Who are your Inner Circle Hall of Famers?

[cgjackson222]

Originally Posted by Tabe

A few things:

First, Campanella won the MVP in 1951, 1953 and 1955, not 1951, 1952 and 1953.

Second, in 1953, his second MVP season, he had a higher WAR than Jackie - 6.8 vs 5.9. It would be hard to argue that a catcher playing good defense while hitting .312 with 41 homers and a 154 OPS+ is NOT the right choice for MVP.

Third, their 1951 seasons show just how goofy WAR is when comparing players. Campanella hit .325 with 33 homers and a 159 OPS+ while playing good defense (dWAR of 1.1) but gets a WAR of 6.9. Jackie hits .338 with 19 homers and a 154 OPS+ while playing great defense (2.4 dWAR) and gets a 9.7 WAR. Basically, Jackie benefited from the rest of his contemporaries at 2B being relatively terrible so he gets a bump from WAR. I think Campy had the better season, your mileage might vary.

Finally, during his actual third MVP season of 1955, Campy had a WAR of 5.2 while Jackie had a 2.6 while missing 49 games.

My mistake, I wrote the wrong MVP years, but the WAR figures I provided were from the correct years ('51, '53 and '55), as shown in Baseball Reference.com

Are you using Baseball Reference for your WAR, or FanGraphs? Or something else?

Let's not forget the year Jackie won MVP where (according to Baseball Reference) Jackie's WAR was 9.3 compared to Campanella's 4.5
https://www.baseball-reference.com/a..._NL_MVP_voting

I am not trying to argue who is the best player, I am just saying that going based off of Campanella's 3 MVPs is not a great indicator that he was a better player than Jackie.

[Tabe]

Originally Posted by cgjackson222

My mistake, I wrote the wrong MVP years, but the WAR figures I provided were from the correct years ('51, '53 and '55), as shown in Baseball Reference.com

Are you using Baseball Reference for your WAR, or FanGraphs? Or something else?

Let's not forget the year Jackie won MVP where (according to Baseball Reference) Jackie's WAR was 9.3 compared to Campanella's 4.5
https://www.baseball-reference.com/a..._NL_MVP_voting

I am not trying to argue who is the best player, I am just saying that going based off of Campanella's 3 MVPs is not a great indicator that he was a better player than Jackie.

Yes, I am using Baseball Reference for my WAR numbers.

I think the voters made the right decision in each of the three years, at least insofar as selecting Campy over Robinson.

[cgjackson222]

ESPN posted their top 100 Baseball Players this week.
https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/...s-all-nos-25-1

Their top 10:
1) Ruth
2) Mays
3) Aaron
4) Cobb
5) Ted Williams
6) Gehrig
7) Mantle
8) Bonds
9) Walter Johnson
10) Stan Musial

Rounding out the top 25: 11) Pedro 12) Wagner 13) K Griffey Jr. 14) Maddux 15) Trout 16) DiMaggio 17) Clemens 18) Schmidt 19) F Robinson 20) Hornsby 21) Cy Young 22) Seaver 23) Rickey Henderson 24) Randy Johnson 25) Christy Mathewson

I think its a pretty defensible list, with a decent balance of old-timers and recent guys. Maybe pitchers could have done better on the list (Carlton was 58, Grover Cleveland Alexander 57, Kershaw 52, Feller 50, Spahn was 47, Satchel Paige 41, WaJo could be top 5). But I think they did a decent job of balancing peak vs. overall WAR with maybe a higher emphasis on peak. They had some peak guys pretty high with Koufax at 32, and Bob Gibson at 33.

I think Cap Anson was the only 19th Century player. No Kid Nichols, Dan Brouthers, etc.

I do think Jeter was probably ranked too high at 28. I don't think he is better than every catcher to ever play the game (Bench was the highest ranked catcher at 29) or a lot of players ranked lower than him.

I would have liked to see Sam Crawford, Al Simmons, Goose Goslin, and Carl Hubbell make the list, but they didn't. Ed Walsh and Dizzy didn't make it either.

[molenick]

Of course, a list like this will generate a lot of debate and disagreement, so I will just mention one thing that stands out to me. I love Pedro, but saying he is the 11th best player and second best pitcher (behind only Walter Johnson) of all-time seems like a very strong take. It looks like he got a lot of credit for peak performance versus longevity and for his ERA+ (essentially, ERA as compared to league ERA).

[obcbobd]

Originally Posted by molenick;2p193040

Of course, a list like this will generate a lot of debate and disagreement, so I will just mention one thing that stands out to me. I love Pedro, but saying he is the 11th best player and second best pitcher (behind only Walter Johnson) of all-time seems like a very strong take. It looks like he got a lot of credit for peak performance versus longevity and for his ERA+ (essentially, ERA as compared to league ERA).

Did they say what they used as criteria, specifically peak vs career. For any five year span I think Pedro was the best pitcher ever. But if you are looking at a full career he would not be as high.

Would be interesting if they did the 100 best seasons by a player.

[cgjackson222]

Originally Posted by obcbobd

Did they say what they used as criteria, specifically peak vs career. For any five year span I think Pedro was the best pitcher ever. But if you are looking at a full career he would not be as high.

Would be interesting if they did the 100 best seasons by a player.

"The Methodology
Based on career WAR, Hall of Fame status, peak performance and overall contributions to the game, we selected an initial pool of more than 200 players from both the major leagues and Negro Leagues, dating back to the late 19th century, plus a few of today's biggest stars.

From there, we asked dozens of ESPN editors and writers to contribute to a balloting system that pits players from the list against each other in head-to-head voting. The question we posed: "Based on a combination of career value and peak performance, which player would you rank higher?"

Would you choose Barry Bonds or Ted Williams? Mike Trout or Joe DiMaggio? Walter Johnson or Roger Clemens?

Our participants voted more than 20,000 times. Based on those votes, the players were ranked by the percentage of the time they were chosen over any competing player. Our No. 1 overall player, for example, was chosen 99% of the time. Our No. 100 player? He was taken 31% of the time. Despite that seemingly large range, the competition was fierce -- a single percentage point could raise or lower a player's ranking significantly."

[molenick]

Here is a link to the methodology https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/...lb-players-all

[Tabe]

Originally Posted by molenick

Of course, a list like this will generate a lot of debate and disagreement, so I will just mention one thing that stands out to me. I love Pedro, but saying he is the 11th best player and second best pitcher (behind only Walter Johnson) of all-time seems like a very strong take. It looks like he got a lot of credit for peak performance versus longevity and for his ERA+ (essentially, ERA as compared to league ERA).

He's obviously getting a ton of credit for peak versus longevity. However, it would be tough to argue that his peak isn't worth that credit. No one - no one - has ever dominated their league like Pedro did in 1999 & 2000. In 2000, he put up a 1.74 ERA in a steroid-fueled era where the league average ERA was 4.91. He was 3.17 runs better than the league average - in a high-scoring era. That's insane. In 1999, he had a 2.07 ERA in a league with an average ERA of 4.86. In 2000, he gave up 0.737 WHIP. Among pitchers throwing at least 200 innings, the next closest is Walter Johnson's 0.7803. All-time.

He had more great seasons than Sandy Koufax and his peak reached higher than anybody's ever did. Is #11 too high? Maybe. I think Roger Clemens was better thanks to his longevity. But I certainly understand how they put him there.

[Fred]

Sooooo.... how many players are considered "inner circle"? All I know is Babe Ruth is #1 and there is no convincing me otherwise.

[todeen]

Originally Posted by Fred

Sooooo.... how many players are considered "inner circle"? All I know is Babe Ruth is #1 and there is no convincing me otherwise.

I think inner circle should be 5-10%

And I agree about Babe Ruth. He showed everyone the possibilities.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using Tapatalk