A Look At The New Hall Of Stats

Continuing my sabermetric theme, I thought I’d take a look at the new Hall of Stats site.  This is mostly the brainchild of Adam Darowski, who has tinkered with this idea for nearly two years.  This group of players contains the same amount of players that are in the actual Hall of Fame, basing merit only on stats, WAR and WAA (Wins Above Average).  He even has a scale for how much a player’s value was derived from peak performance vs. longevity.  He also includes banned players like Pete Rose and Shoeless Joe Jackson, along with steroids-era players like Mark McGwire and Kevin Brown.

Those inclusions show the limitation of this method, but when comparing clean, legal players, it gives a good starting point.  There are 208 players in the HOF, so the HOS also has 208 players.  Seven new players on the 2013 ballot made his minimum 100 mark, so they are included for now, knocking out the 99 players like John Olerud and Nap Rucker.  I see anywhere from one to five getting inducted this year, so the HOS should re-include Olerud and some of the other just-missed players.

Apr 8, 2011; Flushing, NY, USA; Joe Torre before the game between the New York Mets and the Washington Nationals at Citi Field. Mandatory Credit: Anthony Gruppuso-US PRESSWIRE

Currently, there are 69 players in the HOF who are not in the HOS, and obviously vice versa.  The top HOF’ers not in the HOS are Red Ruffing and Jimmy Collins, and the most marginal HOS members are Orel Hershiser and Billy Pierce.  The highest-ranked HOS players not in the HOF are Jeff Bagwell (162) and Larry Walker (150), while Tommy McCarthy (26) and Lloyd Waner (33) are the lowest-ranked HOS players in the HOF.

There are quite a few Braves players that were either added or removed in this process.  Those removed include Rabbit Maranville, Hugh Duffy, Collins (depending on this year’s vote), Dave Bancroft, Orlando Cepeda, McCarthy, Johnny Evers, Red Schoendienst, Rube Marquard, and Bruce Sutter.  Those added include Bobby Mathews, Tommy Bond, Charlie Buffinton, Bill Dahlen, Sherry Magee, Deacon White, Joe Torre, and Darrell Evans.  Many of these names will be included in my upcoming All-Decade Braves teams.

I judge these rankings in the following way:  If you’re above 110 and not banned or a PED user, you should be in.  If you’re 90 or below, you probably shouldn’t be in.  If you are between those two figures, things like playoff performance, military service time, and ability to change the way the game is played should determine your fate.  Somebody like Billy Herman, a 98, getting knocked out when he missed two full seasons due to WWII is probably the incorrect call.  I’m sure Adam would agree, but the system does not have an adjustment for that.  Overall, I think it’s a great system, but there are still many human factors that need to be filtered out before choosing Hall of Fame inductees.