2012-13 Hall of Fame elections

The Pre-Integration ballot is out! No, I didn't know it was coming, either.

http://mlb.sbnation.com/2012/11/1/3586568/hall-fame-ballot-2013-owners-yankees-cardinals-marty-marion

let's just keep going back in time and electing people until literally everyone is elected

looking forward to the veterans committee debating david eckstein in 2062.

be optimistic, go w/ Whitaker & Trammell

Lots of commentary over this on High Heat Stats (where the creator introduced it):

http://www.hallofstats.com/

Haven't had a chance to wade through yet.

Neyer on the coming candidate flood:

http://mlb.sbnation.com/2012/11/30/3708436/new-ballot-baseball-hall-fame

I was looking at Munson's career box (I realize he's long off the writer's ballot)...I seem to recall a time when his HOF candidacy was dismissed by a lot of people as sentimental cheerleading. But he looks pretty good in terms of WAR and MVP voting. He's just shy of 4.0 WAR/per season (including '69, when he only played 26 games--eliminate that and he's over 4.0); that's higher than any of the Top 10 career WAR catchers except Bench. And he drew MVP votes in seven of his nine full seasons, including one win.

Is this the most interesting HOF ballot since ... well, maybe ever? There are at 15 or more candidates worthy of serious consideration, and nobody has a clue what will happen.

Is Biggio really going to get in before Bagwell?

I remember a Neyer column where he called Munson one of the most overrated players ever. He put up some really ugly OBP's and SLG's, but considering his position and the era he played in, they're not as bad as they appear at first. If he'd lived and played a few more years he would have had a solid case.

http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/8695611/survey-shows-barry-bonds-roger-clemens-sammy-sosa-likely-miss-first-hall-fame-vote

Among voters who expressed an opinion, Bonds received 45 percent support, Clemens 43 percent and Sosa 18 percent. To gain election, Bonds and Clemens would need more than 80 percent support among the voters not surveyed and Sosa would need to get more than 85 percent.

"No one would dare say that Bonds, a seven-time National League MVP with 762 home runs, isn't a Hall of Famer," Thom Loverro, a columnist for The Washington Examiner, wrote in a column that explained his decision. "Nor would anyone say that Clemens, with 354 career victories, 4,672 strikeouts and seven Cy Young Awards, shouldn't be enshrined in Cooperstown. The same goes for Sosa, who finished with 609 career home runs, including 243 of them from 1998 through 2001.

"Except they cheated -- all of them. And this Hall of Fame is not just about numbers. Three of the six criteria for election to Cooperstown are sportsmanship, integrity and character. Bonds, Sosa and Clemens fail on all three counts."

when are they gonna kick ty cobb out tho

early to mention this, but this sentence - "Let's assume just one guy gets elected this time around. Next year (as Cameron notes), four outstanding candidates -- Maddux, Glavine, Mussina, Frank Thomas -- become eligible, plus Jeff Kent" - led me to take a look at Tom Glavine's stats for the first time since I had his early 90s baseball card when i was a kid. back then, i always thought of him as one of the very best pitchers, pretty much because of his wins (i was a kid, shoot me.) but his K/9 and BB/9 stats are relatively mediocre, even during his 90s prime! usually around 5 or 6 K/9, BB/9 around 3. 1993 is especially extreme - he had 22 wins, with 4.51 K/9 and 3.38 BB/9. that's fucking terrible!

and by WAR, at his prime he was in the 3-4 range, only topping 5 twice. he was good, don't get me wrong, but he doesn't seem like a no-brainer elite HOF first ballot type.

glavine's "most similar" pitchers are mostly borderline cases, yeah he's not a no-brainer but i think he's a deserving candidate. i figure the guys who will get in next year for sure are maddux and glavine, probably thomas.

I assume you're looking at fWAR, because on B-R he's got four 5+ WAR seasons. I guess that makes sense, because fWAR uses just BB, HR, and SO? Glavine's K and BB rates weren't great, but he did keep the ball in the park. But I think he clears the bar easily, he was durable and threw a *lot* of innings, 200+ IP nearly every year up to age 41, which is amazing. And he was amazingly consistent, even in his late 30's, putting up 3-4 WAR nearly every year. He's 28th all time in pitcher WAR, and would be near the top 20 if you take out the 19th century pitchers.

All of that, and--narrative!--the writers won't pass up a chance to induct Maddux and Glavine together, the most well-timed pairing since Mantle/Ford in '74.

MVP voting as a HOF criterion = headscratcher

^^^just a way of disavowing responsibility

glavine is sort of a testament to the idea that K/BB isn't the most important thing, no? he was special. he still managed a career 3.54 ERA in the worst ever era for pitching. i think after 4000+ innings the difference between ERA and FIP stops being relevant.

heinous as it is to say, WAR also isn't everything, and i trust it less with pitchers. most smart baseball people would still consider jim palmer (5 K/9, 54.6 WAR) an easy hall of famer. i'm sure bill james wouldn't hesitate to call glavine one of the best, either.

i also don't understand how schilling isn't being treated like a shoo-in. 97-04 has to be one of the best pitching peaks all time.

vs Pedro around the same period?

doesn't have to be best to be one of the best

According to something posted on High Heat Stats this morning (nothing to do with Glavine), "The average career pitching WAR for the 36 pitchers in the 'Writers' Hall' is 69.0 WAR. The median career pitching WAR for those pitchers is 67.7." So Glavine (69.3) does make the cut there; Palmer (63.2) falls just a bit short, but to me he clearly belongs.

Which WAR is High Heat Stats using? Cuz rWAR (aka B-Ref WAR) has Glavine at 76 which would be well over both measures.

Or is B-Ref WAR bWAR now?

http://www.baseball-reference.com/about/war_explained_comparison.shtml

I went by this list:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/WAR_pitch_career.shtml

I assume that's for pitching only, and eliminates any marginal effect of hitting/fielding.

Marginal in most cases, but for Glavine it's 8 wins!

21 wins for Maddux. the difference can be so huge it's hard to compare them. palmer is 35th in bWAR and 85th in fWAR.

You must be looking at a different version of WAR cuz Maddux is like 2 wins in bWAR. Also almost all of Glavine's added value is from the bat. And even Maddux's great "fielding" is negligible over the course of an entire career (which sort of surprises me) in bWAR.

Struck me as odd too--that'd be like 20 or 25% of Maddux's value in his fielding and hitting. I know Glavine was a good hitter; to me, 8 extra wins would seem to be about the outer edge of what seems reasonable. (Gibson was an excellent hitter--in the '60s, to boot--and he picks up about 8 extra wins too.)

Yeah Glavine's value appears to be almost entirely walks + sacrifices + not grounding into DPs as far as I can tell which is a far cry from Micah Owings or Dontrelle Willis best years, but obv much better than conceding the out entirely.

Huh, I didn't even think to look at how much of their total WAR came from batting. It seems like WAR is a horrible failure here, e.g. Glavine gets credit for 1.0 WAR for his 1996 batting line when he had a 675 OPS, which might have been good compared to most pitchers, but is still horrible if the idea is to help the team score runs and win games. It shouldn't be a positive WAR contribution, just a less negative one compared to other pitchers.

And how the hell can you determine what a replacement level pitcher would contribute at the plate anyway? Replacement level isn't well defined here like it is for position players.

You can compare it to the league average pitcher (which is probably not much different from replacement level in the case of pitchers). .675 is great for a pitcher .esp again with a high amount of sacrifice hits and walks.

Sure, but I think this is a case where the concept of WAR doesn't work. .675 is good for a pitcher, but bad wrt any reasonable definition of batting value. He kills his team less than the average pitcher, but I'm not sure it makes sense to speak of that as a *positive* contribution overall.

My gut feeling is that most metrics don't make sense for numbers that are too many standard deviations away from the average. Bonds in 2001-4 would put up 21 RC/27 or something crazy like that. But it's not really true that a team of nine BB's would score 21 runs, because if you take that literally, teams can't IBB Bonds to pitch to the next batter. His numbers were so ridiculous that they "break" the metrics. And I think you can say something similar about bad extremes too.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Former New York Yankees owner Jacob Ruppert, longtime umpire Hank O'Day and barehanded catcher Deacon White have been elected to the baseball Hall of Fame for their excellence through the first half of the 20th century.

The trio was picked by the Hall's pre-integration committee. The announcement was made Monday at the winter meetings.

Induction ceremonies will be held July 28.

Babe probably grousing somewhere about the Colonel

The thing I thought about last night as I tried to get my head around that +21 figure was, if you had two pitchers, and one had a pitching-only WAR of 70 (defense/hitting neutral), and the other had a 50 WAR for pitching and the extra 20 for defense/hitting, which guy would you feel better about putting in the HOF? Overall, they both contributed the same number of wins to their teams, but myself, I'd feel a lot better about putting the first guy in. I want to induct pitchers for their pitching.

I think it depends on how much of the extra 20 is for hitting because I'm still not entirely comfortable with fielding metrics and the opportunity for pitchers is so small really. That said instinctively I would go with the first guy too.

That said Glavine and Mussina are basically the real world version of this hypothetical (with 8 non-pitching wins rather than 21). It's hard to argue that Mussina was not the better fielding independent pitcher, but I'm not really sure he was the better player in his prime (or really overall.) Probably a better crossword player though.

You must be looking at a different version of WAR cuz Maddux is like 2 wins in bWAR. Also almost all of Glavine's added value is from the bat. And even Maddux's great "fielding" is negligible over the course of an entire career (which sort of surprises me) in bWAR.

― One bad call from barely losing to (Alex in SF), Monday, December 3, 2012 8:27 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

uh i was looking at fangraphs and bb-ref, is there a third WAR i'm not familiar with

Because I post on High Heat Stats semi-regularly, I got an invitation to participate in this:

http://baseballpastandpresent.com/

I'll never come up with 50 names, not unless I spent a lot of time comparing players. I trust the judgement of everyone here, so here are my five; if nine more of you can post five names each, I'll submit those 50. I have to vote before Dec. 9.

My five (based on stats + nostalgia...):

Luis Tiant
Larry Walker
Willie Randolph
Curt Flood (obviously, based on much more than on-field accomplishments)
Dwight Evans

Dick Allen
Alan Trammel
Lou Whittaker
Tim Raines
Marvin Miller (fuck Bowie Kuhn)

Thanks, Alex--10 down, 40 to go.

kevin brown
bobby grich
darrell evans
jack clark
cesar cedeno

For early Abstract readers, Grich and Darrell Evans are like the ground zero of sabermetrics.

http://nbchardballtalk.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/deacon-white.jpg?w=214

One day, you will be deemed to be 44.2 wins better than Old Joe McDougall, the second baseman/blacksmith who lives three farms down the road.

That guy's mustache alone is worth 7.6 wins.

mark lemke

Jays homerism ahead:

Jeff Bagwell
Mark McGwire
Dave Stieb
Tony Fernandez
Rick Reuschel

Old-school Jays love is fine by me. Out in the HOF lobby: McGriff, Delgado, Olerud, Key, Wells, and (a stretch, but a personal favourite) Henke.

The list so far: Dick Allen, Jeff Bagwell, Kevin Brown, Cesar Cedeno, Jack Clark, Darrell Evans, Dwight Evans, Tony Fernandez, Curt Flood, Bobby Grich, Mark McGwire, Marvin Miller, Tim Raines, Willie Randolph, Rick Reuschel, Dave Stieb, Luis Tiant, Alan Trammel, Larry Walker, Lou Whittaker (Mark Lemke presently under review). I need six more lists.

Jimmy Wynn
Dwight Gooden
Keith Hernandez
Gil Hodges
Minnie Minoso

When you account for the era and the parks he played in, Jimmy Wynn was very underappreciated (until '74, anyway). Need 25 more suggestions.

Today's my deadline for mailing this in; I still need 5 more lists of 5 players each, else I'll have to fill up the remaining spots with Garth Iorg, Otto Velez, Luis Leal, etc.

Albert Belle
Dave Justice
Bret Saberhagen
Dave Parker
Erik Davis

Just naming good players now. I don't think any of those dudes belong in the HOF myself.

Sure, but I think this is a case where the concept of WAR doesn't work. .675 is good for a pitcher, but bad wrt any reasonable definition of batting value. He kills his team less than the average pitcher, but I'm not sure it makes sense to speak of that as a *positive* contribution overall.

― NoTimeBeforeTime, Monday, December 3, 2012 10:41 AM (5 days ago)

WAR is positional; the replacement-level pitcher (even the average pitcher) is striking out and grounding into double plays every at-bat. by merely being a serviceable hitter, glavine produces a lot of value by turning what for just about any other team would be a clear negative into at least a push. that's valuable

Because I post on High Heat Stats semi-regularly, I got an invitation to participate in this:

http://baseballpastandpresent.com/

I'll never come up with 50 names, not unless I spent a lot of time comparing players. I trust the judgement of everyone here, so here are my five; if nine more of you can post five names each, I'll submit those 50. I have to vote before Dec. 9.

My five (based on stats + nostalgia...):

Luis Tiant
Larry Walker
Willie Randolph
Curt Flood (obviously, based on much more than on-field accomplishments)
Dwight Evans

― clemenza, Monday, December 3, 2012 6:17 PM (5 days ago)

pete rose was pretty good

i only have one.

ray lankford.

Here are the 50 names I submitted--I took the first 30 up to Morbius's list (including my first five), deleted Marvin Miller (it was for players only--otherwise I would have included Miller and Bill James for sure, Bouton, too, for Ball Four), then added another 21 names from their sample ballot. I didn't put much thought into it, focused exclusively on players from my lifetime (with one exception), and included a few personal favourites I couldn't statistically defend. On the actual ballot, you were asked to indicate Yes or No for HOF induction; I put a Y beside 19 names, an N next to the other 31.

Dick Allen
Jeff Bagwell
Buddy Bell
Albert Belle
Craig Biggio
Barry Bonds
Kevin Brown
Cesar Cedeno
Ron Cey
Jack Clark
Will Clark
Roger Clemens
David Cone
Willie Davis
Darrell Evans
Dwight Evans
Tony Fernandez
Curt Flood
Dwight Gooden
Bobby Grich
Tom Henke
Keith Hernandez
Gil Hodges
Shoeless Joe Jackson
Tommy John
Jim Kaat
Jimmy Key
Mickey Lolich
Edgar Martinez
Don Mattingly
Fred McGriff
Mark McGwire
Minnie Minoso
Graig Nettles
Rafael Palmeiro
Milt Pappas
Mike Piazza
Tim Raines
Willie Randolph
Rick Reuschel
Pete Rose
Curt Schilling
Lee Smith
Reggie Smith
Dave Stieb
Luis Tiant
Alan Trammel
Larry Walker
Lou Whittaker
Jimmy Wynn

so what names got the "Y"?

by merely being a serviceable hitter, glavine produces a lot of value by turning what for just about any other team would be a clear negative into at least a push. that's valuable

You're right if we're going by how WAR is defined, but I'm saying that the value of a position player relative to replacement level is a meaningful concept, but the hitting "value" of a pitcher relative to replacement level does not. Or at least I have my doubts.

Maybe this isn't the best example, but suppose we have a player with a .280/.340/.400 slash line. If he plays second base and is a good defender, that's a valuable player, if he plays first, less so, etc. So at second base maybe that's a 4.0 WAR player. If we increase his OPS by fifty or so points, and now he's got a .300/.365/.425 line, then let's say he's a 5.0 WAR player. If we increase his numbers then we increase his value, and this is all really basic stuff.

I'm saying that most pitchers are so awful at the plate (even good hitting ones like Glavine) that comparing their numbers doesn't have the same meaning wrt comparing their value. I don't know what replacement level is for a pitcher, let's say it's .100/.100/.125. Now give him another fifty points of OPS, now he's at .125/.125/.150. Did his "value" really increase as a hitter? He's still beyond awful. A team of replacement level position players is supposedly a ~ 40 win team, but a team of .125/.125/.150 hitters probably wouldn't win a single game (they're averaging two or three hits a game, almost all of which are singles, and almost never get consecutive hits).

Pitchers are such bad hitters that I think their "contributions" amount to noise -- it's not something we can measure in the same way that we do for position players. Obviously some pitchers are much better hitters than others, but 99.9% of them are so bad compared to real hitters that I don't think we can assess their value like we do for position players.

Well explained. Also, you'll be dealing with a much smaller sample of AB for a pitcher--Glavine, for instance, never got to the plate 100 times in any one season. (I guess that doesn't matter, though, since the point of contention is career WAR.)

I inducted these 19: Allen, Bagwell, Biggio, Bonds, Clemens, Dwight Evans, Flood, John, Martinez, McGwire, Palmeiro, Piazza, Raines, Rose, Schilling, Tiant, Trammell, Walker, Whittaker. I'll skip the rationalizations I came up with for the PED users (but not Sosa) and Rose (but not Joe Jackson).

Not sure if I'd put him in the Hall, but I completely missed Kenny Lofton for the list of 50.

"Did his "value" really increase as a hitter?"

Of course it did! What the heck?!?!?! Not much, but it def increased.

His percentages went up, but does it really translate into wins? Maybe below a certain threshold of awfulness, differences of 50 points (to continue with this example) are too insignificant to matter.

Another way of thinking about it is that a team of .100/.100/.125 hitters wouldn't be much worse than a team of .125/.125/.150 because both those levels of offense are too low to affect the outcome of games.

Runs translate into wins or % of wins across the course of a whole season. That's what WAR measures. And for Glavine over the course of his whole career it basically equalled nearly 8 wins. He was nearly 8 wins better than a replacement level ie league average pitcher would have been in the same situations.

Bare minimum pitchers in the NL get 500 PAs. If you have a guy who is not hitting into DPs, draws a few walks, and can lay down a bunt successfully in a 1/6 of those PAs that's worth a bit. Not a huge amount, but if you do it consistently over the course of your career it obv adds up.

Right, that's the rationale behind WAR for ordinary hitters, IOW, runs generated on offense get translated into wins. But I'm wondering whether that still applies for extremely low levels of offense.

Here's another example -- I'm just throwing stuff out there to see what sticks. Take a high school team and put them against a team of MLB league average hitters. I'm assuming that the MLB hitters will win every game. Now replace the league average hitters with stars at every position. In terms of talent and production, the MLB team just got better, but in terms of wins, they haven't improved because they're already winning every game. They've maxed out their potential value and don't benefit anymore by getting better.

That's an extreme example, but I'm saying that pitchers are at the opposite end of that scale, i.e. they're such bad hitters that a team doesn't downgrade itself much by replacing a bad hitting pitcher with a even worse one.

No baseball team is at that extreme upper/lower bound. All teams want players who create less outs/create more runs. Whether that batting production comes from a position player or a pitcher is irrelevant. There is little difference between a 250 and 350 ops over 90 ABs but there is a small difference obv. There is a bigger difference between a 600 ops and whatever # the league average pitcher was putting up during Glavine's career. WAR basically measures that difference and I don't see how it's any more inaccurate for Glavine than it is for any other player.

Now the one thing that is true is that if I am an NL team and I am looking to sign a free agent pitcher I care a lot lot more about their pitching value than their batting value because their pitching value represents like 90% of their total value and thus is a lot more likely to affect the teams outcome than than their batting (a difference is reflected in WAR because WAR is a counting stat). But that's the not the same as saying that a pitcher can't affect outcomes at all with their bat (or lack of bat).

I don't know what replacement level is for a pitcher, let's say it's .100/.100/.125. Now give him another fifty points of OPS, now he's at .125/.125/.150. Did his "value" really increase as a hitter? He's still beyond awful.

i'm with alex in sf. yes, his value increased! i think you're overthinking it. if a player's OBP increases, he generates more RBI opportunities for his teammates. if a position player with 500 PA's increases his OBP by .050, that translates to 25 more times he's on base. it doesn't matter whether his OBP increased from .300 to .355, or .375 to .425, or .100 to .150 - in all cases, he just put himself on base 25 more times over the course of a season as compared to before. his starting value - terrible player or elite - doesn't impact the rise in value that comes from increasing his OBP. same with SLG.

now, of course glavine's a pitcher, so he's only seeing 80 or so PA's per season rather than 500. The impact of his good hitting (for a pitcher) has less of an impact because he's seeing less overall PA's. but it still generates surplus value, because he got on base more often than a replacement level pitcher. those extra hits (as compared to replacement level) are valuable to the team - it doesn't matter whether the extra 20 hits come from a pitcher or from Albert Pujols.

it doesn't matter whether his OBP increased from .300 to .355, or .375 to .425, or .100 to .150

ugh, fucking typos. should be .300 to .350

another way of putting it:

let's say you're god, and you care a lot about baseball. you decide to make the st. louis cardinals a better baseball team. you have a choice: next season, you can bump Matt Holiday's WAR from 5.1 to 6.1, or you can bump Daniel Descalso's WAR from 0.5 to 2.0. if you want to improve the team, the correct decision is to improve Descalso's WAR up, even though he's an awful player to start out with.

i agree with the WAR, but i do sort of see what NTBT is saying, that it's a bit odd to see 8 whole wins for glavine. his career PAs add up to a bit more than 2 full seasons. it's difficult to look at his mid-.400s OPS and still make him look like a hitter worth 4.0 WAR/season. the opportunities are all so spread out and rare that it's hard to pull those wins out of the numbers.

Except that if Tom Glavine got 600 ABs with a .454 OPS and the replacement/league average pitcher got 600 ABs with a .250 OPS it's totally easy to see how Tom Glavine would be worth a bunch of wins over that his replacement with the bat.

I think that OPS spread is basically the difference between mediocre (700) and very good (900) and very good and amazing (1.1) for first basemen. Not hard to imagine why it would equal a bunch of wins if you set the replacement bar very low.

Wouldn't any value a pitcher has with the bat automatically be mitigated by the fact he'd invariably be batting with fewer runners on base? (Perhaps in turn balanced by the likelihood you'd burn up fewer bench players batting for him...)

Not making outs (or making "productive" outs) has value regardless of who is in front of you.

Not disputing there's value there, just wondering if, again, there's equal value--I would think a third-place hitter's not-outs produce more runs over a decent-sized sample than a ninth-place hitter's not-outs (not sure how many). Anyway, I'll leave this one to you guys.

Except that if Tom Glavine got 600 ABs with a .454 OPS and the replacement/league average pitcher got 600 ABs with a .250 OPS it's totally easy to see how Tom Glavine would be worth a bunch of wins over that his replacement with the bat.

― One bad call from barely losing to (Alex in SF), Sunday, December 9, 2012 4:03 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah i know, i see how it fits into the WAR formula well and good, but actually translating that WAR into 8 real wins seems like a difficult stretch because it's a small sample size stretched out over 20+ years

he only had one season where his WAR was over 1.0. how do you look at all those 0.4s and translate them into wins? this is really a more basic WAR issue. it makes sense as a means of valuing players, mostly, but the hypothetical "wins above replacement" idea is something that's never gonna totally gel with me.

Can't you translate his value into runs? All WAR is doing is basically summing up those added runs.

sure, but if those runs are two seasons spread out over 21 years of data, how much faith can you put in a system that tries to translate them into real wins? it just seems shaky.

by all means, maybe his teams would've had 12 or 16 fewer wins without his bat in the lineup for 3-4 PAs every 5-6 days. my basic point is "small and weird sample size"

"sure, but if those runs are two seasons spread out over 21 years of data, how much faith can you put in a system that tries to translate them into real wins? it just seems shaky."

It seems pretty basic to me and not shaky at all. And it's not a terribly small sample size when you are looking at 1645 PAs.

i think it sort of is when you're looking at 21 different seasons with 21 different replacement levels and a very small amount of data during each season

"by all means, maybe his teams would've had 12 or 16 fewer wins without his bat in the lineup for 3-4 PAs every 5-6 days"

Who is saying 12 or 16? B-R has it about 8 and yes as you pointed out it's a little bit of WAR every year (no crazy Micah Owings or Dontrelle Willis lines). I think it's easy to look at Glavine's stats, quickly mentally compare them against a league average pitcher and go "oh yeah he's better than that, that's worth something". All WAR is trying to do is put a value on that something and in a way that seems pretty sensible to me.

xp uh pitchers have been consistently bad hitters for basically ever. I doubt we are talking to much of a year over year replacement level swing, but even if it does I'm not sure how that invalidates the formula.

"Who is saying 12 or 16?"

no one, which is the point. i'm saying that with a sample size that small and spread out, in reality, the # of wins he provided with his bat could be much more or much less than his batting WAR. not talking about his WAR value, talking about actually going back in time and plucking his bat out of the lineup for however many PAs and replacing them with another batting pitcher and still somehow keeping his pitching stats. the win difference probably wouldn't be exactly 8, just because of the nature of the sample. i put a lot more faith in the accuracy of his pitching WAR and i'm not sure the two figures should really be added.

Haha how could you even calculate win difference using this fantasy method (which I'll let you code btw)?

Sigh look all WAR is doing is adding up runs. If you don't like the idea of translating those runs to ACTUAL wins fine look at RAA or something like that and just close your eyes and pretend the runs don't equal wins.

Now the one thing okay I can see the argument on is that if you don't think that there should be any difference between the League Average and Replacement Level for pitcher batting, okay, I guess maybe there isn't (it's not like the guy languishing in AAA is doing so because of his bat in all likelihood). I'd assume that somewhere some comparison is made between that AAA pitcher batter and the MLB pitcher batter and that's why there is a difference between RAA and RAR, but replacement level is a constantly shifting thing so I can see the case there.

zp lol come on dude

i have no problem with WAR as a method of comparison in this case, but it takes a leap to get from that to "translates to 8 (or 6.4) wins"

i'm saying that the runs he created with his bat don't reliably translate into some measure of real life wins as reliably as it does for every other position where the PAs aren't spread out over 10 years/season. i mean i've read/heard analysts talking about rounding up WAR for sake of real-life applicability (ie a 6.7 WAR season = "a 7-win player"). try that with glavine's batting WAR and his career total looks a lot different. i'm not saying that his WAR figure isn't a viable way to judge him against other batting pitchers, just that i don't put much faith in its strength wrt actual real life win translation.

and my completely undoable "fantasy method" is the theoretical backbone to the entire concept of WAR. WAR is supposed to be a measure of how many wins a players' teams would lose if that player replaced with AAA fodder but everything else stayed the same, so why is it weird to bring that concept up when talking about WAR?

er xp*

also take one of those "reliably"s out

"and my completely undoable "fantasy method" is the theoretical backbone to the entire concept of WAR."

Right so I'm saying if you want to prove WAR for pitcher batters wrong you should code it and then run your simulation and once you come back with your adjusted RAA/RAR then Baseball-Reference will be suitably chastened and I will bow to your new methodology.

i was an english major

"so why is it weird to bring that concept up when talking about WAR?"

It's weird because it's exactly what WAR is trying to calculate without running sixty zillion game simulations for each event and then pretending that somehow demonstrates something.

xp you're boned then.

i'm not saying anyone should run game simulations. if anything i'm saying a career's worth of game simulations would be just as meaningless because it's still a small sample size. nothing about WAR's implementation is actually "testable", there's always going to be some amount of leaping to go from "this valuation formula" to "this theoretical win total." (ie the difference in replacement levels that different formulas like to use). and for me at least, it's more of a leap to adjust a pitcher's batting sample to real life wins than a full season of batting or pitching over a career.

"try that with glavine's batting WAR and his career total looks a lot different"

Uh no he end's with 7 WAR.

really, i don't think it would be weird -- in fact i'm sure i've seen it before -- for a FG/BP/THT writer to say that a couple seasons of WAR data isn't reliable enough to make huge analytic conclusions on the actual talent/contributions of a 3-4 win player. (apparently you're not even supposed to put stock in less than 3 seasons worth of UZR data.) spread those seasons out in over 20 years, it looks less reliable to me. maybe for you it makes it more reliable, but to me the sample is too weird to make that translation from data to wins.

Yeah but that's because fielding data is still a little squiffy. Batting data is more stable and it doesn't take much of a logical leap to look at Glavine's batting line and the league average batting line and say over the course of 1645 PAs that's going to be worth a half-dozen wins.

"Uh no he end's with 7 WAR."

i didn't say rounding down! i've literally read certain people saying that 0.3, 0.4 WAR is enough to round up.

but even so, doesn't the fact that you can round fWAR to 6 wins and bWAR to 8 wins, which is a 25% difference (i think, english major) show you that it just isn't enough data to matter?

why are we even arguing about tom glavine's batting WAR?

Beats me. I'm going to go argue with my wife about whether or not a bed needs a headboard instead (it doesn't).

why are we even arguing about tom glavine's batting WAR?

Alex and I once spent two days and several dozen posts arguing about whether a theoretical Cy Young case could be made for the guy who in fact did win the Cy Young that year--the 1973 AL Cy Young. May as well ask why fish swim. It's what we do here.

xp tbh that's another worrisome thing about pitcher's batting WAR, there's absolutely no fielding data. that has to add or subtract at least a few wins over a career.

and yes beds need headboards you ignorant piece of shit what is wrong with you

"xp tbh that's another worrisome thing about pitcher's batting WAR, there's absolutely no fielding data. that has to add or subtract at least a few wins over a career."

Apparently it's calculated into pitching WAR. Which makes sense since not all pitchers have batting data/WAR.

ha hahhaa - omg this thread

"Alex and I once spent two days and several dozen posts arguing about whether a theoretical Cy Young case could be made for the guy who in fact did win the Cy Young that year--the 1973 AL Cy Young."

Derailing another HOF thread IIRC.

I think I've won the headboard argument. </disgusting savage>

jane you ignorant slut

Not disputing there's value there, just wondering if, again, there's equal value--I would think a third-place hitter's not-outs produce more runs over a decent-sized sample than a ninth-place hitter's not-outs (not sure how many). Anyway, I'll leave this one to you guys.

― clemenza, Sunday, December 9, 2012 4:18 PM (5 hours ago)

again, we're comparing him to other pitchers, who also bat ninth

alex and zs have been otm itt

zach i don't think you 'get' WAR. it's cumulative. being "spread" (you're misusing this word) over 20 years isn't a negative, it's a positive! larger sample size!

i 'get' WAR, and i understand what you're saying. i'm not sure anyone is really catching on with the idea that i don't deny that he was X better than other pitchers with the bat, i just don't think that 1600 plate appearances is worth enough to determine how worse or better off the braves/mets would've been without his bat. it isn't terribly relevant next to his pitching WAR. i think you should be able to say "he was a good batter compared to other pitchers" without adding the two figures together.

i also just have some basic issues with the implementation of WAR in general but let's not get into that

and when i say "how worse or better off..." i mean specifically trying to ascertain a win-loss difference.

i also just have some basic issues with the implementation of WAR in general but let's not get into that

― THE NATIONS YOUTH DANCED TO THE MACARANA (innocent) (zachlyon), Sunday, December 9, 2012 10:03 PM (3 minutes ago)

ha oh

or we could get into it i have time

again, we're comparing him to other pitchers, who also bat ninth

That wasn't the context in which my comment was made--you need to look at the previous post:

Not making outs (or making "productive" outs) has value regardless of who is in front of you.

I.e., the idea that a pitcher's not-outs are just as valuable as a third-place hitter's not-outs, not that they're as valuable as other pitchers' not-outs, which no one would dispute. I'm saying that, over time, common sense says that a pitcher's not-outs produce fewer runs (and therefore have less value) than the third-place hitter's, because he's hitting with fewer men on base (if you accept the idea that the seventh and eighth hitters are on base less often than the leadoff and second-place hitters).

i mean really it's not like i don't use WAR all the time and have shown myself to be pretty not joe morgan about it, but it's strange that whenever someone doubts it even-remotely-in-the-slightest they are treated like dumb buttheads even though

1. there are entirely different systems of WAR treated with equal esteem
2. every current version is eventually shown to be obsolete by a new upgrade to the formula

it is strange that it's treated as holy when it's in flux and smart baseball people can't even agree on which version to use

xp

isn't like "against the spirit of science or w/e" (-neil degrasse tyson) to not poke into it or express doubt

I.e., the idea that a pitcher's not-outs are just as valuable as a third-place hitter's not-outs, not that they're as valuable as other pitchers' not-outs, which no one would dispute. I'm saying that, over time, common sense says that a pitcher's not-outs produce fewer runs (and therefore have less value) than the third-place hitter's, because he's hitting with fewer men on base (if you accept the idea that the seventh and eighth hitters are on base less often than the leadoff and second-place hitters).

driving in runs and being driven in are both equally important in 'run production' and being on base for the top of the order is valuable

"I'm saying that, over time, common sense says that a pitcher's not-outs produce fewer runs (and therefore have less value) than the third-place hitter's, because he's hitting with fewer men on base (if you accept the idea that the seventh and eighth hitters are on base less often than the leadoff and second-place hitters)."

He's also hitting in front of the top of the order. I'm guessing it largely balances out. I'm pretty much of the opinion that outs equal outs and the value of not making them probably overcomes the marginal value of the batting lineup.

"it is strange that it's treated as holy when it's in flux and smart baseball people can't even agree on which version to use"

Not treating it as "holy", but it's a decent logical short-hand for saying "Tom Glavine was a fairly valuable batter". Future versions of WAR might tweak it here or there, but I doubt that basic premise will change.

there's a difference between saying "he was a fairly valuable batter" and saying "he was really a 76 win player, not a 68 win player" or whatever the numbers are and anyway i was referring to k3vin's "ha oh"

jfc in conclusion pitchers shouldn't hit

you have a choice: next season, you can bump Matt Holiday's WAR from 5.1 to 6.1, or you can bump Daniel Descalso's WAR from 0.5 to 2.0.

That's not the issue though, it's not about how to add together WAR's, it's about how to translate hitting performance (particularly for pitchers and other kinds of outliers) into WAR.

Except that if Tom Glavine got 600 ABs with a .454 OPS and the replacement/league average pitcher got 600 ABs with a .250 OPS it's totally easy to see how Tom Glavine would be worth a bunch of wins over that his replacement with the bat.

This is exactly what I was trying to get at ... a team of .250 OPS hitters wouldn't score any runs or win any games, a team of .454 OPS hitters would be only marginally better, even though they're getting on base more and creating more scoring opportunities. They're still such bad hitters that those few extra baserunners don't necessarily into runs and wins because baserunners are so scarce overall. IOW, that 200 point difference in OPS isn't nearly as significant as that between a team of 700 OPS and 900 OPS hitters.

I also think zach had a good point about the problems with adding up twenty small sample sizes taken over twenty years (with a different replacement level defined for each year).

If nothing else, at least Alex won the headboard argument, so I think we're all winners here.

those few extra baserunners don't necessarily *translate* into runs and wins

But NTBT in the game the .250 and .454 hitters aren't surrounded by other .250 and .454 guys (for the most part anyway). They're surround by position players whose offense is a bunch higher and those outs/run opportunities do have an impact (I mean I can't believe someone would argue otherwise, it's an AB. And an out. You only get 27 a game! Obviously you want to get the most you can out of any of them. Even if compared to what the worst SS can do it's still piddling amount of offense.) And true it isn't as significant even in WAR as the 700 to 900 swing mostly because of the lack of opportunity. But that's why Glavine's WAR is basically a fraction each year. It adds up to 7-8 wins because he was around for 20+ years. Again that # doesn't set off any warning bells for me. Glavine was a consistently good hitting pitcher and he was around forever. It makes sense that he would have racked up some value in that time.

This whole argument is also veering very close to "if you hit a 3 run HR in a 14-0 ballgame it's meaningless". Which is fine, I can acknowledge that WAR is not necessarily the best method for measuring actual wins in any circumstance (not that the methods that try to measure actual wins don't have their own problems). As shorthand, I still think it works well enough for whomever you are looking at.

And true it isn't as significant even in WAR as the 700 to 900 swing mostly because of the lack of opportunity. But that's why Glavine's WAR is basically a fraction each year. It adds up to 7-8 wins because he was around for 20+ years. Again that # doesn't set off any warning bells for me. Glavine was a consistently good hitting pitcher and he was around forever. It makes sense that he would have racked up some value in that time.[

otm again. and i still don't really understand the issue. 8 WAR over 21 seasons is about 0.4 WAR per year. is the argument that the number should be even lower than that, or is the argument that batting WAR should not be applied to pitchers at all because they're so awful at hitting and they only play every 5th game? if it's the latter, i still don't agree, for the many reasons outlined above.

just to introduce some real numbers, here's Tom Glavine's career slash and OPS:

.186/.244/.210
OPS: .454

here are the stats for 2012 NL pitchers:

.130/.163/.168
OPS: .331

Glavine's career OBP was .081 higher than the 2012 NL average for pitchers. that translates, over the course of a season, to many more times when the top of braves lineup came up with glavine on base. that translates to runs. it doesn't matter that glavine is a terrible hitter compared to position players. it matters that glavine got on base significantly more than a replacement level pitcher over the course of his career. he only played every 5th game, so even in his best seasons (1996, .289/.333/.342 for a 1.1 bWAR) his single seasons WAR didn't add up to much. but over the course of a career, it made a real difference.

or am i still missing the point?

and i'd also add that i think the whole "what about a team comprised of only players with a .450 OPS - they would never win a game!" scenario is irrelevant. in real life, if a pitcher manages to get on base, the top of the line-up is coming up. getting on base more than a replacement level player = more runs = better chance of winning = more WAR.

"but over the course of a career, it made a real difference."

i'm willing to just say, ok, sure, yeah. i've never doubted that his bat made a difference, it's more the fact that we're dealing with such a small sample every season that it isn't easy to quantify with WAR (see: the 25% difference between bWAR and fWAR). because 8 wins over 21 seasons is a very small number, i'd think the margin of error would be bigger.

it's more the fact that we're dealing with such a small sample every season that it isn't easy to quantify with WAR

i mean, glavine has 1645 career PAs, right? that's about 3 or 4 full seasons worth for a position player. if a full season of PAs is a large enough sample to make a meaningful assertion about a player's WAR, i'm not sure why 3 or 4 seasons worth wouldn't be enough.

WAR isn't based off of a player's performance in 2-week chunks, or half seasons or full seasons. it's a summation of tons and tons of individual plate appearances.

i don't doubt that it's a worthwhile number on equal ground with every other WAR figure, it's more that figures that small and wide-spread can't be translated to "he contributed X amount of wins over his career" as well as his compiled pitching stats. this isn't really going anywhere.

sorry! i'm not trying to be super annoying, promise. i think i'm just misunderstanding your premise. mike trout had 10.0 fWAR in 2012...and that's a much smaller sample size than glavine's career PAs. so at what point does mike trout have enough PAs to have a large enough sample that his WAR stat is meaningful?

it's more that figures that small and wide-spread can't be translated to "he contributed X amount of wins over his career" as well as his compiled pitching stats. and i would say...yes they can! so you're probably right that this isn't really going anywhere. i'll leave it there, sorry!

last sentence wasn't directed at you, just this whole conversation. i haven't eaten in days.

on the topic of ARGH STATS, i just watched MLBN's "behind the seams" episode on the history of stats, narrated by bob costas, possibly at gunpoint

whole segment on fantasy baseball, nothing on WAR

hahahaha
"i'm never looking at a stat again"

Anyone else following ESPN's "Hall of 100" countdown of the all-time best players?

http://espn.go.com/mlb/feature/video/_/id/8652210/espn-hall-100-ranking-all-time-greatest-mlb-players

You could start a million arguments over this list, but I'll just say that Lefty Grove at #47 is a travesty.

he seems top 15-25 for sure

Answering a reader e-mail a couple of days ago, James casually dropped the following into his response: "At least three players who were almost certainly steroid users have already been elected to the Hall of Fame." Answering a follow-up e-mail today: "There are three players (that I was thinking of) who have strong characteristics associated with steroid use, in all three cases supported by other evidence." I'm trying to figure out who he means...Rice? Schmidt? I'm stumped.

Ripken.

Rickey.

Don't really know who the third would be... Maybe Schmidt. Gwynn seems kinda unlikely.

alomar

the fuck out of here with Rickey on steroids

Giamatti

Alomar makes a kind of intuitive sense to me, just because of the unexpectedly premature end to his career (maybe he'd stopped using--I've never discounted the HIV theory, either). Looked at another way, Henderson's elongated career and Ripken's durability also sort of fit. I honestly don't know--couldn't think of any pitchers, although Old Hoss Radbourn was also suspiciously durable. James phrases it very unambiguously, and I figure he's connected enough by now that he wouldn't do so without good reason. (The context, by the way, was his argument that, as time passes, keeping PED users out will become more and more untenable.)

did lou gehrig juice tho

I'd put money on Ripken, it seems unlikely that anyone could stay healthy for so long without a bit of help.

I wouldn't be surprised if two of the three (or even all three) were pitchers. What about Gossage -- he made a few comebacks and played a lot longer than his contemporaries.

rip always did have a bit of the lance armstrong about him

fuck alomar forever

Dawson '87 outlier

Seriously, the most suspicious guys for me are the exceptionally durable players. That includes pitchers, especially ones like Clemens and Schilling who were injured a lot in their mid-30's and looked to be in serious career decline before coming back and being better than they were before. (as opposed to pitchers like Glavine and Maddux, who were never injured and spent most of their careers working with one of the all-time best pitching coaches)

Normally I'd look to Dawson's '87 HR total as an indicator, but HR were up everywhere that year--it was like a weird anomalous preview of the post-'93 era. Boggs hit 24 HR that year.

on evidence-free blackballing:

http://mlb.sbnation.com/2013/1/1/3824718/jeff-bagwell-mike-piazza-and-the-hall-of-fame

(nice parenthetical Jim Rice dig)

Jay Jaffe's profiles for SI of every player on the HOF ballot has been a lot of fun, and a hell of a time waster.

I keep forgetting about him since he left BP.

Here are the results for that thing I was soliciting lists for way upthread:

http://baseballpastandpresent.com/2013/01/02/50-baseball-players-hall-fame-version-3-0/

@ChristinaKahrl
Blogger Murray Chass votes Morris for #HOF for intestinal fortitude. Alert Adam Richman of Man v. Food: He's the new Cooperstown standard

"Blogger Murray Chass" made me chuckle.

close to Bagger Murray Vance

Schoenfield's projections through 2020:

http://espn.go.com/blog/sweetspot/post/_/id/31870/predicting-future-hall-of-fame-elections

god i wish mlb network would stop turning every single award into a huge announcement show

what are they gonna do when no one gets in

Who's the third-greatest leadoff man since (at least) 1960?

http://mlb.sbnation.com/2013/1/4/3835902/mlb-greatest-leadoff-hitters-rickey-henderson-tim-raines-craig-biggio

He's weirdly dismissive of the suggestion, but it's pretty obv Ichiro.

I initially thought Boggs warranted a mention somewhere: he technically spent more time batting leadoff than anywhere else in the lineup for his career (4361 PA, as opposed to 2945 batting second, 2327 batting third, and another 1100 or so elsewhere). But that's only just over 40% of his career PA, and in the very prime of his prime, his '85-'88 run, '88 was the only season where he primarily led off, and even there it was only for 90 games. Most of his leading off was done later in his career, when he wasn't nearly the same player.

More James--sorry. A couple of clips of him talking about this year's ballot:

New names: http://mlb.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=25543669
Holdovers: http://mlb.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=25543671

I didn't know his feeling on Bonds, he was really tough on him there.

A bit of a surprise, though he's gradually edged away from Bonds since he wrote this in 2004:

http://www.hardballtimes.com/daily/article/gathering/

Also odd that he draws such a clear line between Bonds and Clemens.

I've been reading James forever, and the one constant is that he hates being boxed in by consensus, or by expectations. He was extremely tough on Rose the last few years of his career, sometimes making a mockery of the hits record, and then in '89, when the Dowd Report came out, he wrote a really long piece defending Rose. Last year, a lot of people got angry with him on the site when he came to the defense of Paterno. With PEDs, I think it's fair to say that the great majority of sabermetrically-inclined observers have concluded that PEDs should not be a factor in HOF voting. It would be unlike James just to sign on to that 100%. (He has, however, spent a lot of time arguing that it's impossible, over time, to keep the PED users out of the HOF, so you just accept the inevitable and put them in anyway.)

Jimmy Wynn: 0 HOF votes

http://mlb.sbnation.com/2013/1/7/3847354/hall-of-fame-voting-jimmy-wynn-no-votes

clubhouse confidential has a roundtable on this that is p hilarious

Predictions? I'm starting to think there's a chance that Morris goes in alone.

The best thing in the long run might be for nobody to get elected, because with so many *obviously* qualified candidates, it might lead to changes in the voting rules.

I would say this is the week the HOF officially becomes a joke, cept Jim Rice is in already.

nate silver linked to this google spreadsheet that is keeping a running tally of ballots as they become public:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Aqc4QTMoPrdtdDQxaDYzd1lLOGpOdUdrcnNNNWNXa2c&authkey=CPyuwqIJ&authkey=CPyuwqIJ#gid=6

as of this moment, there are 111 ballots, and the highest % is Craig Biggio with 70% (78 votes out of 111). Tim Raines is at 63%. Bonds and Clemens at 45% and 44%, respectively.

I propose we all chip in money to help Will Leitch attend a public speaking course: http://mlb.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=25547477

It'd be really embarrassing to be the guy who publicly declared that he voted for Bernie Williams (the single vote out of 111 so far)

Smooth jazz hall of fame?

I wdn't vote for Bern but that's hardly mortifying

eg, Jay Jaffe gives him the same JAWS total as Dale Murphy

http://mlb.si.com/2012/12/15/jaws-and-the-2013-hall-of-fame-ballot-bernie-williams/

it's either going to be biggio or no one this year i think. pretty ridic, there are at least 15 players who should garner serious consideration, 16 if you're a bernie stan.

Bernie was one of those players who was like 80-90% of a Hall of Famer at about six different things--very well rounded, no one category that ever jumped out at you, better player than many one-category guys.

cept his defense sucked esp when he got older

Bernie is an outfielder who doesn't have 300 homers or 150 steals. Not a lot of guys like that in the hall.

i am somewhat worried about Morris, guys.

if Bonds hit .400 for his career with 1000 HRs do you think he'd be in? this is stupid.

i don't think his numbers matter at this point. his HoF election hinges on other things. he could have hit .600 with a million HRs and i think we'd still be in the exact same situation.

I propose we all chip in money to help Will Leitch attend a public speaking course: http://mlb.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=25547477

― pun lovin criminal (polyphonic), Tuesday, January 8, 2013 2:57 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

better than bill james and dave cameron combined imo

watched MLBN's HOF roundtable, joe poz was the only "youth" representative there, though costas was actually willing to vote for bonds/clemens next year

chris 'mad dog' russo is the real life strawman representing "baseball pundits who need to die so the sport can finally move on"

i should just make a rolling MLBN thread ugh

I can't believe this guy is real and not a parody of a HOF voter:

http://espn.go.com/new-york/story/_/id/8814011/barry-bonds-roger-clemens-do-not-belong-baseball-hall-fame

Russo is from sportstalk radio, Matthews from the NY Post; why not get upset about Ann Coulter.

cause ann coulter isn't invited to MLBN round table debates

Neyer dissects Verducci, and Bill James a bit

Most of us, I think, are glad that Major League Baseball is discouraging the indiscriminate use of illegal drugs. Maybe without McGwire and Bonds, MLB's drug policy would still be toothless. Maybe we simply have to take the bad (moralizing and rationalizing by Hall of Fame voters) with the good (fewer home runs, baseball players who look more like normal human beings).

In my opinion, Verducci answered one question (about amphetamines) poorly, and didn't answer another at all: What will he do in five or 10 years when he learns that players he helped elect to the Hall of Fame actually did use steroids?

Because that is going to happen. I have exactly zero-percent doubt about that.

But I guess we'll just have to wait. Should make for an interesting column.

P.S. Verducci voted for Jeff Bagwell, but not Mike Piazza. These things are tricky, no?

http://mlb.sbnation.com/2013/1/8/3851926/hall-fame-2013-voting-tom-verducci-cheaters-ballot

did jeff bagwell have backne y/n

HE HAD A SKINNY ROOKIE CARD

better than bill james and dave cameron combined imo

Haven't seen them speak publicly but I doubt it.

james comes off as resentful and a bit awkward, never smiles, never looks into the camera, sort of just mumbles as though the cameraman broke into his house and demanded answers to sabermetric questions. cameron looks like this all the time

looooool

At least Morris didn't make it.

Joe Sheehan ‏@joe_sheehan
No one even got to 70%. Good job, good effort, voters.

Can't wait to go through all this bullshit next year, and the year after that, and the year after that...

LaVelle E. Neal III ‏@LaVelleNeal
Jack Morris picked up three votes from last year

kenny lofton off the ballot forever, fuck

Julio Franco	6 (1.1%)	1
David Wells	5 (0.9%)	1
Steve Finley	4 (0.7%)	1
Shawn Green	2 (0.4%)	1
Aaron Sele	1 (0.2%)	1

under the circumstances, best possible outcome.

watch em "fix it" in the worst possible way now.

Jay Jaffe had Lofton scored as the best eligible CF not in, I think.

lol so much @ jack morris +3 votes

at least we can look fwd to Jacob Ruppert's great-grandson's speech

Five blank ballots were among those submitted.

can anyone link to the official tally?

I hope this means no one will be nominated for an Oscar tomorrow, not even Craig Biggio.

http://bbwaa.com/

BBWAA ... procrastinating their HOF duties one year at a time!

congratulations Deacon White!

And Hank O'Day, boy you were a tough one, way to go!

this whole process is so stupid that i wish i could be unaware of it

next year is going to be a literal shitfest, all of the holdovers + maddux, glavine, big hurt, mussina, jeff kent

a *literal* shitfest?!

literal shit raining down

actual poop

while i disagree, i can at least see ppls' complaints about (alleged) steroid users

the ppl who are all like 'well, biggio deserves to be in but not on the first ballot' deserve to be smeared in poop tho

al leong are u the former omar

http://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_li94xm5A9W1qcu0bjo1_500.gif

ha ha haa!

Biggio had pretty big guns for a 'little' guy....

Selig, speaking at the team owners' meetings, started his comments by answering the question of whether he was unhappy at Wednesday's Hall of Fame shutout.

"No. Why would I be?" he said. "The Hall of Fame is the greatest honor a player can get. A very small percentage of players. Next year, I think you'll have a rather large class, and this year, for whatever reasons, you had a couple of guys who came very close.

"This is not to be voted on to make sure someone gets in every year. It's to be voted on to make sure that they're deserving. I respect the writers as well as the hall itself.

"This idea that this somehow diminishes the hall or baseball is ridiculous, in my opinion."

next year imo there will be 18 dudes on the ballot i'd be cool w/seeing in the HOF, another couple i'd not be displeased w/, and 3 or 4 will get in. and one of those may very well be someone who shouldn't.

congratulations, Jim Rice

we can at least hope Morris has peaked, and Mussina will go sailing by him

guy in my office is like 'if biggio being jerked around for a couple years is the price of keeping jack morris out, i'm willing to pay it'

@JonHeymanCBS
Time to start pro Jack Morris hall campaign. Guy can't get break. All-AL SP in dh era hurt by roid guys and 'net negativity

Can't wait to go through all this bullshit next year, and the year after that, and the year after that...

you mean more steroid arguments or do you think that nobody's going to get in?

I still don't understand the "we need more time to think about these players" angle. What are they waiting for, confessions? New evidence? Bonds and Clemens were already put on trial, so a smoking gun isn't going to suddenly magically appear. Seriously, how much time do these idiots need to make up their minds on a story that's been dominating headlines for seven years already?

eventually the HOF is going to need to draw visitors to Cooperstown under 80 who saw some inductees play.

I think Pedro, Maddux, and Griffey are all getting in pretty soon...

Even if they start electing three people per year (which has hardly ever happened) there will still be a huge backlog of guys.

figure you're going to see mcgriff, walker, e-mart, and some other possibly deserving players start to drop into dangerously low % of votes. and palmeiro is gone next year or the year after, i bet.

eventually the HOF is going to need to draw visitors to Cooperstown under 80 who saw some inductees play.

these crass commercial concerns are as nothing compared to maintaining the hof's 'credibility' tho

This could be a good year to go to the induction and get a hotel room w/in 10 miles.

ILB fap! we can bring Hank O'Day signs.

Just reposting this exchange great work everyone

next year is going to be a literal shitfest, all of the holdovers + maddux, glavine, big hurt, mussina, jeff kent

― christmas candy bar (al leong), Wednesday, January 9, 2013 2:29 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

a *literal* shitfest?!

― Porto for Pyros (The Cursed Return of the Dastardly Thermo Thinwall), Wednesday, January 9, 2013 2:30 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

literal shit raining down

― christmas candy bar (al leong), Wednesday, January 9, 2013 2:30 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

actual poop

― christmas candy bar (al leong), Wednesday, January 9, 2013 2:30 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ILB should start its own baseball Hall of Fame.

With blackjack! A-a-and hookers!

some good quotes from now-sanctimonious writers, eg:

Jack McCallum, Sports Illustrated: “Get this straight: McGwire’s use of androstenedione, which he may not have advertised but didn’t try to hide, should not taint his achievement if he breaks the Roger Maris record. . . . if baseball were to ban andro, then he could be faulted if he kept on using it. To hold McGwire to a higher standard than his sport does is unfair.”

http://www.yankeeanalysts.com/2011/01/writers-who-whiffed-on-roids-need-to-avoid-sanctimony-24092

so T/F: the best thing for bonds/clemens to do would be to come out and say exactly what/when they juiced and then make some commitment to anti-roid youth orgs or something

hard to say

andy pettitte, true. both bonds and clemens are pricks, though, so it's unclear what exactly would suffice

i say it bc, well, nowhere to go but up right? and it'd be good if they did something to alter the narrative, with people talking about "waiting it out" to see where the discussion goes. it would possibly hurry up the process and convince everyone to just make up their minds.

also i'm starting to feel bad for aaron sele

they've got 15 years and the tide is on their side

tbh i don't even know what the specific allegations are -- weren't the mitchell report tests to be 'confidential'?

i mean we laugh at a-rod because he's an asshole plus centaur, but all these tests were never supposed to be public

but at this point the world knows they did something and they're being punished for it, no use in being silent about it anymore

also i really don't want to hear this debate for the next 15 years while a ton of other deserving guys drop off the ballot

I don't really understand the sanctimonious charge against writers who choose not to vote for PED users. (If they once said otherwise, then hypocrisy, inconsistency, sure.) I thought Verducci's column was excellent. And if I had a vote, I'd semi-reluctantly vote for Bonds and Clemens.

The only thing I hate in this whole debate is the certainty that truth is on your side if you're an everyone-in person, and that anyone who disagrees is sanctimonious, stupid, a relic, etc. Verducci carefully presented his reasons why he feels he can't vote for a PED user. He also wrote:

"The threshold for election is 75 percent. I respect the process. If Barry Bonds or Roger Clemens can clear the same bar 112 other electees have cleared since voting began in 1936, I respect that..."

That's a lot more worthwhile to me than someone who dismisses the whole issue with a line or two, whether it's "I don't care about their personal lives," or "everybody did it," or something else, but they would never take the time to lay out their thinking like Verducci does. And I don't know why some pro-admission people won't accept that it's an issue that's going to have a wide spectrum of views.

Neyer's "What will he do in five or 10 years when he learns that players he helped elect to the Hall of Fame actually did use steroids?" seems quite irrelevant to me. We find out all sorts of unseemly stuff about people after the fact--why would that have any bearing on how we felt about them at the time?

I thought Neyer completely dismantled Verducci's arguments. I think Verducci is in the "wait and see" camp -- he has no idea who did what or how it impacted the game, so he refuses to deal with the problem and chooses to wait until everything is magically "clarified" (which of course won't happen) so he won't look stupid later. It's the baseball writers equivalent of pleading the fifth. They're not doing anything to solve the real problems, which includes dealing with the growing number of qualified players who will be clogging the ballot in the next few years.

All I've read is the excerpt above--I'll read Neyer's whole thing when I get a chance. I don't see Verducci's ambivalence as any more of a dodge than throwing up your hands and saying "Put everyone in." And Verducci did vote for Bagwell, so I don't think the waiting-for-clarification description fits him that well.

PEDs in baseball are going to be clarified along w/ the JFK assassination at a joint press conference

ha ha!

Anyone who says they won't vote for a "known steroid user" is waiting for the PEDs/Jack Ruby's zombie joint press conference where we'll find out exactly who took steroids and when (and how they affected on-field performance, if at all). None of this stuff is knowable so anyone who says they "know" who the clean players were is kidding themselves.

I don't think those writers will change their way of thinking until a HOFer admits to using steroids. Best case scenario (TOTALLY hypothetical, not trying to cast doubt here): Nolan Ryan. He's in the HOF, considered an inner circle guy (even though he isn't) by the kinds of writers who are sanctimonious about maintaining the "purity" of the game, his admission would be fantastic comedy ("of course I took drugs, how else could I strike out 300 hitters per year in my 40's, I can't believe you dummies never suspected anything"), and he's an owner, so he couldn't be blackballed and people would be forced to listen to him.

Please, give "sanctimonious" a rest. If you believe someone did something wrong, to say so does not imply that you yourself have never done anything wrong. If I call one of my students on plagiarism, I don't think the implicit message is "I, on the other hand, am above such misdeeds."

I've said this before: the blame for this whole mess belongs to Bud Selig (or Selig + owners). They had a struggling, post-strike game on their hands, home runs brought the fans back, and at a point when it became clear that PEDs were a significant part of the story (not saying the whole story), they looked the other way. I used to believe fans and sportswriters shared some of the blame, but I don't believe that anymore. It wasn't my job to take action. Kenesaw Mountain Landis didn't wait around in 1920; he took immediate action, and that particular problem ended. (Yes, I realize KML was also as bad or worse than everbody else when it came to segregation.)

so close to comic sans

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BAMTg1yCcAAhB6p.png

plagiarism is much more cut-and-dry than 'guy looks too muscular'

If you're talking about Bagwell/Piazza, I mostly agree with you. Bonds, Clemens, Sosa, A-Rod, etc. are a different story. Again, my main point is that I believe there's room for honest disagreement here.

I don't really understand the sanctimonious charge against writers who choose not to vote for PED users. (If they once said otherwise, then hypocrisy, inconsistency, sure.)

Does swooning over McGwire & Sosa in 1998 count? It should.

In 1989, the first juiced team won the World Series. In 1998, two juiced players raced to break Roger Maris’s single season home run record. Both times, steroids lurked in the background. They could have become the story. Executives, journalists, and insiders in the know could have blown the whistle either time. They could have made steroids the story either time. They could have won journalism awards for exposes. But they did not. Insiders concealed steroid use. Instead of exonerating or punishing it, they adopted baseball’s version of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

http://www.sbnation.com/longform/2013/1/10/3857198/barry-bonds-mlb-hall-of-fame-voting-steroids

I don't disagree with any of that--I've blamed fans/sportswriters before (myself included, who shrugged at Andro in '98, and was still defending Bonds roundabout 2002). Where I've changed a bit on that is that even if everyone went along for the ride, it was ultimately up to Selig and the owners to act. If they'd done so in '98, or '99 at the latest, maybe Bonds and Clemens might have acted more prudently. Maybe not. And I understand why taking action at the precise moment when baseball had the entire country's attention wasn't exactly easy. So they didn't. And here we are today.

imo it doesn't matter how those guys reaches these pinnacles because they are giants in baseball history, and they and some of the lesser giants they may have overshadowed (walker, mcgriff imo) should get in. anyone who didn't have a magnificent time watching all of these players rake or deal is not a baseball fan. the whole character clause, cheating thing is speciously and inconsistently applied anyway.

Given that Ty Cobb was a racist, known scumbag, and potential murderer I think it's kind of crazy to apply the "morality clause" to anyone. I think Joe Posnanski really nailed it when he mentioned that a LOT of HOF guys were cheaters (or probably cheated) in some way but we're just punishing the steroid guys because their method of cheating was more effective, which makes no sense at all if you're talking "morality".

If you believe that steroids improve performance--I know that some still don't--it makes no sense to compare racism to PED use. Racism is exponentially worse, but it doesn't improve your on-field performance. Not unless you want to argue that Cobb's racism was part of the climate that kept African-Americans out of baseball, which in turn allowed Cobb to post better numbers than he otherwise would have. Which is pretty tenuous. (If you want to compare steroids to greenies, that's a much more plausible analogy.)

I just think it's weird that the possibly clean guys (like Biggio?) didn't get in.

Agree--collateral damage in all of this is the worst. Biggio came up 39 votes short, and I'd bet money there were at least 39 writers who didn't vote for him because they've decided the whole era is suspect.

Biggio is one of my all-time favorite players. I might not be thinking analytically about his merit.

I think his case is beyond solid, and not because of the 3,000 hits--if anything, the only real knock on him seems to be that he hung on two or three seasons too long to get the 3,000. (So what? is basically my reaction to that--a little selfishness at the tail end of a great career is okay by me.) My own bias makes me partial to Alomar, but there are things Biggio did that Alomar didn't. They're virtually dead even in WAR (both between 62.0-63.0).

and that he wasn't good at defense. but yeah, definitely a deserving hall of famer. not getting in on the first ballot doesn't seem like a tragedy to me, but he'll make it in within a few years, as he should.

i'm guessing there are a lot more voters who just didn't see biggio as a first ballot guy than voters sending in a blank ballot in protest. that issue seems overblown imo.

while the "first ballot" distinction is suddenly... underblown

i honestly can't get too upset. aside from the guys who got dropped (Lofton being the only shame), nothing permanent has happened here. i'm inclined to just let the writers have their snit for a year or two and if they haven't come around in 6-7 years i'll start worrying.
(although it doesn't look good for McGwire right now and Schilling is sort of baffling)

it bugs the shit out of me that people STILL vote for mattingly (and similar). it's like, talk about damn fool crusades and wasting everyone's time. it's not like he every got a sniff FFS

that's all I got peace

lots of folks probably feel the same about trammell

Clemenza, did you read mookieproof's link upthread that collects a bunch of things the writers said about andro in 1998? This is one of those times that "sanctimonious" applies. These guys didn't do their jobs then and they STILL don't want to do their jobs -- rather than make up their minds on where they stand on the issue, they're deferring until some undefined point in the future.

And as long as you mentioned it, the idea that baseball was struggling post-strike is somewhat of a myth. Attendance spiked in 1993 (expansion) but otherwise attendance even in 1996-7 (the first two full seasons after the strike) was much higher than it had been throughout the 80's and early 90's.

I read the quotes, but I don't see the connection. The quotes are from a bunch of writers who, in 1998, were making the same kinds of defenses for McGwire and Sosa that you hear today from let-them-in advocates. (One exception: Wallace Matthews, who didn't fit in at all with the rest of the quotes.) I don't see how that has any bearing on a writer in 2013 arguing that they should not be let in. (Again, if it's the same writer who has completely reversed course, then that's inconsistency, not sanctimony.) If said writer, while arguing his case in 2013, clearly states that he himself is above actions of questionable ethics/morality--my understanding of "sanctimonious"--then I'd agree. But I didn't get that from Verducci's piece.

Your second point is interesting--I'll have to look at that. If I were measuring the economic health of the game, I wouldn't base it all on attendance figures--I'd factor in revenues, TV ratings, public attitudes towards the game, etc.--but you might have something there.

Interesting column by Larry Walker:

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/mlb/news/20130111/larry-walker-hall-of-fame/?sct=uk_t12_a2

It's a tough call. I kind of agree with both sides of the argument at different times. I was at home the other night and watched many hours of TV on the subject. I'd go back and forth: for many hours. I'd go, 'Yeah, I get his point.' 'And yeah, I see his point.'

That's sort of where I've been stuck for a while, which is why I think it's okay and understandable to differ on this issue. (Not under any illusion that Walker's piece isn't at least partly a little aw-shucks lobbying on behalf of himself.)

Sanctimony, imo, comes from, heh heh, injecting morality unnecessarily into an issue where it ought to be a relative non-factor, particularly when you're acting as some paragon of virtue.

That's where we disagree. I don't see these sportswriters (at least those I've read) acting like paragons of virtues, no more than anyone who says "I think such-and-such is wrong" is simultaneously declaring that his own actions in such a situation would obviously and always be above reproach. (Just as an example, whenever I talk about '98, I almost always point out that I was quite happy to look the other way at the time. And I empathize as to why Bonds started using when he felt ignored after the '98 season, assuming such reports are true; that makes complete sense to me.) Also, "unnecessarily and "relative non-factor" are opinions, not facts.

Fact: racists, meth-users, and abettors of child abuse, among others, are already in the Hall.

i don't get using that as a barometer of HoF candidacy tho... past inclusions of shitheads should not let every current shithead completely off the hook for being a shithead. (i'm not talking about anybody specifically here, just saying)

Fact: racists, meth-users, and abettors of child abuse, among others, are already in the Hall.

That's a very good illustration of why I don't think most writers who are against putting PED users into the HOF are moralizing--they don't extend that to racists and abettors of child abuse (who?!), because those egregious moral defects don't improve on-field performance. If you want to argue that neither do PEDs, that's a different argument.

And, if I haven't made this clear, that's where my own ambivalence begins and ends: how much a factor were PEDs in inflating on-field performance and creating an uneven playing field? I still don't think that question's been resolved. (And re Morbius's JFK analogy, just because that has never been conclusively resolved either, and very likely won't ever be, I don't see that as a reason to stop investigating.) It's not that I think the players who used them were moral lepers. The temptation and/or pressure to use them was, to me, quite understandable.

Sorry--as I think this through, I do see where you guys are coming from. Bonds and Clemens were 100% headed for the Hall without ever going near PEDs, so to vote against them is to make a judgement on the morality of what they did. That's why I'd vote those two in; I've very much in the "They were already Hall-worthy" camp. But I think there should be some small acknowledgment on their plaques that everything they accomplished past a certain point is suspect.

I've = I'm

Racism, at least in the form of segregation, was a systemic form of competitive imbalance. But as you said upthread, that doesn't mean that Ty Cobb personally kept black players from the MLB, just arguing against the idea that other forms of behavior don't affect the game on the field.

I think that the notion of competitive balance and even playing fields is chimeric and its boundaries arbitrary and contingent and in constant flux, and thinking that exclusion because of PEDs is trying to fix otherwise relativistic terms in an inevitably goonish manner.

The one difference I can see is that Cobb's racism didn't give him an advantage over the players he actually played against; instead, they all benefited from a diluted level of play. So maybe there's an argument that he contributed to a climate that rewarded him with a higher lifetime batting average than if the level of pitching had been raised by the inclusion of talented African-American pitchers. But in the context of his day, so did everyone.

And if you accept that notion that everyone was taking PEDs, and that therefore Bonds and Clemens and the rest (like Cobb in his day) had no advantage relative to those they played against, I'll accept the logic. But personally I don't believe everyone used them.

"everyone" isn't necessary for the point the stand that we don't know who did/didn't, and what the total (or individual) effect was.

Absolutely agree that we don't know who did/didn't and to what effect. It's all as murky as could be. Which is why (I know I keep circling back to this) I think it's okay and understandable to disagree on this issue, and even why--NoTime hates this--I think it's okay to defer making up your mind for now, regardless of whether you're vainly waiting for clarification that may never come. Or at least deferring within a player's 15-year-window--at some point, yes, you've got to make up your mind. (If geneticists can crack the DNA code, can't somebody definitively provide some sort of quantification as to how much PEDs improve performance?)

(If geneticists can crack the DNA code, can't somebody definitively provide some sort of quantification as to how much PEDs improve performance?)

Not any more than they could sequence a prospect's DNA and tell you how good of a baseball player he'll be!

That's a very good illustration of why I don't think most writers who are against putting PED users into the HOF are moralizing--they don't extend that to racists and abettors of child abuse (who?!), because those egregious moral defects don't improve on-field performance.

I've never been convinced that steroids improve on-field performance, but putting that aside for now, I've never understood this particular interpretation of the "character clause" -- that taking drugs is somehow worse than Ty Cobb charging into the stands to fight hecklers or Babe Ruth punching an umpire. So beating up fans doesn't negatively impact the game because it didn't take place on the field, but playing at an (arguably) higher level and being a model citizen at home and through charity work like McGwire is unforgivable.

For me, "improve on-field performance" and "negatively impact the game" do not fall under the same umbrella. Jerry Sandusky, and anyone at Penn State who looked the other way, negatively impacted his game as much as humanly possible--but I would never have retroactively taken away all those wins. They happened, but Sandusky's actions did nothing to alter the final score. The NFL coach who was stealing playbooks, though, his actions did--and he may well have been a model citizen at home, and he was trying to help his team play at a higher level. Can't speak for sportswriters, but when I try to think through the PED issue, I'm not thinking of the character clause. I'm trying to come to some understanding of how much PEDs altered the final score.

Most writers aren't trying to make that distinction though. They have to rely on the character clause to justify their non-votes, partly because the drug testing rules didn't come into effect until '05. It's a magic wand they like to wave around to avoid serious analysis. Why think seriously about Jeff Bagwell's HOF case when you can dismiss it by saying he played in a "tainted" era, hey let's wait and see if any new evidence or magic beans fall from the sky, etc.

It would be progress if more people used the "he was a HOFer because he started using drugs" argument, even though it's a seriously flawed kind of reasoning too, or tried to be more specific about how drugs might have altered the final scores, like you.

Also after reading way too many HOF-related articles this week, I never want to see the words "Steroid Era" in print ever again. Is it wishful thinking to hope that it'll fall into disuse eventually?

I suppose that's true of some writers--truthfully, I only read a few, and they're largely on the let-them-in side. I'm not sure why they'd suddenly want to avoid analyzing, for instance, Jeff Bagwell's case, though--that's what writers did for decades. Mostly--mostly--they did a good job on the HOF (considerably better than the Veteran's Committee, though I realize they messed up sometimes). I definitely don't think Verducci is ducking serious analysis. A day or two ago Posnanski called him the best baseball writer in the country--even if you disagree with Verducci's conclusions, as with Morris, he seems like someone who lives for debates where you dive into the numbers. If by "serious analysis" you mean some writers are looking for a way to avoid the new metrics, again, maybe some. I really doubt that applies to Verducci, though, and I'm going to give the bulk of them the benefit of the doubt and say they're just genuinely conflicted. If Larry Walker is being honest and he hasn't made up his mind--someone who played the game--I don't begrudge a sportswriter not having made up his mind.

Tired-of-it all might be a good place to end; me too. This is the mess that Selig has created (and maybe a player's union that fought against testing at one time--but I don't know the timeline there). It's not going away anytime soon.

give me the opinion of a sportswriter over that of a fellow-player ANY DAY

If the question is "Who was a better player, A or B?", I'd go with the informed sportswriter too. But if the question is "Did PED users have an advantage, and if so, how much?", I'd go with the player.

Hey Bill, what would your 2012 HOF ballot looked like?
Asked by: Steve9753

Answered: 1/15/2013
Raines, Rocket, Biggio, Piazza, Edgar Martinez, Trammell, McGriff, McGwire. Maybe another one or two...I dunno.

Wish I could endorse McGriff, one of my favourite Jays ever. But I can't.

mcgwire and not bonds?

I purposefully avoided mentioning that.

The trees are not necessarily supposed to understand the forest, which is why I don't take offense at off-base player opinions until they get hired as analysts.

used to be anti-mcgriff, now i'd probably vote for him. extremely consistent and reliable player, played half his career before the steroid era and half during, was basically the same player the whole time but his yearly WAR gets depressed because the players around him became incredible as he got older. his career until '94 was HOF-bound, but after that he still put up high OPSes consistently. just a victim of bad circumstance IMO, certainly a lot better than a whole lot of guys already in.

the strike probably did a decent number on mcgriff's HOF chances.

McGriff and Delgado are so close. If you eliminate a handful of partial seasons (<100 games) at the beginning and end of their careers, they're almost dead even in WAR (3.8/162 for McGriff, 3.7/162 for Delgado) and OPS+ (136 for McGriff, 140 for Delgado). If I had to choose, I'd put Delgado in. I think he was the more dominant player at his very peak, although again, there are different ways of looking at that.

for those of you who think SABR is entirely populated by nu-stats guys, someone on the Society e-list wrote this about Morris: "He was never flustered on the mound, and always seemed to have plenty in the tank. If the price of that approach was a 3.90 ERA, well, refer to the Win column and study the rings."

The clutch gene exists, and Morris is proof of it

shouldnt there be a Stinko Media '13 thread?

What's that? You wish someone would write a long article dissecting Jack Morris's HOF case, with lots of follow-up discussion in the comments section? Well, I searched far and wide and found one:

http://www.billjamesonline.com/a_sabermetric_case_for_jack_morris/

Jack Morris was born in 1955, as was Dennis Martinez. It is possible that Dennis Martinez was a better pitcher than Jack Morris, but only the most die-hard Expos fan would say that Martinez’s 5.8-edge in WAR is any kind of definitive proof. They’re really close. Considering their closeness, I think the general perception of qualified observers should get weight. Most writers and fans thought Jack Morris was an elite pitcher. Dennis Martinez was not viewed as being on quite that level.

(Interesting side-note: Martinez and Jack Morris led their respective leagues in wins in 1981, with 14 each. Also: Dennis Martinez is Jack Morris’s closest comparable according to Similarity Scores).

^ cool sabermetric breakdown

Sarcasm, right? I would think a long and rather thoughtful piece (even if you disagree with its central point--which is not that Jack Morris is a Hall of Famer, but that maybe we can't say definitively that he isn't) deserves more of a rebuttal than a three-word putdown.

From one of Fleming's own comments in the comments section:

Just a brief comment about the origins of this...my brother posted a ballot in which he voted for Jack Morris, and did not vote for Curt Schilling. I mocked him for this, because I think it’s absurd to rate Morris ahead of Schilling. I still think this, by the way.

But...in talking to my brother, I realized that my position on this was pretty set in stone: I wasn’t willing to consider the other side; a differing opinion.

This is, I think, a generally bad tendency; to be sure of things. To be certain that you’ve got it right. I think a lot of the discourse in American politics is stunted by our certainties, on either side of the aisle. I think a lot of problems in general are caused by this.

My intention, successful or not, was to try to be a little bit less certain about Morris; to try to see his career in a way that challenged my certainty about it. This led me, sometimes, down a line of thinking that was sometimes non-objective.

hey, i read the thing. the guy's argument was basically "well we gotta let SOMEBODY in, and morris is at least in the top 10 of this totally arbitrary time frame i just made up, but what puts him over the edge -- and here's where the sabermetrics come in -- is that he was voted to the all star team 5 times." not a terribly convincing argument imo

The title is definitely a misnomer: it's a sabermetrician making a generally non-sabermetric case for Jack Morris, not a sabermetric case. But I think it's a really good piece in any event, one person trying to question his own assumptions. The little section on Morris vs. Mark Langston does this particularly well.

The IP argument is the strongest argument for Morris. I found only one contemporary of Morris who started around the same time he did and pitched a comparable number of innings -- Frank Tanana. Nearly all the best pitchers of the 80's -- Stieb, Saberhagen, Gooden, and so on -- burned out. The 80's were also full of one hit wonders like Pete Vuckovich and LaMarr Hoyt who won the Cy Young award, had maybe one or two great seasons, and disappeared. I guess there are a lot of reasons for this -- adjusting to the DH, higher overall level of play (i.e. fewer "good field no hit" guys), changes in conditioning, pitch counts -- and there's something to be said for the few players who managed to survive that era. It's like when you bring up the fact that so few third basemen are in the HOF, either third basemen just aren't that good, or they've been underrated and evaluated incorrectly.

Verducci argued a variation on the same:

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2012/writers/tom_verducci/11/30/hall-of-fame-jack-morris-craig-biggio-curt-schilling/index.html

Anyway, all the Morris debates should end next year, until he's taken up by the Veteran's Committee down the road. If he didn't get in this year, I can't imagine him doing any better as the logjam gets ever worse.

Maybe Morris figures that his reputation for being a little ornery is the only thing standing between him and the HOF, and that the hourglass is almost up.

http://toronto.bluejays.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20130205&content_id=41408960&vkey=news_tor&c_id=tor&partnerId=ed-6730470-542400440

Prompted by this:

http://www.highheatstats.com/2013/02/beyond-era-why-rick-reuschel-had-hall-of-fame-value/

1997 HOF ballot:

Phil Niekro:   .537 WP, 3.35 ERA, 115 ERA+, 1.268 WHIP, 1.85 SO/BB

Niekro:  80.3% HOF vote, inducted

I realize I'm being extremely selective there--just noticed how close they were in some respects.

(That came out weird...)

Phil Niekro played on a whole lot better clubs earlier in his career than Reuschel, as the Braves were pretty competitive up until the end of Hank Aaron's career. Neikro didn't have that the injury problems that cost Reuschel at least a couple years of counting stats and the old knuckleballer pitched until he was 80 (well 48).

I'd imagine if Rick Reuschel would have pitched for the Reds in the same period of the 70s instead of the Cubs, he might have had 240 wins even with the injuries that kind of got to him for that mid-period around 33-35. Big Daddy was a bit superfluous when he got hurt in '84 on the Cubs, but he would have come in handy for Chicago the next few years when the pitching again bit the big one. It was kind of sad considering how many years the Cubs were terrible that Big Daddy gets hurt and kind of misses out on their biggest season in a long time. I was a huge Cub fan as a kid and it would have been cool to have had him be a 'big' pitcher on that club.

Then again I don't know if Reuschel doesn't get hurt, the Cubs don't go out and get Eckersley. That '84 Cubs was filled with fair to middling starters that all had their one year.

Reuschel was a pretty good pitcher, if he had it working teams just hit ground out after ground out.

Niekro had nearly 2000 IP more than Reuschel. Two thousand! Niekro's ERA+ is also dragged down by a bunch of really awful years at the end of his career. His prime blows away Reuschel's prime. This comparison doesn't really work for me.

peak vs career

peak every time imo

I like the best of both (ie, both Koufax and Sutton)

I know Niekro has many clear advantages--that's why I selectively narrowed the comparison to those few categories. Also, that that was Reuschel's first year on the ballot, while Niekro was in his 5th year. It is a good argument for something people have been especially vocal about this year (with various ideas as to how to fix the problem): guys like Reuschel, Whittaker, Lofton, etc. need some time for their case to develop (as Blyleven's did). It shouldn't be one shot and off.

I tilt towards peak, but it's like 55/45. I think you should have at least a credible case on the weaker end. Koufax throws any kind of a systematic approach out of whack. (His career numbers are really impressive, they're just about 75% of where most people set the floor on wins and IP.)

but of course he had a ridiculous home-park advantage.

True for '62-'65; not '61, when he was better on the road, and not '66, where he was just a bit better at home. For what it's worth, his ERA+ for '62-65 is 161, and his average yearly WAR is 7.3--those things account for ballpark, right?

i'm not saying he wasn't great in that span; he just had a bit of help.

'61 was the LA Coliseum swan song.

Yes, should have remembered that--James wrote something in one of the Abstracts once about how Koufax's big turnaround was largely fictional, it was just the move from the Coliseum to Dodger Stadium, and then broke down his '61 and '62 seasons as evidence. (That was a long time ago; I'm sure you could better answer that question today.)