THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

And here are the totals of all nonpitchers born since Ruth was born and retired when Raines retired:

The first line read: of all players with at least 370 win shares, we find 37 players, of which 36 are in the hall of fame.  (Guess who is not). 

From 340 to 369 WS, 59% of the players are in the HOF.  From 310 to 339, 41% are in the HOF.  So, the “gray area”, is right around 340 win shares, give or take.

minWS n ind ind_rate
370 37 36 97
340 17 10 59
310 29 12 41
280 33 8 24
250 41 11 27
220 61 7 11
190 80 7 9
160 101 1 1
130 146 0 0
100 198 0 0
70 267 1 0
40 415 0 0
10 932 0 0
0 2659 1 0

Those guys who you figure should not be in (based on the table above) are actually Negro League players.

What is happening to Raines is simply unprecedented.

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Here’s a simple function to figure out the chance of making the Hall of Fame:

numerator = Win Shares
denominator = 3200 - 7.4 * Win Shares

chance = numerator / denominator

So, a guy with 340 win shares has a 50% chance of making it.

You get to the 100% level when Win Shares = 381.

You get to the 25% level when Win Shares = 281.

You get to the 10% level when Win Shares = 184.  At this point, I would probably say that this quick equation should probably stop working.

With all due respect, I’m kind of biased toward my ranking based on WSAB:

http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/historical-wsab-41-through-80/

Same conclusion—better stat.

Guess who is not.  Must be Jim Rice.  jk

Where does the great Jim Rice stand in Win Shares?

Win Shares doesn’t like Rice, though I’m not 100% sure why.  He has 282 WS and 117 WSAB.

I’m hoping that when Rice’s last chance goes through, Bill James will be free of his Redsox shackles will finally speak up on Raines.

Studes, no question that WSAB is better than WS.  I was just using the Win Shares database from your site from a year ago.  If you’ve updated it to also include WSAB, I’ll download that one.

Tango, I’ve just updated the files, adding 2008 Win Shares.  Plus, one of the files includes expected Win Shares (.500 level, given playing time) for all players per year, so you can apply your own replacement level.  If you want to replicate WSAB, use 50% for starting pitchers, 70% for everyone else.

Here’s the site:

ftp://ftp.baseballgraphs.com/winshares/

Here it is for pitchers (who, as some of you know, I find that are very undervalued by Win Shares):

minWS n ind ind_rate
301 18 17 94
240 15 8 53
180 55 6 11
120 160 1 1
60 423 0 0
0 3889 1 0

That one guy in the top group is Bert Blyleven at 339 Win Shares.

The group of pitchers from 240 to 299 Win Shares has about a 50/50 shot of making the Hall of Fame.  So, 270 win shares for pitchers, and 340 win shares for nonpitchers should be treated as around equivalent, for the purposes of Hall of Fame.

Raines and Blylven are both well-above the 50/50 borderline point.

Here are the best pitchers not inducted (born since Ruth)

339 Blyleven
289 John, To
268 Kaat
256 Tiant

And that’s it.  From 250 Win Shares and below, pitchers are simply not in the HOF, with a couple of exceptions (relievers, Sandy Koufax, Catfish Hunter, Dizzy Dean, Lefty Gomez).  And that’s it.  NO other exceptions.

Jack Morris has 225 win shares.  Among his contemporaries are:
241 Tanana
240 Reuschel
233 El Presidente
233 Hough
JACK MORRIS
214 Finley
210 Hershiser
210 Stieb

This is what Jack Morris is.  A very good pitcher.  To argue for Morris as HOF is to put up similarly strong arguments for all these other pitchers.  Fine, you can do that.

But, to pick out Jack Morris as the sole other representative (with Blyleven) of starters born between Nolan Ryan and Roger Clemens is crazy.  Morris is no standout among his peers, and deserves no standout recognition as the HOF will continue to let him do for 15 whole years.

In a way, it’s almost better to vote him in like Catfish Hunter, so that we don’t have to hear about him every single year.

Among the Clemens-to-Pedro (born 1962 to 1971) crop:

440 Clemens
395 Maddux
327 RJ
315 Glavine

288 Smoltz
274 Mussina (between Kaat and John)
254 Schilling

251 Pedro
241 Brown Ke

Smoltz will get his closer boost.  Schilling will get enough post-season boost to be a borderline candidate like Mussina.  Pedro will get the Koufax boost.  And Kevin Brown will be the fadeaway candidate.

I’m not sure Raines falling short initially in BBWAA voting is unprecedented.  You are relying on averages for all players in the Hall, not the smaller, and more elite, group of players elected by the BBWAA.  The average among non-pitchers elected by the writers is 412 Win Shares, and, although I haven’t broken it down, I’m sure the average for OFers in particular is even higher.  In short, Raines would be somewhat below average in career Win Shares among BBWAA-elected hitters, and I don’t know that we would expect him to be quickly elected.

Among post-WWII OFers, I think the closest to Raines in career Win Shares are Tony Gwynn and Billy Williams.  Gwynn had the many batting average championships to make him an obvious choice to the BBWAA voters, but Williams took years to be voted in.  In his first year of eligibility Williams received only 23% of the vote (1% less than Raines received in his first year) and it took six years for him to get in.  Gwynn and Williams had better hitting numbers than Raines, but Tony’s speed made him essentially as valuable as Tony and Billy.  I suspect that Raines’ HOF voting arc will be more similar to Williams than Gwynn. Some guys in the sub-400 Win Shares hitter group will get in quickly and some won’t (Al Simmons is another OFer in this Win Shares range who took a few years to get voted in).

Just to point out how much Win Shares undervalues pitching, Pedro only gets 29 Win Shares in 2000 for the most dominant pitching season of all-time. Bobby Higginson, playing LF and creating only 30 runs above average, gets 26 Win Shares. I am using Bill James’ figures from his book. I will have to see how many win shares Pedro had in 2000 using Studes version of win shares.

My reference to “Tony’s speed” in #10 above should have read “Tim’s speed”, as I hope was apparent from the context.

Why not add Jamie Moyer to this discussion?  He has 217 win shares and will probably be in the mid 220’s to low 230’s when his new contract ends.  He has similar career stats to Morris, especially Ks, BBs, W/L, and ERA+.  Granted, Moyer has pitched in 4 more seasons and will have 6 more seasons after his current contract.  I doubt Moyer will get into the HOF unless he pitches long enough to reach 300 wins.

All Stats below are from Baseball Reference, except win-shares from THT.

Moyer
W/L: 246/185
K: 2248
K/9: 5.4
BB: 1074
BB/9: 2.6
ERA+: 106
Win Shares: 217
Innings: 3746 2/3
20+ Win Seasons: 2

Morris
W/L: 254/186
K: 2478
K/9: 5.8
BB: 1390
BB/9: 3.3
ERA+: 105
Win Shares: 225
Innings: 3824
20+ Win Seasons: 3

Jed: very very nice.

That should pretty much end the discussion, shouldn’t it?