Professional Football Researchers Association Forum

The whole idea of only using stats (or ones that have been created in the past two decades) reminds me of how in baseball, a good player such as Bobby Grich is seen by statheads as a misunderstood legend. He appeared just once on the HOF ballot, getting 2.6 percent of the vote in 1992.

BD Sullivan wrote:The whole idea of only using stats (or ones that have been created in the past two decades) reminds me of how in baseball, a good player such as Bobby Grich is seen by statheads as a misunderstood legend. He appeared just once on the HOF ballot, getting 2.6 percent of the vote in 1992.

Yeah, it is funny how Grich was good while active and was determined to have been great years after retirement.

Reaser wrote:

mwald wrote: In that regard, one way to evaluate a coach (or heck, a player) would be to ask "was he ever at one point in his career considered the top of his peer group?"

Whenever there's a "HOF Criteria" thread, for players. Literally, first line I post is always "was he ever the best at his own position?" ... So yes, doing it that way applies to players, too.

Absolutely, and I think I stated earlier, Eli has never been top 5, he'd be an embarrassment to the HOF. I don't think myself a small or big hall guy, but adhering to this rule does tend to skew small hall.

NWebster wrote:I don't think myself a small or big hall guy, but adhering to this rule does tend to skew small hall.

Yes, it's by default that I guess I'm a small-hall guy. I tend to think of myself more as a "the HOF should be for the players who were actually the best at what they did" guy. Though that description is a bit cumbersome, so I guess small-hall is the shorthand version.

Reaser wrote:

bachslunch wrote:-my interest in sabermetric type thinking is limited to looking backwards.

If the 'advanced stats' and such to have no value moving forward they would also not have value looking backwards. Was my point there. It has to go left AND right. Otherwise you can't apply it across the board to all previous seasons if it can't be meaningfully applied to next season.

I'm having a really hard understanding why things must work forwards as well as backwards. You'll have to explain it to me, especially since we're talking about two very different things in the past and future. The past has happened. It already exists as a finite entity, and any variables have occurred. The future has not happened. And any number of unforeseen things could and sometimes do alter what occurs. For example, wild cards like a serious injury (Terrell Suggs in 2015) or an alcohol habit relapse (MLBs Josh Hamilton in 2015) or a bad change of scenery that adversely affects the player's attitude (MLBs Edgar Renteria in 2005) or anything else can and sometimes do play havoc with even the best attempts at prediction. Going backwards, you're dealing with a frozen given and have a better shot at pinning things down. Going forward, the best you can hope for is a good guess at a pliable scenario. Maybe I'm missing something obvious, but I don't see that they're the same thing.

Reaser wrote:

NWebster wrote:I don't think myself a small or big hall guy, but adhering to this rule does tend to skew small hall.

Yes, it's by default that I guess I'm a small-hall guy. I tend to think of myself more as a "the HOF should be for the players who were actually the best at what they did" guy. Though that description is a bit cumbersome, so I guess small-hall is the shorthand version.

I've always thought of myself as a "fair hall" guy in the sense that I like to

-see what voting patterns have been and try to correct what strike me as unfair exceptions to them.

-address positions that seem to get screwed in relation to others and try to make representation more fair. There's a reason why the snubs I usually list contain no RBs and a fair number of guards, safeties, and WRs.

By default, that probably makes me a big-hall guy.

Of course if we all thought the same way, it wouldn't be nearly as interesting or as fun around here.

JWL wrote:

BD Sullivan wrote:The whole idea of only using stats (or ones that have been created in the past two decades) reminds me of how in baseball, a good player such as Bobby Grich is seen by statheads as a misunderstood legend. He appeared just once on the HOF ballot, getting 2.6 percent of the vote in 1992.

Yeah, it is funny how Grich was good while active and was determined to have been great years after retirement.

Okay, you tossed enough meat outside the bear's den...

There are in fact several BBHoF deserving players who have gotten unceremoniously dumped off the writers' ballot early, including Grich, Lou Whitaker, Ted Simmons, Dwight Evans, and Ron Santo. In most all cases, the voters didn't make adjustments for position played, era played, or both. Or the players were great at things that the voters apparently don't know how to evaluate well, such as fielding, base stealing efficiency, or drawing walks.

In Grich's case, it was a perfect storm of all these things. He played most of his career during a time when offense was suppressed, and his home parks were pitcher-friendly. He was a fine fielder adept at getting on base via drawing walks and getting hit by pitches. And he was one of the best hitting second basemen of his time. Grich ranks 8th all time in WAR for 2nd basemen (a catch-all stat that measures several aspects of a player's game and adjusts to ballpark and era); all but Whitaker are in the HoF and 14 HoF 2nd basemen have a lower number. That alone makes him qualified. In addition, he's 15th all time in OPS+ among 2nd basemen, a hitting stat that measures on base percentage and slugging and adjusts to ballpark and era. I maintain that Grich is one of those guys who flew under the radar as badly as Mick Tingelhoff did regarding the PFHoF.

Also add in the fact that several of the BBHoF voters aren't up to the task they're assigned to. Such folks look at only a few cursory stats often out of context, or in some cases none at all. They're easily dazzled by narrative. They decide HoFers by "feel" in a sport that lends itself well to adjusted stats use. Until recently, some of these folks had maintained their HoF voting privileges despite not covering the sport actively for years, even decades (it was a running joke for a while to see who the writers for various golf digests would vote for), though as of this past cycle, such folks have started to get cleared out of the voting bloc. And they whine like petulant toddlers in blogs and news columns about the process while producing ballots that range from puzzling to downright absurd. Fortunately that's not true for all of them, but it has been true of enough of them that it's not surprising folks like Grich have dropped off the ballot while clearly undeserving players like Jack Morris have approached enshrinement.

bachslunch wrote:There's a reason why the snubs I usually list contain no RBs and a fair number of guards, safeties, and WRs.

... and the reason they're 'snubbed' is because players who were never the best (or even close to it) are going in at other positions.

Reaser wrote:

bachslunch wrote:There's a reason why the snubs I usually list contain no RBs and a fair number of guards, safeties, and WRs.

... and the reason they're 'snubbed' is because players who were never the best (or even close to it) are going in at other positions.

I can see that you're perceiving it as "holding the line" to keep these folks out. Understood -- for you, it's a sign of further degradation of the HoF. If you're a small hall guy, I'd be surprised if you felt otherwise.

For me, I see it as unfairness, especially since guards and safeties and WRs play full time, just as much as RBs do.

We're just coming from different thought processes.

Coincidentally, there's a discussion going on now re Bobby Grich's HoF fitness over at the Baseball Think Factory website. What I said above pretty much seems to encapsulate the thinking over there, but for those who may be interested:

http://www.baseballthinkfactory.org/new ... tic_at_all