Baseball: Past and Present

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A few weeks ago, with the help of the survey website Qualtrics, I asked people to address a common Baseball Hall of Fame argument.

Often, when people talk about candidates, they’ll say that they’re okay with one going in but not before another. Accordingly, I created a survey with 10 players at each position, asking them to rank them from 1 for most-deserving of induction to 10 for least-deserving.

Voting wrapped at midnight on Aug. 1, with 425 responses in. Having debuted results for pitchers yesterday morning, it’s my pleasure to now unveil results for catchers. I will add, before we get into parsing the rankings, that while Thurman Munson didn’t finish top overall, I chose his picture to highlight this post because of the tragic death at 32 of the former New York Yankees’ captain in an airplane accident 40 years ago today.

Q2 – Rank the following catchers, ranging from 1 for most-deserving of Hall of Fame induction to 10 for least-deserving

Player	Average ranking
Joe Mauer	3.42
Ted Simmons	4.15
Yadier Molina	4.54
Buster Posey	4.54
Thurman Munson	4.64
Bill Freehan	5.90
Jorge Posada	6.11
Elston Howard	6.40
Charlie Bennett	7.28
Gene Tenace	8.02

[From a survey of 425 respondents, fielded via Qualtrics]

Once again, I’m struck by the parity. After Joe Mauer, whose Hall of Fame case looks encouraging based on how he fared here, it’s a four-way battle between two of the best catchers of the 1970s, Ted Simmons and Thurman Munson, and two of the most-celebrated in the game today, Yadier Molina and Buster Posey. It’ll be interesting to see how long this debate persists, depending on how long it takes for Molina and Posey’s enshrinement. Simmons and Munson have long been debated in Cooperstown conversations.

More thorough results for how people ranked each catcher are wild. There’s really no clear consensus here.

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Bennett	17	6	20	31	34	36	47	49	78	107
Freehan	13	46	30	35	59	58	54	50	50	30
Howard	10	28	33	30	50	49	52	70	64	39
Mauer	80	90	76	67	40	30	27	9	2	4
Molina	76	48	42	54	52	42	39	31	26	15
Munson	49	37	71	59	58	48	39	36	17	11
Posada	9	23	30	54	49	61	68	64	33	34
Posey	52	64	66	45	44	50	36	30	21	17
Simmons	116	73	46	31	20	23	18	23	60	15
Tenace	3	10	11	19	19	28	45	63	74	153
Total	425	425	425	425	425	425	425	425	425	425

Simmons’ results particularly strike me. Simba, the Posey of the ’70s in my book, got the most first-place votes. But he also got the fourth-most ninth place votes and just six fewer than Molina, Posey, Munson, and Mauer combined. Don’t ask me how these things work. The second half of Simmons’ career, when he went from a young standout backstop with the St. Louis Cardinals to an injury-riddled first baseman wasn’t great. But Molina, Posey, Munson, and Mauer all experienced declines after their 30th birthdays as well. And if I’m making an all-time Cardinals team, Simmons is my catcher over Molina any day of the week.

Moving on, I’m struck by the divide thereafter, with Bill Freehan, Jorge Posada, Elston Howard, Charlie Bennett, and Gene Tenace totaling 52 first place votes collectively. To me, it hints that none of the five have great chances for Cooperstown. This isn’t the worst injustice, though cases can be made for each of them. Freehan, in particular, might be one of the more underrated players in baseball history, a wonderful catcher of the 1960s and a linchpin of some superb Detroit Tigers teams. He’s been battling Alzheimer’s disease and in hospice care in recent months. Anything to celebrate the man is a plus in my book.

I’m a little bummed to see that once again, a couple of sabermetric favorite candidates fared poorly here. Yesterday, I was noting the dismal rankings for Rick Reuschel and Wes Ferrell. Today, it appears that word still hasn’t gotten out on Tenace, one of the best offensive catchers in baseball history by OPS+ or Bennett, one of the premier catchers of the 19th century before he lost his legs in a train accident.

That said, I thank everyone for reading so far and will post the results for first basemen on Monday.

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A few weeks ago, I kicked off a challenge here.

With the help of the survey website Qualtrics, I asked people to go position by position and rank the most-deserving players not in the Baseball Hall of Fame, ranging from 1 for most-deserving to 10 for least-deserving. I gave a list of 10 players at each position, based primarily on who I thought voters would expect to be in the poll.

That said, after 425 responses, voting has officially wrapped for this poll. I will be presenting the results here of the survey over the next week or so, going position by position. Today, it’s my pleasure to present how people voted on pitchers.

Q1 – Rank the following pitchers, ranging from 1 for most-deserving of Hall of Fame induction to 10 for least-deserving

Player	Average ranking
Roger Clemens	2.44
Curt Schilling	3.50
Kevin Brown	5.29
David Cone	5.52
CC Sabathia	5.55
Tommy John	5.56
Luis Tiant	5.68
Jim Kaat	5.92
Wes Ferrell	7.60
Rick Reuschel	7.94

[From a survey of 425 respondents, fielded via Qualtrics]

No real surprises at the top, I suppose. Opposition has cooled considerably in recent years toward enshrining Clemens, a brilliant pitcher long before rumors of performance enhancing drug use surfaced. He drew 59.5 percent of the vote in his most recent appearance on the writers’ ballot for Cooperstown. I suspect he will reach the necessary 75 percent sometime in his remaining three years of eligibility. The ballot just isn’t that strong over the next few years.

Looking at the names below, Curt Schilling is probably moving toward enshrinement. I’m struck by the parity between Kevin Brown and Jim Kaat. I’m a little bummed to see Wes Ferrell and Rick Reuschel anchoring the list, though it’s not stunning. I put Ferrell and Reuschel in the survey partly in tribute to my friend and fellow baseball researcher Adam Darowski, who has advocated heavily for their induction in recent years, though each has a nuanced case that could be overlooked in a quick survey. That said, if I field this again in the future, I’ll probably sub in Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer for Ferrell and Reuschel.

I should add that unlike most of the other positions in this survey, it was difficult to get the list of pitchers down to 10 names. I contemplated going 15 names just for pitchers, but thought it would look too out of sync with the rest of the survey. That said, here are some names I wanted to put in but didn’t have space for this time: Verlander, Johan Santana, Dave Stieb, Andy Pettitte, Orel Hershiser, and Dwight Gooden.

For anyone who cares, here’s a more detailed breakdown of the votes each pitcher received for each ranking.

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Brown	14	23	91	55	52	53	48	39	29	21
Clemens	313	29	10	4	2	7	5	2	15	38
Cone	2	23	43	63	87	72	62	46	21	6
Ferrell	2	5	6	30	28	46	59	79	83	87
John	10	35	54	52	68	51	48	45	48	14
Kaat	21	33	44	41	42	53	50	52	52	37
Reuschel	2	1	12	22	21	37	43	81	88	118
Sabathia	8	34	72	56	55	42	53	36	32	37
Schilling	41	211	42	38	12	13	10	10	22	26
Tiant	12	31	51	64	58	51	47	35	35	41
Total	425	425	425	425	425	425	425	425	425	425

Qualtrics allows more sophisticated functionality. While I was limited through my free account to 10 questions and thus chose to forgo demographic questions to get the maximum amount of data, it is possible to use filters to show how certain voters voted. I’ll be diving into the filters more as I post about the results of other positions, but for now, here are a few fun ones:

• The 41 voters who ranked Schilling first ranked Clemens eighth-worst among the field, ahead of only Wes Ferrell and Rick Reuschel, with an average ranking for Clemens of 7.00.
• The 38 voters who gave Roger Clemens a ranking of 10 ranked Curt Schilling top, at 3.63 on average, followed by Tommy John at 4.18, and Luis Tiant at 4.24. I’m struck again by the level of parity in this survey after Clemens. Were there a clear consensus, someone would be closer to 1 here.
• The 43 voters who ranked Tommy John, Jim Kaat, or Luis Tiant top overall gave Clemens an average ranking of 6.74, again ahead of only Ferrell and Reuschel.

I’ll get into comparisons for Clemens with some of the other controversial candidates in this survey (Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, Shoeless Joe Jackson, and Pete Rose) as I get to those results posts. There are some interesting findings to highlight along these lines as we get there.

That said, look for the results for catchers tomorrow. I’ll add in hyperlinks for each subsequent post, allowing anyone who happens upon this post later to easily be able to navigate between the different positions.

Back in 2010, I started a semi-annual exercise here. Four times over the course of four years, I had people vote on the 50 best players not in the Baseball Hall of Fame. It was a fun exercise, though I eventually stopped doing it for a few reasons. Mostly, the effort seemed like it was starting to run its course creatively and in terms of research value for the amount of work involved.

Lately, though, I’ve been getting the urge to run another poll. Accordingly, I’ve created a survey which draws on my past efforts, but asks a slightly different question.

Essentially, when people talk about Cooperstown and the players not enshrined, they’ll sometimes say that one player should be enshrined but not before another. The following survey goes position by position and asks people to rank 10 players from most-deserving to least-deserving of induction. As with previous polls I’ve done, banned players Shoeless Joe Jackson and Pete Rose are here; so are some active and recently-retired folks.

For anyone interested, a link to the poll is here, via the survey website Qualtrics.

I’ll keep the survey open through the end of the month and look to publish results in early August. Please feel free to contact me with any questions or feedback via thewomack@gmail.com. Have fun voting!

Baseball Hall of Fame Induction Weekend is a few days away, with near-unanimous selection Ken Griffey Jr., as well as Mike Piazza, set to join Cooperstown. By stats, each ranks close to being an inner circle Hall of Famer.

Not every selection in Hall of Fame history has been stellar, though. ForSporting News, I have a new piece ranking the 25 worst Baseball Hall of Fame selections ever.

I went one step further than many people go with these lists. First, I included managers, umpires, and executives. I also suggested alternative selections who were eligible at the time.

I’ve resisted doing one of these lists for several years, as it’s a little more negative than I typically like to go.  As my friend Adam Darowski just tweeted:

@grahamdude Still this is a hard thing to write. I don’t like advocating that players were “bad” choices, rather celebrating the overlooked.

— Adam Darowski (@baseballtwit) July 20, 2016

Right there with you, Adam. That said, I admit I enjoyed writing this list more than I expected to.

It’s been a couple of weeks since I posted here, which means a couple new Sporting News columns from me.

First, one that’s fairly innocuous. I wrote about Andrew McCutchen’s budding Hall of Fame case and if a trade might help it.

Second, I wrote about Curt Flood’s Hall of Fame case. Specifically, I think it’s a little overrated because of the historical misconceptions about Flood’s contributions to baseball’s labor movement, misconceptions that persist to this day.

Flood’s son has been pummeling me on Twitter since the story went live, accusing me of being paid to write a hit piece. I’d of course never take money from anywhere but a publication to write a journalistic story. But I’m curious to hear if anyone here agrees with the rest of what Flood’s son said.

It’s Tuesday, which means my latest edition of “Cooperstown Chances” is out for Sporting News. I also realize I forgot to share last week’s column here, so I’m going to drop two links.

First, I wrote about Ichiro Suzuki, who isn’t the “real” hit king now but will be an easy Hall of Famer five years after he retires. I didn’t spend too much time focusing on this in my piece. The real thrust of what I wrote about: a few better players will be lucky to draw 1/10th the votes that Ichiro does.

Meanwhile, I wrote last week about Joey Votto, who ranks as one of the better first basemen in baseball history through his first nine seasons. However, it’s critical Votto continue to rebound from his slump this season if he wants to keep his Hall of Fame hopes alive.

As always, feedback’s welcome and appreciated. Thanks for reading.