The Hardball Times -- Dave Studeman

Money and wins

Dave Studeman — 2012-02-07T04:41:15+00:00

Okay, we all know that teams with bigger payrolls tend to win more games. We know it so well, in fact, that many people consider it the scourge of baseball, the evil lurking in our fanatical hearts, the dark side of the force out. Call it the Alpha Team theory of major league ball. If you're a fan of an Alpha Team, life is good. If you're a Pirates fan, well, you'll always have Willie Stargell and Rennie Stennett.

I'm not out to debunk the Alpha Team theory; far from it. I would just like to give it some historical perspective. This is possible thanks to some terrific data collection by THT co-founder Matthew Namee. Matthew recently compiled the payrolls of all major league teams from 1976 through 2011, the Free Agent Years. Matthew has been using the data to analyze the effectiveness of general managers, which is a really cool idea. Consider this article a background piece to his more detailed analyses.

Let's start at the very beginning. In 1976, the average team payroll was about $1 million; in 2011, it was $93 million. That's a 13 percent compound growth rate over 35 years. During the same time period, inflation has grown 4.5 percent a year. The S&P 500 index has grown 7.6 percent a year. If you could have invested in baseball players in 1976, you'd be buying lots of THT Forecast subscriptions right now.

Plus, there were just 24 teams in 1976; now there are 30. More teams. More payroll. A boatload of money is now paid to major league ballplayers. It wasn't always thus.

If you were around at the time, you remember 1976. The month before the New Year, December, 1975, was the month that Peter Seitz changed the economics of baseball by declaring Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally free agents. This ruling basically undermined the reserve clause. Chaos ensued. The owners postponed spring training in 1976, though Bowie Kuhn finally forced them to open their gates. The Twins traded Bert Blyleven. Charlie Finley sold his best talent, though Kuhn overruled that, too. 24 players refused to sign contracts during the 1976 season and were declared free agents at the end of the year. Reggie Jackson, Joe Rudi, and Bobby Grich were among the players who subsequently signed multi-year deals for over a million dollars each. Mike Schmidt didn't go the free agent route, but the Phillies signed him to the richest contract (at the time) in baseball history ($3.4 million for four years) just to cover themselves.

And on and on. Bottom line: the average team payroll leaped nearly 90 percent from 1976 to 1977.

And wins followed suit. The relationship between payroll and team performance had already been strong—in 1976, the correlation (otherwise known as "R") between payroll and winning percentage was 0.55—but that correlation jumped to 0.7 in 1977.

The graph on the right shows how much each team spent and won in 1977. It's pretty easy to draw a line through the data points, isn't it?

The Phillies, with their veteran lineup featuring Schmidt, Greg Luzinski and Steve Carlton, won 101 games but lost the NL Championship series to the Dodgers. The Yankees, who had been wandering the desert without a world championship for over a decade, took it all with Jackson, Don Gullett and Catfish Hunter leading the payroll. It seemed as though money truly was becoming destiny.

Okay, enough with the ancient history. Let's step back, take in the big picture and ask: how have payroll and wins correlated since the free agency explosion? Has the relationship between the two stayed as strong? The answer is, "it's complicated."

Below is a graph of the year-by-year correlation (R, not R-squared) between the payroll and wins. A high R means that wins closely followed payroll; a low R means that results on the field were more random than payroll would imply. Take a note of the ups and downs during these years.

As you can see, there have been two periods in which money and performance were closely tied: the last half of the 1970s and the last half of the 1990s. The last half of the 1980s, however, was a period of relative equal measure, when both rich and "poor" teams had relatively even chances of winning. Some historical review is in order (the following are my thoughts. Be sure to leave your own observations below).

In the first few years of free agency—the latter half of the 1970s—teams did take advantage of new opportunities by signing top talent to big bucks. It's no coincidence that this period coincided with the Steinbrenner Yankees' return to glory and the introduction of two bottom-dwelling, low-pay expansion teams (the Mariners and Blue Jays). These developments exacerbated the differences between the have's and have-not's.

Beginning around 1980, however, the picture changed as young, lower-paid talent began to make an impact on the pennant races. Players such as Eddie Murray and Cal Ripken in Baltimore, Rickey Henderson in Oakland and George Brett in Kansas City changed their team's fortunes before changing their payrolls. The Mets developed a gaggle of phenomenal, "cheap" young talent. This influx of top young talent helped change the picture in the early part of the decade. At the same time, bad contracts started appearing. The Angels became the first team known for its bloated, underperforming contracts.

Something else happened in the 1980s: collusion. In 1985, 1986 and 1987, free agents such as Andre Dawson, Tim Raines, Jack Morris and many others found no market for their services. It turns out that commissioner Peter Ueberroth had convinced major league owners that they should work together to refuse expensive, long-term contracts. The owners reportedly established standards of no more than three years for position players and two years for pitchers. As a result, average payroll actually declined in 1987.

The impact on the the economics of winning was stark, and the correlation between wins and payroll reached two of their lowest points in 1986 and 1987 (0.17 and 0.15, respectively). Money was losing its power and competitive balance seemed possible. Trouble was, this was illegal. In three different cases, arbitrators ruled that the owners had colluded and eventually ordered them to pay damages.

1992 was the nadir of money's influence, when wins and payroll had a correlation of just 0.14. On the left, the graph for 1992 looks like a random scatterplot. The Dodgers, notably, won only 63 games despite paying Daryl Strawberry over $4 million. And I don't mean to pick on Strawberry. The Dodgers paid a lot of guys a lot of money. Obviously, this was a team effort in economic futility—one of the ten worst in our database.

In 1993, the Rockies and Marlins joined the National League and the era of relative economic equality ended in the major leagues. After the labor strife of 1994 and 1995, high-spending teams started winning strong once again. By 1998, the correlation between salary and wins was 0.77, the highest correlation in the history of our little bit of data. The Yankees and Braves were at the top of the charts, the Expos and Marlins at the bottom, and the Alpha Team worriers seemed to have reason to worry once again.

In fact, a 2000 "blue ribbon panel" (where did that term come from, anyway?) recommended that Major League Baseball institute a system of revenue sharing, essentially taxing the rich teams and giving to the poor ones. Then, in 2001 and 2002, Moneyball was played in Oakland and Billy Beane's A's mounted two of the three best win/salary performances of all the teams and years in our database. (Said differently, the A's won many more games than their payrolls would have predicted, based on the overall major league patterns.)

Certainly we can argue whether teams really did learn how to better spend their payroll dollars. What's less arguable is that the commissioner did indeed start to share revenue between teams according to payroll, and a formal revenue-sharing scheme was codified in the 2006 Collective Bargaining Agreement.

Has this worked? Go back up to the graph and take a look. For the past decade, the average correlation between wins and salary has settled into a "natural" space between 0.3 and 0.5. There are still big payrolls, to be sure, and those teams are more likely to win games. But we haven't seen the extreme correlations between payroll and wins that we witnessed in the past.

For a little more insight, here's one last graph. It's called a "box-whisker" graph because it shows boxes and, um, whiskers around the median payroll each year. In this case, I've calculated the 2011 equivalent of each team's salary and plotted each year on the graph. The boxes above and below the median represent the first two quartiles; that is, half the teams fall within those two boxes. The whiskers show the outside 25th percentile, but I've put an arbitrary limit on those outer quartiles so you can spot the outliers. Those are the triangles that fall outside the whiskers.

See all those outlier triangles starting around 2000 and lasting all decade? Those are the Yankees. Even in the years in which the Yanks don't technically break out as outliers, they stretch the lines to their fullest height. On a inflation-adjusted basis, the Yankees of the 2000's have nine of the top ten spending teams of all time. The only team to break up that run is the Yankees of 1999. So, it's all Yankees.

Check out the other trends. See how narrow the quartiles were in the collusion years? Notice that, indeed, teams became more spread out in the late 1990s. When the Yankees fall into outlier territory in the 2000s, the quartiles look about as wide as previous years. If you graph the Yankees as outliers, the spread between teams in the 2000's is roughly the same as it was in the 1970's and late 1990's, perhaps a bit larger.

So here's the point: Wins and salaries are closely tied, but the relationship between the two has changed over time. There is no doubt that some of the change has been random, or the simple result of individual team successes and failures, but some of it also seems to be related to structural changes in the game. The current state of the game? Despite the outrageous spending ways of the Yankees, it's settled into a pattern that is more competitive than any previous time period, other than the years of collusion.

One other point: We're measuring payroll against regular-season wins here, so the extra randomness added by expanding the playoffs to include wildcard teams isn't accounted for. This is another factor that has given "poor" teams a reason for hope.

So, hey Pittsburgh fans, maybe there is some hope. Hang in there.

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It’s THT Dispatch

Dave Studeman — 2012-01-25T20:10:15+00:00

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Fast goes Astro

Dave Studeman — 2012-01-24T21:53:15+00:00

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SABR Analytics Conference

Dave Studeman — 2012-01-18T21:18:15+00:00

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THT Forecasts

Dave Studeman — 2012-01-12T03:41:15+00:00

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THT writers and the Hall of Fame

Dave Studeman — 2012-01-05T09:01:15+00:00

It's Hall of Fame time. Here at the Hardball Times, we like to think about the Hall and talk about it and write about it. Most of us aren't as prolific as Chris Jaffe, but we have our opinions and, lucky you, we've decided to share them.

The BBWAA results are coming out next week, so we're stealing the thunder by releasing our results today. Twenty-three THT writers voted for the players on this year's ballot, resulting in four players passing the 75 percent mark:

Player              Votes
Barry Larkin          23
Jeff Bagwell          22
Tim Raines            21
Alan Trammell         19
Mark McGwire          17
Edgar Martinez        11
Rafael Palmeiro        9
Larry Walker           7
Dale Murphy            5
Lee Smith              3
Bernie Williams        3
Fred McGriff           2
Jack Morris            2
Jeromy Burnitz         0
Vinny Castilla         0
Juan Gonzalez          0
Brian Jordan           0
Javy Lopez             0
Don Mattingly          0
Bill Mueller           0
Terry Mulholland       0
Phil Nevin             0
Brad Radke             0
Tim Salmon             0
Ruben Sierra           0
Tony Womack            0
Eric Young             0

In our estimation, Barry Larkin, Jeff Bagwell, Tim Raines and Alan Trammell should all be headed to the Hall next week; Mark McGwire just misses the cut.

Barry Larkin was a unanimous pick, Bagwell had just one "detractor" and Raines had two. When looking at the results, it's clear that our writers didn't disagree so much about specific players (though there are some mighty exceptions; see below), but that they differed in the number of players they voted for. Some of our writers voted for only three or four players; others voted for 10. The ones who voted for just three or four all chose the top three or four players overall.

So vote totals for players beyond the big four or five were a result of individual writers expanding their vote set (wow, that sounded like a math nerd talking, didn't it?). In other words, the most important question of all is: are you a Big Hall guy or a Small Hall guy?

Big Hall vs. Small Hall

The smaller the Hall, the easier the voting. The chart on the right is the career Wins Above Replacement total for the top 200 position players after 1900. As you can see, it's relatively easy to select the top 10 players of all time. Top 20? A little harder, but doable. Top 200? Forget about it.

The overlap is bad enough, but WAR isn't a perfect stat. You should consider a host of statistics and breakouts. WAR probably has an "error bar" of maybe 10 or so wins over a career, so you should factor that in. Plus, there really are other considerations for the Hall beyond a player's stats (though some of our writers see it differently). Bottom line: the larger your Hall, the more problematic your selections.

I asked a couple of our writers to explain their thinking about Large vs. Small Hall. Here's Matt Filippi, discussing his approach:

To me, the Hall of Fame is only for the greats. Not the decent, not the good, and not the very good. Only the players who truly dominated the game during the time they played deserve to make to the Hall. In the group of players that are eligible to be elected this year, I only saw three names that were deserving.

A lot of people try to vote for players based on the other players that have been voted in. But I think there are a lot of players who have selected in the past who didn't deserve it. Using them as a standard isn't the right way to go about things. Each player must be looked at on his own terms.

On the other hand, occasional THT writer Joe Dimino (who spends way too much time at the Hall of Merit) voted for 10 players. Here's his rationale:

The Hall of Fame is designed to be an inclusive institution where we honor the greatest players. It is not designed to be a 'small hall' as some would prefer. We don't need a Hall of Fame for guys like Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays. We need it for players like Arky Vaughan and Johnny Mize who were nearly as great and would otherwise be forgotten. Those are guys who are top five at their position on many lists.

So with that in mind, and the way the Hall of Fame balloting is designed (yes/no, 75 percent required) I think all voters should vote for anyone they reasonably think should be a Hall of Famer. It is very hard to get 75 percent of the vote. The BBWAA has only elected 111 players—and that's with letting people pick 10. Historically voters usually vote for only six or seven. Many think the mistakes have come from the Vets Committee and the BBWAA guys are the 'real' Hall of Famers. That's really not entirely true. The BBWAA has missed a lot of players.

The Vets Committee has given us Mize, Vaughan, Goose Goslin, Pee Wee Reese and Hal Newhouser. Those are easy Hall of Famers, and they aren't turn of the century guys. The old VC elected 10 Hall of Merit players, including four Negro Leaguers in the 1990s alone.

Back to the BBWAA. Way too many individual voters are worried about making a mistake by voting for someone as opposed to not voting for him. But when all of the individuals do this, it breaks the voting at the group level. Players such as Lou Whitaker, Bobby Grich and Dwight Evans (all in the Hall of Merit) fall off the ballot entirely. If you aren't sure about a player, you should vote yes, not no. If you aren't sure, 25 percent of the others will keep the group from electing him. And then as time passes you'll become sure one way or the other.

If everyone voted for the seven to 10 players they felt were most qualified, a consensus would form around the guys that most agree on. No real mistakes would be made (my bottom five are going to differ from yours and his and hers) and the ballot would be deeper because far fewer players would fall off. This would make it easier for everyone to vote for seven to 10 players. They really should make the threshold to stay on five votes (one percent) not five percent. Several players have been elected by the BBWAA starting with less than five percent of the vote, before that rule was put in place.

Also, what's the harm if a borderline guy goes in? The point of the place is to honor people. You don't water it down by adding a few borderline guys. You water it down by letting Frankie Frisch and his cronies vote all of their buddies in.

Finally, this is a pretty deep ballot. There are eight Hall of Merit inductees on the ballot, one solid new candidate and Lee Smith. It's not very tough to come up with 10, even if I wasn't trying to be inclusive.

Are you a Small Hall or Big Hall person? It makes a Big Difference.

Tim Raines

Although Tim Raines was voted into the "THT Hall," there were a couple of writers who didn't vote for Rock. One was Brad Johnson (who voted for just four players):

My decision to leave Raines off the ballot was a simple matter of preference. I'm a small Hall guy but I like guys who are super elite during their peak more than players who are great for a long period of time. If you set an arbitrary line at 7+ WAR as a super elite year, he had one. Bagwell, who's the most comparable guy in total value who I voted for, had five, as well as two-three seasons above eight WAR (depending on which WAR you like more). Not a rigorous analysis, but there it is.

With that said, I flip back and forth on my opinion of Raines pretty frequently. When in doubt, I vote No. How many years do I have left to change my mind?

Another was Ben Pritchett:

I understand that longevity and nostalgia play a role in any and every Hall of Fame vote, but I can't seem to enshrine Tim Raines as a hall-of-famer now or ever. Maybe it's also my youth, but I just don't get the appeal of Tim Raines. I read over his statistics and accolades, and I'm not overly impressed. To me, he's a dressed-down version of Kenny Lofton.

I must first say that Kenny Lofton is not a Hall-of-Famer in my opinion either, but Lofton at least has four Gold Gloves. Tim Raines has none. Lofton is a career .299 hitter to Raines' .294 batting average. All-Star appearances are pretty even at just six for Lofton and secen for Raines. Raines has no MVP awards and hasn't finished higher than fifth in the voting. His gaudy run and stolen base numbers can be attributed to his lengthy 23-year career.

Now, I'm not going to totally discount the fact that Raines was a great player for at least 10 years and a good player the other 13, but I can't justify Kenny Lofton, who put up similar statistics in 17 years, as a Hall-of-Famer. Since there won't be a Lofton on my ballot, then there shouldn't be a Raines either.

Mark McGwire

I didn't ask for comments about Mark McGwire from our writers, because I think we all know the issue here. Speaking for myself, I didn't vote for the guy. He has admitted that he took steroids, and I don't believe his playing record would qualify him for the Hall without them (unlike, for instance, Barry Bonds or Roger Clemens). So I didn't vote for him.

Might I change my mind about this? Absolutely. In fact, if this were McGwire's last year on the ballot, I might have voted for him. But the steroids issue is nuanced and difficult. Although I'm sick and tired of talking about it, I can't make it go away. Time brings wisdom; let's see what it brings McGwire.

Edgar Martinez

And then there's the issue of the greatest designated hitter to make the ballot so far, Edgar Martinez. I asked Richard Barbieri why he didn't vote for Martinez, and this is Rich's reply:

According to the usually reliable Baseball-Reference.com, Edgar Martinez hit just .317 with a .965 OPS against the Yankees in 138 games. I can only conclude that is a mistake. As far as I remember—and I watch a lot of Yankee games—every time Martinez came up against the Yankees (and especially the otherwise untouchable Mariano Rivera) he would boom an outfielder-splitting double into the gap.

So why not vote for Martinez? I simply cannot bring myself to vote for a man who did not play more than 100 games in the major leagues until he was 27 (admittedly through no fault of his own) and essentially abdicated any defensive responsibilities upon turning 30. I don’t know if the Mariners regarded Martinez as too fragile or too iron-gloved to play the field—I suspect it is the former—but it raises serious questions about the value he generated. Edgar Martinez was one of the greatest hitters I ever saw. But he doesn’t belong in the Hall of Fame.

Evaluating the designated hitter position is a tricky thing. WAR takes one approach; other systems take other approaches. Over time, we might come to some broad consensus about the value of a batter who never plays in the field, but we're not there yet.

On occasion I've seen a comparison that bugs me: the idea that voters who don't vote for DHs shouldn't vote for relief pitchers either. Folks seem to think that DHs and RPs are both "less than full" players and belong in the same bucket for Hall of Fame consideration. I think that's a false, simple-minded analogy.
{exp:list_maker}DH's don't field. Relief pitchers do everything starting pitchers do, but in fewer innings. It's a different value equation.
DHs were mandated into existence. RPs have evolved organically because they are strategically important to the game.
DHs play in one league. RPs play in both leagues.
DHs take a regular turn in the batting order. RPs pitch some of the most important innings of each season. {/exp:list_maker}These two things are not the same. I have no problem with a voter treating the two roles differently.

Larry Walker

And then there's Larry Walker. Walker was a fantastic, all-around great player who suffered from some injuries in his career and also suffered from playing in Coors Field for nine and a half years. I say suffered, because Coors inflated his stats mightily and BBWAA voters are well aware of that. How much credit should he get for those fantastic batting stats? How do we account for the impact of Coors? Those of you who think you know perfectly well how to factor in park effects—you're wrong.

Because his other skills were often "hidden" in the black arts of baserunning and fielding, Walker probably won't get the consideration he deserves among Hall of Fame voters. And it really is difficult to judge his Coors years. Still, Jeff Gross is a fan:

Larry Walker was a great player, but he does not get the proper level of respect because his career falls in that grey area between "the best" and "excellent for really long time." Larry Walker was neither Sandy Koufax-esque (burning brightest briefly), Pujolsian (truly one of the most elite ever), and certainly he did not stick around for 20+ years (although a 15-plus year major league career is nothing to sneeze at).

Despite these knocks, Walker's numbers stack up nicely with a lot of other deserving Hall of Famers. Walker’s career walk rate was a robust 11.4 percent. He also hit for plenty of power, as evidenced by a career .252 isolated power. 383 home runs might seem light by today’s power number standards, but it still ranks top 70 in the history of baseball. Plus it came with 230 stolen bases. Only 11 players in the history of baseball have more home runs and more stolen bases than Walker.

Coors may have bolstered Walker’s power numbers some, but he nonetheless racked up a career wOBA of .414 that was 42 percent above the major league average production level in the era of steroids, even after park factors are considered. He even stole bases at a decent clip (slightly over 75 percent success rate) and Walker was a pretty good baserunner. FanGraphs only tracks relative baserunning from 2002 and beyond, but even then, in the "twilight" of his career, Walker’s baserunning added an extra 10 runs over the final 461 games of his career. Plus, he played for the Expos (meaning he has the “Jonah Keri factor” going on) and once batted against Randy Johnson with a backwards batting helmet.

If you map out his WAR by season, Walker compares favorably to Paul Molitor and Carlton Fisk for his career. He lasted fewer seasons than either, but Walker had two better single seasons (1997 and 2001) than either Molitor or Fisk ever had. Position differences aside (WAR accounts for that), Walker’s value and case reminds me a lot of Ron Santo (without the off-the-field baggage).

Let me leave you with one final note regarding WAR. My HOF guideline is 70+ career WAR. That captures the greats (seven-plus seasons of 10+ WAR) and the perennial All-Stars (20-plus seasons of 3.5+ WAR). Per FanGraphs, Walker logged seven seasons with 5+ WAR and 10 seasons of 4+ WAR. Walker only posted a couple sub-3 WAR seasons, and those were all seasons where he played 100 or less games—and even then, his full season WAR pace was above 3. With 73 career WAR to his name, Walker deserves a spot in Cooperstown.

Dale Murphy

Let's not forget Dale Murphy. I think very few Big Hall voters would have a problem with Murphy making the Hall, but he's not on many people's lists anymore. Here's Chris Jaffe's rationale for supporting Murphy:

Well, first I'm a big-Hall guy. Second and more importantly, I think center fielders are the most underrated position on the field. People tend to think of left, right, and center fielders all as outfield, when there are considerable differences in defensive value. CFs don't get defensive credit while having to distinguish themselves at the plate in comparison with corner outfielders. Fun fact: from 1936-2011, the BBWAA has given fewer votes to center fielders in their voting history than they have to relievers. That's impressive, given that relievers haven't been around that long.

Murphy had a tremendous prime and did it in center field. My favorite Hall of Fame guys are usually either career guys or prime guys. (I distinguish prime from peak. Prime is a bit more sustained than peak). From 1980-88 he was a terrific player and he lasted long enough to have pretty good career numbers, too. His 398 homers are impressive for a guy who played in the 1980s.

Jack Morris

I'm on record as hating the "Jack Morris for the Hall" thing. I think everyone who votes for Morris should have their BBWAA card burned. But Tigers fan Brian Borawski thinks otherwise:

What separates me from a lot of the other Hall of Fame voters out there? Apparently, not much because when I was asked why I voted for Jack Morris in my Hall of Fame ballot I really struggled with the answer. First off, I’m pretty biased towards the Detroit Tigers and I feel that other Tigers have gotten the shaft in the Hall of Fame voting (I think Alan Trammell and Lou Whitaker deserve to be in). In a lot of ways, Jack Morris is my last chance to see someone from the 1984 Tigers team make it into the Hall of Fame.

I liken him to the Jim Rice of the pitching candidates and I know that doesn’t help my case. And it’s also hard to hang your hat on his 254 wins when we all know wins aren't a great indicator of pitching performance. Still, if you look at Morris through 1987, he was one of the best pitchers year and year out in the American League for an eight-year stretch. Then all he did after that was go on to help his team win three more World Series (okay, I’m stretching with 1993). Throw in the fact that he’s the best pitcher on the ballot and I thought it just made sense to give him my vote.

And just to prove that we're not all sabermetric automatons here at THT, Michael Stein voted against Alan Trammell and for Jack Morris. Here are his thoughts:

Jack Morris—I think that Morris is a Hall of Famer for the wrong reasons. The biggest argument I have in support of this is that Morris was a better pitcher than Bert Blyleven, who was finally admitted to the HOF after many years of eligibility. Blyleven’s statistics are numerically better than Morris in many categories, but he pitched four more years and was arguably a compiler.

Morris, on the other hand, pitched very effectively until the end of his career and was known as one of the best big-game pitchers of his era. He won multiple championships and personally had a major impact on those championship teams. Morris had the misfortune of pitching during a time when some of his peers simply had better statistics. But a baseball player’s true value goes beyond mere statistics. How else can it be justified that Ozzie Smith and Kirby Puckett are in the HOF? Neither of them had anywhere near the requisite statistics to meet the arbitrary thresholds for admittance.

In my estimation, Jack Morris should be in the Hall of Fame because he was easily one of the few pitchers that would be chosen to pitch in an all or nothing game. He also did have over 250 wins, a sub 4.00 ERA, and just under 2,500 strikeouts. His impact on the game of baseball was significant given that he was a dominant force behind three separate World Series championships with three different teams.

Alan Trammell—My argument why Trammell should not be in the Hall of Fame is simply that he wasn’t an elite player. He played in an era when shortstops such as Ozzie Smith and Cal Ripken dominated the position. Smith set the standard for shortstops playing defense, and Ripken shattered the stigma of shortstops in terms of offense. Trammell was a solid and consistent player, but he never had any astonishing offensive numbers outside of the offensive-laden 1987 when he hit .343 with 28 homeruns and 105 RBI. That was the only year he surpassed 100 RBI in a season and was by far the most homeruns he ever hit.

His overall career numbers are simply mediocre. Over the course of 20 seasons, he finished with a .285 batting average, 185 home runs, and 1,003 RBI. That is not Hall of Fame caliber in my estimation. I think his legacy is inflated because he spent his entire career with Detroit and formed a long-time dynamic double-play combination with Lou Whitaker that was arguably the best combo in baseball for many years. Trammell was never the best offensive or defensive player at his position, and he was never the best player on his own team. He will be remembered as a solid player, but not worthy of immortal status.

Final thoughts

There are many issues and angles to the Hall of Fame voting. Are you a Big or Small Hall person? How do you account for the fact that there are 50 percent more players than there were before 1960? How do you handle the steroids issue? How do you factor in park impacts, such as Coors? How do you value designated hitters and relievers?

These are not issues that can or should be resolved quickly. They should be debated, in an open medium. We baseball fans should welcome, and participate in, the ensuing discussions. Let's try not to mock those we disagree with (okay, there are some voters who should be mocked; my impression is that those are the BBWAA members who just don't know baseball well enough). Let's not rush to a WAR-only methodology.

Let's revel in the process. All hail the Hall.

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Morris vs. Blyleven

Dave Studeman — 2012-01-04T18:23:15+00:00

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THT Annual: What do you think?

Dave Studeman — 2011-11-18T13:44:15+00:00

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Now shipping: the THT Annual

Dave Studeman — 2011-11-11T14:36:15+00:00

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It’s the Hardball Times Annual 2012

Dave Studeman — 2011-10-24T14:41:15+00:00

It's gone, out of my hands—sent away to be forever committed to paper. There's nothing I can do about it anymore. What is it? It's The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2012, our eighth Annual in a row. And this year, it's different.

Some quick background: In 2004, we decided to publish an Annual even though we were just a motley crew of baseball writing nuts. We all felt a void in our baseball lives; we wanted something like the old Baseball Abstracts that recounted the season just past, added in some commentary, history and analysis, and gave us something basebally to read in the dead of winter. Our first effort was self-published and it seemed to go over well, so ACTA Sports came along and offered to publish it, giving the Annual a higher profile. They've been our publisher ever since.

The Annual remained the same size and format through the years: 300+ pages in a 8 1/2 by 11 book. The past couple of years, however, we've picked up a bit of disenchantment with the format. We heard that it was too big, too hard to read on the train and some such. People liked the stats in the back, but they generally looked at them just once or twice. They really bought the Annual for the articles.

Well, I heard that cause, I gotta tell you, the stats were a pain in the butt to typeset. If people didn't value them, then I was willing to look at alternatives. So we did.

The THT Annual now comes in a smaller, more convenient size. This year's edition is 7 inches by 9 inches. That's the same size as the Bill James Handbook. It's the same size as a typical Rob Neyer book, or Bill James' manager book. It works because it's wide enough to handle the occasional big graphic or table, but small enough to read on the train. Plus, the width gives us some opportunities to play with extra content in the side margins.

Bottom line, I'm pretty happy with the way it looks and I think most of you will be too. The Annual consists of 25 "main" articles and a number of "extra" articles in the margins on the side. Allow me to provide some details.

We've expanded our division views to include an overview of each team's minor league system as well as a special "PITCHf/x" sidebar for each division. The PITCHf/x sidebar consists of a case study in each division, using the PITCHf/x data as collected and modified by Harry Pavlidis and our other PITCHf/x experts. Some examples are investigations into the breakout seasons by Justin Upton and Jacoby Ellsbury and an in-depth analysis of the Royals' promising young bullpen.

In addition, Jeff Moore has provided an overview of the state of each team's minor league system. These are in the margin of the division views, and I think it makes the reading more compelling and interesting. When you get the book, let me know what you think.

We've still got sections devoted to Commentary, History and Analysis. Some specific highlights are...
{exp:list_maker}Rob Neyer has written a "GM in a Box" feature (a staple of THT Annuals) and he chose Theo Epstein as his subject. Required reading for Cubs fans.
Craig Calcaterra reviews the "year in frivolity." Craig is always entertaining.
I do my usual bit with WPA highlights of the year, including that crazy last day of the regular season.
Speaking of the last day of the season, Steve Treder provides his own perspective on late-season flops
Jack Marshall addresses the "baseball year in ethics" and Brian Borawski addresses the "baseball year in business". We put the two next to each other in the book for you Occupy Wall Street types.
And this is really fun—Jamie Holzhauer reflects on his short but successful career betting on sports: Diary of a Mad Sports Bettor {/exp:list_maker}
In the history section, Chris Jaffe lists the all-time managers in quick and slow hooks (the quickest hook of all time was a Blue Jays manager—can you guess which one?), Frank Jackson has an excellent remembrance of Hank Thompson's on-field accomplishments and off-field troubles and David Wade recalls how the designated hitter came to be.

And then there's analysis.
{exp:list_maker}Adam Dorhauer has a perfect analytic approach to estimate the best hitters, at their peak, in baseball history.
Matt Swartz follows up on his initial work at Baseball Prospectus with an in-depth analysis of whether teams know their own players best.
Max Marchi has some excellent work on the pitchers who drew the most fans to the ballpark. Guess how many extra fans Mark Fidrych drew to baseball games in 1976.
John Dewan presents fielding and pitching runs allowed, based on the terrific work of the folks at Baseball Info Solutions
Speaking of fielding, Michael Humphreys has some new thoughts on what makes an excellent system for judging fielders.
And Brian Cartwright has a fantastic new take, using HITf/x data, on whether groundball pitchers should be treated differently when it comes to those BABIP projections.{/exp:list_maker}That's not everything. We also do have some stats tables in the back of the book. We've included just "unique" stats this time, instead of listing as many stats as we could fit. We will make more stats available on a special webpage for purchasers of the book. Plus, Tuck has toons, Brandon Isleib has "fun with other numbers" and there are a couple of other things I can't remember. You'll just have to buy the book to find out what they are (such a tease).

Bottom line, the THT Annual will be shipping in mid-November and I really, really think you should order it now.

The Deal

We make this book for ourselves, but we also make it hoping that you'll find it valuable, pay for it, and support the Hardball Times by doing so. The best way to support the Hardball Times is to buy the book at ACTA Sports—but only by using this link. Let me repeat: Use this link.

Once you're there, you can also purchase the Bill James Handbook, which works as an excellent statistical reference companion to the THT Annual. When you check out, you can enter "DPD" in the Promo Code and receive 20 percent off the total order. It's a good deal for you and for us. An extra benefit of ordering from ACTA Sports is that you'll get the Annual very quickly, a week or so before Amazon customers get it. Should be on your bookshelf by Thanksgiving.

We know that books are less expensive at Amazon.com, and if you can't afford to purchase the Annual from ACTA Sports, we understand. However, please know that pretty much the entire difference in price comes out of our pocket. When you pay extra at ACTA Sports, you receive their excellent service and you also support THT directly. We barely make anything off Amazon sales.

I've suggested to some folks that they could perhaps buy the Annual from Amazon and then make a donation directly to us. If you'd like to do that, there is a donation button on our home page, in the lower right-hand column. Donate what you can.

Also, I believe an e-book will be available soon, but I don't have any details yet. I'll let you know as soon as I do.

Regardless of where you buy it, we think you'll find it's worth every penny.

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