Wow. I feel like Nomar retired about 10 years ago.

If every voter gave a detailed explanation of their process like T.R.S. did in #21, including mentioning their biases (Rangers) and their regrets (Schilling/McGriff), I think it would improve things immensely.

Looking at the JAWS CF leaderboard, and sorting on WAR7, Murphy is still only 18th among CF. Behind Andre Dawson, Jim Edmonds, Carlos Beltran, and Cesar Cedeno. In front of Vada Pinson, Larry Doby, Willie Davis and Fred Lynn.

Of course, though, those numbers are held down by the fact that in his prime while he was winning gold gloves, TZ has him repeatedly verging on -20 defense. I'm not sure I buy that, and again the older defensive data aren't as reliable (and Murphy's in particular are bizarre, since his numbers are way higher after he lost his knees). If you believe he was actually a good defender and credit him at something conservative like +5 in each of his gold glove years, then he would shoot up to 8th on the WAR7 list, after Snider and before Jones.

Now, clearly that's generous to Murphy, and plenty of people have won GGs without deserving them, but it's at least a plausible narrative.

#52 -- Nah. TR is a special case in that he actually thought about his ballot. We have plenty of people explaining their processes but clearly showing broken logic and factual lapses. See, for example, the Hot Topics thread about Mr. Hickey's ballot where he complains that Pete Rose was considered and passed over 15 times. Most of the BBWAA voters can give a detailed explanation; few can show such a thoughful process as did Mr. Sullivan. And I'm thrilled that TR thinks it through and is willing to share with this motley group of Primates.

#51 -- Perhaps its my age, but to me it seems like just yesterday that he won the ROY. I can't believe he's already retired.

Of course, though, those numbers are held down by the fact that in his prime while he was winning gold gloves, TZ has him repeatedly verging on -20 defense. I'm not sure I buy that, and again the older defensive data aren't as reliable (and Murphy's in particular are bizarre, since his numbers are way higher after he lost his knees). If you believe he was actually a good defender and credit him at something conservative like +5 in each of his gold glove years, then he would shoot up to 8th on the WAR7 list, after Snider and before Jones.

Giving him "good" defensive numbers is a stretch. If you just remove his defensive WAR, he only moves up a spot or two on the WAR7 list.

Given that his candidacy is built on peak, and then we have to massage the numbers to make his peak look good, tends to support that he doesn't belong in the HOF.

This ballot is full of problematic people who have very strong cases. Edgar has the DH thing and the low playing time and the trapped-in-the-minors story. Larry Walker has Coors Field and the injuries. Palmeiro and McGwire have PEDs, and both of them and Bagwell have the problem of playing at a time with about a billion 1B types who could hit. Lee Smith had the ridiculously low IP totals. Kenny Lofton has the problem that he was never thought of as a Hall of Famer during his career. Sosa has the problem of just having an entirely unprescedented career. Even Biggio (and Bagwell) has the problem of spending half his career in the Astrodome and half of it in a bandbox. Most of these guys have the sillyball era. Edgar and Larry Walker especially are guys that require and ton of adjustments and caveats, and so are probably badly overvalued by a lot of people and badly undervalued by everyone else.

Add to this the problem that there are 20 guys on the ballot who deserve and/or will recieve a lot of close attention. This will mean a lot of voters leaving off people they might like to vote for, and also the distortions of strategic voting -- "If I don't vote for McGriff he might fall off the ballot, so I'll leave off Sosa even though I think he deserves it more." I can't imagine there has ever been a ballot on which I would feel less confident about my vote.

Dale Murphy: 140 OPS+ from 1980-87 (ages 24-31), 5 gold gloves in CF, back to back MVPs. (Not that he necessarily should have been MVP in 1987, but his MVP-11 is a joke -- he had a better year than Dawson.)

Gold Gloves? Very weak. MVP's, you already pointed out the flaw in them. 140 OPS+ over an 8 year prime? Meh. Even during your handpicked time period it was 8th in baseball and he was 7th in WAR for the same period. I guess it's not bad, but if you look at era, rather than solely his prime, you start to see so many other OF who are more representative of the HOF than Murphy.

He's got 14 points of OPS+ on Dawson during Dawson's best 8 year run, which basically overlaps.

Selective (best) endpoints on Rice '77-'86, OPS+ of 135, with brutal defense. Murphy was better than Rice and it's barely worthy of conversation.

Rickey '81-'90 (best endpoints): 142 OPS+.

Murphy should be getting more HOF play than he is.

And this is the issue. To make him look even somewhat reasonable you have to compare him to two borderline, at best, candidates. But really comparing him to Henderson is absurd.

Add to this the problem that there are 20 guys on the ballot who deserve and/or will recieve a lot of close attention.

Why is there a 10-name limit? Is there any rational reason for having this rule?

Why is there a 10-name limit? Is there any rational reason for having this rule?

It probably seemed logical when there were 16 teams and the history of the game was much shorter. After the first couple of inductions there wasn't a likelihood that there would be ten worthwhile players. That has changed over the years with expansion and many more decades of the game.

I think it has virtually no impact. Voters are voting for fewer candidates each year. I have never seen any report but the math suggests that the number of people maxing out the ballot is so low as to be meaningless.

I think it has virtually no impact. Voters are voting for fewer candidates each year. I have never seen any report but the math suggests that the number of people maxing out the ballot is so low as to be meaningless.

Actually, this might be the first time ever where the ballot limit could keep a player from enshrinement. It's possible that Morris (or Biggio) could get squeezed off a handful of full ballots and keep them from their appointed 75 percent.

But until now, I doubt it's ever directly kept a guy from getting elected, and probably not indirectly either.

#57 Dale Stephenson started his peak lists because he realized that Murphy's case was essentially pure peak and he wanted to assess how Murphy stood. (He was a Braves fan but wanted a real underastanding of the issue)

The answer is basically tied with Cesar Cedeno as the 11th best. Well behind Jimmy Wynn.

It's not a compelling case since he has so little value outside of his peak.

Looking at the JAWS CF leaderboard, and sorting on WAR7, Murphy is still only 18th among CF. Behind Andre Dawson, Jim Edmonds, Carlos Beltran, and Cesar Cedeno.

Right. Supposing he were average on D during his prime, that would net him about a win and a half and put him about even with Beltran. That squares with my impression that he's a "no"if his D was indeed terrible, and that to get to a "maybe" he needs the case that his defense was at least average during his prime.

I think it has virtually no impact. Voters are voting for fewer candidates each year. I have never seen any report but the math suggests that the number of people maxing out the ballot is so low as to be meaningless.

You need to read Dag Nabbit's series on the hof (if you haven't already) and it basically does agree with that premise.

cardsfanboy - history doesn't matter here. This ballot's depth is unprecedented since they slogged through the initial 60 years of eligibles in the 1930s and early 1940s. This year the 10-rule is definitely important. It's also a function of this ballot having 7 guys who have already been elected to the Hall of Merit (which agrees with 75% of the Hall of Fame - meaning several of those guys will be in the Hall of Fame eventually), plus 6 more who will likely be in the Hall of Fame at some point once everyone gets over the steroid business. This doesn't count several strong borderline candidates like Mattingly, McGriff, Murphy, Morris, Bernie.

The big issue from this year's ballot will be the players who miss the 5% threshold dropping off. I don't think it will matter for eventual election of the big guns, but several good candidates are going to miss 5% this year unless I'm completely misjudging it.

Good point Joe.

Given that his candidacy is built on peak, and then we have to massage the numbers to make his peak look good, tends to support that he doesn't belong in the HOF.

I don't really think it is about massaging the numbers. I was just giving them to flesh out the premise. The point is that his peak candidacy is all about defense. If you think he was a plus CF (which many people thought at the time, and presumable any booster still does), then he's got an above average HOF peak. If you think that he was average or below, then he's just another next-tier guy.

I'm not saying we should just go "Gold Gloves = plus every year," but I do think people are assuming that historical Rfield numbers are much more reliable than they really are (and this doesn't just apply to Murphy). Do you really think Murphy had more defensive value as a no-knee RF than when he was winning GGs in CF?

Right. Supposing he were average on D during his prime, that would net him about a win and a half and put him about even with Beltran.

I think you are underselling that a bit. Murphy won 5 straight GGs from 82-86. His Rfield for those years is -43. Giving him 0 to put him at average, that's ~4 wins. Tacking on 4 wins to his WAR7 puts him around Richie Ashburn at 9 or 10.

Again, mostly just playing devil's advocate, and I'm not saying that you have to accept all that as fact; but if you assume he had average defense during those years, he's got a very good peak. If you think he deserved those gold gloves (which, again, I'm assuming any Murphy booster does), he's got a great peak.

Murphy is a much better HOF candidate than he's given credit for.

He can still be much better than he's given credit for, and then still not really be close.

I think you are underselling that a bit. Murphy won 5 straight GGs from 82-86. His Rfield for those years is -43. Giving him 0 to put him at average, that's ~4 wins. Tacking on 4 wins to his WAR7 puts him around Richie Ashburn at 9 or 10.

This overstates it a bit in the other direction.

On BB-Ref, his top 7 oWAR years are, in descending order, '85, '83, '87, '84, '82, '80, '86. His RField for those years is -19. Average-fielding Murphy's WAR7 would go up by about 2. Your -43 excludes his '80 and '87 seasons, but doing that would cost him offensively in oWAR (how much depends on which years you substitute). The point is, you're zeroing out the negative RField seasons and keeping positive ones, which would correspond to Murphy being an *above*-average fielder during his top 7 seasons.

It is average seasons, not above average, that he lacks.

"I made enough birdies to win. I just didn't make enough pars." Wish I could remember who said that and which tournament he'd just lost.

the number of people maxing out the ballot is so low as to be meaningless.

Not meaningless. I believe that raising (or eliminating) the ten-man limit would have a real impact on the results over the next few crowded-ballot elections.

Suppose they go conservative and raise it only to 15. This would have a couple of immediate psychological effects on the electorate:

--Raising the limit sends the clear message that voters should be voting for more players.
--A "high standards" voter can still feel that their ballot is staying "exclusive" even if they put 12 names down, because they're not maxing it out.

As Joe said, "several good candidates are going to miss 5%" if the limit stays at ten.

You can say that the ten-man limit "has virtually no impact" - until it does. It's one of those old, anachronistic laws that sits on the books until general awareness is made of its potentially pernicious effects. The time is nigh; Ms. Forbes Clark, tear down this wall.

Your -43 excludes his '80 and '87 seasons ...

1987 was Murphy's first year as a Right Fielder. In 1986, he was a gold glove winning CF, but has a -17 on BRef's RField and had been -21 in '85 when he also won a GG. In 1987 as a RF rather than CF, his RField was +11 (with a -7 positional adjustment). I can't recall anything in Murphy's particular skill-set that would have made him uniquely well situated to play RF rather than CF. The latter score, combined with the reputational record, makes me question the former.