The Hardball Times -- Graham Womack http://www.hardballtimes.com/main Baseball. Insight. Daily. en studes@hardballtimes.com Copyright 2013 2013-05-21T08:09:15+00:00 How Hall of Famers rank for salary in 2012 dollars http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/how-hall-of-famers-rank-for-salary-in-2012-dollars/ http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/how-hall-of-famers-rank-for-salary-in-2012-dollars/#When:07:05:15 Babe Ruth signed for $80,000 prior to the 1930 baseball season, as the apocryphal story goes, someone admonished him that he was making more than President Herbert Hoover. "I know," the Bambino is said to have replied, "But I had a better year than Hoover."

What's shocking now, more than 80 years on, is not what Ruth may have said—granted, it was a valid assertion in those early days of the Great Depression—or how much the Colossus of Clout commanded. It's that Ruth's $80,000 1930 salary adjusts with inflation to $1,086,882 in 2012 dollars. That's about a third of the current average major league baseball salary, which rose to a record of $3.2 million last year.

This isn't to say the Sultan of Swat was underpaid historically. In fact, before the advent of free agency in the mid-1970s, no player ever received a higher salary in 2012 dollars than what Ruth got in 1933: $1,436,298. Willie Mays came close in 1959, his $160,000 salary that season good for $1,275,616 in 2012 dollars. The $80,000 that Ruth received in 1933, when the average laborer earned $20 a week and 24.9 percent of Americans were unemployed, simply had more purchasing power.

This is just one thing I learned through a recent long evening on Baseball-Reference.com. The website added salary information as well as a drop down inflation calculator to player pages not long ago. Culled largely from research by University of Wisconsin professor Michael Haupert, the salary info is a work in progress, with some long-ago players having it for only one or two years. But it offers an interesting glimpse into baseball's history.

Using the information, I ranked every Hall of Fame player for his top salary in 2012 dollars—not necessarily his top actual salary, just whatever adjusted highest with inflation. What I found confirmed how good ballplayers have it today. It also showed the degree to which nearly every other generation of players has been exploited by its clubs.

In the interest of readability, I'll split the following list into three parts. We'll start with the 39 Hall of Famers who have received at least $1 million in a season in 2012 dollars:



RankPlayerActual salarySalary in 2012 dollars
1Barry Larkin$9,000,000 in 2001$11,812,817
2Kirby Puckett$7,200,000 in 1997$10,423,881
3Roberto Alomar$7,939,664 in 2002$10,259,133
4Cal Ripken$6,700,000 in 1995$10,219,000
5Ryne Sandberg$5,975,000 in 1993$9,612,854
6Tony Gwynn$6,300,000 in 2000$8,502,261
7Andre Dawson$4,875,000 in 1993$7,843,124
8Rickey Henderson$4,800,000 in 1994$7,526,538
9Wade Boggs$4,724,316 in 1995$7,205,639
10Nolan Ryan$4,200,000 in 1992$6,955,845
11Paul Molitor$4,500,000 in 1995$6,863,507
12Eddie Murray$4,125,000 in 1992$6,831,634
13Dennis Eckersley$3,800,000 in 1993$6,113,614
14Robin Yount$3,200,000 in 1990$5,692,511
15Dave Winfield$3,300,000 in 1991$5,630,882
16George Brett$3,105,000 in 1991$5,298,148
17Ozzie Smith$3,500,000 in 1996$5,186,505
18Mike Schmidt$2,130,300 in 1985$4,603,346
19Gary Carter$2,160,714 in 1986$4,581,186
20Jim Rice$2,354,748 in 1989$4,414,915
21Goose Gossage$1,713,333 in 1985$3,702,326
22Bruce Sutter$1,729,167 in 1986$3,666,212
23Bert Blyleven$2,000,000 in 1991$3,412,656
24Phil Niekro$1,325,367 in 1981$3,388,127
25Carlton Fisk$1,750,000 in 1990$3,113,092
26Catfish Hunter$640,000 in 1975$2,764,230
27Reggie Jackson$1,103,000 in 1982$2,656,328
28Steve Carlton$1,125,000 in 1983$2,625,125
29Rod Carew$800,000 in 1979$2,561,761
30Tom Seaver$1,136,262 in 1985$2,455,338
31Rollie Fingers$1,065,000 in 1985$2,301,349
32Don Sutton$875,000 in 1981$2,236,823
33Joe Morgan$400,000 in 1977$1,534,102
34Babe Ruth$80,000 in 1933$1,436,298
35Johnny Bench$400,000 in 1978$1,425,306
36Willie Mays$160,000 in 1959$1,275,616
37Carl Yastrzemski $375,000 in 1979$1,200,825
38Hank Aaron $200,000 in 1972$1,111,217
39Tony Perez$391,666 in 1980$1,104,764



It's a wonder the list above doesn't have more names. I shouldn't be surprised. The minimum MLB salary was $7,000 in 1966 when Marvin Miller became executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association. The average American household income that year was $6,900. By and large, baseball's top salaries rose at a rate slightly higher than inflation for decades. But it wasn't until arbiter Peter Seitz abrogated the Reserve Clause in 1975 that players began regularly topping $1 million in today's dollars. The rest is history.

The Atlantic suggested in April 2012 that ballplayers remain underpaid, given the slim percentage of MLB revenue they receive. Players still have it about as good as they've ever had it. (Most teams do, too. Forbes reported March 27 that MLB revenues are at record levels, with the most valuable franchise, the Yankees, worth $2.3 billion.)

Cooperstown is typically slow, by design, to reflect changes in baseball, with the names on the list above primarily the early beneficiaries of free agency. That said, I suspect within 15 or 20 years, there could be twice as many Hall of Famers who will have earned the equivalent of $1 million in a season. Inflation alone will push the historic salaries of some men already in the Hall above seven figures. And there's a slew of millionaire players awaiting enshrinement.

Ballplayers finally have economic clout and precedent, after so many baseball generations where the opposite was true. As Jim Bouton wrote in a postscript to Ball Four, 10 years after its original publication:

The irony is that if the owners hadn't abused the players so badly, we wouldn't have gone out and hired Marvin Miller and the players wouldn't be free agents today. If the owners had just doubled the minimum salary, say to $14,000, and given us some extra meal money, we would have been more content to let things ride. Most ballplayers had no idea what kind of money they could be making. I remember sitting in the Yankee clubhouse while the player representative asked each of us what we thought the minimum salary should be. This was when it was $7,000. The players were all saying numbers like $8,000, $9,000, or $10,000. When it came to me I said $25,000 and everybody just laughed.


In the years before Miller, Seitz and others revolutionized labor relations in baseball, few players were compensated anywhere close to Ruth and Mays. Even adjusting for inflation, over half the players enshrined in Cooperstown never earned the current major league minimum salary of $490,000. Also telling to me is the attitude of a baseball immortal like Hank Greenberg, publicly doubting in The Glory of Their Times that he really earned his $75,000 salary from 1947 on the field.

It makes me wonder how systematically teams pushed players to devalue their services so as to maximize profits. This isn't unique to baseball, of course. It's kind of a core tenet of capitalism.

Greenberg and 43 other Hall of Famers topped out, in 2012 dollars, between $500,000 and $1 million during their playing careers:







RankPlayerActual salarySalary in 2012 dollars
40Joe DiMaggio$100,000 in 1949$976,783
41Jim Palmer$250,000 in 1977$958,814
42Herb Pennock$55,000 in 1934$955,522
43Sandy Koufax$125,000 in 1966895,385
44Hank Greenberg$85,000 in 1947$884,709
45Ted Williams$90,000 in 1950$869,378
46Bob Gibson$150,000 in 1971$860,805
47Frank Robinson$160,000 in 1973$837,661
48Roberto Clemente$150,000 in 1972$833,413
49Fergie Jenkins$190,000 in 1975$820,631
50Don Drysdale$110,000 in 1966$787,938
51Ralph Kiner$90,000 in 1952$787,669
52Billy Williams$150,000 in 1973$785,307
53Lefty Grove$45,000 in 1934$781,791
54Juan Marichal$140,000 in 1972$777,852
55Willie Stargell$165,000 in 1974$777,571
56Lou Brock$180,000 in 1975$777,440
57Gaylord Perry$300,000 in 1981$766,911
58Mickey Mantle$100,000 in 1963$759,130
59Hal Newhouser$70,000 in 1947$728,584
60Bill Terry$42,500 in 1936$711,799
61Willie McCovey$125,000 in 1972$694,511
62Rogers Hornsby$40,000 in 1932$681,366
63Stan Musial $75,000 in 1951$671,538
64Ty Cobb$50,000 in 1927$668,966
65Harmon Killebrew$115,000 in 1971$659,951
66Lou Gehrig$39,000 in 1940$646,974
67Brooks Robinson $110,000 in 1972$611,169
68Mickey Cochrane $36,000 in 1936$602,935
69Al Simmons $33,333 in 1933$598,458
70Frank Chance$25,000 in 1913$587,879
71Lou Boudreau$60,000 in 1949$586,070
72Phil Rizzuto$65,000 in 1951$582,000
73Ron Santo$110,000 in 1973$575,892
74Al Kaline$88,000 in 1969$557,706
75Luis Aparicio$100,000 in 1972$555,609
76Orlando Cepeda$83,000 in 1968$554,710
77Warren Spahn$73,500 in 1965$542,053
78Dave Bancroft$40,000 in 1928$541,395
79Yogi Berra$65,000 in 1957$537,867
80Eddie Mathews$67,500 in 1961$524,967
81Chuck Klein$30,000 in 1934$521,194
82Bob Feller$32,500 in 1941$513,529
83Hack Wilson$33,000 in 1931$504,315


Notice all the Yankee legends listed above: Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Lou Gehrig, Phil Rizzuto, Yogi Berra. Contemporary fans may know the Bronx Bombers as the best team money can buy. It's been this way since George Steinbrenner became the first owner to turn a baseball franchise around through free agency. Historically, the Yankees owe just as much if not more of their success to frugality, to shrewd negotiation tactics like leveraging the promise of frequent World Series bonuses. David Halberstam wrote in Summer of '49 of Yankee right fielder Tommy Henrich telling Red Sox Hall of Famer Bobby Doerr at an old-timers game, "We needed the extra money from the World Series check. That was our extra salary."

Granted, New York paid better than many franchises. The lower echelons of this list is a who's who of Hall of Famers from the St. Louis Cardinals, Philadelphia Phillies and other small market clubs that could not or would not pay more. There was of course less money in baseball in the days before television contracts, revenue sharing and regular ticket sellouts. (The late Doug Pappas of SABR's Business of Baseball Committee posted historic MLB financial data.)

Even the Yankees weren't immune to harsh economic realities. In his club history, Pinstripe Empire, Marty Appel includes attendance figures for every year in team history. They peak around 1.3 million spectators during Ruth's career, 2.3 million during DiMaggio's and 1.7 million during Mantle's. It's a far cry from the 3,542,406 the Yankees drew in 2012.

Mostly, though, I suspect that teams threw scraps at players because they could. Players had pitifully low bargaining power in the years before free agency, the Reserve Clause making them the property of their clubs for perpetuity. Players were disposable commodities, with legendary pinch pennies like Branch Rickey telling Ralph Kiner upon trading him from the Pirates to the Cubs in 1953, "We finished last with you. We can finish last without you."

There were generally no other competing professional circuits, since baseball has informally received an exemption from antitrust laws since 1922 and has always moved quickly to crush rival leagues. Players who did jump, such as Sal Maglie and Mickey Owen who went to the Mexican League in 1946, faced severe repercussions, even lifetime bans.

Players found different ways to make the best of their situations. Some successfully held out like Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale, who negotiated together in 1966 for a combined $235,000, roughly $1.68 million in 2012 dollars. Ty Cobb ate for free at Joe DiMaggio's family restaurant after instructing the Yankee Clipper early in his career on how to properly haggle with Ed Barrow for a higher salary. And Jim Brosnan wrote in The Long Season of teammate Stan Musial advising, "The first principle of contract negotiation is: don't remind 'em of what you did in the past; tell them what you're going to do for them in the future. They know what you're selling; they've bought it before. Now promise greater things to come."

For the most part, teams dictated contract terms, extending generosity as they saw fit. Some players like Hack Wilson in 1931 secured windfalls following big seasons. Others were rewarded for loyalty, Cobb, Honus Wagner and others receiving temporary raises while the rival Federal League operated from 1914-15. Beyond this, many of the players on this list got their best salaries at the ends of their careers. I take this to have been token gestures from clubs. It certainly did little to set these players up for retirement. It's why when the original pension system was set up, it had to be amended for Hall of Famers like Carl Hubbell who initially weren't covered.

Many baseball greats had to play in the minors for years after they left the majors. It's unheard of today for Hall of Famers, but players did it regularly in the first half of the 20th century whether it was 42-year-old Nap Lajoie hitting .380 in the International League in 1917 or Iron Man Joe McGinnity (who earned his nickname working in a steel foundry) pitching in the bushes until age 54. Others like Chief Bender and Wagner needed coaching jobs in retirement to escape the realities of the Depression. Grover Cleveland Alexander died alone in a rented room in 1950. While surely his alcoholism impoverished and isolated him, his top salary of $236,860 in 2012 dollars couldn't have helped matters much.

Adjusting for inflation, 118 Hall of Fame players never earned the current MLB minimum of $490,000 in a season. Due to technical space constraints, I'll list some of them here and the remainder in the References section:

RankPlayerActual salarySalary in 2012 dollars
84Jim Bunning$75,000 in 1969$475,318
85Eddie Collins$35,000 in 1926$459,474
86Jimmie Foxx$27,500 in 1939$459,474
87Joe Cronin$27,000 in 1935$457,689
88Ernie Banks$57,500 in 1961$447,194
89Whitey Ford$60,000 in 1966$429,785
90Mel Ott$35,000 in 1946$417,133
91Dizzy Dean$25,500 in 1937$412,250
92Tris Speaker$30,000 in 1923$409,219
93Bob Lemon$45,000 in 1951$402,923
94Roy Campanella$50,000 in 1958$402,768
95-tieRed Ruffing$24,000 in 1940$398,138
95-tieBill Dickey$24,000 in 1940$398,138
97Red Schoendienst$45,000 in 1955$390,410
98Duke Snider$44,000 in 1956$376,127
99George Kell$42,000 in 1951$376,062
100Nellie Fox$47,000 in 1960$369,233
101Carl Hubbell$22,500 in 1937$363,234
102Billy Herman$21,361 in 1936$357,758
103Early Wynn$45,000 in 1960$353,521
104Dazzy Vance$23,000 in 1931$351,492
105Jackie Robinson$39,750 in 1952$347,887
106Robin Roberts$40,000 in 1955$347,031
107Johnny Mize$35,000 in 1949$341,874
108Walter Johnson$16,000 in 1916$341,725
109Lefty Gomez$20,000 in 1935$339,029
110Ray Schalk$25,000 in 1928$338,372
111Pee Wee Reese$35,000 in 1950$338,091
112-tieCharlie Gehringer$20,000 in 1939$334,163
112-tieGabby Hartnett$20,000 in 1939$334,163
112-tieBill Mazeroski$50,000 in 1968$334,163
115Joe Medwick$20,000 in 1938$330,213
116George Davis$12,600 in 1903$325,920
117Frankie Frisch$18,500 in 1934$321,403
118Edd Roush$23,333 in 1928$315,809
119-tieNap Lajoie$12,000 in 1908$310,400
119-tieFred Clarke$12,000 in 1909$310,400
121Richie Ashburn$38,439 in 1959$306,459
122Burleigh Grimes$20,000 in 1931$305,646
123Luke Appling$18,500 in 1939$299,083
124Larry Doby$36,000 in 1957$297,896
125Waite Hoyt$16,000 in 1933$287,260
126Ernie Lombardi$18,000 in 1941$284,416
127Pie Traynor$16,500 in 1935$279,699
128Joe Tinker$12,000 in 1914$278,432
129Paul Waner$16,500 in 1938$272,426
130-tieJoe Gordon$20,000 in 1943$268,615
130-tieBobby Doerr$27,500 in 1949$268,615
132George Sisler$20,000 in 1925$265,047
133Earl Averill$14,500 in 1933$260,329
134-tieWillie Keeler$10,000 in 1903$258,667
134-tieHonus Wagner$10,000 in 1908258,667
134-tieChristy Mathewson$10,000 in 1909$258,667
137Johnny Evers$11,000 in 1914$255,229
138Harry Heilmann$18,750 in 1928$253,779
139Tony Lazzeri$16,000 in 1931$244,516
140Enos Slaughter$25,000 in 1950$241,494
141Grover Cleveland Alexander$17,500 in 1928$236,860
142Kiki Cuyler$17,000 in 1930$236,510
143Hoyt Wilhelm$37,000 in 1969$234,490
144Mordecai Brown$10,000 in 1914$232,027
145Lloyd Waner$12,500 in 1933$224,422
146Heinie Manush$14,500 in 1931$221,593
147Jimmy Collins$8,500 in 1908$219,867
148Ross Youngs$16,000 in 1924$216,979
149Max Carey$16,500 in 1926$216,609
150Goose Goslin$16,000 in 1929$216,558
151Earle Combs$12,500 in 1932$212,927
152Ted Lyons$12,500 in 1932$212,927
153Zack Wheat$16,000 in 1926$210,045
154Jack Chesbro$8,000 in 1905$206,933
155Arky Vaughan$12,500 in 1937$202,083
156Joe Sewell$14,500 in 1930$201,729
157Harry Hooper$14,250 in 1922$197,857
158Home Run Baker$9,167 in 1916$195,780
159Rick Ferrell$12,000 in 1937$194,000
160Ed Walsh$8,000 in 1912$192,662
161Roger Bresnahan$8,000 in 1913188,121
162Rube Marquard$8,000 in 1915$183,789
163Rabbit Maranville$8,500 in 1916$181,541
164Monte Ward$7,000 in 1891$181,067
165Bobby Wallace$6,500 in 1902$174,600
166Sam Crawford$7,500 in 1915$172,303
167Red Faber$10,000 in 1932$170,341
168Eppa Rixey$12,000 in 1924162,734
169Buck Ewing$5,000 in 1891$142,267
170Joe Kelley$5,200 in 1902$139,680
171Stan Coveleski$10,000 in 1928$135,349


This isn't to suggest the average baseball player was embittered or had good reason to be. A few years ago, I interviewed a man named Art Mahan who played first base on the 1940 Phillies. In Mahan's only season in the majors, the Phillies went 50-103 and drew 207,177 fans, Mahan for his part posting one of the lowest adjusted offensive production rates for a first baseman in baseball history. Nearly 70 years later, I heard nothing but gratitude and wonder from Mahan. He spoke of meeting his wife in Philadelphia that year, saying he never would've met her otherwise. The $6,000 salary he received, the equivalent of $96,916 in 2012, was better than four times the average U.S. income that year of $1,368. Mahan earned enough, in fact, for a few of his brothers to make down payments on houses.

Don't get me wrong. Since Lip Pike signed the first professional baseball contract in 1866, for $20 from Philadelphia, players have been lucky. To make any amount of money playing baseball, let alone a living wage is lucky. Making the Hall of Fame is luckier still. Every man on this list attained some degree of baseball immortality with his enshrinement. Most, if not all, made more money in baseball than they would have gotten doing something else. Even Bid McPhee, for all of the $2,300 he received in 1887, got a pretty sweet deal, relatively speaking.

Was McPhee severely under-compensated in a historical sense, cheated by a system specifically set up to marginalize his earning power? Goodness yes. But I doubt he or any other man here would've traded the experience.

Click here to learn about THT's download subscriptions.]]> Graham Womack 2013-04-02T07:05:15+00:00 Getting one vote for the Hall of Fame http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/getting-one-vote-for-the-hall-of-fame/ http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/getting-one-vote-for-the-hall-of-fame/#When:08:26:15 Benito Santiago and Bret Boone made their first and only appearance on the Hall of Fame ballot for the Baseball Writers Association of America. Neither man came close to the 75 percent of the vote needed from the writers for enshrinement, which shouldn't have come as any surprise, really. Santiago and Boone collectively boasted about 3,600 hits and a .265 lifetime batting average, and there were rumors that each used steroids.

They at least fared better on the Cooperstown ballot than Raul Mondesi and Carlos Baerga, among others who went voteless. And in the process, Boone and Santiago joined an interesting club, ballplayers who've received one vote for the Hall of Fame.

Since 1964, 115 baseball players have received one vote in a year from the BBWAA for the Hall of Fame. Prior to this, in the years leading back to the initial election for Cooperstown in 1936, the results were wilder, with an average of 27 players each year getting one vote. A number of these earlier players have since been enshrined, including Joe DiMaggio, Phil Rizzuto and Warren Spahn who received lone votes in the days when active players sometimes got nods for Cooperstown.

For a time during the early days of Hall of Fame voting in fact, all players were eligible, even active ones, which explains DiMaggio's single vote in 1945. The overall voting process isn't the most rational of things looking back on it, but then, Hall of Fame voting sometimes isn't. I don't know if it needs to always be, given the abstract, subjective nature of Cooperstown. It's a museum, after all, that memorializes fame.

I write often about the Hall of Fame on my Website, and I'm currently conducting a project having people vote on the 50 best baseball players who aren't enshrined (voting runs through Dec. 1, and please feel free to email me at thewomack@gmail.com for a ballot.) Baseball may have one of the more restrictive Halls of Fame in all of professional sports, and as such, many notable players have fallen short in the voting over the years. I've written before about one-and-dones like Bobby Grich and Lou Whitaker who received less than five percent of the vote in a year and were thus excluded from future BBWAA ballots.

I've also written a couple of times about players who didn't receive any votes, a club which includes Vern Stephens, Hal Trosky and Jimmy Wynn. The list of players who got one vote is no less noteworthy.

Fifty-nine eventual Hall of Famers received one vote in a year from the BBWAA for Cooperstown, all of this coming in the 20 main elections writers conducted from 1936 through 1962. The reason such a list exists is forgivable: In the early days of Hall of Fame voting, the ballot sometimes teemed with dozens of future honorees. All the same, it doesn't completely explain forgotten non-members like Babe Adams, Hank Gowdy and Johnny Kling sometimes trouncing scores of future Hall of Famers in the voting.

Gowdy was the first baseball player to enlist in World War I and later served in World War II as a chaplain. That's commendable, but it doesn't justify him receiving more votes than 26 future Hall of Famers in 1955, including Earle Combs, Joe Gordon and Joe Sewell, who got one vote apiece.

The 59 Hall of Famers who comprise this club, with the year or years they received a single vote, and their eventual year of enshrinement, are:

{exp:list_maker} Addie Joss: 1960 (enshrined 1978, Veterans Committee)
Al Lopez: 1949, 1956 (enshrined 1977, VC)
Al Simmons: 1946 (enshrined 1953, BBWAA)
Amos Rusie: 1937, 1942, 1945 (enshrined 1977, VC)
Arky Vaughan: 1953 (enshrined 1985, VC)
Bill McKechnie: 1950 (enshrined 1962, VC)
Billy Hamilton: 1942 (enshrined 1961, VC)
Billy Herman: 1948 (enshrined 1975, VC)
Billy Southworth: 1945, 1950, 1952 (enshrined 2008, VC)
Bobby Wallace: 1937 (enshrined 1953, VC)
Bucky Harris: 1938, 1939 (enshrined 1975, VC)
Burleigh Grimes: 1937, 1938, 1939 (enshrined 1964, VC)
Casey Stengel: 1948 (enshrined 1966, VC)
Charlie Gehringer: 1936 (enshrined 1949, BBWAA)
Chick Hafey: 1948, 1951, 1952 (enshrined 1971, VC)
Connie Mack: 1936 (enshrined 1937, Centennial Committee)
Dave Bancroft: 1939, 1946 (enshrined 1971, VC)
Dazzy Vance: 1936 (enshrined 1955, BBWAA)
Earl Averill: 1949 (enshrined 1975, VC)
Earle Combs: 1945, 1952, 1955 (enshrined 1970, VC)
Edd Roush: 1942 (enshrined 1962, VC)
Elmer Flick: 1938 (enshrined 1963, VC)
Eppa Rixey: 1937, 1945 (enshrined 1963, VC)
Fred Clarke: 1936 (enshrined 1946, OTC)
Freddie Lindstrom: 1949 (enshrined 1976, VC)
Gabby Hartnett: 1936 (enshrined 1955, BBWAA)
Goose Goslin: 1948, 1954 (enshrined 1968, VC)
Hack Wilson: 1937, 1939, 1942 (enshrined 1979, VC)
Heinie Manush: 1948, 1949 (enshrined 1964, VC)
High Pockets Kelly: 1947, 1949, 1962 (enshrined 1973, VC)
Frank "Home Run" Baker: 1936 (enshrined 1955, VC)
Jack Chesbro: 1937, 1946 (enshrined 1946 OTC)
Jake Beckley: 1942 (enshrined 1971, VC)
Jesse Burkett: 1937 (enshrined 1946, OTC)
Jesse Haines: 1939, 1947 (enshrined 1970, VC)
Joe DiMaggio: 1945 (enshrined 1955, BBWAA)
Joe Gordon: 1945, 1955 (enshrined 2009, VC)
Joe Kelley: 1939, 1942 (enshrined 1971, VC)
Joe McCarthy: 1951, 1953 (enshrined 1957, VC)
Joe Medwick: 1948 (enshrined 1968, VC)
Joe Sewell: 1937, 1948, 1954, 1955, 1958 (enshrined 1977, VC)
John Clarkson: 1946 (enshrined 1963, VC)
Kid Nichols: 1946 (enshrined 1949, OTC)
Lefty Gomez: 1947 (enshrined 1972, VC)
Leo Durocher: 1948, 1949, 1952, 1956, 1962 (enshrined 1994, VC)
Lloyd Waner: 1950, 1951 (enshrined 1967, VC)
Max Carey: 1945 (enshrined 1961, VC)
Phil Rizzuto: 1956 (enshrined 1994, VC)
Red Faber: 1938, 1942 (enshrined 1964, VC)
Rick Ferrell: 1956, 1958, 1960 (enshrined 1984, VC)
Rube Marquard: 1936 (enshrined 1971, VC)
Sam Crawford: 1936 (enshrined 1957, VC)
Sam Rice: 1938, 1948, 1950, 1951, 1952 (enshrined 1963, VC)
Satchel Paige: 1951 (enshrined 1971, Negro League Committee)
Stan Coveleski: 1938, 1950 (enshrined 1969, VC)
Tony Lazzeri: 1945, 1947 (enshrined 1991, VC)
Travis Jackson: 1952, 1954, 1962 (enshrined 1982, VC)
Waite Hoyt: 1939, 1942, 1946 (enshrined 1969, VC)
Warren Spahn: 1958 (enshrined 1973, BBWAA) {/exp:list_maker}
Voting-related sound and fury began to die down in the 1960s, with more and more older players having been enshrined by the Veterans and Old Timers committees and new rules modernizing the ballot, making it so that a screening committee picked out a smaller number of names each year. That still has left hundreds of additional players throughout baseball history who received a single vote for the Hall of Fame from the BBWAA at least once but haven't been enshrined.

Some of these men have names that pass by the eyes of even the most ardent of baseball researchers like ships in the night. I'd have never heard of Bob Kuzava had he not appeared on the 1964 ballot and somehow gotten a vote despite a 49-44 lifetime record and 4.05 ERA. Other players in this group, though, are more notable.

Denny McLain won 31 games, American League Most Valuable Player, and the Cy Young Award in 1968 and earned a single Hall of Fame vote in his first appearance on the ballot a decade later, courtesy of an all-time epic flameout in between which had him gone from the majors before his 30th birthday. McLain appeared twice more on the ballot, in the years before the one-and-done rule came into effect, earning three votes in 1979 and another two in 1985. He still has his Hall of Fame supporters.

So do Rocky Colavito, who received one vote in 1975 and Vic Raschi and Eddie Lopat, who got one vote in 1968 and 1970, respectively and, with Allie Reynolds, comprised a famed pitching triumvirate for the New York Yankee dynasty of the late 1940s and early '50s.

Like McLain, fellow All Stars Colavito, Lopat and Raschi all made subsequent appearances on the Hall of Fame ballot, and Raschi even jumped to 37 votes, about 10 percent of the electorate in his final year of eligibility with the writers in 1975. Since the mid-1980s, though, getting less than five percent of the vote from the BBWAA has relegated a player to consideration solely from the Veterans Committee, and for a time, it disqualified him for perpetuity. As such, the list of possible snubs for Cooperstown has dwindled significantly.

David Segui is no one's Hall of Famer, nor is Steve Bedrosian even if he helped the San Francisco Giants win the National League pennant in 1989. They each got a lone vote for the Hall of Fame. So did former Philadelphia Phillies catcher Darren Daulton, whose vote in the 2003 election may have been the best thing that happened to him that year, seeing as he got arrested for his second DUI less than a week before voting results were announced.

Occasionally, though, old stars join the one-vote club. Cecil Fielder did so in 2004, his 51 home run, AL MVP season in 1990 but a distant memory. Terry Pendleton and Jeff Burroughs had MVP seasons, too, years before they got the one-vote treatment, and Johnny Callison, Lenny Dykstra and Greg Luzinski each came in second one year for an MVP but got one Hall of Fame vote another.

Others like Jay Buhner, David Justice and John Kruk were solid, if unspectacular players who might have deserved more than one vote for Cooperstown. Kruk's lifetime OPS+ of 133 was better than anyone else on the 2001 ballot including the two men enshrined that year, Dave Winfield and Kirby Puckett, even if it must be noted in the same breath that Kruk played just 10 years and retired with 1,170 hits.

Mark Davis, Pat Hentgen and Bob Welch were all Cy Young winners, and the writers gave them one vote each in 2003, 2010 and 2000, respectively.

Davis is an obvious snub, seeing as he apparently followed his 44-save Cy Young season with the San Diego Padres in 1989 by entering the Witness Protection Program, and no one's crying foul over Hentgen and his 131 wins being denied Cooperstown. Even Hentgen doesn't mind having to pay for a ticket into the museum, I'd venture. But Welch went 211-146 with a 3.47 ERA over 17 seasons, won 27 games in 1990, and he wouldn't be the worst pitcher the Veterans Committee has enshrined. Same goes for Dizzy Trout, who went 170-161 in his career, won 20 games consecutive seasons during World War II, and received one Hall of Fame vote in 1964.

It's hard to say, though, what earns so many other players who fall into this category their one vote. Jim Deshaies got his vote in 2001 after he famously campaigned for it, even launching a Web site to do so. Deshaies pitched seven seasons in the midst of his career for the Astros, and his vote came perhaps appropriately from a Houston Chronicle beat writer.

I suspect a lot of local writers cast these kinds of symbolic votes, knowing the players they covered and perhaps befriended have no shot at Cooperstown but can be spared the indignity of going voteless with their help. And these writers sometimes have votes to burn, with every voting member being allowed 10 picks for Cooperstown each year. Maybe some writers cast token votes as jokes, too, the idea of Dock Ellis getting a Hall of Fame vote in 1985 as odd and humorous as him pitching a no-hitter some years before on acid. Certainly, someone had to be joking when they gave Walt Weiss a vote in 2006.

Other times, writers seem to genuinely believe certain players belong in Cooperstown even if no one else shares in their beliefs. George Case played 11 seasons with the Washington Senators and Cleveland Indians and in his prime was one of the fastest men in the American League, winning six stolen base titles and having the green light from his manager to run whenever he wanted. But he quit playing in 1947 at 31 and his 349 steals rank behind a number of men who weren't in Cooperstown at the time, including 19th century great Billy Hamilton, who got his plaque in 1961, and two other stars of the late 1800s George Van Haltren and Jimmy Ryan, who never got any votes from the BBWAA and still aren't enshrined. I wondered if Case's lone vote in 1958 came from his friend, longtime Washington Post columnist Shirley Povich, who told a D.C. area group honoring Case in 1989 that he belonged in Cooperstown. I emailed Case's son about it, but he didn't know.

With a new season of Hall of Fame voting underway, it will be interesting to see who joins the one-vote club. The crop of newcomers who automatically qualified for this year's BBWAA ballot by playing 10 seasons doesn't look especially strong, Bernie Williams being perhaps the only newcomer the writers will eventually enshrine. And with more and more players from the Steroid Era like Mark McGwire and Rafael Palmeiro becoming long-term holdovers on the ballot, good for 10 or 20 percent of the vote each of their 15 years of eligibility with the writers, the number of players with one vote or less could start to balloon, geting closer again to what it was in the early days of Hall of Fame voting.

Joe Randa, Mike Remlinger and Tony Womack are no Joe DiMaggio, Warren Spahn and Phil Rizzuto, but they might join them in the one vote club this year. Regardless, others will surely follow.

Click here to learn about THT's download subscriptions.]]> Graham Womack 2011-11-17T08:26:15+00:00 Today’s players in another era http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/todays-players-in-another-era/ http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/todays-players-in-another-era/#When:09:10:15 Ken Griffey Jr. retired in June, Joe Posnanski wrote in Sports Illustrated:
In the last years of his life Buck O'Neil, the great spokesman of baseball, would often be asked to name his favorite modern players. He always mentioned just one name: Ken Griffey Jr. When asked why, he would say, simply, "He could play in any era."

It’s high praise to suggest a player might excel in a different era, and some people shy away from these comparisons, suggesting baseball changes too much, too often. I’m not one of these people. Every week in my blog, I write a column called Any player/Any era where I look at how a ballplayer might have done in another era besides his own.

In my view, Griffey’s far from the only recent player who might thrive in another time. In close to a year of doing the column, I’ve envisioned Rickey Henderson on the Brooklyn Dodgers, Ichiro Suzuki on the Gashouse Gang, Josh Hamilton as a Deadball Era pitcher, and more. I believe now, more than ever, that natural ability and talent transfers to any era and that even the greatest of players might improve playing at another point in baseball history better suited to their strengths.

Here are ten current players who might excel in a different era:

Albert Pujols: After reading Posnanski’s piece, I wrote a column placing Griffey on the 1930 Philadelphia Phillies, perhaps the greatest hitting team of all-time, certainly the best offensive club that’s ever finished dead last. At the time, I wrote that Griffey might put up ridiculous numbers in the Baker Bowl. But Pujols would go way beyond. Playing in the Baker Bowl, the hitter’s bandbox the Phillies called home in 1930, Pujols might be the closest thing to Babe Ruth besides the man himself.

I like to use a stat converter on Baseball-Reference.com that takes park factors and average runs scored per game by a team to translate a player’s numbers from an actual season he played to another. In 2003, Pujols hit .359 with 43 home runs and 124 RBI for the Cardinals, finishing second in MVP voting. Because teams scored an average of 4.612 runs per game in 2003, and the Cardinals played in a ballpark that favored pitchers slightly, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to suggest Pujols might have increased his numbers if he’d played in a historically good era for hitters.

In 1930, National League teams averaged 5.684 runs per game, and nowhere were there more runs scored than Philadelphia. It went both ways. The Phillies hit .315 but finished 52-102 since their club ERA was 6.71, all-time worst in the majors and they allowed 1199 runs, third worst ever. I don’t know if Pujols could make a winner out of the Phillies—who had literally one winning season between 1918 and 1948—but the converter shows his 2003 season translating to a .411 batting average, 50 home runs, and 161 RBI with an OPS of 1.252.

Ironically, the Phillies might be the ideal team in 1930 for a 23-year-old Pujols. He probably wouldn’t have appealed to the Cardinals, whose general manager Branch Rickey favored hit-and-run style players (though he made an exception in the mid 1930s for Johnny Mize.) Old Yankee Stadium would have limited Pujols’ stats as a right-handed hitter—just look at what it took away from Joe DiMaggio. And on the A’s or Giants, Pujols might never get off the bench his first couple seasons in the majors, as future Hall of Famers Bill Terry, Mel Ott, and Jimmie Foxx mostly sat their early years for those contenders.

Pujols would need a place he could play from the time he debuted, and while this certainly would be possible with other teams—the Brooklyn Dodgers of those days for instance—Pujols wouldn’t find a better park to hit in than the Baker Bowl. It would be the perfect storm for a young hitter. And along with another young hitter, Chuck Klein and teammate Lefty O”Doul, who hit .386 and .383 respectively, Pujols might help form the greatest 3-4-5 batting order ever.

Chipper Jones: My friend Devon Young emailed me a few months ago that for players with lifetime .300 batting averages, .400 on-base percentages, and .500 slugging percentages, three have stolen at least 140 bases: Ty Cobb, Tris Speaker, and Jones. Devon asked if I thought Jones might have more triples and steals and a better batting average if he’d played in the Deadball Era.

The answer, most likely, is yes. Deadball stars often flirted with .400 batting averages and racked up lots of triples and steals. In 1912, Speaker hit .383 with 12 triples, 52 stolen bases, and a league-leading 10 home runs. This may seem wholly unrelated to Jones’ 1999 MVP season when he hit .319 with 45 home runs and 110 RBI, but Jones’ OPS+ of 168 isn’t hugely different than Speaker’s 188, and their slugging percentages, .633 and .567 roughly relate, too.

I generally don’t trust the converter to accurately translate modern numbers to the Deadball Era, and I’m making no exception here. The converter has Chipper’s 1999 season giving him 42 home runs on the 1912 Red Sox, an unrealistic figure for the era even if Boston hadn’t hit 29 total that year. That being said, I think Jones would do much better than one triple, 25 steals, and a .319 batting average.

Felix Hernandez: King Felix was the AL Cy Young in 2010, going 13-12 for the last-place Mariners and shining in many statistical areas that weren’t team-dependent. So how might Hernandez have done on one of baseball’s greatest teams? The 1927 Yankees went 110-44, swept the World Series, and had a lineup so feared writers called it Murderers Row (and if that sounds like mere hype from a less-sophisticated press corps, consider that New York had a team OPS+ of 127.) On those Yankees, Hernandez’s 2010 season converts to a 16-8 record with a 2.81 ERA and 208 strikeouts.

Tim Lincecum: Historically, young pitchers who throw hard burnout somewhere in their 20s, 30 if they’re lucky. Every baseball generation seems to have its Smoky Joe Wood or Gary Nolan or Mark Prior who debuted early, wrecked their arm, and had to quit pitching prematurely. At least Wood resurrected his career as an outfielder, kind of a latter day Rick Ankiel (who faltered on the mound for different reasons.) It will be interesting to see if Lincecum joins their ranks as a hard-throwing, unusual-throwing 26-year-old who’s led the National League in strikeouts and Ks per nine innings three of his four years in the majors.

Offhand, I can think of two fastball pitchers in the Modern Era who started very young, immediately thrived, and are now in the Hall of Fame: Tom Seaver and Bob Feller. I don’t know what Seaver’s secret was, some fluke or miracle of modern medicine maybe, but Feller may have benefited from having a few years off during World War II. Feller debuted with the Indians as a 17-year-old high school junior on summer break in 1936, and after Pearl Harbor in December 1941 he was one of the first players to enlist. Unlike most, he saw active combat, doing laps around his cruiser between Japanese air attacks.

His first full season back after the war ended, 1946, ranks as one of the best any pitcher’s had, certainly Feller’s finest effort. Going 26-15 with a 2.18 ERA and 348 strikeouts, he posted career highs in ERA and Ks as well as WAR (10.1), innings (371.1) starts (42), complete games (36), and shutouts (10.) In general, 1946 favored pitchers, perhaps because hitters had issues with timing. Others hurlers did quite well, too. Hal Newhouser, who pitched through the war, went 26-9 with a 1.94 ERA and 275 strikeouts. Tex Hughson and Dave Ferriss went a combined 45-17, helping pitch the Red Sox to the World Series.

So it’s no surprise Lincecum’s numbers would improve if he replaced Feller on the Indians in 1946. The stat converter has his 2009 season Cy Young season where he went 15-7 with a 2.48 ERA and 261 strikeouts translating to 17-7 with a 2.03 ERA and 251 strikeouts for Cleveland. And if the extended break with WWII could help him do as Feller did the rest of his career, even better. Still just 27 at the end of the 1946 season, Feller pitched another decade, retired with 266 wins, and along with Jackie Robinson, was the first first-ballot Hall of Famer in 25 years in 1962.

Vladimir Guerrero: Guerrero’s .320 career batting average seems unreal for a player with a modest .383 lifetime on-base percentage and no seasons with 100 walks. But this kind of thing used to happen more often. Hank Aaron hit .305 for his career, never had a 100-walk season, and retired with a .374 OBP. Fellow lifetime .300 hitter Willie Mays topped 100 walks once and posted a .384 lifetime OBP. Mickey Mantle had eight 100-walk seasons and a .421 OBP, but this was the exception, not the rule.

In the 1950s, a young Guerrero might be the Aaron or Mays of a team like the Chicago Cubs, whose short porch in left he could attack as a right-handed hitter. The stat converter has Guerrero’s 2002 season good for 36 home runs, 104 RBI and a .328 batting average on the ‘55 Cubs. A young Guerrero wouldn’t be bad in the outfield either, or running the bases. More than that, he’d be a great sidekick for Ernie Banks, who was something of a lone wolf for the Cubs in the ‘50s.

Johan Santana: It can be amusing to take a current pitcher and run their stats for a 1968 contender, seeing ERAs drop and win totals climb. But few hurlers today likely could handle the 1960s, when starters pitched in four-man rotations, topped 300 innings, and racked up heavy strikeout totals.

Santana is one of two active players, with Justin Verlander, who’s led the league in both innings pitched and strikeouts per nine innings. Verlander did it once, in 2009. Santana has led his league in strikeouts per nine innings three times and innings pitched twice, and in the 1960s, he might be the second coming of Sandy Koufax. Here’s how his 2004 Cy Young season converts to the ’68 Dodgers: 18-7 record, 1.65 ERA, 272 strikeouts, and a 0.735 WHIP, the latter of which would be tops in baseball history.

Roy Halladay: If Santana is the second coming of Sandy Koufax in 1968, Halladay might be something close to Bob Gibson, who posted a historic 1.12 ERA that season to go with a 22-9 record, 268 strikeouts. Another innings eater and strikeout specialist, Halladay was National League Cy Young this year going 21-10 with a 2.44 ERA and 219 strikeouts. The converter translates that to 20-8 with a 1.86 ERA and 220 strikeouts for the 1968 Cardinals.

Currently 169-86 with a 3.32 ERA, with a decent shot at Cooperstown if he can pitch another six or eight years, one has to wonder if Halladay’s numbers would be better and his case therefore stronger if he’d played his whole career in Gibson’s era.

Ichiro Suzuki: What 1968 was for pitchers, it wasn’t for hitters. This was the year Carl Yastrzemski won the American League batting title hitting .301, and just five other players hit over .300, led by Pete Rose and his .335 batting clip. Pitchers were so favored in 1968 that, as Jim Bouton noted in his diary of the 1969 season, Ball Four, the majors lowered the size of the pitching mound from 15 inches to 10 inches for 1969.

The Houston Astros might not have been the worst hitting club of 1968 with their .231 club batting average (the Tigers won 103 games and the World Series hitting just .235 in 1968) but with 510 runs scored and team OPS+ of 88, they finished 72-90, and even in a decent year, their cavernous ballpark, the Astrodome wrecked hitters. Some of the best Astros from that general era, Cesar Cedeno, Bob Watson, and Jimmy Wynn might have even been Hall of Famers on better hitting clubs. Too much was taken away from their numbers in Houston.

Even all-time greats would look relatively normal if they’d played for the ’68 Astros. Babe Ruth’s iconic 60-home-run season in 1927, where he also hit .356 with 164 RBI and a 1.258 OPS translates to 49 home runs, 119 RBI, a .301 batting average and a 1.080 OPS in 1968 with Houston. Roger Maris’s 61 home runs would become 53 in Houston, to go with 109 RBI and a .243 batting average. It doesn’t appear any other lumbering slugger, really, would be favored in a park that rewarded contact hitters with good speed.

This leaves a few players in baseball history that could have been successful in Houston and perhaps made a run at the National League batting title in 1968. The Astrodome seems like the kind of place someone like Ty Cobb would clean up with his disdain for home runs in favor of line drives and his speed on the base paths, and Ichiro Suzuki strikes me as his modern equivalent. His 2004 season, where he hit .372 for the Mariners with a record 262 hits, becomes .332 with 220 hits on the ’68 Astros. It makes him look a bit like Matty Alou that year, but that’s nothing to be ashamed of.

Joba Chamberlain: Put most relief pitchers in any era in baseball history before the last 20 or so years, before the one inning or less save became popular, and most of these men wouldn’t last in the majors or be remembered. Forget Cooperstown. Into the 1980s, any pitcher in the majors needed to have the ability to pitch a few innings and most with any talent became starters. The bullpen was a place for the young, washed up, or talent-deprived to languish.

Chamberlain is one of the few relievers today who could thrive in the 1970s and be among a pioneer class of closers. Because his production has been so erratic the last few years, his role ever changing as he’s gone from setup man to sometimes starter to starter to reliever again, there’s no sense in running his numbers through the stat converter, though my guess is he’d be similar to Goose Gossage or Rollie Fingers as a closer capable of pitching the final five innings.

Jose Reyes: The New York Mets shortstop has cooled his jets a bit the last few years, stealing a modest 30 bases last year. From 2005 through 2007, though, Reyes led the National League in stolen bases, peaking at 78 in 2007, tied for the most anyone’s stolen since 1988 and helping making a case for him being the Rickey Henderson or Tim Raines of his era. Really, Reyes has been at somewhat, to those men at a disadvantage, stolen base-wise. In their time, Reyes might up his numbers a little.

The 1980s were a Renaissance for base stealing, the efforts of pioneers like Luis Aparicio, Maury Wills, and Lou Brock ushering in a stretch where men regularly topped 80 steals and sometimes 100. Some of it may have had to do with competitiveness among the top the stealers, the steal being coached for, or that in the ‘80s Astroturf was more common in ballparks (only three teams have it today) and made for easier stealing since it was essentially like running on concrete. Consider that in 1983, Raines stole 51 of his career high 90 bases at home in the Astroturf-ed Olympic Stadium. Interestingly, Raines had a higher success rate in Montreal, going 51 for 56 in his attempts while managing 39 for 48 on the road.

The converter doesn’t favor Reyes in Raines’ place, showing him with two less steals on the 1983 Expos, though I’m going to dismiss that as a quirk of the converter. The thought here is that Reyes would have a shot at 90 steals, if not 100.

Click here to learn about THT's download subscriptions.]]> Graham Womack 2011-02-23T09:10:15+00:00