I vaguely recall a post mentioning that while his contemporary Lefty Grove pitched the lion’s share of his innings against cellar-dwelling teams, Ferrell faced Grove’s A’s and other above-average teams with greater regularity. That counts as well, in my mind.

Trevor: There was a thread in which Jonesy, I, and some others chased after this point. I don't know what conclusions anyone else came to but here are mine:

1. The inclusion of Grove's name in this sentence is a red herring. The issue of the opponents Grove faced is irrelevant to the evaluation of Ferrell.

2. In attempting to adjust an equivalent W-L record for Ferrell based on the offensive quality of the teams he faced, I found that the effect was tiny - unlikely to make more than about 2 games difference over Ferrell's entire career and likely quite a bit smaller even than that.

Ferrell has a pretty good case, based on other arguments. When you do account for the impact of his own hitting on the days he pitched, he has a good peak. The fact that he only pitched about 2600 innings weakens his case but that's partially offset when you realize that he pitched in an extreme high run environment, with a corresponding high number of batters per inning.

But the bit about the opponents he faced is a poor argument and I wouldn't put much stock in it.

Oh, an addendum to my last post, based on Chris' WS estimates, Bill Foster would score an 87, Dick Redding a 75, and Jose Mendez an 87 as well, although the Mendez ones seem a little unrealistic looking at them now.

I vaguely recall a post mentioning that while his contemporary Lefty Grove pitched the lion’s share of his innings against cellar-dwelling teams, Ferrell faced Grove’s A’s and other above-average teams with greater regularity. That counts as well, in my mind.

This was true only for a few years, and in fact over the full course of their careers is was Grove who was more likely to be used against good teams than Ferrell. In his Boston days, Ferrell was used primarily against the bad teams. For more info, click these links.

As more candidates who starred in the 1930s become eligible, issues of competition differences between eras become more important. WARP views the quality of play in the 1930s as higher than in any previous era and Win Shares shows a larger number of high-value players than in any other decade we have seen.

The pattern of win-share distributions among top players by decade for the first four decades of the 20th century (easily determinable from the _Win Shares_ book) is interesting. Without offering an interpretation, here are a couple of snapshots:

Decade--Best --10th -- 20th -- 30th-- 40th --50th
1900s -- 421 -- 230 -- 202 -- 179 -- 168 -- 157
1910s -- 386 -- 208 -- 183 -- 171 -- 156 -- 140
1920s -- 413 -- 201 -- 180 -- 172 -- 151 -- 144
1930s -- 323 -- 243 -- 196 -- 170 -- 154 -- 142

The profile of the 1900s is consistent with a lower level of competition permitting the better players to stand out more. Even with the 1900 choke point and shorter seasons through 1903, the 1900s decade has consistently higher totals, especially towards the lower end.

The teens and twenties show, aside from the Ruthian spike at the top of the 1920s, about the distribution we would expect if competition levels are increasing. Totals are distinctly lower for the teens than for the aughts but slightly higher than for the 20s (with the exception of the Ruthian spike at the top.

The 1930s, however, have a quite different distribution. Much lower at the very top than any other decade, they bulge in the top 10 and top 20 back towards or even above 1900s levels before dropping back down to match the teens and 20s in the 30th-50th best scores.

Here's another way of cutting up the data, listing players above 400 ws, players 350-399, 300-350, 250-299, 200-249

Decade
1900s -- 1 -- 0 -- 0 -- 4 -- 15
1910s -- 0 -- 3 -- 1 -- 3 -- 7
1920s -- 1 -- 1 -- 0 -- 1 -- 8
1930s -- 0 -- 0 -- 3 -- 4 -- 12

How, if at all, to interpret these differences? Changes in competition level? Random changes in the appearances of all-time greats? Random changes in the number of obvious HoMers? Are the top players of the 10s and 20s suppressing the totals of the 5-20th best players, or are those top players standing out due to lack of great competition?

Chris, at one time you had asked me what percentage I was using to increase the number of pitchers on my ballot. My old system used a number taken out of thin air, but my new one increases each pitcher's number by 40%. I derived this number from the percentage of starting pitchers on a newspaper all-star team (5) divided by 13 (the eight position players plus the five pitchers).

I don't know if I should use 3 or 4 instead of 5 as the number of pitchers, but since I have only four pitchers on my ballot, I don't think I'm overrating or underrating them greatly.

I don't know if it's the right thing to do, but at least it's more scientific than my last method. :-)

Thanks for the links, Garvey. Any thoughts on where I can find Win Shares and WARP totals, instead of slogging through past BP posts?

Trevor, will you be transferring your prelim ballot over to the ballot thread?

Thanks for the links, Garvey

Ewwwwww! What did you call me. My user name means: Garvey Must Be Destroyed. I'm a Cub fan here. Call me Chris.

Chris,

I have always balanced level of competition by balancing WARP3 and WS. WARP3 takes competition into effect, WS does not. Up until now I have used a 60/40 WS balance between the two. I may need to look into that.

Any thoughts on where I can find Win Shares and WARP totals, instead of slogging through past BP posts?

For WARP totals, Baseball Prospectus has all its sabermetric data on its DT Cards. Just enter the player's name in the search bar (i. e. Al Simmons) and look for Advanced Batting Statistics.

For Win Shares, there's the Digital Edition of Win Shares at Stats, Inc. Or, if you're cheap like me, you could use what's available in the NBJHBA (if you already own it) and the adjusted Win Shares (adjusting for season length--much better than the original) that Joe Dimino's compiled with his Pennants Added

Maybe I should change my handle to Good-Looking Prospect...