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One of the greatest debates we had this year in the Roll Of Honor elections, were who would be the next star from the 19th century to make it in. The obvious choice of course would have been Cap Anson, but the debate raged as to Anson roll in the banishment of african americans from the major leagues. As the story goes Anson was one of the main players in Moses "Fleet" Walker, who was a catcher for Toledo in the old American Assoiciation in 1884, being kicked out of the league. Walker, as it turned out, would be the last african american to play major league baseball until Robinson broke the barrier in 1947.
One thing that goes in Anson's favor is the insistance on some of the electorate to include Shoeless Joe in the roll on the basis of only including what they did on the field. The argument becomes was it worse to throw the series or banish a race from the sport? Obviously the latter would by far be the worse offense, but if we are choosing from their on field exploits than we must look at Anson from his stats only as we would Jackson. One thing that the stats are saying is past Dan Brouthers, who made it on the second ballot, Anson looks to be by far and away the best hitter not in.
The dominance of Brouthers in the report was the most impressive fact we came up with. He not only beat Anson by 37.7 points but was found in leaders of the 80's, 90's and the american association(although he spent only 1 season there, he won the mvp in 1891).Brouthers also won an impressive 5 mvp awards winning the 1st in 1882 and the last in 92 which shows he was not a 5 year wonder.
The most surprising player in the report was Harry Stovey. Stovey was only a .288 lifetime hitter and only accumulated 1770 hits, both impressive, but certainly not stats that would point him to the fifth highest total of the century. Looking how he rates in the top categories of the century, he rates #16 in slugging at.461 #14 in total bases, 3rd in homers, 11th in runs and 6th in triples, again all impressive but not leading us to where we are looking. Stovey rated that highly because he was a player who had a tremendous peak value. Between 1883 and 1890, Stovey was dominant. His first three years and last three, brought him down, but year in and year out in the american association, there was no better all around hitter, save maybe pete browning.
Speaking of the american association, perhaps an example of a dominate year pushing a player high up in the standings would be the all time leading point getter in the american association, Tip O'Neill. O'Neill, who upset Pete Browning in the race for the most points in the AA, had a record high monster season of 43.8 points in 1887 for St Louis. O'Neill always gets credit in that season for his monster .435 batting average, the second highest in the century, but a closer looks shows that he also led the league in on base percentage, homers, hits, slugging, total bases, runs and rbi's, all of our scoring categories except for stolen bases. He also led the league in triples and doubles. So dominate was he that his .691 slugging ave. was 144 points higher than Bob Carruthers .547 second place. By far this can be considered the most dominate single season in major league history. Let's give Tip is due though, he did score another 30 points in his career and is rated as having the 19th highest total batting ave of the century at .326 and the 18th highest slugging ave at .458. On a sour note in the phenomenal 1887 season for Tip O'Neill, after leading the Browns to the pennant with a 95-40 record, O'Neill only hit .200 with 1 HR and 5 RBI'S in a 10 games to 5 loss to the Detroit Wolverines, NL Pennant winners in the 1887 world series. Thanks to a couple of decent NL seasons after the AA folded, Browning did eventually pass O'Neill in total points.
As Far as our much heralded second selected hitter to the roll of honor, Ed Delahanty goes, his leading point total in the 90's, being only 1 of three players to achieve over 100 points and his 3 MVP's in the decade, tying Brouthers and Anson for the only players to achieve that level in a single decade, I'd say we came up with a pretty good candidate. Looking at the figures, Anson looks to be the next one to enter the hall and a second member between Hamilton, Thompson and Browning will create good debate. Stovey looks to be a little down the road due to his .288 ave and the fact that when we add career bonus points, he will probably fall a little.
The next step will be to create a bonus point system for career totals, that should be coming back in the next few weeks. The next report will be to apply Ranier's cy young point system to the pitchers of the century.
The following is how we assigned points per year in the following manner:
batting average leaders -6 pts for 1st, 4 for second and 2 for third
slugging percentage-5, 3, 1
rbi's- 6, 4, 2
runs scored-5, 3, 1
hits- 3, 1
stolen bases- 3,1
on base percentage- 3, 1
we chose the points on the basis of what we felt the most important stats were not only in the game, but at that point and time. in today's game, homers would probably rate a 5,3,1 and batting average would probably drop to 5,3,1, but then, there were minimal homers, it just wasnt as important.
the other area we considered was how to award players who dominated a particular stat from one that one by a point. we came up with the following bonus point system.
on percentage stats we rewarded a bonus point if a man was 10 points higher than the second place winner.(IE a .372 batting ave vs a second place .362 would reward the batting champion with an additional point). every 10 points higher the difference is, the player gets another 1/2 point bonus.
on total whole number stats(runs, rbi's......) if a players total is 10% higher than the second player her gets a 1 point bonus. every 10% higher he goes on top of that he gets another 1/2 bonus point.
for the stats weve only applied 3 points for the champion and 1 for the runnerup, the bonus points are figured the cut in half.
bonus points for homers we decided since the numbers were not that great for most of the century, would be 1/2 bonus point would be awarded for a difference of 33% or greater. every 33% additional got another 1/2 bonus point.
the reports we have can be found by clicking on the above links at the top of the page. the report on pitchers will be done in april or early may. Lets see just what kind of job, the electorate did on choosing the members of the roll of honor. later on in the month we will develop a format for awarding bonus points on career numbers.
we felt that the yearly leader stats were the most important on the basis that the absolute all time greats did one consistant thing throughout their careers, the led the league in the various important stats. theory is, if they led the league in a year in and year out basis, they probably were the best of their time. the one thing that on a rare occasion thru things out of whack was what i will now refer to as the levi meyerle effect( being that with the new national association rating show that ross barnes was far more than a one year wonder), having one superior year and never doing anything else. meyerle had a mammoth 30.3 points in 1871. he scored in 1 other season, yet the point total rates as sixth highest total points in the 1870's. looking at it in a common way sense, we might not say meyerle was one of the 10 best players of the 70's, yet must be recognized for his monster contribution. this is not to insinuate that meyerle was not a good player, but in scoring purposes, his high rating is due to one good season. over the course of the last 25 years of the 19th century, the effect of those 1 time wonders will be greatly reduced. it also does not take into effect the great defensive players of the century therefore a bid mcphee does not rate highly here even though he was thought well enough of to be elected to the hall of fame( although in my mind there is no way a mcphee goes in ahead of pete browning). remember though we are looking for the dominate players of the century and say what you want about good defense, i would rather draft a 340 hitter than a 271 hitting second baseman who was good defensively. it will probably be 20 years before the roll of honor is ready to discuss electing the likes of a bid mcphee.
so sit back and enjoy the reports on the batters of the 19th century.