Add five years of career average numbers for Williams and he is at 692 career home runs (he hit 14 in part time play in 52-53), and maybe doesn’t retire after 1960 (OPS+ of 190, 29 homers) since Ruth would have been so close.

Nothing against Aaron, who was a great all around ball player, but if Williams and Ruth are not the two best sluggers of all time then you just don’t know baseball. And most people would consider Mays a better all around player than Aaron; one point higher OPS+, 11 Gold Gloves at Center Field (and arguably the most famous defensive play in baseball history) versus 3 GG in Right; almost 100 more steals for his career.

What’s even more remarkable about Williams is this:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/pi/bsplit.cgi?n1=willite01

Despite supposedly getting the advantage of playing in Fenway, his OPS for those seasons baseball-reference has charted so far actually have him OPSing four points higher on the road, largely because of a much higher slugging percentage. So maybe the DiMaggio-Williams trade rumors really would have worked out for both of them.

So, my one number comparative metric came down to the following. If you created a completely average team (league average pitching and hitting) and then displaced however many innings that pitcher pitched with that pitcher’s pitching. How many Pythagorean wins would you gain. I did not count years when the pitcher would have hurt this theoretical team, as part of my you can’t play your way out of the hall thought. And then I summed up their total. I’ve also included the number of seasons with more than 5 expected wins added. I did this for all HOF pitchers and others that might be in discussion. I believe this method unfairly punishes relief pitchers, as their extra leverage is not captured.

Young 117.7 12
W Johnson 114.9 10
Clemens 85.0 8
Nichols 83.9 8
GC Alexander 83.0 7
Matthewson 80.7 10
Grove 76.0 10
Maddux 73.8 7
Keefe 68.5 5
Clarkson 63.7 6
R Johnson 62.5 7
Seaver 62.5 3
Pedro 57.2 6
Mordecai Brown 55.5 5
Walsh 55.5 6
Radbourn 55.2 3
Gibson 53.9 3
Spahn 52.4 2
Perry 52.4 3
Blyleven 51.8 1
Rusie 51.6 5
Hubbell 50.5 4
Palmer 49.0 4
Carlton 47.8 4
Plank 47.1 1
P Neikro 46.9 3
Ford 44.0 2
Kevin Brown 43.9 3
Glavine 43.8 1
Waddell 43.5 3
Newhouser 43.4 3
Schilling 42.9 1
Feller 42.8 3
Wilhelm 41.6 1
Covelski 41.4 3
Roberts 41.3 3
Smoltz 41.1 0
Marichal 40.9 3
Welsh 40.8 4
Joss 40.3 3
Lyons 40.0 1
Faber 39.9 2
Rixey 39.2 0
Galvin 38.3 2
Jenkins 36.8 1
Mussina 36.4 1
McGinnity 36.1 3
Koufax 36.0 4
Vance 36.0 3
Bunning 36.0 2
Ryan 35.9 0
Willis 35.5 4
Drysdale 34.6 1
John 33.9 0
Cone 33.0 0
L Gomez 31.8 2
Eckersley 31.6 0
Sutton 31.6 1
Wynn 30.6 1
Saberhagen 30.6 1
Ruffing 29.6 0
Grimes 29.4 1
Kaat 28.0 0
Lemon 27.9 1
Hoyt 27.1 0
M Rivera 26.8 0
Dean 26.8 1
C Bender 26.7 0
Herschiser 26.6 1
Guidry 25.0 1
Halladay 24.3 1
Chesbro 23.8 1
Santana 23.4 2
Pennock 23.2 1
Pettitte 22.4 1
Marquard 20.8 0
J Morris 20.6 0
Haines 20.4 1
B Welch 20.2 0
Hunter 20.2 1
Wells 19.7 0
Fingers 18.9 0
F Valenzuela 16.4 0
M Hampton 15.0 0
D Stewart 13.7 0
J Neikro 11.2 0

First off, how did Catfish Hunter get in the hall??? Secondly, I think Schilling is a slam dunk. Their are only three pitchers with more impressive regular season totals than him who I could find who aren’t guaranteed a spot in the HOF, and both Glavine, Blyleven and Kevin Brown will or have generated a fair bit of argument. This plus his remarkable postseason makes it pretty convincing to me.

As to the Williams vs. Aaron debate, with baserunning and fielding thrown in, there’s an argument, based on pure hitting, it’s not particularly close. Williams had a career OPS+ of 191, Aaron, with an amazing 155 is still not really close at all. To put it another way, Aaron had one season with an OPS+ better than Williams’s career, and Williams had one season worse than Aaron’s career numbers. Williams had more than a .100 edge in OBP over his career, and an 80 point lead in slugging. (I realize it’s unfair to compare eras without normalizing, but that’s what the OPS+ was for)

I *think* Gibson is only a marginal HOF candidate. He was never in the argument for best pitcher in the National League until Koufax retired, then he had his unconscious year of 1968, and then he was never out of the argument for being the best pitcher in the NL even though he was never again higher than third in ERA+, even winning a Cy Young in 1970. I think Seaver deserved the Cy Young in 1970, leading the league in ERA (and ERA+) and strikeouts, but Gibson had 23 wins despite not pitching as effectively, Seaver only 18. But if Gibson is on the fence, his World Series success (7-2 with a 1.89 ERA, 1.02 runs better in ERA than in the regular season, and he started three games each of three WS) clearly pushes him into the HOF. Yet Gibson won a Cy Young finishing fourth in ERA+, and Blyleven never got closer than 3rd in the Cy Young race (twice finishing 3rd) even though he was first or second in ERA+ four time, first or second in Ks four times, first or second in shutouts six times, and so forth. I still don’t understand why Blyleven gets ignored.

We *have* to trust our best statistical tools if we’re going to compare players between times, and that leads us to OPS+. Jackie Robinson is tied for 127th all time in OPS+ and only played 748 games at second base; he can hardly have had the impact of a full career of *any* of the major defensive middle infielders. So move him up 30 places in OPS+ for insanely good defense (even if I can find no justification for it) and speed (which is easier to justify). That puts him at 97th best all time offensively. Are there going to be *any* pitchers in your list of best baseball players of all time? I think most folks would agree that pitchers deserve roughly 40% of the roster spots. So put in 38 pitchers and Robinson’s around the 135th best ball player of all time. And as I argued elsewhere, I’m willing to say that breaking the color barrier is worth a *lot* of jumps. A hundred, perhaps. That still leaves Jackie Robinson deserving of being around 35th in our poll of best players of all time.

So why is Robinson so high in Joe’s poll? I argue guilt. I argue that Robinson gets all the votes that should have gone to every Negro league player that we think deserved a shot at Cooperstown because of their MLB stats, but were denied a place on an MLB roster. And Ty Cobb, who has the best batting average of all time by a wide margin, doesn’t get votes because he was a bastard (although, as I pointed out, not a racist, just an all purpose ornery unpleasant guy). And Rogers Hornsby, the second best batting average of all time, twice as many games at second base as Jackie Robinson, OPS+ of 175 (42 points better), career BA of .358 (47 points higher), career OBP of .434 (25 points higher), career slugging percentage over 100 points higher than Robinson, who *has* to be anybody’s pick for the best offensive second baseman of all time, wasn’t even an option in this poll. Hornsby set the all time season record for batting average of .424 and was the best right handed hitter of all time barring ARod finding Bonds’ fountain of youth. And oh yeah, Jackie’s career high in homers was 19. Hornsby twice led the league in homers and 19 would have been Hornsby’s 8th best season.

So if Robinson clearly isn’t the best second baseman of all time, why does he outrank Cobb and Wagner and a whole lot of other players and especially pitchers in this poll? And if some treasure trove of old newspaper box scores gets uncovered and we find that some guy on the Brooklyn Superbas was actually the best second baseman of all time, don’t we owe it to the game to recognize that guy?

And that’s my argument. If we want ARod and Babe and Maddux and even Bonds to still have validity 100, 200, 300 years from now, we have to make sure that we can compare numbers across eras. Baseball *needs* OPS+ and ERA+ and maybe someday the better evaluative methods that will replace them. Because without those guides, there will be no way to compare the players of 2142, following the Genetic Vision Manipulation process which gives every human being 20:10 vision and drives batting averages to an unprecedented level, to hitters of today, or pitchers of 2142 to pitchers of today. We are already seeing some statistical skewing in career numbers based on 162 game seasons. Heck, some of the HOF arguments between Blyleven, Morris, Smoltz, Schilling, and John are skewed because one (or two) extra rounds of playoffs means pitchers have far more chances to prove how clutch they are. So I say, trust the numbers. And the numbers say Jackie Robinson, Hall of Famer, Hall of Fame human being, is maybe the 135th best baseball player of all time (and probably not even that, given all the Negro League players who don’t get onto my list). I say start the HOF with the best players, and then move to the guys who were merely great but did some great stuff. Reggie Jackson will never be on my list of the very best ball players, but yes, he deserves his place in the HOF. So does Koufax. So does Jackie Robinson. Just not the first ballot.

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Schilling: 216-146 (.597 Win%), 3261 IP, 3116 K’s, 127 ERA+, 1.14 WHIP

Pitcher X: 251-174 (.591 Win%), 3884 IP, 3117 K’s, 127 ERA+, 1.19 WHIP

As for postseason numbers, Pitcher X has an edge in ERA (1.89 v. 2.23), but compiled it over 50 less innings in a very pitcher friendly era. Once you adjust for the era, their ERAs are about equal, which would give the edge to Schilling for the 50 extra IP and having one more WS title.

While I would say Pitcher X has a slight edge overall from his additional 600 IP with equal ERA+, Schilling’s postseason advantage and superior K rate certainly make it a close comparison.

Considering that Bob Gibson (the mysterious Pitcher X) was a sure thing, first ballot type HoFer, Schilling certainly has a legitimate argument for the Hall of Fame.

As for his fielding, Bill James did an analysis of this in the last Historical Abstract which found Robby among the top three defensive 2Bs ever, and he outhit the other two by a country mile. (He also found Robinson’s fielding numbers at 3B, which he played after Junior Gilliam came up in 1953, to be off the charts.)

And just so you can see what Joe means when he talks about Robinson’s OBP, consider this: of players who played their entire careers after WWII, ONLY Robinson hit over .300 with an OBP over .400 until Wade Boggs (and then Edgar Martinez) did it. That’s a fifty-year period. Aaron, Mantle, Mays, Frank Robinson — all those no-doubt first ballot names lacked that combination of skill and plate discipline. And his power numbers show he wasn’t a singles hitter, either.

So here we have a ballplayer who a) played a key defensive position about as well as it has ever been played, and b) was one of the two best players in the league at his peak, and c) posted offensive numbers which need not apologize to ANYBODY’S over the last fifty years. All of this puts him in the HOF without any question, even without his heroism.