Post #11

The 2022 Hall of Fame BBWAA Election, Part A

Status is about numbering, counting, ranking and ultimately about excluding. Andy Crouch

January 15, 2022

In earlier posts, I discussed the twenty candidates under consideration by the Early Baseball Era and Golden Days Era Committees [10 players each] for their possible 2022 induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame. For my evaluation of whether these old time players were worthy, I used an analysis based on the WAR [wins above replacement] statistic from the Baseball Reference website. Now I will use the same procedure to analyze the 30 candidates being voted on by the Baseball Writers Association of America [BBWAA]. These results will be announced on January 25, 2022. Basically my method was simple. Starting with the assumption that the Hall of Fame only wants to honor the very best players, I asked this question: “How many eligible players have already been inducted into the Hall of Fame before 2022?” Unfortunately, I had to exclude the players from the Negro Leagues. But I also had to include some players elected as either Executives or Managers (that would have been elected as Players too). With those two qualifications, the answer to the question of how many eligible players have already been elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame before 2021 turned out to be 235.

My Rating System

My second assumption was that the Baseball Hall of Fame always meant to honor the best 235 eligible players. Using that assumption, I then asked who was the 235th best eligible player in the history of Baseball according to the Career WAR calculation on Baseball Reference [bWAR]. The answer to that question turned out to be Bid McPhee with 52.5 bWAR. The career WAR total of this 235th best player then established the lowest common denominator for entry into the Hall of Fame. In other words, if a player has more than 52.5 bWAR, that player should be inducted. If not, then they should be barred. A nice simple clean objective system. However, as is usual with all supposedly nice simple clean objective systems, there is still the possibility of an error or even an injustice if the player does not amass the requisite 52.5 bWAR. One obvious injustice would be: “Was the player a victim of discrimination (such as the Negro League players)?” Another example of a possible error would be: “Was the player primarily a catcher (a position that wears players out faster)?” Yet another problem would be: “Does the player’s career bWAR number fall short because their career was interrupted by Military Service?” The lowest common bWAR denominator is the beginning of the conversation, not the end of the debate.

These three exceptions are the obvious major problems with using Baseball Reference’s bWAR calculation as a bright shining line. The bWAR calculation also does not give any extra credit for a player’s post-season heroics. Not giving David Ortiz, a first time candidate for induction in 2022, bonus points for his incredible performances in the post season seems to miss the essence of the Baseball Hall of Fame. On the other hand, a debit should be made for any player who constantly underperformed when the lights were brightest (Billy Wagner, on the current ballot, and his post-season ERA of 10.03 would certainly qualify). On top of all this, there is the essential question of: “How good is all the information going into the bWAR calculation itself?” Like any system built to spit out ratings, the end result will only be as good as the data going in the front door. There are other systems that attempt to rate the total career value of baseball players: Total Value, Win Shares, and several different versions of Wins Above Replacement. Although I currently believe that bWAR is the best current system, I could be wrong.

One Glitch in the System

The biggest flaw in any of these systems is simply the fact that all baseball statistics are not created equal. There are basically three types of statistics to measure a baseball player’s career: Batting, Pitching, and Fielding. The Batting metric is relatively straight forward and all measurements of this value highly correlate to the player’s worth. The Pitching metric is a bit more complicated. There are problems separating the value of the Pitching from the last metric, Fielding. To complicate matters, this problem has a Time Line component. In other words, the farther back in time that you go, more and more value that is attributed to Pitching is actually Fielding. The last metric, Fielding, is the great unknown. A good example of this would be the current baseball enthusiasm for shifts. A player could play for a team that uses fielding analytics well and maximizes his defensive positioning. Because of this, the player looks like a great fielder. Meanwhile, with another team that is poorly run with little or no defensive analytics, the same player could seem to be a bad fielder because his positioning is bad. In other words, the value is not intrinsic to the player. It is simply caused by his situation (like the difference between two exactly equivalent pitchers, but one backed by a great defense while the other is supported by a team full glove-less wonders). For this reason, I take Fielding statistics with a much greater grain of salt.

The Ratings Themselves

Without further ado, I will list the 30 Candidates eligible for induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame on July 24, 2022, by the BBWAA. They have been listed in the order of their career bWAR rating. After their name, their career bWAR value is listed, followed by their defensive WAR rating [also from the Baseball Reference website]. By my system, sixteen [16] of the 2022 candidates qualify for induction and fourteen [14] do not. It does occur to me that 16 qualified candidates for election seems very high. My next post will discuss these thirty players in a more detail after the election results are announced. Once again, my system concludes that any player with 52.5 career bWAR (or more) should be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Hall of Famers on the 2022 Ballot [Player/Career WAR/Defensive WAR]

  1. Barry Bonds [162.7 ~ 7.6]
  2. Roger Clemens [138.7]
  3. Alex Rodriguez [117.5 ~ 10.4]
  4. Curt Schilling [80.5]
  5. Scott Rolen [70.1 ~ 21.2]
  6. Manny Ramirez [69.3 ~ -21.7]
  7. Andruw Jones [62.7 ~ 24.4]
  8. Todd Helton [61.8 ~ -5.0]
  9. Andy Pettitte [60.7]
  10. Gary Sheffield [60.5 ~ -27.7]
  11. Bobby Abreu [60.2 ~ -10.9]
  12. Mark Buehrle [60.0]
  13. Sammy Sosa [58.6 ~ -0.3]
  14. Tim Hudson [56.5]
  15. Jeff Kent [55.5 ~ -0.1]
  16. David Ortiz [55.3 ~ -20.9]

Non-Hall of Famers on the 2022 Ballot

  1. Torii Hunter [50.7 ~ 4.0]
  2. Mark Teixeira [50.6 ~ -0.9]
  3. Jimmy Rollins [47.6 ~ 15.9]
  4. Omar Vizquel [45.6 ~ 29.5]
  5. Carl Crawford [39.1 ~ 1.5]
  6. Jake Peavy [37.2]
  7. Billy Wagner [27.8]
  8. Justin Morneau [27.0 ~ -6.6]
  9. Joe Nathan [26.4]
  10. Prince Fielder [23.8 ~ -20.5]
  11. A.J. Pierzynski [23.8 ~ 8.4]
  12. Jonathan Papelbon [23.3]
  13. Tim Lincecum [19.9]
  14. Ryan Howard [14.7 ~ -17.3]

Notes: Negative defensive WAR listed in red type. If players are tied, player with better offensive WAR listed first.

The above lists of the current 2022 candidates should probably generate a little sympathy for the BBWAA members who are voting this year. There are sixteen fully qualified Hall of Famer players eligible on the 2022 BBWAA Ballot. A Ballot which is limited to just ten spots. With this many qualified Baseball Hall of Famers on the Ballot, the candidates are bound to cannibalize votes from each other. This will make it much harder, if not almost impossible, for any single player to meet the 75% requirement of votes cast to be inducted. On the other hand, one could easily argue that the BBWA itself is completely responsible for this predicament by riding the moral high horse and refusing to elect any players who used or were suspected of using steroids, so perhaps no sympathy is warranted.

Interestingly, this problem will be significantly reduced by the time that the 2023 Baseball Hall of Fame election rolls around. Four of the fully qualified players [Bonds, Clemens, Schilling, and Sosa] are in their tenth and final year on the Ballot. Yet another qualified player [Hudson] does not appear to be on track to get the minimum 5% requirement of the 2022 Ballots to get relisted on the 2023 Ballot. Lastly, David Ortiz (strangely enough the least qualified of the sixteen players certified by my system as Hall of Famers) is on track to be elected this year. With all these players removed, the 2023 Hall of Fame Ballot should only have 10 candidates who deserve election returning from 2022. These ten will be joined by only one player [Carlos Beltran] who is eligible for the first time in 2023 that also qualifies under my system.

Next:

In my next post [Part B], I will discuss these thirty candidates in a little more detail and also talk about the Baseball Hall of Fame tracking metrics that have been developed by Ryan Thibodaux. This system lets anyone know whether a candidate actually has a chance to be elected way before the vote has actually been announced. Basically, because of Thibodaux’ tracking system, the only real question right now is whether David Ortiz will be elected or not. No one else has a snowball’s chance in hell of being elected.