The Futility Infielder

Today at Baseball Prospectus, the Jaffe WARP3 Score (JAWS) system takes on the 25 players on the Veterans Committee Hall of Fame ballot. This is the second time the "new VC" -- consisting of living Hall of Fame members, Spink (writers) and Frick (broadcaster) award winners, and "old VC" members whose terms haven't expired, 83 voters in all -- will have voted, and the first time JAWS has been used to evaluate the field.

JAWS (which was named very self-consciously, I assure you) is based on Clay Davenport's Wins Above Replacement Player measures, which combine hitting, pitching and fielding, normalizing for everything from ballpark to scoring environment to league difficulty. A JAWS score is simply the average of a player's career WARP3 total and that of his five-consecutive-year WARP3 peak (with allowances made for injury or military service). While a JAWS score shouldn't be confused with an attempt to define One Great Number by which all players should be measured and definitively ranked -- my colleague Nate Silver has compared it to "a very tasty sausage," with appropriate dietary precautions -- the score enables a player to be easily compared to his peers in the Hall. In short, it's a handy tool for pattern recognition.

In 2003, their last time around, the Vet Committee put up a big zilch, its voters failing to shower the requisite 75 percent on any of the candidates. Gil Hodges led the voting at 61.7 percent, while Tony Oliva (59.3 percent) and Ron Santo (56.8 percent) were the only others over 50 percent. JAWS points to only a couple of candidates -- Santo and Joe Torre, whose managerial career will push him over the top when it's all said and done -- as worthy of induction, and it also reveals a pretty wide gulf between the previous VC selections and those voted in via the Baseball Writers Association of America. As much flak as the latter group draws for, say, failing to elect Bert Blyleven and Goose Goosage, they've made very few mistakes in the players they've selected compared to the spotty record of the old VC. That said, if the new VC bakes another donut, we may be seeing the next overhaul before too long. Frankly, they need to elect Santo to instill confidence in their own credibility. We'll know this afternoon whether that happens...

Update: Nope, Santo and Hodges topped the voting at 65 percent, Tony Oliva and Jim Kaat both broke 50 percent, and Joe Torre pulled in 45 percent. Let the fallout begin.

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Speaking of Davenport, anybody looking for insight into his -- and thus BP's -- method of translating statistics from any given league to the majors should read his piece on translating Cuban performance today. BP doesn't show what's behind the curtain often enough for some tastes, but here's a fine example to the contrary.

Oh, and by the way, Baseball Prospectus 2005 is now shipping from online retailers for the insanely low price of $12.21 plus shipping, and it's available in bookstores as well. On that note, the BP book tour is in full effect as well. I'll be in the hizzy for three New York City-area appearances with the likes of Joe Sheehan, Chris Kahrl, and Steve Goldman in the next two weeks:

Brooklyn, Wednesday, March 9 @ 7pm
Barnes & Noble
106 Court Street
Brooklyn, NY
718-246-4996

Manhattan, Saturday, March 12 @ 6 pm
Coliseum Books
11 West 42nd Street
New York, NY 10036
212-803-5892

Manhattan, Monday, March 14 @ 7:30 pm
Barnes & Noble
396 Ave. of the Americas @ 8th St.
New York, NY 10011
212-674-8780

Come on out, meet the crew, and pick up a copy for yourself if you haven't already.