The Hall of Fame? Oh, they let anyone in

The latest bum to get in
The latest bum to get in

Comments on Nate Silver’s fine Hall of Fame piece are hiLARRYous. So so so New York Times. Even after Nate carefully explains that:

A) The Hall of Fame has been letting in fewer players than historically usual lately because, while the writers have been voting in about their usual number, the Veterans Committee, which at times has thrown the doors open wide, has essentially stopped functioning.

B) Because of the Veterans Committee’s former generosity, huge numbers of players from the 1920s and ’30s are in the Hall, about twice as many as from any other era, despite the fact that …

C) at the time, there were about half as many teams as there are now, and the player pool was maybe one-fifth the size it is today.

So, just to review, there are twice as many teams, drawing players from a population five times larger, which should mean that the level of play is much higher — obviously true if you just watch a few games from the good old days — and about half as many players are making the Hall of Fame as made it from that earlier era.

And the New York Times commenters sniff: It’s terrible how they’ve lowered the standards! They just let anyone in there now! Sniff!

The elitism just drips. A few choice samples:

  • “Too stringent”? Au contraire. Over the last couple of decades they have admitted so many bums that it defies description. If anything, the standards should be tightened. There are perhaps six active players who should EVER be considered.
  • We’ve dumbed down America and now you want to water down what makes a true athlete great. They should measure up or not be considered!!!! That’s the problem with America continually relaxing standards and codes.!!!!
  • The statistical look at the question is entirely misdirected. There have been a handful of standout players in the game, something less than 50 in total.
  • i thought the hall was for extraordinary accomplishments not just very good …the hall is so diluted these days.
  • When Mickey Mantle hit a home run he ran around the bases with his head down so that he wouldn’t embarrass the pitcher on the other team. He did that 536 times. He got into the Hall of Fame on his first vote. How many of the guys that make fools of themselves jumping around today deserve to get in on their first vote? There are only so many people who have the Right Stuff for the Hall of Fame and their number doesn’t enlarge just because more people are playing the game.
  • I could go on but you get it. The very idea. Why they’re letting rabble into the Hall of Fame now, Lovey. Absolute rabble!

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    Image lifted from an NBC video without permission. Will remove on request

    Tim Lincecum: Not more impressive than Doc Halladay

    This New York Times blog post by Dan Rosenheck argues that Tim Lincecum’s two-hit shutout Thursday night “was actually both more impressive and more valuable” than Roy Halladay’s no-hitter Wednesday night.

    More valuable because Lincecum had to throw a shutout for his team to win 1-0, while Doc had a three-run margin for error in a 4-0 victory. That’s true without being useful. A pitcher has no control, as a pitcher, over how many runs his team scores, though Halladay did have a key RBI single.

    But more impressive? Then why is everyone, and I mean everyone, and I mean I bet even Lincecum if you asked him, more impressed by Halladay’s performance than by Lincecum’s? Is the whole world stupid?

    No. Rosenheck argues that Lincecum pitched better because he struck out 14 while Halladay only struck out eight. “Extensive research into the subject shows that the vast majority of pitchers wind up giving up hits on about 30 percent of balls in play over the course of their careers,” Rosenheck writes. “As a result, the only ways for most pitchers to reduce the number of hits they allow are to avoid surrendering home runs and to get more strikeouts, so batters never put the ball in play to begin with.”

    Defense-independent pitching statistics, which is what Rosenheck is writing about, tell us that variations on a .300 average on balls in play are mostly due to luck, and by Rosenheck’s figuring, “with normal luck, a pitcher with Halladay’s eight strikeouts, one walk, and zero home runs allowed in 28 batters faced would give up an average of 1.55 earned runs per nine innings, while one with Lincecum’s 14 strikeouts, 1 walk, and 0 home runs allowed in 30 batters faced would surrender just 0.37.”

    That’s all fine, and looking at a career, or even a season, it’s a useful way to evaluate a pitcher. A whole season’s worth of innings reduces the role of variance — luck — quite a bit, and calculations like Rosenheck’s help us figure out by how much.

    But we’re talking about one game here. In a single game, the bad news is that variance can play a huge role, but the good news is that we can see and remember the whole game. And if you saw Halladay’s no-hitter you know that there wasn’t a whole lot of luck involved in the 19 non-strikeout outs he got.

    There was one reasonably hard-hit ball, a line drive, not a screamer but a well-hit ball, to shallow right field that Jayson Werth caught. There was one nice play, Jimmy Rollins ranging into the hole at shortstop. Either of those balls could have been hits, yes, but Rollins’ play wasn’t spectacular by any means, and if that ball had gone for a hit, it would have been a good example of luck — a batter getting a hit on a routine but well-placed bouncer.

    Lincecum didn’t need a whole lot of flashy leather to get his 13 non-K outs either, but let’s not forget that he gave up two ringing doubles. Those shots, by Omar Infante and Brian McCann, didn’t just scoot humbly between infielders. They were well hit. Halladay didn’t give up anything like those two.

    We’re comparing Michelangelo and Rembrandt here. It’s silly. Lincecum was fantastic, Halladay was fantastic. But to use a metric that shows Lincecum was better than Halladay is to find the limits of that metric. Comparing two single games in which almost nothing happened other than outs might be too much to ask of defense independent pitching stats. Sometimes we just have to trust our eyes, and with how impressed we are.