Hall of Fame Standards - Pitchers

The recent retirement of John Okane (and the fact that he missed automatic enshrinement by 0.01 ERA) got me to thinking about how our players stack up as Hall of Famers.  I decided to look at all of our retired pitchers (limited to those with 10+ seasons in the majors) and see how they stack up.

As a metric, I used Bill James's Hall of Fame Standards.  The formula is as follows:

1 point for every:

• 10 W over 100, limit 25
• 20 games over .500, limit 10
• .013 WPct over .500, limit 15 (min 500 IP)
• .20 ERA under 4.00, limit 10 (min 500 IP)
• 200K over 1000, limit 10 (min 500 IP)
• .3 BB/9IP under 4.00, limit 10 (min 500 IP)
• .3 H/9IP under 10.00, limit 10 (min 500 IP)
• 1000 IP over 1000, limit 5
• 100 CG over 200, limit 5
• 30 SHO, limit 5

I made two small changes to this formula.  In our league, no one retired is even close to 200 CG (the record among retired players is 53) and no one has 30 SHO (the record is 27).

As such, I tweaked the last two conditions to:

• 4 CG over 30, limit 5
• 7 SHO, limit 5

The test is designed so that the average Hall of Famer should score a 50.  Of course that means that there will be legitimate Hall of Famers with scores above this and with scores below this.  How far away from 50 we want to stray on the negative side is something we can decide upon in times to come.

So, how did our pitchers do? 

There are 72 pitchers who have ten or more seasons in the major leagues.  When limited to starting pitchers (since the test really isn't designed to evaluate relievers), that leaves 38 pitchers. 

The range of HOFS runs from 72 all the way down to 2.  The average HOFS score for the 38 pitchers is 21.2 and the median is 17.

The dozen pitchers with scores over 25 are:

• 72 Ronald Placencia  
• 67 Demarcus Ramirez
• 54 John Okane
• 53 Chad Nelligan
• 41 Albert Garcia
• 39 Richard Pimental
• 34 Bill Siple
• 34 Thomas Cohen
• 33 Wendell Sorg
• 28 Isaac Diehl
• 27 Sherman Wheeler
• 26 Frank Osborne (who, amazingly, makes the top 12 in a heavily win-weighted list while being 50 games under .500 lifetime)

Ramirez and Nelligan are already enshrined.  It would seem, based on this test (whose validity we can debate) that Placencia and Okane should also be enshrined.

Now, what about the active pitchers?  Well, I took a look that the active starting pitchers with 10 major league seasons.  There are nineteen qualifying active pitchers.  Of those, Juan Villatoro is on top with a HOFS score of 75.  The complete list of starting pitchers on the active list with a score of 25 or better are:

• 75 Villatoro
• 68 Christopher Hester
• 40 Fernando Estrada
• 34 Joseph Macaluso
• 32 Kyle Fyke

So, where does this leave us?  Let's talk standard deviations.  The standard deviation for all qualifying pitchers (active and retired) is 18.48 and the median of all qualifying pitchers is 18.

There is only one pitcher who is three standard deviations above the median -- Juan Villatoro who is at 3.08.  The rest of the pitchers who are at least one standard deviation above the median are:

• 2.92  Placencia 
• 2.70  Hester
• 2.65 Ramirez
• 1.95 Okane
• 1.89 Nelligan
• 1.24 Garcia
• 1.19 Estrada
• 1.14 Pimental

Lastly, who is at the bottom?  Well, considering the fact that all of these pitchers managed to stay in the league for 10 years, I can't say that any of them are failures.  However, limiting ourselves to the retired players (since the active ones can still improve themselves), the bottom pitcher is Pedro Marez, who has a lifetime record of 50-51.

 The full data set can be seen here. (Yellow highlights are arefor enshrined playes, blue highlights indicates an active player).