Dr. Doom here (via Doug) with our final 2017 awards-voting post. I decided to “save the best for last,” as it were, so we could talk about what may be the most interesting and competitive race in the league.
The American League in 2017 was interesting in that there were only five winning teams in the league. There was one good pennant race (the East) and two dominant, 100-win teams. Oh, and the Twins scheduled their (formerly annual) playoff loss to the Yankees.
Before moving on to the other candidates, let’s all just bask in the glory of Mike Trout. No, he didn’t play a full season. But he mashed 33 HR and swiped 22 bags, one of only three 20-20 players (Altuve and Betts were the others). Somehow, Trout scored 92 R in only 114 G, managed to walk 94 times – third in the league, and paced the junior circuit in OBP. SLG. OPS and OPS+.
Let’s look next to one of the most fun players in baseball today – Francisco Lindor. Lindor led the AL in plate appearances, banged out 44 doubles (tied for fourth in the league) and hit 33 HR… all while playing just about the best SS in the AL. He also had the fourth-most TB in the AL with 329, only 14 behind league leader Jose Abreu.
Lindor’s partner on the left side of the infield was Jose Ramirez. Ramirez led the league with 56 doubles, while scoring 107 runs. His 341 TB were second in the league, and he had the third-highest batting average (.318) AND slugging percentage (.583) in the league, the only player to finish in the top three in both categories.
Mookie Betts followed up last year’s MVP runner-up season with a second All-Star campaign, this one featuring totals of 46 doubles, 29 HR, 102 RBI and 77 walks. Besides being one of only three players with a 20-20 season, Betts was also one of only three players to both score and knock in 100 runs (Justin Upton and Aaron Judge were the others). Betts rounded out those offensive credentials with a second straight gold glove selection for the repeat division-winning Red Sox.
Remember this generation’s Mark Belanger, the great all-field, no-hit Andrelton Simmons? Well… what do you have when he learns to hit? Simmons set career highs in R, H, 2B, RBI, SB, BB OBP, SLG and WAR in his first full season of a 100 OPS+. Simmons’ 7.1 WAR pushed his career total to 28.6, the 5th highest total by a shortstop over the first 6 seasons of a career (the top four are named Vaughan, Hornsby, Ripken and Banks).
World Series hero George Springer finished seventh in the league with 144 OPS+, slashed .283/.367/.522, blasted 34 HR, and scored 112 runs, the last ranking second in the league and tied with teammate Jose Altuve. For the second year in a row, 9 of Springer’s home runs came in the first inning as the leadoff batter, just the second player since 1950 with two such seasons – Quiz: who was the first player to do this?
Jose Altuve, of course, won the 2017 AL MVP as the league batting champion with a .346 average from 204 hits (1st), third place marks in OBP (.410), OPS (.957) and OPS+ (164), and a 6th best .547 SLG to join Mike Trout as the AL’s only .300/.400/.500 hitters. Oh, and he added 32 stolen bases (3rd, two behind leader Whit Merrifield). For the fourth straight year, Altuve logged 200 hits, 35 doubles and 30 stolen bases; no other player has as many such seasons in a career, consecutively or otherwise.
The last person we should discuss is rookie sensation, Aaron Judge. Although the same age as Mike Trout, Judge just made it to the bigs full time this season, but did so about as well as anyone ever has. Judge was second in OBP, SLG, OPS, and OPS+. He led the league in R with 128, and his 127 walks were 23 more than anyone else. Judge’s 114 RBI were second to Nelson Cruz. And, of course, there have only been 11 seasons of 52+ HR by AL players from 1962 to the present; the most recent, and first ever by a rookie, belongs to Judge.
There were plenty of other interesting hitters in 2017; Lorenzo Cain (a personal favorite) was again excellent; Nelson Cruz was mashing all over the place; Jose Abreu keeps hitting like a boss; Marwin Gonzalez might have an MVP case… you know, if he weren’t the fourth-best player on his own team; and who knew that Justin Upton still had some pop left in that bat of his? Plus, Byron Buxton took a really big step forward.
Now, since we already did the Cy Young, I’m not going to belabor the pitchers; please refer to that earlier post and read my nonsense and the insightful comments of our wonderful community to decide if and where they belong on your ballot. Now get voting, so we can see who the HHS AL MVP for 2017 is!
DIRECTIONS: Please list 10 players on your MVP ballot in a NEW comment below (ballots with fewer than 10 candidates will be thrown out; I ask for a new comment because it’s easy to lose one if it’s in a reply, especially since we got rid of numbered comments). Ballots will be scored as per BBWAA scoring (14-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1). Strategic voting is discouraged, though that’s unenforceable, so please just don’t do it, as the goal here is to (somewhat) mimic the BBWAA process. The post will be live for about a week; I will comment shortly after the post goes live to tell you when ballots are due. Please discuss and vote whenever you’d like, but there will be NO vote changes, so don’t vote until you’re sure you’re ready!
Jose Altuve
Mike Trout
George Springer
Jose Ramirez
Carlos Correa
Aaron Judge
Corey Kluber
Marwin Gonzalez
Chris Sale
Mookie Betts
Quiz:
Just a guess but I’d say Ricky Henderson
I’m going to guess Alfonso Soriano, just in case Hartvig is wrong.
It is Alfonso, who has done it 3 times.
Rickey holds the record for most career first inning homers from the leadoff spot.
Let’s give a full six days on this one. We’ll close the voting at 11:59:59 on Tuesday the 12th. Happy voting!
Qualifying injury gap seasons: Mantle 1962, Brett 1980, Trout 2017
PAs: M—502, B—515, T—505
oWAR: M— 7.6 (1st in AL); B—8.5 (1st); T—7.4 (2nd)
BA: M—.321 (2nd); B—.390 (1st); T—.306 (6th)
OBP: .M—486 (1st); B—.454 (1st); T—.442 (1st)
SLG: M—.605 (1st); B—.664 (1st); T—.629 (1st)
OPS: M—1.091 (1st); B—1.118 (1st); T—1.071 (1st)
OPS+: M—195 (1st); B—203 (1st); T—187 (1st)
Runs: M—96 (7th); B—87; T—92
RBIs: M—89; B—118 (2nd); T—72
HRs: M—30 (7th); B—24 (9th); T—33 (12th)
BBs: M—122 (1st); B—58; T—94 (3rd)
Runs Created: M—126 (2nd); B—135 (1st); T—121 (4th)
Adj. Bat Runs: M—60 (1st); B—66 (1st); T—56 (2nd)
Adj. Bat Wins: M—5.8 (1st); B—6.3 (1st); T—5.3 (2nd)
Off. Win %: M—.871 (1st); B—.856 (1st); T—.817 (1st)
Mantle: 9 firsts, 2 seconds, 2 sevenths
Brett: 10 firsts, 1 second, one ninth
Trout: 5 firsts, 3 seconds, 1 third, 1 fourth, 1 sixth
I hope this is comprehensible, the point being that Trout’s interrupted season is close to the two greatest in my lifetime. Mantle and Brett won MVPs, neither unanimously, but convincingly, for league champs. Trout finished fourth vs. heavy competition playing on a mediocre team.
Nice work, nsb. I’ve been looking for ground on which to get a clear fix on Trout’s season and this helps.
nsb,
I certainly remember Brett’s 1980 and all the attention he drew chasing .400 How about 24 HR’s and only 22 strikeouts that year and the first to homer (20 or more) as much as strikeout since Berra in 1957? Since then, Bonds in 2004 hit 45 HRs with only 41 K’s but, then again, i guess we all know how.
If you neutralize these three to 4.25 R/G environment, their RC totals are:
138 Brett
111 Trout
108 Mantle
However, due to all those walks for Mantle, their RC/27 looks like:
12.9 Mantle AIR 101
12.2 Brett AIR 99
11.0 Trout AIR 101
200 hits, 35 doubles, 30 steals?
Certianly, Ty Cobb did that at least 4 times.
Nope.
Just thrice.
He was too busy hitting triples.
…
Altuve’s seasons actually all had at least 39 doubles.
And a minimum of 43 combined 2x and 3x.
So, looking at 200 H, 30 SB, and 40+ dub/trip:
…
4 … Altuve
7 … Cobb
But, if you make it 200 hits, 55 XBH and 30 steals, it’s back to Altuve 4, Cobb 3.
To make an obvious point, we are lucky to be watching baseball at a time of so many younger stars. One thing that the Steroid Era did, possibly to baseball’s detriment, is to extend the effective playing careers of some of big names of the 1980’s into even the early 21st Century.
Mike L
Among players with 2,000 or more PA’s from age 34 till retirement, 9 of the top 20 in OPS+ played those seasons after 1994. So, yeah, steroids enhance athletic performance
Buxton was amazing at baserunning and defense.
(+35 Rbaser, Rdp, Rfield)
-6 Rbat on the season, however.
Though, he certainly figured something out…
First 78 games:
.195 / .272 / .280 / .552 (.280 babip)
Team 40-38
Final 62 games:
.314 / .359 / .553 / .912 (.399 babip)
Team 37-25
Trout had 507 PA and 53 Rbat
Rbat leaders in seasons with fewer than 527 PA:
71.4 … Frank Thomas (juiced ball / strike)
66.5 … Bagwell (juiced ball / strike)
61.4 … Ted Williams ’54
60.5 … Brett ’80
59.4 … Albert Belle (juiced ball / strike)
59.1 … DiMaggio ’39
58.0 … Mantle ’62
54.1 … Hornsby ’23
53.3 … Manny ’02
53.1 … Speaker ’22
53.0 … Trout
51.5 … Ted WIlliams ’55 (416 PA)
51.3 … McGwire ’95 (422 PA)
49.9 … Ted Williams ’56
49.4 … Speaker ’25
Don’t know if the death of Dick Gernert is comment worthy on its own, but—Gernert was a big, lumbering first baseman for the Red Sox in the 1950s with some power. After starting in 1952-3 he lost the job to local favorite and former All-American footballer Harry Agganis and spent much of the next two years in the minors. Meanwhile Agganis, after a good but not spectacular rookie season, had to battle another rookie phenom, Norm Zauchin, for the starting position in the spring of 1955. Agganis’s tragic death from a heart embolism opened the door for Zauchin who belted 27 HRs but only batted .239. The acquisition of a real first baseman, the aging Mickey Vernon, put Zauchin on the bench but somehow brought back Dick Gernert from exile with him starting around a hundred games in each of the next two seasons at first and in the outfield. With Vernon’s departure to Cleveland at age 40, Gernert had first base to himself in 1958 but, like Zauchin in 1955, his power couldn’t make up for the low average blues, and his career dwindled away over the next few years.
Gernert, Agganis, and Zauchin were all born in a 14-month span From September of 1928 to November of 1929. Agganis died in 1955, Zauchin in 1999, Gernert in 2017.
In his 30th ML game on 5-27-55 Zauchin drove in 10 runs. That’s the soonest in a career that a player drove in 10+ runs.
Some points on Richard’s post:
1) One of the great rewards of HHS is learning a guy whom I mostly remember as a face on a baseball card — one I noticed particularly when I’d arrange them all on the rug in alphabetical stacks — was actually special;
2) Zauchin collected his 10 RBI by the 5th inning;
3) A greater feat than Zauchin’s is Richard’s ability to toss us these tidbits on a moment’s notice.
One point on nsb’s post:
1) It may not be the glamor role most Americans aspire to, but I think we should recognize nsb as the unofficial HHS necrologist, since he is so quick to spot when an interesting player moves on to the ultimate league and to convey for us something about him that makes him interesting. (Gernert too is a guy I remember chiefly as a man on a card.)
Zauchin is also notable as the player Boston traded (together with Albie Pearson) to acquire Pete Runnels (also born around the same time, in Jan 1928) from the Senators. Runnels played 5 seasons in Boston, all of them batting .310 or better with at least .395 OBP. With his two batting titles, the Red Sox featured the AL’s top batter 5 times in 7 years (1957-63).
Runnels posted 125 OPS+ for the Red Sox, but only 95 for Washington and 84 for Houston. Among left-handed batters, Runnels’ OPS difference in Fenway vs. his overall mark is fourth highest among 15 players with 5000 PA careers, including 1500 at Fenway (top two on that last, far ahead of the rest, are Fred Lynn and Wade Boggs).
Pearson’s worth a mention too. He was traded with Zauchin before his first MLB PA, and initially he probably made the Senators think they’d got the best of the deal, since he was an instant RoY. He tanked after that, but revived his career as an expansion draft pick of the Angels, and was a 5.5 WAR All-Star in ’63 (5.5 was Runnels’ WAR peak as well).
I was a fan of both Runnels and Pearson: Runnels because I loved obscure batting champs, but Pearson for a special reason: he was as short on an MLB field as I was on a high school dance floor (or standing by the wall of it). He was 5’5″, and by the time he retired, he was the only player I knew whom I was taller than (which remained true till Freddie Patek came along).
https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BOS/BOS198006200.shtml
e p m,
….you must have been doing cartwheels when the little guy went yard 3 x in this one at Fenway
Nice find, Paul. My athletic abilities being what they were and are, if I’d knocked myself out celebrating with cartwheels I’d have landed on my head and knocked myself out — and maybe I did, since all recollection of that game seems to have been knocked out of my head.
Doug,
I hate to paraphrase James (Bill, not Henry or William), but, in one of his abstracts (mid-80’s ?) he made mention of the fact that despite the green monster providing cheap homers for RH batters, left-handed batters benefited even more from lazy, opposite-field fly balls that provided cheap doubles in lieu of outs. I imagine, that is one way to win a batting title. 🙁
IIRC, it had to be in one of his Wade Boggs breakdowns/analyses. He also thought the Red Sox should have called up Boggs a year or two earlier….. and Mike Stenhouse was going to be the Frank Thomas before Big Frank became Frank Thomas a few years later
I remember that as well. He was calling Boggs the best player in the league. BTW, recently I found a letter I got from Bill James in the 1980s, after I wrote him to question one of his calculations (in hindsight, I can see I was wrong). He wasn’t subtle.
When checking out Runnels B-R page I noticed he was 0 for 10 in stolen base attempts in 1952 after going 0 for 3 in 1951.
I wonder what the record is for the greatest futility in stolen bases in a season and in a row?
Runnels’ 10 CS and 0 SB in 1952 is the seasonal record. And I’m glad to see that I’m not the only one still looking at this article.
Richard, If you check out my comment below (at the end of the string at the moment) concerning Hartvig’s question, you’d probably be the best guy to solve the problem noted there.
A word of consideration for Gary Sanchez.
Part of the consderation of “valuable” should involve a direct comparison to colleagues.
Sanchez was far and away the Catcher who produced the most runs with the bat:
Rbat, Catchers:
19.2 .. Gary Sanchez
11.2 .. Mike Zunino
9.6 … Alex Avila
9.4 … Robinson Chirinos
8.3 … Wellington Castillo
5.8 … Brian McCann
3.0 … Evan Gattis
-0.4 .. Omar Navarez
-0.5 .. Chris Giminez
-1.3 .. James McCann
-1.4 .. Wilson Ramos
-1.9 .. Sal Perez
-2.3 .. Russel Martin
He was also one of only 5 Catchers to have 400 PA, and was the only PA qualifier, despite missing a month:
525 … Sanchez
499 … Perez
471 … Maldonano
435 … Zunino
407 … Castro
Lindor’s defensive numbers were likely deflated by playing behind the pitching staff that led the league in SO:
Total chances, AL Shortstops:
755 … Elvis
685 … Simmons
685 … Escobar
611 … Lindor
588 … Tim Anderson
552 … Bogearts
538 … Iglesias
513 … Didi
507 … Polanco
475 … Beckham
Yet he still got to a plenty of balls, and led the league in DP.
A note of support for Marwin Gonzalez.
The Super-Utility player is a guy, who, when he produces above-replacement-level value, is actually earning every drop of that WAR. Because most 5th INF/OF types aren’t approaching anything that looks like a 149 ops+.
…
The Yanx all raved about the contribution that Ronald Torreyes made last year, filling in capably for Didi and Starlin when they were injured. Indeed. Good work. And he slashed this:
.292 / .314 / .375 / .689 / 81
…
It is a short list of utility players who are not zero-ish-WAR guys.
Marwin played 5 positions, including 3 “hard” ones, and raked.
I feel like we are missing a stat called
“No, you don’t understand, this guy’s WAR was Actually WAR”
Trout? I feel like there’s an argument for a guy who played 114 games if he made a demonstrable difference in his team’s fortunes. Sure, it is hard to make the case that a player with a 1.071 OPS did not make his team better (Maybin hit to a .702 during his month in center) But here’s the Anaheimen’s records:
57-57 with Trout
23-25 without Trout
…
In comparison, 1980 George Brett:
74-43 with Brett
23-22 without Brett
…
1962 Mickey Mantle:
74-43 with
22-23 without
…
2002 Manny Ram:
70-48 with
23-21 without
…
1939 Joe DiMaggio
78-38 with
28-7 without…
Wait, what? … huh… He got hurt after the first week, Tommy Henrich filled in to an OPS of .864.
Nothin’ was stoppin’ that juggernaut, I guess.
Yeah, this has got me stumped. How can a player of Trout’s terrific quality make no difference to a .500 team? Makes no sense, especially since the Angels went 19-20 while Trout was injured, and faced .500+ teams in 23 of those 39 games, including 16 against teams that won 90+ games — the Angels went 10-6 in those games! (When Trout played in games against 90+-win teams, their record was 6-17, though the mix of teams was somewhat different.) And look at Pujols, with his -1.8 WAR: the Angels were 75-73 when he started, and 5-9 when he didn’t, although 10 of those 14 games were against sub-.500 teams. Should this be considered when voting on the 2017 AL Least Valuable Player award, which I think would otherwise be Albert’s first walk-off of the year.
The guy they brought up to fill in for Trout, Eric Young, wasn’t spectacular, but somehow he had a BAbip of .355 until he was removed from the line-up at the end of June, exactly Trout’s lifetime BAbip average (and well above his 2017 figure of .318). It’s as if no one told the baseballs that the guy wielding the bat wasn’t Trout. (Young’s other talents brought his BA through June to .275 and his OPS to .771, very unTroutian).
But the fact is that we can’t actually know the difference Trout’s absence made because we can’t run those particular games over again with him in the line-up and everything else unchanged to see the difference. One thing we can say is that Trout, by his absence, did not himself cause any part of those outcomes; the players who actually played did.
For me, the MVP is about what a player did, not what his team did. Some players get to add value because they have the opportunity to do good things in games that are of added importance: where the pennant is on the line. But while I’m glad to give them credit for good performance in “clutch” games, I don’t see the logic of giving such a player extra credit over another player with similar accomplishments just because his team’s overall quality gave him the opportunity to participate in important games while the other player was on a team with poor overall quality. The quality of a player’s team, outside his own contributions, are nothing he has caused on the ball field, and I don’t see why it should in itself be considered a component when measuring his value as a player.
I think you’re both forgetting the NL MVP vote, in which the top two finishers, both here and in the official tally, were players on teams with far worse records than the Angels. What impact did Stanton and Votto have beyond keeping a bad team from being worse? Some interesting stats, at least to me: Marlins went 77-85 and matched their Pyth. The Reds were 68-94, down 2. The Angels were 80-82, down 1. The Marlins had 27.7 total WAR, the Reds 21.6, the Angels 30.9. Stanton had 7.6 WAR, Votto 7.5, Trout 6.7. The difference among the three teams, actually, is that the Angels had 12.7 pitching WAR, whereas the Marlins and Reds staffs were in negative territory. The most significant thing that happened with the Angels, it seems to me, is that both the team generally and Trout along with it slumped badly in September. Teams often do that when they can see that there’s no way to catch up to the division leader or even make the wild card. As for the Marlins and Reds, this prospect probably became clear sometime around May.
You’re certainly right about the NL vote, nsb, but I’m not sure it bears on the issue of the mysterious way the Angels performed with/without Trout.
Voomo is a “Most Valuable for the Pennant” type voter, so I like to argue that issue with him in principle. For me, it never gets old, like so many hobby horses I ride round and round here. But in terms of what the BBWAA voters believe, clearly many see the award as a “best player” designation, as was the case with the NL vote this year. This was true even in the initial AL vote in 1933, when the writers chose Jimmie Foxx, whose Athletics were only a bit over .500 and never true contenders, finishing almost 20 back of the Senators (although Foxx was the right “best player” pick on the numbers, not only did Joe Cronin have strong numbers that could challenge Foxx, playing at a critical defensive position, he’d also led the team to the pennant as a rookie manager — if ever there was a perfect test case for the “MVPlayer/Pennant” contrast, that initial year was it). But it’s also a fact that Voomo’s point of view is an influential one that has had continuous impact and surely been the determinative factor in many MVP votes.
I’m not necessarily a Most Valuable for the Pennant Voter, at all.
Just throwing things out there for conversation, as there is no set definition of how to determine MVP.
In this case I’m saying that if we are going to consider a player who missed 50 games, team-performance-without-him exists as a contextual consideration.
My apologies, Voomo. I thought we’d had this same type of exchange in the past.
Here are last year’s leaders in team W-L% difference when playing and when not. To ensure I was looking at a meaningful number of games in both categories, the players evaluated were the 89 who played 90-120 games for the season, all with one team.
Players who will tend to do well in this metric are late inning defensive replacements, moves usually made when a team is leading (e.g. Peter Bourjos). Those who will do poorly are pinch-hitting specialists who are most often used when a team is trailing late in a game (e.g. the Nationals’ Adam Lind was dead last of these 89 players, despite a good pinch-hitting season)
Vote:
1. Altuve
2. Aaron Judge
3. Marwin Gonzalez
4. Jose Ramirez
5. Andrelton Simmons
6. Lorenzo Cain
7. Mookie Betts
8. Francisco Lindor
9. Mike Trout
10. Gary Sanchez
This was hard to limit to 10 players. Had to cut several guys whose names I wanted to type.
And there was no room for any Pitchers. For MVP, I assign strong value to the up-the-middle defensive players, and a DH like Nelson Cruz has very little chance of making my ballot.
I will also look hard at the easy-to-overlook skills of baserunning and defense. Hard to rate defense with certainly, though the technology to do so seems to be accelerating. Andrelton Simmons has been consistently rated a Wizard, so I’m buying in on him. Also like how he compared to Lindor offensively, considering they played the same number of games but Lindor got 80 more PA.
…
No George Springer on my ballot, because only half his games were in CF, and I’ve got two other Astros.
I also left off Buxton, because his whole season at the plate just didn’t add up.
Jose Ramirez gets a bonus for playing two infield positions. I like players with a broad skill set.
…
I searched for a reason NOT to vote for Altuve, and found nothing.
He actually had a huge reverse home/away split, slashing this on the road (with more BB than SO):
.381 / .449 / .633 / 1.081
1. Altuve
2. Judge
3. Trout
4. Ramirez
5. Kluber
6. Sale
7. Betts
8. Correa
9. Simmons
10. Donaldson
Altuve
Judge
Ramirez
Springer
Trout
Lindor
Verlander
Kluber
Sale
Andrus
I’ve got Springer 4th because the Astros were on fire and he was on pace for about 130 runs scored before getting hurt.
I’ve got Verlander above the other pitchers since the Astros had slowed down and he helped pick them back up with some great starts at the end of the year.
Lindor? I thought this guy was going to become Tony Fernandez. Looks more like Cal Ripken (30+ homers/70+ EBH/50 BBs))
Andrus? Him or Simmons…..take your pick. I took Elvino
No Correa because there’s no room left at the inn. But, if he doesn’t miss those games, it’s probably as good a season as any other SS his age ever had
Lindor, Ripken, and Fernandez through their first 3 full seasons.
(this omits TF’s first half season, and takes him through age 25. It’s 23 for the other guys)
L … .293 / .349 / .474 / .823 / 114 / 12.4 oWAR / 15.8 WAR
R … .297 / .355 / .502 / .857 / 136 / 18.7 oWAR / 22.8 WAR
F … .307 / .352 / .416 / .768 / 105 / 11.7 oWAR / 13.9 WAR
Voom,
at 6’4″ and 200+ #, Ripken was a wee bit more physically mature than Lindor at this point in their careers. However, over the next 6 seasons, Ripken averaged only .265 / .344 / .436 and an OPS+ of 117. This is kind of shocking since you’d think these would be his best years. He had an unbelievably brilliant season at 30 (168 OPS+ / 11.5 WAR) – maybe the greatest SS season of all-time …. and then hit for an OPS+ of only 98 while not missing a game over the next 7 seasons. I thought Ripken was so much of a free swinger (who made contact) that it ultimately hurt him. But, he played; I only watched-so what do I know?
Gun to my head, I think Lindor will hit better than Ripken’s 117 OPS+ over the coming six years. And, I believe he will probably continue to hit with more power than Tony Fernandez. The Hall of Fame? Quien sabe? That is a long way off.
It has become somewhat unfair to compare Shortstops of different eras, as it is only in the last 20 years that big dudes with offensive potential have been consistently groomed for the position.
…
OPS+ Leaders among SS, 1980-1989, min 1000 PA:
123 … Ripken
118 … Trammell
111 … Jody Reed
106 … Larkin
106 … Franco
103 … Thon
101 … Tony Fernandez
93 …. Ernie Riles
92 …. Rick Burleson
90 …. Ozzie
…
OPS+ Leaders among SS, 2008-2017, min 1000 PA:
138 … Correa
133 … Seager
124 … Hanley Ramirez
121 … Tulowitski
114 … Lindor
108 … Reyes
106 … Asdrubel Cabrera
105 … Tim Beckham
102 … Peralta
102 … Lowrie
101 … Jeter
101 … Brad Miller
100 … Xander
100 … Yunel
100 … Scutaro
A short, speculative ramble:
Players 5’6” in height or less:
Albie Pearson has been mentioned and Freddie Patek, but these guys weren’t the best. In the HOF are Wee Willie Keeler, Rabbit Maranville, Joe Sewell, Hack Wilson, and Phil Rizzuto. None, of course, are among the all-time greats, although at one time Keeler was viewed that way. Rizzuto in the Hall? I’m one who doesn’t think he quite makes it, but when I see that he lost a year being held back because Crosetti had the Yankee SS position in a lock, and then lost three more prime years to WWII—ages 25-26-27, to be exact— I can accept him as a possibility, since he lost around 20 WAR.
The best pitcher I can come up with on short notice is Bobby Shantz, but I haven’t looked at all the old timers. Pitchers have always tended to be taller, though.
This brings us to Altuve. To me the player he most closely resembles isn’t Mike Lansing (?) but another 2nd-bagger who got his start in Houston, Joe Morgan. Yeah, Morgan took a lot of walks and Altuve doesn’t, but Morgan was 5’7”, stole bases, hit for some power, and lead his team. At age 27 Altuve has 29.6 WAR. Still hampered by playing in the Astrodome at age 27, Morgan had around 29 WAR as well. Will Altuve go on to greater things the way Morgan did for the Reds? I’d guess the chances are good, but minus the boosts of getting free of a pitcher’s park and migrating to a championship team.
Altuve’s already on one.
A last observation: Position players 6’7” or greater in the HOF? Tallest position player in the HOF? Chances for Aaron to be judged Hall worthy? I’d say not good.
Top 10 in career HR, players 5’6″ or shorter.
244 – Hack Wilson
84 – Jose Altuve
63 – Tommy Leach
49 – Joe Sewell
44 – Andy High
43 – Roy Weatherly
41 – Fred Patek
40 – Dummy Hoy, Billy Hamilton
38 – Phil Rizzuto
Tallest HOF position player is Dave Winfield at 6’6″.
Shortest HOF pitchers
– Pud Galvin and Mickey Welch at 5’8″
– modern era – Jack Chesbro at 5’9″
– live ball era – Burleigh Grimes and Whitey Ford at 5’10”
Shortest pitcher (min. 1000 IP)
– Larry Corcoran at 5’3″
– modern era – Bobby Shantz at 5’6″
Billy Wagner was listed at 5’10”, though he always looked smaller to me. Depending on how one values relievers, he’s a viable Hall candidate.
Here’s my list:
Judge
Altuve
Trout
Cruz
Correa
Gonzalez
Ramirez
Kluber
Donaldson
Sanchez
I have mentioned on another post that I like to also judge the players by percentage of runners driven in (RDI). My first method was to calculate this percentage after subtracting out all PA in which the batter received a BB or HBPwith runners on except for the bases loaded situation. For my second method I was prompted by a commenter, perhaps epm or nsb, to also count the batter himself to be a base runner. That is helpful to batters with a high number of HR. I like the second method better. I was undecided between Judge and Altuve for the top spot. My second method showed that Judge’s percentage of RDI was, in its decimal equivalent, .127 compared to Altuve’s .086, a decided advantage for Judge. That’s why I placed Judge first. Also high in RDI percentage was Nelson Cruz with .129. I used that percentage as an additional guide for the ranking of the other players.
For those of you who are interested Baseball Prospectus has a chart for percentage of RDI but they do not subtract out the PA in which a player comes to bat and walks or is HBP. That can give misleading stats. Here’s an example which is comparable to my first method. In 2004 Barry Bonds came to bat with 417 base runners and drove in 56 for a percentage of 56/417 = .134. That is pretty far down the list compared to other players. By adjusting for those PA with BB and HBP Bonds had only 225 runners on base. His recalculated percentage is now 56/225 = .249, a huge difference which puts him near or at the top of the list. So be careful if you use that Baseball Prospectus list.
OK. Here’s my unscientific ballot, except for the winner:
1) ALTUVE—like Kluber in the CY he outclasses the competition enough to deserve his name in caps.
2) Judge—by default, actually. Couldn’t think up an argument for someone else.
3) Ramirez—the Tribe 20 game winning streak corresponds to his pulling out of a slump.
4) Betts—Heart of the surprisingly weak BoSox offense that still won the division.
5) Trout.
6) Hosmer—overlooked man on an overlooked team.
7) Correa—Overlooked somehow in the official voting, probably because Altuve outshone him.
8) Cruz—when a DH leads the team in WAR there’s a reason.
9) Sanchez—no sophomore slump, a catcher with potential to fill the squat that Yogi built.
10) Upton—why not?
1. Jose Altuve
2. Mike Trout
3. Aaron Judge
4. Jose Ramirez
5. Corey Kluber
6. Mookie Betts
7. Francisco Lindor
8. Andrelton Simmons
9. Carlos Correa
10. Jonathan Schoop
To my mind, Altuve has a lock on #1: most of my effort was devoted to juggling the next three slots. Correa inched onto the list, despite being a non-qualifier, through a version of arguments similar to some I’d use for Trout, and after looking at a range of borderline #10s, I chose Schoop because he has a good case and seems to have received too little attention.
In these rankings, I have gone beyond position adjustments in adding value to strong hitting players in the 2, 4, 5, and 6 positions who have fielded well, which accounts for why only three outfielders made my list. The flip side of the coin is that a DH is very rarely going to get my vote. Apart from the fact that he is missing for most of the game, a full-time DH bats without the fatigue of fielding, or the need even to devote pre-season and season time to training for the field. If Cruz had an 8.0 WAR I’d look at him closely, but he earned only half that.
When studying pitchers, I like to go through game logs to understand better how the stats reflect or distort game-context performances. It’s not realistic to do that for position players (apart from narrow issues that home-run logs can isolate) because it would be too time-consuming, so I’m more willing to rely on WPA as a shortcut for what I’m looking for, despite pretty big flaws in that stat I’ve written about before. (I don’t see any reason to value WPA/LI over WPA; the usual argument is that players don’t encounter high-leverage situations with equal frequency, but since such encounters provide opportunities for both positive and negative WPA, I think that point loses much of its force.)
Naturally, the Altuve/Judge contrast on the issue of WPA is important to me. But the more dramatic contrast is between Trout and Judge. Although on the situational context-neutral measure of WPA/LI, Judge is close to Trout (Trout leads the league with 5.9 and Judge is second with 5.2), when it comes to WPA, Judge drops off the charts (Trout a league-leading 5.2; Judge at 2.0, ranked #20). On the “Clutch” measure, Judge ranks dead last in the AL (#77), 20% worse than #76 (Jose Ramirez) – in fact, Judge is dead last by the same margin in MLB (#143). Something odd and not good is reflected by a negative measure on this scale. It doesn’t mean that Judge didn’t have a great year or won’t have a terrific career (I think he will; he’s a Yankee, but I’m a fan nevertheless). But it means he did not deliver the on-field value that his numbers indicate in 2017. Trout delivered more value than his numbers indicate. In fact, his WPA figure is even more astounding when you figure it on a per game basis (here, x10):
Trout .455
Altuve .237
Judge .128
In fact, I had initially put Ramirez above Judge on the basis of this comparison, and was thinking about boosting him above Trout too because of his multiple defense-rich positions and full-season play. Then I looked into Ramirez’s WPA record . . . not good. By this per game measure, he clocked in at just .064.
That’s all I’ll say about my Top Ten, but I’ll mention that Sanchez would have been #11 had there been one more slot.
Hot stove league news over the weekend:
Stanton to Yanks? I wish they’d gotten some pitching instead of or in addition.
Trammell and Morris in the HOF? A schizophrenic outcome according to stats guys, I’d guess. At the risk of seeming an idiot, I’ll admit that personally I don’t mind Morris getting the nod, because I think he was a pitcher for a different era who managed to succeed in an environment unfriendly to his talents and approach. His record resembles those of other, earlier, workhorse pitchers with long careers, only his ERA is higher than theirs and invariably unimpressive over a season of play. If you asked his teammates or his manager who they wanted on the mound in a crucial game, though, my guess is that he’d be the choice of most of them.
The Veteran’s Committee Modern Era Subcommittee put a couple of the ’84 Tigers in the Hall — Alan Tram-m-mell and Jack Morris. I suspect we’ll see a post on them here soon.
Thumbs up on Alan,
I kind of want to say thumbs down on Morris, but he had more value than his 105 ERA+ might suggest, completing one-third of his starts, logging 235+ innings eleven times, and winning 250+ games with a creditable .577 winning percentage. Bottom line – you could rely on him to go out there every fifth day, probably get you into the late innings and, more often than not, help you get a win. Morris posted 12 seasons with 14 wins and a winning record, something only 17 other modern era pitchers have done; if not for the 1981 strike, it would have been 12 seasons of 15+ wins and a winning record, something only 9 others have done.
I plan to gripe about Marvin Miller. A Hall with room enough for Bowie Kuhn….
What modern stats tend to do is to posit a norm of excellence, and even—or especially—positive performance that doesn’t lie within the parameters of the norm creates a conundrum that has people scrambling for explanations, mostly belittling ones. The nearest pitcher I can find to Morris in a short search is Early Wynn. Frankly, I’d take Jack four starts out of five.
The HOF has turned into the Rock N Roll HOF.
I’m ok with Morris’s membership in the Hall (Trammell should have been there long ago), but I’d have been ok if Morris hadn’t been elected, too. He’s a great example of a borderline case, and I think you have to be a Big Hall sort of person to feel entirely happy about his election.
To my mind, the best discussion of the Morris case I’ve encountered is a blog post by Chris Bodig that is both detailed and impressively balanced (although it was, in the end, an advocacy piece). Bodig raises an issue that nsb points towards as well: the appropriateness of using advanced stats in making historical judgments about players who played in a pre-sabermetric context.
I think that we are on an ascending curve in terms of our ability to identify the quality of players in any era. People like Bill James, Pete Palmer, and so forth pioneered the use of analytic thinking to answer questions about baseball value: they developed a series of increasingly good definitions of what baseball value consists in – which really had never been systematically explored – and the advanced statistics that followed are designed to measure that type of value. By these measures, I don’t think Morris deserves HoF membership – which is no pleasure to write, since I lived near Detroit and rooted for Morris at Tiger Stadium many times prior to 1985. I thought, and think, he was terrific . . . just not that terrific over the long haul when measured by contemporary standards.
However, as Morris himself points out, he pitched in a context that did not assess value the same way. His managers employed him according to different standards, and he himself set his goals at targets different from what we now see as optimal. While it would be wrong to say that his success by the two sets of standards was a difference of night and day (a lifetime 3.90 ERA was never a standard of excellence), the scale of difference is probably great enough to shift which side of the borderline Morris stands on. (Although, to be honest about my own perception at the time, I never felt I was watching a Hallworthy player when I rooted for Morris.)
When it comes to baseball value, I’m not much of a relativist: I think some older measures of value were simply wrongheaded and that advanced stats increase the quality of our value judgments in an absolute sense, and will continue to do so (as Statcast has the potential to do in a very fundamental way). I do differ from nsb in that I don’t think that applying contemporary measures of value to past players is generally belittling to them: I expect that for every Jack Morris there is a George Davis. I do believe, though, that Morris is among the players whose achievements in attaining the goals of their own time – which is what every player attempts to do – is somewhat understated by the metrics we use now, and for a borderline case like Morris’s that’s something valid to consider.
Next up for HOF consideration: Dennis Martinez and Bartolo Colon.
…
They got this wrong. Trammell and Whitaker should have gone in together.
Most wins (1876-present) ages 40-43
68 Young
68 Spahn
62 Bartolo C.
60 P. Niekro
Dennis Martinez
1st 1873 IP
111-99 4.18 92 ERA+
Next 1874 IP
120-77 3.02 130 ERA+
I’m not feeling it for either one of them…..but, I’m surprised by Morris getting elected. So, who knows?
Can’t disagree with Voomo on Whitaker. As for Martinez and Colon (I’ve enjoyed Colon’s career), I wonder whether Voomo’s point is that the HoF is descending a ladder.
Those guys are 1 and 2 as Morris’ similarity scores. Dennis played in the same era, and measures up favorably, other than World Series wins. And yes, my point was that: if this guy, then these guys.
Voomo:
To say that Martinez and Morris are similar is like saying that Mantle and Musial are similar. In other words, there might be some similarities, but the one thing they definitely have in common is that their last names begin with the letter M.
Here are some of the things in their 162 game averages that aren’t similar, Morris first:
W: 16, 13
L: 12, 10
GS: 33, 30
CG: 11, 7
IP: 242, 217
BB: 88, 63
SO: 157, 117
Notice that the closest similarity among these items is Games Started, where there’s a 9% difference. Otherwise the difference is in double digits in favor of Morris except for walks.
Another difference: when the two pitchers, just a year apart in age, were full-fledged starters in the same league, both playing for good teams, 1979-1985, Morris’s ERA+ figures were 133, 99, 124, 100, 117, 109, 122. Martinez’s ERA+ for that period looks like this: 110, 100, 110, 96, 72, 77, 78.
Morris was a workhorse whose only timeout for injury was a month+ in his age 34 season. Martinez’s problem was different. He basically tanked mid-career due to an drinking problem that made him a liability for over three years and sent him briefly to the minors.
Martinez’s comeback, of course, was strong, stronger than Morris’s later years in terms of ERA+, but it occurred in a different league in what was usually a pitcher’s park, while Morris continued, nevertheless, to rack up more wins in more innings pitched through his age 37 season.
I don’t see the similarity.
nsb, I have to completely disagree vis-a-vis Martinez and Morris. They are very similar players. The W-L record is similar, the innings pitched are similar. True, Martinez pitched more seasons… but by averaging their stats as you did in your post, you make that a BAD thing, and I don’t think that’s fair to the fact that Martinez was a little more durable over time.
Martinez led his league in complete games twice (Morris once). Martinez won an ERA title. They each led the league in innings pitched once. Martinez has a lower ERA, pitched more innings, has a marginally BETTER strikeout-to-walk ratio (1.84 to 1.78), a better WHIP (1.266 to 1.296). Their career stats are almost identical. Morris probably had a better peak. I would be more likely to vote for Morris than Martinez, I think, particularly because of his peak and postseason peak. But they are definitely similar.
Interesting “pitching to the score” stat…
Morris and Martinez:
With 3-5 runs of support:
97-64, 3.54
94-59, 3.36
With 6+ runs of support:
137-9, 4.24
117-8, 4.26
OK, Doom, let’s say we pick a player named Stan and a player named Willie, both of whom played mostly left field and first base in long careers. Both end up with 475 career HRs. These are some similarities that can’t be denied, but are they similar players? Or take a pair of right fielders, Chuck and Tim. Chuck hit 300 HRs, Tim 299. Chuck played in more games, so his Runs and RBIs are proportionally higher, but his oWAR was 47.9 while Tim’s was 44.3, pretty close, and get this: dWAR-wise Chuck registered -11.9 and Tim -11.6. Does this make them similar, when Klein’s record is top-heavy with the years he crushed the ball in Philly before his injury, and Salmon’s is not quite flat, but notably steady for the most part, with 3.2-5.1 oWAR in eight of his 10 non-injured seasons as a regular?
I don’t get how you see Morris and Martinez as similar just because certain of their totals are similar over long careers. Morris was steady. Martinez had a long stretch of years in the middle when he was kind of pathetic, then became a different, much better pitcher in his final years, one nothing like Morris at all. I’m not pushing for Morris over Martinez in any kind of ranking. I just don’t see that they compare on any but the outer level. Dig deep and they’re quite different. A guy hits 32, 27, 31 HRs over three years. Another guy hits 46, 19, 25. The outside view is that they’ve performed similarly over those years.
The distinction is in the details.
WAR, age 22-32
36.1 … Morris
10.1 … Martinez
WAR, age 33-:
7.8 …. Morris
39.4 .. Martinez
________________
When Martinez ripped off a 5.7 WAR season in 1995, that was, at the time, the 2nd highest WAR season age 41+ (of course, WAR didn’t exist in 1995, but you know what I mean):
9.6 … Cy Young
5.7 … Dennis Martinez
5.6 … Spahn
5.2 … Nolan Ryan
5.1 … Nolan Ryan
5.0 … Jack Quinn
4.7 … Ted Lyons
4.6 … Phil Neikro
4.0 … Spahn
Still tied for 3rd all-time:
7.8 … Clemens
5.7 … Randy Johnson
The thing is, I don’t think anyone was suggesting they were IDENTICAL. What people are suggesting is that they’re SIMILAR. I think it would be difficult to find two pitchers with 3000+ innings who are MORE similar than those two, who played in the same era and wound up with ludicrously similar totals. I mean, you’re not wrong that there are differences, and many of them. But if Morris and Martinez aren’t similar, is your contention that NO two players in the history of baseball can be described as “similar” to one another? I think you’d have to be using a fairly specific definition of “similar” in order to arrive at that argument, that’s all.
I think you’re obfuscating a little bit by comparing Musial and Stargell or Klein and Salmon. There are SOME similarities, yes; but with Morris and Martinez, we’re not talking about 4-5 similarities. We’re talking about roughly a dozen things that are direct comparisons, right down to tying for the AL lead with 14 wins in the strike-shortened ’81 season. I don’t know; I guess we’re just going to see this one differently. But I would genuinely be curious as to see two players whom you DO consider “similar” before we go further in the discussion, because it strikes me that we have two very different standards for that word, and that may be the entirety of the issue.
Responding to Doom’s challenge to nsb, I want to express my ideal of what constitutes “similarity.” Although B-R does not list either as similar to the other, I believe Eddie Joost and Eddie Yost actually should be credited with a Similarity Score of 1001 (after deductions).
Joost was a shortstop and Yost a third baseman — not the same, but not that different. Joost had seasons of 100 PA or more over the years 1939-1955, Yost: 1947-62, so they are rough contemporaries. Joost played the bulk of his career for the Philadelphia A’s in their twilight years; Yost for the old Washington Senators in their twilight years. Sadness is easier to bear when shared!
Joost hit 134 HRs, Yost 139. Joost’s batting line was .239/.361/.366; Yost’s .254/.394/.371. (Note the similar relationship between BA and OBP.) Joost’s total BBs were 78% of the total of his hits; Yost’s figure was 88%. Since the Creation of the Major Leagues, no other infielders with batting averages that low had BB/H percentages on that scale. Joost walked 100 times in six seasons with a high of 149, Yost in eight with a high of 151. Yost was called “The Walking Man”; Joost’s SABR bio begins: “One thing about Eddie Joost — he learned how to work a walk” (not to mention that multiple teams told Joost to take a walk because he was such a pain in the butt). Joost struck out 12.2% of his PA; Yost 10.0% — both well below their BB/PA figures. Joost delivered extra base hits 6.0% of the time; Yost 5.8%. Joost produced 30.7 WAR; Yost 34.2.
Sure, sure, any fool with a browser can see there are a few differences here and there. But remember, these two guys basically had all these things in common and the same name too (Joost was pronounced Yoost). Assuredly, it was the Hand of Destiny that fashioned them as baseball doppelgängers . . . and you — you and B-R — you want to bicker over things like dWAR??
Joost got a boost (couldn’t resist that) in 1947 when he started to wear eyeglasses upon joining the A’s. From 1937-1945 (he did not play in the ML in 1946) his OPS+ was 74 and never got more than 80 BB in a season. From 1947-1955 his OPS+ jumped to 113 and received 100+ BB for 6 consecutive seasons. Unimportant factoid: when he died on 4-12-2011 he was the last living player to have played in the Baker Bowl.
I might be a little late with this and sorry I didn’t catch this thread sooner but, supposedly, at one point relatively late in their careers, Frank Thomas and Jeff Bagwell were the two of the most similar players ever per the James similarity score. And, these guys were born on the same day, no less.
They both played 1B, hit for average, hit with power, and took a walk. Bagwell had a better glove and ran better, however, Thomas was a much better hitter. Thomas was a much better player from the start of his career and was doing a decent Ted Williams imitation until the umps started shrinking the stroke zone on him at age 30.
OPS+ , thru age 29, 3,000+ PA’s:
1 Babe Ruth 218
2 Ted Williams 196
3 Rogers Hornsby 183
4 Frank Thomas 182
5 Lou Gehrig 182
6 Ty Cobb 182
7 Mickey Mantle 175
Bravo, epm.
Similarity scores: Dennis Martinez/Jack Morris 903. BUT Martinez/Jerry Reuss 917. And Morris and Reuss don’t make each other’s top tens.
Besides that, Jerry Reuss/ Mickey Lolich 933. Lolich and Martinez don’t make each other’s top tens.
Mickey Lolich/Jim Bunning 942.
Aha! Now we seem to have a pair of truly similar pitchers, Bunning listed first:
W: 224/ 217
L: 184/191
G: 591/586
GS:519/496
ShO: 40/41
IP: 3760/3638
H: 3433/3366
R: 1527/1537
ER: 1366/1390
HR: 372/347
BB: 1000/1099
SO: 2855/ 2832
FIP: 3.22/3.20
But wait a minute:
Bunning ERA+ 115, pWAR 60.3
Lolich EAR+ 104, pWAR 48.8
What pitching similarity scores do is simply this:
Start with a thousand and then subtract the following:
One point for each difference of 1 win.
One point for each difference of 2 losses.
One point for each difference of .002 in winning percentage (max 100 points).
One point for each difference of .02 in ERA (max 100 points).
One point for each difference of 10 games pitched.
One point for each difference of 20 starts.
One point for each difference of 20 complete games.
One point for each difference of 50 innings pitched.
One point for each difference of 50 hits allowed.
One point for each difference of 30 strikeouts.
One point for each difference of 10 walks.
One point for each difference of 5 shutouts.
One point for each difference of 3 saves.
If they throw with a different hand and are starters subtract 10, relievers 25. For relievers you halve the winning percentage penalty. For all pitchers, the winning percentage penalty can be no larger than 1.5 times the wins and losses penalty. Relievers are defined as more relief appearances than starts and less than 4.00 innings per appearance.
To me this is a misguided and misleading faux stat. Bill James’s pitching families make a lot more sense.
NSB, Doom, and Voomo, I love this argument Just wanted to throw in. 1. Martinez’ ‘pathetic years” probably came from his drinking, which came to a head in early 1984 after a drunk driving arrest and rehab. 2. Martinez lasted parts of two more seasons with Baltimore, then, still lousy, was traded to Montreal mid season. The following year Martinez was substantially a new man and he stayed that way.Maybe it was the new team and stadium–I looked at his home and away stats and he stunk up the joint at home–you wonder if it wasn’t easier drinking there, or maybe he really did reinvent himself.
Here are some other comps for Morris: 3000+ IP, 5.5+ SO/9, BB/9 under 3.5, ERA+ of 100-110. The most similar are probably the two flanking Morris on the list, especially Welch since he is basically an exact contemporary.
I’m advocating here that Judge and Stanton bat at the top the lineup next year.
Common wisdom to put your sluggers in the 3-4 hole, yes.
But how about those extra plate appearances the leadoff and 2-hole guys get, eh?
Most PA in a 50-homer season:
732 … Alex Rod (tied for 114th most PA in a season)
728 … Luis Gonzalez
725 … Alex Rod
722 … Sosa
720 … Griffey
…
Most PA in a season:
778 … Jimmy Rollins
773 … Lenny Dykstra
771 … Pete Rose
766 … Dave Cash
765 … Jose Reyes
…
Last year:
692 … Stanton
678 … Judge
Giancarlo was, in fact, the Marlins’ primary 2-hitter, and Judge started 28 games in that spot.
But it is time to shatter tradition and put a WWE-sized beast in the leadoff spot.
Marlins’ PA per batting order spot:
1 … 764
2 … 740
3 … 728
4 … 714
Yankees’ PA per batting oder spot:
1 … 783
2 … 762
3 … 743
4 … 717
It’s probably best to place your HR hitters in the number 3 and 4 spots because those are the spots with the most runners on base. Here’s an old post of mine which shows the number of ROB per batting order position for the 2015 season.
BOP…….ROB
1……….331
2……….392
3……….431
4……….468
5……….440
6……….402
7……….389
8……….382
9……….373
Bill James once wrote that virtually all of the “best” leadoff hitters- measured, I believe, in terms of getting on-base and on-base in scoring position- were middle-of-the-order types like Teddy Ballgame, Mantle, Ruth, Cobb, et. al.
Of course, that often either leaves you with a singles-hitter or someone highly proficient in 2 of the three-true-outcomes to drive them in so there is that.
If you put power hitters in the 1 and 2 slots, you’re making a trade-off between increased PA and decreased ROB for them (as Richard’s post illustrates). One response to that would be to put your ordinary 1-2 hitters in the 8-9 slots, since some of the low ROB counts for current 1-2 hitters is not due to their batting order position per se, but to the low OBP of typical 8-9 hitters. But if you were to move the 1-2 hitters to the end of the order, you would be sacrificing their PA counts, while boosting the PA counts of your worst hitters, so that seems problematic (a variant of the problem Hartvig points to). It seems intuitive that the best outcome will be the one that discovers the optimal balance between all these positives and negatives, which is a different way to approach the issue than any formula that seeks to maximize the productivity of any one or two of the nine components.
But even the optimization ideal may be a blind alley. In his 1997 book on managers, Bill James had an article in which he tested via computer simulations various batting orders of a particularly well balanced offensive lineup (the 1930 Cubs – Hack Wilson’s 190 RBI year [I’m an old guy; don’t tell me it was 191]), in order to see how much difference the order made. What he discovered was that, in terms of runs scored, the difference between the “optimal” order and the very worst conceivable orders (pitchers bat first, etc. — he called them “illogical” lineups) was on the order (so to speak) of 5%. His results (and he cites another study with similar conclusions) indicated that the difference between any two reasonable orders — lineups designed with a goal of maximizing runs, rather than a goal of having no logical justification — was negligible: the sort of statistical blip that real world particulars would smear into nothingness. Batting order simply doesn’t make a difference, unless you’re trying to be stupid, in which case you can do a bit of damage. The reason is basically one of trade-offs: by maximizing the output of your few best hitters, you degrade, by lesser degrees, the value of your other hitters, there being more of the latter, leading to a net change, that’s roughly, within margin of error, zero.
In his trademark style of humility, James concluded by admitting that despite his own beliefs, there were, after all, two equally available ways of looking at the issue:
On the one hand, you have the barroom experts, the traditional sportswriters, the couch potatoes, and the call-in show regulars, all of whom believe that batting orders are important. And then, on the other hand, you have a few of us who have actually studied the issue, and who have been forced to draw the conclusion that it doesn’t make much difference what order you put the hitters in, they’re going to score just as many runs one way as another. You can believe whoever you want to; it’s up to you.
Don’t you hate it when you get to the end of an article and the writer simply refuses to take a stand?
I see the value of every side of the argument. The reason I’m advocating trying big bats at the top is for those 40+ games when the lineup turns around and it never gets to the 3-4 hitters.
How many of those games are close? Down by 1? A long ball makes the difference?
I don’t know. A few, maybe. Perhaps it makes a difference of a win or two.
And what about at the other end, at the beginning of the game? Pitcher has got those first batter butterflies, and all he wants to do is establish his fastball and location. But he is greeted out of the gate with a 6’7″ cyborg. This could set the tone for the game in a way that benefits the offensive team.
“The reason I’m advocating trying big bats at the top is for those 40+ games when the lineup turns around and it never gets to the 3-4 hitters.”
Cap Anson used to get around that by waiting until he saw if one of the first two batters got on base before he decided if he was going to bat 3rd or 4th that particular day.
Just for fun I did an analysis switching around the #1 and #4 batters for a particular team to see the effect on RBIs. I looked for a recent first-baseman with all of his PA in the #4 position, played in all of his team’s games and had a high number of RBIs. And such a player was Prince Fielder on the 2009 Brewers.
He played in all 162 games and had 719 of the 720 PA for the #4 hitter. His 141 RBI and 46 HR left him with 95 runners driven in (RDI). He came to bat with 507 base runners, giving him a RDI percentage of 18.7%. I did not subtract out those PA with runners on base and he received a BB or HBP.
The #1 hitters had a combined 74 RBI and 15 HR with a total of 375 base runners for an RDI percentage of 59/375 = 15.7%. The total number of PA was 769.The total number of RBI for Fielder and the #1 hitters was 141 + 74 = 215.
Placing Fielder in the #1 spot would produce 769/719 x 46 = 49 HR and .187 x 375 = 70 RDI. Total RBI would be 49 + 70 = 119. Similarly placing the #1 hitters in the #4 spot would produce 719/769 x 15 = 14 HR and .157 x 507 = 80 RBI. (Of course that 507 number might change somewhat, either way, with Fielder now in the #1 spot.) Total number of RBI for Fielder and the new #4 hitters = 119 + 80 = 199, as compared to 215.
I love this. Not sure I’m smart enough at the moment to juggle all the math in my head, but I do have a question…
Prince clocked in at a .412 OBP
The Crew’s leadoff hitters were .357
Certianly flipping their batting order positons would change something.
____
(and, I wouldn’t advocate the bashers-at-the-top approach for the ’09 Brewers, by the way. For one, Fielder was a slow runner. And Wisconsin had a black hole at the bottom of their lineup of Kendall, Hardy, and the Pitcher. The 2018 NYA team should have no such weakness)
The Braves of Mathews and Aaron had those two batting 2nd and 3rd, which might be the way to go for the Yankees. Unfortunately, the Yankees’ big bats are all righties – would be nice for them to break up Judge, Sanchez and Stanton with a power lefty batter. Casey always said never bat two righty power hitters back to back because the double plays will kill you; but, that is much less a problem today with all the strikeouts and the power hitters grooving their swings to hit everything in the air.
Not to bring all the discussion to a grinding halt, but… it’s our last day of voting; don’t forget to get your ballots in!
And here’s mine:
1. Jose Altuve – What else do you say? He was the best.
2. Mike Trout – If you look at some of the advanced numbers (RE24, WPA, WPA/LI, REW), Trout was the best hitter in the AL, and those are counting stats. He had the best slash line in the AL. Plus, I don’t know… it feels weird to leave him OUT of the top-two, so here he is.
3. Aaron Judge – He is a beast. I’m deathly afraid of that Yankee lineup next year. My wife (a Twins fan) is not going to be happy come the inevitable Yankees-Twins playoff annihilation.
4. Jose Ramirez – What a beast. Same OPS as Altuve, folks. What can you say? I don’t know if I’ve ever been so excited to see how a league shakes out than the AL this coming season. Wow, are these exciting teams.
5. Corey Kluber – I could see putting him first. It’s a great year, but I’ve written enough about it already.
6. Mookie Betts – Does ANYONE here think that the .268 BABIP Betts posted is reflective of his true talent? He kept his strikeouts steady, walked more, hit with power (on 6 XBH fewer than last year)… it’s just that the average wasn’t there somehow. I fully expect him to rank higher next year.
7. Marwin Gonzalez – Did you realize that Marwin Gonzalez had the fourth-best OPS+ in the AL, all while playing basically every position on the field? (He didn’t pitch, catch, or play center). Had the ‘Stros DHed him in another 15 games, I feel confident that he would’ve put up the counting stats for me to place him in my top-five.
8. Andrelton Simmons – Some folks asked how the Angels were the same without Trout. Some of it was pitching. Some of it was this guy keeping the team afloat. If Simmons gets close to this year, NEXT year, the Angels with Ohtani may somehow end up just as good as ANYONE offensively.
9. Carlos Correa – What a season. Too bad it wasn’t a full one. There’s an argument he’s too low. I was between him and Simmons for this spot, and went with the guy who played more.
10. Francisco Lindor – HOW can this be 10th-place? I can’t put it higher, but… dang.
As SOOOOOOOOO many of us have said, it was nearly impossible to limit the ballot to ten. You folks who didn’t list pitchers were smart, because that was something you didn’t have to think about, and it was probably a good choice. Apologies to just about EVERYONE I didn’t get to name – I considered over 20 players (those named, pitchers Verlander and Sale, Dozier, Hosmer, Cain, Sanchez, Cruz, Upton, Springer, Abreu, Donaldson, even Joe Mauer), so it was definitely tough.
I just want to make special mention of Joe Mauer here. He’s not nearly good enough to merit a vote in a year like this. However, Mauer’s OBP was fourth in the league. He was 10th in RE24 and 8th in WPA. He hit .300, slugged .400, and OPSed .800 for the first time in four years, and his OBP was his personal best in that time frame, too. Mauer isn’t “back” – he’ll never be the hitter he once was, and he’s nowhere near as valuable as a (surprisingly decent) first baseman than he was as an above-average catcher. Still, I wanted to throw him a 10th-place vote, and I just couldn’t do it.
Best of luck on your voting, everyone! I’ll try to post an update tomorrow, but I make no promises, as I know I’ll be busy at work tomorrow.
Earlier in this thread, Voomo made an interesting comment in the course of a discussion with Paul about Francisco Lindor:
It has become somewhat unfair to compare Shortstops of different eras, as it is only in the last 20 years that big dudes with offensive potential have been consistently groomed for the position.
I’m picking Voomo’s comment back up here because it resonates with the discussion we’ve had about Jack Morris and the criteria by which he should be judged. I’m going to start with Morris and get back to Lindor, after I’m pretty sure everyone’s asleep. . . .
Although I’m sympathetic to the idea that Morris’s qualifications for the honor of Hall membership should include an appreciation of the standards for effective pitching that he and his managers held during his career, I don’t think that is the same as saying that Morris was a better quality pitcher than contemporary stats make him appear. For me, the quality of any historical player’s performance should be judged according to the best measures we’ve developed for assessing how his play contributed towards wins (either wins realized by his team, in Bill James’s formulation, or potential wins that his team may have realized or failed to realize because of play other than his own, as in the formulation of WAR). As those measures improve, our assessments may change, but the entire process is based on a stable notion of quality and a sound methodology for pursuing the ideal of perfected measurement of that quality.
Of course, other factors can influence the way we judge a player: playing time lost due to factors such as war (not WAR) or strikes; positive or negative clubhouse contributions; and, naturally, individual instances of outstanding performance, such as Morris’s 1991 Series clincher. But those factors affect something other than our assessment of quality of play: they construct the narrative for each player, which runs parallel to but separate from quality assessments. Those narratives often determine which players we like or whom we support for the honor of Hall inclusion (or the greater honor of CoGworthiness), but I think they should not influence the way we rank players on the basis of their performance. (I should add that I believe that the “intangible” factor of “clutch” performance is not, in fact, intangible, and that it’s something that should be quantifiable and included in statistical assessments, as with the imperfect example of WPA.)
In the case of Lindor and historical shortstops, I think the situation is somewhat different. While historical context may tell us why excellent shortstops of earlier eras did not generally have the offensive productivity of excellent shortstops today — as Voomo indicates, big, powerful hitters were not generally identified as shortstop material and trained to become capable fielders at that challenging spot — that contextual information does not affect the task they were trying to fulfill in the way that Morris’s task was shaped by expectations. Those earlier shortstops were trying to execute fielding plays and bat productively in the same way as contemporary shortstops: they were just not as well equipped to achieve contemporary standards. They were “the best of their time,” but the reason they don’t look as great today isn’t because the times changed or the game changed, it’s because better all-around players came to be slotted at shortstop. (Obviously, in some cases an historical player’s non-batting skills could be so terrific that the player ranks among the elite despite not being a particularly productive hitter: e.g., Ozzie, who ranks #4 all-time in shortstop WAR. But Voomo’s point was specifically about OPS+.)
We have a somewhat parallel situation at third base. Pre-1960 third basemen look pretty sad compared to later ones. The reason is that the best fielders and hitters were rarely groomed as third basemen (Frank Baker and Eddie Mathews being major exceptions, though neither was more than a competent fielder). Once Clete Boyer and Brooks Robinson set new standards for third-base fielding, and Mike Schmidt demonstrated that a top hitter could field in that class, expectations rose and the result is that the position leaderboard in WAR is filled with post-1960 third basemen who were excellent or outstanding fielders, like Brett, Boggs, Bell, Beltre, and others whose names started with a different letter. I think it’s not in any way unfair to Pie Traynor, the Third Base Gold Standard when I was growing up, that he is now chiefly remembered because of the quaintness of thinking he could have been the Third Base Gold Standard. He’s in the Hall of Fame not because expectations for third basemen in his day were different and he fulfilled them well, but because expectations for third basemen were lower and he seemed (to those who had forgotten or could not calculate Baker’s far greater contributions) to top that low bar by more than any other mediocrity relegated to the Hot Corner.
e p m,
Yes, I imagine 3B and SS have ‘evolved’ more than the other positions. From age 25-28, Mugsy McGraw had the 2nd or 3rd highest OPS+, all-time, among 3B. At 5’7″ and 155# , I don’t think he could carry Scott Rolen’s jock, but he was, what he was, when he was. And, there’s nothing we can do to change that. All the debate about this guy versus that guy from differing eras, is what this site is about; however, who really knows?
I think it’s safe to say that Albert Pujols would probably put up stats equal to or superior to Foxx, Gehrig, and Greenberg in their era, however, I don’t believe they would do as well as he in today’s game. But, maybe I’m wrong. For all we know, Doak Walker would have a difficult time starting at Johns Hopkins or Muhlenberg today, let alone SMU. And, all the advanced training in the present world wouldn’t make him 6’1″ and 220# like Walker or Jackson.
One other thing that seems to be true – most great ones of bygone eras were “larger” than their opponents:
Ruth, Gehrig, Foxx, Greenberg, Williams, DiMaggio, etc….
Further, I think it is safe to say that all the boxing divisions with the exception of heavyweight, have not improved in the last 70 years. I don’t think GGG is any better than Marcel Cerdan or Floyd Mayweather any better than Robinson or Leonard. Not one iota. And, boxing might be the only exception…..maybe curling
But, yes, it is a different athlete playing a different baseball game today. And, that athlete is far, far superior to his predecessors. And, that evolution is probably more pronounced at 3B and SS than the other positions
Your 2017 AL MVP results:
Much like the BBWAA vote, I was expecting a tight one , and we wound up with a landslide. After the player’s name are his vote points, then his first-place votes in parentheses. Tiebreakers are as such: 1st, number of ballots named; 2nd, highest placement on a single ballot; 3rd, remove most recent ballot(s) until the tie(s) are broken.
1. Jose Altuve, 107 (7)
2. Aaron Judge, 71 (1)
3. Mike Trout, 57
4. Jose Ramirez, 55
5. Corey Kluber, 28
6. Mookie Betts, 26
7. Carlos Correa, 23
8. Marwin Gonzalez, 20
9. George Springer, 15
10. Andrelton Simmons, 14
11. Francisco Lindor, 13
12. Nelson Cruz, 10
13. Chris Sale, 9
14. Lorenzo Cain, 5
15. Eric Hosmer, 5
16. Gary Sanchez, 4
17. Justin Verlander, 4
18. Josh Donaldson, 3
19. Elvis Andrus, 1
20. Justin Upton, 1
21. Jonathan Schoop, 1
I think it’s great that the only two Royals named were each named on one ballot, and each named in the exact same slot. The Trout-Ramirez battle was VERY close. Usually, pitchers don’t do as well as Kluber’s done here, but it was a pretty great year he had. Ramirez in 4th had more vote points than Kluber (5th) and Betts (6th) combined, so there’s a clear gap between the top four and the others.
Probably our most consensus ballot was ThickieDon’s, who had the top 6 in order, then the 8th and 9th. AJB had the top 9 all somewhere on his ballot. All 10 players I named finished in the top 11. So those were the three closest, I think. Frankly, it’s impressive that ANY of them got close, since there were 21 players named on only 8 ballots.
Thanks for voting for the 2017 awards, everyone!
Thanks for devising these posts, Doc! They’ve been a great success and a good warmup for the annual CoG frenzy soon to follow.
I’m VERY excited for COG voting, especially since in anticipating at least 5, and maybe 6, rounds of voting!
You’re more optimistic than I.
I’m extremely confident in 3 (Hoffman, Guerrero, C. Jones) & think that Thome has maybe a slightly less than 50:50 chance of being #4.
I wouldn’t be stunned if Edgar made it #5 but I think his best chance is next year, his final year of eligibility and that even then he’ll still probably come up short.
I can’t even think of who #6 would be unless there’s been a big shift on Bonds & Clemens.
And sorry about missing the vote. I somehow got it in my head that the deadline was Friday & it’s been a really hectic week. I doubt it would have changed much since I had Altuve #1. I had some questions about Judge and Verlander definitely would have been on my list (and possibly Upton) but beyond that I doubt anyone would have moved more than maybe 1 spot up or down.
The thing likeliest too change in this election (other than some WAY down-ballot stuff) was the Trout-Ramirez battle for third.
By five rounds, I’m expecting four new electees, and I believe we’re due for a redemption round, which makes five. Six would mean getting lucky with a run-off or a shocking fifth elected player. I’m not confident in that, just hopeful!
I think that the redemption rounds have to fit the available slots, meaning that if the BBWAA select 4 we would have at least 1 for our newest eligible birth year (anyone remember what we’re up to now? 1973?) with the remaining 3 divvied up in some fashion. Most likely at least 2 of them would be redemption rounds and possibly all 3.
I think the doors are opening for the PED Era players, so I wouldn’t be surprised if there were high totals on Bonds and Clemens, even if they don’t make 75%. That’s going to draw some votes from other players who might qualify. There were seven players last year who made it to at least 45%. Add Chipper and Thome that makes for 9. Rolen is new, he will get some votes, that’s 10 viable candidates. I’ll bet Andruw gets votes, and some of the other holdovers who haven’t drawn huge numbers–Walker,Manny, McGriff, Wagner.
Very crowded ballot.
I’ve been somewhat heartened by the recent tendency of the BBWAA to at least occasionally recognize the glaringly obvious. As crowded as the ballot is now it’s not near as bad as it was just a few years ago when you had Maddux, Glavine, F Thomas, Biggio, Piazza, Bagwell, Raines, Clemens, Bonds, E Martinez, Schilling, Trammell, Mussina, Walker plus Kent, McGriff, Palmeiro, McGwire, Sosa & Mattingly and Jack Morris and Lee Smith picking up significant numbers of votes. By my count that’s 14 no-brainers plus another 4 or 5 that you could at least make a reasonable case for.
It’s nothing short of remarkable- especially given their performance over the prior decade or so of letting very few people in and then, too often, the wrong people (Rice, Sutter)- that they managed to sort some of that out while ONLY managing to screw over one extremely well-qualified candidate (Trammell), at least so far.
One big problem, that makes the over-abundance of well-qualified candidates even worse that it should be, is that there are still a number of voters who won’t vote for more than a handful of candidates (or even fewer), no matter how well qualified the others may be, for fear of selecting too many people in a single year and thus somehow- in their minds, at least- cheapening the honor and making themselves look bad.
I guess they don’t understand mathematics well enough to realize that when you have an overabundance of deserving candidates and do stuff like that you actually increase the chances you won’t end up selecting anyone and thereby making the problem even worse.
If I had a vote I wouldn’t have voted for the most notorious of the juicers, or at least the juicers who spent the majority of their careers using when there were hard rules on this (not just a wink). So, I would have contributed to the backlog. But I also don’t understand the “first ballot” bull either. If you are conflicted on someone, don’t vote for him. But someone who clearly meets any objective criteria should be in, period. Finally, I think it’s wrong to have shout-out votes. Last couple of years, Tim Wakefield, Jason Varitek, Edgar Renteria, David Eckstein, and Mike Sweeney got votes. That’s just intellectually dishonest.
Mike L
“….Finally, I think it’s wrong to have shout-out votes. Last couple of years, Tim Wakefield, Jason Varitek, Edgar Renteria, David Eckstein, and Mike Sweeney got votes. That’s just intellectually dishonest.”
AGREED ! It’s, no kidding, probably some sportswriters just giving “good guys” a nod and a thank you for being gentleman and submitting themselves for interviews when they were staring at deadlines. Now Sweeney and Eckstein can tell their grand kids they got HoF votes.
Then again, I there are some guys who see a ballot and they are allowed to vote for 10 and they fill the entire ballot out. But, in either case, a true ‘cheating” of those who were worthy of a vote
Under normal circumstances- meaning a ballot that isn’t overflowing with obviously deserving candidates- I don’t really have a big issue with “shout out” votes.
While there are worse players in the HOF than almost everyone you listed, there’s very little chance that any of those guys are going to get enough votes to even stay on the ballot for a 2nd year much less be elected so I don’t really see any harm in someone making a small statement that acknowledges a players particular contribution. Maybe they hustled and worked hard to get every bit of use of what talents they had. Maybe they were just a good teammate who encouraged others to give their best and did everything he could to help them. Maybe they were just a nice guy who didn’t treat the writer/voter like crap.
Is it absurd to think that David Eckstein belongs in the HOF alongside of Babe Ruth and Willie Mays?
Of course.
Is there any realistic chance of that ever happening?
I really doubt it.
Now if that same voter thinks that there actually ARE 10 or more candidates on the ballot who DO belong in the HOF and then still wastes one of his spots on someone who’s obviously unqualified then that’s a different matter entirely.
I’m missing out on something obviously, since I didn’t realize how close Hoffman came to enshrinement last year, But could someone explain why he is such a hot number? His save total, of course, but otherwise, his stats don’t overwhelm, and Rivera, the guy with more saves, also had twice the WAR. I’m not suggesting he doesn’t belong in the Hall; I just don’t get the early enthusiasm.
I’m not sure I get it either. How much different is Hoffman from John Franco?
I’m not understanding all the love for Hoffman either. I mean I’m fine with Mariano and even Wilhelm & Eckersley. Hell, even Gossage. But a 1-inning wonder like Hoffman? I don’t get it.
I just went back to check the last COG post to see who was returning to the next round. Coming back will be:
Luis Tiant, Dick Allen, Kevin Brown, Dave Winfield, Bill Dahlen, Manny Ramirez, Richie Ashburn, Graig Nettles, and Bobby Wallace. They will be joined by the 1973 birth-year crop, which includes Todd Helton, Johnny Damon, Mike Cameron, Nomar Garciaparra, and, in a first for the COG, not one but TWO active players: Bartolo Colon and Ichiro Suzuki. Looking forward to it!
Hmm…shouldn’t Andy Pettitte still be on the ballot when it comes up, too? 3 votes out of 26 voters, I think…
Right you are, Hub Kid.
I know the voting is over but someone- unfortunately I don’t remember who it was- brought up an article that Bill James had written regarding some of his perceived problems with how WAR is calculated.
To the best of my recollection, how I understood it was that WAR is essentially calculated based on a teams Pythagorean W-L% or at least makes no adjustments based on a teams actual W-L record.
As someone (sorry, again I’m not certain who it was- nsb maybe?) already pointed out, Judge did no perform particularly well in many high leverage situations.
Does this mean that WAR might be overstating Judge’s value by inflating the actual value of his performance?
I think I’m your forgettable poster, Hartvig, and, as I understand it, the answer to your question would be yes.
I think James’ reasoning would be that the “wins” in Judge’s WAR were partly imaginary, since WAR calculations, unlike “Win Share” calculations, basically gave Yankee players 100 wins to divvy up when there were, in real life, only 91. The phantomic nature of the missing nine runs, he seems to argue, is, upon analysis, disproportionately attributable to Judge’s pattern of productivity/failure in the context of situational leverage.
I know that a 10% swing in W-L% vs. the expected W-L% CAN simply be explained by chance but it does appear in this case that there’s at least an argument to be made that it’s partly- or even largely- due to underperformance by Judge in high-leverage/impact situations. Which itself could be explained by chance/luck as well.
But I do think it brings into question the valuation WAR places on at least some players during particular seasons and possibly, in extreme cases, for their entire careers.
A few years ago I looked at the managerial career of Gene Mauch and discovered that up until his last hurrah with the Angels his teams CONSISTENTLY under-performed their Pythagorean W-L% almost without exception.
I wonder if there are players who have a similar history?
Here’s a few examples. The 1949-1957 White Sox under-performed their Pythagorean W-L% every year from 1949-1957 with players such as Minoso, Fox, and Pierce. There was also the 1988-1996 Brewers with Greg Vaughn and B. J. Surhoff, and also the 1973-1983 Mets with John Stearns and Ron Hodges. I have named the players who were with those teams for most of the years in the streak.
Minoso had 11 qualifying years in the ML, 9 with the White Sox and 2 with the Indians. His teams under-performed in 9 of those years.
Actually, the post whose author you forgot also included a long diatribe challenging the appropriateness of explaining batting outcomes by invoking the concept of chance, rather than viewing the outcomes as the product of the skill-performances of the pitcher, batter, and fielders. Most likely, it was the tedium of that rant that erased your memory of the author. To avoid any risk of broad spectrum memory loss, I won’t reiterate.
As with lots of stats, I think with the pythagorean calculation it pays to explore in detail individual cases. While the trends that the pythagorean approach identifies may tend to correspond to real-world situations, sometimes they may be distortions. Blow-out wins and losses, when they are not balanced over the course of a season, are a source of that kind of distortion.
For example, the 2007 Rangers underperformed their pythagorean expectation by four games: they were 75-87, but would have been expected to be 79-83 on the basis runs scored/runs allowed. But you’ll remember that on August 22, the Rangers clobbered the O’s 30-3. So great an effect did that score have on their pythagorean calculation that had they won it 4-3 instead, three of that four-game shortfall would have been erased, and the team would have been all but on target for their pythagorean projection of 76-86.
In that extreme case, one game altered the projection by three games. Obviously, that’s a misrepresentation. There is no universe where the 26 excess runs Texas scored on August 22 could have been shifted to other games to generate two more net wins. Nor did the Texas hitters or manager do anything wrong in running up the score: although the statistical result was to alter the team’s season profile from “performed as expected” to “somewhat underperformed,” what the team actually did that game was to accomplish an historically impressive positive feat. (Apart from that game, Texas was 4-3 in blowouts of 10 or more runs, runs totaling 53-45, so that Aug. 22 game doesn’t lose its impact when balanced against some blowout loss. Removing all 10+ run blowouts, Texas was marginally better than its pythagorean percentage.)
Before assessing whether Mauch’s negative pythagorean record is significant, I think you’d need to explore the way the runs were distributed. I’m pretty suspicious of using the pythagorean record to judge managers, and suspect you might do better just to look at multi-season records in close games against the background of team WAR.
(By contrast, in the case of Judge, the shortfall in his performance is captured by comparing his WPA/LI and WPA figures, which show that his productivity was significantly skewed towards less highly leveraged plate appearances throughout the course of a season, and the scale, as indicated by the defective but reasonably appropriate “clutch” figure, was, in terms of the 142 other MLB qualifiers, off the charts.)
I’m writing a reply to my own reply because the more I think about it, the more whole pythagorean praise/blame business seems irrational to me.
The purpose of the pythagorean calculation is based on a factual observation: a formula close to this:
is in fact the optimum predictor of W-L percentage. It will not invariably be right, but it will be quite close for most teams, and no other formula will get closer.
I have no problem with that: I understand it to be true. However, it says nothing about whether a team should have the number of wins the formula predicts. It was not conceived as an evaluative measure.
But we tend to turn it into one: when we see a team with more wins than predicted, we tend to think the team has done something right (even though the reason for the discrepancy may be a relatively high proportion of losses by blowout, which is certainly not doing things right), and when a team scores fewer wins than predicted, we think something has gone wrong (though, as in the Texas 2007 above, what was “wrong” was that Texas scored lots of runs in blowout wins).
The error seems to me to slide from a value-neutral factual discrepancy (that is: W-L pct. has varied from the prediction of the optimal formula) to the assumption that the discrepancy reflects something done right or wrong. The underlying notion is that teams should match or “exceed” their pythagorean projection. and that the “problem” for an “underperforming” team is that it distributed its runs wrong; for example, concentrating too many in blowout wins where added runs don’t matter, and then having too few left to win enough close games. The idea that teams have a bank of runs on which they draw, however, is simply incoherent: a team is exactly as likely to lose a 4-3 game directly after a 1-0 squeaker win as after 20-0 blowout win.
To return to the parallel with Judge, the problem with Judge was not that he hit so well in low leverage situations — it’s always better to hit well than to hit poorly. Nor is the statistical issue that he hit less well in high leverage situations. The problem is that he was getting credit for his hitting without distinction between the two, making him seem a greater contributor to actual, real-world Yankee victories than was the case. This is not an issue with the pythagorean calculation. No one is ever going to say of a .490 team that it won more games than it lost, or that it was great because it scored lots more runs than its opponents — we count the excellence of a team in terms of wins, so total runs scored becomes a side issue. We may wonder why the pattern of runs doesn’t match up with the W-L record — and the reasons will be interesting — but the bottom line is the first line we see: W-L.
In the case of player records, the first line we see is the slash line, maybe including advanced stats: for B-R/Fangraph purposes, that’s the bottom line — but what James reminds us is that it’s not the only bottom line: the efficiency with which the slashline contributes towards team wins is an equally important bottom line. Within that second bottom line component, there are two analytic layers: to what degree can efficient/inefficient win productivity be credited to the player and to what degree to can it be attributed to the agency of teammates? While Win Shares certainly goes further than WAR in relating productivity to actual wins (though WAR does weight performance in terms of situational run expectancy), I think James’s system fails to adequately distinguish player/teammate agency in those outcomes, which is why a blending of WAR and Win Shares may be a good approach.
e p m,
I guess it’s relatively simple: players create runs in an effort to help their teams reach their goal of winning games. So, i guess James has a real point in using team victories in lieu of Pythagorean. I am kind of biased toward Win Shares since I don’t believe it over values defense while WAR, I believe, has some serious flaws in the defensive calculations. I agree some defensive positions are more important than others and, certainly, some fielders superior to their peers at those positions. However, if Andrelton Simmons makes a ridiculous play with one out in the first inning and the next player grounds out to second to make the third out, I just don’t know how you can say he saved 1 run, 1/2 run, or whatever amount of runs with his “web gem”. I think Win Shares does a better job of keeping the “love of defense” in check.
FWIW, WAR and then WS:
8.3 36.7 Altuve
8.1 30.8 Judge
7.6 32.2 Stanton
If James used Pythag in lieu of actual wins, Judge would clock in with ~ 35.5 WS. I added Stanton since he played RF, hit 50+ homers, and, as a contrast to Judge, is superior to Judge in WS yet has a lower WAR.
IIRC, James claimed 40 WS seasons were other-worldly; 20 was an All Star, and 30 an M V P candidate.
And, yes, I would take Jeter over Simmons
I like Win Shares, Paul. But it has certain limits even in calculating offense. To illustrate with a theoretical extreme: supernaturally good rookie Kid X plays for Team Z, which has sold every good player and other good prospect to bail its owner out of bankruptcy. The Kid homers at every at bat except for one line drive caught at the wall, but he only homers once a game because opposing manager catch on, so he is walked every other PA. None of his teammates can get on or drive him in, and the team finishes 0-162. Kid’s traditional line is 162/162/.994, his B-R slash is .994/.999/3.984, but he’s credited with Zero Win Shares because there are no real wins to share.
The problem is that while Kid X does contribute through his play to real wins and losses, the only type of agency this entails is shared agency, and we need a system that separates out which share of agency (share of wins and share of losses) belongs to Kid X and which does not. In the Kid X scenario, if we were to calculate both Win Shares and Loss Shares, he’d have zero Win Shares, but some fraction of a Loss Share because he made an out, and thus bore some responsibility for one of Team Z’s losses.
We need a system that both ties players’ acts on the field to real outcomes, as Win Shares does, and also allocates positive and negative credit for those acts in a way that measures how effectively each player’s acts moved his team towards or away from wins and losses.
As for the issue of evaluating Simmons’ web gem, I don’t think it’s hard — in theory — and also looking towards the future, once Statcast data has become normed and accessible in aggregations.
Fangraphs Run Expectancy Matrix will tell you that the RE for bases empty, zero outs is 0.481 (at least it was few years ago), and for bases empty, one out, it’s 0.254. If we gain access to Statcast degree of difficulty data and ball-speed+arc data for the ball in play, with probabilities of those data producing a hit, we can quantify Simmons’ contribution to a .227 reduction in RE, assigning other shares to the pitcher and any other fielders involved, and charging against the batter the .227 reduction, modified by the probabilities of his ball in play and degree of difficulty of Simmons’ effort.
That may sound complicated, but once the parameters have been calculated and programmed, say a decade from now, this sort of thing will be tabulated on your screen in a second, and our entire evaluative structure will have been moved far forward (though, of course, we’ll always get it wrong and be getting it better).
E p m,
If it gets to that point, it literally becomes, “I can’t believe my eyes”. But, yeah, I get your point. In the interim, isn’t it a judgmental call whether that was a superlative play or not? You know, bad positioning, etc….making the routine appear difficult? I. E. That jump throw in the hole Jeter makes that Tulo and Ripken made flat-footed with ease?
Yes, I agree, Paul . . . in the interim. But I think the interim is almost past. Statcast would now track the speed Jeter moves and distance he covers, and with the ball speed/angle information, generate a degree of difficulty measure. All we’re missing in that regard, I think, is available aggregated data (and, naturally, we can expect the assumptions on which Statcast in based to be modified as experience is added).
As for good/poor positioning, I’m not sure that will be something that can be evaluated in the near term . . . it would depend on the collection of data on each player and pitcher to generate an “optimum” position that fielders would align with or not (plus an ability to allocate responsibility between coaching staff and player), and still, “optimum” may turn out to be where the player was on any given play, despite the fact that past performance may have dictated somewhere else.
Today, pretty much all we can do is deduce the skill of player positioning from after-the-fact results: evaluating positioning prior to the event may not only be a subjective judgment, there may be no way to adjudicate among different judgments, in which case it simply cannot be counted as a skill measure. After all, think about all those stories where Connie Mack waved his scorecard to move a fielder and the ball went right to him. Brilliant! How many anecdotes about Mack waving the card and the ball going to the point the fielder had vacated do you think were preserved?
So all those Chuckie Carr and Jim Edmonds circus catches will be re-evaluated in due time?
So, theoretically, a Golden Glove can be quantified as easy as a Silver Slugger award?
I don’t expect Statcast technology can work from video, but perhaps I’m wrong, or will be wrong in the future. Is there a quantitative standard for Silver Slugger Awards? I thought voters could interpret slash data flexibly. I do think fielding data will become comparable in specificity to batting data now that we have new tools (and that batting data will change, with greater emphasis on batted ball characteristics and less on base-hit/out outcomes), but I expect it will be a long time before there’s agreement on the parameters on which data interpretations are based.
I don’t know how transparent Statcast methodology is now (I don’t mean physical tracking data; I mean interpretive stuff, like degree of difficulty or base hit probabilities); I think those interpretive elements are not likely to become a consensus vehicle for sabermetric analysis until SABR-type analysts can look under the hood, but if MLB begins to compile aggregate data for players, teams, leagues, etc., I expect B-R/Fangraphs will, perhaps grudgingly, incorporate it, or develop its own interpretive tools to deploy on the physical data reports.
You know, I talk about Statcast and its prospects as if I know what I’m talking about. It might be good if someone who does know what he’s talking about could let us all know how far off base I am. . . .
What you talk like, epm, is someone who wants to quantify the mystery and uncertainty of life out of existence. Be careful what you wish for. The future for baseball you seem to be projecting with so much anticipation is a statistician’s dream, but it may be a death knell for players or fans who just want to enjoy the game, meaning a severe drop in its popularity. Arthur Conan Doyle via Sherlock Holmes points out in several of the stories that once Holmes’s skills at observation and interpretation are explained, people are inclined to say, “Oh, so that’s all there is to it,” and lose interest. So it is with much of life. We no longer marvel at many things once considered remarkable because that remarkableness has been explained away. The vast oceans of the world can be spoken of in terms of awe and wonder, or they can be quantified as so many gazillion gallons of cold salt water and analyzed for exact mineral and organic content at the molecular level. Superstition about many things has been eliminated as well, true enough, but a new superstition has come to replace the old, that science can explain everything.
What I envision as the baseball apocalypse is a great stadium about 80% empty of patrons, but each of those present equipped with the latest version of computer technology and all of them so taken up with the permutations of the myriad statistical formulas available that the reality of action on the field is viewed as mere raw data. In this vision, unbeknownst to this relative paucity of observers, the figures actually playing the game are exactingly engineered androids, each designed to maximum capability for its position on the field.
Wise words, nsb. The nerd in me (he’s a big one!) looks forward to those big data sets and to watching games for the stat-adorned replays. But my residual self, which you may have glimpsed here from time to time, looks at games as character dramas, full of “clutch” performers and others — too often on the team I root for — who play the role of goats.
Somehow, I have generally found that the two facets, so different in spirit, complement one another in experience. Don’t forget that, your examples aside, Conan Doyle also has Watson exclaim on several occasions that he is as amazed by Holmes’s mind after knowing the explanation as he was before — and, of course, Conan Doyle’s success came from understanding that all of us Watsons who were his readers would share that latter reaction. Had Holmes’s methods remained a mystery, I would not — like you, I take it — have read those tales until I could recite them.
So I think that while your thoughts are wise, the mystery of baseball intoxication is more resilient than you may think. For me, the threat is not the fact that fans at the game may experience it both through the view from their seats and the view of their smart phone’s data reports. It seems to me that the most devoted fans are, indeed, nerds at heart who seek moral meaning in a summer game. The threat, I think, is that announcers and flashing scoreboards will continue to believe that fans are so clueless that they’ll miss the point unless they deafen and blind us with their hype.
I love the Sherlock Holmes argument, because maybe there is something in all this advanced stats vs. traditional/gut reaction. Holmes says to Watson “you see, but you do not observe..”. EPM, what you are also describing in terms of fan experience is akin to what musicologists call mimetic participation. Conan Doyle draws you in and let’s you be along side Watson, to see the same things he does, but with perhaps a clearer eye. We are never going to get it all, every nuance. And maybe we don’t really want it all. Even Holmes loses occasionally. just as we have improbable results and unlikely heroes.
i tend to agree with NSB: “I go to a baseball game, not because Stanton has a high slugging percentage; no, I go to the game because Stanton is a slugger and I want to see him slug the ball….
Yeah, exit velocity is all well and good – and probably a great tool for GM’s , but I’d rather go to a ballgame than the winter meetings and I’d rather watch Stanton hit than see the analysis of his hitting.
I will admit though, all the statistical analysis makes for great debate
https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/PHI/PHI197604250.shtml
I saw Dick Allen hit some ridiculousa shots as a child, however, 6th inning of this game, Dave May took Larry C’s offering to dead center field and in 40+ years, I still haven’t heard the same crack of the bat
I got to see the terrible Wayne Tolleson dribble one up the middle for the game-winner here, still one of the best hits I’ve ever seen:
https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYA/NYA198706260.shtml
Replying to Voomo and his Tolleson dribbler here . . . What an absurd game! And my question is, once he was unmasked, who turned out to be the Roger Clemens impersonator?
Now, that was a baseball game.
Voom,
That is one ugly game. As for Clemens, I saw him pitch twice. And he “wasn’t himself” in 1991 versus the Mariners in June and later at Ralph Cramden Yards while pitching for Toronto
I think mimetic participation is certainly part of sports spectatorship (especially since most everyone has synapse-circuit muscle memory of their own baseball games available to create unrealized motor empathy), Mike, but not, I think, the nerdy part — and I’m now going to unleash my inner nerd yet again to illustrate. (Actually, my inner nerd isn’t really very inner, is it?)
Basically, I think appreciating game events and statistics tend to work on different planes, and while they may complement one another in real time, I don’t think they often conflict. I have a personal example to offer, just as Paul does below. When I was little, I saw Brooklyn clinch its last pennant on the final day of the 1956 season. In the fifth, Duke Snider hit his second home run of the game — I can still see it clearing the screen and heading out over Bedford Avenue (residual mimetic participation: our seats were in the upper deck in right) — and began jumping up and down, even though the game wasn’t too close at that point. But my older brother was beside himself with excitement. He knew that Snider’s first HR had tied Hodges’ Dodger record, and he was hoping to see a new record set, which Snider had now done. He began shouting to me, “That’s the record!” over and over, and when he calmed down a little, he explained to me what I’d seen. I was born a nerd, so my happiness at seeing a Dodger home run was much enhanced by the idea of a record and the anointment of 43 as a new magical number. Now, compare the different ways stats enhanced the living game for my brother and for me: my brother was anticipating a statistical dimension when Snider came to the plate, and his game experience was colored by it throughout — he came to the park knowing Snider was closing in on Hodges’ total. That meant his appreciation of Snider’s at bat was infused with two dimensions of attention throughout, while in my case, the statistical outcome enhanced an original in-the-moment-only pleasure: I’m convinced that it’s the reason I remember Snider’s ball going over the fence, but have no memory of his first home run (no one drew my attention to it as a record-tying event). Those are two different ways attention to the game and stats can reinforce one another without conflict. (My Mother, who had been rooting for Brooklyn since the early ’20s, when they were the Robins, had no interest in stats, and she simply cheered the pennant, while my Giant-fan father presumably let his mind wander back to ’51 and ’54.)
Conan Doyle uses both approaches. In his first Holmes book, which nsb was referencing (“Study in Scarlet”), Watson and the reader are almost entirely in the dark throughout the detection process, until, midway through the book, Holmes astonishes us by suddenly handcuffing the murderer, whom we’ve met only a few sentences before as an anonymous cab driver. The second half of the book slowly and pleasurably educates us as to the backstory of the murder, and how Holmes solved it. But in a more mature work, like “The Hound of the Baskervilles,” the dramatic denouement occurs after we have been gradually brought into the know about the essentials, and both know who the villain is and how he will enact his crime. The latter parallels my brother’s state of mind at Ebbets Field, the former mine. Both work.
I get the gut feeling. I was in Yankee Stadium for Righetti’s no hitter, and I can still feel the vibe of the place 30+ years later. Baseball allows you to participate at just about any level you want, from observer to stat-nerd. What made me laugh about this thread was I wrote about Sherlock this past September for 3Quarks, and what the two of you have written could have just unspooled from my head. http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2017/09/in-the-lumber-room-of-my-library.html
OK. Had a few minutes free, so here’s an unsolicited and unacceptable 2018 HOF ballot from someone with no biases except his own:
Guerrero
Martinez
Schilling
Ramirez
Walker
C. Jones
Mussina I took a pass on for now, simply because the six listed are, to my mind, all on an approximate par, given their various strengths and weaknesses, and Mussina falls somewhat below that.
Ya know, this might be a good idea for a post over the holidays while we’re waiting for the BBWAA vote to come in.
Here’s mine.
E. Martinez
Clemens
Bonds
Mussina
Schilling
Walker
C. Jones
Thome
Rolen
A Jones
There are 2 others I might vote for in another year.
I’d most likely vote for Guerrero but I want to be sure that Andrew Jones and especially Rolen stick around for further consideration.
I might consider Manny Ramirez. My philosophy on PEDS has been that if I think they would have made it without them they get my vote and if I don’t think they would have or I’m not sure, they don’t, at least for now. Fairly certain that McGwire, Sosa & Palmeiro wouldn’t have. Not sure about Manny. But I’d also like to know more about what kind of effect that “Manny being Manny” had on the teams for which he played. Is there fairly clear evidence that he cost his teams some games? And what kind of impact did it have in the clubhouse? Have any of his former teammates spoken about it?
For me, quitting on your teammates is a mighty big hurdle to overcome.
If anyone is interested in one of the more bizarre explanations for a HOF ballot, here’s David Borges in The New Haven Register
http://www.nhregister.com/sports/article/David-Borges-Hall-of-Fame-ballot-comes-with-12439764.php#photo-14721929
Not bizarre to me, Mike. I’m not in full agreement, but Borges’s criteria seem well within bounds. Thanks for the interesting link.
By way of links, I mentioned in connection with the Morris discussion the commentary of a blogger named Chris Bodig. Everyone else on HHS may be familiar with his site, “Cooperstown Cred,” but it was new to me, and reading more of his comments I’m impressed with his analyses, although, as with Mr. Borges, I don’t necessarily agree with his conclusions. So I’ve embedded the link, in case there are other HHS readers as out of it as I’ve been.
I should have explained that better. I think his end choices are defensible. It’s his reasoning that irritates me, and I realize my irritation may be personal. He’s a professed “small Hall” guy, so only six on his ballot–Chipper, Bonds, Clemens, Manny, Vlad, Schilling. He’s all in on PED use (primarily, it seems, because he has favorites who were users, and he doesn’t want to keep them out.) He uses a variation on the Jim Rice “feared” and Jack Morris “big game” arguments, which have always struck me as largely subjective excuses to pick your favorites and exclude the others. And he cherry-picks and discards as he sees fit (post season performance is important–except when it’s not)
So, not feared or big game are Edgar (“and don’t bring up OBP, NI-Not Interested”), Thome (a boring nice guy) and Mussina (Thome-like).
But wait….Borges announces he has a conflict. Previously he voted (twice) for Sosa, but now he’s having second thoughts. Yes, Sosa is the same juicer and bat corker as he was the last two seasons, but he feels bad about leaving Thome out so now the juicing and corking are disqualifying, and Sosa is out. If you can explain that one to me….
As for Manny’s juicing…”Maybe it was all PED-fueled, maybe just towards the end. We just don’t know.” So, he’s in.
He says, ” I vote for players who transcended the game, who people paid money to go watch, who put up historical numbers.”
Translation: “I don’t have a consistent framework besides rooting for my guys.”
I read Borges differently, Mike. (Of course, Borges is famous for how differently he can be read, but perhaps now is not the time . . .) He’s an actual HoF voter, and he reports that he’s always voted for Clemens and Bonds in the past, because while he is unhappy about steroids, he sees them as having infected the era, leaving a line between those identified as users and those who are only suspected that is a poor one to use for Hall judgments, an argument we’ve seen multiple times here on HHS. Nowhere does he say anything nice about Bonds and Clemens: he calls them boorish individuals (in contrast to Thome). He goes even further with Schilling, another one of his picks: an absolute garbage human being.” Not your usual fanboy praise.
He passes on Thome and Mussina because he’s one of those “Hall of Fame is for the most fame-ous” sorts of voters. It’s an argument I can easily understand, though not one I accept. There are a lot of Hall members who made it on the basis of high-quality plodding — the Perezes and Suttons; I admire their consistency, longevity, and workhorse ethic, but they sure do lack the pizzaz of real starpower. To think along Borges’s lines: you’d buy a ticket just to be able to say when you were old that you’d seen Willie Mays or Pedro Martinez, but would you do that for Thome or Mussina? — and if that’s how you see the Hall, workmanlike quality just doesn’t fit. Borges goes into detail about how well Thome is qualified otherwise, and shows consistency by noting that he didn’t vote for Biggio for these same reasons. That’s what he means by “a Small Hall guy” — not really an HHS type of Small Hall guy at all.
As for Sosa, I think his explanation is clear and meaningful, even if it reveals poor thinking in past votes. Borges has been voting for Sosa along with Bonds and Clemens, but voting for him again while leaving Thome off the ballot doesn’t pass his smell test. So you can either say that he looks for an excuse to drop Sosa or that he analyzes what’s making him uneasy about Sosa in light of Thome, and he comes up with a rationale that we’ve seen often on HHS: Sosa was a PED creation, while Bonds and Clemens met HoF standards before PED use came into play. I use that reasoning, and the issue for me isn’t that Borges finds it clarifies his reluctance to vote for Sosa now, but that he failed for so long to realize that Sosa was not like the other stratospheric PED candidates. I’m glad the Thome contrast showed him the light!
The one place I’d agree with you entirely is that his reasoning on Edgar Martinez is capricious — that’s a really stupid comment about OBP. I’m not an advocate for Martinez (unlike Borges, the DH thing is important to me) and I can think of real arguments that he could have used with ease. For example, if he’d noted that Martinez and Thome have an identical OPS+ and share that not-quite-a-superstar quality, his reasoning would have perfectly fit his overall voter statement. To be charitable, you might think he simply ran out of gas, or, uncharitably, you might conclude, as you seem to have, that Borges is basically just a poor thinker who failed in this case to cover it up.
I can see your point. I think I was cranky reading it, and, to an extent, I think he was lazy writing it. There are roughly 400 votes, and a guy like Hoffman was at 74% last year, so if you are going to vote, take it seriously, and think about it seriously.
BTW, about Sosa: I checked on Borges first HOF vote (in 2014 for the 15 inductions). It had this interesting quote in it:
“So why no Sosa? Here’s where I get a little hypocritical. I see Sosa as solely a product of PED use. Practically a steroid lab experiment gone awry. No doubt, he was bigger than the game at one point. No doubt, his career stats are among the greatest of all time. But there just seems something wrong, to me, about his whole career. Maybe I’m being hypocritical voting for McGwire and not Sosa, but that’s my vote.”
And, as to DH “Edgar Martinez was a DH. Then again, Big Papi was a DH, too, and I’ll vote for him when he’s eligible. But that’s another column for another year.
Good research, Mike — kind of undercuts Borges’s self-presentation on Sosa in this year’s explanation.
Borges could go into politics….
epm:
Having read the article-length, repetitive, and sometimes circumlocutionary screed by Chris Bodig on Morris, I feel a little the way Mike L feels about the Borges piece: How do I love Jack Morris? Let me count the ways. Nothing wrong with this approach, but you could do the same kind of special pleading for any number of players with good but not great credentials, noting superlatives, statistical and otherwise, and implying that they carry more weight than lesser virtues. As I’ve said above, I don’t mind the elevation of Morris to the Hall, and I don’t think it’s necessary to open the floodgates to a bunch of others with superficially similar careers to recommend them, but Bodig’s fervidity makes me pause.
On a different score, Larry Walker—far more HOF worthy than Morris and many others mentioned by both Bodig and Borges, according to me—gets no love whatsoever in either piece. The bias against players from Coors evidently extends to the level of writing them off without serious consideration much less a mention. It’s as if there’s this list of criteria, sometimes positive, sometimes negative, that lots of people use in place of impartial and careful reflection. But to argue for Walker is almost surely to follow the path Bodig follows here re Morris, so . . .
nsb, What I like about Bodig isn’t his conclusions, it’s the data juggling he does. I don’t even recall what his position on Walker is, but I thought his “13 Ways of Looking At Coors Stats” exercise was great — lots of it was new to me. On Morris, if I recall, he announced up front that he was a partisan advocate, but gave an excellent account of the arguments against Morris, acknowledging that they would be compelling for many. What more can you ask in a personal blog? But if his blog isn’t to your taste, there’s certainly no shortage of alternatives!
Suggestion for a future post. Track HOF votes by the regional background of the writer. I wonder if there actually are biases (other than a “shout out”) and if there are, how prevalent they are. I’d be looking at along several axes. Most obvious would be home preferences, team on team rivalries, and regional familiarity.
Frank Lary passed away on December 13, according to the B-R site. Some interesting facts about Lary, most having to do with his career-long domination of the New York Yankees:
Record against the Yankees: 28-13, 3.32. In Yankee Stadium, 12-6, 3.11.
Record against everybody else: 100-103. Away from Detroit: 44-50.
1958 record against NYY: 7-1, 1.86. Against all others: 9-14, 3.27. Against 7th place KC 0-4, 5.80.
Record against winning teams other than NYY: 40-49.
Record in Fenway: 4-10, 5.50. No, Lary was right handed.
Record April-July: 78-85; record Aug-Sept: 50-29; First half: 56-71 3.75; 2nd half: 72-45 3.23.
Lary was a contemporary of Whitey Ford. Both spent 1951 and 1952 in the military.
1958 was the year I had to start going to the Stadium to see baseball, since my team (and also the Polo Grounds crew) had moved away. Given my Weltanschauung, I naturally went to root, root, root for the visiting team, and I quickly learned that if I wanted to go home happy, I should get to the Stadium on days the Tigers were in town and pitching Lary. I have no idea how many of his Stadium wins I saw, but I never saw him lose. I had players I liked better, but they seemed to prefer spending their time in LA, and among those I could root for in person, Lary was my hero. Thanks, nsb, for conveying the news. He lived a long life.
Most wins in a season versus the Yankees since 1913:
Frank Lary , 7 in 1958
Eddie Cicotte, 7 in1916
I had the 1961 Tigers old-time set with my 1981 Strat-O-Matic baseball. I remember Lary was rated as a 4 hitter, meaning he hit a homerun that season.
A couple of days ago, Hartvig snuck in a comment that was hard to spot because it was in reply to nsb’s earlier post about his HoF choices, and so appeared well up this string, more or less out of sight.
Hartvig, in addition to providing his own HoF ballot, suggested that there be a post to allow us to discuss the candidates and cast our own ballots before the vote is tallied on January 24.
I don’t know whether Doug has the time or inclination to do that, and right now we’re probably all pretty busy (house guests are napping in the next room here), but I think that would be fun to do after the holiday, either with a formal post, or with an informal kickoff by one of us extending this comment string, as nsb and Hartvig did earlier.
Still hoping we’ll turn to a HoF pre-vote discussion, perhaps after the new year, but I want to pick up on another post that Hartvig slipped in way up the string in the middle of the night . . . Here’s his post:
When checking out [Pete] Runnels’ B-R page I noticed he was 0 for 10 in stolen base attempts in 1952 after going 0 for 3 in 1951. I wonder what the record is for the greatest futility in stolen bases in a season and in a row?
I think this is a great catch and an interesting question, and I tried to follow up. Runnels’ streak seems to have reached 16 before he scored the first SB of his career on June 30, 1953 (his 298th game), and I suspect this is both the longest streak of CS and the longest of CS-from-career-start. However, B-R doesn’t actually list Runnels as having such a streak at all, and instead gives the records — both of them — to Bob Nieman, who, after his wonderful 2-PA/2-HR (no SB attempts) debut, continued on to rack up 14 straight CS without an SB to his credit, a streak that finally ended on July 15, 1956, during his 538th game.
Two problems: (1) Why is Runnels not given the records? Many expert mathematicians have adopted the theory: 16 > 14. (2) B-R seems to ignore the fact that on August 5, 1955 (during his 446th game), Bob Nieman did actually steal a base (prior to 1956), thus ending his CS streak at 9 (FYI: 9 < 14) — and even if that were not the case, on the date Nieman is recorded as ending his CS record by stealing a base, he had recorded only 13 CS, not 14.
It appears that B-R is calculating Nieman’s 1955 SB as a CS, while failing to recognize Runnels as the undisputed CS-Streak Champion. If Nieman’s CS streak did not, in fact, exceed 9, then Runnels is actually the only player ever to break into the double digits on this accomplishment.
Perhaps these are grounds for reconsidering Runnels’ HoF case . . .?
With limited searching I found that Joe DeMaestri was CS in his first 10 stealing attempts. It’s a long slow process to accomplish the search.
Nice catch with DeMaesri, Richard. I didn’t find him via the B-R list. Interestingly, after his 0 for 10 start, DeMaestri went 15 for 24 during the rest his career.
Not the answer, but a bit o’ trivia…
Most CS without a SB, career:
8 … Oscar Robles
7 … Russ Nixon
7 … Dave Meier
Nixon’s is particularly (un)impressive, in that his career was 907 games.
Most games played without a SB, career (pitchers excluded):
907 … Russ Nixon
733 … Jose Morales
715 … Chris Snyder
649 … Wilson Ramos (active)
631 … Javier Valentin
612 … Johhny Estrada
610 … Aaron Robinson
574 … Al Ferrara (most for a non-catcher)
483 … Jack Hiatt
476 … Matt LeCroy
465 … Jason Phillips
463 … Ryan Garko
462 … Richie Scheinblum
454 … Bob Schmidt
____________________
And the other end of it…
Most SB, pure Pitchers (since 1901):
…
In researching this, I had to specify at least 90 percent of games at Pitcher, to weed out all the position players who’d taken the mound (as well as two-way guys like Jimmy Callahan and G.H. Ruth and Hal Jeffcoat). Saw that Ben Chapman, while managing the Phillies during WWII, turned himself into a Pitcher, two years after retirement, with fair success.
22 … Bill Dinneen
20 … Christy Mathewson
20 … Chief Bender
18 … Joe McGinnity
15 … Burleigh Grimes
…
Since 1920:
12 … Rip Sewell
11 … Greg Maddux
10 … Burleigh Grimes
9 …. John Denny
8 …. Orel Hershiser
7 …. Dizzy Trout
7 …. Joaquin Andujar
.
in the “good ole days”, when pitchers and managers had no fear of career -threatening injury, pitchers, on their ‘off-days’, frequently pinch ran for catchers in the late innings of close games. Some, like Grant Jackson of the Phillies, were as fast as most everyday players.
Don’t know if we see much of that today
Bill James once mentioned that Pedro Ramos tried to get Mickey Mantle to race against him so I checked out his B-R page.
He regularly appeared in 10 to 20 more games than he pitched. Since he wasn’t much of a hitter he only had 1 pinch hitting appearance in his career. And he apparently never played a position other than pitcher. The don’t specifically list how many times he was used as a pinch runner but it was often enough to account for 28 of the 76 runs that he scored in the 770 plate appearances he had in his 19 year career.
The BR Game Finder shows that Ramos was used as a pinch runner 120 times in his career, tied for 13th all-time, believe it or not..
Voomo and Paul E:
I remember Greg Maddux being used as a pinch runner for the Cubs several times early in his career, plus he won several gold gloves, and swung a fair bat. More reasons to consider him an icon of admirability in a disreputable era.
I awoke in the middle of the night with the most obvious Chris-Berman-y nickname for the no-steals leader… Russ ‘I Am Not A Crook’ Nixon.
Richard,
Could you use the Streak Finder in the PI? I’m thinking of setting it as CS > = 1 and SB < = 1, and checking the "to start a career" box. Then, once the table loads, you could sort by CS, instead of sorting by consecutive games in the streak. Would that work?
My result with that (except SB=0) was a Runnels-free list with the anomaly I noted for Nieman. When it comes to the PI, though, Richard is The Man.
I guess my earlier response to Dr. Doom’s request did not post. You can use the Streak Finder, set it up for SB = 0 and when you get the results sort the Result sheet by CS. It also helps to do it for position players only as I seriously doubt that a pitcher would have such a streak. You can’t just sort for the first Result sheet page, you have to do it for several subsequent pages. Also you may have to do it by x number of years at a time, otherwise the PI will time out. You have to play around with the PI. Also you must check the box score of the game immediately prior the start of the streak and also for the game immediately after the end of the streak. It’s possible that a player had both a SB and CS in one of those games.
Furthermore a player could have a SB = 0 streak of, say, 3 games. In those 3 games he could be CS quite a few times, however, that means you would to do a PI search of all streaks just to be sure you did not miss any one but that is well nigh impossible.
I hope you can all understand what I am saying.
I should have added that you have to enter CS >= 0, not =1.
I had completely missed the need to keep sorting, page by page, which Richard points out. The reason is that the formula yields answers in terms of number of games, rather than in terms of number of CS without SB. There are lots of players (including pitchers) who went many, many games without an SB, while having a few or no CS. In addition, the PI sorts only the first 1100 names, and in a case like this that means there may be some I’ve missed, since a player who, say, was caught stealing 10 times in 40 games would not rise to the top 1100 in terms of consecutive games with no SB over a reasonable search period — and if the search periods are too short, they will break up streaks and make them invisible. The PI search covers only the period 1913-2017. Prior to 1913, there is partial CS data only for 1912 (and for the National Association, 1871-75, but I assume we wouldn’t be much interested in that anyway, since there’s no comparability with the 20th-21st centuries game).
Runnels does show up with his streak of 16 (my apologies to B-R for my previous libelous slander). He accomplished this feat over the course of only 297 games, which puts him way down on the list, as sorted by B-R (#1075 in the time period 1930-2017). Runnels does, indeed, appear to be the All-Time Failed Stolen Base Streak Champion! Congratulations to Hartvig for his having spotted this overlooked aspect of Runnels’ greatness.
There’s a real threat to Runnels from Chris Cannizzaro, forever dignified as an Original Met. Cannizzaro accomplished a streak of 14 CS without an SB, from a CS on June 7, 1964 to an SB on July 16, 1970.
Three players compiled streaks of 13: Zeb Terry, Charlie Jamieson, and Eddie Yost. Terry’s streak began with a CS on October 1, 1920, and ended with an SB on August 26, 1921. (It should be noted that reasonably continuous caught stealing data does not begin until 1920, and significant gaps exist for the period 1926-50). Jamieson’s streak began with a CS on April 26, 1929, and ended with a SB on May 2, 1930 — all his CS were attained during the single season of 1929. Yost’s streak, wiping out a hefty chunk of the good karma of his walks, began with a CS on May 2, 1957, and closed with an SB on July 23, 1958.
Three players achieved streaks of 12: The earliest was Larry Gardner, whose sacrifice fly won the dramatic 1912 World Series for the Red Sox in 1912 (capitalizing on the famous Snodgrass Muff). Gardner’s magnificent streak of base running futility was accomplished for another World Champion team, the 1920 Indians: Gardner’s streak of 12 straight CS took place within that single season, from a CS on June 9 to another on Sept. 28. He broke the streak on May 1 of the following year, and the Indians failed to win the pennant. (Gardner played in four Series, always as a regular, and his teams won them all.)
The other 12-CS streak players were Bennie Tate (you know, that Bennie Tate: the second string catcher for the old Senators who had 3 BB in 3 PA in the ’24 Series . . . remember?), from a CS on August 4, 1927 to an SB August 5, 1929, and Jay Buhner, from a CS October 2, 1991 to an SB on September 5, 1993.
Streaks of 10 belonged to quite a few players, including Bill Knickerbocker (1934-35), Chico Carrasquel (1956-59), Reno Bertoia (1959-60), Dennis Menke (1965-67), Andres Blanco (2004-2015 — covering over 10 years, but not that many games, since Blanco wasn’t a regular till, briefly, 2015), Joe DeMaestri, whom Richard caught, Chris Moreland, Jamie Quirk, and Jim Lyttle. (Bob Nieman is also listed with a streak of ten, but as noted earlier, that seems to be an error: it should be 9.)
I may have missed some streaks of ten CS or greater that only micro-searching would reveal, but it seems to me super unlikely that any would actually challenge Runnels, and even obsessive types need to go eat dinner. . . . If Richard emerges with different results, I advise that he be viewed as authoritative.
epm: I found the same players that you did plus the following:
Juan Rivera 13
Mark Brouhard 11
Tom Veryzer 10
Bobby Doerr 10
You are more thorough than I, Richard, which is characteristic. Thanks for filling the gaps I left.
I believe Brouhard’s streak must be the longest of its kind ever to close an MLB career (though he was stealing bases in the minors during the streak, and in Japan afterwards).
Here, then, is the Top Ten Caught-Stealing-Streak list, never before revealed:
16 Runnels
14 Cannizzaro
13 Terry
13 Jamieson
13 Yost
13 Rivera
12 Gardner
12 Tate
12 Buhner
11 Brouhard
Let’s retire from the Caught-Stealing-Streak-Finder profession: the work is rather dull, the hours long, or seem so, and the pay stinks.
But I did find it a bit interesting, it was somewhat of a learning experience. And where else would one find such a list.
True enough — so hats off to Hartvig, whose sharp eye and curiosity were the impetus of an HHS first!
A footnote, perhaps more interesting than the longwinded message itself.
In 1993, Craig Biggio set a record for a CS streak by being caught stealing in five consecutive games, without successfully stealing a base. The following season (1994, a short one), Biggio was caught stealing only four times all year, while leading the league in SB with 39.
Forget the numbers, Bob Boone was absolutely the worst base runner I ever saw. This, of course, is by the ‘eye test’. Boone must have believed himself to be the reincarnation of Jackie Robinson or Ty Cobb. To his credit, whenever he got thrown out advancing to the next base, it was by at least 30 feet – so, at least he was trying to advance to the next base.
I was surprised to find that Ernie Lombardi stole 8 bases in his career, including 1 in each of his 33, 34 & 35 year old seasons. Unfortunately it appears that the National League does have caught stealing numbers during the years that he played. I don’t think that he harbored any illusions as to his prowess on the basepaths but I’d be curious to see how often he tried to steal.
And speaking of prowess on the basepaths, I never saw Cecil Fielder try to steal a base, successfully or otherwise, but I did see him advance to 3rd base (from 2nd) on a deep fly to center field in old Tiger Stadium. The phrase “continental drift” comes to mind.
Hartvig–I wonder whether any of those Lombardi attempts were parts of double steals?
Lombardi’s first SB, as a Brooklyn Robin in his 15th career game, was the tail end of a double steal. His last, as a Giant in 1943, can’t be determined, because there is no play-by-play record. The other six were all straight steals of second. In 1933, an errant throw sent him to third after the steal, but he was thrown out there. In 1942, two errant throws allowed him to score all the way from first.
Although there are no league CS figures for Lombardi’s career, game logs indicate he was thrown out nine times.
Lombardi’s 1943 steal as a Giant on 7-10 was the only stolen base of that game, so it was a straight steal.
Why didn’t I think of that? Nice!
Hartvig,
No idea, but, Ernie was probably just slow. Same for Fielder. Boone? He just routinely made bad decisions on the base paths. Once again, just the eye test…..
I’d like to see this, especially for the group’s reasoning. I’m currently drafting a piece for 3Quarks that should be up Monday January 7th which looks at voting trends and rationales. Y’all are the most thoughtful bunch I can find.
“Many expert mathematicians have adopted the theory: 16 > 14.”
I laughed so loud at this that I woke up my dog
Having advocated for nsb and Hartvig’s call for a HoF discussion here, I feel I should contribute something other than caught-stealing arcana to the bottom of this string. I’m not ready with a ballot, but Mike L is interested in our reasoning, so I thought I’d list a few criteria (and prejudices) that this HoF ballot seems to call on.
1. What to do with PED users? In the past I’ve tended to adhere to the viewpoint that while all PED users are significantly flawed, there’s a difference between the all-synthetic stars, like Sosa, and those whose PED use exaggerated natural greatness, like Clemens and Bonds. I think that’s a reasonable point of view. But I also feel that Joe Morgan is right to point to the way that PED users have dimmed the light of legitimate stars, and that applies to those straight arrows whose HoF cases may be handicapped by their performances being rated in the context of the era’s distortions. Would Schilling and Moose still be outside if the statistical context for their assessment was purged of all PED consequences? What is the legitimacy in keeping Larry Walker on the sidelines because he made terrific use of home park conditions if we play loose on PED-scale cheating? If Clemens and Bonds were never inducted into the Hall, it would be a shame, but the causes of the shame would be Clemens and Bonds, not the voters. Hall membership is not part of the record book. It’s just a symbol, and it’s the fans and voters who get to configure the character of that symbol, not the players or the stats. Hall exclusion does not change the records: Clemens and Bonds will still be near or at the top of the leaderboards. That may be enough: who knows how much of even that record-book enshrinement they actually deserve? Both were undoubtedly true stars, but what are they doing next to Walter Johnson and Babe Ruth if they really should be in a class with Bob Gibson and Frank Robinson? Isn’t that inflated association reward enough for bad conduct? I’m ok if lack of Hall enshrinement provides a balance, and my current thinking is that I wouldn’t put them on my ballot if I had a real one.
2. I think I’m a “Small Hall” kind of guy (I’m only 5’6″). But what does that mean? Mike L linked us to an actual voter named David Borges whose idea of Small Hall was one that stressed “fame”: the attraction of superstar status (hence no bland Thomes). That’s not the kind of Small Hall I mean. But one characteristic of my Small Hall is that it basically excludes supporting role players: DHs and relief pitchers, or, more accurately, allows in only the very best ever in those roles, if they seem vastly larger than the limits of those roles: players like The Big Hurt and Mariano, and future players who exceed them. Of course, the DH issue is modified by the question of how much of a player’s career was played as DH, so a low-percentage DH like Paul Molitor would survive as primarily a position player. However, Edgar Martinez and David Ortiz would not. For a strong majority of their games, those two players spent about 80% of the games or more sitting in the dugout or clubhouse, and fielding skills dropped from their concern. For me, it takes more than excellence in the remainder to overcome that: it requires best-ever status. But once DHs and RPs begin to populate the Hall, is it fair to keep out candidates who clearly exceed the bar established by real voters and the past candidates they have voted in? For DHs, it’s early days yet, and I’m happy to take Molitor (a low-percentage DH player) and Thomas as the standards. But what about RP candidates who exceed players like Sutter and Fingers, admitted at a time before we had a glimpse of Rivera-level possibilities? . . . Which brings me to Trevor Hoffman.
I’ve assumed that Hoffman would never be on my pretend ballot, but Chris Bodig, who apparently started as a Hoffman skeptic, ran some very interesting numbers and wound up making a persuasive case for Hoffman’s superiority to every RP apart from Mariano — the obvious Gold Standard consensus RP inductee (although who knows: he may look like a mistake in a decade . . .). In fact, in two critical stats — inherited runners scoring and success rate in challenging save situations — Hoffman’s record is superior to Rivera’s. In terms of WPA, Hoffman’s total in that counting stat exceeds more than half of the starting pitchers in the Hall, despite his having pitched only a fraction of the innings. Overall, Hoffman is well behind Rivera, but he seems well ahead of the firemen/closers already in the Hall (though Eck and Smoltz, and to some degree Wilhelm, are not in as pure RPs). I don’t know now how I’d vote on Hoffman — I’d like to vote no, but after looking at Bodig’s stats it’s not easy anymore — but I’m more set than ever to advocate against any DH candidates who can’t match up to Thomas, because the RP situation seems to me a cautionary tale.
Those are some of the arguments about HoF ballot principles I’ve been having with myself.
I’m not sure why an embedded link to Bodig’s discussion of Hoffman didn’t show up in the comment above, I’ll try to remedy that Here.
Thanks for sharing my site, e pluribus munu. Much appreciated.
You’re very welcome, Chris. I appreciate your work, and I’m glad to see that you’ve checked out HHS.
If you haven’t already done so under a screen name in the past, you might consider participating in our HoF-related Circle of Greats project, which will recommence right after the Hall vote is announced in January. The project is explained in its original December 2012 proposal, and has been running ever since, 124 rounds so far, generating the current CoG membership.
sounds like fun, though seems actually harder than voting for the real Hall. Happy New Year!
Yeah, but you tend to get a LOT less snarky criticism about your vote.
We’re generally a pretty civil bunch around here.
This is very good, and definitely part of what I’m looking to cover. BTW I’ve been looking at the reported vote data coming in and there are some really interesting trends
More thoughts on the HoF ballot, and the intersection of principles and the real world. In an earlier post, I wrote about how my deep-seated reluctance, on principle, to vote for a closer like Trevor Hoffman had been challenged by some specific arguments concerning the quality of his performance and his clear superiority to already-enshrined closers like Sutter and Fingers. I’d still be a reluctant vote for Hoffman, but in the meantime I’m having a problem in the other direction with Fred McGriff.
I want to vote for McGriff. I don’t believe HoF voting should be strategic, so I would have no problem voting for him despite the fact that it’s now clear he will not be enshrined this year, or in any BBWAA vote. I can afford to “waste” a slot on an imaginary ballot, and I think I’d do the same if it were a real ballot. McGriff represents, in a number of respects, exactly the kind of player I’d like to see rewarded with Hall membership. The primary respect in which this is so is that McGriff probably suffers more than any other player for having remained straight during the PED years. While Bonds and McGwire were puffing up their home run numbers to astounding heights, McGriff was plodding along with season after season of solid but unspectacular numbers in the 30s. In the pre-PED era, that was enough to bag him two HR titles, but he was left in the dust when 35-HR years became half the top total on the leaderboard. In the end, McGriff hit 493 home runs – a terrific total that only a very few contemporary straight players (Jr., Hurt, Pujols, Thome) were able to surpass by any significant margin. That’s the stuff I’d like to see in the Hall.
There are other features of McGriff’s resume that make me want to support him: productive longevity, the handicap of playing most of his career for mediocre teams, his solid post-season record in the five-year window of opportunity his time in Atlanta provided. I’d really like to vote for McGriff, and enthusiastically too.
My problem is simple: I don’t think he was quite good enough. He provided solid hitting with a fine, honest HR anchor, but his overall numbers simply don’t seem to me to be HoF quality, even if the PED-saturated environment is recognized. McGriff played a low-skill position and his stats suggest he played it with low skill. He was an indifferent base runner. His hit and non-HR XBH totals are modest. His very ordinary WPA total suggests no hidden contributions.
McGriff’s OBP, SLG, and OPS all track very closely with Eddie Mathews, and maybe that’s the way to look at McGriff, since Mathews produced such similar numbers in a non-PED context – maybe we could adjust McGriff’s OPS+ up about 10 points on that basis, to match Mathews’. But Mathews traded a slightly lower batting average for a somewhat higher HR rate, and, more significantly, Mathews had a true peak, where McGriff’s peak was more of a crest: a nicely wooded crest with some fine shrubbery, but not one that rises far above more ordinary hills. And most important: Mathews was a strong fielder at a critical infield position – the first true power-hitting third baseman with solid hot-corner skills – a dimension that sets him completely apart from McGriff.
If you look at WAR, JAWS, and the HoF index measures, McGriff comes up in each one as precisely borderline or just short of borderline. Put them together and that’s where I think he actually is – just short of borderline. The 493 legitimate HRs seem to me basically the only strong element of his case. As is frequently noted, 493 is Lou Gehrig’s number too. But Gehrig also generated 679 other extra base hits, to McGriff’s 465, and Gerig did it in 750 fewer ABs: to hang great weight on the common HR number really just leads to the case collapsing.
So although a vote for McGriff while leaving Bonds, Ramirez & Co. off my ballot would feel deeply satisfying, I’m afraid it wouldn’t be honest.
McGriff has been on my radar since he became eligible as well. And as someone who thinks it appropriate to penalize players who did use PED’s- I would vote for Bonds & Clemens because I think they did enough to qualify without them but not for someone like McGwire or Sosa- I’ve always struggled with how to adjust for someone from whom there is no evidence of having used PED’s but comes close to qualifying like Crime Dog. You’ve laid out some pretty compelling reasons as to why he still falls short.
Another argument against his candidacy is John Olerud who was an exact contemporary- he even took McGriff’s place in Toronto after he was traded. Even tho he had a better peak than McGriff he received exactly 4 votes in his only year of eligibility. Neither would be an awful selection but if push came to shove I’d vote for Olerud over McGriff and I’m not there yet nor am I leaning in that direction.
They’ll have to settle for the Hall of Very Good with guys like Will Clark, Norm Cash & Gil Hodges.
Hartvig, If I recall, you’ve told us live out in the northern plains, where it’s about 20 below now, and it must have been about 4am when you wrote, but you’ve nevertheless provided the first HHS post of 2018 and our first project: McGriff and Olerud: compare and contrast. . . . Stay warm, and Happy New Year!
John Olerud. It strikes me that while Olerud and McGriff were approximate contemporaries, they weren’t very similar in terms of their attributes or the patterns of their careers. Olerud’s career stats are boosted by his two best seasons, widely spaced, and his apparent defensive prowess. McGriff had a run of four or five good seasons early and afterwards was a lesser player, with a huge negative hit on his WAR for his poor fielding.
A player whose career similarity to Olerud’s isn’t noted in the similarity ratings for either player is Mickey Vernon, an admitted favorite of mine, but all the same I think it’s worth noting that, like Olerud, Vernon had a pair of widely spaced, outsized seasons in both of which he won batting titles (Olerud had one and a second place finish). Both players had ups and downs, Vernon’s more pronounced, both hit numerous doubles, and Vernon, trapped for much of his career in cavernous Griffith stadium, produced 120 triples to go with his 172 HRs. Olerud in a different era had 13 triples and 255 HRs, but I suggest that they were similar hitters. Convert half Vernon’s triples to HRS and you might get a better picture.
Olerud took more walks, but he didn’t really score more runs when you consider that he played for far more good teams than Vernon, with far more teammates to drive him in. Vernon was a fast runner and Olerud wasn’t, suggesting to me that, despite the walks, Vernon was possibly more adept at creating runs.
I don’t understand the fielding plus that Olerud receives, his -2.0 dWAR translating into a 9.9 increase in his overall WAR. Vernon gets a -13.3 dWAR, which I assume has something to do with the number of errors he committed. What it doesn’t account for is that he ranks first all time in double plays for a first baseman,finished in the top three in assists nine times, putouts ten times, double plays eleven times, range factor eight times. Olerud’s rankings, save the errors, are similar given that he played in a league with far more teams.
In his age 28 season, after two years off for WWII, Vernon had a powerhouse season in which he led the AL in doubles and BA. He was paid $9000. Olerud in his age 24 season led the league in doubles and BA and was paid $1,562,500.
What a sharp comparison! Like you, nsb, I liked Vernon as a player, but this never would have occurred to me and it works very well. The parallel between Olerud and Vernon isn’t exact, but in the real world their profiles are remarkably close.
There are some counter-intuitive aspects to Vernon’s record in Griffith Stadium. For one, although Griffith severely depressed offense, the effect should have been much more profound for right-handed hitters than for a lefty like Vernon, since the left field line distance was in most years over 400′, while in right it was in the 320s. Moreover, when it comes to triples, Vernon hit a high number everywhere: 66 of his 120 were in Griffith (62 as his home park), but that means his rate in other parks would still have generated 108. I’m not sure Vernon was actually a fast runner — his successful base-stealing years when he was young occurred when the Senators were one of only two MLB teams to stress the running game, and he may simply have learned from coaching how to steal effectively in an era when steals were still something of a surprise. Regardless of his early speed, when he returned from the war, he’d clearly slowed down: his success rate dropped sharply, and after his first trade to Cleveland, he more or less gave up trying to be a base stealer. That he was a savvy base runner, rather than a speedster, would match the fact that his most productive triples years were in his mid-30s. (I don’t recall him as fast, but I saw him when I was little and he was “old.”)
I don’t understand yet the specifics of how dWAR and oWAR combine to generate WAR, but I don’t think there’s anything too odd about Olerud’s mildly negative dWAR leading to a near 10-point rise in WAR over oWAR, and Vernon’s severely negative dWAR resulting in a mild two-point drop. I understand even less about dWAR per se, and I see your point about how Vernon’s strengths seem unrecognized in that very negative dWAR number. I wonder if anyone on this string who actually gets dWAR would be interested in explaining how this works in Vernon’s case: a single example is a lot more helpful than general rules about how dWAR is constructed.
Despite the general insight of your post, I think you radically overstate the difference in compensation between Vernon in 1946 and Olerud in 1993. Vernon’s $9000 would have been worth $72,000 in 1993 dollars, and Canadian dollars in 1993 were worth so little that people used them to light their cigars. Of course, you might argue that the cigars were Cuban and improved the quality of Canadian life dramatically over America’s, where suffering under the embargo was so bad people smoked Swisher Sweets, but in Vernon’s day any ten-year-old could pick up Cuban cigars at the Five & Dime: life in America was good.
epm: I googled dWAR, it’s really complicated.
It certainly is, Richard. I’ve actually spent more time looking at Fangraphs’ fdWAR, which is based on UZR. I assume I’m the last to know all this, but since I haven’t posted a longwinded comment since last year . . . The concept of UZR, which covers all fielding positions, is pretty close to what Statcast does with outfield plays, but the data seems to be proprietary, aggregated and made available to Fangraphs by Baseball Info Solutions (BIS), which also is the source of key B-R defensive data (Rdrs and Rtot). I think it’s not possible to assess how well BIS is able to reduce individual plays to sorted classifications that allow quantification, or to set general parameters that ensure comparability of data among different parks, in different kinds of defensive arrays, etc. However, I can say with complete confidence that if all the data were available, I’d have no idea what to do with it. I certainly couldn’t critique the methodology if it were spelled out. BIS is a business, and I think we have to assume it can sell its product because it passes some pretty stiff tests with a supremely wonky crowd. However, who can say whether the stiff tests of 2018 will look like kindergarten quizzes in 2028?
Speaking of Statcast, I’ve been writing comments that refer to it without realizing that certain aggregate data is already being made available on MLB.com in a user-friendly but substantively opaque format.
Actually, speaking of overstating things, I made trips to Canada in 1992 and 1994 and the exchange rate was, as I recall, never lower than $.70. I’d gladly take 70% of $1,560,000 over $72,000 myself.
Ahah — so you’re a statistician after all!
NSB & EPM, I don’t know any of the nuts and bolts of how the advanced defensive stats came to the conclusion but what they say is that Olerud is a good fielder at an easy position and Vernon is a borderline average fielder at the same position. If you took out the position bonus/penalty, their dWAR’s would track near the 9.9 for Olerud and -2 for Vernon that you both mention. So in overall WAR they are both getting docked for a nearly identical position penalty (from similar amounts of time at first), but adding in extra WAR for Olerud’s defense (on top of oWAR), and dinging Vernon slightly for his.
I think I got most of the general parts of this from the Joe Posnanski link below (which includes an explanation from Sean Forman about why B-Ref’s oWAR and dWAR both include the position bonus). I buy the argument about how the position bonus is in oWAR (so that it’s defensive stats-free), but it makes it pretty hard to use WAR as intended if you can’t add defense + offense = WAR. I prefer Hall of Stats’ breakdown by runs since it shows all of the components (but I can never remember how to convert them into WAR either).
http://joeposnanski.com/dwar-to-end-all-wars/
The link’s excellent, Kid. Thanks! It explains logically what I knew only by rote from B-R’s statement: that adding oWAR and dWAR to figure WAR would double count the positional adjustment, and helps make the dWAR figure more transparent. The comment section includes some good material as well (not to mention a short, atypically dyspeptic contribution from John Autin, whose comments here were always top quality, regardless of pepticity).
By the way, I have an embarrassing general query. Every reference to WAR, oWAR, dWAR, etc. I’ve encountered has been in text. I’ve never heard anyone pronounce these terms in speech. In my head, I pronounce WAR Double-U-A-R, but oWAR (etc.) as oh-wahr (rhymes with pirate, “O arrgh!” not politician, “Oh, war . . .”). Is there a right reading? I’d hate to be caught sounding ignorant addressing the School Board or being interviewed on national TV.
e p m,
It’s pronounced, “Wins Above Replacement”……
Forgive my skepticism, I mean, to some extent, we’re all stat geeks here; but, what did we ever do before WAR? And, really, shouldn’t we all be suspicious of any statistic that reduces 650 plate appearances, 300+ fielding chances, and ~225 trips on the base paths to one stinking number? We sure seem to be all too willing to court, propose, and marry this woman. I would not be surprised if something else comes along – just like Palmer and Thorne and, eventually, James were over ridden.
By the same token, let me confess my own tendency to consider “RC/27/AIR” (on BR site) to be the most critically important of all statistics. Mea culpa……
Sorry for rambling
Thanks for the clarification, Paul. The pirate in me is crestfallen, a little.
I certainly didn’t mean to promote WAR, oWAR, or dWAR as more than one set of approaches to player evaluation. I don’t know that it will be necessary to replace WAR in the future, but I feel certain that if we don’t, WAR a decade from now will represent something different and more acceptable than what it does today.
I haven’t attended at all to RC/27/AIR, and I don’t know what AIR stands for (assuming we don’t breathe it). A quick look at B-R hasn’t shed light on it. Can you direct me to an explanation of the term and a context where the stat is deployed?
E p m,
Sorry, wasn’t being critical of you…just the animal kingdom’s obsession with WAR.
AIR? Basically, “100” is a par/average run environment calculated over many (all?) seasons. Like, the Toy Cannon got hosed playing in both the 1960’s AND the Astrodome/Dodger Stadium. He has a lower AIR number versus, say, another CF like Hack Wilson (1920’s , Wrigley, Ebbets). Dividing their RC per 27 outs by their AIR sort of levels their accomplishments-kind of like wRC. More leveling than OPS+ which, I believe, gives an equal weight to oba and slug pct.
I hope this helps
I get the general concept of using linear weights instead of OPS, Paul, and it makes sense. But can you tell me where I can find the stats themselves on B-R? I just haven’t spotted them.
If you go to any position player on B-R, there is a tab, “Finders and Advanced Stats”. Hover over that tab; far left will appear, “Batting Advanced Stats”. Click on “Advanced Stats”. Scroll down to “Advanced Batting” and there you will find a treasure of valuable information. The Toy Cannon’s AIR is 91; Hack Wilson is at 108 – roughly 20% higher. Helton is at 122; Larry Walker is at 116….these differences in AIR can be eliminated by dividing RC/27 by AIR.
There is some mention of par being roughly .335 OBA and .400 slugging
Thanks, Paul. I’ve used those tables scores of times and never attended to the AIR column. (I was looking for RC/27/AIR after your earlier post.) Am I right to assume you use RC/G and perform the AIR calculation yourself, player by player?
yes…..no spreadsheets. I would suspect the final number (/AIR) is probably equivalent to differences in wRC between players.
Still, the “favorite toy” on B-R has to be the “neutralzied Run Environment simulator. That also can be found in the “Advanced Stats” page by scrolling further down. You can actually estimate a player’s career scenario (i.e. if you put Dick Allen on the 1965 Phillies for his entire career, you’ll approach his career slash line), and then apply other players to the 1965 Phillies, environment as a means of comparison to Allen. Or, Larry Walker on the 1997 Rockies and put players in that run environment…..
Mike Trout’s career/per 162 G – playing his entire career in a run environment similar to ’97 COLO:
G PA AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI SB BB SO HBP SF BA OBP SLG OPS RC
162 791 645 176 232 44 9 45 145 36 127 153 12 7 .359 .469 .665 1.134 199
yes…..no spreadsheets. I would suspect the final number (/AIR) is probably equivalent to differences in wRC between players.
Still, the “favorite toy” on B-R has to be the “neutralzied Run Environment simulator. That also can be found in the “Advanced Stats” page by scrolling further down. You can actually estimate a player’s career scenario (i.e. if you put Dick Allen on the 1965 Phillies for his entire career, you’ll approach his career slash line), and then apply other players to the 1965 Phillies, environment as a means of comparison to Allen. Or, Larry Walker on the 1997 Rockies and put players in that run environment…..
A thought before we enter into the next round of COG voting
At this site’s peak, we had over 60 people voting.
Last year it was, what, about 25-30.
Lately there seems to be about 10 people regularly contributing (maybe more than that silently observing, dunno.)
…
The COG is, in my oipinion, HHS’s most valuable body of work.
Would the site administrators be willing to put an email out to all the contributors from 3 years ago, letting them know that the COG is gearing up for a new round?
Terrific idea!
The more voices and viewpoints the better.
I can’t help but think that if people were aware that not only was the project still ongoing but that the problems that arose before the changeover had largely been addressed that many would be only too happy to return to the fold.
I like that idea, too, Voomo. My thanks to those of you who contribute frequently. I usually don’t have much to say, but I check in regularly to follow along, and I suspect there are many others who do, too. I’m looking forward to the upcoming COG voting.
Here’s a quiz.
Can anyone get this without looking it up?
…
On Base Percentage Leaders, minimum 4000 PA, 1946-2017:
.482 … Ted Williams
.444 … Barry Bonds
.428 … Joey Votto
.424 … ??????????????????
.421 … Mickey Mantle
.419 … Frank Thomas
.418 … Edgar Martinez
.415 … Stan Musial
.415 … Wade Boggs
.414 … Todd Helton
.411 … Manny Ramirez
.410 … Mike Trout
.409 … Jackie Robinson
.408 … Jeff Bagwell
I’ll guess Ferris Fain.
from 1946-2017, there are only 20 players with 4,000 PA’s who managed a BB/SO ratio of >/= 1.85. However, Fain is one of only two players with a ratio > 3.40 ….. don’t have a subscription for the other guy. Valo? Williams? Musial? Ashburn?
It’s Valo and also Johnny Pesky. (For that one I had to use the PI).
Pesky, yes. Valo just a shade under.
3.46 … Fain
3.41 … Pesky
3.35 … Valo
3.33 … Nellie Fox
3.13 … Musial
2.97 … Ted Williams
2.90 … Dale Mitchell
2.54 … Jackie Robinson
2.10 … Richie Ashburn
Yes. Ferris Fain.
…
.406 … Elmer Valo
.406 … Lance Berkman
.403 … Joe Cunningham
.402 … Jim Thome
.401 … Rickey
.401 … Chipper
.400 … Larry Walker
.400 … Brian Giles
The record for fewest Walks Allowed by a league leader has been set and matched three years in a row, with the 2015-2017 leaders all tallying 79. This detail led me to the opposite, and Nolan Ryan’s 200+ BB efforts.
Here’s a fun bit of errata…
Most IP in a season with more BB than Hits allowed:
299 … Ryan
247 … Bob Turley
247 … Bob Turley (back-to-back years)
242 … Sam Jones
201 … Randy Johnson
196 … Tommy Byrne
158 … Bobby Witt
149 … Roy Golden
144 … Tommy Byrne
143 … Bobby Witt
134 … Tommy Byrne
132 … Ryan
130 … Mickey McDermott
120 … Eric Plunk
110 … Ralph Branca
109 … Mitch Williams (first pure reliever on the list)
96 …. Steve Avery
95 …. Dick Weik
88 …. Mitch Williams
87 …. Carlos Marmol
…
Dick Weik had an extraordinary 10.0 bb/9 in a 200+ inning career that spanned 5 seasons.
Byrne’s 196 inning season was notable in that he gave up 54 more walks than hits. No one else comes close to that.
Doug has given us a terrific new post on the HR explosion of 2017, but I’m going to hope that this string may stay alive to continue discussion of the 2018 HoF candidates (or that a dedicated post on the topic shifts that discussion to a clearer location).
Following up on the idea of discussing the candidates in terms of general issues raised by particular cases, I’d like to comment on the case of Andruw Jones. Jones would not be on my ballot — and it’s now clear that the question isn’t whether he’ll be elected this year, but whether he’ll be eligible next year (he’s at 5.5% on Ryan Thibodaux’s HoF tracker) — but I began by thinking he well might be, and I think his case highlights a particular issue: Does being the very best in an important aspect of the game in itself make the case for the HoF?
Advanced stats support the argument that Jones was the best defensive center fielder in baseball history, and I’m prepared to accept that this is so. Some Jones voters who have explained their public votes have cited his fielding as the main explanation for their choice (“in the conversation for best ever”; “10 consecutive GGs”; etc.). A secondary explanation is the desire to keep Jones’s candidacy alive for 2019. I think the first argument is important.
Assuming that HHS readers will be familiar with Jones’s basic dWAR record on B-R, I want to pick out these features:
1) From 1997-2007, Jones averaged about 2.4 dWAR per year, a very high number for a very significant period.
2) His two peak years (’98-99) are simply terrific for center field, 3.9 and 3.8.
3) B-R rates CF as what I’d call a mid-range critical position (C & SS are far more critical, but CF ranks with 2B and 3B).
4) For the remaining six seasons of Jones’s career, including his last five, his dWAR was never positive, and totaled -2.2.
5) Jones’s oWAR over the 11 seasons varied, but averaged a solid 3.4; not much good can be said of the other 6 seasons.
Obviously, Jones’s HoF case rests on the Wow!-factor of his two-year defensive peak, the historic level of his 11-year peak (and what we all remember seeing of it personally), and solidly above-average offense overall during the 11-year peak, including a brief eruption of big home run seasons (51 and 41) in 2005-6 (balanced a bit by below-average years 1 and 11).
Jones’s case seems to me roughly parallel in form to that of a lesser player who did much better in HoF voting: Maury Wills, whose support built to 40% over four voting years before fading. Like Jones, Wills was a “best ever” candidate. During the first 40+ years of the lively ball era, no one stole more than 61 bases in a season until Wills broke the mold with (Wow!) 104 in 1962, adding a 94 SB season a few years later. While OPS+ and WAR don’t treat him very kindly, Wills maintained solid batting averages during the pitching era of the mid-1960s, and at the time this seemed to be a strong offensive record for a SS good enough to net a couple of GGs (dWAR treats him decently).
I’m not sure why Wills’s case collapsed after 1981. My guess is that there were two major factors. First, Lou Brock and Rickey Henderson illustrated that while Wills’s SB totals seemed superhuman, it turned out that superman was not unique. Second, Wills had a disastrous experience as a manager in 1980-81, which brought his character into question and dampened enthusiasm for his case. (Rising support for a better balanced SS speedster, Luis Aparicio, probably contributed too.) These factors may have highlighted the fact that absent Wills’s best SB years, HoF quality was absent, and those SB years were too narrow a base for a hitter and fielder who, despite some other areas of strength, was not outstanding. (Ironically, Brock, a substandard electee, slipped into the Hall on the first ballot despite the fact that Henderson was just then illustrating for voters what a truly Hallworthy Brock would have looked like.)
I think Jones’s case may resemble this in both respects. While no player has yet come along to top Jones’s 11-year fielding record in CF, comparison with a non-star like Juan Lagares may bring Jones’s dWAR into perspective. Lagares has thus far only 1770 PA in his brief career as a sometime regular with the Mets, and he’s garnered 9.9 dWAR in that stretch. If you look at Andruw’s two-year peak of 1998-99 and add his strong 2000 season, you get 10.3 dWAR in 2039 PA — Lagares is actually piling up dWAR at a faster rate. (In fact, although I haven’t done a true search, I notice that Darin Erstad’s 4.2 dWAR as a 2002 center fielder tops any season of Jones’s.) Jones may still have been the best, but perhaps not as super-human as he seemed at the time, and the thought of equivalently fine center fielders in the pipeline seems quite plausible. And, of course, CF is only a mid-level critical position, a bit as SB was only mid-level critical in offensive skills in Wills’s case,.
The aspect of Jones’s case that is comparable to Wills’s managerial disaster is the fact that he completely tanked after age 30, some of which may have been attributable to his allowing himself to put on weight and get out of shape. Jones has some pretty impressive counting stats, such as his 434 HRs, a great total for an outfielder famous for defense. But every HR after 368 came during a period of “compiling” while seriously underperforming as a below-average player.
I think both Jones and Wills are “historic” players who exemplified a significant type of excellence better than anyone else in their era. But in my view that’s actually not in itself a HoF argument, and the threshold for other areas of excellence is still pretty high to make it count for one. Obviously, I’m not arguing anything controversial here, given the 2018 vote to date, but I think it’s worth clarifying just how the counter-argument to the “greatest ever” argument can play out.
And to add a note on the issue of voting strategically to keep Jones’s case alive: For me, there is only one valid reason to vote for a player when the voter doesn’t actually feel sure he’s Hallworthy, and that’s if the voter is convinced the player is likely to be Hallworthy, but just hasn’t pinned down the case in his or her own mind, and feels an honest need for more time while the player is at risk of going off the ballot. (I can also see voting for an at-risk player you’re convinced is worthy, but isn’t in your view among the ten best on the ballot, substituting his name for a shoo-in candidate, because the ultimate outcome at issue concerns an in/out alternative, not a graded ranking.) I don’t feel voters should be voting to save players the “indignity” of a one-and-done ballot history, any more than they should vote to hold back a player from the “honor” of first-year election. But that’s just a personal view about the validity of some voters affecting outcomes of a formally delimited process by responding to extra-procedural narratives that catch their interest.
To your last point, in my earlier comment where I listed my ballot for the HOF, I included Jones.
And my internal reasoning was pretty much spot on with yours: I wanted to see the arguments both pro and con that people made for him. And if I felt that there was a 10th undeniably qualified candidate he wouldn’t have been on my ballot at all. But while I’m leaning towards Guerrero and have serious doubts about Jones neither is a firm yeah or nay at this point and there’s zero chance of Guerrero falling off the ballot. So I voted for Jones to keep the discussion going.
I liked your comparison to Wills. I think a similar case could be me for The King Of The Double Play, Bill Mazeroski. His support grew from 6% in his initial season to 5 years of about 30% before peaking at 42%+ in his final year.
One additional thing that may work against Jones is that not only did his value plummet very quickly but that he had also just signed an enormous free agent contract with the Dodgers and his performance almost single handedly cost them a spot in the post-season. I know there are a lot of teams that have found themselves saddled with terrible free agent contracts but the idea of paying someone $20,000,000+ just to go away has got to leave a questionable taste in some voters mouths.
Well, my HoF “ballot” has ten slots, but I’m not going to fill them all, because there aren’t ten candidates I feel belong in the Hall, partly since I’ve ruled out PED users so summarily for reasons I noted earlier (which eliminates, for me, Bonds, Rocket, Manny, Sammy, and Sheffield). So I’d vote for the following six players:
Chipper
Guerrero
Mussina
Schilling
Thome
Walker
I’ve explained why I passed on Hoffman, McGriff, Andruw, and Martinez. I’d love to help drive Santana’s candidacy — I thought he was terrific — but the mileage just isn’t there. I liked Wagner too, but my argument on Hoffman applies even more strongly to Wagner: that is, on part-time role players, closers and DHs, I think once the category has been regarded as credibly eligible, in view of its limitations the bar — not the ceiling — needs to be set by the best to date: the Marianos and Thomas’s.
There are three candidates I see as viable from a Big Hall perspective: Kent, Rolen, and Vizquel. For me, they’re guys who, to varying degrees, I regret not voting for. They’re clearly far better than many in the Hall now, and even some BBWAA electees (viz., Maranville for infielders, and, more broadly, Pennock, Fingers, Sutter . . .), so it’s unfair to keep them out in that respect — changing the rules in mid-stream and all. But a small Hall guy’s gotta vote like a Small Hall guy. I think that Kent’s quality years are ultimately too compressed; that Rolen’s a prince of a third baseman in an era where we finally know what kings look like; and that Vizquel is a carbon copy of Ozzie, but a third carbon (for those old enough to recall what third carbons looked like), better at avoiding balls that could produce errors than turning them into outs. I’ll look forward to revisiting my view of those three cases next year, but among them right now it’s only Kent’s that I keep questioning.
************
The HHS posters who initiated the idea of casting HoF ballots here, nsb and Hartvig, have their lists so far up the string now that I’m going to relist them here, in case others want to join and we end up doing an informal tally:
nsb:
Guerrero
Martinez
Schilling
Ramirez
Walker
C. Jones
Hartvig:
E. Martinez
Clemens
Bonds
Mussina
Schilling
Walker
C. Jones
Thome
Rolen
A Jones
No rules have been instituted saying otherwise, so I’m changing my ballot, on reflection, to drop Ramirez. I’d made my original ballot in a rush during a brain cramp when I’d somehow forgotten his PED use.
Still can’t quite see Mussina for this year. The arguments for A. Jones are interesting, but I’ll pass on him, too, for now.
I’d be interested in knowing why you passed by Thome, nsb. I paused when it came to him, because a third of his record was as a DH, but I felt he’d banked enough as a position player and his totals reached Hall levels after just a couple of DH seasons. Given your vote for Edgar, the DH issue wouldn’t have been a concern for you in the first place, so I’ve been wondering what issue you’ve focused on. Perhaps too many Ks?
My opinion of Thome is clouded by the era, I suppose, in that his batting skills are aligned almost exactly with those that to me are watered down to the point of becoming automatically suspect. Further he played in almost 500 more games than Martinez, but managed just 4.7 more WAR; in spite of his huge number of walks his OBP is .016 below Edgar’s; and yeah, the Ks bother me. Your question made me look at splits for the two, which I hadn’t done, and Martinez was much better with men on and in clutch situations, and against winning teams Martinez was decidedly more effective. Also, Martinez’s career was impacted by injuries that reduced him from being a decent fielding position player to a DH, which makes me, no doubt irrationally, believe that he was cheated out of a better career, but that he overcame adversity to raise his game in spite of difficulty.
I said in my original comment that I thought that my choices were on an approximate par. Dropping Ramirez, the others are still on an approximate par to my no doubt confused mind. Mussina falls somewhat short despite his stats and Thome does even more so, although I can see where others might not think so.
Very thoughtful reasoning, nsb. Thanks for replying.
Just thought I’d chip in my two cents. As epm and nsb already know, I like to know what percentage of base runners a player drives home. From the PI player comparison it shows that, career wise, Martinez drove in 17% of base runners compared to Thome’s 16%. But I like my method whereby I discount all PA in which a batter receives a BB except for the bases loaded situation. In addition I also factor in the batter as a base runner, otherwise HR hitters are punished. Doing that switches around the results. Thome shows up with 12.0% of base runners driven home versus Martinez’s 10.1%. So Thome gets the edge there. But I still don’t know which player I would choose over the other.
I very much enjoy thinking about all these different ways of approaching player evaluation.
I’ve appreciated your work and extensive tables on base runners driven in, Richard. But I have a question about the figures in your note here. Wouldn’t the percentages rise when PA that result in non-RBI BB are eliminated and the batter is considered a base runner? Your message has them dropping for the two players by substantial margins.
If I did not count the batter as a base runner the percentages would increase. Counting the batter as a base runner turns things around because of all the outs he makes with nobody on. Does that make sense?
Ah. Yes. Of course. Thanks, Richard.
Basically what you’re saying, R.C., is that Thome hit a lot more HRs.
That’s right. By the way, nsb, I believe it was either you or epm who originally suggested that I count the batter as a base runner.
I suggested it, Richard, but the thought wasn’t original to me. I read something many years ago — perhaps a Bill James abstract, perhaps by someone else — where the writer was challenging the old idea that for a true measure of a batter’s worth, HR should be subtracted from RBI, because it was double counting. I’d always done that, but the writer changed my mind: Why penalize the guy who drives himself in? What he’s done is, in fact, more valuable than driving in an ordinary baserunner, which advances a runner only 1, 2, or 3 bases, rather than 4. I’d never have thought of that on my own, with my beancounter mentality.
NSB, to an extent, your feeling about Thome is exactly one of the things that Morgan was worried about–that the clean player’s un-juiced accomplishments would be diminished by those of took PEDS. Growing up, when there were only a relative handful of 500 HR hitters, and only 3 above 600, 612 would have been considered outstanding. Now, we’ve got 9 over 600, at least 3 of which are associated with PEDs, and it doesn’t seem that extraordinary. Voting was different 30 years ago–I don’t think Thome would have been first ballot
I think you’re right about Thome probably not being first ballot 30- or at least 35- years ago.
I see a lot of similarities between Thome & Harmon Killebrew.
And while I think that Thome is the better hitter of the two at least part of the .020 point difference in their respective batting averages is due to era & park effects and Killers .256 batting average was a HUGE sticking point when he became eligible just as Eddie Mathews .271 had been a few years before and Ralph Kiner’s .279 a few years before that.
It took Killebrew 4 ballots to make it, 5(!?) for Mathews and 15 for Kiner.
Agree, Hartvig. I think peak Thome was probably a little better than peak Killer, but they were very close. Thome had the higher BA and significantly more doubles. Killer was able to stay on a position (not terribly well) longer, and the DH definitely extended Thome’s career. His last few years he had back problems and really couldn’t take a glove.
Hooray. We get to argue about Larry Walker again.
Players with 400+ Rbat, 40+ Rbaser, and 90+ Rfield:
Bonds
Mays
Aaron
Larry Walker
_____________
Add to the equation 9+ Rdp and Booger stands alone.
He could do it all.
…
And here are his career splits at the Denver ballpark, to acknowledge the most significant reason to consider not voting for him:
.381 / .462 / .710 / 1.172
On Voomo’s last point, that is indeed the reason why, until this year, I haven’t felt Walker was a good Hall candidate. But the analysis that Chris Bodig did of Walker’s Coors numbers changed my mind (it starts about midway down his post, with the section called “The Coors Effect”), and I’m now a strong proponent (maybe stronger than Bodig).
What Bodig shows is that Walker, far from benefiting from Coors like every other member of the Rockies during his era, benefited far, far more:
Walker’s prodigious performance at Coors Field, the way he took advantage of his home ballpark, was so remarkable, so far and above any other player’s home game performance in the history of the sport that, in conjunction with his all-around game, that it makes him worthy of a Hall of Fame plaque. The other Rockies on these lists derived fantastic benefits from Coors but none of them produced like Larry Walker did and it’s not even close.
Bodig finds that Walker’s OPS at Coors while he was with the Rockies was .207 higher than his away-OPS (not a bad number, by the way), which, he notes, is a home/away differential “bigger than any in the history of Major League Baseball by nearly double.” What I think this means is that about 50% of Walker’s “Coors effect” wasn’t Coors, it was Walker-at-Coors. The number inflation the park produced it produced more or less equally for everyone. Walker’s inflated number includes that — and OPS+ and WAR take that into account — but adds an equal amount beyond that is unique to Walker. Are we going to penalize Walker because he turned a hitting advantage into a hitting blowout?
Here’s a comparison. Anyone my age will remember Joe Adcock. In the ’50s, he was part of the Milwaukee Braves powerhouse — a good hitter put in the shade by Mathews and Aaron. He had a fine career: 336 HRs, 30+ WAR, 124 OPS+, but nothing that would justify a Hall vote, and he never got one. He’s famous, though (or used to be), because he was one of very few players to hit 4 home runs in a game. He did this in 1954 at Ebbets Field, and added a double for 18 TB, which was then a new record. Adcock hit like a fool at Ebbets Field — everybody knew this. He played about 70 games there (more or less half a season’s worth) before Walter O’Malley committed his great crime, and in 274 PA in those games Adcock hit 26 home runs. His AB/HR ratio there was 9.6. A career .822 OPS hitter, in Brooklyn that figure was 1.003.
Now, if you put Adcock in Ebbets Field for his home park through his career and run the numbers, he winds up with a career HR number of 346 instead of 336 — but the 346 is just his home field HRs. Add in his away HRs (199 actually, but let’s knock off half the Ebbets Field component of that and make it 186) and he’d have had 532 HRs and retired in 1966 third all-time in that category, two behind Jimmie Foxx. He’d have sailed into the Hall on the first ballot.
Does anyone think there was something illegitimate about Adcock’s numbers in Ebbets Field? Ebbets Field was a hitter’s park, but the park factor in those years was only about 104. Something happened to Adcock when he played there: everything clicked (actually an effect that kicked in only after he’d been playing a few years, and then the numbers are really insane). And if there’s nothing illegitimate about Adcock’s numbers in Brooklyn as a visiting player, why would there be if he’d been in his home park? Sure — apply the “hitter’s park” discount of 4% to his home stats, as OPS+ and WAR would do. He’s still going in the Hall.
The difference between Adcock at Ebbets and Walker at Coors is that Ebbets involves a 4% discount and Coors a whopping 28%. But Walker-at-Coors exceeds the norm by, roughly, 56%, and, as with Adcock, park effect doesn’t begin to solve the mystery of why Walker was so terrific in Coors: he just was. And isn’t that what you want in a player: that his finest performance standard be realized in the park where he plays 50% of his games, rather than 10% or less?
Adcock used to be famous for his Ebbets Field record in a good way — it was his particular strength. Take your discount for Walker, as advanced stats do, but what remains is a strength, not a weakness, and I think it’s not right to penalize him for it.
Thus preacheth he to the converted.
Actually, as I pointed out here some years ago, there’s another player with a similar relationship to a home field, Chuck Klein and the Baker Bowl:
Klein first, then Walker:
Games: 581, 597
PAs: 2600, 2501
Runs: 550, 555
Hits: 931, 814
2B: 179, 178
3B: 29, 31
HR: 164, 154
RBI: 595, 521
BA: .395, .381
OBP: .448, .462
SLG: .705, .710
tOPS+: 148, 141
The fiction is that neither Walker nor Klein played well in other parks. Klein had hard times at Crosley and Braves Fields and the Polo Grounds, but at Forbes, Ebbets, Sportsman, and Wrigley he performed well. Similarly, Walker crushed the ball in a couple of places besides Coors and put up good to exceptional numbers elsewhere, notable in Montreal, his home park early on. At Shea and the Astrodome, he failed miserably.
For what it’s worth, Ted Williams batted 68 points below his lifetime average at Cleveland Stadium and 58 below at Comiskey. Despite the short porch he didn’t do anything special at Yankee Stadium, but his lifetime BA at Sportsman was .399. If only he could have been a Brown.
Klein’s an excellent comparator, nsb; very well chosen! I do recall your mentioning this in the past. (Bodig makes the comparison as well in his post, even including a diagram of the Baker Bowl.)
I’ve never seen the claim that Klein played poorly in other parks, though I can imagine that a sloppy writer could make it. What I have seen is the claim that Klein’s amazing numbers in his first five seasons as a regular (with a near-Troutian off-the-mark OPS+ of 161 for those first five full seasons), 1929-33, were largely the product of the “Baker Bowl Effect.” This idea is supported by the fact that when he was traded to the Cubs for the ’34 season, his amazingness was immediately amazingly transformed into verygoodness, that is, a 129 OPS+ for his two-plus years with the Cubs. For contemporary fans, who looked first at batting average, that meant a change from a .359 BA over five seasons (with an OPS of 1.050) to .297 (.863) — quite a drop. Returning to the Baker Bowl, his BA went back up to .316, but midway through the 1938 season, the Phillies moved out of the Baker Bowl and Klein’s year was awful (BA .247) — the shift to Shibe Park didn’t actually lower his batting average, but he became a singles hitter there, with an SA of .340 — way under his old BA. A that’s pretty much the end of Klein’s story.
Like Coors, the Baker Bowl Effect affected everyone. The Phillie home away splits are Coors-like: e.g. (for BA, which, again, is what people then looked at first), 1929: .340/.277; 1930: .344/.286; 1931: .303/.256; 1932: .333/.250; 1933: .351/.303.
Here’s how Klein’s H/A BA splits stacked up against his team’s during those halcyon years (the team’s differential is listed first, then Klein’s:
1929: +.063 … +.070
1930: +.058 … +.105
1931: +.047 … +.132
1932: +.083 … +.157
1933: +.048 … +.187
So we see a steadily growing effect of Klein doing what Walker did: on top of the “Baker Bowl Effect” he built his own “Klein-at-the-Baker-Bowl” super-effect.
The story of Klein’s sudden deKlein in 1934-35 is complicated by the fact that he suffered a serious injury in late May that he tried to play through, and so aggravated. He was never the same player again. Through the day of the injury, Klein’s line with the Cubs in 1934 was .329/.404/.652 — quite Kleinian — but for the remainder of the season he was .285/.353/.430. The argument is that it wasn’t the shift from the Baker Bowl that spelled Klein’s downfall, it was the injury.
There’s certainly truth to that part of the story, but if you look at Klein’s numbers in the Baker Bowl vs. Wrigley over the 1934-35 seasons, the Baker Bowl Effect is still there for Klein: his BA/SA in Philadelphia were .344/.678, while in Chicago they were .279/.500 (Klein also hit 8 HRs in just 22 Baker Bowl games in that period, vs. 20 in 109 games in Wrigley — prorated to a 154-game season, that would be 56 in the Bowl vs. 28 in Chicago). So it’s easy to see why fans saw Klein as a one-park wonder. Although the stats are more even in 1936, when Klein returned to the Phillies mid-season, in 1937, his last full year in the Baker Bowl, the effect is back in full force: Klein’s H/A BA split is .383/.268, with 13 of his 15 HRs coming in the Baker Bowl.
So while it’s true that Klein hit well in Sportsman’s Park (.320, OPS .943) and Ebbets Field (.315. OPS .936), in the context of the inflated hitting stats of the era, those were not exceptional numbers, and his career batting average of .277 away from the Baker Bowl wouldn’t ever attract Hall votes: if you eliminate the 125 PAs of Klein’s last four years as a bit player, the average BA for the entire NL (including pitchers) from 1928-1940, Klein’s career years, was .277. Batting average may not be the best of stats, but it’s what shaped Klein’s reputation more than any other stat, and in those terms, outside the Baker Bowl Klein was actually a below-average position player in terms of batting average. . . . That’s not the way you’d characterize his Baker Bowl average: .395.
Basically, when people looked at Baker-Bowl-Klein they saw a .400-hitting superhero, with a HR every 14 at bats; everywhere else they saw a workaday .275 hitter, with one HR every 30 at bats. It’s not surprising this shaped his reputation.
But still, he’s in the Hall.
E P M,
Regarding Klein,
1929: +.063 … +.070
1930: +.058 … +.105
1931: +.047 … +.132
1932: +.083 … +.157
1933: +.048 … +.187
“So we see a steadily growing effect of Klein doing what Walker did: on top of the “Baker Bowl Effect” he built his own “Klein-at-the-Baker-Bowl” super-effect.”
Or, perhaps, the Phillies’ lineup just got less left-handed and their production shrunk? Here are some pretty fair LH sluggers and their Baker Bowl numbers:
Mel Ott 557 PA .415/.508/.774 weighted at 168 versus his other ballparks
Herman 430 PA .416/.478/.665 weighted at 150
Bottomley 585 PA .376/.430/.652 weighted at 147
FWIW, I don’t believe Klein or Walker to be Hall of Famers. I’m not going to get into another anti-Walker /Coors campaign since I’m a “small Hall” believer anyway and neither of these guys (Klein or Walker) would make the cut:
Chipper Jones- in
Jim Thome- in
Guerrero- in
Schilling- in
Mussina- in
I couldn’t vote for any of the steroid guys – their excessive remuneration will have to suffice. These include, IIRC:
Bonds,
Clemens,
Sosa,
Ramirez,
Sheffield….
But, I am hoping Palmeiro comes back at 53 juiced so much his pituitary gland screams “UNCLE”!!!, just so we can see, once again, that steroids really do work.
Rolen – not in. Absolutely, a Hall of Fame talent but getting run over in the baselines killed the HoF
Edgar – not in. If he had a least played 1,200 games in the field, it might help. But, he didn’t….
Andruw – not in. Plenty of D – not enough “O”
sorry, one more LH batter at Baker Bowl:
O’Doul 842 PA .426/.494/.662 weighted at 144
Good points on Klein and others at the Baker Bowl, Paul.
One difference would be that Klein’s tOPS stretched over 2600 PA, more than all the other four combined.
A more important one would be that for the first three 100% of the time, and for O’Doul about 30%, a trip to the Baker Bowl entailed both shots at the right field fence and a chance to fatten up on the offerings of the world’s worst pitching staff. In Klein’s case that was true only about 4% of the time.
I don’t see the issue here. A good left-handed batter was going to do well at the Baker Bowl in that era, and what do you have? Ott, a borderline inner circle HOFer, thanks to his longevity, Bottomley a solid HOFer, Herman and O’Doul, who had short careers with HOF batting numbers, and Klein, whose productivity was more than decimated by injury halfway through his career—taking ‘decimate’ in its pure meaning, to deplete by 1/10.
So they all put up big numbers in Philly? The world is shocked. Ott, incidentally, batted .220 in Shibe after the move. Klein batter .221.
As to your argument, EPM, that Klein didn’t get to hit against the worst staff in the league, that may not always have been the case, but in 1930 the Phillies were outscored by 101 runs at home, or 1.31 runs per game, meaning that something was obviously happening along those lines.
Someone else who has more time and statistical skill might pick out the stats of opposing batters at Coors during the Walker era to see how he lines up from this perspective.
nsb, You’re right: it was not always the case that during the years Klein was with them the Phillies were the worst staff in the league. In the seasons that Klein played exclusively with Philadelphia during the Baker Bowl years (1928-33, 1937-38), the staff’s average ERA+ rank in an 8-team league was not 8.0. It was 7.5.
During the two seasons Klein spent with the Cubs (1934-35), the Phillie staff average rank was 4.5, and in 1936, which Klein split between the two teams, they ranked 5th.
During the additional period 1923-27, when Sunny Jim was a regular prior to Klein’s arrival (Herman entering in ’26), the Phillie staff’s average rank was far better: it was 7.2.
Of course, the awfulness of Phillie staff was, in circular fashion, partially a function of pitching in the run factory of the Baker Bowl. However, ERA+ should take that into account, and I believe that over the period during which the sluggers Paul cited were feasting on Phillie pitchers in the Baker Bowl, calling them “the world’s worst pitching staff” would not be deemed libelous in civil court.
Once they moved to Shibe Park, everything changed. Over their first eight full seasons there (1939-46) their average league ERA+ rank shot up to 7.1.
n s b , e p m,
My point was that it was the ball park. That’s it. Just like Coors. 300′ to RCF? That’s going to create a problem for any pitching staff. Maybe if Klein had played his whole career in another ballpark (even though I believe most parks were bandboxes back then) or Larry Walker had played in Dodger Stadium or Montreal his whole career and produced in a somewhat similar fashion, I’d be willing to accept his production. But, unfortunately, a long line of Rockies (Galarragga, Ellis Burks, Castilla, Cargo, Bichette, Arenado) would all look like Superman if it weren’t for some degree of skepticism. These Rockies put up 350 total base seasons so routinely it screams of doubt…..I dunno
Paul E:
Have to call you on this, just to clarify. The Baker Bowl notwithstanding, NL ballparks of that era were NOT bandboxes for the most part. They were peculiar, true, but the Polo Grounds, to take one example had foul poles at 279 (L) and 257 (R) and a deep center field of over 475, although the exact distance is disputed. Deep right center was 450, deep left was 455. Crosley field was an irregular pentagon with 339 and 377 foul poles and a 400 foot dead center, but with longer distances to deep left left and right. Forbes Field was an enormous place, 365 and 300 at the foul poles, but the RF barrier shot away almost perpendicularly from home plate to 375 in a very short distance. Left center was 406. Deep left center was 457. Braves Field was 359 and 364 to the poles in 1933, 359 to left center,417 to center 402 to right center. The Braves management were obsessive movers of the fences, sometimes making changes mid-season. Sportsman Park had foul poles at 351 and 310, but the outfield expanded to an enormous center field with distances of 400, 426, 422, 422, and 405 from deep left to deep right.
In the AL Griffith Stadium, Yankee Stadium, Sportsman (again), Shibe, and Comiskey all had huge outfields. The short foul lines at Yankee stadium, like those at the Polo Grounds, were largely delusional, since the barriers shot away at a sharp angle, especially in left field, to a 520 foot center field, shortened to a modest 461 in 1937.
It’s modern parks that are the bandboxes.
It’s true that in some parks the furthest reaches of the outfield were not envisioned as being close in enough to be a factor in play. In the Stadium, the monuments were out in the open in center field, but so far away that fielders weren’t going to crash into them. At the Polo Grounds, in straightaway center, the grass just extended out between the staircases up to the clubhouses. No one was expected to hit a ball that far, and no one did ever hit a home run over the wall in dead center . . . it would have had to carry almost 520 feet. (When the Mets started play, Hank Aaron hit a ball into the bleachers to the side of that lane, and it was headline news — something only done once before. But the Mets being the Mets, about a week later the then-obscure Lou Brock did the same thing.)
Paul, the thrust of Chris Bodig’s analysis of Walker in Coors is that his record there was not like the “supermen” you list. He’s an exception to the Coors effect: his effect is on a bigger scale. By the way, imagining Walker in Montreal all those years after 1994: his slash line there as a visitor during that period was actually: .364/.460/.701 (OPS 1.161), comparable to his record at Coors.
e p m.
At the risk of offending anyone, I can’t buy the Larry Walker for the Hall of Fame story. His career OPS+ is 141 and in only one season, 1992 with the Montreal Expos, did he achieve exactly a 141 OPS+.
If we go to the “advanced stats” tab and neutralize him for a career in that 3.84 runs/game run environment, we get:
.277/.359/.500 26 HR/81 RBI for 162 games – not exactly sending chills down your spine?
I got into a debate with John Autin about Walker and I just couldn’t see, based on his more neutral road numbers, where he’s a Hall of Famer. And, just to let you know , I have no ax to grind over this guy. I don’t believe Dick Allen (favorite player) to be a Hall of Famer nor Scott Rolen (2nd favorite player). I just don’t believe their body of work suffices. By the same token, there are a bunch of guys in the Hall I don’t believe worthy either.
You know how some guys don’t get Jack Morris, I don’t get Walker. Sorry
That’s fair enough, Paul. None of us has to accept arguments that seem unconvincing, based on our own thoughts and what we see as important. You’ve offered well formed arguments of your own. As I wrote earlier, I had not been a Walker partisan until I read Chris Bodig’s analysis, which swung me the other way. Richard has found a flaw in one aspect of Bodig’s argument, and next year, Walker’s penultimate one on the ballot, when I have the energy to revisit Walker’s case fresh, I may wind up swinging back your way.
I never really got Morris either (despite being a fan in the stands). But I could appreciate that there was enough there to motivate some passionate support.
By the way, since you’re talking OPS+, bear in mind that Walker’s career ended in St. Louis, and there, outside of Coors, he still had enough in the tank to produce an OPS+ of 134 at ages 37-38. His career 141 was a solidly consistent one. And there are lots of solid Hall members with a lower figure and without super defense: Reggie, Al Simmons, Billy Williams, Winfield, Yaz . . .
Speaking of Winfield, his neutralized slash line is .289/.359/.483 26 HR/105 RBI. A significant difference with Walker on RBI, but a wash when it comes to the rest, and Winfield was in on the first ballot, with about 85%. No one, I think, sees him as out of place in the Hall. (He’s on the cusp of the CoG.) Of course, Winfield had longevity, but Walker turns out to look a lot better in the field.
Bobby Doerr played all of his home games at Fenway Park and had home/away OPS stats of .929/.716, a differential of .213, which is larger than Walker’s.
It does look to me as though you’ve found a flaw in Chris’s key stat comparison. The envelope on which I did the Baker/other BA stats for Chuck Klein is full so I’m not inclined to follow up, but eyeballing the park stats I see that Klein’s OPS in the Baker Bowl was .210 above his OPS in his next best park (Sportsman), so I think the gap there will dwarf both Walker and Doerr.
Fascinated by your Adcock comparison. When I started researching my Walker piece, my predisposition was that Walker was NOT a Hall of Famer because of the low counting stats and Coors effect. But his career 141 OPS+ kind of bothered me, made me feel like I wasn’t appreciating him enough. And, as you put it, he turned a hitting advantage into a hitting blowout. Like you, I could be turned back the other way.
Thanks, Chris.
A side note, in case you stay with us. One of the problems with HighHeatStats is that comments aren’t numbered and get lost in the sub-threads. When we want to reply to an older post far up the string, some of us just start a fresh post that shows up at the bottom instead of a reply, and note what we’re replying to. Of course this particular string has gotten so out of hand that new posts don’t show up at the bottom without another click. . . . (No one wants to mess with fixing this because the last effort to rework the site resulted in weeks offline and the loss of a lot of our community.)
Hall of Fame commentary and voting:
Curt Schilling
He sustained greatness over a long period, was one of the last complete-game-many-innings guys, and compiled one of the best postseason resumes. Some people knock him on his personality, which I could not possibly care less about. In fact, I like the guy. How about how he dealt with the trolls saying nasty stuff abou this daughter:
https://38pitches.wordpress.com/2015/03/01/the-world-we-live-in-man-has-it-changed/
Mike Mussina
Full-time healthy starter from 23-39. (almost) Never the best pitcher in the league, always very good. 20th in WAR for pitchers in the modern era. 24th in Wins.
Sammy Sosa
30-30 player with exceptional defense, and then… numbers that are hard to fathom, and that we are inclined to dismiss because of the high offense and high drug era. I do not know what to do with Sammy.
Larry Jones
Schmidt, Mathews, Boggs, Beltre, Brett, Chipper
Andruw Jones
HOF caliber peak. Nothing in the tank after age 30. No vote.
Johan Santana
Same comments as Andruw.
Larry Walker
The dude only player more than 143 games ONCE. There’s an arguement against him there. However, on the team where I am GM, we have 4 stud outfielders and everyone gets plenty of rest, so no biggie. I’m not going to spill any more ink on Larry here. I’m going to give him my vote, if for no other reason that I argued for nearly a year to get him into the COG.
Edgar Martinez
I cannot yet vote for a DH. Still old-school on that one, even though I was born in the same year as the DH.
Scott Rolen
Offensive stats comparable to Ron Santo, though Rolen had 800+ fewer PA. Rated as one of the greatest defensive 3B. Vote.
Jim Thome
Played nearly 1600 games as a defensive player before becoming a full-time DH, with 430 HR and a 149 ops+, so I cannot dismiss him as I did Edgar. Though he was not rated as a good fielder. Or runner. And he struck out more than anyone but Reggie. But… 612 (not-suspicious) HRs and a .402 obp? I’ll give him a vote.
Vladimir Guerrero
He could have lingered and compiled, but he did not. I’ll give him a vote.
Manny Ramirez
Career OPS leaders: Ruth, Williams, Gehrig, Bonds, Foxx, Greenberg, Hornsby, Manny. I know it is not that simple, but I am voting for him.
Gary Sheffield
He’s Manny-lite. No vote.
Fred McGriff
1st ballot Hall of Very Good. No vote.
Johnny Damon
1st ballot Hall of Very Good. No vote.
Jeff Kent
The argument for him is that no other 2nd sacker comes close to his HR total. He’s 18th among two baggers in ops+. Drove in a lot of runs while batting behind a guy with a .450+ obp. I’m inclined to not be impressed by Kent, and I am not entirely sure why. Maybe he is one of the few guys whose personaility actually bugged me. No vote.
Jamie Moyer
25 seasons. The all-time leader in home runs allowed. Oldest player in the league in 6 different seasons. I’m voting for Moyer. As a 44-year-old who is sore after two consecutive days of playing pickleball, I’m a sucker for the guys who did it that long..
Omar Visquel
24 seasons. Vote.
Barry Bonds
Yes.
Roger Clemens
Yes.
…
Vote:
Bonds
Clemens
Schilling
Mussina
Chipper
Larry Walker
Scott Rolen
Jim Thome
Vlad
Manny
Moyer
Visquel
…
Well, shoot. That is 12 guys. Gotta drop two. I almost want to drop Rolen and Walker, simply for issues of longevity. But, okay, neither Moyer nor Omar were everyday players after the age of 40, so I’ll let go of the old-guy votes. First 10 studs on the above list.
OK, to make myself clear at the outset. I can’t do the juicers. I realize everyone has to draw their own line on it, I realize there was some contributory negligence from the league, and if I were going to make an exception it would be for Bonds and Clemens, whose careers began prior to serious attention being paid, but I’m not convinced.
Schilling (jackass though he may often be, irrelevant on the field) and Mussina. If you are taking one you take both.
Chipper–obvious “first ballot”
Vlad and Walker–some doubts but HOF that has Rice can have Vlad and Walker.
Thome–no precedent for keeping someone clean with his slugging/OPS out.
That’s it. Not convinced on Hoffman, have doubts about Rolen’s fielding value, and the rest of the non-juicers don’t float my boat enough. Edgar was a very hard call for a no. One of the best hitters I’ve ever seen, but not a long career, and a DH
Jamie Moyer in the HOF? The thought keeps me awake at night in anticipation.
I have a soft spot for guys who go out there every 5th day with nothing to offer but guts and guile and hopefully for them at least, pin-point control.
And the reality is that Moyer’s qualifications for the HOF are pretty similar to Jack Morris’s and he wouldn’t be the worst choice that the BBWAA ever made.
But it ain’t gonna happen.
We have no general buy-in for the HoF ballot discussion here, no deadline, no moderator, and no rules (as nsb indicates). But we do have five ballots in now, so I thought I’d tabulate where those stand:
Chipper 5 [98.2%]
Schilling 5 [66.3%]
Walker 5 [39.6%]
Guerrero 4 [94.1%]
Mussina 4 [73.4%]
Thome 4 [93.5%]
*********
Bonds 2 [66.9%]
Clemens 2 [66.9%]
Martinez 2 [80.5%]
Rolen 2 [10.7%]
Andruw 1 [5.3%]
Manny 1 [26.0%]
Hoffman 0 [78.7%]
The percentages are from
Ryan Thibodaux’s HoF-Tracker site, with a total of 169 votes tabulated (39.9% of eligible voters). I added Hoffman, although he has no support here so far, because it looks as though he has more than he needs in the real world.
epm, wanted to thank you, Voomo, nsb, Richard, Hartvig, Doug, Paul, and everyone else who clocked in. I couldn’t have written this without the back and forth both now and through the Circle of Greats. A very Hall-worthy bunch. http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2018/01/baseball-and-politics-politics-and-baseball.html
Mike L:
This is a penetrating piece. I only wish you had extended it to point out the corollaries in recent political developments, although perhaps, because of the venue, that would be a labor on the order of carrying coals to Newcastle.
The position of the supposed broad-minded, of course, is that your arguments are merely the old “open-the floodgates” alarmism of the reactionary. While most of them deplore, no doubt, both our current president and the PED era, they don’t see what I do, at least, that not all change or variation is of equal value. Some change is good or even vital, some is harmless, some is negative or even poisonous. Some change, too, is transitory, but some change results from the opening of a Pandora’s box-like idea or situation from which there is no return to the status quo ante and the effect is permanently deleterious.
I don’t think baseball will ever recover from the PED era, which coincides, coincidentally, with the fruition of sabermetrics. We’ll never look at the game again the way we did prior to the 1990s.
nsb, thanks for reading and commenting. I made a decision to not go too far with regard to specific political figures (although I was tempted by the richness of the field.). Most of 3Quark’s content isn’t political at all, although a preponderance of the articles that are tend to lean left.
On your Pandora’s box point, I agree entirely. We (one side or the other or both) keep moving the goalposts on what bad behavior is too bad, and each time we do, it gets easier to excuse the next time and the bigger outrage. Eventually, we have no norms to fall back on. In baseball, well, if a dozen juicers make it in eventually, it cheapens the place, but doesn’t change the world. In politics, you are completely correct–there is no return to the status quo.
A lot of fun to read your column, Mike. Very interesting take on the Boston phenomenon — good research that makes for good reading. If I read Thibodaux’s page right, Thome broke out in Boston today, with 5 votes from Globe sportwriters (Clemens and Bonds managed just 2), so maybe they ran some water purifying equipment over the weekend.
Nice to see the link to HHS! Maybe you’ll bring us some new voters for the upcoming CoG rounds.
Thanks epm. All those rounds of Circle of Greats left me with a more detailed sense of how people think/ rationalize their choices when they decide to try to convince others in non-screaming way.
I saw The Globe drop. Interesting that they are talking that tack. The Globe is the most institutionally conservative (not politically) of the New England block–and don’t forget they are owned by Red Sox owner John Henry after the New York Times bungled a purchase of it.
Mike, When I read your first phrase I thought, “What? He must have lost his mind to have been part of the Times Square mob in weather like that!” Then I read on and it turned out you’re still sane. Whew!
Ok, in a day that is rapidly turning irritating, that was funny. There’s no way at all I’d ever go to Times Square on New Years. I’m relieved neither of my children had tried it.
Good stuff. Really good stuff.
I’ll be VERY interested to see how the “Today’s Game” members of the Veterans Committee deal with people like Palmeiro (and eventually McGwire, Sosa, etc). I don’t know what the ratio is of HOF players to veteran writers is on the committee but my gut instinct is that the players would be even LESS likely than writers to forgive players who juiced. I may be wrong but I guess we’ll see.
If you ever comment on politics, I’d love to read it as well
Thanks, Hartvig. If I had to speculate I would think the greatest degree of resentment among the players would be from the top and bottom tiers. Top clean guys got elbowed out of “black ink” leadership boards by users, and had to live with the suspicions that they were also dirty. And the more marginal talents had it worse–they might have been the 24th man on the roster, had a good Spring Training, and got bumped for someone “in the best shape of his life.”
I don’t want to hijack HHS. Doug has my email address, or you can find it in the Guest Columnists section at 3Quarksdaily.com. I write for them every 4th Monday, and I do write about politics. 3Q was kind enough to accommodate me on a baseball one.
Good morning, Hartvig. I did comment on politics (and opera). Thought I’d put it in an old post so as not to interfere with newer conversations.
http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2018/02/how-democrats-escape-the-ariadne-trap.html
This is fun – I’ll play:
Schilling
Mussina
Larry Walker
Edgar Martinez
Manny Ramirez
Vladimir Guerrero
Chipper Jones
Scott Rolen
Jim Thome
Johan Santana
My PED approach: I consider anyone who has apologized or served a penalty, and try to ignore rumour + suspicion; if Clemens and/or Bonds apologized I would vote for them because there’s no doubt about their baseball abilities. I think enough of Manny’s numbers were from talent not from chemistry, too (and he served a punishment).
The first 9 choices were pretty easy, so I only really had one slot for the “bottom of the ballot”. I went with Santana (over A. Jones, Damon, Moyer + Matsui) because he deserves some consideration for that 5+ year peak (2 Cy Youngs, 3x ERA, many innings + many wins, a large haul of WAR/YAR).
I try to resist the impulse to jump into the PED argument, because it feels endless and divisive and something we should have found healthy resolution with decades ago.
But I will indulge the impulse and say this about Barry and Roger:
Everyone lied about it at first. That was the culture. “No, I didn’t do it. Wink wink.”
The difference with those two guys, is that they were hauled into federal court, at which point they had to continue lying or their lives would have been ruined. And now they can’t ever come clean because pretty sure there’s no statute of limitations on perjury vs the fed.
Any number of people could have been singled out and harassed/probed. Hundreds of players, coaches, trainers, GMs, owners, and MLB execs. But we chose to destroy our superstars, because that is what we do in this culture.
Look at Clemens’ face in this court picture. The dude has been punished plenty:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/20/sports/baseball/20clemens.html
Voomo, that’s a good point about Bonds and Clemens and perjury. If I were actually a sportswriter and Hall of Fame voter, I would have to think harder about it. However, since this is just for fun, I don’t like either of them enough to give them a pass for being caught in a lie.
Voomo, I’ve been thinking about your post. If I were Bonds and Clemens, I think I’d be a little PO’d, knowing that MLB had no trouble with my usage at all until it became a pubic PR issue. Then I’m taken to Congress and Court because some grandstanding politicians want to do a dog and pony show and get some publicity.
We have a hard time with superstars. First we idolize them, then we tear them down because they can do things we can’t even dream of.
That being said…I would still be a holdout on voting for them for HOF.
Comment #315:
A quote from Dave Chappelle:
“If the system is corrupt then the people who adhere to the system and are incentivized by that system are not criminals. They are victims, and the system itself must be tried, but because how systems work is so compartmentalized as far as information the only way we can figure out what the system is if everybody says what they did. Tell them how you participated. Because men want to help, they’re just scared.”
This thought process is part of my next 3Quarks, when I shift back to politics. Yet I can’t completely buy it. There are things that are clearly right or wrong. What you want to see is the arc of history bend back towards attempts to get it right. Perhaps coordinated disclosure by Bonds/Clemens/McG would have a cleansing effect, perhaps it would just get drowned out. Maybe the most compelling testimony might come from the average players, or the injured guys desperate to get back on the field.
Chappelle was describing the dynamic that applies to broad social cultures shaped by dramatic and endemic inequities of race or gender. His goal was to suggest how a virtuous revolution in a corrupt culture could take place without degenerating into violence, rebalancing power and correcting inequities without initiating cycles of reaction, resentment, and retribution. I see no parallel with MLB and steroids.
Even on its own terms, the universal victimology argument relies on adoption of a fiction: that “the system” is somehow an agent that can incur guilt, relieving those who benefit of their agency and hence their responsibility: that victimhood is universally distributed among those who benefited and suffered, because all equally experienced a distortion of their natural humanity. Adopting that sort of jury-rigged analysis is justified on pragmatic grounds: agreeing not to closely examine the premises will avoid great social harm, relieve emotional pain, produce enduring benefits, and establish a new ground for normal justice to thrive. The ends may justify the means in South Africa — and they may be warranted as a way to ensure that #MeToo has an enduring and constructive impact (Chappelle’s goal) — but guilt is still ultimately assignable only to human agents and the theory of equally shared victimhood is still ultimately false. Those are not “truths” to be applied to any situation where some people succumb to incentives to do the wrong thing and reap benefits, while others resist them at cost.
Bonds and Clemens — men of great wealth and fame before they cheated — chose to cheat to evade normal career wind-downs, and they walked away with more than $100m each in added income and fraudulent reputations as, “arguably the greatest hitter and pitcher in history” (a phrase I noticed one HoF voter using to justify his ballot). The money’s in the bank; their names are high on the top leaderboards; and the players whose careers were blocked by the aging PED crew or whose stats have no luster lost out on money, success, and fame.
But if Bonds, Clemens, and the others want to pay appropriately huge reparations and authorize measures such as asterisks on their stats and removal from leaderboards, ‘fess up to what they did, listen to the stories of players whose careers they stunted, and ask for their forgiveness in a manner that seems credibly aware and remorseful — a true Baseball Truth and Reconciliation process — I’d be all for responding by voting them into the Hall.
I post that quote not to absolve any individual of responsibility, but to emphasize that two+ decades later, we are still focused on damning individuals, one-by-one, and have not yet collectively found consensus or resolution on what the systemic problem is/was.
And Bud Selig is in the HOF.
The whole thing stinks.
And that’s what makes us mad, is that baseball is one of the only “pure” things we can count on in our society (certainly basketball and football are suspect).
And that purity has been tainted.
And the absolutely pure product of our pure pastime – the numbers – those have been irrevesibly tainted. And so we lob hate-bombs at the guys who stuck us with those numbers.
762, boooooo!
Because if we look at the bigger picture in a sober, adult fashion, we have to conclude that our pure pastime is not, and never was, pure.
Which we already freakin’ knew.
Racism, segregation (baseball being a reflection of the culture-at-large).
Amphetamines (okay because soldiers did it, and supposedly nobody was aware that it is bad for you, which is almost believable, because cigarettes were openly advertised until a generation ago).
…
And now these newfangeld drugs, which make you bigger faster stronger.
Which is somehow bad.
Even though it wasnt exactly illegal.
Or against the rules.
And then it sort of was, but wasn’t tested for.
And everybody was looking the other way.
And a plurailty of players did it, because that was the culture.
And a nation of armchair ballplayers now damns their heros, unwilling to admit that in the same situation they, too, would probably do exactly the same thing.
You’re 35, have done nothing but athletics your whole life, your body is wearing down, all your collegaues and medical advisors say “yeah, take this, you’ll recover from that labrum thing and be better than before. Yeah it is sort of against the rules, but everybody does, Selig doesn’t give a shit, and none of the reporters are going to touch it.”
What would you do?
…
If we are going to reject Bonds, Clemens, et al, we have to be honest and damn the entire sport, our culture, and ourselves. Or just shrug and go, “yeah, we did that, wasn’t the best way to do it, let’s learn from it and do it better.”
Maybe step one is to just shut down the Hall of Fame.
It is an absurd, self-congratulatory system of selective memory.
I recognize a lot of what you describe, Voomo, and I certainly agree that Bud Selig being in the Hall stinks (although I don’t take the baseball-executive component of the Hall seriously).
I do strongly disagree with your all-or-nothing approach that makes no distinctions about degrees of culpability or systemic corruption. No human being or culture is without ethical imperfections; our failure to attain ethical perfection does not condemn the enterprise or negate our ability to see gradations and complexity, and to look for ways to respond accordingly.
The Hall of Fame is not bounded by its walls or by its membership — it’s a bigger idea than that. Every fan learns that Ty Cobb was an outstanding player and a near-psychotic SOB: he’s in the Hall because of the former and in spite of the latter. Every fan learns that Joe Jackson was an outstanding player and a co-conspirator in throwing the ’19 Series: he’s outside the Hall because of the latter and in spite of the former. The in/out toggle of Hall membership sometimes becomes an ongoing way to focus on how baseball is, in its way, a morality play full of gray areas, like real life, and I think any approach that might lead us to think we should give up that corner of baseball drama would be a warning indicator that we might give up on the never-successful attempt at moral life (a strain of thought that I worry seems to be gaining a certain degree of traction in our public life today).
Banning the Black Sox or Pete Rose, admitting Selig and Yawkey, excluding and then admitting Negro League players, opening the gate to Bagwell and Piazza while making Bonds and Clemens wait at the door . . . all these problematic things let us incorporate into a love of baseball the sorts of serious discussions we’re having now. And, believe me, while I’m arguing, at my usual length, against your advocacy of Hall membership for some PED users, I understand and appreciate your point of view, and I considered making it mine in the past. It’s distressing, but there are degrees of validity on both (or all) sides.
The thing is, I’m not even sure that I am advocating for Bonds and Clemens to be in the club.
Because what do they say in their speech?
Anything short of the truth and the whole thing is a sham.
And since they cannot ever tell the truth without federally perjuring themselves, stalemate.
And without them, and all of us, being able to speak the truth as plainly as possible (without injuring those who do), this gray-area of morality will always feel unresolved.
And sure, sometimes these things can’t be fully resolved
(do we give guys who were both in the south 130 years ago a pass for being racist?).
But what irks me is that this one is unresolved because of a societal unwillingness to have anything resembling a mature conversation (other than maybe here at HHS).
Yeah. The Bonds/Clemens induction ceremony, if there ever is one, will be awkward: forced smiles all round for hours.
Over the past fifteen years, I’ve read scores of reports and articles that discussed baseball’s PED era and its fallout in a mature and serious way, and I assume there are hundreds of discussions I haven’t read. Many of these highlight the unfairness of dumping all the blame on PED users without including the management enablers, which is, I think, an important issue in your perspective. The decision to induct Selig into the Hall was widely protested among the relatively small percentage of Americans who see baseball as more than casual entertainment. I think we have had a mature conversation, and it simply turns out that talk doesn’t matter much. (Every time I hear someone say America needs to have “a conversation about race” I want to jump out of my skin: we’ve been having one for sixty years, and in the main progress was only made when some folks left the table and took to the streets. Whoever first said, “Talk is cheap,” said something really valuable.)
Clemens and Bonds can tell the truth without the slightest fear of perjuring themselves. The problem is that they appear to have perjured themselves in the past, actions that they don’t have to answer for legally unless they provide the evidence by telling the truth now. That does mean there would be negative consequences for telling the truth now, but it’s not a catch-22 situation: they did, indeed, lie in a legal/congressional context, and that’s a major league crime. Of course, they’d been put on the spot, but wanting to cover up something you’ve done so you don’t have to face consequences is not an excuse for committing perjury.
As for baseball management covering its collective ass — which I think may be the root of what you’re upset about — there is nothing good to say about it, but it neither exculpates the PED users nor constitutes an indictment of society because it can’t make the execs ‘fess up. MLB Inc. should have been investigated and, perhaps, prosecuted, though I suspect there was probably no actual crime. But they weren’t and that opportunity is not likely to return.
“arguably the greatest hitter and pitcher in history” (a phrase I noticed one HoF voter using to justify his ballot)”
I believe Clemens is second, all-time, in ERA+ (Walter Johnson) amongst hurlers with 4,850+ innings pitched. And, on steroids, Bonds was superior to Ruth in RC/27….which kind of makes him pretty good, too.
I wish there were anonymous surveys sent to former and current players of the era (maybe 1990-present) that asked questions about personal use, estimate of users (Caminiti, “50%’; Canseco, “80%”) , ideas on testing, length of use, etc…. But, yeah, somebody should strap on a set of testicles and admit just what went down
Then again, I must be dreaming
I knew there was a conversation going on somewhere because I could see the comment count creeping up but I couldn’t find it until I finally started scrolling from the bottom & looking to see how long ago the comments were made. And it’s all good stuff and there are aspects of almost everyones statements that I both agree & disagree with but it’s late and I’m tired and therefore I’ll spare you all from my rambling on.
Gotta rest up for the big news tomorrow!
Hartvig, When a string gets this long, I search on “minute.” Anything added in the past 24 hours will show up.
For now, I’ve given up adding comments on the two most recent strings, as we all seem to be waiting for the Hall announcement and the CoG debate to start up. (I can’t wait to begin my campaign for Bill Bergen’s CoG induction!)
I’m a little surprised that Johan hasn’t received more love in the HOF voting so far (less than 2% among the published ballots as of this moment). He had an excellent 5 or 6 year peak and a few very solid seasons on either side of it.
I don’t know if it’s because of his career overlapping with guys like Martinez, Clemens, Maddux & Johnson not to mention Schilling, Smoltz, Glavine & Mussina plus (slightly) lesser-lights such as Brown, Pettitte and Cone. Maybe they don’t think his career was long enough. Maybe they just didn’t have room for him on their ballots.
He had a pretty solid impact for 9 seasons and, according to WAR, was the best pitcher in the league for 3 of the years and the second best in another.
There are plenty of pitchers in the HOF who were never the best pitcher in the league even once.
I think you’re asking the voters to stretch a point pretty far, Hartvig. Career length is absolutely the issue, and Johan’s W-L stats make his career seem even shorter than it was (Hoyt Wilhelm has more wins, and he’s in the Hall as a reliever). Johan’s two closest HoF comparators are Dean and Koufax (putting aside Joss, who’s a special case because of his death and delayed enshrinement, but who would still be more like Dean and Koufax than Santana). Those two have always stood out for the brevity of their careers, captured in low win totals. The scale and nature of their peaks, as perceived at the time, got them in.
Santana’s win total is significantly lower — note that it’s about half of Mussina’s (with more or less the same W-L pct.), who’s also on the ballot and who is having a hard time getting in — and good as Johan was at his peak in terms of advanced stats, the perception of it was absolutely nothing like what people saw with Dean in his prime (with a terrifically colorful championship narrative to top it off) or with Koufax’s unique and spectacular flameout, which involved carrying his team on his back to three pennants and two Series wins. Dean and Koufax earned Ruthian spotlights for their peaks, and voters considered their fame in casting their votes. (Personally, I think Dean was a mistake, but not one I feel bad about.)
I think many people would see the election of Johan, with a record truly less impressive than Koufax and lacking anything like the spark of Diz in ’34 to make it shine beyond its merits, as lowering the threshold for the Hall — even those, like me, who acknowledge that Johan was pitching at Hall levels during his peak years.
I’m not really pushing for his induction but it’s not unusual for someone who was viewed as being among the very best for a even fairly short period to get quite a bit of support for the Hall.
Roger Maris was on the ballot for 15 years and regularly received between a 20 to 40% share of the votes.
Don Mattingly was a great player for 4 years and got as high as 28.2% in his 15 years on the ballot.
Ernie Banks was a 1st ballot HOFer because of 6 terrific years and a bunch of years where he was basically Joe Pepitone without the gawdawful wig.
Lou Boudreau had 10 seasons where he was a real contributor and of the 5 seasons he was among the best in the league, 2 of those were against pretty questionable competition.
Ralph Kiner had a 10-year career, 5 of which I doubt even he most ardent supporters would hesitate to call great.
Until someone convinces me otherwise, I don’t think Santana belongs in the HOF>
And I know all of the guys I listed had a “hook” that sort of drove their candidacies, that made for a good narrative, that painted the picture.
But Johan had 2 Cy Young’s, along with 2 3rds, a 5th & a 7th. He had a pitching “triple crown” (wins, era & strikeouts) and another year where he missed it by 1 win. Three era crowns. Three strikeout crowns.
Voters- meaning the BBWAA- usually find that kind of stuff pretty sexy. It tends to get their attention, give them a story to tell if they want to make the case.
I’m just a little surprised the no one has tried to do so, at least to this point.
I really like Santana so I don’t mean to knock his accomplishments, but maybe this tells us voters are becoming more nuanced in their thinking, at least in comparison to Maris and Mattingly. Maybe this is a good surprise.
As for Banks and Boudreau I think they belong in the Hall and are very different cases from Johan. Heck — we voted them into the CoG!
Kiner was certainly a borderline call, but it’s hard to deny that seven HR championships in your first seven seasons is not just a hook, but a unique and substantive accomplishment, especially when paired with great slash figures (reflecting, as we’re aware of today, a lifetime 149 OPS+). Still, remember: in his first year on the Hall ballot, Kiner received less support than Johan’s getting now.
The average JAWS score for pitchers in the HOF is 62.1 and everyone above that mark is in the Hall except for Clemens, Schilling, Mussina and 1880’s wünderkind Jim McCormick as are the next 30 players below that mark except for a handful of 19th century players, a trio of not-yet-eligibles (Halladay, Kershaw & Greinke) and 4 much discussed COG possibilities- Ferrell, Brown, Rueschel & Tiant. After those 60+ the HOFer’s become fewer and further apart and COGers next to nonexistent, with only Koufax at #88 and Ford at #98 making the grade (maybe Three-Finger Brown at #78 as well- I don’t remember what we decided on him and I’m too tired to look it up.
Santana’s 48.1 score put him at #85, just ahead of Koufax but quite away removed from Rube Waddell at 54.1 in the # 59 spot, who was the lowest scoring COG pitching inductee besides Koufax, Ford and the relievers (& possibly Brown).
So by that measurement he would be a fairly unusual pick for the BBWAA- altho they did choose Dean, Herb Pennock, Bob Lemon and Catfish Hunter, all even further down the list and came close on Jack Morris- and close to unique for the COG voters.
So yeah, his career totals don’t exactly scream HOFer, even using advanced metrics.
But his WAR7 #’s at 44.8(the total WAR in his top 7 seasons) are not just higher than everyone below him except for Koufax, Wilbur Wood & deadball era star Nap Rucker but even a few guys in the COG like Smoltz, Ryan, Glavine & Mussina as well as some voters favorites like Drysdale, Reuschel, Tiant, Lyons and Ruffing. It’s 10 WAR higher than 300-game winner Don Sutton.
I still don’t think I’d vote for him but I think from a peak perspective he’s a pretty viable candidate.
It looks like it’s a moot point for the Hall anyways and someone besides me will have to carry his banner for the COG because there are at least 3 and possibly as many as 5 or 6 pitchers I’d vote for ahead of him.
Time for a tangent.
I was talking with a young computer science friend who has a deep interest in military history but none in baseball, and he asked me to explain WAR. Since I ‘d been trying to keep up with his theoretical work on artificial intelligence, revealing my own lack of the other kind, I was delighted to adopt a tone of authority speaking about linear weights and the mysteries of Rtot. When I paused to check for signs of eye-glazing, he told me why he’d asked. Apparently another young militarily inclined informatics theorist has applied WAR to war, and come up with a military WAR leaderboard (Napoleon far in the vanguard, Robert E. Lee well behind the lines).
Thought HHS folks might find this fun.
This was fun. Any of the Generals a complier?
I’m not sure, though maybe if he’d included Hideyoshi . . . It did seem to me that Alexander got short shrift because he missed the compiling stage.
More thoughtfully, George Meade, who scored major victories against his opponents when they were strong, followed by a string of inconclusive or losing battles, ending up with quick victories against a greatly weakened opponent to compile a 1.673 warWAR after 11 battles, when he’d accumulated 1.417 after just five. (Of course, Grant’s whole strategy of the war in the East was based on the idea of “compilation” — that is, attrition — and Meade was under Grant’s command after his initial breakthrough at Gettysburg.)
(Just for the record no one else cares about, I was wrong about Hideyoshi. He’s there, under his pseudo-surname of Toyotomi, and since his Korean campaigns aren’t counted, presumably because he was “commander-in-chief” rather than battlefield commander, those late stalemate wars don’t make him a compiler.)
Interestingly enough, the author apologizes when someone observes that he is actually using WAA as opposed to WAR. I guess, theoretically speaking, the 48-52 win MLB threshold might be the military equivalent of a corporal? You know, in the event your average general is good for 81 W’s
At first it seemed to me that corporal was more like AA-level; you’d want someone on the brink of a commission. But then I recalled that the last time a corporal was put in charge of an entire national military (although not with a formal military rank that would include him in these WAR calculations), the result was so dramatic that the league had to expand to draw in the most powerful draftee ever in order to curtail a catastrophic streak and ensure that no W would close his career.
Supposedly, the ‘corporal” got a real sense of self from his military experience- and the world paid dearly for it. If there are beings, of any kind, watching from afar as we humans go about our military machinations, I imagine they are shaking their heads. And, we’ve been doing this a long time – despite Dwight David’s warnings.
I wonder where General Custer fits in.
Slightly above Corporal Agarn and Captain Wilton Palmeter
Richard, According to the charts in the article, Custer retired with 0.847 warWAR. At his career peak Custer had accumulated 1.303 warWAR, but his last outing was a disaster start, and since the team could provide no relief, he had to take the hit and go the distance.
Just to make sure my tangent doesn’t inadvertently divert participation in the informal HoF vote project, I’m returning the end of the string to that topic by updating the vote with Hub Kid’s selections and latest figures from Ryan Thibodaux (as of 1/10, 9pm):
With 6 votes in so far (nsb, Harvig, epm, Voomo, Mike L, Hub Kid):
Chipper 6 [98.3%]
Schilling 6 [65.9%]
Walker 6 [39.1%]
Guerrero 5 [94.4%]
Mussina 5 [73.2%]
Thome 5 [93.3%]
*********
Martinez 3 [80.4%]
Rolen 3 [11.2%]
Bonds 2 [65.9%]
Clemens 2 [65.9%]
Andruw 1 [5.0%]
Manny 2 [25.1%]
Johan 1 [1.7%]
Hoffman 0 [78.2%]
(If I’ve missed anyone, please let me know.)
Much more interesting than the vote are the discussions on various candidates, and even without additional votes, I hope those will continue.
I’m also interested in another variation. Pretend steroids never existed–vote just on stats and reputation. Vote two ways, keep to a maximum 10 man ballot for the “juicer” count.
Why don’t you simply send in a “Juicer Ballot,” Mike? Others may or may not follow, but it’ll be interesting either way.
The first question I asked myself when I read your post was, “If I do this and wind up knocking off a legit player from my 10-name Juicer Ballot, should that player have been on my real pretend ballot?”
A quick comment on the results so far:
What’s obvious to me is than the Baseball Writers, despite their supposed new awareness of advanced stats, are still going in large numbers with the narrative they themselves have written. I won’t elaborate, except to point out the disparities here between their votes and the limited HHS turnout re Walker and Hoffman.
It’s interesting that of the BBWAA ballots that we’re aware of so far (178-about 43% of the expected total), the average ballot contains 8.92 names.
If my math is correct, our average ballot contains slightly less than 8 names. The difference looks to be a larger representation of “never PEDS” viewpoint, offset by unanimous consent regarding Hoffman.
Per EPM’s comment, here’s my see no evil “with juicers” ballot:
Bonds, Clemens, Chipper
Thome, Mussina, Schilling (as a note, both Mussina and Schilling are 80 and up BWAR and I’m not finding a lot of 80+eligible non-juicers not in the HOF)
Walker, Manny
I added 3 juicers. Left off Sosa and Sheffield—which actually caused me to question my support for both Vlad and Walker. I think Walker was a superior player to Sheffield, but I’m not sure Vlad is that much better than Sheffield. Sosa, I don’t like his profile—he has lower WAR than the others, a mediocre OBA, a good but not great SP and OPS+
My real imaginary ballot had: Chipper, Guerrero, Mussina, Schilling, Thome, and Walker. If I thought everything on their resumes was on the up and up, I’d want to find room for Bonds, Clemens, Manny, Sheff, and Sosa (if it was all legit, there’s no way I could look at Sammy’s 1998-2003 run and not see him as Hallworthy). That means I’d believe 11 candidates were worthy of election.
Like you, Mike, my two weakest commitments would be to Vlad and Walker, and they would go into a mix with Sosa and Sheff to see which one would get bumped. I suspect it would be Sammy, but to determine that would take me an hour or two, and since I don’t in fact, see the PED guys as eligible candidates, I’d rather not spend that much time and effort pretending that I felt their numbers were meaningful in that way. So I’m only going to go half-way with your idea.
By the way, I think that if you look at the two superstars, Roger and Barry, and consider only their numbers prior to the date of likely PED onset (1997 and 1999/2000), you’ll see that while Bonds was clearly going to be a first-ballot shoo-in for the Hall on the basis of his 1986-98 record alone, Rocket may not quite have been over that threshold with 1984-96 (he was still short of 200 wins), and would still have had some compiling work to do during his decline to get to that level. I think Bonds probably would have finished up Inner Circle, but not a candidate for the Hall’s “Mt. Rushmore” elite, while Rocket would likely have been an ordinary, solid Hall member. Of course, either might have found a different path to buffer the impact of aging — new skills adapted to their declining abilities — and wound up legitimately near the tops of their leaderboards. But they chose not to do that, so now they sit on their respective peaks, but alone, without being part of the “Baseball Valhalla” that old-timey sportswriters loved to conjure up (an image that I always found among the most magnificently off-putting in all literature).
You might very well be right about Clemens. Maybe he was in the “twilight of his career” and maybe he would have had to become a later career Sabathia-type to compile sufficiently. The Hall has Jack Morris–the “twilight” Clemens would have made it in, but been less of a standout.
As much as I tried, I had a hard time reconciling Sosa. I realize this is an unfair way to do this, but here’s his other than five year peak line (I dropped 2003): 6380 PA, 5808 AB, 468BB, 1488H, 317 HR, 962RBI, .256/.311/.474. Give him a 35HR and 100 RBI average season for those five, and you have 492HR, 1462RBI, and the .256/.311/.474. More than half his career walks come in just 1998-2002. And I’m being generous by saying his entire juicing period was those five years.
Sosa is the guy who steps into the stats batters box, and erases all the lines.
FWIW,
Chipper
Thome
Guerrero
Schilling
Mussina
Can’t vote for suspected steroid guys (but would if they were clean or I was blind and deaf to media):
Bonds, Clemens, Sosa, Sheffield, Ramirez
Can’t vote for:
Rolen – Hall of Fame talent – not enough playing time. Too many “baseline” injuries (ha ha)
Walker – I’ll never be convinced Coors Field wasn’t the biggest factor in his over-the-top offensive success
Andruw – plenty of “D”; not enough “O”
Hoffman- I don’t even think he was as good as Sutter, let alone Gossage and Rivera
I knew I’d missed a vote, Paul — I even searched on your name, but now I see you added the original version of this list to a post that began on a different topic and evaded my eye.
This thread is so long, I couldn’t find my earlier post when I searched for it. Maybe the 1984 Thought Police erased it? 🙂
I’m of the “small hall” mindset and, in a year like this with so many “small hall” guys, I’ll go with just the “most worthy” of eligibles
You know what really gets to me? When sportswriters say, “Well, I was against letting the PED guys into the Hall, but once they made that awful decision to let Selig in, how can you keep them out?” (Reading the justifications of the latest voter on the HoF Tracker site set me off on this.) There are a number of reasons that voters, HHS posters, and others have given for voting for PED users that I respect, but the Selig argument is, in my opinion, as compelling as the argument, “The Jones’s gave their boy Bobby Grand Theft Auto, so I think we should stop sticking to our guns and give Billy a copy too.”
For those who have not voted for the PED crew, right or wrong, the issue has concerned their beliefs about integrity. If that’s the case, what are you saying when you make the Selig argument? “The Today’s Game Committee [just who was paid to think up that name?] has no integrity so the Hall of Fame doesn’t need to have any,” or is it that you no longer need integrity (or are tired of pretending you have it)? Alas! The Today’s Game Committee hath murdered integrity. . . . What reasoning justifies such a response? “Billy’s going to hear that the Jones’s gave Bobby Grand Theft Auto and if we don’t give it to him, he’ll say we’re unfair!” “Bobby is the last kid who should have a violent video game, so why shouldn’t all the other kids have a copy?”
If you’re looking for an easy way to cave, you can always find one.
Apologies to the manufacturers of “Grand Theft Auto,” and especially to their lawyers.
Drat — I botched the link. That’s what I get for venting on HHS.
I can see the possibility of some committee, at some time, deciding to do a mass admission. We already have three suspected users in (suspected, not confirmed), in IRod, Bagwell and Piazza. Ortiz (suspected, not confirmed) is going to make it in (the higher levels of New England-based support for Bonds and Clemens–and Manny–has as much to do with Ortiz as it does with the quality of Bonds/Clemens–they need to be out there now accepting PED use so as not to appear hypocritical later.) Then you get the nightmare scenario. A-Rod for sure. Why not Manny? If Manny why not Sosa, and if Sosa why not McGwire? Sheffield is better than many already ensconced HOF, and Raffy has 3000 hits and 500 HRs.
Since discussion seems to be winding down on this long and tortuous string, approaching 300 unnumbered and unindexed comments, maybe it’s time to call for any final votes or comments on HoF ballots, and put that informal project to bed, rather than poking it awake again and again till the actual Hall vote announcement on the 24th. We have seven ballots in now, and given that the real vote on this string, Dr. Doom’s MVP vote, drew eight votes, maybe we’ve reached the limit.
This HoF follow-up was nsb’s idea, so he’d be the one to set a final deadline, if there’s to be one, but perhaps this can serve as a sort of last call before closing time — if anyone would like another round, maybe now’s the time to say so.
Here’s where we stand with our 7 ballots (from nsb, Hartvig, epm, Voomo, Mike, Hub Kid, and Paul), with today’s [1/12] HoF Tracker figures in brackets:
Chipper 7 [98.3%]
Schilling 7 [65.9%]
Walker 6 [39.1%]
Guerrero 6 [94.4%]
Mussina 6 [73.2%]
Thome 6 [93.3%]
*********
Martinez 3 [80.4%]
Rolen 3 [11.2%]
Bonds 2 [65.9%]
Clemens 2 [65.9%]
Andruw 1 [5.0%]
Manny 2 [25.1%]
Johan 1 [1.7%]
Hoffman 0 [78.2%]
As it stands the HHS vote supports election of the six players above the starry line and no others. The outcome is actually pretty clear: it would take at least three more ballots, all negative, to knock Chipper and Schilling off the list, and two for the other would-be nominees. And it would take nine more ballots, all positive, to move Martinez and Rolen above the line.
But even if there’s not much doubt as to the voting outcome, there’s lots left to talk about, if anyone still feels inclined . . . and since nsb has set a precedent that ballots can be revised, fresh arguments could make a difference.
It’s just a means of drawing out discussion, so I’m fine with making, say, Jan 15 at midnight local time a cutoff, although I never view myself as the guy who calls the shots on this sort of thing.
Before we leave the subject, though, I’d like to comment on the contrast between Curt Schilling and Trevor Hoffman, something that too many of the BBWAA voters have apparently failed to examine. Even in traditional black and gray ink terms Schilling makes the HOF cut. Hoffman has barely any ink of either shade. Schilling’s raw stats, 127 ERA+, 80.7 pWAR, 54 WAA, and post-season pitching record (4-1, 2.06 in 4 WS, for instance) make him a formidable candidate by every reckoning, even though he has only 216 wins. Hoffman, no doubt, has good stats for a closer, but I’m just not seeing the dominance one might expect from a player who appears to be strolling into the Hall, and his post-season record is ordinary at best, so it’s still the 602 saves that define him. Schilling fits right in with those pitchers of similar careers who are already in the Hall. Hoffman, in contrast, doesn’t look much like his predecessors, although, admittedly, the role of relief pitcher has evolved. The pitcher in the Hall he most resembles, Rivera, outshines him so greatly that his light appears to be about a 40-watter.
In other words, the BBWAA is doing it again.
Well, even Mariano has to wait 5 years before getting into the Hall. He’ll be there soon enough, and I too am already using him as the standard for HoF closers.
I agree with you, nsb, when it comes to Hoffman, but I had a harder time sticking to that position after reading Chris Bodig’s explanation for why he changed his. He convincingly defines Hoffman by qualifications other than his 602 saves, which Bodig is basically no more impressed by than you or I. Hoffman will almost surely be elected this month, and if I believed those voting for him were doing so on the basis of the data Bodig assembled, rather than on the basis of Hoffman’s save total, I’d feel ok about that outcome, even though I wouldn’t vote that way.
I’m with you on this. I’d never elevate Hoffman over Schilling in this particular debate–nor Hoffman over Mussina (who is also unlikely to get in this time). It seems to me the writers aren’t making a player against player choice as much as they are making a positional one–Hoffman was higher up on the career value for relievers hierarchy than either Schilling or Mussina. But I think the voters are making a mistake,
I noticed an odd stat in Kris Bryant’s 2016 season.
He ground into only 3 DP.
That in itself is a fine number. But I thought it odd that he stole only 8 bases.
…
Since 1946, fewest steals with 650+ PA, 3 GIDP or fewer:
4 … Tom Tresh
5 … Rick Monday
5 … Matt Carpenter
6 … Dick McAuliffe
6 … Lou Whitaker
8 … Don Blasingame
8 … Dick McAuliffe (0 GIDP for the ’68 Tigers)
8 … Akinori Iwamura
8 … Curtis Granderson
8 … Kris Bryant
11 .. Tony Lupien
11 .. Richie Ashburn
11 .. Curtis Granderson
13 .. Dustin Ackley
14 .. Richie Ashburn
15 .. Don Blasingame
18 .. Brady Anderson
Interesting list, Voomo – it took a sharp eye to catch this. And I think Bryant’s season is actually the most anomalous.
Five of those 17 seasons are not like the others. In Ashburn’s two seasons, he was a top-ten base stealer; same for Lupien in his (which actually didn’t fall in your time frame of 1946 on); and for Blasingame, he was top ten once and eleventh in the NL the other. In other words, these guys were stealing a lot of bases in the context of the times. (Blazer was also getting caught a lot: his CS figure precisely matched his SB figure each of those two years, although there were years he did much better).
But Bryant’s season is exceptional among all these, because apart from Bryant, this list is composed entirely of players who batted left (although many threw right, including several who played on the left side of the infield). Monday is a different case because he was a switch hitter, but he still would have batted left most of the time. In other words, all these guys started with a natural advantage in getting to first a step quicker on a ground ball, and many clearly adopted the lefty stance precisely to gain that step.
Bryant, however, is the sole player on the list who batted right, so his very low GDP rate without signs of speed is harder to explain. It does appear that in 2016, Bryant hit a relatively low number of ground balls — his GO/AO ratio of 0.55 is less than half the league average (I don’t know how exceptional that is) — and that may be the reason he was so good at eluding the double play. It certainly wasn’t because he didn’t come up in DP situations: he encountered, in fact, an unusually high number of them.
Since 1946, Right-handed batters, 650+ PA, fewest GIDP:
0 … Biggio (led the league with 744 PA, with 78 opportunities to GIDP)
2 … Cesar Tovar (84 opportunities)
2 … Drew Stubbs (94)
2 … Mookie Betts (103)
3 … Tommy Harper (81)
3 … Raul Mondesi (140)
3 … Alfonso Soriano (100)
3 … Chris Young (114)
3 … Kris Bryant (169 !)
Yeah. 169 looked high. You’d expect about 18 GIDP rather than 3 with that figure. The second highest GIDP season ever belongs to Jim Rice (as well as the first): that year (1985) he managed 35 GIDP with only two more opportunities than Bryant had.
epm: Concerning Bryant’s GO/AO ratio I was unable to find a listing of all the players’ stats but I did find a list for GB/FB ratios for all qualified players from 2002-2017. Bryant’s ratio in 2016 was 0.67 which placed him in 69th place out of 2402 player seasons. That’s in the lowest 3% of all players.
Thanks, Richard. That helps put what Voomo found in clearer perspective. (Where/how did you find the list?)
Voomo had a very high PA requirement (650). If you look at qualifying players (502 PA), there is another case that’s queer: Rob Deer. Deer was, of course, a TTO type of hitter: he rarely put the ball in play, and when he did, it was usually in the air (lifetime, with no data for his first four years, 53% of all in-play balls were flies and liners – most caught, as his .220 BA shows). He was also slow as an eephus pitch, averaging 6 SB per 162 games. Like Bryant, he batted right.
In 1990, Deer had 511 PA, stole 2 bases (while being caught thrice), and became one of only four players ever to have zero GIDP in a qualifying season (the stat is only calculated from 1939). The keys seem to include the facts that he encountered only 87 opportunities to ground into a double play, and, in 1990, his GB/FB ratio was 0.42. If you figure Deer’s expected rate of Ks, BBs, safe hits, fly balls, HBP, etc. over those 87 PA with GIDP opportunities, it leaves only 13 times that Deer would be expected to hit a ground ball that did not result in a hit. Given that scale, and the fact that the actual number might have been lower, perhaps the mystery of zero GIDP for a slow, right-handed regular is not as great as it seems.
Deer’s exceptionally high number of Ks was likely a major contributor to his low GIDP totals (and Deer’s 1155 game career total of GIDP was only two more than Jim Rice’s 1984 total, so 1990 wasn’t that remarkable). It brings to mind Tom Tango’s claim that overall, a strikeout is not more damaging than other ways of making outs, because although it eliminates opportunities for runners to advance (so-called “productive outs”), this is balanced by the fact that it also eliminates the double play.
epm:
I got the list from Fangraphs, placed it into an Excel spreadsheet and sorted the column with the GB/FB ratio.
Thanks, Richard. I don’t really know my way around Fangraphs as well as I should.
Don Blasingame’s career is interesting. Managed 18.9 bWAR with an OPS+ of 79–and his dWAR isn’t particularly extraordinary. Career SP slightly below his OBP. In 1962, he hit .284/.364/.340 with only 9 doubles in 570 PA.
Blasingame had a better reputation than his stats suggest, and he was smart — a good addition to the clubhouse. He made a second career in Japan (as “Bureza”), playing and managing. I think he was the first MLB regular to manage in Japan, and I recall newspaper stories about the high regard in which he was held there.
Blasingame was a rookie the same year as Aparicio, 1956. Aparicio, of course, is reckoned now as a terrible player to have leading off, since his OBP barely crossed the .300 threshold most years, but back then? Anyway, leading off for the Cards 1956-59 Blasingame led the team in scoring 3 times, with a high of 108 in 1957, a figure Little Looie only saw in his dreams, despite all the SBs.
1956 was the year I began listening regularly to the Cardinals games on radio—Harry Caray, Jack Buck, and Joe Garagiola in the booth, back when Caray wasn’t a clown. Blasingame was projected for big things according to them. He started the season at shortstop but went to second after the year’s big trade, Schoendienst for Dark (Trader Frank Lane was the G.M., naturally, so the trade didn’t make a lot of sense.)
On the Cardinal Bench were Hank Sauer, 39, and Walker Cooper, 41. Stan the Man at first, leading the league in RBIs. Wally Moon. Vinegar Bend Mizell. I loved that team.
Looking at the other relievers who played 850+ games, here is how Hoffman (who pitched in 1035) compared in ERA+ and gmLI (game-entering leverage index):
205 / 1.81 … Mariano
187 / 1.65 … Billy Wagner
148 / 1.63 … Francisco Rodriguez (active)
147 / 1.51 … Wilhelm
141 / 1.89 … HOFFMAN
138 / 1.74 … John Franco
135 / 1.72 … Eck (numbers from 1987-)
135 / 1.60 … Tom Gordon (numbers from 1997-)
132 / 1.80 … Lee Smith
132 / 1.62 … Kent Tekulve
131 / 1.55 … Roberto Hernandez
128 / 1.84 … Sparky
126 / 1.84 … Goose
126 / 1.62 … Jesse Orosco
126 / 1.48 … Mike Jackson
125 / 1.33 … Mike Timlin
122 / 1.83 … Reardon
120 / 1.95 … Fingers
120 / 1.38 … Don McMahon
118 / 1.52 … Assenmacher
117 / 1.58 … Dan Plesac
117 / 1.54 … Garber
112 / 1.43 … Mike Stanton
112 / 1.27 … Mike Myers (only 542 IP)
111 / 1.54 … Todd Jones
110 / 1.63 … Liny McDaniel
109 / 1.47 … Arthur Rhodes
109 / 1.42 … Eddie Guardado
102 / 1.29 … David Weathers
101 / 1.18 … Kyle Farnsworth
96 / 1.29 ….. Alan Embree
Billy Wagner had 186 fewer IP than Hoffman, and retired after the age 38 season.
Hoffman, ages 39-42:
114 era+ / 2.4 WAR
I’m guessing that the point of your post, Voomo, apart from assembling a lot of interesting data, is to suggest that Wagner should be rated higher than Hoffman, largely because of his ERA+ and the small value Hoffman created in adding longevity. Maybe he should be rated higher — there’s really no reason to knock Wagner in any way: he was a terrific player and role model (and if I were just rooting as a fan for one or the other, I’d root for Wagner, no contest).
I’m not in favor of adding closers to the Hall unless the case seems overwhelming. (I made this argument before.) Historically, the closer is a fairly new role, and now that we’ve been shown what a truly high-quality closer can do through Mariano’s record, I don’t think it’s a good idea to add others who are significantly less impressive until we see whether Mariano was a one-time exception or a leading indicator. I’d rather leave the decision on Hoffman to the elegantly named Today’s Game Committee, hoping they wait a decade or so before evaluating his case (and Wagner’s). (Looks like I’m going to be disappointed on that one.)
If, however, the issue were to choose between Wagner and Hoffman, I think there’s a good case for Hoffman. Part of it is the gmLI figure you provide (you’ve added a little to Hoffman, I think: I see 1.85, still very high). Chris Bodig’s research shows that what distinguishes Hoffman is the high proportion of high-leverage situations that he successfully handled (not just faced), including what stats normally don’t show, inherited runners stranded. In this he was much better than Wagner — slightly better, even, than Rivera.
Wagner is obviously in a class of his own when it comes to ERA+ (it’s not Mariano’s class, but it’s certainly a very fine one), and easily exceeds Hoffman in that regard. However, Hoffman did pitch 20% more innings, and although your close seems to dismiss them as a matter of end-of-career, low-quality compilation, that’s not quite right. Hoffman’s final four seasons included one that was outstanding (at age 41), one that was solid (age 39), one that was mediocre (age 40), and one that screamed, “Retire right now!” which he did. That last season was so lousy that it disproportionately dragged down Hoffman’s averages (his ERA+ sank from 148 to 141; his gmLI would, in fact, have been 189 without it) — I don’t think it should be allowed to turn the seasons preceding it into three years of mere compilation. Taken together, during his age 39-41 seasons, Hoffman pitched near his career norm (142 ERA+), and I think it’s an error to lump his age 42 season in with them and suggest Hoffman added little value after the age of Wagner’s retirement, and that therefore his relative longevity should be discounted.
But I don’t mean to suggest there’s not also an argument for Wagner over Hoffman. Basically, I think we need more time to assess which argument is stronger, and whether either is so strong that it supports a Hall case. If in a decade or two, we see other long-career closers handling high-leverage situations as well as Hoffman, but Wager remains alone behind Rivera in the 150+ (or 160+) ERA+ category, Wagner may emerge as more exceptional and Hallworthy. If Hoffman remains on top in terms of success rates in high-leverage situations . . . Well, that would be the time to choose one or both for the Hall, in my view. (I think that, in fact, the roles of relief pitchers will continue to morph, and that Wagner and Hoffman may come to seem simply second-best types in a brief period of pure-closer mania, in which case people will probably think that neither really deserved election.)
I think we have our first HOF ballot for any of Manny,Sosa and Sheffield without also seeing a Bonds/Clemens. Marc Katz (I think of the Dayton Daily News) Vlad,Hoffman, Chipper, Edgar, McGriff, Sheffield, Thome, and Vizquel.
BTW, thanks to you all who read the 3Quarks piece. Seen some nice traffic so far.
Hadn’t spotted this, Mike. Thanks. Katz is retired from the Dayton paper now.
Sheffield is a Mitchell Report case for whom I think it’s easy to feel some reasonable doubt, given the nature of his statements about his steroid use (in which he claims both that he was unaware the cream he was receiving from Bonds’s trainer was a steroid, and that the cream was not effective). Perhaps Katz made his decision on that basis.
This is the sort of judgment call that fans and voters are forced to make, and that leads some to argue that there’s no sound basis for distinguishing users from non-users so the issue should just be dropped. It’s certainly a distasteful position for a fan or voter to be in.
I’m with you on the frustration. It’s virtually impossible to be sure you are correct in each one of your conclusions, so all you can do is either throw in the towel, or find some construct that works. Morgan’s letter implies the same problem–he wants to bar test failures, admissions, and appearances on the Mitchell Report, but there’s nothing about “strongly suspects.”
Actually, Katz voted like this last year too, picking Sheffield (and Bagwell), but not the more notorious PED users (and with a somewhat quirky overall set of choices). No explanation on Twitter, and his ballot seems not to have been public in previous years.