Hall of Fame Early Baseball Committee

[Jason19th]

While I think WAR is a great stat it is a Theory. It is not an objective measurement like batting average or era. It is a formula that attempts to predict value based on a combination of objective measurements and subjective weights applied to those measurements. It produces a value that cannot yet actually be confirmed. If that is not a theory I don’t know what is

[nat]

fWAR (the version you'll find on Fangraphs) and bWAR (the version on baseball-reference) are two different statistics, that measure different things. Despite the fact that they both talk about "wins above replacement" it's probably best not to think of them as rival accounts of a single value.

There are several differences between them, but the biggest one is in how they deal with pitching. Pitching values in fWAR are based on the pitchers' strikeout rate, walk rate, and homerun allowed rate, since these figures together predict future ERA better than does a pitcher's past ERA. In bWAR, pitcher value is based on runs allowed, which does a less-good job at predicting future ERA, but, of course, does a better job at capturing, you know, the runs that the pitcher actually allowed.

One way to think about the difference between the two is that they are answers to two different questions. fWAR is an answer to the question "if this player were to play for a randomly selected team, how many more (or fewer) games should we expect that team to win in the future?", whereas bWAR is an answer to the question "if this player were to have played for a randomly selected team, how many more (or fewer) games should we expect them to have won?". I think that, for hall of fame purposes, bWAR is the one that you want to look at. The hall of fame is a retrospective thing, and it's bWAR that's the retrospective one.

(In fact, there are, IMHO, pretty limited uses for fWAR. If you are trying to predict future performance, you usually won't want to strip out context in the way that fWAR does. You'll probably want to predict performance of the player if he's playing for some specific team, not a randomly chosen one.)

There's nothing subjective about either WAR measure, they're just algorithms that take events that actually happened and spits out a number. Just like ERA and batting average.

Very briefly, here's the general idea. WAR calculations are based on something called "linear weights". The idea behind linear weights is that each event that happens on a baseball field (a batter hitting a single, for example), has a run value. The run value of an event is how many more or fewer runs a team scores, on average, after an event of that kind. Run values are derived historically - you get them by adding up all of the runs that actually scored after someone hit a single (for example), above or below the average number of runs scored in an otherwise similar situation, and dividing by the number of singles that were actually hit. (You can use all of baseball history for this if you want, but it makes more sense to use a limited range of years, since the run value of an event will vary over time.) By adding up the run values of everything that a player did, you get the number of runs he produced. You then divide that number by the number of runs that will, on average, win a game for a team. (About 10 in recent years - note, this isn't runs scored, it's runs scored PLUS runs that you prevented the other team from scoring.) That gives you the number of wins a player produced. You then find the wins produced by "replacement level" players. A replacement level player is the last guy on the roster, the kind of guy who every team has stashed in AAA, the kind of guy who is barely (or almost) a major leaguer. That kind of guy. And then you subtract replacement level wins from the wins that your player produced to get his wins above replacement.

That's the general idea. There are lots of complications involved in, for example, adjusting for the park that a player plays in. But all of these extra adjustments (that I'm skipping over for the sake of this short post) are also derived from historical data. That is, they, just like the linear weights calculations, reflect what actually happened on the baseball field.

[ValKehl]

Thanks, Scott, for your post re Dummy Hoy. I am in awe of anyone who overcomes a significant handicap to accomplish great things in life. Even though Hoy's career stats are not quite up the the usual HOF standards, I feel the HOF should enshrine Hoy to recognize how much a handicapped baseball player can accomplish.

[GaryPassamonte]

My top choice.

[Leon]

Originally Posted by ValKehl

Thanks, Scott, for your post re Dummy Hoy. I am in awe of anyone who overcomes a significant handicap to accomplish great things in life. Even though Hoy's career stats are not quite up the the usual HOF standards, I feel the HOF should enshrine Hoy to recognize how much a handicapped baseball player can accomplish.

Not a bad perspective.

[bigfanNY]

Tip O'neil another best player on one of the best teams ever 1886 St. Louis. American Assn I think is reason he is not already in..

[Jim65]

I think these Early Baseball/Veterans Committees should be done away with, they accomplished what their intention was, to see if any HOF players were missed to the years. These players have been looked at and evaluated many times. How many more Harold Baines need to be elected?

[CardCollector]

Originally Posted by Jim65

I think these Early Baseball/Veterans Committees should be done away with, they accomplished what their intention was, to see if any HOF players were missed to the years. These players have been looked at and evaluated many times. How many more Harold Baines need to be elected?

Thanks all, for the many illuminating posts on who might deserve to get in. I think the point Jim65 raises is a worthy one ripe for further discussion. Set aside Baines because the Early Committee probably wouldn't include someone who doesn't rate high statistically. I wonder if there is something to be said for not opening up the Hall to 19th century players UNLESS there is a modern stat that wasn't available initially that provides further justification for entry. Hall of Stats seems to do a pretty good job of this, and there's some overlap with a few of the players we've been discussing (including Caruthers and Dahlen): http://www.hallofstats.com/. But unless there's a strong statistical case based on something not available generations ago, I think I agree with Jim65.

[packs]

I disagree. A player like Stovey, for example, was voted on one time: in 1936 when five of the greatest players of all time were the only ones inducted. He was never voted on again.

[Huysmans]

Originally Posted by bigfanNY

Tip O'neil another best player on one of the best teams ever 1886 St. Louis. American Assn I think is reason he is not already in..

O'Neill being Canadian I'm sure doesn't help as well...

[bigfanNY]

Player with .326 lifetime average 10 years pro ball. Triple crown winner. Not Harold Baines. And to counter the AA vs NL Argument, Tip and the 1886 Browns beat the White Sox who were the National leauge champs 4 games to 2 in postseason.

[packs]

The AA was no different than the American League was when it started up. It was an equal competitor that didn't last, not a minor league that wasn't up to snuff. The stats should be respected.

And I really don't know what a player like Stovey or Hoy or Dahlen has in common with Harold Baines. No one would bring up Baines in a discussion about the most overlooked 20th century players 100 years from now.