This post is for voting and discussion in the 142nd round of balloting for the Circle of Greats (COG). This is the second of three rounds of balloting adding to the list of candidates eligible to receive your votes those players born in 1980. Rules and lists are after the jump.
The new group of 1980-born players, in order to join the eligible list, must, as usual, have played at least 10 seasons in the major leagues or generated at least 20 Wins Above Replacement (“WAR”, as calculated by baseball-reference.com, and for this purpose meaning 20 total WAR for everyday players and 20 pitching WAR for pitchers). This group of 1980-born candidates, comprising those with H-M surnames, joins the eligible holdovers from previous rounds to comprise the full list of players eligible to appear on your ballots.
In addition to voting for COG election among players on the main ballot, there will be also be voting for elevation to the main ballot among players on the secondary ballot. For the main ballot election, voters must select three and only three eligible players, and list them in ranked order. The first player listed on each ballot receives three points, the second player listed receives two points, and the third listed receives one point. The one player accumulating the most points from all ballots cast in the round is inducted into the Circle of Greats. For the secondary ballot election, voters may select up to three eligible players, with the one player appearing on the most ballots cast elevated to the main ballot for the next COG election round. In the case of ties, a runoff election round will be held for COG election, while a tie-breaking process will be followed to determine the secondary ballot winner.
Players who fail to win either ballot but appear on half or more of the ballots that are cast win four added future rounds of ballot eligibility. Players who appear on 25% or more of the ballots cast, but less than 50%, earn two added future rounds of ballot eligibility. One additional round of eligibility is earned by any player who appears on at least 10% of the ballots cast or, for the main ballot only, any player finishing in the top 9 (including ties) in ballot appearances. Holdover candidates on the main ballot who exhaust their eligibility will drop to the secondary ballot for the next COG election round, as will first time main ballot candidates who attract one or more votes but do not earn additional main ballot eligibility. Secondary ballot candidates who exhaust their eligibility will drop from that ballot, but will become eligible for possible reinstatement in a future Redemption round election.
All voting for this round closes at 11:59 PM EST Wednesday, February 26th, while changes to previously cast ballots are allowed until 11:59 PM EST Monday, February 24th.
If you’d like to follow the vote tally, and/or check to make sure I’ve recorded your vote correctly, you can see my ballot-counting spreadsheet for this round here: COG 1980 Part 2 Vote Tally. I’ll be updating the spreadsheet periodically with the latest votes. Initially, there is a row in the spreadsheet for every voter who has cast a ballot in any of the past rounds, but new voters are entirely welcome — new voters will be added to the spreadsheet as their ballots are submitted. Also in the spreadsheet is a column for each of the holdover candidates; additional player columns from the new born-in-1980 group will be added to the spreadsheet as votes are cast for them.
Choose your three players, for both the main and secondary ballots, from the lists below of eligible players. The current holdovers are listed in order of the number of future rounds (including this one) through which they are assured eligibility, and alphabetically when the future eligibility number is the same. The 1980 birth-year players are listed below in order of the number of seasons each played in the majors, and alphabetically among players with the same number of seasons played.
Holdovers:
| MAIN BALLOT | ELIGIBILITY | SECONDARY BALLOT | ELIGIBILITY |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dick Allen | 9 rounds | Billy Williams | 6 rounds |
| Vladimir Guerrero | 7 rounds | Bobby Abreu | 4 rounds |
| David Ortiz | 4 rounds | Ken Boyer | 4 rounds |
| Ted Lyons | 3 rounds | Andre Dawson | 3 rounds |
| Willie Randolph | 3 rounds | Andruw Jones | 3 rounds |
| Scott Rolen | 3 rounds | Monte Irvin | 3 rounds |
| Johan Santana | 3 rounds | Reggie Smith | 3 rounds |
| Luis Tiant | 3 rounds | Don Sutton | 3 rounds |
| Todd Helton | 2 rounds | Don Drysdale | 2 rounds |
| Gary Sheffield | 2 rounds | Richie Ashburn | this round ONLY |
| Stan Coveleski | this round ONLY | Chase Utley | this round ONLY |
| Ted Simmons | this round ONLY | ||
Everyday Players (born in 1980, ten or more seasons played in the major leagues or at least 20 WAR):
Matt Holliday
César Izturis
Austin Kearns
Scott Hairston
Ryan Hanigan
Maicer Izturis
Erik Kratz
Ryan Langerhans
Felipe López
Pitchers (born in 1980, ten or more seasons played in the major leagues or at least 20 WAR):
Rich Hill
Dan Haren
Ryan Madson
Brett Myers
Roberto Hernández
As is our custom, here are quiz questions for each of the new players on the ballot.
1. Rich Hill has recorded four different stints playing for his hometown Red Sox, including his 2022 season with 26 starts at age 42. Which pitcher aged 42 or older has the only higher start total for the Red Sox? (David Wells, 2005)
2. Matt Holliday’s 2007 season for the NL champion Rockies is the most recent of nine with 200+ hits, 35+ home runs and 50+ doubles. Which player led his league in OPS and OPS+ in such a season? (Frank Robinson, 1962)
3. César Izturis won a Gold Glove in 2004 while collecting 193 hits, the most by a Venezuelan-born shortstop. Who was the first Venezuelan-born shortstop to win a Gold Glove? (Luis Aparicio, 1958)
4. Ryan Madson’s 5.69 ERA as a swingman in 2006 is the highest by a Phillie pitcher with a winning record in 20+ decisions. Madson recorded two 30+ save seasons, but had no other seasons with more than 10 saves. Which pitcher recorded two 30+ save seasons and had no other saves in his career? (David Aardsma)
5. Dan Haren finished his career with eleven consecutive seasons of 30+ starts. Which two pitchers have the only longer runs of such seasons to close out a career? (Greg Maddux, Mark Buehrle)
6. Brett Myers pitched 70+ games in his 2012 season, while playing for teams in both leagues. Who was the first pitcher to record such a season? (Jim Bouton, 1969)
7. Austin Kearns recorded career highs in OPS, OPS+ and all three slash categories in his 2002 rookie season, finishing 3rd in the NL RoY vote. Which other Reds player finished 3rd in the RoY vote and recorded career highs in OPS and OPS+ that season? (Hal Morris, 1990)
8. Felipe López won the NL Silver Slugger award for shortstops in 2005. Who was the first Puerto Rican-born shortstop to win a Silver Slugger award? (Wil Cordero, 1994)
9. Ryan Langerhans is the only player with 100+ games for the Braves, Nationals and Mariners. Which two players recorded 400+ games for two of those franchises? (Spike Owen, Adam LaRoche)
10. Maicer Izturis is Cesar’s brother but the two are not twins, with Maicer born seven months after Cesar (particularly notable if they have the same mother). Izturis’s 2009 season featured career highs in many offensive categories, including .300 BA, .794 OPS and 65 RBI. Those three marks are the best by any Angel in a 100+ game season including 25+ games at both 2B and SS. Which other player, like Izturis, recorded two such seasons for the Angels? (Sandy Alomar, 1971 & 1973)
11. Scott Hairston counts his brother, father, uncle and grandfather among his major league brethren. Which player played against Hairston and also played with Hairston’s father Jerry? (Robin Ventura)
12. Roberto Hernández won 19 games and posted a 148 ERA+ in his second season, and first as a full-time starter. Unfortunately for Hernandez, it was all downhill after that, as his ERA+ plummeted to just 81 for the rest of his career, the lowest mark for any pitcher in 1000+ IP from the 3rd to 11th seasons of a career, and also from the 3rd to last seasons. Which pitcher active in 2024 is currently a close second to Hernandez in the latter category? (Jordan Lyles)
13. Ryan Hanigan walked more than he struck out in six consecutive seasons (2008-13) with PA in the 75 to 400 range. That is tied for the longest run of such seasons among expansion era catchers with a majority of each season’s PA at that position. Which player shares that record with Hanigan? (Tim McCarver, 1974-79)
14. Erik Kratz’s 2.5 career dWAR ranks 7th among catchers in careers of fewer than 1000 PA. Which other catcher, like Kratz, debuted at age 30 and played into his 40s? (Al Todd)
Is #8, Jose “The Mustache” Valentin?
Not Valentin, who never won a Silver Slugger.
Correct answer is Wil Cordero, identified by Richard Chester below.
Doug,
Sorry, but, I had to make a comment about the mustache
Main: Billy Williams, Dick Allen, Vlad Guerrero
Thanks Jeff,
However, Williams is not on the main ballot. So, please choose 3 players from the Main ballot holdovers (left side of table) or from the new players added to the ballot for this round of voting.
13 Teams
17 WAR
20 Seasons
Team USA pitcher
Dick Mountain
Still active?
As of today, Rich Hill is unsigned for 2025. Hill remained unsigned until August last season.
If a team Hill hasn’t played for should pick him up, Hill would tie Edwin Jackson, who played for a record 14 franchises.
Now that Minoso is in the Circle, I think Monte Irvin may be the sole remaining player with realistic qualifications for entry whose career was significantly affected by segregation. There have been rounds in the past where we’ve focused on Irvin to some degree — that’s how he made it to the Secondary Ballot — but, as is often true in this CoG exercise, I think those older discussions haven’t retained their currency. nsb wrote a valuable post about Irvin last round, and I want to flag that at the outset here. Unless nsb or others build on that over view post first, I’m going to see whether I can do that this round.
As for our ranked-choice experiment, right now I expect to vote with Rolen in first rank (but stay open to argument), and I anticipate using my third-choice vote for Coveleski, with the intent to gain him some Primary Ballot security.
One feature of our rules that has struck me this round that I haven’t noticed before: players who fall off the Primary Ballot — and have a history of support for CoG entry — fall to the Secondary ballot with no eligibility buffer. So it could be, for example, that both Ashburn and Utley, who have over time attracted a lot of support, might disappear entirely through a single round of neglect. My thought is to use two of three slots just to try to avoid that, but I’m also interested in advocating for multiple returning Secondary Ballot candidates. Having just proposed the ranked-voting rules change I’m probably not the best person to suggest another, but I wonder whether it would make sense for those dropping off the Primary Ballot to automatically arrive one level down with an extra year or two of protection.
Seems like a logistical oversight on our part to drop from Main to Secondary with no rounds buffer. I’m wired like Bob – likely to give those guys my vote just to keep them going.
I propose giving Main drop-offs a 2-round buffer. I think that would stay within the spirit of what we are trying to achieve, and would allow everyone to use their votes authentically as opposed to strategically.
That’s fine with me.
Question #1 answer is David Wells with 30 such starts in 2005
Not sure of this but I’ll say Wil Cordero in 1994.
That’s for question #8.
Wells and Cordero are right.
Reminder to everyone that we’re experimenting with a ranked ballot (for the Main ballot) for this round. So, please take care to list your three players for the Main ballot in order of preference, the first listed being the most preferred.
Doug,
Gotta ask, “How will the three Main ballot picks be weighted?”. May I suggest 7-3-1 or 5-2-1 similar to the lines of MVP voting in the old days (14 points for a 1st place vote IIRC)? Or, did I miss that discussion and it’s already been decided?
Thought I’d try 3-2-1 to start, to ease voters into the task of ranking their choices.
If there’s no consensus first choice (as is often the case), close weighting keeps everyone in the running. And, if there is a consensus first pick (as in the next election), that player can win as easily with close weighting as with heavier weighting of the first choice.
That makes sense – thanks !
#11: Robin Ventura. If Scott’s 2004 debut had been a day earlier, he could have played against Sammy Sosa, who was also a 1989 teammate of his father Jerry.
I have been under the weather the past few days and am sorry to now realize I lost track of the timeline for discussion and voting in the Minoso-Rolen runoff.
Ventura is correct.
Hope you’re feeling better,
Thanks, Doug. Hoping to turn the corner soon. Your quiz questions have my mind engaged in a good way,
For #2 I found Frank Robinson in 1962.
You’re on a roll. Robinson is correct.
1962 was Robinson’s third straight season leading the NL in SLG, OPS and OPS+, surpassing .400 OBP and 1.000 OPS each time.
Stan Coveleski
67 pWAR
-5 bWAR
Ted Lyons
66.8 pWAR
3.9 bWAR
Lyons needed 35% more IP than Coveleski to accumulate the same WAR. And, he really did need all those innings, because his final six seasons were the most productive of his career, as shown by his pWAR per 100 IP for these seasons:
1923-27: 1.6
1928-32: 1.6
1933-37: 1.0
1938-46: 2.1 (6 seasons)
In discussion on the previous post, there was some concern articulated about having to scrape the bottom of the barrel (so to speak) in elections like this one where holdovers are the only viable candidates.
Lest anyone be despairing, the original intent of Circle of Greats was to see if this group could do a better job than the BBWAA in identifying baseball’s greatest players. I think the answer is a resounding YES, but I’ll let you be the judge. Take a look at the picks where we’ve differed from the BBWAA, in the graphic here.
If there are some names in the BBWAA column that you think may deserve another look, let me know. If there’s interest, we can include them in a Redemption round after we’ve finished with this year’s election.
Joe Medwick
Ralph Kiner
Dizzy Dean
An argument can be made for all of them as the greatest player in the game during their primes.
_______________________
Rich Gossage piled up 41.6 pWAR as a reliever (2.8 his one year starting).
Only Mariano has a higher number out of the pen.
And for the Goose, these were high leverage, high stress innings.
_______________________
Early Wynn won 300, piled up nearly 10 WAR as a hitter, and lost time to WWII.
Bill Terry was really a dominant player for a few years until injuries kept him from playing regularly. He isn’t one of the Frisch crowd by any means. To me he’s as much worth taking a look at as many on our current roster. The same goes for Rick Reuschel, whose career arc is very like Tiant’s. I’m actually more impressed by Rick’s later years than his time with the Cubs.
For question #13 I found Tim McCarver from 1974-1979.
Question #13: Tim McCarver from 1974 to 1979.
It is McCarver.
McCarver hit for the “cycle” in the 1964 World Series (single, double, triple and HR in the series, not in one game). Who is the only other catcher to do the same in a single World Series? (Hint: he did it in a 4-game series).
Was it Johnny Bench (1976)?
Good guess, but not him.
Maybe I am misunderstanding the question? Bench was behind the plate for all four games of the ’76 series, going 8 for 15 with a double, triple, and two HR. McCarver was just a double short of a series cycle again in 1968.
Is Hank Gowdy in 1914 the answer you are looking for?
You found him. Gowdy had a monster series for the Miracle Braves, clocking a 1.960 OPS on 6 hits (incl. 5 XBH) and 5 walks in 16 PA. He had single, double, triple for his three hits in the series opener, and added a stolen base for good measure. Had a homer and two doubles in game 3, including the leadoff two-bagger in the 12th inning that became the winning run (Gary Carter in 1986 is the only other catcher with a 3 XBH game in the World Series). Gowdy added a walk in both of those games to become the only catcher with a pair of games reaching base 4+ times in the same World Series (Thurman Munson holds the career record, with one such game in three straight series, in 1976, 1977 and 1978).
In the 1960 World Series, Elston Howard was 6 of 13, with a double, triple, and homer. So unless I misinterpreted the question (always a real possibility with me), at least four catchers have hit for a “series cycle”: Gowdy (1914), Howard (1960), McCarver (1964), and Bench (1976).
Howard’s “cycle” wasn’t entirely as a catcher. His home run came as a 9th inning pinch-hitter in game 1. No bottom of the 9th in that game, so he didn’t come into the game to catch (not that he would have done so anyway, as he pinch-hit for the pitcher).
I stand corrected about Bench, who also did it in 1976. I see now why my original query didn’t work. Having now corrected the query, you can also add Carlos Ruiz in 2009.
Ah, yes – I forgot to check (as I had done for Bench) to see if Howard was actually catching for each game. Thanks for the follow up on it, Doug.
As I recall, Gowdy drove with license plate 545 the rest of his life, memorializing his batting average in the ’14 Series.
Is # 3, Luis Aparicio ?
Aparicio is correct.
Kudos for knowing they were handing out Gold Gloves as early as 1958!
Actually, my first guess was Chico Carrasquel
Question #5: Mark Buehrle did it for his last 13 seasons and Greg Maddux did for his last 14 seasons.
A follow up detail on our newest COG member, Minnie Minoso. Here is an article crediting him with 4,471 career hits:
https://sabr.org/research/article/ichiro-suzuki-minnie-minoso-and-the-ever-expanding-4000-hit-club-and-research-team/
Thanks Voomo,
Minoso’s B-R page totals 3375 hits in the majors (incl. Negro leagues), minors, Mexican and Independent leagues, and one season of winter league ball. Evidently, he played a whole lot more winter league ball, enough to account for 1000+ more hits.
I want to make a more careful argument in favor of moving Monte Irvin up from the Secondary Ballot. “More careful” isn’t saying much: I don’t know nearly enough to make a solid argument about how to assess the data we have concerning Irvin, I’m just trying to fly by the seat of my pants over a longer distance. Irvin has two types of compensation that would be due him if we considered both the impact of segregation and World War II. In the case of segregation, the basic requirements I’m inferring from past discussions are that for CoG consideration the player must meet basic CoG requirements (10 MLB seasons or 20 MLB WAR – we waived those for Paige), and that their MLB performance provide “proof of concept” that they had the talent to perform at an outstanding MLB level. In Irvin’s case, his 23.1 WAR record for his 1949-56 MLB years qualifies him, and his 6.9 WAR record in his first full MLB season, at age 32, is the “proof of concept.” In this argument, I have tried to low-ball how we should calculate his missing value, but others might view things differently and provide him less credit. (I think it would likely be fairer to provide him much more.)
The initial period to consider is 1938-41 (ages 19-22), including Irvin’s cup of coffee with the Negro National League II (NN2) Newark Eagles, his low-value rookie year, and his two early full seasons in the NN2. In 1942 Irvin played in the Mexican League (and briefly the NN2). In 1943-45, apart from three NN2 games, Irvin was in the War. He returned to three NN2 seasons (1946-48). He played briefly with the Giants in 1949, but spent most of that season in AAA, and then in 1950 reversed that and spent most of the season with the Giants at the MLB level. I’m positing that he is due some form of compensation for each season after his rookie NN2 year (1939, when his low NN2 rookie WAR over 27 games doesn’t provide any clear clue), through 1949, when there should be some adjustment for the time he spent knocking the cover off the ball in AAA at an age (30) when he would have been a mid-career MLB player were it not for segregation.
The model of his five “full” NN2 seasons (1940-41, 1946-48), for which we have data for only 39-57 games each season, prorates his WAR to 154 games and then discounts by one-third, which is a complete (!) guesstimate of the quality level of the NN2 as compared to MLB. (I really think a one-third discount is far too much, even though I’d expect MLB quality to be substantially higher overall.) Here are the WAR figures I get, compared to what B-R lists for the actual available data (in parens; recall that the number of games for which data exists varies and affects the adjustment):
1940 (actual, 2.1) 5.3
1941 (2.7) 5.4
1946 (2.4) 4.3
1947 (2.1) 3.8
1948 (1.0) 3.8
I am, in addition, applying the 2/3-rule to Irvin’s NN2 rookie year (1939), which brings B-R’s 0.2 figure down to 0.1.
In 1942, when Irvin played for Vera Cruz, he hit an astonishing .397 with 20 HR in 63 games; when combined with a few NN2 games that year, his slash line is .412/.508/.792. B-R provides no WAR for the Mexican League. I think it is safe to conclude that Irvin was performing no less well than he had the year before, so he receives 5.4 for all 1942 (as opposed to B-R’s 0.6 for four NN2 games, where he batted .611). I also think it’s obvious that this is an underestimate.
Irvin, unlike many ballplayers, had no opportunity to play baseball while in the service (1943-45). His comment on the impact on his career was, “I had been a .400 hitter before the war. I became a .300 hitter after the war. I had lost three prime years. I hadn’t played at all. The war had changed me mentally and physically.” In three NN2 games those years he earned -0.1 WAR from B-R. There are several ways we could approach coming up with a semi-arbitrary but reasonable allocation for these years, but I think the best approach is to view these as his prime years lost, note that his first full season in MLB, at age 32, he produced 6.9 WAR, and award that as the average for his prime. If we do this, his 1946 WAR rate looks like a sharp drop-off, but we can either view that as an uncompensated effect of the War diversion or a reflection of a systemic undervaluing of NN2 quality, not repaired in other years. (I suggest an option for assigning less value to these years below.)
In 1949, Irvin debuted with the Giants, coming up at the end of the season. He was in 36 games (19 as a starter), and didn’t do very well, earning only 0.1 WAR. But in AAA ball with Jersey City he batted .373 over 63 games, suggesting he was just making an adjustment in MLB at a time when that adjustment was particularly tough for black players (he and Hank Thompson broke the Giants’ color line on the same day). I’m awarding him a 1.0 WAR increment for 1949 in recognition of these features. (In 1950 he started back at AAA but moved up after batting .510 in 18 games; I’m not making any adjustment there.)
In sum, where B-R gives Irvin 10.9 WAR for partial data on his NN2 play 1940-48 (with nothing for the Mexican League), I’m suggesting we should assess this at a level of 44.2 total WAR, and I add a further 1.0 for 1949.
In sum, I’m leaving in place B-R’s 21.3 figure for Irvin’s MLB career, eliminating B-R’s 10.9 WAR for his NN2 career, and assessing his 1939-1949 WAR as follows:
1939 0.1
1940 5.3
1941 5.4
1942 5.4
1943 6.9
1944 6.9
1945 6.9
1946 4.3
1947 3.8
1948 3.8
1949 +1.0
Total: 49.8
Grand Total, all leagues at MLB equivalent: 71.1
If you want to lowball this more than I did, the easiest way would be to flatline the War years at the 1941-42 level of 5.4, which would reduce the total to 66.6 WAR.
Anecdotal accounts stress the perception that Irvin was a Negro League superstar, so I think this likely far undervalues Irvin. Cool Papa Bell’s assessment was, “Most of the black ballplayers thought Monte Irvin should have been the first black in the major leagues. Monte was our best young ballplayer at the time. He could hit that long ball, he had a great arm, he could field, he could run. Yes, he could do everything.”
The odds of my screwing up the arithmetic are high, so I hope those of you who read this check and correct me. But I think this establishes a reasonable argument that by the criteria we have been implicitly using, Irvin would be a solid choice for the CoG.
I’ve already spotted an error. I applied the NN2-quality=2/3*MLB-quality rule to 1939 without adjusting for games played. Instead of subtracting 0.1 WAR for Irvin I should have added 0.9 WAR.
Vote:
I watched him play a lot, so I’m confident in saying that he was great. But rarely do I hear his name in a discussion of top defensive middle infielders. He is overlooked.
I also know from watching him play that he was unselfish as a hitter. How many times did I see him simply try to smack a grounder to the right side when Rickey was on 2nd base? Point being, the numbers say Willie was a league average hitter.
No. He was a role player who knew his role.
Get on base with a walk.
Put the ball in play effectively with runners on.
Also an effective baserunner. Positive rBaser every year.
.301 / .367 / .466 / .834 / 131
Averages 17 HR, 90 RBI, 4.5 WAR
Those are exceptional numbers for the 1970s. Great for a Catcher.
Secondary vote:
Andruw Jones
Richie Ashburn
Don Drysdale
During Andruw Jones’ 9-year peak, he averaged 6.1 WAR and 35 HR, 104 RBI.
He also averaged 21 rField over those 9 years.
He is 2nd all-time in that stat to Brooks Robinson.
There are very few CF playing today who have ever touched 21 rField, much less averaged it for 9 years. He actually averaged 22 over 10 years ( I omitted his age-20 season from his offensive peak)
As a CF, using total Zone Runs, he is 1st all-time (since 1953).
Nobody from our century comes close:
230 Andruw
176 Mays
171 Blair
128 Piersall
117 Lofton
112 Devon White
104 Beltran
Here is what the HOF thinks of Jones over his 8 years on the ballot:
2018: 7.3
2019: 7.5
2020: 19.4
2021: 33.9
2022: 41.4
2023: 58.1
2024: 61.6
2024: 66.2
Not that their opinion matters. Just putting his public perception in context. he went from barely staying on the ballot his first year to looking like he’ll probably squeak in in year 10…
“he went from barely staying on the ballot his first year to looking like he’ll probably squeak in in year 10….”
Yes; and without a single plate appearance in the interim 🙁
Reminds me of the joke about picking up a girl in a bar. The one you didn’t give a second look to at the beginning of the night looks a lot better a half hour before closing.
Doug,
I refuse to cast aspersions upon that woman (women), however, it’s obvious that “civilization begins with distillation”.
I appreciate the arguments for Andruw Jones, and you’ve hit some of the highlights, Voomo. I believe there’s no question he belongs on the Primary Ballot. But I do have problems assessing his career, despite the fact that he has one of the greatest fielding profiles in the history of the game, and in spite of my own emphasis on fielding quality.
One element of this is that Jones played in a position that is typically a strong batting position. While his profile as a hitter has some very strong elements — 400+ HR plus a 51 HR season — he made a lot of outs, and his total oWAR falls a bit short of 40. Compare that to Ashburn, a center fielder who hit only 29 HR in his entire career but amassed 58.3 oWAR in a virtually identical number of games (though a thousand more PAs). Both had 111 OPS+, but their OBP numbers are really divergent, with Andruw at .337 and Ashburn at .396. (It also doesn’t help that Andruw had twice the GIDP of Ashburn.) All told, while Andruw was delivering exceptionally high fielding dividends, his overall offense was not a positive for an outfielder, despite his power. So the argument for Andruw rests less on overall value of his talents than on the historic magnitude of one of them. That’s a real argument, but it’s not as compelling.
I wish I had retained my familiarity with TZR and Rtot methods. I do know that the validity of the figures is more profound for recent players than earlier ones because part of the data is the visual record of games (and then, later still, Stratcast data). When I compare Andruw with Ashburn, who was renowned for his fielding but who earns only modest total dWAR (5.4 vs. Andrew’s incomparable 24.4), two things stand out to me: Andruw’s exceptionally low error total of 50, vs. Ashburn’s 111, and Andruw’s exceptional range factor: 2.69 RF/9 vs. league average 2.23. Andruw has lots of black ink for his leading PO totals, which peaked at 492 in 1999, 11th among outfielders all-time. However, among the ten seasons above Jones on that list, Ashburn has six (!) — plus a seventh higher than Andruw’s second-best season (those seven spectacular totals stretch over ten seasons, two-thirds of Ashburn’s total). Ashburn’s RF/9 is 3.07 vs. league average 2.31, so far beyond the norm for the league that I wonder whether, if we had a visual record of all Ashburn’s games, we would not find that many of his errors were assigned for plays no other center fielder could have reached to err. Ashburn is also very substantially higher in Assists and DPs than Andruw.
I don’t doubt Andruw’s fielding superiority, and 400 HR (15 times Ashburn’s total!) sure ain’t beanbag, but I have a disturbing sense that because of the evolving nature of fielding stats — which is an aspect of fielding stats that I never did understand — we are significantly undervaluing Ashburn. Given their parity in overall statistical value despite the sharply different types of hitter they were, I think it may be that Ashburn is actually much more deserving of Circle admission and that Andruw’s unicorn argument may be less pointed than it seems (which doesn’t change a bit the actual total value he brought to the game).
And, PS: I’m glad the BBWAA is gradually figuring out that Andruw is Hallworthy. Much like Jones, Ashburn started out very low (2.1%!) and then rose above 40% without him adding a single PA, but his vote stalled there and that was a mistake.
A footnote on Ashburn: I mentioned his exceptionally high PO totals, occupying 6 of the top 10 all-time season highs among outfielders. I just took a look at the career totals for outfield PO. Ashburn ranks sixth, but among the top 100, he is easily the leader in PO/9 innings.
If you go down far enough in the ranks of total outfield PO, there are players with higher rates in much shorter careers. The first example is Dwayne Murphey, who is tied for 116th place in total PO, but in a career of 10,515 innings his 3.06 PO/9 exceeds Ashburn’s 2.98 PO/9 in 18,418 innings. (Among those above Ashburn in total outfield PO, the best rate is Max Carey’s 2.68 PO/9. Ashburn is really in a class by himself.)
Might the change in strikeout numbers from 1950 to 2010 be a factor in Ashburn’s PO totals being higher than Jones’?
That’s a good thought, Voomo. I think it’s certainly a factor. On the other hand, Ashburn stands above everyone else in the PO/9 category. Andruw is tied at 25th in career PO with Mike Cameron. Andruw’s PO/9 is 2.62, while Cameron’s is 2.75 (Devon White, in 35th place, is even higher at 2.78.) Cameron and White are in the high-K era; Cameron overlaps Andruw completely.
Really, it’s in the range factor (RF/9 vs. League RF/9) that Ashburn seems most to exceed Andruw. I haven’t run figures for for others, but the league RFs are close for Ashburn and Andruw (2.31 vs. 2.23): Ashburn exceeds league average by 0.76 compared to Andruw’s 0.46.
Honestly, I’m really puzzled by all this — Jones’s dWAR is so far superior to Ashburn’s that I can’t really explain why Ashburn seems so strong on many of the component parts. I’m guessing it has to do with the variant data quality (we don’t even have Total Zone data for the first third of Ashburn’s career). I assume the error rate is a big factor, but it’s also true that fielding percentage norm comparisons between the two eras should work to mitigate that differential somewhat. Andruw’s fielding percentage above league is larger (+.007 vs. Ashburn’s +.005), which is significant, but not overwhelming in the way that the range factor delta seems to be for Richie.
The defensive stats are certainly problematic.
We puzzled over this a while ago, comparing Larkin and Ozzie. I don’t think we came to a consensus on how the raw data translated to the Wiz being THAT much better.
Perhaps that between innings back flip he would do somehow factored in.
With regards to Andruw, the b-ref numbers have him lapping the field of his contemporaries.
Do we take these numbers as gospel, throw them in the rubbish bin, count on the eye test of GG voters, or just shrug and consider the data good but unreliable?
The way I’m looking at it now, Voomo, is that we can rely on the dWAR numbers to compare Jones with rough contemporaries, perhaps from the 1970s on — I picked that era because the PO/9 leaderboard doesn’t go back further than 1969 (the PO/G board does), but I think the real cutoff should be wherever the TZR research first had access to complete video records, because video review by ranks of trained assessors was the way the research first began. Perhaps the 1980s would be a better start.
All this came up not as a way to throw shade on Andruw, but because — by chance — you paired him against Ashburn, and that highlighted not that Andruw was overrated, but that he might be overrated against Ashburn because Ashburn’s fielding seems grossly underrated.
So, to answer your question, I’d limit the gospel to recent eras and rely on them to show how Andruw was exceptional in his context, but be sceptical about their reliability for earlier eras. (And, frankly, I’m not sure that’s the right approach, since there may be a transparent reason for the disparities sitting within the traditional stats that I just haven’t spotted.)
The more we talk about it, the more I feel Jones’ average-ness after age 30 has caused him to be overlooked.
We are looking for Greats. And I dont see an argument against him being regarded as the best defensive CF of the last 50 years.
If that was all he had going for him, and was a Blair-level offensive player, maybe he’s on the outside looking in.
But Jones was a prolific Home Run hitter.
Only 6 players have more HR in fewer PA.
He had a HR% of 5.0, with no drop-off towards the end of his career.
League average during his time was 2.7%
He also smacked another 50 HR in two years in Japan.
Well, I think it’s certainly true that Andruw’s early tumble over a cliff has had a large effect on the way his career is perceived. He isn’t just average after 30, he’s at -1.2 WAA per 162G. But we know that going into the analysis, and the goal is to see whether we can build on the unicorn argument in his favor — which, again, is a good argument (good enough for the Hall as far as I’m concerned).
The complement to the fielding is precisely the HR, which really stands out in an overall unspectacular batting profile. I went and took a look at a home run hitter of Andruw’s era who really was not much more than HRs, Adam Dunn, and what I wanted to look at was WPA and RE24. The value of the low-average HR hitter relies much more on event timing than any high-average/high-BB batter, whose role includes high rates of table setting. The more-or-less exclusively HR guy produces more volatilely according to how the table has been set for him. Here’s what I get comparing Dunn and Andruw on WPA and RE24, over careers of comparable PAs:
……………..WPA………..RE24
Dunn………23.4………..297.69
Jones……..12.5………..130.82
Now, we’d expect Dunn to be a better hitter just because batting was all he could contribute to stay in the Bigs. His OPS+ is 124 vs. Jones’s 111. But what this discrepancy suggests to me is the Jones’s HR were probably not particularly well timed for game situations, in general. As I understand them (which I really don’t, much — nsb can confirm), that’s something these stats are tailored to indicate. So, again, this does suggest that the HRs don’t balance the (valid and perhaps adequate for the Circle) unicorn argument as much as they might.
BTW, Ashburn, with his 29 career HR and about 12% more plate appearances has 21.5 WPA and 238.24 RE24.
Just as a point of interest, two COG members, George Sisler, and Wes Ferrell, were basically done at age 29, though both played on. Sisler’s talent was sabotaged by eye problems. I don’t know what happened with Ferrell, but he was a pitcher, and that’s what happens to pitchers. Koufax threw in the towel at age 30. I’m not building a case for Jones, but a sudden falling off of performance is hardly unknown, although it most often occurs around age 33. Dale Murphy. Jimmy Foxx . . . .
I think Jones falls into this type of basket, which does warrant CoG consideration. Sisler and Koufax fall into one sub-category (catastrophic injury at their peak; Addie Joss too, obviously). We seem to be sympathetic to that. Ferrell and Jones are more about the unusual “extra” dimension; I’m pretty sure Ferrell wouldn’t have gotten CoG consideration without his 11.3 bWAR. I think both belong to a separate out-of-gas basket, too.
….and maybe the speed of the modern athlete would reduce Assists as well?
Interesting! But wouldn’t there always be the borderline “fast enough to try but not fast enough to make it” tier of players ready to be the next set of victims.
Bob,
Bad baserunners have existed in every generation of ballplayers and they have a tendency to fatten assist totals for OF’ers and catchers – in the 1950’s and in the 2000’s. Strange that CS percentages have decreased despite better athletes behind the plate. Perhaps, baserunners are running that 90 foot distance a wee bit quicker; whether stealing or taking the extra base.
Paul, I suspect the drop in CS is simply a function of managers and GMs learning from the SABR crowd that the break-even success rate is considerably higher than what they had licensed in the past. I’m not sure the same applies to OF assists.
For #7, I found Hal Morris in 1990.
Also: In 2012, Todd Frazier of the Reds finished third in ROY voting, with what would be a career-high .829 OPS. His 118 OPS+ would only be surpassed by a 121 two years later.
Don’t know what it is with the Reds, but they’ve had a lot of career years by players finishing 3rd in the RoY vote. Dan Driessen is another, with a career high .301 BA in 1973. And Gary Nolan too, with career highs in WAR and K’s in 1967 (his 226 IP that year are the most by a teenage pitcher since Bob Feller in 1938, in Feller’s 3rd season).
That’s not to say that the Reds haven’t done better than 3rd place. Quite the contrary, in fact, as their 8 wins trail only the Dodgers and Yankees, and Joey Votto leads their group of runners-up.
Time for another Coors rant….Matt Holiday over the years spent Rocky Mountain High:
.360/.427/.655 , 393 TB/162 and a sweet 141 tOPS
Another way to look at it is this:
Rockies 2006-08: 149 OPS+
A’s-Cards 2009-11: 146 OPS+
Or maybe this:
Rockies 2004-08: 131 OPS+
A’s-Cards 2009-13: 144 OPS+
Really consistent results, wherever he played.
If Holliday had developed sooner and been a better defensive player, he might have had an outside shot at the Hall. Spent six years in the minors, but his numbers there don’t indicate he was ever outclassing his opposition. Didn’t debut until age 24, but after his age 34 season Favorite Toy gives him an 89% chance to reach 50 WAR and 46% chance to reach 60. Instead, he added only 1.2 WAR over his final four seasons to finish at 44.5.
Question #5: David Aardsma who had 30+ saves in 2009 and 2010.
I meant to type in Question #4, not #5.
For two seasons (2009-10), Aardsma was lights out in Seattle with 69 saves in 78 chances and 143 ERA+ (albeit with a 3-12 W-L record). Looks like he was injured late in the 2010 season, pitched only 4 innings of AAA ball the next season, and was never able to regain his form after that.
I was surprised that Voomo voted for Lyons as his first Primary Ballot choice, and for Randolph, whom I know he advocates for strongly, second. I’ve been an advocate for Lyons for a long time, although for much of that period I prioritized players who were subsequently elected (Dahlen and Wallace).
This round, however, I feel some obligation to support Rolen first because I made a case for Minoso, in part, by arguing that Rolen was obviously going to go in the Circle this year and we should support Minoso while he had our attention. Voomo has raised my appreciation of Randolph, and I’ve been thinking of including him too, but, as I indicated earlier, I think I should vote for Coveleski to give him some stability on the Primary Ballot.
This means that right now I’m planning to cast an early ballot for 1. Rolen, 2. Lyons, and 3. Coveleski. But I’m more interested in advocating for Lyons. Because I’m rusty on the arguments I used to rely on, I went back through old HHS topics and found a six year-old post where I’d laid out some arguments. So I’m pasting that below (with some cuts and minor edits because the ballot has changed). It’s my way of getting arguments for Lyons on the table after several years while also fulfilling an obligation to Rolen and his supporters. Rolen is absolutely qualified for the Circle, in my view, but I’d be lyin’ if I didn’t admit my heart is with Lyons.
. . . . .
I was a supporter of Ted Lyons while he was on the Secondary Ballot — and, years ago, when he was a CoG candidate — but I’ve been rusty on the arguments in his favor. Upon review, I do find the case for Lyons compelling. His pWAR figures are comparable to the other pitchers on the ballot, and he actually has an edge when hitting is included — all those are with margin of error. So what sets Lyons apart?
What sets him apart are his three late-career War years. As many will recall, Lyons became a very successful pitcher in his late 30s when he was converted (against his will) to being a “Sunday pitcher,” starting only 20-23 times a season. Over the four seasons prior to the War (ages 38-41), Lyons pitched 20-22 starts and won 12-14 of them each year. His ERA+ varied, but averaged almost 150. His last pre-War year he won the ERA and ERA+ titles (2.10; 171) and completed all of his twenty starts (for 4.7 WAR).
Then Lyons encounters three War years and rejoins his perpetual team, the White Sox, in 1946 at the age of 45. His career ends after only 5 starts, with a 1-4 W-L record; however, his record is not the reason his career ends. In fact, despite the W-L figures, Lyons was pitching very well. He completed all five starts and his ERA+ was precisely at the average of his four last pre-War years: 148 (his ERA was only 2.36). An example of his adventures that year was his initial game: a 1-2 loss. Lyons entered the 9th with a 2-hit shutout, but he lost on a two-out single, with the third potential out a ROE. Such was his short season, his losses were 1-2, 2-4, 1-4, 3-4 (six of those runs were unearned). The team was not all that bad: 74-80 over the year. But when Lyons quit, they were 10-20, and their improvement was largely due to the fact that Lyons quit in order to become their manager. His pitching W-L record had nothing to do with it.
In fact, Lyons at 45 was pitching just like Lyons at 38-41, and the point is that the default expectation is that over the War years he would have continued at that rate, accumulating in the range of 3.5 WAR per year (actually more). If we imagine that “bonus”, Lyons’ WAR moves up to ~78, well past all other CoG candidates. Moreover, had Lyons continued to pitch to form he would almost surely have compiled 300 wins and, despite his age, further lowered his career ERA and raised his ERA+.
Lyons’ lifetime W-L record of 260-230 .531 is not overawing (I remember thinking it was mediocre when I was a kid). But he played for a team that went .460 during his career — he was way above his team in game results. In ERA+ Lyons is a bit better than Luis and substantially above Sutton (114 and 108). His WAR accumulation rate is a shade behind Tiant, but, again, far ahead of Sutton.
To be clear: I think Tiant, Sutton, and Kevin Brown were all superior to Lyons in their pitching. This is because they all were 2-3 generations later than Lyons, and, like everything in baseball, pitching was far more advanced in their day. But our task is to judge the greatest players in light of the game within which they performed, and among the Main Ballot pitchers, I think Lyons was by a significant margin the best in that regard. It’s harder to compare Lyons with CoG position player candidates, but his Total bWAR exceeds all of those players, and with a suitable War/WAR bonus I think there would need to be arguments to justify not voting for him. [2/18/2019]
So: Primary Ballot: 1. Rolen, 2. Lyons, 3. Coveleski
For the Secondary Ballot, I’m adding in Jones — Voomo’s advocacy has, at this point at least, bumped him up over Smith. My favorite is Irvin (but the Secondary Ballot in not part of the ranked voting experiment), and while I’d have chosen Ashburn for strategic reasons anyway, this round I’ve argued him into my full-throated advocacy. It’s astonishing to me that any player could have 6 of the top 10 in any career category.
Secondary: Irvin, Ashburn, Jones.
NB: I’ve discovered earlier analyses of Irvin on the site that seemed very thoughtful (and not necessarily advocating for him — Doom had a good post that was very balanced). I think the analysis I offered earlier on this string is more thorough, but I’m really hoping to get the kind of pushback that will open up other ways to extrapolate from sparse data.
Bob,
There are some obvious superstars of the Negro Leagues like Charleston, Paige, Lloyd, Suttles, Gibson and Leonard. But, if you look at whatever stats we do have, I’d question whether there was significant pitching depth. Some of those batting stats look like the Pacific Coast League of the 1920’s and 1930’s or the Texas League of the 1970’s. Would Monte Irvin have had a 15-year ML career? Yes, obviously. Would he have hit ML pitching at a 150 OPS+ clip? Possibly, at his peak for 7-10 years. I mean how much more can one speculate than that? Any WAR extrapolations appear to me as even more speculative…just sayin’
Calling the Negro Leagues “major” was a nice gesture but probably Rob Manfred merely trying to jump on the “let’s right some long-ago wrong” train. MLB is in the entertainment business and we know how calcualted that industry has been for the last 100+ years. Selig and Manfred have made just about every decision based on $$$. IDK …that’s my rant
You’re not wrong, Paul. A huge portion of calculating a speculative total for Irvin rests on his 6.9 WAR at age 32. You could basically say that this indicates his earlier career would probably have had a good number of years at higher levels, and some deductions for seasons where normal patterns of injury, etc., produced lower figures. The fact that Irvin was a consistent near-.400 hitter at probably sub-MLB level doesn’t prove anything, but it’s consistent with that sort of model, which indicates a high likelihood of a pre-1951 career total in some range above 70 WAR, with another 10 thereafter, so a floor of about 80, well above my convoluted calculation earlier in this string.
If we had data from an age 33 season that was continuous with age 32 it would make it easier to be confident that the 1951 season was not a fluke, but unfortunately the 1952 broken ankle occurred in spring training, and Irvin’s July reentry performance can’t be easily assessed as representative of earlier productivity. In his age 34 season, Irvin produced at a 5.5/162G rate (about the rate of his MLB rookie part-season), which may be enough to indicate that the 7.4/162 rate for his initial full MLB season at age 32 was not really out of line.
Here are my votes:
Primary: Ortiz, Lyons, Coveleski
Secondary: Williams, Abreu, Boyer
Answer to question 6 is Jim Bouton who had 73 games in 1969 with Houston and Seattle.
Bouton is correct.
Apropos (or is it ironic) that the two clubs involved in this first would both later switch leagues.
MAIN:
1) Allen – I don’t believe anyone on the remaining lists can lay claim to the title as one of the 2-3 best players in his league like Allen possibly in 1964, 1966, and 1972. His hitting was possibly greater than anyone else’s individual skill (i.e. Rolen, Ashburn, Jones fielding) on the remaining lists
2) Coveleski – great stats within his era and pitched very well in the post-season
3) Guerrero – he could rake. Led his league in IBB 5x so, obviously, opposing managers agreed. In the four seasons of his prime he didn’t lead the league in IBB (2001-2004),he was behind the chemically enhanced Bonds, Sosa, Luis Gonzalez, Manny , and Palmeiro. The only legitimate guy above him was Ichiro in 2004 (19 – 14).
SECONDARY:
1) Williams – a hero of my youth… sorry, I’m biased on this one
2) Smith – he could hit left and right-handed. Even Allen & Guerrero couldn’t do that
3) Sutton – pretty effective for a long time. You could do a lot worse than handing the ball to Don Sutton
For #10 I found Sandy Alomar (1971 and 1973).
And Maicer and Cesar Izturis are half brothers (different mothers).
Alomar is correct.
Those two seasons came in a span of 647 straight games that Alomar played to begin his time as an Angel. Recorded 10 WAR in six seasons as a Halo, 0.5 WAR in 9 seasons for everyone else.
Alomar would later be the everyday second baseman for the Yankees in 1975, a job he lost the next season to Willie Randolph.
For the Secondary Ballot, I’m voting for:
-Don Sutton
-Andre Dawson
-Chase Utley
Thanks!
For the 1980 – Part 2 election, I’m voting for:
Other top candidates I considered highly (and/or will consider in future rounds):
-Guerrero
-Ortiz
-Tiant
-Allen
-Lyons
-Coveleski
-Sheffield
Thanks!
For #9 I found Adam LaRoche and Spike Owen.
2502 10565 9390 1411 2721 434 88 426 1480 1051 1052 .290/.361/.491 .852
…G…….PA…..AB…..R……H….2B..3B..HR..RBI….BB….SO………………………OPS
2488 10519 9350 1410 2711 434 88 426 1475 1045 1046 .290/.361/.492 .853
Pretty odd…. actually incredible. The top numbers are Billy Williams neutralized for his career; the bottom numbers are his actual career stats
(De-lurking).
I agree that the neutralized numbers are incredible. That is, should be given little or no credit. There is a right way to neutralize, but I’m quite sure that BR did it the simple, easy, lazy, wrong way. What I think they did was figured the league runs scored as a percentage of their historical neutral number. They then multiplied this by the (runs) park factors for Williams in Wrigley and on the road. They happened to get a league number that was less than average. His career was centered in the 60’s after all. But Wrigley was an above average offensive park and the 2 numbers when multiplied got us right back where we started.
The right way to do this would be to figure the park factors for each of the stats you are interested in, walks, doubles, RBI, etc. They won’t all be the same. No park differs from league average by the exact same amount for each different stat. I couldn’t find a source for these different “stat park factors” that covered Williams’ career. Stacast only goes back to 1999.
I am generally much more interested in the theory and construction of WAR and other stats, their strengths and weaknesses, than I am in using a specific application, such as BR gives for a great many stats. I have some interest in writing a continuing series of pieces here on these types of subjects, if there is interest in reading about/discussing these issues. If people are interested, I think that they should be in a separate section of the website. While some of the ideas I have are responses to specific things said here, not all are, and gathering them together seems like a good idea.
KDS
“The right way to do this would be to figure the park factors for each of the stats you are interested in, walks, doubles, RBI, etc…”
Buona fortuna…
Hi KDS, and welcome back from Lurkdom.
I think the idea you propose would be very productive here. We are often locked in arguments over which stats that we understand only imperfectly — sometimes “vaguely” would be a better description — are more reliable than others. The motive seems right: none of us, I think, fully understand bWAR, pWAR, dWAR, or fWAR, and when we focus on counterintuitive results that these figures sometimes yield we look towards alternatives that may align better with our intuitions and that seem individually a bit more transparent than summary WAR figures. We’ve had strings that go to the wall on this in the past, but advanced stats keep advancing and this seems a good time to do it again. If you were interested in putting time and effort into basic analyses that we could respond to and argue about, my sense is that it would help restore some high heat to stats discussions on these threads.
As you’ll know from lurking, there is now a limited number of us who gather here, so I don’t think it would be necessary to move off the main link to discuss the posts you envision. The posts you suggest seem to me very much at the center of the original concerns of High Heats Stats, dating from its B-R blog days.
Never really thought of Wrigley as a neutral park.
But, I suppose the days with the wind blowing out get canceled out by the days with the wind blowing in (with no wind, Wrigley still seems like a hitter’s park). And, Williams did play in a pitcher’s park in Oakland his last couple of years. So you may end up with a certain kind of neutrality.
But, those numbers are crazily similar. The one I really don’t get is the Games total; how does neutralizing Williams’ stats give him 14 extra games?
Doug,
“Neutral” for B-R is 4.25/R and, despite playing in the ‘second dead-ball era”, Wrigley, as a hitter’s park, makes up for it during the course of Williams’ career. As far as the “14 extra games”, the strike in 1972 probably represents 7 of those missing games. Looks like there are another 7 for 1961 when the AL expanded and the NL didn’t (unitl 1962).
My picks.
Primary: Allen, Rolen, Coveleski
Secondary: Jones, Ashburn, Drysdale
If my computer is correct the voting has now closed. It appears to me that there are only six valid votes for each ballot. For the Primary Ballot, I calculate these results (knowing that Doug will catch any errors!):
8 Rolen
7 Lyons
6 Allen
5 Coveleski
4 Randolph
3 Ortiz
1 Guerrero, Helton, Simmons
0 Santana, Sheffield, Tiant
Interesting to note that the outcome would have been very different with unranked voting (assuming that voters kept the same choices):
4 Covleskie
3 Lyons, Rolen
2 Allen, Randolph
1 Guerrero, Helton, Ortiz, Simmons
0 Santana, Sheffield, Tiant
The Secondary Ballot is interesting in a different way, if I have it right: Ashburn and Jones seem to be tied, with all three being named on the same ballots, eliminating any tie-breaker opportunity.
3 Ashburn, Jones
2 Drysdale, Sutton, Williams
1 Abreu, Boyer, Dawson, Irvin, Smith, Utley
Those totals seem to agree with the spreadsheet.
As you noted, Ashburn and Jones received their votes from the same three ballots, so no tie-breaking opportunities. So, I will move them both up to the Main ballot.
Thoughts on the ranked ballot?
Just to finish up the quiz questions.
9. Spike Owen played 400+ games for both the Nationals and Mariners franchises, and Adam LaRoche played 400+ games for both the Braves and Nationals franchises.
12. Jordan Lyles‘ 82 ERA+ from the 3rd to last seasons of his career is currently second lowest to Roberto Hernandez (81) among pitchers with 1000+ IP in that part of their careers.
14. Al Todd is the other catcher, like Erik Kratz, to debut at age 30 and play into his 40s.
Thanks for posting the remaining answers, Doug. I was looking for #14 but hadn’t come across Todd.
My comment about finding Owen and LaRoche a few days ago got lost in the shuffle. Back to your original question, though, to clarify the answer: Langerhans is the only player with 100+ games each for the Mariners, Nationals, and Braves franchises, but he played just 597 total career games. Owen and LaRoche are the only players with at least 400 games each with two of those three franchises.
Right you are about Langerhans. Thanks for the correction. Sorry that I missed your earlier solution.
Todd ranks 2nd (to Bob Boone) in games started as catcher aged 35-36, and 4th in total catcher games for those ages (he is the pre-expansion leader in both instances). Todd’s top 5 most similar players include Hank Gowdy, whom we discussed above, and Ray Mueller, for whom Todd was traded after those two big seasons (Mueller is famous for catching every game of the season in 1944, and for appearing in games with Babe Ruth and Willie Mays).
Todd posted a 42.4% CS rate for his career (which was actually below league average — how times have changed!), but ranked in the top 5 for CS% at age 36 and 38. Todd, Elston Howard and Jorge Posada are the only players to bat .300 while catching 120+ games in an age 35+ season.
On 7/6/1944 Ray Mueller, then with the Reds, established a NL record with 134 consecutive games as a catcher. It was designated as “Mueller Night” whereby all people named Mueller were let in for free. There were 636 such people.
Mueller’s 1944 game logs show four times that he caught double-headers on consecutive days, and three stretches of four days with a single game and three double-headers, catching every inning in the first two of the latter instances. In one stretch of five days (Sep 13-17), Mueller caught nine games, three going extra innings, with his only break coming in the eighth game, when he was removed after 5 innings with the Reds trailing 7-0.
Doug,
How about Al Todd with 17 triples in those two seasons (35 & 36)!! Freikin’ Omar Moreno
Forbes Field was a BIG ballpark in left and centerfield. Split those fielders and you could run for days. In the 1930s, Forbes measured 365-457-435-375-300 left to right (suspiciously like another ballpark, 400 miles or so to the east).
Todd was a RH batter and, from his HR log, looks like he as a dead pull hitter. He hit 10 of those 17 triples at home, and had an IPHR at home as well, to left field.