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Hall of Merit — A Look at Baseball's All-Time Best Monday, December 19, 20162018 Hall of Merit Ballot DiscussionVladimir Guerrero (267), Sammy Sosa (255), Luis Tiant (189), Jeff Kent (179), Vic Willis (161), Kenny Lofton (151), Bobby Bonds (133), Ben Taylor (130), Buddy Bell (130) and Tommy Bridges (106) will be the top 10 returnees for 2018. Jorge Posada (95), Bob Johnson (86), Urban Shocker (80), Dick Redding (79), Phil Rizzuto (79), Wally Schang (79) and Sal Bando (68) rounded out the top 20. 2018 - (December 4 - December 18, 2017) - elect 4 Name HOFm HOFs Yrs WAR WAR7 JAWS Chipper Jones 180 70 19 85.0 46.6 65.8 Jim Thome 156 57 22 72.9 41.5 57.2 Scott Rolen 99 40 17 70.0 43.5 56.8 Andruw Jones 109 34 17 62.8 46.4 54.6 Johan Santana 82 35 12 51.4 44.8 48.1 Johnny Damon 90 45 18 56.0 32.8 44.4 Jamie Moyer 56 39 25 50.4 33.2 41.8 Carlos Zambrano 30 23 12 44.6 39.0 41.8 Omar Vizquel 120 42 24 45.3 26.6 36.0 Chris Carpenter 70 26 15 34.5 29.6 32.0 Livan Hernandez 41 16 17 31.1 27.8 29.4 Orlando Hudson 20 18 11 30.9 27.2 29.1 Kevin Millwood 34 20 16 29.4 24.8 27.1 Kerry Wood 24 14 14 27.7 25.0 26.4 Carlos Lee 78 35 14 28.2 23.4 25.8 Ben Sheets 19 11 10 23.4 22.3 22.8 Jack Wilson 12 16 12 23.5 20.9 22.2 Hideki Matsui 36 21 10 21.3 21.2 21.3 Aubrey Huff 30 20 13 20.2 22.5 21.3 Adam Kennedy 12 16 14 21.0 20.4 20.7 Jeff Suppan 11 9 17 17.4 18.3 17.8 Carl Pavano 16 6 14 16.9 18.5 17.7 Francisco Cordero 77 9 14 17.2 14.6 15.9 Miguel Batista 10 3 18 12.7 15.9 14.3 Jason Isringhausen 71 7 16 13.2 12.2 12.7 Brian Fuentes 48 9 12 10.7 11.3 11.0 Brad Lidge 48 10 11 8.2 12.4 10.3 Scott Podsednik 15 15 11 6.9 7.8 7.4 Guillermo Mota 13 7 14 6.3 7.6 7.0 JoeD has the Imperial March Stuck in His Head
Posted: December 19, 2016 at 09:12 PM | 444 comment(s)
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It's the Hall of Merit, so there are many disparate opinions on this. I'm sure that many voters are content to say that WAR gets it right and virtually no closer is deserving. On the other hand, other voters may look at additional stats to see what they have to tell us about the relative value of closers. Some might consider WAR per IP (or WAR per 100 IP), recognizing that relievers' workloads are intentionally restricted compared to starters. Others might look at Leverage Index. I like to check in with WPA. It's not the only stat I consider but it shows that a reliever's impact on an individual season can be as great as that of a starter- though the variance in WPA means that it's very difficult for a career reliever to match a career starter. As you noted, some people are voting for Hoffman and Wagner. You would be well within your rights to vote for Sutter or Smith if you thought they were among the best 15 players not in the HoM. Personally, I think that John Hiller is the best reliever that we haven't elected (as you said, the '70s firemen had a much bigger workload that the modern closer) and that Dan Quisenberry is as every bit as good as Sutter. That's part of the problem with the relievers. There are so many of them and they're bunched so closely together that it's hard to know where to draw the line unless that line is so high that only an elite few can get over it.
good post, Chris.
and I am not a WAR guy.
1) Relief pitching is incredibly valuable for a team but relief pitchers are almost never valuable enough for the HOM.
2) The vast majority of RPs are former starters who were demoted to the pen whether at the Big league level, the minors, or in college, and who didn't have the stamina, durability, efficiency, or focus to start...which necessarily makes them less valuable to their organizations.
3) The only two relievers I support for the HOM or Hall are Mariano and Goose.
4) Eckersley was not elected by us as a RP so much as a hybrid; and he would never have been elected as a RP given only his stats in relief. His starting career was not enough to make it alone either, but the larger portion of his value comes from it.
5) Fingers was a huge mistake.
6) Wilhelm is IMO a mistake.
7) Hoffman is merely the best of the rest and not a reasonable candidate because he is far closer to Quiz/Wagner/Hiller than to Goose or Mo. With Tiant, Shocker, Willis, and others still out there, it seems strange to toss a vote at him.
8) Mariano is by far the greatest RP ever without any doubt. He is much much much further ahead of other RPs than W Johnson, Babe Ruth, Mike Schmidt, or Hans Wagner are of other players at their positions. Even still, Rivera would be lucky to be in the top half of HOM pitchers by my reckoning. An analogy would be that Honolulu is by far the biggest US city located on an island.
9) Not falling for the saves and gaudy ERA*+es trap is one way that we differentiate ourselves from the BBWAA as a more informed, thoughtful, and effective electorate.
Anyway, everyone's mileage will differ, but unless all one uses is WPA (which seems insupportable to my mind), one gets all glassy-eyed about saves like the BBWAA does, one chooses to ignore how high the ERA+ requirements are for closers, or one ignores facts such as a pitcher making a long career out of a throwing the same dang pitch all the time and never seeing a hitter twice in one night, there's Very few convincing arguments for any but the very cream of the reliever crop.
Where do you slot these guys...by Fingers being a huge mistake, he rests outside your top 110/115 or more pitchers?
Is Wilhelm top 100? Hoyt is pretty solid, besides FIP WAR, interested in where you place him.
Personally, I think that John Hiller is the best reliever that we haven't electedHiller is impressive in baseball-reference, and solid in baseball gauge, he's completely off the map with FIP WAR, Baseball Prospectus DRA, and Kiko's Win-Loss records...he does well with Joe D's PA, no other pitcher is as polarizing of a case.
I need to put the finishing touches on my PHOM, but I show 29 to 30 players HOM not personal, or just above 10%, 25 to 30% is substantial.
Out: Ezra Sutton, Jake Beckley, Bob Caruthers, Nellie Fox, Richie Ashburn, Edd Roush, Sam Thompson, Eppa Rixey, Bid McPhee, Stan Hack, Dave Stieb, Cool Papa Bell, Dobie Moore, Joe Sewell, Earl Averill, Mordecai Brown, Roger Bresnahan, Ralph Kiner, Pete Browning, Cupid Childs, Willard Brown, Clark Griffith, Will Clark, Bill Freehan, Rollie Fingers, Rick Reuschel, Bill Terry, Joe Medwick.
In: Bobby Veach, Urban Shocker, Art Fletcher, Bert Campaneris, Don Newcombe, Bob Johnson, George Uhle, Thurman Munson, Doc Gooden, Joe Tinker, Harry Hooper, Tommy Bond, Wally Schang, Hilton Smith, Sam Rice, Eddie Cicotte, Luke Easter, Bobby Bonds, Luis Tiant, Tommy Leach, Babe Adams, Johnny Pesky, Phil Rizzuto, Vern Stephens, Orel Hershiser, Dizzy Dean, Dave Bancroft, Jim Kaat, Dale Murphy.
Waiting for your full analysis on Kiki Cuyler, he could be swapped in for Dave Bancroft.
Regarding Gwynn, he needs the RE24 contextual hitting and post-season excellence to remain in my HOF, Baseball Gauge also seems him as borderline in a neutral context, so you aren't off the reservation in my mind with Tony.
Dan R was a Gooden proponent, and Dr. C CHEWS show Hershiser as worthy. Stieb depends on your flavor of choice, he looks great by baseball reference and baseball gauge, but he is quote short by FIP WAR, B-P, and your W-L totals.
When you are splitting hairs, I would consider:
1. Era representation
2. Position representation
3. Timeframe of excellence
Weight these however you like, but Johan Santana is one for me that is in a group but checks boxes 2 and 3 (maybe 1), so he deserves a ballot spot. Doc Gooden hits all 3.
It's against the HOM constitution for strategic voting, so if a player clearly slips through the cracks that you like (John, Stephens, and Schang), then I agree that you want to continue voting for them.
I tried to go through and at least get an approximation for the players for whom I have a pretty solid record in my system and 25-30% was an exaggeration - and a pretty big one. By my count, there are around 150 players whose HOM case is entirely covered by seasons for which I have at least some Retrosheet play-by-play data (I count 148, although there are a few players where it's not clear if they don't pop up in my rankings because of missing data or because my system just doesn't like them). Doing a strict - here's my rankings, take the top 150 - I'd replace 27 players, but that includes Charlie Keller, Enos Slaughter, and Minnie Minoso, all of whom are close enough in my numbers that War and Negro League credit would probably put all three in my pHOM - which gets you to something closer to 15% HOM-not-pHOM and even there, the vast majority of such players are close enough that I could either make a statistical case for them or they could have made it if I went back and did the year-by-year election system that the HOM actually used.
I only count 9 players in the HOM, whose careers were primarily or exclusively 1930, non-NgL who would show up as egregious "mistakes" in my system (I'm not crazy about the word "mistakes"; it's not like y'all inducted Casey Blake or Mario Mendoza).
Dave Stieb is the only starting pitcher I can't really make a case for. This is in part because my pHOM would probably include at least 12-15 more starting pitchers than the HOM.
To segue into another current conversation, I would currently have no relievers in my pHOM (Eckersley and Smoltz are both in it, however, and, as with Dr. C., Eckersley needs his reliever years to make it). Mariano Rivera will make my pHOM and almost certainly be very high on my ballot when he becomes eligible. To some extent, Mariano's the problem for all other relievers. If you give relief pitchers enough of a boost to get Gossage - who's probably the #2 all-time reliever in my system - up to HOM-quality, you end up w/ Mariano as one of the top 10-20 players in major-league history, which I can't buy. Incidentally, my system sees Trevor Hoffman as pretty close to Gossage in value and HOM-worthy if you take the position of "relief pitcher is a position; the top 3-5 of them should be in the HOM".
Position players who are clearly below pHOM level for me, then, are Keith Hernandez, Ken Boyer, Ralph Kiner, Richie Ashburn, Earl Averill, and Tony Gwynn. As I said, if I put together a formal pHOM it might replace another dozen or so HOMers and this doesn't include 19th-C, Deadball Era, or Negro League players, or any borderline players whose case requires at least part of the 1920's. Top 9 guys my system would replace them with (if one populated one's pHOM all at once) would be John, Stephens, Posada (*), Hershiser, Gooden, Dizzy Dean, Jeff Kent (*), Gil Hodges, and Toby Harrah. The asterisked guys are recent enough that they clearly wouldn't replace any of those guys if I populated my pHOM year by year and would most likely still be on the outside waiting their turn to get inducted. The next two guys, then, on my pHOM-not-HOM list to replace Kent and Posada would be Jim Kaat and Dale Murphy. This paragraph is based entirely on my Player won-lost records, so doesn't consider guys like Vic Willis, Wally Schang, Ben Taylor, or Cannonball Dick Redding (who, if they made my pHOM would most likely, in theory, replace current HOMers who also pre-date my system).
My interpretation of your system yields:
Clear Nos - to Hernandez, Kiner (to a lesser extent with some war credit), Ashburn, and Gwynn.
Bubble/Worthy - Ken Boyer with some Korean credit and extrapolating Earl Averill's missing seasons and some PCL credit.
For Boyer and Averill, did you factor in the war, missing years, and or PCL stuff?
No. I didn't realize Boyer was a candidate for extra credit. I think I knew that Averill was, but didn't do so myself. I will say that my system prefers Indian Bob Johnson, who I believe ALSO would deserve minor-league credit, quite a bit more than Averill. Between that and my system preferring pitchers more than the current composition of the HOM, I'd be surprised if I went back to the elections where Averill was a candidate, if I'd have been inclined to ever have supported him. But, fair enough on the need to include potential extra credit.
I haven't completely reformatted my PHoM yet, but wrt relievers, the only pure relievers I have in my PHoM right now are Wilhelm and Gossage. Hoyt is slightly ahead of Goose, with both of them most likely in the bottom quartile of my PHoM. Gossage would be right at my projected borderline if not for his postseason bonus. Eckersley and Smoltz are also both in, Eckersley needing both his starting and relief years to get in and Smoltz would be in even if he never relieved. Mariano, primarily because he has the biggest postseason bonus of anyone in my system (literally more than twice that of the 2nd highest - Babe Ruth), he ends up just a little outside of my projected inner-circle line (I'll have approximately 60ish players in my IC), just below Blyleven.
Fingers is close, but clearly out. He'd be behind Wagner if not for his postseason numbers (and Wagner obviously gets no postseason credit). Hoffman and Lee Smith are a little behind Wagner, but none of them are anywhere close to induction.
Greg, thanks for the correction on my hastily drawn analogy about the island cities. Let me rephrase. If Hoffman in this scenario is Honolulu then Rivera and Gossage represent Manhattan and San Juan in whichever order is apt.
And so I very closely concur with Kiko's position about Rivera and Gossage. Again Rivera dwarfs all other RPs, Gossage is the only other that gets over the line, and everyone else also ran. IMO, electing Hoffman, Wagner, Smith, Sutter, Hiller, Quiz, or eventually Pap (unless he goes on a Rivera tear), Nathan, or K-Rod or any of them would be a massive error. I don't generally make the following kind of general, argumentative statement about anyone's balloting and I don't mean it pejoratively, but I believe that tossing votes at the level of pitcher we are talking about is robbing a more deserving candidate in one's rankings of a vote. But that is only my position, and I am not only sharing it in hopes of avoiding the same mistakes the HoF makes.
Because relief pitching is incredibly valuable but relief pitchers are not.
You know FIP doesn't work for knuckleballers worth a damn, right?
Lefty Grove
Tom Seaver
Carl Hubbell
Warren Spahn
Bob Gibson
Jim Palmer
Whitey Ford
Bert Blyleven
Bob Feller
Hal Newhouser
Gaylord Perry
Ted Lyons / Hoyt Wilhelm
Yes, relievers are different. Adjust the mean, but add some leverage. How can Wilhelm not be one of the best 50 pitchers in MLB history. Sure, Mariano was better.
A: Only hitters (I hope to have time to go through the pitching backlog sometime in the next couple weeks, but both weekends are crock full of plans so who knows. I assume 3-5 pitchers will make make final ballot so don't assume top 15 are on my final ballot.
B: Haven't looked at guys like Ben Taylor and Bus Clarkson yet.
C: Planning a summer project where I pick my own all-league teams as well as MVP and Cy Young for all historical leagues. A guy winning more slots on these teams could flip some of the closer picks here.
I use Baseball Gauge custom with Baseruns for offensive WAR and DRA as defensive WAR up through 2002 and DRS from 2003 on. (Note, I'll be using the average of runs based and FIP based WAR for pitchers when I do them). I look at productive career (career minus negative WAR seasons at start and finish of career), prime (best 8 consecutive years), and peak (best 3 years not necessarily consecutive).
1) Buddy Bell: Best Prime 8 and peak of infielders and only Thome put up more career value.
2) Tommy Leach: Best Prime, Peak and career of Outfielders (categorized him there even though he did play 3B). These first 2 are definitely ones I'm interested in feedback on since I'm higher on them than 2017 voters were.
3) Scott Rolen: Wasn't expecting to like him better than Chipper, but slight advantage in Prime/Peak and slight disadvantage in career. Prime/peak wins that tie for me.
4) Chipper: See Rolen.
5) Jim Thome: Slots in very similarly to Rolen and Chipper in my mind.
6) Andruw Jones: Using raw WAR right now though I did penalize him down from #3 for the questions around defensive numbers. I will pay attention to this debate though. I see him as a no-brainer if the WAR numbers are correct but still probably borderline if they are reduced somewhat. He did win 10 gold gloves plus is probably the greatest CF I saw play (I didn't pay close enough attention to Devon White as a kid, so I can't make that judgement) so I can't see a ridiculous penalty, but I am open to being convinced.
7) Thurman Munson: Best catcher available and I am convinced we need 1-2 more.
8) Roy White: Right up there with the top outfielders in prime peak and career. Was surprised to have this high. Am open to criticism.
9 & 10) Dave Bancroft and Bert Campaneris: Best 2 SS on my board. Very similar peak and career, but Bancroft has a slightly better prime 8, but that may be a function of career shape. Bancroft is 9 for now, but I can be convinced on Campy.
11) Frank Chance: Best backlog 1B. Better peak and prime than Thome (and a lot of other guys) but his career value is too far below to put him that high.
12) Bobby Bonds: Averaged over 5.5 WAR in his 8 year prime and put up competitive peak and career value as well.
13-15) Johnny Evers, Ron Cey, and Jeff Kent: 2 2B and a 3B all very similar in each of peak, prime and career. I lean towards all being on the in side of the line, but when adding pitchers, all look to be on the outside of my 2018 ballot. Feedback definitely welcome here.
16) Wally Schang: I have Tenace ahead of him in raw WAR, but I feel Gino has a durability advantage in playing alot of 1B. If Tenace had played all catcher and put up the same WAR, he'd be right with Munson. As it is, I think Munson and Schang are the 2 backloggers most deserving of our attention.
Definitely looking for feedback. That's why I'm posting at this stage. Some of the guys just outside this list (in no particular order): Lazzeri, Rizzuto, Pesky, Bando, Sam Rice, Jose Cruz, Duffy, Sosa, Bob Johnson, Tenace, Posada.
Chipper's defense is woeful by DRA, my interpretation of Baseball Gauge slots them:
Tommy Leach 101, Buddy Bell 124, Scott Rolen 130, Chipper Jones 165.
Carl, I will try to weigh in with intelligent thoughts later today/this week.
Dr. Chaleeko uses DRA as part of his rankings and has a handful of adjustments to improve the data:
Fenway Park LF, Outfielder Throwing Arm Value (Roy White is hurt A LOT in this area), Polo Grounds 1B, etc.
Thanks. And yes, I'm Tom Thress. WPA is centered on average, so technically, I believe it would be comparable to pWOPA (pWins over positional average). pWORL is relative to replacement level.
He looks by my system to have been most valuable for the Yankees, although he's probably somewhere in the 130-150 range among eligible players on this year's ballot for me.
Systems shown are Baseball Gauge, Baseball Reference, and Tom Thress. I also utilize Dan Rosenheck when data is available, his analysis has helped convinced me on a yes to Bert Campaneris and a no to Sal Bando, for example.
I would also suggest incorporating RE24/contextual hitting value into your rankings if you get a chance. Chipper, Munson, Campaneris, and Bonds were outstanding in this regard. Rolen, Cey, White, Kent, and Sosa were good. Others were neutral.
I also check Baseball Gauge WPA added metric for post-season value as a tiebreaker or a minor positive for those who excelled. Munson was quite good here. When Andy Pettitte hits the ballot, you have a guy with a year + worth of post-season league average pitching...for a non-clear cut candidate, that value has to hold at some level.
Please note, in the off-ballot crowd, Sam Rice is a particularly unique guy, long-career without peak seasons, but adjusting the metrics for his arm value makes him an impressive prime guy, along with WWI and or MLE credit, his career started late...what are the electorates thoughts on Sam, any MLE credit (looks like he may have just got started much later than typical)?
And Carl, if you are a Rice supporter, Harry Hooper is a more impressive version of this type of candidate, at least to me and the good doc.
Players: Buddy Bell, Tommy Leach, Scott Rolen, Chipper Jones, Jim Thome, Andruw Jones, Thurman Munson, Roy White, Dave Bancroft, Bert Campaneris, Frank Chance, Bobby Bonds, Johnny Evers, Ron Cey, Jeff Kent, Wally Schang, Phil Rizzuto/Johnny Pesky (WWII credit cases), Sam Rice, Sammy Sosa, Bob Johnson
FL BG BR TT
BB 124 111 408
TL 101 300
SR 130 104 154
CJ 165 65 50
JT 135 125 73
AJ 75 110 147
TM 89 126 250
RW 79 197 353
DB 158 214
BC 171 238 177
FC 191 249
BB 108 154 232
JE 243 292
RC 164 204 227
JK 196 209 127
WS 176 260
PR 170 190 247
JP 197 232 147
SR 104 237
SS 160 131 185
BJ 129 157 160
Rice got married in 1908 at age 18. In April 2012, Rice was at a baseball tryout:
"While Rice was away in Galesburg, his wife and children moved in with his parents on the family farm in Donovan. On Sunday, April 21, as Rice took to the mound in Galesburg, his family took to the road to visit friends in his wife's hometown of Iroquois. Shortly after the family returned from their outing that evening, a violent tornado ripped through Donovan. The high winds destroyed the Rice farmhouse and killed Rice's wife, both of his children, his mother, and his youngest two sisters.
"According to a report published in the Kentland Democrat a few days later, "... the house, with contents, and everything else on the premises ... was seized, torn, and whirled into fragments and strewn entirely across the farm. ... [family members'] ... bodies were found ... 150 [to] 400 yards south of where the house was ... all nearly entirely naked, the clothing having been whipped into shreds and torn away by the wind." His father survived the storm, but was seriously injured. "When neighbors came upon the scene, they found Mr. Rice running distractedly about among his dead dear ones in the ravine, and carrying in his arms one of the children that yet showed evidence of life, but died a few moments later."
Rice's father was dead, too, before the month was over.
"Rice reportedly spent the rest of 1912 wandering across the Midwest, taking on a series of labor-intensive jobs. [20] His wandering ceased on January 24, 1913, however, when he enlisted in the Navy. [21] He was assigned to the USS New Hampshire, a battleship in the Atlantic fleet that was docked in Norfolk, Virginia, as a "coal passer", a rank equivalent to Fireman 3rd class."
then it gets complicated.....
one interesting aspect is that reporters - with one brief exception - never wrote about the tragedy during his career, upon his HOF election, nor even in the wake of his death....
Now run the same kind of comparisons with lefty hitters only, and you can guesstimate his rDP, which comes out around 25 or more runs, but which BBREF currently has no estimate for.
And when I ran my Hooper arm estimates, I also looked at Rice. In some ways Rice'a arm could be seen as better, though I rated it about 70% of Hooper due to Hoop's amazing reputation. I figured it's probably another 25 runs for Rice above his DRA rating (which counts as about 15-18 for me since I use DRA at ⅔ strength).
So what I'm saying is that Rice potentially has like 80-90 runs that BBREF isn't able to account for. He is the Ichiro of his time, building value with low-power offensive performance, strong baserunning, DP avoidance, and excellent defense, especiallly the arm. That took him from a close also-ran to about 14-17 in my RF ranks. If you simply halve my estimates, I still have him over the line. So far he's the only guy who benefits to this degree from unaccounted runs. I can't run this kind of analysis on Hooper yet because we don't have much detail on his baserunning.
The website where my CP Bell article appeared will have a complete write up either this week or next. If no one objects, I will post the link. Again, I don't want to do so and have it be inappropriate. (To which end, I wrote this post off the top of my head, so when the article appears, trust it over this post if there's any discrepancies.)
That tornado is clearly indicated and estimated as being of F4 strength; indeed, when I read the description above, I was thinking that it had to have been that high on the Fujita scale to do that.
Great stuff doc, please share here and in the Sam Rice thread, looking forward to your article!
Sorry for the delay, I've been focusing my baseball efforts on an NFBC slow draft and reading the BP Annual and I haven't logged in here in a couple weeks. Been looking at RE/24 and just want to make sure I understand how to read it. Does this have similar issues to WPA where you are punishing players who don't come up in "big" spots?
Buddy Bell wRAA 127.3 RE24 128.44
Chipper Jones WRAA 598.0 RE24 707.41
Both metrics are based on Runs above average with wRAA being context neutral and RE24 being context dependent.
If my above statements are correct, the conclusions I would draw from the above are:
1) Buddy Bell was roughly as "clutch" as the average player over the course of his career as his context neutral Runs above average were basically the same as those driven by context.
2) Chipper Jones added an estimate of 109 runs over the course of his career based on the timing of his batting events.
Is this a reasonable way to read the data?
It's also worth noting that fangraphs only has RE24 data going back to 1974.
In general, I find RE24 to be great for hitters, pretty good for relievers and not notably different from RA based systems for starting pitchers.
I also need to give Chipper extra credit for his 93 postseason games at .409 OBP and .456 SLG, but I still need to decide on the "how".
Position Players: Bobby Veach 61, Art Fletcher 68, Joe Tinker 69, Andruw Jones 75, Roy White 79, Thurman Munson 89, Harry Hooper 100, Tommy Leach 101, Sam Rice 104 (war credit, could also deserve MLE credit?), Bobby Bonds 108, Buddy Bell 124, Bob Johnson 129 (year of MLE credit), Lance Parrish 133, Gil Hodges 139, Willie Davis (small Japan credit) 141, George Burns (SF) 144, Tony Perez 156, Dave Bancroft 158, Sammy Sosa 160, Ron Cey 164, George Foster 166, Phil Rizzuto 168 (war credit/malaria bump), Kiki Cuyler (dash of MLE credit) 169, Bert Campaneris 171, Jose Cruz 172, Ken Williams (MLE credit) 175, Albert Belle 176, Wally Schang 177, Kenny Lofton 178.
Pitchers: Urban Shocker 42 (war credit), Luis Tiant (smidge MLE credit) 43, Eddie Cicotte 49, Johan Santana 53, Don Newcombe (integration and war credit) 54, Kevin Appier 58, George Uhle 61, Dizzy Dean (small MLE credit) 64, Tommy Bond 65? - adjusting for 19th century pitchers is anyone's best guess, Vic Willis 71, Frank Viola 72, Wilbur Wood 77, Charlie Buffinton 78, Tommy Bridges 79, Dolf Luque (MLE credit) 80, Jim Kaat 81.
1) What is R-OF and where do I find it? Is it the same as Rfield for OFs?
2) I'm assuming the numbers you list are overall ranking among pitchers or position players by your system, but not certain.
1. In their database, they show "Similarity Scores" for Negro Leaguers that gives a set of comps from the white (and/or integrated) major leagues. For example, Ben Taylor's "most similar" is George Sisler.
Do these sims adjust for league quality? That is, Taylor and Sisler are roughly contemporaries (Taylor was born 5 years earlier, according to Seamheads). Is this saying that, if the Detroit Tigers had signed Ben Taylor to play 1B, we would have expected Taylor and Sisler to put up similar numbers over their careers? Or, is this saying that Taylor put up similar numbers, in his league (which was surely of lower quality than the white AL, right?), to what Sisler put up in his (stronger) league? If the latter, what's the right adjustment factor to convert Taylor's numbers into AL-equivalencies?
2. What's the correct way to evaluate career lengths when comparing Negro Leaguers to "white" major leaguers?
For example, Seamheads shows Dick Redding pitching 19 seasons, but only throwing 2,165 innings. His #2 sim is Bob Gibson, who pitched 17 seasons, but threw 3,884 innings. Is it more correct to say that Redding's career was similar in length to Gibson (19 yrs vs. 17 yrs) or significantly shorter than Gibson's (Gibson threw 80% more innings)?
Thanks!
No - that is a possible future enhancement
Correct, that is what it tells currently.
It varies by season - hopefully that will be answered in the future enhancement.
The comps are all based on converting career numbers into seasonal comparisons, precisely because data for complete Negro League seasons tends to be much more scarce than for MLB seasons.
Kiko, have you decided to stay with a 1/3 pWin, 2/3 eWin weighting?
I'm planning to rehaul my spreadsheet of your data to reflect this approach.
Yes.
I think the pWins are really interesting - in large part, they're the most interesting part of the system. But in working through preliminary ballots, I tended to find myself with a lot of comments along the line of "He looks better in pWins, which could be overrating him for having good teammates". I also found myself assuming that was an issue for some guys that my system was "finding" - e.g., Gil Hodges, who played for very good teams, of course, and does look better in pWins than eWins, but only a bit so, so that even more heavily weighting eWins, he still pops up as a guy who looks worthy of consideration in my system (Dizzy Dean also comes to mind in this vein).
Another issue is players who pre-date my system. For the most part, historical data (including WAR and its ilk) are more comparable to eWins than pWins. So, more heavily weighting eWins hopefully lets me make somewhat cleaner comparisons to other sources. And along these same lines, it's also a bit of a nod to consensus, since, for the most part, sabermetric orthodoxy says we should look at context-neutral numbers.
But others can feel free to take a different approach. One can build one's own weighted system for my data here using whatever weights one would like. [note: I'm not sure if the article explaining weighting choices is 100% up-to-date. In particular, I can't remember if I added a discussion of what I call Wins over Star (or WO*). I set replacement level one standard deviation below positional average; star level is set one standard deviation above average. I think I've discussed the idea in this thread (page 1): for something like a Hall of Merit, people may want to look at a higher standard of comparison than even average to give more credit to guys who were really good and great versus guys who were merely above average for a really long time (e.g., Sandy Koufax vs. Tommy John).]
Bleed, I also saw your comment in the Sam Rice thread. I'll try to answer it this weekend or early in the week and will probably do so here, since it's more general than specifically about Rice.
Thanks for the fast response, I will update to a 1/3 and 2/3 split also when time allows. I personally like your weighting prior to the Wins Over Star, but this does great if we are underrating peak type candidates (I support Johan Santana and Dizzy Dean now with my slightly peakier/prime emphasis).
Should we use context-neutral values? I appreciate your team wins, context makes a difference in winning games.
Do we use your team pWins as the starting point?
Do we also incorporate metrics like RE24 instead of context neutral runs (data complete 1974 to present)?, or the clutch stat at Baseball-Reference or Fangraphs.
Frontlogger Sammy Sosa is at 381 RE24 contextual runs and 345 wRAA neutral runs at Fangraphs, 385 RE24 and 372 RAA.
However, Sosa scores an appalling -17.0 clutch score, with negative scores in each year of his prime.
Is one more useful than the other, should a blended approach be taken?
Also, I have found the following thread very intriguing:
Players don't play in neutral parks, should an adjustment be made for this?
rrOPS+ - neutralizing hitting performance for home and road player values
This significantly damages Jorge Posada's case, showing a neutral 121 OPS+ to 108. If we want to take just a half adjustment, then ~114.5 OPS+ is the new figure
An Excel file in the link requires being a member, but I can share with those interested in the WAR adjusted figures.
10 Biggest winners in total WAR gained in the HOM and top 10 other eligible HOM candidates:
CRipken 14.7, JDiMaggio 8.5, BTerry 8.1, CGehringer 7.2, GSisler 6.9, MPiazza 6.5, GGoslin 6.4, EMathews 6.2, MRamirez 6.1.
JKuhel 12.0, AJones 6.2, RColavito 2.5, RStaub 2.5, KGibson 2.1, GHodges 2.1, JGonzalez 1.9, BoBonds 1.9, TLazzeri 1.8.
Guys losing at least 5 WAR, HOM and non-HOM:
WBoggs -16.0, TSpeaker -11.9, RSanto -11.8, HGreenberg -9.6, RSandberg -9.3, CYaz -8.5, EBanks -8.2, EAverill -7.8, JFoxx -7.7
LWalker -7.7, FThomas -7.5, KGriffey -7.0, GNettles -7.0, FRobinson -6.9, BaBonds -6.3, MMantle -5.7, RKiner -5.6,
JPosada -12.5, CKlein -10.0, KPuckett -9.9, GCravath -6.9, FLynn -6.2, MTettleton -6.0,
CJones -5.6, KWilliams -5.4, DStrawberry -5.4, BJohnson -5.3, DMurphy -5.2, JRice -5.0.
Other notables: Todd Helton -5.4, Joe Medwick -4.9, Bobby Abreu -3.8, Tony Gwynn -3.3, Sam Rice -2.1, Sammy Sosa -2.0.
43. Dr. Chaleeko Posted: March 24, 2017 at 07:48 PM (#5423365)
Hi, everyone,
There are two more articles pertaining to "missing" 1930-1940s value that we posted over at our site. I thought you might find them helpful because they explain how I was looking at Sam Rice and also point to a few other important names and what value they might be missing. I hope this is helpful, though I do want to be really clear that these are not meant to be definitive. If you enjoy, thanks for reading. If you don't...thanks for reading. ;)
Method. https://homemlb.wordpress.com/2017/03/20/guesstimating-secondary-value-for-the-1930s-and-1940s/
Other players. https://homemlb.wordpress.com/2017/03/22/giving-1930s-and-1940s-players-back-their-missing-value-mojo/
44. Bleed the Freak Posted: March 26, 2017 at 01:58 PM (#5423812)
Thanks for sharing Doc, I was already a fan of Sam Rice, but this continues to push his case.
Significant findings for guys I have ranked in the bottom 1/3 of HOM or top 1/3 outside HOM, with OLD versus NEW CHEWS, and OLD versus NEW ranks:
NOTE: Baseball Gauge and Baseball Reference are reflected in Doc CHEWS rankings, so I have many references to Kiko's Win-Loss records as another important take to consider for each guy:
Catchers
46/40/16/24 - Ernie Lombardi - I had mentally noted his likely deficiencies in this area, this confirms my subjective judgments. FWIW, I ran a study of runs scored versus offensive value and plate appearances, Ernie faired about as poorly as anyone.
First Base
53/56/16/14 - Bill Terry - Kiko, where do you stand on Terry - my reading of your system shows him well short? Michael Humphrey's noted that Terry is credited with too many defensive runs from the Polo Grounds.
43/46/27/25 - Dolph Camilli - #17 on Kiko's prelim ballot, post 88 in the 2018 discussion thread. this excludes MLE credit, how much is he worthy of? Jaack has a prelim at ~#19.
43/43/28/28 - Gil Hodges - #11 on Kiko's prelim, are we slighting the 1950s guys due to lower standard deviations/tough leagues?
Second Base
49/48/17/18 - Billy Herman - I had him comfortably worthy, but he's slipping a bit here. Deserves a bit of WWII credit.
47/47/19/19 - Bobby Doerr - glad he's now a Miller and Eric electee, Kiko's system backs this with a thumbs up.
43/40/24/27 - Tony Lazzeri - a guy I see support for on occasion depending on level of MLE credit, this keeps him below my threshold.
The big find!?
38/42/27/26 - Lonny Frey - whoa, add 2 seasons from the war following an impressive 5 year prime from 1939-1943, solid in 1946 at age 35 and nothing after.
Frey doesn't look to have any serious injuries suffered in WWII like Phil Rizzuto and malaria.
The 1940s are not overrepresented, Frey is pretty interesting.
Kiko, where does Lonny make out with you, like Bill Terry, the data isn't complete, but enough to share your thoughts.
Lonny Frey SABR bio
Private Frey spent two years stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas, where he batted .450 as his Fort Riley Centaurs took the Western Victory League championship. However, when he returned to Cincinnati at the age of thirty-four in 1946, something was missing. “I just didn’t have it anymore. Two years in the service and you lose it. … I was just too old, I guess,” he said
Third Base:
42/43/19/20 - Bob Elliott - holds his interesting but not quite enough status.
41/45/23/19 - Stan Hack - Kiko, Hack looks impressive from what I can tell from your W-L, is this too much credit for the war years?
Shortstop:
48/52/21/19 - Joe Sewell - information too sparse for Kiko W-L records? I had moved him out of my PHOM, but looks like that may have been a mistake? I have a number of 1920s guys (Dave Bancroft, Burleigh Grimes, others) that are really close to the line.
42/42/27/27 - Vern Stephens - #4 on Kiko's prelim ballot.
37/38/38/37 - Phil Rizzuto - this excludes WWII credit, and Doc, where do Rizzuto and Johnny Pesky fall for you after WWII/malaria/MLE credit?
Left Field:
50/49/20/20 - Bob Johnson - at this level or better from what I can read in Kiko's system + some PCL credit gets him a spot in my PHOM.
47/45/23/25 - Joe Medwick - was at the bubble, this docking and WWII reduction moves him further out.
46/45/25/26 - Ralph Kiner - a bit of Korea credit, but shows poorly in Kiko's, a tad short for me, although the 1950s are sparsely populated.
46/46/26/23 - Minnie Minoso - I give significant Negro/integration and have him safely clearing the bar.
Center Field:
43/45/26/23 - Wally Berger - well short in Kiko's, deserving of MLE credit + CHEWS makes him intriguing.
43/44/29/26 - Larry Doby - Negro/integration credit moves him safely in.
40/41/36/33 - Earl Averill - he's short due to no PCL credit yet and DRAs assessment of poor fielding, slightly below average in B-R and W-L puts him as a bubble or worthy guy after PCL value; the literature of the time was a fan of Averill's defense if that holds a bit of value.
Right Field:
44/46/27/27 - Bill Nicholson - intriguing CHEWS, does awful in Win-Loss records; 2 of 3 best seasons during WWII.
43/44/30/28 - Kiki Cuyler - VERY interested in the final figures, a case for MLE credit and insubordination of manager, looks good from the available W-L data.
41/42/35/32 - Chuck Klein - remains close but shy.
40/41/37/34 - Tommy Holmes - HOF level with Baseball Gauge, WAY short in Win-Loss records - your thoughts Kiko? Deserves some if not a significant amount of MLE value.
C - Ernie Lombardi: if I extrapolate missing games and neutralize context, I calculate his most similar players as Bill Freehan, Roy Campanella, and Darrell Porter, which is more impressive than it sounds, because (a) Lombardi's similar, but clearly worse, I think, than all three, and (b) Freehan wouldn't be in my pHOM (Campanella would; Porter's kind of on my borderline).
1B - Bill Terry: I'm missing three full seasons of Terry's career. If I extrapolate missing games and look only from age 31 (1930 for Terry) on, his most similar player is Jeff Bagwell, which, again, may not be as impressive as it sounds, because the majority of Jeff Bagwell's HOM case came in his 20's. Number 2 on his list of sims is Ellis Burks, which is much less impressive, of course (but Burks and Bagwell actually had very similar value in their 30's; Burks was a late bloomer). I don't have a good feel for whether I would have voted for Terry or not (he's already in the HOM, right?).
As Bleed notes, Gil Hodges is on my preliminary ballot and Dolph Camilli is just off it. I suspect Camilli will always stay just off my ballot, although, if I went back and populated a pHOM year by year, I wouldn't be surprised to see him having made it in at some point.
2B - What do I make of Lonny Frey? Hard to say. Very good peak/prime for the Reds from 1939 - 43. That seems a bit too short to really call it a "prime" and probably not good enough to really be a HOM-level "peak". He appears to be 187th on my 2018 HOM ballot before adding in guys who pre-date my system. So, probably outside my top 200? Extrapolating missing games and adjusting up to 162-game seasons, his most similars look to mostly fall short. Don't be confused by his #2 sim - Frankie Frisch; that's excluding six full seasons of Frisch's career. Which, conveniently enough, probably sums up Lonny Frey's HOM case: he's probably about a half-decade of prime-level performance short of my pHOM.
3B - I'm missing too many games of Stan Hack's career to be 100% certain, but I think he's a legit HOMer. Extrapolating missing games through age 32 (1942, so eliminate Hack's war years), his top 3 sims are HOMers (Reggie Smith, Gary Carter, Wade Boggs).
As for Bob Elliott, he's at #69 on my 2018 prelim ballot between Jack Clark and Jimmy Key. Good player, probably would have made the bottom of some of my ballots his first decade of eligibility, wouldn't be entirely out of place in the bottom tier of the HOM.
SS - Joe Sewell - yeah, I actually have surprisingly good coverage of him for the seasons I have, but I only have three seasons in the 1920s for the AL. So, I'd be loathe to try to say anything about him just yet.
As you say, I love Vern Stephens, am decidedly meh about Phil Rizzuto.
LF - I'm reasonably sure Bob Johnson would be in my pHOM if I went back and populated it by year. Medwick is currently below my borderline, but I'm missing enough data that I wouldn't want to speak too strongly on that. Ralph Kiner falls well short. Minoso is at least borderline on pure MLB numbers; bonus credit would push him over for me, too.
CF - Wally Berger falls into the Joe Medwick camp: I'm missing a little too much data on him to have a really strong feel, but probably short. My system is very fond of Larry Doby even before getting into extra credit. Averill strikes me a guy who's a clear tier below HOM, but I'm missing data and haven't given him any MLE bonuses.
RF - Nicholson's nothing special. Cuyler could be interesting. He has a case, but I'm missing some seasons and I suspect he's borderline depending on what you do with his 1927 season (similar rates as surrounding seasons, but benched for half the season). Chuck Klein looks way better in eWins than pWins (he'd be an example of the flip side of what I was talking about earlier - he played on terrible teams, so his great hitting didn't lead to team wins far more often than not). Even in eWins, though, he seems to land at a tier just below HOM.
Finally, Tommy Holmes: my thoughts. Looking at my Player W-L records as well as his raw stats on Retrosheet, I suspect his early seasons were a product of the weakened NL due to WWII. Especially his power - it looks like a majority of his extra-base hits (of all 3 kinds) came during WWII. He also only played CF during the war and, post-war, he just didn't have enough power to be a particularly valuable corner outfielder.
From what I can tell, he doesn't pop up among the top 500 HOM candidates for me (which does surprise me a bit). That would require a hellacious amount of MLE credit to even make him interesting, much less ballot-worthy.
https://homemlb.wordpress.com/2017/03/27/hidden-superstars-of-the-1910s-and-1920s/
Can you share further on your revised stance with Dave Bancroft, Art Fletcher, Heinie Groh, Wally Schang, and Bobby Veach.
Great news for Harry Hooper fans!
First off, thanks for the excellent recap from post 154.
Second, Terry is in the Hall of Merit, but he is a maligned selection, yet doc's research and what I posted in 152 suggest he might be shorted by 7-10 WAR...moving him off the bubble and ahead of the 1930s borderline glut guys unelected (Kiki Cuyler, Bob Johnson, and Dizzy Dean) in my ranks.
To all, Stan Hack moves back to bubble/in with doc's new info, Kiko's W-L shows him as worthy, but DRA defense is way down on him...unfortunately, Humphrey's didn't have any discussion on Hack in his book.
Looking forward to when more seasons are available for Joe Sewell, he was short of hall status but clears the bar with doc's new info. For me, Sewell moves ahead of the unelected (Dave Bancroft and Burleigh Grimes), is close with George Uhle, but is behind Urban Shocker and Sam Rice.
And I agree, Cuyler is under ballot consideration, but needs more data to feel that strongly about.
He and Sisler were near twins overall (not in career path), and they both sat just below Greenberg and also near Allen. I also have Eddie Murray who n that vicinity. The very bottom of 1B for me is like this:
McGwire (roughly my 20th 1B, counting Banks as a SS and Rose as a RF and Musial as a 1B.)
-----in/out-----
Beckley/W Clark/Olerud in a clump a hair's breadth below Mac.
Then a gap to Killebrew, then a clump with guy's like Chance, Camilli, Perez, etc.
Anyway, Terry would move up for to definitely being among the bottom third instead of definitely in the bottom quadrant, and maybe a little higher yet than that.
http://baseball.tomthress.com/HallofMerit/
http://baseball.tomthress.com/Articles/UltimateSplit.php
Thanks!
The UltimateSplit is a link in the last paragraph from the eWORL vs WAR article about Adam Dunn and Mickey Rivers.
http://baseball.tomthress.com/Articles/UltimateSplit.php
Maybe the link just needs updated to UltimateStat?
Yes, it's directing to UltimateStat (the link in #159) - I just fixed it. These two articles reference each other: UltimateStat is kind of theoretical, looking at the team level, and then eWORL_v_WAR compares some players.
I wanted to post to the negro leagues page, but commenting is closed.
Jim Albright started a great thread over at the fever:
http://www.baseball-fever.com/showthread.php?130322-HOF-cases-of-Negro-Leaguers-using-MLEs-of-ERA-and-OPS-from-Seamheads
Thanks for mentioning this, Bleed. That's a great, great thread! Everybody should read that.
Reading through Jim's evaluations of players, the ones who caught my eye who I don't think are in the Hall of Merit yet:
Hilton Smith - Albright finds him HOF-worthy and he seems to be the best remaining HOM candidate among Negro League pitchers?
Leon Day - Albright likes him quite a bit. His bat is a big selling point in his case.
Cannonball Dick Redding - he's the top HOM vote-getter in recent years among NgL pitchers, but Albright seems to prefer Smith and Day. He comps Redding to the Jack Morris level of very good for a decently long time, but not elite pitcher.
Ben Taylor - Taylor looks very good here
Grant Johnson - is he in the HOM? Given Albright's description of him, I'm a little surprised if not.
Rev Cannady - I had never heard of Rev Cannady
Tubby Scales - nor had I heard of Tubby Scales
Bus Clarkson - is he in the HOM?
Sol White - apparently there's a lot of missing data, but Albright calls his case "tantalizing"
Harley McNair - another one in the "I've never heard of that guy" bin
Ted Strong
Heavy Johnson - another one I've never heard of, Albright really likes him
Chino Smith - apparently he played a lot in a fairly weak Cuban league
Are any of those guys already in the HOM and/or does anybody have anything more to add on the cases of any of these guys? It seems very likely that there remain Negro Leaguers who the HOM electorate missed on for lack of data many years ago. And I think we (that's a bit of a "royal we" talking about myself) need to be careful not to take as our starting point the view that the Negro Leagues were sufficiently long enough ago that these players have all had their chances and were found lacking for legitimate reasons in the way that, say, an Indian Bob Johnson or a Tommy Bridges had their previous chances.
Glad you found this helpful.
I've been on the Hilton Smith bandwagon, Alex King did MLEs a number of years ago that came to the conclusion that Hilton belongs.
Grant Johnson is given the moniker of "Home Run" and has been elected by the HOM, Bus Clarkson continues to draw votes in HOM elections.
The other name of note is Carlos Moran, he doesn't make Jim's list because of the large gap in Cuban vs Negro League results, what's the league quality gap between the two?
Hilton Smith, Leon Day, Ben Taylor, Grant Johnson, Bus Clarkson, and Heavy Johnson make Jim's single ballot hall of fame, similar in size to the HOM.
Top 25 gainers:
Brun Clu Both
REW tch Avg Player
20.2 9.60 14.9 Pete Rose
15.4 12.9 14.2 Nellie Fox
17.8 7.40 12.6 Billy Williams
23.9 0.90 12.4 Luis Aparicio
15.7 7.80 11.8 Yogi Berra
14.4 7.30 10.8 Dave Parker
15.3 5.40 10.4 Tim Raines
10.6 9.90 10.3 Tony Gwynn
20.2 0.10 10.2 Joe Morgan
14.0 6.10 10.1 Bert Campaneris
14.8 4.90 9.85 Ozzie Smith
14.9 4.30 9.60 Terry Pendleton
16.8 2.20 9.50 Jimmy Rollins
14.1 4.40 9.23 Bobby Abreu
12.1 6.20 9.16 Mark Grace
11.7 6.40 9.05 Garry Templeton
10.3 7.80 9.05 Bill Buckner
17.6 0.50 9.04 Vada Pinson
9.40 8.40 8.90 Dick Groat
11.8 6.00 8.90 Frank McCormick
10.6 7.00 8.79 Ted Simmons
12.5 4.70 8.58 Tony Perez
11.8 5.00 8.40 Maury Wills
10.8 6.00 8.40 Dave Concepcion
11.1 5.60 8.35 Willie McCovey
Top 25 fallers (guys losing 4 wins of value:
Brun Clu Both
REW tch Avg Player
(6.5) (12.7) (9.6) Lance Parrish
(9.4) (9.7) (9.5) Chet Lemon
(4.3) (10.1) (7.2) Jermaine Dye
(4.7) (9.6) (7.2) Ivan Rodriguez
(4.7) (9.6) (7.2) Paul Konerko
(2.6) (10.2) (6.4) Richard Hidalgo
3.20 (15.9) (6.4) Frank Robinson
1.39 (13.4) (6.0) Jim Thome
5.04 (17.0) (6.0) Sammy Sosa
(2.4) (9.3) (5.9) Torii Hunter
(1.7) (10.0) (5.8) Adrian Beltre
(3.2) (8.3) (5.7) Jim Rice
(4.0) (6.5) (5.3) Bobby Grich
(4.2) (6.3) (5.3) Robinson Cano
(7.3) (3.1) (5.2) Rick Dempsey
(1.9) (8.1) (5.0) Mike Napoli
(0.8) (9.2) (5.0) Joe Adcock
(0.6) (9.2) (4.9) Frank Thomas
(5.9) (3.7) (4.8) Don Baylor
(1.8) (7.2) (4.5) Benito Santiago
(1.7) (7.3) (4.5) Manny Ramirez
(3.5) (4.9) (4.2) Albert Belle
(2.3) (6.1) (4.2) Andre Thornton
(5.3) (3.0) (4.2) Edgar Martinez
(1.1) (7.1) (4.1) Mike Lowell
Other notable candidates/electees:
Brun Clu Both
REW tch Avg Player
12.2 4.30 8.24 Willie Davis
11.7 4.50 8.11 Rickey Henderson
13.6 2.50 8.07 Johnny Damon
14.9 1.20 8.05 Jim Gilliam
9.31 6.40 7.86 Roberto Clemente
10.0 5.00 7.49 Rod Carew
11.8 2.60 7.19 Darrell Evans
10.4 3.40 6.88 Tommy Henrich
11.1 2.50 6.80 Joe DiMaggio
13.3 0.30 6.79 Carlos Beltran
9.30 4.10 6.70 Jason Kendall
11.6 1.30 6.46 Augie Galan
13.2 (0.4) 6.39 Barry Larkin
16.5 (3.8) 6.36 Ryne Sandberg
6.88 5.70 6.29 Amos Otis
14.9 (2.7) 6.09 Craig Biggio
7.97 4.20 6.09 Keith Hernandez
9.10 3.00 6.05 Jose Cruz
10.4 1.70 6.04 Kenny Lofton
9.09 2.50 5.80 Minnie Minoso
7.24 4.30 5.77 Lou Whitaker
4.99 6.50 5.75 Eddie Murray
11.7 (0.3) 5.70 Mickey Mantle
7.00 4.20 5.60 Darrell Porter
12.7 (1.6) 5.55 Willie Mays
5.67 5.20 5.44 Enos Slaughter
7.73 3.10 5.42 Jason Giambi
12.2 (1.4) 5.39 Chase Utley
4.46 5.90 5.18 Ichiro Suzuki
11.5 (1.2) 5.13 Bobby Bonds
8.47 1.60 5.04 Lance Berkman
12.3 (2.4) 4.95 Todd Helton
11.3 (1.4) 4.93 Derek Jeter
5.62 4.00 4.81 Billy Herman
10.3 (1.0) 4.63 Ken Boyer
6.29 2.90 4.60 Paul Molitor
4.37 4.80 4.59 Orlando Cepeda
2.87 6.10 4.49 George Brett
3.33 5.60 4.47 Roy White
6.65 2.20 4.43 Rusty Staub
7.28 1.40 4.34 Cesar Cedeno
5.16 3.50 4.33 Will Clark
8.65 (0.1) 4.28 Roberto Alomar
12.5 (4.0) 4.26 Duke Snider
11.0 (2.5) 4.23 Al Kaline
10.7 (2.4) 4.17 Carl Yastrzemski
2.90 5.40 4.15 Yadier Molina
6.20 2.10 4.15 Tony Fernandez
4.73 3.50 4.12 Toby Harrah
4.41 3.60 4.01 Kirby Puckett
Full list can be found: http://www.baseball-fever.com/showthread.php?129799-Best-Metrics-for-Measuring-Performance-Value&p=2634573#post2634573
Thanks! It occurred to me that there was a Negro Leaguer w/ the nickname "Home Run" who might have been Home Run Johnson.
No correlation between them, Kiko is measuring things that Baseball-Reference isn't capturing in this view.
REW Clu Avg OPA ORL Name
20.2 9.60 14.9 5.00 3.80 Pete Rose
15.4 12.9 14.2 12.0 12.1 Nellie Fox
17.8 7.40 12.6 (5.5) (5.6) Billy Williams
23.9 0.90 12.4 5.40 5.10 Luis Aparicio
15.7 7.80 11.8 14.8 15.8 Yogi Berra
14.4 7.30 10.8 2.50 2.90 Dave Parker
15.3 5.40 10.4 (2.9) (2.9) Tim Raines
10.6 9.90 10.3 (1.8) (1.4) Tony Gwynn
20.2 0.10 10.2 5.70 6.00 Joe Morgan
14.0 6.10 10.1 1.00 1.00 Bert Campaneris
14.8 4.90 9.85 7.30 7.30 Ozzie Smith
14.9 4.30 9.60 6.20 6.70 Terry Pendleton
16.8 2.20 9.50 6.50 6.30 Jimmy Rollins
14.1 4.40 9.23 (0.8) (0.7) Bobby Abreu
12.1 6.20 9.16 (2.4) (2.5) Mark Grace
11.7 6.40 9.05 4.00 4.40 Garry Templeton
17.6 0.50 9.04 (0.7) (0.8) Vada Pinson
9.40 8.40 8.90 6.30 6.30 Dick Groat
11.8 6.00 8.90 5.50 6.50 Frank McCormick
10.6 7.00 8.79 0.70 1.70 Ted Simmons
12.5 4.70 8.58 4.40 5.10 Tony Perez
11.8 5.00 8.40 8.60 8.50 Maury Wills
10.8 6.00 8.40 6.90 6.60 Dave Concepcion
11.1 5.60 8.35 4.00 5.60 Willie McCovey
(6.5) (12.7) (9.6) (0.9) (0.3) Lance Parrish
(9.4) (9.70) (9.5) (2.4) (2.4) Chet Lemon
(4.3) (10.1) (7.2) (3.6) (3.3) Jermaine Dye
(4.7) (9.60) (7.2) (4.3) (4.3) Ivan Rodriguez
(4.7) (9.60) (7.2) (2.2) (1.5) Paul Konerko
3.20 (15.9) (6.4) (1.0) 0.10 Frank Robinson
1.39 (13.4) (6.0) (0.7) - Jim Thome
5.04 (17.0) (6.0) (7.1) (6.7) Sammy Sosa
(2.4) (9.30) (5.9) 1.40 2.50 Torii Hunter
(1.7) (10.0) (5.8) 2.40 3.00 Adrian Beltre
(3.2) (8.30) (5.7) 1.90 2.00 Jim Rice
(4.0) (6.50) (5.3) 0.80 1.00 Bobby Grich
(4.2) (6.30) (5.3) 5.50 5.40 Robinson Cano
(1.9) (8.10) (5.0) 1.20 1.30 Mike Napoli
(0.8) (9.20) (5.0) 0.70 1.60 Joe Adcock
(0.6) (9.20) (4.9) 0.10 0.60 Frank Thomas
(5.9) (3.70) (4.8) 0.20 1.20 Don Baylor
(1.8) (7.20) (4.5) (0.8) (0.3) Benito Santiago
(1.7) (7.30) (4.5) 2.80 3.80 Manny Ramirez
(3.5) (4.90) (4.2) (2.0) (1.6) Albert Belle
(2.3) (6.10) (4.2) (3.4) (2.9) Andre Thornton
(5.3) (3.00) (4.2) (0.5) (0.2) Edgar Martinez
(1.1) (7.10) (4.1) 0.70 1.10 Mike Lowell
Are there special codes that have to be added?
Thanks much.
That seems to work. (Thanks again.)
https://homemlb.wordpress.com/2017/04/12/erics-viewing-guide-to-the-2017-season/
Kiko, what was the latest update you did on your Win-Loss records website for new Retrosheet info?
Any particular years or players I should refresh my spreadsheets on for your data?
The date at the top of this article should identify the last date I updated (unless I forget to update it). My last update was December 12th, which was tied to Retrosheet's Fall, 2016, release, which included 2016 (which doesn't matter for Hall-of-Merit voting yet, of course) and I think 1944. Their next release will probably be in late June and I'll hopefully have a new update by the end of July (I'll post something in this thread when it's complete). That will definitely include deduced games for 1943 and may include games for 1942 (sabermetric legend Dick Cramer recently retired and has started deducing games as one of his main retirement hobbies, so deductions are moving much quicker than they had been previously). I think there's also a chance that we get one or two all-new seasons (1928 and/or 1929 - probably only partial).
Exciting news for the upcoming seasons!
I have run the spreadsheet numbers to move players to 1/3 p and 2/3 e win values, I will try to have comments soon on the implications and whether there are some guys all of us could be overlooking.
1. Chipper 4898, 2. Thome 4613, 3. Stephens 4396, 4. Trout 4203, 5. Indian Bob 4071.
Note I took a 25% reduction to 1945, 20% to 1944, 15% to 1943, 5% to 1942.
For players pre-1946, values deduced from games available extrapolated for missing games:
Stephens has ~88% accounted for, Trout 74% (although 2 peak seasons fully accounted for), Indian Bob 81%.
6. Henrich 4026, 7. Cuyler 3986, 8. John 3985, 9. Klein 3962, 10. Posada 3925. Henrich 95%, Cuyler and Klein 64%.
For seasons unavailable by Retrosheet (Cuyler and Klein), estimates taken from actual figures from Baseball Gauge and Baseball Reference and relationship of those seasonal values compared against available seasons.
Posada given ~33% boost for catching.
11. Gooden 3853, 12. Pesky 3817, 13. Hershiser 3810, 14. Newcombe 3805, 15. Harder 3803. Pesky 94%, Harder 87%.
16. Passeau 3798, 17. Sosa 3795, 18. Harrah 3775, 19. Kent 3764, 20. Kaat 3760. Passeau 66%.
21. Hodges 3759, 22. L Jackson 3754, 23. Murphy 3742, 24. Andruw 3706, 25. Dean 3699. Dean 71%.
26. Clift 3694, 27. Santana 3676, 28. Campaneris 3671, 29. Colavito 3669, 30. Camilli 3668. Clift 55%, Camilli 81%.
31. Rolen 3645, 32. El Duque? 3640, 33. Sain 3635, 34. Burdette 3633, 35. Friend 3631.
36. Garcia 3627, 37. Hunter 3626, 38. Vlad 3614, 39. Concepcion 3613, 40. Rice 3587.
41. Bonds 3575, 42. Valenzuela 3560, 43. Schoolboy 3555, 44. Dom 3574, 45. Foster 3540. Rowe 72%, Dom 85%.
46. Perez 3534, 47. Appier 3533, 48. Wells 3504, 49. Tiant 3502, 50. Otis 3499
Top 40 returnees:
Walters 3462, Bando 3455, Lofton 3109, McGriff 3076, Munson 3044, Bridges 3028, Rizzuto 2939, Buddy 2390.
Wanted to get this posted, will share thoughts in the following post:
Checking out Seamheads Negros database, Dolf Luque is listed with 21 WAR + MLB ~50 = ~70 WAR, with an all-time great 1923, an excellent 1925, and other all-star like campaigns.
To Kiko's review:
With the margins being thin, let's look at the standings in each decade.
Rank for each player in Parenthesis.
30s - Assuming that Ray Brown, Dihigo, Gibson, Paige, Suttles, and Wells are above the unelected:
Indian Bob (24), Klein (25), Harder (26), Dean (27), Camilli (30).
40s - Stephens (13), Trout (16th MLB, but behind Leonard, Trouppe, and Irvin to 19th?), giving the nod to Hilton Smith (20) and Luke Easter (21), we then have Henrich (23), Pesky (24), Passeau (25), Sain (26), Dom (27), Rowe (28).
50s - Newcombe (16), Hodges (17), Burdette (18), Garcia 3627 (19), Simmons 3364 (20), Rosen 3318 (22), Maglie?! (23), Furillo 3200 (24)
60s - Kaat (18), Jackson (19), Colavito (21), Friend (22), Osteen 3466 (25), McAuliffe 3319 (26), Pascual 3295 (27).
70s - John (15), Harrah (20), Campaneris (21), Hunter (24), Concepcion (25), Rice (26), Bonds (27), Foster (28), Perez (29), Tiant (30), Otis (31).
80s - Gooden (17), Hershiser (19), Murphy (20), Valenzuela (24), Strawberry 3481 (25), Canseco 3380 (26), Guidry 3379 (27).
90s - Sosa (21), El Duque?! (23), Appier (24), Wells (25), El Presidente 3377 (26), Belle 3266 (28).
00s - Chipper (6), Thome (10), Kent (20), Andruw (21), Santana (23), Rolen (24), Vlad (26), Giles 3381 (32).
Elected guys:
30s - Averill (28), Medwick (31), Terry (38), Cool Papa?
40s - Hack (22), Willard Brown?, Kiner (29).
50s - Pierce (15), Fox (21), Ashburn (way off).
60s - Koufax (16), Torre (17), Boyer (20), Wilhelm (23), Freehan (24).
70s - Da Evans (22), R Smith (23), Fingers (32), Reuschel (38).
Sorry, last post chopped off:
60s - Brooks (28).
70s - Nettles (44).
80s - Winfield (16), Dawson (18), Raines (21), Eckersley (22), Gossage (23), Stieb (30), Randolph (31), Gwynn (way off).
90s - Cone (20, I Rod?, Palmeiro (27), W Clark (33).
https://homemlb.wordpress.com/home-honorees/
CHEWS values from your 2017 ballot: Bell (54.71), Tiant (49.00), Lofton (52.09), Veach (54.40), Willis (48.21), Shocker (47.69), Schang (46.95), Munson (45.81), Leach (52.26), Fletcher (55.49), Sosa (?), Bonds (50.31).
Others elected to Eric’s Hall but off ballot: Kevin Appier (64.00 – is this transposed, supposed to be 46?), Chuck Finley (54 – transposed to 45?), Joe Tinker (52.84), Orel Hershiser (51.00), Roy White (50.49), Bob Johnson (49.60), Willie Davis (49.15), Harry Hooper (49.11), Dave Bancroft (48.85), Jose Cruz (48.41), Sal Bando (46.62), Jeff Kent (46.48), Bucky Walters (43.38).
Per your ballot construction, do you make a subjective bump in CHEWS for catchers and pitchers in your rankings, anything else in particular?
Any chance you can share your full spreadsheet of potential candidates, either at the HOME honorees link or otherwise?
I would like to incorporating your findings as best I can...many thanks!
Funny you should ask about that because in Monday, I'm cutting over to a new sifting tool I'm oh so innovatively calling CHEWS+. An exhaustive, and hopefully not exhausting, article on this will appear Monday. The upshot is that I'm fusing some big ideas or features from three systems I've read about: JAWS, HOS' Hall Rating, and a tiny piece of an article on HBT about using pyramid calculations or something like. It was not about Madoff and the Wilpons....
You'll get the deets on Monday, but I'll be able to present more in depth info about the attributes of a player's case viz a biz DocWAR. As always 1'sMMV, but it's a framework more than an answer, peak friendlier than my current system, and more intuitive to look at...I think. As for the Fellows you mentioned above, yes those were typos. Thanks for catching them. The next installment of the HOMEstats doc (next Friday) will have CHEWS+ integrated.
I think in general that I've been high guy on Finley. Which I'm glad to be. I control for workload very strongly, which is designed to give guys like Finley and Appier or Johan the chance to stand more on the basis of per inning performance against some of the endurance candidates whose lesser performance is offset by bulk. I mostly take it out of a pitcher's rRep not their RAA, conserving their performance against average as much as possible. For more on the WHY of this, we ran an article mentioned up thread about Sandy vs Santana that sheds light on the why OF this.
I can't actually read your comment while posting because...BTF. But I think you mentioned catchers? I provide catchers with a bonus/adjustment while I'm tinkering with their WAR. The new CHEWS+ may also provide a little more of a boost. In it I compare players to both their primary position (usually where they played the most games) and to all hitters. Then I average the results. I didn't explicitly do so previously, but in so doing I take away some of the blatant dis/advantages of certain positions. Also, again, these things are all shifters. I'm looking at them as an initial blast of info that helps me feel things out and make distinctions. Then I look for ways to balance position and chronology. But that's just me.
The methodology is the happy union of two elements: (1) Pennants added; (2) Replacement level on a sliding scale.
The concept of pennants added is a concept familiar with everyone who is reading this so I will only summarize it here. The performance of each player each season can be encapsulated by his WAR (wins above replacement) and WAA (wins above average) figures. Throughout this I will be using the WAR and WAA figures appearing on the BB-Ref website. Over the course of a player's career, he accumulates career WAR and career WAA. But these are not immediately or easily compared across players. Different players will have different {WAR, WAA} profiles, will have played different number of seasons, will have different "peaks", etc.
Pennants added is a way to put everybody on an equal footing. In each season, a player's achievements are converted to an estimate of how often his achievements would be sufficient to lead his team to the pennant. I believe the methodology I follow is the standard developed over the years in the sabermetric community. The player's achievements {WAR, WAA} are added to different teams by replacing a replacement player on the team and a season is simulated and we keep track of the differential fraction of times the player-enhanced team wins the pennant.
What I have done is randomly drawn the run-scoring and run-prevention abilities of 8 teams in a league. The teams actual runs scored and runs allowed totals are derived by "normalizing" them so that the total runs scored in the league equals the total runs allowed in the league. Then a player (say the 1923 Babe Ruth) is added to each team in the league, one at a time, and 1,000 different 161-game seasons are played out (each team played each opponent 23 games each season). Of course, I keep track of how many more pennants the team with Babe Ruth wins versus the team without him. I did this for 10,000 different league-team profiles. And I did this for every value of WAR for the "added" player in question from 0 to 15.
Here are the results of the tens of millions of simulations (PA stands for Pennants Added):
A few observations are in order. First, note that the relationship between Pennants Added and WAR is non-linear. Doubling WAR more than doubles Pennants Added, especially as the WAR gets larger. Second, I replicated the simulations with different number of games in the season and have found that the relationship is scalable. For example, the Pennants Added by a 2-WAR player in a 81 game season is virtually identical to the Pennants Added by a 4-WAR player in a 162 game season.
To capture the non-linearity, I posited that there was a "kink" in the relationship and that the difference in a league-average performance and a league-replacement level performance was 2.5 wins. I find that the following equation is the best fit for the Pennants Added relationship under those assumptions:
PA = (.0144)*F*[WAR-(WAA-1)] + (.0144)*ONEWAA*[F*(WAA-1)]^1.1310
where F = 162/L is the scale factor and reflects the length of the season (L), and ONEWAA is an indicator function whether or not WAA exceeds 1. It actually is a much easier formula than it looks. Essentially it mirrors the numbers shown in the WAR-PA relationship enumerated above.
Using the {WAR, WAA, L} seasonal data for any player, I can calculate his seasonal Pennant Added figure for that season. In case anyone is interested, 1923 Babe Ruth was worth around 0.30 pennants added.
In my next post, I will describe the second of the twin-pillars of my new approach.
The first post above described how a player's Pennant Added contribution can be calculated for each season of his career. Based upon that, it is tempting to simply add up the seasonal Pennant Added figures to derive the player's Career Pennant Added figure. I would like to argue that this simple sum is not so obvious and it tends to over-value players with long careers.
Think back to what the seasonal Pennant Added figure represents. It represents the "pennant value" difference between the player and a replacement level player for that season. Simply adding those figures from season to season is tantamount to assuming that the replacement-level player stays with the player over the course of his career. But I don't think this is correct.
When Bill James and others brought the concept of replacement-level into the sabermetric literature, there was a great deal of discussion of the concept. The part of that discussion that is germane to this post is how the replacement-level is affected by the passage of time. By its very nature, time restricts our choices in our lives. If we have more time, we will typically have more options to consider and better outcomes will result. The same holds true in baseball. Baseball managers and general managers can shift more things around and engender better outcomes given the time to do so.
As an extreme example, if today's starting shortstop comes down ill right before gametime, the manager has few options. He likely will start the backup shortstop or possibly shift other fielders around to cover for the missing player. If the team's starting shortstop tells his manager that he has to miss next Sunday's game due to a family obligation (this is undoubtedly hypothetical, but bear with me), the team has more time to make other arrangements. Maybe they would bring up a Triple-A shortstop for one game.
Extending the example even further, suppose the starting shortstop breaks his leg skiing over the winter and will be out for the whole of the following season. Now the team's GM may well try to trade for another shortstop or make other arrangements with his minor league stable. In the extreme, suppose the starting shortstop dies or quits baseball in the prime of his career. Then, over the next several years, the team's GM may well make drafting a shortstop a high priority and/or be willing to give up more in a trade (or free agency) to acquire a new shortstop. The point is that quality of the "replacement" shortstop will rise over time, as shown by these scenarios. In the limit, the quality of the replacement level will approach a league average player.
I have done some research that indicates that teams typically field (on average) a league-average player at each position over a 20-year horizon. Of course, some teams have trouble finding a good player at a certain position (like the NY Mets and third base), but generally speaking 20 years is sufficient for the "replacement level" to reach the quality of the league average.
An example can sometimes paint the picture better than lots of words. Consider the Chicago Cubs of the mid-1960s. They had a young shortstop named Don Kessinger. In truth Kessinger wasn't all that great of a player, but he was the best the Cubs had. Kessinger was the starting shortstop for the Cubs for nearly a decade. Suppose I told you that Kessinger was a below average player each year but above replacement-level each season (this is a stylized example). Suppose for simplicity that Kessinger's seasonal WAR-WAA figures would lead you to believe that he contributed 0.01 Pennants Added each season.
Should the Cubs be happy? How much did Kessinger really contribute to the Cubs' chances of winning the pennant over his 10-year stretch as their starting shortstop. Multiplying 10*0.01 = 0.10. Is this an accurate representation of what Kessinger brought to the Cubs? I say that Kessinger's actual contribution to the Cubs winning a pennant over these 10-years is significantly less than 0.10.
Here is where the "time-based" replacement-level concept comes in. I argue that this over-values Kessinger's contributions since he locked down the shortstop position for 10 years. Over a typical 10-year stretch, the Cubs would have expected better performance than that over any 10-year period.
Having Kessinger (or anybody for that matter) hold down the same position for ten years essentially locks out other options the Cubs might have been willing to try in Kessinger's absence. It is a type of "opportunity cost" argument. Playing Kessinger for 10 years deprived the Cubs of other opportunities they could have pursued over that time period.
I have posited a "sliding replacement level" over time. In one year, it is the typical replacement-level used in WAR calculations. However, as it takes 20 years to reach the league average, every year it ratchets up 5% (1/20) of the gap between the league-average and league-replacement-level quality levels. As an example, if Kessinger were a 20-year starter, in his 20th season his "sliding replacement level" would actually be that season's league average, not that season's league-replacement level. In essence, a team rightly expects more from a veteran due to the opportunity cost nature of his veteran status.
Over the years I have noticed that several GMs have expressed this view. After Albert Pujols signed a long-term deal with the Angels, I remember hearing the Cardinals GM say that one reason they didn't match the Angels' contract offer was that the Cardinals had several players in the minor leagues that they hoped and expected would now be able to contribute at the major league level (a spot opened up for them). Theo Epstein has said similar things when he was GM of the Red Sox. Signing players to long-term contracts have "hidden" costs that are difficult to see. One of the hidden costs is that the player typically blocks the development of others in the organization.
Anyway, I believe that this is an important aspect of player evaluation that has largely been ignored. In my newly-created player evaluation methodology, I have utilized this "sliding replacement level" framework. Rather than simply sum the player's seasonal Pennant Added figures, I now adjust his unadulterated career Pennants Added figure to deduct the opportunity cost of playing that many years in terms of blocking an organization from identifying/developing/acquiring other alternatives. In case anyone is worried, the sliding replacement level is capped at the league average even for seasons beyond the player's 20th major league season.
What I have attempted to ascertain is whether the player in question "blocked" the development of others in the organization in the season in question. Clearly if the player was a starter for every game in the season, he was a blocker that season. Clearly if he was only a late-inning defensive replacement in 25 games during the season, he was not a blocker that season. I used judgment for all cases in between. Generally speaking, if a position player was a starter for significantly more than half of the team's games, he was considered a blocker for that season. For pitchers, it depends upon what the team is expecting out of its pitchers. Essentially, a regular starting pitcher is considered a blocker, but not a spot starter or fifth starter. Relief pitchers are especially challenging -- I attempted to use an innings perspective so that it might take two years of Mariano Rivera's typical usage to equal one year of "blocking" for our purposes. This is since WAR and WAA utilize an innings perspective.
The following posts will present my new "Career Pennants Added based upon Sliding Replacement Levels" figures.
I want to first emphasize what these figures represent and what they do not. They are based exclusively upon WAR and WAA figures themselves. So all the strengths and weaknesses of WAR and WAA will be reflected in my figures as well. As pitchers' WAR is dependent upon their innings pitched and pitchers' workloads varied greatly over time, CPASR for 19th century pitchers may appear to be unduly large. Somewhat related, relief pitchers will be included even though their WAR figures are notoriously small -- accordingly the CPASR figures for career relief pitchers may appear unduly small.
Factors not considered in WAR and WAA and therefore not considered in CPASR include: (i) post season performance; (ii) minor league credit; (iii) missing years due to military service or other reasons; (iv) strength of competition (e.g., 19th century, during WWII, maybe AL during the 1950s, lesser major leagues such as FL, UA, AA, NA, early AL, etc.); (v) catcher bonus; (vi) unequal opportunities; etc.
Recently retired players who are not yet eligible for the HOF/HOM are denoted by **. Players eligible for the HOF/HOM for the first time in 2018 are denoted by ***. The stats of active players (denoted by *) are complete through the 2016 season. Active players figures may be confusing or misleading, especially if the player is in the prime of his career, and are included solely for comparison and completeness.
Also, as both the HOF and HOM were populated chronologically over time, at times "lesser" players were elected due to coming on the ballot "early" or in a "down" year. So we shouldn't really expect that the HOF and HOM would be populated exclusively from the top ranks of my CPASR. In the table below, a M denotes a member of the Hall of Merit and an F denotes a member of the Hall of Fame. Final point, I have calculated CPASR for over 1,000 players but this is not necessarily saying that these are the top 1,000 players of all-time (there may be some players who should be in the lower echelons who are not listed).
Do you have, or did you plan to also do CPASR for Baseball Gauge WAR as well?
A handful of guys to consider for your analysis:
Charlie Buffinton
Bobby Mathews
George Stone
Brian McCann
Darren Daulton
Del Crandall
Orator Shaffer
Abner Dalrymple
Dave Orr
John Clapp
Mickey Tettleton
Jack Rowe
Doug Jones
Tug McGraw
Jim Bagby
(1) I currently have no desire to undertake comprehensive CPASR derivations for alternative WAR methodologies. People may know that I have developed my own version of WAR for starting pitchers based upon game-by-game analysis of the runs scored and runs allowed in each game. Though sorely tempted, I decided to utilize the BB-Ref WAR figures for CPASR rather than my own Win Values even for starting pitchers for whom I have the win value figures (post 1944 Retrosheet era). Possibly if there are a few players for whom a significantly different viewpoint results from using a different WAR methodology, I could recalculate their CPASR using the different flavor of WAR. Of course, other analysts could undertake the calculation as well as me.
(2) I did include George R. Stone (751, .436) and Jim Bagby Sr. (561, .531) in the CPASR calculations reported above. If and when I have some time to calculate the CPASR for additional players, I will include the players you listed above.
(3) DL: Before you asked your question, I would have said that the CPASR methodology is fair to all eras and positions. It uses the "a pennant is a pennant" perspective that JoeD and the other founders of the HOM project so wanted members to embrace. If anything, I would argue that WAR (CPASR) bends over backwards to be fair with the result that it might not be fair in the end. A simple example is that the overall quality of play dropped significantly during WWII. So when Snuffy Stirnweiss had great years in the lower-quality 1944-1945 seasons, he attained very high WAR and CPASR. But some would argue that from a larger perspective, his achievement should be discounted to reflect the lesser strength of competition.
Also, the developers of WAR have essentially baked in the viewpoint that WAR is the same across all positions. This has been verified empirically over all positions and throughout baseball history.
The three main aspects to which some analysts have concerns regarding this are 19th century starting pitchers, catchers, and modern relief pitchers. 19th century starting pitchers achieve gaudy WAR (and CPASR) due to them having so much influence on their team's success. The success of the 1884 Providence Grays rested squarely on the broad shoulders of Old Hoss Radbourn (especially after Charlie Sweeney bolted). Of course Radbourn's WAR and CPASR for that season are remarkably, unbelievably high. Some people believe that catchers deserve a "catcher bonus" to reflect the physical demands of the position making it nearly impossible to play as many games as other positions (and therefore lowering the WAR figures that they could attain). I am ambivalent on that issue but lean toward only granting a small catcher bonus. Similarly, some people believe that WAR does not properly reflect the value of modern relief pitchers. Again, I am ambivalent on this issue and lean toward only granting a small bonus for modern relief pitchers.
If you or anyone else thinks that WAR or CPASR is not fair to all eras and positions, I'd love to hear about it and discuss the issues.
The only true hom case missing is charlie buffinton, he seems to make the glut of intriguing 1880s guys.
Do you have a spreadsheet by season that you can share at the hall of merit group?
3. Spalding
35. Cummings
94. Griffith
101. Wright
221. McGraw
296. Torre
643. Huggins
Perhaps a lower case "f" would be an appropriate identifier for these.
As the historians among us know, pitching did not really become pitching as we know it until some time in the 1890's. I suppose we HOM voters understood that and voted accordingly. In looking at the all-time CPASR list, we see several 19th century pitchers not in the HOM including Tommy Bond (1870s) and Jim McCormick (1880s) -- both in the top 10!
DanG: Thanks for the information. I was referencing a list of Hall of Fame enshrinees voted in as players for comparison. Of course, this is a fine line for early Hall of Famers like Spalding and Cummings (maybe Griffith and Wright too).
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