MLB HOF - Too Big or Too Small?

[abothebear]

Suppose...

there was an algorithm that could measure the greatness of players, factoring in the longevity of their careers, the differences between the parks they played in, the competition they faced, and the influence their own teams and managers had upon them.

the governing bodies agree to use the algorithm and determined a threshold for hall entrance.

would people care about the Hall of Fame?

I don't think they would.

The point I am trying to make is that while the Hall of Fame has some egregious inclusions, the subjectivity and human element to the election process is why we tune in each time new votes come in. It is partly why players play out their careers the way they do. And it is largely why people talk about the hall of fame at all. If people couldn't debate who should be in or debate who belongs in what imagined tier of greatness, what talk of the Hall would there be?

I think it is neither too big nor too small. And yes, Lou Whitaker should definitely be in there. And Bruce Sutter is a head-scratcher.

[obcbobd]

About the right size. And yes, some aren't deserving and some that are deserving are left out.

[Mike D.]

Originally Posted by abothebear

Suppose...

there was an algorithm that could measure the greatness of players, factoring in the longevity of their careers, the differences between the parks they played in, the competition they faced, and the influence their own teams and managers had upon them.

the governing bodies agree to use the algorithm and determined a threshold for hall entrance.

would people care about the Hall of Fame?

I don't think they would.

The point I am trying to make is that while the Hall of Fame has some egregious inclusions, the subjectivity and human element to the election process is why we tune in each time new votes come in. It is partly why players play out their careers the way they do. And it is largely why people talk about the hall of fame at all. If people couldn't debate who should be in or debate who belongs in what imagined tier of greatness, what talk of the Hall would there be?

I think it is neither too big nor too small. And yes, Lou Whitaker should definitely be in there. And Bruce Sutter is a head-scratcher.

I don’t disagree - but I think people sometimes discount how close the “numbers geeks” and the “old school” are in alignment. Sure, there are cases that differ, but look at a voted list of the top 100 or 200 players in history against a list of the top 100 or 200 by WAR…and I bet it’s 80% to 90% the same.

[JollyElm]

When I was a kid, a Hall of Famer meant a 'perfect' player, basically someone who could do no wrong on the field. Granted, it's a naive way of thinking, but I still look at it along those same lines. The biggest WTF moments are when players whose entire careers I've witnessed are 'suddenly' HOF'ers. Most have already been mentioned in the thread, so I won't cast further aspersions, but it is a huge disappointment when players who were never for a moment considered HOF-worthy when they actually played are voted in!!!

Too big!!!!!!!

[Klrdds]

Originally Posted by JollyElm

When I was a kid, a Hall of Famer meant a 'perfect' player, basically someone who could do no wrong on the field. Granted, it's a naive way of thinking, but I still look at it along those same lines. The biggest WTF moments are when players whose entire careers I've witnessed are 'suddenly' HOF'ers. Most have already been mentioned in the thread, so I won't cast further aspersions, but it is a huge disappointment when players who were never for a moment considered HOF-worthy when they actually played are voted in!!!

Too big!!!!!!!

I agree totally it is too big and it may get bigger over the next few years and become more of the Hall of the Very Good when you look at the eligible players over the next few on the BBWAA ballot , as well as those who the Veterans Committee may vote in . Remember the Veterans Committee has given the Hall most of these “debatable “ inductees .

[Mountaineer1999]

Not sure how less than 1.5% of all players is too big. Also, everyone upset with Baines but there are so many others that could be swapped out instead.

HOF watered down to many same as my post in a different thread

[Mike D.]

Originally Posted by Mountaineer1999

Not sure how less than 1.5% of all players is too big. Also, everyone upset with Baines but there are so many others that could be swapped out instead.

I think the fact that everyone names the same few players as "don't belong" is a sign that the vast majority of those in DO belong.

And the HOF standard is actually going UP...before Baines, when was the last "bad" selection? And when was the last bad selection from the writers?

People who think the hall "used to stand for greatness" weren't paying attention, the watering down didn't start when you were an adult, it didn't start when you were 8-12 years, old...it started in the late 30's and 40's (apologies to anyone over 83 reading this).

[bobbvc]

One a 40 man roster of HOFer's, and another of secondary Hofer's. To get in the 40 man, someone must be moved to the lower tier.

[Tabe]

Originally Posted by Mike D.

And the HOF standard is actually going UP...before Baines, when was the last "bad" selection?

The year before - Jack Morris. And Lee Smith went in the same year as Baines - another terrible selection.

Originally Posted by Mike D.

And when was the last bad selection from the writers?

The year before Baines - Trevor Hoffman.

[robertsmithnocure]

Originally Posted by JollyElm

When I was a kid, a Hall of Famer meant a 'perfect' player, basically someone who could do no wrong on the field.

When was this? Seem like the HOF has been watered down for a long time.

[JollyElm]

Originally Posted by robertsmithnocure

When was this? Seem like the HOF has been watered down for a long time.

I was speaking more metaphorically. When reading very old books about the great players from earlier in the century - Ruth, Cobb, Gehrig, etc. - I simply thought of them as baseball gods who did everything perfectly, the paragons of the game. Of course, when my dad told me not only did The Babe hit more homers than anyone else, but he also struck out the most times in history, it was a bit of an awakening. But those were old black and white photos in books, and I had no attachment to the players. As I grew up, that all changed as I actually saw/experienced the entire careers of players. When you're talking Tom Seaver, Reggie Jackson, Joe Morgan, Johnny Bench, Rickey Henderson, Nolan Ryan and Bob Gibson, for instance, they were always surefire Hall of Famers while they were still playing the game. Announcers would say "future Hall of Famer (enter player name here). Everyone (contrarians aside) knew it. No debate necessary. But Baines, Sutton, Blyleven, Raines, etc.? We all experienced a huge portion (or all) of their careers, and who among us ever thought of them as HOF'ers?? Decent players, stars, sure, but Hall of Famers?? No way.

[darwinbulldog]

Originally Posted by Mike D.

I don’t disagree - but I think people sometimes discount how close the “numbers geeks” and the “old school” are in alignment. Sure, there are cases that differ, but look at a voted list of the top 100 or 200 players in history against a list of the top 100 or 200 by WAR…and I bet it’s 80% to 90% the same.

That in itself is a good empirical question. I just took the top 100 players as listed by popular fan vote over at ranker.com and compared them to my sabermetric rankings as a comparison of "old school" vs "numbers geek" rankings.

The lists begin the same (Ruth is #1) and disagree about everyone else from #2-#100. Their #2 (Gehrig) is my #15. Some other notable discrepancies:

Ernie Banks is their #18 and misses my top 100.
Yogi Berra is their #22 (#1 catcher) and misses my top 100 (#8 catcher [or #7 if you exclude Josh Gibson, but you shouldn't; anyway, Gibson did make both lists]).
Barry Bonds is my #4 and misses their top 100 (#105).
Roger Clemens is my #5 and misses their top 100 (#124).
Kid Nichols is my #10 and misses their entire published list (which goes through #150).
Eddie Collins is my #17 and their #74.
A-Rod is my #21 and misses their entire published list.
Mike Schmidt is my #24 and their #93.


Only 55 players made both lists. One could calculate a Spearman rank order correlation if so inclined, but it's clearly not going to be nearly as high as I would have expected. I assumed the Yankees would be systematically overrated by the voting, and that is correct, but since I figured only baseball fans would bother voting on the rankings I wasn't prepared to see Barry Bonds at #105 (right between John Smoltz and Robin Yount) or Kid Nichols outside of the top 150.

[G1911]

Originally Posted by darwinbulldog

That in itself is a good empirical question. I just took the top 100 players as listed by popular fan vote over at ranker.com and compared them to my sabermetric rankings as a comparison of "old school" vs "numbers geek" rankings.

The lists begin the same (Ruth is #1) and disagree about everyone else from #2-#100. Their #2 (Gehrig) is my #15. Some other notable discrepancies:

Ernie Banks is their #18 and misses my top 100.
Yogi Berra is their #22 (#1 catcher) and misses my top 100 (#8 catcher [or #7 if you exclude Josh Gibson, but you shouldn't; anyway, Gibson did make both lists]).
Barry Bonds is my #4 and misses their top 100 (#105).
Roger Clemens is my #5 and misses their top 100 (#124).
Kid Nichols is my #10 and misses their entire published list (which goes through #150).
Eddie Collins is my #17 and their #74.
A-Rod is my #21 and misses their entire published list.
Mike Schmidt is my #24 and their #93.


Only 55 players made both lists. One could calculate a Spearman rank order correlation if so inclined, but it's clearly not going to be nearly as high as I would have expected. I assumed the Yankees would be systematically overrated by the voting, and that is correct, but since I figured only baseball fans would bother voting on the rankings I wasn't prepared to see Barry Bonds at #105 (right between John Smoltz and Robin Yount) or Kid Nichols outside of the top 150.

What is your sabrmetric ranking?

[Yoda]

But who is Eppa Rixey? An Albanian spy?.....the National Dish of Turkmenistan?

[darwinbulldog]

Originally Posted by G1911

What is your sabrmetric ranking?

It's just a formula I made up for comparing which of any two players had a better career. It corrects for inflated numbers from being above average for a very long career without rewarding people for retiring as soon as they start to lose a step.

I call it a Simlab number. Pretty simple if WAR is already calculated. Take the square of career WAR and divide it by games played. Multiply that quantity by 1 for pitchers, 3.39 for regular position players, and 4.6 for catchers. Then throw Mariano onto the list because I felt like it.

[Tabe]

Originally Posted by darwinbulldog

Multiply that quantity by 1 for pitchers, 3.39 for regular position players, and 4.6 for catchers.

How did you arrive at those multiplication factors?

[G1911]

I'm curious on the details and what the list result is with this formula, not to dismiss it but because I like to see what people do with stats and what they can create.


Separately, I would say an analysis of comparing if the old-school and new-school views generally agree on the best players would use straight WAR. Better or worse, this is the standard among that crowd.

It is harder to pick a method of comparison for the old-school crowd, because their statistical analysis is rooted in the view that condensing everything into one number is absurd and won't work, so it can't be a single stat we choose like we can for the sabrmetric crowd. Ranker is a fan vote site, it is public popularity, which I think is completely separate from people who believe inn statistical analysis but use traditional stats (Jeter is really good in traditional stats, really good in WAR, the GOAT SS in public opinion). Public popularity is a third thing and different, and disagrees with traditional math quite a bit as well. I'd think we'd have to do something like take a well-reputed older list from a publication that got much agreement, and then remove players since then from the WAR list to compare apples-to-apples and see how much it agrees.

From a broader view, scrolling over the list of players by WAR, I think we can see that WAR does generally rank the players with the best traditional stats as being the best players. A guy may have be 40th in one and 23rd in the other, but there are not guys topping the WAR charts that traditional stats hate and vice versa. This is probably a credit to WAR doing something right.

I am in the middle, I think traditional stats have great value, I think the best achievement of the modern approach is stats that put them into context of their time and place, like OPS+ and ERA+. I think a guy who hits .350 when the league hits .240 is a good hitter, regardless of what WAR says. I don't trust the notion that all facets of the game can be combined into one, perfectly and correctly weighted equation for all of baseball history that will produce any kind of actual truth. The defensive components are even more problematic. I think the results show it does a much better job of comparing modern players together than older players of different times and era's, where players were focused on aspects of the game that may not be in alignment with the weighted preferences of the contemporary mathematician. I think Bill James' work is endlessly fascinating and have worn out my copy of the Baseball Abstract, and simultaneously think that the mathematician model of managing a ball game has ruined the fun of actually watching a baseball game, which has become a strikeout heavy home run derby in which most small-ball strategy is completely gone and pitchers mostly pitch 5 innings or less. 'The Home Run or Nothing' game may generate more runs in today's small parks, but it's personally boring and not why I like baseball.



To the original question, I would vote the issue with the Hall is not the size, it could be expanded, it could be shrunk, it could be kept the same. The issue is that its selections are arbitrary, odd, sometimes common-sense defying, occasionally openly corrupt, and inconsistent. The Harold Baines election is a great recent example, I think Jack Morris is too. Baines gets the nod, who does not compare favorably to other HOFers, while Schilling who compares favorably to recent SP selections is spitefully ignored. It's been present for most of the hall's history, from the original old timers committee's just voting almost randomly for recognizable 19th century names to Frisch's committee electing his friends to the joke that is the current era committees choices. Any group will make mistakes or make choices I don't agree with, but the sheer amount of them and the obstinacy against following their own standards they have made (by now, it's pretty easy to compare if a nominee compares to the average quality of an elected HOFer or not, for example) makes it a crapshoot every year on if a deserving player will simply be ignored and/or a completely undeserving one will be seemingly randomly selected by an era committee.

[darwinbulldog]

Originally Posted by Tabe

How did you arrive at those multiplication factors?

It's been quite a few years, but my memory is that the 3.39 did the best job of matching the rank ordering of pitchers vs position players from JAWS. Then I noticed that Johnny Bench was the only catcher in the top 100, so I gave catchers the smallest multiplier that would give them I think it was at least 10% of the position players' spots on the list.

[rats60]

Originally Posted by darwinbulldog

It's just a formula I made up for comparing which of any two players had a better career. It corrects for inflated numbers from being above average for a very long career without rewarding people for retiring as soon as they start to lose a step.

I call it a Simlab number. Pretty simple if WAR is already calculated. Take the square of career WAR and divide it by games played. Multiply that quantity by 1 for pitchers, 3.39 for regular position players, and 4.6 for catchers. Then throw Mariano onto the list because I felt like it.

How do you know what WAR to use?

[darwinbulldog]

Originally Posted by rats60

How do you know what WAR to use?

Doesn't really matter given how high the intercorrelations are. I used the bbref one since that's the site I consult most frequently.

[Mike D.]

Originally Posted by darwinbulldog

That in itself is a good empirical question. I just took the top 100 players as listed by popular fan vote over at ranker.com and compared them to my sabermetric rankings as a comparison of "old school" vs "numbers geek" rankings.

The lists begin the same (Ruth is #1) and disagree about everyone else from #2-#100. Their #2 (Gehrig) is my #15. Some other notable discrepancies:

Ernie Banks is their #18 and misses my top 100.
Yogi Berra is their #22 (#1 catcher) and misses my top 100 (#8 catcher [or #7 if you exclude Josh Gibson, but you shouldn't; anyway, Gibson did make both lists]).
Barry Bonds is my #4 and misses their top 100 (#105).
Roger Clemens is my #5 and misses their top 100 (#124).
Kid Nichols is my #10 and misses their entire published list (which goes through #150).
Eddie Collins is my #17 and their #74.
A-Rod is my #21 and misses their entire published list.
Mike Schmidt is my #24 and their #93.


Only 55 players made both lists. One could calculate a Spearman rank order correlation if so inclined, but it's clearly not going to be nearly as high as I would have expected. I assumed the Yankees would be systematically overrated by the voting, and that is correct, but since I figured only baseball fans would bother voting on the rankings I wasn't prepared to see Barry Bonds at #105 (right between John Smoltz and Robin Yount) or Kid Nichols outside of the top 150.

Not sure what your sabermetric ranking looks like, but my first take is that that ranker list may be...not very good. Bonds at 105? Clemens 124?

I mean, if you look at the top 100 players all time by WAR (I used BBR variety), I count 16 who aren't in the hall of fame.

That list includes:

- Five active "likely inductees" (Pujols, Trout, Kershaw, Verlander, Grienke)
- Four steroid guys (Bonds, Clemens, Arod, Palmeiro)
- Two Players on the ballot currently or soon with a good shot at induction (Schilling & Beltre)
- Four players often cited as deserving (Grich, Whitaker, Dahlen, McCormick)
- Pete Rose (I *bet* you know why he's not in)

Of the 16, time should see 7-10 of them should get in, maybe more if the thinking changes on the steroid crew.

Of course, the HOF has something like 235 players, not 100, so you'd get a bigger gap as the list grows.