Some of you may be familiar with the work I had started over at Ross and The Heckler Speak, but for those who aren't here is a brief intro:
I plan to go back year by year and analyze all of the players I deem worthy for nomination and elect my own baseball hall of fame based on a few metrics I like. There will be posts explaining just why I like these stats and why I chose them, and even some interviews with people that know way more about stats than I do.
The purpose of this blog is to get people analyzing the HOF in a new way, and to try to determine just what a HOF quality player really is. I hope you'll post your opinions in the comments section letting me know when I'm both right and wrong.
**NOTE: I am in no way associated with the MLB or the Society of American Baseball Research (I am a SABR.org member however). I'm simply producing MY OWN version of the HOF for the history of the MLB using some of the stats that SABR has deemed important.**
So I’ve begun the task of producing a SABR-based web Hall of Fame for the MLB, which will no doubt be imperfect. However, I (with the help of some very educated baseball dorks) think that I can do a better job than the writers have done over the past century in electing the players that need (Dwight Evans, Bert Blyleven) to be there and keeping the ones who don’t deserve to be there out (I’m looking at you Jim Rice). Writers such as John Heyman spend more time defending why they won’t vote for certain players (Blyleven) than they do showing us the merits of the players they do vote for (Jack Morris) all while stooping to name calling to bloggers who have much more insightful points of view. Other writers such as Dan Graziano refuse to vote for certain players because it is POSSIBLE that they used steroids while maintaining voting records that are dubious at best. Others refuse to vote for sure fire HOFers (Rickey Henderson) because they feel they don’t deserve as much of the vote as a Babe Ruth or Ty Cobb.
This Splashing Pumpkins blog entry echoes my views in a very well written piece: and this video from the Colbert Report does the same:
Starting with the most recently retired players and working backwards, I’m going to establish my own “SABR” HOF using WAR and some other personal biases in an attempt to determine how good a player was within his era, and use that ranking to determine if he is really HOF worthy. I won’t be touching executives, owners, umpires or other people who contributed to the game off the field. The focus here is only on field accomplishment. That being said, you can bet Pete Rose is getting in. Also, it is hard to find accurate statistics for Negro League players, so I’ll save them for last in order to do as accurate a job as possible.
