A slightly-less-awesome Frank who could field.
I think Bagwell’s best shot (if he doesn’t get in on the first ballot) is to go in with Biggio; it’s a great storyline, and writers, naturally, love them some storylines.
Are there any other hall of famers (or near-HOFers) whose careers have been so closely linked? Ruth and Gehrig, maybe.
I haven’t dissected it in detail and I don’t have any serious issues with the list you posted. My main point is that I’m not sure that list is much longer or deeper than a similar list you would have composed in say 1999. If the rate of induction stays about the same they only guys from that list that would get squeezed are the ones in the “boderline by worthy” category and that’s pretty much been the case since forever.
Larkin for example has been compared to Dawson several times. Their numbers are similar but Dawson’s are more impressive since his career was pushed forward a full decade, a decade that included a swing for the fences mandate, huge turf filled ball parks, better pitching and a general dearth of home run hitters. Dawson didn’t play any seasons in the bloated offensive era, where Larkin did.
Personally, I think if you’d have made Gadarene’s list in 1989 Dawson wouldn’t have been in that 4th tier, he likely would have been at the top of the 3rd tier or the bottom of the 2nd. There’s a lot of perception issues at issue and a ton of those guys in the “borderline but worthy” catergory will fall down a tier or two with a decades worth or retrospect, justly or not.
The MVP while on a last-place team couldn’t have hurt.
Yeah, I’d probably agree with this: looking at Palmeiro again, his season-by-season batting average (still an important stat for offensive value, if not as much so as SLG or OBP) wasn’t as consistently lofty for as long as I remember. He’s no more deserving than Sosa or McGwire.
Javy I think gets a boost for offense from a catcher, but I’d be okay moving Lofton up a category for his speed, defense, and longevity.
Omniscient:
Based on the detailed comments from the BBTF thread by guys who know way, way more about baseball history and the HOF than either of us, I respectfully suggest that you’re wrong about this.
And there are a ton of borderline guys who rise a tier or two after being on the ballot for a while, justly (Blyleven) or not (Rice, Morris, Perez). Anyway, my tier placement of Dawson is in large part a matter of taste; I (obviously) don’t purport to reflect the consensus view of knowledgeable baseball fans on the matter.
(Apologies for the multiple posts.)
Omniscient:
Also, I think you’re pretty clearly wrong about this. I’ve identified twenty-one guys in the “Inner Circle” and “Clearly Deserving of Induction” category who’ll be on the ballot in the next five or six years. That’s an average of 3.5 players inducted every single year in 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016. Look at the induction rate I provided for the last thirty years* – as many as three people were enshrined together only three times during that time span, and never four or more. There’s no way we get through even half of the people in my top two categories, given current induction rates, let alone sniffing the borderline candidates. And those top two categories don’t even include some players, like Morris, Schilling, Posada, Mussina, and Sosa, who are likely to garner significant support from at least a broad base of sportswriters, if not enough to get them through the door.
*I only stopped at thirty years because I had to get back to work; as far as I can see, the induction rate wasn’t appreciably different before then, at least during the modern era of annual BBWAA elections.
Very possible. My first criteria for HoF evaluation is the sniff test. Generally guys feel like HoFer or they don’t, I look at stats and criteria second and occasionally players will elevate for fall based on that. I haven’t spent the time or energy to determine if the BBFT guys are right or not, don’t plan to.
However I know that Dawson was widely considered a lock as a HoFer when he was playing in the late 80s. Compared to his contemporaries he was head and shoulders above. The last years of his career and the HRs hit since his retirement by lesser players have damaged that perception. I don’t think Dawson is unique in this effect and I can only imagine that many of the guys on your list will suffer similar fates.
Trammell and Whitaker, had Sweet Lou not dropped inexplicably off the ballot after one year.
Again: which ones? The depth and sophistication of analysis used by your average BBWAA member is only going to grow, as more of the new breed of sportswriters gain HOF votes and the ranks of the old school “he just looked like a Hall of Famer” types become increasingly thinned with the passage of time. Not to say that statheads can’t over- or underrate a particular player, but absent some unforeseen leap in, say, defensive metrics, I think the contemporary evaluation of a player on the day of his retirement is going to match the ten-years-after-retirement hindsight evaluation of the player to a greater and greater extent.
It’s exceedingly unlikely that someone twenty years from now is gonna say, “Huh, turns out Juan Pierre was a way, way better player than anyone thought back then after all!”, or “Hmm, looks like Johan Santana didn’t actually add the kind of value everyone thought he did!” The way we look at players is already too sophisticated for that kind of wholesale reassessment.
I can’t predict the future. I would have said many of the same things in 1989 and so would the “experts” of the time. I don’t think anyone could have predicted that there’d be a home run explosion. Who knows what the next 10 years will bring. It’s possible that the statheads will be proven to be fools in 10 years, perhaps the moneyball concept will be turned on it’s head. Tough to say really, but historically speaking there’s always something unexpected and the pitching vs. hitting battle has a history of being cyclical. Perhaps pitching will make an advancement and make all the pitchers in your list look pedestrian in comparison, who knows.
Koufax and Drysdale?
How about Yogi Berra and his catcher, Whitey Ford, who were inducted together in 1974?
Omniscient:
I don’t know what this means. Also, I think you might be confusing moneyball – which has nothing to do with what I’m talking about – with the tools used to better understand how good a player is (that is, how much value they contribute to their team) relative to their position, their peers, their era, their park, and their general context.
If this happened, it would mean that the contributions of pitchers and hitters from that later era would have to be adjusted for context, not that our understanding about the value of today’s pitchers or hitters would be somehow suddenly incorrect. The fact that the National League hitters in 1930 collectively hit .301 doesn’t mean that the value of someone who batted .301 in, say, 1915 (when the National League average was .248) should be reevaluated, even if the offensive conditions in 1930 ended up being permanent. If anything, it means that people looking back at 1915 from a post-1930 vantage point should keep in mind how much more valuable the 1915 hitter was. Similarly, someone who puts up a 4.50 ERA pitching for the Colorado Rockies in 2000 might look pedestrian compared to someone putting up a 3.20 ERA for the San Francisco Giants in 1968, but that doesn’t mean that the Rockies pitcher was actually worse. As long as you’re comparing across eras and taking the relevant sorts of things into account, your assessment of one player shouldn’t change just because something happened to make future players perform appreciably better or worse as a whole.
Tom Scud:
With the Veterans’ Committee, you never know. Especially since he spent a year as a Yankee.
Maybe it shouldn’t but it does, and has. That’s all I’m pointing out.
I wasn’t necessarily shilling for his election, but he would fit in at about the 20th percentile or so (i.e. worse players are in the Hall). I just found it a bit amusing that someone was so rudely offended that 7 voters would deign to vote for him, when he probably deserved around 50 votes or so. But the BBWAA has been tightening its standards, even as debateable candidates like Rice & Dawson get in (and the current Veteran’s Committee is a joke, not electing any players the last 3 go-rounds or so-yes I know they skip the even years except for non-players). If I stick with the percentile model, the BBWAA doesn’t even consider someone unless they perceive that they are in the top 50%-top 20% will get you in on the first ballot. The ultimate irony is that about 5.5 names are on every ballot (this has dropped in recent years), so on average voters think that 5 or 6 guys deserve election every year-but of course they can’t agree on which 5.
As far as the “glut” of candidates which is coming up, I see it this way: there’s now 30 teams, almost twice as many as in the days of Dimaggio and Ted Williams. So why wouldn’t there be twice as many deserving HoFers now vs. then? [Not to mention that there’s tons more population-now, including Latino countries and now Japan-from which primo ballplayers are drawn.] Now, I can’t answer those who say, “So why did it take to 2012 for that to become an issue and clog the ballot?” Now, Omni I think is partially right-some of the BBTF heads alluded to above seem to believe that it was easier to put up hugely dominant numbers (both for offense AND pitching-there’s been discussion on the latter in a thread today in fact) post 1992 than it was before, for whatever reasons. I still think almost everybody on Gadarene’s top two categories would have still been qualified pre-1992.
What all this means is that the Level 3 (“Borderline but Worthy”) guys will fall off (drop under 5%), when before they would have lingered for years, the Level 2’s will end up waiting to get in for a long time, perhaps until their 15 years are up, AND there’s enough Roiders in Level 1 for many of them to stick around too, with too many voters unconvinced they belong despite their sins. It’s going to be a massive clusterfuck.
If the best relief pitcher ever isn’t Inner Circle, I don’t know what else to say.
A similar argument would be that the best utility infielder ever isn’t Inner Circle. In the same way that utility infielders are guys who couldn’t cut it as regulars, relief pitchers are guys who couldn’t cut it as (more valuable) starters. And even the best relief pitcher on the planet – which Rivera is – might not contribute as much to your team’s wins over a season as a very good #2 starter.
Another way to frame the argument: it’s entirely possible that a majority of the best 30 starting pitchers in the game today, if they were converted to closers, would be nearly as good as Rivera. Say, 70-90% as good. If that were true, then a guy like Rivera wouldn’t really be as valuable as he seems.
Disclaimer: I personally think Rivera obviously deserves to be in the Hall of Fame. I’m just saying the argument against him being “inner circle” isn’t nonsensical.
-P
Omar Vizquel was probably the best defensive middle infielder in MLB history, and he has more career hits and steals than Barry Larkin. He should be compared to Ozzie Smith, but he’ll probably be compared (unfairly) to power hitting shortstops like Jeter, Arod, and Tejada.
Tom Scud:
Tinker, Evers and Chance.
I’d disagree Vizquel was “probably the best defensive infielder in MLB history” given that you already mentioned a better one, as noted above.
Why? Gold Gloves?