I think I got the columns aligned but don't know a better way to fit it all on the page

Cobb and Mays switched places as did Hamilton and Torriente. Griffey Jr is new but slides into a reasonable position.

Pete Hill moves up from 15th to 13th. Dawson moves up from last place to 20th. Willard Brown from 24th up to 21st.

Jim O'Rourke slides from 10th to 18th. Hines from 12th to 16th. Gore from 14th all the way to 25th. Newcomers Beltran and Edmonds bump Doby down. Ashburn slides from 16 to 22. Carey from 17 to 24. Wynn from 18 to 23. Averill from 19 to 27.

It's actually pretty tough to figure out who would be elected by the modern electorate based on these results. I feel like Lofton is the most recent borderline-ish candidate, but he clears the bottom group by a fair margin.

I think we can safely say that the electorate would be rejecting Pike, Roush, CPB, and Browning. All of these make sense - Bell has just not held up to further scrutiny, Roush was on the fringes in the win shares era, and the switch to WAR pushes him down further, and Browning and Pike are representitives of a bit of an overzealous approach to the 19th century. I have to imagine it would be a tough road for the Gore/Oms/Averill trio as well. The consensus there seems to be that they aren't poor HoMers, but I have to imagine for most people they wouldn't be ballotable today. I'm mildly pleased with Averill's showing here - I feel like he's been a little unfairly maligned as a poorer choice, but it looks like it's more that he has no top end support.

Where I'm not so sure are the five between Lofton and Gore. Lofton didn't exactly fly into the HoM, but he did place above the backlog, which is to say there is room below him in the HoM. Willard Brown would probably always be receiving votes - generally the Cooperstown NeL players get at least some support if their MLEs are close. I feel like Dawson fits in well with the Sosa/Abreu group that has got in recently - he'd sit in the frontlog for a bit before getting his turn. The toughest grouping is going to be Ashburn, Wynn, and Carey. I have no clue where the modern electorate would place them. I'd have Wynn and Carey on ballot if they were around right now, but probably not Ashburn.

With respect to the question of how the current electorate would treat earlier players, there's also a question of context: is the question how any one of
these players would do if they were considered for the 2024 election in comparison to other eligible players, or is the question how any of these players
would do if the Hall of Merit election process were to be started over. That distinction makes a big difference for Gore and Carey in particular. I expect
that both of those players would still be elected pretty easily if the election process were run forward from 1898 again. When they are considered in an
all-time context rather than in the context of their contemporaries, they fare less well, I think, with some voters, than they would if questions about the
difference in quality between baseball in the 1880s or 1910s and in the post-integration game were not involved. When I get the center fielder election
history posted, it will show that Gore and Carey were both elected easily, so unless there are a significant number of players from their period who have
been re-evaluated positively, I don't see that the outcomes for Gore or Carey would change. Consider that Jim O'Rourke and Paul Hines, who are among the
very best pre-1890 players, placed only in the middle of these rankings. in context, they are obvious, first-ballot HoMers, and Gore is in the next tier
below them. The bifurcated support for O'Rourke reflects, I think, not only a split between career and peak voters, but also a split in the view of how to
rank 19th-century players in comparison to post-1960 players. That split wouldn't exist in a historical sequence of elections in which the 19th-century
players were being compared only to one another.

3. Jaack Posted: April 06, 2023 at 11:21 AM (#6122884)
It's actually pretty tough to figure out who would be elected by the modern electorate based on these results. I feel like Lofton is the most recent borderline-ish candidate, but he clears the bottom group by a fair margin.

I think we can safely say that the electorate would be rejecting Pike, Roush, CPB, and Browning. All of these make sense - Bell has just not held up to further scrutiny, Roush was on the fringes in the win shares era, and the switch to WAR pushes him down further, and Browning and Pike are representitives of a bit of an overzealous approach to the 19th century. I have to imagine it would be a tough road for the Gore/Oms/Averill trio as well. The consensus there seems to be that they aren't poor HoMers, but I have to imagine for most people they wouldn't be ballotable today. I'm mildly pleased with Averill's showing here - I feel like he's been a little unfairly maligned as a poorer choice, but it looks like it's more that he has no top end support.

Where I'm not so sure are the five between Lofton and Gore. Lofton didn't exactly fly into the HoM, but he did place above the backlog, which is to say there is room below him in the HoM. Willard Brown would probably always be receiving votes - generally the Cooperstown NeL players get at least some support if their MLEs are close. I feel like Dawson fits in well with the Sosa/Abreu group that has got in recently - he'd sit in the frontlog for a bit before getting his turn. The toughest grouping is going to be Ashburn, Wynn, and Carey. I have no clue where the modern electorate would place them. I'd have Wynn and Carey on ballot if they were around right now, but probably not Ashburn.

Yes to rejecting Pike, Roush, Bell, and Browning, even if they are close, they are shy for me.

Gore/Oms/Averill could do either way.
Gore may deserve a little bump on minor league credit.
Oms latest MLEs indicate he is worthy, but without much room to spare.
Averill needs PCL time to make it, and he deserves a year or two, but he also has stark home/road splits to offset part of this.

I'm a healthy fan of Wynn and Carey as a clear HOMers.
Wynn seems to be comfortable 5-20% above the line, depending on your metric of choice or tastes.
Carey is shy by TZ/B-R, but is much stronger by others, his defense and baserunning I think are overlooked with B-R and he's in.
Ashburn is fine if his defense was elite, but Kiko's stat emphasizes his balls in play for extra bases was woeful, so I'm bearish on him.

Chris in #4, that's a fair synopsis.

There are a lot of virtual ties here. Griffey beats Stearnes only by having more 7th place votes. Beltran and Snider virtually tied. Hill, Edmonds, Doby all virtually tied. Andruw and O'Rourke very close. Browning and Cool Papa Bell almost tied. Charleston and DiMaggio are pretty dang close considering how high up the ballot.

Thanks to DL from MN for counting my ballot, and Rob Wood for advocating on my behalf. (If only I was able to post in the thread where this actually happened!)

T

Thanks to DL from MN for counting my ballot

No problem. I try to leave the ballot thread open for 2 weeks because I know how glitchy this website is. I also am willing to copy over prelim ballots.

Here's a review of the election history of the Hall of Merit Center Fielders.

Let's start with a summary version of the position’s electoral history:

Unanimous First Ballot Electees 3 : Mays (all #1), Mantle (all #1), DiMaggio (all #1)
First-Ballot Electees 18: Hines, Gore, O’Rourke, Hamilton, Hill, Cobb, Speaker, Torriente, Stearnes, Charleston, DiMaggio, Doby, Ashburn, Snider, Mantle, Mays, Griffey Jr., Beltran
Initial Top 10 placement 23: All First-Ballot Electees + Carey, Averill, Dawson, Edmonds, A. Jones
Started Outside Top 10 8: Pike, Bell, Brown, Wynn, Roush, Browning, Oms, Lofton

More than 10 years to election (8): Wynn (14: 1983-96), Averill (16: 1946-61), Bell (27: 1947-73), Brown (29: 1958-76), Pike (43: 1898-1940), Roush (61: 1937-97), Oms (66: 1941-2006), Browning (107: 1899-2005)


Now the election chronology.

Paul Hines 1898. First Ballot electee. #2 on ballot behind Deacon White. Appeared on all 29 ballots cast and received 24 elect-me votes.
George Gore 1898. First Ballot electee. #3 on ballot behind Paul Hines. Appeared on all 29 ballots cast and received 18 elect-me votes.
Jim O’Rourke 1899. First ballot electee. #1 on ballot. Appeared on all 31 ballots cast and received 25 elect-me votes.
Billy Hamilton 1907. First ballot electee. #1 on ballot. Appeared on 41 ballots and received 23 elect-me votes, all for first place in this elect-one year.
Pete Hill 1927. First Ballot electee. #2 on ballot behind Joe Jackson. Appeared on 45 of 49 ballots and received 10 elect-me votes.
Ty Cobb 1934. First Ballot electee. #1 on ballot. Appeared on all 56 ballots and received 55 elect-me votes, 52 of which were first-place votes.
Tris Speaker 1934. First Ballot electee. #2 on ballot behind Ty Cobb. Appeared on all 56 ballots and received 23 elect-me votes, one of which was a first-place vote.
Cristobal Torriente 1937. First Ballot electee. #2 on ballot behind Harry Heilmann. Appeared on 51 of 52 ballots and received 37 elect-me votes.
Max Carey 1939. #2 on ballot behind Red Faber. Appeared on 37 of 53 ballots and received 10 elect-me votes. First eligible 1935. #9 that year.
Lip Pike 1940. #2 on ballot behind Joe Rogan. Appeared on 26 of 51 ballots and received 12 elect-me votes. First Eligible 1898. #15 that year
Oscar Charleston 1943. First Ballot electee. #1 on ballot. Appeared on all 52 ballots and received 51 elect-me votes, 49 of which were first-place votes.
Turkey Stearnes 1946. First ballot electee. #1 on ballot. Appeared on all 53 ballots and received 50 elect-me votes, of which 35 were first-place votes.
Joe DiMaggio 1957. First Ballot electee. Unanimous #1, receiving the top vote on all 47 ballots cast.
Earl Averill 1961 #1 on ballot (sole electee). Appeared on 35 of 49 ballots cast and received 2 elect-me votes. Eligible 1946 #6 that year
Larry Doby 1965. First ballot electee. #1 on ballot. Appeared on 41 of 46 ballots cast and received 14 elect-me votes.
Richie Ashburn 1968. First ballot electee. #2 on ballot behind Eppa Rixey. Appeared on 28 of 47 ballots and received 7 elect-me votes.
Duke Snider 1970. First ballot electee. #1 on ballot. Appeared on all 49 ballots cast and received 43 elect-me votes, 36 of which were first-place votes.
Cool Papa Bell 1973. #2 on ballot behind Whitey Ford. Appeared on 30 of 51 ballots case and received 7 elect-me votes. First eligible 1947 #17 that year
Mickey Mantle 1974. First Ballot electee. Unanimous #1, receiving the top vote on all 52 ballots cast.
Willard Brown 1976. #2 on ballot behind Joe Gordon. Appeared on 32 of 51 ballots and received 5 elect-me votes. Eligible 1958 #13 that year
Willie Mays 1979. First Ballot Electee. Unanimous #1, receiving the top vote on all 51 ballots cast.
Jim Wynn 1996. #3 on ballot behind Keith Hernandez and Charlie Keller. Appeared on 32 of 54 ballots and received 4 elect-me votes. First eligible 1983. #19 that year
Edd Roush 1997. #3 on ballot behind Dwight Evans and Nellie Fox. Appeared on 23 of 51 ballots and received 4 elect-me votes. First eligible 1937. #17 that year
Pete Browning 2005. #2 on ballot behind Wade Boggs. Appeared on 22 of 54 ballots and received 8 elect-me votes. First Eligible 1899 #13 that year
Andre Dawson 2005. #3 on ballot behind Boggs and Browning. Appeared on 23 of 54 ballots and received 5 elect-me votes. First eligible 2002. #8 that year
Alejandro Oms 2006. #2 on ballot behind Will Clark. Appeared on 25 of 54 ballots and received 5 elect-me votes. First eligible 1941. Did not receive a vote that year. First received votes in 1956, where he appeared at #34.
Ken Griffey Jr 2016. First ballot electee. #1 on ballot. Appeared on all 26 ballots and received 26 elect-me votes, 21 of which were first-place votes.
Jim Edmonds 2017. #3 on ballot behind Ivan Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez. Appeared on 24 of 26 ballots and received 13 elect-me votes. First eligible 2016. #5 on that ballot
Andruw Jones 2020. #3 on ballot behind Derek Jeter and Luis Tiant. Appeared on 21 of 30 ballots and received 10 elect-me votes. First eligible 2018 #8 on ballot
Kenny Lofton 2021. #1 on ballot. Appeared on 21 of 28 ballots and received. 11 elect-me votes. First eligible 2013. #15 on that ballot.
Carlos Beltran 2023. First ballot electee. #1 on ballot. Appeared on all 26 ballots and received 24 elect-me votes, 22 of which were first-place votes.

With respect to the question of how the current electorate would treat earlier players, there's also a question of context: is the question how any one of
these players would do if they were considered for the 2024 election in comparison to other eligible players, or is the question how any of these players
would do if the Hall of Merit election process were to be started over. That distinction makes a big difference for Gore and Carey in particular. I expect
that both of those players would still be elected pretty easily if the election process were run forward from 1898 again. When they are considered in an
all-time context rather than in the context of their contemporaries, they fare less well, I think, with some voters, than they would if questions about the
difference in quality between baseball in the 1880s or 1910s and in the post-integration game were not involved. When I get the center fielder election
history posted, it will show that Gore and Carey were both elected easily, so unless there are a significant number of players from their period who have
been re-evaluated positively, I don't see that the outcomes for Gore or Carey would change. Consider that Jim O'Rourke and Paul Hines, who are among the
very best pre-1890 players, placed only in the middle of these rankings. in context, they are obvious, first-ballot HoMers, and Gore is in the next tier
below them. The bifurcated support for O'Rourke reflects, I think, not only a split between career and peak voters, but also a split in the view of how to
rank 19th-century players in comparison to post-1960 players. That split wouldn't exist in a historical sequence of elections in which the 19th-century
players were being compared only to one another.

Wanted to circle back here but haven't gotten the chance until now. My approach has been to compare guys to where the backlog is right now, which does not exactly line up with where perhaps the fringe of the HoM exists. Carey is a wonderful example of this - I have to imagine most voters would place him in their top 280~ players, which is where the HoM borderline exists in theory. But that still might place him behind everyone on your ballot as it stands going into 2024.

Gore interests me because I think his situation is different from Carey's. I think, regardless of what the HoM election schedule looked like, there is a good chance that Carey would get elected with the modern electorate in a theorhetical redo - as I said, he's probably a top 280 guy by consensus. I'm not so sure on Gore - I think he benefited from an election schedule that was probably a little bit inclined to electing the 19th century guys. Now the problem was exarcerbated by continuing to pull players from that era after it was picked relatively dry (Pike and Jones are the obvious examples here) but I think that the initial structure gave a lot of these guys a ton of opportunites to get in before they had to go up against a broader set of candidates. Now I do think that a lot of the current electorate who joined after things went annual (myself included) are probably a little over-critical of these players - Gore, for example is a perfectly fine selection all things considered. But his era is the only era where balance was forced - the HoM did not have to take anyone from 1978, but it did have to take four guys in 1898.

My approach has been to compare guys to where the backlog is right now, which does not exactly line up with where perhaps the fringe of the HoM exists.

Interesting! I have not been using the 2024 voting as a tool in my positional rankings, mostly because I consider the degree to which a period is over- or under-
represented in the Hall of Merit as an element in the analysis, and that is irrelevant to a ranking of elected HoMers.

I'm not so sure on Gore - I think he benefited from an election schedule that was probably a little bit inclined to electing the 19th century guys.

At least in terms of design, the election schedule of the Hall of Merit was designed to be "fair to all eras" by scaling the number of election slots available
each year to the number of major-league or major-league equivalent teams active throughout baseball history, with the total number of slots to be distributed
over time set to match the size of the Hall of Fame in 2001. There was a lot of work and discussion in 2012 to establish what the election schedule going forward
into the future should be, and the principle in that determination was,again, having the ratio of the number of slots to the number of teams remain consistent
going forward. So, mathematically speaking, the election schedule was not inclined to electing more nineteenth-century players.

The fact that a somewhat higher proportion of nineteenth-century players have in fact been elected is due, I would suggest, primarily to two factors: (1) the way
that win-based measures of quality will have a "reverse time-lining" effect if compared without awareness of the way in which increasing quality of competition
makes it harder for players to be above average and (2) the effect of perpetual eligibility on players' access to opportunities for election. What these factors
have in common is that they are both linked to the difficulty of thinking through fully the implications of comparing players from throughout the history of
professional baseball through a series of annual elections. The Hall of Merit, starting from the premise that it would be an improvement on the Hall of Fame,
rightly recognized that a major reason why the Hall of Fame had done such a bad job with the 19th century was that the Hall of Fame had started when there was
only a little living memory left of the 19th-century game, and that it would be twenty-five years after the formation of the Hall of Fame before a clear
statistical record of nineteenth-century baseball would begin to be developed, and then another twenty-five years before relatively rigorous tools for analyzing
that statistical record would become available. By starting in the late 19th-century and using the best statistics and analytical methods available, the Hall of
Merit sought to get around the problems that had tripped up the Hall of Fame's treatment of the nineteenth century. Bill James' treatment of nineteenth-century
players in the NBJHBA added fuel to the HoM's fire by its failure to adjust for differences in season length and its incorporation of a fixed "timeline" adjust-
ment in its ranking formuala. Both of these parts of James's system were roundly criticized in the early days of the Hall of Merit, and it was pretty much standard
practice for many years of elections for voters to adjust season length by a linear expansion to 154- or 162-game seasons and to reject the use of any fixed time-
line adjustment. Eventually more nuanced recognition of the need to adjust for differing competition levels (a task for which there are still no straightforward
and widely accepted statistical tools) and of the distorting effects of linear adjustments for season length took hold broadly in the electorate, but in the
meantime, the conditions were in place for nineteenth-century players to become somewhat over-represented in the Hall of Merit. The way in which voters could become
committed to the election of particular candidates, and the way that commitment could persist easily over fifty "years" and more of bi-weekly elections, was
another contributing factor. With annual elections, that kind of commitment is harder to maintain, especially as the statistical tools for analysis get upgrades
every few years, pushing the electorate to re-think their assumptions much more frequently relative to the pace of elections.

Bringing this historical comment back to George Gore, I think it's fairly clear that if 1880s players are represented in the Hall of Merit in a proportion to the
number of major-league teams at the time (with contextual factors like the weakness of the AA and the "not-really-a-major-league" status of the UA accounted for)
that is equal with the proportion applied in other eras, then Gore is very likely to make the cut.

But his era is the only era where balance was forced - the HoM did not have to take anyone from 1978, but it did have to take four guys in 1898.

Well, insofar as perpetual eligibility means that the electorate could pick elect a player who retired in 1882 in 1978 instead of someone who retired in 1972, but
if the Hall of Merit project is going to be historical, it had to have a starting point, and it would only be repeating the unavoidable "mistake" of the Hall of
Fame to start the elections late in baseball history. In later discussions of the number of slots elected, Joe Dimino remarked that he thought it would have been
better, actually, to start elections in 1892 and elect one player per year each year through 1905 instead of starting in 1898 with an elect-four year and then
varying between 1 and 2 electees per season in subsequent years. It's worth remembering that the stated goal of the Hall of Merit in its Constitution is as follows:
Our goal is to identify the best players of each era and elect them to the Hall of Merit. The goal is to identify the best players of each era and elect them.
It is not to identify "the best players of all time." The goal of identifying the best players in every era would not be served if the best players of the 1880s
were compared to the best players of the 1980s, determined not to be as good, and left out of the Hall of Merit.

Where the Hall of Merit's goal of identifying the best players of each era its goal of electing them to the Hall of Merit turn out to be in tension is in the system
of perpetual eligibility, which assumes that comparing players to players from every era will enable the election the best players of every era. It certainly gives
the players elected the aura of being part of "the best players of all time," but achieving that effect requires a great deal of juggling on the part of the electorate.
Grouping players in cohorts of twenty to thirty years and electing a set number from each group would be more effective, but that sort of approach doesn't allow for
annual elections of recently retired players. There is no perfect system.

Now the problem was exarcerbated by continuing to pull players from that era after it was picked relatively dry (Pike and Jones are the obvious examples here)

Pike and Jones cases require considerable credit outside of documented play in order to be real candidates, Lip for his pre-NA play, Charley getting blacklist credit and even maybe a little pre-1875.

Jones is also +4 on WAR with Baseball-Gauge, he dominated in both the NL and besides maybe 1883, a strong American Association.

Bringing this historical comment back to George Gore, I think it's fairly clear that if 1880s players are represented in the Hall of Merit in a proportion to the
number of major-league teams at the time (with contextual factors like the weakness of the AA and the "not-really-a-major-league" status of the UA accounted for)
that is equal with the proportion applied in other eras, then Gore is very likely to make the cut.

Agree, I think it's overlooked now, but Gore broke into the "big leagues" at age 25, a very old age in that time era.

He hit .324 at age 24 in the American Association, a league that functioned much like a major one, with the Buffalo Bisons squad making the jump to the National League the following year.

I may have underrated him at #26 overall, Oms at #24 and Averill at #25 aren't clearly ahead for me.

Interesting! I have not been using the 2024 voting as a tool in my positional rankings, mostly because I consider the degree to which a period is over- or under-
represented in the Hall of Merit as an element in the analysis, and that is irrelevant to a ranking of elected HoMers.

My approach has mostly been to treat the rankings as if it were a regular HoM ballot with only this group of players eligible. That being said, one difference in my aprroach has been to give the benefit of the doubt to the more obscured cases, whereas in HoM voting I generaly tend to be more skeptical in those situations. CF is a nice example - Bell, Roush, and Pike all do quite poorly for me. If this were an annual election, none would be on my ballot, but I would probably rank Roush the highest of the group, since I have the most confidence in his career. But for the purposes of ranking the guys after their election, I'm much more inclined to be generous to Pike or Bell.

At least in terms of design, the election schedule of the Hall of Merit was designed to be "fair to all eras" by scaling the number of election slots available
each year to the number of major-league or major-league equivalent teams active throughout baseball history, with the total number of slots to be distributed
over time set to match the size of the Hall of Fame in 2001. There was a lot of work and discussion in 2012 to establish what the election schedule going forward
into the future should be, and the principle in that determination was,again, having the ratio of the number of slots to the number of teams remain consistent
going forward. So, mathematically speaking, the election schedule was not inclined to electing more nineteenth-century players.

I don't doubt the work that went into the design of the election schedule (I think it's actually really, really good). But I do think that there are probably a couple too many early election slots - if I try to recontruct a pHoM, the backlog bottoms out hard in the 1931 election. Now a nadir like this is inevitable - you will always have a point where you elect your worst player. But that combined with the vote inertia (once a guy hits your ballot, it's easier to continue to vote for him) were some uninentional benefits to the 19th century guys.

The way in which voters could become
committed to the election of particular candidates, and the way that commitment could persist easily over fifty "years" and more of bi-weekly elections, was
another contributing factor. With annual elections, that kind of commitment is harder to maintain, especially as the statistical tools for analysis get upgrades
every few years, pushing the electorate to re-think their assumptions much more frequently relative to the pace of elections.

This is a great insight. No additional point from me here, just really good stuff.

Where the Hall of Merit's goal of identifying the best players of each era its goal of electing them to the Hall of Merit turn out to be in tension is in the system
of perpetual eligibility, which assumes that comparing players to players from every era will enable the election the best players of every era. It certainly gives
the players elected the aura of being part of "the best players of all time," but achieving that effect requires a great deal of juggling on the part of the electorate.
Grouping players in cohorts of twenty to thirty years and electing a set number from each group would be more effective, but that sort of approach doesn't allow for
annual elections of recently retired players. There is no perfect system.

There is definitely an underlying conundrum between the goal of being fair to all eras and to perpetual eligibility - I think both are fundamental to the HoM's goals, but balancing the two can be quite difficult. There will always be a trade-off. At the same time, I think it's important to see the impact of the balancing act. I think we can see that, at least in the eyes of the modern electorate, a lot of the trade-offs ultimately benefited 19th century players (or at least that what seems to be implied by these first few positional rankings).

To loop this back to George Gore - I think that, based on these results, the modern HoM electorate sees him as a lower tier selection. But he was elected quite easily, and if we were to do a hypothetical HoM reset with the current electorate, his election would likely be assured as well. Compare that to Earl Averill - another player seen as a lower tier choice, although not falling into that 'mistake' territory yet. His election would be much more difficult in the theoretical reset.

To loop this back to George Gore - I think that, based on these results, the modern HoM electorate sees him as a lower tier selection. But he was elected quite easily, and if we were to do a hypothetical HoM reset with the current electorate, his election would likely be assured as well. Compare that to Earl Averill - another player seen as a lower tier choice, although not falling into that 'mistake' territory yet. His election would be much more difficult in the theoretical reset.

I think that's right, and it highlights the vagaries of the historical approach. Even though Gore wouldn't do as well initially as he did in HoM 1.0 (and only), he would have good opportunities at a couple of low points to get elected fairly quickly. In HoM 2.0, Averill would still become eligible at a "busy time," and would struggle to get traction for quite a while. This challenge shows up in his HoM 1.0 results, where he debuted at #6 in 1946 and still didn't make it to election until 1961. That's a long wait for someone debuting in the middle of the top 10.

I just want to say, watching a conversation unfold between Cobb, Jaack, and Bleed is like 99% of the reason the HOM project is awesome.

18. kcgard2 Posted: April 08, 2023 at 07:51 PM (#6123151)
I just want to say, watching a conversation unfold between Cobb, Jaack, and Bleed is like 99% of the reason the HOM project is awesome.

Diehard baseballers trying to objectively understand the game and learn from one another, it's a blast!!!

Since I can't post in the SS thread, are we going to start that ballot?