Hall of Stats: First Stab at Adjusting 19th Century Pitchers

First Stab at Adjusting 19th Century Pitchers

Dec 26, 2012 by Adam Darowski

Note: I have opted to implement this adjustment.

When I launched the Hall of Stats, I wrote about one of the ongoing issues I was dealing with—the overpopulation of 19th century pitchers in the Hall of Stats. I’ve been thinking of some ways to deal with this and today I’m giving one a try.

Now, this is just a proposed change. I don’t know if it’s good yet. I figured I’d put it out there for feedback. With the Hall of Stats, I’ve tried to steer clear of arbitrary adjustments. I have to admit, I use a couple. For both catchers and relief pitchers, I give a 20% boost to adjWAR and adjWAA. I like that percentage a lot for catchers. For relievers? Maybe it could be a bit higher.

Since I’m using the 20% adjustment twice already, I decided to see how things would look of I used it again—this time to dock value for pitching adjWAR and adjWAA accumulated before 1893 (when the mound was moved to its current distance).

Here are the results:

Player	Current Hall Rating	Proposed Hall Rating
Kid Nichols	239	228
Tim Keefe	173	139
John Clarkson	162	132
Old Hoss Radbourn	139	113
Pud Galvin	137	108
Amos Rusie	132	125
Tommy Bond	131	106
Jim McCormick	130	106
Charlie Buffinton	126	102
Tony Mullane	124	103
Al Spalding	121	99.8
Bob Caruthers	118	102
Bobby Mathews	115	91
Clark Griffith	113	114
Mickey Welch	112	90
Silver King	103	84
John Ward	103	95

This change would remove the following pitchers from the Hall of Stats:

I’m a bit bummed to see Spalding and Ward go, but they certainly are Hall-worthy for other reasons. Spalding is already in the Hall as a pioneer. The fact that he also had a borderline case in just six useful seasons as a player is remarkable. Ward is in as a player, but he easily qualifies as a pioneer as well. Mathews is kind of the Jim Kaat of the 19th century, so it makes sense that he hovers near the borderline. I won’t miss Welch or King at all.

What’s interesting is the number of pitchers who now come very close to the borderline:

So, are these pitchers really on the borderline? Or did I just not make enough of an adjustment?

As for the rest of the list, Amos Rusie and Clark Griffith aren’t really affected because they started their careers closer to the turn of the century. Kid Nichols, Tim Keefe, John Clarkson, and Old Hoss Radbourn were all well over the borderline and stay that way. Interestly, both Rusie and Griffith leapfrog Radbourn.

In short, I feel that this adjustment actually does a really good job. Many guys now move to the borderline, but that’s where I’ve always felt they belong. I didn’t like the Hall Rating scores that guys like Bond, Buffinton, and McCormick were getting. But I didn’t dislike their cases enough to simply cast them aside. They were elite pitchers and certainly deserve consideration. Did I make a big enough adjustment? Should it go beyond just pre-1893 seasons? Well, I could use some feedback.

If this change did go through, the Hall of Stats would need to induct five new players. They would be:

Nap Rucker (100.4)
Red Ruffing (100.3)
César Cedeño (100.2)
Robin Ventura (100.0)
Jimmy Collins (100.0)

Not an overwhelming list, but probably more deserving than an overpopulation of ancient hurlers.

Your thoughts?

Update: A comment by Bryan alone led me to update some research I did a while back. One of the issues I had with 19th century pitchers was that a high percentage of them are in the Hall of Fame.

In fact,

From 1872 to 1874, over 25% of all innings each season were thrown by a Hall of Famer.
In 1881, a peak of 31.7% of all innings were thrown by a HOFer.
After 18.6% of innings were thrown by a HOFer in 1900, the percentage never went that high again.
In fact, after 1908, it never again reached 15%.

That’s a lot of Hall of Fame pitchers. The thing is, the Hall of Stats currently only adds 19th century pitchers. It doesn’t subtract any. Running this adjustment does help that.

See the table below and note that:

IPouts = innings pitched, expressed in number of outs
HOS = current Hall of Stats pitchers
New HOS = Hall of Stats after this proposed change

Year	IPouts	HOS IPouts	HOS Pct	New HOS IPouts	New HOS Pct
1871	6750	1279	18.9%	0	0.0%
1872	9858	2432	24.7%	0	0.0%
1873	10754	2819	26.2%	0	0.0%
1874	12509	5077	40.6%	1491	11.9%
1875	18571	4831	26.0%	1242	6.7%
1876	14218	4364	30.7%	1230	8.7%
1877	9723	1984	20.4%	1563	16.1%
1878	9972	2951	29.6%	1949	19.5%
1879	17391	7475	43.0%	5147	29.6%
1880	18094	8659	47.9%	5152	28.5%
1881	17965	7863	43.8%	5393	30.0%
1882	30455	9824	32.3%	7268	23.9%
1883	41627	12421	29.8%	9169	22.0%
1884	80835	15103	18.7%	11957	14.8%
1885	47161	11778	25.0%	9035	19.2%
1886	54846	12294	22.4%	10084	18.4%
1887	55110	12256	22.2%	9874	17.9%
1888	57785	11255	19.5%	8225	14.2%
1889	57061	11177	19.6%	8678	15.2%
1890	84342	11925	14.1%	9665	11.5%
1891	58355	12855	22.0%	11222	19.2%
1892	48320	9757	20.2%	8511	17.6%
1893	41593	7030	16.9%	6568	15.8%
1894	41494	5572	13.4%	5572	13.4%
1895	41421	5206	12.6%	5206	12.6%
1896	41286	4185	10.1%	3749	9.1%
1897	42012	4613	11.0%	4151	9.9%
1898	47864	5107	10.7%	5107	10.7%
1899	47665	5461	11.5%	5461	11.5%
1900	29742	4774	16.1%	4774	16.1%
Total	1094779	222327	20.3%	167443	15.3%

We still get a high number of pitchers from the 1880s inducted, but it’s not that much worse than, say, how the Hall of Fame handles hitters from the 1920s and 1930s. Overall, the difference between the percentage of innings by a Hall of Famer before and after the adjustment is a whopping 5%. Pretty major adjustment there.

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