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Well, as mentioned, I mistimed everything on this ballot. We'll do better next year. So here's what I'm going to do now. Today: List off the rest of the Race to 400 ballot. Tomorrow morning: Post my ballot, along with my predictions for each player's vote total. Tomorrow morning: Release...
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My guess? Vizquel stays on the ballot every year and is elected by some future VC. ManRam is made an example of and gets in after he dies. Rivera will get a higher % of the vote than Griffey did but it won’t be unanimous. Also caring about a unanimous vote is dumb.
Something seems off about Vernon Wells here. 293 points for hitting, but Miguel Tejada only has 150? Well, 293 is Vernon Wells’ B-R score on Runs above Replacement. But his Rbat is 30. Tejada has 494 RAR and an Rbat of 102. On Fangraphs Tejada has a wRAA of 91.7 while Wells’ is 55.3. I think your expectation that Wells should have scored lower is well founded.
Trying to make sense of advanced stats can drive you crazy. Too many contradictions.
You can probably adjust Wells’ score up or down, as you prefer, because of his infamous contract. For 7 years the guy was grossly overpaid, and is largely the reason I even remember who Vernon Wells and the guy who signed him, JP Ricciardi, are.
I just don’t know whether to give him positive credit (for raking in the $$) or negative.
Certainly whoever on the Yankees was responsible for signing him for his last season, for $21,000,000, when it was clear that he was a replacement-level player, should get negative credit. (Unless the Yankees paid none of that obscene salary.) Hopefully the apparently slowdown of free agent signings means that GM’s are starting to become less stupid about paying old, bad players dozens of millions of dollars. 🙂
You’re right–that’s a mistake. Joe has been (roughly) using Runs Above Average, but for Wells used Runs Above Replacement. He should have 28 in that category…
I’m not sure that “drove everyone crazy” and “always played on winning teams” should be a net minus for Manny. Being the real oddball on teams that were always in the playoffs seems like a great way to generally get attention and could really add to a HoF case.
The Yankees absorbed 13.9 million of the 42 million that was owed to Wells when they acquired him.
Joe, you could always do longer articles for this whole list after the election. We’re in no rush!
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Tejada did not win MVP in his 150 RBI season ( I know, right?) He came in fifth. The fact that he had a 150 RBI eason AND an MVP season is pretty big. You vastly undrrate him, This is a career shortstop who played every day, and whose most comparable players are Cano, Sandberg, Simmons, Trammell, Fisk, and Berra.