This post is for voting and discussion in the 141st round of balloting for the Circle of Greats (COG). This is the first 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 A-G 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, with the one player appearing on the most ballots cast in the round 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 Sunday, February 9th, while changes to previously cast ballots are allowed until 11:59 PM EST Friday, February 7th.
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 1 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 | 5 rounds |
| Vladimir Guerrero | 6 rounds | Bobby Abreu | 4 rounds |
| David Ortiz | 4 rounds | Ken Boyer | 4 rounds |
| Willie Randolph | 3 rounds | Stan Coveleski | 3 rounds |
| Gary Sheffield | 3 rounds | Andre Dawson | 3 rounds |
| Luis Tiant | 3 rounds | Andruw Jones | 3 rounds |
| Ted Lyons | 2 rounds | Monte Irvin | 3 rounds |
| Scott Rolen | 2 rounds | Don Sutton | 3 rounds |
| Johan Santana | 2 rounds | Reggie Smith | 2 rounds |
| Richie Ashburn | this round ONLY | Don Drysdale | this round ONLY |
| Todd Helton | this round ONLY | ||
| Minnie Minoso | this round ONLY | ||
| Ted Simmons | this round ONLY | ||
| Chase Utley | this round ONLY | ||
| Brandon Webb | this round ONLY |
Everyday Players (born in 1980, A-G surname, ten or more seasons played in the major leagues or at least 20 WAR):
Nelson Cruz
José Bautista
Rajai Davis
Jonny Gomes
John Buck
Chris Denorfia
Pitchers (born in 1980, A-G surname, ten or more seasons played in the major leagues or at least 20 WAR):
Matt Belisle
Santiago Casilla
Josh Beckett
Joe Blanton
Kevin Correia
Craig Breslow
Neal Cotts
As is our custom, here are quiz questions for each of the new players on the ballot.
1. Nelson Cruz’s 464 career HR are the most among players with zero HR before their age 24 season. Who was the first such player to reach 400 career home runs? (Darrell Evans, 1988)
2. Matt Belisle’s 10 wins in 2011 were the most that season among Rockie pitchers with a winning record. Which pitcher posted consecutive seasons similarly leading the Rockies in wins, while pitching, like Belisle, only in relief? (Daniel Bard, 2022-23)
3. Santiago Casilla posted six consecutive 50+ IP seasons (2010-15) with a .500+ W-L% and ERA under 3, a record run of such seasons by a reliever. Which pitcher shares that record with Casilla? (Hoyt Wilhelm, 1964-69)
4. José Bautista’s four seasons with 35+ home runs, 100+ walks and 100+ RBI are a Blue Jay franchise record, and place him among only 15 players with as many such seasons. Which player recorded the lowest OPS and OPS+ in such a season? (Kyle Schwarber, 2023)
5. Josh Beckett won 20 games for the Red Sox in 2007. Who was the first Red Sox 20 game winner as tall as Beckett at 6’ 5”? (Jim Lonborg, 1967)
6. Rajai Davis’s 8th inning game-tying home run in game 7 of the 2016 World Series improved his team’s Championship WPA by 39%, the most for a player whose team did not win the World Series. Davis stole 415 bases in a career of fewer than 5000 PA. Which player has the only larger stolen base total in such a career? (Ron Leflore, 455 SB)
7. Kevin Correia posted a record seven consecutive seasons (2008-14) with 100+ IP and ERA+ under 100. Which other two pitchers share that record? (Harry McIntire 1905-11, Jack Fisher 1961-67)
8. Jonny Gomes’s 3-run home run in game 4 of the 2013 World Series garnered 0.37 WPA for the eventual champion Red Sox and was the biggest WPA event of the series. Which player hit the home run yielding the highest WPA for the Red Sox in any World Series game? (Bernie Carbo, 1975 World Series game 6)
9. Joe Blanton’s 75 appearances in 2016 are the most by a Dodger pitcher aged 35 or older. Which pitcher recorded the most career games for the Dodgers aged 35 or older? (Dazzy Vance 1926-35, 239 games)
10. Craig Breslow’s 1.81 ERA in 2013 is the lowest by a Boston left-hander in a 50+ IP season pitching exclusively in relief. Breslow’s ERA ballooned to 5.96 the next season, the biggest jump in ERA for any Boston left-hander in such consecutive seasons. Who held the latter record before Breslow? (Rob Murphy, 1989-90)
11. John Buck was an All-Star selection in 2010, despite an almost 7 to 1 SO/BB ratio. Which catcher recorded the highest SO/BB ratio in an All-Star season? (Ivan Rodriguez 2007, 10.7 SO/BB ratio)
12. Neal Cotts posted a 233 ERA+ in 2005, best among undefeated relievers in 60+ IP seasons for world championship teams. Which pitcher shares that record with Cotts? (Mariano Rivera, 1998)
13. Chris Denorfia recorded five straight seasons (2011-15) playing 100+ games, including 5 or more at each outfield position, and is the only player to do so aged 30 to 34. Which player recorded the longest run of 100+ game seasons, at any age, including 10 or more games at each outfield position? (Jim Northrup, 1967-73)
Congrats to Ichiro, CC and BIlly Wagner. Three worthy Hall selections.
Twelve seems to be the magic number for modern relievers (entire careers since 1980) to get to the Hall, as in twelve seasons with 20+ saves. Wagner is the fourth such pitcher to do so, and the fourth to reach the Hall.
Next on that list of 20 save seasons are Kenley Jansen and Craig Kimbrel, both currently already at 12. Their WAR totals are both 20%+ lower than Wagner’s in similar appearances and innings, so I’m having more trouble seeing them as HoFers. Adding a minimum 1 WAR requirement to those 20 save seasons, and Kimbrel and Jansen both drop to 9 such seasons, while Wagner stays at 12. That seems about right to me in terms of their relative worth.
A helpful rule of thumb, Doug. I have to admit that I have real trouble evaluating relievers’ career stats and probably always will. It took me several years to acknowledge that Wagner was even worthy of consideration, given his IP totals. But the more I put him in comparative perspective the more I supported his election. (I voted for him in the end, but somehow my ballot was lost in the mail.)
Hey Bob, the “rule of thumb” is that it is only legal to beat your wife with a switch no thicker than your thumb. That’s where that comes from.
Precisely, Voomo. I’ve been shouting at my wife all morning that 20+ saves with 1.0+ WAR justifies Wagner’s election. She’s still telling me to talk a walk but I’m afraid she’ll switch to hitting soon.
Voom:
Here is the “disclaimer” from the politically-correct, DEI-approved, AI generated, Albert Gore-invented Internet of Things:
“Misuse
The search I initiated was something along the lines of “origin of the term “rule of thumb”. Veracity being the basis of any relationship, let me be candid and state that I prefer your explanation.
Thumbs up on that, Paul.
(I stopped shouting before she socked me anyway.)
It’s notable that if you total the WAR total of all 13 players in the class of 1980, the amount comes to about 10% more than one Babe Ruth. I’m going to focus on the holdover lists.
In a post the other day I said I tended to give a lot of weight to WAR/162g as a helpful tool in evaluating HoF caliber. To start analysis here I thought I’d note the figures for our holdover lists, separating bWAR from pWAR, and using B-R figures. (For Minoso I’m using only his MLB years and estimating; for Irwin I’m using his total figures, including NNL2, since B-R gives an inclusive figure.)
Primary list, position players
Rolen 5.6
Allen 5.4
Utley 5.4
Randolph 4.9
Ashburn 4.7
Vlad 4.5
Helton 4.5
Minoso 4.5
Sheff 3.8
Ortiz 3.7
Simmons 3.3
Secondary list, position players
Smith 5.3
Boyer 5.0
Irvin 5.0
Andruw 4.6
Williams 4.1
Abreu 4.0
Dawson 4.0
Primary list, pitchers
Johan 5.4
Tiant 4.2
Lyons 4.2
Secondary list, pitchers
Coveleski 5.5
Drysdale 4.2
Sutton 3.0
Just one starting point. (For comparison, among the Class of 1980, Beckett is the only player above 3.3 WAR/162; his pWAR is 3.6. Cruz and Bautista lead in bWAR at 3.3.)
Bob,
“It’s notable that if you total the WAR total of all 13 players in the class of 1980, the amount comes to about 10% more than one Babe Ruth.”
If you doubled the “Filthy 13” to make a full roster, they probably wouldn’t win 75 games in a 162-game season
No reflection on them, though — not their fault that they didn’t have any superstars in their third of the alphabet. After all, when we get to another swath of eligible players Albert Pujols, with his 101.4 WAR will be smiling at us. I’m not sure whether CC will be in the same cluster of letters, but his 62.3 is approaching as well.
Our focus will definitely be on the 1980 players in the last instalment, with Albert and CC leading the way.
They’d definitely be short of starting pitchers, but with two Bautistas, two Cruzes and two Becketts, I think 75 wins is a pretty pessimistic projection.
Doug,
Beckett seemed to “coast” in the regular season and then put on his Superman cape for the playoffs. In his 10 initial post-season appearances he clocked a 1.73 ERA in ~72 innings; 7.71 in the 21 innings after that.
Now that Dick Allen has made the Hall, are there any players who have had three 8-oWAR seasons in a career not elected to the Hall of Fame besides Joe Jackson and the steroid guys?
Excepting the steroid guys, among players outside the Hall and currently eligible, Chase Utley (on our ballot) and Snuffy Stirnweiss (who knew?) lead the way with a pair of 8 WAR seasons.
Among pitchers by the same criteria, there’s a raft of 19th century guys with three or more 8 WAR seasons, plus Noodles Hahn with three such seasons and 7.9 WAR in a fourth (Hahn might have gone on to post some historic career totals, but 1900+ IP by age 25, incl. 143 CG in 146 starts, was just about all his arm could give). Those with two such seasons are Schilling, Appier, Saberhagen, Wilbur Wood, McDowell, Ferrell, Bagby and Rucker (plus more from the 19th century).
Seems like three 8 WAR seasons is also a pretty good rule-of-thumb.
Doug,
Actually, Allen had three “8-Owar” seasons and merely two “8-WAR” seasons due to his fielding deficiencies (1966) and/or injuries (1967). Allen had not played a single inning of 3B in the minors when Mauch decided that Allen was his 3B for his 1964 rookie season. So, he made 41 errors…. He did finish among the top three in assists and DP’s those first two seasons. Interestingly, there is a stretch of about 165 games at 3B between injuries where he makes roughly 20 errors in over 1350 innings. But, just when he’s adjusting to the position, he dislocates his shoulder (1966) and then lacerates the ulna nerve in his throwing arm/hand. Thereafter, it became a circus of positonal changes. “I’ll play third base, left field, first base. I’ll play anywhere except Philadelhia”.
At one time, this site reviewed MVP balloting in past years. Based on the 1964 pennant race, the Phillies improvement, and current ‘advanced’ metrics, one could make the argument that Allen ‘coulda/woulda/shoulda’ been the first Rookie of the Year to win an MVP award (and not Fred Lynn in 1975).
Allen seemed to be progressing at 3B before those injuries, with his Fld% at 3B going 921, then .943 and, in ’66, .967 which was above league average (his range factor was close to league average each season). But, then it’s .908, .786 (only 10 games and 28 chances, but 6 errors) and, in 1970, .895 (11 errors in 105 chances).
Allen played most of the ’68 season in LF and led the league with the best fielding percentage at that position combined with league average range factor, so not a surprise he didn’t play at 3B at all in ’69. But, in ’71 the Dodgers play him ~45%/35%/20% at 3B/LF/1B; he’s .918 at 3B, and league average or a bit below at the other spots. Allen would play only two more games at 3B the rest of his career.
Allen’s Hobsonesque fielding percentages brought to mind Butch Hobson (of course). In his first two seasons, Hobson combined below average fielding % with much below average range factor. In his infamous 1978 season, he dopped below .900 but bumped up his range factor to very close to league average. He improved to .935 the next year, but his range factor took a big tumble. Then in ’80 and ’81 in part-time duty (about 35%-40% of the innings), he brings his range factor way up to above league average but his Fld% tanks to .910 and .929. Seems like the more chances Hobson took, the worse his fielding got.
Final tale of the tape at 3B for their careers, it was Allen at .927 from 2.84 chances per 9 inn and Hobson at .926/2.79. At least there was one third baseman that Allen may have outplayed.
Doug:
“But, in ’71 the Dodgers play him ~45%/35%/20% at 3B/LF/1B; he’s .918 at 3B, and league average or a bit below at the other spots.”
You may recall that there was a kid who was supposed to play 3B for the Dodgers in 1971 but he failed to hit and Allen filled in? Former MSU Sparty, Steve Garvey. Just a BTW, Allen knocked himself unconscious running into a palm tree in spring training shagging fly balls. He had a very slow start to the season batting .210/.328/.381 thru 35 team games. I imagine initially the plan was Wes Parker at 1b, Garvey at 3b, and Allen in LF…..
Thanks for the context, Paul. I hadn’t realized Garvey was originally intended to be a third baseman. Garvey had really solid range factor at 3B in the games he played there in ’71 and ’72, but his fielding percentage was a problem, in the Allen/Hobson range. Fortunately for the Dodgers, they found their man (Cey) in ’73, Garvey moves to 1B and the Dodger infield is set for a decade.
Garvey’s six 200+ hit seasons are second only to Lou Gehrig (8) among first basemen. No other first baseman in the past 85 years has more than three such seasons.
Doug,
Steve didn’t walk much but certainly put the ball in play. You may recall Bill James harping on the fact that Gravey didn’t take a walk to such an extent that Greg Brock (Garvey’s replacement after the move to San Diego) was more valuable offensively despite his .224 BA?
Garvey hurt his shoulder playing football at Michigan State.
For the 1980 – Part 1 election, I’m voting for:
-Vladimir Guerrero
-Todd Helton
-Willie Randolph
Other top candidates I considered highly (and/or will consider in future rounds):
-Rolen
-Utley
-Tiant
-Allen
-Lyons
-Ashburn
-Sheffield
Thanks!
Doug–
Hello! Just a reminder, for the 1979 – Part 3 vote, I sent the following question:
“Quick Note: Should Brandon Webb have been listed as one of the new candidates for this selection? I would not be voting for him, but it looks like he had a 33.0 WAR.”
And you responded:
“You’re absolutely right, Opal. Brandon should be on the list. Sorry I missed him.
I’m guessing Webb would not have been the winner of the round but, since he arguably could have attracted a vote with that WAR total, I’ll keep him on the ballot for our next round.”
Again, I don’t plan to vote for him, but for the sake of completion, I just wanted to make sure he got his opportunity to be on the ballot! 🙂
Thanks!
Thanks for the reminder, Opal.
I’ve added Webb to the ballot.
For the Secondary Ballot, I’m voting for:
-Don Sutton
-Andre Dawson
-Andruw Jones
Thanks!
Minnie Minoso played full time through age 49.
I propose that his career needs to be considered somewhat outside the boxes of WAR and counting stats.
His MLB career was delayed due to his ancestry. And if, through the efforts of b-ref, we are including numbers from those leagues, let’s also look at Minoso’s 1950 in the PCL, and his unique ability to defy time with his Mexican league durability at an age when testosterone tends to wane..
Looking at Minoso’s time playing in Mexico after his major league days were done:
-he tore up the circuit with OPS of 1.007 and .872 in 100+ games at age 41 and 42.
-then, perhaps he was trying to retire but was coaxed into suiting up for a game now and then (?), as he logged only 13 and 22 games the next two seasons.
-but, at age 45, he was back over 100 games and still with OPS north of .800.
-at age 46, it was a Ruthian 1.214 OPS, apparently mostly as a pinch-hitter as he logged only 53 PA in 40 games.
-his last three seasons were all at 110+ games and 389 to 489 PA; his OPS slid each season, but certainly didn’t fall off a cliff, with .741 at age 49.
The recently passed Rickey Henderson also wasn’t content to hang up the spikes, even after 25 major league seasons. He played Independent ball at age 45 and 46, drew a ton of walks (OBP over .450 both seasons), and swiped 53 bases in 164 games over those two seasons.
Vladimir Guerrero, Todd Helton, Scott Rolen. Andre Dawson, Don Drysdale, Don Sutton.
Thanks DSC, and welcome to the site.
Thanks for putting this together, Doug. While considering the candidates for whom I want to vote / advocate, I looked through the quiz questions. For #7, the cynic in me says to start by looking at Correa’s 2013-14 teammates, then consider any Twins starters of the preceding decade not named Santana nor Liriano.
For #6 though, I’ll guess Ron LeFlore.
Thanks for getting the ball rolling on the quiz questions. Leflore is correct. Leflore, Lou Brock and Vince Coleman share the record of 4 seasons with 50+ SB, 50+ BB, 90+ R and 90 K’s (all three recorded those seasons in a span of 5 years).
Voomo has started us out with substantive discussion on Circle of Great candidates. He’s advocated for Minnie Minoso on the basis of a number of factors beyond Minoso’s MLB stats and I think Voomo makes good arguments. Minoso’s a solid pick. (I can add my own recollection of Minoso as one of the most electric players of the ’50s–kids like me vied for his baseball card.)
It used to be that CoG voters waited for discussion to unfold, and I hope we can return to that–votes can be changed through next Wednesday, for those who have made quick decisions but may spot arguments that change their minds. Discussion is what makes this fun. I’d like to chime in with a few words about Stan Coveleski on the secondary ballot, and my points share certain elements with Voomo’s notes on Minoso.
Coveleski is a great example of a type of player we would never encounter today. He was born in the Pennsylvania coal country and went to work full-time in the mines–when he was 12 years-old (12-hour days, six days a week). His family loved baseball (his brother Harry also made the Majors) and Stan’s only recreation was throwing stones at tin cans, which is how he developed his pitching ability. White players of Coveleski’s time did not face the color bar and never had to compete with talented Black players, but poor white talents had significant challenges to overcome nevertheless. Coveleski was “discovered” by a school coach who observed him throwing at tin cans.
After playing on local teams Coveleski caught on in the low Minors and after a couple of years was spotted by Connie Mack. Mack sent out to the Northwest League for seasoning and then lost control of him and couldn’t bring him up–Coveleski was stuck in the Minors pitching 300 IP per year for three more years. Altogether, he had just short of 2000 IP in the Minors, winning well over 100 games, not because he couldn’t make the Majors on merit, but because his path was blocked by independent ownership in the Northwest and Pacific Coast Leagues.
Coveleski was still able to compile an MLB record of 214-142, with an ERA+ of 127 and 67 WAR (5.5/162G), and he won three games in the 1920 Series, yielding just 0.67 R/9IP against Brooklyn (for which I forgive him). His MLB career was short–almost all his 3000 IP came over just 11 seasons (five were 20-win seasons)–but altogether he notched 342 wins at both Major and Minor levels (virtually identical with Sutton), and the Minor league total was inflated versus the Major league total because of issues beyond his control.
To my mind, our secondary list is about as strong as our primary list, with Boyer, Smith and Irvin (a special case) having particularly strong cases. But I think Coveleski is exceptional among those on the list. (And if you’ve never read his interview in The Glory of Their Times, it’s an eye-opening look at a workingman’s psychology. “There’s always someone sitting on the bench just itching to get in there in your place. . . . Wants your job in the worst way: back to the coal mines for you, pal! . . . So you worry all the time. It never ends. Lord, baseball is a worrying thing.”)
Bob:
A pair of comments:
1) According to Bill James, if my memory serves, it wasn’t just Coveleski who suffered from the sense of needing to succeed to stay in the rotation or on the team. James sites the strangely up-and-down career of Mickey Vernon, seven time All-Star first baseman (1939-1960) who had notable down moments, in Vernon’s case resulting from health conditions he kept silent about in order not to lose his status as starter.
In fact, management has done a U-turn concerning injury and illness in the last four decades or so, roughly corresponding to the inflation of player salaries resulting from free agency, etc. Back in the old days, a starter was expected to start. And there was always someone on the bench or in Triple-A threatening to take over. Consider Wally Pipp.
2) I hadn’t paid too much attention to Coveleski until the last few weeks when, to keep my mind off current events (which we aren’t supposed to speak of on this site), I started a big statistical comparison project which may someday appear to dismay and bore you. At any rate, I found out that the answer to the burning question of what pitcher made the most successful transition from dead-ball to live-ball eras after Pete Alexander was Stan The Coveleski.
So I second the notion (motion?) the he’s been overlooked as a COG candidate. Some things that aren’t in my study but that support the idea: In his 11 seasons with more than 58 IPs, Coveleski was a top-10 finisher in pWAR, ERA, ERA+, and FIP nine times.
James cites, too.
Nice to see Vernon getting some recognition here, nsb. Despite his career fluctuations (which included two widely separated batting titles) he was a steady force on his — generally poor — teams: 14 seasons stuck on Griffith’s Senators, ugh! He lost two prime years, ages 26 & 27, to the Service in the War, and still #4 all-time in games at 1B. Another working class guy, but less oppressed by poverty, and I think his personality was very different from Coveleski’s. Lots of testimonials to what a solid and supportive teammate he was. My sense is that Covey was too shy and insecure to fill that role. (I don’t recall ever coming across those James comments. They explain a lot.)
I look forward to being dismayed by your project — we often disagree — but I’m sure I won’t be bored.
Those “widely separated” batting title were, in fact, 7 years apart, in 1946 and 1953, and were the two best seasons of Vernon’s career, both above 5 WAR and both also leading the AL in doubles. Vernon also played every inning of every game of those two seasons (and also 1942) as the Senators’ first basemen. Only two first baseman since Vernon have matched that feat: Richie Sexson in 2003; and Matt Olson last season.
That 1953 season began a late career resurgence for Vernon, as he compiled more than one-third of his career HR and WAR in his four seasons aged 35-38. Vernon and Cap Anson are the only first basemen to bat .300 with .850 OPS and top 300 R, 350 RBI and 200 BB for those four seasons.
Most consecutive 7 WAR seasons, since 1900
10 – Walter Johnson (1910-19)
7 – Christy Mathewson (1907-13)
6 – Lefty Grove (1928-33)
5 – Stan Coveleski (1917-21), Robin Roberts (1950-54)
The expansion era record is 4 straight seasons, by Koufax, Maddux, Pedro and RJ. (Clemens had 3 seasons in a row three different times). Maddux’s streak included the strike-shortened 1994 and 1995 seasons.
Bottom line: Coveleski is in really good company.
Vernon grew up in Marcus Hook PA where his father worked for Sun Oil. “The Hook” is a unique place and home to many refineries. If you merely “google” Marcus Hook images, I’m sure you’ll see the smoke and soot “abillowing”.
As far as Griffith Stadium being a notorious pitcher’s park, Vernon’s home/away split differences are surprising insignificant
I’ve been a supporter of Willie Randolph, because I saw him play, a lot, and appreciated how perfectly he played his role. However, I’m going to pass on him for this round.
We are asking the question of who was “great “.
Greatness can be assessed in multiple ways. There is the clear cut “he was the best player at his position during his prime, and he had longevity.”
There is maybe nobody on our list that clearly fits that description.
So I’m going to go with one player who was the best in the game (without longevity), and two who defied time and were great later than most.
Ted Lyons led the league in ERA at age 41, and then went to war for 3 years.
Minoso played until age 49.
And Johan Santana was arguably the best hurler on the planet at his peak.
Vote:
Theodore Amar Lyons
Saturnino Orestes Armas Miñoso
Johan Alexander Santana
Secondary ballot vote:
Dod Drysdale
Andruw Jones
Billy Williams
Drysdale is on the bubble, and I don’t think he should drop out of the conversation.
Jones is in the argument for greatest defensive CF of all time.
Williams has the 6th longest consecutive game playing streak, and led the league in TB 3 times in his 30s.
Doug, do you have access to an email list of everyone who has ever contributed to this site?
If so, would it be hygienic to send a message reminding folks of the COG project?
Good thought, Voomo. Don’t have such a list, but I’ll look into how to create it.
I went back to look at the string for our final CoG discussion last year and found it full of interesting stats and arguments about them, most applying to the same pool of players we have now (but also going off on tangents of interest). I thought I’d just embed a link to it here.
For quiz question number 4 I came up with Mark McGwire for lowest OPS with .859 in 1990 and Adam Dunn for lowest OPS+ with 131 in 2008.
Nope. Not them. One player did both.
Then how about Kyle Schwarber with.817 OPS and 121 OPS+ in 2023.
Schwarber is correct.
Schwarber has more strikeouts than hits in all 10 of his seasons to date. The record to start a career is 14 straight seasons, by Adam Dunn, Carlos Pena and Russell Branyan (it was their entire careers in each case). Michael Taylor and Adam Duvall are the active leaders, at 11 seasons.
As those here know, nsb has expressed little faith in pWAR. Though we adhere to different faiths, I’m not here to dispute him. In place of pWAR, nsb has recommended we consult six pitching categories (in pairs): Adjusted Pitching Runs/Wins (APR & APW); Win Probability Added, with and without reference to Leverage (WPA & WPA/LI); Run Expectancy based on situational performance, in runs and wins (RE24 & REW).
I’m somewhat comfortable with most of these (not WPA/LI, much as I’ve read about it), but not comfortable enough to rely on them. I’m still mired in the class of stats at the level of WAR, ERA+, etc. (FIP and others less mysterious). The WPA and RE stats are most ambitious in trying to disentangle performance measures from game situations—what’s at stake—and thinking through the legitimacy and limits of that endeavor are what I find most difficult. But I wanted to see how adopting nsb’s lens would shine light on our CoG candidate pitchers, even without buying fully into the analytic power of the stats. So what I’ve done here is to list the six pitchers on our two lists (not including Webb) in terms of their career ranks in each stat.
The order of the ranks is: APW / APR /-/ WPA / WPA/LI / RE24 / REW (I’ll explain the /-/ separator below).
Stan C ………… 42 / 47 /-/ 18 / 34 / 26 / 26
Don D ………… 62 / 69 /-/ 56 / 47 / 35 / 31
Lyons …………. 45 / 37 /-/ 23 / 39 / 46 / 57
Johan ………….. 44 / 43 /-/ 51 / 45 / 31 / 39
Don S …………. 95 / 108 /-/ 36 / 11 / 32 / 28
Luis T …………. 81 / 98 /-/ 75 / 63 / 74 / 68
I’ve underlined the leader in each career stat among these six CoG candidates. If you just averaged career rank among these stats Coveleski would stand out, but that’s much too remote a figure to have any confidence in. Mostly what struck me was how some of these pitchers maintain a more or less even ranking historically across these categories – Johan has the most compressed rank range, all within 20 – while others bounce up and down: Sutton is all over the map, with a maximum discrepancy of 97. This is much reduced if you simply take APW/APR as a separate set; within the two groupings, then, there’s some rough consistency, and that’s why I added the larger separator /-/ between the first two columns and the others. (I have a pretty low estimation of Sutton, and his good rankings within the contextualized sets — especially WPA/LI — was a surprise, and I’d like to understand it better.)
I don’t know what to make of all this, beyond the fact that it certainly does not provide added support for Luis’s case. But I felt I had to do some sort of due diligence on this front after nsb’s strong pWAR objections.
Too late to edit, but I just noticed an errant underline for Lyons’ WPA rank. I guess my eyes were misaligned. (Better go check in the mirror . . .)
ERA+ and the Six Stats by Innings Pitched
———————ERA+——PR———PW———RE24——WPA——-WPA/LI——REW
Coveleski——-127——-.086——-.0091——-.106——-.0130——-.0098——-.0113
Drysdale———121——-.066——.0072———.086——.0082——-.0078——-.0101
Lyons————-118——-.067——.0067——-..089——.0086——-.0071——-.0096
Sutton————108——-.034——.0040———.057——.0063——-.0081——-.0065
Tiant—————114——.056——.0064———.063——.0072——-.0065——-.0071
Santana———136——-.132——.0137———.149——.0141——-.0135——-.0156
Coveleski benefits from his dead-ball years, when all the stats skewed somewhat higher, but Santana especially benefits by having pitch exclusively in the post-live ball era when the stats are juiced by never having to pitch a complete game. In Johan’s case, 15 CGs in 360 starts. And, like Koufax, he had no downside to his career. Well, 117 IP. Also he pitched 1000 innings fewer than Coveleski, 1400 fewer than Drysdale and Tiant, 2000 fewer that Lyons, and 3100 fewer than Sutton.
Cross era comparisons don’t work well.
Good observations, as always.
Concerning the conditions of the current era and the impact on stats of fine careers cut short, here are Brandon Webb’s comparables (about 65% of Santana’s IP, but with identical CG totals):
ERA+ 142
PR .130
PW .0134
RE24 .111
WPA .0110
WAR/LI .0101
REW .0111
He most resembles Santana on the context-independent figures and Coveleski on the others. And, since nsb mentioned Koufax and I calculated his figures, I’ll include them (~15% more IP than Santana, 9x the CGs):
ERA+ 131
PR .103
PW .0112
RE24 .115
WPA .0146
WAR/LI .0135
REW .0142
Koufax would compare historically with the middle group, but looks more like Santana and Webb on the context-linked numbers. (Koufax’s career downside was on his upside: the entire first half.)
The RE24, REW and WPA stats all depend on play-by-play data, so you’re looking at complete or virtually complete data for Drysdale, Sutton, Tiant and Santana, and only partial data for Coveleski and Lyons.
Quiz question number 9. Dazzy Vance pitched in 239 games for the Dodgers from age 35 and on.
Vance is correct.
Vance is one of three pitchers (the other two were his contemporaries, one his teammate for two seasons) to start 200+ games and relieve in 75+ games aged 35 or older.
For question number 1 I came up with Jason Giambi.
It’s not Giambi.
I suppose it must be Darrell Evans then.
Evans is the one. His first home run was off of Bob Gibson at the age of 24 years, 3 days. He reached 400 HR at age 41 in 1988.
Didn’t seem to matter what type of pitcher Evans faced: his four favorite guys to homer off of were Seaver (8), Hooton (7), Phile Niekro (6) and Blyleven (5), who featured, respectively, the fastball, knuckle curve, knuckleball and curveball.
I don’t usually jump for these quizzes, but the astonishment of seeing Richard miss can have cataclysmic effects.
Ha! I similarly thought, “Something’s up. Richard doesn’t miss.” It was satisfying then to find that Giambi fits the criteria; he just wasn’t the first to do so. Then my world made sense again.
For question number 7 I found a guy named Harry McIntyre who did it from 1905-1911,
McIntire is one. His 98 losses over his first 5 seasons are a modern era high.
Well, of course, McIntire. . . We all know McIntire, don’t we? . . .
Ok, no. But there’s more to McIntire than mere losses. A little searching has led me to a 2007 online discussion claiming that McIntire was the second all-time meanest pitcher in MLB history, a characteristic measured by the ratio of HBP to WP. The idea behind this is that some HBP are caused by wildness, rather than meanness, and wildness should show up in WP counts too. So HBP/WP should be a measure of how weighted towards intentional headhunting the HBP count should be. (I suspect the math is a little simplistic for the idea . . . perhaps the ratio should be between HBP and WP rates rather than totals. However, like nsb I’m no statistician — and for me there are no buts about it — so I’ll leave that for others to ponder.)
The all-time meanest pitcher (by this measure) is an equally famous contemporary of McIntire: Jack Warhop, a little younger and a little meaner. In 1909, pitching on opposite sides of the East River, each man led his league in HBP. New York was a dangerous city in those days.
Good catch, Bob.
I suspect the losses had something to do with making Harry mean. For those 5 seasons of misery in Brooklyn, McIntire plunked 82 batters but tossed only 9 wild ones. In 1300 IP! That’s like one wild pitch every 16 complete games. So, if the wild pitch data can be relied on, wild pitches were absolutely the least of McIntire’s problems. As for the HBP, McIntire led the league three times in 5 years, including his last two years in Brooklyn. At this point, McIntire is traded to the Cubs. For three players! (three really bad players, but the Superbas made use of all of them the next season, in CF, RF and at SS).
Playing for the perennially contending Cubs (they won the pennant, and then finished 3rd with 91 wins in the two full seasons McIntire was on the team), McIntire seems to have mellowed somewhat. Had the same mediocre stuff (86 ERA+) he showed in Brooklyn, but it was good for a .600 W-L% for those two seasons in Chicago. That winning feeling seems to have tamed (somewhat) McIntire’s proclivity for head hunting, as he cut his HBP rate almost in half, from one per 12 IP his last two years in Brooklyn to one every 23 IP in his two full seasons in Chicago.
And now, look! We all actually do know McIntire. The magic of HHS.
#5 is Jim Lonborg (1967)
Is the answer to #8 Bernardo Carbo, Game 6, 1975 World Series (and not Carlton Fisk)?
Is #11, Ivan Rodriguez of the 2007 Tigers (97K/9BB)?
Lonborg, Carbo and Pudge are all correct.
Carbo homered off of Rawly Eastwick in game 6. Eastwick also gave up a Dwight Evans shot in game 3. Both were 8th inning game-tying blasts that rank in the top 5 in WPA for Red Sox WS homers. Despite those two blown saves, Eastwick sports a 2-0 record for the series and a nifty 2.25 ERA (the runners on base for those homers were charged to the pitchers who preceded Eastwick in those games).
For question 11 I found Jim Northrup with 7 such consecutive seasons from 1967 to 1973.
Northrup is the one.
#12 is Mariano Rivera who went 3-0 for the ’98 NYY. In 2008, Brad Lidge went 2-0 with 41/41 on saves (IIRC) but could only muster a 224 ERA+ for Philadelphia….slacker 🙁
Rivera is correct. Lidge’s 41 saves in 2008 are easily the most of any pitcher on any team with nary a defeat nor blown save. Wily Peralta of the 2018 Royals is next with only 14 saves.
As for Cotts, he was 0 for 2 in save opportunities for the world champion 2005 White Sox, a team that, surprisingly, logged 19 blown saves, converting save opportunities at only a 74% clip. However, the Sox showed their championship mettle with a very creditable 8-11 record in those games with a blown save.
With a day left to change my mind I’m going to cast a ballot for the primary list, with comments. My ballot will be:
Lyons, Rolen, Minoso
Since I think it’s obvious that Pujols will be among our three picks as soon as his name appears,
Last year I cited Adam Darowski’s rankings of the holdover players according to his now closed Hall of Stats (I’m adding Ashburn, who wasn’t on the primary list last year, along with CC, who will appear soon, and Albert):
Pujols 215
Rolen 143
Utley 135
Tiant 128
Randolph 125
Lyons 124 (Rank: #141 all time, close to the current CoG size, which I think is 139)
Helton 121
Ashburn 120
Allen 116
Sheffield 116
Simmons 113
Sabathia 113
Guerrero 112
Minoso 111
Santana 108 (Rank: #200 all time, and an obvious special case)
Ortiz 95
I’m picking Rolen this round chiefly on the basis of that ranking (I voted for him last year too), since Albert’s not yet before us. Rolen also leads in WAR/162G, and his basic stats all echo his Circleworthy status.
I’ve argued at length in the past for Lyons, who won 260 games with awful teams and retired without quite realizing it, having just pitched five complete games with a 143 ERA+. He had plenty left in the tank at age 45. The strongest argument against Lyons, I think, is that he played at a time when segregation barred Black players, then at their highest levels of ability and training of the pre-Robinson era. It’s a good argument. But it’s also true that Lyons lost three seasons to the War, and in the seasons surrounding that hiatus his ERA+ was 167. His projected WAR total might well have been ~80 without the interruption, and he would have entered the Circle long ago. As it is, his WAR exceeds all others eligible this round (and CC’s as well), and he and Rolen are the only players who reach as high as the median level for CoG players overall (which is 70-75 for both position players and pitchers).
I’m adding Minoso for now specifically in recognition of Voomo’s argument this round. As we learn better how to contextualize players who were penalized because of color, exploring the enhanced stats we have and realizing that careers in the Minors may have been an enforced substitute for MLB opportunities white players could have sustained, I think we need to reflect on situations such as Minnie’s. (Also, I really did love him as a player!) I have to admit that this is a strategic vote, hoping to keep Minoso on th list while thinking further about Voomo’s points.)
In reviewing last year’s comments (I’m only partway through even now) I noticed a very fine presentation of ways to think about Johan by nsb, and I’d like to recommend it for those voting this year.
Not sure i understand the argument against 1940s players because they played during segregation. If the AL was segregated and the NL had all the top black players, okay,then the numbers would be skewed.
But Lyons and the rest of the “greatest” generation were all playing under the same conditions. Our objective is to assess who was great in their own time, and in a greater historical context.
The reasoning of “maybe Lyons would have been less effective if the hitter pool was stronger” is a mental exercize with some logical merit, but it is perhaps too speculative and revisionist to apply punitive measures against players of that time.
Of course, we have, in that same decade, an example of the actual MLB player pool being decimated by WWII. And we certainly look at players whose only great seasons occurred during those years a bit wary and askance.
The argument pertains to the entire segregated era, Voomo, and some voters in the past have made it to argue against voting for players from the early 20th century too. It is simply that MLB players from 1947 on (more or less; really late ’50s on) must establish their worth against a full universe of MLB-quality players, whereas MLB players prior to that time only established their worth against the universe of white MLB-quality players. (The idea could be captured by saying that the MLB quality pool was elevated in 1947 in a way that makes the earlier era the equivalent of, say, a AAAA league, and that’s not a CoG environment unless you’re really, really beyond “very good.”)
I think this is a valid concern, mitigated by the fact that pre-’47 MLB players could not control those circumstances. (Well, I suppose Cap Anson did.) My argument in response has been that early in the segregated era it appears that there was less participation by the Black community in baseball, and likely lower quality of play, than was the case once the Negro leagues grew in size and quality. So while the universe of rivals was restricted from the start, that universe began with very few non-white players and grew to significant levels gradually. I used this argument when I was advocating for Bobby Wallace, whose career was early in the segregated era. I think the argument is valid, but it works against Lyons, which I think is appropriate. In advocating for him, I’m acknowledging a discount because he did not face some number of great athletes who might have lowered his profile had MLB represented actually represented the full universe of current talent, while balancing it with his years lost to war, another factor beyond his control that worked against him.
That argument can be endlessly extended, however.
Nowadays, the MLB gets the best ballplayers on the entire planet.
Ever more so than 20 years ago.
Are we to look at players from 2005 with less reverence than those of today because the Ohtanis and Yamamotos didn’t yet have as smooth of a pipeline to The Show?
I don’t have a clear opinion.
I’m just more comfortable working with arguments based on what we know.
Take race out of the equation for a moment, as all issues of social justice tend to gum up a logical discussion nowadays.
What about playing conditions now vs 100 years ago? In 1925, you had pitchers throwing dirty balls, sometimes at twilight with no lights. Spitballs and brush back pitches. Can we give old timey hitters extra credit for those factors? Or does the modern game have its equivalent with everyone overthrowing, and one inning specialists?
Excellent points, Voomo. I think there are basically two ideas here. One is the ever-expanding universe of players and the second concerns changing conditions.
The first is indeed a social justice issue, but it is not only a social justice issue. Unlike the forces prior to the influx of international players, which were basically geographical, logistical, and cultural, the force excluding Black players was racial segregation. The problem facing someone like Josh Gibson wasn’t that the pipeline wasn’t smooth; it was that there was no pipeline. That might, for some periods, have applied equally to Asian players, given immigration laws in the early 20th century, but it was not tested, and it’s clear that from 1964, when Masanori Murakami debuted with the Giants–only 17 years after Jackie Robinson–the door has been open globally. The “universe” of players I was referring to includes only players who are ready and willing to play in the Majors. It doesn’t include, for example, Black players who were naturally talented athletes but too technically unskilled to make the Majors (which would probably have been true for many early Black players, without organized leagues) or people who had terrific potential but simply didn’t play baseball. Negro League players were professionals ready for hire, many of them actually playing against and defeating MLB barnstorming teams. Their quality of play is documented by contemporary reports, Negro League statistics, and the success some were able to enjoy when they had the opportunity to prove themselves after 1947 (Monte Irvin is an example). This isn’t speculation: we know these players would have taken away Win Shares from MLB white players if there had not been absolute collusion to exclude them. (We even voted one of them into the CoG with only 9.1 pWAR because the case was so evident.)
The second, regarding changing conditions, is largely handled by the nature of statistics, both the high and low heat varieties. Stats are generated in the context of the times: when we compare across eras, we aren’t comparing the absolute quality of players, we’re comparing the degree to which they excel their contemporaries. I would bet half my pension that a team composed of Cobbs, Ruths, and Big Trains, equipped with the skills they developed in their time, couldn’t compete against a .500 2024 team–maybe not even the White Sox. (Actually, I wouldn’t–I’m a financial wimp–but you get the idea.) I don’t think there could be an argument, given things like contemporary nutrition, physical education, medicine, training, and playing standards. (I do think that if you took a 5 day-old Honus Wagner and brought him up to be a ballplayer now he’d sweep the field before him, but that’s just a thought experiment. We know that training and performance standards now far exceed any that Wagner ever encountered.) So–with exceptions–when we compare across eras we’re comparing relative, not absolute value. (For the exceptions, I’ll cede the floor to nsb. It’s good we have them, because we’d have much less to argue about on HHS otherwise–and since we can recognize many of them we’re also able to factor them in to our assessments.)
For question 2 I’ll say Daniel Bard from 2020 to 2023 although he had a losing record in 2021.
Bard is correct, leading Rockie pitchers with winning records with 6 wins in 2022 and 4 wins in 2023. No Rockie pitcher with more than one start posted a winning record in either season.
Colorado used a franchise record 17 starting pitchers in 2023. The record for any club is 24, by two A’s teams more than a century apart, in 1915 (109 losses) and 2023 (112 losses).
Rolen, Simmons, Helton (if we have Walker’s inflated accomplishments, why not Helton?)
Coveleski, Williams, Abreu
For question 10 I found Rob Murphy who went from 2.74 ERA in 1989 to 6.32 ERA in 1990, a difference of 3.58.
Murphy is correct. Good sleuthing on that one.
Part 1:Guerrero, Ortiz, Minoso
Part 2: Williams, Coveleski, Abreu
Question #3: Hoyt Wilhelm did it from 1964-1969.
Wilhelm is correct.
If it helps at all, Wilhelm was a teammate, with two different clubs, of the player who is the second answer for question 7.
Second clue: Wilhelm was also a teammate, also with two different clubs, of another pitcher with the same last name as the question 7 player.
Third clue: those two teammates of Wilhelm debuted in the same season, played for three of the same franchises, but were never teammates of each other.
One more clue for the second part of question 7.
Our man holds the NL record for the longest CG in the last game of a season.
So far I have found 1, Jack Fisher from 1961-1967. His W-L record in 1965 was 8-24 which makes you wonder if that is the greatest such discrepancy.
the greatest such discrepancy.
You found him. Of the three players with those 7 consecutive sub-100 ERA+ seasons of 100+ IP, Fisher is the only one to reach 100+ IP again, breaking the streak in 1968 with a qualified 107 ERA+, then closing out his career with a forgettable 68 ERA+ in 113 IP in 1969.
That 24th loss in 1965 was a 13 inning CG in the last game of the season (and in the second game of a double-header). That is the longest CG in the NL in the last game of the season, and the 24 losses tied Fisher with teammate Roger Craig (in 1962) for the most in the expansion era.
Here are the most losses with a specified number of wins, in the modern and integration eras.
0-13 Terry Felton (1982), same
1-20 Jack Nabors (1916), 1-16 Mike Parrott (1980), Anthony Young (1993)
2-21 Joe Harris (1906), 2-19 José DeLeón (1985)
3-23 Irvin Wilhelm (1905), 3-21 Don Larsen (1954)
4-25 Ben Cantwell (1935), 4-19 Omar Daal (2000)
5-26 Happy Townsend (1904), 5-22 Roger Craig (1963)
6-25 Fred Glade (1905), 6-19: 5 players, last Patrick Corbin (2022)
7-27 Paul Derringer (1933), 7-20 Clay Kirby (1969)
8-26 Gus Dorner (1906), 8-24 Jack Fisher (1965)
9-23 Buster Brown (1910), 9-21 Mike Maroth (2003)
10-27 George Bell (1910), 10-24 Roger Craig (1962)
Criag’s two seasons and Fisher’s in the above list are three of the five seasons in the integration era with 2+ WAR, .300 W-L% or less, and 20+ losses.
If you’re wondering about the AL record for longest CG in the last game of the season, it’s a 14 IP win by Al Milnar of the Indians in 1940. That made for a certain degree of symmetry for the 1940 Indians who began the year with the only opening day no-hitter, by Bob Feller.
I thought I’d add the Hall of Stats numbers for the secondary ballot players:
Abreu 111
Boyer 117
Coveleski 127
Dawson 123
Drysdale 115
Irvin 72
Jones 127
Smith 126
Sutton 112
Williams 111
I’m having trouble completing this ballot. . . . There’s still time (but not much . . .). Does anyone want to offer some comparative arguments vis a vis Smith, Jones, and Dawson? (I have a real fondness for Boyer, but I’m not sure I can justify that vote.)
Bob,
As far as I can tell, Reggie Smith got just as much done/contribited as much as Jones and Dawson in significantly fewer opportunites/games/plate appearances. I would rank them:
1) Smith 64.5 WAR 2) Dawson 64.9 WAR 3) Jones 59.4 WAR
1) Smith 6.67 RC/27/AIR 2) Dawson 5.51 3) Jones 5.09
1) Smith 311 Rbat 2) Dawson 234 3) Jones 119
1) Smith .389 rOBA 2) Dawson .368 3) Jones .363
1) Smith 138 Rbat+ 2) dawson 121 3) Jones 112
…and in neutralized slash:
Smith .291 / .371 / .496
Andre .281 / .325 / .486
Jones .244 / .325 / .467
….. and neutralized career runs created
Smith 1320
Andre 1619
Jones 1124
The Hawk don’t walk and you really have to have an obscene belief in the power of the glove to believe that Jones is the equal of the other two….just sayin’
Bob,
Just a BTW, per the Pythagorean Theorem of William James (the baseball guy – not the philosopher and as previously explained), the Smiths beat the Dawsons with neutral pitching and fielding 96-66 in 162 head-to-head games. The other Bill James may have had the greatest comment on procrastination, anxiety and bureaucracy of all-time: “Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task”. 🙁
Well, I asked for it and got it, Paul. I need to pay attention. While my appreciation of fielding excellence is not prurient, I do place a great deal of weight on it. This is why I prefer WAR to measures that don’t factor in fielding (or fielding support for pitchers). According to WAR, Smith prevails, and by WAR/162 Smith prevails by even more (5.3 vs. 4.6 for Andruw — that’s a big margin — with Dawson at 4.0).
Andruw’s case really doesn’t rely on glovework: he was great, and I accept the dWAR rating, but he has to overcome a not-quite-near-great offense. Andruw’s case relies on being “perhaps the greatest outfielder of all time.” (The stats seem pretty clear for the eras they cover.) That is not just the value of the glove work (which must be balanced against offense); it’s the Best In Show Gold Ribbon argument. It’s a valid argument, but there still has to be a cutoff. For many years, Mark Belanger was the TZR all-time SS — he’s still only margin-of-error behind Ozzie (and 60% beyond Andruw: SS is more critical than CF). But even if Ozzie hadn’t come along, no one would argue CoG status for Belanger because, despite his 39.5 dWAR, his total WAR was just 41. The Gold Ribbon alone isn’t enough. Andruw’s 59.4 WAR absolutely validates his 24.4 (the guy also hit 51 HR in a season), but when you put him against Smith’s offense the Gold Ribbon weight is a subjective balance, and I’ll go with Smith, in spite of the obscenity of my fielding beliefs. My beliefs in the Gold Ribbon argument are only PG-13.
PS: On Irvin, I looked again at his record and saw that from the time he became an NL regular in his age-31 season, he accumulated 21.1 WAR. That’s not really as much as I’d like to see, but players in those days burned out earlier, playing and working conditions were tough in his 20s, the War, etc., etc. . . . (in other words: ‘reasons’ . . . I have a bias towards recognizing the few late-to-the-Show Negro League stars). Then I had a fairly random thought: How does that compare to Mantle? The answer is that it compares fine: Mantle compiled 19.6 in his comparable seasons. I wish I were as sure of Irvin’s greatness as I am of Satch’s, but he made the cut this round.
Don Drysdale is on the bubble (again) on the secondary ballot. He has bounced around between the two ballots for many of the rounds since he first appeared on the ballot in the class of 1936 round.
In evaluating Drysdale, don’t forget about the 5.8 bWAR that he compiled. Drsydale’s 29 career homers rank 6th among players who were primarily pitchers for their careers. Included are the 14 blasts over his first 5 seasons, which are the most to start a career among the same group.
How does that 5.1 bWAR stack up against other pitchers? I looked at career bWAR in the modern era for all players (any position) with career PA at or below a set maximum, starting at 100 PA and progressing in 50 PA increments. I had to go through 14 pitchers (Drysdale not among them) until a non-pitcher showed up at the top of the list. Who do you suppose that player is?
I’m not sure I understand the exercise, Doug. It sounds as though up until the threshold of career PA <750, the leaders in pWAR are all pitchers (and are not Drysdale, who I think actually had 5.8 bWAR). So the question would be what player who is not a pitcher has the highest bWAR among all players with career PAs in the 750-800 range — is that it?
Having been a big Drysdale fan from his arrival in Brooklyn (my earliest radio memory is of Vin Scully saying, during a disruption on the field, that “this young pitcher can be something of a hothead,” or words close to it), I have a fan’s interest in seeing Drysdale in the circle. And I argued strongly for paying attention to batting states in advocating Wes Ferrell’s case. But Ferrell’s bWA/162 rate is almost twice Drysdale’s (3/3 to 1.7), and his pWAR rate was higher too.
Moreover, there’s a narrative issue with Drysdale. Drysdale put up great numbers, but he did not perform well in critical games. We all knew this at the time (it had been true of Newk too, to a degree), but Bill James documented it in some detail . . . I just went to check and it was indeed he. He put Drysdale’s record in big games during pennant drives at 0-13, with no tough losses. He contrasted him with Bob Gibson. I think it may be easier to see if you compare Drysdale and Koufax in Championship WPA. Despite having the shorter career, Koufax ranks 7th all-time in cWPA while Drysdale ranks 77th. I don’t have a good feel for cWPA and wouldn’t place too much emphasis on it generally, but since (a) Koufax and Drysdale basically had overlapping careers on a single team and (b) the result confirms through a statistical algorithm something we already know subjectively about the two, it seems like a reasonable proxy measure.
Thanks for that correction about Drysdale’s bWAR, which is 5.8 as you said.
Good thought about cWPA. For the four World Series that Koufax and Drysdale both pitched in, it was basically a wash for three of them, but a huge difference in 1965 (highlighted below) when Koufax pitched to a 0.38 ERA in three starts. including shutouts in games 5 and 7, while Drysdale was 1-1 in two starts with a 3.86 ERA. Here are their cWPA for the World Series of 1959, 1963, 1965 and 1966.
Drysdale___9.7%, 15.2%, -8.4%, -8.2%
Koufax_____7.5%, 12.1%, 70.5%, -7.0%
What is more telling is that Alston preferred Koufax on two days rest for game 7, rather than Drysdale on 3 days rest, with both coming off of CG wins in their prior start (though Drysdale had allowed solo homers to Oliva and Killebrew, but nothing else, in his game).
More generally, here are their regular season records (W-L-ND) for starts when the Dodgers scored:
4 runs or more – Drysdale: 148-21-66, Koufax: 99-17-52
3 runs or less – Drysdale: 55-139-36, Koufax: 60-68-18
2 runs or less – Drysdale: 31-109-23, Koufax: 31-51-12
Drysdale started 465 games to Koufax’s 314. About half of that difference are the three seasons Drysdale played after Koufax retired. The other half is that Drysdale was a horse, pitching 200+ IP every year from age 20 to 31. Koufax pitched 200 IP only 5 times, the first not until age 25. However, to your point, Bob, seems pretty clear that when facing a tough opponent with runs likely to be scarce, Dodgers would much prefer to have Koufax on the hill.
As for the exercise I described, actually you have to go a lot further than 750 maximum PA before someone other than a pitcher leads in career WAR. Almost 3 times as far, in fact. That surprised me, as I would have expected some position player to have a good start to his career and then have had that career aborted, tragically or otherwise, or his career just fizzled out quickly. The latter, in fact, was what happened as the player in question finished his career with less than 1/3 of his projected career WAR at age 26. It just took a lot longer (in terms of PA) than I expected for that player to show up via this exercise.
Well, on your question, the name that pops into my mind after you description is Austin McHenry. But I have no way of checking. (I assume you’re using Stathead tables . . .?)
Not McHenry.
Our man started out as a Phillie, but like his teammate Fergie Jenkins, is remembered most for his time with the Cubs.
Can’t find him. I give up. Have mercy!
Our mystery man is Adolfo Phillips, traded with Fergie Jenkins from the Phillies to the Cubs in 1966.
Here’s the list.
I see. I misread your description: “The latter, in fact, was what happened as the player in question finished his career with less than 1/3 of his projected career WAR at age 26.” I read it as ” . . . finished his career . . . at age 26.” If I’d read more carefully I probably wouldn’t have realized you meant Phillips (I’m not good at these puzzles), but I wouldn’t have been certain that there was no one fitting the description.
I remember Phillips, but did not recall the disappointing early end to his career. Another tale of Durocher’s damage.
Sorry if that was confusing. Phillips’ 11.8 career WAR after his age 26 season, after season totals of 3.6, 6.0 and 2.3, produced a career projection of 41 WAR by Bill James’ “Favorite Toy” method. Instead, Phillips ended up at 13.7 WAR.
On that ’65 Series, the reason Koufax was on 2 days rest in the first place was because he had declined to pitch Game 1 because it fell on Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement. (Hank Greenberg had done something similar in the 1930s.) Drysdale got bombed. Koufax pitched Game 2 but fell behind 1-2 in the sixth (one run unearned, but the sixth inning had gone badly for him, with three hits in a row–the only runs Koufax allowed in his three starts), and he was pulled for a pinch hitter in the seventh. The pinch hitter was Drysdale!
On 9/10/34 the Tigers were currently in first place battling the Yankees for the pennant. That day was the Jewish New Year and the Tigers had a scheduled game with the Red Sox. Hank Greenberg, who was religious, was torn over whether or not to play. He consulted with a Detroit rabbi and the ruling was that because it was a joyous Holiday he could play. He did and ended up with the 2 HRs for a 2-1 victory. The headline of the Detroit Free Press on the following day was “Happy New Year Hank” in Yiddish.
The Detroit Free Press also published this, Richard, which I expect you know:
Came Yom Kippur
By Edgar Guest
The Irish didn’t like it when they heard of Greenberg’s fame,
For they thought a good first baseman should possess an Irish name;
And the Murphys and Mulrooneys said they never dreamed they’d see
A Jewish boy from Bronxville out where Casey used to be.
In the early days of April not a Dugan tipped his hat
Or prayed to see a “double” when Hank Greenberg came to bat.
In July the Irish wondered where he’d ever learned to play.
“He makes me think of Casey!” Old man Murphy dared to say;
And with fifty-seven doubles and a score of homers made,
The respect they had for Greenberg was being openly displayed.
But on the Jewish New Year, when Hank Greenberg came to bat
And made two home runs off Pitcher Rhodes — they cheered like mad for that.
“Came Yom Kippur — holy fast day world wide over to the Jew,
And Hank Greenberg to his teaching and the old tradition true
Spent the day among his people and he didn’t come to play.
Said Murphy to Mulrooney, ‘We shall lose the game today!
We shall miss him on the infield and shall miss him at the bat
But he’s true to his religion — and I honor him for that!'”
My vote.
Main: Minoso, Santana, Tiant
Secondary: Coveleski, Smith, Williams
I’ve extended the deadline to see if we can attract a few more voters.
Right now, it appears we have a tie on the main ballot between Guerrero, Helton and Minoso. Also a tie on the secondary between Coveleski and Williams.
If I’ve missed your vote (I’m not seeing your Main ballot vote, Bob Eno), please let me know,
I thought I was making my vote extra prominent by surrounding it with 500 other words, Doug.
Lyons, Rolen, Minoso
Main: Minoso, Lyons, Santana.
Secondary: Coveleski, Irvin, Boyer.
This is a belated response to Paul E From four days ago concerning Walker and Helton as COG candidates:
In 4795 PAs playing for Colorado, Walker put up 48.3 WAR with an OPS+ of 147.
In 9453 PAs for the same team Helton manages 61.8 WAR with an OPS+ of 133.
Playing roughly six years for Montreal and St. Louis early and late in his career, Walker amassed an additional 24.4 WAR in 3235 PAs, a rate that betters Helton’s career rate, with an OPS+ of right around Helton’s 133 for Colorado.
The downside to Walker was that he missed a lot of playing time due to injuries. The downside to Helton was that he was about 2/3 the player Walker was.
I’d say 3/4, nsb. Their WAR/162 are 5.9 and 4.5 respectively.
I had to go back and find the comment Paul made, which referred to the inflated accomplishments of these two. The traditional stats are certainly inflated: no question. But contextualized measures like WAR and OPS+ let us see that their excellence was exaggerated but not hallucinated by Coors. It’s easy to dismiss these guys rather than adjust and see that, big-picture, both are legitimate CoG players, with Walker at just about median CoG and Helton in the bottom quartile in career value.
If Walker were a candidate on this list now I think he’d get into the Circle with ease. His WAR/162 is significantly higher than any other candidate, enough that his career, shorter than many, generated more WAR than anyone now on the either ballot. I think the big picture is enough.
Helton’s ballot profile is quite different. He’s a viable candidate, but 9 other position players on the two ballots have higher career WAR vs. 8 below If we just look at the primary ballot, 4 are higher and 6 are lower. In terms of rate, 9 are above and 6 below on both ballots and 5 above 3 below on the main ballot (Helton’s tied with Vlad and Minnie). To me, that doesn’t at all mean Helton isn’t a voting option, but I think the case has to be argued on the basis of specifics beyond the big picture, either statistical or anecdotal.
I think that among position players on the primary ballot, Allen, Guerrero, and Helton are roughly neck and neck, although Allen’s profile balances out differently. I see Rolen, Randolph, Utley, and Ashburn as in a tier above them (I might flip Randolph and Utley), and Ortiz, Sheffield, and Simmons below (and, in my view, not at CoG level). Minoso is, of course, a special case based on narrative factors (and I think some similar arguments could be made to raise Allen’s profile: I do see him as having a stronger case than Guerrero and Helton). [Note that I’ve left pitchers out here: I’ve already explained my vote for Lyons — and, in other rounds, my vote for Tiant — and recommended nsb’s balanced analysis of Santana from last year.]
The most interesting player on Paul’s ballot for me is Simmons. I have a lot of good feelings towards Simmons (we shared an alma mater for three years, and I admired his contributions beyond on-field play), but I can’t see a persuasive argument for his being on the primary ballot, much less in the Circle. I’ve seen that others disagree — I have a vague sense that at some point there was a post that provided detailed arguments for Simmons but it would have been a while ago and I’ve lost track. (It would be great if we collected a digest of arguments made for candidates so we didn’t start over again each year! After all, the premise of this whole exercise, as the late birtelcom conceived it, was that we’d use our high heat to do a better job collectively than the BBWAA voters. I’m not sure we’re holding to the mission.)
I seem to remember arguing for Walker every week for months. The ballot was stacked back then.
Main argument for Simmons is his long run of consistent production, with twelve 3 WAR seasons, same as Rodriguez, and only one less than Fisk and Bench. For brevity, I’ll confine my analysis to those four players, on the premise that if Simmons can hang with the other three, he’s probably got a pretty good CoG case.
Simmons posted those 12 seasons in a span of 13 years, the miss coming in the strike season of 1981. Rodriguez also had his 12 seasons in a span of 13 years, just missing in 2005 with 2.8 WAR. Bench’s 13 seasons were consecutive, and Fisk did his thirteen over a span of 19 years. Here are the WAR totals for those 13 year spans (I took Fisk’s best span of 13 years).
73.4 – Bench (1968-80)
59.8 – Rodriguez (1994-2006)
52.4 – Simmons (1971-83)
50.9 – Fisk (1972-84)
Bench has separated himself from the field, but Simmons is in the same ballpark with the other two
But, all that glitters is not gold. What did this group do outside of their best 13 year span.
17.6 – Fisk (3684 PA)
8.9 – Rodriguez (2533 PA)
1.7 – Bench (1062 PA)
-2.0 – Simmons (1935 PA)
Fisk and Rodriguez will still making contributions after their primes, bringing their WAR totals within shouting distance of Bench. Speaking of whom, Bench didn’t add much outside his peak, but he didn’t need to, and he didn’t prolong that decline phase needlessly. Simmons didn’t add anything outside his peak, and he prolonged that period, amounting to 20% of his career PA.
So, if you just want to judge based on peak value, Simmons has a fairly strong argument; he’s in the same territory as two undisputed all-time greats. For career value, he may still have an argument, albeit a weaker one; his 50.4 career WAR ranks 10th among modern era catchers (in line with his no. 11 JAWS ranking). Do we penalize Simmons for using up 4 years worth of PA in his decline phase and contributing less than nothing? Or, do we give him a pass on his decline phase because it’s not his fault that teams were willing to pay him to play as he did?
Fair argument, Doug. Thanks! I think you make Simmons’ best case and you don’t press it too far. Your case depends on selecting two criteria: making 3.0 WAR a significant cutoff point for “peak-season” status and using the number of seasons that’s optimal for Simmons (13) as the standard to apply to Pudge and Fisk.
If we use the JAWS 7-year peak, we get Pudge at 39.8 (3rd among catchers), Fisk at 37.5 (4th), Simmons at 34.8 (11th).
If we look at the height of each peak, we see Pudge with four straight 6+ seasons (25.5 total). Fisk has the highest season peaks (non-consecutive seasons of 7.0 and 7.3, and a two-year stretch of 12.9). Simmons’ peak involves four non-consecutive seasons of 5.0-5.5 and three others above 4.0, with a two year-peak of 10.7.
So I’d say that your frame of Peak vs. Total value is contingent on a selective definition of peak. It does, however, convey Simmons’ actual strength: he was for a dozen seasons a solid, All-Star quality catcher, making good offensive contributions (127 OPS+ over those seasons).
I would add one comment on Simmons defensively. These three are in a class together because they were catchers, and the difficulty of the position (plus its wear and tear) earns them extra credit. In terms of their quality as catchers, Pudge is #1 in career dWAR for catchers (29.6); Fisk is ranked #13 (17.1); Simmons is ranked #179 (5.2, just behind Duffy Dyer). (Not all the dWAR is at the position: Simmons caught in 1771 games, Pudge in 2427, Fisk in 2226.)
I’d say that the best CoG comparison for Simmons would actually be Piazza (59.5 WAR, 1.5 dWAR), who is very much a peak-value case (7-year peak 43.1; best years: 8.7; 7.0), although his WAR/162 is also 50% higher than Simmons. (Piazza has some PED shadows to contend with too.)
WAR/YEAR
Simmons 3.3
Schang 4.2
Rodriguez 4.4
Hartnett 4.5
Berra 4.5
Carter 5.0
Dickey 5.1
Cochrane 5.4
Bench 5.6
As soon as Wally gets in the COG, I’ll think about Ted.
One aspect of Doug’s argument that I neglected to address was this: “Do we penalize Simmons for using up 4 years worth of PA in his decline phase and contributing less than nothing? Or, do we give him a pass on his decline phase because it’s not his fault that teams were willing to pay him to play as he did?”
This is a really difficult question that we encounter repeatedly. For example, Pujols is going into the Circle easily, as he should, but although he’s a 100 WAR player, I feel he deeply undercut his value profile by drawing a huge salary for many years while effectively blocking the Angels from being a contending team by filling key offensive positions with a four-year stretch of sub-zero net WAR, 87 OPS (and WAA of -10.1 over six consecutive negative seasons). We can’t expect everyone to behave like Dave McNally, but when the big “accumulators” use their leverage as box office draws to the detriment of their teams I think it should be fair game for those making assessments of “greatness.” Given the nature of contracts now, I expect this will be a continuing issue, especially since its scale is not comparable to earlier periods in baseball (something that, ironically, McNally had a lot to do with).
Where did Pujols undercut his value?
In the minds of strangers typing about him on the internet?
He made 28 million dollars a year for playing baseball after growing up using a milk carton as a glove. Pretty good story.
It’s a fine story, Voomo, but I don’t think you’re speaking of baseball value.
Bob,
….or, how about Miguel Cabrera and that contract? But, Pujols is no worse than the 3rd best 1B of all-time, right? As far as judging athletes, how about we decide everything based on their primes? Like, are we going to rate Berbick above Ali? Marciano above Joe Louis? Of course not. Should we hold it against a major leaguer who takes a 10-year deal at 32 years of age because some owner is desperate to win? Everyone (except GM’s and owners) knows that it’s either a miracle to produce past age 38 in MLB or steroids.
Just a BTW, I took Simmons and Helton because they’re on the bubble.
I think the ground is shifting here. As I said, we can’t expect everyone to be McNally. Contracts are business relationship: Albert made a great deal and the Angels didn’t. He made ~$175M over the years he was not producing. Good for him (and from what I recall, good for the charities he established)! How does that change our assessment of his baseball record? I don’t think it should.
In previous eras, an aging star who fell off like Albert would have been released. The Angels couldn’t afford to do that given the sunk costs, so we have someone who was once superman playing at Minor League level because contract obligations and budget limits require it. I think that performance counts no matter what the underlying cause because it is performance we measure. The question is how and how much it counts.
Voomo pointed to Albert’s childhood poverty, and his rise was wonderful. But if a kid from a middle class background had an identical record would that mean we assess him as less Circleworthy?
Of course, anyone with Pujols’s peak and totals belongs in the Circle, as I indicated earlier — I hope no one thinks I’m arguing otherwise. But this was a discussion about Simmons, and one of the problems with Simmons is that he was a borderline CoG candidate and then he added on a string of past-prime years that detracted from his advanced stats while adding to some traditional stats. The question is then: does this place him below the borderline or do we just count his prime? I think it all counts and we balance prime against totals. Doug made the argument based on prime alone (although he acknowledged it for what it was) — Simmons is borderline Circleworthy if prime is all you look at (I think he’s a bit under) — and then you’ve got the poor years to deal with.
And, Paul, if you’d said you were voting for Simmons and Helton as strategic votes to keep them on the ballot the issue would not have come up. You argued for Helton by using a chain argument: if we grab the Walker link we might as well take the adjacent link in Helton. It’s not an argument I think is valid (ultimately, everyone gets in), and I don’t think Helton is the adjacent link. But I’d like to know more about how you found the close normalized slash lines for the two. I take their very different WAR rates as embedding normalization.
Bob,
“But I’d like to know more about how you found the close normalized slash lines for the two.”
1) Go to any player page on Baseball Reference
2) Hover over “Finders & Advanced Stats”
3) On the far left under “Batting”, click “Advanced Stats”
4) Scroll all the way down to “Neutralized Batting”
A world of objectivity awaits……
Thanks, Paul. I had not discovered this. I see it now and I’ll read up on its features.
NSB,
No the downside to Larry is a .280/.378/.503 slash line away from Colorado that was exceeded by roughly 20 players that accumulated at least 3000 career plate appearances and played from 1985-2010. Larry “neutralized” to a 4.25R environment on Baseball Reference slashes .289/.373/.522 creating 105 runs/162G. This is not ridiculously superior to Helton’s .287/.381/.488 that creates 103R/162. FWIW, Helton played more games in the “Humidor Era” at Colorado than Walker as well. Heavens to Chuck Klein, Walker slashed .380/.460/.709 in 2531 PA’s at Colorado with a .385 BABIP. I don’t think even Ted Williams at Fenway or Musial at Sportsman’s Park come close to this. Walker’s tOPS+ is 141 at Colorado, Helton’s 119. If this doesn’t convince you of the effects of Coors, check out Ellis Burks’ 392 total base season.
To Paul’s point, I recall discussion at HHS, maybe 10 or more years ago, that Coors was so unique, especially pre-humidor, that the normalization methods for WAR etc. may not work quite as well in the case of Coors as with other ballparks. The suspicion was that these normalization methods still left Coors values slightly inflated relative to other ballparks. I think the discussion was along the lines of Andy (when he was working for B-R) relaying this information to us and advising that Sean Forman was working on a tweak to the normalization methods to bring Coors more into line with other ballparks.
Anyway, that was 10+ years ago, probably. And since there was awareness then that this was an issue, I think it’s a safe bet that whatever tweaking might have been needed has happened. FWIW, here are the 162 game WAR and neutralized slash numbers for some of the star players from the 1920s/30s to compare to Walker.
Walker: 5.9, .289/.373/.522/.895
———————————————
Ott: 6.6, .296/.405/.518/.923
Foxx: 6.4, .297/.397/.556:/.953
Waner: 4.8, .321/.391/.455/.846
Simmons: 5.0, .308/.342/.493/.845
Goslin: 4.7, .293/.366/.466/.829
Terry: 5.3, .327/.378/.484/.862
Klein: 4.3, .299/.357/.506/.862
A note about Chuck Klein. I used to believe that Klein was just a Baker Bowl aberration in a high-hitting era, which is what Paul implies. But when you peel off the park effect, his first six years, coming up and starring with the Phillies, were truly terrific: like a six-year long pre-War Pete Reiser. In those six seasons, Klein piled up park-normalized 34.3 WAR, or 6.8/162G with 160 OPS+. The problem with Klein isn’t that the Baker Bowl made a non-star shine like a star, it’s that after a good start as a Cubbie in Wrigley, he tore a leg muscle at the end of May, was never the same, but did not retire. A big draw, the Phillies brought him back and he kept on going for another decade, full or part-time, at a 2.1 WAR/162G clip.
So Klein is like a cross between, say, Walker (a real star with park-effect overinflated traditional stats) and, say, Simmons, whose back half seriously dented his front-half record. Unfortunately, the back half involved more games than the front.
An interesting trivia fact concerning Klein. His was only the second four home run game post-1900, after Gehrig’s. It happened not at the Baker Bowl, nor did it happen pre-injury, but in July of 1936 at cavernous Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. The Pirate hurlers allowed only 19 other HRs at home that year.
Very cool find, nsb! I see the last homer was a tenth-inning tie-breaker, and that he had no other multi-HR games in ’36.
Bob,
Throughout his career in the NL, Klein absolutely raked at Baker Bowl. To the tune of over 13 runs per 27 outs made. And he is not much above average on his splits elsewhere in the NL.
Well, I’m not sure what to make of that, Paul. Once you’ve normalized Klein’s stats according to all the parks he played in, home and away (which is part of the WAR calculation), the fact that the Baker Bowl was his home park is no longer a factor. And the fact that the Baker Bowl was a high-run environment doesn’t mean that players are penalized for hitting better than other players in that environment.
When I was a kid, one of the things I knew about Ebbets Field was that Joe Adcock crushed it when he played there. The park absolutely fit his strengths. (I thought B-R had a table of park-by-park stats for players, but I can’t find it to get the specifics — do you know where it is?) No one ever said, “Adcock’s performance in Ebbets Field doesn’t count as much because the park is clearly one he is able to adapt to perfectly.” If Klein was an exceptional Baker Bowl player, so be it. His value there exceeded the norm by a lot and elsewhere it exceeded by less. Once WAR normalizes it all it doesn’t matter, and for traditional stats the issue is simply the run environment of his home park, not how much better or worse than others he could exploit it.
In terms of the neutralized figures I used below, which you pointed me to, here’s a comparison between Klein and Reggie Jackson:
……………….N-OPS……..N-RC/162……..dWAR/162……….WAR/162
Jackson………..875…………..107……………….-0.9…………………4.2
Klein…………….862…………..107……………….-1.1……………….4.3-4.4
(Because of some glitch I don’t understand there’s a gap in the final 41 PA for Klein, so his WAR/162 is incomplete/blank. Apart from that gap it’s 4.4, but those 41 PA were abysmal, so they might have dragged him down a notch.)
Nothing in those normalized figures says to me that Klein was way out of Jackson’s class in terms of productive quality, and Jackson is a mid-level Circle member. His main advantage over Klein is longevity. And, of course, I’m not arguing that Klein should be in the Circle. I’m only arguing that he was, in fact, a star-quality player during his first six seasons.
Bob,
Why don’t we compare apples-to-apples and use the approximate same number of games for each player? Here’s Jackson from age 23-34; 1969-1980:
N-OPS…..N-RC/162….WAR/162 d/WAR/162 N-PA……N-Games
.931…………123……………6.1 ………..-0.5…………7,398……..1,745
Compared to the Hoosier Hammer’s entire career:
.862…………107……………4.35……….-1.1………….7,270……..1,842
The above shows that Jackson created 15% more runs per 162 games as well as 40% more WAR. This is probably why Autry overpaid for Jackson as he entered his decline phase…
Here’s a reason, Paul:
Why don’t we compare apples-to-apples and use the approximate same number of games for each player? Here’s Jackson from age 29-41; 1975-1987 (1746G), with Klein below (1753G):
N-OPS…….N-RC/162…..dWAR/162…..WAR/162
.848……………100…………..-1.4…………….3.0
.862……………107…………..-1.1…………….4.3
The answer to “Why not?” is that the method stacks the numbers by building them on an unlevel field: Jackson’s latter years, eliminating his strongest and including his weakest vs. all of Klein’s career. The answer to your question is that the method stacks the numbers by building them on an unlevel field: Jackson’s prime years, eliminating his weakest and including his strongest. Why would anyone see either as apples-to-apples simply because the game totals are comparable?
Bob,
My point is that we still evaluate players based on their primes. Like, no one cares if Willie Mays stunk with the Mets or Hank Aaron did a favor and went back to Milwaukee with the Brewers and was mediocre? No one here or elsewhere mentions how Clemente was overmatched (no power/no walks) and hit like a middle infielder those first five years of his career (92 OPS+). Should we compare the mediocre years of each player and use that as a method to decide who is the greater player? The above numbers I presented, I believe, show why the rest of the universe believes Jackson is superior to Klein.
Of course Jackson is superior to Klein. But it’s not based on a comparison of primes and it’s certainly not based on a comparison of the prime of one player to the prime + decline of another. My interest was in illustrating that the numbers you were recommending as “objective” suggest that equivalence.
Mays and Aaron had brief declines. Mays had 20 strong seasons before a decline of ~150G. Aaron had 21 strong seasons before his 22G with the Brewers. Clemente took years to come into his own but bought that time by his outstanding fielding (the last three of those five seasons he contributed 2.4 dWAR/162). A player producing 2.7 WAR/162 over those five seasons is not a drag on his team. (And, of course, we all know the story of how Clemente was rushed to Majors after Rickey stole him from Brooklyn. In the same period, Koufax was flailing for the Dodgers because of the Bonus rule. We understand these things just as we understand Albert’s $175m contract. It’s part of the narratives.)
If we discount Simmons’ first two cups of coffee (I assume we’re actually talking about Simmons here), he has 12 of 13 seasons with production levels between strong and above average. That’s his prime: 52.1 WAR in 12 seasons, a rate of about 4.7/162G for 1765 games. Then we have 691 other games with about -2.0 WAR/162G. That’s amost 30% of his career at Minor League performance level. If no one cares then I’m alone in the view that this is an important factor in evaluating Simmons, but that’s my view. Especially so because I think Simmons is not a slam-dunk CoG selection on the basis of those 12 solid seasons alone.
Bob,
I’ve got Simmons finishing out 502 games (1984-’88) with a TOTAL of -2.3 WAR for those years ages 34-38 (-0.75/162G). On the decline I’m referring to ‘consecutive seasons’. As far as Jackson above, those years from 1969 thru 1980 were consecutive. My thought was that Jackson contributed more in a similar amount of games than Klein ever played, plain and simple. If you want to say that Klein’s best five consecutive years (1929 – ’33) are the standard, I’m fine with that. Klein certainly impressed whomever was doing the MVP voting as he finished 11th, 4th, 2nd, 1st, and 2nd in those season despite playing for some very bad teams.
Yeah, I made a mistake by writing WAR/162, rather than WAR. Sorry. I picked more broadly because you’d had Clemente at the start and Mays/Aaron at the end, and Simmons’ peak had an interruption in ’81. Again, I wasn’t arguing for an equivalence between Klein and Jackson at all. I was pointing out that the stats you chose implied one. It seems problematic to rely on them. (And, again, my original point about Klein was only that his initial six seasons were actually great and not just a mirage.)
In the other case we were discussing, Pujols, the dead-end stretch was 650 games at 0.1 WAR, rising above replacement only because he tagged on that surprise revival of 2.1 WAR when he returned to St. Louis. It’s not that different from Simmons. But it’s just tarnish on silver for Albert because of the scale of his earlier years, with 101 WAR and 8 straight 7.0+ years, all but one above 8.4. It’s the sort of issue that would matter if we were, say, choosing between Albert and Joe Morgan.
Coors, of cooorse, and the fabulous Baker Bowl are the outliers for positive batting outcomes, but no one seems to care much about another park that goes pretty far in the same direction, if home/road batting averages are a legitimate measure. Yes, Klein batted .067 better at home than away, and Walker .070, including a fair number of games played on other teams, but here’s a list of players who don’t fall amazingly short of their marks, all for one franchise, over the course of about eighty years:
Ted Williams–.033
Bobby Doerr–.055
D. DiMaggio–.050
Yaz————-.042
Jim Rice——.043
W. Boggs—–.052
Big Papi——.038
Williams and Ortiz, probably by being left handed batters, benefitted the least.
Does anyone want to argue that Boggs, Yastrzemski, and Williams are overrated COG members for taking advantage of the park they played in?
The point is—Klein, Walker, Helton did their best to play the game as well as they could in whatever park they found themselves, and that they excelled beyond any other players who had the same opportunity ought to be a positive mark for them, not a source of denigration. It isn’t as if they made the choice of what home venue was to their liking.
NSB,
Per Baseball Reference, I believe Larry did actually choose Colorado:
November 14, 1984: Signed by the Montreal Expos as an amateur free agent.
October 24, 1994: Granted Free Agency.
April 8, 1995: Signed as a Free Agent with the Colorado Rockies.
Interestingly enough, he probably would have gladly signed with a better Phillies club (1993 NL pennant winners) except Philadelphia made the mistake of thinking Gregg Jeffries was the better ballplayer and gave him 4/yrs/$20M on a discount in December 1994. I don’t recall if Walker’s reps were asking for a boatload more but he got 5 yrs/$25M from Colorado but not until April 8, 1995.
Years ago, Bill James pointed out that Fenway actually benefited LH batters more since a lot of lazy, opposite field fly balls turned into doubles off the Green Monster. As far as Williams and Ortiz not following suit, it probably has a lot to do with them being dead-pull hitters?
I believe there are some “spreads” in Ron Santo’s home/away splits (tOPS+ 120 at Wrigley) as well? Some of these guys, if you doubled their away stats, maybe they never get into Cooperstown. Maybe Santo is one?
As far as Larry’s 141 tOPS+ in Colorado, Klein has probably the greatest career spread of anyone imaginable at 148 tOPS+. To get a better idea of Baker Bowl’s ‘affect’, in 1929, Lefty O’Doul managed a .453/.515/.689 at home. Still, O’Doul only clocks in at 121 tOPS+ at Philadelphia as he still managed a .398 BA for the year
From what you say, presumably you’re aware that Walker signed for the money, not Coors Field, which had its first opening day later that month of April 1995. Of course, he may have been prescient, or gone to a fortune teller to locate the easiest park to hit in, but “Follow the Money” is what I’m seeing, in an un-prescient way, as his reason for picking the Rockies.
No fortune teller needed…..more runs were scored at Mile High in 1994 than any other NL park. Roughly 90 more…. in a strike-shortened season of ~114 games. But, being Canadian, maybe he preferred Colorado with that whole Rocky Mountain thing. It certainly played in his favor in the end.
Here’s pretty inconclusive barrage of stats. I’ve wondered whether they were worth posting, but perhaps others can make more of them than I.
Paul pointed me towards the Neutralized Batting stats available on B-R and I thought as a way of getting a feel for them I’d pick a few simple numbers to apply to the players on our ballots. I chose two rate statistics that reflect batting performance in a park-neutralized setting: Neutralized OPS (N-OPS) and Neutralized Runs Created per 162 Games (N-RC/162. In order to have some balancing sense of defensive contributions I lined them up with dWAR/162. I added WAR/162G as a control. If park-neutralized productivity and consideration of defense doesn’t match up to WAR/162 (sometimes they seem to, sometimes not), there’s a question about how these types of figures should relate and how either is aligned with intuitions. Here are the numbers I came up with (hope they line up ok):
Primary:
……………….N-OPS……..N-RC/162……..dWAR/162……….WAR/162
Allen……………942…………129……………….-1.5………………5.4
Vlad…………….900…………117……………….-1.3………………4.5
Papi…………….900…………113……………….-1.4………………3.7
Randolph……..735…………..81……………….1.5……………….4.9
Sheff……………890…………112……………….-1.7..…………….3.8
Rolen…………..829…………..97……………….1.7……………….5.6
Ashburn……….769…………..91……………….0.4……………….4.7
Helton………….869…………103……………….-0.4………………4.5
Minoso…………834…………100……………….-0.5………………4.5
Simmons………794…………..91……………….0.3……………….3.3
Utley…………….806………….88……………….1.4………………..5.4
(Pujols………….907…………121……………….0.2)………………5.3
Here are two comps for Helton:
Walker………….895………….105………………0.2……………….5.9
R. Smith……….867………….106………………0.2……………….5.3
Here are two lower tier CoG comps for Simmons:
Dickey………….819……………91………………0.9………………..5.1
Piazza………….908………….117………………0.1………………..5.0
This what a superman looks like:
T. Williams…..1.065…………148………………-0.9……………….8.6
And two above-median CoG non-supermen:
Chipper J………895………….114………………-0.1……………….5.5
Boggs…………..842………….108………………0.9………………..6.1
Of course, these are all career stats and don’t account for peak value or recognize longevity.
Bob,
I guess Allen and Reggie Smith are the superior of the guys not in the Circle. Here’s some neutralized numbers for Allen versus a couple of “stars’ of an earlier era with somewhat similar career PA’s and games played:
………Games………PA’s………BA……..OBA……..SLG…….RC/162
Allen…1754……….7476……..302……..390………552……….129
Joe D..1815……….7813……..309……..382………551……….130
Mize….1977………7627………305……..389………549……….116****
**** if we use ~690 PA’s in lieu of 162 games, Mize creates 129 runs (lots of pinch-hitting and platooning with NYY at end of career).
As far as oWAR:
Allen 6.5/162g
Joe D 6.9/162g
Mize 6.45/690 PA
I’m not sure this tells us anything new about Allen, Paul. It certainly doesn’t tell the full story. These guys played in the field and just doubling up on RC/162 and oWAR/162 doesn’t seem to brighten the light. Allen was a fielding liability (-1.5/162) while DiMaggio was added value as a fielder (0.3/162). As you know, there’s a school of thought that sees fielding as important. Joe D’s WPA/162 vs. Allen’s is 7.4 vs. 5.4. They are not close when compared in the round. (It would interesting to reexamine Mize but he’s such a different kind of player I don’t want to get into those weeds now.)
Moreover, Allen’s career was short: 15 seasons, 11 productive (3 above 7.0 WAR). Joe’s career was even shorter (13 seasons), but 12 were productive (4 above 7.0) and in evaluating him we don’t ignore the fact that three full seasons at prime ages, 28-30, were lost to the War — that’s a huge hit. Against that we might penalize DiMag for playing at the height of the Negro Leagues without facing their talent. We could also factor in Allen’s famously corrosive clubhouse role, while acknowledging that the way he was treated was a mitigating context.
The overall picture, as opposed to an isolated focus on batting, is the reason Allen has not yet made it into the Circle. I’ve voted for him in the past, but this round I think Rolen (fielding counts) and Lyons have stronger cases, and while the neutralized figures confirm Allen’s strong suit, this is information we already have at the same level of clarity.
Bob,
If this “Circle of Greats” exercise is about 5-tool players and 5-tool players only, I think we may have exhausted all entries. Rolen was a great fielder and well above average hitter before injuries (back while sliding, shoulder running into Heep Sop Chou (sic) in the 1st base line and another shoulder injury while fielding in the 3b line and getting run over) limited him. There aren’t too many ML’ers with Rolen’s profile of oWAR, dWAR, and overall WAR (Brooks, Ozzie, ?). But, he didn’t remain a very good hitter after the injuries. We”ve got Ichiro ‘inducted’ and he didn’t take a walk nor hit for power – certainly not 5 tools. The whole purpose of all these arcane statistics is to evaluate talent and if McCovey and Killebrew can’t run, nobody is going to prefer Dan Driessan at 1B. Part of that evaluation is whether the guy with holes in his game but does some things extremely well (Dick Allen?) is better than the all-around guy who does things above average (Reggie Smith?).The perfect ballplayers/inner circle Hall of Famers are few and far between….very few and very far. Bill James once said, “I’ll take the banger” in evaluating Killebrew over Carew. Evaluations of that sort (right or wrong) are what I’m referring to.
A five-tool threshold is not my point at all. My point is that everything counts and we have to weigh the balances. The Allen/Smith contrast is a really good illustration. I think it’s completely non-obvious which one should have priority. They represent two different ways of providing comparable value. Allen’s very high peaks made him a headline player (in the positive direction) and that’s a component of the narrative context that would probably be decisive for me, but only advanced stats reveal how close this comparison is, and that’s what makes them interesting.
If William James preferred Killebrew I think it must have been the product of some variety of religious experience. I can’t see it in the stats. I supported Killer for the Circle, but not a chance I’d pick him over Carew. It’s not because Killebrew couldn’t run; it’s a matter of the volumes of their various contributions.
Bob,
Killebrew is the better hitter and that’s about the extent of his superiority by most of the metrics. I imagine that was the source of his opinion. Regarding Allen and Smith, the former is an all-time great hitter, the latter is a good all-around player. Allen’s biggest problem is he missed 293 games in his prime from 1966-1974. During that period he amassed 6.0WAR/162. If he plays in 240 of those missed games, He’s at about 70 WAR for his career. Kind of a series of different injuries/suspensions but unlike Koufax not career ending at any point.
I try to consider the ultimate purpose of players accumulating these wonderful numbers – they are playing for a team that is trying to win games.
If we get into a spiritual debate about the flawed banger vs the 5-tooler, I usually try to imagine an entire offense of that player.
Which team would win more often, a field of 8 Killebrews or 8 Carews?
That is perhaps unfair, as, because it is a team effort, on a well-balanced team a player can contribute in his unique role
(Im looking at you, Willie Randolph, hitting that grounder to the right side with Rickey on 2nd).
But I still tend to want that field of Carews.
Bob,
Sorry, just noticed the “WILLIAM James” reference. Nice ! 🙂
This round I voted for Lyons, Rolen, and Minoso, saying I was going to think further about Minoso. He is on the bubble and Voomo made a plea for him, backed by some stats from Doug. I stuck with that decision over the original vote-change deadline, but with Doug’s extension there’s a chance to think further, and the exchanges with Paul this round have brought Dick Allen’s claims back into focus. Because Allen’s guaranteed to be on the ballot for years, Minnie has a strategic advantage, but I wanted to look more closely at his case.
Minoso’s basic numbers do not make a strong case: 53.3 WAR; 4.4 WAR/162G (compare Allen: 58.7 / 5.4). That’s very solid but his WAR total is lower than any non-catcher position player (and all but two position players) in the CoG. Obviously, to be a serious CoG prospect he needs arguments outside the simplest stats. Voomo pointed to Minoso’s exceptional post-MLB career in Mexico and Doug fleshed out some details. I’m not able to judge the stats because I have no sense of league comparability (although B-R rates most of that play at AAA level). But before going to Mexico Minoso had compiled a .720 OPS with Indianapolis, and that suggests the Mexican leagues may not actually have been as challenging as AAA. In any event, remarkable as Minoso’s longevity in pro ball was (he drew a walk at age 79!), I don’t think it’s a valid factor for CoG consideration. On the other hand, the impact of segregation on Minoso’s career is a factor that we have accepted as relevant under some conditions.
Minoso established himself as a Negro League star in his second season, at age 23 (1947), but didn’t appear as a regular until 1951, at age 27. He was an instant sensation, with a 157 OPS and league leads in triples and SB. That level of play indicates that he was ready earlier. Bill Veeck had brought him up in 1949 for a cup of coffee and Veeck would not have farmed him out due to racial bias. It was probably due to the fact that he arrived as a third baseman, a position which the Indians had solidly filled with Ken Keltner, coming off a 6.0 WAR season, and then when Keltner slipped, Al Rosen was waiting in the wings. Minnie didn’t show enough in his brief May tryout to stick with the team (where he was out of position in RF), and the result was a two-year delay that may not have been due to bias in Cleveland, but was piled on top of the delay that segregation had caused. (Minoso was Cuban and MLB scouted in Cuba, but only white players.)
The bottom line is that Minoso was a 27 year-old rookie who debuted in peak-career form, and a combination of factors that include segregation probably knocked off comparably precocious results that he could have compiled after his first year as a star in the Negro Leagues, his age 23 season. If that second season with the New York Cubans had been with a comparable AAA club, he would surely have had his rookie year in 1948, not 1951. So what we need to consider is the lost WAR value in his age 24, 25, and 26 seasons. (There is a kicker to all this: Minoso’s birth date is actually unclear, and those might have been his age 26, 27, 28 seasons. I’m not sure there’s a way to factor that in.)
My basic thought is that it would seem reasonable to grant Minoso at least another 12-16 WAR if those years had been in the Big Leagues. His ’51 season was 5.5 WAR, and that would have involved some normal rookie adjustments pushing against full demonstration of value. If he’d come up for good in 1948 (when a white player likely would have, based on Minnie’s 1947 record), we might have expected rising WAR totals reaching to something over 5.5 by 1951. Moreover, even if Veeck (and Greenberg, his GM) had no racial bias in sending Minnie down and the problem was a third base glut, it’s also true that there was almost no trade market in 1949 for a Black Cuban player in the Majors. Ultimately, the Indians traded Minoso in 1952, as soon as he’d proved himself, because he didn’t fit their roster needs. But 1949 wasn’t 1952. In ’52 Minoso became the first Black White Sox player (although not the first Black Sox player!).
So we have the real life result of 53.3 WAR and a projected level in a non-segregated world in the 65-70 range. Minoso’s proven durability (in his prime, ages 27-37, he averaged 149G/yr in a 154 game schedule) suggests that more MLB playing time in his younger years wouldn’t have shortened his career, and, in any case, he was playing full-time in the Negro Leagues and Minors.
There’s more to discuss about Minoso’s actual performance, beyond WAR. He was one of a group of players bringing the stolen base back to baseball (though not at post-Aparicio levels), but his CS rates were awful (managers in the ’50s did not understand how important that was) and he was not a particularly good (or bad) left fielder (where he wound up). He was really exciting to watch, even in his later years with the White Sox (which is when I saw him). Energy.
So for this round I’m going to stick with Minoso as my third vote. It seems an easy call to keep him on the ballot. It would take more thought and some conversation with different viewpoints to feel confident about a vote that could put him in the Circle — but I don’t think he would be out of place there.
Well–here it is.
I’ve refrained from making this comment for a long time, but this year’s impasse (or the lack of interest in voting or participating in the discussions) makes it seem like the moment has come.
There’s a basic flaw in the Circle of Greats rules. They apparently insist on electing the same number of new members per year as the Hall of Fame.
These strictures back voters into a corner. As much as I venerate Richie Ashburn as a wonderful player of an unusual type for his era, I don’t think he belongs in the COG. I have a strong bias for Ashburn, having met him when I was a teen in circumstances retailed here years ago, and if sentiment were enough I’d generate a vote for him.
But I don’t think he’s any better as a candidate than Allen, Guerrero, Randolph, Lyons, Tiant, Rolen, Minoso, Boyer, Coveleski, Irvin, Smith, or Doby, who isn’t even under consideration, and I don’t think any of them should be elevated at the expense of denying the others.
The fact, is, these players all have varying strengths balanced by varying drawbacks that make them questionable to the point that practically no one wants to commit to raising campaign on their behalf. Plus, their collective line of equality falls just a little short of what’s needed.
If Pujols is the only player who meets the criteria this year, and I think he is, then why not collapse the voting into one event and admit that the rules are faulty in this regard. The COG is meant to be a MORE exclusive enshrinement than the HOF, but now that the absolute cream of the crop of retired players have been inducted, ending with Wallace last year, doesn’t it seem more in keeping with the spirit of the award to take a regrettable pass on borderline candidates? Or to create a second tier? Who says the rules can’t be adjusted?
nsb, I think this is a good issue to raise, and it dovetails with the issue you mention in passing at the outset of how low participation has fallen. I’ve thought about raising these questions, but several factors have kept me from doing so. The first is really simple: The formula that our late friend birtelcom (Bruce Regal) developed has worked extremely well for many years, and it’s unclear that we can improvise an improvement. The other questions relate to what I think are analyses of why we’ve encountered this problem — every time I’ve thought about saying that we seem to be forcing ourselves to reduce the quality of the CoG, the amount of work involved in figuring out whether this is so has been more than I could undertake. Here are some thoughts, and to make things simple enough to handle, I’ll just use total bWAR (position players only) to illustrate, stipulating that this is not the basis on which we should make actual decisions.
If you look at the range of CoG position players now the distribution looks like this:
100+ ….. 20
80-100 … 14
70-80 ….. 26
65-70 ….. 19
60-65 ….. 7
60> …….. 10
(Where I have 70-80 I actually mean 70-79.9, etc.) The 70-80 bloc is more or less median range, and 65-70 is more or less unproblematic (but not shoo-ins) for the CoG. Our current two lists, plus Albert, include 19 candidates arrayed like this.
100+ ….. 1
80-100 … 0
70-80 ….. 1
65-70 ….. 1
60-65 ….. 11
60> …….. 6 (2 affected by segregation)
Add in that there are 4 in the 60-65 range whose total is 64.2-64.9; really on the cusp of unproblematic (and only a point or so below Randolph’s 65.9, the only member of the 65-70 class). And, of course, we have pitchers who fall within the normal CoG range too (as CC will too), but only one with pWAR over 70.
So why are we stuck? I think the problem is not so much that there aren’t valid candidates as that the band of competition has contracted to the lower CoG range, such that while individual candidates fit in within the distribution we’re accustomed to, the cumulative effect is to lower the curve. We’re left splitting our (few) votes among a large number of roughly similar candidates just above and below the established CoG threshold (which could easily result in an outlier choice with weak credentials slipping in. And the major questions are: Is this a product of changes in MLB, such that the WAR curve is flattening, and if it is, what do we do about that? Are we going to see fewer and fewer players in the 80+ range and more and more in the 60-low 70s range each era from now on? Does that mean we redefine Greatness or start closing the Circle?
I think this is the sort of analysis we need to do before changing the birtelcom rules in too fundamental a way.
Bob
“I’ll just use total bWAR (position players only) to illustrate, stipulating that this is not the basis on which we should make actual decisions.”
Funny thing about that WAR fellah, I have to believe that even the ‘astute’ baseball fan had no idea just how good Grich was without WAR. But with WAR’s influence, Grich was a slam dunk for the COG. But, why not Randolph? He took a ton of walks but lacked power? I dunno….
By the same token, let’s do our darnedest, Bobaloo, not to turn this into the Hall of WAR. Perhaps fewer entries like NSB suggests? It’s kind of ironic that birtlecom’s concept was born of the fact that there are many an undeserving, enshrined hero in Cooperstown (friends of Frankie Frisch, etc…) but here we are ‘stretching’ and ruminating over, perhaps, the undeserving as well for our CoG
Scylla and Charybdis, Paul: I didn’t mean we shouldn’t use WAR (I was using it), I meant we shouldn’t use only WAR. I was trying to steer clear of nsb’s objection and sailed into yours instead.
Why isn’t Randolph a slam dunk when Grich is? Because Grich is well beyond Randolph in WAR (71.1 vs. 65.9) and his WAR/162G rate is 15% higher: 5.7 vs. 4.9. They’re in different baskets despite a general similarity of cases. (Grich wasn’t quite slam dunk, but he certainly belongs in the Circle.)
The problem we’re encountering is well illustrated by Grich vs. Randolph. Grich’s career WAR rank is #62; Randolph’s is #93. It’s crowded in there. Buddy Bell and Fred Clarke are in the intermediate area and not even on the Secondary ballot. Randolph’s WAR is the same as Snider’s, and the Duke was not a slam dunk.
For me the first question remains: if birtelcom’s model served us for so long, why does it seem to be failing now – if it is, in fact, failing? Is it a feature of the model’s structure; is it a feature of changes in the game; is it random chance and we’ve tripped over eligibility years of lesser value players; is it a function of declining participation? If we know those answers we can know whether there is actually a problem and what to do if there is one.
Bob and Paul:
Who were the most controversial candidates back when we’d have upwards of 50 voters? And what were the bones of contention? Let’s take Killebrew and Wilhelm.
Killebrew clubbed HRs and clogged the base paths, powered his teams and only stopped being an experiment in the field after he was planted at first base where his immobility could do the least harm(on).
Wlihelm’s career was long and irregular with brilliant and prosaic seasons, one brilliant as a starter. But his knuckler gave catchers as well as batters fits and allowed runners to advance on wild pitches and passed balls like no other reliever. For the Giants and the White Sox he was generally paired with another reliever, Marv Grissom and Eddie Fisher come to mind (no jokes about Debbie Reynolds and Liz Taylor, Please), but in the end he carried weight because of his productivity over a span lasting from age 29 to 49. He was also the first reliever to arouse serious consideration for the COG. Baseball Reference credits him with almost fifty pWAR, but Fangraphs gives him just 27.3.
For both players, not raging but reasoned arguments with multiple contributors went on until the pros and cons were laid out and a consensus arrived at, at least in the form of a vote.
I wasn’t one of the voters, since I don’t usually vote, but at the time I argued against both.
Nevertheless, I felt that when twenty-five or thirty people whose intelligence isn’t to be questioned disagree with me, giving reasons not based on biasses, fandom impulses, or sentiment, then I can accept being of the minority viewpoint.
What I’m getting around to is this: a consensus after long discussion among fifty or more is not the same as a vote with little discussion, and that coming from four or five at most.
Conditions have changed.
I agree this is a major issue, nsb, but I’m not sure there’s any way to resolve it. Your original argument was based on the quality of the pool and the vote requirement set by birtelcom’s rules. We can tweak the rules, but we can’t mandate participation or link is to the volume of discussion. (I’ve been concerned for a long time about posters appearing just to drop off a vote, without indicating their thinking or any engagement with others’.)
I just checked the voting and there have only been 8 participants. To my surprise, somehow Minoso has what might be an insurmountable (two-vote!) lead. While, as I may have mentioned, I voted for him, I wonder whether he was #1 on anyone’s list.
One tweak that may generate more discussion and guard against unintended results would be to ask that votes be ranked (1,2,3) with points awarded in reverse, as in MLB awards.
But I also think we have a larger issue connected with changes in baseball. It’s easy to see that pWAR totals of the past are likely gone for good, and using the current CoG as a standard may fail to capture what “Great” denotes in the future. For bWAR, my thought is that the rising standards of replacement-level players is gradually truncating the ordinary range of WAR. But I haven’t been able to undertake an analysis to see if that’s consistent with the actual data.
. . . Something went wrong in that first paragraph: “link is to the volume of discussion” is deeply poetic but not cogent. The point was about linking voting to engagement in or with discussion. Can’t do it.
NSB,
I can’t disagree with anything you’ve hypothisized. And, if Bob is correct that there is some sort of flattening of the WAR credentials, all these guys will start to appear indistinguishable from each other. Which, you have stated above in your comment concerning Ashburn. Further, I believe the field has been winnowed to such an extent that these guys are so similar in value that even a 50-person discourse might not facilitate answers or even nudge a voter in a direction as to whom might be the best candidate(s).
We’ve come a long way from birth year 1931 (Mays, Mantle, Mathews)…..
Paul, If I’m correct — and I don’t know that I am — I don’t think we should view candidates as any less worthy of the Circle. I’ve said many times that I think today’s players are, in absolute terms, the most highly skilled ever. My speculation is just that as players get better there remains less room for the best to outperform replacement level. They’d still be the best, but it would be harder to identify them in a crowd of almost equally excellent players.
So I’d disagree with the second sentence below from nsb:
“The fact, is, these players all have varying strengths balanced by varying drawbacks that make them questionable to the point that practically no one wants to commit to raising campaign on their behalf. Plus, their collective line of equality falls just a little short of what’s needed.“
I think this group may be redefining what’s needed for the era in which they played, and we’re having a tough time recognizing that a change in relative value that reduces the deltas among stat results may be a product of a general rise in absolute value.
When nsb writes, “I don’t think any of them should be elevated at the expense of denying the others,” I don’t agree — the CoG arguments have often been about choosing which of among similarly eligible candidates to admit, because the gateway only fits one at a time. This is easier to be comfortable with when the top candidates are 75 WAR players rather than 65 WAR players.
So in light of the back and forth among Paul, nsb, and me, I’m going to make a vote change after all and suggest an approach to moving forward.
Here’s the voting situation now, with 8 people voting (and, given that this is already an extended vote and no votes have been added in five days, I think 8 votes is all there will be):
5 Minoso
3 Guerrero, Helton, Lyons, Rolen, Santana
1 Ortiz, Randolph, Simmons, Tiant
0 Allen, Ashburn, Sheffield, Utley (plus Webb)
My change is to withdraw my vote for Minnie, who is currently leading with 5 votes — not because I think he shouldn’t be in the Circle, but because I think it’s premature to decide that he is. I floated what I thought was a fairly strong argument for him (although I didn’t incorporate points Voomo had made), but no one has engaged with it, and until its either challenged or supported I think it would not be responsible to have Minoso suddenly leapfrog in.
My hope is that before tomorrow’s deadline from vote changes someone else will also withdraw a vote for Minoso in a way that creates a broad 3-vote tie, sending us into a second go-round on this first 1980 round, where we can sort through the most viable candidates more carefully. In my view, the players who should be under top consideration this round, without regard to the bubble issue, are actually these:
Allen, Lyons, Minoso, Randolph, Rolen, Tiant, Utley
None of these are among the present 3-vote candidates whom I could raise into a tie with Minnie myself (I already voted for Lyons and Rolen, and the others have fewer than three votes; I’m not convinced that Guerrero, Helton, or Santana deserve election at this point). Allen and Utley have no votes: shifting my vote to either would have no effect, so I’m going to shift to Randolph and put him within striking distance of 3 votes. Ideally we might go into an overtime discussion that included as many as four top candidates.
So here’s my vote (boldfaced, to catch Doug’s attention:
I’ll just add that, like Minoso, I think there are a couple of other players whom I could see being persuaded to vote for in longer, more detailed discussion: Ashburn (nsb notwithstanding) and Santana (whose mixed case nsb analyzed very well last year).
I’ll also make a proposal that going forward, from 1980 Round 2 on, we modify birtelcom’s model by using ranked voting, awarding three points for a first-place vote and so on. This will help make Doug’s life more complicated. As a side benefit, it might increase discussion and prevent an outcome unintended by voters as a result of the very small voting pool.
On the theme of possible WAR compression, I want to note some data points taken from our CoG list, position players only. If you look at the superstar group of 100+ WAR players there are some suggestive results.
There are 20 100+ WAR Circle members. There seems to be a useful dividing line if you make a cut at 120 WAR, with 11 members above and 9 members below. Let’s ask this: Of the top 11 players, how many debuted in MLB during which decades? Here are the results, by initial decade years:
1890 …1 (Wagner)
1900 …3 (Speaker, Collins
1910 …2 (Ruth, Hornsby)
1930 …1 (Williams [1939])
1940 …1 (Musial [1941])
1950 …2 (Mays, Aaron)
1980 …1 (Bonds)
Bear in mind that we are moving from the 1890s, when there were, most years, only 12 teams – and small rosters – through the 20th century (the latest start for a CoG member is Ichiro in 2001), growing to 30 teams with large rosters (and a 162-game schedule). The early decades are way overrepresented here. Note the outlier class of the 1950s. That’s the decade when the playing field (so to speak) was remade by the addition of Black players, including Mays and Aaron, whose abilities disturbed the equilibrium. As for the outlier member of the class of the 1980s, Bonds was a 100 WAR player entering a seeming decline when, according to reports, he first took the PEDs that extended his career in spectacular fashion. We can’t know where he’d have ended up without the PEDs, but it may well be that the line of “natural” 120+ players ended with the two greatest Black stars of the 1950s, and otherwise not have gone beyond pre-War rookies.
One player is on the cusp of 120, at 117.8: ARod. You can see where that’s going, so I’m going to skip to the remaining 8 100+ players are all in the range 100.3-112.4:
1890 …1 (Lajoie)
1920 …2 (Gehrig, Ott)
1950 …2 (Mantle, F. Robinson)
1960 …1 (Morgan)
1970 …2 (Henderson, Schmidt)
Looking ahead, Pujols (class of 2001) will go in as the first non-steroid 100+ player since Henderson (class of 1979) – and Albert’s a solid 100+, since his years as a compiler didn’t move the needle on his career WAR. Looking to the future, Trout, at 86.2 (age 32) needs only to stay reasonably healthy. After him there’s Mookie Betts (69.6, age 31) . . . maybe a 50/50 chance? Then no one close enough to project, given life’s unpredictability.
On the pitching side, where we have 10 players with 100+ pWAR (out of 48 in the Circle), although the historical curve is very different because of the spate of 300-game winners in the late 20th century, I think it’s likely we will never see a 100+ pWAR pitcher again because of changes to the game. And for the almost-unicorn successful two-way players, great as Ohtani’s 43.8 after his age 29 season is, at the same age Ruth had 96 (one-way Albert had 73.8).
To validate the whole notion of WAR compression I think you’d need to crunch big numbers and this quick look is grade school arithmetic. But I think this overview does tend to suggest there may be something to the idea.
Interesting thoughts, Bob.
The preponderance of the very best players debuting 70+ years ago indicates that it was easier then for such players to be much, much better than all others. Why? In a less populous and less affluent society (than today’s) with less leisure time and much less access to advanced training opportunities, those with the greatest natural ability could dominate, as others had only limited ability (compared to today) to develop their natural abilities. Also, for athletes who wanted to have a professional career, baseball was really the only option until the mid-20th century, so there was much greater likelihood than today that the very best athletes would become ballplayers.
Today, the very best athletes will be spread amongst a few professional sports, not just one. So, the very best ballplayers today will not be the very best athletes, to the same extent as in the past. So, the ceiling today is a little lower than in the past, shrinking the gap between the most naturally gifted players and all the rest. And, with opportunities today for developing skills through advanced training techniques, that gap shrinks even more. Without the large gap that formerly existed between the best and the rest, the likelihood of 120 WAR players emerging is greatly reduced.
Doug, There’s no question that your two main points are valid (a lower percent of boys and young men participated so there were fewer top talents and they stood out more; a higher percent of top talents went to baseball vs. other sports a century ago). However, there are some countervailing factors. The talent pool is enormously broader because of the end of segregation, the internationalization of the pool (especially from Latin America), and the tripling of the US population. (That population tripling alone seems to me to roughly match the growth of the numbers of players on MLB rosters as rosters grow and expansion kicks in.)
My thought is that rises in nutrition, healthcare, and, most of all, training standards likely have greater impact on raising the MLB-level floor than a reduction in numbers of intrinsically outstanding athletes has on lowering the ceiling.
Absolutely, the floor is raised. And that also shrinks the gap between the best and the rest. Overall, there’s likely much greater uniformity in talent level in the game today than 70+ years ago.
My point about lowering the ceiling was in relation to the second tier of players; they will be closer to the level of the best players than was the case previously. In terms of absolute levels, I have to believe the entire level of competition has been raised for all the reasons you mentioned, despite the drain of better athletes to other sports.
Well! It’s been a minute since I contributed a post on here. Truth be told, I tried to visit this site around this time last year to participate in the CoG process, but I kept getting an error message when trying to load the site, no matter which browser I used. I sadly surmised that the site was no longer active. However, in the late summer I typed it in again and it popped up! I’ve found since then that for some reason I intermittently get error messages, and sometimes get those messages on one browser but not another. Not sure why.
Further to that, I read the first several days of posts on this year’s CoG thread with interest, and marked in my schedule that I should submit a vote by last Sunday, before being taken away by some unexpected life stuff. I figured I missed the first vote but would get in on round 2, only to just discover that Doug extended the deadline to today. Guess it’s better late than never.
I used to have a primary numerical process whereby I ranked the ballot based on WAR, WAA+, JAWS, and WAR/162G or /250IP, and then see where the cumulative rank spat players out, as a starting point. So I dusted off the spreadsheet and did so for this ballot, and the results were:
Rolen 5
Utley 10
Tiant 15
Lyons 21
Randolph 23
Helton 25
Allen 27
Ashburn 29
Santana 35
Sheffield 37
Guerrero 39
Minoso 47
Ortiz 51
Simmons 55
The three at the bottom of the list have some interesting potential arguments to get them higher (Minoso has been well discussed, Ortiz has consistent post-season greatness that’s not captured in those numbers, Simmons has the catcher adjustment), but ultimately I can’t quite get there on them. There are good arguments for some others too (maybe I’ll have time to flesh them out in future rounds, here’s hoping). But I think I’m there on Rolen, and I’ve often backed Tiant in this voting, so I’m inclined to do so again (maybe extra spurred by his recent passing).
My vote: Rolen, Tiant, Allen
Secondary ballot is also close, but I’m going with: Reggie Smith, Drysdale, Coveleski
With bells’ vote (hi bells!) and my vote change the other day this is where I see the totals as we approach the deadline tonight:
4 Minoso, Rolen
3 Guerrero, Helton, Lyons, Santana
2 Randolph, Tiant
1 Allen, Ortiz, Randolph, Simmons
0 Ashburn, Sheffield, Utley (plus Webb)
Ashburn and Utley are set to move to the Secondary Ballot if this result holds. I think that’s a little odd for a strong candidate like Utley, but he can form a 64.5 WAR team there with Reggie Smith. Coveleski has a two-vote lead on that ballot at the moment.
I see I double-counted Randolph in that last post. Doug’s updated tally confirms he received 2 votes (not 1). It appears we’re headed for a run-off.