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Hall of Merit — A Look at Baseball's All-Time Best Sunday, January 22, 20061969 Ballot Discussion1969 (January 30)-elect 2 HF% Career Name-pos (born) BJ – MVP - All-Star Players Passing Away in 1968 Candidates Thanks to Dan and Chris! John (You Can Call Me Grandma) Murphy
Posted: January 22, 2006 at 08:20 PM | 234 comment(s)
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2. Berra
3. who cares
Ditto. I'm finishing up their plaques already.
2. Beckley
3. Berra
-- speaking personally!
We do need to respect the third category: new candidates who need to be accurately placed against the backlog. This year, that's Wynn and Hodges. We owe it to these guys to give them a fair shot against our "old teddy bear candidates." Personally, I have Hodges falling out of contention immediately, but he is a popular HoF candidate, and I'm sure some of us will want to retain him. Wynn is going to be in my top 30 with a good chance at top 15; I'll need to spend some effort figuring out just where.
Can I ask why Beckley is ahead of Berra for you?
I can't really see hits as Berra had more a) power and b)patience, plus he played a position that a) caused him to miss 15-20 games a season at least and b) generally wears players out early
I honestly have no earthly idea why Eagle Eye would be about Yogi. None.
Can you enlighten me?
1. Stan Musial - better hitter than Berra, and Berra's position advantage doesn't come close to overcoming that.
2. Yogi Berra - better hitter than anyone else on the ballot, and a catcher with a long career. These two were obvious.
3. Early Wynn - I haven't been able to accurately judge the Negro League pitchers yet, so he might move. Among major league pitchers, he's the best available, and I find him slightly better than Doerr or Bell. Short peak, though, and it wasn't terribly great (judging by ERA+, IP, and WARP3).
4. Cool Papa Bell - I read the discussion thread on him, and using his comps, this is about where I'd place him. A great fielder with excellent speed and on-base ability, maybe some power - Max Carey was brought up, but Bell was probobly better than that. I'd not put Carey this high, but I'd put Carey Plus about here.
5. Bobby Doerr - he appears to be a great hitting second baseman, which was becoming a rarity in his day. His defense is rated as "awesome" by BP, and WARP3 has his peak the equal of Gordon's, with more career value.
6. Clark Griffith - his peak was about as good as Wynn's (ERA+, IP, WARP3), but much less career value hurts him. I'd take Griffith's peak over Hodges' consistency.
Just a few tidbits, WARP3's timelining makes it nearly impossible to compare Wynn to Griffith. Look at WARP1 or WARP3 rankings within era to compare them. Or you could just use DERA and the translated stats. This problem will arise often if you use WARP3 to compare players across eras.
Also, do you have Gordon close to Doerr? If not you may have forgetten to give Gordon an extra season of war credit (Gordon missed two, Doerr one?) By WS I like Gordon's peak and prime much better, especially with war credit. Doerr does have more career I will admit. Still, I can't see how the two could be more than a few spots apart.
It looks to me that this is not a problem. All of the new guys are going to get elected ASAP.
Well, they are either going to be elected almost immediately or be dismissed as serious candidates almost as immediately.
So far, not a single 1950s player has entered the "probably elect" backlog.
Lemon and Ashburn, not among the first-tier greats of the decade, have been elected very quickly.
Newcombe, Vernon, Rosen, Schoendienst, and Yost have been immediately buried.
This bifurcation is is partly a consequence of having a long baseball history behind us now. If the "could to probably elect" backlog is, more or less, the top 18 returning players each year, we now have 9 decades worth of players to drop into those spots. Assuming even distribution by decade, that would be 2 players from each decade in that backlog. Anyone even slightly above that narrow slice of borderline territory within each decade's ranking sails right in. Anyone even slightly below lands at #40 and drops from serious consideration. (Of course, our actual backlog is not so evenly divided, reflecting uneven distributions of talent and somewhat uneven treatments of different eras by the electorate, but the principle nevertheless holds that as more players gain eligibility, smaller and smaller differences in merit will create larger and larger differences in ranking.)
But it's still troubling: As I see it, there are only three 1950s stars between Richie Ashburn/Bob Lemon and Don Newcombe/Mickey Vernon in my rankings: Billy Pierce, Nellie Fox, and Minnie Minoso. These must be, if any will be, the borderline group for this decade. Will these three enter into the "could-to-probably elect" backlog, or will they sail over the top, or will they be buried?
Are the borderline players of earlier decades being fairly compared to the borderline players who are now becoming eligible? Ashburn's speedy election has made me more doubtful of this than I was before the 1968 results.
It aptly describes the phenomenon occuring; namely guys like Ashburn get elected ASAP and the Duffy's/GVH/Roush's languish and perhaps never get pulled into hall.
I gotta believe GVH was every bit the hitter Richie was, even better perhaps. He certainly drove in almost twice as many runs, stole more than twice as many bases and scored 300 more runs while drawing 300 fewer walks. And the folks who like Duffy's slugging gotta be asking, "Where's the respect"?
Yeah, I know it's an integrated league that Ashburn played in, thus a larger talent pool but it's not a highly integrated league....that doesn't happen until the '60's.
I think Chris is really onto something here and it bears additional analysis and discussion.
a. very even w/ WII credit
b. pennant impact
I'm not a huge believer in counting team performance (sorry Phil Rizzuto), BUT. Doerr's team lost a lot of close pennant races (it is historically popular to blame Ted, the big gun, but in actuality Ted played well down the stretch in 48 and 49, their most heart-breaking years). Attaching a teensy portion of 'lost-pennant blame' to the Sox star 2Bman puts him below his contemporary for the Yankess.
and this is from a die-hard Sox fan.
It's not close enough for a tiebreaker, but if it were, Berra wouldn't get it. Damn Yankee!
Are you still trying to solve the Beckley riddle? Schroedinger's Cat was an easier conundrum. LOL
1. Stan Musial
2. Yogi Berra
3. George Van Haltren
4. Willard Brown
5. Jake Beckley
6. Cool Papa Bell
7. Biz Mackey
8. Mickey Welch
9. Dobie Moore
10. George Sisler
11. Hugh Duffy
12. Tommy Leach
13. Early Wynn
14. Edd Roush
15. Quincy Trouppe
16-20. Griffith, Ryan, Doerr, Rice, Childs
21-25. Redding, Sewell, Smith, Streeter, White
26-30. Strong, Gleason, Grimes, Kiner, Willis
The key: Be the best borderline guy available in a weak balloting year. Bleh.
If league strength is trump, then forget Schnozz, elect all of Richie Ashburn's contemporaries, starting with Gil Hodges. If league strength is trump.
>The key: Be the best borderline guy available in a weak balloting year. Bleh.
No, be the newest borderline guy....
In 1969, Musial, Berra, and Wynn will head my ballot, in that order. Wynn's placement is slightly uncertain, but he won't be lower than 4th on my ballot.
Wynn's pre-Cleveland record isn't impressive, but he was an average to above average pitcher 1943-47 (missing 1945 and half of 1946, it looks like, to the war). He was terrible in 1942 and 1948, and my system basically zeros out those two seasons, but that still that leaves him with a strong peak with Cleveland and over 4000 IP. I think he's a bit better than Rixey, whom we just elected, and whom I had at #2. I'm still weighing him vs. Griffith, who was #1 on my ballot in 1968. Griffith is the 4th best pitcher of the 1890s, Wynn the 4th best of the 1950s, behind Spahn, Roberts, and Ford. Griffith always knew how to win, Wynn didn't, but Wynn also helped his teams as an innings-eater; Griffith didn't.
How many other pitching coaches can be seen as directly responsible for teaching two Hall of Famers how to pitch? Harder gets credit for both Lemon and Wynn.
I'd like to figure out how to place Dick Redding and Jose Mendez better on the ballot. For lack of a better method I've just joined them at the hip to pitchers that seem comparable. I've got Redding slotted between Vic Willis and Tom Bridges and I've got Mendez just ahead of Bucky Walters. It is a pain to use the search to find the player threads (they're obscured by the ballot threads) so I wouldn't mind if they were bumped up to the top. I should look over Willard Brown in more detail also since he's in the top 10 and I have him at 27.
prelim ballot
1. Musial, Stan
2. Berra, Yogi
3. Mackey, Biz
4. Griffith, Clark
5. Bell, Cool Papa
6. Trouppe, Quincy
7. Wynn, Early
8. Sewell, Joe
9. Van Haltren, George
10. Doerr, Bobby
11. Johnson, Bob
12. Willis, Vic
13. Redding, Dick
14. Bridges, Tommy
15. Oms, Alejandro (looking ahead I have Minoso right behind Oms)
----
16. Beckley, Jake
17. Leach, Tommy
18. Waddell, Rube
19. Cravath, Gavy
20. Moore, Dobie
21. Mendez, Jose
22. Walters, Bucky
23. Ryan, Jimmy
24. Roush, Edd
25. Gordon, Joe
Gil Hodges slots around 43.
Here is my top 5 prelim. I've got two 3000s and two 300s in my top 5:
1. Musial -- his most similar player scores a 763. That’s Rickey good.
2. Berra – best catcher to date. As Yogi says, “It’s tough to make predictions, specially about the future”, but I think this will be the only ballot we get to vote for Berra so it won’t be like “déjà vu all over again”.
3. Mickey Welch – 300 wins, lots of grey ink. RSI data shows those wins are real. Compares fairly well to Keefe. I like his oft repeated record against HoMers.
4. Cool Papa Bell – It seems likely he would have exceeded 3000 hits with tremendous speed and great defense in a key position.
5. Early Wynn – starting him low, he’s a good comp for Welch and may be better. I’m sure most voters here will have him well above Welch. Definitely, IMO, better than Grimes, who I have at 6.
If this is the HoWARP3, then the backlog is gonna do pretty horsebleep from here on out. I know the veteran HoM voters have all come to peace with WARP's gigantic timeline adjustments, or not (as my case, not). I hope the newer HoMies understand what WARP is doing. It is not measuring value, it is measuring ability--whether an old-timer could jump off the time machine and play ball today. If that's your idea of "fair to all eras," so be it. But if WARP3 is the be all and end all, we shoulda started voting in 2005 and gone backwards. Using WARP3 implies that you want the 220 players with the most ability, not the most valuable or meritorous from "all eras."
As far as I'm concerned, karl has better reason to support Beckley those (whomever they support) based on 2006-centric numbers like WARP3. In my little world, WARP3 is no good reason.
Berra has a good argument to be the best ML catcher ever (he is obivously no Gibson).
Beckley, whatever his merits, has no argument to be amongst the top 10 1B ever. I think even his supporters here will agree with that.
I think it dubious to suggest that 1B in the 1890's was very close in importance as C in the 1950's.
I think it is highly dubious to give credit for a longer career to a player who plays a position with relatively little wear and tear when in comparison with one that plays a position known for its wear and tear. It is not like Berra was a three year wonder or anything.
I think it dubious to believe that the 1890's, while better than succeeding decades, was as tough as the AL of the 1950's. Especially enough to give a player from the 1890's a noticable boost.
I don't consider concepts that are dubious to be good reasons. Supporting him and having him at the top of this backlog is fine, I disagree strongly, but this backlog isn't that great. Putting him above Berra means that you are either putting Beckley into your top 30 or 40 players ever or severely underrating Berra. Karl's explanation seems to be a combination of both and they are not good reasons in my reckoning.
It's not just WARP3 that timelines. Because WARP1 moves the pitching replacement level down over time, modern pitchers will have more PRAR, and higher relative WARP1 numbers. In effect, this is a double-timeline.
I understand that the replacement levels are being moved because pitchers become less dependent on their fielders.
Case in point - pitchers within about 100 IP of Early Wynn (4500 IP)
Wynn - 4564 IP, 1244 PRAR, 116.9 WARP1
Clarkson - 4536.3 IP, 842 PRAR, 92.5 WARP1
Radbourn - 4535.3 IP, 660 PRAR, 83.1 WARP1
Mullane - 4531.3 IP, 652 PRAR, 88.8 WARP1
Plank - 4495.7 IP, 1050 PRAR, 108.2 WARP1
Rixey - 4494.7 IP, 1019 PRAR, 96.9 WARP1
Wynn has more WARP1, and substantially more PRAR than all the older pitchers (nearly 2 times more than the 1880's pitchers!)
Pause for Marc's anti-timelining scream
Now let's make Marc really happy with two more future 1st ballot HOMers:
Kaat - 4530.3 IP, 1102 PRAR, 106.1 WARP1
Jenkins - 4500.7 IP, 1308 PRAR, 123.8 WARP1
I don't think that our voters are solely looking at the career lines, but I really don't think Wynn/Jenkins are that much better than all of the pitchers with similar career IP.
Remember, these numbers also get further adjusted in favor of modern further if you use WARP3.
I like WARP, but I don't believe it can effectively be used for cross-era comparison of pitchers. Of course, this ineffectiveness is no different than Win Shares, which favors the older pitchers.
Direct quote.
Just hoping :-) .
In order to put Beckley in your top 30, you would need to make the assumptions made to place him above someone like Yogi Berra.
That was my point.
How is it hard to belive that you can have someone in your top 200 but not your top 30? That there can be godo reasons for the former but not for the latter?
By the way I don't know that karl has Beckley in his top 30 I was just picking an absurd number. Maybe I should have said "Above Yogi Berra" instead of "In his Top 30".
At the same time isn't there a good reason to drop the replacement level of pitchers through time as they become less dependent on their defenses? WARP2/3's timelining is mostly about quality of competition, which I find to be too strong. The change in replacement level supposedly tracks differences in the game. If defenses become less important, it would stand to reason that pitchers become more important. This would cause the replacement level to drop (bad pitchers have more of an effect on the game) and would make good pitchers worth more. How is this different from valuing 1B more than CF in the 1890's or 3B more than 2B before 1930. The game changed and players values changed to reflect this. I find this to be perfectly acceptable.
On the same note does this mean we are then underrating defensive wizards from earlier times like Dave Bancroft, Pie Traynor, or someone even earlier? If so have we been overrating or have we overrated earlier pitchers. This coudl effect Clark Griffith, Mickey Welch, etc.
Or could this mean that we should skewer more towards pitching in the future with otherwise borderline guys like Guidry or Kaat making it in while leaving out guys like Smith and Mazeroski who might make it in without taking this effect into account?
James's argument for Gordon is largely based on the comparison between Doerr and Gordon's road hitting statistics. On the other hand, when you look at measures such as OPS+, while Gordon has an advantage, it doesn't appear to be that great. That leads to 2 thoughts:
1)James may be underrating Doerr, because he shouldn't be penalized for making good use of Fenway Park.
2)OPS+ may be underrating Gordon because it doesn't take into account the greater difficulties that Yankee Stadium presented for a right-handed hitter in this era. Granted, there are always more right-handed hitters, but if the park played unusually well for left-handers and unusually bad for right-handers, then a generic ballpark adjustment isn't going to adequately reflect a player's value.
I'm not sure which of these make more sense to people. One other thing is that James sort of downplays Doerr's fielding advantage, emphasizing that Doerr has great fielding statistics, implying that they're inaccurate in some way.
BTW, if anyone has the year-by-year breakdowns of Doerr & Gordon's batting and fielding Win Shares, I'd appreciate it if you could e-mail me a copy. I'm thinking about trying to do a yearly comparison of the two, since their careers parallel.
My personal view on this is that handedness and other variations in park effects should be taken into account when a player is being acquired or projected forward. Otherwise (MVP calculation, HOM type projects, etc.) regular park effects probalby track value better.
Did the Red Sox have a groundball staff in the late 40's? I am pretty sure that Gordon has the higher WS grade, though I don't have the numbers in front of me. He does have the better rep.
However, we should be careful about making fun of writers who hold strange opinions about who deserves to go in the HOF.
Diz, I disagree with you on this one. The writers are becoming increasingly idiosyncratic in their selections, and not calling them on the rug (or making fun, whichever) for it is how they can be made somewhat accountable. If a guy votes for Hal Morris and not Blyleven (say), why should I take the HOF's selection process seriously?
2)OPS+ may be underrating Gordon because it doesn't take into account the greater difficulties that Yankee Stadium presented for a right-handed hitter in this era.
I think this is an entirely plausible line of logic. We don't seem to have L/R PFs, and in places like Yankee Stadium, Fenway, or Forbes Field they would probably be extremely valuable to have. In fact, they probably make/break a case like Gordon's. Or on the flip side will help us better understand whether a lefty like Nettles or Mattingly was really hitting into a, roughly, 98 PF or whether lefties hit into PFs around 102 and righties around 94 (or whatever the case may be).
The change in replacement level supposedly tracks differences in the game. If defenses become less important, it would stand to reason that pitchers become more important.
OK, then back to Ozzie Smith. If it's true that defense is progressively more pitcher-centric, then isn't Rabbit Marranville's defensive performance more (perhaps much more) impressive than Ozzie's? Or Rizzuto's? Does it mean that being rated the best defensive SS ever is not as electable of a trait as it once was? Especially when he played on turf?
Or to put it another way, how many runs more or less valuable is a typical position player in 1917 or 1933 than now?
If I guy thinks Jake Beckley is comparable to Willie Mays, or better than Yogi berra, why should I take the HOM's selction process seriously?
But more to the point, at the HOM you get to tell Karlmagnus all about why he's wrong and he gets to defend himself.
In the HOF world, the writers have no such public accountability.
1.
>On the same note does this mean we are then underrating defensive wizards from earlier times like Dave Bancroft, Pie Traynor, or someone even earlier?
Maybe ;-)
2.
To me the problem with WARP is not the changing specifications per se. It is that WARP places old timers at a virtually insurmountable disadvantage. If we are electing the Hall of WARP then Richie Ashburn is the first of a flood of players who will blow away a bunch of guys who, sans timeline, had every bit as much impact on the game, and often more, in their own time. WARP is meant to id the top 225 players of all-time. It is not useful for being "fair to all eras."
I have had Gordon ahead of Doerr from day one--until 1968 when I had Doerr #14 and Gordon #15 (and Doyle #13; the previous week it was Gordon #14, Doyle #15 and Doerr #16). I think it was a moment of weakness. Gordon has better hitting rate stats and, therefore, a higher peak. Doerr had in balance about one extra productive season, after you adjust both for seasons lost to WWII. Usually I would go peak vs. career, but these (three) guys are just so close....
3. Whitey Ford is a great ####### pitcher. Early Wynn could not hold his jock strap. Sorry about the technical talk. ;-)
To adjust for this, I add about 1 WS per full year to NL players. Or 0.3 WARP, or .007 batting average (and oba and slg).
I cannot see any logical reason to DOWNGRADE AL players in comparison to previous years, such as 1940. It wasn't that the AL got worse, it was that the NL got BETTER by adding players who used to play in the NegLg. It as if the Majors contracted with the Dominican leagues in 2007, with most of the Dominican stars going to the NL. To compare the 1950s AL with the 1880s AA is absurd.
By 1975 or so, the AL was back even with the NL. At that point I will add 1 WS to players in BOTH leagues. Except the schedule was 5% longer, so for players with 20 WS or about 160 hits, it comes out in the wash.
Hal Morris 5
Ozzie Guillen 5
Gary Gaetti 4
Rick Aguilera 3
Doug Jones 2
Greg Jefferies 2
Walt Weiss 1
Gary DiSarcina 0
Alex Fernandez 0
As was pointed out earlier none of these guys should have likely gotten a single vote. I don't know if some one really thuoght these players deserved a plaque, but I doubt it.
I'm a bit conspiratorial and cynical, and I find it more likely they voted for the guy who did them a favor at some point, or who was the source for a "one clubhouse source says..." piece, or whatever.
Why shouldn't that voter be asked explain him or herself? And why shouldn't they be poked fun at for voting for Hal (Freakin'!) Morris?
Of course, you don't need to grant the accuracy of the WS numbers. Lots of systems, WARP for example, have Doerr ahead. There are a number of areas of dispute between the various systems, the major one being the quality of Gordon's defense. WS has Gordon and Doerr as virtually interchangable defensively, while WARP has Doerr substantially better than Gordon based on an assessment that Gordon was a terrible defensive 2B for the last few seasons of his career.
For now, I am largely rejecting WARP's late-career defensive numbers for Gordon b/c/ the subjective reports we have make no mention of such a decline, because WARP tends to overstate the importance of 2B defense in general, and because the change in his recorded defensive performance largely tracks his change in team (which raises the spectre of a park or team effect). However, I remain open to persuasion on this issue. If anyone has any information on how other semi-trustworthy defensive metrics deals with Gordon's defense, I would appreciate getting a look at it.
Beckley, whatever his merits, has no argument to be amongst the top 10 1B ever. I think even his supporters here will agree with that.
Absolutely my position about both of them. Berra is inner-circle, while Beckley is a non-inner-circle HoMer, IMO.
My point stands; HOF overrates 50s Yankees, we shouldn't.
You said the same thing about the Dodgers, too. Doesn't dominating your leagues for a decade (and then some) indicate that they had a few HoM-quality guys playing for them?
Daryn,
That's an interesting question, and if it's true then there's three things that leap to mind:
a) is this a hanging-chad kind of thing where writers can't figure out the ballot? (Having not seen the actual ballot, I ask: How hard can "vote for ten" be?)
b) shouldn't people who can't distinguish the two probably have their credentials thoroughly reviewed anyway, because the two players are nothing alike?
c) if they don't take enough time with baseball's highest honor to even bother checking the correct box (or whatever mechanism the ballot works by) and proofing their selections, then they're probably not giving it the kind of time and reflection it needs. (which means that either the job is not doable in the amount of time any writer has or that the writer himself is not giving it ample attention.)
If Will Clark had gotten the five votes that went to Hal Morris, he would still be eligible in 2007.
ballot spots . career centered at
1, 4,10,13, 14 1890-1905
3, 5, 7,11, 12 ..1920-30
2, 6, 8, 9, 15 ...1940-55
I pass mine check. Yay for me. I go back to work :)
I think its clear that not many checked the maximum of ten names on the ballot. Its likely that Morris didn't take any votes away from anyone.
That's it, but that's not too shabby. :-)
Player: Gordon, Joe
Year of Birth: 1915
Year Hit Field Pitch Sum WS
1938 12.14 6.42 0.00 18.56 19
1939 18.03 6.95 0.00 24.98 25
1940 18.57 7.43 0.00 26.00 26
1941 18.27 5.93 0.00 24.20 24
1942 24.56 6.46 0.00 31.02 31
1943 19.79 8.40 0.00 28.19 28
1944 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0
1945 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0
1946 3.53 5.69 0.00 9.23 9
1947 19.49 5.80 0.00 25.29 25
1948 17.88 6.28 0.00 24.16 24
1949 12.30 7.10 0.00 19.40 19
1950 8.23 3.38 0.00 11.61 12
Totals 172.81 69.84 0.00 242.64 242
Player: Doerr, Bobby
Year of Birth: 1918
Year Hit Field Pitch Sum WS
1937 0.44 1.64 0.00 2.08 2
1938 8.06 6.19 0.00 14.24 14
1939 10.87 6.63 0.00 17.51 17
1940 15.54 5.88 0.00 21.42 21
1941 11.56 3.67 0.00 15.23 15
1942 17.91 6.32 0.00 24.23 24
1943 16.09 7.77 0.00 23.87 24
1944 24.08 3.03 0.00 27.11 27
1945 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0
1946 16.90 10.44 0.00 27.34 27
1947 10.77 7.79 0.00 18.57 19
1948 20.35 6.31 0.00 26.65 27
1949 16.14 8.68 0.00 24.82 25
1950 15.71 6.94 0.00 22.65 23
1951 11.99 4.38 0.00 16.37 16
Totals 196.40 85.68 0.00 282.08 281
Doerr: 24.51
Gordon: 25.02
They had that, but that's not enough. The 60's Giants had Mays, McCovey, Marichal, and and they didn't dominate. The late-50's Braves had Aaron, Matthews, and Spahn - what's not to like about that core? The story of those Yankees is also about Gil McDougald, Hank Bauer, Bob Cerv, a bunch of interchangeable pitchers being put in a position to succeed, and so on. A lot of the history of baseball involves the "Hall of the Very Good" and even the merely good players.
For a more recent example, see the late '90s Yankees. A lot (too much?) has been written about the lack of HOF-caliber players on those teams. But there are a lot of HOVG and good types.
And who is overrating the 1950's Yankees? The HOF has only Mantle, Berra, Ford, and Rizzuto. That is one mistake, which isn't too bad for a team that dominated the decade. It is the 20's/30's Yankees that are filled with HOF mistakes (Hoyt, Pennock, Lazzeri, Combs) not the 1950's Yankees.
Still, the point I think stands that the 1950's AL isnt' any worse than any leagues before it, it just didn't progress as much as the 1950's NL because the NL was more inclusive of NeL players (and dark latinos as well).
Karl,
I figured that your ranking of Beckley over Berra (sorry) dealt with a big overrating of Beckley. While I think you overrated Beckley by a lot it seems it is a really large underrating of Berra that has caused this. Where do you rank Berra amongst ML catchers? I would have to think that Berra can't be ranked lower than #5 and that the #5 catcher of all-time should be in the top 75 players of all-time. Otherwise, you may be underrating catchers for whatever reason (short careers, low amounts of games played per season, etc.)
HOM/HOF material:
Jeter
Rivera
Clemens
Raines (though not in a full-time role)
Borderline HOM/HOF
Williams
Posada (still climbing)
Cone
HOVG
O'Neill
Wells
Pettitte
Knoblauch
Strawberry
GOOD
C. DAvis
T. Martinez
O. Hernandez?
OTHER
Brosius
A whole mess of relivers
>they did have some HOM calibre guys playing for them, name of Mantle and Berra...Ford's not that far off.
Composite record 1946-1950
(regular season, excluding 1948 tiebreaker game):
BOS 473 297 .614 -
NYY 473 297 .614 -
Head-to-head, these two teams went 55-55 over the 5 years.
These two teams were about as even as two rivals ever could be for the 5 year period. Yet, the Yanks won 3 World Series, the Red Sox none.
There were some pivotal "decision" games played that color the whole perception of that period.
1946: Sox lose World Series Game 7 in St Louis 3-4
1947: Yanks win World Series Game 7 in New York 5-2
1948: Sox lose pennant tie-breaker game in Boston 3-8
----- (Cleveland goes on to win World Series in 6)
1949: Sox lose pennant in New York 3-5
----- (teams were tied before this last game)
----- (Yanks go on to win World Series in 5)
Reverse those 4 games, and the Yanks win only 1 Series (1950 sweep over Whiz Kids) and the Sox win 3 (maybe, if you assume they could also beat the Series-losing team).
The point is that those games were essentially coin flips, critical games against quality opponents. And the Sox lost the coin flip all three times. The Yanks won both of theirs. Maybe it was their character. Maybe it was just luck.
Doerr: 24.51
Gordon: 25.02
PLAYER OVERALL WINS:
Doerr - 40 (!)
Gordon - 29
5-year-peak (non consecutive) WS
Gordon 31, 28, 26, 25, 25
Doerr 27, 27, 27, 25, 24
5-year-peak (consecutive) WS
Gordon 134
Doerr 121
Career OPS+
Gordon 120
Doerr 115
Career WS
Gordon 242
Doerr 281
That's without war credit. If you give Doerr 27 WS for 1945 (he had 27 in both '44 and '46), and you give Gordon two years at 24 (his lowest total between 1939 and 1948, sans 1946), then the new career totals are:
Gordon 290
Doerr 306
So if you are a career voter who gives no war credit, I can see picking Doerr over Gordon. Other than that, it looks to me like Gordon was the better player; similar careers with war credit, but Joe had a better peak. Of course, I haven't looked at WARP...would someone who has Doerr over Gordon like to talk about this?
Gordon 25.02
Doerr 24.51
Gordon 76.6
Doerr 98.3
Is this why Doerr is so far ahead? Are the people who support him WARP-ers?
Win Shares attempts to do a similar thing, adjusting the balance between fielding and pitching based on strikeouts. However, the adjustment is so conservative about this that it is practically ineffective. It results in Charles Radbourn receiving 147 WS in 1884 (adjusted to 162 game season). And you think WARP's pitching formulas are out of whack?
These two systems (WS,WARP1) have a great deal of similarities in terms of their overall structures. They differ in their emphases. Win Shares loves offense, and OF'ers, and CF'ers beyond reason. WARP loves defense, IFers when K-rates are low, pitchers when K-rates are high.
These systems are elaborate models that, in the end, reflect the biases of their creators in how the different aspects of the game should be weighted.
Pick the one that reflects your own biases, or better yet accept input from both and from external sources to obtain a more balanced view.
I agree. I "accept input from both and from external sources to obtain a more balanced view."
While I understand the frustration of some that we honored the White-Haired One in his first election while worthy backloggers still languish, allow me to point out that Ashburn didn't eactly get a ringing endorsement. He was on 28 of 45 ballots. If you assume that he averaged about "21st" place on the 17 ballots that didn't contain his name, his average overall placment was 12th. 12th! But in a 'down' year, that was good enough to fit right behind Mr. Rixey and ahead of Mr. Mackey. Neither of THOSE gentlemen got ringing endorsements, either; the only difference is we spent more weeks coming to our non-consensus conclusions on them.
In 'down' years, we will elect guys that will be consensus 'lower tier' HoMers. Well, somebody has to fit that description, and Ashburn and Rixie will do nicely.
For those that believe WARP3 (for example) has to much timeline built in, I'd recommend attempting to convince us that "too many" players who retired by 1965 have been inducted as compared to those in 1900 or 1940. I would listen to this argument, if accompanied by appropriate data, far better than "grumble grumble I hate WARP it disses oldtimers grumble".
TomH, this is a fair point. But I don't have the time to do it. In the meantime, those who actually use W and especially W3 should have an interest in assessing their own methods. If from this point forward, every Richie Ashburn that comes along is better on W3 than every GVH and Sisler and Duffy and..., which seems to me to be very likely, then I think it is pretty legitimate to say the W3 has a built-in bias that everybody ought to be sensitive to.
IOW it's up to all of us to police our own methods. Yes it's also incumbent on society's malcontents to demonstrate that their malcontentions are justified. But all of us have to take ownership of our own methods, too.
I do see a number of ballots that have from 0 to 1 guy out of 15 whose prime was before maybe 1935. That to me represents an imbalance that is much greater than what I see favoring old-timers, karl and Jake Beckley to the contrary notwithstanding.
I think that is the big philosophical question about catchers. If you just took WS or WARP you might have 5 catchers in the top 225 of all-time players -- you might have fewer. Which raises two big questions --
1. can you have a valid HoM with only 5 or fewer catchers? The post above would say you should have 15 catchers in the HoM. How low can you go on that number and still be creating a valid Hom? If no catcher ever earned more than 250 WS, could you have a valid HoM without any catchers?
2. If you resign yourself to a need of a quota of catchers, whether it be 5 or 15 or somewhere in between, can you rank them all (or most of them) in the 210-225 range? I think you can do the latter, which wouldn't quite justify Beckley over Berra (who I have at #2 or #3 among ML catchers all time), but could justify Beckley over pretty much every other catcher, if you are a career focused voter, as many of us are.
He's clearly in the top 10 though, and may be #6-7, thus clearly HOMable. However that doesn't necessarily make him "better than Beckley" who as I've said I don't consider borderline.
No.
If no catcher ever earned more than 250 WS, could you have a valid HoM without any catchers?
No.
What is this number?
It's not relevant to Berra anyway, he's going in. May be relevant to Ford; I don't yet know.
Theer is really no other period of this length (1949-64) in which one team was so dominant. The 1936-39 Yankees were better, but only for 4 years.
It was partially countered by this (certainly for this reason we have given the 19th century a much fairer shake than the HoF), but the schedule of elections was also somewhat backloaded, meaning ratio of ballot spots to new candidates will be rising just a bit as we move toward the present, if my understanding of the election schedule is correct. So it's nnot enough to say, "well, they had their chance." Also, the unevenness of the flow of great players to eligibility also makes it crucial not to write off the backlog. From about 1940 to 1960, for example, we added many more candidates whom we generally agreed should be elected than we were able to elect immediately when they became eligible. We have only now (mostly) cleared those players out and are seeing as top candidates again players who were on the cusp of election 36-40 years ago.
I don't think timelining is the reason Jake Beckley has splintered support, it's a clear peak v. career argument.
Beckley has always had particularly splintered support for these reason, and none of the longtime candidates who have not yet been electd has a perfect resume: if they did they would already have been elected. The question is whether their strong but imperfect records are being given fair consideration against the strong but imperferct records presented by new candidates.
To work out a thorough assessment on the timeline/competition quality issues, you would need also to consider the merits of
Mickey Welch and Tommy Bond (value of pitching pre-1893, overall quality of competition)
Pete Browning and Charley Jones (overall comp. quality, AA as weaker league issues, Jones' blacklisting)
Clark Griffith, George Van Haltren, Jake Beckley, Hugh Duffy, Cupid Childs, John McGraw, Jimmy Ryan (overall comp quality, effects of contraction on career length & league quality, effects of rough play on infielder careers, effects of new distance on pitching careers)
Roger Bresnahan and Wally Schang (effects on catcher pt of pre-modern equipment catching)
Edd Roush, Burleigh Grimes (timelining, NL as weaker league in teens and twenties)
and the treatment of Negro-League players overall.
I assume you are referring to the 1954 book "The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant" that turned into the top Broadway musical "Damn Yankees".
The only year the Yankees won 100 games in the 1950s was the year they finished second (1954).
The AL did have three perennial also-rans in the Senators/Browns-O's/Athletics. Those three garnered an extremely high percentage of the 6th/7th/8th standing positions in the decade. The NL only had two such teams -- the Cubs and the Pirates, but for not quite as long as the AL troika.
Basically it is LWTS, which has generally fallen into disregard, largely as a result of the attacks of Bill James. The primary gripe is its use of the average as the 0 point, with player ratings year to year being + of - from there. IOW a player can have a nice career and then lose a half dozen points in decline. This I agree is ridiculous. A player who accumulated 40 POWs or TPRs or LWTs over a 15 year career cannot retire at less than 40, IMO.
Still given the quirks of WS and WARP, I would have to say that LWTs has been dissed somewhat more than it deserves. Try this. Take all the LWTs and convert any negative numbers to 0s. See if that floats your boat.
Yet the opposite occurred - the Yankees dominated their competition. From 1949 to 1962, the Yankees went 45-30 in world series games; 75 games is not a tiny sample.
I don't think that's correct at all.
• The Indians and White Sox were consistently competitive, in the case of Chicago vastly more so than they had been at any time since the Black Sox.
• The Red Sox were in decline from the '40s but were more competitive than they had been in the '30s.
• The Senators were better than in the '40s.
• The Browns/Orioles were improving rapidly by the latter '50s.
• The Tigers had been much better in the early '40s but otherwise were up and down in both decades.
• The A's were among the worst franchises in ML history from '33 on. They stunk in the '50s but they stunk just as bad in the '40s.
Compared to the '30s and '40s the Tigers and Red Sox are probably the only AL franchises that were more ineffective in the '50s than in the previous generation.
Or to look at it another way, in the 1930s a total of 7 teams (Phi and Wash and Det twice each and Bos once) other than the Yankees finished within 10 games of first place. In the '40s the number was 15 but 5 of them in '44 and '45 alone. In the '50s the number 13, arguably a better showing by non-Yankees than the previous 20 years.
Well, that's basically the same team that also won the AL in 1941-43 as well. :-)
-- Main reason why history has overrated the 1950s Yankees: 8 pennants in the decade
Main reason why we now consider those Yankees overrated: They never really had a year where they blew away the opposition (until expansion). There was no 1927, 1939 or 1998 Yankee club in there. No 1969 O's, no 1975-6 Reds, no 1906 Cubs, 1930 Athletics or 1909 Pirates. So, in the *grand* scheme of things they were just an extremely consistent 95 Win team for over a decade.
Of the top 226 Win Share (283 Win Shares - Minoso and Buffington tie for 225th, Jim Rice has 282) totals of all time how many are catchers?
Yogi Berra - 375
Carlton Fisk - 368
Johnny Bench - 356
Gary Carter - 337
Gabby hartnett - 325
Ted Simmons - 315
Bill Dickey - 314
Mike Piazza - 309
Does Joe Torre fit on this list? I'd call him a catcher
Joe Torre 315
Plus some other guys that were sort of catchers, but I wouldn't call them one:
Jimmie Foxx, Craig Biggio, Cap Anson, Jim O'Rourke, Dale Murphy, and Brian Downing - who is really more in the Torre group than this group.
Just out of the top 226,
King Kelly 278, Mickey Cocharne 275, Ivan Rodriguez 272, Bill Freehan 267
Other active players? BJ Surhoff 230, Javvy Lopez 189, Jason Kendall 177, Posada 173. I'd guess all this guys are pretty iffy, I kind of think that after Ivan and Piazza the next best active bet is Victor Martinez but he is many knee surgeries from the list.
IMO win shares does give catchers a pretty fair shake, but of course the individual voter has to realize that medical advances, and modern equipment, makes the big career totals of modern players more easily attainable.
Basically it is LWTS, which has generally fallen into disregard, largely as a result of the attacks of Bill James. The primary gripe is its use of the average as the 0 point, with player ratings year to year being + of - from there. IOW a player can have a nice career and then lose a half dozen points in decline. This I agree is ridiculous. A player who accumulated 40 POWs or TPRs or LWTs over a 15 year career cannot retire at less than 40, IMO.
Still given the quirks of WS and WARP, I would have to say that LWTs has been dissed somewhat more than it deserves. Try this. Take all the LWTs and convert any negative numbers to 0s. See if that floats your boat.
Yes, I would just add:
1. An average baseline is not appropriate if you're trying to decide who the 25th man on your roster should be, but to determine the greatest players in Baseball History, your baseline probably should be AT LEAST .500.
2. WS, among it's many problems, uses a baseline of .250 Win%. Even if you think .500 baseline is too high, .250 certainly seems WAY too low.
3. WARP has a baseline of around .350 I think, due to the combining of Batting and Fielding replacement levels into one player replacement level. This is around the level for a good AA player, which also seems like too low of a baseline to measure greatness.
4. Player Overall Wins also gets some criticism for "overvaluing" good middle infield fielding. However, if you look at how players rank by position vs. other positions, Player Overall Wins gives you a much more balanced mix of "TOP" players across positions than Win Shares, which gives you a lot of corner OFers and 1st basemen, but not many SS or Catchers.
A similar setting of average could be done for WARP as well, or one could use the provided BRAA, FRAA, and PRAA in place of the values above replacement level.
It has some specific fielding issues that have been described elsewhere, but those relate mostly to inferring defensive innings from PAs. In small quantities, as when a former great is relegated to a bench role, it can go waaaay off.
And yes, it values middle IFers of good defensive value much more highly than WS or WARP. This does not in any way prove that LWTS is the one that's wrong.
I don't think that's why it was criticized, Kevin. It's Glen Hubbard. It's Nap Lajoie. It's Bobby Doerr. It's Joe Morgan. It's Roy Smalley. It's Richie Ashburn. It's Puddin' Head Jones. It's Eddie Yost. It's Steve Garvey. It's Bill Buckner.
I don't know if the new version of LWTS has adjusted for the past mistakes, but those mistakes are what hurt TPI's reputation back then.
Are Win Shares perfect in regard to fielding? No, but there are less head-scratching selections there than with the other system.
For adjsuting LWTS, I wouldn't make everything below 0 a 0, ut instead turn -2.5 (or thereabouts) to 0 for career and then only look at a player's best seasons for 0
For WS, 15 WS is pretty close to an average season for anyone who isn't a catcher or pitcher. From tehre it is pretty easy to calculate value above average or something really close to it. I am not sure what the WS/g or per 100g would be for gus who only played half a season. But then again I dont' like to break things down into units smaller than one season so I don't really give a lot of credit to partial seasons.
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