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Hall of Merit — A Look at Baseball's All-Time Best Monday, November 24, 20031915 Ballot DiscussionLet’s get the 1915 discussion going. I won’t have the full results up today, but I should be able to have them posted by Wednesday (I’ll be busy tomorrow and don’t see the time freeing up). I’ll post the totals of the top candidates in the discussion portion so we can move forward. Here are the top new candidates . . . a couple of big guns are coming on this year. ***1915 (December 7)—elect 2 JoeD has the Imperial March Stuck in His Head
Posted: November 24, 2003 at 10:28 PM | 151 comment(s)
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Please. I'll be shocked it if I got it perfectly right. :-)
1) Pete Browning
I could vote for the fourth best leftfielder of his era (Delahanty, Burkett and Clarke were certainly better) if he had been at least close to the other three. He really wasn't.
I have him down as the best in left field for 1894 and as the best NL first baseman in 1901. We're not talking about a really great peak here.
His career length, while very good, wasn't truly outstanding either.
I can see him at the bottom of a ballot (because he was a very good player), but not near the top.
1. Dahlen or Davis
HOMers by various eras
ERA I: The Pioneers (10): All got their ML start by the second year of organized ball; more than half stretched their careers well into the '80s and '90s.
Since you're definining your eras by the beginnings of careers, Davis and Dahlen clearly belong to era III, so that era will be represented by infielders. Willie Keeler and Cy Young also belong to era III.
I've been saying that the next big project and debate will be the rating and placement of short-career era IV pitchers, of whom McGinnity is the first of many.
Is there another gap between era III and era IV? Do we have many worthy players starting out in the mid-90's?
Whaddya think the casual baseball history fan would say to Kelley topping Collins?
Also I think there were significant changes further down the ballot. Caruthers rallied (up at least 3 slots), Clark Griffith slipped (at least 4 slots).
OK, so who wants to argue about the new 2Bs? I think Ritchey was better than Williams and Hobe Ferriss is seriously underrated!
I dunno, I've already got enough SSs on my ballot ;-)
1. Dahlen or Davis
Maybe it was a combination of two things: contraction in 1892 combined with the "outfielder glut" of young talented players of the 1890's? That might be enough to explain it.
Getting more speculative, and reaching for a third reason, maybe there was also a change in style of OF play. There's a significant increase on PO's made in the OF during the 1890's, and a drop in assists. Were the 80's OF'ers playing shallower, sort of backing up the IF'ers, while the 90's guys played a more modern game, made necessary by more harder hit balls due to the pitching change? Did this change the "requirements" for being an OF'er, the younger guys adapting while the older guys retired?
Oops. Forgot to cite that. It's from John Murphy's 1914 ballot, reasoning behind votes for Browning and O'Neill.
(Unofficial) Career votes-points leaders
Caruthers is a guy who is going to have to keep being re-examined. He's unlike anyone else on the ballot, and each generation he's going to measure up well on some standards and less well on others. He's in my "19th Century Player Most Likely To Be Elected in the 21st Century" category.
Chesbro falls into the "just short" category. He actually has the heart of a HoM career. If he had pitched as a 23-24 year old, or as a 36-37 year old, he'd have a good case. As it is, he's two good years short.
I'm glad to see Griffith is fading on comparison to McGinnity.
This year, as the top of the ballot seems pretty set (Davis is #1 and Dahlen is #2, for sure), I'm reconsidering other pitchers.
Bobby Mathews, I think, was the 2nd best pitcher of the 1870s, after Spalding, and I might have under-rated him.
Also, I'm going to compare Gus Weyhing's 7 year peak, 1887-1893, to other 7-year peaks.
Or vice-versa, depending on your hitting vs fielding weight.
I can't see ranking Chesbro ahead of McGinnity, unless that one year has a very high weight.
Well, I have Mathewson, Plank, Brown, Willis, McGinnity, Walsh, Waddell, Tannehil, and Orth as better than Chesbro. That doesn't sound like a HoMer to me even if you are more inclined to add pitchers to your ballot than myself.
John, I match the summarized results above exactly. Good Work. :^)
Yip-pie!!! :-)
Getting more speculative, and reaching for a third reason, maybe there was also a change in style of OF play. There's a significant increase on PO's made in the OF during the 1890's, and a drop in assists. Were the 80's OF'ers playing shallower, sort of backing up the IF'ers, while the 90's guys played a more modern game, made necessary by more harder hit balls due to the pitching change? Did this change the "requirements" for being an OF'er, the younger guys adapting while the older guys retired?
I think the '80s guys were just getting beat up more than the later guys, but I am intrigued by this theory, though. It certainly may have played some role here.
Basically, McGinnity benefited from McGraw's use of 3/4 man rotations, while some teams (see 1903 Cubs, for example) were actually using 5 man rotations! It was a very transitional period for pitching...
My prelim
1. George Davis
I was actually surprised myself. However, if you compare him to his peers (which is not easy because of the many different positions he played), he outdistanced the vast majority of his competition. His abbreviated career wasn't as short for the 1880s as it would have been during the '90s, plus he did have an impressive peak.
I'm actually happy to see him high because of the unhappy life he had to live.
It appears we're on the same page with Van Haltren.
You still weren't close to being the best pitcher for your time.
No, but he certainly would have helped his team to a lesser extent at third than short.
Perhaps, like me, Bill is slowly realizing that an outstanding peak can make up for a short career. After all, he does have Koufax as the 14th best pitcher. I may have to reconsider Jennings, who is currently languishing at the bottom of my HOM consideration pile, next to his teammate John McGraw.
However, if you compare him to his peers (which is not easy because of the many different positions he played), he outdistanced the vast majority of his competition. His abbreviated career wasn't as short for the 1880s as it would have been during the '90s, plus he did have an impressive peak.
I'm actually happy to see him high because of the unhappy life he had to live.
I dunno, if that's the argument for Pete he doesn't sound like he's within sniffing distance of the HoM.
How about my favorite challenge, really I think of it as a litmus test: Assume we elected your guy. If you were on a radio talk show or an on-line chat and you had to explain to the reasonably knowledgeable fan why Pete Browning is in the Hall, what would you say? It's gotta be short and persuasive, say, less than 100 words. You can use common sabermetric measures in the argument.
Deacon White
Well, he was a great hitter. Nobody can deny that. His fielding overall was poor (though it appears he was good at the beginning of his career), but it still wasn't enough to deter him from being the best major league second baseman for '82, the best major league leftfielder for '83 (close in '90), the best major league centerfielder for 1887 and the best AA centerfielder for '85. He was legitimately great at his peak.
What hurt him in my eyes originally was the brevity of his career. However, (for career length), the '80s were different from the '70s and '90s (and later). If you don't take that into account, I feel you are underrating Browning, Stovey and O'Neill.
If today's game became tough to the point that the average career was halved, would we compare these players to other generations without taking that point into account. I hope that wouldn't be the case.
As I (and Chris Cobb) have stated before - context, context, context!
Clint, that's why I have Davis and Dahlen placed on my ballot the way I do. Doing what you suggest creates a gap between those two that wasn't evident initially when I first read the NBHA.
... and number eleven is on the steps (Stovey).
Best pure hitter in his the American Association's history. Best pure hitter in Player's League history. And never a liability defensively. With pitcher Bob Caruthers, led his team to four consecutive AA championships. During his career peak (ages 24-30), he was "Most Similar" to a top-half Hall of Famer every year (usually Honus Wagner).
No questioning his value to his team, but maybe needs some "League adjustments" for the AA? But League Adjustments understate Browning's ability, because they are calculated based on the marginal player. In an extreme case, Barry Bonds had 1.381 OPS in 2002. If he got demoted to the PCL midseason, would his OPS have been 1.650 there? Of course not. The best AA players were just as good as the best NL players (compare their 1890+ stats when they were in the same league), but are getting "adjusted" out of contention.
Was that under 100 words? If not, just go with the first paragraph.
1. Dahlen - If you had asked me when this project started, I would have said, "Davis over Dahlen. No question." If you want to have Davis first I wont complain. Back in 1898 or so, I said that when (if?) Browning is elected I will go to his grave site, and toast his election to the HoM with some quality KY bourbon. I stand by this. But Browning #1?
On Davis vs. Dahlen: it seems to me that the arguments that are advantaging Davis either on the ability side or on the better-than-position side of things because he played third base for a while are misguided. Their career and peak values independent of position are very close. If Dahlen had been at third and Davis at short, their "best at position" numbers would simply switch. Dahlen has fewer top seasons at short because his peak ran directly against Jennings's, which was the best of any player at any position in the 1890s. Furthermore, while I've been a supporter of Hughie Jennings for a long time, he by no means deserves to rank higher than either Dahlen or Davis. At his best he was better than either of them, but not by very much. They were both _great_ players for a long time. They have more above average seasons than Jennings has seasons.
This has been studied numerous times, and each study points to this being false. Pitchers do not "find a way to win" or "pitch to the score."
And if you think about it logically, a pitcher has no idea in the beginning of a game whether his team is going to score 1 run or 12 runs, so IF there was a skill to "find a way to win" the pitcher would only be able to display that skill in the 8th or 9th inning...
Batters who are aware of "working the count" have somewhat changed this, of course, but our 1912 HOM game, in which Smokey Joe Wood won with an 89-pitch complete game, indicates what was possible in 1912, and may not be possible now.
I take the eight best players during the subject's career with weights for the players who had the most seasons with the subject. I do this for every position that the subject played a majority of games for a season (for Browning, I would have to create position comparisons for him at second, centerfield, left field and third). I also use standard deviation (instead of normalization) so the subject won't stand out unfairly because his competition was lacking.
Whether it was attrition, jimd's theory, harmonic convergence or whatever, something was going on during the 1880s that wasn't happening during other eras in the outfield and needs to be addressed.
Ummm, MattB? He was a BROWNing, but not a BROWN. He played for LOUISville, not st. LOUIS. ;-)
Speaking of the results, if anyone has compiled rankings of the candidates, please send them to me at the above e-mail address so as to compare them with mine.
Thanks!
Obviously, I was typing faster than I was thinking.
I don't have his, but both of our compiled results are in agreement so there's no need for his. However, the ones contrary to post #1 should be sent to me (like yours, Marc).
I think we're going to have an excellent opportunity to look at evidence on this subject starting in 1916, when Clark Griffith and Rube Waddell are under consideration together.
I can't confirm McCormick yet, (and I'm not sure how valuable this stat is for the early 1880s) but, if my calculations are correct, these are the numbers for McGinnity and Griffith.
McGinnity -- 12 wins above team
Even if it is not an ability, per se, in many cases the pitcher deserves a good deal of the credit for his team winning (close) games. See my Win Values articles in the Authors section of the Primer website for more data, discussion, etc.
I will comment specifically about my rather uninspired view of McGinnity at a later time.
I think we were off a little on C. and F. Jones. Would you mind double-checking those two? Thanks!
I didn't mean to sound like it was an order, BTW. :-) If you can send it sometime tonight, that would be great!
Truthfully, compared to the efforts of you and others, I'm hanging on over here with intuition, duct tape, and baling wire - which is why I'm more involved in playing devil's advocate and raising questions than in trying to be too dogmatic.
Don't worry about sending it to me. We have it double-checked now.
1. (tie) Bill Dahlen
This all got me looking at the events of '98-'99-'00. The four teams that survived the wreck of the AA (Louisville, Washington, St. Louis, and Baltimore) moved immediately to the sub-basement of the NL. Baltimore escaped to launch its championship run in 1894, but of the other three ex-AA teams, only one ever (through 1898) finished better than 9th: Washington in 7th place 32 games out in '97, and they went right back down the next year. Louisville was showing some signs of life, having come up with Wagner and Clarke, but (1) Wagner and Clarke were 24 and 25 in 1898, which isn't all that young for alleged emerging stars, and (2) the Colonels still couldn't get above 9th place.
The evil of cross-ownership started making its effects felt between 1898 and 1899. The major stars of the Baltimore dynasty (Keeler, Kelley, and Jennings, but not McGraw) went to Brooklyn. Every good player from Cleveland went to St. Louis. Brooklyn, which had been visiting the sub-basement (10th place, 46 games out) shot up to first, but somehow the Orioles managed to survive as at least a good team. One footnote about a player moving the "wrong" way: Joe McGinnity went from 1898 Brooklyn to 1899 Baltimore.
But the greatest evil was the St. Louis/Cleveland situation. St. Louis had never strayed from the bottom of the league, and had just finished 63.5 games out two years in a row. Cleveland in 1898 finished 5th at 81-68; we've been talking about their talent core. With Young, Burkett, and anywone else with a pulse in St. Louis for 1899, the teams exchanged positions: 12th to 5th, 5th to an infamous 12th.
The decmimation of Louisville in favor of Pittsburgh didn't happen until after the 1899 season, as the 4 old AA teams were all contracted away. Oops, not quite those 4 - St. Louis had stolen Cleveland's ticket for survival. And the Orioles were contracted away despite still being respectable.
The remaining 8 teams were located in 7 of the top 8 markets (or 8 of the top 9, depending on whether you view New York/Brooklyn as one market or two). Baltimore was the only one missing. Compared to the founding season of 1876, the NL lineup is almost identical but stronger, with Brooklyn replacing Hartford, and Pittsburgh replacing Louisville. The NL should have been invulnerable; that they weren't is a testament to a) the players dislike for the owners, and b) the fans distaste for the poor officiating and rough style of play.
1. George Davis (N) Best player in baseball, 1897, twice in top 3, 7 times in top 10. Best 3B 1894; best SS 1900. 2nd-best 3B or SS 9 other times.
2. Bill Dahlen (N) Best player in baseball, 1892, twice in top 3, 3 times in top 10. Best SS 1892 and 1899, 2nd best SS 4 other times.
Um, shouldn't we elect Tommy McCarthy to the HoM first, before we start thinking about Davis and Dahlen?... Davis and Dahlen are about equal in total WS, but Davis had better rate stats.
3. Hughie Jennings (1)
Some others deadball pitchers:
What number do you have for Griffith? Did your not including him mean that your number matches mine?
I've been following along since near the beginning of this project, and I'd like to thank each of you - I've certainly learned a great deal this year about 19thC ball. Before I commit to joining, I would like to spend a couple of "years" putting together my voting lists based on my own calculations as opposed to weighing other's arguments, which I have been doing pretty much adhoc.
1. Ned Hanlon takes over a losing team and builds the Oriole dynasty that finishes 1-1-1-2-2 in a 12-team league over a 5 year period.
2. A two-team ownership syndicate moves Hanlon and the best of the playing talent to Brooklyn, creating an instant pennant winner in Brooklyn using Baltimore parts.
3. McGraw, remaining behind in Baltimore, shows his managerial talent by taking the scrap he's left with and fashioning a 5th place finish out of it.
4. The owners disband those Orioles anyway, leaving Baltimore (see #79) as the largest city without a major league team.
5. The American League claims Baltimore, recycles the name Orioles, and hires McGraw to manage. The team finishes above .500 in 1901.
6. After just a year and a half in Baltimore, the AL team relocates to New York, eventually to become the Yankees. Once again, Baltimore has no team.
7. After being given two chances to build teams in Baltimore, only to have the rug pulled from under each, John McGraw begins his long-team managerial career with the one New York team we haven't mentioned yet - the Giants. Some of the players he uses, like Roger Bresnahan, Jack Dunn, and Joe McGinnity, had been on one or both of his Baltimore teams.
(Jack Dunn's minor League Orioles, Dunn vs. the Federal League, and Babe Ruth being sold to Boston - that's all a different chapter.)
Chris, sorry but I just had enough time to swipe the numbers out of "Hidden Game of Baseball" and Pete Palmer didn't include 19th century pitchers. When I have a chance to actually calculate the numbers I'll let you know.
Yes it is. It is also scaled to a 4.5 RPG environment.
McGraw played a major role in pulling the rug from under himself in the AL. And his jump to the NL played a role in Baltimore losing the Orioles, IIRC.
Correction: the above is true if I used 1890 census figures. By 1900, the rapidly growing Great Lakes cities of Cleveland and Buffalo (also San Francisco) had surpassed Cincinnati in population. Why Buffalo was bypassed by the AL in favor of smaller cities like Detroit, Milwaukee, or Washington has always been a mystery to me.
1. Davis
I have been lurking for 16 years and have a bit of a bias against pre-1900 achievements so I have decided not to vote until now.
Since you have thirteen players who played the majority of their careers during the 19th century on your ballot, your bias against them doesn't seem to be too strong. :-)
I haven't worked on them yet, but (tentatively) I would agree with you. As if Chesbro needed you to pile on him a little more... :-)
Caveat for what follows: I don't have copies of the old player cards available with me here. Just a list of career and peak value summary numbers.
Some first impressions. 1870's guys take a hit. Defensive OF's take a hit. (Duffy, Griffin, Tiernan lose more than 10% while the long-timers Ryan and Van Haltren gain more than 10% of their "old" career value.) Some other big winners (not that they need it): King Kelly, George Gore, Roger Connor. Connor is now close enough to Anson to be a serious candidate for "Player of the 19th Century". Stovey does not appear to have changed net, though I can't compare the AA hitting discounts.
Catchers take a hit collectively. Bennett is still competitive with Ewing. Early defensive IF's take a big hit (the recall campaign for Sutton is beginning soon ;-). Not the 90's guys though; Cross is neutral, Collins and Childs gain. Jennings is Babe Ruth with the leather for a short time.
1870's pitchers and AA pitchers make huge gains. Spalding and Caruthers now look like bona-fide stars under WARP-3. Early 1880's pitchers take a hit, though not Radbourn. He improves quite a bit while McCormick declines considerably; they are no longer "twins". The "replace Galvin with Caruthers" movement is also beginning soon ;-).
I'm sure others will have more comments.
Maybe these prejudices also factored into it.
I think a market viewpoint is sufficient explanation though, with the notable exception of a strong attendance in the smaller Cincinnati market trumping a weak attendance in the larger Baltimore market, not to mention the specific market locations of the syndicates making Baltimore's contraction more convenient.
Still, I would like to see more from WARP 1 than the results -- as my Math teacher used to insist "I need to see your work." That said I appreciate Chris' work and his explanation of why Bobby C. had a great '03 and why Bobby M.(Mathews) had such a bad year.
Thorn and Palmers's Total Baseball is one of the few sources that give some rankings of players by position using traditional stats. It should be available in your local library. Unfortunately, I have only Total Baseball I at hand, so Trammell, Ozzie, Ripken, Jeter, Nomar, and A-Rod are missing from the following, but through 1988:
George Davis' .295 BA is the 8th best ever for a SS. That guy could flat out hit. Dahlen's batting average of .272 is close to league average for his time, though he was above average in slugging. In comparison, Ozzie Smith has a BA that was close to league average, but he was well below average in slugging.
Now consider defense. A useful traditional stat for defense is how many defensive outs (putouts plus assists) a player makes per game. Through 1988, Davis and Dahlen were number 2 and 4 among shortshops is defensive outs per game. Because he played more games at shortshops, Dahlen's 12350 defensive outs are the third most ever at shortshop (through 1988), behind only Aparicio and Maranville. He might have been number 1 if his teams had played a 154 game schedule for his whole career. In My Thirty Years in Baseball , John McGraw said, "I traded Charlie Babb and Jack Cronin to Brooklyn for Bill Dahlen. That, by the way, I consider the most successful deal I ever made. It gave me just want I wanted- a great defensive shortshop. There were mighty few better than Dahlen."
In short, by traditional stats, Davis was one of the best SS ever both in hitting and defense. Dahlen was above average in hitting, and historically great on defense. Both had long careers. Finally, check out baseballreference.com. It gives lists of the most similar players to any given player, based on how much their career batting stats differ. George Davis and Bill Dahlen look great in this context, also.
Traditional statistics are essentially useless _in their raw form_ for assessing fielding value. If you want to start to understand measures of fieldiing value, go into the baseball primer archives and read Mike Emigh's excellent series of articles from last year about the current state of fielding analysis. Or read "win-based fielding analysis," pp. 350-358 in _The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract_, which you can probably get from your local library if you don't want to buy it. Even though the win shares system has some problems, James's explanation of how one has to deal with fielding statistics to begin to get meaningful evidence is excellent. Or read the series on fielding analysis now being posted on the Primer's main page (though it is written presuming a fair amount of prior knowledge in the reader, I think). Skepticism about any given sabermetric analysis can be salutary, but you appear, I must say, to be exercising aggressive ignorance rather than careful skepticism. I'm not asking you to accept the sabermetric evidence without understanding its basis; I am asking you to study the matter before you dismiss the evidence. If a player's value were reliably and obviously documented only in the traditional statistics, there would be no need for further statistical analysis.
In this case, the results of sabermetric fielding analysis are corroborated by the contemporary observation of one John McGraw, who wrote:
"I traded Charlie Babb and Jack Cronin to Brooklyn for Bill Dahlen. That, by the way, I consider the most succesful deal I ever made. It gave me just what I wanted -- a great defensive shortstop. There were mighty few better than Dahlen." from _My Thirty Years in Baseball_, quoted in NBJHBA, p. 607
Dahlen played for McGraw on the Giants during their great run in the mid-1900s. This was late in Dahlen's career, so the fact that he was a great defensive shortstop then is pretty good evidence that he had been an even better defensive shortstop in his prime, and that's what the defensive metrics show.
>Then can I assume you'll also elect Bobby Wallace with a 332 on base% 358 slugginng avg. 2309 hits 2383
The elections are held every other week, from Monday to Monday. There will be one beginning Monday, December 1, and people will be voting between the 1st and the 8th.
1. Charlie Bennett (1) - Dahlen and Davis are recieving a lot of support in the prelim ballots b/c they were shortstops. I am one that believes there should be a balance in the position players throughout our HOM. I'll believe that Davis and maybe Dahlen should be in the HOM, but I feel that Bennett stands out above all other catchers of his era than Dahlen and Davis standout against the other shortstops of their era.
2. George Davis (n/a) - Had the same amount of at bats as Dahlen, but had 200 more hits, and beat Dahlen out in nearly every other offensive category. Not to shabby for someone that didn't even start out as a shortstop. He's definitely superior to Dahlen in my eyes.
3. Sam Thompson (4) - I'm not a big fan of peak, I much prefer career, but Thompson was a VERY dominate player for 10 years.
4. Bill Dahlen (n/a) - I don't really have much to say about him that hasn't already been said, but I don't believe that he was quite the player that Davis was. Very good, yes, as good as Davis, No.
5. Jake Beckley (8) - Being a career lover, I can't help but like Beckley. Maybe he didn't have much of a peak, but neither has Palmeiro and I wouldn't hesitate to keep Palmeiro out of the Hall.
6. George Van Haltren (5) - Still my favorite of the elegible outfielders.
7. Jimmy Ryan (6) - Amazingly close to Van Haltren
8. Jimmy Collins (7) - I honestly thought that he would be moving up this year, but Dahlen and Davis prevented that from happening.
9. Hugh Duffy (9) - Excellant peak, with a couple more productive years and Duffy could have been very high on my ballot.
10. Hughie Jennings (12) - Hughie has much the same problem that Hugh does. All peak, and not enough career.
11. Joe McGinnity (4) - Joe takes a huge nose dive this year. I might have severly overrated him on the previous ballot. Started a lot more games than most other pitchers which would account for the inflated stats.
12. Bobby Carruthers (13) - He's still hanging on
13. Joe Kelley (11) - just another OF in the glut
14. Clark Griffith (10) - A good pitcher, a good manager, a good baseball person
15. Harry Stovey (14) - Just not impressed with anything done in AA at this point
Adam, I agree with you 100% on this one.
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