Thoughts on Hall of Fame Results
The Hall of Fame voting results were announced Tuesday. As expected, Goose Gossage got in, but nobody else did. Also as expected, Tim Raines was the only newly eligible player to meet the 5% threshold required to be on next year's ballot.
Jim Rice will probably make it into the Hall next year, which will be his last on the ballot either way, as it’s his fifteenth year. I researched the performance of players in their fifteenth year on the ballot going back to the 1991 election (who says bloggers never research?) and found that they tend to receive a boost of 3.2% on average, which increases to 4.3% for those who had received over 20% of the vote in the year before. It’s not a large sample size, only 19 in the 18 elections I surveyed, and I relied mostly on wikipedia to tell me which players were in their fifteenth election each year, which lacked Tony Oliva (I have since corrected the appropriate entry), so I may have missed one or two. Steve Garvey was the highest vote-getter in his fourteenth year to see his share of the vote drop in his final year on the ballot, dropping from 26% to 21.1%. On the other hand, there are candidates who have gotten closer to the 75% threshold without being elected by the BBWAA -- Jim Bunning received 74.2% in his twelfth year on the ballot, 1988, which seemed to be an abnormally good year for these players, as half of the sixteen who were on the ballot that year had their best performance. Five of the players had their best year in their last appearance on the ballot.
Prospects look considerably worse for Tommy John, who also will be in his fifteenth year on the ballot. He’s never received so much as 30% of the vote, though there’s only one year that saw him fail to get 20% of the vote. I get the impression the trend will continue next year.
Back to Rice, however; I can’t say that I’m sorry to see him disappear from the ballot. The “debate” over him has been … unproductive. There are plenty of people who are impressed by homerun and RBI totals without paying attention to things like park effects or lineup quality. I don’t mind paying attention to counting stats as long as other things are taken into effect. Instead, there seems to be a willful ignorance. Surfing the internet -- that bastion of high-minded dialogue between differing parties -- I come across comments stating that perhaps the reason behind Rice’s home-road splits are that he was just more comfortable at home, and that Fenway doesn’t magically make him better. Well, there’s nothing “magical” about it, really, but Fenway is a park that helps batters’ numbers. You might think that after more than a decade of baseball in Denver, people would start to realize that different ballparks have different effects on players’ stats.
Moreover, there’s a reaction to statistics like adjusted OPS+ that’s the equivalent of covering their ears and saying “nah nah nah I am not listening.” The “adjusted” portion means that it was ballpark adjusted, so equal batters will have equal numbers whether they’re batting in Coors or Petco. It even allows for better comparison between ages as OPS+ (as I’ll hereafter refer to it) is normalized each year, with the average hitter being 100, better hitters being higher, and worse hitters being less (ERA+ works the same way, should it later come up). Now, I realize that it has not been mainstreamed, and most people don’t immediately understand it, but you would think that, after it’s been explained, they would be able to accept it. Instead, it’s the ear covering business. They say it’s a different era, so we can’t compare Rice to modern players, but won’t listen to repeated statements that OPS+ compares players to their contemporaries and, as such, is comparable across eras (perhaps it’s not perfect, but it’s better than anything else). What modern players does Rice compare to? Well, his career 128 OPS+ is equal to those of Moises Alou and Ryan Klesko. If you’re looking for players more contemporary to Rice, there’s Keith Hernandez and Kent Hrbek. Joe Torre also had the same OPS+ from his playing days. Some people make cases for Hernandez and Torre (less for the others), but they don’t receive nearly the support that Rice does.
Rice is described as the most feared hitter during his career. At least one of my readers should remember George Brett, who was better for longer. But let’s just stick to the Red Sox. Dwight Evans (career OPS+ 127) shared most of those same Red Sox teams. Fred Lynn (129) spent the first half of his career there. The beginning of Rice’s career overlapped the end of Carl Yastrzemski’s (129). Plus, a fellow by the name of Wade Boggs (130) came along midway through Rice’s career. In short, Rice was rarely the best hitter on his team during a given season. In fact, there are only two in which he led his team in OPS+ -- 1977 and 1978 (he led the AL in the latter case). The doesn’t really jive with the “most feared” talk. I realize that advanced metrics weren’t around at the time, but I have a hard time believing that opposing teams were still utterly incapable of realizing who was getting on base, getting extra-base hits, and so forth.
Then there’s the argument that Rice led the league in certain categories over some arbitrary time frame. Well, sure, that proves he wasn’t horrible, but says a lot more about his peak seasons not coinciding with those of his contemporaries. From 1984 to 1995, a twelve year span, Joe Carter led all the major leagues in homers and RBI’s. What has that gotten him? One year on the ballot with 3.8% of the vote.
Moving away from Rice's qualifications (or lack thereof), I'm rather surprised at the jump in vote share that Gossage got, along with, to a lesser degree, those of Rice, Dawson, and Blyleven. Their vote share increased by 14.6, 8.7, 9.2, and 14.2, respectively. While the increase was similar between Gossage and Blyleven, I find Gossage's more impressive as it tends to be harder to find an extra 14% support when you already have 71% than when you have 48%. Anyway, I believe that someone is a Hall of Famer or they're not, whatever your standard may be, and the variablity in the voting makes no sense to me. I realize that the people voting changes from year to year, but not by that much. There are some legitimate reasons to vote for a player after not doing so previously. If a voter voted for the maximum of ten players, but thought an eleventh was also worthy, then it would be fine to name the eleventh the following year, when, presumably, at least one of the ten would no longer be on the ballot. I'll even, somewhat grudgingly, accept some voters' arguments about "first ballot Hall of Famers" because, rightly or wrongly, it's viewed as an extra distinction to be elected in the first year of eligiblity. Finally, of course, there are legitimate changes of opinion as to whether or not a player is qualified. When you look at these players, though, the "first ballot" argument has stopped applying, and the limit of ten players is not much of a factor, as nearly all the ballots I've seen could add Gwynn, Ripken, and Steve Garvey from last year without surpassing ten players (plus, I don't think any of the eight-player ballots I saw this year lacked Raines); even the two nine-player ballots I saw, which both included Raines, really only would have left one of the four off, at most, last year, so the player limit is not really an issue. This basically leaves the entire change in vote share to voters changing their mind, and I can't believe, that after each player has had at least six previous years on the ballot, you have this many voters legitimately changing their mind. There seems to be a fear about not electing anyone (which last occurred in 1996), and votes start flying every which direction when there's no obvious first-ballot inductee (compare the 2006 balloting).
For next year's election, Rickey Henderson should get in (and what a memorable acceptance speech that will be), and I imagine at least one other new player will break the 5% threshold.
Jim Rice will probably make it into the Hall next year, which will be his last on the ballot either way, as it’s his fifteenth year. I researched the performance of players in their fifteenth year on the ballot going back to the 1991 election (who says bloggers never research?) and found that they tend to receive a boost of 3.2% on average, which increases to 4.3% for those who had received over 20% of the vote in the year before. It’s not a large sample size, only 19 in the 18 elections I surveyed, and I relied mostly on wikipedia to tell me which players were in their fifteenth election each year, which lacked Tony Oliva (I have since corrected the appropriate entry), so I may have missed one or two. Steve Garvey was the highest vote-getter in his fourteenth year to see his share of the vote drop in his final year on the ballot, dropping from 26% to 21.1%. On the other hand, there are candidates who have gotten closer to the 75% threshold without being elected by the BBWAA -- Jim Bunning received 74.2% in his twelfth year on the ballot, 1988, which seemed to be an abnormally good year for these players, as half of the sixteen who were on the ballot that year had their best performance. Five of the players had their best year in their last appearance on the ballot.
Prospects look considerably worse for Tommy John, who also will be in his fifteenth year on the ballot. He’s never received so much as 30% of the vote, though there’s only one year that saw him fail to get 20% of the vote. I get the impression the trend will continue next year.
Back to Rice, however; I can’t say that I’m sorry to see him disappear from the ballot. The “debate” over him has been … unproductive. There are plenty of people who are impressed by homerun and RBI totals without paying attention to things like park effects or lineup quality. I don’t mind paying attention to counting stats as long as other things are taken into effect. Instead, there seems to be a willful ignorance. Surfing the internet -- that bastion of high-minded dialogue between differing parties -- I come across comments stating that perhaps the reason behind Rice’s home-road splits are that he was just more comfortable at home, and that Fenway doesn’t magically make him better. Well, there’s nothing “magical” about it, really, but Fenway is a park that helps batters’ numbers. You might think that after more than a decade of baseball in Denver, people would start to realize that different ballparks have different effects on players’ stats.
Moreover, there’s a reaction to statistics like adjusted OPS+ that’s the equivalent of covering their ears and saying “nah nah nah I am not listening.” The “adjusted” portion means that it was ballpark adjusted, so equal batters will have equal numbers whether they’re batting in Coors or Petco. It even allows for better comparison between ages as OPS+ (as I’ll hereafter refer to it) is normalized each year, with the average hitter being 100, better hitters being higher, and worse hitters being less (ERA+ works the same way, should it later come up). Now, I realize that it has not been mainstreamed, and most people don’t immediately understand it, but you would think that, after it’s been explained, they would be able to accept it. Instead, it’s the ear covering business. They say it’s a different era, so we can’t compare Rice to modern players, but won’t listen to repeated statements that OPS+ compares players to their contemporaries and, as such, is comparable across eras (perhaps it’s not perfect, but it’s better than anything else). What modern players does Rice compare to? Well, his career 128 OPS+ is equal to those of Moises Alou and Ryan Klesko. If you’re looking for players more contemporary to Rice, there’s Keith Hernandez and Kent Hrbek. Joe Torre also had the same OPS+ from his playing days. Some people make cases for Hernandez and Torre (less for the others), but they don’t receive nearly the support that Rice does.
Rice is described as the most feared hitter during his career. At least one of my readers should remember George Brett, who was better for longer. But let’s just stick to the Red Sox. Dwight Evans (career OPS+ 127) shared most of those same Red Sox teams. Fred Lynn (129) spent the first half of his career there. The beginning of Rice’s career overlapped the end of Carl Yastrzemski’s (129). Plus, a fellow by the name of Wade Boggs (130) came along midway through Rice’s career. In short, Rice was rarely the best hitter on his team during a given season. In fact, there are only two in which he led his team in OPS+ -- 1977 and 1978 (he led the AL in the latter case). The doesn’t really jive with the “most feared” talk. I realize that advanced metrics weren’t around at the time, but I have a hard time believing that opposing teams were still utterly incapable of realizing who was getting on base, getting extra-base hits, and so forth.
Then there’s the argument that Rice led the league in certain categories over some arbitrary time frame. Well, sure, that proves he wasn’t horrible, but says a lot more about his peak seasons not coinciding with those of his contemporaries. From 1984 to 1995, a twelve year span, Joe Carter led all the major leagues in homers and RBI’s. What has that gotten him? One year on the ballot with 3.8% of the vote.
Moving away from Rice's qualifications (or lack thereof), I'm rather surprised at the jump in vote share that Gossage got, along with, to a lesser degree, those of Rice, Dawson, and Blyleven. Their vote share increased by 14.6, 8.7, 9.2, and 14.2, respectively. While the increase was similar between Gossage and Blyleven, I find Gossage's more impressive as it tends to be harder to find an extra 14% support when you already have 71% than when you have 48%. Anyway, I believe that someone is a Hall of Famer or they're not, whatever your standard may be, and the variablity in the voting makes no sense to me. I realize that the people voting changes from year to year, but not by that much. There are some legitimate reasons to vote for a player after not doing so previously. If a voter voted for the maximum of ten players, but thought an eleventh was also worthy, then it would be fine to name the eleventh the following year, when, presumably, at least one of the ten would no longer be on the ballot. I'll even, somewhat grudgingly, accept some voters' arguments about "first ballot Hall of Famers" because, rightly or wrongly, it's viewed as an extra distinction to be elected in the first year of eligiblity. Finally, of course, there are legitimate changes of opinion as to whether or not a player is qualified. When you look at these players, though, the "first ballot" argument has stopped applying, and the limit of ten players is not much of a factor, as nearly all the ballots I've seen could add Gwynn, Ripken, and Steve Garvey from last year without surpassing ten players (plus, I don't think any of the eight-player ballots I saw this year lacked Raines); even the two nine-player ballots I saw, which both included Raines, really only would have left one of the four off, at most, last year, so the player limit is not really an issue. This basically leaves the entire change in vote share to voters changing their mind, and I can't believe, that after each player has had at least six previous years on the ballot, you have this many voters legitimately changing their mind. There seems to be a fear about not electing anyone (which last occurred in 1996), and votes start flying every which direction when there's no obvious first-ballot inductee (compare the 2006 balloting).
For next year's election, Rickey Henderson should get in (and what a memorable acceptance speech that will be), and I imagine at least one other new player will break the 5% threshold.
Labels: baseball
posted by DC | 2:18 AM
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