hall of fame, next vote...

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Staub looks to have been a more valuable player for basically a three year stretch '69-'71.

timellison, Thursday, 13 December 2018 01:48 (five years ago) link

Well, and '67. Four years.

timellison, Thursday, 13 December 2018 01:50 (five years ago) link

I do wonder if Staub's bWAR for '69 and '70 is high, though, given his astronomical walk totals while hitting third in an Expos expansion-era lineup.

timellison, Thursday, 13 December 2018 02:00 (five years ago) link

Coco Laboy, Mack Jones, Ron Fairly hitting behind him. Staub scored 89 runs in '69 and 98 in '70.

timellison, Thursday, 13 December 2018 02:05 (five years ago) link

that was a relative deadball era, even post-'68

Staub was more valuable *over his career*

a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 13 December 2018 02:09 (five years ago) link

According to his lifetime bWAR, yes. But those four years are Expos '69-'71 and the ninth place '67 Astros.

timellison, Thursday, 13 December 2018 02:12 (five years ago) link

no one ever called harold baines le grand orange

mookieproof, Thursday, 13 December 2018 02:13 (five years ago) link

Harold Baines has zero HOF case and his peak wasn’t peak enough to make his entry as a compiler especially legitimate. None of which I would mind this much (it would still be astonishingly wrongheaded) if the BBWAA would not one-and-done guys like Whitaker or shake their heads sadly in the direction of Larry Walker or make legit great players like Tim Raines and Bert Blyleven and presumably Edgar Martinez wait til the last second to let them sneak in. Fingers crossed for Walker there...

omar little, Thursday, 13 December 2018 02:28 (five years ago) link

his peak wasn’t peak enough to make his entry as a compiler especially legitimate

I think the argument would be that it doesn't have to be peak enough when you average 2.75 WAR over your twelve best seasons.

timellison, Thursday, 13 December 2018 02:33 (five years ago) link

what do you think a list of all the players who have averaged 2.75 WAR over 12 years looks like? mostly hall of famers?

k3vin k., Thursday, 13 December 2018 03:36 (five years ago) link

It's a good question. Do you have an answer?

timellison, Thursday, 13 December 2018 03:48 (five years ago) link

Maybe you're right. Oliver and Staub both average closer to 3.5 WAR if you take their 12 best seasons.

timellison, Thursday, 13 December 2018 03:59 (five years ago) link

i don't have play index, but here are some players who posted 33-35 bWAR over their *first* 12 seasons:

jorge posada
ellis burks
travis fryman
mark ellis
brady anderson
wally joyner
ray durham

mookieproof, Thursday, 13 December 2018 04:07 (five years ago) link

here's the leaderboard for most WAR accumulated between a player's age 22 season and his age 33 season

https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=bat&lg=all&qual=y&type=8&season=2018&month=0&season1=1871&ind=0&team=0&rost=0&age=22,33&filter=&players=0&page=18_30

baines comes in at 516th, just between jake daubert and riggs stephenson

k3vin k., Thursday, 13 December 2018 04:10 (five years ago) link

For reference, Frank White was worth about 2.4 WAR on average over his best 12 (consecutive) seasons, 1975-87

from 1989 to 2001 Mark Grace was 3.6 WAR per year and was dropped from the HOF ballot after his first year (4.1% of the vote)

Karl Malone, Thursday, 13 December 2018 04:18 (five years ago) link

Yes, and all these guys had defensive opportunities that Baines did not. As a DH, Baines was...really good and for a long time. So maybe it's the specialist conundrum again as with closers.

timellison, Thursday, 13 December 2018 04:28 (five years ago) link

but a lot of the guys above who had defensive opportunities would have been at least as good as harold baines at the plate as DHs. it's just that they were good in the field as well, so they weren't DH's. but they're not hall of famers, either. so why should baines get in ahead of people who did everything he did at the plate, plus more?

Karl Malone, Thursday, 13 December 2018 04:34 (five years ago) link

Wait, which of those guys had anything like Baines' offensive numbers?

timellison, Thursday, 13 December 2018 04:36 (five years ago) link

Ellis Burks did.

timellison, Thursday, 13 December 2018 04:37 (five years ago) link

(Although over 100 of his HR were for Colorado.)

timellison, Thursday, 13 December 2018 04:38 (five years ago) link

Baines had 759 more hits

timellison, Thursday, 13 December 2018 04:40 (five years ago) link

mark grace did

Karl Malone, Thursday, 13 December 2018 04:43 (five years ago) link

421 fewer hits, 211 fewer HR

timellison, Thursday, 13 December 2018 04:47 (five years ago) link

Baines lifetime postseason - 113 PA, .324/.378/.510 with 5 HR.

timellison, Thursday, 13 December 2018 04:50 (five years ago) link

i think we're done here

mookieproof, Thursday, 13 December 2018 04:53 (five years ago) link

421 fewer hits, 211 fewer HR

i thought we were still talking the 12 year thing? on that age 22-33 leaderboard kevin posted above, even just looking at offense alone (no defense/DH penalty), harold baines is 320th (mark grace is 282nd. just to be clear, i also don't think mark grace is a hall of famer. i'm just saying, the guy who no one really considers as a hall of fame hitter outhit harold baines.)

Karl Malone, Thursday, 13 December 2018 04:54 (five years ago) link

i'm going to see if i can find mark grace on twitter so i can update him on this

Karl Malone, Thursday, 13 December 2018 04:55 (five years ago) link

i wonder if anyone has ever had the guts to say "hall of the very good" out loud in his presence

Karl Malone, Thursday, 13 December 2018 04:56 (five years ago) link

OK sorry for the confusion. When I asked who had anything like Baines' numbers, I meant lifetime numbers. Thanks for engaging with me, unlike the other ilxor sitting in the peanut gallery.

timellison, Thursday, 13 December 2018 04:58 (five years ago) link

think the argument would be that it doesn't have to be peak enough when you average 2.75 WAR over your twelve best seasons.

WAR is roughly calibrated like this: 0.0 is of course replacement level, 2.0 is roughly "solid major league regular", 4.0 is an All-Star, 5.0-6.0 and above is getting into MVP territory. So in his very best twelve seasons, Baines was a bit better than the average major league regular.

It does mean something to be a solid regular for 12+ seasons, since most players don't keep their starting jobs for even close to twelve years. But a guy who topped out as a borderline All-Star by WAR (which is being generous) shouldn't be a HOFer by any standard.

NoTimeBeforeTime, Thursday, 13 December 2018 07:30 (five years ago) link

rumor has it LaRussa was venting about analytics today! stay tuned.

This is ... something. To summarize : game winning RBIs!!!!!

https://www.mlb.com/cut4/tony-la-russa-and-chris-russo-debate-harold-baines/c-301782986

NoTimeBeforeTime, Thursday, 13 December 2018 07:50 (five years ago) link

fwiw, harold baines led his own team in bWAR twice: in 1984 (his biggest season), he and starter richard dotson both put up 4.3; in 1986, he was way out in front with 2.9. that was the last year he spent any significant time in the outfield.

both those white sox teams finished fifth in the AL west.

mookieproof, Thursday, 13 December 2018 08:54 (five years ago) link

I'm going to cut and paste something I put up on Facebook, rather than reword exactly the same thing. (When I posted it, I included an aside that I'd never post it on ILB in a million years, knowing the ridicule it would inspire.) Please understand, this is not, in any way, an argument that Baines should be in the HOF. He shouldn't--not at all, not close, and I haven't wavered on that a bit. But I have been trying to grasp onto something that makes his pick a little less...bizarre? Anyway, prompted by a comment Tim made about his hits/HR totals:

One addendum to this. The only way those multi-category combinations have even a bit of validity is to drop the floor well below what the player has achieved--if you set the floor exactly where the player is, and then throw in enough categories, you can prove Kelly Gruber ought to be in the HOF. So extend hits and HR to include RBI. If I'm looking at the career RBI list correctly, there are only two non-PED guys with 2500 hits (Baines has 2866), 300 HR (Baines has 384) and 1500 RBI (Baines has 1628) who are not in the HOF or inarguably on their way: Baines and Carlos Beltran. Beltran will probably make it--he was a much better player than Baines, for starters--but I wouldn't say he's quite a sure thing like Cabrera or Beltre. Anyway, Baines clears all three of those benchmarks with room to spare. So that's...something. Not a HOF resume in and of itself, but it's something.

clemenza, Thursday, 13 December 2018 12:28 (five years ago) link

The reductio ad absurdum illustration of combining categories and using the player's totals as the floor was well illustrated by Posnanski yesterday:

I could put together faux-impressive statistical pages like that on just about any player you want. I mean, how in the world has the Hall of Fame not yet voted in a player who has:

More hits, triples and runs scored than 70 Hall of Famers, more doubles and RBIs than 67 Hall of Famers, more stolen bases than 91 Hall of Famers, I mean, how much more does a man have to do?

Give me a call Tony. I'll tell you exactly why Duane Kuiper belongs in the Hall.

clemenza, Thursday, 13 December 2018 12:35 (five years ago) link

exactly

the reason WAR exists is to stop us from coming up with these arbitrary combinations of flawed counting stats

k3vin k., Thursday, 13 December 2018 14:00 (five years ago) link

fwiw I'm not trying to make a case for Baines as HOFer so much as arguing that the idea doesn't seem insane. As just an offensive player, I don't think being impressive for a long career across all three slash line numbers represents an arbitrary combination of facts.

timellison, Thursday, 13 December 2018 14:30 (five years ago) link

i.e., what can you fault him for as on offensive player other than speed?

timellison, Thursday, 13 December 2018 14:32 (five years ago) link

as AN offensive player

timellison, Thursday, 13 December 2018 14:33 (five years ago) link

looks like people generally tend to look at him as 4th best DH of all time (which I know is just a little over 40 years)

timellison, Thursday, 13 December 2018 14:35 (five years ago) link

I'm not trying to make a case for Baines as HOFer so much as arguing that the idea doesn't seem insane.

it's not insane, it's bad

a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 13 December 2018 15:12 (five years ago) link

here's the leaderboard for most WAR accumulated between a player's age 22 season and his age 33 season

baines comes in at 516th, just between jake daubert and riggs stephenson

Daubert is in the HOF too; I had to check on Riggs (no).

a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 13 December 2018 15:14 (five years ago) link

btw the hell with Lee Smith getting off easy... the Spink Award went to Jayson Stark.

a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 13 December 2018 15:30 (five years ago) link

yeah, no kidding.

i don't have a vendetta against stark or anything, but several years ago he wrote for...yahoo? i forget? and it really seemed like he was being paid by the word. just so repetitive and loooong

ring lardner and jayson stark, side by side

Karl Malone, Thursday, 13 December 2018 16:35 (five years ago) link

at least he's NOT BEING INDUCTED, despite what the media say every year

a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 13 December 2018 16:39 (five years ago) link

If anyone's inclined to care about leverage over an eleven thousand PA career, Baines has his highest numbers in high leverage - .314/.381/.481 (for 2,289 plate appearances).

timellison, Thursday, 13 December 2018 22:47 (five years ago) link

i guess it's something

Mad Piratical (The Cursed Return of the Dastardly Thermo Thinwall), Thursday, 13 December 2018 22:49 (five years ago) link

he’s 97th in career WPA

k3vin k., Friday, 14 December 2018 00:54 (five years ago) link

Harold Baines was pretty good

Karl Malone, Friday, 14 December 2018 01:18 (five years ago) link

I was looking at WPA earlier! I actually wondered if he was higher than that.

timellison, Friday, 14 December 2018 01:34 (five years ago) link

KM, Mark Grace is ahead of him...

timellison, Friday, 14 December 2018 01:34 (five years ago) link


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