hall of fame, next vote...

more than 1st ballot hof-er derrack j4ter iirc

Over a seventeen year stretch, he hit under .280 twice. OBP and SLG also both really good consistently. Could have had 400/3,000 if not for the strike, etc.

I'm always arguing against Andruw Jones; I like what James writes about Jones in the piece linked to above. Part of that:

Jones has very, very good defensive numbers, numbers derived from early efforts to measure Defensive Runs Saved, and I do not question that he was a very good defensive center fielder until he put on weight. Those good defensive numbers are incorporated into his WAR, and in fact form the basis of his outstanding 62.8 WAR.

But that means that Jones’ claim to greatness relies on assets that are simply not available to the players to whom he is being compared. If we had parallel data available for Devon White, for Garry Maddox, for Curt Flood, Willie Davis, Paul Blair, Jim Landis and Jimmy Piersall, it is extremely likely that some of them ALSO would have extremely high Defensive Runs Saved, and thus would suddenly leapfrog Andruw Jones in the values; this is not only likely, in my opinion, it is certain. The entire argument for Andruw Jones as a Hall of Famer rests on giving him an advantage that other center fielders are denied. I think it is just totally wrong. I don’t believe that Andruw Jones was a Hall of Famer, I don’t believe that he was anywhere NEAR a Hall of Fame level, and I am strongly opposed to his election.

tim ellison doing a great job of making me wonder whether he’s serious or not

Accumulator!

I really wanted there to be a 3000 Hit Guy not in the HOF. Lou Brock is probably the worst of the modern ones.

Harold Baines was of course a good hitter, the kind of guy you like to have as your third best hitter on a really good team. but he's also a guy whose best bWAR season falls short of the best bWAR season of Raul Ibanez.

Right, but he's not getting in for blockbuster seasons, he's getting in for like eighteen years straight (no injuries?) of being pretty darn good, mostly as a DH. (And not just in some counting stat that doesn't tell the whole picture. He got hits but also got on base a lot and had power.)

I'm not Kevin - I don't think he's a no brainer but I think there's more of a case to be made than others, seemingly.

other posters, that is

Fascinating passage there, clemenza, about those sixties and seventies era outfielders

but Rusty Staub and Al Oliver aint getting in, tim, and they were better.

(but I wdnt vote for them)

as Jeff Sullivan pointed out, Baines was far from the best choice on that ballot. Orel Hershiser should be pissed.

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

Well, and '67. Four years.

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.

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

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

Staub was more valuable *over his career*

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

no one ever called harold baines le grand orange

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...

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.

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?

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

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

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

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

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)

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.

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?

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

Ellis Burks did.

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

Baines had 759 more hits

mark grace did

421 fewer hits, 211 fewer HR

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

i think we're done here

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.)

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

exactly

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

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.

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

as AN offensive player

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)