1944 Ballot

1) Dizzy Trout - most innings pitched in 23 years, hit well for a pitcher too
2) Snuffy Stirnweiss - great glove season
3) Stan Musial - postseason bonus puts him neck-and-neck with Stirnweiss
4) Lou Boudreau
5) Satchel Paige - Absolutely dominant in the NGL. Check out his K/BB and RA rate stats. Only projecting 240 innings.
6) Hal Newhouser - Newhouser and Trout carried Detroit this season
7) Bobby Doerr - more bat than Boudreau but SS replacement level is really low this season
8) Bob Johnson - yay!
9) Vern Stephens
10) Stan Spence

11-15) Artie Wilson, Roy Campanella, Jim Russell, Bonnie Serrell, Bill Nicholson - I like the younger NGL position players here
16-21) Dixie Walker, Johnny Hopp, Bucky Walters, Augie Galan, Ray Brown, Nick Etten

1944 Final

Recalculated Park Factor Adjustments

1. Dizzy Trout 11.12 WARR
2. Stan Musial 10.20 WARR
3. Snuffy Stirnweiss 9.49 WARR
4. Hal Newhouser 8.49 WARR
5. Frank McCormick 6.40 WARR
6. Rip Sewell 5.97 WARR
7. Vern Stephens 5.96 WARR
8. Stan Spence 5.87 WARR
9. Johnny Hopp 5.82 WARR
10. Lou Boudreau 5.76 WARR

Rest of top 15
11. Johnny Lindell
12 . Satchell Paige
13. Buster Adams
14. Bobby Doerr
15. Thurman Tucker

1944 Ballot

1. Dizzy Trout, P, Detroit Tigers: MLB-leading 167 ERA+ and league-lapping 352 IP
2. Stan Musial, RF/CF, St. Louis Cardinals: It took a stellar season by Trout to snag the top spot from The Man
3. Satchel Paige, P, Kansas City Monarchs: 461 ERA+ is pretty amazing, even with regression based on playing time and quality of competition
4. Hal Newhouser, P, Detroit Tigers: 159 ERA+ and 312 IP
5. Snuffy Stirnweiss, 2B, New York Yankees: the great war-inflated season with a 139 OPS+ and +15 defense
6. Lou Boudreau, SS, Cleveland Indians: 145 OPS+ and +9 fielding
7. Bobby Doerr, 2B, Boston Red Sox: a good year for AL infielders, 165 OPS+ but only -4 fielding to drop Doerr behind Boudreau
8. Buck Leonard, 1B, Homestead Grays: the best bat in the Negro Leagues with a 192 OPS+
9. Bob Johnson, LF, Boston Red Sox: AL-leading 174 OPS+
10. Bucky Walters, P, Cincinnati Reds: Yup, it's a big drop in the NL from Musial at #2

11. Dixie Walker, RF, Brooklyn Dodgers
12. Bill Nicholson, RF, Chicago Cubs
13. Ray Brown, P, Homestead Grays
14. Bill Voiselle, P, New York Giants: 312 IP
15. Stan Spence, CF, Washington Senators

Here's my RPA ratings for the top players in 1944, based on runs produced above the median:

1. Stan Musial 56.63 runs
2. Bill Nicholson 49.36 runs
3. Bob Johnson 49.16 runs
4. Stan Spence 45.94 runs
5. Dixie Walker 42.10 runs
6. Mel Ott 39.05 runs
7. Augie Galan 38.13 runs
8. Johnny Hopp 35.75 runs
9. Bobby Doerr 35.09 runs
10. Dizzy Trout 34.83 runs
11. Dick Wakefield 32.31 runs
12. Nick Etten 32.03 runs
13. Hal Newhouser 30.87 runs
14. Tommy Holmes 29.27 runs

Official 1944 MMP Ballot (no postseason bonuses and a 6% reduction in AL player stats):

1) Dizzy Trout: Best ML player/pitcher - just edges out the Man.
2) Stan Musial: Best NL player and ML right fielder.
3) Josh Gibson: Best ML/NeL catcher and NeL player.
4) Hal Newhouser: Best Prince Hal.
5) Stan Spence: Best ML center fielder.
6) Dixie Walker: Best player with a Southern nickname.
7) Bucky Walters: Best NL pitcher.
8) Snuffy Stirnweiss: Best ML second baseman.
9) Vern Stephens: Best ML shortstop.
10) Augie Galan: Best ML left fielder.

Here’s Brock Hanke’s ballot for 1944. This time, I mostly went with the consensus of the Win Share and WAR ordinals. There are disconnects between the two systems, but this is 1944, when lots of top players were in the military. So, I just left adjusting alone and went with the ordinals, except that I moved Vern Stephens onto the list. Vern finished 13th in the ordinals, because WAR is not impressed, but his importance to the Browns is hard to overstate. You can make a good case, based on the Win Share and WAR ordinals, for Buck Leonard and Ray Brown. Buck would rank slightly higher, but I went with Brown because he seemed to dominate pitchers more than Buck dominated hitters.

A note or two on Dizzy Trout and the 1944 Detroit Tigers. Trout and Hal Newhouser were given huge loads of IP because the Tigers basically had a two-man pitching staff. They had one reliever who was good, but got only 22 IP and no saves, and one other decent starter, and then a bunch of guys with ERAs in the 4s. This probaby cost them the pennant. They only finished one game behind the Browns, and the Browns, improbably, actually had a closer, with 12 saves.

The Tiger offense was just as thin. They got a great half season from Dick Wakefield befoore he went into the war, and good seasons out of Pinky Higgins and Rudy York. And that’s it. No other hitters with OPS+ over 100. That is, only three hitters better than Dizzy Trout.

Trout won the MMP with his bat. In 144 PA, he hit .271, with 5 HR, 1T, and 4D, generating 24 RBI and an OPS+ of 107. If he had hit like a normal pitcher – or like Hal Newhouser – Musial would be the consensus MMP.

For those of you who don’t know about him, Rudy York was a very odd player. Part Indian, despite the name, he came up as a big, slow catcher who could hit for power and had an arm. However, he smoked, drank, and chased women, and didn’t put as much effort into keeping in shape as he could have. By the early 1940s, York really wasn’t a catcher any more. But the Tigers had nowhere to put him. Hank Greenberg was already on 1B. This is why there are two seasons of Hank Greenberg in the outfield, with the war in between. Hank probably wasn’t as good an outfielder as York would have been, but Greenberg would actually work, and work hard, at being an outfielder, while York wasn’t likely to. Greenberg’s tour of duty in WWII gave York 4 seasons of playing first base, for a total of 6. But Greenberg was really the Tiger starting first baseman; York playing there was an oddity caused by the war. So anyway, here’s the list:

1. Dizzy Trout
2. Stan Musial
3. Snuffy Stinrweiss
4. Hal Newhouser
5. Lou Boudreau
6. Bucky Walters
7. Stan Spence
8. Ray Brown
9. Indian Bob Johnson
10. Vern Stephens

1944 ballot-no postseason credit but some small credit for playing for a Division-contender

1. Trout--great year on mound and in batters box
2. Newhouser--I had him pretty close to Trout
3. Musial--top NL player
4. Stirnweiss--top AL position player
5. Boudreau
6. Bob Johnson
7. Nicholson--top NL position player
8. Paige--top NLB player
9. Walters--top NL pitcher, bat helped also win shares loved his season
10.Walker

. Michael J. Binkley's anxiety closet Posted: July 02, 2018 at 10:59 PM (#5704337)
I logged into my account from the 1944 ballot page, so of course it won’t let me post there right now. So here is my 1944 MMP ballot. DL or someone else, would you please copy/transfer this to the ballot thread. Thank you in advance.

1. Snuffy Stirnweiss (26.40)- Sorry, Trout won’t be unanimous. Snuffy gets boosted by low 2b median performance and a lower AL hitter standard deviation.
2. Stan Musial (22.48) - NL MMP
3. Dizzy Trout (21.61) - MMPitcher - brought down in my system by lower fWAR and higher AL pitcher standard deviation.
4. Lou Boudreau (20.91)
5. Josh Gibson (18.49) - NgL MMP
6. Hal Newhouser (17.68)
7. Satchel Paige (15.95) - NgL MMPitcher
8. Bobby Doerr (14.49)
9. Bob Johnson (13.08)
10. Mort Cooper (13.28) - NL MMPitcher

11-15. Tex Hughson, Ken Keltner, Bill Nicholson, Stan Spence, Martin Dihigo.

Election is closed