HoF Voting 2016

Cool stuff. Looks like Bagwell will be incredibly close, and Raines will fall 10 to 15 votes short, with a very good shot of making it in his final year.

If you're interested in this stuff, I strongly recommend listening to this episode of Effectively Wild (the BP podcast): www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=28094

Don't forget that about 130 of the previous 650 voters were removed from the balloting, representing voters who hadn't covered the game for more than 10 years. Not only does that change the math, but it will change the demographic substantially.

mlb.nbcsports.com/2015/12/29/the-top-25-baseball-stories-of-2015-21-a-bunch-of-voters-were-kicked-off-the-hall-of-fame-rolls/

As of right now, with about 1/4 of the votes made public, it looks like it could be a Griffey, Piazza, Bagwell, Raines class.

I saw Larry Brooks was added. When did he start covering baseball? He was like the Nick Cafardo of hockey in NY.

I've done a good deal of sabermetric work on this, trying to find the objective standard of career greatness that has been defined by HOF voters.

Most of you are probably familiar with JAWS, the system which adds career WAR to the total WAR of a player's best 7 seasons ("WAR7") to determine Hall Worthiness. But of course, that has two arbitrary assumptions. Why 7 years? And why equal weights?

So I tried to find a formula as simple which did a significantly better job than JAWS for predicting which position players from modern ball, but before the expansion era, were in versus out. Players from 1900-1960 have been very thoroughly looked at. I think it's fair to say that if every single player from that era above a certain standard of career greatness is in the Hall, there's no rationale at all for excluding a post-expansion player who is above that standard (and didn't seem to need PED's to cross the line).

It turns out that WAR5 + 1/2 career WAR does a noticeably better job of predicting who's in the Hall than JAWS. (I used the average of bWAR and fWAR for this.) In other words, JAWS' peak is rather too long but greatly undervalued. Voters have not been doubling a player's seven best years in their minds; they've been tripling their five best. My metric (HW, Hall Worthiness) gets in Ralph Kiner and Hack Wilson, who in the JAWS list are surrounded by guys who aren't in.

I've done less work with pitchers, but the same formula seems best. Note that Pedro is way higher up the list in HW than JAWS. It really passes the smell test.

There are numerous adjustments you want to make to HW:

1) Adjustments for length of schedule. Pre-expansion players need to have HW multiplied by 162/154 if compared with post-expansion ones.
2) An adjustment for catchers, who have never played as many games or accumulated as much WAR relative to others.
3) Adjustments for time missed because of war service or strike seasons, including those which seem likely to have been peak seasons.
4) Adjustments for the weaker quality of play during WWII.
5a) An adjustment for the increased size of the MLB player pool with each expansion. Which is really a standard-deviation of performance adjustment. It's not just that it's arguably unfair to still limit the HOF standard to a perennial best player in his league at his position now that there are almost twice as many candidates (at both the MLB and U.S. and world population level); it's that with more candidates, there is less variance in WAR.
5b) Arguably, an adjustment for the increases in the size of the talent pool post-integration and in the Latino international era.

For the purposes of this post, though, we can skip everything but 1 and 4. That puts the recent guys on the same footing as the classic guys. Anyone good enough to meet the objective standard without 2, 3 or 5a is just in even more easily with them.

(I do have what I think are OK versions of 2 through 4 and a rough version of 5a. The thing is, though, I'm reluctant to finish the whole project because I also have a list of improvements for WAR itself, beginning with a close look at the rival methodologies for estimating defensive performance from basic PO, A, E stats, but also including better park adjustments, quality of opposition adjustments (in the old days, rotations were not nearly as strict, and managers would often match up their better pitchers against better opponents), a re-think of positional adjustments, inclusion of a good chunk of clutch performance differential, and a redefinition of replacement level.)

So, it turns out that (multiplied by 162/154 to get the modern standard), every single player from 1900 to 1960 with HW above 64 or 65 is in the Hall.  Furthermore, 9 of the next 11 are in (> 58.6), and one of the exceptions is Bob Johnson, who's below that line with a WWII adjustment.

So here's the list of contemporary eligible players with HW > 58.6.

Barry Bonds 137.1
Ken Griffey 81.4
Jeff Bagwell 77.5
Larry Walker 69.0
Bobby Grich 68.8
Alan Trammell 66.5
Tim Raines 66.4
Dick Allen 66.3
Graig Nettles 65.6
Mike Piazza 65.3 + catcher, c. 12.5
Rafael Palmeiro 65.3
Edgar Martinez 65.0
Mark McGwire 64.6
[Sherry Magee 64.0]
Kenny Lofton 63.8
Jim Edmonds 63.8
Lou Whitaker 63.4
Sammy Sosa 63.3
Buddy Bell 62.5
Ken Boyer 62.3
Sal Bando 61.8
Gary Sheffield 61.4
Reggie Smith 61.4
Keith Hernandez 61.2
Dwight Evans 61.0 (gains with strike adjustment; 2.5 to 3?)
John Olerud 60.2
Bobby Bonds 59.5
Darrell Evans 59.3
Jim Wynn 59.2
Willie Randolph 58.8
That the old Veteran's Committee never pegged Magee seems insane. Read his SABR bio; he should obviously be in.

Now, 24 of the 32 players from 54 to 65 are in

Taking half of career WAR and adding it to the WAR of the five best seasons seems to strike a very good balance. IOW, Hall worthiness is 2/3 peak value plus 1/3 career value. You can't get into the Hall just by being a good player who aged really well. You can get in by being a great player with a short career.

Yaz? Yaz is underrated, because he put up his best years when offense was at a historic low, and because he played great defense at a position where it goes relatively unnoticed.

Here are the top 21 all-time best position players (based on total WAR, 5 best seasons, average of fWAR and bWAR). Not adjusted for shorter schedule pre-expansion, but the adjustments for increased talent pool would be even bigger.

Rnk Name                 aW5
1 Babe Ruth HOF        64.9
2 Barry Bonds       *55.5
3 Rogers Hornsby HOF 54.8
4 Ted Williams HOF 53.2
5 Willie Mays HOF        52.9
6 Ty Cobb HOF        52.1
7 Mickey Mantle HOF 51.6
8 Lou Gehrig HOF        51.3
9 Honus Wagner HOF 50.0
10 Stan Musial HOF        47.9
11 Joe Morgan HOF        47.5
12 Alex Rodriguez        47.1
13 Eddie Collins HOF 46.9
14 Tris Speaker HOF 45.9
15 Jimmie Foxx HOF        45.7
16 Nap Lajoie HOF        44.4
17 Albert Pujols        43.8
18 Rickey Henderson HOF 43.6
19 Mike Schmidt HOF 43.4
20 Carl Yastrzemski HOF 42.9
21 Cal Ripken HOF        42.9
I have him 18th in my fully-adjusted Hall Worthiness metric.

Mike Trout, BTW, is looking to enter that list at #14 with another typical season. At ages 20 through 24. Everyone on that list had at least one peak season at age 30 or later, but 4:

Mantle, 23 to 26, 29
Pujols, 23, 26 to 29
Collins, 22, 23, 26 to 28
Foxx, 21, 24 to 27

ARod has the only age 20 peak season among the above, Rickey has the other age 21.

I suspect that Teddy Ballgame might have done 22 though 26 if it weren't for the war, and probably would have passed Hornsby for the second highest legitimate peak.

According to the Ryan Thibs spreadsheet, Mussina and Edgar Martinez are looking like the big gainers here. So voters deserve some credit for that. Raines looks like he might really get screwed by the shortened eligibility period. He's gaining a ton of votes and looks like he'll get easily into the 60% range. And since nobody is going to get in from the Veteran's Committee ever again apparently, that really stinks.

Eric, one question - was Todd Helton in your study or was his career too late for him to be considered a contemporary? I did a study a few years back that had him fifth among 1B of his era - behind Thomas, Bagwell, Thome, and Palmeiro (in that order) but ahead of McGwire, Giambi, McGriff, and Olerud. I have him as a Hall of Famer but I think it's more likely he gets bounced from the ballot.

I didn't include the players who aren't eligible yet. Here are the ones who are coming up, or who are active and have already crossed the line:

Name        HW Year
Alex Rodriguez 105.3 Act
Albert Pujols 91.5 Act
Chipper Jones 77.6 2018
Adrian Beltre 75.2 Act
Chase Utley 69.5 Act
Scott Rolen 68.6 2018
Andruw Jones 68.4 2018
Derek Jeter 67.6 2020
Jim Thome 66.5 2018
Miguel Cabrera 66.0 Act
Carlos Beltran 65.7 Act
Todd Helton 65.3 2019
Ivan Rodriguez 64.9 2017
Manny Ramirez 64.0 2017
Vlad Guerrero 60.8 2017
Ichiro Suzuki 60.4 Act
Bobby Abreu 60.4 2018
David Wright 59.2 Act
Jason Giambi 59.1 2020

It'll be "fun" seeing how Jeter's initial vote total compares to Beltre, Utley, Rolen, and Andruw Jones.

Papi is right at the line with a good 2016 and, more importantly, a big correction to the positional adjustment for DH.

It's almost always the case that those who reveal their ballots earlier are more "new school" and those who do not reveal their ballots until the last minute or not at all are more "old school".

Tibbs posted a graph that shows guys like Bagwell and Raines trending down over time, which lends credence to this.

Oh, I have no question about Jeter's HOF credentials. They're immaculate. I'm not committed in advance to attending his induction the way I am for Rivera (my favorite all-time opponent, in any sport), but he completely deserves the honor.

But if you asked every baseball fan in America, "based just on regular-season performance, which of the following five players has the least strong case for the Hall of Fame: Adrian Beltre, Derek Jeter, Andruw Jones, Scott Rolen, or Chase Utley," I can imagine the number of people saying Jeter being in the single digits.

In case folks have missed it, we're 2 hr 15 minutes from the announcement. The MLB Network has apparently already started their coverage.

Edit: re the bias against peaking early, great call. I've often said that if Dwight Gooden had had his career backwards, he'd be in the Hall. And it's because it's simply not the job of sportswriters to evaluate how good baseball players are. Their job is is to help sell newspapers by being enoyable to read. And that means that their job is largely to create interesting narratives. A guy who establishes his incontrovertible HOW worthiness by age 28 but compiles less than 2 WAR past the age of 30, while playing 435 games for four different clubs in five years -- he's ceased to become an interesting story. Contrast Papi this year.