How Many Active HOFers Are There?
by Jeff Sackmann on Apr 10, 2007 6:33 PM EDT
4 comments
My next few columns for the Hardball Times are about which current players are likely to go the Hall of Fame. Here's the first installment, on NL pitchers. Before I did that, though, I figured out how much HOFers there usually are among the player population. I'm going to put all that data here.
It's pretty arbitrary, but I only counted players who had 200 ABs or 50 IP. Then, for each season, I counted how many total players there were (who met those requirements) and how many of them became Hall of Famers. I left out guys who made the Hall as managers, such as John McGraw. So, for each year, I figured out what percent of the MLB population would eventually become a Hall of Famer.
Here is the data, averaged by decade:
Decade %HOFers 1880s 9.73% 1890s 11.68% 1900s 11.21% 1910s 8.91% 1920s 14.26% 1930s 13.98% 1940s 7.11% 1950s 9.48% 1960s 8.51% 1970s 6.41% 1980s 4.21% 1990s 1.35%Of course it's low in the 80s and 90s -- there are plenty of players who aren't even eligible yet. It'll continue to go up for the 70s, too. Induct Blyleven alone and the average goes up about 0.2% for the decade.
The biggest spike, of course, is in the 1920s and 1930s, thanks to the veteran's committee that elected the whole New York Giants team. If you assume that the percentage should always be consistent (which probably isn't true, but it's a good approximation), close to 1 out of every 3 guys from that period doesn't belong. That means you, Rabbit Maranville.
The point of this exercise was to determine how many HOFers there are playing right now. For the sake of my THT columns, I'm estimating 60. That's on the high side: a little above 9% of active players. At first, I thought that the percentage might go down as the number of teams went up; it seems odd that there were 32 active HOFers 50 years ago, and now there'd be almost double that.
But, when I tried to narrow down the pool of potential HOFers, 60 seems about right. In fact, I can see it being a little higher than that. Here's part of the reason: great players are (in general) playing longer. Sure, there have always been durable Hall of Famers (in fact, it's a characteristic of the breed), but an awful lot of guys are making it well into their 40s. So, 50 years ago, maybe Maddux or Randy Johnson would be retired.
In other words, saying that there's a larger percentage of active Hall of Famers doesn't mean there's a larger percentage of great players alive; it just means that those players stick around longer (relative to non-great players) than they did before. I realize this is very approximate, and possibly wrong; I would run some numbers, but with a total of just over 200 HOF players, I doubt the sample size would sustain any kind of strong conclusion. Especially since the standards for HOF inclusion are so ambiguous.
But, again to get back to the point: the percent of active players who would be elected to the Hall of Fame has historically been around 10%. As you'll see in my series of THT articles discussing who those players may be right now, that seems about right, if not a little stingy. There are probably 20-30 no-brainers, at least 15-20 of whom are "Inner Circle" guys.
The only thing I can think of to keep the numbers down would be if the writers went crazy keeping out anybody related with the steroid scandal. That would keep out Bonds, Sosa, maybe Tejada, Giambi (if he'd otherwise qualify, which we'll see about) and probably others whose names will come up in the meantime. I don't think that'll be the case, though of course PEDs will play a part in some marginal player elections, such as Rafael Palmeiro.
If you're interested, the entire data set (players and HOFers, broken down by pitchers and hitters, year by year from 1876 to the present) is below the jump.
Year QualifieBatHOF PitHOF TotHOF %HOF 1876 76 2 0 2 2.63% 1877 54 2 0 2 3.70% 1878 56 3 1 4 7.14% 1879 84 5 2 7 8.33% 1880 80 7 4 11 13.75% 1881 88 9 5 14 15.91% 1882 137 10 5 15 10.95% 1883 188 12 5 17 9.04% 1884 319 13 7 20 6.27% 1885 206 11 6 17 8.25% 1886 217 13 5 18 8.29% 1887 226 10 5 15 6.64% 1888 226 14 5 19 8.41% 1889 215 15 6 21 9.77% 1890 343 17 9 26 7.58% 1891 235 16 9 25 10.64% 1892 183 19 8 27 14.75% 1893 168 17 5 22 13.10% 1894 173 18 4 22 12.72% 1895 170 17 4 21 12.35% 1896 168 18 3 21 12.50% 1897 175 16 3 19 10.86% 1898 178 16 4 20 11.24% 1899 190 15 6 21 11.05% 1900 123 15 6 21 17.07% 1901 236 18 8 26 11.02% 1902 240 17 9 26 10.83% 1903 243 15 10 25 10.29% 1904 254 16 12 28 11.02% 1905 253 16 13 29 11.46% 1906 253 15 11 26 10.28% 1907 257 14 12 26 10.12% 1908 260 15 12 27 10.38% 1909 281 16 11 27 9.61% 1910 267 15 10 25 9.36% 1911 267 14 9 23 8.61% 1912 253 13 10 23 9.09% 1913 269 14 9 23 8.55% 1914 404 15 11 26 6.44% 1915 410 16 11 27 6.59% 1916 263 18 10 28 10.65% 1917 255 16 11 27 10.59% 1918 241 15 6 21 8.71% 1919 256 17 10 27 10.55% 1920 260 18 10 28 10.77% 1921 273 20 10 30 10.99% 1922 278 21 11 32 11.51% 1923 280 24 11 35 12.50% 1924 282 27 11 38 13.48% 1925 289 33 14 47 16.26% 1926 285 36 14 50 17.54% 1927 285 34 12 46 16.14% 1928 287 35 13 48 16.72% 1929 282 35 12 47 16.67% 1930 293 33 12 45 15.36% 1931 284 34 13 47 16.55% 1932 291 35 13 48 16.49% 1933 287 35 13 48 16.72% 1934 289 34 10 44 15.22% 1935 292 31 9 40 13.70% 1936 290 28 9 37 12.76% 1937 285 25 9 34 11.93% 1938 290 24 7 31 10.69% 1939 298 24 7 31 10.40% 1940 299 21 7 28 9.36% 1941 298 20 7 27 9.06% 1942 296 20 6 26 8.78% 1943 296 12 3 15 5.07% 1944 287 8 2 10 3.48% 1945 304 9 3 12 3.95% 1946 310 16 6 22 7.10% 1947 309 16 6 22 7.12% 1948 310 18 7 25 8.06% 1949 296 20 7 27 9.12% 1950 295 20 7 27 9.15% 1951 299 22 7 29 9.70% 1952 293 16 8 24 8.19% 1953 294 17 8 25 8.50% 1954 304 21 7 28 9.21% 1955 308 21 8 29 9.42% 1956 295 24 10 34 11.53% 1957 305 23 9 32 10.49% 1958 308 20 8 28 9.09% 1959 295 19 9 28 9.49% 1960 297 21 10 31 10.44% 1961 349 21 10 31 8.88% 1962 389 21 10 31 7.97% 1963 386 20 11 31 8.03% 1964 401 20 10 30 7.48% 1965 397 19 15 34 8.56% 1966 399 20 15 35 8.77% 1967 397 21 12 33 8.31% 1968 387 21 13 34 8.79% 1969 469 21 16 37 7.89% 1970 469 20 14 34 7.25% 1971 458 19 13 32 6.99% 1972 447 18 12 30 6.71% 1973 472 20 12 32 6.78% 1974 465 19 12 31 6.67% 1975 482 19 13 32 6.64% 1976 486 18 12 30 6.17% 1977 521 15 13 28 5.37% 1978 518 18 12 30 5.79% 1979 527 18 12 30 5.69% 1980 540 16 12 28 5.19% 1981 420 14 11 25 5.95% 1982 515 16 12 28 5.44% 1983 542 17 11 28 5.17% 1984 539 14 8 22 4.08% 1985 532 14 8 22 4.14% 1986 548 14 8 22 4.01% 1987 537 13 5 18 3.35% 1988 534 12 3 15 2.81% 1989 557 9 2 11 1.97% 1990 549 11 2 13 2.37% 1991 561 11 2 13 2.32% 1992 546 10 2 12 2.20% 1993 589 9 2 11 1.87% 1994 464 7 0 7 1.51% 1995 543 4 1 5 0.92% 1996 589 6 1 7 1.19% 1997 580 3 1 4 0.69% 1998 639 2 0 2 0.31% 1999 649 1 0 1 0.15% 2000 649 0 0 0 0.00% 2001 634 0 0 0 0.00% 2002 638 0 0 0 0.00% 2003 622 0 0 0 0.00% 2004 628 0 0 0 0.00% 2005 631 0 0 0 0.00% 2006 646 0 0 0 0.00%
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My count
Definitely:
Clemens
Maddux
Big Unit
Glavine
Mariano Rivera
Jeter
ARod
Bonds
Pedro
Biggio
Bagwell
Big Hurt
Probably:
Schilling
Sosa
Trevor Hoffman
Rolen
Manny Ramirez
Piazza
Chipper
Pudge Rodriguez
Griffey
Maybe:
Miguel Tejada
Delgado
Posada
Kent
Helton
Edmonds
Mussina
Smoltz
Billy Wagner
by JM Barten on Apr 10, 2007 6:50 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs
The fun part...
by Jeff Sackmann on Apr 10, 2007 8:45 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
60 is too high
Over the past 30 years, the BB writers have voted in a total of 48 players. That's an average of only 1.6 inductees per year.
If we assume the average HOFer plays for 15 years, that implies there are only 24 HOFers playing now. Even if we stretch the average career to 20 years, that's only 32 active HOFers.
This doesn't include those voted in by the Veterans Committee. They voted in 35 players over the past 30 years. But, that number has been declining (or even zero) in recent years.
by GoOakland on Apr 11, 2007 5:55 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs
the percent of great players would decline
Also, the avg HOF now probably plays more like 20 years. That career length keeps getting longer, so by the time Felix retires, it might be more like 22-24. Just look at the current crop of 'lock' pitchers.
I don't think it's right to assume that the VC will continue electing zero players. That may last for a while, but if the VC elects no one for the next decade, there'll be another change to the format. The HOF has never been shy about adjusting the voting process as necessary.
Plus, as you'll see through this series of articles, there are at least 20, maybe more, players who are near-locks already. 60 might be high, but I'm convinced it'll much closer to 60 than 32.
by Jeff Sackmann on Apr 12, 2007 10:21 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
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