Pvs results

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

A bit surprised to see Nichols ahead of Mathewson. Mordecai Brown, Joe McGinnity and Rube Foster fall. Jose Mendez rises.

Top six are abundantly clear, while Plank and Walsh seem solidly seven and eight. A four way tie for 10-13 is fun, and makes for a very clear middle tier with Rusie and Brown on either end. Brown is sort of the last 'clear' choice. He's not so far ahead of the next group, but there are enough voters who really like him that I think we can place him as a 'solid HoM' as opposed to a true borderline guy.

As always, going to hone in on the lower tier group - Faber, Griffith, McGinnity, Rixey, and Foster. Foster was discussed quite a bit in the previous thread - I think it's clear he's probably not a great HoM choice based on the newer data, but whose to say for certain. The other four guys, however, are very much in the melee with the other pitchers from this era still in HoM discussion - Vic Willis, Babe Adams, Urban Shocker, etc. Based on the current annual elections, I think it's clear this grouping is very much unsettled - pitchers are pretty much the only guys from pre-integration NL/AL that get any substantial attention. But I'm unsure if you dropped all of Faber/Griffith/McGinnity/Rixey into the current election pool that anyone from this era could get elected. It's such a tough group. For me, I know I'd have Griffith over the line, and probably Faber too, but Rixey is the only one of the group who would be on ballot for me (along with Babe Adams).

Odd note - going back to the old election thread, I'm astonished that Adams got no votes at all in his first election (1932) at a time when Lave Cross and Ed Konetchy were pulling down multiple votes. Some is obviously Win Shares not respecting pitching enough, but that's still astonishing to me.

Pitchers 1893-1923 Election History

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Unanimous First Ballot Electees 4: Young (all #1), Mathewson, Johnson (all #1), Alexander
First-Ballot Electees 8: Rusie, Nichols, Young, Walsh, Mathewson, Johnson, Alexander, Faber
Initial Top 10 placement 14: All First-Ballot Electees + McGinnity, Brown, Plank, Williams, Coveleski, Rixey
Started Outside Top 10 : Griffith (17), Waddell (12), Foster (21), Mendez (16), Redding (18)

10 or more years to election (7): Foster 10 (1923-32), McGinnity 15 (1914-1928), Rixey 30 (1939-1968), Mendez 54 (1932-1985), Griffith 60 (1912-71), Redding 83 (1937-2019)

CHRONOLOGY

Amos Rusie 1904. First-Ballot Electee. #2 on ballot behind Jack Glasscock. Appeared on 42 of 43 ballots and received 10 elect-me votes (5 were #1).
Kid Nichols 1911. First Ballot Electee. #1 on ballot. Appeared on all 44 ballots and received 40 elect-me votes, all of which were first-place votes, as it was an elect-one year.
Cy Young 1917. First Ballot Electee. Unanimous #1, receiving the top ranking on all 45 ballots cast.
Ed Walsh 1920. First Ballot Electee. #1 on ballot. Appeared on 44 of 46 ballots and received 17 elect-me votes.
Christy Mathewson 1922. First-Ballot Electee. #2 on ballot behind Nap Lajoie. Elected unanimously, receiving elect-me votes on all 46 ballots cast.
Eddie Plank 1924. #2 on ballot, behind Sam Crawford. Appeared on 45 of 46 ballots cast and received 23 elect-me votes. First eligible in 1923, when he finished in third place behind Crawford and Honus Wagner, who was a unanimous #1 electee in an elect-one year.
Mordecai Brown 1925. #2 on ballot behind Grant Johnson. Appeared on all 45 of 48 ballots and received 12 elect-me votes. First eligible in 1922, when he finished in third place behind Nap Lajoie and Christy Mathewson.
Joe McGinnity 1928. #2 on ballot behind Frank Baker. Appeared on 44 of 47 ballots and received 10 elect-me votes. First eligible in 1914, when he finished in 8th place.
Rube Foster 1932. #2 on ballot behind Louis Santop. Appeared on 40 of 51 ballots and received 6 elect-me votes.
Walter Johnson 1933. First Ballot Electee. Unanimous #1, receiving the top ranking on all 54 ballots cast.
Grover Alexander 1936. First-Ballot Electee. #1 on ballot. Elected unanimously, receiving elect-me votes on all 50 ballots cast (43 were first-place votes).
Joe Williams 1936. #2 on ballot behind Grover Alexander. Appeared on all 50 ballots and received 48 elect-me votes. First eligible in 1934, when he finished 5th behind Cobb, Speaker, Collins, and Lloyd, probably the strongest entering class of newly eligible candidates in the history of the game.
Stan Coveleski 1938. #2 on ballot behind Heinie Groh. Appeared on 49 of 53 ballots and received 12 elect-me votes. First eligible in 1934, when he finished in 8th place.
Red Faber 1939. First-Ballot Electee. #1 on ballot. Appeared on 44 of 53 ballots and received 6 elect-me votes.
Eppa Rixey 1968. #1 on ballot. Appeared on 28 of 47 ballots and received 8 elect-me votes. First eligible in 1939, when he placed 6th behind Red Faber, Max Carey, Lip Pike, Joe Sewell, and Hughie Jennings. (Clark Griffith was 7th that year.)
Clark Griffith 1971. #2 on ballot behind Warren Spahn. Appeared on 27 of 48 ballots and received 4 elect-me votes. First eligible in 1911, when he finished in 17th place.
Jose Mendez 1985. #1 on ballot. Appeared on 37 of 55 ballots and received 12 elect-me votes. First eligible in 1932, when he finished in 16th place.
Rube Waddell 1986. #2 on ballot behind Willie McCovey. Appeared on 32 of 52 ballots and received 6 elect-me votes. First eligible in 1916, when he finished in 12th place.
Dick Redding 2019. #3 on ballot behind Roy Halladay and Mariano Rivera. Appeared on 22 of 27 ballots and received 15 elect-me votes. First eligible in 1937, when he finished in 18th place.

COMMENTS

The original electorate’s voting is a less reliable guide to the current rankings of early pitchers than for any positional group we have seen so far. Several players who took over fifty years to earn election—Mendez, Waddell, and Redding—now rank solidly in the middle tier. The other player in the 50+-years-to-election cohort, Clark Griffith, is still in the lower tier, but he ranks ahead of four pitchers who were elected when he was on the ballot and passed over: McGinnity, Rixey, and Foster. None of those four were strong-consensus choices when they were elected, but the standing of all four of them has slipped significantly since the original voting, while the standing of Waddell, Mendez, Redding, and (to a lesser extent) Griffith has risen. The status of the top-tier candidates has been more stable, especially the top 9 of Johnson, Young, Alexander, Williams, Mathewson, Plank, Walsh, and Rusie: seven first-ballot electees and two who were squeezed out by all-time greats at other positions.

The churn, I think, derives from two factors. One is the ongoing process of developing solid analyses of Negro-League players based on the records of their performance rather than their reputation. This process has resulted in the rise in Mendez’s and Redding’s standing and the lowering of Rube Foster’s. The other is the rise in the replacement level used to assess pitchers, chiefly in the transition from Win Shares to other metrics, as Jaack has noted above. That has led to the drop in the positions of long-career, low-peak pitchers Faber and Rixey plus uber-innings-eater McGinnity and the rise of high-peak, shorter career pitchers Waddell, Mendez, and Griffith. The positions of the top 9 have remained very stable because they are strong in both peak and career, in reputation and in statistical record, so they remain at the top regardless of the perspectives that are prioritized by the electorate.

Excellent posts jaack and chris cobb...

The change in replacement level of WS with innings eaters vs higher peak guys doing better in war is an important distinction.

On McGinnity, did anyone give him bonus credit for minor league time?
While he broke in to the majors at age 28, it doesn't look like he'd be worthy of MLE credit from what I can gather.
After being an innings eater at the age of 37, the Giants released him.
Instead of joining an AL/NL team, he came an owner in the Eastern League and was a star for two seasons.

His success is enough that I decided to give him the coin/flip and ranked him ahead of Mendez at 14th overall.

Mordecai Brown had no repeat votes until the last vote on the ballot. Too bad, would have been fun

Bleed, I have not given McGinnity MiL credit, which is perhaps why I rank him slightly lower than you do. With respect to credit for pre-ML play, McGinnity was not notably successful in the minor leagues until he developed his submarine pitching motion in 1897, after which his rise to the majors preceded along a pretty normal trajectory: in that respect he was like the knuckle-ballers, whose careers start and late. His case for credit for post-ML play is, as you note, much stronger. I hadn't given any attention previously to the question of post-ML credit for him because his last two ML seasons look pretty clearly like a typical late-career decline. On the other hand, his performance in the Eastern League in his first two post-ML years is outstanding, making the case that he could have continued to pitch in the majors for those seasons, with reduced effectiveness but still above replacement level. Dr. Chaleeko's quality-of-play study doesn't yet include the Eastern League for McGinnity's seasons there, but given the ratings for adjacent leagues, it was likely in the .5-.6 range. He has evaluated the 1912 IL, which Newark moved into that season, and it was a very strong minor league, with a MLE quality of play factor of .87, which is closer to ML quality than modern AAA, and pretty close to what Dr. C finds for the Negro Leagues in the 1910s. The 1912 data point certainly suggests that there is a plausible case for several seasons of marginal MLE credit for McGinnity after he left the majors. He may well have been able to make more money as a pitcher-owner in the minor leagues than he could make as a below-average SP in the major leagues at that time, although he probably could have found a major-league contract somewhere if he had been willing to sign for less money.

As he continued to pitch in the minors until he was 54, if there were some sort of "lifetime achievement award" for dedication to the craft of pitching, McGinnity would be a good candidate for it, alongside his near contemporary String Bean Williams.