If you were starting the baseball HOF from scratch. . .
graygator
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Baked into every argument about who belongs in the HOF are underlying assumptions about how many players should be enshrined and what the bar for enshrinement should be. It seems to me that those are often colored by the number of players already there and the current average and bottom hall of famer using several statistical measures. But should they be?
Let's try a thought experiment. If the baseball HOF did not exist, and you were charged with instructing a committee with how to populate the HOF with players from scratch, and you were going to do all of baseball history at once, what would your instructions be? Just to make this easier, let's assume this committee will focus only on MLB players and that there will be a separate committee for negro league players with separate instructions.
I thought about this in two ways. First, I thought, what percentage of players belong in the hall? The top 1%? Top 2%? This is entirely a subjective judgment. There have been about 20,000 players in the major leagues. The top 1% would be 200 players. That seemed small to me. The top 2% would be 400 players. That seemed too many. So I put a pin in thinking the top 1.5% of players, or about 300, might be about right.
Second, I thought about position representation. There have been 15 decades of major league baseball. If we take on average the 2 best players at each non-pitching position for each decade, which seems like a fair number to represent the history of baseball and give each position it's due, then we'd have 30 players at each of those 8 positions, or 240 players. The top 4 or 5 pitchers from each decade seems right to me, given the historical 4 or 5 man rotation. That would be 60-75 pitchers. Or, 300-315 players total. Then maybe you add spots for relievers and DHs for the shorter amount of time those positions have been around, let's say 5 of each, so we are up to 325. This, at least for me, confirms my intuition that around 300 players is the right number to represent the best of the best in baseball history.
So I would instruct my committee to go find me between 280-320 players based on statistical excellence, historical significance, importance to the story of baseball, and fame in their time and after. I want the players that best represent the full history of the game and shined in their time. I would probably keep the 10-year service time eligibility requirement, but would consider waiving it for a special case. I would want my hall of fame itself, and not jus the accompanying museum, to tell a complete story of major league baseball, with each era of baseball well represented and with each position represented by at least 25 players and at least 60 pitchers. Even if they came back with 320 worthy players, I don't think that hall of fame would be too big at all.
There are 235 major league players currently enshrined.
How would you go about selecting the players for your hall of fame?
Comments
I don't know that I am quite sure how I would answer this, but I want to first say thank you for taking the time to write all of that out. Your post touches on many interesting discussion points and raises some potential questions as well.
I am not up to date on the talking points and arguments surrounding the number of players in the hall. Is it currently considered too big? Do too many get in each year just to fill spots? It is interesting to look at the difference in perception between choosing all of the players at one time or choosing them on a year to year basis. I think that your example of doing it by decades, as opposed to the current formula, is where the difference occurs and what makes your larger inclusion number work well and not feel too large.
I think most people probably assume the HOF is about right, or maybe should be a little bigger or a little smaller, in number of players and the standard for selecting them, and then bicker about whether this or that player belong. I tend to think the size and standard are largely a historical accident based on the somewhat random and not well thought out methods used from the beginning to select members. I just thought it might be interesting to reframe the discussion a bit to center around what it should look like if none of the history had happened.
Its all about the yardstick in terms of comparison and recognizing the differences based on the progression of the game. There are some such as Rocky Colavito and Gil Hodges that belong... using a 2021 yardstick looking back instead of one from the time of their respective playing career peaks basically insures they will never arrive where they rightfully belong.
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Interesting. I apologize in advance for sort of taking your thread off track. I am picturing two scenarios that would alter the HOF quite a bit. In the first, we expand the HOF as you suggested. That would give the voters approximately five or six more players to add from each decade. They would leave the current membership as is, but add accordingly. In the other, they start from scratch. Still getting up to your number north of 300 by using decades. In that scenario, I think the hall would look a lot different, as you suggested.
Now, there is a third scenario I am thinking about. Using your number of a bit over 300 players, they fill the hall without having to adhere to decades. In this case, I think the voters would be inclined to include a lot more of the older players who were overlooked.
Thanks. To clarify, I don’t think I would have strict adherence to decades or positions, but I would want good representation of each. I used the 2 per position, per decade as a metric to approximate the number of players I wanted because I think that saying we are taking the top 2 at a position for a 10 year period sounds reasonable and not over representative. But there are some eras, like from the mid-60s to late 70s with catchers, where there would be a bunching of talent debuting relative to some other eras, and that’s okay too. My number would be big enough to include them all (including Freehan, Tenace, and Munson) as well as somebody like Wally Schang, who was right there with the best of his era but has been almost entirely overlooked.
You are certainly right about the bunching of talent from different eras. I wonder how the voters would do without any boundaries? Would they still feel forced to include certain players from different eras to make it more representative. If so, you could possibly end up with many questionable inclusions and omissions. Which would leave us right where we started I guess. I don't know. Just spitballin here
I can say this, and I wonder if @dallasactuary would agree, that my favorite player and perhaps the best hitter of his era, Jim Rice, would be an obvious choice instead of the fringe insertment that he is often considered.
I love this topic and will add my two cents in abbreviated form. I would be happy to elaborate.
I think the Hall of Fame is fine as is - however you got in you were obviously not a scrub and it’s a nice honor and way to be remembered.
I think a great enhancement would be to add a new feature to the Hall of Fame - the All Time 25 and/or 40 Man Roster to be voted upon once every 5-10 years. So when you add someone, someone is out…
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Awesome thread and great read. I’m not qualified to give a respectable answer but again great read.
I would trash the entire system.
If you care to do some basic research, you will find that the system is not only complex in its voting, but, they even allow for FORMER-BBWAA members who no longer follow baseball to vote!! This under the premise "they expect them to make valid decisions" Really? The "system" is rife with political viewpoints, which, IMO, directly impacted Curt Schilling, who fell a paltry 16 votes short of being elected. This because he said things that weren't "acceptable". He has since asked the illustrious BBWAA to remove his name from the 2022 ballot, and I don't blame him. He violated no rules during his playing days that I could find, he just pissed off some people and they got back at him. His numbers speak for themselves...outrageous.
Upcoming is one David Ortiz, beloved member of the Red Sox. Pretty strong allegations that he failed a drug test, and, I understand this has been verified by the Commissioner. Let us not forget his wonderful speech, given in centerfield over the PA system, shortly after the Boston bombings, where he apparently took it upon himself to address a SRO crowd at Fenway to seemingly support Red Sox Nation and Boston in general, and his clear as a bell dropping of the f-bomb. How many kids heard that? Classless. He may get into the HOF, but does he deserve to be there? IMO, failing any legitimate drug test is automatic disqualification. Sounds harsh, but if the integrity of the game isn't maintained, why have any rules? This goes for Clemens, ARod, Bonds and any other PED useer. They did it to cheat. If you're not good enough to play with your God given talents, then go work elsewhere.
The members of the BBWAA have fluctuated in numbers, it appears around 500 is the norm, could be off a bit here. IMO, the system is in dire need of a compete revamping of the voting process. It is light-years from fair, and it grossly lacks integrity, which is the cornerstone of any voting system. An easy example is the obvious political one...if a player is verbally pro candidate "X", and you, as a voting member of the BBWAA have a complete disdain for candidate "X", then, does anyone honestly believe that the candidate is going to get his vote? Hell no. Only a super star could cross this bar.
You can formulate all the stats you want, but, when the human element gets to give thumbs up or thumbs down, all the stats go out the window. There are those who would fall on their sword over Pete Rose. Yes, he was a very accomplished player, but what he did violated the rules and integrity of the game. Had he not stonewalled the situation, and gone hat in hand to genuflect at the altar of the then Commissioner, and made a public apology, he would undoubtedly been enshrined long ago. Not gonna happen.
Integrity is the prime issue here, and, I seriously doubt that anyone who has a vote as a BBWAA or "former" BBWAA member has that as his/her utmost concern when casting their ballot. I think the HOF has become a good ole boys club at this point.
Nothings gonna change in my lifetime, its too ingrained in the "system".
I've been to Cooperstown and the HOF. Those that are baseball aficionados of the game should go at least once. Nice big statue of Ted Williams as you walk in the door. Memorabilia galore, right on a beautiful lake. Very cool place.
This is the starting point for my hypothetical, which assumes the HOF does not exist. Now I’m interested to know, what would you do to replace it?
I think this would involve more study to determine the most viable, fair and effective method within which to choose HOFer selections. The time involved to fairly assess a player's accomplishments would be quite a task, this is not a "one size fits all".
The entire effort, of which I have no desire to take on, would only be moot, no matter who presents his/her ideas. So, I will take a pass on the endeavor. For sure, the current system is indeed flawed.
I am convinced that a vote only by the BBWAA, many of whom may have an axe to grind for whatever reason, should certainly either be tempered in some fashion, or eliminate them all together. There is CLEARLY, too much bias in these votes.
To be sure, there are far too many variables to consider in formulating the "best practices" for this nomination. As an example, how would you account for those lost years that many players gave up in WWII? Or do you just chuck it and say, "he didn't play, nothing counts". Ted Williams is a prime example. The list goes on and on, but despite your OP, this is a task well beyond me, but, I see the glaring evidence that the HOFer nomination process is broken.
While I would not trash the existing Hall, I would revamp the voting process. My proposal is this: if you vote for a guy that gets less than 3% of the vote, or you DON'T vote for a guy that gets 95%, you lose your vote. No more voting for Jim Deshaies and no more leaving Cal Ripken off your ballot because Babe Ruth didn't get 100% of the vote. I'd be open to kicking out anybody that doesn't make their own decisions (Dan Lebatard) or leaves their ballot blank, too.
I'm closer to 1% than 2%; that is, I think there are more players in the HOF that don't belong than there are players not in the HOF that do belong. The standards that you listed are pretty much the ones that the HOF historically used, with only a rare choice that I didn't like (Tinker, Evers, Chance getting in for being part of a famous poem stands out).
Virtually all of the truly abysmal choices have come from the Veteran's Committee and it's recent demonic offspring, and even then only when the VC voters were friends/former teammates of the people they elected. So, if we're starting from scratch, I'd put in place the system we have now with the following changes:
A player's first appearance on the ballot comes 20 years after they retire, not 5, no exceptions, and leave them on the ballot for 5 years. Let the people who saw the player play retire or at least get to see another generation of players in the interim before a vote is taken. Reduce the sentiment, stick to the actual record.
Appoint a serious VC of baseball experts, to clean up the mistakes the original voters will make, and require that they leave the room when people they know well are up for discussion.
Get rid of all the recent committees and go back to one VC, and have them meet every five years.
Bill James had a proposal for five groups to vote, and a certain percentage of a group and a certain number of groups were required to enshrine a player. I'll try to find and summarize. It was interesting, at least, and is as good at starting a Hall from scratch as adding to the current one.
A question is philosophy: should a Hall of Fame showcase the best who would otherwise be forgotten (who but the most hardcore remembers Jim McCormick today) or the achievements of the most famous (everyone agrees that Bo Jackson didn't have a career to merit the hall, so I won't hurt any feelings by mentioning him here, ditto Don Larsen)?
Defining "of his era" as precisely the years 1974-1989, Rice is 11th in Runs Batting behind Schmidt, Brett, Winfield, Murray, Boggs, Dwight Evans, Jack Clark, Henderson, Carew and Hernandez. Two points: this excludes everything Boggs did after 1989, for example. Second, perhaps we should say "Third best hitter of his era ON HIS TEAM".
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Well, I did say "perhaps" ...😄
I would agree that the vote should include members from more diverse groups, not just BBWA. I would use some CURRENT writers, a panel of current HOFers, a panel of current coaches/managers, a panel of SABR types, and possibly an aspect of fan voting. maybe similar to the way all star players are chosen. I would portion out percentages of how much each groups vote total should be valued into the whole. sort of like how teachers weight grades, to come out to 75%.
as to your second question, I think famous players, but those not great enough to be HOFers are already highlighted In various exhibits in the HOF museum. they may not be enshrined, but their story is still told.
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
With regard to your first point, an excellent one, to define Rice's "era" as only the precise years in which he played is ridiculous. Rice played 15 years, so we could more reasonably define his "era" as his years plus an equal number of years surrounding those years, or, say, 1968 to 1996. I don't know where that would put Rice on a best hitters list, but using Win Shares (which includes fielding) it would put him at 57th on the list of best players. It puts him behind much better players who hit almost as well, but could also play the field, like Robin Yount, Darrell Evans, Gary Carter, Bobby Grich, etc.. It also puts him behind much better hitters who didn't happen to play in exactly the same years as Rice, but overlapped Rice's career considerably, like Yaz, Stargell, Gwynn, etc. I think 57th much better describes Rice's relative place in the baseball pantheon of his own era than 11th. Add a 0 to it, and you've got his place in the all-time pantheon.
With regard to your second point, also an excellent one, I have come to the conclusion that trying to discuss baseball with people who don't immediately see that Dwight Evans was better than Jim Rice is pointless. It's like trying to discuss Middle East politics with a poodle; it might be fun for a little while, but discussing a topic when one party clearly doesn't understand the topic eventually leads to nothing but frustration.
I agree with all this. I was simply trying to be as generous to Rice as possible.
if I were starting the MLB HOF I would begin with the premise that all truly worthy players had already been inducted. then I would begin with HOF inductee number one, working through the list and removing players who shouldn't be there. addition by subtraction, and I figure the HOF would be reduced by about one-third of the current enshrinees.
Do you view that preference as entirely subjective or is it based on something else, like a view that beyond around 1% it becomes harder to distinguish among players?
In thinking about my own preference for a larger hall of fame, I think I have two main groups of players that I would like to see with plaques. First are those who have borderline or just below statistical cases but were largely perceived as great players and were the stars of their eras. The various committees seem better at getting these folks in, and I would put Morris, Kaat, Oliva, and others in this group. Dale Murphy would be another prime example, and there are many more. It’s a shame when fans of those players aren’t able to celebrate the induction of their heroes, when those heroes are very close statistically and meet the fame aspect in spades. In my view their fame ought to distinguish them from statistically similar players who, fairly or unfairly, never reached that level of perceived greatness.
Second, the hall lacks a number of players who far exceed the borderline statistically and, fairly or unfairly, were not appreciated enough in their time. I find the use of modern statistics much more to my liking when they are employed to reveal unappreciated greatness than when they are used to bring down beloved players. The committee did a good job with Ted Simmons in this category, and it’s where someone like Bobby Grich or Rick Rueschel falls, and I would put them in my Hall of Fame as well.
I guess it's both. Ultimately, it has to be subjective, but objectively I see a very short pyramid of talent in MLB. Once you identify the top of the pyramid (Ruth, and others who are unquestionably the best of their eras), you get a much broader second tier (all of whom, except Dick Allen and cheaters, are in the HOF), and then a very much broader third tier. I think 1% approximates the first two tiers, but to allow in the next tier (Oliva, Suton, Perez, Grich, Guerrero, Simmons) would, if applied with any logic expand the HOF to 3%, 4%, maybe even 5%. As it is, we are nearing 2%, but there is no logic. It's like we're flipping coins to see which players in this large group get in. Heads, Oliva is in! Tails, Grich is out. It's random, and as I've said before, honors distributed randomly are no longer honors. It gets all the more frustrating when players from the fourth tier (Rice, Hunter, etc.) get in while the unlucky third tier players are left out.
All of the above is my verbose way of saying the same thing I think you said in your question, but maybe this adds some color.
I guess I don’t view the selections as random, or at least no more random than what makes anybody famous in the first place, which has never been and never will be based entirely on merit. I recognize that this runs perilously close to tautology, but Oliva is in and Grich is out because Oliva was a celebrated and appreciated player and Grich was not. To take a more direct comparison that was brought up recently, Kaat is in and Moyer likely never will be because Kaat was consistently thought of as a Hall of Famer by a pretty significant part of both the fans and the electorate and Moyer wasn’t and likely won’t ever be. It doesn’t matter that they were similar pitchers and it really isn’t that unfair that one garnered fame and the other didn’t.
I think you're saying pretty much the same thing that I'm saying, maybe with a twist. That Oliva was celebrated and Grich was not was "random", to my way of thinking. That is, there is no objective reason, at least none related to how good these players were, why this was so. Grich played his entire career in pitchers parks - that's random. Grich's teammates were tremendously less talented than Oliva's - that's random. Grich was having the best season of his career when a strike cut it short - that's random.
I said that honors distributed randomly are no longer honors. I'll amend/supplement that by saying that honors distributed for reasons other than factors directly related to what is supposedly being honored are no longer honors.
That one was celebrated and one was not was largely due to factors outside of their control and largely random, but that’s life. That the Hall of Fame recognizes the celebrated player and not the other one, though, is not random. It’s largely what it was designed to do and is functioning as intended with respect to the celebrated player. And like I said, I would also put in players who we can appreciate more with modern stats than they were appreciated in their day anyway.
I agree that, at least to a degree, the HOF is doing what it was designed to do when it elects "celebrated" players and not equally good players who were not celebrated through no fault of their own. But this is a "HOF from scratch" thread, and I think what you describe is one of the biggest problems with the HOF. The primary undeserved reasons players get celebrated are having great teammates, playing in hitters parks, and being born into an offense-oriented era. That Oliva had Carew hitting in front of him and Killebrew behind him, while Grich had a mentally defective manager who put him mostly in the 8 spot when he had the highest SLG on the team may have made Oliva more celebrated, but it's an absurd reason to put Oliva in the HOF and ignore Grich.
My way of thinking is more along the lines of your closing sentence. I would rather the HOF sift through the records and find players who were overlooked than rubber stamp undeserved press clippings. The players who deserved to be celebrated will get in either way, but deserving and uncelebrated beats undeserving and celebrated every day of the week and twice on Sundays. And it makes election to the HOF an actual honor.