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Hall of Merit — A Look at Baseball's All-Time Best Monday, July 07, 20031905 Ballot DiscussionI haven’t finished tabulating the 1904 results yet, we’ll get those up a little later, but there’s no reason we can’t get the 1905 discussion going. I’ll be at the SABR Convention this week, from Wednesday to Sunday, if you’re also there, stop by and say hello! That will obviously limit my input this week, but I’ll try to check in when I can. JoeD has the Imperial March Stuck in His Head
Posted: July 07, 2003 at 04:40 PM | 157 comment(s)
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***1905 (July 20)?elect 2
It will be interesting to see how Mike Tiernan is going to do since he's almost identical value career-wise with Sam Thompson. His peak was probably better, too. However, Thompson's gaudy, out-of-context batting stats may hold court. We'll see...
I see Fowler right now as Fred Pfeffer. Quality player who played a considerable amount of time, but just missing. I'm looking forward to discussing his worthiness.
But we have established levels of excellence built up - 20 wins, .400 OBA, and so on, that we just have to clear our minds of in looking at the statistics of another era. For 1880's pitchers, everything about their statistical lines - IP, W/L, etc. - are mind-blowing unless we try to adjust our frame of reference. We run into a similar problem in looking at individual runs scored from the 1890's. So-and-so scored 130 (!) in 5 different seasons - oh, wait, here's someone who scored 150 (!) - but he didn't lead the league, ... . We know we have to tone down the explanation points.
I did something simple-minded. I went through each league from 1876 to 1900 to get two estimates for a "number of distinction" for runs. The first estimate was the average runs scored per team (not per game), divided by 6. The other was the number scored by the player who finished 5th in the league in runs. Since both are easily found on bbref season summaries, this wasn't too hard to do by hand. Both numbers are usually about the same, so I just averaged them to get the "number of distinction." I then set this "number of distinction" equal to 100, and computed each player's runs scaled to this number. Calling this new number "R*", I tried it out on some modern performances to get a feel for how it works:
Woody English 1930 R 152 R* 105
How about from his own "mouth," Rusty? :-)
<i>Posted 9:42 a.m., July 11, 2002 (#15) - Bud Fowler
The italics were meant to be that way.
AdjCWS--McPhee 377 Glasscock 360
1) Ezra Sutton (1)
2) Bid McPhee (n/a): Greatest second baseman of the 19th century. If any AA guys should go in, he should be numero uno. Consistently near the top of the list for second baseman (and did it longer than any of them). Best major league second baseman for 1886.
3) Al Spalding (3)
4) Cal McVey (4)
5) Dickey Pearce (5):
6) Hardy Richardson (6)
7) Joe Start (7)
8) Charlie Bennett (8)
9) Billy Nash (9)
10) Levi Meyerle (10)
11) Jack Clement (11)
12) Ed Williamson (12)
13) Fred Dunlap (13)
14) Lip Pike (14)
15) Pud Galvin (15)
Of the other new guys, Mike Tiernan was slightly better than Sam Thompson but is hurt by his short career (like Big Sam). Ed McKean's defense really drags him down. Bill Lange and Jake Stenzel were terrific players, but they make Tiernan look like Cap Anson in terms of career length.
Bud Fowler is still under consideration.
Then to look at some semblence of peak/extended peak I took each player's excess above some threshold for each season and added those up. After some experimentation, I settled on a threshold of 75. I also threw in some weak league adjustments. Adding that up and sorting, I wound up with 5 names on an "A" list and 7 names on a "B" list. These lists do not represent overall value and must still be sorted for various things. They're here for a single purpose - so you can say "Wow, he sure scored a lot of runs!" and have the exclamation point mean something.
The A list:
Nineteenth century pitchers? I'd like to know who I am an enemy of.
:-)
> McPhee: AA 65, 65, 102, 78, 111, 95, 74, 78, NL 100, 87, 88, 70, 67, 73, 60, 34, 58, 46
What do other lines look like for players for whom scoring runs is not nec. their fort
For all the leagues except the 1876 NL (which is just weird), the mean for league leaders is about 118 with a standard deviation of about 8. Out of 36 leagues, the league leader has an R* between 112 and 120 on 20 occasions.
Here's a table, with "NDIS" being "number of distinction":
League NDIS Leader R R* (for leader)
I included McPhee and Tiernan because they're new this year. I can recall having heard that McPhee had been elected to the Hall of Fame, so I looked him up and my first reaction was, "Wow, he sure scored runs!"
I'm retracting the the "Wow" and the "!", but I'm not discouraging you from voting for McPhee. That's a good record of scoring runs. On my amount-by-which-it-exceeded-75 list, that didn't make the "A" list or the "B" list, but it's easily on the "C" list. It's roughly as good as Sam Thompson (at run scoring), and it's roughly as good as the 19th century portions of the careers of John McGraw, Hughie Jennings, and Herman Long. It's more impressive than Ezra Sutton's post-1876 run-scoring record. It's only a little below Hardy Richardson, Mike Griffin, and Ed Delahanty.
Obviously, there's more to McPhee's case than his ability to score runs. I would assume that anyone who wants to argue his case will talk about his defensive value.
I could give you other lines if you wanted - is there anyone you're particularly interested in?
Unless I am doing something wrong, I see Hardy Richardson as being slightly the better player compared to McPhee. Significantly higher peak value and only somewhat lower career value. I also grant that McPhee was the better defender, but second base defense was not all that critical in that era. But he did a lot of it in the inferior AA.
My prelim prelim ballot has both McPhee and Tiernan around 7th place. I am willing to listen to why I might have McPhee too low.
Are you taking into account defense?
Of course McVey should get some credit for undocumented parts of his career, but so do Barnes and Wright.
Of course McVey should get some credit for undocumented parts of his career, but so do Barnes and Wright.
1. Hoss. Always the bridesmaid, eh Hoss? I understand, though don't agree. when people say he isn't as good as Spalding or Galvin. But when people put him at the bottom or off the ballot? That I don't understand at all.
2. Galvin
1. Joe Start
Assuming that this year's ballots track last year's, McPhee could be challenging Richardson for the second slot -- which I think makes for one of the better head-to-head match-ups we've had so far.
I initially have McPhee third and Richardson seventh, but when I see Richardson's peak advantage (even on WARP, which better values McPhee's defense than than WS), I have my doubts.
McPhee leads Richardson in pennants added on both WS and WARP methodologies, but a WS that took league into account would likely have them reversed.
Can anyone make a good argument that Richardson's peak advantage and better league trumps McPhee's career value? I'd certainly be willing to change my ballot if I could be convinced -- they do seem very close.
As a FOHR, I'll take it from the opposite tact. Besides having a much shorter career, he had 20% of his value in left field. It's a testament to his peak value that he places as high as he does. He belongs, but in a few more years.
1. Al Spalding (1)
Are you taking into account defense?
Now that I look at both of them closer, Tiernan was just a little bit better on defense. He was slightly more durable (packed in less seasons helps his peak numbers)and a much better baserunner. All of that helps to narrow the differences.
I don't see how the 126 runs attributed to Ross Barnes for 1876 can possibly be correct. That number fails every test of reasonableness I can imagine.
That team was scoring over 9 runs a game. How can a team possibly score 9 runs a game? By having lots of big innings, huge innings. What happens in a big inning? Everyone scores, all the way around the lineup. If such a team could keep a stable lineup, the runs scored distribution should be flat - flatter than the true offensive skills. That's almost true for the 1876 Chicago team. If we can call Addy + Bielaski one player, they had a very stable lineup. Of the 8 players other than Barnes the runs scored vary only a little, from a low of 54 (Spalding) to a high of 70 (Peters). Addy/Bielaski scored 95% of the runs Anson did even though they reached base only 62% as many times. All of that is normal. Having one guy with nearly twice as many runs as anyone else is not normal, even if he is the best hitter on the team. Barnes reached base 50 more times than White or Hines - how can that be 60 more runs? Even extra base hits don't matter that much - if an inning goes on long enough, everyone who gets on scores.
Can anyone explain this? If we're suspicious of this, are there other totals from other teams and leagues that could earn the same suspicion?
I don't think these guys were the best players on their teams, or would have regularly made the all-star team. They aren't MVP quality. They weren't the best in their leagues at their positions. They did not have extraordinarily long careers. Contemporaries did not marvel at their abilities. Are they on the ballot primarily because they are fresh faces. There seems to be an element of that in our voting.
I respect their numbers and their quality of play, but I can't see them as HOMers. If they hold their current positions, they may be elected, since we've got some lean years coming up.
I have Tiernan as the best major league rightfielder for 1888 (close in '91) and the best major league centerfielder for 1890 (which is another plus for his competition with Thompson). I don't have Griffin as the best any one year.
I agree that they don't belong, except maybe at the very bottom.
This number is not out of line, I think, with other runs per _documented_ time reached base data for players with exceptional on-base and baserunning skills in the nineteenth-century game. I don't think scoring 9 runs a game means _big_ innings where everybody scores -- it could mean scoring in pretty much every inning. Remember, there were about 7 errors per team per game, so teams are going to have baserunners more regularly, and those runners move around the bases much more freely. Few DP, few CS remove runners once they reach base. Barnes, batting (I guess) leadoff for a great team, scored a number of runs equal to about 79% of his documented times on base. Because of reaching base on errors, he would have probably another 10-20 times on base not accounted for.
Harry Stovey, another great baserunner, hitting leadoff for a _terrible_ team a few years later, scored a number of runs equal to 72% of his documented times on base. Barnes' 1876 runs scored per documented time on base is quite in line with his own 1873 rate as well. His R* is stratospheric because he every factor is going his way: the best player in the league in reaching base (by far), who is also a great baserunner, who is batting leadoff for the most potent lineup in the league.
This case doesn't lead me to doubt the statistics, but it reinforces the case for the value of baserunning. It's only documented indirectly, but sometimes its impact shows up dramatically.
In 1873, Barnes scored 17% of the runs of a 12 R/G team, leading the team by 125 to 99. In 1876, Barnes scored 20% of the runs of a 9 R/G team, leading the team by 126 to 70. 1874 was the only other year Barnes led the team, and then only by a little. When Stovey scored 23% of his team's runs in 1882, the team was dead last in the league with 4.5 R/G, and he led the team by 90 to 50 (the second best hitter being the pitcher.) I'm not sure how the "lots of little innings" possibility works. If that was a nibble nearly every inning, then the scoring innings would be starting in all different parts of the batting order. If it was a 2-3 run pop every time Barnes came up, then shouldn't the people near him in the order have more R and RBI than the others? That isn't what happened on the Barnes teams. I does look more like that for the 1882 Worcester team - it looks like they needed Stovey to have a scoring inning.
In 1886, King Kelly (no slouch as a baserunner himself) scored 17.2% of the runs of a 7.1 R/G team, while his teammate, Gore, scored 16.9% of the runs.
Who would have more incentive to be aggressive on the basepaths - Barnes, who was surrounded by great hitters, or Stovey, who knew he was what there was? On the other hand, that Worcester team also had terrible pitching/defense, so they were usually behind. The Boston and Chicago teams were usually ahead.
Maybe the 1876 numbers are real. I'm still uneasy about them.
Since no one answered a question I asked elsewhere, I assume there is no data on reaching base on errors at the individual batter level.
Then, just a nit: McVey's OPS+ was 134 in his final year (at age 29), yes, below his career, but "fading"? McVey was better than that 7 times in 9 tries, but it is still 7 points better than Start's vaunted NL career.
Finally the post above gives McVey no credit for being recruited by and playing for the greatest team in the history of the game to that point, the Red Stockings. Same pattern--Start was a leading player through most of the decade, McVey had arguably captured a brighter spotlight in the end. All in all, McVey had the vastly higher peak (MVP vs. all-star). How many more seasons at somewhere between above average and all-star makes up for that?
McVey documented 9 years ('71-'79) ~2550 PA OPS+ ~150 played all 9 positions mostly C-1B-RF-3B
Meyerle doc. 7 years ('71-'77) ~1450 PA OPS+ ~160 mostly 3B, some 2B and others
Pike doc. 8 years ('71-'78) ~2000 PA OPS+ ~155 mostly CF, some 2B
FR has them all marginally below average defensively.
Partially documented (ie. lacking normal statistical doc): Meyerle almost nothing. Pike 5 years as an elite middle infielder. McVey 2 years at (help me? 3B? anybody?) with Cincinnati Red Stockings and "several" years (my word) "in the west" after leaving the NL's "new serfdom arrangement" (my words) in '79 (he was said to have resented the league's new management arrangements--not my words).
So Pike seems to have played elite ball for 13 years, McVey for 11 and Meyerle for only about 7-8. But McVey's teams always seemed to be great teams and in no small part because of his contributions, so all in all the consensus seems clearly to be McVey, Pike, Meyerle with Pike closer to McVey than to Meyerle.
For pure peak, however, there is Meyerle '71 and Pike '75 at >200 OPS+ but McVey also had a 190. Meyerle had probably the strongest claim of anybody to challenging Barnes as the best hitter in the NA at any given time. But those 1-2-3 seasons (Meyerle's peak) aside (or even including those) I still think McVey left a huge imprint on baseball from '69 to '79 while Pike and Meyerle's imprint was somewhat more transitory.
1. Ezra Sutton (1)--Ahead of McPhee and Richardson on both career and peak value.
2. Bid McPhee (-)--I don?t think it?s the novelty, I had McPhee ahead of Richardson on my 1906 ballot. Defense and career value trumps the AA discount, but it?s very close among all my top 3.
3. Hardy Richardson (3)--Ahead of Start on defense and maybe peak.
4. Joe Start (4)--Morre career value than McVey. But a lower (documented) peak.
5. Cal McVey (5)--I like the Ross Barnes comparison a lot.
6. Harry Stovey (6)--I think some people have been applying an awfully harsh AA discount to him. He was a tremendous hitter and looks great in WS pennants added and in the baserunning info that?s been posted.
7. Lip Pike (8)--Not as good in the NA as McVey, but better before. Some credit for McVey's post-NL career moves him ahead.
8. Charley Radbourn (9)--A virtual tie with Galvin, but I don?t think either should be HOMers for awhile.
9. Pud Galvin (10)--Could still move him up.
10. Charlie Bennett (11)--Great defense at catcher keeps him in the middle of the Outfielder/Pitcher Glut.
11. Al Spalding (14)--Here for his hitting and the adulation of his peers. This low because of the defense behind him, the hitters on his team compared to the competition and the amount of credit I give pitching vs. fielding in the pre-93 era. Though, I may be underrating him too much still.
12. Pete Browning (12)--AA discount brings him down to Thompson and Tiernan and Griffin?s level. Browning still has the higher peak though.
13. Mike Tiernan (-)--I don?t think 3 players could be any more equal than Thompson and Tiernan and Griffin. Tiernan has a slight peak advantage over Thompson.
14. Sam Thompson (13)--Lower peak than Tiernan, higher peak than Griffin.
15. Mike Griffin (-)--Defense brings his (relatively) low peak onto the ballot. Just edges Caruthers off the ballot. Still considering Bud Fowler as well. . .
This is a tough ballot. It was noted that we've had many different players at the top of the ballot -- I can see reasonable points of view for putting any of the top 9 on my ballot in the number 1 slot. I'm still looking for good arguments on those 9, and they could shift around a bit yet.
1. Pud Galvin (2). With Glasscock in, Galvin rises to the top. Most career value of any player on the ballot, even without credit for 76-78, and his peak is also quite strong. With 76-78 included in his career, we get a pitcher with 18 years of major-league calibre pitching. No pitcher prior to Cy Young comes close to that kind of career, and no position player currently on ballot has a more valuable career.
I hesitated a lot before joining in, because a lot of the voters seem to have an agenda - read: get on a guy's bandwagon and stay on it whether it turns out right (Barnes) or not (Start). I also felt some of the discussions were useless or futile: Williamson VS Sutton for two and a half weeks: for me, it comes down to the following question: does Ken Reitz belong in the Hall of Fame (or Merit)? Well...
Also, some guys are still carrying Meyerles and Pearces on their ballots: in the eyes of outsiders, that takes a lot of credit out of the HoM, IMHO.
Anyway, I finally decided to give it a shot; hope it'll be worth it.
I'll provide you with my prelim as soon as it's ready
P.S. If I need to registrate, please let me know how it can be done. Otherwise, I've been contributing to the Primer for a long time and I'm coming back for more. I guess I'm well known around here, even if my favorite adversaries of 6 months ago (Where are you, Jim Rice, Trevise and Steve Treder??) seem to have disappeared!
Gee, I wonder who you could be referring, too? :-)
David, why are Pearce and Meyerle off limits to you for the Hall? They were, unquestionably, great players for their times. Shouldn't all eras be represented?
Williamson VS Sutton for two and a half weeks: for me, it comes down to the following question: does Ken Reitz belong in the Hall of Fame (or Merit)? Well...
I guess you're talking timeline adjustments here (since Williamson and Sutton were no where near Reitz as third basemen for their era).
Why are people saying so matter-of-factly that Tiernan is better than Thompson defensively? Is it in the Defensive WS? Is it based on reputation alone?
For me, it is the defensive win shares primarily. I trust their evaluation of 19th-century defense more than WARP3's, and in this case their corroboration by contemporary reputation only solidifies my trust in them. Traditional fielding measures aren't, on their face, reliable. WS shows Tiernan as slightly more valuable defensively than Thompson, and I see that as a reasonable interpretation of the data.
Tiernan's _not_ much better than Thompson -- indeed he's no better than average for RF, but when I have to put two players who have _very_ similar careers in rank order, a small difference may be decisive. I'm not going to rank Thompson higher based on WARP3's argument that he's a superior defensive player, any more than I'm going to take its evaluation of Bid McPhee as the top player currently eligible at face value.
>Now I take that all with more than a few
I mention it every week in my notes on Long Levi. :-) He played four years before the NA (1867-1870). By 1870, he was a definite star with the Chicago White Stockings (he was paid the rather large amount of $1500) and considered one of the best hitters already (which is impressive considering he was at third). Eleven years at a defensive position is not bad (though it keeps at #10 on my ballot). Eleven years at first base or in the outfield would be a different story. BTW, there would be no way that he would be on my ballot without those pre-NA years.
I guess I need to flesh out his pre-NA work more in my notes for now on (he also did some pitching and catching during that time). I wish someone had called me on this a long time ago so maybe he would be receiving more than six points.
My only concern about the HOM discussions right now is that I'm seeing increasing reliance on WARP3 (probably because it is readily available on the Web), even though most of us have no idea how it is calculated (particularly the WARP2 timeline adjustment). I would be more comfortable seeing reliance on WARP1 adjusted for length of season (i.e. skipping the WARP2 step). WARP2 just seems like one man's crack at a timeline adjustment without revealing methodology, and I'm not sure how much stock we should be putting in that.
He was considered to have one of the best arms of his time during the 1870s. During a contest in Great Britain, he placed second in a throwing contest when he threw a ball 366 feet.
The Sporting Life claimed he was terrific on foul flies. The New York Clipper also noted his accurate and swift arm while also ranking him as one of the best baserunners for the '70s.
Except Pearce and Meyerle were stars of the first magnitude for their time, while McCarthy was not. Other than that, they were comparable. :-)
>I don't see how I can credit the positive stuff and not weigh the negative.
It seems to me that the "positive stuff" is in regards to his play on the field. The negative has to do with his character. Not just pos vs. neg, but different categories of data.
>his fielding numbers were so-so for
Ignoring them is comparable to not electing Aristotle or Eratosthenes for a science hall of fame. While their knowledge within their particular fields would be tiny compared to the average scientist today, considering their time and place, they were indeed extraordinary individuals who are mentioned in the same breath as Newton, Einstein or Hawking as alltime greats.
As Curly would say - soytantly! :-) I'll post it sometime today. I should mention that my info is from the SABR book </i>Nineteenth Century Stars</i> (which everybody should here should own). You can pick it up for ten dollars at Amazon.
As for missing my statement, I probably have missed a few myself.
Sounds like you lucked out. The writing is not always great, but it's still worth the price for the info and photos.
I've alos been reading David Nemec's book on 19th-Century Baseball (which I found at a used bookstore)
I don't have that one. I have Seymour and Voight's books on the subject, but they are best read for the broad overview of baseball they give (as Nemec's does) than for biographical sketches of any particular player of that time.
Andrew, thanks for putting it all in perspective. This is exactly right.
>I'm operating on the assumption that the first-tier stars of the 1865-1879 period (Barnes, Wright, White,
That said I still credit Start, Pearce, Pike et al for their achievments before 1871. Its tough to figure out how much credit. In the extreme case if we recognize the reputations of the players before 1871 I find Creighton nearly as compelling as Start, Pearce, Pike et al.
My only concern about the HOM discussions right now is that I'm seeing increasing reliance on WARP3 (probably because it is readily available on the Web), even though most of us have no idea how it is calculated (particularly the WARP2 timeline adjustment). I would be more comfortable seeing reliance on WARP1 adjusted for length of season (i.e. skipping the WARP2 step). WARP2 just seems like one man's crack at a timeline adjustment without revealing methodology, and I'm not sure how much stock we should be putting in that.
That said I still credit Start, Pearce, Pike et al for their achievments before 1871. Its tough to figure out how much credit. In the extreme case if we recognize the reputations of the players before 1871 I find Creighton nearly as compelling as Start, Pearce, Pike et al.
Doesn't it work the opposite way? How would modern players perform if they played during that time period? How many batters could execute the fair/foul bunt? How would Martinez fair under the pitching rules of the time? How about fielding without a glove? Why is our game more worthy than theirs?
That said I still credit Start, Pearce, Pike et al for their achievments before 1871. Its tough to figure out how much credit. In the extreme case if we recognize the reputations of the players before 1871 I find Creighton nearly as compelling as Start, Pearce, Pike et al.
The only problem I have with him is the shortness of his career. I think the Pioneer section would be more appopriate for him.
BTW, has anyone ever heard of someone dying of the same injury as Creighton (rupturing himself while swinging his bat)?
>Doesn't it work the opposite way? How would modern players perform if they played during that time period?
Don't get me wrong, I'd rather have the game of today than of back then (though I do like the recreations that I have seen played). But there is no definite version of baseball. It's what we define it at the time.
If you go through the 1870's, the pennant-winning teams usually had 3 to 5 of players that have already been elected to the HoM or are still under serious consideration - and so do quite a few of the teams that finished 2nd and 3rd, like 1871 Boston, 1875 Athletics, 1878 Cincinnati, 1879 Chicago, 1881 Providence, 1881 Buffalo. In 1881, Providence used both Radbourn and Ward as pitchers, and Buffalo had Galvin - and still, every team in the league allowed close to the same 5 runs per game as every other team.
I don't think I'm following your point. Barnes and Spalding were injured (Spalding was playing first instead of pitching), while Anson had a fine season. Hines wasn't anything special, but he sure was the following couple of years. How is this any different from today?
Isn't this more a question of parity (rather than quality of play)?
It's like the MVP argument of 1995. Albert Belle was deemed unworthy because Cleveland woulda won without him. Say what? The '56 Yankees might have won without Mantle. The '27 Yankees might have won without Ruth. So what? These teams from the 19th century look unbeatable in hindsight but the same team (almost) that won in '75 lost in '77. Why? Becuase some guy who has been argued to have been expendable wasn't there. Hindsight is not 20-20.
Career OBP Leaders - Min 3000 AB's (+ = HOF)
Rank Player (age) On-base % Bats
I struggle with those same problems as you and everybody else here does. I think there are legitimate differences of opinion in that regard.
Joyce has a great peak argument for him. If you are inclined in that direction, then he's a worthy. However, I need a little more career to go with that.
I prefer Billy Nash. While not nearly as good as Joyce offensively (he was an above average hitter at his position though), he was more durable and a fantastic defensive player.
And, yes, I know about such teams as the late-50's Braves or mid-90's Mariners.
On the pitchers, I think I would rather be looking at RA and RA+ instead of ERA and ERA+. I always appreciated that in the first Historical Abstract, James published RA and RA/league (the same information as RA+) for a handful of pitchers.
You, too? :-)
Here is short summary of my findings on Thompson and Tiernan
Both players played around the same time so I don?t think a great deal of adjustment is required
I still think Thompson's defense is suspect via BP and goes against contemporary evidence, though we all know this is not infallible.
If we were running a small Hall, once we had Ruth, Gehrig, Aaron, Mathews, and Spahn we'd be done with those teams. But we're not running a small Hall, so what about Meusel? Pennock? Shawkey? Adcock? Torre? We'll have to argue about many of the people you named, just as we're now arguing about McVey and Spalding.
1871 Boston: McVey, Barnes, G.Wright, Spalding. 2nd place, 2 games out.
Thanks for presenting on Thompson v. Tiernan. I think Thompson's advantages in black & grey ink have a lot to do with team context, and other than that, they are very close. Thompson's hitting record is a bit more impressive than I had been giving him credit for, though.
Re Thompson as best position player in 1887 -- probably true, but even here he's a close match for Tiernan, who has a very good case for being the best position player in 1891; he was pretty definitely the best in the NL. Brouthers had a big year in the AA, but the quality of competition in that league's final year is questionable. Tiernan's 1890 was also one of the top two NL seasons that year (Jack Glasscock's might have been better), but there were probably a few better players in the PL that year.
In other words, the line between immortality or greatness on the one hand, and failure (in sports, that means second place) on the other is a very fine line. It is only at a distance that it looks inevitable.
So 1) the guys who finished second were damn good, better than their reputations, but 2) the guys who finished first can't always live up to our belief that they should have dominated, kicked the holy hell out of people or else, by god, they're overrated. No, they hustled, they worked, they may not really have been more talented, they just hustled and worked some more and they won. That's what made them great. Don't denigrate them just because they skinned by. That's the glory of it.
The summary is that if you expand Ewing's catching time to match Bennett's and then compare the defensive stats, you get 483 Assists and 3 DP's in Ewing's favor, while Bennett had 106 less errors, 190 less passed balls, and made 605 more non-K putouts, in about 950 games caught.
I think those stats help show why BP rates Bennett defensively ahead of Ewing. I think it also shows why Win Shares rates Ewing ahead of Bennett. This is due to it's high emphasis on base-running kills (Ewing's strength) and low emphasis on "sure-handedness" (Bennett's strength). Bill James' lens is focused on the modern game, and there's a much lower rate of Errors, Passed Balls, and non-K Putouts nowadays, due to modern gloves, modern armor that repositioned the catcher into a crouch directly behind the plate, plus the rule changes in the mid 1890's that redefined caught-foul-tips as strikes instead of outs.
KJOk presented two stats -- career OBP and career OPS. Joyce does look good in these respects, and for a few years he was an outstanding player, but there are problems with relying too much on either one.
Joyce's career OBP is high in part because he had a short career contained almost entirely within the highest OBP era in baseball history -- 2 of the 5 players ahead of him are his contemporaries, who also had the heart of their career in the 1890s. Despite his high career mark, Joyce never finished higher than 4th in the league in OBP.
Joyce's OPS+ doesn't take into account his fragility: in his short career he only played full seasons a few times. When he played, he was great, but he just didn't play enough. His unadjusted WS for 1894 - 1898 (period during which KJOK suggested he might have been the best position player in baseball):
18, 16, 29, 18, 25
And BTW: Pete Browning (OPS+ 164), not outstanding?
I agree Joyce doesn't belong, but being the best third baseman for that five year period is nothing to sneeze at. Win Shares doesn't have a positional adjustment, so comparing Joyce to all those players from 1894-1898 isn't really fair. He was a lot better than some of those players.
Sure it does, built into the fielding side. It's why catchers get 20% of the fielding win shares and 1b-men only get 6%, on average. I'm sure James calls it something else, but it's a "positional adjustment"; presumably, it's based on long-term offensive averages instead of re-calculating them every season. To put another one on the hitting side would be redundant.
Joyce is one of about a dozen players in MLB history with over 5000 defensive innings at one position that also earned an F grade from Win Shares for their (lack of) fielding. Anybody know what his contemporaries thought about his fielding?
I think of Hardy Richardson as Rod Carew except--as a 2B he was almost surely a better fielder, and as a non-2B (comparing HR's years as an OF to Carew's years as a 1B) he (HR) was perhaps a better hitter, or at least one with a bit more power.
Richardson OPS+ at 2B (and 3B) ~131
Re Bill Joyce and positional adjustments in WS: I wasn't meaning to sneeze at Joyce for being the top third basemen in the league over a five year period. That's significant, but it's not enough to put him into serious consideration for the HoM, when those five years are virtually his whole career, and the best players in the league were clustered at other positions -- several shortstops better than Joyce.
I think that certain positional adjustments to WS when rating players at different positions against one another is justified in the context of career value. For a given season, the weight WS gives to each defensive position does a pretty good job of reflecting accurately the contribution of each player to the team -- SS get considerably more defensive WS than RF. So I think that in comparing players over five seasons when they were all active together and at or near their peaks (as I did in looking at Joyce re his contemporaries), little positional adjustment is necessary, as long as the measure of value includes an accurate assessment of defensive value. Catchers are the only players whose positional demands limit their playing time within the context of a season.
However, the players at the easier defensive positions are more likely to remain productive into their late thirties than those who play more demanding positions, so players at the easier positions tend to pick up a bit more career value. A career positional adjustment thus properly takes into account the limits that the physical demands of certain defensive positions place on the careers of those who play the positions. The career value standards for catchers, third basemen, shortstops, center fielders, and second basemen should a bit lower than for first basemen and corner outfielders, but the peak value standards (except for catchers) should not, as long as the measures that we use include defensive value. That's how I see it, anyway.
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