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Tweaking the Hall of Stats

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Adam Darowski's Hall of Stats is by far my favorite of the various Hall rating systems. Its main competitor, JAWS, suffers from two major flaws in my view: (a) an inherently arbitrary measure of peak value by focusing on a player's seven best years, and (b) an excessive focus on the HOF median, which leads to an ever-increasingly high bar for induction.

The Hall of Stats, in contrast, is an elegantly simple setup. Adjust every hitting season to 162 games, but give players half credit for unplayed games instead of full credit. Give catchers and relievers a boost and pre-1893 pitchers a penalty. Add adjusted bWAR and WAA*1.8. Wins Above Average essentially measures peak value (only positive seasons are included), and the 1.8 gets WAR and WAA onto the same scale. Empty out the real Hall and fill it up again with the same number of players based on that formula.

This is so very close to how I would handle it. I thought I would try building my own Hall rating formula and see where the process took me. A few initial tweaks:

  • Blend fWAR and bWAR instead of using only bWAR. Tom Tango is an advocate for blending the two.
  • Instead of WAA, use WA2 (wins above 2). Another idea taken from Tango. This better handles pitcher hitting.
  • Throw out the Union Association and Federal League as minor leagues. Honestly no idea if this is correct, just a preference.
  • Apply the schedule adjustment to everyone except pre-1893 pitchers.
  • Instead of 1.8*WA2 to measure peak, let's try WA2+WA3. WAR+WA2+WA3 will be called WAR+. WAR+ should more or less track with Hall Rating.

That's enough to start. No adjustments for catchers or relievers yet (I already know I won't adjust for relievers), and no additional penalty for pre-1893 pitchers. Right now the real HOF has 222 players inducted for their MLB performance. Let's start by seeing who among eligible players is in the top 222 by WAR but not WA2, and vice versa. The players shaded yellow are those who are in the top 222 by WAR+.

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Folks tend to put a lot of emphasis on peak value but it's not clear to me that the WA2 guys are more deserving than the WAR guys. Koufax is the thorn in the side of any system that doesn't include a boost for peak value, but other than him there are really no guys in the WA2 column who would be egregious omissions. Regardless, there are too many pre-1893 pitchers by WA2 and not enough catchers by either measure. So let's do those adjustments. Instead of going by WA2 and WA3, for catchers we'll do WA1 and WA2, and for pre-1893 pitchers we'll do WA3 and WA4. With these adjustments added, we'll call WA2 aWA2 for adjusted wins above 2 (meaning wins above 2 or occasionally 1 or 3). Here are the in&out guys by WA2 and aWA2.

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That's a lot better, I won't really miss any of those guys in the first column. Here are the guys for WAR+ vs aWAR+.

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Again, no big losses in the first column and I like all those catchers being included. Seems like the adjustments are the way to go. Let's lock in the catcher adjustments, those look about right. I think there still might be a few too many pre-1893 pitchers though. Tommy Bond in particular I'd like to see on the outside. So let's even try adjusting pre-1893 pitchers up one more notch (i.e., WA4 and WA5). The following table shows the guys who would be in by WA3 but not WA4, and the guys who would replace them.

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Hmmm. Radbourn falling out is regrettable, I think. Galvin falls off a cliff at this particular cutoff point, honestly it makes me re-evaluate his worthiness. The rest of the first column I will not miss. I like Dean getting in, not wild about Doerr. Let's do the same comparison for WAR+ now.

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I feel like this is actually close to the ideal cutoff for the pre-1893 guys. Radbourn and Galvin are back in and all the other guys I'm either ambivalent or negative about. The problem is their replacements are pretty uninspiring.

For now, let's go ahead and keep the pre-1893 adjustments as they were originally (WA3 and WA4), meaning all these ancient guys stay in. None of their possible replacements really need to be in, so we may as well keep adjustments to a minimum.

Now that we know we're sticking with aWA2, let's compare it to WAR. Highlighted guys are in by aWAR+.

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Again, it's not clear to me that the WAR guys are less Hall-worthy than the peak guys. But, Tango advocates for WAA/WA2 as a better HOF starting point than WAR, and he's way smarter than me. So let's go with aWA2 or aWAR+. Which is better? Well, is the yellow group from the WAR column better than the unshaded group from the aWA2 column (plus Chet Lemon, who oddly is in by both WAR and aWA2, but not aWAR+)? No real must-haves from the aWAR+ group, whereas again I like the extra catchers from the peak group. Let's go with straight aWA2 over aWAR+.

Here is the comparison of the in&out guys in my Hall of aWA2 vs the Hall of Stats.

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Again, not immediately clear that one group is better than the other. I do like Barnes, Ward, and Caruthers being in (I know Adam would too), and I don't mind losing any of the HoS guys.

Ward, Caruthers, Whitney, Uhle, Spalding, and to a lesser extent Kaat, Gooden, Cooper, and Grimes all benefit from being pitchers who could hit (the Hall of Stats doesn't count pitcher offense in WAA).

Barnes, Caruthers, Gooden, Stovey, McGraw, Kiner, Hahn, Spalding, and Jennings are all peak guys who benefit from aWA2's reduced emphasis on longevity. Barnes, Stovey, and Jennings especially benefit since the WAA part of Hall Rating isn't schedule-adjusted.

Kaat and Lolich benefit from excellent fWAR totals compared to bWAR.

Everyone other than Whitney, Barnes, Kaat, Lolich, and Jennings has a Hall Rating above 90. Lots of guys at 98 and 99.

The ones that stand out to me personally as names I don't hear a lot about in HOF debates are Whitney and Uhle, two good hitting pitchers with good peripherals. Whitney actually had the two best single-season K:BB ratios ever until 1994; he still ranks 4th and 5th.

Here are the top 222 HOF-eligible players by aWA2, by position.

Pitchers

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Catchers

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First basemen

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Second basemen

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Third basemen

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Shortstops

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Leftfielders

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Centerfielders

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Rightfielders

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Designated hitters

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The Hall-worthy currently ineligible players by aWA2:

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Some active and recent near(ish)-miss guys:

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Finally, the top 300 players:

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So, did we learn anything? I learned that I can get a Hall that's the same basic shape as the Hall of Stats with I would argue fewer arbitrary adjustments. I learned you can take WAR out of the formula entirely without losing any must-have players. I learned that introducing fWAR seems to have a surprisingly small effect compared to other tweaks like swapping WAA for WA2. I learned that WA2 really clarifies the top of the all-time rankings at second base. Anything else jump out at you about the process or the results?

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