The Interactive Hall of Fame Ballot, Now with Pitchers
by adarowski on Dec 20, 2010 9:01 AM EST
in Visuals Above Replacement
Email
PrintLast week, I debuted the Interactive Hall of Fame Ballot—a concentric circular, drag & drop, HTML5/CSS3/jQuery-powered visualization of this year's Hall candidates. And as I often do, I started with position players only. This time, I've added pitchers.
And it beats on one of our favorite sabermetric dead horsies.
Hey, guess what? Bert Blyleven should be in the Hall of Fame. And you know what? Inducting Kevin Brown would increase the Hall of Fame median. Inducting Jack Morris… would not.
So, once again, please click, drag, and play with the full interactive version.
Who would you vote for?
21 comments
|
1 recs |
Do you like this story?
Comments
Pitcher vs. Hitter median is interesting
Similar WAR, but the pitchers have higher WAE and WAM levels. Guess it makes more sense to see pitchers with more peak value relative to career value, since their careers are generally shorter (is that true?) But maybe it also shows we have higher expectations for pitchers? That’s a bit odd, considering there are much fewer of them to hit any WAR threshold.
This really jumped out at me, too.
I think you’re right about the higher peaks and shorter careers. But I was also shocked to see that the raw WAR was so close to position players, too. I think a lot of that may have to do with there being a lot more position player induction gaffes than pitcher gaffes. If you see a list of least-deserving Hall of Famers, not many are pitchers.
Also, I think HOF voters seem to be kinder to position player “compilers” than pitching compilers. If Bert Blyleven, Tommy John, and Jim Kaat were all their position playing equivalents, I think all three would have been inducted long ago.
While doing this, I was just surprised by how few pitchers are in the Hall of Fame compared to hitters. I think the balance might be off.
On Twitter: @baseballtwit
Two things:
Al Leiter> Jack Morris!!
Second, more seriously, This graphic shows really well a reason for the anti-Blylevin Crowd. Blylevin’s Wins above MVP (WAR – 6 in a season, iirc), is lower than the HoF median, and is barely higher than Kevin Brown. So while he’s clearly not a “dreaded compiler” (as seen by his high Wins Above Excellence), he didn’t have what as many people would think of as the amazing amazing season. It’s a different representation yet totally works.
Nice post.
But I have an off-topic question.
Is there a post on here that states that more than the big market teams can compete? My sports marketing teacher claims to us that teams need to make revenue to compete. Completely wrong and I want a well thought out post to show him why. I don’t want to make it right now, but I know something must have been posted about this.
1. Owners pocket cash like the Pirates
2. The Marlins won 2 World Series and other small market teams have made the WS
Is there a post to show that small market teams can thrive in this league? Maybe not for 10 straight seasons because the players will eventually leave for the bigger $ in a big market. Via Crawford.
"Don't give up, don't ever give up."
Clarification...
Is the claim that only high revenue teams can compete? That only teams turning a profit can compete? That only teams who compete turn a profit? That only team who compete have high revenue? Something else?
Forbes has team revenue available for at least the last ten years (aggregated at Biz of Baseball), which should help.
He said only high market teams can compete for a WS.
The Twins can’t win a World Series he said.
What he doesn’t realize the Twins are top 10 in payroll. Thanks I’ll check it out.
"Don't give up, don't ever give up."
Try to separate payroll from revenue.
But either way the claim is technically false. (It’s true that there’s a solid connection between revenue and payroll, and between both of those and wins. But nothing’s a guarantee.)
Man, I do love these visuals
Obviously everyone here is voting for Blyleven, but I’m pretty surprised to see Brown stack up so well statistically. It’s easy to forget how great he was at times- he had a solid nine-year span as an elite pitcher, with multiple other strong seasons on top of that. It’s easiest to remember how he pitched (or failed to pitch) after signing that massive contract, but he was quite dominant for a while before that.
Baseball is my preferred sport. It should be yours, too.
I'm an editor for Beyond the Box Score, an SB Nation blog.
Was listening to Jonah Keri's podcast
And Jay Jaffe mentioned that JAWS doesn’t see Brown as a HoFamer. Not sure why — maybe it’s a metric issue (WARP vs. rWAR) or maybe it’s the HoFame system (JAWS vs. WAE). Any ideas, peeps?
I'd say maybe it's rWAR...
… that’s giving him a lot of credit because maybe (didn’t look it up) he played in front of weak defenses. But fWAR has him even higher. So, not sure what the discrepancy is.
On Twitter: @baseballtwit
Actually, now that I think about it...
I was just listening to that today… I don’t remember him covering Brown. I do remember him saying Larry Walker rated lower than I thought he would. I’ll have to go back and listen. It was a great episode…
On Twitter: @baseballtwit
Could be...
Seeing a couple older references where Brown is above the HOF avg by Jaws…
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=keri/060728
http://www.baseballprospectus.com/chat/chat.php?chatId=176
On Twitter: @baseballtwit
Good to see, thanks.
So then, uh, Walker? WARP/rWAR issue? Park effects, maybe? Other?
One thought is that WARP uses a lower baseline, which rewards playing time (within a season and across more seasons) vs. great rate stats. Walker tended to be in the 500-550 PA range instead of 650. Hurts him more in WARP.
by Sky Kalkman on Dec 21, 2010 11:19 AM EST up reply actions
I'm conflicted about Walker
I’m a stat guy, but I’m just… conflicted. Why did he sneak up on us like this as soon as WAR came along? Is it just me?
On Twitter: @baseballtwit
He was a stellar player all along...
but he didn’t get much press because he played in backwaters for the most part. One of the main reasons to do objective analysis is to take away the vernier of perception — which is clouded not only by selective memory but also by media exposure. Walker stands out as an excellent hall of fame candidate as soon as you take a close look at him — especially when you consider his defense — but many people did not really consider him very much when he played.
Such a great point
And the thing is, he DID get recognized. He had an MVP. He had the Gold Gloves. I need to let it go and just embrace him. :)
On Twitter: @baseballtwit
When WAR was "released"...
There were high-WAR guys that either confirmed to us that they were underrated (and we knew it all along—Blyleven, Trammell, Santo, etc.) and there are some surprising ones. Walker surprised me. Rick Reuschel surprised me. Should Walker have surprised me?
On Twitter: @baseballtwit
Looks like Reuschel does well via JAWS too, and Jaffe's not convinced:
Grant (Chicago): Off the top of your head, who are two or three very credible options for the Hall that few casual fans or even BP readers would see as such? Will Clark? Trammell? In other words, in your extensive research on the topic, who’s really surprised you with good candidancies?
Jay Jaffe: Bobby Grich is one. Will Clark another. Bill Dahlen and Rick Reuschel are two guys whose JAWS scores are near the line that nobody ever thinks of. Dahlen I can see, Reuschel I’m not even convinced of.
http://www.baseballprospectus.com/chat/chat.php?chatId=690
On Twitter: @baseballtwit
Comments For This Post Are Closed
Secondary Sidebar
User Tools
FanPosts
Community blog posts and discussion.
Recent FanPosts
Follow us on Twitter!
BTB: @BtBScore
Justin: @justinbopp
Satchel: @SatchelPrice
J-Doug: @RationalPastime
Josh: @garik16
Julian: @giantsnirvana
Bill: @BillPetti
Lucas: @DBITLefty
Jeff: @jeffwzimmerman
Lewis: @LewsOnFirst
