+ seasons respectively.
Although if you then remove the seasons in which Wagner played no SS, he’d fall back uner 100. But then that’s an arbitrary round-number cutoff…
The length of this comment thread is swiftly approaching that of Tolstoy’s famously bulky sabermetric study, “WAR and Peace”.
BOO!!!!
(Who am I kidding? I actually loved that joke. “Boo” withdrawn.)
Tally note: the vote change @206 (taking a vote away from Killebrew & giving it to Boudreau) hasn’t yet been tallied. With that change, the current totals are:
21 Killebrew
20 Lofton
16 Campanella, Gordon
15 Brown, Ford
14 Alomar, Boudreau
13 Biggio
12 Minoso, Murray
11 Eckersley
1 Trout
Quite the contrast at the top: the slow slugger vs the speedy centerfielder.
My vote is for:
Ford
Killebrew
Campanella
…and the hope that this thread passes 300 comments, which, as far as I know, would be a first for HHS.
Hmm, to get to 300 comments we might have to stimulate some more conversation… what path has been unforged so far?
I know. Eddie Murray deserves no credit for time off for service in the military. Discuss.
Here’s something I’d never noticed about Steady Eddie before. Murray played in nine postseason series and hit exactly one home run in seven of them. In one series he hit two, in another he hit none, so he averaged exactly one home run per series.
He had either 2 or 3 RBI in seven of those nine series (1 and 5 RBI in others). He had between 4 and 6 hits in eight of the series (2 hits in the other). He had 27 strikeouts and 27 walks in the postseason (never more than 5 or less than 1 in a series), or an average of exactly 3 of each per series.
It’s incredible how many ways there are to express quite how steady Mr Murray was.
@285/RJ:
He’s two more ways to demonstrate Eddie Murray’s consistency:
MAINSTREAM STATS/ RBI:
1982 -110
1983 -111
1984 -110
ADVANCED STATS/ OPS+:
1981 – 156
1982 – 156
1983 – 156
1984 – 157
(1985) – (149)
My favorite “Steady Eddie” stat: tOPS+ 100/100. I’m not sure how far down the list of top players you have to go to get to someone who has a 100/100 Home-Road split apart from Murray. But it’s really far down, I believe.
Mine is that Murray leads all players since 1961 in career RDI (Runners Driven In or RBI minus HR). BTW, here are all the players with equal tOPS+ home and away in 5000+ PA careers.
Generated 9/11/2014.
Here’s the rest of the list (too big for one comment).
Generated 9/11/2014.
But … he did have a year that was shortened by a strike – actually, two years shortened by a strike (1981 and 1994) and one by a lockout (1995).
He put up 3.7 WAR in 99 (of the Orioles 105 games) in 1981. Prorated to 150 games (I’ve seen people prorate Lofton’s 1994 to a 160 game season; I think I can safely prorate Murray to 150 games in 1981 as Murray missed 5 of his 6 games in 1981 in April) Murray is at 5.6 WAR in 1981 – it’s not spectacular, just steady.
And 2.4 WAR in 113 of the Indians 144 games in 1995. Maybe he plays in 120 games that year, boosting his WAR to 2.5.
In 1994 he was having a replacement level player type year – he put up -0.1 WAR in 108 games. That probably leads to -0.2 WAR over a full season.
So 1994 and 1995 probably wash each other out in terms of adding career WAR value. But an extra 2 WAR in 1981 would put Murray over 70 for his career and also give him a 6th 5+ WAR season and a 10th 4+ WAR season. And I think the only eligible position player who we haven’t elected to the COG with 70+ WAR is Palmeiro.
I think Palmeiro is also the only eligible position player with 10+ seasons of 4 or more WAR who we haven’t elected to the COG, though there may be others if we do the same adjustment we did for Murray (looking at the list of players who have 9 seasons: Randolph, Reggie Smith, Alomar, and McGwire probably not; Keith Hernandez was already over 4 WAR in 1981; maybe Nettles goes over 4 WAR in 1981 making it 10 times).
Stupid Artie, typing while I was typing and beating me to it! I should know better and remember to refresh the page, but I put enough time into that post that I would’ve posted it anyway.
Artie: Lofton played in 112 out of 113 Indians games in 1994. We were wondering how big of a peak year Lofton might have had, and it’s just a thought experiment anyway so credit him with the same percentage of games played to team games that he had up to that point. It would be weird to suggest he’d only play in 38 of the last 49 games when he’d only missed one game all season.
True, Eddie Murray deserves no credit for time off for military service. He is, though, one of the many players who may well deserve credit for the 1981 strike. (Maybe 1994, as well, but frankly, that strike probably just saved his WAR from going down the toilet.)
1981 featured Murray’s lowest HR and RBI totals in the period of 1977-1985 – and he still led the AL in both! He probably deserves some extra credit there.
Plus, Baltimore MIGHT have been the AL’s best team in 1981. They had the 2nd-best overall record in the AL East that year, behind Milwaukee. HOWEVER, the Crew played four games more than the O’s. Had Baltimore played 4 more games and gone 3-1, they would’ve had an identical record to the Brewers’. Still, it wouldn’t have been as good as Oakland’s, but they were playing in the easier (at the time) West. Had Murray held on and won HR and RBI titles, and had the O’s won the East, it’s not hard to envision Murray (rather than Rollie Fingers) as the AL’s MVP in 1981. If that had happened, maybe history remembers “Steady Eddie” for more than just consistency.
Obviously, that’s a lot of conjecture. But by WAR, his 1981 looks pedestrian for him; on the other hand, sans strike, it may have been his best season. He probably DOES deserve an upward adjustment, albeit not for WWII.
(Hoping this helps your stated goal of generating more discussion…)
I was actually thinking about the issue of lost time due to strike/lockout alot recently, and although I didn’t intend to mention Murray as a jump-off point to that discussion, it is timely. I feel like the strike seasons are often overlooked in terms of ‘adjustments’, and I suppose that’s because of the timing. Losing 3 whole years in your prime (and then 2 more, if you’re Ted Williams) is an obvious, big deal. But losing a third of a season isn’t quite as notable. But yeah, I’m wondering who here adjusts for that in their consideration of players. I think it’s somewhat more difficult to account for differences this makes in a career than both the issues of negro league players or war-affected players. So it’s easier to just ignore it rather than make minor adjustments. I’ve certainly been guilty of that.
Plus the ONLY guy who really gets dinged by both strikes is Tim Raines, who was productive enough as both an old and a young player that both strikes seriously affected his career stats. If there were a bigger group affected more than once, it’d be easier to remember.
Dr D –
With all due respect, I think it’s a bit of stretch to say Raines’ stats were *seriously* affected by the work stoppages – all told, he lost 3/4 of a season of playing time in 1981/1994/1995 combined. If we credit him with prorated WAR for each of those seasons, we come up with:
–> In 1981 he had 3.5 WAR, Montreal missed exactly 1/3 of the season, so if he continued at that pace he’d have garnered another 1.2 WAR;
–> In 1994 he had 1.8 WAR, the White Sox lost just under 1/3 of the season, so let’s call that .6 WAR;
–> In 1995 he had 1.5 WAR, the White Sox lost 1/9 of season, let’s round up and call that .2 WAR.
About 2 WAR total – not a huge difference.
Another way to look at it would be to multiply his “162 game average” stats by 3/4, which would yield another 77 runs, 127 hits, 21 doubles, 5 triples, 8 HR, 47 RBI, 39 steals, and 65 walks – none of which would have put him above any major milestones (well, he’d have reached 1000 RBI, but I don’t think his HoF case rests on his RBI total).
Now, we can add in the 2 dozen games he lost in 1987 to collusion – that gives him a little under 1 full season lost to owner-player strife. It still doesn’t get him close to, say 3000 hits, or 1000 steals, or some other nice round number that would bolster his HoF case among the BBWAA masses.
One last note, Rickey Henderson was also a productive regular in 1981 and 1994-5; if we prorate his WAR in those years we could credit him with another 3.5 or so WAR.
David, for ’81 and ’94 you would divide Raines’ 108-game WAR by 2 to get the remaining 54-game WAR. You were dividing by 3, projecting a 108+36=144 game season. So, 2.7 extra WAR for 81 Raines. Yeah, wouldn’t change anything.
The guys hurt the most in ’81 were the ones having the best years. Dewey Evans and Rickey were about 2/3 of the way to 10 WAR with 2/3 of the season done, so they may both have missed out on a double-digit WAR year. Same with Andre Dawson in the NL as I mentioned a few weeks ago. He would have been just over 11 WAR in 1981. That might have been a bit of a narrative-changer for The Hawk, at least to this crowd.
If a strike had lasted a year and a half or something like that, I’m sure we would be attempting to give credit to these players. Still, just playing a 154-game schedule instead of a 162-game one for fifteen or twenty years is a bigger disadvantage than missed work-stoppage time.
edit: 2.7 extra WAR for Raines in three missed years overall.
David H,
I don’t disagree with anything you’ve said. However:
Raines had a legit shot at Lou Brock’s 118 stolen bases in 1981. He stole 71 in 108 team games (he had played only 88 of those). If he had been a full-time player over the remaining 54, his WAR would’ve been higher, sure, but 118 was a strong possibility.
Also, collusion may have cost him, not just some counting stats, but possibly an MVP with the way he was playing in ’87.
I guess this comes down to how you want to interpret the word ‘seriously,’ so devoting a few posts and several hundred words to an adverb seems kind of silly. I was just trying to say that strike adjustments would be accounted for more if there were more time lost because of them; there would be more time lost because of them if both strikes affected the same group of players; Raine’s is really the only player who’s knocked twice, so we generally don’t think to make adjustmenta for strikes. That’s all I was saying. I do appreciate the mention of Rickey Henderson, whom I had kinda forgotten was still a productive player after his Blue Jays’ tenure.
And bstar, I TOTALLY agree that those are the guys wgi get hurt the most. I just think we don’t think about them because “it’s just a few games.”. But for some guys, it REALLY affects how we think of them, particularly those who were putting up MVP-tyoe seasons (Evans, Dawson, Lofton, etc.)
bstar @311 –
Oops, my bad; thanks for the correction.
Dr Doom @314 –
I didn’t consider the possibility that Raines might have broken Brock’s record in 1981, so thanks for pointing that out.
Even with a full season in 1987 I don’t think Raines would have won the MVP, given how terrible the voting by RBI-enamored voters was in both leagues that year.
I agree with your general point that we often overlook the effect of the work stoppages because there were very few players whose playing time was effected by both ’81 and ’94-5.
Good catch on the 1987 MVP voting, David! I never really put two-and-two together that there were two pretty bad MVP selections the same year. That’s actually pretty rare. Usually, there’s a clear-cut winner in at least ONE league, but you’re definitely right: 1987 was a bad one!
Raines did set the record for NL Rookie stolen bases in 1981 even in a short season. It was broken in a full season again shortly, and that record was broken by Vince Coleman in 1985.
Raines was the only player whose 1981 season was rated Stealing-AAA by Strat-O-Matic.
Murray, Ford, Alomar
Killebrew vs Lofton
_______________________
Best seasons of Wins Above Average (WAA):
4.2 … 5.6 (in the strike year)
3.8 … 5.3
3.7 … 4.4
3.6 … 3.7
2.9 … 3.6
2.6 … 3.4
2.5 … 3.2
2.4 … 2.3
2.2 … 2.3
1.5 … 1.7
1.2 … 1.7
1.0 … 1.3
0.8 … 0.6
Runs Above Average, Career
Lofton
386
Killebrew
280
(Killebrew had 600 more Plate Appearances)
___________________
And for what JAWS is worth,
Lofton is 9th among Centerfielders
Mays
Cobb
Speaker
Mantle
Griffey
DiMaggio
Snider
Beltran
Lofton
(and Beltran might pass Lofton in the wrong direction)
___________
Killebrew is 19th among First Basemen, wedged between John Olerud and Keith Hernandez.
If you call him a Third Baseman he is also 19th, between Darrell Evans and Miguel Cabrera.
As a Left Fielder he moves up to 14th all-time, between Sherry Magee and Jesse Burkett.
Lofton, Boudreau, Ford
For the 1915 election, I’m voting for:
-Craig Biggio
-Roberto Alomar
-Eddie Murray
Other top candidates I considered highly (and/or will consider in future rounds):
-Eckersley
-Lofton
-Killebrew
-Ford
-Brown
-Boudreau
-Gordon
Alomar is now at exactly 25%…I was going to change one of my votes to him last night, but by the time I got my kids to bed it was past the deadline (I’m on west coast time, lest you think my kids stay up ’til midnight)…here’s hoping he gets another vote or two before the round is over…
1915 election:
Lofton (defense does matter in CF)
Alomar (to get another round)
Murray (better all around player than Killer)
Welcome to the voting. Couldn’t have picked a better time to join in — creates a tie at the top of the voting with one day to go in the round.
Better vote now before I forget:
Lofton, Gordon, Boudreau.
Lofton, Boudreau, Gordon
Boudreau, Gordon, Lofton
Three votes in a row for the same trio — we don’t see that very often. It was pointed out earlier in this (very long) thread that, based on reviewing the votes thus far Lofton appeared to be trailing in the voting in a large part because his supporters from last round simply hadn’t voted yet. That was a prescient and well-researched observation.
Seven guys at or above 25%- does anyone know what’s the most we’ve had meet that level in a round?
Theoretically 12 guys could have 25% in a single election but I’d guess that 7 or 8 would be the most that would happen in reality.
Good call, Hartvig. According to my count, the elections with the most players at 25% are:
8: 1964, 1962
7: 1961, 1955/1, 1946/1, 1929, 1922/1
It’s not surprising some early elections lead this list – the holdover list for the ’64 election was 9 strong, and for the ’62 election there were 10 holdovers.
On the flip side, there have been at least 5 elections with only one player above 25%:
1949/2 (Schmidt), 1921 (Spahn), 1920 (Musial), 1919/2 (J Robinson), 1917 (Feller)
There may be a few others on the “only 1” list, as I wasn’t specifically looking for that as I scrolled through the spreadsheets with the past results.
With the vote @320, we’re now down to 5 players at 25%+.
Murray, Killebrew and Eckersley