Amen

Newhouser wasn't a mediocre pitcher by any stretch of the imagination, he was pretty darn good. But he looked really great during The War, and was done at 29.

I think it would be best if we just pass on this one...

5. Orlando Cepeda, OF - Nobody would deny that Cepeda was a pretty good hitter, but for an outfielder his numbers are very mediocre compared with the rest of the guys in the Hall. His career stats have become a popular low-end benchmark for people to compare with when trying to make the case for putting other marginal outfielders in to the Hall.

A career 133 OPS+ in nearly 9,000 PA is not mediocre no matter what your position. Cepeda is a borderliner, and maybe on the wrong side of that line, but is not even close to one of the worst players in the Hall of Fame.

11. Waite Hoyt, P - 237-182, 3.59 ERA, only won 20 games twice. Only in the Hall of Fame because he was a New York Yankee.

3,800 innings of a 111 ERA+ is a pretty nice career. One of the worst players in the Hall? Really?

16. Tony Lazzeri, 2B - Elected in 1991 at a time when the Veterans Committee was going through a phase where it thought it had better elect any player who was ever associated with the 1927 Yankees.

Middle infielder with a 121 OPS+ in roughly 7,500 PA, who ranked in the top 6 in AL OPS+ in four seasons is a mediocre Hall of Fame selection?

17. Ted Lyons, P - Had a few good seasons, and many, many mediocre ones. His ERA was as often above 4.00 as not. Compiled a very uninspiring record of 260-230, despite pitching for 21 seasons.

4,200 innings of a 118 ERA+ and 260 wins is a slam-dunk Hall of Famer.

22. Hal Newhouser, P - Newhouser was a mediocre pitcher who suddenly had three seasons for the ages from 1944-1946, while all the good hitters were away fighting in World War II. Once they they returned, and Newhouser was no longer pitching against minor leaguers, he went back to being mediocre. A classic example of the Veteran’s committee paying no attention whatsoever to context.

161, 116, 132, 145, 124 are Newhouser's ERA+ numbers before and after the war seasons. On what planet is that a mediocre pitcher? Mediocre selection if you don't give him any credit at all for his war seasons - which would, of course, be completely asinine. Borderline at worst.

23. Tony Perez, 1B - First basemen are vastly over-represented in the Hall of Fame, and Tony Perez is arguably the worst first baseman in the Hall. But Joe Morgan will not rest until the entire Big Red Machine is in the Hall, and Joe Morgan has a lot of friends.

See comments on Orlando Cepeda - OPS+ ten points lower, but five of his best offensive seasons were played exclusively as a third baseman. No worse than a borderline selection, and much better than most people give him credit for at a cursory glance.

25. Eppa Rixey, P - Career record of 266-251. Ouch.

4,500 innings of a 115 ERA+. Easy Hall of Famer.

27. Red Ruffing, P - His 3.80 career ERA is one of the worst in the Hall. Only in because he was a New York Yankee.

4,400 innings of a 109 ERA+, with a pretty strong peak in 1932, and 1935-1940 (innings between 221-271, ERA+ between 119-149). Borderline selection at worst.

28. Red Schoendienst, 2B - It’s really, really hard to think of any career accomplishments for Red Schoendienst. Um, I guess he once had a season of 200 hits. Oh, and he led the national league twice in at-bats. And he does hold the record for most doubles in a three-game span! But he also had a career OBP of .337 and a terrible career OPS+ of only 93. Another oozing black sore on the sorry history of the Veteran’s Committee.

A career OPS+ of 93 - as a good defensive second baseman who then won 1000+ games and a World Series as a manager. Schoendienst is clearly not in only as a player - this ignores that.

--

This exercise in simple research has made me realize that the Hall of Fame has been smarter at times than I realized.

5. Orlando Cepeda, OF - Nobody would deny that Cepeda was a pretty good hitter, but for an outfielder his numbers are very mediocre compared with the rest of the guys in the Hall. His career stats have become a popular low-end benchmark for people to compare with when trying to make the case for putting other marginal outfielders in to the Hall.

Cepeda played the outfield in 11% of his career games.

Newhouser was a mediocre pitcher who suddenly had three seasons for the ages from 1944-1946, while all the good hitters were away fighting in World War II. Once they they returned, and Newhouser was no longer pitching against minor leaguers, he went back to being mediocre.

21-12 145 ERA+ is mediocre? That would win a CYA most years nowadays.

Rizzuto had a higher OPS+ than Ozzie Smith, and a similar "best I've ever seen" defensive reputation among his contemporaries.

And if "Even Rizzuto thought Rizzuto shouldn't have been in the Hall" constitutes an argument, then so does "Even Williams thought Rizzuto should have been in the Hall".

23. Tony Perez, 1B - First basemen are vastly over-represented in the Hall of Fame, and Tony Perez is arguably the worst first baseman in the Hall. But Joe Morgan will not rest until the entire Big Red Machine is in the Hall, and Joe Morgan has a lot of friends.

As noted by Le Samourai, Perez played third base for much of his prime. And even if you consider him a first baseman, George Kelly was much, much worse...

A career OPS+ of 93 - as a good defensive second baseman who then won 1000+ games and a World Series as a manager. Schoendienst is clearly not in only as a player - this ignores that.

Right. Plus he was a 10-time All Star. I know that basing a HOF case on past awards voting may simply reinforce the errors and biases of the past...but to say Schoendienst had no career accomplishments is taking things too far in the other direction.

He's got Newhouser, Lyons, Rixey, and Ruffing, but Catfish Hunter is nowhere to be seen?

He's got Newhouser, Lyons, Rixey, and Ruffing, but Catfish Hunter is nowhere to be seen?

Or Bender or Chesbro.

Overall, not a horrible list, but at the margins he could have done a lot better.

EDIT: Oops, wrong place.

So let me chime in on Tinker-Evers-Chance: The Cub Teams of the 1906-1910 were a dominant franchise (4 pennants, 2 WS), with Frank Chance as the Manager, and Evers the leading hitter for part of that.

Tinkers and Evers weren't much but Frank Chance could seriously hit. So what that he has Daryl Hamilton among hist comps - that's just because bb-ref comps are stupid across different eras. Chance's career OPS+ was 135 to Hamilton's 95. The issue with Chance is not quality it's quantity.

But Chance deserves a plus for also managing those Cub Teams to 4 pennants and 2 WS -- which is almost enough, by itself, to warrant enshrinement. In 8 years with the Cubs, he had a .664 winning percentage. Combine that with his good hitting, and I think he belongs.

Tinkers and Evers weren't much but Frank Chance could seriously hit.

Evers was easily the best defensive 2B of his era, and a pretty good hitter as well in the context of his times. Tinker was an excellent glove at SS and a good clutch hitter, although not the equal of the other two with the bat.

The Cubs won four pennants in five years, and won 104 games in the year that they DIDN'T win the pennant. They had the best five-year record of any team ever. SOMEONE has to get credit for that run of success, and there is little question that the defense - which revolved around T-E-C - was the primary reason for it.

-- MWE

Newhouser was a mediocre pitcher who suddenly had three seasons for the ages from 1944-1946, while all the good hitters were away fighting in World War II.

Did some of these guys get lost on the way back from WWII?

Also, this guy sounds like Uncle Leo and the antisemites. "Hey, that guy cut me off. Do you know why he did that? Because he was once associated with the New York Yankees!"

I've seen the poem thing thrown out all the time as the sole reason for Tinker, Evers and Chance being in the Hall. While you can argue their merits for being in or out, anyone who uses the poem line as being the only reason for being in is being extremely lazy in their research and is just parroting something that they've heard.

Perez is in the Hall of Fame because he was a very good player on a great team that now has a loud mouthpiece with a national forum to shill for his ex-teammates. What is galling about his selection is that the ostensible reason for it is among the worst arguments possible, that he had a lot of RBIs, and it appears to validate the most retrograde means for evaluating players.

As for Mazeroski, giving him a pass because he was so superior defensively is a bit ingenuous. Perhaps there is something to that argument, but you will have to demonstrate that his defensive contribution not only trumps the fact that he hurt his team at the plate but that his defensive contribution was so much greater than that of center fielders like Blair and Moore or shortstops like McMillan, Belanger and Marion that we should overlook his weak offense. I have little doubt that Mazeroski is in the HOF for one reason only, the home run in 1960, and the defensive argument is ex post facto justification.

I also think he might have considered Ray Schalk for his list of undeserved HOFers.

As for Mazeroski, giving him a pass because he was so superior defensively is a bit ingenuous.

The odd thing is that he accepts the argument for Mazeroski, but rips Rizzuto who was a much better hitter, and baserunner, lost 3 prime years to the war, and had a similar defensive rep at a more difficult and important defensive position.

Perez is in the Hall of Fame because he was a very good player on a great team that now has a loud mouthpiece with a national forum to shill for his ex-teammates. What is galling about his selection is that the ostensible reason for it is among the worst arguments possible, that he had a lot of RBIs, and it appears to validate the most retrograde means for evaluating players.

Perez was elected by the BBWAA, not by the Veterans Committee. Saying that Joe Morgan was able to convince the BBWAA writers to put Perez in the HoF gives Morgan much more power than he actually has...

28. Red Schoendienst, 2B - It’s really, really hard to think of any career accomplishments for Red Schoendienst.

When I first became aware of major league baseball as a wee boy in the late 1960s, the name "Schoendienst," which I couldn't pronounce for the life of me, sticks out vividly. The Cardinals were a good team back then. They were often on the Saturday game of the week or on Monday Night Baseball. Schoendienst's ultra-long, unpronouncable last name covered his back from shoulder to shoulder. Other than Tony Kubek's and Joe Garagiola's voices, that name plate is my clearest early memory of watching baseball on TV as a 3-4 year old kid.

... On a tangentially related topic: I think the fact that there were two nationally televised games each week (not regional games) and (to the best of my memory) very few locally telecast baseball games, I became a fan of major leage baseball first and the Oakland A's second. By contrast, today's fans are saturated by games on TV designed to please the local market. Most people in Milwaukee, for example, get all of the Brewers games on TV, none of the Diamondbacks (unless Arizona is playing the Brew Crew); in Cleveland, the TV shows all Indians games and only a handful of out of market contests. This is true everywhere. As such, fans are primarily interested in seeing only the local team or teams. And with the unbalanced schedule (which I believe is mostly a good thing), fans watching just the local team see teams from distant markets in their own league even less on TV.... The result of all of this, I think, has been the loss of national baseball fans. So when the local team is out of contention or out of the playoffs, the local audience tunes away from baseball altogether. Back when baseball telecasts were primarily national, that tuning out occurred less frequently. A World Series between St. Louis and Detroit in the late 1960s would have drawn roughly the same national TV audience as one between the Mets and Orioles.....

In the NFL, (excepting blackouts) all of the local team's games are broadcast. But for every local game, there are 4-5 others which are out of market, national games. And the result of that, I think, is much like the result baseball had 30 years ago and more: fans in San Francisco, for example, regularly get to see the Jaguars, the Patriots, the Cowboys, the Packers, the Giants, and so on. And so when the 49ers are out of it, the Bay Area audience still has an interest in watching the playoffs, as they are familiar with David Garrard, Tom Brady, Tony Romo, Brett Favre, Eli Manning, etc.

It doesn't really address your issue, since I think you have to be a hardcore fan BEFORE getting it, but mlb.tv if it continues to explode like it has will really bolster the number of "national" fans.

2007 was the frst year I subscribed to mlb.tv, and I've always been a "national" fan (despite not being American), but it was one thing to follow games through gameday, but an entirely different thing to actually WATCH them. Really has facilitated my obsession to ridiculous heights.

Now obviously, I don't see mlb.tv really effecting how kids discover baseball, but things like it could in the future.

EDIT: I sort of grew up as a bastardized national fan. I grew up in Toronto so they were the team I knew, but my first two favourite teams were the Cubs (1988-1990) and Astros (1990-1995 or so). I knew so little about these teams that I picked Greg Maddux and Craig Biggio (entirely due to the similar names) as my favourite players, and was later shocked to find out they were actually good.

I have little doubt that Mazeroski is in the HOF for one reason only, the home run in 1960, and the defensive argument is ex post facto justification.

Well then, you are just plain wrong. Mazeroski has always been lauded as the greatest defensive second baseman ever. He holds the record for double-plays turned by second baseman. He was well respected for this while he played -- 8 Gold Gloves and 7 years an All Star. The Home Run helped, but it was his defensive rep that got him elected.

Oh, I see, it' in alphabetical order. I thougth the numbering meant that's what he thought of them. Except Chick Hafey, you he listed by his first name, I guess.

5 guys elected in 1971 are on his list. And all are deserving. That was a brutal year.

I wonder why he cut the list off at 34? Not a round number and I don't see any big difference between 34th and 35th worst.

Whadaya suppose would anger Dick Thompson more - Rick Ferrell is on the list or the guy didn't spell "Ferrell" correctly? Hey, I can forgive that - every column I've ever done has at least one error far worse than that.

Nobody would deny that Cepeda was a pretty good hitter, but for an outfielder his numbers are very mediocre compared with the rest of the guys in the Hall.

That wouldn't make him one of the worst Hall of Famers. That makes him a mediocre Hall of Famer, and thus an acceptable one. If the standards of acceptable HoFer is that he has to be better than most guys in the Hall, then . . . that's a screwy standard.

Also, he was a first baseman, not an outfielder.

who suddenly had three seasons for the ages from 1944-1946, while all the good hitters were away fighting in World War II.

Hitters were fighting WWII in 1946? I don't have the time or effort to trot out my standard Hal Newhouse argument. One of these days I got to write a column abou thim at THT. Short version: he was very good at an extremely young age, and blew his arm out through overuse. He won more games before his 30th birthday than anyone else in liveball history.

Tinkers and Evers weren't much

They are two of the greatest defensive players of all-time. That Cubs team was built on its ability to prevent runs from scoring and they were the key elements. Virtually every pitcher who came tehre improved markedly in the run, indicating defense was the most important part of their game. Defense in general was more important back in the deadball era than now (James capped fielding wins shares at .32375 per game, and though teams rarely hit it now, they hit it often back then; the T-E-C Cubs hit it every year for a while). And that team, of course, set a slew of win records that last to this day. I ain't saying they necessarily ought to be in, but they are reasonable picks.

The best player is Newhouser, and I disagree with some other picks but if you were to come up with your worst 34, you'd have some guys on there who ain't so bad. My own personal list (based on 3-5 minutes of looking it up) would be: Hafey, Ferrell, Haines, Hooper, T. Jackson, Kelly, Lindstrom, McCarthy, Marquard, Pennock, L Waner, Bancroft, Chesbro, Bender, Schalk, S Rice, Coombs, Judy Johnson, Hunter, Hilton SMith, Andy Coopoer, Joss, Willis, R Youngs, C Klein, Wilbert Robinson, Bucky Harris, Ford Frick, Happy Chandler, Lee MacPhail, Effa Manley, Morgan Buckeley, Bowie Kuhn, and Tom Yawkcy.

My list differs from his, but he got all the bottom 10-15 and it really gets hazy as to whose the next worst after that.

I'm a bit more hostile to the execs than some - too often it's just a gold watch. I'm tempted to replace Klein and Bancroft with Will Harridge and Warren Giles. I have no idea what those guys did, but there's a shot it was something good, so I'll leave them off. Odds are, they belong on instead. The only commissioners whose presence I could understand are Landis and Selig. No one ever talks about the worst managers, but Harris and Robinson really don't belong.

that his defensive contribution was so much greater than that of center fielders like Blair and Moore or shortstops like McMillan, Belanger and Marion that we should overlook his weak offense. I have little doubt that Mazeroski is in the HOF for one reason only, the home run in 1960, and the defensive argument is ex post facto justification.

You're way off. Maz's defense was already regarded as the best at the position. Never underestimate the importance of being the best. Belanger? I don't know of anyone who thought he was better than Ozzie Smith, who was a veteran when Belanger left.

Also, Maz's offensive contributions were far superior to McMillan and Belanger. Marion has nearly an identical OPS+ but he benefits from playing in WWII, had a career 25% shorter than Maz, and did himself garner substantial support from the BBWAA. If you look up elections he was involved in, he's often got more votes than anyone else on the ballot other than those who ended up getting enshrined. Defense has never helped CFrs on the ballot.

The homer helped, no doubt, but defense wasn't ex post facto justification, it was a leading argument made on his behalf the entire time he was outside the Hall.

This list blows. Sure, he's right on some of the picks, but he's like a guy who just figured out how to use ERA+ and decides anybody under 120 lifetime must not be a Hall of Famer. You cannot complain about context and then bring up W-L record for someone like Ted Lyons, who frequently pitched for second-division teams throughout his career.

"The Home Run helped, but it was his defensive rep that got him elected."

Srul,

I don't disagree with your comments, but I do believe that if you take away that one home run, as a significant marginal event, Maz would not have been enshrined. On the margin, it was his defining moment, the one that made many people think he was a great player.

34 names, but he didn't include Roger Bresnahan?
Only 1450 games, 5400 PA, 279/386/377. A part-timer with one really good season who was said to invent catcher shin-guards. By all means, put the shin-guards on the wall, but putting his plaque up there seems wrong. So what if he walked a lot? It's not like he did much once he got on.

Doesn't Cepeda get some pioneer credit too? I realize that wouldn't help him for the HoM, but it seems like it should for the HoF.

You cannot complain about context and then bring up W-L record for someone like Ted Lyons, who frequently pitched for second-division teams throughout his career.

Ok, but the team around him wasn't the cause of him walking more batters than he struck out

Wow, I've seen a lot of good cases made against the Effa Manley selection, but this is some sexist crap:

19. Effa Manley, Executive - Apparently picked entirely for PC reasons, she was the wife of the owner of a Negro League team, and is currently the only woman in the Hall of Fame. She was a civil rights activist, which is honorable, but her primary baseball-related activity was her well-documented hobby of sleeping with many of the players on the team.

It's easy to debate whether or not her work is deserving, but the following say more about the author than about Manley:
1. Co-owner and sole owner="Wife of the owner"
2. Is the only woman in the HoF=evidence that she's a PC pick.
3. Incorporating the Civil Rights movement into baseball operations is not as baseball related as who she chose to sleep with.
4. I'm frankly shocked and amazed that he didn't understand Manley's role in resisting the opportunistic raiding of the NeLs by MLB owners. :D

As for Mazeroski, giving him a pass because he was so superior defensively is a bit ingenuous.
The odd thing is that he accepts the argument for Mazeroski, but rips Rizzuto who was a much better hitter, and baserunner, lost 3 prime years to the war, and had a similar defensive rep at a more difficult and important defensive position.

What you're forgetting, and I believe that baseball-reference.com will confirm this, is that Mazeroski never played for the New York Yankees.


my first two favourite teams were the Cubs (1988-1990) and Astros (1990-1995 or so). I knew so little about these teams that I picked Greg Maddux and Craig Biggio (entirely due to the similar names) as my favourite players, and was later shocked to find out they were actually good.

Nice stroke of luck. You could've ended up with Al Nipper and Bob Knepper.

Ok, but the team around him wasn't the cause of him walking more batters than he struck out

How does that exactly hurt his candidacy? The guy actually led the league in K/BB twice, he just never walked anybody. He didn't give up that many home runs either. If you don't give up walks and homers, you can do well without striking anybody out. If you do it well for 20 years, it makes you a Hall of Famer.

#17, I suppose you can argue for Tinker getting in thanks to the poem -- though I don't pretend to understand what the committee that put them in was thinking.

To back up your point that the voters didn't see TEC as a linked unit you don't have to look further than the votes of the mid-40s.

This list is mostly Veterans Committee selections. Any consensus as to the worst BBWAA inductee?

... On a tangentially related topic: I think the fact that there were two nationally televised games each week (not regional games) and (to the best of my memory) very few locally telecast baseball games, I became a fan of major leage baseball first and the Oakland A's second. By contrast, today's fans are saturated by games on TV designed to please the local market. Most people in Milwaukee, for example, get all of the Brewers games on TV, none of the Diamondbacks (unless Arizona is playing the Brew Crew); in Cleveland, the TV shows all Indians games and only a handful of out of market contests. This is true everywhere. As such, fans are primarily interested in seeing only the local team or teams. And with the unbalanced schedule (which I believe is mostly a good thing), fans watching just the local team see teams from distant markets in their own league even less on TV.... The result of all of this, I think, has been the loss of national baseball fans. So when the local team is out of contention or out of the playoffs, the local audience tunes away from baseball altogether. Back when baseball telecasts were primarily national, that tuning out occurred less frequently. A World Series between St. Louis and Detroit in the late 1960s would have drawn roughly the same national TV audience as one between the Mets and Orioles.....

I'd say this is about right. I'm 20 years old, and I know that I became a fan of the A's first and a fan of baseball at large second. And I'd say I'm among the overwhelming minority of people around my age who follow baseball as a whole regardless of their team's fortunes. I know die hard Giants and A's fans who can't tell you a thing about the Blue Jays or Marlins. And, now that I go to school in Boston, I've met plenty of die hard Red Sox fans who can't tell me a lick about the A's or Giants.


I don't exactly why this is, but it seems to me like baseball fandom has become pretty team-specific. It takes a lot to know a significant amount about an entire league. I know that if the 49ers are in the tank (and they usually are, as of late) I don't follow the NFL much. I can't even tell you who all the playoff teams are right now. One guess of mine is that with the rise of the NBA and NFL in popularity, people have chosen those leagues as their leagues to follow and simply stick with one team when the longer, more involved baseball season rolls around.

"He won more games before his 30th birthday than anyone else in liveball history"

oh but barely, yes it's true, with 185. Hunter had 184, Drysdale and Feller 177 each. anybody else?

of course Feller himself would scream withgreat volume that HE MISSED 3 FULL SEASONS AND ROUGHLY 75% OF A 4TH ON ACCOUNT OF THAT WAR. one of the great 'what would have beens', that Feller fella.

Just for fun, Big Train had 254 and Big Six 263 for the post 1901 crowd.

"The Home Run helped, but it was his defensive rep that got him elected."

I don't think you can seperate the two. Without his defensive rep he doesn't get in, but he anyway keeps his signature moment and lives on in lore forever after. It's not unreasonable to conclude that the signature moment "made" him, and while from a career standpoint it's just one at-bat of many thousands, from a HOF standpoint it created enormous value and mojo in media attention and fan recognition. It's hysterically historical.

You can argue against quite a few of the specific choices on his list (Johnny Evers would be one I'd start with, and there has to be more to Effa Manley than what he spells out), but I still like the Small Hall impetus behind it. It's only too bad that the idea of a Hall of the Very Good doesn't have quite the cachet ever to catch on with the general public, because that's where most of these players belong, along with most of the players up for consideration today.

And Andrew J raises a good point about the fact that most of these choices were made by the Veterans Committee. With all the often justified criticism of the BBWAA for the way they've kept out a few Blylevens, they've also done a much better job than the VC at keeping out the marginal players.

I don't exactly why this is, but it seems to me like baseball fandom has become pretty team-specific.

It's because it's a lot easier to follow 16 teams that operate in 10 metropolitan areas than it is to follow 30 teams that play in 26. Especially when so many games don't end till the wee hours of the morning. And especially when the star players on the rosters change so much every year. It's what's known as combat fatigue, or a product of too many choices.

"It's because it's a lot easier to follow 16 teams that operate in 10 metropolitan areas than it is to follow 30 teams that play in 26."

That's a great point, Andy, and goes a long way to explaining the lasting popularity of, for example, a Wilbert Robinson. The fish bowl was small.

Evers was never really the best hitting second baseman in the National League. There was Miller Huggins on the front end and Larry Doyle on the back end. Evers started to be a better hitter after he turned 26, but the Cubs still had some big seasons before then.

The 1906-1910 Cubs actually had quite a few guys who would have made all-star teams (if there had been such a thing). From the 1906 Cubs lineup only Slagle looks unlikely to have made any. When they had replaced Slagle with Hoffman, Hoffman had one big year and not much else. But Johnny Kling was a fantastic hitting catcher for his era. This was the Bill Bergen era after all where all that was really required of catchers was a willingness to do so. Sheckard and Schulte were good outfielders and Steinfeldt was a decent enough Chris Sabo caliber player.

Evers is nowhere near one of the worst in the Hall, but I don't think it's unfair to consider him a borderline candidate. I think what he did with the Braves puts him in, but it's pretty close. When talking about Evers it's almost impossible not to discuss Larry Doyle who was clearly a better hitter for teams that won a whole bunch of games in their own right. So it's Evers' glove versus Doyle's bat. I'd find it hard to induct one without the other as Cooperstown has done.

It seems a little unfair that had they been born 15 years later they all would have skated in easily.

This list is mostly Veterans Committee selections. Any consensus as to the worst BBWAA inductee?

Scanning BR. So far I'd say Hunter, Sutton and Lou Brock. All have very good explanations as to why they were elected, but I'd have to disagree nonetheless. Brock was an above average player at best during the regular season and a god in his three World Series. Like others, he stuck around three years too long and that happened to get him to 3000 hits. If he was a CF and a good one, I could see it. But his defense was not well regarded (and my personal experience watching him was when he was near 40 and I was 8 so...).

Early Wynn was not a great choice but better than Hunter and probably Sutton. Before that there was enough of a backlog to keep the writers stocked with decent candidates. It's impossible to know what kind of choice Maranville was, as he's clearly sub Hall of Fame as a hitter with Ozzie Smith's defensive reputation times about 1,000. Herb Pennock maybe. Everybody before Pennock and Traynor (with maybe Sisler and Frisch as possible exceptions) were inner circle type of guys.

I'd vote for Catfish hunter as the worst of the writers picks.

Voros, why would you think a catcher with with 1,100 hits would skate into the Hall? If that is in fact what you're saying.

Larry Doyle IMO is extremely thin in career weight, and retired at age 34. I see him skating against the wind and uphill all the way to a closed door.

"It's because it's a lot easier to follow 16 teams that operate in 10 metropolitan areas than it is to follow 30 teams that play in 26."

That's a great point, Andy, and goes a long way to explaining the lasting popularity of, for example, a Wilbert Robinson. The fish bowl was small.

Beyond that, if you take it back to the days when baseball truly was "the national pastime," (which ended roughly at the time of the first NFL / CBS contract) you had a college football season that went from mid-September through the end of November (plus one day in January), a pro football season that was 12 games long with one playoff game, an NCAA basketball tournament consisting of about 24 teams, and a pro basketball league with 8 teams whose playoffs were finished (rather than begun) around the time of baseball's Opening Day.

Oh, and on national television you had one college football game a week (plus 5 bowl games on New Year's Day), no pro football other than the championship game (and only 6 local games a year, due to the blackout rule), no college basketball at all (the first nationally televised final game wasn't until 1963), and one Saturday afternoon NBA game a week, including through the playoffs. You didn't have a national telecast of the NBA finals until about 1973 or 1974.

Not to mention you didn't have 24/7 sports channels that featured X-games, auto racing, bowling, pool, cheerleader contests, tractor pulls, thousands of old college football and basketball game tapes a year, vintage boxing matches, etc.

Yeah, three guess why it's a little bit tougher to keep up with baseball these days....

This list is mostly Veterans Committee selections. Any consensus as to the worst BBWAA inductee?

Without studying it, but just eyeballing the HOM results and the HOF list, I'd guess the weakest BBWAA inductees would include:

Catfish Hunter
Bill Terry
Tony Perez
Lou Brock
Dizzy Dean
Rabbit Maranville
Herb Pennock
Kirby Puckett
Bruce Sutter
Pie Traynor


That's not such a bad list; if Sutter and Traynor are among the writers' 10 weakest picks, they're doing alright. You've got a couple guys who clearly don't belong, a famous guy with a high peak and a short career as a player--and long one as broadcaster, and some borderline cases.

The writers ain't great but they ain't really the problem, either.

Writers should read James Overmyer's book on Effa Manley before dismissing her case. I'm not sure myself that it was wise to induct a big batch of Negro League executives at once, but she had a very interesting career, and I agree with Eraser-X that it's bizarrely sexist to reduce her to someone who slept with a bunch of guys to get into the Hall of Fame.

Red Ruffing is in the Hall for being a Yankee only in the sense that he made the 1936-39 Yankees a lot better than they would have been without him. As frequently noted, he's one of those guys (like Allie Reynolds, in a shorter career) who made a good Yankee team even better; he was surely not just along for the ride. Waite Hoyt wasn't bad either; he had an Eckersley-like career in some ways, though he never had a run as great as the one Ruffing had in the 30s, and Hoyt is in to some extent because of his long presence as a broadcaster (like George Kell).

The writers ain't great but they ain't really the problem, either.

They have the easier job though. They were still boneheaded enough to leave Johnny Mize out for reasons only they knew.

Larry Doyle IMO is extremely thin in career weight, and retired at age 34. I see him skating against the wind and uphill all the way to a closed door.

Which is also true of Evers and many players of the day. For whatever reason, guys just didn't seem to play as long sometimes. Honus Wagner being an exception.

Voros, why would you think a catcher with with 1,100 hits would skate into the Hall? If that is in fact what you're saying.

I just meant Doyle, Evers, Tinker and Chance, not Kling (and Sheckard and Schulte). Anyway things had gotten easier for catchers behind the plate by the twenties, and a lot easier at the plate for everyone. So who really knows what happens to Kling's career. But at the time he was clearly alone with Bresnahan as the class catchers in the league, so he would have been an All-Star for sure.

Ok, but the team around him wasn't the cause of him walking more batters than he struck out

That was true of the entire American League every year from 1923-1939 except for 1930. My guess is that Lyons posted comfortably above average strikeout to walk numbers for his career. The fact that "average" appears to have kind of sucked back then might be reason to go after him, but then that would be true of Red Ruffing and others.

"For whatever reason, guys just didn't seem to play as long sometimes. Honus Wagner being an exception."

Along with Mathewson, Lajoie, Wee Willie, Jake Beckley, Sam Crawford, Cobb, Speaker .. ; )

Then there's Baker, who supports the idea. I hear you.

Nice digression Andy and Rich. I started following baseball in 1975. While I remember watching an occasional ABC Monday Night game and NBC's Game of the Week, I could also watch the Red Sox, but they were usually only on TV a couple times a week back then. I mainly followed them via radio; lying in bed before falling asleep listening to Jim Woods and Ned Martin. Baseball on TV was a special treat.

Today, sports may be oversaturated. Consider college football. IIRC, when I was a kid New Year's Day was the only day that you could watch four or five games. You can do that and more any Saturday. Then, you only got one or two games a weekend (I also think that ABC thought that Connecticut was in the Great Lakes region. I think we got alot of Ohio State games.) Before college hoops exploded, my winter Saturdays were spent watching bowling segue into Wide World of Sports. I could go on, but I have to do some work to justify my presence on the payroll.

Then there's Baker, who supports the the idea. I hear you.

And Crawford's last full season was when he was 35. Mathewson's last good year was when he was 32. Looking over those Giants teams of the early teens and Doyle's career lasted longer than most of the everyday players.

I'm not necessarily arguing for Doyle, just that it seems odd to put Evers in without putting Doyle in and vice versa.

Two things:

1) The value of the '60 HR is probably overstated in discussions about Mazeroski.
2) Mazeroski's postseason success is a legitimate and significant asset when an accounting of his career is made. He hit .323/.364/.581 in the postseason over his career, a huge bump up from his regular season numbers. He was by far the best position player for the Pirates during the '60 World Series: the best hitter by a bunch, a top-notch defender at a key spot, and a guy who came through in the ultimate clutch situation. Without him, that's probably a five-game series, tops. It may not be enough to make him a good HOF pick, but it's not nothing, which is where some people in this thread seem to be going.

Larry Doyle IMO is extremely thin in career weight, and retired at age 34. I see him skating against the wind and uphill all the way to a closed door.

Which is also true of Evers and many players of the day. For whatever reason, guys just didn't seem to play as long sometimes

IIRC in Evers' case it was a series of nervous breakdowns that helped to cut his career short.

Then there's Baker, who supports the idea. I hear you.

Home Run Baker has a counterpart of sorts in the modern era: J.D. Drew. Only instead of going on a shlt strike at the beginning of his career like Drew, he did it towards the end.

Scanning BR. So far I'd say Hunter, Sutton and Lou Brock.

Sutter is far worse than any of those three IMO. A reliever with 1000 career IP and only 8 good seasons? Only 3 of which were really outstanding? His selection was really laughable.

"And Crawford's last full season was when he was 35. Mathewson's last good year was when he was 32."

Yes, but they put A LOT more in the bank than Doyle.

Perhaps the advent of spring training assisted players in lengthening their careers.. ? There's research to be done ; )

"It may not be enough to make him a good HOF pick, but it's not nothing, which is where some people in this thread seem to be going."

I don't see those posts, but then again i don't read very carefully ; )

I started following baseball closely in '57 at the ripe age of 6. With 5 sisters (well only 3 at that time), a dad who couldn't care less about sports and 1 hour per day TV limit, I almost never saw a game unless I hung out at a friend's house - and we were generally shooed outdoors if it wasn't raining. So I picked up the game through a crystal radio tuned to the Reds' station and baseball cards.
I used to tag along with my dad when he went to Sears on Friday nights to get his weekend home project materials and hang out in the TV section to watch the Friday Night Fights. That was about the only sports that I saw on TV -- I would have had an easier time recognizing Floyd Patterson or Dick Tiger than Willie Mays or Mickey Mantle if I saw them on the street.

24 - I'd replace Bancroft and Hilton Smith with Dandridge and Sutter.

The BBWAA errors were generally not of commission but of omission. The reason we have a VC is the writers were too stingy, not too generous.

The BBWAA errors were generally not of commission but of omission. The reason we have a VC is the writers were too stingy, not too generous.

True, and the writers have become even more stingy in recent years, which is why the Sutter selection is particularly galling. Leaving out Santo, Grich, Trammell, Whitaker, Blyleven, Dawson, Raines (probably), Larkin (probably), et al, but electing Sutter is bizarre IMO.

I used to tag along with my dad when he went to Sears on Friday nights to get his weekend home project materials and hang out in the TV section to watch the Friday Night Fights. That was about the only sports that I saw on TV -- I would have had an easier time recognizing Floyd Patterson or Dick Tiger than Willie Mays or Mickey Mantle if I saw them on the street.

Hell, if all we had had to rely on back then for face recognition was television exposure, the biggest sports stars of the 1950's would've been Bobo Olson and Slave Girl Moolah.

This list is mostly Veterans Committee selections. Any consensus as to the worst BBWAA inductee?

Herb Pennock. The other worst . . .Rabbitt Maranville, and Pie Traynor I suppose. I'm against Sutter and Hunter. If you look at who they elected, they have a fairly consistent line. For example, they elected 8 catchers - all are in the top 9 of all time in the New Historial Abstract. The other is Mike Piazza, who they will vote in. The worst second baseman they put in was either Gehringer or Sandberg.

The BBWAA errors were generally not of commission but of omission.

People say this, but they overlook the structural element. The HoF has two doors - BBWAA and the VC - and the latter is designed to nab those that BBWAA passed over. Thus the BBWAA standard for induction will always be higher than the Hall's is. If the BBWAA lowered their standard to the previous generation's VC, the VC would just pick some of the forgottens. Even when the VC was at its cronyism worst -the Frisch years - they'd intersperse the horrible picks with the most deserving - guys like Goose Goslin, Stan Coveleski, or Lefty Gomez. No matter how good or bad a job the VC and BBWAA each do, the BBWAA's standards are designed to be higher.

Overall, the BBWAA has done an excellent job. Their worst omissions are Johnny Mize, Arky Vaughn, and Goose Goslin. They also missed a lot of deadballers and 19th century players, but those guys retired before the BBWAA members began their careers. Newspaper coverage in 1935 was immensely larger than it was in 1905, and in the first few elections you didn't need to be a BBWAA member to vote. The BBWAA put in the inner circles and lacked enough knowledge to form a concensus on the rest (welcome to the days before baseball encyclopedias) causing the VC to take care of almost all pre-1920 players.

By those standards, their induction of Willie Keeler was one of their worst. He's a deserving HoFer, but they only elected a handful of guys who peaked before 1910 - Mathewson, Wagner, Young, Lajoie, and Keeler. The latter is far worse than the others.

"Hell, if all we had had to rely on back then for face recognition was television exposure.."

Thank God for baseball cards ..

I am not disputing that Mazeroski was a great defensive player, perhaps the best at any position ever. Nor am I denying that his defensive prowess is a reasonable argument for enshrining him. But few players are in the Hall solely because of their defensive reputation (quite a few are in despite it), and in every case there were special factors that kept them in people's consciousness. So while the argument for Mazeroski may have always been his defense, I doubt that would have been sufficient had it not been for the home run, while other great fielders never garnered the same amount of consideration unless they also had some special circumstance.

We get into some very fuzzy areas when comparing defensive play. If a truly bad hitting second baseman gets in because he was a brilliant defender, I do not know how we can justify dismissing great defensive catchers (Grote? Seaver, who also pitched to Bench, said Grote was the best ever), shortstops and center fielders (Gary Maddox?). Is the discrepancy in defensive talent between Mazeroski and Maddox, for example, so great as to enshrine one and never even consider the other? Or is the consensus that Mazeroski is vastly superior to every other second baseman while Maddox is simply among the great center fielders enough to argue that case, despite the more critical position Maddox played and his far superior offensive numbers? I think that is a tough case to make.

"He won more games before his 30th birthday than anyone else in liveball history"

oh but barely, yes it's true, with 185. Hunter had 184, Drysdale and Feller 177 each. anybody else?

On Newhouser's b-ref bullpen page, I posted the list of all liveballers with 150 or more wins. There's about 15, including Waite Hoyt who has come up in this thread. Only one won 300. And please note all the guys you mentioned blew their arms out right after turning 30.

of course Feller himself would scream withgreat volume that HE MISSED 3 FULL SEASONS AND ROUGHLY 75% OF A 4TH ON ACCOUNT OF THAT WAR. one of the great 'what would have beens', that Feller fella.

Yeah, but he might've blown his arm out in 1943 for all we know.

The 1906-1910 Cubs actually had quite a few guys who would have made all-star teams (if there had been such a thing).

I still have a handout from a SABR34 presentation a guy gave on the 1906-10 Cubs. If you look at the win shares of every position player who played in the NL in those years, the Cubs had the league's sixth best player (Evers), seventh best player (Sheckard), eighth best player (Steinfeldt), ninth best player (Chance), tenth best player (Tinker), twelfth best player (Hofman), and thirteenth best player (Schulte). Johnny Kling was in 19th, but that's only because he missed all 1909 (he won an international billiard competition and decided to cash in by opening his own pool hall. If faded adn he went back to baseball). Had he performed barely half as well as he did in his worst year in that stretch, he would've been the 14th best player in the league.

The Cubs didn't have any of the BEST position players in the league (Wagner, Magee, Clarke, Devlin, Leach), but they had the entire next-best-batch. All their starters were better than any starters on Cin, Boston, Brkoolyn of St Louis.

One reason sometimes given for the shorter careers of some star ballplayers in the 1900s and 1910s is the relatively low pay during that era. If you could do as well out of baseball as playing, if you could parlay your baseball career into a business career, it didn't make much sense to play on into your mid- / late-30s. Something of the same principle applied in the 1960s. Mantle, Colavito, Drysdale, Larry Jackson were guys who probably would have played another few years if they had been earning salaries comparable in real dollars to those earned in the 1990s or 2000s – or perhaps even the 1920s. I mean, ballplayers have always been paid decently compared to laborers, but often not very well compared to guys who sell insurance (Bill Werber, for instance, comfortably outearned his 1930s/40s playing salary in the offseason as an insurance salesman).

"Hell, if all we had had to rely on back then for face recognition was television exposure.."

Thank God for baseball cards ..

You got that right.

"Yeah, but he might've blown his arm out in 1943 for all we know.."

That wouldn't stop Feller from screaming .. ; )

Wasn't Maranville supposed to be one helluva shortstop?

, et al, but electing Sutter is bizarre IMO

wrongheaded, but it's pretty c;ear to see what they thinking, so not bizarre imho.

Sutter was a bridge between the "ace reliever" (Fingers/Gossage) and the closer, as such his #s and perceived effectiveness stood out against his peers- not because Sutter was so much better than they, but he was being used differently.

If you look at Sutter's BBREF comps you see a whole raft of guys with EXTREMELY similar numbers, who were just as effective as Sutter, for at least as many years, and who have no hope of making the HOF. Many of these guy's careers overlapped with Sutter, but Sutter came before all of them. Sutter was thus seen as unique, whereas someone like Jeff Montgomery of Rob Nen does not. Due to the different way Sutter was being used he had more save opps than any one else year after year. Once very team is using their closer according to the save rule it became much harder for any pitcher to lead in save opps year after year. Mariano Rivera- a more effective "closer" than Sutter hasn't lead the league in saves as often as Sutter- despite higher single season save totals- because unlike Sutter, he has had to compete against other closers who are also getting all their team's save opps.

Simply stated, during his prime 1977-84, Sutter stood out against his contemporaries, not becasue he was so much better than them, but because he was used differently- and it was that time period that Newspapers began running relief rankings (junk ratings, like 2*W+2*sv-L), and Sutter was at the top year after year. The perception was that he was an elite and unique talent. Of course we now know that quite many pitchers can succeed in Sutter's role. He was a very good pitcher, but he was not a unique TALENT.

What was galling to me about Sutter's election was
1: By the time he was elected it should have been apparent to the voters that Sutter was not the unique talent they had believed him to when he was playing.
2: More than a few voters said they voted for Sutter over the Goose because Sutter had more saves.
3: Many voted for him because he "pioneered" the closer role. Is that a really good thing? Wasn't that his managers? What if there was no Babe Ruth? Does that make Cy Williams a HOFer?

Andy, I USED TO OWN that card, along with a Jackie Robinson from the same year. Sold them in a big batch with other wonders to finance my move to Denmark in the late 80s.

Damn.... never sell your ballcards, never sell your guitars..

They have the easier job though. They were still boneheaded enough to leave Johnny Mize out for reasons only they knew.

That was a strange one. He belonged in and they passed on him. Either he or Vaughn is their top oversight. Looking it up to try to figure out why . . .

Johnny Mize entered the ballot when writers only voted every other year. He only had 11 elections where he could get in.

When he first joined it, there was no time limit on eligibility. The 1960 ballot had 133 candidates receive votes, still the all-time record.

He fairly rather poorly that year, coming in 13th, with under 20% of the vote. Looking at his career, the lack of playing time hurt. Forget the war for a second, he only had 7 years he played more than 126 games.

The tail end of his career didn't help. In his last five seasons, he hit .264 with 62 homers and 241 RBIs in 481 games.

When he retied (1953), he was 6th all-time in homers. When they first voted on him (1960, due to no election in '59), he was down to ninth.

By the next vote (1962) he was 13th in homers. By the end, he was 22nd.

He was a great power hitter for his era, but - much like Will Clark of Fred McGriff - his numbers didn't look as impressive copmared to what came later. Really, Will Clark is a good comp is you ignore war credit for Mize. He had three huge seasons where he hit 40+ homers, but otherwise had a bunch of years in the 20s (becuse he often missed so many games with injuries).

It's a shame, because WWII cost him three years.

He rose anyway, making it to 6th place by 1968, but hit a ceiling. By then it had been 20 years since his last season.

Oh, you know what hurt him? He was a high peak candidate with low career numbers in direction competition with Ralph Kiner. He looked worse than the 7-time homer champ did on paper. Because Kiner's career was so short and his game so heavily dependent on one issue (homers) many voters were less willing to vote for him. And if they weren't going to vote for Kiner, it was harder to vote for Mize. And at the very end, he also had to contend against Gil Hodges, who had similar looking HR totals for his career as well.

wrongheaded, but it's pretty c;ear to see what they thinking, so not bizarre imho.

You're right -- bizarre was the wrong word to use. I understand (and remember) the perception of Sutter as a dominant reliever in the late 70s and early 80s, just as I understand the perception of Rice as a dominant hitter. In a way, his election would have been more defensible had he been elected in his first or second year of eligibility. But you're also right that his election was ridiculous because the writers have had plenty of time to evaluate his career in the proper context.

Hell, if all we had had to rely on back then for face recognition was television exposure.."

Thank God for baseball cards ..

Andy, great card -- that was a couple years before my time. I was being slightly hyperbolic about knowing boxers' faces better than baseball players' but at a nickel a week allowance, I couldn't buy all that many cards in the beginning. My nickel had to cover birthday and Christmas presents for my sisters and Mom and Dad (typically a pack of life savers, woo hoo!) as well as the occasional candy bar so I couldn't buy 52 packs of cards a year, for those who want to question how big of a fan I was. :) By age 8 I was up to 15 cents a week, 10 for myself, 5 for presents/church collection, so I could buy a lot more cards, but by then I was also interested in stamps and comic books. Tough, tough economic choices for a little kid.

I am not disputing that Mazeroski was a great defensive player, perhaps the best at any position ever. Nor am I denying that his defensive prowess is a reasonable argument for enshrining him. But few players are in the Hall solely because of their defensive reputation (quite a few are in despite it), and in every case there were special factors that kept them in people's consciousness. So while the argument for Mazeroski may have always been his defense, I doubt that would have been sufficient had it not been for the home run, while other great fielders never garnered the same amount of consideration unless they also had some special circumstance.

Fair enough, but that doesn't make the defensive argument post facto justification. It was always part of the argument.

One reason sometimes given for the shorter careers of some star ballplayers in the 1900s and 1910s is the relatively low pay during that era. If you could do as well out of baseball as playing, if you could parlay your baseball career into a business career,

Yeah, I've heard this argument before, but I dunno how many actually did it. Factors working against it: risk of setting up a business under any circumstances, you could always do it later while baseball skills would only last for now, those that did try to parlay it into something else might try to begin part-time in the off-season, people just plain liked playing baseball, a lot of guys playing the game didn't come from the upper crust and had limited skills outside the game, if you wanted to work your way up baseball itself was one of your better avenues (just ask Griffith, Mack, Comiskey. Or McGraw, Robinson, and Jennings), and last but certainly not least basebal players were actually better paid than a large majority of Americans back then.

I figure the shorter careers was due to lousier training, conditioning, care for the injured, and overall knowledge of how to take care of yourself. Heck, their idea for treating a pitcher's arm was to apply heat to it. That's 180 degrees away from what they do now.

But few players are in the Hall solely because of their defensive reputation

Basically, the consensus best defensive player at every important defensive position (i.e., not including left field and first base) is in the Hall of Fame: C - Bench, 2B - Maz, SS - Ozzie, 3B - Brooks, CF - Mays, RF - Clemente. Obviously, several of those guys are deserving Hall-of-Famers regardless of the defense (Bench, Mays, Clemente), and just as obviously, some of these guys may not have really been the best defensive player at their position. For the more important positions - C and SS - they've sort of always tried to have the best at the position in there - that would be the selling point probably of Maranville and Rizzuto at SS, for example, and Schalk and Ferrell at C.

The Hall of Fame likes players with singular accomplishments and being the best defensive X in history is a singular accomplishment.

Was Rizzuto ever considered the best defensive SS of all time? I heard his HoF case being made for years and years, and I don't remember anyone ever going quite that far.

Was Rizzuto ever considered the best defensive SS of all time? I heard his HoF case being made for years and years, and I don't remember anyone ever going quite that far.

I don't know. He was before my time. Bill James recently has said that Rizzuto was the best SS ever at turning the double play, but I'm pretty sure he didn't say that until long after Rizzuto was already in the Hall.

but I'm pretty sure he didn't say that until long after Rizzuto was already in the Hall.

I think he wrote that after doing his winshares book, that process seesm to have changed his opinion on the Scooter

Was Rizzuto ever considered the best defensive SS of all time?

I never heard him put in that rarified air until Win Shares. Maranville was the great SS of all-timer. Marty Marion was the great contemporary glove (that's the only explanation for his HoF support) and Ozzie Smith's the greatest in living memory of the baby boom generation.

I never heard him put in that rarified air until Win Shares.

Okay, scratch Rizzuto from my comment #74.

Andy, I USED TO OWN that card, along with a Jackie Robinson from the same year. Sold them in a big batch with other wonders to finance my move to Denmark in the late 80s.

I hate to play one-upsmanship here, Nate, but I still own that entire 1953 Topps set.

The only problem is that about 35 or 40 years ago, I decided that I'd "protect" it by putting all of the cards in five of those dime store family photo albums.

It took about 30 minutes for the sticky stuff to do its thing, and I haven't been able to see the backs of those cards ever since. And though I've had a dozen different suggestions about how to get them out without damaging them, they all had the sound of a mad scientist with a little bit too much "disinterest" in the matter.

Andy, great card -- that was a couple years before my time. I was being slightly hyperbolic about knowing boxers' faces better than baseball players' but at a nickel a week allowance, I couldn't buy all that many cards in the beginning. My nickel had to cover birthday and Christmas presents for my sisters and Mom and Dad (typically a pack of life savers, woo hoo!) as well as the occasional candy bar so I couldn't buy 52 packs of cards a year, for those who want to question how big of a fan I was. :) By age 8 I was up to 15 cents a week, 10 for myself, 5 for presents/church collection, so I could buy a lot more cards, but by then I was also interested in stamps and comic books. Tough, tough economic choices for a little kid.

Edmundo, just imagine what a $1.20 box (24 packs) of unopened 1953 Topps cards could get at an auction today. $100,000 wouldn't be at all unreasonable, and probably if anything it'd go for even more.

In fact, if you think of how many of our retirement nest eggs were likely sacrificed on those bicycle spokes.....where was Warren Buffet when we really needed him?

that would be the selling point probably of Maranville and Rizzuto at SS, for example, and Schalk and Ferrell at C.

I'm sure it helped with both, but Schalk's big selling point was his Clean Sox-edness. One of the charges brought against the Black Sox before the grand jury was conspiracy to defraud Ray Schalk (or something like that). Ferrell? Well, I guess he had a selling point. Can't think what it would be, though. Given his virtual complete lack of support from the BBWAA, his defense couldn't have been that big a selling point for him, though. Schalk got some real support from them at least.

But yeah, the main point you made - being Best Ever at a position - really helps someone; especially if he's at a key defensive slot.

Oh - you know who we all forgot who got in on his defense? Aparicio. That man was a BBWAA pick and everything. Defense also helped Nellie Fox, who went in via the VC.

Ferrell? Well, I guess he had a selling point. Can't think what it would be, though.

Honestly, I put him in there because I couldn't think what else he could possibly have going for him, so I guessed defense (especially since catcher defense is so "intangible").

In fact, if you think of how many of our retirement nest eggs were likely sacrificed on those bicycle spokes.....where was Warren Buffet when we really needed him?

I only used doubles for bicycle spokes and flipping, and generally only players of the caliber of Foster Castleman or Reno Bertoia, two players whose cards seemed to be omnipresent in the packs that I'd buy.

"Their worst omissions are Johnny Mize, Arky Vaughn, and Goose Goslin."

So they missed the third-best shortstop of all time, and that's an endorsement of the job they've done? Yikes.

So they missed the third-best shortstop of all time, and that's an endorsement of the job they've done? Yikes.

Er, no. That was their oversights. They've elected in almost 100 liveballers and have only missed 3-4 should've-been-in guys. That's a pretty good rate. If you want 100% success to justify their existance, you'll never approve of the work any group ever does.

In the same post you pulled that one quote from, I also noted they completely nailed getting the best catchers and second basemen, for example. Going by the New Historic Abstract, they CF they indcuted are all better than the guys they passed on. They put in 7, and James's top 8 are Griffey and those 7.

et al, but electing Sutter is bizarre IMO

I don't think it was bizarre, but I do think Sutter should have made the list of Worst Hall of Famers. He's not as good as Gossage, probably about as good as Quisenberry.

I'm not even that convinced Dennis Eckersley was all that great a choice either, but I don't know if I'd put him in Worst Hall of Famers.

Ray Schalk seems to be a glaring omission from this list.

"Er, no. That was their oversights."

I'm just sayin', missing a top-3 player at a position is one hell of an oversight.

"I hate to play one-upsmanship here, Nate, but I still own that entire 1953 Topps set.."

aww, you didn't hate it THAT much, did ya?

my best cards ever:
1950 Bowman J.Robinson (MVP)
1957 Topps Mantle (Triple Crown)
1957 Topps Aaron (batting title)
1960 Topps Aaron (400 tb)
1964, 1965, 1966 Topps Koufax
1963 Topps Willie Mays
1955 Bowman Feller

well, i could go on. but i have a feeling you could clean out my fleet and still have me mopping the deck, Andy. Touché!

I don't disagree with your comments, but I do believe that if you take away that one home run, as a significant marginal event, Maz would not have been enshrined.

Rich: I agree that the Home Run helped. It is even mentioned on his plaque. Would he have been enshrined without it? I don't know. But if he had not been considered the greatest defensive second baseman in the history of the game, the conversation does not even begin.

"tootin' my own horn"
Srul, see #38. or maybe you did. imo, not relevant to seperate the two. noteworthy stuff, same guy, it all adds, swoop, HOF. i never liked dissecting frogs, why dissect Maz

I don't see Newhauser as one of the worst HOFers. While his competition wasn't great in the war years, his 1946 season (26-9, 1.94, career high 275 strikeouts) erases the doubts of whether he was really great.

Perhaps the competition in 1946 wasn't quite back to where is was pre-war, but Hal had to pitch to guys like Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Vernon, and Charlie Keller, and it looks like he did just fine.

Cepeda played the outfield in 11% of his career games.

Vortex, I'm not sure the fact that Cepeda also played some 1B and DH really makes the writer's point any less valid. In fact, since 1B and DH are traditionally premier power positions, I think it may strengthen his argument -- namely, that Cepeda's numbers are poor compared with the rest of the outfielders/first basemen in the Hall.

his 1946 season (26-9, 1.94, career high 275 strikeouts) erases the doubts of whether he was really great.

Perhaps the competition in 1946 wasn't quite back to where is was pre-war,

well you answered that yourself.

Also some players spent the war years playing baseball (even if not in the majors), some like Ted Williams did not. Other guys who might ordinarily have come up in 42/43 and should have been entering their primes in 46/47 had their development interrupted.

Even with the war having ended I doubt the MLB was fully back up to steam for at least 2-3 years, but then again Hal did have a 145 ERA+ in 272 ip in 1948 and 124 in 292 ip in 1949, and after that his K rate plummeted and then his IP totals dropped and he was obviously hurt. (man oh man was he worked like a dog from 1944-49)

I think the question with Hal is what would 1944-46 have looked like without the war, my guess (and it's only a guess) is that his 44-46 would ahve looked a lot like his 47-49-
that hypothetical Hal goes 183-163 in 2924 IP with an ERA+ of 117

Are there pitchers between 2750-3250 ip with ERA+ between 112-122 in the Hall? Yes-
2 of them
Bob Lemon 2850 IP and an ERA+ of 119, Chief Bender 3017 IP ERA+ of 112. (both men had very nice looking winning Pcts)
Relax the IP to 3500, add 4 more pitchers, Joe McGinnity 3441, 120; Don Drysdale 3421, 121 and Eckersley 3286, 116, Griffith 3386, 121

Was Hal a HOFer without facing weak competition during the war?
That's pretty iffy imho, he was clearly a very good MLB pitcher, but if his true talent was 3000 ip 120 ERA+ rather than 3000 IP 130 era+, well the large majority of 2750-3250 ip, 120 ERA + guys are not in the Hall.

I'm surprised that Rollie Fingers hasn't drawn any support here as a bad BBWAA choice. 1,700 IP of Relief Work at 119 ERA+?

"1,700 IP of Relief Work at 119 ERA+?"

Well, for starters, Athletics 'dynasty' and a Cy Young avec MVP with 1.04 ERA. Signatures. And somehow his BB-REF Hall Monitor is 139 - go figure.

Interesting how his 'most similar by age' from 28-38 is Goose Gossage. Every year.

Good call re Fingers. I keep forgetting that he's in the HOF (which probably doesn't speak well of his election).

I think the question with Hal is what would 1944-46 have looked like without the war, my guess (and it's only a guess) is that his 44-46 would ahve looked a lot like his 47-49- that hypothetical Hal goes 183-163 in 2924 IP with an ERA+ of 117

Yeah, but the counter argument is that the best talents can't take as much advantage from depleted competition. No matter how good you are, there will always be bad pitches, poorly hit but flukily placed batted balls, and since all pitchers are somewhat reliant on their defense, if the quality of defense around him declines, that will cause runs to score.

Ultimately, a sub-MLB player might become an average or even good player under weaker competition, while a great player . . . well, he can get better, even noticably better, but the impact would be less dramatic than on an normally replacement-level player.

Newhouser was able to start in MLB at age 19. At age 21 in 1942 he was already a star. Yes, that was a war-year, but the only prominent hitter gone was Hank Greenberg, who a Tiger hurler wouldn't have faced anyway.

Given how good he was when oh so young, and how he faded in late 1946 (he won his 20th game in his team's 95th game or so. I know that's the fastest any player since WWII. It might be the fastest since Walter Johnson), and his arm abuse, I think his later 1940s numbers are already affected by fatigue.

The war distorts his 1944-5 numbers, but his 1946 stats gives you an idea of what he was. Wanna say there was weakened competition caused by rustiness? OK, but most of the MLB guys drafted played on armed service teams, and they should've shaken off their rust a little quicker. More importantly, his numbers that year are hindered by late season fatigue when his 1943-6 workload finally started to catch up to him. Fatigue and quality of competition cancel themselves out at the least. And he's still a fantastic pitcher.

Also some players spent the war years playing baseball (even if not in the majors), some like Ted Williams did not.

Ted sure didn't take any time to re-adjust after 3 years out of baseball, putting up a typical Ted season right away, .490 OBP, .650+ slugging. But with Ted and the rest of the hitters back, Newhauser's stats didn't fall off the cliff. He just gradually got a little worse over the next 5 years, probably due to his workload more than anything else.

Rollie Fingers is one of those players who benefits from his post-season exploits, espeically in 1972-3 when the A's won four straight series that went the distance.

Fingers appeared in 12 out of 14 World Series games in those two years, threw 24 innings, and allowed 3 runs. The A's had six one-run victories in those two Fall Classics. They won Game 6 of 1973 by two runs (but it was only a 1-run lead when Fingers entered the game in the 8th), and completed '73 with a 3-run victory.

Mariano Riveria's had a much better post-season career, but I doubt any reliever has left that kind of mark in two World Series, let alone back-to-back ones.

I don't have a calculater to figure ERA, but in those four tight post-season series in 1972-3, Fingers - in 18 games, tossed 34 IP, allowed 5 runs. I don't think that means he automatically deserves enshrinement, but it is worth mentioning.

The war distorts his 1944-5 numbers, but his 1946 stats gives you an idea of what he was.

Exactly.

I think the question with Hal is what would 1944-46 have looked like without the war, my guess (and it's only a guess) is that his 44-46 would ahve looked a lot like his 47-49- that hypothetical Hal goes 183-163 in 2924 IP with an ERA+ of 117

I'm fine with hypothetically replacing 44-45 with 47-48 or whatever, but in 1946 he was facing the good hitters. If he was on the ballot now I wouldn't support him, being in favor of the small hall, but he was a fine pitcher. The record above is overcorrecting by taking away 1946, but even so it stacks up with Orel Hershiser, 3100 innings of a 112 ERA+. Not quite who I'd vote for in the HOF, but a very, very good pitcher.