The 2014 Hall of Fame Ballot

There is little I enjoy writing about more than Hall of Fame (HOF) voting because it allows me to review players over the span of their careers. Hot streaks over the course of a week, month or year happen all the time, but sustained excellence gets my attention. I see this as a 4-part series:

1. The 2014 Ballot--the one-and-doners

2. The 2014 Ballot--new candidates

3. The 2014 Ballot--holdover candidates

4. The Bill James Hall of Fame--objective ways to induct (and DE-induct) players

 

Without further ado, this is the 2014 Hall of Fame ballot for newly-eligible candidates:

											Batting Stats
Rk		YoB	% of Ballots	HOFm	HOFs	Yrs	WAR	WAR7	JAWS	Jpos
1	Craig Biggio	2nd	68.2%	169	57	20	64.94	41.61	53.28	57.0
2	Jack Morris	15th	67.7%	122	39	18	44.06	32.75	38.41	61.4
3	Jeff Bagwell	4th	59.6%	150	59	15	79.48	48.17	63.83	55.7
4	Mike Piazza	2nd	57.8%	207	62	16	59.20	43.08	51.14	43.1
5	Tim Raines	7th	52.2%	90	47	23	69.07	42.23	55.65	53.1
6	Lee Smith	12th	47.8%	135	13	18	29.59	21.14	25.36	34.4
7	Curt Schilling	2nd	38.8%	171	46	20	79.92	48.99	64.45	61.4
8	Roger Clemens	2nd	37.6%	332	73	24	140.30	66.31	103.30	61.4
9	Barry Bonds	2nd	36.2%	340	76	22	162.53	72.77	117.65	53.1
10	Edgar Martinez	5th	35.9%	132	50	18	68.28	43.51	55.89	55.0
11	Alan Trammell	13th	33.6%	118	40	20	70.35	44.63	57.49	54.7
12	Larry Walker	4th	21.6%	148	58	17	72.63	44.59	58.61	56.4
13	Fred McGriff	5th	20.7%	100	48	19	52.56	36.04	44.30	55.7
14	Mark McGwire	8th	16.9%	170	42	16	62.05	41.87	51.96	55.7
15	Don Mattingly	14th	13.2%	134	34	14	42.24	35.66	38.95	55.7
16	Sammy Sosa	2nd	12.5%	202	52	18	58.42	43.71	51.07	56.4
17	Rafael Palmeiro	4th	8.8%	178	57	20	71.77	38.77	55.27	55.7
18	Greg Maddux	1st		254	70	23	106.83	56.29	81.56	61.4
19	Frank Thomas	1st		194	60	19	73.64	45.32	59.48	55.7
20	Mike Mussina	1st		121	54	18	83.01	44.48	63.75	61.4
21	Tom Glavine	1st		176	52	22	81.43	44.31	62.87	61.4
22	Jeff Kent	1st		122	51	17	55.19	35.60	45.40	57.0
23	Kenny Rogers	1st		66	29	20	51.43	35.56	43.49	61.4
24	Luis Gonzalez	1st		103	48	19	51.51	33.84	42.67	53.1
25	Moises Alou	1st		80	44	17	39.67	27.50	33.59	53.1
26	Ray Durham	1st		64	33	14	33.68	25.68	29.68	57.0
27	Shannon Stewart	1st		34	21	14	24.73	22.79	23.76	53.1
28	Esteban Loaiza	1st		18	9	14	23.04	22.38	22.71	61.4
29	Jon Lieber	1st		15	14	14	24.28	20.80	22.54	61.4
30	Hideo Nomo	1st		24	14	12	21.10	22.82	21.96	61.4
31	Geoff Jenkins	1st		19	19	11	21.75	20.98	21.36	53.1
32	Keith Foulke	1st		38	17	11	20.92	20.82	20.87	34.4
33	Matt Morris	1st		25	15	11	20.49	19.94	20.21	61.4
34	Jose Vidro	1st		41	24	12	17.15	20.01	18.58	57.0
35	Richie Sexson	1st		46	21	12	17.90	18.81	18.36	55.7
36	Paul Lo Duca	1st		21	26	11	17.93	18.71	18.32	43.1
37	Armando Benitez	1st		73	14	15	17.73	16.58	17.16	34.4
38	Mike Timlin	1st		49	8	18	19.64	13.97	16.80	34.4
39	Sean Casey	1st		38	19	12	16.35	16.27	16.31	55.7
40	Dmitri Young	1st		22	18	13	12.10	12.05	12.08	53.1
41	Eric Gagne	1st		46	17	10	11.92	11.97	11.95	34.4
42	Shawn Estes	1st		15	4	13	11.12	12.77	11.95	61.4
43	J.T. Snow	1st		16	16	16	10.99	12.77	11.88	55.7
44	Todd Jones	1st		78	3	16	10.91	11.29	11.10	34.4
45	Joe Borowski	1st		19	0	12	3.80	6.31	5.05	34.4

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 11/1/2013.

This will be the last you read of Shannon Stewart, Esteban Loaiza, Jon Lieber, Hideo Nomo, Geoff Jenkins, Keith Foulke, Matt Morris, Jose Vidro, Richie Sexson, Paul Lo Duca, Armando Benitez, Mike Timlin, Sean Casey, Dmitri Young, Shawn Estes, Eric Gagne, J.T. Snow, Todd Jones and Joe Borowski. It will also quite likely be the last you'll see of them on a Hall of Fame ballot as they'll be lucky to receive any votes, let alone reach the 5% threshold necessary to stay on the HOF ballot going forward. Bid them a fond farewell and think on them kindly, because they had okay-to-good careers.

The full page from Baseball-Reference doesn't fit in my blog format, so I didn't show the traditional stats because those will be everywhere. Shown instead are less-familiar but very powerful measures:
HOFm--the Bill James Hall of Fame Monitor, fully described in his outstanding book "Whatever Happened to the Hall of Fame?" (originally titled "The Politics of Glory"), is James' method of measuring the counting stats. A definition can be found here at B-R and is fairly self-explanatory--it places season numbers in context.
HOFs-Hall of Fame Standards, another Bill James creation that is fully defined here. Career numbers are given point values, helping truly gauge the value of 3,000 hits, 500 home runs or any other career benchmark to see how it stacks up to OTHER HALL OF FAME MEMBERS. In many ways, these two values set floors that future inductees should hopefully cross or at least come close to.
WAR and WAR7--the familiar WAR statistic and the WAR values for the players' best 7 seasons (NOT necessarily consecutive)
JAWS and Jpos--the first is the Jaffe WAR Score System and the second the JAWS at position. I am not familiar with these metrics and will not use them--I'm sure they're excellent since they come from Baseball Prospectus, but I'm far more familiar with WAR and the two James' stats, so I'll limit my analysis to what can be learned by viewing these.

The chart is ranked by WAR, and I'll work my way UP the chart as to leave the best for last (and force you to either jump to the end or suffer through it all). I'll begin with Ray Durham and Moises Alou collectively--both had very productive careers with brief flashes of excellence. In 1994 Alou was among the top-ranked WAR players, while Durham was a dependable second baseman for around 10 years. The fact that neither Durham or Alou are serious HOF candidates in no way diminishes the value they brought to their teams--no baseball team EVER succeeded without solid second-line players like Durham and Alou to augment their superstars.

Luis Gonzalez, Kenny Rogers and Jeff Kent all have similar career WAR values and illustrate different manners in which career numbers are accumulated. Gonzalez is the quintessential late bloomer, hitting 270 of his career 354 (76.3%) of his home runs after reaching 30. Here's how that figure ranks all-time:

I have to admit that took me a LOT longer to put together than I thought--I figured that would be an easy search using the B-R Play Index Split search. This list only includes players with at least 300 career home runs, and it should be no surprise that the list is populated with players of very recent vintage. In addition to better conditioning, higher salaries and the elephant in the room of performance-enhancing drugs, the new wave of (generally) hitter-friendly stadiums also played a role.

 



Rogers is the Rusty Staub of pitchers, a player who was never transcendent but had enough skills to last and amass counting stats. In Staub's case he was good enough to last 6-7 years as a DH/1B/left-handed bench bat. Rogers was a lefty, already giving him a leg up toward a long career if he were so inclined, had several decent seasons (winning 16-18 games in five different seasons), made four All-Star teams--and received exactly 3 Cy Young votes in his entire career (2006, when he finished 5th, at the age of 41). He was a great #2-#3 type pitcher who was very consistent at making 30+ starts a year but certainly not one of the best pitchers of his era.

Jeff Kent will be a very interesting case. He's already at a disadvantage in that he played 2nd base, and when power numbers are looked at in a cursory manner he'll be docked for "only" hitting 377 home runs. Luckily, outstanding sites like B-R, FanGraphs and Baseball Prospectus allow us to make comparisons within positions, which assists in evaluating Kent's career. This chart is from FanGraphs and ranks the best second basemen of all-time by WAR:

There are some very interesting players ahead of Kent like Bobby Grich, Lou Whitaker and Willie Randolph, all of whom received generally weak support for induction. I've had a soft spot in my heart for Whitaker (as well as Alan Trammell) since I've never really understood why their support was tepid at best. I'll return to those players in the next post.

It's purely my opinion, but I find a career WAR value of around 50 to be my cutoff for serious HOF discussion. WAR calculations state that a season of 5 is considered to be an All-Star type of season and 7.5+ an MVP-type season. Putting together 8-10 of those seasons should get players into a serious HOF discussion, since that suggests prolonged and sustained excellence. Given that, look at the WAR7 column and change that value to 35 to see where the cutoff begins--you'll find it does a very nice job of separating the chaff from the wheat. All the one-and-doners are well below that threshold and Rogers, Gonzalez and Kent are all right at it and worthy of discussion. Rogers had four seasons with a WAR of 5 or greater (out of 20), Gonzalez 3 (out of 19) and Kent 3 (out of 17). 

I don't think that's enough. I doubt that Gonzalez or Rogers will receive any serious support but Kent will, and probably should. WAR takes into account that he plays an "important" defensive position and viewing him in a strictly offensive manner puts him in the top 10 of second basemen. I suspect he'll make it in, but probably not in a year that is so top-heavy as the 2014 Class will be.

My next post will discuss the five new candidates who deserve serious consideration--Kent, Tom Glavine, Greg Maddux, Mike Mussina and Frank Thomas.