BBTF's Hall of Merit Discussion :: Election Results: Johnson and Young are #1 and #2 on Every Ballot Among the Hurlers From 1893-1923!

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Monday, April 13, 2009

Election Results: Johnson and Young are #1 and #2 on Every Ballot Among the Hurlers From 1893-1923!

No surprise here - legendary Washington Senator Walter Johnson unanimously claimed the top spot in this special Hall of Merit election.

Right behind him, all-time career wins leader Cy Young found himself in the second position on every ballot and with 94% of all possible points.

Contemporaries Pete Alexander and Smokey Joe Williams garned at least 80% of the points with their fine 89% and 80%.

Rounding out the top-tier pitchers were Christy Mathewson (78%), Kid Nichols (78%) and Eddie Plank (75%)

Thanks to OCF for his help with the tally!.

RK   LY  Player               PTS  Bal   1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 1  n/e  Walter Johnson       342   19  19                                                         
 2  n/e  Cy Young             323   19     19                                                      
 3  n/e  Pete Alexander       303   19        18  1                                                
 4  n/e  Smokey Joe Williams  274   19         1 10  4  4                                          
 5  n/e  Christy Mathewson    267   19            5 10  4                                          
 6  n/e  Kid Nichols          258   19            3  5 11                                          
 7  n/e  Eddie Plank          209   19                    12  2  2  2           1                  
 8  n/e  Ed Walsh             192   19                     5  8  2  1  1           1  1            
 9  n/e  Amos Rusie           183   19                     2  4  4  6  2        1                  
10  n/e  Mordecai Brown       139   19                        3  3  2  4  1     2     2  1  1      
11  n/e  Stan Coveleski       123   19                        1  3  1  2  2  2  4  1  1  2         
12  n/e  Joe McGinnity        110   19                           2  1  3  5  2     1     1  4      
13  n/e  Rube Waddell         106   19                           2     3  3  1  4  1  2  2  1      
14  n/e  Rube Foster          100   19                              1  1  4  6     1  3  3         
15  n/e  José Méndez           84   19                           1  3  1     2     3  1  4  4      
16  n/e  Red Faber             81   19                                 1  1  4  3  3  3  2  2      
17  n/e  Clark Griffith        79   19                                 1  2  2  3  4  3  1  3      
18  n/e  Eppa Rixey            76   19                        1     2     1     1  4  3  3  4      
Ballots Cast: 19

John (You Can Call Me Grandma) Murphy Posted: April 13, 2009 at 06:59 PM | 12 comment(s) Login to Bookmark
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1. John (You Can Call Me Grandma) Murphy Posted: April 14, 2009 at 02:01 AM (#3137060)

hot topics

2. OCF Posted: April 14, 2009 at 02:24 AM (#3137120)

I'll copy my post from the other thread over here.

Here is my version with both the average placement and the standard deviation of placement for each candidate. The first number after each name is the average placement and the second number is the standard deviation.

  Johnson .  1.00  0.00
  Young . .  2.00  0.00
  Alexander  3.05  0.22
  Williams . 4.58  0.87
  Mathewson  4.95  0.69
  Nichols .  5.42  0.75
  Plank . .  8.00  1.75
  Walsh . .  8.89  2.49
  Rusie . .  9.37  1.60
 Brown . . 11.68  3.13
 Coveleski 12.53  2.68
 McGinnity 13.21  3.05
 Waddell . 13.42  2.58
 Foster .  13.74  2.12
 Mendez .  14.58  3.12
 Faber . . 14.74  1.94
 Griffith  14.84  2.03
 Rixie . . 15.00  2.90 

Comments:

1. The election was disjoint between the top 6 and the bottom 12; these two groups did not mix.

2. Consensus scores on my -100 to 100 scale ranged from 79 to 87. The total agreement on the 6 vs. 12 split, and the substantial agreement within the top six, insured that that score would be high. I'm not going to bother breaking it out by individuals.

3. McGinnity and Brown did as much to define factions within the electorate as any candidates. Count me in the McGinnity high, Brown low faction

3. OCF Posted: April 14, 2009 at 04:25 PM (#3137620)

We drew an unusually clean line here between Nichols and Plank. That's a line you can make use of when you talk about "inner circle" or "small hall."

Here's a question for my fellow voters: Looking back to the first group we voted on, would you put Clarkson above or below this line that's somewhere between Nichols and Plank? How about anyone else (Radbourn/Keefe/Spaldng)?

4. John (You Can Call Me Grandma) Murphy Posted: April 14, 2009 at 05:07 PM (#3137688)

Here's a question for my fellow voters: Looking back to the first group we voted on, would you put Clarkson above or below this line that's somewhere between Nichols and Plank? How about anyone else (Radbourn/Keefe/Spaldng)?

Offhand, I would place Clarkson and most likely Spalding above the line, OCF. Possibly Keefe, too. It's difficult question, however, since pitching changed a lot by 1900 in regard to durability.

5. Paul Wendt Posted: April 14, 2009 at 05:26 PM (#3137715)

OCF
Some voters mentioned a big gap rather than a clean line. For them (and me) it makes a big difference whether your line is just below Nichols or just above Plank.
My guess is that John Murphy means a line just above Plank; he would put rank one to three of group one above Plank. My other guess is that a majority of voters would put at least one of group one inside that gap.

I think there is a case for placing Clarkson above the upper line but I think I would come down on the side of adding none of them to the "big six" in that sense.

6. DL from MN Posted: April 14, 2009 at 05:32 PM (#3137727)

I have Clarkson and Keefe at the Rusie/Plank level. Any hall that didn't include Eddie Plank would be pretty dull. Let's just say they would have induction ceremonies every other year at the most.

7. Howie Menckel Posted: April 15, 2009 at 01:07 AM (#3138376)

I hope we will vote on these things after concluding the 4-round pitching tier; at that point it's much more reasonable to vote a "top 15 all-time."
6-7 big candidates from this group, I suppose 1-3 from the first group, etc.

I guess we could go more than 15 slots deep, but already it's obvious that the 25th- or 30th-ranked guy is not someone we're doing cartwheels over (while agreeing that most of us may agree that most of them belong in a reasonably-sized Hall).

8. DanG Posted: April 15, 2009 at 03:38 PM (#3139075)

I just want to throw in a quick pitch for another quick ranking project starting soon:

Hall of Fame Purgatory in the Hall of Fame forum at Baseball-Fever. The project will identify and prioritize the eligible players who should be elected to the Hall of Fame.

9. David in Toledo Posted: May 05, 2009 at 10:33 PM (#3165732)

Now that Addie Joss led Joe Posnanski's Cleveland Indians to the Historical Baseball League championship, does Joss merit placement on a list like this?

10. OCF Posted: May 05, 2009 at 11:28 PM (#3165828)

In the regular 2009 HOM election, Joss drew top-15 votes from 3 of the 40 voters and finished 50th in that voting. That's actually a slight improvement over his finish in the 2008 election, in which 2 out of 50 voters named him and he finished 66th among the candidates. Under Hall of Merit rules, eligibility never expires, and Joss has been eligible for a very long time. (HoM rules also do not specify any minimum number of seasons for eligibility - just that it all counts and we weigh career length, career value, peak levels, and so on in each voter's own way.) I'm too lazy to figure how high Joss got in the vote rankings at his best.

Proponents of Joss - and he does have supporters - have always cited his ERA+, which is the highest of any eligible non-elected candidate (other than perhaps some ultra-short-career joke cases). Detractors have noted that even when healthy, he wasn't a workhorse by the standards of his time and, well, that is a pretty short career. Most of us strongly resist doing any "what if he'd stayed healthy" extrapolation; one or two of us do tread in that direction. We don't speak with unanimity, but the Joss supporters haven't been winning this particular argument with the rest of us.

11. John (You Can Call Me Grandma) Murphy Posted: May 05, 2009 at 11:37 PM (#3165849)

Most of us strongly resist doing any "what if he'd stayed healthy" extrapolation; one or two of us do tread in that direction.

Especially since Joss had a bum arm at the time he died anyway.

12. Howie Menckel Posted: May 06, 2009 at 02:02 AM (#3166458)

New discussion always welcomed.

Several candidates who are as bad off as Joss is now in the voting, or worse, eventually won over enough of the electorate to get enshrined. It's not impossible.

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Monday, April 13, 2009

Election Results: Johnson and Young are #1 and #2 on Every Ballot Among the Hurlers From 1893-1923!

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