This post is for voting and discussion in the 126th round of balloting for the Circle of Greats (COG). This is the second of four rounds adding to the list of candidates eligible to receive your votes those players born in 1973. Rules and lists are after the jump.
The new group of 1973-born players, in order to join the eligible list, must, as usual, have played at least 10 seasons in the major leagues or generated at least 20 Wins Above Replacement (“WAR”, as calculated by baseball-reference.com, and for this purpose meaning 20 total WAR for everyday players and 20 pitching WAR for pitchers). This second group of 1973-born candidates, including those with D-J surnames, joins the eligible holdovers from previous rounds to comprise the full list of players eligible to appear on your ballots. The remaining 1973-born candidates, with K-Z surnames, will be eligible to receive your votes in the next two rounds of balloting.
In addition to voting for COG election among players on the main ballot, there will be also be voting for elevation to the main ballot among players on the secondary ballot. For both ballots, which may be voted on at the same time or in separate posts, voters must include three and only three eligible players. For the main ballot election, the one player who appears on the most ballots cast in the round is inducted into the Circle of Greats, while for the secondary ballot election, the one player appearing on the most ballots cast is elevated to the main ballot for the next COG election round. In the case of ties, a runoff election round will be held for COG election, while a tie-breaking process will be followed to determine the secondary ballot winner.
Players who fail to win either ballot but appear on half or more of the ballots that are cast win four added future rounds of ballot eligibility. Players who appear on 25% or more of the ballots cast, but less than 50%, earn two added future rounds of ballot eligibility. One additional round of eligibility is earned for for any player who appears on at least 10% of the ballots cast or, for the main ballot only, any player finishing in the top 9 (including ties) in ballot appearances. Holdover candidates on the main ballot who exhaust their eligibility will drop to the secondary ballot for the next COG election round, as will first time main ballot candidates who attract one or more votes but do not earn additional main ballot eligibility. Secondary ballot candidates who exhaust their eligibility will drop from that ballot, but will become eligible for possible reinstatement in a future Redemption round election.
All voting for this round closes at 11:59 PM EST Sunday, February 11th, while changes to previously cast ballots are allowed until 11:59 PM EST Friday, February 9th.
If you’d like to follow the vote tally, and/or check to make sure I’ve recorded your vote correctly, you can see my ballot-counting spreadsheet for this round here: COG 1973 Part 2 Vote Tally. I’ll be updating the spreadsheet periodically with the latest votes. Initially, there is a row in the spreadsheet for every voter who has cast a ballot in any of the past rounds, but new voters are entirely welcome — new voters will be added to the spreadsheet as their ballots are submitted. Also initially, there is a column for each of the holdover candidates; additional player columns from the new born-in-1973 group will be added to the spreadsheet as votes are cast for them.
Choose your three players from the lists below of eligible players. The current holdovers are listed in order of the number of future rounds (including this one) through which they are assured eligibility, and alphabetically when the future eligibility number is the same. The 1973 birth-year players are listed below in order of the number of seasons each played in the majors, and alphabetically among players with the same number of seasons played.
Holdovers
| MAIN BALLOT | Eligibility | Secondary BALLOT | ELIGIBILITY |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kevin Brown | 8 rounds | Mordecai Brown | this round ONLY |
| Luis Tiant | 5 rounds | Ken Boyer | this round ONLY |
| Dick Allen | 4 rounds | Andre Dawson | this round ONLY |
| Bill Dahlen | 3 rounds | Dwight Evans | this round ONLY |
| Graig Nettles | 3 rounds | Ted Lyons | this round ONLY |
| Manny Ramirez | 2 rounds | Willie Randoph | this round ONLY |
| Richie Ashburn | this round ONLY | Rick Reuschel | this round ONLY |
| Satchel Paige | this round ONLY | ||
| Andy Pettitte | this round ONLY | ||
| Ted Simmons | this round ONLY | ||
| Don Sutton | this round ONLY | ||
| Bobby Wallace | this round ONLY |
Everyday Players (born in 1973, ten or more seasons played in the major leagues or at least 20 WAR, D-J surname):
Johnny Damon
Todd Helton
Nomar Garciaparra
David Dellucci
Alex Gonzalez
Todd Hollandsworth
Damian Jackson
Pitchers (born in 1973, ten or more seasons played in the major leagues or at least 20 WAR, D-J surname):
Octavio Dotel
Shawn Estes
Bob Howry
Ryan Franklin
Danny Graves
Jason Johnson
Please read the post carefully to understand the new voting procedure and rules.
You may cast a ballot for the main COG election, for the secondary ballot election, or for both. If you are voting in both elections, you may do so in the same post or in separate posts. For both elections, each ballot cast must contain three (3), and only three, names.
Have fun!
Thanks, Doug, for all the work. I’ll return to do my voting later, but until then, here’s your obligatory Kevin Brown post for 2018. It’s a long one, but I hope it clarifies why I think he belongs.
Most of you are probably familiar with my talk of Brown’s five-year peak here. I’ll save you that rant (unless someone requests – then I’ll be happy to oblige). Instead, I want a heads-up comparison with a pseudo-contemporary who achieved more votes than Brown last round: Manny Ramirez.
At first blush, I think, most of us wouldn’t consider this a fair fight, and would put Manny FAR above Brown. Let’s start with some of the obvious things. Ramirez won a couple of World Series. Well, Brown appeared in two, winning one. Ramirez was a bigger name… sort of, but Kevin Brown was (at one point) the highest-paid player in MLB history. Brown was named in the Mitchell Report for using when a LOT of guys were; Manny was suspended (TWICE!!!) during the more stringent era, which I think means it’s safe to say he was using the rest of the time, too. I think most of those “intangibles” are even, if not a slight edge to Brown. So let’s look at the numbers.
First, the traditional. Yes, it’s an “apples to oranges” comparison of hitter and pitcher, but we can check black ink, can’t we? How about the “big three” (ERA, W, and SO for pitchers; HR, RBI, and BA for hitters)? Brown led his league three times (ERA twice and W once). Manny thrice, as well (once in each). Brown also led in innings (once) and WHIP (twice). Manny led in OPS thrice. I’d say they’re pretty close.
In the “advanced” stats category, that’s where things get really interesting. Ramirez only led the league once in OPS+… something surprising for someone whose entire case is his defense. Brown has a matching ERA+ title. So we go to WAR.
Again, they’re essentially tied (69.2-68.5). But Brown has a substantial edge in WAA (40.2-35.6 – and that difference is NOT explained by low value in Ramirez’s last few “hang-around” years). Brown’s peak, by WAR, is better, whether you’re looking at a one-, three-, five-, seven-, or ten-year peak, consecutive or otherwise.
Yes, to buy those WAR numbers, you have to believe that Manny was a bad – even terrible – defender. But… well, it would be pretty hard to argue anything BUT. You’d also have to believe that he somehow benefited from being a righthanded hitter in Fenway in an offensive era. Again… not hard to buy. Brown pitched in pitchers’ parks, too, but still in a high-scoring environment. He looks good on the numbers; better, I would say, than Manny.
Now, perhaps you believe these comparisons have been unfair to Manny. Perhaps you believe that his competition for black ink was tougher. Was it, though? Most of the best hitters of his era were putting up their remarkable numbers in the other league. In Brown’s case, most of the best pitchers were in his own league. For me, the comparison is simple: Kevin Brown was a more valuable baseball player than Manny Ramirez. He wasn’t more famous, he didn’t have a better nickname. But you know what he had more of? Greatness. And it’s the Circle of GREATS, not the Circle of Well-Known Baseball Players. So Manny voters, go ahead and vote for your guy; just remember to put his name on your ballot… only AFTER you’ve put Kevin Brown’s on there first. I rest my case.
I happen to agree that Kevin Brown would have the edge over Manny, but I won’t ever be voting for either of them. The reason lies in Doom’s quick comment: Brown was named in the Mitchell Report for using when a LOT of guys were; Manny was suspended (TWICE!!!) during the more stringent era, which I think means it’s safe to say he was using the rest of the time, too.
While Doom seems to touch on PEDs only to suggest that Manny was more culpable than Brown, for many of us that matters very little: the essential point is that both used PEDs to produce the career stats on which we are judging them. I think that’s really the only point of disagreement between those who vote for Brown and/or Ramirez and those who don’t.
Manny’s misdeeds are well known because he was suspended twice (I believe he’s high on the leaderboard there). But in case there are any HHS readers who are not aware of the case against Brown, maybe it’s best simply to post the entire text of what the Mitchell Report says — I don’t think we’ve ever done that and it may be time. Here’s the section specifically on Brown (pp. 214-17):
Kevin Brown pitched for six teams in Major League Baseball between 1986 and 2005, the Texas Rangers (8 seasons), Baltimore Orioles (1 season), Florida Marlins (2 seasons), San Diego Padres (1 season), Los Angeles Dodgers (5 seasons), and New York Yankees (2 seasons). He played in six All-Star games. He was the San Diego Padres Player of the Year in 1998 and the Los Angeles Dodgers Player of the Year in 1999.
[Kirk] Radomski (NB: Radomski was a former Mets clubhouse employee who supplied players with steroids and was a major informant for the “Mitchell Report”) said that Paul Lo Duca referred Brown to him in 2000 or 2001 when Brown and Lo Duca were teammates with the Dodgers. Brown called Radomski and they spoke about human growth hormone for one or two hours. Radomski said that Brown was “very knowledgeable” about human growth hormone. Brown was placed on the disabled list in June 2001 with a neck injury and in July 2001 with an elbow injury. After Brown got hurt, he called Radomski again and asked for human growth hormone.
Radomski said that he sent human growth hormone to Brown by overnight mail and called Brown several times to make sure he had received it. Brown finally returned Radomski’s call and confirmed he had received it. Soon thereafter, Radomski returned home one day to find an express delivery package from Brown on his doorstep, wet from the rain. When he opened it, he found that it contained $8,000 in cash. Radomski called Brown and told him not to check the signature waiver box on the overnight delivery package when he was sending cash, because the envelope was left on Radomski’s doorstep for several hours and could have been taken.
According to Radomski, over the next two or three years he sold performance enhancing substances to Brown five or six times. Radomski recalled that Brown usually purchased multiple kits of human growth hormone. Brown sent cash, sometimes as much as $10,000, to Radomski by overnight mail, and he used his agent’s business address as the return address. At one point, Brown asked Radomski for Deca-Durabolin to help with an ailing elbow, and Radomski sold it to him. (In 2002, Brown was placed on the disabled list with an elbow injury.)
Brown’s name, with an address and several telephone numbers, is listed in the address book seized from Radomski’s residence by federal agents. Agents also seized an Express Mail receipt dated June 7, 2004 addressed to “Kevin Brown, [address].” A copy of that receipt is included in the Appendix and is shown below. [Can’t import the image to HHS]
In the notes of the October 2003 meetings among Dodgers officials, it was reportedly said of Brown:
Less than two months later, the Dodgers traded Brown to the Yankees.
In order to provide Brown with information about these allegations and to give him an opportunity to respond, I asked him to meet with me; he declined.
To my knowledge, Brown has never spoken about the issue publicly.
I admire Doom’s loyalty to Brown — I know he has a deep sense that keeping Brown out of the Circle is unjust, and I know how that feels. I also know that a lot of other players were doing steroids when Brown was. The Mitchell Report names 87. There are, of course, rumors about others. The website, “Baseball’s Steroid Era” lists 128 players, including all who are have been “implicated.” (Beyond that, of course, any players who were successful at keeping their use secret will never be known.)
We know too that there were players who did not use steroids, and who protested baseball’s failure to police itself. Altogether, on any given day before September 1, there are 750 players on active rosters. One can interpret the Mitchell Report as evidence that PED use was nearly universal (if he found 87 players, imagine how many were actually out there), or that it was confined to a minority subset of players (87 players, some of whose careers were not long, over a period of years, would be far under 10% of all MLB players in that time frame). In the first case, the issue of competitive advantage has limited applicability; in the second, it is, for many of us, the main issue when it comes to assessing the legitimacy of career statistics, applying both to the validity of Brown’s good record in competing with his contemporaries, and to the validity of assessing how he stacks up to players from other eras, who competed with their peers on a level playing field.
There is clearly a split among HHS participants about how to handle PED issues. Some of us will not vote for a known PED user, and some of us believe we should not take PEDs into account at all, because we can’t know for certain who took them, or because baseball’s failure to police itself is the ultimate locus of guilt. A third group of us will consider voting for a PED user, but will make a subjective adjustment to estimate what level of natural excellence the player’s career seems to document, discounting for the influence of PEDs.
I’m in the last group. I believe we know that Brown used HGH from 2001 on, and that his “knowledgeability” about HGH when discussing them with a known distributor, which was great enough to elicit notice in testimony by that distributor, is strong evidence of prior use. Since I see Brown as a very fine player whose career record falls close to the CoG borderline — if it were natural, he’d be in, though not as a member of the Circle-Inner-Circle — I can’t credit him as CoGworthy without illicit chemical assistance.
Doom belongs to the second group, and if I were alongside him there, I’d be as passionate in defense of Brown as he is. We’re not actually arguing about Brown or Brown’s record: we’re arguing about PEDs and how we should handle that issue. It’s too bad — that’s not what makes “HighHeatStats interesting and fun for us, and unlike disagreements about the interpretation of statistics, which I believe can in principle always be resolved by burrowing deeper into the stats, I really don’t see any principle that we’d all recognize and accept that would lead us towards common ground. So we’re stuck here, round after round.
I agree that we’re just spinning our wheels on the PED issue, and as the Watson to Dr. Doom’s Holmes when it comes to Brown advocacy, I think it might be a lot more instructive for us to once again tackle the other big mark against Brown, his quite pronounced home/road splits.
Next Redemption Round I’m voting for Canseco (Jose), simply because he was vilified and blackballed for being honest while the rest of us were in chicks-dig-the-longball mode.
I guess I would say that Brown’s H-R splits are unusually large – 0.92 points of ERA. The tOPS+, which takes into account ballpark, says that he was ten percent better than himself at home, ten percent worse than himself on the road. This IS large, but not crazy. Greg Maddux and Randy Johnson, for example, were about five percent better than themselves at home, five percent worse on the road. Mike Mussina, John Smoltz, Curt Schilling, and Tom Glavine were all within 2% of their average performance, whether home or away. Roger Clemens and Pedro Martinez were in between (3-4% off their normal performance). Those are Brown’s contemporaries (among starters) in the COG. Historically, among post-WWII pitchers, Bert Blyleven, Fergie Jenkins, and Tom Seaver were about even whether at home or on the road; Phil Niekro, Whitey Ford, and Juan Marichal were 3-5% better or worse, depending on park; Bob Gibson and Steve Carlton were at 6%; Sandy Koufax and Robin Roberts at 7%; and Jim Palmer matches Brown at 10% better at home, 10% worse on the road. Nolan Ryan’s H/R splits were, famously among uber-nerds, more than 10% off his normal performance (88/115) on the road, as were Warren Spahn’s. Some of it is, I suspect, luck/chance/randomness; some of it is taking advantage of good pitcher’s parks, making the gap appear large because of being able to take advantage of one’s most common surroundings, and some of it could be written down as a problem with the pitcher. That said, we elected Wade Boggs and Larry Walker and others on the offensive side with huge splits. We can measure the runs, so it seems to me that it’s valid to elect someone with a large split if they have the run prevention ability to make them a candidate. The thing about Brown is, he played in like a hundred home ballparks, and he was ridiculously effective in all of them, unlike Palmer or Koufax, who exhibit similar splits but may have been uniquely suited to their home parks. Brown was uniquely suited to MANY different home parks. I have a hard time punishing him for it.
I don’t place much stress on H/R splits, unless the home park characteristics distort the overall record over time, which would be a decisive argument in a case like Bobby Doerr’s, for example, where an entire career in a hitter’s park dramatically biases his traditional numbers.
As I see it, you want a player to do his best work in the park where he plays 50% of his games, and, naturally, that will make his performance in other parks look “worse”: you can’t have it both ways. If a player’s record is worse at home, find a team whose park he does well in and propose a trade for a player who does well in your park. (Equally, of course, we should expect that hitters will hit better in hitter’s parks and pitchers will pitch better in pitcher’s parks — so if your club plays in a hitter’s park and a pitcher has a better ERA away, put that trade on hold.)
The issue is simply adjusting between players so that the statistical playing field is always neutral. That’s something advanced stats are designed to do, albeit sometimes imperfectly. Brown moved around a lot, as Doom notes: I see no reason to think he was advantaged by a long-term career in a pitcher’s park, and if he were, ERA+ would handle it.
I feel so certain about all this that I suspect myself of being completely blind to some obvious point that people concerned about H/A splits can see, so if anyone can show me what I’m missing, I’ll be grateful..
epm,
It’s a thoughtful and measured response. I GET that many people are going to have problems with electing Brown due to PED use. I could’ve also pointed out that the Mitchell report itself basically talks about Brown’s “hangaround” years more than his most valuable ones; the thing is, as you point out, if we just talk about steroids, no one is going to change their mind, so I’m not going to try. I just want to stick to things that might actually sway someone. In particular, there were quite a few voters who voted for Manny and not for Brown; were I able to convince them, Brown would likely have been close to election. I totally understand that you (and others) are never going to come around. On the other hand, we have previously elected steroid users and those suspected of steroid use, so I know that there are voters out there who will consider it – and certainly, Manny Ramirez came in second in the last vote, so I know there are people who don’t hold it against players, to the extent that I think Brown is electable in our current bloc of voters. I don’t want to try to convince anyone of an issue on which feelings run deep and aren’t likely to be changed; I just want to discuss it with those who might be won. That’s why I didn’t focus on that issue.
Fair enough, Doom.
I truthfully go back and forth on my thoughts on PEDs and how to value players, especially non-slam dunk players, all the time. Morally, I have a problem with taking them, but career-wise, if I’m assessing a player’s value on the baseball diamond, I have more of a problem with breaking the rules. I think it’s lazy to say ‘it happened so much that I’m gonna call it a wash’ and I think it’s lazy to say that anyone with even a whiff of PED suspicion should be discounted wholesale (luckily, these views aren’t espoused much here, they’re just different ends of lots of arguments I’ve seen among baseball writers).
I’ve come around to the point where I view PED use before it was tested for/outlawed outright by MLB as similar on the moral scale to other uses of advantages. There’s a scale within that, of course – I’ll grant Larry Walker credit for using his home field to his advantage even more than the general advantage his other teammates got (and for being a damn good all-around player even without that consideration). Same with someone who uses Fenway to their advantage. That’s smart play and should be rewarded, not discounted. I’ll consider Gaylord Perry’s stats pretty much at face value, even though doctoring the ball was more illegal by baseball rules than steroids and HGH were in the 90s. I’ll consider Cobb’s stats at face value even though he used whatever trick he could to get on base (I remember the famous anecdote about him crowding the plate against Walter Johnson because Johnson would pitch easier since he didn’t want to hurt anyone). I’ll consider Brown’s stats at face value, but my brain wants to make a mental adjustment because putting things in your body to change your physiology seems grosser and more unnatural, even though it’s an advantage that wasn’t outlawed, just like some of those other examples. It is also easier to be tempted to make an adjustment when the numbers are so obvious – Perry getting a bunch of wins in his career doesn’t stick out as egregiously as the home run binge in the 90s-00s, or as Bonds’ changing physical profile. And maybe more players were obtaining an obvious advantage from PEDs than from, say, doctoring a baseball, so it’s more tempting to want to punish the whole by venting anger at the few we know about and can deny our meaningless vote. So, I’ll let that feeling find some purchase and make… some kind of adjustment for that. But how does that translate statistically? I dunno.
Manny got suspended twice after the rules changed. That’s a much bigger adjustment.
Anyway, what I’m trying to say is… I’m thinking of starting to vote for Kevin Brown again?
Main COG election:
Brown
Simmons
Tiant
This round’s tidbits. Answers are bolded.
1. Johnny Damon is one of six expansion era players with a career including 500 doubles and 100 triples. Which of the other five had fewer career extra base hits than Damon? Jimmy Rollins
2. Todd Helton is the eighteenth retired player since 1901 to compile a .300/.400/.500 career of 5000+ PA. Which of those players recorded less career WAR than Helton? Hank Greenberg
3. Octavio Dotel is one of 13 pitchers with a season of 70 games finished. Which of those pitchers, like Dotel, had no other seasons with more than 50 games finished? Duane Ward
4. Nomar Garciaparra is the only rookie to lead his league in hits and triples. Garciaparra’s 209 hits in 1997 are tied with Harvey Kuenn (1953) for the most by an AL rookie shortstop. Which NL rookie shortstop recorded the most hits? Corey Seager
5. Bob Howry recorded 200 relief IP for the Cubs and White Sox. Which other pitcher did the same? Turk Lown
6. David Dellucci led his league in triples playing for the 1998 Diamondbacks. Which other rookie led his league in a major offensive category while playing for an expansion team in its maiden season? Chuck Carr
7. Shawn Estes’ career 4.60 BB/9 ratio is 7th highest among all modern era pitchers with 250 starts. Estes twice allowed 100 runs and 100 walks in a season. Which pitcher is the only contemporary of Estes with more such seasons? Russ Ortiz
8. Alex Gonzalez recorded 7 seasons of 100 strikeouts and no more than 20 home runs. Who is the only shortstop with more such seasons? Derek Jeter
9. Ryan Franklin is one of 112 pitchers with careers of 100 starts and 200 relief appearances, but is one of only four in that group with three 190 IP seasons, and 6 seasons of 60+ IP, all in relief. Which HOFer is among that group of four? Dennis Ecksersley
10. Todd Hollandsworth was rookie of the year in his league in his only qualified batting season. Who was the first RoY winner with such a career? Joe Charboneau
11. Jason Johnson posted a 16-29 record (.364) in two seasons as a starter for the Tigers. Which pitcher has a lower W-L% in 60+ starts for Detroit? Lerrin LaGrow
12. Damian Jackson is the only Padre with 150 games at both 2B and SS, and is one of 8 middle infielders to record 6 career WAR for the Friars. Which two of those eight were traded for each other? Ozzie Smith, Garry Templeton
13. Danny Graves is the only major league player born in Vietnam. Graves recorded a .263 W-L% (5-14) as a starter but .494 (43-44) overall, a -0.231 difference that is the 4th largest among all pitchers with 180+ IP as a starter and in relief. Which HOFer has a larger negative W-L% difference as a starter? Rich Gossage
My favorite Shawn Estes stat line: 2004, pitching for (of course) Colorado: 5.84 ERA in 202 IP, 1.624 WHIP. 105 BB, 117 K, but a positive WAR (.7, but positive) and….wait for it, a 15-8 WL record as he clearly pitched to the score.
#2 should be Hank Greenberg.
Move the threshold to 3,000 PA and I think it’s Lefty O’Doul with the lowest WAR in a .300/.400/.500 career.
Greenberg is the one.
Doug, is Joe Charboneau the answer for #10?
The very one.
CursedClevelander should have got this one.
I should have at least guessed it, since I knew he fit that designation, though I wasn’t 100% sure he was the first.
I actually misread the Q at first and though the answer might be Bob Hamelin. But Hamelin didn’t get his own song, now did he!
I think #1 is Jimmy Rollins.
Right you are.
#12 sure sounds like Ozzie Smith and Gary Templeton.
And right again.
#8 – Sight unseen, I figured it had to be Jose Hernandez – first guy that came to mind for a SS that struck out all the time. But he only had one such season. Then I realized it – this is a perfect trivia question! Obviously, the answer is the other Alex Gonzalez, right?
Except no, he only had 4 such seasons. Shawon Dunston perhaps? Nope, not enough seasons. So I gave up and brute forced it – lo and behold, it’s Cap’n Jeter, with 8 such seasons.
Of course, many of those were good to great seasons – of the 137 qualifying seasons that show up on a P-I search, Jeter has 4 of the 5 top OPS figures.
Gonzalez’s 7 seasons with 100 K’s and 20 or fewer home runs totaled 7.4 WAR. For Jeter, it was 34.4 WAR in 8 such seasons.
Since you mentioned the other Alex Gonzalez, here’s a follow-up question for you: What career accomplishment (min. 5000 PAs) do the two Alex Gonzalezes share with only four other shortstops? (min. 50% of Games at SS). Heck, I’ll even tell you the other shortstops: Nomar, Joe Cronin, Jose Valentin, Juan Uribe (thru age 28, Juan played 87% of his games at SS, after age 28 only 16%).
The answer to the follow-up question is that these six are the only retired shortstops to record extra bases on 35% of their hits over a 5000+ PA career.
It will surprise no one that I’m going to advocate voting for Satchel Paige. I just finished commenting on Doom’s post concerning Kevin Brown, where I said I didn’t think that the arguments we’ve had about Brown have been about Brown and his career at all: we’ve just been arguing about how to handle the PED issue. In a way, I think Paige’s case is similar.
I wrote at length about Paige in the Redemption Round string, and it would be bad form to repeat that long post. (Of course, I hope those who didn’t see it will go take a look.) For this round, I’m going to stress three basic points more briefly (I originally wrote “much more briefly,” but after I was done, I made a deletion):
(1) I suspect that there may be no pitcher about whom a broader range of contemporary testimony claims that in his prime, he was the greatest pitcher ever, including comments from pretty good MLB players who hit against him, like Joe DiMaggio. I think no one familiar with baseball is unaware of Paige’s reputation, or would fail to think of him as possibly one of the very greatest pitchers ever. We have not recently had the chance to elect any player who could be considered an “inner circle” member of the CoG – a member of the elite among baseball’s elite. Paige has that stature; no other current candidate, good as they may be, does.
(2) The reason I italicized the word “possibly” in the last paragraph is because it is always natural to doubt whether Paige’s record in the Negro and Latin leagues, and his barnstorming exploits, translate into true MLB elite talent. In my earlier post I went into some detail on Paige’s actual MLB record, which begins at age 42 (and 2 days) and ends at age 47 (not counting three shutout innings at 59). If you look at the records of pitchers who continued to play and who pitched 100+ innings after turning 42, and who pitched as starters (I’m dodging Wilhelm’s special case here), I believe only Roger Clemens has a better ERA+ than Paige . . . and there are some problems about how Clemens managed that. (Because Paige began pitching at age 42 in his “age 41 season,” the B-R Play Index doesn’t make this search easy, and I can’t guarantee I haven’t overlooked someone.) I believe we have to regard this as “proof-of-concept”: Paige was tested in “old age” to see whether his abilities were consistent with his reputation in his prime and he passed the test.
(3) Because of the first two points, I think it should be granted that Paige “fits” easily in the CoG. The problem is that he is not eligible, because by the terms of birtelcom’s original rule, a CoG candidate must have played in the Majors for 10 years or accumulated 20 WAR. Paige played only six seasons (the last a token appearance), and he accumulated only 10+ WAR – we all know why. Paige is the only player who fails to qualify for the CoG, but whose abbreviated MLB record demonstrates that segregation alone prevented him from achieving inner-circle greatness in the Majors. So I believe the choice of whether to vote for Paige or not reduces to whether we believe we should make an exception to the CoG rules for the unique case of Paige. I think that is the argument we should be having this round.
. . . And, obviously, in making this point, I have been advocating that we make this exception and admit one of the greatest pitchers ever to play Major League ball into the CoG. His election will strengthen the quality of the CoG and register that we have chosen to acknowledge the evidence and make a unique exception to our own rules, rather than allow rules that are adequate in all cases but this one to affirm the consequences of racial segregation.
Comments on the new balloteers:
DON SUTTON
200+ IP for 21 straight years (on pace in ’81)
190+ IP for 22 straight
3rd in career starts behind Cy Young and Nolan Ryan.
It can be argued that he had just a handful of ‘great’ seasons.
It can also be argued that that kind of long-term consistency is great.
________
SATCHEL PAIGE
I don’t think anyone doubts the stories of his greatness.
This would be our first time, however, voting for someone without any numbers to back up the story.
________
TED SIMMONS
15th in defensive games at Catcher.
Some fine offensive seasons.
The 8 retired Catchers with a higher WAR than Simmons are all in the HOF.
_________
JOHNNY DAMON
40th in career PA. 138th in WAR.
16th in WAR among CF, between Jim Edmonds and Jim Wynn.
He was a splendid baserunner. In fact, he is the only player in hstory with at least
90 Rbat, 70 Rbaser, and 40 Rdp
_________
TODD HELTON
37.4 WAR in his 5-year peak.
As with any Denver player, we look to the home/road splits:
.345 / .441 / .607 / 1.048
.287 / .386 / .469 / .855
__________
NOMAH
Had 8 HR in his first 13 playoff games.
__________
DAVID DELLUCCI
2.5 WAR at age 31. 0.1 WAR in his other 12 seasons.
The last player to bat at least .390 with 100+ PA. (tied for 4th highest BA since 1941)
__________
ALEX GONZALEZ
Was part of the 4-team trade that brought Nomah to the Cubs.
__________
TODD HOLLANDSWORTH
Was Rookie of the Year same year as Jeter.
Walked and scored in the infamous Moises Alou Hissy-Fit inning.
__________
OCTAVIO DOTEL
Played for 13 franchises.
Had an amazing 3-year run (2001-2003).
__________
I kind of see Sutton as a poor man’s Warren Spahn. Pitched forever and always gave you a bushel full of innings and his fair share of wins. In my view, there is indeed greatness in that type of player.
Nomar holds the career record for SLG percentage among shortstops, and it isn’t even close, with a 53 point bulge over Joe Cronin, among retired players with 5000 PA careers.
I assume you are using the standard 50% of games played at a position.
This put Alex Rodriguez into no-position-land.
1272 at SS
1194 at 3B
298 at DH
2 at 1B
__________
.550 SLG
.581 while a SS
Yes, it was 50%. A-Rod takes the lead at 45%.
FWIW, Nomar and A-Rod share the record of six shortstop seasons with 70 XBH. Nomar did it over 7 seasons (his only miss was the 2001 season lost to injury), and A-Rod over 8 years (he had 66 in ’97 and 67 in ’99).
Here are some comparative stats for the candidates this round. I’ve tried to include everyone who might get a vote, but there always seems to be a vote or two for someone I’d never expected.
Pitchers
P(Tot)WAR…Peak5..Top5…WAR/9IP…WAR/Yr….ERA+…Career length
68.5 (68.3)……37.0…37.0……0.189……4.0 (17)……127……1.0………Brown
10.3 (09.1)……10.1…10.1……0.190……2.1 (05)……124……N/A……..Paige
60.9 (60.8)……20.3…28.4……0.166……3.4 (18)……117……1.0………Pettitte
68.7 (67.4)……22.5…27.3……0.117……3.0 (23)……108……1.6………Sutton
66.1 (66.7)……28.7…34.7……0.171……3.9 (17)……114……1.2………Tiant
Position Players
WAR……Pk5……Top5……WAR/G…WAR/Yr……OPS+…Career length
58.7………31.5……36.7……0.034……4.2 (14)……156………1.0………Allen
63.6………31.6……32.7……0.029……4.2 (15)……111………1.3………Ashburn
75.2………22.6……29.8……0.031……4.0 (19)……110………1.4………Dahlen
56.0………19.8……24.5……0.022……3.2 (17)……104………1.5………Damon
44.2………28.1……33.0……0.031……3.7 (12)……124………0.8………Garciaparra
61.4………37.4……37.4……0.027……3.8 (16)……133………1.3………Helton
68.0………28.7……32.2……0.025……3.4 (20)……110………1.4………Nettles
69.2………28.7……29.9……0.030……4.1 (17)……154………1.3………Ramirez
50.1………23.3……26.4……0.024……2.6 (19)……118………1.4………Simmons
70.2………28.6……31.3……0.029……4.2 (17)……105………1.3………Wallace*
* Wallace’s total WAR (incl. pitching) is 76.3.
WAR/Yr. includes only those seasons with 10 GS or 100 IP for starters, 20G for relievers, and 50G for position players.
Career length takes Brown IP and Allen PA as 1.0.
Garciaparra’s 3.0 WAR aged 30+ is the fourth lowest total among 86 players, since 1893, with 40 WAR thru age 29 (Mike Trout is the 87th). Only lower totals were posted by John McGraw (0.2), Daryl Strawberry (1.9) and Jim Fregosi (2.8).
The fact that Paige’s ERA+ shows up so highly and he didn’t get to pitch until he was 41 means a lot.
I think the WAR/9IP figure is even more startling. After a 21-year career before debuting as an MLB rookie, Paige was generating WAR at a higher per inning rate than Brown and any of the others over their entire careers.
I feel like Andre Dawson may be the best player on either ballot with a strong peak but I guess he didn’t quite make the cut. I’m also a little worried about this split ballot deal that we’re getting a little too complicated but I understand that the circle is complete now and continuing to add kind of puts us well across the years and thus requires a different kind of approach.
Satchel Paige
Greg Nettles
Ted Simmons
Andre Dawson
Willie Randoph
Rick Reuschel
Really reluctant to have to name three guys from that short secondary ballot.
Quick rules clarification from Doug? I didn’t vote in the redemption round because, if I recall, I had stopped voting in the redemption rounds when we first did COG and I wanted to stay consistent. To keep in line with that I’d rather not vote for the column B players (and I agree with Mosc’s take as well). Can I vote straight COG without the Column B vote?
Yes, can vote on either or both ballots.
Here’s a chart of stats for Secondary Ballot candidates, using the same parameters as the chart for the CoG ballot, above:
Pitchers
55.1 (56.4)……34.2…34.2……0.148……4.5 (12)……139……1.0……M. Brown
67.2 (71.6)……24.2…29.0……0.145……3.6 (19)……118……1.6……Lyons
68.2 (70.1)……31.0…32.8……0.173……4.0 (17)……114……1.4……Reuschel
Position Players
62.8………33.0……34.0……0.031……4.5 (14)……116………1.2……Boyer
64.4………32.4……33.7……0.025……3.4 (19)……119………1.5……Dawson
66.9………23.7……28.3……0.026……3.5 (19)……127………1.4……Dw. Evans
65.5………27.2……29.5……0.030……3.7 (18)……104………1.3……Randolph
Allen, Dahlen, Simmons
M. Brown, Lyons, Boyer
Just curious if the PC police would allow a nickname like “Three Finger” nowadays…..
Brown, Ramirez, Simmons
and
Brown, Randolph, Evans
My Main and Secondary ballots are included in this comment.
Main ballot:
Kevin Brown
Luis Tiant
Satchel Paige
While my first two spots are steady as can be, I’ve rotated my third spot for the last four rounds. I’ve moved over to Team Paige, and this one is sticking. I’ve been one of the outspoken folks that Paige did not belong, because he wasn’t in the original rules. I felt like a COG that included Paige by EXCLUDED Josh Gibson, Bullet Joe Rogan, and Oscar Charleston was a bit of a farce. I haven’t completely moved off of this idea; I would still happily vote for those players. HOWEVER, I now feel that only one of them in is better than none of them. I would like to see Paige elected. So what if the original rules didn’t cover it? Rules are made to be broken, right? Maybe we’ll find a way to honor other Negro League players, and maybe not; either way, I think electing Paige is the right call. And you’ll know I’m serious when I say this: I wouldn’t even have a problem with him going in BEFORE Kevin Brown (though you should definitely still vote for Kevin Brown).
Apologies to Simba; I think he might’ve had my fourth spot, if such a thing existed.
Secondary Ballot:
Rick Reuschel
Ken Boyer
Andre Dawson
Going with the three guys I voted for in the Redemption Round who didn’t make it to the main ballot. Not a tough choice for me! 🙂
Paige
Tiant
Ashburn
Lyons
Dawson
Brown
Last round I advocated for Dahlen and Wallace, and this round I’m all in for Paige. I think I should stick to those three, but Dahlen now is off the bubble, and if I see someone on the bubble floundering (or is it “foundering?”), I may make a strategic change. Among the redeemed brethren, I don’t have a strong sense of how to assess Simmons or Sutton. I’d appreciate it very much if paartisans for either of these two could note the key reasons why they seem CoGworthy (and equally if others would explain why they may disagree). (in Sutton’s case, having been aware of him as kind of the runt of the Dodger bullpen litter in his early years, I remember at some point looking at his record when he was approaching 300 wins and wondering, “How the hell did this happen?” I’ve really never figured that out.) Among the 1973 Class of DJs, I’d also be interested to read pro/con arguments about Helton.
So for my main ballot:
Paige
Dahlen
Wallace
On the Secondary Ballot, my choices are:
M. Brown
Lyons
Boyer
Those who participated in the last Redemption Round know that I unintentionally blew up Brown’s redemption by changing my vote. I owe him one. I also wrote a lengthy advocacy post for Lyons. I’m going with Boyer over the outfielders and Randolph because he played third well at a time when that was first becoming a key component of that historically under-attended position. Of course it was his little brother who joined Brooks in showing how it was really done, but Ken was a defensive forerunner, in addition to his strong offense. I’m interested in hearing more arguments for Randolph and Evans. Frankly, I think all four Secondary Ballot position players are very close in value, though with very different profiles of how they accrued it.
For Sutton and Simmons, the primary argument would be that all of the comparable players are in the HoF.
In Sutton’s case, he is one of 13 pitchers with 5000 IP, all of whom are in the Hall, and one of 24 pitchers to win 300 games, all but one (Roger Clemens, who is in the CoG) of whom is in the Hall.
Similar story for Simmons. He stands 11th in WAR among catchers, with the 10 ahead of him, excepting Joe Mauer, in the Hall. Other catcher rankings include 2nd in Hits, 2nd in RBI, 5th in XBH and 5th in Runs, results more impressive for having been accomplished in a lower run scoring era. Simmons ranks 3rd in games and PA, and 3rd in games caught thru age 33 (Simmons mostly played other positions after that).
For Randolph, the WAR argument is there, standing 11th among full-time (75% of games) second basemen. Of those ahead of him, all but Grich, Whitaker and Cano are in the Hall, and the first two are in the CoG. Randolph also combines excellent defense and baserunning with competent hitting. Among full-time second baseman through 2001 (before the new defensive metrics were introduced), only Randolph, Frisch and Joe Gordon totaled 100 Rbat and 100 Rfield. In that same group, Randolph stands 1st in Rbaser and 4th in Rfield. Comparing him to a contemporary middle infielder also more noted for his defense and baserunning than for his offense, their totals for Rbat + Rfield + Rbaser + Rdp are 267 for Randolph and 224 for the other player, who is … Ozzie Smith.
Thanks, Doug. Good reply. I think nsb’s assessment of Simmons and Sutton, below, is pretty in line with my own thinking about those two. The arguments about Simmons and Sutton share a certain reliance on the company they keep, rather than on their own accomplishments. Sutton is, indeed, somehow, a member of the exclusive 300-win club. How did he get there? Spahn famously won 20 games 13 times; Sutton won 15 games 12 times — a “poor man’s Warren Spahn” indeed! How destitute can a 300 game-winner be? Over his final seven seasons, Sutton threw a 100 ERA+ (2.8 WAA) while going from a 240 game-winner to 324. That seems like the typical profile of a compiler. (And who wouldn’t follow Sutton’s path? He earned approximately 70% of his lifetime baseball salary over those mediocre years — no destitution there.) Of course, you can make exactly the same argument about the last seven seasons by the guy behind Sutton on the win list, Phil Niekro (99 ERA+), and we voted Niekro into the Circle — but then, Niekro’s 318 wins weren’t the basis of his case: it was his 97.4 pWAR, 40% more than Sutton.
Along similar lines, and again following nsb’s lead, while Simmons may be 11th in WAR among catchers, with all 9 retired catchers above him in the Hall, if you look at his rate of WAR production, things look very different. Among the top 20 catchers in total WAR, Simmons is 19th in WAR/100PA, and it’s a sharp drop from 18th. Bench leads with .865 WAR/100PA, Tenace (!) is second with .847, Cochrane is next with .839. Go down to number 11 on that scale and you get to Mauer (.720); number 18 is Posada, at .597, and then comes Simmons, at .517, a thirteen percent drop-off from Posada (Jason Kendall brings up the rear at .477). Outside of that group of Top 20, the CoG includes Campy (.710, but 26th among catchers in total WAR), and Gary Carter, who played too low a proportion of games at catcher to be picked up on this list, but who would be at .773. The lowest CoG catcher in these terms is I-Rod, at .666 (already a beastly number without dropping the floor to Simmons’ .517). This is all consistent with Simmons’ profile in the WAR figures I listed for the CoG candidates. Apart from Johnny Damon, Simmons has the lowest Top5 WAR seasons, the lowest WAR/G, and the lowest WAR/Year (including Damon). Given his low rate standing among top catchers, I don’t see how the catcher bonus can lift Simmons high enough.
This all sounds very negative, but both Sutton and Simmons were wonderful players. They just don’t seem to be in a class with their comparators in the CoG, even though on certain compilation statistics they seem to belong, or even to be superior.
I don’t see that kind of problem with Randolph, but he doesn’t particularly shine on this same measure among second basemen (that is, those who played 50%+ at 2nd). Here, the list, according to WAR/100PA, rather than straight WAR, is headed by Hornsby (1.340), Lajoie (1.088), Robinson (1.060), and Collins (1.029). When you get to Randolph’s place on the total WAR list, 12th, you find Lou Whitaker at .751. Randolph is in 16th, at .693. Quite a few active players are above him, and may sink (Utley, .852; Pedroia, .774; Cano, .774; Kinsler, .735). The thing about Randolph that is different from Simmons is that there are CoG members below him in WAR/100PA: Alomar, .642, and Biggio, .521. So Randolph does have an if-he’s-in-why-not-me case. I don’t see that kind of negative argument as persuasive in itself, but I’m going to follow up on some of the more positive elements of Randolph’s record that you note. I’m certainly not ready to write him off.
. . . Got to get my italics under control before the html police come take them away . . .
Here are some more of those “compilers”.
Most wins, last 7 seasons, aged 37+. Note that Maddux makes the list with just 6 seasons, and Plank with only 5.
Interesting list, Doug. Obviously, Young, Clemens, Alex, Johnson, and Plank were not just compiling, since they all registered ERA+ above 115. Rogers, Wynn, Wells, Moyer, and Joe Niekro are not in or candidates for the CoG.
That leaves four pitchers who are in the CoG who had records much like Sutton’s in their final 6-7 years. I noted earlier that Phil Niekro, the only one of the four whose ERA+ is actually on a par with Sutton, escapes the comparison by having 40% more WAR than Sutton. The other three are Perry, Spahn, and Maddux. Perry registered 35% more WAR than Sutton, Spahn 49%, and Maddux 59%. The compiling phase may bear some resemblance, but overall Sutton is not in a class with these pitchers.
Doug, I want to add another note on your paragraph on Randolph, and the point has a general thrust. You close by writing, “Comparing him to a contemporary middle infielder also more noted for his defense and baserunning than for his offense, their totals for Rbat + Rfield + Rbaser + Rdp are 267 for Randolph and 224 for the other player, who is … Ozzie Smith.” That brought me up short, because it seems to suggest that Willie was a better all-around player than Ozzie. I went straight to their B-R pages to confirm your counter-intuitive statement, which was entirely accurate. I was, like, “Wow!” and, “OMG!” and “How come I never knew?” After thinking about it for a while, though, I settled back on, “Oh.”
Here’s my thinking now. Smith and Randolph were very different players. Smith was a poor hitter, while Randolph was better than average (helped by a good eye for BBs) — their deviation from average was almost identical, in different directions. Smith was a far better baserunner, a bit better avoiding the DPs as a batter, and almost twice the fielder Randolph was (taking his longer career into account). When you crunch those numbers, Randolph comes out well ahead.
But as I understand it — and I’d really like to know if I’m wrong, because I have a hard time getting clear on this — those numbers omit the key factor that Smith’s excellent fielding figure basically reflects his superiority over the average shortstop, because Rfield does not distinguish among positions (although it incorporates data that may be exclusive to certain positions or types of positions). To compare Randolph’s 114 Rfield at 2B to Smith’s 239 at SS, you have to factor in Rpos, the differential positional values assigned to defensive runs at 2B and SS. Because SS skills are scarcer (which we take as an indication of difficulty and value), Smith’s 239 runs saved are calculated as equivalent to 393 runs saved on a scale where Randolph’s 114 runs saved are equivalent to 180. So when you build a straight-up comparison on fielding, turning apples and oranges into a smoothie, Randolph comes out with a total value (batting, running, hitting) of 333, while Smith is at 378, 13.5% higher in total value, rather than 16% lower.
Now, Smith was a HoF and CoG shoo-in, and it would seem as though Randolph’s case must be strong even on these revised numbers if they leave him within about 13% of Smith’s total value. But while Smith’s total-value numbers supported his Hall case, they certainly didn’t support his 92% first-ballot Hall vote, nearly six times the vote for Trammell, another SS in his first year of eligibility, who had just a little less WAR than Smith and a lot more WAR/G.
Smith’s case was built on the fact that he played the most acrobatic of all fielding positions far better than any other player ever had, with 10% more dWAR than his nearest competitor (who couldn’t hit a lick). This is like Nolan Ryan’s 99% first-ballot vote, despite a W-L record and some other traditional stats that were really not outstanding (WAR wasn’t there yet): it was because Ryan was the all-time King — no: the all-time Emperor — of the splashiest pitching feat: the strikeout.
Now, if you take another position player to compare with Ozzie or pitcher to compare with Ryan, and say, “He doesn’t have that one sexy thing, but he’s got a mix of stuff that puts his within, say, 10% of your 99%-vote Hall member, so surely he’s Hallworthy,” you miss the dynamic that made Ozzie and Ryan shoo-ins. Keep Ozzie’s total value constant, but tone down his fielding to “very good” and bump up his hitting to “above average,” and what do you get? You get Alan Trammell. Ozzie’s RAA was 379; Trammell’s was 375 (in fewer games) — on average, they’re almost clones. Ozzie was swept into the Hall on the first ballot; Trammell peaked at 40% and had to wait for the Veteran’s Committee. My own view is that the writer’s made a mistake on Trammell — he should have made 75% — but they also judged Ozzie on an uneven playing field, inflating his vote beyond his actual value. (I’m not sure that was a bad thing to do in Ozzie’s case, but if a similar distortion had swept the less qualified Andruw Jones in the Hall this year, I would have been dismayed.)
So while Randolph looks good if you say he falls 13% short of Ozzie in total value, that also means he falls 13% short of Trammell. Trammell was a fine player and I supported him for the CoG, where he resides. But my recollection is that his election was not an easy vote, and if we’d had to cut him down by 13% in value, at best I think he’d have been wobbling on the threshold, which is where Randolph is now. I’m not sure how I’d have voted for [Trammell – 0.13*Trammell].
The general point I draw from all this is that isolating certain combinations of numbers to articulate a candidate’s props when it comes to the Hall or CoG can, I think, be misleading. When we were doing our informal Hall vote, I tracked countless HoF advocacy and voter statements about this player or that, and many were of the form: “He is 2nd in X, 4th in Y, the only player besides Babe Ruth to have Z’d three times . . .” and so forth. These are interesting facts and I was sometimes startled by them, as I was by your comparison between Randolph and Smith. But they are, I think, at best secondary ways to try to triangulate the quality of a player’s career, and I’m afraid that their intriguing nature can capture central attention and wind up distorting our view.
I’m afraid I don’t know all the details about how the R values are calculated. But, I was actually trying to avoid “isolating certain combinations of numbers” by adding them all together to show the run value attributable to the player’s performance (which I think is measured on the same scale, regardless of the player’s position).
I left Rpos out of the mix because it’s so arbitrary and non-discriminating. There’s no correlation to the player’s performance, only a supposed run value awarded to every player at a position (weighted, of course, by how much of the season each played), regardless of how well or poorly a player performed.
I see what you’re thinking, but to my mind, Rpos is like park factor: it’s a built in constant adjusted each year in light of holistic calculations of performance at all positions. The constant is applied equally per inning to all players because it applies equally per inning to all players. For a good first baseman or a lousy first baseman, their fielding performance is constrained by the position they play.
Albert Pujols was a terrific first baseman, and despite his recent woes, his career Rfield is substantially higher than Randolph’s (139 to 114). We’ve all played the game and know the dramatic difference in what fielding is about at 1B and 2B. Is there any way it makes sense to suggest that Pujols get more career credit as a fielder than Randolph?
. . . or, to stick to the Secondary Ballot and view things another way, rather than comparing Randolph to a player he’s not competing with on the ballot, like Ozzie, total up the four categories without Rpos for the other three position players and compare (the numbers in brackets are RAA, with Rpos factored in):
Evans 415 [296]
Dawson 324 [258]
Boyer 276 [305]
Randolph 267 [332]
Now, the obvious response to Randolph’s having the worst numbers is to point out that he was a second baseman and the others were at easier positions in the field — otherwise, what case could you make for Randolph? That’s precisely the correction that Rpos provides.
Point well made. Thanks.
Floundering is more appropriate in this case than foundering.
The other Simmons—not Bucketfoot. I’m basically negative on him. The only reason for considering him, it seems to me, is that in some respects he seems the best catcher—or his stats seem the best—of those not already voted in. Against that easy premise is the fact that his WAR of 50.1 (2.0 minimum less than all other COG catchers except Campanella) was accumulated in 2456 games. Thurman Munson, just to pick one of several not under consideration, produced 45.9 in 1423 games. Simmons # 10 JAWS ranking, in other words, is only that high because he was pretty good and hung around nearly as long as I-Rod (68.4 WAR in 2543 games) and Fisk (68.3 WAR in 2499). This is a tremendous gap, as I see it. Further, while Simmons was an 8-time All Star, his presence in MVP voting is less than noteworthy—a sixth place finish, a ninth, and a few other down-ballot appearances.
One place catchers don’t usually need an allowance for their position is in the MVP sweepstakes. Bench and Cochrane won two, Berra and Campy won three, I-Rod, Mauer, Hartnett, Munson, Lombardi, and Posey all grabbed one, and Carter, Fisk, Piazza, Dickey, and Freehan all finished in the top five in one or more seasons, several times coming in second, with other recognition in the top ten as well. Of the leading 18 JAWS catchers, in fact, only Buck Ewing—whose career preceded MVP awards—and Gene Tenace fare worse.
His fielding was never highly regarded, and, while it might not be as bad as some thought, it wasn’t on a par with most of the others high on the JAWS list. Not quite good enough hitting and certainly not good enough fielding— is this the level the COG has sunk to in order to bring another catcher into the fold?
Sutton? To paraphrase Lincoln’s famous comment, people who like this sort of pitcher—usually decent and in a couple of seasons very good, with long careers—will find this the sort of pitcher they like. Next to Tiant, he’s a tall midget, about on a par with the unjuiced early K. Brown, but very durable.
Weird WAR notes:
Nomar Garciaparra has the most seasons of 6+ WAR (6) of anyone on the ballot. Richie Ashburn, Todd Helton, and Kevin Brown are the only other players with 5 such seasons.
Don Sutton has 22 seasons of 1-WAR or better. Second most is 18. That is quite the gap.
The only player with a 9-WAR season on the ballot… is on the secondary ballot (Rick Reuschel). We have another coming later in 1973 (Ichiro).
Kevin Brown is the only player on the ballot with four seasons of 7+ WAR.
Bobby Wallace has 8 seasons of 5+ WAR. 8 players on the ballot have six such seasons.
On Sutton’s 22 seasons of 1-WAR or better, it looks to me as though Cy Young had 21, Walter Johnson had 20 . . . But Sutton does seem to be the champ. It sort of fits, I think.
Another weird COG note:
We’ve elected 92 position players. 47 of them (a majority) are deceased, with several particularly untimely deaths in the group (Ron Santo, Gary Carter, Tony Gwynn). We’ve elected 36 pitchers, and the vast majority (23 of them) are still living. I don’t know what, if anything, this means, but I thought it was interesting.
The oldest living COGer is Whitey Ford. The oldest living position player in the COG is Willie Mays. Tony Gwynn would be 57 if he were living, and is the most recently-born deceased player in the COG. Chipper Jones, of course, is the youngest player in the COG, though I suspect you all remember that from last year. I also suspect it won’t be true for long, but we’ll have to see how the final round of this year’s voting goes…
From 1997 to 2000, Nomar had an aggregate 27.7 WAR, A-Rod 29.2, and Jeter 25.1, But outside those years, Jeter added 46.7,
A-Rod 87.5 and Nomar 15.5.
Nomar had 41 WAR by the time he was 29…and finished with 44.2
Rick Reuschel’s WAR in seasons where his record was under .500:
5.8 … 14-15
3.4 … 11-17
5.5 … 14-15
5.7 … 11-13
3.3 … 8-11
1.1 … 9-16
0.8 … 3-6
He was on losing teams 13 of his first 15 seasons (before getting to play on some good Giants teams).
In those seasons, in which he accumulated 61.1 pWAR, he played to a
106.5 Park Factor and
-0.23 RA9DEF
_____
So, certainly, WAR likes Big Daddy.
His won/loss record was bruised by grinding out 250 inning a year on crummy teams, however.
He had 175 wins in 447 starts those 15 years.
By comparison, the first 450ish starts of Don Sutton and Luis Taint, who played for mostly excellent (or at least good) teams:
175-164 … 115 era+ … Big Daddy
205-155 … 110 era+ … The Mechanic
217-156 … 118 era+ … El Tiante
Oh, I should include Ted Lyons in this discussion.
He played on a brutal two-decades of White Sox teams.
Here he is through the same chunk-ish of starts (which, for him, comprises most of his career):
245-220 … 116 era+
That is 465 decisions in 459 starts.
Lyons also appeared in relief 110 times over that period.
Not especially effective as a reliever.
15-20 … 4.65 era
For the Secondary Ballot, I’m voting for:
-Willie Randolph
-Rick Reuschel
-Andre Dawson
Thanks!
For the 1973 Part 2 election, I’m voting for:
-Manny Ramirez
-Don Sutton
-Todd Helton
Other top candidates I considered highly (and/or will consider in future rounds):
-Tiant
-Pettitte
-Brown
-Ashburn
-Nettles
-Allen
-Wallace
-Dahlen
Thanks!
Here’s my lineup of potential COG members whose careers were scuttled by early death or ailment/injury so that they were either denied an extended career or had a greatly diminished finale.
C Thurman Munson
1B George Sisler
2B Ray Chapman
3B Al Rosen
SS Nomar Garciaparra
OF Chuck Klein
OF Ross Youngs
OF Eric Davis
P Addie Joss
There are probably other pitchers who might qualify, like Smokey Joe Wood, but I’m reluctant, since pitching arm injuries are so common, to speculate.
And, yes, I am aware that Sisler is in the COG, but he is the only one of the group whose potential has resulted in membership, and that only in the face of pretty serious opposition from commentators who were opposed to cutting slack for career altering injuries.
Booby Doerr could challenge Chapman at 2B (especially since Chapman was a shortstop). Doerr had 51.2 WAR thru age 33, more WAR than Chapman’s projected career total of 50.8 (by Bill James projection tool).
Honorable mention in the outfield to Lyman Bostock. Bill James projects him at 42.5 WAR, about the same as Youngs’ 43.7.
Ed Delahanty’s drinking probably would have ended his career anyway, but he put up 6 WAR in less than 140 games in each of his last two full seasons aged 33-34 (only Roberto Clemente and Tris Speaker did the same), so probably could have played for several more years had he straightened out his life.
Doerr played 14 seasons, and another would have been when he was age 34, so the diminishment factor for him to me is problematical. As for Chapman at 2nd base, I couldn’t find a viable candidate otherwise, and he did play there in parts of two seasons. I forgot to explain that in my original comment.
Bill James projects Doerr at 67 WAR, or 69.6 if you extrapolate his WAR for his last truncated season. So, he could have had several more seasons before his career wound down.
Doerr is one of 26 retired players with 200 games thru their age 20 season (Bryce Harper is the 27th). Of that group, Doerr’s 51.2 WAR in a shortened career was still above the median career WAR of 44.9, so seems likely his career would also have been longer than the median of 17 years.
Leo Durocher used to claim that, as a young player, Cesar Cedeno was better than Willie Mays but not as good as Pete Reiser. Supposedly, Reiser ran into outfield walls on a regular basis. By the same token, Reiser couldn’t overcome military service in WWII so I guess my suggestion is a moot point
For 2B, in the Lyman Bostock category of “way too young to tell” is Ken Hubbs. Probably not destined for COG worthy numbers, but he was only 21, so who knows what the future held for him.
Another 2B that doesn’t quite fit but at least is a case of unfulfilled potential is Carlos Baerga – of course, the rumor in Cleveland has long been that the “ailment” that diminished his career comes in a powder form, but still, he had almost 21 WAR through age 26. The other 17 2B with 20+ WAR through their age 26 season are:
Hall of Famers (Collins, Alomar, Frisch, Lazzeri, Doerr, Sandberg, Billy Herman, Evers, Morgan, Gordon, Carew)
Guys Outside the Hall with Good to Excellent HoF cases (Grich, Randolph, Whitaker, Larry Doyle, Knoblauch)
Active (Jose Altuve)
Baerga is the only one who basically had no value after age 26. He actually posted a negative WAR for the balance of his career (-1.3).
I don’t mean to tread on CC’s turf, but I’d argue for Herb Score as your pitcher. He notched over 14 WAR in just over 500 IP before McDougal’s liner changed everything when Score was just 23.
Geeze, how did we forget Tony Conigliaro? He was averaging 4.1 WAR/162 from age 19 through the Jack Hamilton beaning at age 22 !!
Tony C is a good one, but OF is probably the most crowded in this particular category. Not to make the team all Indians (it’s already got Rosen, Chapman and Joss), but Grady Sizemore is another good one in the OF. Through his first 5 seasons, his #1 similarity score comps were Duke Snider and then Barry Bonds. His 25.7 WAR through Age 25 certainly seemed to bode well for a HoF career. He also came off as a natural superstar, with a flair for dramatic catches, big moments, a winning smile and matinee idol good looks. Then the injuries started piling up, and after 2009 he’d never again be even an average MLB player. Oh right, those similarity scores? For his whole career, say goodbye to Snider and Bonds and hello to Al Martin, Larry Hisle and Trot Nixon.
You know, there are many more we could bring to mind: Harry Agganis, Lyman Bostock, Bill DeLancey, all stopped by sudden or very early death at a point where their great potential had not yet come into full view.
But, you know, I’m not sure that the world needs more depressing thoughts right now, so I think I’ll sign off on this ersatz project.
My ballots.
Tiant
Ramirez
Wallace
I liked Tiant over Sutton, with basically the same WAR but in 1800 fewer innings. And, Wallace over Dahlen, by a hair. Wallace, by reputation, was the pioneer of modern infield play, the first apparently to perfect the skill of fielding and throwing in a continuous motion. Wallace also has better peaks than Dahlen, at 52.9 WAR to 47.2 over 10 years, and 28.5 to 24.0 over 5 years.
Randolph
Dawson
Reuschel
Reuschel is on a par with Tiant in IP and WAR. With better teams, his W-L% would be a lot better. To that point, playing for the strong Giant teams of the late 1980s, Reuschel posted two seasons aged 39+ with 17 wins and a .600 W-L%. Spahn has three of those campaigns, and RJ, Kenny Rogers and Clemens are the only others with a pair.
Primary Ballot:
Kevin Brown
Bill Dahlen
Graig Nettles
Secondary Ballot:
Andre Dawson
Ken Boyer
Dwight Evans
There’s a lot of support for Andre Dawson on the secondary ballot, so I decided to take another look at his stats. Here’s my question, to those 13 or so who put Dave Winfield into the COG last round. What do you think makes Winfield that much better than Dawson, other than a longer career? Dawson was a better fielder by far, a better baserunner, and his OPS+ seems low only because he failed to walk much. Otherwise they are very close.
The follow-up question: if they’re as close as they seem, why is Winfield so much more in favor here?
I’m probably not the best person respond to this, nsb, since my vote for Winfield last round was, I think, my first ever, and was based on a somewhat whimsical feeling that I should balance by defense-heavy ballot (Dahlen & Wallace). But using the stats I like to look at as I begin thinking about this, Winfield and Dawson compare this way:
WAR……Pk5……Top5……WAR/G…WAR/Yr……OPS+…Career length
64.4………32.4……33.7……0.025……3.4 (19)……119………1.5……Dawson
63.8………26.9……28.6……0.021……3.0 (21)……130………1.7……Winfield
Dawson does better on WAR, both peak and total/rate; Winfield does better on OPS+, as you note — as someone said, a walk is as good as a hit (not true, but not too far from it). Apart from Dawson’s weakness in BBs, fielding is the other big difference; it’s Winfield’s Achilles heel. Although I’ve come to have more reliance on fielding stats, I’m less sure of the value of fielding differences for outfielders, and in my case I gave Winfield a bump for the undeserved, terrible working conditions he endured with the Yankees, which I can’t imagine failed to wear down some of his play over the years (sort of like a War bonus — I’d do the same thing for Amos Rusie if we were doing the 1890s). I suspect a number of the other 12 Winfield voters were simply skeptical about the weight being given to outfield fielding numbers, especially since Winfield looked like a good fielder (like the Derek Jeter conundrum, for which, however, we have far superior data).
Winfield was also advantaged by the fact that Dawson wasn’t on the ballot. Very similar players will tend to split the vote (I think that’s happening with Dahlen and Wallace now), and with Winfield and Dawson, one probably had to fall if the other rose. Dawson’s luck began to go south when Winfield won redemption in 2016. The momentum of that carried Winfield past Dawson in the following Rounds 120 and 121 (the same sort of effect that I think we’re seeing with Simmons now, Paige being a little different story), and then the HHS membership drop after the 2016 site crash seemed to hit Dawson particularly hard: he was out after Round 122. If Dawson wins redemption now, Winfield having been lifted off the ballot, perhaps we’ll see a repeat of a Winfield-like effect.
Andre Dawson and Dwight Evans had careers within 200 PA of one another.
Dawson was a CF for his first 1000 games, while Evans was a RF all the way.
Comparisons, in the War Runs categories: bat, baser, dp, field:
234 / 14 / 6 / 70
353 / 2 / -6 / 66
Rbat actually lists Dawson’s MVP season as his 7th best year.
And gives Evans 5 seasons better than Dawson’s best.
Difference definitely seems to be in their walks, as their slash lines look like:
.279/.323/.482
.272/.370/.470
Neutralizing to the 1982 Red Sox gives this result.
.287/.331/.496
.275/.374/.475
So, Dawson has a bit of an edge in BA and SLG, but Evans trumps him big time in OBP, walking more than twice as much. I wouldn’t have guessed that would result in a 50% edge in Rbat, but when you consider that Dawson made 9.4% more outs, it starts to make sense,
Andre Dawson was a borderline superstar before his knees became an issue. The Hawk didn’t walk but he sure did everything else, at one point, extremely well. That weakness, of course, is evidenced by a low OBP, however, it really becomes evident when comparing these contemporaries by neutralized RC/27.
Dawson trails Dwight Evans in best 3 consecutive seasons 6.98 vs 7.51 RC/27
Dawson trails Evans in best ~ 6,400 PA’s 5.87 vs. 7.07
Dawson trails Evans in best ~ 9,600 PA’s 5.74 vs. 6.35
Dawson trails Evans in career RC/27 5.49 vs. 6.19
I guess this translates to approximately 6 runs per season?
Paul, where are you finding those RC/27 figures? I don’t see them on B-R advanced or Fangraphs.
B-R player page.
Hover over “Finders and Advanced Stats”, on far left, click on “Advanced stats” and scroll scroll down to “Advanced Batting”. I neutralized by dividing RC/27 by “AIR”
I see. RC/27=RC/G. I remember now your preference for RC/27*AIR, and that you taught me how to do this before. I have a mind like a steel trap. Unfortunately, it was sprung some time ago.
Yes, but the nice part about numerical logic is that it doesn’t change – and hasn’t changed since you last asked 🙂
6 runs is an okay estimate, but maybe a little low; if you figure that each guy is allowed to make 324 outs (2 per game, which seems like an okay estimate; might still be a little on the low side), you get Evans with about 74 RC per season, and Dawson with about 66. That’s just spitballing off the top of my head.
Anyway, I don’t think it’s crazy to assume that Dawson more than makes up for that difference with defense. The position difference alone (CF vs. RF) has got to be worth a couple of runs. They’re not far apart, but I prefer Dawson. Yes, Evans’ peak as a batter was even better than Dawson’s, but Dewey never ran the bases nor fielded as well as Dawson at his peak. I think it’s Andre, if you’ve got to choose.
Doom,
The career difference is about 96 runs and they each played roughly sixteen 162 game seasons (2606 for Evans and 2627 games for Dawson versus 2592 =16 x 162 ). 96 runs / 16 seasons = 6
I believe you may be thinking of a very young Andre Dawson as a great fielder and baser-runner and I certainly remember the athletic Dawson who ran like a gazelle prior to his knee problems. But, he was not the same player in later years. I’ll take Dawson prior to his 29th birthday and Evans after his 29th. That would make for a pretty fair major-leaguer.
But, Dawson only took walks in 5.57% of his plate appearances from age 22-28 and only 5.40 from age 29-41 and 5.469% overall. There are only 11 other HoFers who walked as infrequently. Prominent among them are Pudge Riodriguez and Joe Medwick and a bunch of 19th century guys when the world was still flat
Those 96 runs should translate into about 9.6 extra wins for Evans, but actually show up as only 2.4 more WAR for Dwight. Where are the rest of those wins? Mostly they’re in Rpos where Dawson, because of his years in CF, loses 55 fewer runs (-65 Rpos compared to -120 for Evans) or about 5.5 wins,
As for Secondary ballot pitchers, Lyons and Reuschel both played on mostly bad teams, while Mordecai was part of the Cubbie heyday. So, hard to compare. Brown was also deadball, while Lyons played in the 30’s.
That being said, here’s a comparison of their RA9/RA9OPP.
This is how many runs they allowed per 9 innings, versus what their opponents allowed.
Being on a great team with great defense is obviously helpful, but a pitcher being way above average in this stat must have some value.
Here is Brown, Lyons, Reuschel
2.96 / 3.89 … 0.93 better
4.45 / 5.14 … 0.69
3.79 / 4.13 … 0.34
Mordecai is way ahead here, and significanly ahead considering that runs were at more of a premium in his day.
Here is how he looked compared to his own teammates, Ed Reulbach, Jack Pfiester, Orval Overall
2.96 / 3.89 … 0.93
3.03 / 3.80 … 0.77
3.08 / 3.51 … 0.43
3.05 / 3.63 … 0.58
Early returns. After 10 ballots of the regular vote (Andy’s the most recent) here are the totals I have:
=================50% (5)
4 – Kevin Brown, Satchel Paige*, Ted Simmons*, Luis Tiant
3 – Bill Dahlen, Manny Ramirez,
=================25% (3)
2- Graig Nettles, Bobby Wallace*
1 – Dick Allen, Richie Ashburn*, Todd Helton*, Don Sutton*
=================10% (1)
Voters: Jeff Harris, mosc, Paul E, JEV, Doom, Hartvig, epm, opal611, Doug, Andy
Let me know if you see a vote I missed or an error!
Secondary ballots (through nine votes; Jeff Harris did not post a secondary ballot):
6 votes – Andre Dawson
4 votes – Willie Randolph, Rick Reuschel, Mordecai Brown, Ken Boyer
3 votes – Ted Lyons
2 votes – Dwight Evans
That’s what I have too, Doom. I was waiting for a tenth to arrive . . . Would you like to split the updates: I’ll handle the primary ballot while you do the secondary one?
I’d be fine if you did both; I’ll continue to keep my spreadsheet as a check so we’re both doing something, if that’s alright with you. I just figured some folks might want both updates at the same time, but in the future, I’ll leave you to it.
For the record, when I used to do these, I always waited until there were 11 ballots cast for the first update. That way, you know that the people who are at more than 10% aren’t going to have that change as soon as the next ballot comes in – but feel free to do as you please.
I believe that in the future when it comes to the timing of updates, I shall follow the Wisdom of Doom.
One of the odd things about looking at a ballot with players that I watched is that the “eye” test is something hard to get away from. I’m a Yankees fan, so Nettles and Randolph were right in front of me. They were both really good, but I don’t think I ever saw either of them as HOF-worthy. Winfield had this impossible standard to meet—he had signed this (for then) huge contract, and I think most of us expected Mays/Aaron/Mantle, and he was more of an A- player, not a megastar. Still thinking.
Mordecai Brown is 6th all-time in ERA.
The caveats being that he played in a low offense, many unearned runs era, so we can question the value of that stat.
However, he was still better at not-allowing runs than almost anyone else in his era, so that must count for something.
…
The pitchers ahead of him in ERA:
Ed Walsh (COG)
Addie Joss (9 years, 43.7 WAR)
Jim Devlin (1870’s)
Jack Pfiester (Brown’s teammate, and just over 1000 IP)
Smokey Joe Wood (injuries, contract dispute, switched to outfield)
…
So, really, 3F is 2nd to Ed Walsh in ERA, among pitchers with “full” careers.
…
In ERA+, Brown has a 139, tied for 16th all-time.
However, there are 4 relievers ahead of him (Mo, Hoyt, Quiz, Hoff).
Two 19th century guys (Devlin, Nichols).
And 3 guys with short careers (Wood, Joss, Brandon Webb).
Exclusing all those fellas, here’s the list:
…
161 … Clayton Kershaw (let’s assume he won’t drop under 140)
154 … Pedro
148 … Lefty Grove
147 … Walter Johnson
145 … Ed Walsh
143 … Clemens
139 … 3F BROWN
139 … Chris Sale (active)
138 … Cyclone Young
136 … Mathewson
…
I’ll use WAR to try to make sense out of Brown, Lyons, Reuschel.
This is a list of their best seasons by WAR:
8.7 … 7.4 … 9.4
8.2 … 5.8 … 6.2
7.1 … 5.4 … 5.8
5.3 … 5.3 … 5.7
4.8 … 5.2 … 5.7
3.4 … 4.8 … 5.5
3.3 … 4.7 … 4.7
3.2 … 4.3 … 3.9
2.9 … 3.7 … 3.7
2.7 … 3.4 … 3.5
2.4 … 2.5 … 3.4
1.8 … 2.1 … 3.3
1.4 … 2.0 … 2.9
-0.1 .. 1.9 … 2.7
……… 1.9 … 1.1
……… 1.6 … 0.8
……… 0.5 … 0.3
……… 0.4 … -0.1
……… 0.3 … -0.2
……… -0.5
For WAR7 (total of their best 7 years),
41.4 … Brown (84th all-time)
40.9 … Lyons (89th)
43.8 … Big Daddy (70th)
I think it’s important to point out that Lyons missed 3 full years to WW2.
And that the year prior to his going to war he led the league in ERA, completed 20 out of 20 starts and produced 4.7 WAR and that upon his return he completed 5 out of 5 starts with a 2.32 ERA and produced 0.5 WAR in in 42.2 innings. The reality is that he almost certainly lost 10 WAR- or possibly more- to military service. Which would put him over 80 WAR for his career, in the same range with Rod Carew & Tom Glavine.
This is a recurring question–the what if the player didn’t lose time to injuries, what if he didn’t lose time to service. There’s a lot we can’t know. I’m not sure you can bracket 1942 and 1946, because basically his (old) arm got several years of rest. But it’s interesting to speculate anyway.
Lyons is a unique case in the “old arm gets rest” category. His arm did get tired in his mid-30s, so in 1935, at age 34, he began to be moved towards the “Sunday pitcher” role. (It wasn’t really always on Sunday and there were some days on short rest, though by ’42 those had stopped.)
Consequently, Lyons’ “old arm” pitched only 85 games over the years 1939-42 — about a two-thirds load. But, of course, he completed 85% of his games (including his last 28 starts before the War), so he pitched well over the qualifying number of innings. As his arm aged before the War, his record got better and better — his 5-year ERA+ of 140 leading up to the War was by far his peak in that respect, and closed with an ERA title and 171 ERA+ in 1942.
So there is no indication that Lyons’ arm needed or would benefit from the additional “rest” of three years not pitching. He still came back 3 1/2 years older than he left, and you could just as easily stress the difficulty of a 45 year-old arm recovering its tone after such a gap.
But both possibilities are probably misconceived because during the War the Marines assigned Lyons to pitch for and manage the Air Corps baseball team in Hawaii, and then he toured on all-Service all-star teams that played as troop entertainment in the Pacific during the War. The intensity surely wasn’t at MLB levels, but he was pitching against MLB players like Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio, and it was a year-round job. I think the most logical way to think of it would be as the equivalent of continuing his junk-ball Sunday-pitching routine, with the reduced stress and year-round season balancing out. That would account for why, when he resumed pitching in ’46, his arm was behaving just as it had in ’42. Lyons himself said that he expected to pitch till 50, and only the sudden need for him to swap his mound role for managing changed that plan.
I’ll admit that it’s speculative and I’m extremely hesitant to “credit” players for injury because they can happen at anytime to anyone, especially pitchers. There might be rare times when I would at least take it into consideration when trying to get a clearer understanding of what someone’s career arc might have looked like under different situations- say Monte Irvin’s broken leg when he was 33- but generally it’s not something I factor in to how I evaluate 99.9% of players careers.
I do think that time lost to war and segregation need to be treated differently however. Those are circumstances totally unrelated to someones level of talent or style of play and yet they kept someone off the field thru absolutely no fault of their own. And even there I’m reluctant to extend the “what if” argument too far.
Cecil Travis had nearly 1400 hits by age 27 and you could make a case that without WW2 he would be in the HOF. How many shortstops do you see with 3000 hits that aren’t? But that would mean projecting his career another 9 or 10 years at at least a fairly high level of play from that point and to me that’s asking a bit too much from a time when the vast majority of players were finished in their early to mid 30’s.
But I don’t think that applies to guys like Reese, Gordon, Greenburg and Mize who were in the prime of their careers when they left for the war and who pretty much picked up right where they left off when they came back. Yeah, maybe the Indians would have abused Bob Feller’s arm to the point where it fell off earlier but maybe not and since he was doing his duty to our country I’m OK with giving him a little benefit of the doubt.
We’re doing the same thing right now with Satchel Paige to an even greater extent. He was a pretty terrific pitcher in his 40’s and there’s little doubt that between the Negro Leagues, barnstorming, Mexico, Puerto Rico and everything else there were at least as many innings on his arm as any MLB pitcher of that era. But I do understand the reluctance of some people to take things that far. Yes, he was a pretty good pitcher at the major league levels in his 40’s. But Jack Quinn was even better and he ain’t in the HOF, much less COG. And even if you do think he was a great pitcher- as I would guess that virtually everyone does- that’s not a lot of useful statistical evidence to go on. But now I’m off on a tangent so back to Lyons.
The thing about him is that he had already blown out his arm long before, back when he was 30, and had remade himself as a knuckleball/junkball pitcher. And he’d been completing 75 to 80% of his starts almost every year since. Only Walter Johnson, Pete Alexander & Warren Spahn had more complete games in their careers of anyone who pitched outside of the pre-1900/deadball eras. I’m pretty confident that he could have kept going for another 3 years without any undo stain on his arm.
That’s my call anyways and I’m stickin’ to it.
Not critiquing. Interested in the thought process. In effect, Lyons became sort of a variant of the Mariano analysis–a pitcher who did not look like he could succeed at “regular starter workload” but achieved excellence in differing role.
While I understand the value in having someone who could go out there and give you 8 or 9 innings once a week in an era when Sunday doubleheaders were an almost weekly occurrence, I have wondered since his name appeared on the ballot if they might not have been better off going with a 5 man rotation and getting 7 or 8 innings out of him every 5th day instead. It would have meant someone starting on “short rest” most Sundays but since they had already been going out there every 4th day anyways what difference as long as it ain’t the same guy every week? You might want to skip Lyons in those situations so maybe he would have had only 28 or 29 starts over the course of a season instead of 31 or 32 but I still think they could have gotten another 40 or 50 innings out of him without putting any real additional stress on his arm. Guess we’ll never know for sure.
It was a hard time to be a 500 club in baseball, especially in the AL. The Yankees averaged over 100 Wins (in a 154 game season) from 1936-39, they had an off year in 1940, then went back to it in 1941-43. Maybe the White Sox found a way to keep Lyons effective and didn’t see themselves as having to come up with a better strategy. You are right–we never will know, although it’s fun to speculate.
BTW, here’s political link http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2018/02/how-democrats-escape-the-ariadne-trap.html
Lyons himself thought he could have pitched more frequently; it was a club decision.
The bottom line is that in his six true Sunday pitcher years, Lyons finished almost every game and had a .603 W-L Pct., while without him the Sox were a .491 team (those were actually about their best years during Lyons’ long tenure). Lyons twice led the team in WAR. Why second guess a strategy with such good results?
Mike, I’ve come to trust your baseball judgments, but seeing that you refer to Tschaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin as a mediocrity, I think I must view your posts with a more skeptical eye. (I enjoy your columns, but I suspect HHS is best left a politics/religion-free zone, despite the fact that the temptation to argue against PED-entangled CoG candidates by declaiming Zoroastrian gathas is always a zealous yearning within me.)
Yes, I agree.
BTW, Parsifal…is a little eh
I’m very generous when it comes to Wagner. You can have him.
Excellent stuff. Soon as I get my new computer set up I’m going to subscribe.
Thx–the website is multidisciplinary. Before I posted the HOF one, I first checked with the editors.
On Quinn vs. Paige, ages 42-49: Quinn racked up 19.7 WAR after his 42nd birthday (the age Paige began), and teams were willing to hire him every year. I’ve pointed out before how Paige’s situation differed. Only Bill Veeck would hire him, so In his “age 43” season, when Veeck was out of baseball, Paige was once again excluded, and after two years of 3.0+ WAR in his age 45 and 46 seasons, he was out again after Veeck lost his team. When given a chance by Veeck at the AAA level, age 49-51 seasons, Paige’s records ranged from outstanding to very good (Quinn’s post MLB attempts in the minors, ages 50-51, were not successful).
So while Quinn pitched for a total of about 7.5 seasons at age 42+, adding 19.7 to his late-career WAR, Paige was limited to 4.5 seasons in compiling his 10.1 WAR (he debuted after mid-season in 1948). In large part because of these factors, Quinn generated 19% more WAR pitching 23% more innings. compiled a 121 ERA+ vs. Paige’s 124: I’m not sure it’s correct to say Quinn was better than Paige over those ages.
Moreover, nobody was calling Quinn the best pitcher in the world before he was 40 — he was a slightly above-average one (111 ERA+), who attracted no notice until he just declined to decline. Of course he’s not in the Hall.
In Paige’s case, you have a pitcher whom many people and players called the best on the planet during a 21-year pre-MLB career, and when he was — first off for two decades, then on, and off, and on, and then finally off — allowed to pitch in the Majors, his record is superior, inning for inning, to the most celebrated “old-age” MLB pitcher ever. How rational is it to speculate that the alignment between his prime reputation and old-age performance was mere coincidence?
Yeah, now that I reread what I said it sort of comes off like that and I certainly didn’t intend to imply that Paige wasn’t clearly a much better pitcher than Quinn- even with the incomplete statistical evidence available- in his younger days. I had just been going on for so long that even I was getting tired of listening to what I had to say.
But I do think it valid for someone to argue that we are extrapolating to a much greater extent in Paige’s case than we have for someone like Johnny Mize or Jackie Robinson or the other guys I mentioned.
Of the guys actually in the COG, Roy Campanella probably comes to closest to Paige- he had 11 seasons, 9 of them full, under his belt before he ever played a ML game- and I suspect that between all of the various venus he played that he would have caught a bare minimum of 1500 games before he ever played in the majors. And yet he stuck around long enough to win 3 MVP’s. And few, if any, championed his case more than I did.
Among players not on the ballot, Monte Irvin probably comes the closest to Paige, with Minnie Minoso and Larry Doby a distant 2nd or 3rd. But Irvin has seen little traction and Doby and Minoso’s cases are actually much more like the guys missing a few years than they are like Paige’s.
I’m not trying to say Paige doesn’t belong. Hell, I voted for him now, have done so in the past and will do so in the future, if necessary and assuming he’s still on the ballot. I was just pointing out that his case isn’t exactly like anyone else’s and I can see why some people view it differently from what I do.
Quinn is noteworthy as the only pitcher to record 200 CG and 200 GF.
Including his minor and negro league stats, Paige was over 100 in both categories (incl. Quinn, there are 46 such ML pitchers, 41 of whom played their entire careers before 1961). Don’t know if his negro league stats are incomplete, but Paige’s recorded stats show that he never started more than 16 games in a season, and reached 160 IP only once.
I’ve read that the Negro Leagues played short championship seasons because players could make more money doing various kinds of barnstorming tours each year. Sort of like a Harlem Globetrotters component. Which fits: when Veeck initially called up Paige and other black players, he first consulted Abe Saperstein, the Globetrotters coach and business manager, who doubled as a multi-faceted executive and impresario for Negro League teams.
Highest Career Percentage of IP Starting on 6+ Days Rest (min. 1500 IP), since 1913.
Highest percentage in expansion era is Bruce Kison at 21.6%, and highest among full-time starters is 21.3% by Dock Ellis.
Secondary Ballot Vote:
Dwight Evans
Ted Lyons
Willie Randolph
Vote:
Richie Ashburn
Bill Dahlen
Bobby Wallace
Following Voomo’s lead (and picking players closer to my size):
Dalhlen, Wallace, Ashburn.
Not voting on the secondary ballot.
Main ballot:
Paige
Wallace
Garciaparra
Secondary vote:
Boyer
Evans
Lyons
Secondary ballot vote in this post, but first:
Both Andre Dawson (1993) and Dwight Evans (1990) spent their age 38 season as DH for the Red Sox.
Their batting stats are similar, though Dawson’s are stronger in every area except walks, in which he falls an astounding 50 BBs short of Evans, 17 to 67. He struck out 24 fewer times, slugged .425 vs .391, drove in 4 more runs in 24 fewer PAs, and had 24 more TBs, batting .273 to Evans’s .249. In all the common clutch stats except one he performed better, sometimes much better, than Evans. Against winning teams he batted .265 to Evans’ .225.
My reason for raising these points is merely to try to put a little perspective on the supposed marginal superiority of Evans’ career as expressed above. Evans played half his games every year until his last in Fenway Park. Dawson had not that automatic edge going for him. While Evans’ H/R splits aren’t nearly as gaping as for some career Red Sox, he still benefitted greatly from playing in Boston. Dawson, in contrast put in a long stretch playing in Olympic stadium where his 32 HRs in 1983 was the franchise standard until 1996. In spite of that his WAR total of 29.0 1980-83—1981 being a strike shortened year, remember—has as its lowest yearly reckoning 6.8, which is .1 higher than Evans’ achieved in his best year. Dawson’s 7-year peak is 42.5, Evans’ is 37.1.
In the MVP voting, Dawson has a win, two seconds, a seventh, and several down ballot votes. Evans finished third, fourth, seventh, ninth, and eleventh. Dawson was an 8-time All Star, Evans a 3-time All Star. Dawson has eight gold gloves, Evans also; Dawson four Silver Slugger awards, Evans two.
I honestly don’t think either Dawson or Evans is on a par with most of the players in the COG, but as to which one deserves another shot on the ballot, I’m going with Andre.
Secondary ballot vote:
Brown
Lyons
Dawson
As is my (almost) usual practice, I will not participate in the main ballot voting.
**long post alert**
Regarding Paige, Voomo’s comment near the top of the thread of “this would be our first time voting for someone without any numbers to back up the story” got me thinking about Paige’s measurable numbers, which I believe I summarized a couple of years ago similarly to how I am going to try in this post.
I suppose first is the larger issue, which is just your starting point for looking at the fact that we don’t have ‘any numbers’ for him. Some might view that as disqualifying for consideration of this exercise, others might argue that he doesn’t just have a lack of numbers in a vacuum, but rather that there was a very real reason why he wasn’t allowed to accumulate those numbers, and so the numbers we do have should serve as a starting point. So I suppose your consideration of his case depends on your perspective on that, to start with.
As has been mentioned elsewhere, Paige is somewhat of a unique case. Not totally unique – guys like Irvin and Doby, to a certain extent Campy, have had similar considerations. (also, those rare cases like Connie Marrero who played elsewhere for a long time but left an MLB record). I know – or at least, have deduced from reading comments in this project over the years – there are people who voted for Campy and justified it despite his low WAR at least in part because a) he was highly regarded in his time (3 MVPs), and b) he would have had a couple of more years in MLB if not for segregation. (certainly, a catcher adjustment as well, I don’t want to ignore that, but in a lot of discussions that wasn’t all). I am genuinely curious if there are people who voted for Campy with at least some of that line of reasoning who don’t feel they could vote for Paige. If so, why not? Is it easier to adjust for only a few years vs. a lot? Is it easier to justify reputation when there’s MLB hardware rather than apocrypha from a league that didn’t keep as clear stats (even if it’s 20 years of apocrypha)? Is it just that ‘rules are rules’ and he doesn’t meet CoG criteria, never mind that he made it out of redemption and is actually on the ballot despite that? I am curious to know, and genuinely so, not so that I can sharpen my knives to argue whatever anyone is going to say. My main argument is in this post.
Anyway – a couple of years ago I looked up Paige’s measurables, specifically his WAR after entering MLB. He debuted in his age 41 season – here are the top 12 WAR scores for age 41+ as a pitcher:
Jack Quinn – 20.7 (59.0 total): Quinn was unreal, pitching effectively through his 40s. He got 12.0 WAR from age 42-44; he got 1.7 at age 48, and finally slowed down at 49 and retired. An extreme outlier.
Roger Clemens – 18.3 (140.3 total): stats-wise, one of the best pitchers of all time. Reputation-wise pre-Mitchell Report, one of the better pitchers of all time. CoG member.
Phil Niekro – 18.1 (96.6 tot): CoG member, HoF member.
Hoyt Wilhelm – 18.0 (47.3 tot): paradigm-shifting pitcher, CoG and HoF.
Nolan Ryan – 17.3 (81.8 tot): maybe the most unique skill set of a high-level pitcher ever, CoG and HoF.
Cy Young – 16.1 (170.3 tot): also a pretty good pitcher. CoG and HoF.
Randy Johnson – 12.3 (102.1 tot): CoG and HoF.
Satchel Paige – 10.3
Red Faber – 8.6 (64.8 tot): a very good pitcher for a long time. Had 2 great seasons, a bunch of pretty good ones. HoF, not CoG (although his WAA, JAWS, and WAR/250IP are all comparable to/better than current redemptee Don Sutton, so you could make a case for Faber on the ballot as much as a lot of guys).
Warren Spahn – 8.3 (100.1 tot): one of the best pitchers ever and one of the first one would think of as a good, old pitcher. CoG and HoF.
Gaylord Perry – 7.2 (93.7 tot): no question about his bona fides, aside from doctored balls. CoG and HoF.
Dutch Leonard – 7.1 (51.3 tot): good pitcher, lasted awhile, generally regarded as Very Good. Neither honor is his.
So, that’s the top 12. Below 7 WAR it’s a mixed bag, with David Wells, Mo, Charlie Hough, Pete Alexander, etc. But it’s getting too far in the weeds to go lower – there’s only so many seasons one can do after age 41, and Paige is over 3 WAR above the cutoff of 7, which is a few seasons for a decent pitcher at that age. So comparing him meaningfully with anyone below that seems unnecessary.
Anyway, in summary, out of the other 11, 8 are in the CoG. Of those who aren’t, two are about a season or two below Satch in WAR, and Faber ain’t far from CoG consideration. The one above him was the outlyingist outlier of an old pitcher I’ve ever heard of. The rest are among the pantheon of great pitchers or singularly amazing ones, including the guy who the best pitcher award is named after, the guy who won it most, the top 2 all time in strikeouts, the guy who changed relief pitching, and so on.
So the range for Satch is from Very Good Pitcher Who Hung Around For Awhile (3 of the 12 listed) to All Time Great (let’s take Hoyt and Nolan Ryan out of that and leave the guys with >90 WAR, which is 6 of the 12). So there is 6 guys >90 WAR, two unicorns, three guys from 51-65 WAR, and Satch. I ask myself what is more likely – that he was in the minority of good pitchers who hung around and all the stories about him being the best are exaggerated? Or that he is an all-time great pitcher who was denied the opportunity at the highest level for decades? I feel like the evidence we have backs up the reputation – in other words, I disagree with the assertion that he is “without any numbers to back up the story”. The numbers we have do exactly that, limited as they are.
That’s my case from a stats perspective.
bells, As you know, I’m in full agreement with the thrust of your argument. I’ve also been laying stress on several additional factors concerning comparisons between Paige and successful older pitchers.
(1) Although Paige is listed as pitching in his age 41 season, he was not brought up till past mid-season and was already 42 when he debuted. Some of the WAR figures for pitchers on your list include a full year when they were 41. That year should be deducted.
(2) Despite excellent pitching in 1948-49, Paige was frozen out of MLB in 1950 after Veeck lost his team. Thus Paige also was denied his age 43-44 season. (The fact that his one poor season was after Paige had spent 21 months out of baseball entirely — while his best seasons, by WAR, were the two that followed — suggests that his exclusion in 1950 had a negative impact beyond the one year.)
(3) Despite great pitching in 1952-53, Paige was excluded again in 1954 and thereafter. His great AAA record, ages 49-51, shows he had plenty left in the tank, but no owner would hire him.
Basically, the effects of segregation on Paige till mid-1948 were compounded by the refusal of MLB owners other than Veeck to hire him thereafter regardless of his success. The lacunae in his record are not the results of his pitching ability or preparedness. Whatever the thinking of MLB owners at the time, this is strikingly abnormal.
Therefore, to put the other pitchers on a level playing field with Paige, we need to (1) exclude pre-age-42 WAR, (2) exclude a season comparable to ages 43 or 44, (3) exclude any seasons pitched after the age 46 season.
When you do this, the WAR figures for the pitchers above Paige on your list change as follows (in some cases, where player turned 42 mid-season, I’ve had to calculate an estimate based on IP and ERA):
Quinn: 13.8 (12.4)
Clemens: ~12.8 (~10.8)
Niekro: 11.0 (10.6)
Wilhelm: ~12.7> (~12.5)
Ryan: 11.7 (10.1)
Young: 5.7 (4.1)
Johnson: ~6.5 (~4.7)
Paige 10.1 (not counting 0.2 at age 59)
The primary figure is what you get if the season you choose to knock out at age 43 or 44 is the one of lesser WAR value, with the alternatives in parentheses.
No one is in fact significantly beyond Paige, especially when you consider that these figures don’t include the fact that Paige’s 1950 exclusion from baseball continued through more than half of 1951: Veeck only bought the Browns in July and brought Paige back immediately, but another half season had been lost to MLB’s unwillingness to let Paige play.
All the pro-Paige arguments are compelling, but once we get into the weeds of theoretical “coulda beens”, where does it end? I understand that his reputation was as the greatest ever.
But Diomedes Olivo had that same reputation.
And then there are others who never played U.S. ball who we could argue for, like Sadaharu Oh.
And there are probably a dozen guys not in the COG who would have had better careers than our lower-echelon electees had they not lost 3+ years to WWII.
I’ve been a huge fan of Paige all my life; the legend, the inspiration, the quotes. What I’m wondering, though, is how much of the support here is something of a “reparations” vote. Everyone is free to have their own methodology, of course. I’m just sayin’, as one of the (likely) few not-exactly-white people posting here, y’all don’t need to bring that fashionable gulit to our numerical safe zone. There, i said it.
(and I say all that, having been almost-convinced to vote for Paige myself)
Voomo, Of course there’s an element of “reparations.” This is ethical issue about how to handle the impact of one special obstacle — segregation — on a player whose case is unique. Paige is the only Negro League superstar not eligible for the CoG who had an MLB career adequate to test and confirm his prior reputation as of MLB superstar quality.
Lots of players got bad breaks because of forces beyond their control (military service, injuries & illness, etc.), but those excluded by segregation were subjected to a force that bore on a descriptive quality of their persons as members of a group, and that wasn’t a bad break, it was a socially sanctioned ethical injustice we all recognize now.
As bells pointed out, CoG voters took this into account to varying degrees in electing Campanella — he is otherwise an outlier in the CoG because his WAR is over 30% lower than any other member. Enough voters decided to take his short MLB career as evidence that had he not been excluded by segregation when young, that WAR shortfall would have been made good.
Paige’s situation is different from Campy’s because he lost about 15 more years, leaving far less time to establish an MLB record, and, most crucially, because to elect him we have to waive a key CoG rule. But both cases share one principle: exclusion because of segregation is a distinct category of obstacle for players, and we may feel an ethical imperative to give special consideration to those subject to it, if there is good evidence to ground a CoG case.
Let me respond to your last comments, and since you were forthcoming, I will be too. I’m a white guy of a different generation from yours. Perhaps because of the time of life and circumstances in which I became aware of explicitly sanctioned segregation, I did not feel guilt about it, and that has carried over to today. Segregation for me was an injustice to be corrected at a time when it seemed it could be. The dominant emotion my friends and I felt was anger, not guilt, and we carried that into the streets in protests, marches, political campaigns, benefit concerts, and so forth, which, I suppose, made us feel completely distinct from the white people responsible for segregation. Although time lets me understand how naive and unself-aware that young vision was, questions concerning historical segregation simply don’t feel to me either fashionable or motivated by feelings of guilt. They’re matters of sorting out ethical issues on a specific point — statutory or explicitly sanctioned racism — that America resolved. . . . Not that I think fashionability or guilt would invalidate an ethical impulse to right a wrong. There are plenty of contemporary injustices, including ongoing non-statutory racial inequities of various kinds, for which there may be feelings of personal guilt and responses that are in fashion that I’d see as entirely appropriate. But those are matters that people with different politics will see differently; I don’t think they are generally appropriate for HHS and they don’t seem to me to bear on the Paige vote, which, I think, concerns an ethical issue around which we’ve (pretty much) all reached consensus agreement — a miracle in this day and age, and one I hope will let us debate this CoG vote without a sense of cultural division.
epm, if you have written any books, I would buy them and read them.
Because, yes, I am of that middle generation that still reads books.
Paper books, not pulses of light.
And I do love to hear stories of the activism of your generation. Just the fact that it existed, not as a fashionable impulse which ultimately served to further divide, but that it was borne from a place where the masses involved still had a coherent enough sense of their collective culture that they were able to agree upon the important details to stay the course. I’m certainly not idealizing that time, but compared to the morsels-of-information-addicted, easily-influenced-by-personalty, pharma-drug-addled generation making noise today, it seemed like a moment in history where Hope was a reasonable conceit.
…
And by the way, I’m racially ambiguous enough that I identify with no race, and have experienced both the privilege and discrimination from both sides of the tracks. My ancestors came from the pirate-rapist/rapee island paradise of Sicily. So, when I work hard to clean up, I’m a fine-looking Italian boy. But on an average day leaving the house, surly and unshaved, I look like I come from the “wrong” side of the Mediterranean.
I keep in my car both a funky cowboy hat and a New England Patriots baseball cap, in case Im in a place where it seems advisable to ‘pass’ as a straight white male. Yes, I wear a Patriots cap to be more likable.
A number of us here are of that generation, Voomo, and having been an extra on the set of the Sixties doesn’t actually give me any special wisdom worthy of publication. But thank you. It did seem to many of us, I think, a hopeful time and full of certainties. The world turns out to be too complex for certainty, and to work in mysterious ways.
The technological, social, and cultural changes people now face seem to me much more challenging to respond to. Where is the overriding moral theme that can draw people together, when the experience we have increasingly reflects level upon level of social fragmentation? I understand why you’d feel irritated with people who seem to adopt a new cause de jour every week, but think about cutting them some slack: most are, at least, making an effort to preserve a form of hope and resist retreat into passive cynicism or escape into addiction. I roll my eyes when I pass a street demonstration against the latest outrage that looks fifty years out of date to me, but deep down there’s an annoying sense that I should be chanting too.
My family will assure you I could go on in this vein for hours, but this is a baseball site, and one of the reasons I like coming here is because in the form of our discussions about baseball we also deal with complex mixes of fact and value, mobilizing our abilities in science and ethics in ways that mirror the “real world,” as we play with endless mixes of stats and narratives. Luckily, we can usually get together on this without the minefields of anger that seem these days to permeate conversations among people of various backgrounds and points of view — some of whom may even, like you, seem to reflect multiple backgrounds and points of view at the same time.
Voomo, I get the “where does it end?” when it comes to Paige. But here’s the thing: it’s not like Babe Ruth and Cy Young and, on this current ballot, Bill Dahlen and Bobby Wallace were playing in integrated leagues, either. Satchel, we can say for certain, was one of the finest players in the history of Negro League baseball. Personally, I would prefer if Oscar Charleston, Josh Gibson, Bullet Joe Rogan, and Paige were all elected, because I think their cases are so obvious as to not require MLB stats to be sure that they belong. Oh is another question. If we were filling a Cooperstown-sized group, I would be a proponent. A BBWAA-only sized group, I’m not sure he belongs. That’s just where I sit on that issue, though.
When it comes to valuating Negro Leaguers, I like to refer to what Bill James said (paraphrasing here): in its waning, dying days, the Negro Leagues produced Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Ernie Banks, Don Newcombe, Roy Campanella, and many others. Is it THAT crazy to think that Paige, Rogan, Gibson, etc., were the equals or betters of their contemporaries?
Just some thoughts on “where does it end” – I think the comments of most folks here who have spoken up suggest it stops at Paige, a unique case. (and I guess it stops here, if he has the most votes.) I can’t speak for others, but here are a few things about his case from my perspective…
I think once you get into the weeds then yes, it opens a theoretical argument that can go through Olivo and Oh and really, taken to its logical end, make you try to find the person in history most physiologically and psychologically optimized for baseball and make a case that they should be recognized as a great potential player but never got the chance to play in MLB because they lived in the time of Alexander the Great. Which is, I hope we can all agree, stupid. But I think of it on two planes:
First, I differ Paige from Josh Gibson and Oscar Charleston not because I don’t think they were great, but because he played in MLB, and left enough of a record that we can extrapolate a pretty clear picture (from my perspective) of his earlier quality even without the hype. The fact that he has a multiple year MLB statistical record is too much for me to ignore, and to me his MLB record is a glaring reminder of how he was prevented from playing for reasons that were systemic and – I hope we can all agree on this as well – absurd to modern eyes.
Second, I differ Paige from Connie Marrero and, sure, Diomedes Olivo because those players were able to play at the highest level in the country they were born in. That is a distinct difference, for me. (also, Olivo reportedly turned down an offer from the White Sox in 1948 and wanted to stay in the Dominican, and Marrero didn’t even start pitching in Cuba until age 27. But I digress.) I know nothing exists in a vacuum and the reasons players didn’t leave their countries to play MLB certainly was intertwined with the same factors dictating that American blacks couldn’t play. But, the existence of the Negro Leagues in America was a direct result/enabler of a stratified system based on race that was egregiously unfair. So I have more of a desire to ‘correct’ for that, yes, than I do to play ‘what if’ with people from other countries. The ‘what if’ is thinner with Satchel, because the reason why that wasn’t reality had nothing to do with any choices he made, or his health, or anything related to baseball. He was out on the diamond in America hundreds of days a year for two decades, he put in his time, and although I’m sure on the personal level there were probably some great things about being the most famous star in the Negro Leagues, the shadow of segregation looms large and his whole career can’t avoid the issue of where he wasn’t playing that whole time.
So I think that’s why I’ve been so vocal about his case. I’m a spritely thirty seven years of age, and I’m closer to the current culture wars and social justice warriorhood than I am to the civil rights movement, but epm’s statment about feeling angry, not guilty, resonates with me for sure. (sidenote – epm, I don’t post here much but read almost everything eventually, and I always appreciate reading your thoughts on this and related subjects) More “argh, his MLB record reminds me how those stupid jerks (I guess, meaning, um, society?) kept him out of there for so long and what a goddamn shame” than “I feel the legacy of white guilt” (which, I also do, but try not to let it guide my decisions too much). If I really wanted to be fashionable and reactionary, I’d advocate to burn it all down and just start voting for Cool Papa Bell and Rube Foster and Moses Walker every round. I’m happy with Paige.
And I’m cool with the self-promotion, it happens everywhere and makes sports more interesting. Just because Ruth probably didn’t call his shot in the 1932 Series doesn’t mean he isn’t the greatest baseball player of all time.
VOTE
Primary Ballot:
Manny Ramirez
Kevin Brown
Ted Simmons
That was a tough vote. There are other guys I’d like to support, but I believe Simmons deserves a longer look. His longevity and production at a position that is notoriously underrepresented is worth further discussion.
Secondary:
Mordecai Brown
Ken Boyer
Andre Dawson
COG – Allen, Paige, Sutton
Secondary – Reuschel, Brown, Evans
The deadline for vote changes is now past, and here’s an update:
Primary Ballot
With 15 votes in:
=================50% (8)
6 – Satchel Paige*
5 – Kevin Brown, Bill Dahlen, Ted Simmons*, Bobby Wallace*
4 – Manny Ramirez, Luis Tiant
=================25% (4)
3 – Richie Ashburn*,
2 – Dick Allen, Graig Nettles, Don Sutton*
=================10% (2)
1 – Nomar Garciaparra*, Todd Helton*
Voters: Jeff Harris, mosc, Paul E, JEV, Doom, Hartvig, epm, opal611, Doug, Andy, Voomo, Mike L, Hub Kid, Josh Davis, T-Bone
Secondary Ballot
With 14 votes in:
8 – Andre Dawson
7 – Mordecai Brown
6 – Ken Boyer, Ted Lyons
5 – Dwight Evans, Willie Randolph, Rick Reuschel
Voters: mosc, Paul E, JEV, Doom, Hartvig, epm, opal611, Doug, Andy, Voomo, Hub Kid, nsb, Josh Davis, T-Bone
Andy Pettitte seems like a forgotten man on this ballot. He is also on the bubble.
He’s basically Don Sutton with 2000 fewer IP.
…
(No, that’s not fair. Yes, their WAR-per-year totals are similar. But Sutton averaged roughly 30-40 more innings per year. Look at WAA. Pettitte was far more above-average.)
..
Nah, not buying it. He had one great year, two excellent years, and was a number 3 innings-eater on offensive juggernauts with a lot of media for the rest of his career. Hall of Very Good.
…
(That’s too harsh. I think he deserves more consideration.)
Andy Pettitte was a really good pitcher–and definitely better than Jack Morris, but he had the PEDs taint, which I considered a disqualification.
I tried PEDs on my taint once. It did not improve my sporting abilities one iota.
As long as you did it only once, and it was to try to come back faster from an injury….
If I’m understanding correctly, should Mike Cameron and Bartolo Colon be a part of the secondary ballot, since they received a vote on the COG ballot? Or is that only starting from this point forward?
Thanks!
Interesting question. Doug’s rule reads: “– 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”.
There seems to be nothing there about needing to receive at least one vote to stay on the ballot.
The critical point in the case of Cameron and Colon is whether they were on “the ballot” last round in the sense Doug meant. If they were, then so were all the other 1973/A-C players Doug listed, and they would all drop to the secondary ballot together, swelling that ballot to a hefty size (17 this round); this would happen for every future round. . . . Can’t be what Doug intended.
I’d propose that the phrase “primary ballot” refer only to the list of those we now call, “holdovers,” and that the birthyear newbies be considered additionally eligible for election, without applying that “primary ballot” phrase to them. When a newly eligible player gets 10% of the vote or more, he goes on the “primary ballot” at that point (unless, of course, he is elected to the CoG), and becomes eligible for the secondary ballot subsequently in any year when he gets less than 10% of the primary ballot vote.
It’s starting from this round, as the secondary ballot is something new that wasn’t conceived of when the previous round started.
Holdovers drop to secondary ballot if on the bubble, getting less than 10% of the vote (incl. 0%), and finishing outside the top 9 and ties. First-timers drop to secondary ballot if they attract one or more votes but less than 10% and finish outside the top 9 and ties.
Guess I missed this in your earlier post, Doug.
VOTE:
Primary Ballot
———————
Manny
Dick Allen
Don Sutton
***Shout out to Nomar who would be a lock if it wasn’t for Al Reyes
Secondary Ballot
————————-
Mordecai Brown
Dwight Evans
Willie Randolph
Pettitte, Paige, Nettles & Randolph, M.Brown, Dawson.
Vote:
Primary ballot: Wallace, Dahlen, K. Brown
Secondary ballot: M. Brown, Dw. Evans, Reuschel
My primary choices should be no surprise, I’ve backed all of them before.
Really believe Three Finger deserves another look on the main ballot and stands out a bit from the hard-to-differentiate secondary pack.
For the primary ballot, I’ll stick with my vote from last time”
K. Brown
Nettles
Manny
For secondary:
Dawson
Evans
Boyer
Primary ballot:
Ted Simmons, Luis Tiant, Dick Allen
Secondary:
Willie Randolph, Dwight Evans, Ken Boyer
Primary Ballot: Paige, Wallace, Simmons.
Secondary Ballot: M. Brown, Dawson, Randolph.
Yipes! I guess I took up all my posting time and energy this week on the long case for Paige, and almost didn’t come back to vote in time! Phew. Glad to see a lot of healthy discussion around Satchel this week, on top of the always healthy discussion here in general. Here are my ballots:
Primary:
Paige
Allen
Tiant
Secondary:
Reuschel
Lyons
Randolph
Well, here are the final vote totals for Round 126, as I count them:
Primary Ballot
With 22 votes received:
=================50% (11)
9 – Satchel Paige*
7 – Kevin Brown, Ted Simmons*, Bobby Wallace*
6 – Bill Dahlen, Manny Ramirez, Luis Tiant
=================25% (6)
5 – Dick Allen
4 – Graig Nettles
3 – Richie Ashburn*, Don Sutton*
=================10% (3)
1 – Nomar Garciaparra*, Todd Helton*, Andy Pettitte*
Voters: Jeff Harris, mosc, Paul E, JEV, Doom, Hartvig, epm, opal611, Doug, Andy, Voomo, Mike L, Hub Kid, Josh Davis, T-Bone, Chris C, dr. remulak, Dave Humbert, Cursed Clevelander, Brendan Bingham, Scary Tuna, bells
Secondary Ballot
With 21 votes received:
11 – Mordecai Brown, Andre Dawson
10 – Willie Randolph
9 – Dwight Evans
8 – Ken Boyer
7 – Ted Lyons, Rick Reuschel
Voters: mosc, Paul E, JEV, Doom, Hartvig, epm, opal611, Doug, Andy, Voomo, Hub Kid, nsb, Josh Davis, T-Bone, Chris C, dr. remulak, Dave Humbert, Cursed Clevelander, Brendan Bingham, Scary Tuna, bells
Doug has indicated that there will be tie-breaker used for the secondary ballot. I’m not sure whether he’s going to use the same one that applied to the redemption round, so I’ll leave it to him to indicate the process and to designate the player to be promoted to next round’s primary ballot.
I have the same count. If Doug DOES use the same tiebreaker as the redemption round, I believe that would elevate Brown to the ballot; however, I’m not really sure a tiebreaker is even needed. I don’t see why we couldn’t/shouldn’t just elevate both… but that’s just me.
Since this is a new protocol that hasn’t yet settled into place, and the secondary ballot is going to be swelled by three new names next round (and I can see that happening regularly as posters cast “shout-out” votes to newly eligible players who are unlikely to get other types of votes), I’d support modifying the rule such that in the case of a two-way tie, both players move on to the primary ballot. In the case of more than two, the established tie-breaker rule would select one. (And I agree that according to the rule used to break redemption round ties, Brown would be set to move to the primary ballot, if we only select one.)