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Jesse over at TwinkieTown published an essay over the holiday weekend which was the result of a bit of soul-searching over Kirby Puckett and the Baseball Hall of Fame. Jesse's point seems to be that, when comparing Puckett to the other centerfielders in the Hall of Fame, Puckett may be far below the best, but he's certainly not the worst and he's also not unworthy of being in the Hall. I may need to turn in my contrarian bona-fides for this, but I find myself largely agreeing with Jesse. I continue to assert that Puckett is the least-impressive centerfielder, and possibly the least-impressive player, ever sent to the Hall by the Baseball Writers Association of America, but that doesn't mean Puckett is undeserving of enshrinement. How do I know Puckett is the least-deserving centerfielder ever elected to the Hall? [PRBREAK][/PRBREAK] Simple -- let me take Jesse's chart showing the 17 Hall of Fame centerfielders for which baseballreference.com has detailed numbers and tweak it slightly: [TABLE=width: 500, align: left] Name WAR Into HOF how? Cobb 159.4 BBWAA (1*) Mays 154.7 BBWAA (1) Speaker 133.0 BBWAA (2*) Mantle 120.2 BBWAA (1) DiMaggio 83.6 BBWAA (1) Hamilton 69.6 Veterans Committee Snider 67.5 BBWAA (11) Ashburn 58.0 Veterans Committee Carey 50.6 Veterans Committee Duffy 49.6 Veterans Committee Doby 47.4 Veterans Committee Roush 46.5 Veterans Committee Averill 45.0 Veterans Committee Puckett 44.8 BBWAA (1) Combs 44.7 Veterans Committee Wilson 39.1 Veterans Committee Waner 24.3 Veterans Committee [/TABLE] There's definitely a 'one of these things is not like the other' aspect to this list, and unless you have a really poor opinion of Duke Snider it pretty much demonstrates my argument for Puckett as 'least impressive centerfielder elected by the BBWAA', but it doesn't necessarily mean that Puckett doesn't belong on the list at all. For instance, compare Puckett to the guy just below him on the list -- Earle Combs, the answer to the Jeopardy question, "Who was the leadoff man for the Yankee teams that featured Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig in the heart of the batting order?" Combs hit .325 with a career .397 on-base percentage, which looks pretty danged impressive to modern eyes, and he had eight consecutive seasons scoring 110 or more runs. His numbers in his prime compare favorably to those of Kenny Lofton, without adjusting for era. And adjusting for era is really the kicker -- in Combs's best season, when he led the AL in both hits and triples, the 'average' AL player (defined by taking every plate appearance for every player on every team in the AL) hit .286 with a .352 on-base percentage, or in other words, nearly as good as a 25-year old Kenny Lofton, by unadjusted numbers. To argue that Puckett doesn't belong in the Hall is to argue that Earle Combs had a significantly better career than Puckett did, which all things considered is hard if not impossible to do. Of course, Combs was put into the Hall by the Veterans Committee nearly 35 years after his last big-league game, while Puckett was elected by the BBWAA on his first ballot. Another good comparison is Larry Doby, whose career in the majors was nearly the same length as Puckett's and who finished less than 3 WAR ahead of Puckett on Jesse's list. Doby played in the '50s (and late '40s), mostly for the Cleveland Indians, twice led the AL in home runs, and finished a close second for the 1954 MVP behind Yogi Berra in a year when three other Indians, including two pitchers, got lots of MVP consideration. More significantly, Doby was the first black player in the AL, and was already a star in the Negro Leagues when he was signed by the Indians in 1947 at the age of 23 -- a couple of extra years of production probably wouldn't have made a huge difference, but Doby's existing production, plus his status, made him a worthy pick. Again, to argue that Puckett doesn't belong would require someone to argue that Doby is far more qualified than Puckett, which I don't see. But again, Doby was elected by the Veterans Committee in 1998, nearly 40 years after his final big-league game. Puckett went in first-ballot. Download attachment: KirbyPuckettHOF.jpg That's really my bone of contention for Puckett as a Hall of Famer. It was pretty clear that Puckett would eventually get into the Hall, but putting him in first-ballot makes a statement about Puckett that isn't really defensible. Is Puckett a Hall of Famer? Sure. Is he a Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, George Brett, Mike Schmidt-level no-doubt Hall of Famer? No, not really. As long as people are willing to accept that Puckett's first-ballot election didn't really mean anything other than that he was well-regarded among baseball writers, I'm OK with him being in the Hall, and somewhat appreciative that he made the Hall when he was still alive to appreciate it, and let us appreciate his reaction to it. And in that sense, I'm not worried anymore about Jack Morris's case for the Hall of Fame. If he doesn't get elected in the next two years, and there are reasons to think he might not, that won't mean he'll never get into the Hall of Fame. Morris is, if anything, the stereotypical Veterans Committee selection -- the guy who didn't necessarily have the numbers, but who had the reputation and the recognition of his peers as a competitor and outstanding player. That Bert Blyleven got elected by the BBWAA and Morris might not doesn't mean that they weren't both outstanding pitchers, and doesn't make one more deserving than the other, just as Puckett's election doesn't make him more deserving than Doby or Combs or any of the other Hall of Fame centerfielders enshrined by the Veterans Committee. Except Hack Wilson, of course. I mean, what's up with that? * - Cobb wasn't just elected on his own first ballot, but was elected on the first-ever Hall of Fame ballot in 1936. Tris Speaker, therefore, had to wait until the second-ever Hall of Fame ballot in 1937 for his own election. In that sense, Speaker's second-ballot selection is more impressive, in my eyes, than anyone's first-ballot selection after 1937. Click here to view the article

Let's get this one out of the way before the season starts. Some knowledge about baseball is much easier to get from personal observation than from statistics. (Does he look good in the field? Is he a confident or tentative baserunner?) Other knowledge of baseball is much easier to get from statistics than from personal observation. (How often does he hit into double plays? How many defensive plays does he make in a season?) In those situations where you can go either with what you see on the field or what you see in the numbers, how do you decide what weight to give to each bit of info? I'm going to modify a classic thought-experiment from Bill James to try to convince you that you should give your personal insights from watching games pretty much zero weight. First, let's set the parameters of the experiment. Let's say you went to enough games at Target Field last year so that you saw exactly twenty games started by Delmon Young and exactly twenty started by Jim Thome. (Obviously, you could go to a game where both started, in which case you'd have gone to fewer than 40 total games, but I digress...) Could you tell, just based on your own observations, whether Thome or Young was the better hitter? First, the basics. Young had 41 hits at Target Field in 2011, while Thome had 23. Odds are, you'd have seen Young get more hits, maybe a lot more, than Thome did in the games you attended. There's a chance that you went to a lot of games where Young got the sombrero and Thome got hits, but the most likely outcome is that you saw Young running to first more often. On the other hand, Thome hit six homers in Target Field while Young hit just one, so you probably saw more Thome homers. You probably also noticed Thome walk more (21 to 7) and strike out more (39 to 28). If you noticed any difference in them hitting into double plays, it was entirely a matter of chance (4 GIDPs apiece). Do you think you could tell who was the better hitter based on that information? Keep in mind that this doesn't take into account how well these players hit on the road, since you didn't see that in person. (By the numbers, Young hit worse on the road in 2011, while Thome hit better.) If you went to a lot of games in June, you almost certainly saw Young (.321/754 in June) hit much better than Thome (.200/533 in June), but if you went a lot in May, you probably saw the opposite (Young .197/448 in May, Thome .316/1146). How would you filter all that out? And yes, I know that everything I've mentioned has numbers to back it up, but what would you look for that wasn't in the numbers? Can you tell the difference, in 20 games, between a fielder who's uncomfortable playing defense and one who has no business putting on a glove? Between an aggressive hitter and a hacker? Based on blog comments and Twitter posts, it seems like a lot of guys who go to 20-40 games a year think they have just as good a scouting eye as real MLB scouts, who watch 200-300 baseball games, live, every year, at all levels of play, not just in the big leagues. I have no doubt that when you have that much experience watching live players, you develop an ability to see some things that the casual or even the committed fan generally misses. After all, that's why a good color commentator can point things out to you that you wouldn't normally see during a game. That's one reason, and a decent one, why folks who know 'inside baseball' tend to dismiss those of us out here in the blogosphere. When it comes to us blog guys talking about batting stances and pitching motions, I'm inclined to believe the inside baseball guys -- unless you're a specialist who is focusing on that particularly (like Batting Stance Guy), odds are you don't know nearly as much about batting stances as you think you do, and certainly not as much as a guy who makes his living looking at ballplayers and their batting stances. On the other hand, you can watch 20, 40, or 300 games and still miss things. For instance, did you know that, based on baseballreference.com numbers, Delmon Young's glove was worth 11 defensive runs to the Twins last year? The glove that many in our blogosphere say belonged to the worst left fielder in recent history was worth an entire win to our beloved ballclub -- could have been the difference between 99 and 100 losses, even? Naw, I hear you saying, that can't be true. I don't have to believe the numbers, when I have the evidence my own eyes provide. So, what did your eyes tell you about Thome's and Young's bats last year, slugger?

Let's get this one out of the way before the season starts. Some knowledge about baseball is much easier to get from personal observation than from statistics. (Does he look good in the field? Is he a confident or tentative baserunner?) Other knowledge of baseball is much easier to get from statistics than from personal observation. (How often does he hit into double plays? How many defensive plays does he make in a season?) In those situations where you can go either with what you see on the field or what you see in the numbers, how do you decide what weight to give to each bit of info? I'm going to modify a classic thought-experiment from Bill James to try to convince you that you should give your personal insights from watching games pretty much zero weight. First, let's set the parameters of the experiment. Let's say you went to enough games at Target Field last year so that you saw exactly twenty games started by Delmon Young and exactly twenty started by Jim Thome. (Obviously, you could go to a game where both started, in which case you'd have gone to fewer than 40 total games, but I digress...) Could you tell, just based on your own observations, whether Thome or Young was the better hitter? First, the basics. Young had 41 hits at Target Field in 2011, while Thome had 23. Odds are, you'd have seen Young get more hits, maybe a lot more, than Thome did in the games you attended. There's a chance that you went to a lot of games where Young got the sombrero and Thome got hits, but the most likely outcome is that you saw Young running to first more often. On the other hand, Thome hit six homers in Target Field while Young hit just one, so you probably saw more Thome homers. You probably also noticed Thome walk more (21 to 7) and strike out more (39 to 28). If you noticed any difference in them hitting into double plays, it was entirely a matter of chance (4 GIDPs apiece). Do you think you could tell who was the better hitter based on that information? Keep in mind that this doesn't take into account how well these players hit on the road, since you didn't see that in person. (By the numbers, Young hit worse on the road in 2011, while Thome hit better.) If you went to a lot of games in June, you almost certainly saw Young (.321/754 in June) hit much better than Thome (.200/533 in June), but if you went a lot in May, you probably saw the opposite (Young .197/448 in May, Thome .316/1146). How would you filter all that out? And yes, I know that everything I've mentioned has numbers to back it up, but what would you look for that wasn't in the numbers? Can you tell the difference, in 20 games, between a fielder who's uncomfortable playing defense and one who has no business putting on a glove? Between an aggressive hitter and a hacker? Based on blog comments and Twitter posts, it seems like a lot of guys who go to 20-40 games a year think they have just as good a scouting eye as real MLB scouts, who watch 200-300 baseball games, live, every year, at all levels of play, not just in the big leagues. I have no doubt that when you have that much experience watching live players, you develop an ability to see some things that the casual or even the committed fan generally misses. After all, that's why a good color commentator can point things out to you that you wouldn't normally see during a game. That's one reason, and a decent one, why folks who know 'inside baseball' tend to dismiss those of us out here in the blogosphere. When it comes to us blog guys talking about batting stances and pitching motions, I'm inclined to believe the inside baseball guys -- unless you're a specialist who is focusing on that particularly (like Batting Stance Guy), odds are you don't know nearly as much about batting stances as you think you do, and certainly not as much as a guy who makes his living looking at ballplayers and their batting stances. On the other hand, you can watch 20, 40, or 300 games and still miss things. For instance, did you know that, based on baseballreference.com numbers, Delmon Young's glove was worth 11 defensive runs to the Twins last year? The glove that many in our blogosphere say belonged to the worst left fielder in recent history was worth an entire win to our beloved ballclub -- could have been the difference between 99 and 100 losses, even? Naw, I hear you saying, that can't be true. I don't have to believe the numbers, when I have the evidence my own eyes provide. So, what did your eyes tell you about Thome's and Young's bats last year, slugger?

Jesse over at TwinkieTown published an essay over the holiday weekend which was the result of a bit of soul-searching over Kirby Puckett and the Baseball Hall of Fame. Jesse's point seems to be that, when comparing Puckett to the other centerfielders in the Hall of Fame, Puckett may be far below the best, but he's certainly not the worst and he's also not unworthy of being in the Hall. I may need to turn in my contrarian bona-fides for this, but I find myself largely agreeing with Jesse. I continue to assert that Puckett is the least-impressive centerfielder, and possibly the least-impressive player, ever sent to the Hall by the Baseball Writers Association of America, but that doesn't mean Puckett is undeserving of enshrinement. How do I know Puckett is the least-deserving centerfielder ever elected to the Hall? Simple -- let me take Jesse's chart showing the 17 Hall of Fame centerfielders for which baseballreference.com has detailed numbers and tweak it slightly: [TABLE=width: 500, align: left] Name WAR Into HOF how? Cobb 159.4 BBWAA (1*) Mays 154.7 BBWAA (1) Speaker 133.0 BBWAA (2*) Mantle 120.2 BBWAA (1) DiMaggio 83.6 BBWAA (1) Hamilton 69.6 Veterans Committee Snider 67.5 BBWAA (11) Ashburn 58.0 Veterans Committee Carey 50.6 Veterans Committee Duffy 49.6 Veterans Committee Doby 47.4 Veterans Committee Roush 46.5 Veterans Committee Averill 45.0 Veterans Committee Puckett 44.8 BBWAA (1) Combs 44.7 Veterans Committee Wilson 39.1 Veterans Committee Waner 24.3 Veterans Committee [/TABLE] There's definitely a 'one of these things is not like the other' aspect to this list, and unless you have a really poor opinion of Duke Snider it pretty much demonstrates my argument for Puckett as 'least impressive centerfielder elected by the BBWAA', but it doesn't necessarily mean that Puckett doesn't belong on the list at all. For instance, compare Puckett to the guy just below him on the list -- Earle Combs, the answer to the Jeopardy question, "Who was the leadoff man for the Yankee teams that featured Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig in the heart of the batting order?" Combs hit .325 with a career .397 on-base percentage, which looks pretty danged impressive to modern eyes, and he had eight consecutive seasons scoring 110 or more runs. His numbers in his prime compare favorably to those of Kenny Lofton, without adjusting for era. And adjusting for era is really the kicker -- in Combs's best season, when he led the AL in both hits and triples, the 'average' AL player (defined by taking every plate appearance for every player on every team in the AL) hit .286 with a .352 on-base percentage, or in other words, nearly as good as a 25-year old Kenny Lofton, by unadjusted numbers. To argue that Puckett doesn't belong in the Hall is to argue that Earle Combs had a significantly better career than Puckett did, which all things considered is hard if not impossible to do. Of course, Combs was put into the Hall by the Veterans Committee nearly 35 years after his last big-league game, while Puckett was elected by the BBWAA on his first ballot. Another good comparison is Larry Doby, whose career in the majors was nearly the same length as Puckett's and who finished less than 3 WAR ahead of Puckett on Jesse's list. Doby played in the '50s (and late '40s), mostly for the Cleveland Indians, twice led the AL in home runs, and finished a close second for the 1954 MVP behind Yogi Berra in a year when three other Indians, including two pitchers, got lots of MVP consideration. More significantly, Doby was the first black player in the AL, and was already a star in the Negro Leagues when he was signed by the Indians in 1947 at the age of 23 -- a couple of extra years of production probably wouldn't have made a huge difference, but Doby's existing production, plus his status, made him a worthy pick. Again, to argue that Puckett doesn't belong would require someone to argue that Doby is far more qualified than Puckett, which I don't see. But again, Doby was elected by the Veterans Committee in 1998, nearly 30 years after his final big-league game. Puckett went in first-ballot. That's really my bone of contention for Puckett as a Hall of Famer. It was pretty clear that Puckett would eventually get into the Hall, but putting him in first-ballot makes a statement about Puckett that isn't really defensible. Is Puckett a Hall of Famer? Sure. Is he a Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, George Brett, Mike Schmidt-level no-doubt Hall of Famer? No, not really. As long as people are willing to accept that Puckett's first-ballot election didn't really mean anything other than that he was well-regarded among baseball writers, I'm OK with him being in the Hall, and somewhat appreciative that he made the Hall when he was still alive to appreciate it, and let us appreciate his reaction to it. And in that sense, I'm not worried anymore about Jack Morris's case for the Hall of Fame. If he doesn't get elected in the next two years, and there are reasons to think he might not, that won't mean he'll never get into the Hall of Fame. Morris is, if anything, the stereotypical Veterans Committee selection -- the guy who didn't necessarily have the numbers, but who had the reputation and the recognition of his peers as a competitor and outstanding player. That Bert Blyleven got elected by the BBWAA and Morris might not doesn't mean that they weren't both outstanding pitchers, and doesn't make one more deserving than the other, just as Puckett's election doesn't make him more deserving than Doby or Combs or any of the other Hall of Fame centerfielders enshrined by the Veterans Committee. Except Hack Wilson, of course. I mean, what's up with that? * - Cobb wasn't just elected on his own first ballot, but was elected on the first-ever Hall of Fame ballot in 1936. Tris Speaker, therefore, had to wait until the second-ever Hall of Fame ballot in 1937 for his own election. In that sense, Speaker's second-ballot selection is more impressive, in my eyes, than anyone's first-ballot selection after 1937.

Jesse over at TwinkieTown published an essay over the holiday weekend which was the result of a bit of soul-searching over Kirby Puckett and the Baseball Hall of Fame. Jesse's point seems to be that, when comparing Puckett to the other centerfielders in the Hall of Fame, Puckett may be far below the best, but he's certainly not the worst and he's also not unworthy of being in the Hall. I may need to turn in my contrarian bona-fides for this, but I find myself largely agreeing with Jesse. I continue to assert that Puckett is the least-impressive centerfielder, and possibly the least-impressive player, ever sent to the Hall by the Baseball Writers Association of America, but that doesn't mean Puckett is undeserving of enshrinement. How do I know Puckett is the least-deserving centerfielder ever elected to the Hall? Simple -- let me take Jesse's chart showing the 17 Hall of Fame centerfielders for which baseballreference.com has detailed numbers and tweak it slightly: [TABLE=width: 500, align: left] Name WAR Into HOF how? Cobb 159.4 BBWAA (1*) Mays 154.7 BBWAA (1) Speaker 133.0 BBWAA (2*) Mantle 120.2 BBWAA (1) DiMaggio 83.6 BBWAA (1) Hamilton 69.6 Veterans Committee Snider 67.5 BBWAA (11) Ashburn 58.0 Veterans Committee Carey 50.6 Veterans Committee Duffy 49.6 Veterans Committee Doby 47.4 Veterans Committee Roush 46.5 Veterans Committee Averill 45.0 Veterans Committee Puckett 44.8 BBWAA (1) Combs 44.7 Veterans Committee Wilson 39.1 Veterans Committee Waner 24.3 Veterans Committee [/TABLE] There's definitely a 'one of these things is not like the other' aspect to this list, and unless you have a really poor opinion of Duke Snider it pretty much demonstrates my argument for Puckett as 'least impressive centerfielder elected by the BBWAA', but it doesn't necessarily mean that Puckett doesn't belong on the list at all. For instance, compare Puckett to the guy just below him on the list -- Earle Combs, the answer to the Jeopardy question, "Who was the leadoff man for the Yankee teams that featured Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig in the heart of the batting order?" Combs hit .325 with a career .397 on-base percentage, which looks pretty danged impressive to modern eyes, and he had eight consecutive seasons scoring 110 or more runs. His numbers in his prime compare favorably to those of Kenny Lofton, without adjusting for era. And adjusting for era is really the kicker -- in Combs's best season, when he led the AL in both hits and triples, the 'average' AL player (defined by taking every plate appearance for every player on every team in the AL) hit .286 with a .352 on-base percentage, or in other words, nearly as good as a 25-year old Kenny Lofton, by unadjusted numbers. To argue that Puckett doesn't belong in the Hall is to argue that Earle Combs had a significantly better career than Puckett did, which all things considered is hard if not impossible to do. Of course, Combs was put into the Hall by the Veterans Committee nearly 35 years after his last big-league game, while Puckett was elected by the BBWAA on his first ballot. Another good comparison is Larry Doby, whose career in the majors was nearly the same length as Puckett's and who finished less than 3 WAR ahead of Puckett on Jesse's list. Doby played in the '50s (and late '40s), mostly for the Cleveland Indians, twice led the AL in home runs, and finished a close second for the 1954 MVP behind Yogi Berra in a year when three other Indians, including two pitchers, got lots of MVP consideration. More significantly, Doby was the first black player in the AL, and was already a star in the Negro Leagues when he was signed by the Indians in 1947 at the age of 23 -- a couple of extra years of production probably wouldn't have made a huge difference, but Doby's existing production, plus his status, made him a worthy pick. Again, to argue that Puckett doesn't belong would require someone to argue that Doby is far more qualified than Puckett, which I don't see. But again, Doby was elected by the Veterans Committee in 1998, nearly 30 years after his final big-league game. Puckett went in first-ballot. That's really my bone of contention for Puckett as a Hall of Famer. It was pretty clear that Puckett would eventually get into the Hall, but putting him in first-ballot makes a statement about Puckett that isn't really defensible. Is Puckett a Hall of Famer? Sure. Is he a Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, George Brett, Mike Schmidt-level no-doubt Hall of Famer? No, not really. As long as people are willing to accept that Puckett's first-ballot election didn't really mean anything other than that he was well-regarded among baseball writers, I'm OK with him being in the Hall, and somewhat appreciative that he made the Hall when he was still alive to appreciate it, and let us appreciate his reaction to it. And in that sense, I'm not worried anymore about Jack Morris's case for the Hall of Fame. If he doesn't get elected in the next two years, and there are reasons to think he might not, that won't mean he'll never get into the Hall of Fame. Morris is, if anything, the stereotypical Veterans Committee selection -- the guy who didn't necessarily have the numbers, but who had the reputation and the recognition of his peers as a competitor and outstanding player. That Bert Blyleven got elected by the BBWAA and Morris might not doesn't mean that they weren't both outstanding pitchers, and doesn't make one more deserving than the other, just as Puckett's election doesn't make him more deserving than Doby or Combs or any of the other Hall of Fame centerfielders enshrined by the Veterans Committee. Except Hack Wilson, of course. I mean, what's up with that? * - Cobb wasn't just elected on his own first ballot, but was elected on the first-ever Hall of Fame ballot in 1936. Tris Speaker, therefore, had to wait until the second-ever Hall of Fame ballot in 1937 for his own election. In that sense, Speaker's second-ballot selection is more impressive, in my eyes, than anyone's first-ballot selection after 1937.