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It'll be interesting to see what we do with Eppa Rixey.
Pitcher makes an error on a play that should have ended the inning. All subsequent runs are unearned, just as if the SS threw the ball away.
Similarly, in BP's analysis, once the ball is in play, pitcher as pitcher has done his job. Pitcher as fielder takes over if he makes a PO, A, or E; just as if the ball went to SS instead.
So pitcher as pitcher and pitcher as fielder are two separate categories.
Like all of Davenport's calculations, we can't see the innards. OTOH, Ed Walsh in 1907 made 70% more fielding plays than the average pitcher (4 Assists per Game). If he wasn't a great fielding pitcher, then he's violating DIPS by inducing more easy comebackers to himself instead of the other IFers. Either way, he probably deserves extra credit.
For those who give war credits, Rixey served all of 1918 and part of 1919 (half?).
I'm deliberately not including HOFers Waite Hoyt and Jesse Haines in that mix, who each had somewhat of a '30's relief career. Haines, FWIW, gets my vote as the all-time worst HOF pick.
I thought he was injured.
My project for "Let's make sure we don't forget him while we induct the great players who come on the ballot with him" is Stan Covaleski.
Yea, I've always liked SC, too.
I too am interested to see what we do with the Tommy John's and Frank Tanana's of the '20's, namely HOFers Eppa Rixey, Red Faber, Burleigh Grimes, Herb Pennock, and maybe Stan Coveleski, not to mention non HOFers Carl Mays, Urban Shocker, and Dolf Luque.
Don't have the adjusted numbers with me, but Pennock had terriffic run support - a career RSI around/over 110. Grimes also loses several games when his W/L record is adjusted for run support - which is pretty bad considering how lackluster his Pct is w/out adjusted. Faber's career RSI was right around 100 or 101. Rixey picks up some wins when his record is adjusted.
Fun fact: when adjusted for run support, Red Ruffing has as many wins and two more losses than Gus Weyhing.
Here's the essentials, I suppose:
(1) Still reviewing all candidates under light of new (to me) info.
(2) Thank God we'll elect at least one carry-over this year.
(3) I've already reshuffled a few of mine since last year.
And here are the lucky butt-heads...
1. Frank Baker
2. Dickey Pearce
3. Jimmy Sheckard
4. Bob Caruthers
5. Lip Pike
6. Eddie Cicotte
7. Gavvy Cravath
8. Sam Thompson
9. Larry Doyle
10. Ed Konetchy
11. Cupid Childs
12. Jimmy Ryan
13. George Van Haltren
14. Joe McGinnity
15. Bobby Wallace
2) Pearce
3) Sheckard
4) Caruthers
5) Pike
6) Cicotte
7) Cravath
8) Thompson
9) Doyle
10) Konetchy
11) Childs
12) Ryan
13) Van Haltren
14) McGinnity
15) Wallace
Is this going to ever submit a freakin' comment!?!
Is my face red. LOL
Thanks.
http://www.baseballthinkfactory.org/files/primer/hom_discussion/new_eligibles_year_by_year/P200/
BP doesnt use a complete DIPS approach, I believe it is 70%. Thus, a pitcher is still on the hook for 30% of the responsibility of a ball in play.
Rube Waddell 123
Eddie Cicotte 108
Addie Joss 108
Hippo Vaughn 105
Clark Griffith 104 (11% AA discount for 1891)
Bob Caruthers 100 (11% AA discount for 1884-89)
Vic Willis 99
Joe McGinnity 96
And the top 10 dERA+ seasons for pitchers on this ballot:
1. 138, Rube Waddell 1903 (2.48 dERA, 3.42 league dERA)
2. 136, Rube Waddell 1902 (2.95 dERA, 4.00 league dERA)
3. 131, Rube Waddell 1904 (2.54 dERA, 3.32 league dERA)
4. 127, Rube Waddell 1905 (2.69 dERA, 3.42 league dERA)
5. 125, Rube Waddell 1907 (2.77 dERA, 3.46 league dERA)
6. 124, Eddie Cicotte 1918 (3.17 dERA, 3.92 league dERA)
7. 123, Rube Waddell 1900 (3.30 dERA, 4.06 league dERA)
8. 121, Rube Waddell 1908 (2.79 dERA, 3.38 league dERA)
9. 119, Eddie Cicotte 1917 (3.20 dERA, 3.81 league dERA)
10. 118, Eddie Cicotte 1919 (3.36 dERA, 3.95 league dERA)
for comparison:
146 Walter Johnson 1912 (2.47, 3.62)
146 Christy Mathewson 1908 (2.50, 3.66)
135 Ed Walsh 1910 (2.59, 3.50)
134 Pete Alexander 1915 (2.72, 3.64)
Strange to see Waddell's '03 season on top when is 02 & 04-05 are usually considered superior. Are you including HBP numbers? Pitchers tended to hit lots of batters in this period (though that would only help Waddell '03.
I've heard no claims that DIPS works for dead-ballers. Its possible with $HR so low and outfield's so large (and outfielders so shallow) that doubles and triples would not be pitcher independent. Its also possible that spitballers need the same adjustments that knuckleballers would.
Just for comparison, how our the career dERA+ for the inductees (Brown, Plank, Walsh, Mathewson)?
295, Pedro Martinez 1999 (1.57, 4.65)
Yes, I should put in the knuckler adjustment for Cicotte, which increases his career dERA+ to 116. Do you have any idea how I might come up with a spitter adjustment?
Good point about extra-base hits over outfielder heads being equivalent to HRs today.
Maybe instead of using a .295ish BABIP I should just use the league BABIP for each year. Don't know if that would make a difference.
Three-Finger Brown: I don't know what Federal League discount to use. Without one, he is at 111 career dERA+. From 1906-1911 his dERA+ were definitely excellent: 118, 118, 116, 128, 121, 120. And of course he had Tinker to Evers to Chance, which clearly helped his BABIP.
Eddie Plank: Again, don't know how to discount his FL season; he's at 106, peaking at 120 in 1913 and 117 in 1914 (he had 126 in the 1915 Federal League but I imagine that gets discounted lower). I never loved Plank as much as the rest of the electorate anyway.
Ed Walsh: dERA+ likes him a lot: 119 career, with 5 seasons over 120 and 2 over 130 (1910, 11). A spitballer BABIP adjustment would make him look even better.
Christy Mathewson: the Big Six's greatness is also borne out by dERA+. He had a 120 career dERA+, and a superb peak: from 1903-1912, he was 128 118 128 105 125 146 137 130 132 125.
Maybe this isn't such a bad measure after all. Ideas for improvement would be greatly appreciated.
It's a big number. From Total Baseball, the seasonal totals, followed by career:
8.3
4.5
1.8
3.6
11.2
7.9
(2.3)
2.4
(3.1)
2.7
3.1
(2.4)
0
Total: 37.7
Just want to keep my acronyms straight.
I do something that I think is a little bit similar. I still use Palmer's pitching linear weights as a factor in my analysis (it's basically ERA+ weighted by innings and park-adjusted).
I then adjust the LWTS number by a factor determined by comparing the pitcher's DERA and NRA from the BP cards (i.e., if NRA is higher than DERA, the defense behind the pitcher was below average). I take this DERA LWTS and treat it like WS and WARP -- that is, I determine it for 3 and 7 year peaks, 5 year consecutive peaks, career and on a per 1000 IP basis.
Palmer/Gillette Baseball Encyclopedia has his OAV at .214 which puts his OAB at 1168 and BFP at 1900.
Looking at the team pages, baseball-reference doesn't have BFP for all the pitchers for that year. Maybe they got the number wrong. *shrug*
Don't forget double plays and caught stealings, the of which were many I'd imagine (which would be included in outs on bases) too. Generally I think the Stats All-Time Handbook uses 2.9*IP, not 3.
TBF=X*IP+H+BB+HBP. Then use that same X for everyone when you don't have any other data. You actually could figure it for each team if you want to get really fancy . . .
Wins - The most basic measure
Welch by far has the most at 307. Then McGinnity 246, Griffith 237, Caruthers 218, Waddell 193.
Wins minus Losses – include penalty for bad stuff
Caruthers win this round with 119. Next, McGin 104, Welch 97, Griffith 91, Waddell 50
RSI W-L record – taking into account their run support
Caruthers 204-113
Welch…... 304-213
McGin…... 239-149
Griffith… 233-150
Waddell.. 201-135
Wins Above Team – taking into account one’s mates
Griffith the winner with 46. Then Welch 38, McGin 34, Cauthers 32, Waddell 18
ERA+ - preventing runs, career rate
Waddell 134, Caruthers 123, Griffith and McGin 121, Welch 113
DERA – BP’s taking into account defense, and league quality
Waddell wins going away with 3.79, then Griffith 4.04, McGin 4.09, Caruthers 4.12, Welch 4.35
EqA – could they hit?
Caruthers 288!! Griffith 217 Welch 214 McGin 165 Waddell 163
WARP3 – BP’s career accomplishments
Caruthers 71 Griffith 69 Waddell 60 McGin 59 Welch 49
Win Shares – BJ’s career accomplishments
Welch 354 Caruthers 338 (pre-1893)
Griffith 273 McGin 269 Waddell 240 (post-1893)
Other notes:
Welch has NO black ink – unless you count leading the league in walks.
Griffith was matched against the tougher opponents more than the ‘normal’ amount. He also ‘pitched to the score’, as indicated anecdotally and by the fact his W-L record is better than his ERA would suggest.
Obviously the guys who pitched in the 1880s were able to rack up more IP (and Wins) than those after the mound distance was lengthened.
We’re on track to honor Joe Mac this week. I’m OK with that, but if I were to honor only one of these 5 hurlers, there is no doubt which one I would take. By both won-loss record in context of team, and by ERA in context of league and defense and career length, and with a smattering of a good bat thrown in, Clark Griffith to me is the clear choice. I’m apparently the Best FOCG – but tell me, everyone else, why he is buried on so many ballots?
I too think Griffith is underrated by the group, but if I looked at the data in your post and nothing else, Caruthers looks like the winner.
I've got McGinnity (#2) and Caruthers (#4) about even, but give the nod to McGinnity b/c his numbers are less skewed by the idiosyncracies of pitching statistics pre-1893 and b/c Caruthers gets an AA discount. They are followed by Griffith (#8), then Waddell (#10) and then Welch (who is off the ballot).
I've got Griffith ahead of Waddell primarily b/c of WARP and b/c some of Waddell's credit comes from strikeouts, which look more important than they are (glamour stat).
Welch has NO black ink...
Out of the five pitchers, I have Welch last, and it's true he has NO black ink. However, of the five, he easily has the best grey ink, so it's no like he wasn't contending for the black ink on a regular basis.
I think they are all credible candidates (top 30) but none of them are knocking down the door (I'm going to have Caruthers and McGinnity somewhere around 10th and the others off ballot).
What I want to emphasize, however, is the importance of getting our decisions on them right. By my calculations, each of them ranks significantly below the pitchers we have inducted so far (with the possible exception of Spalding, who is a special case). Our decisions on these guys and the career pitchers from the 1920s are going to set our baseline for pitchers. I advise a lot of thought and careful voting, b/c/ if we are too inclusive with these guys, our only options will be to have a pitcher-dominated HoM or to use disproportionately harsh standards on later pitchers.
Leaders in ERA+, 2400+ IP
146 Walter Johnson
135 Pete Alexander
127 Stan Coveleski
125 Dazzy Vance
124 Urban Shocker
123 Eddie Cicotte
121 Eddie Rommel
120 Hippo Vaughn
119 Red Faber
119 Carl Mays
117 Dolf Luque
117 Babe Adams
116 Wilbur Cooper
115 Eppa Rixey
114 Jack Quinn
Leaders in IP
5915 Walter Johnson
5190 Pete Alexander
4495 Eppa Rixey
4180 Burleigh Grimes
4087 Red Faber
3920 Jack Quinn
3883 Sad Sam Jones
3762 Waite Hoyt
3572 Herb Pennock
3480 Wilbur Cooper
3391 Hooks Dauss
3307 Rube Marquard
3223 Eddie Cicotte
3220 Dolf Luque
3209 Jesse Haines
Leaders in CG%, 2400+ IP
79.5 Walter Johnson
73.1 Pete Alexander
71.1 Carl Mays
69.5 Eddie Cicotte
69.5 Jeff Pfeffer
68.7 Wilbur Cooper
65.0 Hippo Vaughn
64.7 Burleigh Grimes
64.5 Dazzy Vance
63.5 George Uhle
63.3 Urban Shocker
63.1 Hooks Dauss
61.6 Slim Sallee
61.5 Joe Bush
59.0 Eddie Rommel
Leader in Wins Above Team
90.0 Walter Johnson
81.6 Pete Alexander
33.2 Dazzy Vance
30.8 Eddie Rommel
30.2 Urban Shocker
24.5 Herb Pennock
23.5 Red Faber
23.5 Joe Wood
21.9 Carl Mays
21.3 Hippo Vaughn
21.3 Burleigh Grimes
21.0 George Uhle
20.6 Slim Sallee
20.2 Babe Adams
20.1 Stan Coveleski
Pitchers Leading in OPS+ as Hitters, 2400+ IP
86 George Uhle
82 Carl Mays
76 Walter Johnson
72 Joe Bush
61 Wilbur Cooper
58 Burleigh Grimes
57 Art Nehf
55 Urban Shocker
54 Hooks Dauss
54 Dolf Luque
52 Bill Sherdel
50 Babe Adams
48 Tom Zachary
45 Sad Sam Jones
43 Pete Alexander
I thought he was injured.
My source for the Military Service was the Neft&Cohen; Baseball Encyclopedia. baseballlibrary.com also has Rixey serving all of 1918, but no mention of 1919. Maybe that leaves 1919 in some doubt?
[Rixey] missed the 1918 season, serving overseas with an army chemical-warfare division.
That's good to know. I never remember the exact % of BP's responsibility, though I know it gives more fielding credit than Win Share's 50-50 approach.
My point with Walsh (and pitcher fielding) was that, no matter how the responsibility is divided, having 70% more "range" than the average pitcher is a positive credit, whether you believe it was his fielding or induced by his pitching skill.
Babe Ruth was always quite high in putouts. The most extreme example was 1918, when he had 19 putouts in 20 games as pitcher. For contrast, in 1918, Johnson had 15 putouts in 39 games and Cicotte 9 putouts in 38 games. What could that mean? Possibilities include:
(1) Ruth, the egomaniac, called off infielders and caught his own popups when other pitchers weren't doing that.
(2) Yankee first basemen ranged further off the bag and made their pitchers cover more, or
(3) There's some stat leakage here involved games in which Ruth moved from P to OF.
My money's on #1.
"was thought to be washed up in 1919-1920, but had his best seasons after that, and pitched until 1933."
That's what I was thinking of. Later on, in the Eppa Rixey comment itself on p900, James writes:
When the Phillies sold Pete Alexander to the Cubs in late 1917, Eppa Rixey was so disgusted that he joined the Army. With World War I underway everybody had conflicts about whether to stay or go. rixey said that he had hoped to pitch one more year in the majors and had planned to take his chances on the draft, but the sale of Alexander (and Bill Killefer) had wrecked the team, and he decided to heck with it. He fought a year in Europe, returned to the Phillies - and pitched fifteen more seasons in the National League."
So I guess he did serve.
I agree Tom. Carurthers only looks tops based on what you posted if you don't discount the AA at all. Just with the raw numbers and no discount, I'd drop his W-L to 4th, not first. Griffith had 29 more wins and 37 more losses, I'd take 29-37 over 0-0. Not to mention tougher competition. Of course that doesn't account for Caruthers' hitting, etc. I'm just talking about the pitching records.
But Griffith's career was substantially longer when compared with his contemporaries, which counts for something with me. I also think replacement level for pitchers was higher for pitchers when there were fewer pitchers getting the call for each team. I believe replacement level is generally the level of the worst regulars, and if there are few regulars to go around, the replacement level should one go down is higher. This hurts the 1880s pitchers vs. the 1900s pitchers in my analysis. Caruthers could move up for me this week, but he won't be ahead of Griffith.
Griffith looks great now that I've added up the numbers for BRARP+FRAA+PRAR and adjusted for season length; for everyone on the ballot. He'll get a significant bump from me this week. I've definitely been undrerrating him.
Childs -- B+
Doyle -- C+
I realize OBP-heavy is better in OPS, but I thought there was a post before that said that this didn't matter so much for OPS+.
Anyhow, I'll probably just slot them together on my ballot and vote soon.
Doyle 50.3 of 287.8 total (17.48%)
Childs 57.0 of 236.7 total (24.08%)
You have to remember that Childs OPS+ was created in a one-league environment where all the best players were located. Doyle's OPS+ would not be as impressive if he had played under similar conditions. Of course, the competition did improve during Doyle's time so that has to be factored in. It's a matter of balancing everything to see who weighs more quality-wise.
HoM balloting is not for wimps! :-)
I was referring to a discussion that was had last year or the year before. The nature of OPS+ not being 100*OPS/lgOPS but being 100*(OBP/lgOBP + SLG/lgSLG - 1) meant that OBP and SLG are weighted more on their own scales and that OPS+ more closely matches OTS+ which is closer the RC+... the heavier weight on the OBP is not as necessary. That's what I thought I'd read. Could be that Child's OBP's are significantly large enough to still tilt this scale. This could be necessary, or it could be a case of a run estimator acting weird at high OBP (batting yourself in so to speak)... and the glossary at BP doesn't state if they use MLV to compensate for that.
*Sigh* Yup... HOM balloting is not for wimps! Ahh... looking forward to 1934... I think I'll have Tris Speaker 5th... that's two years worth of slam dunk inductees in front of one of the greatest players of all time. A ways to go yet... must focus... :-)
So it's weighing .001 of OBP the same as .0012 of SLG which is about 6:5, but not near the 2:1 that is reasonable. So it's slightly better than OPS, but not nearly enough.
Again, unless I'm missing something, which is entirely possible, I've only glanced at it.
Childs and Doyle, as much as any two players at the same position, really do come out much differently in 2 rating systems:
Doyle has a .632 to .609 edge in OWP using James' methods, but Childs has a higher EqA (303 to 295). There's a good mini-project for somebody....
I think this basically comes out as a wash.
John's comment relates to competition generally, but I was curious who the other second basemen in the league were when these guys were playing (i.e., which 2b they were competing against for honors). I picked the season for Childs and Doyle when they were 28 years old (random...but they both had good seasons at that age).
Note, this is for fun...I don't think it has any bearing on answering which player was better.
CHILDS:
Heinie Reitz
Dick Padden
Bill Hallman
John O'Brien
Tommy Dowd
Tom Daly
Bobby Lowe
Kid Gleason (pitching days were over)
Fred Pfeffer
Bid McPhee
DOYLE:
Bill Rodgers
Bert Niehoff
Jim "Anti-inflammatory" Viox
George Cutshaw
Miller Huggins
Heinie Zimmerman
Johnny Evers
Childs' competition at 2b looks tougher. There's a HoMer in there (though he's winding down at that point) and Daly, Lowe and Pfeffer were good position players. The average player on Childs' list played 12.8 seasons and had 145.8 WS (I ignored Gleason's pitching years). Not bad.
On Doyle's side, Evers, Zimmerman and Huggins were good players, but the rest were pretty awful (Cutshaw wasn't horrible). The average player on Doyle's list played 9.9 seasons and had 137.7 WS.
I decided to see who was in the AL in Doyle's 28th year, because while Doyle wasn't competing against those second baseman for retroactive all-star honors, he competed against them for "best in the league". Here they are:
Ralph Young
Eddie Foster
Lute Boone
Heinie Wagner
Del Pratt
Bill Wambsganss
Eddie Collins
Nap Lajoie
Well, that's a better looking group. Two of the best players ever, plus a couple of other decent players in Pratt and Wambsganss.
I know I should be applying myself to something useful, but I feel rewarded by the presence of three Heinie's in one study.
By the way, Butts Wagner also played during Childs' era...and even played 5 games at 2b!
Well, I'm using first principles to try and remember why OBP has a higher weight. I was sure it was because OBP*SLG was the RC formula and not OBP+SLG... I could be wrong... or it could just be part of it.
I should just trust the formulas, because a lot of hard work and testing went into those.
Its just details, but I was convinced that Doyle was a better hitter by rate. OPS+ says so, batting win shares seems to say so, why does EQA say so?
Here is OWP for 2B's with 6000+ PA:
CAREER
1871-1921
2B
OWP OWP
1 Nap Lajoie .729
2 Eddie Collins .721
3 Larry Doyle .632
4 Cupid Childs .609
5 Johnny Evers .558
6 Miller Huggins .555
7 Del Pratt .552
8 Bid McPhee .540
*shrug*. I didn't think that EQR and RC would give such different results. Its close though and for now I just put them 14/15 on my ballot. Will update next week if something else comes out.
I've restarted my RSI website. The old one collapsed due to problems involving archiving snafus & its unwillingnes to update the public info when I re-published it, thus sapped my will to actually do anything with it.
So far I've only got: What is RSI, How W/L records are adjusted, and a complete list of the career RSIs & Adj'd W/L records for the 191 pitchers I've done it for. Hopefully, I'll do more before getting really really bored. I do intend to prioritize putting up info on 19th century & deadballers, in deference to this project. The archiving already works here better than it ever did on the old site. Don't expect any quick work though.
http://runsupportindex.blogspot.com
I found that unlike more recent years, deadball pitchers absolutely had the ability to prevent hits on balls in play--every pitcher I am considering on the ballot had a career BABIP lower than that of his teammates. To correct for effects of fielding and park, however, I conducted the following process:
1. Take a pitcher's real-life $K, $HR, $BB, and $HB for each year.
2. Calculate the ratio of his BABIP to that of his teammates' for each year.
3. Smooth out the noise in this data by replacing the actual ratio each year with the following formula: 1/4 the ratio in a given year, plus 1/4 the ratio over the three-year interval (one year on either side), plus 1/4 the ratio over the five-year interval (two years on either side), plus 1/4 the career ratio.
4. Multiply this smoothed ratio by the league BABIP each year to get a $H for each year.
5. Use Extrapolated Runs values to get a dERA from the Ks, HRs, BBs, HB's, and adjusted base hits.
6. Compare this dERA to the league dERA to get a dERA+.
Here are the pitchers I have figured data for:
1. Ed Walsh (1904-1917)
1904 103, 1905 123, 147, 144, 198, 176, 206, 143, 140, 107, 118, 175, 1916 96, 1917 76, career 151
2. Addie Joss (1902-10)
1902 138, 1903 142, 138, 129, 134, 138, 178, 1909 148, 1910 145, career 143
3. Christy Mathewson (1900-16)
1900 91, 1901 137, 119, 140, 122, 145, 111, 154, 205, 191, 147, 142, 131, 123, 107, 1915 103, 1916 97, career 134
4. Rube Waddell (1897-1910)
1897 107, 1899 122, 135, 117, 144, 137, 129, 132, 112, 117, 117, 1909 108, 1910 95, career 125
4. (tie) Mordecai Brown (1903-1916)
1903 103, 1904 125, 120, 134, 135, 157, 158, 132, 120, 108, 99, 118 (FL), 1915 120 (FL), 1916 108, career 125
6. Vic Willis (1898-1910)
1898 114, 1899 126, 101, 128, 134, 126, 118, 107, 125, 129, 129, 1909 120, 1910 112, career 121
7. Joe McGinnity (1899-1908)
1899 119, 1900 108, 114, 130, 139, 130, 116, 118, 1907 106, 1908 87, career 118
8. Eddie Plank (1901-1917)
1901 116, 1902 112, 108, 107, 115, 111, 108, 126, 113, 113, 117, 110, 122, 121, 147 (FL_, 1916 117, 1917 116, career 116
9. Clark Griffith (1891-1906)
1891 92 (AA), 1893 114, 108, 99, 114, 118, 140, 136, 130, 128, 94, 107, 95, 1905 131, 1906 97, career 115
10. Eddie Cicotte (1905-1920)
1905 74, 1908 94, 95, 89, 97, 99, 112, 115, 116, 112, 141, 132, 1919 141, 1920 116, career 113
11. Bob Caruthers (1884-1892)
1884 (AA) 125, 1885 (AA) 113, 120 (AA), 117 (AA), 122 (AA), 109 (AA), 105, 1891 102, 1892 82
Don't you have some sort of Component ERA going on? Not that that doesn't have value in and of itself.
I have calculated, as above, defense-independent ERA's for these 11 pitchers (our four modern era pitching HoM'ers plus the pitchers I'm considering on this ballot). Now, factoring innings pitched, straight-line-adjusting for season length, and using the Pythagenport formula with replacement level set at 1.25*league dERA, I have converted these ERA's into Wins Above Replacement, BP-style (no timeline or league quality adjustments yet). Here is my data:
1. Christy Mathewson
2. Ed Walsh
3. Eddie Plank
4. Clark Griffith
5. Iron Joe McGinnity
6. Mordecai "Three Finger" Brown
7. Rube Waddell
8. Vic Willis
10. Parisian Bob Caruthers
(not including hitting)
11. Eddie Cicotte
Thanks.
I wonder if we'll see Griffith move up a notch or two in the balloting as a result.
By the way, do you ever sleep?
True. He's completely fallen off the radar.
In my mind, Rixey in the only "top half" type candidate from this group.
Looking ahead, I think the toughest call -- I could see him being either a #1 or off-ballot --
is Red Ruffing. What do you do with a guy with 273 wins, who pitched forever, is top 30 in wins and innings, but who only has an ERA+ of 109 and led the league in losses more than in wins? Throw in the fact that he was a below-average pitcher until age 28 and that he lost 2.5 years to WWII in his age 38-40 "prime".
His "most similars" list is a Who's Who of the Dubiously Large Counting Stats (Gus Weyhing, Tony Mullane, Dennis Martinez, Jack Morris . . .) plus Grimes, Faber, etc.
In my mind, how we treat Red Ruffing will indicate whether the HoM with end up closer to 20% pitchers or closer to 33% pitchers.
The next step for me with this is to give credit to fielders in this--I am giving these pitchers each league-average fielding but crediting them for it 100%. How do I do this?
A note on Griffith: I used to really not like him; he barely made my ballot. And his lifetime dERA+ of 115 is nothing remarkable, way worse than, say, Addie Joss' 143.
But he had a real ability to prevent hits on balls in play from 1898-1901--his BABIP was just 85% of his teammates over that span (similar to McGinnity in 02-04, Walsh 08-10, and Mathewson 07-09). His 1898 season was actually not nearly as terrific as it appears, as he stranded an ungodly proportion of runners. He was almost as good in 1899 (1898 $K = .069, $BB+HBP = .057, $HR = .01, BABIP = 84% of team; 1899 $K = .054, $BB+HBP = .055, $HR = .004, BABIP = 85% of team). And he threw lots of innings.
Anyhow, they also had an award called the "Sell Your Soul to the Devil" award for pitchers that show a large change in their fortunes. Camilio Pascual was honored for this, even Jerry Koosman's revival in MN after some horrible years for the Mets in the mid-70s got a mention.
The big winner for this award was Red Ruffing. Ruffing had negative WAT numbers for the awful 20's Red Sox and positive WAT numbers for the mighty 30s Yankees. Simply one of the biggest turnarounds in history and it would be fun to here some anecdote of a coach's or player's advice that accounted for this turnaround. So, its almost like he wo
Anyhow, his peak years were solid but by no means spectacular... since he his prime is aslo in the Negro League hey-day he might have trouble getting to the top of a ballot (I've been wrong about that before though).
Still got 15-20 years before he is eligible though.
In that order????
With such a small sample size of teammates to compare his BABIP too, take these results with a grain of salt.
Mickey Welch
<pre>
Year dWARP dERA+
1880 16.0 108
1881 9.7 105
1882 3.1 89
1883 8.8 101
1884 13.4 112
1885 11.3 110
1886 6.4 95
1887 7.6 109
1888 5.3 98
1889 5.5 99
1890 5.0 103
1891 0.1 81
1892 -0.1 62
TOT 92.1 102
Keefe had a Delta-H of -105 and a Delta-R of -34.
Welch had a Delta-H of -42 and a Delta-R of -262.
So, it looks to me like Keefe was better at preventing hits on balls in play, but Welch was MUCH better at preventing his hits from turning into runs -- Clutch Pitching.
It makes sense when you look at their peripheral numbers as teammates, where Keefe leads considerably, and then look at the results -- wins -- which finds them nearly identical.
McCormick's WARP numbers are so high because, of course, he pitched almost the entire season for many of his teams. Welch tops out at 16.0 WARP, while McCormick has four years above 18 maxing out at 25, because his dERA+ were significantly higher than Welch's, due to a higher strikeout rate. He appears to have been somewhat better at preventing hits on BIP than Welch, although Welch's ability may be understated due to his pitching alongside Keefe.
Nonetheless, here's what I've got:
Jim McCormick
1885's a very strange year. All the talent was on two teams - Giants & Cubs - & the rest of the league wasn't very good. It's no accident that Clarkson & Welch had their big win years that season or that McCormick had his gaudiest non-UA winning percentage that year. It was also Keefe's best single season winning percentage. All of them deserve some sort of discount, IMHO. May have something to do with why the Giants team BABIP was so much lower than the league average.
So, it looks to me like Keefe was better at preventing hits on balls in play, but Welch was MUCH better at preventing his hits from turning into runs -- Clutch Pitching.
Along those clutch pitching lines Mickey Welch won 13 more games than he should've based on his RA & the team's RS in his career - only Bobby Mathews, Roger Clemens & Rick Wise did better. Keefe lost 18 more games than one would've expected based on RS & RA, tying Curt Simmons for the worst mark ever.
I now have six pitchers clustered between 200 and 206 RA+ equivalent FWP: McGinnity, Ruffing, Coveleski, Rixie, Faber, and Vance. Ruffing, Rixie, and Faber reached this neigborhood through bulk; Coveleski and Vance have fewer innings but a higher winning percentage. McGinnity is in between, but more of his value is concentrated in his top two seasons. What are some of the other ways these six are unlike each other? How did each one's defensive backing compare to the others in this group?
Boston: 39-96 (.289 W%), 1122.3 IP, 92 ERA+.
New York(and Chicago): 234-129 (.644 W%), 3221.7 IP, 115 ERA+.
I tried to find someone who had a career comparable to Ruffing in New York, with comparable wins, Win%, and ERA+. The best I could come up with was NOBODY. Nobody was able to keep up that sort of win% for so long with such a low ERA+. Ron Guidry and Ed Lopat were vaguely close, although not really (Guidrey had a higher ERA+, and Lopat had a lower win%), both in about 1000 fewer innings.
Red Ruffing in New York was either the Clutchest pitcher ever, had the most run support in history, or was the luckiest sumbitch to ever grace Yankee Stadium.
He did have an RSI over 120 in his post-Red Sox days, which would put him among the best post-Nat'l Ass'n pitchers ever in terms of run support. His Red Sox RSI was around 80, which is equivilent (yea, I know, I can't spell) to the run support of Eddie Smith, who has the worst run support of anyone I've come across.
1. Can you convert Win Shares to runs at 3.33 R/WS?
2. Is data available on the league average fielding WS at each position for each year? Are fielding WS equal to fielding runs above replacement divided by 3.33 (or some similar number)?
Back in Prospectus Delta-Land, check out Ruffing's Run Delta. I shifts from large positive numbers to large negative numbers at the instant of the trade to New York, so it is looking like the perfect storm of run support and stranded runners.
I'm certainly not saying I wouldn't vote for him (especially after giving fair credit for 2.5 missed seasons in WWII), but I think it is a perfect example of Charlie Hough Syndrome.
Is great something you can BECOME at age 37 when looking back in retrospect, or does there have to be some indication of greatness somewhere in his prime?
At age 34, he was Most Similar to Joe Bush, and the comparison is actually a good one. 17 seasons of Joe Bush is clearly not a HoMer. Is 22 seasons of Joe Bush a HoMer? 25 seasons (Ruffing plus war credit)?
I don't know. One side of me says that you have to add up all the credits. The other side says that 100 years of Joe Bush is still just Joe Bush.
My guess is, it wouldn't make much difference, but the short career retire-at-30 players, (Rusie, Flick, Joss and, yes, Caruthers) would lose out since they'd appear rather after their long career contemporaries. But would there be other differnces?
Aside from that, I don't know the exact locations of all the canidate gaps, but the further into the project gaps come, the less "troublesome" they are, because with a bigger backlog, the odds of having better players at the top of it are pretty low.
As it stands now, I will predict that whoever we take in the last year of this backlog will be the "worst" players selected in the entire project. That's not meant as an insult to the players, someone has to be 200th out of 200; I just think it's gonna be them.
The honor should soften the transition from junior high into high school, but I can't imagine his parents will be too thrilled about him traveling up from Curacao for the induction ceremony....
It's not the same at all. Win Shares asserts that pitching is always 33% of the game (plus or minus a couple of % points). WARP allows a much wider range in the pitching/fielding split.
Radbourn won 60 games in 1884. For Win Shares, this means about 60 Win Shares, plus extra credit for his 205 ERA+, and more credit because of the fielding cap, and maybe a little bit extra for hitting above .200 OWP. Total 89 Win Shares, or approximately 30 Wins above Replacement.
WARP-1 has him at 17.7 (approximately 53 Win Shares). The excellent fielding behind him gets a chance to claim about 40% of the credit that Win Shares gives to Hoss. What's left is still enough to give Radbourn more WARP than any position player I've noticed in 1884 (though I haven't yet conducted an exhaustive search).
If you toss 80-90% of a team's innings at even a league average level, you are going to be many, many wins above replacement.
That's true in any era. It's also true for position players, who accumulate WARP for average play too.
This highlights something that I've said before. The game is structurally different in the early 1880's. Good pitchers were more important then than they are now. This is due to the huge amount of innings that they throw, combined with the fact that pitchers were nearly as effective then as they are today (strikeout rates are comparable to the 1930's/1940's/1950's).
Pitchers have more value then due to the large amount of innings they throw. And position players have less value then because the seasons are shorter. They have less "time" to impact the season, to accumulate the small edges that add up over the long season of today. If you adjust the hitters but not the pitchers for these short seasons, you distort the original relationship between the hitters and pitchers of that time.
I think this also influenced the quality of the athletes that went into different positions. If you had a player that could do both, well, in Ruth's time, you became a hitter. Because you had to be Walter Johnson to be as good as Ty Cobb in any given season; being Addie Joss wasn't enough (quality at lesser quantity); being Joe McGinnity wasn't enough (quantity at lesser quality). And if you could be both, being a hitter meant it was more likely to have a long career.
OTOH, in the early 1880's, you became a pitcher, because you were almost full-time (just like a modern catcher), and the team got the benefit of both your bat and your arm. The longer schedules of the late 1880's altered this balance away from the pitcher and towards the position player.
1988: A-Rod and holdovers Rolen and Pettitte. Garrett Anderson and Jeff Cirillo are top holdovers.
1987: Chipper Jones, Carlos Delgado, and either Shawn Green, Jim Edmonds or a holdover.
1986: Javy Lopez, Mike Piazza, and Pedro Martinez
1985: Jeff Bagwell, I-Rod, Mike Mussina. Kenny Lofton carries over.
1984: Weak year. Frank Thomas and then two carryovers. I'll go with Kenny Lofton and Garrett Anderson. Moises Alou and Luis Gonzalez are the top carryovers.
1983: Start with Sammy Sosa. After that, I'm stuck. More carryovers? Larry Walker? John Olerud? Albert Belle? Steve Finley? Marquis Grissom?
Okay. I did 8 years. How many of these guys do you think will make the HoM? I'm not optomistic for half of them. On the other hand, you start moving through the backlog pretty quickly if you have a two year dead-spot and you are electing 3 per year, so maybe all these guys will make it.
I think the weakest HOMers may come in the years with a high election rate, as we run out of good ideas, and elect a relatively modern second rater instead of an 1860s-1880s star. We only have 9 more to elect before 1932; if you assume Santop and Baker are certain, and Poles and Hooper strongly supported, then any of McGinnity, Wallace, Sheckard, Thompson, Caruthers, Pearce, Pike or Beckley is likely to find by 2007 that there are several players worse than him in the HOM. Welch, well down the current list, may well deserve election in 1985 but not be able to get elected.
Bill James has an essay entitled "Lucky B*stards" in The Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers. It's a familiar and simple study of expected wins vs. actual wins (and expected win% vs. actual win%), using the pythagorean method and making park adjustments.
He only lists top ten career luckiest, and Ruffing isn't in there, but Raschi is #1. He also includes a quote from Waite Hoyt: "The secret of success as a pitcher lies in getting a job with the Yankees."
Here's a thought experiment. Suppose we ran an alternative HOM in which time ran backwards...
Karl, are you trying to make my brain explode? I can hardly decide how to vote as it is. Maybe it would be like a HOM version of the movie Memento. However, I endorse the idea on grounds that it would be several human years and 75 HOM years before sunnyday starts to hate me. :)
You also need to figure out what years the pre-1881 slots are coming from -- logically the most recent ones, so maybe you do 2 a year solidly from 1990 to 1913, with a 3-year every 5 years to 1945, then add the additional 20 that's generated into 1861-1880. Also if say Andrew Jones doesn't quite make it in 1990, having only 8 years of ML experience, but has a career year in 2006, he may suddenly rocket up the ballot in say 1930, which we'd be doing in October 2006.
I haven't seen any data in this format. The WS book has "norms" by position for players who played within certain ranges of innings, but that information represents the average over all of baseball history. Still, it's better than trying to calculate it on your own if you are looking for some numbers to experiment with.
If you don't have the WS book I can transcribe the norms for you (wouldn't take too long).
Are fielding WS equal to fielding runs above replacement divided by 3.33 (or some similar number)?
I'd be surprised if it is that simple, particularly since WARP and WS rarely agree on the fielding attributes of a player. James determines fielding WS by using an artificial claim points system at the team level, and later apportioning those among the position players by using another set of claim points. I think the odds would be slim that his artificial claim points system would translate neatly into the way WARP determines fielding runs, but I guess it's possible.
Seems like one of the earliest things I remember Chris Cobb posting was a formula that got us from WARP to WS. I don't know if he ever broke it into components.
Looking at the eligible players for the "real" elections in the mid-1980s, I can tell you right now that Bobby Bonds (who I had imagined would be borderline) is going to be First Ballot (in the top 3 in his election year). The real question are going to be the hitting equivalents of Red Ruffing, who all retired in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Each year seems to have one or two Lou Brocks or Willie McCoveys, and then a half dozen outfielders and first basemen who played forever and had a 110 OPS+ (Willie Davis, George Scott, Jose Cardenal, Willie Horton, Lee May . . .)
When it comes down to Jake Beckley versus the fourth best first baseman of the 1970s, I would hope that even a elderly Floridian would be able to pick Beckley.
As a Florida resident, I can assure you that our election procedures under the watch of Jeb Bush ensure that elderly Floridians who have trouble with ballots still manage to have their votes counted. :)
Unless they aren't white. I'm embarrassed to say that I was born and raised (and still live) in a Florida county in which nearly 1/2 of the minority ballots weren't counted. Who knows, maybe mine wasn't either. It was a tricky ballot. I know who I voted for, but I had to read the ballot three times to make sure. And I've got 20 years of education under my belt.
As for the baseball aspect of the comment, I agree with you on Beckley over the guys mentioned in parentheses, although maybe not over McCovey. An outfielder or first baseman in the 110 OPS+ range isn't really in HOM territory in my opinion. I'm looking for guys with at least 120 OPS+ at those positions.
Are fielding WS equal to fielding runs above replacement divided by 3.33 (or some similar number)?
Jeff M. responded:
I'd be surprised if it is that simple, particularly since WARP and WS rarely agree on the fielding attributes of a player. . . .
Seems like one of the earliest things I remember Chris Cobb posting was a formula that got us from WARP to WS. I don't know if he ever broke it into components.
My experience in translating WARP into WS matches Jeff M.'s account. For Batting Runs above Replacement, 10 BRAR is usually approximately equal to 3 WS, once one adjusts for differences in replacement level, and that difference is typically 3 - 3.5 WS/162 games. For Fieldng Runs above Replacement, there's much less consistency. As jimd mentioned above, WARP allows the balance between pitching, fielding, and hitting to shift radically with changes in the games, whereas WS treats this balance as more or less fixed. In the early game, WARP typically gives fielders FRAR that are much higher that WS * 3.3. WARP also apportions fielding credit differently within teams, so that much of the additional credit to fielding per team in the early game goes to the middle infielders. Those are the broad, systemic differences. They also differ widely on individual players for reasons that, without a full disclosure of the WARP system, are impossible to determine.
When I developed translations from WARP to WS for National Association players, I tried to estimate the number of win shares that system would likely award, given WARP's assessment of the player's fielding, with each position treated differently.
Bold made my 1928 ballot, italics made my Top 30, plain text fell outside the Top 30 (and are not necessarily in my Top 50, since I haven't compared them to #6 in the other positions). The only position that didn't make the Top 15 this year was Left Field, but that's because my Top 2 left fielders (Jackson and Hill) were inducted last year.
P: Caruthers, McGinnity, Foster, Welch, Griffith, McCormick, Willis, Waddell, Mullane, Cicotte
C: Bresnahan, Clements, McGuire, Meyers, Kling
1B: Beckley, Chance, Konetchy, S. White, Orr
2B: Childs, Evers, Doyle, Monroe, Dunlap
SS: Pearce, Wallace, Jennings, Tinker, Long
3B: Baker, Williamson,McGraw, Leach, Cross
LF: Sheckard, C. Jones, York, O'Neill, Dougherty
CF: Pike, van Haltren,Browning, Duffy, F. Jones
RF: Cravath, Thompson, Tiernan, Donovan, O. Burns
Yea, I've seen that. He reminds me a bit of Jaime Moyer in that respect. I wonder how much it has to do with defense & the way that defense improves the pitcher's confidence. The Yanks under McCarthy were always a terrific fielding team, & the recent Mariners have generally been a very good fielding team. Helps make outs out of hits & maybe gives the pitcher more confidence to throw pitches that he otherwise wouldn't. Look at Ruffing's K:W ratio - it improves dramatically when he gets to New York.
I am trying to imagine the 1985 election. Leaving aside the token rule, the newly eligible are here. We are electing 3. Maybe you like Thurman Munson. Is Brock not the second best there? Who goes over him? Mickey Lolich? Ken Holtzman?
Maybe there are two carryovers. Check out the previous year. It's an "Elect 2" in 1984. I see some good middle infielders(Sandy Alomar, Sr., Davey Johnson, Jim Fregosi), and an above average outfielder (Ron Fairly). I don't see any of them crowding out Brock.
Back up one more year to 1983 (elect 2), and you've got these guys. Dick Allen, Boog Powell, and Brooks Robinson gives you one carryover to 1984. Nobody else catches my eye. It'll be Joe Torre as the only other ballot-worthy.
Anyway, that's 3 years, for 7 inductees, and only about 3 "first ballot" guys. That leaves about 4 guys to be inducted from either the rest of the players listed above, or else the pre-1982 backlog. Maybe there will be a bunch of backlogged guys clamorring for spots, but if his competition is Jimmy Ryan and Rube Waddell, then it looks to me that Brock waltzes right in.
Willis Davis seems around as good if not better than Brock. Less OPS+, but a good (not great) defensive CF.
Munsen - I'd have to see how we're doing on catchers at that time. He'd have his support, of course.
Catfish and Lolich bring decent cases to the table. Like Munsen, they depend on what our pitcher standard is at that moment in time. I think they're both better than McGinnity, who's going in. :)
My point isn't so much that Brock won't go in, it's just that he's not a mortal lock. Hell, even with timelining, WARP3 has Jimmy Ryan better than him in both peak and career.
Catfish sailed into the HOF because he played for great teams in pitchers parks in a pitchers era... he also retired early which allowed him to escape comparison with his superior contemporaries. He's younger than Carlton, Jenkins, Perry, Sutton, Seaver and probably more.
Exactly how is Catfish better than McGinnity? Maybe some timeline adjustments don't favor McGinnity. Lolich simply has a weak case. There are going to be a ton of pitchers in his group.
Hmmm... I just realized there are about 110 weeks to go before we can start debating their candidacies.
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