As a quick reminder, the Hall of Fame Standards is a metric designed by Bill James. The average Hall of Famer should have a score of 50 on the test.
To start, here is the list of corner infielders who have played in the majors in at least ten seasons:
| John Hukill | 73 | ACTIVE |
| Dong Lutz | 58 | RETIRED |
| Luis Jeon | 51 | ACTIVE |
| Bruce Parker | 41 | ACTIVE |
| Gregory Mudge | 41 | RETIRED |
| Gregorio Marzano | 40 | ACTIVE |
| Timothy Palacio | 39 | RETIRED |
| Russell Powell | 38 | RETIRED |
| Eugene Alustiza | 38 | RETIRED |
| Octavio Cabrales | 37 | ACTIVE |
| Tyler Thomas | 33 | RETIRED |
| Richard Campion | 29 | RETIRED |
| Brian Palazzo | 28 | RETIRED |
| Daniel Burdine | 26 | ACTIVE |
| Henry Diemer | 25 | RETIRED |
| Robert Fout | 23 | RETIRED |
| Ronald Aikin | 23 | RETIRED |
| Spencer Solomon | 20 | RETIRED |
| Bill Johnson | 17 | RETIRED |
| Joseph Michalski | 17 | RETIRED |
| Jonathan Dillow | 16 | RETIRED |
| Michael Slye | 16 | RETIRED |
| Reuben Caufield | 7 | RETIRED |
| Micheal Salzman | 7 | RETIRED |
| Douglas Stiger | 4 | ACTIVE |
Mudge is already a member of the Hall of Fame.
Hukill, as you can see, tops the list by far. In fact, Hukill ranks on top of the list for all players who have played in the league. Hukill, of course, has been a monster in the league. His lifetime .296/.415/.572 lifetime line, combined with his 562 home runs and 1631 RBI put him far ahead of everyone else.
Lutz, of course, is high up on most of the offensive lifetime lists, including games (2nd), At bats (2nd), Hits (1st -- 2653), runs (3rd), home runs (2nd), doubles (5th), RBI (3rd) and walks (3rd).
The guy ahead of him in most of those categories is the second guy on the list -- Luis Jeon. Jeon has played in more games, had more at bats, hit more home runs, more RBI and more walks than any player in league history -- and he's still active. However, he ranks behind Lutz because of the latter's substantial lead in batting average, on base percentage and slugging percentage.
Let's talk standard deviations.
The median HOFS score for all qualifying corner infielders is 28.
Hukill is the only player who is more than two SDs above the median, at 2.64.
Lutz (1.76) and Jeon (1.35) are the only players more than one SD above the median.
Seven corner infielders are between .5 and 1 SD above the median:
Parker .76
Mudge .76
Marzano .70
Palacio .64
Powell .58
Alustiza .58
Cabrales .52
On the flip side, there are three infielders who are more than 1 SD below the median. Caufield and Salzman both had more than 100 career home runs, showing that even though they're on the bottom of the pile, they still had the ability to remain in the league long enough to rack up those numbers. Stiger hit .246 with 51 home runs. One wonders how he remained in the majors for ten years (although, to be fair, I employed Stiger for one season).
Next time, we'll look at the middle infielders.
The full dataset can be found HERE.
Fantastic stuff! Will be really interesting to see how this all shakes out when we get a couple generations' worth of players data...
ReplyDeleteAgreed, this is fantastic work, Zev.
ReplyDeleteI'm in favor of adding more players to the Hall of Fame. Looking over these amazing posts you've done, and knowing there are few more upcoming, I think that we should consider automatically enshrining, at least to help populate the HoF, batters with 45 HOFS score, and pitchers with 50.
And, then, form a "veterans committee" to inaugurate players from the first few years of the league who didn't play long enough to accumulate stats, but were clearly Hall of Fame worthy.
Again, great work, Zev!
I want to echo the praise for these posts, Zev. This is just fantastic.
ReplyDeleteI feel compelled to point out though that Hukill was a shortstop for the vast majority of his career. It's only now, near the end and when his range has declined, that he's moved to third base. Hukill has played over 1,500 games at SS (counting the seasons before 2013 when the game started saving that data), 300 games at second base, and 187 at third. I would think Hukill should be considered a shortstop when considering his whole career.
Timothy Palacio was also a second basement historically, before the late-career shift to first base. Others further down the list may be similarly situated.
Second baseman, not basement.
ReplyDeleteThanks, everyone.
ReplyDeleteYou are right, Mack. I forgot to account for positional changes. I'll have to take that into account in future posts.