Wrap Up:
Here are the totals for the 200 members of the Hall that I tiered.
| Tier | # of Players | % of Players |
| S | 19 | 9.5 |
| A | 15 | 7.5 |
| B | 47 | 23.5 |
| C | 44 | 22 |
| D | 28 | 14 |
| F | 47 | 23.5 |
Overall, pretty fair. Thought there would be fewer in the S tier, but it is what it is. I could do an analysis of each tier and break them down, but that would be insane and take way too much time. Instead, I’m only going to look at the F tier, because I think people will see that 23.5% and think my system is flawed. But, let's look at that tier really quickly:
The F Tier:
In the bottom tier, there are 47 players. Of those 47 players, 36 were inducted by either the old Veteran’s Committee or the now defunct Old Timer’s Committee. That means 11 players were inducted by the BBWAA that really don’t belong in the Hall of Fame. Those 11 players are: Lyons (78), Dawson (76), Perez (70), Lemon (70), Sutton (70), Traynor (69), Ruffing (66), Maranville (57), Wynn (57), Hunter (52), and Pennock (45). Are any of those 11 players really what you would consider an all-time great? Some of them have cases, like Sutton and Traynor, but most of them really don’t. The same can be said of the 36 voted in by the VC, which would induct popular players for a long time. That’s why you see guys like Red Schoendienst and Bill Mazeroski and Orlando Cepeda getting inducted by them. They are players that most people would want on their team, but aren’t really all time greats by any stretch of the imagination. So, really, this is just looking objectively at the players that were inducted and giving people an idea of who really belongs. To be blunt and honest, these 47 players don’t. Sorry, but it’s true. It wasn’t my system that was flawed, but the system that let them in was flawed.
Other than that, not much to say. I’m going to leave the D tier the way it is. They were mostly players that played for a long period of time and either got milestone numbers or were great for a time then just hung on way too long.
So to wrap this up, let’s look at a couple of active players that would make my Hall of Fame rankings:
1) Albert Pujols, 1B. Yes, I hated it that he bolted for money and a BS personal services contract that should have been illegal from Day 1. But, he was the second best player the Cardinals ever had, maybe even the best behind Stan. His WAR+ as of this moment is 171. As time goes on, that’ll probably drop a bit, but it’s hard to see him dropping so low that he doesn’t make it in. He’ll probably end up at the low end of my S tier at worst.
2) Derek Jeter, SS. Yes, I hate the Yankees. Yes, he sucks defensively and the Yanks would be better with almost anyone else defensively playing SS. His WAR+ is 106, and at this point it won’t change much.
3) Chipper Jones, 3B. I got nothing to hate on with Chipper. He was always a personal favorite. Same as Jeter, WAR+ of 106.
4) Pudge Rodriguez, C. Yes, I know he isn’t active, but I feel like calculating his anyways. It’s 101.
5) Ichiro, RF. Without even thinking about his time in Japan, he has a WAR+ value of 106.
6) Mariano Rivera, RP. Always called the greatest reliever of all time. His WAR+ is 160.
7) Alex Rodriguez, SS. Baseball Reference has him as a SS for now. In that case, his WAR+ is 151. Assuming no change in WAR, as a 3B it would be 134. If they decide to ignore those steroid reports with him, he’ll get in easily.
8) Chase Utley, 2B. WAR+ of 115. Definitely the best second baseman out there in his prime. The question is, will that prime be enough to carry him through a decline phase that really won’t be kind to him, given his injury history.
9) Miguel Cabrera, 1B. WAR+ of 110. As long as he doesn’t hit a Hafnerian decline phase, he’ll be inducted. He’s only had a couple of OK seasons, and the rest of his 10 years have ranged from very good to awesome.
10) CC Sabathia, SP. WAR+ of 101. He’s been a steadily great pitcher for a number of years now. The question is, now that he’s approaching mid 30s, can he keep it up? It’ll be interesting to see, and playing in NY should grant him enough of a chance to rack up the victory stat that voters like to look at.
And that’ll do for this project. I hope people got something out of this. I know I did. I’m probably going to take a break from writing for a bit to recharge myself. This was fun, so thanks for indulging me. Feel free to contact me via email or comments to discuss anything on here.
It took a long time for relief pitchers to be recognized for inductions to Cooperstown. Why is that? My theory is that because most relievers only handled about 1/3 the workload of a starter, that they didn’t deserve to be recognized. It was also looked at that those who weren’t good enough to start are sent to the bullpen. There is some foundation to that line of thought. But, the closer has taken on such a prominent role in recent years that you have to start looking at them as being legendary players. Check that list of World Champions from a couple of posts ago. Not only did they have good rotations, but they had strong bullpens as well. A common thing that Whitey Herzog mentioned in the 1980s was how his bullpen was strong enough to shorten games to a six or 7 inning affair. If bullpens can be what distinguishes from a good team and a great team, then you need to start looking at players in the bullpen as being all time greats. I’m not saying that we should induct all types of relievers, like setup men and LOOGY’s, but inducting closers I’m ok with.
There are 5 relief pitchers in the Hall of Fame. Not much to go on for an average, but it’s something. Of those 5, their average career was 18.6 years and had a career WAR of 38.6, giving us a baseline of 2.7 WAR/yr. I’m cutting it down to 1.95. Why would I do such a thing? Simply put, our relievers today don’t get that workload, and even the top closer on my list I’d consider more of a 1 inning closer than anything else. The extra work hurts their value a bit more than you’d expect. With that out of the way, here are the WAR+ values:
| Name | WAR+ | Tier |
| Eckersley | 167 | S |
| Wilhelm | 154 | S |
| Sutter | 134 | A |
| Gossage | 124 | B |
| Fingers | 114 | B |
Thoughts:
Amazing to see what our old relievers look like compared to the new guys, eh? Not much to say about this one. I’d imagine that most people would put Sutter below Gossage and Fingers, but Sutter was a lot better than people remember. He was a decent strikeout pitcher, and didn’t give up as many baserunners as those two. What hurts Rollie a bit is a slow start to a career (He was mostly a 1 WAR player at best until his age 28 season), but after that it was pretty darn good.
Upcoming Ballots:
Pre-2013:
Lee Arthur Smith: WAR+ of 88. His career seems pretty solid to me. I’d have no problem with him being inducted.
2013-2015: No one worth looking at. And yes, I’ll ignore Tom Gordon and Jose Mesa if I want to.
2016: Billy Wagner and Trevor Hoffman come up. Hoffman gets an 89. Wagner gets a 100. I don’t know what’s hurting Hoffman that much. His career ERA+ is 141, he struck out over 9 per inning. Yet in 6 of his 18 years he was worth less than 1 WAR. WAR is pretty tough on relievers. With Wagner, he was pretty much a left handed one inning Nolan Ryan, and I think a lot of people would want that coming out of their pen most days.
I guess that’s every position. Remember, I’m only looking at players. Managers, executives, all that stuff can stay in and it’s too hard to tier them. I’ve got one more post in this series coming up about current players who I think will make it. Should be a fun read and calculation.
OK, so last time we looked at the best HoF starters. That means we’re looking at the bottom 3 tiers of starters in this entry. We came to a decent realization before that the guys from the pre-1900s skewed the average of starters WAR/yr way too high, so these guys reflect that change as well. I’ll say up front that someone that people look at as the greatest pitcher of all time due to his really REALLY high number of strikeouts and those 7 no hitters of his was helped greatly. Remember, these are your average to below average to failing Hall of Famers. The guys on top here are the ones that should be used as the most comparable to a pitcher being inducted into the Hall. Here we go:
| Name | WAR+ | Tier |
| Walsh | 103 | C |
| Marichal | 101 | C |
| Blyleven | 100 | C |
| Roberts | 99 | C |
| Feller | 97 | C |
| Brown | 97 | C |
| Carlton | 96 | C |
| Ryan | 94 | C |
| Chesbro | 94 | C |
| Bunning | 92 | C |
| Ford | 88 | D |
| Palmer | 85 | D |
| Gomez | 79 | F |
| Lyons | 78 | F |
| Faber | 75 | F |
| Lemon | 70 | F |
| Sutton | 70 | F |
| Grimes | 67 | F |
| Bender | 66 | F |
| Ruffing | 66 | F |
| Hoyt | 62 | F |
| Rixey | 62 | F |
| Wynn | 57 | F |
| Hunter | 52 | F |
| Haines | 51 | F |
| Marquard | 51 | F |
| Pennock | 45 | F |
Thoughts:
Ryan was initially on the low end of the D tier. That 27 year career did hurt him some. Also walking nearly 3000 batters. And having years of 200+ walks. Who does that? That’s why his H/9 is low (it’s like 6.9 or some ludicrous number), cause he walked a bunch of hitters! He’s a Hall of Fame pitcher, no doubt, but not as great as some people think.
I lamented having to put Feller, one of my favorite pitchers of all time, in the C tier but he lost some prime prime sweet years to the war. It’s admirable. It’s a great thing to look up to. But, his career is pretty typical of a Hall of Fame pitcher, and probably would be a high B rank at least if it hadn’t been for his service. I’d have to forfeit my objectivity card (it’s a plain white business card with black text in 12 point font that says “you are objective”) if I did anything else to him.
Now, will someone tell me, would Whitey Ford or Jim Palmer be in the Hall of Fame if they didn’t play for powerhouse teams in their time? I mean, Palmer had a decent stretch where he topped 8 WAR one year and was about 6 or 7 for 5 out of 6 years in a stretch, but was mostly a 3-4 WAR pitcher most of the rest of the time, and plenty of years where he was worth 0-2 WAR. Ford, on the other hand, topped 6 WAR once. And that was at the tail end of his career. Both of them suffered from walking too many compared to the number they struck out. I have nothing against non strikeout pitchers (guys that tend to strike out 5 or 6 per 9), but if you aren’t going to strike people out at least be able to not walk guys, too. When your career K/BB is close to 1.5, you didn’t do your job as a pitcher. For all the walks that Nolan Ryan gave up, he still struck out twice as many batters. If voters knew about how poor the “win” stat is for pitchers back then, I doubt that you’d see guys like these winning Cy Young Awards and entry into the Hall of Fame.
Catfish Hunter didn’t make my cut, huh? Why is that? Well, he only played until he was 33, but did seem to run out of gas those last couple of years and did pitch for 15 seasons. His 3.26 ERA looks nice, but it’s only 4% better than league average (Jack Morris has the same ERA+ for the record). Only struck out 5.2 batters per 9, but also controlled the walk (about 2 per 9 innings), so it isn’t like the Ford and Palmer rant I had above. What hurts him most is the HR. He gave up 1 per 9 innings, which is pretty high for a Hall of Fame pitcher I’d think without looking it up, and he only had 2 seasons above 6 WAR, which is not great. Sorry, he was a nice guy and pitched well, but just wasn’t as good as people made him out to be.
Upcoming Ballots:
Pre-2013:
Jack Morris. WAR+ of 56. Please explain why people think he should be in the Hall of Fame. Please. Tell me why he is still on the ballot and will get in. Anyone? No one? OK, moving on.
2013:
Clemens and Schilling come up on the same ballot. That’s an interesting combo. Clemens gets a score of 135, and if the writers decide that he wasn’t massively aided by steroids, he’ll get in. Schilling gets a score of 94, and if the writers don’t look at his win total he should get in.
2014:
Mike Mussina, Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine. There’s no way that any upcoming ballot could top a decision like that. Moose gets a score of 112. He should get in, and playing for the Yanks will help his cause. Maddux gets a score of 110, and no doubt he should be in. Glavine, however, gets a score of 94. He’s a lot closer to borderline than people remember.
2015:
I was wrong in that last paragraph. This class is the best crop of pitchers possibly ever. John Smoltz, Pedro Martinez, Randy Johnson. Just incredible. Smoltzie gets an 89, but should get in. It’s low just because he lost time as a reliever (and was arguably the best NL Closer in the game those years). Randy Johnson gets a 115, and is no doubt going to be inducted. Pedro gets a 126, and is going to waltz into Cooperstown.
2016: No one worthy. And after those guys, who is worthy?
We’re almost done. Up next is the reliever class, which is by far the smallest in the Hall, but has the potential to grow more as the years go due to the acceptance of the closer role.
One of the oldest baseball adages is “Pitching and defense win championships.”, along with “Good pitching will beat good hitting.” For evidence of this, look back at the last 5 World Championships to see how grounded they were in their rotations:
2011- St Louis had Carpenter, Garcia, Lohse, and Jackson for a solid 1-4 rotation
2010- San Fran had Lincecum, Cain and an up and coming Bumgarner
2009- NY Yanks had CC, AJ, Pettitte
2008- Philly had Hamels, Blanton, and Moyer
2007- Boston had Beckett, Dice-K, Lester and Schilling
Along with those rotations, each team had a dominant bullpen and a manager that knew how to use it to his team’s best advantage. Pitching was huge for each of them. What we’re going to look at today are the best pitchers of all time. These are guys who are inducted into Cooperstown as starting pitchers and came out as either S or A ranking on my tier system. So these are the best of the best. Remember, there are 57 starters in the hall of fame and if I were to post the rankings for each player, it’d take up way too much space. So we’ll do this two tiers at a time. Here are the S and A ranks for Hall of Fame starters:
| Name | WAR+ | Tier |
| Nichols | 182 | S |
| Young, Cy | 168 | S |
| Clarkson | 168 | S |
| Rusie | 163 | S |
| Johnson, W | 157 | S |
| Radbourn | 143 | A |
| Grove | 139 | A |
| Mathewson | 138 | A |
| Keefe | 137 | A |
| Alexander | 135 | A |
| Waddell | 131 | A |
| McGinnity | 130 | A |
| Coveleski | 126 | B |
| Galvin | 118 | B |
| Gibson | 118 | B |
| Seaver | 115 | B |
| Koufax | 115 | B |
| Welch | 113 | B |
| Plank | 110 | B |
| Willis | 110 | B |
| Joss | 110 | B |
| Drysdale | 109 | B |
| Vance | 106 | B |
| Dean | 105 | B |
Thoughts:
When I first did my calculations on this, I honestly wondered if I should leave out the guys from the Old Timers, like if the bulk of their careers were before 1900, I’d ignore their WAR numbers because they tend to be inflated slightly I think. Just due to more games being added at different points in history, it changed how pitchers were used. In fact, let's go through and recalculate just for them! This means that we’ll ignore: Kid Nichols, John Clarkson, Amos Rusie, Old Hoss Radbourne, Pud Galvin, Mickey Welch and Tim Keefe. That gives us this chart below:
| Name | WAR+ | Tier |
| Young | 180 | S |
| Johnson | 168 | S |
| Grove | 149 | S |
| Mathewson | 147 | S |
| Alexander | 144 | A |
| Waddell | 140 | A |
| McGinnity | 139 | A |
| Coveleski | 134 | A |
| Gibson | 126 | B |
| Seaver | 123 | B |
| Koufax | 122 | B |
| Plank | 117 | B |
| Willis | 117 | B |
| Joss | 117 | B |
| Drysdale | 116 | B |
| Vance | 113 | B |
| Dean | 112 | B |
| Perry | 107 | B |
| Niekro | 106 | B |
| Hubbell | 106 | B |
| Jenkins | 105 | B |
| Spahn | 105 | B |
| Newhouser | 105 | B |
New Thoughts:
I feel much more comfortable with this list. Those 7 guys had WAR so overrvalued that it was insane. I had to use BR’s WAR values which are scaled slightly differently than fangraphs (higher replacement level, different defensive metrics used), and I don’t much care for the high values they tend to give to older players, probably over scaling it to a 162 game schedule. It’s something that other sites have talked about. Fangraphs doesn’t have pitching WAR’s for older pitchers, so to encompass entire careers I decided to use BR’s value. Really, it doesn’t matter as long as I’m consistent within the position, since the scales should be similar.
As far as the players in this list, there isn’t much to say. I’m digging how some of the players that Reginald barked about have higher WAR+ values than he does. I still don’t get his bashing of Niekro. He had a 20+ year career and was worth over 4 wins a year, which is incredible. But that’s neither here nor there. This came out great and that means that the next set of players should be coming out decently too.
I’ll do upcoming ballots on the next post. There’s a lot of big names coming up, so it should be fun to find out.
When most voters go to cast their ballots for the Hall of Fame, two major questions usually enter their mind beyond “Should I vote for this guy?” One is obviously “Do I think steroids made this guy a HoF player?” The other is “Will I vote for a DH?” A lot of voters believe that if you didn’t play a position then you don’t deserve to be in the Hall of Fame. A fair statement. I don’t agree with it for two reasons. One is that if MLB is going to add a position, you’re going to have greats at that profession and ignoring them isn’t fair for Hall of Fame consideration if you’re great at it. The other reason I have is that I’d rather have a guy that’s awesome with the stick and not hurt me in the field than a guy who is awesome with the stick and hurt me in the field, a la Derek Jeter. The hall of fame has no player inducted as a DH for their primary position. Not a one. So, how am I going to get around this? I’m going to average the other offensive positions and take it a little bit lower than that for my baseline. The average for the offensive positions was 4.3 WAR/yr. I’m going to take it down to 4 WAR/yr because DH’s do tend to play longer than a few of the positions just due to the nature of the position. What I’m going to do is look at the prominent DH’s of today and yesterday and see who would make my cut for inductions. And, I suppose that we should start with the first player any kid from the 90s thinks of when he hears “DH”:
1) Edgar Martinez. WAR+ of 109, which is a B tier in my rankings. Why he isn’t in the Hall of Fame when guys like Dawson and Rice got in is a giant sin in terms of baseball history.
Well, who else out there is a DH that could be worthy? Let's see....
2) Frank Thomas. WAR+ of 100. Probably should be looked at as the standard for great DH’s. Hey, he even has the milestone of 500 HR that writers get all excited about.
3) Jim Thome. WAR+ of 90. Please retire Jim. You’ve been done for the last few years. I know you love the game, but you’re done.
4) David Ortiz. WAR+ of 75. Not yet there and I don’t know if he’ll ever get there. I don’t know if the writers will take sympathy for him playing for the Sawx, but it’s possible.
That’s everyone on offense. Next up is the top starter tiers (S and A). Some big big names are up there, and some are left off. It’ll be interesting to most people I’m sure.
Right Field Rules! This was a common cheer at old Hall of Fame Games. And, in the context of baseball players, it does make sense. Right field has seen some of the greatest offensive and defensive players of all time, in fact I dare say the greatest player is most known as a right fielder. In RF, typically you’re a high offense player and play good defense, but not good enough for CF. And of course, one of the most common themes of a RF is a strong and accurate arm to make some of the longest throws in a game. It’s a tough position, but not as tough as center field or SS.
As I stated earlier, baseball history is loaded with great right fielders, including the 2 previous all time HR leaders in Ruth and Aaron. In order to be in a class with them, you better be a legendary player in your own right. The baseline for RF is 4.3 WAR/yr. The average RF had a 16.9 year career and a career WAR of 75.3.
| Name | WAR+ | Tier |
| Ruth | 216 | S |
| Aaron | 151 | S |
| Ott | 141 | A |
| Robinson, F | 134 | A |
| Clemente | 117 | B |
| Flick | 114 | B |
| Heilmann | 112 | B |
| Kaline | 112 | B |
| Crawford | 103 | C |
| Keeler | 98 | C |
| Youngs | 97 | C |
| Waner, P | 96 | C |
| Jackson | 94 | C |
| Gwynn | 92 | C |
| Cuyler | 86 | D |
| Hooper | 84 | D |
| Winfield | 82 | D |
| Thompson | 79 | F |
| Klein | 77 | F |
| Dawson | 76 | F |
| Rice, S | 71 | F |
| Slaughter | 70 | F |
| Kelly | 69 | F |
| McCarthy | 30 | F- |
Thoughts:
Tommy McCarthy got the absolute lowest score of anyone in the HoF. Lower than Dawson, Mazeroski, and everyone else!
Other than that little tidbit, I don’t think there’s anyone that is too hard to deal with on this list. Except for Winfield. He’s just another guy that hung on way past his prime to get to 3000 hits. He had some very good seasons, but only one of those seasons were above 6 WAR, the rest of his career was very good though, so maybe he belongs? Tough call on him. I think he’s Jim Rice with a longer career though, just by a quick look at his numbers (355 regular OBP, 364 wOBA, 129 wRC+) so, maybe he does, maybe he doesn’t.
Upcoming Ballots:
Pre-2013:
Larry Walker is the only one worth talking about. He was always a favorite of mine. And he has a WAR+ of 106. He should be in, definitely a top player of his time. He may be hurt by the Coors effect, but he played quite a few years for Montreal at a high level. I don’t know what’s keeping him out. Is he caught in the steroid winds?
2013:
Sammy Sosa comes up. Yes I know he won’t get in due to steroids. His WAR+ is 83 in any case.
2014: None worth talking about.
2015: Sheffield, an interesting case, comes eligible. Again, steriods. His WAR+ is 74 so he shouldn’t be in for any reason.
2016: None again.
Well, that’s it for most of the offensive players. I do need to talk about DH’s, which I’ll save for the next post. Soon pitchers will come up, and that will be a big BIG post. Will have to break it up somehow.
