fyp

Does one have to be the best pitcher/hitter in the league to have a hall of fame level season now? That would put travis at a solid 0 now. We would also have to kick out half of the hall of fame, and then elect a bunch of guys who had 1 great season and were the best pitcher or hitter that year in that league. Your argument changes every single post.


I have already said, multiple times now, that Chesbro is a poor selection. But it is just not factually true that he only had 1 hall of fame level season. If he had only that season, he would not be in the hall of fame (as evidenced by the fact that not a single short-peak player in the Hall, even the worst selections, have only had 1 excellent season).


Yes, if Chesbro did what he did over a long career, it would be less impressive. That is obvious. It is true of every single player in baseball history. If Travis had his 1941 season's numbers cut into 3 years, he would have been sent to the Minor Leagues. If Willie Mays took 60 seasons to do what he did in 20, he would have been a far below average player every year and also sent packing long before his 60th season. This is an absurdist argument, that a player is not a real hall of famer or a star because if you take their best years and pretend they happened in 3 times the length, they would not be hall of famers or stars. There must be some logic, some rationality, some consistency, and we must look at the actual numbers, which are freely available.

It's pretty cut and dry to me. If Ted Williams didn't hit 400, he's still a HOFer. If Joe D didn't get a hit in 56 straight games, still a HOFer. If Babe Ruth doesn't hit 60, still a HOFer.

Jack Chesbro did what outside of winning 41 games in one season? Lead the league in wins one other time? So what? The game is full of players who led the league in wins twice in their career. What else sets him apart?

Well, if posting 133 ERA+'s and leading the league in major statistical categories is a "so what" to you, there are maybe 4 or 5 pitchers in all of baseball history who achieved anything. This is a pretty ridiculous standard.


Again, I wouldn't vote for Chesbro myself either, but your argument is easily contradicted by looking at his stats, and entirely inconsistent with your previous arguments for Travis.

Yes, I would say a 133 ERA+ once is no big deal. it doesn't even register as a top 500 single season mark.

My argument about Travis had to do with what could have been and what was given up. Of course Chesbro doesn't apply to him. Chesbro didn't fight in a war.

Travis' best season does not qualify as a hall of fame season by the standard you have set for Chesbro. Seems like the argument for him is thus completely null now.

Ted, more stories please I'm really enjoying them!

I will take the thread to a slightly different course. While I think the hall has done s pretty good job a dealing with the players who lost time mid career because of the war I don’t think that Hall or baseball history in general has done a good job of dealing with players who’s career was delayed by the war. I will use Al Rosen as an example. Rosen who is not well remembered today was the 1953 AL MVP and almost won the triple crown. He had five straight seasons of 100 RBI and had a career war of 35 in a really short career. He is not considered a baseball victim of WWII because his first full year in the majors was 1950. But his first year in the minors was in 1942 when he had a great year as an 18 year old. He then is in the military for 4 years and misses those years. But for the war it is very possible that he makes it to the bigs as a 21 year old rather then a 26 year old and there is s good chance he has 10 straight 1000 seasons and maybe another MVP. I could list many players along this type.

I agree, Al Rosen is one of my favorites. Gene Woodling is another that comes to mind. He was something of a prodigy having won three minor league batting titles by the time he was twenty. Still twenty when the Indians brought him up he hit well for a couple of weeks & it's reasonable to believe he would have been an every day player from then on. Instead he went into the service & didn't make the majors for good until he was twenty-six.

Dick Wakefield & Sam Chapman were young players who had breakout seasons when they went off to serve & neither was the same player when they returned. Larry French & Tommy Bridges missed winning 200 games & in Bridges' case a possible place in the HOF. Johnny Pesky's career still would have been short but he may have topped 2,000 hits & wouldn't have been a bad addition to the Hall. Red Ruffing actually made the Hall but he missed out on a chance to win 300 games.

Re: Cecil Travis: If the argument is "should" he have made the HOF, it is debatable. But I think it pretty likely that he "would" have been elected if his career was uninterrupted & he remained healthy. A BA well over .300 (his lifetime BA at the end of 1941 was .327) & 2,500+ hits w/much of his career at SS would be close to a lock, regardless of his WAR total, IMO.

Jack Chesbro and Cecil Travis played in completely different eras. It's a difference between apples and oranges. Happy Jack was voted in by the Old Timers Committee in 1946 so most likely, those who voted him in actually saw him play or followed him in the papers.

There are very few people around today who can remember seeing Travis play and too many fans and card collectors put too much on stats and forget that you cant compare players of one generation to today's standards. We also tend to forget or not quite understand the time in America in which these players lived. One poster he said, and I completely agree, that Travis's injury was out of his control -his government asked him to do a job -and a compulsory job at that. It would've been a completely different story had he been injured playing the game.

There is noting to assume that had he not been in the Service, that he wouldn't have continued those 1941 numbers or had a few awards because of the depleted ranks. Travis was also a very humble man and I doubt he'd ever consider himself a Hall worth candidate even if he had Cobb-like numbers. That just wasn't his style.

I'm quite aware that they played in separate era's. If the argument is that Chesbro had too short of a peak to make the hall, then Travis doesn't make it either. Or are we allowing single season peaks only for players in Travis' era, and not others (ignoring that Chesbro, in fact, had other very high performing seasons)? What kind of a reasonable standard is that?


OPS+ does not compare the player to today's standards. Not at all. It compares them to the league average in that specific year. Nowhere have I compared Travis' play to the numbers of today, and quite specifically, placed his batting average in the context of the era and league in which he played.


If your point is that we today can't accurately judge players from the past, then Travis should not be elected, because we cannot judge him. Nobody before year X should ever be considered then.


"There is noting to assume that had he not been in the Service, that he wouldn't have continued those 1941 numbers or had a few awards because of the depleted ranks" - This is very true. There is also nothing to assume that he would repeat his 1941 season several times, and play at a significantly higher level of play from every single other one of his years. Why should we make the assumption he would?


The Hall of Fame should not be based on selective arguments that are not applied to any other players. If there is no logical consistency, and we can elect players by just filling in their careers with fantasy years because we like them or war service tugs on our heart strings, then it's a Hall of Fiction, not a Hall of Fame.