Tangotiger Blog

Wednesday, July 02, 2014

Runaways in the Cy Young race

Felix, Tanaka and Cueto, Wainwright continue their stranglehold. 

In the AL: Darvish and Buehrle way behind, and they've been joined by Lester and Garrett Richards, with Kazmir and Kluber around.  So, these six probably have 2-5% shot each, while Felix/Tanaka are each trying to get to the even odds level, and are probably now at 40% each.  The only other pitcher with a hope is if David Price pitches to his absolute best the rest of the way.  So, I'll put the rest-of-AL at 1%.

As for the NL: it's Teheran being joined by Greinke and Bumgarner at the 2-5% level.  I don't even know who could be part of the rest-of-NL to give at 1%.  Maybe 0.5%. 

But, the big wildcard is Kershaw.  Even though he's right now at Greinke's level, it's just a matter of time as he builds up his starts.  We're probably at 30% each for the big 2, and Kershaw.

Kershaw's race for the top while spotting everyone else a big lead is like Mario Lemieux spotting his former junior rival Pat Lafontaine, but without the potentially life-threatening disease.

He was on pace to challenge Gretzky's records of 92 goals in one season (1981–82) and 215 points in one season (1985–86),[24] until January 12, 1993, when he made the shocking announcement that he had been diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma. He was forced to undergo energy-draining aggressive radiation treatments, leaving his career and possibly his survival in doubt. He missed two months of play, and without him, the Penguins struggled. When he returned, he was 12 points behind Buffalo's Pat LaFontaine in the scoring race.[24]

On the day of his last radiation treatment, Lemieux flew to Philadelphia to play against the Flyers, where he scored a goal and an assist in a 5-4 loss. Before the game Lemieux earned a standing ovation from Philadelphia fans—a rare occurrence for any visiting player, much less a Pittsburgh athlete.[24] With Lemieux back, Pittsburgh won an NHL record 17 consecutive games to finish first overall for the first time in franchise history;[24] their 119 points are still a franchise record. Lemieux scored at an incredible pace, notching an average 2.67 points per game—the third highest points-per-game for a season, behind only Wayne Gretzky's 1983–84 and 1985–86 averages of 2.77 and 2.69, respectively.[24] Lemieux won his second straight and fourth overall scoring title, finishing with 160 points (69 goals, 91 assists) in 60 games, beating out LaFontaine by 12 points.[17]

Sweet Lou and Alan Trammell among the best players of their generation

I like to look at players relative to their peers, and the easiest way to do that is to simply look at their birth year.  Since they were born in early 57 and 58, we simply grab all nonpitchers born 1952-1962, rather ubiquitously via Baseball Reference.?

We start with the players who easily clear whatever hurdle you set up: Rickey, Ripken, Boggs, Brett.  Then you've got guys who are obvious enough: Yount, Ozzie, Molitor.  After them are Sweet Lou and Trammell. 

After that are those that should be obvious enough, but the voter needs some nice surface numbers (3000 hits and/or 500 HR) to believe it, otherwise, they'll take many years before a consensus can be reached from 600 voters of varying stripes: Gary Carter, Raines, Gwynn, Murray, Sandberg.

That brings us to 14 non-pitchers.  In any 11-year time period, that should be enough for anyone with a medium-Hall mentality.  Whitaker and Trammell easily fall into this group, and therefore, are easily deserving of the highest honor.

Then you have guys that are more borderline, but would be deserving: Willie Randolph, Dawson, Keith Hernandez.  That's 17, and close to the cutoff point.

After that, well, that's the difference between medium-Hall and big-Hall: Chet Lemon, Jack Clark, Kirby Puckett, Tony Phillips, Fred Lynn, Jim Rice, Devon White, Dale Murphy, Willie Wilson, Tony Fernandez.  In our quest to get Dawson and maybe Keith Hernandez in, sometimes the price for that is letting in Puckett and Rice from the almost-deserving group. 

We can look to see how the earlier generations were honored.  Among players born 1941-1951, only 8 nonpitchers are in the Hall of Fame.  Among players that could have their cases taken up by the Vet Committee before it's too late: Bobby Grich, Nettles, Dwight Evans, Buddy Bell, Reggie Smith, Sal Bando.  If standards of the past were used, we'd expect to see these players make it, to bring us up to 14 non-pitchers.

We can look at one generation earlier, players born 1930-1940, and we have 19 non-pitchers in the Hall of Fame.  Among the most-deserving still not honored are Ken Boyer and Willie Davis.  So, we can say that in this time period, they got all the most deserving and in their quest to get more, got a few that fell under the Boyer/Davis line.

How about the generation before that?  Among those born 1919-1929, every player more deserving than Minnie Minosa has been honored, a total of 11 nonpitchers.  This would cover players pre-expansion which explains why the numbers are low.

If we look at the generation before that, players born 1908-1918: we have 15 nonpitchers and every player more deserving than Stan Hack and Bob Elliot are in.

Basically, they EVENTUALLY get everyone that deserves to be in (and in the process, get a few guys below the line).  We can see with the three earliest 11-year time periods, we got 11 to 19 nonpitchers (an average of 15).  We see that in the generation before Whitaker and Trammell, we only have 8, and so, expect to see some 3-7 more players from that group make it.

Whitaker and Trammell will eventually make it, but it may take another 10 years for that to happen.

And this is the #1 problem with the Baseball Hall of Fame: they are more interested in making sure no one undeserving makes it, rather than ensuring that anyone deserving makes it in quickly.  But as it happens, they STILL let in plenty of players below the line in anyway (Rice, Brock, Puckett, Perez among the more recent players).

Look no further than the NHL as they get two-thirds of the players into the Hall within their first three years of eligibility.  When you have 18 serious people come together, sometimes that's better than getting 600 people, some of whom are very serious and others are not. 

There are easy fixes, but it would require removing power from the BBWAA.  And as we know from world history, people in power abhor giving up their power for the greater good.  Someone needs to tear down that wall.

 

Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Kershaw finally enters the Cy Young race

My basic rule of thumb is that anyone within 15 Cy Young points of the leader has a shot at the Cy Young.  Kershaw is at 36 points and Cueto is at 53.  Just a bit outside, but considering the reason he got 0 points for a while is because he missed starts, that rule of thumb is not a hard and fast rule.  I then checked the updated Steamers, and here's how it sees the Cy Young race:

 79  Adam Wainwright  79  Johnny Cueto  75  Clayton Kershaw  74  Madison Bumgarner

 86  Felix Hernandez  82  Masahiro Tanaka  71  Yu Darvish   So, pretty much a dead heat among the 4 NL pitchers.  Interestingly, Teheran has currently the same number of points as Bumgarner, but that's not good enough for Steamer.  He's part of the next group with Greinke and Strasburg.  Looks like if we give odds, say it's 5% for each of these three, 5% for rest of NL, and 20% for each of the 4 prime contenders.

As for the AL, it's the Felix and Tanaka show, with Darvish waiting in the wings.  After them, far back, are Scherezer, Sale, Kazmir, Price, Lester.  Let's give each of these 5 guys 2%, the rest of AL 1%, Darvish 9%, and Felix/Tanaka splitting the remaining 80% as 40-40 each.

?

Saturday, June 21, 2014

Kazmir trying to join the Cy Young party

?Tanaka and Felix seem to have a stranglehold on the AL race, but there's always a new guy trying to enter the race each week.  This time, it's Scott Kazmir, with Buehrle and Darvish still around.  It looks to me that it's down to these 5 guys.  I'd give 95% odds that it's one of these 5, which basically puts the odds at 25-30% for each of Tanaka and Felix, and 10-15% for each of the other three.

The NL is Cueto and Wainwright, with Teheran and Greinke.  There's alot of other "smaller" players, like Kershaw, who of course has missed some starts, so, he hasn't had a chance to build up his resume yet.  That's a big wild card, and the NL has other wild cards in play.  I'll go with 70% chance that it's among the big 4.  So, 20-25% for the big 2, 10-15% for the next 2, and then 30% for the rest of the NL.

Just guessing.

Friday, June 13, 2014

Welcome to the party, Yu and Tim Hudson

As Cueto and Wainwright keeping flip-flopping for the lead in the Cy Young race, we saw Teheran try to join the NL party.  Well, Tim Hudson has passed him.  Still a little far to catch up to the other two guys any time soon.

As for the AL, Tanaka has beat back Felix and Buehrle who are still looking great, but they have been joined by Yu Darvish, who is right in the thick of it now. 

Somebody suggested applying the Cy Young Points to the Fangraphs end-of-season forecasts.  I think that's a tremendous idea.  Fangraphs or Baseball Prospectus or whoever does the end-of-season forecasts, I would love to see this tracked.

?

Friday, June 06, 2014

Odds that one of Cueto, Wainwright, Felix, Tanaka, Buehrle will win Cy Young in 2014?

That's my question.  Is it at 50/50?  More?  Less?

We're about sixty games in so far.  If an aspiring saberist wants to tackle this, go to Pinto's site, take the top 2 Cy contenders in each league for the last five years (2009-13), which is 10 Cy Youngs, plus the best 5th guy? (either after around 60 games, or through games of June 5 of that year), and tell us how many Cy Youngs were in that group.  Was it 5?  3?  8?  What exactly?

Saturday, May 31, 2014

Daily Cy Young tracker, back to 1974

?Courtesy of the always-impressive David Pinto.

Would love to see a Straight Arrow reader work with this and come up with odds of winning the Cy Young.

Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Adam Wainwright in the Cy Young lead

Using my simple tracker, and David doing the hard work, we see that Wainwright has taken over from Cueto.

Tanaka is still in the lead, but Gray, Buehrle, and Felix have jumped over Scherzer.

Still wide open across the board.  Odds are probably at 15% or something for each of the leaders (though someone else out there can come up with a model).?

Sunday, May 25, 2014

Cy Young votes, with a losing record

In 1971, Dave Roberts had an 14-17 record, finishing second in ERA, and got 2 votes.

?In 1987, Nolan Ryan lead the NL in ERA (and strikeouts), with an 8-16 record.  He finished tied for 5th in the Cy voting in an unexciting group of starting pitchers (Bedrosian won).

In 2000, Mike Mussina had an 11-15 record, finishing third in ERA and managed to get 1 vote.  It was Pedro and "we have to vote for 2 other guys".

Last year, Chris Sale had a 11-14 record, finishing in 5th in Cy voting.  He was 7th in ERA, 3rd in Strikeouts.  If it wasn't a sabermetric vote, it was at least a vote that placed very little emphasis on the number of his wins.  And his running neck-and-neck with Colon, who had both a better W-L record (18-6) and better ERA (2.65 to 3.07) is a strong indicator that the voters loved them some K (226 to 117 in favor of Sale).

Other than relievers, that's the whole history of players with at least 3 more losses than wins with Cy Young votes.

The BBWAA voters radical underweighting of the pitcher W and L is impressive in its quickness.  Sometime between 2006 and 2009 is when the shift happened.  And the underweighting is fairly strong.  It'll be interesting to see in 2014 and beyond how little the pitcher W and L are considered by the voters.  If ever we get another Nolan Ryan type of situation (leading the league in ERA and K, with a poor W-L record), will we see such a pitcher awarded the Cy Young?

Saturday, January 11, 2014

Poz’s revamping of HOF

?As only Poz can write such a long treatment and keep you interested in something spoken about "to the point of nausea".

As he notes, this is a starting point for a conversation.  He's offering this as a basis for the conversation. Summary: have four distinct groups, two professionals (BBWAA, current Hall of Famers) and two for fans (SABR, and Hall of Fame membership).  This is genius:

Group 4. Fans. I have a very specific suggestion for the fan group. I don’t think an All-Star balloting system or gigantic Internet poll is the way to go.

Here’s what I would do: The basic membership for the Hall of Fame right now is $50. I’d cut that in half — but make it so that one of the perks for membership is getting to vote for the Baseball Hall of Fame.

There are countless advantages here. For one thing, it would unquestionably beef up Hall of Fame membership, probably double or triple the membership base, maybe even a lot more than that. It would re-engage people with the Hall of Fame, which I think would be fantastic (and necessary). Also, think a group of baseball fans who cared enough about the Hall of Fame to be members would make for a great collection of voters.

We always worry about ballot-stuffing, but this is a PERFECT barrier to entry.  This directly benefits the HOF, and the fans get a good perk.  And we unquestionably know that the voters have a stake.  True stakeholders.  Eventually, I can even see this group as the SOLE group to establish the HOF winners.  Anyway, I love this group.

Well, each of the groups gets a ballot. They vote. And here comes our biggest change. Every player who gets more than half the vote is nominated for the Hall of Fame by that group.

So for this year, for instance, the BBWAA would have nominated Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and Frank Thomas (of course) but also Craig Biggio, Mike Piazza, Jack Morris and Jeff Bagwell. All of them got over 50% of the vote.

Only now, they would not just go into the Hall of Fame. The other groups vote the same way. And in order for a player to get into the Hall of Fame, they need to be nominated by at least three of the four groups.

I like it.  Now, all we have to do is see if we can test this somehow.  With this kind of drastic change, we need a failsafe.  In the event that no one gets elected by this system, then we need a backup plan of sorts. 

You can for example take the #1 pick of each group, and if two of the groups agree, then that's the guy.  Still no one?  Take the top 2 of each group, and if two of the groups agree on those players, then that's the guy.  (Then, we'll have to worry about a tie-breaker.)

Still just talkin'.

Friday, January 10, 2014

?My one-sentence verb-free proposal for the HOF to be improved

"exactly-1 (min 50%), max-4 (min 75%), unlimited selections"

Taking it backwards:

• unlimited selections, meaning an up-or-down vote on each player; no reason to be artificially constrained, which is the whole problem with all the other committees, which offer 10 or 12 people, and constrain you to select 4; it's obvious that whoever created the limiting rule has never thought through the problem at all and that it continues to be repeated shows that NO ONE in power is thinking through this
• max-4 (min 75%): we still want to put in some control, now that we have unlimited ballots; you can't have a scenario where 6 or 8 players are elected, as that will impact future elections; the NHL does this max-4, and so the year Larionov should have gone in (his 1st year) instead was delayed to his 2nd year
• exactly-1 (min 50%): in the event that NO ONE meets the 75%, then it's kinda silly to not have anyone; other than Gil Hodges (and now Jack Morris), anyone who has gotten to 50% has eventually been voted in, by some body (and presumably Morris will get it too); so, in the rare case (like last year) that no one gets 75%, then whoever got the most votes, and is over 50%, will be elected

What I like about this is the simplicity of it, that you don't have to have hours of debate, and you can explain it in one sentence. Not to mention that we actually won't even (visibly) feel the impact for the next few years, and so, is pro-active. We'll still get to where we want to get, but it'll feel more fair. It'll still be Pedro, RJ and Biggio getting voted in, and MAYBE Smoltz. That's really what this system does, in that it gives Smoltz an outside shot now, rather than be destined to be in the Schilling or even Mussina class. It prevents the voters from deciding on the down-ballot candidates at #10, #11, #12, #13, and who to pick from them, since now the voter can pick all of them if he wants.

It just smooths out the whole thing.

 

Thursday, January 09, 2014

Scoring system for HOF ballots

?This time, instead of basing the scoring system against the Straight Arrow readers, I'm basing it against the actual votes.  Here's my proposal for points for each player.  For any ballot, you take the top 8 scores.  No bonus points for 9th and 10th players, and no penalties for leaving blank spots.  Max score is 100.

18 Greg Maddux

17 Tom Glavine
15 Frank Thomas
13 Craig Biggio
10 Mike Piazza
10 Jack Morris
9 Jeff Bagwell
8 Tim Raines
6 Roger Clemens
6 Barry Bonds
5 Lee Smith
5 Curt Schilling
4 Edgar Martinez
3 Alan Trammell
3 Mike Mussina
2 Jeff Kent
2 Fred McGriff
2 Mark McGwire
2 Larry Walker
1 Don Mattingly
1 Sammy Sosa

What would have happened with a mandatory 8-player ballot?

The top 21 votegetters got a total of 8.31 votes.  They appeared on 10-player ballots and 9-player ballots and 1-player ballots.  What would have happened though if ALL voters had to list 8 players?  In this case, I estimate this would have happened (first column is my estimate, and second column is how many they actually got):

EST ACT Player

100.0% 97.2% Greg Maddux
97.5% 91.9% Tom Glavine

84.0% 83.7% Frank Thomas
72.6% 74.8% Craig Biggio
58.9% 62.2% Mike Piazza
57.8% 61.5% Jack Morris
50.6% 54.3% Jeff Bagwell
42.8% 46.1% Tim Raines
32.5% 35.4% Roger Clemens
31.9% 34.7% Barry Bonds
27.1% 29.9% Lee Smith
26.1% 29.2% Curt Schilling
23.3% 25.2% Edgar Martinez
18.6% 20.8% Alan Trammell
18.2% 20.3% Mike Mussina
13.9% 15.2% Jeff Kent
10.6% 11.7% Fred McGriff
10.1% 11.0% Mark McGwire
9.6% 10.2% Larry Walker
7.8% 8.2% Don Mattingly
6.5% 7.2% Sammy Sosa

In order to get Biggio elected, we'd have to go to a 9-player must system.  In that case, he'd get 82% of the vote.  And that, I think, should be the limit for any election year: 4 players.  Why?  Because if you elect too many, you won't have enough players in the down years.  Standards may go down. While I feel for the 50% of the voters who filled their ballot 10-deep, the real problem is at the lower-end, with the voters putting in 7 or fewer players. In order to elect 2 players, I estimate that you need all voters to put in 6 players.  In that case, Maddux would have gotten 98% and Glavine 82%, with Thomas at 63%.  To elect 3, you'd have to go to 8 players.  To elect 4, you'd have to go to a 9-player-must system.  And if every voter goes to 10-players, what would happen? Maddux and Glavine at 100%, Thomas at 98%, Biggio at 91%, Piazza at 77% and Morris at 76%.  You'd get six players voted in.  While that works now, the danger with a 10-player-must system is those years when it's more bare. The problem though is that the reason you are wanting to vote for 12 or 14 players is because you know there are other ballots putting in 2 or 3 players.  It's an implicit overvoting to make sure that the overall vote comes in.  But, you don't really know what everyone else is doing!  There's a danger you might vote in 7 guys. So, one solution is that rather than allowing more than 10 votes, is that you force a minimum number of votes, say 4.  Since the lowest average per ballot, ever, was 5.10, it doesn't seem that much of a big deal to require 4 players to be voted on for every ballot.  Indeed, even starting as late as 2010, there have been 4 guys on every ballot since the beginning, where the player eventually made it to the Hall of Fame.  For a voter to think that there are fewer than 4 worthy guys is silly. *** Alternatively, you can have an even easier solution: unlimited ballots, everyone votes as they want, 0 to infinity.  You still need the minimum 75%, but with a maximum of 4 winners.  If more than 4 get over 75%, then you take the top 4.  And if in any year no one is over 75%, then you take the top 1.  So, my proposal: a min-1 / max-4, unlimited selections system.  Simple to implement, and easy to understand.

Considerations for HOF voting rules

Just reprinting something from the old blog.

Here’s one way to do this (click on image to enlarge).  This explicitly satisfies all those voters who want to assign “inner circle status”.  Any of the first-timers who get at least 50% of the “ask me later” (plus Yes) is placed into the “returning players” category.  Players drop off after 10 years.  Players on last year of ballot are so noted.  (Of course, we’ll have to think of something for transitioning of old ballots to new ballots.)

Wednesday, January 08, 2014

HOF 2014 results

?If someone has it, show the difference between the published ballots prior to announcement, and the actual results, thanks.

Modest change to HOF voting, that keeps it in the hands of the BBWAA

?What would happen if you had a rotation-type system of the BBWAA voters, of a maximum of 100 voters? 

Let's say that first of all, the BBWAA voters have to be proactive and actually submit that they are INTERESTED in voting.  So, we get a list of say 600 names.

We randomly select 100 of those for 2015.  They cannot have voted in the previous three years.  They can't go more than six years without voting.  (i.e., you vote every 4 to 6 years).

Now what?  Well, knowing that you are not going to vote again until, say, 2020, you are no longer going to "punt" on a guy.  The "I'll think about it next year", and relying on five of the other 99 voters to vote on that player to keep him on the ballot.  Now, you REALLY got to vote this year, because it may be your only chance at this player.

You can put in other mechanisms to limit the number of players to a max of 4 per year (and min 1), so that we're not totally dependent on filling the ballots to the max to get the flow of players.

This seems like a simple enough change, no?

Tom

Friday, January 03, 2014

Catchers in the HOF

Of players born since 1931, the Hall of Fame player with the fewest plate appearances is Kirby Puckett, at 7831.  Once Mike Piazza is finally elected, he will set the bar for fewest PA for a HOFer at 7745.  While Piazza was principally a catcher, his replacement-level performance as a 1B/DH did nothing to add to his legend.  He actually only had 6826 PA as a catcher.  There are 13 catchers born since 1931 with at least 6800 PA as a catcher (and it will be 14 at some point in 2014, thanks to Pierzynski).  Here they are:

1. 9916 IRod (likely HOF)
2. 8801 Fisk (HOF)
3. 8531 Kendall
4. 8172 Carter (HOF)
5. 8048 Boone
6. 7352 Santiago
7. 7279 Simmons
8. 7142 Parrish
9. 7052 Ausmus
10. 7003 Pena
11. 6970 Bench (HOF)
12. 6826 Piazza (likely HOF)
13. 6823 Sundberg
14. 6527 Pierzynski

That's only five HOF catchers out of the even-more-only 14 to meet the minimum PA criteria.

How many should we have expected? Well, of the 1931+ born players, we have 214 players with at least 7500 PA, of which 43 are HOF.  By the time time all is said and done, we'll probably be at 50-60 players, or an average of 7 HOF per position, out of the average of 27 per position who meet the minimum PA criteria.

The question therefore is if catchers are under-represented in terms of the number of players that should be considered?  Or, it's simply a case of "too bad", that being a catcher limits your contributions at the career level?

Imagine if you will that starting pitchers would fall like flies every few years, a result of simply the hazardous conditions of being a pitcher.  So, they never get those 15-year careers like position players.  Would we therefore lower the bar for starting pitchers, or, do we simply accept that in order to have an outstanding career, you really need to have a certain level of quantity?  That barring over-the-top performances like Pedro 1997-2003, it would have been otherwise impossible to enshrine such starting pitchers?

And so, can we extend that to relief pitchers as well, that by the simple virtue that teams limit their usage, that they simply can't attain the levels needed?  Without any kind of adjustment, only Mariano Rivera qualifies for the honor, in my view.  But, should be have a different view, so that Hoffman and others better qualify?

I don't know.

Monday, December 30, 2013

Nominations for best research

?Feel free to post your favorites.  Off the top of my head, and this is recency-bias, I like the times thru order (and more) by MGL, and Chris Caruthers work on pitch-level ERA.  I'm sure there's plenty more, so, feel free to post it.

Wednesday, December 25, 2013

Perfect Hall of Fame ballot

16 points for each of: Bonds, Maddux, Clemens

8 point for each of: Fr Thomas, Piazza, Bagwell

7 points for each of: Raines, Biggio, Glavine, Trammell

That's 100 for the perfect ballot.

6 points for: Schilling, Mussina, Edgar, McGwire

5 points for: La Walker, Sosa, Kent

4 points for: Palmeiro, McGriff

3 points for: Mattingly, Morris

2 points for: Alou, Lee Smith, Lu Gonzalez

1 point for: Kenny Rogers

Negative one point for: anyone else

Negative two points for every open spot on the ballot

I'm interested to see which HOF voter has the best ballot and the worst ballot.

***

UPDATE (Thu, 10AM).  In response to this thread at Primer: nowhere do I say that this is MY preferred ballot.  It is simply a list that shows a point system, with the idea that you get 100 points for the perfect ballot.  It's based on a poll of Straight Arrow readers here.  As I've noted elsewhere, Larry Walker is extremely underappreciated, and there's really no difference between Mussina and Glavine.

You will also find fascinating results here.  To take one pairing: 16% of the voters thought that Jack Morris' career was more outstanding than Larry Walker's.  MY opinion is that Larry Walker is a well-qualified HOF, and that Jack Morris would be if we doubled or tripled the size of the HOF.  But, this isn't about advancing my opinion, but rather, showing how the readers of my site view them.

Yes, it would have been nice if I said all this upfront.  But, I'm posting as the idea comes to my head, and two minutes before I walk the dog, all I had time for was a list.  And when I came back, I updated the point system slightly.  And, I made more changes in the comments.  This is meant as a starting point for a discussion.

If someone wants to make an argument that the "perfect ballot" could potentially leave out Raines, Biggio, Glavine, Trammell, and include Schilling, Mussina, Edgar, McGwire, then feel free to make that argument.  I'm not against the idea that this could be true.

I'm laying out a framework to analyze ballots, making things as transparent as possible.  The implementation can be tweaked if you would like to offer some constructive criticisms.

 

Thursday, December 19, 2013

Increase in Hall of Fame standards

Dave makes the point that since historically, we have 1% to 2% of MLB players in the Hall of Fame, then we should uphold that standard.  And if a voter thinks that Bonds/Clemens is in the way, then vote for someone else in their place.  As it stands, we won't even get to the 1% level.

While I have normally thought that we should have about 20-25 players voted in for any 10year time period, regardless of expansion, I think I am wrong on that one.  As I posted in the comments:

For those who asked: the number of US-born players is the same in 1969 as it is today, more or less. The expansion from 24 to 30 teams has been entirely consumed by foreign-born players.

This is also true in the NHL (Canada/US-born players), when it expanded from 21 teams to eventually 30. All of the expansion teams covered by foreign-born players.

And, since the number of live-births has been a constant for several decades, there is actually NO dilution in talent.

Basically, ?if we accept that expansion does not dilute talent, then we have to accept that we should select based on a percentage of the pool, rather than some constant number as I originally have thought.  The 30-team era should have nearly double the number of hall of famers of the 16-team era.

Now, my research would at least suggest that the 24-team and 30-team leagues had no dilution in talent.  I don't know if that's true of the 16-team league.  But, I'd think it's true, at least pre-Jackie.  After all, about 35%-40% of the great players in the Hall of Fame born since Willie Mays are non-whites.  That would mean that expanding from 16 to 24 teams would be completely covered by what would have been segregated players, if not for Jackie.

So, yeah, I'd go with a percentage basis.

I don't know about the NHL, since they went from 6-teams to 30-teams rather quickly.  Someone will have to look into that one.