The Swamp

Pudge SHOULD be a slam dunk but I wonder if the steroid police are going to ding him even though there's no solid proof he juiced.

Bagwell and Vlad and hopefully Raines. Hoffman is closer to 20th on the list than deserving so I'm sure he'll get it too.

brian wrote:I said this on Twitter and really meant it, but I'm actually glad Trammell didn't get voted in (not that it was ever going to happen). Him and Whitaker getting to go into together via the Veteran Committee will be pretty sweet. Each has the highest bWAR at their respective position of any person eligible for the Hall to play in the 20th century. Neither ever really got a sniff at being elected by the writers.

Not so sweet if they aren't alive.

Both easily deserve the honor. HOF voting is not as flawed as it has been in some past eras. But it's still been highly flawed in recent years.

DC47 wrote:

brian wrote:I said this on Twitter and really meant it, but I'm actually glad Trammell didn't get voted in (not that it was ever going to happen). Him and Whitaker getting to go into together via the Veteran Committee will be pretty sweet. Each has the highest bWAR at their respective position of any person eligible for the Hall to play in the 20th century. Neither ever really got a sniff at being elected by the writers.

Not so sweet if they aren't alive.

Both easily deserve the honor. HOF voting is not as flawed as it has been in some past eras. But it's still been highly flawed in recent years.

Brian and DC on the same page. Who'd have thunk it? What's next? Dogs and cats living together?

I've always seen us as kind of a Trammel-Whitaker tandem.

I'm curious about something regarding the "Raines is an obvious choice" argument.

I have no objection to Raines getting in, but he is 81st in career WAR on Fangraphs; 108th on Baseball Reference. He's below Larry Walker on both lists, and the sources I read seem to treat Walker as an obvious "not good enough."

If Raines is such an obvious choice, why isn't Walker?

Jonah Keri had a really good write up on Raines that I read on CBS Sports. Pretty convincing.

duff wrote:Jonah Keri had a really good write up on Raines that I read on CBS Sports. Pretty convincing.

I've read that one a while ago, I think. And I've read a couple of others. Then you look at where Raines is on these lists, and it appears that he is in a group with others who aren't obvious choices, or who are never going in and were never considered. (Rick Reuschel has a much higher career WAR than Raines.)

What about his comps to other LFers in the HOF? He is pretty high up there. And look at his combined total of being on base. Really high up there, along with his base runner prowess. Just thought it was pretty convincing.

Steve of phpBB wrote:If Raines is such an obvious choice, why isn't Walker?

WAR accumulates, so it comes down to this: do you prefer a player with a higher peak, or a player with a lengthier career? In this instance, Raines actually played longer than Walker, but Walker was more productive for a longer period.

Raines had a 5-year run in the '80s when he was one of the very best players in baseball. So, how much do you value those 5 years?

I had never looked at Larry Walker's numbers until now. That's a pretty staggering level of production. But how much is he going to get dinged for playing his best years in Colorado, where offensive numbers were inflated?

1. 81st best hitter should be in the HoF without question, so its really more "why is Walker overlooked". (Part career length, part Colorado effect. I'd have him in mine.)

2. He has a huge defensive demerit and I'm still not sold on any attempts to quantify defense for players pre-pre-statcast.

3. The real should-be checkmate is looking at who's 88th.

Bapo: Somewhere, maybe here, I recalculated Walker's career if he never played in Colorado and just averaged out his career slashes. He's still really awesome. Destined to join Evans and other corners who were great hitters and even better fielders and still get ignored for whatever reason.

(I just saw the topic "checkmate" on the front page. Its weird how words seep into your subconsciousness.)

mister d wrote:Bapo: Somewhere, maybe here, I recalculated Walker's career if he never played in Colorado and just averaged out his career slashes.

.294/.378/.529

Almost identical to A-Rod's career line. Also Duke Snider, Dick Allen, and David Wright.

Park adjustments do and don't work. For standard parks, they're probably fine. For parks that have a unique feature, like the monster or YS's right field or Colorado's air or Oakland's foul territory or SD's massive OF, there are certain players who will probably outlie adjustments to the point that you can't really normalize. Like Dante Bichette's career or Johnny Damon's one year in the new stadium, you just can't take the standard deduction and call that the accurate view of the player.

For the record, I wasn't offering an opinion on Walker one way or the other -- I was talking about which way voters might be inclined. I typically don't pay much attention to this stuff, so looking at Walker's number was an eye-opener.

I swear there was a Steve post that I was responding to.

mister d wrote:I swear there was a Steve post that I was responding to.

Yep. Decided to respond after I took a shower, but it looks like we got punk'd.

Sorry about that. I posted, then realized you had covered most of what I was going to say.

All votes being made public starting next year

So does this mean we might finally see someone get in unanimously, now that the writers can no longer use anonymity to hide their spiteful protest votes?

...oh, who the fuck am I kidding?

mister d wrote:Park adjustments do and don't work. For standard parks, they're probably fine. For parks that have a unique feature, like the monster or YS's right field or Colorado's air or Oakland's foul territory or SD's massive OF, there are certain players who will probably outlie adjustments to the point that you can't really normalize. Like Dante Bichette's career or Johnny Damon's one year in the new stadium, you just can't take the standard deduction and call that the accurate view of the player.

Not that unlike how Bill Mueller won a batting title in Fenway Park, where foul balls die in the seats? (Unless you're Carl Yastrzemski of course)..

Just reminding y'all that I will NOT be OK if Bagwell doesn't get in again.

Giff wrote:Just reminding y'all that I will NOT be OK if Bagwell doesn't get in again.

20 announced ballots, and he's picked up one vote he didn't get last year.

78 ballots now known. The average ballot has 8.9 names checked off. That is both insane and correct. (I mean, 10 would be correct but at least we're getting there)

Raines at 88%. There's like 350 ballots left and he only needs to pick up 5 more net votes over last year.

Others - Bagwell 90%, Bonds 69%, Clemens 69%, Pudge-Rod 82%, Hoffman 76%, Vlad 71%, Edgar 67%, Horrible Nazi Person 51%, Manny 35% (same as goddamn Lee Smith)

The problem is a guy like Raines is going to lose almost exclusively on the private ballots. Doesn't seem overly predictive at this point unless public and/or Raines' public percentage is skyrocketing.

He's been named on 65 public ballots (of which 15 are gains) and all 4 known-but-anonymous ballots. Unless there's a lot of old-schoolers who were already voting for him but dropping him this year to spite everyone, he's in great shape.

#hemusthavehadagreat2016seasonjoke

Mussina is all over the board and getting uberfucked by the backlog. He's picked up 10 already but has been dropped on 4, all of which voted for 10 players.

Guys, Schilling is totally going to get in because of the MONSTER VOTE.

Schilling has gained 4 and lost 13!

Also, should I know who Steven Marcus from Newsday is? He voted for Guerrero and Hoffman. Only.

Ryan wrote:Also, should I know who Steven Marcus from Newsday is? He voted for Guerrero and Hoffman. Only.

He only voted Hoffman and Griffey last year, and Johnson, Martinez, and Biggio for 2015 induction.

Here's my official fake ballot ...

VOTES FOR:
Barry Bonds
Roger Clemens
Mike Mussina
Jeff Bagwell
Curt Schilling
Ivan Rodriguez
Larry Walker
Manny Ramirez
Tim Raines
Gary Sheffield

STRATEGIC NON-VOTE:
Vladimir Guerrero

STILL DEBATING:
Edgar Martinez

SOLID NO BUT I DON'T MIND SOMEONE VOTING FOR:
Sammy Sosa
Fred McGriff
Jeff Kent
Jorge Posada
Billy Wagner

CLEAR NO BUT DAMN WAS HE UNDERRATED:
Mike Cameron

GIVE ME A FUCKING BREAK WITH THIS GUY:
Trevor Hoffman

NO BUT I DON'T MIND THEM ON THE BALLOT AS LONG AS THEY'RE AN UNDERSTOOD NO FOR EVERYONE:
J.D. Drew
Magglio Ordonez
Edgar Renteria
Derrek Lee
Lee Smith

I GUESS YOU NEED TO HAVE EVEN MORE CLEAR NO VOTES LOWER ON THE BALLOT SO WHATEVER:
Tim Wakefield
Melvin Mora
Carlos Guillen
Orlando Cabrera
Pat Burrell

HERE WE FUCKING GO ... :
Jason Varitek

???????:
Casey Blake
Arthur Rhodes
Freddy Sanchez
Matt Stairs

Outfielders debuting after 1946 within 500 career PAs of Kirby Puckett either way by career fWAR (rank per PA) ...

1. Larry Walker: 68.7 (2)
2. Reggie Smith: 64.6 (7)
3. Jim Edmonds: 64.5 (8)
4. Bobby Bonds: 57.1 (11)
5. Lance Berkman: 56.1 (1)
6. Brian Giles: 54.9 (3)
7. Jimmy Wynn: 52.8 (15)
8. Chet Lemon: 52 (31)
9. Minnie Minoso: 50.8 (9)
10. Mike Cameron: 50.7 (38)
11. Jack Clark: 50.6 (6)
12. Cesar Cedeno: 49.9 (18)
13. Matt Holliday: 49.9 (4)
14. Fred Lynn: 49.2 (16)
15. Rocky Colavito: 49.2 (10)
16. Moises Alou: 47.7 (13)
17. George Foster: 47.1 (19)
18. Kirby Puckett: 44.9 (23)
19. Ellis Burks: 44.7 (17)
20. Jose Canseco: 42.1 (12)
21. Devon White: 41.8 (50)
22. Paul O'Neill: 41 (25)
23. Roy White: 41 (24)
24. Amos Otis: 40.2 (32)
25. Frank Howard: 38.7 (5)
26. Felipe Alou: 38.1 (40)
27. Dusty Baker: 37.9 (34)
28. Willie Wilson: 37.8 (49)
29. Magglio Ordonez: 36.6 (20)
30. Johnny Callison: 34.6 (37)
31. Bobby Bonilla: 32.7 (27)
32. Greg Luzinski: 32.7 (14)
33. Brady Anderson: 32.6 (35)
34. Bobby Murcer: 32.6 (22)
35. Ken Griffey: 32.1 (29)
36. Gary Matthews: 30.7 (28)
37. Shawn Green: 29.9 (30)
38. George Hendrick: 28.2 (36)
39. Willie McGee: 27.6 (48)
40. Willie Horton: 27.5 (33)
41. Harvey Kuenn: 27.5 (43)
42. Roy Sievers: 27.5 (26)
43. Adam Dunn: 25.4 (21)
44. Nick Markakis: 24.4 (42)
45. Juan Pierre: 23.9 (51)
46. Jeff Conine: 22 (45)
47. Jose Cardenal: 21 (47)
48. Dave Kingman: 20.4 (39)
49. Tommy Davis: 19.9 (44)
50. Raul Ibanez: 19.5 (41)
51. Claudell Washington: 16.9 (46)

Puckett wasn't a Hall of Famer.

Basically a fat blind dead abusive hitting version of Jack Morris

The reliever fWAR (1980-2016) gap between Rivera (1) and Hoffman (2) is the same as the gap between Hoffman and Francisco Cordero (29).

http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?p ... &players=0

I think that's more about Mariano's dominance than Hoffman's unworthiness of Cooperstown. The gaps between Jerry Rice and the #2 NFL WRs all-time in various stats are similar. (I wouldn't vote for Hoffman with the current backlog. A case might be made in future years though.)

Probably both? Krod is 4th all time in saves and probably more dominant at his peak. Mariano is probably rare in that no reliever should make it but he was just so good. Hoffman might be the best of the bunch behind him, but that doesn't speak to him being worthy at all.

Are you trying to tell me that Claudell was the worst ever outfielder that kinda hung around a long time, by a lot?

He moves up to 45th of 51 if you sort by wOBA. There's no one really bad in this list because it has a minimum of 7,331 PAs.