Prelim ballot

1) Lou Gehrig - Pujols isn't eligible yet so I'm pretty sure Gehrig will win this election
2) Cap Anson - I really dislike this guy but his career is incredibly long and productive
3) Roger Connor - I will be re-assessing the ABC guys
4) Jimmie Foxx
5) Johnny Mize
6) Dan Brouthers
7) Hank Greenberg - gets WWII credit
8) Jeff Bagwell
9) Frank Thomas
10) Jim Thome
11) Buck Leonard
12) Joe Start - another who will get re-assessed
13) Eddie Murray
14) Mark McGwire
15) Willie McCovey
16) Jake Beckley
17) Dick Allen - I had him classified as a 3B but he was in the 1B election last time
18) Harmon Killebrew
19) Rafael Palmeiro
20) Keith Hernandez
21) Mule Suttles
Norm Cash
Ben Taylor
22) Will Clark - not PHoM yet
23) Bill Terry - below the line
24) Todd Helton
25) George Sisler

With the caveat that Negro Leaguers are provisional.

1) Lou Gehrig
(Albert Pujols)

2) Jimmie Foxx
3) Cap Anson
4) Roger Connor
5) Dan Brouthers
6) Johnny Mize - WWII credit

7) Buck Leonard
8) Jeff Bagwell
9) Hank Greenberg - WWII credit

(Miguel Cabrera)
10) Willie McCovey
11) Frank Thomas
12) Jim Thome

13) Eddie Murray
14) Mark McGwire
15) Harmon Killebrew
16) Dick Allen

(Joey Votto)
17) Mule Suttles
18) Joe Start

Low tier and little to differentiate this group:
(Paul Goldschmidt)
David Ortiz
19) Todd Helton
20) Keith Hernandez
21) Will Clark
(Freddie Freeman)
Jason Giambi
22) George Sisler
23) Rafael Palmeiro
24) Bill Terry

Borderline In:
Fred McGriff

Borderline Out:
Luke Easter
Tony Perez
Ben Taylor
Frank Chance
25) Jake Beckley
John Olerud

Prelim:

1. Lou Gehrig
2. Jimmie Foxx
3. Cap Anson
4. Buck Leonard
5. Roger Connor
6. Dan Brouthers
7. Johnny Mize
8. Hank Greenberg
9. Jeff Bagwell
10. Frank Thomas
11. Jim Thome
12. Mark McGwire
13. Eddie Murray
14. George Sisler
15. Willie McCovey
16. Dick Allen
17. Joe Start
18. Keith Hernandez
19. Bill Terry
20. Jake Beckley
21. Harmon Killebrew
22. Rafael Palmeiro
23. Mule Suttles
24. Todd Helton
25. Will Clark

Real have and have nots position here - I only rate two of these guys as true middle class HoMers. Kind of the opposite of shortstops.

1. Lou Gehrig
2. Jimmie Foxx
--. Albert Pujols - I feel like he should be ahead of Foxx, but the gap my system spits out is to wide for me to justify an intangible adjustment here.
3. Roger Connor
4. Cap Anson
5. Dan Brouthers - I feel like this trio is probably in need of a discussion - were they all really this good?
6. Hank Greenberg
7. Jeff Bagwell - I think he has a case as the most underrated player in history. To me, he's pretty clearly the best first basemen since integration not names Pujols, and I don't feel like he is perceived anywhere close to that.
8. Johnny Mize
9. Buck Leonard
10. Frank Thomas
11. Willie McCovey
--. Miguel Cabrera
12. Jim Thome - I don't actually have him ranked that high numerically, he's just the best of a very large group of lower end HoMers here.
13. Dick Allen
14. Eddie Murray
15. Harmon Killebrew
16. Todd Helton
17. Mark McGwire
18. Keith Hernandez
--. Joey Votto
19. Bill Terry - I think I'm probably higher on him than most.
20. Mule Suttles
--. Paul Goldschmidt
21. Rafael Palmeiro
22. Joe Start - Highly preliminary. I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt, but low and slow in the 19th century probably won't do well with me.
--. David Ortiz - Not a 1B but where else can you put him
--. Jason Giambi
23. Will Clark
24. George Sisler
--. John Olerud
--. Norm Cash
--. Dolph Camilli
--. Freddie Freeman
--. Frank Chance
--. Tony Perez
25. Jake Beckley - The only 'bad' selection by my standards (Clark and Sisler are probably not pHoM, but are close)

First Base Preliminary Ranking

1. Lou Gehrig
(Albert Pujols)
2. Cap Anson
3. Jimmie Foxx
4. Roger Connor
5. Dan Brouthers – Although it seems odd having three nineteenth-century players in the top 5 first basemen, they are the three best position players of the nineteenth century. But it seems equally odd to have the other half of the top 6 all basically from the 1930s, at least until Pujols becomes eligible. First base is a very unevenly distributed position historically.
6. Johnny Mize - with war credit
7. Jeff Bagwell
8. Hank Greenberg - with war credit
(Miguel Cabrera)
9. Frank Thomas
10. Eddie Murray - The best first baseman between Johnny Mize and Frank Thomas, as I see it
(Joey Votto)
11. Jim Thome – The high end of what I would call the “middle tier” of the Hall of Merit
(Paul Goldschmidt)
12. Joe Start – Very preliminary placement, but being the best player of the 1860s is no small matter in my system. Probably adapted to more major rule changes than any other player in the history of the game.
13. Rafael Palmeiro
14. Willie McCovey
15. Mark McGwire
16. Keith Hernandez – The bottom of the “middle tier”
17. Dick Allen – A third baseman in my own positional rankings
18. Todd Helton
19. George Sisler
20. Harmon Killebrew – Also a third baseman in my own positional rankings
21. Buck Leonard – Likely to move up—I need to re-run his MLEs with updated conversion factors, but I still may have him lower than most.
(Freddie Freeman)
(Jason Giambi)
(John Olerud)
22. Bill Terry
23. Jake Beckley
(Fred McGriff)
--In-Out Line--
24. Will Clark -- A very small gap between McGriff and Clark, but that's where the in-out line falls in my system.
25. Mule Suttles – Likely to move up. As with Buck Leonard, I need to re-run his MLEs.

MMP scores for first basemen

Lou Gehrig 131.87
Albert Pujols 105.53
Jimmie Foxx 84.99
Frank Thomas 58.32
Hank Greenberg 51.08
Johnny Mize 50.63
Miguel Cabrera 44.21
Dick Allen 41.67
Jeff Bagwell 41.38
Willie McCovey 39.50
Joey Votto 38.16
Mark McGwire 36.84
Jason Giambi 36.75
George Sisler 32.50
Paul Goldschmidt 30.83
Will Clark 27.07
Eddie Murray 26.27
Todd Helton 24.96
Jim Thome 23.65
Freddie Freeman 23.43
Pedro Guerrero 22.20
Keith Hernandez 21.64
Harmon Killebrew 20.80
John Olerud 20.00
David Ortiz 18.28
Bill Terry 18.00
Mark Teixeira 17.62
Don Mattingly 15.98
Frank Chance 15.36
Fred McGriff 14.59
Buck Leonard 13.57
Norm Cash 13.44
Tony Perez 11.23
Ken Caminiti 11.00
Vlad Guerrero Jr 10.29
Adrian Gonzalez 10.24
Jose Abreu 9.63
Jack Clark 9.43
Rafael Palmeiro 9.05
Orlando Cepeda 8.90
Cecil Cooper 8.45
Cecil Fielder 8.00
Travis Hafner 7.84
Ryan Howard 7.80
Chris Davis 7.58
Mule Suttles 7.57
Carlos Pena 7.22
Ben Taylor 1.88
Jake Beckley 1.00

1. Lou Gehrig - prolly consensus here

2. Jimmie Foxx

3. Roger Connor
4. Cap Anson
5. Jeff Bagwell - Connor-Anson-Bagwell back-to-back-to-back. A different set of ABC. Case for the most underrated player of the last...whenever?
6. Johnny Mize - war credit
7. Dan Brouthers

8. Frank Thomas
9. Hank Greenberg - war credit
10. Buck Leonard

11. Mark McGwire
12. Jim Thome - back-to-back again with McGwire
13. Rafael Palmeiro
14. Dick Allen
15. Eddie Murray
16. Willie McCovey - a big ol' chunk of guys in this middle not really iffy but not actually 100% obvious HOM first basemen
17. Keith Hernandez
18. Bill Terry - back-to-back with Hernandez. I guess I'm higher than most on Terry?
19. Harmon Killebrew - I thought this would be lower than most but it's actually not. Was Killer pretty overrated?
20. George Sisler
21. Todd Helton - back-to-back with Sisler

-- John Olerud - I have Olerud and Suttles very close, they'd probably be another back-to-back if both were in
22. Mule Suttles
23. Will Clark

24. Jake Beckley
25. Joe Start - in the next couple of years, Suttles will go in my pHOM, and then all these elected 1B will be pHOM for me. There are five players below Start in my pHOM, and they represent a big dropoff from Start. I guess a roundabout way of saying Start is my pHOM line for guys who don't get in on massive luck of timing.

10. Eddie Murray - The best first baseman between Johnny Mize and Frank Thomas, as I see it

While I'm a Murray fan as well, I have to give the nod to Willie McCovey.

Stretch is only at 64.5 B-R WAR, but other pluses:
71.2 Gauge WAR
~75 Kiko WAR
+5.7 clutch wins
73.3 WPA 11th! all-time for games available
1101 OPS in 34 playoff PA

This gets him into Greenberg (depending on war credit and debiting for extra home/road splits), Thomas, Thome territory for me.
Murray does get a bump for clutch/situational hitting and home/park as well, it lifts him past McGwire/Killebrew at 13.

19. Harmon Killebrew - I thought this would be lower than most but it's actually not. Was Killer pretty overrated?

Killer could mash, it's a matter of how bad his defense was to offset the offensive goodness.

He looks pedestrian from a B-R WAR view at 60.4 and B-G 60.8.

However, Kiko has him at ~76 and WPA is at 59.5 and 24th all-time.

Going back to the last post, 2 of McCovey's peak years were with expansion (1969-1970), though he was a star in the strong 60s NL.
Killebrew benefited less, but enjoyed a big 1969 season as well, and has the demerit of being a star in the 60s AL.

Maybe I'm a little too bullish on Harmon, and he should drop to ~18, but the guys from 19 down all have flaws that I'm a bigger fan of Killebrew on.

18. Bill Terry - back-to-back with Hernandez. I guess I'm higher than most on Terry?

The 19-24 group for me is a tough draw, so 18 seems fine to me.

He was an elite defender (or appears to have been, did he benefit from the quirks of the Polo Grounds on defense), and a good enough hitter (an elite road one and situationally).

Come to think of it, I'll be planning to swap him and Sisler, bumping him to #22 and consider all the way up to #19, this group is close together.

21. Buck Leonard – Likely to move up—I need to re-run his MLEs with updated conversion factors, but I still may have him lower than most.

I'm very interested in what you uncover, Eric's MLEs have shot him up to ~3rd overall for Negro League position players, at 94 WAR / 62 WAA, clearly behind Charleston and Gibson, even with Willie Wells, and edging Turkey Stearnes, John Beckwith.

7. Jeff Bagwell - I think he has a case as the most underrated player in history. To me, he's pretty clearly the best first basemen since integration not names Pujols, and I don't feel like he is perceived anywhere close to that.

With making the HOF, and balloting well here, I think he's not extremely underrated by history, but he was in the sense that he was overlooked a bit in his time as a well rounded 1B.

Clear modern HOF guys like Bobby Grich, Lou Whitaker, and Jim Edmonds that were one and dones on the BBWAA ballot take the cake for me.
If I take an old-timer, Pebbly Jack Glasscock.

Here's where I stand right now:

1. Lou Gehrig PHOM 1945
---Albert Pujols---
2. Jimmie Foxx PHOM 1951
3. Johnny Mize PHOM 1959
4. Buck Leonard PHOM 1958
5. Roger Connor PHOM 1903
6. Hank Greenberg PHOM 1953
7. Cap Anson PHOM 1903
8. Jeff Bagwell PHOM 2011
9. Dan Brouthers PHOM 1910
10. Frank Thomas PHOM 2015
11. Jim Thome PHOM 2018
12. Mark McGwire PHOM 2007
13. Willie McCovey PHOM 1986
---Miguel Cabrera, Joey Votto---
14. Eddie Murray PHOM 2003
---Paul Goldschmidt---
15. Rafael Palmeiro PHOM 2011
16. Harmon Killebrew PHOM 1984
17. Keith Hernandez PHOM 1996
18. Mule Suttles PHOM 1967
---David Ortiz, PHOM 2023---
19. Bill Terry PHOM 1942
20. Will Clark PHOM 2006
---Luke Easter, PHOM 1972---
21. Joe Start PHOM 1902
---John Olerud, eventual PHOM---
22. Todd Helton
---In/Out Line bounces around here---
23. George Sisler
24. Jake Beckley PHOM 1913
25. Cal McVey

cookie, you ranked McVey instead of Dick Allen.

4. Buck Leonard PHOM 1958

I know the MLEs revisions look good for him, but when we did the MMP project he got hardly any votes. 7th in 1938, 8th in 1939, 14th in 1941, 16th in 1940, 17th in 1944. That's not an impressive enough peak to get him to 4th overall. His MMP points are similar to Fred McGriff. Either we messed up in our MMP voting or the new MLE's are too optimistic.

I've updated my MLEs for Buck Leonard, and that moves him up significantly in my rankings, as I expected, from 20 to 10, which is pretty similar to where he appears on a number of preliminary ballots so far. Here's his relative placement in my system, with the revised MLEs:

7. Jeff Bagwell
8. Hank Greenberg
9. Frank Thomas
10. Buck Leonard
11. Eddie Murray
12. Jim Thome

My MLEs for Leonard credit him with 69.5 career WAR. This is significantly lower than Dr. Chaleeko's MLEs, which credit him with 94.3 WAR. (69.5 WAR is a 10-WAR increase from my prior MLE assessment, though, which was using a conversion factor that was too low.)

There are two factors at work in the difference between my findingas and Dr. Chaleeko's. One is playing time. Dr. Chaleeko's project Leonard as having a 2236-game MLE career; I project him for 1986 games. The main reason for this difference is that Dr. C's MLEs project Leonard for a full 1933 season and for some playing time in 1949 and 1950. Since Leonard played only one NeL game in 1933, I don't credit him for any MLE value for that season, and I don't give him credit for the 1949 and 1950 seasons, either. If one removes 1933, 1949, and 1950 from Leonard's Dr. Chaleeko MLEs, that would drop his career WAR there to 84.5. Given Leonard's late arrival into the top level of NeL competition, there's definitely an argument for giving him some minor-league credit prior to 1934, but without any data at all for his prior play, that's more speculative than I am comfortable with.

The rest of the difference is due to differing competition adjustments. Because I am still using a multiplicative adjustment, it probably put a little too much downward pressure on Leonard's best seasons. I am working on an adjustment that combines a subtractive and a multiplicative adjustment to better adjust for high peaks, but I haven't implemented it yet. If I made that change, it might push Leonard above Thomas, but there's a big gap between Thomas and Greenberg that a fairly minor adjustment would not close.

It's still worth noting that Leonard was one of the most productive older first-basemen ever. Using my 69.5 WAR still gives Leonard the fourth-most WAR from his age 26 season to the end his career among first-basemen. Here's the list, according to baseball-reference WAR, of all the first-basemen with 60+ WAR age 26 and up.

1. Lou Gehrig -- 81.8 WAR
2. Cap Anson -- 78.9 WAR
3. Roger Connor -- 69.9 WAR
4. Buck Leonard -- 69.5 WAR
5. Dan Brouthers -- 65.5 WAR
6. Jeff Bagwell -- 65.0 WAR
7. Albert Pujols -- 64.0 WAR

With war credit, Johnny Mize would be around 71, Hank Greenberg around 65.

Now I need to work on Mule Suttles . . .

cookie, you ranked McVey instead of Dick Allen

Allen would be 14th, behind McCovey.

Either we messed up in our MMP voting or the new MLE's are too optimistic

I think it's probably both. I assume the MMP voting was pre-new MLEs, and that would impact his votes if we run it again. I always assume the MLEs are a bit optimistic, and build in a reduction factor into my own rankings. Even with it, he's pushed up this high for me

chiming in from the outside; and I know I've said this before, but I'd like to state it again here; if I had to make an all-time team, my first basemen would no doubt be... Stan Musial. Yes, yes, I know, he's an outfielder, but he DID play more games at 1B than LF!
(and Pujols would be #2. Gehrig would be #1 as a hero of a person tho)

DL - I agree with your placement of Mize, but you don't list him as deserving WWII credit, whereas he deserves three prime years, in the middle of his streak of season where he kept leading his league in important categories. Did you just forget to put the not in?

I'm going to try this category this time, because my endurance has gone up. I'm starting out:

Gehrig
Foxx
Anson
Mize
Bagwell
McGwire
Leonard
Connor
Murray
Brouthers

I haven't gotten any further than that.

For Tom H - I understand your opinion of Musial, but the seasons he played 1B were mainly late seasons, when he had lost his OF speed. I wouldn't put him at 1B for the same reason I wouldn't put Ernie Banks at 1B.

I'm giving Mize war credit, just forgot to mention it.

#4 No. Connor, Anson and Brouthers were not actually that good. Top hitters in very weak leagues are tricky to evaluate.

bjh - I wouldn't put Banks at 1B because he isn't that great among 1Bmen :) But obviously Musial *could* have played 1B most of his career if his team needed him too; he was full time there at age 25.

Anson-Connor-Brouthers:

Anson has the bulk. Brouthers has the prime; (by WAR) the best position player 5 times, and top four 6 more times. Connor is in between on prime & career value. They were all very good. But Gehrig/Foxx/Greenberg were at least as good, at a time when there were 16 MLB teams and other great Negro Leguaers.

#4 No. Connor, Anson and Brouthers were not actually that good. Top hitters in very weak leagues are tricky to evaluate.

Was there a more difficult league they should have joined?

Evaluating great players from long-ago is always a challenge. There is a fine line between considering "league quality" issues (which is certainly appropriate) and "timelining" (which is essentially prohibited in the HOM).

The Anson-Brouthers-Connor trio are great examples of this challenge. As you can tell from my prelim ballot I have ranked them very very high. They dominated the best leagues of their day and it could be argued that the best players were typically first basemen in that era due to the way the game was played.

I may bump them down a slot or two but this trio will remain very high on my final ballot.

#24 That snide attitude is a primary reason that I don't participate much here.

The NA was generally not of AA strength. Anybody who says otherwise is just not paying attention. Leagues would get progressively stronger but not quickly, with Anson himself in his management role being one of the key players in funneling top talent to the major leagues. They had to build the structures to get the top talent to the majors and didn't have anything approaching all of the best players in the majors. The misevaluation of Anson, Connor and Brouthers starts with the false assumption that the major leagues were made up of most of the best players -- with scouting networks already in place.

The NA was generally not of AA strength. Anybody who says otherwise is just not paying attention.

Double-A compared to what? If you're comparing to the 1890s National League, sure but that didn't exist in 1870. You're essentially saying that a pennant in 1870 isn't worth as much as a pennant in 1890. I don't know where that rabbit hole ends.

#27 The NA features town teams. More, they're town teams from places that weren't particularly large. Take the absolute best team you can can field from a small midwest town. How do they do against an average AAA team? Not very well I submit.

The point you fail to acknowledge is that many of the best players simply weren't playing in organized leagues (or at least not organized leagues that Chadwick was able to follow). The few major league talents that made the top organized leagues particularly in the 1870s but still into the 1890s (becoming progressively less common every year and still far from uncommon even as long as the PCL was mostly independent) were playing against very inferior competition. That's easy to see if you just look at the 1878 Buffalo team which is no weaker than the 3rd best team in the NL (they'd actually likely have finished 3rd. Maybe higher. Galvin went 5-5 in exhibitions against Boston and Cincinnati. Galvin pitched a startling amount in 1878) but whose players don't count (check out Pud Galvin's stats that year).

And that before considering all of the Cap Ansons in the 1870s who didn't happen to play an exhibition game against a top tier team. It was sheer luck making the majors -- there was nothing approaching a scouting pipeline (as I mentioned, Anson was one of the key players in getting this set up and it didn't spring forth fully formed)

I have the advantage of having been in a sport (Society for Creative Anachronism stick fighting) from very early in its history. I got to see what happens in leagues that are just developing, just getting started. I came to the conclusion that you really should judge a player by who he was relative to the best league out there at the time. It's important to realize, though, that
the margin of supremacy in an immature league will be greater than in a more developed one. A, B, and C were dominant in the best league of their time. But their margins of supremacy, expressed badly by OPS, need to be damped down. How much damping is needed is, unfortunately, more of an art than a science. I always just say to do the best you can.

#22 - I see your point, but Musial's career was very weird, due to oddities in who was available in which year during WWII. Musial played 1B at age 25. He also played CF. He finished his career as a LF, because the Cardinals had Bill White. When he played 1B, the reason was that the Cards had three other starting OF who were better in the OF than he was - that year. But the bulk of his 1B play occurred in the last years of his career, when he slowed down. It's no t monolithic, but it's there. Calling him a 1B in the earlier years isn't really true. It's just that the Cards had a lot of OF in those Rickey-farm-system-fueled days. Sometimes, there were three who were better than Stan. Sometimes, not.

Stan was the starting CF for the 1952 Cards. Terry Moore had been gone for four years, and the team had Stan, Peanuts Lowrey, Enos Slaughter, and Dick Sisler. Lowrey had played CF in 1951, but the team apparently concluded that Stan was better. Sometimes, where Stan played makes not much sense. When he first came up, he was probably the second-best CF on the team, but the #1 was Moore, and they had Enos in RF, so Stan played LF. That's as much of why he played LF more than any other position than anything else is.

#27 The NA features town teams. More, they're town teams from places that weren't particularly large. Take the absolute best team you can can field from a small midwest town. How do they do against an average AAA team? Not very well I submit.

The point you fail to acknowledge is that many of the best players simply weren't playing in organized leagues (or at least not organized leagues that Chadwick was able to follow). The few major league talents that made the top organized leagues particularly in the 1870s but still into the 1890s (becoming progressively less common every year and still far from uncommon even as long as the PCL was mostly independent) were playing against very inferior competition. That's easy to see if you just look at the 1878 Buffalo team which is no weaker than the 3rd best team in the NL (they'd actually likely have finished 3rd. Maybe higher. Galvin went 5-5 in exhibitions against Boston and Cincinnati. Galvin pitched a startling amount in 1878) but whose players don't count (check out Pud Galvin's stats that year).

And that before considering all of the Cap Ansons in the 1870s who didn't happen to play an exhibition game against a top tier team. It was sheer luck making the majors -- there was nothing approaching a scouting pipeline (as I mentioned, Anson was one of the key players in getting this set up and it didn't spring forth fully formed)

I don't know about this line of thinking at all. We have to base evaluation from somewhere, and I don't see a credible argument that the best place to base it from in this period is the NL. I think we can say with a fair amount of confidence that even if the NL was not the end-all-be-all league until the 1890s, it was the strongest level of competition available. The example of the Buffalo in 1878 sort of proves that - the very next year they joined the NL as opposed to staying in the International Association. Good players obviously existed outside the league structure, and even good teams could - but I think that the NL can still fairly be established as the locus of baseball talent. As the strongest level of competition, it is a fair standard by which to judge players.

Furthermore, speculating on hypothetical elite players outside the league structure is just that - speculation. A player who is not attested in the record and had no interaction with organized baseball can't reasonably considered in the evaluation set. I don't see any way to account for them at all - functionally, they are no different from elite athletes who elect to play other sports. If there is reasonable attestation, then they are fair game - Frank Grant is a HoMer after all.

To bring this back to the players in question - Anson, Brouthers, and Connor were the best three hitters of their era. I don't think there is much of a question there. What I do find more difficult is the positional adjustment - currently both fWAR and bWAR use a neutral adjustment for 1B in this period. The position is so strong offensively, even beyond ABC, that I find that a bit of a hard sell. My lazy adjustment is to just use the deadball positional adjustment instead, but that isn't exactly clean (or accurate necessarily - you'd have to make up the 5 run difference somewhere). That makes Brouther in particular look a fair bit more mortal to me, although still in the top half of the position.

And that before considering all of the Cap Ansons in the 1870s who didn't happen to play an exhibition game against a top tier team. It was sheer luck making the majors -- there was nothing approaching a scouting pipeline.

While this explanation refers to events that happened, I think that using this story to assert that making the majors "sheer luck" in the early days is a misreading of the actual situation. To call the game Anson played in an "exhibition game" suggests that it was kind of accidental, unserious game that a top-tier team happened to play. Because the hierarchy of baseball leagues in the early game was still in formation in the 1870s, the way that top teams established themselves as top teams was by playing other teams that were out there and beating them. The neat division between a "league game" and an "exhibition game" that we now make was by no means so distinct, and teams of various levels of quality in variously organized groups were playing a lot of games against each other. We focus exclusively now on the "league games" as the ones that counted, but in the early NA, there were likely more non-league games played than league games. There multiple teams in large cities that played each other, teams from neighboring towns played each other, teams within states played each other, and the major professional teams toured around and played against this competition as well. It wasn't as if players were hidden away in some separate league that seldom or never came into contact with "top tier" teams. It was a much more fluid situation that gave players on lesser teams opportunities to demonstrate their skill in direct competition against top teams and get recruited by those teams.

In addition, before the reserve clause, players were very free to move from team to team, and towns that became invested in having a strong team could and did go out and recruit players, who could and did change teams when offered better pay. It was an imperfect system for concentrating talent, but the great success of early team-builders like Harry Wright or the investors who put together the 1878 Buffalo Bisons demonstrates that it was quite possible to find and collect talent, if you were willing to pay high salaries to recruit top players.

The fact that the Bisons were very deliberately assembled and were probably the last really strong team to be created outside the context of the major leagues shows that the consolidation of talent in the top professional leagues was quite far advanced by the late 1870s. The fact that the Bisons moved into the National League after their great 1878 season was another step in talent consolidation.

Overall, making the majors was far from "sheer luck." There were significant economic and competitive incentives for teams to find top players and for those players to join top-tier teams that would pay high salaries. It was a market-driven system, and I think the evidence of the dominance that professional teams gained over amateur teams makes it clear that the best players were mostly playing in the major leagues--otherwise the major-league teams wouldn't have come to dominate other competition.

There was less financial incentive, however, for both teams and players to raise the floor on the weakest players, and so "replacement level" was significantly lower across the 19th century, less sophisticated talent identification likely played a role as well. It's harder to tell a 1-WAR player from a 0.5-WAR player than it is to tell a 5-WAR player from a 2-WAR player. It looks to me like the evidence shows that the top players were being identified and recruited to the top teams, but that making the majors as a marginal player was more a matter of being in the right place at the right time or being willing to play for a modest level of pay than of being just a bit more talented than the next available player.

What is interesting about Anson is he played through the entire period of identifying and consolidating talent and he actually seemed to get better into his 30s. His talent isn't a weak league illusion. The closest comparison I have is Ted Williams. Ted played before and after integration of black players and he consistently outperformed everyone.

I have come to the conclusion that there is no league context (and therfore no pennant to win) before 1871 so I have trouble giving anyone credit before then. That's going to drop Joe Start down on my list.

A lot of the following comes from my grandad, who played town ball in the early 1900s. That's not the same time period, but I bet the most of the comments applied back then too.

The pro teams used their non-league tours not just as a way to make immediate money, but also as recruiting tools. The Negro Leagues also did this. They would ask around, when they came in, as to who were the best players they were going to see, and pay attention. Also, the towns were willing to cooperate in promoting the best player within 5 counties, so that if that player didn't play for the only team the pros were going to meet, he would suddenly sign a one-game contract, so he could show his stuff, and then return to his original town team. That makes for a LOT better coverage than even Chris Cobb implies. Whole counties would be proud of themselves if one of their boys made it with a pro team.

Also, in those days, the best player on almost every team was the pitcher, who started every game. So, if the pro team paid attention to the opposing pitcher, which they would, they were likely paying attention to the best baseball player in the whole five county area. Who might well be there on the one-day contract.

Basically, what my grandad said was that you have to focus not just on what the pro team is doing trying to scout players, but what the rural counties are doing to try to get their best players right in front of those pro eyes. And the rural counties could do a lot to showcase their best.

Here is my preliminary ballot. For now I have Connor and Brouthers lower than others, but I am open to convincing.

While I'm basically agnostic on the question of whether to treat 19th century stats as lesser, I do think pre-integration and post-integration are meaningful distinctions, which is why I have Bagwell above B and C and was tempted to bump Thomas a little higher as well. And then Mize and Greenberg might be, along with Ted Williams, the biggest beneficiaries of war credit in this entire exercise, enough to easily put them in that elite class.

1. Lou Gehrig
2. Jimmie Foxx
3. Cap Anson
4. Johnny Mize
5. Jeff Bagwell
6. Roger Connor
7. Hank Greenberg
8. Dan Brouthers
9. Frank Thomas
10. Buck Leonard
11. Jim Thome
12. Rafael Palmeiro
13. Willie McCovey
14. Todd Helton
15. Eddie Murray
16. Mark McGwire
17. George Sisler
18. Dick Allen
19. Mule Suttles
20. Harmon Killebrew
21. Bill Terry
22. Keith Hernandez
23. Jake Beckley
24. Will Clark
25. Joe Start

A couple of odd notes abut Roger Connor, that I would while looking him over for this project:

1. Probably all of you know that Roger Connor held the record for most career homers before Ruth, and that Ernest Lanigan, who researched the subject, missed him and so got the wrong answer. But WHY did Erie miss Roger? I think I may know. Take a look at Roger's career. He idd hit homers, but he NEVER led his league for even one season. I'll bet that Ernie started his research by listing everyone who had ever led their league and then looking all those guys up. Given what HIS sources looked like, wouldn't you do the same? And suer, enough, if you do that, you miss Roger.

2. Roger Connor, at the age of 30, reinvented himself as a hitter, even more strongly than Stan Musial in 1948. You can argue, I imagine, that Roger became the first Three True Outcomes hitter. Here are his age 29-30 stats in a select few categories:

STAT AGE 29 AGE 30
HR 7 17
BB 41 75
SO 15 50
AVG .355 .285

His numbers before age 29 are al like age 29; afterwards, they are all like age 30. He did not change teams or anything, so no ballpark effect that I know of. Did he invent the uppercut long before Ruth? I don't know.

from Conner's SABR bio: "In 1887 the National League lengthened the pitching distance to 55½ feet and instituted a short-lived scoring change. For this one year, a walk would be deemed a base hit for batting-average purposes. The 75 passes accumulated by the strike-zone-savvy Connor was not only the second most received by a National League player that season. It also inflated his official batting average to a career-high .383."

only a partial answer, alas.

Howie - You're right about the specific year 1887, of course. But my point was that Connor's whole career changed shape. His seasons after 1887 look like 1887, not those before that year.

preliminary ballot:

(Sadaharu Oh)
1. Lou Gehrig
2. Albert Pujols
3. Jimmie Foxx
4. Cap Anson
5. Dan Brouthers
6. Roger Connor (The 19th century ABC boys are not only back-to-back-to-back in my 1b rankings, but also in my overall rankings)
7. Buck Leonard
8. Johnny Mize
9. Frank Thomas
10. Jeff Bagwell
11. Mark McGwire
12. Jim Thome
13. Hank Greenberg
14. Willie McCovey
(Miguel Cabrera)
(Joey Votto)
(Paul Goldschmidt)
15. Eddie Murray
16. Keith Hernandez
(Jason Giambi)
17. Mule Suttles
18. George Sisler
19. Todd Helton
(Freddie Freeman)
20. Rafael Palmeiro
21. Will Clark
22. Harmon Killebrew
23. Joe Start
(Frank Chance)
(Luke Easter)
-----PHoM line-----
(John Olerud)
24. Bill Terry
(Tony Perez)
(Carlos Delgado)
(Fred McGriff)
(Ben Taylor)
(Gil Hodges)
25. Jake Beckley - easily one the worst HoM choices; being slightly above average, but never any higher, for a long time doesn't make a player great

40. Michael J. Binkley's anxiety closet Posted: June 07, 2023 at 01:24 PM (#6131816)
preliminary ballot:

2. Albert Pujols

A heads up, Pujols isn't eligible yet, Dick Allen is listed in 1B to rank.

Thanks - I normally put Allen with the 3b. He would slot in right after McCovey.

12) Joe Start - another who will get re-assessed

He will slide down between Killebrew and Palmeiro.

If I run Anson's numbers he's actually ahead of Gehrig at #1. That shouldn't be too much of a surprise, I'm a career voter and Anson has a 25 year career versus Gehrig's 14 seasons. That's a lot of time to catch up.

1) Lou Gehrig - Pujols isn't eligible yet so I'm pretty sure Gehrig will win this election
2) Cap Anson - I really dislike this guy but his career is incredibly long and productive
3) Roger Connor - I will be re-assessing the ABC guys
4) Jimmie Foxx
5) Johnny Mize
6) Dan Brouthers

I'm probably here now:

1) Anson
2) Gehrig
3) Foxx
4) Connor
5) Brouthers
6) Mize

Pujols would slot between Gehrig and Foxx

And postseason credit moves Gehrig back on top. Anson has the disadvantage of playing before there was a postseason. This is really close for my #1 spot.

(Sadaharu Oh)
1. Lou Gehrig
2. Albert Pujols
3. Jimmie Foxx
4. Cap Anson

Q: are you saying that you would rank Sadaharu Oh #1 if he had been elected to the HoM? I don't know enough about Japanese baseball to know what to think about that -- I don't know if it would be eccentric to rank him that highly, or if it's genuinely strange that nobody else around here has ranked him at all.

(Sadaharu Oh)
1. Lou Gehrig
2. Albert Pujols
3. Jimmie Foxx
4. Cap Anson


Q: are you saying that you would rank Sadaharu Oh #1 if he had been elected to the HoM? I don't know enough about Japanese baseball to know what to think about that -- I don't know if it would be eccentric to rank him that highly, or if it's genuinely strange that nobody else around here has ranked him at all.

Yes, based upon Dr. Chaleeko's first set of Japanese League MLEs from his former HOME site, Oh would be my #1 first baseman of all-time. From Eric's new site, it appears that he is planning on doing revised, more complete, Japanese League MLEs, and when they are completed, I, of course, may revise my opinion.

I think you know that this thread is about ranking the first basemen who have previously been elected to the Hall of Merit. Due to the way the project was initially set up, Sadaharu Oh is not eligible for the Hall of Merit. I cannot speak for others but I personally have given zero thought/research/analysis into where Oh would rank among the all-time great first basemen.

I would consider it somewhat eccentric, or at least I don't think it would be the consensus that Oh was the best 1B who ever lived. I don't have him ranked anywhere because he's not eligible, but head to head he would unquestionably be behind Gehrig for me. Behind Foxx, and then perhaps you get to interesting territory with Connor. My opinion.

If you ask me how I think his career would translate, I would guess somewhere around the Palmeiro range? Based on an extremely surface level look at it only.

Sorry if I got us sidetracked, but I was curious. I didn't know anybody had done MLEs for older NPL players.

51. Infinite Yost (Voxter) Posted: June 13, 2023 at 05:25 PM (#6132672)
Sorry if I got us sidetracked, but I was curious. I didn't know anybody had done MLEs for older NPL players.

I don't see it hurting anything, but as others mentioned, Japan centric players are excluded.

Eric had Oh at 123 WAr and 83 WAA: https://homemlb.wordpress.com/2021/01/21/discovering-japanese-first-basemen-part-ii/

The question for the HOM group is whether combo guys are worthy, Ichiro makes it likely safely with no NPB credit, but what about the eligible Hideki Matsui, and the future eligible Yu Darvish??

Japan players are excluded based on matching Hall of Fame criteria. I don't think Ichiro is going to get any NPB credit when he gets elected to Cooperstown.

Japan players are excluded based on matching Hall of Fame criteria. I don't think Ichiro is going to get any NPB credit when he gets elected to Cooperstown.

Sure, but HoM voters often give credit for other things not considered by HoF voters - performance predating 1876, or minor league seasons where the player was clearly of MLB quality. I don't see why NPB seasons couldn't be considered in the same vein for players who went on to significant MLB careers.

I believe Willie Davis' brief stint in NPB has been cited in his HoM case before. A bit of a different animal since he started in North America, but the principle of the matter is that high level baseball play can always taken into consideration.

Eligibility is the bigger question - clearly all Cooperstown eligible players are HoM eligibles as well (which means Ichiro, Matsui, and Darvish are fair game), while players like Oh with no NA play are clearly not. The only edge case would be NPB players with <10 years in the MLB, but there aren't exactly a lot of those with legit HoM cases. Probably the closest would be.... Hiroki Kuroda? Maybe Koji Uehara?

To circle back to the question at hand - I see no problem with noting Oh's placement - I don't think it's impossible that he was the greatest 1B of all time, although I'd expect he'd place a fair bit further down for me if I actually tried my hand at evaluating him.

Japan players are excluded based on matching Hall of Fame criteria. I don't think Ichiro is going to get any NPB credit when he gets elected to Cooperstown.

The constitution does not explicitly exclude either the NBP contributions of either Sadaharu Oh or Ichiro. Here are the relavant portions:

All major league players are eligible for the Hall of Merit. Also eligible are all “excluded” players, most notably Negro Leaguers, and pre-MLB players that played professional ball in the US. ... In addition to major league and Negro League accomplishments, particularly noteworthy minor league or non-US professional league accomplishments can also be considered meritorious (in a HoM perspective) in certain circumstances. However, it would be extremely unlikely for a career minor leaguer or Cuban league player to be elected to the HoM.

Historical voting practice has generally held that players wo MLB or NA experience are excluded, with at least one ballot changed upon request that I can recall (1944, Eiji Sawamura), while as Jaack notes, the inclusion of non-MLB experience from candidates who have played in the majors has been up to voter discretion. If Willie Davis's & Reggie Smith's NPB contributions deserve consideration, I think Ichiro's deserve consideration as well, but that, of course, will be up to each voter!

Since we're talking about first basemen, one interesting case in this vein is Jose Abreu, who was clearly an elite player when he reached MLB in 2014 at age 27, and had 10 years of Cuban league experience prior to that (raw stats from ages 21 - 25 are particularly impressive).

If he's truly fallen off the cliff this year, I probably wouldn't see him as a HOMer, but if he bounces back and puts up a few more good years, he's going to be interesting.

Here's Brock Hanke's first attempt at a listing, with some comments. I am available for education.

1 Lou Gehrig
2 Jimmie Foxx
3 Cap Anson
4 Johnny Mize
5 Jeff Bagwell
6 Mark McGwire
7 Buck Leonard
Any NgL pacement must be treated as a guess largely informed by contemporary opinion.
8 Harmon Killebrew
9 Roger Connor
10 Willie McCovey
11 Eddie Murray
12 George Sisler
I have him higher than most, because his first half of a career was tremendous. He actually deserved his MVP in 1922, granted that Babe Ruth missed time from a suspension. His second half, according to Win Shares, was worth just about half, season for season, of what his first half was worth. BB-Ref’s Defensive WAR are impossibly low. He was known for his defense at a time when 1B defense was in demand, because of bunting, and paid attention to because bunt defense was flashy. Win Shares shows him as having a Gold Glove the first half of his career, and being an ordinary starter the second half. That’s probably right. Contemporary opinion means a lot in the Dead Ball Era at 1B.
13 Dan Brouthers
14 Mule Suttles
15 Dick Allen
I never know what to do with Dick, because I don’t know how to weigh his subjectives.
16 Will Clark
17 Hank Greenberg
Deserved 3 years of WWII credit, but his game was not as strong when he returned, and he retired after 1947.
18 Keith Hernandez
19 Todd Helton
20 Jim Thome
I’m not a big fan of guys whose main credentila is regular season accumulated WAR. Thome and Beckley suffer from this.
21 Rafael Palmeiro
22 Frank Thomas
Weighed down by my obnoxious habit of assigning him VERY low defensive numbers when he was playing DH because he could not really play MLB 1B.
23 Bill Terry
24 Jake Beckley
25 Joe Start
Not as big a star as I thought. His numbers, once the NA gests started, are good, but not THAT good.

Bjhanke,

Your first-base rankings look thoughtful and reasonable. You make the case for Sisler well, I think. I don't have him as high as that, but it has always surprised me that the HoM electorate has treated him as a borderline HoMer -- it took him 44 years to get elected.

I think Greenberg's war credit is more like four years, which would move him a bit higher than you have him, I think.

Re Joe Start: his NA numbers are not impressive, but he has a pretty strong late peak from 1878-82--somehow getting out of New York seems to have helped him. The case for Start being better than the bottom of the batch depends on his pre-NA play: he has a full decade in organized base ball prior to 1871, and his record there is strong. He's uneven from 1860-64, but from 1865-68, he was the best hitter on the top team in organized base ball (virtually undefeated over this period, with a combined record of 101-15-1), in 1869 he was the top hitter on a team that went 15-6-1 against professional competition, and in 1870 he was one of the two best hitters on a team with a 20-16 record against professional competition.

I read this record as Start having his peak from 1865-69, ages 22-26, which is about where one would expect to find it in the early game, when players usually peaked younger. In the end, his total package is of the Thome/Palmeiro/Beckley type, which you don't favor, for understandable reasons, but his long compiling career does include a peak when he was definitely among the best, if not the best, player in organized base ball. For me, that peak plus an Anson-length career moves him a bit ahead of Thome and Palmeiro, and well ahead of Beckley, who was never an elite player, although very good for an exceptionally long time. I rank Start/Thome/Palmeiro as a group higher than you do, but I'd agree with your sense that Thome and Palmeiro are similar, and I think Start aligns with them pretty well.

12 George Sisler
I have him higher than most, because his first half of a career was tremendous. He actually deserved his MVP in 1922, granted that Babe Ruth missed time from a suspension. His second half, according to Win Shares, was worth just about half, season for season, of what his first half was worth. BB-Ref’s Defensive WAR are impossibly low. He was known for his defense at a time when 1B defense was in demand, because of bunting, and paid attention to because bunt defense was flashy. Win Shares shows him as having a Gold Glove the first half of his career, and being an ordinary starter the second half. That’s probably right. Contemporary opinion means a lot in the Dead Ball Era at 1B.

I agree, he had an excellent half of a career, but it was just 7 seasons. In Dan R's estimation 45.7 WARP2 and 31.8 WAPA2 during those 7 seasons, 0.2 WARP2 and -16.1 WAPA2 in the other 9 seasons. Ignoring those seasons completely helps his case in my rankings.

I will be on vacation to start July so I'll run this election to end at the beginning of August.

DL - I know it's just 7 seasons, but there's a credential in there that I didn't get to: For his 5-year prime, 1918 through 1922, I can argue pretty successfully that Sisler is the best player in the AL, at any spot, not named Ruth. WAR has him down for MVPs in 18 and 22, ahead of Ruth, which doesn't even include his best season, 1920. In 1920, Ruth hit 54 homers, pretty much sealing up the MVP there. But aside from Ruth, Sisler is the best. I suggest that pretty much every player who was the 2nd best in his league for a five-year run, including two MVPs, is among the top 12 at his spot, which is where I have George. That his career was ruined by a beaning in late 1922 is worth noting, but it doesn't take that away. In other words, Sisler didn't just dominate the 1B of his time, he dominated everyone except Ruth until he was beaned.

We did MMP voting for that era. Sisler got votes in 5 different seasons. He placed 7th in 1918 (behind Johnson, Ruth, Hippo Vaughn, Cobb, Coveleski, Joe Williams). 18th in 1919, 5th in 1920 (behind Ruth, Hornsby, Alexander and Speaker), 19th in 1921 and 2nd in 1922 to Babe Ruth. I would say Hornsby is the clear #2 player for that 5 year run and Cobb is close to Sisler.

I suggest that pretty much every player who was the 2nd best in his league for a five-year run, including two MVPs, is among the top 12 at his spot

Yes, mainly because they didn't suffer an injury that ruined the remainder of their careers. It sucks that it happened to Sisler but it did.

The trouble with Sisler for me is Dolph Camilli. What is the case for Sisler that doesn't equally apply to Camilli? Their peak stretches are similar in length and strength - I might even give the hitting edge to Camilli, but Sisler probalby makes that up on the basepaths. Outside of that... Sisler played more, but his 2500 additional PAs of below average hitting are not a case shifter - I buy that Sisler is probably a stronger choice than Camilli, but there really is not a whole lot of daylight between them.

I did a little poking around in details. Here are the top five players, by WAR, in the AL, from 1918 to 1922, cumulative:

Ruth 44.9
Sisler 37.1
Speaker 32.7
Cobb 28.8
Collins 24.5

Sisler is at the head of a tremendous grouping there. I don't think that Camilli was ever capable of dominating that kind of competition. All of the other four guys are among the top four ever at their positions. And Sisler is the #2 of that group. My point isn't that he had as good a career as they did, because he didn't. My point is that his prime here is worth more than you would think, and so should be weighted more heavily than other players' primes.

Other small details: You ca argue that Sisler was one of the first guys to figure out what Ruth was doing He finished 2nd in the AL in homers - yes, homers - in both 1919 and 1920, when Ruth was just getting started on them. His Stolen Base umbers would look very good now, much less in the DeadBall Era. He stole a lot and didn't get caught much. And I am of the opinion that WAR's rating of his defense is indefensible, given his reputation. It would take a lot to convince me to compare him to Dolph Camilli.

I took a look at Sisler and Camilli's peaks and primes, with those concepts as used by Bill James n the New Historical. Sisler's prime of best 5 consecutive years, according to WAR, is 1918-1922. Camilli's is 1937-1941. Here are the WAR lists for them:

Sisler

1918 - 6.8
1919 - 6.1
1920 - 9.8
1921 - 5.7
1922 - 8.7
Total - 37.1

Camilli

1937 - 6.1
1938 - 4.6
1939 - 6.4
1940 - 5.3
1941 - 6.8
Total - 29.2

These are not comparable lists. Sisler is far ahead. The competition is also not as tough. The AL top 5 WAR for the five years are in the previous comment: Ruth, Sisler, Speaker, Cobb, and Colllins. Here is the NL from 1937-1941:

Mize
Arky Vaughn
Ott
Camilli
Medwick

Camilli ranks fourth, not second, and the list is not nearly as strong. The NL in the late 1930s was simply not as strong at the top as the AL at the turn of 1920.

As for three-year peak, which does not have to be consecutive years, well, first, both players have all three of their peak years within their primes. This is not always true, but it is true of these two. Second, here are the numbers:

Sisler

9.8
8.7
6.8
Total = 25.3

Camilli

6.8
6.4
6.1

Total = 19.3

Again, Sisler is not comparable to Camilli. Sisler is far ahead of Camilli. I'm sorry, Jaack, but your observation os simply not true. My point, that Sisler's peak and prime are exceptionally strong, holds up.

This is probably tangential, but Brock I'm wondering if your use of WAR, rather than Win Shares, in this discussion means that you have dropped your objections to WAR as a method of evaluation.

Interesting discussion of Sisler. For the consideration of Sisler, I thought it might be useful to take a look at his ranking upside--that is, how does Sisler look by the measure that most showcases his best points? It's pretty clear that would be seven-year consecutive peak. So here's a list, by bWAR as our lingua franca, of the HoM first basemen in order of their seven-year consecutive peaks. In preparing these numbers, I have expanded early seasons to 154 games, and I have expanded war-shortened or strike-shortened seasons to match the regular season-length of the period in which the shortened season occurred. For Buck Leonard and Mule Suttles, I have listed them by my MLEs, while also noting Dr. Chaleeko's.

Player...Top 7 Con...Seasons...Notes
1. Gehrig...62.4...1927-33
2. Brouthers...57.8...1882-88
3. Connor...55.5...1885-91
4. Foxx...55.1...1929-35
5. Anson...52.2...1880-86
6. Sisler...49.0...1915-22
7. Thomas...48.0...1991-97
8. Bagwell 47.9...1994-2000...Strike adj. 95, none for 94 b/c of season-ending injury just before work stoppage
9. Mize...47.1...1939-42, 46-48
10. Helton...45.0...1999-2005
11. Leonard...43.4...1935-41...50.3 WAR per Dr. C
12. Terry...42.1...1929-35
13. Hernandez...41.8...1979-85
14. McCovey...41...1965-71
15. Greenberg...40.4...1934-40
16. Murray...39.5...1979-85
17. Thome...38.5...1996-2002
18. Start...38.3...1865-71...My estimates for Start's pre-1871 peak
19. Palmeiro...37.9...1993-99
20. Allen...37.5...1964-70
21. McGwiree...36.7...1994-2000...Not his best look
22. Killebrew...34.3...1963-69
23. Clark...34.2...1986-92
24. Beckley...31.8...1889-95
25. Suttles...30.9...1926-32...32.5 WAR per Dr. C

From his best side, Sisler looks very good indeed. I continue to think that Bjhanke's ranking of Sisler at #12 is about has high as he can go, considering the full picture, but his peak is so strong that I think he should fit into the third quartile (13-19) rather than the bottom quartile of the first base rankings. I have him at #19 now, and that might be a little bit low.

The data is incomplete, but Kikos Retrosheet data is bearish on George Sisler. It's enough to give me pause to place him in the 13-19 group.

https://baseball.tomthress.com/StatTables/PlayerStats.php?id=sislg101

What I'm looking at with Camilli vs Sisler

wRC+ by year:

Camilli
1936 - 158
1937 - 164
1938 - 137
1939 - 145
1940 - 150
1941 - 163
1942 - 142

1936-1942 - 151

Sisler
1916 - 126
1917 - 155
1918 - 150
1919 - 151
1920 - 173
1921 - 138
1922 - 168

1916-1922 - 152

Is there a distinction to make there at all? Sisler is slightly peakier, but you are really splitting hairs. They are functionally equivalent with the bat for that stretch. Defensively, Sisler's reputation is quite good, while Camilli was perceived as weak initially, but he came into his own later on. TZ and DRA both see basically the same thing as well. Perhaps there's a little daylight between them here, but not a whole lot. Now I do think Sisler's superior playing time and decent baserunning make him a better player, but not leaps and bounds better.

I also question elevating Sisler based on his peers there - yes Cobb, Speaker, and Collins are huge names, but all three were outside of their peak by the time Sisler came around and really got going. And it's not like Camilli's peers are slouches either - Mize, Ott, and Vaughan are fine company!

Overall, I don't dispute that Sisler was the better player. But there is enough similarity that a huge gap is going to raise my eyebrows.

Is there a distinction to make there at all [between Sisler and Camilli's offensive peaks]? Sisler is slightly peakier, but you are really splitting hairs. They are functionally equivalent with the bat for that stretch.

This is a good question. I've spent some time digging around to come up with a reasonable answer. Obviously, given the data Jaack has presented, as wRC+ sees matters, there isn't a meaningful difference between Sisler and Camilli offensively. BWAR's rbat, on the other hand, sees a considerable difference, awarding Sisler 290 rbat vs. 260 for Camilli. Since rbat is built off of wRC, and since Camilli has a few more games played than Sisler during his peak, it appears odd that rbat's findings would differ by more than 10% from wRC+, and this oddity provides the point of entry for answering Jaack's question.

As far as I can tell without actually doing all the calculations from scratch, the difference between rbat and wRC+ assessments lies in the way in which they handle strikeouts. wRC+ in the form used by fangraphs (which matches the numbers Jaack provided) does not appear to distinguish strikeouts from other outs. Rbat, on the other hand, weights the value of strikeouts and outs on balls in play independently based on the league context of the season. As the site's account of rbat puts it, " In early baseball, pre-1920 or so, this is especially vital because error rates were high and DP rates were low, so there was a lot of benefit to putting the ball in play." Although the overall productivity of Sisler and Camilli is similar, they achieved their value by very different routes. Sisler was a contact hitter who put the ball in play most of the time: both his walks and his strikeouts are low (his strikeouts are very low). Camilli, on the other hand, found success when he developed himself on the modern power-hitting model: he hit home runs, he took a lot of walks, and he struck out a lot, particularly in the context of his time. Here are Sisler and Camilli's strikeout totals during their prime:

Sisler, 1916-22: 153 K (22 per season)
Camilli, 1936-42: 657 K (94 per season)

Sisler's additional 500 balls in play over the course of his and Camilli's offensive primes, coupled with the higher rate of errors and lower rate of double plays (and Sisler's strong baserunning probably leads him to have above average ROE rates in Baseball-Reference's formulas) net him about 30 runs relative to Camilli over the course of their primes. It's a subtle difference, but a significant one.

When I look at Sisler's peak versus Camilli's, I get the following picture.

Baseline: Camilli's 40 wins, which is 5% below the median 7-year consecutive peak for first baseman (Keith Hernandez 41.8 WAR is the median). Camilli, by peak, would be around the middle of the HoM pack. It's his lack of value outside his peak that places him around 35th all time among first basemen instead of among the top-25 HoM cohort. Sisler's peak rises above Camilli's with the following pieces:

Batting: +3 wins for Sisler, as explained above
Base-Running: +1 win for Sisler.
Fielding: +1 win for Sisler.
League Quality: +1.5 wins for Sisler (Baseball Reference and Dr. Chaleeko's league strength both support this view)
Season-Length adj. for 1918-19: +2 wins for Sisler (for 40 additional games played, credited at Sisler's 1917-20 rate of production)

So that, from the "what's the difference?" starting question prompted by wRC+, I arrive at a place that supports the view that, despite Sisler and Camilli having almost identical wRC+ scores during their peaks, Sisler's peak was significantly above the HoM first-base median, rather than being around the median, as Camilli's is. Sisler's superiority in any single facet of the game is not large, but it is consistent across hitting, fielding, and base-running, and it is boosted by the season-length and league-quality adjustment. None of the factors that contribute to the demonstration of Sisler's superior value are accounted for in wRC+, but nevertheless all seem to me to be substantive. Sisler should be evaluated as a player with a peak that was well above average by HoM standards, not as a player with a typical HoM peak.

Mefisto - No. What happened is that the last site that had Win Shares available to look up stopped doing that. I still want to use WS, but I can't very well use them if people can't fact-check me. If you know of some site that still has them, please let me know.

I have no idea why I'm being asked to use wRC+ as the measure of offense. I know just about nothing about that stat. I can't use Offensive Win Shares, because of the above paragraph, but OWAR is right there on BB-Ref, ready to fact-check. And Camilli's similarity to Sisler disappears just as soon as you use OWAR. Here are the numbers for the 7-year period (which I think is too long anyway):

Sisler
1916 4.2
1917 6.0
1918 5.3
1919 5.5
1920 9.2
1921 5.2
1922 8.2
Total 43.6

Camilli
1936 6.3
1937 6.0
1938 4.4
1939 5.3
1940 6.1
1941 6.2
1942 4.4
Total 38.7

There are two obvious adjustments to be made in Sisler's favor. First is the one Chris Cobb mentioned: Sisler's Browns, like all teams in 1918 and 1919 (WWI), played less than full schedules. I didn't bother to adjust for that in my original lists, because Sisler didn't need it, but it's something that should be adjusted for if Camilli starts to look even close to Sisler. Also, 1916 is not really a good season to use for Sisler. In 1916, Sisler was a sophomore, playing his first full season. His numbers, including OWAR, clearly indicate that he spent some of that year just adjusting to being in the Major Leagues. Camilli in 1936 was having his first full season, but was a four-year veteran. His 1916 OWAR are actually the highest on his list.

As far as I know, no one from Camilli's time, or later, ever considered Dolph to be the equal of George Sisler. I contend that the wRC+ numbers should be treated as a fluke caused by some quirk in wRC+, and not anything to be taken seriously. I imagine that Jaack disagrees with me about that.

A note about 7 years being too long. I am a MUCH bigger fan of the New Historical's Ranking System than I am of WS, and I am a BIG fan of WS. What I like about the New Historical Method is that it actually includes multiple ways of looking at a player, instead of just one. I find that three-year non-consecutive peaks and five-year consecutive primes work. If you try extending out to 7 years, you get in trouble. You end up having to include seasons that really don't fit the definitions of peak or prime. In other words, I am NOT a fan of Jaws.

I also checked to see if the NL had any number of at-their peak players in the top five list in place of those horrible years by Cobb, Speaker and Collins. It is true that Rogers Hornsby take the #2 spot away from Sisler. It is also true that no other NL player finishes ahead of Collins.

Doing the same for 1937-1941, Joe DiMaggio of the AL takes the #1 slot and Hank Greenberg finished ahead of Joe Medwick, right behind Camilli.

Adding on, Camilli was excellent during his peak in clutch value, at about +5 wins

He also appears to have been ready for a season or two in the PCL to be major league quality, though it probably adds at the margins, he didn't crush the league.

On the negative, he has pretty large favorable home/road splits.

However, Sisler has the same park issues, and is also at about 4 negative clutch wins in his peak.

On the negative, [Camilli] has pretty large favorable home/road splits.

His home-road splits are extremely closely linked to power-hitting, and especially home runs. Camilli had 54 more base hits at home than on the road, and he had 45 more home runs at home than on the road. From Camilli's record, it looks to me like his trajectory as a player pointed more toward him being major-league average player until he learned how to make use of the small outfields in the Baker Bowl and Ebbets Field to boost his home-run production and how to be highly selective at the plate. We don't have walk totals for Camilli's PCL years, but his home-run rates are considerably lower there than they would become in the majors.

He hit 53 home runs in 531 games in his 1931-33 PCL seasons: 1 home run per 10 games.
He hit 95 home runs in 733 away games in his major-league career: 1 home run per 8 games.
He hit 144 home runs in 756 home games in his major-league career: 1 home run per 5 games.

I think it reflects well rather than poorly on Camilli that he developed his offensive skills so effectively in the majors, but it's not surprising that he didn't get picked up by a major-league team sooner, as his PCL numbers don't project in the direction of his major-league accomplishments. He's an interesting player.

1 win of Sisler's oWAR advantage is due to first base having a better position adjustment in Sisler's time than in Camilli's. Doesn't close the gap, but the clutch value might. Sisler is 22.5 WAA to Camilli's 21.5. I agree that Sisler has a better peak, but I also agree that Camilli is at least in the same area code here, and is Sisler's equal as a hitter with separation coming in the other facets of the game. Does JAWS have to be consecutive? I don't pay attention to JAWS.

Thanks Brock.

Sisler is 22.5 WAA to Camilli's 21.5.

Sisler's peak should have schedule length adjustments for '18 and '19; that probably adds a couple more wins to his lead.

Does JAWS have to be consecutive? I don't pay attention to JAWS.

It doesn't. (And you shouldn't.)

[Bill Terry] was an elite defender (or appears to have been, did he benefit from the quirks of the Polo Grounds on defense)

Say more about this?
I know the Polo Grounds had acres of foul territory, but I don't remember anybody suggesting some 1b/3b took particular advantage of that.

Killer could mash, it's a matter of how bad his defense was to offset the offensive goodness.

During that legendary last 2 weeks of the 1967 season, when Carl Yastrzemski went 23 for 44 with 4 doubles, 5 homers, 8 walks (1.558 OPS)...
Killebrew - right there in the same pennant race - went 20 for 41 with 4 doubles, 5 homers, 9 walks (1.531 OPS)...
and made a key error in the last game of the season (his only error charged over those last two weeks), which lost the season to Yastrzemski's Red Sox.
I don't think anybody ever suggested Killebrew was not "clutch" - but it's funny how close his story (and Yaz's) came to being so different.

I am of the opinion that WAR's rating of [Sisler's] defense is indefensible, given his reputation.

His contemporary Hal Chase had the greatest fielding rep of any 1b at the time, and maybe ever, and (like Sisler) Chase led the league in errors there every year. Sisler was often compared to Chase, with the glove. I wonder if they were both just kind of hot-dogging fielders where people remembered the web gems but overlooked (or undercounted) the stylish plays that didn't quite come off.
(Chase was a crook, but I assume most of his errors were legitimate)

I am of the opinion that WAR's rating of [Sisler's] defense is indefensible, given his reputation.

First, fair enough; fielding stats before the modern era are dicey.

But second, regarding the drop in the second half of his career - didn't he develop double vision after his injury? I could see that affecting his fielding as much as his hitting.

His contemporary Hal Chase had the greatest fielding rep of any 1b at the time, and maybe ever, and (like Sisler) Chase led the league in errors there every year. Sisler was often compared to Chase, with the glove. I wonder if they were both just kind of hot-dogging fielders where people remembered the web gems but overlooked (or undercounted) the stylish plays that didn't quite come off.

FWIW, bWAR thinks Sisler was roughly average at 1B over the course of his career - and thinks Chase was AWFUL. My tendency (justified or not) is to assume that part of Chase's game throwing was in the field - not necessarily in making obvious errors, but in failing to make plays his reputation suggests he was capable of. A slightly late throw here, a foot pulled off the base there, a stretch not quite snaring a grounder as it gets by you...

Killebrew should rank higher for his defensive flexibility. His defense was not good, but it was survivable. If you had another good 1B you could play Harmon at 3b or LF and get away with it. Consider that the years McCovey and Cepeda were both with the Giants there was only one season (1963) that they were both full-time players. Whereas if you had both McCovey and Killebrew on the roster you could get both of them in the lineup.

If you want to deal with the positional adjustment in WAR, you need to know what it is. BB-Ref does not print it anywhere I can find, which is annoying (it makes them look like they're trying to cover it up), but they do say that they apply it to both OWAR and DWAR. Since they do print WAR, you can calculate out what PWAR must be. OWAR + DWAR must contain the actual OWAR and DWAR, without positional, plus PWAR counted TWICE. Final WAR only counts it once. So, OWAR + DWAR - PWAR = WAR, right? A quick bit of algebra, and you have PWAR = OWAR + DWAR - WAR. So, for Sisler's career, 54.3 + (-7.6) - PWAR = 54.9.

So, PWAR = 54.3 + (-7.6) - 54.9. That's -7.9.

Sisler's career PWAR is -7.9, which is very severe for the Era of Many Bunts. I'm not a fan of WAR's positional adjustments in general, and doubt tat this is correct, although it might be, considering that half of the career was played after 1923. There were still lots of players in the 1920s who bunted a lot, though. The 1B hd to field a lot of those bunts.

Once Chase got thrown out of MLB, people started to talk about what he did to throw games. Both hitting and fielding were mentioned. I think it may have been easier to throw a game on defense than on offense. If your team, other than you, is hitting everything in sight, there's not much you can do with your one plate appearance out of each 9. But you can kill whole opposing rallies by failing to catch throws and throwing bunts into RF. Chase was known to pay opposing pitchers to give him meaningless singles in order to keep his batting average high.

Errors can be badly overrated in fielding analysis. There just aren't that many of them compared to everything else. I would imagine that, for an HONEST fielder like Sisler, errors come from being very aggressive on ground balls and bunts. That would fit Sisler's reputation very well. Chase could have "attempted" to make impossible plays, ending up with errors that look like the product of exceptional effort.

Yes, Sisler's injury (a pitch to the head) did result in double vision, which is what happened to his game. If you look at WAR's DWAR numbers, they aren't great for the early part of his career, but they are awful for the second part. Win Shares (I know you can't fact check me on this, so I included WAR) shows Sisler with about double the Fielding Win Shares early than late (Batting Win Shares also drop by half, so Total WS also drop by 50%). Sisler was fielding (and hitting) at about HALF of his early career. This was concealed on offense by the overall rise in batting average, which kept Sisler's looking good. If you are putting up about half the fielding numbers late that you did early, you will end up with about 3/4 of the fielding ranking you would have if you had not been beaned. That's probably a good estimate of just how much happened to Sisler.

Killebrew racked up back-to-back 138 OPS+s - not far off his career 143 total - at age 35 and 36 in 1971-72.

then along came the DH in the AL in 1973 and... Killebrew followed with mediocre-at-best final seasons of 95, 90, and 93.

but don't blame the DH.

in 1973, Killer missed more than half the season with a knee injury, and he started 59 games at 1B and only 9 at DH (longtime teammate and also gimpy Tony Oliva handled DH, naturally).

in 1974, Killebrew did shift to 57 GS at DH to 33 at 1B (Oliva made ALL of the other Twins starts at DH). he was just toast, basically.

Harmon signed with the Royals to be their full-time DH in 1975, but he hit just .199 with 14 HR.

if only McCovey had gotten a chance to be a DH, right?

well, he did, however briefly.

in 1976, Willie was sold to the Athletics for the September stretch run. But while making all 7 of his Oakland starts at DH, he had just 5 singles in 24 AB (0 HR, 0 RBI, 0 R).

toast, right? McCovey then shows up back with the Giants in spring training in 1977, and wallops 28 HR and 86 RBI at 1B to earn NL Comeback Player of the Year. quite the last hurrah (followed by two less memorable seasons).

Sisler always reminds me of Ernie Banks - the back of their baseball cards make it look at first glance like a longevity or at least prime argument, but the bulk of it actually is bigtime peak and then a back half of very meh play for a long time.

Brock,

The positional adjustment in bWAR can be approximated a bit more easily from the "rpos" column. That is the positional adjustment--runs for position--, applied to the player for that season. For Sisler, it's -85 for his career. Your calcuation of -7.9 WAR as his exact positional adjustment is more accurate, as it takes account of the runs/win ratio for Sisler's career, but it's handy to be able to grab a number from a column without having to do calculations.

bWAR position adjustments for each season from 1871-2017 can be found here, table just before halfway down the page. (Not sure why it cuts off in 2017, but obviously that's sufficient for all of the players being discussed here.)

Eric j - THANKS! I found this page once, poking around in BB-Ref, and wrote a whole article about that chart. Aside from it's being unreadable - (for those of you who haven't seen it, the numbers are in a spreadsheet format, except that all of them have all the trailing zeros that can fit in the cel, so the thing just reads like one unending line-width number after another. Since the chart only uses ONE decimal point, this is ridiculous. Someone needs to go into Excel or whatever and change the formats to "one decimal place" - it trips over every possible obstacle on its way to savagely overusing a quick and dirty method Bill James cooked up in the New Historical to deal with the single issue of the change in the defensive spectrum between 2B and 3B. The New Historical has one little article about that, dealing with that one issue and nothing else, and someone at BB-REf just swiped the method and used it wholesale, with catastrophic results. But I lost the url and couldn't find it again, until you linked to it just now. Thanks Again. The article was useful in my advocacy of Lou Brock for the Hall of Merit, since Brock takes a false beating from the method reflected in the chart. Now I can write about that again, because I can reference the chart itself.

Chris - I appreciate your info, but I have a specific use for "PWAR" that makes me calculate it directly. My opinion is that the positional adjustments are not a good idea in the first place, and should never be applied to offense in any way, even if you think they are useful on defense. Being able to extract "BWAR" from OWAR and "PWAR" is something I value all the time, to get what WAR actually rates a player's offense to be. I didn't do that for Sisler, because I was commenting on his characteristics as a whole player, not just a hitter. The digression about Camilli was the only thing that got me writing about Sisler the hitter.

While the Sisler convo was interesting, your ballot did make me notice that you're quite far from consensus on Killebrew v Greenberg, bj...did you get them mixed up with each other? You have a stated reason for being (extremely) low on Thomas, but Greenberg that far down (cuz he wasn't as good when he came back after missing basically four seasons to the war?) is hard for me to get my head around. Nothing against Will Clark, but Greenberg's *career* OPS is higher than any season Clark ever had.

Time to re-rank pitchers next. Last time we ranked pitchers

Pre-1893
1893-1923
1924-1958
1959-1986+

Since then we have elected:
Rick Reuschel, David Cone, Roger Clemens, Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez, Curt Schilling, Mike Mussina, John Smoltz, Roy Halladay, Mariano Rivera, Dick Redding, Luis Tiant, Johan Santana, Andy Pettitte. That's 16 pitchers.

Only Dick Redding fits into a older era (1893-1923). There was a pretty clear top 6 and next 7-10. I have Redding fitting pretty neatly between #6 Nichols and #7 Plank.

Everyone else is after 1959. Should we rank 1986-2023 as a 12 member cohort or pull in the other 24 pitchers from 1959-1986? Do we redo 59-86 with Reuschel and Tiant or split the two groups in half with 18-20 pitchers in each group?

Here's the post 1959 list

Bert Blyleven
Jim Bunning
Steve Carlton
Don Drysdale
Dennis Eckersley
Rollie Fingers
Bob Gibson
Rich Gossage
Fergie Jenkins
Sandy Koufax
Juan Marichal
Phil Niekro
Jim Palmer
Gaylord Perry
Nolan Ryan
Bret Saberhagen
Dave Stieb
Don Sutton
Tom Seaver
Hoyt Wilhelm

If we split in two by debut season here are the lists:

Wilhelm 1952
Koufax 1955
Bunning 1955
Drysdale 1956
Gibson 1959
Marichal 1960
Perry 1962
Niekro 1964
Tiant 1964
Palmer 1965
Jenkins 1965
Carlton 1965
Sutton 1966
Ryan 1966
Seaver 1967
Fingers 1968
Blyleven 1970
Gossage 1972
Reuschel 1972
------------------
Eckersley 1975
Stieb 1979
Clemens 1984
Saberhagen 1984
Brown 1986
Cone 1986
Maddux 1986
Glavine 1987
Smoltz 1988
Schilling 1988
Johnson 1989
Mussina 1991
Martinez 1992
Rivera 1995
Pettitte 1995
Halladay 1998
Santana 2000

https://www.baseballthinkfactory.org/hall_of_merit/discussion/combined_pitchers_ballot

FYI

There is a nice break in debuts between Spahn (1942) and Roberts (1948) with Ford (1950) coming along for the ride. There is also a break between Vance (1915) and Rogan (1920).

DL, the split you've just proposed looks reasonable to me.

On the other hand, if we want to keep this round's lists more closely aligned with the prior divisions, the break year could be 1980, which would keep Eckersley and Stieb with the group in which they were previously included, while Saberhagen would switch to the later group. Eck and Stieb are transitional figures and so would make sense in either group, I think.

Also, I think two corrections are needed for the list of pitchers in post 92. It includes Bruce Sutter, who hasn't been elected, and it misses Kevin Brown (debut year 1986), who was elected in 2011.

There is also a nice break in debuts between Spahn (1942) and Roberts (1948) with Ford (1950) coming along for the ride.

Billy Pierce's debut year was 1945. Bob Lemon's debut as a pitcher was 1946. I think it makes sense to keep the pitchers through Whitey Ford with the earlier cohort: they all did most of their work prior to expansion and the Little Deadball Era. In general, keeping the lists as consistent as possible from one round of ranking to the next makes the results more clearly comparable, which seems a benefit.

There is also a small break between Sabathia (2001) and Greinke (2004). Oswalt is 2001, Buehrle is 2000 and Hudson is 1999. I could hold the most recent era pitcher ballot until we elect Sabathia next year.

Also, I think two corrections are needed for the list of pitchers in post 92. It includes Bruce Sutter, who hasn't been elected, and it misses Kevin Brown (debut year 1986), who was elected in 2011.

You are correct, I will edit.

In general, keeping the lists as consistent as possible from one round of ranking to the next makes the results more clearly comparable, which seems a benefit.

Ok. Then we will re-rank 1893-1923 with Dick Redding. Then re-rank 1924-1958 without any new electees but with more info for NGL pitchers. Then I propose ranking Wilhelm-Eckersley (20 pitchers) next and waiting on Stieb-Sabathia until after we elect CC.

I'm in agreement to discussion as well.

Delaying the modern candidates would also give us a decent chance that we elect one of Tim Hudson or Kevin Appier from the high backlog.