Is Charlie Bennett a HOFer?

[Rad_Hazard]

Originally Posted by G1911

I voted borderline. He’s not a bad candidate, he might be the best catcher not in the Hall already. A reasonable expansion, but I hardly consider him in the group of folks where it is unjust he isn’t in already.

I don’t think using the stat equations written around the modern game and what is valued now are particularly telling of this very different context he played. They do good with modern players, I do not really buy in that the gigantic quantity of value assumptions and comparison to an imaginary modern replacement player concept that form the root of WAR is much relevant to baseball as it existed in the 19th century. WAR is great for ID’ing overlooked players in 2014, not for 1884 for whom it is not written.

I wouldn’t hold that he only caught 954 games against him very much, due to the time context. I would probably vote for him as a very bottom tier hall of famer if the ballot did not have the most deserving 19th century players.

Thank you for the well thought out response.

The reason I like modern sabermetric statistics with 19th century players is that a lot of their on-field contributions seem quite low when compared to modern players and this is a product of the times (lower amounts of games played per season, etc).

Modern sabermetric statistics are formed using their contemporaries and not modern players so it really gives a good insight as to how they compare to their 19th century peers. Even if we didn't want to go that route, we can see that Bennett had a .942 fielding percentage at catcher to a .909 league average during his playing days, which may be his most impressive state.

Originally Posted by cgjackson222

Always nice to learn a little more about a relatively obscure player.

Are the WAR and other stats you provided just for the years the players played catcher?

And do you happen to have a source for the WAR per 650 plate appearances stat you cite? That is an interesting statistic. I'd like to see the other guys leading the list.

I might include Gene Tenace in the conversation as the most worthy pre-1980 catcher. Yes, he retired in 1983, but most of his good years were in the 70s.
Bill Freehan was pretty solid as well, as he was an 11x All Star with 5 Gold Gloves.

The WAR and other stats I provided are for all seasons/games played by those in the graphics (part of my criteria was 80% of games played at the catching position, but this includes everything at every position as long as they made the cut of 80%).

I agree that Gene Tenace and Bill Freehan, as well as my suggestion of Wally Schang are also great catchers to include in that conversation, but overall my money is on Bennett, his defensive stats are on par with Ivan Rodriguez, even though he played in a gloveless and mostly equipment-less era. He was also an extremely popular player in his day who even had a stadium named after him; Bennett Park in Detroit.

As for the WAR per 650 PA's, that was a quote from an article I found that was a bit dated as it was posted 5 years ago. While it was likely correct at the time, the numbers have shifted a bit since, but Bennett is still 38th in WAR per 650 PA's. Here is the data as I've compiled it from Baseball Reference. NOTE: this list is ALL-TIME for all position players

Fun Fact: I capped the list at the first 400 players and sitting at the bottom of those 400 is HOFer Harold Baines (2.27 WAR per 650 PA's), Baines also has the exact same WAR as Bennett (38.8) but has 11092 PA's to Bennett's 4310...