The 2009 Hall of Fame ballot, like the most recent few, looks a lot like the most prized possessions in our baseball card collection back when we were a kid: Tim Raines, Jack Morris, Andre Dawson, Dale Murphy, Dave Parker. We feel like getting out our ‘84 Donruss Don Mattingly and Barry Larkin ‘87 Topps rookie.

So it’s tempting in our nostalgia, of course, to want to honor more of these players than we should — they were the best players of our generation! Thankfully, we have resources like career WAR lists to bring us back from the brink of sentimentality. (Don’t worry: we didn’t think of voting for Parker. Well, not very long, anyway.) As a dutiful netizen and honored member of the Baseball Bloggers Alliance, we’ll explain how we pulled the lever in this year’s BBA Hall of Fame vote. It’s a relatively long list (though not as long as this BBWAA guy’s), especially considering how many actually got in with the BBA vote, but it’s about being deserving, right?

• Roberto Alomar: As much as we disliked him as a human and as a Met (and that was when we were a Mets fan!), we can’t argue with his greatness: 85th all-time on the position players WAR list with 63.6.
• Alan Trammell: It’s refreshing to see the Sabermetric numbers back up what we, living in an NL city in a pre-cable era could only assume about this obscure-teamed American Leaguer: He was outstanding (69th on the WAR list) if unheralded.
• Tim Raines: We knew he was good, but better than Jackie Robinson? At 81st on the WAR list, he just may have been (at least in terms of playing ability). In an era when stolen bases were king, he not only stole a lot but avoided outs, both on the bases (85% success rate) and at the plate (lifetime .385 OBP).
• Bert Blyleven: We’ll admit: Blyleven never so much as received the dignity of a cellophane card sleeve in our collection. But we realize now that we were duped by dinosaur-stat-loving card designers pushing 20-game winners like Lamar Hoyt and Jack Morris on us ignorant kids who couldn’t see past Blyleven’s win-loss record. Indians players were relegated to the "commons" bin, but Blyleven was anything but common: He’s 13th among pitchers all-time in WAR, for cryin’ out loud, and no one can claim ignorance about the uselessness of pitcher win-loss records these days
• Andre Dawson: At #130, he’s a relatively more difficult choice to defend, we grant. But that’s still ahead of some indisputably great players — Medwick, Boudreau, Dickey, Slaughter, Cochrane, Rice, Sisler — so let’s be reasonable. In his time, Hawk was one of the best players in the game and even with his maligned OBP of .323 still created 1490.1 weighted runs, more than fellow Hall of Fame Cubbies Ernie Banks (1488.7) and Ryne Sandberg (1309.1).
• Barry Larkin: Back in the day, claiming that Larkin was superior to Ozzie Smith would’ve earned you a wedgie, but it was true, at least according to WAR: Larkin is 59th; Ozzie 82nd. Along with Trammell and Cal Ripken, Larkin and Smith treated ’80s fans to seeing four of the game’s all-time best shortstops play.
• Edgar Martinez: Martinez is an example of us simply trusting the numbers, for we have absolutely no visceral feeling that he should be a Hall of Famer. Yet it’s pretty clear that he should be, ranking #66 in WAR and an astounding 1601.9 weighted Runs Created (for reference, Willie McCovey had 1593.2). His hitting more than made up for his not playing in the field — heck, Paul Molitor is #46.
• Dale Murphy: As much as we’re taking Martinez on blind faith in the stats, we’re relying on instinct with The Murph, though not without some statistical backing. Although he ranks relatively low in WAR (#227), his total of 44.4 is certainly comparable to the only other outstanding centerfielder of his era, Hall of Famer Kirby Puckett, with 45.0. Plus, he’s ahead of 20 existing Hall of Fame position players. During his nine-year prime, he was Matt Holliday combined with the Gold Glove defense in center of Andruw Jones.

Seldom does selecting the Cy Young come down to something as esoteric as regressed tRA and the debate over how important strikeouts are. Yet that is how close the 2009 season performances of Tim Lincecum, Javier Vazquez and Adam Wainwright have been. And that’s to say nothing of some other outstanding work from the likes of Dan Haren, Josh Johnson and, of course, Wainwright’s slightly older doppelganger, Chris Carpenter. The candidates themselves aren’t helpful in deciding, with Lincecum picking Carpenter, and Carpenter commending Wainwright.

Although only one of our top three is listed in the Neyer/James Cy Young Predictor, Lincecum, Vazquez and Wainwright represent the best combination of quality and quantity in the league. Before going any further, a word on our "methodology": Certainly, narrowing the field to merely three is already a big subjective assumption. When one picks a best player, he has to do so based on one or more of the following:

1. First-person eyewitness observation
2. Trustworthy secondhand opinions
3. Statistics

For our part, we saw Wainwright pitch about a dozen games this past season, many outstanding. We witnessed Lincecum and Vazquez pitch only once, and each was a gem. And people we respect are supporting all three pitchers (as well as the others). So we’re left with statistics.

Unlike some mainstream writers, we’re not afraid to disclose our thought process, imperfect though it is. Our overriding preference is for statistics that attempt to represent what the pitcher himself — and not some combination of the pitcher and his teammates — did. Here are the cases for each of our top three pitchers (all ranks are within the National League):

Wainwright’s strongest suit is leading the league in expected outs. After all, if the goal of an offense is to avoid outs, the name of the pitcher’s game is to obtain them. Wainwright did more than any other senior-circuit pitcher to that end.

The defense for Wainwright is that he is able to face more batters because he uses his defense, and therefore doesn’t have to strike out as many batters. While it’s true that Wainwright faced more batters than Lincecum, it’s not clear that preferring balls in play to strikeouts is the reason. Moreover, Lincecum used fewer pitches per inning pitched than Wainwright, anyway (15.3 to 15.5). Wainwright deserves credit for pitching to a strength, but the bottom line is that strikeouts are still a much more reliable means of obtaining outs and therefore preventing runs; even the league leader in defense-efficiency rate, Randy Wolf (.749), let a quarter of batters who hit the ball into play reach base. Strikeouts are nearly 100% effective as out-makers.

In the end, Lincecum was simply more dominant than Wainwright when he pitched, and was dominant enough to make up for the amount of outs the Wainwright created: More quality and only slightly less quantity.

National League Cy Young: Tim Lincecum (Javier Vazquez, 2nd; Adam Wainwright, 3rd)

We created a “Cardinals and the Division Championship Series” survey. Please take a minute to fill it out. We’ll post results at the end of the regular season.

Click Here to take survey

With the advent of the Twitter age, we’re going to try to post tweets by individual games this season. Starting with spring-training games, we’re adding a “hash tag” to game-specific tweets so that fans everywhere can read and provide commentary on individual games. You can read all of the related posts using Twitter’s search or by going to another aggregator, such as hashtags.org. We’re still experimenting with the syntax, but right now the plan is to go with the following format:

• yymmdd{3-letter visiting-team abbreviation}{3-letter home-team abbreviation}

So, for instance, yesterday’s game in which the Cardinals played the Mets was #090227slnnyn. Today’s game vs. the Nationals is #090228wassln.

Please let us know if you have any other ideas on syntax or question on how this works.

Three-letter team codes used by MLB Gameday:

Posted on behalf of Jim Rygelski, Bob Broeg SABR Chapter President