The Best Players Without a Retired Number, by Number

Jonah Keri posted something the other day over at CBS Sports about the best players to wear each uniform number. It made me think of an idea I had been kicking around for a while (read: had a filled-out spreadsheet sitting open on my desktop for months), the “Best Players Without a Retired Number, by Number” list, where I basically try and guess the best retired number candidates for each uniform number. This seemed like as good of an excuse as any to see how that experiment would go, so let’s dive right in.

Out of the Park Baseball 16 and the 1996 Cleveland Indians

Once again, this year, I’ve been given the chance to play Out of the Park Baseball’s new edition and write about it. This year’s edition is another wonderful entry in the series-I feel like it’s definitely the smartest entry in the series yet, at least, with computer teams acting closer and closer to real people. It certainly made my yearly alternate-history run a lot more interesting, at least. So what alternate baseball history did it let me try out this time?

As you may or may not be aware, the city of Cleveland just saw its most recent best hope for a title in five decades end. Maybe the Indians can turn it around and take the title this year, but realistically, it seems that the city’s chances at a title will have to wait until 2016. One thing that fascinates me about this drought, though, is the presence of the 1990s Indians. That group has to be the closest thing a baseball team can be to a dynasty without actually winning anything. From 1994 to 2001, they averaged a .578 winning percentage (about 93 and a half wins over a full season), peaking with a .644 mark in 1995. They made the playoffs six out of seven times (since 1994 was a strike year) and won two pennants. They had a core that included peak play from Jim Thome, Manny Ramirez, Kenny Lofton, Omar Vizquel, Roberto Alomar, and Albert Belle, all of whom have varying degrees of cases for the Hall of Fame. They couldn’t even find a spot for future inner-circle Hall of Pretty Great player Brian Giles because they were just too deep.

But they couldn’t capture that elusive title. Which is why I’m giving them a chance to go back and claim it. I’m taking control of the Indians starting in 1995, and seeing if I can guide them to their first World Series win since 1948.

BBA Hall of Fame Ballot, 2012

My Hall of Fame ballot for the Baseball Bloggers Alliance vote is due soon, and since I just covered the 50 Best Players Not in the Hall, it seemed like a good time to continue on the topic. Heck, I even had an entire post just about the players on this year’s ballot. But that brings up an important question:

In my article, I had 14 players from this year’s ballot listed as worthy. The "real" voters only get 10 spaces to vote, though. It’s a stupid rule, but it still applies. So, if I were voting for the BBWAA instead of the BBA, who would I cut?

50 Best Players Not in the Hall of Fame 2012

You might remember that last year, I participated in Baseball Past and Present’s 50 Best Players Not in the Hall of Fame. This year, Graham Womack is running the project again, and I once again decided to participate. The process was much easier this year, as I had last year’s list to work off of. However, this year’s influx of candidates did mean that I needed to do some difficult rearranging.

And that seems like the best place to start. There were fourteen players on this year’s ballot that I count among the 50 best players not in Cooperstown, seven of them new, as well as two more that made the Veterans Committee ballot. And again, I would support the induction of all 50 players that I named.

So, without further ado (Players are listed with their teams by games played, their position, and their Hall Rating* from the Hall of Stats, with the new players on the ballot italicized):

*The Hall Rating uses Wins Above Replacement and Wins Above Average from Baseball-Reference to determine a player’s worthiness. The Hall Rating is a combination of the two, on a scale like OPS+. 100 is the Hall minimum, 110 represents 10% than the minimum, and so on. It’s more for the sake of quick comparison. All Hall Ratings have been updated to reflect the induction of Deacon White.

Who Are the Hall of Famers Playing Today? 2006, Part 1

So, last time, we established that there are likely 37 future members of the Hall of Fame playing the game of baseball at any time. Not only that, though, but there might be even more than that who deserve to go in, possibly 45 total. Or 51. Or 64. We never really got a super obvious answer. So, what I decided is; what would 37 active players headed for the Hall of Fame look like? Or 45? And so on.

I was going to cover 2012, but for various reasons, I decided it would be better to go back and look at a past season first. Why? Because that 37 can (and frequently does) include players who are just starting their careers. If we go back to, say, 2006, that gives us six years to at least take a stab at estimating who’s a Hall candidate while keeping a lot of current players. That way, when we move forward to 2012, we have a basis to build off. On top of that, it’ll give us a look at the next few Hall ballots; the 2012 ballot included players who last played in 2006.

I really don’t have a super scientific method for this process, but that’s okay, because neither does the Hall’s voting body. So, I guess I’ll just start listing players, and stop to explain when it’s necessary. There isn’t really any order to this list, so forgive me if it jumps around at all.

Fighting Tomorrow's Ignorance Now 2

The Hall of Fame season got me all worked up, due to the high quantities of misconceptions, confusions, and outright errors that got thrown around as facts. And I know that it will happen next year, as well. Curt Schilling isn’t the only player in next year’s class that I foresee being unfairly written off too quickly, though.

As of right now, I would bet money that Kenny Lofton receives less than 5% of the vote next year and falls off of the ballot for 2014, and that would be a huge shame. I think the guy is a Hall of Famer; even if you don’t, I think you’ll at least admit that he deserves to stick around for a few ballots and have his case debated some.

For his career, Lofton got 2428 hits and held a .299 batting average, both respectable figures. He was known for his speed too, and totaled 622 steals in his career at an 80% success rate, both good marks. In fact, he’s fifteenth all-time in steals. Really, all of this is impressive, but it’s very easy to ask what makes him stand out so far; that’s going to be the argument against Lofton, that he doesn’t stand out.

Which just isn’t true. All of this is just scratching the surface on his true value. For example, he walked 945 times in addition to his hits, giving him a .372 OBP. He also carried a decent slugging percentage of .423. Together, those give him a 107 OPS+, which sounds good, but not great. However, this doesn’t account for his base running, which we established is well above average.

Also, he translated that speed into superb fielding skills; both Fangraphs and Baseball-Reference rate him at an 11.5 win defender over his career, which makes him one of the elite fielders of all-time (for example, he’s tied for 38th all-time in total zone rating, just for the sake reference). Also not taken into account is his position, center fielder, which is one of the harder positions to play on the diamond. This isn’t to say it’s as hard as catcher or shortstop, but it’s on par with third base in difficultly and closer to second base than right field. So, Lofton was an above average hitter and exceptional fielder and runner at a difficult position.

All of this translates to 65.3 bWAR and 66.3 fWAR, both well inside the normal boundaries of Cooperstown. Also, it’s worth noting that neither method completely accounts for base running; fWAR tries, but they only have data going back to 2002, meaning we’re missing more or less all of Lofton’s prime. He was worth positive value on the bases up until he retired (over a win, in fact), so by adding his 1991 through 2001 numbers can only increase his value.

This may make you very skeptical, but consider it this way: name every center fielder better than Kenny Lofton. Going by Fangraph’s sorting tool, Lofton is placed sixteenth all-time at the position. Those ahead of him are: Ty Cobb, Willie Mays, Tris Speaker, Mickey Mantle, Joe DiMaggio, and Ken Griffey, Jr. (who are all sort of on their own tier); Al Simmons, Robin Yount, and Reggie Smith (all of whom spent more time at other positions); and then there’s sort of second tier, which includes Duke Snider, Billy Hamilton, Jim Edmonds, Andruw Jones (thanks to his legendary fielding), Richie Ashburn, Max Carey, and Lofton.* So, that means Lofton can roughly be put somewhere between 7th and 13th all-time.

*As of right now, Carlos Beltran stands one more season like last year from joining this group too.
This may not seem like a great case for induction...until you realize that there are 24 center fielders in the Hall of Fame. So, worst case scenario, you count both Robin Yount and Reggie Smith as center fielders despite their time being spent 50/50 at other positions AND you assume Lofton is the worst of the second tier (which I doubt), he’s still 15th all time, at a position with 24 Hall of Famers. More realistically, he’s better than something like half of the people at his position in the Hall.*

*Again, let’s say worst case scenario is true and he’s 15th. Of the 14 center fielders who would rank above him, 10 are currently enshrined, so saying he’s better than half of the Hall of Fame center fielders is indeed very realistic.

I realize this second half has mostly been more subjective arguments, but I still feel safe saying that Kenny Lofton should be in elected. I can’t see any major leaps in my reasoning, and Lofton still definitely rates better than most enshrined center fielders, possibly even top ten at his position all-time. If that doesn’t seem like serious Hall credentials, then I don’t know what is.

Retired Numbers Series: Cleveland Indians

While looking for the next team to cover in the Retired Numbers Series, I noticed something interesting about the Indians. The team has six retired numbers. Among the sixteen original teams (the eight AL and eight NL teams around in 1901), only four teams have six or fewer retired numbers. And the other three (the Orioles, Twins, and Athletics) all spent significant portions of their history in other cities.

Is this low number for the Indians the result of higher standards, a lack of good candidates, or something else? And does it look like they’ll add to this total any time soon?


Notes on the Numbers
Some quick notes on the stats: the two most prominent stats I used are similarly named. Both are called WAR, or Wins Above Replacement. They both try to account for every part of a player’s game, including, but not limited to: offense, defense, position, and playing time. So, it is a counting stat, like hits or home runs (with the small difference that bad seasons can actually decrease your WAR, if you are worse than a replacement player). WAR credits a player with how many wins they have provided to their team. They aren’t perfect, but for my purposes (a single number showing roughly how good a player has been), they work perfectly.

There are two major sites that provide WAR, Baseball-Reference (henceforth called bWAR) and Fangraphs (fWAR). The two are mostly the same, with the biggest difference coming from the different fielding stats the two use. Fangraphs has a fairly good summary of what makes up WAR and how it is calculated (for those wanting a more general summary, the introduction works just fine). Pitching is slightly different: Fangraphs’ WAR for pitchers only goes back to 1974, so for my purposes, I stuck to just bWAR for them.