WAR Graphs: Average and Replacement Level Hall of Fame Values

by Jeff Zimmerman (TucsonRoyal) on May 19, 2009 6:00 AM EDT Comment 6 comments

Jim Rice pondering how in the heck he made it into the Hall of Fame and Tim Raines hasn't yet. (AP Photo/Tim Roske)

There has been discussion in the comments sections of a couple of recent articles (here and here) about what values should be used as a baseline for comparing players' seasonal wins above replacement (WAR). To address that issue, I incorporated work done by JBrew with several other suggestions and I came with a an average HOFer and replacement level HOFer (minimum value for induction) for pitchers and hitters.

To get the values I used the following procedure:

I collected all the HOFers who played their entire careers in the retrosheet era (which are the seasons presented in Sean Smith's WAR database). I made an exception for two pitchers, Hoyt Wilhelm and Whitey Ford, because they played only one season before 1953 and there aren't as many pitchers (19) as hitters (32).
For each player, I ranked their seasonal WAR values from highest to lowest.
All the highest single season values were grouped together, then the second highest seasons were grouped together, and so on down the line.
I took the value that was at the middle (median) of the pack for each grouping to use as the average HoF career path. I took the values that were at the 20th percentile of each grouping to use as the "replacement level" Hall of Famer. Yes, this implies some HoF players don't deserve to be enshrined.
Once the WAR values went negative or there were no more seasons at the median level, the final value was set to 0 and no more values were calculated. The series values were then used to create two reference lines.

Here are the values in graph and tabular form:

Data tables are after the jump:

Xth Best	Replacement Level Hitter	Median Hitter	Replacement Level Pitcher	Median Pitcher
1	7.2	8.2	6.8	8.2
2	6.4	7.2	5.8	7.6
3	5.8	6.6	4.7	6.4
4	5.2	6.0	4.0	5.9
5	4.6	5.6	3.2	5.7
6	4.1	5.1	3.2	5.5
7	3.4	4.9	3.1	4.3
8	3.2	4.4	2.6	3.7
9	3.0	4.0	2.3	3.6
10	2.7	3.4	2.2	3.3
11	2.6	3.1	1.8	2.9
12	1.9	3.0	1.6	2.4
13	1.6	2.7	1.2	1.8
14	1.0	2.4	0.7	1.5
15	0.6	1.9	0.0	1.1
16	0.3	1.5		0.5
17	0.0	0.8		0.2
18		0.2		0.2
19		0.0		0.0
Total	53.3	70.5	43.2	64.8

The following is a chart of players whose career WAR totals closely match each of the four defined WAR trajectories.

	Name	WAR
Replacement Level Hitter	Willie Stargell	58.2
	Luis Aparicio	50.4
Average Hitter	Tony Gwynn	70.6
	Eddie Murray	70.2
	Brooks Robinson	69.9
Replacement Level Pitcher	Whitey Ford	48.8
	Rich Gossage	40.1
Average Pitcher	Don Drysdale	65.6
	Jaun Marichal	64.1

Feel free to use these when creating WAR graphs so we have a general comparison between graphs, and let me know if there's any way to improve the methodology.

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Comments

This is great Jeff!

An excellent resource. Thanks for taking the time to do this.

St. Louis Cardinals... defying win expectancy since 2008

by vivaelpujols on May 19, 2009 6:21 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

My preference would be

to use the straight line relationship I previously mentioned of WAR = 8 – 0.4*Seasons to define the average HOF. If was pretty close to the original data (including some pre-1955) and would plot better in my opinion, as well as it removes the negative WAR values that were questioned. Even if you assign a 0 WAR for every player that either has no WAR (i.e. didn’t play) or negative WAR up to 20 seasons the line doesn’t change more than 0.12 WAR for a season.

All we were trying to do is find a baseline to throw on a plot to see where a current player (or favorite player) stands compared to other HOF. I would guess that most players above that line would get voted in (although there are probably exceptions) and those below would be subject to the voter’s opinion (“but did you see him play?”). The replacement level doesn’t add anything in my opinion since it is still dependent on voters.

As for the pitchers, it looks like they drop off a little sooner but I would say that the same equation could apply since it is just a baseline. I still think of Sky’s original scale linked in the first post and that a HOF would have one stellar “MVP” season, a few really good seasons, a few more all-star seasons, and a few above average seasons.

by JBrew on May 19, 2009 9:39 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

A couple of comments:

use the straight line relationship

This seems like a good idea, let me see if I can get an equation for each line.

The replacement level doesn’t add anything in my opinion since it is still dependent on voters.

I think it is nice to have the baseline of the minimum HOFer. Gives at least a reference of mininium consideration for HOF.

As for the pitchers, it looks like they drop off a little sooner but I would say that the same equation could apply since it is just a baseline.

I think for sure there should be 2 separate lines because there seems to be 2 separate criteria for getting in

by Jeff Zimmerman (TucsonRoyal) on May 19, 2009 2:36 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Another gray-area baseline idea:

Combine the worst ten players in the HoF with the best ten not in the Hall of Fame (excluding those that aren’t eligible). That might be a decent cutoff baseline.

Beyond the Boxscore // Calling BJ Upton lazy is lazy.

by Sky Kalkman on May 19, 2009 2:38 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs