This post is for voting and discussion in the 79th round of balloting for the Circle of Greats (COG). This round adds to the list of candidates eligible to receive your votes those players born in 1908. Rules and lists are after the jump.
The new group of 1908-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). This new group of 1908-born candidates joins the eligible holdovers from previous rounds to comprise the full list of players eligible to appear on your ballots.
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 EST Sunday, December 21, while changes to previously cast ballots are allowed until 11:59 PM EST Friday, December 19.
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 1908 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-1908 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 thirteen 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 1908 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:
Harmon Killebrew (eligibility guaranteed for 7 rounds)
Lou Boudreau (eligibility guaranteed for 6 rounds)
Roberto Alomar (eligibility guaranteed for 4 rounds)
Kevin Brown (eligibility guaranteed for 3 rounds)
Roy Campanella (eligibility guaranteed for 2 rounds)
Dennis Eckersley (eligibility guaranteed for 2 rounds)
Eddie Murray (eligibility guaranteed for 2 rounds)
Rick Reuschel (eligibility guaranteed for 2 rounds)
Dizzy Dean (eligibility guaranteed for this round only)
Joe Medwick (eligibility guaranteed for this round only)
Minnie Minoso (eligibility guaranteed for this round only)
Luis Tiant (eligibility guaranteed for this round only)
Dave Winfield (eligibility guaranteed for this round only)
Everyday Players (born in 1908, ten or more seasons played in the major leagues or at least 20 WAR):
Al Lopez
Billy Jurges
Ernie Lombardi
Ben Chapman
Gee Walker
Myril Hoag
Mike Kreevich
Jo-Jo Moore
Frankie Pytlak
Babe Phelps
Jake Powell
Billy Werber
Ival Goodman
Odell Hale
Red Rolfe
George Selkirk
Zeke Bonura
Pitchers (born in 1908, ten or more seasons played in the major leagues or at least 20 WAR):
Wes Ferrell
Lefty Gomez
Johnny Murphy
Al Hollingsworth
Bill Swift
Monte Pearson
Eck, Murray, Boudreau
Innings Pitched per Win Above Average (IpWaa):
73.5 …. (1969) Dean
80.3 …. (3256) Brown
93.1 …. (3548) Reuschel
101.0 … (3486) Tiant
107.4 … (3286) Eckersley
110.1 … (2621) Wes Ferrell
127.0 … (2502) Lefty Gomez
190.0 … (1045) Johnny Murphy
Ival Goodman
has the only season with no more than 15 doubles, and at least
14 triples, and
17 homers
Here is Wins Above Average,
expressed as a rate stat, by dividing it into Plate Appearances (PaWaa):
105.1 … (1345) Wes Ferrell (see also his pitching stats)
166.4 … (7024) Lou Boudreau
260.3 … (6351) Ernie Lombardi
287.8 … (7712) Minnie Minoso
289.8 … (8143) Duck Medwick
304.7 … (3322) George Selkirk
306.7 … (4815) Roy Campanella
322.0 …(10400) Rob Alomar
350.0 … (9833) Harmon Killebrew
419.9 … (4029) Zeke Bananas Bonura
461.1 … (7424) Ben Chapman
474.8 …(12817) Eddie Murray
521.4 …(12358) Dave! Winfield
_______
Let’s adjust for length of career.
To use a semi-arbitrary baseline, I’m calling the first 7,000 PA of a player’s career Peak+.
7000 is roughly 12 full seasons.
It is also the length of Boudreau’s career.
Here is PaWaa again, calculated through the season closest to 7000 PA.
PaWaa7000:
105.1 … Wes Ferrell (1345)
166.0 … Boudreau
236.2 … Murray
237.4 … Minoso
254.4 … Killebrew
260.3 … Ernie Lombardi (6351)
264.5 … Medwick
287.0 … Alomar
288.6 … Winfield
304.7 … George Selkirk (3322)
306.7 … Campanella (4815)
407.7 … Ben Chapman
419.9 … Zeke Bananas Bonura (4029)
______
Selkirk and Bonura both make it to this ballot under the 20 WAR or more exception to the 10-season requirement. Bonura makes it with just seven seasons in the majors. He had a reputation as a particular poor fielding first baseman, and if the numbers we use now confirmed that, he probably would not have the 20 WAR needed to make the ballot. But our best available current fielding estimates for that period suggest that in fact he was above average as a first baseman in overall defensive value. Bill James ranked him as a B+ defensive first baseman based on his defensive Win Shares system, and the Total Zone system that Baseball-Reference and Fangraphs use for evaluating defense of that period, and which is actually similar in a lot of ways to James’ defensive Win Shares, also gives Bonura credit as an above-average defensive first baseman. Given his obvious high value as a hitter, he manages to cross the 20 WAR line despite those mere 7 seasons.
Selkirk is most famous for having replaced Babe Ruth as the Yankees’ regular right fielder, but he was a fine ballplayer in his own right.
Zeke Bonura’s 16.3 WAR over his first four seasons trails only Frank Thomas for most four-year WAR to start a career as a member of the White Sox.
George Selkirk just cracks the top 20 in games played by a Canadian-born player. His .400 OBP is tied for second best with Larry Walker amongst non cup-of-(Tim Hortons)-coffee Canadians, behind the active Joey Votto.
Banana Nose and Twinkletoes. Got it covered from top to bottom.
Lou Boudreau
Rick Reuschel
Ernie Lombardi
Boudreau, Tiant
oops, need one more.
Is it really required to vote for three if there are not three candidates we would put in? (I dont have this problem yet, just wondering).
Yes; three players per ballot exactly are required. If you really don’t think that three belong, though, you can always just waste a vote on someone super unqualified; that way, they won’t hold over and you won’t have potentially helped someone get elected.
Yes, three on each ballot are required. You can vote for the three who you think are the best three of the eligible candidates (which is not necessarily a statement that all three are COG-worthy). Alternatively, you can vote tactically and vote for three in any manner that you think best helps advance the candidacy of those you think COG-worthy. But you must include three eligible candidates on your ballot.
A heads-up on coming Circle of Greats attractions, in case it is helpful in planning your votes:
The next two rounds after this one, parts one and two of the 1907 birth-year class, will each be accompanied by a redemption round, each of which will select two players to return to the ballot. The first of these redemption rounds will include players born from 1946 through 1969, and the the second redemption round will include players born from 1908 through 1945.
Then, after the completion of the two parts of the 1907 voting, with their accompanying redemption rounds, the next round after that will bring in the birth year class of 1970.
We will also shortly be learning how many new members of the real Hall of Fame the baseball writers are inducting for 2015, which will affect our goal for the COG. The overall intention of the COG is to induct the same number of players that the BBWAA has elected for induction, a number that currently stands at 115 but that will likely increase by a few when the results of the latest BBWAA election are announced in January.
If Giambi retires, will we do a 1971 ballot?
The plan is to hold the 1971 ballot at the beginning of 2016.
What is the reasoning behind separating the redemption rounds by year? just to make the lists smaller?
Personally I feel that the list of rejected candidates from 1946 to 1969 is *much* stronger than that from 1908 to 1945, because for the most of the 1946-1969 elections we had a very strong holdover list with most of those candidates now in. OTOH, the last 10-20 ballots have been quite a bit weaker, and probably include some candidates that won’t get in. There have been very few years in the last 20 when it was even possible for a candidates likely to make it to slip by.
I guess we can just put a couple on the ballot and let them drop off if there isn’t anybody there just to prove it, but I don’t really understand the motivation.
I agree, I think all of the better redemption round candidates are players from the 70s and 80s on our list. They went against established guys who accumulated rounds, had serious competition, and were pushed out by the post war players as well.
Mosc #107 and Michael Sullivan #60
Looking at the past redemption vote, here are the candidates that received 5 or more votes, broken out by the two time periods:
46-69: McGwire, Palmiero, Randolph, Ted Simmons
08-45: Dick Allen, Ashburn, Drysdale, Nettles, Reggie Smith, Sutton, Wilhelm
Seems to me that the 08-45 time period is actually much stronger than the 46-69 period. And if you include people who received 4+ votes, the 08-45 period would gain Stargell and Boyer whereas the 46-69 period would gain no one.
Michael@60: You are right that the basic motivation for breaking the redemption round into two parts was that it is getting quite unwieldy, I think, for voters to select among everyone born since 1908 in a single ballot.
Also, part of the point of the redemption rounds is to assure that top candidates from different eras, who voters may not have had a chance to compare head-to-head because of the way the voting rounds are conducted, do have a chance to be compared against one another in the induction balloting. The two-part redemption voting is intended to help assure that.
Also, as David P points out, I think the split is much more balanced than you might at first expect. “Born before 1946” might seem like a long time ago, even to some of us older folks born in the 1950s, but that category includes a lot of players who I at least don’t necessarily think of as ancient history.
For those who want a preview of the 1946-1969 redemption candidates, here are a couple spreadsheets (one for pitchers, one for hitters) of guys who fit in that birth-year range, finished at 25 career WAR or more and and who not on the current induction ballot and not already in the Circle.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15gZOvjCZWrrYQyClfX9aqxg_4NQCeTWrzciUU5FXvCM/edit#gid=0
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1RgXhFEc2QEsyyoOpuakVoEGAde36MkJV8XEebMfnUEw/edit#gid=0
In the spreadsheets I linked to above, the hitters are listed in order of career PAs, the pitchers are listed in an order based on a crude formula that is IP + (5*SV). The idea was to list the candidates in a relatively neutral manner based on sheer career quantity, and to leave all judgments of quality up to the voters to determine.
Yeah I guess I was thinking of Nettles, Smith, and Sutton as post war candidates but they were all born just before the 1946 cutoff.
Plus you’ve got guys like Ralph Kiner & Enos Slaughter and most importantly (to me anyways) Larry Doby & Monte Irvin in the older group as well.
The only guy in the post-WW2 group that interests me (at least that I can think of) that hasn’t already been mentioned is Buddy Bell.
I think this is a great idea to separate the field of redemption candidates into two groups. To me, it accomplishes two things:
-it will bolster the weak holdover list with 4 candidates instead of just 2.
-it corrects for the fact that it is becoming harder to get back on the ballot because the sheer number of candidates out in purgatory continues to grow.
Someone like Lofton or Edgar who fell off the ballot relatively early in this process had an easier road to get back on the holdover list because they didn’t have to beat out as large a group of players in purgatory as someone who recently didn’t make the cut.
Wait, did we do a 1970 ballot?
Ignore this. I can’t read.
Alomar, Minoso, Ferrell
Ferrell is certainly an interesting case, combining very solid pitching and unusual value as a hitter.
On the recent Hall of Fame post, Jim Kaat was pumped up as the shadow CY winner in 1966 for his 25-13, 131 ERA+ season in 1966, when Koufax grabbed the single award. In 1930 Ferrell had a 25-13 record and a 145 ERA+. That year, though, had there been a CY award, Lefty Grove’s 28-5, 185 ERA+ season would have trumped Ferrell’s.
Luck of the draw.
I’m in transit and have no time to really think about my CoG vote for a few days yet, but I just want to say that first, I’m very excited to have the CoG back, and second, even though I don’t know if I’ll end up voting for him, I definitely have a (admittedly Bill James-inspired) soft spot for Ernie Lombardi.
I know it’s tough to really compare over ancient history, does anyone have any other candidates for slowest player in baseball history?
Bengie Molina is definitely in the running (sorry, couldn’t resist). A while back I looked up a bunch of XBT% numbers (percentage of times a runner took extra bases on a single or double), and his was the lowest figure I found, 16%.
This was a decidely non-comprehensive search, to be sure. Mike Lavalliere barely out’ran’ Molina at 17%. The highest number I found was some guy named Mays, 63%.
Anyway, Molina had 6 3B and 3 SB in a career of 5159 PA, along with that 16% XBT%. Lombardi had 27 3B and 8 SB in 6351 PA; his XBT% data is, alas, incomplete, covering only the *last* 8 years of his career, from age 32 onwards; but even at that he outpaces Molina at 23%.
Given that speed was not a big part of the game in Lombardi’s time, I’d say that relative to their era (speed+, as it were) Molina was the slower.
Gus Triandos (6 3B, 1 SB in 4424 PA; XBT% = 29%) is another good candidate.
David H: Ever since you last brought this up I’ve been keeping an eye out for interesting XBT% figures, and I actually found one higher than Mays. The Say Hey Kid has an XBT% of 62.9%, but that is beaten by the unlikely figure of Glenn Beckert, with an XBT% of 63.1%. Beckert’s stolen base totals (49 SB in over 5000 PA) would not indicate that he was anything like a speedster.
I posted about it here, and John Autin did some further digging;
http://www.highheatstats.com/2014/05/saturday-game-notes-quo-vadis-senor-cueto/#comment-79398
Thanks for the link, RJ – I hadn’t seen that thread before. Glenn Beckert! – who’d’a thunk it? Here’s my original post on the topic of XBT%:
http://www.highheatstats.com/2014/01/slide-billy-slide-but-above-all-hit/#comment-72872
Billy Hamilton the Younger is at 67% in his brief career.
Another candidate for slowest of all time is Billy Butler: 4 3B and 5 SB in 4811 PA; 20% XBT%. There’s an entertaining article by Joe Posnanski about him here:
http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/2013/09/25/the-slowest-player-in-baseball/
Bells #18 – I mentioned this a few rounds ago but there’s clearly something wrong with the Rbaser and Rdp numbers from Lombardi’s era. And you can most clearly see this by looking at Lombardi himself. Baseball Reference has him at +5 Rbaser and 0 Rdp. Based on everything we know about Lombardi, there’s no way those numbers are correct.
My guess is that this round will end up a 3-way battle between Boudreau, Brown, and Killebrew. I’m an anti-Brownite, and I’ve been lukewarm on both Boudreau and Killebrew – not strongly against their making the CoG, but not strongly in favor, either. However, I’m starting to come around on both of the latter.
In Boudreau’s case, my objection (or lack of conviction) has been based on the brevity of his career, and the ‘war discount’ effect on his numbers. The length of his career is what it is, but as far as his playing against the lesser competition of war-depleted rosters goes:
1) It wasn’t Boudreau’s fault the war happened, and it seems unfair to ‘penalize’ him for padding his numbers a bit due to circumstances beyond his control;
2) He had enough excellent seasons in non-war years to demonstrate the quality of player he was at his peak. If his only outstanding seasons came during the war (see: Stirnweiss, Snuffy) we wouldn’t still be discussing him, and if he’d had only one really excellent season outside of the war years it’d be easy to write that off as a fluke. But to my mind he established himself as one of the better all-around shortstops in the history of the game with his performances in ’40, ’47, and ’48, and the fact that his numbers were inflated in 1943-45 is neither here nor there.
Still, the shortness of his career does give me pause, so I’ve not become a red-hot Boudreauvian; but if it comes down to a close race between him and, say, Brown, I’m much more likely to throw Boudreau a vote that I had been before.
As for Killebrew…with the 1970 election coming up anon, I’ve been thinking about Jim Thome, and it strikes me that Killebrew and Thome are so very similar that if one them is CoG-worthy, then both are.
Obviously they had similar skill sets: big power/lots of walks/lots of strikeouts (of course Thome struck out far more than Killebrew did in an absolute sense, but he played in a more strikeout-happy time). Their OPS+ (and wRC+) are within a few points of each other, Thome having a slight edge in both. Neither had any speed (their 3B and SB/CS numbers are nearly identical), and they were both undistinguished fielders at corner positions. Their careers were of similar length.
However, bb-ref credits Thome with a significant edge in WAR, 72.9 to Killebrew’s 60.3. Fangraphs has them much closer: Thome 67.7, Killebrew 66.1. I wondered about this discrepancy, and digging into it, a significant amount of the difference in rWAR seems to come down to the fact that Thome was able to be a DH for over 800 games, while Killebrew only DH’ed for 158 games, since the DH wasn’t instituted until the tail end of his career.
Thus, while both have similar overall dWAR numbers (Killebrew -18.8, Thome -17.2), Killebrew’s dWAR is split almost evenly between Rfield and the positional adjustment, while 3/4 of Thome’s dWAR is positional adjustment. And so Killebrew’s rWAR takes a hit because he had no choice but to play the field for most of his career. I suspect that if the two of them had been contemporaries the Rfield/Rpos split in their dWAR numbers would have been much more similar and their overall rWAR would be much closer than it is.
So although I would give Thome a slight edge over Killebrew, I think it’s a slighter edge than their rWAR figures would have it; and since I think Thome belongs, I think Killebrew belongs, too.
David H #19: Interesting Thome/Killebrew comparison. In looking at the two of them and comparing them across Baseball Reference and Fangraphs, here’s what I notice:
1) They both agree that Thome was the better hitter by about 100-120 runs (I believe Fangraphs includes Rdp in their batting numbers).
2) Fangraphs does ding Thome a little bit more for positional adjustment.
3) There’s a clear discrepancy in how they value baserunning. Baseball Reference has them basically even (-24 and -27 runs) whereas Fangraphs has a sizable advantage for Killebrew (0 and -47). I’m skeptical that Killebrew was basically a league average baserunner and I’m also skeptical that Thome was as bad as Fangraphs says he was.
4) For reasons I don’t begin to understand, Fangraphs “gives” Killebrew WAR at a higher rate than Baseball Reference. They’re in almost perfect agreement in terms of Runs above Replacement (598 for BR, 599 for Fangraphs) but as you pointed out Fangraphs has Killebrew with about 6 more WAR.
your last question has a really easy answer: runs were worth more on average during Killebrew’s time because the average run environment was less — it took about 9 runs per win, as opposed to 10, — that’s responsible for that last 6 war difference, and it’s not a fangraphs thing. BR does the same thing, they just have different run totals.
This happens for everyone and it makes sense — there’s a bigger spread in runs created in higher scoring environments, but you need more runs to create a win in those environments.
The baserunning discrepancy is more interesting. BR’s result makes more sense to me, but I’d like to know more about how they are calculated. Both have ~20 SBs and 1 more CS than SBs. Using that alone, they both should be pretty bad, and roughly comparable. Of course there are other elements of baserunning, but it’s hard to imagine that Killebrew could be *that* much better at them than Thome without having something show up in SB/CS.
Looking at more stats, I see that Killebrew has a slightly better extra base % 35% to 32%. out of 486 opportunities. If we figure that an extra base is worth as much as a steal, that’s about 4 runs worth, or less than .5 WAR.
I think I see what’s may be going on here though: Killebrew has a much better ROE than Thome. 144 to 70 over his career. Now ROE vs. out is pretty big, roughly the same as drawing a walk. Adding 74 walks could easily account for a 45ish run difference, so 74 extra ROEs probably does the same.
If I remember correctly, BR counts ROEs as part of rBat and does *not* count them as part of baserunning. If fangraphs puts those run in baserunning, that would account for the difference there, except that then we have to explain a 45 run difference in how they calculate bat value not including ROEs. But the key here is that the difference isn’t really in baserunning, it’s in other bat value.
Michael Sullivan – Perhaps I didn’t explain the final point correctly. It’s a comparison of Killebrew between Fangraphs and Baseball Reference. So it has nothing to do with different run environments.
Fangraphs has Killebrew with 599 Runs above Replacement and 66.1 WAR. Baseball Reference has him with 598 Runs above Replacement but only 60.3 WAR. Not sure why that would be.
sorry when you said “has Killebrew with 6 more WAR” I thought it was a comparison between killebrew and thome.
It’s hard to believe that there’s that big a difference in the runs/win calculation between the two sites, so that does seem a bit odd.
At first I was thinking maybe a different replacement level, but a) I thought they harmonized that a couple years ago, and b) that should affect runs as well.
Since there’s only 4 people on the ballot that I fully support for the COG, this is a fairly easy vote:
Boudreau or Alomar for the win. Tiant to stay on the ballot.
Vote Change: Dropping Alomar and voting for Murray.
Dizzy Dean, Harmon Killebrew; Lefty Gomez
Alomar, Murray, and Brown
Dean, Medwick, Minoso.
Killebrew, Campanella, Medwick
Dean, Killebrew, Minoso
Most Wins Above Average, excluding negative seasonal totals:
Brown 43.3
Boudreau 42.3
Reuschel 40.6
Tiant 37.5
Alomar 37.1
Eckersley 34.3
Murray 33.7
Killebrew 33.0
Winfield 31.1
Minoso 30.6
Medwick 30.2
FerrellW 29.6 + 12.9 hitting
Dean 27.9
Lombardi 24.5
Gomez 23.1
Campanella 19.2
Any opinions as to whether it’s fair to simply add Ferrell’s pitching WAA and hitting WAA? As a hitter, he’s being compared to other pitchers, so he’s getting credit for surpassing a really low standard, but then, that advantage is real, since other teams had to put a pitcher in the lineup too. On the other hand, I haven’t added hitting WAA to other pitchers’ totals, so he might get a little unfair edge from this method. Also, by ignoring negative seasonal WAA totals, I’m focusing only on greatness, forgiving players for long learning curves or hanging on too long. Should I give Ferrell credit for 1.3 hitting WAA in 1937, when I’m ignoring his -1.3 pitching WAA? I suppose it makes more sense to combine hitting and pitching WAA each year so that he doesn’t get a break for negative hitting numbers in a year when his pitching WAA was positive. By that method, he scores 40.1 positive WAA, right between Reuschel and Tiant.
Hall of Stats gives Ferrell a 110 Hall Rating, vs. 137 for Brown, 135 for Reuschel (who had 4.4 positive WAA with the bat), and 128 for Tiant. This is heavily influenced by his short career, which I tend to downplay in favor of peak value. Unless someone wants to convince me, I don’t think I’m sold on Ferrell for the CoG.
Brown, Boudreau, Reuschel
The only guy I would be upset at being left out from this ballot is Campanella. I am excited for the redemption rounds to get some more talent on this ballot. We’re also entering some much better years soon, that will help as well.
Using my peak WAR averaging method I discussed earlier, I took a look at Murray and Killebrew, Thome, and Boudreau. Murray beats Killebrew in WAR for any N consecutive years you pick, clean sweep. Similarly, so does Bodreau beat Murray until N > 14 years. Even tweaking things for the war years (removing some RBAT in 43-45), Boudreau is pretty high up.
Boudreau average Killebrew average Murray average Thome average
1 10.4 10.4 6.4 6.4 7.1 7.1 7.5 7.5
2 17.8 8.9 12.3 6.2 13.7 6.9 13.4 6.7
3 22.0 7.3 16.7 5.6 19.3 6.4 18.9 6.3
4 25.9 6.5 21.3 5.3 24.5 6.1 22.3 5.6
5 33.9 6.8 25.9 5.2 28.6 5.7 26.9 5.4
6 41.8 7.0 30.2 5.0 32.7 5.5 31.4 5.2
7 46.2 6.6 34.9 5.0 37.6 5.4 38.5 5.5
8 50.8 6.4 39.1 4.9 41.8 5.2 44.4 5.6
9 56.7 6.3 42.7 4.7 45.9 5.1 49.0 5.4
10 59.8 6.0 47.6 4.8 49.7 5.0 52.2 5.2
11 60.8 5.5 50.7 4.6 52.9 4.8 54.2 4.9
12 62.1 5.2 54.9 4.6 56.1 4.7 57.2 4.8
13 63.0 4.8 57.7 4.4 60.0 4.6 60.9 4.7
14 63.0 4.5 60.7 4.3 63.2 4.5 62.9 4.5
15 63.0 4.2 61.2 4.1 64.5 4.3 64.9 4.3
16 63.0 3.9 61.1 3.8 66.1 4.1 67.9 4.2
17 63.0 3.7 61.3 3.6 67.2 4.0 69.9 4.1
18 63.0 3.5 61.1 3.4 67.1 3.7 71.1 4.0
19 63.0 3.3 60.9 3.2 69.5 3.7 72.6 3.8
20 63.0 3.2 60.4 3.0 69.2 3.5 73.1 3.7
21 63.0 3.0 60.4 2.9 68.3 3.3 73.0 3.5
22 63.0 2.9 60.3 2.7 68.3 3.1 72.9 3.3
23 63.0 2.7 60.3 2.6 68.3 3.0 72.9 3.2
24 63.0 2.6 60.3 2.5 68.3 2.8 72.9 3.0
25 63.0 2.5 60.3 2.4 68.3 2.7 72.9 2.9
5.1 4.2 4.6 4.7
I have Murray as about the COG line and in any N year period he put up more WAR than Killebrew who was just too one dimensional to be valued by WAR that strongly. Between Thome and Murray is a very interesting battle. Thome’s best seasons are far apart (’96 and ’02) with a fairly weak ’98 campaign between them which hurts a lot of his totals. He beats Murray in N=1 but loses N=2 to N=9 only to recapture from N=10 to N=25 except for a blurp where Murray passes him in the third decimal at N=14. I think Thome should be voted in, not sure about Murray, really think Killebrew is below the bar unless you have a serious problem with how WAR values him. I don’t, so I don’t think I’m ever going to vote for him.
Campanela, Murray, Boudreau
I did pitchers here (ignoring Brown), Tiant is 0.106 below Murray, Reuschel is above the Murray line by 0.080 counting 1982 as zero WAR.
I forgot Winfield. No WAR adjustment his number is 4.265 for the average of averages over 25 years. That’s 0.054 better than Killebrew but a decent ways under the Murray line. Using his OWAR instead, his numbers actually go down for N=1 through N=7 (he was a better than average defender during his peak years even by WAR standards). He gets better from there using OWAR and comes out 4.425 but that’s still below the Murray Line. I like winfield a lot and think his defensive contributions are underappreciated but I think calling him a league average defender even when playing at well off peak ages is a stretch. I’m not as sure any more if he should make it, Murray was a pretty damn good player. I’m sticking there even if Winfield drops.
For those of you that are curious how heavily this weights peak, Koufax comes in at 4.995. In other words, it weights peak very heavily.
For the record, this is very similar to how I’ve been weighting players the entire time, with descending value for each year N, sorted from greatest to least. Except that I use the first year times 1, the second year times .9, the third times .81, the fourth times .729, etc., etc., so that each year is worth 90% of the year before it. Works pretty well to value peak and career, I think.
I’d have to do the math but I think our score difference between two players would be exactly the same percentage.
Well, I don’t use consecutive years; I start with all seasons, so I’m certain we’d find some differences, with your system preferring players who bunch their best seasons tightly, and mine being agnostic on that point, simply ordering seasons by WAR.
Besides, I’m pretty sure the math wouldn’t work out with them as the same. Your own math would work out differently depending on whether you used 10 years rather than 25, or 30, or 20. The number of terms in your own equation is going to change the value of them in relationship to one another. If you use only ten terms, your “top” season would get counted 10 times, the second season 9 times; using 25, as you did, counts your top season 25 times, your second 24. So season two would count 90% as much as season one, as opposed to 96% as much.
I hope that makes sense; maybe not. That’s what makes sense to me, though.
Yeah. I use 25. You want it pretty long because the metric is already very peak heavy since the single season peak gets counted so many times over.
Harmon Killebrew, Dennis Eckersley, Dave Winfield
Murray to win
Winfield and Tiant to stay on the ballot because I don’t know.
For me, it’ll be:
Kevin Brown
Lou Boudreau
Luis Tiant
I’m just not sure what to do with Wes Ferrell. He’s probably just off my ballot, regardless of hitting numbers. I understand the math behind it WAR; for me, though, it’s just tough to say that the pitcher as a hitter is the difference between being OUTSIDE the HOF (as Ferrell, purely as a pitcher, would likely be), and INSIDE the COG! Especially considering that Ferrell was just a league-average hitter (OPS+ 100), he was only over 100 in four full seasons. I don’t know. Like I said, I get the math behind WAR. I just don’t think I can do it – not when there are still so many OTHER strong candidates.
In sum, I’m sold on Ferrell for the HOF; I just don’t think he’s COG material, but I could be convinced.
Well, just looking at WAR including batting WAR, he deserves COG consideration, but he’s below every other pitcher we’ve elected, and he’s below 3 on this ballot.
If you take WAA at face value, his WAA+ is slightly above Tiant, but some kind of composite probably puts him behind.
So he’s a possible COG candidate, but not a clear one.
i think the batting WAR is legit. Hardly anyone has this much batting WAR from the pitcher’s slot (Babe ruth did for a few years, but then… babe ruth). Yes, he’s just batting average for the league, but getting an average bat from the pitcher’s slot is like having a DH! That’s huge value to your team when you are pitching.
By “below every other pitcher we’ve elected” I suppose you mean in terms of pitching WAR only? Because so far we’ve elected 3 pitchers with less combined WAR than Ferrell (61.6) : Ford (57.3), Rivera (57.1), and Koufax (49.0).
I kinda threw that off without thinking too hard. Oops. Partly I forgot about Ford and Koufax because I didn’t support them, so basically he’s below my line. I also didn’t consider Rivera, because I consider a career RP to be essentially a different category, but I did say “Pitcher” and not “starting pitcher”
Apparently what I should have said is “he’s below every starting pitcher that we *should* have elected.” :).
I didn’t realize Koufax was that poor a batter. I mean how bad do you have to be to drop 4 WAR from the 1. I guess about 1/3 as bad as Ferrell was good.
A lifetime batting average of .097 will certainly drag a player’s numbers down. Interestingly, it seems that Koufax was considered a good hitter as an amateur, per this scouting report:
http://scouts.baseballhall.org/report?reportid=03245&playerid=koufasa01
I didn’t look at Ferrell at all. I’m going to change my vote.
Ferrell the pitcher compares very favorably with the likes of Tiant and Reuschel favoring his peak. He put up 15.2 pitching war ’35+’36, that’s more than Tiant and Reuschel ever did in back to back years. He lacks their longevity clearly as both had a full third more innings. Ferrell’s league average bat was better than a AAA replacement level position player bat lets remember and he did have 1345 PA’s
Ferrell has more PITCHING WAR than Tiant in N=1 (tied) through N=11 years, ignoring their bats. You have to add in a lot of little more than league average pitching seasons from Tiant to even consider him as good a pitcher as Ferrell and ignore a lot of plate attempts as well. Ferrell the pitcher is only slightly below Tiant in my book. The averaging metric says 4.328 for him as a pticher, and 5.368 as a player.
The guy does have 13 starts in left field and has a career slash line that puts many “glove first” hall of famers to shame. His RBAT+RPOS+RBASE+RDP is 141 which beats the likes of Ozzy Smith with a speed heavy 139 and Brooks Robinson’s 78. Those are career stats of players who had a lot of AB’s. Glove first guys of course but we’re talking about a pitcher first guy. His defensive value also stacks up well against infielders. Over a 9 season period Ferrell was 296 runs better than an average pitcher by pRAA which beats the career RFIELD of Brooks Robinson and Ozzy Smith too. It’s only when you take in the replacement value of playing so many innings that the glove first infielders pass him by in WAR. And this is all from a guy who was basically washed out as a pitcher at age 29. Imagine if teams would have backed off on his innings a little more and kept him pitching a little longer and sucked even more value out of that bat!
Reuschel, Murray, Boudreau
Murray, Alomar, Dean
Ferrell had an 8-year peak of 6.2 WAR.
He had only one notable (league average) season outside of his peak.
Cherry-picking those 8 years (1929 – 1936), WAR leaders:
63.6 … Lefty Grove
49.4 … Carl Hubbell
49.2 … Wes Ferrell
34.2 … Dizzy Dean
31.5 … Mel Harder
_____
Expanding for the length of his career (1927 – 1941):
100.4 .. Lefty Grove
67.2 … Carl Hubbell
50.9 … Ted Lyons
48.8 … Wes Ferrell
48.2 … Red Ruffing
45.4 … Mel Harder
_____
Batting WAR, by Pitchers, 1927 – 1941:
12.7 .. Wes Ferrell
12.5 .. Red Ruffing
4.7 … Schoolboy Rowe
4.0 … George Uhle
3.7 … Joe Bowman
3.7 … Ed Brandt
_________
So, he was one of the most valuable pitchers in a heavy-offense era.
I’m considering a vote for Ferrell, just to continue the conversation.
But when you compare him to Ruffing…
Ruffing had 1700 more IP and 600 more PA, and a notable WS career.
Vote:
Lou Boudreau
Wes Ferrell
Eddie Murray
This round’s tidbits:
– Al Lopez passed Ray Schalk in career games caught in 1945, a record Lopez would hold for more than 40 years. Who was the first player to pass Lopez? Lopez also caught 100 games in a season three or more times for each of three franchises. Who are the only other catchers to do the same?
– Ernie Lombardi’s 9 qualifying seasons batting .300 is tied with Mike Piazza for the most by a right-hand hitting catcher. Who holds the record for switch-hitting catchers?
– Billy Jurges is the only player with 500 games at shortstop for both the Cubs and Giants. Jurges’ career averages per 162 games are on the top. Which shortstop has the bottom numbers?
Generated 12/3/2014.
– Gee Walker played 100+ games in a season for four franchises in four consecutive years (1939-42). Among players to do this before free agency (prior to 1974): Who is the only HOFer? Who is not in the HOF despite much lobbying in his behalf? Who is the only player to make it 5 franchises in 5 years?
– Ben Chapman started his career with eleven qualifying seasons of 100 OPS+ and at least 10 stolen bases. Who is the only other player to do this since 1901?
– Jake Powell was the beneficiary of Ben Chapman’s slow start to the 1936 season that earned the Yankee veteran a ticket to Washington in a straight-up exchange for Powell. It was not the Yankees’ most inspired move; Chapman’s best days were indeed behind him but he provided 5 more very serviceable seasons while Powell struggled and mainly failed to stay above replacement level. Powell still holds the Yankee record for left-fielders with 10 hits in the 1936 World Series. Which left-fielders have 10 hits in a World Series against the Yankees?
– Wes Ferrell is the only age 24 or younger pitcher with four consecutive 6 WAR seasons (1929-32). Who is the only pitcher that young with 4 such non-consecutive seasons?
– Lefty Gomez and Red Ruffing were teammates on the 1942 Yankees when both had then logged almost 2500 IP in pinstripes (Gomez would finish just shy of that mark with 2498.1 IP for the Bombers). Which is the only expansion franchise to have a team with two or more pitchers who had then reached 2500 IP with that franchise? Six original franchises (three in each league) have had a total of 13 such teams since 1901. How many of them can you name?
– Johnny Murphy appeared in 32 games for the 1947 Red Sox, then the most for any pitcher without a decision. That record would stand for more than 30 years, until eclipsed by which pitcher?
– Myril Hoag appeared in 8 World Series games and had a hit or a run in all of them. But, his -3.3 career WAR makes the bottom 10 for all 3000+ PA careers, and is the lowest career WAR for any player with 1000 PA as a Yankee. Which player has the lowest career WAR total, among those with 1000 PA against the Yankees since 1914?
– Frankie Pytlak’s 2717 career PA are the fewest among 27 players to bat .300 in each of four or more 250 PA seasons as a catcher. Pytlak was also a decent defensive player, with eight seasons catching 50 games with positive Rfield, more than the combined total of such seasons by the two others of those 27 who never had a season with 500 PA. Who are those other two catchers?
– Mike Kreevich posted 4 consecutive qualifying seasons (1936-39) with a .295 BA. Who is the only White Sox outfielder with a longer streak of such seasons?
– Jo-Jo Moore’s 9 consecutive seasons (1933-41) playing 100 games in left field is the longest such streak by a Giant. Between Moore and Barry Bonds, who was the only Giant at that position with 4 such seasons consecutively?
– Al Hollingsworth is the only pitcher to start a career with 4 qualifying seasons with a losing record and fewer than 10 wins. Who is the only HOF pitcher to start a career with 3 such seasons?
– Bill Swift started his career with 5 seasons of 200 IP and at least 10 wins. Who is the last pitcher to start his career that way?
– Babe Phelps’ .367 BA in 1936 is still the record for catchers in a qualifying season. His 6.9 WAR per 1000 PA puts him in a group of 17 such retired catchers with 1500 career PA. Which one of those 17 was active in the past 30 years and is not in the HOF and not currently on the HOF ballot?
– Billy Werber’s 7 seasons with 80 runs, 65 walks and 15 stolen bases are the most among 3rd basemen, a mark he currently shares with David Wright. Werber’s 1940 World Series totals of 10 hits, 4 doubles and 4 walks paced the Reds to victory over the Tigers. Who is the only player to match those totals for a losing WS team?
– Ival Goodman led his league in triples in each of his first two seasons. Who is the only other player since 1901 to do the same?
– Monte Pearson’s career .621 W-L% is tied with Mel Parnell as the best among all pitchers with a WHIP of 1.4 or more in 100+ starts. Pearson’s career line as a Yankee is on the top. Whose Yankee totals are on the bottom?
Generated 10/24/2014.
– Red Rolfe’s 7 seasons with 130 games at third base is tied with Graig Nettles for the most as a Yankee. In addition to Rolfe, which three players have a season as a Yankee with 130 games at third base and have also managed in the majors?
– Odell Hale’s 1062 career games (including just one at shortstop) are the fewest among 24 players with 400 games at both second base and third base. Among those 24 players, which three had no games at all at shortstop?
– Zeke Bonura compiled 20+ WAR in just 7 seasons, playing only at first base. Who is the only other player with fewer than 5000 PA to compile 20+ WAR playing 90% of his games at first base?
– George Selkirk’s 3322 career PA are the fewest among all players with five or more 3 WAR seasons. Who are the other such single franchise players with fewer than 5000 career PA?
Ival Goodman question: Paul Waner is the only other since 1901 to lead his league in triples in his first two seasons.
I discovered this whilst researching some titbits of my own, which I’ll post below. In the live-ball era, Waner and Goodman are #1 and #2 in triples over their first five seasons.
Jurgens – Marty Marion. It took me literally one guess. I thought, “I bet that’s Marty Marion,” I looked it up, and I was right!
Jurges, obviously. Autocorrect fail.
Pretty sharp, Dr. Doom.
Marion – four pennants, seven ASG, one MVP, two other top 10s, three more top 25s
Jurges – three pennants, three ASG, zero MVP, zero top 10s, two top 25s
Evidently, Marion passed the eye test better than Jurges.
Gee Walker – Dick Allen is obviously the “lobbying on his behalf” player to whom you refer.
Also, it’s post-free-agency, but Kenny Lofton played for NINE franchises in his final SIX seasons. Even in an era of free agency, that’s A LOT of movement.
Yup, Dick Allen was the easy answer. You had the makings of a decent team from the players traded for Allen in those four years.
1B – Willie Montanez
2B – Cookie Rojas, Ted Sizemore
CF – Curt Flood
C – Tim McCarver, Bob Stinson
SP – Tommy John
RP – Joe Hoerner, Jerry Johnson
Later, Allen was traded for himself (in a manner of speaking):
(1) Allen from Chicago to Atlanta for PTBNL
(2) Allen from Atlanta to Philadelphia for Jim Essian
(3) Essian from Atlanta to Chicago to complete (1)
Gee Walker:
Bobby Bonds made in 5 franchises in 5 seasons from 1974 – 1978 with SF, NYY, CAL, CWS, TEX. He actually spent 1978 with the final two and only played 26 games with the White Sox.
You could probably make a pretty decent team with the “problem” guys who got traded frequently in the prime of their careers. It seemed like every time Bonds or Allen was traded their former employers got two players in return
Good one, Paul E.
But, there was at least one 5 teams in 5 years player before free agency in 1974. Who was he?
@ 57.
Rogers Hornsby is the HOFer who played in 100+ games for four teams in four consecutive years: 1926-Cardinals, 1927-Giants, 1928-Braves, and 1929-Cubs.
Still trying to come up with the five teams in five years player…
I presume the answer we’re searching for is post 1900. However, I just stumbled across Duke Farrell, who played for six different franchise in six consecutive years: 1889 Chicago White Stockings (NL), 1890 Chicago Pirates (PL), 1891 Boston Reds (AA), 1892 Pittsburgh Pirates (NL), 1893 Washington Senators (NL), and 1894 New York Giants (NL).
Yes, Scary Tuna, since 1901.
But nice find on Duke Farrell. Interesting that those six seasons were the only ones of 100 games in his 18 year career (although he hit 90 three more times).
Farrell is one of only 6 players in the 19th century with six 70 RBI seasons in the first 7 years of a career (one of them, George Davis, had 70 RBI all 7 seasons).
The first Frank Thomas played for the Pirates, Reds, Cubs, Braves and Mets from 1958-1962 with 100+ games for each team.
Frank Thomas is the one.
Thomas’s 34 home runs for the ’62 Mets would stand as the franchise high until Dave Kingman smashed 36 in 1975 (and 37 in 1976). Toddy Hundley (1996) and Carlos Beltran (2006) share the current Met record with 41.
For his career, Thomas hit 47 home runs at the Polo Grounds, one every 15 AB. He hit one every 23 AB everywhere else.
Al Lopez question: Tony Pena and Darrell Porter.
That’s part (b) of the question.
Looks like part (a) is Bob Boone.
Correct, Richard.
Boone passed Lopez in the 1987 season. Carlton Fisk passed Boone in the final game of his career in 1993, and I-Rod passed Fisk in 2009.
Today, Lopez ranks 9th and Schalk 22nd. A.J. Pierzynski is the active leader, in 15th spot (he needs another 152 games to crack the top 10).
Re: Wes Ferrell, I’m guessing you mean only modern-era player; Kid Nichols had 8+ WAR every year age 20-24.
The answer you’re looking for is Bert Blyleven:
6.4 WAR age 20
9.9 WAR age 22
7.9 WAR age 23
6.1 WAR age 24
He has 2.2 at age 19 and “only” 4.9 at age 21.
I kept hunting for long-ago players at is was easier to rack up WAR pitching 300+ innings, but Blyleven had at least 275 IP each year between age 20 and 24.
You’ve got it, brp.
Blyleven is the only pitcher, since 1871, with 150 IP, 10+ wins and a .500 or better record, each season aged 19-24.
George Selkirk question: Roy Campanella and Al Rosen
Exactly so.
Not often a keeper is kept for such a short time.
Odell Hale question: I found Jim Gilliam and Pete Rose. My PI run turned up Bobby Adams on the 400 G played at 2B and 3B lists but his BR home page shows 399 G at 2B. He played no games at SS.
Those are the three.
Really thought Ichiro would be the answer to Ben Chapman question of 11 seasons to start career at 100 OPS+ and 10 SB, but he “only” had 10.
My second guess was Barry Bonds, and it looks like he did so, unless his 484 PA as a rookie isn’t enough.
If it’s not Bonds, I don’t have another obvious guess. Rickey Henderson missed out due to his rookie year, as did Paul Molitor (also hit by an injury season); Willie Mays was interrupted.
Not Barry.
502 PA are needed to qualify in a 162-game season (3.1 PA per game).
Here’s a hint: Chapman is the only player to do this in the live ball era.
I tried all the “obvious” deadball era guys – Cobb, Speaker, Collins, … and none of them worked for various reasons (usually playing time).
So I cheated and did a PI search to narrow the list of names down – only 54 players have ever had 11+ seasons of 100+ OPS+ and 10+ SBs in a qualifying season, so that made it easier. Only 38 players have met those criteria in 11+ seasons since 1901, which makes it even easier.
The PI is telling me that Sherry Magee had a qualifying season in 1904, despite only 387 PAs (the Phillies played 152 games that year). Were they using a 100 hit standard back then? Or 350 ABs or something like that?
I don’t think I’ve skipped over any other names from that era, so I’ll guess Magee.
It is Magee.
The old qualifying standard was 100 games, regardless of the number of PA.
Doug – I thought it was a 100 game standard, but Magee only played in 95 games in 1904.
Here is explanation on B-R re: batters’ qualifying seasons.
– Prior to 1920, a player must have appeared in 60% of the team’s games to qualify for a title. This number was rounded to the nearest integer.
– From 1920-1937, a player must have appeared in 100 games.
– From 1938-1944, the AL used 400 at bats and the NL stayed with 100 games
– From 1945-1956, a player must have 2.6 at bats per team game. Note however, that from 1951-1954 a player could lead if they still led after the necessary number of hitless at bats were added to their at bat total.
– From 1957 to the present, a player must have 3.1 plate appearances per team game. Note however, that from 1967 to the present a player could lead if they still led after the necessary number of hitless plate appearances were added to their at bat total.
Magglio Ordonez is the answer to the Kreevich question. 1999-2003, hit .301 or better every year.
Robin Ventura is one answer to the Red Rolfe question.
Gene Tenace was my first thought for the Babe Phelps question, but he last played in 1983. Chris Hoiles.
All correct.
Quite a difference in the number of games managed for the other two answers to the Red Rolfe question.
Lefty Gomez question: Here’s one; Wilbur Cooper and Hooks Dauss of the Detroit Tigers in 1926.
Cooper-Dauss is wrong. They both pitched for the Tigers in 1926 but they reached 2500 IP before they became Tiger teammates. But it looks like Lefty Gomez and Bobo Newsom reached 2500 IP while they were teammates on the 1943 Senators.
It’s not 2500 IP overall. It’s 2500 IP for the franchise that both are then playing for.
The only expansion team with at least 2 pitchers of 2500+ IP is the Mets with Tom Seaver and Jerry Koosman. They were teammates but at the time when Koosman reached 2500 IP Seaver had already been traded to the Reds. So does that count?
You are correct, Richard.
Koosman and Seaver didn’t do it. My mistake.
So, no expansion teams, but I did find 13 original teams with such a pair (unless I’ve made some further errors).
Thanks Doug. Now it should be fairly easy to find those other 13 teams.
Here’s what I came up with:
A’s: Eddie Plank-Chief Bender
Indians: Bob Feller-Bob Lemon
Tigers: Hal Newhouser-Dizzy Trout
Pirates: Wilbur Cooper-Babe Adams
Giants: Carl Hubbell-Freddie Fitzsimmoms
Braves: Warren-Lew Burdette,Tom Glavine-John Smoltz, Greg Maddux-John Smoltz
@149
I guess you have all figured out that I left out Spahn.
@161, Richard.
Those are the ones I found (total of 13 teams):
– Plank/Bender 1914 As
– Cooper/Adams 1922-24 Pirates
– Fitzsimmons/Hubbell 1937 Giants
– Newhouser/Trout 1951-52 Tigers
– Feller/Lemon 1956 Indians
– Spahn/Burdette 1962-63 Braves
– Smoltz/Glavine 2002 & 2008 Braves
– Smoltz/Maddux 2003 Braves
David Wells is the Monte Pearson/Yankees answer. I recognized his basic stats, but wasn’t sure that he’d tossed 9 shutouts for NYY. But he did — 5 of them in ’98, when he threw his perfect game.
I was struck by how close Wells and Pearson were on so many of their totals, despite how different their SO/BB ratios are.
More than one way to skin a cat, or modern hitters are a lot better than in the past? I’m inclined to lean more to the latter.
I misread the Murphy question – I thought Doug was looking for the Red Sox pitcher who eclipsed Murphy’s team record (Manny Delcarmen, 2007, 44 games).
The guy who first broke Murphy’s record does hold a dubious place in Red Sox history – he was part of what some might call a historically lopsided trade. What might be much more useful information is that he was the last card I needed to complete my 1988 Score set.
In looking up the most games without a decision the current season record holder is Randy Choate, with 80 games. What interests me about that is that Choate set the individual team records for 2 teams in that 2012 season. He pitched 44 games for the Marlins, and 36 for the Dodgers. Individually those numbers would rank in the top 25 for most games pitched without a decision.
Wow, that was some trade. Talk about the one that got away.
Yet, Boston still got 36 WAR in 15 years (1991-2005) from their first basemen. Less than half of what the other guy got, but not a complete disaster.
Lombardi question: Ted Simmons
Powell question: Irish Meusel
Hoag question: Doc Cramer
Werber question: Frankie Frisch
Correct.
There’s a second answer to the Powell question.
Monte Irvin (and a few more words to post this).
Remaining quiz answers.
– Johnny Murphy question: first pitcher to exceed Murphy’s 32 games in a season without a decision – Larry Anderson (1982)
– Frankie Pytlak question: other catchers without a 500 PA season who batted .300 in four 250 PA seasons (Bubbles Hargrave, Don Slaught)
– Jo-Jo Moore question: Giant between Moore and Barry Bonds with four consecutive seasons with 100 games in left field – Gary Matthews (1973-76)
– Al Hollingsworth question: HOF pitcher to start a career with 3 seasons with a losing record and less than 10 wins – Red Ruffing
– Bill Swift question: last pitcher to start career with five 200 IP seasons with 10+ wins – Tom Seaver
– Red Rolfe question: other players with season of 130 games at 3B for Yankees who also managed in majors – Robin Ventura, Bobby Cox, Jimmy Austin
– Zeke Bonura question: other player with 90% of games at 1B and 20+ WAR in fewer than 5000 PA – Ferris Fain
Dennis Eckersley, Wes Ferrell, Kevin Brown
Killebrew, Winfield, Dean
Gomez, Boudreau, Campanella.
Alomar, Murray, Winfield
Adding onto Doug’s player titbits:
Red Rolfe scored 143 Runs for the 1937 Yankees despite an 86 OPS+. That is by far the most Runs scored for a sub 100 OPS+ season. Woody English is next with an equally impressive 131 Runs and 72 OPS+ in 1929. Maury Wills crossed home plate 130 times with a 99 OPS+ in 1962.
Odell Hale is the only Indians ballplayer with at least 250 games manning second and third base (Hale has 400+ at both).
Billy Werber’s 29 stolen bases in 1935 is the fifth lowest total to lead the majors in the AL era.
Jake Powell’s career .435 batting average in the World Series is seventh all-time (min 36 PA or 14 BB + H as per b-ref’s postseason leaderboards).
Frankie Pytiak’s OPS+ of 7 in 1940 is tied for tenth worst in a season of 170+ PAs.
Jo-Jo Moore’s 1335 games in the Giants outfield trails only George Burns and COGers Bonds, Ott and Mays.
Ernie Lombardi’s .342 batting average in 1938 has only been topped by two qualified catchers since: Mike Piazza and Joe Mauer (twice each). Lombardi’s 30 GIDP in the same year has only been topped by Pudge Rodriguez among catchers.
Billy Jurges is one of ten 20th century shortstops with more than 110 Batting Runs and fewer than -120 Fielding Runs.
Alfonso (Al) Lopez was the first Alfonso and the first Lopez to play in the majors.
Monte Pearson led the league in ERA in 1933 and then in Earned Runs the next season. I don’t know how to search for this: are there any other examples of this feat?
Bill Swift is the only Pittsburgh Pirate to start his career with five seasons of 200+ IP and an 100+ ERA+.
Al Hollingsworth was one of seven pitchers to play in a World Series game for the St Louis Browns.
Johnny Murphy was the first pitcher to reach 100 career saves. Murphy held the saves record from 1946 until 1962, when he was surpassed by Roy Face. Current leader Mariano Rivera has more than six times as many saves as Murphy.
Lefty Gomez is the only pitcher to have a World Series win-loss record as unblemished as 6-0. Two had 5-0 careers, two have records of 4-0 (including the active Madison Bumgarner).
More tidbits:
Jo-Jo Moore in 1935 had 201 hits and a .295 BA making him the first player with more than 200 hits and a sub .300 BA. It has happened 11 times since.
Ernie Lombardi was the first player to hit into 30+ double-plays.
Wes Ferrell is one of two pitcher with more than one walk-off HR. He and Kirby Higbe each had two such HRs.
Ben Chapman is one of two ALers to lead his league in CS for 4 consecutive seasons. Ricky Henderson is the other.
Al Hollingsworth has the second longest surname in the ML. Twelve other players have a 13 letter surname. Of course Jarrod Saltalamacchia has the longest.
A caveat on Lombardi being the first to have 30+ GIDP is that we only have GIDP data from 1933-present in the NL, 1939-present in the AL.
The story goes that in the mid-1980s, the White Sox signed Dave Wehrmeister because someone in the front office wanted a big name pitcher.
Concerning the Monte Pearson feat, Steve Carlton achieved it in 1972-1973 and Frank Baumann did so in 1960-1961. On Pearson’s Standard Pitching chart on BR his 1933 ERA is in bold indicating a league leader but the BR leaderboard does not list him as the leader. He had only 135 IP that year and I don’t know what the qualifying requirement was then. Something is amiss on BR.
Good catch Richard. Mel Harder also has black ink for the season in question. Here’s what Baseball Reference has to say on their ERA Champions page:
“The Pitching/ERA Titles listed are those players recognized by their leagues at the completion of the season as having the lowest earned run average in the league. Subsequent statistical research and rules changes may mean that we list a different pitcher as having the lowest earned run average for that season. When applicable we will give “black ink” measurement credit to both the league pitching champ and the player we believe had the lowest earned run average.”
http://www.baseball-reference.com/awards/pitching-era-titles.shtml
So I’m guessing that Pearson was originally recognised as the ERA champ, but Harder is considered the league leader is retrospect.
According to the information on B-R, qualification for their ERA leaderboard is one IP per team game (scheduled, not played), and qualification for their W-L% leaderboard is decisions equaling or exceeding .098 x scheduled team games (16 for 162 games, 15 for 154 games). So, Pearson’s 1933 season (10-5 record) qualified for the W-L% leaderboard but not for the ERA leaderboard.
Thus, I concur that his 1933 ERA should not be bolded on his player page. Just speculation, but possibly it is bolded (erroneously) because his season did qualify for the W-L% title. Another explanation is the B-R leaderboard shows leaders according to B-R criteria, whereas the player page shows the leaders as they were recognized at that time.
I seem to recall that before 1950 or so, qualifying the ERA title was based on CGs rather than IP.
That seems to be it oneblankspace. A quick google suggests that ten complete games was the threshold, which Pearson just met.
RJ and OBS: Not quite. The 10 CG threshold was a National League rule. The American League, on the other hand, continually switched back and forth between 10 CG and 45 innings pitched. The 45 inning rule was in effect in the AL in 1933.
A summary of the early ERA rules can be found in the next-to-last comment here:
http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/board/earlier-versions-ootp-general-discussions/207839-qualifications-batting-title-other-rate-statistics.html
I also found a PDF of the original SABR research article by Dan Levitt but for some reason only part of the article is available:
http://research.sabr.org/journals/files/SABR-National_Pastime-25.pdf
Thank you David P! I’m going to have to bookmark those links.
45 innings pitched. Really.
A September call-up inserted into the rotation could be the ERA champ!
Or, as in Red Embree (1945) or Max Lanier (1946), a youngster who starts hot and then gets a draft call (I’m guessing) or possibly gets injured. Both had identical 1.93 ERAs, league-leading marks in many seasons, out of the gate, before their seasons came to an early end.
That SABR publication is a collection of articles that were printed and scanned (with character recognition) into a PDF. But, whoever did it missed 3 pages, which were the last 3 pages of the article by Dan Levitt on his research into ERA qualification standards.
So, unsure of what the AL qualification was from 1930 to 1945, except that it wasn’t 10 CG nor 1 IP per team game. However, the article does indicate that the 1929 AL ERA leader was recognized as Tom Zachary with his 2.48 mark in 119.2 IP. Yet no black ink for Tom on his player page. Possibly, B-R is applying the 10 CG rule, as Zachary had only 7 CG that year?
If the commenter on the OOTP blog is correct that 45 IP was the AL standard from 1925 to 1945, then there are some more anomalies.
– 1938: Ivy Andrews (3.00, 48 IP, 1 CG) beats Lefty Grove (3.08, 163.2 IP, 12 CG)
– 1939: Marius Russo (2.41, 116 IP, 9 CG) beats Lefty Grove (2.54, 191 IP, 17 CG)
– 1940: Tiny Bonham (1.90, 99.1 IP, 10 CG) beats Bob Feller (2.61, 320.1 IP, 32 CG). No black ink for Bonham despite 10 CG.
– 1941: Johnny Humphries (1.83, 73.1 IP, 4 CG) beats Thornton Lee (2.37, 300.1 IP, 30 CG). Johnny Murphy and Joe Heving also beat Lee.
– 1942: Tom Ferrick (1.99, 81.1 IP, 2 CG) beats Ted Lyons (2.10, 180 IP, 20 CG)
– 1944: Joe Berry (1.94, 111.1 IP, 0 CG) beats Dizzy Trout (2.12, 352.1 IP, 33 CG). Joe Heving also beats Trout.
– 1945: Ken Holcombe (1.79, 55.1 IP, 0 CG) beats Hal Newhouser (1.81, 313.1 IP, 29 CG)
Doug: I was assuming that the person who posted on OOTP had access to the original SABR article.
BTW, Dan Levitt does have a website if anyone wants to contact him:
http://daniel-levitt.com/
Ferrell, Tiant, Winfield
Brown
Boudreau
Killebrew
Not much interesting new this time. Like some others, I’m not sure being a really good hitter (for a pitcher) is exactly what a “Great” pitcher looks like to me. Making imaginary teams from inductees, Ferrell’s hitting would look terrible (league average hitter, but way below the CoG average), just less than most pitchers.
Yes, but the barometer is not CoG hitters, or even league average hitters. The barometer is whether Ferrell provided more offensive value than would be expected from a pitcher. And, of course, he did. A lot more.
Put the package together, you’ve got over 60 WAR, about the same as Tiant (Ferrell might, in fact, be worth a bit more than that, since his 12.8 batting WAR would be higher if measured against the replacement level for a pitcher batting, which is Ferrell’s real value to his team). Worth a look, at any rate.
I suppose, but the barometer for the CoG hitting standards can be the CoG if I want it to be…this is all about splitting hairs with players groups like this one.
I’m not WAR sorting, not all the time anyway. I can acknowledge that Ferrell’s hitting provided actual value, without really being impressed by the nature of that value (much better than awful hitters), right? I have a few weird standards, like giving credit for great defence, but tending to discount terrible defence (hence voting for Killebrew often) as more of the managers fault, at times.
Doug #81 – Actually Ferrell’s hitting WAR does come from only measuring him against replacement level pitcher batting.
His Rbat is -6 so if he were being measured against all hitters he’d basically have zero hitting WAR. He ends up with 12.8 batting WAR because of the position adjustment for pitchers’ batting.
Actually I need to correct my #134.
Rbat is calculated against average, not replacement. A -6 Rbat over 1345 PAs would probably be about 3-4 batting WAR. Which is what Ferrell would have if he were only being compared against hitters.
The rest of Ferrell’s hitting WAR comes from the pitching adjustment. For Ferrell it’s 143 runs over 1345 PA so about 60-70 runs per “full batting season”. That’s a rate that 5 or 6 times higher than any other position (and rightfully so).
Thanks for the correction, David P.
Think of it this way. He could have .280/.351/.446/.797 slashed his way as a roughly league average left fielder (he did play 13 games there) and by career PA’s he did that for about two seasons. That’s considerable value with the bat. Now, move that bat to short and you’d value it a whole lot more. Of course the pitchers mound is the ultimate defensive position so as a league average defensive pitcher (ahem), that’s a pretty reasonable bat.
Considering what Babe Ruth had done, you wonder why the Indians didn’t move him to the field when he hit 9 home runs over 128 PA’s at age 23 in 1931.
It’s also not fair to only call him a pitcher even ignoring those scant 13 games in left. He was frequently used as a pinch hitter in his Boston tenure and I’d bet some of his 41 relief appearances involved entering as a pinch hitter. Imagine the added value of a league average relief pitcher out of your pinch hitter…
Murray, Alomar, Lombardi
Murray, Alomar, Winfield
Killebrew, Eckersley, and Dean
Killebrew, Dean, Boudreau
I’m with the good Doctor @ 35 on Ferrell- I think he belongs in the HOF but at least as of this moment I think he falls short of the COG. In an era that is already far over-represented in the HOF- including Lombardi & Gomez- he and Stan Hack are the 2 that I think are truly worthy that were overlooked.
So unless someone is able to change my mind about Ferrell before the deadline to change our votes mine is:
Campanella, Minoso, Tiant
By the way- if there’s someone out there who’s not familiar with the players from this era it’s worth checking out their B-R page if only to see all of the great nicknames they had back in those days.
I’m trying to assess just what his added-value as a hitter really was.
Getting any value out of the 9-hole is big added value, but how much is being ‘great’ in that regard helping to win ballgames?
Greatest hitting Pitchers since 1893, by WAR:
15.0 .. Red Ruffing
13.3 .. George Mullin
13.3 .. Walter Johnson
12.8 .. Wes Ferrell
11.6 .. George Uhle
11.3 .. Bob Lemon
9.7 … Early Wynn
9.0 … Don Newcombe
8.6 … Doc Crandall
8.5 … Schoolboy Rowe
8.2 … Mike Hampton
8.0 … Bob Gibson
_______
Of course, differences in PA among that group.
So, PA per WAR:
103.0 … Hampton
105.1 … Wes Ferrell
105.2 … Don Larsen (6.2)
109.7 … Earl Wilson (7.7)
109.8 … Newcombe
117.3 … Lemon
120.4 … Rowe
121.0 … Crandall
126.7 … Mullin
130.3 … Uhle
138.9 … Ruffing
186.1 … Gibson
189.6 … Walter Johnson
196.3 … Wynn
______
And there’s this stat that people seem to like…
Homeruns by Pitchers:
38 … Ferrell
37 … Lemon
36 … Ruffing
35 … Spahn
35 … Wilson
29 … Drysdale
For his career, he slashed this out of the 9-hole:
.281 .352 .456 .808
Not sure how to search for the league averages in this category, but as M Sullivan pointed out above (90), this was like having a DH in a pitcher’s league.
Voomo: Go to the Team Batting Split Finder, set the years to 1927-1941, NL Teams Together, select Batting Order Positions and Batting 9th. The Results Sheet presents all the info year by year.
Of course I meant AL Teams Together, Ferrell had only a few PA in the NL.
Oh! That is just delightful. Thanks.
So, Ferrell thumped an .808 OPS from the 9-hole.
The AL totals for each year of his career ranged between:
.459 – .565
A fellow named Ruth was a pretty good lefty pitcher as well.
Lou Boudreau
Kevin Brown
Rick Reuschel
Killebrew, Lombardi, and Medwick
Rick Reuschel, Kevin Brown, Lou Boudreau.
VOTE CHANGE:
Ferrell, Campanella, Boudreau
Dropping Murray but sticking with him and Reuschel as my COG borderline duo.
Killebrew, Lefty Gomez, Dizzy Dean
Medwick, Dean, Campanella.
Minoso, Boudreau & Alomar
Boudreau, Ferrell, Minoso
Ferrell falls into the same category as Minoso and Tiant for me: borderline COG case who was overlooked by the HOF, despite being above the HOF standard.
When it comes to borderline COG cases, if they are not in the HOF, that adds to their COG case for me and vice versa; that’s why I vote for Minoso, Tiant, and now Ferrell; and why I didn’t vote, for instance, for Whitey Ford.
Plus, thanks for the HR by pitcher table, Voomo; it is swell to see that Ferrell has a superlative achievement to his career, along with the interesting stats. Even if it is only trivia, it is fun trivia.
If the Veterans Committee had voted Tiant or Minoso in, I would probably have stopped voting for them.
Lots of discussion of Ferrell’s pitching and hitting but none of his “character”.
“When the manager, Bucky Harris, came out to relieve him, not only did he refuse to hand over the ball; when he was finally persuaded to return to the dugout he punched himself in the jaw with his fist and slammed his head against a concrete wall. He had to be forcibly restrained to prevent him from doing further harm to himself. During the 1936 season, Ferrell walked off the field in disgust and refused to continue pitching twice in the space of five days, angered each time by his teammates’ defensive shortcomings. On the second occasion he was fined $1,000 and suspended for several days. Ferrell’s reaction was to threaten to punch the manager, Joe Cronin, in the nose.”
http://sabr.org/bioproj/person/81a7570e
Just a few in a long line of childish incidents. If Ferrell was clearly above the threshold for the COG, I might consider voting for him. But he’s not. So this Indian’s fan say NO!
What? A good punch in the nose was the standard way of handling a disagreement back then. Once again, our futuristic feminized standard of behavior is being anachronistically applied to the Real Men of yesteryear.
Babe Ruth once knocked out the home plate umpire after a base on balls to the first batter of the game.
His replacement pitcher wasn’t rattled by the barbarism.
Nay, in fact, he retired 27 in a row.
I guess I always thought Brian Wilson’s tirades were somewhat charming though if he had broken his hand I wouldn’t have had much sympathy. Violence towards inanimate objects out of self frustration is hardly the greatest vice in baseball history. Pissing off teammates isn’t good but that’s not really that rare.
Brown, Tiant, Ferrell
Campanella, Minoso, Dean
For the 1908 election, I’m voting for:
-Roberto Alomar
-Eddie Murray
-Dave Winfield
Other top candidates I considered highly (and/or will consider in future rounds):
-Eckersley
-Killebrew
-Brown
-Boudreau
-Reuschel
-Tiant
-Medwick
I could be wrong. But I think that first batter whom the Babe walked, was thrown out trying to steal second after the Bambino’s exit.
Ernie Shore then retired 26 in a row.
The 26-out “perfect” game.
Just like Armando Galarraga in 2010, except Shore got credit for the 27th out he didn’t get, whereas Galarraga failed to be credited with the 27th out he did get.
Killer, Eck, Murray
Vote update! This might actually matter to people here, since this round seems pretty ridiculously wide-open. This takes us through PP’s vote @136. Here you go:
15 (38.46%) – Lou Boudreau
11 (28.21%) – Harmon Killebrew, Eddie Murray
10 (25.64%) – Dizzy Dean
9 (23.08%) – Roberto Alomar
8 (20.51%) – Kevin Brown
7 (17.95%) – Wes Ferrell, Minnie Minoso, Dave Winfield
6 (15.38%) – Roy Campanella, Luis Tiant
5 (12.82%) – Dennis Eckersley, Rick Reuschel
4 (10.26%) – Joe Medwick
3 (7.69%) – Lefty Gomez, Ernie Lombardi
Holy Dizzy Dean! I actually had to double-check, because… wow. I had NO idea he was doing THAT well.
How could someone take Dean over Ferrell? I don’t get it.
Dean: brilliant for a brief period, career ERA+ 131. Ferrell very good for a longer period, career ERA+ 116. I’ll take brilliant.
Dean: Not as Brilliant as Ferrell over ANY period. Ferrell’s best season is 11 WAR, Dean’s is 9. Ignoring their bats those years it’s Dean by 8.5 over Ferrell at 8.4. It’s not just best season. For any N consecutive years you pick, Ferrell was a better player according to WAR than Dean and it’s not even that close. In addition to that peak dominance, he has more value as a league average pitcher because he could hit. His ERA+ is lower mostly because he pitched an additional 650 Innings over Ferrell. If you lob off the last 650 innings at the end of Ferrell’s pitching career his ERA+ goes from 116 to a Dean like 128. Not quite the same but Ferrell hit an OPS+ of 100 vs Dean’s 43. That makes much more than a 3 point ERA+ difference over similar lengths and means Ferrell’s lower ERA final 650 innings he was of considerable value.
You have to completely ignore Ferrell’s bat and fail to look at a Dean-like shortened sliver of Ferrell’s career to think they’re even remotely similar players.
Reuschel, Tiant, Killebrew
Killebrew, Medwick, Minoso
Killebrew, Eck, and Wes Ferrell, whose 1933 baseball card sits in my living room.
Lombardi, Campanella, Eckersley
From 1949 through 1964 inclusive, the Yankees won 14 AL pennants. Al Lopez won the other two.
As a catcher, Lopez put up some black fielding ink, leading his league in games caught, assists, DP, caught stealing (raw once, percentage four times), and fielding percentage. His 107 assists as a catcher in 1936 is the most in the All-Star Game era.
Voting for:
ALopez
HKillebrew
EMurray
Apologizing to:
SOAAMinoso
DWinfield
DMedwick
WFerrell
Lopez’s bounce HR on 9-12-30 was supposedly the last one ever hit. Beginning in 1931 in the NL such balls were ground rule doubles. The AL adopted the new rule after the 1929 season.
Kevin Brown.
Lou Boudreau.
And I can’t let Luis Tiant slip off without my having a say.
Brown, Boudreau, Tiant.
Another update! This takes us through David P.’s vote change WAY up @176 (nested under comment 23) – 45 votes tallied:
16 (35.56%) – Lou Boudreau
15 (33.33%) – Harmon Killebrew
13 (28.89%) – Eddie Murray
10 (22.22%) – Dizzy Dean
9 (20.00%) – Kevin Brown
8 (17.78%) – Roberto Alomar, Wes Ferrell, Minnie Minoso, Luis Tiant
7 (15.56%) – Dennis Eckersley
6 (13.33%) – Rick Reuschel
5 (11.11%) – Joe Medwick
4 (8.89%) – Ernie Lombardi
3 (6.67%) – Lefty Gomez
1 (2.22%) – Al Lopez
Campanella and Winfield also have 7 votes, so the current tally is:
16 (35.56%) – Lou Boudreau
15 (33.33%) – Harmon Killebrew
13 (28.89%) – Eddie Murray
10 (22.22%) – Dizzy Dean
9 (20.00%) – Kevin Brown
8 (17.78%) – Roberto Alomar, Wes Ferrell, Minnie Minoso, Luis Tiant
7 (15.56%) – Roy Campanella, Dennis Eckersley, Dave Winfield
6 (13.33%) – Rick Reuschel
5 (11.11%) – Joe Medwick
4 (8.89%) – Ernie Lombardi
3 (6.67%) – Lefty Gomez
1 (2.22%) – Al Lopez
For The Win: Harmon Killebrew
Get another extra round: Eddie Murray
I’m not sure if he actually belongs in our COG, but let’s keep him on the ballot: Joe Medwick
Down to the wire we go!!!!
Ferrell vs Dean
Their best years of Player WAR
(pitching and batting combined):
11.0… 9.0
9.1 … 7.2
8.1 … 7.1
8.0 … 6.6
7.2 … 5.7
6.7 … 4.7
4.9 … 2.5
4.9 … 1.8
2.5 … 0.5
0.6 … 0.4
Dean is a great baseball personality.
And he had one truly great season: 30 wins and a Game 7 WS shutout.
Ferrell had perhaps the closest matching peak career pitching performance to Dean in the history of baseball. Very similar. He just did it while hitting like a corner outfielder, being used as a pinch hitter, and followed it up with 650 innings of league average pitching and a little more hitting.
Look at it this way. Dean ’32-’37 is only a 6 year peak and makes up 1728.1 innings, 88% of his career worth 38 pitching WAR. Even ignoring Ferrrell’s bat, his 6 year peak ’30-’35 is a very similar 36.2 WAR over a shorter 1565 innings. That’s a better rate. He was more dominant. He also pitched at that level for longer too, ’29 and ’36 were at a near as identical rate over 543 innings in those years. And over ’29-’36 he also hit. And he pitched better outside of his 8 year peak than Dean did in his 6 year peak.
If you were building a dream roster of players based on single season performances it’s hard to imagine that 1935 Wes Ferrell wouldn’t get some serious consideration as a long reliever/pinch hitter. His ERA+ of 134 is far from the highest qualifying season on record (have to be 150 to even make the top 500) but he did pitch 322 innings that year completing 31 games and he hit a staggering .347/.427/.533/.960 line that even in an offensive era was good for an OPS+ of 141 over a not insignificant 179 PA sample size.
His career ERA is over 4 and it’s hard to fathom a guy who regularly competed for best player in the league with an ERA that high but it’s the truth. Dean’s previous year 2.66 ERA over 311 innings paired with 30 wins and 195 strikeouts won him the MVP and fits much better into the traditional narrative but Ferrell’s AL had much better bats (yankees, tigers). 3.52 ERA doesn’t sound as impressive but it is.
Campanella, Murray, Winfield
Here’s a Dizzy Dean quiz that I imagine our panel of experts will figure out very quickly:
What batting accomplishment does Dean share with three other Hall of Famers?
Is it he is one of 4 HOF pitchers to hit a walk-off HR? Red Ruffing, Pete Alexander and Juan Marichal also did it.
I should have known you’d come up with an even better answer than mine Richard! This particular piece of trivia is a seasonal feat.
RJ: I haven’t forgotten your quiz, I just can’t come up with an answer.
I stumped the master! I’m guessing the problem was that I found a piece of miscellany so trivial and insignificant that you didn’t bother to check it.
And this particular answer is that Dean is one of four Hall of Famers to hit 1.000 in a season, with Jessie Haines, Ray Shalk and Catfish Hunter the others. Naturally, they all had a solitary at-bat.
The inspiration for this was seeing Jimmie Foxx’s 6 for 9 performance in his age-17 debut season. I wondered whether Foxx’s .667 batting average was the highest non-1.000 BA for a season by a Hall of Famer: it is.
I think it’s an interesting piece of trivia.
For a spreadsheet following the real Hall of Fame voting by the baseball writers, in a manner similar to the COG vote tally spreadsheets, you can go here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AmkBNPY405WAdFBOUVBhbjNRZjYzbWI2d201bm0tSmc&usp=sharing#gid=16
Unlike the COG votes, which all have to be public, the HOF voters can keep their ballots private if they wish, so this HOF spreadsheet will not show all the ballots that have been cast. And because the writers who make their ballots public may have different voting tendencies than the writers who keep their ballots private, the votes recorded on this spreadsheet may not be fully predictive of the final result. But in the past few years this spreadsheet has presented a quite impressive sample of the total vote, so it is worth following if you are into this sort of thing (which if you read this far into comment 186 of this post, you probably are).
Thanks Birtelcom! Here’s a different version with a few more votes. Based on the early voting, looks like we could have as many as 6 players elected. (doubtful we’ll have that many, but it’s at least possible)
http://www.baseballthinkfactory.org/newsstand/discussion/the_2015_hof_ballot_collecting_gizmo
My guess is that the early public voters are a somewhat un-representative sample, with a lot more in common among themselves than the total universe of voters will have; ergo, a lot of uniformity in the voting that shows up as a large number of candidates with very high early percentages.
Oh it’s completely unrepresentative Birtelcom! Still, it’s fun to look at. Smoltz, for example, is off to a way better start than I would have anticipated.
Meanwhile, we can already begin the mocking/scorn. Starting with one Garry Brown of Springfield, MA who only voted for 6 players, leaving Randy Johnson off of his ballot.
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/207064-legendary-sports-columnist-garry-brown-retires-after-59-years
Murray, ALomar, Campanella
I don’t feel great about this vote, but I’m going with Boudreau, Murray, and Tiant
Nice,
Eddie Murray is tied for the lead with Boudreau.
Harmon the Killer is one behind.
Here’s a comparison of Murray and Killebrew, two guys in the 500 Homer club…
Killer was an effective hitter through age 36.
This was 2138 games.
Murray played in 2135 games through age 34,
and had a bit left in the tank.
But here’s how they compare through 2138/2135 games:
.261 .382 .527 .908 149
.294 .372 .494 .866 140
Runs
1201
1210
Hits
1890
2352
XBH
825 (261 / 23 / 541)
810 (402 / 29 / 379)
RBI
1454
1373
SB / CS
18 / 16
76 / 31
BB / SO
1419 / 1509
1026 / 1076
Total Bases
3820
3949
Rbat / Rbaser / Rdp / Rfield
494 -21 -25 -77
396 -7 -4 59
WAR
60.2
63.2
WAA
31.5
34.0
______________________________
Their career stats After this:
.219 .325 .362 .686 93
.270 .328 .434 .761 103
PA
1041
3692
WAR
0.2
5.0
WAA
-3.4
-7.0
Murray, Reuschel, Winfield
50-vote update (through donburgh @196):
18 (36%) – Eddie Murray
17 (34%) – Lou Boudreau
16 (32%) – Harmon Killebrew
10 (20%) – Dizzy Dean
9 (18%) – Roberto Alomar, Kevin Brown, Roy Campanella, Luis Tiant, Dave Winfield
8 (16%) – Wes Ferrell, Minnie Minoso
7 (14%) – Dennis Eckersley, Rick Reuschel
6 (12%) – Joe Medwick
4 (8%) – Ernie Lombardi
3 (6%) – Lefty Gomez
1 (2%) – Al Lopez
(I love doing these when the percentages are all pretty and not full of messy decimals!)
I have to admit that I thought that Brown would be in the thick of this, at least in the early going. In the past 11 elections Boudreau has gotten 175 votes, Killebrew 186 votes and Brown 165.
During that same stretch our current leader, Murray, received only 143 votes. It was in the first 1916 ballot- which was 11 elections ago- when he received his largest vote total (19) in a late attempt to get him an extra ballot’s eligibility. In the 27 elections since he returned to the ballot he has exceeded 13 votes only twice in addition to that 1916 election whereas in just the past 11 elections Killebrew & Brown exceeded that total 7 times each and Boudreau did it 9 times.
I’m not advocating for or against anyone- just pointing out that when you have multiple candidates and a limited number of votes sometimes strange things happen.
Players with:
500+ Home Runs and
3000+ Hits
Aaron
Mays
Viagra
Eddie Murray
…
500+ Home Runs
500+ Doubles
1900+ RBI
Barry
Hank
Babe
Willie
Alex
Eddie
And the other end of it…
500+ Home Runs
Lowest WAR Batting Runs:
255.5 … Banks
332.6 … Sosa
391.8 … Murray
430.7 … Viagra
440.1 … Griffey
478.0 … Reggie
486.5 … Killer
486.9 … McCovey
Murray, Eckersley, Alomar.
Been voting for Murray for like 48 straight ballots, let’s get him in already!!
Boudreau, Killer, and, for historical purposes, a one time shout out to El Tiante
I remember a description of him taking a post-game shower smoking a cigar.
Boudreau
Medwick
Lombardi
Glad to see Ferrell is safe. He belongs.
Disappointed to see that Lombardi isn’t generating more enthusiasm. The weaknesses in his game are pretty apparent (speed; durability maybe), but I don’t know how appreciable the difference between him and Mickey Cochrane is — and I’m fairly sure Cochrane will go in to the COG. In general I think catchers are undervalued by WAR, so I’m bound to look favorably on both of them. I’ll be curious to hear people’s opinions about Cochrane, especially if Lombardi falls off without even making it past one round.
Lombardi –
28th All-Time in games played at Catcher
17th in WAR (and one of the only guys to Only play catcher)
12th in oWAR (defensive stats are certainly variable at C)
Most of the fellas ahead of him had far more PA.
PA per oWAR:
116.6 … Tenace
117.5 … Piazza
118.9 … Cochrane
121.0 … Mauer*
125.4 … Bresnahan
131.3 … Dickey
131.5 … LOMBARDI
133.0 … Bench
135.7 … Schang
137.6 … Munson
138.7 … Hartnett
142.9 … Campanella
147.7 … Posada
148.5 … Berra
150.0 … Fisk
151.9 … Burgess
156.7 … Victor Martinez*
158.6 … Haller
160.5 … Freehan
161.1 … Walker Cooper
162.2 … Carter
166.0 … Tettleton
166.8 … Porter
182.7 … Simmons
188.1 … Javy Lopez
190.5 … Ivan Rod
207.6 … McCarver (scoring runs helps you win games)
217.6 … Kendall
220.3 … Parrish
234.3 … Rick Ferrell (HOF)
When Lombardi gripped his bat he interlocked his right pinky and left fore-finger so as to move his hands as close to the end of the bat as possible.
You left out one very big weakness of Lombardi’s- defense.
He had a hell of an arm but played in an era when almost no one was running. And the rest of his game defensively was pretty much a disaster.
Offensively, Lombardi is exactly the same as Victor Martinez. Take a look and you’ll see what I mean. Whether it’s with traditional stats or advanced stats, it would be hard to find two more similar players.
And yet Lombardi has an 11.5 edge in WAR, 45.9 vs 34.4. (Fangraphs has it closer: 41.9 vs. 33.2)
There are two reasons for Lombardi’s advantage:
1) As I pointed out in #21, the baserunning and Rdp numbers for Lombardi’s era are simply wrong/non-existent. This gives a huge boost to someone like Lombardi who was incredibly slow and grounded into lots of double plays. If the numbers were accurate, Lombardi would likely have 4-6 less WAR.
2) The other obvious difference is that Lombardi played his whole career at catcher and Martinez didn’t. Baseball Reference also gives Lombardi the edge in Rfield (though Fangraphs gives the edge to Martinez).
So at the end end of the day, Lombardi is about a 40 WAR player, offensively equivalent to Victor Martinez but with a slight defensive edge. Personally, I don’t see that as being close to COG worthy.
Boudreau, Brown, Reuschel.
Boudreau, Tiant, Reuschel
24 hours to go in the current voting round. A closely contested election — don’t forget to cast your ballot if you can.
Murray, Brown, Tiant
Boudreau, Murray, Eckersley
Through bstar @214:
22 (38.60%) – Lou Boudreau
21 (36.94%) – Eddie Murray
17 (29.82%) – Harmon Killebrew
12 (21.05%) – Luis Tiant
11 (19.30%) – Kevin Brown
10 (17.54%) – Roberto Alomar, Dizzy Dean
9 (15.79%) – Roy Campanella, Dennis Eckersley, Rick Reuschel, Dave Winfield
8 (14.04%) – Wes Ferrell, Minnie Minoso
7 (12.28%) – Joe Medwick
5 (8.77%) – Ernie Lombardi
3 (5.26%) – Lefty Gomez
1 (1.75%) – Al Lopez
Low voter turnout this round means that every single vote counts that much more! Lombardi’s on the edge of 10%, Tiant is on the edge of 25%, and while Killebrew seems out of it, it’s still a tight battle between Murray and Boudreau for the top spot.
I love to see Tiant pick up a little buffer but it’s still a long shot.
Even with Francisco’s vote @ 217 he’s still only on 13 ballots out of 58 cast which means that he has to be named on the next 2 ballots cast to reach 25% and if there are more than 2 ballots cast he’ll have to be named on a third.
Not impossible but not likely either.
Tiant, Brown, Medwick
Brown, Boudreau, Tiant
Can El Tiante escape the bubble for the holidays?
Two comments about Wes Ferrell:
To rate Ferrell against other pitchers on total value, I took the top 200 in pitching WAR since 1901, then found their WAR/pos, and thus their combined career WAR. Then I made two sets of rankings:
(1) Career combined WAR; and
(2) Product of career WAR and WAR/250 IP.
Then I took the average of those two rankings.
Ferrell comes out #34, tied with Tiant and Palmer. Ferrell is #43 in career WAR (combined), and #25 in WAR/250.
For a voter relying on this ranking, the question then would be, do we expect to induct at least 35-40 pitchers? So far, having covered 61 birth years, we have 55 hitters and 23 pitchers, about a 70/30 split. (18 of the 23 pitchers chosen thus far rank #34 or higher by this method, including Palmer. Four rank #42 or lower, including Feller and Koufax, and I excluded Mariano from my rankings because closers have a big advantage in compiling a high WAR rate per inning.)
FWIW, this “average-of-two-rankings” method gives double weight to the career WAR as opposed to the rate per 250 IP. I’ve concluded that my hybrid “WAR product” stat is too kind to those with the least playing time, and Ferrell’s 2,623 IP is low for a COG candidate. I haven’t found a way to solve the weighting problem directly in the “WAR product” stat.
Wes Ferrell’s peak was genuinely outstanding, using combined WAR/pitch and WAR/pos. From 1929-36, he totaled just under 60 WAR combined, averaging 7.5 WAR per year. That’s great. Only 13 modern pitchers averaged 7+ WAR for any 8-year span:
— Young
— W.Johnson
— R.Johnson
— Grove
— Mathewson
— Pedro
— Maddux
— Clemens
— Gibson
— Alexander
— Seaver
— Walsh
— P.Niekro
Ferrell had:
— 4 years of 8+ WAR (only 12 modern pitchers did that on WAR/pitch alone).
— Highs of 11.0 and 9.1 WAR (24 modern pitchers had 2+ years of 9+ WAR/pitch).
Granted, I’m comparing Ferrell’s combined WAR to just the WAR/pitch of others. But since most pitchers have minimal WAR/pos, I think the general picture is valid.
Comparing Ferrell with Koufax and Feller, two pitchers we’ve inducted largely for their peak value: I tallied their combined WAR by season, then took six different “peak” measures: best 4, 5 and 6 seasons, and best consecutive spans of 5, 6 and 7 years:
— Feller wins 4 of those 6 measures (best 4, 5 and 6, and 5-year span), placing 2nd in the other two.
— Ferrell wins the other 2 measures (6-year and 7-year spans), with three 2nds and one 3rd.
— Koufax has one 2nd (very close to Feller in 5-year span), and five 3rds.
Ferrell routs both guys on 8-year peak, but I didn’t want to stack this in his favor.
So when both hitting and pitching are counted, I think Ferrell is (heresy alert!) clearly a superior player to Koufax, and probably better than Feller.
We’ve trained ourselves not to focus on won-lost records. But from 1929-36, Ferrell went 161-94. The only pitchers within miles of that were Grove (173-65) and Hubbell (160-88, very close to Ferrell). Both Grove and Hubbell had much better teams behind them in that time.
— Grove’s teams from 1929-36 had a .551 W% in non-Grove decisions. So he bested his expected win total by 42.
— Hubbell’s teams were also .551 without him in that span. He bested his expected wins by 23.
— Ferrell’s teams played .485 without him. He beat expectations by 37 wins.
Ferrell and Grove both pitched for the BoSox from 1934-36. Ferrell went 59-34, Grove 45-32.
I’m NOT equating Ferrell with Grove. Lefty had several great years outside this span. But I’d put him very close to Hubbell, who ranked one slot ahead in my average-of-two-rankings method (see comment #222).
Bottom line: Ferrell had an 8-year span of true greatness. I’m going to vote for him.
P.S. Here are links to my saved reports for:
— Top 200 WAR/pitch, 1901-2014
— WAR/pos for the Top 200 in WAR/pitch, 1901-2014
(Because I included OPS+ on the WAR/pos list, Guidry and Gubicza are omitted, as they never batted.)
Ferrell, Tiant, Boudreau.
This has been a pretty exciting election; lots of discussion, the facts/quiz questions were top notch, tons of momentum shifts in voting (did Dizzy Dean really get ten votes in the first half of the week and then nothing since? Was Eddie Murray really in the lead?). In the end, I think Boudreau is the most deserving of this ballot, I’ve been thoroughly convinced over the months he’s been on, so I’m happy with how it’s going. I also feel like maybe the direct comparisons people have made between Murray and Killebrew in recent elections have made people take another look at Murray, and as I view Murray as the superior candidate between the two, I’m happy to see that too (I’ve spared enough words on my own doubt towards Killebrew’s worth in terms of the CoG already; I think I’m done with that subject and if he eventually gets elected, so it goes). And I’ve been stumping for Tiant to get over 25% for some time, so that possibility is exciting.
Oh yeah! The vote.
Boudreau
Tiant
Reuschel
Killebrew, Tiant, Murray.
Alomar, Campanella, Boudreau.