Hey Bill (part 2)

Bill: Guarantee--100%--you've got Pauline Kael mixed up with someone else. She didn't write for the Voice, just the New Yorker from '67 on, and it's inconceivable she'd ever do such a thing. For me, in terms of film critics, you're half-Kael and half-Manny Farber, in all the best ways--stubbornly anti-consensus, impatient with clichés and pseudo-scholarship and received wisdom, a little ornery, and sometimes just plain stubborn. Politically? Here's something Kael wrote about Michael Moore's Roger & Me: "He does something that is humanly very offensive: Roger & Me uses its leftism as a superior attitude. Members of the audience can laugh at ordinary working people and still feel that they're taking a politically correct position." You've both had a tremendous influence on me.

Asked by: Phil Dellio

Answered: 6/15/2014

I'll take your word for it. Thanks.

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Bill: In trying to explain, on a message board, why I thought Adrian Beltre would have an easier time with HOF voters than Scott Rolen, one of the reasons I cited was that Rolen’s career was more fragmented--i.e., more characterized by noticeable year-to-year fluctuations. (Beltre had his mid-career downtime, but he’s been pretty steady since leaving Seattle.) Has that in fact made much difference with HOF voters historically? If you had two players with very similar numbers, and one achieved them via a fairly steady career, while the other player was more mercurial, would that matter?

Asked by: Phil Dellio

Answered: 7/19/2014

Those are better questions for research than for speculation. I tend to agree that Beltre will have an easier Hall of Fame battle than Rolen, but I'm not sure why this is true. The public just never really "got" the fact that Rolen was a Hall of Fame caliber player, even though he was. Some of it is image. Rolen had battles with his managers in at least two cities, which tended to shape his image. Beltre, on the other hand, is an interesting, cheerful, person….oddly combining "highly competitive" with "friendly", which not many people can do…and I think there is more understanding of the fact that he's a tremendous player, although I'm not really sure he is better than Rolen.

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Bill: I’ve developed a fascination for the ‘92 Jays that mirrors yours for the ‘66 Cubs--for me, they had the deepest staff of the post-war era, based on career accomplishments (as opposed to what they did that season). I used the yardstick of All-Star-type seasons accumulated over a career--and just because it was easy, I counted any season of 4.0+ WAR as an All-Star season:

https://phildellio.blogspot.com/2026/03/crossroads-2013.html

I was curious how the ‘66 Cubs would come out using this method, and they indeed do very well--possibly the third-highest figure in the modern era, with a total of 37 All-Star-caliber seasons on their staff, just behind the ‘92 Jays and ‘03 Yankees, but ahead of the ‘95 Braves and ‘66 Dodgers. Using career wins, the Cubs come out on top 2,117 to 1,870--although the Jays had a higher career average per pitcher, 110 to 92. (In the course of doing this, I’ve discovered my new favorite cruel nickname from the ‘60s: Chuck “Twiggy” Hartenstein, 5’11” and 165 lbs.)

Asked by: Phil Dellio

Answered: 8/6/2014

A similar fascination with the pitching staff of the 1972-74 Oakland A's. They had four starting pitchers, two left-handed, two right-handed, all of them good (Catfish Hunter and Blue Moon Odom right-handed, Ken Holtzman and Vida Blue left-handed. Blue Moon had a bad year.) They had two very good fifth starters/long relievers, one right-handed (Glenn Abbott) and one left-handed (Dave Hamilton). They had a Hall of Fame closer (Fingers), backed by a very good lefties (Darold Knowles and Paul Lindblad). One of the lefty relievers should have been right-handed, but otherwise…the perfect 9-man staff in the era in which the 9-man staff was the norm.

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Bill: This one's harder to explain--and therefore may be viewed skeptically by you and/or your readers--but Toronto's acquisition of David Cone in late August of '92 was huge. Cone pitched very well down the stretch--2.55 ERA, 6.6 hits and 8 Ks per 9--but only had a 4-3 record to show for it. What the trade meant to a team that had come so close so many times in the previous few years, though, was huge; I remember it kind of shocked the baseball world, and there was no mistaking that the Jays wanted to win badly that year. Postscript: the "player to be named later" given up by Toronto was Jeff Kent. I'm not sure there was a future for him in Toronto anyway (Alomar), and he still needed to pass through a couple more teams before finding his way.

Asked by: Phil Dellio

Answered: 10/24/2014

Thanks.

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Bill: I can’t quite find it, but I’m positive you had something in the ’83 or ’84 Abstract that suggested in a close MVP vote--specifically, Murray/Ripken--it was reasonable to give the established star who was expected to do what he did, as opposed to the player who was more of a surprise, a little extra credit. It always stuck in my mind, and with Cabrera/Trout in 2012, I thought Cabrera deserved a little extra credit for that same reason. I’d apply the same principle to Felix/Kluber this year--a little extra credit to Felix for the Cy Young. Do you still think this idea has validity?

Asked by: Phil Dellio

Answered: 10/2/2014

I can't figure out what you're referencing. Anybody know what argument he's referring to?

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Bill: a comment, not a question. I'm in the middle of a very good book on the Gary Hart scandal, Matt Bai's All the Truth Is Out, that over and over makes essentially the same point as you: that Hart didn't do anything new, it's that conditions had changed. The biggest change--and I don't know how often this applies to other political scandals--was the media landscape. Hart's scandal happened at the dawn of CNN, tabloid shows like A Current Affair, and fax machines. It was less a sea-change in morality (although that figured in too by way of Watergate's shadow) than a technological shift.

Asked by: Phil Dellio

Answered: 12/27/2014

Thanks.

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Bill -- I have to chime in on the Hank Snow symposium: Haven Hamilton, the character Henry Gibson plays in Robert Altman's Nashville (a movie I suspect you hate, if you've seen it), is supposedly based on Hank Snow, or is at least a mix of Snow and a couple of other country stars.

Asked by: Phil Dellio

Answered: 2/27/2015

I liked the music. I liked Robert Altman for a while, then--from my standpoint--he got carried away with the notion that he was a genius, and kind of went 'round the bend.

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Bill: Your comments on Boyhood and Citizen Kane (I registered my surprise and strong disagreement in the comments section) reminded me of something the music writer Greil Marcus said in an online Q&A a few years ago: "I've never known anything that people otherwise seemingly in sympathy disagree about more predictably than movies. That's what movies are for--for people who think they understand each other to disagree about."

Asked by: Phil Dellio

Answered: 2/3/2015

Well, but my post was provoked by what I thought was grossly excessive AGREEMENT about this issue--and about Citizen Kane. First of all, I think it's a bad movie (Boyhood); Citizen Kane is a good movie, it's just horribly overrated. Let'’s take Marcus' adage to be true; what then does it tell us if EVERYBODY starts registering their agreement on an issue about which there is no perfectly objective truth, and about which people normally disagree? It tells us, I would suggest, that those let's-all-fall-in-line comments are not genuine reactions; they're rather a part of an emperor's-new- clothes syndrome, in which large numbers of people all agree that they see something that isn't there in fact. That was my objection to the universal adulation for Citizen Kane, that when everybody and his goddamned brother starts telling us that Citizen Kane is the greatest movie ever made, it is time for some quiet, humble citizen to raise his hand and say, "Uh, wait; I think I see the emperor's pee-pee hanging out." And the same with Boyhood; there are too many people, too many critics, saying the SAME things about Boyhood; they all love it. It's time for somebody to stand up and say, "you guys are full of shit. That's a stark naked emperor there."

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Bill: While checking a comment made by someone else on a message board last year, I quickly calculated the percentage of walks that were intentional among all the 500-HR guys. Pujols' rate was very high: almost 26% of his career walks were intentional, third on the list after Banks and Bonds. (Banks was somewhat of a surprise, but, as someone suggested, he played for some poor teams early in his career, and didn't walk a lot otherwise, pushing his percentage up.) Anyway, that's clearly a big factor in Pujols' declining walk rate--he's just not as feared anymore, so he doesn't get the IBB. He had a six-year run in the 2000s where he was getting 27-44 IBB a year; the last four seasons he received 15, 16, 8, and 11, and this year he's down to 2 so far.

Asked by: Phil Dellio

Answered: 6/15/2015

Thanks.

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Bill: I read Jeff Guinn's Manson book a couple of years ago and also thought it was fantastic. "He de-mystifies Charles Manson by tying him to a calendar, to a locale, to his birth family, to a personal history, to habits and tactics and to outside events"--that was the key for me, how Guinn framed the story in terms of the world out there, the way Manson kind of floated through the mid- and late-'60s as these incredible events unfolded around him. I though Guinn was even sometimes able to sketch Manson as this weird mirror to people like Nixon or William Calley, and do so in a way that did not seem glib or gimmicky. I hope someone takes the book and tries to make another film, but this time something really thoughtful and non-sensational (Helter Skelter's okay for what it is, but it's still basically a mid-'70s movie-of-the-week). I imagine there are a lot of obstacles to that in terms of surviving family members, the Tates especially.

Asked by: Phil Dellio

Answered: 7/31/2015

Buddy of mine with the Red Sox is reading it now and is annoyed by all the stuff on LSD in the 60s. He's too young to remember it, so it doesn't mean anything to him…Thanks.

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Bill: When you do get a left fielder who by all accounts and all measures is a really great fielder--Bonds and Yaz are the first two who come to mind--is it a fair assumption that it's his arm that's keeping him out of center or right? Or is it just a case-by-case thing, like maybe there's an even better fielder playing alongside him?

Asked by: Phil Dellio

Answered: 7/22/2015

I would say it is case by case. Yaz kind of went to left field because he was designated as the successor to Ted Williams. Greg Luzinski went to left because you had to put him somewhere.

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Bill: Is it possible Edwin Encarnacion isn't in your hot-batters system, or that there's a glitch somewhere? His last 19 games, he's .389/.440/.944 with 10 HR and 10 doubles, yet he doesn't appear in the Top 100. Now, I've included yesterday's huge game, and your rankings are only through Friday's games, but even before yesterday he was working on a 20+-game hitting streak with a ton of extra-base hits.

Asked by: Phil Dellio

Answered: 8/31/2015

I'll ask the wizards about it…Later. We did have a glitch in the data; Encarnacion should have been at or near the top of the Hot Hitters list. Thank you for calling this to our attention.

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Bill: I’m not asking for your own thoughts on this matter--I realize you’re far too close to the situation to comment. But do you see David Ortiz’s HOF candidacy as potentially the most heavily debated since Morris’s? I was thinking that all the arguments that will be advanced, both for and against him, are exactly the same things that people already get into the most heated arguments about: clutch hitting, the continued relevancy of time-honored milestones like 500 HR (or, more generally, “counting stats”--a term I personally hate), leadership/intangibles, PEDs (however murky Ortiz’s connection is--not even clear to me), the DH. I think it’ll be like the Cabrera/Trout MVP discussion of a few years ago (“discussion”--people yelling at each other, really), a perfect storm of lots of things on everybody’s mind.

Asked by: Phil Dellio

Answered: 9/21/2015

Well, ya never know. But my first guess would be that he will be elected fairly quickly and easily.

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I'm one of those people who had my head completely turned around by my first encounter with the Abstract ('83--I was a little late). To me, the very foundation of sabermetrics is Question Everything, especially conventional/received wisdom. My biggest issue with some of the people on a message board I'm on--younger people in their 20s and 30s (I'm 54) who came up through sabermetrics and lean heavily on newer metrics--is that it sometimes seems as if they've replaced the old checklist of conventional wisdom with their own newer checklist. I've nicknamed them the "RBI, LOL" branch of baseball analysis. You can't have a discussion on why there might have been at least a case for Cabrera as the 2012 MVP; Trout's WAR was significantly higher, end of discussion. I've always appreciated that you, Posnanski, Rob Neyer, and others are regularly questioning your own assumptions (Posnanski's recent column on why Ned Yost should have been manager of the year a perfect example).

Asked by: Phil Dellio

Answered: 11/28/2015

Yes, it is true (I think) that some people in our field have merely replaced one checklist of assumptions with another one, and also that the new checklist is little if any better than the old one. This actually is relevant to what I was trying to say before, that if I was writing an intro to sabermetrics I would start by trying to explain that it is supposed to be a search for better understanding, rather than set of methods or conclusions.

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Bill: The Dylan quote about Harry Truman sent in by wwiyw is one of my favourite ever--that whole '66 interview is incredible. When Playboy interviewed Dylan in '78, he had altered his view of Truman considerably: "Actually, as Presidents go, I liked Truman...I just liked the way he acted and things he said and who he said them to. He had a common sense about him, which is rare for a President. Maybe in the old days it wasn't so rare, but nowadays it's rare. He had a common quality. You felt like you could talk to him." Pretty stark disconnect there that people will see differently: softening with age and gaining some perspective, or simply forgetting what he once knew.

Asked by: Phil Dellio

Answered: 11/25/2015

1978 was the crest of the "Harry Truman's face should be carved onto the moon" nonsense.

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Bill: Someone posted this on my message board yesterday: “I really hate everything about this process. It gets everyone moralizing and grandstanding, it leaves righteous candidates hanging for years and it makes perfectly good ballplayers like Alan Trammell seem like failures because they lose every year for 15 years or, like Edmonds/Lofton/Delgado, get knocked out on the first try.” I think you’ve made the same point yourself, the unfortunate move towards the HOF as the be-all and end-all when remembering players from the past. What brought this on? Three guesses: 1) The card boom of the late-‘80s (HOF = $, for both the players and collectors; 2) sabermetrics (old school vs. new school distrust, vociferous advocacy, etc...not a knock on sabermetrics--I’m here, right?); 3) the internet, which has a way of degrading everything. By the way, as someone who collected cards for a time, I definitely plead guilty to #1--HOF potential became my filter for who I'd collect. Any thoughts?

Asked by: Phil Dellio

Answered: 1/12/2016

The process becomes tiresome. It would be a good thing if someone were to start a "rival baseball museum" dedicated to the memories of Minnie Minoso, Stan Hack, Dwight Evans, Mike Garcia and Carl Furillo, but for something like that to work you have to be serious about it. You have to devote a lifetime to making it work, and you have to make good decisions in setting it up. We've only got shovel apiece, so it just hasn't been done yet.

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Bill -- In response to 337's question: the most obvious example happened fairly recently, when Josh Hamilton won an MVP even though his season essentially ended on Sept. 4. (He came back and played three inconsequential games on Oct. 1/2/3--the Rangers were 10.0 up.) I also thought of Jeff Bagwell, whose '94 MVP season ended (broken wrist) the same day as the strike. His stats were awesome when the season shut down, but I imagine Matt Williams or Fred McGriff or maybe even Greg Maddux would have passed him had it been played out.

Asked by: Phil Dellio

Answered: 2/12/2016

Thanks.

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Bill -- Showed this clip to my grade 6 class a couple of days ago, on Jackie Robinson's birthday: Jackie on What's My Line?, with Bert Convoy on the panel (who briefly and self-deprecatingly mentions his baseball career).

Asked by: Phil Dellio

Answered: 2/3/2016

I can't believe we're talking about Bert Convy. I actually came by this information honestly; I was going by a 1950s Sporting News Guide page by page and found his name. I sort of collect the names of people who played minor league baseball but are known for something else, like Dwight Eisenhower, Mario Cuomo, John Elway and that basketball player guy…can't remember his name.

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Bill: Was there ever a point in his career where Milt Pappas (who died today) was thought to be on track for the Hall of Fame? Thinking about how central wins were to evaluating pitchers then, I notice he had won 40 games by the time he was 21, 150 before the age of 30, and then, after a brief lull, he came back to win 17 twice more in his early 30s. He retired at 34 with 209 wins; feels like he had a decent shot at 300, which almost certainly would have put him in the HOF.

Asked by: Phil Dellio

Answered: 4/20/2016

Oh, I hadn't heard about his passing; sorry to hear. Pappas self-advocated avidly the position that he should be in the Hall of Fame, and in particular would compare his own record to Don Drysdale's. Pappas was 209-164 (won-lost), and Drysdale was 209-166. I think there was a third pitcher in there, too…somebody else in his generation who had a similar record. But no; other than Pappas himself, nobody ever suggested that he was a Hall of Famer.  He was always a #2 starter.   

Pappas was a real character; hope that I am not speaking disrepectfully of him at the moment of his passing. Whenever his manager was fired, Pappas would apply publicly for the position of the team's new manager, and would call the local reporters on the phone to lay out his credentials for the position. This was done in the same spirit as his later claims that he should be in the Hall of Fame; nobody was ever entirely sure how serious he was about it, although it was always clear that he wasn't going to be hired as the new manager. For years and years, he would periodically claim that his real name was… I am probably misspelling this… but he would claim that his real name was Miltarego Pappdiego, Greek, and that he had just shortened it to Milt Pappas for his baseball career. Just making it up, but he stuck with it for years. He had other stories like that; he liked to pull the reporters' legs.   

As you may know…I don't know what is in the obituaries… but Pappas was suspected for more than 20 years (as I recall) of murdering his wife.   His wife disappeared, just vanished; police suspected that he had murdered her. That REALLY obstructed any possible Hall of Fame campaign for him; you couldn't get a bandwagon rolling for somebody who was under a cloud of suspicion in that way. Finally, many years after she vanished, they drained a lake a few blocks from his house, or a large pond, or a drought dropped the water level…something.  Anyway, they found her body in the car with the seat belt fastened. She drank a lot, and she had just taken a wrong turn and driven into the lake, apparently (from the position of the vehicle) at a pretty good rate of speed. She may have passed out before she went in the water, since she had never unfastened her seatbelt.

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Bill: Just a comment...I had no interest in the TV O.J. reenactment, but I highly recommend the almost-eight-hour documentary O.J.: Made in America. I think it'll be on ESPN at some point in the next few months--I just saw it at the Toronto Hot Docs festival. It deals with the minutiae of the case for about three-four hours, but it also steps back and looks at the 30-year backdrop that led up to the verdict (Watts, John Carlos, etc.). Gil Garcetti was there for a Q&A after the screening I was at, also Robert Lipsyte.

Asked by: Phil Dellio

Answered: 5/3/2016

While one channel was doing the OJ re-enactment, some other channel was showing a long documentary about the OJ trial…several episodes, but I didn't really focus. Was that the same thing?

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Bill: "Some other channel was showing a long documentary about the OJ trial...Was that the same thing?" I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have been--O.J.: Made in America is playing festivals before it plays ESPN. The thing this film does is take what became a big cultural joke at a certain point--Kato Kaelin, Jay Leno's "Ito Dancers," Top Ten Lists, etc.--and revisits how really grim and stunning and tragic the story was initially. And it unpacks so much history. Early on, you see a photo of O.J. and Nixon; late in the film, O.J. and Trump.

Asked by: Phil Dellio

Answered: 5/5/2016

Sounds like something I would hate, honestly. I KNOW how grim it was; I don't need to be educated about that.

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Bill: 99.9% sounds about right: the 7-HR loss has happened twice before, in 1995 and 2004, both times the Tigers being the losing team.

https://www.baseball-almanac.com/box-scores/boxscore.php?boxid=200408080DET

One of the things that went wrong with the White Sox yesterday, or at least went weird, was that all seven of their HR came with the bases empty.

Asked by: Phil Dellio

Answered: 6/27/2016

Still, 81-3 isn't 99.9%, or even 99%. I'd have to think even three losses in those games were kind of flukish.

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Bill: The short/tall pitcher discussion has been going on in Toronto recently because of Marcus Stroman's recent bumpy stretch. (His first as a Jay, probably, in his interrupted time here.) Gregg Zaun--very much a "Here's the answer, now I'll tell you what the question was" kind of analyst (i.e., he often drives me up the wall)--talks a lot about it being much easier to hit off shorter pitchers because the ball comes in on a much flatter plane than with a tall pitcher. I'm inclined to agree with Zaun here, although I have no idea if he's just making stuff up. (He says he used to go to town on shorter pitchers...if i get ambitious enough, I'd like to dive into Baseball Reference and see if that's true.)

Asked by: Phil Dellio

Answered: 6/18/2016

I'm SURE you could convince him to stop saying it if it isn't…

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Bill: Politics and baseball...I’m 100 pages into Ed Sanders’ biography of Sharon Tate, published last year. Something I’d never come across before: in Robert Kennedy’s last speech inside the Ambassador Hotel, moments before he was assassinated, he mentioned Don Drysdale’s ongoing scoreless streak. "He pitched his sixth straight shutout tonight, and I hope we have as good fortune in our campaign." I’ve seen video of that speech a million times, but you only ever get the very end of it ("...on to Chicago and let’s win there"). Kind of chilling.

Asked by: Phil Dellio

Answered: 7/29/2016

Thanks. 

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Bill: You’ve written many times about certain seasons that fascinate you for one reason or another. For me, it’s 1970, the year I became a fan and bought my first Zander Hollander guide. I bring this up because Jim Hickman died a couple of weeks ago. His was probably the best out of a whole raft of outlier career years in the NL: .315/.419/.582, 32 HR, 115 RBI. Bob Bailey: .287/.507/.597, 28 HR. Dick Dietz: .300/.426/.515, 22 HR, 107 RBI. Bernie Carbo: .310/.454/.551, 21 HR off the bench. Wes Parker: .319, 47 doubles, 111 RBI. Cito Gaston: .318, 29 HR, 93 RBI. On and on and on, guys who mostly had ordinary career numbers otherwise. NL teams scored 4.05 RPG in 1969, 4.52 in 1970, and 3.91 in 1971. What on earth happened that year?

Asked by: Phil Dellio

Answered: 7/11/2016

Juan Marichal got hurt? That's the Dick Young theory; good hitting can always be explained as merely bad pitching, and vice versa. For the last 25 years of his career, if stolen bases increased, Dick Young would explain that it was just that there were no good catchers anymore. If home runs increased, it was the fault of the slider, too many pitchers throwing them useless sliders that get hit out of the park. There was really no good baseball after Roy Campanella got hurt…

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Bill: "Well, we should at least note in passing that Dylan has a pathological hatred of his songs being interpreted as political messages, and has expressed this dozens of times over a 50-year period."  

Most brilliantly in Nat Hentoff's famous Playboy interview from 1966 (responding to the question, "You've said you think message songs are vulgar. Why?"): "...you've got to respect other people's right to also have a message themselves. Myself, what I'm going to do is rent Town Hall and put about 30 Western Union boys on the bill. I mean, then there'll really be some messages. People will be able to come and hear more messages than they've ever heard before in their life."

Asked by: Phil Dellio

Answered: 8/4/2016

Thanks.  

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Bill: Something we're kicking around on another message board: Bryce Harper's season. Is there any kind of a precedent for a player following up an historically great year like he had last year with a season as sub-mediocre as where he's at now? (A player heading into what should be his prime years, that is.) Is this just a fluke? He's walking just as much, and striking out even less than in 2015. Is it even worth discussing with two months still to play?

Asked by: Phil Dellio

Answered: 8/2/2016

It is unusual for a player's batting average to slide 100 points in a season with no real change in his strikeout, walk and power data. The only REAL parallel--you may not want to hear this--but the only REAL parallel is Norm Cash in '61 and '62. Cash after his "fluke" year in 1961 had basically the same strikeout rate, the same home run rate, nearly the same doubles rate, essentially the same walk rate, down a little, but basically the same underlying stats in '62 that he had in '61, except that his batting average dropped 118 points because the balls weren't finding holes all of a sudden. Darin Erstad had a massive dropoff between 2000 and 2001; of course, that's the steroid era, so you never know what's going on there; may just have been a luck gap. Red Rolfe had a massive decline between 1938 and 1939. Mickey Vernon dropped off about 100 points after what could have been an MVP season in 1946, although it wasn't; Vernon confessed years later that he had caught a fish hook in his back and injured his back, didn't tell anyone about it and played through the injury, which slowed him down for years. Adrian Beltre had a massive decline between 2004 and 2005, but he was in a new park and a new league and his strikeout/walk ratio backed up some, so that is less puzzling, and of course there are some older players who have had similar declines, like Earl Averill from 1936-1937.

In terms of following up an MVP season with a disappointing campaign, Roy Campanella did that two or three times, but that's explained by "catcher's injuries"…foul balls off his hands. Zoilo Versalles, of course, completely disintegrated following his MVP season in 1965, and his strikeout/walk ratio actually IMPROVED while his career was degenerating; I don't think we know yet what happened to him. Jeff Burroughs fell off a table after an MVP season at age 23, but his strikeout numbers went way up.

Hey Bill (part 1)

This will be a long, five-part post, possibly broken up by other stuff…In 2023, Bill James shut down Bill James Online, which he launched in 2008 as a home for the kind of writing and studies—when I think of James, the words “you could study that” immediately come to mind—that used to find their way into his annual Abstracts and Baseball Books. The site also had a section called “Hey Bill,” where readers could send in a question and he’d answer as many as he felt like answering. One of the first indicators for me that the site was nearing its end, actually, was when the “Hey Bill”s slowed down drastically; James had always been really good about posting a few almost every day. (The site was, surprisingly, put back online recently—not sure exactly when—but, without the ability to log in, only a small part of it can be accessed.)

I was, of course, an enthusiastic and prolific “Hey Bill”-er. I saved everything, and below are the first few years of all the “Hey Bills” I had answered, starting with a question from August of 2010 about, of all things, Tiger Woods’ car crash. Time stands still…

Writing James was a bit of an adventure, and, I’ll say with some humility, I got pretty good at getting questions into print (I’d say he answered about 80-90% of what I sent in) and making sure not to press his buttons (you’ll see that I did, every now and again). Getting slapped down by James wasn’t pleasant. He could be rude, and he could be maddeningly arbitrary. The latter was especially fascinating to observe, and to use as a guide of what to avoid. (If this is starting to sound a little bit like Seinfeld’s Soup Nazi, that’s because it’s not a bad analogy.) For a while, acronyms were verboten; if you sent in a question that mentioned FIP, he’d print it just so he could say “Sorry, I don’t answer questions with acronyms.” The next day, there might be a question he clearly liked with two or three acronyms. The biggest red flag for a long time was WAR, which he hated and didn’t think contributed anything to understanding a player’s value. (I’ll spare you a long digression, but part of the issue was that the sport settled on WAR rather than James’s own Win Shares as the default analytical tool.) Again, if your question referred to WAR, he’d just brush that part of it aside. Eventually, he kind of gave up and accepted it as a necessary evil. Just to make sure, though, you’ll see that whenever I mentioned WAR, I usually threw in a reference to Win Shares alongside it.

I happily lived with all of it. As I often say, the chance to regularly correspond with one of my key writing heroes would have been almost unthinkable pre-internet. And I’m forever sorry that I didn’t get to do the same with Pauline Kael. (Both Greil Marcus and Robert Christgau have incorporated “Hey Bill”-like features into their Substacks.)

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Bill: You've written a lot on age and peak performance in baseball. Any thoughts on the degree to which Tiger Woods' worsening play is a function of his off-course problems? Is the one wholly causing the other, or is it more a case that the personal stuff is masking (and exacerbating) a decline that was inevitable anyway?

Asked by: Phil Dellio

Answered: August 10, 2010

I don't know nothin' about golf, but my assumption has been that this was 99% caused by his personal problems, leading to massive distractions and an inability to stay on the course. Golfers age slowly, don't they? I think their aging curve has a lower slope, so that a golfer of Tigers' age would not normally be experiencing a decline of anything like this magnitude.

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Bill: A baseball fan since 1970, and a reader of yours since 1983, I've been arguing with some hardcore sabermetricians (i.e., they keep throwing metrics at me I've never heard of) on a message board over the prospect of a Triple Crown Winner. Me: It's something I've been waiting forever to see, and I'm excited. Them: RBIs are overrated, BA is overrated, who cares. Me: I know all that--I'm still excited. Am I wrong? I never felt like the purpose of sabermetrics was to reach a point where you'd shrug off two guys within reach of a Triple Crown.

Asked by: Phil Dellio

Answered: August 30, 2010

No no…you're right. They don't have to care about the Triple Crown if they don't want to, but nobody should step on your enjoyment of it because they think RBI aren't meaningful. I think it's a clear case of "Up yours, buddy."

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Bill -- Sparked by Posnanski's column the other day about worst post-WWII Series winners, my message board has been debating the issue. I suggested that the '80 Phillies are a candidate, in that they were a very mediocre team propped up by two all-time greats and Tug McGraw. Another guy is countering that the mere fact of Schmidt and Carlton being on the team eliminates them from consideration. Any thoughts?

Asked by: Phil Dellio

Answered: November 7, 2010

I think you may both be 90% right. You are certainly correct in saying that that was a fifth-place team that was carried to the top by two fantastic talents and a good reliever. Your counterpoint may also be correct in saying that that's enough to lift them out of the class of truly weak champions.

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Bill: No question, just an idea. You need a catch-phrase for every question that annoys you for one reason or another (presumptuous, long-winded, etc.). Something like "You're fired," or "No soup for you--next!" Having one phrase at-the-ready will save you a lot of time andeffort. (I've just set you up perfectly to give your new line a test run...)

Asked by: Phil Dellio

Answered: December 5, 2010

Questions that annoy me I delete immediately, and you never know they exist.

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Bill -- Sorry to turn to you as a litigator of message-board arguments yet again. 1973 Cy Young vote...Briefly: a) slam-dunk for Blyleven over Palmer, or b) a case could be made for either. As you might guess, the argument arose out of Blyleven's HOF candidacy.

Asked by: Phil Dellio

Answered: January 2, 2011

It's a legitimate contest, and a case can be made for either; in fact, I kind of think I might vote for Palmer. They pitched a comparable number of innings (325 for Blyleven, 296 for Palmer), and Palmer had a better ERA (2.40 to 2.52). The Park Factor for Baltimore (Palmer) was actually HIGHER that year (111) than the park factor for Minnesota/Blyleven (108). Lee Sinins' Runs Saved Against Average shows Blyleven at +53 (53 runs better than an average pitcher), Palmer at +54. The pro-Blyleven argument relies, then, on strikeouts and walks; Blyleven's K/W was 258 to 67, whereas Palmer's was a very unimpressive 158 to 113. Palmer's excellent ERA apparently derived in substantial measure from the superlative Baltimore defense, which had Gold Glove quality fielders at second (Grich), third (Brooks Robinson), short (Belanger) and in center field (Paul Blair). Blyleven's advocates can reasonably argue that the Runs Saved analysis credits to Palmer the good work of the fielders behind him.

Yes, that's true, and certainly…I'm sort of assuming people know this…Palmer had better offensive support. Blyleven was shackled with 2 runs or less in 16 starts. He had a 2.99 ERA in those starts, but was 4-12. Given 3 runs or more to work with he was 16-5, but that only adds up to 20-17. 

Palmer, on the other hand, had "only" nine starts of 2 runs or less. He was 1-6 in those starts, but 21-3 with 3 runs or more, which makes 22-9.

Yes, that's true, but there are a couple of other points on Palmer's behalf. First, Palmer was charged with only 7 un-earned runs; Blyleven, with 18. There's another 11 runs for which Blyleven escapes all responsibility because of the vagaries of the un-earned run rule. 

Second, if you look at the games that Palmer and Blyleven did have a chance to win…Bert Blyleven had 6 starts in which he had 3 runs of support. He gave up 20 runs in those six games (five of them un-earned), had a 3.00 ERA, and was just 1-4 in those six games. Palmer, in his six games with three runs of support, had a 1.80 ERA with no un-earned runs, and was 4-1. There's a three-game swing that can't be attributed to offensive support.

Both Blyleven and Palmer also had five starts with (exactly) six runs of support. Again, Palmer pitched better in those games. Palmer had a 2.00 ERA in those games, and his team won all five games; Blyleven had a 2.59 ERA, and his team lost one of those games (although Palmer was not charged with the defeat.) Palmer limited opponents that year to a .199 batting average (.249 slugging percentage) with runners in scoring position. I'd be reluctant to assert that that was luck, in that Palmer's career batting average allowed with runners in scoring position was .213.

It seems to me that to say absolutely that Palmer was better than Blyleven relies heavily on the argument of strikeouts and walks--to the point of saying that other things don't count. I believe in strikeouts and walks, but not to the extent of saying that other things don't count.  I think it's a legitimate contest.

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Bill -- Any thoughts on the relationship between post-season performance and a closer's HOF candidacy? We've been debating Billy Wagner's case. View #1: Sample size matters, and you can't base anything on 11.2 innings. View #2: The nature of a closer's job is different--they're supposed to come up big when it matters most. (View #3 is called Mariano Rivera--post-season's the difference between getting 98% of the vote and 99%.)

Asked by: Phil Dellio

Answered: January 2, 2011

Or Rollie Fingers. Fingers is in the Hall of Fame mostly because of what he did in post-season, I think. I don't have a theory to explain here.   

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Bill: It's highly unlikely Roy Halladay will retire with as much career value as Clemens or Maddux. (At least I think it's highly unlikely--not impossible that he'd catch Maddux, I suppose.) Where do you think he stands in relation to those two guys in terms of peak value, though? We should have a pretty good idea of Halladay's peak value by now. What's your gut instinct tell you? (If you want to throw in Pedro and Randy Johnson, even better.)

Asked by: Phil Dellio

Answered: April 8, 2011

Not less than them; a little different, but not less. He's probably the top pitcher in his generation, and I'm not sure you can go higher. You strike out 215 batters a year and walk 30…it's not Clemens, it's not Maddux, but it's not LESS than Clemens or Maddux. 

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Bill: I was listening to a short interview of Tom Verducci reacting to Verlander's MVP win. I like Verducci a lot, but something jumped out at me (speculating on Verlander's future): "We know he's a power pitcher, and those guys tend not to last a long time." My first thought was "Ryan, Clemens, Johnson, Seaver, Schilling, etc." Second thought was, "I thought Bill James had something in an old Abstract that debunked this idea." Is this still a common fallacy, or, more broadly speaking, is there truth to what Verducci says--i.e., are there three Kerry Woods for every one of those guys? (In fairness, Verducci seemed to think Verlander would last.)

Asked by: Phil Dellio

Answered: 11/22/2011

There are three Jeff Francises for every Kerry Wood. This idea is not merely a fallacy; it is the direct opposite of one of the game's most important truths: That power pitchers last DRAMATICALLY longer than finesse pitchers. Essentially ALL pitchers who last a long time are power pitchers.  

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Bill -- I'm sure you'll be deluged with suggestions for your "Going Out on Top" piece, so let me be the first: Tom Henke, one of my favourite players ever. He had 36 saves, a 1.82 ERA, and the usual array of excellence across his peripheral stats. I'm guessing it's easier for a stopper to go out on top than a starter or position player.

Asked by: Phil Dellio

Answered: 12/17/2011

Thanks. 

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Bill: This isn’t the most precise question, but I’ll give it a go anyway...Do you believe--or do you know of any studies that indicate--there’s a correlation between teams who play better late in the season (as opposed to April and May) and winning divisions/pennants? This springs from some recent back-and-forth I had over the relative merits of Verlander and Bautista for MVP. Obviously, all wins count equally in the standings--a win in September is a win in June is a win on Opening Day, etc. But in making the case against Bautista, I remarked that it bothered me that he was so much more formidable in April and May than he was the rest of the way, while Verlander was close to unbeatable the last two months. But I don’t know if I’m placing importance on something--the notion that players have added value if they perform well down the stretch--that has no basis in fact.

Asked by: Phil Dellio

Answered: 12/30/2011

Well…in general championship teams play better late in the season. The league "pulls apart" late in the year; the .400 teams play .350 baseball, the .600 teams .650 baseball…actually .640 or something, but the gap widens. It isn't what you were asking, but it IS a correlation between playing better later in the season and winning the pennant.

It has been shown that playing well late in the season has SOME carryover value to the next season. If you take two 90-72 teams, but one was 50-31 the first half, 40-41 the second half, while the other was the opposite, the team which played better late in the season has some advantage in the next season. But I am not aware of any study that shows that teams that play well late in the year have a meaningful advantage in post-season play.

On a related issue…I remember we used to have people in the field who would fume about late-inning homers being counted as more important than early-game homers, etc. We just hadn't worked out a coherent way to think about the problem. Eventually we all came around to the concept of "leveraged" situations, a concept with which people are comfortable, so people stopped bitching about game-time performance being given additional weight. It's not unreasonable to think that late-season performance in a pennant race is ALSO leveraged performance, and should be given weight.

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Bill -- One thing I loved in Popular Crime was your digression on the Rosenbergs, and how things that initially seem frivolous will later be viewed as hugely important (and vice versa). I'm always amused when little political controversies flare up (e.g., the Ann Romney thing from last week), and a certain mindset automatically dismisses them as meaningless distractions from the "real issues." Anyway, I thought of you when I read this piece in Slate that tries to quantify various political controversies. The writer's approach to the question reminded me of the way you often lay out your own thinking on various matters--categorize, organize, systemize--even though I don't think he gives enough weight to something like the Romney flare-up.

Asked by: Phil Dellio

Answered: 4/16/2012

Thanks.

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Bill -- A leap into the dreaded land of intangibles...Most everyone agrees now that the irreplaceability of a closer was vastly overstated for a number of years; teams move guys in and out of that role continually. Watching the Jays struggles this year, though--five blown saves in 21 games--has hurled me back to the couple of years in the early '80s before they got Tom Henke, and the memory of how demoralizing a series of blown saves can be to an otherwise good team (to a fan, anyway). Question: even though the difference between a great position player and an adequate one is undoubtedly quantitatively larger (in terms of WAR, or Win Shares, or whatever) than the equivalent difference between a great/adequate closer, might there be an intangible psychological importance to the great closer that can't be measured?

Asked by: Phil Dellio

Answered: 4/29/2012

Implying that it isn't demoralizing to lose a game in other ways? If your offense is poor and you lose games because you can't score runs, this doesn't demoralize the pitchers? If your starting pitching is bad and you're playing from behind every day, this doesn't demoralize the rest of the team?  

Of course it is POSSIBLE that there are things we can't measure, in the same way it is possible that the world around us is full of creatures or beings of some nature of which we are unaware because none of our five senses will pick them up. The question is, why should one believe in any one of these things? 

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Bill -- Re Hank Gillette's letter yesterday: I became really interested in Triple Crown challenges the year Delgado made a run at one with the Jays. I started fooling around with this formula to quantify how close various people have come: [(BA/BA leader) squared + (HR/HR leader) squared + (RBI/RBI leader) squared]/3. Using that, my Top 10 closest since Yaz are: 1) Dick Allen, '72; 2) Matt Kemp, '11; 3) George Foster, '77; 4) Jim Rice, '78; 5) Albert Pujols, '10; 6) Mike Schmidt, '81; 7) Dante Bichette, '95; 8) Willie McCovey, '69; 9) Larry Walker, '97; 10) Barry Bonds, '93. Also, for what it's worth: if Billy Williams had gotten one extra game in '72 and hit three solo home runs, he would have won a Triple Crown. Anyway, the point holds--since none of them went 1st-1st-2nd, no one player ever prevented anyone from winning a Triple Crown.

Asked by: Phil Dellio

Answered: 5/12/2012

Thanks. 

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Bill: Do you know of any pitcher who has ever averaged two strikeouts per inning over a decent-sized sample (say a minimum of 60 innings)? Aroldis Chapman has struck out 80 in 42.2 IP so far. All the seasonal leaders lists are based on ERA qualifiers, so they don't help; I threw the question out on a message board, and the closest suggestions (Billy Wagner, Eric Gagne) all topped out at 14-15 K/9.

Asked by: Phil Dellio

Answered: 7/24/2012

Taking that record all the way back to 1876, and using 60 innings as the standard all the way…in 1876 Tommy Bond averaged 1.94 strikeouts per 9 innings, leading the National League.  In 1877 Bobby Mitchell increased that to 3.69, and in 1878 Mitchell broke his own "record" with 5.74 strikeouts per nine innings.

You have to remember that in this era they would still, for example, change how many strikes were required for a strikeout…one year it was 5, the next year 4, etc…so records were pretty fluid. In 1883 Grasshopper Jim Whitney (so called because he had a tiny little head that looked like a grasshopper's head) struck out 6.04 batters per 9 innings, and in 1884 One Arm Daily (so called because he had only one arm) struck out 8.68 per 9 innings. In 1885 Toad Ramsey (so called because. . .) struck out 9.46. 

We could start the sequence over at 1900, but…let's not. If we credit the 19th century record as a legitimate major league record, that record stood until Bob Feller struck out 11.03 batters per 9 innings in 1936, the remarkable thing being that Feller was only 17 years old at that time. This record stood until Dick Radatz (The Monster) struck out 11.05 per 9 innings in 1963.  

That record stood until John Hiller struck out 11.08 in 1975. That record stood until Dwight Gooden struck out 11.39 in 1984; Gooden was only 19 years old, and Gooden was the last starting pitcher to own the record, and the only starting pitcher to own the record since Bob Feller. 

Tom Henke broke that record in 1986, at 11.63, and then Henke broke his own record in 1987, at 12.26. Henke's record was broken in 1989 by Rob Dibble, at 12.82; Dibble then broke his own record twice, upping the ante to 13.55 in 1991 and 1992. His record was broken by Billy Wagner. Wagner struck out 14.38 in 1997, then broke his own record twice, with 14.55 in 1998 and 14.95 in 1999.  

Wagner's record was broken by Eric Gagne, who struck out 14.98 in 2003. Gagne's record was broken by Carlos Marmol in 2010; Marmol struck out 15.99.

So…Chapman may well break the record. If he doesn't, somebody will within a couple of years, and then it is fairly likely that that person will break his own record once or twice, and then the record will be handed off to somebody else within a few years. Records are made to be broken--in this case probably within five years. 

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Another big message-board argument--like most of the things we argue about, extremely basic. When weighing an MVP candidacy, do you place any weight on late-season performance (from Sept. 1 onward, say, presumably for a team in contention)? Is it worth a lot, a little, nothing, or does it vary from year to year and player to player?

Asked by: Phil Dellio

Answered: 10/4/2012

I would think you could place SOME weight on late-season play.   Obviously we don't want to encourage a repeat of 1979, when Willie Stargell stole an MVP award with three big late-season hits.   

We used to have passionate arguments about how to give weight to the innings pitched by relievers.  Tango got us out of that rut by developing the Leverage Index, which rationally compares innings pitched by the situation.  So the question is, has anyone developed a "Game Leverage Index", which compares the pennant impact of different games, and thus would create a pathway toward a reasoned resolution of this?

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Bill -- I did an online piece a few years ago where I listed and wrote about all the Neil Young covers I'd collected (self-aggrandizing link below). I speculated in the piece that Young was the third-most covered pop artist ever--behind Dylan at number two and, way, way out front, the Beatles at number one. At the time, I'd collected about 115 hours' worth of Beatles covers. I don't know how many hours I'm up to now, but I'd estimate I've got somewhere between 5,000-6,000 Beatles covers on my external drive, and I basically confine myself to what I get from a couple of sites that specialize in Beatles covers (i.e., if I ever started actively searching, there'd be no end to it). So, while I think Dylan was probably covered as frequently in the '60s, I suspect the Beatles have lapped him many times over by now. 

Asked by: Phil Dellio

Answered: 10/3/2012

Yeah, well…experts are experts, but it still doesn't seem plausible. And Dylan HAS to have been covered more in the last ten years than the Beatles.  

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Bill -- Apologies if this has been asked in this forum before, and I know it probably doesn't lend itself to a quick and easy answer, but do you have any strong convictions about the relationship between viable MVP candidates and team performance? We've been arguing about this on my message board, and as is almost always the case, I lean towards the conventional, probably soon-to-be-antiquated notion that team performance should be factored in, while everyone else is on the side of MVP = best player, plain and simple.

Asked by: Phil Dellio

Answered: 11/16/2012

I think it is MVP = Best Player, for this reason. The definition of the best player is the player who does the most to help his team. What other definition is there? If the definition of the best player is the player who does the most to help his team, then how can the team be a separate and distinct consideration?

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Bill: Carlos Baerga always comes to mind when I think of players falling off a cliff early in their careers. Not sure how he computes in terms of Win Shares, but at least according to WAR, it looks as if 100% of his career value comes by the time he's 26; he did go on to have three more mediocre seasons before turning 30. I can't remember if there were any explanations offered at the time.

Asked by: Phil Dellio

Answered: 2/28/2013

Well…not saying that Carlos was a steroid guy, but…one of the chief effects of steroids was to PROLONG player's careers. Outfielders and first basemen who used steroids effectively continued to IMPROVE after the age at which they would ordinarily be in decline. 

But among middle infielders of that era, the opposite pattern is apparent. There are a number of "slugging middle infielders" of that era whose careers tailed off very suddenly. 

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Bill: Not a question, but following up on the knuckleball talk, an enthusiastic recommendation for the recent documentary Knuckleball. It was my favourite film from last year. If the people who made it missed a living knuckleballer, I'm not sure who that would be--besides Dickey and Wakefield (who are the focus of the film), there are also interviews with Hough, Niekro, Bouton, Candiotti, and even Wilbur Wood. The camaraderie among these guys is amazing--the basic premise of the film is that they're like some esoteric sect of monks who can only communicate with each other. There's a scene where Dickey, Wakefield, Niekro, and Hough all go out golfing together that still makes me smile thinking about it. Everyone, see this film!

Asked by: Phil Dellio

Answered: 3/19/2013

Thanks. No Eddie Fisher?

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Bill: Leaving aside the question of whether or not closers should get Cy Young votes, the fact is that they do, and they even used to win them semi-regularly during Tom Henke's peak years. So I'd like to put forth his name as another pitcher who was drastically shortchanged by Cy Young voters. Total votes: zero, even though he was arguably the second-best closer in the game after Eckersley from '85-95. He did draw MVP and ROY votes during three of those seasons.

Asked by: Phil Dellio

Answered: 5/26/2013

Left the game when he could still pitch. He was a dominant closer, for sure…built like Papelbon.

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Bill: The other day, Bob Costas got a little sarcastic about the Mets going crazy over their extra-inning win over the Cubs (“another sign of the decline of Western Civilization”). On a message board where I post, a couple of people took umbrage at Costas’s derision. While I agree that he maybe shouldn’t have targeted the Mets (a little celebration in the midst of a rotten season seems understandable), I also find the recent ritual of treating every walk-off win like the 7th game of the World Series a little excessive and puzzling. Any idea when this took hold? I don’t remember teams doing this in the ‘70s or even the ‘80s for mid-season games of no special consequence.

Asked by: Phil Dellio

Answered: 6/19/2013

It's the last ten years. But you SHOULD get excited when you win a game in dramatic fashion. If you don't, you're not participating in the emotional experience of the game.

Used to be, I think, that players didn't celebrate on the field out of the fear of "showing up" the opposition. The practice of lining up on the field to congratulate everybody on the win started in the late 1970s, and the jumping around celebrating kind of grew out of that. Since you're on the field anyway, it seems natural to express your passion for the game. There's nothing wrong with it.

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Bill: I think you, with some help from Robin Yount, addressed the Puig question very well in the '83 Abstract. Yount: "I can't really answer that question because I don't know who the game is supposed to be for. I don't know if the game is supposed to be for the fans or if it is supposed to be for the players." You: "The answer you select to that question will tell you who ought to elect the teams." You and Yount are talking about who should pick the team, but I'd extend that to controversial choices as to who should be on the team. If the game is for the players, I'd agree that Puig is a very specious choice. If it's for the fans, well, rightly or wrongly, he's captured their imagination and they want him there. I suppose the obvious counter to that would be, "What if the fans want Jeff Keppinger, does he get in?" And if Puig's numbers were like Jeff Keppinger's, I'd agree. But they're not.

Asked by: Phil Dellio

Answered: 7/10/2013

It doesn't seem to be self-evident that the fans want to see Puig. Maybe it's just a media thing?

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Bill: In light of Chris Davis, Jay Jaffe compiled a chart the other day of all the players who've had 30 HR by the All-Star break; the chart also included how many they hit after the break and their total for the year. The fewest after the break (excepting strike years and injuries) were 10, by Mays in '54 and Reggie in '69. A reader comment offered an explanation for Mays--that Durocher asked him to concentrate on spraying the ball around the second half (no idea whether that's true or not). Any recollection of what happened with Reggie? His walk rate went up--once every 6.5 PA first half, once every 5.5 second half--and the All-Star Game wasn't until July 23 that year, but they wouldn't seem to wholly explain such a drastic 37/10 split. I also notice that he had 24 doubles and two triples before the break--63 extra-base hits! His slugging average dropped 260 points the second half.

Asked by: Phil Dellio

Answered: 7/4/2013

The strikeout was invented in mid-season. 

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Bill -- I was watching game 7 of the ’71 Series (on a VHS re-broadcast someone gave to me; you can find the whole game on YouTube). There was an exchange between Curt Gowdy and Chuck Thompson in the bottom of the 6th that surprised and sort of amazed me. A precise transcription: GOWDY: Cuellar, like Palmer, doesn’t mess around on the mound. He likes to work in a hurry. THOMPSON: Curt, that is something that George Bamberger, the Orioles’ pitching coach, brought with him. He likes his pitchers to work in a good rhythm. He figures their concentration stays a lot better that way. GOWDY:...They talk about speeding up the game. The best way to speed it up is what Cuellar’s doing and Palmer did yesterday. They really make a game move. So people were talking about speeding up the game as far back as ’71? Wow. That particular game took two hours and ten minutes. It was low-scoring and well-pitched, but a 2-1 Game 7 would nevertheless surely take three hours today.

Asked by: Phil Dellio

Answered: 3/31/2014

People were actively debating ways to speed up the game in the early 1950s. Lot of articles in the early 50s about how the games were dragging.

Visions of Johan

I used to write about the Hall of Fame a lot--I think I’m quoting Bill James there, possibly even the opening sentence of his HOF book. “A lot” is a stretch for me; once every decade or so. You can find three roundups of candidates on this blog, one from 2001 (when I think the concept was still relatively novel on the internet; such roundups are ubiquitous now, and not even confined to the weeks leading up to the yearly vote), from 2010, and, most recently, from 2018. (It would be more accurate to say I post about the Hall of Fame a lot, on the I Love Baseball message board--that much is true.) Joe Posnanski recently reevaluated some HOF prognosis he did for Baseball Digest back in the mid-’70s, when I’m guessing the idea was virtually unheard of. Joe knew that one day he’d be writing a Substack on the internet, so he took great care when thinking through his predictions.

I usually start by taking a look at what I wrote last time. Quickly:

• of my seven “100% Locks,” one is in (Adrian Beltre), and the other six will follow soon.
• I designated eight players as “Good Bets;” the one who has since retired, Buster Posey, is almost a sure-thing now, and of the seven who are still active, I’d say six are going in. Giancarlo Stanton is very much up in the air but fading fast.
• there were a bunch more categories I won’t go over individually, but out of players mentioned, two have gone in--Sabathia (“Hard to Say”) and Mauer (“Probably Not”--really goofed there)--three are almost certainly going in (Greinke, Harper, and Soto), Acuna is still a very good bet, and a bunch have seen their windows close. Kind of funny from the vantage point of 2026: nowhere did I mention Aaron Judge (then already close to 100 HR into his career) or Shohei Ohtani (the year of his rookie season).

Which is again where I’ll start this year’s slate, 100% Locks, which can almost be subdivided into three smaller groups:

1) Judge and Ohtani, with one small caveat: I’m not entirely convinced that, somewhere down the road, some enterprising reporter won’t revisit Ohtani’s gambling scandal and turn up something that resurrects that story.

2) Generational Starters: Kershaw (just retired), Verlander, and Scherzer. Verlander gets his first start of 2026 tomorrow. Something I continue to believe, although people on the message board think I’m insane: I haven’t ruled out 300 wins. At 42, he’s got 266…what if everything fell into place this year (he’s on a good enough team that he wouldn’t have to pitch spectacularly) and he picked up 15 wins? 280 wins at 43? And a guy who’s announced his desire to make it to 300 many times? In that situation--again, a longshot--I can't see that he'd walk away.

3) The Rest: Betts, Freeman, Goldschmidt--the last two used to march in lockstep; Freeman has moved ahead, but PG still seems like a sure thing--Trout, Machado, Ramirez, Harper, Lindor, Arenado. You could, I suppose, say that they’re not all past the finish line yet, in which case please contact me and we can make a bet for a large sum of money…well, I might balk a bit on the last two myself; we can bet a smaller sum of money on them.

Peak Is the New Career: I was wrong on Mauer because the growing preference for (or at least acceptance of) peak value vs. career value hadn’t yet, in 2018, taken hold. After Mauer and then Andruw Jones (with Posey on deck), I think it has, and with that in mind, Chris Sale is going in. From 2012 to 2018 he was 99-59, had an ERA and FIP that were both under 3.00, his WHIP was just over 1.000 and K/BB ratio over 5.5, and he finished in the Top 6 in Cy Young voting every year. When he shocked everyone with his comeback Cy in 2024, that pretty much sealed it, I think, even with last year's injury.

Best Bets Still Under 30: I haven’t forgotten about Soto, who has accumulated over 40 WAR before his 28th birthday. Barring anything unexpected, a lock--but under 30, lots could still happen, so I’ll put him in a separate category. Joining him, you’ve got Acuna (28 WAR at 28), Vlad (26 WAR at 27), and, farther behind, Alvarez (24 WAR at 29). Tatis has 27 WAR at 27, right there with Acuna and Vlad, but--first thing I thought of when he got nailed (as in, “How could you be so stupid?”)--PEDs will keep him out, short of the damn-break that never comes.

Starters: Looking past the easy ones (the big three plus Sale), and mindful of how drastically the nature of starting pitching has changed the past few years--and also how we evaluate starters--there’s more guesswork here than anywhere, I think. 1) deGrom: one of the strangest HOF cases ever (I wrote about him here). He’s 37 now, stuck on two Cy Youngs, shy of 50 WAR and 100 wins (not that important anymore, but I’ll say that again: shy of 100 wins), and apparently hurting again. 2) Gerrit Cole: coming off his Cy Young in 2023, looked to be a near-lock. Has pitched 95 innings in the two seasons since (TJ surgery), may be back in June. 35 now, 43 WAR. 3) Skubal and Skenes: inarguably the two best pitchers in baseball are separated by almost six years, so their HOF cases are positioned very differently on a timeline. Skubal has two Cy Youngs, but he’ll turn 30 after this season. When and if he picks up a third, that should secure his induction; but, like deGrom, he just doesn’t have enough time to compile career stats that would bolster his case significantly (unless the whole peak/career thing tilts so drastically towards peak in the next few years that the standard career benchmarks undergo an inverse reevaluation). Skenes, with one Cy and a ROY, has all the time in the world; he’ll turn 24 this May. Who has the stronger case, I’m not sure--I’m leaning Skenes, but Skubal’s two Cys are already secure, and he looks primed for a third this season. (Skenes’ first 2026 start was disastrous, but reportedly he was victimized by some poor defense and bad luck.) 4) Blake Snell--the poor man’s Jacob deGrom (or Johan Santana). Also two Cys, but has even fewer wins, hasn’t received a single CY vote in seasons where he didn’t win (deGrom drew support in five other seasons), has registered exactly one complete game for his career, is on his fourth team in 10 years, and, possibly related, does not seem to be the world’s most likeable person (I may be projecting after his World Series smarminess last year). Needs a third Cy to be viable. 5) The field, which at this point I might reduce to Max Fried, who all of a sudden--did anyone think of him a HOF’er going into 2025?--looks plausible. At 32 he’s 94-41 with a career ERA of 3.00, is edging close to 30 WAR (he’ll have to pick up the pace there), has made a few AS teams and finished second, fourth, and fifth in Cy voting (no wins), and is off to a great start in 2026. I’d have to look, but I bet I could find one or two HOF pitchers who had less of a foundation than that going into their age-33 season. But he needs some foreground; he needs at least one of those flashy seasons where he transforms into the Other Max. Last year was as close as he’s ever gotten, and he wasn’t all that close.

Closers: same old story: you’re looking at the same three guys--Chapman, Kimbrel, and Jensen--who’ve been the only realistic candidates the past decade to satisfy the more stringent post-Mariano HOF bar for closers. And it looks like Jensen is the guy who’s broken through. Chapman was awesome last year, but he’s going to fall woefully short in the character-counts department (and it does these days: cf. Curt Schilling and Omar Vizquel, for starters). Kimbrel hasn’t been the same pitcher since leaving Boston seven years ago; his 440 saves and 2.58 career ERA would have made him a cinch two decades ago, but he bounces around, no one seems to like him (for reasons I’ve never quite understood), and his post-season resume’s not great. Jensen, meanwhile, has more saves than Kimbrel (closing in on 500), has been pretty consistent the past few seasons, has a very good career post-season line, and doesn’t have any of the baggage of the other two.

Everyone Else: There are definitely other future HOF’ers active right now who I haven’t yet mentioned--there always are.

1) Infielders: Jose Altuve, Corey Seager, Trea Turner, Carlos Correa, Alex Bregman, Matt Chapman, Marcus Semien, Xander Bogaerts--my guess is two or three of those guys will go in. If not for bang-a-gong, I might have put Altuve in with the sure-things; he’s got a shot at 3,000 hits, but he’s a little light on WAR. Now that Beltran’s in, though, I can’t see the scandal keeping him out. Altuve, 36, leads that group in WAR with 53; the other seven are bunched between 49.5 (Semien--surprised, aren’t you?) and 41.7 (Turner), and between 35 (Semien again) and 31 (Correa) years old. So nothing is decided yet. As a Blue Jay fan who spent two seasons tearing my hair out watching Matt Chapman at bat, I’m not enthusiastic about the idea of him one day going in.

2) Catchers: Salvador Perez, Will Smith. What happens with Molina may line up well with Perez’s chances: Molina was low on WAR (42) but famous for his defense and an acknowledged team leader; Perez is even lower (36), but is still hitting well at 36, has over 300 HR (his 48 was briefly the single-season record for catchers) and numerous AS games and GG on his resume, and is an acknowledged team leader. Their cases seem roughly comparable. Will Smith is the longest of longshots right now, with a case that will be largely determined by how far the Dodger dynasty extends; if he remains a mainstay and builds up some other credentials, you never know. Mind you, that same dynamic didn't help Jorge Posada get to a second ballot. Alejandro Kirk is already in my personal Blue Jays Hall of Roly-Poly Catchers Who Are Worth the Price of Admission Just to See Them Run Out a Double (I have, twice), but I think he’ll fall short of Cooperstown.

3) Pete Alonso/Kyle Schwarber: I’ll give them a category of their own. Alonso’s 31 and has 265 career HR; Schwarber’s 33 and has 342. Alonso doesn’t have any post-season heroics that I remember; Schwarber has many. If either or both get to 500 HR, you can start to look at their chances then.

4) Outfielders: Christian Yelich, George Springer. Yelich looked like a good bet coming out of his back-to-back monster years just before COVID; he’s been fairly consistent since then, but at a much lower level of ~ 3.0 WAR per season. Springer’s great comeback season last year brought him back onto the radar; winning the WS would have helped, but he’s once again, I think, in longshot range. With guys like him, my thinking goes something like this: before you play yourself into the HOF, you have to not play yourself out of it. And I don’t think he has, not yet.

After all that, you can be sure I’ve missed someone--a player who’ll do things over the next five-seven seasons that will have people asking “Geez, is this guy a HOF’er?”--or maybe I’ve simply forgotten someone who’s obvious already.* In any event, I’ll be checking back here in 2034 to see how I did, at which time I fully expect the whole HOF experience--committees, voting, induction day, everything--to be a subsidiary of BetMGM, with John Hamm installed as the new face of Cooperstown.

*10 days later...Indeed I did: Bobby Witt Jr and Julio Rodriguez. 1) At 25 (turning 26 in a couple of months), Witt is just under 23 WAR; much better than Yordan Alvarez, and, by the end of the season, he should be right there with Acuna and Vlad. He also has a couple of GG and SS awards, three top-seven MVP finishes, and a lot of black ink on his career box: he's led the league in hits twice, doubles and triples once, and he won a batting title in 2024. 2) J-Rod, younger by about 200 days, has one SS and won ROY in 2023. No black ink, so a little less flashy than Witt, but his OPS+ is almost the same, and the two are more or less dead even in WAR. Not sure why I forgot them.