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Hall of Merit — A Look at Baseball's All-Time Best Tuesday, September 30, 20031910 Results - Galvin ElectedHe’s finally made the long climb up the ballot and into the Hall of Merit . . . congratulations to Pud Galvin! He finished 12th in 1898, and dropped to 16th in 1899 (behind 7 candidates that are still on the ballot). He made a big run from 1903 through 1905 (it wasn’t a sympathy rise, after his death in 1902, but that sure would make a good story!), he’s bounced around a little near the top of the ballot for the past few elections, and he’s now a HoMer. Joe Start finished as the first runner-up for the 3rd consecutive year, and actually finished with more first place votes than Galvin (12-9), but was left off five ballots entirely (Galvin was left off one) and finished 37 points short. Bid McPhee, Cal McVey, Charlie Bennett and Harry Stovey were next in line for 2nd straight year. The final four from the top 10 were closely bunched, and shuffled a little. Hugh Duffy and Sam Thompson jumped over Jimmy Ryan and Frank Grant, but the four were separated by just 18.5 points. Duke Farrell was the only new eligible to be named on a ballot, he finished 29th. RK LY Player Pts Ballots 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 1 3 Pud Galvin 780 43.0 9 12 10 1 2 3 1 1 1 3 2 2 Joe Start 743 39.0 12 9 4 4 5 2 1 1 1 3 4 Bid McPhee 714 42.0 9 2 11 3 2 4 4 1 1 1 2 1 1 4 5 Cal McVey 639.5 40.0 5 6 6 8 2 1 1 1 2 1 2 1 2.5 1.5 5 6 Charlie Bennett 599 37.0 3 7 3 4 6 4 1 4 1 3 1 6 7 Harry Stovey 598 41.0 3 2 8 4 4 5 5 3 1 1 1 1 1 2 7 10 Hugh Duffy 446.5 35.0 2 2 2 3 1 2 7 3 2 4 4 1.5 1.5 8 11 Sam Thompson 443 38.0 1 1 2 3 3 2 5 3 1 2 5 1 4 5 9 8 Jimmy Ryan 436 36.0 2 3 5.3 5.3 1.3 4 3 1 5 4 2 10 9 Frank Grant 428 34.0 1 2 5 1 6 5 1 3 2 2 2 3 1 11 12 George Van Haltren 357 34.5 1 3 6 1 1 2 3 5 3 8 1.5 12 13 Hughie Jennings 293 28.5 1 1 1 1 1 3 5 4 3 4 4.5 13 14 Lip Pike 282 24.0 1 2 2 3.3 2.3 0.3 1 4 1 1 2 4 14 15 Cupid Childs 254 24.0 2 1 2 5 1 4 3 2 2 2 15 18 Pete Browning 201.5 18.0 1 2 3 4 3 1 2 0.5 1.5 16 17 Mike Tiernan 183 18.0 1 3 2 1 3 3 3 1 1 17 16 Jim McCormick 176 15.0 1 2 2 1 3 2 1 1 1 1 18 20 Dickey Pearce 156 13.0 2 1 1 2 3 2 1 1 19 19 Bob Caruthers 154 11.0 1 1 2 1 1 2 1 2 20 21 Mike Griffin 129.5 13.0 1 1 1 1 3 2.5 1.5 2 21 23 Ed Williamson 90 11.0 1 3 2 5 22 26 Mickey Welch* 86 9.0 1 1 1 2 2 2 23 22 John McGraw 86 9.0 1 1 3 1 1 2 24 25 Tony Mullane+ 70 7.0 1 1 1 2 2 25 24 Jim Whitney 70 5.0 1 1 1 1 1 26 27 Charley Jones 49 6.0 1 1 1 2 1 27 30 Herman Long 44 5.0 3 1 1 28 29 Harry Wright 39 3.0 0.3 1.3 0.3 1 29 n/e Duke Farrell 38 4.0 1 1 1 1 30 28 Jack Clements 31 3.0 1 1 1 31 32 Tip O'Neill 27 3.0 1 1 1 32 31 Fred Dunlap 25 2.0 1 1 33 34 Billy Nash 20 2.0 1 1 34 33 Chief Zimmer 18 2.0 1 1 35 35 Tom York 14 1.0 1 36T 36 Bill Hutchison 11 1.0 1 36T 37 Tommy Bond 11 1.0 1 38 39 Levi Meyerle 8 1.0 1 39 40 Silver King 6 1.0 1 *won tiebreaker, ahead on individual ballots 9-8. +won tiebreaker, ahead on individual ballots 6-5. Dropped Out: Bud Fowler (38). JoeD has the Imperial March Stuck in His Head
Posted: September 30, 2003 at 10:09 PM | 32 comment(s)
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1. John (You Can Call Me Grandma) Murphy Posted: October 01, 2003 at 12:15 AM (#518065)I was surprised that he moved ahead of Start so strongly, however. Nothing new was added to the discussion about him. Of course, having Start outside of the top forty players of the 19th century on five ballots (?) didn't hurt Pud's cause. Old Reliable will have to wait a few more seasons.
It seems that almost as big was McPhee's move from 38 to 42 ballots and from a 37 to a 75 vote margin over McVey and from a 64 to a 29 vote deficit vs. Start. All in all a big week for the EO'70sB.
Joe Start is the antithesis of that -- "Old Reliable," 27-year career, played until it was clear that he just couldn't anymore.
Marc has presented a plausible statistical analysis that indicates that Start and McVey similarly lost ground in comparison to Galvin and McPhee. Maybe they lost ground for entirely different reasons -- enemies of adventurous slackers are dropping McVey on their ballots while enemies of guys who stick around too long are dropping Start on their ballots. The evidence of the voting doesn't completely rule that out. But if you want us to laugh off Marc's analysis, you'll need to find an EOGWSATL to back you up. In the meanwhile, I think we can expect some discussion of the reasons for an against time-lining during the next couple of elections . . .
Unfortunately for Start, he won't move up to #1 this week because Kid Nichols has popped up.
He will get in eventually. (I think McVey will as well, though I am less certain)
Me, too. In fact, my first post on the 1910 ballot thread explained why I was going to vote for Galvin over Start. The key point that Marc is making, and I think he is right, is the change in the relative position of Start and Galvin took place in bottom-of-the-ballot voting, not at the top.
It aint a novel when it explains my ballot. (BTW, I am EOGWQTSCOFAIILOW post). Start is prominently placed on my ballot (middle, but above my personal HoM line), while McVey, Spalding barely got mentions. McVey made my 1910 ballot at #15 for the first time, but wont make my 1911. It has nothing to do with the 1870s, and all to do with his short career. Give me 5 more years, and he would be in. Same for Spalding (except he made it despite me).
I think there are more primarily career value voters than there are extreme timeline voters.
That doesnt explain Start though.
I would guess that there are just enough who heavily timeline the '60s and/or '70s or who don't consider qualitative data that, together, give Start a tough row to hoe. It will be interesting to see how the Negro Leaguers do since that will have to include some qualitative info. My guess is they'll get a little more of a pass than Joe does.
I think at some future time it would be interesting to do a survey of this group along the lines of: Agree strongly, agree, neutral, disagree, disagree strongly: And then follow up with a whole variety of assertions about the utility and validity of various kinds of data and the levels of competition (pre-'71, NA, AA, Negro Leagues, etc.), and do a statistical profile of the various beliefs and attitudes and assumptions and methodologies, etc. etc. that are at work here. I think there might even be a dissertation in that.
And BTW, if there is any redeeming value to the HoM effort, I have to believe it is in the establishment here of "timeline" as a verb ;-)
Percent of possible points in their year elected
99.7 Brouthers-1
98.4 Delahanty-1
94.4 White-1
94.0 Hines-1
94.0 O'Rourke-1
93.2 Connor-1
90.0 Clarkson-1
89.1 Hamilton-1
85.2 Anson-1
84.0 Kelly-1
82.4 Glasscock-4
79.5 Gore-1
78.2 Keefe-3
76.2 Wright-4
75.6 Sutton-11
74.7 Ewing-1
73.9 Galvin-13
73.5 Ward-1
73.4 Spalding-9
71.7 Radbourn-8
69.8 Rusie-1
68.4 Barnes-1
67.1 Richardson-8
In the 1910 election, Start (70.4%) and McPhee (67.6%) topped Richardson's election support.
Percent of all points in their year of election
11.86 Delahanty-1
11.79 Brouthers-1
11.11 O'Rourke-1
11.02 Connor-1
10.75 Hamilton-1
10.74 White-1
10.69 Hines-1
10.64 Clarkson-1
10.08 Anson-1
9.93 Kelly-1
9.74 Glasscock-4
9.25 Keefe-3
9.12 Sutton-11
9.04 Gore-1
9.01 Wright-4
8.91 Galvin-13
8.86 Spalding-9
8.83 Ewing-1
8.68 Ward-1
8.48 Radbourn-8
8.25 Rusie-1
7.93 Richardson-8
7.78 Barnes-1
Again, in 1910 Start (8.49%) and McPhee (8.15%) received more support than some HoMers did.
Johnny Lush matches up against Joe Lake as the Browns take on the Cardinals in this year's all-St. Louis HOM game.
http://web.archive.org/web/20031207172333/http://www.whatifsports.com/mlb/boxscore.asp?GameID=10845455&ad=1
Those are some ugly, ugly teams.
For those judging such things, Radbourn and Richardson clearly head the 'timing is everything' team. With slightly different selection numbers by year, coulda been a lot tougher for either to ever get in. Spalding, Sutton, and Galvin are the others in somewhat the same boat.
That said, ANY format leaves a few 'barely made its.' Doesn't make them crappy players or anything, and we're still doing quite well so far....
But I'm not so sure it's a grave problem, either. It's worth noting, but not worth losing any sleep over. I think we're fine overall...
I think our balloting situation right now is actually quite stable -- witness the fact that we are looking ahead to future elections rather than talking about the one upcoming. This is due to the excellence of the voting system and the commitment of the voters to research and debate. However, I think it's worth looking at the basis of that stability to see its limits.
We have a solid majority judgment among the voters about who belongs in the top half of the ballot. That produces a well-defined group of candidates for the top third of the ballot -- (Galvin), Start, McVey, McPhee, Bennett, Stovey -- who rank substantially ahead of the rest. Outside of the voters sustaining this majority judgment, there are respected dissenters on each of these candidates who play an important role in determining who reaches the top of the ballot, as we saw this year. We've seen players go right in over the top of this defined group when there are no dissenters, but we haven't seen any players earn a place in it for several years. Some of the very good (but not obviously first-ballot) players coming onto the ballot may earn a place in this group. It will be interesting to see how this works, but I think as long as this sort of group is well-defined (which it will be as long as we have substantial agreement about who belongs on the top half of the ballot and who belongs on the bottom half), we're unlikely to "accidentally" elect someone who doesn't have really solid support. There's no way this group is going to disappear prior to 1915, I think.
Immediately below this group is a much less stably arranged, much more closely bunched group of candidates: Duffy, Thompson, Ryan, and Grant. Maybe they will sort themselves out easily over the next few years as we all become firmer in our judgments of them. Maybe they will stay as a tightly bunched but unstable middle underneath a more stable top-ballot group and the first-ballot guys. If, however, they more upwards in the late 1910s without being more clearly sorted out, then I think it will be time to worry about making sure we are electing the right guy, but that very uncertainty would probably provoke intense and productive debate needed to do that sorting.
The candidate who most represents the potential challenge the we face is Sam Thompson. Unlike the other candidates with a lot of support, whose votes are bunched in one place or other in the rankings, Big Sam's are spread pretty evenly between 1 and 15 -- there's no identifiable agreement about him. We can have a few candidates like that and still have confidence in our results because candidates with such mixed support won't reach the top of the ballot, but if we end up with a lot of candidates like that, they will reach the top of the ballot: we'd have a large number of candidates with point-totals in the 400s milling around the top half of the ballot. In that case, we're more likely to make mistakes because we're simply unable to reach any sort of agreement about a player's merit. I think that's unlikely to happen, but that's the evidence in the voting patterns that would lead me to be worried about the validity of our results.
Let?s start with the election of 1906, when there were zero newbies on the radar. We replaced the one electee from 1906 with one no-brainer and two other very good candidates, Duffy and Childs.
After electing one in 1907, we replaced him with one good candidate, Jennings. We would expect the holdover candidates to increase their support in 1908. Duffy did, from 44.4% to 48.7%, a typical increase for the top candidates. But Childs? support decreased from 32.9% to 31.8%.
After electing one in 1908, we replaced him with one no-brainer and three other strong candidates (Grant, Ryan, Van Haltren). Naturally, holdover candidates saw their support drop by a lot. Biggest losses were by Jennings (37.8% to 22.2%), Tiernan (28.8% to 14.1%), Browning (28.0% to 13.4%), Childs (31.8% to 20.1%), and Duffy (48.7% to 37.5%). You can understand the OFers dropping, but why should Jennings and Childs be plummeting? (Partly, it?s because the voters who had them #13-15 tended to drop them off.)
After electing one in 1909, we replaced him with nobody. The holdover?s support naturally should skyrocket. Duffy rebounded to 42.3%, still below his first year. Childs came back to 24.1%, still far below his first year. Jennings came back to 27.7%, still far below his first year. Ryan and Grant, newbies in 1909, gained less than 1% in 1910, when those around them were gaining 4% to 7%. Van Haltren increased by 3.2%, also a smaller increase than the other holdover candidates. Another 1909 newbie, McGraw, saw his support decrease, from 8.2% to 8.1%.
The evidence shows that every new candidate since 1906, with the possible exception of Duffy, has had lagging support after his first year on the ballot. This can be attributed, in part, to an increasingly crowded ballot. In a period where we?ve elected Spalding, Sutton and Galvin from the backlog, we?ve added Duffy, Ryan, Grant, Van Haltren, Jennings, and Childs.
I think our tendency for a ?newbie boost? is still there, but to a lesser degree than earlier years.
I don't take much stock in first-ballot vs. non first-ballot, I think everyone should vote in the best player available. For example, I would be shocked if either Nichols or Burkett did not get everyone's first-place vote this year. This does not appear to be because of a newbie bias, as I think Candy LaChance will not get any support, except perhaps from his mother and Sammy Davis, Jr.
During the next ten years, there are going to be clear cases like 1911 where newcomers vault over established players (Davis & Dahlen in '15, Young in '17, Lajoie, Mathewson in '22, Wagner in '23.) However, the occasional 2 player election will allow a few of the McPhee's, Start's, etc. to get elected.
Sam Thompson may never make it, but with only 213 players allowed in for the entire history of baseball, should he?
In closing this rambling, I would also like to point out that your limitation to 1 or 2 candidates (later 3) should weed out undeserving candidates, and will require some deserving candidates to wait a bit before election, as will be demonstrated by the Nichols/Burkett result in 1911.
However, I would like to warn people to remember to look at each election independently. I'm not in 100% agreement with everything Bill James says, but I do agree with his Politics of Glory indication that players should not be compared to those already in the Hall. Many earlier players, with less competition, made the HoM more easily than their later equivalents will.
In 1909, Grant and Ryan came on to the ballot in 8th and 9th places, immediately ahead of Duffy and Thompson. In 1910, with Grant and Ryan's newness rubbing off a bit, Duffy and Thompson bounced up ahead of them.
So the newbie bias is not that a player received more votes than he "should" have. That is a value judgement that no one can make. It is that he received more support initially than he himself received later on. DanG's evidence shows exactly this, though the percentages he uses are subject to a lot of variability based on the competition. I think the rank ordering makes this phenomenon more clear.
But because it has not resulted in the election of an unqualified HoMer, it is something to talk about but not a big deal.
Here is how I currently have the candidates arranged:
1) Very likely to be elected within next four elections: Start, McPhee.
2) Top of Gray Area: McVey, Bennett, Stovey.
3) Middle of Gray Area: Duffy, Thompson, Ryan.
4) Bottom of Gray Area: Grant, Van Haltren, Jennings, Pike.
5) Fade to Black Out: Childs, Browning, Tiernan, Caruthers.
6) Also Ran: McCormick, Pearce, Griffin, Williamson, Welch.
Your statement regarding groups 1 and 2 was: "There's no way this group is going to disappear prior to 1915". I would say at least 1919, possibly into the late 20's.
It may not seem like it now, but Duffy and Thompson are likely to make the HoM by 1930. Ahh, those will be exciting times to be a part of this, next year in the late spring and early summer. Those guys in group 4 above may start looking pretty tasty by then. Harry Hooper is a likely first-ballot HoMer for 1931.
Now, scientific proof! We are electing too many HoMers! Count me among the small hall-ers.
His case hinges on modern analyses of his fielding, which show him as super, IIRC.
Joe Jackson, Jim Creighton, Pie Traynor, Honus Wagner, Nap Lajoie, Cap Anson, Three Finger Brown and Gabby Street.
It was my post, thanks for the info, I hadnt freeze-framed or googled for the answer yet. It did lead me to two questions, who the heck is Gabby Street? (Ive looked him up so that one is answered) and Why was he selected?
My count is 6 eventual HoMers on that team.
No. Not even close.
McPhee is much closer to the top of the list for second baseman than Hooper is in the right field section by a considerable amount. Bid's career value is much greater than the Hoopster for their respective positions, also.
If Hooper ever gets in the HoM, I'm taking up bird watching instead. :-)
I think they were just selecting some old names to be funny. I don't think the players were selected on merit.
John Swartzwelder, one of the writers on the show, is a big baseball fan and named "Jim Creighton" to the team because it was the oldest name he could come up with in a writing brainstorm session (without reference to any computers or books). It was the setup for the line "Sir, your rightfielder has been dead for 130 years".
I think there was a tendency to select players with funny first/nick names: Gabby, Three Finger, Cap, Nap, Pie, Shoeless Joe, Honus. That explains everyone but Creighton (explained above) and Harry Hooper. Not sure the writers spent a heckuva lot of time coming up with the names for such a short visual joke that most people wouldn't "get".
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