I'll post the expanded totals tomorrow.

The results look quite reasonable. My only quibbles are with the Petes. Hill is too low, and Browning is too high. Roush and Averill also a bit high, I guess, but Oms, Pike, and Brown have a lot of questions about their records, so it's hard to say for sure that they are being underrated.

Everything as expected at the top.

I realize I am biased, but I think Dawson being ranked that low is a travesty. Edd Roush? Seriously? 1500 (seasonal length adjusted) games of Pete Browning?

There's more to playing than drawing walks. He had 2774 career hits (with some time lost to strikes) and it wasn't Lou Brock style. There were 448 HR mixed in there, an MVP caliber season, 309 SB at a 74% rate (in a lower scoring era where SB were more important than most), Gold Glove defense.

His career OBP was .009 below park adjusted league average, sure, but his rate stats were hurt by his last few years (OPS+ dropped from 123-119), which I give as zero value (1993-96). His career SLG was 87 points over park adjusted league average.

I'm just baffled that he finished dead last. I think he must just miss the boundaries of some systems or something.

Where did the career guys go? Do we only have peak voters left?

Rant over. :-)

If someone can send the itemized totals by ballot position (preferably in spreadsheet format), I'll format them, thanks!

Not to mention Dawson playing in a very low standard deviation era as well.

OK, rant now over. Maybe. :-)

I'm a little surprised that Torriente beat Snider, and soundly.

Mantle over Speaker is pretty interesting to me. I dunno, compared to you guys I'm a complete noob at this stuff. :)

Here's another presentation of the ballot totals. There are three columns of numbers after each name: the first is the point total, as reported above. The second is the average ballot placement of that candidate on the 23 ballots. This number is entirely equivalent to the point total and can be converted back and forth - I just like it as a way of expressing things. The third column of numbers is the standard deviation of that candidate's ballot placements. Those standard deviation were remarkably low for the first 9 candidates - depsite the fact that we can't agree on the top one, we are in very close agreement on the top 9, and in just about that order. Dimaggio missed being unanimous 6th by two voters - his 6.09 ballot average come from 21 6th place votes and two 7th place votes.



For the top two: Cobb had 12 first place votes and 11 second place votes. Mays had 10 first place votes, 11 second place votes, a third and a fourth. The one first place vote that leaves unaccounted went to Mantle (that was sunnyday2 who had Mays fourth); the unaccounted 2nd place vote also went to Mantle.

In my mind, that's too close a vote and we're too small a group to say that we've definitively chosen Cobb over Mays - let's just say that it's close. (And I say that as someone who did vote Cobb first, Mays second.)

Who got the most 26th place votes? Browning 6, Brown 5, Dawson 4, Roush 2, Bell 2, Pike 1, Oms 1, Averill 1, Hill 1. Dawson finsished last in the voting not so much be being placed last so often but because a few voters placed either Brown or Browning quite a bit higher. (My own vote had Dawson 23rd, Brown 24th, and Browning 25th. I couldn't see Dawson ahead of Carey, to name one marker.)

Consensus scores ranged from 82 to 91 with a mean of 88. That's so closely packed together that I'm not even going to bother breaking out the individual voters beyond saying that the 82 was Sean Gilman and sunnyday2 was at 83.

I didn't have Dawson last, either, but Carey at 17 - by a wide margin over 18 - is what amazes me.

Sure, great fielder and baserunner, but mediocre hitter.

I didn't have Dawson last, either, but Carey at 17 - by a wide margin over 18 - is what amazes me.

It amazes me also, Howie.

BTW Joe, if you don't mind, could you do your magic with the results at the top of the page? I would greatly appreciate it.

BTW Joe, if you don't mind, could you do your magic with the results at the top of the page?

When you do that, push Cobb's numbers one notch to the right (12 first place votes) and pull Charleston (14 5th place votes) and Torriente (5 8th place votes) one notch back to the left. I think those are the only misalignments, but check to make sure the table makes sense.

Should be all set.

Glad to know my consensus score was low again. I thought this ballot was tough, whereas with all of that agreement many must have found it not so difficult. What made it hard (for me) was that like most other positions there were about 15 NB. But whereas at many other positions the 15 NB were supplemented by maybe 5 lesser players, here there were 10. And not only that but many of the 19C and NeL players seemed clustered in that bottom 10. For some reason, we elected a fair number of lesser CF from those two pools, and I wasn't comfortable just tossing them all to the bottom. I wanted a better distribution when, in reality, these 19C and NeL CFers probably do belong on the lower rungs. Anyway, I thought this was a tough ballot.

The variance for Ashburn's and Carey's ranks is very high. Most of the nine players below them are outside the Hall of Fame or unknown to most fans with only moderate interest in major league baseball history. Granting both points, this is still a strong endorsement of both as Hall of Fame quality players. (I believe that many fanatics or self-proclaimed experts would not endorse them.)

It's not so much that the variance for Ashburn and Carey is high as that the variances for everyone above them are low, and are particularly low for the top 9.