Hall of Fame numbers - whats required?

Is there a valid number in certain categories that put you into the Hall of Fame guaranteed? Or is it just a number that people put value in that doesnt guarantee a spot?

for example, will hitting 500 homeruns in your career clinch your spot in the HOF? Does 3000 hits? 300 wins? Etc etc

after reading all of Bagwells carrer stats, he only has 449, and some people go "well, he didnt hit 500 homeruns". (I feel if Bags didnt play half his career at the Astrodome, he would be past 500)

As far as I'm aware, who gets in is completely up to the voters and their biases/beliefs

I can't wait to find out who sold their vote to Deadspin and watch the chaos that ensues

With the inflated numbers of the steroid era the 500 homerun total is a soft number when it used to be a hard and fast ticket to Cooperstown.
I still think 3000 hits, 300 wins are automatics. Although it would have been interesting to see how voters would have treated Omar Vizquel if he would have held on long enough. Or Harold Baines for that matter.

3000 Hits is not automatic, otherwise Biggio would be in already.

No. Steroids negate any & all numbers.

There used to be hallowed or sacred milestones--500 HR, 3,000 hits, 300 wins that all but assured a player of enshrinement. Things change obviously, especially with increased power numbers coming out of the steroid era. Suddenly guys who hit those career milestones, like Raffy Palmeiro, aren't and likely won't ever get in.

Baseball Reference has an nice section called "Hall of Fame Statistics" that show measurement along a few indexes (i think all created by Bill James):
1) Black Ink - measures how often a player led the league in an important stat, different categories weighted differently. penalizes modern players as there are more players per league now.
2) Gray Ink - same as black ink but counts appearances in the top 10.
3) Hall of Fame Monitor - Long mathematical equation. If end result is 100 then player is good possibility of election, 130 virtual cinch
4) Hall of Fame Standards - another equation.

Bagwell shows up as a HOFer, though slightly short on the Black Ink

http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/b/bagweje01.shtml

gradedeflator said:

There used to be hallowed or sacred milestones--500 HR, 3,000 hits, 300 wins that all but assured a player of enshrinement. Things change obviously, especially with increased power numbers coming out of the steroid era. Suddenly guys who hit those career milestones, like Raffy Palmeiro, aren't and likely won't ever get in.

Baseball Reference has an nice section called "Hall of Fame Statistics" that show measurement along a few indexes (i think all created by Bill James):
1) Black Ink - measures how often a player led the league in an important stat, different categories weighted differently. penalizes modern players as there are more players per league now.
2) Gray Ink - same as black ink but counts appearances in the top 10.
3) Hall of Fame Monitor - Long mathematical equation. If end result is 100 then player is good possibility of election, 130 virtual cinch
4) Hall of Fame Standards - another equation.

Bagwell shows up as a HOFer, though slightly short on the Black Ink

http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/b/bagweje01.shtml

Click to expand...

Are the HOF metrics on the Baseball Reference site cumulative in nature? Is it possible that a player can "play his metrics down" by playing more years at a sub-par level?

I'm interested to read opinions.

Thanks!

Jeff

BACK FLIPS!

nosterbor said:

BACK FLIPS!

Click to expand...

BACK FLIPS MAKE YOU THE BEST DEFENDER OF ALL-TIME! DONT FORGET IT FOR A SECOND!

IMO You needed to be the best player on your team for the majority of your seasons as well as be one of the league best at your position for the majority of your years.


300 wins is an ALMOST automatic in I think. However, 500 HRs isn't anymore and neither is 3000 hits. If you are a power hitter (Bagwell) and don't have 500 however I don't think you deserve to be in.

I don't think Biggio or Bagwell deserve to be in but the HOF is a joke now and doesn't mean much in my eyes.

jbhofmann said:

BACK FLIPS MAKE YOU THE BEST DEFENDER OF ALL-TIME! DONT FORGET IT FOR A SECOND!

Click to expand...

And the worst hitter [non-pitcher] in the HOF!

Interesting notes. And that section on baseball-reference is interesting. When i get more free time i want to take a closer look at it.

and i wonder how many doubles and triples Bagwell has had that would have been homeruns if they were hit in Minute Maid Park vs the Astrodome... Maybe there is a distance chart somewhere for stuff like this.

Requires forced to kiss reporters ass, be "clean" away from PED and if you are playing in "PED" era they are guilty by association despite nothing ever got linked to the players

ASTROBURN said:

Interesting notes. And that section on baseball-reference is interesting. When i get more free time i want to take a closer look at it.

and i wonder how many doubles and triples Bagwell has had that would have been homeruns if they were hit in Minute Maid Park vs the Astrodome... Maybe there is a distance chart somewhere for stuff like this.

Click to expand...

They will take that into account just like they would had he played in Colorado and his numbers were inflated as opposed to deflated. They will also take into account he played in the roid era, his shoulder problems possibly due to roid use, etc. . Some of which will hurt him and some of which will help him,

That's the true issue now. Not whether the guy is good enough as good enough stands. It's more about whether they think he took roids, whether or not they believe or have faith in local reporting to unearth evidence of said issue, and whether or not his numbers merit a higher value given based on the fact that a lot of the greats of this era did use. So now they have to figure out just how much 449 means when compared to verified users who had more. In essence, it's become way more about PEDS than play.

The numbers required should be dependent on the era of that player. If not, then today's pitchers will never be HOF worthy. It will be a stretch for a pitcher to get 250 wins let alone 300.

IMO it's simply play at least 10 years in the bigs and dominate during your era... For example the '90s... and maybe do something like be the first to hit 50/50...

or wait... nevermind... yea it's totally up to the voters who gets in and who doesn't

MansGame said:

IMO it's simply play at least 10 years in the bigs and dominate during your era... For example the '90s... and maybe do something like be the first to hit 50/50...

or wait... nevermind... yea it's totally up to the voters who gets in and who doesn't

Click to expand...

For such a power hitter he ony hit 381 Hrs.

.295 BA is not too bad but he only hit 1700 hits.

I am in no way trying to trash talk Belle in the least but but argue (in a HOF #s thread) that Belle would have needed to play longer to be a Hofer.

double post.

I do not think nor believe any given numbers are a requirement at all, nor should they be. The Hall of Fame has always, since its inception, been a place for the most revered and popular players of any given generation. The common modern mistake is thinking the great numbers made the great men when it was the other way around, great men made the great numbers. It just so happens that the same things that are conducive for creating a revered and popular player are usually somewhat parallel with significant statistical statures, but obviously not always. The only criteria I use when judging a players HOF worth is if he was among the few who captured a large part of any given generation with regards to reverence and popularity.

I don't understand the belief that the Hall of Fame has recently become a joke. If the HOF is a joke, it got there a long time ago. Most of the egregious selections are guys that got in via the old veterans committee and/or played the bulk of their careers before 1960. It is the players that played the bulk of their careers in the 70's or later that are underrepresented in the Hall.

As a percentage of guys playing in a given year, the last 40 years have a dramatically lower percentage of guys in the HOF. Does it really make logical sense that a higher percentage of guys that played during 1930 are in the Hall than were playing in 1980? Not to mention the fact those guys from 1930 only had to play against whites?

One of the things I love most about baseball is the attachment to and reverence of the past but it gets taken to a ridiculous level when it comes to the Hall. The quality of play and skill level is light years ahead of where the game was 75 years ago but too many of the BWAA will tell how much better the game was back in the day. Total BS. Too many of the voters are incapable of applying any context to the game, have an axe to grind, or just don't really care about the process.

The "steroid era" notwithstanding, it is much more difficult to put together the accumulating stats that guys did 75 years ago. The overall level of play is so much higher today that it is virtually impossible to dominate the game. Stick someone like Larry Walker in 1925 and I'd bet he would have Gehrig like numbers. The rise in talent level has caused a regression to the mean so that you don't have statistical outliers to nearly the degree you once did. This is just natural in any field. At the beginning, the best participants are several standard deviations away from the mean, but as the field evolves, it levels off to some degree so that everyone is pulled toward the middle. And this really should be factored in when evaluating guys for the Hall.

The game is just too different today to evaluate guys against the counting stats put up in the past. That is why stats like WAR are so important. It is still flawed and will no doubt continue to evolve, but the theory behind it is rock solid and it (or something that will improve upon it) will someday be accepted as the standard to compare guys across eras. A good example is pitcher wins. Ignoring the argument about whether it is a valid stat in the first place for evaluating pitchers, it is completely pointless to compare Roy Halladay's win totals with Walter Johnson's.

Those HOF standards at BR are a fun tool but they were developed by Bill James a long time ago and are somewhat outdated at this point. For example, the black ink test isn't really a good measure these days because there are so many more players and teams today than 50+ years ago so it is obviously much harder to lead your league in anything. WAR is kind of/sort of a more sophisticated version of those BR measures- and all of them are just pieces of a bigger puzzle.