hot topics

OK, I'll go first. This is a 21-name ballot, and Henderson will join it after our 2009 election.

Babe Ruth
1. Ted Williams
2. Stan Musial
Hank Aaron
Mel Ott
Frank Robinson
Rickey Henderson
3. Ed Delahanty
Reggie Jackson
Sam Crawford
4. Carl Yastrzemski
Pete Rose
Joe Jackson
Harry Heilmann
Al Kaline
Paul Waner
Tony Gwynn
5. Tim Raines
6. Jesse Burkett
7. Fred Clarke
Roberto Clemente
8. Willie Stargell
9. Al Simmons
10. Billy Williams (In my system, I have too much offensive difference to put him ahead of Stargell.)
Enos Slaughter
King Kelly? (Really not sure what to do with him)
11. Sherry Magee
Elmer Flick
Dave Winfield
12. Goose Goslin
13. Zack Wheat
14. Joe Medwick
15. Joe Kelley
Willie Keeler
16. Minnie Minoso
Dwight Evans
17. Charlie Keller (Still - it's a rather short career.)
18. Ralph Kiner
19. Jimmy Sheckard
20. Harry Stovey
Sam Thompson
21. Charley Jones (I didn't vote for him.)

Some changes since my prelim.

(Bonds)
1. T. Williams
2. Musial

No changes here, however.

(big gap)

(Rickey)
3. Delahanty (moves up from 4)
4. Yastrzemski (up from 5)--on second look, a better peak than I thought
5. Simmons (down from 3)--I realized his peak offensive years were spent in LF, not CF
6. Burkett (up from 13)--that was just a mistake of the mathematical kind

(gap)

7. Stargell (was 7)--the only 20C LFer other than T. Williams and Musial with 140+ OPS+ and even 7,000 adjPA
8. Clarke (was 15)--head-to-head with Raines moves Clarke up and Raines down, similar players but Clarke was just a better hitter
9. Raines (down from 6)--has all the extras but his OPS+ is pretty underwhelming
(Manny)

(gap)

10. C. Jones (was 20)--head-to-head with Keller and Kiner leaves no doubt that Charley was more valuable
11. Kiner (was 10)
12. Keller (stays at 14)

(gap)

13. Minoso (was 8)--also like Clarke and Raines but maybe a step slower
14. S. Magee (was 16)
15. Medwick (down from 11)--head-to-head with S. Magee flips 'em
(Belle)
16. Stovey (was 19)--great numbers but AA discount keeps him down here
17. B. Williams (was 12)--only Sheckard on this list has fewer top 10 OPS+ seasons; over-rated
18. Wheat (was 17)--head-to-head with Clarke not a pretty thing
(F.Howard)
19. Goslin (was 9)--I had a prettier picture in my mind

(gap)

(J. Rice)
20. Kelley (was 21)--the not PHoMs start here
21. Sheckard (was 18)--up 'n down, on this list those downs kinda stick out

Sunnyday, I have to ask what's going on with your ranking of Raines and the comment that he "has all the extras but his OPS+ is pretty underwhelming"?

I give you Willie Stargell's top 5 seasons by win shares: 36, 35, 29, 27, 26
I give you Tim Raines' top 5 seasons by win shares: 36, 34, 32, 32, 29 (which also happen to be consecutive)

I don't see why Stargell is more meritorious than Raines when Raines did more to help his team win just because Stargell has a more muscular OPS+.

Maybe you're just being contrarian about Stargell and Raines because others are running Stargell down, but I don't see how your ballot here is consistent with how you usually vote.

Moreover, Sunnyday, do you think that being able to catch the ball matters? That's why people are big on guys like Williams and Sheckard and down on Pops. Perhaps you don't, since you backed Larry Doyle.

1. Ted Williams
2. Stan Musial

I'm with the majority on these two. The order seems both obvious and unassailable until Bonds is eligible (and then they just become the obvious 2-3).

3. Ed Delahanty
4. Carl Yaztrzemski

Still pretty standard. This election could have a pretty tight variation.

5. Tim Raines

The HoF's biggest current mistake.

6. Jesse Burkett
7. Al Simmons
8. Fred Clarke
9. Billy Williams

An unsexy grouping by general public name recognition values.

10. Willie Stargell

I haven't mentioned this before, but even though I know better I still do a double take whenever I see him listed as an outfielder. When I first started watching baseball and collecting cards etc., he was very clearly listed as a firstbaseman. Those formatitive opinions are hard to shake some times.

11. Zack Wheat
XX. Jim O'Rourke
12. Sherry Magee
13. Jimmy Sheckard
14. Goose Goslin
15. Joe Kelley
16. Joe Medwick

Quack

17. Minnie Minoso
18. Harry Stovey

Here is my PHoM line

19. Charlie Keller
20. Ralph Kiner
21. Charley Jones

Rusty, you sure Bonds > Williams? I think it's close...I currently have Teddy Ballgame higher but that's subject to war credit assumptions.

Well that is my current opinion, but of course I haven't gone over Bonds' career fully yet.

Without that extra work, I have Bonds high...VERY high. I mean, Top 3 overall high. That could change.

5. Simmons (down from 3)--I realized his peak offensive years were spent in LF, not CF
15. Medwick (down from 11)--head-to-head with S. Magee flips 'em
19. Goslin (was 9)--I had a prettier picture in my mind
<<

That's better. Now flip Duck and Goose.

Well, I agree Bonds is clearly top 3. The problem is, the other two are Williams and Ruth!

With no war credits or deductions, both Williams and Musial end up with around 130 WARP2 in Dan's system, while Bonds has about 165 (guessing at his 2006 and 2007). Given how much shorter his career was, Williams should still be rated higher than Musial without war credit, although the gap is not huge. I can see being sufficiently conservative with war credit that Williams ends up clearly ahead of Musial while still clearly behind Bonds.

Isn't that a game?

"Medwick, Medwick, Goslin!"

I predict that catching the ball won't matter a bit when Manny comes on-line. But the bottom line is, I knew I had under-rated Burkett but also took a fresh look at Fred Clarke and also realized he was better than Raines. And I was just never all that knocked out by B. Williams.

Is there any doubt that the top three position players of all time are Bonds/Ruth/Williams, in some order, if you give war credit and don't deduct for steroids or timeline? Sometimes OPS+ really does tell the whole story....Cobb and Wagner should be in the discussion, but they seem clearly a notch down to me.

> Is there any doubt that the top three position players of all time are Bonds/Ruth/Williams

Doubt is named Josh Gibson. I also have Honus Wagner above Ted Williams. Those are my top 5.

Mays oughta be in there, if you include league qual and grant more for defense than Win Shares does. Wagner's rank may largely depend on a voter's preference for any "head an dshoulders above the competition" bonus. I.e., if you and I were drafting two teams against each other, Wagner is an amazingly obvious first pick, since if I don't get Ruth I can have other great OFers. It still holds true, IMO, if we expand it to a 6- or 10-team "league". But if you strictly rank by wins above replacement (a 500 team league if you will), Wagner is a bit shy.

and yes, Josh G COULD be top 3, but he could also be top 30. Hard to tell.

Gibson's only near that stratosphere if he gets a full catcher bonus. I don't think he deserves one, since it seems to me that C in the NgL's wasn't quite the same position as C in the bigs. But I'm eager to be corrected.

Even if Mays was +200 in the field and +50 on the basepaths and gets a league quality bonus, does that really make up for the 40 points of OPS+ he's giving up to Ruth and a war-credited Williams? As I'm fond of saying, the OPS+ gap between Mays and Williams is the same as that between Mays and Chet Lemon--and that's before boosting Teddy's lifetime line for the missing war years. I just don't see how it adds up....

Hmm, let's see. By Palmer Linear Weights, Williams is almost exactly +3.0 wins better than Mays per 650 PA (Chet Lemon, by the way, is closer to Mays than Mays is to Williams). The gap would be a little bigger if you filled in the war years (and their careers would be closer in length), but this is going to be rough anyway so I am going to ignore that. Mays picks up about 0.6 wins per 650 PA for playing CF instead of LF, so the gap goes to +2.4 wins. TotalZone, generously filling in Mays' early years, has him at +140 runs on defense, and I think Dan Fox was about +40 runs baserunning. Assuming 9 runs per win, that is +20 wins, which is about +1.0 wins per 650 PA.

So the remaining gap is +1.4 wins per 650 PA. League quality can lop off maybe .2 runs per, but anymore seems hard to justify. Thus, it seems that the only way Mays can be considered better than Williams is if Williams was consistently -1.3 wins on defense, over his entire career, which would make him one of the worst defensive outfielders ever. FRAA and FWS, and I believe contemporary opinion, agree that he was an indifferent fielder, but nothing horrible. TotalZone hates him at the end of his career, but then so does FRAA. Basically, while it seems POSSIBLE that Mays was better than a war-credited Williams--in contrast to the way is it impossible that, say, Jim Rice was better, contra Tim McCarver--it seems pretty darn unlikely.

Mays was a +40 runner from 1956-72. There's probably another +15 before that, maybe even a little more given what I imagine is the early-peaking aging curve for baserunning. Also, Mays was much more durable than Williams. All that said, Williams was just a better baseball player, by a rather big margin. Again, being "worse than Ted Williams" describes all but one or two players in the game's history in my view; it's hardly an insult.

Sure, I just wanted to get a rough sense of *how* bad Williams would have had to be, defensively, to be worse on a rate-basis than Mays.

re Raines

I think some things are ignored

I haven't voted yet, but some Raines comments will be (and there is zero dispute that his OPS+ is underwhelming; question is whether else overcomes it. maybe):

"Love the 1983-87, and the SB pct as well. He gets more underrated by OPS+ than anyone else. Belongs in the Hall of Fame. BUT after 1987, he only totaled 600 PA 3 times (4 if you count 1994, but who's to say he'd have been healthy anyway?). He's a mostly forgettable part-timer after age 35. His last top 10 in OBP (his bread and butter) came in 1989. A peak candidate, really, which would surprise a lot of people."

I know it is way off topic for this thread, but seeing Mays' name shows that Center Field will rival Second Base for the most contested election. Shocking that C, 1B, 3B, SS, LF and RF are unanimous or very nearly so. Pitcher is a closer call, but I'd be surprised if Walter Johnson didn't garner a significantly high percentage of votes. Interesting how easy it is to agree on an all-time team.

The top CF is Cobb.............no? 167 OPS+ over 24 years, best baserunner of his era? Unless you get him on league strength. His leagues were not easy to dominate *at all*--in fact, the aughts AL had the lowest stdev (both actual and regression-projected) of any period since 1893. Check out 1907, when a 119 OPS+ was good for tenth in the league!

Historical HoM artifact: of the 56 voters in the 1934 election, one (I believe it was Brent) voted for Speaker 1st and Cobb 2nd. The other 55 had Cobb ahead of Speaker, although only 52 had Cobb 1st; the three others had Collins and/or Lloyd ahead of him.

Bill James has the top 5 players of all time...

Ruth
Wagner
Mays
Charleston
Cobb

Then...

Mantle
T. Williams
W. Johnson
Gibson
Musial

Then...

Speaker
Aaron
DiMaggio
Gehrig
Morgan
Bonds (this was in 2001)
Paige
E. Collins
Grove
Alexander

I think we'll stipulate Bonds into the top 10, but I don't see anybody else from James' 2nd 10 challenging his top 10. And personally, for me, it would be Musial that would drop from #10 to #11 or thereabouts.

Then the question becomes, Who from his 2nd 5 is better than anybody in his 1st 5? Well, T. Williams and Gibson and Bonds are the 3 possibilities, with all due respect to Mantle. But, then, who drops down? Not Ruth, and not Wagner.

So 3 through 8 are clearly Mays, Charleston, Cobb, Williams, Gibson and Bonds. But in what order? HellifIknow. But I might be inclined to say Charleston, Bonds, Williams, Gibson, Mays and Cobb. And when I say Mantle is below that group, I mean in terms of the consensus. On my own personal list, I might be inclined to put him in that group somewhere. As a peak voter, I think Mantle was the greatest CF ever at his best. On a peak-only basis, he might be #3 after Ruth and Wagner.

But, then, this is the LF Ranch, so I'll leave it for now.

LF ballot

1) Ted Williams - top 5 player (incl pitchers)
2) Stan Musial - top 10 player (excl pitchers)
(Rickey)
3) Carl Yastrzemski - there's about 15 wins difference in baserunning between Raines and Yaz.
4) Tim Raines - not far behind Yaz but not as good of a fielder which I wouldn't have guessed.
5) Ed Delahanty - I vote pure career. Unfair his career was cut short but that's how it goes. It would have taken almost 2 more seasons of play to make 3rd place assuming some decline.
6) Fred Clarke - Almost even with Delahanty.
7) Jesse Burkett - now we're past the top 100 players
8) Billy Williams
9) Al Simmons
10) Jimmy Sheckard - I'm not discounting the ridiculous defensive numbers. Maybe I should but every metric has Sheckard as the best defensive LF ever, the only difference being the range over which the metric allows for defensive value.
11) Zack Wheat
12) Joe Kelley - 12 through 17 could be picked out of a hat
13) Willie Stargell
14) Goose Goslin
15) Sherry Magee - The group of guys after him are getting various amounts of credit. This is where I break ties in favor of the player who actually played major league games.
(Bob Johnson)
16) Charlie Keller
17) Charley Jones
18) Minnie Minoso - Only 1 year NgL credit
19) Joe Medwick - Medwick in and Bob Johnson out still irritates me. I see Medwick as clearly inferior to Johnson.
20) Harry Stovey - makes my PHoM because I threw all the pioneers (pre 1893) that were already elected in without argument. After a closer look he's right on the edge of merit.
21) Ralph Kiner - just not enough career, hitter comparable to Belle or Manny but not for long enough. Not in my PHoM.

I'll vote early this time--remembering my segregation penalty this time

1. Teddy Ballgame, #2 alltime--guys, get real. With war credit you're talking about 22 years at an OPS+ around 200. Take your defense and baserunning and league strength and durability and put it where Putin apparently told Saakashvili to put his declarations of Western support. :)
2. Stan the Man--top 10 post-1893 MLB position players. Was his wartime D really that exceptional? Anecdotal reports, anyone? DRA agrees that Musial carried a mean glove in '43.
3. Don't Go Chasing Waterfalls
4. Rock
5. Yaz
6. Burkett
7. Clarke--DRA loves this Kool-Aid
8. Billy Williams--again, DRA-supported. Remarkable durability.
9. Bucketfoot Al
10. Keller--now giving him credit for 1938 and 1/4 of 1939; not his fault they gave his PA to Henrich
11. Miñoso
12. Kelley
13. Sheckard--such a tough guy to place. DRA does have him at over +200. I'm convinced that he was really something special with the glove, because his fielding numbers hold up despite playing on three different teams, and he did have the reputation to back it up.
14. Pops--All systems agree that he gave back substantial value on defense and baserunning, and he couldn't stay on the field.
15. Wheat
16. Magee
17. Goslin--I'd give him a tiebreak on component park effects, but there's no tie to break.
18. Stovey
19. Ducky
20. Kiner

Heads up Dan R. I believe you left off Charley Jones.

I think we'll stipulate Bonds into the top 10

Why? What did Bonds do after 2001 that improves his case over what he did prior to 2001?

-- MWE

Esteban, it appears I did. Apologies, particularly since I was a big supporter of his. He slides in at #17. Revised:

1. Teddy Ballgame, #2 alltime--guys, get real. With war credit you're talking about 22 years at an OPS+ around 200. Take your defense and baserunning and league strength and durability and put it where Putin apparently told Saakashvili to put his declarations of Western support. :)
2. Stan the Man--top 10 post-1893 MLB position players. Was his wartime D really that exceptional? Anecdotal reports, anyone? DRA agrees that Musial carried a mean glove in '43.
3. Don't Go Chasing Waterfalls
4. Rock
5. Yaz
6. Burkett
7. Clarke--DRA loves this Kool-Aid
8. Billy Williams--again, DRA-supported. Remarkable durability.
9. Bucketfoot Al
10. King Kong--now giving him credit for 1938 and 1/4 of 1939; not his fault they gave his PA to Henrich
11. Miñoso
12. Kelley
13. Sheckard--such a tough guy to place. DRA does have him at over +200. I'm convinced that he was really something special with the glove, because his fielding numbers hold up despite playing on three different teams, and he did have the reputation to back it up.
14. Pops--All systems agree that he gave back substantial value on defense and baserunning, and he couldn't stay on the field.
15. Wheat
16. Magee
17. Jones, with full blacklist credit. Pete Browning plus defense and half a career in the strong league.
18. Goslin--I'd give him a tiebreak on component park effects, but there's no tie to break.
19. Stovey
20. Ducky
21. Kiner

Mike, are you trying to spark a steroids flame war? I think the answer to your question is pretty obvious.

Hey, for the one-season peak voter, nothing after '01 matters--or before, for that matter. :)

Man, the one year peak-voter would be one interesting beast: Sammy Sosa the second best RF ever, Norm Cash one of the top 3 1B ever, Dwight Gooden possibly the greatest pitcher ever...

Dan, you only get one vote. ;)

Left Field:

1. Ted Williams - He’s good.

2. Stan Musial - Him too.

3. Carl Yastrzemski - League quality moves him up to third, he’s still a long way from second.

4. Ed Delahanty - Best of the 19th Century guys, with small edges in peak and career over Burkett.

5. Tim Raines - Competition quality moves him up, WARP1 thinks he had a better peak than Yaz. Less career value though.

6. Jesse Burkett - Better peak, less career value than Clarke.

7. Fred Clarke - Less peak than Simmons, but a lot more career, even discounting for the higher standard deviations of the 19th Century.

8. Al Simmons - Very even with Williams, WARP1 likes Simmons’s peak a bit better.

9. Billy Williams - Just a bit less than Simmons, the gap between him and Sheckard is much larger.

10. Jimmy Sheckard - WARP loves his defense as well, I don’t see any reason to disagree.

11. Joe Kelley - About the same peak value as Clarke, but that doesn’t standout among the 19th century players and he has a lot less career value.

12. Charley Jones - I give him blacklist credit and some AA demerits. He’s still got a great peak and a reasonably long career.

13. Sherry Magee - Just very solid all around. It makes him forgettable, unfortunately.

14. Harry Stovey - Very comparable with Jones, I still don’t know how much I buy the baserunning argument.

15. Charlie Keller - Very good peak, but even with bonus credit his career is pretty short.

16. Willie Stargell - WARP punishes him for defense, but the leagues he played in were much tougher than most of these LFers, so that helps him a bit.

17. Zack Wheat - Good career value, mediocre peak.

18. Minnie Minoso - WARP1 doesn’t seem to like him. Not much of a peak and only slightly more career value than Medwick. I suspect WARP is missing something, but I don’t know what it would be.

19. Goose Goslin - Less career value than Wheat, about the same peak.

20. Joe Medwick - Never been a Ducky fan. He’s got the third least career value (after Keller and Kiner) to go with a solid but unspectacular peak.

21. Ralph Kiner - WARP1 isn’t particularly impressed by his peak, and he’s significantly behind everyone else in career value.

Sorry, Dan - I didn't spot at first that that was a correction rather than a double post.

Dan R asks about Musial, "Was his wartime D really that exceptional? Anecdotal reports, anyone? " Anecdotally, yes. I grew up in St. Louis, and got to hear it all. The Cards had Terry Moore when Stan came up, so he didn't start in center. Then they had Harry Walker. If the system hadn't been churning out guys like that Stan would have been in center. Around the wartime, the management just got really odd about who played where. Check out the careers of Musial and teammate Johnny Hopp during the 1940s and see if YOU can make any sense of it. Sometimes, the manager thought that Musial was the better center field choice, sometimes Hopp. Makes no sense, nor does moving either player to first base. What you do get, if you look, is the clear impression that Musial was the first backup choice in center. If the regular had a day off or got hurt, Stan would go into center. That lasted for approximately a decade. I would consider, based on anecdotal info and sportswriter Bob Broeg, that the wartime Musial was a good center fielder, but not a really good one. After the war, he's a bit worse. But the wartime defense is real. He's a competent center fielder whose team just has better ones, so he plays elsewhere, where he looks great by comparison.

Hi. This is just to let you all know that the third base ballot thread isn't dead yet. I just posted up a three-post-long defense of my rankings of Jimmy Collins, Home Run Baker and Ezra Sutton. I told you all that I write for a living, didn't I? Still, that wouldn't take 3 posts. What is mostly there is an entire essay on how I think about very early players, and especially about their FSEs. I am pretty sure I'm at least on the right track and very sure that, if what I say proves out to be true, it's valuable. What I don't know is how much of this you guys already know. My voting disparities imply that I really don't think the same way as at least most of you, but I can't be certain. I do know that at least Grandma Murphy understands at least that you can't trust blind FSEs at early catcher. How much else you all know, that's what I don't know. Also, just for those of you with real math backgrounds, please be aware that I think like an engineer, not a pure mathematician, and did a lot of work on the 19th c. in the 1990s, when baseball databases were few and primitive. So I relied a lot on what I call Plausibility Tests. Just so you won't be disgusted at the lack of hard math. Leaves you free to be disgusted at the conclusions.

ballot

1 - Williams
2 - Musial : Tom's retired alltime rank Ruth-Wagner-Mays-Johnson-Williams-Aaron-Musial
3 - Yaz
4 - Delahanty : tied with Yaz, but tie goes to the guy with the clutch 67 heroics versus getting drunk and dead.
5 - Raines : BBWAA, listen up you stooges.
6 - O'Rourke : tough to decide nbetween the mosern slugger Bily and the long career 1800s guy, but O'Rourke gets the nod.
7 - B Williams
8 - Burkett : how many people know he hit .400 three times?
9 - Clarke :
10 - A Simmons : close to 400 win shares = one good career
11 - Wheat : ditto
12 - Stovey : runs scored analysis from early days bumps him up to here
13 - Stargell : awesome slugger
14 - Kelley : next few are about tied
15 - Sheckard
16 - Goslin
17 - Magee
(gap)
18 - Minoso
19 - Medwick
20 - Keller : could be up to #18; depends on partial or full credit for early years.
21 - C Jones
22 - Kiner - borderline on my PHOM.

Tom: we (Joe, anyway) decided to move O'Rourke to the CF list, so you'll have to re-figure where he belongs. But your LF ballot is unambiguously ordered and we'll count it without you having to do anything.

Leftfielder Ballot
1. Ted Williams - Clear #1 on this ballot
2. Stan Musial - Clear #2
(Rickey Henderson)
3. Ed Delahanty - Best 19th century leftfielder.
4. Jesse Burkett
5. Carl Yastrzemski - Very close to Burkett.
6. Al Simmons - Very nice peak value.
7. Fred Clarke
8. Tim Raines - Great player, long career, nice peak, but underwhelming OPS+
9. Sherry Magee
10. Harry Stovey - Speed and good bat.
11. Charley Jones - I give blacklist credit. High peak.
12. Joe Kelley
13. Charlie Keller - Short career but high peak. And I like a high peak.
14. Ralph Kiner - Difference between him and Keller is defense.
15. Zack Wheat - Best of the long career, low peak LFers.
16. Willie Stargell
17. Jimmy Sheckard - Long career candidates are bunched up here. (17-20)
18. Minnie Minoso
19. Goose Goslin
20. Billy Williams
--------------------------------------PHOM----------------------------------------
21. Joe Medwick Looking closely at him, he seems better than I thought. Moves within 5 of my PHOM. Nice 3 year peak, but career is a little short.

8 - Burkett : how many people know he hit .400 three times?

Sean Forman doesn't.

1. Ted Williams - one of the three best hitters ever. With war credit, it's not close.

2. Stan Musial - without war credit, it does start to get close. More durable and a better glove than Ted.

3. Ed Delahanty - one of the greatest hitters of the 19th century; good glove, could be stretched to play infield.

4. Carl Yastrzemski - odd career shape, played seemingly forever after his peak was over. Still, a decade as an above-average 1B who rarely misses a game has a lot of value. Enough value to put him above...

5. Tim Raines - one of the more unjustly underrated players of all time. Only durability issues and peak defense have him below Yaz.

6. Al Simmons - I always feel he's been overrated by history due to all those RBI he piled up in a big-hitting league and era, hitting behind Bishop and Foxx. I didn't want to rank him this high, but his peak and defense make this ranking look fair. As a Milwaukee boy, he gets a bonus. ;)

7. Billy Williams - gets a huge bounce from his long career of never missing a game. Not as good in any one facet of the game as many of those ranked beneath him; but a very, very good all-around player for a long time.

8. Jim O'Rourke - I give O'Rourke a lot of credit for his ability to play anywhere on the diamond. Outstanding hitter for his era.

9. Jesse Burkett
10. Fred Clarke
11. Sherry Magee
12. Joe Kelley - these four are very, very close for me.

13. Willie Stargell - one of the great home run hitters of all time. Fairly one-dimensional game, and was pretty fragile.

14. Minnie Minoso - great all-around player, maybe could have come to the majors earlier; but I don't give him much credit for that, because I think he'd have spent a couple of years in the minors rather than being in MLB at 19. If I were timelining like I really want to, he'd be top-10.

15. Zack Wheat - Billy Williams-type player of the late deadball/early Ruth era. Not outstanding in any one aspect of the game, above average all-around. There's nothing really inspiring about him to me.

16. Jimmy Sheckard - probably made the HoM for his defense. Which was very good.

17. Charlie Keller - at his best, the equal of anyone not named Williams, Musial, or Delahanty. Simply did not play long enough or often enough to rank higher. Lost his entire age 27 season to WWII, for which he absolutely deserves some credit.

18. Goose Goslin - defense moves him up.

19. Ralph Kiner - I wonder what kind of numbers he could have created in the DH era.

20. Harry Stovey - if the AA had been a real major league, he might be top-10. It wasn't, so he's not. Still a good player, and a solid HoMer.

21. Charley Jones - truly a monster hitter for his era.

22. Joe Medwick - I'm not sure I'd vote for him. Nice peak, though.

Same for Al, I guess - ignore O'Rourke and move the others up

Same for Al, I guess - ignore O'Rourke and move the others up

Oh yeah, I forgot he'd been moved.

Yup, just slip him out.

DL says, "10) Jimmy Sheckard - I'm not discounting the ridiculous defensive numbers. Maybe I should but every metric has Sheckard as the best defensive LF ever, the only difference being the range over which the metric allows for defensive value."

I had a thought just now, and looked something up. Sheckard's first two seasons, his partial at age 18 and first full season at 19, don't involve any serious hitting, given the time period. I have some doubts about those seasons because of my Standard Deviation / Percentage Dissonance theory (SD/%, see in Third Base posts). But if there was any real reason to play Jimmy in his first-year partial, much less start him in his second season, it almost had to be phenomenal defense.

Only 9 ballots in a week. Hopefully there's more action this week. Stargell has placed anywhere from 7th to 16th. Strange lack of consensus on a modern player.

DL from MN, I'm not surprised at all Stargell is so divisive. He's a fairly extreme player, in that the quantitative evidence suggests that poor fielding and baserunning really gobbled up a significant chunk of his value. Furthermore, he missed a ton of games every season. So voters who don't think that D and baserunning are actually part of baseball, and those who disregard in-season durability (both pure career voters and "peak-rate" voters), will have Stargell extremely high (the "OPS+ times PA" contingent). Those who do use fielding and baserunning as more than a tiebreaker, and who put weight on in-season durability (as my current salary estimator does), will have him in the bottom tenth of the HoM.

Brock #46 on Jimmy Sheckard
I had a thought just now, and looked something up. Sheckard's first two seasons, his partial at age 18 and first full season at 19, don't involve any serious hitting, given the time period. I have some doubts about those seasons because of my Standard Deviation / Percentage Dissonance theory (SD/%, see in Third Base posts). But if there was any real reason to play Jimmy in his first-year partial, much less start him in his second season, it almost had to be phenomenal defense.

For one, he was cheap.
The Brooklyn club was a money-loser, occasionally or always rumored to be going out of business.

For two, except for its three outfielders, team OPS+ less than 75, team on-base average less than .275. There was no fourth outfielder after the loan of John Anderson to Washington (NL to NL). They moved Anderson before the first western trip, after he played 17 of 19 games in the east. I suppose that was a pure money-saving deal --what else?

Probably there is valuable comment on the deal, and decision to go with Sheckard, in some of the newspapers. NYTimes and WPost are widely available by internet and Brooklyn Daily Eagle is available to all.

Only 9 ballots in a week.

I'll probably get one in tomorrow. I was busy getting married when the balloting opened, but since I have tomorrow off due to TS Fay, I'll have time to work on it.

I'll have one in sometime this week too--just had our second son a week ago, so a bit distracted!

Mark, you and I just have to get our priorities straight.

51. Mark Donelson Posted: August 19, 2008 at 12:30 AM (#2908009)
I'll have one in sometime this week too--just had our second son a week ago, so a bit distracted!

Congrats Mark!

Left Fielder ranking. MVP/AS are my own calculations, but for Negro Leaguers I use some combination of Holway/James MVP and AS selections. Revised Monster = 13.5 WARP1 or WARP2 and above. Great=10.0 WARP1 or WARP2 and above. WAV is the average of career WARP1 and WARP2.

1. Ted Williams – 10 MVP, 16 AS. 165.9 WAV (Only Bonds (230.5), Musial and Henderson (176.0) have higher WAV) – war credit bumps him above Ricky and Stan the Man, but I think Teddy is below Barry. Monster 1942, 1946, Great 1939, 1941, 1947, 1949, 1951, 1957. Only complaint is the fielding.

2. Stan Musial – 10 MVP, 16 AS. 190.8 WAV – war credit. 4 Monster (1943, 1944, 1946, 1948), 7 Great (1942, 1946, 1948, 1949, 1951, 1952, 1954). I thought 1948 would be a monster WARP season. Stan probably would have vaulted over Gehrig for the #1 1B spot for many voters, including me.

3. Ed Delahanty – 7 MVP, 11 AS. 111.5 WAV. 1 Monster (1893), 5 Great (1895, 1896, 1899, 1901, 1902). Peak surpasses the long career guys, and he had enough of a career for this high placement.

4. Carl Yastrzemski – 3 MVP, 15 AS. 137.9 WAV. Monster 1967, 2 Great (1968, 1970). Yaz was steady for a long, long time.

5. Tim Raines – 5 MVP, 10 AS. 123.2 WAV. No Monster, 5 Great (1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1992). One of my favorite players growing up, it is a shame that it might take it until my generation reaches 60 before Timmy makes the Hall of Fame.

6. Jesse Burkett – 6 MVP, 14 AS. 109.9 WAV. 1 Monster (1901), 3 Great (1895, 1896, 1899). Can be interchangeable with Simmons.

7. Fred Clarke – 5 MVP, 14 AS. 127.3 WAV. No Monster, 5 Great (1897, 1901, 1902, 1908, 1909). Very underrated. WARP loves his fielding.

8. Al Simmons – 5 MVP, 11 AS. 110.0 WAV. No Monster, 4 Great (1925, 1929, 1931, 1933). Played forever, but essentially nothing big past 1933.

9. Goose Goslin – 3 MVP, 13 AS. 104.3 WAV. No Monster, 5 Great (1924, 1925, 1926, 1927, 1928). I like listening to Goose on the Glory of Their Times tapes. Better than I would have thought.

10. Sherry Magee – 3 MVP, 11 AS. 102.7 WAV. No Monster, 5 Great (1906, 1907, 1908, 1910, 1915). He played with the Phillies when the Braves went to the World Series and the Braves when the Phillies went. At least he got to play a little against the Black Sox.

11. Jimmy Sheckard – 3 MVP, 11 AS. 109.3 WAV. No Monster, 4 Great (1901, 1903, 1906, 1911). We now recognize the value of the walks.

12. Billy Williams – 2 MVP, 12 AS. 116.6 WAV. No Monster, 3 Great (1963, 1965, 1972). Overlooked because of 60’s contemporaries.

13. Willie Stargell – 3 MVP, 11 AS. 110.1 WAV. No Monster, 2 Great (1971, 1973). The Big Papi of the 70’s.

14. Joe Kelley – 3 MVP, 9 AS. 90.5 WAV. No Monster, 4 Great (1894, 1896, 1897, 1899). Always the last of the Big 4 Orioles I remember.

15. Zack Wheat – 3 MVP, 11 AS. 111.5 WAV. No Monster, 3 Great (1914, 1916, 1924). No real difference between Wheat and Williams.

16. Joe Medwick – 3 MVP, 11 AS. 98.6 WAV. No Monster, 3 Great (1935, 1936, 1937). Valuable enough player.

17. Charlie Keller – 4 MVP, 6 AS. 70.8 WAV – war credit. No Monster, 4 Great (1941, 1942, 1943, 1946). Probably my personal most surprising (but deserving) HOMer. He really had a fantastic peak, and may have been better than DiMaggio from 1941-1946..

18. Ralph Kiner – 4 MVP, 8 AS. 72.4 WAV – small amount of war credit. No Monster, 3 Great (1947, 1949, 1951). Great peak, but that’s about it.

19. Minnie Minoso – 2 MVP, 11 AS. 82.1 WAV – Negro League credit. No Monster, 1 Great (1954). Not enough heft to a decent-sized career.

20. Harry Stovey – 4 MVP, 11 AS. 82.8 WAV. No Monster, 3 Great (1884, 1888, 1889). Deserving enough rep from the AA.

21. Charley Jones – 3 MVP, 9 AS. 55.2 WAV. No Monster, 2 Great (1879, 1884). Hurt by the blacklist.

Only Stovey, Minoso, Kiner, Keller, and Jones are below 90. Besides Bonds (230.5), and Henderson (176.0), only Jose Cruz (103.9) surpasses 100 WAV among unelected players. Bob Johnson (95.8), Lou Brock (95.1), and Bobby Veach (90.1) break 90.

no excuse other than working too hard
I hope this makes sense....

Our all-time Left Fielder HOMer ballot, 6th in a series

1. TED WILLIAMS - Led AL in OBP, 1940-42. WW II, 1943-45. Led AL in OBP, 1946-49. Also would have led in 1950, but only played 89 Games. Led AL in OBP 1951. Korean War, 1952-53. Led AL in OBP, 1954. Also would have led in 1955, but only 98 G. Led AL in OBP, 1956-58. Also would have led in 1960, but only 113 G. Not mentioned: 6th in OBP, 1939; and would have been 9th in 1959, but only 113 G.

2. STAN MUSIAL - 3 MVPs, 4 runnerups, 14 times in the top ten. 7 batting titles, 2 2nds, 5 3rds, 2 4ths, a 5th - that's 17 times in the top 5 (woulda been 18, no doubt, in 1945). From 1942 to 1958, a serious BA title contender every year he played. Then there's adjusted OPS+, where he was 1st 6 times, 2nd 4 times... well, I think you get the idea.

3. ED DELAHANTY - Still an elite player at age 35 when he stepped off the train - and then into eternity (4th adj OPS+ title came the previous season). Once everything clicked in 1892, became one of the game's best players over 11+ years. NY Times obit, with misspelled last name, is here: http://www.baseball-almanac.com/deaths/ed_delahanty_obituary.shtml

4. CARL YASTRZEMSKI - All-time great type player in 1967-68-70, excellent in 1963 and 1965, and very good in a lot of other seasons. Has attractive peak, prime, career numbers, but doesn't quite knock it out of the park in any of them compared to the highest of immortals. A little overrated but still should be highly rated. I like the 1963-74 prime a lot, and the early/extra years aren't all hanger-on stuff either.

5. AL SIMMONS - Counting stats must be popularly adjusted for silly-hitting-stats of era, but even that isn't quite enough to drop him from here. The years in CF are a nice boost, and 7 top 7s in OPS+ (4 of them in the top 5) is stronger than it looks given the conceded spots to Ruth-Gehrig-Foxx and friends.

6. BILLY WILLIAMS - I underrated him the first time around, as I had suspected. In-season durability for star players pretty well evens out so often that you can miss an extreme exception like this one. bb-ref page can be yours for $35. Matches Yaz in the "I like the 1963-74 prime a lot." Just not as much beyond it.

7. TIM RAINES - Love the 1983-87, and the SB pct as well. He gets more underrated by OPS+ than anyone else. Belongs in the Hall of Fame. BUT after 1987, he only totaled 600 PA 3 times (4 if you count 1994, but who's to say he'd have been healthy anyway?). He's a mostly forgettable part-timer after age 35. His last top 10 in OBP (his bread and butter) came in 1989. A peak candidate, really, which would surprise a lot of people.

8. JESSE BURKETT - Ten top 10 OPS+s, and one of the longer careers on the board. This is what I picture a Hall LF to look like; excellent hitter for a long long time. Crappy pitcher as a rook in a bad NL in 1890, but we'll forgive. Seemed like he still had something left in the tank when he quit at 36.

9. WILLIE STARGELL - Mashed a la Delahanty and Burkett for a long time. But as noted, durability deficit hurts him more than most. Most PAs he ever had is 609. Had 10 top-10 SLG PCT finishes. Also six top-5 adj OPS+ finishes. This is one case where the "Most similar player" gimmick does fairly well - he was pretty much Frank Howard with an earlier start and later finish, more a tribute to underrated Howard than a knock on Pops.

10. FRED CLARKE - Last multiple OPS+ champ on the board. A regular alongside Honus Wagner, and Honus's manager to boot, from 1898-1911. You'd think he'd have been great in 1898-00, too - if he had been, he'd have moved up a few notches.

11. SHERRY MAGEE - Still a very good player in 1918 at age 33, then hits .215 in 1919 for the World Champion Reds in a part-time role - hits .500 in the World Series, but it's 1 for 2, and he never plays again. So how does he get up here? A good player right out of the gate at age 19, and a great one by age 22. Grabs the 10 hole (barely) by just having fewer demerits than the pack. 5 top 5 OPS+ finishes.

12. JIMMY SHECKARD - Left startlingly few fingerprints in terms of baseball's collective memory, but you have to like the all-around skills and imprint on pennant winners. Needs every bit of the defensive nod to edge out several others.

13. ZACK WHEAT - Edges out Goslin; was a stellar player just a little more often. Weird peak at age 35-37 is worth several spots. Hit .300 14 times, but the last time was 1927 (his last year), when he hit .324 and the AL hit .300. Never "won a ring."

14. JOE KELLEY - Key is noting that his exact prime was in the 1890s one-league NL - tough crowd. If he hadn't mostly ran out of steam at age 32, he'd be a lot better remembered. Pretty good part-time finale as player-manager in Boston NL in 1908.

15. GOOSE GOSLIN - AL hit an amazing collective .290 in his career, he hit .316. But a good slugger with a nice overall prime at 1925-31.

16. RALPH KINER - His offensive competitiveness with Kaline over his top 9 years, and with Killebrew for a long stretch as well, is telling. Peak voters - how about a 184-184-173 trifecta of OPS+s? Then 156-146-140-132 to complete a stunning prime. A 121-117-116 completes the 10-pack.How many runs did he really cost his teams in the OF? Yes, deduct, but it's from a high place.

17. CHARLIE KELLER - Poor man's Ralph Kiner. Of his six actual big seasons of note, one was a weakened 1943 and another is a slight issue, 1942. Still, he has a dazzling peak that seems likely to have been longer if not for WW II. Yeah, his career looks funny, but plenty of Negro League guesstimates do, too. The world has a way of getting in the way of neat stats pages. I'm fine with him in HOM. I just couldn't extrapolate him any higher.

18. JOE MEDWICK - Very nice 5, 8, 10-year numbers. But look closer, and it's basically a (not-quite) Kiner-esque career with a few part-time seasons on the fringes.

19. MINNIE MINOSO - Eight OPS+s over 130 is pretty nice, and could field his position, too, but I'm disappointed to see that such negligible Negro Leagues credit is due. I thought he was a better player there than we discovered he is.

20. HARRY STOVEY - Underrated and interesting for his run-scoring machine efforts. But didn't stand out as much as you'd like given the era and the league.

21. CHARLEY JONES - Some sympathy for the contract issues, but it's just not the same as going to war or being the 'wrong' skin color. Therefore, I see his career as too short.

Well, here's mine. I reserve the right to make small changes until Sunday, because there are so many players so close that a good argument could change my mind. But if I haven't changed anything by the deadline, then this is it. Oh, yeah. I wrote too many long comments. The ballot won't send to this list in one post. I had to break it down into three. For those of you who do the tabulating, the simple ordered list of names is the first thing in this post. - Brock

1. TED WILLIAMS
2. STAN MUSIAL
3. ED DELAHANTY
4. AL SIMMONS
5. TIM RAINES
6. CARL YASTRZEMSKI
7. FRED CLARKE
8. MINNIE MINOSO
9. BILLY WILLIAMS
10. WILLIE STUNGUN
11. JESSE BURKETT
12. SHERRY MAGEE
13. JIMMY SHECKARD
14. GOOSE GOSLIN
15. JOE MEDWICK
16. ZACK WHEAT
17. HARRY STOVEY
18. JOE KELLEY
19. CHARLIE KELLER
20. RALPH KINER
21. CHARLEY JONES

1. TED WILLIAMS

You've all no doubt read Moneyball. And I imagine most of you don't think any more of it than I do. But there was one idea in there worth mentioning, even if the author didn't say it explicitly. That idea is that, in addition to the five traditional scouts' "tools", there is a sixth: strike zone judgment. It's a tool, not a learned skill

Ted Williams' ranking among all position players makes more sense if you know that. Otherwise, you've got a top-five guy who only has two of the five tools. He runs OK, fields OK, and throws OK, but no better than that. Not good, just OK. His only two real tools are hitting for average and for power. That's only two out of five, although it is the most important Big Two. But if you add in the walk judgment, and you value walks appropriately, you get outstanding in the Big Three tools. That sounds more like a top-five of all time guy, which is what Williams is, and is why he is who he is.

2. STAN MUSIAL

The odd thing is that you get the same ranking for Musial whether or not you count wartime. If you do, you make deductions for his 42-44 seasons, which drive his peak rankings, but you also add a prime year to his career. If not, then his peak stays way high, but he loses a year. The end result is the same, although the shape changes a bit.

I'm not sure that Musial's personality was a huge plus to his teams. He was too passive. He'd accept anything, and play anywhere, rather than complain. That, really, is why he ended up with so many games at first base. He wouldn't complain when a worse outfielder than he was got sent out there and he was relegated to first. The nadir of this occurred in 1959, when Solly Hemus, an atrocious manager by all accounts, sent Joe Cunningham AND Bill White out into right field, while Musial said not a word at first. Neither Joe nor Bill was an outfielder at all, and there was no excuse for Musial to be at first base with those two on the roster. But Musial wouldn't complain, and since he was the team's superstar and also one of the guys involved in the mess, who else was going to?

If you've read Curt Flood's autobiography The Way It Is (and I think it is arguably, though not certainly, the best book on baseball ever written), you get a sense of this in Flood's description of Musial. He comments at some length about Musial viewing the whole world through the lens of his own good fortune in being able to play baseball instead of working in the Pennsylvania coal mines. And no, it's not racial. For one thing, Musial was, like Williams, the opposite of a racist, a fact that Flood also documents (see the restaurant story). For another, Flood tells the Musial story as an analogy to Willie Mays. I think it's safe to say that Curt Flood had no racial problems with Willie Mays.

3. ED DELAHANTY

His first four seasons are junk, and his last one is a small partial, which leaves only 11 serious seasons. But boy! What an 11-year run. What's odd is that almost all the top left fielders from Ed's time can make a case for being center fielders playing out of position. Sheckard. Clarke. Burkett and Kelley likely. Delahanty and Magee don't have great defensive stats, but they did have the speed. Of course, so did Lou Brock, Tim Raines and Rickey Henderson. Still, I don't think there's ever been a period like this for left field defense. My guess is that this is due to the asymmetrical ballparks of the time, which often had huge left fields, but I don't have the time to document that in any detail.

4. AL SIMMONS

I wasn't expecting this high a ranking. Simmons was what I call an RBI Vulture. It's not a compliment. It applies to power hitters who simply will not take their walks (see Vlad Guerrerro). Those guys get all the RBIs that come through their spot in the order, while never passing the rally down to the next guy. Makes them look great to sportswriters and award voters, but.... In addition, Simmons had his three best seasons at the exact time that his team had their three best (29-31 A's). That, too, will get you overrated. So will playing in the 1920s and 30s. He did miss about 20 games a year with nagging whatever, which does make his raw counting numbers look a little weaker than they really were. But it turns out that his averages and power were real, not just an era illusion, and his defense was outstanding. I'm not sure that he was really better than Raines, but I am sure that he was better than Yaz.

Also, although I gave no credit for this, Simmons spent several years of his life effectively managing the As for the elderly Connie Mack. He got no public credit for this. That's a contribution to a team and loyalty to a manager. I like it.

5. TIM RAINES

The third-best leadoff man in history, behind only Henderson and Hamilton. Through 1987, if you make the massive era adjustments, his career doesn't even look embarrassing next to the early (pre-48) Musial's, which is saying a lot. He's not as good as Stan, but he's close. But he got hurt that year, and just never recovered. It's sort of like combining the skills of the early Musial with the durability (and walks) of the late Kiner.

6. CARL YASTRZEMSKI

Wildly inconsistent early, with truly great seasons mixed in with truly ordinary ones. Then in 1970 or 71, he got hurt and, like Raines, never recovered. He is not a star of any sort in any season after 1970, and his last 5 years as a DH are so embarrassing that I don't even count them. He ranks better as an 18-season man.

7. FRED CLARKE

I tend to think of Fred Clarke as what would have happened to Jimmy Sheckard if Sheckard had become his own manager. When Clarke gets started in Louisville, he's playing left field while a revolving door is open in center, just like Sheckard. Why his managers never tried him there, I may never know. As soon as he becomes manager, the revolving door stops in center field. First, it's Dummy Hoy. Then Ginger Beaumont. Then Tommy Leach. And that's it. The odd thing is that, of the three, only Leach was certainly a better center fielder than Clarke would have been. But at least Clarke realized the value of having a star in center. Sheckard played next to a new guy almost every year. Clarke also understood what he could and could not do as a hitter, with the result that his placement in his batting orders makes sense, and the shape of his stats remains more or less consistent.

The other odd thing about Clarke is also about him as a manager. With Pittsburgh, at the beginning of the century, he developed what has to be the very best control pitching staff of all time. Deacon Phillippe. Sam Leever. Jesse Tannehill. Look 'em up. Then Babe Adams. Jeez. Ted Williams wouldn't have walked 50 times a year against those guys.

What I think was going on is this: in the 1890s, a few guys, led by McGraw and Hamilton, figured out that you could pile up tremendous offensive value if you sacrificed power and just hit for a very high average and took a hundred walks a year. Clarke realized what strength that kind of offense had, and just wasn't going to let it happen to his teams. Bill James talks about this happening in the early 1950s, with Robin Roberts as the feature guy. But compared to Deacon Phillippe, even Roberts had no idea where the strike zone might be.

And therefore, I will say this: if we were allowed to count contribution as a manager, I would have Fred Clarke ranked third here. I think he was a wonderful manager and student of the game. Comparable to Frank Selee.

This is Brock #2

8. MINNIE MINOSO

I seem to have Minnie ranked higher than the consensus, possibly because I approach his career differently than most of you seem to do. I spent no time on Negro League MLEs. Instead, I spent time trying to envision what his career might have looked like up through age 27 if he had been white. Minnie had his first full season in the bigs at age 28. If he had been white, he would have entered the league at age 21 or 22, probably with a couple of partial seasons. So let's say there are 5 or 6 FSEs to come up with. I used to have a tool, a couple of computers ago, that reverse-engineered Bill James' old BROCK2 formula. That is, the spreadsheet would take a career missing the early years and then backdate it until the player got too bad to play. If I still had it I would have used it. Instead, I had to guess. My guess ended with him right about here. Most of you seem to be giving him credit for a season or two of Negro League play. I'm giving him credit for 6 FSEs. And so, I have him ranked higher.

Oh, yeah. Back while I was in Indianapolis, I remembered Minoso as being on the 1959 Chisox. This is wrong. Their black star was Al Smith. Minoso was in Cleveland, and would not join the Sox until the next year.

9. BILLY WILLIAMS

I have no real idea of how to order the next 5 guys. They are so different from each other, and come up with such similar results in most hard math systems, that it's just hard to compare them.

Billy here was having a nice, standard, not-quite-Hall-of-Fame career until, in 1970, at the age of 32, he went on a three-season binge that puts him over the HoF (and HoM) borderline. Why? Well, here's one theory. As you know, in 1969, the Lords of Baseball decreed that the pitching mound be lowered. One season later, Billy Williams has his binge. Perhaps Williams had problems hitting sinking fastballs or sliders and the change helped him more than any other player. I don't know; that's my working theory. In any case, the binge is what puts him in the HoM at all, much less up here in the rankings. A poor defender.

10. WILLIE STUNGUN

Well, that's what Don Malcolm and I call him. The same situation as Williams. He has his two big seasons in 1971 and 73 at the ages of 31 and 33. Was he helped by the lowering of the mound? I don't know. The years are not as close to 1969 as Williams' are. In any case, I'm not going to make any deductions, like I am for Sherry Magee and Jesse Burkett, so he ends up ranked above them. A truly brutal defender, even at first. Really, a born DH.

11. JESSE BURKETT

Would rank above Williams and Stargell except for the following deduction: His best season, by a lot, is 1901. Well, 1901 is an expansion year, in effect. It has a high standard deviation, I would imagine. And with some gas taken out of that season, Jesse ends up here. A good defender, though not Clarke or Sheckard.

12. SHERRY MAGEE

Sherry had an injury in 1911, and for a couple of years his career looked like it was in collapse. His defense, in particular, was going to pieces, and he wasn't hitting much, either. Then 1914 came along and Lo! Sherry Magee was reborn! Well, no. What happened was the Federal League. Magee has a real hot 1914 and 15, and then goes back into a state of torpor, although he doesn't just collapse, like it looked like he would do in 1913.

13. JIMMY SHECKARD

Man, you could write a real good book about this guy. I mean, let's face it: Jimmy Sheckard's career looks like someone took the missing years from World War II, put them in a hat, and drew a few out in no particular order.

I speculated elsewhere in this thread that Jimmy might have been in the majors a couple of years before he was really ready. Paul Wendt suggested that the reason might have been a team with no budget for veterans, and suggested that I read me some newspapers from the time. So I did. I didn't find any mention of financial problems in Brooklyn, but I read maybe 50 columns, while Paul has probably read 500 or more. What I did find is what follows.

Jimmy came to the bigs in 1897 at the age of 18. He came up to fill in for Germany Smith, Brooklyn's injured starting shortstop, and likely to audition for the job. Smith, in his last full year, was really really finished. Sheckard, however, did not turn out to be a shortstop, and as soon as Germany was healed, Sheckard was on the bench. Brooklyn was a mediocre team, not a doormat, but that was about to change. Twice.

The Brooklyn offense was anchored around left fielder John Anderson, whom they traded early in the 1898 campaign. They then gave the left field job to Jimmy Sheckard, who at least could really play the position. However, they also inserted him into the cleanup slot in their lineup. Sheckard, at 19, was not a real cleanup hitter, but I looked up their roster and you know what? He was, indeed, the best hitter on Brooklyn that year. As you might guess, they were dreadful.

That might be why Sheckard started his career as a mid-order hitter; just a fluke of the Brooklyn roster. At the time, power hitters did not generally take walks. Their job was to drive runs in. Therefore, Sheckard did not take the walks for which he would later be famous.

Anyway, after a one-year hiatus in Baltimore, Sheckard returned to Brooklyn just in time to help them win the Temple Cup in 1900 (and THAT is one helluva two-year turnaround). After a few more years there, during which he played VERY well, he went to Chicago, just in time for 1906. He was certainly a help on the monster Cubbie teams; one of the best hitters on a squad that was really pitcher-driven.

In 1910, both Sheckard and Johnny Evers decide to really up the ante on taking those walks, and Sheckard transforms himself into a truly hot leadoff man. Unfortunately, he's already 32, and has only a couple of more years in him.

That's the outline of his career, but it omits one big thing: Jimmy's truly odd defensive career. As you all know. Sheckard is perhaps the best of all defensive left fielders. What you'd think, if you're me, is that he came up on a team with a superglove in center, and was just kept in left by that hot glove. No. He did come up behind a hot glove, Mike Griffin. But Griffin didn't stay in Brooklyn, nor did Jimmy. In 1899, Jimmy played right field in Baltimore, with Steve Brodie in center. Then back to Brooklyn, but with Fielder Jones in center. That's three different center fielders in three years, but at least they were all hot gloves. The weakest Bill James grade for any of the three is Griffin's A. The other two get A+.

OK, so it's weird so far, but it does make some sense. But then, it's 1901, and the Brooklyn center fielder is Tom McCreery. Grade C fielder. Then Cozy Dolan (C-). And then John Dobbs, who only played 5 years, and so doesn't have a Bill James ranking. That's six different center fielders in six years, and they're getting worse. There are two more years of Dobbs, and then Jimmy is off to the great Chicago Cubs of 1906. There he confronts three years of Jimmy Slagle (A), followed by Solly Hofman (A+) for 3 years, and then Tommy Leach (A+) until 1912, and then Jimmy is finished.

So Jimmy Sheckard, in a space of 16 years, played left field next to 9 different center fielders, of which 6 have A or A+ grades. But what happened in 1901? Tom McCreery is lousy, and then there's Cozy Dolan. How did Sheckard manage to avoid becoming the center fielder? I have no idea. But I doubt that you can find any other player who played that well next to that many center fielders, and never once got the job.

But then, this is Jimmy Sheckard.

This is Brock #3

14. GOOSE GOSLIN

Just what you all need: another Stan Musial story. In the Bill James Historical, you can find a quote from a contemporary of Goslin's, mentioning his exceptionally closed batting stance. The description sounds just like Stan Musial's famous superclosed stance, which has been a mystery for years.

Well, I think I might have figured this one out. As it happens, I've been stick fighting for 30 years now, and know a bit about stick hitting mechanics, although certainly not as much as a major league batter does. So what I did was take a bat and try to set up in Stan Musial's stance. And you know what? It worked. It gave me bat speed. What happened was that, as soon as I started taking my stride forward, my whole body turned, carrying my torso, my shoulders, and my arms with it. All I had to do was aim the bat at the ball, and follow through. Power came from my torso and rear end. The stance, essentially, wound my body up tight as a spring. As soon as I strode, all that torsion unloaded. Explains a lot about both Musial and Goslin.

One more Goslin note. In 1924, Goslin played for the Washington Senators. He hit 12 homers. The rest of the team hit ten, for a total of 22. The rest of the outfielders, starters and benchers included, hit one (Sam Rice). That matched Walter Johnson's total for the year. This team scored 755 runs and won the pennant. THAT is what Goslin's home park was like. Goose then hit three more taters in the World Series. And three more in the 1925 one.

15. JOE MEDWICK

I probably will have a high ranking for Medwick. What throws me here is the dissonance between the consensus ranking here and the consensus ranking of Bill James and Pete Palmer. The Historical Abstract has Medwick ranked 13th among left fielders. Total Baseball, skimming through the Total Player Rankings, has him even higher, at 11th. Those two are not generally that close, except on the absolute top end superstars. I place a lot of credibility any time the two have a consensus.

I looked at Medwick's numbers in detail to figure out where the problem comes from. As far as I can figure out, James and Palmer think much more of Medwick's peak than anyone here. Bill gives Medwick 40 Win Shares for his best season. That's higher than anyone ranked lower than Medwick among left fielders, except for Elmer Smith, who was a pitcher in 1887. Joe's second-best season comes in at 36 WS. No one lower can match that except for Sherry Magee's years during the Federal League (Magee didn't play in the Fed, but its dilution of talent all across the bigs made Magee look better than he was). Medwick's third-best year comes in at 33 WS. No one lower can match it. His five-year peak ranks at 157 WS. No one lower.... But there are 8 people who have more career WS than Medwick despite ranking lower, and many people who have more WS per 162 games. Palmer doesn't have such detailed breakdowns, but Medwick's TPR is hurt by several seasons at the end of his career that have negative values, because Pete uses the statistical mean as his zero point. According to TB, Medwick would rank higher if he had retired six years earlier than he did.

One last thing. Everyone's ballpark adjustments for St. Louis hurt Medwick. He was a righty in Sportsman's Park. That park was about neutral for righties. It was a bandbox for lefties. Makes a difference in the ranking.

In the end, I decided to split the difference between the consensus here and the consensus of the two Founding Fathers.

16. ZACK WHEAT

About even with Goslin and Medwick. His big feature, of course, is his improbable two-year comeback from an injury in 1924-25, when he was in his late 30s. I have no idea what to make of those years, but they obviously count. And, as a result, Wheat has only one year of a decline phase.

17. HARRY STOVEY

Stovey ends up here because the guys behind him have fewer seasons of any real value in their careers. I did make a deduction for the quality of AA play, but I also added some in for the short schedules. I didn't make any adjustments for stolen bases or errors, because I don't have any idea how big an adjustment to make. Here's the sb / error case as I see it:

A stolen base was worth more in Stovey's time than it is now. This is because the chance of an error is much greater, so you get a lot of 2 and 3-base "stolen bases." That throws the break-even point out of whack compared to the modern one, which explains the high volume / low stolen base percentages of early baseball. There are no caught stealing data for Stovey's time, so we have no idea how much of this advantage he gave up by running too often. However, he was a premier base stealer and those guys, in modern days, tend to have high percentages. If this is true of Stovey, then he might have a lot of stolen base value unaccounted for. Remember, too, that he was getting a lot more catcher errors in his stolen base attempts. That is, he was getting 2-base "stolen bases" that aren't even counted as SBs. They're counted as catcher errors. In short, I firmly believe that a lot of Stovey's stolen bases should be counted as doubles or triples, in terms of their impact on the game.

The same is true of ground balls for fast runners, and lefty hitters. Those guys beat out more grounders that hit pebbles, and they go to second more often on errant throws. Those things happened much more often in Stovey's time than they do now.

The big problem is trying to quantify this in the lack of light of any decent stats. No caught stealings. No way to find out who hit into how many errors. Certainly no way to figure out how many bases the errors were giving up. No way to determine how many stolen base attempts ended up scored as E2 instead of SB. My guess is that a stolen base in Stovey's time has approximately 1 1/2 times as much value as it does now, while the negative value of a caught stealing hasn't much changed. But that's a guess, based mainly on dead-ball era stolen base percentages and catcher error percentages.

As I said, I made no adjustments for this. Stovey ends up ahead of Keller, Kelley, and Kiner because of their short productive careers compared to Harry's. But in reality, he could deserve to be anywhere from below them to above Sheckard. I don't know and I have no way of finding out, unless we uncover some play-by-play data from the 1880s.

18. JOE KELLEY

My opinion is that there is almost no difference between Kelley, Keller, and Kiner. They all have short careers of any real value, and then some other seasons. That is, they're all sort of George Sisler types. I ranked them according to defense, because that was the only serious difference I could find.

Joe Kelley's last six seasons don't have much to offer. His first two have even less. That's 8 years out of his 17. The remaining 9 years are good, but not great; he has a noticeably weaker peak than Keller or Kiner. But they have a bit shorter careers of value, so it evens out.

19. CHARLIE KELLER

In Bill James's system, Charlie has a slightly lower peak (both 3 and 5-year) and a little less career value than Ralph Kiner. But his Win Shares per 162 games are noticeably higher because his weak seasons are partials, whereas Kiner was played full time even after he had stopped being RALPH KINER. Charlie was the better defender.

20. RALPH KINER

His 5-year stretch between 1947 and 1951 is truly great, easily better than anything Keller or Kelley can offer. But that was when he led the league in homers AND hit over .250. There are two more years, framing the five-year run, when he led in taters, but hit for lousy averages, so the seasons don't amount to much. And then, there are the other years. A brutal defender. A true peak voter will have him ranked over Keller, Kelley, and Stovey. I'm not one.

21. CHARLEY JONES

Charley didn't enter the bigs until he was 25, which is a little late for this caliber of player. He had his peak right on time, got derailed by the blacklist, and then came back for about three of the American Association's weak early years, and was dominant. But if you take some AA gas out of those 3 seasons, his missing years really hurt, both the blacklist years and the lack of early play.

Some quick comments on Brock's ballot:

re Minnie Minoso:

One reason you have him ranked higher is that you are working with outdated information on Minoso's year of birth. He is younger than it was long believed that he was. He was not 28 during his first full season in the big leagues, but 25 (in 1951).

Check out his page at baseball-reference.

If you look at Minoso as a player who got his break at 25 and who was done at 38, you see a very different player than one who got his break at 28 and was done at 41.

re Billy Williams: Why do you see him as a poor defender?

re Willie Stargell: It's often thought that it was the move from Forbes Field to Three Rivers Stadium that helped him, but I don't think his splits support that conclusion. My guess is just that he was healthier than usual for longer stretches in those two seasons.

I was about to post essentially the same comment about age that Chris just did. The Minoso thread makes for good reading even now.

About Stovey's speed: it's not just stolen bases that we're looking at. It's also extra base hits. He led leagues in HR five times, with several other years among the league leaders. My best guess is that not very many of those HR flew over fences. He also led leagues in triples and total bases. It is true that the XBH are directly part of his batting record - but you also have the effect that Brock was talking about of overthrows and extra bases. Circling the bases and having it recorded as a triple and an error, or going to third on a double.

But you may notice that, longtime Stovey defender that I am, I wound up voting him 20th. The AA discount, and the time at RF and 1B, just sucked away too much of my support for me to have him above that.

bjhanke--Billy Williams was a poor defender? The stats certainly don't say so.

Also, using the defensive stats available to us, Burkett's best year was 1896.

Chris Cobb says, "One reason you have him (Minoso) ranked higher is that you are working with outdated information on Minoso's year of birth. He is younger than it was long believed that he was. He was not 28 during his first full season in the big leagues, but 25 (in 1951)."

Oh, wow, thank you!!! That's not one reason; that's the whole reason. I had no idea there was any problem with Minnie's age. I am so glad I left the opportunity open to change my votes. Minoso will certainly go down. I knew there was something funny going on with what you guys were saying and voting, but I didn't know what it was except focusing on Negro League MLEs. I should have checked out the thread, but I thought all it would have was Negro League MLEs. My fault.

Dan R says, "Billy Williams was a poor defender? The stats certainly don't say so."
Also, using the defensive stats available to us, Burkett's best year was 1896."

About Billy Williams' defense: Part of my opinion comes from watching him play, which mostly means in the caverns of Busch Stadium after 1966. Williams really didn't have the range to play there, although I'm sure he was fine in Wrigley. But in Busch, I'd rather have Lou Brock, who had speed but nothing else to offer. If you only saw Williams in Wrigley or on TV, you wouldn't see that. And maybe it only applied to the larger stadiums of the era. Now, I would not make a judgment based only on that. I check out the defensive rankings of Pete Palmer and Bill James, trusting Bill over Pete when there's a conflict. Bill gives Williams a C, which, in Bill's system, is poor. Pete has him down as at least average and maybe better. I went with my eyes and Bill's system. I could be wrong. Defense is a mess to evaluate.

About Burkett: I wasn't talking about just defense. Palmer gives Burkett a TPR of 5.2 in 1901, 3.1 in 1899, 3.0 in 1900, and 2.7 in 1896. Bill James gives Jesse 38 Win Shares in 1901, 35 in 1895, 30 in 1899, and 29 in both 1898 and 1896. In both systems, the drop from 1901 to the other years is overpowering. His defense alone, I didn't try to analyze yearly.

OCF says, "But you may notice that, longtime Stovey defender that I am, I wound up voting him 20th. The AA discount, and the time at RF and 1B, just sucked away too much of my support for me to have him above that."

You deduct for playing first base in the 1880s? I don't, especially when the player begins his career at first and then is moved to the outfield as he ages. Here's a quick anecdote: When I was working up Jimmy Sheckard, you may remember that I have him coming up at age 18 to try out at shortstop. That didn't work, so Brooklyn went to plan B. Plan B was to ask Candy La Chance, the team's starting first baseman, to move over to shortstop. I'm not kidding. It was all over the newspaper columns that September, and it did happen the next April. La Chance didn't want to go, and so it didn't work out, but that's a completely different view of first base as a defensive position than we have now. And that's the late 1890s. In the 1880s, with no gloves, much less mitts, first was a tough, tough spot. This is really true until the end of the dead ball era with all the bunting. And, as Bill mentions, John McGraw never did wean himself from the model of a first baseman as a defender first.

Bill gives Williams a C, which, in Bill's system, is poor.

Not for his position. Remember, James grades all outfielders together, so the centerfielders grab most of the good grades. It is only the outstanding corner outfielders (esp. those with fairly long careers) who get even B grades. We worked out, once, long ago, what the true positional average grades for CF and for the corners were in James' system. I don't have time to hunt for that this morning, but I am pretty sure that an average centerfielder would earn a B+, while an average corner outfielder earns about a C.

Among Williams' near contemporaries, Roberto Clemente, whom _everyone_ agrees was a great defensive right fielder, earns a B- in James' system. Al Kaline earns a B-. Hank Aaron earns a C+, and his defense was very good. All three of these players were better in their prime, of course, but still, grades top out for modern corner outfielders at about B-.

Here's somewhat more detailed illustration. I used BB-ref to get lists of starting players in LF and RF in 1968, around the middle of Williams' career: this is a fair sample of his contemporaries. I looked up their letter grades in _Win Shares_. Here's the list (players who didn't log enough OF innings to get a grade are omitted), sorted by grade.

B Vic Davalillo (CF)

B- Jimmy Wynn (half CF)
B- Roberto Clemente
B- Johnny Callison
B- Tony Oliva
B- Pete Rose

C+ Cleon Jones
C+ Carl Yastrzemski
C+ Bob Allison
C+ Jim Northrup
C+ Frank Robinson
C+ Hank Aaron
C+ Roger Maris
C+ Ron Swoboda

C Billy Williams
C Roy White
C Joe Rudi
C Jesus Alou
C Ron Fairly

C- Lou Brock
C- Tito Francona
C- Willie Stargell
C- Lee Maye
C- Rick Reichardt
C- Reggie Jackson

D+ Alex Johnson
D+ Frank Howard
D+ Willie Horton

The only player who earns a B on this list is Davalillo, who is really a career center fielder, listed here only by the accident that he happened to play the most games in RF in 1968 for team that didn't actually have a starting right fielder. Jimmy Wynn is also more a center fielder than a corner guy, with 1182 games in CF and 658 on the corners. If we leave them out, the corner outfield distribution of grades becomes

4 B-
8 C+
5 C
6 C-
3 D+

The median grade is C, so for corner outfield, the C defenders are, in the view of Win Shares, around average. The poor and bad corner outfielders take the C- and D+ grades; the good and great take the C+ and B- grades, at least for the period 1960-75, for which the 1968 season provides a snapshot.

Weird to leave off 2 of the top 4 (Bonds and Henderson).

1) Williams--Top 5 All-Time.
2) Musial--Top 10 or 12 All-Time.
3) Delahanty--About 40th All-Time; surprisingly the only other retired LF who was clearly the best player in baseball for more than a blink of the eye.
4) Raines--Most of his value came in a 7 or 8 year extended prime, but they were extraordinary years.
5) Burkett--We eelected him immediately but never really discussed or appreciated his accomplishments.
6) Yaz--3 or 4 super-elite seasons and then an extraordinarily long HoVG career make for a very nice resume.
7) Simmons--Nothing to add.
8) Clarke--Career was better and longer than I remember.
9) Keller--Giving him war and minor league credit, he had a superior 7 or 8 year run.
10) Williams--Never super-elite, but excellent for a longtime.
11) Magee--I like his best seasons a lot, but the next 6 are close. Could rank much lower.
12) Stargell--Pluses: big bat, great intangibles; minuses: most everything else. But hitting counts mosts.
13) Wheat--Run-of-the-mill HoMer.
14) Goslin--Him too.
15) Kelley--Him three.
16) Minoso--Case for him as a top-tier HoMer depended on erroneous birth information. With correct birthdate, he projects as a bottom third HoMer.
17) Sheckard--Weird career pattern but legitimate bottom-quartile HoMer.
18) Stovey--Consistent, very good player with lots of positives; the numbers put him squarely on the borderline, however.
19) C. Jones--His AA seasons weren't that impressive when you translate, but perfectly reasonable to cut him some slack for rust. One of the very last players in my PHoM.
20) Medwick--When both the HoM and Win Shares overrate a guy, we are almost sure to follow. In retrospect, a very minor misake.
21) Kiner--Only 3 or 4 years when he was great and verry little to go along with it. Also, a minor misake.

Quotations from Brock's ballot #56-58 unless noted otherwise.

56. bjhanke Posted: August 21, 2008 at 11:29 PM (#2912407)
Well, here's mine. I reserve the right to make small changes until Sunday, because there are so many players so close that a good argument could change my mind. But if I haven't changed anything by the deadline, then this is it. Oh, yeah. I wrote too many long comments. The ballot won't send to this list in one post. I had to break it down into three. For those of you who do the tabulating, the simple ordered list of names is the first thing in this post. - Brock

Hi, Brock
The only thing that's too long is the apology! Everyone has the right to revise a ballot by posting a new one. Your vote is identified as yours, easy enough to replace.
Your comments are good to excellent.
- Minoso, the functional comment :-)
- Sheckard and Stovey, the provocative comment, or should I say exhumtive because they provoke me to exhume the Sheckard and Stovey threads? I will not comment on these two now, Friday morning, but postpone.
- Billy Williams in the field, worth exhuming his thread now?

Miscellaneous

re Ted:
That idea is that, in addition to the five traditional scouts' "tools", there is a sixth: strike zone judgment. It's a tool, not a learned skill

But base on balls rate commonly increases during a player's major league career. We commonly say that a player has learned or is leanring strike zone judgment. You disagree.

re Stan:
Solly Hemus, an atrocious manager by all accounts, sent Joe Cunningham AND Bill White out into right field, while Musial said not a word at first. Neither Joe nor Bill was an outfielder at all, and there was no excuse for Musial to be at first base with those two on the roster.

That's ironic to me because in my time (barely his Philly seasons; I was in elementary school and not in that region) Bill White was supposed to be a good to excellent fielder at first. (not to make too much of it, "Bill White good, Joe Pepitone bad")

on the Pirates dynasty:
The other odd thing about Clarke is also about him as a manager. With Pittsburgh, at the beginning of the century, he developed what has to be the very best control pitching staff of all time. Deacon Phillippe. Sam Leever. Jesse Tannehill. Look 'em up. Then Babe Adams. Jeez. Ted Williams wouldn't have walked 50 times a year against those guys.

When you look 'em up begin with Jesse Tannehill at baseball-reference. His four most "Similar Pitchers" are Phillippe, Chesbro, Babe Adams, and Leever and none of the others can match that. (That is #1-2-3-4 from the 1900-1902 pitching staffs and #5-6-7 from the 1909 pitching staff.)

on Sherry Magee:
1914 came along and Lo! Sherry Magee was reborn! Well, no. What happened was the Federal League. Magee has a real hot 1914 and 15, and then goes back into a state of torpor, although he doesn't just collapse, like it looked like he would do in 1913.

Sherry Magee's years during the Federal League (Magee didn't play in the Fed, but its dilution of talent all across the bigs made Magee look better than he was).

I don't buy this.
1a) The dilution was minor, although greater in the NL than AL. b) Everyone who remained in the league should have benefited from dilution.
2a) There isn't that much up-and-down to explain. b) With 1914>1915 and 1913>1916 (by OPS+) it seems equally plausible that he was getting older and he had tailored his game to Philly. He wasn't very good after his twenties or after Philadelphia, age 19-29 and 1904-1914.

DRA has Billy Williams at +32. BP FRAA has him at +56. And the only thing being a C outfielder means in Bill's letter grade system is that you are not a CF. Actually, Win Shares is quite fond of Williams's D--he accumulated 14 more Win Shares over his career than a league-average LF would have had during his playing time. After correcting for the fact that WS absurdly squeezes the range of corner OF fielding ability, that translates to +48 runs over his career. All three systems are in fairly close agreement that Williams was a somewhat above-average defender. As for your own anecdotal evidence, with all due respect, how many chances did you see him get?

As for Burkett, what I meant was that after taking defensive stats into account, 1896 was Burkett's best overall year, not 1901. But I'll partially retract that. The latest version of FRAA has him at -1 in 1901 (compared to -7 in the version I used to make my WARP), although Fielding WS does give him 0.9 below average that year (which translates to -7), and DRA (a more accurate system) actually says +10. If Burkett's fielding in 1901 was even average, then it was definitely his best year as you say.

But on the standard deviation point, I think you've got it backwards. Although the AL was founded in 1901, the *only* HoM position players who crossed over were Lajoie (who promptly hit .426) and Jimmy Collins (plus John McGraw, who I think should be in the HoM, but he only played half the year). By contrast, the NL merely had Wagner, Burkett, Flick, Sheckard, Delahanty, Wallace, Clarke, George Davis, Crawford, Beckley, Keeler, Dahlen, Kelley, and Hamilton. As