Who’s suggested such an alternative?
That’s great. I don’t think there’s anyone that would disagree with that. (Pitchers A and B are Mussina and Schilling, by the way.)
Nobody, and that was a poor choice of words on my part. I meant that whenever people start with the “X is in the HOF, and Y has similar numbers, therefore it follows that Y must also get in” argument are missing a larger point.
D’oh!! I thought I saw them identified upthread and didn’t inspect the numbers closely enough to realize that wasn’t the case… Told ya stat-based arguments tend to lose me! 
Yep, except maybe for the last one. The best players, the Hall candidates make their teams better and therefore better known.
As someone else said already, it’s the Hall of Fame. Guys who were considered dominant at their position, and who rose to the occasion in big games, earned more fame. They were a bigger part of the game than the very good, long-lived, but somehow never-on-top guys who rack up the big career numbers. The Big Moment does matter, even if it’s hard to put into stats. It’s the heart of what the game is about.
His World Series performances will put Schilling in on one of the first few ballots (maybe not the first, he’s pissed off people along the way, and still does for that matter), while Mussina may not get in at all. And there’s not a thing wrong with that.
That’s a semantic argument that really doesn’t mean almost anything at all. What the hell is “Fame,” then? Is it your position that the Hall of Fame doesn’t exist to honor the best players of the game of baseball?
Why is it meaningful to point out that the word “Fame” is in the name of the thing, other than as a sort of sneering nerd putdown?
It’s whatever the voters want it to be, in effect.
That’s the primary criterion, yes, of course, but not entirely, and even so it covers a pretty broad range of factors. Thanks for posting the requirements (saves me the trouble). Note that only 1 of the 6 criteria is even quantifiable. Do you think that be the only one considered?
To help foster a fuller perspective on the institution’s purpose and, hopefully, on the game itself.
Well, yeah, and they’re falling into a pretty common trap, “If Smith Then Jones.” You can’t really argue that way because you’d end up inducting six or seven hundred more guys (there’s about 240 now) because there are so many Hall of Famers who really shouldn’t have been inducted in the first place. If George Kelly is a Hall of Famer, how could you argue against John Olerud or Will Clark?
The Mussina-Schilling numbers comparison is interesting because while the totals are similar, the shape of their careers is REALLY different. Mussina was just really good, year in and year out. Schilling was more unpredictable and had famous highlight moments.
Don Sutton and Steve Carlton are the usual litmus test. Their career records are more or less identical, but the shapes are very different indeed.
I’m not going to be responsible for turning every baseball thread into the same argument, so I’ll just say this – nobody advocating for or against a player’s candidacy from a statistically based perspective in this thread has discounted any particular alternate valuation of a player.
On the contrary, there have been multiple “arguments” to the effect that “all these stat people don’t even understand the game.” It’s these arguments which are limiting the number of factors to be considered. There’s been plenty of “stats don’t tell the real story,” but there hasn’t been ANY “stats tell the whole story.” Hell, the first thing I said in the thread was that Schilling’s postseason performance makes him a clearly superior candidate and should be included in the discussion. So talking about a “fuller perspective” is an end run around the real source of the disagreement.
Also, 3 out of the 6 requirements are quantifiable, not just one of them.
Which ones besides “record”? And how?
Nor have they given anything other than a glance to any. There has, however, been a bit of snark about “sneering nerd putdown” aimed at those who have attempted to discuss other factors.
Lefty got in on the first try IIRC. Sutton had to wait a while. Schill may have to wait, but Moose definitely will.
Ability and contribution to team, and, well, lots of ways. How much do you want to hear? VORP, the different levels of WARP, and lots of other acronyms I won’t bother you with are measures of how much an individual player contributed to his team relative to the level of production a replacement level player would contribute (and at different levels are adjusted for league difficulty, position, season length, etc.) Playing ability is measured a million different ways. In fact, the entire point of subjecting baseball to statistical analysis is to determine better ways to quantify these things. I mean, the statistic “career home runs” is at once a measure of a player’s ability and his contributions to his team(s). Certainly it can be refined, but it is a measure, if a crude one.
I don’t really know who has given glances to what, and how to verify the sincerity of those glances, or how to separate ‘other factors’ from statistics when statistics are the language of the sport. I can only repeat that the first thing I brought up was postseason performance, which as near as I can tell counts as another factor.
Your final sentence is of course total bullshit. I begin to feel like a Bush supporter in GD, ready to point out to you the ways you’re misrepresenting my position and the way this argument has developed, but frankly it isn’t a feeling I’m inclined to indulge for much longer, nor one that I think the other participants want to hear about. Enjoy.
Lefty got in in a landslide, over 95%. Sutton was on the fifth try, I think. Maybe it was the fourth - I’m never sure if by “inducted in year X” they mean he was elected that year or if that’s the year they bring them to Cooperstown.
That’s the ideal example because I think almost everyone would agree Steve Carlton was a greater pitcher than Don Sutton. They’re REALLY similar in totals, even in playoff performance, but the simple fact is that Carlton reached greater heights of awesome, and the main reason his career numbers are close to Sutton’s is that he also had some bad years Sutton never really did. But given the choice I’d vote for Carlton every single day that ends in a Y over Sutton, and everyone else who isn’t a Dodger fan and many who are think the same. So there’s something to attaining true greatness.
The thing is, Sutton was just as FAMOUS. “Hall of Fame” or no, the fame argument doesn’t really work for Carlton-Sutton because Sutton was an LA media darling and was not, unlike Carlton, on a self-imposed interview ban. Sutton was extremely famous. Nonetheless, Carlton’s reaching higher levels of greatness pretty clearly makes people think differently about his candidacy.
I suspect both Schilling and Mussina will have to wait, in any event.
I was surprised Carlton wasn’t “penalized” in the vote (well, much) by his hanging ona few years too long after he’d lost his effectiveness. It was a little harder to remember his dominance in his prime, unfortunately (his 1972 season was incredible - 27 wins for a last place team). His media silence was probably a good idea for his image anyway, considering his whackjobbery. The few guys who were openly hostile to the media, notably Jim Rice, certainly do pay for it.
Schilling was well known for being a fine teammate and person, four days out of five, but had to be left alone on days he was scheduled to start. I doubt anybody saw that as more than serious competitiveness. In fact, he always went out of his way to give the media material to work with, even though it has always had an element of his own ego to it. Anyway, he’s in, and before a guy who was very good for a long time but never was truly scary.
jimmy, the rest of us are having fun talking baseball. Please join us.
Good one.
[quote=“ElvisL1ves, post:53, topic:492785”]
The few guys who were openly hostile to the media, notably Jim Rice, certainly do pay for it.
[QUOTE]
Actually, when it comes to the Hall of Fame, writers don’t seem to hold grudges against surly, uncooperative players, PROVIDED the players in question have great numbers.
Eddie Murray, Steve Carlton and Ted Williams got into the Hall of Fame without a problem, even though most reporters hated them (and vice versa), because their numbers couldn’t be denied.
If Jim Rice had better numbers, he’d have gotten in on the first ballot. I mean, Dale Murphy was widely seen as a prince of a guy, but that hasn’t gotten HIM into the Hall of Fame, has it?
There’s also the possibility that Rice’s numbers were reassessed after the steroid issue was finally rubbed in everyone’s faces (thanks, Jose). Applying a reasonable discount factor for juiced numbers made his look a lot better.
But he still just squeaked by in his last year.
Just to clarify- writers are only human, and I DO believe there have been several occasions when they’ve snubbed players who deserved major awards, just because the players in question were perceived as jerks (Albert Belle lost the MVP award for being a jerk, NOT because Mo Vaughn was better than Belle).
But when it comes to the Hall of Fame, I don’t see where any “jerks” have been treated unfairly. I can’t think of anybody with stellar numbers who’s been kept out just because he was uncooperative with the media. MAYBE when there’s a close call, writers will be influenced by how much they liked or disliked a player on a personal level.
But that only matters with the borderline cases. Fred “The Chicken” Stanley wouldn’t get any votes, even if he were the friendliest, most quotable guy in sports, while Eddie Murray never said a word to repoerters and STILL got elected on the first ballot.
Dick Allen is probably the clearest case of a very good player who would have gotten into the hall of fame if he’d had Kirby Puckett’s (for a not entirely random example) personality. But he’s a relatively short-career guy in a low-offense era who though great at his peak didn’t put up no-doubt HOF career numbers.
And Puckett’s World Series performances. The postseason (I dislike that word, it devalues what are by far the most important games) really does matter in assessing a player’s worthiness, the OP’s framing of the question notwithstanding.
Ted Williams lost the MVP award in a year he won the Triple Crown. Same reason.