The Baseball Hall of Fame: A Qualitative Analysis – Final Thoughts
By my count, there are just over 200 former Major League baseball players in the Hall of Fame. This does not count players who were eventually elected to The Hall not for what they did on the field, but for what they later did as coaches, managers, or even team owners.
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I also did not count former Negro League players like Satchel Paige who, though he did spend some time in The Majors, is actually in The Hall primarily for his vast accomplishments as a Negro League pitcher.
After having written well over 15,000 words on this subject, I have come to several conclusions.
First, there is broad consensus on the top 40-50 players of all-time. I don’t mean that you and I would come up with exactly the same list of players on such a list, just that if you polled a room-full of those of us who spend an inordinate amount of time on this stuff, our lists would not vary greatly.
So far, so good.
There are 23 players who have a career WAR over 100. These are the shoo-ins. There are another ten players who accumulated WAR between 90-99 in their respective careers (interestingly, this is one of the smallest cohort groups in the HOF.)
Among the players in the 90+ range include Christy Mathewson, Jimmie Foxx, and Al Kaline, so I think it’s probably safe to assume that expanding the Hall to at least the top 33 players would be acceptable to a reasonable person.
Yet, if we limit Hall membership to this elite group of 33 players to ensure that only the “best of the best” are included, we have slammed the door shut on Cal Ripkin, Jr., Joe DiMaggio, Roberto Clemente, George Brett, Nolan Ryan, and a dozen other players who generated 80-89.9 WAR in their careers. And I know you’re not up for that, are you?
Now that I have strong-armed you into accepting the top 50 players, (as measured by WAR), into The Hall, I’m sure you feel like you can rest on your laurels here. Just keep these 50 plaques in The Plaque Room in the HOF, and eliminate all the others. Then you’ll have a TRUE Hall of Fame where only the best of the best are honored.
But we still have a couple of problems here (three actually.) The first thing you might be forgetting is that baseball is constantly generating new players, some of whom are pretty damned good. Albert Pujols, for example, is already approaching 90 WAR. What happens when he is elected into The Hall? To keep Hall membership exclusive by limiting it to just the 50 top players, whom do you then kick out of The Hall? Wade Boggs? Steve Carlton? Good luck on that.
And Pujols won’t be the last player to top 80 career WAR in his career.
You also have another problem. You still don’t have a catcher in the HOF.
WAR is tough on catchers (see Adam Darowski’s Hall of wWAR for more on this topic,) in large part because they just don’t play as often as other position players, and because the nature of the position takes a bigger toll on the human body, which tends to wear out faster than someone playing, say, first base.
Also, though this may be of lesser concern to you, there also aren’t any relief pitchers over 80.0 WAR in The Hall.
We can go on and on like this, adding now all players between 70-79 WAR (including Bench, Carew, Reggie Jackson, Johnny Mize, Robin Yount, etc,) and even dropping into the 60′s WAR (including Ernie Banks, Duke Snider, Tony Gwynn, Carlton Fisk, and some guy named Jackie Robinson, to name a few.)
Pick a random WAR cohort to eliminate, and I’ll tell you why you have a problem. No players in the 40-49 range should be allowed, you state firmly, because now you’re shoving in guys with less than half the career WAR as the top couple of dozen players in The Hall.
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I’ve got two words for you: Sandy Koufax. Or, if you prefer, Dizzy Dean. How about Rube Waddell? He only led his league in strikeouts six straight season. Sure there are players in the 40+ WAR cohort who don’t belong in The Hall, but where’s the cutoff, exactly?
Meanwhile, in the 20+ and 30+ career WAR groups of HOF players, you have some of the best relief pitchers of all time, including Goose Gossage, Bruce Sutter, and Rollie Fingers. What should we do about them?
If we ignore WAR for these players, plus the players like Koufax and Dean who burned brightly for just a few short years, and players like Whitey Ford, Yogi Berra, Ryne Sandberg and Willie Stargell (each in the 50+ WAR cohort) whose reputations somehow don’t mesh with what we’d expect their WAR’s to be, we are left with a bit of a mess of a situation.
Sure, in general, the lower the WAR, the worse the player is, but there are enough exceptions to make us consider, perhaps, what this all means.
What exactly is it we’re trying to accomplish here? When we say that we want only the best players in The Hall, do we mean that we simply want the players, regardless of our emotional connection to them, and despite what their historic legacy might be, who meet the standards of a mathematical formula (however well put together), or are we looking for something more here?
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Catfish Hunter has one of the lowest career WAR of any starting pitcher in the HOF. I concede, unconditionally, that he was an overrated pitcher who, if we wasn’t fortunate enough to have pitched for excellent A’s, then the Yankees teams in the ’70′s, he would have been more or less just another pitcher.
But I’m glad Catfish is in The Hall. The fan in me just doesn’t give a rat’s ass what his WAR is (and I don’t consider myself a “traditionalist,” whatever the hell that means, when it comes to stats, either.) I greatly respect modern statistical analysis, and I’m glad that I have a nice peg to hang my biases on when it suits me (WAR says Jack Morris doesn’t belong in The Hall, so screw him.)
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None of this changes the fact, however, that there really are players in The Hall who don’t belong there. We could probably even agree on several of them. I would take out Lloyd Waner, Tommy McCarthy, Freddie Lindstrom, Herb Pennock, and Dave Bancroft before breakfast tomorrow morning. But they’re there, and I guess they’re not going anywhere.
Meanwhile, short of taking the vote away from the BBWAA and from the Veteran’s Committee (which has largely stopped electing former players just about all together anyway), what is to be done about Hall voting now and on into the future? How do we eliminate mistakes, and get back to the Golden Age of the Hall of Fame?
Here’s the good news. If it is exclusivity you seek, we are already swiftly sauntering down that street. Here’s the evidence.
In each decade since the 1970′s, inductions of former MLB players into The Hall has declined for four straight decades. The number of players inducted into the HOF in each of the past four decades is as follows:
1970′s – 36 (one of the worst decades in terms of quality of players inducted in history.)
1980′s – 29
1990′s – 24
2000′s (including 2011 inductees) – 22
And this is without yet knowing how the steroids controversy will affect several (otherwise obvious) potential HOF’ers like Bonds, Clemens, etc. Almost certainly, in the very near future, there will be a huge backlog of historically significant players not in The Hall that will rival the untapped talent available to the first HOF election committees back in the 1930′s. Whether this is a good thing or a tragic situation depends on your point of view.
But one thing’s for sure. No one will be able to argue that too many mediocre players are being elected into The Hall.
Although no group of humans, and no statistical formulas, will probably ever solve the puzzle of how to create a “perfect” Hall of Fame, I believe that if you are looking for a time when there was something resembling a Golden Age for the HOF, you can stop looking.
We may already be there.
Underrated / Overrated: Baseball and Other Stuff – Part IV
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This is the fourth installment of an ad-hoc series called “Baseball, and Other Stuff.” If you’ve been hanging around here for a while, you know how this works. If you are just joining us, settle in. You’ll get the idea.
The last stand of the survivors of Her Majesty’s 44th Foot at Gandamak
Overrated: Ryan Howard - Sure, his home run and RBI totals over the past five years have been remarkable. But, consider, his walk totals have declined steadily over the past five years (108, 107, 81, 75, 59.) In only two of his seasons has his WAR exceeded 4.0. By contrast, Albert Pujols‘ LOWEST single season WAR was 5.8. And Howard has struck out in 27% of his plate appearances, a staggering total. Finally, only once in the past three years has his on-base percentage touched .360. At age 30, he has probably seen his best days.
Underrated: Miguel Cabrera - Has been playing in the shadow of Albert Pujols his whole career. Otherwise, Cabrera might be considered the greatest player in the game today. Still only 27-years old, he has already produced seven excellent seasons. He has driven in over a hundred runs in all but his first half-season, and has only once failed to score over a hundred runs in a year. His career line is: .313, .388, .552 with an OPS of .939. His career OPS+ is 145, good for 45th place all-time, higher than Harmon Killebrew and Eddie Mathews.
Overrated: Custer’s Last Stand - June, 1876. Lt. Col. Custer’s entire command was wiped out (268 killed) at the Little Bighorn River, by a combined force of Sioux and Cheyenne warriors. Within a year, most of the Indians had been forced back onto reservations, were killed, or had fled with Sitting Bull to Canada.
Underrated: Massacre of Elphinstone’s Army - January, 1842. Afghanistan (road from Kabul to Jalalabad.) After an uprising in the city of Kabul, fomented by Akbar Khan, forced the British / Indian troops and camp followers (16,500 strong) out of Kabul, they attempted to reach safety 90 miles away at the British garrison at Jalalabad. But soon after they set out, the slaughter began. Near the end, fewer than 40 British regulars of the 44th regiment of foot were all that was left. Surrounded by Pashtun tribesmen, their surrender was requested, to which a British sergeant reportedly declared, “Not bloody likely.”
Of the original 16,500 men, women and children that evacuated Kabul, only one British medical officer and a few Indian sepoys survived to tell the tale.
Overrated: Jim “Catfish” Hunter - A colorful character and a tough competitor, but does he really belong in the Hall of Fame? He did win 20 games or more for five straight seasons, but, excepting win totals, he had just three truly outstanding seasons in his entire career: 1972, ’74, ’75. He never struck out 200 batters in a season. He was extremely durable (200+ innings pitched) ten seasons in a row, and he kept his walks to a minimum. But his career ERA+ was just 105, meaning that taking his career as a whole, he was just 5% better than your average replacement level pitcher.
Underrated: Pedro Martinez - Will eventually make the Hall of Fame once he becomes eligible, but some writers, perhaps most, will not view Pedro as a first round HOF candidate (as if that matters) because he won just 219 games in his career. I could be wrong, but I’m guessing that most baseball fans / writers, bloggers, etc., view Pedro as a top 25 all-time pitcher who, unfortunately, didn’t last long enough to make an even greater impression on the minds of the baseball masses.
But let’s take another look at Pedro Martinez’ career. He was an eight time all-star who won five ERA titles, six WHIP titles, three Cy Young awards (while finishing 2nd twice and third once), whose career WAR of 75.9 is 23rd all-time.
Pedro also posted nine 200 strikeout seasons, including two 300-hundred K seasons.
But those are his LEAST impressive statistics. Pedro also posted a career WHIP of 1.054 (fifth best ever) and struck out 10.04 batters per nine innings (3rd best ever.) His strikeouts per walks ratio was 4.15 (3rd best ever.)
Pedro Martinez made 409 career starts, and was defeated just 100 times. He never lost more than ten games in a season, and he was defeated 1o times in a season just twice in 18 years. His .687 career win-loss percentage is 6th best all-time. Pedro struck out 3,154 batters in just 2,827 innings pitched.
Most impressively, however, Pedro Martinez enjoyed his success in a hitter’s era in mostly friendly hitter’s parks (especially Fenway Park.) Very few pitchers in baseball history have managed to top an ERA+ (which takes into consideration a pitchers era and home ballpark) of 200. For the sake of context, Lefty Grove, Bob Gibson and Pete Alexander each reached that plateau just once in their respective careers. Sandy Koufax, Randy Johnson and Tom Seaver never posted an ERA+ of 200 in any single season.
Christy Mathewson reached that lofty number twice. Roger Clemens touched that number three times, but two of those years are tainted by alleged PED usage. Walter Johnson, widely regarded as the best pitcher who ever lived, topped an ERA+ of 200 an astonishing four times.
Pedro Martinez reached that pinnacle five times.
Pedro’s career ERA+ of 154 is pretty damn good. How good? Well, since you ask, it’s THE BEST EVER for a starting pitcher.
In other words, folks, from 1997-2003, not only wasn’t there a better pitcher in baseball, but there may never have been a better pitcher in the history of baseball.
Overrated: The Everley Brothers - Here are some lyrics to their hit single “Cathy’s Clown“, released in 1962:
“When you see me shed a tear, and you know that it’s sincere, Doncha think its kinda sad, that you’re treatin’ me so bad? Or don’t you care…?
Egad man, grow a spine!
Underrated: The Blues Brothers:
Overrated: Dave Winfield - Nice overall life-time numbers, 3,000+ hits, 1,800+ RBI’s, 465 home runs… no one’s saying that he sucked. And he gets extra points for being tailed by a private investigator at the behest of Herr Steinbrenner in the ’80′s. But his career line of .283, .353, .475 is not spectacular. Nor is his .827 career OPS, or his OPS+ of 130. Each of these numbers are rather on the low side for a HOF outfielder.
Underrated: Jimmy Wynn - Jimmy (Toy Cannon) Wynn broke into the big leagues in 1963 at the age of 21, and retired fifteen-years later at the age of 35. For most of his career, he played in pitchers’ parks in a heavily dominant pitcher’s era. Despite these handicaps, Wynn was an offensive force in the N.L. In 1965, at age 23, Wynn stole 43 bases while being caught just four times. He also drew 84 walks, scored 90 runs, hit 30 doubles and 22 homers, and logged an OPS+ of 144.
In 1967, despite leading the league in strikeouts, Wynn clubbed 37 homers, drove in 107, scored 102 and stole 16 bases. In ’68, he led the league in offensive WAR at 7.7.
In 1969, Wynn led the league with a huge total of 148 walks, resulting in a .436 on-base percentage. He also slammed 33 homers and scored 113 runs. His .943 OPS was good for sixth in the league. His OPS+ of 166 was a career high, and was fourth best in the senior circuit.
In 1974, Wynn was traded to the Dodgers, made the All-Star team and finished fifth in the N.L. MVP voting at age 32. He drew 108 walks, drove in 108 runs, and scored 104 runs. He slugged 32 homers, and finished with an OPS+ of 151.
In his career, Wynn drew over a hundred walks six times, scored 90 or more runs six times, hit at least 25 homers five times, and posted a career OPS+ of 128, the same as Hall of Famers Mickey Cochrane, Goose Goslin…and Jim Rice.
And, perhaps most ironically, considering Jimmy Wynn is not in the HOF, and Dave Winfield is…
Jimmy Wynn’s career WAR: 59.8.
Dave Winfield’s career WAR: 59.7.
That’s all for today, boys and girls. As for me, I’m done here until after Christmas, so check back in sometime between Christmas and (overrated) New Year’s. Until then, enjoy the holidays.
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