Author Archive: Michael Mountain

Having presented the concept of BOOG Score in my previous article, we can now use it to discuss Hall of Fame candidacies for specific players. If you don’t have time to review the introductory piece, the CliffsNotes version is this: BOOG Score is an accumulating stat measuring overall player value, intended for comparisons between elite players. It’s a player’s career Wins Above Average (WAA) total, but with all negative seasons zeroed out and ignored. This rewards longevity, but only for players who continue to contribute at an above-average level; for example, George Brett’s final three seasons, when he was a below-average hitter as a full time DH, add nothing to his career total.

The rest of this article will be devoted to reviewing the state of the Hall of Fame as it relates to BOOG Scores, broken down by primary position. Each table that appears below will detail career BOOG totals for one position. I’m going to focus on infielders who have already had a chance to appear on a Hall of Fame ballot; outfielders, catchers, pitchers, and active or recently retired players will be discussed in future articles.

Readers who are familiar with Jay Jaffe’s work on the JAWS metric will understand the concept of the positional average — the average total for all currently inducted Hall of Famers at this position. Being above the positional average is often cited as a point in favor of a player’s election to Cooperstown. I’ve chosen to use median instead of mean, but the concept is the same. I’ll also list what I’m calling the marginal threshold, which can be thought of as a lower threshold of excellence that still conveys something meaningful about a player’s candidacy. To explain by way of illustration, using the shortstop position as an example: There are 25 shortstops currently enshrined in the Hall. That suggests that the 25th-best shortstop in major league history should be considered a reasonable candidate – not necessarily a strong candidate, but at least worthy of review. I define the marginal BOOG threshold at each position to be the Nth best BOOG score of any (retired) player who primarily played there (regardless of whether that Nth player is actually in the Hall), taking N as the current number of inductees. For the shortstop example, that 25th-best shortstop is Nomar Garciaparra with a BOOG score of 26.9. Along with Garciaparra, two other shortstops are outside the Hall with career totals at or above the marginal threshold, but below the Hall of Fame median of 37.9. For that reason, they probably still merit some discussion even if they are not slam dunk inductees. Read the rest of this entry »

In 1889, Hall of Famer John Clarkson had one of the best pitching seasons ever by WAR. He won the Triple Crown with a 2.73 ERA, 284 strikeouts, and a win-loss record of 49-19. He also threw 620 innings, the most in the league and a total that represented more than half the combined workload of his team’s entire pitching staff. Although no one knew it at the time, his retroactively calculated ERA- was 64 and his FIP- was 82; both of those rates led the league among qualified pitchers. If the Cy Young award had existed in the National League at that time, he almost certainly would have been the recipient.

In 2025, Tarik Skubal had a dominant season. He didn’t repeat his Triple Crown achievement from 2024, but his ERA and strikeout numbers both improved from the prior year. His 195 1/3 innings were tied for fourth in the majors, and his 54 ERA- and 58 FIP- not only led among all qualified AL pitchers, but also significantly exceeded Clarkson’s 1889 performance. Skubal’s performance was more than good enough for him to win his second consecutive Cy Young award.

Clarkson’s pitching WAR was 10.9; Skubal’s was 6.6. Whose season did more to bolster his Hall of Fame case? Read the rest of this entry »