Hall of Fame voting season is over, the results are out, but Hall of Fame discussion season isn’t over quite yet. Maybe that irks you and you just want this all to go away, but if that’s the case, you probably didn’t click on this post to begin with. If you did, just think of this more as the appreciation of a career, tied to some voting results.

It should come as no real surprise that Jim Edmonds fell off the ballot in his first year of eligibility, receiving just 11 votes (2.5%). If you’d been following Ryan Thibodaux’s Hall of Fame tracker, you’d have long seen this coming, and it never seemed realistic that Edmonds would actually make it in in the first place. But it’s kind of sad, because Edmonds had a remarkable career, one that stands head and shoulders above the typical “fall off the ballot in the first year of eligibility” career, yet here we are.

It’s not the first time it’s happened. A couple years back, it was Kenny Lofton who fell off in his first year of eligibility. A couple years before that, and perhaps most egregiously, it was Kevin Brown. Dwight Gooden‘s first-ballot exclusion may have come as a bit of a surprise in 2006, and maybe the most famous example of this phenomena was Lou Whitaker’s first-year showing of 2.9% that dropped him from the ballot in 2001.

Edmonds isn’t the first player with a borderline Hall of Fame-worthy career to receive just one turn on the ride, and he won’t be the last. Some of Edmonds’ detractors will reference his laissez-faire, some might characterize it as careless or lackadaisical, attitude. If that’s the case, maybe we care about this more than Edmonds himself. And in some ways, maybe falling off the ballot on your first year is better than falling off in year two or three. Guys who fall off the first time around were never going to make it anyway, and there’s less recognition for the guy who falls off in year three after clinging onto the 5% threshold in years one and two. You fall off in year one with a legitimate case, and you get used as an example in an article.

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Other clubs: Braves, Diamondbacks, Orioles, Red Sox.

Cubs fans had to be thrilled with how the 2015 season played out, as many of the top prospects in their system decided they didn’t need an adjustment period and sprinted out of the gates. Looking at the number of young players contributing to the playoff run, you could assume the minor league pipeline would take a step back after graduating so many high-level players. Fortunately for Cubs fans, there is still a wealth of both high-floor and high-upside talent under team control.

There is a strong mix of pitching and hitting assets. Most of the top offensive reinforcements will be knocking on the big league door within a year or two, while the higher-ceiling pitchers may take another year to show up. The overall quantity of guys who were in the conversation for this list was itself an impressive compliment to the Cubs’ scouting and player development efforts.

For the hitters, I’m a little higher on Billy McKinney and Dan Vogelbach and lower on Willson Contreras and Jeimer Candelario than you might see elsewhere. None of them grade out poorly in my opinion, but it may be a different ranking than even some Cubs officials would prefer. Pitchers Dylan Cease and Jake Stinnett are ranked favorably, especially in comparison to CJ Edwards and Pierce Johnson for reasons that are explained in each respective player’s report.

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After having typically appeared in the very hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have been released at FanGraphs the past couple years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Minnesota Twins. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other Projections: Arizona / Atlanta / Baltimore / Boston / Chicago NL / Cincinnati / Cleveland / Kansas City / New York AL / Philadelphia / Pittsburgh / Seattle / Texas / Toronto.

Batters
At some level, the ZiPS projections for Minnesota — and, in particular, for the positional corps of the club — represent a best-case scenario: despite having dealt with injury in recent years, wunderkind prospects Byron Buxton and third baseman/left fielder Miguel Sano already possess two of the top-three WAR forecasts on the team. This is, in a sense, a desirable outcome: the organization’s most promising young players have developed, it would seem, into its most productive contributors.

Unfortunately, Buxton and Sano receive merely three-win projections — as opposed to, like, five-win ones. Which means that, if those two are the club’s “most productive contributors,” then the other contributors profile as roughly average or below that. The Twins actually do seem to possess quite a few players (Brian Dozier, Eduardo Escobar, Joe Mauer, Byung-ho Park, Trevor Plouffe) in the dependably average range — and in the era of two wild cards, average isn’t entirely undesirable. Given the current roster, however, it would appear as though “sneaking” into the postseason represents the team’s upside.

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This is a big giant polling post. I’ve run some big giant polling posts before. For example, a few months ago, I asked you all about your 2015 season experiences. Close to a year ago, I asked you about your pitching coaches. In the middle of the summer, I asked you about your front offices. When I asked for your front-office evaluations — or front-office opinions — I requested you try to keep them independent of ownership complications. Of course, in reality, that’s really hard, but we’re not saving the world, here. Nothing important relies on your input. I’ve just been looking to collect information, and now I want to collect more, on ownerships, specifically.

Owners! Everyone has ’em. Some teams have a few of ’em. Some of ’em meddle, and some of ’em don’t. Some of ’em spend, and some of ’em don’t. No matter what, they sign off on all the important stuff, and they’re responsible for setting a lot of the limits within which front offices try to work. My sense is owners are a little like third-base coaches, when it comes to fan opinion. That people either don’t think of them much, or complain about them, with little in the way of consistent appreciation. Owners seldom seem to get a lot of credit. Which is perfectly fine, because it’s not like they’re hitting or pitching. And front offices are more directly responsible for the bulk of the roster management. But that’s why this is a data-collecting opportunity. Tons of fans complain about owners, just as tons of fans complain about managers. That much, we already know. But through an exercise like this, we can see who’s complained about the least, relatively speaking. Owners tend not to be the heroes, but then you can still have those who are the non-villains.

Now, these polls aren’t so easy to deal with, because there’s so much information we just don’t know. We don’t really know how much owners would be able to spend, compared to what they actually spend, and we don’t always know the extent of any meddling. But with everything in baseball you just have to accept the uncertainty and try to find a position anyway. The polls are kind of strangely worded but I did that just for the sake of consistency with previous posts like this. I’m essentially asking your opinion. Do you like the people who own your baseball teams? Do you hate them? Do you trust them? Do they make themselves available? Are they in any way responsive? Do you feel like their interests align with yours? Do they spend what you think is too little? Do they not seem to worry too much about the budget? I know pretty much all of you have ownership opinions. This is a chance to share them, somewhat constructively. This post isn’t going to fix anything, but it will at least lead to another informative post, with tables and charts and stuff based on your responses.

Thank you in advance for your participation. I know it’s not necessarily all that straightforward. And if you don’t feel like you have a strong opinion, that’s no problem — you can go with “average”, or you can go with nothing. I understand this project has nothing to do with the Hall of Fame, which right now is what’s most topical. I’m sorry, or, you’re welcome. Let’s see what happens here.

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Every time the Pirates acquire a new pitcher, the analysis is basically the same. It’s either super lazy, or super insightful, and I’m not really sure which. Here’s how it goes: while the given pitcher might have had his struggles lately, the stuff is there, and Ray Searage ought to be able to work his magic. Every time. Some fans of some baseball teams wouldn’t even be able to name the pitching coach. Searage is so prominent he all but has to come up every time a new arm is brought into the fold. He’s an enormous part of the Pirates’ plan, and the Pirates are going to put Searage to work on newcomers Yoervis Medina and Juan Nicasio. And others. Always others.

The newest arm, as of today, belongs to Neftali Feliz’s right shoulder. Feliz has signed a one-year contract worth a bit under $4 million, and ordinarily this would be an easy thing to ignore. Feliz wasn’t even brought back by the Tigers, for God’s sake, and he’s coming off an ERA over 6. To many, the most interesting thing about Feliz is what he used to be, years and years ago. Before the starting experiment and elbow surgery. The way this reads is that Searage has just another live-armed project. As I look at it, though, Searage might have less to do here than you’d think. Feliz doesn’t really seem that far off.

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Two weeks. Two weeks is all it took. Shortly before Christmas, it looked like there was almost no chance Alex Gordon would return to Kansas City. He had too big of a market, and the Royals were sticking with too small of an offer. The Royals themselves were thinking about alternatives, more affordable replacement outfielders, but they made sure to stay in touch. Gordon remained the top priority, and the Royals were willing to be patient. Now it’s safe to say it worked out for all parties involved.

According to sources, Alex Gordon and the #Royals have agreed to a mult-year deal, pending physical. Announcement likely today

— Jeffrey Flanagan (@FlannyMLB) January 6, 2016

The terms: four years, reportedly, worth $72 million. There’s no opt-out clause, and the contract is said to be somewhat backloaded, to give the current Royals a bit of additional flexibility. Now that we’ve gotten here, this appears to be a tremendous deal for the team. And I suspect Alex Gordon knows that. I also suspect he doesn’t care, because this one’s about more than just money.

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The Major League Baseball Hall of Fame is a lot like the game itself: wondrous, fascinating and great in scope. The voting process for the Hall of Fame, meanwhile, resembles the umpiring aspect of the game: even though the arbiters typically perform their job well enough, their failures receive considerable attention — nor is it particularly easy to determine who should be in charge of different aspects of gatekeeping. Predicting who will get into the Hall of Fame using any statistical measures has become much more difficult in recent years due to changes in rules, changes in the electorate, and confusion about steroids. Analyzing who should get into the Hall of Fame statistically is also wrought with difficulty, but perhaps presents a clearer process. This is my attempt.

Jay Jaffe has been the standard-bearer for Hall of Fame analysis over the last decade, with most of his work appearing at Sports illustrated. Inventor of the JAWS system, he designed a great metric — one which appears on Baseball-Reference — to compare Hall of Fame candidacies. JAWS takes a player’s bWAR (that is, WAR as calculated by the methodology employed by Baseball Reference) and averages it with the player’s seven highest bWAR seasons, meant to represent a player’s peak. Jaffe then compares every player in the Hall of Fame to those who might gain election in order to provide a basis for the player’s candidacy.

Jaffe’s work is fantastic, and while I don’t claim to have improved on JAWS, I’d like to introduce an alternative method of combining a player’s peak with his overall value to compare to Hall of Famers. JAWS will be discussed below, not because it is full of flaws, but because it provides the basic framework for creating a method for evaluating players for the Hall of Fame.

The first, most noticeable departure from Jaffe’s system is that this one use fWAR (that is, FanGraphs WAR) instead of bWAR. While many people use one or both metrics and each has their own group of devotees, I have always been partial to fWAR when evaluating players even before my time writing at FanGraphs. A simple solution would be to repeat Jaffe’s exact methodology using fWAR, but creating a metric from scratch (sort of), we can look for alternate methods to look at the Hall of Fame.

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In a few hours, Ken Griffey Jr will be announced as the newest member of the Baseball Hall of Fame. He may be joined by Mike Piazza, or he may end up going in alone, but there’s no question that Junior is going in. At this point, the only question is how many voters will leave him off their ballots, either for strategic reasons — thanks to the insane limitation on only being able to vote for 10 players — or because of some archaic notion of what a “first ballot” Hall of Famer is. But pretty much everyone who follows baseball agrees that Ken Griffey Jr belongs in the Hall of Fame.

What’s interesting about that near-unanimous agreement is that his career numbers are actually not that spectacular, or at least, aren’t the kind of numbers you’d necessarily expect from a guy who is considered a slam-dunk entrant to Cooperstown. Even though he played for 20 years, he didn’t get to 3,000 hits. His career wRC+ is 131, which puts him in a tie for 118th best among hitters with at least 5,000 PAs. His +78 WAR puts him closer to the tier of guys who are having a tough time collecting votes than the other guys who got nearly 100% support when they went on the ballot.

But, of course, the support for Griffey isn’t based on his career numbers; it’s based on what he did during the first 10 to 12 years of his career. And that stretch was spectacular. Here’s just the first decade of Junior’s career.

Griffey’s First Decade

Griffey	PA	BA	OBP	SLG	wRC+	WAR	WAR/600
1989-1998	5982	0.300	0.379	0.568	144	63.6	6.4

That +63.6 WAR? That’s the same as Roberto Alomar’s career total. It’s higher than the career totals of Duke Snider, Ernie Banks, Ryne Sandberg, or Andre Dawson, all of whom are enshrined in Cooperstown. By the time he finished his age-28 season, Griffey had already had a Hall of Fame career. And then he put up two more excellent seasons after that, giving him a dozen-year run at the kind of level that few players ever reach. The +74 WAR that Griffey put up from 1989-2000 ranked second only to Barry Bonds during that stretch, and the #3 guy on that list — Jeff Bagwell — wasn’t even within +10 WAR of Griffey’s total.

The first 60% of Griffey’s career was absolutely stunning. In graph form, here’s Junior essentially keeping pace with three of the best hitters baseball has ever seen.

Source: FanGraphs — Ken Griffey Jr., Barry Bonds, Hank Aaron

Right up through age-30, Griffey played at an inner-circle Hall of Fame level. The last decade of his career was marred by injuries and significant decline, which dragged down all his rate stats and left his totals significantly shy of the other all-time greats, but Griffey is perhaps the primary example for why peak performance should matter more than longevity when discussing the best players in the game’s storied history.

Griffey was simply capable of things other players weren’t capable of. There have been better hitters than Griffey, and better fielders than Griffey, but the list of players who could impact the game on both sides of the ball to that degree is quite small indeed.

In the long history of the game, there have 12,711 individual seasons where a position player got at least 500 plate appearances. Of those nearly 13,000 player-seasons, a hitter has managed to accumulate +50 runs of offensive value in the same season in which they were at least an average defensive player (+50 OFF/+0 DEF) only 135 times; Griffey did it twice.

Others who have pulled off that feat multiple times include guys like Mantle, Mays, Musial, Horsnby, Wagner, DiMaggio, and more recently, Bonds, Rodriguez, and Trout. Griffey’s 1997 season — where he put up a +50 OFF/+17 DEF — puts him in a group of just 19 seasons (out of almost 13,000) where a player has ever put up a offensive season 50 runs better than an average hitter while also producing at least 15 runs of defensive value more than an average fielder.

That’s the player that people are voting into the Hall of Fame, not the guy who finished his career with bad knees and limited range. For a little over a decade, Griffey was a transcendent performer, and then his body broke down.

But should we really care that Griffey didn’t age well? His first 12 years pushed him across the Hall of Fame threshold pretty easily, and he did more in the first half of his career than most players could do in 20. Griffey established his greatness from 1989 through 2000; that he was unable to hold onto it from 2001 through 2010 does not eliminate the fact that said greatness existed in the first place.

Griffey is, in some ways, the Sandy Koufax of center fielders, only he was great from the get go, rather than taking some time to work up to elite performances. The difference, of course, is that when Koufax’s body broke down, he stopped playing; Griffey continued to take the field for another decade after his physical abilities began disappearing. But like with Koufax, the greatness is essentially unquestioned, even if the career totals don’t necessarily stack up with other players of similar repute.

We didn’t need to see Griffey be a decent player in his 30s to know he was a remarkable player in his 20s. For a 12 year stretch, Junior was about as good as a player can be, and that’s what the Hall of Fame will be honoring. And rightfully so.

Welcome to Cooperstown, Kid.

Colby Lewis sits among the 20-worst pitchers by strikeout rate among qualified pitchers over the last two years. He has the second-worst ground-ball rate among that group. He has the fifth-worst fastball velocity. He basically only has two pitches, and only one of them rates as above-average on whiffs or grounders currently. He’s fifth on the Rangers’ starting-pitcher depth chart currently, and the team would probably admit that they are hoping that Chi-Chi Gonzalez and/or Nick Martinez take that job from him.

The point is, you wouldn’t think he was best in the league at anything.

The good news for our own personal senses of rankings and skills and value and Colby Lewis? That thing that he’s good at is something that people don’t think is really a skill.

Still. He’s been good at this thing, even as his ERAs over the last two years have been poor. And this thing? If you can repeat it, it’s good.

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