What Makes a Hall of Famer

What Makes a Hall of Famer?

            I want to start this out with a quick comparison.  A example of 2 pitchers that I want to see if you can guess before looking up the numbers yourself just by looking.  After the Hall of Fame vote on TiT I decided to ask what to me made a Hall of Famer and since I’m a stats guy I figured I’d take a look at an example.  A note that these are obviously their career numbers as HoF (Hall of Fame) only takes that into account.

Player A) ERA: 3.38, FIP: 3.39, WHIP: 1.18, K/9: 6.93, BB/9: 1.94, K/BB: 3.58, AVG Against: .249, K%: 18.8, BB%: 5.2

Player B) ERA: 3.36, FIP: 3.37, WHIP: 1.21, K/9: 7.42, BB/9: 2.08, K/BB: 3.56 AVG Against: .253, K%: 19.9, BB%: 5.6

These are players that played very similar amounts of years and have very similar careers and as you can see they’ve had very similar stat lines.

            Before I give the answer to this comparison lets talk about HoFers and how I view them.  Personally I believe that the stats have to dictate it and then we let what they’ve done outside the game become a factor after the stats.  What stats do I think are HoF worth?  Well there’s the obvious ones like 500 HR’s and 3,000 hits but we can’t be blinded by simple counts like these since just 1 doesn’t make you a star if that’s all you did.  I know Mark McGwire broke the HR record years back and in the end was a terrific HR threat but lets look at his stat line in general. .263/.394/.588 I admit this is way better than I expected and honestly this makes me reconsider my option of him, it doesn’t hurt that he broke the HR record and has a career 586 total HR’s.  Also many of his sabermetric stats are very good as well such as an ISO of .325 and a BB% of 17.2.  But does that make him a star?  Honestly I think he needs more consideration and should be getting some more votes than he is but his stats are just very good other than the power numbers and his HR’s.  Edger Martinez is a very similar case with a slash line of .312/.418/.515 and an ISO of .204 with a career HR count of 309.  An exact opposite of McGwire and again is very good in his area but not elite in any 1 area.

            Another stat we could look at is WAR, a favorite among sabertitions like myself.  Let’s do a similar thing as above and look at a few WAR’s.

A)   65.6

B)   80.3

C)   72.4

D)   113.9

E)   60.4

Remember when you look at WAR these are the wins that this player accounted for mathematically over a league average player.  It takes offense and defense into account making it a good judge of overall usefulness on the field.

A)   Edger Martinez

B)   Jeff Bagwell

C)   Frank Thomas

D)   Greg Maddux

E)   Sammy Sosa

According to WAR Bagwell was more valuable to his team over his career than Martinez, Thomas and Sosa and shows that Greg Maddux is well deserving of his election to the Hall of Fame.  While this isn’t a sure fire way of determining a players worth in is career we can use this and the “magic number” stats and ever career highlights to get a very accurate picture on who deserves to be in the Hall.

            In the end everyone has their own way of choosing this would be mine, I don’t feel its fair for writers to become the “moral authority” because they have a vote.  If you have a vote you should let the stats talk and not accuse players that have never tested positive for substance abuse or if you liked the player since he gave you good quotes.

            So who we’re those players at the beginning?  Well player A was Roy Halladay, someone that most people have considered to be a Hall of Famer.  Player B is Roy Oswalt, a player that will not get much hype as a Hall of Fame candidate, I am in no way saying either are Hall of Famers in fact I don’t believe either are.  In the end the system is flawed by bias and writers that feel like the should be able to use their power to dictate who gets to go into a place where the stats should speak louder than these writers words.