Talking about the Hall of Fame elections is one of the great Hot Stove pastimes. With the JAWS series in full swing and the ballot results set to drop at 2 PM Eastern on Monday, I sat down with Alex Belth and Cliff Corcoran of Bronx Banter for a pair of short video roundtables on SNY.tv. In Part One, we discuss Rickey Henderson, Tim Raines and Alan Trammell. In Part Two, we hit Jim Rice, Andre Dawson and Bert Blyleven.
In doing all this I was reminded yet again of the difficulty of cramming two or three thousand words worth of writing—not to mention a brief description of the methodology—into about two minutes of video when I fumbled a portion of the Raines segment, first calling him Henderson halfway through the Tony Gwynn comparison, and then forgetting to include Rickey (whom we had just discussed) on the short list of left fielders with higher JAWS scores. Nonetheless, while I’m skeptical NBC is going to come calling for a pilot to follow The Office, I hope it makes for a few entertaining minutes of video.
For clarity’s sake, here’s a repeat of the list of JAWS rankings for left fielders:
Rk Player Career Peak JAWS
1 Barry Bonds 192.6 88.7 140.7
2 Rickey Henderson 155.7 74.9 115.3
3 Stan Musial 152.7 75.7 114.2*
4 Ted Williams 128.2 74.2 101.2*
5 Pete Rose 106.7 56.2 81.5
6 Tim Raines 94.3 54.9 74.6
7 Carl Yastrzemski 94.7 50.9 72.8*
8 Ed Delahanty 84.7 59.6 72.2**
9 Jim O’Rourke 94.3 46.5 70.4**
10 Willie Stargell 82.2 54.1 68.2*
11 Fred Clarke 81.1 43.9 62.5**
12 Jose Cruz Sr. 72.7 47.7 60.2
13 Jesse Burkett 72.1 47.5 59.8**
14 Al Simmons 71.6 47.0 59.3*
15 Tony Phillips 69.0 49.3 59.2
16 Albert Belle 61.9 53.2 57.6
17 Joe Medwick 67.1 46.5 56.8*
18 George Foster 62.7 50.8 56.8
19 Jimmy Sheckard 63.9 42.8 53.4
20 Bob Johnson 63.7 41.7 52.7
21 Goose Goslin 61.9 43.1 52.5**
22 Joe Kelley 59.9 44.9 52.4**
27 Zack Wheat 61.8 38.2 50.0**
29 Billy Williams 59.2 38.8 49.0*
35 Jim Rice 55.1 39.6 47.4
38 Ralph Kiner 47.9 43.4 45.7*
39 Lou Brock 54.6 36.0 45.3*
75 Chick Hafey 31.8 28.9 30.4**
81 Heinie Manush 31.3 27.1 29.2**
*: BBWAA-elected
**: VC-selected
Probably the two "wow, really?" names on this list for me would be Cruz and Phillips. (And Sheckard, mostly because I have no idea who he is.) Cruz always felt like a good but never outstanding player, although looking back at the record it's obvious his longevity and consistency were his strength. I always liked Phillips a lot - he was the savior for my strat team one year - but think of him as a guy who started his career late and never really had a position, so to see him rank as high as he does on this list is pretty cool.
And I thought O'Rourke's stuff with Sonic Youth really pushed the band over the edge into truly inspired greatness; had no idea he was such a good ballplayer, too. A true renaissance man.
There is something inherently wrong with a system that has numbers to show that Tony Phillips was a significantly better player over his career than Jim Rice. That doesn't pass any test.
This is from the web page, so it's different from the numbers Jays is using:
Jim Rice: .298/.352/.502, 2452 H, 382 HR, 95 FRAR. 325 GIDP
Tony Phillips: .266/.374/.389, 2023 H, 160 HR, 391 FRAR, 127 GIDP
I'm inclined to rub my eyes and look at it again myself. But Tony Phillips was a much better fielder to the tune of 300 runs (30 wins) and grounded into far fewer double plays while posting a higher OBP. He actually scored more runs than Rice (1300-1249) although Rice obviously drove in tons more (1451-819). I wonder about park effects too, although Phillip's best years were in Detroit.
The high ranking of Phillips appears to be mostly fielding so I'm inclined to take it with a grain of salt.
Phillips' offense is considered more valuable, coming as it did from (mostly) a middle infielder (1,071 G at SS and 2B combined). Phillips played more games at 2B (777) than LF (566). He did spend more time in the outfield, but only if you combine all three outfield positions together (786).
It's a combination of position, defense, and park effect that pushes Phillips ahead. I don't know if I'd agree that he was THAT far ahead of Rice, but he's closer than we tend to give him credit for.
(Games played info is from baseball-reference, not BP).
When I ran Phillips a few years ago when he was on the ballot, he finished above the JAWS bar, which surprised the hell out of me.
I'm actually surprised to see him classified as a LF myself. It was a classification generated by the database, not by me. IIRC, the system is supposed to put at the position where he accumulated the most WARP, but it's also supposed to lump players into infield and outfield piles -- considering games at all three or four positions within those subgroups -- before doing that. Phillips has about 1600 games in the infield and about 800 in the outfield, so it's difficult to believe his WARP could be higher at the latter. Then again, he was playing a lot of OF from 1990 through 1996, his peak years, so I suppose it's possible.
Anyway, his defense is a lot more valuable than Rice's by about 240 runs in the new WARP version. Rice gets about about 100 runs of that back offensively -- they're all measured as hitters in WARP, not relative to position like VORP -- and that's how Phillips ends up outranking Rice.
If you're surprised, as I am, to find a player who played more games at second base than left field and more games at infield than outfield classified as a left fielder, perhaps the system is flawed.
As an aside, if a player spent the latter half of his career in the "Steroid Era" and his home run total at age 36 matched his sum of home runs for ages 23-28, the first six years of his MLB career, one might consider that, regardless of his personal use or avoidance of PEDs, maybe the conditions of the latter part of his career somehow favored offensive contribution more than those of the early part of his career. Phillips hit 27 HR in 1982-1987, just as he hit 27 HR in the single year of 1995, his age 36 season, in Anaheim, not an overwhelmingly favorable ballpark for power hitters.
Maybe the JAWS system should normalize across decades more than it does.
Yeesh. Classification of Tony Phillips is not in and of itself evidence that the system is flawed, it's evidence that I didn't have time to pester Clay about something at the time I was writing an Unfiltered post that had nothing to do with Tony Phillips in the midst of delivering some 11,000 words worth of content on JAWS over the past two days (http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/baseball/mlb/01/12/jaffe.JAWS/index.html?eref=T1 if you missed the SI.com abridged version of JAWS 2009). The classification of Phillips is ultimately completely irrelevant because he's not used in creating the JAWS position standard for the Hall. If I remove him from the above list, Rice is now the 34th-best left fielder according to JAWS instead of the 35th. That should settle the debate over whether he belongs in Cooperstown, eh? Regardless, Phillips was still the more valuable player.
Meanwhile your statement regarding Phillips' home run total, it's pretty well documented that offensive levels began increasing in 1994-1995. But what you seem to miss is that while those conditions enabled players to rack up higher totals of counting stats like home runs, it DECREASED the value of each home run and each run and every other positive offensive event. WARP already adjusts for that, along with park and league levels - it's why we're using WARP instead of raw counting stats to assess value.
I didn't miss the decrease of importance of every home run. It was diminished by runs per game averages, like every other stat. In 1995 the AL averaged 5.06 R/G per Baseball Reference. In 1985, the median point of the six-year span I cited with respect to Phillips' youth, the AL averaged 4.56 R/G. WARP adjusts for the change, discounting 1995 runs by 10% with respect to 1985 home runs. But, Jay, c'mon, Tony Phillips racked up his entire home run total of ages 23-28, what should've been his prime, in one year at age 36 without moving to an extreme hitters' park. The 10% adjustment for offense is dwarfed by the normal decline in talent with age...and we're still talking about a huge difference in home runs per plate appearance.
Jay, you're frustrated at my use of Phillips--whose career you chose to cite earlier today as an example of a left fielder better than Rice--as my primary case to counter your position. I'll tell you what: cite any one other player active in MLB from ages 24-28 with 1,500+ PA at those ages who matched his home run score for those five seasons in a single season anywhere from ages 34-38 where the latter season was outside the "Steroid Era" and the earlier seasons all were after 1919, and I'll withdraw my position and apologize.
Otherwise, while I apologize for frustrating you, I believe that my point stands: some players improved radically during the "Steroid Era," and the increase in deviation of WARP3 scores undermines the JAWS system. I've cited the arithmetic. This is the example to drive the point home.
A glaring flaw in this logic is the focus on a single season. There have been plenty of players that have hit for more power later in their careers. Two players that come to mind quickly are Frank White and Brian Downing.
HRs at ages 24-28 and ages 34-38:
Phillips 27/73 (1:2.70)
White 31/71 (1:2.29)
Downing 33/108 (1:3.27)
HRs pre-31 versus post-30:
Phillips 33/127 (1:3.85)
White 48/112 (1:2.33)
Downing 56/219 (1:3.89)
Note also that Phillips played in Oakland through his age 30 season but afterward mostly in much better parks for hitters.
I dunno - Phillips scored more runs, played better defense (at many positions), was much better at getting on base, probably didn't benefit quite as much from his home parks, was obviously a better runner and better athlete, and played until he was 40 (and played relatively well - his line at age 40 was 243/362/433 with 76 runs scored in 106 games.)
Rice was done being a productive player by age 33, never walked much and was a pretty terrible fielder on the wrong end of the defensive spectrum.
I know Rice was "feared" - his 77 career intentional walks ranks him 198th all time, tied with other feared players like Claudell Washington, Pete O'Brien and Jerry Grote. (Barry Bonds drew 688 IBBs, BtW - that's "feared").
While I would never claim Phillips is a hall of famer, I think that it's reasonable to call him a more valuable player than Rice, and I think one can make an argument for it. Value in baseball isn't just wrapped up in HRs and RBIs, and shouldn't be measured as if it is.
If I was drafting players for a team to have their careers, I'd pick Phillips over Rice. Maybe it is my age--when I started following baseball, Rice was a declining, poor defensive, out-making machine. Phillips was a highly versatile defensive player who was skilled at getting on base. Rice was a good player who had a good career, but Phillips was a talented player with a unique career, a valuable lead off man who could play about any position you needed. That is exceedingly harder to come by than Rice's skill set.
I think the defensive stats are too wild and imprecise to take really serious with a system that tries for the number of digits of significance as JAWS.
That said, Bary Bond's *PEAK* WARP is higher than all but 7 other LFs' *CAREER* WARP. And Bond's CAREER WARP is higher than all but 3 LFs' CAREER+PEAK WARP. The man is a monster who IMHO would deserve first ballot HOF even if PEDs were completely proven to have been taken by Bond's and none of his contemproaries.
Let me make the suggestion that every BP story from now on that includes a JAWS number makes full disclosure of the fielding component so exceptions like Bill Dahlen, Tony Phillips, and Bret Butler can be duly noted.
19 comments have been left for this post.
Ted Williams is only fourth? Man, I hate that Hitler guy.
lol, best reply I've seen on here.