THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Retired 21+ years and whose career was primarily in what the Hall calls the expansion period:

A few position players:

Bobby Grich 67.6 WAR
Reggie Smith 63.4 (I’m guessing he is in this group; his peak is almost exactly split in two by this particular era construction)
Graig Nettles 61.6

The two highest rated pitchers by career WAR who fit into the category are Tommy John (59) and Luis Tiant (60.1).

Santo and Allen would be considered part of the “Golden” era—I hate that name.  Dewey Evans and Lou Whitaker, while off the BBWAA ballot, retired too recently to be considered.

Depending on the makeup of the 12 person panel, I wouldn’t be surprised if no one makes it.  On the other hand, the Hall clearly wants more Gen Xs, with the disposable cash, to be coming to Cooperstown to visit their heros since inductions of Bill Dahlen, Joe Gordon or Doug Harvey are unlikely to draw much of a crowd.

Bobby Grich not being in the HOF is the one that always gets me. Whether you are a small Hall or large Hall guy, he should be in.

But the reason it stands out is because IIRC, on the first ballot he got 2.6%- not even a respectable percentage.

It also unclear whether the panels will meet in person and discuss candidates, which would make it more likely that a candidate garners a 75% vote.

Will this allow “an equal review of all candidates” as the Hall seems to desire by the quote included in this story?  Lumping in players and nonplayers together might cause the nonplayers to be overlooked.  Also, given that the pre-1947 candidates have already had decades of opportunity to be inducted (and if inducted they presumably will be less helpful at increasing attendance at the museum than more recent candidates would), is this really equal treatment?

The HOF website hasn’t updated the page describing the voting rules. But if I understand the article then it appears that they are lumping the executives/umpires/manager/players together in each time period and moving the voting to 16-voter committees which will actually meet.

The system in place before this had all the HOF members vote on the post-WW2 ballot, with the result that the voting was so split that nobody got elected. The only people elected came from the small pre-WW2 committee, the executive/pioneer committee and manger/umpire committee.

I think Santo’s chances just went up.

I think there’s a more plain reason why they’re doing this: the current Veterans Committee, or whatever they call it nowadays, hasn’t picked anyone. Not picking anyone is bad for business.

As for Grich, I’m just old enough to remember when he was active. (I can’t remember if I actually saw him play.) The fact that he never got better than 8th in the MVP award votes is pretty indicative of how folks thought of him then. His voting record is even worse than that: he was in the top 10 only one other time, and only got mentioned on the ballots five times. When he finished 8th, a teammate who was clearly a worse player won the award, a DH whose only real MVP qualification was that he led the league in RBIs. (The vote is worse than even this. Baylor may well have been the worst player in the top 10 of voting that year, and he won the award.) Another year when Grich would have been a very good pick for MVP, 1981, he finished 14th, despite tying for the league lead in home runs; the voters, still fried on PCP, picked a relief pitcher.

Charles: you must have seen this play

http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/1986-10-10/sports/0260170218_1_bobby-grich-moose-hungry

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And yes, everyone is at odds as to the purpose of enshrinement.  The players think they should keep it as small as possible, so, they aren’t going to vote someone in unless they were better than they were.

The fans want to see qualified players, 1-4 a year, averaging 2-3 a season.

The HOF itself would like to get at least 4 a season.  It’s ridiculous that the HOF would have Whitey Herzog, but not Frank White or Jack Clark.  Exactly what would Herzog be without those guys?  Would any team give up Frank White to get Herzog?  Or give up Clark to get Herzog?

How about this: they have two ceremonies, one for the players and one for the non-players. How many people would should up for the non-player ceremony?

I am so opposed to managers and execs sharing the stage with the players.

That’s why they let the non-players go first and Dawson last.  Make sure everyone sticks around.

Tough call on Whitey.  Moreso for his Cardinal teams than the Royals, Whitey was also the GM.  He did a great job building the Cardinal championship team and as some of the pieces lost their value he was able to rebuild to return to the WS for 1985 and 1987.

Maybe he just got lucky, but it sure seemed like he knew what he was doing.

How much do top managers make in their lifetimes (adjusted to 2010 dollars)?  50MM?  70MM?  There’s just no way you would give up Kevin Brown to get Joe Torre.

There’s no way you would give up Joe Torre the player to get Joe Torre the manager!

I’d rather have Jim Rice or Jack Morris than any manager in history.  Once you select about 500 players, then you can talk about one manager.

Tango-

I’m sure only a small subset of HOFers are concerned about keeping the Hall small and don’t want to put anyone else in. About 60% think that Santo belongs. The issue is that 75% agreement is required and it is extremely difficult to get 75% of any large group to agree on anything. Smaller groups which actually discuss the candidates are much more likely to reach agreement.

I think the HoF has set its precedents and the best we can hope for is something resembling consistency in its admissions.

That, and a small display of the best players by WAR.

As far as execs go, as a Mets fan, I’d trade any player on the team for a good GM.

"There’s no way you would give up Joe Torre the player to get Joe Torre the manager!”

I agree.  How much would you give up for a general manager who’s better at building a team than his competitors?  That’s what Whitey was for the Cardinals.  (As far as I know, he was just a manager for KC).

Pertaining to the above discussion, the Devil Rays once traded Randy Winn to obtain manager Lou Piniella.  I don’t believe that most observers at the time thought Winn would be quite as good as he turned out to be though.

It seems to me that Bill Dahlen is going to eventually go into the Hall of Fame.  There’ll be pressure from the veterans committee to elect at least one person each year, Dahlen is probably the leading player who isn’t already in the Hall of Fame from the pre-1947 era given that the 1920-1940 era already is overrepresented in the Hall, and I can’t see much support for the nonplayer candidates from so long ago.  In essence, a player never never completely falls off the ballot.  As George Davis and Bid McPhee have shown, guys can be voted into the Hall a century after they played.

Isn’t the format they are switching too substantially similar to the format they had prior to 2000 that let in some of the more questionable candidates and led to the hall of famers getting upset and asking for more of a say in the proceedings so they could essentially shut everyone out.

It is interesting that they are changing to a potentially less restrictive vote just as more players from the juiced era will be reaching the writers ballots. This may ensure, or at least make it more likely, that the inductions have more “clean” players and ensure that somebody will make it if there are years when the writers choose to shut everyone because of steroids.