In a continuation of my article from yesterday, here is part two of the MLB Dream Team. This article will showcase spots six through nine in the batting order as well as the starting pitcher.

Enjoy!

Batting sixth and playing second base…

Robinson Cano

64.4 career WAR / 50.3 7yr-peak WAR / 57.4 JAWS

Average HOF 2B:

69.4 career WAR / 44.5 7yr-peak WAR / 56.9 JAWS

9th in JAWS out of 20 Hall of Fame Second basemen

Accolades: 8x All-Star, 2x Gold Glove, 5x Silver Slugger, World Series Champion (2009)

For many years, Robinson Cano has been in the conversation as the best second baseman in baseball.

He was an integral part of the New York Yankees 2009 championship squad, and he parlayed his five All-Star appearances with the Bronx Bombers into a 10-year, $240-million contract with the Mariners in 2014. Cano hasn’t lost his luster since leaving New York for Seattle, and he has made three All-Star Games (so far) with the Mariners.

Cano had to beat out Chase Utley and Dustin Pedroia — two likely Hall of Famers in their own right — to earn his position at the keystone sack in this lineup. Ultimately, Cano received the nod because of his sustained excellence. He has played at least 156 games every year since 2007, a level of health that neither Pedroia nor Utley can match.

Cano has also redefined the second-base position because of his ability to hit for average and power. Among Hall of Fame second basemen, Cano’s average of 25 home runs per season ranks second and his 296 career home runs ranks third. In a few years Cano should hold the record for career long balls by a second baseman, and he should be known as the greatest power hitting second baseman of all time.

Batting seventh and playing center field…

Carlos Beltran

70.3 career WAR / 44.3 7yr-peak WAR / 57.3 JAWS

Average HOF CF:

71.2 career WAR / 44.6 7yr-peak WAR / 57.9 JAWS

8th in JAWS out of 19 Hall of Fame Center Fielders

Accolades: Rookie of the Year (1999), 9x All-Star, 3x Gold Glove, 2x Silver Slugger

Carlos Beltran, always a reliable asset, is now in his 20th season. Beltran has been every archetype an athlete can be: young star (Royals); decisive deadline acquisition (Astros); hero (Mets); scapegoat (Mets again); veteran contributor (Giants, Cardinals, Yankees, Rangers); and experienced old-timer (Astros again). Beltran was the fifth-youngest in the majors when he debuted in 1998, and now he’s the third-oldest player in the league.

Beltran came into the majors as a 21-year-old kid for the Kansas City Royals, and immediately showcased his skills by taking home Rookie of the Year honors.

After seven years in Kansas City, Beltran signed with the New York Mets in 2005. It was in New York that Beltran would spend the prime of his career, making five All-Star appearances and taking home three Gold Gloves. Beltran proved to be one of the best players in the Major Leagues from 2006 to 2008, crushing 37 homers, driving in 124 runs, and scoring 123 (per 162 games).

Beltran has aged well, making All-Star teams as members of the Giants, Cardinals, and Yankees since leaving the Mets in 2011. However, the 40-year-old has shown signs of decline this year, and he may decide to hang up his spikes in the near future. Beltran left a lasting impression on the game of baseball, and his 20 years of service deserve a place in Cooperstown.

Batting eighth and catching…

Joe Mauer

51.4 career WAR / 38.5 7yr-peak WAR / 45.0 JAWS

Average HOF C:

53.4 career WAR / 34.4 7yr-peak WAR / 43.9 JAWS

8th in JAWS out of 15 Hall of Fame Catchers

Accolades: MVP (2009), 6x All-Star, 3x Gold Glove, 5x Silver Slugger

Even though Joe Mauer has not caught a game since 2013, he spent 10 seasons and 920 games behind the dish.

Mauer was truly one of the finest offensive backstops ever, and in 2009 he became only the second catcher since 1980 to win MVP (Ivan Rodriguez was the first in 1999). In Mauer’s MVP season, he led the majors in batting average (.365) and on-base percentage (.444), both of which were records for catchers. He also led the AL in slugging (.587), OPS (1.031) and Offensive WAR (7.6). In addition to his MVP, Mauer was the first AL catcher to win the batting title and he holds the record for most batting titles by a catcher, with three.

As well as being one of the league’s finest hitters, Mauer was a force to be reckoned with behind the plate. His great instincts and fielding prowess earned him three straight Gold Gloves from 2008 to 2010, and his 99.51% career fielding percentage ranks seventh all-time among catchers.

Although Mauer’s body has declined over the years, he has performed well since being moved to first base in 2014, and has not made an error this year in 69 games.

Mauer will leave a legacy as one of the greatest hitting catchers ever, and he has earned his place in the Hall of Fame.

Batting ninth at shortstop…

Troy Tulowitzki

44.0 career WAR / 40.0 7yr-peak WAR / 42.0 JAWS

Average HOF SS:

66.7 career WAR / 42.8 7yr-peak WAR / 54.8 JAWS

26th in JAWS out of 21 Hall of Fame Shortstops

Accolades: 5x All-Star, 2x Gold Glove, 2x Silver Slugger

This is the hardest decision on the roster, because in my opinion there aren’t any Hall-of-Fame-worthy shortstops in the majors right now. Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter, the two best shortstops of this generation, have retired in the past two years.

I ended up choosing Troy Tulowitzki because he has the best chance of any shortstop in the majors to make it to the Hall.

There were a few ways I could have gone with this pick. At first I considered moving Chase Utley to short, and then I looked at the plethora of up-and-coming shortstops (Carlos Correa, Corey Seager, Francisco Lindor; to name a few).

Ultimately, I chose Tulowitzki — but this would have been a much easier decision if Tulo had stayed healthy during his career. During his prime years with the Rockies between 2007 and 2014, Tulowitzki averaged a respectable 4.8 WAR per season. However, he missed an average of 45 games per year (!) during that period. If you extrapolate his numbers to 154 games (meaning he would miss 8 games per year), he would have recorded 6.7 WAR per season, boosting his JAWS from 42.0 to 50.0.

Although Tulowitzki didn’t stay healthy most of the time, his impact while he was on the field was undoubted, and he deserves Hall of Fame consideration.

And your starting pitcher for tonight…

Clayton Kershaw

58.8 career WAR / 48.7 7yr-peak WAR / 53.8 JAWS

Average HOF P:

73.9 career WAR / 50.3 7yr-peak WAR / 62.1 JAWS

60th in JAWS out of 62 Hall of Fame Pitchers

Accolades: Pitching Triple Crown (2011), MVP (2014), 3x Cy Young (2011, 2013, 2014), 7x All-Star, 1x Gold Glove

Clayton Kershaw, in my opinion, is the best pitcher in the game right now. He has been terrorizing opposing hitters since coming up as a 20-year-old with the Dodgers in 2008.

Kershaw achieved the Pitching Triple Crown in 2011, when he led the league in ERA, wins, and strikeouts. In 2014, Kershaw joined Roger Clemens and Sandy Koufax as just the third player in baseball history to win three Cy Young awards and an MVP.

Kershaw has finished as an All-Star and a top-five Cy Young award finisher in each of the past six seasons, a nearly unparalleled run of dominance, and he has already attained a career’s worth of honors at just 29 years old.

Supposing Kershaw retires at age 37, he has eight years remaining in his career. If we extrapolate his season average of 5.7 WAR to seven more years, then his current WAR of 57.0 jumps to 102.6, which places him as the ninth best pitcher of all time, a very fair assessment.

Kershaw has the lowest career ERA of any starter since 1920* (2.35), and he deserves a plaque in Cooperstown.

*Baseball-Reference defines a starting pitcher as a player whose starts make up 60% of their appearances. Minimum of 50 Innings Pitched.

Special thanks to baseball-reference.com for all of these helpful stats. I could not have written this article without them.

Sports always allow us to ask, what if? What if a baseball lineup — complete with all nine positions and a designated hitter — was composed of all-time greats in their best seasons.

I have composed a lineup filled with the very best active players who I think will make the Hall of Fame.

These players will not be judged on their performance this year; they will be chosen based on how well they performed during their primes.

I have designated a player’s “prime” as the best seven years of their career — not necessarily consecutive — and these selections are based on the player’s likelihood to make the Hall of Fame. Some members of the team will be inducted on the first ballot, and some will take years to make it to the Hall, but ultimately I think that every player on this list has a great shot at being immortalized in Cooperstown.

This article is part one of a two-part set in which I show my Dream Team. Part two will be released tomorrow.

Metrics Explained

Wins Above Replacement, or WAR, is the most commonly used advanced metric in baseball. It is a measure of how many wins a team gained by playing a specific player instead of a replacement player, who would have a WAR of 0. If a player records 2 WAR in a season, he is considered starting material, 4 or 5 WAR is acknowledged to be All-Star value, and 8 WAR is MVP-level production.

The Jaffe WAR score system, or JAWS, is simply the average of a player’s seven-year peak WAR and career WAR. For example, if a player had 100 career WAR and 50 seven-year peak WAR, his JAWS would be 75. This metric gives us perspective on how likely it is for a player to make the Hall of Fame compared to those who played their position.

Fielding Percentage is a measure off how often a player commits an error. For example, a fielding percentage of 97% means the player committed an error on 3% of the plays he made.

Note: This list favors older players because:

• They have more career WAR
• They have more years from which to choose their seven-year peak WAR
• They are closer to entering the Hall of Fame than younger players.

Batting leadoff and playing right field…

Ichiro Suzuki

59.4 career WAR / 43.6 7yr-peak WAR / 51.5 JAWS

Average HOF RF:

73.2 career WAR / 43.0 7yr-peak WAR / 58.1 JAWS

17th in JAWS out of 24 Hall of Fame Right Fielders

Accolades: MVP (2001), Rookie of the Year (2001), 10x All-Star, 10x Gold glove, 3x Silver Slugger

Ichiro was one of the easiest selections for this Hall of Fame Dream Team. He was a trendsetter — the first Asian position player to debut in the Major Leagues.

In his rookie season, Ichiro set the baseball world ablaze, winning MVP and Rookie of the Year, and leading the league in hits, stolen bases, and batting average.

Ichiro was a revelation in the big leagues, and his game was predicated on speed not power, completely opposite to the direction baseball was trending. According to FanGraphs, Ichiro occupies the first seven spots on the list of highest single-season infield hit totals.

Ichiro was the hit king. He holds the records for most hits in a season (262) and most consecutive 200-hit seasons (10). He also tied the record for most 200-hit seasons (10), and led the league in hits seven times.

Recently, Ichiro reached the 3,000 hit plateau, and if you count his hits from his time in Japan, he broke Pete Rose’s record for most hits across all of baseball’s professional leagues.

In his prime, Ichiro was one of the best players in the world. Only Albert Pujols and Alex Rodriguez accumulated more WAR than Ichiro from 2001 to 2010. On top of being one of the greatest to ever play in the outfield, Ichiro was a cultural icon, and many of the recent advances that Asian players have made are attributable to him.

Batting second and playing left field…

Mike Trout

52.0 career WAR / 52.0 7yr-peak WAR / 52.0 JAWS

Average HOF CF (out of 19):

71.2 career WAR / 44.6 7yr-peak WAR / 57.9 JAWS

14th out of 19 Hall of Fame Center Fielders

Accolades: 2x MVP (2014, 2016), Rookie of the Year (2012), 6x All-Star, 5x Silver Slugger

Trout usually plays center field, but I had to move him over to left in order to accommodate him in the lineup.

Mike Trout is hands-down the best player in baseball right now, and is surely destined for Cooperstown.

Trout has only played five full seasons, but his numbers stack up well next to other center fielders who are enshrined in the Hall. And at just 25 years old, Trout is only entering his prime, meaning that his best years are ahead of him.

Now that’s a stunning thought.

Trout also has the sixth-best seven-year peak WAR out of the 24 center fielders in Cooperstown, in only five seasons!

Here I am talking about how Trout is a generational talent, and I haven’t even mentioned the countless honors that he has collected. Trout has made the All-Star team (for which he has won MVP twice), taken home a Silver Slugger, and been either MVP winner (twice) or runner-up (three times) in every season of his career.

That level of dominance is mind-boggling and completely unprecedented.

Batting third as the designated hitter…

Miguel Cabrera

70.0 career WAR / 44.6 7yr-peak WAR / 57.3 JAWS

Average HOF 1B:

66.4 career WAR / 42.7 7yr-peak WAR / 54.6 JAWS

10th in JAWS out of 20 Hall of Fame First Basemen

Accolades: Triple Crown (2013), 2x MVP (2012, 2013), 11x All-Star, 7x Silver Slugger, World Series Champion (2003)

Miguel Cabrera, still one of the best players in baseball, is a generational talent and already a surefire Hall of Famer. The Venezuelan has been tearing up the big leagues ever since debuting in 2003, and has brought a cheerful smile and a love of the game to wherever he plays.

In the beginning of his career, Cabrera was a young star on the Florida Marlins, one of the youngest teams in baseball. He experienced success early on when the Marlins won the World Series in his rookie year. Then, after a blockbuster trade to the Detroit Tigers in 2007, he continued to amaze in the American League.

From 2011 to 2015, Cabrera was the most feared hitter in all of baseball. During that time, he won four batting titles, took home two MVPs, and racked up five All-Star selections. In 2013, Cabrera captured the Triple Crown (leading the league in batting average, home runs, and RBIs), a feat that had not been accomplished since 1967.

Cabrera already has 2,598 hits and 458 home runs as of July 22nd, so he has a good chance to join Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, and Alex Rodriguez as the fourth member of the 3,000 hit and 600 home run club. Cabrera’s near-incomparable match of hitting for both power and average have vaulted him into the conversation as one of the best hitters of all time.

Batting cleanup and playing first base…

Albert Pujols

100.1 career WAR / 61.6 7yr-peak WAR / 80.8 JAWS

Average HOF 1B:

66.4 career WAR / 42.7 7yr-peak WAR / 54.6 JAWS

2nd in JAWS out of 20 Hall of Fame First Basemen

Accolades: 3x MVP (2005, 2008, 2009), Rookie of the Year (2001), 10x All-Star, 2x Gold Glove, 6x Silver Slugger,  World Series Champion (2006, 2011)

The easiest choice on the roster, Albert Pujols should make the Hall of Fame on the first ballot. Much like Pujols’ overflowing trophy cabinet, I don’t have room enough to praise Pujols, truly one of the greatest players ever.

Pujols has faded since he signed with the Angels on a 10-year, $240-million contract in 2012, but don’t let his struggles of late affect your judgement on his case for the Hall of Fame. He trails only Lou Gehrig in career WAR among first basemen, and is one of only 21 position players to record 100 career WAR.

Pujols’ nickname “The Machine” was an apt description of his time as a Cardinal. His 162-game average stats for his 11 years in St. Louis were: .328/.420/.617 with 127 RBIs, 123 runs, and 43 home runs. Pujols finished in the top 10 of the MVP voting all 11 years, ending up in the top five in ten seasons, and winning the award three times. But Pujols isn’t just a slugging first basemen, he is a very capable defender and has won two Gold Gloves.

Pujols became the ninth member of the 600 home run club earlier this year, and next year he should join the 3,000 hit club (as of July 22nd he has 2,908 hits). Pujols leaves a legacy as one of the best ever, and he deserves to be enshrined in Cooperstown.

Batting fifth and manning the hot corner…

Adrian Beltre

91.5 career WAR / 49.7 7yr-peak WAR / 70.6 JAWS

Average HOF 3B:

67.5 career WAR / 42.8 7yr-peak WAR / 55.2 JAWS

5th in JAWS out of 13 Hall of Fame Third Basemen

Accolades: 4x All-Star, 5x Gold Glove, 4x Silver Slugger

Adrian Beltre, still chugging along at the ripe age of 38, has graced baseball with his presence for 20 seasons. From hitting home runs off one knee, to his aversion of people touching his head, Beltre is one of the true characters of the game.

Beltre is third all-time in WAR among third basemen, trailing only Mike Schmidt and Eddie Mathews. He also figures to be the next member of the 3,000 hit club, needing only 15 more hits as of July 22nd. And if he decides to come back and play next year, he has a great chance of overtaking Brooks Robinson for most games played at third base.

Those are just some of the records that Beltre is approaching, and he does not seem to be slowing down.

There is just no debate on Beltre’s Hall of Fame candidacy. Among all third basemen, he ranks in the top five in games played, hits, doubles, home runs, RBIs, and WAR.

Beltre’s legacy will be as one of the best defensive third basemen of all time, and he trails only Brooks Robinson in Defensive WAR among players who have manned the hot corner. His highlight reel of diving stabs, barehanded picks, and throws from all the way across the diamond make him one of the best ever to play third base.

Special thanks to baseball-reference.com for all of these helpful stats. I could not have written this article without them.

Thanks for reading Part I. Part II will be released at a later date and it will include spots 6-9 in the batting order as well as the starting pitcher.

To be continued…

Scott Rolen will appear on Hall of Fame ballots in 2018. Rolen played professional baseball from 1996 – 2012, and was a premier third baseman whose value was largely underrated due to the fans’, writers’ and even some teams’ lack of acceptance of advanced metrics. In this piece, many of these metrics, along with a few traditional ones, will be used to describe the value that Rolen produced at the plate and at third, a value that is deserving of the Hall of Fame.

Third base has long been a position of heavy hitters, and in the high-powered offense era during which Rolen played most of his career, this may have caused fans to overlook him because he only broke 30 home runs three times in his career. However, we’ll examine Scott Rolen’s worth as a hitter as compared to other players who played the slugger-heavy position of third base. Rolen has 8,495 plate appearances. According to baseball-reference.com, among third basemen with at least 7,000 plate appearances, Rolen ranks 5th in OBP, 6th in SLG, 5th in Runs Created and 6th in Runs Produced. In all of these categories, Rolen ranks behind players like Chipper Jones, Wade Boggs, Mike Schmidt, George Brett, and Adrian Beltre. It is worth noting that he actually ranks ahead of Brooks Robinson in Runs Created, even though Robinson is generally known for setting the gold standard as a third baseman defensively, not offensively.

Again according to baseball-reference, from 1997-2007, the majority of Rolen’s career, he was 1st in Runs Created, hits, stolen bases, and times on base w/o ROE among third basemen with at least 1,000 plate appearances during that time span. He was 2nd in walks drawn, 3rd in HR, and 7th in OBP in that same period. Scott Rolen played in an era with some of the best third basemen at the plate- Chipper Jones, Alex Rodriguez, Aramis Ramirez, Adrian Beltre- and was consistently one of the best during his career. According to FanGraphs, for third basemen with at least 3000 PA during the entire span of Rolen’s career, he has 119 wRC+, a .360 wOBA, 0.357 OBP, and 148.5 wRAA. That puts him at 7th in wRC+, 6th in wOBA, 5th in OBP, and 5th in wRAA. Furthermore, his 128 wRC+ is higher than Hall of Famer Paul Molitor’s 122, and Molitor made the majority of his plate appearances as a DH.

We can see that Rolen consistently put himself on the short list of the most valuable offensive third basemen during his era, even if he was never considered to be the outright best at the plate. But Scott Rolen added most of his value on defense. During his career, he had four seasons in the top 10 in defensive WAR. According to FanGraphs, his 182.2 Defensive Runs Above Average rank 5th among 3B all time. He led the league twice in putouts and assists, with six seasons in the top 10 for putouts and eight seasons in the top 10 for assists. Wade Boggs, of course a Hall of Fame third baseman, was 95 Total Zone Fielding Runs above Average for his career. George Brett, inducted in 1999, has 54 in 17 seasons. Scott Rolen has 150 Total Zone Fielding Runs above Average for the same number of seasons. Scott Rolen ranks 2nd among 3B behind Adrian Beltre from the seasons of 2002 to 2012 in UZR (109), Defensive Runs Saved (114) and Range Rating (80.5). During 10 of his 17 seasons, he was in the top 10 in Total Zone Runs and Range Factor/9 innings. He also led the league twice in both of those categories. Maybe Rolen was a ‘good-not-great’ hitter, but his defense was nothing short of absolutely stellar.

If you happen to care about certain seasonal awards in Hall of Fame considerations (I certainly don’t, but HoF voters seem to), Rolen was a Rookie of the Year, a Silver Slugger, a seven-time All-Star, and an eight-time Gold Glove winner.

Immensely more important are Scott’s player-value numbers, which make his Hall of Fame case impossible to ignore. FanGraphs gives him a WAR of 70.1, which ranks 10th among 3rd basemen in the history of baseball. He played finished in the Top 10 for defensive WAR four times in his career, and three times in overall WAR. The average WAR for a Hall of Fame third basemen is 67.5. If you aren’t familiar with the JAWS score, developed by statistician Jay Jaffe, it measures whether or not a player is deserving of the Hall of Fame by comparing him to other players in the Hall who played his position. This score also accounts for the different offensive eras throughout the history of the game using advanced metrics, and produces a score that combines a player’s career WAR and his seven-year peak WAR to compare him to current Hall of Famers. The average JAWS score for third basemen in the Hall of Fame is 55.2. Scott Rolen’s is 56.8.

So why does Scott Rolen’s name rarely come up among casual conversations about some of the best third basemen ever? For one, these defensive metrics in which Rolen excelled were not widely accepted or even widely understood during most of the time that he played. Another reason may be that Scott Rolen only appeared in 39 postseason games, and did not play particularly well in those postseason appearances. Postseason appearances, especially when there is such a small sample size in the case of Scott Rolen, should not be a make or break factor in Hall of Fame consideration; but, there are still a decent amount of voters who look for that.

Whatever the reasons may be, Scott Rolen’s case is more than strong with the application of advanced statistics. The Hall of Fame is strangely lacking in third basemen, holding only 16 currently. To put that in context, there are 10 umpires enshrined and 23 players from the other corner of the infield. Hopefully, the BBWAA can begin to fix this imbalance, and they could start by inducting Scott Rolen, truly one of the greatest third basemen of the last two decades.

Is Ivan Rodriguez going to make the Hall of Fame when the results are announced today? In my opinion, it’s close to a toss-up.

Does the man they called Pudge deserve to be enshrined, though? Most would agree he does, whether it’s because he’s the all-time games played leader at catcher, the all-time hits leader among catchers or because of some combination of his traditional stats (311 HR, 2844 H, .296 AVG, 13 Gold Gloves, 14 All-Star appearances) and sabermetric stats (+68.9 career fWAR). Will he be? Who knows! At least, this year, that is. If he doesn’t go in this year he’ll almost certainly be close enough to make his enshrinement in 2018 a mere formality.

What are his chances for this year, though, since that’s what’s important right now?

I’ve been following how Rodriguez has been doing via Ryan Thibodaux’s amazing BBHOF Tracker (check out his twitter handle @NotMrTibbs if you have yet to do so). A few dozen ballots in, I realized that Rodriguez was tracking extremely well with voters who checked off fellow superstar catcher Mike Piazza’s name last year. From that point on, I decided to follow along as Ryan tracked ballots and see if I could get an accurate bearing on whether Rodriguez would join the ranks of first-ballot Hall-of-Famers.

Over at the Tracker, there’s a row labeled “Estimated Net Gain Needed” for returning candidates. I wanted to see how many Piazza voters Pudge could afford to lose, so I used the same assumptions to calculated Pudge’s allowable net loss that were used there:

Total voters: 435

Returning voters: 415

New voters: 20

I used Piazza’s percentage for the returning voters (83%) and new voters (8/10 on new voters in 2016, 80%) to calculate Piazza’s expected votes if he were put back on the ballot — or, essentially, how I expected Pudge would do if he exactly cloned Piazza. All the math worked out to -33.45, meaning Rodriguez could afford to lose 33 Piazza voters, but 34 would presumably put him just under the assumed 327 votes needed (327/435 is just over 75%).

How has I-Rod actually fared, though?

Through 247 ballots tallied in the Tracker, 208 voters have voted for whom information is known about their 2016 voting. 180 of them voted for Piazza last year, whilst 28 withheld a vote. Of the 180, Pudge has picked up 157 of them. He’s also picked up a stunning nine of the 28 who didn’t vote for Piazza last year, which is significantly better than how I’d expected he’d do there, and is partially what’s kept him afloat.

All in all, with about 57% of the approximate vote total counted, Pudge has 158 votes from these 200 returning voters, 14 fewer than what Piazza had. That net -14 is about 40% of his allowable net loss. What does all that mean for his chances, though?

To answer that, I delved a little deeper into the numbers, breaking down how Pudge has done based on size of ballot combined with if they voted for Piazza.

I also utilized the information at the bottom of Thibodaux’s Tracker to see who we knew for sure did not vote in 2016 and how that affected the percentage of Piazza’s voters who were available to vote for Pudge.

So far, there have been 12 confirmed, eligible 2016 Hall-of-Fame voters who did not cast a 2017 ballot, 11 of whom did vote last year. Of those 11, 10 had public ballots last year and Piazza went 8/10 on them, a touch below his overall 83% mark. There are actually nine voters who have publicly revealed their ballots this year who didn’t vote last year, too — Jeff Blair, Steve Dilbeck, Lynn Henning, Kevin Modesti, Jim Reeves, John Romano, Gary Shelton, Willie Smith and Clark Spencer. Those nine went 7/9 on Pudge, essentially cancelling out the lost Piazza voters.

The projected net-loss-allowed figure also used an 80% assumption for Pudge and new voters, but Pudge has actually fared a little better, going 13/14. If six more first-time voters cast ballots and Pudge was named on five of them, he would go 19/20 on new ballots, gaining a much-needed three-vote cushion. At that point, he’d essentially be able to lose as many as 35 of Piazza’s voters.

There are two key ways to look at how Pudge will do on the remaining ballots. Most players do worse when private ballots are tallied; they tend to skew more anti-PED and put fewer names on their ballots. Last year, Mike Piazza finished the pre-results portion of ballot-tracking at 86.3% and fell 3.3% from pre-results to the final tally.

According to Thibodaux’s tally, Piazza got 102 of the 129 fully private, untracked votes last year, or 79.1%. He got 81 of the 100 public ballots released after the announcement, meaning he got 79.9% of all votes not released at the time of the announcement.

Going back a bit, Pudge has gotten 166 votes on the public returnees, whereas Piazza had 180. If that ratio were to hold on the remaining ballots, taking Piazza’s post-results percentage and multiplying it by 92.2%, the percentage of Piazza voters Pudge has gotten, would leave Pudge around 73.8% on private ballots. Thibodaux’s estimates say Pudge needs to get 130 of the remaining 187 ballots, which translates to 69.52%. All in all, much of this is good news for Pudge. Bagwell dropped about 6% from pre-results to final last year, but Bagwell hadn’t done quite as good against Piazza voters and had more certainty among his private voters. Pudge is on his first try; people can estimate how he’ll do all they want, but most voters seem to consider him a clearly superior candidate to Bagwell, despite the fact that Bags was likely the better player.

Rodriguez, I don’t believe, drops quite as much as Bagwell did. Does he drop as little as Piazza, though? Who knows! And that’s exactly the issue. One projection system I’ve seen (authored by Nathaniel Rakich, @baseballot) estimated Pudge’s public/private differential will be an 8.5% drop-off. From where he is right now, he can more than afford that differential and still survive and be elected.

One last thing I’ve looked at is how small-Hall voters who had Piazza have voted on Pudge. Last year, pre-announcement, there were 11 voters who voted at max five players and selected Piazza. Eight of these selected Rodriguez this year, which isn’t fantastic, but is still very good. Additionally, two others who had five-or-fewer ballots and didn’t vote for Piazza chose to vote for Rodriguez. Some have been afraid that Rodriguez’s chances would be ruined by small-Hall ballots, but I’d counter that this research has made me feel the exact opposite. At announcement-time last year, Piazza had votes on 11 ballots of five-or-fewer names. Right now, Piazza currently has votes on 10 of last year’s five-or-fewer voters.

It’s going to be close. It could go either way. However, there are plenty of reasons to be optimistic about Pudge’s first-ballot chances when the results are announced at 6 p.m. ET.

…
Note: While writing this, another previously private voter released his ballot and voted for Pudge despite not voting for Piazza last year, meaning Pudge is now -13 at the 57% mark.

One of the most controversial issues in baseball history has arisen recently in regards to the Hall of Fame. Historically the debates over a player’s worthiness of enshrinement have focused almost squarely on a player’s career statistics and in fact for many that remains the case today. But recently a new trend among candidates has begun to emerge. The morality of their careers now seems to matter more than ever and not just with borderline candidates. Players like Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens have numbers that put them in the conversation for being the greatest position player and pitcher of all-time, respectively, but because people question the means by these players attained their numbers, they have been thus far shut out of receiving the game’s highest honor. The issue? PEDs, or, more simply put, any drug concerning the use of anabolic steroids or HGH.

I feel that it is important to differentiate the difference between PEDs and these two families of drugs, because in a technical sense over-the-counter aspirin could be considered a PED. The idea of punishing a player for taking a simple Tylenol seems utterly ridiculous even under the most draconian of PED rules.

It is specifically the use of anabolic steroids and/or HGH that has been the square focus of people’s outrage and it’s the attitudes people have about these two drugs which I will be focusing on.

The Health Risks

To date no long-term study on the long-term health effects of these drugs has ever been done, mainly because no scientific institution of significance would ever approve of such a thing, but the anecdotal evidence seems to be mixed at best and not good at worst.

Countless athletes across various sports have contracted various health issues during and after their playing careers, some of which no doubt stem at least in part from steroid use. Others however have had minimal to non-existent side effects of use and with the rigors of sports such as football it’s almost impossible to make the distinction between issues that were caused by the side effects of drug use and the side effects of the physical toll caused by playing the sport itself.

Another issue as it relates especially to sports like football and other combat sports like MMA and boxing is the issue of facing opponents who are on steroids or HGH themselves. Regardless of any physical effects Barry Bonds’ PED use may have had on himself, it’s hard to correlate any direct negative health consequences this would have on another player because of the non-physical nature of the sport. Taking steroids or HGH to add more power to your jab would seem to be a different story, especially over time.

Less mentioned is the role that illegal or hard drugs may have played in many of the more notable cases of steroid-attributed health issues. Steroids rose to prominence around the same time as the drug cocaine did and while the long-term health effects of steroids may not be very well documented, the long-term health effects of cocaine use certainly are.

Unlike the scare-tactic view of Len Bias’ allergic reaction death, the more likely health outcome of cocaine use, especially long-term, is a premature heart attack. Sadly there is probably no greater evidence of this than among some of the more recent celebrity deaths. In addition to having and or succumbing to serious heart-related issues, Carrie Fisher, Whitney Houston and Robin Williams were all noted heavy cocaine users and I have no doubt that use played a significant part in the health struggles all three went through in their later years.

Ken Caminiti was both a steroid and cocaine user. How much of an impact each had on his health independent of the other is impossible to say. It is worth noting though that Caminiti’s off-field lifestyle may help explain why he is now dead and why others like McGwire are still alive even though their total HGH and/or steroid use over the course of their lives may have been close to equal.

How serious the side effects of drugs like steroids and HGH are from one person to the next is impossible to say, but I haven’t seen any anecdotal evidence yet to suggest that aside from the most extreme cases that steroid use on its own can cause your mortality to be lowered by 20-30 years.

As it relates to a sport like professional baseball, in the grand scheme of health risks related to the sport, I actually don’t view the direct side effects of steroids or HGH as being that significant of a health risk. If a player suffers an injury such as an ACL tear, it is just assumed that player will undergo major knee surgery and 6-9 months of serious rehab like it’s nothing.

Guys have developed lifelong chronic pain by trying to play through injuries that they wouldn’t have had they taken better care of themselves instead of playing baseball. Derek Jeter broke his ankle in the 2012 ALDS trying to play through a bone bruise and even received a cortisone shot to alleviate the pain. In terms of long-term health effects, I would put that injury up there with any side effects that could come from a steroid cycle.

Many may claim we take these types of health issues players go through to get on the field for granted because it’s what they want to do and they are getting financially compensated, but I think the real reason is because most people can’t really relate to it. Most jobs aren’t entirely dependent on your physical well-being. If you have a debilitating injury you’re probably not given the options of getting it fixed ASAP just so you can have the opportunity of getting your old job back, or find a new line of work.

For a player like Joe Mauer, the financial implications of this decision may not be nearly as severe as, say, a nine-year backup catcher who needs one more year in the league to get a full pension, but the expectation to handle these serious injuries that require surgery to fix them is all the same.

All this being said, the biggest health risk I see with steroid and HGH use as it relates to baseball isn’t any direct side effect stemming from use, but rather the long-term effects from the increased amount of injuries caused that can be attributed at least in part to steroid or HGH use. As always, it is important to note that your mileage may vary with this statement. In a sport like baseball, it may mean a chronically sore elbow or shoulder caused by overuse. With football, it could be a more damaged brain caused by being hit by a 280 pound player who added on an extra 40 pounds of muscle by taking steroids.

Looking at the issue through that lens I think should give people a different understanding of how the risks of these drugs should be viewed. The conventional argument of “no player should have to choose between using a drug that could potentially cause them harm and playing” can still hold true, but the long-term consequences can be very different. Say what you want about Roger Clemens, but aside from Mike Piazza, I didn’t see him trying to cause bodily harm to any opposing player he came across. For someone like former defensive end and noted steroid user Mark Gastineau, causing physical harm to the opposing player is pretty much in the job description. The amount of physical strength he gained from those drugs was used against his opponents in a way that caused more adverse harm to them than would otherwise exist.

This may not quite be the boogeyman “all drugs can kill you” view that many anti-drug advocates have taken, but it takes a far more honest look at the risks associated with these types of drugs not just on an individual level, but a league-wide one as well. Looking at it through that lens makes the type of sport a lot more relevant to the discussion and I think subsequent punishments.

However strict the MLB and NBA are with regard to steroids and HGH, sports like the NFL and UFC should be far stricter and far more serious about talking about this problem. Regardless of how you feel about steroids in sports morally, I don’t see how anyone using steroids while playing baseball is causing any type of increased health risk for any other player beyond the increased incentive for that other player to use just to keep up with the rest of the pack. I can’t say the same when it comes to combat sports and for that reason I can’t say the issue should be viewed the same across all sports.

The Attitude

At the heart of the media and fan outrage toward the issue of steroids, I think, is what simply boils down to the idea of an otherwise perfectly healthy person taking a potentially dangerous drug purely for the benefit of making themselves a better athlete.

I add in the word “perfectly healthy” because when it comes to players trying to play through injuries and ailments, people tend to be far more understanding. A cortisone steroid for instance can have health effects that are just as adverse as an anabolic steroid, but because cortisone steroids are almost entirely associated with players recovering from injury, their use is tolerated largely without question.

Which is actually worse for your health is tough to say, but it is fascinating to me that the same people who would condemn the use of blood doping by Lance Armstrong having no issue giving praise to the athlete who “gutted it out” through an injury that would have kept most people on the bench. One is viewed as a selfless action, the other selfish, yet aside from the issue of one athlete being perfectly healthy and the other not, the dynamic between doing what’s best for your career or team versus doing what’s best for your health is almost identical.

What seems to bother people more than anything when it comes to PEDs is when athletes are able to obtain results through these drugs that would be impossible to achieve without them.

In all, 52 players have been suspended under the MLB’s adopted drug policy, which began in 2005. Of those 52 players, most fans of the sport could only name a small handful of players who have actually been caught, but even the casual fan will have no issue recalling that Álex Rodríguez was one of the 52 players that have been suspended. When it comes to Bartolo Colón, his ability to provide entertaining at-bats appears to have caused most fans to come down with a case of amnesia.

The amount of outrage a player receives over using PEDs appears to be more correlated to their overall ability and whether or not they are likeable than it is to the act of using itself. It may not be a coincidence that at the same time that David Ortiz is getting more and more attention for being a serious Hall-of-Fame candidate, the overall view towards known PED users seems to have softened somewhat. It certainly hasn’t been lost on me that some of the same writers who have been pounding the table how they would never vote in a person with a PED cloud around them tend to get a bit quieter on the subject matter when it comes to David Ortiz. A 2003 failed drug is now seen as a “minor association” with PEDs.

Is this is a sign of writers softening their stance on the issue, or is it simply the case that a lot of this “outrage” over PEDs is really just an excuse to perform a litmus test on a player’s “likeability”? Each writer will have a different answer to this question, but as a whole the group probably falls somewhere in the middle.

What Should The Hall of Fame Be About?

“Voting shall be based upon the player’s record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character, and contributions to the team(s) on which the player played.”

That is the official verbiage by which all Hall-of-Fame players should be voted on, yet the phrase itself is incredibly vague and unspecific as far as how much weight should be placed on each characteristic.

If you are to view all of these attributes as being equal though, then a player like a player like Carlos Delgado should have a slam-dunk case for getting into the Hall of Fame. In addition to his three Silver Slugger Awards and his 473 career home runs, and having no PED-related issues; Delgado was also one of the most active players in baseball when it came to charity work, activity trying to increase exposure of the game, while also being a spoken advocate of things like improving education in his native home of Puerto Rico.

On the flip side of the argument though is Roberto Alomar, who spit in umpire John Hirschbeck’s face during an argument over balls and strikes in 1996. It was a disgraceful moment in baseball history for everyone involved, and thankfully it didn’t prevent Alomar from getting into the Hall of Fame, but it was amazing to me how many fans and writers were willing to completely disregard Alomar’s 17-year career over one 30-second incident. Anyone who thought this incident alone was bad enough to warrant being kicked out of the Hall needs to pick up a history book.

I bring up these two players because it offers proof that the whole case with character and integrity is really a one-way street. As honorable as Delgado’s off-field actions were/are my guess is very few voters even know about how extensive Delgado’s charity work is, let alone care enough about it to the point where it could actually influence their vote.

If I were voting it would not influence my vote one bit and in my opinion Delgado is not a Hall-of-Famer, but I’m not someone who also claims to put a great deal of weight on things like “character” and “integrity” when it comes to voting.

I’m not asking for anti-PED voters to vote for Carlos Delgado. What I’m asking is for them to be consistent about what it is they want from a player and not look at things like character as someone thing that can only be a pure negative.

The Hall of Fame doesn’t necessarily need to honor the best players who ever played the game. I would be all for honoring players that weren’t just great on the field, but also people who anyone associated with the game could be proud of, but that would seem to change the Hall-of-Fame worthiness for some of the players who are now in.

A player like Joe DiMaggio who easily has the numbers and the reputation to warrant induction would not be someone I would consider worthy of induction under this new system because of his off-field transgressions and general personality which was not described as all that friendly, to put things mildly, based on numerous accounts.

It’s impossible to talk about baseball in the 1940s without mentioning Joe DiMaggio, and some may feel that his service in WWII should go a ways in overcoming some of his more off-putting attributes, but is DiMaggio’s situation really all that different from someone like Curt Schilling, who is being held out for a lot of the same reasons that DiMaggio was given a free pass on? (i.e. Just not being a nice or good human being.)

These are the unintended consequences of morality run amok. You wind up doing things you don’t agree with or don’t support, but have to do anyway, else risk contradicting yourself and calling into question how strongly held your principles on this really are. The alternative is what I think we have now. A double standard where players like David Ortiz have their PED issues overlooked or brushed under the rug simply because they were a popular player who voters would very much like to get in, while less popular players like Kevin Brown are treated like almost chopped liver because they didn’t get well with the media and weren’t marketed very much during their career.

Some may think putting players like Bonds and Clemens in will damage or even ruin the integrity of the institution itself. That may in fact be true, but the alternative to that is the Hall of Fame loses credibility as an evaluation tool for confirming a player’s greatness. This aspect was already damaged during Frankie Frisch’s reign as head of the Veteran’s Committee. Guys like Chick Hafey and Jesse Haines may be Hall of Famers, but have nowhere near the kinds of numbers you need to have in order to view their enshrinement as a serious endorsement of their greatness.

But Roger Clemens does not need a plaque in Cooperstown in order for people like me to consider him the greatest pitcher of all time, just like Pete Rose doesn’t need a plaque to be considered one of the greatest hitters of all time. But if the Hall of Fame wants to be viewed as the foremost authority on player greatness, the Hall of Fame needs these players to be members way more than those players need the Hall of Fame.

Just speaking for myself, I’ll take a morally ambiguous Hall of Fame that that can be viewed as an authority of player greatness over a morally righteous Hall of Fame that can’t.

For the next month and a half, while you’re scouring the internet for hot Mark Melancon rumors, you’ll likely run into a number of people sharing their opinions about the Hall of Fame ballot. Most of the time, those opinions will concern the best players on the ballot, rehashing old arguments about Barry Bonds and Curt Schilling, or maybe they’ll focus on some of the newcomers with a chance like Ivan Rodriguez or Vlad Guerrero. And if you like that, great! You’ll have plenty of reading material. But this won’t be one of those opinion pieces. Here we are going to talk about the denizens of the ballot and let them ride off into the sunset.

Read the rest of this entry »

With the special attention pitchers receive today, such as pitch counts, innings limits, as well as the host of PITCHf/x data that can notify teams of when a pitcher is fatigued, it seems like they days of 300-game winners have come and passed. And for the most part, some of this is true. We’ve seen pitchers be shut down during their earlier years to prevent injuries, such as the Nationals keeping a close eye on Stephen Strasburg. When we think of 300 wins, the math isn’t that hard. It’s some combination of 15+ seasons of 15+ wins over an entire career. Let’s dive in to what further breaks down these pitchers.

I gathered data on pitchers who finished their careers after 1980 as well as pitchers younger than that; I did this to avoid looking at pitchers such as Cy Young who are a little tough to compare to the modern day, with rule changes and the different run-scoring environments. In my query, I looked at pitchers with at least 250 wins. This gave me more data, and since 250-win pitchers are reasonably close to 300, it will allow me to get at what exactly creates a pitcher of this caliber.

My list included 19 names:

Greg Maddux

Roger Clemens

Steve Carlton

Nolan Ryan

Don Sutton

Phil Niekro

Gaylord Perry

Tom Seaver

Tom Glavine

Randy Johnson

Tommy John

Bert Blyleven

Fergie Jenkins

Jim Kaat

Mike Mussina

Jamie Moyer

Jim Palmer

Andy Pettitte

Some of these guys were absolute iron men, pitching over 5000 innings in their career. Maddux did this, as well as Carlton, Ryan, and Sutton. Most of this group barely reached 12 wins per season, showing that they reached the 300-club with longevity, not necessarily dominance. The other guys on this list, by default, either had higher win totals or pitched forever, but without racking up a ton of innings (Kaat, Moyer). Surprisingly, or perhaps not, only four of the 19 pitchers did not pitch for 20 seasons, so again, dominance might not be the key factor — instead, longevity.

I then looked at where these pitchers were at when they were 30 years old. Thirty years seems to be about a halfway point, but the data indicates otherwise. In fact, only three of these 19 pitchers had at least 150 wins at 30. This again drives home the point that these pitchers do not necessarily have to be untouchable every single year they pitched; it just means they have to be pitchers that stay healthy and can pitch for a long, long time. At the same time, the average pitcher on this list had 115 wins at 30, so they did need to have a productive youth in terms of racking up wins.

Here is a table displaying the careers of our 19 pitchers:

The amazing part, at least in my opinion, is that these pitchers almost seemed to get better with age, at least in terms of wins. I know that wins is not a good stat for tracking the effectiveness of pitchers, but since we are talking the 300-win club, it is what we have in front of us. Anyways, 17 of these 19 pitchers had more wins after 30 than they did before. Again, this hammers home the idea that longevity and durability is more important than complete dominance. Yes, you have to be a good, if not great, pitcher, but you also have to stay healthy.

So when looking at current pitchers that possibly have a chance at 300, I filtered through active pitchers fulfilling a few different qualifications. First, the pitcher must have at least 190 innings pitcher per year, including years of injuries (this helps get at longevity and durability). Also, the pitcher must also average at least 12 wins per year. I came up with a group of pitchers who where close to matching these requirements. From this list of 14 pitchers, I think eight or so have the best chance of eclipsing 300.

Here is a table of possible contenders:

This list includes: Clayton Kershaw, Chris Sale, Justin Verlander, Madison Bumgarner, David Price, Rick Porcello, Jon Lester, and Felix Hernandez. CC Sabathia, although at 223 career wins, does not make this list, since I don’t think he has 5-8 more seasons of decent pitching in front of him. I will go into each pitcher in more detail to describe what each pitcher needs to do to have a chance.

I’m going to start with Lester. Lester is currently at 146 wins, with 2003 regular-season innings pitched. He has been great through his first 11 seasons, in nine of which he was a full-time starter. In those nine seasons, he failed to pitch 200 innings just once, when he posted 191.2 innings pitched. He has been an iron man, and at age 32, the recipe is simple. He just needs to stay healthy and he needs his game to age well. This is going to be a repetitive theme, but to be honest, that’s what we would expect. Things helping Lester? Well, playing for the Cubs is one. Not only do they have a great defense, but they also create great run support, which can help Lester pick up a lot of wins. He was 19-5 this past year, matching his career high in Boston in 2010.

Now on to Justin Verlander. After an injury-riddled 2015, Verlander was great this year, posting a 16-9 record and an ERA of 3.04 (FIP of 3.48). Currently, he sits at 173 wins and is 33 years old. I mentioned his injury struggles in 2015. He only pitched 133 innings. In his 11 years as a full-time starter, that was the only the second time he failed to reach 200 innings pitched. People may worry that Verlander is starting to lose his velocity, which could mitigate his effectiveness, but in 2016, he struck out batters at a career-high rate and also had a career-best strikeout to walk ratio. Verlander is back with the elite, and if he can avoid injury trouble, he deserves to be in the discussion for a possible 300-win flirtation.

I’ll now move on to Clayton Kershaw. Kershaw has been the best pitcher in baseball for the past five years, and has only struggled with injuries for this past year, when he hit the DL with back issues. He still picked up 12 wins, and looked like peak Kershaw when he came back. Kershaw continues to strike out hitters and not allow walks, and in his shortened 2016, he posted a career-best FIP. Kershaw currently sits at 126 wins, and is 28 years old, in the middle of his prime. I think there are two factors that could keep Kershaw from getting close. The first one is his back. The Dodgers shut Kershaw down for half the year, and hopefully it heals, but if it is one of those lingering injuries that can also affect his timing a delivery as well as his overall health, he won’t be able to age his game to the necessary limits needed to hit 300. Also, he should get more wins. I’m not sure this will be a big factor now that the Dodgers have Andrew Friedman at the helm, but if he cannot get the run support he needs, that could lead to two or three fewer wins every year.

Chris Sale is next. Sale sits at 74 wins and is 27. He has some work to do. He has been relatively healthy, however, over his five full years as a starter. I think the best bet for Sale is to get out of Chicago, or at least the White Sox, and get on a team that can give him some good defense and offense. His win totals just aren’t high enough, but he is young enough where if he finds a new team and can age well, he might be able to hit 250.

I’ll do Bumgarner next. He really hasn’t had any injury trouble in his six years as a full-time starter. He is 27 and has 100 wins. He is a little harder to project, but I would say he’s got a better shot than Sale. I mean, he is already at 100 and only 27. Kershaw might have a leg up on him, but MadBum has been able to stay healthy. To be honest, Kershaw had been healthy too before this year, which somewhat shows that pitching 20 full seasons does not happen to often. Anyways, Bumgarner hasn’t quite been as dominant as some of the other names on this list, but he has been very good, and has stayed healthy. He is on a solid team with a good defense. The conditions are correct, he just needs to age well and stay healthy. I still like Kershaw’s odds a little more, but Bumgarner’s are not far behind.

Now I’ll move on to David Price. Price is 31, has 121 wins, and has pitched relatively healthy for seven full seasons. He is on the Red Sox now, which — although their poor defense won’t help some of his pitching metrics, they should give him the run support he needs. He wasn’t terrible this year; I have a feeling people think he fell off the map. He had 17 wins, and a ERA of 3.99 and a FIP of 3.60. His ERA and FIP were at career highs, but the FIP really wasn’t too far off what we’d expect. I’d credit the higher ERA to playing in Fenway with not the best defense behind him. Price may not be as dominant as he once was, but the Red Sox should give him support. He might be a little behind pace, but he could be the next CC Sabathia or Mike Mussina, where upon retirement, we say, “I didn’t realize he had 260 wins!” For the record, I doubt CC gets there, but the point is that if Price can stay healthy and moderately effective on a team that will support him, he may be able to move up in the wins chart. Will he hit 300? I don’t see it, but realistically, I’m not sure any of these guys will.

Now I’ll move on to the other Red Sox pitcher on this list: Rick Porcello. Porcello had a modest beginning in Detroit, but his FIP always seemed to outperform his ERA, so he has that going for him. Porcello is only 27 and somehow has 107 wins already. Although he is on the Red Sox, who can support him, Porcello really hasn’t been able to stay healthy over his career, and only eclipsed 200 innings pitched in a season twice: 2014 in Detroit, and this past season in Boston. Still, he is young, and if he can hang around awhile, he might be able to pick up 100 wins or more if he can stay decent on an offensive team. Again, he doesn’t need to contend for the Cy Young, but he has to stay relatively effective, so he keeps his starting spot and racks up wins.

Finally, I move on to my dark horse, King Felix Hernandez. Felix is only 30, but has been a full-time starter for 11 years. He sits at 154 wins. I feel like as a baseball community, we tend to forget about Felix. He has been very durable, although he hit the DL this past season by injuring his calf when celebrating a win. But hey, forgive the guy; he plays in Seattle, who hadn’t given him much help until recently. He is my dark horse on the list. He now plays on a good Seattle team, so he should be able to pick up wins. He might not be as good as he once was, but if he can stay effective, he has the best chance of anyone on this list. He can age well, he has stayed healthy, and he now plays on a winning team. The conditions are there, and I think he has the best shot of anyone on this list.

Realistically, if I had to choose between none of them winning 300 or one of them winning, that would be a much harder choice than picking one out of the group. Realistically, do I think any of these guys have a shot? Sure, but a shot is a lot different than actually getting there. Who knows, maybe one of these guys will age well and will stay healthy. Your guess may be as good as mine.

Each year when it comes time for Hall of Fame voting we hear a lot about the problems with the voting process.  The Baseball Writers’ Association of America (BBWAA) has recently made some changes to address issues related to the qualifications of the voters.¹  However, other problems with the voting process persist.  From a psychometric perspective, a primary concern is that the ballot is norm-referenced, meaning other players on the ballot matter.  The issue of whether a player is a Hall of Famer should be based on their performance on the field and not based on whether they happen to hit the ballot with 10 other players who may also have potential Hall of Fame credentials.  As it currently stands, the Hall of Fame ballot is more about whether a player is a Hall of Fame-caliber player compared with the other players on the ballot and given that voters can only vote for 10 players.  That voters have a limited number of votes also imposes a ceiling effect and in years when there might be more than 10 Hall of Fame caliber players on the ballot, some might not get votes they would otherwise get.

The Rasch model² provides a criterion-referenced, sample-free method for analysis.  This means that it would be possible for voters to vote for as many players as they want regardless of who else is on the ballot without compromising the selection quality.  Furthermore, a player would never need to be removed from the ballot because they received too few votes and new voters could be added without changing the threshold for election.

In order to demonstrate this method I enlisted the help of 16 friends to cast votes on whether they thought each player was a Hall of Famer or not.  They simply answered Yes or No for each of the 32 players on the ballot.  If they weren’t sure they were allowed to leave their response blank, and since the Rasch model is robust to missing data, blank responses do not impact the player measures.  Tables 1 and 2 provide a summary of the responses for players and voters, respectively.

It is natural that the conceptualization of what constitutes a Hall of Fame player will vary by voter, with some being more lenient and some being severe.  Based on the severity of the voter and the ability of the player, the list of players will form a hierarchy.  This hierarchy is graphically represented in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Voter-Player map

Griffey received 16 Yes votes and one can see that he is at the top of Figure 1.  There were 9 players who did not receive any Yes votes and they can be seen at the bottom of Figure 1.  Hoffman is ranked higher than Clemens even though Clemens had more Yes votes (12 to 8).  However, Clemens received 15 total votes and Hoffman only 12, so Hoffman’s 8 votes were effectively worth more than Clemens’ 12 votes based on the severity of the 12 voters who actually provided a vote for Hoffman. Figure 1 also shows the severity of the voters with Voter05 and Voter14 being the most severe and Voter06, Voter07, and Voter15 being the most lenient.  Because these three voters only cast Yes votes and left the rest blank, they were shown to be very lenient since voters are only calibrated on the responses they provide.

In order to actually determine election to the Hall of Fame, a passing standard would need to be established.  This could be done by a variety of methods³ and could be carried forward each year so that the standard for election would remain the same for everyone.  Since the voting block from BBWAA is relatively stable, anchoring the voters’ Rasch calibration produces a stable scale in which voters can be added and removed easily without changing the passing standard.

I mentioned earlier that a player would not need to be removed due to an insufficient vote tally, but 9 players here did not receive any Yes votes.  It would seem natural that these players would be removed from the ballot to make room for others coming on so that the ballot did not become so large as to put an undue burden on voters.  However, statistically speaking, it doesn’t matter.  Once voter calibrations are anchored the number of players on the ballot becomes irrelevant.  The score scale and passing standard would be the same if the ballot was one player or 100 players.

Needless to say, this is a simple demonstration using a non-representative sample.  It would, however, alleviate some of the issues that plague the voting process.  The discussion would then hinge on a player’s record and not on the intricacies of the ballot.  Borderline players would not be dismissed simply because they were the 11^th best player on the ballot that year and voters would be free to vote for any number of players they felt fulfilled the criteria of being a Hall of Famer.

References

1. http://baseballhall.org/news/hall-of-fame-announces-change-to-bbwaa-voting-electorate
2. Rasch, G. (1960). Probabilistic models for some intelligence and attainment tests. Copenhagen, Denmark.: Danish Institute for Educational Research.
3. Cizek, G. (2012). Setting Performance Standards. New York: Routledge.

On this year’s Hall of Fame ballot, there are 15 newcomers who the BBWAA has never gotten a chance to vote for. Only four of these guys, Ken Griffey Jr., Trevor Hoffman, Billy Wagner, and Jim Edmonds, have a reasonable chance of garnering the 5% of votes required to survive until next year’s ballot. But of course, ever year, there is that one voter who for whatever reason thinks that Aaron Sele or Armando Benitez was a Hall of Famer. Yes, the dreaded pity vote.

Now, there are some standards for a pity vote. It’s not just about falling off the ballot after one year. Despite not managing to get the necessary 5% last year, Carlos Delgado did not get 21 pity votes.. He was too reasonable a candidate with a significant amount of support. Hideo Nomo in 2014 was also not a pity candidate, despite only getting 6 votes, good for 1.1% of the picks. That’s more support than any third party had in the 2012 presidential election. We’re talking about guys that get 2 votes, maximum. Any more than that and it’s a trend, and we’re too edgy to vote for any mainstream candidates. So who are the deep-cut candidates of the 2016 Hall of Fame election?

There is Mark Grudzielanek, who is probably the guy least likely to get a vote. He was not particularly memorable nor did he stick around very long with any one team. If you feel like trolling the system, then just pick David Eckstein who was the exact same player with more gritty-gamer-clutch-Harold Reynolds-scrappy-played-the-game-the-right-way narrative working for him. Of course, Eckstein may get too much support. Would it shock you to see Eckstein get 3 votes, either from the old fogey crowd or from some edgy troll voting ironically?

Including Eckstein, there are a lot of 2002 Angels’ championship team on this ballot, which is funny because there are no legitimate Hall of Fame candidates from that roster. Troy Glaus was legitimately a star for a few seasons, so I could see an Angels beat writer or someone tossing him a vote. Same could be said for Garret Anderson, except he was much less good than Glaus.

Speaking of Anderson, let’s play a fun game! Here are two mystery players from 2002:

Player A hit .344/.354/.516.

Player B hit .306/.332/.539.

You probably guessed that one of them is Garret Anderson, and you would be right? You may have even guessed that he was Player B.

You probably did not guess that Player A was Mike Hampton.

Hampton is mostly remembered as a disappointment because of his poor, injury-muddled play after signing the largest contract in baseball history. He was probably a better player than either Garret Anderson or David Eckstein, but I doubt he’ll get a vote. I also doubt that Mike Sweeney will get a vote, mostly because I cannot recall anything interesting about him. Maybe he’ll get thrown a bone by some masochistic Royals writer longing for the good ol’ days of 2001, lamenting the current success of the franchise.

Randy Winn played like a Hall of Famer for like 2 months after being traded by the Mariners to the Giants in 2005. He wasn’t really special aside from that stretch. Luis Castillo and Mike Lowell combined to win 5 World Series rings, including one each with the 2003 Marlins. Good players. Lowell did win World Series MVP honors in 2007 with the Red Sox, so maybe he gets one vote for that. Other than that, I doubt any of these guys will manage to get pity. Brad Ausmus is probably the worst player on the ballot. He was the guy you were trying to upgrade from, not the one you actually wanted to start. Unless he made quick friends with someone in the Detroit press, he’s not getting a vote.

No, the best candidate would be Jason Kendall. He has at least some of the intangible goodness that Eckstein has wrapped up in a player who was actually pretty good. Kendall was a prototypical lead-off hitter who played catcher. A weird combo, but an interesting one. Kendall led off 50 times in 5 different seasons. No other catcher since deadball has done that even once. Kendall was actually a good lead-off hitter too. Had the Pirates utilized good players elsewhere in the lineup, he would have been batted in many times by them. Kendall may have had a real Hall of Fame case had he continued what he was doing for like a decade more instead of falling off a cliff. Alas, it was not to be.

So, if you happen to have both a Hall of Fame ballot and a desire to rebel against the conformity of the system and vote for someone unique, Jason Kendall is probably your man. Or maybe Troy Glaus, who was probably about as good, but less much interesting.

Or just vote for ten guys who actually, you know, deserve to be in the Hall. That’d be good too.

I’ve often wondered if some sort of bizarre connection exists between names and athletic ability, specifically when it comes to the sport of baseball. Considering I grew up in the 90’s, I will always associate certain names with possessing a supreme baseball talent. Names like Ken (Griffey Jr.), Mike (Piazza), Randy (Johnson), Greg (Maddux) and Frank (Thomas) are just a few examples. With a wealth of statistical information available, I thought I’d investigate into the possibility of an abnormal association between names and baseball skill.

I began digging up the most popular given names, by decade, using the 1970’s, 80’s & 90’s as focal points. This information was easily accessible on the official website of the U.S. Social Security Administration, as they provide the 200 most popular given names for male and female babies born during each decade. After scouring through all of the names listed, the records revealed there were 278 unique names appearing during that timespan.

Having narrowed down the most popular names for the timeframe, I wandered over to FanGraphs.com, to begin compiling the “skill” data. I will be using the statistic known as WAR (Wins Above Replacement) as my objective guide for evaluating talent. Sorting through all qualified players from 1970-1999, the data revealed 2,554 players eligible for inclusion. After combining all full names with their corresponding nicknames (i.e.: Michael & Mike), the list was condensed down to 507 unique names.

By comparing the 278 unique names identified via the Social Security Administration’s most popular names data, with the 507 qualified ballplayer names collected through FanGraphs, it was discovered that 193 of the names were present on both lists. The following tables point out some of the more intriguing findings the research was able to provide.

The first table[Table 1], below, is comprised of the 25 most frequent birth names from 1970-1999. The second table[Table 2] consists of the 25 WAR leaders by name, meaning the highest aggregate WAR totals collected by all players with that name. Naturally, many of the names that appear in the 25 most common names list, reappear here as well. Ken, Gary, Ron, Greg, Frank, Don, Chuck, George and Pete are the exceptions. It’s interesting to see that these names seem to have a higher AVG WAR per 1,000 births(as seen on the final table), perhaps indicative of those names’ supremacy as better baseball names? The last table[Table 3] contains the top 25 names by AVG WAR per 1,000 births; here we see some less common names finally begin to appear. These names provide the most proverbial bang (WAR) for your buck (name). Yes, some names, like Barry and Reggie, are inflated in the rankings — probably due to the dominant play of Barry Bonds and Reggie Jackson, but could it not also mean these players were just byproducts of their birth names?!? Probably not, but it’s interesting, nonetheless.

So if you’re looking to increase the chances your child will make it professionally as a baseball player, then you might want to take a look at the names toward the top of the AVG WAR per 1,000 births table, choose your favorite, and hope for the best…OR, you could always just have a daughter.

Please post comments with your thoughts or questions. Charts can be found below.

25 Most Common Birth Names 1970-1999

25 Highest Cumulative WAR, by Name, 1970-1999

25 Highest WAR per 1,000 Births, by Name, 1970-1999