As you're no doubt aware, Rich Gossage got the call from the Hall last Tuesday, receiving 85.8 percent of the vote. He was the only candidate to gain entry this year. Jim Rice fell just 16 votes shy at 72.2 percent, followed by Andre Dawson (65.9 percent) and Bert Blyleven (61.9 percent). Tim Raines, the candidate I promoted most heavily, finished with a dismal 24.3 percent in his first year of eligibility.
In anticipation of Raines not making it on his first try, I set about to find out what a strong first-year showing for an eventual enshrinee would look like. Using the Hall of Fame's website, I culled the year-by-year voting results back to 1966, when the BBWAA resumed annual balloting after a decade of biennial votes...
Since 1966, the BBWAA has elected 65 players to the Hall of Fame, including Gossage but not including Roberto Clemente, who was elected via a special process in March 1973, less than three months after his death, and Red Ruffing, who was elected in a 1967 runoff which the rules provided for in the case of the writers didn't grant any candidates 75 percent (only the winner of the runoff gained entry). Thirty-two of those 65 were members of one of the three milestone clubs: the 3,000 Hit Club, the 500 Home Run Club, and the 300 Win Club. Of those 32 "marked" players, only six didn't get in on the first ballot: Harmon Killebrew, Eddie Mathews, Gaylord Perry, Phil Niekro, Don Sutton, and Early Wynn. They took an average of 4.33 ballots to gain enshrinement. Only two marked players have thus far failed to gain enshrinement, Pete Rose (who received 41 write-in votes in 1992) and McGwire--a rather incredible precedent.
Of the 33 "unmarked" electees in that span, 10 gained entry on the first ballot... The remaining 23 candidates averaged 6.52 ballots; the distinction between ballots and years is necessary because five of these players, as well as the already-dismissed Ruffing, date back to the 1956-1966 biennial era.
Taking the 18 unmarked, non-first year, non-biennial candidates and the six marked, non-first year ones into consideration leaves us a pool of 24 enshrinees to study for clues as to what constitutes a good start to an eventual Hall of Fame election. It's not a huge sample, but it will have to do:
Wtd is the weighted percentage of votes received (based on the actual number of votes cast instead of the simple mean) and Med is the median percentage of votes received. Any way you look at it, Raines received about half the support level of a typical non-first ballot Hall of Famer. Since 1966, only Duke Snider (17.0 percent), Don Drysdale (21.0 percent), Billy Williams (23.4 percent), and Sutter (23.9 percent) have rallied from lower percentages, while Ralph Kiner (24.5 percent), Luis Aparicio (27.9 percent), and Early Wynn (27.9) weren't much better off. Even Gossage got just 33.3 percent his first time out.
As for Jim Rice, his near-miss 72.2 percent has been eclipsed only by four players who failed to gain enshrinement via that year's voting. Three of them -- Nellie Fox (74.7 percent), Jim Bunning (74.2 percent) and Orlando Cepeda (73.5 percent) -- got in via the Veterans Committee a few years later, while the aforementioned Ruffing got in via a runoff. Even with Rickey Henderson appearing on next year's ballot, Rice's eventual election is a virtual lock, which is a head-scratcher given how far below Raines and below the JAWS benchmarks he ranks.
My BP colleage Joe Sheehan did an excellent job of dismantling Rice's case both at BP and on ESPNews, the latter in which he double-teamed with ESPN Insider columnist and BP alum Keith Law. I only wish that he hadn't uncharacteristically pulled a punch in his article by failing to mention that the ESPN colleague and BBWAA writer who accused Neyer of spearheading an anti-Rice campaign was Peter Gammons, who said that Neyer was "obsessed with degrading Rice's career." While I've had my differences with Rob recently, I found nothing in his examinations of Rice's credentials to suggest his look at the evidence and the arguments that had been advanced on the candidate's behalf was biased. Gammons' statement was a thoroughly unprofessional grandstanding maneuver by one of the game's most powerful writers to try to bully and embarrass Neyer. Frankly, it was horseshit, but it was also sadly characteristic of Gammons' recent unprovoked swipes at some sabermetric straw man that's apparently haunting his offseason. Say it ain't so, Peter.
Sadly, the Raines/Rice vote discrepancy seems to provide the take-home message of this year's vote -- that advocacy using advanced metrics like WARP or Win Shares might somehow create a backlash among voters due to the uppity refusal of analysts to take their exalted word as gospel instead of thinking for ourselves. Mark Armour, in a provocative guest piece at Baseball Analysts, made a solid point about such efforts:
Another problem with the analytical arguments is that they are so… strident. The current message from the stat community to the Hall of Fame and its voters goes something like this: "Your institution is riddled with poor selections, and most of the current voting writers are morons. P.S. Please find enclosed my application to join your fine group." It's a bit like saying, "I don't like your wife, but if you have me over for dinner I can give her a few tips on her attitude."
Every time some poor writer released their Hall of Fame ballot last month, unless it had the "right" guys on it, the voter was deemed not smart enough, unthinking. I don’t really want to quote examples because I am in enough trouble already, but, trust me, if you voted for Jack Morris you were mocked.
While Mark, who had mentioned my JAWS work earlier in the piece, doesn't specifically point a finger at me at on the stridency charge, I must admit that there are times when that particular shoe fits -- though at least I've got the occasional excuse to go double-barrel -- and there are times I too gawk and groan in dismay at many of the published ballots. What else can I do? I've devoted a great deal of time to carving a niche in covering the Hall of Fame vote, all the while knowing that there's little chance in hell I'm ever going to get to partake in the process myself. For some of these writers to blithely dismiss certain candidates at the expense of others, or to simply not take their role in the process seriously, is an annual disappointment. As I wrote in my recent piece:
The obstinate and occasionally belligerent innumeracy publicly displayed by many a voter over the past few weeks remains the most frustrating aspect of the annual election cycle. For every analyst at the margins who offers a rational, factually-supported argument about the merits of a particular player's candidacy, there appear to be a dozen voters willing to fall back on the "I saw him play, you eggheads" argument accompanied by cherry-picked statistical measures and selectively applied standards. 'Twas ever thus, and so long as the Stonecutters, er, BBWAA keeps electing somebody so as to funnel a steady horde of tourists to Cooperstown every summer, the Hall of Fame has little incentive to get with the times by revamping its voting process. The best those of us who attempt to call attention to the "right" candidates can do is to persist with our educational efforts while hoping that younger, more open-minded writers gradually replace certain fossilized BBWAA members whose voting privileges apparently hinge on the unwillingness of that body to purge its rolls in accordance with its bylaws. Wait 'til next year, or the year after that, or the year after that...
In any event, while the election results weren't all that I'd hoped, I'm delighted to see JAWS and the Hall of Fame standards becoming a bigger part of the discussion. Onward and upwards, my friends.
Regarding your NL MVP candidates, how about those two guys in Florida? Yes, the Marlins are not in playoff contention, but it's hard to ignore Hanley Ramirez and Miguel Cabrera, especially considering they're first and second, respectively, in the NL in VORP, and rank in the top three in Runs Created. It looks like you went through all the playoff-contending teams, and chose a "good" player from each. Let me ask you: If Cabrera were on a playoff-contender this season, would there be any doubt who the MVP was? -- Carolyn, Boca Raton, Fla.
Actually, you're right. That's exactly what I did, and how I came up with Prince Fielder as my NL MVP leader. His "good'' year is actually more than good, and the Brewers are right in the thick of the playoff race. While I understand your sentiments, I am more interested in "wins created'' than runs created. And the day I consider VORP is the day I get out of the business. The idea of the MVP is to honor the player who has had the biggest positive impact on the pennant races. I have been a big champion for Ramirez, but I would not consider him a true candidate to win the MVP award.
Emphasis added. Once again, an old-guard sportswriter decides that a simple sabermetric concept is interfering with his ability to gum his applesauce in peace:
"Damn you kids! You don't know anything about the manly, musky smell of a locker room and its relationship to team chemistery and anonymously sourced shit-stirring quotes! It's got nothing to do with your new-age sissy numbers! You don't need a computer to add up RBIs! Hell, I'll bet you think these stat-generating robots put their pants on two legs at a time as they plug their Internets into their calculators. Well, you whippersnappers can pry my ignorance out of my cold, dead hand!"
Funny, I had Heyman for being about 15-20 years younger than Chass. Clearly, he got old in a hurry.
Fire Joe Morgan was on this one like white on rice, and Lone Star Ball took some pretty good cuts, too. So rather than raising my blood pressure any further, I'll simply get off Mr. Heyman's lawn and allow him to resume the search for his pants.
And hope that the day he gets out of the business comes before the day he hands in another award ballot.
On Monday, my JAWS article about the Veterans Committee was published at Baseball Prospectus publication. Tuesday saw the voting results -- another shutout -- announced, and when I blogged it at BP Unfiltered, I added a veiled dig at the New York Times' Murray Chass, who had... well, I'll give him the rope:
I receive a daily e-mail message from Baseball Prospectus, an electronic publication filled with articles and information about statistics, mostly statistics that only stats mongers can love.
To me, VORP epitomized the new-age nonsense. For the longest time, I had no idea what VORP meant and didn’t care enough to go to any great lengths to find out. I asked some colleagues whose work I respect, and they didn’t know what it meant either.
Finally, not long ago, I came across VORP spelled out. It stands for value over replacement player. How thrilling. How absurd. Value over replacement player. Don’t ask what it means. I don’t know.
I suppose that if stats mongers want to sit at their computers and play with these things all day long, that’s their prerogative. But their attempt to introduce these new-age statistics into the game threatens to undermine most fans’ enjoyment of baseball and the human factor therein.
People play baseball. Numbers don’t.
Shortly after the blog entry was published, I began receiving a steady stream of emails, almost unanimously positive. The supportive comments -- thank you, readers -- kept pouring in during my chat a couple of hours later, where I said some things that a few people took as upping the rhetorical ante. If I regret anything now that the story has cooled, it's that nobody got the vintage Ice-T reference, and that said opening line was taken as BP's party line. It was not; it was an off-the-cuff response that was far more heated and less measured than Executive Vice President Nate Silver's open letter, which stands as BP's official response.
In my view and the view of many others around the blogosphere, Chass looked completely foolish. Even in hindsight, I'm puzzled why his screed was published; it's an embarrassment to the New York Times and the profession. Did anyone who read that article decide they would suddenly take Chass more seriously than they had before, now that he had drawn the line in the sand and declared, I will not learn what this means under any circumstances, even when the answer is one click away?
Did any of Chass' colleagues at the Times -- whether old-guardsmen like Dave Anderson and George Vescey or younger writers such as Alan Schwarz and David Leonhardt (who have mentioned many BP statistics and writers in their "Keeping Score" column" but who obviously weren't asked in Chass' informal poll) -- thank him for standing up to those punks with their new-age stats?
Did the wheezing Grey Lady gain more traction in any quarter thanks to one of its writers proudly standing up for knownothingism?
Boil down Chass' words, and they amount to, "I don't understand this. It somehow finds my computer every day and it scares me and reminds me I'm obsolete. They're replacing me with a calculator!" To me, that looks like a writer who's gone waaaay past his pitch count.
It's a sad day when someone who's received the top honor that baseball can grant his profession decides he knows too much about the sport to have to learn another statistic. Scratch that. It's a sad day when any writer decides he knows so much about his field that he'll trumpet his exemption from learning more.
It's even sadder that said writer, who was honored in part for being on the vanguard of reporting the business of baseball and its labor issues, has decided that he no longer can keep up with the changing times. Worse, he decided to make an unsupportable and offensive generality that something he doesn't understand -- a statistic, for heaven's sake -- somehow ruins the game for most fans.
The beauty of baseball is that its fans can find such a multitude of ways to appreciate the game. If Chass hasn't grasped that single fact in 40-something years of covering baseball, he hasn't learned a thing.
• • •
Aside from l'affair Chass, my chat also featured technical problems that sent a few of my responses floating into the ether rather than showing up on the page. I earmarked a couple of JAWS-related ones to take a later swing at:
bloodwedding (BK): Jay, I am not totally up on HOF opinion and JAWS, but I assume a) that Biggio is a lock and b) that he is now a below average player in 2007. Using Biggio (not sure he is the best example), but say a player's last few seasons are decidedly below average for their position, yet they push up the guy's WARP3 or what-have-you...my question is, should Peak be given more weight than Longevity, and how much more? A guy like Albert Belle could peter out for a few more years and enhance his raw totals, but it wouldn't help a team in real life. Thoughts?
Biggio, who is now just 70 hits shy of 3,000 and 19 homers shy of 300, is in good shape regarding the Hall of Fame based on his accomplishments on the field. JAWS thinks so, too; he scores at 123.7 career WARP3, 69.5 peak, and 96.6 overall. The Hall of Fame second basemen set the highest bar — 122.8/71.5/97.1 — and Biggio isn't quite over it yet, but 1.2 WARP will do the trick.
Which brings up the fact that Biggio is in fact now a below-average player. According to BP's numbers, he was seven runs below average with the bat and 14 runs below average in the field last year, good for just 2.5 WARP in a season where he got over 600 plate appearances. In fact, in a year where the Astros missed winning the NL Central by 1 1/2 games, it's arguable that Phil Garner's decision to ride such a spent horse so far when they had a younger, more able alternative in Chris Burke cost the team the division. I wrote a chapter for the forthcoming It Ain't Over 'Til It's Over: the Baseball Prospectus Pennant Race Book on similar instances throughout baseball history. It's an all-too-common mistake, alas.
But that shouldn't change how we view Bigs' career. One thing I stated in both the BBWAA and VC JAWS articles is that what we can call the Terrence Long portion of a player's career -- the point where we could substitute said crappy player to soak up a mostly useless 2-3 WARP a year to finish out a foreshortened career -- isn't where a Hall case should be decided. That's why I overrode the "no's" on Belle and Dick Allen, both of whom had very high peaks and missed by just a couple JAWS points on career; with better luck they'd have made it over the line even with minimal production.
On the other hand, the studies I've done with my WARP data indicate to me that in terms of using JAWS as a predictive tool for the HOF, I'm probably overvaluing peak; one actually gets a better correlation simply using career WARP. Note that JAWS isn't specifically designed to be a predictive tool; my goal with it is to strike a balance between the idealism that a Hall vote should be based on merit and the pragmatism to understand that merit is a concept that means different things to different voters, but that greatness is generally considered along the lines of career and peak.
Accounting for peak gives the system more nuance than simple career totals, as the peak element stands as a proxy for the awards, the All-Stars, Gold Gloves and league-leading totals which a career WARP measure doesn't see. But the latter still provides the bulk of a player's Hall of Fame argument whether rwe're talking about JAWS or the BBWAA vote; if it didn't, most of the players on this year's VC ballot would have long since been in, as their careers petered out at 33 or 35 instead of lasting until 40.
Carlos Delgado (Flushing, New York): JAWS me, please!
Oddly enough, this question came up over dinner last week with my baseball-loving pals of some renown. Delgado scores at 81.8/58.7/70.3, where the average Hall of Famer first-sacker winds up at 106.1/62.8/84.5. That puts Delgado, who's entering his Age 35 season, 28.4 WARP away from the line, needing about four and a half seasons that are the equivalent of his 6.2-WARP 2006.
He can get closer by improving upon his peak component; his seven best years are worth 10.4, 9.2, 8.9, 8.7. 7.5, 7.2, and 6.8 WARP. An 8.0 WARP season, a level he hasn't seen since 2003, would up his career total to 89.8 and raise his peak to 59.9, good for an overall score of 74.9, leaving him 19.2 WARP shy. And so on. The bottom line is that Delgado will have to maintain a considerable pace into his late 30s to improve his Hall of Fame credentials. While I'd like to see it happen -- he's a great hitter, and his outspokenness is a nice reminder that not all athletes are pompous right-wing gasbags like Curt Schilling -- I'm not going to put money down on that likelihood.
