Without war or NeL credit Slaughter also seems to have a better 3 year peak (and five year peak but year #'s 4 adn 5 are even between the two) and a good bit more career. Minoso does, however, have better shoulder seasons around the peak. With war and NeL credit I think that Slaughter pulls safely ahead as he missed some priem years while Minoso adds only a few average ones and one good year. Salughter woudl be about #8 for me (though I didnt' vote for im while he was eligible, Minoso was #27 on my 1970 ballot.

To me Minoso's closest comps (in terms of value in the OF) are Willard Brown, George Burns, Roy Thomas, Edd Roush, and Richie Ashburn. I have him third in that group though he may be as good as second (I don't think he was as good was Brown).

1948 NNL Statistics: Minnie Minoso
G AB R H 2B 3B HR BA SA TB
36 152 27 51 9 7 3 .336 .546 83

Minoso had played in all 36 of the New York Cubans' league games when he was sold to Dayton in late August of 1948. He was the Cuban's starting third baseman and lead-off hitter.

Notes on comparisons:

1) Minoso cannot really be compared to Irvin; Monte was way way better. It's like comparing apples and oranges. Minoso got to play a straight decade in the bigs; Irvin really had only one, non-adjustment, non-injury, season when he was young and healthy [1951]. In that one season, Irvin was as good as Minoso ever was in any season and actually much much better when park effects are taken into consideration.

2) The comparison to Robin Yount is also invalid. Yount was a mediocre hitting shortstop who blossomed into a superstar when he hit his prime. Minoso, on the other hand, was basically the same player, a star but not a superstar, from 1948 to 1960.

The interesting question that was raised is: Was the huge discrepancy in Minoso's MLE as opposed to his Major League BA caused by a Yount like blossoming? Well, from 1945 to 1949, Minoso batted .271 in Cuba. He took the 1949-50 season off and then came back to hit .284 for the rest of his Cuban career (1950-61) to finish with a .280 average. And even this much overstates the case, as the Cuban League's actual league BA was usually much higher in the 1950s than the 1940s.

As was pointed out (Brent: Post 81), this is simply more data indicating that the MLEs are too low.

3) But the most fascinating comparison of all is the fact that Minoso played full-time simultaneously in both the Cuban and Major Leagues for a decade: Cuban League 1950/51-60/61 (10 seasons, did not play 1954-55) and American League 1951-1961 (11 seasons).

As noted above, Minoso hit .284 (2066-587) in Cuba during that time. And, in the AL from 1951-61, he hit .305 (6110-1861). Considering that Minoso had to adjust to the AL but not the Cuban League during this time frame AND is missing a prime season in Cuba, the real difference is probably even slightly greater.

Of course, this doesn't mean the Cuban League was better than the AL (the League context is much different) but does go to show how much closer things are when samples are 1) statistically significant and 2) most of the adjustment bias is taken out. In other words, is anyone out there INCREASING Cuban League BA for MLEs?

Dr. Chaleeko,

Dr. Chaleeko,

Thank you for reconsidering and updating your MLEs. The latest versions seem much more plausible than the earlier ones.

Gadfly,

I have a question about Minoso’s 1946 record. In post # 28 Dr. C says Minoso hit .260 for the New York Cubans, whereas Riley says he hit .309 (a statistic that also appears on several Web sites) and on the John Beckwith thread) you once said he hit .306. This difference could affect some voters choice regarding when to start giving Minoso non-MLB credit.

Since most voters start giving Minoso non-MLB credit beginning either in 1947 or ’48, the following totals may be useful. (They are based on the table Dr. C gave in post # 84, but substituting the latest numbers shown in # 93 for 1948.)

YEAR _AVG OBP SLG __G __PA __AB __H _TB _BB ops+ WS
47-50 .288 .361 .422 546 2309 2072 597 875 236 108 76.8
48-50 .291 .363 .421 398 1682 1510 440 636 171 109 56.4

Combining these with his major league record gives Minoso the following MLE career totals:

YEAR _AVG OBP SLG ___G ___PA __AB ___H __TB _BB ops+ WS
47-80 .296 .382 .451 2381 10019 8651 2560 3898 1050 125 360
48-80 .297 .384 .452 2233 09392 8089 2403 3659 0985 126 339

I found that several corner OF HoMers have comparable career statistics:

AVG OBP _SLG ___G _PA __AB ___H __TB __BB ops+ WS
.317 .367 .450 2410 9996 9106 2884 4100 0650 129 380 Wheat
.316 .387 .500 2287 9822 8656 2735 4325 0949 128 355 Goslin
.300 .382 .453 2380 9084 7946 2383 3599 1018 123 323 Slaughter
.341 .388 .415 2123 9594 8591 2932 3562 0524 127 333 Keeler
.274 .375 .378 2122 9118 7605 2084 2878 1135 120 339 Sheckard

These players pretty much constitute the bottom rung of corner OFers in the HoM. These statistics do not include any adjustments--Slaughter missed three prime seasons due to the war, which in my mind should move him to the top of this list. Keeler and Sheckard should get some playing time adjustments for short seasons, and of course Sheckard’s record is OBP-heavy, implying that his OPS+ tends to understate his batting value. Also, Sheckard was easily the best fielder of this group, though all (including Minoso) were good fielders. If I were to pick one of these players as most comparable to Minoso, it would be Goose Goslin.

Of course, Bill James has reminded us that if we look for comparable players in the Hall, we should also look for comparable players who are not yet enshrined. The closest I could find was Jimmy Ryan, who used to be a popular candidate 40 elections ago, but has virtually disappeared in recent elections.

AVG OBP _SLG ___G _PA __AB ___H __TB _BB ops+ WS
.306 .374 .444 2012 9106 8164 2502 3621 803 124 316 Ryan

My guess is that the lack of support for Ryan mostly reflects concerns about his in-season durability.

I’d also like to reiterate my concern that many voters do not appear to be taking account of the reduced playing opportunities in the 1950s (and resulting increase in quality) associated with the contraction of the Negro Leagues. The voter who bases his ballot on fixed statistical criteria that aren't adjusted for the reduction in playing opportunities will tend to find, all else equal, about one-third fewer players from the 1950s meeting their standard than from the prior 3 or 4 decades. I do not consider this to be “timelining”; it is a simple concern that we treat players of all decades fairly. Results of recent elections suggest that 1950s-era players may wind up being underrepresented.

Taking account of the 1950s NeL contraction, WWII, shorter seasons pre-1904, etc., my system ranks the above players in the following order: Slaughter-Minoso-Goslin-Wheat-Sheckard-Ryan, though the differences between Minoso, Goslin, and Wheat appear very small to me. (Keeler was before my time as a voter, so I don’t have him rated; Ashburn would slip in between Slaughter and Minoso.) In view of the strong support that Slaughter, Ashburn, Goslin, and Wheat received when they appeared on the ballot, I’m surprised at the lack of support for Minoso and hope that voters here will reconsider his case.

we should also look for comparable players who are not yet enshrined. The closest I could find was Jimmy Ryan, who used to be a popular candidate 40 elections ago, but has virtually disappeared in recent elections.

Ryan hasn't been the direct object of much discussion. Frequently said in favor of those who have remained in the discussion and high on the leader board, Van Haltren and Griffith, is that they were in their primes during the contraction years 1892-1900. So I infer that Ryan's peak beginning in 1888 (if defined by one to eight consecutive years) counts against him.

In view of the strong support that Slaughter, Ashburn, Goslin, and Wheat received when they appeared on the ballot, I’m surprised at the lack of support for Minoso and hope that voters here will reconsider his case.

Ashburn is contemporary but his electoral strength (shoo-in at his time) may be derived from those who value fine defensive CFing more than you do. Wheat and Goslin are ancient history. So hang this hat on the Slaughter peg.

So hang this hat on the Slaughter peg.

Agreed, Paul. If you liked Country (and I did), you should like Minoso, IMO.

One other thing needs to be stressed: Minoso played a lot of third base between 1948-51. No, the hot corner wasn't as defense-oriented then (or now, for that matter) as it was when Sutton, Collins, Baker, and Groh were playing, but it still wasn't left field either. His MLE OPS+ need to be evaluated in that light.

C'mon! An age 53 comp to Hall of Famer Jim O'Rourke! Put the guy in!

Triviality (or maybe not):

Found this in the NHBA. Bill James took a set of all the players in baseball history who played 1,000 or more games, and ranked them in a bunch of offensive categories: BA, OBP, SLG, doubles/AB, triples/AB, home runs/AB, runs scored/AB, RBI/AB, stolen bases/AB, walks/AB and strikeouts/AB. Then he looked to see how many players were above average in every category. He got 5:

Jackie Robinson
George Grantham
Jacques Fournier
Ken Williams
Minnie Minoso

Like I said, trivia, but I will point out: Robinson's a HoMer, Grantham was a lousy fielder, Fournier had an odd career, getting sent to the minors midway through for no good reason, and Williams had a very big home park advantage.

triples/AB

I bet this category, and maybe SBs, eliminated a lot of great players.

Brent,

My #s for Minoso are taken from either Lester/Clark or Holway (IIRC). Probably the former.

Gadfly,

Thanks for the numbers on Minoso! Are these from a published source? If so, I'd love to get my hands on it.

These MLEs not only respond to Brent's concerns, but also include the newest data just posted by Gadfly. Thanks, Gadfly! I'm going to post this over on the 1971 thread as suggested by several voters.

I mentioned it several times before but it was not corrected. Due to the November birthday, those MLE's should go from age 19 to 24. As it stands now he's listed as 25 in both 1950 and 1951.

Not a big deal, but something to keep in mind when potentially given credit for 1947 and earlier.

In # 104 I gave Minoso’s career numbers including the MLEs (starting either in 1947 or ’48). The following updates them using Dr. C’s latest MLEs:

YEAR _AVG OBP SLG ___G ___PA __AB ___H __TB _BB ops+ WS
47-80 .296 .382 .452 2378 10010 8642 2559 3907 1050 125 361
48-80 .297 .384 .454 2230 09383 8080 2402 3668 0985 127 341

Again, to me these numbers look a whole lot more like Goose Goslin (OPS+ = 128, PA = 9822) than like George Burns (OPS+ = 114, PA = 8251) or Lou Brock (OPS+ = 109). Considering that when Goslin was elected he appeared on 49 of 52 ballots (including 42 votes in the top 5), I’ve been stunned at the lack of support for Minoso.

Brent,

He's clearly better than Brock on all counts. But I've got Burns over him on peak. This view is supported by both WS and WARP which have Burns enjoying more MVP-level seasons than Minoso. I don't tend to vote as much on career as peak, but Burns has just enough career to hold off Minoso IMO.

Just wait til Clemente or Dewey hit the board. If Minoso hasn't been elected by then, it's going to get real interesting to distinguish among them.

I quoted and replied:

> In view of the strong support that Slaughter, Ashburn,
> Goslin, and Wheat received when they appeared on the ballot,
> I’m surprised at the lack of support for Minoso and hope that
> voters here will reconsider his case.

Ashburn is contemporary but his electoral strength (shoo-in at his time) may be derived from those who value fine defensive CFing more than you do. Wheat and Goslin are ancient history. So hang this hat on the Slaughter peg.</i>

Brett #41:
Considering that when Goslin was elected he appeared on 49 of 52 ballots (including 42 votes in the top 5), I’ve been stunned at the lack of support for Minoso.

My purpose was to prevent Brett and others from being stunned. Goslin might not get many of those 42 votes today. In contrast, I recommended "the Slaughter peg" because I think it's clear that the recently honored Enos would get most of his votes today.

Given the strong showing by Van Haltren today, it may be useful or interesting to make the same point in another way. It's possible that Goslin beats Van Haltren in 1940, because timeliners flock to his banner, but Van Haltren beats Goslin in 1970, because the timeliners have abandoned him for Minoso (this is theory!) while Van Haltren's 1940 support remains in place.

>t's possible that Goslin beats Van Haltren in 1940, because timeliners flock to his banner, but Van Haltren beats Goslin in 1970, because the timeliners have abandoned him for Minoso (this is theory!) while Van Haltren's 1940 support remains in place.

I think that's right. Another of the ways in which timelining inserts an M.C. Escher quality to this exercise.

>t's possible that Goslin beats Van Haltren in 1940, because timeliners flock to his banner, but Van Haltren beats Goslin in 1970, because the timeliners have abandoned him for Minoso (this is theory!) while Van Haltren's 1940 support remains in place.

I think that's right. Another of the ways in which timelining inserts an M.C. Escher quality to this exercise.

Thanks for stressing that point, Marc. ;-)

It's possible that Goslin beats Van Haltren in 1940, because timeliners flock to his banner, but Van Haltren beats Goslin in 1970, because the timeliners have abandoned him for Minoso (this is theory!) while Van Haltren's 1940 support remains in place.

Yes, but my concern wasn't the timeliners, it's the "reverse timeliners" -- those who rank Minoso behind an outfielder from 40 years earlier whose OPS+ was a dozen points lower, with a thousand fewer plate appearances. Showing that the players with statistics similar to Minoso have consistently been elected (usually quite easily) is an argument to maintain consistent standards and avoid errors of omission.

Turning to the broader issue of timelining, Paul suggests an interesting idea for checking for timelining. If players tend to get strong support shortly after becoming eligible, and then see their support rapidly wane as time goes by, that would be evidence that voters are timelining. Comparing the 1970 results with those from 1945 (the year Goslin was elected) that seems to have been the case with Sewell, who came very close to being elected shortly after becoming eligible, but placed 18th on the latest ballot.

On the other hand, Sewell appears to have been an exception. Other "recent" candidates in 1945 included Eppa Rixey, who retained support for decades until finally elected, and George Sisler, who has maintained strong support. Generally, the current backlog looks pretty similar to what it was in 1945 with the additions of several new names (and the deletions of the handful who've been elected).

Another exception might be Negro League candidates, for whom there seems to be more of a "herd" effect. In 1945 Dick Lundy and Bill Monroe were still getting a lot of support, which has now pretty much dissipated. That support now seems to be going to Alejandro Oms and more recent arrivals like Willard Brown. (Earlier, the same thing happened to Spot Poles--he became unpopular and his support dried up.) But we generally haven't seen the major league candidates being abandoned in the same way.

I agree that we haven't generally seen "major league candidates being abandoned" over time, so there is little evidence of this kind of timelining in the voting record. Goslin was elected in a landslide that can't generally be attributed to timelining. And the huge difference in initial support for Goslin and Minoso can't generally be attributed to timelining. Jimmy Ryan seems to be an exception.

If Goslin benefited significantly from timelining, in contrast to Van Haltren for example, that must be (in order to get significant effect from modest cause) in conjunction with other phenomena, such as a dearth of strong new candidates at other positions.

There are five pre- and Negro Leagues candidates in the ten leading incumbents, with two 19ers, Sisler, and Doerr and Gordon. That seems to be strong evidence only for Chris Cobb's observation that the electorate now handles almost all new candidates swiftly and surely.

Paul, that COULD be, but my take is this is merely a function of our set-up.

Over time, most of our players are handled swfitly. The top 20 (to pick a # which will rhyme later to make a cute phrase) backlog guys are the ones who have straddled the fence over time, but this represents a smal portion all of our candidates. Add in those we've elected and those we've dismissed, and it's "twenty out of many".

So, we should expect most of our new guys to be dealt with swiftly as well; maybe only 5-10% will be neither honored or dimissed quickly. Fox perhaps? :)

Since I'm doing these for important/interesting NgL eligibles....

Minoso's early-career MLEs change just a little bit when you apply the recently published league averages.



David Foss, please note the age change!

Again, SLG up a little, AVG down a little, but WS mostly unchanged. The shape of his career as initially interpreted remains as is.

Cross-posting:

I start giving Miñoso credit for his age-21 1947 season. It seems like Fielding Win Shares were never posted, so I'm just using his rate from the 1950's to measure the quality of his fielding for those years (which comes out to an extremely high +9-+10 per full season). I'm also correcting the data in the spreadsheet for his multi-positional '51 and '52, and incorporating the most recent version of BP FRAA. Here's what I get:



3-year peak: 19.0
7-year prime: 39.5
Career: 64.1

In my salary estimator, that's $173M, which is Kelley/Sheckard level. I would subjectively dock him a bit for league strength. Also, a very big chunk of his value is locked up in defense, so if you don't trust Fielding WS and BP FRAA, you might want to push him down as well. (TotalZone agrees with their take starting in 1956). On another note, his manager should never have allowed him to steal.

In the LF ballot thread Brock Hanke asked about the revised birth year 1925. I'm surprised there isn't more info here in the Minoso thread [oh, I didn't notice there are two pages]. See #19 for a 2003 profile at mlb.com that includes notice of correct birth year 1925. The print source is Minoso's autobiography although there have been interviews with him since then (such as for that 2003 profile).

Just Call Me Minnie: My Six Decades in Baseball
by Minnie Minoso (Author), Herb Fagen (Contributor)
[data from Amazon.com]
* Hardcover: 250 pages
* Publisher: Sagamore Publishing (April 1, 1994)
* Language: English
* ISBN-10: 0915611902
* ISBN-13: 978-0915611904
* Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 1 inches

I believe that the autobiographical account was generally unknown until 1999 or so when Dick Thompson discussed it by email to about 1000 SABR members. Thompson listed numerous reasons why some ballplayers have misrepresented their birth dates. Re Minoso, iirc, he was uncertain but leaned toward 1925 (the revision).

I try to keep up with approved revisions to biographical data by reading the SABR Biographical Research Committee newsletter but I don't remember the Minoso case. My only historical record is the Pete Palmer print encyclopedias Total Baseball and Baseball Encyclopedia. I have the 1993, 1999, and 2005 editions; all three list the old birth year 1922.