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Hall of Merit— A Look at Baseball's All-Time Best
Monday, February 27, 2012
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2023 Hall of Merit Ballot Discussion (168 - 1:46pm, Jul 13)Last:  DL from MNMost Meritorious Player: Trophy Case (71 - 6:53pm, Jul 08)Last: DL from MNMost Meritorious Player: 1900 Results (6 - 6:28pm, Jul 08)Last: DL from MNMost Meritorious Player: 1900 Ballot (11 - 4:03pm, Jul 06)Last: DL from MNMost Meritorious Player: 1918 Results (6 - 8:58pm, Jun 29)Last: kennaMost Meritorious Player: 1920 Ballot (25 - 8:55pm, Jun 29)Last: kennaMost Meritorious Player: 1900 Discussion (9 - 1:14am, Jun 29)Last: Harmon RipkowskiHall of Merit Book Club (6 - 12:45pm, Jun 28)Last: progrockfanMost Meritorious Player: 1899 Results (6 - 1:51pm, Jun 22)Last: DL from MNMost Meritorious Player: 1899 Ballot (10 - 9:54am, Jun 22)Last: TomHMost Meritorious Player: 1899 Discussion (9 - 9:04am, May 31)Last: DL from MNMost Meritorious Player: 1898 Results (4 - 3:22pm, May 06)Last: DL from MNMost Meritorious Player: 1898 Ballot (8 - 10:07am, May 05)Last: DL from MNMost Meritorious Player: 1898 Discussion (7 - 1:08am, May 02)Last: Harmon RipkowskiMost Meritorious Player: 1897 Results (2 - 4:29pm, Apr 06)Last: DL from MN
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1. John (You Can Call Me Grandma) Murphy Posted: February 27, 2012 at 01:28 PM (#4069618)And maybe 2015 (Randy, Pedro, Sheffield).
Some comparisons to that 227-135:
Smoltz as a starter: 208-137, but only 16 for "big seasons".
Kevin Brown: 216-146, big seasons 46.
Whitey Ford: 218-134, big seasons 34.
Dazzy Vance: 201-129, big seasons 58. Another late bloomer.
Stan Coveleski: 209-134, big seasons 61.
Hal Newhouser: 202-131, big seasons 62.
Dave Stieb: 190-131, big seasons 34.
Sandy Koufax: 163-95, big seasons 63. So Schilling minus Koufax, career, comes to 62-40, which is pretty strongly in Schilling's favor.
The upshot: Schilling can be reasonably compared to a number of short-to-medium career, high-peak pitchers, almost all of whom are in the HoM, and appears by some measures to be better than any of them. There's no real doubt in my mind that he's a "frontlog" candidate for the HoM. I'm probably not putting him in my top 3 or 4 this time, but he doesn't need to mix with any of the backlog.
Most wins of the 80s- to which I said, so what, Don Sutton had the most wins over a 20 year period, and that's what Morris was, a good pitcher a durable pitcher who pitched a long time for good teams, just not as long as Sutton, and therefore not quite as good as Sutton... he said no no no, Morris was an ace, Sutton was just an endless finesse guy like Moyer- that's when we started arguing- I said that for much of his career Sutton was the "ace" (i.e., #1 starter) for his teams, and he was not a soft tossing finesse guy forever like Moyer- or Tommy John- and that if he had ever seen any of these guys pitch he'd know that...
that went real well, but if this guy is representative of how Sox fans feel, then Schilling may be in trouble...
Oh, the other one thinks Schilling should go, but thinks he won't...
They both think he "faked" the bloody sock thing... there is something wrong with Sox fans who live and work in NYC.
Still, he's clearly deserving anyway.
Schilling is a bad comp for Morris (so is Smoltz), since he had the postseason stones career that the casual Morris fan thinks that Morris had....
That his RA+ was better than his ERA+ due to the fact that he did not give up unearned runs is a good point- his K/bb less so since in large part that was result of his ALWAYS being in the zone- and he gave up extra hist because of that- and he was typically up in the zone- which meant more homers, he's someone who may have benefited a little from strategic wildness every now and then.
"throw strike one, stoopid" approach to working a batter, which led to an economy of pitches, which led to an increase in his ability to eat innings, which led
to more team wins, no?
He was strategicly wild when he had a guy 0-2, and made him wave at a splitter in the dirt, or heat at the letters. Strike one is the best pitch in baseball. If they swing at it and put it in play, you got yourself a ~60%* chance of getting them out on one pitch--this is one way to look at it.
*IIRC, when the 0-0 is put into play, the batter hits around .400, maybe I'm mis-remembering.
(edited for * comment)
And all of that stuff is reflected in his other numbers, including ERA+. But his low UER% is not, which is why it's important to note it when dealing with Schill's case.
Sounds like Mitch might still be a little miffed about that whole towel thing.
dirty and see if Schill gave up more than his share of 0-2 hits...
21-Immediately that sprang to my mind as well.
If Schilling is borderline then the standards for pitchers are ridiculously high.
Agree completely. Of course, we at the HoM have already collectively made that statement by electing Stieb, Saberhagen, Brown, Reuschel, Cone and by strongly considering the likes of Tiant.
I don't care about Ks or BBs for HOF purposes. I care about run prevention. I don't care how he got there.
In that sense, ERA+ and RA+ (unearned runs) are relevant to me, as they are to you.
I suppose if one is making some sort of fielding-independent argument, K/BB might be relevant. Otherwise, they're style points. And I don't reward players for style.
The argument for Blyleven should have been fought on intelligent and informed grounds, to help pitchers in the future. And for the sake of... intelligence. I wasn't interested in Getting Blyleven Elected at all costs, or in bending over so that the idiots could reach the right conclusion for the wrong reasons and learn nothing from the process.
I think the point that Lederer was making was that, even by traditional standards, Blyleven should have gotten in. I don't think Lederer was using them to make his own case.
I don't see what is "uninformed" and "unintelligent" with using runs saved above average, ERA vs. league average, and neutral wins.
Here is another article where he compares Blyleven's ERA+ with that of contemporary Hall of Famers: http://baseballanalysts.com/archives/2005/12/the_hall_of_fam.php
Also, while sure, 17th in wins doesn't mean very much (if anything), I'm not exactly sure what is wrong with including fifth in career strikeouts and eighth in shutouts. Strikeouts are very important to run prevention, and shutouts define preventing runs, so those seem like something you want from your pitchers.
Schilling ranks ahead of Biggio in B-R WAR, FG WAR, and BG WAR, along with also the JAWS calculations for each version. The JAWs calculations along with the seeming general consensus according to the Biggio thread has Biggio at around the middle of the pack of HOM worthy 2B. According to the JAWs metrics, Schilling would be at the bottom of the upper third of pitchers. That would seem to make him more worthy than Biggio. Am I missing something (quite possible)? Also, assuming you believe Schilling and Biggio to be of equal value, doesn't the tie breaker go to the pitcher?
Why would it?
I'd guess because there's stronger agreement on the proper assignment of value and responsibility for the offensive component of the game. We know that Biggio hit X HR, and Y 2B and so on, and we know that (on average) these events result in Z runs. In comparison, for pitchers, there's still significant disagreement on how to split assignment of value between the pitcher himself, and the defense behind him. We know that K's are good, and HR are bad, and both can be assigned (in the massive majority of cases) to the pitcher, but all the in-play stuff isn't nearly as cut-and-dried in terms of the pitcher's percentage of responsibility.
Then wouldn't the tie go to the batter?
Guys, everyone knows tie goes to the runner.
Yes. I didn't get a chance to edit before the time limit. We have a greater degree of certainty as to the value of Biggio's (offensive) contributions that make up the bulk of his estimated total value than we do as to the value of Schilling's pitching contributions that make up the bulk of his estimated total value.
So say Biggio gets the tiebreaker. Do people think it is close enough that this applies, even with the Schilling out-WAR-ing Biggio across the board and ranking in a higher percentile for his position?
It depends. By B-Ref WAR, I'd say it's close - 69.7 WAR for Schilling vs. 66.2 for Biggio, and best 5 of 7.3/6.8/6.4/6.0/6.0 vs. 9.5/6.6/6.6/5.2/5.1. By Fangraphs, it's all Schilling, as he's at 86.1 WAR vs. 70.5 for Biggio, with a best 5 of 9.7/8.6/8.6/7.6/7.3 vs. 9.7/6.8/6.2/5.2/4.8.
Given that B-Ref also has Biggio at -7.9 dWAR for his career, which seems low for a guy who was good enough to win multiple Gold Gloves and skilled enough to capably switch from C to 2B to CF to LF and back to 2B, and given that I don't agree with the FanGraphs decision to use FIP/xFIP in their evaluation of pitcher WAR, I'd probably go with Biggio over Schilling, on a combined peak/uncertainty of evaluation of pitching argument.
As a WAR & DRA guy, I don't see them as remotely similar. Schilling places among the top third of pitchers for me, very near Mussina, and Biggio around 18-20 for 2Bs. Right around Billy Herman.
Here are two factors that push Schilling up and Biggio down.
A. I adjust all pitchers' usage to a common baseline league where ~250 IP leads the league, and that pushes Schilling upward in the rankings compared to some pitchers whose value came primarily from eating up innings (which doesn't float my boat at all).
B. I use a 1/3 Rfield and 2/3 DRA combo on defense, and DRA knocks a couple wins off Biggio more than Rfield.
2B is densely packed below Gordon, with Randolph, Biggio, Herman, McPhee, even Tony Phillips having similar cases and straddling the borderline among them. Biggio travels in much less dynamic company than Schilling does among pitchers in my way of looking at things.
I use BBREF WAR as the basis of my system. It has Biggio at only four seasons (adjusted for sked) above 6 Wins, and only one of those four seasons above 7 wins. So it's not like he's piling up value by being an All-Star every year. Less than half of his value comes from being above average (28.5 WAA on 64.9 WAR). I give him bonus credit for his catching, and I adjust out to 162 in 1994 and 1995. However, as I mentioned, he gets additionally debited for his fielding. So in the end, he closely resembles a number of other middling-peak, decently long career players (Herman, McPhee, Phillips, Randolph), most of whom we've enshrined. And I would support Biggio's induction. But Schilling comes first by far. In docWAR, here's what the nonconsecutive 5/7/10/15/career for Biggio and the second basemen looks like along with a JAWS-like score that in a moment of complete uniqueness and innovation I called CHEWS (CHaleeko's Equivalent WAR Score) that puts a 10% premium on peak, and that I use as a sifting tool, not a final ranking tool:
CB: 30 / 39 / 50 / 62 / 63 / 49.5
BH: 31 / 40 / 51 / 61 / 60 / 49.1
BM: 28 / 38 / 51 / 67 / 72 / 53.4
TP: 28 / 38 / 50 / 61 / 62 / 48.7
WR: 28 / 38 / 50 / 66 / 69 / 51.8
For context, here's the 2B CHEWS scores above these guys:
Hornsby: 106.0
Collins: 95.2
Lajoie: 95.0
Morgan: 74.0
Frisch: 65.8
Gehringer: 65.3
Barnes: 64.5 (does not include 1870)
Grich: 63.9
Robinson: 59.7
Sandberg: 58.0
Alomar: 58.0
Whitaker: 57.7
Gordon: 55.4 (does not include war credit)
Childs: 50.1
Schilling, on the other hand, in raw BBREF WAR outranks Biggio by 11 career Wins (~81 to ~65). It is, in fact, Schilling who is the better career candidate right out of the box. Two of Schilling's seasons are cups of coffee, so he's got 18 real seasons to Biggio's 19 or 20. Considering how poorly Biggio finished his career, there's not much difference in career length there. More over, Schilling's got 54 WAA, so about ? of his total value was from being above average. As I said, he's a top-third pitcher in my eyes. Biggio is much more compiler than dominator, and I prefer the latter.
If you don't trust WAR or DRA (or me!), YMMV.
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