eras committee candidates baseball HOF

[timn1]

Step outside the old boxes. Grich was a great, no qualifications, no apologies. Excuse me for saying so, but WAR doesn’t lie. Maybe he fell a little short in the counting stats to be a hofer, but he was a truly great player.

[rats60]

WAR is the big lie. In 1965, Bob Veale had 4.0 bWAR and 8.0 fWAR. How are we supposed to know what to believe when the self-proclaimed experts disagree by 100%?

[timn1]

A discrepancy in a season is your reason for dismissing the entire metric? Sure, No stat is perfect. But especially to evaluate an entire career i think WAR is hard to beat.

[rats60]

When I see pitcher A has an ERA+ of 169 and a WHIP of .914 and pitcher B has an ERA+ of 123 and a WHIP of 1.278, I don't need WAR to tell me pitcher A was better than pitcher B. When WAR tells me different, then I just ignore it.

If there are large discrepancies in one season, then the sum of discrepancies for a career becomes even larger. When someone tries to argue Bobby Grich was better than other players because he has more WAR or Rich Reuschel was better than pitchers with less WAR, I am not going to believe it.

[cgjackson222]

Originally Posted by rats60

When I see pitcher A has an ERA+ of 169 and a WHIP of .914 and pitcher B has an ERA+ of 123 and a WHIP of 1.278, I don't need WAR to tell me pitcher A was better than pitcher B. When WAR tells me different, then I just ignore it.

If there are large discrepancies in one season, then the sum of discrepancies for a career becomes even larger. When someone tries to argue Bobby Grich was better than other players because he has more WAR or Rich Reuschel was better than pitchers with less WAR, I am not going to believe it.

The discrepancy you have cited is for a pitcher. I think the ways that Fan Graphs (fWAR) and Baseball Reference (bWAR) calculate pitching value are quite different. But can the same be said for hitting and fielding?

For instance, Bobby Grich has a career bWAR of 71.1 and a career fWAR of 69.1

Not terribly far off.

I'm sure you can find examples where there is a larger difference, but I am not sure that is the norm for hitting/fielding.

[Peter_Spaeth]

In medicine, numerous widely accepted tests yield both type 1 and type 2 errors, because they are not completely perfect. But we don't discard them just because one can find outlier cases where they didn't do such a great job. So too here. This is not, IMO, an invalidating example. False standard of it's invalid if it isn't perfect.

[rats60]

Originally Posted by cgjackson222

The discrepancy you have cited is for a pitcher. I think the ways that Fan Graphs (fWAR) and Baseball Reference (bWAR) calculate pitching value are quite different. But can the same be said for hitting and fielding?

For instance, Bobby Grich has a career bWAR of 71.1 and a career fWAR of 69.1

Not terribly far off.

I'm sure you can find examples where there is a larger difference, but I am not sure that is the norm for hitting/fielding.

There is a pretty big discrepency for Jackson Merrill this year. 5.3 for fangraphs and 4.4 for baseball reference. Paul Skenes goes the other way. 5.9 for baseball reference and 4.3 for fangraphs. When you have those type of discrepencies, you can't use WAR to compare players.

You can say Grich is a HOFer, but if your only argument is WAR, then you are going to get a lot of people disagreeing with you. In the end, it is only opinions. The only opinions that matter said 11 yes and 419 no the one year he was on the HOF ballot. Interestingly enough, Bill Mazeroski received 182 votes on the same ballot. So at least 171 HOF voters thought Mazeroski was a Hall of Famer and Grich was not.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by rats60

There is a pretty big discrepency for Jackson Merrill this year. 5.3 for fangraphs and 4.4 for baseball reference. Paul Skenes goes the other way. 5.9 for baseball reference and 4.3 for fangraphs. When you have those type of discrepencies, you can't use WAR to compare players.

You can say Grich is a HOFer, but if your only argument is WAR, then you are going to get a lot of people disagreeing with you. In the end, it is only opinions. The only opinions that matter said 11 yes and 419 no the one year he was on the HOF ballot. Interestingly enough, Bill Mazeroski received 182 votes on the same ballot. So at least 171 HOF voters thought Mazeroski was a Hall of Famer and Grich was not.

Sure, and there are many guys who eventually got in who were denied 10 or 15 times by the voters. Assessments can and do change. That said, I doubt he will get in unless he has a political ally on some future committee, and it's no crime to leave him out. But I don't think, as some do apparently, that he invalidates WAR.

[cgjackson222]

Originally Posted by rats60

There is a pretty big discrepency for Jackson Merrill this year. 5.3 for fangraphs and 4.4 for baseball reference. Paul Skenes goes the other way. 5.9 for baseball reference and 4.3 for fangraphs. When you have those type of discrepencies, you can't use WAR to compare players.

You can say Grich is a HOFer, but if your only argument is WAR, then you are going to get a lot of people disagreeing with you. In the end, it is only opinions. The only opinions that matter said 11 yes and 419 no the one year he was on the HOF ballot. Interestingly enough, Bill Mazeroski received 182 votes on the same ballot. So at least 171 HOF voters thought Mazeroski was a Hall of Famer and Grich was not.

Again, I think discrepancies for pitchers are common when comparing fWAR and bWAR. But a difference between 5.3 and 4.4 for Jackson Merrill doesn't seem that big to me.