Regular HHS contributor “no statistician but” (or nsb) continues his series examining where the Hall of Fame cutoff line really lies with his look at marginal HoF inductees. If you missed his Part 1 introduction, you can read it here. In Part 2, nsb looks at the positions of catcher and first basemen. More after the jump.
The question of who does or doesn’t belong in the Baseball Hall of Fame, encompassing a variety of points of view, notably the “Small Hall” and “Big Hall” perspectives, is at the heart of what I want HHS followers to consider here. When you exclude Negro League inductees; non-playing inductees such as managers, executives and broadcasters; marginal 19th century stars; talented inductees whose careers were blighted by injury, illness, or even death; and lastly, the notorious ‘Friends of Frisch,’ what remains is a group of forty-eight players who by one standard, at least, that of the
Hall of Stats, fail as individuals to measure up. These forty-eight (identified in Part 1), it seems to me, are at the heart of the conundrum of how to define a Hall of Fame player.
To lay the groundwork for discussion, I’m going to begin with the positions of catcher and first baseman where there are just six players—three of each— who make the HOF but not the HOS. The listing below provides what I think are the most relevant stats for overall comparison: first the Hall of Stats rating, where 100 rings the bell automatically; then the number of career plate appearances and career OPS+ and WAR figures—with dWAR added for catchers; and finally the JAWS position rating (JAWS rating combines career WAR with WAR for a player’s best 7 seasons). As a further point of comparison I’ve appended the name of and figures for the player at each position ranked 6th by JAWS.
Catchers:
- Roger Bresnahan 94—5376 PA; 126 OPS+; 42.5 WAR; 6.5 dWAR; JAWS 20th
- Ray Schalk 52—6240 PA; 83 OPS+; 33.2 WAR; 18.3 dWAR; JAWS 30th
- Roy Campanella 78—4815 PA; 123 OPS+ 37.0 WAR; 8.5 dWAR; JAWS 21st (MVP Award 3 times)
JAWS #6: Yogi Berra 136—8359 PA; 125 OPS+; 59.8 WAR; 9.2 dWAR (MVP Award 3 times)
First Basemen:
- Frank Chance 94—5112 PA; 135 OPS+; 45.7 WAR; JAWS 35th
- Orlando Cepeda 84—8698 PA; 133 OPS+; 50.2 WAR; JAWS 33rd
- Tony Perez 96—10861 PA; 122 OPS+; 54.0 WAR; JAWS 28th
JAWS #6: Jeff Bagwell 165—9431 PA; 149 OPS+; 79.9 WAR
The challenge I want to issue to HHS followers is this, to argue for (or against) the presence in the Hall of Fame of any or all of the six players listed here with a HOS rating below 100. One argument is disqualified: saying that Richard Roe doesn’t belong because John Doe, who was better, has been passed over for inclusion, fails on every count to meet the terms of the challenge. The merits or demerits of the listed players, comparisons to other HOFers, the use of more detailed statistics, historical and biographical information—these and similar bases for argumentation are all welcome.
So: who belongs? I personally see three players who pass a basic test, but I’d prefer some discussion before I chime in.
I’ll get the ball rolling with an argument for Frank Chance. At just over 5000 PA, his career length would seem to disqualify him unless you consider that he was held back by improper utilization and injury (he suffered a lot of hand injuries as a catcher) for his first 5 seasons, and then had his career shortened by brain injury arising from the many beanings he suffered. Despite that really short career, Chance’s HoS rating is just slightly below Perez whose career was more than twice as long, and ahead of Cepeda (70% longer career) by a healthy margin. Indeed, his WAR per PA ratio is 7th highest of all first basemen, behind only Gehrig, Brouthers, Foxx, Mize, Connor and Greenberg. Add in his post-season credentials (one of 10 players with .300 BA and .400 OBP in 75 World Series PA) and you might have a HoF case.
Frank Chance’s case for induction becomes easy if you assume they meant to elect him as a manager. Heck, look at his HOF plaque: It calls him a “famous leader” of the Cubs, who won a record 116 games in his first year as a manager, also winning three other pennants and two World Series. It finished by noting he also managed the Yankees and the Red Sox. The only other thing the plaque mentions is that he started with the Cubs in 1898.
Notice anything? Or rather, notice the lack of something?
At no point on his plaque is his role as first basemen mentioned*, much less is he praised for his offensive or defensive capabilities. He’s in as a manager; the fact he’s actually INDUCTED as a 1B is probably either because he was a player-manager most of that time, or because of the symmetry of Tinkers-Evers-Chance.
*The closest is “started with the Cubs in 1898”, which is even less than a mention than it seems because he played a total of 3 games at first in 1898. His other 50 games were split between catcher and outfield.
Just to start things off, here are the rankings for catchers (since 1900) according to the CAWS Career Gauge.
CWS = career win shares
CV = player’s core value = sum of win shares for 10 best seasons
CAWS = career value = CV + .25(CWS – CV)
The 12 Catchers with Hall of Fame Numbers (CAWS = 250)
________________________________________CWS_____CV______CAWS1.......Yogi Berra......(1946-1965).....375.....276.....301
2.......Johnny Bench....(1967-1983).....356.....277.....297
3.......Mike Piazza.....(1992-2008).....325.....273.....286
4.......Gary Carter.....(1974-1992).....337.....263.....282
5.......Carlton Fisk....(1969-1993).....368.....240.....272
6.......Ivan Rodriguez..(1991-2011).....345.....234.....262
7.......Joe Torre.......(1960-1977).....315.....244.....262
8.......Ted Simmons.....(1968-1988).....315.....240.....259
9.......Mickey Cochrane.(1925-1937).....275.....250.....256
10......Bill Dickey.....(1928-1946).....314.....235.....255
11......Joe Mauer.......(2004-2018).....293.....241.....254
12......Gabby Hartnett..(1922-1941).....325.....229.....253
Note: Joe Torre is in the Hall of Fame as a manager – not as a player – although he deserves to be there as a player.
The Other Catchers in the Top 20 (they do not have HOF numbers):
________________________________________CWS_____CV______CAWS13.......Bill Freehan...................267.....224.....235
14.......Jorge Posada...................254.....216.....226
15.......Jason Kendall..................245.....201.....212
16.......Gene Tenace....................231.....206.....212
17.......Lance Parrish..................248.....194.....208
18.......Roy Campanella.................207.....207.....207
19.......Thurman Munson.................206.....204.....205
20.......Roger Bresnahan................231.....191.....201
Catchers who are in the Hall of Fame who did not make it into the top 20.
________________________________________CWS_____CV______CAWS........Ernie Lombardi..................218.....167.....180
........Ray Schalk......................191.....167.....173
........Rick Ferrell....................206.....150.....164
According to CAWS, Bresnahan, Schalk and Campanella do not have HOF numbers.
As a kid, I saw Campy play in the Polo Grounds a few times and he definitely deserves to be in the Hall of Fame.
If anyone would like an 80-page monograph explaining the CAWS Career Gauge, you can download it for free at seamheads .com or by writing to me at profhoban@gmail.com
Sorry about the numbers collapsing together. Not sure how to fix that.
Mike,
I’ve fixed your comment.
You can use the code and /code HTML tags around tables to retain their formatting. Spacing dots can also aid readability.
Doug,
Thanks.
Mike
For those who would like to read Mike’s paper on CAWS, you can find it here.
Bill James has a brand new HOF metric called “HOF Value Standard” with 500 denoting a worthy HOFer. The formula is pretty simple at Win Shares + (4 x WAR) which puts the two components on roughly equal terms in the resulting sum. Here are the totals for the six players being evaluated here:
Bresnahan – 397.8; Schalk – 305.4; Campanella – 343.4
Chance – 419.4; Cepeda – 510.8; Perez – 565.0
With due respect to Bill James, this seems like just one more version of the same old song, the one titled “Eureka, I Have Found the One True Way—or the Universe Explained.”
This one made be laugh. Bill James certainly has a well-developed sense of self.
Hilarious note about Bill’s new HOF Value Standard – he deliberately created a metric that overvalues Win Shares. Roughly speaking, I think WS=6*WAR is much closer. AKA – a 300 WS player and a 50 WAR player are FAR more alike than a 75 WAR player and a 300 WS player. So a balanced attack would be WS + 6*WAR, with 600 as the standard. (Then, if it were me, I’d just divide the whole dang thing by 6, and get a number where 100 is roughly the standard for the Hall of Fame, but James didn’t ask me – he wouldn’t ask anyone, of course.)
Rusty Staub has 358 Win Shares. By James’ formula, you’d assume that means like 90 WAR! It’s HALF that (45.8). Joe DiMaggio is closer – 387 WS, so we can assume about 97 WAR… only it’s actually 79. Dick Allen – 342 WS, but only 58.7 WAR, not 80-some. This is a problem over and over again. The only players the 4:1 thing works on are the guys WAY at the top – the Mayes and Ruths and Aarons and Bondses. But the reason it works on them is that SO MUCH of their value is above average, much less replacement, that the ratio is totally different than the guys you actually CARE about, which are the guys in the 40-70 WAR range. THOSE are the ones the system should be configured for. Configuring a system where we know where Babe Ruth and WIllie Mays rank is, as Bill himself has said about a hundred times, not very worthwhile.
I don’t want to be totally down on Bill; he’s still doing very good work once or twice a year. And in this system, in his defense, if he’s more confident in HIS system than the other (which he most certainly is), there’s nothing wrong with privileging the “better” system; in fact, that’s exactly what we SHOULD do. What’s deceptive is that he treats it as if it’s a “compromise” between WAR and Win Shares, when it’s really basically just Win Shares with a teeny adjustment.
Good feedback, Doom.
It doesn’t strike me that James put a lot of work into this. In his early days, his formulas wouldn’t have whole number constants, but would instead be something more like 3.86 or 4.17, based on his testing and evaluation to determine the most accurate results.
Oiy. That’s called steering the curve and it’s an awful statistical process. The only kinds of numbers I like in those regards are relative weightings of outcomes. For example a single and a HR are equal in BA but when you move towards any more sensible offensive measure, you have to move off of that. “Slugging” is an overly elegant and inaccurate way to do it but we seem to be stuck with it. I’d actually be more comfortable with an offensive outcome weight (which would have a lot in common with RE24) for classifying the positive and negative outcomes of a batter.That’s not going to say 1 HR and 3 outs = 4 singles and would derive irrational number scalers, but they’re not “hand tuned”.
Doug:
Just discovered that I have Roger Bresnahan’s career OPS+ entirely wrong. It should be 126, not 84. Mea culpa, possibly, although . . .?
It looks like Baseball Reference has done some adjusting of all its figures since I first wrote this, especially for catchers. Now Campanella’s OPS+ is at 123, but his WAR is 37.0, while Schalk now has 33.2 WAR with 18.3 dWAR.
I was going to say, scanning the post, the OPS+ seemed way too low for Bresnahan, who was not a weak hitter. I didn’t know what it should be, but I was sure it couldn’t be so close to Schalk’s.
I’ll update the post with the current figures. There really have been some significant changes for the catchers.
Some notes on players:
Roger Bresnahan: An innovator at the catcher position, instrumental in the adoption of shin guards and padded masks. At his peak with the Giants from 1903-1908, his OPS+ numbers were 162, 140, 132, 140, 129, 137. In 1909 he went to Cardinals as player manager, cutting his appearances by about a third but keeping the high OPS+ going at 105, 134, 146, 144.
Ray Schalk: Noted for his fielding innovations, such as backing up plays at first, third, and even second at times. Small, wiry, and fast, started 150 games at catcher in 1927, something unheard of at the time. Unlike Bresnahan not the top player at his position during his career, just far more publicized than Wally Schang, possibly because of his remaining white in the Black Sox scandal, the publicity stunt of catching a ball dropped from Tribune Tower, and his obvious fielding prowess.
Roy Campanella: You probably know quite a bit about him already. The first catcher to hit 40 HRs in a season.
Frank Chance: Originally a catcher. Never played more than 136 games in a season and over 100 only six times. Player-managed the Cubs during their golden era, and was, in fact, their ‘peerless leader,’ in many offensive categories most of those years, despite his low number of PAs. Averaged 100 runs scored per 162 game season in an era when runs were scarce.
Orlando Cepeda: Much discussed here a few years ago, and again after McCovey’s death, as the roadblock to Willie’s success early on. Injuries, drugs, and low BB totals impact on his career totals.
Tony Perez: Didn’t become a regular until his age 25 season, so it’s impressive that he continued for so long. With Rose and Bench a key to the success of the pre-Joe Morgan Big Red Machine. In most respects better offensively than an earlier Red, Vada Pinson, but with a similar career arc.
Just spotted that nsb’s Part 2 was posted. It’s late, so for now I’ll just note some different numbers for the three catchers, plus Berra, and add a few comments. (C% here is the percent of games played in which the catcher actually caught; Career length is now indexed to 5000PA=1.0.)
WAR…WAR/500PA…Peak7…OPS+…dWAR…Career…C%
43.3………..4.0………….29.9…..126……..6.5……..1.1……71%…..Bresnahan
37.0………..3.8………….33.5…..123……..8.5……..1.0….100%…..Campy
33.2………..2.7………….22.3…….83……18.3……..1.2….100%…..Schalk
59.8………..3.6………….38.2…..125……..9.2……..1.7……87%…..Berra
Note that Bresnahan, Campy, and Berra are virtually identical in offensive strength, as reflected in OPS+. Schalk’s strength is in defense, far superior to the others (when he retired, his dWAR was the best ever for a catcher, and was not surpassed, I believe, for half a century) .
Yogi’s WAR advantage over Bresnahan and Campy is entirely explained by longevity, and a fair share of that longevity was provided by his switch from catcher to left field. Only Campy and Schalk have careers as “pure” catchers (if we’re thinking of the bonus considerations catchers receive); Bresnahan’s non-catcher role is a far greater component of his profile (despite his contributions to “catching technology”; he actually started as a promising pitching prospect).
While Yogi is in a different class in total WAR, on a quality rate measure, Bresnahan and Campy do significantly better (Campy’s dWAR rate is also better than Berra’s). Campy also has a strong peak, which is enhanced when consideration is given to the fact that one of his Peak7 seasons was among the two where he played the season injured (’54, where he compiled only 0.1 WAR, wedged between two of his MVP seasons). Obviously, Campy’s short career was abridged by segregation at the start. It was also cut short by his auto accident, but his productivity had probably ceased by that point. (Campy is also all-time leader in CS%.)
I don’t want to belittle Berra; he was terrific (and seemed always to be breaking my heart with late-inning clutch hits when I was at the Stadium). But I think Campy has the edge, all things considered (or at least all things on this first pass). (Like Mike, I saw Campy play too, but not in enemy territory; at Ebbets Field. I’m afraid I was too young then to provide expert testimony now.)
Schalk seems to me a tough player to judge for the Hall. Catcher defense is an especially critical skill, and offensive trade-offs for a good catcher are common. Schalk was not among the worst on offense, but he was quite weak; he seems, on the other hand, to have been among the very best on defense, the trademark skill of a catcher. His 18.3 dWAR was compiled at almost the same rate as the record-holder, Ivan Rodriguez’s, 29.6 dWAR was compiled. He really was special; the question is the valie of the offensive/defensive trade-off in terms of Hall standards.
Here’s a table that puts Bresnahan, Campanella, and Schalk in company with all the catchers listed by Mike according to CAWS. This is a bWAR-base list, rather than Win Shares, and I’ve chosen to sort it according to WAR/500PA, that is, according to rate of WAR compilation. So I’d think of this as a kind of raw “quality” ranking. The nature of the quality would be roughly indicated by the OPS+/dWAR balance — is value primarily derived from hitting or from fielding? Obviously, longevity has its virtues as well, and total WAR and Career (indexed to 5000PA=1.0) give some rough translation of that. To be clear, I don’t mean to say this list is better than CAWS; it’s just a different perspective. I also don’t mean to suggest that the list reflects anything like an optimum rank order, only that I think this may be the best first step.
When it comes to compilation stats like total WAR and dWAR, and also Peak7 (contiguous, representing career-prime value), there needs to be some consideration for the fact that in earlier eras, when catcher equipment was less effective in protecting the player, catchers caught fewer games per season (and, of course, before 1961/62, the seasons were themselves about 5% shorter).
WAR….WAR/500PA…Peak7…OPS+……dWAR……Career…….%@C
75.2………4.3……………45.4……126………19.7…………1.7…………79%……Bench
46.8………4.2……………35.0……136………..1.8…………1.1…………58%……Tenace
58.4………4.1……………34.4……127………10.2…………1.4………100%…….Dickey
60.1………4.1……………29.0……126………13.3…………1.5…………98%……Hartnett
43.3………4.0……………29.9……126………..6.5…………1.1…………71%……Bresnahan
48.5………3.9……………35.6……129………..0.7…………1.2………100%…….Cochrane
46.1………3.9……………35.2……116………11.9…………1.2…………97%……Munson
70.1………3.9……………46.4……115………26.1…………1.8…………90%……Carter
59.6………3.8……………41.5……142………..1.5…………1.5…………96%……Piazza
37.0………3.8……………33.5……123………..8.5…………1.0………100%…….Campanella
46.8………3.7……………25.6……126………..3.8…………1.3………100%…….Lombardi
59.8………3.6……………38.2……125………..9.2…………1.7…………87%……Berra
68.5………3.5……………34.4……117………17.0…………2.0…………97%……Fisk
55.0………3.5……………34.8……124………..2.9…………1.6…………60%……Mauer
68.7………3.3……………38.8……106………29.6…………2.1………100%…….Rodriguez
57.6………3.3……………31.0……129……….-0.3…………1.8…………41%……Torre
44.8………3.2……………26.7……112………12.0…………1.4…………91%……Freehan
42.8………3.0……………30.3……121……..…2.6…………1.4…………97%……Posada
33.2………2.7……………22.3……..83………18.3…………1.2………100%…….Schalk
50.3………2.6……………32.7……118……..…5.2…………1.9…………87%……Simmons
39.5………2.5……………25.5……106………15.3…………1.6…………98%……Parrish
41.7………2.4……………25.2……..95………13.9…………1.7…………99%……Kendall
33.7………2.4……………21.2……..95……..…9.4…………1.4………100%…….Ferrell
A couple of added points. %@C, which indicates the percent of games played at catcher, suggests that Torre, Tenace, and Mauer are, in fact, much less “career catchers” than most of the others, with Bresnahan in a middle ground. (Bench is a little ambiguous too, but Bench being Bench, there’s no point in spending time on it.) In a CoG post, I specifically excluded Tenace from consideration as a career catcher for this reason, and, naturally, if I used the same criterion I’d take Torre and Mauer off the list. Also, for these players, dWAR is less of a clear indicator, since I’m using the simple B-R total, not trying to isolate “catcher dWAR,” which I cannot do.
Although I do think WAR as a rate stat may be the single best initial indicator of Hallworthiness, I don’t mean to suggest at all that it should be considered in isolation. Longevity (total WAR) and sustained level of excellence (Peak7) are obviously very important as well. The fact, for example, that Gary Carter falls a little behind, say, Gabby Hartnett in WAR rate seems to me more than balanced by his exceptional peak and by the fact that he was superlative defensively, which is so critical in a catcher.
It’s interesting that of these 23 names, 11 have OPS+ figures in the range of 121-129. That seems to me to be a kind of standard of elite catcher offense; the only true career catcher to exceed that range is Piazza. Players with lower OPS+ figures all have double-digit dWAR, which seems to show the offense/defense trade-off norm in catchers. Ferrell is an exception, too low in both (obviously the HoF committee meant to say “Wes” and stumbled) and so is Simmons, but he’s just short of the OPS+ benchmark (and, perhaps, of Hallworthiness). Only the top-ranked (here) three career catchers (Bench, Dickey, and Hartnett) have both higher OPS+ and dWAR figures (though dWAR is, of course, a counting stat, so longevity, rather than quality, may account for some of that).
It seems to me that this expanded table leaves us with the same general view as the shorter one I posted last night. Bresnahan seems to meet the Hall’s standards for catchers, but he was a bit less of a catcher than most others. Campy’s a good fit if you excuse his career brevity (which was certainly a product of segregation, in part). Schalk doesn’t seem to make the cut, but is so exceptional for his era in his defensive skill that we may need to go beyond these stats to assess him. In one of his books or abstracts, Bill James has a terrific example of the difficulty of assessing the weight that should be given to catcher defense (though I’m not sure he used the example to that purpose; I apologize for no longer having the reference at hand and for relying on a shaky memory instead). He considers Bill Bergen, the worst hitter the universe has ever produced — Win Shares assigns 100% of his value to his defense, and these WAR-based figures show why that would be so:
WAR….WAR/500PA…Peak7…OPS+……dWAR……Career…….%@C
-6.8……….-1.1…………..-3.3…….21………….14.6………0.6……….100%
Note that dWAR figure. Given Ivan Rodriguez’s career length, that would translate to 46.4 dWAR (a bit beyond Ozzie). James says that at some point in Bergen’s apparently dismal career, the players in the NL were polled on the best five players in the league. The dismal Bergen was on the Top Five list. Catchers do a lot beyond what stats can show, as this example seems to demonstrate, and Schalk too, the player with the lowest total WAR on the list above, may be a case where we might want (to some degree) to defer to the opinion of those who saw him play and knew the view his contemporaries had of him.
Here are some stats for the 1B Famers, nsb’s three plus Bagwell (whom nsb used as a comparative standard), ranked according to WAR rate:
WAR….WAR/500PA…Peak7…OPS+……dWAR……Career
45.7………..4.5…………..35.3…..135……….2.9…………1.0…….Chance
79.9………..4.2…………..47.4…..149………-7.2…………1.9…….Bagwell
50.2………..2.9…………..30.3…..133…….-13.8…………1.7…….Cepeda
54.0………..2.5…………..36.5…..122………-6.6…………2.2…….Perez
This is an interesting mix of strengths and weaknesses. Chance looks terrific in every respect except career longevity: he barely amassed the equivalent of ten modern qualifying seasons. Of course, he was managing terrific teams in Chicago as a bonus, but they had been assembled by his managerial predecessor, Frank Selee, so while he gets credit for the work, he can’t really claim much for the quality (he did not prove to be a turnaround artist when he moved over to the Yankees as player-manager). Nevertheless, his WAR rate is significantly better than Bagwell’s, which is excellent, and Chance compiled it with a balance of offense and defense.
Cepeda and Perez are simply in a lesser league. Basically, there seems little special about Cepeda and Perez other than longevity (especially Perez’s), but any argument would need to be made with respect to the current cut-off level for the Hall: that’s what they need to surpass or fall short of. Both were weak fielders (like most first basemen), yet not outstanding hitters: solid on offense, but their records, as reflected in OPS+, fall into a very large group of players, some in the Hall and some not. I know nsb doesn’t want us to compare along the lines of, If Richard Roe isn’t in, John Doe shouldn’t be either; however, when it comes to borderline Hall members like Cepeda and Perez, I think we need to ask what makes them worthy or unworthy while others who resemble them are in or not. Questions like: what characteristics make a 122 OPS+ hitter like Perez, playing a hitter’s position, stand out from the 18 eligible 122 OPS+ players who are not in the Hall, and more closely resemble the two other 122 OPS+ players who are in (Banks and Molitor)? Or we might consider valid the related question, to paraphrase nsb, If Richard Roe isn’t in, what makes John Doe worthy, or did the Hall fail to get its ducks in a roe with Richard?
OK, Tony Perez:
Personally, I didn’t (and don’t) see a need to have another 1970s Red in the Hall. There are plenty of them there, particularly if you consider that, but for his post-playing activities, Rose would be in.
But let’s look at Perez.
First, we have the Hall Rating: it’s 96. I mean… are we really confident enough in WAR to say that a guy THAT close definitively shouldn’t be in? To me, if the numbers are close enough and there are some subjective opinions that put him above the line, that’s okay by me.
Statistically, I think he offers a lot. First of all, I want to talk defense. Perez was moved to 3B in 1967 and was defensively brutal there, to the tune of a -9 Rfield. However, in the course of the next two years, he learned to play the position to a draw. Plus, that ONE season cuts away like 40% of his career Rfield number. If you look from age 26-36 (so, beginning the season after the move to third and you stop when he gets old), Perez had a career 33 Rfield. That’s not bad at all.
Second, let’s talk about some “traditional” hitting numbers. Perez missed some significant counting milestones (400 HR and 3000 H) largely as a result of getting platooned, at times inappropriately. As a young player, he split time with Gordy (not Gary – though that would’ve been much funnier) Coleman. Seriously… Gordy Coleman, a career .273/.324/.448 hitter. So everything before age-25, he doesn’t have much to show for 3 MLB seasons. And at the end, he was still a useful player (overall OPS+ of 100 from 1981-1986, ages 39-44). Had he spent that whole time as a DH for a non-contending team (what probably should’ve happened, in all honesty – someone in need of an average bat), he probably plays full time and reaches those numbers. He had a weird career in that way, in that it was both long, AND sort of “cut off” on either end by weird platooning.
Oh, and another thing – the NL in the late-1960s and 1970s was a TERRIBLE hitting environment. Other than a weird blip in 1970, the best league in which Perez played during his first 16 seasons averaged only 4.40 R per game. Next best was 4.22, then everything’s below 4.2 R/G. While Crosley Field was a hitter’s park, his best seasons were played in Riverfront, and it was (most of the time) a pitcher’s park. So there’s ANOTHER thing depressing all his numbers.
Of course, there’s the team success: pennants with the ’70, ’72, ’75, and ’76 Reds, plus a playoff appearances in ’73; he also won a pennant with the Oldest Team in the Universe, the 1983 Wheeze Kid Phillies. He had a very mixed bag in the postseason, but he had three real series with an OPS over 1.100 – the 1970 and ’75 NLCS, and the ’72 World Series. But he was also on a lot of other good teams that didn’t make the postseason – the 1974 Reds (98 wins and second place), the 1979 Expos (95 wins and second place), and with the Red Sox (they weren’t ever near the postseason, but had winning records all three of Perez’s seasons with the team). Even his second tenure with the Reds featured two second-place finishes. Basically, wherever he went, teams won a lot of games. Of course, baseball is a team game, so you can’t credit Perez unduly with that success… but it sure doesn’t hurt, does it? In another big game, he hit the decisive HR in the 1967 All-Star game off of Catfish Hunter in the 15th inning. That doesn’t really MEAN anything… but it’s pretty cool, nonetheless. Plus, he was named MVP of the game – unsurprisingly. As for another note, while he wasn’t even close to being the first Cuban player of note in MLB, he WAS the first elected to the Hall of Fame.
Additionally, how about a little love for durability? Only 26 players have played more games than Perez, 2,777.
I know that we can lean too far in one direction by rewarding him for being on a team with 2-3 inner-circle guys. But who WOULDN’T have been fourth-best on a team with Morgan, Bench, and Rose? I think, in a way, it actually HURT Perez in the minds of the BBWAA, because he did NOT do well in Awards voting. Compare him to, for example, Willie Stargell. They were players from virtually the same era. Yes, Stargell’s biggest seasons may have been bigger, but he was hurt all the time, rarely topping 140 games. Perez, on the other hand, was a constant in the lineup. They have similar career WAR numbers – 57.5 WAR for Stargell, 54.0 for Perez. Yet, Stargell finished his career with 3.30 career MVP shares, while Perez finished with 0.93. Isn’t it possible that, on some level, voters were reluctant to give Perez as much credit as he deserved, simply because he had the fortune/chance/luck of playing with other great players? (For the record, Stargell clearly DID deserve more MVP support; I’m not arguing that; I’m just arguing the DEGREE TO WHICH that’s true; look at their top WARs. In their best five seasons – that would be all seasons about 4.5 WAR for either of them – Stargell wins 30.5 to 29.1. That’s less than 0.3 per season better. I would’ve guessed at it being a MUCH larger difference, if you’d asked me off-hand who had the better WAR numbers – and I suspect most of you would’ve, too. I don’t think the MVP voting results match the data.)
So, look, I’m not sitting here saying, “Perez definitely belongs.” But I do think he’s the best of the players we’ve been asked to discuss, and I think given his heritage, his place in the story of baseball, and his actual production, I can’t claim I’d like to see him kicked out. I think the Hall of Fame is better for players with a profile like Perez.
Finally, a nice little note on a comparison of him to Chance. Forget that Chance played in a segregated game, and therefore had worse competition than Perez. Forget that Chance was a very good defensive player who never played out of position, as Perez was. Instead, look at the two of them like this. They were dynastic First Basemen in radically different eras. Doug points out above that Chance has nearly half as many PAs as Perez. Okay. Let’s even it out, then. Here’s Perez, 1968-1975: 5203 PAs, 137 OPS+. Chance’s 5112 PAs result in a 135 OPS+. In other words, Perez is Chance, PLUS a whole second guy with 500 PAs as a 107 OPS+. For my money, I take the guy with two careers, one as an above-average MLB player, the other as a HOF-caliber guy.
Doom, You’ve gotta be the best advocate a player could wish for. This is a great post to read. I think that at the end you go a little too far. Here are Perez’s peak 8 seasons (1968-75) vs. Chance’s career (per your comparison), and Perez 1964-67, 1976-86:
WAR….WAR/500PA…Peak8…OPS+……dWAR
45.7………..4.5…………..37.4…..135……….2.9………Chance, career (5112 PA; Peak 8 WAR/500PA: 5.0)
WAR….WAR/500PA…Peak8…OPS+……dWAR
38.9..……..3.7…………..38.9…..137………..0.6………Perez, 1968-75 (5203 PA)
WAR….WAR/500PA…Peak7…OPS+……dWAR
15.1……….1.3…………..13.9…..109………-7.2………Perez, 1964-67; 1976-86 (5658 PA; WAA: -3.8)
Perez’s eight prime seasons are a lot like Chance’s Peak8 in total WAR, but Chance had a far higher WAR rate (5.0 vs. 3.7, which I know is not the comparison you’re making), and that holds even if you compare Chance’s entire career to Perez’s prime (which is the comparison you’re making). Perez does edge Chance on OPS+, and it’s fine that you point out that Perez was playing 3B some of that time to mitigate how the comparison favors Chance on defense. Perez was not “out of position,” however; his Minor League position was predominantly 3B. When he came up he played first at first, because he did have some experience there and the Reds had good infielders at third: Leo Cardenas and Tommy Helms. When the Reds made Perez a regular, they put him back in position, moving Helms to second. It didn’t work out very well for Perez, though he did get better, as you point out. They put him at first for good when they made that terrific trade that sent a crowd of players between Cincinnati and Houston, including the Reds’ solid first baseman, Lee May, plus second baseman Helms, in return for whom they got Joe Morgan for second, along with a serviceable third baseman, Denis Menke, making Perez’s switch to first a logical roster outcome.
The “second guy” who is Perez out of his prime is not an above-average MLB player; he’s a below-average MLB player, though not by a lot. So I think both halves of your comparison need to be taken down a step: Perez played nearly a half of his career as a guy who could hit like Chance, though the rest of his game didn’t compare well, and a little over half of his career as a slightly below-average MLB player. Whether that’s Hallworthy I don’t know. I’d want a better sense of where the borderline for first basemen is in the Hall right now. As for whether Chance or Perez is more Hallworthy, I think it’s the old balancing act between quality and longevity, and how you balance the two when specific quantities are filled in. We’ve always lined up the way we seem to now, with me doing a little more emphasis on quality during career primes and you balancing more on the longevity side. (Our other underlying difference, concerning earlier and later eras, may be at work under the surface, but you haven’t raised it here so perhaps not.)
Bob,
Regarding Perez’s “natural position,” this is always an interesting debate. My assumption was that he played third in the minors because, yes, he had a good enough arm to play third IN THE MINORS, much the way a 6’4″ kid will be a center in high school basketball, but will never play that position if you move up a level, because such a player is just too short (even in D3). Similar to Machado or others who played a fair amount of SS in the minors, to be moved to third or second in the majors. It happens. That was my assumption with Perez; I could certainly be wrong, because this all happened more than two decades before my birth. In my defense, Perez’s Saber bio contends that Perez was meant to play first, but shifted the third with the arrival of Lee May (who DEFINITELY couldn’t play third; I think we can all agree about that!), only for Perez to be restored to first when May was moved. I don’t have contemporaneous accounts of what was going on; if anyone knows of primary sources on the Reds belief in Perez’s position, I’d be fascinated. I think your account sounds more plausible, but those saber bios are usually SO good that it gives me pause to wonder. If I have more time, I might want to debate a little more than Chance/Perez business, but I’m not feeling it right now.
Thanks for this reply, Doom. It’s a counter-argument that I hadn’t anticipated and have to acknowledge could be plausible.
I like the Chance/Perez comparison. I have actually thought all along that neither of them belonged in the Hall, but thinking through nsb’s challenge I found myself surprised by Chance, and was really impressed with your arguments for Perez. So I’m more inclined towards both of them than I was a few days ago. Still, I identify as a Small Hall guy, so . . . It’s nice that unlike the CoG, this string we don’t have to vote, just argue.
Don’t think it’s true that Chance never played out of position. He spent his first five seasons as a part-time catcher with unimpressive defensive stats (-6 Rfield). While he was reluctant to make the move to first base, once he did so, he proved to be far more adept (54 Rfield) and resilient there (as would be expected) than behind the plate.
Had he played first base from the start of his career, you could probably add 8-10 more WAR and 1000-1200 PA for his first 5 seasons, making his career totals look a lot closer to those of a HOFer.
Perez is 30th all-time in batting runs among guys who played 50% of their career games at 1B.
Joey Votto is 11th in about 3,500 fewer PA’s.
If Votto got hit by a truck tomorrow, he doesn’t make Cooperstown. However, Perez is in due to career length and great teammates. Baseball must have been fun batting behind guys like Harper, Rose, and Pinson….Rose, Tolan, and Bench….Rose, Griffey, Morgan, and Bench. Hence 1 RBI per every 5.8 AB’s versus a league average of 8.8 durung his career.
Nice guy but, IMO, not a HoFer
I think Votto would get in on the strength of his peak even if he retired tomorrow – I hope he still has some pop in his bat, but his 2018 numbers combined with his spring training numbers this year make it seem like he’s turning into Ferris Fain.
Of course, there are worse players to turn into, since Fain had a nice career.
CC,
Taking that walk-Moneyball. I wonder if the A’s are willing to assume the rest of that Votto contract?
I don’t see anything weird about the platooning on either end of his career. Gordy Coleman hit better than Perez in 1965 & Perez was better (though not good) the next year after which he became a regular. Later on, after a poor age 39 year, he predictably became a part timer like any number of former stars who hung on Past their primes.
Also, UPDATE on park-adjusting defensive stats:
Historic seasons in Baseball-Reference WAR definitely ARE adjusted to account for ballpark, so those are not double-counted. Rally made a comment on Tango’s site about how he designed the original rWAR using TotalZone, and has some interesting comments on this post, if anyone’s interested. I know it’s not germane to the discussion here, but I lost track of the thread on which that was being discussed, so I thought I’d just post it on the most recent stuff. Sorry for going off-topic.
Doom, your link (“this post”) lacks the URL in code. Could you add it? I’m a little confused by your post, but perhaps reding Smith’s comment will clear it up.
Hmmm… don’t know why the link didn’t work. I’l try here: http://tangotiger.com/index.php/site/comments/rejoinder-and-or-amicus-brief-to-bill-james-on-pitching-rwar#comments
Thanks, Doom. I think this puts to rest Bill James’s objections and my own speculations, but it does leave @dackle’s findings (described last thread) unexplained.
Rally makes the following statement in his explanation: “The 1980 A’s pitchers are not being double penalized for a pitcher’s park factor and a defensive rating that looks good because of a park.” What James was actually suggesting is something a little different: that the park factor may unduly reflect the quality of the home team defense. I’m not sure the inverse results in the same outcome, but perhaps after a night’s sleep I will be.
Here are some rankings of first basemen according to the CAWS Career Gauge.
CWS = career win shares
CV = a player’s core value = sum of WS for 10 best seasons
CAWS = career value
Some first basemen with HOF Numbers (CAWS = 280)
……………………………….. CWS …..CV..….CAWS
1…..Lou Gehrig…………489……384..….410
2…..Albert Pujols ……..476……347……379
8…..Jeff Bagwell………..388……287..….312
11….Jim Thome………….392…..270……301
A few first basemen who just missed the benchmark.
15….Jason Giambi………318……266……279
16….Joey Votto…………. .285……273……276
17….Tony Perez………… 349……249……274
20…Orlando Cepeda…..310……251……266
Three first basemen who are in the Hall of Fame but who did not make it into the top 20.
George Sisler…………….292……239……252
Jim Bottomley……………258……214……225
Frank Chance…………… 237……206……214
Tony Perez and Orlando Cepeda are border-line Hall of Famers.
Frank Chance is not even close.
“Frank Chance is not even close” That’s certainly true according to your metric, Mike.
In the “New Abstract,” James rates Chance just one slot below Sisler (whom he doesn’t much like either) and far (11 spots) above Bottomley. I assume the difference between measuring 3/5-year-peaks vs. 10-year-peak accounts for most of disparity with CAWS. Perez is rated much higher by James, but his WS Peak5 is almost identical with Chance’s (just as WAR would suggest), and Chance’s WS-rate, something James does also consider, is almost 50% higher than Perez’s. (Chance was, in fact, ninth in WS rates among first basemen when James was writing at the turn of the millennium.) Perez rates higher for just the reason Doom argued: longevity, even though he was, during those longevous seasons, a slightly below-average player. WAR tells us the same thing: Perez is well ahead of Chance in the aggregate (54.0 vs. 45.7), about equal in peak, and way behind Chance in rate (2.5 vs. 4.5 WAR/500PA).
Your system leaves Chance in the dust because you measure an aggregate total and a form of peak, where Chance’s performances are mediocre and very good, and don’t consider rate, where Chance is outstanding. So naturally your results will look as they do. It’s a product of the choices you’ve made. Those choices are clearly legitimate, but for someone like me, who has increasingly become focused on career rate of value accumulation, the priority question I ask (not at all the only one) is one that your system does not address. So I suppose we will have many disagreements stemming from that initial decision on how career value is measured. It’s fair grounds for disagreement, and I’m not at all saying you’re wrong, but rather that that, and not the contest between WS and WAR, is what I think we’re disagreeing about. (I suppose I should add that JAWS, which uses WAR and a 7-year peak, but is otherwise structured like CAWS, has our three candidates for de-Hallification much closer — Perez: 45.3; Cepeda: 42.4; Chance: 40.5 . . . Sisler’s well ahead at 50.5 and Bottomley’s not even close at 32.0. Of course, the Hall of Stats one-number reduction has yet a different order, with Chance and Perez near parity, Cepeda well behind, Sisler easily in the Hall, and Bottomley, again, not even close.)
I’m also not arguing that Chance belongs in the Hall; I don’t yet know whether he does or not. The knock on Chance is pretty straightforward: he didn’t play very many years and in the seasons he did play he usually missed a lot of games (although some of those seasons were on schedules of as few as 140 games). That matters a lot. The question is how to balance that against that fact that, as James wrote, “He rates higher than anybody else who played 1285 career games,” which (unless James was being needlessly ironic in the specificity of the number) I take to mean that Chance has the finest “short career” among first basemen. Chance was clearly a Hallworthy player; it’s not clear that he had a Hallworthy career.
The whole point of the CAWS Career Gauge is to try to determine how good a player’s ENTIRE CAREER was. One reason why I chose the 10 best seasons as a player’s Core Value is because if we are judging whether a player had HOF numbers, then we should be making the criteria as difficult (within reason) as possible. I do not believe we should be cherry-picking among the many stats to try to justify a player’s “worthiness” if his entire career just does not measure up. I think your last sentence sums it up well – “Chance was clearly a Hallworthy player; it’s not clear he had a Hallworthy career.” Of course, this could be said of many players.
Very few players who did not have at least 10 solid seasons belong in the Hall of Fame. Of course, there are some who do (Koufax being a prime example). So, it is incumbent on the system to create “special HOF benchmarks” for players who did indeed have “short but great careers” – and CAWS has done this for position players and pitchers. In fact, I think the CAWS HOF benchmarks for pitchers may be its most significant contribution (especially for true relievers = fewer than 1500 innings pitched.)
Mike, I’m not sure how we might agree on what constitutes the core value of a career, but I do agree that cherry picking is not a good approach. On the other hand, I’d stretch the metaphor and say that I think there are multiple kinds of fruit in a career, and while me may want get a general idea of them in a combination smoothie, it’s also worthwhile to look at each kind on its own terms. My interest in rate stats as a complement to aggregate would unpack the metaphor. Ray Schalk’s exceptional defensive skills might constitute another example: an often overlooked fruit that may have exceptional flavor in Schalk’s particular case (or orchard).
Bill James famously pointed out that the Hall has no established standards. When you say that the criteria should be as difficult as possible within reason, different people will reason differently. It’s fun to identify the solid members and to show why others, who might be more famous, probably should not be Famers. But the most interesting discussions, in my view, are the borderline cases, which are precisely the guys nsb is asking us to discuss. When I said that it’s not clear that Chance had a Hallworthy career, I did not mean it was clear that he didn’t. I meant that viewing his career from multiple angles, the balance of strengths and weakness make this a tough, and therefore an interesting call for me.
Mike H
I agree that any system of evaluation should use a career peak longer than 7 years but 10 years is just as “arbitrary” as 7 (but definitely better). If a guy is a great talent (Luis Tiant, por ejemplo) and suffers serious injury mid-career peak, perhaps even 10 is not long enough? I dunno. In the example above, Bagwell has several seasons of greater than 20 WS yet those seasons are outside his 10 year peak window. I believe James called the 20 WS seasons “All Star” caliber. Shouldn’t they be included in comparing the “greats”? Just asking
Paul,
Just to clarify – in the CAWS Career Gauge, I do not use the concept of “peak.” A player’s core value is the sum of his 10 best seasons – whenever they occur during his career.
Mike H
very fair – and even less arbitrary. Logically speaking, when comparing superstars, you could even take it out further – say, 15 best seasons? You know, like to settle the Cobb-Mays-Mantle or Collins-Hornsby-Morgan debate…..McCovey vs. Stargell or Williams/DiMaggio,etc….
I don’t know, Paul. It seems more arbitrary to me, but I suppose you can look at it either way. Picking out widely dispersed seasons because they meet the 10-best criterion is a lot closer to cherry picking than finding the block of 5, 7, or 10-best seasons and seeing the level of excellence a player could sustain over a career prime (although that is a form of cherry-picking too). But in cases like Tiant you’d need to be aware that a “prime/peak” calculation under-represents his quality, just as for players whose 10-best number correlates to their peak10 you’d want to be aware of how dependably they sustained their excellence over time: fairness works both ways. You can, of course, include both numbers, if you want to work from an enhanced information base: I think there’s really no principled argument in favor of less data, although it’s harder to figure out what to do more data. Move up to best-15 seasons and you’re coming closer to the WAA+ approach that mosc advocates, just forgiving players their worst seasons (and for some, there aren’t even 15 seasons to calculate with).
It seems to me that the target here is not a number, it’s an assessment. A single compound number like CAWS can guide the assessment, but I don’t believe any one number can constitute an assessment unless the arguments for the proper proportionality of each component of the number and the sufficiency of the set of components are fully persuasive, which is, I think, not possible in principle: assessments include non-stat elements, such as the testimony of contemporaries and special challenges that individual players may have had to overcome to reach their statistical results (military service, segregation, minor league contract constraints, injury, PED-laced opponents, premature death . . . well, that one’s hard to overcome . . . ).
Bob,
As far as advocating for the “mosc approach”, I believe he’s also eliminating negative WAA seasons. However, with WS, I don’t believe there are negative seasons- just positve and less positive. Not every guy’s career is a perfect bell curve. I don’t believe Mantle’s half-crippled seasons (’63, ’65, ’66) should be held against him any more than Mays’ struggles with the Mets (bad example-end of career/bottom of bell curve). Mantle was injured and later was “less crippled” in some subsequent seasons. But if we go 10 straight, Mays would lose an MVP season (either ’54 or ’65). For guys of that caliber, comparisons should be certainly based on an even longer peak or greater amount of seasons.
Out of curiosity, I just checked WS for Lou Whitaker and he appears to be steadily accumulating WS’s (17-24/year) for a long time just like his WAR accumulating – no real significant peak….maybe he shouldn’t be called Sweet Lou – perhaps Steady Lou? But, I dunno, I just believe 7 seasons (JAWS) is not enough when considering Cooperstown because the fewer seasons considered, the larger the Hall. I believe JAWS is a large Hall “builder’.
Yes, as I understand it WAA+ is simply total WAA without the WAA- seasons. And, yes again, there are no negative Win Shares (though I believe some people have rebuilt WS to create them).
My view is that we want to count all seasons, but we want to understand the factors that create outliers. So Mantle’s “crippled seasons” would be “held against him” — what happened on the field actually happened, we can’t wish it way. But assessments of Mantle’s stature include an understanding of the causes of those poor numbers, and a judgment that is qualitative, rather than a one-size-fits-all quantitative fix that throws Mantle’s injury years together with Pujols’s play-out-the-contract years, or, for that matter, Willie’s stubborn refusal to retire at the point when we were all turning away in embarrassment.
I see the way to “forgive” players their worst seasons not to be pretending those seasons didn’t happen, but to involve independently calculating their prime or best seasons, just as Mike does in CAWS. Of course, the more seasons you include in that figure the less it is distinguished from career total (in some cases, like Jackie and Campy, the ten-year period erases the distinction entirely). You and Mike think 7 isn’t enough, but if you’re seeking to know the player at his best, so as to balance the mix of best & worst in a full career, my worry is the 7 may be too many. (I realize you aren’t seeking the answer to that question, so much as the question to which WAA+ is an answer.)
Where you and I most disagree would be in your statement, “the fewer seasons considered, the larger the Hall.” I think that this could only be true if the numbers you generate through this sort of manipulation are substituted for an assessment that considers all available data, rather than as a way to guide our thinking. Whatever system you’re using, if you take one number as a sufficient formula for a Hall (or CoG) decision, without thinking about the player’s full profile, I think you’re going to get an unsatisfying result. If you take one number as a starting point, then those numbers have the potential to guide your thinking towards a much more satisfying (but always ultimately subjective) outcome. And there are, indeed, better and worse single number guides — CAWS and JAWS and Hall’o’Stats are all huge advances over the old Batting Average / Wins standards.
I think Bill James had the right approach in his “New Abstract.” His player rankings were largely based on an array of six figures: Total Win Shares, Top-3 WS-Seasons individually enumerated, Top-5 Seasons as an aggregate figure, and a seasonal WS-rate based on 162G. I remember poring over those lists trying to figure out James’s thought processes as he translated that portfolio of numbers into a ranking. Sometimes it cannot be done. For example, James rated Pie Traynor two slots above Jimmy Collins among top third baseman, although Collins bests Traynor in every single category, and when you turn to the narrative section for enlightenment, James bad-mouths Traynor and simply records contemporary praise for Collins. Obviously, the ranking came from data outside the six numbers James listed, showing that James’s broad data table was not at all the limit of his assessment.
Bob,
“I remember poring over those lists trying to figure out James’s thought processes as he translated that portfolio of numbers into a ranking. ”
Check out the 1B rankings. Dick Allen is possibly, by James’ mathematical standards, the 3rd or 4th best 1B of all time. Then he gets into the subjective stuff and treats him like a witch at Salem. Basically stating, “possibly the greatest talent I have ever seen”, he then ranks him 15th for all the BS and soap opera that went on in Allen’s career – numbers be damned. But, it’s his system and his book…..
Actually, CAWS has Dick Allen ranked as tied with Eddie Murray as the #7 best 1B. That would be #8 if you think of Frank Thomas as a 1B and not as a DH.
How good was Dick Allen? Only 25 players since 1900 have a core value grater than 300 and Allen is one of them – that is, an average of better than 30 win shares over his 10 best seasons (where 30 win shares is an MVP-type season). Allen is arguably the best player (not banned or a PED user) who is not in the Hall of Fame.
Mike,
Sorry, re Allen, I was referring to the BJHBA player ratings
Mike H
At the risk of being “that guy”, Allen is missing from your list in “The 250/1800 Benchmark” starting on page 27 of 80 of the monograph. He is the exception as he played in only 1,749 major league games and amassed a 314 CAWS career gauge score and has yet to be asked to give a speech at Cooperstown.
Paul,
Thank you for pointing that out. So, Dick Allen becomes the only such player who has not been elected to the Hall.
Mike H
Yes, apparently Allen is not just a ‘touchstone” for a lot of issues but also an exception who stands out at times statistically. I believe one of three greatest position player rookie seasons ever by several measures including WS (maybe 1st?) and WAR (Mike Trout, Joe Jackson)
Paul, I think I recall reading an attack on Allen along those lines but there’s nothing like that I see in the “New Abstract,” where the numbers appear. Basically, James writes off Allen’s Peak3 and Peak5 numbers by saying he did have a few super seasons but made a train wreck of the rest of his career. Personally, I think James really is out of line being so casually judgmental, especially since Allen’s case was multi-sided during an era when race was even more explosive than it is today. But it’s also true that we’ve faced similar issues when debating Allen for the Circle, and the brevity and extreme uneveness of his career have stalled him well beyond what his rate and peak stats would seem to indicate.
Bob
You are correct. The “greatest ” label was in the original abstract. I believe when comparing Allen Rose Killebrew and Leach as multiple position players. It’s also in an assessment recently made on his website concerning a chronology of baseball’s best player based on a 4 year rolling average of win shares
I said I’d chime in later, so here it is:
Of the six, who is a genuinely poor choice? I’m not talking about which player or players have stats that don’t measure up to a basic standard, because, in fact, none of them do, depending on which standard is used.
At first my view was that Schalk, Cepeda, and Perez weren’t good choices, while Bresnahan, Campanella, and Chance, because of their high performance in relatively few career appearances, actually cleared every hurdle but longevity or durability, meaning that the original voters, not constrained by the rage for accumulation built into counting and evaluative stats, gave them a pass which I find acceptable. I still do.
Doom’s arguments for Perez, which I won’t repeat here, have convinced me that he, too, is just barely acceptable as a HOFer along the lines of, say, Don Sutton or Early Wynn, an accumulator with credentials.
That leaves Ray Schalk and Orlando Cepeda. Re Schalk, the question boils down to how much importance one ascribes to his defense and durability, since his batting, while not the worst for a catcher historically, is far below that of any other HOF backstop. I have to come down on the side of the critics on this one. He was generally the fifth or sixth best player on his team by WAR standards, making him a cog in the machine, not a driving force in that respect, a much better version of Rick Ferrell, perhaps, but Rick Ferrell, to most people, is one of the worst all-time HOF choices.
Orlando Cepeda. For years I wondered why he failed to to get into the HOF. Here was a ROY/MVP with several other great seasons. Following the usual pattern, after just failing to make the cutoff in his 15th year, the Veterans Committee voted him in five years later. Now I have my doubts. He’s the under to Perez’s over maybe.
Discussion here seems to be winding down, and I’ve been asking myself where I stand in answer to nsb’s question. after listening to everyone’s viewpoints. It’s not so easy. I sometimes call myself a Small Hall guy, but I tend to get behind good players whose stats and stories I get to know well, even if their inclusion implies a large Hall. Things look different up close.
One easy call for me is Campanella, whose rate and peak figures are clearly Hall caliber, but whose career was stalled by segregation. That leaves Bresnahan and Schalk.
Schalk has really attracted my attention because he was an exceptional catcher. His SABR bio describes how he was so mobile that he functioned as an infielder, a fact made vivid by his having multiple putouts at second base. His defensive numbers are perhaps the most impressive ever and his narrative is very attractive. I can now understand why he was voted into the Hall and I’d really love to be able to challenge the numbers and go with the Veteran’s Committee on this one. But the gap is too large. One of things I’ve always wondered is why Schalk was in the Hall and his exact contemporary, Wally Schang, was not. Researching both, it’s clear that Schang was not the defensive whiz that Schalk was, and he was less exclusively a catcher, but look at the comparison of their numbers:
WAR….WAR/500PA…Peak7…OPS+……dWAR……Career…….%@C…Hall of Stats…CAWS
33.2………2.7……………22.3……..83………18.3…………1.2………100%……….52……………173………Ray Schalk
48.0………3.7…………..24.3……117………..6.5…………1.3………..86%……….94……………190………Wally Schang
I know I’m violating nsb’s directive by making this In/Out comparison, but it brought final clarity to me. Schalk has by far the more interesting profile as an exemplary catcher, but that is not enough to warrant inclusion.
Bresnahan’s numbers are (very) marginally better than Schang’s overall:
WAR….WAR/500PA…Peak7…OPS+……dWAR……Career…….%@C…Hall of Stats…CAWS
43.3………4.0……………29.9……126………..6.5…………1.1…………71%………94…………….201…….Roger Bresnahan
Unlike Schang, he played a famous historical role in innovations of catcher equipment (does every young fan still grow up knowing who introduced the shin guard?), but he is essentially Schang with much less time behind the plate, and so due a significantly smaller “catcher bonus.” His narrative, though better known, seems less compelling than Schalk’s, which involves uniquely innovative on-field play, and I don’t think the Hall would lose if Bresnahan were not included.
So my conclusion is that Campy should keep his plaque, and Schalk and Bresnahan should be celebrated through historical narrative rather than bronze.
Among the three first baseman I’ve focused on Chance and Perez — I really haven’t given a lot of thought to Cepeda, whose career I feel more familiar with than the others’, having been attentive to Cepeda through his initial decade. I was never excited about Cepeda’s election, and could reconcile with it only on the grounds that the Hall threshold (just like our CoG threshold) seemed to be getting lower, but I really don’t have a good picture of where that threshold lies, for first basemen or position players in general (certainly, there’s no bonus for first basemen; if anything the opposite: it seems the least taxing position on the field).
The Perez/Chance debate is one I’ve enjoyed joining with Doom. He has elevated Perez in my mind, but only in comparison with Chance; I felt about Perez’s election much as I felt about Cepeda’s, though in Perez’s case I also felt sentiment played a role — his teams were historically great and everyone liked Perez. But even Doom’s strong defense of Perez seems to put his inclusion in doubt at the outset, more or less saying, “We don’t really need this guy in the Hall, but . . .” The single-number metric are not strong arguments: he’s a little subpar for the Hall of Stats; CAWS, in Mike’s words, shows him as “borderline,” JAWS puts him in 28th place at his position.
Moreover, Perez was a one-dimensional player. His case rests entirely on what he did with the bat. He was indifferent to poor in the field and slow on the bases (he makes Cepeda look like a speedster). Here I’m shifting to an argument in favor of Chance, whom I have to confess to supporting, despite his obvious problem of career brevity. Chance was an all-around skilled ballplayer despite his field position. He managed a positive dWAR at first, which is not easy (Rfield: Chance 48; Perez 13; Cepeda -11, with both Chance and Perez hurt by years at other positions they were less suited for — and few are well suited for the catcher role Chance was first assigned). Chance’s OPS+ edges Cepeda and is well ahead of Perez, and he was fast on the bases, leading the NL in stolen bases twice. Moreover, he played his best seasons with the added burden of being player-manager, a role in which he led his teams to enormous success. In these respects, Chance’s narrative is stronger than Ray Schalk’s and his numbers alone put him on the borderline. CAWS and JAWS don’t like him because his career was short (so, low total WS and WAR) and he missed games in the seasons he was a regular (so, low Peak7, Best10), but those features are, at least in part, a function of injuries as a young catcher and the stress of managing while playing. This context adds significance to the fact that Chance’s career WAR-rate of 4.5 WAR/500PA is absolutely Hallworthy, not only far ahead of Perez and Cepeda, but of others easily in the Hall (and in the more exclusive CoG). Chance’s WAR rate looks very good even when lined up with the greatest first basemen of all time, according to CAWS:
Gehrig 5.8
Foxx 5.0
Mize 4.8
Chance 4.5
Pujols 4.3
Bagwell 4.2
McGwire 4,1
Allen: 4.0
Thome 3.5
McCovey 3.3
Killebrew 3.1
Murray 2.7
So in Chance’s case, we have on the one side a significant negative — career brevity — and on the other side a number of significant positives: rate of productivity, variety of high-level skills, multiple successful baseball roles. Doom has added another negative I want to address briefly: Chance played in a segregated era, so the talent pool quality was artificially lowered. This is so, but Chance’s career occurred before the Negro Leagues had formed to nurture black talent to MLB levels, and we have no indication that a significant number of excluded black players in that era were playing with skills that would have brought them to the Majors, as was certainly the case a quarter century later. Of course, there surely would have been MLB-ready black players by the first decade of the 20th century had baseball not been segregated from the start, but that is different from saying that Chance, like, say, Lou Gehrig, did not have to compete with the full range of top first basemen or his era, which is certainly true for Gehrig but not for Chance. I think we have to see the idea that Chance’s stats benefit from segregation as a theoretical negative, rather than as a practical one, and I do see those as different.
So, even from my Small Hall perspective, I think Chance’s career profile surpasses the threshold I feel appropriate, while Cepeda and Perez’s very fine profiles do not. I would not have said this before nsb’s post led me to look closely.
I see that while I was working on my morning project of the post above, nsb posted his own. It looks like we differ on where we draw the line, but not so much on the reasoning that gets us there.
Bob,
Thanks for your feedback. I wouldn’t say I’m a Perez backer. As I’ve said above, I really DON’T see him as a Hall of Famer. I’m not offended by his presence there; he’s a borderliner, but I can’t see that he’s any more or less worthy than, say, Frank Tanana. Is a Hall of Fame better or worse with players like that? I don’t know. Probably better, so I can see him in; but I realize that an ideal Hall with such players is probably 400+ people, which many would deem too large. If you’re a Small Hall kind of guy, I’d assume the cutoff for first base is around 10-12 players (actual Hall has about 22, depending on how you count), and I don’t see any of these guys remotely CLOSE to that higher standard. But if you widen it out to 30 or so, as I probably would… what they heck? Throw ’em ALL in. 🙂
I guess I’m a small Hall guy because it seems possible to begin to articulate what constitutes a “great” player for me if the examples are so good that I start out feeling confident that they’re great and then I work backwards to the details of their stats and narratives to identify what caused that assessment (which can still change both ways when new facts come to the fore). When dealing with players like Cepeda or Perez — or Chance, for that matter — I feel lost looking for a frame of reference, so a Hall that extends out to capture that sort of player is one where I really don’t feel I know how to translate what I learn into an In/Out decision, except by doing the “If X is in/out then Y . . .” thing. What I really enjoyed about our debate was that it created a frame of reference for me (I should probably say that you created it), and when I began looking closer it allowed me to feel confident in my judgment (for me): specifically, the focus of longevity vs. peak quality was enhanced by the one-tool vs. multiple-tool distinction and the reasons for Chance’s low career and season PA totals. Those issues resonated for me and suddenly Chance looked much better, while Perez, whom your post had raised in my view, dropped back a bit. I think Chance would still lie outside my ideal small Hall, but I’m picturing some sort of hybrid, and he gets in right now. But more fundamentally, I’m now more aware that Chance is the type of player I tend to value more highly, while Perez is not. I’d like to be able to justify that a lot more clearly (in my own mind!).
Maybe in the remaining nsb-prompted discussions we can say more about the way we weight the various components we think about when assessing these players, with an eye to describing how threshold decisions relate to those dimensions.