2012 Baseball Hall of Fame ballot

The Game Room
41

As far as the candidates:

Larkin: Rather easily a HOF’er based on the standards established. His only real negative was his tendency to miss games. 69 WAR.

Raines: Another definite for me. Incredible SB% and a really strong OBP along a better SLG% than many would think. 65 WAR

Bagwell: Doesn’t have the benefit of compiling numbers in his early 20’s or late 30’s like many, but is still the best player on this ballot imo. He had a tremendous peak and was able to total 80 WAR in a relatively short career. One of the top 1st baseman ever. No doubt HOF’er.

McGwire: Yes, but not by much. Defense, baserunning, and durabilty hurt his case, but he was a dominant hitter for a fair part of his career.

Palmeiro: Other than steroids, the only argument against him is that he was more of a compiler than a great player. That is partially true, but he was really really good for a really long time. Basically a much better McGriff. Yes to Raffy. 66 WAR.

Trammel: This guy is basically a slightly lesser version of Larkin. Close call, but yes. 67 WAR.

Martinez: A dominant hitter who probably should have had more AB’s in his mid 20’s. The compiled stats are not great due to a late start, but the rate stat are fantastic. A .312 / .418/ .515 slash line says it all. Yes, he didn’t play much in the field, but he still accumulated a 67 WAR despite doing almost nothing before age 27.

Walker: An interesting case. 67 WAR. So if I was just going off that, he’d get my endorsement. However, an OPS over 200 points better at home keeps me from approving of him. Coors just inflated his numbers too much for me to think he is as deserving as the above guys.

Morris: This guy is so far from being a HOF pitcher that it really baffles me why so many feel differently. I don’t see anything about his resume other than a few great starts in the WS (not a great overall postseason resume though). He just wasn’t a great pitcher, he didn’t pitch to the score, at least not effectively, and he shouldn’t get any credit for some good timing that made him one of the better pitchers of the 1980’s decade in terms of compiled stats. 39 WAR

Smith: See prior post.

Williams: An intriguing player who was overrated defensively but underrated offensively. Too short of a peak/career though.

I think that’s everyone.

Shout out to Lou Whitaker though who has a very strong case and somehow fell off the ballot.

42

You can adjust for the home/road differences all you want, but you shouldn’t adjust ALL of the home stats down to the baseline. What he did in Coors led to real runs, and real wins, even if a run there was worth less than elsewhere; you simply can’t whitewash all those runs out of existence by simply doubling the road numbers. I’ll also note that Coors was NOT a park he played in while on the road, and players in general will hit better at home anyway, even in a neutral park (home field advantage at work). In his best season (1997) he hit .346/.443/.733 on the road, and overall did relatively well on the road in any event (when I’m not so tired I can go quantify that).

We also have Walker’s record in Montreal (which was pretty neutral), where he had a .284/.359/.489/130 OPS+, which isn’t too shabby esp. since 3 of those seasons happened before offense exploded in 1993.

43

Relevant Joe Posnanski blog post.

44

So far Edgar has 30 votes, Larry Walker 16.

I mentioned this in the other thread on the subject, but I cannot think of any reasonable case why you would vote for Edgar Martinez and not vote for Larry Walker. None at all.

Even adjusting for Coors Field, Walker’s overall effectiveness as a hitter is very close to Edgar’s; the difference is very minimal. When you add in the fact that Walker was an excellent defensive outfielder, I find it hard to come to any conclusion but that Walker was obviously a better player than Edgar Martinez.

45

My response is the same as from last year’s thread: Larkin, Trammell, Bagwell, and Raines.

Though I still like the idea of putting Bagwell and Biggio in together.

46

I think the argument is that Edgar had a longer, more consistent peak. Obviously this is going to be very subjective, but let’s compare their career by seasonal bWAR:

4 WAR seasons
Martinez = 10
Walker = 8

5 WAR seasons
Martinez = 9
Walker = 4

6 WAR seasons
Martinez = 4
Walker = 2

7 WAR seasons
Martinez = 1
Walker = 2

If you look at their overall resumes, Walker’s career WAR is a bit inflated by his two ridiculous seasons (7.4 and 9.0 WAR). He accumulated his career WAR in 15 seaons, whereas Martinez did his in 13 years. So you have a combination of Walker having a bunch of lesser seasons and two ridiculously good seasons, and having done it over a longer stretch (meaning Martinez was more valuable on a per-season basis).

I’m no advocate for Martinez, just thought I would give you a neutral party’s take on their relative candidacies.

47

Williams had just as long a career as Edgar.

I know I’m a broken record about this but I think WAR often really blows it big time on measuring defensive value. WAR rates Williams as a substantially lesser player than Edgar Martinez largely because it assigns Williams a huge, huge negative as a defensive player. I think this is out to lunch a few times over;

  1. I honestly believe the “replacement value” for key defensive positions is set way too high,

  2. It’s simply not convincing to me that Williams, who played a key defensive position well enough that his team never stopped winning, was actually a less valuable defensive player than a player who did not (for the most part) play defense at all. That position means, logically, that WAR is saying that during his career, Bernie Williams was a worse defensive outfielder than Roseanne Barr.

  3. I’m absolutely convinced WAR is frequently hopelessly amiss with regards to overall team defensive WAR, and that this filters down to individual players. The Yankees of the Jeter era are an extreme example of this; their year to year WAR would literally suggest that a team that made the playoff almost every year was usually no better than a good Triple-A team. That doesn’t make any sense to me. In general I think we’re getting a bit too dependent on WAR; it ain’t everything, and in this particular case I’m convinced it’s flawed.

Now, I don’t think Williams was ever really a GREAT center fielder and, like Jeter, he won Gold Gloves with his bat and his uniform, not his glove. But he wasn’t a worse defensive player than Dave Kingman, for God’s sake.

I also think we are getting to the point that we must consider postseason play. Williams played a season’s worth of playoff games, 121 in all, and batted .275 with 22 home runs against playoff-level pitching. That’s basically about 4 or 5 WAR on his resume. Those games count for something, and I think he should be given credit for them. Martinez, in 34 games, hit about the same (hell of an ALDS in 1995 and all, but he had some series where he didn’t show up.) That’s a big difference. It’s not Edgar’s fault his team wasn’t as good, and I’m not suggesting a World Series ring is a necessity for enshrinement or else we’d have to kick out Ted Williams and give his place to Joe Carter. But Williams played in those games and Edgar did not, and those games count.

All in all I think Bernie Williams is just as good a choice as Edgar.

48

What’s hinky about Bernie’s projected level of support-or should I say lack thereof (among partial ballots revealed so far-about 2%) is that I seriously doubt the voters are knocking him down much for his alleged defensive deficiencies. He hit close to .300, with power and some speed, for a dynasty while playing a key defensive position; historically that would garner a solid modicum of support, but the current voting pool doesn’t seem to have those biases like past pools did. Among post WWII CFers-let me amend that-among post Willie Mays CFers, only Puckett and in a few years Griffey will be in, which seems ridiculously low to me for a 40-year run in the expansion era (and Puckett belongs at about 5th on that list not 2nd). It’s almost like they are judging him like a corner OF, making absolutely no allowances for the difficulty of playing center. Edmonds and Lofton will undoubtedly be one-and-done’s too it seems, which is a fracking shame. It appears that defense never figures into the equation for the BBWAA unless the candidate is a glove wizard (Ozzie) or a total slug (Manny).

49

I agree that CF is pretty underrepresented in Cooperstown, but the way to remedy this is not to let a player like Bernie Williams in, but to take defense into account more strongly (resulting in the admission of players like Andruw Jones or Jim Edmonds). Bernie is around 40th in career WAR at CF, and there are a bunch of worthier candidates.

50

That’s assuming you completely buy the accuracy of WAR an the rankings it provides. It’s a very useful tool, but it’s not the final word.

Your point is generally a good one though; the “We don’t have enough of position X” argument is not a valid argument for an individual player.

51

It appears that I voted for every single name in the poll. I think I did that under the influence of alcohol. So, yeah. Sorry about that.

52

Well, it can mean that the Hall hasn’t reached the “quota” at a given position, at least according to some self-appointed pundit somewhere, and yeah that’s a non-starter of an argument. But it can also mean that the Hall isn’t recognizing quality play at that position because of its institutional biases. The Hall has traditionally given 3B short shrift (expecting them to hit like 1B and field like SS), and something similar may be at work recently when it comes to centerfielders.

53

Buddy the Elf: Pretty, it’s like a Christmas tree!

54

Good thing I’m not adjusting them all down to the baseline. I realize hitters do better at home in general.

And the OPS+ adjusts for era, so no need to say the line looks better because some of it occurred before the offensive explosion.

55

Regarding Bernie vs Edgar…

Edgar was a vastly superior hitter than Bernie, enough so that even with the positional adjustment, his bat was worth 7 wins more.

Even if you want to adjust Bernie’s dWAR to 0 instead of -12, he still comes up those 7 wins shy of Edgar and a bit shy of HOF caliber imo. I do think he was a poor defensive CF, though. Maybe not -12 bad I’ll grant you.

56

Okay, then, I don’t get the opposition to Walker. His adjusted numbers effectively equal Martinez and he was a sensational defensive player. Yes, Coors inflated his numbers, but even after you adjust for them he’s just as good as Raines, Martinez, or Palmiero if your yardstick is WAR. If your yardstick isn’t WAR, I don’t see what else puts him below them, either. Playoff success? None of them have a lot. MVP Awards? Walker’s the only one with one. Peak? Walker’s peak was as good as any of them. Balanced game? Walker was a five-tool player. Character? I’ve heard nothing bad about Walker.

57

I don’t think OPS+ adjusted enough for the spike in offense at Coors Field.

And when you say his adjusted numbers equal Martinez and he was a great sensational player it makes it seem like his case is better. But in reality, there wasn’t the need for the and in that sentence. His adjusted value numbers equal Edgar’s when factoring in Larry’s great D. Edgar’s offense was better.

Other than my first line, the other reason I give Edgar the edge is I think he was robbed of some time where he could have added value to his career.

I also did say that I’m not reaching a definitive stance on Walker. I may change my mind at some point.

58

Why doesn’t OPS+ adjust for Coors enough? I’m pretty sure it’s based on fairly solid home/road data, is it not?

I note with some interest that Larry Walker is credited with 307 Win Shares, Martinez with 305, again essentially even; it’s interesting both methods put them so close. However, 305-307 Win Shares is not a really super endoresement for enshrinement; it’s a little on the low side, albeit pretty good for guys in shorter careers.

Absent the steroids issue, Mark McGwire is clearly just as good a candidate, too. There’s a lot of quality candidates on the ballot, but no sure fire inductees.

59

I didn’t word that well. I think that for some players in particular, like Walker, the adjustment isn’t enough given the absurd splits.

His career OPS at Coors is 1.172! His tOPS there is 141! For his career, he was an .865 OPS guy. His sOPS was consistently better at home by a wide margin.

So he took advantage of Coors more than would be expected based on the OPS+ adjustment. It may be unfair to hold that against him, but my thinking is if he had stayed with the Expos or gone to any other team, his career wouldn’t have as much value.

It’s a tough call, and I think is case is more complex than most.

60

Larkin
Morris
Smith
Bagwell
Raines
Martinez
Trammell
Mcgriff
Mattingly
Murphy