Clayton Kershaw

[CMIZ5290]

Originally Posted by bravos4evr

Yes I think all of those guys should be in with perhaps the exception of Brown due to his appearing on the Mitchell list.

It's a crime Mussina wasn't a first ballot guy as he should have been.


and yes for their careers Murray and Kaat provided very similar value, overall. I don't get why you have such a hard time with this.

If you play ten years and put up 72 WAR you were a better player than a guy who put up 72 WAR over 20 years, but FOR YOUR CAREER, you provided exactly the same amount of wins above a replacement player.


do you think that 2000 pounds of dirt piled slowly is less a ton than 2000 pounds of dirt piled quickly?

Kaat was a reliever for 4 of the final 5 years of his career, thus providing very little value on a WAR basis.

Kaat 19 seasons of positive WAR contribution - total fWAR 70.9

Eddie Murray 18 seasons of positive WAR contribution- total fWAR 72.0

and like I said, Kaat's peak production period of 1961-1975 he was the 3rd best pitcher behind only Gibson and Gaylord Perry.

Eddie Murray's peak production period from 1977-1990 he was 4th best position player behind Schmidt, Henderson and Brett.

I think both compare pretty well, they are within 1 WAR for their careers had similar rankings against their peers in their prime and both had similar total years of positive WAR contribution.

Nick- I have tried to follow you but some of your threads don't make sense to me. You are the guy that thinks 3000 hits is drastically overrated....Jim Kaat? Really? career ERA of 3.50? And please, get off this WAR contribution bullshit. Let's talk baseball....Would you actually take Kaat over Bob Feller in a must win game? I don't think so....The verbiage on this thread is remarkable and way too extensive. I would venture to say that the book War and Peace was more simplified. Holy Crap

[bravos4evr]

Originally Posted by CMIZ5290

Nick- I have tried to follow you but some of your threads don't make sense to me. You are the guy that thinks 3000 hits is drastically overrated....Jim Kaat? Really? career ERA of 3.50? And please, get off this WAR contribution bullshit. Let's talk baseball....Would you actually take Kaat over Bob Feller in a must win game? I don't think so....The verbiage on this thread is remarkable and way too extensive. I would venture to say that the book War and Peace was more simplified. Holy Crap

who ever said I would prefer Kaat over Feller? I would take Feller over a lot of guys in the HOF, that doesn't mean they don't belong there.


ERA is not a very good stat, it's better than using win and losses, but it doesn't do as good a job at describing pitching performance as we have been lead to believe over the years. FIP and peripherals are better.

WAR is the best stat at comparing players across eras in one easy number. It's not perfect, but it's a heckuva lot better than using the old counting stats everyone seems so addicted to.

I do think 3000 hits is a milestone for the player's career, but it IS NOT an indicator for a good hitter. Too many fans are hung up on the old ways of judging players, we have found those ways are mostly incorrect. Time to evolve or get left behind, this is the way of things.

[the 'stache]

Forget it, Kevin, his mind is made up, and logic doesn't seem to apply when his mind's made up. He's like a little kid sticking his fingers in his ears, screaming "lalalalalala" 70.9 and 72.0 are the same thing. Never mind that one player played 20% longer. They clearly provided the same value to their teams.

2,000 pounds of dirt is 2,000 pounds of dirt....really? LOL

3.75 more years played is 3.75 more years played, and stating that "Kaat was a reliever the last four years" is irrelevant. When he was a reliever, he obviously got fewer innings per season. That was factored in by averaging innings pitched per 162 team games played.

Murray was an elite player, and was a first ballot Hall of Famer. Kaat was on the ballot for fifteen years, and never even broke 30% of the vote. 75% is required to get into Cooperstown, and Kaat couldn't even get 40% of what was required.

Originally Posted by CMIZ5290

Nick- I have tried to follow you but some of your threads don't make sense to me. You are the guy that thinks 3000 hits is drastically overrated....Jim Kaat? Really? career ERA of 3.50? And please, get off this WAR contribution bullshit. Let's talk baseball....Would you actually take Kaat over Bob Feller in a must win game? I don't think so....The verbiage on this thread is remarkable and way too extensive. I would venture to say that the book War and Peace was more simplified. Holy Crap

[nat]

The problem with simply comparing WAR totals for HOF discussions is that WAR doesn't measure value. It measures wins above replacement. Wins are the basic building blocks of value, but value isn't just their sum. How they are distributed matters also.

Look at it this way. An average player will post about 2 WAR in a season. An average team will win 81 games (give or take; more precisely, on average, a team will win 81 games). Say that it takes 90 wins to get into the post season (number for illustration purposes only). There is, therefore, a lot more value to a team to getting to 90 wins than there is to sitting at 81. A lot more value, over and above the extra 9 wins. For example, it's more important to get from 81 to 90 than it is to get from 72 to 81. So a 4 WAR season is more than twice as valuable than a 2 WAR season.

And that's the reason that not all 70 WAR careers are of equal value. It's more valuable to have that production concentrated than it is to have it spread out. It's why Sandy Koufax is a reasonably good hall of fame choice, and not a pretty bad one.

[packs]

So a thread about Clayton Kershaw has devolved into a discussion about Jim Kaat?

[bravos4evr]

Originally Posted by nat

And that's the reason that not all 70 WAR careers are of equal value. It's more valuable to have that production concentrated than it is to have it spread out. It's why Sandy Koufax is a reasonably good hall of fame choice, and not a pretty bad one.

Kaat- 19 seasons of positive WAR , 68.3 WAR over 16 seasons

Murray-18 seasons of positive WAR, 65.4 WAR in 14 seasons

seems like both guys had about the same amount of productive years

[bravos4evr]

Originally Posted by the 'stache

Forget it, Kevin, his mind is made up, and logic doesn't seem to apply when his mind's made up. He's like a little kid sticking his fingers in his ears, screaming "lalalalalala" 70.9 and 72.0 are the same thing. Never mind that one player played 20% longer. They clearly provided the same value to their teams.

2,000 pounds of dirt is 2,000 pounds of dirt....really? LOL

3.75 more years played is 3.75 more years played, and stating that "Kaat was a reliever the last four years" is irrelevant. When he was a reliever, he obviously got fewer innings per season. That was factored in by averaging innings pitched per 162 team games played.

Murray was an elite player, and was a first ballot Hall of Famer. Kaat was on the ballot for fifteen years, and never even broke 30% of the vote. 75% is required to get into Cooperstown, and Kaat couldn't even get 40% of what was required.

A- 20% longer is inaccurate when measuring pitcher versus hitter

B- you seem to ignore the part where I showed you Eddie Murray was not an elite player (and provided evidence to this FACT)

C- you get snarky about my example of value but don't have an argument against it.

D- you keep ignoring the part where I showed you Kaat is a top 30 pitcher all time and top 22 since the live ball era. why the omission?

[packs]

In one thread you argue that Ichiro was more or less an average player and now in this thread you're arguing that Jim Kaat is one of the all time best pitchers.

I will use your own methods against you to demonstrate why it doesn't make sense to view baseball players the way you do. You said Ichiro was only 5 percent better than an average player based on RC+. Well, Jim Kaat's ERA+ is only 108, that makes him just 8 percent better than a league average pitcher.

[bravos4evr]

Originally Posted by packs

In one thread you argue that Ichiro was more or less an average player and now in this thread you're arguing that Jim Kaat is one of the all time best pitchers.

I will use your own methods against you to demonstrate why it doesn't make sense to view baseball players the way you do. You said Ichiro was only 5 percent better than an average player based on RC+. Well, Jim Kaat's ERA+ is only 108, that makes him just 8 percent better than a league average pitcher.

I don't think much of ERA+ or any other proprietary BR stat (and it would be dishonest for me or anyone else to use a fangraphs stat for one player and compare it to a baseball reference stat for another) Kaat's FIP is 28th in the live ball era of all pitchers with at least 3000 innings pitched. Ahead of Spahn, Tiant, Feller, Robin Roberts, Jim Palmer, Niekro and Catfish Hunter.

PLUS, if folks want to throw voting and awards into the mix, Kaat has 16 GG's.

I never said I didn't think Ichiro was a HOF'er either, nor did i say he was an avg PLAYER, he IS a slightly above avg HITTER for his career though. (as he is a HOF PLAYER because of his total game, but not just on his bat alone) plus Ichiro has 58.2 fWAR in 16 seasons which ,considering his late entry into MLB, is surely good enough. In his prime, Ichiro was around 20% above avg with the bat, but he's hurt his career avg because of playing these last 4 or 5 seasons as it now sits at 105%

[the 'stache]

Forget it. I've given up. Again, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. His mind is made up, and if Jesus came down from the heavens, and told him he was wrong, he'd argue with him.

Originally Posted by packs

In one thread you argue that Ichiro was more or less an average player and now in this thread you're arguing that Jim Kaat is one of the all time best pitchers.

I will use your own methods against you to demonstrate why it doesn't make sense to view baseball players the way you do. You said Ichiro was only 5 percent better than an average player based on RC+. Well, Jim Kaat's ERA+ is only 108, that makes him just 8 percent better than a league average pitcher.

[packs]

People always have an excuse why their facts are more important than your facts and their facts are the ones that really matter. It's just like when you're at a card show and the dealer's cards always seem to be worth more than your cards because they own them.

[bravos4evr]

I don't understand why people have to make things personal when they feel like they are losing an argument. I have been consistent in my use of fangraphs, presented a reasonable argument and been met with personal jabs and snarky derision, that isn't cool.

I happen to think baseball reference is an antiquated site in their proprietary stats and that Fangraphs is more up to date, evolved and simply better. I am not going to use BR for some stuff then Fangraphs for others as that would be cherry picking.

No I don't think that the % of votes received has any bearing nor validity on the merits of a candidate as the voters have shown over and over again they are fairly worthless at defining a HOF player. (Maz and Rice are in, Dick Allen and Trammel are not)

If you don't think WAR is a good measuring stick for a player's career then why use it at all? I happen to think that there are 3 paths to the HOF, being amazing for a shorter period of time (Koufax) being really good for a looong period of time (Murray, Kaat) or a combo of the two (Aaron, Mays) You can argue against this sure, but I don't see the need to get so flippant and dickish about it.


ETA: look at Glavine for example, he's really a borderline guy, sure he has the Cy Young awards, but for a career, it's sketchy. I have a hard time, even as a biased Braves fan, to accept his being in there and keeping Kaat, Mussina or Shilling out.