Some "Teams" Based On The Hall Of wWar

As I was putting together the Hall of wWAR, I kept myself amused by putting together a few "teams" from the pool of players I had before me—a team of Hall of Fame snubs, best to miss the Hall of wWAR, etc. I figured Saturday morning was a good time to throw some of these out for discussion.

Beyond The Boxscore

Ted Simmons Vs. Hall Of Fame Median

Today, we'll hear another announcement that Ted Simmons was not inducted into the Hall of Fame. And it's too bad, because he deserves it.

Beyond The Boxscore

A Day For Our Heroes

Morrie Martin attended the baseball conference at the World War II Museum in New Orleans in November 2007. He was there with other WWII veterans and former major leaguers such as Bob Feller, Dom DiMaggio, Johnny Pesky, Lou Brissie and Jerry Coleman. He joined a panel discussion about the importance of the national pastime in the 1940s to a nation embroiled in world war.

STL Today

Historical WAR Review: Catchers

Rally just completed the Herculean task of estimating WAR season totals for every player in major league baseball, 1871 onward. I don't think it can be understated what an accomplishment this is--yes, we've had other measures on these same players before--win shares, WSAB, WARP, etc. But I think these are clearly the best measures of career value we have to date, and I was happy to purchase the database from him. In an effort to explore these data, and to learn some baseball history, I'm embarking on a position-by-position review of career WAR totals.

Beyond The Boxscore

Backstopping & Roaming Wide (Part Two: 1935-70)

In this series we identify and profile those rare major league ballplayers who've performed both as catchers and as shortstops, second basemen or center fielders. Last time, we tracked them from the 1890s to the 1930s. This time we'll go through the middle decades of the 20th century.

The Hardball Times

Backstopping & Roaming Wide (Part One: 1890-1935)

Catchers come in many varieties. Some are tall, and some are short. Some are good hitters with marginal defensive ability, and some are good-field-no-hit. Some are remarkably durable, while others seem to get hurt all the time.

The Hardball Times

The Path To Cooperstown: The Catchers

For my fourth annual THT column on position players and the Hall of Fame, I’m taking an in-depth look at a group not represented on this year’s BBWAA ballot and with only one post-1920 representative on the Veterans’ Committee ballot (Joe Torre, who got just 29.7 percent of the vote, well short of the 75 percent of required): the catchers. This column, Part 1 of 2, will focus on the catchers with primes of eight years or more—the core of any Hall of Fame discussion—and Part 2 will deal with the rest.

The Hardball Times

A League Divided: Part 2 (1926-1952)

As a sequential successor to this article, we look at historical leagues if they were given divisions and had unbalanced schedules, playing about 55 percent of their games against their division. Full methodology is given in the previous article, but for ease of reference, here are the four divisions we're dealing with in 1926-1952, when the Yankees truly gained dominance and teams went moribund until they got to move:

The Hardball Times