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Hall of Merit— A Look at Baseball's All-Time Best
Monday, January 27, 2014
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1. DL from MN Posted: January 27, 2014 at 12:32 PM (#4646774)Well, if you are going to give anyone minor league credit it would seem to be Giles,
11th in the EL in OPS in 93
15th in the IL in 94 (only 2 same age or younger players did better, Carlos Delgado and Shawn Green, Green was up for good in 95, Delgado wasn't- but that was more due to wiping out in his 94 cup of coffee)
He was 7th in the American Assoc in 95
and 2nd in 96
Trouble is to me is that he needs MLE credit AND platoon/bench sitting credit to enter the gray area, he's at about 50-55 WAR, you can get him to 60-65, if he was already 55-60 and credit gets him to 65-70 then I'd be more likely to say yes.
He's guy who falls short, just falls short, even with credit
Yes. But as stupid as the Indians were to leave Giles rotting in the minors for so long, AAA is not the Negro Leagues and I simply can't bring myself to credit MLE's toward a HOM/HOF case. Brian Giles was a hell of a hitter there for a while. He's not Hall material. I realize my arguments here aren't as detailed with the lists and such, but I have Giles a clear tier below Gary Sheffield, and Sheff barely edges into my Halls depending on how kind I'm feeling that day.
And now I'm back. That was truly fantastically odd.
I think some HOM voters do just that.
Have you ever read some of your own posts? I can easily see you stumbling across an old OTP post of yours, thinking, "what a jackass" and then clicking on "ignore member"
Your lack of a sense of humor isn't something I can fix, man.
But that gets too deep by half into counterfactual navel gazing, in a split second, IMHO. At some point you're so far down the rabbit hole you're talking about some theoretical farm boy super baller who would have been better than Ted Williams if he could have afforded a train ticket to Chicago that spring of '38. I understand the thinking here; it wasn't technically Brian Giles' fault that he didn't get a chance to perform until very late in his career. So it's tempting to "fair up" the case and give him credit for his various destructions of AAA. I draw the line there. There was nothing systematically preventing Giles from playing, like the color line, so I can only give him credit for what he did in Major League Baseball. And that's below my personal Hall cut.
And so?
Sammy was a great player for a 5 year peak, he was not a great player at any time outside that 5 year window.
In fact take out 2001 and Sammy doesn't even sniff the HOM, as it is, I'm not sure Sosa gets in the HOM- he'll get more support than the HOF due to the lack of steroid moralizing, but here's a guy who was up at age 20 and played until he was toasty, he's got some MSM counting milestones, but he's under the 60 WAR line.
He finished 6th in HOM balloting last year, now he's got Randy Johnson, Pedro and Smoltz coming on, he'll finish 6th again- at best, Sheffield may (should imho) edge him as well.
Then after that you have Griffey, Edmonds, then Vlad, Manny, IRod, then Chipper, Thome, Rolen, Andruw Jones...
With an attitude like that you should be the one standing up for Ray when the crowd abuses him for his Ichiro No position.
But was it "organizational stupidity" that kept Giles in the minors or the fact that the Indians starting outfield was Albert Belle, Kenny Lofton, and Manny Ramirez? And if Giles "belonged" in the minor leagues behind those three guys, does that change the view? Because now you're drifting much closer to what Rickey is talking about - the counterfactual isn't, "What if he'd played for an organization that recognized his greatness", but instead, "What if the Indians had traded him away three years earlier?" The latter question seems much more speculative / random alternate-universe navel-gazing.
When I bother to get involved with those threads, I do. Now, as with most things, I wouldn't take it as far as Ray. Because, Ray. But I have some deep seated reservations about Ichiro's case for the HOM. I have less with his case for the HOF. I recognize his time in Japan as distinct and uniquely differentiated from his MLB career. Playing in Japan isn't quite the same as the color barrier in the US, in my opinion at least, but it's a real structural disconnect between career halves. So I give Ichiro more of the Satchel Paige thought process than I would allow for Brian Giles. Nothing kept Giles out of MLB aside from scouts who didn't like his defense, or maybe some inability to connect with the ML coaching staff, or just being another bopper in an organization full to the brim of slugging maniacs as it was. That sucks for Giles, but it's not playing in Japan, and it's certainly not being denied access to MLB entirely due to the color of your skin.
I would vote for Ichiro for the HOF, but not the HOM (unless the HOM gurus specifically told me his Japaneses career should be considered; at that point he's a shoe-in.) For the HOF, I take a marginally qualified star who broke the MLB/Japan barrier and give him credit for his historic trailblazing. He's Hideo Nomo if Nomo had Kevin Appier's career.
Can you parse that out for me. I don't understand but it's really intriguing.
Well... saying "Giles was a very good player at 23 but wasn't in the majors because he wasn't good enough to crack the Indians' outfield, and doesn't deserve credit for that" is a bit like arguing Richie Ashburn wasn't really a Hall of Fame/Merit player because he was only the fourth-best CF in his era, isn't it? It's a hell of a piece of bad luck for Giles that he happened to come through the system of the only team in the major leagues that didn't have room for him.
I don't really think Giles can get enough extra credit for his couple of extra years in the minors/as a bench player to push him into the HOM, in any case.
If Hideo Nomo had put up Kevin Appier's career, I would argue *strongly* that he should be in the Hall, because in addition to being "Kevin Appier" by the numbers, he was also the first major Japanese star to come over to MLB. So in addition to his raw career track, he has the "trailblazer" status as the guy that bridged the Pacific. So, if Hideo Nomo had Kevin Appier's raw numbers, I'd be very vehement in my support for him for the Hall of FAME because he was also historic to the game itself, as a trailblazer.
I think of Ichiro Suzuki in those terms. He has a reasonable case for the HOF on his numbers, even without the Japanese league stats. I don't think I'd vote him in on those raw numbers alone, but combined with his numbers he's also the first position player to make the jump across the Pacific, and I think that counts toward the Hall of FAME, but not toward the Hall of MERIT. (Unless the HOM guys tell me to consider trailblazing, or to give him some credit for his Japanese career.)
[Edited to add: which promptly disappeared once I posted myself.]
Sosa finished way ahead of the pre-1990 backlog.
Schilling and Mussina exceed HoM standards and are just biding their time waiting for an open slot. Sosa is on 10 more ballots than the 7th place guy. He's quite likely to make it.
I have a theory that Jimmy is using my account for testing some sort of nefarious worm virus.
Sosa finished way ahead of the pre-1990 backlog.
I'm really surprised the HoM voters have him so far ahead of Lofton and Kent.
I mean Sosa's got a 128 OPS+ as a RF. That's Tim Salmon, Kent Hrbek, Jim Rice territory.
When?
He's not getting in next year, not with Randy Johnson, Pedro, Smoltz and Sheffield on the ballot (let's say he drops to 7th)
then 2016, Griffey and Edmonds, let's say he moves to 6th
2017, Vlad, Manny, IRod: stays at 6th
2018: Chipper, Thome, Rolen, Andruw Jones... drops to 7th again
after that?
Halladay, Mariano then at some point 2019-2022 you will see
Alex Rodriguez
Albert Pujols
Derek Jeter
Adrian Beltre
Carlos Beltran
Todd Helton
Andy Pettitte
Ichiro Suzuki
Chase Utley
Tim Hudson
Miguel Cabrera
etc.
And this being the HOM I wouldn't be surprised if by this time Lofton overtakes him, I really don't see Sosa getting any closer in HOM voting than he is now
Sosa is basically Rice if you took Rice's best year, and multiplied it by 3 and added it back to Rice's career.
Which makes him a signifcantly better candidate than Rice
Which makes him a signifcantly better candidate than Rice
He has 900 more PAs at the same level, and a better peak. So, yeah he's better. But not enough better to be in the HoF/HoM.
Concur. And I'd vote for Kent over Sosa too. 123 wRC+ in 9500 PAs at 2B, vs. 124 wRC+ in 9900 PAs in RF.
But then both of them lost their power basically overnight and dropped from 35-40 homers per to around 15-20 (or about half of where they used to be). They still walked enough to make them better hitters than their power numbers made them look, but the HOLY CRAP!!! days were gone.
Since Helton's peak lasted a little longer than Giles', he finished with the better career...and he's still borderline. Which means Giles is a clear "no", IMO.
I think spending his whole career in Cleveland, Pittsburgh and San Diego made him a hell of a lot less famous than he would have been if he'd spent it in, say, St. Louis, New York and San Francisco or something.
The main reason Giles "lost his power overnight" is that he started playing his home games at PETCO. It you strip out park effects, it looks much more like a normal age-related decline.
He also played a harder defensive position and played defense much better relative to his position. BR has that difference as being worth about 8 wins.
"8 wins better than Jim Rice" still doesn't get in the door.
Exactly.
Sosa and Giles provided base running and defensive value beyond kent, so quoting ops seems one sided.
Helton's war is well Above the historical in/out line, he is only borderline if you dock him for coors field or capping the number of elected 1b from his time era.
As dl mentions, Sosa is a clear mid-log candidate that is in line for election once the no brains are elected.
Sosa and Giles are not no-brainers, as u can see from dl's ballot, just curious to see everyone else's ballot/dismissal of these guys.
Don't forget that we're tossing in an "Elect 4" year now and then going forward. I don't know exactly when but Sosa has strong support.
If you're not a fan of Sosa (or if you are) and would like your opinion counted please consider submitting a ballot. Our numbers are slowly declining.
Sosa and Giles provided base running and defensive value beyond kent, so quoting ops seems one sided.
Helton's war is well Above the historical in/out line, he is only borderline if you dock him for coors field or capping the number of elected 1b from his time era.
As dl mentions, Sosa is a clear mid-log candidate that is in line for election once the no brains are elected.
Sosa and Giles are not no-brainers, as u can see from dl's ballot, just curious to see everyone else's ballot/dismissal of these guys.
I don't have a systematic ranking system, and I'm grossly unqualified to speak on the older candidates. That said, only voting on guys I remember (no deep baglog):
My top-4 would be 1 RJ, 2 Pedro, 3/4 Schilling/Mussina. Not sure on my ordering of Schilling/Mussina; they are very very close in my mind.
After that, Lofton and Smoltz are close at 5/6, and then Sheffield/Kent at 7/8, and Sosa/Tiant at 9/10.
Also, I used wRC+ to compare Sosa and Kent, that includes baserunning.
How far back do I have to be able to intelligently speak to enter a ballot?
I'm fine ranking the guys post-WW2, but I fear I have neither the knowledge, nor time to give 1880-1940 players a fair hearing.
The ballots are basically synced with modern candidates for the Hall now. My understanding is that all of the historic candidacies have been vetted and we're basically to the point of discussing players from the late 80s and 90s. Which is why I'm part of the HOM threads now, personally.
You don't have to look at all of the players pre-WW II but you should be familiar with the handful of candidates who remain in the high backlog (Duffy, Willis, Taylor, Redding, Bridges, Bob Johnson, Walters, et al) and, more importantly, you should be open to including them in your rankings if they appear worthy.
Seems fair.
Must I have a formal ranking system? Or can I cobble my list together?
Thanks
Actually that kind of changes my opinion on whether he'll get it (not whether he should or not, just whether or not hell get in)
If 3 get in each year I kind of see him stalled at 6-7 at fort then slowly drifting away, if 4 are elected each year he'll likely slowly drift in and get in.
Another point to examine is the BB-Ref assessment of his defense. The available fielding evaluations often show great discrepancies in their estimates, so it's worth checking to see if other fielding metrics make a better case for Giles. Here's the set of career fielding runs above average from the four metrics I consult, listed from best to worst:
DRA +17
BP -21
BB-Ref -28
Davenport -89
In Giles' case, BB-Ref is about in the middle of the range, so even the best-case reading of Giles' defensive value only adds 4.5 wins to his career value, which probably doesn't put him over the top in most cases. If Giles has a case, it will be based on the inclusion of MLE credit or on peak/prime rather than career.
That he played longer with the Padres blows my mind. If I had to guess without looking it up I would have said 6 years for the Pirates and maybe 3-4 for the Padres. Those Pirate years were so good they have more weight than a chronological year.
Chris, doesn't that list speak volumes about the defensive metrics? Looking at that tells you virtually nothing about the quality of Giles' defense. Just from watching him, knowing how his teams chose to deploy him and his general athletic skills (young Giles was pretty quick) the best option would be to abandon most of the defensive metrics and just make him a 'minus' in center and a touch above average in the corners (a clear plus as a young player, a slight minus when older). Doesn't that info tell you more than a series of advanced metrics that can't decide whether he was significantly above average or awful?
When younger he was capable enough to be deployed in center (where admittedly he was stretched) and no one seemed to have any reservations about his arm as he was deployed in right field more than left field. You could ballpark a number from that info and probably get as close if not closer to reality than trying to use the metrics.
Certainly the lack of even basic agreement among the metrics indicates that none should be relied upon uncritically. I am just beginning to seriously examine the metrics available, so I am far from ready to jump to the conclusion that they should simply be discarded. Also, for the purpose of evaluating players for the Hall of Merit, working with the metrics has some advantages. For example, it quantifies fielding in a way that enables it to be weighed with offensive value. From my experience of watching HoM voting over a long period of time, my sense is that when defensive value isn't quantified, it tends to be underrated. Having a quantification makes it harder to dismiss. In addition, the metrics do enable one to distinguish with some confidence between the defensive value of a Gary Sheffield, a Brian Giles, and a Barry Bonds among corner outfielders. Sure, you could ballpark numbers in this case, but when I have hundreds of players to evaluate, many of whom I have little non-statistical information about, if I can rely on the fielding metrics sufficiently to get a ballpark estimate, that's quite helpful.
So, yes, I am posting the numbers partly to encourage people not to simply rely on BB-Ref's WAR as if it gives us a completely reliable assessment of each player's value, but I don't advocate for discarding the metrics. Yes, fielding analysis is still in its infancy, but I don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
My point is exactly that we _should_ be conservative in how we value defense precisely because we do not know with near the level of accuracy as we do with hitting. We also should evaluate defense using _all_ the information we have available to us, and if there's a necessity for a numerical way to express that, metrics can be developed. Probably the easiest way is to take a 2 to 8 scale with no half numbers and just throw a number on everyone. So that for left field Bonds would be a 7 or 8, Giles a 5 or 6, and peak Sheffield a 3 or 4. And then extract value in terms of wins from there.
But the Andruw Joneses and Adam Dunns and Andrleton Simmonses of the world throw that completely out of whack by racking up defensive WAR well in excess of any realistic confidence we should have in those numbers. Simmons is a great defender, so is Zack Cozart but not quite as great. If I were to guess, the gap between the two is a hell of a lot smaller than the 37 runs WAR has for last year.
Concur.
Implicit in WAR is the assertion that a fielder has earned all of the credit for his fielding numbers, and that there are no factors other than the fielder that have a significant impact on those numbers. As I have said before, I think that's an unreasonable assertion - there is enough of a relationship between team pitching staff characteristics (both in terms of power vs finesse and GB vs FB) and overall team defense to suggest otherwise. I would much rather see one use a reasonable estimate of the percentage that is due to other factors besides the fielder (pitching staff effects, park effects, opportunity) - as Clay Davenport and Bill James both did - and work from there.
-- MWE
Chris it seems to me that averaging a bunch of unreliable numbers doesn't get you any closer to a reliable number, particularly if several of the sources of unreliability are problems the metrics share.
I would agree that magnifying errors by averaging metrics that share the same source of unreliability is a problem, and I haven’t made any decisions yet about how exactly I would combine the metrics. I have begun studying how each metric is calculated and the fielding data that underlies it to try to arrive at a set that, by their methods, seem reasonable, but that work on the problem using different methods applied to different data sets. The problem I discovered with my old approach to averaging comprehensive metrics is that for players before 2000ish, bWAR and fWAR are using the same TotalZone numbers for fielding, so averaging those metrics' WAR with others is not providing any offset to TZ's fielding values. So I am trying to set up a basket of fielding metrics that offers a diverse range of methods and datasets, so that the sources of unreliability may be offset rather than magnified.
My point is exactly that we _should_ be conservative in how we value defense precisely because we do not know with near the level of accuracy as we do with hitting
The problem with this position, from a Hall of Merit perspective, is that if one chooses to be conservative due to uncertainty, one is choosing systematically to risk underrating one particular class of players--outstanding fielders. The HoM debated this same issue with respect to Negro League players: we do not know the value of Negro League players with the nearly as much accuracy as we know the value of American League and National League players. If, in response to this recognized level of uncertainty, we are conservative in how we value those players, we are in fact systematically under representing them, since, if we really are uncertain, then our evaluations probably underrate some players while overrating others. After much debate, the electorate in the main concluded that we should establish the most plausible interpretation of the data, and then apply it without further discount. Obviously, we regressed to the mean and that sort of thing, but we didn't rate a player below what our best evaluation indicated just because we had less certainty about that evaluation than about the evaluation of a player from the American League or National League. With outstanding fielders, the choice to be conservative would not be perpetuating the effects of a historic injustice, but the evaluative principle is the same. When faced with uncertainty in an aspect of evaluation, go with your best estimate, because that distributes the risk of mistaken evaluation evenly across the whole spectrum of players rather than subjecting one class of players to a different standard.
If, when you make your best estimate of value, you conclude that Andrelton Simmons doesn't look like he was 37 runs better defensively than Zack Cozart, go with your best estimate. If you think drs fielding runs are bogus, don't use them, but don't systematically value defense lower than your best estimate indicates that it is just because you know the level of accuracy is lower. Myself, I am not prepared to conclude without close investigation that Simmons wasn't 37 runs better. He did have 120 more assists than Cozart in about 50 more defensive innings. Now, fielding value is tricky, so it is quite possible that those 120 extra assists weren't worth nearly what they appear to be worth in isolation, but it's such a large number of additional plays that I can hardly see how a 37-run difference could be judged to be impossible.
For what it's worth, DRA sees Simmons as 22 runs better than Cozart in 2013. Clay Davenport sees him also as 22 runs better. Baseball Prospectus sees him as 31 runs better. UZR sees him as 19 runs better. All four of these systems use different underlying data and/or different methods than bWAR's drs does, and all of them affirm a very large difference. It's smaller than the 37 runs bWAR calculates, but it's high enough that bWAR's view doesn't look crazy or impossible. Is a 37-run difference too high? Probably, but is it so high that we are better off throwing out that data instead of averaging it in some fashion with others? Probably not, unless we can demonstrate that drs consistently produces outlying evaluations beyond a reasonable construal of the data.
I would much rather see one use a reasonable estimate of the percentage that is due to other factors besides the fielder (pitching staff effects, park effects, opportunity) - as Clay
Davenport and Bill James both did - and work from there.
I would note that I am by no means against including Clay Davenport's work in the discussion of fielding (no surprise since I've been : it brings another significant methodology to the table. I would also note that my own (limited) examination of his data does not suggest that his system routinely assigns less value to fielders, in runs at position above or below average, than the other systems do. I don't use win shares because its melding together of positional adjustment and value at position makes it difficult to combine with other systems, and the lack of a direct connection in its calculation of fielding value between the run value of fielding events and the fielding value assigned to the player seems to me to lead to estimates that are significantly presupposed by the system. I think James's approaches to analyzing fielding data are often shrewd, however, and other systems could be checked against his, but I don't see a good way to use fielding win shares as part of an evaluation system that draws upon multiple metrics.
What I'd like to see is extensive examinations of multiple fielding metrics to help us to identify which metrics have the larger variance and to assess whether that variance is plausible, given the underlying data, and to try to identify the particular strengths and weaknesses of the metrics. For example, looking at how metrics assign value among groups of fielders with overlapping responsibilities, like outfielders or 3B-SS-2B, might be illuminating. (I have started looking into the question of overlap with the major HoM centerfield candidates from the 1990-2010, but I’m not very far with it yet.) I am actually surprised at how little comparative analysis of fielding metrics is out there: maybe that work is being done but it isn’t freely available on the web? I have a lot to learn and only a small amount of time in my life to spend learning it!
http://www.hardballtimes.com/brian-giles-hall-of-fame-class-of-2016/
This. It's really important.
****
BTW, Dan R's WAR loves Giles. Through 2005, it has him with .77 Pennants Added, .88 is roughly my in/out line. If you use BB-Ref WAR for 2006-2008 (his 2009 is below replacement level, so I zero it), I get Giles at about .917 Pennants Added.
For perspective, Giles' BB-Ref WAR is 50.9, 52.8 if you zero out his 2009. Carlos Delgado is at 45.7 if you zero out his 1994-95. So Giles has a 16% edge in BB-Ref WAR.
But in Dan R's WAR, converted to Pennants Added, Giles has a much bigger edge, .917 to .675 - that's a 36% edge.
Dan gives Giles 49.9 WAR through 2005, compared with 43.3 for BB-Ref.
Dan gives Delgado 40.6 WAR through 2005, compared with 40.9 for BB-Ref (again zeroing out 1994-95). Just an example to show that Dan doesn't always differ by a lot.
So if anything, it looks to me like BB-Ref WAR may be underrating Giles, not overrating him.
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