It isn’t even December yet, but I am already looking forward to baseball starting again in the spring. Luckily, besides the Derek Jeter contract saga, the offseason brings into focus one of my favorite things about baseball: The Hall of Fame. Set in Cooperstown, New York, the Baseball Hall of Fame honors the greatest players to ever play the game and is a museum on the rich history of baseball. I love comparing baseball players among all eras to see how they matchup with each other, and the Hall of Fame provides a great context in which to do so.
Each winter, the Hall of Fame decides which players, if any, will be the newest inductees into Cooperstown, and this sets off the greatest and most contentious debate in all of baseball. Some people believe the Hall of Fame is too lax with its standards for admission, while others think it is too stingy. Since I think the Hall of Fame is a starting point for fans learning about baseball history, I personally believe in a larger Hall of Fame rather than a small one; I don’t get worked up when a borderline candidate, such as Jim Rice, is inducted in, but I do get upset when deserving players (at least in my mind) do not make the cut (Lou Whitaker is my personal favorite example). My theory is that fans, when learning about Rice, will find out about his flaws as a candidate as well as his strengths that carried him into the Hall of Fame, but that a player who doesn’t make it can fall through the cracks and be forgotten.
Some baseball fans and history enthusiasts became fed up with the Hall of Fame’s selection process and decided they could do better. Starting in 2003, they created the Baseball Hall of Merit, designed to be a counterpoint to the Hall of Fame. All based online, anyone can create a ballot for the Hall of Merit; all that new voters must do is post their ballot prior to election and explain how they came to their conclusions to show they have put serious consideration into their ballot. Players are eligible for induction in the same way that they are for the Hall of Fame; the Hall of Merit chose 1898 as the first year to have a ballot and worked their way to the present, having caught up in time with the Hall of Fame. I thought it would be interesting to compare the two bodies and see where they differ.
When organizing the Hall of Merit ballot, the founders conceived it a little differently than the Hall of Fame ballot. A BBWAA voter for the Hall of Fame can vote for up to ten players, with each vote being equal. If a player gets 75% of the voters to select him, then he is a Hall of Famer. However, a voter has the freedom to vote for less than ten, depending on how he feels about the players on the ballot. If a player does not get 5% of voters to select him, or if he does not get elected in fifteen years, he drops from the ballot (although he can still be elected in by the Veterans Committee). For the Hall of Merit, each year was given a pre-ordained number of inductees (for example, there would be guaranteed two new Hall of Meriters for the 1905 election, but only one for the 1906 election). Each voter then must vote for 15 players and rank them. Each rank earns points, with it being weighted so first place receives the most points, etc. and the player(s) who received the most points are inducted. Furthermore, a player can stay eligible for the Hall of Merit as long as voters are willing to keep him on their ballots.
This has some advantages over the Hall of Fame system. For one, when the original Hall of Fame class of Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner, Christy Mathewson, and Walter Johnson were elected without receiving 100% of the votes, a precedent was set that no one should receive 100% of the vote, even though there are many players who everyone can agree are Hall of Fame worthy. This is not an issue with the Hall of Merit, as fifteen players have unanimously been selected first (Hank Aaron, Wade Boggs, Joe DiMaggio, Lou Gehrig, Lefty Grove, Rickey Henderson, Walter Johnson, Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Stan Musial, Babe Ruth, Mike Schmidt, Honus Wagner, Ted Williams, and Cy Young). Furthermore, allowing players to stay on the ballot forever really allowed voters to study the nuances that might separate one candidate from another, and in years when there were no overwhelming new candidates, players were elected who had been under consideration for an extended period of time (for example, John McGraw was elected in 2009—his 100th time on the ballot). This works as a de facto Veterans Committee for the Hall of Merit. There is something to be said, however, about the elegance of the Hall of Fame’s insistence upon receiving 75% of the vote. Because there was no consensus beyond Rickey Henderson for the 2009 voting, McGraw was able to finish second—but he only received 31% of all possible points. One could make the argument that a 31% second place finish is more pluralistic than meritocratic. There is no denying that at least the 75% seems more legitimate than 31%.
But most importantly (and interestingly), let’s compare who these two bodies have inducted:
Hall of Merit: 240 players
· 63 pitchers
· 26 center fielders
· 26 shortstops
· 23 left fielders
· 22 second basemen
· 21 right fielders
· 20 catchers
· 19 first basemen
· 19 third basemen
· 1 designated hitter (Edgar Martinez)
Hall of Fame: 232 players (292 members which include umpires, managers, and executives)
· 71 pitchers
· 25 center fielders
· 23 shortstops
· 23 right fielders
· 21 first basemen
· 20 left fielders
· 19 second basemen
· 16 catchers
· 14 third basemen
The Hall of Merit and Hall of Fame similarly skew in their totals for each position, although the Hall of Merit has fewer pitchers and uses the leftover amount for third basemen and catchers. There are 64 players (just over 26%) in the Hall of Merit who are not in the Hall of Fame, while there are 56 players (just over 24%) in the Hall of Fame who are not in the Hall of Merit (although it should be noted that some players in the Hall of Merit were inducted into the Hall of Fame in a different capacity, such as a manager or executive, and that the Hall of Merit includes Joe Jackson and Pete Rose, who would be in the Hall of Fame if they had not been expelled from the game). These percentages are similar on purpose, as the Hall of Merit has actively tried to stay the same size as the Hall of Fame to better serve as a foil against Cooperstown. Part of the initial movement for the Hall of Merit was based on how the founders felt the Hall of Fame had done a poor job with the earliest baseball players and Negro League players. The first class of the Hall of Merit consisted of Deacon White (C), Paul Hines (CF), George Gore (CF), and Ross Barnes (2B), all stars from the 1800s who are not in the Hall of Fame. The Hall of Fame improved its Negro League representation by having a special election for Negro League players in 2006. The Hall of Fame now has 28 players who spent most if not all of their careers in the Negro Leagues (for example, this counts Satchel Paige but not Monte Irvin or Jackie Robinson), while the Hall of Merit has 29. However, the two groups have not elected all the same Negro League stars. Slightly more than 21% (6/28) Negro League Hall of Famers have not been elected to the Hall of Merit, while roughly 24% (7/29) Negro League Hall of Meriters have not been elected to the Hall of Fame. It seems clear that both groups should devote more than just 12% of their inductees to Negro Leaguers, as there were many talented players who were unfortunately not allowed to compete at the major league level due solely to their skin color.
I also looked at the career WAR (Wins Above Replacement) totals for the players elected to these two groups to see if there were any noticeable baselines. Normally, I prefer Fangraphs’ version of WAR, but they do not have historical WAR for pitchers, so I used Sean Smith/Baseball Reference’s version. Obviously WAR is not a be all/end all, but I wanted a quick and dirty way to compare players from all eras while looking at these two groups, and WAR is a great system to use. Unfortunately, WAR has even more limits in this project, as obviously this excludes the Negro League players along with position players before 1871 and pitchers before 1876 (for example, Dickey Pearce, a SS in the Hall of Merit but not in the Hall of Fame, has a career 8.3 WAR which seems awful until you realize it doesn’t include his seasons from 1856-1870). I assumed that the Hall of Merit, which embraces sabermetrics, would have players with much higher career WARs. While this is partially true, it does not play out as much as I thought. For example, Cal McVey, a catcher in the 1870s, was elected to the Hall of Merit even though he only had a career 23.0 WAR. McVey was rewarded for his durability at a position that was extremely hard to play at that time. By comparison, in the Hall of Fame, the lowest WAR belongs to 1880/90s RF Tommy McCarthy. Looking at his 19.0 WAR (and any of his other stats, except for possibly his stolen bases), it is difficult to see how he was elected. However, he was apparently a savvy tactician who came up with the hit and run, among other things. The other side of the WAR spectrum is slightly more telling. The highest WAR for a Hall of Famer not in the Hall of Merit is 57.2 (Vic Willis). There are 25 players in the Hall of Merit who have a higher WAR than 57.2 who are not in the Hall of Fame, led by Bert Blyleven and his 90.1 WAR. Besides Blyleven, Barry Larkin, Roberto Alomar, Tim Raines, and Allan Trammell are some examples of those 25 who are still eligible to be inducted by the Hall of Fame, and hopefully will be soon.
The reason I am writing about all this now is that the Hall of Merit’s 2011 ballots are due on November 29th. They like to announce their results before the Hall of Fame, who will also be announcing results shortly. The Veterans Committee will announce December 6th who they have inducted into the Hall of Fame, while the BBWAA ballot should be released shortly, and the results tallied in early January. It’s an exciting time for baseball, even if no games are being played.
No comments:
Post a Comment