Oh. THAT'S why the Hall of Fame is in New York

by Johnny Safron on Jan 12, 2009 11:46 PM EST Comment 18 comments

Someone will naturally complain about the members of the BBWAA who did not vote for Rickey Henderson on first ballot. I see no problem with that, and it's quite likely those who did not just feel there is no reason to vote in anyone on the first ballot.

There are many excellent players who failed to get in on first ballot. Harmon Killebrew waited four turns, while Reggie Jackson waltzed in on the first ballot. Jackson was not a better player than Killebrew, and if you want to make an attempt to argue otherwise you still can't justify such a discrepency.

It all comes down to East Coast bias.

Henderson is certainly a Hall of Famer, but it's pretty easy to argue that based on statistics alone there are a number of inductees in the past 50 years who gained access to the Hall based on where they played.

By my count, since 1959, the BBWAA have inducted 72 players. (People like to bitch about the BBWAA in connection with the Hall of Fame, but that august body is responsible for just 108 of the 289 elected HOF members.)

Of those 72 who were voted in since 1959, 23 have strong Boston or New York connections.(I use 1959 because by then the "generals," the Ruths and Cobbs and Mathewsons who were piling up when voting started in 1936 - and players like Sisler, Gehrig and Collins who were part of the subsequent logjam - were all accounted for.)

It's interesting to me that such a large percentage of inductees in the past 50 years have strong Boston-New York ties. If you decide that Dennis Eckersley, Don Drysdale and Sandy Koufax had East Coast ties, that raises the number to 26 of 72. That's an awfully high number considering New York-Boston teams don't constitute anywhere near close to one-third of the teams in baseball.

It's a certainty that some voters who cast ballots for Koufax, Drysdale and Eckersley were influenced by those players' days in Brooklyn and Boston, and of the three Drysdale is a very borderline choice.

There are eight others in this Boston-New York group who could be argued over: Jim Rice, Goose Gossage, Gary Carter, Carlton Fisk, Catfish Hunter, Roy Campanella, Red Ruffing, Jackie Robinson.

Robinson would never have made it on stats alone, but there is special consideration here despite the fact he barely meets the minimum 10 years of playing time. Campanella's career was equally brief, but unlike Robinson, Campy would have had a bumpy road to induction if he had played in, say, St. Louis.

But rather than get into it over the list of eight or so players who may have been inducted because of the knickers they wore, I'd be willing to concede their worthiness if this list of inductees was larger, say, 90 players, with the other 18 having no Boston-New York ties.

If the BBWAA wants to induct players who drank many post-game beers in Boston and New York, OK. Fine by me. But if that's going to be the case, it's time for the writers to loosen their attitude and adopt the mindset that it's OK to have three or four inductees annually - with one or two of them having played their careers in uniforms that didn't read "Boston" or "New York."

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I disagree that there is discernable "east coast bias"

in the BBWAA HoF selections. First, you note that 23 of 72 BBWAA selections had strong NY/BOS ties. That’s 32%. Given that there are at least parts of 6 franchises here (NYY, NYM, BKN, NYG, BOS, BSN), that doesn’t seem so outrageous. It isn’t entirely clear to me who you are counting and who you aren’t, but given that these clubs have generally been very successful, it isn’t suprising that they have a bunch of hall of famers—teams win because they have good players.

Then you cite 3 other players that maybe could count; let’s deal with that right away. Koufax barely pitched in Brooklyn and was elected entirely because of his peak in LA; Drysdale (a dubious selection) also pitched very little in Brooklyn and was elected due to his association with Koufax and as a central part of the LA Dodgers great 1960s teams. Eckersley—really? Because a few years early in his career doing something for which he isn’t best known took place in Boston? That doesn’t count. He was elected because of his reputation as a closer, along with his reasonably good career as a starter, but it’s hard to suggest that Boston had anything to do with it.

Then, you cite 8 “arguable” players with NY/BOS ties. Though I think that only 3 of these selections are really questionable—Hunter, Rice, and Ruffing—the real issue I have is this: I can make a list of at least equally “arguable” selections that had no ties to NY/BOS that still got in off the top of my head:

Bruce Sutter
Rollie Fingers
Tony Perez
Kirby Puckett
Orlando Cepeda
Ralph Kiner
Early Wynn
Don Sutton
Lou Brock

This isn’t exhaustive, merely demonstrative. These are marginal BBWAA selections since 1959 who had nothing to do with NY/BOS (with the possible exception of Kiner, whose candidacy may have been helped by his career broadcasting Mets games).

Ultimately, it seems to me that your complaint fails because the Dodgers were great in the 50s (leading to several post-1950 selections), and most importantly, the Yankees are always good so they have a lot of Hall of Famers associated with them. This doesn’t reveal an east coast bias in the voting, it reveals a bias in where great players play.

by Eric in Madison on Jan 13, 2009 10:18 AM EST reply actions 0 recs

1) The NYY, NYM, BKN, NYG, BOS, BSN constitute six teams. Your mistake in calculating these teams as a percentage of all baseball teams comes in that ALL of these teams were never in baseball at the same time. Thus, at no time did New York-Boston teams come close to being 25 percent of MLB, let alone 30-some percent.

2) “…given that these clubs have generally been very successful.” Really? The Boston Braves were rarely any good. That’s why they moved out of Boston. The Mets had a nice run under Davey Johnson, but they weren’t World Champions often. The Red Sox are way short on championships preceding the last decade, and really have been a sustained force for only the past decade. Your point that these clubs have “generally been successful” is, of course, open to interpretation of the word “successful.” Of the 16 World Series team since the millennium dawned, 4 NY-Boston entires have made it to the World Series. From ’91-2000, Boston and New York teams made five World Series appearances.

3) The ultimate point I made was made to specifically avoid a pissing match over who should be in or who should be out, but naturally baseball fans always roll back into the ditch on this, because they always think they’re right. I pointedly conceded the BBWAA all of their picks, and simply asked for a little ventilation in their thinking in return.

by Johnny Safron on Jan 13, 2009 4:26 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

In reply

1. I didn’t “make a mistake” or at least not the one you are imputing to me—I didn’t suggest that the teams in these markets made up any percentage of the league—I just pointed out that there are several teams involved here. The only percentage I cited was your percentage—of BBWAA selections that had “strong ties” to the NY/BOS teams.

2. Well…OK, but the Yankees have been the dominant force in baseball since the 20s, the Red Sox have won more than they’ve lost since the 1940s, except for an ugly stretch in the early 60s because they wouldn’t integrate, Brooklyn was terrific in the 50s, leading to several post-1959 inductees.

3. I wasn’t trying to have a “pissing match” about who should be in and who shouldn’t. either, though it’s somewhat unclear to me what else you’re doing. You presented a list of “dubious” NY/BOS players; I was merely trying to point out that there are plently of “dubious” selections from outside the axis.

by Eric in Madison on Jan 13, 2009 4:49 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

The bias is there

You could say it’s a matter of where the most members of the BBWAA do most of their work. If the midwest was equally represented in that body, I doubt the bias would be as strong. But the BBWAA is more like the House than the Senate: You get more representation in states where there are more constituents. Yet the teams are spread out fairly evenly.

I propose that the BBWAA be more like the Senate than the House: Every team should have two representatives from their area (perhaps revolving to ensure that all major writers in an area get to vote once every few years). It would significantly reduce the number of votes, but you still would need 75% or something to get in. That would effectively remove coastal bias from the HOF vote.

"You're thinking too much. Just have fun." -- Bennie "The Jet" Rodriguez in Sandlot

by cmathewson on Jan 13, 2009 10:53 AM EST reply actions 0 recs

I don't agree

the bias ISN"T there, regardless of the makeup of the BBWAA geographically.

The real travesties have been the various VC’s that have elected a ton of cronies of whoever was on the vets committee. The BBWAA has done a pretty good job, I think,. with some mistakes and omissions. I fail to see, however, the effects of any geographical bias.

by Eric in Madison on Jan 13, 2009 11:09 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Clearly, there is a bias

If Jim Rice had played his career with Minnesota, Texas, Pittsburgh and Anaheim, he would not be in the Hall. If Blyleven had played his entire career in Boston or New York, he would have been inducted years ago. If Killebrew had been a Yankee and Reggie Jackson a Twin, Killebrew would have been a first-, rather than fourth-ballot inductee.

As for this:

Bruce Sutter
Rollie Fingers
Tony Perez
Kirby Puckett
Orlando Cepeda
Ralph Kiner
Early Wynn
Don Sutton
Lou Brock

Perez and Cepeda both made stops in Boston, and Perez’s case that certainly didn’t hurt; but Kiner has a strong New York connection that made the difference. It was his post on-field career that kept him in front of people and swung the deal, so 22 years after he retired he was inducted.

And, of course, I can go tit-for-tat and tell you why each of the above players don’t qualify as being “borderline,” but as I have stated, those arguments are pointless.

It’s very clear that there is an imbalance in Boston-New York inductees. It’s too bad, particularly when you have legitimate candidates like Tim Raines and Bert Blyleven out there. This, as again was the point of my original statement, would be rectified if the writers would ventilate their view and decide to induct more than one or two players. If they need to have their media center inductees, fine. Just open it so deserving players are not waiting for more than a decade.

by Johnny Safron on Jan 13, 2009 4:41 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

I disagree with virtually everying you have written here.

I’m not at all convinced either Rice or Blyleven would be in different positions had they played elsewhere—pure assertion on your part. As for Killebrew/Jackson—well maybe, but there are reasons to prefer Jackson, and reasons he got in sooner. He was a truly dominant force over 5 different World Series, primarily.

You can’t possibly be serious that Perez’s stint in Boston had anything to do with his selection. Yikes. He was voted in eventually due to the lobbying of Joe Morgan and the reverence for the Big Red Machine teams.

As I noted in my initial post, I wasn’t trying to do anything with my list other than point out that there are plenty of arguable selections from all over the major leagues.

It isn’t “clear that there is an imbalance” at least not to me. There are a lot of players that played in NY or Boston in the Hall, but this tells us nothing about the voting, necessarily. It tells us rather that great players often wind up in NY/BOS. This shouldn’t be a surprise—people have been complaining about competitive imbalance in baseball for longer than I’ve been alive, and I’m not particularly young.

And didn’t Tim Raines play for the Yankees?

by Eric in Madison on Jan 13, 2009 4:59 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

Gosh

>>There are a lot of players that played in NY or Boston in the Hall, but this tells us nothing about the voting, necessarily

Of course, it tells us a great deal about it, particularly being only the New York Yankees have been a storied franchise among the franchises to have played in New York and Boston.

1. You couldn’t possibly know whether or not Perez playing in Boston earned him no votes, one or 10.

2. Considering you based your argument in large part on naming all the Boston – NY franchises and treating them as if they all existed simultaneously – a point you have failed to re-visit – you’ve got a very weak counter-argument.

by Johnny Safron on Jan 13, 2009 5:22 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

I'm somewhat flommoxed here

first, I never suggested that the 6 teams involved existed simultaneously, I just pointed out that there have been 6 teams from which the BBWAA might have selected players for your list.

I don’t think the raw number or percentage of HoFers from NY/BOS tells us much about the voting; a lot of great players have NY/BOS ties due to economics. Consider, for example, Reggie Jackson. Reggie would have gotten into the Hall regardless of where he played, with 563 homers, etc. The fact that he played in NY was a function of free agency and Steinbrenner’s early willingness to spend.

Ultimately, the situation seems to be this: you’re arguing that there is a bias in HOF voting that favors NY/BOS players. To support this argument, you point out that 23 of 72 players selected by the BBWAA since 1959 have “strong” NY/BOS ties. You further suggest several players specifically that might have been helped by geography in getting elected.

My position is that none of that proves anything. That 23/72 having ties to NY/BOS doesn’t show bias in the voting, rather that there are many good and great players who played in those markets, for reasons that have been endemic to baseball for decades. Economic forces were involved even before the advent of free agency.

Further, my position goes, there might be borderline entrants that played in NY/BOS, but there are also borderline entrants that played elsewhere. Thus showing that there are borderline entrants from NY/BOS doesn’t show that there was bias in the voting due to geography.

It seems to me that to be convincing, you have to show a preponderance of “dubious” or “borderline” entrants were helped by playing in NY/BOS. or that the weakest of the BBWAA selections were from NY/BOS. Ultimately, though I know you said you didn’t want to do this, it does come down to names, Especially when there is a limited universe (73) players, it does come down to this guy vs. that guy.

by Eric in Madison on Jan 13, 2009 6:14 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Um, it's FLUMmoxed

I know: those mean old Word Police are after you again.

I just can’t get past a guy who is so obsessed with numbers tripping himself up on this one:

>>First, you note that 23 of 72 BBWAA selections had strong NY/BOS ties. That’s 32%. Given that there are at least parts of 6 franchises here (NYY, NYM, BKN, NYG, BOS, BSN), that doesn’t seem so outrageous.<<

NY and Boston franchises never represented more than about 12 percent of all MLB franchises in the past half century, and today it’s 10 percent. I would guess in the past half century about 12-15 MVPs have been from those franchises, which would be 12-15 percent of all MVPs in the past 50 years (one from each league, totaling 100.) Yet you think that it’s in line with the 32 percent of HOF inductees who played a fair share of their careers in Boston and New York, cities that represented about 10 percent of all franchises?

That’s a fascinating conclusion for a numbers-obsessed baseball fan.

Answer this one: If Harmon Killebrew had played his entire career in New York, would he have been elected in his:
1. First year of eligibility
2. Second year
3. Third year
4. Fourth year

Remember: Killebrew was a better player than first-ballot inductee Reggie Jackson.

After you answer No. 1, admit there’s an East Coast bias and then we’re done here.

by Johnny Safron on Jan 13, 2009 11:16 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

One example does not, a pattern, make

I think that we can all understand why one might think that there is an east coast bias. This is because we all feel that the sports media is so much more focused on east coast teams/players, due to the higher population density. Motive alone does not prove a crime.

Secondly, you have pointed out that 32% of players have east coast connections, while <12% of players at any one time have had east coast connections. This is not a fair comparison. You need to compare the percentage of total players who had an east coast connection. The stat may be the same, (and Phoenix may have already done it, I don’t understand his definition), but in the age of free agency, we will find that a larger proportion of players have connections to east coast teams.

Next we need to adjust for meritious differences. Someone needs to find a way to estimate the actual difference in qualifications. I think it is a safe bet that NYY have had the most players that merit induction in the history of baseball. I can’t prove it, but to prove that there is a bias, you would have to demonstrate this impact.

Lastly, you need to show that it is a statistically signficant difference. If you spin a roulette wheel (38 possibilities) 72 times, you will absolutely find clustering. This is why Casinos show the list of recent results on the boards above the wheel. You are making the same mistake that most gamblers make, which is thinking that some clustering within an insignificant sample size is actually meaningful.

by snolls on Jan 14, 2009 8:22 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

If that's your criterion

We won’t have enough evidence to support this claim in our lifetime.

But if we triangulate, we might. A common research method in my field (Web content effectiveness) is to recognize patterns in data sets that are too scant to support the conclusion by themselves. We then use that data to form a hypothesis and look for other ways to show that the data is more likely than not. Since statistical evidence alone won’t do it, you have to look for evidence elsewhere.

To reason by analogy, consider DNA evidence. In a population of 1 million people, DNA evidence proves that there is a 50% chance a suspect who matches the profile is the culprit. But if you add circumstantial evidence (the suspect had means, motive, and opportunity), the odds go to around 99. There might be 50 chance any suspect chosen at random is guilty, but the odds go up dramatically if you only take suspects who were seen at the scene of the crime on the day it was committed.

The evidence I cited earlier is just such a thing to tip the scales, where stats alone don’t prove a thing. We have long claimed bias from the corridor (New York to Boston) There are two ways to measure this: by content or by writer.

I don’t have the numbers in front of me, but intuitively, it feels like about half the headlines on ESPN.com, for example, are related to New York or Boston. It would be interesting to study just how many stories, column inches, title tags, or whatever make their way to one outlet (ESPN, Fox, AP) on corridor teams. I suspect it will be different for each outlet, but there is a common theme: The corridor teams receive an inordinate amount of coverage. The best way to measure is to look at Google. It won’t take long to find out that there are tons more pieces of content in the last year on Boston or New York than any other teams.

I have mentioned that the largest class of writers in the BBWAA hail from that area. Most of the ESPN writers, for example, got their start in New York or Boston. This alone is not proof, but strong circumstantial evidence that the conditions or motives for bias exist.

Read Peter Gammons: Half of his stuff is about the Red Sox/Yankees rivalry, and more than half of that is from the Boston perspective. He’s the consummate professional, but he can’t change his Bostonian frame of mind. And his stuff is quoted and reused all over the place. Take Peter Gammons out of the equation and I doubt Jim Rice makes it: He only has one vote, but he’s so influential, it’s as though he has more than one vote.

Bill James is another case in point. Among stat heads, he’s the king. Whom did he grow up rooting for? Who does he work for? He doesn’t have a vote, but writers read as much as they write, and more and more of them read Bill James every year.

(Aside: I’m surprised Dwight Evans never made it, based on the bias. He was a better player than RIce for a longer period of time. And that’s another problem with looking at stats alone. Suppose there is a bias, the variability of human behavior based on the bias will result in all kinds of complexity that requires a lot more than stats to make sense out of. The HOF voting is about as complex a thing as I have studied in the media. As you said, one case does not a pattern make.)

In the absence of enough statistics, we can at least say that bias is more likely than not based on other types of evidence.

"You're thinking too much. Just have fun." -- Bennie "The Jet" Rodriguez in Sandlot

by cmathewson on Jan 14, 2009 9:59 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

I hear you

I hear what you’re saying, but what I’m saying so far, is that no-one has shown that NY/BOS players are getting disparate treatment.

I also work in statistics. All we’ve been discussing so far is possible cause. Further, Safron pointed out a couple of examples that he considered marginal. Unless we are going to line up players by their associations, and start counting who we feel deserved it, and who didn’t, we haven’t actually looked at the real question, which is whether people are being considered on their own merit.

I just think this whole post is a rant against “the man”, but we still have to figure out if there is actually favoritism. If people want to say that they fell that there is favoritism, I’m done discussing it, but if they want to show it to me, they need to talk about overall results, not one or two examples that bother them.

by snolls on Jan 15, 2009 8:57 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Missed the big picture

It should be astonishing that the summation of my post was entirely missed, but it’s not; that’s blogs for ya:

Here it is for the selective readers in the audience:

But rather than get into it over the list of eight or so players who may have been inducted because of the knickers they wore, I’d be willing to concede their worthiness if this list of inductees was larger, say, 90 players, with the other 18 having no Boston-New York ties.

by Johnny Safron on Jan 15, 2009 8:29 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

I'm sorry you "can't get past"

what essentially was a peripheral point, leading you to ignore the bulk of my last post, which I’ll reprint here:

Ultimately, the situation seems to be this: you’re arguing that there is a bias in HOF voting that favors NY/BOS players. To support this argument, you point out that 23 of 72 players selected by the BBWAA since 1959 have "strong" NY/BOS ties. You further suggest several players specifically that might have been helped by geography in getting elected.

However, I will answer your question about Killebrew: I don’t know. But even ceding your point that he would have been elected in his first year of eligibility it doesn’t prove your point that there is east coast bias, as much as you might want it to. One player does not a proof make. I have trouble understanding why Puckett got in first year vs. Killer.

by Eric in Madison on Jan 14, 2009 12:15 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

God

I cannot wait for spring training.

by Neil on Jan 13, 2009 8:39 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

Number

I did a quick query in the Lahman Database, focusing on the data from 1959 and onward. I grouped players by teams, such that a player who played for (e.g.) three different teams in his career was counted thrice. I then computed the ratio of NYY + NYM + BOS Player-Team Combinations to total Player-Team-Combinations. For what it’s worth, that percentage came out at 11.6%.

by PhoenixV on Jan 14, 2009 1:32 AM EST reply actions 0 recs

this post

seriously? so many of us twins fans are becoming pathetic.

want to know why there isn’t much about the twins in the news? because we have done nothing this offseason. teams like boston and new york make their own news.

they also have more blogs because there are more fans; large markets do that. the twins are a mid-market team with fans just as whiney as chicago (hard to admit but it’s true).

be thankful you don’t live in kc or pit.

and an fyi – toronto has ZERO hall of fame players. i guess that’s just the bos/ny writers spiting them.

by derby625 on Jan 14, 2009 11:47 AM EST reply actions 0 recs