THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

I have very little doubt that Kirby also got the “2 world series titles” boost, as well as, “We’ll see you tomorrow night” world series heroics boost.

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Holy Crap, former teammates Jim Edmonds and Scott Rolen are in very similar situations in regards to PA, WAR, GG, Hof, etc.

For pitchers by the way, the fewest IP (for non-relievers) in the Hall of Fame, born since 1924:

2324 Koufax
3170 Whitey Ford
3432 Drysdale
3449 Catfish
3507 Marichal
3760 Bunning

Among short-career players (less than 3700 IP) NOT in the Hall of Fame, the best are:
2563 Saberhagen (you can REALLY make a Koufax case for him)
2895 Stieb
2898 Cone
3130 Hershiser
3197 Ch Finley
3486 Tiant
3548 Reuschel

This I think explains Jack Morris (3824 IP) to some degree, in that all the other guys have short careers in comparison.  (Though not in comparison to Dennis Martinez.)

As for upcoming players:

2827 Pedro (obviously he’ll be treated like Koufax)
3261 Schilling
3562 Mussina

These guys basically were so good that their relatively short careers won’t be much of a hurdle.

I haven’t seen Mussina talked about in that light before - acknowledging that I would have him as a HoFer, I don’t see him jumping right in - he’s the picture of a 5-10 year ballot guy to me. No magic numbers (270 wins, 2800 Ks, 3.68 ERA), no major awards and never really deserved any (I’m discounting GG for pitchers), non-champion member of the Yankees, no extra postseason credit.

It’s a bland story of a guy who was very good for a long time, which misses the voting a lot of the time. A lot like Jim Edmonds, or Jeff Kent, maybe?

Mussina led all AL pitchers in rWAR in 2001.  He was also second to Clemens in 1992 (7.9 to 7.4).  I imagine that he will get voted in to the Hall within a few years, but probably not on the first ballot.

Marichal got less than 60% of the votes in his first year, and made it in his 3rd year.

Considering the competition that Mussina will have, that sounds about right.

In his first year, Marichal had Gibson.  In his 2nd year, he had Hank Aaron and Frank Robinson (and ALMOST made it).

I’m not arguing he wasn’t very good, I’m saying that I don’t think he will get in through the voting process very quickly.

It’s been gone through before, but Mussina is clearly worse than (contemporaries) Clemens, Maddux, Johnson and Martinez (extra peak credit). He’s similar to Smoltz, Glavine, and Schilling, but doesn’t have the “hook” for voters they do. Never won the Cy Young, never won 20 games, never won a championship...I hope I am wrong here, I just don’t think he’ll do nearly as well as you do, in the voting. Looking at it more closely, he should be a slamdunk candidate, since he’s arguably in the top 20-30 pitchers of all time.

This may have been written elsewhere, or about someone else - Mussina seems to have been the pitcher in reality that Jack Morris gets credit for in the imaginations of 50%+ of the voters. I’m just not sure that helps him.

I agree with everything above except I will point out that Mussina won 20 games in 2008 - his last year.  He’s 24th in career rWAR and the ELO rater has him at 37th.  A ranking somewhere around 30-35 sounds about right to me.

The ELO rater is a summary reflection of how people feel about a player and/or his stats.

I wouldn’t change my opinion of someone based on how someone else (the ELO voters) interpret his numbers and/or name.

In hockey for example, there’s plenty of good results, but also several really bad ones:
http://www.hockey-reference.com/friv/ratings.cgi

#1 (Hull) is ridiculous.  Nicholls/Dionne.  Lidstrom being so low.  I won’t even talk about goalies.

I think there is a great benefit to getting subjective votes, but asking their subjective opinion of how to interpret numbers is not one of them.

It can reflect bias, but it doesn’t inform analysis.

I was using the ELO rater for exactly that - as a data point to show how Mussina is viewed by a large group of people.

What possible explanation is there for Gretzky not being #1 in the hockey rater?

"These guys basically were so good that their relatively short careers won’t be much of a hurdle.”

You’re not calling Mussina a short career guy, are you?  You’d have to throw 200 innings a year for 18 years to match his total.  It’s 66th alltime, 66th alltime in plate appearances would be 10226.

Relative to the list of players listed for Hall of Fame, that’s how I defined “short”.  A short-career for players in the Hall of Fame.

For hitters, if you have fewer than 9000 PA, you are a “short career” guy. 

In any case, it’s irrelevant what word I use, since I’ve defined the numbers already (9000 PA for a hitter and 3700 IP for a pitcher).

If it’ll make it any better to avoid confusion, I can call all those guys with medium-length careers.  So, if you have more than 9000 PA or more than 3700 IP, then you have a long-career.

As for #66 for pitchers and #66 for position-players: the proper comparison point would be more like #132 for a position-player, something like that.

Just checked it out… 9000 PA for a non-pitcher is 151.  A pitcher ranked #75 is 3460 IP.

So, 9000 PA and 3500 IP would seem to be about equivalent.

Whitey Ford is at #109, and Duke Snider is at #219.

Given that they are both #2 in shortest careers in the Hall of Fame (born since 1924), that seems to be a fair comparison point.

I’d like to point out that another guy who was the pitcher that everybody thinks Jack Morris was and was nearly as good as Mussina couldn’t even make it to his second ballot. I’m talking about Kevin Brown.

I’m with aweb on this one. Mussina=Blyleven.

Kevin Brown has 3256, so he’s got a short career for the Hall of Fame.  That would have been the 3rd shortest career of pitchers born since 1924.

Kevin Brown is also arguably the 10th best pitcher of pitchers born 1962-1971, and the typical number of pitchers selected for any 10 year period is around 7-8 pitchers.

So, after Clemens/RJ/Maddux/Pedro, and with Schilling/Mussina/Smoltz/Glavine, and finally Rivera, it looks like Brown just go squeezed.

Not to mention he came on the ballot before all of them.  If you vote him in right away, you guarantee all the other pitchers get in.

So, short-career, worst of the great peers, first on ballot (and PED maybe), and it’s a recipe for disaster.

On top of which, HOF doesn’t have a “ask me next year” check box.  So, the only way you can do that is for someone ELSE to vote for him, and get enough of those.

The HOF does have an “ask me next year”. It’s called getting 5% of the vote.

The difference between Brown and Mussina was basically those 300 innings. Is that enough to propel Mussina in? I’d like to think so, but I can’t see 300 IP as the difference between not getting 5% and getting in early. It just feels like Mussina is going to have a long grind ahead of him to get into the HOF, deserved or not.

Schilling has the same shortness of career problem with very similar production to Brown. Maybe Schilling gets left out? I wouldn’t call him a lock either, although with all the Ks and the sock, I’d say his chances are better than Mussina, both for getting in and getting in early.

rw: I said this:

On top of which, HOF doesn’t have a “ask me next year” check box.  So, the only way you can do that is for someone ELSE to vote for him, and get enough of those.

The 5% is for someone ELSE to say “yes”, and if 5% to 74.9% say “yes”, then it’s an “ask me next year” to those that did NOT put him on the ballot.

So, I’m trying to say that a voter should have the choice to say “yes” and “ask me next year”, so that a guy like Kevin Brown could stay on the ballot for further consideration.

As it stands now, because not enough people said yes, the people who may have wanted to think about him some more are prevented from doing so.

Puckett, on one end, and Edgar, on the other, are excellent candidates for the point Bill James always made that the Hall of Fame should not depend on length of career where the part that was missing was at the non-productive end.  Of course, the comparison should be peak to peak, not career-cut-short to full career.  But it’s pretty hard to say that either should not be considered for reasons that literally had nothing to do with either their control or the parts of a career that really make someone Hall-worthy.