I picked Ron Cey as the first player to evaluate in response to a request because I (apparently erroneously) thought that was the first request.  For some reason, posts which did not appear when I first looked later showed up with earlier posting times, so. . . I don’t know why that happened.  Anyway, we’re doing Ron Cey.

            For a contrast with Ron Cey, let’s do Steve Garvey at the same time.  (The major time-killer in this process is figuring the Runs Scored context, points 6 and 7.  Since these are mostly the same for Cey and Garvey, it is time-efficient to do them both.)    So here is the chart:

            As we would probably all anticipate, the chart method shows Ron Cey to have been substantially underrated, and Steve Garvey to have been tremendously overrated.

            These I would believe to be accurate conclusions, but this also reveals a flaw in the method of which I was previously unaware.  Ron Cey earned 280 Win Shares in his career; Garvey, 279.   But when we run the Hall of Fame Equivalent Score, the system works OK for Cey, but doesn’t work quite right for Garvey.  Ron Cey got 1.9% in the voting; 1.9% of 150 is 3, add 150, that makes 153; he is shorted by 127 points, divide by 4, we give him 31 underrated points there. 

            But Garvey got up to 42.6% in the vote; multiply that by 150 is 64, add 150 is 214, subtract 214 from 279, he is "shorted" by 65.  The system concludes, on this point, that Garvey is underrated by 16 because he got to only 42.6% in the vote. 

            But this is obviously problematic since, if Garvey had gotten to 75% in the vote, his score (by the system outlined) would vault to 350.  In essence, the system is saying that unless a player of this quality is elected to the Hall of Fame, he is underrated by the voters.  That doesn’t seem like a true statement, and also, it creates a "dead zone" where no player can land.  If you have 262 to 349 Win Shares, then you are underrated if you reach 74% in the voting, but overrated if you reach 75%.  This doesn’t seem right.

            I can’t, at this moment, see how to fix that; there must be some way to fix it, but I don’t see what it is.  I would ask you for your input, except that I know from experience that this would trigger people to propose 50 different solutions, all of which obviously don’t work if you look at them from some other angle, and I would either have to just ignore you or try to explain patiently why this obviously doesn’t work.   So. . .feel free to suggest a fix if you have one in mind, but be aware that I’ll probably just ignore you, because there is a 99% chance that the suggestions you offer obviously won’t work if you look at them from some other angle.   Sorry.  Sounds harsh. 

            I appreciate your suggestions, and I’ll work on the list.   For some reason, a lot of people are suggesting third basemen—Cey, Santo, Wallach, Stan Hack.  Also, I don’t know that anybody so far has suggested a probably overrated player other than possibly Harmon Killebrew, and this will get boring real fast if I start checking these out and find "Yeah, he’s underrated.  He’s underrated.  He’s underrated; here’s his score.  He’s underrated, here’s the numbers."  The process needs some suspense in order to make good reading.   Thanks for reading.