2019 World Series Trivia: Best Active Players Without a World Series

I had this year's version ready to go right when the series ended: Can You Name the Best Active Players Without a World Series, 2019 Edition? Spoilers below the break for some very brief discussion.

The Best Players Without a World Series, 2014 Edition

As I wrote a few weeks ago, this offseason looks like it might be one of the best drought-busters in recent memory. That got me thinking, though, specifically about an article I wrote last year (and the accompanying Sporcle quiz). Who are the best active players without a World Series win? Does the quantity of new teams in the mix for the World Series mean that a similar number of titleless players will be appearing in the Fall Classic this year?

I’ll probably make another quiz later this year, once the World Series itself is over and we know who all we can cross off the list. For now, though, let’s just look at these unfortunate souls and see who has the best chance of having their misery alleviated.

First, I used a pretty straight-forward methodology. I just went down Baseball-Reference’s list of most Wins Above Replacement among active players and manually took out anyone who had played on a champion. Right now, 64 of the top 100 players are without a title to their name. (WAR totals as of 9/24).

Another Look at Predicting Hall of Fame Hitters

As some of you may remember, last year I took a look at the active players who were, in one sense, on track to join the Hall of Fame. I wanted to update it with the players from last year, but after looking at it in retrospect, there were a few things I needed to fix. The biggest issue was that, when gathering the historic data, I only went back to 1901. This time, I included all years in the Play Index search. This ended up pushing the median Wins Above Replacement higher than last year, which led to interesting results on the prediction angle.

First, though, a quick summary of what I did for those who didn’t see last year’s article: I looked at the Hall of Fame hitters and their career Wins Above Replacement through each age from 20 through 35 (last year, I only went to 30). In each set, I picked the median career value. Then, I looked at how many hitters in history had been worth that much through those ages, Hall of Fame or not. I removed players currently on the BBWAA ballot, since they’re still up in the air, then found a simple percentage of how many players at the Hall median for the age would go on to Cooperstown.

For example, take the age of 20. Of the 60 Hall of Famers who had played games through their age 20 seasons, the median value provided was 0.45 WAR. Therefore, 30 Hall of Famers were above that. 90 Players not in the Hall have matched that mark, with 1 of them being on the ballot this year. That works out to 25.21% of 20-year old players who were at the Hall median eventually making the Hall of Fame.

There are still some issues with this. The two biggest are related. Mostly, this doesn’t account for deserving players not in the Hall. One that sticks out in my mind is Ted Simmons; I remember seeing him consistently above the median, and he’s definitely better than half of the catchers in the Hall, but as is, he’s just not in.

However (the second problem) is that this also doesn’t account for future Veterans Committee picks. For example, Simmons may one day get his induction; right now, though, it just doesn’t factor in. Either way, these numbers would be underselling the likeliness of future election in both cases.

At the low end, there’s also the issue of incomplete information (since not all players debut at the same age), but there isn’t much that can be done with that. Also, I’m just going by what has historically happened, not counting stuff like all the protest nonsense, steroid-moralizing, and whatever else has been going on the last few ballots.

Anyway, on to the numbers. Below, in order are the Ages, the median WARs (from Baseball-Reference), the number of Hall of Famers at that mark, the number of non-Hall of Famers, the number on the ballot still, and finally, the resulting percentage that have made the Hall.

2013 All-Star Roster Corrections: NL Edition

I would say Bruce Bochy/the NL All-Star Squad out-sensibled Jim Leyland/the AL/whoever’s responsible for the mess that is All-Star selection. While making the roster, I felt like it was the other way around; I was making all sorts of changes on the NL roster. Then I realized that a lot of that was fixing problems the fans made in voting, something that miraculously (almost) didn’t happen at all in the AL. Between these two, these may be the most reasonable All-Star Rosters that I’ve covered.

On top of that, a lot of the picks in the NL wound up feeling almost like personal preference picks, like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic (or Queen Mary*, depending on how you feel about the NL’s chances this year, I suppose).

*I guess this sort of destroys the comparison, though. Either way.

I would like to add that, where the AL is stacked at second and third base, the NL is well-stocked behind the plate, at shortstop, and in the outfield. I couldn’t even fit people like Brian McCann or Evan Gattis in, and young stars like Giancarlo Stanton and Jason Heyward had just enough bad luck in their years to let a bunch of other players into the discussion (but more on the mess that is the outfield once I get to it).

Three Ideas on the NL and AL East

Some quick ideas on the NL East playoff race and a related idea.

First, the Nationals: they need all the help they can get catching up to the Braves right now, especially in the lineup. They currently have a team weighted runs created+ of 83, twenty-eighth in the league (and remember, it works like OPS+; 100 is league average). They need all their bats they can get. They should be getting their best hitter (Bryce Harper, 166 wRC+) back soon. Their next two best are Ryan Zimmerman (127 wRC+) and recent call-up Anthony Rendon (149), so those two need to stay in the lineup. However, they’re both third basemen.

Best Players 27 and Under and the Hall: Two Separate Ideas

So, Dan Szymborski ran an interesting article over at ESPN a few weeks ago in which he projected the careers for MLB’s 24-and-under stars to see who might be looking at the Hall of Fame. I enjoy looking many years into the future, and I’ve been meaning to look at the many young stars of the game for a while now. Now seems like a good time to do so, especially with a Hall of Fame context.

So, I used Baseball-Reference’s Play Index and found the median WAR for Hall of Fame batters and pitchers at each age from 20 to 27 (from 1901 on), then looked at how today’s young stars compared.

Re-Run: Can NL MVP Ryan Zimmerman Get Some Attention?

I'm already posting one article about an underrated player, why not post one of my older ones on the subject? It's a completely different player, but still, any excuse to talk about Ryan Zimmerman is good. You know what else is good? Ryan Zimmerman. I need to write more about him soon.


Anyway, this piece was originally from the 2010 season.

The race for Most Valuable Player in the AL looks to be dominated by Rangers outfielder Josh Hamilton. But what about in the NL?

As you may or may not know (depending on whether you’ve read any of my articles), I’m pretty found of a stat called Wins Above Replacement, or WAR. WAR is is a stat that takes a players offensive and defensive numbers and determines how many wins a player has been solely responsible for over a replacement player. Conceivably, we can use this stat to get an idea of who should at least be in the running for NL MVP.

Who Are the Hall of Famers Playing Today? 2006, Part 2

So, a quick recap. First, I went through and determined that the Hall of Fame just was not electing players at the same rate that they used to. Then, I decided to take a recent year (2006, in this case, since it gives me a little time to assess the rookies and call-ups for that year) and determine who was playing that year that could possibly make the Hall of Fame.

The first half of this list saw me list 35 players who had more or less established cases (although only one of them started after the year 2000). I’m going to continue using numbers in this part, but they’ll mean much less. This part of the list is much less a science and much more a “throw things at the wall and see what sticks” process. Similarly, the order means even less here. For a full review on the process, check out part 1. I'll be pointing out the cut-off marks for each percentage (for example, 50 players would represent 4% of the players in 2006).

Ryan Zimmerman: The Contract Extension, and Other Thoughts

So, there are a lot of things that I’ve wanted to write about as of late, but general, all-around business has kept me busy (go figure). So, I’ll try and condense some of them into a single meandering post.

One of the two stories I really want to address is the big extension that Ryan Zimmerman just signed with the Nationals. I really care about both the Nationals and Ryan Zimmerman, for some reason. Neither is on par with my actual fandom for the Cardinals or Orioles, but if I had to construct a hierarchy of favorite teams, the Nationals would probably be a solid bronze medal winner. I really don’t have any clear explanations for this. Part of it might be that I used to live in the D.C. area (granted, it was before the Nationals were a thing, which is why I’m an Orioles fan instead; but maybe some residual feelings for the area?). Part of it might have been sympathy for the Expos that carried over and multiplied when they were moved. Part of it might be because Peter Angelos didn’t like them. But I think Ryan Zimmerman is also a large part of it.

The 2011 Ryan Howard Awards

So, this may or may not be my last piece on the 2011 Awards season, but it is the last one that requires the BBWAA’s voting results. Ladies and gentleman, I present...

The 2011 Ryan Howard Awards

So, what is it, you ask? Simply put, it is the most inexplicable result of the MVP voting. The name sake is Ryan Howard, for two reason. The first is that he was what inspired the award last winter. Last year, I wrote about Ryan Zimmerman’s MVP-quality year, but noted he was getting no attention for his great play. Sure enough, he finished sixteenth in the voting, in spite of his good year. While I was looking at the player who had finished ahead of him, I noticed that Ryan Howard finished tenth. There were other odd choices ahead of Zimmerman, but Howard was definitely the strangest, as he was barely starter-level in 2010 (bWAR had him at 2.0, while fWAR put him at 1.4).

This led me to look closer at the AL voting; my choice for the 2010 AL Ryan Howard Award was also tenth place in the voting. If you recalled that this was Delmon Young, then congratulations; you must understand the Baseball Writers Association better than I do. Young hit 21 home runs and drove in 112 runs...which was apparently enough for the BBWAA to collectively overlook the fact that .298/.333/.493. And .826 OPS with bad defense in left field just isn’t that valuable, which partly explains his 1.7 bWAR (lowest among all MVP vote-getters in either league).

So, who are the Ryan Howard Award winners for the 2011 season? Well, the award requires a combination of votes and awfulness. So, David Robertson got an MVP vote in the AL, but he won’t win the Ryan Howard Award because he was so unsupported. Voting for a reliever for MVP is a fairly bad choice, but in Robertson’s case, he got one point. These things happen; writers vote for friends or guys they like or so on. The RHA winner has to be both unjustifiable as MVP, but at the same time a popular MVP choice.

Re-Run: Future Hall of Fame, Third Base

This is the start of the Future Hall Series proper. I decided that after almost half a year that a position-by-position in-depth analysis was more what I was looking for, and third base seemed like the ideal place to start (please note the name of the blog).

As with last time, please note that the stats are slightly out-of-date.

Retired Numbers Series: Washington Nationals

After the first two articles in my Retired Numbers Series, I decided to continues on with a team common to both of them: the Washington Nationals.

As I said in the Orioles articles, I am an Orioles fan from when I lived in the D.C. area-that was obviously before the Nationals existed. I know the two teams are supposed to be rivals, and maybe it’s just because I haven’t lived in the area for a while, but I’m definitely sympathetic towards the Nats. They aren’t my favorite NL team-my two teams are the Orioles and Cardinals. But I do follow the Nationals somewhat, and I guess I care more about them than most other teams in the league. I don’t feel like there’s enough of a history between them yet to be full on rivals; maybe frenemies instead? They did just partner together in an effort to get their final vote candidates elected, so there is some cooperation. Besides, if Wikipedia has it, it must be a word, so I’m sticking with that one.

Anyway, onto the numbers.

Re-Run: Don't Worry, MLB: I Fixed the All-Star Game Rosters

I wanted to start getting a semi-regular schedule, but I got back late last night after watching the Orioles get shellacked twice by the Rangers. So, I'm reposting my All-Star game column from last year. I would also like this time to mention that Omar Infante's nickname should be "Freaking".

Really, MLB?
You’re going to make me take time out of my Future Hall of Fame series to fix your All-Star Rosters?
You guys obviously need help this year. There’s bad, and then there’s not even trying. I mean, really.
No Joey Votto? No Jered Weaver? OMAR FREAKING INFANTE?
Thankfully, I’m giving you a mulligan this year. In fact, I’ll even fix your rosters for you, starting right now.

MLB's All-Overlooked Team

With the All-Star game just around the corner, we will be seeing some of the most brilliant and visible stars of the game today. I would like to take a moment to recognize something else, though-players who are almost exactly the opposite. These are the players who play just as well as those who will be attending Arizona on July 12th, but are much less likely to be attending themselves. For whatever reason, these players are overshadowed relative to their performance, an All-Dark Matter team, if you will (since dark matter is invisible? Actually, this metaphor works better than I expected).

In any case, even if you didn’t fill out a ballot with these player’s names, you can at least give them some attention now.