The Hoyt Scale Re-Revisited
The Futility Infielder tackles the modern reliever.
Relief pitchers are the most underrepresented position in the Hall of
Fame. Thus far, voters have deemed only two of them, Hoyt Wilhelm and
Rollie Fingers, worthy of admission to Cooperstown. This year’s
ballot contained three reasonable candidates—Rich Gossage, Lee
Smith and Bruce Sutter—none of whom came close to the 75%
necessary for election.
There’s no shortage of reasons for why these firemen are getting closed out:
o Unlike all of the other positions, we have a very tough time
measuring the current candidates against those enshrined; a class of
two doesn’t exactly make a strong sample size or produce de
facto standards for admission. Wilhelm is widely acknowledged as
the greatest reliever ever, while Fingers simply had visibility and
popularity—in the form of several successful postseason
appearances, a couple of big awards, and a distinctive moustache—
on his side.
o The tools which are readily at our disposal—wins, losses, and
especially saves—do a less than ideal job for measuring the
reliever’s impact. This is especially true when comparing pitchers
between different eras; Jeff Reardon has over 50% more saves than
Hoyt Wilhelm, but anybody who wants to argue that Reardon was as
valuable as Wilhelm has an uphill battle ahead.
o The tools which do a better job at helping us measure a reliever’s
impact, such as Baseball Prospectus’
HREF="http://www.baseballprospectus.com/current/rrereport02.html">Adju
sted Runs Prevented or Tangotiger’s
HREF="http://www.baseballthinkfactory.org/articles/tangotigre_2002-12-16_0.s
html">Leverage Index, are relatively recent developments based on
play-by-play or situational data and thus unavailable for the larger
chunk of the game’s history.
o As Mike’s Baseball
Rants continues to explore, the role of the reliever has been in
a nearly constant state of evolution across baseball history. Several
pitchers are often identified as paradigm of the “modern” reliever
based upon their pattern of usage, including Wilhelm, Sutter, and
Dennis Eckersley.
o Finally, most baseball fans, whether knowledgeable statheads or
simply men on barstools (not that the two are exclusive, and that’ll
be another round for me, thanks), intuitively grasp that while relief
pitching is an important part of the game, the impact of an ace
reliever isn’t on par with that of an ace starter or All-Star
position player. Several measures of player value—both sabermetric
and economic—bear that out.
All of this combines to make a reliever’s road to the Hall of Fame an
uphill one. But that doesn’t eliminate the question of where this
year’s three candidates fit in with respect to the two already in the
Hall, to each other, and other good-to-great relievers who are or
will be eligible for the Hall in the not-too-distant future. With
Eckersley up for election next year, and a generation of save-happy
closers on the horizon (Smith, the career leader, has already
arrived), it’s worth looking at different ways to compare them.
Last year Baseball Primer’s
HREF="http://www.baseballthinkfactory.org/clutch/archives/00001105.shtml">Rich Rifkin introduced a measure designed to judge relief pitchers
based on a combination of innings pitched and on ERA+ (which is
park-adjusted ERA relative to the league). The reasoning behind this
is simple: a pitcher’s job is to prevent runs; a good pitcher
prevents runs at a better than league-average rate; the more innings
a pitcher throws at a better-than-average rate, the more valuable he
is.
Based on the widely-agreed notion that Wilhelm was the best ever,
Rifkin called his measure the Hoyt Scale, and created a simple
formula:
(ERA+) + 4*IP/75 = uH (unadjusted Hoyts)
Rifkin then produced a Hoyt Constant such that Wilhelm winds up with
exactly 100 Hoyts, and all other relievers are calculated relative to
the master. By Rich’s calculations, the best relievers after the ol’
knuckleballer were Kent Tekulve and Rich Gossage (84.2), John Franco
(82.8), Dan Quisenberry (81.7), Lee Smith (80.4), Tom Henke (80.2),
Sparky Lyle (81.0), and Rollie Fingers (79.3).
This was a quick-and-dirty attempt at getting a handle on the
relative values of a select group of top-notch relievers, but it
contained a few flaws. First off, Rifkin’s numbers for calculating
the Hoyt Constant were off; for whatever reason he reported Wilhelm’s
total number of innings in relief as 1,890 when it’s in fact 1,870
(still a major league record).
That’s a minor problem, easily correctable. However, a much larger
problem exists. Several pitchers in the group we’re examining,
including Wilhelm, have significant numbers of innings pitched as
starters. Using a pitcher’s total ERA+ and total number of innings
favors anybody who racks up the mileage a starter gets; yet we’re
trying to measure relievers.
While breakdowns between innings pitched and runs allowed as
starter/reliever are not always available, we do have a large amount
of data for the 55 pitchers in my study. Using
HREF="http://www.retrosheet.org">Retrosheet and a few instances
where ALL of a pitchers appearances in a single season were starts, I
was able to completely separate the stats as starter and reliever for
18 pitchers. Another 12 obliged me by never starting a single game.
That’s over half of the pitchers in this study for whom I was able to
use exact Relief IP totals and Relief ERA+ to recalculate their
Hoyts. We’ll call all of these pitchers whose stats cooperate with
our mission Group A. Wilhelm himself is included in this group
because if we know his Relief IP, we know his Starting IP. I made an
estimate of his Relief ERA+ which I’ll explain shortly.
Here are the Group A pitchers, sorted by Relief Innings Pitched
(RIP). GSd is the number of games started for which we have data for,
and RERA+ is Relief ERA+. The rest should be familiar (* denotes an
active player):
G GS GSd W L Sv IP RIP ERA+ RERA+
H. Wilhelm 1070 52 0 143 122 227 2254.3 1870.0 146 145
K. Tekulve 1050 0 0 94 90 184 1436.3 1436.3 132 132
S. Lyle 899 0 0 99 76 238 1390.3 1390.3 127 127
L. Smith 1022 6 6 71 92 478 1289.3 1252.3 132 143
T. Burgmeier 745 3 3 79 55 102 1258.7 1248.7 119 120
J. Orosco* 1187 4 4 85 78 142 1261.3 1243.0 130 132
B. Stanley 637 85 85 115 97 132 1707.0 1159.0 118 131
J. Franco* 998 0 0 88 76 422 1150.3 1150.3 143 143
J. Reardon 880 0 0 73 77 367 1132.7 1132.7 121 121
D. Jones 846 4 4 69 79 303 1128.3 1112.3 130 130
M. Jackson* 960 7 7 60 67 142 1141.7 1108.0 127 131
G. Minton 710 7 7 59 65 150 1130.7 1089.3 112 121
G. Lavelle 745 3 3 80 77 136 1085.0 1077.7 126 128
D. Quisenberry 674 0 0 56 46 244 1043.3 1043.3 146 146
B. Sutter 661 0 0 68 71 300 1042.3 1042.3 136 136
R. McDowell 723 2 2 70 70 159 1050.0 1039.7 114 115
W. Hernandez 744 11 11 70 63 147 1044.7 994.3 118 124
L. Andersen 699 1 1 40 39 49 995.3 990.7 120 121
S. Bedrosian 732 46 46 76 79 184 1191.0 931.0 114 118
B. Locker 576 0 0 57 39 95 879.0 879.0 122 122
J. Montogomery 700 1 1 46 52 304 868.7 863.7 134 136
D. Eckersley 1071 361 361 197 171 390 3285.7 807.3 116 180
D. Smith 609 1 1 53 53 216 809.3 807.3 130 131
T. Henke 642 0 0 41 42 311 789.7 789.7 156 156
R. Aguilera 732 89 89 86 81 318 1291.3 740.3 117 131
M. Henneman 561 0 0 57 42 193 732.7 732.7 129 129
J. Howell 568 21 21 58 53 155 844.7 731.3 114 127
T. Hoffman* 632 0 0 45 44 352 701.0 701.0 146 146
T. Worrell 617 0 0 50 52 256 693.7 693.7 122 122
J. Wetteland 618 17 17 48 45 330 765.0 683.0 148 165
B. Harvey 322 0 0 17 25 177 387.0 387.0 165 165
Group B consists of pitchers for whom we have
incomplete data on their time as starters. For this group, we have
data on 53% of their total starts. For Goose Gossage, we’ve got 32
out of his 37, for Rollie Fingers only 8 of 37. I went ahead and
removed the known starter stats from their lines, such that we’ve got
Relief IP and Relief ERA+ which still include some starter innings
(which we’ll adjust for down the road). Interestingly enough, every
pitcher in either Group A or Group B had as good or better an ERA+ as
a reliever than as a starter, sometimes dramatically. Here are the
Group B pitchers, sorted again by RIP (keep in mind that this RIP is
not a complete total):
G GS GSd W L Sv IP RIP ERA+ RERA+
R. Gossage 1002 37 32 124 107 310 1890.3 1659.0 126 139
R. Fingers 944 37 8 114 118 341 1701.3 1656.7 119 122
G. Garber 931 9 1 96 113 218 1510.0 1505.7 117 117
T. McGraw 824 39 15 96 92 180 1514.7 1435.3 116 121
C. Carroll 731 28 9 96 73 143 1353.3 1299.0 120 123
M. Marshall 723 24 19 97 112 188 1386.7 1285.0 118 124
B. Campbell 700 9 7 83 68 126 1229.3 1181.7 111 115
D. Knowles 765 8 2 66 74 143 1092.0 1085.7 112 114
G. Harris 703 98 75 74 90 54 1467.0 1056.0 112 123
J. Hiller 545 43 35 87 76 125 1242.0 1012.0 134 135
T. Forster 614 39 24 54 65 127 1105.7 982.0 115 123
E. Sosa 601 3 2 59 51 83 918.0 908.7 112 113
Group C pitchers are the ones for whom we have no
data on separating Relief IP and Relief ERA+. Five of the eleven are
older pitchers, contemporaries of Wilhelm who spent most of their
careers as relievers. Sorted by total IP:
G GS GSd W L Sv IP RIP ERA+ RERA+
L. McDaniel 987 74 0 141 119 172 2139.3 n/a 109 n/a
S. Miller 704 93 0 105 103 154 1694.0 n/a 115 n/a
E. Face 848 27 0 104 95 193 1375.0 n/a 109 n/a
D. McMahon 874 2 0 90 68 153 1310.7 n/a 119 n/a
R. Perranoski 737 1 0 79 74 179 1174.7 n/a 123 n/a
R. Myers 728 12 0 44 63 347 884.7 n/a 122 n/a
R. Hernandez* 696 3 0 48 51 320 775.0 n/a 143 n/a
A. Hrabosky 545 1 0 64 35 97 722.0 n/a 121 n/a
R. Nen* 643 4 0 45 42 314 715.0 n/a 138 n/a
F. Linzy 516 2 0 62 57 111 816.7 n/a 122 n/a
D. Plesac 1006 14 0 63 70 156 1038.7 n/a 116 n/a
Here’s a quick comparison of the three groups:
G GS GSd W L Sv IP RIP ERA+ RERA+
A 23630 721 669 2250 2118 7203 35780.3 31127.3 124 129
B 9773 437 230 1131 1109 2119 17868.0 16516.3 117 121
C 8284 233 0 845 777 2196 12645.7 n/a 119 n/a
In general the trend seems to be that the more data
we have on these pitchers, the better that data reflects on them.
Note the improved RERA+ for the A’s and the B’s.
Back to Wilhelm. Poring over his stats, I became concerned about the
impact his one year as a regular starter (1959, 32 GP, 27 GS, 226 IP,
173 ERA+) had on his overall stats. So I decided to cobble together
an estimate of his Relief ERA+. Knowing his total number of starts
and innings as a starter, I calculated his number of innings pitched
per start (7.39), and then resolved his pitching lines into “starter”
and “relief” innings and earned runs allowed for each year he started
games:
G GS IP SIP RIP ER SER RER IP/GR
1958 39 10 131.0 73.9 57.1 34.0 19.2 14.8 1.97
1959 32 27 226.0 199.6 26.4 55.0 48.6 6.4 5.29
1960 41 11 147.0 81.3 65.7 54.0 29.9 24.1 2.19
1961 51 1 109.7 7.4 102.3 28.0 1.9 26.1 2.05
1963 55 3 136.3 22.2 114.2 40.0 6.5 33.5 2.20
384.3 106.0
Not a bad
estimate; his ERA as a “starter” here is 2.48 compared to his career
ERA of 2.52. But the one thing which troubled me about this was the
last column, the estimated innings pitched per relief appearance. For
1958, this comes out to over 5 innings pitched per appearance. I
decided to rerun the numbers using a higher estimate for that season
(8.0 IP/GS) and a lower estimate for all the others (6.75) based on
the fact that he pitched so many complete games (13) that year:
G GS IP SIP RIP ER SER RER IP/GR
1958 39 10 131.0 67.3 63.7 34.0 17.5 16.5 2.20
1959 32 27 226.0 216.0 10.0 55.0 52.6 2.4 2.00
1960 41 11 147.0 74.0 73.0 54.0 27.2 26.8 2.43
1961 51 1 109.7 6.7 102.9 28.0 1.7 26.3 2.06
1963 55 3 136.3 20.2 116.1 40.0 5.9 34.1 2.23
384.3 104.9
My extra
work eliminates only one more run, but it does get his innings
pitched per appearance down to a more uniform range. I then removed
the totals from his line and recalculated his ERA+ as a “reliever”:
145, compared to his overall 146. Not a huge difference in the grand
scheme of things, but enough to satisfy a few nagging doubts I had
about the impact of that 1959 season.
Using Wilhelm’s Relief ERA+ and Relief IP, we can now calculate a new
Hoyt Constant so that the man winds up with an even 100. In Rifkin’s
original study it was .4051 (100/246.8), here it becomes .4086
(100/244.73).
One more hurdle remains: how to avoid overestimating the number of
Hoyts for the Group B and Group C pitchers. I decided to dock them a
small amount for each missing start as a percentage of their total
appearances, settling on the following formula:
Hoyt = G - (1.5*(GSm)/G) * uH * Hc
G is Games, GSm is missing Games Started (the ones we DON’T have data
for), uH is Unadjusted Hoyts, and Hc is the Hoyt Constant. I tested
the factors of 1.0 to 3.0 in increments of 0.5, and 1.5 provided a
good equilibrium; anything more and you penalize the old swingmen too
much, anything less and you reward them too much for piling up
innings as a starter. For what it’s worth, I also ran the
calculations another way, using a very reasonable 6 IP/GS for the
missing Games Started; the results are almost identical.
Anyway, and without further ado, here is new Hoyt list:
IP RIP ERA+ RERA+ Hoyt
Wilhelm 2254.3 1870.0 146 145 100.0
Gossage 1809.3 1578.0 126 139 90.5
Smith 1289.3 1252.3 132 143 85.7
Tekulve 1436.3 1436.3 132 132 85.2
Franco 1150.3 1150.3 143 143 83.5
Quisenberry 1043.3 1043.3 146 146 82.4
Wetteland 765.0 683.0 148 165 82.3
Lyle 1390.3 1390.3 127 127 82.2
Fingers 1701.3 1656.7 119 122 82.0
Orosco 1261.3 1243.0 130 132 81.0
Henke 789.7 789.7 156 156 81.0
McDaniel 2139.3 n/a 109 n/a 80.9
Garber 1510.0 1505.7 117 117 79.7
Stanley 1707.0 1159.0 118 131 78.8
Sutter 1042.3 1042.3 136 136 78.3
Marshall 1386.7 1285.0 118 124 77.9
Jackson 1141.7 1108.0 127 131 77.7
Jones 1128.3 1112.3 130 130 77.4
McMahon 1310.7 n/a 119 n/a 76.9
McGraw 1514.7 1435.3 116 121 76.9
Burgmeier 1258.7 1248.7 119 120 76.2
Eckersley 3285.7 807.3 116 143 76.0
Harvey 387.0 387.0 165 165 75.9
Lavelle 1085.0 1077.7 126 128 75.8
Perranoski 1174.7 n/a 123 n/a 75.7
Hiller 1242.0 1012.0 134 135 75.5
Carroll 1353.3 1299.0 120 123 75.5
Hoffman 701.0 701.0 146 146 74.9
Hernandez 775.0 n/a 143 n/a 74.8
Montgomery 868.7 863.7 134 136 74.4
Reardon 1132.7 1132.7 121 121 74.1
Minton 1130.7 1089.3 112 121 73.2
Campbell 1229.3 1181.7 111 115 72.4
WHernandez 1044.7 994.3 118 124 72.3
Nen 715.0 n/a 138 138 71.3
DSmith 809.3 807.3 130 131 71.1
Andersen 995.3 990.7 120 121 71.0
Face 1375.0 n/a 109 n/a 70.9
Harris 1467.0 1056.0 112 123 69.7
Aguilera 1291.3 740.3 117 131 69.7
McDowell 1050.0 1039.7 114 115 69.6
Knowles 1092.0 1085.7 112 114 69.4
Forster 1105.7 982.0 115 123 69.0
Locker 879.0 879.0 122 122 69.0
Henneman 732.7 732.7 129 129 68.7
Plesac 1038.7 n/a 116 n/a 68.6
Bedrosian 1191.0 931.0 114 118 68.5
Howell 844.7 731.3 114 127 67.8
Myers 884.7 n/a 122 n/a 67.4
Miller 1694.0 n/a 115 n/a 67.3
Linzy 816.7 n/a 122 n/a 67.3
Sosa 918.0 908.7 112 113 65.8
Hrabosky 722.0 n/a 121 n/a 65.0
Worrell 693.7 693.7 122 122 65.0
Fisher 1538.7 1530.7 101 101 64.6
Even with
the slight deduction for five missing starts, Gossage clearly leaps
into second place in this study. Smith edges Tekulve for third place
and Franco’s alone in fifth. The next seven pitchers are separated by
a mere 1.5 Hoyts. Rollie Fingers is right in the middle of that pack.
In his original piece, Rifkin used Fingers’ score to define the
cutoff for Hall of Fame relievers. By this measure, Smith, Tekulve,
Franco, Quiz, Wetteland, and Lyle should get the nod, while Orosco,
Henke, McDaniel, Garber, Stanley, Sutter and a whole bunch of others
fall by the wayside.
Intuitively, this isn’t a bad conclusion, but it’s worth remembering
that Fingers’ exact position might be considered somewhat fluid.
We’re missing 29 of his starts, and additional data (say, Retrosheet
splits for 1970, when he started 19 games) could shift his position.
If I’d used a different deduction factor, say 2.0 instead of 1.5 per
missing start, it would have knocked him below Orosco and Henke at
80.7. A deduction factor of 1.0, on the other hand, would slide him
past Quiz, Wetteland, and ol’ Sparky at 83.3. Admittedly, one of the
reasons I settled on 1.5 was because he fit into the middle of this
grouping rather than significantly beyond or behind it.
It’s just as well that we don’t depend too much on Fingers’ exact
position, because as a barometer of what makes a Hall of Fame
reliever, it’s the definition of a slippery slope. But more
importantly, the question is, is the Hoyt Scale alone enough to tell
us who belongs in the Hall and who doesn’t? I don’t claim that it
does. It ignores postseason credentials, awards, and other factors
such as a pitcher’s performance as a starter. But it’s of great help
in pointing us in the right direction, of letting us compare apples
to apples and oranges to oranges.
Let’s remember what the Hoyt Scale does and doesn’t do. The Hoyt is a
measure of career value for relievers based entirely on runs and
innings and the pitcher’s performance relative to the league average.
It doesn’t take into account peak value. It dismisses any performance
a pitcher had as a starter. It ignores the relatively trivial aspect
of the reliever’s W-L record, and somewhat helpfully shades us from
being influenced by save totals. It’s worth noting how the all-time
save leaders rank:
S Hoyt rank
Smith 478 85.7 3
Franco 422 83.5 5
Eck 390 76.0 22
Reardon 367 74.1 31
Hoffman 352 74.9 28
Myers 347 67.4 35
Fingers 341 82.0 9
Wetteland 330 78.1 7
RHernandez 320 74.8 29
Aguilera 318 69.7 40
Nen 314 71.3 35
Henke 311 81.0 11
Gossage 310 90.5 2
Montgomery 304 74.4 30
Jones 303 77.4 18
Sutter 300 78.3 15
Most of the more recent closers
don’t fare so well on this list, given their low number of innings
pitched; Wetteland is the exception. On the contrary, the Hoyt
rewards yeomen who racked up quality innings amid little fanfare.
Tekulve, Orosco, McDaniel, Garber, Burgmeier, and Lavelle aren’t
exactly tip-of-the-tongue names when it comes to relief aces, but
those guys were very good for a long time. Not Hall of Famers,
perhaps, but no slouches either.
I should add somewhere in here that among the lower reaches of our
“Top 55 (Guys Whose Hoyts I Bothered to Calculate)” there are
probably pitchers I’ve omitted who would score just as well,
especially among active players and players whose splits I don’t
have. Recent free-agent signing Steve Reed rolls in at a respectable
71.5. Among older pitchers, Ron Reed is around 70. If anyone finds a
pitcher above 75 who’s not active and who’s missing from this list,
let me know and I’ll run the stats. In order to score a 75 on the
Hoyt Scale a pitcher would have to post numbers along the following
lines:
RERA+ RIP
110 1379
120 1192
130 1004
140 817
150 629
And if anyone can provide definitive sources
for relief innings pitched for any of the Group B or C pitchers,
please let me know as well. Somewhere I’m imagining a Top Ten or Top
Twenty list for Most Career Relief Innings exists, and I’d love to
get my hands on it.
Jay Jaffe
Posted: January 30, 2003 at 06:00 AM |
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1. Chris Dial Posted: January 30, 2003 at 02:28 AM (#608674)It lists: relief W-L record, relief IP and relief ERA, as well TB's own Adjusted Relief Runs and Relief Rank.
Hope this helps.
A lot of the pitchers who started fewers than 10 games show differences between ERA+ and RERA+ that are hard to believe when you consider that innings as starting pitchers are only 2-3% of total innings, Lee Smith in particular. You may want to check your numbers again.
Also, a slightly better way to calculate Wilhelm's innings as a starter for each year would be to credit him with 9 innings for each complete game then calculate innings per start for the remaining games started.
A more substantive comment: The Hoyt scale itself is pretty flawed in that if you pitch few innings and allow almost no runs you end up with a very high ERA+ (say 350) that puts you at the top of the scale regardless of the number of innings pitched. Similarly, you can pitch a ton of innings with a low ERA+ and score high on the scale. A better measure: ERA+ times innings pitched
Knowles 6.3 IP, 7 ER
Montgomery 5 IP, 5 ER
Sosa 9.3 IP, 8 ER
Lavelle 7.3 IP, 10 ER
Orosco, 18 IP, 13 ER
Mike Jackson, 33.7 IP, 25 ER
Dave Smith, 2 IP, 3 ER
These are enough to knock a few points off their ERAs and subsequently improve their ERA+.
As for Lee Smith, in retracing my steps it appears I transposed two digits:
Lee Smith, 37 IP, 19 ER leaves him with a 134 RERA+, not 143. This leaves him with 82.0 Hoyts -- enough to knock him down into a tie with Fingers, more or less (I don't have my spreadsheet on this computer so I don't know the rounding). Damn it!
Well, that's a drag. Sorry, folks -- score that as E-6 on the Futility Infielder.
Marc, as for your more substantive comment about the high ERA+ in a small number of innings -- your point is well taken, but some discretion is needed. We don't award batting titles to rookies who go 2 for 5 in a cup of coffee, and we don't say that a pitcher with a 1-0 record has the highest lifetime winning percentage.
The Hoyt Scale has a built-in mechanism to reward the number of innings pitched, but it doesn't really work for ridiculously high ERA+ in a small number of innings. Bryan Harvey is the only pitcher on the list with less than 683 innings, and I debated whether or not to include him. If we draw a line at 600 relief innings, he's not on there.
As for Mariano Rivera, I knew he'd score somewhere in the 90s, but I think he's still got a few years ahead of him and probably some decline as well. He may well make the Hall of Fame thanks in part to his excellent work in the postseason, but it's a bit early to start setting his plaque in bronze, so I don't think he belongs on the chart. He's got only 562 RIP, and if we draw a minimum inning line at 600 or 650, he's out. Other active pitchers were included on the list in part because their careers are closer to the end than the beginning (M. Jackson, J. Orosco) and/or because they place high on the all-time Saves list (T. Hoffman, R. Nen, R. Hernandez).
Off-topic, but I thought this was interesting, even if it took a couple of read-throughs to digest. So much so, that I set about to make a list. Is it possible that there's not a site with all of the past HOF voting results? Surely not. Someone wants to point to it, that would be just super. At any rate, after trawling around various sites until reaching the frustration point with Google, I've learned that the leading "also ran" has eventually made it from 96 (Niekro), 97 (Sutton), 98 (Perez), 99 (Fisk), 01 (Carter), and 02 (Carter). Rice was the "leader" in 2000.
On-topic, the Hoyt Scale work was really good. This, combined with the work by Tangotiger, helps a ton in ranking the short relievers. As Jay pointed out, though, it doesn't make it any easier to know where to draw the HOF cut-off line. So long as Quisenberry is on the "deserving" side, I'm OK with using Fingers.
I tried to find a list of relief innings pitched leaders online but did not find one. Now it's on Primer. I copied the list from TB7, updated it through 2002, and added a few more at the bottom from TB4, TB5, and TB6.
The top 57 pitchers in career Relief Innings Pitched through 2002:
1871.0 Hoyt Wilhelm
1694.0 Lindy McDaniel
1556.7 Rich Gossage
1500.3 Rollie Fingers
1452.7 Gene Garber
1436.7 Kent Tekulve
1390.3 Sparky Lyle
1301.3 Tug McGraw
1297.0 Don McMahon
1259.3 Mike Marshall
1252.3 Lee Smith
1248.7 Tom Burgmeier
1243.0 Jesse Orosco
1212.3 Roy Face
1204.7 Clay Carroll
1186.0 Eddie Fisher
1177.3 Bill Campbell
1170.7 Ron Perranoski
1157.0 Bob Stanley
1150.3 John Franco
1132.3 Jeff Reardon
1108.0 Mike Jackson
1097.3 Doug Jones
1094.7 Stu Miller
1087.3 Greg Minton
1077.7 Gary Lavelle
1052.3 Darold Knowles
1043.3 Paul Lindblad
1043.3 Dan Quisenberry
1042.0 Bruce Sutter
1040.7 Johnny Klippstein
1039.7 Roger McDowell
1016.3 Pedro Borbon
994.3 Willie Hernandez
992.7 Bob Miller
990.7 Larry Anderson
976.0 Dave LaRoche
970.0 Ted Abernathy
969.7 Dan Plesac
962.7 John Hiller
931.0 Steve Bedrosian
923.0 Greg Harris
917.0 Eric Plunk
905.0 Elias Sosa
901.3 Dale Murray
889.3 Doug Bair
888.0 Terry Forster
881.7 Craig Lefferts
879.0 Bob Locker
876.0 Dennis Lamp
874.3 Ron Reed
861.0 Jim Brewer
860.0 Aurelio Lopez
859.3 Dick Tidrow
856.3 Dave Giusti
854.0 Clem Labine
849.0 Grant Jackson
Note that some of these differ by a couple IP from the Relief pitcher register in TB3.
These are the non hall of famers with the highest one year voting support, whose time on the BBWAA ballot has expired:
Gil Hodges 63.4%, Tony Oliva 47.3%, Roger Maris 43.1%, Ron Santo 43.1%, Maury Wills 40.6%, Marty Marion 40.0%, Harvey Kuenn 39.3%, Hank Gowdy 35.7%, Phil Cavarretta 35.6%, Johnny Sain 34.0%, Allie Reynolds 33.6%, Luis Tiant 30.9%, Johnny Vander Meer 29.8%, Jim Kaat 29.6%, Joe Gordon 28.5%.
Steve Garvey (42.6%) will join this list after four more elections.
So I'm in something of a quandry regarding the Group B guys. Thanks to DanG's list, we now know their true relief innings, but we don't know their true RERA+. We have a partial RERA+ which is usually better than their overall ERA+, but we don't know that it's accurate. I'd be inclined to just plow ahead with that partial RERA+ and the true RIP for my update, but something in me wants to tinker with the formula a bit, basing the penalty on "missing innings" rather than "missing starts".
I'd have to look over my data again, but my lunch-hour hunch is that the true RERA+ won't be more than about 5-10 points off of what it already is, which translates to 2-4 Hoyts. I'm going to come up with a revised formula that takes that into account, and when I do, I'll run revised rankings.
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