Posted by llamanunts on 2/7/2011 3:33:00 PM (view original):
Compared with:

1996 NL  7.5 (1st)
1997 NL  6.4 (3rd)
1998 NL  8.4 (1st)
1999 NL  5.8 (3rd)
2000 NL  6.5 (2nd)
2003 NL  5.4 (3rd)

  This is Dave Steibs WAR:

WAR for Pitchers† s c a p y 
1980 AL  4.9 (7th) 
1981 AL  4.2 (2nd) 
1982 AL  6.8 (1st) 
1983 AL  6.4 (1st) 
1984 AL  7.7 (1st) 
1985 AL  6.5 (2nd)

He got almost the exact same % of votes as Kevin Brown did in his only HOF ballot.

Posted by contrarian23 on 2/7/2011 3:38:00 PM (view original):
Starting to get a bit off-topic here, but the peak/career thing reminds of something that drove me crazy about the 2nd edition of Bill James's Historical Abstract.  I was 16 or 17 when the original came out, read it cover to cover many times, and was blown away by it. 

In that first version James hammered the point that the two had to be considered separately when it comes to comparing players.  He used many examples (Mantle > Mays at peak; Mays > Mantle at career; Koufax > Spahn at peak; Spahn > Koufax at career; etc).  He had two separate lists for his rankings, one for peak and one for career.  And he basically criticized every other attempt by anyone else to rank players because no one was consistent as to whether they were using peak value, career value, or some combination.

The revised edition comes out 15 years later, not quite as good, but with some new material and revised player evaluations, and the whole peak/career thing was just gone.

Not "I've rethought my position on this."
Not "I've discovered a way to combine the two into a single evaluation"
Not "I'm going strictly with one or the other."

Just ignored the whole issue.

I think the world of Bill James, but this just struck me as sloppy. 

http://www.baseballcrank.com/archives/001772.php

James has ranked players based on a statistical formula, albeit one that includes a numeric value designed to account for subjective factors, and that gives weight both to a player's overall career value and to the height of his peak, thus eliminating the separate lists for career and peak value in the earlier book and abandoning his previous criticism of "great statistics" that seek to roll all evaluations into a single integer.

I din't realize the steroid issues surounding Brown.  If I knew, he wouldn't be on my list.
***
Personally I value career stats over peak.  If a guy does nothing more (or less) than acumilate 3 WAR a year, but does it each year for 30 years, to me he is still a slam dunk HoFer.

Trentonjoe: Good point.  Dave Stieb's peak seems to have been higher than Glavine's, and almost as good as Brown's.

zubinsum: "Personally I value career stats over peak.  If a guy does nothing more (or less) than acumilate 3 WAR a year, but does it each year for 30 years, to me he is still a slam dunk HoFer."

I like that and I agree.  I wonder... if the rules didn't prohibit it, would you support the candidacy of a pitcher who pitched 250 innings per year for 6 years with a 1.63 ERA?  (Current scoring environment.)

Pettitte is the type of pitchers the writers really ought to wait 10 years before considering, much like they did with Blyleven.  It will take time to look back and reflect on the era in which he pitched to determine if he was in the top 5% or so of the starting pitchers he competed against.  I think Pettitte is very borderline. We wouldn't even be having this conversation if it wasn't for his post season success. 

I like how some commenters have said Tommy John and Bob Caruthers deserve to be in the Hall. I completely agree.  Tommy John almost won 300 games and just as important, he has the surgery named after him.  The fact he as the first to have succesfully had the surgery and come back from it is a huge part of baseball history.  Caruthers' numbers are simply sick.  He should be in. 

Posted by jfranco77 on 2/7/2011 3:28:00 PM (view original):
I'm not overwhelmed by Glavine's peak. He certainly doesn't hurt the standards for the Hall (he's no Marquard) but he was never a dominant pitcher. He only has 1 season over 6 WAR and he was usually the 3rd best pitcher on his team (Maddux, Smoltz, even Neagle/Millwood/Burkett). But he fielded well, handled the bat well, and did OK in the post-season (14-16, 3.30 ERA). And the Hall is also a museum, and he does tell the story of 1990-2005 better than most (better than Moose, for sure).

Check out his leaderboard appearances for pitching WAR:

1991 NL  7.4 (1st)
1995 NL  4.7 (4th)
1996 NL  5.6 (4th)
1997 NL  5.0 (7th)
1998 NL  5.6 (5th)
2000 NL  4.5 (10th)

Not exactly blowing away the competition there. But I doubt there are many who are consistently in the top 5 for that period of 95-98 like he was.
 

Do you WAR guys not put stock in CY Young Voting?  Because your statement, "He was usually the 3rd best pitcher on his team" can be refuted by his winning of two Cy Youngs and two 2nd place finishes. 

TJ, I don't know... I feel like WAR does a good job with pitchers. I also feel like once a pitcher has gotten some recognition he tends to get votes for the Cy Young that he doesn't really deserve. That's what killed Blyleven, he couldn't win the Cy Young and then he couldn't get into the Hall because he couldn't win the Cy Young.

To some extent I'm more willing to believe MVP votes for hitters (even though I know they're driven by RBIs and HR and winning teams) because I'm not sure that WAR does a consistent job with defensive contributions.

A pitcher's job is simpler - to prevent runs. Whether they're his fault or his defense's fault, at the end of the day, if he allows runs, he lowers his team's chances of winning.

Glavine probably gets a little underrated by ERA+ because he stunk at the beginning of his career. If you just look at 91-2006, he has a record of 257-150 and 3500 innings of 128 ERA+. If you give Brown a similar pass, he's got a record of 205-136 with 3150 IP of 130 ERA+ from 89 to 2004. [Brown gets 65.8 WAR, Glavine gets 61.8, which seems wrong somehow.]

Glavine is kind of like a Spahn-lite... a really, really long period of very goodness with occasional greatness.

Anyway, getting back to the point...

Glavine's first Cy was richly deserved - 91 was a bad year for pitching and he crushed it. 7.4 WAR, Dennis Martinez 2nd with 5.5

In '92 he came in 2nd to Maddux... he had only 3.5 WAR. Tewksbury and Drabek were also better (maybe others too)

In '93 he came in 3rd to Maddux and Swift... Jose Rijo should have won with 8.6 WAR (Maddux had 6.2) Glavine had only 3.8, ranking 6th among pitchers receiving a Cy vote.

In '95 Glavine came in 3rd to maddux and Schourek, he should have been 3rd to Maddux and Nomo

In '98 Glavine won with 5.6 WAR. Kevin Brown finished 3rd with 8.4 WAR, Maddux 4th with 6.1 and Al Leiter 6th with 6.5.

In 2000, Glavine was 2nd with 4.5 WAR. Maddux was 3rd with 6.1, Unit won and led with 7.6 WAR. Brown (again) was 6th in Cy but had 6.5 WAR.

So that's 6 years when Glavine was 1st, 2nd or 3rd in Cy Young voting. In that time he was 4th (2000), 4th (98), 3rd (95), 6th (93), 4th (92) and 1st (91) in WAR.

Regarding being the 3rd best pitcher on his team:

1991: Glavine 7.4, Smoltz 4.7, Avery 4.5
1992: Smoltz 3.7, Glavine 3.5, Avery 2.5
1993: Maddux 6.2 WAR, Avery 3.0, Glavine 3.8, Smoltz 2.8
1994: Maddux 7.8 WAR, Glavine 2.0, Mercker 1.8
1995: Maddux 8.8, Glavine 4.7, Smoltz 4.4
1996: Maddux 6.3, Smoltz 6.1 Glavine 5.4
1997: Maddux 7.3, Glavine 5.0, Smoltz 4.5, Neagle 4.1
1998: Maddux 6.1, Glavine 5.6, Smoltz 3.2
1999: Smoltz 4.4, Maddux 2.9, Glavine 2.8
2000: Maddux 6.1, Glavine 4.5, Millwood 1.5
2001: Maddux 4.5, Burkett 4.2, Glavine 3.3
2002: Maddux 4.1, Glavine 3.7, Millwood 3.5

I don't think this necessarily hurts Glavine's argument. Finishing 2nd to one of the 5 best pitchers of all time doesn't make you a bad pitcher. And consistently being in the top 3 on the best pitching dynasty in history can only help your argument.

I'm coming around to the idea that Glavine belongs in the Hall. I think I was too harsh on him before I really looked at the numbers. He's not one of the 10-15 best pitchers of all time but I think he might even be in the top half of HoF pitchers.

Let's do one more.

Glavine's best years are 91-06. During that time he started 530 games, or 33 a year. He was 257-150 with a 128 ERA+ in 3503.2 IP.

Warren Spahn's best years are 1947-63. During that time he started 592 games (or 35 a year) and pitched in 44 more in relief. He was 342-211 with a 124 ERA+ in 4731 IP.

So the biggest difference is just the number of innings per game. Sure, it's huge. Who knows if Glavine would have been able to work like that? Who knows how Spahn would fare today in a 5-man rotation and smaller parks? But the ERA+ is similar. And they were both durable for their times, and consistently good. And I don't see anyone saying that Spahn isn't a hall of famer.

I'm not sure why there is a discussion over Glavine going to the HOF.  He's in on the first ballot...he won 300 games. 

I like WAR, but like all stats, I don't believe it is perfect.  Like all stats, you can't ONLY use it.   It's impossible to measure the unmeasureable but I feel you have to give some credit to Glavine for winning games.  He did win 20 games a bunch of times.  I am not saying wins are most important, or very important but I do feel they ARE important.

John, you said earlier the pitcher has a simple job, " prevent runs".  I think it is simple yet different, I think his job is to win games.  Glavine was really good at that.

I am not debating that Smoltz was a better pitcher than Glavine but if you look at their W-L over an 8 year period (90-97, which was Smoltz's healthy part of his career and more or less their prime), here are their numbers:

Glavine 130 Wins
Smoltz  115 Wins


How could Glavine win two more games a year than Smoltz?  I don't get it.  He must have been doing something that is not measurable by WAR.  

Knowing how to win is a valuable skill.




 

Posted by cwillis802 on 2/8/2011 9:45:00 AM (view original):
I'm not sure why there is a discussion over Glavine going to the HOF.  He's in on the first ballot...he won 300 games. 

It really started as "is Kevin Brown worthy of the discussion?", morphed into "is Brown better than Glavine?", and "is now how good was Glavine?"

I wish more people cared about Dave Steib....I think he was as good as Morris.  I think neither should be in.

Posted by jfranco77 on 2/8/2011 9:33:00 AM (view original):
Let's do one more.

Glavine's best years are 91-06. During that time he started 530 games, or 33 a year. He was 257-150 with a 128 ERA+ in 3503.2 IP.

Warren Spahn's best years are 1947-63. During that time he started 592 games (or 35 a year) and pitched in 44 more in relief. He was 342-211 with a 124 ERA+ in 4731 IP.

So the biggest difference is just the number of innings per game. Sure, it's huge. Who knows if Glavine would have been able to work like that? Who knows how Spahn would fare today in a 5-man rotation and smaller parks? But the ERA+ is similar. And they were both durable for their times, and consistently good. And I don't see anyone saying that Spahn isn't a hall of famer.

AGREED!  The argument on Glavine is a joke.  I think Spahn is a good comparison for people here in the SIM who think that Glavine nor Spahn perform well.

What more do you want on a resume?  Take your +stats and your WAR and shove them.  Those are for guys that don't have the big numbers and need a debate. They all played in different ERA's.  Glavine played at a high level for a long time and put up the numbers to prove it.

DOES HE HAVE ENOUGH WINS?!?!?!? He has 300 wins, one of 26 players in the history of the game to do so.  His 305 are 4th most for any Left Handed pitcher EVER.  And don't make the longevity argument.  It does not work both ways.  People argue that guys either played to little or too much.  PICK!

BUT DID HE EVER WIN 20 WINS?  Yes! 5 times!  Not once, not twice, 5 times!  5 times in his career he was good enough to win the Gold Standard in modern pitching.  How many times did Pedro do it?

BUT DID HE EVER WIN THE CY YOUNG?!?!?!  YES!  He did it TWICE!!!! He also came in second twice and third twice!

BUT I AM NOT SURE HIS ERA+ AND HIS WAR ARE HIGH ENOUGH?!?!?!?  You my friend are the one that is high.

As for being the best player on his team.... He played with Maddux, arguably the best pitcher in the last 50 years.  This argument is like saying that Lou Gehrig might not deserve to be in the Hall as was not the best player on his team because he played with Babe Ruth and Joe Dimaggio.  And oh by the way Gehrig does not have 500hrs OR 3000 Hits, should we take a closer look at his credentials?