Posted by examinerebb on 12/5/2014 6:57:00 PM (view original):

Posted by bad_luck on 12/5/2014 6:49:00 PM (view original):

Posted by examinerebb on 12/5/2014 6:31:00 PM (view original):
Again, that's fine.  I'm not trying to argue that Durham belongs in the HOF.  What I'm saying is that the voters telling us that Biggio is a mortal lock are the voters who didn't muster up a single vote for Durham when he was on the ballot.  They played in the same era and put up very similar numbers (again, per-season), so that seems odd to me.

I don't think they are really all that close. Biggio has Durham by ~30 WAR (essentially double Durham's total) and almost ten points in OPS+.

My buddy brought that up too.  My immediate question was "when setting the average, do WAR and "+" stats use pitchers' hitting stats in the NL, while using DH hitting stats in the AL"?

My buddy wasn't sure, which is why he figured out the normalized stat line.  If they do, you can't compare across leagues with any meaning.  The difference in hitting stats between AL DHs and NL pitchers would significantly skew your results.  If they don't, I'd be interested to hear the reason for the discrepancy, given how close the stat lines look.

Pitcher batting stats are not included in WAR. See here:

To calculate Batting Runs Above Average you only need to know three things about a player and several things about the league in general. You need the player’s wOBA, PA, and home park factor and you need League Average wOBA (lgwOBA), the wOBA Scale, MLB R/PA (lgR/PA), and the specific league (AL or NL) wRC and PA for non-pitchers. 

It seems an odd set of stats, for this purpose.  Wouldn't it make more sense in cases like this to rely on stats that are normalized across all of baseball, rather than by league?

Posted by examinerebb on 12/5/2014 7:44:00 PM (view original):
It seems an odd set of stats, for this purpose.  Wouldn't it make more sense in cases like this to rely on stats that are normalized across all of baseball, rather than by league?

If you don't adjust for league and one league is significantly better (which happens), players in the weaker league would look better.

But, either way, it doesn't make a big enough difference to account for the huge difference between them.

League adjustment (from the previous link):

The league adjustment is a small correction to make it so that each league’s runs above average balances out to zero. Each league’s Batting Runs + Base Running Runs + Fielding Runs + Positional Adjustment often total to something slightly different from zero. The league adjustment fixes this and has a very tiny impact on player value.

To find the league adjustment find the league specific values (AL or NL) and do the following:

League Adjustment = ((-1)*(lgBatting Runs + lgBase Running Runs + lgFielding Runs + lgPositional Adjustment) / lgPA)*PA

This will tell you how many extra runs you need to add to the entire league per PA and then you multiply that by the specific player’s PA. This will add between 0 and 5 runs to a player’s value per season based on their league and PA.

On Monday, the Hall of Fame Golden Era Committee will announce whether it has elected
any of 10 candidates: Gil Hodges, Luis Tiant, Maury Wills, Dick Allen, Ken Boyer, Jim Kaat,
Minnie Minoso, Tony Oliva, Billy Pierce and Bob Howsam. The group considers players, &
executives whose most significant impact was from 1947-72.

Once again nobody elected.  They could at least televise the committee discussing the candidates and present their cases on MLB Network so at least we get some inclination of what the voters are thinking.

Posted by Got_Worms on 12/8/2014 3:43:00 PM (view original):
Once again nobody elected.  They could at least televise the committee discussing the candidates and present their cases on MLB Network so at least we get some inclination of what the voters are thinking.

For a second I thought you were talking about the BWAA vote. What a disaster that would be. I really don't have a problem with no golden-era guys getting in.

Posted by Got_Worms on 12/8/2014 3:43:00 PM (view original):
Once again nobody elected.  They could at least televise the committee discussing the candidates and present their cases on MLB Network so at least we get some inclination of what the voters are thinking.

They could do that if they were looking to find a way to hit a new all-time ratings low.

Bonds
Clemens
Johnson
Pedro
Piazza
Bagwell
Biggio
Schilling
Raines
Mussina

 
Edgar
Smoltz
McGwire
Sheffield

Screw the 10 player limit.

Posted by AlCheez on 12/8/2014 4:30:00 PM (view original):

Posted by Got_Worms on 12/8/2014 3:43:00 PM (view original):
Once again nobody elected.  They could at least televise the committee discussing the candidates and present their cases on MLB Network so at least we get some inclination of what the voters are thinking.

They could do that if they were looking to find a way to hit a new all-time ratings low.

Nice.

Re: Lofton

https://twitter.com/dszymborski/status/548332340838412288

Posted by bad_luck on 12/25/2014 11:22:00 PM (view original):
Re: Lofton

https://twitter.com/dszymborski/status/548332340838412288

Congrats.  You found a fellow retard?