Today, we have the third and final part of my series looking at the thirty best players who have been totally overlooked by the Hall of Fame's Veterans Committee process. It's a direct continuation of the first two parts, which can be found here and here. Also, if you'd like to see my chart summarizing Veterans Committee ballots since 2000, that can be found here, with the annotation notes: non-player candidates are highlighted in red (Joe Torre gets an off-red color, since his first few ballot appearances were as a player), each column is a different year’s VC ballot, and X’s show seasons that they were nominees. Yellow means a candidate was inducted that year (with subsequent years blacked out), green means the player hadn’t been retired long enough for VC consideration, and light blue is years where the candidate wasn’t up for consideration (for example, how they currently consider certain eras at a time).
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Bob Caruthers (SP/OF, 59.6 WAR)
If you’ve read any of my Hall snubs coverage in the past (or similar articles from other writers), you might be familiar with Wes Ferrell, the pitcher from the 1930s who could hit like a position player. Ferrell has had plenty of VC ballots (including 6 since 2000), but the 1880s equivalent Bob Caruthers (who even finished within half a Win of Ferrell’s career total) has not. His career, like many of the other 1800s pitchers I’ve covered, was relatively short, at ten years exactly, and he did pitch in fewer games than most of them. He makes up for some of that by being an actually good hitter, though, with a career 134 OPS+ to go with his 122 ERA+. I don’t know if I’d put him ahead of Ferrell, but that certainly is an interesting narrative hook that puts him ahead of some of the other 1800s pitchers I’ve touched on so far.
Sherry Magee (LF, 59.4 WAR) #
Magee had some bad luck in building a Hall of Fame narrative. He was one of the better offensive players of the deadball era, but retired in 1919, the year before Babe Ruth went to the Yankees, hit 54 home runs, and rewired how everyone thought about offense in baseball. He played for mostly mediocre teams, primarily the 1900s-1910s Phillies, but was dealt away in 1915, at which point the Phillies made a surprise pennant win. He finally won a World Series as a part-time player on the Reds in 1919, but that was probably the only World Series where the losing team is more famous than the winner. Magee had been retired for a bit when the Hall of Fame opened, but wasn’t really old enough to qualify for early attempts at Old Timers Committees. He made a handful of BBWAA ballots in the early years (which featured very different rules), but never got more than 1% of the vote, as he was already something of a relic from a different era. Magee did make the pre-1943 ballot of the 2009 Veterans Committee induction, where he got 3 of the required 12 votes, but did not make the 2013 or 2016 ballots.
Bret Saberhagen (SP, 58.9 WAR)
I feel like I’ve mentioned this here repeatedly, but I think Saberhagen fits neatly within the Hall’s tradition of high-peak stars, and he (along with Cone) should be one of the first names the VC considers in their effort to elect more starting pitchers. Despite his two Cy Young Awards, Saberhagen was a one-and-done candidate on the BBWAA ballot, getting only 1.3% of the votes back in 2007. That was also Orel Hershiser’s second year on the ballot, and he fell below 5% as well, although he’s made the Today’s Game ballot both times he’s been eligible. I’m really not sure what’s the disparity between those two in terms of Hall consideration, let alone the disparities between Cy Young winners like them and MVP winners like, say, Don Mattingly and Dale Murphy, who hung around the ballot for full terms. There’s a lot around the margins of Hall voting that gets confusing when you look at it too closely.
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Showing posts with label Jimmy Wynn. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jimmy Wynn. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 17, 2021
Friday, June 19, 2020
Astros Dream Draft Fantasy Tournament
Over at The Crawfish Boxes, we're making the best of a bad situation by running an All-Time Astros Fantasy Draft and Tournament. We held a draft where every player in franchise history (with two or more seasons on the team) was eligible, and we tried to make the best team possible. The best team was up for discussion, fan voting, and Out of the Park simulations. The full series is over there and still in progress, but I wanted to re-post my team here, as well as my reasoning:
Friday, December 6, 2019
Jimmy Wynn Might Be the Most Overlooked Player In Hall of Fame History, and He Deserves Second Look
Once again, this Hall of Fame piece is also up over at The Crawfish Boxes!
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Next week at the Winter Meetings, in addition to any trades or free agent signings, the sixteen players, executives, and historians representing the Veterans Committee will convene and make their selections for the Class of 2020. I've already written about the people on the ballot, as well as the people doing the voting, and there's not much to add there; we'll probably see one player receive the twelve votes needed to reach 75% and merit induction, with the possibility of a second remaining. If you're curious who's most likely, that's all in those two articles.
I'd like to go in a different direction today, though, and focus on a player who's not on the ballot this year. In fact, he's never appeared on any Veterans Committee ballot, despite being eligible for it for over twenty years now, probably in part because he picked up no votes in his lone appearance on the BBWAA ballot. That decision was a glaring oversight at the time, and it's only become a bigger one following the advancements we've seen in player evaluations since his career ended in 1977.
I'm talking, of course, about early Astros star center fielder Jimmy Wynn. Initially drafted by the Cincinnati Reds in 1962, Wynn was taken that winter by the then-Colt .45s in the first-year player draft and made his major league debut the following year at the age of 21, beginning his eleven-year tenure in Houston. He also earned the nickname "The Toy Cannon" along the way, starting the Astros' tradition of under-sized stars (although Wynn was 5' 10", his power wound up being the thing that surprised people).
When he was finally traded to the Dodgers in December 1973, he was the franchise leader in most counting stats, including homers (223, no one else had even 100), hits (1291, no one else had managed 950), and 719 RBI (nearly 250 ahead of second place). He would eventually lose most of those titles, but some of them took a while (notably, he had the home run title until Jeff Bagwell finally passed him in 1999), and his name is still all over the franchise leader boards.
His fifteen season career ended with some pretty decent stats, although it's not difficult to see why voters didn't keep him on the ballot: 1665 hits, 291 homers, 964 RBI, 225 stolen bases, and a .250 batting average. Why, then, did his profile rise in the years since his retirement, with high profile fans like Bill James advocating him for Cooperstown? James even went as far as to call him one of the ten-best center fielders of all-time in his Historical Abstracts, and although that's a designation that has almost certainly changed over the years, James also had Wynn as one of the most underrated players of the 1960s. What did the Cooperstown voters miss in his case, and why does he deserve a look from the Veterans Committee.
Basically, every change in the understanding of baseball statistics has swung in Wynn's favor. Appreciation for reaching base highlighted Jim's incredible batting eye, with 1224 walks bringing his career OBP up to an impressive .366.
Understanding of offensive contexts was another big development. As it turned out, playing in the 1960s, the worst offensive context since the deadball era, and having your home games in a pitcher's park like the Astrodome will do a number on your superficial stats. Things like OPS+, which control for that context, showed that Jimmy was actually well above the rest of his peers. OPS+ puts him at 129, while wRC+ has him slightly better at 130.
There was the greater understanding of positional context. Fans had long known that some positions were more difficult to play than others, but it mostly reserved for the extremes rather than the finer differences. But, for instance, it mattered that The Toy Cannon was a center fielder, and not just a general outfielder, and it actually mattered a lot; people began to appreciate things like that.
For instance, on it’s own, his 129 OPS+ may not have stood out all that much, but compared just to other center fielders? That ties him for 20th all-time (at a position where there are still only 19 Hall of Famers), and looks even better when you realize that two of the players ahead of him are still active, and another two played less than 1000 games in their career. Put another way, the center fielders who hit better than Wynn while accruing more plate appearances is short and impressive: Mickey Mantle, Ty Cobb, Tris Speaker, Willie Mays, Duke Snider, and Ken Griffey, Jr.
And of course, tying together all of that brings us to WAR, and its various spinoffs, like Wins Above Average or the more Hall-centric spinoffs like JAWS and Hall Rating (both of which take into account a player’s peak and career values). All of those were meant to quantify those underappreciated aspects and give them the same type of attention that home runs or RBI got, and it turns out, that helps out Wynn a lot! Baseball-Reference’s version of WAR puts Jim at eighteenth all-time for center fielders, at 55.9.
And the other methods like him even more: since Wynn’s career was rather brief (fifteen seasons, just twelve with more than 100 games played), he had a pretty high peak to be able to reach nearly 56 Wins. Three times, Wynn reached 7.0 or more WAR, with another three above 5.0. Wins Above Average, which compares players to Average, 2-Win players rather than replacement level ones, puts him sixteenth among center fielders with 28.8 Wins. JAWS rates him seventeenth (49.6), while Hall Rating puts him fifteenth (110, or 10% better than a borderline Hall of Famer).
Maybe that wasn’t good enough for the BBWAA, seeing as their inductees in center have looked more like Ken Griffey and Joe DiMaggio. But Wynn is well past that stage, since the Veterans Committee would be selecting him, and being better than somewhere between 40 to 50% of the inductees at your position seems like it should be the type of thing to attention from a committee designed to recognize overlooked players.
Given that Jimmy Wynn’s career spanned the 1960s and ‘70s, I could see either of the Golden Days or Modern Baseball committees being responsible for discussing his candidacy. That would mean he would either be up next year (the 2021 ballot, which will be announced in November 2020) or two years after that. Hopefully, he at least attracts some attention the next time he’s up for nomination, as it would be great to see him finally get a vote for Cooperstown, at the very least. He deserves more than that, but getting his merits discussed would at least be a first step in the right direction.
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Next week at the Winter Meetings, in addition to any trades or free agent signings, the sixteen players, executives, and historians representing the Veterans Committee will convene and make their selections for the Class of 2020. I've already written about the people on the ballot, as well as the people doing the voting, and there's not much to add there; we'll probably see one player receive the twelve votes needed to reach 75% and merit induction, with the possibility of a second remaining. If you're curious who's most likely, that's all in those two articles.
I'd like to go in a different direction today, though, and focus on a player who's not on the ballot this year. In fact, he's never appeared on any Veterans Committee ballot, despite being eligible for it for over twenty years now, probably in part because he picked up no votes in his lone appearance on the BBWAA ballot. That decision was a glaring oversight at the time, and it's only become a bigger one following the advancements we've seen in player evaluations since his career ended in 1977.
I'm talking, of course, about early Astros star center fielder Jimmy Wynn. Initially drafted by the Cincinnati Reds in 1962, Wynn was taken that winter by the then-Colt .45s in the first-year player draft and made his major league debut the following year at the age of 21, beginning his eleven-year tenure in Houston. He also earned the nickname "The Toy Cannon" along the way, starting the Astros' tradition of under-sized stars (although Wynn was 5' 10", his power wound up being the thing that surprised people).
When he was finally traded to the Dodgers in December 1973, he was the franchise leader in most counting stats, including homers (223, no one else had even 100), hits (1291, no one else had managed 950), and 719 RBI (nearly 250 ahead of second place). He would eventually lose most of those titles, but some of them took a while (notably, he had the home run title until Jeff Bagwell finally passed him in 1999), and his name is still all over the franchise leader boards.
His fifteen season career ended with some pretty decent stats, although it's not difficult to see why voters didn't keep him on the ballot: 1665 hits, 291 homers, 964 RBI, 225 stolen bases, and a .250 batting average. Why, then, did his profile rise in the years since his retirement, with high profile fans like Bill James advocating him for Cooperstown? James even went as far as to call him one of the ten-best center fielders of all-time in his Historical Abstracts, and although that's a designation that has almost certainly changed over the years, James also had Wynn as one of the most underrated players of the 1960s. What did the Cooperstown voters miss in his case, and why does he deserve a look from the Veterans Committee.
Basically, every change in the understanding of baseball statistics has swung in Wynn's favor. Appreciation for reaching base highlighted Jim's incredible batting eye, with 1224 walks bringing his career OBP up to an impressive .366.
Understanding of offensive contexts was another big development. As it turned out, playing in the 1960s, the worst offensive context since the deadball era, and having your home games in a pitcher's park like the Astrodome will do a number on your superficial stats. Things like OPS+, which control for that context, showed that Jimmy was actually well above the rest of his peers. OPS+ puts him at 129, while wRC+ has him slightly better at 130.
There was the greater understanding of positional context. Fans had long known that some positions were more difficult to play than others, but it mostly reserved for the extremes rather than the finer differences. But, for instance, it mattered that The Toy Cannon was a center fielder, and not just a general outfielder, and it actually mattered a lot; people began to appreciate things like that.
For instance, on it’s own, his 129 OPS+ may not have stood out all that much, but compared just to other center fielders? That ties him for 20th all-time (at a position where there are still only 19 Hall of Famers), and looks even better when you realize that two of the players ahead of him are still active, and another two played less than 1000 games in their career. Put another way, the center fielders who hit better than Wynn while accruing more plate appearances is short and impressive: Mickey Mantle, Ty Cobb, Tris Speaker, Willie Mays, Duke Snider, and Ken Griffey, Jr.
And of course, tying together all of that brings us to WAR, and its various spinoffs, like Wins Above Average or the more Hall-centric spinoffs like JAWS and Hall Rating (both of which take into account a player’s peak and career values). All of those were meant to quantify those underappreciated aspects and give them the same type of attention that home runs or RBI got, and it turns out, that helps out Wynn a lot! Baseball-Reference’s version of WAR puts Jim at eighteenth all-time for center fielders, at 55.9.
And the other methods like him even more: since Wynn’s career was rather brief (fifteen seasons, just twelve with more than 100 games played), he had a pretty high peak to be able to reach nearly 56 Wins. Three times, Wynn reached 7.0 or more WAR, with another three above 5.0. Wins Above Average, which compares players to Average, 2-Win players rather than replacement level ones, puts him sixteenth among center fielders with 28.8 Wins. JAWS rates him seventeenth (49.6), while Hall Rating puts him fifteenth (110, or 10% better than a borderline Hall of Famer).
Maybe that wasn’t good enough for the BBWAA, seeing as their inductees in center have looked more like Ken Griffey and Joe DiMaggio. But Wynn is well past that stage, since the Veterans Committee would be selecting him, and being better than somewhere between 40 to 50% of the inductees at your position seems like it should be the type of thing to attention from a committee designed to recognize overlooked players.
Given that Jimmy Wynn’s career spanned the 1960s and ‘70s, I could see either of the Golden Days or Modern Baseball committees being responsible for discussing his candidacy. That would mean he would either be up next year (the 2021 ballot, which will be announced in November 2020) or two years after that. Hopefully, he at least attracts some attention the next time he’s up for nomination, as it would be great to see him finally get a vote for Cooperstown, at the very least. He deserves more than that, but getting his merits discussed would at least be a first step in the right direction.
Thursday, December 27, 2012
50 Best Players Not in the Hall of Fame 2012, Part 5
For the second year, I’m participating in Baseball Past and Present’s 50 Best Players Not in the Hall of Fame project. First, I covered players still on the ballot. Then, I started on to the backlog of candidates. He’s the final part of the older candidates. Each player is listed with their teams (in order of games played), position, and Hall Rating from the Hall of Stats (which works similar to OPS+; 100 is the baseline for a Hall of Famer).
Ted Simmons, Cardinals/Brewers/Braves, C, 111-Catchers in general are underrated in the Hall, as previously mentioned. Even considering that, though, the voters passing on Simmons is a little odd. His 2472 hits are second most for a catcher, behind only Ivan Rodriguez (meaning he was number one when he retired). He’s tenth among catchers in home runs with 248 (and Mike Piazza, Ivan Rodriguez, Jorge Posada, and Javy Lopez all started after he retired, meaning he was even higher up on the list when he first hit the Hall ballot), and second in doubles with 483 (again, only behind Ivan).
I was kind of surprised to see his Hall Rating at only 111. However, 1) that still puts him in a tie for eleventh all-time among catchers; and 2) he hung on too long. His final fives seasons were pretty bad (-2.9 bWAR and -1.4 fWAR). If he had just quit after 1983, his Hall rating would probably have gone up to something like 137 (if my math is correct), squarely between Mike Piazza and Yogi Berra. Not to say that those seasons shouldn’t count, but, at the same time, Yogi Berra was a second-ballot Hall of Famer, and Piazza might be a first balloter. If they tacked on three or four more seasons with the Mets and A’s (respectively) like the ones they had at the end of their real careers, would that have suddenly invalidated their entire Hall cases? At the very least, I think there’s definitely room in Cooperstown for Simmons. I suppose you get overlooked as a catcher when your career overlaps with Johnny Bench's.
For his career, Simmons was worth 46.7 bWAR and 61.2 fWAR.
Ted Simmons, Cardinals/Brewers/Braves, C, 111-Catchers in general are underrated in the Hall, as previously mentioned. Even considering that, though, the voters passing on Simmons is a little odd. His 2472 hits are second most for a catcher, behind only Ivan Rodriguez (meaning he was number one when he retired). He’s tenth among catchers in home runs with 248 (and Mike Piazza, Ivan Rodriguez, Jorge Posada, and Javy Lopez all started after he retired, meaning he was even higher up on the list when he first hit the Hall ballot), and second in doubles with 483 (again, only behind Ivan).
I was kind of surprised to see his Hall Rating at only 111. However, 1) that still puts him in a tie for eleventh all-time among catchers; and 2) he hung on too long. His final fives seasons were pretty bad (-2.9 bWAR and -1.4 fWAR). If he had just quit after 1983, his Hall rating would probably have gone up to something like 137 (if my math is correct), squarely between Mike Piazza and Yogi Berra. Not to say that those seasons shouldn’t count, but, at the same time, Yogi Berra was a second-ballot Hall of Famer, and Piazza might be a first balloter. If they tacked on three or four more seasons with the Mets and A’s (respectively) like the ones they had at the end of their real careers, would that have suddenly invalidated their entire Hall cases? At the very least, I think there’s definitely room in Cooperstown for Simmons. I suppose you get overlooked as a catcher when your career overlaps with Johnny Bench's.
For his career, Simmons was worth 46.7 bWAR and 61.2 fWAR.
Monday, January 9, 2012
50 Best Players Not in the Hall of Fame Ballot Explanations, Part 4
To see the early portions of my ballot: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
Round 2
Ross Barnes, Red Stockings (NA)/White Stockings/Reds/Red Stockings (NL), 2B/SS - Ross Barnes had a very short career; so short that, if he were to retire today, he actually wouldn’t make the ballot. He only played 9 seasons. In addition, he never played more than 78 games in a season. However, to say that the game was very different when Barnes played would be an understatement. Barnes played from 1871-1881 (taking 1878 and 1880 off), and only played in 499 games. The seasons were much shorter in the 1870s, though. For example, Teixeira also has nine seasons under his belt, but those nine seasons have equaled 1374 games. Rate stats do a better job of conveying just how dominant Barnes was; he had an OPS+ of 168. Also, despite his very short playing time, he managed to get 33.1 bWAR and 30.0 fWAR.
Buddy Bell, Indians/Rangers/Reds/Astros, 3B - You know that group of four deserving third basemen I mentioned in Part 2? The one with Sal Bando, Darrell Evans, Graig Nettles, and one mystery person in that got added in my second round of additions? Well, Buddy Bell should probably get added to that group; for some reason, I didn’t automatically think of him as a Hall of Famer, but he compares to that quartet quite well. Like the others, he was very well-rounded at a difficult position; the difference is that more of Bell’s value came from his glove. Both Fangraphs and Baseball-Reference put him at over 17.5 wins through his fielding alone. That makes up for his .279/.341/.406 line and 109 OPS+ (lower than the other four mentioned third basemen). Overall, Fangraphs has him at 66.6 WAR, while B-R puts him at 60.8, both of which put him in good standing (for reference, both figures but him on the same level as first-ballot pick Dave Winfield).
Ken Boyer, Cardinals/Mets/Dodgers/White Sox, 3B - Ken Boyer was actually the last member of the quartet I had in mind. I scrutinized him a little more, as he came up on the Veteran’s Committee ballot this year. However, I determined that third base is underrated enough and all five third basemen mentioned so far are good enough that all of them could be added to the Hall while raising it’s standards. Again, Boyer was a third baseman in the “do everything well” vein, posting a 116 OPS+ while saving over 70 runs (worth over 7 wins) with his glove. The difference is that most of Boyer’s value came over a shorter peak rather than a long, spread out career. He played for roughly 15 seasons, so his 58.4 bWAR and 63.3 fWAR look underwhelming. However, going by weighted WAR (wWAR), which gives extra credit for stronger peaks, Boyer comes in with a solid 87.0, equal with Ozzie Smith and better than Hall members like Harmon Killebrew, Jimmy Collins, and Willie Stargell.
Eddie Cicotte, White Sox/Red Sox/Tigers, P - It’s actually kind of easy to make a case for Cicotte. In fourteen seasons, he had a 209-148 record, a 2.38 ERA, a 123 ERA+, 3226 innings pitched, 49.7 bWAR, etc. He’s not in because he was one of those meddling Black Sox. I’ve made my case on Shoeless Joe, and that applies here as well: at the very least, Cicotte’s been dead since before the 1970s, and the Hall is losing more at this point keeping him out than he is by being kept out.
Buddy Bell, Indians/Rangers/Reds/Astros, 3B - You know that group of four deserving third basemen I mentioned in Part 2? The one with Sal Bando, Darrell Evans, Graig Nettles, and one mystery person in that got added in my second round of additions? Well, Buddy Bell should probably get added to that group; for some reason, I didn’t automatically think of him as a Hall of Famer, but he compares to that quartet quite well. Like the others, he was very well-rounded at a difficult position; the difference is that more of Bell’s value came from his glove. Both Fangraphs and Baseball-Reference put him at over 17.5 wins through his fielding alone. That makes up for his .279/.341/.406 line and 109 OPS+ (lower than the other four mentioned third basemen). Overall, Fangraphs has him at 66.6 WAR, while B-R puts him at 60.8, both of which put him in good standing (for reference, both figures but him on the same level as first-ballot pick Dave Winfield).
Ken Boyer, Cardinals/Mets/Dodgers/White Sox, 3B - Ken Boyer was actually the last member of the quartet I had in mind. I scrutinized him a little more, as he came up on the Veteran’s Committee ballot this year. However, I determined that third base is underrated enough and all five third basemen mentioned so far are good enough that all of them could be added to the Hall while raising it’s standards. Again, Boyer was a third baseman in the “do everything well” vein, posting a 116 OPS+ while saving over 70 runs (worth over 7 wins) with his glove. The difference is that most of Boyer’s value came over a shorter peak rather than a long, spread out career. He played for roughly 15 seasons, so his 58.4 bWAR and 63.3 fWAR look underwhelming. However, going by weighted WAR (wWAR), which gives extra credit for stronger peaks, Boyer comes in with a solid 87.0, equal with Ozzie Smith and better than Hall members like Harmon Killebrew, Jimmy Collins, and Willie Stargell.
Eddie Cicotte, White Sox/Red Sox/Tigers, P - It’s actually kind of easy to make a case for Cicotte. In fourteen seasons, he had a 209-148 record, a 2.38 ERA, a 123 ERA+, 3226 innings pitched, 49.7 bWAR, etc. He’s not in because he was one of those meddling Black Sox. I’ve made my case on Shoeless Joe, and that applies here as well: at the very least, Cicotte’s been dead since before the 1970s, and the Hall is losing more at this point keeping him out than he is by being kept out.
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