Bill James: The Father of Sabermetrics photo found on Google Images

The standards by which the elite are chosen for election into Cooperstown are evolving. This transition can mostly be attributed to the growing popularity and acceptance of Sabermetrics. The decision to vote Ron Santo into the sacred Hall is a prime example of the shift from traditional thinking.

While greatness on the diamond has its conventional and established characteristics, future Hall of Famers may be relying more on Sabermetric measurements to punch their tickets. For position players, the Hall of Fame has been reserved for the great power hitters, those with batting averages over .300, and a high number of career RBI. For pitchers it’s all about the career strikeouts, ERA, as well as wins and losses.

Ron Santo unfortunately passed away in 2010 without ever hearing his name called by the HOF. The Baseball Writers Association of America decision to induct Santo in 2012 isn’t just posthumously honoring a Chicago icon, but is truly a testament to the level of acceptance Sabermetrics has achieved. Santo had a career .277 batting average. He hit only 342 home runs, and drove in a very respectable 1,331 base runners. Santo definitely compiled above average career statistics, but not “elite” numbers to the naked eye. This is where Sabermetrics influenced his worthiness to the voting writers.

Image via Wikipedia

For five seasons, 1963-1967, Santo had an OPS of .905 which would classify him in “Category A” according to Bill James’ “The 96 Families of Hitters.” Category A is reserved for batters with an OPS greater than .900, which is elite and, by all measures, great. He finished first in walks in the National League four times in his 15 year career. He led the NL in OBP three times. Santo was an even better fielder. A five time Gold Glove recipient, he finished in the top five in fielding percentage for third basemen eight times. Santo is currently ranked 105^th all-time in Wins Above Replacement, which is nothing to scoff at.

Ron Santo most likely wouldn’t have reached the Hall of Fame without the help of Sabermetrics. HOF voters are taking into consideration the statistics that are often undervalued and contribute to team wins. Ron Santo helped the Chicago Cubs win and by Sabermetric standards is an elite player deserving of Hall of Fame status.

Sabermetrics will continue to influence Hall of Fame voting. Particularly after an era of steroids and inflated power statistics, Sabermetrics provides a fresh perspective on players who may be on the “bubble” regarding their chance at being inducted. Position players and pitchers who come to mind include Tim Raines, Lee Smith, Jeff Bagwell, Edgar Martinez, Derek Jeter, Andy Pettite, Trevor Hoffman, and Ivan “Pudge” Rodriguez to name a few. Many of those may be considered shoe-ins for the Hall, but these players are nothing short of Sabermetric superstars and shouldn’t (and probably won’t) be overlooked by voters in the coming years.

Photo taken from Google Images

This is a post written by Jeff Herbst. Jeff has had a passion for sports ever since he could first walk and enjoys writing in his spare time. He works with Phoenix Bats, a company that manufacturers wood bats and specialty composite wood bats for amateur and professional ball players around the globe.

Since 1936, the baseball Hall of Fame has inducted 296 players, managers and executives who have excelled on the field of play, behind the scenes as manager, coach or executive, or who played a part in advancing the game of baseball itself. In its induction criteria, players must have played a minimum of ten years, and have been retired for five years. A screening committee then ciphers through the list of eligible players after they have waited the mandatory five-year period after retirement. Once the screening committee clears the list of lesser-qualified players, members of the BBWAA (Baseball Writers Association of America) must then cast their votes for players on the ballot and players who receive a minimum of 75 percent of the votes cast is automatically inducted.

While the process itself may seem foolproof, there are flaws in the system and those flaws have certainly come into play during and after what has been termed as baseball’s Steroid Era.

The Steroid Era can be loosely defined as the era between the late 1980s until now, when many ballplayers were suspected to have used performance enhancing drugs to in order to increase offensive output. Many players during this time were alleged to have used PEDs, while others actually tested positive for banned PED substances after MLB implemented PED testing in 2003.

The voting bloc for baseball’s Hall of Fame, the BBWAA (Baseball Writers Association of America) has largely denied entry into the hallowed halls of baseball for players suspected of PED use, including those who have tested positive in recent years. Mark McGwire, the slugging first baseman who originally broke Roger Maris’ all-time single-season home run record in 1998, is one such player who has failed to gain enough votes for entry. In the five years that McGwire has been eligible for Hall of Fame induction, the highest number of votes he has achieved has been 23.7 percent in 2010, far short of the 75 percent required for automatic induction.

So too is the case with former designated hitter Rafael Palmeiro. Palmeiro famously declared at a Congressional hearing in 2005, “Let me start by telling you this: I have never used steroids, period. I don’t know how to say it any more clearly than that. Never.” However, just four months later, Palmeiro tested positive for a banned substance, rendering his very public statement useless. Despite the fact that Palmeiro is just one of four men in baseball history who have collected 3,000 hits and 500 home runs, he only received 11 percent of the votes in his first year of Hall of Fame eligibility.

Cheating is cheating, no matter what form it takes. That is exactly why Shoeless Joe Jackson and Pete Rose have been barred from entry into the Hall of Fame—they were both involved in gambling on their own teams in some way. Baseball writers in the BBWAA have taken a stand that anyone accused of, or who tested positive for PED use also cheated and also should not gain entry in baseball’s hallowed halls.

For this writer, were I eligible to vote, I too would absolutely not cast a vote for any player who willingly changed his body via unscrupulous means in order to pad his statistics. Are there players in the Hall of Fame who were not the nicest of people, or who were disliked for various reasons? Yes, but none of them were accused of cheating the game. The Hall of Fame should only be reserved for players who earned it the right and honest way.

Today, Friday December 10, 2010 is Baseball Bloggers Alliance (aka BBA) Day! The BBA was started in April 2009 by one of our contributing writers here at Baseball Reflections, Daniel Shoptaw. Daniel also runs his own blog where he covers the Cardinals called C70 at the Bat and he also runs the United Cardinal Bloggers (UCB). To learn more about the BBA, please check out the interview with Daniel titled, “Talking With Baseball Bloggers Alliance Founder Daniel Shoptaw” from the BBA member site Misc. Baseball. Take a peak at the interview and then come back to read my story with the BBA.
Now that I’ve told you a little bit about the BBA and you hopefully checked out the interview with Daniel, I’d like to tell you what I think of the BBA, what I’ve participated in and why I jumped at the chance to join.

I jumped at the chance to join the BBA for two reasons. First, knowing of Daniel’s success with the UCB I new it would be run properly. Second, because I had a very similar idea that crashed and burned over on LinkedIn. Basically, I loved the idea! I told Daniel I’d help out in any way that I could. Now it has over 230 bloggers in membership & we have voted on the basic end of season awards for the best player, rookie, pitcher, reliever, manager and also the Hall of Fame which is currently in process. In fact, last year (2009) we were approached by the BBWAA to change the names of those end of the season awards. We were allowed permission to use Hall of Famer Googe Gossage’s name for our Best Closer Award.

I also have co-hosted a BBA podcast a few times and am now the host of the show on months with a fifth Tuesday. The show is hosted on Blog Talk Radio and it’s called BBA Baseball Talk and it runs on every Tuesday night. Please check it out sometime…the shows run for about an hour and are broadcast live and can be downloaded or subscribed to in iTunes.

Photo of Braves OF Jason Heyward by Icon SMI

This year the BBA has renamed their awards as advised by the BBWAA, so the best NL  rookie for 2010 is named after Hall of Famer Willie Mays (not Hayes). As a warning, please note that defensive ability did not play a part in this decision like I would have liked it to. Therefore, this is based solely on offensive ability (sorry Buster) when analyzing runs, total bases, runs batted in, stolen bases less caught stealing, intentional walks, batting average and on base percentage minus strikeouts.

What hurt Posey (and to a lesser extent Walker) was his late call up. Hayward and Sanchez had over 30 and 40 more games played than he did. What also did him in was a lack of stolen bases although his play behind the plate should really bring him closer to 2^nd place. Either way, Heyward wins hands down.

Also of note: I did not, for better or for worse, include a rookie pitcher in this list although Garcia of the Cardinals could have gotten a fourth or fifth place standing in my book.

The Goose Gossage Award

Photo of Braves Closer Billy Wagner by Icon SMI

This BBA award is something special as we (the BBA) received the permission to use the name of Hall of Famer (Rich) Goose Gossage  for the best late inning reliever award (I took into account non-closers with the inclusion of the unofficial Hold stat which I think is more telling of a clutch performance than the save). For this award I analyzed the following stats: saves plus holds minus blown saves (do they have a stat for blown holds yet…that might be a hole in this analysis, I admit), earned run average minus SIERA (a new Baseball Prospectus stat) plus walks/hits per innings pitched (WHIP), plus strikeouts, less wild pitches and balks, wins minus losses, minus home runs allowed.

Although Wagner didn’t have the most saves(37), he made up for it with a win differential of 5 and lows in ERA, SIERA and WHIP (0.87) and high strikeout total (104, second only to Marmol out of this bunch). What hurt Marmol was his a win differential of -1 to go along with higher ERA (2.55) and WHIP (1.18) even though he gave up fewer HRs. Wilson, like Marmol, also had a higher WHIP (1.18) and lower strikeouts (only 98), but had more saves (48). He also gave up 3 HRs had a SIERA of 2.72 while earning 3 wins and 3 losses.

*denotes Honorable Mentions

Editor’s Note: No, I am not a Braves fan!

Why haven’t the BBWAA elected the closer with the third highest saves total with 478? The only two guys ahead of him are still playing (Hoffman and Rivera) and former inductees whom are below him on the list are Eckersley, Fingers, Gossage, Sutter and Wilhelm. The next closest player is John Franco and he played longer than him and he bests Franco with 54 more saves and bests Eckersley by 88.

His career ERA was 3.03, he finished 802 games with a SO/9 ratio of 8.7which factors out to being 1251 K’s in 1289.1 innings pitched. To go along with that he was in 7 All Star games, got MVP and Cy Young Award votes in 4 years.

If you haven’t guessed by now, I’m talking about former closer Lee Smith!

What do you think about the possible induction of Lee Smith into the Baseball Hall of Fame?

Image via Wikipedia

I just got the e-mail from Boston.com, Jim Rice (my favorite player growing up), in his last year of eligibility, was finally elected into the Baseball Hall of Fame by the BWAA!

Here’s the story on the election of Rice and Rickey Henderson (in his first year of eligibility) from ESPN. The date of the ceremony, according to the ESPN article is as follows, “The pair will be inducted into the Hall during ceremonies on July 26 in Cooperstown, N.Y. They will be joined by former Yankees and Indians second baseman Joe Gordon, elected posthumously last month by the Veterans Committee.”

Here’s the write up in the e-mail from Boston.com:

Jim Rice, the fierce and feared slugger who spent his entire 16-year major league career with the Red Sox, was at last elected to to the Baseball Hall of Fame this afternoon on his 15th — and final — season on the Baseball Writers Association of America ballot.

More on Rice from the ESPN article, “Rice, the 1978 AL MVP, was an eight-time All-Star who hit 382 home runs in 16 seasons with the Red Sox from 1974-89. He had a .298 career batting average and 1,451 RBIs and from 1977-79 averaged .320 with 41 homers and 128 RBIs.”