This post is for voting and discussion in the 123rd round of balloting for the Circle of Greats (COG). This is the second of three rounds adding to the list of candidates eligible to receive your votes those players born in 1972. Rules and lists are after the jump.
The new group of 1972-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). This second group of 1972-born candidates, including those with H-M surnames, joins the eligible holdovers from previous rounds to comprise the full list of players eligible to appear on your ballots. The remaining 1972-born candidates, with N-Z surnames, will be eligible to receive your votes in the next round of balloting.
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 Tuesday, February 7th, while changes to previously cast ballots are allowed until 11:59 PM EST Sunday, February 5th.
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 1972 Part 2 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-1972 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 nine 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 1972 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 6 rounds)
Goose Goslin (eligibility guaranteed for 6 rounds)
Dave Winfield (eligibility guaranteed for 4 rounds)
Dick Allen (eligibility guaranteed for 2 rounds)
Graig Nettles (eligibility guaranteed for 2 rounds)
Luis Tiant (eligibility guaranteed for 2 rounds)
Richie Ashburn (eligibility guaranteed for this round only)
Bill Dahlen (eligibility guaranteed for this round only)
Bobby Wallace (eligibility guaranteed for this round only)
Everyday Players (born in 1972, ten or more seasons played in the major leagues or at least 20 WAR, H-M surname):
Chipper Jones
Raul Ibanez
Mike Lieberthal
Melvin Mora
Ramon Martinez
Paul Lo Duca
Pitchers (born in 1972, ten or more seasons played in the major leagues or at least 20 WAR, H-M surname):
LaTroy Hawkins
Mike Hampton
Jason Isringhausen
Jose Lima
Dustin Hermanson
Steve Karsay
Steve Kline
Jimmy Haynes
Ramiro Mendoza
This round’s tidbits. Answers are bolded following question.
1. LaTroy Hawkins allowed two or more earned runs in each of his 3 appearances in the 2015 post-season, tied for the longest streak of such relief games to close out a post-season career. Which of the pitchers tied with Hawkins led the majors in Games Finished in the same year as his rocky post-season finale? Jose Valverde (2012)
2. Raul Ibanez hit 278 home runs in his age 30 and older seasons, more than 10 times his 27 total home runs before age 30. Who is the only 200 home run hitter with a larger such ratio? Hank Sauer
3. Chipper Jones’s 8 consecutive games with a hit to start his post-season career is the longest such streak by a third baseman. Which third baseman had an 8 game hitting streak to end his post-season career? Doug DeCinces
4. Jason Isringhausen saw his season W-L% plummet 518 points from his first to second season. Which pitcher had the only larger decline in 10+ decisions in both seasons? Rube Bressler
5. Mike Hampton recorded consecutive seasons with 140 ERA+ (1999-2000) followed by consecutive seasons with ERA+ below 100 (2001-02). Which two HOFers are the only other pitchers to do the same in consecutive qualified (modern definition) seasons? Christy Mathewson (1912-15), Early Wynn (1955-58)
6. Mike Lieberthal smacked a career best 31 homers in 1999. Who is the only Phillies catcher to top that mark? Stan Lopata (1956)
7. Melvin Mora’s .340 batting average in 2004 is the highest by a third baseman in a 25 home run, 100 RBI season after age 30. Which third baseman has the most 25/100 seasons as a Brown or Oriole? Harlond Clift
8. Jose Lima is the only pitcher to twice start 30+ games and record an ERA over 6. Which live ball era pitcher has a lower ERA+ than Lima’s 85 mark in a 1500 IP career? Herm Wehmeier
9. Ramon Martinez played 75 games at 2B for the Dodgers and Giants. Who was the first player to do this? Eddie Stanky
10. Dustin Hermanson recorded 34 saves for the world champion 2005 White Sox, but had none in the post-season. Among 21 other pitchers with 30+ saves for a World Series champion, who, like Hermanson, played in the post-season but did not collect a World Series save? Dan Quisenberry (1985)
11. Paul Lo Duca caught 200 games for the Dodgers and Mets. Which teammate of Lo Duca’s did the same? Todd Hundley
12. Steve Kline led the majors in games pitched for three consecutive seasons (1999-2001), tied for the longest run of such seasons by any pitcher. Which live ball era pitcher led his league in games pitched for four consecutive seasons? Paul Quantrill (2001-04)
13. Steve Karsay is one of three retired pitchers with ERA+ under 90 over his first four seasons, but above 150 over the next four campaigns, in 200+ IP for both periods. Which active pitcher is on pace to join that group next season? Jake Arrieta
14. Ramiro Mendoza was the winning pitcher in game 3 of the 1998 World Series. Which other pitcher has a World Series relief win over the Padres? Aurelio Lopez
15. Jimmy Haynes is the only pitcher with 300 IP for the A’s, Brewers and Reds. Which other pitcher recorded 300 IP for the A’s and Brewers? Lew Krausse Jr.
Question 7: The phrasing makes me think the answer might be Harlond Clift.
2 Clift
1 Brooks Robinson
1 Mora
1 Miguel Tejada (34/150, 26/98, 24/100)
0 DeCinces
0 Ripken (1997-2001)
0 Machado
0 Mark Reynolds
0 Tony Batista (26/99)
Doug DeCinces is the answer to question #3.
I think #11 would be Todd Hundley.
#14 would be Aurelio Lopez. (He’s also the only such pitcher whose first name includes all five major vowels, a critical feature.)
There’s also Aurelio Monteagudo who pitched from 1963-1973.
Touché, Richard. But Monteagudo’s illustrious career did not include a World Series relief win over the Padres, so among such pitchers, Lopez’s full complement of vowels stands alone in its glory.
Here’s a genuine question for you, since you’re one of a small number of posters here who was paying attention during Monteagudo’s era. Monteagudo’s career flew completely under my radar: I have no recollection of ever seeing his name before. When you came up with his name today, did it ring a bell for you? I don’t feel too bad when I’m blindsided by a player name from the 1940s or earlier (before my time, though the last years fall into yours), even after years of poring through the old encyclopedias, and there are many, many players I don’t know from the late 1960s on. But it really bothers me when I turn out never to have heard of some player from the period 1955-65, when baseball was a 24/7 obsession for me – especially through 1963, when I was still filling my closet with Topps cards. You were an AL fan in those days, when the illustrious Mr. Monteagudo was playing on prodigious Kansas City Athletics teams, and I wonder whether he ever caught your eye (despite the fact that he would never have had enough decisions to make the Sunday list of player stats).
I do not remember Monteagudo at all, I simply entered the name Aurelio into the BR searchbox. There are 3 guys with that name, the two already mentioned and also Aurelio Rodriguez whom I remember as an outstanding fielding AL 3B. I later got a list of all players from 1901 to date from Fangraphs, put them into an Excel spreadsheet and by manipulating found that Aurelio is the only ML given name with all 5 major vowels.
It was actually Rodriguez who first attracted my attention to the five-vowel nature of Aurelio — not my discovery: I got it from some local sports writer or maybe a Roger Angell type (I think Angell was the first to notice that Al Kaline’s name was of chemical interest).
Rodriguez was really terrific in the field. I lived close enough to go to many games in Detroit in that era, and I remember one play where some runner was dogging it from second to third on a single to right. Kaline decided to give it a try and fired a perfect shot to Rodriguez who made absolutely no move that would alert the runner until the ball actually arrived – he just stood nonchalantly with his arm hanging down as Kaline’s bullet headed for his glove. The only move Rodriguez made was to move his glove a few inches in the tag attempt once the ball arrived (because the runner went in standing up, he didn’t have to bend down for the tag). The runner was safe – barely: just shy of a 9-5 force out – but he was so completely surprised when the ball hit Rodriguez’s glove that he threw his arms back and his head jerked up in a flinch – I’m sure his jaw dropped, though I couldn’t see from the bleachers. Rodriguez must have decoyed the third-base coach too – nothing to see here! It brought the crowd to its feet – there was no out to cheer, just the theater of it.
#15: The second Lew Krausse.
Lew Krausse Jr. was an unofficial pitching coach at my High School. Both of his sons played ball on the high school team (one was a year behind me and the other was 3 years behind me). He had some really, really good stories about his days with the KC A’s (he was a bonus baby, I believe, and was on the major league roster at age 18, probably not the best influence on a young man that one could have)
#9 would probably be John Montgomery Ward, but if you’re thinking of an era when the Dodgers were called “Dodgers,” maybe Eddie Stanky.
Question #5: One such pitcher is Early Wynn who was 140+ for 1955-1956 and sub-100 for 1957-1958.
And the other is Jim Bunning, who was 140+ in 1966 & 67 and sub-1oo in 1968-69.
Dennis Eckersley missed by just a whisker, being 139 in 1978 & 149 in 1979, followed by seasons of of 99 & 91 but he only pitched 154 innings in the last year.
But Bunning had only 160.0 IP in 1968, the Pirates played 162 games.
It’s not Bunning. Just missed qualifying as Richard notes.
I suppose it’s Mathewson: 1912/13 vs. 1914/15. I’d never registered what a fluke his 1914 24-13 record was (ERA+ 88).
Christy is our man. He was actually below 90 ERA+ in 1914-15 after being above 150 in 1912-13. 1914 was his second qualified sub-90 ERA+, after a 22-12 record with 88 ERA+ in 1906. Mathewson led the majors with 16 home runs allowed in 1914 which, with only 23 walks, made this the first qualified season with walks less than 50% more than home runs allowed. Here are the numbers of such seasons by decade:
1910s – 1
1920s – 0
1930s – 1 (Red Lucas – 1933)
1940s – 0
1950s – 17
1960s – 17
1970s – 8
1980s – 25
1990s – 20
2000s – 60 (Carlos Silva in 2005 has smallest BB:HR ratio with 9 BB and 25 HR allowed)
2010s – 32 (Josh Tomlin in 2016 has second smallest BB:HR ratio with 20 BB and 36 HR allowed)
Most wins in a sub-90 season is held by Jack Coombs with a 28-12 record in 1911. Best W-L% is .750 by Chuck Dobson (15-5) in 1971, and .731 by Storm Davis (19-7) in 1989, both playing for the A’s.
#8 is Herm Wehmeier who had an 84 ERA+ from 1945 to 1958 with 2nd division NL teams (Reds primarily, then Phillies and Cardinals, also a very short stint at end of career with Tigers). The main culprit for his poor pitching was a sub 1.0 SO/W ratio in his career.
Wehmeier lasted as long as he did because he was touted as a “can’t miss” kid. But, miss he did, and mostly the strike zone with a 4.3 BB/9 for his career.
In Wehmeier’s 1945 debut, he was relieved by Hod Lisenbee, making the final appearance of his career, and the last major league appearance by a player born before 1900. The difference in their ages was more than 28 years.
#4 Rube Bressler: 1914, 10-4 (.714); 1915, 4-17 (.190); 1918-32, outfield.
Bressler evidently followed the “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” strategy in dealing with hitters.
Question 12: Paul Quantrill led the AL in 2001 and 2004 and the NL in 2002 and 2003.
I don’t know if anyone has answered 13, but are we looking for Andrew Miller (2nd guess – Wade Davis)
Neither of those two.
How about Jake Arrieta.
How about Jake!
He was probably one more mediocre season from playing his way out of the bigs. But, then, everything started to click.
Question #1: Jose Valverde in 2012
Doug, I just cannot figure out #10. I wonder if I am reading it wrong. The only 2 pitchers that I can come up with who had 30 saves in regular season but none in post season for WS winners are Isringhausen in 2006 and Holland in 2015 and they were both hurt and did not pitch in the postseason. Otherwise, the least I see is Quisenberry in 1985 with only 1 post season save (in the ALCS)
My mistake. Should have written “had no saves in the World Series”. So, your answer of Dan Quisenberry is correct.
Here is a list of stats for candidates, including the ten holdovers and Chipper Jones, the only current 1972 candidate with a WAR exceeding 30.
Pitchers
P(Tot)-WAR…Peak5…Top5…WAR/9IP…WAR/Yr…ERA+…Career length
68.5 (68.3)……37.0…37.0……0.189……4.0 (17)……127……1.0……Brown
66.1 (66.7)……28.7…34.7……0.171……3.9 (17)……114……1.2……Tiant
Position Players
WAR……Pk5……Top5……WAR/G…WAR/Yr……OPS+…Career length
58.7………31.5……36.7……0.034……4.2 (14)……156………1.0……Allen
63.6………31.6……32.7……0.029……4.2 (15)……111………1.3……Ashburn
75.2………22.6……29.8……0.031……4.0 (19)……110………1.4……Dahlen
66.1………32.5……32.8……0.029……4.1 (16)……128………1.3……Goslin
85.0………33.0……35.5……0.034……4.7 (18)……141………1.4……Jones
68.0………28.7……32.2……0.025……3.4 (20)……110………1.4……Nettles
70.2………28.6……31.3……0.029……4.2 (17)……105………1.3……Wallace*
63.8………26.9……28.6……0.021……3.0 (21)……130………1.7……Winfield
*Wallace’s total WAR (incl. pitching) is 76.3.
6) Stan Lopata
2) ……not Hank Sauer, whom I thought it HAD to be
I think the answer to #2 is Hank Sauer. 281 HR age 30 and after, 7 HR before age 30. Ratio of 40.1.
hah! I knew it had to be Sauer, went to his b-ref page, errantly added the rbi column, got 29 and saw he only hit 288 homers.
bill james wrote about him languishing in the minors because no one thought he would ever field well enough
I’m struggling with whether Ramiro Mendoza cracks my top three….
Highest WAR since 1987, with fewer than 140 IP, and SO/9 less than 4:
2.9 … Ramiro Mendoza
2.7 … Chuck Crim
2.5 … Greg Hibbard
2.5 … Bill Swift
2.5 … Bob Welch
Oops.
At the top of that list is actually Shigetoshi Hasegawa, with a 3.2 in just 73 IP in 2003.
Mike, Let’s call it “The Mendoza Line.”
It sings to me….
Chipper Jones, Brown, Goslin
Jones, Dahlen, Wallace
WAR Leaders, Number 1 Draft Picks:
117.7 . Alex Rod
85.0 … Larry Jones
83.3 … Griffey the Jr.
50.0 … Joe Mauer*
43.8 … Adrian Gon*
42.0 … D. Strawberry
38.5 … Harold Baines
34.3 … B.J. Surhoff
33.1 … Rick Monday
32.3 … Darin Erstad
31.9 … David Price*
31.7 … Andy Benes
28.5 … Mike Moore
28.1 … Josh Hamilton*
26.9 … Floyd Bannister
26.7 … Justin Upton*
26.2 … Tim Belcher
21.7 … Bob Horner
21.5 … Bryce Harper*
20.9 … Ben McDonald
18.8 … Pat Burrell
18.2 … Stephen Strasburg*
17.6 … Jeff Burroughs
16.7 … Jeff King
15.8 … Phil Nevin
13.0 … Kris Benson
11.5 … Shawon Dunston
10.1 … Carlos Correa*
9.4 …. Gerrit Cole*
9.4 …. Ron Blomberg
(I’ll stop there)
joe mauer kind of slowed down a bit….
Ron Bloomberg would stop anyone. He could hit–lifetime OPS+ of 140. He just couldn’t stay on the field.
Looking at the all-time leaders in Games (LaTroy Hawkins is 10th), I noticed that Francisco Rodriguez is 195 behind Mariano’s record for a right-handed Pitcher. And he’s only 34.)
Rodriguez seems like he’s been around forever. Among pitchers relieving in 95% of appearances and debuting in 1987 or later, nobody else is close in IP through age 34.
950.2 – Francisco (0 starts)
863.0 – Bob Wickman (28)
848.0 – Jeff Shaw (19)
837.0 – Kyle Farnsworth (26)
799.1 – Eddie Guardado (25)
774.1 – Jeff Brantley (18)
772.2 – Armando Benitez (0)
765.0 – John Wetteland (17)
755.2 – Keith Foulke (8)
745.2 – Mike Stanton (1)
Most Starts in a career, with also 350+ Games Finished:
361 .. Eck
133 .. Dave Guisti
98 …. LaTroy Hawkins
95 …. Jose Mesa
93 …. Stu Miller
89 …. Rick Aguilera
89 …. Dave Righetti
____________________
Fewest Saves in a career, with 350+ Games Finished:
84 …. Mike Stanton
102 .. Tom Burgmeier
125 .. John Hiller
126 .. Dave LaRoche
126 .. Bill Campbell
127 .. LaTroy Hawkins
132 .. Bob Stanley
133 .. Jim Brewer
For the 1972 Part 2 election, I’m voting for:
-Chipper Jones
-Dave Winfield
-Luis Tiant
Other top candidates I considered highly (and/or will consider in future rounds):
-Brown
-Goslin
-Ashburn
-Nettles
-Allen
-Wallace
-Dahlen
Thanks!
I’m re-looking at the holdovers. I want to try to think about players anew. I’ve got it narrowed down to four players. I’m looking at: Graig Nettles, Dave Winfield, Luis Tiant, and Dick Allen. Whom should I select, given only one spot? Convince me. I’m going into this round as open-minded as I can, so help me out.
What made each of them “great”?
Winfield….
Extreme longevity.
…Though it can be argued that he was merely charismatically above average, and that he had only three “great” seasons (’79, ’84, ’88), even disregarding his curiously poor defensive stats.
Allen….
Absolute beast of a hitter. Greatness unquestioned there.
… Though noone argues that his defense was very bad.
And only 7315 PA. The only COG inductee with fewer is Home Run Baker (excluding Catchers, WWII, and partial-segregation players). And Baker’s career was short-circuited by the death of his wife. The great Larry Walker and his 8030 is really our Great with the fewest PA.
Nettles…
Only Brooks and Beltre have more games at 3B. Great defensive rep. 390 HRs.
… Low BA, not many “Great” seasons.
Tiant
He was great.
… And inconsistent. Only once strung three great seasons together.
Think you’d have to drop Allen for his defense.
Then it would be a question of whether you felt Nettles’ defense compensated enough for his offensive deficit relative to Winfield (who passed the eye test defensively, if not the Rfield test). I’d give that edge to Winfield, but might still vote for Nettles because of the dearth of third basemen in the COG.
Tiant is really close to Rick Reuschel. Same WAR. Same IP, Same ERA+, Tiant’s W-L% is a bit better, but likely because he played for better teams. Reuschel has about a 10% edge in WAA, but Tiant played more of his career in the AL facing the DH (just my preference but if I have to pick between two similar contemporary pitchers in different leagues, I’d go with the AL pitcher). Reuschel just missed getting the COG nod; that may be Tiant’s fate too.
I’d go with Nettles if I had to pick one.
Big Daddy got to pitch to a Pitcher about 600 times more than Tiant.
1059 PA
.130 / .165 / .157 / .322
464 PA
.125 / .161 / .156 / .318
And they had almost the same number of PAs against non-Pitchers:
13,829
.274 / .324 / .388 / .712
13,902
.240 / .301 / .379 / .680
Doom, You and Voomo are as steeped in the stats as anyone here. I don’t have anything to tell you that you don’t know about the stats (or about other things, really), but in close calls, I like to think about what dimensions may not be captured by the statistical record.
It seems to me that Nettles’s case rests largely on his stats, and perhaps on the boost to his reputation that televised post-season play provided, since it gave him a chance to display some terrific third-base acrobatics in clutch contexts. I don’t mean to diminish Nettles’s quality, but I don’t know of anything significant left behind by the stats.
But there are some non-statistical factors to consider for the other three.
With Winfield, the key is what Voomo suggested: the uncertainty introduced by the gap between dWAR and contemporary assessments of Winfield’s defense. I think the likelihood is high that Winfield has been shortchanged by WAR in ways that we simply can’t identify, but that those who tracked his performance closely are certain exist. Winfield also gets a boost from maintaining his composure in the face of a tyrannical King George – workplace conditions during the heart of his career were more difficult than average.
I made a case for Allen last round. I won’t repeat it, because I know you read every post: it rested on the role racism – and perhaps bad managing – may have played in shaping the negative aspects of his career. I’m increasingly inclined to see Allen as a CoG quality player, hampered by forces that were essentially beyond his control. Another workplace conditions issue, but a much more formative one. My recollection is that you’re a peak-value voter, so Allen might be a natural for you in the context of the other three.
I’m partial to Tiant in this group because I remember his (to borrow Voomo’s term) charismatically unique pitching style, and the fact that he returned from near career-death. (I’m not a peak-performance voter: in fact, I tend to gravitate towards players who seem to establish two different high-quality careers by overcoming some ordinarily career-crippling challenge, so Tiant’s especially attractive.) My own recollections are of wonder that he was able to fire pitches over the plate when he appeared to be checking out the bleacher scoreboard, and I think that in a pinch, uniqueness in style of play provides an edge. Another factor in Tiant’s favor beyond stats is that he was apparently a tremendous clubhouse asset.
All this having been said, I’m not sure any of these four will make my ballot, unless there are strategic reasons for adding one.
Here’s a comparison between Dick Allen and Edgar Martinez.
I wasn’t fully on board with electing Edgar as “Great”, because I feel like there are enough players who are the “total package” in history that the one/two dimensional guys should be on a slightly lower tier.
But we did, so now it feels maybe a touch unfair to dock someone just for bad D.
Because if Dick were born ten years later, maybe he’d be Edgar.
Maybe better.
And maybe his career would have been more than 7315 PA, which for me is the main reason to disclude him.
Allen had a very solid 11 years. Edgar, 14.
But here’s their best 11 consecutive years. Difference of 7 PA.
Allen, then Edgar.
.299 / .386 / .554 / .940 / 165
.323 / .432 / .547 / .979 / 157
2B 277 … 3B 74 … HR 319 … RBI 975 … SB 110
2B 402 … 3B 11 … HR 245 … RBI 962 … SB 44
431 … 17 .. -7 ….. -98 . -30 …. 58.3 WAR
471 … -7 … -14 … 4 … -97 ….. 56.5 WAR
Voom,
I guess you could say they were “hitters” and Allen’s oWAR is ever-so-slightly better. Allen had to move off 3B after he lacerated a tendon/ulna nerve in his throwing hand (Aug 1967)…which was preceeded by a separated shoulder (May 1966). Initially moved to LF in 1968, he played 1B primarily through the remainder of his career.
But, for the life of me, I don’t know who kept Martinez in the minors nor who moved him off 3B in Seattle.
If I understand “WAR” correctly, both guys would have benefited “War Wise” just by standing on 3B and making plays and plate appearances, no?
Good comp. Notice how close their slugging marks are, which is particularly impressive for Allen, given his era and the ballparks he played in. Those WAR totals include both players’ negative dWAR. For oWAR it’s 69.9 for Allen and 66.4 for Martinez.
Edgar might have been a decent defender at third base (he had 2.3 dWAR in two season’s as Seattle’s everyday third baseman). But, just before the 1993 season started, Seattle came up to Vancouver to play a pre-season series (that I attended) and Martinez sustained a significant injury attributed to playing on unfamiliar artificial turf (Seattle’s turf at the time was the old-fashioned “fuzzy concrete” but the stuff in Vancouver was more spongy and could really grab hold of your foot when you tried to make a sudden move). That injury unfortunately turned out to be the end of Martinez playing regularly in the field.
Doug, Voomo,
…might have a better comp than Edgar Martinez for Allen: Joe DiMaggio. If you go to b-ref and try to duplicate each other’s careers, you might put them both on, first, the 1948 Phila Athletics (run environment almost duplicates DiMaggio’s numbers) and, second, the 1965 Phillies (almost duplicates Allen’s numbers):
.299/.371/.535 121 Runs Created/162 G – DiMaggio on ’65 Phillies for his career
.293/.380/.535 121 Runs Created/162 G – Allen on 1965 Phillies for his career
.329/.399/.578 146 Runs Created/154 G – DiMaggio on ’48 Athletics for his career
.318/.408/.580 145 Runs Created/154 G – Allen on 1948 Athletics for his career
I guess all this “similarity” makes sense their OPS+ is very similar (156 vs. 155). By the same token, their totals for PA’s and G’s for their careers are very similar
Nice comp, Paul.
No questioning Allen’s offensive credentials – the man could hit!
Tiant’s 1975 post-season performance really stands out to me.
Three complete games (one in the LCS) and three wins before the Reds got to him in game 6 of the WS in his 3rd start of the series (occasioned by a multi-day rain delay preceding that contest). But, Bernie Carbo picked him up before Fisk’s heroics (which wouldn’t have been necessary if the Red Sox hadn’t botched things in the home 9th when they failed to score the winning run with the bases loaded and nobody out, the key play being a bonehead decision to try to come home on a really short fly ball, probably no more than 50 or 60 feet behind third base – heck, I could have thrown out the runner from there).
For ages 32-35, Tiant is top 5 among expansion era pitchers in IP, Starts, Wins, and CG.
Thanks for all the feedback so far, everyone. Always looking for more, so don’t stop it coming!
I have voted for both Nettles and Tiant in the past; Nettles a couple of times, Tiant MANY times. My thoughts concerning the four are this:
Allen was a damn fine hitter. Are we sure he was THAT bad on D? How much do the racial factors mentioned many places but called out by epm contribute to contemporary perceptions of Allen, and did they help shorten his career? Should we care that his career was so short when decline years are just decline years?
Tiant at his best was clearly, in my opinion, COG-worthy. But his career has virtually unprecedented peaks and valleys – you really didn’t know whom you were getting from year to year. How much should this contribute to my evaluation of him? I’ve never had reason to count it against him before, but he’s just barely hung on to my ballot (30-some odd times, but still).
Nettles raked and played great D. His case is the easiest because there aren’t any glaring issues with it, other than the slippery slope argument – if Nettles, why not the other 6-or-so 3B from the 70s who are pretty similar?
Winfield, if you trust contemporary defensive opinion over modern defensive analysis, was a clear, hands-down, no-doubt COGer. WAR disagrees A LOT. His traditional defensive numbers aren’t really that impressive, either. Great arm, sure. Graceful runner, no doubt. But what if WAR’s right, and he was just bad a placing himself in the field? Or he had bad reaction time that led to late jumps on the ball? What if he really WASN’T getting to the number of balls a great defensive player should’ve been? It’s just REALLY easy to be skeptical of Gold Gloves, because I grew up seeing Gold Gloves handed to a lot of bad fielders.
All these guys have drawbacks, and as I look with fresh eyes, it’s really hard to choose. So thanks for the thoughts so far, and keep them coming!
Regarding whether Allen’s 7315 PA are an issue because usually the PA after that are ‘decline years’…
I’ll revisit a stat called PaWaa (Plate Appearances per Win Above Average).
Calculating each of our offensive candidates through the seasons closest to 7000 career PA:
200.1 … Larry Jones
213.6 … Allen
224.4 … Nettles
227.6 … Wallace
244.6 … Goslin
254.3 … Dahlen
257.0 … Ashburn
288.6 … Winfield
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And their numbers after 7000 PA:
199.3 … Larry Jones (3548)
279.7 … Dahlen (3665)
589.3 … Wallace (2829)
1371.4 … Goslin (2880)
1610.0 … Ashburn (2898)
3833.7 … Nettles (3067)
-0.1 WAA … Winfield (5519)
-0.5 WAA … Allen (200)
_______________________
Jones and Dahlen maintained.
Wallace had something left in the tank.
Everyone else fell off the cliff.
__________________________________________
Here are the PaWaa leaders among guys who had 7000-8000 career PA:
207.0 … Mark McGwire
222.3 … Dick Allen
266.0 … Chet Lemon
302.2 … Jim Fregosi
305.6 … Norm Cash
307.1 … Kirby Puckett
330.1 … Fred Lynn
334.6 … Matt Williams
356.6 … Rocky Colavito
369.3 … Chuck Knobs
382.9 … Roy White
386.3 … Davey Lopes
391.2 … Reggie Sanders
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And here are the leaders THROUGH 7000 PA:
77.1 … George Ruth
94.0 … Rogers Hornsby
97.0 … Ted Williams
104.2 … Ty Cobb
105.6 … Mickey Mantle
106.8 … Willie Mays
107.9 … Honus Wagner
108.1 … Barry Bonds
111.2 … Albert Pujols
117.1 … Stan Musial
117.3 … Lou Gehrig
117.6 … Mike Schmidt
124.5 … Rickey Henderson
125.3 … Tris Speaker
125.4 … Alex Rod
135.2 … Joe DiMaggio
135.3 … Jimmie Foxx
135.4 … Hank Aaron
136.4 … Wade Boggs
139.6 … Joe Morgan
….this one is a little contrived in order to have twenty players to manipulate the play index function as a non-subscriber.
PA > 7,000 ; oWAR > .00925 x PA ; ranked by OPS+
1 Babe Ruth 206
2 Ted Williams 190
3 Barry Bonds 182
4 Lou Gehrig 179
5 Rogers Hornsby 175
6 Mickey Mantle 172
7 Ty Cobb 168
8 Jimmie Foxx 163
9 Stan Musial 159
10 Johnny Mize 158
11 Tris Speaker 157
12 Dick Allen 156
13 Willie Mays 156
14 Hank Aaron 155
15 Joe DiMaggio 155
16 Honus Wagner 153
17 Napoleon Lajoie 151
18 Eddie Mathews 143
19 Eddie Collins 142
20 Alex Rodriguez 140
17 inner circle HoF’ers, two steroid guys, and Allen.
Allen, Jones, Winfield
Mike Hampton played 16 seasons. In five of them, he earned more batting WAR than pitching WAR. His 8.2 batting WAR represents 28.3% of his total (29.0) WAR. That’s got to be one of the highest ratios for full time pitchers (with a minimum threshold of innings pitched). George Mullin is right behind him (13.3 of 47.6) at 27.9%. Doc Crandall is the highest (8.6 of 21.1) I can find, although he spent a lot of time at 2nd base in 1914.
Tommy Byrne’s 44.6% (5.0/11.2) beats Crandall’s 40.8%.
Some others high ratios: Don Larsen (33.7%), Don Robinson (28.3%), Jim Tobin (27.2%), Earl Wilson (27.2%), Mickey McDermott (27.0%).
Don Newcombe doesn’t quite make the cut at 24%, but he was actually a pretty good pitcher, 29.5 pWAR. He batted .359 with a 163 OPS+ in 1955 while going 20-5 on the mound, but in several other years he was nearly as good with the bat. Not his best pitching years, though. In 1958 he went 7-13 and batted .361. There was talk of turning him into a position player. The next year for a poor Reds team he was 11-12 and batted .305.
What’s your minimum IP?
Because Micah Owings and his 483 was good for 0.7
And 3.3 at the bat.
What is that, like, almost Negative 500 percent.
Actually, it’s 82.5% of WAR from batting.
Jones, Nettles, Tiant
Chipper, Ashburn, Nettles
The case for Dahlen and, to a lesser extent, Wallace is growing on me.
While it pains me on a personal level to give a vote to Larry, I fail to see anyone more deserving.
Jones, Goslin, Brown
Jones, Goslin, Dahlin
Jones, Goslin and Winfield
Maybe Winfield wasn’t as good on defense as we remember.
I’ve got to consider that possibility.
He was six foot six, and so graceful. Perhaps he just LOOKED good when he moved.
I’m not that fluent in the mechanics behind the advanced metrics, so I’m trying to understand his D.
His range factor was often below average (definitely so in those years that I was right behind him as a bleacher creature, 87-88).
So, this is a combination of Putouts and Assists.
Putouts. Maybe that big long body of his didn’t have a quick first step. Maybe he looked good in the effort, but didn’t get to as many balls as the next guy. And assists? I dunno. I want to say that his arm’s reputation was so good that people stopped running on him. But that didn’t hurt Barfield. The Yanx traded for Jesse when Dave went down with a back injury in ’89. Barfield led the league in assists the next two years, having already led 4 times previously.
Joe DiMaggio was another player who looked the part, and he was also famous for making plays look easy and effortless. I remember reading his comment on the subject in which he said something like, “It may have looked easy from the stands, but out in the field I was running like hell.” Of course, Joe WAS a great fielder.
Chipper, and then……………………………………………Goslin and Tiant.
My vote:
Chipper Jones
Bill Dahlen
Bobby Wallace
Jones to win, Dahlen and Wallace to stay on the ballot. My sense is that their cases are at least strong enough to bear comparison with the Winfield, Tiant, Allen, Nettles, Goslin group.
As for Dahlen and Wallace, I haven’t made my case against them in over a year, so I’ll make it here.
Statistically, their cases are as strong as anyone’s, EVEN IF you’re skeptical of defensive numbers. They were great hitters at key defensive positions; you can’t ignore that.
However, where the case falls apart for me is when they played. I have no problem electing SOME players from the days of Ye Olde Base Ball. But I don’t think Wallace and Dahlen are excellent ENOUGH. I need to see 80+ WAR, at least. Because here’s the thing. Dahlen started playing baseball when it was, essentially, a racist, Atlantic Coast softball league. The players were almost all from the northeast, and they were certainly all white (or American Indian). The ball was pitched underhand. And even once the pitching switched (Wallace entered the league in 1894), the pitchers themselves didn’t, and it took years for the game to adjust.
But beyond all of that, I don’t consider the two of them because I don’t believe the BBWAA would have, and since we’re mimicking their process, I don’t want to consider them, either. When the original Hall of Fame setup was developed, there was an Old Timers’ Committee immediately, to vote alongside the BBWAA. The BBWAA basically ignored 19th century players (with the exception of Cy Young; however, Cy Young in the 20th century alone has a Hall of Fame career – 225-146 with a 2.12 ERA). I think it goes a little beyond the scope of the project to vote for them, so I leave them off. Certainly, others are entitled to disagree; but that’s been my guiding principle, and I plan to stick with it.
Not sure how racism comes into play, specifically, here.
It was almost all whiteys until the 1950s.
And the players were from the Northeast because travel and relocation wasnt as easy back then.
Just because we get the best players on the entire planet, now, doesn’t make it fair to hold different eras to that same standard. That’s the point of a stat like WAR. And the point of this exercise here. To determine who was “Great” at the time they were playing.
But, referring to that era, why hold them to an 80+ WAR standard, when it was far more difficult to have career longevity? These were people who worked real jobs in the offseason, and had no advanced ligament surgeries. On the flip side, they almost certainly ate more nutritious food, as the soils hadnt yet been compromised by poisons and monoculture.
Also, Wallace didn’t start as a position player until 1897. Whereupon he played for a very long time as a Shortstop, fielding well and avoiding injury on early-20th-century landscaped fields while wearing an oven mitt.
Most Games Played by a Shortstop in the first 50 years (1871-1921):
2795 … Honus
2444 … Dahlen
2383 … Wallace
2372 … George Davis
2202 … Tommy Corcoran
1895 … Donie Bush
1875 … Herman Long
1806 … Joe Tinker
1737 … Jack Glasscock (carefully)
1728 … Mickey Doolin
1712 … Germany Smith
1684 … Monte Cross
1660 … George McBride
1423 … Art Fletcher
I don’t disagree with any of the REASONS those things were true; I wasn’t suggesting that racism, regionalism, etc. were arbitrary. I was just suggesting that they are factually true statements about the game at that point in time. If the game was THAT bad, I feel that a player should dominate to a massive extent to be considered. Additionally, while you note that career longevity was harder… I’m not sure that’s demonstrably true. The greatest players of that era played just as long as the greatest players of later eras. Cap Anson, Nap Lajoie, Cy Young… they all had long careers beginning at the same time as these other guys. I’m not saying that Bobby Wallace and Bill Dahlen don’t belong in Cooperstown. I think they do. I just don’t think they belong in the COG.
I think the big issue for Dahlen, Wallace and the COG is the Willie Keeler Problem, a problem I struggled with in structuring the COG in the first place. The early Hall of Fame voters couldn’t figure out initially whether Keeler belonged with the Veterans voters or the BBWAA voters, and he received some votes from each. But a consensus gathered fairly quickly and Keeler was soon elected by the BBWAA. Dahlen and Wallace are from that same generation. Keeler with his .341 career BA is a classic example of the kind of guy pre-SABR fans and writers latched on to as an obvious superstar from those years, but in retrospect we’ve learned that he was perhaps not as valuable an overall player as his contemporaries Wallace and Dahlen. My own vote here is kind of a response to the Willie Keeler Problem.
Doom, the problem I have with your approach is your axiom that the turn-of-the-century game was bad. It was the best baseball ever played. Today’s game, in my view, is the best baseball ever played – overwhelmingly: a huge talent pool, extraordinary pre-professional on-field training, medical miracles (from our point of view) and health/nutrition regimes that could not be imagined in the past, and players free to focus 24/365 on their game.
In my view, at least half the pre-War CoG members couldn’t play in the MLB today, when dozens of pitchers throw at Johnson/Feller speeds. I do believe that almost all would probably be fine 21st century players players if they were reincarnated as themselves at 18 years-old, and then entered the college/pro training regime of today. The same belief holds true for me in the cases of turn-of-the-century players like Dahlen and Wallace.
If they’re still playing MLB in the 22nd century and some group forms on a medium I can’t imagine to create a circle of the best MLB players ever, I imagine some of them objecting to players from the 2010s being included because the game of that time simply can’t be compared to the “modern” game – it was simply bad baseball: getting better, but without the great advances in playing style, training, and so forth (and, perhaps, because it excluded women: half the population, who were thought too weak to play).
I think we have to realize that every generation plays the best baseball ever to that time: it’s a constant process without a clear dividing line (at least after 1893).
The issue is, epm, we DON’T KNOW if it was the best baseball played at it’s time. We don’t. How do you know there wasn’t a California league with far superior players? How do you know there wasn’t a second-division Negro League team who could’ve beat the pants off the champs? You simply don’t know. If we had called the Texas League a “Major League” in 1898, would we suddenly be checking THEIR players’ stats? There’s a LOT of happenstance that led to the teams and leagues we consider to be best actually being considered the best of all leagues. As it got broader, it got better. You’re right in that there’s no clear dividing line. But New York is close to Philadelphia, which is close to Pittsburgh, which is near Cleveland, which isn’t too far from Cincinnati, which is a hop-skip-and-a-jump from Indianapolis, which is barely a drive from Chicago. If modern baseball is Chicago, there may be no “clear dividing line,” but I do think it’s fair to say that New York ain’t nowhere near Chicago. That’s how I feel about the baseball of that time. If you prove to me that you were absolutely, undoubtedly, head-and-shoulders above the competition, I’d consider a vote. Beyond that, it gets harder. I would also say that I have a pretty tough time believing that the baseball played in the mid-40s was worse than the baseball played in the 1890s… yet we were happy to keep Hal Newhouser out… yet we continue to discuss these two.
Look, the level of play isn’t even my primary concern. My biggest problem with the two in question is the Willie Keeler problem birtelcom alludes to – I’m not sure if they “belong” to the COG, and I err on the side of “no.” I get 1893 as the cutoff; it’s what I usually use, too. I’m just more comfortable with a higher standard for guys who played against weaker competition. Like I said, I’d put EITHER of them in the Hall of Fame. I’m just not sure they’re among the 124 best players in the history of MLB. I don’t think there’s a single candidate on this ballot (other than Chipper) about whom that could possibly be a controversial statement.
PS, if you’ve watched Fastball (still available on Netflix instant, I believe) you’d see that Aroldis Chapman is very comparable in speed to Bob Feller (though I admit the physics are a wee bit dubious). I don’t think there are many pitchers today who could match him.
Doom, you make some very good points. I’m going to respond at some length, but only after noting that my first reaction was that your argument is very strong, and that my response may be weaker.
I believe historical context is different from what you’re thinking. In 1900, the states of the West Coast, Rockies, and northern Great Plains together held less than 10% of the US population (overwhelmingly white, I believe). While it’s true that that 10% was underrepresented in the NL, there were no professional leagues to scout out west – individual players did make it to the Majors: about 2% of Major League players were from California in the decade around 1900. The states of Pennsylvania, Ohio. New York, Massachusetts, and Illinois, certainly dominated – about half of all Major League players came from those states. But these were also population centers, accounting for a third of the US population, and they were also the places where baseball was most played at all levels. I don’t see any reason to suspect that the Majors were missing a significantly greater percentage of actual MLB-quality players then than they do now. There is no reason to suspect baseball at Major League levels in the West until the great minor league teams of the PCL (and, in the East, the IL), which didn’t emerge until after the careers of Dahlen and Wallace. The argument actually applies better to the 1920s, when a player like Buzz Arlett could get stuck in the PCL (or, for that matter, Lefty Grove could get stuck in the IL). Of course, there may have been a higher percentage of men who could potentially have been Major Leaguers, given appropriate interest, training, and competition. But that’s hard to know: MLB now misses many, many such players simply because there are so many other options for outstanding professional sports careers.
As for a “second-division Negro League,” that’s a bit anachronistic too. While there were professional black teams, leagues didn’t develop until the latter part of the careers of Dahlen and Wallace, and were not viewed as outstanding in play until the 1920s. In the 1880s, when the Walker brothers had their brief careers in the American Association, they did not set the league on fire, despite having trained in good quality white college ball — of course, they faced special obstacles both on and off the field, but the point is that although we can imagine that there was a wealth of potentially great black baseball talent in those early decades, there is no evidence that a significant number of black players had, in fact, trained up to Major League levels and were demonstrating it on any ball field until later than the heart of Dahlen and Wallace’s playing days. I have no doubt that there were many black men playing baseball on some level in 1900 who could have developed into All-Star quality Major Leaguers; but the proposition that they were All-Star quality major leaguers seems to me to have no basis until a later era.
I do think there’s a serious argument that social prejudice now is the reason MLB is restricting its talent pool to one-half the population. Surely, if hardball teams were available to girls in little leagues, middle and high schools, and the possibility of college play and MLB contracts available to women, there would be a significant number of outstanding Serena Williams’ and Delle Donnes in the Majors – and if there are such players a century from now, that won’t change the fact that there is probably in 2017 not a single woman capable of succeeding on any Major League team.
Your Newhouser argument is excellent, but the reason baseball during the War is discounted is not because it was not as good as early baseball or as baseball in the post-War era, but because it was not as good as baseball in the decade just before – it was a step back, though surely not, I agree, to 1900 levels – the equipment and playing conditions alone would ensure that. There were, during the War, plenty of men not on the field who were capable of dominating the Majors – but it’s not just that they could have become All-Star quality players: they were All-Star quality players.
The problem still lies with value terms: the ambiguity of the “best” 124 players – what qualifies for “best?” There’s no way you can convince me that Home Run Baker belongs in the same league as Graig Nettles – Nettles is the “better” player. But have Nettles grow up in 1900 and learn the baseball of his day, and I believe the best guess is that he’d wind up a very strong, but not superlative, player in the 1910s, just like Baker – both borderline CoG quality, just as they seem in their different eras. You can’t take a player out of his time – you can only compare across time if you adjust for the context of the real world as it actually exists. If the CoG question were, “Who would be the 124 best players of all time if thrown into a game today?” I think 95% would be post-War players, probably 85% from the expansion era. I don’t think that is the CoG’s question.
I understand that you are trying to find a median position that factors in these considerations by requiring a sort of descending threshold of greatness (e.g., 1900-era players need 80 WAR; later players may need only 65 or so . . .). I think the concept is cogent, but I don’t see how it can be practically implemented in an objective way. (Of course, you have every right to apply it in your votes.) And I’m not sure that if it were a practical standard, it would, in the end, be an appropriate one. It seems to me a form of making the CoG question: “Who are the 124 greatest players ever, taking 2017 greatness as the standard?” It’s an interesting question, but one that I think we’d have to argue on very different bases, filled with hypotheticals that statistics could not capture.
I haven’t seen Fastball. Feller claimed he was clocked at a top speed of 98.6 mph and he was a considered freakishly fast – only Johnson was generally believed to have been comparable up to that time (though I wonder about Waddell and Vance). Chapman is by no means the only pitcher who is routinely at or above that range now. Most, of course, are relievers, a product of the contemporary game – but a single team may have more than one.
These ARE very strong counter-arguments. I guess my main point is this: we all have to make judgments about things like league quality all the time. I’m just laying my cards out on the table. I think the standard for players from the Deadball Era and earlier should face a substantially higher standard. Anyone else may vote how they feel on the issue; I just want to put things out there for people to consider.
You are, of course, correct about the Negro Leagues in that there weren’t really any such organized leagues at the time; there were, though, town teams throughout the country. Nowadays, the best players from those teams would surely be scouted and tried out. There would be a CHANCE at the Majors. I’m just pointing out that I don’t think there was much of a way to do that at the time.
I would argue that of the 100 best baseball players in the world today, at least 90 of them are in the Major Leagues. It’s possible a couple are in Japan, Cuba, Latin America, the minors, college, even high school. But I would bet that it’s at least 90. I would say that, in 1900, it was probably closer to 50; maybe as high as 75 – but I think that’s being remarkably optimistic when I don’t think 75 of the world’s best 100 players were in the Majors 40 years later, and scouting had IMPROVED. I would also bet that every single player in the Majors today is among the 2500 best baseball players in the world (about 2000 players played last year; well, that’s just adding the total number of pitchers and batters, so it’s actually a little lower than that). There were only 371 players in MLB in 1901, but I would bet an enormous amount of money that not all of them were among the world’s 1000 best players, which is a far, far lower bar than every player today in the top 2500.
Look, we all have choices to make. I truly respect your opinion on the matter. My anachronisms don’t help my case, but I appreciate your knowledge on the matter. (The only one I looked up, the Texas League, IS accurate, though; they’ve been playing since 1888.) Regardless, I think the points I was making are important things to consider. Baseball is a fluid game in which we measure people against their time. That is the only fair thing to do. However, I think comparing 2016 to 1958 is a pretty fair comparison. Comparing 1958 to 1900 is not as fair, for a variety of reasons. That’s where my opinion falls on the matter, but others are welcome to draw their own conclusions, and I’m frankly really glad to have so much baseball to discuss!
As a final note, on Fastball, Feller WAS clocked at 98.6. HOWEVER, that was the speed of the ball AFTER it passed home plate; Nolan Ryan’s 100.6 was AT home plate; Aroldis Chapman’s 106 was 50 feet IN FRONT OF home plate – just after release, essentially. The documentary has a physicist estimate that, had Feller and Ryan been clocked from the same place as Chapman, they would’ve been measured at 107 and 108 MPH, respectively. (Walter Johnson’s famed measured fastball would only be 93 MPH – it was initially measured from 10 feet behind home plate, as I recall.) I think there are some physics arguments that could be made that could argue those numbers down a bit, but probably not much. It’s an interesting documentary, and I’d recommend it to any HHSer.
I’m happy to grant the cogency of these arguments, Doom, although we’ll continue to pursue different paths.
Terrific discussion.
Stephen Jay Gould and Bill James both wrote at some length- and if I’m remembering correctly sometimes using each others ideas & examples- about how you sometimes see far greater diversity early on in the life cycle of some organisms or organizations. It’s way too complicated an idea for me to go into in detail since it took people way smarter than me whole chapters of books to explain but James did come up with an example that I think encapsulates the idea very well.
First think about a ball players entire career as actually starting in T-ball and then gradually moving up thru Little League, Babe Ruth, High School/American Legion and so on until you finally reach the major league level. We all recognize that that in general the quality of play gets a little better but what exactly does that mean and how do we show that statistically? It’s not hard to do with the individual player- the guy who hits .500 with power or strikes out 20 in a 7 inning game is obviously better or at least ahead of his peers- but how do you do it for each level of play as a whole?
The way he came up with was to look at the outliers. How many games are won or lost by 20 runs or more (admittedly not as easy to do any more since many of the lower leagues have mercy rules)? How many guys hit .500+ and how many went oh-for-the season? The higher up the ladder you go- and presumably the better the level of competition you get- the fewer and less extreme outliers you tend to find.
From that I would argue that the quality of major league baseball has followed a non-linear curve, steep at the beginning with a curve that levels out to a very gradual decline with perhaps a few deviations along the way. The question of course is where was the game on that graph during it’s timeline.
I think most would agree that before the early 1890’s the curve was pretty steep.
I would argue that it was still pretty steep during not only the last decade of the 19th century but during the first decade of the 20th as well.
You read about players getting their break because a scout would ask a player they were looking at if they knew of a good outfielder and they would recommend a friend. A guy would get signed because they had a good day when the player the scout was in town to look at had a bad one. Players would be signed based on a barbers recommendation. Guys would come out of the stands to play in major league games. And there are all kinds of statistical indicators as well. Multiple players hitting .400 in the same year. Pitchers winning 30 fairly routinely and as many as 40 on occasion.
The point of this is not to say that the great players back then weren’t great or that they don’t deserve recognition but that we need to be careful about how we evaluate their “greatness”. I would argue that when there’s a wider disparity of talent merely being among the leaders may not be as reliable a marker of talent and that a clearer level of dominance is required.
Jesse Burkett is one guy that I have been all over the board on myself. He has a fair bit of black ink. He led the league in batting average 3 times and total bases twice. Twice he hit over .400. His WAR totals are diminished by playing most of his peak at a time when the season was only 140 games long.
But if you look closer I think there’s a bit more to it.
The one year he led his league in the most offensive categories was the year the major leagues expanded from one 12-team league to two 8-team leagues. Prior to that his best finish had been two 4th place finishes with a handful more between 7th & 10th. Some of his other black or grey ink was aided by his also being at or near the top of the leader board in games played (1st or 2nd four times) and plate appearances (1st or 2nd five times and top 10 five more). Not saying that there’s not value in someone going out there every day but that you have to put some of the other results in context because of it. The 2 years he led the league in total bases were also two seasons he led the league in games played and plate appearances. He finished 4th & then 5th in slugging percentage those 2 years.
Even though he ranks 80th in career stolen bases, during his career he never finished in the top 10 in his league. I’m not aware of his ever being viewed as more than an average fielder. Rfield and Rbaser don’t see him particularly favorably.
The question for me becomes: is an average fielding outfielder who’s not good on the basepaths who managed to finish higher than 4th in either WAR for position players or adjusted OPS+ exactly one time in each one of the 125 or so best players in history.
And I think that if you adjust for the spectrum of players that were in the league at the time that he played he falls short of being a dominant enough player to be considered among those 125 (or whatever the hell the number is now).
And to show how all-over-the-board on this I now also include Dahlen & Wallace in the same category in spite of saying I was coming around to the idea that they belong less than a week ago.
Call me a flibbertigibbet if you will but that’s how I see things, at least as of this moment in time.
The Gould/James analysis is an important one, Hartvig, and, as you’d suggest, given Gould’s inclusion, it goes way beyond baseball. But I think there are at least two respects in which its impact is not as definitive as you suggest: 1) the standards of the era form a softly limiting factor for the outstanding players of the era; 2) the analysis does not consider the recursive dimension of players at earlier stages of the game serving as models for players at later stages – that is, the rising talent standards of later eras are dependent upon the exceptional talents of the earlier eras, not just on more expansive recruitment.
Let’s consider T-ball. There are no great T-ball players, and the play in T-ball never improves because that isn’t the goal of T-ball. No one recruits the best T-ball teams, and no one coaches players in the fine points of T-ball success to make them top T-ball players. The goal is just to convey the general idea of playing a baseball-like sport and to have fun. In T-ball there are only better or worse athletes, not better or worse players. The athlete vs. skilled-player distinction shifts as you move up the developmental ladder. As you move into little league, varsity, college, and minor league ball, the balance towards acquired skill vs. unspecialized athleticism increases – that’s why the overall standards at each of those levels increases over time (to varying degrees), but it never increases in T-ball.
When you reach Major League ball of any era, the goal of the league is to assemble the best players, not the best athletes (e.g., Michael Jordan). Great athletes have a great advantage, but skills that come from intensive training and performative intelligence – not part of the T-ball picture – come to have greater relevance (e.g., Pete Rose — note: “performative intelligence” ≠ “intelligence”).
For the most part, excellent MLB players are those who maximize good athletic talent with development of excellent sport-specific skills, and what constitutes those skills is, in most cases, limited by the level of development of the sport. This is a soft-line distinction – was Ted Williams’ eye for the strike zone a function of his eyesight and reflex arc or of his training? Hard to tell how to distinguish those. And there are exceptional cases where the whole concept gets messed up – Babe Ruth would probably have hit, maybe, 300 HR rather than 700 if his talents hadn’t been such that baseball was reshaped around them, allowing him, for a few years, to lap the field until others figured out how to do what his particular athletic talents allowed him to do without specific training.
Generations build on one another. The players of Generation A generally attempt to realize the standard of excellence that defines their generation, but the best of that generation may also become the models for a better Generation B. I’m thinking, for example, of how I imagine the example of Clete Boyer’s suddenly over-the-top performances at third base in 1961-62 may have contributed to Brooks Robinson moving from being a very good to a prime-Boyeresque third baseman a few years later. (And, having lived in New York during Boyer’s prime years, I can testify that the quantum leap in fielding performance he was exhibiting on the Yankees was very much noticed at the time.)
In the 1890s, Davis/Dahlen/Wallace set new standards for what shortstopping was. They weren’t just good relative to others of their time, they were the engines that pushed standards higher at a time when those were still in development. In terms of timing, it was Dahlen who seems to have figured this out earliest among the three, judging by Rfield, but the three were very close in time, like Boyer and Robinson at third in a later era. All three pushed the game forward in the field, while at the same time being among the most productive at bat (David much more so, Wallace a little less, but with pitching credit to add). Thus they are Burketts with an added dimension, and that’s why they are bona fide CoG candidates, where Burkett quickly fell off the ballot.
So, yes, the percent of the available talent pool may have been captured to increasing degrees after the Dahlen/Wallace era, leaving them as standouts in a group that may not have been at the true tail of the Bell Curve. But part of the meaning of “talent” for subsequent eras was shaped as a reflection of them, and I think that should be a dimension of the curve’s tail that we consider as well.
While he’s ineligible for purposes of our discussion I would argue that Pebbly Jack Glasscock got there before anyone, however your point is still a valid one. My problem is a) that of the 3 there seems to be pretty clear consensus that Davis was the best (not just our voting but the Hall of Fame, Hall of Stats, JAWS, Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract) and b) Honus Wagner.
I appreciate that there are times when talent at a particular position seems to come in bunches: Willie, Mickey & the Duke all playing in the same city at the same time not to mention the plethora of outfield talent the was at or near it’s prime in the 50’s & 60’s, Ripken, Yount & Trammell all playing in the same division and followed shortly by Barry Larkin only to overlap (except for Yount) with Arod, Jeter & Nomar.
But in the same era we also have an abundance of pitchers as well. Not only do we have Young, Plank, Waddell, Mathewson, Walsh and Johnson active in the 00’s but Kid Nichols, who almost certainly would have been elected but just missed qualifying and Pete Alexander who came along a year too late as well. In addition, Three-finger Brown, Iron-Man McGinnity, Vic Willis, Noodles Hahn, Nap Rucker and Addie Joss also saw varying levels of support.
I’m just not comfortable with the idea that many of the all-time greatest shortstops- or pitchers for that matter- being active at the same time in a game was still evolving that quickly. Especially when there’s agreement that one of the three was better than the other two and that by the time they were half way thru their careers the guy who would be the consensus greatest-of-all time for the next century came along as well.
But I remain open to being convinced otherwise.
Well, Hartvig, to try to answer your good challenges: To start with the one you really didn’t make, Glasscock’s play really does involve the difference in what shortstop meant in pre-1893 and post-1893 baseball. If we were including the former in the CoG, I’d make the argument for Glasscock that I’m making here for the later guys.
I think you’re merging two issues when it comes to deciding who was the “best” of the three shortstops. Davis is clearly the strongest CoG candidate, but Dahlin has a significant edge in terms of shortstop play – both in being earlier to move ahead in SS Rfield numbers, reflecting a new level of excellence (Davis moved to SS later than Dahlen) and in his higher dWAR totals. I may be missing someone outside the guys we’re discussing (a paleo-Clete Boyer type), but my description of the model for early SS’s fits Dahlen. Davis does come out about 8 oWAR ahead in comparable PAs, but this isn’t a large number and doesn’t, in any case, relate to the argument I was making (and of course, Dahlen leads by about 4 dWAR). If you’re going to insist on picking one, Davis would be my pick, as he was in the CoG voting. But drawing a line on that basis seems arbitrary to me. I think that when it comes to pitchers, if Nichols had been eligible, he’d have been a CoG no-brainer, regardless of Young, Plank, etc. All the others you mention were viable candidates who fell short, and I hope not on the basis that those other guys were pitchers. Basically, they fell short because they couldn’t stay in against the competition on the basis of WAR and other stats. (I actually don’t remember the arguments made for each by posters on those strings – maybe they were turned down because we had “too many” good pitchers from the era, but I hope I wasn’t arguing that.)
I think there is a place for doing the sorts of comparisons by position you’re talking about, but it’s on true borderline calls. I made a similar argument concerning Brown, Reuschel, and Tiant – trying to argue that (because of PEDs, not stats or quality), if you had to choose one of those borderline cases it would not be Brown. But I wasn’t arguing that you did have to choose one and only one: if I thought two were CoGworthy, I’d have argued for two. As it stands, I haven’t argued for any, though Tiant is so on the cusp for me that I may have slipped in a vote or two for him. I don’t think Dahlen is a borderline case – the border seems to me to have been created by people’s view of his era, not his play, and a combination of his era and his fielding position. (On the opposite side, I’ve argued against voting for Nettles just because the CoG is short of third basemen.)
As for Honus: sure, he may be the greatest player of all time, and legendary as a shortstop. But he was also legendary at other positions. I suspect he learned little from the other three guys here – he was not playing SS until 1901, nor regularly till 1903, so he’d have had their examples to emulate as he got started (he’d have observed them all play). But I think that in the field, Honus was a little like Ruth at bat: he was just able to do things, in his own way, that others could not do — not a model to be emulated and, I suspect, not a player who modeled his play on others’. From what I’ve read of descriptions of Wagner, no coach would ever have told a rookie, “Watch how Honus does it and try to do it the same way.” The comments I’ve read all tend to be: “He looked really awkward, but seemed to make every play look easy anyway. Don’t know how he did that!” In any event, his Rfield at Short never had the consistency at high levels of the others – I don’t think that the “greatest of the century” label actually stands up when shortstop fielding alone is considered. The other three seem to have all been better technical shortstops – the types that coaches would point to and say, “Watch him and try to do what he’s doing.” In any case, it makes no sense to me to argue that if Honus had stayed at third base, then Dahlen would be CoGworthy.
(In all these arguments, I take Dahlen as a proxy for Dahlen/Wallace because I rate Dahlen somewhat higher – I know others here may disagree. I think Wallace has a strong case, and I think I’ve cast ballots where I voted for both – I know I’ve voted for Wallace. If Dahlen were in the CoG, that would not prevent me from voting for Wallace, if he seemed among the top three to me on his own merits.)
We’re so far up the string here that I don’t know whether anyone else will be checking this back-and-forth, but I’m having fun: you and Doom have offered very well crafted arguments and it’s interesting to try to parry them, especially very late on a winter night.
This discussion is definitely being read and enjoyed. I think the question of era is a pretty interesting one to try to find a way to resolve, and I have (so far in this process) come down on the side of being open to ‘old’ players being evaluated on a level field with newer ones. To make some tangential points to ones that have been raised here:
1) it seems odd to me to make the argument that since the BBWAA didn’t consider these guys, we shouldn’t. The whole point of the CoG was to reconsider a Hall of Fame type place with the same number of players as BBWAA elected, but to see if we could do better. And so, we have our own rules. We vote for three guys, we could vote for banned players like Rose and Jackson, we had the task of backwards-looking statistical perspectives trying to untangle things like home park advantage (cue endless Larry Walker discussion) from who benefitted on the margins from steroids (sorry Rafael) from who benefitted or was punished by WWII play/service (sorry Hal, but Joe Gordon is cool) from whether to trust defensive metrics, etc etc. There are a lot of considerations, but our rules is that any player who played more than half his games after 1900 (right? I think that’s it) is eligible. So, these guys are eligible, no Willie Keeler problem, because our alternative hall has set rules that are clear-cut. I get arguing about all the other things stated here, but I am puzzled by the idea that someone should be discounted wholesale because the BBWAA didn’t know what to do with them. Our stated mission is to reimagine the BBWAA votes with our own guidelines.
2) There is definitely something to the idea that a weaker talent pool should be factored in. On the one hand, a big feature of stats like OPS+ and WAR is they can compare and adjust for a player’s surroundings, so the stat is supposed to be able to make an apples-to-apples comparison across eras, to a certain extent. I’m not convinced when that breaks down to the point that it’s nonsensical – I think back to 1901 with a stable two leagues and 16 teams should be fairly reliable at least. But – even if only 60 out of the top 100 players or something were in the ‘majors’ at the time, I think the best were still among the best. The bigger issue was the general talent level. I teach university stats, and we used to show an intro video on standard deviation that included Steven Jay Gould talking about .400 hitting, and how it was easier back in the day because the greats were as good at hitting as the best are now, but everyone else has gotten better (due to better training/talent finding/etc), so they can’t beat up on league-average pitching now as much as they did then, which comes out in the standard deviation of stats being closer together. I think it’s possible that idea can carry over to WAR and the like (although any experts in the components of WAR, please correct if my assumptions are off-base). I’d be curious to see, say, a list of the top 100 WAR players and how that compares to how much we’d expect given how many teams were from a certain era. Hmm, maybe if I have time next week…
3) related – maybe for next round (as time is running out here), it would be useful to just take the stats of Dahlen and Wallace post-1900 and pro-rate them for the length of their careers. That might be a more useful point of comparison. Heck, maybe that’s what I should have done with war guys a bit more. I was a big advocate for Hal Newhouser at least to be on the ballot, because I thought he was an interesting case. I don’t want to be lazy about just trusting a catch-all number, I just want to use those things as a starting point to dig in.
Thanks for the food for thought, all.
Sorry for being out of this discussion, everyone. It’s been a busy few days.
Here’s another thing: I have a problem with a COG that includes Bill Dahlen but doesn’t include Satchel Paige.
We were asked by birtelcom to consider players only on the basis of their contributions AS PLAYERS to MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL. The idea here being, the REAL Hall set up an entirely different committee to elect Negro League players. Under that instruction, I did not vote for Satchel Paige, because I didn’t believe that Satchel’s Major League accomplishments alone merited his inclusion. Likewise, the Hall set up a separate group to elect “Old Timers.” I believe that they do not, therefore, merit inclusion in this process. I have a personal issue with the idea that Josh Gibson doesn’t count, but Bobby Wallace somehow could. That strikes me as doubling-down on the racism that prevented his inclusion. I realize that electing players from the Segregation Era (the actual meaning of the phrase “Pre-Integration Era” that Cooperstown doesn’t want you to think about), as we have, has that bias already. But saying that we’ll (in my opinion) bend the rules for Dahlen and Wallace, but NOT for Satchel or Gibson or Bullet Joe Rogan or Martin Dihigo or Oscar Charleston or Turkey Stearnes literally makes me feel sick.
I took a hardline stance against Paige due to birtelcom’s initial instructions; I will continue to do so for similar reasons against Dahlen, Wallace, and other players who played in the 19th century – with the exception of Cy Young, who was so excellent in the 20th century alone that I can support his inclusion (plus, more importantly to me, anyway, he was elected by the BBWAA). I just can’t support those guys and then look back at the fact that we ignored Negro League players all along and feel good about that. That’s why I think there’s a Willie Keeler problem, even if others may think there isn’t.
Doom, I too have trouble with a CoG that includes Dahlen and not Paige. I advocated strongly and regularly for Paige. I distinguished him from other Negro League players by the excellent quality of his MLB play (lifetime ERA+ of 124), with 10+ WAR in under 500 IP, all earned, amazingly, at ages 42-47 — in and out of MLB, depending on whether Bill Veeck was around to make sure he was on a roster — (plus three one-hit no-walk shutout innings at age 59 – perhaps using the curveball that he decided he needed to add to his repertoire when he reached 53).
It would have required suspending the rules because Paige neither played 10 MLB years nor earned 20 WAR, but Paige’s case seemed to me different from the cases of the other Negro League players you cite because the CoG concerns selecting a group of successful Major League players, and only Paige’s case among those involved a man who actually was a successful Major League player, so the suspension of rules was of a different order, one I thought we could accommodate in the interests of social justice and proven MLB success. I lost that argument. Voters adhered to birtlecom’s instructions. I see that position as entirely appropriate, although I didn’t share it.
Nothing in birtlecom’s instructions rules out Dahlen and Wallace, just as they did not rule out Cy Young for you and George Davis for others. I don’t see any way this can actually be about the CoG’s rules. I think it’s about social justice and the limits of how we interpret its demands on us. I’m in sympathy with your sensitivity on that score. I don’t draw the limiting line in the same place you do.
I would be very much in favor of the CoG being expanded to include Old Time and Negro League players. We would need new procedures for those endeavors, but only because the circumstances and measures were different, not because the players were inferior or different as players. We’d also require some posters who were either students of those baseball traditions or willing to learn a lot more than the rest of us so that they discussion could rise to be as well informed as the basic CoG process (which would continue unchanged) has been. I think that would be both fun and just.
Jones, Goslin , Winfield
Voting this round for:
Winfield
Don’t-call-me-Richie Allen
Don’t-call-me-Larry Jones
First of all, Doug (and whoever else is counting) don’t miss Paul E’s ballot buried in the comment thread I started about my vote. My vote will be at the bottom of this post.
Second, I started to look at Winfield and Allen head-to-head, because I thought that comparison was important. it’s hard to separate out all the issues. But I looked at Rbat over their best ten-year stretch. For Winfield, it’s 278. For Allen, it’s 397. Now, even with Allen as a minus defender and Winfield as a plus one… well, nearly 120 runs in ten years is a LOT to make up. It’s very possible, but I’m not sure. And being unsure, I have to err on the side of what’s easier to measure, so I’m going with Allen over Winfield.
Comparing Nettles to Allen by the same criterion, it’s not even close – Allen has nearly five times more Rbat. But their argument is more nuanced. Allen at his best was clearly the better player. Nettles, though, was valuable for a really long time. This is true via WAR, but ALSO true based on how he was utilized by his managers. They obviously still thought he was helping, even as a mid-.200s hitter with 15-20 HR – he played that way for like a decade. It’s a more nuanced discussion between the two of them, because there are so many moving parts.
Which leaves Tiant. I’ve been a Tiant supporter for a long time. I think I’m going to continue to go that way, though I remain open to being convinced. Next round, I’m going to take a closer look at Richie Ashburn, too, whom I perhaps unfairly excluded this time ’round. Tiant’s career has a very odd shape. But while you didn’t really know what you were going to get, he wasn’t really ever going to HURT you (except the years he was hurt, but that’s often true of injured players). If I were a GM and had to choose one of these guys, knowing they would be exactly what they were, Tiant has the least year-to-year consistency of the group. Yet I think, long-term, gives me the best chance to win of the bunch. So my vote is:
Chipper Jones
Kevin Brown
Luis Tiant
Doom,
Thanks for pointing out the surreptitious nature of my ballot casting. In our fine democracy, voting is all we have – besides flush toilets and clean water 🙁
Chipper Jones, Goose Goslin, Richie Ashburn
After 15 votes (Gary Bateman’s being the most recent, Paul E and Doom included), this is what I have:
15 – Chipper Jones
=================50% (8)
7 – Goose Goslin
5 – Dave Winfield
4 – Luis Tiant
=================25% (4)
3 – Kevin Brown, Bill Dahlen*,
2 – Dick Allen, Richie Ashburn*, Graig Nettles, Bobby Wallace*
=================10% (2)
Well, I expect we’ll begin to see the strategic votes start coming in. 🙂
According to the rules, if the outcome looked like this – even if it went over 20 votes – as things stand everyone would be staying on (“Top 9, including ties”).
I didn’t realize we only had nine holdovers left!
Nonetheless, there’s STILL room for strategic voting, in terms of attempting to get certain players to thresholds that give them extra rounds of eligibility.
Could still see a holdover dropped this round, if he finishes last by himself.
I guess we have the slight problem that there isn’t really anything to debate in this round.
L.W. Chipper Jones is by far the most worthy, and clearly head and shoulders above our hold-overs.
He definitely retired on a high note, age 40 (and final) season slash rates of .287/.377.455, OPS+ 124 and 103 games at 3B, which is good, but I haven’t really had a chance to compare it (and we are spoiled by an David Ortiz’s insane final + age 40 season last year, although as a DH).
I’m not totally sure what we are voting for with hold-overs now. Going head to head with Manny (debate and voting contest fully expected), and then being ready for next year? I am holding off, but I can’t see too much advantage to strategic voting except to protect worthies from falling off the ballot.
1973 is pretty interesting, but with no sure-things (Helton, Ichiro, Garciaparra, Damon, Cameron & Colon! are the only ones I see over 40 WAR)…
Looking ahead to next year, we have the same issues as this year in that we don’t know how many we’re going to be electing. If we only have a spot or two, it’ll really severely cramp our style, seeing as I can’t imagine Ichiro failing to be elected. However, if we get three again, that gives some of these holdovers a lot more hope. We’ll just have to wait and see, I suppose. But it got me thinking – who are the candidates coming up in the next few years (50+ WAR)?
1973 – Todd Helton, Ichiro Suzuki, Johnny Damon
1974 – Derek Jeter, Bobby Abreu
Not too bad. But then we get to the toughie:
1975 – Alex Rodriguez, Scott Rolen, Vladimir Guerrero, Tim Hudson, David Ortiz, Torii Hunter
It eases off after that, but hopefully we have a lot of slots available in three years (assuming this project is still running, which sounds crazy until you realize that this project has ALREADY been running for over four years – since December 9, 2012 – and yes, I just took 5 minutes to look that up. The post is here).
Next round will also feature Andy Pettitte. I’ll be interested in the group’s views on his credentials, particularly after electing Wes Farrell in the last round.
The Marlins have an option on Ichiro for the 2018 season, so next year might see us voting on inducting an active player into the COG. Ichiro has a shot next season to crack the top 20 in career hits, and will become just the sixth player to pass 2500 singles for his career.
I predict the consensus on Pettitte will be “Hall of Very Good.”
WAR: 8.4, 6.8, 5.6…….. 3.8, 3.6, 3.4, 3.3, 3.2, 3.1, 2.9, 2.5, 2.5, 2.5, 2.4, 2.2, 2.2, 1.5, 1.1
Among Pitchers with 500+ Starts and a winning percentage over .600, Pettitte is dead last in WAR, and it isn’t close.
So far no one has drawn much attention to the fact that Chipper Jones was a third baseman. I think it might be interesting to compare him to the other prominent third baseman on the ballot, so, here goes, Nettles vs. Jones:
Games: 2700 . . . 2499
PAs: 10228 . . . 10614
ABs: 8986 . . . 8984
Runs: 1193 . . . 1619
Hits: 2225 . . . 2726
2Bs: 390 . . . 549
3Bs: 28 . . . 38
HRs: 390 . . .468
RBIs: 1314 . . . 1623
SBs: 32 . . . 150
BBs: 1088 . . . 1512
SOs: 1209 . . . 1409
BA: .248 . . . .303
OBP: .329 . . . .401
SLG: .421 . . . .529
OPS: .750 . . . .930
OPS+: 110 . . . 141
WAR: 68.0 . . . 85.0
oWAR: 52.3 . . . 87.4
dWAR: 20.9 . . . -1.6
WAA: 32.8 . . . 53.2.
With a nod to Bill James, I’d like to point out that the most interesting thing in this comparison is the fact that the two had almost identical at bats, 8986/8984, but that Jones got on base around 900 times more than Nettles through walks and hits, even though he struck out 200 more times. Meaning, basically, that he made far fewer outs. His BA and OBP, of course, indicate this in their own ways, but, looking at things in reverse never hurts. Forget the advanced stats for a moment, and think about which of the two you’d like at the plate in any situation, and by how much. Via the magical mysteries of dWAR, Nettles looks a lot closer to Jones than he actually is, in my opinion.
A side note on fielding stats in general. Infielders get a fielding chance on the great majority of plays they make, PO, Assist, Error. Outfielders field any number of balls with no credit—that is, they pick up the one bounce hit or slow roller or chase down the double in the corner, then throw the ball in, a double endeavor that only gets recorded as a fielding chance if they screw up. Fielding % doesn’t acknowledge these routine efforts in any way, and I doubt dWAR does either. Except, of course, when the fielder misses the ball, fumbles it, or throws wildly so that a runner advances.
Defensively It’s a whole different ball game in the outfield.
Clarification: I’m referring to batted ball instigated fielding events.
The advanced fielding metrics do account for every batted ball hit anywhere on the field, so those “pick it up and and throw it in” plays by an outfielder are counted (but most often negatively in that each of those plays is docked some fractional amount based on how often an outfielder catches a ball hit similarly to that spot; the only positives result when, for example, the outfielder holds a runner to a single when, more often, a similar batted ball hit there results in a double). At least, that’s my understanding of how those new metrics work.
So . . . You make a diving catch of a short blooper and you’re penalized for not making the same play on a line drive? You barely run down a fly ball at the barrier from a slugger, and you take the next one off the wall because the no-power back-up shortstop hit it and you were playing him in? The terms for certain agricultural byproducts come to mind.
My understanding is it’s based on both location and type of hit (pop up, liner, can-of-corn, etc.). Then it’s what percentage of times is a catch made on that type of hit in that location. If you make a play that isn’t made 95% of the time (for example), you get a big bonus; conversely if you flub an easy play, it’s a big deduction. For most of the plays were talking about here that are routine hits, it would be a very, very tiny deduction or none at all as very rarely would a catch be made on such plays.
Here’s a link to the Fielding Bible where it’s explained in detail.
http://fieldingbible.com/Fielding-Bible-FAQ.asp
“Via the magical mysteries of dWAR, Nettles looks a lot closer to Jones than he actually is, in my opinion.”
Because defense is not a thing?
Nettles was clearly one of the better defensive 3Bs of all time, not quite Beltre or Brooks Robinson level, but he was a premier defender and stayed that way a long time. Chipper was basically average. Yet he still comes out 17 WAR ahead, or around 25% more. Because he was vastly superior offensively, Nettles being moderately above average while Chipper has crazy good numbers. Almost Bagwell numbers, who was an obvious COGer as a 1B.
Is there any eye test that disputes this? You can quibble with exactly how much credit to give Nettles for defense, but it’s clear that it needs to be a lot, nobody that watched the guy in his prime would say he was anything but well above average. Similar Jones, nobody had him pegged as a defensive whiz, he was average in the field and there for offense.
There no magical stew of WAR that “makes nettles look closer”. It’s just giving him credit for parts of the game that he played very well.
There’s also the matter of looking at raw numbers between players who played in different eras. Nettles began his career during some of the lowest scoring years in history and ended it before the offensive explosion of the 90s and 00s. Chipper OTOH, played almost his whole career during said offensive explosion, and spent much of his prime at the peak of it. His raw numbers would look a lot better even if they were comparable offensively. That’s what rBat and OPS+ are designed to compensate for.
Michael, you make a good point about nsb’s raw numbers coming from different eras. But it’s interesting that when you compare Nettles and Chipper on OPS, with Nettles’ figure 80% of Chipper’s, it lines up pretty closely with comparative OPS+, where Nettles has 78% of Chipper’s figure. (Am I thinking through this wrong – Nettle’s oWAR comparative figure is only 60%?; I’m no statistician, and there are no buts about it!)
I certainly agree that Nettles was very skilled defensively – I saw it too. And dWAR generally does give credit for good fielding to fielders who appear good (although we have cases like Winfield too).
I think the reason for skepticism like nsb’s is that it’s more difficult to feel confidence that the magnitudes of positive and negative dWAR are awarded in proportion to the merits, because the calculation is less transparent (it’s inherently more difficult to measure runs that do not score than runs scored) and we do see cases where the data is misinterpreted, as I recall it having been when extreme shifting first became a regular tactic.
The problem isn’t confined to Nettles. I’m an advocate for Dahlen and I’m ready to parry negative arguments about him based on era, but I feel the weakest point in his case is also the relatively high contribution from dWAR (although his case is pretty strong on oWAR alone – he’s got quite a bit more of that than Nettles).
When Nettles was playing, I never thought he was HoFworthy. I thought he was a very good player and a classy fielder (I used to think of him as the Yankees’ new, improved Clete Boyer at Third, although dWAR tells me he wasn’t actually that good), but it never occurred to me that his fielding skills might contribute on a scale that would make him a good candidate for the Hall. Now I’m used to thinking that he may be because of dWAR data, but there is still enough dissonance in the thought to make me sympathetic with nsb’s remark.
Michael S:
Good to see that someone besides Doug is reading my ranting.
Basically, though, I was responding to Hub Kid several posts above who bemoaned the fact that there was nothing to debate about this round. A lot of people are big fans of Nettles, and not too many are fans of Jones, so I thought an inflamatory comparison was in order to provoke comment.
Here are their neutralized slash lines (Jones/Nettles), if they both played their whole careers on the…
2001 Braves:
.309 / .407 / .537 / .944
.270 / .355 / .458 / .813
________________________
1976 Yankees:
.283 / .378 / .492 / .870
.247 / .329 / .420 / .749
________________________
1908 Brooklyn Superbas:
.257 / .347 / .447 / .794
.224 / .301 / .381 / .682
I guess I should vote. Chipper, Goslin and, for fun, my favorite ex-Royal on the ballot, Raul Ibanez.
I’m nearly convinced on both Wallace and Tiant.
A lot has been said about Tiant’s up and down career. But was that three-year blip in the middle really that unusual?
I think that at first glance the traditional numbers just look bad.
A 20 loss season, then half a year, then ONE victory season.
But the 9-20 year was actually credited with 3.2 WAR. He started out 0-7, 7.51. But he did straighten it out. And 18 times he received either a loss or a no-decision when giving up 3 runs or less. I’ll take his 1969.
Wallace? WAR leaders among Shortstops in the first 50 years of BB (1871-1921)
(but yes, most of these guys are 1890-):
131.0 . Honus
84.7 … George Davis
75.2 … Bill Dahlen
70.2 … Wallace (76.3 incl Pitching)
61.9 … Jack Glasscock (carefully)
53.2 … Joe Tinker
45.7 … Art Fletcher
42.3 … Hughie Jennings
________________________
That’s not a lot of great Shortstops.
Expand it to 75 years, through WWII (1871-1946):
131.0 . Honus
84.7 … George Davis
75.2 … Bill Dahlen
70.9 … Arky
70.2 … Wallace (76.3 incl Pitching)
66.4 … Cronin
61.9 … Glasscock
61.3 … Appling
53.7 … Sewell
53.2 … Tinker
So through 75 years of MLB, there’s only 2 SS significantly better than Wallace?
And Davis only played 1363 of his 2363 games at Short.
______________________________
Vote:
Richie Ashburn
Luis Tiant
Bobby Wallace
(Ashburn is easy to overlook, as his only flashy numbers are walks and defense. But he’s on the bubble, and I’d like to give him a cushion. Larry doesn’t need my vote.)
Jones, Winfield, Goslin.
I’ll put a vote in again:
Jones
Nettles
Brown
Chipper Jones, Bill Dahlen & Graig Nettles
Today (Sunday) is the last day to change your vote, should you wish to do so.
Since Doug has noted the deadline for vote changes, I thought it might be a good idea to post the latest vote count (I was otherwise waiting for the 21st vote, in accord with the Doom Formula for vote tabulation).
After 20 votes (Bruce Gilbert’s being the most recent), this is what I have:
19 – Chipper Jones
=================50% (8)
9 – Goose Goslin
6 – Dave Winfield
5 – Luis Tiant
=================25% (4)
4 – Kevin Brown, Bill Dahlen*,
3 – Richie Ashburn*, Graig Nettles, Bobby Wallace*
2 – Dick Allen
=================10% (2)
1 – Raul Ibanez*
Given that Allen has a guaranteed round left, this means that even if another vote comes in, all the holdovers will remain eligible (unless 11 more votes come in).
Vote:
Allen, Ashburn, Dahlen
Jones, Tiant, Allen
I messed up the last vote tally by shortchanging Nettles one vote and forgetting to change the precise number of votes needed to qualify for each of the three percentage divisions, so I’m adding this update as we enter the last half-day of voting.
After 22 votes (Hub Kid’s being the most recent):
20 – Chipper Jones
=================50% (11)
9 – Goose Goslin
6 – Luis Tiant, Dave Winfield
=================25% (6)
5 – Bill Dahlen*
4 – Dick Allen, Richie Ashburn*, Kevin Brown, Graig Nettles
3 – Bobby Wallace*
=================10% (3)
1 – Raul Ibanez*
Wow, now that Wes Ferrell is in, my votes on the holdover ballot are pretty open. I don’t even know what to do with myself. Not that it matters this round, as Chipper gets in clearly. I’m pretty solid on Tiant, but have been cycling between other candidates without much success at having one stick. Wallace and Dahlen have good numbers and I don’t want to discount them too much by era; I’m coming around on Allen due to arguments I’ve heard in the last two weeks; I was high on Nettles a year ago but am coming back around to being skeptical; same with Kevin Brown; Goslin is always there and I keep coming back to him as maybe the best of the pack; I think Ashburn is underrated in a lot of ways by the main advanced stats we use. Winfield – okay, I’m not there yet on Winfield and probably won’t be. Hmmm. Well, all else being equal, maybe I’ll just try to get Dahlen an extra round.
Jones
Tiant
Dahlen
So it seems that the bell has rung on Round 123, with bells having the final vote. The results, if I (at last) have them right, are:
Total of 23 votes:
21 – Chipper Jones
=================50% (12)
9 – Goose Goslin
7 – Luis Tiant
6 – Bill Dahlen*, Dave Winfield
=================25% (6)
4 – Dick Allen, Richie Ashburn*, Kevin Brown, Graig Nettles
3 – Bobby Wallace*
=================10% (3)
1 – Raul Ibanez*
Having lost quite a few threads because I’m not up to speed on the current sorting & nesting of threads, I have a belated comment on Satchel Paige in response to the long discussion of Dr. Doom’s approach to Dahlen & Wallace and segregated baseball. I’m putting at the end here so that it is more visible.
As far as COG rules go, the precedent is that Satchel Paige is eligible for Redemption Rounds, so it is still up to voters. If I remember correctly, Paige came in 4th place and was only a few votes from being put on the ballot after his first Redemption Round, and has received votes since then.
Paige has proven MLB statistics, unlike so many other Negro Leagues greats. It doesn’t take much extrapolation to me: he was great in limited appearances in his 40s, so there is no doubt in my mind that he would have been COG-level great if he had played in the MLB for his whole career. It is a unique case, and having to earn listing on the ballot by winning a Redemption Round seems like enough of a hurdle to me to make it a fair process for a special case.