This Circle of Greats (COG) vote is not to induct anyone into the Circle. Instead, this round of voting will:
– select three players who will be restored back to the main ballot after having been previously dropped from eligibility
– select seven more players who will initially populate a secondary ballot to be used to supplement the primary COG ballot in future rounds of COG voting.
As with earlier redemption rounds, this is an opportunity for voters to reconsider past candidates who have previously fallen off the regular induction ballots. This redemption round is being conducted prior to the final three rounds of COG balloting for candidates born in 1973.
In this vote you may include on your ballot any major league baseball player who:
– was born before 1973; and
– played a majority of his career games since 1901 or compiled 20 WAR since 1901; and
– has not been elected to the Circle of Greats; and
– is not on the ballot for the 1973 Part 1 COG Balloting also being conducted this week
For this round of voting, you must vote for five (5) and only five players to cast a qualifying ballot. The three players who appear on the most ballots cast will be restored to eligibility for the next round of COG voting. The next seven players, including ties, with the highest number of votes will populate the COG secondary ballot. To assist you with your selections, career stats for the most eligible candidates are provided here.
Unlike prior redemption rounds, only three players will be restored to the ballot, NOT the top 3 and ties. If more than 3 players are tied for the 3 highest vote totals, the tie-breaker process will be to discard ballots, starting with the last ballot cast, until the tie is broken. So, vote early as your ballot could be discarded if it is the last, or among the last, to be cast.
In future COG rounds of balloting, two votes will be conducted:
– one vote to elect to the COG one player from the primary ballot
– one vote to elevate to the primary ballot one player currently on the secondary ballot
Here are the proposed rules concerning the secondary ballot election:
– the player winning the secondary ballot will be restored to the primary ballot for the next round of COG balloting
– players dropping from the primary ballot will now drop to the secondary ballot, and thus become eligible to be restored to the primary ballot in a future COG election
– players appearing on fewer than 10% of the secondary ballots cast will drop from the secondary ballot and will only become COG-eligible again if elected in a future Redemption round
– future redemption rounds will occur when there are three or fewer players on the secondary ballot
The deadline to cast your ballots in this redemption round is Sunday night, February 4th at 11:59PM EST. You can change your votes until 11:59PM EST on Friday night, February 2nd. You can keep track of the vote tally in this redemption round here: COG 2018 Redemption Round Vote Tally.
Thanks for devising a way to address our issues with the CoG, Doug. I’m looking forward to assessing the 342 players you’ve offered us for consideration!
Vote:
Buddy Bell
Stan Coveleski
Andre Dawson
Dennis Eckersley
Don Sutton
Here’s at least a partial list of players who have received some support- to the best of my recollection- in the past who are not in the COG, based on career WAR.
Ted Lyons
Rafael Palmeiro
Red Ruffing
Fred Clarke
Don Sutton
Don Drysdale
Dwight Evans
Buddy Bell
Willie Randolph
Andre Dawson
Reggie Smith
Billy Williams
Vic Willis
Dennis Eckersley
Hal Newhouser
Ken Boyer
Dave Cone
Tommy John
Mark McGwire
Sal Bando
Early Wynn
Stan Coveleski
Jesse Burkett
Jim Bunning
Joe McGinnity
Enos Slaughter
Kirby Puckett
Minnie Minoso
Ted Simmons
Larry Doby
Ralph Kiner
Lou Brock
Dizzy Dean
Satchel Paige
I did some editing, especially after I got past the first 20 or so names, and I have no doubt that I left a few off that someone might feel strongly about. Plus it’s entirely possible that I simply missed someone or that I left them off because I thought they were in the COG but they aren’t or screwed up in some other way so please don’t assume this list is all inclusive. I just thought it might come in handy since we are looking at such a long timeframe.
And only now do I realize that Doug already gave us a link to an even more inclusive list in his article.
Yeah but google spreadsheets are blocked for some of us. Thank you!
Thanks for the list!
A lot of greats there to consider. It will be a few days until I have narrowed down to 5.
My vote:
Ted Lyons
Buddy Bell
Andre Dawson
Jessie Burkett
Ted Simmons
I’m going to put five names into play, so to speak, in spite of the fact that I plan to return to being a commentator, not a voter in the final COG ballots.
These five players are worthy of reconsideration, I think, because they were impact players whose performance, in my estimation, raised them above the impression of their bare statistics. In chronological order:
1) Mordecai Brown. One point of many that could be made: in 12 qualifying seasons he finished in the top ten in ERA, ERA+, and FIP nine times.
2) Ted Lyons. Pitching for a different franchise he would have easily surpassed 300 wins.
3) Minnie Minoso. After Williams and Mantle the best position player in the AL in the 1950s, the first Latin star, the heart of the White Sox batting order during their rejuvenation.
4) Jim Bunning. Finished first or second in strikeouts nine times. Thirteen years in the top ten strikeouts/walks. Frank Lary intimidated the Yanks; Bunning intimidated everybody.
5) Reggie Smith. Extremely underrated impact player. The reason for the Dodger’s rise to the top in 1977-78.
Good catch on Brown. I completely whiffed on him because I thought he had already been elected.
I see I also missed what must be one of the top 4 or 5 vote getters among those not already in- Rick Rueschel.
I’m voting for:
Fred Clarke,
Dwight Evans
Ted Lyons
Satchel Paige
Reggie Smith
I’m not ready to vote yet, but I appreciate nsb’s list, particularly Reggie Smith, whom I might have overlooked otherwise (Brown and Lyons were and are on my radar). And I’m glad Hartvig listed Paige before defaulting to Doug’s list. Hub Kid has picked up on Paige and I’m looking forward to reviving the debate we’ve had on the appropriateness of granting Paige leeway.
mosc recently raised the issue of the intrinsic limits of all the pre-1947 records because of the gap of segregation that they cover up. I think one response to that issue is to waive technical criteria when assessing Paige, whose brief MLB career validated all that was said of him during the era when segregation kept him out of the Majors: e.g., his 165 ERA+ debut at age 41 and 124 career ERA+, ages 41-46. And look at his record in AAA ball at ages 49-51 (ERAs of 1.86, 2.42, 2.95) — the only reason an MLB team wouldn’t have picked him up was because of his age. He was shut out on both ends.
Drysdale
Mordecai Brown
Sheffield
Doby
Fred Clarke
Thanks for doing this, Doug. Here are my five:
1. Don Drysdale – I’ve voted for 106 unique players in COG voting. 101 of them are in, 4 of them are currently on the ballot, and the other is Don Drysdale. I’d like to see him get another shot.
2. Ted Simmons – The best pure catcher we haven’t elected. I think we’re light on catchers, and I think he belongs. We (myself included) need to do a better job of giving a “catcher bonus” when we vote.
3. Rick Reuschel – I’m still very suspicious that like 15% of his WAR came in his one-and-only stellar season. Yet, look at his career – pitchers park on terrible teams with bad defenses – it just makes sense that he was better than the “traditional” numbers say. I’m willing to give him a second look.
4. Andre Dawson – I think the sabermetric crowd has been too cruel to Dawson. They (rightly) denigrate his 1987 MVP and the fact that he got into Cooperstown before the more-deserving Tim Raines. That said, the fact that Raines was more deserving doesn’t make Dawson un-deserving. He probably-could’ve/maybe-should’ve won an MVP more than a half-decade earlier, so the scales seemed to balance a little bit. Again, I think we need to take another look.
5. Ken Boyer – He had as much of a career in only 15 seasons as most of the guys on our current ballot had in 20. Not his fault he was born in 1931 (the greatest birth year ever). Be nice to see him have a second shot.
To your point about Reuschel, he is one of 33 pitchers since 1901 with exactly one 9 WAR season. Half of them (17) had at least one other season of 6.5 WAR and half (including Reuschel) didn’t. So, maybe not that unusual that he would have one season standing out so strongly as his best.
FWIW, Hall of Stats has Reuschel comfortably included with a 137 score.
I posted a version of this in the morning, but I got a message that it was being “moderated,” and it hasn’t posted. I know my messages are often immoderate, but I’m trying again nevertheless . . .
I’m not yet sure of my list of five, but I want to comment on Ted Lyons’ record. When I was young, I thought Lyons’ W-L record of 260-230 was shabby for a Hall of Fame pitcher. I didn’t realize the weight he was carrying: during his 19 years as a regular starter for the White Sox, his .533 percentage contrasted with his teams’ .460.
Lyons lost three years to the War, and in cases like that we usually add some consideration for what a player might have lost. In Lyons’ case, since he went into the military at age 42, we might be tempted to conclude that he really had nothing ahead of him, especially noting that when he returned briefly in 1946, he went 1-4 and then retired.
But that would be deeply misleading. By 1942, Lyons had settled into his patented “Sunday pitcher” role with great effectiveness. From 1939-42 he won between 12 and 14 games every year, completing almost all his games – in fact, in 1942, at age 41, he completed every start and won the ERA title (with an ERA+ of 171). So Lyons left for the War with his momentum strong.
But did he return with anything left? Doesn’t his poor record in 1946 mean that he would have petered out had he stayed in uniform in the War years? It does not. All five games that Lyons pitched in 1946 were complete games, and in none did he allow more than four runs. His four losses were due to two factors: his run support was 1.75/game, and in three of those losses the deciding runs were the unearned products of team errors (none his own). Absent those errors, two of the losses would have been wins and one would have been tied. In fact, Lyons was pitching with the effectiveness he’d shown in 1942, with an ERA+ of 148.
The reason Lyons retired was not because his pitching had deteriorated, but because the team’s performance was so poor that the manager, Jimmy Dykes, resigned, and Lyons accepted an offer of the job. Obviously, it was unrealistic for a 45 year-old starting pitcher to double up as manager, so he retired. While we can’t know how long Lyons would have motored on pitching a low-run complete game every Sunday, it is reasonable to assume that had he been pitching in the years between his nearly identical 1942 and 1946 performances, those intervening years would have looked similar, continuing the 13-win per year rate that he’d steadily compiled the four seasons prior. Lyons would almost certainly have retired as a 300-game winner, with a much higher historical profile than he has today, despite having played his entire 24-year career for a mediocre team that rose as high as third only twice (once with a .500 record).
By the way, Lyons was also a good-hitting pitcher, and if his 4.4 batting WAR are taken into account, his total WAR of 71.6 would match Rafael Palmeiro’s as the highest of any Redemption Round candidate, and, in fact, the highest of any CoG candidate other than Wallace and Dahlen (nor will any new 1973-round players come near that total).
When Satchel Paige was on the CoG ballot in the past, I wrote several posts in support of his candidacy. He stayed on the ballot a while, but it didn’t work out. I’d like to see him get another shot, and I want to lay out the case for him as best I can, starting with the reasons against placing him back on the ballot and giving him another shot.
The case against Paige (as I understand it):
(1) The CoG election process is governed by a set of rules that include criteria of eligibility (ten seasons in the Majors or 20 WAR). Paige’s brief MLB career does not meet those criteria: he played in only six seasons and compiled only a little over 10 WAR.
(2) In his six seasons, Paige pitched only 476 innings – about two seasons worth of IP for a starter, and he was really neither a starter nor a reliever, putting together a small mix of the two roles. As a starter, his career record is a negligible 10-9; as a reliever, he has a total of only 33 saves.
(It’s Point #1 that has had a real impact on Paige’s candidacy here on HHS, but I wanted to get the second point on the table.)
There is no way around the issue of the CoG criteria: Paige doesn’t meet them. Obviously, if he were elected we would be treating him as a special case. What’s special about him is chiefly that he played his prime years in the Negro and Latin leagues because segregated baseball would not admit black players. Others have argued that if we were to make an exception for Paige, we would need to make an exception for Negro League greats generally. That argument has prevailed, but I believe it is incorrect: Paige is a unique case and electing him opens no slippery slope.
The case for Paige:
(1) Among the older Negro League greats who were prevented from realizing their talents in a Major League setting, only Paige lasted long enough to demonstrate whether he could, indeed, excel in the Majors. His record makes it clear that he could. Paige debuted as a 41 year-old rookie. He came up in July, but, not having pitched much or at all earlier that year, he was not given a start till August. He made seven starts: his record was 4-0, with 3 CG and 2 ShO. Overall, he was 6-1 with an ERA+ of 165 (the league leader, Gene Bearden, was at 168 – and Paige surrendered only one unearned run in 72.2 IP; Bearden gave up ten in 229.2). Paige’s performance at the age of 41 represents “proof of concept”: if the question was whether his legendary performance in non-Major leagues over the period 1927-47 translated into MLB excellence, the fact that he could come in cold at age 41 and compile that sort of a record answers that question. This what makes Paige unique among Negro League greats. We know that the two decades of reports of his MLB-level greatness have a basis in fact because it was put to a test that Paige passed.
(2) Paige’s MLB career spanned ages 41 to 46. His career ERA+ was 124. That is, over a career played well past the retirement age of all but a handful of players, Paige pitched at a level 24% better than the average AL pitcher. He compiled WAR of 3.4 and 3.0 in his age 45 and 46 seasons,his final two. His debut was no fluke.
(3) Paige’s MLB career was interrupted in 1950 (age 43): he did not pitch in the Majors. The reason is simple. No one other than Bill Veeck ever hired Paige. As owner of the Indians, Veeck brought Paige to the AL in 1948, but after Veeck was forced to sell the team, Paige was off the roster. Veeck brought Paige back in 1951 for the legendary St. Louis Browns. When Veeck was run out of baseball after the ’53 season, Paige was no longer welcome – if he had been, there’s no reason he could not have pitched in 1954 and beyond. I wrote earlier about Paige’s terrific AAA record in 1956-58, after he’d been out of baseball for three years. The summer he turned 50, he went 11-4 with a 1.86 ERA for the Miami Marlins. Who brought him to Miami? Veeck. No other baseball man would hire Paige. Why not? I don’t actually know. The easy answer is that other owners were convinced he’d turn decrepit the minute he signed a contract. But I think the likelier answer is this: Paige was not like other black players of the post-1947 era. He was as old as some of the owners and his own man. He behaved like a privileged veteran, and was prepared to walk away if he was treated as if anyone were doing him a favor by hiring him – accounts of his behavior are detailed in Veeck – As In Wreck. I believe that apart from Veeck, even MLB owners who were prepared to hire black men were not prepared to deal with a black man like that. It was easier to rely on the excuse that Paige’s youth was bound to run out sometime. (The exception here is, of course, Charlie O., who hired Paige in 1965, long after integration in baseball was settled, as a publicity stunt. Paige was asked to pitch three innings for the KC A’s against the Red Sox. Dalton Jones reached on an error and was caught stealing. Yaz doubled and was stranded. Eight other men made outs, the last seven consecutively. Paige was 59.)
(4) HHS makes the rules for the CoG. We agreed to the criteria for eligibility, and, if we wish to, we can agree to the criteria for an exception if we feel the reasons are compelling. Because Paige is unique, an exception in his case affects no other player. I believe that Paige’s exclusion from the Majors – even after the color barrier was broken and he had proved his excellence – may be the most egregious baseball example of the racist attitudes of the America I grew up in (I won’t speak of today), and I think we’d do well to recognize the damage those attitudes did to baseball and the country by including Paige in the Circle.
Great stuff, epm.
Makes one wonder what other Negro league stars didn’t get a chance because they didn’t have the “right attitude”.
Paige, according to his bio, was great at creating a legend about himself, mixing myth with reality, claiming he kept an accurate record of all his performances, showing some of his jottings to reporters that varied considerably on a second showing, boasting about things that obviously were not true. Independent of his other behavior, this aspect of his character, the bullshitting con man, can hardly have enhanced his likability or credibility.
When I was in graduate school I knew a fellow student who was half genius and half bullshitter, and you never knew until sometime later upon verification if what he said at any given point emanated from the genius or the conman. You simply couldn’t trust him.
What I’m saying is it’s a mistake to turn people into plaster saints, just because they’ve not been treated fairly. Let’s have Satchel as he really was, warts and all. Bill Veeck, no plaster saint himself, understood the man, but it’s not necessarily to anyone else’s discredit—although it may be in specific circumstances—that he put them off.
Who he really was is one of the best pitchers age 40+ ever to play baseball and that hardly came out of nowhere.
Ready to vote.
Paige
Lyons
Brown
Coveleski
R. Smith
Obviously, I feel most strongly about Paige and Lyons, and I won’t repeat why here.
There are lots of very good players on Doug’s list of 342 (which doesn’t even include Paige), but really few that I think are both CoGworthy and who stand a chance of election, based on their track record before.
Brown dropped off the ballot fairly quickly after appearing in the 111th Round. I think Hartvig was initially a strong supporter (I wasn’t), but he questioned Brown’s high number of unearned runs. Having now calculated league UER rates, I think they weren’t actually so high. Coveleski generated no enthusiasm whatever and faded quickly: appearing in the 101st Round, he dropped out after the 102nd.
But comparing Brown (Three Fingered) and Coveleski to the holdovers on the current ballot, they seem quite strong (I’ve added Lyons, who doesn’t look as strong on these measures, although offering productive longevity, but might look stronger if we kept his War-years penalty, team context, and Total WAR in mind):
P(Tot)WAR…Peak5..Top5…WAR/IP…WAR/Yr….ERA+…Career length
68.5 (68.3)……37.0…37.0……0.189……4.0 (17)……127……1.0………K. Brown
55.1 (56.4)……34.2…34.2……0.174……4.5 (12)……139……1.0………M. Brown
65.2 (60.2)……40.0…40.0……0.212……6.0 (11)……127……0.9………Coveleski
67.2 (71.6)……24.2…29.1……0.162……3.5 (19)……118……1.3………Lyons
60.9 (60.8)……20.3…28.4……0.166……3.4 (18)……117……1.0………Pettitte
66.1 (66.7)……28.7…34.7……0.171……3.9 (17)……114……1.2………Tiant
As for Smith, once nsb brought him to our attention I began doing some comparisons, since Smith is a player I really don’t have a good feel for — for various reasons, I missed baseball during a key part of his career, and I don’t think I was participating in HHS discussions when he originally came up on the CoG list. But I just voted for Winfield in the 1973 Round 1 vote, so I looked at that comparison:
WAR……Pk5……Top5……WAR/G…WAR/Yr……OPS+…Career length
63.8………26.9……28.6……0.021……3.0 (21)……130………1.7………Winfield
64.5………26.9……29.0……0.032……4.3 (15)……137………1.1………R. Smith
Almost a perfect balance between high-productivity and long-productivity approaches to value, so I’m happy to vote for Smith here and work more on his record if he makes it back as a candidate.
Satchel Paige
Monte Irvin (I have half a thought that he actually got voted IN? He does make the 20 WAR critera unlike Paige)
Ted Simmons (I agree catchers are under-represented and he’s clearly the one missing)
Andre Dawson (29 WAR in 4 years is pretty rare folks. Also I don’t penalize him for his age 20 or 38+ seasons like WAR does)
Don Drysdale
Irvin not only wasn’t voted in, he didn’t make the 10% cut when he became eligible in the 64th Round (he received about 6%). But Irvin was on the ballot alongside Campy, who just squeaked by with 11%, and, of course, they presented similar issues, with Campanella being far better known and holding three MVPs. There was a lot of discussion about Irvin and might-have-beens, and perhaps without Campy on the ballot, Irvin’s candidacy would have stayed alive and grown. (I haven’t researched how he fared in subsequent redemption rounds.)
When we elected Campanella, we made a type of double-adjustment for him, looking at his exceptionally low WAR (34.2 — low for the CoG, that is; no one else is below 50). One adjustment was the “catcher bonus,” which Doom alluded to above. The other was the impact of segregation on Campy’s late MLB start, which is what he’d have in common with Irvin, although the impact was greater for Irvin, who began in the NL four years older than Campanella was when he debuted (although they finished just a year apart, because of Campy’s accident).
Campanella is an example of the HHS community staying within the birtlecom rules, but making a very substantial adjustment to acknowledge the impact of segregation. The same could be done for Irvin. The arguments would be a bit different. Campanella’s MLB performance (in his good years) was so strong a basis of his reputation that the promise he showed in the Negro Leagues was simply no longer a factor to think about. The issue was overcoming his relatively low total WAR. With Irvin, his reputation in the Negro Leagues would be more of a factor because those were his prime years, and he really had only one outstanding MLB season (and postseason). In this sense, Irvin is a sort of middle case, between Paige and Campanella — though since the issue of eligibility under CoG rules isn’t involved, his case probably resembles Campy’s a bit more.
We can’t extrapolate backwards, but—Monte Irvin as a 31 year old rookie in 1950 batted .299 in 110 games with 15 HRs, 61 runs and 66 RBIs, OPS+ of 131. The following year, playing full time, he put up slightly better numbers, .312, 24 dingers, 94 runs, 121 league leading RBIs, and 147 as his OPS+. Injured in 1952, he was limited to 136 PAs, but his production was about the same. In 1953, in 502 PAs, he batted .329, with 21 HRs, 97 RBIs, OPS+ of 141. Even allowing for his 93 rather indifferent PAs in 1949, his 162 game averages at this point in his career—through his age 34 season—were .309 BA, 22 HRs, 108 RBIs, .903 OPS, 137 OPS+. His 15.6 WAR at this point were accumulated in 467 games.
Irvin’s Negro league career is much better documented than most, and it includes a run of seven seasons in which he batted between .348 and .400 in recorded games with three years cut out of the middle for service in WWII.
As a triple-A minor leaguer in varied stints from ages 30 to 38, in 160 games he scored 141 runs, had 193 hits, 43 doubles, 7 triples, 34 homers, 139 RBIs, 135 walks, 53 strikeouts, a BA of .375 with an OPS of 1.193.
Speaking of Bill Veeck, here’s an anecdote I recall from Veeck as in Wreck, which I read in 1962, so my memory for exact details might be slightly off, although my point should be clear. One of the biggest mistakes Bill Veeck admitted to making was hiring Rogers Hornsby to manage the Browns in 1952. Hornsby was fired after 51 games and one of the reasons, possibly the tipping point reason, was that Hornsby refused to let one of the players—don’t remember which one—take a day or two off while his wife was giving birth. Hornsby defended himself by saying his rules applied to all players, blah, blah, and he couldn’t make exceptions. Veeck said, no, you have only one player whose wife is having a baby, so giving him time off in the crisis isn’t making him an exception. It would only be an exception if all the players wives were having babies, and you gave him time off, but not the others.
Well, I feel personally, after investigation, that Monte Irvin may be a similar exception, insofar as his situation is unique: he cut out a short but outstanding major league career, and the evidence is there to more than suggest his excellence outside the majors. Josh Gibson, Turkey Stearns, et all, never had a chance to prove themselves in the Bigs. He did, and he put up age 30-34 stats that many great players could not match. Is he COG worthy? I don’t know. Is he worth careful consideration? Maybe. He straddles the line, I think.
Good memory, nsb. The player in the Hornsby story was Bobby Young. I read the book in 1962 too, but my memory is no better than yours — it’s sitting here next to me, and I didn’t actually recall Young’s name till I flipped to page 232. But I never forgot the gist of that story and it influenced me in life.
Young was the starting second baseman in 439 of 464 games for the 1951-53 Browns.
Wow, no way to do this with any degree of clarity. OK, how about this: Mordecai Brown and 4 players I think that should be considered with Nettles’ candidacy: Boyer (Ken), Bell (Buddy), Bando, and Darrell Evans.
Apropos of nothing in particular, I notice that there is currently only once COG pitcher (Bert Blyleven) born in the 14 years from 1948 to 1961, a notable dearth (only comparable gap is having only two COG hurlers born from 1892 to 1907).
Reuschel and Eckersley, both over 60 WAR, are probably the leading contenders of pitchers born in this period, followed by:
50-59 WAR: Tanana, Stieb, Hershiser, Langston
45-49 WAR: Dennis Martinez, Key, Guidry, Viola, Steve Rogers, Blue
40-44 WAR: Morris, Welch, Candiotti, Gossage, Darwin, Candelaria
A sizable number of very good pitchers, but perhaps only a few great ones.
Doug, that’s too much of a coincidence to be a coincidence. It doesn’t make sense for 14 years of a gene pool to produce only very good, but not great. Three possibilities-usage, rule changes, or something baked into the way we calculate. One thing we can say is that the strike zone was changed in 1969, as was the height of the mound.
I’m not sure it’s statistically significant. There are only 2 CoG pitchers born during the 12-year period 1923-34 (Roberts and Ford), then 10 over the 13-year period 1935-47 (Gibson, Koufax, Marichal, Perry, Niekro, Jenkins, Seaver, Carlton, Palmer, Ryan). The latter ten are the crew that dealt with the 1969 changes. Then, after the 14-year/1-electee “Blyleven Gap,” we have 9 CoG pitchers in a 10-year birth span (Clemens, Johnson, Maddux, Schilling, Glavine, Smoltz, Mussina, Rivera, Martinez).
Basically, what you have among CoG pitchers is two clusters (1935-47; 1962-71) contributing 19 of the 36 electees, and 6 more are clustered in the 13-year period 1875-1887, leaving only 11 for the other gaps (1867-74, yields only 1 — Cy Young; 1888-1900 yields 2; 1901-1913, 2; 1914-1922, 2). So clusters of 36 total years in a 105-year stretch (about 35%) produce about 70% of the inductees. (It would be better to do this analysis with regular intervals set by an arbitrary standard, such as by decades; I’m just following Doug’s approach.)
The Blyleven Gap may be the dryest spell, but even distribution would be bizarre, so some period of years had to be, and 1948-61 is only a little longer and dryer than some of the others. It’s probably the three clusters that are the anomalies needing explanation (but I suspect any after-the-fact explanation will simply be rationalizing normally uneven distribution).
The one position that I think that there is a significant gap that we needed to address was third base.
We have one third baseman in the COG who played prior to 1948, Home Run Baker, and his candidacy was fairly controversial.
There are maybe 10 other candidates for serious consideration even if we expand our search to include pre-1900 players.
1) Deacon White- he was actually a catcher in the prime of his career but since that was in the pre-glove, pre-facemask, pre-shinguard, etc era when catchers only played in about half of their teams games he wound up playing more games at third in his career. I think he belongs but as a catcher.
2) Ned Williamson- another early player that’s ranked 49th by JAWS and 28th by the HOS. If we ever hold an Old-Timers vote he may have a shot.
3) John McGraw- a 17 year playing career but he only played more than 100 games in 5 seasons. Maybe has a shot if view as a “player-and” candidate. Since the bulk of his games player were pre-1900 we didn’t have to decide
4 Jimmy Collins- pre-WW2 he was often listed as the best third baseman ever. We passed on him.
5) Baker’s contemporaries Heinie “Bottle Bat” Groh and Larry Gardner- WAR doesn’t view them as measuring up. You could maybe put Tommy Leach in this group too.
6) The guys in between Baker and Eddie Matthews- Stan Hack, Pie Traynor and Bob Elliott. Again, WAR sees them as falling quite a bit short and so did we.
It’s difficult to imagine that there’s not a single player who played at a position for the first 75 years of the games history or the first 50 years that the COG covers isn’t worthy of the Hall of Fame.
I think we shouldn’t be welcoming players into the CoG because they fill some sort of lacuna, they should only be welcomed because they were roundly great. If there are few pitchers born 1948-62 who were roundly great, then we’re doing our job right if we have only those few (or one) in the Circle. If there were few roundly great third basemen in the pre-War era, then there ought to be few pre-War third basemen in the Circle — and I think, in fact, we have that right.
Here’s something to think about (I’m thinking about it because I just learned it). Currently, dWAR positional adjustments value catcher fielding highest, then shortstop, then second, then center, then third. These positions get positive positional adjustments on the ratio of 9 : 7 : 3 : 2.5 : 2. The corner outfield positions and first are negative, meaning that the fielding impact and scarcity of skills for these positions is low. In other words, good fielding third basemen don’t get much of a dWAR (and hence WAR) boost for that skill.
However, those ratios vary by year — the variation is slow enough that we can think of it as by era — and the value of third base fielding was not always this low. For example, consider these ratios for their times (I’m sure this will be hard to read with wobbly columns — just note that 3B is always the last column):
………..C : SS : 2B : CF : 3B
1893…10 : 10 : 3 : -8 : 5
1905…10 : 10 : 0 : -4 : 5
1930…. 5 : 10 : 5 : -3 : 4
1960…8.5 : 9 : 4.5 : -1 : 3
1990…8.5 : 8.5 : 3 : 1.5 : 1
2017…. 9 : 7 : 3 : 2.5 : 2
What I draw from this — and, Lord knows, with fielding stats I could be drawing a petunia as a hippo, so poorly do I understand them — is that for the era of scarce roundly-great third basemen, the data point we’re relying on perhaps more than any other, WAR, is according third basemen considerably more fielding weight than is true today. If Jimmy Collins and Pie Traynor can’t cut that mustard then I think it’s all the more reason to keep them out of the sandwich. (But if he qualified, I’d vote for Muggsy, all time leader in RSIBU: Runs Saved Impeding Baserunners Undetected.)
This is a good point. There are times when there seem to be either a surplus of great players at a position, or a dearth. We don’t have to find “someone’ if performance doesn’t support it.
I totally agree that talent at certain positions often comes in clusters.
From the mid-50’s until the late 70’s there were no stand out shortstops then the next 20 years brought us almost half of the shortstops in the COG (I’m assuming that Jeter & ARod will get in when their time comes).
And there are perfectly reasonable explanations for gaps like that. Chance. Changes in the rules or style of play. War.
But that wasn’t exactly what I was getting at. And I’m certainly not arguing that we should go back and put a bunch of pre-WW2 third baseman in the COG.
And I get epm’s argument. If you move all of the shortstops in the COG to 3rd base there are a bunch of them who wouldn’t get in.
But going for a decade or even a generation without a COG qualified player at a position is one thing. But going over half of the existence of the game is something else.
Yes, Baker is in. But it was a near thing and may not have happened if circumstances had been different.
I just thought since the subject of gaps in quality of talent was the subject that it was worthy of comment.
Billy Williams Jim Bunning Lou Brock Satchel Paige Early Wynn
Lyons
Paige
Williams
Sutton
Simmons
Per most of the “objective” statistical measurements, an awful lot of these guys are awfully similar
Ken Boyer
Ted Simmons
Hal Newhouser
Kirby Puckett
Orel Hershiser
Boyer and Simmons are two who were tops at underappreciated positions. Newhouser’s 1944-1946 are amazing and I think he matches up with the very best of his era. Puckett and Hershiser are guys I associate with the very best of baseball in the late 1980’s and early 90’s. Their peaks were perhaps not as long as some others (Puckett’s cut short by injury), but I’d like to think they cast an oversized shadow over baseball in those years. I’d actually include Don Mattingly in that group as well, but I only have 5 slots and my sense is that Mattingly would not garner a lot of support. Hershiser also addresses the “gap” issue for pitchers that Doug mentions above.
RIP Oscar Gamble.
Thanks for alerting us, Doom. I hadn’t seen this news. People remember the hair, but his energy in the batter’s box is what I think of first. He was different.
Gamble finished his career with exactly 200 home runs, matching the total for Don Mincher and Bill Freehan.
So, which player with 30+ career WAR was a teammate of all three?
Gamble had 185 of the home runs against right handed pitching. Is there anyone else even close to that ratio with that many HR?
You surmised correctly that Gamble leads among players with 150+ career home runs, but his pursuers are close behind. Here are the top 10.
I would not have guessed Duke Snider. His splits are astounding–and he was fortunate there weren’t many lefties. In 1956, the year he led the NL in HR, 42 of his 43 were against right handed pitching. And he had only 69PA against lefties all year.
But if the reason for Snider’s low HR totals against lefties is that he had few PAs vs. lefties (even though he wasn’t platooned), then there’s less evidence for saying he was lucky. Snider hit against righties 86% of the time, so his 92% righty (vs. leftie) HR rate isn’t really very astounding. In fact, his AB/HR rate for righties was 16, and lefties 32 — so Snider was just twice as likely to homer off a rightie (actually, that ratio of ratios was 1.93).
Oscar’s ratio of ratios is about the same as Snider’s (actually he’s at 2.00), even though he was platooned.
Looking at the others on this list in this way, among lefties who I believe weren’t generally platooned (Abreu, Berkman, Klesko, Snow), their “ratio of ratios” is, in each case: Abreu: 2.64 — much more pronounced than Snider or Gamble — Berkman: 1.99; Klesko: 2.36; Snow: 1.93 (so Berkman & Snow are like Gamble & Snider) more or less like Snider and Gamble. Stairs was platooned, but his figure is, oddly, 1.25.
Hundley and Valentin were switch hitters, so it’s hard to know whether they were actually platooned: both threw right, so they were probably natural righties, so we’d expect the differential to be lower. Hundley’s is 1.97 — that is, he looks like a lefty in this respect. Valentin’s ratio is 2.75. Now that seems weird to me: a switch-hitting natural right hander who simply couldn’t hit home runs off lefties.
Don’t think you can assume RH throwers are natural RH hitters. Snider and many other notables bat opposite to their throwing side.
What is also not that uncommon is for successful switch hitters who, notwithstanding that success, have most of their power from one side of the plate. Valentin may be just such a case.
Certainly true, Doug. But configurations like Snider’s have a rationale. Young right-handers are sometimes trained early to bat left to get the extra step towards first and the platoon advantage. That would never be the case in reverse, since batting right has a double disadvantage. It’s really likely that Snider was right-handed (I don’t know of any kid taught to throw with his non-dominant hand unless some injury was involved, like Buddy Daley’s), but trained to bat lefty so that it was natural to him.
But I could be wrong: I can imagine, though I know of no such case, a lefty being trained to throw right so he could play the IF positions Valentin did (or I suppose it’s possible Valentin — or Snider — was fully ambidextrous). Are you aware of any such cases?
And yes, it’s certainly true that switch hitters often have most of their power from one side. My impression is that it’s generally their dominant side, but perhaps there are opposite cases that I’m not aware of. Mantle has a marginally better AB/HR ratio batting left, and he was famously a natural righty, but he was a better hitter overall from the right hand side, and I suspect the HR ratio is due to the short right-field porch at the Stadium.
Mantle’s HR splits were almost identical between home and road. I suspect that part of Mantle’s extra power from the left side (just from remembering him) was his swing from the right side was more level, from the left more uppercut.
It’s a fine point, Mike, but I think you’d need to see the platoon splits home and away to conclude that the Stadium’s dimensions had no effect, regardless of the total number of home/away dingers. The issue combines the question of where the HRs were hit with which side of the plate he hit them from. My guess wouldn’t necessarily be that he’d hit more or fewer HRs in the Stadium than in, say, Fenway, but that he’d hit a relatively higher per-AB number of his Stadium HRs against righties swinging left-handed and a greater per-AB share of Fenway HRs against lefties, swinging right-handed, because of park dimensions.
Nevertheless, my idea was, indeed, just speculation, and your speculation seems a lot more interesting. I was not observant enough as a kid to notice that Mantle had different swings from each side of the plate, but of course, all switch hitters must have such differences, and your idea is perfectly plausible.
Just a shot in the dark, EPM. Like most of my posts…. I’m writing a political piece for 3Quarks, and this is a welcome distraction.
I looked at splits for Mays, Aaron, and Musial for overlap in careers. Mays had 8754 PA against Righties, and 3525 against Lefties. He was somewhat better against Lefties, but it wasn’t anywhere near the gap Snider had. Aaron had 10036 PA against RHP, and 3538 again LHP. Musial, 7333 PA RHP, and 3945 LHP (289 HR v RHP and 137 HR v LHP). I’m struck by the low ratio LHP/RHP PA Snider had.
You can add Berkman to the list of switch hitters – of course, maybe he should have been a platoon player, since his splits as a RH hitter are inferior in pretty much every aspect:
As a RH – .260/.360/.417 in 1,825 PA’s
As a LH – .304/.420/.575 in 5,989 PA’s
Snider, Campanella, Hodges, Furillo, Robinson, Reese, Cox, even Andy Pafko—all right handed hitters, and all but Cox real threats.. The incentive to start a lefty against this lineup was scant. Losing twice to Whitey Ford in the 1955 Series was as close as it came to consistent failure against a lefty.
Doug, who’s the leader in that stat against LHP? Might have to relax the career home run total.
Here you go.
If you drop the qualification down to 100 home runs, only Howard (7th) and Winfield (10th) remain in the top 10. That list, which is more like the RH list, looks like:
I would never have guessed Hal McRae. That’s a pretty long career as a power guy to show up (hitting 100 HR’s against leftys). Lowering it to 50 though would bring up a lot of more heavily platooned hitters. Was there something specific I don’t remember about the old Royals Stadium?
Nothing I can think about Royals Stadium that made him hit so many home runs against lefties as opposed to righties. If I were to take a guess, I would suggest that Hal was more true to his Charlie Lau roots against right handed pitchers when he didn’t have the platoon advantage, whereas against lefties, he might have looked to turn on the ball and drive it out more often. Of course, that was back in the day when oppo HRs were very rare and being a HR hitter meant being a pull hitter.
FWIW, Royal batters faced lefties in 31.9% of their PA from 1973 to 1986. That was slightly above the major league average of 31.3%, but below the AL average of 32.6%. Seven of 14 AL teams faced a higher proportion of lefties than did the Royals over those seasons.
Before McRae played for the Royals, 18 of his 22 home runs for the Reds came against lefty pitching. Another Red, Wally Post, stands second on this list though, of course, he mostly played in a different ballpark than McRae (at Crosley Field, McRae homered 5 times, 4 against lefties; all 8 of his 1970 home runs came while the Reds were still playing at Crosley, with 8 HR in 86 PA to start the year, and 0 for 96 to finish it)
A P-I search lists 549 players who threw left and batted right.
159 non-pitchers.
To add some additional mostly useless information, if we completely relax the total HR threshold for qualifying, the batter with the most HR’s that were all against RH pitching is Randy Bush, with all 96 of his HR’s coming against righties. I’d never heard of him – he’s a bit before my time – but he seems to be an interesting player, a heavily platooned OF (3362 of his 3481 PA’s came against RH pitching) who spent his entire career with the 1980’s/early 1990’s Twins.
The same figure for facing LH pitching is much much lower, as you might expect – Nate Freiman, a 1B with the A’s earlier this decade who played last season in Mexico, has all 9 of his HR’s against southpaws. Right behind him are Dave Stegman, Harvey Pulliam, and perhaps the most interesting name on the list, Jeff Torborg, with 8 HR’s.
Intuitively this makes sense because we know there’s pretty much no such thing as a RH platoon hitter that only faces LH pitching. The RH hitter in a standard platoon will invariably end up facing RH pitching as well simply because there are never enough southpaws in the league to make it worth a roster spot for a dedicated platoon split player, whereas LH platoon hitters who near exclusively face RH pitching are commonplace.
It’s fascinating to learn that Bush holds the record for this stat. I remember him as a platooned player but didn’t realize just how lopsided his splits were. It’s also interesting to think that if he had the same career in a different city in a slightly different era, there might be no reason for me to have heard of him, either.
Randy Bush was a fourth outfielder / DH / pinch hitter for the Twins. He debuted in 1982, part of the core group that would lose 102 games that year but win two world championships within the decade. As noted in CursedClevelander’s post above, Bush hit effectively against righties and rarely saw left-handed pitching. While his 1.6 total WAR doesn’t suggest a particularly distinguished career, he played twelve seasons, all for a state that still reveres him 25 years later. He won two World Series rings as a key contributor on those squads, and he earned a few million dollars along the way.
One last obscure note: my sister-in-law had a Randy Bush keychain she used during the 1991 season, as he was deemed the “most handsome” player on that Twins team.
For those who have already voted, we’re 48 hours from the deadline for submitting a revised vote (Friday 11:59pm), with the final voting deadline on Sunday evening.
I count 12 ballots submitted so far, with 28 different players named. Here’s the way those votes appear to have been cast according to my tabulation (the top three names will move back on the CoG ballot, and the next seven finishers — or more, if a tie for the final slot occurs — will form the initial pool of the secondary ballot (along with vote-getters from CoG Round 125 who fail reach 10%).
===================Leading three===================
5 – Lyons, Paige, Simmons
==================Next seven + ties=================
4 – M. Brown, Dawson
3 – B. Bell, K. Boyer, Drysdale, R. Smith
2 – Bunning, F. Clarke, Coveleski, D. Evans, Sutton, B. Williams
============Currently short of redemption====================
1 – Bando, Brock, Burkett, Doby, Eckersley, Hersheiser, Irvin, Minoso, Newhouser,
Puckett, Reuschel, Sheffield, E. Wynn
Voters: Voomo, Hartvig, nsb, Hub Kid, JEV, Doom, epm, mosc, Brent, Rich, Paul E, Josh Davis. Let me know if I missed a vote!
I’ll go with:
Stan Coveleski
Don Sutton
Jim Edmonds
Ken Boyer
Andre Dawson
Results after 13 votes.
5 – Satchel Paige, Andre Dawson, Ted Lyons, Ted Simmons
= = = = = = Main Ballot = = = = = =
4 – Mordecai Brown, Ken Boyer
3 – Buddy Bell, Stan Coveleski, Reggie Smith, Don Sutton, Don Drysdale
= = = = = = Secondary Ballot = = = = = =
2 – Jim Bunning, Fred Clarke, Billy Williams
1 – Sal Bando, Lou Brock, Jesse Burkett, Larry Doby, Dennis Eckersley, Jim Edmonds, Darrell Evans, Dwight Evans, Orel Hershiser, Monte Irvin, Minnie Minoso, Hal Newhouser, Kirby Puckett, Rick Reuschel, Gary Sheffield, Early Wynn
Doug, I think you dropped Lyons (5) and listed Boyer twice (should be at 4). On the other hand, I screwed up too: I had Evans at 2 after 12 votes, when, in fact, two Evans’s (Dwight & Darrell) were each at 1, a distinction you saw.
Here’s a corrected (I think) list, after 14 votes, including yours, with “/” indicating where a current tie-breaker would fall:
===================Leading three===================
5 – Lyons, Paige, Simmons / Dawson
==================Next seven + ties=================
4 – M. Brown, K. Boyer, Drysdale, Sutton
3 – B. Bell, Coveleski, R. Smith
2 – Bunning, F. Clarke, Eckerskley, Reuschel, B. Williams
============Currently short of redemption====================
1 – Bando, Brock, Burkett, Doby, Edmonds, Da. Evans, Dw. Evans, Hersheiser, Irvin, Minoso, Newhouser,
Puckett, Randolph, Sheffield, E. Wynn
Thanks for the correction. I’ve made the update.
Whoops! I forgot to check where to draw the redemption boundary: it’s changed.
===================Leading three===================
5 – Lyons, Paige, Simmons / Dawson
==================Next seven + ties=================
4 – M. Brown, K. Boyer, Drysdale, Sutton
3 – B. Bell, Coveleski, R. Smith
============Currently short of redemption====================
2 – Bunning, F. Clarke, Eckerskley, Reuschel, B. Williams
1 – Bando, Brock, Burkett, Doby, Edmonds, Da. Evans, Dw. Evans, Hersheiser, Irvin, Minoso, Newhouser,
Puckett, Randolph, Sheffield, E. Wynn
My vote.
Don Drysdale
Don Sutton
Dennis Eckersley
Rick Reuschel
Willie Randolph
Willie Randolph is another who’s getting criminally under-rated in this whole thing. Oh well, I apparently gave a shout-out vote to Monte Irvin because nobody else believes but me so sorry Willie!
mosc:
If I’d had a sixth vote it would have gone to Irvin, thanks to your raising the issue.
I have a list of favourite candidates for Redemption Rounds that is at least a dozen players long; Monte Irvin and Hal Newhouser are probably the two I most regret not having space for this time; at the moment they are probably my 6th and 7th redemption candidates. Hopefully the votes ahead will give me the chance to put them both in my top 5 next time.
I’ve voted for Randolph a bunch. Having seen him play, I know he was a situational hitter – a guy who is gonna poke a weak grounder to the right side with 2 strikes to move a runner over. “Doesn’t show up in the scorecard” talent.
Great D, great baserunning, great eye, longevity.
Here’s one way of looking at it.
Among 2nd basemen, here’s who had
100+ Rbat
40+ Rbaser
100+ Rfield
Willie Randolph
Chase Utley
________________
Drop it to 0 Rbaser and you only add
Frankie Frisch
Joe Gordon
________________
Only 15 second sackers even achieved
30 Rbat
0 Rbaser
30 Rfield
Only 18 at
20 / 0 / 20
Only 22 at
10 / 0 / 10
___________
The 2nd base position has it Mt Rush with
Hornsby, Collins, Lajoie, Morgan
And then Gehringer and Carew (Rod played half his career at 1st)
But there’s a major logjam after that where Randolph fits in with a lot of other COGers
Whitaker, Grich, Frisch, Sandberg, Alomar, Cano, Utley, Biggio, Jackie, Gordon
Vote Change
Paige
Lyons
Coveleski
R. Smith
Irvin (changed from M. Brown)
After reading the exchange about Monte Irvin between mosc and nsb yesterday, I reexamined Irvin’s record and read his SABR bio (which I don’t think I had before).
I think Irvin would be a difficult case for the CoG. Irvin’s Negro League record is very strong, but not very long, yet part of the reason for that is years lost to wartime service (and unlike some MLB players in the service, Irvin played no ball in those years). Irvin’s MLB debut was not that long after his prime (age 30), and it took him a partial season to adjust — different from Paige who was ten years older and excellent in the AL from the get-go. Nor was Irvin’s Negro League reputation of the stature of Paige’s (or Charleston’s, or Gibson’s): but, again, the War may have been the reason — he seems to have been on track for such a reputation, and returning from the War he began to recover his momentum. Irvin’s MLB peak year was excellent, if not terrific, and he retired with a strong 125 OPS+ for seasons ages 30-37. In Paige’s case, I think there’s no room for doubt that with a full MLB career he’d have been an inner-circle BBWAA HoF inductee; in Irvin’s case — just dealing with the quality issue alone — I can see that possibility, but my current sense is that he might also simply have been very good, or a HoF inductee on a lesser level.
I suspect most HHS posters are like me, and familiar with Irvin’s career in broad outline rather than in detail. In a case like this, I think we’d profit from further discussion and do well to avoid closing off Irvin’s candidacy too quickly, especially because it is one of the few that forces us to focus on baseball’s segregated history and the problem of how to respond to it. Looking at my original ballot and the votes in so far, at this moment withdrawing my vote from Three-Finger Brown will have no effect on his standing, and since that is, to one degree or another, not true of the other four players on my ballot, I’ve decided to shift that vote to Irvin. I think Brown is GoGworthy and I’m not sure about Irvin, so this is strictly a strategic vote to prompt closer examination of Irvin’s case.
This shift should bring Irvin within one vote of making the CoG secondary ballot, and will only have an effect if one other poster joins me — that’s why I haven’t waited till evening to see the vote situation then before acting: I’d like to give others who have already voted some time to think about making a switch too, now that a switch could result in Irvin’s semi-redemption.
Minnie Minoso’s 162 game average stats for his age 31-34 years are very close, nearly identical, to those of Irvin, except that Minoso 1) scored far more runs and 2) was healthy, productive and playing full time. Add to that the fact that Minnie’s best years on the whole came in his age 25-30 years, a perennial AL all-star, and I have to take Minnie over Monte. Reality in these things has to trump speculation, no matter how convincing the speculation might be.
Reality in these things has to trump speculation, no matter how convincing the speculation might be.
Obviously, if this were so, nsb, there would be no argument for Irvin on any grounds, nor for Paige. I think there is room for disagreement.
Minoso was an exciting player, and I was upset that he missed out on his one postseason opportunity by the rhythm of his back-and-forth between Cleveland and Chicago. But though Minoso played in the Negro Leagues, he only hit his stride there at age 22, and he came to the AL at 23, in 1949. His 1949 season with the Indians and in AAA ball suggests that he may not have been quite ready for the Majors. Since that makes it hard to argue that segregation was a critical factor in handicapping Minoso’s career, I think there’s not much relevance to comparing Irvin and Minoso.
There are plenty of players qualifying as candidates for the CoG who were better in their age 30-37 MLB seasons than Irvin, Minoso being one. But none of them had been considered the greatest young star in the Negro Leagues during their prime, and been unable to demonstrate those talents in MLB because of segregation. That is what distinguishes Irvin’s case (just as, to a lesser degree and with somewhat different circumstnces, it influenced Campanella’s case when we voted him in despite his WAR being 15 wins below any other Circle member).
If we were voting straight up for Minoso or Irvin based on their MLB records, of course I’d vote for Minoso, just as I voted for Brown over Irvin on that basis. If speculation concerning the impact of segregation on Irvin’s record were out of order, then I can’t see any grounds for considering Irvin at all — there are probably a hundred players whose reality would trump it.
epm:
I was just explaining why I kept my vote for Minnie and didn’t bump him for Monte after Irvin was brought into the discussion by mosc. Irvin vs someone else is anyone’s call on his or her ballot. Irvin vs the guys on my ballot, Minoso being the weakest, is my call.
Of course that’s your call, nsb. I did not realize you were explaining your personal vote. I thought you were making an argument, advocating for Minoso over Irvin by asserting a general imperative. I wanted to argue in response that the imperative was not necessarily valid in the context at hand. Sorry I misunderstood you.
Oscar Gamble’s demise has already been mentioned. The thing that always comes to mind for me re Oscar was his one-year stint as DH for the White Sox in 1977. Along with Richie Zisk, he was a sort of rent-a-player, hired for a year by Bill Veeck (in his second go round on the south side) to be milked for his cheap talent in his last year before the new concept, free agency, applied to his career. Between them Gamble and Zisk hit 61 homers and drove on 190 runs, leading the team to ninety wins before they were set free. Zisk’s salary went from $64,000 to $312,000, Oscar’s from $100,000 to $475,000, but not for the White Sox. Neither played nearly as well again.
I’d argue that Gamble played pretty well in 1979:
.358 / .456 / .609 / 1.065
___
Sure, only 327 PA
But still.
He did this with RISP:
.477 / .617 / .862 / 1.479
___
And he did this in the Yankees’ last 7 games:
.516 / .531 / 1.129 / 1.660
with 5 HR and 14 RBI
All victories.
Almost led them to the division title that week. They only finished 13.5 games back.
1979?…..previous division winners NYY, KC, LAD, and PHL were nowhere to be found. I wonder if that has ever happened before to such an extent that they had 11 division titles between them in the prior 3 seasons?
Vote change:
Lyons
Dawson
Simmons
Paige
Irvin
It doesn’t appear that Bell or Burkett have much of a shot and I’ve advocated for both Paige & Irvin at times in the past
The deadline for vote changes is now past, and since I’ve been keeping track, here’s the current tabulation, as I have it, according to Doug’s rules. We’re still at 14 votes: the only reason to post a new tabulation now is to update with a few vote changes and alert all those who haven’t yet voted how things stand — they can cast ballots until 11:59pm EST on Sunday evening, February 4.
==========Heading_towards_Redemption_(Leading three)===========
6 – Satchel Paige
5 – Ted Lyons, Ted Simmons // Andre Dawson
========Heading_towards_Secondary_Ballot_(Next seven + ties)=======
4 – Ken Boyer, Don Drysdale, Don Sutton
3 – Mordecai Brown, Stan Coveleski, Monte Irvin, Reggie Smith
=========Currently_short_of_Redemption_&_Secondary_Ballot========
2 – Buddy Bell, Jim Bunning, Fred Clarke, Dennis Eckerskley, Rick Reuschel, Billy Williams
1 – Sal Bando, Lou Brock, Larry Doby, Jim Edmonds, Darrell Evans, Dwight Evans, Orel Hersheiser, Minnie Minoso, Hal Newhouser, Kirby Puckett, Willie Randolph, Gary Sheffield, Early Wynn
// indicates that, when all votes are tallied, if Dawson remains tied at 5 with Lyons & Simmons, he would move to the Secondary Ballot, because the last vote tallied for him was later than the others’. (If Dawson moved ahead but the other two remained tied at 5, as it stands Lyons would remain on the redeemed list and Simmons would drop to the Secondary Ballot.)
Voters: Voomo, Hartvig, nsb, Hub Kid, JEV, Doom, epm, mosc, Brent, Rich, Paul, Josh, Andy, Doug
For the 2018 Redemption Round, I’m voting for:
-Willie Randolph
-Don Sutton
-Rafael Palmeiro
-Rick Reuschel
-Dwight Evans
Thanks!
Ahh, it’s CoG time again! And a redemption round, to boot. That means it’s time for me to start to compose a long post arguing why people should vote for Satchel Paige, and –
oh, you say other people have already done so, eloquently and at length? And it’s almost the end of the voting period? Yikes! Okay, note to self – don’t procrastinate next time. Just like you told yourself the last time, and the time before that.
Well. I am thrilled to see some support for ol’ Satch here, as back when we had this thing weekly I beat that drum as much as possible. Monte Irvin, gotta say, haven’t ever really considered him, but I’m swayed somewhat by the argument of ‘deserves more discussion’.
I am bummed, albeit not surprised, to see the lack of support for another player I think is underrated in this process, in Hal Newhouser. I don’t care if he’s only got one vote so far, I’m going down with that ship. I’m convinced his numbers hold up. In my aggregate rankings (I use the combined rank of WAR, WAA+ and JAWS as a starting point), Reuschel statistically stands head and shoulders above the other candidates, with Newhouser pretty distinguished from the rest in 2nd too. But there are SO many candidates – third on my rankings is actually David Cone, who I haven’t heard a word about here, but it’s really tight in the next 10-15 positions. Right behind I have Clarke and the always-overlooked Reggie Smith tied, then Ted Lyons and McGwire, then Palmiero, Bell, Randolph, Boyer, Covaleski, Saberhagen, Bando, and, uh… Vic Willis? Huh. I also have backed Drysdale before, who is up there too.
Hmm, hmm. Okay, here it is:
Satchel Paige
Rick Reuschel
Hal Newhouser
Reggie Smith
Monte Irvin
Nice to see you back, bells. I had you in mind when advocating for Paige.
Well thank you sir! I appreciated the excellent post on that matter. Rest assured that I’m around these parts, although I’ve dropped by relatively infrequently and caught up on a couple of weeks of comments at a time. I just don’t have the breadth of knowledge of most folks here and so this CoG stuff was always a natural thread to contribute to, because even I know about lots of the most prominent players in history. But despite my non-posting, I have read pretty much every comment on here. This place is always wonderful, small but committed, respectful, intelligent community.
I like this redemption format, gets some good cases back to revisit:
Vote:
Rafael Palmeiro
Rick Reuschel
Fred Clarke
Dwight Evans
Mordecai Brown
Ted Simmons
Mordecai Brown
Willie Randolph
Stan Coveleski
Kirby Puckett
Vote:
————
Palmeiro
Dwight Evans – Seems silly he isn’t even be on the ballot as Winfield is on the cusp of being elected.
Three Finger Brown
Don Sutton
Dennis Eckersley
Doug: Kudos on the elegant solution to the issues that have been perceptively raised about the COG voting going forward. It is fascinating how things have evolved.
When I first proposed the COG system and we began the voting, back in December, 2012 (more than five years ago!), the BBWAA had voted to induct a total of 112 players into the Hall over the 76 years since they began voting. Nobody was voted in by the BBWAA in the 2013 vote that concluded just after we started our process, so the BBWAA was down to an average of 1.45 inductees per year (2013 was the first vote that included Bonds and Clemens, with all the confusion and dismay that caused — as I noted in the first sentence of my original introduction of the COG concept, “The prospect of an upcoming Hall of Fame voting process that may now be preoccupied for years by PEDs issues rather than more sporting matters, provokes me to suggest the creation of an alternative “all-timer” voting process for High Heat Stats (HHS) readers.”)
But beginning with the voting for the 2014 inductions, the BBWAA has taken a different tack. In the five elections from 2014 through 2018, the writers have voted in 16 new inductees, an average of 3.2 guys a year (the various veterans/old-timers committees, meanwhile, recently produced only their first two new player-inductees over that entire 5-year period — thank goodness these committee decisions are irrelevant to the COG). We have gone from a standard of looking for the top 112 players for our goal of comparison with the BBWAA to what is now a standard of the top 128. That is a meaningful difference from where we began and does suggest the need for a reevaluation by us, the voters, of some players who would not have met the original lines we may each have drawn for ourselves between what is and what is not deserving of COG induction. We need to adjust our own standards for the COG to reflect the recent, more welcoming approach in the recent BBWAA voting. Doug has produced a clever and interesting way to allow us to do some of that re-thinking. Thank you to him, and to all of you who continue to participate in this ongoing group effort!
All hail Birtelcom! Age cannot wither, nor custom stale, his infinite variety
Comparing me to Cleopatra? Asp not what you can do for your country….
LOL. Sherlock Holmes uses a variant of the Cleo quote in his return “The Adventure of the Empty House,” I was thinking of your probing intellect and problem-solving skills.
Not to mention the common theme of sudden and unannounced reappearance after long absence.
I’m never going to find another group with this level of casual erudition
Second Mike’s encomium! It’s a treat to have you reappear, birtelcom, and I hope you well.
As one who was concerned about the standards issue, I take your point and agree that Doug’s solution is an excellent one. Your message adds the dimension of orthodoxy — even though HHS no longer shows all the former icons, “birtelcom” and “The Father of Baseball” are enduringly linked in memory. I believe that even my die-hard stance against the DH could not withstand an online post from Henry Chadwick supporting that rule change.
Be assured, epm, you will never see a post from this user of Chadwick’s iconic image (back when HHS included those avatars) supporting any expansion of the DH. What I have suggested and supported (in lieu of what I really prefer, which is to get rid of the DH entirely, which I recognize has become an impossible scenario) is a compromise between the leagues in which both adopt a common rule: one DH plate appearance per game. Once and only once per game, a manager could insert a hitter in place of the pitcher (or any other position in the lineup for that matter), without disqualifying the replaced player from going back into the game, or disqualifying the hitter from appearing again later in the game (though he could not bat twice in the same cycle through nine spots in the lineup), and the replacement hitter could be used even if he has previously appeared once as a normal pinch-hitter (though, again, he could not bat twice in the same cycle through the lineup).
That is an ingenious compromise, birtelcom. But in modern America, where half the fans view only AL.com and the other view only NL.com . . . or something like that . . . the art of compromise is not getting much play. The millennium having passed, your plan may have to wait till the Millennium.
But your thinking reminds me how much you’ve been missed here at HHS: not just in connection with the CoG, but for your knowledge and reasoning about baseball issues in general.
I do hope to get back to involvement here at HHS. I’ve been very busy at work (I work in a large city’s municipal government, and my area is heavily involved with federal government relationship matters, so you can imagine things are complicated these days), plus I’m still in physical therapy recovering from the illness that knocked me off here in the first place. So life is full. But I do enormously enjoy the HHS type stuff, so keep your eye out for more of me here. Also thank you to Dr. Doom for spotting a note of mine at Adam D.’s Hall of Stats and reminding me to show my (virtual) face around here.
Given what you encountered, birtelcom, the fact that you’ve resumed your career and are busy at it is good news indeed. In your line of work in these times, perhaps needing only physical therapy is an index of strong character.
I see Doom’s note, and the context makes me think I should be spending more time at the HoS site. The view from there is different.
Randolph, Dean, Mattingly, Eckersley, Guidry.
Great to have the COG discussions and voting back again!
Redemption round vote:
Buddy Bell
Fred Clarke
Dwight Evans
Willie Randolph
Ted Simmons
This is what I have through Brendan Bingham’s vote (#21):
==========Heading_towards_Redemption_(Leading three)===========
7 – Satchel Paige, Ted Simmons
6 – Mordecai Brown, Don Sutton //?
========Heading_towards_Secondary_Ballot_(Next seven + ties)=======
5 – Andre Dawson, Dwight Evans, Ted Lyons, Willie Randolph, Rick Reuschel,
4 – Ken Boyer, Fred Clarke, Stan Coveleski, Don Drysdale, Dennis Eckerskley, Monte Irvin, Reggie Smith
3 – Buddy Bell, Rafael Palmeiro,
=========Currently_short_of_Redemption_&_Secondary_Ballot========
2 – Jim Bunning, Hal Newhouser, Kirby Puckett, Billy Williams
1 – Sal Bando, Lou Brock, Dizzy Dean, Larry Doby, Jim Edmonds, Darrell Evans, Ron Guidry, Orel Hersheiser, Don Mattingly, Minnie Minoso, Gary Sheffield, Early Wynn
//? Note the problem here: Brown and Sutton are tied for third, but the last ballot for each is identical: Chris C provided the sixth vote for each. If this situation remains, we may have to choose whether to allow four to rise to the CoG ballot or to devise an after-the-fact tie-breaker strategy.
In this case, wouldn’t the tie breaker then go back to the first player to get to 5 votes?
1. two tied at 6: ignore the tying vote(s) (dropping M. Brown and Sutton back to 5 votes);
2 7 tied at 5 (including the two above): keep throwing away votes until there is only one of these players with 5 votes.
I think the first player of these 7 to get to 5 votes was Ted Lyons, but I haven’t double-checked that, and it is only including the players with vote totals currently between 5 and 6 (ignoring any with 7, or 1-4). Of course, voting a third player to 7 votes would solve the complication…
(my hypothetical steps should include the following corrected punctuation):
1. two tied at 6: ignore the tying vote(s) (dropping M. Brown and Sutton back to 5 votes);
2. 7 tied at 5 (including the two above): keep throwing away votes until there is only one of these players with 5 votes.
Kid, Your basic suggestion is logical, but I think the implementation would simpler. Given that Brown and Simmons reached 6 simultaneously, the tie-breaking criterion would become which of the two reached 5 earlier. The answer is Simmons, who reached 5 with opal’s ballot, #15, vs. Brown, who waited for Scary Tuna’s vote at #18.
I withdrew a vote from Brown in favor of Irvin for strategic reasons, believing it would probably have no effect on Brown’s redemption, and would lead Irvin to the Secondary Ballot. As things now stand, the consequence is that Brown will miss redemption, but the change will indeed help Irvin. If a vote comes in this evening for any of those tied with Irvin, however, my strategy will have proved as effective as Napoleon’s at Waterloo.
Man, this is tough. I’ll go with:
Satchel Paige
Larry Doby
Rafael Palmeiro
Ken Boyer
Dwight Evans
Cursed Clevelander’s vote #22 has brought the redemption round to a tumultuous close. This is the tabulation I have, with the questionable tie-breaker for the final redemption slot indicated.
==========Heading_towards_Redemption_(Leading three)===========
8 – Satchel Paige
7 – Ted Simmons
6 – [Don Sutton //? Mordecai Brown] Dwight Evans
========Heading_towards_Secondary_Ballot_(Next seven + ties)========
5 – Ken Boyer, Andre Dawson, Ted Lyons, Willie Randolph, Rick Reuschel
=========Currently_short_of_Redemption_&_Secondary_Ballot========
4 – Fred Clarke, Stan Coveleski, Don Drysdale, Dennis Eckerskley, Monte Irvin, Rafael Palmeiro, Reggie Smith
3 – Buddy Bell
2 – Jim Bunning, Larry Doby, Hal Newhouser, Kirby Puckett, Billy Williams
1 – Sal Bando, Lou Brock, Dizzy Dean, Jim Edmonds, Darrell Evans, Ron Guidry, Orel Hersheiser, Don Mattingly, Minnie Minoso, Gary Sheffield, Early Wynn
I’m going to leave it up to Doug to rule on the tie-breaker for the third redemption slot.
Paige and Simmons are a pretty clear 1 and 2 for the end and for several ballots preceding, but finding a third place with no ties looks mighty difficult. Using EPM’s tabulations (any mistakes mine), it looks like all ballots from 13-22 involve ties, although I think that ballot 12 does not.
Your totals match mine on Google.
The tie-breaker is between Sutton, Brown and Evans. Working backwards from the last ballot cast:
– Cursed Clevelander – vote cast for Evans, so he is out
– Chris C – vote cast for Sutton and Brown, so keep going
– Scary Tuna – vote cast for Brown, so he is out
Elevated to main ballot – Paige, Simmons, Sutton
Initial secondary ballot – Brown, Evans, Boyer, Dawson, Lyons, Randolph, Reuschel
BTW, the answer to the Oscar Gamble trivia question is Jim Perry. He compiled 38.7 WAR in his career and was a teammate of all three retired players recording exactly 200 career home runs: with Gamble on the 1974-75 Indians; with Bill Freehan on the 1973 Tigers; and with Don Mincher on the 1963-66 Twins.
Doug: Excellent trivia question (and answer). Aurelio Rodriguez was also a teammate of Gamble, Freehan, and Mincher, but he came up well short of the 30 WAR mark.
I see that Josh Hamilton also has exactly 200 career home runs, but B-R still shows him as active player. That should change soon.
Missed the deadline but meant to vote. Any chance for an extension?