Player Name HOFm HOFs Yrs WAR WAR7 JAWS Jpos
Tim Hudson 66 42 17 58.1 38.3 48.2 61.5

Hudson is just over the line for me, in Chuck Finley territory. Someone I will gladly vote for at some point, but who is a few notches down the totem pole from the pitchers I've been voting for.

But then again, I'm considering rejiggering my pitching this year, so maybe/not.

Hudson is pretty much a dead ringer for Luis Tiant in my system. I didn't vote for Tiant last election, and won't vote for Hudson this one, but he could eventually make my ballot.

Agree with what has been said by everyone so far. I also have him similar to Finley in high, off-ballot territory for me, below a generous handful of pitchers who are one tier up from that. And I also consider him pretty close to my personal in-out line, which is what I feel about Tiant also.

Good work, gents :)

Player won-lost records are a big fan of Tim Hudson. Using my default weights, he's at 40.4 eWOPA (eWins over positional average) and 40.8 pWOPA (pWins ...).

Baseball-Reference only gives Hudson 31.3 WAA (30.0 pitching, 1.3 batting). Fangraphs doesn't show WAA, but since they use the same replacement level as BB-Ref, you should be able to just subtract the difference between BB-Ref's WAR and WAA from Fangraphs' WAR to get fWAA.

Fangraphs calculates their WAR two ways: using FIP and using RA9. Converting from WAR to WAA, they give Hudson 23.6 FIP-WAA and 37.7 RA9-WAA.

So, Tim Hudson's runs allowed (he had a career ERA+, for example, of 120) is way better than you'd expect from his peripherals (career ERA of 3.49, career FIP of 3.78). BB-Ref's WAA number comes in between the two Fangraphs numbers - as you'd expect. BB-Ref thinks that maybe 50-60% of Hudson's RA-FIP gap is to his credit, which certainly seems plausible on its face. Whereas, if we accept Fangraphs' numbers, Player won-lost records say Hudson actually deserves MORE credit than even his excellent RA9 would suggest. Which certainly raises an eyebrow, even from me.

Here's Tim Hudson's pitching page on my website. Hudson rates as above average at everything (he was also an above-average fielder and an above-average hitter for a pitcher). Within pitching, Hudson was very good against the running game (Component 1), good at preventing hits on balls in play (Component 5), good at limiting extra-base hits (Component 6), good at generating double plays in double-play situations (Component 7).

Component 3 is plate appearances where the batter doesn't put the ball in play - strikeouts, walks; Component 4 is plate appearances where the batter does hit the ball - including home runs. These are jointly estimated, so they're jointly .500 but not both .500. For Hudson's career, pitchers' Component 3 win percentage was over .500 (in aggregate, the wins from strikeouts were more than the losses from walks/HBP); Component 4 was below .500 (in aggregate, the wins from pop-ups, fly balls, and ground balls were less than the losses from line drives and home runs). Tim Hudson was above average - and above .500 - in both. Basically, beyond FIP, Tim Hudson was really good at avoiding line drives and generating relatively weak contact.

If I take these numbers at face value, Hudson's easily on my ballot, almost certainly in an elect-me spot, and might even be #1 overall. I have to think about whether I might want to temper them a little bit, though - and, if so, by exactly how much.

Hudson ranks 211th all time for me, right between Dwight Evans, Clark Griffith, Ken Boyer and Ted Lyons. He's a pretty easy HoM choice for me, and will be a first year PHoM inductee, along with Mark Buehrle. It looks like Jeff Kent will join them in my PHoM next year.