About the Hall of wWAR

I love the Hall of Fame. But the Hall of Fame sucks.

Every year a player (or several) like Bert Blyleven, Tim Raines, or Edgar Martinez hits the ballot. An alarming number of baseball writers and fans will argue that these players don’t deserve induction. When they think of the Hall of Fame, they always remember Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Walter Johnson. They often forget—or perhaps don’t even know—that the Hall of Fame already features players like Rube Marquard, Chick Hafey, or Tommy Freakin’ McCarthy. Inducting a Bert Blyleven or an Edgar Martinez would never, ever hurt the “purity” of the Hall of Fame. That was soiled long ago.

This made me question what actually makes a player Hall of Fame-worthy. Let’s take Will Clark, for example. He’s certainly no Lou Gehrig or Jimmie Foxx. But he’s a hell of a lot better than High Pockets Kelly or Jim Bottomley (both first basemen were inducted to the Hall of Fame). To determine whether or not Clark should be a Hall of Famer, I now have to do this balancing act between how much worse he is than the elite players at his position and how much better he is than some guys already inducted.

It’s an absolute mess. The only way to fix it is to kick everyone out of the Hall of Fame and start from scratch. So that’s what I did.

“Why even bother voting for the Hall of Fame?” they ask us stat geeks. “Why don’t you just pick a WAR cutoff and everyone above the line is a Hall of Famer?”

That’s not a bad idea. I love WAR (Wins Above Replacement). If you aren’t familiar with WAR, I wrote about it in detail. To me, it is the best way to use a single number to gauge a player’s overall career value. However, I don’t want to re-populate the Hall of Fame using “plain old” WAR. We all know there’s more to a Hall of Fame case than simply providing value (and one of the knocks on WAR is that it rewards “compilers”). Peak performance and postseason heroics can also enhance to a player’s case. Those happen to be two of the adjustments that go into my weighted version of WAR. I call it wWAR.

Time to geek out. Here’s the formula:

wWAR = WAR/162 + WAE + WAM + wWPA

What do all those acronyms mean?

WAR/162

In 1879, Deacon White posted 3.8 WAR. In 2011, David Ortiz also posted 3.8 WAR. But which is more impressive? Ortiz produced his 3.8 wins in a 162 game schedule. White did the same in a 84-game schedule. WAR/162 projects White’s WAR to a 162-game schedule, making him worth 7.3 WAR/162.

There’s a limit to how much credit a player will receive, though. In 1872, Ross Barnes posted 5.2 WAR in a 48-game schedule. WAR/162 projects BarnesÕ WAR to a 162-game schedule, making him worth 17.6 WAR/162. That simply pads a player’s wWAR too much, giving them value for what didn’t actually happen. For that reason, I limit WAR/162 to doubling the player’s WAR.

When calculating WAR/162, I typically just used the league schedule length for all seasons. In more volatile leagues (like the National Association, Union Association, etc.), I was more specific and used the number of games the player’s team played (since there were several cases of teams folding mid-season). From 1871 to 1892, I didn’t project the pitching WAR over 162 games. This is because of the huge differences in pitcher usage and scheduling during that time. I still project the pitchers’ hitting stats from those years, though.

WAE

Wins Above Excellence, originally devised by Sean Smith (the father of Baseball-Reference’s WAR), is the total of all single season WAR above 3.0. WAE aims to measure only seasons where a certain level of excellence was achieved (while its cousin Wins Above MVP aims to capture dominant MVP-worthy performances).

There are some exceptions to the 3.0 baseline:

For catchers (seasons where the player’s primary position was catcher), the WAE baseline is 2.0.

For relief pitchers (80% or more of appearances in relief), the WAE baseline is 1.5.

For starting pitchers with 400-500 innings, the WAE baseline is 4.5.

For starting pitchers with 500-600 innings, the WAE baseline is 6.0.

For starting pitchers with 600-700 innings, the WAE baseline is 7.5.

It is important to note that Wins Above Excellence (and Wins Above MVP) baselines are applied to the player’s WAR, not his WAR/162. I think it is fair to give a player credit for value he lost because of schedule length, but I don't want to double count it by adding more WAE/WAM as well. WAE and WAM also disregard negative position player WAR or pitcher WAR that drags a player’s total WAR down. For example, if a pitcher posts 4.0 pitching WAR and -0.3 WAR as a hitter, his WAE will be 1.0. He is not docked for the negative WAR at the plate because he is already docked for it in his overall WAR.

WAM

Wins Above MVP is the total of all single season WAR above 6.0. After Sean Smith came up with WAE, I whipped up WAM as a way to measure only seasons where a player was a legitimate MVP candidate.

There are some exceptions to the 6.0 baseline:

For catchers (seasons where the player’s primary position was catcher), the WAM baseline is 4.0.

For relief pitchers (80% or more of appearances in relief), the WAM baseline is 3.0.

For starting pitchers with 400-500 innings, the WAM baseline is 9.0.

For starting pitchers with 500-600 innings, the WAM baseline is 12.0.

For starting pitchers with 600-700 innings, the WAM baseline is 15.0.

wWPA

Postseason statistics break the “small sample size” rule, but postseason heroics absolutely add to a player’s Hall of Fame case (while being a postseason goat hurts some). Since there is no postseason WAR, how can we capture postseason value? We can use Win Probability Added (WPA), which measures a player’s contribution to his team’s victory. Add up his WPA and you have an estimate of the number of wins he was directly responsible for.

I recently introduced a modification of postseason WPA called (of course) wWPA (Weighted postseason Win Probability Added). The theory behind wWPA is that not all postseason series are created equal. I count the LDS once. I double count the LCS. And the World Series? It counts three times.

In order to avoid double-counting negative values, I calculate it like: wWPA = Total Postseason WPA + LCSWPA + (2*WSWPA) (where I only add the extra LCSWPA and WSWPA values if they are greater than zero).

More About the Project

All WAR data comes from Baseball-Reference. This is the version of WAR created by Sean Smith (aka RallyMonkey) and originally posted on BaseballProjection.com.

I keep the Hall of wWAR the same size as the Hall of Fame (207 inducted as players). This is to show the difference in quality between the two Halls from top to bottom.

I ignore performance enhancing drugs because we just don’t know how to handle them yet. Besides, they apparently go back to the 19th century.

I ignore lifetime bans. This opens up the Hall of wWAR to Pete Rose, Shoeless Joe, and any other banned players.

I open this up for Hall of Famers who were inducted for a role other than player. This is why Hall of Famers Al Spalding (inducted as a pioneer) and John McGraw (inducted as a manager) aren’t considered Hall of Famers in this exercise. Both should have been in because of their playing careers.

While there is a basic wWAR cutoff for induction, I used a higher baseline for 1800s starting pitchers (they are so complicated) and a lower baseline for catchers (they have shorter careers) and relief pitchers (they just don’t get as many opportunities to perform). I use normalized wWAR (wWAR/norm) to put all these baselines on a single scale, allowing me to sort all players by how good their Hall of Fame case is (this is how Rich Gossage can rank higher in wWAR/norm than he does by just plain wWAR). I only normalize the wWAR total of catchers if they ever had a season in which catcher was their primary position.

I can’t include Negro League players. This project relies on WAR and there is no WAR for Negro League players. Trust me, I wish there was. One day I hope to add Negro League players to this project.

I don’t adjust for time lost to military service. I’m just not comfortable doing that. I don’t feel great about this because I know that Enos Slaughter (and perhaps others) would be inducted if I tried to estimate lost value. Bob Feller and Ted Williams stand out as other players who would be helped by such an adjustment.

Pitching WAR does not exist for the National Association (1871–1875). Rather than ignore these players, I estimated the WAR values.

Changelog

February 10, 2012 Due to some changes in the wWAR formula, we saw players exit the Hall of wWAR for the first time (Ezra Sutton and Hoyt Wilhelm). This was due to a change in the WAR/162 component (for Sutton) and a change in the reliever adjustment (for Wilhelm). As a result, Billy Pierce and Hugh Duffy were added to the Hall of Fame. The Hall of wWAR is a fluid Hall that always goes by the best data available. We are not doomed to live with past “mistakes’, no matter how minor. January 9, 2012 As Barry Larkin was inducted into the Hall of Fame, Frank Chance was inducted into the Hall of wWAR. December 8, 2011 With Ron Santo’s induction to the Hall of Fame, the Hall of wWAR needed to also expand to 207 members. Since Santo was already in the Hall of wWAR, Frank Tanana is inducted into the Hall of wWAR. November 14, 2011 The Hall of wWAR is relaunched. In addition to an adjustment for peak, there is now a season length adjustment, a postseason adjustment, and more. March 7, 2011 The Hall of wWAR is originally launched. December 27, 2010 The concept of wWAR is introduced. A later post goes into detail about the genesis of wWAR.

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