Worst HOFer?
markj111
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in Sports Talk
There has been a lot of talk of who belongs in the HOF? Who is there but does not belong? My first thought was Jack Chesbro, plus a a bunch of guys who played in the 30s.
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That said, George "Highpockets" Kelly seems to me to be the worst overall player in the HOF with Fred Lindstrom next in line, Lindstrom playing a more difficult position making him better than Kelly since they were about equals at the plate.
Nobody else has mentioned pitchers (edit: oops, forgot about the original post; Chesbro is a worthy candidate, too), but any discussion of the worst HOFer ought also to include Rube Marquard and Bruce Sutter.
Forget blocking him; find out where he lives and go punch him in the nuts. --WalterSobchak 9/12/12
Looking for Al Hrabosky and any OPC Dave Campbells (the ESPN guy)
There is no justification or debate that could ensue for the following Hall of Famers:
George Kelly
Fred Lindstrom
Travis Jackson
Chick Hafey
Jesse Haines
Rube Marquard
Forced to choose a worst it would either be Kelly or Marquard.
<< <i>There is no justification or debate that could ensue for the following Hall of Famers:
George Kelly
Fred Lindstrom
Travis Jackson
Chick Hafey
Jesse Haines
Rube Marquard
>>
I could debate you on Hafey; I agree with you that he doesn't belong, but I could make a case for him. In any event, there's no way he's the worst HOFer.
Jesse Haines is a good addition to the list. He's also virtually indistinguishable from Jim Hunter so I think Hunter ought to be on the list, too.
I think his brother was more deserving and prolly it was him that the voters thought they were voting in.
Veterans commitee btw.
Steve
Shane
Even though I liked him an awful lot as a player ( He was a very exciting player to watch ) Lou Brock's over all career #'s rank pretty much near the bottom, when all the adjustments for seasonal, era, etc are done. His BFW, ( which takes into account, Batting, slugging, OBP, fielding and other odd balll stats ) was only 2.4 games above an average player. I think he meant a lot to the teams he was on , but stats really don't lie.
Some of the players of the non major leagues , who are in the HOF as players were very , very good. The average level of play, record keeping, and umpiring,was not the same as the higher levels of major league , both majors and minors . Debate on my friends , Debate on.
Think about it, a guy nicknamed Rabbit(so I'm assuming he could leg out a few hits) hitting in the 1920's, the age of the .400 hitter, and he could only muster a .258 career avgerage.
Further, he played 2670 games and only scored 1255 runs, or .47 runs a game, a horribly low amount.
I'll say it again(as this same question was asked about a month ago) it appears Maranville got in the hall because of his nickname, because it sure wasn't because of talent.
<< <i>The correct answer is Rabbit Maranville. The players you folks have mentioned are all great compared to him.
Think about it, a guy nicknamed Rabbit(so I'm assuming he could leg out a few hits) hitting in the 1920's, the age of the .400 hitter, and he could only muster a .258 career avgerage.
Further, he played 2670 games and only scored 1255 runs, or .47 runs a game, a horribly low amount.
I'll say it again(as this same question was asked about a month ago) it appears Maranville got in the hall because of his nickname, because it sure wasn't because of talent. >>
That's been my choice for worst, and Mazeroski is a good choice as well. Of course there are always "reasons" why a player like Maranville gets in. At least he was better than Eddie Gaedel.
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Rabbit Maranville
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Rabbit Maranville: forever the joker.Walter James Vincent Maranville (November 11, 1891 - January 5, 1954), better known as Rabbit Maranville, was a Major League Baseball shortstop. At the time of his retirement in 1935, he had played in a record 23 seasons in the National League, a mark which wasn't broken until 1986 by Pete Rose. He was widely known as one of "baseball's most famous clowns" due to his practical jokes and lack of inhibitions.
Over his lengthy career, Maranville played for the Boston Braves (1912 - 1920, 1929 - 1933, 1935), Pittsburgh Pirates (1921 - 1924), Chicago Cubs (1925), Brooklyn Robins (1926) and St. Louis Cardinals (1927 - 1928). He retired having compiled a .258 batting average, 1255 runs, 28 home runs, 884 RBI and 291 stolen bases. As a shortstop, he finished his career with a positional record 5,139 putouts. He won his only World Series championship in 1914 as a member of the Braves, and won his only other National League championship in 1928 as a member of the Cardinals.
Rabbit Maranville is a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame. Maranville was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1954. After 13 failed attempts, Maranville was elected to the Hall in his 14th chance, the most of any member of the Baseball Hall of Fame.
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Lou Brock? Boy.......I don't think I agree with that! He was an absolute terror on the base paths.
He was a super lead-off man. Longevity, etc etc. I don't know.....what do others think about
Lou Brock?
I just simply don't agree he is not HOF worthy.
Tony
KalineFan
PS--He killed my Tigers in the 68 series, even though WE won!
<< <i>Even though I liked him an awful lot as a player ( He was a very exciting player to watch ) Lou Brock's over all career #'s rank pretty much near the bottom, when all the adjustments for seasonal, era, etc are done. His BFW, ( which takes into account, Batting, slugging, OBP, fielding and other odd balll stats ) was only 2.4 games above an average player. I think he meant a lot to the teams he was on , but stats really don't lie. >>
How to say this without sounding arrogant? There is no way, so I'll just forge ahead....
The BFW system doesn't work. It's not in need of a little tweak; it's broken and it simply does not work. How do we know this for sure? Because when you add up all the "wins" of every player - you don't get the number of games played and last I checked every game ended in a win for somebody. "Wins" are created out of thin air when the formulas dictate it, and they are as easily removed from the face of the Earth if another formula says to do that. And the entire foundation of the fielding "wins" was improperly conceived from the beginning - the system shows Johnny Bench as a bad catcher, and Bill Buckner as a better first baseman than Steve Garvey!
Lou Brock has a career BFW of 2.4? Next thing you'll tell me is that Dwight Evans has more BFW than Pete Rose, that Gary Carter has a negative BFW, that Ralph Kiner has more BFW than Duke Snider and that Amos Otis has more BFW than Dale Murphy. Just kidding, you don't need to tell me any of those things because I already know they're true. I think it only takes one of these examples to prove that the system does not work, but there are hundreds if not thousands of them.
Lou Brock is certainly not the greatest player in the HOF, he may even be closer to the bottom than the top, but to bring his name into this discussion is just kooky talk. Stats do not lie; that makes it really easy to spot the bad ones.
Getting on base , known in normal circles as OBP is measureable. Strickly on that number , a person who gets on base .400 of the time will help his team win ballgames more often over the long haul than a person who has .333 OBP. This raw # doesn't take into account how he got on . He simply measures how often. This is measurable.
A person that hits alot of HR's will help his team win ball games much more than a singles hitter. He is able to score all by himself. He will cause others on base to score. It is easier to score from a homerun than any other event. Fortunately there are only types of hits. Triples are better than doubles or singles. Doubles are better than singles. Singles are better than walks or HBP's or sacs or SF. We call this general area of thought slugging %. Hitters that have better slugging % help their teams win ball games more often than those that have smaller slugging%'s.
When you combine the two, no matter how flawed, OBP + SLG, we have a # that doesn't make linear sense but shows a picture of your best hitters that help a team the most as hitters. The teams that have the highest #'s in this catagory generally have a higher winning % than the teams that have a smaller ( OBP + SLUG ).
Just as you have hitters that get on base or hitters that get the big hit, you also have fielders that do the same. The area of the field that the ball is hit the most ( to the thinking impaired , I do not mean all the time or more than 50 % ) is the SS position. Normally on the ground ball , once a ball is past the infield , a person is on base,and become a threat to score. When you add the ( ASSIST + PO ) of the 3 primary positions (ss, 2B ,& 3B ) ,a person would find that SS's get more chance than 2b's and 2b's in turn more than 3b's. A person primarily gets an opportunity to touch the ball because he got to where the ball was at. Most hitters are trying to hit the ball where the fielders are not. Fielders that get a PO or an ASSIST stop the opposition from getting on base or moving forward. SS's that have more chances ( AS + PO ) than other SS's per games are getting the others teams hitters from getting on the base or getting them off the base. A bad SS that has 150 less chances than an average SS is killing his team, as this many batters are getting on base or advancing. Firstbase men that have more assist, means that they got to some groundball and was able to get someone out with his throw. There were firstbase men that had great range year in and year out ( Bill Buckner and others ) that helped his team win games with his fielding by getting runners off the base. There were Firstbase men than had much lower assist totals year in and year out ( Steve Garvey and others ) that hurt his team by not being able to remove runners off the base , when compared to other firstbase men.
Outfielders affect the team with their fielding as well. Every ball hit to the outfield has potential for a triple , a double or a single. A put out stops all that. Outfielders that have higher PO totals for their position, get batters out , which makes them no longer a threat to score. They also keep the big hit from occuring. An assist by an outfielder is kind of like a great bonus as it means that an additional out has occurred. An outfielder that an additional 10 assists is so very much better than those that do not. An ERROR by an outfielder hurts because it sometimes allows a batter to get on that should have been out or allows a runner to advance that should've been held. I think and I could be wrong , but most OF errors are for more than one base.
With this being said, the BFW # as flawed as it is tries to measure the effect of a players hitting AND his fielding. Outfielders in the HOF that had a high batting average, but low OBP, with little power, who consistantly let the league in errors and rarely had more put outs than the others average outfielders , BUT were fast and could steal bases are exposed for their REAL contributions.
Its one thing to be critical of a system, but when a person offers nothing but insults , as to what is a fair system to measure what we are talking about here, well it sounds like a nagging whinning women, that doesn't know what she wants. To be critical and offer nothing is how shall we say quoting their own words " ARROGANT ". Hot air from a person comes from 2 sources . Come on guy, show us the best system as I want to learn more about this great game. Show us some thing other than pontificating BS. Debate on , lets debate on.
calaban - Just for clarity - Bill Buckner had below average range. The only reason he had more assists than other firstbaseman is because he ALWAYS flipped the ball to the pitcher covering, hence an assist. His actual number of assists to players other than the pitcher is probably less than most other firstbaseman.
Without sounding stuffy, and I'm really not trying to be, I'm trying to get something other than memories on the TV or at the ball park being used as strong evidence. When I was young, the pitchers all looked like they threw over 100 MPH. That's how it looked to me. Reality is reality though, and sadly my memory doesn't hold up. When people bring up say Steve Garvey, who I thought was Mr Clutch, and act like he was Don Mattingly or Mike Squires at 1st, my only conclusion is that they must of drank a lot of stadium beer. No he didn't make many errors , but he was smart enough to know it was better to hold it ,then throw it away, which happened alot early in his carreer. ( By the way , The stats really do confirm , he really was a CLUTCH hitter ).
Rabbit Maranville was a terrible hitter batting I think around .250-.260 in an era when .280-.,290 was normal. His secondary #'s ( extra base hits) were just as bad, compared to his peers , even at short. There have been very few SS's ever that got to more balls as a fielder than him. What he didn't do with his bat, he more than made, and then some with his glove.Does he belong in the HOF ? Probably not , but I know why he's there.
I live in Baltimore, Home of the Orioles. Brooks Robinson( rumored to be the best fielding 3rd baseman ever ) and CAL. Most have all heard what a great SS he was. I've met Brooks many times over the years, seen him play,100 's & 100's of time in person. He put on a great show. Mike Schmidt has the numbers to show he probably the greatest hitting and greatest fielding 3rd baseman of all time, by a mile. I loved Brooks and what he meant to Baltimore. There's a difference between fantasy and reality. As far as CAL goes, I love the guy, and in 1990 he set the major league record for fewest errors in a seson( 3 ). But really when you look closer at the numbers , when one compares his (PO & ASSISTS) #'s to other SS's that year, you would find he made about 160-180 less plays. We , in Baltimore heard all year that Ripken was holding onto the ball to avoid the throwing error. And so it goes. Again there is a difference between whats in our head and what was reality.
I hope we can avoid fantasy or hearsey. Thats why this discussion is so much fun. We get to talkabout what we think, even if we don't agree. Thanks again for this forum.
Bill Buckner was a bad first baseman. He wasn't Dave Kingman bad, but that he was worse than an average first baseman was hardly a secret. All you had to do was watch him play, or watch him not play when his managers pulled him for defensive replacements throughout his career, and no statistical analysis is really necessary. The opposite being the case for Garvey - he was one of the best defensive first basemen to ever play the game. In developing a statistical tool for analyzing defense - which is extremely difficult and certainly beyond my abilities - there is bound to be some trial and error. And the statistician needs to absolutely rely on whatever indisputable facts he has at his disposal to guide him along the way. That Garvey was a better first baseman than Buckner - that Garvey was immensely better than Buckner - is one such absolute fact. That Palmer's system ignores known facts necessarily calls the entire system into question, as indeed do the conclusions that Dwight Evans was more valuable than Pete Rose, that Gary Carter was worse than the average catcher, and that what separated Lou Brock from an average outfielder over the course of a twenty year career was 2 extra wins.
The errors in the BFW system are too numerous to count. Aro13 pointed out a specific example of one of the largest mistakes - that all fielding chances are treated equally even though many, if not most, are a result of factors other than skill. Nap Lajoie looks like an absolute fielding god under the BFW system because he was the star (and manager) of his team and, damn it - get out of my way, he was going to take every throw to second base even when it made more sense for the shortstop to take them.
Another HUGE error involves the lack of adjustment in the system to account for the pitchers on the team. Were there an odd proportion of lefties, were they a mostly ground-ball or fly-ball staff, did they strike out so many hitters that there were fewer total chances for the fielders? All of these things have an obvious impact on the number of chances any specific fielder might get, but the BFW system pretends that they don't matter. That they do is obvious.
Johnny Bench, at least until Pudge came along, was probably the best catcher in history. Again, this is one of the known facts that any system ought to be relying on to point the way. But the BFW system says that Johnny Bench was not only not great, it says that he actually cost the Reds games with his poor fielding. Why? Because he threw out so few runners. And why did he throw out so few runners? Because he was so unbelievably great at throwing out runners, that nobody tried to run on him. So, according to the BFW system Johnny Bench was a bad catcher because he was so good at throwing out runners. As Dave Barry might say, I am not making this up.
Calaban, please do not confuse insults of the BFW system (which I have made) to personal insults (which only you have made). I don't expect you to be pleased to find out that a system you have obviously spent a fair amount of time reading about was a waste of your time. But Pete Palmer is the one you should be mad at, not me.
By the way Arky was a GREAT one. Bert was a , head case , with one of the greatest curveball I ever saw. I saw numerous Blyleven interview over the years. They ( the interviews )spoke for them selves. He was a great ball player too. I still liked both , but I'd rather have Arky on my team if I had to choose between the two.
This is fun, lets keep it up.
1)Cross era comparisons from Total Baseball are WAAAY OFF. For example, Total Baseball(through the 1988 edition)measures the 100 best pitching seasons with their Adjusted Pitching Runs! It says that 66 of the best 100 season of all time occured in the 1800's!! And that only THREE occured between 1945 and 1988!! THREE. Even they themselves make a crack about how you just can't look at normal ERA otherwise it would say all the best seasons occured before 1900, and that it would be foolish to think such a thing to be true. Yet, they trot out their final work, and their work has a similarly out of whack conclusion. And this is their crack at trying to measure different eras? Terrible job! Even a moron on the street should recognize the 66 to 3 conclusion to be the biggest head scratcher of all time.
Their Total Baseball ranking(hitters and pitchers), and this is their baby, their conclusion of their work, has 35 of the best baeball seasons occuing from 1880-1889, and only 12 occuring between 1950 to 1989. So in the most competitive time in the history, ONLY THREE players crack the top 100?? Quite awful. How they can trot this out, and push it off as law is crazy.
2)Dallas pointed out a huge flaw in the Total Baseball system....defensive runs. There is an excellent analysis of that on DiamondMind baseball(I don't know if it is still there though). In other words, take the defensive value from them with a grain of salt.
3)They may also be overly generous to the value of SS, 2B, etc...as opposed to 1B. Their positional adjustment is questionable. For example...
Alex Rodriguez is given X value when he was a SS, then if he performs the exact same offensively the next year at third base, his value takes a hit. While it is true that it is more valuable to have his numbers at SS, what you are now doing with this is MEASURING THE DECISION MAKING OF THE BALLCLUB based on their decision where to use him, and not how good a player Alex Rodriguez is. This is a big problem, and smacks in the face of trying to achieve objective measurement of a player.
It is also PURE estimation on the position value scarcity of a ss vs. 1B. In Total Baseball, firstbaseman take a HUGE hit, and SS get a HUGE boost in baseball value. There is no question that a boost is in order, but they make a large one. Where it is true that Mark McGwire would be bad at SS, Ozzie Smith would also not be nearly as good defensively at 1b as McGwire was. Why? The biggest attribute of a 1B is being able to to retrieve throws before the runner gets to first. A little short guy like Smith would be a liability there, wheras McGwire would save many more runs by reaching balls that Smith would not have. The problem is that nobody has ever measured this aspect of the first baseman, yet it is their most important job. First baseman take the biggest hit of all, and they are barely viewed better than a DH on the Total Baseball defensive spectrum. This is insane.
4)Their Linear Weights hitting portion is good(though i don't know if they've kept up with the new values), but it doesn't take into account the context of each offesnive event. When the situational aspects are taken into account, it tells a more precise story.
Those are the flaws of the Total Baseball BFW. And those are what led me to debate the hardliners of this. They lived by this stuff, and swore by it. Yet, their own notions and logic are contradicted in their own conclusions of their own work(like the cross era stuff). This is the kind of stuff that gives good logical baseball stat research a bad name.
As for which standards to use, there isn't just one that should be used. There are some very good ones, and they should ALL be taken into account for what they offer. As for the cross era comparisons, NOBODY has done anything good with that yet. Even the best methods available are off, and in line for a BIG adjustment.
Unless of course he can barely walk and balls hit right behind the bag are 3 to 1'd cuz the batter can run 90 feet before the slo footed firstbasemen jogs 5?
Steve
<< <i>Correct me if I am wrong but wouldn't a firstbasemen that gets alot of assists pitching off to the pitcher ala 3 to 1 mean he has good range? >>
Steve, you're certainly not "wrong", but assists by a first baseman measure two things - their range and their preference for tossing to the pitcher vs. touching the bag themselves. In the BFW system, assists by first basemen ONLY measure range and as a result the best fielding first basemen are always the ones who CHOOSE to flip to the pitcher most or all of the time. The result is simply meaningless. Want to get on BFW's list of greatest first basemen? Start flipping to the pitcher (riskier) instead of making the play yourself (safer). Actually, since the best first basemen generally make the smarter play of touching the bag themselves whenever they can and since those discretionary assists are very much more common than the ones where the first baseman has ranged so far from the bag that he must flip to the pitcher, the BFW system - to the degree it measures anything at all - tends to rank the first basemen in reverse order of their actual fielding ability.
The Win Shares system is MUCH better than the BFW system. That's not to say that it is perfect - it's not - but the obvious shortcomings in it are mostly admitted to by James, and they generally occur when there is no obviously better solution. As skinpinch noted about the assignment of value to different positions under the BFW system, so to does the Win Shares system automatically assume that shortstops are better fielders than first basemen or third basemen. That's not a desirable assumption in all cases, but it is undeniably the case generally, and there is no obvious way to statistically estimate Ozzie Smith's ability at first base or Mark McGwire's ability at short. It is an "error" that should average out at least. The errors in the BFW system, on the other hand, do not average out and in fact tend to build upon themselves in many cases. For each questionable fielding ranking under the Win Shares method I believe that I could find 10 obvious, outrageous errors in the BFW rankings. I am not aware of any obvious, outrageous errors in the Win Shares fielding rankings.
But, to give credit where credit is due, the BFW hitting rankings are much better than their fielding rankings (although not nearly as good as Win Shares' and only within a given era) and they do correctly identify Jim Rice as the third best outfielder on his team.
If anyone is seriously interested in the mechanics of state-of-the-art player evaluation I strongly recommend Win Shares and Historical Baseball Abstract by Bill James. You may very well find things within the system with which you disagree (as I have), but you will find them because James is 100% transparent about each step of his method and there are no better published sources available.
<< <i>By the way Arky was a GREAT one. Bert was a , head case , with one of the greatest curveball I ever saw. I saw numerous Blyleven interview over the years. They ( the interviews )spoke for them selves. He was a great ball player too. I still liked both , but I'd rather have Arky on my team if I had to choose between the two. >>
No question about it, Arky Vaughn is the least appreciated superstar in the history of baseball. But seeing that requires that one look at the right things and ignore the wrong things, and very few people do that.