Yesterday’s group of players was the no-questions-asked Hall of Famers.   Today’s group is what might be called the more-questions-asked Hall of Famers.    Like the players listed yesterday, this group of twelve players had relatively short careers for Hall of Fame candidates, at least in terms of their innings pitched or plate appearances.   Like yesterday’s group, they are in the Hall of Fame.   But these are the guys that we are not so sure about.    The inclusion of these thirteen players will give us a total of 65.

65.   Herb Score (75-58, 562)

64.   Bob Locker  (71-46, .603)

63.   Tony Conigliaro (95-82,.537)

62.   Johnny Murphy (88-58, .600)

61.  Brian McRae  (134-151, .470)

60.  Tiny Bonham (111-69, .618)

59.  George Case  (138-148, .482)

58.  Vince Coleman  (144-166, .465)

57.  Steve Gromek (140-120, .538)

56.  Sam Chapman (138-152, .475)

55.  J. R. Richard (125-97, .565)

54.   Scott Fletcher (147-153, .490)

53.   Jack McDowell (126-87, .548)

52.  Bobby Higginson  (142-121, .540)

51.  Jim Ray Hart (130-79, .622)

50.   Spud Chandler (123-54, .696)

49.   Bob Veale (145-116, .556)

48.  Pete Fox  (161-156, .509)

47.  Johnny Allen (145-107, .576)

46.  Sal Maglie (142-83, .631)

45.  Thornton Lee  (158-127, .555)

44.  Bobby Shantz  (153-99, .607)

43.   Firpo Marberry (159-104, .604)

42.   Jim Maloney (163-91, .642)

41.   Freddy Lindstrom (184-141, .564)  Win Shares Value 202

            Freddy Lindstrom had 231 hits in 1928 and again in 1930.   He rarely walked, had mid-range power and was not an outstanding defensive player.    He does not meet any of my tests of a Hall of Famer.   I have felt that Lindstrom’s selection was absurd since the day he was chosen, and the development of newer and better ways to evaluate players has only served to underscore that conviction.   Team Success Percentage:  .579.

40.   Chick Hafey (167-96, .634)  Win Shares Value 202

            A 1920s/1930s slugger. . .well, I’ll tell you a couple of anecdotes about his career from memory, warning you that neither the anecdotes nor my memory of them is likely to be 100% accurate.    Hafey was a minor league pitcher in the Cardinal system.   Branch Rickey, at a minor league workout, heard the ball thundering off Hafey’s bat in batting practice (not saw it, heard it), and immediately asked “Who is that?”

            “That’s Chick Hafey,” he was told.   “He’s a pitcher.”

            “Not any more he isn’t,” Rickey replied.   I kind of dislike the anecdote, because it casts Branch Rickey as an autocrat, which he was to some extent, but (I don’t think) to the extent that he would actually convert a pitcher to an outfielder, based simply on the sound of the ball booming off of his bat in batting practice.

            Anyway, Andy High, a teammate of Hafey’s, spoke at a SABR convention a long time ago.  Hafey had notoriously bad eyesight, wore thick glasses. High claimed that Hafey’s vision was so poor that, even with his glasses on, he couldn’t read the “departure” signs at the train station unless he walked right up to them.   High said he couldn’t imagine what Hafey would have hit had he been able to see.

            Hafey was a terrific hitter—career won-lost contribution, as a hitter, of 135-52, a .723 percentage—and the Hall of Fame, attempting to justify his 1971 selection to the Hall, has tried to mythologize his hitting ability to cover their mistake.    But Hafey’s career was very short (1,283 games), and, while he was a player of real ability had he had a longer career, he does not meet any of the three Hall of Fame tests that I have advocated here.   His career is very comparable to Rico Carty’s, and to Danny Tartabull’s.   Like Rico and Danilo, he was a right-handed hitting outfielder who could really crush the baseball, but, like Rico and Tartabull, he just didn’t really have enough good years to make him a legitimate Hall of Fame candidate.   Team Success Percentage, .539.

39.   Lu Blue (191-163, .539)

38.   Rollie Fingers (170-107, .612)  Win Shares Value of 205

            Fingers pitched for eighteen years, but may be considered a short-career player of a kind because he pitched only 1700 innings, which is less than Johan Santana has already thrown. 

            Relief pitchers are a challenge for our system, but even cutting some slack for that, I have a hard time understanding why Rollie Fingers is in the Hall of Fame.   Riding the success of the Oakland A’s three successive World Championships and a signature moustache, Fingers became the biggest name reliever of his time, and, with a 1.04 ERA in the strike-shortened 1981 season, the American League MVP.   We credit him with a won-lost contribution for the 1981 season of 14-0.  While not suggesting that he wasn’t a very good reliever, I don’t see that he has anything that sets him apart from Jeff Montgomery, Armando Benitez or Gene Garber, much less Dan Quisenberry and Lee Smith.    The problem isn’t simply that his dominance is expressed in so few innings that one must inflate those innings heroically to make him seem like a Hall of Famer; that’s the common problem with all relievers.   The problem with Fingers is more that he isn’t really that dominant.   A .612 Winning Percentage.  .which is an expression of ERA, essentially, diluted with some other success measures. . ..just isn’t good enough to mark a Hall of Famer.  Team Success Percentage, .700.

37.   Rico Carty (179-112, .615)

36.  Allie Reynolds (192-144, .572)

35.  Riggs Stephenson (171-81, .671)

34.  Danny Tartabull (175-93, .654)

33.  Johnny Pesky (168-95, .640)

32.  Addie Joss (167-85, .662)  Win Shares Value of 208

            An off-season sportswriter, Addie Joss was a popular pitcher with the Cleveland Indians in the first decade of the 20^th century.   He died of tuberculosis* at a young age.   An All-Star game, sometimes described as the first All-Star game, was played to benefit his widow.   American League President Ban Johnson attempted to prohibit players from participating in the Addie Joss benefit, which led to the formation of a Player’s Union, which flourished in the years 1912-1915.   Joss was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1978 on the strength of the argument that his career was parallel to Sandy Koufax’.

            I’m a great fan of Wikipedia, which I sincerely believe is generally more accurate either than journalism or academic research, but there is an error in Joss’ Wikipedia page.   Wikipedia says that “in an era filled with spitball pitchers, Joss achieved his success without ever experimenting with altering the baseball.”   But actually, Joss’ career barely touches the spitball era.  Joss threw his last major league pitch in 1910; the spitball era didn’t really begin until 1911. 

Team Success Percentage:  .619.

            (*Contemporary accounts say that Joss died of tuberculosis.    More recent summaries use the term “tubercular meningitis”, which I think is essentially a change of medical terminology. )

31.  Dizzy Dean (166-80, .674)  Win Shares Value of 208

            Dizzy Dean was the living embodiment of the expression “Hale, hearty fellow well met”, or was that supposed to be “Hale, hardy?”   Who the hell knows; anyway, that was Diz.   A full blown hillbilly from the wildest parts of Extremely Rural, Arkansas, Dizzy burst upon major league baseball in 1932 like a volcano, roaring and swearing, slapping people on the back, bragging, lying, telling stories and winning ballgames.   He was 30-7 in 1934—the last 30-game winner in the National League—28-12 in 1935, 24-13 in 1936.   Our Won-Lost contributions for him in those seasons are 33-7, 29-12 and 27-15.   He was a beast.

            Earl Averill hit a line drive off his toe in the 1937 All Star Game.   Dizzy, who thought he was invincible, tried to pitch with the broken toe, threw off his delivery and hurt his arm, basically ending his career on the mound.   Dizzy loved to talk.   His favorite thing in the world was to find some group of people, hop up on the stage and start telling stories.  He was a natural for the broadcast booth.    Broadcasting for the Browns in the late 1940s, Dizzy observed that he could still pitch better than nine out of ten men on the Browns’ staff.   This annoyed the players’ wives, who protested to the Browns’ owners.   The Browns responded by signing Dizzy—now 37, and retired for almost seven years—to come out of the booth and pitch.  Dizzy pitched four shutout innings, but pulled a hamstring running the bases, and returned to the booth.

            In 1952 a movie was made about Dean’s life, The Pride of St. Louis, and a few months later he was elected to the Hall of Fame.   In retrospect, while he did have three high-impact seasons and a career win contribution percentage of .674, he may not have been the best possible selection—but it is, after all, a Hall of Fame, and Diz was certainly famous.   In the 1950s CBS broadcast a “Game of the Week”, a once-a-week national baseball broadcast that, at the time, was the only baseball seen on TV in much of the nation, and the only non-local baseball seen in some places where there were other broadcasts.  Dizzy became part of the Game of the Week team.   He was a hoot, inventing words and phrases or at least original conjugations of them at a rate of two an inning.   The past tense of “swing” was “swang”.

            Dizzy was 150-83 in his career; Don Newcombe was 149-90.    On a strictly logical analysis, I would say that Newcombe was a better player, essentially because Newcombe a) was also an exceptional hitter, and b) missed major league time while he was an outstanding player due to military service.    Dizzy’s playing career may have been a touch short for what we expect of a Hall of Famer, but his life inspired movies, plays, biographies, imitators, restaurants and museums.  Perhaps we should not focus too hard on the technical merits of the performance.   Team Success Percentage:   .567.

30.  Ken Williams (179-106, .630)

29.   Ron Guidry (176-95, .650)

28.  Dominic DiMaggio (186-127, .595)

27.  Don Newcombe (181-96, .653)

26.  Smokey Joe Wood  (177-86, .673)

25.  Hal Trosky (184-104, .638)

24.  Nomar Garciaparra (191-95, .668)

23.  Albert Belle (205-106, .660)

22.  Roy Campanella (166-71, .701)  

21.  Jacques Fournier  (209-102, .673)  

20.  Dolph Camilli (211-97, .685)

19.  Phil Rizzuto (216-133, .620)  Win Share Value of 258

            In a book that I wrote about seventeen years ago (The Politics of Glory) I used Phil Rizzuto as a test case as I tried to work through the logic of who does and who does not belong in the Hall of Fame—Rizzuto, and Don Drysdale.   Rizzuto I used as a player who was out but could be in; Drysdale, as a player who was in but could be out.   (Following what I call the Chief Hogsett principle of book publishing, Rizzuto was elected to the Hall of Fame and Drysdale died suddenly after the book was written but before it was published, making the entire book read different than I had intended it to read.   The Chief Hogsett principle states that no matter what subject you write about in a book, no matter how obscure it may be nor how far removed in history it is, something will happen to the subject after the book is written but before it is published to screw up the context of the discussion.   If you were to publish a biography of 1930s pitcher Chief Hogsett, I guarantee you that two months before your book was published, somebody you never heard of would discover and publish evidence that Chief Hogsett was gay, a bank robber, a philanthropist or a Nazi, thereby totally undercutting whatever it was you wished to say about Chief Hogsett.)

            Anyway, in that book I more or less dodged the issue of whether Rizzuto should or should not be in the Hall of Fame, taking no position until the closing pages of the book.   The book that my editor wanted me to write at that time was a book about who should be in the Hall of Fame and who should not.   At that time I didn’t feel that I was ready to write that book, and so I didn’t; I wrote instead about the history of the Hall of Fame, a few players who were good candidates for the Hall of Fame, and about the Hall of Fame debate—not who should be in and who should be out, but about the debate itself, the arguments that were used, the names involved, the standards that were suggested, the evidence that was cited, etc.

            The current series of articles—seventeen years later—represents a kind of turning point for me in this regard.   For the first time in my career, I am moving toward the book that Bill Rosen wanted me to write twenty years ago, outlining what the standards of the Hall of Fame should be, and explaining who belongs and who does not.   I have been avoiding those issues for almost 40 years; here, for the first time, I am addressing them head on.    While I am not quite where I need to be, I am taking that step because my methods have improved enough, over the last twenty years, that I am more confident that I have a clear picture of the won-lost contribution of each player.

            Phil Rizzuto does not technically meet any of the three criteria that I have laid out as standards for the Hall of Fame.   However, I have to say that I now believe him to have been a much better qualified candidate than I thought he was at the time that I wrote the book.    I have Rizzuto’s individual won-lost contributions as follows:

            20-9, 25-9, 22-10, 27-6, 21-12, 22-14. . .this is a really good player.

            As a hitter, Rizzuto was very good in 1950, his MVP season, and he was above-average in a few other seasons.   Overall, he was 131-128 at the plate, nothing special.   What makes him score well in this effort is a defensive won-lost record of 85-4.   Defensive winning percentage:  .950.   According to defensive wins and losses, Rizzuto was a sensational defensive player, on a par with the greatest of all time.

            Rizzuto had two “high impact” seasons, not three, but he had other seasons with Win Share Value of 26, 28, 25 and 26, and he is missing three prime seasons due to World War II.   Given back those three seasons, it seems clear that he would exceed the +100 standard—he’s +83—and it seems much more likely than not that he would have had a third high-impact season.  

            Giving Rizzuto no compensation for his service to the country, he is still far from the worst player in the Hall of Fame--and his team success percentage is a staggering .952.   Every team that Rizzuto played for was a “5” on a 5-to-1 success scale except the 1946, 1948 and 1955 Yankees, and those were all “fours”.

18.  Ralph Kiner (203-81, .698)  Win Share Value of 261

            Playing for the Pittsburgh Pirates in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Ralph Kiner led the National League in home runs seven straight years.   He hit 294 homers over those seven years.  No other major league player hit even 200 over the same seven—and Kiner drove in 772 runs, which was also the most in the major leagues; Stan Musial drove in 760.    Life was good.  He married a movie star; he uttered the famous line “Home run hitters drive Cadillacs,”  which no longer resonates because people no longer think of a Cadillac as the symbol of wealth and status.  There were four great outfielders in the major leagues in those years—Ted Williams, Stan Musial, Joe DiMaggio and Ralph Kiner, and Ralph Kiner was a full member of the club.

            The Pirates had been one of the premier organizations in baseball from 1900 until the mid-1930s, but by the time Kiner joined the team they had drifted toward the bottom of the league.   They rallied in 1948, winning 83 games (83-71) and staying in contention until the second week of September.  That was Kiner’s heyday.   He had hit .313 with 51 homers in 1947; he would hit .310 with 54 homers in 1949.   He was compared to Babe Ruth in those days. 

            The Pirates, however, now stumbled and fell to new lows.   The Phillies had been the National League’s worst team for 30 years, but as the Phillies rallied, the Pirates balanced the state.   Kiner had back trouble, and his numbers started to drift toward the more ordinary.

            It is among the sad facts of sports journalism that players who play on bad teams get the reputation for being losers, whether they deserve it or not.   Kiner’s reputation began to suffer with the performance of his team.   Branch Rickey, forced out in Brooklyn in a power grab by Walter O’Malley, was hired to be General Manager of the Pirates.   Rickey believed in trading stars off at their peak, before their value began to decline.   He had traded off or sold Joe Medwick, and Rogers Hornsby, and Dizzy Dean, and Johnny Mize, and Chick Hafey, and he wanted now to trade off Ralph Kiner, and get some good young players for him.   The Pirate owners balked at trading Kiner, and compared him to Babe Ruth.   Rickey went down a point-by-point comparison of Ruth and Ralph, which came off sort of like a comparison of Thomas Jefferson and James Traficant.   Kiner’s reputation suffered some more.

            Kiner was not a good defensive outfielder; we have him with a defensive won-lost record of 20-53.  99% of his value was in his bat.   Still, it is my view that his real failings were exaggerated, while his strengths were ignored or trivialized.    By 1975 Ralph Kiner had been on the Hall of Fame ballot for fifteen years, earning no more than 62% of the vote.    The BBWAA decided that year to include with the Hall of Fame ballot a note directing the attention of the writers to those who were in their last year of eligibility.  Kiner, in his last year of eligibility, got 75% of the vote, earning election with one vote to spare.  This, again, backfired on him; writers who had opposed his selection used these facts to deride his selection, and to once more portray him as a .270 hitter who was slow, a bad outfielder, and had a short career of just 369 home runs.   A resolution was adopted ending after one year the practice of alerting the voters to who was in his last year of eligibility.   The clear purpose of the resolution was to mark Kiner’s selection with an asterisk. 

            In the view of the author, Kiner was a well-qualified Hall of Famer.  Yes, his career was short.  Yes, he was a bad outfielder (after his first couple of years in the league; he was OK from 1946-1948, but pretty bad after that.)    But as a hitter, he was Big Impact; he was comparable, as a hitter, to Albert Belle and Frank Thomas.   I credit him with four high-impact seasons, and 122 more Win Shares than Loss Shares; thus, he meets both of those Hall of Fame tests with some room to spare.  His triple-crown numbers (.279 with 369 homers, 1,015 RBI) are comparable to Rocky Colavito, Norm Cash and Frank Howard, yes, but in a thousand less at bats, and his OPS is almost a hundred points higher.  And also, for whatever little it may be worth. . .while Kiner did squeeze in under the wire of the BBWAA, drawing 75% in his last year of eligibility with the help of a one-time note to the voters, he also was at 60% in the voting with several years to go.   Generally speaking, if you’re at 40% in the voting with five years to go, you’re in good shape.   Kiner’s election was being resisted, in my view, by petty attacks from sportswriters who exaggerated his failings.    Team Success Percentage:   .263.

17.   Sandy Koufax (216-115, .653)

16.   Ross Youngs (202-71, .740)   Win Share Impact of 267

            Well, you live and learn.   Youngs, who died at the age of 30 of kidney disease, was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1972.   I have always regarded this as one of the Good Ole’ Boy selections of the Frankie Frisch committee, like Freddy Lindstrom, Chick Hafey and Jesse Haines, but Youngs does stunningly well in this analysis, with individual won-lost contributions as follows:  1917, 2-0, 1.000; 1918, 20-8, .728; 1919, 24-6, .805; 1920, 31-3, .916; 1921, 22-8, .726; 1922, 23-10, .692; 1923, 24-10, .702; 1924, 27-1, .950;, 1925, 15-16, .481; 1926, 14-9, .609.   With four high-impact seasons and a career total of +131 Win Shares, he meets two of the three Hall of Fame tests.

            I remember within the last two or three months somebody trying to tell me I should re-consider Ross Youngs, but I didn’t listen.  I guess I should have.   Team Success Percentage, .684.

15.  Charlie Keller (191-25, .883)

14.   Babe Herman (217-97, .692)

13.   Tony Oliva (221-105, .678)

12.  Kirby Puckett (238-140, .630)  Win Share Value of 287

            Kirby’s career is actually too long to qualify for this group, but he came up in the discussion yesterday, so I decided to include him.    Kirby was a short, powerful, cheerful athlete who had a short, powerful, cheerful career, dimmed suddenly by a series of unfortunate events.    Here’s how we evaluate him year by year:

            There are many worse players in Cooperstown.    Team Success Percentage, .530.

11.  Jackie Robinson (211-55, .793)  

10.   Joe Gordon (229-111, .674) Win Share Value of 289

            Elected to the Hall of Fame just a year or two ago, Gordon easily clears two of the three Hall of Fame tests, with six consecutive high-impact seasons.    In 1942, as I have mentioned several times in different books, Gordon won the MVP Award despite leading the American League in strikeouts, errors and grounding into double plays.   His won-lost contribution that year was 28-3—his best year, but he had six other years of 22-10 or better.   Team Success Percentage:   .816.

9.  Roy Thomas (232-100, .698) 

8.  Don Mattingly (243-127, .656)  301

7.  Frank Chance (218-46, .825)  303

6.  Mickey Cochrane (224-72, .757)  300

5.  Larry Doby (233-69, .772)  Win Share Value of 317

            Larry Doby was the American League’s Jackie Robinson, the player who integrated the American League.    He was different than Jackie; not intense and defiant like Jackie, not almost defiantly upbeat like Campanella.    He was quiet and dignified, a bit of a cipher to those who opposed him.   He took what was thrown at him and gave nothing back, walking forward like a ghost in a fire.

            It took a long time for Larry Doby to make the Hall of Fame, I think mostly because of the odd balance of his skills.   The way that most people interpret baseball statistics is not by mathematical inference, but by comparing numbers to standards, making them function like language.    This approach has difficulty in recognizing a low, broad profile of excellence.   If a player is 40 singles better than an average hitter—190-for-570 rather than 150-for-570—we pick that up immediately, because that makes him a .330 hitter, and .330 hitters are easy to see.  If a player is 20 homers better than an average hitter—35 homers rather than 15—we pick that up immediately.  If a player is a spectacular defensive shortstop, we pick that up.   If he steals 40 bases, we pick that up, and if he draws 120 walks, we pick that up.

            But if a player is good at everything—if he is 10 homers better than average AND ten singles better than average AND draws 90 walks, sometimes we don’t pick up the combination.   We don’t see combinations as easily as we see colors.   Doby was that guy who was good at everything.   He led the league in homers, but with only 32, and he led in RBI, and he walked 90 times every year, and he hit .326 but only once, and he played a key defensive position and played it really well, but not with the style and energy of Willie Mays, and he played long enough to qualify for the Hall of Fame but not long enough to pile up big numbers.

            And then, too, he was in Cleveland, rather than New York City, and on top of that Cleveland was the worst hitter’s park in the American League in those days.   Doby hit .276 in 1952 with 32 homers, which tied for the league lead, and 90 walks giving him a .924 OPS which tied with Mantle for the best in the American League.  The Park Run Index for Cleveland that year was .76.   The credit went to the pitchers.   Three Cleveland pitchers were in the top ten in the MVP voting; Doby wasn’t.

            Larry Doby was the walking embodiment of the term “winning baseball”.   I credit him with individual won-lost contributions, beginning in 1948 and skipping no years until 1959, of 19-6, 23-9, 25-2, 24-1, 27-2, 24-7, 26-7, 19-7, 19-9, 16-7 and 9-5.    I credit him with an offensive won-lost record of 183-41 (.817), a defensive record of 51-28 (.646).    Team Success Percentage:   .715.

4.   Hank Greenberg (231-55, .806)

3.   Johnny Evers (261-133, .662)  Win Shares Value of 325

            The Most Valuable Player in the National League in 1914, Johnny Evers is most famous as the pivot man in the Franklin Adams poem, Tinker to Evers to Chance.

            Johnny Evers, in my view, is a fully qualified and well qualified Hall of Famer.   We credit him with four High Impact seasons, and his MVP year isn’t one of them.   His MVP season isn’t notably worse than his other great years; it just isn’t any better.   We have him with won-lost contributions of  20-8 or better eight times.

            Comparing Evers to Rizzuto or to Joe Tinker, who he hated but with whom he is locked forever in memory, Evers was a little better hitter in the context of his team, not quite as fantastic in the field.  We have him with an offensive won-lost record of 166-106 (.609), defensive won-lost record of            95-27 (.779).   He was a good offensive player, and a major defensive asset, playing a key role on one of the greatest and most dominant teams of all time, and then later on one of the greatest surprise teams of all time, the Miracle Braves of 1914.   Team Success Percentage:   .819.

2.  Joe Tinker (271-146, .649)  Win Share Value of 333

            On July 10, 1910—one hundred years ago in a couple of months—Franklin P. Adams published a one-stanza poem “bemoaning” the dominance of the three Cub infielders, Tinker and Evers and Chance.   The ditty became inexplicably famous, and the three players were elected to the Hall of Fame together in 1946.

            First of all, I freely acknowledge that my defensive analysis system is set up to discriminate in favor of a player like Joe Tinker or Phil Rizzuto.  The system “suspects” that you are a quality defensive player if you play a key defensive position.   The system suspects that you are a quality defensive player if you play for a team which is successful from a defensive standpoint (that is, successful at preventing runs.)  Joe Tinker was the regular shortstop on teams that were fabulously successful at preventing runs—thus, he stands in the area of the data that is most favored by the analysis.

            In addition to this, he has really good individual fielding numbers.   He led his league in fielding percentage five times.  He led his league in assists three times, double plays twice, range four times.

            As an offensive player, Tinker has similar numbers to Phil Rizzuto.   As a fielder, he is even better.   Rizzuto has a defensive winning percentage of .950.   Tinker is at 1.000—128 defensive Win Shares, in an assigned defensive area of 128 Game Shares.

            Is that unrealistic?   Well, if Tinker isn’t the greatest defensive player ever, then who would be?   What team was ever more successful at preventing the other team from scoring runs?   None; absolutely none.   Year in and year out, the Cubs of Tinker to Evers to Chance won more games with their gloves than any other team that has ever played baseball.   These guys didn’t win as many games with their gloves as Ruth and Gehrig won with their bats; they won more.   Consistently more.   If we don’t attribute a good share of that to Tinker and Evers and Chance, where do we put it?

            The pitchers?  Sure, the pitchers were good—but it still looks like it is much more fielding than pitching.   In 1908 the Cubs played in a hitter’s park, relative to the league (Park Factor of 106).  Cub pitchers walked 437 men—34 more than the league average—and threw 34 Wild Pitches, which led the league.   There weren’t many homers in those years, but the Cub pitchers allowed 20 homers, whereas the league average was 19—yet they narrowly missed leading the league in ERA and fewest runs allowed. 

            The Cub pitchers did not normally lead the league in strikeouts or in (fewest) walks, nor were they normally low in home runs allowed, nor did they play in a pitcher’s park—and yet their ERAs were fantastic.   Every pitcher who popped up on their staff suddenly cut a run off of his ERA.   If we don’t attribute that to Tinker and Evers and Chance, who do we attribute it to? 

Team Success Percentage, .799.

1.  Joe DiMaggio (322-45, .876)

            The general conclusion of this lot is that most of the “questionable” short-career Hall of Famers stack up fairly well against the unquestioned Hall of Famers and the short-career Hall of Fame candidates.   Freddy Lindstrom and Chick Hafey don’t belong, but we’ve always known that, and Joss and Dean are really marginal.    If Rollie Fingers belongs in the Hall of Fame, then I’m not smart enough to see why.  The other guys, the other seven. . .they’re actually pretty well qualified by this analysis. 

            We’ll wrap up this series tomorrow with a list of special cases:   Dick Allen, Wally Berger, Ray Chapman, Joe Jackson, Roger Maris and Darryl Strawberry.    Thanks for reading.