Ok... Who SHOULD be in?

[HowAboutThat]

6 hours ago, makoman said:

Cal was just a .276 batter who grounded into almost twice as many DPs as Carter and only averaged 20 HR per year. Also only two gold gloves. If those are the things that are important to you. Lower OPS+ than Carter too. 

Johnny Bench is often considered to be the best catcher of all time, so if that's the standard you're going to have a small hall. He also grounded into more double plays than Carter in fewer plate appearances. If you go by WAR, which it appears you wouldn't, Bench is first and Carter is second.

Pudge is the best all-time.

[ArtVanDelay]

55 minutes ago, Maverick Hiker said:

If you look at the careers of various catchers there  is no way Gary Carter is #2 behind Bench . Carter is far down the list, there are numerous catchers who were far better, even though they are slightly behind him in WAR (which is an inexact and misleading statistic at times.).  Gabby Hartnett had a .297 lifetime BA.  Yogi Berra had 358 HR and a lifetime .285 BA.  Bill Dickey had a .313 lifetime average, Mickey Cochrane .320.  

In modern times Mike Piazza (.308) and Ivan Rodriguez (.296 BA 311 HR) were far better than Carter.

I don't want to single anyone out but it always bothered me that the Hall has lowered their standards and that Carter made the Hall of Fame.  Admittedly I never cared for the Mets or Carter while he played,, but there are so many great catchers who were far better than Carter.    The fact that Carter was first rejected from the Hall  before he later got in indicates he was a marginal candidate., 

 

 

[atomic]

10 hours ago, DrungoHazewood said:

 

Including Aaron and Mays, who almost certainly used greenies?

Gary Carter is one of the half-dozen best catchers of all time, or at least has a strong case for that kind of ranking.  If he's not in it's basically Bench and... nobody?

The unanimous thing is a result of a poorly thought out voting process.  In the very early days hundreds of now-enshrined players were eligible, there were no good sources of information, and the voting was the same - you had to get 75% to get in.  And there was a badly thought out split between 19th and 20th century players.  It's no surprise that no one got 100% of the vote.  Cy Young didn't even get in the Hall in the first class because nobody knew if he was treated as a 19th century or 20th century guy.  

They basically went to hundreds of writers and asked them to go by memory and vote for up to 10 out 1000s of plausible candidates.  It's amazing anyone got 75%, 100% is ludicrous.

In the 1940s or early 50s. Lefty Grove got votes after he'd already been elected.  Di Maggio got a few votes when he was still active, before he was eligible.  It was a complete crapshow, and continues to be to some extent today.

And yet there are a number of players with lesser careers who've been enshrined.  Tommy McCarthy.  Ray Schalk.  Bill Mazeroski.  High Pockets Kelly.

You can certainly make the case that Whitaker and Grich are right around the level of an average Hall of Fame second baseman.  Grich and Ryne Sandberg are very similar.  Whitaker's career is about as valuable as Roberto Alomar.  Both of them are difficult to exclude when compared to 6, 8, 10 obviously lesser second basemen who have long been in.

Evans is a victim of having an underappreciated skill set in his era.  Players who do a lot of things pretty well never get the credit someone like Rice gets for hitting a lot of homers at a very homer-friendly park.

Allen would have a better case if he'd been able to control his alcoholism and destructive personality.  I know he faced a lot of societal pressures including racism, but it's not helpful when you openly agitate and conspire to have your manager fired on multiple occasions.  He was a truly fearsome hitter, much better than Jim Rice.

Grinch doesn’t belong in.  You need to win or close to winning MVPs.  Or post season heroics or lead in something.  Get 3000 hits or .800 OPS or field like Ozzie Smith.  Grinch is just a guy overrated by WAR.   Good player like Doug Decinces or Ken Singleton.  Sanberg has an MVP season.   
 

I saw Grich play he was no Belanger or Brooks defensively,  he 

[Frobby]

5 hours ago, LookinUp said:

Anyone know if a modern SABR type person has written about the best non-hall inductees? That would be an interesting read and would likely resuscitate the case for a few guys like Grich and Whitaker.

Bill James wrote a whole book on it.  

[atomic]

13 hours ago, Philip said:

A lot of the arguments mentioned during Hall of Fame discussions are as moot as using the pilgrims and the Mayflower as an example of illegal immigration.

The “greenies” Argument is one such. Illegal or not, they were commonly used and it was tolerated. That cannot remotely be compared with The steroid situation. 

And everybody, and I mean everybody,  ignores the character clause. We can all think of current players who demonstrate a lack of character by their actions.

Raffy was one of my very favorite players, but I wouldn’t vote for him if my life depended on it. Bonds as well. Altuve won’t get my vote, nor Verlander or Cole, at least not at this point. 

Ridiculing people who invoke the character clause is a very big part of the problem. It exists so that Voters will be encouraged to look at the quality of the person as well as the quality of the ball player.

All this character clause does is make being in the Hall of Fame less prestigious. If you keep the best players out what do you actually have?  And everyone thought people like Bill Cosby and Joe Paterno were great people.  We don’t know what any of these people  have done in their personal lives.  
 

The only NHL player that I thought that belonged in and wasn’t is Peirre Turgeon.  When I looked for a reason the thing I found was when he was 18 years old he was on the Canadian Junior hockey team playing against the Russians. A brawl broke out and all the players got on the ice and everyone punched each other for 10 minutes or so. And the refs even turned the lights off in the arena. The game was cancelled and the Canadians were all suspended from international play and they were thrown out of the tournament. Well everyone was suspended but Turgeon who sat on the bench for the entire brawl and one of his teammates was double teamed by the Russians.  He wasn’t even a pro player yet but the voters hold it against him it seems.

[bpilktree]

21 hours ago, Maverick Hiker said:

Two who should not be in: Bonds and Clemens: Never.  Their statistics are inflated due to steroids and letting cheaters in is not a good message. Manny Ramirez too. 

There are too many players in the Hall who don't deserve to be there based on their accomplishments.  Standards have been lowered in certain cases. . Gary Carter for example.  I'd consider Schilling and Fred Lynn but I'd have to look at their lifetime stats first.

Rivera should not have been the first unanimous choice when so many other great players were not unanimous.  Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Frank Robinson, they were far more valuable than a closer.  Also Rivera blew. a couple of post seasons series for the Yankees.  By the same token I'm glad Jeter was not unanimous and I give credit to the writer who kept that from happening. 

Bonds was on pace to be a hall of famer even before he started juicing.  Yes those numbers inflated his stats but people forget how good he was even before. He won 3 NL MVP awards in Pittsburgh and first year in San Francisco along with second the other year in a 4 year span.  He was still hitting 30+ homers and 30+ steals a game in his prime.  Bonds has admitted starting taking steroids after a injury in 1998.  If you take all those stays away he is still a .298 hitter with 411 homers with ops+ of 164, only 4 players in the hall have those numbers Ruth Mantle Fox and Williams.   His war was 22nd all time before taking PED.  

[Satyr3206]

No roid guys or electronic cheaters. I'm sure others will disagree. Greenies are speed pills. They do not help with performance. Trust me.

[Maverick Hiker]

2 hours ago, bpilktree said:

Bonds was on pace to be a hall of famer even before he started juicing.  Yes those numbers inflated his stats but people forget how good he was even before. He won 3 NL MVP awards in Pittsburgh and first year in San Francisco along with second the other year in a 4 year span.  He was still hitting 30+ homers and 30+ steals a game in his prime.  Bonds has admitted starting taking steroids after a injury in 1998.  If you take all those stays away he is still a .298 hitter with 411 homers with ops+ of 164, only 4 players in the hall have those numbers Ruth Mantle Fox and Williams.   His war was 22nd all time before taking PED.  

I agree that Bonds would have made the Hall of Fame, even if he had never gone on the juice.  But he did take that route and he made a mockery of the game, distorting the record books, looking like the Hulk and hitting long HR into the bay.  It wasn't just to recover from injury, he intentionally kept on the steroids because he enjoyed performing at that unnatural level.  Lack of morality, cheating, unsportsmanlike conduct, unfair advantage over others, breaking rules, damaging the game.

 Morals clause of the Hall should keep him out.  

[Satyr3206]

And Schilling is being kept out not because of his career or poor behavior. Because of his beliefs.

[Can_of_corn]

57 minutes ago, Satyr3206 said:

And Schilling is being kept out not because of his career or poor behavior. Because of his beliefs.

His business failure might also be a factor.

[DrungoHazewood]

18 hours ago, Maverick Hiker said:

Gary Carter was a lifetime .262 batter who hit into a lot of double plays (very slow afoot).  324 HR over 19 years equals 17 per year.  He was pretty good defensively but only won the gold glove 3 years out of 19 so other catchers were presumably better.   I just don't think he was Hall of Fame material.    He was rejected the first time and broke down weeping so some of his being elected the next year was probably a sympathy vote. 

It's a shame Gary  passed away at a relatively young age and he was a good teammate from everything I've heard.  But the Hall should be reserved for great players not very good ones. 

Great catcher, Hall of Fame Material: Johnny Bench.  10 gold gloves.  Averaged 23 HR per year.  And a rocket for an arm I still recall him throwing out Lou Brock in 1974 when Brock set the stolen base record.

Perhaps you haven't looked at the list of catchers and their accomplishments.  By JAWS, which balances career and peak value, has Gary Carter as the 2nd-best catcher of all time.  At most positions there are 15 or more Hall of Famers.  The bar you're setting is unrealistically high.  You're really saying that Johnny Bench is the only Hall of Fame caliber catcher.

[DrungoHazewood]

10 hours ago, Frobby said:

Bill James wrote a whole book on it.  

He wrote an excellent book on the history of the Hall and why the inductees and non-inductees have evolved to where they are (or were).  But it was written in the 1990s and some things have changed in the last 20 years with both the Hall and analysis of who is a good candidate.  It remains the best history of how the voting and committees and the like evolved over time.

[Frobby]

3 hours ago, DrungoHazewood said:

He wrote an excellent book on the history of the Hall and why the inductees and non-inductees have evolved to where they are (or were).  But it was written in the 1990s and some things have changed in the last 20 years with both the Hall and analysis of who is a good candidate.  It remains the best history of how the voting and committees and the like evolved over time.

Yes, it is pretty dated.    I forget whether the later edition came out before or after his book on “Win Shares” that was a precursor to WAR.

[DrungoHazewood]

18 minutes ago, Frobby said:

Yes, it is pretty dated.    I forget whether the later edition came out before or after his book on “Win Shares” that was a precursor to WAR.

James has a web site where he posts occasional articles and Q&As.  There's a small messageboard associated with the site, I'll occasionally post something there.  But I've mostly been driven off by the unmoderated politics that seeps into numerous threads.

There are die-hards there who think WAR is some kind of fatally flawed, irrational alternative to Win Shares.  They'll post analytical things where they only refer to Win Shares. They'll have discussions about how obvious it is that Win Shares is better in doing X, Y , or Z and only simpletons would use WAR.  Which is kind of amazing since there's only one kind of obscure site I know of that has comprehensive Win Shares data, the book came out around 2000 or 2001 and has never really been updated, and the calculations are about 46 times harder than those that go into WAR.  And James made some idiosyncratic philosophical choices when designing the system that I disagree with*.  Bill James himself uses WAR about as often as Win Shares in his writing, and admits that without Loss Shares (which has never been fully described or published) the system is incomplete.

Strange little worlds exist on the interwebs.

* Mostly that there is no team-level luck, and that when a team scores and allows 700 runs but wins 93 games credit for the unexpected 12 wins is somehow allocated to the players on the team.  So a .700 OPS LFer in a neutral park might be worth a full win or two more than a .700 OPS LFer in another neutral park because his team exceeded their pythag.

[Frobby]

59 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

James has a web site where he posts occasional articles and Q&As.  There's a small messageboard associated with the site, I'll occasionally post something there.  But I've mostly been driven off by the unmoderated politics that seeps into numerous threads.

There are die-hards there who think WAR is some kind of fatally flawed, irrational alternative to Win Shares.  They'll post analytical things where they only refer to Win Shares. They'll have discussions about how obvious it is that Win Shares is better in doing X, Y , or Z and only simpletons would use WAR.  Which is kind of amazing since there's only one kind of obscure site I know of that has comprehensive Win Shares data, the book came out around 2000 or 2001 and has never really been updated, and the calculations are about 46 times harder than those that go into WAR.  And James made some idiosyncratic philosophical choices when designing the system that I disagree with*.  Bill James himself uses WAR about as often as Win Shares in his writing, and admits that without Loss Shares (which has never been fully described or published) the system is incomplete.

Strange little worlds exist on the interwebs.

* Mostly that there is no team-level luck, and that when a team scores and allows 700 runs but wins 93 games credit for the unexpected 12 wins is somehow allocated to the players on the team.  So a .700 OPS LFer in a neutral park might be worth a full win or two more than a .700 OPS LFer in another neutral park because his team exceeded their pythag.

I loved that Win Shares book when it came out; it was really cutting edge stuff at the time.    I remember James was particularly proud of the defensive component to the metric, which he said was vastly better than the other advanced defensive metrics of the day.    But I think time passed it by pretty quickly.   I still give him a ton of credit for coming up with the concept.