eras committee candidates baseball HOF

[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.

[Kutcher55]

I like WAR because it is one single number that makes it easy on the surface to compare one player to another across different eras, but man is it heavily flawed for all the reasons outlined in this conversation. It rewards compilers/longevity to a fault, and penalizes certain positions such as catcher, because it's impossible for a catcher's knees to hold up for 3000 games even after they switch positions mid career.

Also, it's awesome when rats60 chimes in. Dude is pure hickory even if I don't always agree with him. I wouldn't totally throw WAR out with the bathwater, but it is not the end all be all.

[Peter_Spaeth]

How does it reward compilers? If people at the end of their careers have lousy years, they don't accumulate much if any WAR for those seasons, look at Pujols? From 2016 on he essentially added no WAR despite adding to the counting stats totals. I believe same is true of Cabrera.

[Kutcher55]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

How does it reward compilers? If people at the end of their careers have lousy years, they don't accumulate much if any WAR for those seasons, look at Pujols? From 2016 on he essentially added no WAR despite adding to the counting stats totals. I believe same is true of Cabrera.

Was checking and yeah you’re right Peter it doesn’t always reward compilers. A guy like Don Sutton was able to eke his way into the HOF with some modestly effective +WAR years late in his career but then again Jim Kaat, another classic compiler, had negative WAR late in his career, and probably shouldn’t be in the HOF anyway but that’s a separate argument.

WAR does a credible job identifying the true greats of the game who were good for a long time (ie, nobody with a 100+ WAR played for less than 15 years). For borderline HOFers it should be one of many considerations and it clearly has been just that. The Jeter/Grich argument being the ultimate example, as I don’t think too many people would say DJ doesn’t belong in the HOF whereas Grich wasn’t even close and will likely never make it despite being a terrific player (I wouldn’t vote for him either).

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by Kutcher55

Was checking and yeah you’re right Peter it doesn’t always reward compilers. A guy like Don Sutton was able to eke his way into the HOF with some modestly effective +WAR years late in his career but then again Jim Kaat, another classic compiler, had negative WAR late in his career, and probably shouldn’t be in the HOF anyway but that’s a separate argument.

WAR does a credible job identifying the true greats of the game who were good for a long time (ie, nobody with a 100+ WAR played for less than 15 years). For borderline HOFers it should be one of many considerations and it clearly has been just that. The Jeter/Grich argument being the ultimate example, as I don’t think too many people would say DJ doesn’t belong in the HOF whereas Grich wasn’t even close and will likely never make it despite being a terrific player (I wouldn’t vote for him either).

Which all begs the question, how in the hell did Harold Baines (WAR under 40) make it?

[BioCRN]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

Which all begs the question, how in the hell did Harold Baines (WAR under 40) make it?

ERA committees are going to be weak. It's a very small number of humans making judgement calls and whether they choose to involve stats is up to them...and which stats they choose to care about.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by BioCRN

ERA committees are going to be weak. It's a very small number of humans making judgement calls and whether they choose to involve stats is up to them...and which stats they choose to care about.

Baines had a lot of hits but didn't seem to have much else going for him. Was he ever, even early on, among the top ten players in the AL, much less baseball?

[Peter_Spaeth]

I would argue that at least in some cases WAR does a good job of offsetting late career added counting stats. Take Pujols again. 2018 and 2019, he adds 42 HR and 157 RBI to his counting stats (the latter thanks to Mike Trout being on base so damn much in front of him), but had a ZERO total WAR.

[JollyElm]

tidalwavewargraphic.jpg