MLB HOF - Too Big or Too Small?

[Tabe]

Originally Posted by darwinbulldog

Multiply that quantity by 1 for pitchers, 3.39 for regular position players, and 4.6 for catchers.

How did you arrive at those multiplication factors?

[G1911]

I'm curious on the details and what the list result is with this formula, not to dismiss it but because I like to see what people do with stats and what they can create.


Separately, I would say an analysis of comparing if the old-school and new-school views generally agree on the best players would use straight WAR. Better or worse, this is the standard among that crowd.

It is harder to pick a method of comparison for the old-school crowd, because their statistical analysis is rooted in the view that condensing everything into one number is absurd and won't work, so it can't be a single stat we choose like we can for the sabrmetric crowd. Ranker is a fan vote site, it is public popularity, which I think is completely separate from people who believe inn statistical analysis but use traditional stats (Jeter is really good in traditional stats, really good in WAR, the GOAT SS in public opinion). Public popularity is a third thing and different, and disagrees with traditional math quite a bit as well. I'd think we'd have to do something like take a well-reputed older list from a publication that got much agreement, and then remove players since then from the WAR list to compare apples-to-apples and see how much it agrees.

From a broader view, scrolling over the list of players by WAR, I think we can see that WAR does generally rank the players with the best traditional stats as being the best players. A guy may have be 40th in one and 23rd in the other, but there are not guys topping the WAR charts that traditional stats hate and vice versa. This is probably a credit to WAR doing something right.

I am in the middle, I think traditional stats have great value, I think the best achievement of the modern approach is stats that put them into context of their time and place, like OPS+ and ERA+. I think a guy who hits .350 when the league hits .240 is a good hitter, regardless of what WAR says. I don't trust the notion that all facets of the game can be combined into one, perfectly and correctly weighted equation for all of baseball history that will produce any kind of actual truth. The defensive components are even more problematic. I think the results show it does a much better job of comparing modern players together than older players of different times and era's, where players were focused on aspects of the game that may not be in alignment with the weighted preferences of the contemporary mathematician. I think Bill James' work is endlessly fascinating and have worn out my copy of the Baseball Abstract, and simultaneously think that the mathematician model of managing a ball game has ruined the fun of actually watching a baseball game, which has become a strikeout heavy home run derby in which most small-ball strategy is completely gone and pitchers mostly pitch 5 innings or less. 'The Home Run or Nothing' game may generate more runs in today's small parks, but it's personally boring and not why I like baseball.



To the original question, I would vote the issue with the Hall is not the size, it could be expanded, it could be shrunk, it could be kept the same. The issue is that its selections are arbitrary, odd, sometimes common-sense defying, occasionally openly corrupt, and inconsistent. The Harold Baines election is a great recent example, I think Jack Morris is too. Baines gets the nod, who does not compare favorably to other HOFers, while Schilling who compares favorably to recent SP selections is spitefully ignored. It's been present for most of the hall's history, from the original old timers committee's just voting almost randomly for recognizable 19th century names to Frisch's committee electing his friends to the joke that is the current era committees choices. Any group will make mistakes or make choices I don't agree with, but the sheer amount of them and the obstinacy against following their own standards they have made (by now, it's pretty easy to compare if a nominee compares to the average quality of an elected HOFer or not, for example) makes it a crapshoot every year on if a deserving player will simply be ignored and/or a completely undeserving one will be seemingly randomly selected by an era committee.

[darwinbulldog]

Originally Posted by G1911

I'm curious on the details and what the list result is with this formula, not to dismiss it but because I like to see what people do with stats and what they can create.


Separately, I would say an analysis of comparing if the old-school and new-school views generally agree on the best players would use straight WAR. Better or worse, this is the standard among that crowd.

It is harder to pick a method of comparison for the old-school crowd, because their statistical analysis is rooted in the view that condensing everything into one number is absurd and won't work, so it can't be a single stat we choose like we can for the sabrmetric crowd. Ranker is a fan vote site, it is public popularity, which I think is completely separate from people who believe inn statistical analysis but use traditional stats (Jeter is really good in traditional stats, really good in WAR, the GOAT SS in public opinion). Public popularity is a third thing and different, and disagrees with traditional math quite a bit as well. I'd think we'd have to do something like take a well-reputed older list from a publication that got much agreement, and then remove players since then from the WAR list to compare apples-to-apples and see how much it agrees.

From a broader view, scrolling over the list of players by WAR, I think we can see that WAR does generally rank the players with the best traditional stats as being the best players. A guy may have be 40th in one and 23rd in the other, but there are not guys topping the WAR charts that traditional stats hate and vice versa. This is probably a credit to WAR doing something right.

I am in the middle, I think traditional stats have great value, I think the best achievement of the modern approach is stats that put them into context of their time and place, like OPS+ and ERA+. I think a guy who hits .350 when the league hits .240 is a good hitter, regardless of what WAR says. I don't trust the notion that all facets of the game can be combined into one, perfectly and correctly weighted equation for all of baseball history that will produce any kind of actual truth. The defensive components are even more problematic. I think the results show it does a much better job of comparing modern players together than older players of different times and era's, where players were focused on aspects of the game that may not be in alignment with the weighted preferences of the contemporary mathematician. I think Bill James' work is endlessly fascinating and have worn out my copy of the Baseball Abstract, and simultaneously think that the mathematician model of managing a ball game has ruined the fun of actually watching a baseball game, which has become a strikeout heavy home run derby in which most small-ball strategy is completely gone and pitchers mostly pitch 5 innings or less. 'The Home Run or Nothing' game may generate more runs in today's small parks, but it's personally boring and not why I like baseball.



To the original question, I would vote the issue with the Hall is not the size, it could be expanded, it could be shrunk, it could be kept the same. The issue is that its selections are arbitrary, odd, sometimes common-sense defying, occasionally openly corrupt, and inconsistent. The Harold Baines election is a great recent example, I think Jack Morris is too. Baines gets the nod, who does not compare favorably to other HOFers, while Schilling who compares favorably to recent SP selections is spitefully ignored. It's been present for most of the hall's history, from the original old timers committee's just voting almost randomly for recognizable 19th century names to Frisch's committee electing his friends to the joke that is the current era committees choices. Any group will make mistakes or make choices I don't agree with, but the sheer amount of them and the obstinacy against following their own standards they have made (by now, it's pretty easy to compare if a nominee compares to the average quality of an elected HOFer or not, for example) makes it a crapshoot every year on if a deserving player will simply be ignored and/or a completely undeserving one will be seemingly randomly selected by an era committee.

I think this is considered the gold standard old school list of greatest players.

[Mike D.]

Originally Posted by darwinbulldog

I think this is considered the gold standard old school list of greatest players.

It’s a good list, but now 23 years old (pains me to say as it came out the year I graduated college), so there’d be a few adds (and matching removals).

[Mike D.]

Two more thoughts:

1. The people who really seem to “get” and use WAR mostly openly admit it’s imperfect and is one of many tools you should use to determine greatness. But having something less subjective to drive a conversation has value. It’s kind of the “scouts vs stats” thing from 20 years ago. The “stats geeks” were saying “and” and the old school crowd was hearing “or”.

2. I hope we’re taking “relative” hall of fame size, not raw size…since every year (or so) more players get in. I’d be interested to see how % of players get elected to the hall…adjusted for things like league size.

[rats60]

Originally Posted by Mike D.

Two more thoughts:

1. The people who really seem to “get” and use WAR mostly openly admit it’s imperfect and is one of many tools you should use to determine greatness. But having something less subjective to drive a conversation has value. It’s kind of the “scouts vs stats” thing from 20 years ago. The “stats geeks” were saying “and” and the old school crowd was hearing “or”.

2. I hope we’re taking “relative” hall of fame size, not raw size…since every year (or so) more players get in. I’d be interested to see how % of players get elected to the hall…adjusted for things like league size.

WAR is totally subjective. BB Reference uses ERA to determine WAR for pitchers. Fangraphs uses FIP. Fangraphs thinks Bob Veale was worth 8 WAR in 1965, better than Juan Marichal's 6.8. Baseball Reference thinks Juan Marichal was worth 10.3 WAR and Bob Veale was only worth 4.0. Which one is correct? How can you trust something that has so much variance? What do the error models look like for these two formulas? Imperfect has to be the understatement of the year.

[Mike D.]

Originally Posted by rats60

WAR is totally subjective. BB Reference uses ERA to determine WAR for pitchers. Fangraphs uses FIP. Fangraphs thinks Bob Veale was worth 8 WAR in 1965, better than Juan Marichal's 6.8. Baseball Reference thinks Juan Marichal was worth 10.3 WAR and Bob Veale was only worth 4.0. Which one is correct? How can you trust something that has so much variance? What do the error models look like for these two formulas? Imperfect has to be the understatement of the year.

To me….that’s not WAR being variable. Within either model, you get pretty good consistency.

But comparing two completely different things that happen to be called the same thing and expecting consistency is nuts. Even then, in most cases I’d guess the two models generally agree, although as you point out there are cases where there is wide discrepancies.

I use BB-R WAR because I’ve used that site since close to the beginning. FanGraphs is a great site I’m sure…but every time I go there it makes my head hurt. Too much advanced math for me!

[darwinbulldog]

Originally Posted by Tabe

How did you arrive at those multiplication factors?

It's been quite a few years, but my memory is that the 3.39 did the best job of matching the rank ordering of pitchers vs position players from JAWS. Then I noticed that Johnny Bench was the only catcher in the top 100, so I gave catchers the smallest multiplier that would give them I think it was at least 10% of the position players' spots on the list.