This post is for voting and discussion in a runoff election to decide the winner of the 141st round of balloting for the Circle of Greats (COG). Here are the career AL and NL stats for our two candidates.
| Player | WAR | OPS+ | G | PA | AB | R | H | 2B | 3B | HR | RBI | BB | SO | SB | BA | OBP | SLG | OPS | Pos | Tm |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Minnie Minoso | 50.4 | 130 | 1835 | 7713 | 6579 | 1136 | 1963 | 336 | 83 | 186 | 1023 | 814 | 584 | 216 | .298 | .389 | .459 | .848 | 759H8/36 | CHW-CLE-STL-WSA |
| Scott Rolen | 70.1 | 122 | 2038 | 8518 | 7398 | 1211 | 2077 | 517 | 43 | 316 | 1287 | 899 | 1410 | 118 | .281 | .364 | .490 | .855 | *5/H | PHI-STL-TOR-CIN |
| Player | WAR | oWAR | dWAR | OPS+ | G | PA | AB | R | H | 2B | 3B | HR | XBH | RBI | BB | SB | BA | OBP | SLG | OPS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Minnie Minoso (1951-1964) | 12 | 12 | 114 | 20 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 8 | 5 | 4 | 30 | 9 | 9 | 11 | 5 | 15 | 13 | 45 | 24 |
| Scott Rolen (1996-2012) | 6 | 19 | 4 | 67 | 20 | 20 | 23 | 17 | 23 | 5 | 42 | 34 | 11 | 16 | 24 | 87 | 124 | 83 | 70 | 66 |
Our candidates’ top 100 career live ball era rankings (min. 5000 PA) look like this.
- Minoso: OBP 64th
- Rolen: WAR 56th, dWAR 31st, WAA 38th, 2B 44th, XBH 71st
And, here are their scores based on Bill James’ informal Hall of Fame metrics and Adam Darowski’s Hall of Stats, as well as their rankings for Jay Jaffe’s WAR Score System (JAWS). Note that the “Avg” and “Likely” benchmarks are established based on players already in the Hall of Fame. Click on the links below for each of the metrics to see the all-time leaders.
| Player | HoF Standards (Avg=50) | HoF Monitor (Likely=100) | Black Ink (Avg=27) | Gray Ink (Avg=144) | Hall of Stats (Qualifying Minimum=100) | JAWS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Minnie Minoso | 37 | 104 | 16 | 232 | 111 | 18 (LF) |
| Scott Rolen | 40 | 98 | 0 | 27 | 143 | 10 (3B) |
Lastly, to amaze your friends, here is a fun fact for each of our candidates:
- Minoso is the only player to reach 40 XBH each season from 1951 to 1961
- Rolen retired in 2012 as the only third baseman to record 10 seasons with 30 or more doubles
So, the choice is yours. However you decide, your ballot in this runoff round, unlike the usual three-name ballot, should identify only the one candidate you prefer (you will also need to add at least a little bit of extra verbiage though, because the WordPress engine that supports the site won’t accept comments of only one or two words).
All votes must be in by 11:59PM EST on Sunday night, February 16th, with vote changes allowed until 11:59PM EST on Friday night, February 14th. If the result of this runoff is still a tie, a tie-breaker process will be followed to discard the last votes cast until a winner is determined. So, vote early to ensure your vote counts! If you would like to keep track of the vote tally for the runoff, you can check this tally spreadsheet: COG 1980 Part 1 Runoff Vote Tally.
Rolen
FWIW, playing a 154-game schedule, Minoso had 9 seasons of 145+ games and a tenth in the 1961 AL season of 162 games with 152. Rolen had 5 seasons of 145+ games….. I believe, without question, that Rolen was an absolute Hall of Fame talent – a fielder to rival the best third-basemen of the last 60 years (Nettles, Schmidt, Beltre, Bell,…..perhaps even Brooks Robinson) with great range and a cannon-arm. As discussed a million times on this site, I don’t know how you quantify that but WAR seems to really like his fielding. He hit with power and took a walk and ran the bases like a freight train. But, the shoulder injuries took their toll on his hitting.
I never saw Minoso play but, like Allen and Santo, Cooperstown called after he was long dead. I’ll vote at some point.
Curious about Rolen’s very low black and gray ink numbers. Both are outside the top 1000 (yes, one thousand). Probably just a quirk, but a notable difference from Minoso’s respectable black ink score, and very high gray ink number.
The case for Minoso rests, I think, on how much allowance you give him for his late career start. Minoso didn’t play in the Negro leagues until age 22, and didn’t play well there until 23. But, he almost certainly would have honed his skills sooner had he been given the opportunity to play organized ball from his teenage years, following the normal pathway for white players.
Minoso made the opening day roster for the world champion Indians in 1949 at age 25, and was given a brief opportunity to start early that season when Bob Kennedy scuffled out of the gate. But, when Minoso fared no better after a week’s play, the Indians pivoted back to Kennedy. Blocked by an Indians outfield of Doby, Kennedy and Dale Mitchell, Minoso didn’t get his next chance until two years later, at age 27, when, thankfully for him and baseball fans, he was traded early in the season to the White Sox.
Given that Minoso impressed enough, at age 25, after fewer than 120 games of organized ball, to make the opening day roster of a defending world championship team, it’s not hard to picture him being ready at age 22 or 23 had he been able to start in the minors in his late teens. With Minoso available in ’46 or ’47, the Indians don’t trade for Kennedy in ’48, and Minoso adds 4 or 5 years to his career, pushing his WAR total up to Rolen’s levels. Which, of course, makes the choice of Minoso or Rolens that much harder.
Doug, I was getting ready to post when your post went up. I didn’t see it first, but I think we come out about the same place.
I agree, Bob. Think we both have Minoso penciled in for 4 or 5 seasons, and 15-20 WAR (or more) that he was denied because of segregation.
It’s also highly likely that those seasons at the beginning of his career would have allowed him to have even bigger years in his prime. Think about Bill James age 20 and 21 study. He compared two groups of players who had similar auspicious rookie seasons. One group had that season at age 20, and the second group at age 21. To James’s amazement, he found the age 20 group averaged 50% more career WAR than the age 21 group. That was with one extra season (albeit for groups of precocious over-achievers). Think what 4 or 5 more years at the beginning of a career might do to enhance performance in the following seasons.
RBI League leaders 9/10/2004
121 Rolen STL
114 Castilla COL
108 Pujols STL
106 Beltre LA
Doug,
Regarding Rolen’s lack of black ink, he was leading the NL in RBI September 10, 2004 doubling and homering with four RBI in 2 AB’s when he suffered a calf strain. At that point, he had appeared in 136 of 140 team games. He missed the next 16 games and finished with 124 RBI behind Vinny Castilla’s 131. He then proceeded to go hitless in the NLDS, played well in the NLCS (3 HR/6RBI) and went 0h/zero/nada for 15 in the WS. Oddly enough, he only struck out once in the 15 World Series AB’s.
Rolen’s lack of 155+ game seasons was certainly going to limit his black and gray ink – particularly in the steroid era.
Now that Rolen and Minoso are head-to-head, I think it’s a great opportunity to figure out just how we want CoG ratings to assess careers impacted by segregation. We flew by the seat of our pants in the cases of Paige and Campanella, as I remember. I think there are only two significant Negro League players left raising this issue, Minoso and Irvin (who is on the Secondary ballot, and who may be the superior of the two). I tried to think this through for Minoso on the initial Round 1 string. Minoso should be the easier of the two cases. The reason I withdrew my earlier vote for him was that I didn’t think we should put Minnie in the Circle without a discussion about this issue.
Minoso’s encounter with MLB segregation is complicated. His appearance in the Majors was not profoundly delayed—he came up at 25—but he probably would have come up a year earlier had the leagues been open to him from the start. More important, as a really hot prospect he was unable to break through with Cleveland because when the team had no place in the line-up for him, and there were also very few teams yet willing to make a trade for a Black player. So he frittered away two years in Triple-A, and was traded a moment later, in 1951, when Cleveland could get players in return. This is an example of segregation’s impact in the post-1947 years.
In my earlier post, I considered the level of play Minoso showed when he had his delayed rookie season in ’51 and projected that, absent segregation, his 53.3 WAR total would project to about the 65-70 range, which would approximate Rolen. I estimate his WAR/162G in the 4.6-5.0 range, still trailing Rolen’s terrific 5.6. Of course, as Doug’s figure shows, Minnie is all oWAR while Rolen relies on a lot of dWAR (to go with a very solid 122 OPS+) – they are different styles of excellence.
Minnie also had a particular strength that I don’t think we’ve ever discussed. He was the premier HBP artist of his era. He led the Majors nine times. His absolute totals were not high in the context of either very early or later eras. When he was hit 16 times in his rookie season, though, that was the highest total since 1924, and when he reached 23 in 1953 It was a level unseen since 1911. When Minnie retired he had the most HBP ever compiled in the 20th century, and despite the burst of HBP peaks since Ron Hunt’s time, he is still ranked #11 all-time. He was also an electric stolen base artist, leading the league three times, but that’s a mixed record because he ran far too much and led in CS six times – in fact, he twice led his league in both, which conveys something of the excitement Minoso generated. He was fireworks at the park (but we now realize a 60% success rate is not helping your team).
So I think if we agree (and we may not) that segregation-related gaps in a career (like military service gaps) are uniquely (duoquely) worthy of straight up compensatory calculations, I think Minoso and Rolen are actually at the same general level of Circleworthiness. I haven’t decided which to vote for, and I’d really appreciate others’ analyses of this choice before deciding.
Good shout out on Minoso’s HBP proclivity. Should have shown those in the Stats tables.
Off on a tangent, but as to your remark that Irvin might have been the better player, his Negro and minor league stats are nearly off the charts. He led in batting average his second through fourth seasons in the NNL ( .380, .387, and .369), but that only gives a vague picture, since between his third and fourth seasons came a four year gap, the first of those, 1942, spent batting a mere .397 in the Mexican League. The next three years were lost to military service. At age 30 playing for triple-A Jersey City he was batting .373 with 9 HRs and 52 RBIs in 266 PAs before being brought up to the Giants. In 1950, he again started the season in Jersey, hitting .510 with 10 HRs and 33 RBIs in 81! PAs before batting .299 with the parent club in 110 games. So, like Sam Jethroe, (an Irvin NNL contemporary star almost forgotten now) Irwin made the Bigs in 1950. Jethroe, age 33, was Rookie of the Year, but Irwin, technically no rookie with 93 PAs in 1949, produced 3.7 WAR to Jethroe’s 3.2 in 31 fewer games played. After a poor start in 1955, Monte at age 36 spent the second half of the season in triple A, batting .352 with 14 HRs and 52 RBIs to help power the Millers to the American Association and minor league world series titles.
This is all independent, of course, from his unfortunately brief and injury plagued years with the Giants, and swan song year with the Cubs (2.4 WAR in 388 PAs).
You’re ahead of me, nsb. I was waiting for Round 2, but glad you’re setting the stage. I wouldn’t have thought of the Jethroe comparison!
Here’s another tangent, or possibly just a geriatric ramble:
What part does personality play in our assessment of players? Cobb and Hornsby being jerks, for instance—do we put a mental if not a moral question mark against them in our evaluations, even when we’re trying to be impartial about performance?
Minoso’s outgoing personality was so expansive and—to most people not overly racist— infectious, his behavior on the field so naively appealing, that it’s only now, over half a century later, that a consideration of him can arise without the memories of his distinctive way of running, his grin, his apparent nonchalance, his general demeanor—so diametrically opposite that of Jackie Robinson’s burning intensity—fail to enter the discussion.
Is that good or bad?
Stan the Man was almost universally beloved, if begrudged in Brooklyn, whereas his AL counterpart, the Splinter, was hardly an unqualified fan favorite—feared and respected, true—even and at times especially in Fenway Park. Stan, as Bill James notes somewhere, always left the batter’s box after contact at a dead run. Ted isn’t noted for that kind of zeal.
I’m one of those who prefers Musial, even though Williams’s stats make him seem the better player.
As a boy I probably saw Minoso play in person exactly twice on trips to Chicago, but my eyes both times were on the visiting Yankees. However, I do remember a couple of wondrous, unlikely defensive plays he made in games I saw on TV. He won a Gold Glove. by the way, in three of the first four years the award was offered.
10.5 150 671 522 141 186 34 5 36 137 3 2145 51 .356.499.648 1.147 216 .514 219 338
10.6 150 672 514 142 176 37 8 38 123 0 0156 44 .342.497.667 1.164 215 .513 224 343
Off the beaten path as well, this is off Baseball Reference and reflects Ted Williams’ 1942 and 1946 seasons. The numbers across are the B-R format and are identifiable (if familiar). You know….WAR G PA AB R H 2b 3b HR etc….incredibly similar, Williams didn’t lose a step after three years flying airplanes in service to his country. BTW, the lower insignificant numbers (3 2 0 0) are SB and CS.
Bill James did comment that “Richie” Allen was one of the three biggest horse’s arses in baseball history behind Cobb and Hornsby (IIRC). As for Cobb and Hornsby, they played simultaneously from 1915-1928 and accumulated 82.5 and 109.7 WAR respectively. Without looking it up, I believe this exceeds Gehrig and Ruth as well as Aaron and Mathews for their respective times together as teammates? So, I guess having malcontents is forgivable if you’re a GM or manager. However, it sure seems St. Louis, the Giants, and Boston Braves had no qualms about trading Hornsby regardless of his production. Six months can seem like a long time to put up with some people you have to live with…
Ruth + Gehrig, 1923-34 111.8 + 83.1
Aaron + Mathews, 1954-66 96.4 + 83.5
So, batting .500.
Of course, Ruth wasn’t exactly easy to get along with either . . .
Bob,
Good job – I guess we managed to get Ruth’s best season (1923 – 14+WAR) in there while the football player from Columbia garnered 23 PA’s. But, without picking pepper out of flypoop, I imagine every manager since George (or, was it Harry?) Wright would gladly take a chance on Cobb and Hornsby – even doubling one’s aggravation in the same lineup.
I believe Bill James called the media’s unnatural affection for athletes at the other end of the spectrum the “halo effect”. And, obviously, the media drives the public’s opinion…..
Nice to read your recollections, nsb. And you ask an interesting question.
My inclination is to say that personality per se should have nothing explicit to do with our assessments. It’s going to have an influence nevertheless (your “mental or moral” issue), because affect can’t help but exert some push on borderline cases and may guide us towards whom we want to take the time to advocate for by building a case. But I think basic personality isn’t a baseball issue.
But sometimes the impact of personality does become a baseball issue. For example, one of my thoughts about Dick Allen, and one which really does influence my thinking, is the degree to which his behavior off the field (showing up late; missing games) during some of his career undercut his team. Allen’s case is probably not a great example because near-but-not-on the field things pull in so many directions in his case (his atrocious treatment by Phillie fans and injuries pull one way; missed games and team rule-breaking another), but none of these seem to point towards helping to create wins, only to excuse to some degree conduct that may have cost a win or two. Highly reliable players whose behavior or personality contribute to team cohesion (I’m thinking of Pee Wee Reese and Willie Stargell right now) do probably help create wins.
I’m going to top you in the geriatric department by recounting a long ago game I attended that I’ve probably described in some string here before. It’s why I thought of Reese. It was Brooklyn’s final regular season game in 1956 and Ebbets Field was packed. The pennant was on the line: the Dodgers were a game ahead of the Braves, playing the Pirates at home. I was little so I don’t remember all the details, but B-R has helped me reconstruct them: the event I’m describing would have occurred in the top of the eighth. After a Lee Walls one-out HR the Pirates had clawed back to within one run after falling behind 7-2 (Newk was being Newk). The scoreboard showed Milwaukee was leading its game. Dick Groat came to the plate and hit a low liner to right which Furillo caught with a spectacular dive and somersault (what a thrill!). But the umpires stopped play, ruled it a trapped ball, and awarded Groat first base, putting the tying run on. All hell broke loose.
I never saw anything later that was like that day’s fan eruption after the umpire’s ruling. Not only did the fans shout, stomp, and curse with deafening endurance — it went on and on — they took out white handkerchiefs and began waving them like the sea. I asked my parents what was happening and my mother explained that the fans were ensuring the game would stop because the next batter wouldn’t be able to see the ball against the white background. In time, the Dodgers trotted off the field and into the dugout. The stands just kept agitating. My parents and older brother began to explain about forfeits and the possibility of a playoff.
Finally, three players emerged from the Dodger dugout: Furillo, flanked by Reese and Robinson (who, it turned out, was playing his next to last regular season inning). The fans began to quiet down a bit and the three players formed a line facing third base side (away from us; we were at the top of the stands in right field so I could stand on my seat and see over the heads in front). Furillo then pantomimed trapping the ball. (My mother was explaining it to me. He was telling a hard truth.) I don’t remember exactly how it proceeded then, but I think they walked to face another part of the stands and repeated it. The crowd cheered them and then put their handkerchiefs away.
At the time what I took away from that was the moral heroism of Carl Furillo, and that’s the reason that I’m looking at a framed picture of him right on my desk right now. But in reflecting on your question, nsb, I was suddenly struck by the reason Pee Wee and Jackie were there. I knew it then but only vaguely: those two had absolute credibility for the Brooklyn fans. They validated Skoonj’s testimony because of the personas they had built, and while I do not think that under the circumstances any team of umpires would have forfeited the game (people valued their own lives even then), in the moment my Brooklyn-born mother was obviously concerned (my dad was a Giants die-hard; he probably was only restrained from comment by the prospect of divorce). I figure Alston calculated that Furillo alone wouldn’t suffice. Who knows: perhaps Reese and Robinson split a W that day because of their personalities. (Only to have Newk revert to form in Game 7.)
Bob,
Sometime around 1987, Jim Barniak interviewed a docile, composed Allen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICD7dS0yOU4
Pretty laid-back, no? If you ever saw “A Bronx Tale” , Allen might have been Eddie Mush — anything that could have gone wrong, went wrong. Tough rows to hoe for a young man
Interesting video, Paul. He certainly interviewed well. I wouldn’t have pictured him coming from a town of about 1000 near Pittsburgh. Nice to hear that he and Thomas made up, and he clearly appreciated Thomas’s son coming up to shake his hand years later.
At one point Allen says, about the match-up with the Big Red Machine in ’76, that over the course of the season the Phillies had a 9-0 record against the Reds before they were swept in the playoffs. It was actually 7-5. That’s a pretty intriguing turn of memory. Never rely overmuch on your neurons!
I do not feel qualified to make moral judgments.
Minoso makes a short list with both Musial and Hornsby, in leading his league in Total Bases with fewer than 20 home runs. Fourteen such seasons in the live ball era, but only five since the end of World War II.
I vote Minoso.
A lot of what ifs with MM.
What if he got a chance sooner?
What if he played CF?
What if he played on good teams?
If ifs and buts were
Candies and nuts
We’d all have a merry Christmas, i know.
I’ve been enamored with Minnie since about 1982, when I discovered his 1977 Topps card and learned how old he was.
I love his story.
As for Rolen, sure, he’s one of the great defensive 3B, and he could hit.
But… only once was he in the top 5 in WAR, and never led the league in an offensive category.
As for his defense, he certainly passed the eye test, and has the numbers… but those numbers are somewhat behind Robin Ventura. My point being, if we are saying that Rolen is “great” because of his Defense…meh.
Minnie had 6 top-6 WAR seasons in the 1950s, was an iron man, and has the complex backstory.
“As for his defense, he certainly passed the eye test, and has the numbers… but those numbers are somewhat behind Robin Ventura.”
Don’t think so. In careers of very similar games and PA, Rolen compiled 18% more dWAR than Ventura, and 13% more Rfield. Certainly they were similar players, with elite defensive skills and above average offensive numbers, but Rolen has clearly better numbers on offense (30% more oWAR) and defense (and baserunning as well).
I don’t think the argument for Rolen is that he’s great because of his defense. I think it’s that he’s great because of the magnitude and balance of his offense and defense together.
Here is a list of third basemen whose careers are complete, sorted by WAR/162G:
Schmidt 7.2
McGraw 6.7 (in a very short career)
Mathews 6.5
HR Baker 6.5
Boggs 6.1
Rolen 5.6
Chipper 5.5
If you slice Adrian Beltre’s career to Rolen-length, picking an optimal period, you’ll get him to 6.1. There are valid ways to slice things up that don’t place Rolen quite so high, but that’s the company he’s keeping. (Ventura is at 4.4.) Moreover, if WAR compression is actually a thing, Rolen and Chipper would be somewhat undervalued compared to those above them, particularly McGraw and Baker, but Mathews as well.
I do want to say, in reply to your comment, Voomo, that I don’t think black ink is particularly important, although it’s nice to see. Black ink is a Bill James HOF vote predictor, not a HOF quality assessment. Rolen, as a balanced offense/defense case, is going to have a lot less of it.
It seems to me that the conversation we’re having will have the primary effect of establishing that Minoso is Circleworthy if we try our best to apply the criteria we used for Paige and Campanella. That doesn’t damage Rolen’s case, which I think is solid. This year we have three openings, one of which is going to Albert. I think Rolen should be getting one of the others. I have been leaning towards Lyons for the third, but with this reassessment of Minoso I’m re-leaning. One thing about Minoso’s case is that the focus we have on it right now is likely to be a one-time thing — a problematic element that Circle discussions are prone to. (Each round starts discussion anew, the ground is always shifting to foreground different players, and some votes are simply not engaged with the project.) So my inclination here is to plunk for Minoso while he’s in the spotlight and trust Rolen to recapture everyone’s attention as soon as Albert has crossed the stage.
My admittedly cherry-picked reference to Ventura was based on this chart:
https://www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/tz_runs_total_tf_career.shtml
Voomo,
Quite an odd coincidence that Rolen is tied with Nettles despite 3,700 less innings. And, I KNOW that Nettles could field. It’s kind of ‘eye-test’ type stuff.
As far as gray ink/black ink, Rolen incurred a ton of serious injuries and he just wasn’t going to place among league leaders in the ‘compiling’ stats and, in the rate stats, the steroid guys tended to take those spots
I’m definitely not arguing against Rolen being in our COG. This is a fun exercise to focus on two players from different eras with different skill sets. I think they are of similar “value”, and both comfortably within the lower tier of our group.
I certainly do not disagree. Definitely a tough call
Minoso.
I’ll go with Minoso.
I’ll take Minoso.
You start with an arbitrary condition, that you have to elect someone or someones, anyone or anyones, to keep pace with the HOF numbers.
Then you posit a premise, that a group of players who have been rejected for the honor, time and again in many cases, are the pool from which to choose, then you posit another premise, that they’re all of approximately the same worth, and from that a third, by implication, that they’re all worthy of election, so it doesn’t really matter in what order they’re chosen.
OK.
But after this batch of not quite border-liners enter Valhalla and you still have the need to elect the anyones to keep pace with the HOF, how do you do it without redefining downward and downward what constitutes the necessary level of quality to meet the demand?
Hear, hear !!!!
It is a conundrum.
But, if the HoF is also having its quality standard debased, and if that is the standard we’re trying to mimic, then that’s what we get.
I’m open to suggestions on this issue, or others.
Bob Eno proposed using a ranked ballot to better distinguish the group’s preference for a candidate. I think that’s at least worth an experiment, so will give it a try with the next election.
Another thought I have is a replacement CoG election. If there is a candidate outside the CoG that might be considered better than a player already in, then we might have an election on whether to make that replacement. Possibly, that might incrementally improve the quality standard, though I expect the effect would be small, as presumably we would mostly be dealing with players at the margins.
Another approach might be to reduce the CoG by matching it to a pseudo-HoF, that is a HoF with “unfortunate” BBWAA choices removed by us voting for that express purpose. Then, we would do the same for the CoG. Maybe do one of those per year in conjunction with the regular CoG election.
As I say, would welcome your suggestions.
This doesnt address the stated concern (might in fact exacerbate it), but id love for us to have a Second Chance ballot or two, where anyone who has ever been on one of our ballots for more than one round gets another look.
As for reducing or tiering the current COG, I love re-examining and improving on processes.
Is it a concern that our numbers have dwindled? While the opinions of the small, core group that are active right now I trust more than 50+ quiet lurkers, does the larger number of voters make our conclusions more ‘valid’?
I would strongly argue against reducing the current COG or replacing its members, once elected. Second guessing after the fact? Declaring voters’ choices from years past null and void or stupid and unworthy? If that starts happening I’ll be gone. At my age, of course, I’ll be gone soon enough regardless, but, please, let’s not open that can of worms. As a solution it solves nothing, and it would inevitably turn into a contest of my favorite against yours.
The argument that, if Walker made it, then why can’t we have Helton is one thing. Bunning’s got more WAR than Ford, so let’s ditch Whitey is far different proposition and more dangerous, because such an approach is all eventually going to be driven by appeals to WAR. If the COG is just about WAR, then it’s irrelevant, since Baseball Reference has precedence.
I don’t say much, but I’ve been around and voting since almost the very beginning. I also am strongly against the idea of voting out/reducing any of the members who have already been elected.
If we would like to highlight the “best of the best” and/or acknowledge that some of the COG are “greater” than the others, I would much rather implement additional rounds to select the “Inner Circle” of the COG. Although in general I think ranked ballots are great, I am also not a huge fan of switching our methods at this point in the process. If we were to do a separate “Inner Circle”, then I think we can switch to whichever method works best (ranked ballots, etc), but I favor keeping with the current method for the overall COG. Maybe the “Inner Circle” COULD be a set number? Like the 100 best or something like that? And in that case, we would have to vote someone out if we were to vote someone else in.
But again, I would prefer the COG process to stay as it is. I’m also not interested in moving forward with this process if we are going to start voting people out of the COG.
I agree with opal when it comes to voting people out. The original CoG project was to do a much better (and well justified) job than the BBWAA, not to be perfect. I think we’ve done well so far. There are a couple of picks I disagree with and argued strongly against, but we have a lot of different views here and I’m sure others feel similarly a a couple of choices I’ve backed. (I’d also hesitate have a voting base of nine reverse the choices of far larger participating groups.) So far we’re within margin of error of birtelcom’s goal. But I do worry that we’re at a point where that may change.
There are two reasons. One is a shrinkage of voting base that has raised the impact of votes that appear disengaged with the type of analysis that led birtelcom to think we could do this well (and, opal, it’s great to hear you expand on your thinking!), together with a diminished opportunity to sort out real preferences with the three-equal-vote format, which works much better with large numbers than with a small group of voters who may be including strategic votes (such as keeping players on the ballot). So I do think we should switch to rank voting, and the coming round will be a benign first test since I assume the actual outcome is a foregone conclusion (assuming also that the letter ‘P’ is included in the Round 2 1980-birth list).
The other reason is that overreliance on CoG WAR may introduce systematic error into our voting. If you look at pitchers, it seems possible that if Chris Sale’s comeback peters out we may have exactly three more pitchers who meet the 65-pWAR consensus threshold for Circleworthiness (Verlander, Kershaw, Scherzer). Unless baseball changes direction, future pitchers just won’t meet the standard, even if, during their lower IP/yr careers, they stood out like Feller or Koufax or Alexander. I think that after this year’s rounds are over, it would be great to discuss whether there are multipliers or modifiers we should be using for WAR totals in different eras to inform CoG voting. Sticking with pitchers, where this will become obvious (but the curve may be more complex, given the up-and-down history of IP norms), if we balance WAR with WAR/162G in different ways that reflect changing managerial norms for pitcher deployments, can we come up with a model for how better to assess career WAR totals across eras, both in terms of IP quantities and the possibility of WAR compression over time? We all know the basic issue — look at film of Walter Johnson and for all his legendary speed a lot of the time he appears to be lobbing the ball, able to tax his arm much less. How do we compare his career to a contemporary like Gerrit Cole, who may wind up with one-third the pWAR, and below the CoG threshold, having exerted maximum tax on his arm nearly every pitch? We have the example of Santana before us now. (I picked Johnson because I can picture those old films, but a better example might be Hubbell, whom I can’t picture but who is at the 65pWAR level, built on a single lower-velocity pitch, though stressful in its own way.)
So, contra nsb, I don’t think lower career WAR levels are necessarily the mark of “anyone-ness.” There may be a factor of the increased toll of higher performance norms combined with compensating managerial usage strategies, both at season and career levels. (As I recall we did this on an ad hoc basis for Ford, recognizing that he was operating under a unique for-Ford-only pitching norm imposed by Stengel for much of his career.) WAR compression, if it’s actually a thing, may be a separate issue contributing along the same WAR vector.
WAR is dubious for pitchers, and defensive stats before advanced computer tracking are problematic.
Perhaps we try to conduct our analyses moving forward without ever mentioning WAR.
Bob:
If I were one to take umbrage, I would certainly have swallowed a big dose after coming across your passing comment about my view of lower career WAR. Luckily I never touch the stuff. Gives me acid reflux.
Au contraire, as those effete continentals are always saying, I’m anything but a fan of having cut-offs based on WAR for worthiness of consideration. Doug is more into the 65 WAR borderline business (see his comment below on Minoso).
To me, WAR has become a stumbling block for open discussion, the evil elephant in the room that we all are wary of treading too heavily on the toes thereof.
Ford, of course, is the prime suspect in any discussion of the matter, and my advocacy for Whitey as being extremely undervalued by WAR ought to be legendary in the annals of this site by now.
The current research I’m doing on live-ball era pitchers reinforces that view: Among pitchers with 2500 IPs or better and a ERA+ of 117 or more, he ranks second in ERA+: third in pitching runs/IP; second in pitching Wins/IP; second in RE24/IP; fourth in WPA/IP; seventh in WPW/LI/IP; and second in REW/IP. Raise the bar to 3000 innings or more and only Lefty Grove outdoes him in every category, Hubbell in two, and Feller in one.
But when WAR/IP is brought into play Ford suddenly drops to 18th by the Baseball Reference standard. Notably, the Fangraphs WAR standard has him tied for 8th place, which shows two things, that there is disagreement about Whitey in this regard and that the two major purveyors of baseball stats diverge greatly in their assessments of pitching WAR. You only have to click on the Circle of Greats membership stats for pitchers and use your eyes to see this.
But I digress.
My point boils down to clearing away a misconception, perhaps fostered by my dubiety about the current class of candidates. That dubiety rests on individual judgments, not a blanket assessment that WAR below a certain point is a deal killer.
Just to clarify the notion of a 65 WAR “rule”, I mention that only as an observation. Nearly all position players, save for catchers, who reach 65 WAR have been included in the CoG, while relatively few (10, including Jackie, Ichiro and Shoeless Joe) below that number have been so honored.
I’m not saying 65 WAR should be a rule, or that it’s a good “rule of thumb”, only that, based on our voting to date, a player reaching that level stands a very good chance to be elected to the CoG.
FWIW, the equivalent barometer for catchers would be 50 WAR. Ted Simmons is the only eligible catcher at that level who has not been elected.
As for pitchers, we seem to be exhibiting a nuanced approach to using WAR as a barometer for CoG- worthiness, expecting more of it for pre-WWII pitchers, and progressively less for more recent candidates. For the latter period, 62 WAR seems to be a reliable barometer, with only one eligible pitcher (Reuschel) above that level snubbed. For the former period, 68 WAR gets you in, based on our voting to date. The nuanced approach I alluded to is that, proportionately, there have been a greater number of pitchers below these WAR levels elected to the CoG (8 of 39 starting pitchers, by my count) than has been the case for position players.
nsb, It was by no means my intent to throw shade upon you, much less to encourage you to distill it and consume it! I made the mistake of conflating your comments about a gradually lowering threshold with a parallel discussion about WAR threshold to which I thought you were referring. Given your oft declared suspicion of WAR, especially pWAR, I should not have.
You picked up on my response on Ford and that your objection is valid. I misremembered the issue with Ford. Going back to look at fWAR (not very thoroughly, I’m afraid), I think the difference is largely on the issue of how to factor in fielding. fWAR appears to focus on FIP, which eliminates fielding, presumably viewing it as unmeasurable. bWAR tries to use the methods of TZR to measure fielding’s shares of wins, and a field of excellent fielders will take their share away from the pitcher, as Stengel’s outstanding crew did. That seems to be the reason for the discrepancy in Ford’s case. I can easily understand why measures such as the ones (PR, PW, WPA, etc.) you rely on seem to you more solidly based. As you know, I was convinced of the viability of pWAR by my immersion years ago in the “Fielding Bible” book series (which I proselytized about here), and so I’m much more comfortable with it, although I’ve long lost touch with the methods.
There are various approaches to assessing players. The two WAR methods represent single-number summaries, your battery of six categories provides the intrigue of a mix of numbers that we need to interpret and balance. Paul’s reliance on park-normalized gives a range of figures all based on a common adjustment to level the field that has a commonsense appeal. I’ve tried to apply your methods and Paul’s in contributing tabular data in the course of these discussions. I’ve yet to get the feel of transparency I need to be comfortable with your set, which seem to me conceptually diverse, but I’ve continued to consult them. When I tried to use Paul’s, my initial attempts seemed to yield conclusions that conflicted with expectations to a degree that made me doubt the success of the exercise, but I don’t know why, since the premise seemed straightforward. I think all these methods are valid means to deploy in trying to make statistical arguments, and I don’t think we should exclude any of them, including bWAR/pWAR. And none of them — or even all of them — do not preclude narrative factors and features of systemic context that the stats aren’t designed to measure.
The approach that’s within my ability to handle, and that I think some others use, is to focus on bWAR/pWAR and OPS+/ERA+ as familiar and fairly well understood starting points, and then to complicate the story. The complication is where all the interest lies, and the stats you and Paul advocate for contribute to that. There’s only so much time to devote to each string, and I’m in danger of exhausting it here so I’ll stop.
Actually, we won’t get to Pujols and Sabathia until round 3. Unless I fiddle with how the ballot is constructed.
Let me know if you think round 2 (holdover round) or round 3 (new ballot players round) would be better for trying out a ranked ballot.
I don’t think it makes a difference, Doug, so long as the rule for staying on the primary ballot remains 10% of ballots cast, rather than “votes” (which could mean a doubling of the required amount). The principal target of the idea originally was to create a distinction in weight between direct support of CoG admission and strategic votes to preserve ballot eligibility.
Just to amplify on my selection of Minoso, I was penciling in seasons (4-5) and WAR (15-20) for him as compensation for the opportunity denied him due to segregation. Doing so moves Minoso to somewhere between 6th and 10th place in JAWS for left-fielders, in a cluster with Manny, Raines, Goslin, Al Simmons and Ed Delahanty, all within 4 WAR of each other (66.0 to 69.6). It’s notable that NONE of the eligible left-fielders outside the JAWS top 10 are in the CoG.
That JAWS ranking (6 to10) for Minoso compares to a 10th ranking for Rolen at 3B. Rolen is also in a cluster, with Santo, Nettles and Edgar Martinez (though Martinez, of course, was a third baseman only early in his career), within 2.6 WAR of each other (67.9 to 70.5). Those four plus Molitor (75.6 WAR) occupy 8th thru 12th spots.
While we obviously will never know if Minoso would have achieved the levels I’ve posited for him, I don’t think that should be a reason for disqualifying him from consideration. Seems to me both qualify at the unofficial 65 WAR level that seems to be a bar that most position players (somewhat lower for catchers) need to reach to have a good chance at CoG selection.
So, either is a good choice, but I’ll stick with Minoso, while expecting Rolen to follow fairly soon.
My vote is for Scott Rolen.
Thanks!
Minoso
If push comes to shove (as it does in this zero-sum runoff), my vote is for Rolen. But I think Minoso is a good choice, I’ve waffled in my analysis of him over the years (and over the last few weeks). I didn’t have him in my three for the main round, but before I published that vote, I was strongly considering putting him in… there’s the stats as a starting point, which are good-not-‘great’, and some of the ‘what if’ mentioned up thread was mitigated by the incorporation of a few (small) seasons of NL stats for him, adding 3 WAR in 100ish games. But a really unique career and personality does hold sway for me in how to assess players for this exercise. And players that straddled that line between NL and MLB tend to justify consideration to me of ‘what if’ as much as anything, the comparable being time missed to military service.
Anyway, it’s literally a few hours before deadline so my vote to make it 5-3 (by my count) rather than 5-2 won’t do much. Just happy to participate again, however briefly. I do hope to be able to join some more discussion in upcoming rounds (for the record, I do like keeping the same rules that we started with, but understand the interest in trying out ranked voting as a way to stratify the small number of votes. Would not participate in a process to remove players) But my reading to posting ratio has always been rather high, so we will see 🙂