Comments on FIRE JOE MORGAN: Hall of Fame Elections?! When?!

Here is a fun and nicely-presented argument from O...

2007-01-16T17:29:00.000-05:00

Here is a fun and nicely-presented argument from Owen, who insists I am being, in this case, too tough on our old friend the Batting Average:

"Yes, he was a very good hitter. BA is like the eleventeenth-best stat to use to prove his worthiness, but I still TA that he should be in."

Look, we all know batting average isn't nearly as related to actual production as the yokels like to think. But this is Tony friggin' Gwynn. His value was almost exclusively predicated upon his ability to hit for average year after year -- the last accomplished guys to be so average-dependent were probably Sisler and Terry. Boggs would take a walk; Ichiro runs and fields brilliantly. Gwynn ran well at times, fielded well at times... but basically he was just a cherubic little fat guy who could sneak one through the infield a couple hundred times a year. Batting average isn't a great stat, but it's *exactly* what proves the worthiness of Tony Gwynn.

That's why he was good, and that's why he was fun. Let's celebrate that.

This is a rare spot where the mainstream folksy dopes have it right...Tony Gwynn was very good in terms of WARP3+ -- but he was absurdly good, even sublime, in terms of batting average. Batting averages got him into the bigs in the first place, and they carried him all the way to the Hall of Fame. In the rare case where a weak statistic can do that for a brutha, let's don't fight it. Let's freak out and party, because baseball's weird and varied and awesome. Hail batting average, and hail Tony Gwynn.

Addendum: To respond to many readers who had the ...

2007-01-10T21:29:00.000-05:00

Addendum:

To respond to many readers who had the same or similar criticisms of this post:

Yes, I do realize that pitchers are not voted on in the All-Star balloting. I also realize that while each of a player's individual honors (ROY, All-Star games, etc) might be relatively meaningless, that the accumulation of dozens of such honors all put together could indicate a very good player. I realize these things. Promise.

However. My point here is this.

There are many different ways to evaluate a player's career. Many good ways. Like stats that take into account a player's era and home ballpark effects. Or stats like EqA, which measure a player's total offensive output per out recorded -- a far, far better average to use than batting average. And what bugs me like few other things on God's green earth is when people make hysterical arguments for a player's candidacy based on bad ways.

All-Star game selections are stupid. I'm sorry. They are voted on by the fans. The balloting starts in May, after like 40 games. Often, the ballots don't even contain the names of deserving players, because those players break into the league in April or fill in for an injured player or something. And even if they are deserving, they are theoretically only being judged on the first half year. This is the reason a pitcher's appearance can be misleading -- lot of pitchers tire in the second half and their year-end stats aren't great, when all is said and done.

Should I go on, with reasons ASG appearances aren't a good way to evaluate players? Okay.

There are tons of considerations for the squads -- only a certain number of guys at each position, for example. Granted, Joe Torre did take four SS one year, but that is rare. Much was made (pre-steroid-scandal) in the Raffy Palmeiro should-he-shouldn't-he debate about how he didn't have that many ASG selections. Who cares? There were a lot of awesome 1Bmen in his era, who maybe played for more popular teams or something, or just had better first-halfs (halves?), so Raffy didn't often get elected to start. It didn't mean he wasn't putting up great numbers.

And, as if it needs to get any less meaningful, there is a rule that at least one guy from each team has to be on the squad. If you are a decent KC Royal right now, you can knock off 5 or 6 ASG appearances before you reach free agency. It doesn't mean you are a great baseball player.

More reasons? Okay. How about that the managers are incredibly biased, and they now pick the reserves. (Torre used to pick every Yankee that wasn't nailed down.) They still count as ASG appearances. Also, many guys who have been very good, or popular, or both, for many years often just get elected again, year after year, regardless of whether they deserve it.

An ASG selection is simply a coarse and silly way to judge whether a guy had a good season, and therefore, even in aggregate, a career. It suggests quality. It does not define it in any way.

The same is true of Gold Gloves -- perhaps even moreso. Gold Gloves are completely phony. Was Ozzie Smith really the best fielding SS in the NL in 1992, at age 38? Or did the voters just check his name off like they'd done so many years before? Was Greg Maddux really the best fielding NL pitcher last year? Really?

The GG voting is no different from the Emmy voting or Oscar voting. Certain names just ring in voters' ears, and instead of watching the players' performances closely and making an informed decision, they just say, "Judi Dench is wonderful. I shall vote for her!"

All I ask, when someone makes an argument for or against a player, is that the argument be as informed as possible. There are many good weapons an arguer can use. Why wield a dull sword?

A reader with the made-up name of Alasdair adds a ...

2007-01-10T14:41:00.000-05:00

A reader with the made-up name of Alasdair adds a few points re: Stark's comments on Gwynn:

He batted .500 (8-for-16) in the '98 World Series.

True, which is pretty impressive. Here were all of his career postseason stats, in the interest of full disclosure...
'84 NLCS: .368/.381/.526
'84 WS: .263/.364/.263 (love it when BA and slugging are identical...)
'96 NLDS: .308/.308/.385 (and when BA and OBP are identical...)
'98 NLDS: .200/.200/.333
'98 NLCS: .231/.259/.269 (ouch...)
'98 WS: .500/.529/.688

You've got to cherry-pick that one series, plus possibly the '84 NLCS, to make any kind of postseason-based argument. Much as I don't think postseason stats have great predictive quality, they do, like ERA, give a good measurement of performance in that specific situation, and Gwynn didn't generally seem to be all that special in the playoffs.

And his greatest talent was one that no player in any of our lifetimes could match: It was just about impossible to make this man swing and miss.

[Note: I did not include this point in my own analysis. --KT]

That's true - in terms of career AB/K, he's 87th, which is the best of any recent player. His career rate of 21.40 is excellent. Still, I'm a little dubious about this stat as a true indicator of quality. Take a look at the active top ten, from tenth to first:

Bengie Molina, Ichiro Suzuki, Orlando Cabrera, Jason Kendall, Lenny Harris, David Eckstein, Paul Lo Duca, Eric Young, Placido Polanco, and...drum roll...Juan Pierre. How many of those guys do you really want on your team? (P.S. #11 is Neifi Perez.)