Weak group. I didn't even bother creating any pages for any of them. Was I wrong?

Hey John there is an Olico page, did you not create that? ;-)

I concur, my guess is that Medwick and Lemon will get elected in 1967, which would make me happy as that woudl be two PHOM guys for me. However it should be really, really close this year. Should be fun.

Is there anyone in the top 5-6 who we should really be going over again? My first reaction is that we should but we have already gone over many of them ad nauseum. The guy I am most afraid of is Biz Mackey as I don't see him as being as good as Quincey Trouppe.

Bell is a bit further down but I guy I am nto wild about and Beckley...well let's not go there!

Hey John there is an Olico page, did you not create that? ;-)

:-)

The guy I am most afraid of is Biz Mackey as I don't see him as being as good as Quincey Trouppe.

I'm going to do some extra work on Trouppe.

(We've elected 3 OFs and a P the last two years. we have 25 pct Ps by this rough 'science,' maybe 26 pct if Ruth and Caruthers are adjusted)

HOM batters by percentage of games played at position (min. 10 pct to be listed)

C (8.03) - Cochrane 100, Dickey 100, Hartnett 98, Gibson 95, Campanella 95, Bennett 88, Santop 75, Ewing 47, Kelly 36, McVey 30, White 28, O'Rourke 11

1B (13.49) - Start 100, Gehrig 100, Mize 100, Terry 99, Brouthers 98, Leonard 95, Connor 88, Foxx 87, Anson 83, Greenberg 83, Suttles 70, Wilson 45, Stovey 37, Charleston 35, McVey 31, Jennings 26, Lloyd 25, Heilmann 22, Ewing 19, Kelley 16, Delahanty 15, Hines 12, Lajoie 12, Spalding 11, O'Rourke 10, Dihigo 10, JRobinson 10, Irvin 10

2B (10.15) - McPhee 100, Gehringer 99, E Collins 98, Herman 95, Lajoie 83, Frisch 77, Hornsby 72, Grant 70, Barnes 69, JRobinson 65, Richardson 43, Ward 26, HR Johnson 25, Groh 20, Hill 20, Pike 18, Dihigo 15, Wright 10, Wilson 10

3B (7.23) - Baker 100, J Collins 98, Hack 98, Groh 79, Sutton 69, White 51, Beckwith 50, Wilson 40, Davis 22, Frisch 20, Wallace 18, Dihigo 15, JRobinson 15, McVey 14, Richardson 13, Vaughan 11, Ott 10

SS (15.18) - Pearce 96, Boudreau 95, Reese 95, Glasscock 94, Appling 94, Cronin 92, Wells 90, HWright 89, Dahlen 88, Vaughan 85, Wallace 77, Jennings 70, HR Johnson 70, Lloyd 70, Wagner 68, Davis 58, Ward 44, Beckwith 35, Barnes 28, Grant 20, Sutton 19, Hornsby 16, Dihigo 15, Irvin 10

OF (36.85) - Carey 100, Clarke 100, Hamilton 100, Thompson 100, Wheat 100, Goslin 100, DiMaggio 100, Averill 100, Doby 100, Slaughter 100, TWilliams 100, Simmons 99, Burkett 99, Cobb 99, Flick 99, Gore 99, Sheckard 99, Speaker 99, Jackson 98, Stearnes 98, Keeler 97, PWaner 97, Crawford 94, Ruth 92, Magee 91, Ott 90, Hines 82, Torriente 80, Kelley 79, Heilmann 77, Irvin 75, Pike 73, Delahanty 72, Hill 70, O'Rourke 69, Rogan 65, Stovey 63, Charleston 60, Caruthers 50, Kelly 47, Richardson 40, Suttles 30, Santop 20, Dihigo 20, McVey 18, Ewing 17, Greenberg 17, Davis 13, Spalding 13, Wagner 13, Ward 11, White 10, JRobinson 10

SP (30.26) - Alexander 100, Covaleski 100, Faber 100, Plank 100, Vance 100, Grove 100, Hubbell 100, Lyons 100, Newhouser 100, Feller 100, Ruffing 100, R Foster 99, Brown 99, Mathewson 99, Walsh 99, Williams 99, Young 99, B Foster 99, Paige 99, W Johnson 98, McGinnity 98, WFerrell 97, Keefe 96, Nichols 96, Rusie 95, RBrown 95, Clarkson 94, Galvin 92, Radbourn 78, Spalding 72, Caruthers 47, Rogan 35, Dihigo 25, Ward 16

INF: 54.08
OF: 36.85
P: 30.26

Caveats: Totals treat all careers as equal. A little off on players like McVey and Sutton due to changing schedule length. Guesstimates on Negro Leaguers. Doesn't sufficiently represent pitching weight of players like Ruth or Caruthers.

P.S. I'd be open to 'improvements' on numbers for McVey/Sutton/Ruth/Caruthers types, and all Negro Leaguers.

OK, last night as I was working on my ballot and looking at the catcher candidates, I was struck by Trouppe and Mackey's MLEs having much more PAs then the other candidates. I did a quick look at other long-serving catchers of the era and drew the conclusions that a)no MLers matched those numbers, and b)thus, there must be something wrong with the MLEs, so I knocked them both down the ballot a ways. Today I took the time to look at it a bit more closely, and here's what I found. I checked the numbers for all the catchers in the all-time top 35 in games caught up to Yogi Berra.

Here are the MLers in PA/Season (# seasons):

Roy Campanella (ML Only): 481.6 (10)
Mickey Cochrane: 477.4 (13)
Yogi Berra: 440.2 (19)
Bill Dickey: 415.3 (17)
Rick Ferrell: 392.9 (18)
Ernie Lombardi: 373.5 (17)
Gabby Hartnett: 364.8 (20)
Al Lopez: 347.7 (19)
Duke Farrell: 347.4 (18)
Sherm Lollar: 345.4 (18)
Wally Schang: 338.1 (19)
Wilbert Robinson: 318.7 (17)
Roger Bresnahan: 316.1 (17) (Not in top 35, but close enough)
Luke Sewell: 302.1 (20)
Rollie Helmsley: 289.9 (19)
Jack O'Connor: 275.2 (21)
Deacon McGuire: 266.6 (26)

And here's the Negro Leaguers:
Josh Gibson: 489.81 (16)
Quincy Trouppe: 479.6 (15)
Roy Campanella: 444.8 (16)
Biz Mackey: 397.8 (21)

So, now what do I think? Well, obviously, that Campanella's MLE rate was lower than his ML rate is a good sign that the MLEs aren't overrating him. And the numbers aren't clearly outside what was possible for a catcher.

On the other hand, Trouppe and Mackey's numbers still look like they're higher than they ought to be. Trouppe was a good hitter, but not quite in the class of Campy or Cochrane, so would he have as many PAs? Mackey's comp is Rick Ferrell, which is reasonable, but Ferrell was able to extend his career because of WWII. Outside of that, there just isn't a precedent of a pre-war catcher getting that many plate appearences for that long a career. And of course, if they wouldn't have that many PAs, they wouldn't have that many Win Shares.

I know this isn't a completely new issue, but what do people think? Does it look like a flaw in the MLE process, or just HoM-level players exceeding what the ordinary player can be expected to produce?

Looks to me as through there may be a particular problem with MLEs of NEL catchers, in addition to the MLE careers of NEL players being generally too long, particulalry those who went on playing in the NELs into their 40s. The reality is that scaling up to ML seasons doesn't take proper account of the wear and tear from the additional games, or of the player becoming marginal as a hitter and slow in the field earlier in the ML than in the NEL. Bell in particulalr is overrated by MLEs; he would NOT have got 3700 hits with an OPS+ of only 100-102. Nobody has done this, even with better sports medicine since 1970.

Trouppe's MLEs are Dr. Chaleeko's, so I'll let him speak for them.

I devoted a goodly amount of care and research to modeling Mackey's playing time, however, and I think that the criticism of his PA/season being too high is misplaced.

Two key facts need to be remembered in assessing Mackey's _career_ PA/season rate: his positional history and his injury history.

Positional History

Mackey broke in as a SS/3B. He was primarily an infielder during the first two years of his career, and he appears to have had significant playing time away from catcher through his first five seasons. During these seasons, I set his playing time according to ordinary infielder usage or to the playing time that can be expected of a player who is shifting between catcher and another position, which is higher than for a pure catcher. This raises his career average of PA/season somewhat. If you drop out his first five seasons and look at his seasons in which he was a pure catcher, his pa/season is 386.75, which is in line with the other catchers.

Injury History

This career PA/season measure is significantly influenced by by whether or not a catcher happened to miss a lot of time in a season or two with a serious injury. Hartnett, for example, has his career PA/season drop because of a serious injury year. Mackey, as far as we know, was not sidelined by serious injury, although I have built one injury-influenced season into his career. Dickey and Berra avoided serious injury in their (long) careers, and both of them have PA averages up above 400 PA/season. That Mackey's career total is under 400, even given his playing time at other positions early in his career, verifies that my estimates place him within the durability limits established by his major league contemporaries.

I modeled his PA/g on his contemporaries Dickey, Ferrell, and Hartnett, so it is certainly my opinion that his number of plate appearances is in line with these other players. I didn't use a general formula derived from other positions to model Mackey's PA/g or games per season. This _is_ my estimate: it's not a translation of Mackey's actual record (which, for reasons that Karlmagnus states, would not be reliable even if it were possible). However, I think that it is niether on its surface nor on close inspection an estimate that is out of line with the careers of similar major league players.

As to Gibson's playing time: in his case, I decided that he was the sort of player who would probably set standards of durability rather than remain within the norms set by others. He projects as somewhat more durable than Cochrane, about like Campy in the majors but a generation earlier. It also seems probable that a ML team would have used him at other positions if possible to keep his bat in the lineup.

Trouppe's high total of PA's (or G caught) is a big reason why he has that high peak and thus is on my ballot. I would be interested if there is a good reason to say that he didn't get that many PA's.

On the other hand, I think that our MLE's have underrated peaks and overrated careers. In other owrds very long, peakless careers seem to be the norm for these players so some kind of adjustment must be done by teh voter.

Troupe's career path doesn't show the long tail on the 'old' side that karl is referring to. His last year was at age 39 and his last decent year was at age 35. The question for him is his high playing time in 1946 (154 G). Is that reasonable? He was a C/3B/OF... how much of each?

Mackey does have the long tail at the end, though I think his career looks better when you cut that off. His post-1932 numbers are killing his rate numbers. As for playing time, they look reasonable. The high playing time before 1924 is due to him playing other positions.

I don't think there's anything wrong with Trouppe's PA's. However, he played quite a bit of outfield, so his games caught would be somewhat less than if he played Catcher 100% of the time.

With Lemon poised on the lip of induction, it's time to remember something Chris Cobb was cautioning us about - that we haven't seen all his true contemporaries yet.

Consider the 300-game winner. The species nearly went extinct with the lively-ball explosion of 1920. Sure, Johnson and Alexander had to finish off their careers, and there was Lefty Grove - but Grove is an inner-circle guy, a fantasically high-peak pitcher who also had a long career.

With 50's pitchers, the 300-game winner is back. We have Warren Spahn, who may be a great one but whose peak (in things like ERA+) will not remind you of Grove, and we have Early Wynn, who's nowhere near being Spahn. So why should Wynn have more wins than Rixey or Ruffing?

(W)hy should Wynn have more wins than Rixey or Ruffing?
More SWAGGER.

Interesting question. These players have much in common.

1. They all missed some time due to war when they were established starters.
Rixey missed the 1918 season.
Ruffing missed 1943 and 1944.
Wynn missed 1945.

2. They played for bad teams to start or end their careers.
Rixey suffered through the 1929 to 1933 Reds who were so bad, they knocked the Phillies out of last place. They finished 7th, 7th, 8th, 8th, and 8th. Also, had a two year, post-war period with the Phils where they finished 8th and 8th.
Ruffing suffered through 1925 through 1929 with the Red Sox, plus cups of coffee in 1924 and 1930. In all 5 years, they were last with at least 96 losses.
Wynn suffered through 1941 to 1948 with the Senators. There were two gasp at .500, but every other year: 6th, 7th, 2nd, 8th, 4th, 7th, 7th.
Their records during those years: Totals, bad period, otherwise:
Rixey: 266-251 .515 / 51-75 .405 / 215-176 .550
Ruffing: 273-225 .548 / 39-96 .289 / 234-129 .645
Wynn: 300-244 .551 / 72-85 .459 / 228-159 .589

3. They were All-Star level roughly 5 times each:
Rixey: STATS 5 times / Win Shares: 6
Ruffing: STATS 5 times / Win Shares: 4
Wynn: STATS 6 times / Win Shares: 5

4. They were extremely durable, especially during for their times:
Rixey: 4495 / 12 years over 200 IP / 8 over 250 / 3 over 300
Ruffing: 4344 / 14 / 4 / 0
Wynn: 4564 / 14 / 7 / 0

5. They were regulars at any early age:
Rixey: 21, straight out of college, after graduation from UVA
Ruffing: 20.
Wynn: 22.

Quick Comment: Rixey's advantage in ERA+ is due to differences in Unearned Runs Allowed. Of all the runs Rixey allowed, 79.1% were earned. Ruffing, 86.6%. Wynn, 88.2%.

Why did one get 300 wins and two others, not? I think there are a few factors.
1. The change in importance of numbers and quantifying baseball history. In Rixey's time, the hallowed hallmarks had not been established. There were no magic round numbers yet. Sam Rice retired with 2987 hits and very few people cared when Cobb got #4000. Ruffing started a decade later and the same mentality was still present. Wynn's entire career occurred after the Hall of Fame was already open; there was a consciousness of baseball history and special numbers definitely had meaning. Wynn thought he would be the last 300 game winner. I don't thing that thought would enter Rixey or Ruffing's minds.
2. Ruffing was stuck with a truly horrendous Boston team in the 1920s. In his 5 years as a starter with them, their average record was 52-102, .338. Rixey's teams were bad also, but their average record was 60-94, .387. Wynn's teams were 68-86 .444. 8 games between each of their bad team's records.
3. Wynn started more games, 60 more than Rixey and 76 more than Ruffing.
4. Wynn got good run support, a RSI over 105, while Ruffing received great support - RSI over 111, and Rixey was not treated too kindly with an RSI of just over 95.

<u>Wynn started more games, his time on bad teams was spent on teams not as bad as the teams for which the others played, and baseball's goal numbers had been established during his career</u>.
Ruffing is easy to see 300 wins: pencil in 10 to 12 wins in 1943 and 1944 and a little better luck with the Red Sox or the Yankees giving a little more opportunity in the mid-40s.
Rixey is a little harder. Some more wins with Philly in 1918, but they were a 6th place team anyway. I think he was recovering some in 1919, but not 34 games worth of time in 1918/1919.
Of course, the year Wynn missed at war, the Senators had a great year finishing second by a game. Wynn probably would have won 15 to 20 and he would have finished with about 315 wins.

Enjoy.

Revised from a note in the Bob Lemon thread, adding Grimes (who has worked his way back onto my ballot):

Top 10 ERA+ AND Top 10 IP

BoLemon (3-4-4-5-6).... (1-1-1-1-2-3-4-5-10)
EpRixey (2-2-3-4-5-6-8) (1-3-3-3-4-7-8-8-9-9)
BGrimes (1-3-4-4-5-7).. (1-1-1-3-3-4-7-9-9-9)

ERA+ seasons (top 7, minimum 200 innings)
BoLemon 144 39 36 34 33 13 12
EpRixey 143 42 39 36 29 24 13
Grimes 152 44 38 36 31 23 08

Also, Rixey has a 144 in 162 IP, and a 115 in 177 IP, and a 144 in 115 IP, which has no match in the other two careers.

So at 162 IP minimum (a familiar number), listing all ERA+ season qualifiers of at least 100:
BoLemon 144 39 36 34 33 13 12 08 03 01
EpRixey 144 43 42 39 36 29 24 15 15 13 10 09 09
BGrimes 152 44 38 36 31 23 08 08 08 03

Rixey pitched for so long that he tends to get compared to the all-time greats. And of course he's a bit short there.
But then you have Ferrells and Lemons come along, and they're seen as "big peak guys" because that's almost all they have. And Rixey - not much of a peak guy compared to his career-IP peers, but a damn good one compared to the next tier - gets a little lost in the shuffle on some ballots.
Rixey also missed his age 27 season to WW I, and a shortened age 28 season upon returning.

Lemon was a better hitter than Grimes, who was a better hitter than Rixey, but I don't think it's enough to overcome Rixey's overall pitching edge.


Vote Rixey in '67!!

Constructing a ballot will be easy. It's choosing the PHoMers that will be very hard. Enos Slaughter and Addie Joss are the obvious candidates, next in line on my ballot. But I want to think about each in light of their positional peers:

Slaughter versus Harry Stovey, Averill and Duffy
Joss versus Bob Lemon and Dick Redding

And Joe Gordon and Stan Hack remain in the mix. They are all down around 10-20 or 25 on my ballot, among the lower rated (on my ballot) to ever go PHoM.

As KJOK has noted, Trouppe's playing time was boosted by his appearances at other positions. Not only did he play the outfield, he spent at least one full season in Mexico as a 3B, and parts of others as well.

Also, and this is pure speculation, but I think the smaller, more flexible NgL rosters may well have demanded catchers play more often than in the majors, though perhaps not always at catcher.

Trouppe's playing time was boosted by his appearances at other positions. Not only did he play the outfield, he spent at least one full season in Mexico as a 3B, and parts of others as well.

Well, that makes him a much trickier candidate. In my opinion, his bat is good enough to be a serious catcher candidate, but tossing in the other positions actually makes his bat look less impressive. Its the same reason that's hurting Bresnahan. Trouppe caught a higher percentage of games than Bresnahan did, but Bresnahan hit quite a bit better than Trouppe.

Quick question:

If we do a 1-week-discussion, 1-week ballot format for 1967, then balloting will end on the day after Christmas. If we extend either disucssion of balloting by one week, the last day of voting will be the day after New Years. Generally we have postponed balloting through the winter holidays, but if we wait for balloting until after New Years 2006, then the 1967 results won't come in until Jan. 9, or four weeks from now.

I was just wondering what Joe and John are thinking about this.

I would favor staying on schedule for 1967 -- with no new candidates and knowing that we are going to go farther into the backlog than we will go in this election, it seems like people who will be checking out for a portion of the holidays woiuld be well able to cast their ballots early without concern.

If we are going to extend things, I would favor having two weeks of discussion for the 1968 ballot so that the whole discussion time is not in the week between Christmas and New Year's Day. Richie Ashburn is a candidate who will call for discussion, I think.

We three kings of initial base are
Looking for meritorious honor
Prime/Peak and career,
Rate and combo here!
Following the previous stars
Oh oh ….
Stars of wonder,
Stars of might,
Stars of hitting beauty bright
Slugging leading
RBIs proceeding
Elect us before we’re out of sight!

The potential first base triumvirate: Beckley, Sisler, Chance.

Well, I mention three, but in our collective minds to date, Sisler and Beckley have many backers, but the Peerless Leader is barely mentioned. Here is how I see them:

Beckley is the obvious candidate for strict careerists. No argument.

However, if someone votes on ‘career with a high replacement level’, the answer is much different!

From the old ‘positions thread – 1B’, here are the career win shares and batting win shares per 162 game that someone posted:
Player…. Beckley Sisler Chance
Career WS 279 ….260 ….214
BWS rate . 18.9 ...20.5 …26.9
(effctv yrs) 14.8 ..12.7 ….8.0

If your base rate is zero, then Beckley has the most WS, so he had the best career. What if we assume a mediocre first basemen could generate 10 BWS/year? Subtracting 10 BWS/yr from each base rate gives modified Career WS of

Player…. Beckley Sisler Chance
ModCarWS 132 ..133 ….135
ModWSrt .. 8.9 ...10.5 …16.9
(effctv yrs) 14.8 ..12.7 …8.0
………….. Wow, that’s a close one.

But I’ll spend more time here on the peak/prime candidates, Sisler vs Chance; they are more similar, and George is creeping closer to being elected.

First, defense. Sisler’s rep is outstanding, and we shouldn’t completely discount that. The numerical defensive data we have show he was much better before his eye injury than afterward, and I suspect that the anecdotes are mainly based on some of the superlative plays he made early on. I even read in one book (Mac Davis, 1970, Baseball’s top 50 players) that he once fielded a grounder, tossed underhand toward the pitcher, realized too late the pitcher wasn’t covering, and caught his own lob toss (believe it if you can)!

BP data show Sisler to be a career avg 1Bman (“rate” = 100), with Chance very good at 105. Sisler has as much positive value in his best 5 years (FRAA +66) as Chance. Win Shares shows much the same; Chance better grade (B to C-) overall, partly based on Sisler’s poorer later years. On the other hand, Chance’s defensive rep is also excellent, and the teams he played on were as good defensively as any club ever was. Plus he caught for 1/7th of his career. So let’s call it a small edge for Frank and move along.

Sisler’s stats in his prime LOOK much better than Chance’s, but that is misleading because of three factors:
1. offensive context
2. overemphasis on batting average
3. Chance missed more games each year and so didn’t put up great single-season ##s.

If we use RCAA from the Lee Sinins Encyclopedia, here are their top 5 years
Sisler.. 89 84 49 48 44 (701 g)
Chance 73 62 54 43 29 (619 g)

Clear edge to George. But if you extend out to their primes, it’s much closer:

Sisler.. 1915-1922 ..370 RCAA
Chance 1898-1911 ..348 RCAA

And runs were slightly harder to come by in 1905. And first base was a slightly more defensive position.

Now, it’s true that Chance’s prime was 14 years, and Sisler’s only 8. But Sisler didn’t contribute anything above average beyond 8 years, so the results would be the same if we extended George’s ‘prime’.

In Sisler’s prime, 1915-22, he was 5th in the majors in RCAA (behind Ruth Cobb Speaker Hornsby). From 1903-08, Chance was 3rd in the majors in RCAA (behind Wagner and Lajoie). Which is the better accomplishment?

Sisler was a fine baserunner, but Chance was even more valuable. Chance was 2nd in MLB in his prime in SB (Wagner). Sisler was 3rd (Cobb, Carey).

But when you slice all the numbers, Sisler does come out ahead. Because Chance missed a lot of time. And here is the (I think) the most crucial item we ought to look at: Was Chance’s Time Missed His Own Fault (injuries, etc), or Beyond His Control (Willard Brown, Gavy Cravath, Wilie McCovey)? <u> I submit that Frank Chance was a great ballplayer who in most other universes would have played many more games and won more games for his team. </u>

Frank Chance career
1898, age 20 – backup catcher for Cubs (Orphans). Completely outplays the starter, but hey, he’s a 20 yr old rookie, whaddaya want.
1899 – Ditto. Can’t get PA, even for a bad team with a poor catcher.
1900 (contraction). Ditto again. OBP more than 100 pts above the starting catcher.
1901 moved to OF, plays almost half-time, despite a .376 OBP, and the rest of the team’s OBP is under .300.
1902 splits time at1B/C. Completely outplays others in those positions.
1903 gets a full time job at 1B. Finishes 3rd in league in OBP. Team makes a great leap forward to 82-56 record, mostly gains in offense.
1904 a fine year
1905 takes over as manager in late June. Team is 10 games out, in 4th place. Team gets somewhat better, finishes 13G out in 3rd place. Chance leads league in OBP. He only plays 118 games; not sure if begins to play less when he became manager.
1906 and 07 – dynasty. Cubbies kill everyone. Both years, Chance is probably the best position player on the team.
1908 Cubs win narrow (1 game!) pennant race over the Pirates and Giants. They were 3 games back on Sep 15.
1909 Chance playes great, but only in 95 games. Don’t know why. Pirates run away with 110 wins.
1910 Cubs back on top, easily, Chance down to 88 games.
1911 (age 33) A bench player; 3rd string catcher, although he was MUCH better when he played than the other two. Cubs fall to 2nd. Chance managed them one more year.

The Cubs played in 4 World Series in this time. Chance played in 20 of the 21 W.S. games. He stole 10 bases, being caught only once, with an OBP of .402. In an extreme pitching environment; this great hitting team only scored 75 runs in 21 W.S. games.

So Frank played when he needed to. He played Very well when they Really needed him to. The team never lost a close pennant race in his days. They were arguably the most dominant dynasty EVER, and how many of their guys have we honored? Chance managed the team, and while we give no bonus credit for managing, how many more games might Chance have played if he didn’t have the rigors of managing as well? Managing may well have cost him hits, runs scored, stolen bases, etc. And in other scenarios, he could easily have been a full time player at age 21, instead of waiting until he was 25. Once a full timer, his team caught fire, leading the league often in offense, and becoming a such a great defensive unit that every pitcher who showed up there magically became an ace. He was called the Peerless Leader for a reason; his excellent on-field play as well as being the manager. Chance’s career OWP is very high on the list of great first sackers; barely behind Foxx, about even with Greenberg and Dick Allen, ahead of Roger Connor, Killeberew, Carew and gobs of others. Oh, and he played 14% of his career behind the plate. Only his lack of playing time makes him a borderline candidate, and I believe there are good reasons not to hold this too strongly against him.

On my ballot, Chance is dead even with the other two members of the first base triumvirate. May we consider one day honoring all three kings together.

Backlog Time!!

Prelim


PHoM: Earl Averill & Hilton Smith

1. George Van Haltren
2. Eppa Rixey
3. Joe Medwick
4. Jake Beckley
5. Mickey Welch
6. Willard Brown
7. Biz Mackey
8. Cool Papa Bell
9. Dobie Moore
10. George Sisler
11. Tommy Leach
12. Hugh Duffy
13. Edd Roush
14. Sam Rice
15. Quincy Trouppe
16. Clark Griffith
17. Cupid Childs
18. Jack Powell
19. Pete Browning
20. Jimmy Ryan

21-25. Kiner, Lemon, H. Smith, Streeter, White
26-30. Doyle, Strong, Willis, Gleason, Doerr

I was just wondering what Joe and John are thinking about this.

Actually, I'm thinking about our annual HOF ballot after next week, then start 1968 after that.

1967 Ballot Prelim:
Another raid of my PHOM backlog. Enos Slaughter leads six HOM/PHOM trying to emerge from my backlog: Slaughter, Vance, Beckwith, Jennings, Herman, and Terry while Joe Medwick, Willard Brown, Dobie Moore, Ralph Kiner, Jose Mendez, and Wilbur Cooper are making their case among eligibles.

Let's see if my consensus score can get worse.

1. Mickey Welch - PHOM 1901
2. Charley Jones - PHOM 1906
3. Pete Browning - PHOM 1921
4. Charlie Keller - PHOM 1957
5. Hugh Duffy - PHOM 1918
6. Bucky Walters - PHOM 1958
7. Quincy Troupe (reexamining) - PHOM 1960
8. Alejandro Ohms - PHOM 1964
9. Cupid Childs - PHOM 1932
10. Bob Lemon - PHOM 1965
11. Vic Willis - PHOM 1942
12. Jose Mendez
13. Tommy Leach - PHOM 1966
14. Dobie Moore
15. Luke Easter
16. Burleigh Grimes - PHOM 1961
17. George Burns - PHOM 1938
18. Willard Brown
19. Frank Chance
20. Wilbur Cooper

21. Joe Medwick - LF
22. George Van Haltren - PHOM 1939 - CF
23. Edd Roush - PHOM 1940 - CF
24. Biz Mackey - C
25. Dick Redding - P
26. Ralph Kiner - LF
27. Gavy Cravath - RF
28. George Sisler - 1B
29. Rube Waddell - P
30. Larry Doyle - 2B
31. Clark Griffith - P
32. Roger Bresnahan - C
33. Cool Papa Bell - CF
34. Urban Shocker - P
35. Jimmy Ryan - CF
36. Bob Elliott - 3B
37. Dizzy Trout - P
38. Ben Taylor - 1B
39. Eppa Rixey - P
40. Dick Lundy - SS
41. Bill Monroe - 2B
42. Jack Fournier - 1B
43. Joe Gordon - 2B
44. Wally Berger - CF
45. Al Rosen - 3B
46. Wally Schang - C
47. Don Newcombe - P
48. John McGraw - 3B
49. Fielder Jones - CF
50. Lon Warneke - P

The top 50 is a little shy of shortstops, but 51-55 include Herman Long, Vern Stephens, and Joe Sewell (plus Dizzy Dean and Carl Mays).

PHOM / non-HOM:
See my ballot.
HOM/non-PHOM: Al Spalding, Joe Jackson, Rube Foster, Bobby Wallace, Max Carey, Red Faber, Lip Pike, Bill Terry, Dazzy Vance, John Beckwith, Billy Herman, Stan Hack, Hughie Jennings, Enos Slaughter, Red Ruffing.
Terry, Vance, Beckwith, Herman, Hack, Jennings, Slaughter, and Ruffing are all on the cusp. I am reading the 1905/1906 threads to get a handle on Spalding.

I'm thinking about our annual HOF ballot after next week, then start 1968 after that.

I'll second that. Do we vote for current eligibles only OR can we vote for players the writers have rejected, such as Lou Whitaker?
And is it a HoF ballot, 10-man maximum and no minimum, or a HoM 15-man ballot?

Kelly, this is what we did last year:

2005 Hall of Fame Discussion/Ballot

2005 Hall of Fame Results

This year, I'll create separate threads for discussion and ballot.

I would think any players that we have selected to go into the HOF are off limits for 2006, even if they are still on the real ballot (i.e. Blyleven). Make sense?

When is the date for the real HOF announcement, BTW?

so from Dec 26-Jan2 we are doing out HOF ballots, then start again with the 1968 discussion thread on Jan 3rd? sounds good to me.

I think we should consider everyone on the ballot for 2006 John. This exercise is more about who the HOM thinks is worthy on this ballot and if we dont' include Blyleven then it would lose something to the regular observer. Is it possible to get our results put over on the newblog then so that everyone can see our results. Could make for a decent discussion.

As a possible change, why dont' we rank our top ten on the ballot? I woudl do this for two reasons a) it keeps with HOM tradtion and b) it would allow for us to see where we stand on a lot of guys. Last year no one got between 5 and 18 votes out of 20 votes. However, this isnt' too big a deal I guess.

I think we should consider everyone on the ballot for 2006 John. This exercise is more about who the HOM thinks is worthy on this ballot and if we dont' include Blyleven then it would lose something to the regular observer.

I think you're right, Mark. That's how the Internet HOF used to work it.

Is it possible to get our results put over on the newblog then so that everyone can see our results. Could make for a decent discussion.

Don't see why not. Good idea.

As a possible change, why dont' we rank our top ten on the ballot? I woudl do this for two reasons a) it keeps with HOM tradtion and b) it would allow for us to see where we stand on a lot of guys. Last year no one got between 5 and 18 votes out of 20 votes. However, this isnt' too big a deal I guess.

I'm not opposed to this, but we probably should keep this on the same level as the HOF.

Well, I definitely agree that anyone not in the HOM should be up for vote.
If we keep 'electing' the same people, so be it. That would say something right there...

Goog point John, it was just a suggestion. One that I realized wasn't as bright as i had originally thought while I was writing it.

You know in some ways I am more excited about this than the 1967 ballot even though we should get two more backlog guys.

I'm not expecting any votes for the new candidates, but they deserve some sort of mention. (Either that or I need something to occupy myself while I procrastinate on my holiday shopping :-))

Ned Garver -- I must admit that I hadn't heard of the guy. Credited with 20 of the Brown's 52 victories in 1951. Had led the league in ERA+ the year before.

Ted Kluszewski -- The sleeveless jerseys in Cincy were designed to show off his big arms. Pretty darn good five year peak but had trouble staying healthy after that. Four straight years of 35+ HR while having more HR than K's each year. He did return to form for the Go-Go Sox in the 1959 Series, though.

Jackie Jensen -- Quite well known for a 187 WS guy. Young CF prospect who was beat out for the job by Mickey Mantle, though he did end up stealing an MVP from him several years later. Fear of flying prematurely ended his career.

Earl Torgeson -- Patient hitter with some pop in his best years. Member of 48-Braves and 59-Sox pennant winners.

Elmer Valo -- Native of Czechoslovakia. Not much power but a career OBP of .398. Solid starter in his 20s, pinch hitter extraordinaire in his late 30s. Teams he played for had an uncanny knack for changing cities. He was part of three franchise moves in seven years.

Mike Garcia -- You know you have a great pitching staff when your 3rd/4th starter snatches up two ERA titles and two shutout titles. He got a bit of a late start and wasn't effective after age 30 or he'd be a candidate for sure.

Hank Bauer -- Played in 53 world series games including a 17 game hitting streak. A very good and very consistent player and a testament to the depth of the Yankee juggernaut of his day. He just doesn't have the peak or career to garner much support in the voting here. As a manager, he has won 94+ games for three seasons running including a sweep of the Dodgers in the WS last year.

Howie posted a question on the Results Discussion Thread asking voters who have Lemon and Rixey far apart for their reasons why. Here are mine.

My system starts by looking at 5 measures for pitchers: 1. career win shares; 2. win shares in 3 consecutive years (peak) 3. win shares in best 3 seasons (peak); 4. win shares over best 7 years (prime); 5. win shares per 275 innings (seasonal). These are weighted and compared to a theoretical maximum pitcher. Generally, 60% of maximum means you will be elected to the HoM at some point. As workloads have decreased, the theoretical maximum is reduced. I give credit for being among the best 4 starters in one's league by STATS or win shares. I also take into account Chris J.'s Run Support Index and Defensive Support. Also, if I have the info, I will take into account the pitcher's opponents/opposing pitchers. Oh, and Grey/Black Ink is also considered. And I give war credit. (Yes, the spreadsheet is a little overwhelming sometimes.)

Anyway, Rixey does very well in several areas. Not so well in others. The following rankings include Jose Mendez, Dick Redding, and Leroy Matlock. If you discount the MLEs, then move the following places 3 spots for the most part.
Career: <u>Rixey</u> has the most among eligibles. <u>Lemon</u> is 21st. That is a big edge, but career has the smallest weighting for me.

Peak: <u>Rixey</u> has a consecutive peak score of 73 and a any-3-yr peak of 76. The 73 ties him for 20th with Pennock, Newsom, and Rommel. The 76 puts him 25th. <u>Lemon</u> is 15th with 82 and 21st with 82. These scores have more weight than career.

Prime: The most weight in my system. <u>Rixey</u> is 16th with a 164. <u>Lemon</u> is 10th with a 176.

Seasonal: Weighted similarly to career - intended to balance the long career players who do well in careers with the Dizzy Dean types tho burn brightly, but quickly. <u>Rixey</u> does poorly here, 29th at 19.3 per 275 innings. <u>Lemon</u> is 9th at 22.4 per 275 innings.

STATS All-Stars: <u>Rixey</u> and <u>Lemon</u> are among 5 with 5 such honors. Also Shocker, Gomez, and Grimes. Carl Mays has 6.

Win Shares All-Stars: Again, <u>Rixey</u> and <u>Lemon</u> do well here. <u>Lemon</u> is the only one with 7, while <u>Rixey</u> is tied with Grimes and Wilbur Cooper with 6.

Win Shares Best in League: Lemon has one, while Rixey has none.

Run Support and Defensive Support: <u>Lemon</u> has great offensive support, <u>Rixey</u> has very poor offensive support. Both have fantastic defensive support.

Grey Ink: Push, Lemon 179, Rixey 175

Black Ink: Not a push, more of a pushover. Lemon 44, Rixey 10. Sorry.

They are very similar so far. I am not getting into the question about who each faced because I only did the first 2/3 of Rixey's career and none of Lemon's. There is one last thing that I mentioned above and that is the maximum that the pitcher is compared to changes over time. It is higher in Rixey's time compared to Lemon's time. Therefore, the same statistical achievement means less for Rixey because the theoretical maximum for him is greater. If I didn't adjust the maximum, Rixey would be 25th or 26th. It comes down to a lot of small advantages and a slightly different context outweighing Rixey's career numbers.

There is very little difference in my system between Lemon (#10) and Joe Gordon (#43). The biggest deal in my system is prime followed by peak and those are not Rixey's strong suits.

PS: I just realized I had not downwardly adjusted Dizzy Trout's war efforts sufficiently. He now drops down behind George Uhle around 65th/70th.

Hey, it works for me. Your milage, of course, may vary.

Reasons to vote for Bob Johnson - my periodic rant about the old Philadelphia Athletic star.

1. In Bill James New Historical Baseball Abstract the best OF arm in the 1940s is said to be either Indian Bob Johnson or Dom DiMaggio.

2. Also according to BJNHBA 4th All-time in OF assists per 1000 innings, sharing the list with names like Jesse Barfield, Roberto Clemente, Paul Waner.

3. Based on (1) and (2) above, I have a hard time believing he graded out as poorly as he did in LF defense by Win Shares. Shibe Park in his time was a very large left field to cover.

4. Teams combined for 15 less actual wins vs. Pyth Wins over course of his career.

5. Win Shares underrepresents his value. The teams over his 5 consecutive year "peak" (1936-1940) had a winning percentage of .353 . The teams over his 10 consecutive year "prime" (1933-1942) had a winning percentage of .390 . Hard to find HOM candidates stuck exclusively on such poor teams. In fact, most candidates perform on teams during their peak and prime well over .500 .

Interesting post, Kelly.

Is it possible that Rixey would rate higher in your system by having quit much earlier?
I ask because it would help his seasonal number, yet you care least about career win shares.

Also, how much more important should "three best consecutive years" be, for instance, than "three best years, period?"

And finally, if Win Shares gets tweaked again next year, isn't it possible that many voters will wish in vain that they could now bounce someone out of the HOM that already has been elected?

I stand - so far, at least - by my sense that players like Rixey tend to match players like Lemon for (non-consecutive peak), pitch far longer and respectably well in those years, and yet get little boost from those years while at the same time being penalized for having a lower career rate.

That's my key question: Is it possible that there are systems out there that would rate a Rixey higher if you take only their "Lemon-like years" and throw out the rest entirely? Similar peak, similar rate, in that case?

>And finally, if Win Shares gets tweaked again next year, isn't it possible that many voters will wish in vain that they could now bounce someone out of the HOM that already has been elected?

None of the above may be on my ballot this year, possibly as high as #2.

Before this train to oblivion gets away from me, I'd like to ask everyone to consider Marvin Williams. MLE estimates show him as possibly comparable to Lou Whitaker in value (if not in style). The guy seems worth more than the passing glance he's getting.

Here's a rundown of QT's positions. I don't have G at each, but I can at least offer up when and where.

YEAR LG   POS
1930 NNL  OF/C
1931 NNL  C/OF
1932 NNL  C/OF
1933 NNL  C/OF
1933 N.D. ???? 
1934 N.D. ????
1935 N.D. ????
1935 WEST C/OF
1936 N.D. ????
1936 WEST C/OF
1937 WBA  PUGILIST
1938 NAL  C/OF
1939 NAL  C/OF
1939 MEX  C/2B/SS/OF
1940 MEX  3B
1941 MEX  C/3B
1941 PRWL C
1942 MEX  C
1942 PRWL C
1943 MEX  C
1944 MEX  C/3B/1B/OF
1945 NAL  C/OF
1946 NAL  C/OF
1947 NAL  C/OF
1947 PRWL C
1948 NAL  C/OF
1949 NNL  C
1949 CPL  C/OF
1949 CWL  C
1950 MEX  C/3B
1951 MEX  C
1952 AL   C
1952 AA   C

Like I said, I don't have breakouts about how many games he played at each position.

Given that, however, I think it's obvious that he was a catcher first and foremost. Moreso than Bresnahan, certainly, and moreso than Joe Torre. In virtually every year but two he was primarily a catcher. I do think that the versatility was as much a product of his being in the Negro Leagues as anything else, and I think that his frequent appearances elsewhere probably did offer him a chance to "rest" while keeping his bat in the game.

Howie/not-Grandma, I don't understand the ground rules for the HOF ballot week. If we're using the HOF eligibility criteria (5-20 years retired, not yet eliminated by getting <5% on previous HOF ballot) than none of our current HOM eligibles qualify. If we allow everyone to qualify, then my #1 pick is Parisian Bob Caruthers, who's not in the HOF, ought to be the HOF and is better than Blyleven, who's probably my #2, although I need to think about Joe Start, Cal McVey, Mickey Welch, Shoeless Joe and Eddie Cicotte -- Rose would be below all those 5.

Howie/not-Grandma, I don't understand the ground rules for the HOF ballot week. If we're using the HOF eligibility criteria (5-20 years retired, not yet eliminated by getting <5% on previous HOF ballot) than none of our current HOM eligibles qualify.

Correct. We would only be able to vote for a player made eligible by the HOF for 2006.

Kelly #13
They were regulars at any early age:
Rixey: 21, straight out of college, after graduation from UVA
Ruffing: 20.
Wynn: 22.

BB-REF shows Rixey "Attnd" (playing, I think) at U Virginia only 1911-1912, two baseball seasons at ages old 19 and old 20 or one academic year between birthdays 20 and 21.
MLB records of U Virginia players (data from the SABR Collegiate Baseball Cmte)

Rixey's career record is relatively poor because of his
<li>innings or earned runs performance in the three years after that excellent start at age 21 (1913-1915),
<li>many many unearned runs in three years the Phillies were strong (1915-1917) --this re poor W-L "percentage" and "Fibonacci" ratings--
<li>IP and ER performance in the three years after he entered military service (1918-1920).

The first qualifies that "early age" significantly; I don't know whether there is anything HOM-significant there. The second is amazing: UER almost half of ER! on a contending team. The third is a fertile field for Rixey supporters to make hay, in my opinion. It is those ten years --1916-1925 at ages 25 to 34-- where Rixey may look HOM-worthy from one perspective and merely inconsistent from another.

No system should make Rixey's career look much better by chopping of his 40s (330ip with ERA+ just over 110) or his late 30s (1100ip with ERA+ just under 110). His full-career ERA+ is only 115.

Why did one get 300 wins and two others, not? I think there are a few factors.
1. The change in importance of numbers and quantifying baseball history. In Rixey's time, the hallowed hallmarks had not been established. There were no magic round numbers yet. Sam Rice retired with 2987 hits and very few people cared when Cobb got #4000.

I recall an article on Sam Crawford's 3000 hits, a longtime ambition, in Baseball Magazine probably 1917. The news was that Crawford would return for another season after all.

--
TomH #20
In Sisler’s prime, 1915-22, he was 5th in the majors in RCAA (behind Ruth Cobb Speaker Hornsby). From 1903-08, Chance was 3rd in the majors in RCAA (behind Wagner and Lajoie). Which is the better accomplishment?

Because 8 seasons is not 6, we need to see Sisler's for 6 and Chance for 8.

But when you slice all the numbers, Sisler does come out ahead. Because Chance missed a lot of time. And here is the (I think) the most crucial item we ought to look at: Was Chance’s Time Missed His Own Fault (injuries, etc), or Beyond His Control (Willard Brown, Gavy Cravath, Wilie McCovey)?

He was a fighter, and fights may cause both suspensions and injuries.

Try again. "Live preview" includes a live link.
MLB records of U Virginia players (data from the SABR Collegiate Baseball Cmte)

Karl,

I think we are doing thsi exercise not to say everyone who we feel should be in the HOF, but to shed some light on what the HOM thinks about the current ballot. I do like the idea of having guys like Grich and Whitaker avaiable to us to vote for, but at the same time if we are trying to ape the BBWAA in this exercise, maybe we shouldn't include the ineligible guys.

However, if we do is there anywhere I can get a list of prominent ineligibles that would be eligible if they had kept receiving the 5% of the vote? I am afraid I would miss someone. Is there anyone else prominent besides Grich and Whitaker?

Howie,

I have Lemon above Rixey and I don't like to use career WS rates because of the very reason you mention, it unfairly punishes guys who play for a long time at a rate below their peak. However, I don't think that Rixey was as god as Lemon at their best and WS and WARP agree with me. Looking jsut at their best 3,5,7 years I bleive that Lemon is a clear though not dominating winner over Rixey.

One also must remember that pitchers in Rixey's time had larger workloads adn that Rixey played a significant portion of his career during the dead-ball era, a time when a pitcher didn't need to worry about every pitch being hit out of the park. So to some degree Lemon is at a disadvantage if you are using a metric like WS to measure peak and prime. Lemon was also a very very good hitter and Rixey was not.

However, I am a Rixey fan. I like him better than Ruffing and will have him at #14 this year with Lemon at #3. So maybe I am not the type of voter that you were talking to.

Prelim:

I'm confident that my top three have been overlooked and pretty sure that I like the next three or four better than the remaining candidates. After that, it is hopelessly close. I think there is very little difference between number 8 and number 35.

(1) Moore (2nd)
(2) Van Haltren (5th)
(3) Rixey (4th)
(4) Oms (6th)
(5) Duffy (9th)--Slides up a few positions as I downgrade other guys slightly.
(6) Lemon (7th)-- Fact that his peak numbers aren't that much stronger than Rixey or Grimes gives pause, but they are better and fit with the other mid-career pitchers we have elected.
(7) Roush (10th)-- I know he missed a lot of games and played in a relatively weak league, but he's a solid CF with a relatively long career who consistently ranked among the top few guys in his league in OPS+.
(8) Sisler (11th)--Not that different that guys like Chance and Keller who rank ten or twenty spots below, but small differences matter. Might move down in future elections.
(9)Trouppe (8th)--Still trying to get a handle on the playing time and positions questions.
(10) Childs (13th)
(11) Gordon (12th)
(12) Beckley (14th)
(13) Medwick (16th)
(14) Mendez (15th)
(15) Elliott (18th)
(16) Doerr (17th)
(17) Sewell (19th)
(18) Bob Johnson (20th)
(19) Grimes (unranked/about 30th)
(20) Chance (unranked/ about 25th)

Next 10 (in no particular order): Bresnahan, Doyle, Stephens, Leach, Kiner, C. Jones, Ryan, Shocker, Mays, Redding.

Is there anyone else prominent besides Grich and Whitaker?

You may laugh, but Joe Carter. Here in Toronto in 1993, it seemed like he was a lock for the Hall. Kind of like Whitaker and Trammell in Detroit in the mid to late 80s.

However, if we do is there anywhere I can get a list of prominent ineligibles that would be eligible if they had kept receiving the 5% of the vote? I am afraid I would miss someone. Is there anyone else prominent besides Grich and Whitaker?

Check the HOF voting page and look for recent names under 5%:
HOF Voting History

LWhitaker, BGrich, KHernandez, DSteib, DStrawberry, DwEvans, DMartinez, JCarter, FValenzuela, JKey, RGuidry, JClark, GNettles, DQuisenberry, DaEvans, TSimmons and more.

Simmons, Quiz, Witaker, Grich (maybe Nettles with w position bonus) seem to be the class of this group. I doubt anyone else would get a vote here.

Also, is Darrel Evans soemone who would still be eligible? Or has he been away too long?

Hernandez probably stayed on the ballot longer than any of these other guys. He is certainly worthy of consideration.

But of all the players who are not yet 15 years out (or thereabouts, I'm not sure about this) Grich is the obvious choice, then Quisenberry who to me is right there with Sutter if not Goose, and sure, Whitaker and Simmons, but both Evans go ahead of Nettles.

I would say that Grich, Whitaker, and Darrel Evans should be in

I think that Quis, Nettles and Simmons are really obrderline, maybe just out.

I think that Hernandez is just out and that Dwight Evans is even further out.

Howie,

Thank you for your response. Your first post about Rixey did get me thinking about him again, which is always a good thing. I was not as clear as I should have been on my post (Serves me right for writing so late at night.) I tried to find appropriate weights for career and seasonal rates so that they would balance each other out, so that, for example, Beckley or Van Haltren would not have too significant an advantage over Jennings or McGraw. These are the two lesser important measures compared to peak and prime.
Also, I forgot to state that 3 year consecutive and best-3-years are weighted the same.

I ran the numbers for Rixey as if he had retired after the 1930 season. I could not see him retiring after the 10-13 year as he had just gone 19-18 and still had an ERA quite a bit below league average. But after another 9-13 year with an ERA over 5, I could see retirement. So, I took out 20 win shares from career and 332.66 innings from 1931-1933. It doesn't change anything significantly because his overall career rate of 19.4 WS/275 innings in 4494 innings is not much effected by removing 332 innings at a rate of 16.5 WS/season.

Rixey's biggest problem for me is that he did not accumulate a lot of win shares for the number of innings he pitched. Looking at 1921 to 1925, his stretch of 129, 113, 139, 136, and 142 ERA+ seasons, he earned 118 win shares in 1449 innings. That is 22.4 win shares per 275 innings. That is Lemon's career rate. That is Rixey's best 5 year stretch, he went 100-71 2.78 ERA in a league with an ERA around a run higher. Because he did not "earn" or was not "awarded" win shares at a high rate, his peak and prime scores are not that high.

Compared to Lemon's 1948-1952 when he had 144, 133, 113, 108, 134 ERA+s. Lemon earned 126 win shares in 1434.33 innings. That is 24.2 win shares per season. He went 104-60 3.12 in a league with an ERA around .80 runs higher.

Lemon is just a bit better.

I thought I would examine how the two pitchers looked outside of various primes.
Outside these years, their records are Rixey: 166-180 3.24 and Lemon: 103-68 3.35 ERA. That is a significant difference outside of those 5 years.
Or any best 7 years: Rixey is 144, 143, 142, 139, 136, 129, 124 ERA+s and <u>123-99 .554 2.55 ERA</u>. If you drop the 144 ERA+ 10-10 year for the 25-13 113 ERA+ year, you get <u>138-102 .575 2.71</u>.
Lemon is 144, 139, 136, 134, 133, 113, 112 ERA+ and <u>151-82 .648 3.04</u>. Remember the different contexts for these pitchers of course.
Records outside of these 7 years: Rixey 128-149 .462 3.51 ERA and Lemon 56-46 .549 3.67. So outside of prime, Rixey is Lemon plus 72-103 .411 3.41 in 1599 innings. Per 275 innings, that is 6 years at 12.4 - 17.7 or rounded to 12-18. The ERA doesn't make a whole lot sense because of cross-era comparison.
Outside of his prime, Rixey doesn't offer a whole lot and his prime is not that big compared to his time period. 1912 through 1933 encompasses the primes of Walter Johnson, Stan Coveleski, Pete Alexander, Dazzy Vance, Wilbur Cooper, Lefty Grove, Burleigh Grimes, Ted Lyons (sort of), plus Hippo Vaughan, Dick Redding, Carl Mays, Urban Shocker, and Jose Mendez. I know I am forgetting some. His prime is not remarkable compared with them and his career numbers are not remarkable compared to them.

This debate is exciting.

I noticed one other thing with Lemon and Rixey. 9% of Lemon's career value is in his hitting while 0% of Rixey's is. Their career rates are about 10% different. Rixey loses out on rate because he couldn't hit and Lemon could do it well. Something else to think about.

OTOH the big argument in favor of Rixey is Red Ruffing.

OTOH the big argument in favor of Rixey is Red Ruffing.

Ruffing and Lemon could hit better than Rixey. I know its not a big effect, but with these borderline guys its often little things that make a difference.

Just want to make sure we aren't giving Ruffing a boost for his hitting and then forgetting about that boost when we use his induction as a reason to induct Rixey.

If you examine the records of Rixey and Lemon at BP carefully, you'll see that Rixey was, at his best, a better _pitcher_ than Lemon. His peak value as a player is a bit lower than Lemon's, however, because he is so much worse as a hitter and slightly worse as a fielder. Win shares, by silently subtracting a pitcher's bad hitting from his pitching win shares, can sometimes obscure a pitcher's effectiveness as a pitcher, even if it accurately reflects his overall value as a player.

I think the study of Rixey vs. Lemon is valuable and should continue, but I'll mention that Burleigh Grimes really ought to be in the conversation as well. WS sees his non-continuous peak and prime as better than Lemon's, and he has a lot of career value. Grimes is hurt by interspersing mediocre or bad seasons among his excellent ones, but he has ten excellent seasons and 12-13 good ones, which ought to get him more support than he is now receiving.

Paul,
regarding Rixey's years at UVA. I assumed he graduated. I checked Deadball Stars NL, which says he waited to join the Phillies in 1912 until he graduated with a degree in chemsitry. Rixey went to UVA to be a chemist and, at 6'5", he played some basketball. An NL umpire coached basketball and baseball at UVA and he saw Rixey's athletism. He encouraged Rixey to try out for the Phillies, who signed him in 1912 and allowed him to finish school. According to Deadball Stars, he only joined the Phillies because his family needed the money for his younger brother's education and the family bank was in financial trouble. I think the dates at BB-Ref refer to the years he played baseball at UVA, maybe?
Anyone else know anything more?

Regarding the career achievements. I had not heard that about Crawford. I was basing it on Sam Rice's comments after he retired, that if he had known getting 3000 hits would be such a big deal, he would have stayed around to get them. I would amend my previous comment to players may have had personal goals or may have cared about the Round Numbers individually, but there was not the Round Number Fascination that occurred after the founding of the HOF and the growth in interest in baseball history. It wasn't until 1951 that Turkin and Thompson put out their Official Encyclopedia of Baseball, the first modern source for individual player season and career records.

Let me second Chris' touting of Grimes. He is on my ballot's fringes.

Comparing the three by my measures (and Cooper and Ruffing for good measure).

Career:
Cooper: 266
Grimes: 286
Lemon: 232
Rixey: 315
Ruffing: 322

Peak (3 yr non-consecutive):
Cooper: 86
Grimes: 92
Lemon: 82
Rixey: 76
Ruffing: 75

Peak (3 straight years):
Cooper: 85
Grimes: 72
Lemon: 82
Rixey: 73
Ruffing: 72

Prime (7 yr non-consecutive)
Cooper: 179
Grimes: 181
Lemon: 176
Rixey: 164
Ruffing: 163

Seasonal (275 innings)
Cooper: 21.0
Grimes: 18.8
Lemon: 22.4
Rixey: 19.4
Ruffing: 20.4

STATS All-Star:
Cooper: 4
Grimes: 5
Lemon: 5
Rixey: 5
Ruffing: 5

Win Shares All-Star / Best in league:
Cooper: 6 / 1
Grimes: 6 / 1
Lemon: 7 / 1
Rixey: 6 / 0
Ruffing: 4 / 1

Seasons of 20 / 25 / 30 win shares:
Cooper: 9 / 4 / 1
Grimes: 7 / 4 / 2
Lemon: 7 / 4 / 1
Rixey: 8 / 2 / 0
Ruffing: 7 / 2 / 0

Black Ink / Grey Ink:
Cooper: 17 / 173
Grimes: 38 / 213
Lemon: 44 / 179
Rixey: 10 / 175
Ruffing: 11 / 257

ERA+:
Cooper: 116
Grimes: 107
Lemon: 119
Rixey: 115
Ruffing: 109

RSI:
Cooper: 99.69
Grimes: 106.67
Lemon: 111.53
Rixey: 95.31
Ruffing: 111.08 (including the Boston years)

Defensive Support:
Cooper: 11.1 (this is rather high)
Grimes: 4.1
Lemon: 9.3
Rixey: 8.6
Ruffing: 0.5 (including the Boston years)

Grimes generally pitched in hitters park, if I remember right.
Lemon and Rixey did NOT, Lemon was a pitcher's park his whole career, and Rixey's years in Cincinnati were all in a pitcher's park per BB-Ref.

Let's not forget wins/losses/and Wins Above Team:
Cooper: 216 - 178 .548 / 19.4
Grimes: 270 - 212 .560 / 22.3
Lemon: 207 - 128 .618 / 14.3
Rixey: 266 - 251 .515 / 8.8
Ruffing: 273 - 225 .548 / 3.2

And they need to hit - OPS+
Cooper: 61
Grimes: 58
Lemon: 82
Rixey: 22
Ruffing: 81

So why are Cooper and Grimes being ignored?
And if anyone wants to put WaRP stuff up, that's cool too.

And speaking of the career guys (Cooper, Grimes and Rixey are not peakers) why is Dick Redding being ignored? Oh, yeah, lack of data.

And speaking of the peakers (Lemon is not a career choice) why is Jose Mendez being ignored?

I would just ask everybody to think how they slot into this list. (I'd say, at the top.)

Cooper isn't ignored on my ballot! I rank them

Lemon
Cooper
Ruffing
Rixey
Grimes

I've seen posts saying we need to balance our HOM representation among all eras, or among all positions. I haven't seen arguments regarding handedness.

Are we too harsh on left-handed pitchers?

To date, we have elected 43 left-handed batters (including Bob Caruthers and Monte Ward, but excluding all other pitchers), 49 right-handed batters (excluding all pitchers), and 3 switch hitters (excluding all pitchers).

We have elected 28 right-handed pitchers, but only 5 lefties (Eddie Plank, Bill Foster, Lefty Grove, Carl Hubbell, and Hal Newhouser). None of those southpaws had much difficulty getting elected. Plank - 2 years, Foster - 3 years, Grove - 1 year, Hubbell - 1 year, Newhouser - 1 year.

Now, I don't think that the number of lefty pitchers should equal the number of righty pitchers. However 5/33 seems to be a bit low. Of course, I have not seen any study on the number of overall lefty pitchers in the league each year. If it is significantly greater than 15%, then I would wonder two things: (1) do uberstats somehow underrate lefties? and (2) why aren't there a few more standout lefties?

The only lefties that received a 20-man vote last year were Eppa Rixey, Rube Waddell, Lefty Gomez, and Wilbur Cooper. Spahn, Koufax, and Ford are coming up, but that's about it through this project, other than Carlton and currently active players (Randy Johnson, Glavine).

Perhaps our borderline standard for lefties should be a little lower? I don't know, but I'm going to look a little more closely.

IN
BGrich, KHernandez, DSteib, DaEvans, TSimmons.

OUT
LWhitaker, DStrawberry, DwEvans, DMartinez, JCarter, FValenzuela, JKey, RGuidry, JClark, GNettles, DQuisenberry.

ok, so the two guys who merit a quick why/wherefore

Stieb: My 33rd ranked starting pitcher by the seasonal adj WS method.

Quis: I've been working on cooking up some reliever stats. What I've seen so far suggests that Quis a) was worse than the average reliever at stranding inherited runners b) worked in much lower leverage than other relif notables c) was very effective at getting outs, but not historically effective, d) made a lot of appearances compared to the norms of his time. I'd rather have Sutter or *gasp* Lee Smith. In fact, I'd probably also prefer Randy Myers, but Randall K. is still a no. I'd probably rather have Tekulve, Henke, and Dave Smith too, based on my early findings.

On the other hand, I'm still not sure what to do with my findings! So maybe I'd better not say much more..

I like to think of myself as hand-blind, thus Wilbur Cooper. ; )

If I recollect (without sourcebooks in front of me), something like 25-30% of all batters are lefties, but the number of lefty innings pitched is lower, maybe 20%???

I think Ron Shandler's annual mentions it in his "toolbox" section every year. This however may only be true for contemporary leagues.

btw, apparently the italian word for left is sinistro (I don't spell well in any language, so pardon if it's wrong), which goes a long way toward explainging the flaky lefty concept.

Some OPS+ numbers:

Player A: 180, 156, 151, 142, 140, 137, 132, 131, 131, 123, 119, 115, 97, 92

Player B: 222, 190, 177, 177, 173, 169, 163, 154, 151, 138, 132, 98

Player C: 183, 168, 168, 158, 157, 156, 154, 147, 132, 106


One of these players is about to be elected to the HOM, supposedly on the strength of his peak/prime.

Derived from the Latin sinister, of course. It's been about 40 years since I took Latin so I could be wrong about all of this - I think the word for "right" is dexter but then the English "right" is more a linguistic cognate for rectus, which I think means "straight."

I've had Rixey well ahead of Lemon all along, and since I work with RA+ rather than ERA+, I've been holding Rixey's unearned runs against him all along. I understand Lemon being ballot-worthy but I don't understand why he's been doing quite as well as he has. My own votes last year (most likely everyone moves up two slots): Rixey 6th, Mendez 11th, Redding 12th, Lemon 14th, Walters 19th, Bridges 23rd.

My recycled from long ago quote about Rixey says, "A successful long-career inning-eater. No peak." But who was that "no peak" meant to contrast him with? It must have been Red Faber. We elected Faber long, long ago, and how much difference was there ever between Rixey and Faber?

Sean: rate stats alone are not everything. A 222 OPS+ in 314 plate appearances in a barely-major league (if that) is not the same as a 180 OPS+ in 677 plate appearances in the 1937 NL. I haven't figured out who Player C is yet, but when I do, I'll ask about his playing time as well.

Ah, the pictures to go with Dr. Chaleeko's L/R words, and make them contemporaries:

Righteous: Christy Mathewson
Sinister: Rube Waddell

I've got player A and player B on my ballot--high on my ballot and in my PHoM--but player A is higher than player B.

C must be Keller, Kiner or Wilson, or maybe Berger, but probably Keller.

OK, strike four I'm out. Charley Jones? Strike five. But I'm still in the batter's box, no, I'm AJ and I'm on first base now! And now (*body slam*) I'm on 2B! But I still don't know who C is.

Player C is Charley Jones, without extra credit for being blacklisted two years in the middle of his prime.

Those 314 PAs in 1882 represent 69 of the team's 80 games, not quite as impressive as 156 of 162, but still a full season. I dropped the partial seasons from the end of Medwick and Browning's careers.

Medwick's case over these two is solely a matter of timelines and guesses about league quality and how that applies to star players. If it was about who actually created the most value for their teams. . . .

Derived from the Latin sinister, of course. It's been about 40 years since I took Latin so I could be wrong about all of this - I think the word for "right" is dexter but then the English "right" is more a linguistic cognate for rectus, which I think means "straight."

Yeah. Also, the french word for left is "gauche", right is "droit" (the source of adroit).

Don't LHP's have a natural platoon disadvantage since most batters are right handed? Sure they can neutralize LHB's which makes them a valuable bullpen asset, but LOOGY's are just for one out. I'm not sure if anyone has ever been used as a ROOGY.

Personally, Faber was a HUGE mistake, but that is water under the bridge, processed by the local water department, used in your home, flushed through the sewer system, processed through the sewage treatment plant, and is now irrigating the crops you will be eating next spring.

Pitchers from the teens through early thirties and their peaks/primes.

Pitcher: 3 best yrs / 7 best yrs
Johnson:   143 / 291
Alexander: 127 / 253 
Grove:     112 / 225
Ferrell:    95 / 191
Lyons:      80 / 164
Vance:      94 / 176
Coveleski:  97 / 187
Faber:      93 / 163

Rixey:      76 / 164
Mendez:    107 / 203
Redding:   100 / 186
Mays:       95 / 182
Cooper:     86 / 179
Grimes:     92 / 181
Shocker:    84 / 166
Vaughan:    82 / 168
Luque:      89 / 154
Cicotte:    97 / 172
Uhle:       84 / 157
Adams:      84 / 164
Shawkey:    81 / 158
Rommel:     73 / 148
Quinn:      70 / 146

Bolds are electeds. Rixey has a lot more in common with the unelecteds than the electeds. Sounds like
a street gang in a '50s movie.

There are 20 players on that list with better "peaks" than Rixey.
There are 14 players on that list with better "primes" than Rixey.

Other pitchers from the era with around 75 win shares for a peak include
Joe Bush, 74, 1921-1923
Sam Jones, 71, 1921, 22, 28
Herb Pennock, 73, 1923-1925
Harry Coveleski, 74, 1914-1916
Jeff Tesreau, 72, 1913-1915
Jeff Pfeffer, 84, 1914-1916
Larry Cheney, 72, 1912-1914
Dutch Leonard, 73, 1914, 1916-17

That is what I mean when I say he had no peak and little prime. Also, being 15th in prime during your career doesn't say HoMer to me. Maybe Johnson shouldn't be on the above list, but he had enough good years after 1912 to rate better than Rixey's totals. There are 8 eligible pitchers from this era (Redding, Mendez, Mays, Cooper, Grimes, Shocker, Vaughan, Cicotte) with better peaks and primes than Rixey and Adams is better on peak and tied on prime.

If you are more of a career-focused voter, then Rixey will do better than most of the above pitchers. But lots of pitchers during Rixey's career had better peaks and primes.

My 2 cents.

Medwick's case over these two is solely a matter of timelines and guesses about league quality and how that applies to star players. If it was about who actually created the most value for their teams. . . .

I've been a bit cold on Medwick as well, ranking him below Jones (but above Browning). Still, Ducky is slated to entery my ballot at #15 in the coming year.

As for timeliness, I'm not sure why peaking in the late 30s should give you a bonus. Its turning out to be one of our best represented eras.

There is a little extending beyond 1933 with Ferrell and Grove, but they both had quite a bit of achievement up to 1933 - enough to establish peak and prime levels.

As for timeliness, I'm not sure why peaking in the late 30s should give you a bonus. Its turning out to be one of our best represented eras.

Why indeed. One of the other popular arguments against Browning and Jones is that we've elected enough players from the 1880s. I haven't seen that used against Ducky Wucky,

Medwick should be at #22 on my ballot, Browning and Jones are at the top.

Medwick, Browning, and Jones and how they rank in their leagues among position players:

Browning:
1882: 1st
1883: 4th
1884: 5th
1885: 1st
1886: not in top 10
1887: 2nd
1888: not in top 10 (injury? did not play full year.)
1889: not in top 10 (injury? did not play full year.)
1890: 5th in Player's League - the one with most of the NL'ers.
1891: not in top 10 (injury? did not play full year.)
1892: not in top 10 (injury? did not play full year.)
1893: less than half season
1894: token apps.
6 times top 10, 6 top 5s, 2 firsts.

Jones:
1876 is his age 26 year.
1876: 21st place, but team only won 9 games. No position player had a greater percentage of his team's win shares. For what that is worth.
1877: 14th place, but team only won 15 games. Ties Cal McVey for greatest percentage of team's wins. For what that is worth.
1878: 4th (tied)
1879: 2nd
1880: suspended in August
1881-1882: suspended
1883: 7th
1884: 1st (tied)
1885: 3rd
1886: not in top 10
1887: not in top 10
1888: partial season, retires at 38.
5 top 10s, 4 top 5s, 1 1st, 2 missing years in his prime.

Joe Medwick:
1932: partial
1933: 7th tied
1934: 9th tied
1935: 3rd
1936: 1st tied
1937: 1st
1938: 9th
1939: not in top 10 (11th)
1940: not in top 10
1941: 8th tied
1942: not in top 10 (14th)
1943: not in top 10
1944: not in top 10
1945: not in top 10 (half season)
1946: not in top 10 (pinch hitter)
1947: not in top 10 (pinch hitter)
1948: not in top 10 (pinch hitter)
7 top 10s, 3 top 5s, 2 firsts.

And the top 2 have the better OPS's as well. And Jones is positively screwed by playing with the Reds in 1876 and 1877. But Medwick has the better support.

To quote Sean: <u>Medwick's case over these two is solely a matter of timelines and guesses about league quality and how that applies to star players. If it was about who actually created the most value for their teams</u>

Remember, Medwick is putting up his best numbers in a FANTASTIC hitting park, Sportsman's Park. Does anyone know where we can find hitting splits for the Cards in the 1930s? I have seen Hornsby's and various Browns from the 20s and their splits are Fenway-esque from the Jim Rice era.
Lastly, people cite quality of competition issues with early players or AA players, remember there were NO African-Americans in Medwick's league - no Gibson, Paige, Matlock, Mackey, Troupe, Williams, Bell, etc.
And to those of you who comment that we have elected enough of the early players - and you are still out there - there is NO BETTER represented era than Medwick's.

Ok, that's enough for today. I think my keyboard is going to catch fire.

If Goose, then Duck.

If Goose and Duck, then Jake :-)

Joe Dimino mentioned recently that there have been some changes in WARP lately. It looks like one of the changes has been to lessen the WARP3 penalty for the NL in the teens and twenties. I happened to have saved BP pages for Rixey, Grimes, and Cooper some time back, and I notice that all three have gained in WARP3 since I saved those pages.

Cooper was 65.1, is 68.9
Grimes was 74.9, is 80.7
Rixey was 82.3, is 89.3

I don't know how old the pages I saved are, unfortunately, but if you use WARP3 and haven't updated your records in a while, this might be a good year to do it. It looks like some of the change comes from shifts in WARP1 (Rixey, for example, went up from 94.3 to 96.9), but the shift in WARP2/3 seems to be the larger portion.

Goose:176, 158, 144, 143, 139, 135, 128, 118, 116, 114, 112, 111, 111, 102

Duck: 180, 156, 151, 142, 140, 137, 132, 131, 131, 123, 119, 115, 97, 92

Looks like a reasonable comparison to me, depending on how you feel about Goose's 1900 extra plate appearances.

Well, you're into Goose's 13th year before he's ever more than a spit's worth better than Duck. For 12 years Ducky is 5 OPS+ points better every year. I really don't care about years 13ff at that point.

Joe Dimino mentioned recently that there have been some changes in WARP lately. It looks like one of the changes has been to lessen the WARP3 penalty for the NL in the teens and twenties.

Anybody happen to know if it helps my boy Edd Roush a little too? I don't use WARP myself, but IIRC his WARP score hurt him with some voters.

Sean,

I think that Comparing Browning/Jones with Mediwck is very misleading. For one the first two played in a league that was not even close to teh quality of MEdwick's league. AND they didn't play many games per season. Sure they played a lot of their team's games so they shouldnt' lose any points for longevity but it is easier ot post a 180 OPS+ in 314 AB's than in 600 AB's no? If you want to compare them then please dont' use OPS+.

OH, and I am not one that really worries too much about overrepresenting an era. I think if we did we would end up with soem unworthy players being selected. It is my belief that by simply electing the best players we will approximate being fair to every era.

Medwick is going to be #2 for me (though it is a down year), Browning #13 and Jones is #57.

Your first point is granted, if you timeline then you'll think Medwick is better. Just as I'm sure you'll eventually be thinking Randy Winn is better than Joe Medwick.

Your second point seems not to be that Browning and Jones had less durability than Medwick, but rather that their seasons aren't as valuable as Medwick's because their team's seasons were shorter, which I don't understand. Perhaps it is easier to post a 180 OPS+ in 314 ABs than 600, but that isn't relevant. 85% of a season is 85% of a season, regardless of how long that season is. In other words, a 150 OPS+ in 162 games of a 162 game season is equivalent in value to a 150 OPS+ season in 80 games of an 80 game season. Not to recognize that and adjust early players by diminishing their actual value by not directly translating their performance into the same games per season context as everyone else is doubly penalizing them for playing in the 19th Century.

Your third point, however, contradicts the first two. If you want to be fair to each era and elect simply the best players, you should not be timelining players off the ballot. Either you elect the best players, or you elect the no-brainers and the most recent borderline players.

Well, you're into Goose's 13th year before he's ever more than a spit's worth better than Duck. For 12 years Ducky is 5 OPS+ points better every year. I really don't care about years 13ff at that point.

Sean made a couple of errors in Ducky's favor. After all, Ducky only played 12 years over 100 games. Ducky's 137 is his late rookie callup of 109 PA and Goose's 148 was forgotten by mistake.

I have this:

GG: 176 158 153 148 144 143 139 135 128 118 116 114 112 111 111 110 101         
JM: 180 156 151 142 140 132 131 131 123 119 115 097

Medwick's 132 & 97 are subject to war discounts.
Medwick gets a slight edge in fielding (B-/C+) while Goslin gets an edge in baserunning (however much that's worth).

Paul Wendt:
BB-REF shows Rixey "Attnd" (playing, I think) at U Virginia only 1911-1912, two baseball seasons at ages old 19 and old 20 or one academic year between birthdays 20 and 21. MLB records of U Virginia players (data from the SABR Collegiate Baseball Cmte)

Kelly:
regarding Rixey's years at UVA. I assumed he graduated. I checked Deadball Stars NL, which says he waited to join the Phillies in 1912 until he graduated with a degree in chemsitry. Rixey went to UVA to be a chemist and, at 6'5", he played some basketball. An NL umpire coached basketball and baseball at UVA and he saw Rixey's athletism. He encouraged Rixey to try out for the Phillies, who signed him in 1912 and allowed him to finish school. According to Deadball Stars, he only joined the Phillies because his family needed the money for his younger brother's education and the family bank was in financial trouble. I think the dates at BB-Ref refer to the years he played baseball at UVA, maybe?

Thanks for checking the Deadball NL biography, which explains a mid-college start to his baseball career and (and implies graduation).

Yes, I believe "Years Attnd" is really "Seasons Plaid" :-)
A few years ago, SABR's collegiate research committee was reorganized to shift focus from collegiate biography of major leaguers to collegiate baseball. The website is not entirely up to date but I don't believe much non-playing college attendance data has been compiled or digitized much less distributed (here, to Sean Forman).

According to my browser, this is the address composed for my above reference to "MLB records of U Virginia players":
http://www.baseballthinkfactory.org/files/hall_of_merit/discussion/34803/<br />http://www.baseball-reference.com/schools/virginia.shtml

Is that a browser problem or a thinkfactory problem?

Thanks for the correction David, that didn't seem right to me. I should have checked more carefully.

JM: 180, 156, 151, 142, 140, 132, 131, 131, 123, 119, 115, 97, 92

PB: 222, 190, 177, 177, 173, 169, 163, 154, 151, 138, 132, 98

CJ: 183, 168, 168, 158, 157, 156, 154, 147, 132, 106

Win shares, by silently subtracting a pitcher's bad hitting from his pitching win shares, can sometimes obscure a pitcher's effectiveness as a pitcher, even if it accurately reflects his overall value as a player.

Wow! I didn't believe it, but there it is on page 37 of Win Shares! I hope one of the tweaks that gets made is to transfer that deduction to a negative bWS like The Hardball Times does.

FWIW, Win Shares really likes Ducky's three year peak. In-season durability probably a big factor as Ducky averaged 155 games those three seasons. Beating pythag was only a factor in one of the three years (big factor that year (1936-10G), though)

GG: 33 31 29 28 26 25 25 23 22 21 20 19 19 17 12 04 01
JM: 40 36 33 24 24 24 24 22 21 19 19 09 05 05 04 03

OK, my turn to step away from the flaming keyboard. *tag* Take it away Kelly! :-)

Now, I don't think that the number of lefty pitchers should equal the number of righty pitchers. However 5/33 seems to be a bit low.

What about the number of tall pitchers?

Of course, I have not seen any study on the number of overall lefty pitchers in the league each year. If it is significantly greater than 15%, then I would wonder two things: (1) do uberstats somehow underrate lefties? and (2) why aren't there a few more standout lefties?

Here is the distribution of batting hand in the latest release by Sean Lahman (baseball1.com version 5.2). N means no data, which is about 8% more common here than the missing hands in the Biographical Database (SABR, unpublished).

ALL MLB PLAYERS
N   1232
B    980
L   4103
R   9893

DEBUT FROM 1900
N    179
B    858
L   3575
R   8595

DEBUT FROM 1950
N      0
B    551
L   1924
R   4691

DEBUT FROM 1990
N      0
B    181
L    524
R   1366

This naive count may be useless, distorted by increasing numbers of relief pitchers who throw and bat right.

Let me add in Bob Johnson to the mix versus Ducky and the gang, based on OPS+.

BJ: 174, 155, 147, 143, 141, 135, 134, 130, 129, 129, 127, 125, 125 
JM: 180, 156, 151, 142, 140, 132, 131, 131, 123, 119, 115, 97, 92
PB: 222, 190, 177, 177, 173, 169, 163, 154, 151, 138, 132, 98
CJ: 183, 168, 168, 158, 157, 156, 154, 147, 132, 106

Then let me do some translations to Indian Bob and Medwick. It shouldn't be too bad to do them since they played during the same time period. I'll take 10% off of the 1943-1945 WWII seasons for both. That affects a 174, 127, 125 for BJ, a 132, 97, 92 for JM.

Then I add in the 1932 Minor League season for Bob Johnson. He had spent 1929-31 down on the farm, in fact getting a 1931 spring training with the A's. He was sent down for seasoning in 1931 (a decision that BJ later said was the right one IIRC) and performed well enough to say he could play ML ball by 1932. Anyways, in the Bob Johnson thread you've got an MLE in 1932 as 500 PA at 136 OPS+.

New table for BJ and JM:

BJ: 157*, 155, 147, 143, 141, 136**, 135, 134, 130 , 129, 129, 125, 115*, 113** 
JM: 180 , 156, 151, 142, 140, 131  , 131, 123, 119*, 119, 115, 88*, 85*

* = WWII discount, ** = MLE equiv

So you have Medwick big win Year 1, dead heat Years 2-5, slight edge Indian Bob Years 6-7, widening edge Years 8 on.

Medwick is about to be elected and Indian Bob is in 37th place. OUCH! Must be that titanic WS total Ducky had for his biggest years.

Kelly:
If the experimental concept of Win Shares is off at all, then our entire rankings will be rocked. It's no one person's fault: It's an intriguing system with a lot of potential, and I can picture someone using it as their favorite tool.
But when dozens use it primarily, I have great trepidation.

Finally, isn't there anyone out there who has given Lemon a slight edge over Rixey via Win Shares, then widened it to account for Lemon's big hitting edge? That's double counting.

I think the case is quite strong for Rixey being the better pitcher, and yes Lemon gains some ground back via hitting. But is his hitting more important than the weakness of the AL in Lemon's time, for example?

Some good stuff on Medwick, too - Kiner would like to be listed as well, as he is kind of a cross between Medwick and Johnson (and I like Ralph best of all).

Sean,

I do timeline but for this comparison I think every shold be able to recognize that the 1880's weren't exactly the peak of baseball competitiveness. And I see timelining as something different than making sure we have enough players form all eras. The latter includes saying "We don't have any 1B between ABC and Gehrig, we must elect Beckley or Sisler!" and the former is saying, "You know what I think baseball in the 1930's was a little more compeititive than the AA in the 1880's." There is a difference. And of course I won't want to elect Randy Winn don't be ridiculous.

And I didn't say that Browning and Jones' seasons were less valuable because they were shorter. I said that it is easier to post a high rate stat in fewer plate appearances, thus they shouldn't be compared by OPS+ or, actually, any rate stat. This is probably why I don't use rate stats that much in my analysis, or if I do I use them in combination with playing time.

Obviously it isn't that hard to post an OPS of 2.000 in any one at bat but it is nearly impossible to do so in 700 AB's. Between there is a sliding scale of difficulty where it is harder in 600 than 300, 400 than 200, etc.

Browning doesn't make the grade for me for reasons I have explained before. Basically, once you impose an AA discount to his hitting stats (particularly in his early years), he becomes a short-career, poor-fielding guy with excellent but not Cobb/Mantle automatic induction OPS+ numbers. If you don't timeline at all and don't let further air out of the hitting stats b/c/ of the greater standard deviations in his era, he looks a lot like Kiner (who I have in the 20's) or Keller (who I have in the 30's). If you do either or both of those things, he looks a lot more like Tiernan or Fournier (both of whom I have in the 70's). There are a lot of good hitters in baseball history.

Jones is better--his early numbers are in the best league in town, he was durable and consistent, as a young player he was a very good defensive OF, and he deserves all sorts of extra credit. The problem is that, as a percantage of active players, his era is very well-represented. He's either just over the line or just short for my PHOM. I have him about 23rd or 24th.

I have Medwick 13th and Bob Johnson 18th. The two are very similar, but I think it is far to give Medwick at least a smidgen of credit for the many extra WS he piles up, largely due to his team's vastly superior record.

The real question from these numbers is why did we give the Goose a free pass.

If the experimental concept of Win Shares is off at all, then our entire rankings will be rocked. It's no one person's fault: It's an intriguing system with a lot of potential, and I can picture someone using it as their favorite tool.
But when dozens use it primarily, I have great trepidation.

The win shares system isn't perfect, and neither is WARP, but both systems get us a lot farther in player analysis than we would be able to get without them. The position that we should abandon better tools of analysis for worse tools of analysis because the better tools aren't perfect is misguided. It is also misguided, however, to assume that these tools don't need examination and calibration in order to be well-used.

Finally, isn't there anyone out there who has given Lemon a slight edge over Rixey via Win Shares, then widened it to account for Lemon's big hitting edge? That's double counting.

Yes, it would be, though I hope no one has done that! WS is a less useful tool when used incorrectly. In Rixey's case, I suspect that the WARP evaluation has hurt him in the rankings much more than the WS evaluation has. Kelly and jschmeagol use WS peak arguments to rank Lemon over Rixey, but it's the WARP2 league quality evaluation, I think, that is totally burying Rixey on many ballots.

I think the case is quite strong for Rixey being the better pitcher, and yes Lemon gains some ground back via hitting. But is his hitting more important than the weakness of the AL in Lemon's time, for example?

Then the weakness of the NL in Rixey's time is also important, isn't it? At his peak, Lemon was the better player. It's not a question of gaining back "some ground" via his hitting. WARP and WS agree (as does my non-WS/WARP analysis, fwiw) that Lemon's peak is better than Rixey's. Not as much better as WARP says it is, but still it's better. In my view, Lemon has a small peak advantage and Rixey has a large career advantage, but if you believe WARP3, then Lemon has more career value than Rixey. I can't support that conclusion.

The real question from these numbers is why did we give the Goose a free pass.

Because he had two seasons more playing time than Medwick at the same career level of quality, with no competition discount issues because of a war.

OPS+ shows, as does EQA, that the two were quite similar as hitters, and both were corner outfielders. But Goslin had a demonstrably better career. If Medwick had another 300 games played without his career rates dropping any, we would have elected him already.

The real question from these numbers is why did we give the Goose a free pass.

The backlog hadn't been built up yet after the drought elections of 1940 & 1942. Make him eligible 5-10 years later and the Goose has to fight a bit more for induction. FWIW, he does look a cut above Medwick & BJohnson.

I agree that Goslin looks better than Medwick, 3 year peak is the only place where Medwick seems to beat him.

I am probably one of the people who could be mistaken for double counting the hitting of Lemon (and Ferrel I guess). I jsut wan to say that I usually use the hitting as the reason why Lemon's WS peak is better than Rixey's after looking at the pitching numbers. As for WARP, I like to take a midpoint between WARP1 and WARP3 when comparing players, but generally I only like to use WARP3 compared to contemporaries or near contemporaries because the timeline is too strong.

Of course I have just advocated timelining and said that WARP3 timelines too much in the same thread!

Any discount for Medwick due to WWII would have to be miniscule, and in fact is totally non-existent relating to his peak or prime. If he had retired after '42, his case would be exactly what it is.

The argument that Goslin's 300 extra games are important is the flip side of saying that Medwick's peak was better. I say the glass is half (more than half) full, focusing on the bottom end of the career is a glass is half empty sort of argument. Whatever the semantics, focusing on 300 rather than 180 (or 40) is backwards, to me.

Well, we double counted Ferrell's and Ruffing's hitting. Why not Lemon?

Well, we double counted Ferrell's and Ruffing's hitting. Why not Lemon?

?!?

Using ERA+/IP with a hitting correction is fine. Adjusting RSI for their own hitting is fine.

Using WS with a hitting correction is double-counting. Good-hitting pitchers get a boost from bWS and bad-hitting pitchers see that silent deduction in pWS that Chris talked about above.

This has nothing to do with Lemon vs Ferrell or Ruffing. I think its just a reminder of which metrics already including hitting corrections.

How many times did I read that Ferrell had that great peak (35 WS or whatever) and he was a great hitter besides? More than once.

Huh? I don't know anyone who actually doublecounted that.

I think you misunderstood the argument, he had a great peak *because* of his hitting. His hitting (and his IP) was always brought up as the counter to the "his ERA wasn't that special" argument.

I'm aware of no one who added anything to his raw WS or WARP due to his hitting.

WARP3 goes up? How'd GJ Burns do???? or Laughin' Larry D?

Also, I found the "Handedness Notes" from R Shandler's book c. 2004. he says that LHP account for 26% of all IP.

For hitters it's 27% LHH, 55% RHH, 18% SWH

WARP3 goes up? How'd GJ Burns do???? or Laughin' Larry D?

Comparing W1/W3

Burns is 96.5/70.5
Doyle is 93.1/57.5

That's quite a discount for Larry D! Looks like much of it is in fielding. I didn't think fielding was affected that much by league-quality issues.