COG 1948 Round Results: Vote for Trammell; Break for Travel

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In a competitive round of voting, with holdovers from previous rounds receiving almost all the support, Alan Trammell edged out John Smoltz, Bobby Grich, Lou Whitaker and others to become the 25th player inducted into the High Heat Stats Circle of Greats. The COG voting will be on a two-week hiatus as your host drifts out of fair territory but will be back in play mid-August to start the 1947 round. More on Alan Trammell, and on the latest voting results, after the jump.

Highest OPS by a Shortstop in a League Championship Series (min. seven PAs)
1. Alan Trammell (1984) 1.314 OPS
2. Nomar Garciaparra (1999) 1.255 OPS
3. Alex Rodriguez (2000) 1.253 OPS
4. Dave Concepcion (1975) 1.227 OPS
5. Rich Aurilia (2002) 1.221 OPS

Highest OPS by a Shortstop in a World Series (min. seven PAs)
1. Dererk Jeter (2000) 1.344 OPS
2. Alan Trammell (1984) 1.300 OPS
3. Edgar Renteria (2010) 1.209 OPS
4. Marty Marion (1943) 1.185 OPS
5. Granny Hamner (1950) 1.181 OPS

Trammell’s nine Total Bases in Game 4 of the 1984 World Series remains a record, unbroken and untied, for a shortstop in a World Series game.

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Most all-around WAR, MLB, 1980-1990 (baseball-reference version of WAR):
1. Rickey Henderson 80.5
2. Wade Boggs 62.9
3. Alan Trammell 59.1
4. Robin Yount 57.6
5. Cal Ripken 57.5
6. Mike Schmidt 56.3
7. Ozzie Smith 55.7
8. Dave Stieb 54.3
9. George Brett 51.6
10. Eddie Murray 50.8

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–This was a closely contested round, with four guys within six votes at the top.
–Only two votes were cast for players born in 1948, out of a total of 183 votes (on 61 ballots). The very competitive nature of the round seems to have discouraged voters from casting “shout-out” or “favorite son” votes.
–Robbie Alomar, who has been eligible for every one of the 25 ballot rounds we have held, but recently has been on the bubble each round, nudged over 25% this time, getting off the bubble at least for the moment.
–Smoltz, Whitaker, Grich and Edgar Martinez all also appeared on more than 25% of the ballots cast this round, and so expand the number of rounds they have assured ballot eligibility.
–Smoltz appeared on more ballots than he has in any round since the 1964 round, 20 rounds ago.
–Ted Simmons fell a couple of votes short of the minimum needed to remain eligible, and thus loses his place on the ballot.
–With Trammell inducted and Simmons dropping off, the holdover list will be reduced from 13 players this round to 11 for the next round. Five will continue to be on the bubble: Sandberg, Murray, Winfield, Reuschel and Lofton.

As usual, you can check out the complete voting record for this past round at Google Docs. The link is here: COG 1948 Vote Tally

If you would like to review the history of the COG voting, a spreadsheet summary of the voting is here: COG Vote Summary , with a summary of the raw vote totals on Sheet 1 and a summary of the percentage totals on Sheet 2.

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The commenter who uses the screen name bells usefully suggested that the list of players inducted in the Circle of Greats so far, which is included at the end of each of these results posts, is getting a little long to be left completely un-annotated and organized solely by alphabet. For now at least, let’s try something new by categorizing the list by the position each player filled the most often during his career.

The Circle of Greats membership thus far:
Bert Blyleven, P
Roger Clemens, P
Tom Glavine, P
Randy Johnson, P
Greg Maddux, P
Mike Mussina, P
Curt Schilling, P
Gary Carter, C
Mike Piazza, C
Jeff Bagwell, 1B
Wade Boggs, 3B
George Brett, 3B
Mike Schmidt, 3B
Barry Larkin, SS
Cal Ripken, Jr., SS
Ozzie Smith, SS
Alan Trammell, SS
Robin Yount, SS
Rickey Henderson, LF
Tim Raines, LF
Barry Bonds, LF
Tony Gwynn, RF
Larry Walker, RF
Paul Molitor, DH
Frank Thomas, DH

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Jeff Harris

11 years ago

Funny that – no 2nd basemen in yet, the only position with a void. Time for Sweet Lou and Grich to get in.

Jeff Harris

11 years ago

Check that, no CF in yet either.

Brendan Bingham

11 years ago

Reply to Jeff Harris

But plenty of games played in center, between Yount and the corner OFs who sometimes played there.

Editor

Bryan O'Connor

11 years ago

Pretty great 25-man roster. Lineup against lefties: 1. Henderson, lf 2. Bonds, cf 3. Thomas, dh 4. Schmidt, 3b 5. Walker, rf 6. Bagwell, 1b 7. Ripken, 2b 8. Carter, c 9. Smith, ss Lineup against righties: 1. Raines, cf 2. Schmidt, 2b 3. Bonds, lf 4. Thomas, dh 5. Brett, 1b 6. Carter, c 7. Gwynn, rf 8. Smith, ss 9. Boggs, 3b I’m pretty sure Ripken and Schmidt can handle 2b defensively, particularly with Ozzie covering half the infield at short. I’d rather have Carter’s defense and Piazza’s bat off the bench. Let’s start Maddux and let Clemens… Read more »

mosc

11 years ago

Reply to Bryan O'Connor

Ozzy’s defense is not that much better than a healthy Barry Larkin and their bats aren’t comparable. Similarly, Molitor is well experienced and competent at the keystone. Other notes, you’d put barry in left and rickey in center. Bond’s arm is terrible. Why would you bench Rickey against Righties? Really? His OBP is only 0.019 worse against righties(and his rhp obp is greater than raines no matter how you slice it, career or peak). Speed is also more effective against righties than lefties when he’s on first. Neither match the power Ricky had against lefties when their facing righties. Raines… Read more »

mosc

11 years ago

Reply to mosc

Seriously, Ricky has a career .395 OBP against RHP. There are few right handed hitters ever born who can say that. In 1990, he OB’d .446 against righties (in 434 PA)! Let the man do his job. I’m sorry but short of leaving out one of the biggest bats of all time, pencil in Rickey batting first and forget it.

Editor

Bryan O'Connor

11 years ago

Reply to mosc

I put this together based solely on handedness. I was kind of hoping someone would dig into the splits and fine tune these lineups. First, I have a vivid image of Larry Walker batting from the right side, but it appears I was wrong. Let’s reverse the platoon. As to Rickey and Raines, I noticed after I put together the first lineup that it only had one lefty (I missed Walker at the time), so I decided to build a “vs. righties” lineup loaded with lefties. Raines got the edge as a switch-hitter, but I suppose that has value off… Read more »

mosc

11 years ago

Reply to Bryan O'Connor

Larkin had double digit RFIELD three times at short, not that I really like that metric. Discounting Ozzy’s statistical 1989 oddity year (32 RFIELD) Ozzy’s next best year (21) is ten up on Larkin’s second best year (11). Their peak RBAT differences? Larkin broke 25 5x times with an oddity of 44. Ozzy’s top 5 RBAT’s are 10,10,4,2,and 2. Yeah, that’s not that close. Basically, you can expect about 20 more RBAT out of larkin than Ozzy and about 10 more RFIELD out of Ozzy than Larkin. The difference in their gloves is half the difference in their bats. Larkin… Read more »

bstar

11 years ago

Reply to mosc

Sorry, you’re no different here than a WAR naysayer who refuses to attempt to learn about the metric and instead complains that complex stats are taking over baseball. People like that DO use stats, just inferior ones (usually Triple Crown numbers). Your final paragraph is eerily similar to this: you decry and spit on Rfield because you don’t agree with results/refuse to attempt to understand how it’s computed, and offer up instead relatively crude (fielding %) and downright godawful (Range Factor) defensive stats in its place. It makes perfect sense why fielding % doesn’t always jibe with Rfield. Infielders with… Read more »

aweb

11 years ago

Reply to mosc

I’ve seen some pretty good arguments that dWAR is likely underestimating the best defensive players, because the measures have a built in regression component that tries to normalize the results. But when someone is consistently well above average, this regression is throwing away some of the credit they should be getting (maybe on Tangotiger’s old site?). Similar to FIP-based pitching WAR, for guys who consistently outperformed (as measured by ERA or RA) their FIP. I think I saw this in an argument for why Jeter was even worse than was commonly believed, as compared to someone like Smith, who was… Read more »

bstar

11 years ago

Reply to Bryan O'Connor

Bryan, perhaps you’re thinking of the time in the All-Star game when Larry Walker was facing Randy Johnson. After taking a pitch over his head (or was that Krukkie?), he flipped his batting helmet backwards and jumped to the RH batter’s box for laughs.

mosc

11 years ago

Reply to Bryan O'Connor

RHP first (more common) 1 Rickey Henderson CF 2 Wade Boggs 3B 3 Barry Bonds LF 4 George Brett 1B 5 Frank Thomas DH 6 Larry Walker RF 7 Robin Yount SS 8 Gary Carter C 9 Paul Molitor 2B LHP 1 Rickey Henderson CF 2 Barry Bonds LF 3 Frank Thomas DH 4 Jeff Bagwell RF 5 Mike Piazza 1B 6 Mike Schmitt 3B 7 Barry Larkin SS 8 Gary Carter C 9 Paul Molitor 2B Middle infield to me is pretty easy. Larkin crushed lefties better than any middle infielder on the list so he’ll start there. Molitor… Read more »

11 years ago

So the question remains…what do High Heat Stat voters have against second baseman????

Comparing Grich to Trammell, Grich was definitely the better candidate and yet the voters preferred Trammell. In case you doubt me, they have the same overall WAR, the same peak, and yet Grich did it in over 1,000 fewer PAs. Grich was better than Trammell. Period.

I would have actually broken my voting moratorium to vote for Grich if it had mattered. But since it didn’t, there was no point in doing so.

Chris C

11 years ago

Reply to Ed

It isn’t that the voters have a problem with 2nd basemen. The problem is that there is no consensus on who the best 2nd baseman is. The vote is crepeatedly split among Alomar, Biggio, Sandberg, Whitaker, and Grich. You feel strongly that Grich is the best, I think it’s Biggio, others think it’s Whitaker, etc. All were excellent and we’re splitting hairs over the differences, so they all miss out.

Chris C

11 years ago

Reply to Ed

I just looked – 55 of the 61 voters voted for at least one 2B on this ballot. The voters definitely want a 2B – they just don’t know which one to put in.

Author

birtelcom

11 years ago

Reply to Ed

Ed at #4: To get most of those 1,000 extra PAs for Trammell you have to include PAs when he was 19 and then at the tail end of his career. He was essentially a replacement level player in those periods. But if you look at Trammell’s career from 20 through 35, you get 71.2 b-ref WAR in 8,555 PAs compared to Grich’s career (age 21 through 37) at 71.0 b-ref WAR over 8,220 PAs, I don’t think there is any clear WAR advantage for Grich. Adam Darowski’s Hall of Stats ranking, which balances b-ref’s raw WAR totals with a… Read more »

11 years ago

Reply to birtelcom

True Birtelcom but personally I’m not in favor of willy-nilly throwing out years of a player’s career. Those replacement level season are part of Trammell’s record even if they’re “inconvenient”.

And an apples-to-apples comparison would look at ages 21-37 for both (or some other same age comparison). Just looking at age 21-37, Grich had slightly more WAR (71.0 vs 69.1) in slightly less playing time (8220 PAs vs. 8617). Not a big difference but enough in my opinion.

bstar

11 years ago

Reply to Ed

Also, Trammell has a WS ring and, as birtelcom noted, a glittering postseason record while Grich has the polar opposite: a .182 BA and a .566 OPS in 98 postseason PA.

Hartvig

11 years ago

With 7 pitchers among the 25 inductees we’re right in line with the proportion of pitcher to position player ratio of the Hall of Fame- not that that should matter this early in the process. It could be argued that we have an over-representation of shortstops but I would attribute that more to a freak concentration of talent at the position from about 1975 to 1995 just like there was in center field in the 1950’s and first base in the 1930’s rather than any voter bias. I think an easy case can be made that every one of the… Read more »

brp

11 years ago

Reply to Hartvig

We do have a lot of SS, but I really think of Yount primarily as CF. Granted there is about a 50/50 split there. As for the lack of 2B I have a hard time believing Joe Morgan won’t win the 1943 round or at least one of the years close to that.

Eventually we will get to Jackie Robinson and Rogers Hornsby, who I think both should get in. Robinson for sure as a lock. Also I imagine at least one of the Grich/Whitaker/Alomar will make it; it seems like Sandberg & Biggio will fall short.

KalineCountry

11 years ago

I am certainly pleased to read Trammell has been inducted into the High Heat Circle of Greats. A deserving member.
I think Trammell is ‘overall right there’ with the shortstops who have been voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Tram was fundamentally perfect as a shortstop.
I hope I live long enough to see him, Lou Whitaker, Bobby Grich, and several other deserving players, who for whatever the voter’s reasons, have languished with low percentages, or failed within the 15 years, while similar contemporaries gained entrance into the hallowed halls of Cooperstown.

Chad

11 years ago

Bravo. About time.

Fireworks

11 years ago

Gotta go with Sweet Lou next round. Tram and Whit belong together.