If an ERA effects someones stats hwo does that effect their HOF potential?

Question

Many people say that you can not compare todays stats to the stats of the dead ball ERA because the game was completely different. How can you compare those players then if you can not compare stats?

When people talk of a HOF player do they say he is because he led the league in something or do they say that because he was dominate over his opponents, some put numbers to it, I guess I am saying if you put numbers to it, then how can you compare a player from an area that has the HR leader at 25 vs today's era of 50 being a regular occurance.

BRAVESFAN: Responses like that get people banned from Yahoo!Answers

EXCELLENT Chip!!! That is what I am looking for, reasonable thought into a question of defining stats between ERA's. Some will say that Koufax and Gibson benefited from the higher mound and that is why they were so great, others will point out, they were just great pitchers. You mentioned hitters and expansion, do bloated numbers also have to do with AAA pitchers from 30 years ago pitching in the majors today?

Answer 1

That whole "cannot compare across eras" canard is a dodge, a skive for the twits and dolts who don't know how to approach the question. A surface comparison will, yes, not be very informative, or at least significantly inaccurate. But stats are data, and data can be massaged to get better answers out.

What has NOT changed is the pitcher's job: prevent runs, prevent baserunners. Do this well and you rank highly within your league-season. Hanging actual numbers on it is just a way of measuring and ranking the performance.

Statistical analysis is better today than ever before, and while it might feel overwhelming (or overkill), it does give us (when used properly) greater insight into player performances, across the long reach of history, than ever before available. And this should be appreciated, not dismissed with a snort.

As one undetailed example, the 1960s were a pitchers' era, with the high mound, low strike, expansion, and new parks. Were Koufax and Gibson genuinely the greatest ever? Well... no. Undoubtedly very good, and worthy of their individual Hall plaques, but they were IN PART a product of their times, the gameplay conditions during which were very much in favor of pitchers.

Conversely, the 1990s were a powerball decade, and gameplay conditions were tilted toward the hitters. More expansion, new parks (including Mile High and Coors), steroids/PEDs (just another gameplay condition here, folks), umpires calling the defined strike zone... pitchers of this era were not lesser hurlers (as a group) than 30 years earlier, but conditions were tilted against them. (Which, in part, makes the achievements of Clemens, Maddux, Johnson, and Martinez all that more impressive, as they had steeper uphill battles.)

How that all boils down to Hall candidacies really is impacted by how inquisitive the members of the Hall electorate are. Some embrace the new depths of analysis; others think any new stat since, oh, 1888 is merely an affront to How Things Are Spozed To Be. As we move forward, we can only hope that the former group outnumbers, and outlives, the latter.

Answer 2

Of course you can compare stats across eras. It is in HOW those stats are compared. For instance, "Who was better, Ty Cobb or Ted Williams?" Stats are PART of the answer. But more important is to compare Cobb with his era and Williams with his first. THEN you can compare the two. Cobb wins. "Who was a better outfielder, Cobb or Williams." Again, compare them against their peers and then together. That one is a toss up. So how do you decide? Or, "Who's a better hitter." Toss up again. Then the commonality of accepted standards disappears. To choose base on compared stats becomes a decision of personal preference. That is, unless you are comparing more than just 2 players. If you have a bigger pool of players you generate a smaller number of gray areas.

For me, it is meaningless to compare 2 people from different areas and to apply standard that can be ONLY accounted for by ONE PERSON'S opinion of what makes Cobb better than Williams, or vice versa. That is in fact one of baseball's strongest points. It is so complex that there are no simple answers. Any other approach is personal arrogance.

Nowadays, the Hall of Fame potential of a player is not affected by comparisons to the dead ball era anyway. It is, as it should be, primarily a comparison of a player against his peers. A pitcher these days with 3 or 4 career complete games and a 3.75 ERA has a chance to get in. If today's pitchers were compared to the dead ball, NONE would get in. (With the exception of those with a lot of strike outs.)

Answer 3

Schufs is correct about no written criteria and it is rather a discretionary judgement made by the writers, and in some cases the Veteran's Committee.

However, if you look at a list of all the pitchers that have been inducted, you will always see the following statistical categories listed for them:

Games
Starts
Wins
Losses
ERA
Strikeouts
Bases on Balls

Obviously, these stats carry some weight in the voting.

Answer 4

You make the decision based on how their stats compare to others that are playing during the time period they are. If you lead the league in homers 10 times than you will probably get in whether you lead the league with 20 homers or 50.

Answer 5

One method is to go to baseball-reference.com and look at ERA+.
If the league ERA is 2.00 and mine is 1.00, I have an ERA+ of 200. If the league ERA is 4.00 and mine is 2.00, I have the same ERA+.
This helps us to measure a pitcher against his time. In and of itself, it is not the whole story. But for a single stat, it is very useful.

Answer 6

since there is no written criteria for getting into the HOF... it is all subjective to the voters who are voting...

Answer 7

If your a good player your going to have a good era its just that simple and those players get in

my bad bdough