Let the discussion begin!

I pulled the numbers above from baseball-reference.com.

One thing that would be nice would be to get an idea of what Matsui's Japan translations might be.

I figure he would have been in the majors by 1996 at the latest, age 22. He was 29 by the time he got to the majors, and put up 21.3 bWAR (22.6 if you zero out 2012). Is that typical of a Hall of Merit corner OF? He played a little CF in the majors, would have been a Major League CF in his early/mid 20s? That's probably relevant too.

I see Jones, Thome and Rolen sailing in. Having an Elect 4 year will make things interesting for the final spot.

I agree, Posada or Rizzuto should be next in line!

Smiles.

There are some names there that make me say, "He's been retired long enough to be eligible? Wow." Names like Santana and Carpenter. Although to some extent, perhaps I haven't been paying as much attention as a fan to the last five years as to some previous years, and that's why I didn't realize they'd been gone that long.

Defensive evaluation, both positive and negative, is going to loom large in several cases, notably Jones, Jones, and Rolen. I just tried to get something of a discussion about Chipper started. And is Thome mostly going to be evaluated as a bat-first, left end of the defensive spectrum player? He did play a little 3B in there somewhere.

We never came close to electing Luis Aparicio, but how would Omar Vizquel compare to him? That thought comes up just from the sheer number of games played at SS.

Whereas Andruw Jones has me thinking of Cesar Cedeno and odd career trajectories.

Yeah, it feels like just recently Santana was throwing that no hitter about a month or so before his career ended.

It's pretty crazy seeing Kerry Wood, who was so memorable as a rookie, while I was a grown up being eligible for the Hall of Fame now.

And I will now being sounding the drumbeat for Johan Santana.

Somewhere on this year's Thibs Hall of Fame tracker thread is a discussion of Santana being the Sandy Koufax of his generation. While someone here will probably do a spit take at my saying so, it makes a ton of sense when you think not about the number of innings they each threw but about how many seasons they pitched, the shape of their careers (both began as RP/spot starters), and how excellent they were in comparison to their peers.

But for a more in-depth look, please check out this article I wrote for an online project in which a pal and I are basically repeating the HOM experience with our own set of rules for election and whatnot. (Actually, our acronym is HoME, but it stands for Hall of Miller and Eric...we weren't trying to be so close to the HOM acronym.)

https://homemlb.wordpress.com/2016/02/10/is-johan-santana-the-contemporary-sandy-koufax/

Not trying to pimp my own blog here, please don't take it that way. But the article is germane (well, big chunks of it).

Yeah, it feels like just recently Santana was throwing that no hitter about a month or so before his career ended.

To be fair, there was an article less than month ago about "Johan Santana ... attempting another MLB comeback". Even setting aside possible future value, he'll be a very interesting player to evaluate. He was pretty clearly the best pitcher in baseball for about a five-year stretch but with almost no value outside of that period.

If Santana is Koufax, does that make Carpenter Dizzy Dean?

Capsule thoughts:

#1) Chipper Jones - 25th all-time in runs created; more walks than strikeouts.
#2) Scott Rolen - as good as Brooks and Nettles defensively, a better hitter than either (essentially Ken Boyer's career with the bat).

Jim Thome - in a class with McCovey and Killebrew; well above our threshold for bat-only players; most likely #4 behind Jim Edmonds.

Andruw Jones - in a class with Richie Ashburn (despite the different shape of their offensive value) and Chet Lemon (a lower offensive peak, not quite as insanely good on defense). Both declined sharply after their age-31 seasons, though not as precipitously as Andruw. A hard case where I'm open to persuasion - probably behind Vlad but ahead of Sosa.

Johan Santana - broke at age 31; among extreme short-career pitchers, very comparable to Addie Joss, less qualified than Koufax, more qualified than Lefty Gomez; pitched poorly in the postseason. I'm voting for Nomar Garciaparra and Santana has pretty much the equivalent case as a pitcher, so he'll probably be on the bottom half of my ballot.

Johnny Damon - essentially Vada Pinson 2.0. Only made two All-Star teams. Among the top 100 eligible players, but shouldn't be on anyone's ballot.

Jamie Moyer - essentially Jim Kaat 2.0. Among long-career lefties, he's behind both Tommy John and Frank Tanana.

Omar Vizquel - gave away so much value as a hitter that he'd need to be the greatest defensive shortstop ever, and he wasn't. Both Luis Aparicio and Rabbit Maranville have stronger Hall of Merit cases.

most likely #4 behind Jim Edmonds

Edmonds got elected

Ardo, I personally see a lot of daylight between Santana and Nomar. An analogy might be Koufax and Fregosi.

Elsewhere up thread someone mentioned Addie Joss as a Santana comp. Superficially that makes sense, but once we dive below the durability and ERA+ levels, Santana was more effective in his own time, so much so that he is well above Joss for me. One thing that I do for all pitchers is adjust their innings to be on the same approximate level as a pitcher in the year 2000. I do this because otherwise I'd have too many pre 1920s hurlers. Anyway, Joss' innings aren't especially impressive by the standards of his time, and he translates as very good not great.

Elsewhere someone mentioned Dean vs Carpenter. I happen to like Dean more than the average voter might, though I wouldn't vote for him at this time. I would liken him more to Jose Rijo with an outstanding bat and another season or season and a half of good performance. Since I am a Rijo fan (but wouldn't ever vote for him), this is praise from me. Or to say it differently, Dean is the Koufax of his era minus just enough value to make him not votable. Because Sandy for me is a borderline vote.

I don't timeline, but award Pitcher Points, calculated as ((ERA+-90)*IP/1000) On that basis, Santana has 93PP compared to Joss's 121, so they're not close. But I have Joss second on my 2017 ballot (haven't looked at the other eligibles for 2018 yet) and Santana is hovering around #15, below Welch, Bridges and Tommy John but above Leever and Tiant.

Edmonds got elected

D'oh! (facepalm).

Too-early 2018 prelim:
1) C. Jones
2) Rolen
3) Thome
4) Schang
5) Luque
6) Vlad
7) A. Jones (?)
8) Hilton Smith
9) Sosa
10) Santana (?)
11) Taylor
12) Kent
13) Posada
14) Easter
15) Evers

16-20: Nomar, Tommy John, Buddy Bell, Vic Willis, Kenny Lofton.
21-25: Lee Smith, Tommy Leach, Luis Tiant, Fred McGriff, Dick Redding.

I don't timeline, but award Pitcher Points, calculated as ((ERA+-90)*IP/1000)

Is that per season (and then summed up at the end), or the career ERA+/IP calculation?
Could a pitcher accumulate NEGATIVE PP for a bad year in an otherwise amazing career (like Randy Johnson's second and last seasons)?

I ask because I liked your scoring system and ran Santana's numbers through both methods.

In the year-by-year-then-sum version, he ends up with 107.8327.
In the whole-career version, he ends up with 93.18067.

That seems to be a big difference.

Follow up:

Santana's year-by-year PP totals

Innings  ERA+   Points
 86       80     -0.86
 43 2/3   96      0.262
108 1/3  150      6.5
158 1/3  148      9.183333333
228      182     20.976
231 2/3  155     15.05833333
233 2/3  162     16.824
219      129      8.541
234 1/3  166     17.80933333
166 2/3  130      6.666666667
199      131      8.159
117       79     -1.287
Grand total     107.8326667

Random, that's a very interesting idea, to do it year by year. Idle person that I am, I just do it over the whole career. It has the advantage of giving a single number that is consistent across eras, and doesn't depend on "secret sauce" ingredients like WAR does. Your calculation would push him up a bit, though I suspect all pitchers with some variance would have higher seasonal-summed PP than career PP. He's still not as good as Joss, though, although he matches Cicotte's career PP.

My first cut on Rolen has him ahead of Home Run Baker and Jud Wilson but behind Brett and Boggs.

I have Chipper Jones as the #3 third baseman of all time ahead of Boggs but behind Schmidt and Mathews. That's before looking at his extensive postseason record.

Thome ends up between Buck Leonard and Frank Thomas among 1B. He will get the third slot on my ballot.

Andruw Jones ends up between Jose Cruz and Brett Butler, well behind Lofton. Will not make my ballot.

DL - where are you slotting Posada among catchers, he and Lofton are two guys I'm having trouble placing. I didn't look as hard at Posada as I should have.. I had him behind Schang, and thus off the ballot and then I didn't worry about it too much.

Dimino think all the Yankees are his special children and Posada and Bernie and Paulie and Tino Martinez and Clay Bellinger all should be in the HOM so I have to throw his comments out - joking Joe, Happy Holidays.

Seriously though, if you are working on the lists right now DL would you share your Posada and Lofton rankings by position?

2018 Prelim

1) Chipper Jones - Is he as good as Mathews? Postseason bonus for Jones puts them very, very close. PHOM
2) Scott Rolen - My first cut on Rolen has him ahead of Home Run Baker and Jud Wilson but behind Brett and Boggs. PHOM
3) Jim Thome - Thome ends up between Buck Leonard and Frank Thomas among 1B. PHOM
4) Tommy Bridges
5) Johan Santana - Not really a surprise if I like Tommy Bridges so much. PWAA total is outstanding. PHOM
6) Phil Rizzuto
7) Gavy Cravath
8) Urban Shocker
9) Tommy John
10) Bus Clarkson
11) Bucky Walters
12) Bob Johnson
13) Bert Campaneris
14) Luis Tiant
15) Ben Taylor

16-20) Bancroft, Giles, Schang, Cash, Appier
21-25) H Smith, Newcombe, Posada, Pesky, Kent

28) Sosa
35) Lofton
39) V Guerrero
81) Andruw Jones - Dom DiMaggio ranks higher

Moyer and Vizquel are not in the top 100

I have Posada pretty close to Schang. They are the two best catchers not inducted yet.

Lofton is behind both Doby and Averill. Averill is the bottom of my PHoM. I have Lofton ahead of Andre Dawson and Jimmy Wynn but they are not PHoM. There are six CF that are not PHOM for me - Dawson, Wynn, Edd Roush, Willard Brown, Pete Browning, Lip Pike.

DL we are in agreement on Schang and Posada as the best two available catchers not in the HOM, but not in the 15 most vote worthy, but not too far off either.

I'm more bullish on Lofton than you are, but I do think he is in that group with Jimmy Wynn and Dawson and I'm thinking maybe Max Carey is the best comp. He's hard to evaluate, partially because he is clearly better when I looked at him than when I just remembered him.

Pitcher Name IP ERA+ PWAR PWAA BWAR
Johan Santana 2025.2 136 50.2 34.1 1.0 (zeroed out his first two seasons and his last season)
Mariano Rivera 1283.2 205 56.4 33.1 0.5 (also zeroed out his first season)

I will end up with Rivera ahead of Santana due to the differences in their postseason record but they start off pretty close to each other.

Idle person that I am, I just do it over the whole career.

Oh, I get that. Short of feeding the database into a spreadsheet and going at it, that's exactly how I would do the calculations.
I was kind of surprised there was that big of a difference. I was thinking they would be closer (within a point or two), but halfway through my post I realized that the numbers were quite different, so I kept going.

I just ran the similar test on Addie Joss' numbers, and he goes from 121 to 133, which pretty much supports your original position about the difference between Joss and Santana.

I'm not a voter, but I have a question:

I was looking up Schilling, Mussina, and Brown on BBRef; right there with them in terms of WAR is Jim McCormick, who accumulated 75.5 bWAR in just 10 seasons. I look him up, and see he's one of those 600 IP/yr guys from the late 1800s. So I come over here to read about him in the HOM plaque room, and...nothing. I dug a bit deeper, see he hung around a few years on the ballot, but never gained any traction. I looked for the discussion thread for him, and he's paired with Jim Whitney in a short (6 post) discussion that doesn't say anything.

Sure, he had a very short career (10 years), but that's a crap load of value. Why was he so easily dismissed?

TDF,

Here's my take on it.
1) You should include Tony Mullane with McCormick and Whitney.
2) But we've already elected five pitchers (and part of Monte Ward) from the 1880s, during which time there was only one league for two years, the UA was a lousy league, and every year 1882 through 1884 was an expansion year.
3) The number of team-seasons in the 1880s was about the same as three-four years of team seasons in the 1980s to now so. We've already elected too many 1800s guys en toto, reflecting either a bias toward them or the fact that they've gotten a much longer hearing than later eras...I'm on record as saying we should stop electing from that era and start electing deadballers and 1970s guys to bring about more chronological equity in the backlog.
4) McCormick, himself, had his best WAR year in the UA, which, as mentioned was a poor league.
5) There is reason to believe that WAR might not capture the contribution of 1880s pitchers as accurately as latter-day moundsmen because the balance between pitching and defense might have been different during a time with astronomical error rates, few DPs, and much wilder base running.

So to my mind, would I rather vote up McCormick knowing these things? Or would I rather vote for, say, Buddy Bell and Wally Schang who not only help out era-wise but also played positions where the HOM has a shortfall of honorees? My answer is the latter but someone else's mileage may vary.

From my own records as a voter:

I cast my first ballot in 1904. The most obvious 1880's pitchers has already been elected. Jim McCormick appeared on my ballot every year from 1905 through 1915, generally somewhere between 9th and 13th. Even from the beginning, I was always using methods based on RA+; McCormick always looked good to me, and I think I was pretty heavily discounting the UA.

I had McCormick clearly ahead of Bob Caruthers. So I disagreed with the election of Caruthers, and in particular, I disagreed with electing Caruthers ahead of McCormick.

I had McCormick just slightly ahead of Mickey Welch. In the end I wasn't really in favor of electing either of them, but to the extent that Welch stuck around on the ballot and McCormick disappeared, I disagreed with that.

But McCormick slipped out of my top 15 starting in 1916 and never came back. (One pitcher who did appear starting in 1916: Rube Waddell.) My current position: I'll take him as the best of the remaining 1880's pitchers - but I won't put him on the ballot. Too much of the rest of baseball history, too many other candidates.

Preliminary ballot for 2018:

Chipper
Rolen
Thome
J. McCormick
Tiant
Vlad
Sosa
Schang
B. Bell
Bob Johnson
Ben Taylor
Redding
Willis
Kent
V. Stephens

16-25: T. John, Shocker, Lofton, Munson, Bando, Fregosi, Campaneris, A. Jones, Santana, T. Bridges.

Regarding mccormick, he is a baseball reference darling, but is much worse under the prism of baseball gauge or fangraphs, links to a post and discussion regarding 1880s hurlers...http://www.baseball-fever.com/showthread.php?126842-Yes-No-Maybe-Hall-of-Fame-project-1900&p=2543737#post2543737

Ordinal rank:
Clarkson, keefe, Spalding, radbourn, galvin, hall line, mullane, caruthers, bond, buffinton, whitney, mccormick, welch...I would move bond to below galvin due to extreme peak value.

Jim McCormick...Sure, he had a very short career (10 years), but that's a crap load of value. Why was he so easily dismissed?

McCormick was generally dismissed by HoM voters more than a decade ago, before BB-Ref had WAR, when this site was baseballprimer. The metrics we were using put him in the tier just below the HoMers, with Mullane and Welch. I had a preference for Welch, slightly ahead of McCormick.

The early HoM threads are not archived here in their entirety. They were corrupted in a 2005 site update. Internet archive has most of the original versions. A good discussion we had of early pitchers can be found here.

Thanks for sharing Dan, some excellent discussion from the early days.
As an example, Favre makes a great case in post 108 to exercise caution with Bob Caruthers, showing that his peak years in the AA may have been from a poorer league quality than is generally thought of.

Hello everyone!

I've been a long admirer of the Hall of Merit, but it wasn't until recently that I decided to give it a go-around. I had hoped to have a ballot up to standard in time for the most recent vote, but It looks like I missed it. Oh well.

Anyway, I still haven't finished my system, but I do have a few players that are doing quite well by my system that there seems to be little interest in, and I kind of wanted to get some opinions on them before putting together a preliminary ballot. My system is primarily based around Fangraphs WAR with a focus on sustained production (ie Prime), although I do like raw longevity as well, especially from pitchers.

The first player is Hack Wilson. My system currently ranks him as the 12th best centerfielder (note that I haven't gotten to Negro Leaguers already in the Hall of Merit yet, so that does affect the ranking). He's just behind Kenny Lofton and decently ahead of the borderline HoMers like Earl Averill in my system. Looking at his career and I get why my system likes him, but it still gives me pause when I see that no one else is voting for him. One thing that could be a bias in my system that might help him is I'm giving decent sized penalties for horrific late career defense, which hurts guys like Dave Winfield for me, but since Wilson had such a short career he didn't have time to butcher things out there.

The other older outfielder that my system likes is Kiki Cuyler. I found a bit of discussion about him as a borderline type guy, but not anything in years. To me he looks like a pretty solid all around player with a sustained period of really good production. Top notch baserunning, solid bat, tweener defense. Has some playing time issues though. He looks a lot like Reggie Smith to me. Smith is a smidgen better everywhere but on the basepaths where Cuyler blows him out of the water. Another guy that seems decently over the borderline in my system, but there doesn't seem to be much interest in him.

Next is Mickey Lolich. My system has him third among eligible pitchers not yet in the HoM. Four year stretch (1969-1972) as a legitimate ace, with a 12 year stretch of really solid seasons. He does benefit a decent amount from using FIP over ERA & friends - a lot of his more mediocre seasons like '66 or '74 look a lot better under FIP. To me it looks like he has a similar case to Tommy John or Jim Kaat, with a little more peak, but he doesn't seem to get the interest of those two guys.

The final guy is Dolph Camilli. Unlike the other three, he's not currently in a ballot spot for me, ranking somewhere around 18th among eligibles, but there seems to be like no discussion of the guy, and he's right at the borderline for me, so I figured I'd bring him up. Short career, but really nice bat and a top notch glove for a first baseman, both by reputation and the numbers I can find. Got a late start but it looks like he was a pretty quality player in his 5 years in the PCL. That being said he didn't really take off upon his arrival in the Majors which kind of implies he wasn't a star caliber player yet. I'm not giving him any minor league credit right now, but I think he's a guy to look at.

The other holdovers doing well by my system seem to have a decent level of support from the rest of the electorate, but I wanted to get some opinions on why people don't like these four before moving forward.

Pitchers, by the RA+ seasonal system I've used from the beginning. This is before any adjustments for either defensive support or the pitcher's own hitting.

Johan Santana:

Equivalent record: 146-79. Big years bonus: 38. Career Fibonacci Win Points: 164. Best 5 years: 19-6, 18-8, 18-8, 18-8, 14-8.

Jamie Moyer:

Equivalent record: 241-211. Big years bonus: 13. Career FWP: 163. Best 5 years: 16-5, 16-10, 16-10, 15-9, 16-10.

Chis Carpenter:

Equivalent record: 140-106. Big years bonus: 19. Career FWP: 116. Best 5 years: 16-5, 18-9, 16-8, 12-8, 14-12.

Santana's equivalent record is a little better than his actual record of 139-78. Carpenter's equivalent record is somewhat worse than his actual record of 144-94. Moyer's equivalent record is quite a bit worse than his actual record of 269-209.

Santana and Carpenter had 9.33 and 9.31 IP per decision, which is high; they were credited with fewer decisions than their innings warrant. Moyer had 8.52 IP per decision, so he was credited with more decisions than his innings warrant.

Carpenter's career totals do not come close to putting him into HoM consideration. Some others with vaguely similar records (big years bonus in brackets): Brad Radke 154-119 [4], Mark Langston 178-151 [12], Claude Osteen 200-185 [10], Sam McDowell 154-123 [22], Mike Cuellar 167-144 [8], John Tudor 120-80 [15]. But those were all good pitchers.

Moyer and Santana have the same career equivalent FWP, getting there by radically different paths. Some others with career FWP between 158 and 171:

Jim Kaat 262-241 [13]
Addie Joss 161-98 [40]
Lefty Gomez 169-109 [46]
Dolf Luque 203-154 [33]
Jerry Koosman 233-193 [21]
David Cone 190-132 [19]
Bret Saberhagen 174-111 [27]
Rick Reuschel 221-174 [14]
Don Drysdale 209-157 [31]
Sandy Koufax 163-95 [63]

So: I can see a possible case for putting Moyer ahead of Kaat and some of the other inning-eaters in that range, like Koosman and Reuschel. I'd definitely take Moyer ahead of Jack Morris (226-199, [9]). But I would put Moyer behind Tommy John (281-244, [3]) even though John never had a year as good as several that Moyer had.

Comparing Santana to Koufax is fair game. So also is comparing him to Saberhagen. Severely cross-era comparisons to Gomez, Luque, and Joss are not particularly reliable.

Since Jaack likes Lolich, a quick review of him by the methods of the previous post:

Equivalent record: 215-189. Big years bonus: 15. Career FWP: 141. Best 5 years: 23-14, 25-17, 18-14, 15-11, 18-16.

By today's standards, his seasonal IP totals are unimaginable, topping out at 376 IP in 1971. (That's the 25-17 equivalent record above.)

Some others with career FWP between 135 and 148:

Dwight Gooden 174-137 [24, but oh what a top year]
Frank Viola 177-138 [26]
Dizzy Dean 136-82 [35]
Orel Hershiser 191-157 [18]
Vida Blue 202=169 [28]
Milt Pappas 195-159 [31]
Jack Morris 226-199 [9]

So, a specific question for Jaack: when you compare Lolich to Morris, what do you see? (Note: you said you were using FIP rather than ERA or "its friends" - I'm using one of those friends, namely RA.)

Just a look shows Morris was pretty consistently around 4 FIP for his career. His lifetime mark is 3.94, and his only season sub 3.50 FIP was 1983. Lolich meanwhile had 5 sub 3 FIP seasons (Technically 6 but the last on is his 34.2 innings for the Padres in 1978) and a career mark of 3.20, which is pretty good.

Lolich is better than Morris in all three components of FIP, and significantly so in K/9 and BB/9 (Career K/9 is 7.01 to 5.83, BB/9 is 2.72 to 3.27, HR/9 is 0.86 to 0.92.

All in all, by RA, they're close in career value but Lolich has a significantly better peak and prime. But RA probably underrates Lolich, so he gets a pretty substantial bump from that.

Welcome Jaack!

Lolich is an interesting character, ranking outside the top 120 by Baseball Reference and Baseball Gauge, outside the top 175 by Kiko's WAR, but a top 60ish guy by Fangraphs and Baseball Prospectus. His WPA is awful, but he was quite good in the post-season.

Jaack - so looking at Wilson and Camilli I think the reason your system spits out different answers than most of the voters here - is your use of Prime WAR, as the main bench mark. Using BB Ref WAR for Wilson for example from ages 26-30 he had 29.9 WAR - but only 8.9 WAR for the rest of his career combined.

I'm trying to be very careful not to say your system is wrong/bad - but it is different than what most of us do. I often think of things in this way, if I was playing OOTP and I could have this guy or that guy - Hack Wilson or Kenny Lofton - for their whole career (20 seasons) who would I rather have.

The way you seem to be answering the question is "Hack Wilson is going to win me a couple of pennants when he is rolling and I'll get by with Tommy Umphlett the rest of the time. I'd rather have that than maybe coming up short with Kenny Lofton in those years, even though Lofton will be great when Wilson has disappeared into a bottle at age 34."

I think that's a reasonable position, but if you are true to your system you'll always have a "funny looking" ballot.

With a potentially contested fourth electee spot, I wanted to review the major systems and highlight whether any of the high rankings candidates may standout/we can gravitate toward a 4th standout candidate.

I reviewed Kiko's WAR, Baseball Gauge, Baseball Reference, Fangraphs, and Baseball Prospectus.

Kiko's values are a 50/50 split of E/W ORL, with a multiplier of 171% to equal the total WAR values of the other systems.
I also adjusted Kiko's figures for the positional adjustments of the top 1000 rankings, as suggested from post 134 of the 2017 ballot discussion thread. Kiko has no RE24 adjustment made.

Analysis profiles: Top 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17 years, total, Avg of those, an adjustment for RE24 contextual hitting comparing against wRAA at Fangraphs, the Adj WAR with RE24, and a 50/50 split of neutral and context dependent.

Average of 5 systems:
1.0 _3.0 _5.0 _7.0 _9.0 11.0 13.0 15.0 17.0 Tot Avg RE24 Adj AvAd Name
7.1 20.8 33.2 44.4 54.0 61.9 68.9 74.6 79.5 81.5 52.6 1.11 58.4 55.51 Chipper Jones
8.6 21.4 33.0 43.0 51.8 59.6 64.2 66.6 67.6 67.6 48.3 1.07 51.6 49.99 Scott Rolen
7.2 20.6 31.5 40.8 49.4 56.9 63.7 68.9 72.0 73.7 48.4 0.99 47.9 48.17 Jim Thome
9.8 22.6 33.7 43.9 51.9 57.4 60.8 62.4 62.7 62.7 46.8 1.05 48.9 47.84 Sammy Sosa
7.9 22.0 34.3 45.0 53.9 59.9 62.6 63.8 64.0 64.0 47.7 0.98 47.0 47.37 Andruw Jones
7.7 20.7 30.5 39.2 46.5 52.6 58.0 61.4 62.6 62.6 44.2 1.06 46.7 45.45 Kenny Lofton
7.4 19.7 29.2 37.3 44.7 50.9 55.7 58.8 60.0 60.1 42.4 1.07 45.2 43.76 Jeff Kent
6.9 19.6 30.9 40.2 48.3 54.6 58.1 58.9 58.9 58.9 43.5 0.98 42.8 43.14 Vladimir Guerrero
8.4 23.1 34.9 43.6 50.1 50.9 50.9 50.9 50.9 50.9 41.5 1.00 41.5 41.45 Johan Santana
6.1 16.5 25.0 32.6 38.5 42.1 43.9 44.3 44.3 44.3 33.8 0.95 31.9 32.85 Jorge Posada

Kiko:
7.1 20.1 32.1 43.3 52.5 61.0 68.1 74.2 79.5 82.0 52.0 1.00 52.0 51.98 Chipper Jones
7.3 18.2 28.8 36.8 44.4 50.1 53.0 54.9 55.9 55.9 40.5 1.00 40.5 40.52 Scott Rolen
5.9 17.6 28.7 37.0 44.7 51.6 57.8 63.5 67.8 69.6 44.4 1.00 44.4 44.42 Jim Thome
7.7 18.1 26.6 33.9 40.5 45.8 49.4 52.0 52.6 52.6 37.9 1.00 37.9 37.92 Sammy Sosa
6.4 18.6 29.5 40.0 48.9 54.2 57.6 59.4 59.8 59.8 43.4 1.00 43.4 43.44 Andruw Jones
7.1 16.4 25.1 33.1 39.5 45.3 50.2 53.2 53.9 53.9 37.8 1.00 37.8 37.77 Kenny Lofton
7.7 21.0 31.3 40.4 48.7 55.4 60.8 64.0 65.8 65.8 46.1 1.00 46.1 46.09 Jeff Kent
5.8 16.5 25.9 33.7 41.1 48.0 52.2 53.3 53.3 53.3 38.3 1.00 38.3 38.32 Vladimir Guerrero
8.4 22.3 33.1 41.6 47.8 48.9 49.0 49.0 49.0 49.0 39.8 1.00 39.8 39.83 Johan Santana
8.0 21.0 32.4 43.1 52.3 59.1 62.2 63.7 63.7 63.7 46.9 1.00 46.9 46.90 Jorge Posada

Baseball Gauge:
6.2 18.2 28.4 37.0 45.2 52.1 58.2 63.0 66.8 68.4 44.3 1.16 51.4 47.89 Chipper Jones
7.4 20.5 31.9 42.0 50.0 57.4 61.8 64.7 66.2 66.2 46.8 1.09 51.0 48.89 Scott Rolen
6.5 19.3 29.5 38.6 46.8 54.0 60.7 65.9 69.0 71.0 46.1 0.99 45.5 45.79 Jim Thome
8.9 22.0 33.3 43.2 50.5 56.8 60.6 62.0 62.4 62.4 46.2 1.06 48.9 47.56 Sammy Sosa
8.2 22.8 34.7 44.7 52.8 58.1 60.6 61.9 62.2 62.2 46.8 0.98 45.9 46.35 Andruw Jones
4.8 18.1 26.7 33.9 40.5 46.1 51.1 54.8 56.7 56.7 38.9 1.08 42.1 40.51 Kenny Lofton
7.1 19.0 28.9 37.3 44.6 49.7 54.5 57.5 58.9 59.1 41.7 1.08 45.0 43.35 Jeff Kent
6.4 17.8 27.9 36.5 44.3 50.7 54.0 54.8 54.8 54.8 40.2 0.98 39.3 39.74 Vladimir Guerrero
9.2 24.6 37.4 47.7 54.1 54.8 54.8 54.8 54.8 54.8 44.7 1.00 44.7 44.70 Johan Santana
5.8 16.0 24.8 32.7 38.4 42.4 45.0 45.5 45.5 45.5 34.2 0.94 32.0 33.07 Jorge Posada

Baseball Reference:
7.60 21.9 35.0 46.6 56.6 64.6 72.1 77.9 82.9 85.4 55.1 1.13 62.1 58.60 Chipper Jones
9.20 22.4 33.7 43.6 52.7 61.3 66.5 69.7 70.3 70.3 50.0 1.08 54.2 52.06 Scott Rolen
7.50 21.5 32.6 42.2 51.4 58.6 65.1 70.1 73.1 75.0 49.7 0.99 49.0 49.39 Jim Thome
10.3 22.7 34.1 44.9 53.7 58.9 60.9 62.0 62.1 62.1 47.2 1.06 49.9 48.52 Sammy Sosa
8.20 22.7 36.0 46.5 54.7 60.9 63.8 64.4 64.5 64.5 48.6 0.98 47.7 48.15 Andruw Jones
10.3 24.5 36.0 46.4 54.7 61.7 67.7 71.0 71.8 71.8 51.6 1.06 54.9 53.26 Kenny Lofton
7.20 19.4 28.0 35.8 43.1 49.4 53.2 55.6 56.6 56.7 40.5 1.08 43.9 42.20 Jeff Kent
7.40 20.3 31.6 41.1 49.2 54.9 58.4 59.3 59.3 59.3 44.1 0.98 43.1 43.61 Vladimir Guerrero
8.70 23.4 35.7 44.8 51.2 51.6 51.6 51.6 51.6 51.6 42.2 1.00 42.2 42.18 Johan Santana
5.90 16.8 25.2 32.7 38.6 41.5 43.2 43.4 43.4 43.4 33.4 0.93 31.2 32.30 Jorge Posada

Fangraphs:
7.3 21.5 34.7 46.8 57.6 65.4 72.4 78.2 83.0 84.9 55.2 1.13 62.3 58.73 Chipper Jones
9.0 22.5 34.3 44.6 53.8 62.0 67.0 69.2 70.2 70.2 50.3 1.08 54.5 52.39 Scott Rolen
7.4 21.5 32.0 41.2 49.7 57.2 63.5 67.6 69.6 70.6 48.0 0.99 47.3 47.66 Jim Thome
9.9 22.9 34.2 44.9 54.6 59.9 63.0 63.8 63.8 63.8 48.1 1.06 50.8 49.42 Sammy Sosa
7.9 22.6 35.8 47.1 57.2 64.2 67.1 68.2 68.2 68.2 50.7 0.98 49.7 50.19 Andruw Jones
9.5 22.3 33.1 42.5 50.7 57.6 63.3 65.8 66.1 66.1 47.7 1.07 51.0 49.31 Kenny Lofton
7.4 19.0 27.4 35.4 42.6 49.0 53.6 56.8 57.5 57.5 40.6 1.08 44.0 42.33 Jeff Kent
7.1 20.0 31.2 40.5 47.2 52.1 54.6 55.1 55.1 55.1 41.8 0.98 40.8 41.32 Vladimir Guerrero
7.1 20.7 30.2 37.6 44.6 46.1 46.1 46.1 46.1 46.1 37.1 1.00 37.1 37.07 Johan Santana
6.1 17.7 26.2 33.8 40.2 44.0 45.8 45.8 45.8 45.8 35.1 0.94 32.9 34.01 Jorge Posada

Baseball Prospectus:
6.90 20.3 32.7 44.1 53.4 60.9 67.3 72.9 77.8 79.2 51.5 1.14 58.7 55.10 Chipper Jones
9.20 21.9 33.7 44.6 54.1 62.6 67.7 69.6 70.3 70.3 50.4 1.08 54.6 52.51 Scott Rolen
7.40 19.8 29.3 37.9 46.0 53.6 60.4 65.4 67.9 69.3 45.7 0.99 45.0 45.39 Jim Thome
10.9 24.8 36.7 47.4 54.0 59.1 63.0 64.5 64.9 64.9 49.0 1.05 51.7 50.38 Sammy Sosa
8.40 22.6 34.2 45.3 54.0 59.7 61.6 62.7 62.9 62.9 47.4 0.98 46.5 46.96 Andruw Jones
6.70 21.5 30.7 38.6 45.8 50.4 55.8 60.3 62.6 62.6 43.5 1.07 46.6 45.05 Kenny Lofton
7.60 20.4 30.4 37.8 44.6 51.0 56.5 60.1 61.4 61.4 43.1 1.08 46.5 44.83 Jeff Kent
7.10 21.0 33.9 44.5 53.7 60.3 63.5 64.1 64.1 64.1 47.6 0.98 46.7 47.16 Vladimir Guerrero
8.20 23.6 36.6 44.4 50.3 50.5 50.5 50.5 50.5 50.5 41.6 1.00 41.6 41.56 Johan Santana
6.30 15.2 22.6 28.9 33.4 35.2 35.7 35.7 35.7 35.7 28.4 0.92 26.1 27.29 Jorge Posada

My personal weight falls closer to a 45% Kiko, 25% Gauge, 15% Reference, 7.5% Prospectus, 7.5% Fangraphs, the results:
6.9 20.0 31.8 42.5 51.7 59.6 66.5 72.1 77.0 79.1 50.7 1.08 54.8 52.75 Chipper Jones
7.9 20.0 31.1 40.3 48.5 55.4 59.4 61.8 62.8 62.8 45.0 1.05 47.1 46.05 Scott Rolen
6.5 19.1 29.8 38.6 46.7 53.8 60.3 65.5 69.0 70.8 46.0 0.99 45.6 45.83 Jim Thome
7.4 20.9 32.6 43.1 51.8 57.4 60.3 61.7 62.0 62.0 45.9 0.99 45.4 45.66 Andruw Jones
7.5 20.0 29.9 38.3 46.1 52.3 57.2 60.3 61.8 61.8 43.5 1.05 45.5 44.49 Jeff Kent
8.8 20.6 30.7 39.7 47.1 52.6 56.0 57.8 58.2 58.2 43.0 1.03 44.3 43.65 Sammy Sosa
7.2 18.8 28.2 36.4 43.4 49.3 54.5 57.7 58.8 58.8 41.3 1.04 43.0 42.14 Kenny Lofton
8.5 23.0 34.6 43.5 49.8 50.7 50.7 50.7 50.7 50.7 41.3 1.00 41.3 41.32 Johan Santana
6.4 18.0 28.3 36.8 44.5 50.9 54.6 55.5 55.5 55.5 40.6 0.99 40.1 40.36 Vladimir Guerrero
6.9 18.4 28.2 37.2 44.4 49.4 51.8 52.6 52.6 52.6 39.4 0.96 38.0 38.70 Jorge Posada

A potential prelim:
1. Chipper Jones
2. Jim Thome
3. Scott Rolen
4. Urban Shocker
5. Andruw Jones
6. Bobby Veach
7. Bert Campaneris
8. Jeff Kent
9. Tommy Bond
10. Sammy Sosa
11. Vic Willis
12. Bob Johnson
13. Don Newcombe
14. Art Fletcher
15. George Uhle

I could be underestimating Johan's sustained peak, I could see a placement in the 9-15 range, holding off at this point.

Question. Why is the difference between pitcher WAR so different between BBReF and Fangraphs? The former really likes McCormick, Tiant, Willis, John, and Shocker but the latter not so much. Meanwhile, folks like Bridges, Lolich, Kaat, Derringer, Friend, and Newsome do well in the latter but not the former.

Position players seem pretty similar for the most part.

Bachslunch, baseball reference is based upon runs allowed (ra-9), while fangraphs is fielding independent (fip).

Thanks for all of the responses. You guys really dig deep into these things!

OKay, I think I'm about ready to post my prelim:

1. Chipper Jones
Top 5 third baseman all time and best player on the ballot by a substantial margin.

2. Scott Rolen
I have him as the fourth best defensive third baseman, after Brooks Robinson, Clete Boyer, and Buddy Bell, and he was a significantly better hitter than them. Top 10 overall third baseman

3. Kenny Lofton
All around great player - I think the Max Carey comp that Mike Webber brought up earlier is pretty good, but I think Lofton is a decent bit better. I tend to like players that remain relativively productive in the tail ends of their career, and Lofton tacks on eight years as a solid contributor after his prime is over.

4. Jim Thome
I'm normally not in love with bat only guys, but Thome's bat was plenty enough to make up for it. Actually, the defensive metrics don't hate his defense at third for those first few years before moving to first/DH, which does help his case some for me. An interesting comp in terms of value is Edgar Martinez, although Edgar was more of a contact/doubles guy and Thome was more TTO. Thome also had more longevity.

5. Hack Wilson
One spectacular year and four more where he's an MVP caliber player. As I said before, Earl Averill looks to me to be pretty similar, with Averill having a few more quality years but Wilson having a higher peak. Declined pretty quickly but he didn't stick around as a sinkhole at the end, which helps for me.

6. Tommy John
Was a solid starter or better for nearly two decades, and had a short period in there (1977-1980) as a topline pitcher on a couple of contenders, so he's not just a compiler.

7. Jeff Kent
Bit of a strange career arc. Despite popular belief, his defense was pretty solid until he got to Los Angeles. Compared to former teammate Craig Biggio, his bat looks pretty good, although he lacks Biggio's baserunning or longevity.

8. Mickey Lolich
I've talked about him already. Between his status as a workhorse and his playoff success, Lolich actually is what people think Jack Morris is.

9. Jim Kaat
On pitching alone, he's closer to Jerry Koosman than Lolich for me, but his defense pushes him up into ballot territory

10. Sal Bando
By my system he's effectively equal to contemporary Graig Nettles and better than near contemporary Darrell Evans. Evans had the best bat, Nettles had the best glove, but Bando was solid by both means, and I guess the best baserunner.

11. Hugh Duffy
The fact that two of his best seasons came in lesser leagues gives me pause enough to move him down from where my system would otherwise place him, he looks to me as the best guy remaining from the 19th century. I don't think George Van Haltren or Jimmy Ryan are even close to him really.

12. Andruw Jones
My system isn't fond of his late career but the glove is so good, and he did have plenty of offensive presense in his early career.

13. Kiki Cuyler
Another guy I've talked about. If you're willing to cross eras, I do like that Reggie Smith comp. All around solid player with really great baserunning.

14. Ben Taylor
I like first basemen with good gloves. I think the worst case projection for him is Jake Beckley with more glove, which is borderline for me, but there's a good chance he was better than that.

15. Vladimir Guerrero
The defensive metrics on him scare me a decent bit, but the bat is good enough to make up for it. For a guy with solid speed earlier in his career, his baserunning stats are shockingly bad (-12 runs in 2010 alone). I'm not sure if the bat is enough to make up for it, but for now he slots in here.

----
Next five:
Robin Ventura
Joe Tinker
Dwight Gooden
Bob Johnson
Dolph Camilli

Required disclosures:
Sammy Sosa - Probably in the 20-30 range for me. His case basically rests on how much I want to trust that he was an elite fielder early in his career because otherwise he's not all that close.
Luis Tiant - Not a bad choice, but not particularly close to the ballot for me. Among pitchers, I have him between Paul Derringer and Frank Tanana, and a bit behind contemporary Jerry Koosman.
Vic Willis - Well off ballot for me. Between Javier Vasquez and Mickey Welch for me. Top 90 pitcher or so.
Bobby Bonds - About even with Sammy Sosa in that 20-30 range. Could hypothetically make my ballot in the future.
Buddy Bell - Also in that 20-30 range.
Tommy Bridges - Not particularly close for me. Top 120ish pitcher.

Other newcomers:
Jamie Moyer - About tied with Herb Pennock. Top 150 pitcher.
Johan Santana - Well below my borderline, but not into egregious territory. Cliff Lee seems like a contemporary comp although he's not eligible. Around 100th best pitcher.
Johnny Damon - Top 50ish centerfielder. Between Vada Pinson and Willie Wilson
Omar Vizquel - My system places him right next to Rabbit Maranville, which seems about right.

Jaack, Dan rosenheck warp was a fan of Dolph camili also, placing him close to but short of enshrinement. Check out the yahoo groups for background files or excellent discussion from the boards, post 422 with values.

https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/HallofMerit/files

http://www.baseballthinkfactory.org/hall_of_merit/discussion/dan_rosenhecks_warp_data/P400

I was the biggest kiki cuyler fan prior to you joining, a candidate for mle credit, was also benched by mercurial manager donie bush during a prime season, kikos available data suggests we are overlooking his case.

A word of caution with hack wilson...the 19 30s are already over populated with electees, a lot of raw war value should have went to negros ineligible. Earl Averill is viewed usually as a borderline or mistake electee, with Joe medwick in the same boat. For these reasons, I grapple with whether to support Bob johnson, kiki cuyler (split with 1920s), dizzy dean, etc.

Thanks for the links. I'll take a look. I don't think Camilli will ever get high on my ballot, and he's right at the borderline for me, but I think he's worth a longer look.

I feel like I should be a bit more hesitant with Hack Wilson, but even significant adjustments are going to keep him on my ballot. I don't have him all that far off from Goose Goslin. In order to penalize Wilson to the point where he's off ballot, Goslin starts to look borderline and Paul Waner and Al Simmons start to look rather pedestrian. I've already made some adjustments for the era - a few weeks ago, Bob Johnson was on the top half of the ballot and Wally Berger and Tony Lazzeri were in the 10-15 ranger- but unless I do a major overhaul, it's hard for me to see Wilson falling off. He just hits a lot of the things I really like in a candidate so well.

Declined pretty quickly but he didn't stick around as a sinkhole at the end, which helps for me.

Do you deduct players for below replacement level seasons?
It's your personal preference, but a number of voters zero out these seasons, so late career Andre Dawson was desired by the Florida Marlins and paid, even though he didn't provide WAR like value.

Good explanation on Hack, I understand why he shows where he does.

Regarding Bando, Sal benefits from the replacement level 10 year assessment rather than a rolling years average like Dan R uses, significant WAR might truly belong to SS like Campaneris instead. Post 695 is a highlight: http://www.baseballthinkfactory.org/hall_of_merit/discussion/dan_rosenhecks_warp_data/P600

Thanks for all the help!

I currently do deduct players for negative seasons, but not fully (about 70%). My thought process: There two broad reasons for a net negative player to get substantial playing time. The first is management ineptitude - they don't know that that the player is actually bad, they can't find anyone better to play there, etc. In this case I don't think that the player deserves much blame. More likely than not their team isn't going to be in contention because the management is bad.

The second scenario is a team feels some sort of obligation to the player that makes it difficult for them not to give them playing time - lengthy contract, milestone quest, whatever. In this case I do think the player deserves some level of penalty. I'm not going to blame Albert Pujols for showing up for his check or Pete Rose trying to become the hits king, but at some point these decision do hurt a team's ability to win games. Unless it's particularly egregious or the player is already borderline, it's unlikely to affect a players standing all that much.

A quick look at zeroing out negative seasons in my system shows that there isn't much of an effect aside from catchers, where the primary beneficiary is... Jason Kendall. I think I'll stick with that.

As far as Bando goes, that's some pretty compelling stuff. Looking at Dan R's data and comparing my cross era positional adjustment leads me to discount Bando's defense in my system by a decent amount (19.5%). That would drop him from 9th to 14th on my ballot. I'd have to look at other 3B and SS from the 70s, but A quick look shows that Campaneris probably enters consideration range, and Buddy Bell moves out. Guess I have something to work on.

Okay, I think I'm about done (for now at least) but I have a few last stickling points.

First is Negro Leaguers. I know that Ben Taylor and Dick Redding are pretty popular picks right now (Taylor's on my tenative ballot, Redding doesn't look particularly close). I was just wondering if there's anyone not yet in the HoM that I should be looking at.

The second big one is another player my system like a decent amount. Mike Tiernan. Currently he would be ranked 22nd on my ballot if I went down that far, but that's without any specific adjustments whatsoever. I don't know much about him so I was wondering if there was any good discussions on him in the past to take a look at. He's close enough to ballot territory that I feel I need to put a decent amount of effort into evaluating him. He's the last idiosyncratic guy in my top 30. Well except Jerry Koosman, but I know exactly why my system likes him.

Thompson, Tiernan, and Griffin

the players with the most career ballot points who are no longer getting votes are probably worth any newer voter's tire-kicks, as some liked them for some point:

OF George Van Haltren
OF Jimmy Ryan
SP Burleigh Grimes
2B Larry Doyle
32 Bill Monroe
3B Pie Traynor
SP Carl Mays
1B Orlando Cepeda
OF Sam Rice
OF Ken Singleton
OF MIKE TIERNAN
OF Fielder Jones
OF Chuck Klein
OF Rusty Staub
OF George J. Burns

Van Haltren and Ryan shared a thread with Hugh Duffy, still the all-time vote pts leader and still unelected

OFs of yore

Other Negro Leaguers to look at besides Taylor and Redding:

Bus Clarkson - might be the best SS of the 1940s, held back by playing in the Mexican League and slow integration
Hilton Smith - Hall of Famer with a good resume
Luke Easter - some really like him but I am not a big fan of one-dimensional sluggers

Thanks for the info guys.

For the Negro League guys...

Luke Easter is fascinating, but for his brief MLB career his bat looks a decent bit like Frank Howard, but longer lasting. Certainly better defense as well. I can see the case, but he'll fall short of the ballot for me for now, slotting in in the mid 30 range for me.

Bus Clarkson is also fascinating. But from the looks of things the strongest I could comfortably project him would be Barry Larkin with a lot less glove. That still might be a borderline HoMer, but a more conservative projection has him in the 50-75 range amoung eligibles with Campaneris and Travis Jackson.

Hilton Smith doesn't look like my type of pitcher. I tend to like pitchers who put up a lot of quality seasons (John, Lolich) over Dizzy Dean types. Dean is just outside my top 100 pitchers. If I assume Smith was equal to Dean (a generous assumpsion as it looks like Dean had about two more prime-y years than Smith) and give him some solid hitting credit (deservedly), he just grazes my top 50 eligibles. But using Smith actual data, he shows up right between Ron Guidry and David Wells among pitchers, which is around the bottom edge of my top 100 eligibles.

So my top 30 now looks like:
(1-5) Chipper Jones; Scott Rolen; Kenny Lofton; Jim Thome; Hack Wilson
(6-10) Tommy John; Jeff Kent; Mickey Lolich; Jim Kaat; Hugh Duffy
(11-15) Andruw Jones; Kiki Cuyler; Ben Taylor; Sal Bando; Vlad Guerrero
(16-20) Robin Ventura; Joe Tinker; Dwight Gooden; Dolph Camilli; Bob Johnson
(21-25) Fred Dunlap; Mike Tiernan; Jerry Koosman; John Olerud; Tony Lazzeri
(26-30) Sammy Sosa; Bobby Bonds; Bob Elliot; Paul Derringer; Luis Tiant

Derringer might be a bit high - His strong FIP comes from HR suppression which is probably in part due to pitching most of his home games at Crosley Field. If I do move him down, Ernie Lombardi would be next in line. Of the required disclosures, Buddy Bell is 48th, Vic Willis is 49th and Tommy Bridges is nowhere close.

Bus Clarkson talk here

81) Andruw Jones - Dom DiMaggio ranks higher

DL, can we get your perspective on the relatively terrible showing by Andruw.
He looks like a viable candidate in the five systems I profiled in post 43: Kiko, Baseball Gauge, Baseball Reference, Baseball Prospectus, and Fangraphs.

If he belongs closer to 81, the rest of us electorate need to be careful not to usher him in on his first ballot.

Would appreciate the electorates thoughts on personal hall of merit(s).

Since 2013, a glut of candidates have hit the ballot, including:
2013 - Bonds, Clemens, Piazza, Schilling, Biggio, Sosa, Lofton
2014 - Maddux, Thomas, Mussina, Glavine, Kent
2015 - Unit, Pedro, Smoltz, Sheffield, Giles
2016 - Griffey, Edmonds
2017 - Manny, I Rod, Vlad
2018 - Chipper, Thome, Rolen, Andruw, Johan
If you were to honor these guys, or El Duque, Posada, Wagner, Hoffman, you have 10 total candidates in the PHOM queue.

I'm currently grappling with holding these 6 in the queue:
Kent, Sosa, Vlad, Johan, Giles, Lofton

My question for you guys is, how many extra guys do you find worthy?
0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, more?

Happy New Year!

I am likely to end up inducting Santana, Giles, Kent, Posada and Sosa eventually. Lofton is right on the borderline too.

The big problem for Andruw Jones is his career (for the purposes of my spreadsheet) is 1997-2007.

Here are my stats on Kenny Lofton, a war adjusted Dom DiMaggio, Andruw Jones, Earl Averill, Andre Dawson, Jim Wynn and Brian Giles.

Player BWAA2 BRWAA2 FWAA WARP2 WAPA2
Averill 40.5 1.1 1.0 55.9 31.1
Giles 40.3 1.1 2.5 59.1 29.9
Lofton 16.3 7.2 8.6 59.8 21.5
Dawson 33.8 0.4 3.7 56.1 22.7
JWynn 40.5 1.1 0.6 53.2 26.7
DDiMag 24.4 1.7 12.6 54 23.4
AdwJns 15.7 0.8 16.1 48.7 24.5

There just isn't enough bulk there for Jones and his case is ALL glove. The Wins above Positional Average are just okay for Andruw Jones and the WARP is not. Lofton has the bulk, so he wins out over the other CF. Giles looks a lot more like Earl Averill than the others which is why Giles is the top of my not-PHoM list (followed by Posada and Kent).

Sorry to bother y'all once again with a random old player, but I was reworking my pitcher ratings a bit and one guy who benefited was Babe Adams. He's not quite over the line yet, but there is something that caught my eye.

He missed all of 1917 and most of 1918, not due to WWI, but because he got demoted due to injuries/ineffectiveness. He did pitch in the minors in both years and was quite good - in 1917 he put up a 1.75 ERA in the Western League and in 1918 he had 1.67 ERA in the American Association. His numbers upon his return to the majors at the end of 1918 are great, and he subsequentially had a few more really nice years.

I haven't really been able to find discussion of whether Adams deserves minor league credit for those two years. The circumstances get discussed briefly in the 1932 discussion thread, but there's more interest in whether he deserves credit for his younger years (he started at age 27). Normally I'm hesitant to give out minor league credit but the case here is pretty compelling. Adams was clearly a known quality to major league teams and clearly pitching at a major league level in the minors.

It doesn't take all that much credit for him to bump up into ballot territory for me. Just wondering what people's thoughts here were.

huh, Babe was a babe

that article doesn't quite answer your valid query, but worth it for:

"James Skipper, Jr., in his book Baseball Nicknames, states that Adams earned the sobriquet during his 1908 Louisville stint because female fans hollered "Oh, you babe!" whenever he took the mound. Either way, the dark-featured Adams apparently was popular with the ladies"

also cool to learn he became a sportswriter in the 1930s....

I'm currently grappling with holding these 6 in the queue:
Kent, Sosa, Vlad, Johan, Giles, Lofton

Giles and Santana both fall short for me. Neither of them is HoM/personal HoM material.

I'm not sure about Andruw Jones. I'll have a better idea when we vote next winter. He'll likely slot behind Lofton, who was 12th on my ballot last year.

Jaack-

I do give MiL credit for Babe Adams for 1917-18. He's usually hovering around the periphery of my ballot, and since I still have to go back in time and populate it, I'm not sure if he's in my PHoM or not.

Adams' "best friend" here I'm pretty positive is Brock Hanke. (I believe he actually supports at least a couple of the turn of the 20th C. Pirates pitchers).

Bleed -

As it stands right now, Lofton, Vlad, Sosa and Andrew appear to be above the line for me amongst frontloggers (Biggio finally makes my my PHoM in 2018), with Kent barely out and Giles and Santana a little bit further back.

Make sure your positional balance looks okay. One reason Kent and Posada look good to me is they are clearly the best options at their position for non-PHoM. The outfielders are a lot less clear as to who is the best one and I don't want to induct all of them along with Bobby Bonds, Kiki Cuyler, Dom DiMaggio and a dozen other outfielders.

I am also giving Babe Adams some minor league credit. His 1916 was lost to injury so I don't give him 2 full years of credit. His 1908 is a good year but there are plenty of players who had a good last season in the minor leagues.

Jaack - I'm in a similar camp to Michael J. Binkley. Babe Adams might have the oddest trajectory and be the most anonymous superstar of all-time, coming out more impressive that widely hailed "great" and fellow deadballer Three Finger Brown.

Adams was dominate at age 25 in 1907 but was stuck repeating a level and excellent again in 1908 at age 26. As DL mentions, his 1916 was a lost season between being injured or trying to pitch through injury. He continued his ascent in 1917 and 1918. I could easily a case for 7-10 WAR for Babe over his 3 years spent in the minors. Adams was also a 1909 world series hero.

Even without the extra credit, Babe compares favorably to 3 Finger:

Baseball-Reference, Fangraphs, Baseball Gauge, best cumulative 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, and 15 seasons.

MB_ _3.0 _5.0 _7.0 _9.0 11.0 13.0 15.0
B-R 24.8 34.8 42.2 48.5 53.7 57.2
F-G 19.2 30.1 37.9 43.0 47.3 49.7 50.5
B-G 20.5 29.7 36.1 40.9 44.6 47.2
Avg 21.5 31.5 38.7 44.1 48.5 51.4

BA_ _3.0 _5.0 _7.0 _9.0 11.0 13.0 15.0
B-R 24.0 33.9 42.3 49.6 54.5 57.4 58.6
F-G 19.6 28.9 37.1 43.7 49.1 52.5 54.0
B-G 20.0 28.7 35.7 41.8 46.3 49.6 50.6
Avg 21.2 30.5 38.4 45.0 50.0 53.2 54.4

Adams and or Hilton Smith could easily make the ballot sometime.

Yeah, even without any extra credit, Adams is quite close to three Finger Brown. Right now, I'm being conservative and only giving Adams 1.5 years of league average credit for 1917-18, and they're dead even. Any bigger boost and he's well into ballot territory. Outside of Big Train and Pete Alexander I'm having a hard time saying and 1910s pitcher is notably better really.

Make sure your positional balance looks okay. One reason Kent and Posada look good to me is they are clearly the best options at their position for non-PHoM. The outfielders are a lot less clear as to who is the best one and I don't want to induct all of them along with Bobby Bonds, Kiki Cuyler, Dom DiMaggio and a dozen other outfielders.

Kent seems to stick above the crowd, sure.

Posada was quite impressive slugging, but catchers are a different beast in evaluating the overall package.
Jorge was somewhere between below average to downright awful behind the plate.
Posada was a poor situational hitter (RE24) in the regular season (6% worse than context neutral) and it carried over into the playoffs (WPA of negative .97).

Wally Schang and Thurman Munson should also be under consideration from the catcher wing.
Wally looks like the best catcher between Buck Ewing and Gabby Hartnett (roughly a quarter century)...should we elect at least 1 backstop from this period (I suppose we might have erred by electing Bresnahan?)

Munson doesn't perform well with Kiko's data (tough co-hort, other reasons?), while he's a bit shy with Dan R WAR, B-R, B-G, and B-P are all big fans of Thurman. He is the flip of Posada for RE24 and postseason values, he was a huge part of the 1977 and 1978 World Series championship squads.

DL, I appreciate your point on outfielders, we don't want to accidentally let a flood in. I have roughly 26 HOMs on average for infielder positions and 27 for outfielders. This feels like too heavy an OF allotment.

However, I wanted to look at removing the inner circle hall (31) guys and examine the remaining by position HOMs. Inner circle OF are ~4.7 per position with IF only at 3.4. Removing them, I get 22.6 infielders/position and 22.3 outfielders/position.

I don't think I'm too far off, but maybe I need to boot at least 1 of Abreu, Giles, Lofton. Berkman's situational and post-season value vault him a nudge above this grouping for me.

FWIW, I do also support Bobby Bonds and Kiki Cuyler.

The big problem for Andruw Jones is his career (for the purposes of my spreadsheet) is 1997-2007.

Here are my stats on Kenny Lofton, a war adjusted Dom DiMaggio, Andruw Jones, Earl Averill, Andre Dawson, Jim Wynn and Brian Giles.

BWAA2 BRWAA2 FWAA WARP2 WAPA2 Player
40.5 1.1 1.0_ 55.9 31.1 Averill
40.3 1.1 2.5_ 59.1 29.9 Giles
16.3 7.2 8.6_ 59.8 21.5 Lofton
33.8 0.4 3.7_ 56.1 22.7 Dawson
40.5 1.1 0.6_ 53.2 26.7 Wynn
24.4 1.7 12.6 54.0 23.4 Dom Dim
15.7 0.8 16.1 48.7 24.5 Andruw

There just isn't enough bulk there for Jones and his case is ALL glove. The Wins above Positional Average are just okay for Andruw Jones and the WARP is not. Lofton has the bulk, so he wins out over the other CF. Giles looks a lot more like Earl Averill than the others which is why Giles is the top of my not-PHoM list (followed by Posada and Kent).

Are the WARP figures based upon Dan R, something else/how did you arrive at 48.7 for Andruw?
I think you've identified that Andruw is a "risky" candidate in that we want to ensure that his defensive valuation is correct/we are comfortable. Other public metrics show Andruw in the same range offensively, with a tad more defensive value, and WAR exceeding 60. While less enthusiastic, hopefully Kiko can weigh in, but Jones shows as low-ballot worthy?

8. Mickey Lolich
I've talked about him already. Between his status as a workhorse and his playoff success, Lolich actually is what people think Jack Morris is.

Jaack has inspired me to dust off the FIP WAR values...an anti-Lolich looks like Vic Willis, someone we appear on the cusp of electing.

Vic kicks butt in RA systems like Baseball-Reference and Baseball Gauge, but he's quite poor Joe D's PA and underwhelming by FIP WAR...which one is closer to the truth?

Wally Schang and Thurman Munson should also be under consideration from the catcher wing.

Wally Schang is already PHoM for me. I do support him more than I would Jorge Posada even before considering positional scarcity across eras.

I use Dan R for WARP until 2005 where I use hand-adjusted BBRef WAR. I would love it if Dan R updated at least the top returning players for the remainder of their careers.

Jeff Kent is by far the best 2B not inducted. He's pretty even with Willie Randolph on my list and ahead of Bid McPhee, Cupid Childs and Nellie Fox. My top infielder is Phil Rizzuto who was once on the cusp (top of the backlog 2009-2012) before his supporters left.

On positional balance - Jones and Rolen will help us in our most desperate area - 3B. We are about 4 players short there compared to the other position players.

I would also put us at least 5 below par for pitchers. We have 62 pitchers inducted out of 224 inductees which is a miserable 27.6%. 30% would be 67-68 pitchers. I don't know how we can argue that pitching is only ~25% of baseball. My PHoM is +6 pitchers on the Hall of Merit and I'll induct Johan Santana this year too.

PHoM not HoM pitchers
Tommy Bridges
Urban Shocker
Tommy John
Luis Tiant
Bucky Walters
Kevin Appier
Hilton Smith
Don Newcombe
Dick Redding

HoM not PHoM
Bob Lemon
Joe McGinnity
Rollie Fingers

Threads are up for Chipper Jones, Scott Rolen, Jim Thome, Andruw Jones and Johan Santana

Just looking specifically at Lolich and Willis for more insight there.

In the value section at Fangraphs, they both their FIP-WAR and their own version of RA-WAR (they call it RA9). The difference between them is summarized by two other values - LOB-WAR or ability to leave players on base and avoid big innings and BIP-WAR or value produced on balls in play.

Looking at some seasons in which FIP and RA WAR really disagree for Lolich, in 1970 for example where his FIP-WAR was 5.1 but his RA-WAR was 3.9. That year his LOB-WAR was 0.8, which is basically not notable either way. His BIP WAR was -2.1. That's huge. Looking at his defenders that year, at shortstop he had Cesar Gutierrez and manning third an aging Don Wert. Both were well below average defenders in 1970.

Another year where the two WARs disagree is 1975. By FIP, it's Lolich's last big year at 4.9 WAR. By RA he's just okay - 2.8 WAR. He had Tom Veryzer at SS and Ron LaFlore in center, both poor defenders, with LaFlore being particularly a bad choice in center field. Lo and behold, Lolich's BIP WAR that year was -1.7, which makes up most of the difference.

Lolich's career BIP WAR is -9.4, which is bottom 15 BIP WAR. Another guy down there - Rick Reuschel. A significant portion of his HoM case comes from pitching in front of poor defenses. I don't think it's quite as big of an issue for Lolich as it was for Reuschel, but its definitely something to make note of.

Moving on to Willis, the difference between FIP WAR and RA WAR is a bit more complicated. Unlike Lolich, for whom the vast majority of the difference was balls in play, Willis gets about equal career benefits from both BIP and LOB WAR, which for his career are about equal. Looking at defense, Willis was lucky enough to pitch in front of a couple of very good shortstops in Herman Long and Honus Wagner, as well as other great defenders like Jimmy Collins and Tommy Leach. On the other hand, Willis' final season in St. Louis was not seen as nicely by RA WAR. But St. Louis had a rather poor defense, so FIP WAR doesn't think it's so bad.

But that doesn't tell the whole story. Willis' career BIP WAR was 11.4, but that only makes up half the difference. Furthermore, it's not super high for a good pitcher of his time. Cy Young, Iron Man McGinnity, Ed Walsh, and Three Finger Brown all posted high BIP WARs, in good part because strike outs weren't as prevelent then. But Willis also had 12.1 LOB WAR, second only to McGinnity over his career. Now Eddie Plank isn't that far off in third, and Three Finger Brown and Cy Young also posted relativly high numbers there as well. In fact, of the top 30 or so career LOB WAR leaders, the vast majority of them are deadball or 19th century. Lefty Grove is the baby of the bunch. So while Willis looks to be the most reliant on getting out of jams of these pitchers, it looks like it's largely an era thing.

To summarize, Willis pitched in an era that FIP probably underrates on an inning to inning basis. Runners were much more likely to get stranded on base. For other pitchers of this time period, the huge number of innings they put up compared to modern pitchers is going to more than make up for this difference, so you don't see it on the surface. But for a guy like Willis who had a shorter career, it will make a difference. That being said, Willis also benefited from strong defenses in both Boston and Pittsburgh, and his numbers don't look to great his one year with a poorer defense.

I'll proably never end up voting for Vic Willis, but he doesn't look like a major mistake to me now. Lolich still looks as good as he ever did.

Just to follow up a bit more on guys like Lolich who have large negative BIP WARs

Paul Derringer's low BIP WAR looks like an illusion to me at first glance. The Reds had a good defense for most of his time there, and teammate Bucky Walters had a high BIP WAR. This leads me to believe that Derringer himself was more responsible (more hard hit balls). Johnny Vander Meer is also in the positives, so its clearly not the fault of the Reds defense.

That being said, a lot of Derringer's negative BIP WAR comes from his first couple of seasons when he was in St. Louis (1931-1933). Their defense looks alright, but Dizzy Dean also had a notably negative BIP WAR those years. So Derringer might deserve a bit of extra credit there, but probably not as much as he gets from fWAR. But overall, unless he's really close to the borderline for you, I don't see anything here to change anyone's mind.

Bob Friend is another guy with a rather negative BIP WAR. This looks like even more of an illusion than Derringer's. Friend had Roberto CLemente and Bill Maz behind him. Furthermore, none of the other Pirates of that time (Bob Veale, Vern Law, Roy Face, Harvey Haddix) see nearly as large of an effect. In fact, Law is in the positives. So again, this looks like a guy who just gave up a lot of hard hits.

He's not eligible yet, but Andy Pettitte also has a large negative BIP WAR, although his numbers did improve in his stint in Houston. I haven't looked at other Yankees pitchers yet, but pitching in front of Derek Jeter and Bernie Williams can't be good for your RA.

Going back to Lolich for a second, all the other primary Detroit pitchers from 1970-1975 also see decently large negative BIP WARs - Joe Niekro, Joe Coleman, Lerrin LaGrow. Not quite to Lolich's level, but definitely a pattern to take note of.

He's not eligible yet, but Andy Pettitte also has a large negative BIP WAR, although his numbers did improve in his stint in Houston. I haven't looked at other Yankees pitchers yet, but pitching in front of Derek Jeter and Bernie Williams can't be good for your RA.

Thanks for sharing your research Jaack.

Pettitte is PHOM for me. He's out by Baseball-Reference and Baseball Prospectus, borderline by Baseball Gauge, easily worthy by Fangraphs FIP or Kiko's WAR. It's tough to be fair by assigning post-season credit to candidates, but pitchers only have so many bullets to spare, and his quality 277 IP have to stand for something.

I have posts for the 2000 MMP thread, and I can't get into it. So I'm checking if actually making a post somewhere else will change anything.

On positional balance - Jones and Rolen will help us in our most desperate area - 3B. We are about 4 players short there compared to the other position players.

I would also put us at least 5 below par for pitchers. We have 62 pitchers inducted out of 224 inductees which is a miserable 27.6%. 30% would be 67-68 pitchers. I don't know how we can argue that pitching is only ~25% of baseball. My PHoM is +6 pitchers on the Hall of Merit and I'll induct Johan Santana this year too.

PHoM not HoM pitchers
Tommy Bridges
Urban Shocker
Tommy John
Luis Tiant
Bucky Walters
Kevin Appier
Hilton Smith
Don Newcombe
Dick Redding

HoM not PHoM
Bob Lemon
Joe McGinnity
Rollie Fingers

Good points DL, I'm also +6 on PHOM pitchers, with Johan Santana and possibly El Duque "Orlando" Hernandez in the queue.

In: Urban Shocker, Don Newcombe, Tommy Bond, George Uhle, Hilton Smith, Doc Gooden, Babe Adams, Eddie Cicotte, Jim Kaat, Luis Tiant, Orel Hershiser.

Out: Rollie Fingers (my borderline reliever), Rick Reuschel, Clark Griffith, Mordecai Brown, Dave Stieb.

Close: Jim Whitney, Dizzy Trout, Burleigh Grimes, Dizzy Dean, Vic Willis, Kevin Appier, Sal Maglie, Dick Redding.

Threads are up for Chipper Jones, Scott Rolen, Jim Thome, Andruw Jones and Johan Santana

I found and bumped most of those, but I haven't found the Santana thread. How did you spell it?

Kiko, for the key stat from post 105 in the 2017 discussion thread, did you use the positional adjustments you note in post 134?

Many thanks!

105. Kiko Sakata Posted: September 20, 2016 at 08:27 PM (#5303609)

Did my blurb from the 80s interest you any further in Gooden, Hershiser, or Murphy?



Yes, I definitely like the idea of trying to balance inductees over time. I think Player won-lost records do a good job of doing this by construction, because positional averages are calculated empirically every season and replacement level is also calculated empirically, set at one standard deviation below average. So, as the spread of talent loosens or tightens, WOPA and WORL should compensate for that naturally.

I haven't really looked at that formally, but I do feel like my system is finding some interesting players from the 1980's, including the three you mention.

I've written some articles that relate to the three names you mention, which I just re-read and revised a little to make sure they reflect my most recent results.

Jim Rice vs. Dale Murphy
Dwight Gooden
Pitchers of the 1980's

Murphy, Gooden, and Hershiser certainly all fall within my consideration set. I just ran my "key stat" (using the weights I'm leaning toward today - ask me next week, and they might change a little) and Hershiser looks to be a clear notch ahead of Gooden, who's a bit ahead of Murphy. The guys around Hershiser on the list mostly look like HOMers to me - Raines, Miguel Cabrera, Enos Slaughter, David Cone - but it'll probably depend on how many more guys my system loves that haven't been elected. Vern Stephens and Dizzy Trout end up back-to-back about 4 slots behind Hershiser with 1944 extrapolated (which, as I think I noted on the last page, probably under-rates Stephens) but giving 1944 and 1945 full weight.

134. Kiko Sakata Posted: November 28, 2016 at 05:21 PM (#5359076)

Interesting, can you share the secret sauce used behind the scenes on positional adjustments you make :)



It's the last "+" here.

Bleed @ 81: Yes, although per the quote in #105, I'm constantly re-thinking the positional adjustments. I've been tinkering with them the past week or two again.

In terms of positional adjustments, I'm leaning toward simplifying non-pitchers to C, 2B, and Other. Catchers have an obvious case for a boost. Looking at career values, there's also a case that 2B have modestly shorter careers which I'm thinking may warrant some adjustment if that's due to the wear and tear of the position (presumably the danger of turning double plays, maybe?). Everybody else seems pretty similar in terms of how often they show up in a list of, say, the top 1,000 players vs. all players.

On a somewhat related topic, I still like the idea of giving more credit for "star" seasons above simple WOPA and WORL (WAA/WAR). At one point in last year's thread, I toyed with the idea of WOPA-squared as a way to give bonus points to really good seasons. I've backed away from that, but now I'm thinking of something like WO* (wins over "star"). I calculate my replacement level as one standard deviation below positional average so I was thinking of defining "star level" as one standard deviation ABOVE positional average which would give me four measures: wins, WOPA, WORL, and WO*. That would boost guys like Sandy Koufax or, relevant to this year's ballot, Johan Santana (and implicitly push down-list guys who had a lot of years of being above-average and/or above-replacement without being true stars - from my last ballot, Bert Campaneris is an example, I think, of this type of player).

Kiko, I was looking for a great article you had looking at a handful of players per position and I couldn't find it.
Matthew Cornwell acknowledged/used your evaluation of Dave Winfield in a discussion over at Baseball-Fever.
I remember you discussing the merits of Winfield but I can't put my finger on the article.

Defensive repository reminder for the electorate:
http://baseball.tomthress.com/HallofMerit/

Dead link, can you refresh?
http://baseball.tomthress.com/Articles/HittingPositions_v_FieldingPositions.php

Thanks :)

Bleed,

The last link in #83 should work now. I've written an article about Dave Winfield in my (increasingly infrequent) series on Hall-of-Famers (I'm working back in time by inductions; I think my last one was Rollie Fingers). My Winfield article is here. I do like his defense more than I think a lot of other sabermetric measures - the last table of that article shows all players who I find above-average in everything, a list which includes Winfield.

If you're thinking of just fielding, you might be thinking of this article in your first sentence in #83 (although Winfield doesn't make much of an appearance).

Finally, shameless self-promotion: coming in June from McFarland, Player Won-Lost Records in Baseball: Measuring Performance in Context

Thanks Kiko and congrats on the book!

https://homemlb.wordpress.com/2016/02/10/is-johan-santana-the-contemporary-sandy-koufax/

Cool site Doc! Is this a shared election with a person named Miller?

If you wanted some opinions on expanding your contributor electees, make sure to check out Jim Albright's great work:

http://www.baseball-fever.com/showthread.php?126921-Albright-s-Musings-v-2-0&p=2546864#post2546864

http://www.baseball-fever.com/showthread.php?126921-Albright-s-Musings-v-2-0&p=2543986#post2543986

http://www.baseball-fever.com/showthread.php?126921-Albright-s-Musings-v-2-0&p=2546865#post2546865

Top managers: Tommy LaSorda (19th), Frank Chance (21st), Davey Johnson (22nd), Lou Piniella (24th), and Bruce Bochy (25th).
Top executives: Brian Cashman (6th), Bob Howsam (8th), Harry Dalton (9th), Brian Sabean (11th), Chub Feeney (12th).

Wow, a great HOF by the way:

18 Not PHOM: B Freehan, B Terry, B McPhee, S Bando, B Bell, J Cruz, R White, R Ashburn, W Davis, K Lofton, T Phillips, K Appier, M Brown, C Finley, R Reuschel, D Stieb, B Walters, and V Willis.

Suggested HOMERS/updates: Catcher - move Deacon White from 3B, Cal McVey, Darrell Porter?
First Base - Joe Start, Gil Hodges?
Second Base - move Rod Carew from 1B, Bobby Doerr, Hardy Richardson
Third Base - move Dick Allen from 1B, Harmon Killebrew, John McGraw, Ned Williamson, Heinie Groh
Shortstop - Bert Campaneris, Johnny Pesky, Hughie Jennings, Dickey Pearce, Phil Rizzuto, Vern Stephens
Left Field - move Stan Musial from 1B, Charlie Keller, Willie Stargell, Charley Jones, Minnie Minoso, Joe Kelley, Harry Stovey,
Center Field - move Andre Dawson and Reggie Smith from RF and Jim O'Rourke? from LF, George Gore
Right Field - Enos Slaughter, Sam Rice, Kiki Cuyler, Brian Giles
Starting Pitchers - Al Spalding, Don Newcombe, Hoyt Wilhelm, George Uhle, Tommy Bond, Doc Gooden, Babe Adams, Eddie Cicotte, Billy Pierce, Jim Kaat, Bob Lemon,

10 bolded I have safely in my personal hall, the next 8 are italics...really starting to split hairs!

Doerr, Killebrew, Keller, Stargell, and Slaughter kick rump by Kiko's W-L records.

Okay, I've finished refining the weights I'm using to rank my players (for now), so I'm going to throw up four posts that will probably be kind of long.

I'll open w/ my weights. To review, I use my own statistic, Player won-lost records.

I calculate Player won-lost records two ways. pWins tie to team wins and are context-dependent. eWins are tied to expected context. This will be my third year voting in a HOM election. For my first two ballots, I weighted pWins and eWins equally. This year (for now), I've decided to go (1/3) pWins, (2/3) eWins. I think there's information to be had in looking at things in context when evaluating the past, but I found myself looking at a lot of rankings and thinking "I think that guy might be overrated by pWins because he had the benefit of playing on good teams".

I also calculate pWins and eWins for postseason games, which I include in my calculations weighted equal to regular season games.

In addition to wins over average (WOPA) and replacement level (WORL), I also constructed another measure that I tentatively call Wins over Star (WO*). I set replacement level one standard deviation below positional average. I decided to set "star" level one standard deviation above positional average. For all three of these - WOPA, WORL, WO* - I zero out negative numbers. My weights for WOPA, WORL, WO*, and raw wins are set such that the 100th-highest total across seasons w/ full play-by-play (1944 - 2016) would end up w/ the same weighted value.

For positions, I give a pretty healthy boost for catchers (~20%), and a slight negative boost to other positions except for second basemen (~ -5%; so, implicitly, I'm boosting 2B relative to 3B, SS, etc.). I give a slight negative boost to starting pitchers relative to position players (~ -8%, so ~3% below most position players). For relief pitchers, I give them a boost of about 30%, which kind of just acts to give them credit for "leverage" in their eWins as well as their pWins.

I apply negative adjustments to 1943, 1944, and 1945 because of WWII (5%, 7%, 10%, respectively; these numbers were pulled out of my ass), give a negative adjustment to pre-integration players (-7%) and half as much negative adjustment to early-integration AL players (1947 - 1965; weights and years, again, pulled out of my ass - I chose 1966 because that was Frank Robinson's first year in the AL and the two leagues seemed to start splitting the World Series fairly evenly starting about then).

Incidentally, you can vary these weights - except for the WWII and integration adjustments - and construct your own list here.

So, here is the tentative ranking I've come up with for players who are covered by my system (MLB since 1930).

1. Chipper Jones - he'd be #1 on my ballot no matter what I did in terms of weighting
2. Jim Thome - ditto the Chipper comment replacing #1 with #2
3. Tommy John - my system still loves Tommy John
4. Vern Stephens - I may not be discounting his 1944-45 enough, although his best season was actually 1949. A shortstop with a career OPS+ of 119; good enough on defense that the Red Sox moved Pesky to 3B for him (my system says he was a bit above-average defensively for his career)
5. Jorge Posada - a catcher w/ a 121 OPS+. Yes, please. If his pitch-framing and game-calling were terrible, they didn't seem to keep the Yankees from winning a crap-ton of games while he was their catcher.
6. Orel Hershiser - My inclusion of WO* helps. Very good 5-year peak with enough pretty good years to make his career numbers respectable.
7. Dwight Gooden - Almost the exact same case as Hershiser. Gooden looks better in pWins; Hershiser looks better in eWins.
8. Dizzy Dean - this one surprised me. I'm missing about one-third of his career and he looks a lot better in pWins than eWins - but I'm weighting the latter more heavily and he's still this high. My inclusion of WO* certainly helps him. I'm not entirely sold on him this high, but maybe.
9. Johan Santana - best pitcher in baseball and one of the top 3-5 players in baseball from 2003-09; that's a strong opening argument. Unfortunately, it's his only argument.
10. Jeff Kent - I love good hitters, especially power hitters, at defensive positions (see 4. and 5. above)
11. Gil Hodges - My system calculates positional averages empirically every year. Being the best 1B of the 1950's makes him look good; his performance looks better in context, too. He could be getting a bit of an unfair boost here by having played for good teams - although he was a key reason why they were so good.
12. Toby Harrah - Last year, I had Harrah, Dave Concepcion, and Bert Campaneris - the top 3 SS of the 1970's - clustered at the bottom of my ballot. Adding WO* to the equation pushes Campaneris off ballot. Harrah looks best by eWins; Concepcion looks best in pWins. Weighting eWins (2/3) to (1/3) for pWins creates some separation for Harrah.

This is probably about to the point of the ballot where pre-1930 candidates could push everybody below here off-ballot

13. Jim Kaat - a poor man's Tommy John. Adding WO* to my key stat didn't hurt John, but seemed to drop Kaat somewhat.
14. Scott Rolen - less important defensive position than Posada, Stephens, Kent, and Harrah (for half of Harrah's career) but better defense makes up for some (but not all) of that. I'm a little surprised he's this low. I suspect he'll end up making my ballot somewhere.
15. Dale Murphy - Murphy looks MUCH better in eWins than pWins and my heavier weighting of eWins brings him up to what will likely end up a just off-ballot position.

16-20: Lefty Gomez, Dolph Camilli, Dave Concepcion, Dutch Leonard, Dennis Martinez
21-25: Ron Guidry, Fred Lynn, Curt Simmons, David Wells, Luis Tiant
26-30: Catfish Hunter, Vida Blue, Schoolboy Rowe, Andruw Jones, Darryl Strawberry

Required disclosures (not mentioned above) who debuted in 1930 or later (rank #'s here are among post-1930 players only):

Vlad Guerrero - #61
Sammy Sosa - #40
Kenny Lofton - #74
Bobby Bonds - #88
Buddy Bell - #180 - my system just really doesn't like him. In a very odd coincidence, Buddy Bell ends up ranked just between Jay Bell and Buddy Myer.
Tommy Bridges - #121 - I'm going to talk about 1930's pitchers in a subsequent post.

Other top 20:

Bob Johnson - #47; this downgrades his WWII performance, but doesn't give him any minor-league credit and also extrapolates about 300 or so missing games in his prime. He may deserve a more serious look, and is close enough that he could conceivably sneak onto the end of my ballot.
Phil Rizzuto - outside of top 200 without WWII credit; he clearly deserves credit for that, but I can't see how he could deserve enough to get him onto my ballot. Good fielder, good baserunner, just not enough of a hitter for most of his career. (see Buddy Bell)
Sal Bando - #50

So, now let me talk about pre-1930 players. I'll start with a few that I have some data for. Retrosheet has released play-by-play data for 1921 (NL only), 1922, 1925, and 1927, in addition to 1930 - 2016. Some interesting / noteworthy guys who fall within this time period.

Wally Schang - he's very much of a type that I like - good hitter at a defensive position - and he's been on my both of my previous HOM ballots. He seems to profile similar to Posada. He'll probably slot somewhere on my ballot perhaps just behind Jorge.

Urban Shocker - the seasons I have for him match up well with Tommy John - my top-rated pitcher, but he has nowhere near the career length of John. Baseball-Reference lists his most-similar pitcher as Lon Warneke, who ends up #46 in my ranking since 1930. That said, Shocker's 1922 and 1925 seasons match up well with the top 2 seasons of Warneke's career, but are probably NOT the top two seasons of Shocker's. So, he would end up somewhere between John (#3) and Warneke (#46), which isn't terribly helpful. Probably off-ballot for now.

Kiki Cuyler - Bleed the Freak pointed out that Cuyler looks very good in my system and, indeed, he does. Cuyler's 1925 season looks very good in my system - top 5 in the majors that season. The only other season I have of his in his 20's when he was a regular was 1927, which was a weird season for Cuyler - similar offensive rate stats to surrounding years (.309, 115 OPS+) but played only 85 games because, I believe, of a dispute w/ his manager (he was then traded that offseason). Should he get "benched for no good reason" credit for that season? He's worth keeping an eye on, but probably off-ballot for me for now.

Dave Bancroft - he made the bottom of my ballot two years ago. His 1921, 1922, and 1925 seasons all look great in my system - as good or better than the top seasons of Jeff Kent's career, for example. I may try to find room for him on my ballot again this year, although he may get squeezed off by the quality of newcomers, of whom I'm likely to have 4 on-ballot.

That then leaves 3 guys from the returning top 20 about whom my system has nothing to say.

Vic Willis - he was on my first two ballots. Seems like the sort of pitcher my system would love. I'm not entirely sure what to do w/ Willis's inning totals in terms of trying to compare him to more recent pitchers - he pitched 410 innings in 1902! He'll probably stay on my ballot, although I'm leaning toward sliding him down a bit.

Ben Taylor - I put him on the bottom of my ballot two years ago and just off-ballot last year. Seamheads has similarity scores for their Negro League database, but they seem to be based on per-162 game averages, and it's hard for me to get a good feel for how long Ben Taylor's career was. The other problem is that most of his sims are from his era or earlier and, hence, pre-date my system. He still ends up right near the end of my ballot: either just on or just off depending on my mood at the time.

Dick Redding - To be honest, I hadn't really looked at him before. Among post-1930 pitchers, the top 3 sims for Redding listed by Seamheads are Mel Stottlemyre, Bob Gibson, and Mort Cooper. Which isn't terribly helpful. Stottlemyre wasn't as good as Redding (Redding beats him in ERA+ 120-112; era makes their raw ERA's closer) and Redding probably wasn't as good as Gibson. Mort Cooper seems to have had a shorter career than Redding in terms of seasons, but not in terms of innings. Cooper's fairly far off-ballot for me, but, say, Cooper times 1.5 (which would match up w/ Redding's total seasons, I believe) would get you to Hershiser/Gooden territory.

If somebody wants to try to convince me to vote for Redding, I could perhaps be persuaded.

Finally, three guys that I'm very intrigued by what Player won-lost records will say about them when we get play-by-play data back that far are Joe Tinker, Johnny Evers, and Frank Chance. I'm not the first to suggest this, but the 1906-10 Cubs won a crap-ton of games and somebody would seem to have been responsible for that. And then Evers adds an MVP season for the 1914 Miracle Braves. That seems like a player who was doing an awful lot to help his teams win games.

One group of players for whom a lot of them show up in my consideration set and I feel like I need to look more carefully to properly rank them are 1930's - '40's pitchers. Roughly speaking, I get the following players in about this order:

Dizzy Dean
Lefty Gomez
Dutch Leonard
Schoolboy Rowe
Mel Harder
Claude Passeau
Dizzy Trout
Lon Warneke
Bucky Walters
Harry Brecheen
Paul Derringer
Bill Lee
Mort Cooper
Tommy Bridges

I'm missing varying numbers of games for most of these guys (I think I have all of Walters' career; Retrosheet has complete coverage of Reds games for pretty much every season they've released). At a minimum, I need to figure out why Bridges is at the top of the pack for the electorate at large and at the bottom of the pack for me. My best guess is that it's the distribution of missing games - I'm missing over half of the games in Bridges' career.

Baseball-Reference shows Dave Stieb as Tommy Bridges' most-similar. My system isn't a huge fan of Stieb, who is probably just outside my pHOM. But that doesn't necessarily mean that Bridges also lands there - although, based on what I have of his career so far, he does.

For now, I think I'm okay w/ Dean being the only one of these guys for whom I might vote and with Bridges being off-ballot. But I'll try to keep an open mind and perhaps try to dig a bit deeper here.

Urban Shocker - the seasons I have for him match up well with Tommy John - my top-rated pitcher, but he has nowhere near the career length of John. Baseball-Reference lists his most-similar pitcher as Lon Warneke, who ends up #46 in my ranking since 1930. That said, Shocker's 1922 and 1925 seasons match up well with the top 2 seasons of Warneke's career, but are probably NOT the top two seasons of Shocker's. So, he would end up somewhere between John (#3) and Warneke (#46), which isn't terribly helpful. Probably off-ballot for now.

Does your rating include credit for his strike shortened excellent 1918 season?
Too bad he died young, could have been a slam-dunker.

Vic Willis - he was on my first two ballots. Seems like the sort of pitcher my system would love. I'm not entirely sure what to do w/ Willis's inning totals in terms of trying to compare him to more recent pitchers - he pitched 410 innings in 1902! He'll probably stay on my ballot, although I'm leaning toward sliding him down a bit.

I've had Willis on ballots in the past, but go back and forth, his FIP WAR and Joe D's classic PA analysis shows Willis WAY short of electable...was he the extraordinary beneficiary of stellar defense, induce awesome weak contact, or what mix of in between?

8. Dizzy Dean - this one surprised me. I'm missing about one-third of his career and he looks a lot better in pWins than eWins - but I'm weighting the latter more heavily and he's still this high. My inclusion of WO* certainly helps him. I'm not entirely sold on him this high, but maybe.

I've been warming to him being a bubble PHOM case...he might even stand a case for a smidge of MLE credit?

14. Scott Rolen - less important defensive position than Posada, Stephens, Kent, and Harrah (for half of Harrah's career) but better defense makes up for some (but not all) of that. I'm a little surprised he's this low. I suspect he'll end up making my ballot somewhere.

When I interpret your W-L system with a 50/50 p/e win split, Rolen finishes in a dead heat with Andruw Jones, David Concepcion, Bert Campaneris, Toby Harrah...Dolph Camili and Sammy Sosa a shade below.

I apply negative adjustments to 1943, 1944, and 1945 because of WWII (5%, 7%, 10%, respectively; these numbers were pulled out of my ass), give a negative adjustment to pre-integration players (-7%) and half as much negative adjustment to early-integration AL players (1947 - 1965

I personally do a 5, 10, 15 for WWII seasons. 1943 was partially compromised, 1945 had a glut of players missing.
The pre-integration discount may explain why I see so many valuable pre war candidates in your system.

Tommy Henrich and Kiki Cuyler come out around Jorge Posada level, with Johnny Pesky similar to Jeff Kent and Bob Johnson above the remaining glut of candidates.

Any thoughts to share on Henrich, Pesky, or others?

Dizzy Trout is fully dependent on the interpretation of the war years, raw W-L love him. You've mentioned before that Mel Harder came out well but his missing games might give him an artificial boost.

13. Jim Kaat - a poor man's Tommy John. Adding WO* to my key stat didn't hurt John, but seemed to drop Kaat somewhat.

Kaat is also a FIP monster...he's squeezed into my PHOM, is he getting proper credit for his gold-glove defense?

15. Dale Murphy - Murphy looks MUCH better in eWins than pWins and my heavier weighting of eWins brings him up to what will likely end up a just off-ballot position.

Dr. Chaleeko's analysis from a couple years back on era representation showed the HOM to be ~2 candidates shy from the 1980s...I agree that Gooden and Hershiser would be my first two picks from that time.

However, W/L records are extremely sour on Tony Gwynn, Keith Hernandez, and Dave Stieb. Maybe Murphy should replace one of these men?

Kiko, would love your opinion on the range of old time hurlers that pre date your system/need extra credit: Don Newcombe, Tommy Bond, George Uhle, Babe Adams, and Eddie Cicotte.

Does your rating include credit for [Shocker's] strike shortened excellent 1918 season?

At this point, I don't really have a "rating" per se for Shocker. I have reasonably solid data for 3 seasons for him (1922, '25, '27). Counting 1918 as a full season, it looks like he had essentially a 9-season career. If I multiply my 3-season rating by 3, he ends up in the 60-70 range for me, but eyeballing his BB-Ref page and bumping his 1918 workload up to match surrounding seasons, I'm probably missing the top 2-3 seasons of his career, so that's probably on the low side.

Any thoughts to share on Henrich, Pesky, or others?

As I said, I debit WWII performance; giving WWII credit for guys serving is tougher, because I have to do it case by case. Quick-and-dirty, adding 3 "typical" seasons to Tommy Henrich's career pushes him from around the 70-80 range up to bottom-of-the-ballot range. Worth a closer look for me, for sure. Giving him 3 extra seasons pushes Pesky up to about the level of Sal Bando, which is probably the range of "solid pHOM candidate, but unlikely to make my ballot".

For guys w/ relatively short careers (as both Henrich and Pesky have), WWII credit looks to be a pretty big deal. I should probably look more carefully into that and see if there's anybody else that I'm missing out on. Charlie Keller occurred to me, but he didn't show up in my query and I realized it's because y'all have already elected him! As I said in my original comment, WWII credit isn't enough to get Rizzuto into my consideration set.

Dizzy Trout is fully dependent on the interpretation of the war years, raw W-L love him.

I'm still missing a big chunk of Trout's 1943 season, which may be under-rating him here, but the big difference between Trout - who's in the 30-40 range or so for me - and Vern Stephens - who's in a borderline elect-me spot on the ballot - is that Stephens matched, and, in fact, beat his 1944-45 performance after the war, whereas after 1946 (and before 1943) Trout's career looks very ordinary.

This does, however, prompt a question from me. Is there a case to be made that quality-of-play was still down in 1946? Trout and Newhouser maintained their 1945 performances, at least somewhat, and, for example, Phil Rizzuto's 1946 performance was probably the worst of his career. Is there a case to be made that we should take some of the air out of players' 1946 performances because the quality hadn't fully returned to pre-WWII levels? Or maybe even - although this would be hard to do - a case to bump down guys who had the benefit of having played in the majors in 1945 and bump up guys who were maybe playing major-league baseball for the first time in 2, 3, 4, 5 years? Or am I going down too deep into the weeds there?

Dr. Chaleeko's analysis from a couple years back on era representation showed the HOM to be ~2 candidates shy from the 1980s...I agree that Gooden and Hershiser would be my first two picks from that time.

However, W/L records are extremely sour on Tony Gwynn, Keith Hernandez, and Dave Stieb. Maybe Murphy should replace one of these men?

This prompts a question I had. I haven't gone through and done a careful count, but I'd guess that maybe 25-30% of the players in my pHOM are not in the HOM and vice-versa. I suspect this is more than for most people, but maybe not: everybody has their pet candidates and the quirks of their systems. Bleed identifies a few clear trades I would make here: I'd put Murphy ahead of Gwynn (I realize my Gwynn ranking opens me up to the classic "Any system that thinks Tony Gwynn isn't a Hall-of-Famer must be flawed" argument; let's set that aside for now). I'd put Hershiser and/or Gooden in ahead of Stieb.

In my most recent analysis, Dale Murphy comes out ahead of Andruw Jones, by a small but significant margin, which puts Murphy among the 10-15 candidates fighting for the last 2-3 down-ballot slots and leaves Jones just below that range. Jones would probably be in my pHOM and, if the real Hall of Merit matched my pHOM, so that guys like John, Stephens, Dean, Gooden, Hershiser, ..., and Murphy were already in the HOM, Jones would almost certainly rise up to at least make my ballot (but not pHOM this year as he's 5th among newcomers - very strong debut class).

Am I being "fair" to "all eras"? Specifically, am I being fair to the most recent era in general and Andruw Jones in particular - if I put Dale Murphy on my ballot instead of Jones? Murphy's already had 15-20 chances at HOM election. Indian Bob Johnson's had, what, 50 or 60 such chances (Indian Bob's just below Andruw for me, but close enough that PCL credit - or a tweak to my WWII/pre-integration adjustments - could push Johnson ahead of him)?

Or would it be more fair to say, "You know what, Tony Gwynn took Dale Murphy's spot, and Earl Averill took Indian Bob's spot, and that can't be undone. So let's give that ballot slot to Andruw Jones." Not to the point of saying, "I won't vote for anybody who played before 1980; everybody before then has had enough chances." I'm going to keep voting for Tommy John and probably Vern Stephens and probably even Wally Schang. But for two guys who are reasonably close - where "reasonably close" is, of course, left as a subjective exercise of the reader - is it more "fair" to go w/ the more recent player? I kind of think it is.

I posted this in another thread but I thought it belonged here too since we should keep an eye on "era balance".

Since I have all the Hall of Merit stuff on my computer, here is the tally of the number of Hall-of-Meriters (to date, including the just elected 2017 class) active in each year of professional Major League Baseball. Negro Leaguers are included in the years they were active at the highest level they were allowed to play.

Year Tally
1871 10
1872 12
1873 12
1874 12
1875 14
1876 13
1877 13
1878 14
1879 17
1880 20
1881 22
1882 23
1883 22
1884 24
1885 25
1886 26
1887 26
1888 29
1889 27
1890 32
1891 36
1892 34
1893 32
1894 28
1895 27
1896 26
1897 30
1898 26
1899 28
1900 29
1901 31
1902 27
1903 29
1904 32
1905 31
1906 32
1907 32
1908 32
1909 33
1910 33
1911 30
1912 32
1913 33
1914 35
1915 36
1916 38
1917 37
1918 32
1919 31
1920 32
1921 34
1922 38
1923 43
1924 48
1925 51
1926 53
1927 52
1928 50
1929 48
1930 50
1931 47
1932 50
1933 49
1934 46
1935 47
1936 47
1937 49
1938 49
1939 50
1940 48
1941 50
1942 42
1943 30
1944 22
1945 28
1946 39
1947 38
1948 36
1949 33
1950 33
1951 30
1952 30
1953 30
1954 31
1955 35
1956 35
1957 32
1958 31
1959 32
1960 33
1961 34
1962 35
1963 39
1964 37
1965 39
1966 38
1967 40
1968 41
1969 42
1970 41
1971 42
1972 44
1973 44
1974 46
1975 46
1976 45
1977 43
1978 41
1979 44
1980 45
1981 45
1982 46
1983 44
1984 43
1985 41
1986 47
1987 45
1988 50
1989 47
1990 46
1991 48
1992 49
1993 48
1994 43
1995 41
1996 39
1997 37
1998 36
1999 33
2000 29
2001 31
2002 26
2003 26
2004 24
2005 21
2006 17
2007 17
2008 12
2009 7
2010 4
2011 2

The whole idea of War Credit is a tough one for me. At least in the case of Negro League or Minor League Credit, you have some kind of playing record to base a decision on -- though of course how much to discount, especially for the latter, becomes yet another issue.

With War Credit, there's absolutely nothing unless they might have participated in some kind of Armed Forces League. For all we know, the player might have developed a serious injury if they had played MLB and lost a year or even a career. The thinking may be to just assume they would have done what they did in the years immediately preceding and following, but that's potentially a major leap of faith.

I'm inclined to go with Negro League Credit pre-Jackie Robinson because they had no possible option to play major league ball because of prejudice, and chalk the rest up to luck of the draw or lack thereof. My understanding is that no one here gives injury credit, after all.

War credit is pretty much a necessity to be fair to all eras. They didn't leave because they were bored playing baseball. It is possible to interpolate a career for the players who played before and after the war. It is more difficult to extrapolate a career for players where WWII pretty much ended their career but I think it is fair. Several of my top candidates wouldn't be there without war credit (Tommy Bridges, Phil Rizzuto, Dick Redding, Urban Shocker, Bus Clarkson, Don Newcombe, Johnny Pesky).

Also, integration definitely did not happen overnight. There are many players where the Negro Leagues pretty much disappeared but they weren't exactly welcomed into the white leagues. This includes Quincy Trouppe, Bus Clarkson, Luke Easter and Hilton Smith. Some players served in the military only to come back and have the black leagues disappear also (Luke Easter).

Does anyone know if Baseball Gauge WAR or BBRef WAR have adjustments for season length? ie is a player who played in a 154 game context already adjusted to be comparable to someone playing in 162 game context? Or do I need to make that adjustment myself? I couldn't find this info in either of their glossaries.

I don't know about baseball gauge but it's not included in baseball reference. so yeah, you would need to make that adjustment yourself. For the record, that's a big reason why Posada comes in behind Schang and Lombardi for me.

Makes sense. Thanks Chris.

Its been awhile since I was a regular voter. I'd be interested in hearing some of the electorates' thoughts on Closers/Relief Aces. I see Fingers, Gossage, Wilhelm, and Eckersley got in and I would expect Rivera will get in once eligible. My interest is in guys like Sutter and Lee Smith from the older mold of closers and Billy Wagner and Hoffman in the more modern role. I know WAR doesn't rate these guys highly (at least compared to other positions). Are other voters making adjustments to bump these guys up? Or are you assuming WAR has it roughly right and that closers aren't as valuable as the casual fan assumes? To answer my own question, I do think that the position as used today is overvalued and that relief Aces of the 60s 70s and early 80s were more valuable as their managers used them. That said, I also feel that the modern closer role is part of our game and probably not going away (though Andrew Miller showed in a big way what a relief Ace used in big spots regardless of inning can do for a team). If that's true, Rivera followed by Hoffman and Wagner are the obvious cream of the crop from the last 25 years.

I haven't truly made up my mind; the above is just where my thoughts are now. I'm definitely interested in hearing other voters' thoughts on the matter.

in this link we voted on modern HOM pitching ranks

(that's only thru 2009 electees, however)

Gossage beat out only Dave Stieb (who got in basically as one of the 50+ placeholders who replace the stupid HOF selections) and came close only to Sutton and Saberhagen. Fingers was last out of the 20 pitchers on 12 ballots and 19th on four others.

Wilhelm and Eckersley ranked 12-13, with the latter nearly dead-heating with Drysdale.

Only 2 of the 25 voters in 2017 HOM polling found a spot for Hoffman and Eckersley on their mandatory 15-man ballots.

Rivera will be more interesting, of course.

for me, the biggest issue regarding the modern closer is that often only a certain level of dominance is needed to be sufficiently effective. if closer A has a 2.92 ERA and 1.050 WHIP and closer B has a 1.42 ERA and 0.750 WHIP and both go 41-for-42 in SV, how much better is the first one?

sure, the second guy is more impressive and you figure he has a better chance to repeat his success. but how much more productivity did you get for your 70 IP?