Top 25 Worst MLB HOFER’S

[Misunderestimated]

A friend of mine once remarked that it called the Hall of Fame not the "Hall of Stats"...
WAR and other Uber stats (like Win Shares) purport to capture the worth of players based entirely on their statistical performances during the regular seasons. This is insufficient to measure a career for HOF purposes. Here are some of my additional factors:
1) What if the player won a lot -- doesn't that mean something (hence the abundance of Yankees with iffy WAR scores like Scooter and Ruffing)
2) What if the player was considered the BEST or among the very best at a certain aspect of the game ? Brock with SBs, Mazeroski and Maranville as great middle infielders... Sewell and Kell were impossible to strike out).
3) What if the player was recognized at the time and and years after as the BEST at his position? As Paul pointed out above-- Pie Traynor was considered baseball's greatest 3B for many many years after his career. I have a Kelloggs' 3D card of him that reflects this estimation from the early 1970's.
4) What about innovation (I don't just mean Candy Cummings) how about Bruce Sutter, Roger Bresnahan etc.
5) What about short-term greatness ?
6) What about great Post-season performances? Jack Morris for instance.
Remember: the object of the game is to win championships.
That said, I still think T. McCarthy, G. Kelly and "Sunny Jim" Bottomley and many of the others are less than worthy. We know that Frisch packed the HOF with his cronies and some like Kelly and Lindstrom simply don't measure up.... And I also think that Dahlen and some of the others discussed above belong instead.
But it's about a lot more than WAR scores...
---
Also I note that Tommy McCarthy was a big winner in his day and considered a stellar outfielder. I don't think this is enough to put him in the HOF but it does explain why the Veterans Committee back in the day picked him without the benefit of WAR (or much else given the paucity of 19th Century stats at the time). They selected someone based on legend and reputation - he was one of the "heavenly twins" of the outfield with Hugh Duffy...
https://baseballegg.com/2010/02/01/b...eavenly-twins/

[packs]

If it's about being the best player at your position in your time then there's no reason Larry Doyle shouldn't be in. He was easily the best second basemen the NL had for a very long time.

[G1911]

Originally Posted by Misunderestimated

A friend of mine once remarked that it called the Hall of Fame not the "Hall of Stats"...
WAR and other Uber stats (like Win Shares) purport to capture the worth of players based entirely on their statistical performances during the regular seasons. This is insufficient to measure a career for HOF purposes. Here are some of my additional factors:
1) What if the player won a lot -- doesn't that mean something (hence the abundance of Yankees with iffy WAR scores like Scooter and Ruffing)
2) What if the player was considered the BEST or among the very best at a certain aspect of the game ? Brock with SBs, Mazeroski and Maranville as great middle infielders... Sewell and Kell were impossible to strike out).
3) What if the player was recognized at the time and and years after as the BEST at his position? As Paul pointed out above-- Pie Traynor was considered baseball's greatest 3B for many many years after his career. I have a Kelloggs' 3D card of him that reflects this estimation from the early 1970's.
4) What about innovation (I don't just mean Candy Cummings) how about Bruce Sutter, Roger Bresnahan etc.
5) What about short-term greatness ?
6) What about great Post-season performances? Jack Morris for instance.
Remember: the object of the game is to win championships.
That said, I still think T. McCarthy, G. Kelly and "Sunny Jim" Bottomley and many of the others are less than worthy. We know that Frisch packed the HOF with his cronies and some like Kelly and Lindstrom simply don't measure up.... And I also think that Dahlen and some of the others discussed above belong instead.
But it's about a lot more than WAR scores...
---
Also I note that Tommy McCarthy was a big winner in his day and considered a stellar outfielder. I don't think this is enough to put him in the HOF but it does explain why the Veterans Committee back in the day picked him without the benefit of WAR (or much else given the paucity of 19th Century stats at the time). They selected someone based on legend and reputation - he was one of the "heavenly twins" of the outfield with Hugh Duffy...
https://baseballegg.com/2010/02/01/b...eavenly-twins/

I agree with much of this. I don't think there's much of a Yankee bias (For every questionable Yankee in, there's one you would expect to have made it if there was a Yankee bias, like Mattingly). Winning doesn't matter much, even the absolute best couldn't win championships on their own, in a game where the impact of a single player is limited over the course of a season it's not a good measure of an individual. Context of the election is important, and why I wouldn't put Cummings on a list of the worst choices, or necessarily even McCarthy.

Cummings was not elected for his statistical performance, he was elected because he was thought to have either invented the curveball or popularized it and brought it to the mainstream game. Which seems a clearly worthy innovation.

McCarthy was in the AA and WAR hates him and OPS+ hates him, but these didn't exist. He stole a ton of bases, scored a ton of runs, and hit .292. He had a reputation for wonderful defense and developed new plays and styles that were a counter to an unpopular-among-baseball-elitists thuggish style of play. I'm not even clear that they had available full statistics of the traditional stats for him in 1947 when he was picked.

Maranville, Mazeroski and Schalk were elected for their defense. It is reasonable to posit that defense of non-pitchers doesn't have enough of an impact to merit induction for it alone, but the use of batting stats to deride the choices that is usually done instead completely misses the context.

I think it much worse when the reasons actually present in that time for the selection are A) completely unreasonable, B) inconsistent or C) openly corrupt. Waner, the Fritsch appointments, Baines, Sutter, Morris, these types where the standards used for them are corrupt or pretty inconsistent and unreasonable are much worse picks.

[GaryPassamonte]

Originally Posted by Misunderestimated

A friend of mine once remarked that it called the Hall of Fame not the "Hall of Stats"...
WAR and other Uber stats (like Win Shares) purport to capture the worth of players based entirely on their statistical performances during the regular seasons. This is insufficient to measure a career for HOF purposes. Here are some of my additional factors:
1) What if the player won a lot -- doesn't that mean something (hence the abundance of Yankees with iffy WAR scores like Scooter and Ruffing)
2) What if the player was considered the BEST or among the very best at a certain aspect of the game ? Brock with SBs, Mazeroski and Maranville as great middle infielders... Sewell and Kell were impossible to strike out).
3) What if the player was recognized at the time and and years after as the BEST at his position? As Paul pointed out above-- Pie Traynor was considered baseball's greatest 3B for many many years after his career. I have a Kelloggs' 3D card of him that reflects this estimation from the early 1970's.
4) What about innovation (I don't just mean Candy Cummings) how about Bruce Sutter, Roger Bresnahan etc.
5) What about short-term greatness ?
6) What about great Post-season performances? Jack Morris for instance.
Remember: the object of the game is to win championships.
That said, I still think T. McCarthy, G. Kelly and "Sunny Jim" Bottomley and many of the others are less than worthy. We know that Frisch packed the HOF with his cronies and some like Kelly and Lindstrom simply don't measure up.... And I also think that Dahlen and some of the others discussed above belong instead.
But it's about a lot more than WAR scores...
---
Also I note that Tommy McCarthy was a big winner in his day and considered a stellar outfielder. I don't think this is enough to put him in the HOF but it does explain why the Veterans Committee back in the day picked him without the benefit of WAR (or much else given the paucity of 19th Century stats at the time). They selected someone based on legend and reputation - he was one of the "heavenly twins" of the outfield with Hugh Duffy...
https://baseballegg.com/2010/02/01/b...eavenly-twins/

Excellent post. The value of a player to his team is more than statistics. There are intangibles involved. Also, how a player is viewed by his peers is important. By this I mean that teammates know who they value most and opponents know who they fear most.

[perezfan]

Originally Posted by GaryPassamonte

Excellent post. The value of a player to his team is more than statistics. There are intangibles involved. Also, how a player is viewed by his peers is important. By this I mean that teammates know who they value most and opponents know who they fear most.

This.

There is no stat that accurately measures clutch hitting. To see Tony Perez at #20 on the list made my blood boil. I shut it down immediately after seeing that.

Ask any '70s Reds fan, fellow team member, or Sparky himself.... Perez was the glue that held the Big Red Machine together. Bob Howsam later admitted that trading the Big Dog after the '76 season was the biggest mistake of his career.

They definitely had another Championship or two in them, had Perez stayed.

[G1911]

Perez had 2.8 and 3.3 WAR in 1977 and 1978, and his traditional stats line up similarly. Good seasons. After that he was basically replacement, besides his part time 1985 surge.

In 1977 the Reds lost the west division by 10 games. In 1978, by 3 games. Dan Driessen posted 2.1 war, 1.2 below Perez. Maybe Perez could have made a difference that year to win the division, but the available math doesn't suggest he would. It doesn't seem very likely that we can say they would have had a WS win with this slight 1B upgrade.

Perez's clutch splits don't seem to indicate anything unusual or unusually good performance 'when it counts'.

A good player for many years, very much an accumulator in a prime position to rack up RBI's. A weak hall of famer looking at the traditional and new math both, but I wouldn't really consider him among the worst selections. His career percentages by his very long downfall as he played until he was 44. WAR has him as worth 2 George Kelly's, and the traditional stats seem to say that that is about right.