Even against a couple of popular birth-year classmates, Jimmie Foxx  dominated this week’s vote to easily win induction as the 80th member of the High Heat Stats Circle of Greats. More on Foxx and the voting after the jump

Was Foxx the most valuable young batter in major league history, looking back even now? Rbat, also called WAR Runs Batting, is Baseball-Reference’s statistic estimating how many runs a hitter created with his batting, compared to what an average hitter would have created in the same run-scoring environment (i.e., a home park and league with a similar run-scoring level) over the same number of plate appearances.

Most Rbat Through Age 30 Season, MLB History
1. Jimmie Foxx 632.4
2. Mickey Mantle 631.8
3. Lou Gehrig 622.9
4. Babe Ruth 622.4
5. Ty Cobb 621.3

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Most Runs Batted In Through Age 34 Season, MLB History:
1. Jimmie Foxx 1,882
2. Lou Gehrig 1,880
3. Alex Rodriguez 1,831
4. Mel Ott 1,695
5. Hank Aaron 1,627

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Here’s a Foxx-led stat that was mentioned by an HHS commenter recently:
Highest Career Regular Season OPS By A Righty Batter, MLB History (min. 50 career PAs) (career OPS+ in parens)
1. Jimmie Foxx 1.038 (163)
2. Hank Greenberg 1.017 (158)
3. Rogers Hornsby 1.010 (175)
4. Manny Ramierez .996 (154)
5. Albert Pujols .991 (162)

(6th on this list is Frank Ernaga, who had .985 career OPS in 52 career PAs, all for the Cubs in 1957-58. Ernaga Interview)

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As noted above, Foxx’s career regular season OPS was 1.038, with a .428 OBP and a .609 SLG. In his 75 PAs over 18 World Series games, his OPS was 1.034, with a .425 OBP and a .609 SLG, proving he could defeat even the god of small sample probabilities. He certainly earned his two consecutive World Championships.

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The only first basemen to lead all American League batters and pitchers over a full season in total Wins Above Replacement:
Jimmie Foxx 1932, 1933 and 1938
Lou Gehrig 1934
Rod Carew 1977
Jason Giambi 2001

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Most Home Runs From the 5th Spot in the Batting Order:
1. Jimmie Foxx 203
2. Norm Cash 163
3. Ernie Banks 161
T4. Robin Ventura and Orlando Cepeda 159

Highest OPS From the 5th Spot in the Batting Order (1914-2014) (min. 1,000 PAs in the 5th Spot):
1. Jimmie Foxx 1.050
2. Lou Gehrig 1.034
3. Johnny Mize .999
4. Barry Bonds .981
5. Mel Ott .971

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Jimmie Foxx played for the A’s only through his age 27 season, but he’s the most productive hitter, by a huge margin, in franchise history anyway:

Most Rbat for the Athletics franchise
1. Jimmie Foxx 486.6
2. Rickey Henderson 386.5
3. Mark McGwire 337.8
4. Al Simmons 335.1
5. Bob Johnson 300.7

Foxx is 9th in Rbat for the Red Sox franchise.

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Notes on this round’s voting:

–Players born in 1907 received exactly half of all the votes cast this round. With 62 ballots cast, there were 186 votes to be counted. A total of 93 votes, precisely 50%, went to the born-in-1907 group of Foxx, Dickey, Appling and Camilli.

–With the newcomers soaking up that many votes, something, or rather, someone, had to give among the holdovers and it turned out to be Joe Medwick, who had been hanging on by slim margins but was abandoned this time for more popular preservation projects. Medwick received only one vote this time, and falls off the eligibility list.

–Kevin Brown also paid a bit of the price associated with a strong birth-year class. Brown fell just short of 10% support level this time, and drops from three guaranteed eligibility rounds down to just two. Roberto Alomar barely avoided losing a round of eligibility, edging over the 10% level in the last hour or so of voting. Many other holdovers received lower vote totals than they have in a long time, or ever.

–Dickey and Appling both easily topped the 25% support level, and so join the holdover list with two rounds of guaranteed eligibility already in hand.

–David Cone and Dwight Evans are the winners of Redemption Round Seven/Part 1 and will return to the eligible list next round, although both will be on the bubble and part of a large group of holdovers. We had 13 holdovers this round, and with Dickey, Appling, Evans and Cone all joining, and only Medwick falling off, we’ll be up to 16 holdovers for the 1907 Part 2 Round that’s about to begin.

–Willie Randolph, Bret Saberhagen and Andre Dawson also made quite respectable showings in the Redemption Round voting, but well behind Cone and Evans.
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The full spreadsheet showing this round’s vote tally is here: COG 1907 Part 1 Vote Tally.

The vote summary for recent Circle of Greats voting rounds is here: COG Vote Summary 2 .  An archive w ith details of the 1968 through 1939 rounds is here: COG 1968-1939 Vote Summary .  In both cases, raw vote totals for each past round appear on Sheet 1 and the percentage totals for each past round appear on Sheet 2.

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A spreadsheet listing the full membership to date of the Circle of Greats, along with some of their stats, is here: Circle of Greats Membership . You can also find that same link any time by clicking on “Circle of Greats” at the top of the High Heats Stats home page.

Another COG data spreadsheet showing each season a COG member played in the majors, along with the team he played for that season and his baseball-reference WAR (overall WAR for everyday players, pitching WAR for pitchers) for the season, is here:
Circle of Greats Seasons