The first thing I should say here, I suppose, is that history shows that there are almost always more than ten future Hall of Famers on the Hall of Fame ballot.    If you go back to 1960, 1970, 1980, I think you will always find that there are more than ten players on the ballot who will eventually go into the Hall of Fame, and usually, that there are more than 25.   It is not unusual to suggest that Dale Murphy is 18^th on the list, but nonetheless a qualified Hall of Famer.

            On an emotional level, I would be very happy to see Dale Murphy go into the Hall of Fame.   He is a good man, and there are many players no better than he was who are in the Hall of Fame, so he in no way degrades the standards of the Hall of Fame, if he were selected. 

            It seems like he might be a Hall of Famer, because he had the two MVP seasons, and he had other seasons of the same quality.   But while Murphy’s two MVP seasons were not illegitimate MVP Awards, as (in my opinion) Juan Gonzalez’ were, neither were Murphy’s seasons of true MVP quality.  Bret Boone didn’t win any MVP Awards, but Bret Boone’s best season was better than Murphy’s.   Tim Raines didn’t win any MVP Awards, John Olerud didn’t and Fred McGriff didn’t, but Fred McGriff had two seasons better than Murphy’s best, Olerud had two, and Raines had three.

            If I had a vote, I couldn’t vote for Dale Murphy to go into the Hall of Fame, because I think there are ten candidates on the ballot who were better than he was.   But he’s not an undeserving Hall of Famer. 

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Performance at Age 37

            At the age of 37 this group of players retained 36% of their Peak Value.   Edgar Martinez at age 37 hit 37 homers, drove in 145 runs and had a .423 On Base Percentage, making him the oldest player in this group to have a true All-Star quality season.   But only five players in the group had 500 at bats at age 37.

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            Kevin Brown’s career won-lost record (211-144) is similar to a half-dozen pitchers who are in the Hall of Fame, like Stan Coveleski (215-142), Chief Bender (212-127), Jesse Haines (210-158), Don Drysdale (209-166), Hal Newhouser (207-150), and Bob Lemon (207-128).  In truth, Brown was probably a better pitcher than most of those.   However, until we clear off the backlog of better pitchers, I wouldn’t consider voting for him. 

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Performance at Age 38

            The best player in this group at the age of 38 was again Edgar Martinez, playing 138 games, and hitting .306 with 116 RBI.   Five players in the group remained regulars or quasi-regulars at age 38—Martinez, Fred McGriff, Rafael Palmeiro, Harold Baines, Barry Larkin and Dave Parker.   Larkin and Parker weren’t very good.    Blyleven, Brown and Leiter continued to pitch well.

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             OK, remember this chart, that I ran yesterday and the day before?

GROUP A

Win Share Value 450 or more

Obvious Hall of Famers

GROUP B

Win Share Value 400 to 449

Obvious Hall of Famers

More-than-Qualified Hall of Famers of a type who are almost universally selected fairly quickly.

GROUP C

Win Share Value 350 to 399

Fully qualified candidates who are presumptive Hall of Famers

unless there is some peculiar reason they should not be.   In general,

I endorse the Hall of Fame candidacy of these players.

GROUP D

Win Share Value 300 to 349

Qualified Hall of Fame candidates of a type that are selected more often than not,

often after a long wait.  In my view there are some players in this range who

are good Hall of Fame candidates, and some who are not.

GROUP E

Win Share Value 250 to 299

Marginal candidates.  

There are many players in this range who are in the Hall of Fame;

there are dozens or hundreds who are not.   In my view, players in this range should in general not be selected to the Hall of Fame, unless there is some unusual reason why they should.

GROUP F

Win Share Value 200 to 249

Fringe candidates.  

There are players like this who have somehow managed to get into the Hall of Fame, because Hall of Fame voting is often not well considered, and there may even be one or two players in this range who should be in.    But in general, players in this range of stature

do not belong in the Hall of Fame.

GROUP G

Win Share Value Less than 200

Players who are not Hall of Famers.

            With Don Mattingly we have entered group "D", players who are at or above the Hall of Fame standard, and who generally do get in the Hall of Fame eventually.   Mattingly clears one of the two standards that, in my view, mark a man as a legitimate Hall of Fame candidate:  100 more Win Shares than Loss Shares.

Although he ranks only 16^th in this group of players in a technical analysis, I feel that Don Mattingly should be in the Hall of Fame, and if I had a ten-man ballot I would try to make room for Mattingly on it.   Mattingly was a truly great player, if only for a few years.   His period of brilliance was shortened by back trouble, but, to me, a man who is actually a great player for a few years ranks ahead of a player who hangs around and accumulates value.   Thus, although my numbers put Harold Baines ahead of Mattingly, I don’t know that I would vote it that way.

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Performance at Age 39

            By the age of 39 more than half of the players in this group were no longer in the majors, and the players as a group retained only 13% of their peak value.   The best players in the group were Al Leiter (12-4), Dave Parker (16-15) and Rafael Palmeiro (15-15).

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            Trammell, or Barry Larkin?   It’s not really close; Larkin was quite a bit better.   Larkin’s OPS was .815; Trammell’s was .767, and he played in a higher run context—plus Larkin was faster and a better shortstop.    Trammell’s a legitimate Hall of Famer, but Larkin should go in first.

            RCAP is Runs Created Against Positional Average. 

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Performance at Age 40

            By the age of 40, 25 of the 36 players were no longer in the majors, and they retained only 10% of their peak value.  The best players in the group at age 40 were Edgar Martinez (17-7), Harold Baines (15-7), and Rafael Palmeiro (11-9).    Martinez hit .294 with 24 homers, 98 RBI and 92 walks.

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             If I understand the rules Baines will drop off the ballot for lack of support after drawing only 4.8% in this year’s voting.   That’s alright; he is very close to the line where I think you’d have to support his candidacy, but I don’t think he is over it.

             What is odd about Baines’ career is that his prime is missing.   He was a very good young player, posting won-lost records beginning in 1982 of 20-16, 20-14, 22-8, 21-13 and 20-11.   When he was an old player, he was exceptionally good for an old player—one of the best "old" players in this group.   It’s just that, because of his injuries, his prime seasons aren’t very impressive.  

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Performance after the age of 40

            By the age of 41 only four of the 36 players were still in the majors—Edgar Martinez (10-13), Harold Baines (6-8), Bert Blyleven (5-9) and Tim Raines (3-2).   At age 42 we lose Edgar and Bert, but John Franco comes back, leaving us Franco (3-2), Raines (1-3) and Baines (0-5).  At age 43 it’s just Franco (3-3), and age 44, Franco (1-1).

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             Dave Parker, more than anyone else I have seen, perfectly defines the border of the Hall of Fame.    One of my Hall of Fame tests is that a Hall of Fame candidate should have either 300 career Win Shares, or be +100.   If a player doesn’t meet either of those standards, he’s not a Hall of Famer; if he meets both of them, he is.  If he meets one but not the other, we’ll negotiate. 

             I settled on these standards just because they seemed to work, and later realized why they work.   A player’s career, when you think about it, is of almost the same size, the same bulk, as a team/season.    A team/season is 486 Win Shares and Loss Shares with a modern schedule, 462 pre-expansion.    Look at these players.   Dave Parker has 501 Win and Loss Shares, Harold Baines has 504, Alan Trammell 457, Kevin Brown 477, Dale Murphy 451, Lou Whitaker 472, Roberto Alomar 487, Fred McGriff 471.

             A team consists of 25 players—thus, about 25 player/seasons--but only about 13 of those are regulars.   A full career consists of 15 to 20 seasons. It’s about the same.   A "career" is a team/season.

             Asking "Did he have 300 Win Shares" and "Was he +100", then, is the same as asking, "In his team/season, did he win the pennant?"   300 Win Shares is 100 wins.   +100 is 33 games over .500.    If you win 100 games, if you finish 33 games over .500, you’ll win the pennant.  

             It also happens that the guys you look at and say, "He’s a legitimate Hall of Famer". . .they meet these tests.   Sandy Koufax and Jackie Robinson didn’t play long enough to get to 300 Win Shares, but they were much more than 100 Win Shares over .500—thus, they won their team a pennant.   Bert Blyleven and Roberto Alomar meet both of these tests.   The obvious Hall of Famers meet both tests, the guys who are truly great in short careers are +100, and the guys who are able to struggle to 3,000 hits or struggle to 300 wins also get to 300 Win Shares.

             Parker is right on the edge—300 Win Shares, +99.   He straddles the fence better than anybody else I have found, probably better than anybody else in history.   I would predict that he will eventually get into the Hall of Fame.

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             With Larry Walker we enter Group "C", the truly great players who clearly surpass the Hall of Fame standard, and who should get into the Hall of Fame fairly easily unless they present some unique problem like Pete Rose, Dick Allen or Joe Jackson.

             Walker combined power and grace as well as any baseball player of the last 30 years—a tall, graceful right fielder with a tremendous arm and a powerful bat.  He hit .313 in his career with 383 home runs—numbers comparable to Joe DiMaggio.   He has the 7^th-highest OPS of any outfielder in baseball history, behind Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Barry Bonds, Manny Ramirez, Mickey Mantle and Joe DiMaggio, but ahead of Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Ty Cobb and everybody else.    He was an exceptional defensive outfielder.    He was a great player. 

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             John Olerud—and everyone we will see from now on—is, in my opinion, a fully qualified Hall of Fame player, unless you want to disqualify the player for steroid use or for some other reason.

             500 walks, according to the people who study this, have almost exactly the same value as 325 singles.   If John Olerud had drawn 500 fewer walks in his career but hit 325 more singles (in 325 more at bats, thus the same number of outs), he would still have had about an average number of walks, and his overall value would have been the same—but his career batting average would have been .324.

             In recent years it has been suggested that the Cy Young Award for Felix Hernandez or the Hall of Fame selection of Bert Blyleven show how far sabermetrics has come in winning general acceptance.   Well, let me suggest that the near-unanimous rejection of John Olerud shows how far we haven’t come.   If John Olerud had hit .324 in his career, I suggest, his value would have been considered self-evident, and people would think of him as a Hall of Famer.   He would have scored about 50 less runs; he would have driven in about 70 more—which would have given him six hundred-RBI seasons, rather than three.

             In my analysis, John Olerud rates as an obvious Hall of Famer.   One reason for this is that, despite playing first base all of his career, Olerud rates as a better defensive player than Marquis Grissom, who was a center fielder and won four Gold Gloves, or Roberto Alomar, who was a second baseman and won ten Gold Gloves:

This is quite unusual.   The system is set up so that the values and winning percentages of second basemen and center fielders are much higher than the values and winning percentages of first basemen, and also, the system tracks with Gold Glove voting pretty well.   This raises the issue of why Olerud’s defense rates so well?

            There is no easy answer; it is just that everything is positive.   He committed 45 fewer errors in his career than a league-average first basemen.   The third basemen and shortstops on his teams were charged with 58 fewer errors than expectation (adjusted for Olerud’s playing time.)   His "arm rating", based on an estimate of the number of plays he initiated at other bases, is very good.    His teams were very good defensively, and our system assumes that if a team is good defensively, then the individuals on the team must receive credit for that.    Olerud does not rate as the equal of Keith Hernandez, but he does rank as a very, very good defensive first baseman.

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             One of the puzzles created by the recent Hall of Fame votes is why Alan Trammell is at 24% in the voting, although Lou Whitaker was excommunicated from the ballot after drawing only 3%.   I don’t see Trammell as being that much better than Whitaker; in fact, I see Whitaker as having had a slightly better career:

             The first thing that comes to mind, of course, is that it could be a distinction based on race, but that seems not entirely consistent with the voting.    If it is based on race, then why is Lee Smith (184-93) far ahead in the voting of John Franco (184-51)?   If it is based on race, then why is Marquis Grissom (221-229) ahead of B. J. Surhoff (221-227)?

             There could be a difference between the value that we place on Trammell being a shortstop, as opposed to a second baseman, but my instinct is that that isn’t the real issue here, either.   Our system evaluates Trammell as being a better defensive player than Whitaker.   In order to push Trammell ahead of Whitaker, we’d have to exaggerate Trammell’s defensive performance to a heroic extent (85-17).   We’d have to make him easily the best defensive player in our system.   Trammell had chronic shoulder troubles that interfered with his ability to throw, and I think that most people understand that, while he played the critical defensive position and played it pretty well, he wasn’t Ozzie Smith.   And if the voters don’t think that defense at second base is also important, then how would we explain the 90% vote for Roberto Alomar? 

             Lou Whitaker, while he was a fine player, was a little bit of a head case; I think that’s what it comes down to.  I think Trammell’s a legitimate Hall of Famer, and I think Whitaker was a little bit better.   Whitaker, I think, is being marked down because he was (and probably still is) a space cadet.