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Baseball Primer Newsblog — The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand Wednesday, December 28, 2011Cybermetrics: Why Didn’t The Writers Vote Johnny Mize Into The Hall Of Fame?Being that he saw his whole career…I once asked Madden the same exact thing.
Repoz
Posted: December 28, 2011 at 08:53 PM | 51 comment(s)
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1. Something Other Posted: December 28, 2011 at 09:46 PM (#4024596)Can anyone explain it?
Was he a dick? Was he the Dick Allen, the Albert Belle of his day? Did he run kids down while on horseback? Did he have an erroneous reputation as a bad fielder, the kind of thing that knocked Ted Simmons off the ballot?
Plus Mize only had 847 total AB in his last four seasons, so by the time his name came up, it had been 12 years since his last big season, 1948.
He was one of the best hitters in the game for six years, then disappeared for three years of WW II, then had three more monster years, then part-time.
And none of that justifies him having to wait so long.
I suspected Mize was overlooked for a couple of reasons --
First - he played on some really, really great teams. Medwick and Slaughter in St Louis (among others), then the great Yankee teams in the early 50s. Even his years with the NY Giants overlapped with (I think) a season or two of Ott and Lombardi (though I think both were near the end). Beyond a couple of seasons when Ott/Lombardi were sunsetting in NY (at which point he was off to war), it's hard to pick a point when one could definitively say that he was clearly the best player on his own team.
Second - while I don't think he was necessarily known as a malcontent - I do know he had a fair number of complaints about playing time both ends of his NY stay... someone else would have to speak to whether it went beyond that.
1B predecessor Ripper Collins was a stud in 1934 and 1935, with 128 and 122 RBI and leading the NL in OPS and SLG in 1934. Collins was 9th in OPS in NL in 1936, but started only 58 games because rookie Mize (who got the other 97 starts) was even better.
(The only other player to appear at 1B that year for the Cardinals was... future Dodgers manager Walter Alston, who whiffed in his only career MLB AB and made an error on one of his two fielding chances in the final game of the season).
Medwick's peak was 1935-39, so he got a slight head start on The Big Cat. Mize was a better player than Slaughter in 1940-41, but Slaughter was good. Mize went to the Giants in 1942, where the older Ott out-OPSd him 165-161.
Mize was by far the Giants' best player when he returned in 1946 (Ott, 37, went 5 for 68 that year for a .074 AVG. wow.), but missed the latter part of the season and was in only 101 G.
Mize again is the Giants' best hitter in 1947 (though C Walker Cooper went .305-35-122. yes, please!) and 1948, though Sid Gordon was right there with him in '48.
That was it for full-time duty.
I wonder if the solid part-time/pinch-hitting work for the Yankees hurt his cause? He mainly pinch-hit in 1952 and 1953, starting a total of only 36 games.
Was there a previous Hall of Famer who was a Manny Mota-type for 2+ seasons?
And he was on the ballot in the 60s, when the speed game was at its most popular, and big slow guys tended to be looked down upon. Ralph Kiner, who wasn't as good as Mize, but probably had a superficially better case (more total HRs and leading the league 7 straight times) took 15 years to get elected.
Greenberg -- 9 "real" elections
Mize -- not elected
Kiner -- under 5% in 60 and 62 -- strange election stuff during that early 60s era but inducted in his last year of eligibility I think
Allen -- not elected, other baggage
McGwire -- doomed, other baggage
You might even argue that Edgar and JuanGone are examples.
If you look at <=8500 PA and >=300 HR, you get 65 players, most obviously not HoFers by any stretch. But the HoFers in that group are Berra, Snider (11 ballots), DiMaggio, Mize (not elected), Klein (not elected), Kiner (15 years) and Greenberg (9 ballots). Piazza is also here and will likely make it. In this group by OPS+, Pujols leads the way at 170, Mac at 162, Mize and Greenberg at 158, Allen at 156. Lance Berkman is #8 at 146 and I don't think he's a "hit by a bus" kind of candidate.
There are several guys with reasonable (and mostly failing IMO) "borderline" cases -- Belle, Howard, Walker (not really a slugger type though), Cash, J Clark, R Smith (see Walker), Edmonds (see Walker), Andruw (see gold gloves), Ortiz. Edgar misses this list only because he had 8672 PA but his 147 OPS+ puts him only 1 point ahead of Berkman (in 1100 more PA). In some ways, Edgar has done better than you might think -- at least he's started out more like Greenberg than Allen.
Historically speaking, career length has always been a big deal for HoF voters. You want to make the HoF with under 8500 (9000?) PA while not playing C or CF -- you have to DESTROY the ball. Without roids, McGwire would have sailed in but then he also had almost 600 HR and "saved baseball" so he was the pinnacle of short-career sluggers.
But none of them had an easy time of it so Mize is not unusual in that way. Seems like they decided he was no Greenberg (who was below 50% until jumping 24 points in 55 and another 23 in 56). (Again, different rules in that he was getting good vote totals 2 years after retirement)
In essence, for hitters, there is really only a couple of truly pure peak cases voted in -- Kiner and Greenberg -- and they both took a good while. Lots of other guys are in because of great peaks but they still hung on for those 2-4 more seasons (e.g. Banks).
Also although I have no idea if this is true, part of it may be that they were still trying to figure out how to give war credit. I think DiMaggio was the first war guy to get elected and that happened in 55, the year of Greenberg's first big bump. I can imagine there'd been some guys giving war credit and other guys not until Joe D was "officially" eligible when they all decided it was a great idea. Doesn't really explain Mize though.
Were they counting years differently or something? There were gaps in the voting in the 60s, no odd years until '67, but surely they wouldn't count that against someone...would they? Kiner and Mize both became eligible in 1960, so there shouldn't be any difference in their length of eligibility.
I was taking a long to time to write my comment so I missed yours. Seems to make sense. But the voters seemed to like Kiner alot more, voting him in and in overlap years Kiner usually got more votes. Mize beat Kiner in MVP shares 2.46 to 1.31.
Cy
My guess:
1: He played his prime years in the late 30s early 40s NL- The NL deadened its ball after 1931, the AL did not- basically the Al/NL offensive split was like that between the IL and the PCL- Mize was as good a hitter as Greenberg- but Greenberg had better looking raw numbers, years like .328-36-170 and .337-40-183 and .315-58-146 and .340-41-150, so a "traditionalist" would certainly conclude that Greenberg was a distinctly superior hitter- even though their raw career totals are very close.
2: WWII, voters really didn't give WWII credit, they may have talked about it, but almost certainly none acted on it- at least not the way the HOM does, those 2 kissing years cost Mize 400 homers and 1500 ribbies
3; Greenberg- as Bill James noted his election in 1956 was heavily criticized at the time- and it came just after Mize's retirement and right before his voting eligibility- and Mize was a comparable player who was regarded (mistakenly IMHO) as inferior.
4: Duke Snider- by 1960 had passed Mize in career HR, the Duke waited 16 years after retirement to get in- and he ended up with 50 more homers
5: By 1970 Mize was down to 19th in career homers, behind guys like Colavito, Hodges and Kiner and a couple active players close behind (Kiner got in in 1975- and that set off a spate of angry MSM articles about the watering down of the hall)
Mize was hit by a double whammy- he was both underrated and lost time to WII that hurt his counting stats.
The voting of the 1950s and 1960s was genuinely funky. It isn't even fully coherent within its era, let alone as an extrapolative tool for today.
And Ralph Kiner's rise had something to do with his staying in the public eye as the Mets' announcer.
Another HOF head-scratcher: Goose Goslin, who amazingly never got more than 13.5% of the BBWAA vote.
Actually, it wasn't Greenberg's election that was criticized, but the process by which he was elected. Greenberg had more votes in 1955 than any candidate who was not elected and it was anticipated that he'd be elected in 1956 all along.
What happened in 1956 is that, for the first time, the ballot was sent to the electorate without a summary of the previous year's voting (in which Greenberg finished fifth and Joe Cronin sixth, behind the four players who were elected). The explanation that the BBWAA gave was that the voters had become lazy, voting for the leading returnees from the prior year's ballot, and that they wanted the electorate to give a fresh review to all of the eligibles. The upshot was that, without the previous year's vote readily available, 130 different players received votes, including many who were not eligible under the rules - and while Greenberg and Cronin were elected anyway, no one else got close, and only Red Ruffing among the others got over 50%. The outcry against that result was not aimed at Greenberg or Cronin, but at the number of *other* players who got votes, whether eligible or not.
-- MWE
For us over at the Hall of Merit - sure. We did position-by-position ranking votes, and here's the first base list:
1. Gehrig
2. Foxx
3. Anson
4. Mize
5. Brouthers
6. Connor
7. Greenberg
8. Murray
9. McCovey
10. Leonard
11. McGwire
12. Killebrew
13. (Joe) Start
14. (Will) Clark
15. (Mule) Suttles
16. Hernandez
17. Sisler
18. Terry
19. Beckley
One issue in evaluating Mize versus Greenberg: understanding that their offensive environments were different.
I think he didn't get in via the BBWAA for three related reasons: He wasn't seen as a superstar; the voters in his early eligibility years were quirky, to say the least; and his best years were in parks that were tailor-made for left handed power hitters.
Fun fact: On June 16, 1953, Mize got his 2000th hit on a 5th inning pinch single, in a game that saw the Browns beat the Yankees in Yankee Stadium. Nothing all that special about that, except that going into the game....
The Yankees had won 18 straight, the last 14 on the road as they swept the entire western half of the league
The Browns had lost 14 straight, all at home, as they were swept by the entire eastern half of the league
And Whitey Ford had yet to lose a game as a starter in his entire career, having gone 16 and 0 in 22 starts since he came up from the minors in 1950. Satchel Paige got the save, and in his only appearance that game against Mickey Mantle, he got him to strike out on a fouled bunt.
You have to wonder what sort of odds you could have gotten on the Browns prior to that game from a New York bookie. I didn't learn the score until I got to school the next morning, and I almost offered to bet my lunch that it was a lie, a false friend's cruel idea of a joke.
-- MWE
Home: .320/.406/.598/1.004
Road: .305/.389/.527/.916
Now Greenberg
Home: .338/.440/.681/1.121
Road: .289/.382/.529/.912
Looks very comparable in road games. They both had a career OPS+ of 158. Mize had about 1300 more PAs.
Here are Mize/Greenberg by best 5 seasons in OPS+ (400 PA)
186/171
178/171
176/170
176/169
172/166
Mize had 10 seasons with an OPS+ of 150 or higher. Greenberg had 7. (400 PAs)
These guys really are ridiculously close. Age 24-27 OPS+:
Mize 172
Kiner 169
Greenberg 167
Allen 165
Piazza 164
Klein 161
Also, it took the voters a LONG time to realize that the Lou Gehrig type of first baseman was here to stay and that the George Sisler type was no longer needed to field a bunch of dead ball era bunts. All the guys like Greenberg and Mize were delayed over that. - Brock Hanke
I did not know that. Thanks.
Cy
oh--and I left out: also led in BA
Add that to WWII taking out three near-prime seasons - and I think Mize probably has to win the worst timing 'award' (non-first half of the 20th century AA division).
1. Gehrig
2. Foxx
3. Anson
4. Mize
5. Brouthers
6. Connor
7. Greenberg
8. Murray
9. McCovey
10. Leonard
11. McGwire
12. Killebrew
13. (Joe) Start
14. (Will) Clark
15. (Mule) Suttles
16. Hernandez
17. Sisler
18. Terry
19. Beckley
Was this list done a few years back and only included HOF eligible players? Cuz it looks pretty outdated without Bagwell, Thomas, Thome, Palmeiro, and Pujols, at least. And I'd put McGriff, Helton, Olerud, and probably a few others ahead of Sisler and Terry too.
I don't see Vlad being anything close to a shoo-in. He came up not long ago in a long thread so I won't belabor the points made there, but what has he got for the mainstream voter than fifty other candidates don't have, other than being lovable and having a nice batting average (despite which he never won a title)? He doesn't have a short career for a HOFer (would the kind person who calculated the average PAs for a HOFer also be kind enough to mention whether that was for all position players, or just BBWAA elected position players?), but it feels short (leave me alone), and his last four years have been good to ordinary, which won't help. He doesn't have any big numbers, and other than the MVP award, not a whole lot of black ink. A very good peak, but not a great one, not a Mizian peak, for instance.
Short of hanging around for another 51 home runs my guess is Guerrero gets hurt by the influx of terrific candidates and never really nibbles free admission.
* I think he was there before actually, but I focus less on the history of baseball than I used to and I think I forgot about him.
Amazing career.
edit: a quick look at BBRef indicates Mize nips Mays and Aaron on 10 year peak, and is just behind Pujols. Ted Williams is, of course, ridiculous. Teddy doesn't have a 10 year stretch where he's worse than any of those guys' best 10. Never mind the 10 year stretch, it's likely that you can pick the ten worst years of Williams' career and come out better than the best 10 year peak of Aaron, Mays, or Mize. Madness!
This list was done a few years back and included only players elected to the HoM. Since then, the only first baseman added are Bagwell and Palmiero. Bagwell would obviously finish quite high on the list. Palmiero would be somewhere behind Murray, but Murray was who he was most often compared to. While I admit that there are good arguments for putting McGriff and Olerud ahead of at least some of Sisler, Terry, or Beckley, we can't do that because McGriff and Olerud haven't been elected to the HoM. On the 2012 ballot (just finished last night), Palmeiro was elected, Ben Taylor was 14th, McGriff was 20th, Frank Chance was 26th, Tony Perez was 29th, and Olerud was 39th. Thomas, Thome, Pujols, and Helton are not eligible yet.
We also did this before we elected Edgar Martinez; there's no consensus about which positional list he should be on. And there's argument about the placement of Stan Musial, with some opinions that he should be on the 1B list, although we actually ranked him as a LF.
-----
One guide to Bitter Mouse's asterisk: when the public voted on the "All-Century Team" in 1999, which players did the "panel of experts" have to add to balance out the popular vote? The experts added Honus Wagner, Stan Musial, Warren Spahn, Christy Mathewson, and Lefty Grove. (And I'll argue that even the experts screwed up by putting Mathewson ahead of Alexander.) At the very least I would think that Grove should also get Bitter Mouse's asterisk.
Bitter Mouse should also take a look at Eddie Collins and Arky Vaughan.
That makes me appreciate Stan Musial's 1948 season even more. He led the league in doubles and triples, and fell just one home run short of Mize and Kiner. He led the league in BA and RBI, so that one home run cost him the triple crown. But leading the league in home runs, doubles, and triples the same season? That would be mega impressive.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/o/o'neiti01.shtml
And he, too, may have lost his best years to helping kicking the Nazis' ass, then the commies (as well as a couple of significant injuries to overcome). Harder than beating the Nazis or the Red menace, though, was that he had to keep Ted Williams in some sort of containment.
Anybody know why the Cards were so anxious to dump Mize right after Pearl Harbor?
Mediocre SP and a couple of subs, plus $50K - maybe the ownership needed money, I don't know.
I know one thing: If I'd been the surgeon who took out The Man's appendix after the 1947 season, I would've put my name and Stan's picture up on billboards all over St. Louis.
Can't do that unless Stan agreed.
Well then, how about a billboard with the Doc's name and a picture of the appendix?
DB
Wikipedia says:
hmmm, the year before Rickey had traded Medwick away for this:
June 12, 1940: Traded by the St. Louis Cardinals with Curt Davis to the Brooklyn Dodgers for Carl Doyle, Bert Haas, Ernie Koy, Sam Nahem and $125,000.
I suspect STL was having a firesale- they didn't get more talent for Mize than they had for Medwick, and received even less $... I wonder what Mize's salary was
I will say this- the Cards absolutely dominated the WWII years
I also found this:
Sanders was no Mize, but he did play well during the war years...
Branch Rickey was famous/notorious for trading players while they still had value. The fact that he participated in the Cardinals' profits and derived a substantial portion of his personal income in that manner I'm sure had nothing to do with it. The Cardinals may or may not have needed the money, for all of their on field success in the late twenties and the thirties they never drew particularly well at the gate, something that was exacerbated by the effects of the depression. In any case in the days immediately after Pearl Harbor no one knew for sure if MLB would even be allowed to continue, in 1918 the regular season was terminated early by governmental decree. No doubt Rickey felt that offloading the contract of an expensive star onto a competitor was a wise thing to do, especially given that the Cardinals' farm system had replacement(s) ready to take over, at one quarter the cost.
Good points both.
The Mahatma might've been focused on the mazuma, but it certainly didn't seem to hurt the Cards over the next few years.
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