Earlier today, when I was writing about Tim Raines, I noted that that whole post came out of me actually doing some research on David DeJesus. That wasn’t a lie, and I have two nuggets of proof:

1. who would lie about that
2. the rest of this post

In case you were worried, I didn’t let some Raines facts get in the way of me still writing about a free-agent veteran fourth outfielder. I know you don’t come to FanGraphs to read about David DeJesus, but, take a look at what you’re doing now! I promise there’s good reason, though. See, you might not have expected this, but according to the numbers, DeJesus is the worst active base-stealer in the game.

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Read Part I here.

The last few Hall of Fame elections have seen quite a few pitchers gain induction. In 2014, Tom Glavine and Greg Maddux were elected, and in 2015, Pedro Martinez, John Smoltz, and Randy Johnson went in. Prior to 2013, only one full-time starting pitcher had gained election this century: Bert Blyleven in 2011, and he had to wait until his 14th year on the ballot. Roger Clemens, Mike Mussina, and Curt Schilling all have very strong cases for the Hall of Fame, and at least in terms of pitchers, the next few years look pretty clear of even borderline candidates before Roy Halladay, Roy Oswalt, Andy Pettitte, and Mariano Rivera appear on the ballot in 2019.

Getting elected by the BBWAA has been a tough hill to climb for starting pitchers. Only 33 starting pitchers in the Hall of Fame were elected by the writers. From 1950 to 1979, just 10 starting pitchers were elected. The 1980s saw just four starting pitchers elected while the 90s had eight players inducted before another slowdown last decade. If Clemens, Mussina, and Schilling and get in, this decade will see nine starting pitchers gain election. Despite greats like Bob Gibson, Juan Marichal, and Jim Palmer failing to achieve the 300-win milestone and gaining election, for a time, it seemed only pitchers with 300 wins would gain election. Blyleven, Martinez, and Smoltz appear to have tempered that attitude somewhat, giving more hope to Mussina and Schilling.

Coming up with standards for the Hall of Fame can be a difficult process. I went into detail in my process yesterday when I introduced a Hall of Fame rating system, but included only position players in the results. The basis for the point system is repeated below: Read the rest of this entry »

I want you to know that I don’t have an agenda here. I mean, I know that’s exactly what someone who has an agenda would say, and I know there are people online who push Tim Raines pretty hard every year, but if you can believe it, this actually came out of research focused on David DeJesus. I recognize that Tim Raines was outstanding. When I was younger, I didn’t have much opportunity to watch him, so I don’t have much in the way of loyalty. And based on trends, it looks like Raines will make the Hall of Fame next year, given how close he just came. This post is agenda-less. All I want to do is fill in a gap.

It’s a baserunning gap. When talking about Raines as a deserving Hall-of-Famer, part of the argument is his ability to steal bases. Considered most simply, Raines ranks fifth on the all-time stolen-base list. Considered more nerdily, I examined the last 50 years, and calculated stolen-base value per 600 plate appearances. You can do this using our leaderboards, and Raines came in third, out of more than 1,100 players. Only Vince Coleman and Rickey Henderson are above him. Willie Wilson’s right behind him. Raines’ ability to steal — successfully — was a big part of what made him a star, and this is reflected on his player page, where you see him at 101.5 stolen-base runs above average for his career. If it weren’t for the steals, Raines’ Cooperstown argument would be an awful lot weaker.

Yet, there should be more to this. Just as there’s more to catcher defense than throwing runners out, there’s more to baserunning than just stealing or not stealing. For Raines, however, we don’t have much of a record. There’s value he contributed that isn’t showing up.

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Phase II of the 2015-16 free agent and trade markets has begun, with Alex Gordon re-upping with the Royals, and the rumor mill is again beginning to churn after a brief holiday-related respite. The elite and upper-middle-class arms have already secured their positions for 2016 and beyond, but some of the other middle class arms remain on the market.

The three free agent pitchers who are subject to draft pick compensation but are still likely to sign long-term deals are lefty Wei-Yin Chen and righties Yovani Gallardo and Ian Kennedy. At this stage in the game, it is likely that all three will need to settle for terms below consensus projections. Earlier this week, we took a look at Chen’s situation; today, we’ll dig a little bit deeper into Yovani Gallardo’s true value.

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Yesterday, Ken Griffey Jr. was elected to the Hall of Fame, receiving the largest proportion of votes of any player in baseball history; 437 of the 440 voters to cast ballots checked the box for Junior’s inclusion. And as I noted yesterday, the overwhelming support for Griffey’s candidacy highlights the fact that we generally value peak performance over longevity; Griffey played for 20 years, but was mostly a shell of himself for the second half of his career, creating the entirety of his Hall of Fame resume during the first dozen years he played. The consensus that Griffey is one of the greatest players of all time is driven by what he did in his 20s, not what he did in his 30s.

So this brings up an interesting question; given that almost everyone agrees that Griffey’s peak was so good that the second half of his career essentially was irrelevant, how much more does Mike Trout need to do before he reaches a similar point in his career? Does Griffey’s overwhelming induction based on a 12 year run of greatness suggest that there’s a 24 year old walking around who may have already done the bulk of the work necessary to ensure enshrinement in Cooperstown?

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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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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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