Looks like a perpetual backlogger, but he was a lot better than most people gave him credit for.

Maybe our first foray into Japanese baseball, if I am remembering correctly?

Does anyone have a stats line for him for 1977-78?

I don't know how to format, but here are Davis' Japanese stats:

Year G PA AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI TB Sac SF K BB IBB HBP SB CS GIDP AVG OBP SLG
1977 72 302 288 47 88 13 2 25 63 180 1 1 18 10 1 2 10 3 6 .306 .332 .625
1978 127 532 509 67 149 21 4 18 69 232 0 6 24 12 2 5 12 3 6 .293 .312 .456
Totals 199 834 797 114 237 34 6 43 132 412 1 7 42 22 3 7 22 6 12 .297 .319 .517

Here's the link, if anyone can't read the stat lines:

Willie Davis NPB stats

I think that Clay Davenport has written at some point that the Japanese leagues are, in the last ten years, about 93-95% QoP compared to the majors. If I am correctly remembering this, then his BA/SLG would be

at 93%
1977 .284/.541
1978 .272/.394

at 95%
1977 .291/.564
1978 .278/.411

I think the Japanese leagues also played a 130 game schedule, but I'm not sure. If so, he'd obviously see a little boost in the counting stats.

IMO his Japanese stats might push him up to the top 30 CFs ever, but not enough to get near a ballot.

Are league stats available for the Japanese Leagues? We could do a better job of assessing Davis if we could get OPS+ . . .

Unless there is good information to the contrary, I would assume that the JaL were somewhat lower in quality in the 1970s than in the 1990s: a 88-90% translation rather than 93-95% seems appropriate to me.

Davis was around a major-league average player in 1976: his 1977 performance in Japan certainly suggests that he had another year in him of about that quality. 1978 seems to be a significant decline, consistent with his being a replacement-level player in 1979 when he returned to the U.S.

Without having access to league-wide data, doing full translations, or identifying major-league comps to assign win shares, I'm inclined to give Davis 20-22 win shares for his Japanese play: 10-12 for 1977 (reduced from an average season for playing time) and 8-10 for 1978 (reduced from an average season due to decline in quality).

Does that sound reasonable?

If, when I do a full study of him, that additional credit would be enough to get him into borderline territory, I would do a more exacting translation, but if he's still clearly below the in-out line, it probably wouldn't be worth the trouble.

Are league stats available for the Japanese Leagues? We could do a better job of assessing Davis if we could get OPS+ . . .

Davis played his two seasons in Japan with different teams, in different leagues. He played for Chunichi Dragons in the Central League in 1977, and then for Crown Lighter Lions in the Pacific League in 1978. Here are the team stats for those leagues (they're not totalled, but a few minutes with a spreadsheet would provide league stats):

http://www.japanbaseballdaily.com/pennantrace1977CL.html

http://www.japanbaseballdaily.com/pennantrace1978PL.html

Is there a line in the constitution saying it's mandatory to count Japanese league stats? Or is it optional?

Is there a line in the constitution saying it's mandatory to count Japanese league stats? Or is it optional?

that's a joe/john question, but...

since Davis played in MLB in 1979, I'd say that there's every reason to count them. I think the constitution would exhort you to take the question of whether to count them or not very seriously since it's not entirely certain at this juncture WHY Davis went eastward. If he did so because he was washed up and needed a lower quality league to maintain his career, that would be one thing, but his 1975 and 1976 seasons check in at 100 and 97 by OPS+, which while not optimal, isn't the kind of tail-end of career that screams washed up.

In 1977, Davis's Japanese League had 29538 PA, 26051 ABs, 7053 hits, 11056 TB, 2485 BB, 559 SH, 178 SF, 264 HPB per the link above.

League averages .271/.332/.424
Willie's averages .306/.332/.625 = 113 AVG+/100 OBP+/147 SLG+/147 OPS+

For 1978: 28894 PA, 26007 AB, 6890 H, 10264 TB, 1876 BB, 452 SH, 230 SF, 328 HPB

League averages .265/.313/.395
Willie's averages .293/.312/.456 = 111 AVG+/100 OBP+/115 SLG+/115 OPS+

Turns out both are 130 game seasons.

I don't know if the Japanese Leagues used the DH in those years or not. So two work ups for Davis that translate his performance into the NL or AL depending on the DH status, using .88 as Chris suggested above.


1977 non DH league: .260/.285/.449 in 90 games, 324 AB, 101 OPS+.

1978 non DH league: .247/.270/.331 in 158 games, 572 AB, 73 OPS+

1977 DH league: .264/.289/.460, 104 OPS+

1978 DH league: .254/.271/.342, 77 OPS+

These are not bona fida 100% Dr. Chaleeko translations, but just about. I'm still playing around a bit with the walks/OBP stuff a bit and will iron it out as we go along with Japanese guys.

Anyway, a rough translation sees Davis as continuing on the path his U.S. stats show him on. He's at the league average, then declines in 1978 to very same depth he reaches in 1979 in a half year.

Now if you plug in his translated OPS+ into the documented ones you get this for his last five seasons:

104
100
97
101
73
71

I can only hope that all Japanese translations hit the mark this closely. More to Trevor's point, I think it represents evidence that Davis' career was not over and that the two years bewteen his 1976 and 1979 stateside years should probably be looked at very carefully.

As a peak voter, Willie's Japanese numbers aren't going to make any difference to me. I agree with Doc, he is well short of the ballot.

But much better than most people would probably give him credit for. There are lots and lots of "great" players not getting votes. Willie is another.

Anytime I hear Willie Davis's name, my first thought is "3 errors in Sandy Koufax's last game" which is unfair. He was a very good player. Has anyone out there ever seen any film of them (1966 World Series Game 2)? I never have, the years of day baseball and in those days (junior high, not the "middle school" name they use now) I never thought to watch local news. Were his errors understandable (bad sun) or just bad plays (2 on flyballs, one on a throw)? Of course Jim Palmer did pitch a shutout that day too.

One thing that people said at the time - they said that Davis was the fastest player in baseball. They made a point of saying that because he was a teammate of Wills - he was faster than Wills, faster than Brock. It's not clear to me what evidence that was ever based on.

Two of the places you'd look for that speed in his statistical record would be range factor in CF and triples. Both are subject to park effects. In particular, Dodger Stadium has a relatively small amount of area in CF, cutting down on both CF range and on triples.

In the NBJHBA, James does a translation of Davis's statistics to another time and place.

Davis played 2,237 games in CF. That's A LOT!

And I have a Japanese Translation Method in place. Just need to plug Davis' numbers in...

What are our rulings with Japanese numbers? If we aren't going to include Sadaharu Oh and company, why include Willie Davis or, down the line, a guy liek Cecil Feidler's numbers? At the same time Davis and Fielder have had very significant MLB career and their japanese stats aren't different than Cuban Winter League or Mexican League stats in this context.

I have no problem with including Davis' Japanese stats but I am not all for doing Oh's. So what is the cut-off? 6 years in MLB? 10 years? A majority? Where would Ichiro, Matsui, etc. go? Of course by the time we are voting on Ichiro and Matsui (assuming we are still doing this project and I hope we are) we may have already done a comb over of the japanese leagues and may have everything figured out.

The consensus decision on the Japanese Leagues, which I won't even pretend to understand, was that they are only relevant if the player ever played in the US. So Davis, Fielder, Ichiro!: yes; Oh: no.

>The consensus decision on the Japanese Leagues, which I won't even pretend to understand, was that they are only relevant if the player ever played in the US. So Davis, Fielder, Ichiro!: yes; Oh: no.

And this is consistent with what we did with the Carribean leagues.

He played for Chunichi in 1977 and Crown Lighter in 1978.

In BP 2006, the park factors for Chunichi were reported as 945, 945 and 937 for 2003-2005. Anyone have any idea if it was such a severe pitcher's park in the late 70s too?

As for Crown Lighter, they became Seibu the next year, a team which is still around -- this according to baseballreference.com. At the Seibu official web site there appears to be no "history" section, though I must admit my head was spinning trying to navigate it. In a Google search I learned that the Crown Lighter Lions played in Kyushu, in southwestern Japan. Couldn't find any park data on Kyushu.

I don't know my Japanese provinces from my cities, from my ***, from a hole in the ground. :) But it appears that Kyushu is a province or region, and Fukuoka is the biggest city in Kyushu. Baseballreference.com shows that the Crown Lighter Lions were owned by the Fukuoka Baseball Corporation, so perhaps the Lions played in Fukuoka.

Fukuoka has a current team, with park factors reported in BP 2006 as 950, 953, and 952. Of course I have no way of knowing if they are playing in the same ballpark (probably not), and even if they are, it's been almost 30 years. But it has been fun looking this stuff up.

P.S. I believe Fukuoka was a common phrase hurled by Expos', Nationals' and Brewers' fans when a certain player was not having a good outing. :)

I think that Clay Davenport has written at some point that the Japanese leagues are, in the last ten years, about 93-95% QoP compared to the majors.

You are correct. His current thinking (from the BP web site) can be paraphrased as follows: He wrote in BP 2001 that Japanese baseball was about Triple A level. The Triple A multiplier is .860. He thinks he was wrong in BP 2001. He followed with a conclusion that in the last ten years or so Japanese baseball is .941, and wrote a subsequent article saying he thought it was perhaps slightly lower, at .92 or .93, but definitely above Triple A level.

That doesn't help us with the 1970s, and we probably can't get much help in that regard, since there wasn't as much switching between MLB and JPL at that time and therefore less comparative data.

My hunch would be that in the 1970s, the Japanese leagues were not as strong as they are now. I don't know if they were at Triple A level, but I'll probably split the difference between Triple A and the current multiplier, and use something like .89.

I've sent an e-mail to the heads of the SABR Japanese baseball committee asking if they know of any sources indicating ballpark dimensions or other park factors in the late 1970s. I'll let you know if I hear anything.

Response from SABR's Rob Fitts, Chairman of the Asian Baseball Committee, regarding ballpark data from the 1970s in Japan:

"there are no studies in English that I know of. most Japanese parks in the late 1970s were 91-92 meters down the line (295-298 ft) and 120 meters (394 ft) to CF."

>most Japanese parks in the late 1970s were 91-92 meters down the line (295-298 ft)

Holy ####.

I'm willing to take Davis's Japanese numbers. However, using what Dr. Chaleeko posted, I get something that contributes very little in my offensive system. Overall, I have Davis placed quite clearly behind Pinson, and Pinson didn't make my top thirty.

I'm willing to take Davis's Japanese numbers. However, using what Dr. Chaleeko posted, I get something that contributes very little in my offensive system. Overall, I have Davis placed quite clearly behind Pinson, and Pinson didn't make my top thirty.

That's about where I am with Davis, too.

I've sent an e-mail to the heads of the SABR Japanese baseball committee asking if they know of any sources indicating ballpark dimensions or other park factors in the late 1970s. I'll let you know if I hear anything.

In 1977, the Dragons played in Nagoya Stadium, dimensions: 300/390/300
In 1978, the Lions played in Heiwadai Stadium (their last year in that park I believ), dimensions: 302/400/302

Was the typical Japanese stadium in the 70s a symmetrical Baker Bowl or early '60s LA Coliseum? Both boosted runs 10% or more (and probably boosted home runs even more). If that's true, and there's also a 10% league quality discount, Japanese stats during this era won't help much of anyone.

As far as I've been able to tell, almost all Japanese Parks were very symmmetrical.

Davis' Japanese Parks are, by my rough estimate, close to neutral.

However, there is about a 7% difference in the SET of Japanese Parks to the SET of MLB parks (current parks, not 1970's) - or in other words, moving from a neutral Japanese Park to a neutral MLB park will reduce a batter's stats by 7% BEFORE applying any competition adjustment.

Translating him into 1977 NL Neutral Park, and using a .90 multiplier, I get:

G-90
AB-346
R-47
H-97
2B-16
3B-3
HR-21
RBI-63
BB-11
IBB-1
HB-1
SO-25
SB-12
CS-6
SH-0
SF-1
GDP-8
AVE-.281
OBP-.304
SLG-.531

Anytime I hear Willie Davis's name, my first thought is "3 errors in Sandy Koufax's last game" which is unfair.

My only recollection is the three errors in Jim Palmer's game.

My other thought is Bill James judgment that he was hurt more by time and place than any other (prominent?) (recent?) player (non-pitcher?). That is a memory or reading about WDavis maybe 20 years after seeing him on TV.

He was a very good player. Has anyone out there ever seen any film of them (1966 World Series Game 2)? I never have, the years of day baseball and in those days (junior high, not the "middle school" name they use now) I never thought to watch local news.

I saw the game live on TV after school --elementary school, I think they still call it? (Seriously, I think "junior high" implies 3-year high school and "middle school" implies four, same then and now.)

Were his errors understandable bad plays (2 on flyballs, one on a throw)? Of course Jim Palmer did pitch a shutout that day too.

In my mind's eye, WDavis wears sunglasses and an announcer says he lost it in the sun but I don't recall which one and I don't bank on it, either. He made the errors all in a row and broke open the game --"broke open" in 1966 world series context.

Retrosheet shows top of the fifth in Dodger Stadium. That might be shades hades on a sunny weekday.

ORIOLES 5TH: Powell singled to left; On a bunt Johnson popped to
catcher in foul territory; Blair reached on an error by W. Davis
[Powell to third, Blair to second]; Etchebarren reached on an
error by W. Davis [Powell scored (unearned) (error by W. Davis),
Blair scored (unearned) (error by W. Davis), Etchebarren to
third]; Palmer struck out; Aparicio doubled to left [Etchebarren
scored (unearned)]; Blefary made an out to right; 3 R, 2 H, 3 E,
1 LOB. Orioles 3, Dodgers 0.

From "Black and Blue" by Tom Adelman, about the Dodgers, Orioles and 1966 Series:

"Both Alston and Blair would agree that when a ball got directly in the sun, nothing could help. Tommy Davis, Ron Fairly, and Maury Wills would point out how much further south the sun was at this time of year, which made it even tougher on the center fielder, and it was always especially harsh at this hour.
...
But this time too Davis had lost the ball. It had climbed like the last fly, and then just vanished into the sun. He looked up at the sky imploringly, spread his arms wide, Job-like, beseeching. Willie recalled saying to himself right then, \"####, here's that same kind of ball."

Kiko, can you please give some background to your Willie Davis rank?
He's a bubble guy with Baseball Reference and is easily in with Baseball Gauge or Baseball Prospectus.
He's woefully short when I look at your Win-Loss Records, and he doesn't fair much better by Dan Rosenheck's WARP.
A clutch situational hitter to add extra spice.

Thanks in advance!

wow, I had an eerily similar experience as a kid.

impossible sun field (though playing LF), and three consecutive Senior League RH batters crush balls in my direction. I see them hit the ball toward me - then, nothing. I freeze each time - and they all wind up way over my head. I had no chance of catching any of them anyway, in retrospect, but I never felt so humiliated at the time. Yeah, I returned to the bench in tears.

I also remember that an hour later, the manager of the other team - who lived in neighborhood - drove past and expressed genuine concern of how I was doing. Um, he was now delaying our Capture the Flag game, so I was doing fine until he stopped, lol.

It was easier to be 12 back then, for sure.

Kiko, can you please give some background to your Willie Davis rank?

Sure. Very good baserunner, although his baserunning decisions are kind of low (he wasn't a huge basestealer, and wasn't a huge OBP guy for much of his career). One of the best defensive CF by my system, but fielding is less important in my system than in WAR.

He actually ends up ranking lower than I would have guessed, considering how I rate his fielding and baserunning.

His batting looks to be a bit below-average (he's just over .500 win percentage for his career, but he played his entire career in leagues with pitcher batting, so .500 is below average for a non-pitcher). In terms of batting, he seems to do well in speed-based components (what I call Components 5, 6, 7 - pretty good at beating out infield hits, a lot of triples (he led his league twice; had 10 or more in a season 5 times), didn't hit into many double plays), didn't walk a lot, not a ton of power. He looks slightly better in context (pWOPA, pWORL) than context-neutral. Terrible postseason record.

Looking at his player page, one thing I notice is that Player won-lost records think that Davis's batting was legitimately bad (sub-.500) from 1965 - 1968. In other words, my system says his record isn't just a function of playing in a low-offense era, but was worse than before and after (i.e., he was hurt by the mini-Deadball Era more than average). Baseball-Reference kind of agrees - from 1965-68, he has an OPS+ of 93, with 1965, in particular, being terrible (OPS+ of 76). I think his offensive value was very hit/BA-driven: when he was hitting .280 - .310 (1962, 1964, 1969-74), he was a pretty valuable player - and was on base enough to take advantage of his baserunning skill; but when his batting average dropped to .250 or so, he didn't have enough supplementary skills (walks, power) to maintain value.

One thing that hurts him there is that the positional average for CF was pretty high during his career. His career positional average is .515, which is about what CF ran from the mid-50's through the '60's; CF had a much lower PosAvg before and after that - see here. One thing I've thought about is trying to maybe smooth out the positional averages, at least for my context-neutral stats (eWOPA, eWORL), which would help him a bit, although I'd be surprised if it was enough to get him onto my ballot. But I may try to look into doing something like that over the next few months.

Here's an article I put together looking at the 1960's. Davis was one of the decade's top baserunners, best defensive CF of the decade, but doesn't even show up among the top 10 overall CF (Mays and Mantle are 1-2, of course; Jimmy Wynn is #3).

Thanks Kiko, as you mention the position average being particularly tough, I am giving him a 10% boost, still WAY short, but pushes him back into the gray area when I consider the others systems.

Doc, the Hall of Miller and Eric has elected Willie Davis.
Where does Willie place for you in the 2018 ballot cycle, and amongst CF all-time?

Glad this thread came back to the fore. I hadn't looked at him closely since he didn't get any votes last year and wasn't a new eligible. He's definitely worth a closer look. He seems to do well by DRA based Defensive WAR (12.1 Def WAR, about 18% of combined offense-defense). Any issues with Dodger stadium in the 1960s skewing CFers? Because I'm looking at a guy who put up 13 straight years of All-star caliber WAR from 1962-1974 with a couple slightly above average years and a pretty much exactly average year thrown in. He looks a like a really good 'career' guy and a pretty good guy in my 8-year prime measurement as well.

I've got a little JAWS rip-off stat that I use to create initial rankings of players. The only difference between Jaffe's and Doc's is that I use (1.22 x WAR7) + career WAR then divide by 2.22. This gives me a very slight peak orientation. My in/out line is usually around 50 for position players (except catchers who are more like 40.0-45.0. BTW, I call this thing CHEWS (Chaleeko's Equivalent War System) since I use my own adjusted WAR and because the acronym is apt.

Keep in mind that CHEWS only represents an initial estimate, not the final decision.

Anyway, here's my CF rankings down to the 25th best eligible CHEWS. Non-yet-eligibles are in italics.

116.3 Cobb [Strongly suspect this is low because he has no known rGIDP, and he'll have a lot of it as a fast lefty, line-drive hitter]
113.6 Mays
107.9 Speaker [See Cobb comment]
87.0 Mantle
66.3 Griffey, Jr.
66.2 J. DiMaggio [Probably passes Griffey once arm and baserunning info are known]
62.4 Hamilton [See Cobb comment]
59.6 Ashburn
56.7 Beltran
56.5 Hines
56.0 Edmonds
55.1 A. Jones
52.1 Lofton
51.4 Snider
50.7 J. Wynn
50.5 Carey [Intuition: Carey is missing a lot of rBaser due to lack of PBP, even though he's got a very high rBaser estimate already (+88). But consider that his known SB success rate is 80%. 80%!!!! In context that's way better than Raines or Beltran. Their leagues stole in the range of 67-72% successfully. We don't know the rate of Carey's leagues, but we know that the AL's rates were as low as 55% in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, and that they hovered around 60% or less. So his net steals value will be staggering compared to his leagues. If we just use the .18/-.37 sb/cs values from extrapolated runs as stand-ins (XR is for 1955-1999, but good enough for this purpose), Carey's known steals are worth +40 runs net, and his leagues (using a 58% success rate) are worth -28 runs net. Unless my math is way off, the league is a lot better than I think it was, or Carey turns out to be a really bad runner in steals, advancement, pickoffs, and outs-on-base compared to the league, he's going to be well over 100 rbaser. Plus his DP avoidance is missing, and he was a fast switch hitter, which should give him some advantage. Carey may also turn out to be a good thrower. This one's not as certain because all we have are positional assist rankings to go on. But he led in LF twice and finished 2nd once in the three full years we know about him in LF. Transitioning to CF, he led the league in CF assists six times in ten years and finished in the top five two other times. In one year in RF as a 37 y/o he finished third in assists. Once we actually know the granular arm stuff, he will zoom upward. He's probably sitting on a minimum of 50 "missing" runs. We could be ignorant of as much as 100 missing runs depending on what the PBP looks like.]
49.2 W. Davis
====in/out========
48.9 Gore [Too many 1880s guys already]
47.9 Browning [Ditto]
47.0 Be. Williams
46.7 Griffin [And too many 1890s guys]
46.6 Cedeno
46.5 C. Lemon
46.3 Trout [What is wow, Alex?]
45.4 Butler
44.9 Duffy
44.8 Damon
44.3 W. Wilson
44.0 K. Puckett

That's the top 25 eligibles. As you can see there's a clutch of guys very close to Davis and the border. However, I haven't yet created estimates for Negro Leaguers. I would reckon that Charleston, Torriente, Hill, and Stearnes would be immediately over the line. It's likely also that Bell would be a strong candidate. I'm forgetting someone else....

Now, Doby is someone I want to mention. He's at 43.0, and he's about 29th right now, but I don't have Negro League estimates in this list. His pre MLB work is likely enough to push him up to or over my in/out line.

Two other interesting (to me) names are Fielder Jones (42.4) and Edd Roush (40.1). In both cases you have a lefty swinger, which usually means positive rGIDP value. Jones appears on BBREF as a -11 runner. Until we have CS and PBP baserunning, we have no clue if that's a reasonable estimate, but if feels a little low to me intuitively. Seamheads has him with positive SB v. avg value. Jones has a lot of assists and finished in the top five in his league five times. He have hidden arm value, but DRA's arm values are really hinky, and it has him at -3.6. Who knows?

Roush is similar in that he's got positive SB numbers on seamheads (much better than Jones), but the few seasons we have CS data for, he's barely over 50% (compare the incomparable Max Carey!). Then again, as late as the 1950s, the leagues stole at a below-60% clip. But he's a lefty with some speed, so he's bound to be good on the rGIDP front. His assists record in CF is intriguing since I've never heard him described as having a strong arm, but he was in the top five in his league 11 times (leading once). In CF that can mean that a player has a poor arm because there's little correlation between arm value and annual assists finishes.

But in both those cases, someday PBP may reveal some remaining value. For Jones to get into contention, he'd need to pick up something like 60-80 runs, depending on R/W conversion rates. That's what Sam Rice did, and I think he's an extreme case by far. Roush has a little better peak than Jones but less bulk. If he picked up lots of peak-season runs, he might be able to bump himself into contention as well (for my pHOM, that is, I know he's already in the HOM). But we won't know until we know.

Thanks doc, does davis include any Japan credit or roush management issues?

Surprised Gore falls short, is that with extrapolating seasons to 162 games? He might be in line for a smidge of mle credit if I have read into his minors history correctly.

Other negros: Willard brown, Monte Irvin, and Alejandro oms.

And the tough to place lip pike?

Dr. Chaleeko: on the list you posted in #36 where would Vada Pinson be? I see my own comment above (posted over a decade ago) that I thought that Davis was behind Pinson.

Dr. Chaleeko,
Someone awhile back mentioned you made DRA adjustments. Would you mind sharing those? Definitely curious.

Bleed: Does not include any MiL, Negro League, NPB, WAR credit, or labor stoppage credit. Not at all opposed, just haven't got all that into this new system yet because I am using it another project.

OCF: Darth Vada is right behind this group.

Carl: I use a mix of ⅔ DRA and ⅓ rField on BBREF. Except at C where I use 50/50. But in the OF because DRA arm ratings are not very reliable, I substitute BBREF's throwing rating, which is called rOF. However, before 1953, theee is no rOF because it is PBP based and BBREF hasn't yet updated for seasons before that. There are to other adjustments I make. Per Wizardy's suggestion, I adjust Red Six LFs positively since the Monster's construction at a rate of 10 runs per 1450 innings. The same adjustment is made for Rockies OFs in any pasture. Finally, Yankee LFs from the year OYS opened until its renovation in the mid 70s are marked down by 5 runs per 1450 innings because the tight corner and Death Valley together allowed LFs to pick up more POs than in other parks. Again this is all from Wizardry.

In my case, I also use a spin-off from JAWS in order to do preliminary rankings, in which I calculate the best ten years a player has, and also note the number of times in which they had 5+ WAR, the number of times they were among the best players in their league, and the number of times they were among the best position players in their league.

A preliminary finding, based on this:

Willie Mays: 16/15/15/100.4
Ty Cobb: 18/15/19/89.9
Tris Speaker: 17/15/18/83.8
Mickey Mantle: 11/11/11/83.4
Ken Griffey: 9/6/7/69.5
Joe DiMaggio: 9/9/12/66.2
Duke Snider: 7/5/7/60.7
Andruw Jones: 6/5/6/57.8
Richie Ashburn: 7/7/7/57.1
Carlos Beltran: 6/3/5/57.1
Billy Hamilton: 6/2/10/55.8
Jim Edmonds: 7/3/5/55.2
Kenny Lofton: 6/3/5/54.6
Jim Wynn: 6/3/4/54.1
Andre Dawson: 4/4/4/52.8
Larry Doby: 4/4/8/49.3
Vada Pinson: 5/2/4/48.6
Mike Trout: 5/5/5/48.5
Earl Averill: 4/3/5/48.0
Chet Lemon: 4/3/4/47.9
Cesar Cedeno: 5/3/5/47.3
Willie Davis: 4/1/3/47.1
Bernie Williams: 6/1/2/47.1
Dale Murphy: 6/3/5/46.9
Kirby Puckett: 3/2/3/46.8
Fred Lynn: 2/2/2/45.1
Brett Butler: 2/1/3/44.9
Max Carey: 3/4/7/43.3
Devon White: 4/0/4/42.8
Johnny Damon: 2/1/1/42.7
Wally Berger: 4/3/4/42.0
Curtis Granderson: 3/1/1/42.0
Mike Cameron: 2/0/1/41.7
Torii Hunter: 2/0/1/41.6
Ellis Burks: 3/1/1/40.5
Willie Wilson: 3/3/3/39.3

For position players other than catchers, I regard 50 WAR as the usual place to start a dividing line. There are fifteen players on this list with 50+ WAR, and, of these, the only one I have any doubts on is Andruw Jones, where it is dependent on how much I trust his defensive WAR.

As for those below 50: Larry Doby and Earl Averill both make it across the line due to two different sets of adjustments. Doby deserves Negro League credit, and I am reasonably convinced that Averill had a season equaling 5 WAR in the Pacific Coast League. Moreover, they also deserve a 5% adjustment because they played in the 154-game era, and equalization is needed in order to prevent disproportionate favoritism to post-1962 players.

Pinson, meanwhile, had three of his best four seasons in the 154-game era, and merits an additional point of WAR, bringing him to 49.6 WAR. Here, whether or not he should be in is a judgement call, based on how precise we regard WAR.

Max Carey has two adjustments to make- first, he lost 0.9 WAR compared to a 154-game schedule because the 1918 season was truncated, which brings him up to 44.2 WAR. He then goes up to 46.4 WAR after the 5% adjustment- not enough for my PHOM, but demonstrating that he was better than the raw total suggests.

Chet Lemon's career totals were effected by the 1981 strike- if we give him full credit for prorating his 1981 stats, he gains 2 full WAR and goes to 49.9 WAR, which is almost exactly the borderline. Dale Murphy doesn't do as well (as his 1981 wasn't one of his great years), but he also gains 0.9 WAR to get to 47.8 WAR.

Bernie Williams lost 2.2 WAR as a combined result of the 1994 and 1995 strikes, and this takes him to 49.3 WAR- at this point, much probably more the first person out to the last one in. Kirby Puckett does almost as well, gaining 2 WAR to get to 48.8 WAR.

In comparison, Willie Davis and Cesar Cedeno only would get credit for the 1972 strike. Davis gains 0.3 WAR, to get to 47.4- but Cedeno gets 0.4 WAR, and goes to 47.7.

So, what is the point of this exercise? Quite simple- looking at both the preliminary list and it after adjustments, I cannot justify admitting Willie Davis to my PHOM, or to the HOM overall. Even just looking at the center fielders with substantial MLB careers post-1904, he's 25th on the list, and is behind four people (Williams, Puckett, Murphy, and Cedeno) who I believe to be safely on the out side of the list. Once we add the Negro Leaguers (Charleston, Torriente, and Pete Hill, just for starters), the 19th-century players (Paul Hines, Pete Browning, George Gore, and possibly others), and those with other cases, he falls even farther.

Having said all that, I do ponder one thing. By my methods, the key years for his placement are 1965 to 1968, when he was overall an average player at best, and when his fielding seems to have been substantially worse in much of the period than usual. Does anyone know if there's any reason he struggled in these years?