THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Right.  The HOF has unwritten standards that just evolved, somehow, and that’s what we’re stuck with.

The thing about non-sports is that you have accomplishments that are WAY, WAY beyond the norm. 

That doesn’t happen in sports.  Your typical MVP season is nothing special in the grand scheme of baseball, and it’s only (say) 20 or 30 percent better than the next ten best.  But Sgt. Pepper ... that’s got to be hundreds of percent better than the next 9 albums of 1967. 

Furthermore, in baseball, the next 9 guys are going to have a good year every year.  In other things in life, the biggest things are one-time shots.

Terry Fox did only one thing, but it was worth a thousand smaller things.  Martin Luther King, Oskar Schindler, Steve Jobs.  They did only one thing, but it was so huge that their peak value is their career value, and it doesn’t matter.

So the ratio of peak/career is much higher in real life than in baseball, and you need different standards for the real-life HOF.

I’ve often thought there should be a separate HOF for *achievements*. 

Paul Henderson, the 1980 US Olympic Hockey Team, Don Larsen, Bucky Dent, David Tyree, Bill Mazeroski ... people everyone talks about, but where you’re really honoring the event that they featured in, rather than the people themselves.

If they’re still talking about what you did 40 years later, you’re in.

Pedro 1997-2003 I think counts.

Bobby Orr’s 8 years counts.

Gretzky’s first 8 years.

In the case of these guys, it’s a question of how few years you need to say “yup, he’s in”.

Ken Dryden made it in 8 years, so I think it’s fair to say that Orr could have made it in 4.

Suppose Gretzky had his actual first five seasons, then became only average for 10 more.

In your eyes, would the extra 10 years make him more, or less, suitable for the HOF, compared to if he had quit after five years?

@1: Be careful what you say about 1967; the Velvet Underground’s debut, Jimi Hendrix’s debut, Love’s Forever Changes, Kinks’ Something Else, the Who Sell Out.  Maybe Sgt. Pepper is better, but not by hundreds of percents!  For plenty more, click my name.  I think we have to assume some performance enhancing drugs

The extra 10 either added something, or nothing.  It would NOT detract.

It’s as if Koufax started his career backwards, from 1966 going back.

To my gut, it would detract.  That doesn’t seem right to me, but it is what it is.

Phil/1, may I submit Ruth in the ‘20s.  Indeed, hitting more HR than entire teams does seem to be be similar to the hundreds of percents better than the rest that Sgt Pepper was in 1967.

Regarding the Hall of Achievement, the most memorable in my lifetime I think has been Rulon Gardner.

"… people everyone talks about, but where you’re really honoring the event that they featured in, rather than the people themselves.”

I’d love to see how voters would react to Armando’s Galarraga “imperfect” game in your Hall of Achievements Phil. Does the fact that it was not perfect would make it more remarkable than other perfect games (excluding Larsen’s of course) and thus Hall worthy? Highly debatable.

Phil/4

I wonder if the reason your gut reaction is that those 10 average years would detract is that our instinct is to reason that the first 5 years were somehow lucky, illusory, or in some way deceptive. In other words, the last 10 years “revealed” the true value of the player. Had those 10 average years not happened (and we had only the 5 years from which to judge), we are free to assume that the player could have had an excellent AND lengthy career, if only injury/death/early retirement had not intervened.

Perhaps it’s the same conflict between “true talent” and actual results. We are willing to disregard actual results (the first 5 years) if we believe that further information (the last 10 years) has revealed the true man (or his true talent) to us.

If a player only plays for 5 years, and is then injured, and another guy plays for 5 years (same performance), and then average for 10 years, the second player MUST be better.

After all, the first guy, in those other 10 years, had no talent to play MLB.

I don’t see how it can possibly detract that the second guy played MLB, while the first guy did nothing.

I disagree about Sgt Pepper being hundreds of times better than any other albums in 1967. It wasn’t hundreds of times better than the Velvet Underground and Nico or the first Doors album.

In fact, I could make an argument that the Velvet Underground album was better. After all, did every person who bought Sgt. Pepper form a band?

Real point is that few things are as objectively measurable as baseball, even with all the arguments we have over those measurements in baseball. Whether Sgt Pepper was hundreds of times better than another album, or even better at all, is strictly a matter of opinion.

Kevin Brown 1996-2003. The man needs to be recognized.

Does baseball talent follow a Zipfian distribution?

If so, do we expect/think albums and art to also be Zipfian in their greatness?

The Beatles are great, of course, but I’ve always resented the way in which they’re presumed to be the best band ever, and heads above anyone else. And with the Stones #2, maybe, there is then argued to be another big drop-off after that (shades of Bonds and Ruth?).

1967 is considered one of the best years for music, ever.
Sgt Pepper, VU, and the Doors, yes, but also Are You Experienced? by Hendrix, Grateful Dead: Grateful Dead, The Magical Mystery Tour, Pink Floyd’s first release, Aretha Franklin’s best album…

I don’t know that Sgt. Pepper is, in fact, so much better than everything else.
What I think is that it’s sort of been canonized as such by a sort of general consensus, the way the Mona Lisa is “the best painting ever” even though it isn’t, and the way Moby Dick is “the best book ever” or Beethoven’s 9th is “the best symphony ever “

Regardless, for art, one can easily make the case that it is in no way quantifiable in terms of value and that things like the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Grammies are a joke without working very hard to do so.

I think the analogies in the post are off the mark. Sgt. Pepper’s, Cochrane, Daystrom, and the Mona Lisa aren’t independently so great that they are Hall worthy. Their Hall credentials come from the influence brought about by these singular accomplishments (real or fictional). If the influence of one accomplishment is enough for enshrinement, let’s put Homer Jones into the NFL Hall for being the first to celebrate a touchdown by spiking the ball. Or Nomo for busting open the door for Japanese pitchers.

And Watterson, to me, is like Barry Sanders. The career was nothing but greatness, albeit voluntarily abbreviated compared to some others.

So, yeah, I agree with Phil’s general idea, that there should be an opportunity for enshrinement, though not for achievements, but for influence. And I wouldn’t want it separate from the others who are inducted. For example, if Plante had only been the Canadiens equipment manager and never wore skates in his life, I’d still put him in the Hall just for inventing the goaltender’s mask.

And that leaves the question of what would qualify. For example, two people who were largely unknown but extremely influential in baseball recently died. No one seemed to notice, I guess because they weren’t industry insiders. Would Irving Franklin go in (batting gloves)? What about Bill Mardo, a Communist Party newspaper writer who was one of the loudest and longest advocates for baseball to integrate?

Both obits are worth reading for the stories behind what these people did:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/15/sports/baseball/irving-franklin-maker-of-batting-gloves-dies-at-93.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/25/sports/baseball/bill-mardo-writer-who-pushed-baseball-to-integrate-dies-at-88.html

"But Sgt. Pepper ... that’s got to be hundreds of percent better than the next 9 albums of 1967”

Really? That seems unlikely. Other notable albums released in that year:
The Doors (self-titled) and Strange Days
Younger than Yesterday - The Byrds
The Velvet Underground & Nico
Are You Experienced and Axis: Bold as Love - The Jimi Hendrix Experience
David Bowie (self-titled)
The Piper at the Gates of Dawn - Pink Floyd
Buffalo Springfield Again
Disraeli Gears - Cream
John Wesley Harding - Bob Dylan
Plus 3 Rolling Stones albums and another one by the Beatles.

It’s even debatable whether Sgt. Pepper ranks as #1 in 1967. That was just an amazing year for music in general.

An extreme peak like Sgt. Pepper’s can’t really be separated from “career” value.  Imagine that a one-hit wonder band had emerged in 1967, made Sgt. Pepper’s, and then broken up.  Would it have the same iconic status, had it not been made by the Beatles?  Not a chance. 

It’s a bit different in sports, where we can measure performance more objectively.  A mediocre player can throw a no-hitter, or win the 7th game of the WS. But I think our perception of a player’s peak is somewhat shaped by the rest of his career.  What we appreciate is great talent, and the more evidence we have that the talent is real (not luck) the more we admire it.  If Koufax had had only 2 great seasons, he wouldn’t be considered an all-time great. But add another 5 seasons of league-average performance to his career, and his standing wouldn’t change much.

I think Phil’s intuitive response is interesting, and not that uncommon.  If a player has a few brilliant seasons and then stops, we can fill in the remaining seasons with our imagination.  And those virtual years will be quite a bit better than the reality would likely have been.  If Gooden had stopped pitching after 5 seasons, I suspect he’d have a better reputation today.

I’ve often thought that if you take the name literally, a Hall of *Fame* might not necessarily enshrine the most “worthy” players, and I’d be okay with that.

Phil/2 proposes a reasonable standard:
If they’re still talking about what you did 40 years later, you’re in.

This simple idea encompasses both long career greatness and a much more short-lived brilliance, and indeed infamy.

If anything, it rewards the brilliance more than longevity. Bert Blyleven was a very good pitcher for a very long time, and he surely had more career value than, say, Dizzy Dean, but Dean was more famous. If Blyleven is largely remembered in 20 more years, it may be as much for the internet campaign to get him enshrined as for his accomplishments on the field.

What we usually talk about as the Hall of Fame might more accurately be described as a Hall of Merit, and I have no problem saying Blyleven belongs there. This isn’t just a big hall/small hall argument - it’s a more fundamental question about what the HOF should be.

If you go with the fame standard, then there’s zero justification at all for keeping out Bonds or Clemens. Or, really, McGwire and Sosa: all of these players were indeed truly special, and indeed historic, no matter how they managed to achieve what they did.

But for a Hall of Merit, people then debate whether a given player “deserves” to be so honored, and thus the HWs can crusade against steroid/HGH abuse. But not amphetamines.

One other downside about making it more about fame than merit - by using Phil’s standard, you should count some players who current conventional wisdom would never consider HOF-worthy players, such as Joe Jackson and Johnny Vander Meer. We clearly still talk about them well over 40 years later!

Value in art is aesthetic; in baseball we have objective standards of value (runs, wins, championships, etc.).

That’s not to say that peak performance that does not result in a clear increase in objective value standards is an invalid criterion by which to evaluate players.  But it should be acknowledged as one’s preference rather than an objective standard.

James/5 and others:

IMHO Sgt. Pepper led the league in RBIs, but the Velvets had a much higher wOBA.

For a long time, I have liked Phil’s idea of a “Hall of Achievements” and have often thought that a good hall of fame would want to immortalize those achievements in a separate wing or floor, so not to be confused with the players, coaches, broadcasters, etc., immortalized for their lifetime achievements. 

When I visit Cooperstown, I would feel cheated about not being able to relive the experience of some of the great moments in baseball, of which two reasonable lists as starting points are here:
http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/baseballs_best/index.jsp
http://www.baseball-almanac.com/legendary/likodak.shtml

I would add Armando Galarraga’s near-perfect game.  If I were taking my son or grandsons to the HOF, I’d want them to know about the grace with which Galarraga dealt with it and the forth-right and honest statements of Jim Joyce afterward.  It is a great lesson in dealing with an unfair decision and admitting to one’s mistakes.
We all just witnessed one of the most amazing and memorable days on baseball, the final day of the 2011 regular season.  Surely that’s Hall-worthy.
Similarly, some amazing (and inglorious) streaks, like Oakland’s 20 gamer and Hatteberg’s walk-off (*), or Colorado’s 14 of 15 to make the ‘07 playoffs, the Phold. 
(*) Yes, I know that’s featured in Moneyball, but I’d rather not leave these things to Hollywood and their propensity to enhance for dramatic effect.

I would also invite SABR to form a committee to correct the errors created by the voting system where players with Hall-worthy careers were overlooked.

Well, de gustibus non disputandum est. Piper at the Gates of Dawn was possibly the best record that year; Sgt. Pepper’s is one of the weakest Beatles records. It was much worse than the two records that bookend it (Revolver and the White Album). As for the Velvets ... yes, good record, but the bands it inspired weren’t.

But the sentiment is the same. I would have thrown the Beatles even if they all died in a plane crash after Help.

This is a case for your W-L records, Tom. Bill James has two standards for Win Shares in part to combat this issue.

@21 - I’m not sure if you have been to Cooperstown, but the building is the Hall of Fame and Museum.  The former is just a single room that houses all of the plaques but the latter has many exhibits detailing all of the history of baseball.  You can read about and see videos for many of baseball’s great moments. 

@1 - I’m a little late to this thread but I would dispute Steve Jobs and especially Martin Luther King as having only done one thing.

@23 - No I haven’t been yet.  Thanks for the info.

"As for the Velvets ... yes, good record, but the bands it inspired weren’t.”

Except for the literally dozens that were.

@1—I’m sorry, but I am having a hard time understanding what Steve Jobs has in common with Terry Fox,Martin Luther King or Oskar Schindler.

I don’t know that velvet underground inspired nearly as many bands as there are bands that would like you to think they were inspired by VU. It’s almost comical some of the bands that list them as an influence; while they were certainly influential, the second-order cultural influence where it’s actually a meme or signaling device to say you’re inspired by VU can’t be discounted.

Part of this seems to be related to the fact it’s been cliche to say you were inspired by the Beatles for decades, and also with their de facto #1 pop band status it is somewhat stating the obvious to remark on their influence.

I think it’s pretty likely Steve Jobs and Bill Gates will be remembered as the two lasting figures of the digital revolution. Jobs will probably be remembered similarly to Edison and/or Tesla, while Gates seems to be well on his way to being the next Carnegie/Rockefeller.

For those reasons if we’re talking about fame I think it’s perfectly acceptable to talk of Jobs in this discussion alongside Watterson, MLK, Schindler, etc. Obviously these people contributed to vastly different “fields” in dissimilar ways, but they are all famous for their contributions.

Here’s my contribution:  Abraham Lincoln.  Pretty much universally considered the greatest president ever, he was only President for a few weeks more than a single term in office.  At least according to this aggregate ranking, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_Presidents_of_the_United_States , the only one who served less in the top ten was Polk, who is number ten.  Indeed, only TR and Truman in the top ten served less than two full terms, and in each case they served just a short time less than two full terms. 

And, as with Sandy Koufax’s career after 1966, you’re just speculating what he’d have done if he’d lived longer.

This is relevant: http://www.avclub.com/articles/one-magic-popculture-wish,68305/

I’ll paste the relevant comment:

John Teti
I’ll preface this by saying that this isn’t meant as a response to Todd, even if I am thinking about some of the same themes. I’m just coming at it from a different angle. Anyway, I wish we could move past the obsession with reducing culture to numbers. Everything has to have a goddamn score out of a hundred, or marks out of 10, or a letter grade, or a star rating, all of which gets fed into the digestive systems of Metacritic, Rotten Tomatoes and the like, which turn already insipid, pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo into something even more meaningless. Then critics and fans pore over the color-coded entrails of these beasts, like modern-day witch doctors, as if we’ll divine some deeper truth by staring at them long enough. I’ve said this before, but as far as I can tell, it remains true: The more people are talking about scores, the less they’re talking about ideas. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love math. I’m very much into sabermetrics, Moneyball, and the like, but I’m troubled to see how often the lesson that’s often taken away from Moneyball is “we need more statistics!” Moneyball isn’t so much about numbers as it is about truth—it says that a hard-fought struggle for truth can find success against the overwhelming inertia of conventional wisdom. The revolution in baseball thinking was ignited by a renewed focus on a meaningful, true core calculus: Whoever scores more runs wins. There’s no such core calculus for art. As a result, no matter how many data points and regression analyses we might employ in our efforts to quantify the artistic qualities of a thing, it’s all built around a rather hollow center. So as much as I understand the fun of toting up box-office profits, Nielsens, Q-ratings, Metacritic ratings, and what have you, I think we give them more gravity in our pop-cultural cosmos than they deserve—we treat them as a fundamental reality, when they’re mostly fluff. The allure of assigning tidy numbers to complex concepts is pernicious. Culture isn’t a war of numbers; it’s a dialogue of ideas, and my wish is to see a heartier focus on that core truth.

I couldn’t agree more.

"The allure of assigning tidy numbers to complex concepts is pernicious.”

Can just as easily be:

The allure of assigning complex numbers to tidy concepts is pernicious.

I should come back later and comment on a lot of this, but, for now ...

As some of you have pointed out, MLK and Steve Jobs aren’t good examples.  In fact, MLK and Jobs are awful examples—they’re the closest you can get to MLB players, having long careers of doing the same thing, having bigger years and lesser years.

But Oskar Schindler is still good.  Captain Sullenberger is even better.  In one afternoon, he probably accumulated more PAR (piloting-acts above replacement) than most other pilots do in a lifetime.  So he makes the HOF on both peak and career value ... but that’s because his career value is almost ALL because of his peak.

Which is what I was trying to say in the first place, but chose bad examples.

As a side note, guys like Bucky Dent have most of their VALUE above replacement as career, not peak.  But Bucky has almost all of his FAME above replacement coming from one at-bat. 

Bill Mazeroski is probably 50:50 in fame, right?  Half from the home run, and half from the rest of his career?

Carlton Fisk is probably 10:90 in fame (the 10% from waving that home run fair, the 90% from everything else he did). 

Who’s the closest to 100:0?  Maybe Don Larsen?  Would anyone remember Larsen if not for that one game?

I’m not including guys like Eddie Gaedel, where their peak was *literally* their entire career.  I mean only guys where their peak was a small part of their career in playing time, but 100% of their fame.

You know those guys who are arguably good enough to make the HOF but don’t?  Dwight Evans, Bobby Grich, guys like that?  I bet they’re all very close to 0/100%.  I couldn’t tell you Evans or Grich’s best year (although I think Evans tied for the AL home run lead in 1981, maybe?). 

In hockey ... Paul Henderson is probably 90/10?  Not as bad as Bucky Dent, but close.  How would you estimate Bobby Orr?  Maybe 15/85, the 15 for that flying goal in 1970?

In football, I’m thinking David Tyree, someday, will be 100/0.  (Am I wrong?  I don’t know football that well).

In basketball, I have no idea.

Bobby Orr’s goal was like Ruth’s called shot or Gibson’s 17K game, just a cherry on the sundae of what was clearly a Hall of Fame career, though cut short. 

Sort of the next level down from Orr would be Kirk Gibson.  He had not one, but two memorable home runs, the one in game five of the 1984 Series plus the one that eclipsed that.  He was highly hyped coming into baseball from football, and I think Bill James referred to him at the time as being considered the best player on that great 1984 Tigers team.  Yet he clearly is remembered for the one homer (and less but still remembered for the other one which made a memorable Sports Illustrate cover), and didn’t have a Hall of Fame career, yet had more of a career than a Dent, Larsen or Bobby Thompson.

I read the entire Calvin & Hobbes collection to my boy last year.  Some really great stuff.

My 10yo son and I absolutely love Calvin’s employment of the snowmen to terrorize his dad and protest his mom’s dinner selections.

Very good stuff.

@25 Some were, but most were just punk bands. I have respect, but finding out that Nirvana and REM were influenced by them doesn’t help their case with me.

I still await that standard to be applied to King Crimson, about which this is also true, and the influence was immediate.