1) Jackie Robinson
2) Stan Musial - Musial is the better hitter and Robinson the better baserunner and defender. Stan gains in playing time but Jackie is better on rate. Close at the top
3) Roy Campanella - C bonus
4) Ralph Kiner - Almost as much bat as Musial but not as much glove
5) Robin Roberts - Roberts has a few more innings than Spahn and hit better
6) Warren Spahn
7) Ted Williams - Best player in the AL
8) Monte Irvin - playoff bonus
9) Richie Ashburn
10) Ned Garver - Interesting learning about guys like this. Best part of the project for me.

11-17) Yogi Berra, Ed Joost, Eddie Stanky, Larry Doby, Alvin Dark, Sal Maglie, Early Wynn

1951 Ballot

1. Stan Musial, LF/1B, St. Louis Cardinals: 183 OPS+ and MLB leading 157 runs created, +3 fielding runs plus a handful of games in CF
2. Ralph Kiner, LF, Pittsburgh Pirates: 185 OPS+ and 150 runs created, -6 fielding runs
3. Jackie Robinson, 2B, Brooklyn Dodgers: neglected to credit Jackie's baserunning on my prelim; it's enough to help him leapfrog Campanella but not enough to catch this year's pure hitters
4. Roy Campanella, C, Brooklyn Dodgers: 159 OPS+ and 115 runs created while playing behind the plate
5. Ted Williams, LF, Boston Red Sox: AL leading 164 OPS+ and 137 runs created
6. Robin Roberts, P, Philadelphia Phillies: 127 ERA+ in league leading 315 innings
7. Sal Maglie, P, New York Giants: league leading 134 ERA+ in 298 innings
8. Eddie Joost, SS, Philadelphia Athletics: 134 OPS+ and 102 runs created- 2nd best in the AL
9. Warren Spahn, P, Boston Braves: 124 ERA+ in 310 innings
10. Yogi Berra, C, New York Yankees: 130 OPS+ and +4 fielding with the tools of ignorance

11. Larry Doby, CF, Cleveland Indians
12. Monte Irvin, LF, New York Giants
13. Larry Jansen, P, New York Giants
14. Bobby Thomson, 3B/CF, New York Giants
15. Minnie Minoso, 3B/LF, Cleveland/Chicago
16. Early Wynn, P, Cleveland Indians- top pitcher in the AL
17. Al Dark, SS, New York Giants
18. Preacher Roe, P, Brooklyn Dodgers
19. Don Newcombe, P, Brooklyn Dodgers
20. Richie Ashburn, CF, Philadelphia Phillies

Just a repeat from the discussion thread:

1)Jackie Robinson
2)Roy Campanella
3)Stan the Man Musial
4)Ralph Kiner
5)Ted Williams
6)Robin Roberts
7)Warren Spahn
8)Monte Irvin
9)Richie Ashburn
10)Larry Doby

Just missed - Yogi, Ferris Fain, Eddie Joost

My usual assortment of systems thrown into the "uber-stat blender".
No postseason credit. 10% catcher bonus.

1951 ballot:
1 Robinson, Jackie 9869
2 Musial, Stan 9532
3 Kiner, Ralph 8223
4 Campanella, Roy 8095
5 Williams, Ted 7799
6 Roberts, Robin 7566
7 Irvin, Monte 7019
8 Spahn, Warren 6996
9 Doby, Larry 6766
10 Ashburn, Richie 6625

11 Berra, Yogi 6464
12 Garver, Ned 6031
13 Maglie, Sal 5987
14 Joost, Eddie 5782
15 Wynn, Early 5724

Very close between Robinson and Musial.

See comment #24 of the Discussion Thread.

1. Jackie Robinson
2. Roy Campanella
3. Warren Spahn
4. Stan Musial
5. Alvin Dark
6. Robin Roberts
7. Ed Lopat
8. Monte Irvin
9. Ted Williams
10. Larry Doby

1951 Ballot

Batters: start with RAA (using XR runs), adjust for park, position and defense (average of TZ, and DRA) Convert adjusted RAA to wins. Add 60% of normal Runs above replacement to get WARR (wins above reduced replacement)

Pitchers: start with RAA, adjust for quality of opposition, park, and team defense (average of TZ, DRA) Convert adjusted RAA to wins. Add 60% of normal runs above replacement to get WARR (wins above reduced replacement)

1. Stan Musial 9.39 WARR
2. Jackie Robinson 9.17 WARR
3. Ralph Kiner 7.84 WARR
4. Robin Roberts 7.14 WARR
5. Ritchie Ashburn 7.05 WARR
6. Warren Spahn 7.03 WARR
7. Ted Williams 6.50 WARR
8. Monte Irvin 6.44 WARR
9. Roy Campanella 5.67 WARR
10. Willie Mays 5.64 WARR minor league credit

Rest of the top 20
Ned Garver
Eddie Joost
Larry Doby
Eddie Stanky
Gil Hodges
Alvin Dark
Minnie Minoso
Sal Maglie
Ferris Fain
Ellis Kinder

I am not going to be able to extend balloting this time due to a spring break vacation

This is Brock Hanke's official ballot for 1951. This was very likely the easiest ballot I've ever done for this project. Win Shares and WAR are in absolutely ASTONISHINGLY close agreement on this year. Frankly, I would never have thought that any two different systems would get this close.

To give you an idea of how close the agreement is, and to save myself from having to write any actual comments, because none are really needed, I'm going to list the ballot, with the ordinal rank in Win Shares, followed by the ordinal rank in WAR. You will note that Jackie Robinson and Stan Musial are, essentially, tied for first place. I put Jackie ahead of Stan because I'm a lifelong Cardinal fan, and so try to work against possible bias.

There were two serious system disagreements, which led to two of my "must-do" placements. I regard a player as a must-do when he ranks so high in one system that I feel I should include him on the tail of my ballot, even though he ranks nowhere near in the other system. The two must-dos this year were Warren Spahn and Yogi Berra, but you could have figured it out by perusing the ordinals. The two guys who got displaced by the must-dos are Sal "The Barber" Maglie and Alvin Dark.

For those of you who don't remember baseball in the 1950s, Maglie was truly famous - Carl Mays-like famous - for throwing inside. He was called "The Barber" because his pitches could shave a hitter's beard. Unlike Mays, though, Maglie never killed anyone, and I'm not sure he ever hurt anyone seriously. As a consequence, he was able to talk about his brushbacks in a way that was somewhere between bragging and self-deprecating humor (see the Bobby Avila comment in the New Historical). He really was funny about it, and I think made decent money as an after-dinner speaker. The 1950s, and the 60s as well, were an era that was very tolerant of brushbacks. People like Bob Gibson and Don Drysdale openly talked about knocking a hitter down if he crowded the plate, and no one gave them a hard time for this. It was just a much more macho environment than it is now.

NAME WS WAR
1. Jackie Robinson 2 1
2. Stan Musial 1 2
3. Ralph Kiner 3 4
4. Ted Williams 4 6
5. Roy Campanella 5 9
6. Monte Irvin 8 7
7. Robin Roberts 13 3
8. Larry Doby 7 11
9. Warren Spahn 22 5
10. Yogi Berra 6 26

No time so no comments, just a straight ballot. Pretty much same as prelim except Campy moves up because of Catcher Bonus

1-Robinson
2-Musial
3-Campy
4-Kiner
5-Twilliams
6-Irvin
7-Roberts
8-Spahn
9-Ashburn
10-Doby

Copied from discussion

1. Jackie Robinson - 9.4
2. Warren Spahn - 9.3
3. Robin Roberts - 9.2
4. Ralph Kiner - 8.8
5. Sal Maglie - 8.5
6. Stan Musial - 8.3
7. Ted Williams - 8.2
8. Larry Jansen - 8.1
9. Preacher Roe - 7.8
10. Early Wynn - 7.6

Nothing yet from EricC or Ivan Grushenko. A few prelims left to copy to this thread. We should have around a dozen voters

Official 1951 MMP Ballot (no postseason bonuses and includes league adjustments):

1) Jackie Robinson: Best ML player and second baseman.
2) Stan Musial: Very close to topping Jackie - best ML left fielder, though he did play quite a few games at first.
3) Roy Campanella: Best ML catcher.
4) Ralph Kiner:
5) Ted Williams: Best AL player and AL left fielder.
6): Robin Roberts: Best ML pitcher.
7): Yogi Berra: Best AL catcher.
8): Warren Spahn:
9) Richie Ashburn: Best ML center fielder.
10): Sal Maglie:

1951 MMP ballot. Berra at #2 needs explanation: typical catcher playing time was so low in 1951
(only 2 catchers qualified for the batting title, compared with 10-13 players at every other
position) that Berra's playing time earns him a big bonus in my system. It's fair to say that
the catcher bonus may be too high in this case; on the other hand, the MVPs IRL were Campy and Berra.
Aside from #1-#2, the high WS/WAR correlation this year leads to an unsurprising ballot.

1. Roy Campanella
2. Yogi Berra
3. Jackie Robinson
4. Stan Musial
5. Ralph Kiner
6. Robin Roberts
7. Ted Williams
8. Sal Maglie
9. Warren Spahn
10. Larry Doby

No postseason bonus but in some cases a small bonus for playing for a Pennant winner/contender:

1. J.Robinson--really close race between Jackie, Campy, & Stan the Man
2. Campanella--some catcher bonus
3. Musial--a close call for top 3 then a gap to #4, as good as we know Stan was, he's probably underrated
4. T.Williams--the NL really appears to have had the better individual players at this time
5. Irvin
6. Maglie--the NL pitchers were all relatively close
7. R.Roberts
8. Spahn
9. Kiner
10.Thomson--hitting one of the most famous HRs ever sneaks him in

I'll give an extra hour due to the outage.

Election is closed