2023 Franchise Review [Number 4]: New York Mets (2022 Record: 101-61)

July 3, 2023

It’s when the Yankees score eight runs in the first inning and then slowly pull away. Jacob Ruppert, owner of the New York Yankees [1915 to 1939], when asked to describe his perfect day at the ballpark.

1. The Best Owner in Baseball?

For the most part, the owners of Major League Baseball teams are despicable people (there may be an exception or three). You don’t get to be a billionaire without cheating and stomping on other human beings. All that being said, the average Baseball fan probably could care less about the loathsomeness of their local owner than whether that owner wants the team to win too. So who (or what) would be the perfect Baseball team owner from a fan’s perspective? It probably would not be a corporation.* By definition, a corporation will (or at least should) always value profits over a championship. A corporate team will just try to win the World Series as a result of an established profit-making process. A championship would simply be a by-product of this system. But an efficient corporate team would never go all-in to win or overspend simply for a chance of victory. For this reason, the typical fan would probably much prefer an owner with an overwhelming desire to win. Of course, one of the major stories of 21st century Major League Baseball has been the adoption of the so-called Money Ball philosophy in whole or in part by virtually all Major League teams. And Money Ball, at its essence, is simply the very successful application of some modern corporate processes to Baseball. So perhaps the perfect Major League team owner would be one who applies the corporate processes of Money Ball to his team but also wants to win so much that he is willing to throw both processes and profits aside if necessary? This dream owner would be both stupid rich (able to overspend for the fun of it) & also hopefully from an industry that relies heavily on process, like perhaps some kind of investment manager.

*Interestingly, the two Major League teams currently owned by corporations, Atlanta (Liberty Media) and Toronto (Rogers Communications), are both very well run and quite successful.

2. The Tao of Steve Cohen

On October 30, 2020, billionaire hedge fund manager Steve Cohen purchased the New York Mets from the much maligned Fred Wilpon.* Mets fans rejoiced, assuming that any other owner would be better than the weirdly incompetent Fred Wilpon and family. Almost three years later, it has become apparent that the new Met’s ownership has cleared the bar of that assumption with room to spare. Cohen, who is reportedly the richest owner in the Majors, has spent his money on his new team as if the success of the team is much more important than actual profits. Of course, Cohen may be spending money now under the assumption that he will recoup it later (in economic terms, he is building up a reservoir of good will). In many ways, Steve Cohen seems to be following the diagram laid out by George Steinbrenner, the former owner of the New York Yankees (only without King George’s narcissism): spend money hand over fist for the best players and all the cash and publicity will ensure that good things happen. Also, since Cohen is a “billionaire hedge fund manager,” there seems to be an implicit assumption that he is competent and knows exactly what he is doing. Steve Cohen certainly says all the right things (such as often stating that he wants to model his New York Mets after the extremely competently run Los Angeles Dodgers). If one assumes that Cohen is a visionary and not just some guy throwing money around like it is nothing but paper, then the hiring of Billy Eppler on November 19, 2021, as the club’s General Manager has implications that cannot be denied. Billy Eppler does not fit with Cohen’s stated desire to be the Los Angeles Dodgers East.

*See Addendum #1

3. Steve Cohen Hires a General Manager

Born in 1975, Billy Eppler* has a interesting baseball resume: 1) a California native, he enrolled at San Diego Mesa College in 1993 and played baseball there; 2) he transferred to the University of Connecticut and played baseball for the UConn Huskies under an athletic scholarship; 3) Billy Eppler’s college career was ended by an arm injury; 4) he graduated in 1998 with a degree in finance; and, after interning for a year for the NFL’s Washington Redskins, he was hired in 2000 by the Colorado Rockies as a scout. In 2005, Eppler joined the New York Yankees as their director of scouting. in 2011, he was promoted to assistant general manager. Late in 2015, Eppler was hired away from the Yanks to be the general manager of the Los Angeles Angels, a position Eppler held from 2016 to 2020. On November 18th of 2021, Billy Eppler was hired by Steve Cohen to be the New York Mets’ general manager. Eppler was hardly Steve Cohen’s first pick for this job. And his hiring did not fit the presumed narrative. Instead of hiring one of the analytical data-driven general manager prospects that have flooded into Major League Baseball front offices recently, Cohen hired someone who would have fit right into the former jockocracy front offices that were swept away by the new Money Ball generation. If Steve Cohen’s plan was to follow the front office blueprints laid down by the Los Angeles Dodgers or Tampa Bay Rays, Bill Eppler was not the man for the job. So what were Billy Eppler’s main qualifications to be the general manager of the New York Mets?

4. The Man Who Signed the Japanese Babe Ruth

Like most Los Angeles general managers, Billy Eppler* started the job in 2016 with a five year plan to build the mediocre Angels into a powerhouse. He had the great advantage of inheriting a team with the best player in Baseball, Mike Trout, already on the roster. In 2016, the Angels finished with a 74-88 record despite Trout’s presence. In 2017 and 2018, the Angels finished with identical 80-82 records. Then, in 2019 and the covid-wrecked 2020 season, the Angels receded to 72-90 [.444] and 26-34 [.433] records. All this despite the addition of the Once and Future King as the best player in Baseball, Shohei Ohtani, to a roster that still included Trout. Any analysis of Billy Eppler’s tenure as the Los Angeles Angels general manager from 2016 to 2020 would have to conclude that it was an abject failure. So why did Steve Cohen hire him? Was there no one else like perhaps a very motivated ballpark crackerjack vendor? Basically, the answer is already included above. The one great success of Eppler’s stint as the Angels GM was somehow convincing Ohtani to sign on the dotted line. The most probable takeaway from Steve Cohen’s hiring of Billy Eppler is that Cohen will be going pedal to the metal after Shohei when Ohtani becomes a free agent after the 2023 season. So far, in Steve Cohen’s time as the Mets’ owner, the one constant has been a George Steinbrenner like willingness to overspend for true star players. The big story of the 2022 to 2023 off-season was the odd free agent journey of Carlos Correa. After originally signing with the Giants, Correa failed his physical and had his contract voided. Cohen then stepped in and signed Correa to another massive contract [315 million for12 years]. Reportedly, Cohen did this practically on a whim while vacationing in Hawaii. This is Steinbrenner-like impulsivity. Correa then also failed his Mets’ physical (when the Mets used the same doctor that San Francisco did). Eppler has been hired to give the Mets a leg up in the upcoming Ohtani free agency.

*Apparently Billy, not William, is his actual first name.

Searching for the Next Jacob Ruppert

So far, Steve Cohen’s tenure as the New York Mets’ owner has been mostly one of impulsivity, like a boy with a new toy. In 2021, his first year, the Mets were mediocre, finishing with a 77-85 record. In his second year, 2022, Cohen threw money at the problem and the Mets had a miracle type year, recording a fantastic 101-61 record before getting quickly bounced out of the playoffs. For 2023, Steve Cohen doubled down, putting together the highest paid team of all time with a team payroll in excess of 300 million with various penalties that will actually push it over 400m. The results have been disappointing, to say the least [the NY Mets are currently a sad 38-46 on the morning of July 3, 2023]. It will be very interesting to see how Cohen reacts to this poor result. It seems obvious that his first option will be to throw money at Shohei Ohtani. This has obvious parallels to Jacob Ruppert, owner of the New York Yankees, buying Babe Ruth from the Boston Red Sox way back in 1920. With Ruth, the Yankees dominated the American League throughout the 1920s. But Ruppert backed up his purchase of Ruth (and other star players) by building the farm system that allowed the Yanks to rule the League all the way down to 1964. If they do sign Ohtani, Steve Cohen will once again be doubling down on their current spend the bank strategy. But it will be even more interesting to see what happens if the Mets don’t win the Ohtani auction. Strangely, this may actually be bad news for the rest of the League. Without Ohtani, Steve Cohen may accelerate his building of a great analytically driven farm system like the Dodgers or Rays.

The New York Mets Future as Goliath?

While the Mets have struggled through a difficult 2023 season, Steve Cohen has said all the right things. Despite media personalities yelling and carrying on about how Cohen should punish the players for their poor performance, gut the team at the trading deadline, fire the manager and/or front office, and generally act like George Steinbrenner, Cohen has resisted the urge to pacify the idiot talking heads. He has remained calm and continued to send out a: “We will stay the course” message. This bodes well for the Mets future. If the best Major League Baseball owner possible would be one with: 1) an immense desire to win; 2) who spends money on premium free agents; and 3) invests his money in building the best possible farm system, Steve Cohen does not seem to be there yet. There have been no indications that the New York Mets have gone all in on building a Dodger-like farm system. The GM, Billy Eppler, seems like completely the wrong man for that particular job. But Steve Cohen has the possibility of becoming the next Jacob Ruppert. At this time, we may simply be seeing Cohen at the same stage as Jacob Ruppert was right before Ruppert bought Babe Ruth. If Cohen follows a similar path, the NY Mets may eventually be similar to the late 1930s led Joe DiMaggio Yanks.

Addendum #1

Major League Baseball Team Owners like to claim that the sport of baseball is not all that profitable. Their employee, the Commissioner of Baseball, parrots this propaganda pretty much whenever the Owners negotiate a new contract with the players or the owners are asked to pay for anything. Of course, this is simply a sound and a fury, signifying nothing other than the owner’s greed. Major League teams are obviously fantastically lucrative year after year (even probably during the 2020 Covid epidemic). However, the Owners do not have to just rely on their team’s annual income for their financial rewards. Owning a Major League Baseball teams also comes with a considerable financial asset appreciation when the owner finally sells. The transfers of the New York Mets’ ownership illustrate this perfectly. In 1986, Fred Wilpon & Nelson Doubleday, as equal 50/50 partners, purchased the NY Mets for $81.0 million dollars from the Doubleday Publishing Company (i.e. they each paid $40.5 million dollars for their share). In 2002, Doubleday sold his 50 percent share of the NY Mets to Wilpon for $391 million dollars. In other words, Fred Wilpon now owned the Mets in 2002 for an outlay of $431.5 million dollars. In 2020, Wilpon sold 95% of the Mets (keeping 5% for himself) to Steve Cohen for $2,400 million dollars (or 2.400 billion dollars). Even if the Mets had never made a dime of profit during all the Years that Wilpon owned the team, this is an return on investment that just boggles the mind. Basically, for Fred Wilpon, this was a 600% return over 18 years from 2002 to 2020. In other words, somewhere around a 30% annual return. Even Wilpon’s friend, Bernie Madoff, the Ponzi King, did not promise returns like this….

Big Bill Smith [Part 2]: In his own words

All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.
Martin Buber

June 5, 2023

Introduction

In a previous post [see Post 27], I published the demographical information of William “Big Bill” Smith, a forgotten African American baseball player from the turn of the last century. Born in 1869, Bill Smith played various positions (first base, catcher, second base, and outfield) for many of the best Negro teams of the 1890s and 1900s, including the Cuban Giants, the Cuban X Giants, and the Brooklyn Royal Giants. He also was deeply involved with three short-lived top Black teams of this period: the oddly named 1906 Philadelphia Quaker Giants of New York, the 1910 New York Black Sox, and the 1913 Mohawk Giants from Schenectady, New York. Smith himself spoke several times about his career to newspaper reporters (usually while promoting himself and his current project or team). This post will reprint four of these articles to establish a basis for the further discussion of Big Bill Smith’s career. The first of these 4 articles is from the April 2, 1909, edition of the Nashville Globe, the colored (to use the term then applied) newspaper from Bill Smith’s home town. In 1907 and 1908, Bill had played for John M. Bright’s Cuban Giants team. But in 1909, Smith (who had just turned 40 years old) decided not to return to Bright’s club and try his luck playing for and managing his own club. Before the 1909 season started, he was considering starting a baseball team in Nashville, Tennessee. Big Bill talked about his plans with a Nashville Globe reporter:

Article #1: The Nashville Globe, Friday, April 2, 1909 [Page 8].

Mr. William Smith, an old Nashville boy, and better known around town as Serk Smith, is in the city, having just returned from Florida and Cuba, where he has had charge of a number of ball players during the winter season.  Mr. Smith is a man of wide experience in baseball, having been at the head of some of the leading Negro baseball teams in the country – such teams as the Cuban Giants, Cuban X Giants and Philadelphia Giants – and for the last fifteen years has given his attention to the game both as a player and a manager.  Mr. Smith has been working out every day during his stay here, getting ready for the hard season in the East.  When seen the other day by a Globe man Mr. Smith stated that he was surprised to find baseball at such a low tide in Nashville.  And that he had several good things in store provided the movement for a Negro park comes along all right.  He seems to think Nashville is a good baseball town and that a good team here with a park to play in would be a profitable investment.  He says the record Nashville has made in the world of baseball is one to be proud of and that whenever a ball player says he hails from the Rock City he is given a good chance to show what he can do.  When asked if he thought well of any of the talent around here he said that there was a world of good young ball players in Nashville and that he was thinking strongly of taking some of them with him if he did not decide to stay here and work up a good team.  He also stated that by mixing some older heads with the young blood already here he could mold out  a very fast team.  It is to be hoped Mr. Smith will remain in the city.  Such a man has been badly needed in Nashville and we should give Mr. Smith a world of encouragement and do all we can to help him.  Nashville needs baseball and that badly; here is wishing him success.

Bill Smith did form his new team in 1909: the Nashville Collegians. He kept his club playing around Nashville for its first month before barnstorming up north. But the team did not last out the year, evidently breaking up in July of 1909. In 1910, Smith would organize another new team, the New York Black Sox, with better financial backing. The Black Sox lasted out the 1910 season. For the 1911 and 1912 seasons, Bill Smith once again returned to the Cuban Giants. In 1913, Smith was contacted by one William “Bill” Wernecke, a white businessman from Schenectady, New York, for help forming and organizing a team called the “Mohawk Giants.” Before coming to town, Bill Smith talked to a news reporter for a local white newspaper, the Schenectady Gazette:

Article #2: The Schenectady Gazette, Friday, February 28, 1913 [Page 14]

[HEADLINE] “Big Bill” Smith, widely known Baseball Player and Member of Schenectady Club, in this city [PARAGRAPH 1]. W. T. Smith, better known in baseball as “Big Bill,” is in this city aiding William Warnecke in completing his schedule for the coming season.  Smith has been playing ball for eighteen years and is known by a majority of the league managers and by practically all managers of semi-professional teams in this section of the country.  His reputation as being absolutely on the level in all dealings will result in the Schenectady Colored club being booked with the foremost attractions, for the manager s know that Smith never misrepresents the true facts, and when he says this will be the highest paid colored club in the country, as well as the leading, he is telling no falsehood.  This will also be the first club of its kind to have mackinawa a part of the players’ uniforms. [PARAGRAPH 2] Smith will be the catcher of the local colored club.  He has been playing all winter at Palm Beach and arrived here yesterday in accordance with telegraphic request of Mr. Wernecke to help in arranging the schedule.  For the opening game to be played at Island Park, the second week in April, the Schenectady club hopes to oppose either the Utica or Syracuse State League team.  The managers of both teams have written for games for later in the month and it is expected that no trouble will be experienced in signing them a week earlier. [PARAGRAPH 3] As a ball player, Smith has a record that any leaguer might well feel proud of.  In 1903, while playing with the Royal Giants, he made 26 hits in 13 games and each was better than a single.  Seven were for the circuit of the bases.  Few, if any players in the country today, have established a better batting record in consecutive games. [PARAGRAPH 4] “Big Bill” stands 6 feet, 1 inch, and tips the scales at 240 pounds, which shows just why he received the nickname of being “Big.”  When but 16 years of age, he began his career with the Black Sox of St. Louis.  He organized the Brooklyn Royal Giants in 1905.  Later he joined the Cuban Giants and it was while with this colored aggregation that he received his best schooling.  In 1907 he came here with this team and played two games, defeating the Locos on a Saturday by the score of 16 to 6 and the Jeffs the next day by a score of 11 to 0.  Ben Ellis umpired these games.  In the game against the Jeffs, which then had “Bill” Cunningham” in their line up, Smith made three hits, one a three bagger, off Ketcham, and scored a like number of times.  In the other game he made two hits, one a two bagger, off Berger and Arnold, and scored one run. [PARAGRAPH 5] He is a graduate of Fisk university at Nashville, Tenn., which has been made famous by its jubilee singers.  In speaking of the team which Mr. Wernecke has organized, Mr. Smith said last night: “I can truthfully say that this is one of the best ever organized among colored players in the country.  I can see nothing but success for the team and I know that just as soon as it becomes generally known that Schenectady has the highest paid and leading team, that Mr. Wernecke will be swamped with applications for games.  If the players on this team were white, he would be unable to secure their services for less than $3,000 per month.

Interestingly, while this article contains much new and interesting information about Bill Smith’s life and baseball career, it also has an obvious falsehood. It asserts that Smith went on a complete batting rampage for the 1903 Brooklyn Royal Giants, smashing 26 extra base hits (including seven home runs) in just 13 games. But the Brooklyn Royal Giants were not formed until 1904 and Bill Smith did not play for them until 1905. However, a little research does confirm that Smith’s batting spree (or something close to it) did actually happen. Only it occurred in 1902 when Big Bill was playing for the Cuban X Giants. Also Bill Smith did not organize the Royal Giants either. He was hired by John Connor, the Royal Giants’ team’s owner, to manage and improve the club in its second year. Of course, the article reprinted here is the only one of the four that was written by a white reporter for a white newspaper (which may account for the sloppy reporting). Smith played for and managed the Schenectady Mohawk Giants through the 1913 season. In 1914, Smith re-organized the team (for a different owner Samuel Flansburgh), but this team disbanded in mid-season. Since John Bright had died in 1913, Bill Smith could not return to play for the Bright’s Cuban Giants. But, for the rest of 1914 into 1915, he did play for the remains of the Cuban Giants (teams made up of former Cuban Giants players which operated under various names but called themselves the Cuban Giants when no one was looking). Late in 1915, Big Bill Smith once again started his own club. He named his team the Chicago Black Sox (which just 4 years later would reverberate with historical irony). In August of 1915, the Chicago Black Sox played a series of games versus C. I. Taylor’s top-rated Indianapolis ABCs ballclub. This series likely changed the course of Big Bill Smith’s life.

In all probability, Bill Smith meet his future wife while his Chicago Black Sox played in Indianapolis. In any event, Smith apparently spent the 1915-1916 off-season in the Indiana city. He would settle down in Indianapolis and live the rest of his life there. But Bill Smith was not quite through with Baseball yet. In Smith’s scrapbook, there are two articles evidently clipped from an African American Indianapolis newspaper. The earlier of these two articles, almost surely from 1916, has a better summary of Bill Smith’s career than the 1913 Schenectady article. It even has a headshot photo of Bill himself. Smith was evidently planning on continuing his baseball career in his adopted city. In the article, Smith even hinted that he would be open to trying to form a league or organization with other Negro Baseball team owners and managers (four years before the great Rube Foster formed the actual first truly viable Negro National League). The unknown reporter did a great job outlining Big Bill Smith’s career and hinting at Smith’s future aspirations:

Article #3: 1916 Newspaper Clipping from Big Bill Smith’s Scrapbook at the Baseball Hall of Fame [probably from the the Indianapolis Freeman].

[HEADLINE] “Big Smithy” as a Factor in Base Ball. [SUB-HEADLINE] A Glimpse Into His Most Interesting Career On The Diamond Both As Manager and Player. [PARAGRAPH 1] W. T. Smith started his career in baseball at Fisk University, where, with Frank C. Leland (deceased), they formed the star battery.  In 1893 Smithy played his first professional game in New York with John M. Bright’s Cuban Giants.  In 1897, he joined the Cuban ex-Giants, with which team he played in every position.  In those days there were only three Colored teams in the United States, namely Cuban Giants, Chicago Unions and Cuban ex-Giants, and to fill a position on either team a player had to be mighty good.  In 1902 Smith weighed 230 pounds and could hit according to his size.  On a two weeks’ trip with the Cuban ex-Giants through Pennsylvania “Big Smithy” had twenty-eight hits – one single, ten doubles, eight triples and nine home runs, five of his home runs being made in two days, two at Roxborough and three at Morristown.  In 1905 Smith organized, manned and managed successfully the Brooklyn Royal Giants.  In 1910 he launched a sensational team of youngsters – the New York Black Sox.  No one on the team had ever been heard of except Mathews, the former Harvard University star, but they played great ball and defeated every team in the East.  Leroy, Grant, Handy, Crawford, Andrews and several stars of lesser light graduated from the Black Sox.  His best effort was the launching of the Mohawk Giants in Schenectady, N.Y., in 1914.  At that time the average attendance at Sunday games in Schenectady was 800.  With the advent of the Mohawks the average attendance jumped to 5,000 at Sunday games and 1,500 on Thursdays and Saturdays during July and August.  The Mohawks defeated Montreal, Utica, Elmira, Albany, Troy, Pittsfield, and Holyoke, all league teams, and Walter Johnson’s All-Americans, with Walter Johnson pitching.  Smith wired President Navin, of the Detroits, for a Sunday game, who wired: “Do not care to play exhibition games unless guaranteed a thousand dollars.”  Smith called Mr. Navin over the ’phone and agreed to send him a certified check for a thousand dollars if he would send Cobb and Crawford. On being informed he would have to play a Negro team, he declined the offer.  The Chicago Cubs accepted a Sunday date at Schenectady and notified Smith on Friday that they would not play a Colored team during their playing season.  The Rutland (Vt.) team was then engaged to play the game instead of the Mohawks.  Smith put Wickware in uniform to pitch for Rutland, but the Cubs would not play against him.  In writing of the affair, the New York Evening Telegram said: “The Chicago Cubs in an exhibition game with the Rutland Tri-State League team refused to go on the field when the latter tried to put a Negro pitcher in the box.  Drawing the color line is the acme of impertinence for a team that can bawl out umpires and opposing players in such finished yet uncouth manner as can the Cubs.” [PARAGRAPH 2] Smith is thoroughly familiar with baseball from all angles.  Seeing the time is now ripe for organized baseball among the Negroes, he has decided to take up the work in the West and to co-operate with all the managers and promoters for the organizing and uplift of Negro baseball.  He has already paved the way for another first-class team in the West by organizing the Chicago Black Sox, which team in their initial appearance defeated the crack A.B.C.’s two extra-inning games.  Let us hope that all managers and promoters pull together and adopt the proper methods and the success of Negro baseball is assured.

Despite his hopes and dreams, Bill Smith was pretty much at the end of his baseball career. Smith was evidently out of Baseball for the 1916 season. In Indianapolis, the ABC club fractured into two different teams: one directed by C.I. Taylor, the 1915 club’s manager; and another controlled by Tom Bowser, the 1915 team’s owner. For the 1916 season, these two Indianapolis ABCs teams fought for supremacy in the Indianapolis market. Interestingly, Taylor, the African American manager, won out over Bowser, the White owner. After the 1916 season, Bowser sold his ABC club to Warner Jewell (another White businessman). In 1917, information about Bill Smith appeared once again in the same Indianapolis newspaper (using the exact same headshot as the 1916 article). Basically, this 1917 article is a retirement announcement by Smith. But Big Bill also very obviously uses it to get some free publicity for his new vocation:

Article #4: 1917 Newspaper Clipping from Big Bill Smith’s Scrapbook at the Baseball Hall of Fame [probably from the the Indianapolis Freeman].

[HEADLINE] Ex-Baseball Manager Becomes Contracting Painter In This City. [PARAGRAPH] William T. Smith, one of the well known baseball managers, has located permanently in Indianapolis and has become a contracting painter.  “Big Smithy” as he was called by ball players, comes of a family of painters who are well known throughout the south where they conduct large businesses along that line. Mr. Smith has managed successfully several of the big colored ball clubs at various times, and when he first came to the city a few weeks ago, it was generally surmised that he was to take the managerial end of the Jewell A.B.C.’s.

With this announcement of his retirement, Bill Smith’s baseball career came to pretty much an end. However, his name would be mentioned several times in the future when Negro Baseball in Indianapolis was at a crossroads. In 1926, the Negro National League was trying to re-establish the Indianapolis ABCs as a viable club (the club had slowly disintegrated following C.I. Taylor’s death in 1922). William T. Smith was mentioned for lending a helping hand. In 1937, the first year of the Negro American League, the new organization also tried to start up an new team in Indianapolis (naming it the “Athletics” rather than ABCs), Once again, William T. Smith was mentioned as helping out. However, for all intents and purposes, all Bill Smith’s experiences in his long and storied baseball career found no outlet after he stopped playing in 1915. In general, the Negro Leagues (and the larger world of Blackball itself) had unfortunately very few opportunities for its veterans to continue their careers at the top.

Conclusions

Using this four articles and his obituary from the Indianapolis Recorder, [see Post 27], it is now possible to write a pretty good biography for Big Bill Smith. William T. Smith was born in Nashville, Tennessee, in the year 1869. His family ran a Painting Contractor business and was relatively well-off. Smith attended Fisk University, an African American college in Nashville. There Bill Smith was a baseball star with his battery mate Frank C. Leland. Of course, Frank Leland was instrumental from 1887 until 1901 for the success of the Chicago Unions, one of the era’s top Black teams. After 1901, Leland continued to run various Chicago Clubs (Chicago Union Giants, Chicago Leland Giants, and finally just Chicago Giants) until his death in 1914. Bill Smith began his baseball career in 1885, when he was just 16, with the St. Louis Black Sox. Big Bill Smith turned professional in 1893 with the Cuban Giants. In 1897, Smith joined the Cuban X Giants. In 1902, Smith was at the peak of his abilities for the X Giants. In 1905, he managed the Brooklyn Royal Giants. In 1906, he built the New York Quaker Giants. In 1910, he handled the New York Black Sox. In 1913, Smith was hired to run the Schenectady Mohawk Giants. Finally in 1915, Bill Smith founded the Chicago Black Sox. After retiring, Smith settled in Indianapolis & was a painting contractor himself until about 1926. In 1936 or so, Bill Smith opened a male social club called the “Wagon Wheel” in Indianapolis. In 1940, William T. Smith died of cancer. Of course, this obituary needs to be fleshed out but it hits most of the highlights… except for one.

All of the current biographies of Big Bill Smith credit him with playing for the Chicago Unions from around 1891 to 1898. However, in the four articles that are reprinted above (and his obituary also), there is only one mention of the Chicago Unions and that reference simply states that the Unions were one of the three top African American teams in the 1890s.* It is incontrovertible that a William Smith played for the Chicago Unions during this time period. And it makes perfect sense that Bill Smith would travel to Chicago and play for Frank Leland, his old friend and battery mate from Fisk University. So why didn’t Big Bill Smith list the Chicago Unions as one of the teams that he played for? This question will be the subject of our next post about Big Bill Smith.

*Of course, there were not just three top teams in the 1890s. Early on, there were the Cuban Giants, the New York Gothams, and York Colored Monarchs. Later on, there were the Chicago Unions, Cuban Giants (once again), Cuban X Giants, and Page Fence Giants [Chicago Columbia Giants after 1899]. There was also, briefly in 1893, the Boston Monarchs.

2023 Franchise Review [Number 3]: Atlanta Braves (2022 Record: 101-61)

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature. Helen Keller

May 7, 2023

1. Introduction*

From 2017 to 2021, Baseball fans got to watch the bloated remains of Albert Pujols and Miguel Cabrera stumble through season after season. Each player was: 1) very obviously not in the best of playing shape; and 2) not worthy of their hefty contacts during this time period. Against all odds, Pujols went out in an improbable blaze of glory in 2022, retiring after one last monster season to remind everyone of his greatness. Cabrera was not so lucky. His dreadful 2022 season should have finally put his comatose career out of its blubbering misery. However, since he is still owed 32 million dollars to play in 2023, the Detroit Tigers decided not to get their money’s worth….. one…. more…. time (a truly odd decision). Each man was playing out the end of a contract that paid them deep into their 30s. Their fading years stand as a testimony to the folly of such long-term contacts. Seemingly not learning much from past mistakes of this sort, Major League teams have been recently giving out contracts that will actually cover players into their early 40s. Will these contracts, which are really designed to circumvent harsh penalties for having an excessive payroll, still seem like a good strategy when the players are actually in their 40s? Only time will tell (but it doesn’t look good). On the other hand, some of the more progressive Major League front offices have been trying to tie down their best players through their productive 20s and into their early 30s. Although they did not invent this particular strategy, the Atlanta Braves have implemented it to a unprecedented degree. This post will discuss two aspects of this type of team blueprint: 1) Was it wise for the Braves to sign virtually their entire player core to contracts of this sort; and 2) What would be the economic impact on Baseball itself if this strategy is followed to its logical conclusion?

*As I already wrote a long post specifically about the Atlanta Braves [Post #19], this post will try [and probably fail] not to be so specific to the team itself.

2. The Atlanta Braves’ Bright Idea

The Atlanta Braves have signed seven of the team’s young core to long-term contracts before they would have been eligible for free agency (in some cases, way before) after playing in the Majors for six years. These types of contracts give the players immediate financial security, but at the expense of eventually trying to maximize their value on the open market. The team gets both cost control and good publicity with the added bonus of a chance for an economic killing (to be able to pay a player far under his actual worth). Of course, there is always the possibility that the team could end up paying a player far more than he deserves too. Jon Singleton serves as a cautionary tale for overpaying a player. He was signed by the Astros to a long-term contract before he even established himself as a Major Leaguer. His career was derailed by a runaway marijuana addiction; and he was never worth a penny that the team paid. Do the Braves have a potential Singleton in their 7 player signed core? The quick answer is, of course, possibly Spencer Strider. He is the only pitcher and thus just a torn ligament or burst rotator cuff from becoming a shell of his present self. Sean Murphy, the Braves’ catcher, also is part of a group that often has their careers curtailed by injuries. Both Ronald Acuna Jr. & Ozzie Albies have already lost seasons to injuries; but also seem to have recovered without any lingering problems. Injuries often beget injuries though. But the Braves have extremely team friendly contracts for both men too. The two sluggers, Matt Olson and Austin Riley, are both signed until they are 35 (with team options for their 36th years). Sluggers like them often fade suddenly in their early 30s. Finally, there has been some chatter that Michael Harris II may turn out to be the second coming of Claudell Washington.* Even if he does, the Braves still win that scenario. But, even if two or possibly three of these seven contracts are total duds, the Braves will still win. By signing so many core players, they have (in insurance terms) spread the risk. Every Major League Baseball club should be trying to copy this strategy.

*Claudell Washington debuted in 1974 at age 19 with the Oakland As. He hit .285 in 221 ABs with an OPS+ of 108 [a measure of offensive production, Major League Average=100]. In 1975 at age 20, Washington hit 10 HRs, 77 RBIs, a .308 BA, 40 SBs, a 118 OPS+ and 4.9 WAR [Wins above replacement]. But that was his peak, he never got any better. However, he also played regularly until 1989 and was last seen in the Major Leagues at age 35 in 1990.

3. The Economic Impact of this Strategy

One very interesting aspect of the Baseball team strategy of signing up their young players to long-term contracts has not really been discussed (as far as I know). This practice will definitely effect free agency itself. Basically, the free agent market has been used by teams to improve themselves quickly since it was introduced in the late 1970s. But what happens if this market dries up to a certain extent? What happens if all (or almost all) of the best young players have been tied up by long-term contracts and the free agent market contains only those guys being sent to the Island of Misfit Toys? In the last off-season [2022-2023], it seemed like every star shortstop in the Majors was available as a free agent. Teams were able to go browsing or be caught short by window shopping too long. But many writers have already noted that the coming off-season [2023-2024] has a notably thin free agent class (essentially it’s Shohei Ohtani and some random guys). If the free agent market does dry up, will the free agents available be rewarded handsomely with more lucrative contracts? What will this do to team dynamics? What happens if you are the best player on a team but some guy signed in free agency is making twice what you are because you were convinced to sign away your free agency rights early on? It seems like the Atlanta Braves may already have this problem. The team has a obvious salary structure now.* Would the Braves sign a player in free agency who made significantly more than any of their players that have been tied up long-term? Interestingly, one player the Braves have not signed long-term is Max Fried, their ace pitcher [or, at least, he was until Strider showed up]. Fried has show no inclination to sell himself short and repeatedly fought the Braves in arbitration. Like Freddie Freeman and Dansby Swanson before him, he will obviously have to get paid in free agency. If the strategy of signing all of the best talent to early contracts is taken to the logical extreme, Baseball will end up with set teams fighting one another to overpay for the geriatric scraps that can put them over the top (much like the current Mets contracts for both Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander).

*The Braves have, for now, evidently set a salary ceiling of 22 million dollars a year. Matt Olson (in 2024), Austin Riley (in 2025) and Spencer Strider (in 2027) all eventually top out at this number. It will be interesting to see how long the Braves can hold this particular line.

2023 Franchise Review [Number 2]: Houston Astros (2022 Record: 106-56)

April 5, 2023

Sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground – James Taylor [from the song “Fire and Rain”]

Editorial Comment

As a “writing exercise” for 2023, I decided that I would try to write a “brief” essay for each Major League Baseball team. These essays would be in order of the team’s 2022 records. The very first essay, for the 111-win Los Angeles Dodgers, was not brief. I promised myself that I would do better. For the 2nd essay, the 105-win Houston Astros, I first read a whole book about the team. This was hardly conducive to knocking out these 30 posts briefly and quickly. Once again, the essay was far too long; and more than two months elapsed between the team posts. At this rate, the final essay [Washington Nationals] will be published in 2025. I either need to get better at this or maybe skip a boring team or two.

1. The Houston Astros & Corporate Culture

The book Winning Fixes Everything (by Evan Drellich) was published recently. Basically, it is an expose on the corporate culture of the Houston Astros. This culture possibly led to a sign stealing scandal that tarnished the Astro’s 2017 World Series victory. The book, if one is interested in the analytical side of the game of baseball, is fascinating. Drellich’s story even serves as a bookend to a much more well-known book about baseball: Moneyball by Michael Lewis. Moneyball is, at its heart, a story about the conflict between a bunch of jocks and nerds. It is a latter day high school story where the nerds tear down the social structure of a jock society.* But the hero of the book is the Oakland A’s general manager, Billy Beane, a former jock. He opens the doors to his team’s corporate boardrooms to the nerds. With the help of the nerds, Beane finally becomes successful. In the end, Beane received what had been denied to him in his athletic career (despite formidable talent). It is a redemption tale and Hollywood loved the plot so much that it was made into a movie (starring the ridiculously handsome Brad Pitt as the jock turned nerd hero). No one will be turning Winning Fixes Everything into a Hollywood movie. Unlike Lewis’ book, the plot of Everything is scattershot. Lewis threw out anything that did not fit his main thesis (like how much of the Oakland A’s success was simply due to its great pitching staff). Drellich, the author of Everything, throws everything and anything about the Astros into his book. However, his main thesis, that the corporate culture of the Astros led directly to the sign-stealing scandal, is actually weak. The low tech of watching a TV and banging on a trash can was basically the player’s initiative. The analytically obsessed Astro executive team simply looked the other way once they knew it was happening. All that being said, the book Everything has, in some ways, an even more fascinating story to tell than the much more famous Moneyball.

* There is a whole series of movies, “Revenge of the Nerds” from the 1980s and 1990s, based on this exact same premise.

Winning Fixes Everything tells the tale of Jeff Luhnow, the general manager of the Houston Astros from 2012 to 2019. He began his professional career as a corporate consultant. Of course, consultant is simply another term for a “killer nerd.” As a consultant, Luhnow advised corporations how to restructure their business practices. This restructuring was usually accomplished by laying-off employees without any regard for sentimentality. A Baseball fan, Luhnow sent his resume to Major League teams when the Moneyball revolution swept thru the sport. Many clubs were trying to duplicate the success of Billy Beane and the Oakland A’s. Hired by the St. Louis Cardinals as their head nerd, Luhnow was their vice-president in charge of analytics from 2003 to 2011. On May 16, 2011, the last place Houston Astros were purchased by Jim Crane, a shipping magnate. Crane, who relied deeply on logistics (i.e. analytics) in his primary business, hired Luhnow to be his General Manager (GM). Now in full charge of a team, he quickly decimated the team’s “jock” employees and bought in a platoon of his analysts. Everything tells the fascinating story of this process, in which even the original “analysts” hired by Luhnow were quickly replaced by better analysts. The results were preposterously good. The Astros, who had lost over 100 games yearly from 2011 to 2013, were a winning team by 2015, won their first World Series in 2017, won over 100 games each season from 2017 to 2019, but lost the 2019 World Series in the seventh and penultimate game. After Luhnow was banished from Baseball as a result of the scandal, the Astros continued to win, losing the World Series in 2021 and then winning a second title in 2022. Despite his fantastic record as a Baseball GM, Luhnow will almost surely never run a Major League Baseball team again.*

*It probably doesn’t help that Jeff Luhnow has sued Jim Crane and the Houston Astros for 22 million dollars (the remainder of his contract).

On the one hand, Luhnow’s banishment is nothing to get upset about. By all accounts, he had the interpersonal skills of a bad-tempered badger. The fact that he was fired in much the same way that he fired people himself feels like karma. However, it is also true that Luhnow was scapegoated because he had no real friends in the world of Baseball. The real culprits went scott-free. The players were given “immunity to testify” by the powers that be. But, in reality, the Commissioner’s Office simply did not want to take on the Player’s Union. The Commissioner himself, guilty of not proactively policing and preventing the scandal itself, skated free. Crane – the Astro’s owner with a sordid past of allegations of racism, misogyny, and even “war-profiteering” against his main business – was absolved of responsibility by his employee, the Commissioner. Luhnow (along with manager A. J. Hinch and coach Alex Cora) was banished from Baseball for a year. But while Hinch and Cora were quickly re-employed after their year was up, Luhnow did not get a single offer. With Luhnow gone, Astro’s owner Crane hired yet another analytics oriented GM, James Click, to run his team. Click maintained the run of good seasons from 2020 to 2022. But Crane was not clicking with Click. For 2023, the Houston Astros have yet another GM, Dana Brown. Unlike Luhnow and Click, Brown does not belong to the nerd brigade that has taken over the sport of Baseball. A former minor league player and college teammate of Astro Hall of Famer Craig Biggio, he is squarely part of the jock blue bloods that usually run Major League teams. It seems as if Astro owner Jim Crane has changed the team’s course away from hardcore analytics. What does all this mean for the future of the defending World Champion Houston Astros?

The answer to that question is probably grim. The current Houston Astro’s team was built on analytics and the high draft picks that come from being a lousy team. Except for their 29-31 record in the Covid scuttled 2020 season, the Astros have not had a losing season since 2014. Not only that, the Astros lost draft picks as a result of the sign stealing scandal. Most well-publicized current farm system rankings list the Astro’s organization at the bottom, if not dead last, amongst all 30 Major League teams. The chances that the Astros can reload their Major League team from below are slim. The current team still has the strengths the led them to the 2022 Championship: a very strong pitching staff (both starting and relieving) and formidable line-up. However, pitchers are inherently fragile and the line-up is aging. After the 2024 season, Jose Altuve and Alex Bregman, both probably future Hall of Famers, are slated to become free agents. They could be resigned. But each will be in their 30s for those contracts. Without them, the line-up will no longer be formidable. With them, the line-up will be declining. The traditional front office response to a strong team with a weak or absent farm system is to bring in free agents to shore up the core. An analytical front office would tear the team down (i.e. tanking) and rebuild with draft picks and prospects acquired in the teardown. The corporate culture of the Houston Astros has almost certainly gone from analytical to traditional. Probably the most telling roster move made by the Houston Astros during the 2022/23 off-season was the signing of free agent first baseman Jose Abreu. The acquisition of a 36-year-old first baseman as your quintessential off-season move screams traditional.

It is almost certainly now just a question of player health until the Houston Astro dynasty from 2017 to 2022 comes crashing down to the ground and leaves nothing but wreckage. With good health, the Astros will probably still be strong contenders in 2023 and 2024. But sometime after that, the tide of time and the inevitable wear and tear on any pitching staff will take the Astros down to the bottom of the standings. They may stay there for quite awhile.

2. Jose Abreu & the Baseball Hall of Fame

For several years before Jose Abreu escaped from Cuba in 2013 (with various family members in a boat ride to Haiti), articles were written claiming that he was either: a) the best hitter not in the Major Leagues; b) the best hitter alive; or c) Babe Ruth reincarnated. In the end, all this hyperbole turned out to be just a trifle over-baked. Although he has not turned into the 2nd coming of the Babe himself, Abreu established himself as a very good hitter once he was in the Major Leagues. From 2014 to 2022, he compiled 31.8 bWAR.* Born in 1987, Abreu is now 36 years old. With a good finishing kick, he will probably end up with somewhere around 40 WAR for his career. This will leave Abreu short of the 50 WAR or so that it takes to make a good Baseball Hall of Fame argument. Should he be given any credit for what might have been? Abreu debuted in the Cuban National League in 2003 at the reported age of 16 (if that age is incorrect, the window for a nice finishing kick is probably shorter). Abreu was probably not a Major League caliber hitter until 2008. In the USA, he would have, if given the chance, broken into the Major Leagues then and definitely been a regular from 2009 to 2013 (his age 22 to 26 seasons). How many more WAR would Jose Abreu have compiled in those five seasons? A conservative estimate would be 15 or so [from 2014 to 2018, Abreu amassed 19.3 WAR]. If that had happened, Abreu would now be sitting on about 46 or 47 career bWAR. He wouldn’t need a good finishing kick to simply get into a Hall of Fame discussion; it would give him a worthy Hall of Fame case just on his Major League merits. There are several other Cuban and Japanese players that could make similar arguments if given the chance. It will be interesting to see if Abreu’s Cuban career is considered when he eventually comes up for Hall of Fame consideration. It is probably more likely that he will be a “one & done” candidate, falling off future ballots after not receiving the required five percent to stay on until his election or the 10 year limit runs out.

* Baseball Reference’s Wins Above Replacement formula.

3. Dusty Baker & Clubhouse Culture

The year 2022 was probably the apex of Dusty Baker’s career. After 25 years of managing Major League Baseball teams, Baker finally won a World Series Championship. His passport to the Baseball Hall of Fame has been stamped. Many anecdotes have been told about his managerial style. All these stories seem to agree that the secret to Baker’s success was the “clubhouse culture” that he created. His men just loved playing for him. Perhaps the best thing about this was that it was unquantifiable. In the sport where everything gets measured, Baker’s strength as a manager was virtually abstract. The annual “Bill James Handbook” always contains various measurements of managerial tendencies such as: their number of line-up changes, use of player platoons, quick or slow hooks removing starting pitchers, use of relievers, number of intentional walks given, preference for left-right or right-left batter/pitcher match-ups, partiality for either rookies or veterans, and even a bias for either speed or power. However, baseball analyst/historian Bill James himself has admitted that the tools used to rate managers are inadequate. How do you measure what is obviously a manager’s greatest strength or weakness: the ability to foster a clubhouse culture that lets the players win? Back in 1997, James wrote an entire book just about baseball managers. In that book, he told the story of Hall of Fame manager Joe McCarthy and Hall of Famer Hack Wilson. Wilson originally came up to the Major Leagues in 1923 with the New York Giants. But he did not thrive under the dictatorial Giant manager John McGraw. Traded to the Chicago Cubs, Wilson played for McCarthy from 1926 to 1930. For McCarthy, Wilson had great year after great year, culminating in his monstrous 1930 season (56 HR, 191 RB1, .356 BA). Joe McCarthy was then replaced as Cubs manager by Rogers Hornsby, a man with no tact at all. Hack Wilson’s career fell apart and he was out of the Major Leagues by 1934.

James hypothesized that McCarthy had created the “clubhouse culture” that allowed the free-spirited alcohol-loving Wilson to thrive. In other words, he maximized the value of Wilson to his team. Of course, no baseball manager can perfectly maximize a complete roster of baseball players (traditionally 25 men but currently 26). However, a great manager needs to ensure that his best players are able to focus on winning.* There is some actual proof that Dusty Baker may be good at this. From 1992 to 1996, second baseman Jeff Kent played for various teams, primarily the New York Mets. For the Mets, he played for manager Dallas Green, a dictatorial man with no tact. Defensively challenged, Kent put extreme pressure on himself to perform well. The teams and managers whom he performed for openly doubted his talent. In 1997, Kent was traded to the San Francisco Giants, managed since 1993 by Dusty Baker. Baker simply told Jeff Kent to relax, that he believed in him. In 1997, Kent had a very good season with 29 HRs and 121 RBIs. But he hit for just a .250 BA. Baker continued to build Kent up, make him feel secure. From 1998 until Baker was fired by the Giants in 2002, Jeff Kent was a monster, including seasons of 31-128-.297 in 1998, 33-125-.334 in 2000 winning the league MVP, and 37-108-.313 in 2002. Jeff Kent had basically all his best years playing for Dusty Baker. Unlike Hack Wilson, Kent did not fade quickly after his favorite manager left the club in 2002. He was still good from 2003 to 2008 when he retired at age 40. The Baseball Writers Association of America [BBWAA], who vote players into the Hall of Fame, recently dropped Kent from the ballot after he reached the ten year limit for. The argument for electing Kent raged on for that entire time. If he had played his entire career for Dusty Baker, it is likely that there would have been no argument at all. Jeff Kent would have sailed into the Baseball Hall of Fame without a glitch.

*Hall of Fame Baseball Manager Casey Stengel famously said that: The secret of successful managing is to keep the five guys who hate you away from the four guys who haven’t made up their minds.

Negro League Demographics: Post #1 Big Bill Smith [Part 1]

The light of other days is faded, and all their glories past. Alfred Bunn

March 27, 2023

The field of Negro League Demographics may be the “final frontier” of Major League Biographical Research.* The Society for American Baseball Research [SABR], and its Biographical Research Committee in particular, have worked diligently to fill in every nook and cranny of Major League Demographics. By the end of the 2022 season, 20603 men had appeared in the traditional (non-Negro League) Major Leagues. Of these men, 37 players are missing their 1st name. Just 152 players (of those presumed deceased) are missing info about where and when they died. Only 474 players are missing birth information. And virtually all of these players with missing biographical data played very briefly in the Major Leagues. Many years ago, when I first became a Baseball fan, great chunks of this data was missing. I remember well the search for the remains of Benjamin Rippay (aka Charlie Jones), the very first National League triple crown winner (in 1879). His death data was eventually found, hiding in plain site. Basic information on all sorts of important and noteworthy players was just absent. Now, diligent SABR members are hunting down the marginal guys. With their great work seemingly almost completely done, Major League Baseball [MLB] itself decided to throw these SABR researchers a curveball. On December 16th of 2020, MLB announced that, henceforth, the teams of seven Negro Leagues, from 1920 to 1948, would be considered Major League clubs. On the one hand, this was an honor totally overdue. On the other hand, this overdue inclusion was a logistical nightmare, especially demographically.

*Apologies for the offhand Star Trek reference, I couldn’t help myself. I would hardly be considered a Trekkie, but it fit perfectly.

The Conundrum of Negro League Demographics

From the National and Union Associations to the Federal League right up to the present, there is a box score for every game ever played in the traditional Major Leagues. This is not true for the Negro Leagues. There will always be missing box scores for games in the newly seven Major Negro Leagues. This means that there are Major League/Negro League players from these circuits who will always be unknown. The worst teams in the historic Major Leagues (other than perhaps the Union Association) were still of Major League caliber (better than all but the best Minor and Independent baseball teams of their times). However, there were lots of Negro teams, not included in the seven newly minted Major Negro Leagues, that were of much better quality than the worst teams in the new Major Negro Leagues (especially the now Major 1932 Negro Southern League). The great Negro teams that played before 1920 are simply forgotten despite the fact that many of these clubs would simply wipe the floor with the worst teams (and some of the best too) from the now Major Negro Leagues. In addition to all this, Negro league player demographics are geometrically much more difficult than the player demographics of the classic Major Leagues. Primary sources, such as newspapers, are seriously lacking. A classic Major League club was covered by multiple daily major newspapers. A Negro League team usually had one weekly African-American newspaper that covered it (with just passing references in the daily white papers). There is a very good chance that death data for Dave Brown (the great African-American pitcher who went on the lamb from murder charges) will never ever be found. This would not be true of a white classic Major League murder suspect. Such a player would never have escaped the clutches of his crime. It would have followed him through the press until his conviction or absolution.

Praising the Seamheads Negro League Database

There is an old lawyer joke that goes: “What do you call 1000 dead lawyers on the bottom of the Ocean? [Answer: “A good start.”] In the last ten years, the website Seamheads has developed a Negro Leagues database that was all but inconceivable when Robert Peterson’s book “Only The Ball Was White” revived interest in the Negro Leagues, way back in the 1970s. Seamheads has made a lot more than just a good start on missing Negro League Demographics. But there is still a lot of missing information for important and noteworthy Negro League players. For my post today, I will be discussing just such a player. His name was William Smith, but he was much more commonly known during his playing career as “Big Bill.” Anyone who has done demographic research will probably flinch at the very thought of tracking down someone named William Smith. Other than perhaps John Jones or Bob Brown, there may be no worse name to try to research without any clue where to start. Fortunately, there are clues for Big Bill Smith. For one thing, the Baseball Hall of Fame actually has a scrapbook evidently compiled by Big Bill himself.* In the scrapbook, there are lots of clues, including a couple of short newspaper biographies of Bill Smith. In these bios, it is stated that Bill Smith was born in Nashville, Tennessee. The Hall of Fame even has demographic information for a William Smith, born in 1869 at Tennessee, and also died there in 1939, who they believe is the right man. The Seamheads database, perhaps relying on the Hall of Fame file, lists Bill Smith as being born in 1869 at Nashville too. Strangely enough, despite the fact that the Hall of Fame has data on the wrong William Smith, the info is actually correct. “Big Bill” Smith was born in 1869 at Nashville, Tennessee. But he died in 1940 at Indianapolis, Indiana.

*Many thanks to Claudette Scrafford of the Baseball Hall of Fame for, long ago, making me a copy of the Big Bill Smith scrapbook.

The Obituaries of Big Bill Smith

Just like old Benjamin Rippay (aka Charlie Jones), William “Big Bill” Smith was hiding in plain site all along. The Pittsburgh Courier, a national weekly African American newspaper is one of the primary (along with the Chicago Defender) newspapers for Negro League research. In the Saturday, October 19th, 1940 edition of the Pittsburgh Courier, the newspaper published the following obit for Big Bill Smith:

Ex-Ball Player Dies. Indianapolis, Ind., Oct. 17 – William Turner Smith, known in the baseball world as “Big Smithy,” died last Thursday at his home, 422 W. 26th street. Mr. Smith was 69 years old. A native of Nashville, Tenn., Mr. Smith was a graduate of Fisk University. He entered professional baseball in 1893 as a catcher. In 1905 he organized the Brooklyn Royal Giants, the New York Black Sox in 1910, and the Mohawk Giants in 1914.

A nice simple and concise obituary. William “Big Bill” Smith died on October 10, 1940, at Indianapolis, Indiana. Of course, Indianapolis had its own weekly African American newspaper, the Indianapolis Recorder. The Recorder had a slightly more substantial obituary:

Wm. T. Smith, Wagon Wheel Operator, Dies. William Turner Smith, ex-baseball player and manager of national fame, and operator of the well-known local Hotel Men’s club or the “Wagon Wheel,” 561 West Twenty-sixth street, died here Thursday, October 10th, at 7:45a.m., at his home, 422 West Twenty-sixth street. “Smitty,” as he was locally known, had been ill since June of this year. He was sixty-seven years of age. A native of Nashville, Tenn., he began his career at sixteen when he was a heavy hitter for a Fisk university teams [sic]. In 1905, “Big Bill,” as he was called in baseball circles, organized the Brooklyn Royal Giants. He later became nationally known as a catcher and batter, and played with leading colored teams of the day including the Cuban Giants, Cuban X Giants, Schenectady Colored Baseball club and the Black Sox of St. Louis. Perhaps his greatest claim to baseball fame lay in his managerial work with the New York Black Sox Baseball association. Mr. Smith came to Indianapolis twenty-three years ago when he began a career as a painting contractor. Coming from a family of painters who were well-known in southern areas, Mr. Smith worked here in that field for about ten years. Failing eye-sight forced him out of the business. Approximately four years ago, he became the proprietor of the Hotel Men’s club or the “Wagon Wheel,” which has been greatly patronized by local citizens. An honorary member of the Elks lodge and Coalese club, Mr. Smith was affiliated with the Christian Science services for him were held Saturday, October 12, at 2 p.m.. at the residence. Surviving Mr. Smith are a widow, Mrs. Marguerite Smith; a daughter, Miss Thelma Smith of New York City; a brother, John Smith of Cleveland, O.; an aunt, Mrs. Alice Rogan; two nieces and five nephews. The Herbert C. Willis mortuary was in charge. Burial was in Crown Hill cemetery.

Complete Demographic Information for Big Bill Smith

Demographics always reminds me of the children’s game Jenga. In this game, you build a tower with wooden blocks. The goal is to create a stable structure that will not collapse if blocks are removed. In demographics, a new piece of data often contradicts another and then all your theories collapse like a house of cards. But finding absolute proof of birth or death? That is like building a Jenga tower with a steel reinforced frame. With William “Big Bill” Smith’s date and place of death confirmed, the next step is to order his death certificate to see if more information can be gleaned. Bill Smith’s death certificate lists his date of birth as January 30, 1873 and place of birth as Tennessee. His parents’ names are listed as Isaiah Smith and Parthena Thompson. His cause of death is listed as cancer. Most interestingly, Bill Smith’s race is listed as “white.” two pieces of this information on this death certificate are incorrect (or perhaps, at least, partially true). First, “Big Bill” Smith was bi-racial. In census after census, he is listed as a “Mulatto,” the term of that time for bi-racial. Secondly, a little census research quickly reveals that William Smith was certainly born in 1869, not 1873. This completes the basic demographic research into our subject: William Turner Smith (aka “Big Bill” or alternatively just “Big” and also “Big Smitty” or “Big Smithy” occasionally; also, in his younger days, “Serk” and, at one time, “Home Run”); Born January 30, 1869, at Nashville, Tennessee; Died October 10, 1940, at Indianapolis, Indiana [Age 71 at time of death].

Future Posts

Of course, this demographic information is simply the skeleton for the tall tale of “Big Bill” Smith. In future posts, I will try to flesh his story out by answering such questions as: 1) How long and for whom did Bill Smith play Baseball; 2) How good a Baseball Player was Bill Smith; and even 3) Actually how big was Bill Smith? If you have never heard of “Big Bill” Smith, the answers to some of these questions may genuinely surprise you. Bill Smith was a very noteworthy player indeed.

The 2023 BBWAA Hall of Fame Election Results: Part 1 [Public Versus Anonymous Votes]

It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future. Yogi Berra [although it is claimed that many of his quotes were actually made up by sportswriters]

February 11th, 2023

A Correct but Faulty Prediction

On January 24th of 2023, the Hall of Fame elected Scott Rolen to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Two weeks previously, on January 11th, this Blog stated that the Baseball Hall of Fame Tracker (compiled by Ryan Thibodaux) had reduced this election to the simple question of: Will Scott Rolen be elected?* As predictions go, this seems to have been pretty solid. But real life is never quite that clean. When this prediction was made, it was also asserted that Rolen was probably the only candidate with any chance of being elected. At that time, the Hall of Fame Tracker had collected 154 ballots. Scott Rolen had been named on 125 of them. Todd Helton, in second place, had been named on 123. On second thought, any predictions based on that sample should have been taken with a boulder-sized grain of salt. Rolen and Helton were essentially tied. Between January 11th and January 24th, Rolen and Helton eventually swapped places. On January 23rd, Helton led Rolen 149 to 147 votes with 186 ballots counted [177 public & 9 unverified ballots]. When the actual results were released the very next day, Rolen had regained the lead on the HOF Tracker with 167 votes to 163 for Helton [207 ballots total]. But, in the actual results, Rolen received 297 votes and Helton collected just 281 [of 389 total]. Scott Rolen’s four vote lead on the Tracker had ballooned to 16 votes in the actual election. He was the only player elected. The prediction was only true because Rolen got more of the anonymous votes, which the HOF Tracker cannot count, than Helton. In other words, it was correct but faulty. Is there anything to be learned from the differences between the 207 public ballots that were counted before the election by the HOF Tracker and the 182 anonymous ballots? This post will take a look at these differences & then make an attempt to explaining them. In 2 future posts, some suggestions will be made to a) change the BBWAA HOF voting process and b) make some needed adjustments to the entire Baseball Hall of Fame election process itself.

*See Post #24

The Public versus the Anonymous Hall of Fame Voters

There were a few underlying assumptions behind the January 11th prediction. One was that the Baseball Hall of Fame [HOF] Tracker compiles the ballots of the more liberal wing of the Baseball Writers Association of America [BBWAA]. In 2023, the HOF Tracker collected 207 of the eventual 389 ballots cast before the election (194 attributed & 13 unverified).* Basically, the Tracker compiled the votes of slightly more than half of all the eligible BBWAA voters before the election. It was presumed that writers who release their ballots to the public are more liberal than the writers who kept their votes anonymous (even if it is just until the election is actually over). But is this really true? Allowing public scrutiny does not necessarily equate to being a more liberal person. Another assumption made by the prior post was that the published voters were more interested in modern statistical analysis (Wins Above Replacement, aka WAR, etc); while the anonymous voters would be more interested in traditional but discredited stats such as games won for pitchers and runs batted in [RBIs] for batters. But is this also true? Yet another assumption made by the prior post was that anonymous voters believe in the Small Hall of Fame argument. This argument states that the Baseball Hall of Fame honor should be reserved only for the very greatest players: Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, Walter Johnson, Satchel Paige, etc. Scott Rolen type players need not apply. Behind this assumption is an actual fact. In previous elections, BBWAA HOF election candidates have had their vote percentages diminish appreciably as the anonymous votes are counted. But is this Small HOF argument true? Maybe the anonymous voters are just lazy and cast less votes. Finally, there was also the assumption being made that the published voters were less judgmental than their anonymous colleagues (i.e. the public voters would be more likely to vote for a candidate with moral lapses on their resumes than the anonymous voters). This would also fit their characterization as “Liberals.” But are any of these assumptions actually true?

*For the 2023 election, the Baseball Hall of Fame mailed out 405 total ballots. They received back 389 before the January 24th, 2023, deadline.

The Actual Evidence

Interestingly, the results of the 2023 election, split into the 207 public ballots and the 182 anonymous ballots (as of January 24th, 2023), can be analyzed for evidence to support or dispute these assumptions. In the recent election, there were 28 players on the ballot. But 12 of these players, all on the ballot for the 1st time, received either one or no votes. This was their one and only chance to be elected by the BBWAA. For the sake of this discussion, they are no longer relevant. However, the vote totals, published and unpublished, of the other 16 men can be reviewed. Did these 16 players receive the majority of their support from public voters (liberals who believe in modern statistics, an inclusive HOF, and will forgive moral lapses) or from the anonymous voters (conservatives who believe in traditional statistics, a limited HOF, and will not forgive scandal)? One thing is undisputed. In 2023, the anonymous voters, as usual in the previous elections counted by the Baseball HOF Tracker, voted far less than the public voters. To be precise, the 16 candidates under discussion here lost an average of 12.56% from their HOF Tracker vote percentage once all the anonymous ballots were counted.* In other words, it could be argued that if a player fades by less than 12.56%, they may have more support from the anonymous voters than the public ones. Or perhaps not. In any event, the breakdowns between the public and the anonymous votes for all 16 of the players (who lived to possibly be elected by the BBWAA another day) are listed below in order of their vote totals. Also, there is a brief discussion of each player’s Hall of Fame results, trends, and eventual chance to be elected (except for Scott Rolen, who is now in forever).

*16 total players; 1285 public votes on 2070 ballot spaces [10×207); and 988 anonymous votes on 1820 ballot spaces (10×182).

The 2023 Ballot Survivors

1) Scott Rolen: got 297 of the 389 total votes cast [76.3%] in the Baseball Hall of Fame 2023 election; receiving 167 of the 207 total public votes counted by the Tracker before the election [80.7%]; and then getting 130 of 182 Residual votes uncounted by the Tracker [71.4%]. The threshold for election to the Hall was 292 votes [75%]. Scott Rolen was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame by four votes. This was his 6th year on the BBWAA ballot (which will very happily be his last). His candidacy was supported more by modern statistical analysis (70.1 WAR with outstanding fielding metrics) than by traditional statistics. But Rolen’s traditional stats were not completely lacking either. By every account, Scott Rolen is a good and upstanding citizen so there were no moral lapses to impede his candidacy. His vote percentage did recede when the anonymous ballots came in, but not too badly (just 9.3% rather than the 2023 average of 12.6%). The evidence seems to support the argument that Rolen lost some of the anonymous voters simply because they did not find him qualified [i.e the “Small Hall” voters]. But that should have been their only problem with him. That said, it should be noted that, if the public voters had voted at the same percentages that the anonymous ones did, Scott Rolen would still be waiting outside the Baseball Hall of Fame cathedral in 2023 [Path 2018-2023: 1-10.2%; 2-17.2%; 3-35.3%; 4-52.9%; 5-63.2%; 6-76.3% Elected].

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Baseball_Hall_of_Fame_balloting

[Path 201x-2023: 1-%; 2-%; 3-%; 4-%; 5-%; 6-%; 7-%; 8-%; 9-%; 10-%].

2) Todd Helton: 281/389 [72.2%]; Tracker 163/207 [78.7%]; Residual 118/182 [64.8%]; 5th year. On the surface, Todd Helton has better traditional statistics than Scott Rolen [G-HR-RBI-BA-SA]. However, Helton lost 13.9% of his votes when the anonymous ballots were counted. Rolen lost just 9.3%. But Helton has warts on his resume that Rolen does not [an unconfirmed steroid rumor and several post career DUIs]. This would seem to confirm the theory that the anonymous voters are more judgmental. Of course, these anonymous voters could also have been devaluing Helton’s career statistics because he played in the offensive pinball park named Coors Field. But that would have been quite modern of them. In any event, Helton is still ahead of Rolen on a year to year basis [in his 5th year, Helton reached 72.2% against Rolen’s 63.2%]. It will be a complete shock if Todd Helton is not elected next year after just missing by a mere eleven votes in 2023 [Path 2019-2023: 1-16.5%; 2-29.2%; 3-44.9%; 4-52.0%; 5-72.2%].

3) Billy Wagner: 265/389 [68.1%]; Tracker 150/207 [72.5%]; Residual 115/182 [63.2%]; 8th year. The HOF support for Billy Wagner actually goes against the conventional wisdom. Modern statistical analysis does not support Wagner’s eventual election at all.* It seems like most of his support should come from the traditional-statistics-loving anonymous voters (“look at all the saves”). But the public voters put Wagner on 9.3% more ballots than the anonymous ones. Wagner had a better than normal fade. This can perhaps be explained away by the “Reliever Conundrum.” For some reason, all BBWAA voters have been bound and determined to elect the best ace relievers to the Baseball Hall of Fame [but no one pushes to elect Manny Mota, arguably the best pinch hitter of all-time]. Wagner has only two years left for the BBWAA to elect him; but he surely has a better than 50-50 chance that he gets honored in either 2024 or 2025 (especially after he jumped 17% this year to 68%). If he does fall off the BBWAA ballot, Wagner will still almost surely eventually be elected. The HOF clean-up Committees do not let players who get over 50% of the BBWAA vote linger in oblivion. It will just take a bit longer. It would be interesting to know how badly Wagner’s brutal post-season record has hurt his candidacy. Billy Wagner was lights out during the regular season but consistently burned his team to the ground whenever the playoffs rolled around. It actually doesn’t seem to have hurt his candidacy at all [Path 2016-2023: 1-10.5%; 2-10.2%; 3-11.1%; 4-16.7%; 5-31.7%; 6-46.7%; 7-51.0%; 8-68.1%].

*Serious Hall of Fame support for non-Ace Relievers players starts at about 50 career Wins Above Replacement [WAR]. Billy Wagner, like most relievers, is no where in that vicinity. He had just 27.7 career WAR.

4) Andruw Jones: 226/389 [58.1%]; Tracker 138/207 [66.7%]; Residual 88/182 [48.4%]; 6th year. The fall off [18.3%] from public voters to anonymous voters for Andruw Jones is right in line with the argument that public voters support modern statistics over traditional (he has great fielding metrics but his career batting average was just .254) and are less judgmental (a strip club scandal in his 20s and getting so out of shape in his 30s that his career effectively ended at the age of 30). There is probably a better than 50-50 chance that Jones is elected by the BBWAA before his eligibility runs out. He has four more years to get that last 17% he needs. But, if he doesn’t make it through the BBWAA, Jones will probably eventually get in through some HOF clean-up Committee just like Billy Wagner. However, Jones wait might be considerably longer. All HOF Committees seem to be conservative and judgmental. That 18.3 percent fade seems to indicate that there will be a rougher road for him if his election gets left up to some future HOF Committee [Path 2018-2023: 1-7.3%; 2-7.5%; 3-19.4%; 4-33.9%; 5-41.4%; 6-58.1%].

5) Gary Sheffield: 214/389 [55.0%]; Tracker 130/207 [62.8%]; Residual 84/182 [46.2%]; 9th year. In this Blog’s previous post, it was asserted that Sheffield would probably eventually get into the Hall of Fame. That may have been a bit pre-mature. Sheffield had a steep 16.6 percent drop-off from the public voters to the anonymous ones. Unlike Helton, Sheffield’s involvement in the steroid scandals was more than just a rumor. Sheffield’s claim that he did not know that he was applying a steroid cream to his knees is somewhat sketchy. On the other hand, in this country, you are presumably innocent until proven guilty (though modern social media has stood this formula on its head), and there has been no other damning evidence. With only one year of eligibility remaining, Gary Sheffield has a slim chance of being elected by the BBWAA.* And when you say slim, it is totally anorexic. Sheffield needs 20% more votes for his last year. In his first nine years, his best yearly percentage increase was just 16.9%. It looks pretty grim actually. After that he will be in front of some future HOF clean-up Committee that may just dismiss him outright like Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens were this year. There is a very good chance that he slips into Baseball Hall of Fame purgatory after the 2024 BBWAA HOF election ends [Path 2015-2023: 1-11.7%; 2-11.6%; 3-13.3%; 4-11.1%; 5-13.6%; 6-30.5%; 7-40.6%; 8-40.6%; 9-55.0%].

*Has there ever been a BBWAA path as strange as Sheffield’s track? 5 straight elections of basically absolutely no movement, two big jumps, then another year of exactly the same percentage, followed by another big jump. Jeff Kent’s weird path may be close.

6t) Carlos Beltran: 181/389 [46.5%]; Tracker 111/207 [53.6%]; Residual 70/182 [38.5%]; 1st year. The election of Beltran to the Baseball Hall of Fame by the BBWAA is inevitable. It is just a question of how long it will take. In this, his first year, the anonymous (presumably more judgmental) voters docked him just 15.1% compared to the public voters. Hardly much more than the usual 12.6% fadeaway. This is presumably an indication (and not a really loud one) that the more conservative voters are holding Beltan accountable for his role in the Houston Astros 2017-2018 sign stealing scandal. But stealing signs is a crime as old as the game of baseball itself. This off-season, the rehabilitation of Beltran continued with his hiring by the New York Mets (the team that fired him when the scandal erupted). Has any player ever gotten 46.5% of the vote by the BBWAA in their 1st year and then never made it into the Hall of Fame? Beltran could be elected next year. However, it seems more likely that Beltran gets to the verge and then is elected in 2025 [Path 2023: 1-46.5%].

6t) Jeff Kent: 181/389 [46.5%]; Tracker 107/207 [51.7%]; Residual 74/182 [40.7%]; 10th and final year. The anonymous BBWAA voters cast their ballots for Jeff Kent at a rate 11.0% under the public BBWAA voters. This is probably completely due to the Small Hall convictions of the anonymous voters. In any event, Kent’s election is now out of the BBWAA hands. He will soon appear in front of a HOF Veteran’s Committee. His chances of being elected by a Hall of Fame by one of these Committees (eventually) is probably assured. Jeff Kent (all-time leader in Home Runs by a second baseman) seems exactly the type of player one of these Fred McGriff (almost 500 home runs) and Harold Baines (almost 3000 hits) loving Baseball Hall of Fame sub-committees can really get behind [End of Path 2014-2023: 1-15.2%; 2-14.0%; 3-16.6%; 4-16.7%; 5-14.5%; 6-18.1%; 7-27.5%; 8-32.4%; 9-32.7%; 10-46.5%].

8) Alex Rodriguez: 139/389 [35.7%]; Tracker 80/207 [38.6%]; Residual 59/182 [32.4%]; 2nd year. Rodriguez has probably no chance of ever getting into the Hall of Fame through a BBWAA vote [and probably probably should not even be included in that sentence]. His multitude of proven beyond a doubt steroid scandals (and allegations of even more) plus his extensive attempts to cover up his crimes will always be an anchor dragging his candidacy down into the depths. Like Bobby Bonds & Roger Clemens before him, the only question of A-Rod’s candidacy is whether he will get close to the 75% threshold required for election. It will be interesting to see if Rodriguez can surpass either Bonds or Clemens final (and highest) vote totals [66.0% and 65.2% respectively]. If he does, it will be a disgrace. His sins are far greater than anything that they ever did. Unlike them, A-Rod actually failed mandated steroid tests, and then he lied and scammed to cover up his sins. Strangely, A-Rod lost only 6.2% of his vote in 2023 when the anonymous votes were counted. This is probably because the Small Hall argument does not apply to him at all. Rodriguez was (absent the proven allegations of steroids) an inner-circle small Hall of Famer already. In other words, his slight decrease must all be due to the anonymous voters being judgmental [Path 2012-2023: 1-34.3%; 2-35.7%].

9) Manny Ramirez: 129/389 [33.2%]; Tracker 76/207 [36.7%]; Residual 53/182 [29.1%]; 7th year. In many ways, the results of the 2023 BBWAA Hall of Fame for Ramirez simply duplicated the outcome of the election for Alex Rodriguez. The percentage of anonymous voters casting their ballots for Ramirez against the percentage by the public voters went down by just 7.6% (compared to the 6.2% lost by Rodrigues). Assuming that all the voters (anonymous and public) also considered Ramirez an inner-circle Hall of Famer, these percentages must just represent the basic debit for coming to the election with a serious stain on your reputation. In other words, the “Small Hall Argument” does not even apply. That being said, there is a huge difference in value between these two players. Baseball players need to play defense too. A-Rod’s good to great defense at shortstop and third base was much more valuable than Ramirez’s “wandering-in-the-desert” outfield play. In fact, modern statistical analysis basically values Rodriguez as almost twice the player that Ramirez used to be. Of course, this is reflected by the fact that Rodriguez, only in his second year, is ahead of Ramirez, who is in his 7th. Regardless of this, both players are on a rocket ride to nowhere. They will eventually fall totally off the BBWAA ballot and into Baseball Hall of Fame Veterans-type Committee oblivion. Just three more until Ramirez is cast into the outer darkness [Path 2017-2023: 1-23.8%; 2-22.0%; 3-22.8%; 4-28.2%; 5-28.2%; 6-28.9%; 7-33.2%].

10) Omar Vizquel: 76/389 [19.5%]; Tracker 17/207 [8.2%]; Residual 59/182 [32.4%]; 6th year. The difference in the public and the anonymous results for Vizquel is pretty startling. Rather than fading by the usual 10 percent (or so) between the known and the unknown, Vizquel surged by 24.2%. Some of the anonymous surge is certainly because public voters are more likely to believe that Vizquel is not statistically worthy. Traditional voters, who probably make up most of the Vizquel supporters, are more likely anonymous. But this is not really a baseball result but a cultural one. Currently, there is a large and quite vociferous cultural movement [the so-called Me Too Movement] that believes that any claim against a man for being abusive should be treated as true until disproved [the complete opposite of: innocent until proven guilty]. So there is a pressure on anyone who posts their ballot publicly that does not exist at all for the anonymous voter. Why take abuse when you don’t have to, especially for a candidate right on the line like Vizquel? All this being said, the evidence that Vizquel physically abused his now former wife and also sexually harassed a bat bay is pretty damning. There is a good argument that it would be much more prudent to wait and see if the allegations are proven or not (or perhaps even multiply). In the previous post, it was stated that Vizquel looked like he might fall below the 5% threshold for remaining on the 2024 ballot. That may have been the worst prediction in that post. The anonymous surge took him safely out of the danger zone. But his election by the BBWAA is still doomed. Like the steroid guys, Vizquel has been left to take up space on the ballot and twist in the wind until his ten years of eligibility are up [four years to go]; and then he will fall into Veterans Committee oblivion. However, if this 2023 Hall of Fame election showed anything, it demonstrated that there is obviously a anonymous core of support for Vizquel well north of the five percent needed to keep him on the ballot until his 10 years are finally up. [Path 2018-2023: 1-37.0%, 2-42.5%, 3-52.6%, 4-49.1%, 5-23.9%, 6-19.5%.]

11) Andy Pettitte: 66/389 [17.0%]; Tracker 35/207 [16.9%], Residual 31/182 [17.0%]; 5th year. The candidacy of Andy Pettitte is a puzzle. The support for Pettitte is equally distributed between the public and anonymous voters. But, since there was no fade, it could be argued that the more progressive public voters are less committed to Pettitte than the more conservative anonymous voters. His admission that he used Human Growth Hormone [HGH] is pretty obviously being held against him almost equally. Like Mark McGwire, Pettitte has the arguments of transparency and accountability going for him. He did not deny or lie about taking HGH. He was doing it for what would be, in the real world, a noble purpose. He took HGH to help recover from injury so that he could: 1) help his team and 2) earn the salary that he was being paid. But this doesn’t seem to be helping him at all. Neither does being a Yankee and having a pretty stellar post-season career. Pettitte seems to have the mix of qualifications that would appeal to both progressive and conservative voters. His lack of support is really a mystery. Pettitte should, at the very least, have the same support as Rodriguez and Ramirez, both know steroid users (and, in Arod’s case, a history of denial and lying and and other nefarious actions that probably should outright disqualify him). In 2023, Pettitte did finish with his highest percentage yet. However, this is may just be due to spots opening up on BBWAA ballots because of all the players who dropped off the ballot after the 2022 election. The theory would be that these dropouts (Pettitte friend & source of pain Roger Clemens and others) leaving freed up their spots for a borderline candidate like Pettitte [Path: 1-9.9%, 2-11.3%, 3-13.7%, 4-10.7%, 5-17.0%]

12) Bobby Abreu: 60/389 [15.4%]; Tracker 38/207 [18.4%]; Residual 22/182 [12.1%]; 4th year. Public voters gave Bobby Abreu 6.3% more love than their anonymous counterparts. Under the theory that public voters believe more strongly in modern statistical analysis than their anonymous peers, this makes complete sense. Abreu is possibly the quintessential modern statistical player. He was never the best player in the league (or probably on his team). Abreu didn’t lead the League in any of the flashy categories [HR-RBI-BA etc]. He did do the underrated things, including drawing an absolute ton of walks. If there ever was a star baseball player who faded into the scenery to the extent that Bobby Abreu did, the search party has not located him yet. Despite all this, he forged a respectable Hall of Fame claim through modern measurements. It is said that: the furrther into the past the memory of a player’s career goes, the more the statistics matter. If that is true, Abreu’s vote totals should continue to increase. But, if the pace doesn’t pick up soon, Abreu will simply run out of time for his election (at least by the BBWAA). The most likely outcome seems to be that his vote total will continue to increase (perhaps into 30-40 percent land). But eventually Abreu will be lost in the Baseball HOF Committee forest [Path 2020-2023: 1-5.5%; 2-8.7%; 3-8.6%; 4-15.4%].

13) Jimmy Rollins: 50/389 [12.9%]; Tracker 25/207 [12.1%]; Residual 25/182 [13.7%]; 2nd year. Anonymous voters favored Rollins by 1.6% over their more public brethren. By modern statistical analysis, Rollins is just a borderline Hall of Fame candidate. However, to a voter relying more on traditional methods, Jimmy Rollins looks quite a bit better than that. He had a long career and he accumulated good counting stats. His actual offensive prowess was reduced by his reluctance to accept a base on balls. Rollins played shortstop well but was not among the very top fielders at his position. Rollins had a very good and valuable peak. He won the MVP award in 2007 when he knocked out 38 doubles, 20 triples, and 30 home runs while playing all 162 games. But, aside from his 2004-2008 peak, he was often just an average player. When he won his MVP award, Wins Above Replacement actually rated him as the ninth best player in the League. Rollins led his league four times in triples, once in runs scored, and once in stolen bases. He was very durable. He played on various contending teams and one World Series winner. All in all, his career ended in the gray area between the actual Hall of Fame and the Hall of almost Famous enough players. Interestingly, Rollins has one thing in common with the other three guys on the bottom of the 2023 election results (players 13 through 16). They all had more support from the anonymous voters than the public voters. Whether he will continue to languish down near the bottom, fall off the ballot entirely, or begin to rise up is unknown. If pressed for a prediction, this blog believes he will rise but never get over 50 percent [Path 2022-2023: 1-9.4%; 2-12.9%].

14t) Mark Buehrle: 42/389 [10.8%]; Tracker 21/207 [10.1%]; Residual 21/182 [11.5%]; 3rd year. Like the rest of the players on the bottom of the list, Mark Buehrle received more votes from the anonymous voters (by 1.4%). Buehrle rebounded nicely from damn near falling completely off the ballot in 2021. His fall from an initial 11.0% to 5.8% in his second year with a nice rebound to 10.8% this year (it seems to indicate that Buehrle may have been the last man on a multitude of ballots (i.e. listed 10th or 11th). Whatever the reason, it is good to see him survive to possibly be elected another day. In many ways, he is the pitching equivalent of Bobby Abreu. Buehrle was competent and very valuable but he was not flashy at all. He pounded the strike zone and did not beat himself. His early retirement ensured that he had no chance to pile up more statistics and make his Hall of Fame argument stronger. But it should already be strong enough. Like Abreu, Buehrle’s lack of pizzazz is probably going to keep his vote totals from rising very far. It’s a shame [Path 2021-2023: 1-11.0%; 2-5.8%; 3-10.8%].

14t) Francisco Rodriguez: 42/389 [10.8%]; Tracker 20/207 [9.7%]; Residual 22/182 [12.1%]; 1st year. In his first year, Billy Wagner received 10.5% of the vote. His vote totals didn’t even really start to rise up until his fourth year on the ballot [Of course, a bunch of unelected steroid abusers were clogging it up]. Now, eight years later, Wagner is on the verge of being elected [with a 68.1% share]. In his first year, Rodriguez got 10.5% of the vote, doing slightly better than Wagner. Just looking at their traditional statistics as ace relievers, Wagner doesn’t really look all that better than Rodriguez.* And Rodriguez is basically the “Roger Maris” of ace relievers, holding the single season record for saves with 62 in 2008. If Wagner gets elected, the candidacy of Rodriguez will almost surely get a large boost because of their obvious similarities. On the other hand, Wagner was pretty clearly the better pitcher over his career if one analyses his statistics closely (in the regular season). The prediction here is that Francisco Rodriguez has just begun a long and productive run on the BBWAA Baseball Hall of Fame ballots. He will probably either get real close or set himself up for eventual Committee selection for election. Like the rest of the candidates at the bottom of the ballot, Rodriguez got a greater share of the anonymous vote [Path 2023: 1-10.8%].

*Rodriguez: 52-53 W-L, 948 games, 976.0 IP, 1142 SO, 2.86 ERA and 437 saves vs. Wagner: 47-40 W-L, 853 games, 903.0 IP, 1196 SO, 2.31 ERA and 422 saves.

16) Torii Hunter: 27/389 [6.9%]; Tracker 7/207 [3.4%]; Residual 20/182 [11.0%]; 3rd year. Torii Hunter’s candidacy was saved by the 2023 anonymous BBWAA voters to once again grace the ballot next year. If left up to the public BBWAA members, Hunter would have sent packing (their 3.4% was slightly under the 5.0% required to survive). However, the anonymous BBWAA members voted at a rate of 11.0% for Hunter. Only Omar Vizquel, for obvious reasons, had a greater positive differential [24.2%] than Hunter [7.6%] between votes cast by the unknown and the identified. The next largest percentage in favor of the anonymous over the public votes was just 2.4%. So the obvious question is: What do the anonymous voters see in Torii Hunter to make them vote for him at a rate three times greater than the public voters? Using modern statistical analysis, Hunter is a borderline Baseball Hall of Famer. It can be argued that his traditional statistics make a better HOF case for him (his main weakness was that not walking much). Hunter certainly was famous enough and also had the requisite charisma to appeal to the less numerically obsessed. Even though his (probably) most famous play was a failure, Hunter would have to be given credit for the extreme effort.* But, realistically, this large difference in support between anonymous and public voters seems inexplicable. Maybe it is just random. He had only 7 public voters who believed in his candidacy against 20 anonymous ones. But just 27 total votes total is hardly a majority that speaks with great authority. Perhaps current Torii Hunter HOF supporters simply prefer anonymity. Who knows? It will be very interesting to see if this pattern holds from year to year [Path 2021-2023: 1-9.5%; 2-5.3%; 3-6.9%].

*In the 2nd game of the 2013 American League Championship Series, Hunter flipped completely over the low wall separating left field from the bullpen in Fenway Park while chasing a David Ortiz grand slam home run. It was epic.

Closing Observations: The Attendants

So what conclusions (if any) can be drawn from looking at and analyzing the public versus the anonymous votes in the 2023 BBWAA Baseball Hall of Fame election? In general, there seem to be 3 distinct classes of candidates. The class with lowest vote totals could be called the “Attendants.” These players could be said to be in the Hall of Fame “waiting room” (so to speak). Oddly, the one thing that all the Attendant HOF cases currently have in common is that more of the private voters are in favor (percentage-wise, at least) of their candidacies. This is quite strange. All of the other candidates, with one very unique exception, received much more support from public voters rather than anonymous ones. It almost seems like the public voters have not yet actually considered the Attendants. Of the 16 surviving candidates, 5 can be classified as Attendants. In order of their anonymous versus public percentages, they are: 1. Torii Hunter [+7.6%]; 2. Francisco Rodriguez [+2.4%]; 3. Jimmy Rollins [+1.6%]; 4. Mark Buehrle [+1.4%]; and 5. Andy Pettitte [+0.1%]. By total votes in the 2023 BBWAA election, they finished 11th [Pettite] and 13 through 16th of the 16 total candidates. The Attendants seem to be just waiting for their HOF cases to be noticed by the public voters and catch fire. The Attendant with the greatest chance of igniting in 2024 is probably Francisco Rodriguez. It will be interesting to see, if his candidacy rises, whether it is fueled mostly by the public voters beginning to consider him more closely.

Closing Observations: The Exiles

The second class, the 3 players with the the 8th through 10th vote totals in the 2023 BBWAA Hall of Fame election, could be called the “Exiles.” These 3 candidates could be said to be completely outside the HOF Arena. But some of the crowd are throwing them bouquets over the walls. Because they were caught and suspended during their careers for using steroids, Alex Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez are simply marking time on the ballot. Perhaps they will get another chance in some distant future [when steroids have been proven not to enhance performance and carbohydrates shown to make you skinny]. The one fascinating aspect of looking at their public and anonymous votes is that the private voters were actually not much more judgmental than those voters who published (just 6 to 7 percent worse). Since neither player should have been affected by “Small Hall Syndrome” at all, anonymous voters barely held more of a grudge against them than public voters did. It seems like they have a core of support unaffected by known or unknown votes. Not that it will help them any. There is obviously also a core of non-supporters, greater than 25%, which will always block their election. There is also one other guy in the Exiles: Omar Vizquel. But he is a complete unicorn. Supported by just 8.2% of the public voters but a whooping 32.4% of the private voters, there is no one else like him on the ballot. Evidently, Vizquel (like Ramirez and A-Rod) has a core of supporters, no animosity of the anonymous there, that will keep him on the ballot until the clock runs out. But there also seems to be a large group of non-supporters, who do not condone wife beating or autistic people molesting, that will always block him. The Baseball Hall of Fame’s decision to let these 3 candidates twist in the wind for ten years almost seems like a form of added punishment, a type of mental torture.

Closing Observations: The Contenders

The final class of 2023 BBWAA Baseball HOF candidates should be called the “Contenders.” These are the players whose HOF cases are really currently in play by the BBWAA. They are (or they were in the case of Jeff Kent) all making progress every election towards being elected. It could be said that they are in the Arena. The top 7 vote getters in the 2023 BBWAA HOF election were all in the class of Contenders. Each of these players has greater support from the public voters than the anonymous ones [at least 9.3% more support]. This is a complete reversal from the Attendants, the candidates who are on the bottom of the list. This indicates that the public voters are the engine that drives the BBWAA vote. In other words, a BBWAA HOF candidate will rise to the top of the election when the public voters take his HOF case seriously and begin to vote for him. It remains to be seen whether the anonymous voters are swept along in the wake of this phenomenon. It will be very interesting to see if the gap between the public and private voters closes next year for Andruw Jones. If it does, this would almost certainly mean that the private voters are leading the charge with the anonymous voters following along afterwards. If it does not close, this would indicate that the private voters are resisting the choices of the public voters (and not buying into Jones’s marvelous fielding metrics). These 7 Contenders, in order of the smallest percentage difference between their public and their private vote percentages, are: 1t. Scott Rolen [9.3%]; 1t. Billy Wagner [9.3%]; 3. Jeff Kent [11%]; 4. Todd Helton [13.9%]; 5. new to ballot Carlos Beltran [15.1%]; 6. Gary Sheffield [16.6%]; and 7) Andruw Jones [18.3%]. Whether a high difference [Jones/18.3%] or a low difference [Wagner/9.3%] is more advantageous in the next election will (hopefully) be revealed in 2024.

Closing Observations: Next Year and Future Posts

There is one more player among the remaining 16 active HOF candidates who was not discussed above: Bobby Abreu. He finished 12th in the 2023 BBWAA election. Unlike the other bottom of the ballot finishers (#11-16), Abreu did not receive more anonymous votes than public ones. In fact, Abreu had 6.3% more public supporters than private ones. Was this the start of Abreu’s rise in the HOF ballot as the public voters begin to scrutinize his case? There is a lot to like in Abreu’s career. But it is hidden behind a uncontroversial and quiet façade. Have the public voters finally begun to notice that he is actually quite worthy? If this is true, Bobby Abreu has now joined the “Contenders” and his vote total should jump in 2024. It will be something to watch closely in 2024. Of course, everything discussed above is all about the inner workings of the BBWAA HOF election process. But it doesn’t address the larger issues at all. One of these issues [Why is the BBWAA HOF election structured as it is and can it not be improved?] will be analyzed in the next post on the Hall of Fame [Part 2]. After looking at that, the even bigger picture [How can the entire Hall of Fame process be improved?] will be addressed [Part 3].

Addendum #1

One of these things (well two actually) is not like the others: Public Votes- Abreu 38, Pettitte 35, Rollins 25, Buehrle 21, Rodriguez 20, Hunter 7. Private Votes- Pettite 31, Rollins 25, Abreu 22, Rodriguez 22, Buehrle 21, Hunter 20.

2023 Franchise Review [Number 1]: Los Angeles Dodgers (2022 Record: 111-51)

January 25, 2023

One of these things is not like the others. One of these things just doesn’t belong – Jay Asher

Part A: The Unique 2022 Los Angeles Dodgers

A common cognitive puzzle is to pick out what makes something in a series different from all the other selections. For example, which of these 4 states does not belong in this list: Alaska, Connecticut, Minnesota, and Ohio? Two obvious answers would be: 1) Alaska because it is not part of the Continental United States or 2) Connecticut because it does not end with a consonant like the other choices. The 2022 Los Angeles Dodgers, who won 111 games and lost only 51, are an example of this type of mental enigma. The 111 victories are tied for 4th on the all-time list with the 1954 Cleveland Indians [111-43]. Since Major League Baseball began in 1871, only 3 teams have ever won more games in a single season: the 1906 Chicago Cubs [116-36]; the 2001 Seattle Mariners [116-46]; and the 1998 New York Yankees [114-48]. Of course, there are quite a few other teams that have come close to 111 victories in a season: the 1909 Pittsburgh Pirates [110-42]; the 1927 New York Yankees [110-44]; the 1961 New York Yankees [109-53]; the 1969 Baltimore Orioles [109-53]; and the 1970 Baltimore Orioles, the 1975 Cincinnati Reds, the 1986 New York Mets, & the 2018 Boston Red Sox [all with a 108-54 record]. Another five teams have won 107 games [including the 2019 Houston Astros & the 2021 San Francisco Giants], seven more won 106 [including the 2019 & 2021 Los Angles Dodgers plus the 2022 Houston Astros], and yet another 5 finished with 105 triumphs. So what makes this 2022 Los Angeles Dodgers team so different from all the other super-teams that won well in excess of 100 games during a season?

The 2019-2022 Los Angeles Dodgers Super-Team Streak

For one thing, the 2021 Los Angeles Dodgers club went 106-56. In the entire history of the Major Leagues, no team has ever won that many games in one season and then improved in the next. But the 2022 Dodgers did, going 111-51, and improving by 5 whole games. More interestingly, it could be argued that these Dodgers were the only 100+ wins super-team that was just having a regular year. The Dodgers won 106 games in 2019 and 2021. In the Co-vid pandemic shortened 2020 season, the Dodgers went 43-17. At that pace, the 2020 Dodgers would have finished with a 116-46 record. In other words, the Dodgers, from 2019 to 2022, could have finished with 106-116-106-111 wins. The Dodger’s great 2022 season of 111 wins may not have been a peak year at all. It could have been just a fluctuation in the team’s normal talent level. The 2022 Los Angles Dodgers, with just a little luck, could have been an even better team than they were. Trevor Bauer, arguably the team’s best pitcher, was suspended for the entire 2022 season after his predilection for beating up women was revealed. Walker Buehler, probably the team’s 2nd best pitcher, did not pitch up to his 2021 standard. His 2022 season ended on June 10th with a sore elbow that resulted in his 2nd Tommy John surgery. Buehler will not return until 2024. Several regulars had off-years. Max Muncy fell from 36-94-.249-.527 (HR-RBI-BA-SA) to 21-69-.196-.384. Chris Taylor went from 20-73-.254-.438 to 10-43-.221-.373. Justin Turner went from 27-87-.278-.471 to 13-81-.278-.431. No player had a career year. The 2022 Dodgers did add the excellent Freddie Freeman and serviceable closer Craig Kimbrel as free agents. But they also lost Corey Seager and even better closer Kenley Jansen to free agency. On the bright side, center fielder Cody Bellinger went from brutally awful with the bat in 2021 to just terrible in 2022; and Mookie Betts was, once again, Mookie Betts. So why were the 2022 Los Angeles Dodgers five games better than their 2021 team?

Probably the best answer to that question is that a bunch of arbitrary pitchers (Tyler Anderson, Tony Gonsolin, and Andrew Heaney) performed much better than expected. But this was just random luck. The 2022 Dodgers, as a whole, were no better than their 2021 squad. Every other 100+ win super-team was surely peaking (possibly excepting the 1969-1970 Baltimore Orioles). Perhaps the best historical comparison for the 2019-2022 Los Angeles Dodgers super-team run is the 1906-1910 Chicago Cubs.* From 1902-1905, the Cubs steadily improved with 68-69, 82-56, 93-60, and 92-61 records [the Dodgers went 92-70 in 2018 but had won 90 or more games every year from 2013-2018 with a peak 104 win year in 2017]. The Cubs improvement could be traced directly to Frank Selee, their manager [elected to the Hall of Fame in 1999]. Hired in 1902, the no-nonsense Selee led the Cubs until stepping down due to illness during the 1905 season [and passed away in 1909]. Frank Chance, the Cubs star first baseman, replaced Selee as the manager. The 1905 Cubs performed better under their new manager, and then exploded on the National League in 1906 with a 116-36 record. The primary factors behind the increase from 92 victories in 1905 to 116 wins in 1906 were: 1) the maturation of Mordecai “Three Finger” Brown into a superstar; 2) a deep pitching staff that got even better; 3) the acquisition of two stars, Harry Steinfeldt and Jimmy Sheckard; 4) career years from Frank Chance and new acquisition Steinfeldt; and 5) great or good years from everyone else. After their 1906 peak, the Cubs remained an excellent team from 1907-1910: finishing 107-45, 99-55, 104-49, and 104-50. Then the Cubs, from 1911 to 1915, began a slow decline towards mediocrity (92-62, 91-59, 88-65, 78-76, and 73-80). Will the 2023 Los Angeles Dodgers team fall off this same precipice, or will they be able to continue to win 100 or more games per season?

*If they had won 116 games in 2020, the LA Dodgers would hold the record for most victories over four seasons with 439. Without really checking, the second best total would almost surely have been the 1906-1909 Cubs with 426 wins.

Rebuilding on the Fly

For the 2023 season, the Los Angeles Dodgers are attempting to rebuild their club on the fly. They released the repellent Trevor Bauer, despite having him under contract for 2023, while still owing him over 22 million dollars. The club replaced star free agent shortstop Trea Turner with the stopgap Miguel Rojas. They let the struggling Cody Bellinger and aging Justin Turner leave; and then signed the aging and struggling J.D. Martinez. The Dodger’s two lottery ticket winner pitchers, Tyler Anderson and Andrew Heaney, cashed in their winnings by signing elsewhere. Craig Kimbrel and Chris Martin were allowed to wander off. The Dodgers practiced addition by subtraction by letting David Price and Joey Gallo go. In the end, nine 2022 Los Angeles Dodger pitchers and players signed contracts worth over 10+ million dollars annually with other teams for the 2023 season. The Dodgers did resign their long-time ace pitcher Clayton Kershaw and purchased two new lottery ticket pitchers, Noah Syndergaard & Shelby Miller. And the club has stated that it wants to let some rookies have an opportunity to shine. Of course, this will help the 2023 Dodgers get under the luxury tax threshold and reset the penalties to a lower level for when they once again violate it (if they ever do). If all goes right and the team peaks, the 2023 Los Angeles Dodgers could win 100 or more games again: Mookie Betts has an MVP season; Gavin Lux becomes a star player; Max Muncy bombs 40 home runs; Freddie Freeman continues to be himself; Will Smith has a career year; Noah Syndergaard and Shelby Miller punch their own lottery tickets, etc. etc. But the much more likely scenario is that some players have good years and other players do not. It looks the Dodger super-team streak will reset.

2023 Los Angeles Dodgers Prediction: 90-95 wins [not bad for a reset].

Part B: Where is the Big Bopper?

The Los Angeles Dodgers’ franchise has never had a player hit 50 (or more) home runs in a season. Of course, many teams can claim this dubious honor. But the Dodgers are the National league equivalent of the New York Yankees and they used to play in a bandbox named Ebbets Field.* The Yankees have, of course, had multiple players whack 50 plus home runs in a single year. The very first Dodger to hit 40 home runs was Gil Hodges in 1951 (with exactly 40, breaking Babe Herman’s 1930 team record of 35). Hodges was one of three Boys of Summer Brooklyn Dodgers to hit more than 40 in a season before the club moved to Los Angeles [Hodges: 40 in 1951 & 42 in 1954; Duke Snider: 42 in 1953, 40 in 1954, 42 in 1955, 43 in 1956, and then 40 more in 1957; and the great catcher Roy Campanella with 41 in 1953]. Snider’s 43 home run in 1956 remained the club record for a very long time. In 1997, Mike Piazza hit exactly 40 bombs to become the first Dodger to reach that threshold since the 1950s. Then, in 2000, the great but peripatetic slugger Gary Sheffield tied the Dodger record with 43 taters of his own. The very next year, 2001 the long & lanky Shawn Green crushed 49 home runs to break the record. Green followed up with 42 more HRs in 2002 before shoulder issues robbed him of his power. In 2004, Adrian Beltre, having an enormous fluke season, bashed 48 home runs, just falling short of tying Green’s record or even becoming the first Dodger to reach 50 homers. It certainly seemed that the Dodgers would finally get their 50 HR hitter when Cody Bellinger arrived. In 2017, he hit 39 HRs as a 21-year-old rookie. In 2018, he slumped to just 25 Homers. Then Bellinger, now 23-years-old, crushed 47 Home runs, the third most ever hit be a Dodger. Cody seemed sure to eventually break the record. Unfortunately, Bellinger’s career was derailed by shoulder issues, just like Shawn Green (oddly, both men were long & lanky as players). From 2020 to 2022, Bellinger could not even crack 20 home runs in any given year. The Dodgers have finally given up on him, let him go as a free agent. A Dodger hitting 50 HRs in a year will have to wait a while longer.

*Fans of the St. Louis Cardinals may claim, with some justification, to be the National League’s version of the New York Yankees (and their seasonal home run record is, of course, held by Mark McGwire with 70.)

Of course, if history had flowed down a different channel, the Dodgers may have already had a slugger who could have hit 50+ homers for them. From 1958 to 1964, Frank Howard played for the Dodgers. Listed at 6 feet 7 inches tall and 255 pounds, Howard was the Aaron Judge of his time. Playing in the pitching dominated and offensively starved 1960s, Howard played his career at an awful time to hit. The Dodgers, showing no faith in Howard, platooned him from 1960-1964 and then simply traded him away. The Dodger parks did Howard no favors either (from 1958-1964, he hit 55 home HRs versus 68 road HRs). With the Washington Senators, Frank Howard came into his own at last from 1968 to 1970 and hit 44, 48 and 44 home runs before age (he turned 32 in August 1968) and injuries washed his career away. If he had played for the Dodgers in the high-octane 1990s (and not been platooned), Howard would have possibly hit at least 50 home runs six times or more. In context, he was probably the most gifted HR hitter that the Dodgers ever had. Unfortunately, the Dodgers recently had a player under contract who could have given big Frank a tussle for that title. In June of 2016, the Dodgers signed a tall skinny, almost 19-years-old, Cuban refugee named Yordan Alvarez for over 2 million dollars. Two weeks after signing Alvarez, the Dodgers traded him away for a middling Major League relief pitcher to the Houston Astros. Why wasn’t the Astros interest in Alvarez not some sort of indication to the Dodgers that they should have looked twice at Alvarez before trading him? It simply seems very odd. If his knees hold up, it is now very likely that the 6 foot 5 inch and 250 pound Yordan Alvarez will hit 50 or more HRs relatively soon. Meanwhile, the Dodgers still wait patiently for their 50 HR man.

Note: This post was the first of 30 individual team post (in order of 2022 winning percentage) to practice writing shorter blog posts. In that sense, it was an abject failure. Hopefully, practice will make perfect eventually.

The 2023 BBWAA Baseball Hall of Fame Election: A Bright Clear Line

Knowledge is the process of piling up facts; wisdom lies in their simplification – Martin H. Fischer

January 11, 2023

Introduction

On January 24th, 2023, the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA) will announce their selection(s), if any, for induction into the Hall of Fame later in July. The ballot, which was released on November 11th, 2022, [presumably to build up some publicity before the coming announcement] has 28 players on it. Fourteen of these players are holdovers from previous elections and 14 others are new to the ballot [which makes for a nice balanced lineup]. Any of the 28 players getting less than 5% of the vote will be thrown off the BBWAA Hall of Fame bus [metaphorically speaking] and will not be listed on the 2024 ballot. This is all pretty straightforward, but also tediously boring. For several years now, there has been a Baseball Hall of Fame Tracker which analyzes any and all published Hall of Fame ballots before the big day. For all intents and purposes, any mystery of who may join Fred McGriff [already voted in by the Hall of Fame’s Veterans Committee] on the podium in July of 2023 is already over. Scott Rolen is probably the only candidate that has any real chance of being elected by the BBWAA this year. The Hall of Fame Tracker [compiled by Ryan Thibodaux] has reduced the suspense of the 2023 Hall of Fame election to the simple question of: Will Scott Rolen make it?

Who Actually Should be Elected by the BBWAA in 2023?

The Hall of Fame Lowest Common Denominator System (LCDS) holds that any players elected should have accrued more career bWAR (Baseball Reference’s Wins Above Replacement formula) than the 244th best eligible player for the Hall of Fame.* In other words, a Hall of Fame player should have accumulated more than 52.7 bWAR [the total accumulated by Hall of Famer Elmer Flick and non-Hall of Famer Babe Adams, both tied at #243]. Using this bWAR number as the baseline, the LCDS 2023 Baseball Hall of Fame ballot would be: 1) Scott Rolen 70.1 bWAR; 2) Andruw Jones 62.7; 3) Todd Helton 61.8; 4) Gary Sheffield 60.5, 5) Bobby Abreu 60.2, 6) Andy Pettitte 60.2, 7) Mark Buerhle 59.1, and 8) Jeff Kent 55.4. Under the LCDS system, Torii Hunter [50.7] and Jimmy Rollins [47.6] just miss the ballot; but would have been Hall of Fame worthy with one more good year. Alex Rodriguez, who finished his all-time great career with 117.6 bWAR, is not considered eligible despite currently being on the ballot. Along with Manny Ramirez [69.3 BWAR], Rodriguez is ineligible for election to the Baseball Hall of Fame due to his suspension for taking steroids during his career. There is no reason for allowing either man to twist in the wind for ten years as the BBWAA is doing. A-Rod’s eventual banishment into steroid limbo is ensured when he inevitably falls off the ballot in 8 years. Ramirez, the other steroid casualty, has 3 years to go. Any review of the steroid ineligible should start with players who were not suspended for using performance-enhancing drugs during their careers [with Mark McGwire at the front of the line]. There is another player, currently getting strong support for the Hall, who is absent from the above list: superstar reliever Billy Wagner. Unfortunately, bWAR may not be the best tool to measure the contributions of a relief ace like Wagner. He only accumulated 27.7 bWAR in his career. Only by virtually doubling his bWAR total does Wagner qualify under LCDS. The BBWAA will almost surely, absent some horrible intervening scandal, elect him quite soon anyways.

*For a better explanation of the LSDS, please see Post #22. There are currently 241 (non-Negro League) Hall of Fame players elected to the Hall of Fame plus 3 more who were elected as executives but who would have qualified as players.

The Hall of Fame Tracker at this very Moment [1-11-23]

Right now the Hall of Fame tracker has collected 154 ballots [Usually there are just under 400 ballots cast].* With 75% of the total votes needed for election, the current count for the top 10 is: 1) Scott Rolen 81.2% [63.2% last year], 2) Todd Helton 79.9% [52.0%], 3) Billy Wagner 73.2% [51.0%], 4) Andruw Jones 69.8% [41.1%], 5) Gary Sheffield 66.4 [40.6%], 6) Carlos Beltran 57.7% [1st year on the ballot], 7) Jeff Kent 50.3% [32.7%], 8) Alex Rodriguez 43.0% [34.3%] and his running mate 9) Manny Ramirez 40.9% [28.9%], and lastly 10) Bob Abreu 20.1% [8.6%]. Unless history is reversed, these percentages will fade away as the ballots from the more neanderthal BBWAA writers are finally counted (the members who refuse to publish their ballots and are unaccountable for their often strange votes). Rolen may be able to hang on and be elected this year. Todd Helton, the only other player currently above the 75% threshold, does not seem to be high enough to fend off the inevitable ebb. But he certainly seems primed to be elected in 2024. It would help Helton if Rolen goes in this year, clearing the path for him. The probably unavoidable elections of Jones & Wagner seem to be on track too. Sheffield, despite his tangential steroid taint, & Carlos Beltran, despite his involvement in the 2017-18 Houston Astros sign-stealing scandal, also seem to be on track for eventual induction. Alex Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez, the convicted steroid pair, are both treading water and waiting for their eventual dismissal from the ballot. Jeff Kent, in his 10th and final year on the ballot, will be getting his dismissal this year. He will have to wait for the Veterans Committee to eventually honor him. There are 2 other players [in addition to Kent and Abreu] who deserve to be in the Hall of Fame by the LCDS system: Andy Pettite 18.8% [10.7%] & Mark Buerhle 10.1% [5.8%]. Both men will surely live to see another ballot but the prognosis for their eventual election by the BBWAA seems grim.

*Apparently 140 published and attributed to a specific eligible Baseball Hall of Fame voter plus 14 more ballots that are unattributed.

A Question of Discussing Progress

In general, the Baseball Hall of Fame Tracker has changed the discussion from: Who will get elected? to Who is making good progress towards being elected? Usually, players go on the ballot, their candidacy gets considered, and then (if they are worthy) their vote totals rise until they are elected. Scott Rolen, Todd Helton*, Billy Wagner, Andruw Jones, and Gary Sheffield are currently making good progress and will eventually be elected to the Hall of Fame. Also, Carlos Beltran is doing so well in his first year that his election is inevitable. There is one very unusual 2023 candidacy. Omar Vizquel’s Hall of Fame vote totals are regressing, not progressing. In 2020, Vizquel’s election was all but inevitable. He had reached 52.6% in only his third year on the ballot (after starting with 37.0% in his first year), despite an underwhelming career total of 45.6 bWAR. But, as the 2021 ballots rolled in, he got accused of domestic violence against his wife and sexual harassment of an (autistic) bat boy. The double whammy of this bad publicity hurt his 2021 vote total a little [49.1%]. Then completely crashed it in 2022 [23.9%] like a plane hitting a mountainside. This freefall is continuing in 2023. His current vote total is a mere 8.7% (and sliding down). At this rate, he will fall off the BBWAA ballot either this year or in 2024. Three other players (Jeff Kent, Alex Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez) are just treading water until they fall off the Ballot. There are five more players (Bobby Abreu, Andy Pettitte, Jimmy Rollins, Mark Buehrle, and Francisco Rodriguez) who are all waiting around at the bottom of the ballot, hoping their Hall of Fame cases catch fire. Abreu, Pettitte and Buehrle are all qualified under the LCDS to be in the Hall and Rollins is close. Francisco Rodriguez, who like Beltran is in his first year on the ballot, was an ace reliever like Wagner. If his bWAR [24.2] is doubled, Francisco Rodriguez still doesn’t qualify under the LCDS. Despite all this, it is probable that his candidacy will survive to see next year. If it does, there is a good chance that he will begin to make some progress.

*The election of both Rolen and Helton, who would then join McGriff in the 2023 Baseball Hall of Fame class, would obviously be the best outcome for the Hall of Fame itself by giving it three, rather than just two, players to honor on July 23, 2023.

The Other Guys On and Off the Ballot

Other than the 15 players mentioned in the above paragraph, there are 13 other players on the 2023 BBWAA ballot. Twelve of these guys are first-time candidates like Carlos Beltran and Francisco Rodriguez. None of these twelve players are going to survive to see the 2024 Ballot. In fact, none of them has even received a single vote so far (with 140 votes currently counted). This is not surprising considering that pitcher John Lackey has the most career bWAR [37.3] of the 12 players. They will all be one and done on the BBWAA Hall of Fame ballot. Despite this, all 12 guys were fine players: Lackey; Jered Weaver; Jacoby Ellsbury; Jhonny Peralta; Jayson Werth; Matt Cain; J.J. Hardy; the great Mike Napoli; R.A. Dickey; Bronson Arroyo; Andre Ethier; and relief ace Huston Street. A very good team could be made from these players in their primes. Probably the greatest “Could Have Been A Contender” for the Baseball Hall of Fame out of these 12 candidates would be Jacoby Ellsbury. Presently, Ellsbury is mostly remembered as a bitter disappointment by New York Yankee fans. He signed a 7 year/153 million dollar contract in 2013 but never lived up to it. However, his career was derailed and eventually destroyed by near constant injuries. The one year that Ellsbury was totally uninjured and in his prime was stunning. In 2011, he scored 119 times, hit 32 HRs, drove in 105 runs, batted .321, and stole 39 bases (finishing 2nd to Justin Verlander in the MVP race). It was a fantastic season. A few more like it would have given Jacoby Ellsbury a very strong Hall of Fame case.* Of course, this leaves one player on the Ballot undiscussed. That would be outfielder Torii Hunter [career bWAR of 50.7]. In 2021, his first year on the BBWAA ballot, Hunter received 10.5% of the vote. In 2022, he was down to 5.3%. Currently, in 2023, Hunter has only 2.0% of the vote. Evidently, the BBWAA voters have decided that 3 years on the Baseball Hall of Fame ballot, but not one more, is enough to honor Torii Hunter.

*After a great 33 game trial in 2007, Ellsbury started his career with two very promising seasons in 2008 & 2009 [3.0 and then 2.8 bWAR]. He was injured basically all season long in 2010. He had his monster season in 2011 [bWAR of 8.3]. A shoulder injury destroyed his 2012 season. He then returned with no power in 2013 [5.8 bWAR]; but got some back in 2014 [3.6 bWAR with 16 HRs]. After a good start to 2015 (.324 BA in 37 games), injuries called off the rest of his career [2015-2019]. He didn’t even play in 2018 or 2019 as the injuries ate what was left of his talent.

A Bright Clear Line

The Lowest Common Denominator System [LCDS] for deciding if a Baseball player is worthy of the Hall of Fame contains an assumption that the Hall of Fame has already elected and inducted the correct number of players [244 to be exact right now]. The only difference is that the LCDS gives a very different answer to who actually belongs. Most baseball fans would agree that the Hall of Fame has done, at times, a pretty shoddy job of selecting its new members. Many baseball writers like to argue that the Hall has elected too many players. Others argue that the Hall of Fame has elected too few. But maybe we should just throw the baby & the bath water out the window and start over? It seems like a bright clear line [ABCL] for electing a player to the Baseball Hall of Fame could be set at 50.0 or more total bWAR during their career. Since the player must play 10 seasons to even qualify for election, this would mean that the potential Hall of Famer would need to average 5.0 bWAR per year for 10 years to get in (5.0 bWAR basically represents an All-Star-type season). This seems reasonable. Perhaps we could even name these types of seasons. Above 5.0 bWAR would be a “Kong.” Above 7.5 bWAR (a MVP-type season) would be a “King Kong.” In honor of Hideki Matsui & Aaron Judge, a season 10.0 bWAR or above would be a “Godzilla.” There are currently 278 Baseball players who are eligible for the Hall of Fame with 50.0 or more career bWAR. This is only a slight increase from the 244 who are currently enrolled. It has the advantage over the LCDS system of being an immovable and fixed line. It will not shift, like LCDS, after the results of future elections. From this point on, the ABCL will be used as the starting point for any Baseball Hall of Fame discussions in this blog.

The 2023 BBWAA Ballot

Using the ABCL, this blog’s uncounted and disregarded ballot for the BBWAA 2023 Baseball Hall of Fame election goes: 1) Scott Rolen; 2) Andruw Jones; 3) Todd Helton; 4) Gary Sheffield; 5) Bobby Abreu; 6) Andy Pettitte; 7) Mark “The Burley” Buerhle; 8) Jeff Kent; and 9) Torii Hunter. With undeniable proof that a relief ace is actually worth twice as much as other players, Billy Wagner would be tied with Jeff Kent at 8th, pushing Hunter down to 10th. But that proof has not been forthcoming yet.

Coming Later: Addendum #1

Relief Pitchers and the Hall of Fame.

Coming even later: Addendum #2

Kongs, King Kongs & Godzillas

Addendum #3

The 28 Players [listed by bWAR] on the 2023 BBWAA Baseball Hall of Fame ballot [14 players held over from 2022 Ballot and 14 new players, who are marked with a + sign]:

1) Alex Rodriguez the doomed 117.6; 2t) Carlos Beltran 70.1+; 2t) Scott Rolen 70.1; 4) Manny Ramirez 69.3; 5) Andruw Jones 62.7; 6) Todd Helton 61.8; 7) Gary Sheffield 60.5; 8t) Bobby Abreu 60.2; 8t) Andy Pettitte 60.2; 10) Mark Buehrle 59.1; 11) Jeff Kent 55.4; 12) Torii Hunter 50.7; 13) Jimmy Rollins 47.6; 14) Omar Vizquel 45.6; 15) John Lackey 37.3+; 16) Jered Weaver 34.6+; 17) Jacoby Ellsbury 31.2+; 18) Jhonny Peralta 30.4+; 19) Jayson Werth 29.2+; 20) Matt Cain 29.1+; 21) J.J. Hardy 28.1+; 22) Billy Wagner 27.7; 23) Mike Napoli 26.3+; 24) Francisco Rodriguez 24.2+; 25) R.A. Dickey 23.7+; 26) Bronson Arroyo 23.4+; 27) Andre Ethier 21.5+; and 28) Huston Street 14.5+.

The 36 Players [listed by bWAR] who qualified for the 2023 BBWAA Baseball Hall of Fame ballot (10 years of service); but were excluded from the ballot by a secret Hall of Fame Committee:

1) Yunel Escobar 26.8; 2) Aaron Hill 24.4; 3) Erick Aybar 22.8; 4) Carlos Ruiz 22.5; 5) Ubaldo Jiminez 20.4; 6) Jeremy Guthrie 18.4; 7) Franklin Gutierrez 18.2; 8) Joaquin Benoit 17.9; 9) Chris Young 17.5; 10) Stephen Drew 15.9; 11) Ricky Nolasco 13.4; 12) Adam Lind 12.7; 13) Matt Garza 12.5; 14) Geovany Soto 12.0; 15) Joe Blanton 11.8; 16) Seth Smith 11.6; 17) Rickie Weeks 11.5; 18) Ryan Hanigan 9.2; 19) Glen Perkins 8.9; 20) Jonathan Broxton 8.7; 21) Scott Feldman 7.9; 22) J.P. Howell 7.8; 23) Alejandro De Aza 7.2; 24) Craig Breslow 6.2; 25t) Mike Pelfrey 5.8; 25t) Chad Qualls 5.8; 27) Mike Aviles 5.7; 28) Brandon Moss 5.0; 29) Jason Grilli 4.6; 30) Kyle Kendrick 4.6; 31) Michael Morse 4.0; 32) Edward Mujica 3.9; 33) Eric O’Flaherty 3.8; 34) Ryan Raburn 3.3, 35t) Andres Blanco 1.6; and lastly 35t) Dustin McGowan 1.6.

Yunel Escobar and Aaron Hill may have a complaint here. Why R.A. Dickey or Bronson Arroyo or Huston Street on the ballot but not them? One wonders whether pitching in the thin Colorado air ruined the career of Ubaldo Jiminez. How much harder did he have to torque his arm to impart spin there? Rickie Weeks is probably, without really checking, the most disappointing player in this group. The second player taken in the 2003 June amateur draft (after the even more disappointing Delmon Young), Weeks seemed to have the talent to be a much bigger star than he turned out to be.

Interestingly, a total of 50 players who retired in 2017 qualified for the 2023 Baseball Hall of Fame ballot after waiting the required 5 years after the end of their careers. Fourteen were placed on the ballot itself and the other 36 were then excluded by a Hall of Fame Ballot Committee. A question for yet another day would be: What is the normal number of players that qualify to be on the Baseball Hall of Fame ballot each year? Were the 50 qualified players in 2023 an abnormal number of guys to qualify? What would be the normal range? If not normal in 2023, is it more or less?

Major League Demographics: 1871

From a small seed, a mighty trunk may grow. Aeschylus

January 1, 2023

Introduction

Anyone who loves Baseball history owes an enormous debt of gratitude to the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR). Founded in 1971,* this group has expanded the available knowledge about Baseball in virtually all directions. In one particular area, SABR continued the work of the late great Lee Allen, historian of the Baseball Hall of Fame from 1959 until he died of a heart attack in 1969. Allen had made it his life’s work to collect biographical information about every Major League player. Without this work, started by Lee Allen and then followed up on by SABR, the detailed demographics of the 115 players who played in the 1871 National Association (NA) would not even be available to analyze. But, thankfully, they are. This post will seek to answer the following questions about those 1871 NA players: 1. how old were they in 1871; 2. how long did they live after their careers ended; 3. how tall and heavy were they in 1871; 4. which was their dominant hand when batting or throwing; and 5. where did these men originally come from? Future posts will answer the exact same questions for other Major League seasons. It will then be possible to compare and contrast this information over the entire timeline of Baseball. Hopefully, something interesting about the always changing demographics of the supposed National Pastime will be uncovered. If not, it will just be good fun for the Baseball obsessed (or perhaps just interested).

*Exactly 100 years after the formation of the first Major League, the National Association. Unless otherwise noted, all basic demographic information comes from the website Baseball Reference.

1. How Old Was the Average NA Player in 1871?

Of the 115 players, 81 men have a full birthdate (day/month/year); 15 have a partial birthdate (month/year); 17 have just a birth year; and only two players (Bill Barrett & Bill Kelly) have no birth information at all. For the purposes of this post, the median will be used to determine any averages. The median is the mid point in any data set (exactly 50% of the data points are greater and 50% of the data points are lesser). Other demographic studies like this use the mean, or the weighted mean, to arrive at their conclusions. The mean, of course, is the average of all data points combined (a weighted mean assigns different values to individual data points such as games played or at bats). In this case, the median seems better suited as the mean can be thrown off by an extreme data point. It is also just less complicated. Of the 81 NA players who have full birthdates, the median would be player #41 (William Johnson), born June 1, 1848. In other words, the median NA player was around 23 years old in 1871 (using 7/1/1871, the season mid-point, to determine player’s age). Of course, the obvious question would be: Does including the data from those players without full birthdates make any difference? There are 32 players with partial data. Using the data from all 113 men with any birth data, the median 1871 age rises to 23 years, 6 months, and 4 days (aka #57, John Sensenderfer, aka “Count” Sensenderfer). Basically, the median age of a 1871 NA player was 23 and a half. This is almost surely the lowest average age of the players for any one season in Major League history [which, considering 1871 was the very first season, makes total sense]. In more recent years, Major League players reportedly averaged around 27 years old in the 1960s and 1970s, which rose to about 29 years old in the 2010s, and has currently fallen back to 28 years old or so in the 2020s.

2. How Long Did the Average 1871 NA Player Live?

Of the 115 NA players, 111 of them have been found dead. Four men (Barrett and Kelly again, plus Edward Beavens and Fred Treacey) have left no trace (so far) of when they shuffled off this mortal coil. But they are definitely dead [or approximately 170 years old]. The first and also youngest of the 1871 players to die was Willard White. He died March 3, 1872, at the very young age of 22 years and 101 days of what was then called the “White Plague” (tuberculosis). Seven players did not see the 1880s. The median age of the 1871 NAL players when they passed on was 61 years and 116 days (#56 out of the 111 players, William Johnson, once again). The median date of death was November 28th, 1908 (a different #56, Thomas Pratt). In an odd twist of fate, the 1871 player who lived the longest was Hall of Famer James “Deacon” White, the cousin of the Willard White who had died first. Jim White lived to the ripe old age of 91 years and 217 days, finally passing away on July 7th of 1939. He was one of 4 players from the 1871 NA who made it to 90 years old. One of them, Al Pratt, died just 2 days after turning 90. Yet another was White’s former teammate & fellow Hall of Famer, George Wright. Wright died in 1937 after living 90 years and 205 days. The only other 1871 player to make 90 was George Bird. Bird was also the last player from the first Major League still living. When he died on November 11th of 1940 at the advanced age of 90 years and 139 days, the last player from the 1871 National Association was laid to rest. Compared to modern times, the players of the 1871 NA lived considerably shorter lives. In the year 2020, the average lifespan of an American male was reportedly 74.5* years, more than 12 years longer than the average 1871 NAL player.

*An average modern American women reportedly lives to be 80.2 years, raising the overall American average to 77.3 years old.

3. How Big Was the Average 1871 NA Player?

Of the 115 NAL players, 13 do not have their height listed. Of the 102 players that do have it listed, the median is 5 feet 8 inches (the average between #51 and #52, though both men are listed as 5-08). Only 13 of the 102 players are listed as being 6 feet or taller (8 men at exactly 6-00, 3 men at 6-01, and just one man, Robert Armstrong, at 6-02). The shortest man listed, at 5 feet and 3 and a half inches, is Dickey Pearce, the long time shortstop. But Pearce is also listed as having weighed a very stout 161 pounds. The next shortest man on the NA list is David Force, also a shortstop, listed as being 5-04 and weighing only 130 pounds. Three other NA players are listed as 5-05 tall. There are 101 players with their weight listed (the 14 missing this info are the 13 without a listed height, plus William Johnson again). The median of these 101 players (#51) weighed 157 pounds (Thomas Foley or Hall of Famer Harry Wright). The heaviest listed player is another Hall of Famer, Adrian (aka “Cap”) Anson. But his listed weight, 227 pounds, is obviously from much later in his career [Cap was the last 1871 NA player active in the Major leagues, retiring in 1897]. The photographic evidence suggests that the 19-year-old Anson weighed about 180 to 190 pounds in 1871. This would still make Anson heavier than Charles Bierman or Gat Stires, next on the list at reportedly 180 pounds.* The lightest listed player was David Birdsall at 126 pounds. However, he was almost surely heavier than that. Birdsall, listed as 5-09 tall, was a thin man. But 126 pounds on a 5-09 frame is emaciated. He was probably, looking at photos, around at least 145-150 pounds. The smallest man on any NA field was probably always the 5-04 short and 130 pounds light Davy Force. Presently, the average Major League player stands 6-01 and weighs around 205 to 210 pounds in 2020. In other words, the average present Major League player would be comfortably the largest man by far on any 1871 National Association team.

*The fascinating Garret “Gat” Stires, listed as 5-08 and a muscular 180 pounds, was probably the strongest man in the NA. An incredibly powerful batter, Stires reportedly swung a 6 pound bat [i.e. 96 ounces, modern bats are 31 to 33.5 oz]. That is basically a log. Unfortunately, 1871 was his only year in the Majors.

One other interesting question related to the height and weight of the 1871 NA players is: Were the pitchers from 1871 bigger, smaller, or the same size as the other 1871 players? For most of baseball history, pitchers have been taller and heavier than other players. Reportedly, in modern baseball, pitchers are 6 feet and 3 inches tall on average and weigh between 210 and 215 pounds. In other words, two inches taller and 5 to 10 pounds heavier than other players. The advantage of a taller pitcher comes from the downward plane which can be attained throwing a ball overhand. But pitchers in 1871 were not allowed to throw overhand. Modern pitching mounds also accentuate the downward plane effect. But pitchers in 1871 did not throw off a mound. The advantage of a heavier pitcher is that he would be able to supposedly throw harder (i.e. by putting his weight behind the pitch). But there has never been a plethora of fat guys with blazing fastballs pitching in the Major Leagues. In any event, 19 men pitched in the 1871 National Association. But 9 of these men were just players who primarily played other positions. One man, William Stearns was primarily a pitcher during his career but only pitched two games in 1871 (during his career, he played 84 Major League games, every one as a pitcher). Stearns threw right-handed but his batting, height and weight are not listed. This leaves just nine other men who really pitched in the 1871 NA. This may seem low, but the 1871 teams ordinarily used just one pitcher. For what its worth, these 9 men were generally bigger than their teammates. The median height and weight of these 9 pitchers was 5-09 and 162 pounds.* Strangely, the only left-handed pitcher was John McMullen (who was also probably the worst pitcher of the nine). Truthfully, there were simply not enough pitchers hurling in 1871 to draw any definite conclusions about their relative size.

*The mean average height of these 9 pitchers was exactly 5 feet and 9 inches [9 men/621 inches] also; but their mean average weight was a slim 155.67 pounds [9 pitchers/1401 pounds]. Basically, the size differential between the 9 pitchers and the batters in 1871 could just be a rounding error.

4. Which Was the Dominant Hand of the 1871 NA Players?

Of the 115 NA players that played in 1871, whether they batted right-handed or left-handed has been recorded for just 48 of them. The breakdown of the batting data shows that 36 of 48 [75.0%] players batted from the right side and 12 of 48 players batted from the left [25.0%]. Whether NA players threw the ball right-handed or left-handed has been recorded for only 60 of them. The breakdown of the throwing data shows that 48 of 60 players threw right-handed [80.0%] and 12 of 60 players threw left-handed [20.0%]. As the right-left percentages of the general population are usually recorded as 90% right and 10% left, the data seems to suggests that the natural advantage of being left-handed in Baseball, especially while batting, was already evident at the beginning. But this data could actually be skewed. As being left-handed is more unusual than being right-handed, whether a player was left-handed is much more likely to have been recorded. The absence of data is too great to definitely claim that baseball’s bias towards the left-handed existed in 1871. Also it is obvious that positional discrimination was not yet set in stone in the beginning [because of the left-handed disadvantages of playing as a C, 2B, SS, or 3B, these positions eventually would be manned only by the right-handed.] It should be noted that one man, the always eclectic Bob Ferguson, has been listed as a switch-hitter in most Baseball databases. However, for this analysis, Ferguson is simply being considered a right-handed hitter. He did not switch sides at the plate to gain a platoon advantage.* Ferguson was basically just a right-handed hitter, but would sometimes switch-hit to gain what he thought was a tactical advantage. In the most widely reported example, Bob Ferguson shifted from right to left in the batter’s box in an attempt not to hit the ball at shortstop George Wright, probably the greatest fielder at that time.

*The platoon advantage occurs because a right-handed pitcher will appear to release the ball at the body of a righty batter and a left-handed pitcher does the same versus a lefty batter. This element of deception (and fear) makes it harder to hit than opposite side confrontations [lefty-righty or righty-lefty].

5. Where Did the 1871 NA Players Come from?

The simple answer to this question is: The players mostly came from New York State or Pennsylvania. As the game of Baseball was invented in New York City; and then spread outwards from there like a fever, this is hardly surprising. All told, the players in the 1871 NA came from only ten states (and the District of Columbia). Of the 115 NA players in 1871, just one player is listed without a birthplace [Pete Donnelly]. Interestingly, thirteen (13) of the players were not born in the United States at all (England 5, Ireland 4, and one each for Canada, Cuba, Germany and the Netherlands). This may be the highest percentage of foreign players in a Major League until over 100 years later (a robust 11.4% of the players). Of the remaining 101 players, 45 of the players were born in NY; 23 in PA, 9 in MD, 8 in NJ, 5 in IL, 4 in OH, 2 in IA and MA, and just one in CT, DC & IN. There were 79 players born in the Northeast [NY-PA-NJ-MA-CT]; 12 players born in the Midwest [IL-OH-IA-IN]; and another 10 players from the southern borders [basically Baltimore MD & Washington DC]. There were no players in the 1871 from the Southern States or the far Western States. There was no one born in either Texas or California [though seven players from the 1871 NA would eventually pass away in CA]. Interestingly, there was only two players from Massachusetts in the 1871 NA. It seems like the Boston area, all by itself, should have contributed many more players than that. However, the game of baseball, as played in Massachusetts, differed from the game played in New York. The “New York” game took quite awhile to catch fire in the New England area (there were no players from Rhode Island, Vermont, Maine, or New Hampshire in the 1871 NA either). Essentially, most players in the 1871 NA came from Northeastern urban centers.

The deeper answer to the question of where the players came from is: They were mostly of English descent. Since baseball evolved out the British game of rounders, this is hardly a revelation. Although the specific ethnicity of every player cannot be exactly determined, the nationality of their surnames can be reviewed. But, [for example] if a player had an Italian or Spanish mother, this process would not pick that fact up. Examining the surnames of the 115 men who played in the 1871 NA, there were 68 players with (presumably) English surnames [59.1%]; there were 24 players with likely Irish (or Gaelic) surnames [20.9%]; there were 13 players with probably German surnames [11.3%], and there were 6 players with seemingly Scottish surnames [5.2%]. There were 2 players of Jewish heritage (Lipman Pike was certainly Jewish but Levi Meyerle was only possibly Jewish). Both of these Jewish men had Germanic last names [interestingly, they were both ferocious hitters and poor fielders]. There was also one surname that was of presumably French origin (Henry Berthrong) & one surname that was definitely Spanish [Esteban Bellan]. Esteban Bellan may actually be the most important historical figure in the 1871 NA. The son of a Cuban father and Irish mother who immigrated to Cuba, Bellan attended St. John’s College (now Fordham University) in New York City from 1866 to 1868. After graduating, Bellan played Baseball in the New York City area from 1868 to 1873. Then he returned home and was one of the founders of the Cuban Baseball Leagues. Finally, there is one group of players that is included only by its absence. There were no players of African-American descent in the NA. They had been banned by the National Association before the first game had even been played.

*Surnames were studied mostly through Google queries and the Surname database on FamilySearch.com [the Mormon Genealogical website].

Conclusion: A League of Young Altuves

The average [median] 1871 National Association [Major League*] player was around 23 and a half years old, stood 5 feet 8 inches tall, and weighed about 157 pounds.* He batted and threw right-handed. The player was most likely born in New York State (if not in New York City itself). He was a white male of northern European ancestry. His parents were probably of English stock. He would live to be 61 and a half years old and died in 1908 or so. Every person that he knew has been dead for over a century. In the current Major Leagues, Jose Altuve of the Houston Astros [2011 to present] is celebrated for his small size. Altuve is listed as 5 feet 6 inches tall and weighing around 166 pounds. Although he is older [presently 32 years of age] and also both slightly shorter and a little bit heavier than the average 1871 NA player, Altuve is basically the exact same size. As players usually gain weight as they age, there is actually a good chance that the average weight of those 1871 NA players was around 165 to 170 pounds when they were 32 too. Another thing that Altuve and the 1871 NA players have in common is that they don’t appear to have any fat on them at all. Pictures of the players in 1871 convey that they were either wiry and muscular or stocky and muscular. Very few of the players appear to have been in need of a diet. Perhaps, the best way to think of the 1871 National Association players is a League of young Jose Altuves (minus the tattoos).

**For those who would rather not use the median, the mean average height of an 1871 NA player was: 5 feet 8.52 inches tall [102 players/6989 inches]; and average weight was: 158.53 pounds [101 players/16012 pounds]. Basically the same statistics.

Addendum #1

Some Baseball historians do not consider the old National Association, which operated from 1871 through 1875, to be a Major League. One reason that they believe the Association should not be considered the Majors is that it let any team that could pay the initiation fees join. Another reason that they cite is one of problematic game scheduling. The Association clubs did not play a balanced schedule (an equal number of games against each opponent). But, in the final analysis, the main problem these historians have with the National Association is that they just don’t think that it was of Major League Caliber. It was an inferior League. However, the National League which followed the NA was basically just a continuation of the NA with different organizational rules. The NA was almost certainly as good as the 1876-1880 NL. The other side of this argument is the assumption that the game of Baseball was [and probably still is] evolving so rapidly that the game improves steadily decade by decade. In other words, Baseball in the 2000s was better than in the 1900s was better than the 1880s which was way better than the 1870s. In other words, the NA was simply inferior due to this evolution. Perhaps the game of Baseball does steadily improve. But the slope of that improvement is probably so gradual that it is almost imperceptible. Adrian Anson played in the Majors from 1871 to 1897. His career path is completely normal, as if the quality of the Leagues did not change over the years, even a little bit. The NA was the top League in the United States from 1871 to 1875, ipso facto it was a Major League.

Coming Attractions: Future Posts in [Hopefully] 2023

1. Short post on the upcoming January 2023 BBWAA Hall of Fame Election. Nothing to see here, move along.

2. Thirty different brief team capsules for every Major League club [including one very long one about aging for the San Francisco Giants, now well over a year in production].

3. The Problem with Major League Player’s Height and Weight Information and a solution that will not be adopted.

4. My personal and provisional All-Time Major League Baseball Top 100 List with WAR modifications and Negro League players included.

5. The tentative 100 Greatest Players from the Negro Leagues List.

6. The Major League Demographics of the 1880, 1900, 1920, 1940, 1960, 1980, 2000 and 2020 seasons. Not necessarily in that order.

7. The history of the Baseball Hall of Fame and Negro League Players; or how to screw up the process and progress of glory.

8. Where’s Winston: Negro League Demographics, Part 1 to start. Adventures in the last frontier of Major League Demographics

9. The Mysterious Career of Will Jackman [Negro League Legend] Revisited.

10. The Biography of Big Bill Smith [forgotten Negro League Legend].

11. The Legendary 1894 season of Grant (Home Run) Johnson: 60 home runs?

12. Career Paths and Injury Cascades (aka Luck of the Draw), Part 1 to start: Probably Pete Reiser or maybe Bob Feller.

13. Little fast fat men: An examination of the worst player in the Baseball Hall of Fame, Tommy McCarthy, and several of his contemporaries.

14. The True Power stat and 500 at bats: How to waste your time with baseball statistics when wondering how many home runs Ty Cobb would have hit if the Major Leagues were using a lively ball during his career.

15. Baby You’re a Rich Man: Modern players and Generational Wealth [with many thanks to Roger Clemens for saying that phrase out loud].

16. An examination of Barry Bonds career path: What if Barry Bonds hadn’t taken any Steroids?

17. Today’s Pitchers: Modern Medical Marvels [or why exactly are so many guys throwing 100 mph].

18. Any other strange topic of Baseball that may consume my time.

The Baseball Hall of Fame Asserts its Authority

December 26, 2022

Politics is the art of controlling your environment. Hunter S. Thompson

Institutional Override

The People that run the Baseball Hall of Fame (basically the Clark Foundation and Major League Baseball) have a difficult problem. The voters primarily in charge of electing former baseball players into their shrine are not under their direct control. Does the Nobel Committee let someone else tell them who to give their prizes and money to? But the Baseball Hall of Fame [BHOF] allows the members of the Baseball Writers Association of America [BBWAA] to have the first crack at electing any player to their shrine. The advantages of doing this are obvious. The BBWAA generates a ton of free publicity for the BHOF as it debates the merits and demerits of potential BHOF inductees. Since the BBWAA is a separate organization, the BHOF also gets the added illusion of impartiality. The modern rule of publicity (all publicity is good publicity, only lack of publicity is bad) reigns. The disadvantage of this arrangement is that the BBWAA has a habit of doing one thing that the BHOF simply cannot allow. The BBWAA occasionally gets on its moral high horse and refuses to elect any player. This has happened 3 times in the last 25 years [1996, 2013, and 2021]. The high point of the BHOF’s year is when the crowds come to celebrate the annual induction ceremony. The Hall literally needs to induct someone each year. Does a hotel owner in Florida or the Caribbean close his establishment when the winter tourists flock to town? The BHOF has a simple and elegant solution to this problem. In addition to the annual elections of the BBWAA, the BHOF itself also annually elects some other players through the BHOF’s Veterans Committee. Like any institution, the BHOF needs to be able to put its fat thumb on the scale.

Settling for Second Best

This dichotomy, that baseball players are being elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame by 1) the BBWAA and 2) the BHOF itself, has existed since the very first election. In that initial 1936 election, the Writers voted to elect players from the 20th Century. The Hall of Fame appointed a Veterans Committee to elect players from the 19th Century. Eventually, the BBWAA elections focused upon the players that became eligible each year. These players were given 15 years at first to be elected by the BBWAA (eventually shortened to 10 years in 2014). There was also a five-year waiting period to make sure they did not unretire. The Veterans Committee also adapted. It was eventually limited to voting on the leftovers from the BBWAA elections. As the years rolled by, this process eventually ensured that the Veterans Committee would always elect the lesser qualified, those players ignored by the BBWAA. As the Veterans Committee evolved, it selections were filled with lowlights (the election of virtually all of the unqualified players in the Baseball Hall of Fame, especially in the 1960s & 1970s) and highlights (the belated elections of the very over-qualified Negro League superstars). Beginning in 2022, the Veterans Committee was tasked with electing three different groups of candidates who have not been elected by the BBWAA. The first is Players active primarily since 1980. The second is non-players (executives, managers. and umpires) active primarily since 1980. The third is players and/or non-players active primarily before 1980. These 3 groups will be considered annually on a rotating basis. In other words, Group One gets considered for induction in 2023, Group Two for 2024, and Group Three for 2025; before this sequence begins all over again.* Which brings us to the recent election of Fred McGriff by the BHOF Veterans Committee.

*Because the Baseball Hall of Fame has once again set an exact year rather than a moving time frame [i.e. exactly 1980 rather than 40 years ago], these 3 groups will inevitably need to be, eventually, changed once again.

The Hall of Fame Elects Fred McGriff

On December 4th, 2022, the BHOF Veterans Committee selected Fred McGriff from the group of players active primarily after 1980 who had been retired for five years and were no longer eligible for BBWAA election He will be inducted on July 23, 2023 into the Baseball Hall of Fame. The procedure used to elect him was straight forward. A BHOF Screening Committee of 10 to 12 members (primarily from the BBWAA) selected 8 players that fit their post-1980 criteria for the ballot. The Veterans Committee [VC], consisting of 16 members also appointed by the BHOF, considered whether any of these eight former players were worthy of induction. Each of these 16 VC members was allowed to vote for 3 candidates. A player receiving 12 votes (75%) was elected to the BHOF. Both Committees reportedly have the Baseball Commissioner and the Head of the Clark Foundation present (though non-voting). Although this procedure is transparent, the process itself is so cloudy that its almost opaque. Who was selecting these Committee members? Why were these 8 players on the ballot selected? It is obvious that the BHOF (i.e. Major League Baseball) was in total control of the process. The only question was: Would they act appropriately? It was quickly apparent that the answer was: Not at all. The 8 players selected by Screening Committee were an odd group, to say the least.* There were 3 players who had already been rejected by the BBWAA because of accusations of steroid use; and yet another player rejected because of the possibility that he would embarrass the Hall of Fame. Three of these 4 players had fallen off the BBWAA ballot just the previous year [2021] when their 10-year eligibility expired. The remaining four players consisted of 2 men whose careers were cut short by injuries [Mattingly & Belle], one man whose career burned out early as he was also injured [Murphy], and one player who had a full career and seemed well qualified: Fred McGriff.

* The 8 players were: Albert Belle, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Don Mattingly, Fred McGriff, Dale Murphy, Rafael Palmeiro and Curt Schilling.

The Fix Was In

The results of the 2023 Baseball Hall of Fame election certainly seemed to be a foregone conclusion. Sportswriters Jay Jaffe and Joe Posnanski both pretty much predicted that McGriff’s election was inevitable before the vote. It was. McGriff received all 16 votes. Every member of the Committee voted for him. If someone was suspicious that the election was rigged, they would not have to do much to construct a plausible conspiracy theory. The reasoning behind McGriff’s election was as old school as possible. If not for the games canceled during the 1994-1995 strike, McGriff would have hit over 500 home runs. For many years, 500 career HRs and 3000 hits had equaled automatic election to the BHOF (pro-rating for those lost games, McGriff would have finished with 510 HRs). This was very similar to the last Veterans Committee election from this group of players in 2019. In that election, the Veterans Committee had elected Harold Baines, using the argument that the strike years of 1981 and 1994-95 had denied Baines the chance to amass 3000 hits and guaranteed his automatic election (however pro-rating Baines for those three years does not get him to 3000 hits, just 2965). So just exactly what did the BHOF Veterans Committee accomplish with their 2022 election for the 2023 inductions? First, they once again got to thumb their nose at modern mathematical analysis by using the traditional measurements of 500 HRs and 3000 hits. Second, they broadcast that, going forward, steroid-tainted players would find no comfort in their selections. Bonds, Clemens, and Palmeiro will almost certainly not be on the next ballot as these three players did not even receive enough votes for their totals to be announced (Albert Belle, who had such breath-taking anger management problems that he might as well have been on steroids, is probably also included in this group). Third, the Committee also got to elect a man that it felt the BBWAA had given short shrift: Fred McGriff.

* Belle’s Anger Management problems have continued since his Baseball career ended. All things considered, his inclusion on the 2022 VC ballot may be even odder than the inclusion of the steroid-tainted players.

The Worthiness of Fred McGriff

In 2025, the BHOF Veterans Committee will once again vote on the pool of post-1980 players. It is very likely that the three other players who had their vote totals announced [Don Mattingly 8, Curt Schilling 7, Dale Murphy 6] will be on that ballot. In fact, the elections of Mattingly and Murphy are probably inevitable now. Schilling, if he can convince the BHOF that he will not cause a controversy with his induction speech, will also possibly be elected. But there is always the possibility that the BHOF will wait for Schilling to shuffle off this mortal coil before posthumously electing him. He may be the one man alive whose Baseball Hall of Fame chances would geometrically increase if he died. However, none of these assumptions answer the interesting questions of: 1) Was Fred McGriff actually worthy of election to the BHOF; and 2) Who should have been on the eight man ballot that resulted in his election? In a previous post, the Lowest Common Denominator system for membership in the BHOF was proposed. This system used the most widely accepted modern statistic for measuring whether a baseball player’s career was BHOF worthy [website Baseball Reference’s Wins Above Replacement formula, aka bWAR]. Currently, with the election of McGriff, there are 341 people in the BHOF [269 as players, 40 as executives or pioneers, 22 as managers, and 10 umpires]. Of these 269 players, 28 played primarily in the Negro Leagues and (unfortunately) cannot be compared directly with the 241 players from the traditional Major Leagues. There are also three players among the top 241 players by bWAR who were not elected as players (Charles Griffith & Al Spaulding as executives/pioneers and Joe Torre as manager). In other words, by this system, the Baseball Hall of Fame should contain the top 244 eligible players by bWAR.* Fred McGriff is the 245th ranked eligible player by Baseball Reference’s WAR calculations. You cannot straddle the line any closer than that.

* In the previous post of this formula, any players still in their 10-year eligibility period for the BBWAA vote for the BHOF were excluded. This choice has been reconsidered. Now, all players are eligible as soon as the 5-year waiting period from the end of their career is over.

Who Should Have Been on the List?

By the bWAR formula, the 2022 Veterans Committee should have probably considered the following 8 post-1980 eligible players: 1. Curt Schilling [59]*, 2. Lou Whitaker [73], 3. Kenny Lofton [103], 4. Graig Nettles [107], 5. Kevin Brown [110], 6. Dwight Evans [112], 7. Willie Randolph [120], and 8. David Cone [145]. By bWAR, all of these 8 players were more highly qualified for the BHOF than Fred McGriff. There are several other players (Rick Reuschel, Bobby Grich and especially Buddy Bell) whose careers could have qualified as either pre-1980 or post-1980 players (depending on the whims of BHOF) who also could have been considered. McGriff, depending upon who is included in the post-1980 bucket, would have been about 20th on the bWAR list of post-1980 eligible players. In fact, Schilling is the highest ranking eligible non-Hall of Famer in the post-1980 period outside of the steroid accursed careers of Barry Bonds (4th) and Roger Clemens (8th). This certainly does not mean that McGriff was not a worthy Hall of Famer. The bWAR formula probably underrates big bats like McGriff in favor of players with golden gloves to sell. It also almost surely underrates relief pitchers, catchers, and those players with short careers but very high peaks. On the other hand, it definitely overrates any 19th Century pitchers primarily active before 1893 and all players with long careers but no high peaks. All that being true, there is still no reasonable explanation for the 8 players selected by the BHOF Screening Committee for the BHOF Veterans Committee to consider for 2023 election other than the scales were tilted. It will be interesting to see which players get picked from the same post-1980 player pool for the next induction from this group in 2026.

* Each player is followed by his number on the bWAR eligibility list.

Addendum #1

One of the very odd things about the post-1980 player Veterans Committee 2022 election was the fact that Alan Trammell was one of the 16 Committee members who voted for Fred McGriff. Trammell, of course, is linked forever in baseball history with his long-time Detroit Tiger teammate Lou Whitaker (in the old days, they would have been called keystone partners). Trammell and Whitaker are reportedly good friends. After Curt Schilling, Lou Whitaker was the highest rated post-1980 eligible player by bWAR who should have been under consideration by this Veterans Committee. Could Trammell not have put in a good word for his supposed dear friend? It’s just odd.

Addendum #2

In 2023, another Veterans Committee will consider post-1980 non-players for 2024 induction into the BHOF. This blog may comment on that election. Or perhaps just ignore it. In 2024, yet another Veterans Committee will consider pre-1980 players and non-players for 2025 induction into the BHOF. Once again, there will be 8 candidates under consideration. In a perfect world, this list of 8 men would probably be all or almost all Negro League players, led by Grant Johnson & Dick Redding. However that is quite unlikely. Hopefully, by that time, this blog will have developed its top 100 list of Negro League stars and be able to populate such a list in a well-thought-out order. But the BHOF will probably once again shift through the bargain box of already discarded candidates. By the bWAR formula, the top 8 would be: 1. James McCormick [68], 2. Bill Dahlen [72], 3. Bobby Grich [84], 4. Tony Mullane [116], 5. Buddy Bell [118], 6. Luis Tiant [119], 7. Reggie Smith [127], and 8. Ken Boyer [141]. Removing the 19th Century guys, you get: 1. Bobby Grich [84], 2. Buddy Bell [118], 3. Luis Tiant [119], 4. Reggie Smith [127], 5. Ken Boyer [141], 6. Tommy John [150], 7. Sal Bando [152], and 8. Willie Davis [157]; Honorable mention: 9. Wes Ferrell [167], 10. Sherry Magee [173].