Reserve your place now for the 2012 Hot Stove Luncheon of the Bob Broeg Chapter of the Society for American Baseball Research. It will be Saturday, January 28, at the usual spot, Mike Shannon’s Steaks and Seafood, 620 Market St., Downtown St. Louis. Doors open at 11:30, with a ballpark-buffet lunch at noon. Invited guests include former Cardinals outfielder Kerry Robinson and Pat Daly of the Cardinals’ Event Services Department. Also included will be chapter members’ research presentations, a trivia quiz, prizes and the chance to just talk baseball with other fans like yourself. Cost is $35 per person. Send a send for that amount payable to “SABR Bob Broeg Chapter” to Fred Heger, 9388 White Ave., Brentwood, MO 63144 by Tuesday, January 24.

No word on whether K-Rob will be signing copies of Three Nights in August…

Johnson was a less-known member of the legendary Gas House Cardinal teams of the ’30s, but he is most notable for his work in baseball outside the lines in 1937:

That season Johnson began a campaign to create a pension plan for retired baseball players who had played for ten years. The 36-year-old veteran pointed to the major leagues’ pension plan for umpires. “Umpires are entitled to a pension after 15 years of service,” he pointed out to sportswriters. “Why shouldn’t a player receive the same reward? I’d like to see each ten-year man become eligible for a pension of $75 a month, with $5 for each additional year of service. There are not many players with that length of service in the majors.” Johnson tried to pitch his idea to Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis and the owners during the winter meetings of 1938, but his proposal fell on deaf ears. (Nine years later, in April 1947, Commissioner Happy Chandler and Yankees boss Larry MacPhail helped create a pension plan for retired players.)

Tudor is of course well-known, if not nearly as ubiquitous as Fox Sports Midwest’s Eldred, as a hero of the Cardinals’ pennant-winning clubs in the late ’80s. Writes Rory Costello:

Tudor’s game face was severe: lips compressed, eyes boring in. His intensity carried over off the field as well. “He was also combative, curt, and bluntly honest; when he considered a question stupid, he said so.”[4]His disappointment in losing Game Seven of the 1985 World Series is well remembered – he sliced his hand punching an electric fan in the clubhouse.

Yet to focus on this aspect of a complex personality is far too simplistic, as writers strove to recognize during Tudor’s career. “Even friends and acquaintances differ in their perspectives,” wrote Ross Newhan of the Los Angeles Times in 1988.[5] First, Tudor didn’t like to talk about himself – he was refreshingly free of ego. His acerbic wit could also be playful. He was intelligent, introspective, and demanding – of himself more than anyone. “I’m only concerned about doing my job,” he told Newhan. “I try to be as honest as I can, though that’s where I’ve gotten in trouble in the past.”

Jacobson was an underrated slugger with the Browns — lifetime wOBA of .373 — though not unappreciated in his day: He earned MVP votes in three straight years (1924-26). BioGrapher Bill Nowlin relates a turning point in the Cable, Il., native’s career:

Jacobson was 28 when he returned from the service, and he hit well over .300 for each of the next seven seasons, beginning with .323 in 1919 and – playing every game of the season – a career-high .355 in 1920 – driving in 122 runs, tied with teammate George Sisler, with the two of them second only to Babe Ruth’s 137 RBIs. In the offseason, he worked as a millwright in a tractor works. Jacobson was the center fielder for St. Louis throughout. He credited manager Jimmy Burke for helping turn his career around when, before the 1919 season, Burke called him aside. He asked Jacobson, “Say, you big stiff. Where’s your wife?” Jacobson said she was in Illinois. Burke said he thought she always stayed with him during the season, and Jacobson replied she did, when he was settled down for the summer. “Send for your wife today,” Burke told him. “You’re settled down for the summer.” He’d made the team and wasn’t going to be sent down again. He told reporter John B. Sheridan that he had started seeing the ball than he ever had before, now that he was relieved of the worry he’d always had. “After five years of trial and five years of failure I have made good at last. That’s all I know. Whatever improvement I have shown is due to Burke’s four words, ‘Send for your wife.’ When Burke made that crack, he made me a success where I had been one of the most pitiable failures in baseball.”

Though Bill Johnson doesn’t mention Eldred’s faith (a vital part of his life story; he has been involved in Baseball Chapel, an international ministry that offers encouragement to players through the gospel), he describes the career of the Cardinal righty who despite adversity went out on top. He relates the story of how Eldred came to St. Louis:

Frustrated but looking at life realistically, Cal spent the rest of 2001 and the entire 2002 baseball season doing everything but playing baseball. He spent the time with his family in Iowa, completely resting his damaged elbow. After a great deal of reflection and self-evaluation, he came to understand that his inner, competitive fire was not yet extinguished.  Eighteen months after walking off the mound, he gingerly picked up, and tossed, a baseball again.

He expected pain, but it did not come. Encouraged, he gathered [wife] Christi and the family and headed to Arizona, where he could continue working out. Again he told Tiernan McKay, “At first I wasn’t sure about everything that was happening. Then I figured I had nothing to lose and everything to gain, so I went for it.” On November 6, 2002, he held a public workout for approximately twenty scouts, and threw well enough to convince the St Louis Cardinals to sign him as a free agent in the offseason.

Some notes:

• As much as it hurt to vote for two Brewers, but Fielder and Weeks were both such clear choices that it was difficult not to (Fielder leads Joey Votto in WAR, 3.8-3.5, and Weeks leads Danny Espinosa, 3.6-3.1).
• With all due respect to Chase Headley, you know it’s a down year for NL third basemen when he leads at the position with 137 wRC+. Where have you gone, Mike Schmidt?
• For outfielders, we preferred total run production (as represented by wRC+) to defense and positional skill (as represented by WAR). In the NL, those three are the top three outfielders in the league in wRC+, and it just so happens that they play LF, CF and RF.
• True, Alex Avila is having the best half-season at AL catcher, but we still consider Carlos Santana the best in the league, especially given his unfortunate .249 BABIP.
• No, we don’t vote for designated hitters. What, this surprises you?

We put Carlos Marmol first on our ballot based on the quality and quantity of his relief work this year. The lanky righty with a herky-jerky delivery was 11th in the league in expected FIP and fifth in batters faced. And if the Cubs stank this year, it wasn’t because of Marmol, who was fourth in the league in win-probability added.

The players who rounded out our ballot were surprises. Brian Wilson, whose season continues into the playoffs, was nearly as dominant as Marmol, ranking second in WPA, 12th in batters faced and 14th in xFIP. And Matt Belisle faced the second-most batters in relief in the majors with 365 over an old-school-like 92 innings and outranked contenders like Heath Bell, Jonny Venters and Hong-Chih Kuo in xFIP.

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.

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)

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