THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

This is an utterly simplistic way to look at it, but was there ever a time when a reasonable GM would have traded Tim Raines for Lee Smith? I doubt it. I am at least as shocked that Smith gets so much support as I am that Raines gets no traction.

I would guess that David Segui’s one vote was to spite Mark McGwire.

Courtesy of Eric Simon http://www.amazinavenue.com/2010/1/6/1237063/bbwaa-embarrasses-self-again :

The failure of the BBWAA to recognize the value of actual performance while masking their own smug ignorance—and in some cases bitter intransigence—behind the blustery veil of tired rhetoric and logic fallacies never ceases to amaze me.

Why I continue to care about this is a different mystery altogether.

im probably most bummed about the treatment mcgwire is receiving.  for purely nostalgic reasons, mcgwire easily occupies the most and fondest memories of anyone on that list.  i know a lot of people’s opinions on steroids are vastly divergent to mine but to me it’s like not giving a pulitzer to a guy because you know he wrote some stories after taking a bunch of non-prescribed ritalin. 

oh well, presumably he is still rich.

When David Segui and Pat Hentgen each get a vote, and Eric Karros gets 2 votes, but Blyleven falls 5 votes short and Raines is at 30%, it just makes the whole thing seem ridiculous.

I care.  A little.

In any case his vote total will be an interesting precedent when Bonds and Clemens come up for election.  Presumably those two players should get EXACTLY the same number of votes (and I’d be interested in explanations of voters who voted for one and not the other) but whether or not they receive more votes than McGwire will interest me.

I agree that Alomar should make it next year, but I am less confident on Blyleven (who is left who can be persuaded?), Larkin, Edgar and especially Raines.  Some of these guys may require the death of a lot of BBWAA members (and who knows whether they’ll still get ballots that go into the denominator well after their deaths?).

Help me out on why Dawson > McGriff.

Dawson was a great-fielding CF… McGriff was not.  McGriff gets, what, a 10 run advantage per season as a hitter over Dawson?  Dawson’s fielding+position, at least for half his career, demolishes that.  And for the other half, probably makes it close.

McGriff is close, sure.  Him getting 22% of the vote on his first try sounds about right to me.

This is disgusting.

I certainly don’t pretend to know what goes on in the mind of BBWAA voters, but I don’t see any particular cause for alarm wrt Blyleven’s chances in 2011-12.  He only missed by 5 votes, and increased his total by 12% in just one year. 

People have cited the precedent of Bunning, who just missed in 1989 and then saw his support drop again, but he had to deal with the first-time eligibility of two better SP (Perry and Jenkins) in 1989; in 1990 those two were still on the ballot as was Palmer for the first time.  In ‘91, Palmer was gone, but Perry and Jenkins were still there, and Bunning ran out of time.  Luckily for Bert, there are no comparable SP coming on to the ballot in the next two years.

Hearing about all the silly things that Bob Costas said today (I realize he’s not a BBWAA writer, but he is likely from the same mindset as a lot of them), it is painfully obvious that these folks know little about how to put modern players in historical context and less about the history of the HOF.

Patriot,
what exactly did Costas say?

Paraphrasing (obviously), he said that:

* Tim Raines career numbers compare favorably to Lou Brock’s, but Brock had a better peak than Raines--he held the single season and career SB records simultaneously

* Barry Larkin was a great player, but he doesn’t have the historical cachet of a Ozzie Smith or Omar Vizquel (*)

* When the HOF opened it was only for the greatest of the greats, not players like Edgar Martinez (maybe for 10 yrs, max)

* Gary Carter should have gone in the HOF as a Met, not an Expo (I may have misunderstood this one, so don’t blow any gaskets Tango

* When the 2011 first-timers were listed, he said that Larry Walker was the one that stood out the most (Gammons said Bagwell, which is the obvious answer)

(*) As an Indian fan I am as puzzled by the notion that Omar Vizquel is some kind of no brain immortal as anybody else is.  And it may be true that those two had more hype, but who’s responsible for that?

It’s hard for me to fathom an argument for the exclusion of Raines that is based on justifying the inclusion of Brock.  And his “best of the best” argument based on some idea of what happened in the 1930’s is rather comical when Freddie Lindstrom, Bill, Terry, George Kell and Tony Perez are in the Hall. 

Larkin and Trammell are very much hurt by the later emergence of A-Rod and Jeter but it makes no sense to let in Rice and Dawson under one set of standards and leave those guys out under a different set entirely.

Without getting into the small Hall versus large Hall controversy at all, it seems to me these guys belong in any Hall, Raines in particular.

As a Mariners fan, I’m rooting hard for Edgar, but Blyleven is the one that still pisses me off.  Even if he makes it in, it shows total ignorance by the writers. 

How can anyone use “teh fear” as an argument against Edgar, unless they weren’t actually watching the games, or at least the post game interviews.  “Teh fear” was quoted by opposing pitchers and managers more than I can remember with any other player.

#7/ Craig

The reality of it is that you can’t compare this year’s vote between Dawson and McGriff.  Many writers vote on a player at a given time based on their career.  You have to compare Dawson’s first ballot to McGriff’s second ballot.

See below for my article on how the writers use the “when” question as their only lever to create tiers in the HoF.

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=9917

Tim, I’m all in favor of self-linking, but it would be helpful to cut/paste the relevant passage that is behind the pay wall.  Based on this poll, one-third of the readers here are BPro subscribers:

http://www.insidethebook.com/ee/index.php/site/comments/poll_do_i_subscribe_to_bpro/

It’s a significant overlap, but you are still not reaching two-thirds of them with your unquoted link.

Tango,

That might be an interesting poll to re-do given the recent developments…

Here’s a silly question I have. I understand Dawson made a ton of outs (22nd all-time). I also understand that he struck out a fair amount (though I don’t believe his K/AB rate is all that high). What I wonder is if he was particularly hit-unlucky or not…

FanGraphs has his Batting Average on Balls in Play during his career at .293.

Given his 9,000+ career at-bats, I think that’s probably his baseline.  I don’t think we can say he was “hit-unlucky” for a career, but we could look at certain years in which he had a much higher or much lower BABIP and say he was “hit-unlucky” or “hit-lucky” for that year.

I realize he had a lot of at-bats to establish a baseline, so maybe I can rephrase a bit to clarify what I am interested in.

Dawson says he tried to put the ball in play/drive runners in instead of taking walks. Does this show up in the stats in some form like a higher than expected pop-up rate or weak groundball rate? With his speed, was he poor at getting infield hits? Or is he just trying to offer an excuse when, in reality, he had the hitting approach of Alfonso Soriano?