It’s a minor quibble, overall I think the presentation of this site is fantastic.

I love all the cool little unique things like the Trade section and the weighted balance sheet that’s offered. The players pages are excellent as well with all time team-mate page etc.

Since Howser only managed 1 game and lost that game, he actually gets credit for negative bonus points because he actually hindered the teams chances of making the postseason.

It’s not perfect and I should probably give more credit to the manager who actually managed the team in the postseason, but I still think that the others deserve some credit as well.

The big knock against Piniella IMO is that he made only one WS appearance in 7 play-off appearances. Seriously how did he never make it to at least one WS with those Mariners teams? R. Johnson-Griffey-A-Rod-Edgar and not one WS appearance? Then no WS with the Ichiro-Olerud-Edgar-Cameron group either.

Your point on Robinson is a valid one. I think he got something of a lifetime achievement induction because his managerial record is fairly mediocre. Basically inducted him as a manager is kind of like inducting Chuck Dressen. As a player there’s not really anything special about him, actually he was a rather poor player according to WAR, Win shares. The coaching he did on those Giants teams was probably the only thing that distinguishes himself. In many ways inducting him is like inducted Don Zimmer. Sort of like, “you were a mediocre sometimes terrible manager, a rather poor player, but you were a coach on some great WS teams and you’ve been in the game for 60 years so here’s a plaque.”

You also bring up an interesting point in that they should have a separate category for combined achievement, i.e, player-coach-manger-executive. That would be for guys like Gil Hodges, Jim Fregosi, Mike Hargrove etc. Basically good to very good players who bumped up their status with some very good/great managerial work or coaching. I think that’s what they did with Red Schoendienst.

I have some minor disagreements with your managerial page. You give credit to Dick Howser for a WS championship in 1978 when he only managed one game for the ’78 Yankees? You also give credit to Billy Martin for the ’78 Championship when he was fired half way through the season?

You also give Howser credit for a division title in 1981. The Royals won a 1/2 division that year and then lost the western division to the A’s. So technically the A’s were the 1981 division champs. I think the 1981 Royals are the only team in BB history to make the playoffs with a losing record 50-53. 1981 was very weird overall in that the Reds and the Cardinals had the best overall record in the National League and neither teams made the playoffs.

Wilbert Robinson is an interesting case and while he was inducted as a Manager, I think voters may have taken his entire career into account. He was the catcher of the great 1890′s Orioles teams and was a coach for the NY Giants when they were winning multiple pennants. As a manager, he was so well liked that they pretty much changed the team name to Robins because of him and weren’t the Dodgers until after he was gone.

And Billy Martin should be in the HoF easily IMO. He took 4 teams to the playoffs and had a +.500 season with all 5 of his teams. Unfortunately, he’ll be remembered for the craziness of the Bronx Zoo with Steinbrenner.

The ’93 Braves had +40 runs saved, but we have them at just 1.6 for our 3-year average which tells me that some of their fielders (ie Pendleton) got a little lucky in ’93. So Glavine just received .1 of the team’s 1.6 runs.
We increase the sample size to 3-years to give a better representation of the player’s skill at a position.

On the same vein, I was digging around those Braves teams, and noticed that in 1993, the Braves DRA was +40 runs, but Glavine was awarded with +.1 runs prevented by his defense. What would cause that? There were several years like this for Glavine, especially. Weird batted ball distribution? Something to do with handedness? Any ideas?

Thanks by the way! Great work – I really like the construct of this version of WAR. I am still not sure about the ability to quantify league quality into WAR, but I like that you have taken a stab at it.

What your list shows is that Billy Martin is a glaring omission to the HOF. Maybe the circus that Steinbrenner created distorted peoples appreciation of Martin’s work. I never quite understood why Ralph Houk and Danny Murtaugh were never elected to the HOF as well. It also looks like Charlie Grimm and Hughie Jennings should have been elected to the HOF.

What’s interesting is that realistically Fred Clarke, Cap Anson, and Frank Chance should be in the HOF as both players and managers. Charles Comisky probably deserves to be elected as both a pioneer and a manager. You can also make a case that John Mcgraw should have been elected as a player as well.