By Derek Rosenfeld Babe Ruth won 94 games as a pitcher.
As time moves forward and a greater number of variables are introduced into any type of meritocracy, it’s natural for perceptions to change regarding those variables’ quality and value. You will often hear the phrase “watered down” when used to describe a perceived unnecessary influx of entries or articles into what was originally thought of as a very exclusive collectivity. Such is the case for the Baseball Hall of Fame (HOF).
With pitchers’ workloads being decreased (many will say they are being coddled); hitters’ power numbers spiking because of smaller ballparks, maple bats, and performance enhancing drugs (PEDs); a greater reliance on player specialization; and a constantly emerging and evolving circle of statistics, separating the wheat from the chafe in baseball is becoming more and more difficult and complex. This is creating a more controversial approach to determining who is an all-time great and who is merely just a great in his time.
SABERMETRICS Roy Halladay
Felix Hernandez
James was also a looming influence in Michael Lewis’s 2003 bestseller Moneyball. Soon to be a major motion picture starring Brad Pitt, the book took an in-depth look at current Oakland A’s General Manager (GM) Billy Beane, who made the A’s a perennial contender in the 2000s by expanding on former A’s GM Sandy Alderson’s reliance on sabermetrics despite having a limited budget with which to work. Focusing more on on-base percentage, slugging percentage, and the combination of the two (OPS) rather than more conventional statistics such as batting average and runs batted in, Beane became a sensation by winning five American League West titles in seven years between 2000-06. However, each title came with a first-round exit in the playoffs. Once the team’s “Big 3” starting pitchers Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder, and Barry Zito departed, the A’s once again fell back to the middle of the MLB pack, bringing into question just how well sabermetrics works for a team without great pitching.
Tim Lincecum
Among the more popular examples of sabermetrics, as mentioned in part 2 of my column, is the stat Walks plus Hits per Inning Pitched, or WHIP, which is slowly working its way into the mainstream. Created by Daniel Okrent (the inventor of Rotisserie League Baseball) in 1979, this measures a pitcher’s effectiveness simply by calculating the number of hitters who reach base safely—not counting errors—for every inning pitched. It is this stat, such as it is with OPS for hitters, that is helping pitchers subvert more traditional stats such as Wins. A prime example of this stat’s impact can be seen in the past three years of MLB Cy Young Award voting. During this time, the San Francisco Giants’ Tim Lincecum, Kansas City Royals’ Zack Greinke, and Seattle Mariners’ Felix Hernandez each won Cy Young Awards with the three lowest win totals in MLB history with 15, 16, and 13 respectively. All three displayed domination in other, more individualistic sabermetric stats, whereas a pitcher’s wins are now being looked on as more team oriented and less telling of a pitcher’s own performance.
Zack Greinke
James currently works for the Boston Red Sox as a senior advisor; he received World Series (WS) rings after the team’s 2004 and 2007 WS victories because of certain player trades and signings that met with his approval. He was also named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world in 2006. His work and the work of others have turned 120 years of what was considered faultless analysis on its head and created a 21st-century version of America’s pastime that will prove more rewarding and, to some pundits, more fair to its participants and fans than ever before.
In the fourth and final installment of my examination of the HOF, I will delve into the biggest question of all surrounding the Hall: The steroid question.
Images found on Wikimedia Commons. From top to bottom: Fabian1309, UCinternational, Schwenkenstein01, SD Dirk, UCinternational.
Derek Rosenfeld is an associate editor for Fire Engineering. He is beginning his sixth season as the assistant baseball coach at Bergen Community College in Paramus, New Jersey. He is also an infielder for the semipro North Haledon (NJ) Reds. During the mid-90s, Rosenfeld was a three-year starter at second base for the Ramapo College baseball team in Mahwah, New Jersey, where he earned all-New Jersey Athletic Conference honors and was a two-time New Jersey Collegiate Baseball Association (NJCBA) all-star selection. He was named MVP of the 1997 NJCBA All-Star Game. He has a bachelor’s degree in communications from Ramapo College.
