This post is for voting and discussion in the 113th 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 1874. Rules and lists are after the jump.
The new group of 1874-born players, in order to join the eligible list, must, as usual, 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). Additionally, to be eligible, players must also have played at least half their career games since 1901 or compiled 20 WAR since 1901. This new group of 1874-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. As always, 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, November 29th, while changes to previously cast ballots are allowed until 11:59 PM EST Friday, November 27th.
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 1874 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-1874 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 fourteen 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 1874 birth-year players 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:
Kevin Brown (eligibility guaranteed for 3 rounds)
Goose Goslin (eligibility guaranteed for 2 rounds)
Graig Nettles (eligibility guaranteed for 2 rounds)
Ed Walsh (eligibility guaranteed for 2 rounds)
Dick Allen (eligibility guaranteed for this round only)
Richie Ashburn (eligibility guaranteed for this round only)
Mordecai Brown (eligibility guaranteed for this round only)
Andre Dawson (eligibility guaranteed for this round only)
Wes Ferrell (eligibility guaranteed for this round only)
Addie Joss (eligibility guaranteed for this round only)
Rick Reuschel (eligibility guaranteed for this round only)
Luis Tiant (eligibility guaranteed for this round only)
Rube Waddell (eligibility guaranteed for this round only)
Hoyt Wilhelm (eligibility guaranteed for this round only)
Everyday Players (born in 1874, ten or more seasons played in the major leagues or at least 20 WAR):
Nap Lajoie
Honus Wagner
Topsy Hartsel
Jimmy Callahan
Roy Thomas
Harry Smith
Pitchers (born in 1874, ten or more seasons played in the major leagues or at least 20 WAR):
Jack Powell
Jesse Tannehill
Tully Sparks
Jack Chesbro
Willie Sudhoff
This round’s tidbits. Answers in red.
1. Honus Wagner’s eleven seasons (1899-1909) with 30 doubles and 30 stolen bases are three more than any other player. Wagner collected his 3000th hit batting against a rookie pitcher (Pete Schneider). Who is the last player to do this? Tony Gwynn
2. Nap Lajoie’s 227 hits in 1910 are the most by a player aged 35 or older. Who shares that record with Lajoie? Sam Rice (1925)
3. Jack Powell is the last player to pitch 500+ innings for four teams (Spiders, Cards, Browns, Highlanders) through his age 30 season. Powell’s .338 W-L% in 50+ decisions aged 35+ is the lowest mark among 88 pitchers since 1893 with a winning record in 300+ decisions through age 34. Which pitcher in that group had the highest W-L% in 50+ decisions aged 35+? Roger Clemens
4. Jesse Tannehill compiled a 62-38 record with Boston, including consecutive 20 win seasons (1904-05). Which other Red Sox pitcher did the same while compiling fewer career decisions for Boston than Tannehill? Dave Ferriss
5. Topsy Hartsel led the AL in 1902 in runs, walks and stolen bases. Which two AL players have matched Hartsel’s feat? Johnny Mostil (1925), Rickey Henderson (1989)
6. Roy Thomas recorded 100+ walks in each of his first 6 seasons, while no other player has done so in both his first and second seasons. Who is the last player to exceed Thomas’s total of 646 walks over his first 6 seasons? Frank (Big Hurt) Thomas
7. Jimmy Callahan pitched 195 games and recorded 3610 career PA, a combination unequaled since 1893. Callahan’s 1897 season with 105 hits, 27 extra-base hits, 60 runs, 47 RBI and 12 stolen bases are all rookie batting records in a qualified pitching season. Callahan twice won 20 games and stole 20 bases four times. Which 20 game winner had more seasons stealing 20 bases than Callahan? Cy Seymour
8. Tully Sparks bucked the trend of players taking a flyer on the fledgling AL by twice jumping from AL teams back to the NL, where his career began in 1897. That debut for the Phillies was rather inauspicious as Sparks allowed 9 runs, all earned, in a CG loss to the Braves. Which two live ball era players allowed 9 runs in their pitching debuts and appeared on a COG ballot? Fred Heimach, Hank Leiber
9. Jack Chesbro posted career totals of 332 starts and 330 decisions. Who is the last pitcher with more decisions than starts in a 200 game career with 60% of games started? Dizzy Trout
10. Harry Smith posted career totals of 22 doubles and .255 SLG. Who is the only non-pitcher since 1893 with fewer doubles and a lower SLG mark in a 1000 PA career? Tommy McMillan
11. Willie Sudhoff’s 66 ERA+ in 1904 is the lowest mark since 1893 in a 200 IP season allowing fewer than 95 earned runs. Which live ball era pitcher has the lowest ERA+ in such a season? Bill Parsons (1972)
#4: Dave Ferriss
Dave Ferriss pitched 4 shutouts in his first 6 games. No one else has done that. His 46 wins in his first 2 seasons has been exceeded by only Pete Alexander. A shoulder injury curtailed his career and he finished with a total of 65 wins.
took a poke at a couple of these…
#2 – thinking of guys who got lots of hits while old, I discovered that Sam Rice matched that total in his age 35 season.
#4 – I initially thought Ruth, but he had 135 decisions with the Sox, and anyway, it seems like Richard Chester got it and I didn’t notice until now.
#5 – the first two names that popped into my head were Rickey Henderson and Ty Cobb. The Georgia Peach never led his league in BB, but Henderson is one of the right answers.
Sidenote – Ty Cobb has black ink in all but 4 of the 19 major offensive categories listed in BBref’s Standard Batting charts. Unreal. He never led the league in GP, PA, BB or SO, but EVERYTHING else at least once – AB, R, H, 2B, 3B, HR, RBI, SB, CS, BA, OBP, SLG, OPS, OPS+, and TB. Holy cow.
#6 Don’t know if he’s the latest, but Ted Williams did it with walks to spare.
There’s someone more recent than Splinter.
The other player (to join Henderson and Hartsel) shares a career statistical curiosity with Bert Campaneris and Derek Jeter (among others).
#6 Don’t know if he’s the latest, but Ted Williams did it with walks to spare.
Number 6 is another Thomas. Frank. AKA, The Big Hurt. Not the one from the 60’s.
#8: I found Fred Heimach and Hank Leiber. Leiber was a position whose only appearance as a pitcher was the last game of the 1942 season. He, along with Minnie Minoso and Whitey Kurowski, are the only players to lead his league in GIDP and HBP in the same season.
That 1942 appearance for Leiber was the last game of his professional career. A farewell gesture, evidently, from the Giants for whom Leiber played most of his career.
5. The name besides Rickey Henderson is a tough one. My first few guesses only had 2 of the 3 categories. I thought Snuffy Stirnweiss may have done it in that 1945 season when he led the league in nearly everything, but he was only 6th in BBs. The answer is Johnny Mostil in 1925. Also led the league in PA, HBP and CS.
The curiosity Mostil shares with Campy and Jeter – identical career totals for sacrifice hits and times caught stealing.
#9, more decisions than starts in a 200-game career, 60%+ of appearances as a starter: Dizzy Trout, 331 decisions, 322 starts.
#11, pitcher with lowest season ERA+ since 1920 pitching 200+ innings and allowing fewer than 95 earned runs: Bill Parsons, 1972 Brewers—93 ER in 214 IP, 3.91 ERA, 77 ERA+.
(In 1973, incidentally, both Parsons and Steve Blass caught Steve Blass disease, except Parsons had a worse walk rate than Blass.)
What came to mind for #7 is John Montgomery Ward.
Looking for a pitcher since 1893.
These tidbits answers got lost in the ether when I posted them the first time. Again:
#9, more decisions than starts in a 200-game career, 60%+ of appearances as a starter: Dizzy Trout.
#11, pitcher with lowest season ERA+ since 1920 pitching 200+ innings and allowing fewer than 95 earned runs: Bill Parsons, 1972, 77 ERA+.
I think #7 is Kid Gleason, who should be famous for winning 138 games as a pitcher in the 1890s and then turning into a pretty darn good 2nd baseman in his second career who stole more than 20 bases 6 times in his career.
Alas, he is most famous for the 1st season in his third career, as a manager, specifically the manager of the 1919 White Sox.
On #7, my first guess was Kid Gleason, who fits the original criteria, but not Doug’s followup hint later. However, I am not sure that post made it to the site, and anyway, I now think it is Cy Seymour anyway, based on Doug’s later comment that the pitcher did it after 1893.
#10: Tommy NcMillan
That should be McMillan.
This round features the first players (I think) to meet the 10 seasons or 20 WAR threshold and be disqualified for playing fewer than half their career games since 1901.
Barry McCormick just missed (491 of 989 games since 1901) while Win Mercer’s career was cut short by suicide at age 28 in 1903, by which time he had already compiled 23.9 WAR.
Just curious Doug but are you including Federal League stats in the 10 seasons/20 WAR? I remember seeing a few players that would only be ballot eligible if their Federal League time was included. Doubt any of those players would get elected, just curious how you decided to handle the Federal League.
I have included Federal League seasons in the qualifying criteria. Also, Players League and AA seasons for any of the players in the last few rounds who might have such time on their resumes.
Doug, I had looked at McCormick as well. I think you’re right about him being the first to meet the 10 year mark but miss the 50% since 1901 mark, and he might end up being one of the closest calls period. 49.64% of games played since 1901 – hard to get much closer than that.
Nellie Fox missed the Hall of Fame in 1985 — he only got 74.684% of the vote
Counting this one I believe we have 8 guaranteed elections remaining plus whatever the BBWAA decides to do this years (my guess is 2). Based on that and who we have coming up in future elections I would guess that 1 to 3 names off of the holdover list will make it in, more if the BBWAA is more generous than expected.
I hear 2 arguments against enshrining some of these guys:
a) that the level of talent was more uneven the further back you go. I think there is at least some validity to this (I’ve made the argument myself) and that for borderline candidates it’s reasonable to take this into account. And
b) some of these guys would be better classified as “Old Timers” and left to a separate election.
I can see both sides of this argument.
The BBWAA picked Cy Young on their second ballot and the only reason it took that long was confusion over where to put him. Also Wee Willie Keller was picked on the 1939 ballot. On the other hand a whole bunch of guys that we’ve either already enshrined, passed on or are still making up our minds on were chosen by the Old Timers Committee in 1945 & 46. But on yet ANOTHER hand several of the guys that the OTC picked were getting a lot of support by the BBWAA (Ed Walsh 55.5%, Jimmy Collins 49.0%, Rube Waddell 62.3%, Frank Chance 72.5%) meaning that once they finally came to grips with their backlog they almost certainly would have be picked by the BBWAA.
Unless someone can convince me otherwise I’ll be taking the first issue into account for borderline players (especially pitchers) but ignoring the second issue for anyone who meets birtelcoms original guidelines.
If you’ve never heard of Roy Thomas you owe it to yourself to check out his Baseball-Reference page. I suspect his total of 7 extra-base hits in a season where you lead the league in plate appearances may be a record that will last forever.
My vote
Honus Wagner, Wes Ferrell, Richie Ashburn (I’m having a hard time accepting that a guy can go from being Garry Maddox to Greg Luzinski in the span of 1 season)
Thanks for the tip on Roy Thomas. (When I think of Roy Thomas, I think of the guy who wrote Fantastic Four and X-Men and Avengers after Stan Lee – but perhaps my namesake would give that away to anyone who’s familiar with THAT Roy Thomas.)
Anyway, as I was perusing his stats, I noticed something ELSE really interesting. In his first 9 seasons, his OBP was .088 (or MORE) higher than his SLG FIVE times. That’s insane! Cumulatively, through his age 32 season, his OBP/SLG was .430/.341 – .089 apart. I literally cannot imagine a hitter having a real career like that today. He had 600+ PAs in every single one of those seasons. Otis Nixon is his best “modern” comp via Baseball-Reference, and he looks like Babe friggin’ Ruth compared to Thomas. Plus, he only topped 600 PAs twice in his whole career. Truly a one-of-a-kind player. Thanks for the (very long) diversion, Hartvig!
The “other” baseball Roy Thomas, a pitcher for the Astros, Cardinals, and Mariners, won the final 8 decisions of his career.
Any idea if that’s a record? No idea how to find that in the PI.
Babe Ruth won his last 10, don’t know if that’s a record.
My bad, Ruth won his last 8 games with a decision. Eddie Yuhas won his last 10 decisions. It can be found with the Streak Finder. Set it for W =1 and check the To end season or active box. Jake Arrieta is first with 11 but he is still active.
Thanks Richard! Never heard of Yuhas before…looks like he blew his arm out in his sophomore season which is how he claimed that record.
Javier Vazquez won the last 6 games of his career, all starts, in 2011. That’s the most winning starts or appearances to end a career.
Lowest career ISO to OBP ratio, min. 5000 PA. Thomas is in a class by himself.
I like this group–they were my size. Except for Otis Nixon, who should have had a little more juice in those arms. imagine a 17 year career with an OPS+ of 77, and someone with 621 stolen bases, but never more than 21 2B, or 3 3B;s in a season. Otis, really?
Because I think the 1874 and 1873 elections are givens for Wagner and Lajoie, I’m thinking about votes now in terms of their implications for the 1872-71 election, when we will have whichever holdovers survive, plus a few very likely new additions (Clarke, Collins, Dahlin, Davis, Keeler, McGinnity, Wallace), who will pick up significant support. Here’s a chart (fingers crossed the columns sort of line up, but I’m sure they won’t) of all the current holdovers plus the likely additions – other than Wagner and Lajoie – with a variety of stats, mostly non-standard.
The non-standard stats include peak WAR for any 5-year period, top WAR for a player’s best 5 years, WAR per game, which for pitchers is per 9IP, WAR per year, excluding entirely years when the player was in few games, no matter how he performed (I should make clear, I’ve excluded the years, but not their minimal WAR, which I probably should have, but time has limits), ERA+, and an index of career length, set at 1.0 for the shortest career in each group, pitchers (using IP) and position players (using PA) (Joss’s career is the standard for pitchers, Allen’s for hitters). For pitchers WAR/Yr includes all seasons with at least 10 GS or 20 G or100 IP; for hitters 50G (the number of such seasons for each player is in parenthesis). Players not yet on the ballot in 1874 are marked with *.
Pitchers
….Name………….P-WAR….Peak5….Top5….WAR/9IP….WAR/Yr……ERA+…Career length
K Brown…..……..68.5………37.0……37.0…….0.189……….4.0 (17)…..127…….. 1.4
M Brown…………55.1……..34.1…….34.1…….0.156……….4.6 (12)….139……… 1.4
Ferrell……..48.8……..29.9…….36.0…….0.168……….4.9 (10) ….116……… 1.1
Joss…………………45.9……..30.1..…..30.5…….0.178……….5.1 (9) ……142……… 1.0
McGinnity*…….60.4……..37.5……..43.3……0.158……….6.0 (10) …..120………1.5
Reuschel………..68.2……..31.0……..32.8…….0.173……….4.0 (17) …114…….. .1.5
Tiant……..………..66.1……..28.7…….34.7…….0.171……….3.9 (17)….114…….…1.5
Waddell…………61.0……..43.9……..43.9…….0.185……….5.9 (10) ….135………1.3
Walsh……..……..63.2……..47.3……..48.9…….0.192……….6.2 (10) ….145……..1.3
Wilhelm…………50.1……..16.1……..21.6…….0.184……….2.6 (19) …..147……..N/A
Position Players
….Name………….WAR….Peak5….Top5….WAR/G….WAR/Yr……OPS+…Career length
Allen………………58.7……31.5……36.7……0.034……4.2 (14) ……156……1.0
Ashburn…………63.6……31.6……32.7……0.029……4.2 (15) ……111……1.3
Clarke*………….67.4……22.2……26.6……0.030……3.7 (18) ……133……1.3
J Collins*……….53.2……25.9……29.5…….0.031……4.1 (13) ……113……1.0
Dahlin*…………75.2……22.6……29.8…….0.031……4.0 (19) ……110……1.4
Davis*…………..84.3……27.4……33.1…….0.036……4.7 (18) ……121……1.4
Dawson…………64.4……32.4……33.7……0.025…….3.4 (19) ……119……1.5
Goslin……………66.1……32.5……32.8……0.029….…4.1 (16) ……128……1.3
Keeler*………..54.0……27.0……27.5……0.025…..…3.4 (16) ……127……1.4
Nettles………….68.0……28.7……32.2……0.025….…3.4 (20) ……110……1.4
Wallace*.……..70.2……28.6……31.3……0.029….…4.1 (17) ……105……1.3
Although I included Wilhelm on the list, he’s not really comparable and I think he needs to be considered on his own (his career length, by IP, is just short of Joss’s, but that makes no sense to list).
To give a sense of normal CoG range for the unfamiliar stats of WAR/9IP, WAR/G, and WAR/Yr, I picked a variety of ten CoG pitchers and hitters for comparison:
Pitchers (WAR/9IP and WAR/Yr)
W Johnson: 0.232 / 7.3 (21)
Koufax: 0.206 / 4.8 (11)
Vance: 0.190 / 5.2 (12)
Matty: 0.179 / 6.4 (15)
Hubbell: 0.170 / 4.2 (16)
Jenkins: 0.165 / 4.6 (18)
Roberts: 0.160 / 4.4 (19)
Ford: 0.153 / 3.9 (14)
Carlton: 0.145 / 4.0 (21)
Ryan: 0.140 / 3.2 (26)
Position players (WAR/G and WAR/Yr)
Mays: 0.052 / 7.8 (20)
E Collins: 0.044 / 6.2 (20)
Gordon: 0.036 / 5.2 (11)
Heilmann: 0.034 / 4.5 (16)
Cronin: 0.031 / 4.2 (16)
Crawford: 0.030 / 4.2 (18)
Yaz: 0.029 / 4.2 (23)
B Robinson: 0.027 / 3.9 (20)
Sisler: 0.027 / 3.6 (15)
McCovey: 0.025 / 3.1 (21)
Given Wilhelm’s uniqueness, I think this indicates that in terms of these specific figures, all of our many candidates are actually better than the lowest echelon of players voted into the CoG. (I don’t know that the two who look worst on this list, Ryan and McCovey, are actually representative of the lowest rung – and, of course, other figures and factors besides these figures matter.) As for which particular ones should be the leading candidates in the 1872-71 election, while I think George Davis is a pretty clear pick for anyone who thinks these stats are good metrics to choose, other factors – Doom’s view that true Old Timer’s should be excluded, Hartvig’s view that later players should have priority because of the level of competition – may distribute votes elsewhere, and, of course, there are both other stats and other issues (e.g., Wilhelm’s singularity, Ferrell’s batting, Brown’s PEDs, etc.).
Concerning Wilhelm’s unique record, Kahuna Tuna posted a great analysis of the impact on his teams of Wilhelm’s catcher-evading knuckler, and I think it provides grounds for a much better assessment of his high unearned run rate. I mention it here because it may get lost now that the 1875 string is done.
Very informative breakdown, epm. One correction – Dahlen, Davis and Collins were born in 1870, so they won’t be part of the scrum in the 1872-1871 election.
By George, you’re right, C.C. Now I actually have to think about the lead player on my ’72-’71 ballot, and when you take Davis out of this mix, the horse race is dismayingly close.
Doug –
Having this round’s voting end on Thanksgiving might be a bit inconvenient for some. Might we extend it through the weekend?
Good thought, David.
Yes, I’ll change the deadline.
Well, with the very first vote (Hartvig’s) ensuring that both Wagner and Lajoie won’t be named on 100% of ballots, I have no qualms about casting my votes for both. With my third slot, I’m going to pull a Tammy Wynette and stand by my man, as Kevin Brown and I probably have the largest combination of votes by a single voter for a single player. I realize that Brown has lots of eligibility stored up AND no chance of winning this round. At the same time, I’m actually hoping that having two STELLAR candidates this round gives us some clarity by knocking some players off the ballot. We’ll see what happens, though.
Honus Wagner
Nap Lajoie
Kevin Brown
Do you know how many times have you voted for Brown, Dr. Doom? My top vote-receiver is Roberto Alomar, for whom I voted 42 times.
I will answer you in full when I finish counting (it’s actually REALLY FUN to look back at old ballots; I’m going to save it now, though, so I don’t have to keep checking them all).
For now, I’m only back to 1916.1, which has been 46 ballots. I’ve voted for Kevin Brown in 45 of those rounds. And I’m pretty sure I voted for him all the way back on the very first ballot… so it’s going to be a lot.
So, I learned a few things.
1. I didn’t vote for Kevin Brown in the first round. My mistake. I did, however, vote for him twice in the 1950s. I’ve voted for him 50 times in this process. That may not be the most for a single-voter-single-player combo, but it’s gotta be pretty close.
2. I also voted for Ryne Sandberg 32 times, Bobby Grich 21 times, Luis Tiant 21 times, Ron Santo 14 times, Alan Trammell 10 times, and Larry Walker 10 times. Those are my double-digit guys.
3. Sadly, I discovered something that absolutely broke my heart. This whole time, I’ve been thinking that I hadn’t failed to vote in a single election. Apparently, I DID miss one. It was 1934, part 1 – when Hank Aaron was elected. I posted 3 or 4 comments in that discussion, so it’s not like I wasn’t around. I guess I just had a brain fart that week or something. This depresses me.
4. Did you realize we’re coming up on the THREE-YEAR anniversary of the COG? The first post went live on December 16, 2012! That is a VERY long time ago. So for all of us who have been a part of it the whole way (even if we THOUGHT we had voted in every round, but really hadn’t) I just want to say another thank you to birtelcom for starting and Doug for continuing this amazing thing I’ve been enjoying having as a part of my life for the last three years. And I also want to thank all you commenters who continue to make this a really fun place to hang out, even after all this time!
I know I voted for Biggio for a while when he was trying to get in / trying to get more votes than Barry Bonds has homeruns.
Lajoie, Wagner, Joss
Wagner, Lajoie, Goslin.
Wagner, Lajoie, Waddell
Lajoie, Wagner, K Brown
As for my vote:
Best position player: Wagner (Love that 1908 season – it looks like someone spilled black ink on the page, but no, that’s just old Hans, leading the league in just about everything worth measuring)
Best pitcher: K. Brown (if Waddell is in danger of falling off, I may change my vote to save him, since I think he belongs in the mix for the 1872-1871 election)
Wildcard: Lajoie (As a lifelong Indians fan, how can I leave off a guy so integral to the franchise that we changed our name to honor him?)
I’m going to strategically vote without Lajoie under the premise that voting for him is purely strategic anyway considering he has no shot of winning this round.
Wagner, Ferrell, Dawson
nettles has a spare round worst case
Wagner
Lajoie
K. Brown
Reaching for some negatives…wagner was always missing a few games a season, until setting his career high at age 41. So a fragile player who was clearly a roider at the end. Lajoie isn’t even the best player on the ballot and hung around at the end obviously reaching for 3000 hits. Also didn’t take many walks…
Obviously, this was largely in jest. However, with Wagner, you have to keep in mind that much of his career was played in a 140-game schedule. That changes how one views some of those seasons of 130 games played.
Oh yeah, I recalled the seasonal totals bounced around a bit, but forgot they used to be that low. Part I always forget about Wagner until I see his bbref page – he stole a ton of bases and is still top ten all time.
…couldn’t find anything negative to say about Brown? 😉
Also, are we far back enough that the guy who caused controversy by using extract of monkey’s testicle is on the ballot? I remember Voomo mentioning that a loooong time ago but can’t remember who the guy was.
Bells, I think you’re referring to Pud Galvin, who tried the Brown-Sequard elixir in 1889. He won’t be making his way onto the ballot, not because of PED controversy, but because he was wholly a 19th century pitcher.
A couple quick Galvin facts:
Though his nickname seems like it has a mocking or even a concupiscent origin, it’s actually a reference to his pitches making hitters look “like pudding.”
Most people know about Hoss Radbourn’s famous 1884 season, where he won 59 (or 60, or even 61; unsurprisingly, there’s some discrepancies with records from 130+ years ago) games. But Galvin actually put up a higher rWAR that season, 20.5 to 19.1. Old Hoss had much better raw numbers and pitched more innings, but Galvin gets a big WAR boost from playing in front of an inferior defense and pitching in a more offensively-tilted home park. Gun to my head I’d still take Radbourne’s season (can you really turn down 678.2 IP of a 205 ERA+?), but it’s interesting that advanced metrics rate Galvin’s year higher than Hoss’s legendary ’59 in 84.’
Honus Wagner, Nap Lajoie, Rick Reuschel
Can someone issue a reminder on the eligibility status of George Davis, Bill Dahlen, and Denton Young? All of them played more than half their careers before 1900.
All three- Davis, Dahlen & Young- are eligible for COG voting.
So, continuing what hartvig started above (I’m doing it at the bottom because, without numbering the comments, it’s difficult to find a comment in the middle of the form)…
If we have 8-11 elections remaining…
… and all Redemption candidates are banished to the Circle of Pretty Good,
the upcoming guys in the WAR stratosphere of already enshrined players are:
Honus
Lajoie
Cyclone
George Davis
Bill Dahlen
Fred Clarke
If it plays out that way, two holdovers get in for sure (plus whatever the BBWAA gives us in January).
____________
Here’s where all of our holdovers rank according to JAWS (just to pick a metric):
3B
12 … Graig Nettles
17 … Dick Allen (played more games at 1st)
LF
9 … Goose Goslin
CF
11 … Richie Ashburn
12 … Andre Dawson (played more games in RF)
SP
29 … Ed Walsh
39 … Wes Ferrell
45 … Rick Reuschel
46 … Kevin Brown
51 … Luis Tiant
59 … Rube Waddell
74 … Mordecai Brown
138 .. Addie Joss
RP
3 … Hoyt Wilhelm (Eck is 1st, shenanigans)
I’m skeptical of Clarke making it in. I see three main knocks against him:
1) Over 20 of his WAR was accumulated before the 20th Century.
2) He has +91 fielding runs and the further back we go the more skeptical people are of the defensive numbers.
3) Outside of a 6.6 WAR season in 1897, he never topped 5.2 WAR in a single year.
Would people really vote for Clarke over Nettles who has the same WAR in the same amount of playing time? And doesn’t suffer from problems #1 or #3. And who we know was a legitimately great defensive player.
Clarke’s offensive numbers (slugging) were likely aided by playing in Exposition Park in Pittsburgh.
Splits dont exist to confirm, but lots of doubles and triples when it is 515 in center and 475 in LC.
I would take Nettles.
___________
Here’s a nugget from wikipedia that I though can’t possibly be true. Couple of links below confirm it:
________
During a July 4, 1902 doubleheader against the Brooklyn Superbas, an Allegheny flood caused water to rise to thigh level in center and right fields, and about head level in deep center. Players occasionally caught a ball and dove under the water.
________
https://oldpittmaps.wordpress.com/2012/05/17/68/
http://newsinteractive.post-gazette.com/thedigs/2013/04/01/exposition-park/
I would probably swap out Bobby Wallace for Fred Clarke in your top 6.
I also wouldn’t put too much significance in positional rankings for outfielders. JAWS may see Goslin as the 9th best left fielder but in right field his score would put him in 15th just ahead of Dewey Evans. There are also 16 shortstops and 13 second basemen with a higher JAWS score than him as well. And Clarke’s JAWS score is about 5% lower than Goslin’s.
The Hall of Stats reverses the two. Clarke’s HOS score is in the COG borderline range- Goslin’s JAWS score is actually slightly below the cutoff line- and they score Goslin almost 10% lower than Clarke.
I can see the case for both but for me they both come up a little short.
Wagner, Lajoie, Ashburn
We elected Koufax entirely on the strength of his 6 year peak (plus postseason).
Here’s the case for Walsh, with stats from each of their 6 year peaks:
Koufax
1633 IP
46.6 WAR
35 IP/WAR
129-47
156 era+
_________
Walsh
2248 IP
55.3 WAR
40.7 IP/WAR
151-99
157 era+
Walsh led the league in Saves 5 of those 6 years.
Voomo, The parallel is really very close, and you’ve made me rethink whether I really want to rate Goslin over Walsh or even, as you note below, Waddell, for whom parallel 6-year peak stats would be:
1869 IP
46.5 WAR
40.2 IP.WAR
131-82
146 era+
I think you left out an important stat when comparing: Ks, which reflect the type of pitchers these guys were. In straight up terms, the 6-year peak K’s and K’s/9 are:
Koufax 1713 / 9.4
Waddell 1576 / 7.6
Walsh 1369 / 5.5
But if you normalize for the league K rate apart from each pitcher’s K’s, Waddell moves well past Koufax on a level field, to about 13.0 K/9 at 1961-66 rates, and Walsh gets close, at about 8.5 K/9. These were all spectacularly overpowering pitchers, but Rube was really something else. (As for control, Walsh has the edge on BB rates, with Waddell giving up about 40% more and Koufax in between – the guys in their prime could all compete on K & BB stats with The Big Train in his.)
So I can see a case for Rube here if, in addition to the stats you gave, where he lags a little behind Walsh, you include the impact he made on the ball field. It’s a bit like Nolan Ryan: would Ryan be in the CoG if he was a routine strike out guy, picking up outs in the field instead? (Or, for that matter, would Koufax?)
The more I think about it, the more wobbly Goose becomes. (And if I let Lajoie go till 1873, I wouldn’t have to choose between Big Ed and Rube . . .)
I’m torn right now between Walsh and Waddell. Each were dominant in their peaks in different ways. Walsh brought sheer volume of effort, while Waddell’s ability to miss bats was on another level from his peers.
1904, SO Leaders
349 … Waddell
239 … Chesbro
202 … Powell
201 … Plank
200 … Young
1902, 1903, and 1905 have a similar spread.
#1: On 8-6-99 Tony Gwynn got his 3000th hit off rookie Dan Smith.
Vote update, since we now have over ten ballots (I never really see the need to post one before that, as it’s really just “have you gotten a vote or not?”).
11 – Honus Wagner
=========100% (11)
9 – Nap Lajoie
=========75% (9)
=========50% (6)
4 – Kevin Brown
=========25% (3)
2 – Richie Ashburn, Wes Ferrell
=========10% (2)
1 – Andre Dawson, Goose Goslin*, Addie Joss, Rick Reuschel, Rube Waddell
0 – Dick Allen, Mordecai Brown, Graig Nettles*, Luis Tiant, Ed Walsh*, Hoyt Wilhelm
Over 1/3 of voters have submitted identical Wagner-Lajoie-KBrown ballots – meaning that every vote Kevin Brown has came from a person posting exactly that ballot.
Looking at Voomo’s early vote tally, I’m concerned that the double-candidacy of Wagner and Lajoie may result in the unintended consequence of knocking off truly viable holdovers. With a substantial number of closely comparable CoG-borderline candidates and a small number of available non-Wager-Lajoie votes, it would be easy for quite a few players who vie successfully for election in the 1872-71 round to fail to get the 4 votes necessary to survive till then.
(I’ll confess that I’m thinking in particular about the implications of this on Kevin Brown’s candidacy. I’ve spent a lot of time researching Brown’s record, and it now seems to me that it would be a bad idea to elect as a borderline candidate a player who may have reached that plateau through documented PED use. His case is not like shoo-ins Bonds and Clemens, where the only aspect of PED use that might affect votes was the ethical one of cheating. It’s closer to the cases of McGwire or Palmeiro, whose less certain statistical credentials were critically weakened once the fact that PEDs may account for a significant portion of WAR was factored in. Obviously, others don’t feel this way, but, apart from general principle, this is one specific reason why I’d like to see the strongest of the holdovers who match up with Brown’s stats available as alternatives for the 1872-71 round and thereafter. That would, in my mind, include about half the players who seem in danger of being dropped from the ballot at this early stage, plus the unique Wilhelm.)
Unless many others shift their votes away from Lajoie, who obviously should be retained for election in the next round, I’m planning to drop him from my ballot in order to add a vote for one of the other highly viable players struggling now. Otherwise, the pruning of the holdover list may become much more of an accidental outcome that we should want to see, now that redemptions are over and a final CoG threshold is being set.
The only problem with the PED assessment in my view is that the established timeline has Brown starting to use in 2000 or 2001, and his best seasons were 1996 and 1998. Of course, he was teammates in Texas with a lot of known or suspected users (Palmeiro, Canseco, Juan Gonzalez), so it’s not much of a stretch to assume that he started using before 2000. But as far as documented use, we can’t say for certain that he was using PEDs during his peak seasons.
As a Brown supporter, I’m a lot more troubled by his home/road splits, which I admittedly need to look into further.
C.C., I agree with you that it’s hard to know what (and when) the PED effect may have been, and, as you pointed out on an earlier thread, it’s a lot harder to assess the effects of PEDs on pitchers than on hitters.
But even if we grant that Brown’s best seasons were unaffected, the effect on his WAR figures is significant in this context. The Mitchell report evidence concerns 2-3 years beginning in 2000 or 2001. If you call into question his WAR from that point (9.5-16.7, depending on which year you date from), his CoG competitors are much strengthened.
Our problem is to assess comparative marginal value in a close field of peers. Any discount on Brown’s WAR measures trims or eliminates the small lead in those stats that he holds over similar pitchers, like Tiant and Reuschel (especially if you grant that 2000, one of his WAR-peak years, is doubtful – though his WAR/9IP prior to 2000 is actually a bit higher). Voting for, say, Tiant over Brown is really tough as it stands, but if a few points of Brown’s WAR and WAR peak are soft, then it becomes a much easier proposition.
Cursed Clevelander:
Regarding Brown’s home/road splits….
Of the 96 pitchers with 3,000+ innings pitched, Brown has the 4th biggest home advantage based on ERA. Tiant, the pitcher that I prefer, is 75th.
Of the 329 pitchers with 2,000+ innings pitched, Brown has the 12th biggest home advantage based on ERA. Tiant is 252nd. And Sandy Koufax, who everyone dings for being helped by his home parks, only ranks 111th.
Of course, WAR theoretically takes care of these sorts of things. But I’m not certain/convinced that it works so well at the extremes.
I agree with your other point, though. I might end up dropping Brown and Lajoie if it’s necessary to keep a guy like Waddell or Wilhelm on the ballot, since I think both should be in the mix for the 1872-1871 election.
I will take credit for the stars and the moon, but I have tallied no votes. That grind has been labored by Mr Doom, Ph.D.
My apologies to Doom!
Especially like your work on Orion, Voomo.
Kevin Brown had cups’a’coffee in ’86 and ’88, and he was terrible in 2005. So his productive career ran from 1989-2004.
Here are the leaders in the following categories spanning 10 years on either side of his run, from 1979-2014:
WINS:
355 … Maddux
354 … Clemens
305 … Glavine
303 … R Johnson
270 … Mussina
269 … Moyer
256 … Pettitte
250 … Morris
239 … Wells
219 … K Rogers
219 … P. Martinez
216 … Schilling
214 … D. Martinez
214 … Hudson
213 … Smoltz
211 … KEVIN BROWN
208 … C.C.
____________
WAR:
139.4 .. Clemens
104.6 .. Maddux
104.3 .. R Johnson
86.0 … Pedro
82.7 … Mussina
80.7 … Schilling
74.0 … Glavine
68.5 … KEVIN BROWN
66.5 … Smoltz
65.6 … Halladay
61.7 … Cone
60.9 … Pettitte
_________________
ERA+ (min 2000 IP)
154 … Pedro
143 … Clemens
136 … Johan
135 … Randy
132 … Maddux
131 … Halladay
130 … Felix
127 … Schilling
127 … Oswalt
127 … KEVIN BROWN
126 … Saberhagen
125 … Smoltz
123 … Mussina
________________
Quality Starts
480 … Maddux
465 … Clemens
436 … Glavine
403 … Randy
341 … Moyer
330 … Mussina
314 … KEVIN BROWN
301 … Pettitte
298 … Smoltz
297 … D. Martinez
293 … Hershiser
292 … Hudson
292 … Morris
_______________
Highest Percentage of Quality Starts (min 265 QS)
.668 … Randy
.667 … Pedro
.661 … Schilling
.660 … KEVIN BROWN
.658 … Clemens
.649 … Maddux
.639 … Glavine
.639 … Hudson
.629 … Hershiser
.627 … Nolan Ryan
Wagner, Lajoie, Allen
Wagner
Lajoie
Walsh
I’ve posted some comments about the site’s functionality on the Suggestions page, here:
http://www.highheatstats.com/suggestions/#comment-107421
Agreed 10000% on all your points – ESPECIALLY the numbered comments. I can do a Ctrl+F for the day (like November 23) and that helps, but it used to be SO MUCH EASIER when comments were just numbered. In my opinion, unnumbered comments are a step backward in creating discourse, since it’s harder to figure out if certain conversations are going or not.
I was about to post an addition to Voomo’s, but I thought I’d ask first: Is there some way to access the archive I’m missing? The only way I can find access to old strings is by clicking serially on the last-post link near the banner, and that would be far too time-consuming.
I agree with Voomo’s suggestions, too, but given the ease of agreement factor and reduced leverage after Doom’s comment, my agreement only calculates as 8713%.
If it’s not listed on the “Recent Posts” board the only way that I’ve been able to do it- besides doing what you suggested- was by using the “Search” function.
Which, now that I look for it, is no longer there.
So, no.
I got nothin’.
EPM’s comment about too many votes going to Wagner and Lajoie, thinning out the holdover crowd by default, is a good one. Wagner is too good not to vote for. Lajoie is going to get in next year. If these two take 60+% of the total vote, basically you are forcing the voters to select only their remaining top choice. Given the intensity of Brown’s loyalists, now concentrated in a smaller field, you are going to have a handful of votes that are truly “free”. I’m voting for Wagner this time, Lajoie the next, and I have to figure out which two of the others I want to support.
Vote:
Wes Ferrell
Rube Waddell
Hoyt Wilhelm
I’m changing my vote, for reasons I’ve explained above and that Mike L has enlarged upon. I’m unwilling not to celebrate Wagner, but Lajoie doesn’t need my help, unless by Friday a raft of changed votes puts him in danger. I’m also passing on Walsh and Goslin, others I support, because they’re not on the bubble.
Given my view of Brown, I no longer think he’s the pick of the Brown-Reuschel-Tiant group, and I don’t think any member of that group beats out the best of the Walsh-Waddell-Joss-Ferrell group (to which McGinnity will be added). Wilhelm remains a strong wild card.
Among position players, I see Dawson, Goslin, and Nettles as a group of players with (very) roughly similar profiles, and Allen and Ashburn as outliers in opposite directions. My pick after Goslin, Nettles, also isn’t on the bubble, and I’m selecting pitchers I think we need to continue considering.
Wagner, Waddell, Wilhelm
Wagner,Lajoie, Goslin
No objections to Napoléon or Honus geting in.
Chesboro and Tannehill are essentially the same pitcher — each in the other’s top 2 or 3 in similarity scores, each jumping from the Pirates to the Highlanders.
Voting this round:
Ed Walsh
Hoyt Wilhelm
Nixey Callahan (who had 2 RBI in a night game at Comiskey Park in 1910)
Your post got me to Callahan’s bio, oneblank – I’d never heard of that story before. I was also impressed that offered the position of president of the ballclub, he successfully argued Comiskey into hiring him as a player instead.
Goslin, Nettles, Walsh.
Nettles, Waddell, Wilhelm.
Allen, Joss, Wagner
Lajoie, Tiant, Allen
I think it’s about time Lajoie got a vote over Wagner, although they are pretty darn similar players, and Wagner wins almost every metric except BA. I will say I’m going with the Rhode Islander over the Pennsylvanian.
First off, my votes go to Honus, Nap, and Addie.
Second, how come no posts or comments from the last two and a half weeks (the last post I have is Charlie Hayes) show up when I go to the site in my normal Chrome window, but when I use Chrome incognito or Firefox, it works fine?
Funny enough, for me it’s the opposite. The site works fine on Chrome (even without an incognito window) but on Firefox it won’t load anything past the MVP Crowdsourcing post.
I think it’s an issue with the site cookies, though. IIRC, Incognito windows disable cookies as well as not recording sites visited in the browser history. If you manually delete all the HHS cookies, it should restore most of the functionality.
For the 1874 election, I’m voting for:
-Andre Dawson
-Rick Reuschel
-Luis Tiant
Other top candidates I considered highly (and/or will consider in future rounds):
-Wagner
-Lajoie
-Brown (Kevin)
-Goslin
-Ashburn
-Nettles
-Allen
-Walsh
-Waddell
Honus Wagner, Rick Reuschel and Hoyt Wilhelm
In the “things I did NOT see coming” division, Nixey Callahan outpolling Mordecai Brown would have to be near the top.
Here’s an update, through Kirk, the 23rd ballot:
===============75% (18)
17 – Honus Wagner
13 – Nap Lajoie
===============50% (12)
===============25% (6)
5 – Hoyt Wilhelm
4 – Kevin Brown*, Rube Waddell
3 – Dick Allen, Wes Ferrell, Addie Joss, Rick Reuschel, Ed Walsh*
===============10% (3)
2 – Richie Ashburn, Andre Dawson, Goose Goslin*, Graig Nettles*, Luis Tiant
1 – Nixey Callahan
0 – Mordecai Brown
Wagner, Lajoie and Goslin. I think I am too conflicted about the group of pitchers I have to choose from, so will take the easy way out and vote for none of them.
Reuschel, D. Allen, Honus Wagner
Doom–your observation about Nixey Callahan–he’s also polling at 7% in New Hampshire. Nixey was born, raised, and was buried in Fitchburg, MA so he’s getting a little favorite son treatment. Behind Trump, Carson, Rubio, Cruz, and Bush but ahead of Huck, Paul, and Christie. Bet you didn’t see that coming….
Happy Thanksgiving, folks,
Goslin, Nettles, Tiant
I know I posted an update only three votes ago, but I’m going to be away from my work computer until Sunday morning, and that’s where I store my spreadsheet I use to keep track. So here’s the last vote update I’ll be giving until Sunday AM, if at all.
This is through David Horwich, the 26th vote:
======75% (20)
19 – Honus Wagner
14 – Nap Lajoie
======50% (13)
======25% (7)
5 – Hoyt Wilhelm
4 – Dick Allen, Kevin Brown*, Goose Goslin*, Rick Reuschel, Rube Waddell
3 – Wes Ferrell, Addie Joss, Graig Nettles*, Luis Tiant, Ed Walsh*
======10% (3)
2 – Richie Ashburn, Andre Dawson
1 – Nixey Callahan
0 – Mordecai Brown
I should be able to post an update some time over the weekend. Will Nixey Callahan continue to outpoll Mordecai Brown? Stay tuned…
Wagner Lajoie Goslin
Wagner, Dawson, Allen
Wilhelm
Ashburn
Dick Allen
Interim copy updating Dr Doom’s table from Wednesday afternoon:
This is through brp, the 29th vote, with 12 hours to go:
22 – Honus Wagner
======75% (22)
15 – Nap Lajoie
======50% (15)
======25% (8)
6 – Hoyt Wilhelm, Dick Allen,
5 – Goose Goslin*,
4 – Kevin Brown*, Rick Reuschel, Rube Waddell
3 – Wes Ferrell, Addie Joss, Graig Nettles*, Luis Tiant, Ed Walsh*, Andre Dawson, Richie Ashburn
======10% (3)
1 – Nixey Callahan
0 – Mordecai Brown
OBS: It’s 12 hours to go for vote changing. The balloting is open through Sunday night.
The above tally has one excess vote for Wagner, not that it’s going to matter in the end.
Not an easy group–you are really starting to see a split in the way we perceive older players and new ones–particularly among the pitchers. And there’s just not very much time left. I considered Mordecai Brown, but I thought a) I was wasting a vote, and the HOF votes for the three (Walsh, Waddell, Brown) were intriguing. Brown never got above 27%. Walsh was high 40’s and 50s. Waddell mid 50’s and 60’s. Presumably, many of the voters had a chance to see all three pitch, and they were near contemporaries
Wagner, Waddell, Walsh.
I’m going to be difficult and change my vote a second time (if that’s allowed! I don’t remember) before this evening’s deadline cuts off the chance. The reason is Tiant’s potential disqualification.
I see K. Brown, Reuschel, and Tiant as extremely close in CoG potential, but, for reasons I’ve already laid out on previous posts, Tiant would have the edge for me. I’d be disappointed if, when an actual holdover selection may occur, Tiant were the only one of the three to have dropped out, so I’d like to provide him the cushion he may need this round. My earlier vote was “Wagner, Waddell, Wilhelm.” All three seem safe, but I’m only going to change my vote for to help out one player teetering on the bubble’s edge. The other four besides Tiant who are at three votes and in danger are all great – and I particularly like Ashburn and Ferrell – but I don’t feel the same sort of issue applies.
Waddell, Wilhelm, Tiant
Multiple vote changes have always been allowed.
With the vote-changing deadline having passed, here’s the current tally through 30 ballot (through Mike L’s ballot, and including epm’s vote change):
21 – Wagner
15 – Lajoie
==========50% (15)
==========25% (8)
6 – Allen, Wilhelm
5 – Goslin*, Waddell
4 – K Brown*, Reuschel, Tiant, Walsh*
3 – Ashburn, Dawson, Ferrell, Joss, Nettles*
==========10% (3)
1 – Callahan
0 – M Brown
So, I hope he stays on the ballot, but in case he doesn’t, a little bit about Andre Dawson:
Is Dawson one of the players most helped by the rise of saberstats? At first blush, it seems like an odd notion. 10 or 15 years ago, when sabermetrics was still in its relative infancy, Dawson was a bit of a punching bag; certainly not to the extent of Joe Carter or Jim Rice or Jack Morris, but he was considered a guy overrated by traditionalists. After all, how could an outfielder with a career .323 OBP be a Hall of Famer?
I think this article is indicative of Dawson’s place in the collective consciousness of the online advance stats community circa 2006: http://www.hardballtimes.com/rice-belle-and-dawson-in-context/
A quote from that article: “[Dawson] just wasn’t good enough, and his election would be a thumb in the eye of everyone who takes the time to understand these things and take them seriously.”
Now, I don’t write this to pick on the author. It was written by Dan McLaughlin, aka the BaseballCrank. He’s a serious thinker, and a good writer. He was using the analytical tools of the time, just like the baseball minds of an earlier era were when they overrated certain guys and underrated others. Furthermore, this opinion wasn’t extraordinary at the time, it was commonplace. This was the era when I became a serious baseball fan in earnest. I started posting on the ESPN MLB boards, along with a couple of current HHS posters, actually; KalineCountry used to post there, and IIRC Insert Name Here (I don’t think he’s posted in a while, but he was a valued contributor when he did) was also on those boards as evanredsoxnave or redsoxfan34. This was the heyday of Fire Joe Morgan, and the SABRminds of the time loved to mock players like Juan Pierre and David Eckstein, the players lauded by announcers and managers, and lionized TTO guys like Adam Dunn and Nick Swisher and Nick Johnson and Jack Cust. I was getting my first look at the writings of Bill James, realizing the importance of OBP and era/ballpark context and positional value and so forth. I learned to love the Ferris Fains and Max Bishops and Eddie Stankys of the world, the largely forgotten OBP monsters of the past. Of course McLaughlin was correct; an OF with a .323 OBP simply isn’t a serious HoF candidate.
In retrospect, it looks silly to rate Belle ahead of Dawson. And of course, WAR isn’t telling us anything we couldn’t have known back in 2006. All those things that make Dawson more valuable than Belle – his good defense at a premium position, the fact that he played in a much lower offensive context, his superior baserunning, his much lower GIDP rate – we knew about those back then. But WAR, while imperfect, is useful because it crystallizes all of those disparate pieces of information into one easy to digest figure. All those tiny advantages look much bigger when taken in aggregate and rolled into one number. Dawson does well in basically every version of WAR: 59.1 BP WARP, 64.5 bWAR, 59.5 fWAR, 64.5 Baseball Gauge WAR. Ten years ago, Dawson was considered a joke of a candidate, a guy who would tarnish the Hall and drag the standards down. Now, not only is he a Hall of Famer, he clears the bar by quite a bit. The only reason his JAWS score is below the average for HoF CF’s is because the CF position is ridiculously top-heavy – it’s tough to be above average when the average includes Ty Cobb, Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle and Tris Speaker. And of course, the coup de grace is his continued candidacy for the CoG. This process, undertaken by a group of incredibly sharp, analytically-minded baseball fans, who are tasked to build a Hall of Fame decidedly more exclusive than the one in Cooperstown, has been seriously considering Dawson as a member. And IMHO, that simply wouldn’t have been the case ten years ago. The superstats have helped Dawson hurdle from an inside joke in the advanced stats community to a guy being seriously debated as one of baseball’s top 120 players of all time. That’s a jump that even Bob Beamon would admire.
One correction – Dawson’s Baseball Gauge WAR (gWAR) is 59.5, not 64.5. 64.5 is his bWAR, which is the metric shown on the individual player pages at The Baseball Gauge. You need to look at the career leaderboards to get the gWAR figures. I notice that figure mirrors his fWAR, though fWAR and gWAR are not identical.
A bit about Belle as well:
It’s funny to see Belle so beloved by the SABR community of a decade ago, because he’s probably one of the most “what you see is what you get” players of all time. Just about all of his value can be gleaned from back-of-the-baseball-card type stuff, his triple crown stats and his slash line. I think the conventional wisdom of the time was that Belle was underrated because of his bad attitude, and that he was a high peak player that fell short in the minds of the BBWAA because they preferred compilers, guys who achieved nice arbitrary round numbers in counting stats.
But everywhere you dig below the surface, Belle’s numbers begin to suffer. He played in an extremely high offensive context. After the Indians left Cleveland Municipal Stadium, he never again played in a pitcher’s park. He didn’t add any positional value, he was a below average defender at best, he was a mediocre to poor baserunner, and he grounded into a ton of double plays. His career is pretty much all peak, since his degenerative hip condition forced him out of baseball at age 33. He really only has two things in his favor:
1. Before his hip went, he was extremely durable, playing in just about every game. 153 in 1992, 159 in 1993, 106 (of 113) in 1994, 143 (of 144) in 1995, 158 (of 161) in 1996, then a three year stretch where he missed only one game.
2. He could HIT. He played in a high scoring era, sure, but he would have raked in any era. He was an extra-base hit machine. He didn’t have a fantastic batting eye, but he wasn’t a free swinger either, and he could be judicious when the situation called for it; he walked about 70 times a year and struck out about 100 times a year. He racked up tons of RBIs, partially because he played on some high-octane offenses, but also because he hit very well with RISP (a .992 OPS, good for a tOPS+ of 113).
As opposed to Dawson, who looks a lot better with the superstats, Belle really suffers when analyzed within the parameters of WAR. He’s below the HoF bar in pretty much every different type of WAR: 39.9 bWAR, 41.0 fWAR, 45.3 BP WARP, and 45.9 gWAR. Really, the only thing that could have dinged him more was playing his career in Coors Field. Of course, if that were the case, even if his WAR would have suffered, he’d have put up some seriously fearsome hitting numbers. If he put up the only 50/50 2B/HR season ever in 144 games in Cleveland, just imagine what he could have done given a full slate of games in pre-humidor Coors. 60/60 wouldn’t have been out of the question.
A final note about Belle: I always wondered what Bill James was looking at when he wrote in the NBJHA that Belle was an “underrated base runner who was rarely caught stealing.” Of course, I don’t expect James to get every detail right in such a massive tome where he covered 1,000s of players, and he didn’t have the data to know that Belle’s total baserunning was below average, but just his SB/CS numbers alone should be enough to show that he certainly wasn’t “rarely caught stealing.” He had individual seasons where this was true – 11 for 11 in 1996, 17 for 20 in 1999. But for his career, he had only a 68% success rate, below the break-even rate for just about any era, and well below the rate for a high-scoring era like the 90’s. Even if you take away his 0 for 5 line in 2000 when he was playing on a hip that had pretty much turned into cole slaw, he’s at just 71% for his career.
In terms of CoG-worthiness, I consider Belle analogous to the high peak/short career Dead Ball era pitchers on the current ballot: good players all, but with numbers that look better than they are because the era they played in favored their particular skills. E.g. Belle would’ve been an outstanding hitter in any era, but I doubt he would’ve racked up 103 XBH in a season had he played in, say, the ’60s or ’70s.
I think this would work, if you multiplied Belle’s hitting by about 1.4-1.5, to match career contribution volume (as opposed to career length) and turned him into an acceptable fielder.
It’s interesting that you bring this up, because I had the opposite reaction–that is, WAR convinced me that Dawson was NOT HOF worthy. My opinion is that a guy (when he retired) in the top 40 in HRs and RBI, with over 300 SB, belongs in the HOF. At the time he retired, there was only one other player who had done that, Willie Mays. And even now, only four players.
Therefore, based on those counting stats alone, I thought he was a no-doubt HOFer.
When I learned about WAR and started to somewhat understand it, I changed my mind and formed the opinion that he was only a borderline HOFer.
Wagner, Lajoie, Waddell.
Nettles, Dawson, M. Brown
I do not feel 3 Finger should be shut out. 239-130 with a 2.06 ERA in 3172 innings is nothing to sneeze at. He outpaced everyone on this ballot in wins (and most of them without his Federal League numbers also) and did so very efficiently. His WAR suffers compared to Walsh and Waddell in that he did not tally crazy strikeout numbers, but if hitters cannot make any solid contact with his pitches, that should be recognized too. Hopefully McGinnity will fare better when he comes along.
Final day update!
When David Horwich last updated, everyone with 3 votes was safe. Not so anymore, so you final-day voters have the decision on who is saved, and who gets the ax. There’s also a possibility for a three-vote push to get Waddell or Wilhelm above 25%, but they’d need three votes in four ballots to do it. Plus, Nap Lajoie is JUST hanging on to 50% (though, admittedly, he probably won’t need it). Anyway, here you go:
22 – Honus Wagner
16 – Nap Lajoie
===========50% (16)
===========25% (8)
6 – Rube Waddell, Hoyt Wilhelm
5 – Goose Goslin*
4 – Kevin Brown*, Andre Dawson, Graig Nettles*, Rick Reuschel, Luis Tiant, Ed Walsh*
===========10% (4)
3 – Richie Ashburn, Wes Ferrell, Addie Joss
1 – Mordecai Brown, Nixey Callahan
Dick Allen also has 6 votes.
Vote:
Tiant, Reuschel, Ashburn
Ferrell at three votes? A travesty! Us few Ferrell supporters gotta put together a case for those last few open rounds. For now, I just want him to get there. I’m happy to vote for Wagner, who is in my mind one of the greatest combos of ‘great baseball player’ and ‘great human being’.
Wagner
Ferrell
Walsh
Don’t know what case we can make that we haven’t made.
There’s only 40+ people voting and most folks have got their guys.
Ferrell was arguably the 2nd best pitcher in the game for his decade-peak (Grove), while hitting like a league-average left-fielder.
I actually think that only a minority of people here have decided on their 1872-71 votes. There seem to be small groups really loyal to Brown, Wilhelm, Nettles, and Ferrell, but I think only 2-4 members of each.
I suspect that as the debates go on for the next two rounds, the Wilhelmists will have the easiest case to state, because the case rests simply on Wilhelm’s unusual profile. The Brownians need to establish that Brown should be the choice within the Brown-Reuschel-Tiant family of pitchers; the Nettlites need to show why Nettles should be picked over Dawson and Goslin (Allen and Ashburn being so different as to make those three seem like a family); while you Ferrellers need to show that your guy stands above the other members of the sharp-peak pack: Walsh, Waddell, and McGinnity.
As it stands, I can’t get Ferrell up over the competition when it comes to peak performers. For me, the numbers just don’t get him within close enough range of the others to make his hitting determinative. I’ve mentioned before that Ferrell is a player I’ve always liked, but for me, he’s really a close match to Drysdale, whom I really couldn’t vote for either. (Maybe I like Ferrell/Drysdale types because the first game I ever attended was Newcombe’s 27th win in ’56, and Newcombe was the same general type of pitcher: short-career, high-peak, great hitting power pitcher – if you repair the damage his military call-up inflicted, you get a pitcher amazingly close to Ferrell.)
The issue I have with the Walsh/Waddell/McGinnity group is two-fold.
The first is that I think that major league baseball was still in a very transformative stage during the first decade of the 20th century. In the last election we discussed the complete domination of the National League by 3 teams during the decade. And that’s only one part of the evidence that the overall talent in the majors at that time was far more uneven than it would be even a decade later.
The second issue is with pitchers in general during that era. Yes, if you take their seasonal and/or career numbers and compare them to any of our current holdovers they seem pretty dominant. But the issue is that when you compare them to other pitchers of that same era it’s an entirely different story. Not only do their careers overlap with the likes of Cy Young, Christy Mathewson and Walter Johnson but also Kid Nichols, Eddie Plank, Pete Alexander and slightly lesser lights such as Three Finger Brown, Addie Joss, Noodles Hahn, Vic Willis, Jack Chesbro, Orval Overall, Nap Rucker and others, all of whom were putting up fairly comparable numbers, at least on a WAR per IP basis.
Does it really seem feasible that there were that many truly great pitchers around in such a brief time frame or is it more reasonable to view them as a creation of their (changing) times?
Hartvig, that’s a fair question, but doesn’t WAR try to contextualize that? On Walsh, he has the lowest ERA and FIP of all time. He’s 10th in ERA+, but ahead of him is Hoyt, Mariano, Jim Devlin (who pitched three seasons in the 1870’s) and Kershaw (who is still active). I’m not wedded to Walsh, but I can’t see swapping him out, for, say, Tiant (who I have voted for in the past)
Hartvig, Concerning your argument about the value of Walsh, Waddell, and McGinnity compared to Young, Matty, Pete, and The Big Train, I think the same can be said of say, Tiant vs. Koufax, Marichal, Gibson, Seaver, etc., and Brown vs. Rocket, Pedro, Unit, Maddux, and company. We are talking about admitting a fifth pitcher born in the 1870-1890 era; we already have admitted ten pitchers born 1930-1950, Tiant or Reuschel would be the eleventh, and we already have eight born in the 1960s alone, Brown would be the ninth.
As for the context of the time, when it comes to pitchers, I think a modern bias may already be inscribed in the CoG. When it comes to Walsh, Waddell, and McGinnity, we know that in their relatively brief primes, they were superstars in a class with Matty and Young, not, like Plank, the steady second team (particularly Walsh and Waddell). It’s hard to say that of, say, Tiant or Reuschel vs Gibson/Seaver, or Brown vs Clemens/Maddux.
Mike, epm-
After sleeping on it and then reading your comments I have come to a few more conclusions.
First is that at least as of this moment pitchers from this era probably aren’t over-represented in the COG. I do still have some issues on those lines however.
My gut tells me that in a pitching dominated era, great hitters should stand out even more. I no longer know how to access voting results on the site but if my memory is correct (and your totals for the pitchers are as well) is that we have just selected the 6th position player from this era (Wagner, Jackson, Baker, Collins, Cobb, Speaker) and will likely choose a 7th in the next round with what I could consider 1 more fairly certain selection and maybe 3 possibilities yet to come.
That would mean we’re fairly certain to have 8 position players & 6 pitchers representing this era with a chance for a couple more of each, as long as I’m not leaving anyone out.
Since the HOF ratio is roughly 8 position players for every 3 pitchers and at least on an overall basis we seem to have been roughly following that pattern, pitchers from this era would seem to be fairly represented.
It would seem however that pitchers from the second dead-ball era are already fairly well represented casting even more doubt on Tiant & Reuschel and even Wilhelm for altho he was born in the 20’s his career extended thru the majority of that time.
One final take away from all this is that pitchers from the live-ball era of the 20’s and 30’s- i.e. Ferrell- appear to be grossly under-represented.
Your final point is especially good, Hartvig, and an argument to strengthen Ferrell’s case. It’s worth trying to figure out why we selected so few pitchers from the entire 1921-1961 era – really only seven whose careers were primarily in that 40-year period (Vance, Grove, Hubbell, Feller, Spahn, Roberts, Ford). It makes it seem better that we included Ford, and raises in my mind a regret that we weren’t more responsive to your pleas for Lyons, who I think really outshines Ferrell, although not on a peak-value basis. (Ruffing is actually an interesting match for Ferrell – in the long-haul as opposed to peak mode – since his WAR numbers are higher for both pitching and batting.)
I’m not in favor of representation for its own sake (as I argued for third baseman awhile back), but I do think we should reexamine how it came to be that we left so large a gap, particularly since our last shot at redressing it, if we think it’s warranted, is likely coming up. (I have to say that looking over the list of other available pitchers in the era we under-represented, there aren’t any who really cry out “injustice!” on a WAR basis.)
epm-
I agree that thing like having “x” number of players at each position or so many from each era is- for a variety of reasons- a bad idea and as you can tell that’s not what I’m talking about.
But it certainly does seem that pitchers are grossly underrepresented in that 40 year period you mentioned and even with so few chosen 2 of them (Ford & Vance) were at least slightly controversial picks.
I don’t have a good explanation for what’s going on there either.
I suppose that WW2 & to a less extent Korea played a part but there is no one that I can point to except possibly Lyons & maybe Newcombe who’s careers were impacted enough to possibly keep them out. I suppose it could also be argued that Newhouser was a case where the war actually worked in reverse in explain why he didn’t get in.
It might be that we are looking at 2 different eras & 2 different factors.
The wars may have been the biggest factor for the 1941 to 1961 group.
The offensive explosion between 1921 and 1940 might have been a different issue.
Without looking at it in detail it does seem that pitchers who played in low run scoring eras are well represented. And while the second “live-ball” era (say 1986-2005ish) seems well represented-especially at the top- with Clemens, Maddux, Johnson, Martinez (eventually), Schilling, Mussina, Rivera & probably a couple more that I’m forgetting- the first one certainly is not.
Maybe it’s just random chance that the 20’s & 30’s are not well represented in the pitching ranks.
It does seem at least a little odd however.
Goslin – Ashburn – Walsh
I voted 8:48 Pacific Time – and my post says 12:48 – Am I too late?!
The return to standard time still has the HHS clock stumped. The time is an hour earlier than the time stamp indicates, so you actually voted at 11:48pm EST.
Vote update!
Craig Biggio – 763
Eddie Murray – 731
Roberto Alomar – 725
John Smoltz – 658
Kenny Lofton – 608
Ryne Sandberg – 607
Harmon Killebrew – 585
*Kevin Brown – 549
Edgar Martinez – 507
Lou Whitaker – 493
#Dave Winfield – 408
#Dennis Eckersley – 407
Roy Campanella – 396
Whitey Ford – 382
Bobby Grich – 376
Sandy Koufax – 375
Tony Gwynn – 346
*Luis Tiant – 345
Willie McCovey – 336
#Minnie Minoso – 309
*Rick Reuschel – 305
Juan Marichal – 268
Tom Glavine – 262
*Graig Nettles – 254
Alan Trammell – 239
Mike Mussina – 233
*Richie Ashburn – 231
Curt Schilling – 224
Nolan Ryan – 220
Ron Santo – 217
Lou Boudreau – 216
Tim Raines – 213
Larry Walker – 197
Barry Larkin – 188
Frank Thomas – 181
*Hoyt Wilhelm – 178
*Goose Goslin – 176
*Dick Allen – 171
Gabby Hartnett – 165
Paul Molitor – 152
Bob Gibson – 147
Gaylord Perry – 142
Paul Waner – 140
Jim Palmer – 133
Al Kaline – 132
Duke Snider – 130
*Wes Ferrell – 129
Carl Hubbell – 126
Joe Gordon – 126
Ernie Banks – 119
Eddie Mathews – 115
Pete Alexander – 111
#Dwight Evans – 100
1. The other holdovers: Andre Dawson (81), Ed Walsh (45), Rube Waddell (18), Nap Lajoie (16).
2. Falling off the ballot were electee Honus Wagner (23), Addie Joss (22), Mordecai Brown (10), and Nixey Callahan (1).
3. No one picked up any extra rounds besides newcomer Nap Lajoie (who likely won’t need them, if we’re being honest).