Wednesday, December 12, 2012
2013 Results: Bonds, Clemens, Piazza and Biggio are elected to the Hall of Merit!
(bbtf)
Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Mike Piazza and Craig Biggio have been elected to the Hall of Merit!
The timing for our first year electing 4 candidates could not have worked out better, since class of 2013 is the strongest in terms of electees that we’ve ever had. The top of the 1934 ballot included Ty Cobb, Tris Speaker, Eddie Collins, Pop Lloyd, Smokey Joe Williams and Cristobal Torriente, but only 2 were elected.
Bonds and Clemens were each unanimous at 1 and 2. I believe that’s the first ...
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Moral Idiotspeople have spoken! It's democracy in action!This is certainly good advice, but man, its so easy to complain.
Nope. Entirely different mental bucket for practically every voter.
And, really: what's it to you (or me)?
The primacy of ERA+, primarily. But even that premise collapses on its merits given that Catfish Hunter was elected not so long ago with the very same 105.
I've always thought that any argument comparing one's favorite HoF snub to one of its weakest members is not a good argument (people do this all the time re the Pro Football Hall comparing their favorite WR snub to Lynn Swann and QB snub to Joe Namath). And as far as I can tell, if Morris gets elected, he'll be tied for next-to-last among HoF starting pitchers in ERA+ with Catfish Hunter at 105. Only Rube Marquard at 103 is worse.
If Morris were in the middle of a bunch of second-tier HoF-ers, that would be different.
I think this is good advice, but it assumes a false choice -- support qualified candidates OR oppose Morris. In fact, the best chance of stopping Morris is to make affirmative cases for better qualified (but not automatic) candidates. The more votes that Raines, Bagwell, Edgar and Schilling get in 2013, the smaller the chance that Morris makes it. This is true simply as a matter of mathematics -- there are only so many votes, and most writers won't vote for 9-10 guys -- and because a year of being regularly reminded that Morris is maybe the 8th best candidate on the ballot makes it less likely that previous No votes become yes votes.
And most important of these is Schilling, since voters mainly compare pitchers to other pitchers. Rather than continuing to debate Morris-vs-Blyleven, we need lots of articles on Morris-vs-Schilling. If writers see that Morris isn't the best pitcher on the ballot, that really hurts him. It's not even too early to remind people that Glavine and Mussina are far stronger candidates, since some writers will be inclined to consider them marginal candidates.
Player WAR (Top five seasons) ERA+ PitchW IP From To GS CG SHO W L W-L% SO ERAJack Morris 39.3 (5.1-4.9-4.8-4.7-4.1) 105 10.10 3824.0 1977 1994 527 175 28 254 186 .577 2478 3.90
Dennis Martinez 46.9 (5.5-5.3-4.9-4.7-4.6) 106 11.54 3999.2 1976 1998 562 122 30 245 193 .559 2149 3.70
Frank Tanana 55.1 (7.8-7.7-7.2-4.9-3.7) 106 11.59 4188.1 1973 1993 616 143 34 240 236 .504 2773 3.66
Rick Reuschel 66.3 (8.7-5.9-5.5-5.5-5.4) 114 19.52 3548.1 1972 1991 529 102 26 214 191 .528 2015 3.37
We could have thrown Hough in here as well, but his unusual career makes direct comparisons to Morris more complicated. He also has less career WAR then Morris, so we'll stick with these.
How about our old friend Win Shares? Career totals and top 5 seasons:
JMo 225 (21-20-20-19-18)
DMa 233 (18-18-17-16-16)
FTa 241 (27-22-20-15-15)
RRe 240 (26-20-20-19-18)
How about Cy Young voting (that tends to be very dependent on team support)? Career shares and top 3 finishes:
JMo 0.73 3-3-4
DMa 0.05 5-5-x
FTa 0.23 3-4-9
RRe 0.62 3-3-8
Look at the Translated Statistics from Baseball Prospectus. Translated Won-Loss and ERA
JMo 223-200 4.29
DMa 232-212 4.36
FTa 238-195 4.11
RRe 221-152 3.78
What makes Morris an impending HOFer and these others one and done? Teammates - just win, baby! Morris' teams turned his WL record from Mel Harder (223-186) to Bob Gibson (251-174). It's an old truism that HOF pitchers play for good teams. It not only makes for a shiny W-L record, but it saves wear and tear on the arm pitching in front of good defenses and having good bullpens. Bob Friend and Bobo Newsom were better pitchers than Morris. Too bad they couldn't "pitch to the score" like The Jack.
I don't think it's a desire to be the anti-Lederer so much as a desire to have the Hall reflect what we feel is the best of the best. Including an inferior player I think devalues the meaning of "Hall of Famer." It isn't a deathblow or anything like that but to me the Hall of Fame should be the best of the best and in my opinion Jack Morris does not meet that standard.
I wouldn't discount the "he's so close, who am I to be the one denying him entry" vote from guys like Rosenthal.
The right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Folks get to crusade for whatever random thing floats their boat, and that is a feature not a bug. I do not understand the need to chastise people for how they allocate their time and energy. Calling them wrong "Morris does belong in the HoF" is one thing, but "Stop wasting your time on this, spend it better" seems to me to be much more disrespectful.
That said it is in fact a false dichotomy (a theme today I guess), you can argue for X and against Y. Plus, as others have noted before sins of omission can be fixed, sins of comission are essentially forever and so are in some sense more important.
Edited: The Sine of Ommission, while a good band name, was not exactly what I was trying to say.
If Catfish were up for discussion right now he would have little or no support among the sabermetric community. He was elected in 1987. A lot of people on this site hadn't even been born yet. Others had yet to read Bill James. I was on my third year of Baseball Abstract reading at the time. Don't think I would have yet been able to come up with a reason to oppose him if anyone had asked me.
At this point he's just one of those questionable cases from long ago, not much different than George Kelly or someone like that.
And it's not harmless; if you let in people who don't belong -- and I don't mean borderline guys like Andre Dawson, but total jokes like Morris -- then it diminishes the honor of getting in for those who do.
EDIT: Coke to Bitter Mouse on the sins of comission thing.
And at that, James's comment on Hunter in the first Historical Abstract finds him "interchangeable" with Jenkins and Roberts. Even in the later HOF book, the comparison is to Tiant and not to Hunter's disadvantage, but rather to show how good Tiant was. It's only in the second Historical Abstract that James's tone shifts and he has to admit that Hunter wasn't the equal of his mystique (dropping him to 64th among all-time pitchers).
Even Bill James, in the 1980s, liked pitchers who won lots of games. He made a strong argument for Steve Carlton for the 1982 Cy Young Award, based on Carlton's wins total and general Männlichkeit, that ignored his relatively high ERA. I don't think he'd make the same argument today.
Outside of those years he just didn't have much value at all. Years like 1968 (234 innings, 3.35 ERA, 172-59 K-uBB) look like a good pitcher by our current standards. But 76 pitchers qualified for the ERA title that year, and Catfish's ERA came in at 69th place. There is value in being an innings eater at an average rate, but I don't see any value in a replacement level innings eater.
I think that's what gives him a chance, and why I thougt he needed to eclipse 65 percent this year to have a chance. But it is still a long way to 75 percent, and the most recent "close guys" aren't really an agument in his favor.
In his 14th year on the ballot, Rice received 72 percent of the vote. His final push votes only amounted to a 4.2 percentage-point gain, enough to move him over the line but not an overwhelming total. The '09 ballot had Henderson, but no other first-balloters even reached Year 2.
In his 13th year on the ballot, Blyleven received 74 percent. He picked up only 5.5 percentage points to push him over on the 2011 ballot (which didn't include any first-ballot Hall of Famers).
What's impossible to know in any of these cases is the strength of conviction of the no voters, which should be considerable with Jack (due to him being not worthy and all).
I say he comes up short in 2013. But if he can get within a handful of votes of election in the process, he's got a chance in 14. With ridiculously false precision, I'll say if he eclipses 73.5 percent next year, he'll go in during his 15th year. If not, (which I'm going to say is the case) it's off to the Vet's Committee, which will usher him in.
...because we know where he is going to be then, and can set up an ambush, capture him, and burn him on a pyre?
Likely because Sparky thought Morris was the best pitcher he ever managed, which he's said publicly on at least one occasion.
Outside of those years he just didn't have much value at all. Years like 1968 (234 innings, 3.35 ERA, 172-59 K-uBB) look like a good pitcher by our current standards. But 76 pitchers qualified for the ERA title that year, and Catfish's ERA came in at 69th place. There is value in being an innings eater at an average rate, but I don't see any value in a replacement level innings eater.
The antis are asking the writers to reject Morris because of his ERA+ when they inducted Catfish with the same ERA+ in the adult memories of most of the writers, and Sutton with essentially the same ERA+ more recently.
They're further asking the writers to adopt revisionist -- if not faddish -- definitions of the baseball terms "win" and "ace," and to a lesser but still significant extent the commonly-used word, "reputation."
That's a very tough sell.
Because he's a god damn menace and will terrorize the children once he's there. There's so many exhibits for him to hide behind that we'll never find him.
And they're doing the same thing but in reverse with the steroid era guys. Even excluding the confirmed juicers, the voters know that Bagwell, Biggio, Piazza, etc are worthy, but the entire era they played in offends them so they're not going to vote them in right away simply because they don't WANT to. The HOF will continue to lose more and more relevance each year if the voters keep being allowed to elect and reject players just based on likes/dislikes rather than statistical merit.
That only makes sense if Catfish is the only comparable and represents a good in/out line. Morris was better than Catfish so he deserves to go in? No, I don't think so.
We also know that these same writers have rejected 14 pitchers who retired between 1980-2005, pitched 3000 innings, and had an ERA+ better than 105. If they were paying attention to ERA+, they'd say no to Morris, and wonder what in the world they were thinking on the Catfish and Kevin Brown votes.
108 (Sutton's career ERA+) is not 105. More importantly, through 1981, Sutton had essentially the same number of innings as Morris and a career ERA+ of 112. The fact that he pitched a further 1400 IP at 100 doesn't diminish his career, it enhances it. Morris is not only not in the same ballpark as Sutton, he's not in the same time zone.
That's even more reason not to expect the writers to draw an ERA+ in/out line. There's really no precedent for them to do that, nor should they.
I'm not using Catfish as a comp; I'm saying that the claim that Morris should be out because of teh 105 fails entirely, because it didn't eliminate Catfish. Which means the writers have every right, based on existing precedent, to look more deeply -- and when they do, they find a lot to like about Morris, and rightfully so.
That's an interesting set of alternative histories for aficianados, but I'm not sure they should impact Hall of Fame voting. When all's said and done, some of what happens in a player's career, for both good and bad, is out of his hands. The '91 Twins go to the World Series -- mostly out of Morris's control. He shows enough to get picked by TK to pitch Games 1, 4, and 7 -- to a large extent within Morris's control, but certainly not entirely. Pitching a masterpiece for the ages in Game 7 -- mostly in Morris's control, but Lonnie Smith and TK letting him go out for the 9th and 10th. Morris proving he should go out for the 9th and 10th -- materially, but not entirely, in his control.
And so it goes. Life isn't lived asocially; team sports are played with other people, and managers, GMs and owners make career-impacting decisions. Most of us make our peace with that and move on.
I'm not using Catfish as a comp; I'm saying that the claim that Morris should be out because of teh 105 fails entirely, because it didn't eliminate Catfish.
Did the stat ERA+ even exist when Catfish was elected (I really don't know; anyone?)? If it didn't - or if it wasn't widely known at the time - it would make sense for a writer to consider it now even if they hadn't before. It's not really fair to critique past selections using statistics that weren't around when the selection was made.
I agree that a lot of voters won't care about ERA+ (or even know what it is). But writers certainly understand ERA, which is perhaps the single stat on which traditionalists and saberists can find the most common ground. It is unquestionably the single best measure of pitcher quality among traditional stats, and I don't think many writers would disagree. And if he's elected, Jack Morris' 3.90 ERA will be the worst ERA in the HOF. Not one pitcher has ever been admitted, even by the VC, with an ERA this high. And not many are even in the neighborhood of 3.90. And please don't talk about context -- Morris threw less than 300 innings after 1992 (7% of his total), so the 90s offensive explosion had a very small impact on his career record.
If Morris' ERA were 4.00, we wouldn't be having this discussion at all -- he simply wouldn't be taken seriously. And yet how much better is 3.90? Not very damn much....
3824.0IP/9I=424.89G
424.89*0.1=42.489R
4 wins?
The concept of ERA relative to one's league certainly existed, if not the precise calculation. Hard as it is to imagine now, back in 1968 an ERA of 3.00 was literally mediocre (the entire AL had an ERA of 2.98 that year). Hunter's ERA, as AROM points out, was excellent over a short stretch in the early 70s, but of all pitchers who threw 1000 or more innings from 1965 through 1980 (the span of Hunter's career), he was 37th in overall ERA. People knew that at the time, and as with Morris's equally unimpressive ERA, they really didn't care. Hunter was a winner and that was enough.
I guess I would rather give Raines et. al. the well-deserved opportunity to make induction speeches than concern myself with the sanctity of the Hall. Having Morris in might diminish that sanctity for most of us, but I don't think you'd find a major league alive who feels the honour of being inducted is diminished by having Morris or some other less-than-worthy (from an on-field performance viewpoint) player being in. This isn't the same thing as a college removing honours distinction and giving the exact same degree to a guy who got Cs as they do to the guy who got A+ in everything.
That's what bugs me as well. It's sloppy thinking, and sloppy thinking should be opposed, whatever the forum.
True, but I'm still not entirely convinced that Hunter is a good comp, since like you mentioned, he really was very good for a short stretch at his peak. And that peak - which Morris never had - may very well be what got him into the Hall. Hell, Morris never had a SINGLE season with a sub 3.00 ERA. Better comps than Hunter would be guys like David Wells or Jamie Moyer (and of course, the always mentioned Frank Tanana and Denny Martinez).
Wells didn't win as many games, Moyer wasn't an ace and simply wasn't as good, Tanana and Martinez and Reuschel didn't win as many games and didn't have as good a winning percentage. None had Game 7, or postseasons like '84 and '91.
Quibble about the validity of these distinctions, but distinguishing these candidates is straightforward and simple. Should the distinction lead to Morris in the Hall of Fame, the others not even in the conversation? Probably not. The writers can be legitimately faulted for gaps in perception of this magnitude; they show the same fault with Sandberg/Whitaker, Ozzie/Trammell, and likely several others. They aren't drawing proper distinctions and gradations between the two extremes.
And if it wasn't, having the name "Catfish" probably didn't hurt.
I'll see your Game 7 and raise you a perfect game.
I believe the calculation of park effects has been improved since then, but thru 1988 Morris is shown as having an ERA+ of 113, while never ranking among the top five in the league in any season.
Morris emerged as the counterpoint to Blyleven for years. With Bert now in the Hall, Morris' candidacy no longer makes a lot of sense since his win totals and big game performance aren't being compared to Blyleven anymore. However, as is human nature, so many people have committed to Morris over the past few years that they aren't just going to back down from their anti-Blyleven positions. There will be others like Rosenthal, who, out of respect for Morris as a person, will vote for him to go in just to put this to rest and let the guy have his day in the sun.
Blyleven's election is such a great victory for the stats community that if the price is Morris, I will happily pay it.
It's "straightforward and simple" if you are reasoning backward from a conclusion, and looking to justify a Morris yes/other guys no position. It is virtually impossible to make a good-faith effort to establish reasonable criteria for supporting pitchers for the HOF, and then to discover that Jack Morris has met your standards.
Or it makes more sense since, fundamentally, many writers believe that Morris was as "good" -- in the essential, if not numerical, sense of the term -- as Blyleven. With Bert not yet in, that drove both pro-Morris and anti-Blyleven sentiment. Now, with Blyleven in, Morris is seen as just as "good" as a Hall of Famer -- so why not put him in the Hall of Fame?
20+ Wins....
Morris: 3 times
Martinez: 0 times (max of 16 - this kills him)
Tanana: 0 times (max of 19)
Reuschel: 1 time
Catfish: 5 times
Sutton: 1 time (almost killed him iirc)
Stieb: 0 times (max of 18)
ERA sub 3 (generally viewed as impressive)
Morris: 0 times (best of 3.05, best ERA+ was 133)
Martinez: 4 times (5th with just 28 IP)
Tanana: 3 times
Reuschel: 4 times
Catfish: 5 times
Sutton: 8 times
Stieb: 3 times
Black Ink (lead in something - many writers don't know what 'black ink' means but do their own version I'm sure)
Morris: 20
Martinez: 17
Tanana: 9 (this kills him)
Reuschel: 7 (this kills him)
Catfish: 26
Sutton: 8 (this almost killed him)
Stieb: 17
All Star Games (viewed strongly when playing)
Morris: 5 times (3 starts)
Martinez: 4 times
Tanana: 3 times
Reuschel: 3 times (1 start)
Catfish: 8 times (1 start)
Sutton: 4 times (1 start - NL pitchers were 3 HOF, Reuschel & Gary Lavelle)
Stieb: 7 times (2 starts)
I added Stieb as he is often listed as the true 'best of the 80's' if you exclude guys like Clemens & Gooden.
Sutton was hurt a lot by the lack of 20 win seasons (which I'm sure killed off both Stieb and Martinez as far as many voters were concerned) and an amazing lack of black ink (also hurting Reuschel and Tanana). Never having an ERA sub 3.00 has to be a big hurt for Morris (goes with his 3.90 lifetime) but many voters seem to buy the 'pitching to the score' no matter how much it is shown to have not happened (at least no more so than it does for any other ML pitcher).
I was very surprised to see how well Morris does on the black ink score though. Twice leading in wins (big), once each in complete games/shutouts/strikeouts/innings/batters faced/walks allowed/earned runs allowed, twice in starts, six times in wild pitches. Points were via 4 per win title/strikeouts/ERA, 3 per win IP/win%/saves, 2 for complete games/lowest BB per 9/lowest H per 9, one for appearances/starts/shutouts.
I can see how Morris ended up becoming the representative for the 80's pitching group of Tanana/Reuschel/Stieb/Martinez/etc. as he had enough in total wins and in All Star Games and Black Ink while still getting the mandatory 20 win seasons. Don't agree with it but doing this digging does help explain it a bit.
So the Cooperstown-bound Morris train is substantially a whistle-stop, politically-charged juggernaut riding a populist track. Those of us who care about HOF standards must aim our strategies at this tribal-based support in order to slow the train's progress, in order to reroute its final destination to the Veterans Committee station.
Yes.
Intellectual laziness should not be championed.
I'm not sure that last bit is true actually. When I think of the worst BBWAA selections, it's Dean, Hunter, Brock, Perez, Puckett, Sutter, Rice. I'm probably forgetting somebody (one could round out with Gossage, Dawson, etc.) It's slicing it pretty thin and my first instinct is Morris would not be "the least" but he's certainly not "far from the least."
As to "why argue against Morris?" Well, nobody was until probably his 8th year on the ballot because Morris was going nowhere. The "anti-Morris" movement is strictly a reaction to the pro-Morris movement which uses a mix of traditional counting stats, poor arguments, cherry-picking, key buzz words and uses him as a tool to try to bash the statnerds over the head. Expecting a statnerd website to take the attitude of "good for you Jack!" under those circumstances is like expecting us to sit back and say "to each their own" as you try to argue that Madeleine Albright is the hottest chick in the world.
But I don't see anybody _campaigning_ against Morris. Lederer went out of his way to contact HoF voters, wrote several long pieces, looked at it in 1,000 different ways and became well-known among writers and even to Blyleven. Nobody's showing that level of passion for or against Morris, we're just blowing off steam on a baseball website.
And Morris's voting history puts the lie to much of what SBB tosses about. The vast majority of the voters didn't consider him some sort of indomitable, clutch ace when he hit the ballot. They weren't impressed by his win total, winning percentage, number of opening day starts, "best pitcher of the 80s" then.
Morris debuted at 22%, behind Sutter, Gossage, John and Kaat just among pitchers. The latter two, generally facing much tougher competition on the ballot (300-game winner after 300-game winner) had debuted at the same level Morris did. In his 5th year he bumped up to 26%. At this point he is still behind Sutter, Gossage, Lee Smith and Blyleven (by nearly 10 points). He's just ahead of the plummeting Garvey and he's also now ahead of John in his 10th year.
So as of 2004, the voters see him as Tommy John and as less valuable than the closers. 2004 was the year Eck was elected so closers other than Smith were about to skyrocket. In 2005 he gets a nice bump to 33% and his climb has begun and he now has a 10 point gap on John but is still behind those other 4 pitchers.
Point being that it's not that "we" have the arduous task of getting voters to give up on the traditional concept of "ace", "win" or "reputation" ... it's that the pro-Morris folks somehow suckered other voters into believing those terms applied to Morris to an unusual degree when they did not. Morris simply was not an HoF-level "ace" by any traditional definition thereof. His "win" total is not impressive for an HoF-level starter. His "reputation" is a single, great game.
Morris does not meet the traditional standards for an HoF starter. Morris's HoF voting history is partly explained by standard HoF voting phenomena -- reasonable counting stats combined with a long-run of weak pitching ballots -- and a rather odd social phenomenon going on within the BBWAA and baseball analysis more generally.
Anyway, he's a shoo-in by the VC at least.
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