Posted by tecwrg on 12/15/2010 11:03:00 PM (view original):
I'm curious as to whether people think this guy is HOF worthy, because he's never received any love in HOF voting in Mantle:

Hardball Dynasty – Fantasy Baseball Sim Games - Player Profile: Bart Kirby

The case against him: never made an All-Star team, never won an award, hit a crapload of home runs playing 1B/DH in Durham.  One-dimensional player in a hitting-friendly ballpark.

The case for him: 622 career home runs, 11 straight years of 40+ HR / 100+ RBI's.  The dude produced consistently.

Posted by overeasy on 12/15/2010 3:57:00 PM (view original):
We are all familiar with what have traditionally been the automatic MLB HOF numbers of 300, 500 and 3000. After seasons of analyzing my own 3 worlds, which are all decently competitive and score in the top third of anyone's rankings systems, and seeing the extreme numbers in the All-time leaders thread I believe that HBD's numbers should be a bit different.

Wins:  Considering the fact that only 9 pitchers currently have 300+ wins in the all-time records, this number definitely needs to be lower for HBD. I think a reasonable number would be 250.

Home Runs:  Despite the change to reduce home runs, it still seems that a lot of guys in HBD are able to put up 500 and they don't all seem like guys who should be auto locks for the Hall. If we are talking about an automatic, if this guy hits this number, he should be in the Hall, then I believe that 600 is probably a more appropriate number.

Hits:  Since it seems that most HBD hitters, save those with ultra-high splits, become useless against ML pitching once they are over 35, star position players in HBD seem to have shorter careers than similar players in MLB. Also, it seems that many of the best hitters in HBD have durability in the 70s, resulting in fewer ABs per season than the typical MLB star. As a result, the 3000 hit club in HBD seems to be more exclusive than the MLB version. I thought 2500 seemed like a nice looking number, but is possibly a bit too low. Perhaps 2700?

All thoughts and constructive comments welcome. Any RSFs can go elsewhere.

Posted by iain on 12/17/2010 8:37:00 AM (view original):
How are his lack of award anything to do with his ratings?  They are directly based on his results.

Consistent, sure... but if there were guys putting up better numbers over the course of his career, shouldn't they get consideration first?

Awards are an important parameter when looking at players in worlds where you don't play.   Sure 622 homers is pretty damn good.  But he never made an A/S team.   So one has to assume his numbers didn't stack up well against at least two other players at the same position each season.   Sorry, that's just not good enough.

Of course, one could dig deeper and find out why he never made an A/S team but I'm not in that world so I don't really care to do all that.

Posted by mlhutch on 12/17/2010 8:35:00 AM (view original):
I would vote for Kirby in a heartbeat.  His numbers are his numbers.  Too often voters bias their votes based on these guys' ratings.  If you didn't see his less than admirable ratings and just saw his numbers, he would have more support.  People look at the relatively poor ratings (for today's current system) and begin discounting the overall numbers. 

Then the HoF debate only centers around a lack of awards (which are poorly determined in the system and in some cases voted on by the same voters biased against these 'poor' ratings to begin with) which is really just a proxy for a bias against his ratings.  In the end, didn't really matter that his contact sucked or his splits were below average, he hit 622 HRs and had a good number of consecutive seasons with 40+HRs and 100RBIs.  The guy was a consistent run producing machine.

Posted by mlhutch on 12/17/2010 8:45:00 AM (view original):

Posted by iain on 12/17/2010 8:37:00 AM (view original):
How are his lack of award anything to do with his ratings?  They are directly based on his results.

Consistent, sure... but if there were guys putting up better numbers over the course of his career, shouldn't they get consideration first?

I was talking more generally.  There are many awards that are decided by votes that are directly impacted by bias.  As for the sim award calculations, I am sure we can all agree that it has some flaws.

You are assuming that he is now competing against them in HoF voting.  I don't know who he is competing with in terms of votes - it could be changing from year to year.  Where does he rate all-time? 

My larger point is that many of these players from early in the game suffer from a rating-bias from later owners.  Guys who dominate in the first 5-7 years of a league can barely make a ML slot in leagues in seasons 17-18 as the quality of players increase.  The bias stems, in part, from this disconnect.

The reason why I brought Kirby up was because of the title of the thread "automatic HOF milestones".  A number of folks say 600 HR's should be an automatic HOF vote.  Then they look at Kirby and say "oh, but maybe not for him".

Maybe people should stop thinking in terms of "automatic" milestones.