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Post by johnsilver52 on Dec 21, 2020 16:07:08 GMT -5
I don't agree with that. If so? Jim Kaat, who racked up 283W's for mostly bad teams, except for the early part of his career, was a truly iron man and workhorse.. Completing what he started with 180CG's and several times, making 40+ starts a season. Kaat hs long deserved enshrinement over guys like Mussina and yes.. Even Schill. I think you kinda just proved his point, the old guard looks at things like you do. Yet compare Kaat to pitchers of his generation and he wasn't a HOF pitcher highlighted by his 50.5 bwar. You can't penalize pitchers because the game changed. My point was If there is some kind of minimum, believe deserving HOF caliber guys would get in.. Like Lee Smith, Kaat over ones in same category that have who played in the same era.. Namely for example Rollie Fingers. bwar gives no credence to finishing games, making starts every 4 days and playing for mostly pitiful teams the majority of a career I believe. Not to mention winning 20+ 2x for white Sox teams when they were the dredge of the AL in the early 1970's. I'm not going to say analytics are totally flawed, but i shake my head often at those who only rely on them when judging any ballplayer instead of what they have seen from them perform, or what the caliber of team they played for etc.. There are always other factors
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Post by umassgrad2005 on Dec 21, 2020 16:30:14 GMT -5
I think you kinda just proved his point, the old guard looks at things like you do. Yet compare Kaat to pitchers of his generation and he wasn't a HOF pitcher highlighted by his 50.5 bwar. You can't penalize pitchers because the game changed. My point was If there is some kind of minimum, believe deserving HOF caliber guys would get in.. Like Lee Smith, Kaat over ones in same category that have who played in the same era.. Namely for example Rollie Fingers. bwar gives no credence to finishing games, making starts every 4 days and playing for mostly pitiful teams the majority of a career I believe. Not to mention winning 20+ 2x for white Sox teams when they were the dredge of the AL in the early 1970's. I'm not going to say analytics are totally flawed, but i shake my head often at those who only rely on them when judging any ballplayer instead of what they have seen from them perform, or what the caliber of team they played for etc.. There are always other factors Bwar adjusts for all those things and does it in the year you played, giving everyone in a given year wins above replacement level. It's not perfect, not even close, it's also not totally broken either. I see a player who had some HOF type seasons, yet not enough to come close to a HOF player.
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TearsIn04
Veteran
Everybody knows Nelson de la Rosa, but who is Karim Garcia?
Posts: 2,837
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Post by TearsIn04 on Dec 21, 2020 18:07:08 GMT -5
If you're going to elect a SP because of longevity and accumulation, you'd go with Tommy John over Kaat. TJ had a few more wins, a handful fewer losses, a better adjusted ERA (111 to 108, so not by a lot) and significantly more WAR.
I wouldn't picket the HOF if Kaat or John got elected. Longevity is an achievement and they both had a few big years. But neither is nearly as deserving as Schilling (if you put aside his douchery) or Tiant.
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Post by johnsilver52 on Dec 21, 2020 18:33:05 GMT -5
If you're going to elect a SP because of longevity and accumulation, you'd go with Tommy John over Kaat. TJ had a few more wins, a handful fewer losses, a better adjusted ERA (111 to 108, so not by a lot) and significantly more WAR. I wouldn't picket the HOF if Kaat or John got elected. Longevity is an achievement and they both had a few big years. But neihter is nearly as deserving as Schilling (if you put aside his douchery) or Tiant. Tiant and John both had nice careers and wouldn't knock them either getting enshrined. Yes.. John won more and with some better numbers over a say Kaat. He had better support around him also for over half of his long career as well. What has always been a surprise to me was he wasn't elected years ago as kind of a ground breaker from coming back from his name saker surgery and being very effective again so many years ago when that injury was career ending. Tiant also had the advantage of playing for mostly very good teams with above average supporting cast most of his career to help him out, not that would knock him, or Schill and with his. Maybe that's the wrong way to look at players, or should say pitchers, but it has been mine and Kaat was not a strikeout pitcher by any means, like Tommy John was. They both relied on their defense to make the plays rather than the umpires right arm.
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Post by umassgrad2005 on Dec 22, 2020 11:57:01 GMT -5
If you're going to elect a SP because of longevity and accumulation, you'd go with Tommy John over Kaat. TJ had a few more wins, a handful fewer losses, a better adjusted ERA (111 to 108, so not by a lot) and significantly more WAR. I wouldn't picket the HOF if Kaat or John got elected. Longevity is an achievement and they both had a few big years. But neihter is nearly as deserving as Schilling (if you put aside his douchery) or Tiant. Tiant and John both had nice careers and wouldn't knock them either getting enshrined. Yes.. John won more and with some better numbers over a say Kaat. He had better support around him also for over half of his long career as well. What has always been a surprise to me was he wasn't elected years ago as kind of a ground breaker from coming back from his name saker surgery and being very effective again so many years ago when that injury was career ending. Tiant also had the advantage of playing for mostly very good teams with above average supporting cast most of his career to help him out, not that would knock him, or Schill and with his. Maybe that's the wrong way to look at players, or should say pitchers, but it has been mine and Kaat was not a strikeout pitcher by any means, like Tommy John was. They both relied on their defense to make the plays rather than the umpires right arm. You keep talking about good teams/bad teams and supporting casts, you get Bwar and Fwar adjust for those things right? It's why Felix Hernandez can go 13-12 and win a cy young award. The whole idea of war is to look at a players value isolated from the team and ball park, so you can just compare players.
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Post by manfred on Dec 26, 2020 16:52:15 GMT -5
I don’t know if Tommy John should be in, but I think Frank Jobe should be. TJ surgery has had as much positive impact on the game as virtually anythibg in history. Think of how many guys who might be in the HOF wouldn’t be without it.
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Post by Oregon Norm on Dec 30, 2020 13:15:45 GMT -5
Eh, I don't know that I agree. 3000 K's, 3 rings including a WS MVP and the bloody sock game, 3x Cy runner-up. Are there really that many people who don't think he meets the bar statistically? That said, given that he was all of 20 votes short last year, it's probably both. I just know there's probably at least 20 voters in the "new" generation of voters who are smart enough to ignore wins who are vocal that they don't vote for him for off-field reasons. That said, I've seen articles lately about how the standard for modern-era pitchers has been unrealistic for the Hall. Just read through Jay Jaffe's harsh take on Schilling. I had not realized how busy he's been on Twitter and in the media. He's pushed away some of his supporters, people such as Jaffe who have brought the expertise to really evaluate players. Sad.
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Post by manfred on Dec 30, 2020 13:33:53 GMT -5
Eh, I don't know that I agree. 3000 K's, 3 rings including a WS MVP and the bloody sock game, 3x Cy runner-up. Are there really that many people who don't think he meets the bar statistically? That said, given that he was all of 20 votes short last year, it's probably both. I just know there's probably at least 20 voters in the "new" generation of voters who are smart enough to ignore wins who are vocal that they don't vote for him for off-field reasons. That said, I've seen articles lately about how the standard for modern-era pitchers has been unrealistic for the Hall. Just read through Jay Jaffe's harsh take on Schilling. I had not realized how busy he's been on Twitter and in the media. He's pushed away some of his supporters, people such as Jaffe who have brought the expertise to really evaluate players. Sad. I am Schilling’s political opposite, and I revel personally in his exclusion, but objectively I think it is wrong to vote against him because of his mouth. Obviously, as the cliche goes, there are some really bad dudes in the Hall. Even the recent rush to vote in Halliday seems like a striking comp.... they are remarkably similar in accomplishment. Roy died in a tragic accident, but he sounds, er, complicated? I think you are right about judging modern pitchers. To Chris’s point, there is a great case Schilling doesn’t make it statistically *judged by standards set decades ago* — 216 wins and a career 3.46 ERA is almost identical to Charlie Hough. Or, say, Mickey Lolich. And stuff like the bloody sock or CY votings aren’t really statistics. BUT.... even someone like me who still does take wins seriously has to rethink standards. I see 200 wins as an acceptable bar, though 10-20 years ago I wouldn’t have. And more than ever attention has to be paid to the relativity of ERAs etc. But on the baseball card measure, it is tricky. My point is... Schilling should be in 🤮... but it would not surprise me terribly if there *are* a good number of people who think he just misses statistically.
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Post by incandenza on Dec 30, 2020 14:32:46 GMT -5
The HOF voters' over-valuation of relievers (aka, pitchers who weren't good enough to be starters*) drives me bananas. Currently, Billy Wagner is at 43.7%, which is ahead of the likes of Manny Ramirez, Andruw Jones, Andy Pettitte, and Bobby Abreu. But even forgetting those obviously more worthwhile candidates, Tim Hudson is at 3.4%.
Now ask yourself: at what point in their respective careers would you have traded Tim Hudson straight up for Billy Wagner? If their careers were perfectly contemporaneous, that would have been an insane trade at any point.
Wagner has all of 903 career IP, a total Hudson exceeded before his 28th birthday.
Hudson has more than twice Wagner's fWAR total.
In Hudson's worst full season (2006), he had 2.5 fWAR, a total Wagner exceeded exactly once.
I know WAR is not great for pitchers, but it is a rough-and-ready cumulative accounting of how much value a player contributes to their team, and it makes it completely obvious that almost no reliever does enough for their team to be considered on a par with even a decently good starter, let alone be considered a hall of famer. The one exception to this rule was the first player unanimously elected to the Hall (which itself was an over-valuation, in its way!).
And yet at the very most, only 1 in 13 voters who voted for Billy Wagner also voted for Tim Hudson. It makes no damn sense.
*Yes, I know that it's not literally the case that every reliever is a failed starter; some came up as relievers from the beginning. Nonetheless, if they were better pitchers they would have been starters.
ADD: Even going by saves, which is the dumbest stat ever invented, Wagner is only 6th all time, behind both John Franco and Francisco Rodriguez (as well as Lee Smith and Trevor Hoffman, who also shouldn't be in the hall of fame).
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Post by manfred on Dec 30, 2020 15:21:40 GMT -5
The HOF voters' over-valuation of relievers (aka, pitchers who weren't good enough to be starters*) drives me bananas. Currently, Billy Wagner is at 43.7%, which is ahead of the likes of Manny Ramirez, Andruw Jones, Andy Pettitte, and Bobby Abreu. But even forgetting those obviously more worthwhile candidates, Tim Hudson is at 3.4%.
Now ask yourself: at what point in their respective careers would you have traded Tim Hudson straight up for Billy Wagner? If their careers were perfectly contemporaneous, that would have been an insane trade at any point.
Wagner has all of 903 career IP, a total Hudson exceeded before his 28th birthday.
Hudson has more than twice Wagner's fWAR total.
In Hudson's worst full season (2006), he had 2.5 fWAR, a total Wagner exceeded exactly once.
I know WAR is not great for pitchers, but it is a rough-and-ready cumulative accounting of how much value a player contributes to their team, and it makes it completely obvious that almost no reliever does enough for their team to be considered on a par with even a decently good starter, let alone be considered a hall of famer. The one exception to this rule was the first player unanimously elected to the Hall (which itself was an over-valuation, in its way!).
And yet at the very most, only 1 in 13 voters who voted for Billy Wagner also voted for Tim Hudson. It makes no damn sense.
*Yes, I know that it's not literally the case that every reliever is a failed starter; some came up as relievers from the beginning. Nonetheless, if they were better pitchers they would have been starters.
ADD: Even going by saves, which is the dumbest stat ever invented, Wagner is only 6th all time, behind both John Franco and Francisco Rodriguez (as well as Lee Smith and Trevor Hoffman, who also shouldn't be in the hall of fame).
I agree with you. I do. But.... it is not fair to compare across positions without many caveats. I mean, Abreu would be a HOFer if he was a catcher, but he wasn’t. That is, different specialties have different standards. In the case of Wagner, I’d ask... how many closers would you have traded him for? Still... I don’t think he belongs. Truthfully, I don’t think most of them do. I think generally being a closer is a relatively easy job, more so now than ever. One inning. The odds are actually in your favor. But the question for me has always been do you shorten the game, a la Rivera. Do you make teams play like they have to be winning after 8? And I really think only a few guys do that. Wagner wasn’t necessarily one. Hoffman certainly wasn’t one for much of his career. To me, the two obvious guys are Mo and Eck. (Goose is a different beast).
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Post by Chris Hatfield on Dec 30, 2020 15:31:28 GMT -5
I have a hard time getting my head around how to judge relievers. WAR seems to be a poor way to do it given that they simply can never accumulate enough playing time to match a starting pitcher or full-time position player. But is that a bug or a feature? Like, if a player was the greatest pinch hitter ever... that's not a hall-of-famer, right? But relievers are certainly more important, and it strikes me that modern pitcher usage - in other words, no more 100+-inning relievers - shouldn't necessarily disqualify a guy.
Like, Mo Rivera is pretty inarguably worthy of the Hall of Fame, right? He has 56.3 career bWAR. But that's DOUBLE Wagner.
I don't see Wagner as a HOFer, but part of me wonders how to quantify the worthiness of the modern relief pitcher. Like, relief pitchers are as important as they've ever been, and I can't think of one active reliever with much of a case (assuming that Kimbrel doesn't suddenly rediscover himself and get another 5-8 years of old Kimbrel before retiring). Kenley Jansen maybe? Prob not. That just seems very weird to me.
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Post by James Dunne on Dec 30, 2020 15:53:58 GMT -5
As a starting point I like WPA for relievers. Not perfect, obviously, but a good shorthand. Puts Rivera fifth all-time, Hoffman 28th (around other clear HOFers), and Wagner 44th, in range with Papelbon and Joe Nathan. WPA doesn't work for starters the same way because it penalizes guys who had good bullpens, or who pitched for teams that had great offenses. But for relievers who get brought in specifically for the late innings, it works pretty well I think.
Kimbrel is 84th and Jansen 89th all time, two best among active relivers. I agree they're nowhere close.
A major reason a guy will be sent to the bullpen is because of durability concerns, so it makes sense that a lot of them end up lacking the durability to put together the long career resume for the Hall of Fame. Also, while bullpens are more important than ever, there are also so many good relievers now that it kind of neuters the value of a truly great one, right? Like, there's nothing on this forum you'd get everyone to agree on, except the fact that you shouldn't overpay for a reliever because they're so replaceable. It's part of the reason Sammy Sosa gets so little HOF support despite those huge counting stats - there were all those other outfielders putting up as good or better overall numbers at the same time.
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Post by Oregon Norm on Dec 30, 2020 15:57:37 GMT -5
I have a hard time getting my head around how to judge relievers. WAR seems to be a poor way to do it given that they simply can never accumulate enough playing time to match a starting pitcher or full-time position player. But is that a bug or a feature? Like, if a player was the greatest pinch hitter ever... that's not a hall-of-famer, right? But relievers are certainly more important, and it strikes me that modern pitcher usage - in other words, no more 100+-inning relievers - shouldn't necessarily disqualify a guy. Like, Mo Rivera is pretty inarguably worthy of the Hall of Fame, right? He has 56.3 career bWAR. But that's DOUBLE Wagner. I don't see Wagner as a HOFer, but part of me wonders how to quantify the worthiness of the modern relief pitcher. Like, relief pitchers are as important as they've ever been, and I can't think of one active reliever with much of a case (assuming that Kimbrel doesn't suddenly rediscover himself and get another 5-8 years of old Kimbrel before retiring). Kenley Jansen maybe? Prob not. That just seems very weird to me. Jaffe is with you as far the weakness of WAR. He's worked on a way to meld that with win probability added, because that is where relievers have their greatest impact. The guy is just dedicated to this sort of analysis. I'm waiting to see what he comes up with describing what he's done. You can find his analysis of Wagner on the linked page.
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Post by manfred on Dec 30, 2020 16:11:55 GMT -5
I have a hard time getting my head around how to judge relievers. WAR seems to be a poor way to do it given that they simply can never accumulate enough playing time to match a starting pitcher or full-time position player. But is that a bug or a feature? Like, if a player was the greatest pinch hitter ever... that's not a hall-of-famer, right? But relievers are certainly more important, and it strikes me that modern pitcher usage - in other words, no more 100+-inning relievers - shouldn't necessarily disqualify a guy. Like, Mo Rivera is pretty inarguably worthy of the Hall of Fame, right? He has 56.3 career bWAR. But that's DOUBLE Wagner. I don't see Wagner as a HOFer, but part of me wonders how to quantify the worthiness of the modern relief pitcher. Like, relief pitchers are as important as they've ever been, and I can't think of one active reliever with much of a case (assuming that Kimbrel doesn't suddenly rediscover himself and get another 5-8 years of old Kimbrel before retiring). Kenley Jansen maybe? Prob not. That just seems very weird to me. Jaffe is with you as far the weakness of WAR. He's worked on a way to meld that with win probability added, because that is where relievers have their greatest impact. The guy is just dedicated to this sort of analysis. I'm waiting to see what he comes up with describing what he's done. You can find his analysis of Wagner on the linked page. This is another tricky thing about closers: there are not many in the Hall, and the nature of the position has changed even as they are just entering. We’ll never see a Wihelm or Gossage again, a guy who might go the last 3 innings. So comparing current guys to them is not far from comparing to starters... just not the same. Can you imagine the value of a guy who could give you multiple inning dominance on frequent occasions these days? But then you have a guy like Smith who had tons of saves but was, let’s face it, many years not so great. But if he is one of only a handful of comps, it is harder to say no to Wagner, who was certainly better than Big Lee. Come to think of it, when the Sox let Lee go and replaced him with Jeff Reardon, it seemed like we had virtually the same guy. And soon it’ll be the Kimbrels. He has almost exactly the same number of saves as Reardon in half the innings. Dominant innings, yes, but surely it is a demerit that, for example, in his sick stretch of 2012-2013 he averaged <1 inning an appearance? I’m not doing a deep dive, so maybe he stranded inherited runners at an ungodly rate, but... Even Lee and Reardon had 90-100 inning seasons in the first half of their careers.
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Post by Chris Hatfield on Dec 30, 2020 16:57:26 GMT -5
I mean let's just agree to ignore saves, yes?
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Post by incandenza on Dec 30, 2020 17:14:20 GMT -5
To manfred's point: you certainly have to make some adjustments across positions, and you wouldn't judge David Ortiz and Andruw Jones by a one-size-fits-all standard. But 'reliever' isn't a unique position - they're pitchers. They have a distinct role, like a backup catcher or a utility guy, but you wouldn't put the best backup catcher or utility guy of all time in the Hall of Fame. To James' point: WPA has some advantages, but one problem is that top relievers are meant to be brought into high-leverage situations (in theory), so the fact that a reliever has a higher WPA doesn't necessarily reflect their ability. E.g., if Tim Hudson were a bit worse and had been made into an ace reliever rather than a starter, his WPA might have been better. A wrinkle here is that, because of the idiotic save stat, a lot of the best relievers are used in low-leverage situations, like how Kimbrel always had to be brought into a clean inning with a lead, often a 2- or 3-run lead. So they would actually look better if their usage hadn't been sub-optimal due to silly baseball conventions. (But then do you ding a pitcher for being used sub-optimally by their managers?) And that's a good point about how there are so many good relievers nowadays it's harder for great ones to stand out in a sustained way. I wonder if Wagner marks the end of the Great Closers Era (ca. 1980-2015). To Norm's point: Jaffe is begging the question by accepting "relievers who are already in the Hall of Fame" as the standard for whether a reliever should be voted into the Hall of Fame. And even by that circular reasoning, Wagner's a marginal case. Since I start from the position that relievers are already over-represented in the Hall, there's nothing here that's at all persuasive to me.
SIDE NOTE: But damn, Kimbrel's first 5 years were ridiculous. That really was a HOF-worthy run, if he had been able to keep it up for a whole career. As it is, though, it's only about 300 really great innings - a season and a half for a dominant starting pitcher. He got back to that level in 2017, but otherwise he's been good at best, and now seems pretty washed up at age 32.
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Post by manfred on Dec 30, 2020 17:19:24 GMT -5
I mean let's just agree to ignore saves, yes? *We* can agree, but I don’t vote. Don’t you think Hoffman got in based primarily on total saves? I don’t think he was particularly daunting for at least the second half of his career, so he doesn’t even have the flash of a K machine like Wagner.
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Post by manfred on Dec 30, 2020 17:30:22 GMT -5
To manfred's point: you certainly have to make some adjustments across positions, and you wouldn't judge David Ortiz and Andruw Jones by a one-size-fits-all standard. But 'reliever' isn't a unique position - they're pitchers. They have a distinct role, like a backup catcher or a utility guy, but you wouldn't put the best backup catcher or utility guy of all time in the Hall of Fame. To James' point: WPA has some advantages, but one problem is that top relievers are meant to be brought into high-leverage situations (in theory), so the fact that a reliever has a higher WPA doesn't necessarily reflect their ability. E.g., if Tim Hudson were a bit worse and had been made into an ace reliever rather than a starter, his WPA might have been better. A wrinkle here is that, because of the idiotic save stat, a lot of the best relievers are used in low-leverage situations, like how Kimbrel always had to be brought into a clean inning with a lead, often a 2- or 3-run lead. So they would actually look better if their usage hadn't been sub-optimal due to silly baseball conventions. (But then do you ding a pitcher for being used sub-optimally by their managers?) And that's a good point about how there are so many good relievers nowadays it's harder for great ones to stand out in a sustained way. I wonder if Wagner marks the end of the Great Closers Era (ca. 1980-2015). To Norm's point: Jaffe is begging the question by accepting "relievers who are already in the Hall of Fame" as the standard for whether a reliever should be voted into the Hall of Fame. And even by that circular reasoning, Wagner's a marginal case. Since I start from the position that relievers are already over-represented in the Hall, there's nothing here that's at all persuasive to me. They are pitchers, but we don’t call all three OF positions “outfield.” We know CF is different from LF. Starter and reliever is different, too. I think the starters-as-relievers thing is a bit unfair. It is *different.* Hudson is a tricky one. First, he was a pretty awesome pitcher, so he’d likely succeed in any role. Buuuttt... he was a pitch to contact guy. He hovered around the hit-an-inning rate. So he might actually not make a great closer. 9th inning, lead off double, time for the closer: is Hudson your guy? The point is, yes, broadly a closer needs less... but he also likely needs at least one plus pitch. A starter can be effective with multiple average-to-above pitches and good command. Now.... many very good starters might have a near-plus pitch, especially for one inning. But I don’t think that means closers are *just* washout starters. And obviously there are two other huge factors: first, many guys don’t respond as well to pitching frequently in short bursts. It is a physically different thing from starting. And most importantly, the mental game. Closers are like kickers.... we expect them to be perfect, and they get most of their attention when they blow it. Hell, Eck is a HOFer and his most famous moment is a blown save.
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Post by incandenza on Dec 30, 2020 17:52:23 GMT -5
To manfred's point: you certainly have to make some adjustments across positions, and you wouldn't judge David Ortiz and Andruw Jones by a one-size-fits-all standard. But 'reliever' isn't a unique position - they're pitchers. They have a distinct role, like a backup catcher or a utility guy, but you wouldn't put the best backup catcher or utility guy of all time in the Hall of Fame. To James' point: WPA has some advantages, but one problem is that top relievers are meant to be brought into high-leverage situations (in theory), so the fact that a reliever has a higher WPA doesn't necessarily reflect their ability. E.g., if Tim Hudson were a bit worse and had been made into an ace reliever rather than a starter, his WPA might have been better. A wrinkle here is that, because of the idiotic save stat, a lot of the best relievers are used in low-leverage situations, like how Kimbrel always had to be brought into a clean inning with a lead, often a 2- or 3-run lead. So they would actually look better if their usage hadn't been sub-optimal due to silly baseball conventions. (But then do you ding a pitcher for being used sub-optimally by their managers?) And that's a good point about how there are so many good relievers nowadays it's harder for great ones to stand out in a sustained way. I wonder if Wagner marks the end of the Great Closers Era (ca. 1980-2015). To Norm's point: Jaffe is begging the question by accepting "relievers who are already in the Hall of Fame" as the standard for whether a reliever should be voted into the Hall of Fame. And even by that circular reasoning, Wagner's a marginal case. Since I start from the position that relievers are already over-represented in the Hall, there's nothing here that's at all persuasive to me. They are pitchers, but we don’t call all three OF positions “outfield.” We know CF is different from LF. Starter and reliever is different, too. I think the starters-as-relievers thing is a bit unfair. It is *different.* Hudson is a tricky one. First, he was a pretty awesome pitcher, so he’d likely succeed in any role. Buuuttt... he was a pitch to contact guy. He hovered around the hit-an-inning rate. So he might actually not make a great closer. 9th inning, lead off double, time for the closer: is Hudson your guy? The point is, yes, broadly a closer needs less... but he also likely needs at least one plus pitch. A starter can be effective with multiple average-to-above pitches and good command. Now.... many very good starters might have a near-plus pitch, especially for one inning. But I don’t think that means closers are *just* washout starters. And obviously there are two other huge factors: first, many guys don’t respond as well to pitching frequently in short bursts. It is a physically different thing from starting. And most importantly, the mental game. Closers are like kickers.... we expect them to be perfect, and they get most of their attention when they blow it. Hell, Eck is a HOFer and his most famous moment is a blown save. CF is literally a different position from LF. Like, they stand at different places on the field. The pitcher stands on the pitcher's mound and pitches. I still think 'role' is the right term here, and that a reliever is more akin to a bench player than a unique position.
I'm sure there are starters who wouldn't necessarily be better as closers. But if you had a great starter who could be a great closer, you would keep him as a starter, whereas if a great closer could be a great starter you'd definitely have them start. I think that's pretty much all you need to know about the relative importance of those roles.
At any rate, my main point is just that relievers can only contribute so much value because they simply don't pitch that many innings. Wagner pitched 900 innings in his whole career. Andruw Jones gets dinged for putting together "only" 10 great seasons at the start of his career, when he maintained a 6 WAR/season pace. How do the HOF voters think that's insufficient, but Wagner somehow deserves to get in? (Last year Jones got 20%, Wagner 33%, so clearly a significant number of voters came to just that conclusion.)
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Post by manfred on Dec 30, 2020 18:13:54 GMT -5
They are pitchers, but we don’t call all three OF positions “outfield.” We know CF is different from LF. Starter and reliever is different, too. I think the starters-as-relievers thing is a bit unfair. It is *different.* Hudson is a tricky one. First, he was a pretty awesome pitcher, so he’d likely succeed in any role. Buuuttt... he was a pitch to contact guy. He hovered around the hit-an-inning rate. So he might actually not make a great closer. 9th inning, lead off double, time for the closer: is Hudson your guy? The point is, yes, broadly a closer needs less... but he also likely needs at least one plus pitch. A starter can be effective with multiple average-to-above pitches and good command. Now.... many very good starters might have a near-plus pitch, especially for one inning. But I don’t think that means closers are *just* washout starters. And obviously there are two other huge factors: first, many guys don’t respond as well to pitching frequently in short bursts. It is a physically different thing from starting. And most importantly, the mental game. Closers are like kickers.... we expect them to be perfect, and they get most of their attention when they blow it. Hell, Eck is a HOFer and his most famous moment is a blown save. CF is literally a different position from LF. Like, they stand at different places on the field. The pitcher stands on the pitcher's mound and pitches. I still think 'role' is the right term here, and that a reliever is more akin to a bench player than a unique position.
I'm sure there are starters who wouldn't necessarily be better as closers. But if you had a great starter who could be a great closer, you would keep him as a starter, whereas if a great closer could be a great starter you'd definitely have them start. I think that's pretty much all you need to know about the relative importance of those roles.
At any rate, my main point is just that relievers can only contribute so much value because they simply don't pitch that many innings. Wagner pitched 900 innings in his whole career. Andruw Jones gets dinged for putting together "only" 10 great seasons at the start of his career, when he maintained a 6 WAR/season pace. How do the HOF voters think that's insufficient, but Wagner somehow deserves to get in? (Last year Jones got 20%, Wagner 33%, so clearly a significant number of voters came to just that conclusion.)
We are probably largely agreeing. I think — as has come up — one thing that makes closer different is that they basically just play in the high pressure moments. Yes, they get in for work with big leads, but they have to play with it all on the line more often than not. Anyway... I agree that few of them deserve to be in the Hall. Of the closers 1980ff, I’d only vote for Mo and Eck. There have been guys who have been insane for short periods (cf. Eric Gagne) or even a bit longer (Kimbrel) but... naw. Maybe it is all the memories of whiteknuckles with CK, but he just didn’t seem to be as good in practice as his numbers made it look.
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Post by James Dunne on Dec 30, 2020 18:17:15 GMT -5
Just to be clear, I don't think WPA is suitable for comparing starters to relievers (or starters to each other, at least in general).
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Post by incandenza on Dec 30, 2020 18:29:36 GMT -5
Even Eckersley only had 4 or 5 great years as a closer (which actually surprised me that it was that short of a run when I just looked it up). I'd vote him in, but only because he had a long run of success as a starter before that. Compare his 3285 IP to any reliever's...
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Post by julyanmorley on Dec 30, 2020 18:33:56 GMT -5
I don't think there is one correct standard for the hall of fame. I think it's perfectly reasonable to want to use it as a tool for telling the great narratives of the sport and for celebrating legendary figures. This has become a taboo belief in a lot of internet discussions but it shouldn't be. In that kind of hall of fame, relievers have a place.
If you think the hall of fame should about honoring the best players, then it's hard to improve much upon just counting WAR. In that case relievers should be nearly shut out. WAR does not underrated relievers.
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Post by manfred on Dec 30, 2020 18:36:36 GMT -5
Even Eckersley only had 4 or 5 great years as a closer (which actually surprised me that it was that short of a run when I just looked it up). I'd vote him in, but only because he had a long run of success as a starter before that. Compare his 3285 IP to any reliever's... That’s the thing about Eck... he had two careers that probably weren’t enough at either end, but together... And it is such a unique career. I know people dismiss wins etc, but at 197 career wins, Eck is not much behind Pedro, Schilling, Halliday. It is pretty amazing. But the other thing to me is — and it’s totally subjective — I felt doomed in ‘88 and ‘90 when he came in. He pitched in 7 of the 8 Sox/A’s playoff games and gave up no runs. He and Mo had that demoralizing effect.
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Post by incandenza on Dec 30, 2020 20:14:56 GMT -5
I don't think there is one correct standard for the hall of fame. I think it's perfectly reasonable to want to use it as a tool for telling the great narratives of the sport and for celebrating legendary figures. This has become a taboo belief in a lot of internet discussions but it shouldn't be. In that kind of hall of fame, relievers have a place. If you think the hall of fame should about honoring the best players, then it's hard to improve much upon just counting WAR. In that case relievers should be nearly shut out. WAR does not underrated relievers. I'm all for this philosophy in general and certainly don't think the HOF should become the Hall of WAR Leaders - WAR is nothing more than an easy shorthand for talking about a player's value in broad terms, the beginning of a conversation rather than the end of one. But how far do you want to take this logic? Do you honor the greatest backup catcher of all time ("and who would that be?" "exactly") because that's "telling the great narratives of the sport"?
As for "celebrating legendary figures," well, that's circular since the point of the Hall is to define just which figures should be regarded as legendary. And I just don't see it even being close for a pitcher who didn't even manage to accumulate 1000 IP.
Lest I give the impression I'm some sort of sabermetric fanatic, though, I'll give you an example of a guy who I don't think has the numbers to really justify a plaque in Cooperstown, but who wouldn't annoy me if he got voted in: Omar Vizquel. His defense wasn't even the best ever, but it was beautiful, and if you wanted to say that beauty was enough to deserve a spot in the Hall of Fame I wouldn't try to convince you otherwise.
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