The “Expansion Era Committee” of the Hall of Fame will consider twelve candidates for induction this year. Those candidates who appear on 75% of the ballots of the sixteen committee members will be inducted into the Hall in July, 2014.  The results of the committee’s voting will be announced on December 9.

Four of the twelve candidates being considered were long-time managers: Bobby Cox, Joe Torre, Tony La Russa and Billy Martin.   Evaluating managerial performance is not easy — it is very difficult to separate the contributions a baseball manager makes to winning from those of his players.  But what we can do is evaluate what kinds of records have led previous managers to be inducted into the Hall.  I’ve found that the following formula is very good as a description of which managers have made it into the Hall:

–First, take the number of games over .500  a manager’s teams have been during the regular season overall for his career.
–Then add to that a number equal to 100 times the number of AL and NL pennants the manager’s teams won.
–Then add a bonus of  85 times the number of World Series won.

Let’s call the result HOF Manager Index Points (“MIPs”).  After the jump is a table of the top MIP totals in major league history.  Checking the table you’ll see that of the of the top 27 MIP totals (540 MIP points or more), 26 managers are either in the Hall of Fame (elected either as managers, executives or players) or are on the current Expansion Era Committee ballot.  The only manager with more than  540 MIPs who is not in the Hall, or on the current ballot, is Ralph Houk, who is down at 25th on the list with 558 MIPs.

Only two managers with MIP totals below 540 have ever been inducted into the Hall as managers: Bucky Harris, who you’ll see at 40th on the MIP list in the table with 409 MIPs, and Wilbert Robinson, who sits down at 75th on the MIP (too low for the table below) — now tied, actually, at 201 MIPs with John Farrell.

If we take 540 MIPs as the normal cutoff point for managers to make it into the Hall, three of the current nominees look like shoo-ins, either this year or in the future: Torre, La Russa and Cox all have over 1,000 MIPs and sit in the top 10 in the MIP list all-time.  Billy Martin falls just short at 525 MIPs.

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