The Futility Infielder

My second piece for Baseball Prospectus is up, this one analyzing the pitchers on the 2004 Hall of Fame ballot. It's another epic -- I had 15 pitchers to evaluate, after all -- and this time it's part of the site's premium content, so you need to be a subscriber to read it. Which ought to be reason enough to shell out if you haven't already, right? Here's the intro:

The Baseball Writers of America's standards on what constitute a Hall of Fame pitcher are in a curious spot now, both when it comes to starters and relievers. Spoiled by a group of contemporaries who won 300 games from the mid-'60s to the mid-'80s (Tom Seaver, Steve Carlton, Gaylord Perry, Don Sutton, Nolan Ryan, Phil Niekro), the writers haven't elected a non-300-winning starter since Fergie Jenkins in 1991. That Perry, Sutton and Niekro took a combined 13 ballots to reach the Hall while Ryan waltzed in on his first ballot with the all-time highest percentage of votes is even more puzzling. Apparently what impresses the BBWAA can be summarized as "Just Wins, Baby" -- which is bad news for every active pitcher this side of Roger Clemens and Greg Maddux.

Of the 59 enshrined pitchers with major-league experience, only two of them -- Hoyt Wilhelm and Rollie Fingers -- are in Cooperstown for what they accomplished as relievers. While the standards for starters are somewhat easy to discern (if lately a bit unrealistic), the growing number of quality relievers on the ballot, the continuous evolution of the relief role, and the paucity of standards to measure them by present some interesting challenges to voters.

If there's an area in which performance analysis has struggled mightily against mainstream baseball thought, it's in hammering home the concept that the pitcher doesn't have as much control over the outcome of ballgames -- as reflected in his Won-Loss totals -- or even individual at-bats -- hits on balls
in play -- as he's generally given credit for. Good run support and good defense can make big winners of mediocre pitchers on good teams, and .500 pitchers of good hurlers on mediocre teams. As such, it's important to examine the things over which a pitcher has control and account for those he does not. Once again, the Davenport system rides to the rescue.

A hint: the system found four pitchers worthy of a vote -- and not the four you'd expect. No, no, no, not Bob Tewksbury. And alas, not my personal favorite, Fernando Valenzuela.

My jaw still aches from smiling over my BP debut last week, and I'm still answering emails related to it. Again, I'm thrilled to have my work in such hallowed company.