A Pivot on My Annual Tradition / HOF’s Sins of Omission

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From 1901 through 2000, no team played at least .536 ball in a 10-year span without any Hall of Famers — except these:

 

  1. Detroit Tigers, 1979-88 — .553 W%
  2. Detroit Tigers, 1978-87 — .551 W%
  3. Detroit Tigers, 1980-89 — .536 W%
  4. Detroit Tigers, 1977-86 — .536 W%

Yes, friends … Another year’s Hall of Fame vote has gone by, so it’s time for my annual “Trammaker” speech. But I’m shifting focus this year.

There were 193 ten-year spans between .535 and .555 in the 20th century. The non-Tigers spans averaged 23 years from Hall of Famers, not counting those who played for more than one team in a season. But no one who played a game for Detroit in that era has been inducted. (In fact, the last HOFer to play even one game for Detroit was Al Kaline, 1974; the last to pitch for them was Jim Bunning, 1963.)

In the best of those listed spans, 1979-88, Detroit’s .553 W% ranked 2nd out of 26 teams. On an annual basis, they were about 90-72, a half-game behind the #1 Yankees, and 3.5 games ahead of #3 Boston. They had a memorable championship year and another division crown, each time with baseball’s best record. They finished 2nd twice — one game out in ’88, and MLB’s 3rd-best record in ’83 — and were 2 games back another year. They were relevant every season; their worst was 83-79.

In the next tier down, from .516 to .535, these 10-year spans had no Hall of Famer:

  1. Toronto Blue Jays, 1981-90* — .535 W%
  2. Detroit Tigers, 1981-90 — .533 W%
  3. Detroit Tigers, 1982-91 — .530 W%
  4. Detroit Tigers, 1976-85 — .528 W%
  5. Detroit Tigers, 1983-92 — .525 W%
  6. Toronto Blue Jays, 1980-89* — .523 W%
  7. Detroit Tigers, 1984-93 — .521 W%

(* Well, the ’87 Blue Jays had Phil Niekro, but only for only 3 games.)

From 1976 through 1993, all nine Detroit 10-year spans had at least a .521 W%, a World Series title, and not a single appearance by a Hall of Famer. In the whole 20th century, no one else had a 10-year span with a winning record and a playoff series victory, without some input by a HOF inductee.

Besides the nine Tigers spans listed so far, the remaining 10-year spans with a winning record and no HOFers:

  1. Blue Jays, 1981-90 — .535 W%, two division titles, lost both playoffs.
  2. Blue Jays, 1980-89 — .523 W%, see above.
  3. Giants, 1991-2000 — .515 W%, two divisions, lost both first-round series.
    (And Barry Bonds would be in the Hall, if not for … Plus, Jeff Kent has only been on the ballot two years.)
  4. Tigers, 1975-84 — .512 W%, one championship.
  5. Pirates, 1987-96 — .507 W%, three divisions, lost all three playoffs. (Plus, Bonds.)
  6. Pirates, 1988-97 — .506 W%, see above.
  7. Tigers, 1985-94 — .504 W%, one division, lost playoffs.
  8. Pirates, 1986-95 — .501 W%, see above.

That covers 20 years for the Tigers, 1975-94 — eleven 10-year spans, each with a winning record and a first-place finish, and no Hall of Famer. Out of 894 winning 10-year spans in the 20th century, just six others had no HOFer. Four of those had at least 5 years of Barry Bonds, and the other two were those ’80s Blue Jays.

For W% between .520 and .555, there are 374 ten-year spans. The only ones blanked by the Hall were those nine of the Tigers (1976-93) and two of the Jays (1980-90). The rest had an average and median of 21 seasons by HOFers.

In the tight range from .550 to .555 W%, there are 46 ten-year spans. Every such span has been Hall-honored, except the Tigers of 1978-87 and ’79-88. All the rest had at least 7 HOF years, except the 1982-91 Blue Jays (one); the non-Tigers average was 24 years by HOFers. Every span in that range had at least two Hall of Famers in some year, except the two Detroit spans (none), and the 1976-85 Royals and ’82-91 Jays (high of one per year).

Even truly bad teams have more feet in the Hall than the Tigers of Alan Trammell, Lou Whitaker and Jack Morris. There are 78 sub-.400 ten-year spans, akin to 65-97 or worse in a modern schedule. They averaged 7 years of play by HOFers. The worst 10-year span — the 1936-45 Phillies averaged 51-102, never less than 34 games behind — had nine years of Chuck Klein, and one each by Jimmie Foxx and Lloyd Waner, as regulars.

In fact, pick a team 10-year span at random between 1901-2000. There’s a 97% chance they had at least one Hall of Famer — only 55 of 1,698 didn’t — and an 85% chance they had at least two Hall of Famers in some year. Those with none averaged a .461 W% — except the Tigers during the 20-year span of Trammell and Whitaker, who averaged .523.

Is that just coincidence? An accident of random distribution, and a balanced team that just happened to pull off a successful generation with no truly great players? Or does this team-based approach expose a real oversight?

__________

Through 1996, just two World Series winners had no Hall of Famers:

  1. The ’84 Tigers won 104 games in the regular season and lost once in the postseason.
  2. The ’81 Dodgers had their division’s 2nd-best record, but made the playoffs by the split-season quirk.

The only other pennants with no HOFer were the wartime ’44 Browns and ’45 Cubs, and ’93 Phillies.

Among regulars on those five Hall-denied league champs, here’s everyone with 35+ career WAR — first, position players:

And the pitchers:

The ’84 Tigers had 8 of those 23 players, and 5 of the top 10. Schilling, the WAR leader of this group, hasn’t garnered 40% in three ballots, but has seven tries left. He’ll get in … or I’ll dust off my picketing shoes. I haven’t gone that far yet for Trammell and Whitaker, fearing to seem a provincial Tigers fan, but the joke is starting to wear thin.

Bottom line: The ’84 Tigers were clearly the best World Series or league champ still not blessed by the Hall.

__________

In the 15 years from 1979-93, Detroit won the most games in MLB, a .525 W%. (Their .528 pythagorean W% also was best.) Next in wins were the Yankees, with 25 regular years by 7 different HOFers; then the Expos (16 regular years from 3 HOFers), and the Blue Jays (5 regular years by 3 HOFers, plus two cameos).

Someone wearing the Old English “D” won a lot of games in that era. And that’s really what WAR is about: attributing wins on the field to individual players.

Here are Detroit’s WAR leaders for 1979-93 — first, position players:

Rk Player WAR WAA Off. Def. OPS+ TB From To G PA R H HR RBI BB BA OBP SLG OPS Pos
1 Alan Trammell 68.4 42.7 59.6 20.7 116 3033 1979 1993 1919 8051 1094 2054 172 902 748 .290 .357 .428 .785 *6/HD587
2 Lou Whitaker 67.2 39.2 59.5 14.5 117 3182 1979 1993 2064 8706 1207 2053 215 937 1060 .274 .362 .425 .788 *4H/D
3 Chet Lemon 30.6 15.5 24.5 5.0 117 1779 1982 1990 1203 4676 570 1071 142 536 468 .263 .349 .437 .786 *89/HD
4 Lance Parrish 28.4 14.5 24.2 9.8 116 1864 1979 1986 1049 4319 530 1051 195 652 318 .267 .322 .473 .795 *2/DH397
5 Kirk Gibson 25.0 11.8 25.5 -4.1 126 1719 1979 1993 1009 4126 590 990 163 561 424 .274 .353 .476 .829 98D7/H
6 Tony Phillips 20.5 11.5 17.4 2.9 118 908 1990 1993 608 2782 411 648 42 248 424 .281 .392 .393 .785 457/9D86H
7 Travis Fryman 15.4 7.7 15.4 2.5 116 927 1990 1993 527 2279 282 570 72 311 179 .277 .337 .451 .788 *65/HD
8 Darrell Evans 14.5 5.5 10.8 -1.1 121 1056 1984 1988 727 2809 357 559 141 405 437 .238 .357 .450 .806 *3D/H5
9 Cecil Fielder 13.6 4.2 15.1 -5.6 135 1197 1990 1993 630 2733 366 620 160 506 331 .262 .354 .506 .861 *3D/H
10 Mickey Tettleton 13.3 6.7 14.4 -0.3 136 749 1991 1993 463 1899 246 385 95 282 332 .249 .379 .484 .863 *2/D39H7
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used / Generated 1/17/2015.

And then pitchers:

Rk Player WAR WAA ERA+ ERA IP W L From To Age G GS CG SHO GF W-L% SV
1 Jack Morris 36.9 11.4 109 3.71 2891.0 194 144 1979 1990 24-35 395 395 153 24 0 .574 0
2 Dan Petry 17.4 1.1 105 3.84 1843.0 119 93 1979 1991 20-32 306 274 48 10 8 .561 0
3 Frank Tanana 13.2 -0.7 99 4.08 1551.1 96 82 1985 1992 31-38 250 243 27 7 5 .539 1
4 Mike Henneman 11.2 4.4 135 3.00 605.2 56 30 1987 1993 25-31 432 0 0 0 320 .651 128
5 Aurelio Lopez 9.5 2.2 119 3.41 713.0 53 30 1979 1985 30-36 355 4 0 0 245 .639 85
6 Milt Wilcox 8.7 -1.7 102 3.96 1173.2 78 61 1979 1985 29-35 185 180 46 5 2 .561 0
7 Willie Hernandez 8.5 3.9 135 2.98 483.2 36 31 1984 1989 29-34 358 0 0 0 279 .537 120
8 Walt Terrell 7.7 -4.0 96 4.26 1328.0 79 76 1985 1992 27-34 216 190 44 9 9 .510 0
9 Doyle Alexander 6.4 1.6 100 3.91 540.1 29 29 1987 1989 36-38 78 78 13 5 0 .500 0
10 Dave Rozema 5.4 0.3 113 3.57 579.2 33 27 1979 1984 22-27 152 72 9 4 45 .550 10
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used / Generated 1/17/2015.

 

Now, you could explain Detroit’s success without anointing anyone, if there was a parade of stars in short stints with the club. But Trammell and Whitaker account for Detroit’s top five WAR years in that span (6.7+ WAR), and almost half their top 40 (4.1+ WAR):

  • 10 by Whitaker
  • 9 by Trammell
  • 4 by Tony Phillips
  • 3 by Kirk Gibson
  • 2 by Chet Lemon
  • 2 by Darrell Evans
  • 2 by Lance Parrish
  • 2 by Mickey Tettleton
  • 2 by Travis Fryman
  • 1 each by Steve Kemp, Cecil Fielder, Chad Kreuter and Milt Cuyler

On the pitching side, Morris had four of their top five years (4.9+ WAR), and half their top 10 (4.0+ WAR) — Morris 5, Dan Petry 2, one each for Doyle Alexander (in a third of a season) and the relievers Willie Hernandez and Aurelio Lopez.

Those clubs never had a superstar — Hernandez won their only major awards, in one fluky season — and no other big stars. No one who played for Detroit in the ’80s survived two years on the Hall of Fame ballot or cracked 6% of a vote, except Trammell and Morris. Trammell has yet to reap 40% of a ballot, trending downward with just one year left.

__________

Team records help expose some silly Hall selections. Take the Braves of 1922-31. (Please.) They averaged 60-94, with no winning years, and high marks of 5th place and 22 games behind. Yet they had 15 years of regular play from five Hall of Famers, not counting a brief Burleigh Grimes stopover and a Johnny Evers cameo. Okay, Rogers Hornsby had one great year. But the rest … Dave Bancroft averaged a decent 2.6 WAR and 111 games over 4 years (age 33-36). His successor, Rabbit Maranville, averaged 1.5 WAR in 144 games for 3 years (37-39). George Sisler’s last 3 years averaged 0.7 WAR in 136 games (35-37). And Rube Marquard’s last 4 years averaged 0.6 WAR in 136 IP, and totaled a 25-39 record and 89 ERA+ (age 35-38).

Those four marginal HOFers obviously weren’t in their prime during that span. But there are countless examples in the same vein.

Bill James once wrote:

“It has become common to bash the selection of Tinker, Evers and Chance to the Hall of Fame. [T]his is perilously near an absurd argument, to wit: [They] were not really great ballplayers, they merely happened to win a huge number of games. The definition of a great ballplayer is a ballplayer who helps his team to win a lot of games.”

No one’s comparing the Tigers of 1979-88 (.553 W%) to the Cubs of 1903-12, whose .648 W% marks the best 10-year span in modern history. But the big leagues were far more stratified in that era. Two contemporary NL powers, Christy Mathewson’s Giants and Honus Wagner’s Pirates, also had 10-year spans at .634+ centered in the Aughts, both among the modern top 12. The Cubs won four pennants in their span, but their other six years averaged 10 games behind the Giants or Pirates.

More on point, those great Cubs teams have been honored with four Hall of Famers. The “trio of Bearcubs,” plus Mordecai “Three Finger” Brown, gave that 10-year span a total of 39 HOF seasons. Tinker, Chance and Evers ranked 6th, 8th and 11th in total WAR for 1903-12, but miles behind the top three of Wagner, Lajoie and Cobb. Brown joined the Cubs in 1904, and ranks 5th in pitching WAR for 1904-13.

From 1979-88, in a much bigger and more competitive MLB, Trammell and Whitaker ranked 8th and 16th in player WAR, and Morris 2nd in pitcher WAR. Stretch the span to 15 years, 1979-93, you get Trammell 5th, Whitaker 6th, while the Tigers won more games than anyone. Everyone else in that top 10 is enshrined.

Is it not absurd to suggest that this keystone combo were not really great players, they just happened to win a great many games? They anchored a 10-year run that rivals the best spans in Detroit history:

  • The Tigers of 1907-16 had a .560 W%, three pennants (but no championship), behind 10 years each of Ty Cobb and Sam Crawford, plus one full year of Harry Heilmann. Adjusting for eras, Trammaker’s .553 is at least as impressive as Cobb’s .560.
  • Detroit’s third-best span, .552 from 1932-41, featured 28 years by Hall of Fame position players — 10 by Gehringer, 9 by Greenberg (7 full), 4 by Goslin, 4 by Cochrane (2 full), 2 by Averill, and one fine year by Al Simmons. They won three pennants, one championship.
  • The next-best Tigers span from a different era is .550 from 1961-70. Not as HOF-saturated, this stretch still had 10 years of Al Kaline and 3 prime years of Jim Bunning. Similar in some ways to the Trammaker era, those Tigers had one championship and one near-miss at the pennant. Kaline, who breezed into the Hall on the first ballot, totaled 49.3 WAR in that span, just below Trammell’s 49.6 for 1979-88.

It would be easy to go too far with that line of reasoning, so let’s sum up the first points and move on:

  • The ’80s-era Tigers are easily the best team of the 20th century with no Hall of Fame representation.
  • The ’84 Tigers are the best such championship team.

Again, the 1979-88 Tigers played at .553, which is just under 90 wins in a full slate — 3 wins more than the next-best team span with no HOFer, besides adjacent Detroit spans.

__________

They have three legitimate HOF candidates. Morris had the best ballot luck, peaking near 68% in 2013, but his tries at the front door are over. He has perhaps the best old-school credentials, but was shunned by the sabermetric bloc (with whom I agree).

Trammell and Whitaker are slam-dunks to most of the advanced-stats brigade — both stand miles above the Hall of Stats threshold, and rank 11th at their positions by JAWS (and both scales include a peak component) — but also to those old-style thinkers who dare to view counting stats in the context of era, position, and team success.

Even ignoring modern value gauges, there are many Hall of Fame middle infielders with worse credentials (career or peak) than Trammell and Whitaker, if you take their batting stats with a grain of contextual salt. What put Rabbit Maranville, Luis Aparicio, Nellie Fox or Red Schoendienst in the Hall, except longevity and team success?

Yet here’s Trammell, 10th in career games at SS (7th when he retired), and Whitaker 4th at 2B (retired #3). For the whole modern era through 2000, both rank in the top 25 middle infielders in:

  • Hits (nos. 17-18)
  • Extra-base hits (10, 14)
  • Total bases (11, 15)
  • Runs (10, 23)
  • RBI (18, 21)

All this was in spite of a neutral offensive era, unlike many HOFers with inflated batting stats from the 1920s-30s and the steroids era. Among MIFs still not enshrined for stats compiled through 2000, Trammaker are #1-2 in hits, XBH and TB, #1 and 5 in runs, #3-4 in RBI.

Against stiff competition, they totaled 7 Gold Gloves and 9 All-Star nods, all from 1980-90. Among MIFs in the ’80s, they were #1-2 in hits and runs, #2-3 in total bases, #2 and 4 in RBI.

They batted #1-2 throughout Detroit’s march to the ’84 championship, with Trammell named Series MVP (.450 BA/1.300 OPS, with 6 RBI and 5 runs in 5 games). Trammell hit cleanup throughout their ’87 division title year, batting .343-28-105 to join Rogers Hornsby in the .340-20-100 club for middle infielders — the first to do that at SS, or to add 20 steals to that mix. (Since joined by Hanley Ramirez.) He just missed the MVP that year in a very close vote that laughed in the face of his and George Bell‘s stretch-run performance. (Bell hit .111 with one RBI as Toronto lost their last 7 games to blow the crown, while Tram hit .417/1.167 in September.)

Trammell and Whitaker have the historic distinction of more games played together than any other teammates, far more years and games than any other 2B/SS tandem — almost 500 games more than the #2 pair. Yet instead of raising their profile, that constant conjunction seems to have blurred their identities and hurt both their chances.

The negative argument goes thus: “They’re so similar that you can’t have just one in the Hall. And if both were so great, why did they win just one title?”

Gee, I dunno … Why didn’t Robin Yount and Paul Molitor win any titles in 15 years together? Or Nellie Fox and Luis Aparicio in their 7 years? Why didn’t Jackie Robinson and Pee Wee Reese win a Series in their five years as keystone mates — the best 5-year WAR stretch of any tandem — or more than one in their 10 years as teammates? How come Evers and Tinker plus Chance and Brown only won it all twice? Why no 1906 pennant for Nap Lajoie (10.0 WAR) and Terry Turner (9.4), the only tandem that both topped 7 WAR? Why no pennants at all for Lajoie?

One Series crown was the limit for Rogers Hornsby (with 4 HOF teammates contributing), Lou Boudreau (also 4), Pee Wee Reese (3), Charlie Gehringer (3), Travis Jackson (3), Aparicio (3), Honus Wagner (2), Cal Ripken (2), Joe Sewell (2), Ozzie Smith (with Bruce Sutter), Rabbit Maranville (with Evers), and Barry Larkin. (By my reckoning, only Larkin won a Series with no HOF help.)

No WS titles at all for Lajoie, Yount, Ryne Sandberg, Arky Vaughan, Joe Cronin, Billy Herman, Fox, Luke Appling, Bobby Doerr or Ernie Banks.

Winning more than one World Series is the exception for HOF middle infielders. I may have missed someone, but I count 11 middle infielders in the Hall now with two rings or more — less than a third of the Hall of Fame MIFs whose careers were centered in the WS era. Phil Rizzuto won 7 (his pipeline to induction), Joe Gordon and Tony Lazzeri 5 each (Derek Jeter will join them), Eddie Collins and Frankie Frisch 4, Evers 3, and 2 each for Tinker, Dave Bancroft, Joe Morgan, Roberto Alomar and Red Schoendienst. (Bill Mazeroski won 2 rings, but he sat the bench in ’71.)

If failing to win twice is a black mark on a Hall of Fame SS or 2B, Trammell and Whitaker would have plenty of company.

__________

So, at last, these team-based and player-centric trains of thought meet at this point:

  • There is virtually no precedent for excluding a SS or 2B with such counting stats — and none at all for Hall-snubbing such a successful 10-year team span, or such a great champion.

What is wrong with this picture? Can you make sense of it?

 

69 thoughts on “A Pivot on My Annual Tradition / HOF’s Sins of Omission”

  2. Voomo Zanzibar

    That’s pretty much a sewn up winning argument right there.
    I’d print it out and mail it to the Veterans Committee.

    _________________

    About the ’81 Dodgers, you listed their Regulars above 35 WAR above.
    Here’s a list of everyone on their roster above 25.
    This is a lot of very good careers.

    64.5 … Reggie Smith
    53.5 … Ron Cey
    43.5 … Bob Welch
    42.2 … Davey Lopes
    37.7 … Steve Garvey
    37.4 … Fernando Valenzuela
    36.9 … Dusty Baker
    36.6 … Burt Hooten
    34.3 … Pedro Guerrero
    33.1 … Jerry Reuss
    33.1 … Rick Monday
    31.2 … Bill Russell
    31.2 … Rick Sutcliffe
    26.1 … Dave Stewart
    26.0 … Mike Scioscia
    25.3 … Steve Sax

    Also, at least eight of these guys had good porn names.

    Reply ↓
    1. John Autin Post author

      Thanks, Voomo. Yeah, those Dodgers had some good porn ‘staches, too. Anyway, I meant no slight — they did have many fine players, including (I think) the longest-running infield quartet.

      I don’t have a clue, though, how notable it is to have 16 players with 25 career WAR on one squad — except that the ’93 Phillies only had 3 (Schilling, Dykstra, and Kruk with 25 even).

      Part of my motive for doing this post was to explore what I could do with Excel and a large number of player seasons — I harvested over 3,000 seasons of HOFers, and all team records since 1901, in order to cross-check them. A future offshoot might be to gather all seasons by players with N career WAR (or whatever), in order to answer questions like this one.

      Reply ↓
      1. Doug

        The ’79 Yankees also had 16 players with 25 WAR with Munson, Chambliss, Randolph, Nettles, Rivers, Jackson, Murcer, White, Scott, Blair, Gossage, Tiant, Kaat, Hunter, Guidry and John.

        The ’34 Cubs, ’75 As and ’97 Indians all had 15 players over 25 WAR.

        There may be others.

        Reply ↓
    2. RJ

      “Print it out and mail it” being the operative words. I can’t remember where I read this now, but apparently one Hall of Fame voter asked for someone to send him some player stats through the post, and on being informed of the existence of Baseball-Reference.com, claimed it would be easier if he had the piece of paper in front of him.

      Reply ↓
  3. David P

    Interesting analysis John. But I see a few issues.

    1) No distinction between HOFers elected by the BBWAA and those elected by the Veteran’s committee. This matters for a few reasons. One is the obvious fact that Trammell is still on the BBWAA ballot which means he’s only been rejected by one of the two election methods (and Morris just fell of last year).

    Do some of those “Tiger like” teams only have Veteran’s committee HOFers? That’s worth knowing.

    Related to this is that there’s no control for how long after retirement someone was elected to the HOF. For example, Ron Santo was elected 38 years after retirement. Or using a Tiger as an example, George Kell was elected 36 years after retirement. Neither Trammell, nor Whitaker, nor Morris are that far removed from retirement. By including all HOFers, your analysis likely includes some HOFers who were elected further past their retirement than the Tigers’ trifecta. Which means you end up with an apples vs. oranges comparison.

    2) No attempt to control for quality of HOFer. While Trammell and Whitaker certainly deserve HOF consideration, neither are no-doubt-about-it HOFers. Perhaps those others teams with a ten-year span between .535 and .555 all have inner circle HOFers? Or at least a player that was better than the Tigers’ best?

    Reply ↓
    1. John Autin Post author

      David P — I wholly agree with your first point. I’ll try to follow up with the numbers for teams with strictly BBWAA selections.

      But I wouldn’t try making the additional distinction of your second point. On what basis would we classify the BBWAA selections? How many classes? And if we’re getting that granular, oughtn’t we go whole hog and check the actual HOFer performance in each span? After all, even the elite have decline phases. I just can’t see a consensus point for any such attempt, so the resulting numbers wouldn’t be worth the trouble.

      Reply ↓
    2. John Autin Post author

      Followup to David P — There’s a fatal problem with distinguishing between BBWAA selections and others. In the Hall’s first decade, there was obviously a huge backlog. In the catch-up process, many players were selected by the “Old Timers” and “Centennial” committees, who clearly would have got in by the front door had the selections started much earlier — Cap Anson, Ed Delahanty, Old Hoss Radbourne, etc.

      For many others chosen in those years, it’s impossible to guess whether they would have been BBWAA selections in a normal time. For instance, Evers, Tinker and Chance were part of an 11-man Old Timers class in 1946.

      More broadly, while the BBWAA selections are generally better than the VC’s, there are many exceptions. The writers voted in Rabbit Maranville, Pie Traynor, Lou Brock and Jim Rice, all under 50 WAR in long careers. The VC chose writers’ rejects Ron Santo, Sam Crawford, Arky Vaughan, Johnny Mize, George Davis and Roger Connor, all over 70 WAR.

      Maybe a better distinction for these purposes would be career WAR total. But any threshold would be arbitrary and flawed, if applied automatically — which is the only practical method, given how many team spans have to be analyzed.

      Reply ↓
      1. Hartvig

        And that 11 man Old Timers class in ’46 was in response to the BBWAA’s almost complete inability to agree on anyone for a span of 7 years (only Rogers Hornsby in 1942) in spite of a wealth of ridiculously well-qualified candidates.

        As far as their being no-doubt-about-it HOFers there are 22 shortstops in the HOF (http://www.baseball-almanac.com/hof/hofstss.shtml)- there is no way on earth that anyone could rank Trammell lower than 12th on that list which would make him at worst as qualified as the average HOF shortstop.

        Much the same can be said for Whitaker among the 20 second basemen in the HOF as well (http://www.baseball-almanac.com/hof/hofst2b.shtml).

        A large part of the reason for the continued existence of the Veterans Committee is the BBWAA’s all-to-frequent refusal to select clearly qualified candidates.

        Joe Medwick but not Johnny Mize?

        Rabbit Maranville but not Arky Vaughan?

        Pie Traynor but not Ron Santo?

        The baseball Hall of Fame is what it is. If the BBWAA continue to steadfastly refuse to honor players who clearly belong in the top half of the players already enshrined- however that may have come about- then this ridiculous 2-channel voting system will continue to exist.

        Because what other alternative is there?

        Are we going to say to players “Yes, we know you’re better than the average player at your position that are already in the HOF but after 80 years that’s not how we’re going to do things anymore.”?

        Reply ↓
    3. Paul E

      David P. et al:
      Years ago Bill James came up with his Hall of Fame monitor and various other data which appear to be the basis for HoF SELECTION. B-Ref lists this on the main player page in 4 categories including black ink and gray ink….
      Whitaker does not exceed the “quota” in any of the four categories; Trammell in only 1 of the 4 (Hall of Fame Monitor score of 118 ranks 122nd – score of 100 is good enough).
      Perhaps this is the answer to the mystery? The BBWAA is not even giving a sniff to WAR – no consideration what so ever. They’re looking for some compiling of career landmark stats, some individual seasons of 200 hits, 100 runs, 100 RBI, etc…This is their system.
      There’s a scene in the last 20 minutes of “No Country for Old Men” where Tommy Lee Jones visits his brother living in a trailer amidst cats and tumbleweeds. They’re lamenting old age, change, and all its BS ramifications. At one point Jones’ character says something along the order of, “I guess it would be pretty narcissistic of me to think things are going to change they way I want them to change – back to way they used to be”.
      Well, change takes time….and, so far, the BBWAA has voted Felix Hernandez a Cy Young Award despite something like 14 wins. But, they also gave Miguel Cabrera two MVP’s over a “sabrmetrically superior” Mike Trout. It’s a mixed bag at this point.

      Reply ↓
  6. Mike L

    John A, an interesting way of looking at it, but at the risk of irritating an already justifiably irritated tigres fan, I think the argument is largely circular. Those Tigers teams had a lot of good players, but they didn’t necessarily have great ones, save Trammaker. What you are really saying is that because the Tigers were so consistently successful, an injustice has been done institutionally–they effectively “deserve” a HOFamer (or two) and I don’t see that as compelling. It may have been that Tiger management was foreshadowing some of the techniques used by lower revenue teams now, such as the Rays and A’s, by stocking useful-to very good players. They do it out of necessity–they don’t have the bucks. But the Tigers managed to develop a number of very good quality players who were not transcendent stars.
    I think Trammaker stand on their own, and certainly are more deserving than Jack Morris, but the Hall-voters don’t agree. Correlation does not necessarily imply causation, and the inference that there is an unconscious bias against the tigers I think is stretched, particularly in light of strong showing of the WAR-challenged Morris.

    Reply ↓
    1. John Autin Post author

      Mike L, that’s a reasonable response to my “spans” argument, on its own. But of course, that’s just a supporting plank in the case for Trammaker. I’d like to hear a case *against* them that addresses the “spans” point, along with their dominance of star-caliber seasons among the 1979-93 Tigers, and their stand-alone credentials.

      Your “Rays and A’s” point is interesting, but I see no evidence that their approach correlates with fewer “great seasons.” From 2009-14, there were 43 pos-player years of at least 7 WAR (that’s MVP zone). The Rays had 6 of those, the A’s 2 — 19% of the total, against a “fair share” of 7%. (At 6+ WAR, they combined for 12%.) They may have given back some of that edge on the pitching side, but we still can’t say that their value-hunting has led to fewer great seasons.

      From 1979-93, here’s Detroit’s share of WARpos seasons. Their “fair share” would be 4% (one out of 26 teams, ignoring the ’93 expansion):

      5+ WARpos — Det. 6% (21 of 345) … 10 of those 21 by Trammaker.

      6+ WARpos — Det. 6% (11 of 188) … 8 of those 11 by Trammaker.

      At 5+ WARpitch, Detroit had less than their “fair share,” just over 2% (4 of 171). But Morris had 3 of those 4 years.

      So it may be that Detroit’s value in that span was tilted towards position players. But it’s not at all evident that their value was less concentrated in “star seasons” than other teams.

      P.S. I did not mean to imply voter bias against them specifically.

      Reply ↓
  7. Jeff Harris

    I sure hope the Veteran’s Committee rights the wrong for Sweet Lou. 6th highest hallofstats rating all-time, 2nd only to Morgan post-WWII.

    Reply ↓
    1. mosc

      And he also had no peak. Over his best 7 year period he averaged 4.7 WAR. My nyear averaging method set to 25 gives him a 4.63 score. For a middle infielder that’s pretty good but it’s not Joe Morgan’s 6.83 by any stretch. I’m not sure what position you want to call Rod Carew (5.71) but he was a much better player than Whitaker. Bobby Grich over 7 years averaged 5.7 WAR (he was even better over an 8 year peak) per season and crushes whitaker with a 5.15 score. I don’t know why we picked Whitaker in the COG before Biggio (4.93) and 6 war over 7 seasons averaged either. Biggio gets a rap as an accumulator and a guy who held on but he had one of the best peaks for a middle infielder in history.

      Reply ↓
      1. John Autin Post author

        True, mosc, Whitaker’s peak doesn’t rate with the better HOFers, especially if you use something like 7 consecutive years. (His two best WAR years were 8 years apart.) It comes down to how much weight you put on peak vs. career.

        Both JAWS and Hall of Stats have a peak component. Both rate Whitaker above Biggio and Alomar.

        What’s most impressive about Whitaker is that he had positive WAA in all 18 years that he played regularly.

        He had 12 years with at least 2.0 WAA. Of other 2Bs, only Collins, Hornsby and Lajoie had more (16, 15, 14). Gehringer had 11, Morgan and Randolph 10. Biggio and Alomar had 9.

        Here’s how I would counter Biggio’s peak edge on Whitaker:

        In their best 10-year spans, Biggio had not quite a 5-point edge in total WAR and WAA — 53.1-48.2, and 33.3-28.7. (Age 24-33 for Biggio, 25-34 for Whitaker.) That’s a half-point per year, most coming from their one best year (9.4-6.7 WAR).

        But Whitaker has better good years outside that range, and more of them. By positive-WAA years:
        — Biggio, 1.2, 1.0, 0.6, 0.1, 0.1
        — Whitaker, 2.8, 2.7, 2.6, 2.4, 1.9, 1.2, 0.5, 0.1.

        I think the team with Sweet Lou comes out ahead.

        Suppose you took the 14.1 WAA from Whitaker’s first 4 and last 4 years, and put it in the years between. Then he’d have a 10-year peak with 42.8 WAA, and 8 other years as an average player. That would be a great peak — only Hornsby, Collins, Lajoie and Morgan have done 42 WAA in a 10-year span. It would make Whitaker look more like the classic HOFer. But would it win any more ballgames?

        I know a lot of folks think the Hall should be mostly about peak value, or should only include those who had great seasons. I think there’s room for anomalies like Whitaker — consistently good (sometimes very good) for a very long time.

        Reply ↓
        1. mosc

          He hit well and he fielded well, but mostly during different seasons. He has 9 seasons of double digit RBAT and 6 of double digit RFIELD. How many times did he pull both tricks? Once in ’91. One of RFIELD’s many problems is the large seasonal variations. Trout, for example, lost 30 full runs between 2012 and 2013. Smoothing that out helps Whitaker develop a bit more of a peak but still he hit mostly later in his career after he’d lost his speed.

          in 1980 he’s a league average second basemen with no bat and a slick glove and by 1995 he’s putting up David Ortiz numbers. That gives me some pause when you look around the league those years. I’m not sure where the steroids era starts but Molitor in Toronto is 1993 and 94, winfield 92, big mac wasn’t himself until 92, Kaminiti had a nice 95 and won the MVP in 96 alongside Brady Anderson’s 50 HR season. I think 96 is full on roidfest across much of baseball. Guilt by association certainly but too many players in their 30s skyrocketed in offensive production 92-96. It’s possible some of this late career offensive production that’s keeping whitaker in the HOF discussion (at least on here) came out of a needle. It’s hard to say that when you can see offensive production in ’89 and certainly sporadically at earlier points in his career but Canseco’s 40/40 season was ’88 lets remember. The stuff was around.

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          1. Artie Z.

            In other news, it is now impossible for anyone to improve over time or have a change in skills over time. Roberto Clemente – you had a career OPS+ of 89 in 2559 PAs up until your age 25 season (Whitaker’s was 94 in 2074 PAs). From your age 32-37 season your OPS+ was 157 in 3180 PAs (Whitaker’s from ages 33-38, his final 6 seasons, was 129 in 2801 PAs). Between ages 25-31, Clemente had a 136 OPS+ in 4472 PAs. We saw the “women’s” East German swim team in the 1970s – stuff was around then, Clemente just knew a guy.

            At least say something like “Whitaker’s OPS+ numbers likely increased later in his career because he was being benched against more LHPs and he was awful against LHPs.” That’s probably the real reason his OPS+ increased, and if you want to argue that he wasn’t as useful later because he didn’t play against lefties – well, I don’t have a rebuttal to that because he didn’t play against LHPs; then again, he wasn’t particularly useful in the 1980s when he played against them.

            But go to his seasonal splits – in 1989 he hit .278/.383/.508 with 23 HRs in 433 PAs against RHP, and .188/.305/.349 with 5 HRs in 178 PAs against LHP. In 1981 he was .280/.367/.402 against RHP, and .240/.304/.336 against LHP (no power against either, but he was young). In 1986 he hit .287/.359/.480 with 17 HRs in 471 PAs against RHP, and .221/.283/.325 with 3 HRs in 180 PAs against LHP. In 1995 – well, he had 257 PAs against RHP, and 28 against LHP (though he actually did fine in 1995 against LHP, but 28 PAs is a small sample) – so his OPS+ numbers increased because he wasn’t playing against guys who gave him trouble. There are a few seasons late in his career with small samples where Whitaker did better against LHP than RHP – 1992 and 1995 – but by and large his numbers against LHP were awful.

            As for Mike Trout, I believe it is well-documented (or at least documented somewhere) as to why his Rfield numbers fell. In 2012 he made a few HR saving grabs that increased his Rfield numbers greatly; in the years since then he hasn’t made those grabs (or hasn’t had the opportunity to make those grabs). Those are big run saving plays that do not occur that frequently, but the numbers are trying to accurately reflect how many runs he saved that year.

          2. CursedClevelander

            Even without examining his splits, Whitaker’s 90’s numbers don’t seem so fishy to me. 90-93, he puts up a line of .270/.380/.452. He looks like a guy that got a better eye/became more selective at the plate, was hitting a few more HR’s (but nothing mind-blowing, capping with a 23 HR year, or 28 if you go back to 1989), and had completely lost his speed. 94-95, he’s a part-time player in a league where offense exploded for everybody, so even as a guy in his late 30’s, his .298/.375/.503 line doesn’t seem beyond the pale. Over those last two seasons, he had about one season’s worth of PA’s, and hit 26 HR’s, not at all outside the realm of possibility given what was happening to everybody’s offensive numbers.

            Remember, offense exploded league-wide post-93, and it wasn’t all steroids. Whatever it was (expansion, new ballparks, juiced balls in preparation for/after the strike, umpires enforcing the strike zone differently), it was effecting everybody. To believe otherwise, you’d need to think that steroids are basically magic snake oil, that every single person in baseball was taking them, and that they all started taking them at the exact same time.

            But then you examine the splits (as Artie Z helpfully pointed out), and it becomes even less fishy, since Whitaker was largely being platooned in those later years, and he always had a heavy platoon split.

            There are valid arguments against Whitaker’s HoF case, IMO. He lacks that one peak “wow” season, his best years didn’t always come in bunches, and a lot of his value comes from having a ton of very good seasons instead of a few amazing ones. He’s definitely more a career-value guy than a peak-value guy, though you can argue that JAWS shows that his peak is also HoF-worthy, just not as eye-popping as guys like Morgan or Hornsby or Lajoie.

          3. Paul E

            Cursed Clevlander:

            ” ” To believe otherwise, you’d need to think that steroids are basically magic snake oil, that every single person in baseball was taking them, and that they all started taking them at the exact same time.” ”

            Yes, but if 1/2 the position players are on them, it has to be a great boon to the guys who aren’t on them. It’s probably immeasurable but, it certainly has to be a lot easier to hit with runners on base and guys who juiced got on base for their “legit” teammates. Hence, a clean guy like CoG member Jim Thome has Albert, Juan Gon, Matt Williams, and Manny juicing, he is going to get some fantastic opportunities to hit. And, if Alomar and Lofton are clean, they are going to score a lot more frequently because of the enhanced abilities of Belle, Ramirez, Gonzalez, and Williams. Believe me, I saw far too many 4-hour, nine inning marathons at Camden Yards with pitchers living in abject fear of 215# second basemen who could hit the ball 425 feet…just pitching around and hoping someone would be inpatient enough to swing at generally piss-poor offerings.
            I don’t know if B-Ref has the info or not, but post-1993, I would not be surprised if pitchers threw an extra 1/2 pitch per batter. Certainly, if you took all the runs, RBI and HR as well as BA, the average line was something like 90R 23 HR 85RBI .280

          4. Paul E

            Mosc:
            And let’s not forget Macho Row and the ’93 Phillies – a lot of guys who just started having career years. Daulton, Hollins, Incaviglia, ….and Dykstra was on those “vitamins” since day 1.
            How about Danny Jackson flexing in front of the dugout with his shirt off to the delight of the crowd? Sweet!

    2. mosc

      Not that any of that would apply to Trammel. He shouldn’t need the help. I have him above any HOF borderline players I can think of at 5.06. Over 7 years, and like Grich he did even better over 8, he averaged 5.8 WAR.

      Maybe they just remember him losing as a manager too recently and it jaded his reputation as a fielder. I really don’t understand that one.

      Reply ↓
      1. Michael Sullivan

        Trammel hit the HOF ballot after Jeter, Arod and Nomar were putting up crazy numbers from the 6 slot. 1/2 the writers have no appreciation for context (Trammell playing during a much lower offensive time), or the fact that those big numbers were being hit by two slam-dunk HOFers, and a guy who would have been a third if he’d kept it up.

        But that’s it, that’s why he’s not already in. Until the late 90s, I think most people thought of Trammell as a future HOFer. I certainly did.

        Reply ↓
    1. birtelcom

      Speaking of the Circle of Greats, happily no lack of love for those Trammaker Tigers there. There were 25 seasons, a quarter-century, in the four-division era — 1969 through 1993. Over that period, the Tigers are represented by 155.1 worth of WAR, a bit of Kaline’s career, plus almost all of Trammell’s and Whitaker’s. Only five franchises are currently represented by more WAR in the COG over that four-division period:
      –Orioles (best W-L record in the majors in the four-division era, 238 COG WAR for the period, covering the Robinsons and Palmer, Mussina and Ripken)
      –Reds (second-best W-L record in the 4-div. era, 235.5 COG WAR for the period, Rose/Bench/Morgan/Seaver/Larkin)
      –Red Sox (5th best W-L record in the 4-div. era, 233.9 COG WAR for the period, mostly Yaz/Fisk/Boggs/Clemens)
      –Phils (mostly Carlton and Schmidt, with a bit of Rose/Morgan/Schilling)
      –Braves (Niekro’s prime plus pieces of the careers of Aaron/Glavine/Smoltz and a year each of Perry and Maddux).

      Of course, the COG is not yet filled up and these numbers could change as the weekly inductions continue.

      Reply ↓
  9. CursedClevelander

    I do remember some statistic about every WS team having at least one Hall of Famer, which was broken by the 1981 Dodgers, who admittedly won during the odd strike season. Some of them were extremely small contributions (like the 88 Dodgers with Sutton), but still, it’s true of all pre-96 teams besides the 81 Dodgers and 84 Tigers. I don’t need to write anything more about the HoF cases of Trammell and Whitaker; John has done a tremendous job, and I think almost all of us consider them to be HoF snubs.

    Looking at more modern teams that will likely not have a Hall of Famer, you’ve got the 97 Marlins (Sheffield and Brown are both good candidates, but would both need to be VC selections) and almost certainly the 2002 Angels, whose highest WAR player is Kevin Appier (Ape was a great pitcher, but if Mussina, Brown, Schilling and Reuschel are getting shafted, he’s got 0 shot).

    As for others:

    96, 98, 99, and 00 Yankees: Jeter and Rivera for sure. Raines was on the 96 and 98 teams. You’ve got Bernie Williams and Posada with borderline cases. Clemens will probably eventually get in through the VC. Anyway, no lack of Hall of Famers.

    01 Diamondbacks: Big Unit. Schilling should eventually get in.

    03 Marlins: Miggy should be a slam dunk. I assume Pudge 2.0 will also make it.

    04 Red Sox: Pedro. Schilling if he gets in. Big Papi will have his backers. Manny won’t get in, but has HoF numbers.

    05 White Sox: Frank Thomas, though he didn’t play in the playoffs. If Buerhle plays for a looooong time more, he might have a case.

    06 Cards: Pujols. Edmonds and Carpenter had great careers, but probably not enough. Wainwright still has time to make it.

    07 Red Sox: Schilling, Papi and Manny, as above. Pedroia might eventually make it.

    08 Phillies: Hamels has time to make it. Utley has a great peak case, but he’ll be a tough sell given the fate of Grich, Whitaker and others. Rollins will have his supporters, too.

    09 Yanks: Jeter and Rivera again. Sabathia still has a shot.

    10, 12 and 14 Giants: Way too early to tell, but Posey and Bumgarner have a chance to carve out HoF careers. Hudson for the 2014 team perhaps, though again, better pitchers have been shafted.

    11 Cards: Pujols.

    13 Red Sox: Big Papi and Pedroia.

    Reply ↓
    1. Doug

      “03 Marlins: Miggy should be a slam dunk. I assume Pudge 2.0 will also make it.”

      Those two would also break the Tigers’ jinx.

      Reply ↓
    2. Michael Sullivan

      “Rollins will have his supporters, too.”

      I assume you mean Rolen.

      I support Rolen, and I was wondering why you didn’t mention him, then I realized.

      Reply ↓
      1. CursedClevelander

        No, I meant Rollins, who I wouldn’t let within 1,000 feet of Cooperstown without a ticket, but he’ll have some ardent backers.

        Completely forgot about Rolen, who might very well represent the 06 Cardinals eventually along with Pujols in the Hall of Fame.

        Reply ↓
    3. mosc

      Good reminder. Chase Utley, another second basemen who was clearly better than Whitaker.

      It’s still amazing to me that Beltran is not on that list somewhere but he never did seem to get on a winner, did he? Sigh.

      Reply ↓
  10. Jeff B

    How would Papi make it if Edgar is struggling to? Also, i dont know if any of the tigers truly deserve induction, but i also dont know how Larkin is superior to Trammell.

    Reply ↓
    1. CursedClevelander

      I don’t think Ortiz is a Hall of Famer, but he has the rings/post-season heroics/curse-breaking/etc. The writers might let him in because of that, though the dissonance between honoring Ortiz’s postseason numbers and ignoring Schilling’s would be galling.

      Reply ↓
  11. John

    Trammell and Morris should be in the HOF, and probably Whitaker. Ron Santo, Leo Durocher, and Bill Veeck all had to die before they go in. We could talk all night about snubs (& who shouldn’t be in but are, no names mentioned (Highpockets Kelly)) starting with Gil Hodges.

    Reply ↓
  12. Albanate

    I remember Reggie Smith as a pretty good player, but I had no idea that he was a 60+ WAR player. He must be one of the more underrated players of all time, as I’ve never known him to get any HoF support at all.

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  13. no statistician but

    The Yankees had nine HOFers on their roster each year from 1930 to 1933. For the last three of those years six of their starters in the field and three of the starting rotation were HOFers. They only won one pennant. I don’t know what that proves, exactly, but it indicates that winning pennants and having HOF personnel aren’t equivalent.

    If there’s a problem with those Tiger teams it’s that only one player season—Trammell’s in 1987—really stands out, unless you count Fielder’s 51 home runs. The 1984 banner year? Parrish, Whitaker, Trammell, Lemon, Gibson—that was a team effort, requiring a lot of study to distinguish gradations of excellence. It could quite possibly be that the Tigers of the era are perceived as a blur of of very capable but also equally capable players on the whole. Parrish, Nokes, Lemon, Gibson, Evans, oh yeah, and Trammaker, too.

    Reply ↓
    1. CursedClevelander

      nsb, to be fair to those Yankees teams, they were all very good. Some were great and lost out to teams that were just better (like the 1931 squad, who finished behind a 107-win Athletics team also packed full of Hall of Fame talent). The 1930 team had an insane offense even for a year known for its insane offense (both Ruth and Gehrig topped 200 OPS+ years), but their 4 HoF pitchers didn’t give them very much, and one of them was Waite Hoyt, who only pitched 47 innings for them (he got traded to the Tigers mid-season). The 1932 team won 107 games and the WS, and the 1933 team won 91 games.

      Of course, some of those HoF Yankee pitchers are somewhat borderline candidates (Red Ruffing, Lefty Gomez) and Herb Pennock was old and well past his prime. They weren’t getting the best years of Joe Sewell, either.

      Reply ↓
  14. John Autin Post author

    Some offshoots from the spreadsheet I built for this post:

    Most HOFers on one team: 9, for the Yankees of 1931-32-33 — Ruth, Gehrig, Dickey, Combs, Lazzeri, Gomez, Ruffing, Pennock, and Joe Sewell. Team averaged 97-55, but finished 1st only once, avg. 10 GB the other two years.

    (Two limits on all these notes: (1) Teams are all since 1901, and (2) players who were on more than one team in the year are not counted. Incidentally, I’m not trying to make any points with this stuff, just throwing some data out there.)

    Most HOFers on non-Yankee team is 7:
    — A’s of 1927-28: young Grove, Foxx, Simmons and Cochrane, old Cobb, Collins, and a year each of Speaker & Wheat.
    — Giants of 1923-27 and ’29: Frankie Frisch & Friends.
    The ’27 Giants went 74-77, the worst record for 6 or more HOFers.
    Worst record with 5 or more is the ’61 Cubs, 64-90 — Banks, Santo, Williams, Ashburn, and Lou Brock’s debut cameo.

    Team-years with the most players with N career WAR:

    70 WAR — 5 on the 1928 A’s
    Seven teams had 4, most lately the 2005-07 Yankees.
    All teams with 4 or more played at least .543.
    Worst with 3 70-WAR players was the ’83 Angels, 70-92 with the aged Jackson, Carew & Grich.

    60 WAR — 6 on the 1927-28 A’s, ’97 & ’02 Braves, 2004-05 Yanks.
    They all played at least .586.
    Worst records with 5 60-WAR men were the ’76 & ’74 Red Sox, 83-79 & 84-78, with Yaz, Fisk, Evans, Tiant, and Marichal or Jenkins.

    50 WAR — 10 on the 2007 Yankees.
    The ’05-’06 and ’08 Yanks had 9, as did the ’27-28 A’s.
    All with 7 or more played at least .525.
    Worst with 6 50-WAR men was the ’86 Cubs, 70-90 with Maddux, Palmeiro, Sandberg, Eckersley, Cey & Moyer.

    40 WAR — 12 on the 1996-97 Yanks.
    11 on the 2005-07 Yanks and ’31/’33 Yanks.
    10 on the Yanks of ’32, ’34, ’79, ’88, ’98, ’02 and ’08 — and on Cleveland ’95, whose .694 W% was only 3rd-best of these eight clubs.
    Worst record with 9 40-WAR men was the ’25 Yanks, 69-85 in Ruth’s illness year.

    What about successful teams without such career stars?

    Best record with no 40-WAR men: 1901 Tigers, 74-61 behind Roscoe Miller’s big rookie year.
    (I’m excluding 21st-century teams from this list.)

    Best with no 50-WAR men was the 1940 Reds, champions led by MVP Frank McCormick, Schnozz Lombardi, Bucky Walters and Paul Derringer, all between 34 and 47 career WAR.
    Three others over .600 –’39 Reds, ’45 Cards, ’17 Giants.

    I could go on all day, but I’ll save it for another post.

    Reply ↓
    1. Richard Chester

      Here’s a blurb from the Charlton Chronology.
      5/24/28
      In the first game of a doubleheader in Philadelphia‚ a ML record 13 future Hall of Famers take the field as the first-place Yankees take on the 2nd-place A’s. This number does not include non-playing Hall of Famers Herb Pennock and Stan Coveleski‚ managers Miller Huggins and Connie Mack‚ nor umpires Tom Connally and Bill McGowan. [HOFs: Combs‚ Durocher‚ Ruth‚ Gehrig‚ Lazzeri‚ and Hoyt for New York; Cobb‚ Speaker‚ Cochrane‚ Simmons‚ Collins‚ Grove‚ and Foxx for the A’s] Led by Tony Lazzeri’s three hits and six RBIs‚ the Yanks edge the A’s‚ 9-7‚ handing the defeat to Lefty Grove. The A’s win the nitecap‚ 5-2‚ behind rookie Ossie Orwell.

      Reply ↓
  15. BryanM

    John — I think it is very difficult to make sense of the exclusion of either of the two Detroit middle infielders ; even taking the HOF to be a record of fame, not merit, for in their time they were widely regarded as the best double play combination in baseball , perhaps ever, and the trio of bearcubs was often evoked in news stories about them; the only thing i can think is that they were famous in an unemotional, detached sort of way; “we acknowledge that these guys are really good ” not “wow- did you see that? ” even here , though I feel like I am grasping at straws.
    Secondly; it is well to recall the purpose of the sabermetric enterprise, when it began 30 or so years ago, about the time Trammaker were in their prime. It set out to ask the question “what leads to winning baseball ” ? how valuable is a home run as compared to a walk? to a stolen base, etc.- surely we can measure this, rather than taking received wisdom from the successors of John McGraw and Connie Mack Of course WAR is only the latest evolution of the perhaps quixotic quest for a single metric to measure “what is a winning ballplayer” – without getting into the limitations of WAR, it is clear that Adam, JAWS and the other “peak value” guys are trying to answer a slightly different question , namely “what is a great ballplayer” , by which they mean a winning ballplayer who also does spectacular things.
    YMMV, but I find myself drawn to the opposite side of that discussion — I think a player’s value is best measured by consistently performing at a high level – in other words, of two players with equivalent WAR , i think the one with the LOWER peak, (and therefore more consistent career) has been more valuable – both the manager and the GM getting what they expect, and what they pay for, increasing their ability to fit in other pieces to produce victory in what is ,after all, a team game..
    I know that “value” is not “greatness”, nevertheless for me the slighting of these two stars is an even greater travesty that it is for you , absent of course the emotional investment in the Tigers. As a Cardinals fan, I have no reason at all to complain about how our stars have been treated down through the years…..

    Reply ↓
  16. David P

    After giving this a lot of thought, here’s what I think:

    1) Regardless of their overall record, no one thinks of those Tigers’ teams as great teams. They weren’t the `72-74 A’s, they weren’t the Big Red Machine, they weren’t the ’76-78 Yankees. They played in and won a grand total of one World Series. When I think of the 80’s, I think of parity and inconsistency and the Tigers are part of that.

    2) While it’s interesting that most World Series winners have a HOFer, I’m not sure what that tells us. For one thing, most of those World Series winners are the same team with the same players winning multiple World Series (e.g., The Yankees). They’re not the Tigers and their one World Series.

    Secondly, I’m not seeing a clear tie between winning a single World Series and being a HOFer. The ’85 Royals had Brett who was a HOFer regardless. The ’83 Orioles had Palmer, and Murray and Ripken. All HOFers even without the WS. The ’89 A’s had Eck and Rickey. Again, I see zero connection between them being in the HOF and winning their single WS.

    3) At the end of the day, Trammell and Whitaker aren’t in the HOF because they don’t have the markers that voters associate with HOFers. Look at all the other middle infield HOFers from their era. They all have “multiple markers”:

    Ripken: 3,000 hits, two MVPs, 19 All Star games, (plus THE STREAK!)
    Yount: ·3,000 hits, two MVPs
    Ozzie Smith: 13 gold gloves, 15 All Star games
    Larkin: MVP, 13 All Star games
    Morgan: Two MVPs, 10 All Star games
    Carew: ·MVP, 3,000 hits, .328 BA, 18 All Star games
    Sandberg; MVP, 10 All Star games, 9 gold gloves, HR record for second base
    Alomar: .300 BA, 12 All Star games, 10 gold gloves

    Meanwhile, Trammell and Whitaker have none of those things. They have a few gold gloves and a few All Star games. They don’t have 3,000 hits, they don`t have any MVPs. They didn’t bat .300.

    At the end of the day, humans like easy stories. And they like compelling stories. And last I checked, most (but not necessarily all) HOF voters are human. 🙂

    What’s the easy, compelling HOF story for Trammel and Whitaker? That they were key members of a team that won between .535 and .555 of their games for a decade? Good luck selling that story.

    There’s one other middle infielder who was a contemporary of Trammell and Whitaker who has similar WAR. He was also ignored in the HOF vote, receiving a percentage similar to Whitaker his one year on the ballot. That person, of course, is Bobby Grich. Like Trammell and Whitaker, he has no easy, compelling HOF story. (I suspect we’ll be saying the same about Utley in the future).

    WAR tells us that all 4 of these players deserve HOF consideration. But I don’t think that WAR will ever be the primary reason someone makes the HOF (and it probably shouldn’t be). I’m pretty sure the people who built the HOF case for Blyleven did so without using WAR. Try doing the same for Trammell or Whitaker or Grich or Utley. Try making a simple, compelling HOF case for one of them without using WAR. Maybe you can do it, but I doubt the story will be as simple and compelling as the stories of their contemporaries who are in the HOF.

    Reply ↓
    1. Dr. Doom

      I think the most important point is actually #3, particularly in regards to Trammell. Look at the period of 1982-1984. That should’ve been the prime of Trammell’s career – ages 24-26. (Yes, I know most people think it’s around age 27, but if anything, more modern research shows that, particularly as a hitter, the peak is earlier.) Each of three different teams wins the AL East (and the AL Pennant) in those three years. And each is anchored by a different SS.

      In 1982, the Brewers win the AL East. Robin Yount leads the team with probably the greatest season by a SS since some fella named Honus, and he racks up 10.5 WAR. In 1983, the Brewers come up short, but a new power (re-)emerges: Baltimore. After finishing one game shy in ’82, the O’s take the 1983 AL East title. They’re led by some kid named Ripken, who manages 8.2 WAR. Ripken’s even better the next year, getting 10.0 WAR. But in that “next year” of 1984, the Tigers finally break through, led by Trammell with… 6.7 WAR. That’s it. Here are the numbers for the time when these three greats overlapped at SS in the AL East:

      Yount, 1982 – 10.5
      Ripken, 1984 – 10.0
      Ripken, 1983 – 8.2
      Yount, 1983 – 7.2
      Trammell, 1984 – 6.7
      Trammell, 1983 – 6.0
      Yount, 1984 – 4.9
      Ripken, 1982 – 4.7
      Trammell, 1982 – 4.2

      After 1984, Yount moved to the OF. In 1981, Ripken was just a rookie. So they really only overlapped for these three seasons. But Yount was the superior SS prior to Ripken, and Ripken was the superior SS following Yount. In what could’ve/should’ve been his prime, Trammell was the 3rd-best SS in his own DIVISION. I think those impressions stay with people long enough that it’s hard to think of a guy as belonging with the legends if he was always just the “kid brother” to better players. It’s the same symptom that Tim Raines is dealing with as he gets compared to Rickey Henderson – only this one’s worse, because Trammell is getting compared to guys who were not only in the same LEAGUE, but the same DIVISION. They each won two MVPs, Trammell won none.

      Now, I’m not saying that Trammell should HAVE to be as good as two to the best ever at the position to get in to the Hall. But I really think that the time they overlapped made Trammell’s case seem wanting, and that those impressions are very hard to shake.

      Reply ↓
      1. David P

        Thanks for your thoughts Doom!

        I just think it’s really hard for these two because there’s no simple narrative to explain why they should be in the Hall. And you’re obviously right: “3rd Best Shortstop in His Division” isn’t going to cut it.

        At least with Raines you can say “Second best leadoff man ever” or perhaps “Best Percentage Base Stealer”. Those messages resonate with voters. But when you have to write 1,000 word blog posts to explain why someone deserves to be in the Hall, you’re going to lost most of your audience.

        And it’s not just Trammell and Whitaker who suffer from this problem. It’s Grich and Nettles and Randolph and Lofton. And likely Utley.

        Reply ↓
        1. John Autin Post author

          David P — Well, yes, there *is* a simple narrative for Trammaker: They were very good players for a very long time, which can be seen easily by comparing non-WAR stats (both counting and rate) to others at the position.

          I find that compelling, but many don’t. I know that a 1,000-word blog post is unlikely to reach that audience. But it’s therapeutic for me. 🙂 And I thought the team-spans angle was interesting on its own, separate from Trammaker advocacy.

          Reply ↓
          1. David P

            I agree it`s simple John but I don`t think many voters would find it compelling. I mean couldn’t we say the same about Johnny Damon, just to pick a name off the top of my head?

            As for your #33 and whether or not HOF voters should dig deeper, please let me introduce you to one Marty Noble.

            “For the second year in a row, no need to study the ballot existed. I voted for the three no-brainer candidates — Johnson, Martinez and Smoltz. I never picked up a book or clicked on a website, though, as encouraged by the Hall, I did chat with guys who covered the game when I did.”

            http://m.mlb.com/news/article/105597840/mlbcom-reporters-reveal-their-hall-of-fame-ballots

        2. Voomo Zanzibar

          Absolutely agree on Grich/Nettles/Randolph/Lofton.
          But Utley?
          His counting stats may fall short, I suppose.
          And no Gold Gloves despite the numbers.

          But his Postseason story is epic. And he’s not playing in the shadow of any great Second Basemen.

          He came into the league in 2003.
          Here’s 2B leaders since 1993, ten years before his debut:

          WAR
          61.5 … Utley
          53.5 … Kent
          51.5 … Cano
          50.7 … Biggio
          43.5 … Alomar

          Reply ↓
          1. CursedClevelander

            Yeah, Utley’s only two real contemporaries are Cano and Pedroia. Cano’s prime started in earnest right when Utley’s was ending, and Pedroia is in many ways a mini-Utley. He does many of the same things well (baserunning, defense, extra-base power, on-base skills), just not quite as well as Chase.

          2. David P

            I love me some Utley but the voters decided that Howard (and for one year Rollins) was the engine that powered the Phillies machine. I think that will hurt him a lot.

            And he may not make 2,000 hits. Not sure the BBWAA has ever elected anyone under that threshold (catchers excepted).

            Postseason? Let’s ask Curt Schilling how much voters care about post season success.

      2. Paul E

        Dr. Doom:
        Hey, brother – don’t forget Cleveland’s Julio Cesar Franco – Phil Rizzuto loved him some Julio back in the early ’80s.

        All great points but, Mickey, Willie, and the Duke played in the same city at the same time 1951 – 1957 at the same position and Snider still made it to Cooperstown despite being the least talented of the three.
        I once asked a friend if “so and so” was a Hall of Famer and his reply was, “Obviously not, if you have to ask”. Perhaps Trammel gets in if he would have received a well-deserved MVP award in 1987?

        Reply ↓
    2. John Autin Post author

      Good stuff, David P. I’m assuming that you’re inferring the voters’ views, not describing your own, and I think you’ve hit the main targets.

      The WS angle was really a throw-in — just my way of emphasizing that, y’know, Trammaker *did* win the dang thing, which is a marker that a lot of HOF MIFs lack … and Trammell was MVP of the Series.

      Yes, voters *are* human … often frustratingly so. It takes quite a few superficial, yes/no decisions to completely dismiss Whitaker and Trammell as HOF candidates, including arbitrary and uncontextualized thresholds like .300 BA.

      That’s why I tried the team success angle. I know the Tigers of that era weren’t a *great* team (except for one year), but that’s another “yes/no” toggle that I’d like to overcome.

      My point in correlating team spans and WS with HOFers is NOT that every WS champ or .550 decade deserves a HOFer, per se. The point is that when you see the overwhelming correlation of those things, you should take a closer look at the anomalies.

      I do think WAR is the best tool for sifting those anomalies, but even using counting stats would help someone see an era more clearly. For instance, from 1979-88, Tigers had just four 100-RBI years — yet they were a very good team, and a good offensive team. Trammell had one of those 100-RBI years, and three of their six 100-run years (Lou two, Leflore one).

      If you simply sum the number of seasons of 100 RBI and those of 100 Runs for 1980s shortstops, you get Ripken & Yount 5, Trammell 4, Ozzie 1 and Hubie Brooks 1. A count of qualified SS years batting .300+ in the ’80s shows Trammell 5, no one else more than 2. For the ’80s combined, Trammell is 1st in OBP (out of 21 SS with 2,500 PAs), and 2nd to Ripken in SLG, OPS and OPS+, with a huge lead over #3 in those stats. Whitaker leads ’80s 2Bs in HRs, RBI, Runs, and 2nd to Grich in OPS+ (with far more PAs).

      All I would hope is that someone currently skeptical about “Trammaker” consider all this stuff in conjunction: their counting stats, their place relative to other MIFs of that era, the team’s success, and their historic position as long-lasting teammates and keystone mates (who were also clearly good players).

      As with their on-field performance, no single aspect jumps out and screams “Hall of Fame!!!” But HOF voters ought to look deeper, no?

      Reply ↓
    3. CursedClevelander

      David, I think you make a lot of good points.

      Regarding almost every WS team having a HoF’er, I agree that it likely doesn’t tell us much. It’s pretty much just a fluke of history. Early on, when you had 16 teams and leagues largely marked by little parity (clear demarcations between ‘first division’ and ‘second division’ teams), you expect the winning teams to have a few Hall of Famers, especially the dynasties. Some teams managed to win with a lot of good players and had one HoF’er squeak in through the back door, like the 1940 Reds and Lombardi. Going forward, we’re likely to see more teams win the WS without any clear Hall of Famers. I noted the 2002 Angels above, who just had a very good assemblage of talent without any superstars (6 regulars with over 4 WAR, with the highest being Erstad’s defensively-stacked 6.4 [he actually only had an 86 OPS+, so WAR is infatuated with his defense], two more between 2 and 2.5 WAR, two SP’s over 3 WAR, and an RP with 2.4 WAR).

      But the other aspect is what John was doing, which is looking at a team that was very successful over a long period of time with largely the same personnel, and pondering whether such a team *must* necessarily have a few Hall of Famers. Of course, this same thinking has hurt some other favorites of the seamhead community: Santo was often derided because writers said “how can one team (the Cubs of Santo’s tenure) have so many Hall of Famers, but so little success?”

      Of course, there are a lot of ways to build a great team. You can build a “stars and scrubs” team, or you could try and be competent/above average everywhere, sort of like the 02 Angels.

      Reply ↓
    4. CursedClevelander

      Utley’s case should be relatively compelling (flat-out best at his position by quite a bit for a 7 year period), but I suppose he has some of those “undervalued” skills. His defense is universally acknowledged as good, but he never won a Gold Glove. His baserunning is tremendous (best SB% ever among guys with over 100 SB’s, heck, even among guys with over 50 SB’s), but he doesn’t steal a ton of bases, simply a modest amount at a stupendous rate, and he’s a good baserunner in other ways as well (taking extra bases, scoring on extra-base hits). But he does have a lot of numbers that BBWAA guys like. He averaged almost 30 HR’s and over 100 RBI a year during his 5-year peak. He played on winning teams and has a WS ring. He hit well in the postseason, including his 5 HR’s in the 2009 WS.

      Reply ↓
    5. Lawrence Azrin

      @29,

      It’s not as if Trammell/Whitaker weren’t considered serious HOF candidates when they were active – I remember back in the late 80s/early 90s, a number of people commented on how similar their career stats were, and oh wouldn’t it be adorable if they were inducted into the HOF together, in the same year… It’s hard to pinpoint precisely when they went from serious to less-than-serious HOF candidates.

      At least Trammell has stayed on the HOF ballot 14 years and drawn decent support. It is _by far_ the bigger travesty that Whitaker got a total of 15 votes (23 less than Dave Stewart and 133 less than Don Mattingly)his debut HOF ballot year in 2001, and fell off the ballot. Coincidentally, that was also Kirk Gibson and Lance Parrish’s only year on the HOF ballot also.

      As David P. astutely points out above, what probably happened is that a number of middle infielders, such as Ripken, Larkin, Alomar and Sandberg, continued their greatness or emerged as great players, and Trammell/Whitaker stood out much less. Even though Trammell stayed on the ballot, the further emergence of A-Rod/ Jeter/ Nomar/ Tejada as great players post-2001 further diminished Trammel’s perception as a truly great player.

      Not fair, but sometimes timing makes a big difference in perception.

      Reply ↓
      1. Richard Chester

        Make what you want out of this but Whitaker had the highest OPS+ (134) of all 2B in his last 5 years in the ML (2000 min. PA, retired players only).

        Reply ↓
      2. David P

        #48 Lawrence – I’m sure there were people who talked about Trammell and Whitaker as future HOFers. But the same is true of lots of players who never make it or come close. Steve Garvey for example.

        And how many of the 500+ voters were talking about them as future HOFers? Because ultimately that’s what matters.

        Reply ↓
        1. Lawrence Azrin

          @48,

          There was a fair amount of talk in the mainstream sports press of Trammell/Whitaker as future HOFers (and possibly being inducted together). Then again, as you say, there was similar talk about Steve Garvey, Don Mattingly and Dale Murphy, amongst others.

          Reply ↓
  17. David P

    I went back to 1980 and looked at every position player elected to the HOF by the BBWAA. That’s 38 players in all. Every single one has at least one of the following, with most having more than one.

    .300+ batting average
    400+ homeruns
    1,500+ RBIs
    3,000+ hits
    MVP
    10+ All star games

    Now I’m not suggesting that those are the only criteria that voters consider. Or that they consider them in exactly this manner. But if you don’t have at least one of them, then your chances of getting in via the BBWAA are zero. In fact the last player elected by the BBWAA without at least one of these criteria was Ralph Kiner in 1975. (if Raines somehow gets elected, we’d need to add a runs scored or a stolen base criteria).

    And this, ultimately is why neither Whitaker not Trammell got much love from the BBWAA. They have zero of this criteria and really aren’t even close on most of them. Had Trammell won the MVP in ’87, he might have had a chance but even then he would have been fighting an uphill battle.

    Now obviously standards change as do the voters themselves. So these criteria may evolve over time though they’ll likely evolve slowly.

    Below is a list of all players with which criteria they met. Aaron is the only one to hit all six. Ripken, Brett and Yaz each have 5 of the criteria.

    Biggio: 3,000 hits
    Thomas: MVP. BA, HRs, RBIs
    Larkin: MVP, All-star games
    Alomar: BA, All-star games
    Dawson: MVP, HR, RBIs
    Henderson: MVP, All-star games, hits
    Rice: MVP
    Ripken: Hits, MVP, All-star games, HRs, RBIs
    Gwynn: Hits, BA, All-star games
    Boggs: Hits, All-star games, BA
    Sandberg: MVP, All-star games
    Molitor: Hits, BA
    Murray: Hits, HRs, RBIs
    Carter: All-star games
    Smith: All-star games
    Winfield: HR, Hits, RBIs, All-star games
    Puckett: BA, All-star games
    Fisk: All-star games
    Perez: RBIs
    Brett: Hits, BA, RBIs, All-Star games, MVP
    Yount: Hits, MVP
    Schmidt: MVP, HRs, RBIs, All-star games
    Jackson: MVP, HRs, RBIs, All-star games
    Carew: MVP, BA, Hits, All-star games
    Morgan: MVP, All-star games
    Bench: MVP, All-star games
    Yaz: MVP, Hits, HRs, RBIs, All-star games
    Stargell: MVP, HRs, RBIs
    Williams: HRs
    McCovey: MVP, HRs, RBIs
    Brock: Hits
    Aparicio: All-star games
    Killebrew: MVP, HRs, RBIs, All-star games
    B. Robinson: MVP, All-star games
    Aaron: MVP, Hits, BA, HRs, RBIs, All-star games
    F. Robinson: MVP, HRs, RBIs, All-star games
    Kaline: Hits, RBIs, All-star games
    Snider: HRs

    Reply ↓
      1. David P

        Glad you found it useful John!

        BTW, this is why I’m not bullish on Utley’s chances. Similar to Whitaker and Trammell he meets none of the criteria and doesn’t come close. The one advantage he’ll have is that there will be more voters knowledgeable about advanced stats. But I’m skeptical that it will be enough.

        Reply ↓
    2. Lawrence Azrin

      @55,

      Most impressive – kind of like a condensed version of Bill James’ “HOF Monitor Index” for modern players.

      Reply ↓
    3. Paul E

      David P;

      And, ditto for Bobby Grich.

      Great research -this is what they’re looking for.

      Hey, as we suspected, it’s not the Hall of War 🙁

      Reply ↓
    4. bstar

      Hey, David — great find!

      What I find interesting is you didn’t need Gold Gloves at all as one of the criteria. The “10 All-Star Games” captures the guys in mainly for their gloves and also the catchers:

      Ozzie: A-S games
      Aparicio: A-S games
      Brooks: MVP, A-S games
      Fisk: A-S games
      Carter: A-S games
      Bench: MVP, A-S games

      It also helps explain why that glut of third basemen between 60-75 WAR didn’t make the cut, including Ron Santo despite his eventual Golden-Era Committee selction. Ken Boyer’s MVP in ’64 is the only achievement that registers.

      Bell: 5 A-S gms, no MVP, nowhere near TC marks, 2500+ hits
      Nettles: 6 A-S gms, no MVP, close on the HR (390)
      Bando: 4 A-S gms, 3 top-4 MVP finishes, not close on hitting marks
      Boyer: 7 A-S gms, MVP, .287 BA
      Santo: 9 A-S gms, no MVP, 340 HR

      Doesn’t look good for Scotty Rolen either.

      Rolen: 7 A-S gms, no MVP, .281, 316 HR, 1287 RBI, 2100 hits

      Adrian Beltre? I don’t know, he should have 400 HR next year and 1500 RBIs by the end of 2016, but no MVP and only 4 A-S games thus far.

      Reply ↓
      1. bstar

        Edit on Beltre: and of course 3000 hits is within Adrian’s reach also.

        That would certainly clinch his HOF selection, I think, although the 97% probability spit out by Favorite Toy is preposterously high. 97% is 32 out of 33. You’re telling me if you run a projection 33 times for the rest of Beltre’s career that he will pass 3000 hits 32 times? Ummm, no.

        Reply ↓
        1. David P

          Thanks for the comments Lawrence, Bstar and others. I kind of made this up as I went along so it’s possible that’s there’s a more elegant set of criteria. And if it weren’t for Rice and Perez you could eliminate the MVP and RBI categories.

          Now obviously these aren’t the only things that voters look at. Defense, for example, obviously factored in for Smith and Robinson and perhaps others. And stolen bases for Henderson. Etc.

          In some ways I’d say it’s the opposite of James’ HOF Monitor Index. James was trying to predict who would get elected. This is more of a screening tool for who won’t get elected. Of course I have no idea what it’s future predictive ability is.

          Reply ↓
  19. John Autin Post author

    David P @44 — Yes, Johnny Damon’s ranks among outfielders in basic counting stats during 1994-2013 are similar to Whitaker’s & Trammell’s among MIFs during 1977-96. But there’s a big difference in the key rate stats. Comparing each to those who had 5,000+ PAs at his position (SS, 2B and CF):

    OBP — Trammell 2nd, Whitaker 4th, Damon 8th
    SLG — Trammell 3rd, Whitaker 3rd, Damon 12th
    OPS+ — Trammell 3rd, Whitaker 3rd, Damon 13th

    Damon was an All-Star twice, no Gold Gloves. Trammell had 6 AS and 4 GG, Whitaker 5 AS and 3 GG.

    They are easily distinguished without using advanced stats.

    Reply ↓
    1. David P

      John @66 I guess I wasn’t clear. I was responding to the first part of the statement: “They were very good players for a very long time” and didn’t really pay much attention to the second part.

      Anyway, I went back and looked at the work that Rich Lederer did to get Bert Blyleven elected. He used phrases like “Only pitcher with 3,000+ K’s not in the HOF” or “Since 1900, Bert Blyleven ranks 5th in career strikeouts, 8th in shutouts, and 17th in wins” or “There is only one pitcher in the history of baseball who has more wins, strikeouts, and shutouts than Blyleven”.

      That was the sort of easy, compelling story that I was suggesting that Trammell and Whitaker need. I think that’s one of the reasons why Morris came so close to getting elected. There was a simple story (Best pitcher of the 80`s) wrapped around him, even if the story wasn’t true.

      Reply ↓
      1. John Autin Post author

        David P — Nice work again on the historical record. I do get all the stuff you’re saying. And I’ll take for granted that Rich Lederer’s points had a big hand in getting Blyleven elected. (I know nothing of it.)

        But there were other things going in Bert’s favor at the time he finally made it. I would not utterly dismiss the role of saberists touting him for years. More crucial, I think, to the voters, was that no SP had been selected in 12 years since Nolan Ryan, and the next shoo-ins weren’t due for another 3 years.

        And while I won’t deny that more people are moved by round numbers like 3,000 Ks, I think it’s sad that so many are unmoved by Whitaker’s and Trammell’s ranks at their position through 2000 (when Lou hit the ballot):

        — Whitaker, 10th in hits, 8th in total bases, 5th in HRs, 6th in extra-base hits, 7th in runs, 9th in RBI.

        — Trammell, 8th in hits, 7th in TB, 5th in HRs, 5th in XBH, 13th in runs, 11th in RBI.

        — No MIF not in the Hall is anywhere near that array of rankings.

        Like I said, I know that case doesn’t move people. I just don’t get the thinking. Seriously, is that not as impressive as 5th in Ks, 8th in shutouts, 17th in wins? Especially when you know that Bert was 9th in starts for that same span?

        Reply ↓

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