The
Hall of Fame voters came through with flying colors last year, electing four new
members (Craig Biggio, Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez and John Smoltz) and thus helping
to break the logjam (a bit) caused by the unhappy confluence of the ten-player
limit to voters and the Steroids Era. There
are five players on the ballot that have been tainted by the PED scandal: Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire,
Sammy Sosa and Gary Sheffield (or seven if you count Mike Piazza and Jeff Bagwell,
for whom the whispers have been loud but the evidence scant). Voters are split on the legitimacy of these
HOF contenders; these five players receive plenty of votes (563 in total
last year, or 12% of all votes) from those who choose to overlook their
scandal. They receive neither enough votes
to get elected, nor so few as to be eliminated from future consideration
(though Sosa may be this year as Rafael Palmiero was several years) -- but instead
annually garner their 500+ votes, potentially robbing others from their place
in Cooperstown. So they are dragged
along in their purgatory, embarrassments for years to come.
This
year there are 15 newcomers to the HOF ballot who join 17 holdovers for a field
of 32. This analysis will focus on answering
two questions: 1) who will be
elected to the Hall of Fame this year, and 2) how many votes will
everyone on the ballot receive?
To
answer these questions, I scrapped my old method and have developed a brand new
regression equation for newcomers, based on WAR (Wins Above Replacement value),
and prior voting history for holdovers. (PED
tainting is also a variable in the equation.)
Had I used this new approach last year, my predictions would have been
even more accurate than they were.
One
note: the Baseball Gods are thwarting me
and my new methodology a bit, because this year there will be 74 fewer HOF ballots
as a result of a decision to reduce the number of members of the Baseball Writers
Association of America who have voting privileges. Because of this dramatic change in the
composition of the voters, this could render the methodology I follow less
effective. While the general thinking is
that the remaining writers will tend to be a little more “advanced stats”
oriented and will also show a bit more leniency to the steroids gang, I have
not attempted to incorporate such notions into the models. (And one other note: I have not looked at any early voting numbers
at all. I ran my models several months
ago.)
So,
armed with all this, let’s break down all 32 players on the ballot:
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·
There will be two new members of the Hall of Fame: Ken Griffey, Jr. and Mike Piazza. This is Junior’s first year on the ballot and
he is a sure thing, racking up magnificent stats in an untainted Steroids Era
career. The HOF has never had a unanimous pick, and Griffey will not be one either, but I think he will get 97% of the vote. Piazza has been the victim of a
steroids whisper campaign but no evidence has ever surfaced to support that he
was a PED user, and he is, hands down, the great offensive catcher of all time. But it will be very close…the model projects Piazza
getting exactly 75% of the vote, just what he needs.
·
A
total of 17 players will not gain election but will surpass the
5% threshold for inclusion on next year’s ballot, although one of them, Alan Trammell,
is now in his 15th and last year on the ballot and thus will not be
back (a shame, he deserves to be in the HOF).
Jeff Bagwell and Tim Raines lead this list, and will fall just short of
election. Four players in this group are tainted by the PED scandal,
Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire and Gary Sheffield. And three players are on the ballot for the
first time, Trevor Hoffman, Billy Wagner and Jim Edmonds.
·
That
leaves 13 players who will miss the 5% cutoff, 11 of them first-timers. All of them were very good players, most with
multiple All Star selections (and all with at least one), but none are close to
being HOF material, with WAR’s generally below 50 and most in the 20’s. Sammy Sosa, another PED-challenged player, and
Nomar Garciaparra, are the two holdovers who will miss the cut.
The
HOF seems to have done a better job of scrubbing the ballot of totally
undeserving players. Only one player on
the ballot has a WAR of less than 20, Brad Ausmus. Last year there were five such players.
My
projection for voting percentage totals is shown in the chart below. In the past I have relied on a regression
equation that produced what I called the “TG Score,” which used On Base Plus
Slugging Percentage Plus (OPS versus the league average over a career)) and
career hits as the variable for hitters, and ERA Plus (ERA over the league
average over a career) and innings pitched for pitchers. Thus every player was measured on both “greatness”
(OPS+ and ERA+) as well as “longevity” (hits and innings pitched). The equation yielded a pretty good projection
of percentage of votes attained, good enough last year to “beat” the legendary
HOF predictor Bill Deane by a good margin.
But
I noticed that my “TG Score” was highly correlated with WAR and, in fact, WAR
is actually a better predictor of Hall of Fame votes than the TG Score. So (of course) I created a new regression
equation using WAR. I use the WAR
equation to predict the percentages for those players on the ballot for the
first time. For those who are holdovers,
I use another prediction method based on their prior balloting history -- one
method for second years, and another method for those who have been on the ballot
for more than two years.
When
I back-validated the new methodologies and re-predicted 2015, the results were
superior to my “TG Score” model. (I’ve
included the comparisons at the end of this article for those of you that are
interested.)
So,
here are my predictions for the January, 2016 Hall of Fame announcement. The columns are: WAR = Wins Above Replacement value, YOB =
Years on Ballot, PED = steroid issue, PY% is the percentage a playeri received
in last year’s vote, and then my projection in the last column. That is, to be absolutely clear, I am
predicting that Ken Griffey, Jr. will receive 97% of the vote, Mike Piazza 75%,
and so on.
2016
|
WAR
|
YOB
|
PED
|
PY%
|
Projected
%
|
Ken Griffey, Jr.
|
83.6
|
1
|
97%
|
||
59.4
|
4
|
70%
|
75%
|
||
79.6
|
6
|
56%
|
60%
|
||
69.1
|
9
|
55%
|
59%
|
||
79.9
|
4
|
39%
|
42%
|
||
140.3
|
4
|
1
|
38%
|
38%
|
|
162.4
|
4
|
1
|
37%
|
37%
|
|
29.6
|
14
|
30%
|
32%
|
||
Trevor Hoffman
|
28.4
|
1
|
0%
|
30%
|
|
68.3
|
7
|
27%
|
29%
|
||
83.0
|
3
|
25%
|
26%
|
||
70.4
|
15
|
25%
|
26%
|
||
55.2
|
3
|
14%
|
14%
|
||
Fred McGriff
|
52.4
|
7
|
13%
|
13%
|
|
Larry Walker
|
72.6
|
6
|
12%
|
12%
|
|
Gary Sheffield
|
60.3
|
2
|
1
|
12%
|
11%
|
Mark McGwire
|
62.0
|
6
|
1
|
10%
|
8%
|
Billy Wagner
|
28.1
|
1
|
0%
|
8%
|
|
Jim Edmonds
|
60.3
|
1
|
0%
|
6%
|
|
Nomar Garciaparra
|
44.2
|
2
|
6%
|
4%
|
|
Sammy Sosa
|
58.4
|
4
|
1
|
7%
|
4%
|
Jason Kendall
|
41.5
|
1
|
3%
|
||
Troy Glaus
|
37.9
|
1
|
2%
|
||
Mike
Hampton
|
29.0
|
1
|
2%
|
||
Garret Anderson
|
25.6
|
1
|
2%
|
||
Mike Lowell
|
24.8
|
1
|
2%
|
||
Mike Sweeney
|
24.7
|
1
|
2%
|
||
Luis Castillo
|
28.9
|
1
|
1%
|
||
Randy Winn
|
27.5
|
1
|
1%
|
||
Mark Grudzielanek
|
26.3
|
1
|
1%
|
||
David Eckstein
|
20.8
|
1
|
1%
|
||
Brad Ausmus
|
16.4
|
1
|
0%
|
The
projected numbers speak for themselves, but here is some commentary on the
candidates:
Our
new Hall of Famers:
·
Ken Griffey, Jr: is a legend of our
time, a man who compiled near-Bonds like statistics without the benefit of any
enhancers, and with injuries that turned him from a superstar into a merely
competent player for the second half of his career. He had 630 homers, 1836 RBI and an 84 WAR. A no brainer.
·
Mike Piazza also should have been
a first-ballot HOF’er, but he will squeak in on his fourth try. He is the greatest hitting catcher of all
time, with 427 homers and 1,335 RBI.
This one is not even close, but for the whispering campaign about his
possible usage of PED’s.
My
own opinion is that the following players would be on my ballot, if I was a
voter, that is, they should be in the Hall of Fame:
·
Jeff Bagwell’s stats are well above
those of the average first baseman in the Hall of Fame, with a WAR of 80, but,
like Piazza, he has suffered from PED rumors.
He will not get into the HOF this year, but he could next year with a
little less competition (the newcomers in 2017 will include Ivan Rodriguez and
Manny Ramirez, who have PED issues, and Vladimir Guerrero….in short, no “no-brainers.”)
·
Tim Raines is undervalued as a
speedster; his 808 steals do not get incorporated well into the advanced
stats. The cocaine rap doesn’t help him
either. But Rock has a WAR of 69 and easily
deserves to be in the HOF and will someday, perhaps even next year.
·
Curt Schilling’s ERA+ is a sterling 128
and his WAR is a hefty 81. And if you
like postseason performances, his stats are phenomenal: 11-2 with a 2.23 ERA.
·
Edgar Martinez gets dissed as a
virtually full-time DH, but with an extremely healthy WAR of 68 he serves to be
in the HOF; unfortunately, he won’t get in anytime soon.
·
Mike Mussina, in my view, was a
stronger candidate than Tom Glavine; he has a better ERA+, won-loss percentage
and WAR than Glavine, but Glavine demonstrated the mystical power of the
300-win mark. It was ludicrous that
Glavine received 92% of the votes to Mussina’s 20% in January, 2014. Moose should make it, but he will be denied
for some time to come.
·
Alan Trammell is on the ballot for
the last time. I’ve long thought he was
worthy. His stats are practically
identical with the average of all HOF shortstops, except for those 185 homers
which are nearly double his HOF shortstop peers. Trammell was outshone in his career by Cal
Ripken, Jr., and then eclipsed by the Jeter/A.Rod/Nomar trio of outstanding
hitting shortstops. But he belongs, for
sure (as does his keystone partner, Lou Whitaker, who did not even receive the
5% mark in his first year of eligibility).
·
Jeff Kent has a WAR of “only”
55, but he is hard to deny given that he is all-time leading home run hitter
among second baseman, and is third in RBI behind Rogers Hornsby and Napoleon
Lajoie. He was simply one of the
greatest power-hitting second basemen ever and the greatest of modern times. I’ve often thought that Lou Whitaker and
Bobby Grich were HOF-worthy and Kent’s stats exceeds theirs. He should be in, but won’t make it this year.
In
my view, these players are not Hall of Famers, though they are worthy of strong
consideration:
·
Fred McGriff has always been a very
tough call for me. His stats generally
fall in line with the “borderline” HOF first basemen, with a WAR of 52. As stated, Bagwell has an 80 WAR. This is not a good era to be a borderline
call. Sorry, Fred.
·
Larry Walker suffers from “Coors
Field Syndrome,” with an otherworldly home OPS of 1.068 and a merely very good
.865 on the road. That basically means
that if he had played his career in any other ballpark, he would have been a
player much like, say, Bobby Abreu or Ellis Burks, with a WAR in the 50’s
instead of the 72 that Coors Field enabled him to achieve. So I say no to Larry. {Correction: a reader pointed out that WAR is park-adjusted, which is correct, and thus Walker's 72 WAR already accounts for the Coors effect. See the comments section below for the back and forth on this. I'll rethink Walker next year!}
·
Jim Edmunds was a better player
than most people think, with four All Star nods, two Top 10 MVP finishes, a
slew of phenomenal catches and a surprisingly high WAR of 60. That puts him on the borderline for HOF
consideration. I think he will just edge
over the 5% mark and become a holdover. But
I don’t think he is HOF worthy and won’t last beyond next year if he makes it
to the 2017 ballot.
·
Nomar Garciaparra, once upon a time, looked
like a certain Hall of Famer. He outshone
Derek Jeter offensively in those early years.
But like Don Mattingly, injuries robbed him of the second half of his
career and put him short of the mark. He
will likely fall off the ballot this year.
·
And
that brings us to the most problematic candidates to predict, the first-ballot
relievers Trevor Hoffman and Billy Wagner. Relievers do not have a long track record of
voting to learn from, and the nature of the closer role has evolved from the
“two inning” guys (Gossage, Fingers and Sutter) to the “one inning” closer
exemplified by Mariano Rivera. In truth,
relievers do not really have enough opportunities to have a high WAR; in truth,
the role itself is overrated. Mariano
Rivera really stands alone in the role.
He has a WAR of 57; the next highest relievers are Rich Gossage and Hoyt
Wilhelm at 40.
The rule of thumb for Hall of Fame status is a
WAR of 60. In modern times, players
with WAR’s of 60-69 average a solid 40% first ballot voting percentage. In contrast, those with WAR’s of 50-59
average only 6%. Thus the dilemma for
Hoffman and Wagner, each of whom have WAR’s of 28. The model would indicate a WAR of 28 should
translate to less than 5% of the vote.
But history tells us that relievers do better than they “should” in HOF
voting. Lee Smith has a WAR of 30, and
consistently gets about 30% of the vote.
So, I’m eyeballing (that is, not modeling) a
prediction of 30% for Hoffman (he has over 600 saves, the only player within
hailing distance of Mariano), and 10% for Wagner, because the savvier voters (a
subset of the whole) will recognize that he was every bit as good as Hoffman
and Smith. But I don’t think either
should be in the Hall of Fame. Only
Mariano Rivera is truly deserving among the reliever set. Apart from the 57 WAR, Mariano was
superlative in his extensive postseason resume, whereas the others were all
shaky.
·
Therefore
I don’t think Lee Smith belongs in
the HOF either, with his low WAR (30), even with his 478 saves. And he is not budging much from his roughly
30% of the ballot range in this, his 14th year on the ballot. Smith,
Hoffman and Wagner are all in the same ballpark, and should be on the outside
looking in.
As
for the PED gang…
·
Nobody
doubts the statistical credentials
of Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds and Gary Sheffield. Some believe Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa
do not have Hall-worthy stats, McGwire has 62 WAR and Sosa has a 58 WAR, which
are borderline. But the steroids rap
voids them all from consideration, in my view.
And
for the rest…
·
All
the others are fairly forgettable by Hall of Fame standards, with WARS between
16 and 41. Mike Sweeney made the All Star team five times; Troy Glaus and Mike Lowell made four; Garret
Anderson made three and had a Top 10 MVP finish. But these accomplishments, and the less ones
of the others, are far short of HOF consideration.
So, look for smiles from Ken Griffey, Jr. and Mike Piazza on January 6th,
and sighs from Jeff Bagwell and Tim Raines and all the rest.
**************************************************************
Read
on if you want to read about back validating!
The
chart below attempt to do a few things.
First, as mentioned above, I managed to out-forecast the legendary Bill
Deane last year, in that my projected votes were closer to the mark than
his. Deane is the former research
associate at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown and he has been doing HOF
forecasting for 34 years, usually quite accurately.
You
can tell that I did a bit better because his “total variance”, in the second
from the right column, was greater than mine, the column to the left of
his. He was off by 112 (or about 3.3
percentage points per player), whereas I was off by “only” 80 (or 2.4 per
player). Bill had a great deal of
trouble with first-balloters Pedro Martinez and John Smoltz. I had some trouble with Smoltz, too, he was
quite a unique candidate, with only Dennis Martinez as a relevant
comparison.
But,
second, while I was pleased to beat the Master, I am more pleased by my brand new
model. The variance of this model, had I
developed and used it last year, was only 58 (or 1.7 percentage points per
player). It did marginally better on
Smoltz, but tightened up the variance on a number of others (notably Bagwell
and Kent).
So,
I hope to do better this year….noting again the fact that the voter base is a
bit different last in prior years with the “downsizing” of the BBWAA voter
rolls.
Jan. 2015
|
Projection
(%)
|
Absolute
Difference (pp)
|
|||||
TG
|
Bill Deane
|
TG
|
TG
|
Bill Deane
|
TG
|
||
Original
|
Original
|
New Model
|
Actual
|
Original
|
Original
|
New Model
|
|
96
|
94
|
97
|
97
|
1
|
3
|
0
|
|
95
|
57
|
95
|
91
|
4
|
34
|
4
|
|
65
|
46
|
67
|
83
|
18
|
37
|
16
|
|
83
|
79
|
82
|
83
|
0
|
4
|
1
|
|
68
|
69
|
68
|
70
|
2
|
1
|
2
|
|
65
|
60
|
59
|
56
|
9
|
4
|
3
|
|
50
|
52
|
50
|
55
|
5
|
3
|
5
|
|
30
|
36
|
32
|
39
|
9
|
3
|
7
|
|
33
|
38
|
37
|
38
|
5
|
-
|
1
|
|
33
|
38
|
36
|
37
|
4
|
1
|
1
|
|
30
|
32
|
33
|
30
|
0
|
2
|
3
|
|
27
|
28
|
28
|
27
|
0
|
1
|
1
|
|
25
|
27
|
20
|
25
|
0
|
2
|
5
|
|
24
|
25
|
23
|
25
|
1
|
-
|
2
|
|
23
|
17
|
15
|
14
|
9
|
3
|
1
|
|
Fred
McGriff
|
14
|
14
|
13
|
13
|
1
|
1
|
0
|
Gary
Sheffield
|
18
|
5
|
16
|
12
|
6
|
7
|
4
|
Larry
Walker
|
12
|
12
|
11
|
12
|
0
|
-
|
1
|
Mark
McGwire
|
9
|
13
|
10
|
10
|
1
|
3
|
0
|
Don
Mattingly
|
7
|
11
|
9
|
9
|
2
|
2
|
0
|
Sammy
Sosa
|
4
|
8
|
6
|
7
|
3
|
1
|
1
|
80
|
112
|
58
|
|||||
