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

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.)