I've been very critical of the argument that Jack Morris should be in the Hall of Fame because he was the "winningest pitcher of the eighties." While it's a wonderful thing to be one of the best in the business for ten whole years (and Morris wasn't, but that's neither here nor there), a player doesn't deserve any extra credit due to the accident of having had those ten years begin in a year ending in zero. So I was thinking: who are the Players of Decades that didn't have the happy accident of coming into prominence in a nice, round year? I decided to look at the decade that runs from years ending in 5 to years ending in 4, just because that list seems likely to be the furthest removed from your traditional "team of the decade" lists. So we'll do each of the ten full "decades" that began in the twentieth century. Today: 1905-1954. We'll do the other half later in the week. Stats shown are for the relevant decade only.

1905-1914
C: Roger Bresnahan (.275/.398/.362, 129 OPS+, 3360 PA)
1B: Ed Konetchy (.278/.353/.400, 125 OPS+, 4774 PA)
2B: Nap Lajoie (.331/.384/.425, 146 OPS+, 5195 PA)
3B: Frank Baker (.321/.375/.471, 153 OPS+, 3840 PA)
SS: Honus Wagner (.328/.397/.466, 155 OPS+, 5920 PA)
LF: Sherry Magee (.301/.375/.450, 143 OPS+, 5927 PA)
CF: Ty Cobb (.368/.423/.515, 182 OPS+, 5258 PA)
RF: Sam Crawford (.316/.369/.460, 150 OPS+, 6476 PA)
SP: Walter Johnson (179-115, 1.62 ERA, 174 ERA+, 2442 IP)

Notes: The biggest beneficiary of the time shift is Sherry Magee, whose career started in 1904 and dropped off precipitously starting in 1915...if I'd arbitrarily chosen the decade from 7 to 6, Eddie Collins (who didn't start until 1907) would crush Lajoie, which I guess drives home that this is just as unfair as the traditional "team of the decade" posts...Home Run Baker and Walter Johnson didn't start until 1907 either [edit: actually 1908 for Baker], but Baker doesn't have HOF competition and Big Train was just that damn good...Wagner is probably the only one on this list that would also have been on the 1895-1904 team; consider that he was still primarily a shortstop, still one of the league's best hitters, and was age 31-40 during this period...Cobb is probably the CF of the decade from 1900-1909 even though he didn't start until 1905, but this makes it ridiculously easy.

1915-1924
C: Wally Schang (.289/.394/.399, 120 OPS+, 4116 PA)
1B: George Sisler (.353/.396/.498, 145 OPS+, 5258 PA)
2B: Rogers Hornsby (.359/.424/.562, 180 OPS+, 5408 PA)
3B: Heinie Groh (.295/.375/.390, 121 OPS+, 5824 PA)
SS: Dave Bancroft (.279/.355/.362, 102 OPS+, 5703 PA)
LF: Joe Jackson (.338/.405/.495, 159 OPS+, 3134 PA)
CF: Tris Speaker (.353/.442/.509, 160 OPS+, 6101 PA)
RF: Babe Ruth (.351/.483/.714, 219 OPS+, 4500 PA)
SP: Walter Johnson (198-135, 2.32 ERA, 143 ERA+, 2875 IP)

Notes: This was definitely Schang's "decade," but he played long enough and well enough, as a catcher, that it seems to me he really ought to be in the Hall...Sisler's run of great seasons straddles 1920, so he probably doesn't make either the Team of the Teens or Twenties...man, Eddie Collins really gets screwed over in this range -- Hornsby's great run starts in 1916...bad time for shortstops, though Ray Chapman would probably look a lot better had he not been killed on the field in 1920...It was hard to pick Jackson (whose career also ended in '20, for very different reasons), but his quality of play over Bobby Veach was big enough for me to overlook nearly twice as many PA...you can flip a coin on offense, but I think Speaker's superior defense puts him ahead of Cobb for CF.

1925-1934
C: Mickey Cochrane (.321/.414/.483, 128 OPS+, 5380 PA)
1B: Lou Gehrig (.343/.444/.643, 184 OPS+, 6805 PA)
2B: Rogers Hornsby (.359/.448/.602, 171 OPS+, 3971 PA)
3B: Pie Traynor (.327/.370/.442, 111 OPS+, 6113 PA)
SS: Joe Cronin (.303/.385/.451, 117 OPS+, 4254 PA)
LF: Al Simmons (.359/.403/.589, 150 OPS+, 6087 PA)
CF: Earle Combs (.327/.399/.467, 127 OPS+, 6133 PA)
RF: Babe Ruth (.338/.469/.677, 199 OPS+, 6014 PA)
SP: Lefty Grove (203-87, 3.04 ERA, 144 ERA+, 2510 IP)

Notes: This setup is a huge boon for Cochrane, whose years of greatness basically ran from 1925-1934...you'd expect it to hurt Ruth, since he was so clearly the whole story of the 1920s, but it ends up helping him because he becomes the slightly-less-dominant player of two decades...even that choice wasn't quite as easy as choosing Lefty Grove as pitcher.

1935-1944
C: Bill Dickey (.307/.391/.496, 130 OPS+, 4068 PA)
1B: Jimmie Foxx (.316/.425/.590, 155 OPS+, 4832 PA)
2B: Billy Herman (.307/.371/.416, 116 OPS+, 6060 PA)
3B: Stan Hack (.304/.394/.404, 121 OPS+, 6385 PA)
SS: Arky Vaughan (.318/.408/.451, 137 OPS+, 5554 PA)
LF: Joe Medwick (.328/.369/.512, 138 OPS+, 6162 PA)
CF: Joe DiMaggio (.339/.403/.607, 159 OPS+, 4417 PA)
RF: Mel Ott (.298/.419/.525, 160 OPS+, 6078 PA)
SP: Tommy Bridges (131-84, 3.48 ERA, 130 ERA+, 1874 IP)

Notes: Foxx gets his moment in the sun here; Gehrig is probably the 1B of the 20s and 30s, Mize the 1B of the 40s, so here the second-greatest 1B of all time finally gets his own decade...and Charlie Gehringer, the clear 2B of the 1930s, gets edged out by an inferior overall player...Hack probably gets into the Hall if he'd excelled from '30-'41 rather than '35-'46...Carl Hubbell becomes the second huge snub after Collins, as he was clearly the pitcher of the '30s but didn't carry it over strongly enough into the early 40's; not a great time for pitchers as a whole, what with the war and all.

1945-1954
C: Yogi Berra (.296/.354/.497, 130 OPS+, 4333 PA)
1B: Johnny Mize (.287/.376/.528, 142 OPS+, 3182 PA)
2B: Jackie Robinson (.319/.414/.487, 137 OPS+, 4981 PA)
3B: Al Rosen (.295/.393/.521, 148 OPS+, 3297 PA)
SS: Pee Wee Reese (.280/.383/.402, 109 OPS+, 5921 PA)
LF: Ted Williams (.342/.489/.636, 193 OPS+, 4472 PA)
CF: Larry Doby (.285/.394/.500, 142 OPS+, 4246 PA)
RF: Stan Musial (.344/.434/.599, 172 OPS+, 6196 PA)
SP: Warren Spahn (166-110, 2.93 ERA, 129 ERA+, 2417 IP)
RP: Ellis Kinder (92-65, 75 Sv, 3.48 ERA, 123 ERA+, 1357 IP)

Notes: Roy Campanella might've given Yogi a run for his money if Yogi didn't get a two-year advantage for being born white...Jackie and Doby, meanwhile, wouldn't come all that close to qualifying in the 40s or 50s, so this range is perfectly suited to them...I almost gave Ted the nod in the previous decade too, but Medwick did have almost 3x the playing time...relief pitching slowly but surely started to become a meaningful part of the game during this period, so I thought I'd better start including them...couldn't decide what to do with Musial--at first, I accidentally omitted him entirely, since his not playing 50% at any one position kept him from showing up in my searches; then I had him at 1B, the single position at which he spent the most time in the period, replacing Mize; then I decided to fudge a bit and put him in RF, replacing Enos Slaughter.

• Tom Tango, at least, was convinced that Baseball Prospectus' replacement level was far too low. BP doesn't divulge its replacement level (that, like most other things, is BP-proprietary), but their glossary does explain that "a team which is at replacement level in all three of batting, pitching, and fielding will be an extraordinarily bad team, on the order of 20-25 wins in a 162-game season," and has explained elsewhere that a "replacement player" is essentially an AAA player that might be called upon to fill in as an emergency injury replacement. Tango noted that replacement players are freely available who are not (as BP was assuming all replacement players were) far, far below average on both offense and defense, and so he adopted a much higher standard for a replacement player, one with a total contribution of about -20 against average. BP eventually announced that it was making upward adjustments to its own definitions of replacement level, which lowered its WARP numbers across the board...but still not to the level of the two WARs. Accordingly, WARP is virtually always considerably higher than either WAR number. Pujols' 2009, for example, gets 9.2 by Rally WAR and 8.5 by FanGraphs WAR, but a whopping 11.8 by WARP.
  
  
• BP's fielding numbers are pretty opaque, and don't seem all that trustworthy. Nobody really knows how FRAR was calculated before. Now they use play-by-play data, but nobody knows how. UZR and Total Zone, on which the two WARs are based, are also based on play-by-play data (where available) and are much more transparent and verifiable, and just seem to make a bit more sense.
  
  
• BP's numbers in general, as you might have picked up already, are opaque. As a subscription-based site that closely protects its secrets, it's hard to tell what goes into BRAR, FRAR and PRAR, and, for that matter, the replacement levels. Meanwhile, if you're willing to do enough digging/Googling and have the math chops, you can pretty much figure out every single thing that goes into the FanGraphs or Rally WAR. The creators of these numbers (particularly Tango -- see e.g. here and here) are generally committed to being open about the numbers they use and where they're coming from. I'm not one to dig into the math, as you know, but I do like to have some idea of what it is I'm looking at.
  

Billy Hamilton!

Interestingly, after Sliding Billy, the next best player born on February 16 is probably Eric Byrnes. Quite the dropoff.

Hamilton would be 144 today, and that would be some kind of record. Hamilton's .344 career batting average is still 8th all time. His .455 OBP is 4th all time, and his 912 stolen bases are good for third.

Now, it's true that the league batting average for his time was .286 (compare to .264 during Willie Mays' career, or Cobb's .273), and that in 1894, when Hamilton hit .405, his was the third-best batting average in the Phillies' starting outfield (fellow Hall of Famers Ed Delahanty and Sam Thompson both hit .407), and that they didn't keep track of caught stealing back then, so for all we know Hamilton could've had 100 CSes to go with those 111 steals in 1889 (though of course we can assume that if he ran so much more than everybody else, he was probably pretty good at it).

But nonetheless. Hamilton was, as this very interesting-sounding book notes, the game's first great leadoff man. He led his league in on-base percentage four times, batting average twice, walks and steals five times apiece. He led the league in runs four times and scored 192 of them in that 1894 season (a brilliant baserunner getting on base at a .523 clip in front of two other .400 hitters is a good thing -- who knew?), still an all-time record. No one has ever come within 15 runs of that record, and no one has come within 40 runs of it in the last 80 years. His 1690 runs scored are still twenty-fifth all-time, despite the fact that he lasted less than 14 seasons, and he's third all-time among players whose careers ended before 1901.

Here's what I can't decide: is Hamilton a player who is forgotten because he played in the last decade of the nineteenth century rather than the first of the twentieth, or does that help him somehow? On one hand, the cartoonish nature of some of his numbers make him seem like a product of his era that really can't be moved (though, as the interview with the author of that book linked above notes, his skills weren't the kind that were really appreciated in that time either). On the other hand, while he's no Ty Cobb, his style of play may have fit in well with the fast-paced, get-the-one-run-at-all-costs style of the twentieth century's first two decades. This is a guy who certainly deserved to be a superstar, and I have to think that in Ty Cobb's era, he really would've been.

Here's the most interesting thing I've found about Hamilton: in 1891, he led the National League in walks for the first of his five times (with 102) and in hits for the only time (179). As you might imagine, doing both in the same year is awfully rare; a high hit total tends to be the mark of one who doesn't walk enough. In fact, I'm not nearly certain of this, but in my brief check I can find only three NL'ers who have ever led the league in both in the same year.

Weird thing? All three played centerfield for the Phillies when they did it:

Hamilton, 1891: 179 hits, 102 walks
Richie Ashburn, 1958: 215, 97
Nails Dykstra, 1993:194, 129

I might have missed one (or more), but unless the one I missed is another Phillies CF, I probably don't need to know...

So, spurred on by a truly bizarre, but brilliant, idea from Andrew Kneeland of Twins Target, today is Nick Punto Day. Twins bloggers all over the blogoworld are writing whatever they feel like writing about the Twins' frustrating and kind of inherently funny utility infielder.

Well, I'm not a Twins blogger, technically, but close enough, so I wanted to participate. But then I realized that I'd already written very nearly a thousand words about Punto, back on October 16, five days after he made one of the most astounding baserunning mistakes in postseason history. How much more can one really say about the guy?

So, in honor of Nick Punto Day, I'm doing my first-ever repost. Here's what I had to say when I anticipated Nick Punto Day like four months early. Since this was written, unbelievably, two of the three possibilities I mentioned below happened, and two of the kind of wishful-thinking ones; they traded for Hardy and signed Hudson. Well, that still leaves third base, and I still believe that Punto's your man, and that that's just fine. So here it is, after the jump:

Well, since it's Hall of Fame week and all (until tomorrow, which is Nick Punto Day), I might as well indulge again.

After the Albert Belle debate the other day, I started thinking about Belle's neighbor in that Cleveland outfield. Center fielder Kenny Lofton is probably remembered by most people now as a journeyman third-and-a-half outfielder, after playing for an amazing nine different teams in the last six years of his career. And in all, he played for eleven different teams -- more than everyone who has ever played except two relief pitchers -- and had three different tours with Cleveland, the only team for which he played more than one season. You can understand why he'd be remembered for something like that.

But Lofton also:

• played 16 full seasons, 2103 games;
• hit .299 and collected 2478 hits;
• stole 622 bases, 15th all time, and led his league five years in a row;
• scored 1528 runs, 56th all time, scoring 100+ six times and 90+ six more times; and
• played in six straight All-Star Games.

That's the kind of resume that, while it certainly doesn't scream "Hall of Fame," at least deserves another look. Is Kenny Lofton a Hall of Famer?
(click here to read more)

Apparently, it's HOF week here at The Daily Something.  Yesterday, Bill made an important distinction between the Hall of Fame and your Hall of Fame (well, not yours personally, but the Hall of Fame of anyone who insists on applying their own standards to the existing Hall to complain about how current or potential enshrinees do not belong), pointing out, "If your Hall of Fame doesn't have room for Ron Santo in it, then you're dealing with an entirely different sort of institution than the one located in Cooperstown, NY," because Ron Santo is clearly one of the best 10 or so 3B in history and 3B are underrepresented in the Hall.  The irony, of course, is that as much as every baseball fan has their own definition for what constitutes a Hall of Famer, the Hall itself has no real definition.  A Hall of Famer simply is someone who 75% of supposedly knowledgable voters decide is a Hall of Famer.  A set of rules does limit the pool of eligible players somewhat (players simply have to last 10 years in the league and have been retired at least 5 (unless they die unexpectedly)), but almost none of the players it excludes would be considered candidates anyway (unless you're dying to vote for Shane Spencer for his great run of 78 PAs in '98).  The Hall itself gives incredibly vague guidelines that barely limit the pool from which writers can choose.  Voters should consider “record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character, and contributions to the team(s) on which the player played,” but which statistics are relevant, what contributes a "contribution" to a team (Kevin Millar, by all accounts, was a great teammate in Boston) and how much consideration to give to unquantifiable qualities such as integrity, sportsmanship, and character is left entirely to the discretion of the voters.  Without objective criteria, Ron Santo is not technically a Hall of Fame quality 3B because the Hall of Fame voters don't view him as such.

Confused yet?

So I had a really good time monitoring, and participating in, the comments to the debate Gene and I did over at ATH Baseball yesterday. It became a debate that was less about Albert Belle and more about Ron Santo, of all people (and honestly, I had no idea before yesterday that there were still people outside the Veterans' Committee itself who didn't think Santo was a Hall of Famer, but they're out there), and about the nature of the Hall of Fame generally.

A sentiment that emerged from the crowd was that there were too many not-really-great players in the Hall of Fame. Some said what we really needed was a way to separate the wheat from the chaff. One wing for your Babe Ruths and Willie Mayses, and another for your Bill Mazeroskis and Andre Dawsons. Sal said something that I suspect encapsulates what a lot of the commenters were thinking:

The HOF started out as being for a certain class of player and the fact that they seem to feel they have to put someone in every year takes away from it's importance. Getting elected to the HOF is not what it once was.

To which I say...well, a few things. First, I agree generally that there are too many generally uninspiring players in the Hall, but my complaint is with the quality of players selected, not the quantity (though we could do with just a couple fewer Chick Hafeys and Freddy Lindstroms). Substitute Tim Raines for Jim Rice, Bert Blyleven for Bruce Sutter, Lou Whitaker for Tony Perez, etc., and I'm happy.

But my main point is this: getting elected to the HOF is exactly what it once, and always, was. People tend to have this vision of the Hall as a place that was intended for legends, the very best of the very best, a place that's downright sullied by the inclusion of guys like Dawson or (God willing) Santo.
(click below to read more)

One of the other baseball sites in the wonderful Bloguin network, Around the Horn Baseball, was soliciting guest writers to participate in weekly "great baseball debates" leading up to the season opener. I took up the challenge and ended up as part of the inaugural debate, up against Gene Zarnick from the excellently-named site Favre Dollar Footlongs.

The topic: "Should Albert Belle be in the Hall of Fame?"

I was prepared to argue either side, but luckily, so was Gene, so I got to go to town on the side I actually believe in (no, no, no, a million times no).

I had fun. You can read Gene's pro-Belle piece, and my much longer anti-Belle response, here.