BASEBALL'S 2015 GOLDEN ERA COMMITTEE BALLOT: ARE THERE ANY HALL OF FAME PLAYERS LEFT?

The Current Structure of the Veterans Committee

Actually, since 2010 the "Veterans Committee" has comprised three separate committees: the Pre-Integration Committee, which covers the period from 1876 to 1946; the Golden Era Committee (1947–1972); and the Expansion Era Committee (1973–present). Each committee meets annually on a rotating basis to evaluate and vote on a roster of candidates selected by a Historical Overview Committee for that particular era. That roster may contain individuals who had been managers, umpires, executives (which includes team owners, general managers, and major league officials), and long-retired players, and just as with the BBWAA balloting, a candidate who receives at least 75 percent of the vote from that era's committee is thus elected to the Hall of Fame.

Last year, the Expansion Era Committee chose three inductees—Bobby Cox, Tony La Russa, and Joe Torre—all managers, although Torre's record as a near-Hall of Fame player was likely another factor, and all are worthy choices. The previous year, the Pre-Integration Era Committee also chose three inductees: Hank O'Day, who, elected as an umpire, also had careers as a baseball player and manager; Jacob Ruppert, the owner of the New York Yankees responsible for bringing Babe Ruth to the franchise; and Deacon White, a Deadball-era player who retired more than a decade before the Wright Brothers flew their first successful airplane.

In 2012, the Golden Era Committee elected one player to the Hall of Fame: Ron Santo, whose initial snubbing by the BBWAA voters had been criticized for years as his case for why he should be in the Hall became stronger every year. (I too championed Santo in my very first column for this site.)

Santo's was an oversight that the Committee corrected—but are there any other players from the "Golden Era" whose careers have been unjustly overlooked?

The 2015 Golden Era Ballot

This year's Golden Era Committee has ten candidates to consider, nine players and one executive. The nine players are Dick Allen, Ken Boyer, Gil Hodges, Jim Kaat, Minnie Miñoso, Tony Oliva, Billy Pierce, Luis Tiant, and Maury Wills. The sole executive is Bob Howsam.

Six of those players were on the 2012 ballot, with Allen, Pierce, and Wills being new for this year. Kaat was the top vote-getter in 2012, garnering 10 of the 16 possible votes for a 62.5 percent showing; Hodges and Miñoso each got nine votes (56.3 percent) while Oliva polled eight (50 percent). Boyer and Tiant received less than three votes each.

All nine players appeared on ballots voted on by BBWAA voters when they were first eligible following retirement—although the fates of three players, noted in the table below, took some interesting wrinkles.

Dick Allen was one-and-done in 1983, but he was returned to the ballot in 1985 and remained on it until 1997, which was his 15th and final year on the ballot—and it included his "missing" year of 1984, when he was not on the ballot.

Ken Boyer spent five years on the ballot beginning with his first year of eligibility in 1975, but he never received five percent of the vote during that time and was dropped following 1979. However, he re-emerged on the ballot in 1985 and remained on it for ten more years, giving him the full 15 years commonly granted (barring election or falling below the five percent threshold) until 2014, when it was announced that the maximum allowable time on the ballot will be reduced to ten years starting with the 2015 vote.

Minnie Miñoso was also a one-and-done in 1969, following his seeming retirement from Major League Baseball in 1964, but then he made brief returns to the Majors in 1976 and again in 1980—more on Miñoso's surprising longevity later—which restarted his eligibility clock, as it were, and he remained on the ballot for 14 more years starting in 1986.

The table below summarizes the nine players' experience on the BBWAA ballots, listing their first year of eligibility (including the anomalous situations described above), the number of years they were on a BBWAA ballot, the percentage of the vote they received in the first and last years of eligibility, and the highest percentage of the vote they received during their entire run on the ballot.

2015 Golden Era Candidates, BBWAA Voting Summary
Player	First Eligible	Years on Ballot	Debut Percentage	Ending Percentage	Highest Percentage
* Allen, Dick	1983	1	3.7	3.7	3.7
* Allen, Dick	1985	13	7.1	16.7	18.9
** Boyer, Ken	1975	5	2.5	4.6	4.7
** Boyer, Ken	1985	10	17.2	11.8	25.5
Hodges, Gil	1969	15	24.1	63.4	63.4
Kaat, Jim	1989	15	19.5	26.2	29.6
*** Miñoso, Minnie	1969	1	1.8	1.8	1.8
*** Miñoso, Minnie	1986	14	20.9	14.7	21.1
Oliva, Tony	1982	15	15.2	36.2	47.3
Pierce, Billy	1970	5	1.7	1.1	1.9
Tiant, Luis	1988	15	30.9	18.0	30.9
Wills, Maury	1978	15	30.3	25.6	40.6

* Dick Allen did not meet the five percent of the vote on his first BBWAA ballot in 1983 to remain on the ballot, but he was returned to the ballot in 1985. Allen's return to the ballot in 1985 took into account his "missing" year, however, as his final year in 1997 was considered his 15th and final year on the ballot.

** Ken Boyer did not meet the five percent of the vote on his first ballot in 1975, but he remained on the ballot until 1979. However, he was reinstated to the BBWAA ballot in 1985.

*** Minnie Miñoso did not meet the five percent of the vote on his first BBWAA ballot in 1969, which followed his last year in the majors in 1964, and he was dropped from subsequent ballots. However, Miñoso returned to the majors briefly in 1976 and in 1980, which reactivated his eligibility starting in 1986.

Seven of the nine Golden Era player-candidates had been on the BBWAA ballot for the full 15 years then established as the maximum number of years allowed on the writers' ballot; Dick Allen was on the ballot for 14 years all told, having lost a year of eligibility between his first year of eligibility and his reinstatement two years later, and Billy Pierce was on the ballot for only five years even though he never reached the two-percent mark in voting during that time. Gil Hodges had the best showing, netting 63.4 percent of the vote in his final year of 1983, which is significant because no other candidate even reached the 50-percent mark in voting during his time on the writers' ballot.

In other words, BBWAA voters of the time did not consider any of the 2015 Golden Era player-candidates to be Hall of Fame-caliber players when each had the opportunity to be voted in by the writers. They did ask for Ken Boyer to be reinstated after his first stint, and his ballot performance was much better during his second term although his best showing was about 25 percent; significantly, though, Ron Santo was also a reinstatement at this time, and the Golden Era Committee did elect Santo to the Hall in 2012. Dick Allen, too, got a new lease of life although he never reached the 19-percent mark in any year on the ballot.

So, are any of the nine players on the 2015 Golden Era ballot secretly Hall of Famers just waiting to be recognized? Will today's advanced statistical analysis help to reveal that fact? That is our purpose here, but before we begin to analyze the players and speculate upon their fate, let's look at the current Golden Era Committee and at a brief history of the Veterans Committee.

The 2015 Golden Era Committee

The 2015 Golden Era Committee comprises 16 members, eight who are currently enshrined in the Hall of Fame (seven players and one executive), four executives, and four media figures. The committee composition differs significantly from the 2012 committee that elected Ron Santo to the Hall; only four members of the 2012 committee are on this current committee.

The Hall of Fame members of the current committee are Jim Bunning, Rod Carew, Pat Gillick, Ferguson Jenkins, Al Kaline, Joe Morgan, Ozzie Smith, and Don Sutton. Only Gillick was not a player, and he and Bunning were elected by the Veterans Committee. The executives are Jim Frey, David Glass, Roland Hemond, and Bob Watson. Watson is a former general manager, notably with the New York Yankees, with whom he won the 1996 World Series and became the first African-American GM to win a world championship, and was also a Major League Baseball official as vice president in charge of discipline and vice president of rules and on-field operations until he retired in 2010; Watson was also a former player with a respectable 19-year career primarily with the Houston Astros, with whom he was thought to have scored MLB's one millionth run in 1975, although that has been disputed subsequently. The media members of the committee are Steve Hirdt, Dick Kaegel, Phil Pepe, and Tracy Ringoldsby.

Kaline, Sutton, Hemond, and Kaegel were members of the 2012 committee.

Brief History of the Veterans Committee

Before evaluating the ten candidates for the 2015 Golden Era ballot, it is useful to review a brief history of the post-BBWAA Hall of Fame voting that has been the task of baseball's various Veterans Committees since 1939. That action in 1939, by the Old Timers Committee, came just three years after the very first elections by the BBWAA in 1936 with the intention of recognizing 19th-century players, including Cap Anson, Candy Cummings, Buck Ewing, and Old Hoss Radbourn.

It indicated early on that baseball was keenly invested in its legacy, and in ensuring that a mechanism existed to memorialize players who may have escaped the notice of the writers; it also ensured that non-players integral to the history of the game also got proper recognition, which in fact began in 1937 with the induction of executives, pioneers, and managers (specifically, Connie Mack and John McGraw). This attention to the game's legacy continued to be felt as, beginning in 1971, a separate Negro Leagues Committee began inducting players (for example, Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, and Buck Leonard) and non-players (Rube Foster) whose careers were primarily or exclusively in the Negro Leagues prior to baseball's integration in 1947.

Since then the various and sundry committees have been criticized either for inducting too many players, or else players of lesser caliber, or not inducting anyone. Adding to the confusion and criticism are the various names of committees tasked with specific duties, and the rules and mandates committees labored under, which over the years have changed as often as have the names of the committees.

For example, in 1945 the Old Timers Committee selected ten inductees as had been requested by Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis, who had died in late 1944 and was himself almost immediately inducted into the Hall; in addition, his mandate lived on as the Old Timers Committee did indeed induct ten players whose careers were primarily in the 19th century, including Dan Brouthers, Jimmy Collins, and King Kelly. This was done also to break up the logjam on the BBWAA ballot, as the BBWAA, which had been meeting every three years at this time, had not elected anyone in 1945. (And does a "logjam" sound similar to our current situation with the BBWAA ballot?)

And even though the Committee was later criticized for inducting too many players, it returned the following year to select eleven more players, including Jesse Burkett, Eddie Plank, and the Cubs' famed double-play team of Frank Chance, Johnny Evers, and Joe Tinker. And while Burkett and 325-game winner Plank seemed reasonable, the Cubs' trio has since been regarded as a sentimental rather than a substantive vote. Moreover, even though the 1945 vote drew criticism only retrospectively, the 1946 vote drew complaints almost immediately, not only for the Committee's choices (right fielder Tommy McCarthy, chosen in 1946, is often regarded as the worst player in the Hall of Fame; his Wins Above Replacement, from baseball-reference.com, admittedly a retrospective value, is 16.1—with the average value of all 24 right fielders in the Hall being 73.2), but for infringing on the responsibilities of the BBWAA, which had been unable to elect candidates at this time.

Thus the Committee scaled back its scope and operations, waiting until 1949 to elect only two players (pitchers Mordecai Brown and Kid Nichols), then waiting four years to elect six candidates (only two of whom were players), and then electing just two candidates every other year until 1961. By now the Committee had renamed and reconstituted itself as the Committee on Baseball Veterans, shortened as the Veterans Committee, and that name has stuck as the catch-all term for any non-BBWAA body evaluating potential Hall of Famers even if the name itself is not actually in use.

In 1962, the Committee (and we are using the catch-all term for simplicity's sake) resumed annual operations, and it remained that way until the end of the century, although names, scope, and members have changed significantly over the last half-century; for instance, the Committee began evaluating Negro Leagues personages for the Hall.

Not that the Committee then became immune to criticism. In the early 1970s, the Committee, with Hall of Fame players Frankie Frisch and Bill Terry prominent members, selected several players, including Chick Hafey, Jesse Haines, High Pockets Kelly, and Rube Marquard, whose credentials are hardly up to Hall standards—more suspiciously, they were also one-time teammates of either Frisch's or Terry's. Thus the Committee's reputation took a serious hit. At the opposite end of the spectrum, the Committee elected no one in 1988, 1990, and 1993.

But even following the suspected Frisch-Terry collusion, the Committee still elected players whose credentials did not seem substantial enough for the Hall of Fame. For every Johnny Mize or Ron Santo or Hoyt Wilhelm elected by the Committee, players whose records and impact were overlooked by the BBWAA, there are a host of marginal players whom the Committee has also deemed worthy of the Hall, including George Kell, Chuck Klein, Bill Mazeroski, Phil Rizzuto, and Hack Wilson.

By the turn of this century, the Veterans Committee instituted a radical reform, greatly expanding the pool of members, including all living Hall of Famers, and creating a Historical Overview Committee to nominate 260 candidates, including 200 players and 60 managers, umpires, and executives. Such an ambitious undertaking resulted, not surprisingly perhaps, in no elections of former players—although the top three vote-getters were Gil Hodges, Tony Oliva, and Ron Santo. In 2005, the Historical Overview Committee offered voters a much-trimmed ballot of 25 players, although voters were still unable to deliver at least 75 percent of the vote required for election to any candidate; again, though, Hodges, Oliva, and Santo were the three highest vote-getters, with first-timer Jim Kaat close behind. The results were the same in 2007—three shutouts in a row—and criticism of the Committee's methods and standards was becoming widespread.

Thus the Committee tried again in 2007, splitting the composite ballot of all candidates into two separate ballots for non-players, one for managers and umpires and one for executives, while reducing the voting membership to a handful of Hall of Famers and adding a small contingent of executives and media members. The Committee would also vote on the non-player ballots only in even-numbered years starting in 2008; meanwhile, the players ballot in 2008, which was limited to players whose careers began after 1943, did not see any elections (although the top finishers remained Santo, Kaat, Oliva, and Hodges), but a separate election in late 2008 for the Class of 2009 for those players whose careers did begin before 1943 yielded the election of second baseman Joe Gordon.

Following a final, non-players vote in late 2009 for the Class of 2010, which saw the election of umpire Doug Harvey and manager Whitey Herzog, the old Veterans Committee was sundered. It was replaced by the current configuration of three separate committees—the Pre-Integration Era (1876 to 1946) Committee, the Golden Era (1947 to 1972) Committee, and the Expansion Era (1973 to the present) Committee—that would vote in turn every year, meaning that each committee would vote every three years. The Historical Overview Committee would continue to select the candidates for each ballot, with that ballot now including players and non-players alike. And a select number of members—players, executives, and media figures—would staff each committee, with most members joining for one session before being replaced.

First up for the Class of 2011 was the Expansion Era Committee, which voted executive Pat Gillick, who as a general manager won world championships with the Toronto Blue Jays (1992, 1993) and Philadelphia Phillies (2008), into the Hall. The Golden Era Committee voted Ron Santo into the Hall for 2012. In 2013, the Pre-Integration Committee elected three candidates, umpire Hank O'Day, executive Jacob Ruppert, and catcher/third baseman Deacon White, in a year that saw the BBWAA unable to muster a 75-percent vote for any player on its superstar-packed ballot that was also laced by players with known or suspected performance-enhancing drug involvement (this was the first ballot for left fielder Barry Bonds and pitcher Roger Clemens, for instance)—leading to sardonic remarks about how the only Hall-worthy candidates in 2013 were those who had been dead for more than seven decades. The Expansion Era Committee, in its second showing for the Class of 2014, did manage to elect three managers, Bobby Cox, Tony La Russa, and Joe Torre, who are all living; they joined the three candidates the BBWAA managed to elect for 2014, pitcher Tom Glavine, pitcher Greg Maddux, and first baseman/designated hitter Frank Thomas, at Cooperstown, New York, for the induction ceremonies earlier this year.

Which brings us to the Golden Era Committee's turn at bat for the Class of 2015. But although the changes instituted from 2011 on seem to be viable, a vital question remains unanswered: Are there really any Hall of Fame players left unselected from the Pre-Integration and Golden Eras?

Of course, cases can still be made for a few players from the Pre-Integration Era (I would make one for shortstop Bill Dahlen), and we will soon find out whether any of the player-candidates for the 2015 Golden Era Committee ballot are truly Hall of Fame-caliber. But the point is this: After three-quarters of a century of baseball second-guessing itself—or at least the Baseball Writers Association of America—about the legacy of its players and non-players alike, haven't these candidates been examined and re-examined enough already?

A re-examination using current advanced metrics may reveal a Ron Santo or a Bill Dahlen, a "sleeper" Hall of Famer whose anecdotal tales of greatness are validated by his statistical record. (Conversely, those same metrics can reveal that existing Hall of Famers may not be as good as their tales initially advertised them to be.)

Will the Historical Overview Committee keep sending the same candidates to the ballots until it finds a voting committee that will finally elect them? Or, as with the BBWAA ballot, should there be a statute of limitations, a maximum number of times a candidate can appear on a "Veterans Committee" ballot before being removed permanently? (Keeping in mind that this year the BBWAA rules were amended to shorten the time allowed on its ballot from fifteen years to ten years.)

For our purposes, these are rhetorical questions, but they are ones to keep in mind as we examine these well-examined nine players on the 2015 Golden Era ballot.

The 2015 Golden Era Player Candidates

Make no mistake about the nine player candidates on the 2015 Golden Era ballot: They are "bubble" candidates—players whose records and accomplishments are on that great, fuzzy margin that separates Hall of Fame talent from the rest of the field.

If there are any players here who truly belong in the Hall, it will be a judgment call to elect them now—keeping in mind that with two exceptions, Dick Allen and Billy Pierce, these players were on BBWAA ballots for all fifteen years of eligibility (Allen was on fourteen ballots; Pierce on five), all nine players have been considered by previous Veterans Committees, and all except for Allen, Pierce, and Maury Wills were on the 2012 Golden Era ballot that elected Ron Santo to the Hall.

The players' records don't change but perceptions of them do. In a context-neutral setting, Santo's numbers were not eye-popping, but putting him in the context of the tough-pitching 1960s and his playing for the generally hapless Chicago Cubs, along with advanced qualitative statistics that supported the anecdotal evidence of Santo's excellence, convinced committee voters in 2012. Will any candidates in 2015 experience a similar reversal of fortune?

Perhaps, but even advanced statistics may not help as much as could be expected, at least with respect to Wins Above Replacement player, or WAR, which measures a player's contribution to his team's wins, taking into account his offensive and defensive contributions, above what a replacement player would contribute. WAR is not a be-all and end-all statistic, but it does give an indication of a player's worth, and it is the only statistic that can be used to compare position players with pitchers. There are different versions of WAR; the two versions discussed here are from Baseball Reference (bWAR) and FanGraphs (fWAR). Often, the difference between the two is marginal—but as we will see below, there can be significant differences in a couple of cases.

Here are the six position players on the 2015 Golden Era ballot, ranked by bWAR, with other qualitative statistics, including fWAR, listed alongside it and explained below the table.

Position Players on the 2015 Golden Era Ballot, Ranked by bWAR
Position Player	Slash Line	wOBA	bWAR	fWAR	OPS+	wRC+
Boyer, Ken	.287/.349/.462	.355	62.8	54.8	116	116
Allen, Dick	.292/.378/.534	.400	58.7	61.3	156	155
Miñoso, Minnie	.298/.389/.459	.382	50.1	50.8	130	133
Hodges, Gil	.273/.359/.487	.378	44.9	42.1	120	121
Oliva, Tony	.304/.353/.476	.365	43.0	40.7	131	129
Wills, Maury	.281/.330/.331	.301	39.5	35.7	88	91

Slash Line: Grouping of the player's career batting average, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage.

wOBA: Weighted on-base average as calculated by FanGraphs. Weighs singles, extra-base hits, walks, and hits by pitch; generally, .400 is excellent and .320 is league-average.

bWAR: Career Wins Above Replacement as calculated by Baseball Reference.

fWAR: Career Wins Above Replacement as calculated by FanGraphs.

OPS+: Career on-base percentage plus slugging percentage, league- and park-adjusted, as calculated by Baseball Reference. Positively indexed to 100, with a 100 OPS+ indicating a league-average player, and values above 100 indicating the degrees better a player is than a league-average player.

wRC+: Career weighted Runs Created, league- and park-adjusted, as calculated by FanGraphs. Positively indexed to 100, with a 100 wRC+ indicating a league-average player, and values above 100 indicating the degrees better a player is than a league-average player.

Here are the three pitchers on the 2015 Golden Era ballot, ranked by bWAR, with other qualitative statistics, including fWAR, listed alongside it and explained below the table.

Pitchers on the 2015 Golden Era Ballot, Ranked by bWAR
Pitcher	W-L (S), ERA	bWAR	fWAR	ERA+	ERA–	FIP–
Tiant, Luis	229–172 (15), 3.30	66.7	53.9	114	87	90
Pierce, Billy	211–169 (32), 3.27	53.2	54.7	119	84	90
Kaat, Jim	283–237 (18), 3.45	45.3	69.4	108	93	90

W-L (S), ERA: Grouping of the pitcher's career win-loss record (and career saves, if applicable) and career earned run average (ERA).

bWAR: Career Wins Above Replacement as calculated by Baseball Reference.

fWAR: Career Wins Above Replacement as calculated by FanGraphs.

ERA+: Career ERA, league- and park-adjusted, as calculated by Baseball Reference. Positively indexed to 100, with a 100 ERA+ indicating a league-average pitcher, and values above 100 indicating the degrees better a pitcher is than a league-average pitcher.

ERA–: Career ERA, league- and park-adjusted, as calculated by FanGraphs. Negatively indexed to 100, with a 100 ERA- indicating a league-average pitcher, and values below 100 indicating the degrees better a pitcher is than a league-average pitcher.

FIP–: Fielding-independent pitching, a pitcher's ERA with his fielders' impact factored out, league- and park-adjusted, as calculated by FanGraphs. Negatively indexed to 100, with a 100 FIP– indicating a league-average pitcher, and values below 100 indicating the degrees better a pitcher is than a league-average pitcher.

The table below combines both position players and pitchers into a ranking by bWAR with their fWAR values also listed.

All 2015 Golden Era Candidates, Ranked by bWAR
Rank	Player	bWAR	fWAR
1	Tiant, Luis	66.7	53.9
2	Boyer, Ken	62.8	54.8
3	Allen, Dick	58.7	61.3
4	Pierce, Billy	53.2	54.7
5	Miñoso, Minnie	50.1	50.8
6	Kaat, Jim	45.3	69.4
7	Hodges, Gil	44.9	42.1
8	Oliva, Tony	43.0	40.7
9	Wills, Maury	39.5	35.7

According to bWAR, and using 60.0 WAR as a rough baseline for serious consideration for the Hall of Fame, both Luis Tiant and Ken Boyer appear to be worthy of discussion, with Dick Allen also a possibility. However, fWAR tells a different story.

The table below combines both position players and pitchers into a ranking by fWAR with their bWAR values also listed.

All 2015 Golden Era Candidates, Ranked by fWAR
Rank	Player	fWAR	bWAR
1	Kaat, Jim	69.4	45.3
2	Allen, Dick	61.3	58.7
3	Boyer, Ken	54.8	62.8
4	Pierce, Billy	54.7	53.2
5	Tiant, Luis	53.9	66.7
6	Miñoso, Minnie	50.8	50.1
7	Hodges, Gil	42.1	44.9
8	Oliva, Tony	40.7	43.0
9	Wills, Maury	35.7	39.5

According to fWAR, Jim Kaat now appears to be the front-runner, with Allen the next-best bet, and Boyer and Tiant less serious candidates than they were when ranked by bWAR. This pinpoints the limitations of using WAR as the only, or even primary, metric, as the player's value changes based on which version of WAR is used. But is there a tool that enables a comparison against existing Hall of Famers?

Yes, there is. Sabermetrician Jay Jaffe has developed "JAWS," the Jaffe WAR Score system, to compare a player at a position against all players, in aggregate, who are already in the Hall at that position by using their WAR values. Note that Jaffe's system uses the Baseball Reference version of WAR, and the usual caveats about the limitations of WAR apply.

The JAWS rating itself is an average of a player's career WAR and his seven-year WAR peak. Jaffe also assigns one position to a player who may have played at more than one position, choosing the position at which the player contributed the most value; thus, in the table below, Dick Allen is compared against third basemen although he actually played more games at first base. The purpose of JAWS is to improve, or at least maintain, the current Hall of Fame standards at each position to ensure that only players at least as good as average current Hall of Famers are selected for the Hall.

The table below lists all nine players on the 2015 Golden Era ballot, ranked by bWAR, along with their JAWS statistics, which are explained below the table, as well as the average bWAR and JAWS statistics for all Hall of Fame players at that position. The table also contains the players' ratings for the Hall of Fame Monitor and the Hall of Fame Standards, also explained below the table.

All 2015 Golden Era Candidates, Qualitative Comparisons to Hall of Fame Players (Ranked by bWAR)
Player	Pos.	bWAR	WAR7	JAWS	JAWS Rank	Ave. HoF bWAR	Ave. HoF JAWS	HoF Mon. (≈100)	HoF Std. (≈50)
Tiant, Luis	SP	66.7	44.6	55.6	51	73.4	61.8	97	41
Boyer, Ken	3B	62.8	46.3	54.5	14	67.4	55.0	86	36
Allen, Dick	3B	58.7	45.9	52.3	17	67.4	55.0	99	39
Pierce, Billy	SP	53.2	37.8	45.5	97	73.4	61.8	82	35
Miñoso, Minnie	LF	50.1	39.8	45.0	22	65.1	53.3	87	35
Kaat, Jim	SP	45.3	38.4	44.9	101	73.4	61.8	130	44
Hodges, Gil	1B	44.9	34.2	39.6	34	65.9	54.2	83	32
Oliva, Tony	RF	43.0	38.5	40.8	32	73.2	58.1	114	29
Wills, Maury	SS	39.5	29.5	34.5	46	66.7	54.7	104	29

Pos.: Player's position under evaluation in this table.

bWAR: Career Wins Above Replacement as calculated by Baseball Reference.

WAR7: The sum of a player's best seven seasons as defined by bWAR; they need not be consecutive seasons.

JAWS: Jaffe WAR Score system—an average of a player's career WAR and his seven-year WAR peak.

JAWS Rank: The player's ranking at that position by JAWS rating.

Ave. HoF bWAR: The average bWAR value of all the Hall of Famers at that position.

Ave. HoF JAWS: The average JAWS rating of all the Hall of Famers at that position.

Hall of Fame Monitor: An index of how likely a player is to be inducted to the Hall of Fame based on his entire playing record (offensive, defensive, awards, position played, postseason success), with an index score of 100 being a good possibility and 130 a "virtual cinch." Developed by Baseball Reference from a creation by Bill James.

Hall of Fame Standards: An index of performance standards, indexed to 50 as being the score for an average Hall of Famer. Developed by Baseball Reference from a creation by Bill James.

With a few isolated exceptions, the various elements used to compare the nine Golden Era player candidates show that the candidates do not measure up to Hall of Fame standards. A few are close, and arguments can be made for them that they are worthy candidates compared to some players already enshrined in the Hall, several of those elected by past Veterans Committees—and as we have seen earlier, some of those committees made some dubious selections.

But because this committee is focusing solely on the Golden Era from 1947 to 1972, it may be helpful to concentrate on only those Hall of Fame players as comparisons to the nine candidates. In other words, how do our nine candidates stack up against their contemporaries already enshrined in the Hall of Fame?

Golden Era Hall of Fame First Basemen

Because these nine player candidates have been identified as belonging to the Golden Era, it may be useful to compare them with their Golden Era contemporaries already in the Hall of Fame. So, starting with this segment and in the following segments, I have grouped each of the nine player candidates with the Hall of Fame players that also played the same position as the candidate. The exception is Dick Allen, who played both first base and third base and is included in the comparisons of Hall of Fame players at both positions; although Allen played more games at first base, Jay Jaffe's JAWS statistics lists him as a third baseman because he provided the greatest value at third.

The Hall of Fame players were selected if they played the majority of their careers during the pre-defined Golden Era. I used 1964 as the latest first-year date for the Hall of Fame players because that is the first-year date for Luis Tiant, who had the latest start of the nine candidates.

The purpose of this is simple: If these nine player candidates are to be considered Hall of Fame players from baseball's Golden Era, how do they stack up against other Fame players from that Golden Era who already have been inducted into the Hall of Fame?

Let's start with first base. Here are the five Hall of Fame first basemen associated with the Golden Era and 2015 Golden Era first-base candidates Dick Allen and Gil Hodges, ranked by bWAR, with other qualitative statistics, including fWAR, listed alongside it.

Golden Era Hall of Fame First Basemen and 2015 First Basemen Candidates on the 2015 Golden Era Ballot, Ranked by bWAR
Position Player	Slash Line	wOBA	bWAR	fWAR	OPS+	wRC+
McCovey, Willie	.270/.374/.515	.388	64.4	67.4	147	145
Killebrew, Harmon	.256/.376/.509	.389	60.3	66.1	143	142
Allen, Dick	.292/.378/.534	.400	58.7	61.3	156	155
* Torre, Joe	.297/.365/.452	.365	57.6	62.3	129	129
Perez, Tony	.279/.341/.463	.356	53.9	58.9	122	121
Cepeda, Orlando	.297/.350/.499	.370	50.2	50.3	133	131
Hodges, Gil	.273/.359/.487	.378	44.9	42.1	120	121

* JAWS ranks Joe Torre only as a first baseman because JAWS places his greatest value at that position. However, Torre played more games at catcher; moreover, Torre's induction into the Hall of Fame as a result of the 2014 Expansion Era Committee's vote is based primarily on his post-playing career as a manager.

Among their Golden Era contemporaries, Allen compares quite favorably to Willie McCovey and Harmon Killebrew in percentages (slash line, wOBA), value (WAR), and league- and park-adjusted indexes (OPS+, wRC+). In fact, in this sample, Allen is tops in on-base percentage, slugging percentage, wOBA, OPS+, and wRC+. Hodges, on the other hand, lags behind all others in terms of value, and is most comparable to Tony Perez, who is a very marginal Hall of Famer, and whose eventual election by the BBWAA in 2000 is likely due to his being a key component of the Cincinnati Reds' "Big Red Machine" as much as his individual excellence. This is an angle that applies to Hodges's case, as we will examine shortly.

The table below lists the five Hall of Fame first basemen associated with the Golden Era along with Allen and Hodges, ranked by bWAR, along with their JAWS statistics and ratings for the Hall of Fame Monitor and the Hall of Fame Standards. Also included are the JAWS statistics for all first basemen in the Hall of Fame.

2015 Golden Era First Basemen Candidates, Qualitative Comparisons to Hall of Fame First Basemen (Ranked by bWAR)
Player	No. of Years	From	To	bWAR	WAR7	JAWS	JAWS Rank	HoF Mon. (≈100)	HoF Std. (≈50)
Ave of 19 1B HoFers	NA	NA	NA	65.9	42.4	54.2	NA	NA	NA
McCovey, Willie	22	1959	1980	64.4	44.8	54.6	12	110	44
Killebrew, Harmon	22	1954	1975	60.3	38.1	49.2	19	178	46
Allen, Dick	15	1963	1977	58.7	45.9	52.3	NA	99	39
Torre, Joe	18	1960	1977	57.6	37.3	47.5	22	96	40
Perez, Tony	23	1964	1986	53.9	36.4	45.2	26	81	41
Cepeda, Orlando	17	1958	1974	50.2	34.5	42.4	30	126	37
Hodges, Gil	18	1943	1963	44.9	34.2	39.6	34	83	32

Based on the bWAR and JAWS ratings, only McCovey, Killebrew, and Allen are at or near the average scores of all 19 first basemen already in the Hall of Fame, with Hodges lagging noticeably behind that average. In terms of Hall of Fame Monitor and Standards, only Allen is near the threshold. Among Golden Era first basemen, Allen is qualitatively right on the threshold while Hodges falls appreciably below that threshold.

In terms of personality and temperament, Dick Allen and Gil Hodges are poles apart. We will examine Allen more closely in the third baseman segment below. In this segment, we will examine Hodges more closely.

Gil Hodges and "The Boys of Summer"

Gil Hodges is a sentimental favorite for the Hall of Fame—he polled nine of sixteen votes in the last Golden Era Committee ballot—and that sentiment that has been in part fostered and perpetuated by Roger Kahn's 1972 hagiography about the Brooklyn Dodgers, The Boys of Summer. That keynote book profiled the team up to their 1955 World Series victory in relation to Brooklyn native Kahn's life and career as a reporter and writer. Kahn's gushing paean to the "Bums" still informs "the boys of summer," four of whom were Hodges's teammates during this period and who have been enshrined in the Hall of Fame—where, Hodges's supporters insist, Hodges belongs as well.

But does Hodges stack up against his teammates Roy Campanella, Pee Wee Reese, Jackie Robinson, and Duke Snider? The following table lists the qualitative statistics of these Hall of Fame "boys of summer" along with Hodges's.

Brooklyn Dodgers Golden Era Hall of Fame Position Players and Gil Hodges, Qualitative Statistics Ranked by bWAR
Position Player	Slash Line	wOBA	bWAR	fWAR	OPS+	wRC+
Snider, Duke	.295/.380/.540	.404	66.5	63.5	140	139
Reese, Pee Wee	.269/.366/.377	.350	66.3	64.4	99	103
Robinson, Jackie	.311/.409/.474	.406	61.5	57.2	132	135
Hodges, Gil	.273/.359/.487	.378	44.9	42.1	120	121
Campanella, Roy	.276/.360/.500	.385	34.2	38.2	123	123

The following table lists the Hall of Fame comparison statistics of these "boys of summer."

Brooklyn Dodgers Golden Era Hall of Fame Position Players and Gil Hodges, Hall of Fame Comparison Statistics (Ranked by bWAR)
Player	Pos.	No. of Years	From	To	bWAR	WAR7	JAWS	JAWS Rank	HoF Mon. (≈100)	HoF Std. (≈50)
Snider, Duke	CF	18	1947	1964	66.5	50.0	58.2	7	152	47
Reese, Pee Wee	SS	16	1940	1958	66.3	41.0	53.6	17	100	39
Robinson, Jackie	2B	10	1947	1956	61.5	52.1	56.8	10	98	38
Hodges, Gil	1B	18	1943	1963	44.9	34.2	39.6	34	83	32
Campanella, Roy	C	10	1948	1957	34.2	32.8	33.5	25	108	39

NOTE: Players' WAR and JAWS ratings and ranking are for the players' position listed.

In both sets of data, Hodges generally ranks behind all his "boys of summer" contemporaries except for Roy Campanella, whose slash line, wOBA, OPS+, and wRC+ are roughly equivalent to Hodges's. Campanella, though, suffered misfortune at both ends of his short career: A Negro League player, Campanella's first Major League season was in 1948, following integration the previous year, in his age-26 year. Then, tragically, his career ended following a January 1958 automobile crash that left him paralyzed for the rest of his life. That occurred in what would have been his age-36 year.

Had Campanella not been injured, it is intriguing to consider what the Dodgers would have done with both Campanella and Hodges. As a catcher, Campanella was already in his decline phase before he was injured—in 1957 he started 94 games at catcher, his lowest number since his rookie season—and whether he would have continued as a catcher or have been traded away are points of speculation. However, the Dodgers could have considered moving him to first base—and where would that have left Hodges? Let's note that Hodges had come up as a catcher but was moved to first base to accommodate Campanella. Would Hodges have been moved off first base to accommodate Campanella again?

Again, that is a what-if situation, but it gets to the question of relative value, and of Hodges's specific value. Roy Campanella was named the National League's Most Valuable Player three times (1951, 1953, 1955) during his ten-year career (we'll leave aside whether he deserved the honors), and he finished in the top ten for MVP voting one other time. Jackie Robinson was the NL MVP in 1949, and he finished in the top ten for MVP voting in two other years; Robinson was also the 1947 NL Rookie of the Year—the award is now named for him. Pee Wee Reese was never named MVP but he finished in the top ten for MVP voting eight times. Similarly, Duke Snider was never an MVP but he finished in the top ten six times, with three of those top-five finishes. Hodges had three top-ten MVP-voting finishes and never won the award.

Snider had five consecutive years in which he hit 40 or more home runs, leading the NL in 1956 with 43, and he drove in 100 or more runs six times, leading the NL with 136 in 1955. Hodges hit 40 or more home runs twice and drove in 100 or more runs in seven consecutive seasons, although he never led the league in either category. Campanella hit 41 home runs in 1953, the only time he reached that plateau, while driving in a league-leading 142 runs in that same season, one of three times that he reached that plateau. Campanella, Hodges, and Snider were power-hitting, middle-of-the-order players and are more easily compared to each other, although Robinson, who was not primarily a home-run hitter, actually played more games batting in the cleanup position, and his OPS+ and wRC+ are better than Hodges's. Reese was a table-setter at the top of the order, and his offensive stats cannot match closely to Hodges's—although Reese's batting average and on-base percentage are comparable.

But catcher Campanella, shortstop Reese, second baseman Robinson, and center fielder Snider staffed the core defensive positions up the middle while Hodges was a first baseman, the least demanding defensive position. Granted, Hodges was an excellent-fielding first baseman, winning the first three Gold Glove Awards at that position when the award was introduced in 1957—a greater honor in that inaugural year as the award was presented to only one player at each position across both leagues. However, Hodges's career Range Factor scores are actually lower than the league averages for each statistic: For Range Factor per 9 innings, Hodges posted a 9.56 versus the league's 9.75, and for Range Factor per Game, Hodges had an 8.71 versus the league's 9.67. (For Range Factor per 9 Innings, the equation is put-outs plus assists multiplied by 9, then divided by the number of innings played; for Range Factor per Game, the equation is put-outs plus assists divided by the number of games played.)

Hodges may have been overshadowed by his "boys of summer" teammates, but that is for good reason: Hodges simply wasn't as good as they were in terms of the Hall of Fame. His WAR, JAWS, Hall of Fame Monitor, and Hall of Fame Standards statistics show that he is not even close to the thresholds in comparison either to his storied teammates or to Golden Era first basemen already in the Hall. Aside from the fulsome sentimentality exemplified by Roger Kahn's book, there seems to be a "complete the set" mentality concerning Hodges—all his star "boys of summer" teammates are in the Hall, so why isn't Hodges? That seems to have been the case for Tony Perez, whom even BBWAA voters thought should join his "Big Red Machine" teammates Johnny Bench and Joe Morgan (and presumably Pete Rose should he have been eligible) when they voted Perez into the Hall in 2000. (Coincidentally, the Veterans Committee voted Reds manager Sparky Anderson into the Hall that same year.)

As we have seen in the comparisons above, Hodges and Perez are pretty close to each other in a number of categories. Perez hit for a slightly better average, but Hodges got on base and slugged at a higher percentage. In counting numbers, though, Perez has the edge as he is in the top 60 lifetime in a few key categories: He ranks 57th in hits with 2732 (Hodges ranks 315th with 1921), 55th in doubles with 505 (Hodges is 446th with 295), and 28th in runs batted in with 1652 (Hodges is 125th with 1274), although Perez had more than 2600 more plate appearances than did Hodges, which makes Hodges's 370 home runs to Perez's 379 look that much more impressive. But neither Hodges nor Perez are Hall-worthy.

Where Hodges has another claim to the Hall is as a manager. Following his player retirement during the 1963 season, Hodges became the manager of the Washington Senators until 1967 before becoming the manager of the New York Mets for the 1968 season. The Senators did not have a winning season under Hodges, although in four full seasons the team improved steadily to a 76–85 (.472) mark in 1967. Similarly, the Mets were also a sub-.500 club under him during his first year in New York, but in 1969 Hodges took the "Miracle Mets," who won 100 games and took the National League Pennant, all the way to the World Series, which they won in five games against the heavily favored Baltimore Orioles. Hodges was named The Sporting News Manager of the Year, which in 1969 awarded the honor to only one manager across both leagues. (Note that in 1983 the BBWAA, which votes for Rookie of the Year, Cy Young, and Most Valuable Player awards, instituted its own Manager of the Year award although The Sporting News continues to present its award, and since 1986 it is presented to a manager in each league.)

Here the comparison is to Joe Torre, a near-Hall of Famer as a player who went on to an auspicious managing career, which landed him in the Hall of Fame in 2014. But just as we saw above that Torre's playing record is superior to Hodges's, there is no comparison as a manager. Torre ranks fifth all-time among managers in wins with 2326, against 1997 losses for a .538 winning percentage, winning six pennants along the way. and Torre posted a 84–58 mark (.592) in the postseason, winning four World Series with the New York Yankees; those 84 postseason wins are the best all-time (taking into account that they all came during the current Divisional Era with its three rounds of postseason play, thus greatly expanding the number of postseason games in a season). Hodges posted a 660–753 record (.467) as a manager with one pennant won and one World Series won. Hodges died in 1972, two days shy of his 48th birthday, and thus there is no way to know what Hodges could have accomplished as a manager had he lived.

But you evaluate the baseball you have, not the baseball you wish you had. Hodges's playing record and managing record are not sufficient to call him a Hall of Famer, either singly or together.

Golden Era Hall of Fame Third Basemen

In this segment, we examine the two third basemen candidates named on this year's Golden Era ballot, Dick Allen and Ken Boyer. Allen was evaluated in the preceding segment that examined first basemen as Allen played more games at first base (795 games started; 571 complete games) than at third base (646 games started; 593 complete games). However, Jay Jaffe's JAWS ratings place Allen at third base because he produced his greatest value as a third baseman.

Here are the four Hall of Fame third basemen associated with the Golden Era and 2015 Golden Era third-base candidates Dick Allen and Ken Boyer, ranked by bWAR, with other qualitative statistics, including fWAR, listed alongside it.

Golden Era Hall of Fame Third Basemen and 2015 Third Basemen Candidates on the 2015 Golden Era Ballot, Ranked by bWAR
Position Player	Slash Line	wOBA	bWAR	fWAR	OPS+	wRC+
Mathews, Eddie	.271/.376/.509	.389	96.4	96.1	143	143
Robinson, Brooks	.267/.322/.401	.322	78.3	80.2	104	104
Santo, Ron	.277/.362/.464	.367	70.4	70.9	125	126
Boyer, Ken	.287/.349/.462	.355	62.8	54.8	116	116
Allen, Dick	.292/.378/.534	.400	58.7	61.3	156	155
Kell, George	.306/.367/.414	.362	37.6	38.2	112	111

Both Allen and Boyer rank appreciably behind Brooks Robinson, Ron Santo, and especially Eddie Mathews in terms of WAR, while fWAR gives the greater nod to Allen rather than Boyer in terms of value. However, Allen possesses the best slash line—second-highest batting average and tops in on-base and slugging percentages—along with the highest OPS+ and wRC+. In fact, Allen is 18th all-time in wRC+ and tied for 19th all-time in OPS+ as his 156 is the same as two first-ballot Hall of Famers—Willie Mays and Frank Thomas. Allen's slugging percentage of .534 is 40th all-time, tied with another Hall of Famer, Earl Averill, while his wOBA is tied for 80th all-time (with Lance Berkman and Alex Rodriguez, whose Hall of Fame chances seem blown for years to come following another performance-enhancing drugs admission in 2014), and Allen's .378 on-base percentage ranks 183rd all-time, a tick higher than Rick Ferrell's and a tick below Chuck Klein's, both Hall of Famers (both Veterans Committee inductees, albeit borderline ones).

Boyer, on the other hand, has been considered a poor man's Ron Santo, and as the slash lines above indicate, they are very similar—Boyer hit for a better average, Santo had a better on-base percentage (he led the National League in that category twice and in walks four times), and their slugging averages are a wash. Both played for 15 seasons, but Santo played in roughly 200 more games with about 1100 more plate appearances, which gives him the edge in counting numbers (hits, doubles, home runs, runs scored and runs batted in). Boyer won the NL Most Valuable Player award in 1964 when he led the NL in RBI with 119.

Both third basemen won five Gold Gloves each. Boyer was probably the better defensive third baseman: Baseball Reference calculates his defensive Wins Above Replacement (dWAR) at 10.6 while Santo's is 8.6, and the site calculates Boyer's Total Zone Total Fielding Runs above Average, the number of runs above or below average a fielder was worth based on the number of plays made, at 73 while Santo clocks in at 20. FanGraphs gives Boyer the edge over Santo in Defensive Runs Above Average (the number of runs above or below average a fielder is worth on defense; it combines fielding runs and positional adjustment), with Boyer's 105.7 topping Santo's 69.5, although—oddly—FanGraphs rates Santo higher in Total Zone Number of Runs Saved, with Santo indexed at 27 while Boyer is at 7.

Defensively, Allen is a tremendous hitter. Allen's overall dWAR is –16.5 while his overall Defensive Runs Above Average is –152.2; at third base, Allen rates a –45 in Total Zone Total Fielding Runs above Average and a –46 in Total Zone Number of Runs Saved.

The table below lists the four Hall of Fame third basemen associated with the Golden Era along with Allen and Boyer, ranked by bWAR, along with their JAWS statistics and ratings for the Hall of Fame Monitor and the Hall of Fame Standards. Also included are the JAWS statistics for all third basemen in the Hall of Fame.

2015 Golden Era Third Basemen Candidates, Qualitative Comparisons to Hall of Fame Third Basemen (Ranked by bWAR)
Player	No. of Years	From	To	bWAR	WAR7	JAWS	JAWS Rank	HoF Mon. (≈100)	HoF Std. (≈50)
Mathews, Eddie	17	1952	1968	96.4	54.3	75.4	2	162	54
Robinson, Brooks	23	1955	1977	78.3	45.8	62.1	8	152	34
Santo, Ron	15	1960	1974	70.4	53.8	62.1	7	88	41
Ave of 13 HoFers	NA	NA	NA	67.4	42.7	55.0	NA	NA	NA
Boyer, Ken	15	1955	1969	62.8	46.3	54.5	14	86	36
Allen, Dick	15	1963	1977	58.7	45.9	52.3	17	99	39
Kell, George	15	1943	1957	37.6	27.8	32.7	48	90	29

Both Allen and Boyer are just at the threshold based on WAR and JAWS calculations, several wins under the Hall of Fame average for total WAR, but better than average in seven-year peak, and, Boyer especially, just below the JAWS average, a composite of overall WAR and the seven-year peak. With respect to Hall of Fame Monitor and Standard ratings, Allen looks stronger while Boyer falls just behind Ron Santo, the sole Golden Era candidate elected in 2012.

Ken Boyer is a promising candidate but doesn't quite measure up as a deserving Hall of Fame inductee. Dick Allen is a more intriguing proposition.

The Intriguing if Troubled Career of Dick Allen

Beginning his career in the mid-1960s, Allen is a fitting presence in that turbulent decade—controversial, outspoken, misunderstood, and ultimately mistreated. As an African-American, Allen endured racial harassment even before he joined the Philadelphia Phillies as he became the first black player on the Phillies' minor-league affiliate in Little Rock, Arkansas, at the time still one of the most racially divisive regions in the United States. (Recall that only a few years before, in 1957, Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus had called out the state National Guard to prevent the integration of Little Rock Central High School, a move that was countered by President Dwight Eisenhower when he sent federal troops to Little Rock to ensure the students' safety.)

But when Allen joined the parent club for his first full season in 1964, he merely became the National League's Rookie of the Year when he led the league in runs (125), triples (13), and total bases (352)—and also strikeouts (138)—while collecting 201 hits, slugging 38 doubles and 29 home runs, posting an impressive slash line of .318/.382/.557, generating a 162 OPS+, and driving in 91 runs. Allen was one of the true bright spots in a season that saw the Phillies, who had been in first place for most of the season, fall into a horrendous slump during the final weeks of the season and lose the pennant, one of the most notorious collapses in baseball history. Yet Allen did not endear himself to Phillies fans—indeed, not only did they hurl insults and racial epithets at him, they began to hurl physical objects at him, prompting Allen to wear a batting helmet as he played the field, which earned him the nickname "Crash," short for "crash helmet." Even his teammates threatened him, such as Frank Thomas (not the 2014 Hall of Fame inductee), a known racist who wielded a bat at Allen in an infamous 1965 incident that saw Thomas ejected from the team.

As a result, Allen demanded to be traded from the Phillies. He was traded to the St. Louis Cardinals (who had eventually taken the NL pennant in 1964, with its own third baseman, Ken Boyer, winning the MVP award) in 1970, and found himself again a part of history: One of the players for whom he was traded was Curt Flood, who famously refused to be traded without his consent; Flood's protest, though ultimately futile, did eventually lead to the dismantling of baseball's Reserve Clause and to the current free-agency environment. Allen's short stay in St. Louis was relatively uneventful, and he was traded to the Los Angeles Dodgers, for whom he played one season before being dealt to the Chicago White Sox. (He was traded for Tommy John, who himself would make history for the arm surgery now named for him.)

In his first year with the White Sox, Allen owned the American League: He led the AL in home runs (37), RBI (113), bases on balls (99), on-base percentage (.420), slugging percentage (.603), and, retrospectively, OPS+ (199) while batting .308 and even stealing 19 bases, one shy of his career-high 20 in 1967. Allen walked away with the MVP award, garnering 21 of the 24 first-place votes, and was certainly the best position player in the league that year. But a serious leg injury curtailed his 1973 season, and although he rebounded the following year, his age-32 season, with a .301/.375/.563 slash line and a league-leading 32 home runs (he also led the AL in slugging percentage), Allen quit the White Sox with two weeks to go in the 1974 season, claiming a feud with Ron Santo, in his last season before retirement, was to blame. Allen announced his own retirement following the season, but he was lured back to, of all places, Philadelphia. However, his previous injury and the onset of his decline phase meant that Allen had seen his best seasons already pass him by. He retired for good following the 1977 season, after an undistinguished part-time year with the Oakland Athletics.

In terms of offensive effectiveness, Dick Allen is probably the most potent of the six position-player candidates on the Golden Era ballot. Minnie Miñoso and Tony Oliva could hit for average and get on base, and Gil Hodges hit more home runs (370) than did Allen (351), but Allen could do all of that impressively—and he is the only one of the six with a slugging percentage above .500. Allen's counting numbers cannot match up with career leaders, and apart from his sensational 1964 rookie season and his masterful 1972 MVP season, Allen did not have a streak of dominance that would indicate an incipient Hall of Fame talent; apart from his rookie campaign and his MVP season, he had only one other year in which he finished in the top ten for MVP voting: in 1966, when he placed fourth after generating a .317/.396/.632 slash line—that .632 slugging average led the NL—hitting 40 home runs, and driving in 110 runs.

Offensively, Dick Allen is the best candidate on the 2015 Golden Era ballot, but he falls just short of the Hall of Fame.

Golden Era Hall of Fame Left Fielders

Turning to the left fielder on the Golden Era ballot, Minnie Miñoso, we find that he is among some of the most auspicious names in the Hall of Fame.

Here are the seven Hall of Fame left fielders associated with the Golden Era and 2015 Golden Era left-field candidate Miñoso, ranked by bWAR, with other qualitative statistics, including fWAR, listed alongside it.

Golden Era Hall of Fame Left Fielders and 2015 Left Field Candidate on the 2015 Golden Era Ballot, Ranked by bWAR
Position Player	Slash Line	wOBA	bWAR	fWAR	OPS+	wRC+
Williams, Ted	.344/.482/.634	.493	123.1	130.4	190	188
Yastrzemski, Carl	.285/.379/.462	.375	96.1	94.8	130	130
Williams, Billy	.290/.361/.492	.376	63.5	60.4	133	132
Stargell, Willie	.282/.360/.529	.387	57.5	62.9	147	145
Miñoso, Minnie	.298/.389/.459	.382	50.1	50.8	130	133
Kiner, Ralph	.279/.398/.548	.427	49.3	47.6	149	147
Brock, Lou	.293/.343/.410	.336	45.2	43.2	109	109
* Irvin, Monte	.293/.383/.475	.389	21.4	20.8	125	127

* Monte Irvin was elected to the Hall of Fame by the Negro Leagues Committee; his eight years as an MLB player is insufficient service to qualify for the Hall of Fame ballot under the current rules that stipulate a minimum of ten years' service.

The table above has two significant outliers: At the top, Ted Williams is ridiculously overqualified for the Hall, as befits one of the greatest hitters in baseball history, and although Williams was in his decline phase in the 1950s as Miñoso was in his prime (a decline relative to Williams, that is—he still led the American League in batting in 1957, his age-38 season, with a .388 average while crushing 38 home runs, tied for the second-highest single-season total of his career), it was still Miñoso's misfortune to be a left fielder in the same league as Williams. At the other end of the scale, Monte Irvin played just eight seasons in the major leagues, but he was elected to the Hall of Fame by a special Negro Leagues Committee, having not entered the majors until 1949, his age-30 season—and we will address Minnie Miñoso and baseball's integration below.

So, if we toss out the two outliers in this sample of Golden Era left fielders in the Hall of Fame, we see Miñoso essentially identical to the other five players in terms of slash line, wOBA, OPS+, and wRC+. In WAR, he falls behind Carl Yastrzemski, who is another outlier in this category because of his longevity, Billy Williams, and Willie Stargell, but Miñoso is ahead of Ralph Kiner, whose career was cut short by injury by his age-30 year, and Lou Brock.

The table below lists the seven Hall of Fame left fielders associated with the Golden Era and Miñoso, ranked by bWAR, along with their JAWS statistics and ratings for the Hall of Fame Monitor and the Hall of Fame Standards. Also included are the JAWS statistics for all left fielders in the Hall of Fame.

2015 Golden Era Left Field Candidate, Qualitative Comparisons to Hall of Fame Left Fielders (Ranked by bWAR)
Player	No. of Years	From	To	bWAR	WAR7	JAWS	JAWS Rank	HoF Mon. (≈100)	HoF Std. (≈50)
Williams, Ted	19	1939	1960	123.1	69.2	96.2	2	354	72
Yastrzemski, Carl	23	1961	1983	96.1	55.5	75.8	4	215	60
Ave of 19 HoFers	NA	NA	NA	65.1	41.5	53.3	NA	NA	NA
Williams, Billy	18	1959	1976	63.5	41.3	52.4	11	122	48
Stargell, Willie	21	1962	1982	57.5	38.0	47.7	15	106	44
* Miñoso, Minnie	15	1949	1964	50.1	39.8	45.0	22	87	35
Kiner, Ralph	10	1946	1955	49.3	43.7	46.5	19	136	34
Brock, Lou	19	1961	1979	45.2	32.0	38.6	35	152	43
Irvin, Monte	8	1949	1956	21.4	21.3	21.3	102	18	18

* Minnie Miñoso played in three games (eight plate appearances) in 1976 and in two games (two plate appearances) in 1980.

In terms of WAR and JAWS statistics, Miñoso falls below the average marks for all left fielders in the Hall of Fame, but so does everyone in this sample except for Ted Williams and Yastrzemski. And apart from Irvin, who played just eight major-league seasons, Miñoso falls short in both Hall of Fame Monitor and Hall of Fame Standards ratings.

Furthermore, Miñoso's 15 seasons (not counting his guest appearances in 1976 and 1980) are the fewest in this sample except for Kiner, whose career was cut short by injury by age 30, and Irvin, who did not enter the majors until age 30. Miñoso himself did not play in his first Major League game until 1949, during his age-23 year, and that amounted to nine games and 20 plate appearances with the Cleveland Indians. Prior to that, he had spent three seasons in the Negro Leagues. This prompts the central question of Miñoso's candidacy, which is whether, as a black Latino, he would have compiled a more impressive playing record—and thus have boosted his chances for the Hall of Fame—had he come into the majors earlier in his career. Let's explore that possibility now.

Is Minnie Miñoso the Latino Jackie Robinson?

After three seasons in the Negro Leagues from 1946 to 1948, Minnie Miñoso was signed as a free agent by the Cleveland Indians in 1948. That season, he played a few games for the Indians' Single A affiliate the Dayton (Ohio) Indians before jumping to the parent club's Triple A affiliate the San Diego Padres the following year, for whom he played two full seasons, with a brief call-up to Cleveland in 1949 before making the majors for good in 1951.

Miñoso began that season with the Indians before being traded to the Chicago White Sox as part of a three-team trade (the Philadelphia Athletics being the third team) on April 30. The next day, in his first at-bat with the White Sox, Miñoso hit a 415-foot home run off the very first pitch he saw from the New York Yankees' Vic Raschi, and he was in business with the Sox. That year, Miñoso was the AL Rookie of the Year runner-up to the Yankees' Gil McDougald, and although the voting was fairly close (of the two candidates, McDougald polled 54 percent to Miñoso's 46 percent), in hindsight Miñoso looked to be the stronger candidate—he posted a .326/.422/.500 slash line while leading the AL in triples (14), stolen bases (31), and being hit by a pitch (16), the first of ten times he would lead the league in that category. Miñoso also finished fourth in MVP voting in 1951, and he would go on to finish fourth in MVP voting in three more seasons, with a career top-ten finish in MVP voting totaling five altogether.

Throughout the 1950s, Miñoso continued to be a star player both offensively and defensively, leading the AL in hits once, doubles once, triples three times, and stolen bases three times—as well as caught trying to steal a base six times—in a ten-year period from 1951 to 1960. Miñoso also won a Gold Glove for his defensive play during the first three of the four years the award had been in existence, and like Gil Hodges's win in 1957, Miñoso's win in that year is even more auspicious because there was only one Gold Glove awarded to a specific position for both leagues. Following a good if not noteworthy 1961 campaign in his age-35 year, Miñoso became a part-time player for three years before retiring following the 1964 season.

As we saw previously, Miñoso was a one-and-done in his first time on a Hall of Fame ballot in 1969, netting less than two percent of the vote. However, the White Sox engineered a pair of publicity stunts in 1976 and in 1980 in which Miñoso returned, at age 50 in 1976 and age 54 in 1980, to take a handful of at-bats and thus become the only player in Major League history besides Nick Altrock to play in five different decades. However, the ploy restarted Miñoso's clock with respect to the Hall of Fame—starting in 1986, Miñoso remained on 14 straight ballots, averaging about 15.2 percent of the vote with a high of 21.1 percent in 1988.

Now Minnie Miñoso's chances for the Hall of Fame rest with the Golden Era Committee, and the argument for Miñoso's inclusion is that he is a pioneer—the first star player from a Latin American country, predating Roberto Clemente, and thus is the "Latin Jackie Robinson"—one who also faced discrimination: As a black Cuban, Miñoso spent three years playing in the Negro Leagues at the cusp of baseball's integration before signing with the Cleveland Indians. The Indians were the first American League team to integrate when center fielder Larry Doby played his first major league game less than two months after Robinson did.

Doby saw limited action in 1947 but became a full-time player the following year; he remained the Indians' center fielder through the 1955 season, when he was traded to the White Sox and, fittingly enough, became Miñoso's teammate once again. Larry Doby was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1997 by the Veterans Committee; Doby had an excellent career although on numbers alone he does not look like a Hall of Famer, and his induction is recognition—belated recognition, to be sure—that Doby faced the same daunting challenges as did Jackie Robinson but received nowhere near the attention that Robinson did. Now a similar argument has been put forth for Minnie Miñoso.

The following table lists qualitative statistics for Minnie Miñoso and selected Golden Era Hall of Fame players who played in the Negro Leagues before becoming Major Leaguers, ranked by bWAR.

Golden Era Hall of Fame Negro Leagues Players and Minnie Miñoso, Ranked by bWAR
Player	Age at MLB Debut*	Slash Line	wOBA	bWAR	fWAR	OPS+	wRC+
Robinson, Jackie	28	.311/.409/.474	.406	61.5	57.2	132	135
Miñoso, Minnie	23	.298/.389/.459	.382	50.1	50.8	130	133
Doby, Larry	23	.283/.386/.490	.396	49.5	51.1	136	137
Campanella, Roy	26	.276/.360/.500	.385	34.2	38.2	123	123
Irvin, Monte	30	.293/.383/.475	.389	21.4	20.8	125	127

* Denotes first appearance in a major league game, not necessarily when the player became a full-time player.

The table below lists Minnie Miñoso and selected Golden Era Hall of Fame players who played in the Negro Leagues before becoming Major Leaguers, ranked by bWAR, along with their JAWS statistics and ratings for the Hall of Fame Monitor and the Hall of Fame Standards.

Minnie Miñoso Qualitative Comparisons to Golden Era Hall of Fame Negro Leagues Players, Ranked by bWAR
Player	No. of Years	From	To	bWAR	WAR7	JAWS	JAWS Rank	HoF Mon. (≈100)	HoF Std. (≈50)
Robinson, Jackie	10	1947	1956	61.5	52.1	56.8	10	98	38
Miñoso, Minnie	15	1949	1964	50.1	39.8	45.0	22	87	35
Doby, Larry	13	1947	1959	49.5	39.6	44.6	20	72	30
Campanella, Roy	10	1948	1957	34.2	32.8	33.5	25	108	39
Irvin, Monte	8	1949	1956	21.4	21.3	21.3	102	18	18

Both tables show Miñoso and Larry Doby to be very similar. Both debuted in the majors during their age-23 season, and both have very similar qualitative statistics and Hall of Fame comparison statistics. Miñoso rates more highly than Doby in Hall of Fame Monitor and Hall of Fame Standards, but Miñoso also played roughly 300 more games with about 1400 more plate appearances than did Doby.

Would Miñoso have compiled a more Hall of Fame-worthy record had he entered the Majors as a full-time player before his age-25 season in 1951? Did he experience additional prejudice because he was both black and Latino? Is Miñoso indeed the Latino Jackie Robinson, a trailblazer for Latin players who deserves to be enshrined in the Hall of Fame because of it?

Strictly as a player, Miñoso has always been on the borderline as a Hall of Famer. Add that playing record to his status as the first Latino star, and it would not be surprising if the Golden Era Committee voted Miñoso into the Hall. It would be similar to previous acknowledgements of Monte Irvin, a star in both the Negro Leagues and in the Major Leagues, and particularly of Larry Doby, overshadowed by Jackie Robinson but no less a pioneer. Moreover, and despite the huge influx of Latin players into the majors in the last three decades, a Miñoso election would be a reminder that Latinos struggled with prejudice and discrimination as well, and it is not an issue that has been resolved.

When Arizona passed a state senate bill, SB 1070, in 2010 that targeted illegal immigrants and initially featured draconian measures regarding racial profiling, not only civil rights groups but even Major League Baseball itself protested its extremity, with high-profile Latino players such as Adrian Gonzalez and Albert Pujols stating publicly that they opposed the bill. Why? Arizona borders Mexico, and SB 1070 cannot help but target Latinos. There was talk about players boycotting the 2011 All-Star Game to be held in Phoenix; however, that talk—and any action—fizzled by the time the game was actually played, although by that time the more extreme elements of SB 1070 had already been struck down. (I wrote about the reaction to SB 1070, including a possible boycott, just prior to the 2011 All-Star Game.) And in 2012, Torii Hunter, who will get some Hall of Fame consideration when he retires, generated some controversy with his remarks about Latino players—and, apropos of Miñoso, black Latino players in particular—when he labeled them "imposters" and "not black." Hunter himself is African-American.

Although Hunter's remarks were tactless and impolitic, they do raise a point with respect to how situations are different between African-American players and Latino players. Both groups did—and do—face prejudice and discrimination. But the circumstances between the two groups are much different, and they should give pause to those simply equating Minnie Miñoso with Jackie Robinson.

The African-American experience in American history and society is unique. No other group was forcibly taken from their native lands in Africa and brought to North America to work as slaves. No other group was counted as three-fifths of a human being for representation and taxation purposes as described in the Three-Fifths Compromise portion of the United States Constitution. (Technically, black slaves were not explicitly named in the Constitution as counting as three-fifths of a human being—the language in Article 1, Section 2, Paragraph 3 states it as "three fifths of all other Persons"—but the historical context and intent make clear what group is being referred to.) Following emancipation from slavery, which precipitated the American Civil War, blacks were still subject to segregation in the American South (and tacit discrimination in many areas outside the South). This practice was upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States in its 1896 decision Plessy v. Ferguson, which immortalized the expression "separate but equal" as doctrinal law, and it was not struck down legally until another landmark Supreme Court ruling in 1954, Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka, seven years after Jackie Robinson, and then Larry Doby, had led the drive to integrate Major League Baseball.

By contrast, Minnie Miñoso came from Cuba to the United States voluntarily: He had been offered a deal to play for the New York Cubans in the Negro National League in 1946. (And unlike Cuban players who even today are said to have fled Cuba's political repression, Miñoso had left Cuba 13 years before Fidel Castro and the communists took power in Cuba in 1959.) Two years later, and one year after baseball's color line had been broken, Miñoso had been signed by the Cleveland Indians at age 22. True, he didn't earn a full-time job in the majors until 1951, his age-25 season.

Did baseball's color line rob Miñoso of seasons in which he could have compiled an even stronger career playing record? Did the Cleveland Indians fail to fully recognize Miñoso's potential, or did they deliberately ignore it? Or did the Indians simply not have a place for him at the time they signed him? Or did Miñoso, in his first, limited action with the club in 1949, in which he batted .188 with one home run in nine games and 20 plate appearances, simply not impress the club, which thought he needed minor-league seasoning before he would be ready for the majors? And did any of these situations barring the first have anything to do with prejudice or discrimination based on Miñoso's being a Latino, or even a black Latino?

We may never know the answers to these questions, but one point is clear: As an immigrant, even a black immigrant from a Spanish-speaking country, Miñoso's experience was not the same as Jackie Robinson's, or Larry Doby's, or any other African-American player. Miñoso may have faced prejudice and discrimination, as have countless immigrants throughout American history, but those immigrants chose to leave their native countries and come to the United States. For African-Americans, though, the United States is their native country, albeit one they did not originally choose willingly, and it is within their native country that they have struggled for status equal to all other Americans—to be regarded as more than three-fifths of a human being for accounting purposes. That is why the African-American experience is unique, and that is why Miñoso's experience ultimately cannot be compared to Jackie Robinson's or Larry Doby's or any other pioneering African-American player. This may be what Torii Hunter was struggling to convey in his maladroit remarks about Latino players, particularly black Latino players—the sense of resentment that the immigrants' experience is equivalent to the African-Americans'.

And if baseball collectively is in such a self-congratulatory mood concerning its record of social pioneering, it may want to remember that the next time Marvin Miller and even Curt Flood are considered for the Hall of Fame. After all, their efforts led to the dismantling of the Reserve Clause, which historically had made players in essence chattel, or property, of the teams for which they played, to be used and discarded as the teams saw fit without any regard for the players' wishes—and without regard to a player's race, creed, or color.. The efforts of Flood and Miller led to the current economic environment of free agency, which has been as powerful and as revolutionary to baseball as had been integration, affecting all players be they African-American (such as Torii Hunter) or black Latino.

So, does Minnie Miñoso belong in the Hall of Fame, based on his playing record, his pioneering status, or both? His case is not as clear-cut as his proponents would argue, but neither is it unfounded. Previous veterans committees have elected players with substantially weaker cases; Miñoso would not be the worst inductee by a fair margin. Although I am, in the last analysis, not opposed to his induction, I cannot consider his playing record strong enough by itself for the Hall of Fame, and I have little more than lukewarm enthusiasm for his status as a pioneering Latino player being a non-playing factor in his Hall of Fame case.

Golden Era Hall of Fame Right Fielders

Moving to the other corner outfield spot, we find another Cuban whose playing record is on the bubble. And although Tony Oliva entered major league baseball in 1962, at a time when Latino players were becoming commonplace, the bigger hurdle he faces in a Hall of Fame assessment is his competition among right fielders already in the Hall—as we will see below, Oliva's contemporaries in right field are among the best whoever played the position.

Here are those five Hall of Fame right fielders associated with the Golden Era along with Oliva, ranked by bWAR, with other qualitative statistics, including fWAR, listed alongside it.

Golden Era Hall of Fame Right Fielders and 2015 Right Field Candidate on the 2015 Golden Era Ballot, Ranked by bWAR
Position Player	Slash Line	wOBA	bWAR	fWAR	OPS+	wRC+
Aaron, Hank	.305/.374/.555	.403	142.6	136.3	155	153
Musial, Stan	.331/.417/.559	.435	128.1	126.8	159	158
Robinson, Frank	.294/.389/.537	.404	107.2	104.0	154	153
Clemente, Roberto	.317/.359/.475	.365	94.4	80.6	130	129
Kaline, Al	.297/.376/.480	.378	92.5	88.9	134	134
Oliva, Tony	.304/.353/.476	.365	43.0	40.7	131	129

The table below lists the five Hall of Fame right fielders associated with the Golden Era and Oliva, ranked by bWAR, along with their JAWS statistics and ratings for the Hall of Fame Monitor and the Hall of Fame Standards. Also included are the JAWS statistics for all right fielders in the Hall of Fame.

2015 Golden Era Right Field Candidate, Qualitative Comparisons to Hall of Fame Right Field (Ranked by bWAR)
Player	No. of Years	From	To	bWAR	WAR7	JAWS	JAWS Rank	HoF Mon. (≈100)	HoF Std. (≈50)
Aaron, Hank	23	1954	1976	142.6	60.1	101.3	2	421	74
Musial, Stan	22	1941	1963	128.1	64.1	96.1	3	452	76
Robinson, Frank	21	1956	1976	107.2	52.9	80.0	5	222	66
Clemente, Roberto	18	1955	1972	94.4	54.2	74.3	6	231	51
Kaline, Al	22	1953	1974	92.5	48.7	70.7	7	160	58
Ave of 24 HoFers	NA	NA	NA	73.2	42.9	58.1	NA	NA	NA
Oliva, Tony	15	1962	1976	43.0	38.5	40.8	32	114	29

Poor Tony Oliva—ranked against his Golden Era contemporaries already in the Hall of Fame, he falls short of their accomplishments, let alone those of all right fielders in the Hall. And it is admittedly piling on by including Stan Musial in the mix—Musial played more games in left field and at first base than he did in right field; however, Jay Jaffe's JAWS rates Musial as having the most value as a right fielder. And of the two right fielders who played in the American League during Oliva's peak in the 1960s, Al Kaline and Frank Robinson, they were both beginning their decline phase—although Robinson, (in)famously traded to the Baltimore Orioles in 1966 as the club that traded him, the Cincinnati Reds, thought he was past his prime, only won the Triple Crown in his first year in the AL. (Hank Aaron finished his last two seasons, 1975 and 1976, in the AL, but by then neither he nor Oliva were much of a factor.)

And Oliva deserves consideration. In his first full year with the Minnesota Twins in 1964, Oliva roared out of the gate as he led the AL in batting (.323), hits (217; his career high), doubles (43; another career mark), runs scored (109—yep, a career best), and total bases (374; need I say it?). Oliva walked away with the Rookie of the Year award, and he placed fourth in Most Valuable Player voting. Oliva went on to lead the AL in batting two more times, in hits four more times, and in doubles three more times while leading the league in slugging percentage with .546 in 1971, the same year he won his last batting title with a career-best .337. He was runner-up in MVP voting twice, in 1965, when he lost to teammate Zoilo Versalles, although the shortstop did have a career year, and in 1970, when Oliva did have a better season, value-wise, than winner Boog Powell—although fourth-place finisher Carl Yastrzemski topped them both with a monster year; Oliva finished in the top ten for MVP voting five times in his career.

But following his excellent 1971 campaign, Oliva became beset with injuries, particularly to his knees; he played just 10 games in 1972, when knee surgery ended his season, and when he returned in 1973, it was as the Twins' designated hitter, and had the position not have been created that season in the American League, Oliva may not have continued his career for another four years, although he was, at age 34 in 1973, already in his decline phase.

Tony Oliva was an excellent high-average hitter with some power, hitting 30 or more doubles in a season seven times and 20 or more home runs five times, and if he didn't walk as much as current fashion dictates (448 bases on balls in 6880 plate appearances, or once every 15.4 plate appearances), neither did he strike out that much—645 whiffs in 6880 plate appearances, or once every 10.7 plate appearances). Could Oliva have posted better counting numbers had injuries not slowed him down? Should the Twins have made him a full-time player sooner? That's the guessing game again, and to add to that from the other end, had the DH rule not been instituted in 1973, he may not have had his last four seasons to begin with. You evaluate the baseball you have, not the baseball you wish the player had had, and Tony Oliva does not measure up to his Golden Era fellow right fielders already in the Hall of Fame.

Golden Era Hall of Fame Shortstops

Moving back to the infield, we shift gears in our look at shortstop Maury Wills, the sparkplug for the Los Angeles Dodgers of the first half of the 1960s who reputedly revived the stolen base during those low-scoring, pitching-dominant seasons. Wills was the first player in the modern era (since 1901) to steal 100 or more bases in a single season when he swiped 104 in 1962, breaking Ty Cobb's modern-day record of 96 set in 1915. Wills ranks 20th all-time in stolen bases with 586, and he was 10th all-time when he retired following the 1972 season.

Here are the four Hall of Fame shortstops associated with the Golden Era and Wills, ranked by bWAR, with other qualitative statistics, including fWAR, listed alongside it.

Golden Era Hall of Fame Shortstops and 2015 Shortstop Candidate on the 2015 Golden Era Ballot, Ranked by bWAR
Position Player	Slash Line	wOBA	bWAR	fWAR	OPS+	wRC+
Banks, Ernie	.274/.330/.500	.359	67.5	63.3	122	118
Reese, Pee Wee	.269/.366/.377	.350	66.3	61.3	99	103
Aparicio, Luis	.262/.311/.343	.296	55.8	49.1	82	83
Rizzuto, Phil	.273/.351/.355	.335	40.6	41.3	93	96
Wills, Maury	.281/.330/.331	.301	39.5	35.7	88	91

The table below lists these four Hall of Fame shortstops associated with the Golden Era and Wills, ranked by bWAR, along with their JAWS statistics and ratings for the Hall of Fame Monitor and the Hall of Fame Standards. Also included are the JAWS statistics for all shortstops in the Hall of Fame.

2015 Golden Era Shortstop Candidate, Qualitative Comparisons to Hall of Fame Shortstops (Ranked by bWAR)
Player	No. of Years	From	To	bWAR	WAR7	JAWS	JAWS Rank	HoF Mon. (≈100)	HoF Std. (≈50)
Banks, Ernie	19	1953	1971	67.5	51.9	59.7	7	170	46
Ave of 21 HoFers	NA	NA	NA	66.7	42.8	54.7	NA	NA	NA
Reese, Pee Wee	16	1940	1958	66.3	41.0	53.6	17	100	39
Aparicio, Luis	18	1956	1973	55.8	32.7	44.2	22	150	36
Rizzuto, Phil	13	1941	1956	40.6	33.7	37.2	35	87	23
Wills, Maury	14	1959	1972	39.5	29.5	34.5	46	104	29

In this group, and apart from his being above the average of all 21 Hall of Fame shortstops in terms of JAWS statistics, Ernie Banks is the outlier in two other respects. First, he actually played more games at first base, having switched to that position full-time by the 1962 season, but, again, Jaffe's JAWS assigns him greater value as a shortstop. But even as a shortstop, Banks was atypical for his era—he was a power hitter, with five years with 40 or more home runs, more of a prototype for contemporary shortstops rather than indicative of Golden Era shortstops. In fact, Banks hit almost twice as many home runs in his career, 512, than did the other four Golden Era shortstops in this sample combined—they hit a collective 267 homers.

So, let's look at Maury Wills in terms of what shortstops were expected to deliver during the Golden Era, which was primarily a solid glove in the field and table-setting abilities at the top of the batting order, with their ability to get on base and then steal a base.

The table below lists the Golden Era Hall of Fame shortstops and Wills, ranked by dWAR, or Wins Above Replacement based on defensive effectiveness only, with other defensive metrics (explained below the table) and their career stolen base totals and stolen base percentages.

Defensive and Stolen-Base Statistics for Golden Era Hall of Fame Shortstops and 2015 Shortstop Candidate on the 2015 Golden Era Ballot, Ranked by dWAR
Player	Putouts	Assists	Double Plays Turned	dWAR	Rtot	Def. Runs	Total Zone	Stolen Bases	Stolen Base Pct.
Aparicio, Luis	4548	8016	1553	31.6	149	302.7	149	506	78.8
Reese, Pee Wee	4040	5891	1246	25.6	22	241.7	107	232	83.8*
Rizzuto, Phil	3219	4666	1217	22.9	7	207.9	107	149	72.0
Wills, Maury	2550	4804	859	12.0	0	99.8	4	586	73.8
Banks, Ernie	2087	3441	724	4.9	62	48	62	50	48.5

* NOTE: Caught-stealing statistics for Pee Wee Reese are unavailable from 1940 to 1950; percentage is calculated using available statistics from 1951 to 1958.

dWAR: Wins Above Replacement for defensive play only, as calculated by Baseball Reference.

Rtot: Total Zone Total Fielding Runs above Average, the number of runs above or below average a fielder was worth based on the number of plays made, as calculated by Baseball Reference.

Defensive Runs Above Average: Number of runs above or below average a fielder is worth on defense; it combines fielding runs and positional adjustment, as calculated by FanGraphs.

Total Zone Number of Runs Saved: Indexed to a league-average of 0, with a seasonal 15 TZ equivalent to a Gold Glove-caliber defender, as calculated by FanGraphs.

Luis Aparicio leads the field both in the counting statistics and in the qualitative statistics for fielding, which should not be a surprise—Aparicio played the third-most games at shortstop in major-league history with 2581 (he retired after the 1973 season as the leader in that category and has since been surpassed by Omar Vizquel and Derek Jeter), and Aparicio's dWAR of 31.6 ranks sixth all-time; it is no surprise that Aparicio won nine Gold Gloves at shortstop, the highest number at the time of his retirement although he has since been passed by Ozzie Smith and Vizquel.

Maury Wills won two Gold Gloves, in back-to-back years including his second in 1962, the year in which he stole a then-record (for the modern era) 104 bases and was also the National League Most Valuable Player that year, although almost immediately the outcry began that Willie Mays, who finished second in voting, should have been the NL MVP (Frank Robinson and Hank Aaron would have been viable winners as well). Wills does rank 159th in dWAR with 12.0, tied with Hall of Fame shortstop Arky Vaughan, although Vaughan, possessor of a career .318/.406/.453 slash line, is a much more potent offensive player than was Wills.

Wills did lead the NL in stolen bases for six consecutive years, from 1960 to 1965, including 94 steals in 1965, and he stole 40 or more bases a total of seven times. Wills is often credited with reviving the art of the steal, of returning the stolen base to baseball's offensive arsenal, particularly on those light-hitting Dodgers teams of the early 1960s that succeeded through pitching and defense.

But here is an interesting point: Luis Aparicio led the AL in steals for nine consecutive years, from 1956 to 1964, with four of those years involving swipes of 50 or more including a career-high of 57 in 1964, and he stole 40 or more five times during that span. Moreover, Aparicio led the majors in swipes four times in the six seasons between 1959 and 1964, when Wills had begun playing—although in fairness Wills was a part-time player with seven steals in his debut year of 1959. Aparicio bested Wills on the basepaths in 1960 (beating Wills by one steal, 51 to 50), 1961 (53 to 35), and 1964 (57 to 53), while both tied in 1963 with 40 swipes apiece. Wills ended up with 80 more steals over his entire career to finish 20th with 586 while Aparicio ranks 36th with 506. But as indicated in the table above, Aparicio finished with a better stolen-base percentage than Wills; Aparicio led the AL in times caught stealing four times while Wills led the NL in that category seven times. And Aparicio was a much better defender, which in the Golden Era was a much more vital commodity.

Simply put, Maury Wills lacks sufficient credentials for the Hall of Fame.

Golden Era Hall of Fame Starting Pitchers

We close out our look at the Golden Era playing candidates with a visit to the mound and the three starting pitchers under consideration by the Committee: Jim Kaat, Billy Pierce, and Luis Tiant.

I had looked at all three pitchers, particularly Pierce and Tiant, in an article I wrote last year that examined pitching wins as an indicator of Hall of Fame worth. For our purposes here, though, let's continue to evaluate these three pitching prospects against their contemporaries from the Golden Era who are already in the Hall of Fame.

Here are the fourteen Hall of Fame starting pitchers associated with the Golden Era and 2015 Golden Era starting pitcher candidates Kaat, Pierce, and Tiant, ranked by bWAR, with other qualitative statistics, including fWAR, listed alongside it.

Golden Era Hall of Fame Starting Pitchers and 2015 Starting Pitcher Candidates on the 2015 Golden Era Ballot, Ranked by bWAR
Pitcher	W-L (S), ERA	bWAR	fWAR	ERA+	ERA–	FIP–
Niekro, Phil	318–274 (29), 3.35	96.6	80.8	115	86	95
Spahn, Warren	363–245 (29), 3.09	92.6	81.2	119	84	94
Perry, Gaylord	314–265 (11), 3.11	91.0	103.7	117	85	86
Gibson, Bob	251–174 (6), 2.91	89.9	91.1	127	78	71
Roberts, Robin	286–245 (25), 3.41	86.0	78.3	113	89	81
Drysdale, Don	209–166 (6), 2.95	67.2	66.4	121	83	88
Tiant, Luis	229–172 (15), 3.30	66.7	53.9	114	87	90
Feller, Bob	266–162 (21), 3.25	63.6	69.3	122	82	89
Marichal, Juan	243–142 (2), 2.89	63.1	69.9	123	81	88
Newhouser, Hal	207–150 (26), 3.06	63.0	62.6	130	76	81
Wynn, Early	300–244 (15), 3.54	61.3	62.8	107	94	97
Bunning, Jim	224–184 (16), 3.27	59.4	71.4	115	88	88
Ford, Whitey	236–106 (10), 2.75	57.3	55.4	133	75	88
Pierce, Billy	211–169 (32), 3.27	53.2	54.7	119	84	90
Koufax, Sandy	165–87 (9), 2.76	49.0	57.9	131	75	75
Lemon, Bob	207–128 (22), 3.23	48.8	34.6	119	84	99
Kaat, Jim	283–237 (18), 3.45	45.3	69.4	108	93	90

What is notable is that, although Pierce's value as determined by Baseball Reference's and FanGraphs's version of WAR is roughly comparable, both Kaat and Tiant experience reversals of fortune—Tiant drops more than 12 wins while Kaat rises by nearly twice as many as that.

The table below re-orders the 14 Golden Era Hall of Fame starting pitchers and the three 2015 candidates Kaat, Pierce, and Tiant ranked by fWAR.

Golden Era Hall of Fame Starting Pitchers and 2015 Starting Pitcher Candidates on the 2015 Golden Era Ballot, Ranked by fWAR
Pitcher	W-L (S), ERA	bWAR	fWAR	ERA+	ERA–	FIP–
Perry, Gaylord	314–265 (11), 3.11	91.0	103.7	117	85	86
Gibson, Bob	251–174 (6), 2.91	89.9	91.1	127	78	71
Spahn, Warren	363–245 (29), 3.09	92.6	81.2	119	84	94
Niekro, Phil	318–274 (29), 3.35	96.6	80.8	115	86	95
Roberts, Robin	286–245 (25), 3.41	86.0	78.3	113	89	81
Bunning, Jim	224–184 (16), 3.27	59.4	71.4	115	88	88
Marichal, Juan	243–142 (2), 2.89	63.1	69.9	123	81	88
Kaat, Jim	283–237 (18), 3.45	45.3	69.4	108	93	90
Feller, Bob	266–162 (21), 3.25	63.6	69.3	122	82	89
Drysdale, Don	209–166 (6), 2.95	67.2	66.4	121	83	88
Wynn, Early	300–244 (15), 3.54	61.3	62.8	107	94	97
Newhouser, Hal	207–150 (26), 3.06	63.0	62.6	130	76	81
Koufax, Sandy	165–87 (9), 2.76	49.0	57.9	131	75	75
Ford, Whitey	236–106 (10), 2.75	57.3	55.4	133	75	88
Pierce, Billy	211–169 (32), 3.27	53.2	54.7	119	84	90
Tiant, Luis	229–172 (15), 3.30	66.7	53.9	114	87	90
Lemon, Bob	207–128 (22), 3.23	48.8	34.6	119	84	99

When ranked by fWAR, Kaat and Tiant exchange places in the rankings, with Kaat now shouldering alongside Juan Marichal and Bob Feller while Tiant drops just slightly below Pierce, who remains near the bottom in these rankings as well as in the previous rankings by bWAR. Clearly, for some pitchers there are significant differences in valuation between the two WAR methods that can alter perceptions of them. This indicates not only that WAR is not the definitive statistic to assess players but that other evaluation criteria are necessary.

That said, as we have done with the position players previously, the table below lists the fourteen Hall of Fame starting pitchers associated with the Golden Era and 2015 Golden Era starting-pitcher candidates Kaat, Pierce, and Tiant, ranked by bWAR, along with their JAWS statistics and ratings for the Hall of Fame Monitor and the Hall of Fame Standards. Also included are the JAWS statistics for all starting pitchers in the Hall of Fame. And we should keep in mind that a JAWS system based on fWAR would most likely produce different results.

2015 Golden Era Starting Pitcher Candidates, Qualitative Comparisons to Hall of Fame Starting Pitchers (Ranked by bWAR)
Player	No. of Years	From	To	bWAR	WAR7	JAWS	JAWS Rank	HoF Mon. (≈100)	HoF Std. (≈50)
Niekro, Phil	24	1964	1987	96.6	54.5	75.6	15	157	52
Spahn, Warren	21	1942	1965	92.6	51.7	75.9	13	260	66
Perry, Gaylord	22	1962	1983	91.0	52.8	71.9	20	177	57
Gibson, Bob	17	1959	1975	89.9	61.6	75.8	14	222	54
Roberts, Robin	19	1948	1966	86.0	54.8	70.4	22	128	47
Ave of 59 HoFers	NA	NA	NA	73.4	50.2	61.8	NA	NA	NA
Drysdale, Don	14	1956	1969	67.2	44.7	55.6	49	134	42
Tiant, Luis	19	1964	1982	66.7	44.6	55.6	51	97	41
Feller, Bob	18	1936	1956	63.6	51.8	57.7	41	180	51
Marichal, Juan	16	1960	1975	63.1	51.9	57.5	43	159	57
Newhouser, Hal	17	1939	1955	63.0	52.5	57.8	40	140	34
Wynn, Early	23	1939	1963	61.3	38.6	50.0	70	141	44
Bunning, Jim	17	1955	1971	59.4	48.9	54.2	57	98	42
Ford, Whitey	16	1950	1967	57.3	34.7	46.0	94	208	56
Pierce, Billy	18	1945	1964	53.2	37.8	45.5	97	82	35
Koufax, Sandy	12	1955	1966	49.0	46.1	47.5	85	227	46
Lemon, Bob	15	1941	1958	48.8	39.0	43.9	110	118	34
Kaat, Jim	25	1959	1983	45.3	38.4	44.9	101	130	44

But if a JAWS system keyed to fWAR were to yield similar results as the existing JAWS system, all three Golden Era pitching candidates would fall below the threshold of the averages of the 59 starting pitchers already in the Hall of Fame. Let's look at the individual candidates more closely.

In 25 seasons, often with mediocre teams, Jim Kaat was a workhorse whose durability netted him 898 career games played (26th all-time) with 625 of those starts (17th all-time), which added up to 4530.1 innings pitched (25th all-time) and earned him 283 wins (31st all-time). Kaat won 15 or more games seven times and 20 or more games three times, including a career-high 25 wins in 1966, which led the American League. That year Kaat also led the AL in games started (41), complete games (19), and innings pitched (304.2), although he did not receive any Cy Young consideration for two related reasons: 1966 was the last year that the award was given to only one pitcher across both leagues, and in 1966 that pitcher happened to be another left-handed starter, the Los Angeles Dodgers' Sandy Koufax, who had probably his best season ever. Kaat did finish fifth in AL Most Valuable Player voting, although 1966 was the year Frank Robinson won the batting Triple Crown in his first year in the American League with the Baltimore Orioles..

Yet Kaat never finished in the top ten for Cy Young voting except once, in 1975, in his age-36 season, when he won 20 games for a Chicago White Sox team that finished in fifth place in the AL West, six games under .500. Kaat finished fourth in AL Cy Young voting, and his record was strong enough to merit a high finish although not enough to claim that that year's winner, the Baltimore Orioles' Jim Palmer, did not deserve the honor. Kaat did win 16 Gold Gloves, the most ever by a pitcher at the time Kaat retired following the 1983 season, although Greg Maddux has since surpassed him. Kaat did win a World Series ring in 1982 with the St. Louis Cardinals, although by then the 43-year-old southpaw was pitching short relief from the bullpen.

There are five modern-era starting pitchers who are within 20 wins of 300 career wins. Three of them—Bert Blyleven, Ferguson Jenkins, and Robin Roberts—are in the Hall of Fame, with only Tommy John and Kaat not in the Hall. Bert Blyleven's career had similarities to Kaat's: Blyleven pitched for a lot of mediocre teams, although he too was a World Series winner (twice, in fact), but apart from delivering greater value—Blyleven's bWAR of 96.5 is 11th-best among all pitchers, and 38th among all players—Blyleven is distinguished among traditional counting statistics as well, ranking ninth all-time in shutouts with 60 (Kaat ranks 103rd with 31), and fifth all-time in strikeouts with 3701 (Kaat ranks 34th with 2461). Fergie Jenkins was not included in our list of Golden Era Hall of Fame pitchers—his career began in 1965, one year after our cutoff based on Luis Tiant's 1964 start—but if he was, he would only add to the deck stacked against Kaat. Jenkins's bWAR of 82.8 is 23rd-best among pitchers and 51st among all players, while his 3192 career strikeouts are 12th all-time and his 49 shutouts are tied for 21st all-time (interestingly enough, tied with Luis Tiant and Hall of Famers Don Drysdale and Early Wynn).

In terms of win-loss record and ERA, Kaat and Robin Roberts are almost identical, but as we've seen in terms of value, either bWAR or fWAR, Roberts is the more valuable pitcher. Roberts ranks 29th all-time in shutouts with 45 and 45th in strikeouts with 2357, behind Kaat by just over 100 strikeouts, and Roberts did pitch almost 160 more innings over his career. In the last analysis, though, Jim Kaat is most similar to Tommy John (whom I detailed at length in my assessment of pitching wins and the Hall of Fame): Like John, Kaat is a compiler, whose career probably would have been shorter had he, like John, not have been a left-handed pitcher. Compared to his Golden Era contemporaries, Jim Kaat is not distinguished enough to be a Hall of Fame pitcher.

Billy Pierce is the definite dark-horse candidate among the three pitchers, as his name does not carry the same recognition as does Kaat's or Tiant's. Pierce was the left-handed ace of the "Go-Go" Chicago White Sox teams of the 1950s, and he tangled often with a more celebrated southpaw, Whitey Ford of the New York Yankees, so it is fitting that Pierce and Ford should be so closely aligned in the tables above. Those 1950s White Sox teams are usually regarded as underdogs, particularly in relation to the Yankees dynasty of the period, but from 1952 to 1960 the White Sox never finished below third place in the American League and took the pennant in 1959, losing the World Series to the Dodgers in six games. In that nine-year period Pierce led the AL in strikeouts (186) in 1953, in earned run average (1.97) in 1955, in wins (20) in 1957, and in complete games in three consecutive years from 1956 to 1958. Pierce won 15 or more games eight times, and 20 games twice, in back-to-back years (1956 and 1957). Pierce finished among Cy Young candidates once, in 1962, his first year with the San Francisco Giants; he placed third with a 16–6 record and a 3.49 ERA, but he was hardly robbed by Don Drysdale's winning campaign, and Pierce's finish is noteworthy as in 1962 the Cy Young was awarded only to one pitcher across both leagues.

Would Billy Pierce have looked like a more effective pitcher had he been on a stronger club? That is difficult to say. During his 13 years with the White Sox, from 1949 to 1961, he received run support on an average of 4.2 runs per game in games he started; that was the same run support he received during the innings that he actually pitched; meanwhile, the Major League averages were 4.4 for both run support per game and for the innings a pitcher pitched. By contrast, Ford received 4.8 runs in both categories. Pierce had 241 of his total of 260 quality starts, or starts in which he pitched at least six innings while allowing three or fewer earned runs, with the White Sox, which represented 62 percent of his 390 starts with the White Sox. Ford, who had spent his entire career with the Yankees, pitched 282 quality starts in 438 total games started, a 64 percent ratio. With the White Sox, Pierce endured 60 "tough losses," or losses of games in which he had a quality start; those 60 tough losses with the White Sox account for all but one of his 61 career tough losses. And while Pierce left 16 games in which he had the lead and seemed in line for the win, but the bullpen then blew the lead, that same bullpen saved 40 games in which Pierce was slated to be awarded the loss but the White Sox then rallied offensively to tie the score. For Ford, he endured just 39 tough losses while he left 20 games with the lead that was subsequently lost by his bullpen, a bullpen that also rescued Ford from a potential loss a whopping 61 times.

Pierce may have won the ERA title in 1955 with that 1.97 ERA, but he posted an ERA under 3.00 only three other times in seasons in which he pitched at least 50 innings. His career ERA is 3.27; however, his career FIP is 3.50, nearly a quarter-run higher than his career ERA, indicating help from his fielders to keep the other team from scoring, and indeed he posted a sub-3.00 FIP in only three seasons, including a 2.83 in 1955, the same season in which he recorded that 1.97 ERA—nearly a full run lower than his 2.83 FIP, and suggesting a lot of help from those "Go-Go" White Sox fielders. Similarly, Pierce posted an ERA+ of 140 or better only three times in seasons of 50 or more innings pitched while posting an ERA+ of 110 or worse eight times. His career ERA+ of 119 is respectable, and that sums up Billy Pierce's career: Respectable, but not a Hall of Fame career.

A star pitcher for the Boston Red Sox in the 1970s, underscored when he started three of the seven games in the vaunted 1975 World Series against the Cincinnati Reds, Luis Tiant battled injuries throughout his career yet still compiled an excellent career record—although one that positions him squarely on the threshold of the Hall of Fame: He is not an obvious Hall of Fame pitcher, yet neither can his record be easily dismissed.

Tiant came up with the Cleveland Indians primarily as a starting pitcher, although in 1966 he was used as a spot starter 16 times in 46 total appearances and still managed to tie (with eight other pitchers) for the major-league lead in shutouts with five while also notching eight saves. In 1968, Tiant led the American League in shutouts with nine as he posted an outstanding record of 21 wins against only nine losses (a .700 winning percentage) and, more significantly, he led the AL in ERA with 1.60, the lowest mark in the league during the live-ball era as he struck out 264 batters in 258.1 innings pitched, a strikeouts-per-nine-innings pitched of 9.2, against only 73 bases on balls for an excellent 3.27 strikeouts-to-walks ratio. Tiant finished fifth in AL Most Valuable Player voting that year, and he may have had a bit better year than MVP winner Denny McLain, the Detroit Tigers pitcher who remains the last 30-game winner in MLB history as he won 31 games in 1968—McLain, not surprisingly, also won the AL Cy Young Award—although in retrospect, Tiant's teammate Carl Yastrzemski may have been the most valuable player in terms of bWAR.

Part of Tiant's ascendancy stemmed from the change in his delivery, enacted to compensate for a shoulder injury, that resulted in his distinctive half-turn, looking directly at second base, before turning back to deliver the ball to the plate. But 1968 was also "the year of the pitcher"—apart from McLain, the St. Louis Cardinals' Bob Gibson had a historic season, going 22–9 with 13 shutouts and with the lowest ERA ever recorded by a starting pitcher in the live-ball era, a miniscule 1.12—and 1968 was the last year the pitching mound was 15 inches high. In 1969, the mound was lowered to 10 inches, and the strike zone contracted, both moves instituted to boost offense, which had been flagging throughout the 1960s. (In 1968, Yastrzemski led the AL in batting with a .301 average, the only AL hitter who qualified for the batting title to hit .300 or better.) And although injuries have been offered as the reason why Tiant's performance suffered in 1969 (even if he did start five more games than he had in 1968), it is curious that he did in fact experience a reversal in 1969, practically inverting his win-loss record, winning just nine games while leading the majors in losses with 20, while his ERA more than doubled to 3.71 as he also led the majors in home runs allowed (37) and in walks allowed (129, the only time Tiant posted triple digits in this category).

Dealt to the Minnesota Twins, Tiant began strongly but soon fractured his shoulder blade and started only 17 games in 1970. Dropped by the Twins in 1971, the Red Sox took a chance on Tiant; they stuck with him through an awful season, and they were rewarded the following year. As a spot starter, starting 19 of his 43 appearances, Tiant won 15 games while losing only six (a .714 winning percentage) as he led the AL—and the majors—in ERA with a 1.91 mark, the second time he posted a sub-2.00 ERA. By 1973 his was in the starting rotation almost exclusively and would remain there through his 1980 season. With the Red Sox, Tiant won 20 or more games three times and finished in the top ten for Cy Young voting three times between 1972 and 1976, leading the AL in shutouts in 1974 with seven.

And while his 1975 campaign may not have been as strong as the other four during this five-year halcyon period—plagued by back problems, he posted an 18–14 record with a 4.02 ERA, although his FIP of 3.62 suggests that his defense might not have been as supportive as perhaps it should have been—Tiant was regarded as the staff ace for the Red Sox: He started Game One of the AL Championship Series against the Oakland Athletics, the three-time defending world champions, and allowed only one unearned run in a complete-game victory as the Red Sox went on to sweep the A's in three games and face the Reds in one of the greatest World Series ever.

Tiant shone in Game One of the Series, hurling a five-hit shutout in Boston's Fenway Park, and picked up another complete-game win in Game Four with a 5–4 victory in Cincinnati's Riverfront Stadium. Then, following rains that delayed the start of Game Six back in Boston, Tiant got the start on full rest; staked to a first-inning three-run home run by Fred Lynn, Tiant cruised until the fifth inning, when he allowed the Reds to tie the game; they took the lead in the seventh, and after giving up a lead-off home run by Cesar Geronimo to lead off the eighth, Tiant was pulled. The Red Sox tied the game in the bottom half of the inning on Bernie Carbo's memorable pinch-hit, three-run blast, although that would be overshadowed by Carlton Fisk's twelfth-inning homer, which forced a Game Seven, and which remains one of the most famous home runs ever hit.

After a decent 1978 season, in his age-37 year, Tiant spent two years with the New York Yankees before finishing his career with a season each for the Pittsburgh Pirates and the (then-) California Angels.

Luis Tiant is poised on the cusp of greatness: As we have seen, his qualitative numbers are just under the threshold of those already in the Hall of Fame. His counting numbers are impressive but not remarkable; he ranks 21st in shutouts (49), 39th in strikeouts (2416), 64th in wins (229), and 157th in complete games (187). Tiant had an excellent five-year run with Red Sox from 1972 to 1976, all the more impressive for occurring between his age-31 and age-35 seasons, but he was never a dominant starter. Luis Tiant is certainly a better candidate than our other two Golden Era pitchers Jim Kaat (whose sheer longevity enabled him to amass his counting numbers) and Billy Pierce, but in the last analysis Tiant falls short of the Hall of Fame.

Executive Decision: Bob Howsam

The tenth candidate for the Golden Era Committee ballot is the only non-player: Bob Howsam actually straddles two professional sports, baseball and football, and his actions helped to shape the course of both sports. We are of course concentrating on baseball here, and thus we will have to merely touch on how Howsam's desire to bring a National Football League franchise to his native Denver, Colorado, actually helped to create the American Football League in 1960 when Howsam, his father, and his brother founded the Denver Broncos, and with the owners of seven other teams they created the AFL. The upstart league was a rival to the NFL, and its growing influence led to the establishment of the first Super Bowl in 1967 to determine which league had the best team, a challenge that became non-existent when the AFL was folded into the NFL in 1970 although that championship game lives on as Super Bowl Sunday has become tantamount to a national holiday in the United States.

Actually, Howsam got involved in football only because his plans to bring a Major League Baseball franchise to Denver fell through. He had helped to found the Continental League, which never played a game but served notice to MLB to seriously consider expansion, which it did in 1961 although Denver was not yet chosen as a location. The Howsams, though, had already built a major-league caliber ballpark, Bears Stadium, that was too lavish for the Denver Triple-A team the Bears (an affiliate of the Yankees), but with renovations Bears Stadium became Mile High Stadium, the home of the Broncos for four decades.

Prior to the Yankees, the Bears had been an affiliate of the Pirates, which is how Howsam first met the legendary Branch Rickey, the champion of the minor-league farm system who also helped to integrate baseball with Jackie Robinson, and the two kept in touch; Rickey had been the president of the abortive Continental League. When Howsam sold the Broncos, he returned to baseball courtesy of Rickey, semi-retired but now a top advisor to St. Louis Cardinals' owner Gussie Busch; Rickey reputedly recommended Howsam to Busch for the Cardinals' general manager's position in the midst of the 1964 season.

The Cardinals won the NL pennant following the Philadelphia Phillies' epic collapse (see the summary in the Dick Allen segment above), and they went on to beat the Yankees in the World Series. Howsam, though, claimed responsibility for the Cardinals' turnaround, which did not sit well with many of the players. The Cardinals dropped back to average in the next two seasons, with Howsam dealing away veterans such as Ken Boyer (also outlined above) and acquiring former stars Orlando Cepeda (included in our sample of Golden Era Hall of Fame first basemen) and Roger Maris. Although the Cardinals would return to the World Series in 1967 and 1968, winning it again in 1967, Howsam had already lit out for greener pastures.

In 1967, Howsam became the general manager of the Cincinnati Reds, a position he held for 11 years, the period when the Reds became the "Big Red Machine," winning four National League pennants and two World Series during that time. Although Howsam had inherited several players already with the Reds or in the farm system—including future Hall of Famers Johnny Bench and Tony Perez as well as putative Hall of Famer Pete Rose—he helped to build the dynasty. First, Howsam brought in a new manager, Sparky Anderson, who would later be inducted into the Hall of Fame. Then he cultivated minor league prospects such as Dave Concepcion, Ken Griffey, Sr., and Ray Knight. Finally, he traded for both George Foster and especially Joe Morgan. Foster would crush 52 home runs for the Reds in 1977, becoming the only player to hit 50 or more home runs between the time Willie Mays hit 52 round-trippers in 1965 and the time Cecil Fielder hit 51 long flies in 1991.

But Morgan was the jewel in the crown. The slick-fielding second baseman who could hit for power, get on base, and then steal a base won back-to-back MVP awards in 1975 and 1976—not coincidentally the same two years in which the Reds won the World Series—as the literal keystone in the Big Red Machine; Morgan was voted into the Hall of Fame on his first ballot in 1990.

The 1976 Reds were a juggernaut: They won 102 games to clinch the NL Western Division by 10 games over the Los Angeles Dodgers; they swept the Phillies in three games in the NL Championship Game; then they swept the Yankees in four games in the World Series, with Johnny Bench being named the Series MVP. Five Reds starters made the 1976 NL All-Star squad, with two more in reserve. As noted previously, Joe Morgan was the NL MVP. The 1976 Reds are considered one of the greatest teams in baseball history, listed along with the 1908 Chicago Cubs, the 1927 New York Yankees, and the 1970 Baltimore Orioles.

Bob Howsam was responsible for a good deal of that success. Reputedly, he had a good deal of autonomy in the front office as the club's owners left him in charge of day-to-day operations—he was named team president in 1973—and Howsam also represented the team at owners' meetings. And when Howsam stepped down as general manager at the end of the 1977 season, the Reds were headed for a decline that was not arrested until Howsam returned as club president in 1983, with Sparky Anderson already gone (to the Detroit Tigers, with whom he would win another World Series in 1984); Howsam retrieved Pete Rose, who left via free agency following the 1978 season, and installed him as the Reds' player-manager (and, yes, Rose's betting continued apace).

Free agency, which also spurred the departure of Morgan and pitcher Don Gullett, was something of bugbear for the Reds and particularly Howsam, as he had helped to set the conservative fiscal policies of the club that made it hard for players to resist the lure of free-agent money. Howsam also had little regard for labor relations, having taken a hard-line stance against the Players' Association; during the very first players' strike in 1972, the Reds were among the management most opposed to the strike. Howsam was also a "social conservative" as he oversaw the club's strict policies on player appearance, a stance that earned great resentment among the players.

All of which makes his Hall of Fame case rather intriguing: Based on his executive acumen with the Cincinnati Reds, Howsam has a legitimate case for the Hall. However, one Golden Era Committee member who no doubt recalls Howsam is Joe Morgan, and given Howsam's relative unpopularity among players both in Cincinnati and in St. Louis, could Morgan have been privately lobbying his fellow committee members to not vote for him?

That of course is mere speculation, though not unfounded speculation. As is the case for all nine players on the 2015 Golden Era Committee ballot, who are all borderline candidates, Bob Howsam is also a borderline executive candidate, achieving great success with the Reds over the course of a decade, but with little other baseball merit—in fact, his short stint in St. Louis could be considered a demerit. (At least Howsam, having served on the Colorado Baseball Commission in his retirement, saw a major-league team established in his hometown of Denver: In 1993, the Colorado Rockies began their tenure as a National League expansion team.)

Is Bob Howsam a Hall of Famer? No, he is not.

Are There Any Golden Era Hall of Famers Left?

After all the tables, statistics, history, and analysis presented here, let's boil all this down to one simple question: Are there any Golden Era Hall of Famers left?

The answer is equally simple: No.

At least not on this ballot. Frankly, the nine players on the 2015 Golden Era Committee ballot have been exhaustively evaluated for some time now. All except Billy Pierce have had full, or near-full, terms on the writers' ballots, with Dick Allen and Ken Boyer having been reinstated on ballots while Minnie Miñoso had his clock restarted by dint of a couple of publicity stunts.

These players have been looked at by the writers, the BBWAA. Many have been looked at by previous veterans committees. They have been evaluated by traditional statistics, and they have been evaluated by modern statistics. And in all ways over the decades, the results have been the same: All nine candidates fall short of the Hall of Fame, some just short of the threshold, others by a bit more than that.

Make no mistake: They are all excellent players, with brilliant moments in their careers. Some, like Pierce, have been overlooked, while others, like Hodges or Kaat, have been overrated. I think that Dick Allen and Luis Tiant come closest to the bar, with Minnie Miñoso just behind them, and if any or all of those three do get elected, it will not be a travesty because there have been players at these candidates' respective positions who have been inducted into the Hall of Fame with playing records that are inferior to theirs. The problem is that there are players already enshrined whose playing records are superior to theirs—we have looked at several of them at length—and the Baseball Hall of Fame, despite occasional lapses, has maintained very high standards for inclusion.

That said, though, I do think it is quite possible that the Golden Era Committee will vote for Gil Hodges, Jim Kaat, or Minnie Miñoso, or perhaps any two, or perhaps all three. So be it.

Baseball has been concerned about its legacy since the 1930s, when it created the Hall of Fame and even the first veterans committees to ensure that players and others from decades long past would not be overlooked. That sentiment has continued ever since, to the point that by the middle of the second decade of the 21st century (I'm talking about right now), we have picked clean almost all of the Pre-Integration Era and almost all of the Golden Era. Where the hidden Hall of Famers reside is in the Expansion Era, but the previous two eras have been combed repeatedly, and with respect to this 2015 Golden Era ballot, there may be a couple of players whose election, though I believe unmerited, would not be an outrage. But there is no injustice to be righted this year.