HOF Arguments
markj111
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in Sports Talk
From Baseball Prospectus-Subscription required for the article-I have given an excerpt below.
The Hall of Famously Weak Arguments, Part I
In the wake of this year’s Hall of Fame voting season, and to help remove the bad taste left by some of the mind-numbingly bad arguments I’ve heard and read over the last few weeks for or against various HOF candidates, I thought it might be fun to open my very own Hall of Famously Bad Baseball Arguments. To do this, I need your help. I am hereby nominating you for membership in the BBWAA—Baseball Weak Argument Arbiters—and empowering you to nominate and vote for the baseball arguments that you find the most irritating and least convincing.
Examples:
5. “He wasn’t the most dominant player (on his team/at his position) during his era.”
When it’s heard:
When discussing the Hall-worthiness of a player who had contemporaries or teammates to whom he was viewed as inferior. Recent examples include Tim Raines (Rickey Henderson), Edgar Martinez (A-Rod, Big Unit, Junior), and Ron Santo (Ernie Banks, Ferguson Jenkins, and Billy Williams).
Why it’s weak:
Talent is not distributed evenly across teams or eras, so it’s unfair to punish a player for the random misfortune of being, say, the second-greatest leadoff man in history whose career happened to coincide with the greatest leadoff man in history, or being teammates with three other players whose nicknames will live on decades after they retire. This particular argument grates on me, since I’m convinced it helped keep the more-than-deserving Santo out of the Hall until after his death. There are far better arguments for or against a player’s candidacy.
When it might be correct:
Three occasions come to mind—never, never, and never.
6. “You can’t know how good he was unless you saw him play.”
When it’s heard:
Whenever a famous retired player with good counting stats but bad rate stats is dissed by propeller-heads with spreadsheets, you’ll hear a few sportswriters trot this one out.
Why it’s weak:
While it’s true that statistics can be made to lie, they’re freakin’ sodium pentathol when compared to even a mountain of anecdotal evidence. Saying you had to have watched a given player on a day-to-day basis to appropriately judge his value is ageist, condescending, and disregards the fact that the opinion being voiced was likely formed in an echo chamber. You’ll usually hear this as an argument of last resort, advanced to help explain why Hall of Fame voters should overlook some deep statistical flaw in a player’s case.
Recent examples include Andre Dawson’s low OBP (since he was acting like a slugger, not a table-setter) or the league-average ERA of Jack Morris (since he was pitching to the score). Which begs the fatal question, why did so many other great sluggers manage higher OBPs, and so many other great starters post lower ERAs?
When it might be correct:
If you share Kevin Goldstein’s opinion that the Hall of Fame is a place for the famous, not necessarily the best, this argument works fine. The characteristics of players who actually help teams win tend to be less easy to observe than the characteristics that make them famous. Every hitter makes lots of outs, so it takes a lot of “seeing” to notice the difference between a player with a .320 OBP and a .370 OBP, compared to noticing the difference between 10 home runs and 40 home runs. If you want to base your opinion of a player on how good you thought he was while you watched him, that’s fine; just don’t try to argue that you’re certain he was more valuable than another player, because there’s no way you can be sure of that just from observing.
The Hall of Famously Weak Arguments, Part I
In the wake of this year’s Hall of Fame voting season, and to help remove the bad taste left by some of the mind-numbingly bad arguments I’ve heard and read over the last few weeks for or against various HOF candidates, I thought it might be fun to open my very own Hall of Famously Bad Baseball Arguments. To do this, I need your help. I am hereby nominating you for membership in the BBWAA—Baseball Weak Argument Arbiters—and empowering you to nominate and vote for the baseball arguments that you find the most irritating and least convincing.
Examples:
5. “He wasn’t the most dominant player (on his team/at his position) during his era.”
When it’s heard:
When discussing the Hall-worthiness of a player who had contemporaries or teammates to whom he was viewed as inferior. Recent examples include Tim Raines (Rickey Henderson), Edgar Martinez (A-Rod, Big Unit, Junior), and Ron Santo (Ernie Banks, Ferguson Jenkins, and Billy Williams).
Why it’s weak:
Talent is not distributed evenly across teams or eras, so it’s unfair to punish a player for the random misfortune of being, say, the second-greatest leadoff man in history whose career happened to coincide with the greatest leadoff man in history, or being teammates with three other players whose nicknames will live on decades after they retire. This particular argument grates on me, since I’m convinced it helped keep the more-than-deserving Santo out of the Hall until after his death. There are far better arguments for or against a player’s candidacy.
When it might be correct:
Three occasions come to mind—never, never, and never.
6. “You can’t know how good he was unless you saw him play.”
When it’s heard:
Whenever a famous retired player with good counting stats but bad rate stats is dissed by propeller-heads with spreadsheets, you’ll hear a few sportswriters trot this one out.
Why it’s weak:
While it’s true that statistics can be made to lie, they’re freakin’ sodium pentathol when compared to even a mountain of anecdotal evidence. Saying you had to have watched a given player on a day-to-day basis to appropriately judge his value is ageist, condescending, and disregards the fact that the opinion being voiced was likely formed in an echo chamber. You’ll usually hear this as an argument of last resort, advanced to help explain why Hall of Fame voters should overlook some deep statistical flaw in a player’s case.
Recent examples include Andre Dawson’s low OBP (since he was acting like a slugger, not a table-setter) or the league-average ERA of Jack Morris (since he was pitching to the score). Which begs the fatal question, why did so many other great sluggers manage higher OBPs, and so many other great starters post lower ERAs?
When it might be correct:
If you share Kevin Goldstein’s opinion that the Hall of Fame is a place for the famous, not necessarily the best, this argument works fine. The characteristics of players who actually help teams win tend to be less easy to observe than the characteristics that make them famous. Every hitter makes lots of outs, so it takes a lot of “seeing” to notice the difference between a player with a .320 OBP and a .370 OBP, compared to noticing the difference between 10 home runs and 40 home runs. If you want to base your opinion of a player on how good you thought he was while you watched him, that’s fine; just don’t try to argue that you’re certain he was more valuable than another player, because there’s no way you can be sure of that just from observing.
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