We need a quick runoff vote to resolve the tie at the top in the 1973 part 3 voting. Voting closes Sunday night, so vote early. More after the jump.
This is the first runoff vote since contemporaries and teammates Mickey Cochrane and Al Simmons squared off following the 1901 Part 1 election. Quite a different runoff this time, matching a pitcher and an outfielder separated in time by almost a century. Here are their career lines:
| Rk | Player | WAR | OPS+ | G | PA | AB | R | H | 2B | 3B | HR | RBI | BB | SO | BA | OBP | SLG | OPS | Pos | Tm |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | Manny Ramirez | 69.2 | 154 | 2302 | 9774 | 8244 | 1544 | 2574 | 547 | 20 | 555 | 1831 | 1329 | 1813 | .312 | .411 | .585 | .996 | 79D/H | CLE-BOS-LAD-CHW-TBR |
| Rk | Player | WAR | G | GS | CG | SHO | GF | W | L | W-L% | IP | BB | SO | ERA | FIP | K% | BB% | ERA+ | WHip | Tm |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | Mordecai Brown | 55.1 | 481 | 332 | 271 | 55 | 138 | 239 | 130 | .648 | 3172.1 | 673 | 1375 | 2.06 | 2.41 | 11.1% | 5.4% | 139 | 1.066 | STL-CHC-CIN-SLM-BTT-CHI |
The ranking of 2 for both players indicates that neither topped the WAR list for players of their birth year, with Ramirez trailing Chipper Jones, and Brown behind Rube Waddell by a hair.
To make your choice that much harder, those WAR totals both rank 64th in the modern era among, respectively, position players and pitchers. Other rankings for Ramirez include 8th in SLG and OPS, 15th in HR, 18th in RBI, 21st in OBP and 22nd in OPS+. Brown’s headline rankings include 2nd in ERA, 6th in ERA+, FIP and WHIP, 8th in W-L% and 12th in H/9 and SHO.
So, the choice is yours: Ramirez or Brown. However you decide, your ballot in this runoff round, unlike the usual three-name ballot, should identify just one name: Ramirez or Brown. You will also need to add at least a little bit of extra verbiage though, because the WordPress engine that supports the site won’t accept comments of only one or two words.
All votes must be in by 11:59PM EST on Sunday night, February 25th. If the result of this runoff is still a tie, the tie-breaker will give the win to the candidate who received the most runoff votes immediately before the very last runoff vote cast. So it may not be advisable to wait till the end of the runoff period to cast your vote, because if your vote happens to be the last one cast, your vote may not count for tiebreaker purposes. If you would like to keep track of the vote tally for the runoff, you can check this tally spreadsheet: COG 1973 Part 3 Runoff Vote Tally.
I want to argue the case for Three-Finger Brown as a CoG choice in some detail. My basic argument will be that Brown is underrated by advanced stats and has a stronger CoG case than may first appear. This post does not compare him to Manny Ramirez.
In the regular Round 127 vote, Dr. Doom made a strong case against Brown. Two of Doom’s arguments seemed to me perfectly valid: Brown’s career was short and his two years in the Federal League were not of true MLB quality. However, I think the arguments most central to Doom’s case against Brown are mistaken, and that if we look at them again, we will see that Brown is, in fact, a much stronger candidate than he may initially seem. I laid much of this out in a couple of posts on the last string, but I’m going to get more deeply into the weeds this time.
Doom’s major argument is summed up in this statement: “I don’t think Brown was ever really the best pitcher in his league – not for a season, not for a group of seasons. He was on a fabulous team, and that earned him a marginally better record than he maybe deserved . . .” I think there are two flaws to this argument – Brown was his league’s best pitcher over a five-year stretch, and he got less support from the Cubs than the team’s record would suggest – and those flaws can be demonstrated in three steps:
1) Over his peak five-year period, Brown and Christy Mathewson were without question the best pitchers in the NL, and their records show approximately identical value;
2) Brown’s record is distorted to his disadvantage by a misunderstanding of the way his team’s excellence impacted his pitching success;
3) When the distortion is understood, Brown emerges as unquestionably the best pitcher in the NL over the period 1906-10, topping for that significant period of time one of the greatest pitchers in baseball history during his own prime.
To support #1, I’ll just lay out the comparison between Mathewson and Brown for the years 1906-10:
…………………………………….IP……..W-L…..Pct……CG….ShO…..ERA+….WAR
Brown (1906-10)………..1461…127-44…743…133….38…….182…….34.2
Matty (1906-10)…………1566…135-50…730…140….35…….140…….37.7
I’ll stick with my earlier comment on this comparison: “Basically, the WAR difference tells us that Matty pitched an average of 21 more innings per season. Otherwise, this is about as close to a dead heat as you can get.”
To support #2, I want to return to some comments I made late in the Round 127 string that attracted no response. The upshot is that Brown did not, in fact, benefit unusually from the strength of the Cubs during his peak years, despite the fact that the Cubs averaged 106 victories per year over that period, far ahead of any other MLB team in history,
First, speaking of the Cubs’ offense: Over the period 1906-10, the three best NL teams were the Cubs, Pirates, and Giants. Offensively, the teams were almost equivalent, scoring 4.16, 4.12, and 4.08 runs per game respectively. These three teams’ offenses were certainly superior to the league average of 3.58, but the Cubs don’t stand out from the other two teams. While we have no easily accessible game logs for those years and so can’t know the precise numbers for games Brown pitched, Brown pitched for a team that scored runs at rates that were equivalent to those supporting about 37% of the pitchers in the league, including Mathewson.
Moreover, the Cubs’ offensive strength basically affected only Brown’s W-L record. It is defensive strength that’s key to evaluating the team’s impact on Brown’s pitching record, and, indeed, the Cubs’ success was largely the product of the great superiority of their defense in a low-run era: the Cubs were spectacular on defense, allowing just 2.72 runs per game, vs. 3.18 for Pittsburgh and 3.34 for New York (the league average would, of course, be 3.58). But, of course, that high quality captures a combination of great fielding and great pitching. In terms of fielding alone, the Cubs “inefficiency rate” (the rate at which they allowed BIP to turn into baserunners) was 8% lower than league average over the five-year period. (I think this measure is clearer than using “efficiency rate,” which I feel understates comparative Cub fielding strength.) So how much was Brown’s great pitching simply a reflection of the quality of his fielders?
B-R assumes that the answer is a whole lot, and this is the main reason why Brown’s WAR is lower than Matty’s – Brown’s figures take a huge hit because the general success of Cubs fielders over the course of these seasons is projected onto the games Brown pitched. But, although once again the absence of game logs limits how much we can know, it is clear that when Brown pitched, the Cubs fielders did not execute particularly well. We know this because over Brown’s peak five years, at a time when the league average for unearned runs was 29% of all runs scored, when Brown pitched 33% of runs scored were unearned.
Why was Brown’s unearned run rate so high? Brown had a unique delivery because of his missing finger – his pitches are sometimes said to have behaved like knuckleballs. The result was a pitch so uniquely tough to hit that Brown’s Giant adversary, Al Bridwell, called Brown “one of the wonders of baseball.” Now true knuckleballers can have high unearned run rates because they have poor control of their pitches, resulting in many passed balls. That kind of wildness is also signaled by high rates of walks, hit batsmen, and wild pitches. Brown shows none of these signs. On the last three, allowing that Brown pitched about 20% of all Cubs innings, his expected (based on league averages) and actual rates of BB, HBP, and WP were: BB/9: 2.9/1.6; HBP 9.4/5.2; WP 5.8/5.4 (the last two are season rates). Although we don’t have passed ball counts, during these years the Cubs’ primary catcher in most seasons, Johnny Kling, was only once among the top 10 in PB (although he led the league in some seasons outside that five-year range; for 1909, the primary catcher was Jimmy Archer, who recorded only 5 PB).
So Brown’s high unearned run rate was in spite of excellent pitching control: it was undoubtedly caused by errors in the field (and not Brown’s: his own season error rate was 2.0). Good as the Cub fielders were, they were actually better than the record shows except when Brown was pitching. Why? Given descriptions of Brown’s pitching, we can speculate that balls in play off Brown were probably more difficult overall to field than those off other pitchers, but not because of a defect in the pitch: simply because his pitch was unique and the behavior of batted balls unusual. Fielders had less opportunity to master defense against such BIP, and their performance was less successful than their norm, even though it may have been the better than any other team’s. For that reason, I believe B-R makes a major error in reducing Brown’s WAR by attributing a high proportion of his pitching success to fielding success. The fielders were the best in the business, true; but Brown’s very low overall runs allowed rates were in spite of above average error rates behind him that likely turned the Cubs into an average fielding team when Brown pitched. Brown’s skill was unique, and so he had to accept that his fielders would not possess the specific skills necessary to handle many of the balls hit to them, despite the fact that that an extremely high percentage of batter BIP were too weak to be construed as base hits. Fortunately, Brown’s WHIP rates were so very low (compare Brown and Matty over the five years: 0.932 vs. 0.987) that he could win even with his fielders committing errors at a rate significantly above average.
(To be clear, I’m inferring the error rate from the UER rate. All pitchers bear some responsibility for most UERs, but without game logs we can’t explore to what degree that was true for Brown. A related point: during Brown’s peak years, before ERA became an official stat, pitcher success was primarily measured by wins, so it’s unlikely that the phenomenon of the pitcher easing up once runs were no longer “charged to his account” applies here.)
Now, I want to insert a tangential paragraph here because Doom also noted that Brown’s record is well short of superb if FanGraph’s fWAR approach is used, a method that calculates pitching WAR solely by batting events that do not involve fielders. Quite apart from the fact that I believe calculating WAR by eliminating most batting events makes no sense, the use of Fielding-Independent Pitching for the period of Brown’s career seems to me entirely inappropriate. The basic formula for FIP is a per inning figure for (13xHR+3x(HBP+BB)-2xK), adjusted with a constant to align league ERA and FIP. Brown pitched in an era where there were very few home runs (and most of those were not fielding-independent, since they were inside-the-park homers, but I believe they are all counted in FIP anyway). Brown’s season HR-allowed rate was extremely low (1.6; compare to Matty’s 4.0); in both HBP and BB he gave up slightly more than Matty, but only allowed about 60% of the league average. But his excellent figures are washed away by the strikeout factor. Brown was not close to the leading strikeout pitcher. His K/9 rate for the period was 4.2, whereas Matty’s was 5.2. The result is that Matty’s 1.78 FIP set a standard that Brown’s 1.97 did not match (although no other pitcher was in their class). But all Brown’s relatively unspectacular fWAR tells us is that he didn’t strike out as many batters as the league leader (generally Matty). It’s problematic enough that we rely so much on a single reductive figure, WAR, as a primary guide to player value, but in this case, WAR itself is effectively reduced to K/BB, a one-dimensional snapshot of pitching effectiveness. Even here, the issue is not whether Brown was good; it’s whether he was super-good, as good as Mathewson in this one respect. Here are the relevant figures for 1906-10:
…………..BB/9……K/9……K/BB
Brown……1.6……4.2…….2.58
Matty…….1.5……5.2…….3.35
Brown is second to Matty in K/BB (over the five years and in four consecutive years – no one else approaches these two). But the K/BB difference, which is almost all a matter of strikeouts, seems to be the fundamental reason why the fWAR for Brown vs. Matty over these years in 28.3 vs. 35.6: a huge disparity of 26%, of which only about a quarter can be attributed to Matty’s greater IP (and, of course, Brown’s superior WHIP and ERA+ are ignored).
Now, returning to the main line of argument and point #3 (that is, when the distortion in Brown’s WAR is understood, Brown was unquestionably the best pitcher in the NL over the period 1906-10), what B-R (and FanGraphs, but on a different basis) does not capture in its assessment of Brown is that during his prime he was not only doing something no one else could do, and with tremendous success, he was accomplishing his outstanding W-L record and ERA+ figure in spite of the handicap that his uniqueness created. It was Brown who made his ball club so successful defensively when he pitched; his pWAR figure assumes it was largely his fielders.
In B-R’s calculation of Brown and Matty’s performances over the 1906-10 period, because Brown has a defensive support figure of +0.32 and Matty -0.03, Matty gets a big comparative boost and Brown’s WAR suffers severely. Although Brown gave up only 2.12 RA/G and Matty 2.47, an average pitcher, pitching in Brown’s context, is calculated as likely to allow only 3.15 vs. 3.52 in Matty’s case: fielding erases Brown’s advantage over an average pitcher. But when Brown pitched, his fielders in fact allowed about 13% more UER than average. If we simply allow that their performance was average, and assign a figure of zero (average) to Brown’s defensive support (after all, increased errors would likely have been balanced by Cub fielders’ outstanding range and otherwise high efficiency rate in turning BIP into outs), his Runs Above Average – the basic component of WAR – rises over 25%. I would argue that that is how Brown’s 5-year peak should be evaluated, with pWAR in the range of 42 to 43, well beyond Matty’s 37.7, and accomplished in substantially fewer innings. While Brown’s fielders were not to blame for having trouble fielding behind him because Brown’s pitching offered novel fielding challenges, Brown himself should not be penalized for the very skill that constituted his extraordinary success.
This underrating of Brown’s WAR in his peak years more than compensates for any discount Doom might justifiably want to charge against the 5.3 WAR he earned in the Federal League. Assume the FL was worth only 50% of that and Brown still comes out ahead about +5 career WAR (and we haven’t even considered possible negative distortions in his RAA figure in the seasons outside his 5-year peak). Moreover, there would be no question that Brown was indeed, for a five-year period, the best pitcher in his league (and, until Ed Walsh and Walter Johnson overtook him in the latter portion of that stretch, in all baseball). And though Brown’s overall career was short because of his late start, it was long enough to earn him over 200 NL victories, without even counting his Federal League years. He was, indeed, “one of the marvels of baseball.”
. . . Ok. All this goes so far beyond my actual command of stat methods that the likelihood of errors or overlooked factors is really high. I’ll look for rebuttals to learn my mistakes, and if there are any, we’ll see whether I can still salvage the overall case.
OK, here goes…
epm, I didn’t respond the first time because you have a massive misunderstanding in your calculations. It bugged me the first time, and I didn’t respond to it, but I will here because I fear that someone will base their vote on your conclusion, which I believe to be incorrectly derived. It also has a huge effect on virtually every one of your arguments, so I’ll try to keep it as concise as I can.
Here goes: OF COURSE Brown had a higher-than-average % of earned runs scored. You’re suggesting that this says something about the numerator; IT DOES NOT. It says something about the denominator. Not to be a jerk, but fractions have two parts; as percentages are really fractions, they are driven by BOTH factors. The reason Brown has a higher percentage of UER compared to R scoring is because he was an excellent pitcher, and his ERAs were low. I would suspect that most good/great pitchers in the history have a higher-than-league-average rate of UER as a fraction of total runs. This seems immensely obvious to me. If I knew how to check it, I would. Brown was a phenomenal pitcher, so I would assume this to be true for him, too. The real question isn’t, “What percentage of his runs were earned?” The real question is, “What was the RAW NUMBER of unearned runs the TEAM (at least, in this era where we can’t really look more granularly than that) allowed?” You’ll find that the Cubs gave up substantially FEWER runs unearned than most teams. For example, in 1906, the average NL team allowed 3.56 R/G, but had a 2.62 ERA. In other words, 0.94 UER/G. That’s about 26% of runs being unearned. The Cubs, meanwhile, allowed 2.46 R/G, with a 1.75 ERA. By the math that epm is showing above, this would make the Cubs defense below average – after all, about 28% of the runs they allowed were unearned. But it is PAINFULLY OBVIOUS that this is bad math. The league average was 0.94 UER/G; the Cubs allowed only 0.71 UER/G. This is clearly and obviously better. The Cubs defense was about 25% BETTER than league average not 8% WORSE. The fact that the UER rates with Brown were high is NOT a testament to the Cubs defense being bad; it’s because Brown WAS an excellent pitcher. What WAR does is correctly assess the quality of the fielders behind him. Brown was not “unquestionably the best pitcher in the NL over the period 1906-1910.” He was virtually the same as Matty. I don’t have a problem with putting him in the COG; I truly don’t. I feel about him the way I feel about Jack Morris in the actual Hall – it’s fine if he’s there, but it’s weird to elect THIS guy when there are definitely other, better players RIGHT THERE to elect. Therefore, I woudn’t vote for him among the many, many qualified candidates we have on the ballot otherwise; I would rank him near the bottom of the current crop of holdovers, in fact.
But my arguments against Brown extend primarily to the ballot as comprised. As things stand, it’s not ABOUT Three-Finger versus Kevin Brown and Luis Tiant. It’s about Three-Finger and Manny. Truth is, I have no dog in this fight. I will likely end up voting for Brown this round (though I’m not 100% sure about that yet). It’s fine if he goes in. I just think people are WAY overestimating his value. Yes, he pitched in a different era; yes, he was excellent. But his excellence was short-lived, the peak wasn’t THAT high, and the longevity is absent. He will be, when things are said and done, among the 3-4 worst starting pitchers elected by this body. That’s fine; someone has to be. I just don’t understand the appeal of him over the other pitchers on the ballot, who present, in my opinion, more complete and persuasive statistical arguments for a place in the COG. So go ahead and vote for Brown. But whoever chooses to do so, I STILL don’t buy epm’s statistical argument, and I honestly don’t think it’s really that hard to see why Brown IS accurately assessed by WAR.
Doom, Your point makes perfect sense and there is, indeed, an elementary conceptual error in my choice of UER as a percent of total runs in Brown’s case.
Perhaps I should have begun by using UER/IP and compared Brown with other Cub pitchers, factoring in WHIP rates, since Brown provided fewer base runners eligible to advance on an error, or base hits to advance runners who reached base on an error. That would yield a formula ((UER/IP)/WHIP): the UER enabled by Cub fielders relative to pitcher efficiency in keeping runners off the bases. I think that figure should correlate with an inferred error rate.
If that formula is meaningful, then the figure for Brown over the period 1906-10 would be 0.084 and for other Cub pitchers 0.076 — another calculation showing Brown encountering more UER (errors) than anticipated, given the quality of his fielders when behind other Cub pitchers, but this time not tied to his low overall RA. I did this calculation not expecting to come up with a similar finding to my invalid one, but since it seems to have similar implications I’d be pleased if it held up. Perhaps this approach is just as invalid as the other, but, after all, I did commit to trying to salvage my particular argument for reassessing Brown’s WAR . . .
I have always said that I welcome criticism, and I have always been quick to confess that this is a lie. But it’s a lot better than getting stuck in a systematic error and building on it, and learning is a good thing, even the hard way. Next time (which may be this time), it might be better if you just pointed out the error when you spotted it.
By the way, my 8% claim was not that the Cub defense was worse than other teams’; it was that it was “less inefficient”: it had a lower rate of failing to convert BIP into outs — that is, it was better. It’s just , but seems to provide a more accurate comparison than the efficiency rate, which, I think, gave a result of 3% better.
Mordecai Brown. He managed to forge a highly valuable MLB career with just one finger more than Manny had PED suspensions.
Perhaps the most concise but effective statement possible. Good exit velocity, Chris.
Oh, yeah. Chris reminds me: need to vote.
Brown.
This is a crude argument (compared to the effort epm just put in)… but seeing as we are working with the outer tier candidates for the COG, consider the question of “if we elected This guy, why not This guy”?
Here is Manny vs Killer:
9774 PA
9833 PA
.312 / .411 / .585 / .996 / 154
.256 / .376 / .509 / .884 / 143
555 / 1831
573 / 1584
651 / -22 / -27 / -129
487 / -24 / -27 / -78
(note: I was adamantly against electing Killebrew, and I did not vote for either Manny or 3F Brown. I did vote for Mordecai in Redemption, and I may have voted for Manny last year. Manny is a problem for me, because as great as he was, for this project I tend to move towards players who were useful in all facets of the game. So, elite hitter? Of course. But with the bad fielding and baserunning? Ehhhh, gives me pause.
The fact the he was a Red Sock bothers me not in the least. Nor that Manny was Manny.
I liked all the hated personalities from that team. Manny, Schilling, and especially Pedro. Always loved Pedro. Consider the extraordinary athleticism and real-time moralistic thinking that Pedro displayed when Zimmer charged at him. He managed to defend himself, but somehow guided Zim to the ground with almost-gentleness. Extraordinary. A true gentleman. I probably would have punched him right in his Uncle Fester face. And I was born in the Bronx! Vote for Pedro!)
This is actually a REALLY fun comparison to me. Lots of considerations.
Killebrew was a great guy, beloved of everyone. Manny was a space cadet. Killebrew worked hard on defense and sucked at it; Manny literally left the field because he cared so little (and he also sucked at defense, but at least the Red Sox could mitigate that by putting him in literally the smallest possible amoung of real estate for an outfielder). Manny played in great hitters’ parks in a great hitters’ era; Killebrew played in bad hitters’ parks in the worst post-deadball hitters’ era. Manny never won an MVP, but was in the top-ten 8 straight years (and then once more later); Killebrew actually did win one, but was only in the top 10 six (non-consecutive) times. Of course, Killebrew’s finishes were higher, but they were less consistent AND less frequent.
On the pro-Manny side of things: Manny won all three legs of the Triple Crown at some point in his career. Killebrew never batted .300, so we know he didn’t win any batting titles. Manny had nearly a 1.000 career OPS, whereas Killebrew managed a 1.000 OPS only twice in a long career. Therefore, Manny kills it in both the Hall of Fame Monitor (226-178) and Hall of Fame Standards (69-46), since both consider the numbers but don’t account for context.
Killebrew, on the other hand, in spite of not being a “batting title” kind of guy, crushes Manny on Black (48-21) and Gray (193-154) Ink. While Manny was renowned for his keen batting eye that allowed him three OBP titles (to Killer’s one), Manny led in OBP largely as a function of his already-high batting averages. Killer, on the other hand, won an OBP title in a year in which he batted .276 (with a .427 OBP!!!) as a result of his ability to take a walk. Killebrew walked 100 times in a season 7 times (Manny did so only once, and hit exactly 100 to do so).
Both have similarity-score top-tens littered with HOF players, and they both share Mickey Mantle and Jim Thome near the bottom of their top-tens. It’s a really great comparison. I can see a logical, stats-based argument for either.
Of course, I think it likely to come down to steroids, if you’re just thinking about these two. I have voted for and will continue to vote for steroid-users. But with Manny, it actually gives me pause. Manny’s different because his suspensions came in the era in which MLB was actually actively telling players NOT to use. I think Manny gets a pass because he is, as was said a couple rounds ago, “an airhead.” But I’m not sure that’s a good enough excuse. If he were more solidly above the borderline, he’d be an easier vote for me. If we were electing a HOF-sized group, he’d be an easy “yes.” But, given the exclusivity of the COG, I wouldn’t have ever really given him serious consideration. I think I might be leaning Brown, but I’m hoping the discussion this round sways me one way or the other.
I took a look at the competition during Mordecai’s initial candidacy and it sure was a difficult road:
Mordecai entered the ballot in round 111 (1877-76), which saw Brown, Willis, and Waddell join 17 holdovers in a very split vote. Crawford prevailed, and many were saved through strategic votes. Mordecai was tied with many others at 5 votes (just barely safe). Ballot 112 (1875) brought Plank, who took it easily (Mordecai barely survived at 4 votes). Ballot 113 (1874) brought Wagner (winner) and LaJoie, who gobbled lots of votes. At this point everyone knew only 8 rounds remained, and strategic votes were moved towards other favorites (I cast the only vote for Mordecai that round, and down he went to await redemption).
To be fair, the rounds 114-121 went: LaJoie/Walsh (runoff to beat Wilhelm, McGinnity one and done, Wallace/Clarke entered fray)/Davis (Dahlen enters the struggle)/Young (strategic saves for Wallace)/Pedro (landslide, Clarke falls)/I-Rod/Waddell (in a squeaker over Wilhelm, Winfield redeemed, Wallace/Dahlen hang on)/Wilhelm (over Goslin). Wilhelm had developed a solid core of backers for his unique role, and was the only real surprise to me down the stretch (I was more in line with Wallace/Dahlen, who could not gain traction).
Once the COG started to expand, Round 122 went to Ferrell (over Goslin again!), 123 was Chipper, 124 was finally Goslin, 125 was Winfield (Paige/M. Brown redeemed), 126 was Paige, and here we are. From rounds 111 on, major all-time greats dominated for a while, and more recently some long-argued cases finally broke through the increasingly homogenous holdover field. Mordecai’s birth year put him in a rough starting spot in our process, but hopefully he gets over the hump now.
Voting early this time: Three Finger Brown.
Before posting, I verified that I hadn’t accidentally typed “Boyer”.
Vote: M Brown
Setting aside PED’s for a moment, I cannot vote for a player in a team sport who gave up on his teammates.
Hartvig, are you still on the 2008 Boston media payroll? It is a dirty business, and there are few dirtier players than Scott Boras and the Red Sock management. Whatever happened that year was about 10% Manny’s personality and 90% politics.
Recycling 10-year old character assassination sound-bites is lame.
His last month in Boston he had a 1.060 OPS.
Pardon my impoliteness, hartvig. I could have phrased all that without the barbs.
No problem.
Vote: M. Brown, the more efficient knuckleballer.
239-130, over 100 more wins than losses. 55 wins (22%) were shutouts. Miniscule 2.06 career ERA. That is consistent high quality, even for a shorter career, in any era. Turned a handicap into a strength; three fingers were enough to get the job done well.
Gotta go with The Beast with Three Fingers. Does anybody recall Ramirez getting caught at the Toronto airport with fertility drugs/hormones/steroids? Does anybody believe the last 6 years of his career (at the least) were not the product of chemical enhancing? Heavens to Scotty Boras, what’s the world coming to?
We also had the Walsh/Wilhelm run-off around the end of 2015.
One wonders what Brown’s totals might have looked like had he gotten an earlier start in pro ball. He was an infielder for local clubs in various Indiana mining towns until he was 23, only getting the chance to pitch as an injury replacement and impressing the opposing team that obtained his services the the next year. Only made it to organized ball (class D) at age 24, and the majors at age 26.
Given Brown’s mangled pitching hand, it’s certainly not surprising that nobody (probably including Brown himself) figured him for a pitching prospect. So, should probably be thankful that serendipity intervened to get him to the majors at all.
Manny Ramirez
1. Hitting talent for the ages (.312/.411/.585!)
2. A big part of 2 World Series winners (so probably not so bad a teammate, really)
3. Caught using banned substances twice, but served punishment of two suspensions
I don’t get M. Brown as top 128 of all time- a good Hall of Famer (great name and nickname combo, 3 great seasons, great ERA+, not much longevity) but aren’t we trying to be more selective than the HOF? Even counting Manny’s shortcomings (use of PEDs, etc.) I don’t think it’s very close between these two, but it looks like this runoff has the look of a runaway.
Setting aside WAR for a moment, Brown pitched for a team that won 898 games (in a 154 game schedule) over his 9 years with the team. The best player on that team outside of Brown was Frank Chance, who was only a regular for 6 years.
I personally believe those Cubs teams to be about as close as one can get to the “everyone’s above average” team (maybe the 1955 Dodgers or the 2001 Mariners are as good of examples). 100 wins per year for 9 years in a 77-game schedule means 23 WAA or about 47 WAR. If you assume:
A.) 8 starting fielders,
B.) Three other regular position players (that is, a utility infielder, a fourth outfielder, and a backup catcher),
C.) A four-man rotation, and
D.) Two relievers
You can get to 47 WAR as follows:
1.) 3.5 WAR for each regular and starter (groups A and C above)
2.) 1.0 WAR for each other regular (groups B and D above).
You don’t have a single superstar, and you win 100 games like clockwork. Being the best player on a team with no stars is not really much of an accomplishment, if no one’s even at 4-WAR.
Obviously, this is not precisely what the Cubs did, but I think they were as close to it as any team in history. I think we tend to think you HAVE to have a superstar to get to 100 wins; it’s simply not true. You EITHER have to have superstars, OR everyone has to just be pretty darn good (or some combination of the two, which is basically what most 100-win teams in history have had).
I wouldn’t give TOO much credit for that. The double-play combo poem’d their way into the HOF under the assumption that there MUST have been a reason they won 100 games every year. The thing is, there were MANY reasons the Cubs won 100 games every year. I mean no disrespect to Brown, who would be fine in the COG. I just don’t love this particular argument as it relates to this particular team.
Here’s an aspect of these calculations I don’t understand. The 1906 Cubs won 116 games in a 152 game (average 76-76) schedule (I’m skipping the issue of how tie games figure in). I’d expect them to be assigned about 40 WAA, maybe 80 WAR. Yet the total WAA allocated to the players is in fact far, far lower: 26.7; the WAR total is 56.0. (The Cubs’ Pythagorean projection was 115 wins.) Here are the totals for the nine Brown seasons:
Year….W (Pyth)….W over .500…Tot. WAA…WAR
1904…..93 (87)………..16.5 (10.5)…….7.5……..34.9
1905…..92 (104)………15.5 (27.5)…..17.4……..45.9
1906…116 (115)………40 (39)………..26.7……..56.0
1907…107 (102)………31 (26)………..18.1……..46.9
1908…..99 (98)………..22 (21)………..11.4……..41.3
1909…104 (109)……..27.5 (32.5)……21.1……..49.1
1910…104 (101)……..27 (24)…………18.7……..44.8
1911…..92 (92)……….15 (15)…………11.0……..38.9
1912…..91 (83)……….16 (8)…………….6.7……..33.5
The best correlations are with the Pythagorean W-L, which makes sense, but even these jump around (compare 1905 with 1907 or 1910). In no case does WAA come close to W-over-.500, though the distance with the Pyth. figure is generally closer. The WAR to WAA ratio is all over the map, ranging from a factor of 2.1 to 5.0, generally rising as WAA drops. For a 100-win season, it would seem sensible to look at the factor for 1908, which was very close to that in both real and Pythagorean wins: it is 3.6, a full point above the other two seasons that come close — though they come close only with the Pythagorean record (1907 & 1910).
I have no doubt this all makes sense if you work through the details — WAA isn’t like Runs Created, and is not limited by actual wins (in these nine instances, it actually falls substantially short eight times and slightly over once). But I’m not sure how (or whether) B-R’s WAA actually relates to the concept of Wins over .500.
Maybe this is a special problem for early teams or the Three-Fingered Cubs. Here are the figures for the two other teams Doom mentioned:
1955 Brklyn……98 (95)…..22.5 (19.5)…..19.4….53.5
2001 Seattle…116 (109)…35 (28)………..30.4….67.7
Closer. The WAR to WAA ratios are 2.8 and 2.2.
Where was my mind (Doom might say, in its usual place). When I wrote “WAA isn’t like Runs Created,” I meant it isn’t like Win Shares.
🙂
There are a few possible reasons for some of this happening.
1. Changes in the replacement level (the difference between “average” and “replacement” has been different in different eras of baseball history);
2. Rounding errors (a bunch of people rounding up or down could change a team totally pretty dramatically);
3. Part-time players (small amounts of playing time REALLY mess with WAR)’
4. As you note, the run ratio of the team is ACTUALLY where the WAR comes from, and that might not line up particularly well with the team’s wins.
Those are just off the top of my head. I have an event to attend this weekend and don’t have the time to dive in deeper, so I’m not going to research this further, but those are some thoughts.
Thoughtful reply, Doom. Enjoy your event.
I’m getting disillusioned here, so I’ve probably been a bit hard on Mordecai “Three Finger”. Brown (and the majority that is voting for him in this run-off).
1. Pitting two borderline candidates, one a known PED user (with other weaknesses), and the other a long ago great already in the HOF is not likely to be much of a contest for the COG.
2. Rehashing which pretty-darn-good Hall-of-Famers we are going to vote in is getting a bit dull. Nothing against Goslin, or Winfield, or Brown, but they’re not why I’m interested in the Circle of Greats and COG voting; I’m most interested in the under-recognized players that we can vote for which the Hall of Fame has passed over, even when those players are borderline “Greats”. Manny isn’t really one of those, but I find his case to be much more interesting (and not incidentally, greater. even with the flaws) than Brown’s.
Picking up on something Doom alludes to below, this is a binary choice and doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s an optimal one. Brown’s stats, like many of the better Dead Ball Era pitchers, are really hard to evaluate, except in comparison to his direct competition. These guys are really pitching a different game than we know. The fielding behind them is hampered by bad equipment, there are no night games but a lot of double headers. field conditions are often idiosyncratic. Their usage is crazy by modern standards, but really just moderately evolutionary from the decades before. And they are just a few years away from Ruth revolutionizing the sport. Which, of course, leads me to no informed conclusions about anything, but, because this is a binary choice. and because the other guy is a twice-failed (and who-knows-how-many-times-used) juicer…
I’m going with Mordecai Peter Centennial Brown. The “Centennial” part was the clincher, since I’m a history nerd.
And one more random observation about the hardy HHS crew, as exemplified by EPM and Doom: It’s a lot more civil over here than at Fangraphs, where the comment section has turned into a snarl-fest.
Brown
Brown. He excelled despite a physical disadvantage, whereas Manny excelled with help from an artificial advantage.
I’ll go with Manny.
A quick Keltner Test for Mr. Aristides Onelcida:
1. Was he ever regarded as the best player in baseball? Did anybody, while he was active, ever suggest that he was the best player in baseball?
Doubtful. He was contemporaneous with far superior overall players like Bonds, A-Rod and Griffey. His lack of contributions outside of pure offense makes him a hard sell for ‘best in baseball.’ For the two year period of 1999 and 2000, he was probably the best hitter in baseball.
2. Was he the best player on his team?
Yes, several times, though he played on some fantastic teams and was at times outshined by better overall players (Alomar, Lofton, Nomar).
3. Was he the best player in baseball at his position? Was he the best player in the league at his position?
In the AL, yes, he was likely the best LF for an extended period. Since a Mr. Barry Lamar also played LF, he was not the best in baseball.
4. Did he have an impact on a number of pennant races?
That would be a hell yes. He was on 11 playoff teams, and was a significant contributor on every single one.
5. Was he a good enough player that he could continue to play regularly after passing his prime?
He was able to maintain his offensive prowess well past the “Outfield Wall” of 31/32 years of age. Of course, he had some pharmaceutical assistance.
6. Is he the very best player in baseball history who is not in the Hall of Fame?
Nope. I don’t think I’ve ever done a Keltner Test where I answered yes to this question.
7. Are most players who have comparable career statistics in the Hall of Fame?
Yes – everybody on Manny’s Top 10 Sim Scores is either a Hall of Famer, an active player, or has something else keeping them out of the Hall (Gary Sheffield is the non-active/non-HoF’er, and he has both PED and major fielding issues).
8. Do the player’s numbers meet Hall of Fame standards?
Definitely. 555 HR’s, HoF Monitor of 226, HoF Standards Score of 69.
9. Is there any evidence to suggest that the player was significantly better or worse than is suggested by his statistics?
He played in a high offensive context – other than that, he’s very much a “what you see is what you get” type of player. I would say that almost all of his value is captured in his standard box score stats. Not exactly a “move the runner over” guy.
10. Is he the best player at his position who is eligible for the Hall of Fame but not in?
No – that would again be Bonds. Is there an echo in here?
11. How many MVP-type seasons did he have? Did he ever win an MVP award? If not, how many times was he close?
No MVP awards, but two 3rd place finishes and two 4th place finishes. By the WAR standard of 8+ being MVP, he has no MVP seasons. Offensively, he has anywhere from 3 to 8 seasons that are of “MVP” quality.
12. How many All-Star-type seasons did he have? How many All-Star games did he play in? Did most of the other players who played in this many go into the Hall of Fame?
He was a 12 time All-Star and played at an All-Star level in two additional seasons. Yes, most players with 10 or more ASG appearances are in the Hall.
13. If this man were the best player on his team, would it be likely that the team could win the pennant?
Yes, you could absolutely compete for the pennant with Manny as your best player.
14. What impact did the player have on baseball history? Did he introduce any new equipment? Did he change the game in any way?
The greatest cut-off of a throw in MLB history. Made revolutionary strides in the area of mid-game hygiene. Made Predator-hair fashionable again.
15. Did the player uphold the standards of sportsmanship and character that the Hall of Fame, in its written guidelines, instructs us to consider?
Yeah, about that….
Obviously this is a big capital N capital O. Caught with PEDs twice and one of the most notoriously difficult clubhouse presences of this generation.
I’d add a 16th….bringing to a new generation an updated “Rickey being Rickey” meme.
I’m voting for Brown.
I’m voting Manny.
I have no quarrel with Brown winning, though. All of his superior contemporaries have already been elected, and I do feel he’s better than the remaining deadball pitchers with some support in the Redemption Rounds (Joss, McGinnity). I’m not sure he’s a ton better than those two, but I’m confident he’s the best of the 3.
My vote is for Manny Ramirez.
Thanks!
I’m going with Manny, but I would not have a problem with Brown being inducted.
I realized I may have buried my vote under a ton of verbiage. Brown
I think I’m a little newer to the party than most of you voters here, so forgive me if this issue has been discussed already, but I’d like to hear how other voters rationalize their votes/non-votes for Manny Ramirez, particularly in regards to his steroid suspension.
I’ve noticed a number of voters comment that they won’t consider Ramirez because of his PED use. Completely understandable. I’m loathe to honor cheaters as well, but I also want to be fair across the board and that is where my dilemma with Ramirez comes in.
There’s no doubt that he took banned substances. But he served the punishment that MLB deemed appropriate. When judging his place in baseball history, is it really our place to punish him further by discounting his achievements? As a group, it seems we tend to hold the misdeeds of steroid users against them — they wear a scarlet “S.” But the “cheater” label doesn’t stay affixed to those with other offenses. I wasn’t around the site for the induction of Gaylord Perry, an admitted cheater. But he is a member of the C.O.G. What about Graig Nettles? Also a proven cheater (corked bat). Did/do other voters penalize Perry and Nettles in the same way they are penalizing Ramirez? I’m mostly curious as to what others think.
Josh,
Our regulars exhibit a range of positions on PED use, some of which have been elaborated here. On the whole, if the prevailing judgment is that a player’s greatness was such that PED use was irrelevant (i.e. they were clearly “above the bar” before PED use was proven or suspected), then we’ve looked past that transgression, certainly more so than HoF voters who, as an example, are still shunning COG honorees Clemens and Bonds (who are tarred only with the “suspicion” of PED use, though their performance levels late in their careers make those suspicions quite strong).
For players closer to the COG performance threshold (this is simply the level where, based on voting to date, players stand a very good chance of making the COG, and is usually somewhere around 65 WAR for position players), PED use could be a determining factor in not making the COG, perhaps rightly so. Examples include Palmeiro and, to a lesser degree, Pettitte. Ramirez is also a threshold case and suffers as a one-dimensional player, as some voters have noted (indeed, had he been only an average defensive player, he would be comfortably above threshold and perhaps his PED use would not be scrutinized quite so closely).
Was there discussion on Perry’s spitballing? Or on Nettle’s corking? Do others tend to dock them for such transgressions?
Josh, I’m a “redline” on PED use, but the larger group shows more nuance than I do. I wanted to point out something else, though. HOF voting requires 75%, and the percentage of HOF voters who have found a way to rationalize PED use is presently in the mid-fifties (and only for Bonds and Clemens). A COG candidate who gets 50+ of our voters is going to get in.
I think Doug and Mike have captured most of the dynamic here when it comes to PED players. I’m not a principled vote against any player found to have used, like Mike; I fit more closely Doug’s description: Bonds and Clemens seemed so clearly CoGworthy players who then added PED’s in order to illegitimately rise to the level of all-time leaders that I was able to vote for both despite feeling deeply resentful that the Top-5 quality of their career stats is fraudulent.
As for Ramirez, there are some players you like in spite of their negative qualities and I felt that way about Manny when he was playing. But with both Manny and Kevin Brown, my feeling is that the clear evidence of their PED use late in their careers makes it legitimate to question of how much more of their careers may have been tainted — different from players whose PED use is rumored but uncertain. For Manny, whose fielding woes add the issue of one-dimensionality, the CoG case just falls apart.
But you’ve asked a really basic and interesting question in pointing to the case of Gaylord Perry. We’ve discussed on HHS the relevance of “greenie” use in trying to get a fix through contrast on what seems to many of us unique about PED cheating, but we’ve never addressed the issue of “traditional” forms of cheating, like using doctored balls and bats. (I actually was unaware till you wrote about the Nettles super-ball bat incident: thank you, and thank you, Google.)
I don’t think I actually participated in the vote on Perry, but if I had I would have voted for him, and though I haven’t been a backer of Nettles (great player; just a borderline decision) I feel no more disinclined to vote for him now that I know about the bat incident. Why? — I’ve been asking myself this question since reading your post and it’s not easy to answer.
I think the key is that although the word “cheater” covers both PED users and players like Perry and Nettles, that doesn’t mean that all acts of cheating are the same thing or are equally deplorable. Let’s just contrast Perry and Ramirez, both players who cheated, were caught, and who served suspensions. Perry is in a long line of pitchers (e.g., Whitey Ford — even Don Sutton) who played the game of doctoring balls and evading detection successfully enough to establish excellent careers. It is not to their credit, but examining the attitudes of contemporary fans, press, and even players, this type of conduct was viewed as more or less part of the game: arts that a certain number of players would learn to master, creating a type of traditional cat-and-mouse effect that fit into long narrative arcs of baseball history. The context around doctored ball used did (and, I think, does) not involve strong senses of immorality and shame — though a player might be ashamed to be caught, since part of the art was evading detection. Perry played with this ethical ambivalence throughout his career and in selling his book, and the nature of this kind of cheating is signaled by the fact that accounts of it are often laced with humor. (This is not an argument on ethical principle; it’s an argument that includes facts about our actual ethical responses.)
Although both are cheating, in real life judgments, PED use seems to have little in common with doctoring baseballs. It is dangerous, illegal, involves no skill on the part of the player, who just receives drugs, and can have massive physical and performance effects (Sammy Sosa would be the caricature). I think that rather than classify PED use as “cheating,” we can signal the difference in its nature by legitimately calling it “fraud.” The players are themselves not what they seem, and the stats they generate sit in the record book with other stats in a deeply problematic way: they are the products of conduct outside baseball culture. This is part of the reason fans, the press, and other non-using players respond with anger and see a moral issue far deeper than “cheating” implies; nobody sees it as a laughing matter.
Of course, cheating is a form of fraud and fraud is a form of cheating: it’s all on a continuous spectrum. It’s hard — in principle it’s impossible — to find a determinative dividing line. But that does not mean that there is not a significant qualitative difference, and I think taking into account the way baseball culture responds to different forms of cheating is a legitimate way to gain some perspective on such qualitative differences. Ethical principles would seem to demand that we regard them all equally, but we don’t, and that too is a significant ethical fact.
epm, excellent essay. I agree with almost all of it. Everything but the sentence:
“they are the products of conduct outside baseball culture.”
This is where I have a hard time dismissing PED players. The raw numbers of how many players we know were doing it say that it was absolutely part of the culture. It was a known fact of the locker room, that went unregulated by both management and media. There is a lot of willful ignorance in our (american)culture. And we fans are not without blame here either. We knew what we were looking at in 1998. Maybe not fully consciously, because we were loathe to believe that our pastime was dirty, and it was just so fun to go for the ride. But we knew. Everybody knew.
And we will never heal, and move forward in a positive way, drawing strength from our failures, until we acknowledge our systemic mistakes, instead of just lobbing blame at individuals.
We’ve had this discussion before, Voomo. I think I understand and respect your point of view. I agree that PED use was a known fact in the locker room. However, it was a fact non-users deeply resented, different in kind, I believe, from the cases of spitballers and greenies.
I don’t think it speaks poorly of fans that they’ll give players the benefit of the doubt until the evidence is strong. I don’t extend that view to baseball executives who became aware of what was going on and permitted fraud to continue as a business decision. I recognize that members of the press, without proof available, were in a difficult position, and think they should be judged individually, by the point at which and the basis on which they felt empowered to blow the whistle, if they did. And, as I’ve said before, I do not believe people now blame only individuals at all — I think most share your view, witness the broad anger at Selig’s Hall enshrinement. But the individuals are nevertheless responsible for their actions. I can’t accept the idea that McGwire (whom I now like again) and Bonds (whom I now dislike again) should get a pass because other people also behaved badly.
By the way, in 1998, I’d been paying very little attention to baseball for years: I was completely taken in. I remember sending an excited email message to an expat friend telling him how wonderfully McGwire and Sosa were conducting themselves (!). A couple of years later, I gave up my long dislike of Barry Bonds, in awe of what he seemed to be doing. Then I began to reengage and pay attention and it all crashed.
Voom,
“……went unregulated by both management and media.”
Jayson Stark of the Philadelphia Inquirer (and later, ESPN) wrote a “numbers” column every week (on Sunday, IIRC) where he espoused the Olympian feats of McGwire and, later, others. In response to questions I forwarded, he indicated in an e-mail that he had absolutely no idea, at that point, what was going on.
My question is, “If the media is unaware, who informs the general public”? I believe it was later on, after the Sosa / McGwire gloat-fest of 1998, that McGwire’s jumbo size Andro jug was spotted by a reporter at his locker. Shortly thereafter the luster came off the pearl and everybody was a suspected user
The nail in the coffin? I believe if it wasn’t for Canseco’s “inject and tell” gossip piece, we might still believe these guy’s were really super human. The Mitchell report didn’t even scratch the surface and was just some Selig self-serving propaganda. But, yeah, there are probably steroid users in Cooperstown.
On another note, I wonder what Ted Williams would have accomplished with steroids? Mickey Mantle? Mays and Aaron?
I just want to add that my discussion above talked about how people felt and feel, but not everyone feels the same. I think it’s fine that HHS voters who don’t see PED use the way I’ve described are making a different judgment if they think Manny’s the right choice.
I appreciate the thoughtful response. I can see where one could make a distinction between types of cheating, but my knee-jerk reaction is that corking a bat is a fraudulent action as well. A players tools are not what they seem and statistics are affected.
One could argue that athletes who take “performance enhancers” are maximizing their abilities, but still have to perform the physical feats demanded of them. In contrast, the doctoring of a ball or bat fundamentally changes the supposed basics of the game (i.e. we’re all using the same ball and same materials at the same distance). For some reason that bothers me nearly as much.
If Perry had struck me out in the World Series with a doctored ball, I’d think that I’d be crying “foul” pretty loudly. But perhaps, as you say, some of that is due to our distance from a time when such things were permitted.
I am one of the people who penalize players on the fence for steroid use. If there’s any question at all about whether or not they would have made it without PED’s, they don’t get my vote.
As far as other forms of cheating, it gets more complicated but in my mind it boils down to what I think of as “the gladiator effect”.
Yeah, maybe some kid is going to try and throw the spitter or cork his bat but it ain’t going to work for long and in the end it does no lasting damage. And while Greenies may have allowed Mickey to go out and play after staying out all night, it didn’t make him anything he wasn’t already.
PED’s are different. They do make some players better than they would otherwise be. But it comes at a price. Some of those physiological changes will affect them for the rest of their lives in ways we don’t completely understand.
And that’s not something I want some 14-year old think that they have to do if they’re ever going to play major league baseball.
This is a remarkably well-tempered discussion (not out of the ordinary for HHS) about one heck of a controversy. I don’t like PEDs, or any unfair advantage, and I didn’t vote for Bonds or Clemens (who incidentally got about 60-70% of the COG vote each, which was easily a 25% drop compared to other of their calibre). We’ll never know all of the players who used (or are using now, despite a proper policy). I take the position that as a fan of baseball I can judge stats and careers and games, but innocence and guilt are mostly out of my remit… and when a player has been caught, if they served the time or apologized that’s enough for me. I’m happy for the game to police itself, especially now that it actually has a real policy and testing program.
Kid, On the issue of having served time, I think there’s an additional factor. It can be highlighted by the way penalties are sometimes handled by the NCAA. (I do not want to be mistaken for an NCAA shill; I’m just pointing to this example.) When the NCAA penalizes a school for an extremely serious breach of rules, they have available and often use the option of changing the record book — wins, even championships, are taken away from the team. The goal is not only to punish individuals, but to preserve the “ethical integrity” of the record, even at cost to the factual integrity of the record.
We don’t want that in MLB, I think. The factual integrity of the record is essential to the historical continuity of the game, which is, in part, what makes many baseball fans fanatics (like us, I suppose). But it does create the problem that while the individual may have served his time, the statistical record by which he’s judged remains unchanged. Manny and a few others may have settled the score with MLB, apologized, and earned our forgiveness. But for those of us making judgments not about the person but about his place in baseball history, the score is hard to know.
Voting for Mordecai Brown. Thanks.
Here’s where Manny measures up among players from 1991-2013 (2 years on either side of his career):
OPS:
1.124 .. Barry
1.043 .. McG
1.008 .. Pujols
.996 … MANNY
.982 … Booger
.974 … Big Hurt
.967 … Miggy
.960 … Vottomatic
.956 … Thome
.953 … Helton
.950 … Edgar
OPS+ 1991-2013 among 20 best in OPS
1 Barry Bonds ……..197 1.124
2 Mark McGwire 173 1.043
3 Albert Pujols.. 165 1.008
4 Joey Votto…… 155 .960
5 Frank Thomas 155 .974
6 Miguel Cabrera 154 .967
7 Manny Ramirez 154 .996
8 Edgar Martinez 150 .950
9 Jeff Bagwell… 149 .948
10 Ryan Braun ……..147 .938
11 Jim Thome ……..147 .956
My vote IS in this post. I’ll put it on its own line so people can find it.
I’ve only not voted in one election in COG history. It was the one in which Hank Aaron was elected. I was just a space cadet that week – i participated in the discussion, I was posting regular vote tally updates… I just forgot to vote. Anyway, every tiebreaker, every redemption round, every round, I’ve been here.
Never have I cared as little about the result as this round. It’s not because these are borderline candidates – EVERYONE is a borderline candidate at this point. No, what bothers me is that I don’t think I’ve ever had TWO players in a binary choice like this in which both are near the bottom of the list of holdovers (for me, anyway). I view them with a similar lack of enthusiasm.
I DO feel somewhat grateful that my vote, whomever it’s for, is likely meaningless this round; Brown built up such a massive lead so fast that it’s unlikely anything I do will matter (I live in South Dakota – for the next 25 days, anyway – so I’m used to my vote being irrelevant, as basically EVERYONE’S vote is irrelevant here). So here it goes:
I’m voting for Manny Ramirez.
I have grave concerns about his PED use; his and Palmeiro’s bother me in that they did not take place in the free-wheeling ’90s. In the 90s, we didn’t know, we didn’t care, we didn’t discourage, and we didn’t punish. I just can’t get worked up about it. However, to do it AFTER the testing was in place is different – to me, anyway, if only marginally.
On the other hand, punishments were negotiated. MLB did not negotiate a no-tolerance policy. They negotiated “three-strikes and you’re out.” We’ve elected Pete Rose, whose sins against baseball actually call into question the results of games, which I would consider a FAR greater sin than PED use. And, ultimately, Manny wasn’t suspended three times. Therefore, I DO tend to land on the side of “he did the time.”
Additionally, I would like to vote in favor of my own bias toward later baseball. All other things being equal, I’d rather vote for players who played later than those who played earlier. I DO have serious questions about Brown’s record, too. Really, it’s a choice without a winner for me, but I’d rather participate in the vote, even if it’s for someone I don’t particularly care about. I have no problem if either one is elected. But either is pretty squarely going to be in my personal bottom-10 COG players, and that’s just set in stone at this point. So Manny gets my vote; when Brown wins, that’ll be fine. But for the moment, I’m going to stick with a PED-using indifferent defender whose offensive numbers are ludicriously bloated by era and ballpark. There are a LOT of weaknesses in Manny’s case, but I have a thing this weekend, and that’s where I’m at tonight, and this is (realistically, I think) the last chance I’ll have to cast a vote. So with great trepidation, I cast a vote for a candidate I’m not really in favor of – Manny Ramirez.
Always appreciate your elegant comments.
I think casting a vote for your least favorite ballot redeems your lapse in not voting for Hank Aaron.
Vote:
Manuel Aristides Ramirez
(I agree with most of what Doom wrote in the post above.)
Manny would probably also lose a run-off vote for Best Player from George Washington High School.
Rod Carew also went there.
One curious b-r note on Carew – in the JAWS calculations they have him listed as a 2B, even though his games played are:
1184 … 1B
1130 … 2B
68 ……. DH
JAWS follows what Bill James does and lists players by the position assert which they earned the most value, rather than most games played. See also Ernie Banks.
Earlier on the string, Josh Davis opened up what I think is a very interesting line of discussion by pointing to the problem of treating different kinds of cheaters differently. Now Dr. Doom has added to that by his comparison of Manny Ramirez to Pete Rose, suggesting that Rose’s actions were far worse than Ramirez’s because betting could affect game outcomes more directly than PEDs.
I think the Rose case, which is unique, can help clarify some of these issues. I believe that the ban on Rose playing a role in MLB is completely appropriate, but that his Hall ban is not. Let me stipulate at the outset that I think Rose, despite admirable aspects to his style of play, is among the most personally unsavory people ever to put on a uniform: mercenary, dishonest, and narcissistic. However, I think banning him from the Hall on the basis of bad personal character is arbitrary, and banning him for his gambling is largely a proxy for banning him for bad character.
Rose is accused, justly, of three baseball main crimes connected with his betting:
1) He bet on his teams’ games when he was an active player and manager.
2) He violated the MLB rule against gambling, one of baseball’s most serious prohibitions.
3) He lied about his violation.
I think (2) and (3) are violations serious enough to warrant banning Rose from baseball. But I think the core of the Hall case against Rose is (1): the corruption of betting on games. This is what Doom sees as so dangerous: it could affect the outcome of games. However, as we all know, Rose seems only to have bet on his teams winning.
What is wrong — intrinsically, ethically wrong — with betting on your team winning? I believe the answer is: Nothing. If I challenge you to a race by saying, “Bet you a buck I can beat you to the light post,” is there anything unethical about it? Of course not; we do that sort of thing all the time. The fact that we’re betting on our performance and stand to gain monetarily alters the race only to the degree that each runner may care more and exert more of his or her best effort. If the problem is that it creates an added incentive that you’ll get extra money if you win, that is really no different from the differential shares winning and losing players receive in post-season series — do we consider the monetary incentive there, or in various types of performance bonuses, to undermine the integrity of the game? No.
The ethical flaw connected with betting that makes it reprehensible is relevant only to betting against yourself or your team, or agreeing to accept a payoff for a loss, when you are in a position to influence the outcome. Naturally, this is overwhelmingly likely to affect the outcome: monetary rewards and winning become mutually exclusive alternatives, and in pursuing the money the integrity of your performance is gone. The two types of betting may seem to be alike, but there is, in fact, no parallel whatever between the two: betting on yourself is, all else being equal, perfectly ok. Betting against yourself is the foundation of the most fundamental type of cheating.
Rose is banned from baseball and the Hall for gambling on his teams. Of course he should be banned from baseball — the prohibition on gambling and consorting with gamblers is absolute. His repeated lies about it (not to mention his whining) are further testimony to his flawed character. But while these crime show bad character, breaking rules and lying are common sins in baseball (e.g., Perry, Nettles, Manny). The seriousness of Rose’s transgressions elevates the normal type of penalty, suspension, to a lifetime ban.
What supports the Hall ban is the gambling itself. But the gambling itself adds no sin to the other two crimes because betting on your team and betting against it are ethical opposites. Betting on yourself in baseball is only wrong because it is a major rules violation. In Rose’s case, the nature of (2) unjustly infects the interpretation of (1).
Now, there are arguments to be made about whether Rose’s betting pattern may have tipped off gamblers and led them to bet against the Reds on days when Rose didn’t bet. But Rose did not intend or stand to benefit from that and there is no evidence that his the “tips” would have been accurate. There are arguments about the corrosive effects of a manager consorting with gamblers — how he could have placed himself in a position where the temptation to bet against his teams would have become irresistible? But there is no evidence that this occurred, and gambling debts are essentially no different from other debts: any profligate ballplayer could fall into the same position. Of course, the level of Rose’s gambling, and of his greed generally, mark him off as a pathological personality, but psychological pathology is not a valid basis for a Hall ban.
The bottom line is this: Rose is a sleazy man who violated perhaps the most serious of baseball rules and then lied and lied. But unlike Perry, Nettles, Ramirez, and, of course, all the Black Sox, Rose did not cheat, and unlike all those who do cheat, Rose’s sins have nothing to do with unethically gaining unfair competitive advantage. The intrinsic act with which he is charged is simply not unethical, and the implications have no negatively distorting implication for game outcomes.
That’s why, for me, the Hall ban on Rose is unjustified, and why I see those who engaged in major secret and successful cheating, such as PED users, as more corrosive to baseball than Rose. I don’t support banning them from the Hall either — I’d just prefer they not get in. In the case of Rose, if I could I’d vote for him if he were a Hall candidate, and I have no problem with his CoG membership. His sins in no way require a discounting of any portion of his statistical record.
#1) I have found that those who watched Pete Rose in their formative years as baseball fans are far more likely to dismiss his sins than those older than they were. Somehow, they often don’t see that they do the same thing with steroid players that the older generation did to them, only they attempt to erase, essentially, an entire generation of baseball. I wonder why baseball struggles to sometimes connect with younger fans when Baby Boomers have systematically told older Millenials (like me): “The players you grew up watching were all cheaters and frauds, and they can’t be in the Hall like the cheaters and frauds of OUR generation, who were NOBLE cheaters and frauds because REASONS.
#2) You FAR too easily dismiss the days Rose didn’t bet on his team. Additionally, how do we know Rose was trying his hardest on those days he wasn’t betting? Yeah, yeah, “Rose was the hardest-playing player who ever played!” But really… we don’t know. You’re supposed to play because you’re supposed to want to win, not because of the financial incentive beyond that to which you’re entitled.
#3) “Rose only bet on his team to win.” HOW COULD ANYONE POSSIBLY KNOW THAT?!?! Is it because Rose told us? Are we now supposed to assume that a lying liar who lies and does nothing BUT lie was magically virtuous about this one thing? I don’t see why we HAVE to believe him. I don’t especially see why we SHOULD believe him.
—-
I support Rose for the Hall, I think. I have no problem with his COG membership. I can just make the arguments the other way as easily as anyone, and I don’t see how Rose, Perry, et al are any better than the 90s group. Ultimately, I just don’t understand the easy dismissal of the moral failings of others, whereas the players of the 90s are vilified. After all, WHY didn’t Gaylord Perry use steroids? Was it because of his morality, or was it because they weren’t readily available? Babe Ruth, who never met something he DIDN’T want to put into his body, would’ve ABSOLUTELY taken steroids, had they been available and believed effective. Yet, Ruth gets to be in the Hall, whereas McGwire is perceived as morally bankrupt. I don’t know; maybe it comes from working in a profession in which I deal with people’s personal problems and ethical quandries, but I just have a hard time with hardline moralizing about what I would consider “ordinary” moral decisions. Manny, I think, you can put in a different category, if you like, simply because the moral standard had changed. But that’ s just my two cents. I don’t expect most people to agree, because I think we just see the world in ways that are too far apart, but maybe it’s because we’re ALL just too quick to dismiss the failings of the players we loved when we were younger.
Well, Doom, I expected my post might upset some people, but I didn’t mean to distract you from your weekend activities!
#1, as a fan, I hated Rose and I still find him personally despicable. I rooted for the Mets in those days, and I’ll take John Rocker over Rose any day. I believe you have made an illegitimate substitution by arguing that old guys like me see PEDs as uniquely reprehensible because they are the sins of a different generation from ours. I can understand the appeal of that view and I am not in a position to dispute it, since my bias is built into your suppositions, but I don’t see where your evidence comes from. I suppose I could argue that you only are forgiving of PEDs because you’re younger and were a fan of some of the users, but I that’s a dead end and, besides, I don’t believe it’s true.
#2, there is a world of things we don’t know. We don’t know that Curt Schilling wasn’t shooting steroids when he was blasting those who did. That’s not evidence that it was the case. There is a difference between saying, for example, that because we know Kevin Brown was using PEDs in 2001 we can suspect that he may have been using them earlier, which concerns probabilities of like events, and saying that because Pete Rose bet on his team we can suspect he bet against them, two things that I argue are fundamentally different. As for your last point, if a guy came up to Rose and said, “Hey Pete, I brought the kids to the game and I’m going to give you a grand if you get two hits today,” would Rose be violating any baseball rule or norm by trying harder to get two hits? I think you’ve invented an ad hoc rule to support your argument.
#3, we can’t know Rose only bet on his team, but his betting slips give no evidence that he did. Arguments from silence can never be fully proven, but when you have a body of evidence like the betting slips, and you pose a question about instances of X, if the answer is zero, you cannot argue that there is any evidence that X occurred.
So I think that while you can manufacture arguments out of hypotheticals — how do we know Ruth would not have taken steroids, etc. — when it comes to assessing their validity they may not be very strong.
I loved John Rocker. I’ll take unsavory honesty from a celebrity every single time.
Though, I was sort of rooting for him to get traded to Montreal.
McGwire morally bankrupt? I doubt that. Seemed like a good guy. As for the morals of his cheating, you gotta give him credit for thinking ahead. In ’98, when the (very quiet) questions of “how is he doing that?” started swirling, suddenly a big jar of andro (legal, over the counter) appeared in his locker.
Beautiful piece of deflection.
…
Here’s an article a year later, still artfully deflecting:
http://www.nytimes.com/1999/08/06/sports/baseball-mcgwire-stopped-his-use-of-andro-four-months-ago.html
I’m no attorney, nor was I ever that guy on the ‘forensics” team. But, I will say this regarding Rose and baseball gambling:
Since he was a little boy at Macon in A ball or D ball or God knows whatever it may have been in 1959 or 1960, there was a sign on the wall that basically stated, “No gambling allowed”. It was baseball’s only rule; their “Golden Rule” that baseball was going to defend come hell or high water. If he was too stupid or too arrogant to think he could get away with it, tough shit. If he was an addict, did he ever attempt to seek help? Even ONCE?
He doesn’t deserve Cooperstown and he doesn’t deserve my sympathy. I think Rose is a “character” and quite amusing, likable, and entertaining, but “nay” on Cooperstown. Yeah, he played hard. He accomplished an awful lot, but…he screwed up his legacy – just like Bonds and Clemens. Let their money be their consolation, recompense, and reward.
Great story (WARNING: probably should be over 50 years of age to ‘get it”)
Pete’s is a guest on, “The Best Damned Sports Show, Period”.
John Salley: “Pete, Frank Robinson is the best ball player you ever played with, right?”
Pete Rose: “No, Sal. Mike Schmidt is the best ball player I ever played with. Frank Robinson was the best black ball player I ever played with”
Salley almost turned red with an embarrassed smile on the level of an unspoken, ‘yeah, I guess I asked for that”
Paul, I have no good response to an argument that posits that violating the betting rule is, in itself, valid grounds for exclusion from the Hall. On those grounds, Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker should almost certainly be banned too. I don’t happen to agree with that position. I do feel it is valid grounds for a ban from any role in MLB baseball, and I’ll be happy to go along with any nasty things you may say about Pete Rose’s character and social intelligence.
Good story.
Pete also owned and played his horses….at Delaware Park, he would put down a boatload on his horse and totally change the board. He might not have won often while betting sports (of all kinds) but he certainly made enough money to pay his bills. I guess that’s what the state lottery commission calls “betting responsibly”.
Pete (and Jetes?) may have had the best teammates, of anybody, in the history of the game.
CF Pinson
2B Morgan
3B Schmidt
RF Robinson
C Bench
LF Foster
1B Perez
SS Concepcion
While Pete played with this guys, they all seemed to be in their primes. You could score a lot of runs batting at the top of lineups like those that were typical of his career
This is a 5-minute video of Pete Rose and Jose Canseco talking with the Big Hurt:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0Jv6cMu7bg
And don’t forget Ken Griffey Jr’s dad.
I’m going to make just one argument against this closely-reasoned post. Rose bet on games when he was managing. For me, that would have ended it. We have no idea whether he bet on each game or how much he bet when he bet. But unless he bet the same amount every single day, his roster management comes into question. How he puts together his lineup,, when he pulls his starter, how he uses his bullpen, when he gives his regulars an off-day are all relevant to the chances of winning games. And unless he bet on each game the same amount, knowledge of Rose’s bets would be a tip off to other gamblers.
Since Rose’s betting slips show only bets for his team, I don’t see how the influence on the game works. I think your logic is: If he tries harder on the days he bets, he must not try hard on the days he doesn’t bet. It is a logical assertion, but not a necessary one, and I don’t know of any evidence that it’s true. If Rose bet when he thought his team was a good bet to win and didn’t bet when he thought his team was not a good bet to win, the implication is that he might try harder in the first case, but not that he would not try hard in the second: only that he was not optimistic about the outcome. After all, he was a manager, and his future in the game and salary were dependent on his team’s W-L record.
I can’t disagree that there is an added unsavoriness about Rose violating the betting rule while a manager. He was supposed to be grown up and an exemplar. Given Rose’s character, I thought it was insane for anyone to hire him as a manager, and I was completely unsurprised by the results. Frankly, I had to revise my opinion of Rose upward when it became clear that no evidence was going to show he bet against his team. It reminded me that as much as I’d felt he was a socially stunted person as a player, that admirable work ethic had to have been a reflection of some redeeming quality.
The “tip off” argument certainly has its range of validity. I see it as post hoc reasoning: I doubt it was a matter Rose paid any attention to. If the consequences are as you say, then in baseball terms, so what? Gambling outcomes that don’t involve people on the field have no impact on game outcomes. Are we arguing that Rose should be kept out of the Hall because his conduct influenced who among bookies and bettors won more or less? The center of all my arguments is simply that people seem unwilling to recognize that there is no ethical defect in the intrinsic act of betting on yourself or your team. I believe the extension of Rose’s ban to the Hall rests on the premise that the betting itself was a cardinal sin. It wasn’t. The rule violation and lying are the sins. The “tip off” argument seems to me one that is trying to overcome this fact by identifying hypothetical consequences whose negative features could influence our view of the intrinsic act and make it seem virtually the same as its opposite: betting against your team.
Thanks for the response. My reaction is a narrow one–and a hypothetical: It’s 1986, Rose has retired as a player, and is now purely a Manager. My Catcher is 34 year old Bo Diaz, my 3B 35 year old Buddy Bell, and my right fielder 36 year old Dave Parker. John Franco is my closer, two other relief pitchers, Frank Williams and Rob Murphy pitch in 85 and 87 games respectively. I have a day game on Saturday, and a double header Sunday. How am I betting on the three games, and who am I using?
Mike, I think your hypothetical relates to what Paul wrote below, which I responded to before seeing your post. Perhaps my response to Paul will serve here as well.
But to add something in light of your scenario, I think our presumption should be that Rose bet on his team when he thought it was a good bet to win and not when he didn’t think it was a good bet to win. I suspect your hypothetical, given the cluster of games, would be a case where Rose would be less likely to bet at all. After all, there may be nothing intrinsically wrong with betting someone that you can race to a lightpost first, but if the race is going to be over broken ground at twilight, it would be sort of stupid to propose the bet in the first place, especially when you can see coming up ahead other lightposts with smoother ground.
Or, to put it bluntly “it’s 4-3 going into the top of the 9th, but I’ve got nothing on this game but do have a big bet down on the front end of tomorrow’s double header. If I use Franco now, he’s not coming in tomorrow.”
Not sure if you’d read my reply before posting this, Mike. If you had then I was obviously unconvincing, but I don’t think I have anything to add.
I think I must have missed it. I’ve blathered enough, anyway
epm, I think your point is correct that Rose wouldn’t be betting on his team to win unless he felt the matchups were favorable. So, manager Rose would, presumably, avoid doing anything that would upset those favorable matchups. I think Paul has clearly shown a scenario where Rose’s managing to win a game might be compromised by considerations related to maintaining favorable matchups for future games that he is betting on.
Yes, one can construct those hypotheticals, Doug. I pointed out that manager Rose throwing a game might make choices motivated by his bet that worked to his team’s long-term benefit. Those issues are interesting and relevant to the reasons betting is outlawed in baseball, but don’t bear on the intrinsic ethical qualities of betting for or against one’s team, which are fundamentally different.
By betting on his team, Rose may have put himself in a position where he would be tempted to make an unethical choice during the game. But unless he makes that unethical choice for reasons of his bet, he has not done anything intrinsically unethical. He has been imprudent and stupid, and he has broken a rule — which is unethical in its own right (as is lying about it) — but his betting on his team itself was not an unethical act.
PS: I’m writing as if all my assertions were correct. I believe they are, which is a very different matter.
epm, can you elaborate on this:
“I thought it was insane for anyone to hire him as a manager, and I was completely unsurprised by the results.”
What results do you mean?
1982 … 61-101
1983 … 74-88
1984 … 70-92
Pete Rose Hired as Manager
1985 … 89-72
1986 … 86-76
1987 … 84-78
1988 … 75-59 (30-day suspension for touching umpire Dave Pallone’s arm)
1989 … 59-66 (might have been a bit distracted)
Oh, I didn’t mean W-L, Voomo. I meant conduct. I saw Rose as a great baseball man and a socially immature person. I felt he was a powder keg and that some incident would blow things up. I didn’t expect it to be betting: I thought it would be conflict with players or something like that, so I was no prophet. But I wasn’t surprised by the gambling.
He can definitely talk baseball:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIcfFozZnyI
I remember reading of how Rose could give you a pitch-by-pitch recap of the game he had just played in (not just his PAs but the whole game). Definitely had his head in the game playing and, one would assume, when managing.
Perhaps the most amazing thing about Rose’s managing record is that in 85 and 86 he pretty much had an offensive black hole at first base, at least a significant portion of the time.
Mike L
or, “how much he currently owes his bookie”, might be some real motivation to go with a starter (or closer) for too long. Risking possible injury to players? Yeah, sure – “throw the book at him”
There’s some legitimacy to this argument, which essentially opposes long-term team goods against short-term betting goods. I suppose the counter is that, as a manager, the balance of Rose’s interests were firmly rooted in the horizon of the team’s season record. You could, of course, push the issue of short-term desperation, or just posit that Rose was so stupid that he couldn’t recognize his interest in long-term player health in the face of short-term gains. But now you’re into both hypotheticals and post hoc reasoning, still without any evidence that this sort of thing actually happened. (Still, again, the argument does have fundamental logic to it.)
But, all in all, he bet on baseball. Which, at the time (as well as now), was illegal and against baseball’s ‘cardinal’ rule (as opposed to, “No Playing Pepper”). We’re arguing hypothetical scenarios when, factually/actually, he bet on baseball.
In a society where you now can’t even make a suggestive comment to an actress, waitress, or secretary (yeah, sorry to go there), we’re sure giving Pete the benefit of the doubt for his past illegal indiscretions.
Paul, I’ve acknowledged that if you believe that violation of the no-betting rule is in itself sufficient for a Hall ban, then a Hall ban should be your position. I don’t share your view when it comes to the Hall, though I think a lifetime baseball ban for Rose was entirely appropriate. I see no argument between us: this is simply a matter of opinion about the degree of seriousness pertaining to this rule violation.
Arguing that there is an essential distinction in kind between betting for or against one’s team is not a matter of hypotheticals; it is a point of ethical reasoning. I don’t think there is, in fact, any doubt about the fundamental nature of the difference between the two, and there is zero evidence that Rose crossed the line between the two — it is the suggestion that Rose may have done so that is entirely hypothetical — so I don’t see my argument as giving Rose the benefit of any doubt.
My point merely is that MLB has a rule and Giamatti, obviously, agreed to the point of enforcement. Cooperstown is kind of like a country club, a church, even a corporation, in that they all have rules and requirements for being a member. We could get into degrees of morality (Speaker was possibly a member of the KKK , Cobb was a racist, Anson was a racist, etc….) but my feeling is that the CoG holds these athletes to a higher standard of performance and behavior. Or, were we merely to eliminate the Chick Hafeys of the world, based on WAR and FIP, etc…?
To the contrary, it seems this blog is a democracy of sorts and you can vote for Clemens or Bonds or Rose or Ramirez regardless of their past indiscretions and whatever rules (written and unspoken) Cooperstown and the BBWAA have.
And far more briefly, here is a video of Pete Rose getting exactly what he deserves:
https://youtu.be/LxmvAFGbeFA?t=3m33s
ahhh, the pile driver – a horrible comeuppance for any shill. Not quite as sweet as the 3-6-3 double play but, I guess it’s a quicker payday than signing autographs for 8 hours and trying to avoid the IRS.
BTW, like who isn’t digging Pete’s current arm candy? But, I digress…..
Replying to Paul on Giamatti: I think Giamatti was a good guy and Vincent just as fine. But I don’t share their view of Rose and the Hall. I believe both became understandably frustrated and angry about Rose’s refusal to admit guilt and negotiate a penalty in good faith, and that the outcome of those angry dynamics transformed the view of the Hall’s status into those you state, significantly heightened over the way the Hall’s exclusionary aspect was viewed pre-Rose.
Yes, the CoG process is democratic. If you want to see the vote as holding athletes to a higher standard than the Hall, that’s your vote. I voted for Clemens and Bonds; I won’t vote for Kevin Brown or Ramirez. I’m drawing the line at a different place. I’ll argue for my view, but the force of the argument is more likely to be explanatory than persuasive for those who feel differently.
As I wrote, I think you and I have no disagreement. Your exclusionary criteria don’t engage the question of whether it is unethical to bet on your own team that I raised. However, you might reflect on this: If baseball had no rule prohibiting betting on your own team, only betting on your opponent (or simply throwing games for money), would it then be ethically wrong to bet on your own team? That can help clarify whether those who condemn Rose’s betting in addition to his violation of the rules have a strong case.
E P M,
I dunno if it’s unethical or not to bet or your own team. If you’re a player or a manager, you certainly have “inside” information regarding injuries and miscellaneous player idiosyncrasies; however, if the inside information fails you, you could have a possible problem with unsavory gambling types. This is probably what Landis was trying to avoid 100 years ago. If you’re a manager, there’s always the temptation and dilemma of Mike L’s hypothetical above. If you’re a bookie, obviously you might think this guy knows what he’s doing and it might behoove me to lay off his action or bet elsewhere on his team.
BTW, I have absolutely no problem with a Floyd Mayweather or Gennady Golovkin betting on himself in Vegas since it’s on him and him alone. Boxing isn’t a team sport and you’re not going 12 rounds the next night as part of a marathon season. That’s a wee bit different than asking John Franco to go 2 full innings to close out a one run lead or a 37 year old Dave Parker to play both games of a double header after a night game the day before. Baseball seasons are often managed (at least by contending teams) with the hope of being fresh for September and the post-season. Maybe that’s a pipe dream but Pete didn’t have to worry about October with those Reds teams
Paul, I’d agree entirely that Landis made the right decision in cutting baseball off from all contact with gamblers and making “No Gambling” an absolute rule, one that Rose flagrantly broke. You’re perfectly right that there might be issues about inside information, etc., which would concern the ethics of the relation between the bettor and the bookie. And all sorts of bad consequences can result from dealing with bookies, but those are not ethical issues: they’re prudential ones.
When you bet against your team and you’re involved in the game, the outcome is to a greater or lesser degree in your hands. You have an undisclosed conflict of interest; you are deceiving your teammates, the fans, and your owner in order to benefit yourself financially. It’s immoral. By the nature of your arguments I think you can see that the issue of betting on yourself or your team is structured very differently — you don’t have to think hard to know that throwing a game is unethical.
Again, I agree that you’ve found a good leverage point on the issue of short-term vs. long-term team/self-interests in making decisions about a specific team game. Conflict of interest issues, secrecy, and deception may all arise. I concede ground on that point: you’ve earned it. But that concerns hypothetical decisions in particular circumstances, rather than the structure of the deal you’ve made — when you bet against your team, your efforts are necessarily going to be directed against the interests of your team. As a factual matter, we know the Black Sox (when they believed they had a deal) purposely sabotaged the interests of their team. We don’t know whether that might have been the case with Rose at specific points in games he was trying to win, and it certainly would not have been his intent on placing his bet. After all, once again, his own long-term interests depended on his team winning.
If he tries to win a game going with Franco on a third straight day (in lieu of Murphy or Hume), he’s putting Franco at risk. That, to me, is a problem. If he plays Parker, at age 37, in three games in 2 days, that certainly can create a potential problem come September. You can’t go 162-0 but if he’s betting the Reds every night, though he might be foolish enough to try. AAA players are not adequate replacements for injured stars. That, is a problem for Pete’s long term interests. Tommy John surgery for your closer, Thomas Howard replacing Dave Parker who is on the 15 day DL, not real good.
I just don’t believe betting on your team enhances the integrity of the game or serves the longer term interests of your ballclub
Paul, I didn’t claim betting on your team enhances the integrity of the game. I said it was not intrinsically unethical, in contrast to betting against your team, which is intrinsically unethical.
You’ve imagined a number of cases where unethical conduct could arise, and they are well imagined. You can continue to imagine more. I think they are significant, but I don’t think they pertain to my argument, which concerns the dramatically different intrinsic ethical natures of the acts of betting for and against your team. Because I am interested in the intrinsic nature of the acts, I haven’t tried to refute your hypotheticals with ploys like noting that if Rose had bet against his team, he might be more inclined than otherwise to take Franco out, increasing the team’s chance of losing the game while improving the team’s long-term prospects beyond what a non-betting manager might have done. That sort of thing just isn’t relevant to my point. (Of course, I’ve now used the ploy after all. . . .)
For me, the intrinsic ethical difference between the two acts embodies the threshold between being banned from participation in baseball and being banned from the Hall that honors baseball accomplishments. I understand and respect that this is not where you place the threshold. I’m not sure that there is any new ground we can break on this.
I get it. Absolutely, betting on your team is not akin to throwing games.
Here is Dykstra talking about both Pete Rose, and the reality of why and how he did steroids in the 90’s
https://youtu.be/uZHoq4oeUOw?t=1m33s
It is very hard for me to watch this engaging video and not think harder about the reality facing PED users, Voomo. Good choice.
But now look at Dykstra’s B-R page. How are we to assess his excellent four-year 20+ WAR peak, 1990-93? He’s got a 137 OPS+: 37% better than players, most of whom were not using steroids — but what percent better on an even playing field (who knows?). Lennie did the deal and earned many millions of dollars. I liked him as a player (I remember him as a Met in the Ron Hunt mold of toughness); I like him more now as a person, having watched that video. But his record is still fraudulent: empathy can’t change that.
You might want to watch a few more Dykstra interviews before you decide you like him.
By with regards to roids, here he is with Dan Patrick going into more detail:
https://youtu.be/xrg2ppO23ec?t=5m11s
Halfway was more than enough for me on this one, Voomo. I prefer him straight — who knows what he was on during the Patrick interview.
Yeah, you should (shouldn’t) hear him on howard stern discussing his, um, technique with 80-year-old women who hire him for companionship.
Ok, pass.
I appreciate the various opinions and friendly discussion. Not everyone draws the same line on steroids or cheating and that is what makes such discussions interesting I suppose. I wasn’t here for the Perry or Rose votes, but personally I’m unwilling to draw a line that includes gamblers and spitballers but excludes PED users. I can see the argument for doing so, but I’m uncomfortable with it. So, my vote remains with Manny Ramirez, who I think, sans the cheater label, would sail into the Circle based on his spectacular hitting.
Your posts really enhanced this discussion, Josh.
My vote goes to Ramirez, baggage and all.
– 9 qualified .300/.400/.500 seasons incl. 6 with .600 slugging. Only Bonds has more among his contemporaries.
– Difference maker for two notoriously underachieving franchises. Two pennant-winning seasons with each.
– 29 post-season home runs, including 14 in only 21 WS games. Multiple home runs in 12 post-season series.
– Despite his well-deserved reputation as a liability in the field, Manny twice led all AL outfielders in assists, and had one season with the best fielding percentage among left-fielders and another season (albeit only 55 games) without an error committed. (alas, he still is an outfielder with an infielder’s fielding percentage)
Doug, I’m never going to argue Manny’s raw hitting stats. But I’m going to push back on the assists titles. Dante Bichette led in 1998 and 1999, and managed -1.3dWAR in 1998, and an impressive -3.9 dWAR in 1999.
The last point was mainly in jest. I expect Bichette and Manny got some of those assists throwing out a runner on the bases after dropping an easy fly.
I do think in 1996 as a RF in Cleveland when he led the league in OF assists his assist total was earned largely through having a decent arm, and not just because of park effects or runners testing him more often. Of course even back then he also led the league in errors and had a negative Rfield, so I’m under no illusion that he was ever an acceptable fielder.
And my analysis for highest percentage of runners driven in (after eliminating PA with BB) for the searchable era shows Manny as number 1.
Just a general comment as this interesting runoff moves into its last day (Brown’s lead having slipped to 11-9, by my count) . . .
I wonder what makes some great hitters bad fielders. Is it indifference, or are the hand/eye skills involved so different? Ted Williams, the guy with the best eye ever, was notorious for being a bad fielder (his stats actually say that till his final years he was perfectly adequate patrolling the small area of Fenway’s left field, but that wasn’t his rep). The reason isn’t really a mystery: Williams said he didn’t much care and he didn’t want to put in the work to get better. Dick Stuart was similarly arrogant in refusing to work on his execrable first base skills; he even paid to have E3 as his license plate.
But I’ve always wondered whether, in fact, these guys aren’t actually discouraged by the fact that fielding isn’t a natural skill for them, while their talents at hitting have hooked them on constant praise. Perhaps they prefer people think that they don’t care, when in fact they are using that as a cover for the fact that if they did make the effort, they’d still be no more than adequate at an aspect of the game where their expectation is always to appear as the best. I can relate to that. It’s a lot less alienating than simple arrogance. If it were the case, I’d admire all the more great hitters who did work hard to overcome a lack of fielding talent and to avoid being liabilities in the field that their clubs simply couldn’t afford to cut. (Of course, there will always be the Mays’s and the Pujols’s and the Trouts to make everyone else feel inadequate.)
And, to tack on an even more irrelevant thought — maybe having more to do with the Rose tangent than with Manny: It seems to me that the fielder who receives more narrative praise than any other in the pre-War era is Hal Chase, who is described as playing first base with such assurance and grace that watching him was like watching a dancer. Chase has an awful Rfield record: Dick Stuart territory. Of course, Chase was crooked, and the presumption is that most of those errors earned him pocket money. But the discrepancy between Chase in folklore and Chase in B-R is really a shock.
As a tangent to the Rose tangent, to illustrate just how good Ty Cobb was, here are the number of batting titles some of his contemporaries won (with their lifetime BA noted):
0 … .356 … Joe Jackson
0 … .333 … Eddie Collins
1 … .345 … Tristram Speaker
1 … .342 … George Ruth
2 … .340 … George Sisler
note: Both Tyrus and Nap Lajoie are credited with the batting title in 1910.
But on each of their pages, Nap has a .384, and Cobb has a .383
227/591= .3840947
194/506= .3833992
Ah yes, the issue of the 1910 batting title has been thoroughly investigated:
http://cleveland.indians.mlb.com/cle/history/story1.jsp
And of course, 8 of the top 13 seasons in Rbat (batting runs better than average) belong to G.H. Ruth.
It was 8 of the top 10 before Barry Bonds became a late-autumn bloomer.
Kind of remiscent of Hal McRae crying about the 1976(?) AL batting race results on the final day of the season
There is an excellent book on the 1910 batting race and its aftermath (still controversial decades later) by Rick Huhn titled “The Chalmers Race.” I’d highly recommend it.
In regards to Hal Chase, I’ve often posited two theories:
1. No one doubts Chase was an attractive man – not physically, but he had something about him that made others want to believe in him. As Bill James notes, here’s a man who was called out as crooked by Matty and Frank Chance, two of the most respected men of their time, and yet he continued to skate by for almost another decade. People *wanted* him to be clean, and so they convinced themselves that all these little coincidences must mean nothing. Chase gave a player that helped lose a big game a present? Well why, since he’s such a generous man! Chase made a key error ill-fitting a man who is usually so graceful at his position? Well he may be good, but nobody’s perfect! Is it possible that same trait, his ability to cause others to have so much faith in a man who deserved so little, also helped shepherd the legends of his defensive prowess, legends that the stats seem to contradict? Yes, he certainly played with showmanship and flair – there is so much corroborating evidence that he twirled about the field like a dancer that I’m sure it must be true. But how valuable is it to glide about the pitch, Nijinsky-like, pouncing on bunts like a mad dog? If Chase had a knack of making the routine look extraordinary, but conveniently misplacing his prowess when doing so could yield him a pretty penny, then I think it’s entirely possible that he simply hoodwinked everybody. People weren’t wrong in describing him as a fielder who played with a grace far above everybody else in the game – they were wrong in assigning much value to it.
2. The stats simply fail to pick up on some real, tangible skill he had that was easily visible to contemporaries but is occluded by the passage of time. How much do we really trust dWAR once we go back over a century? A player like, say, Bill Bergen – dWAR doesn’t say he was anything all that special as a catcher. But didn’t he have to be, for managers to keep running out somebody that couldn’t even outhit a pitcher?
I’m not sure which case holds more water. Probably a bit of both?
“People *wanted* him to be clean, and so they convinced themselves that all these little coincidences must mean nothing.”
Interesting comment.
The Round 127 Runoff seems to have ended quietly, with no votes being cast on the final day. According to my tabulations, after piling up an early lead with nine of the initial ten votes, Mordecai Brown has held on to prevail by a final vote of 11 to 9.
Votres were (in order of votes cast): Chris Bodig, epm, Scary Tuna, Hartvig, Dave Humbert, Paul E, Hub Kid, Mike L, Jeff Harris, dr. remulak, JEV, Richard Chester, Cursed Clevelander, opal611, Andy, Brendan Bingham, Dr. Doom, Voomo Zanzibar, Josh Davis, and Doug.
If anyone spots a missed vote or error, please let me know. Doug is, of course, the final arbiter.
Voting for 3 finger Brown. Manny used after explicitly against the rules.
Pingback: Circle of Greats 1974 Part 3 Runoff |