|
|
|
#1
05-23-2004, 02:16 PM
|
||||
|
||||
|
Waite Hoyt
I have a burning question. Today, I went to www.baseball-reference.com. I realized that Hoyt was a hall of famer, but I never really thought of him as one. The evidence that I found was utterly shocking! Hoyt pitched on the greatest offensive collection of players ever for the prime of his career, yet ended up with a less than hall worthy win percentage. I realize that this is because he played on some lackluster teams later in his career, but his other stats don't hold up, either. Hoyt never led the league in strikeouts, and was only as high as sixth, once. He was only in the top 10 in ERA 5 times, although those finishes were impressive. Hoyt never stood out as a HOFer to me, and perhaps voters overrated his prime seasons, although he wasn't really the main factor of those Murderer's Row teams. In fact, Hoyt only led the league in any stat three total times in his career. One time was wins, obviously helped by the fact that he had Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth at his side. The second was saves, and the third was Hits plus walks per nine. Three lead leagues in a whole career? Hoyt was a very good pitcher, but not a hall of famer, in my eyes.
Why is Waite Hoyt in the hall of fame? Do you think he should be? Pumpsie 
|
|
#2
05-23-2004, 07:03 PM
|
||||
|
||||
|
He was a fine pitcher but he just got in under the radar.
He is not worthy but what can ya do. Hoyt was a name asscociated with greatness and someone on the Vets Com. thought a little rubbed off on him.... Blyleven and Kaat were both much better on much much worst teams.......
|
|
#3
05-23-2004, 07:21 PM
|
||||
|
||||
|
Re: Waite Hoyt
Quote:
Quote:
__________________
No matter what I talk about, I always get back to baseball." -- Connie Mack
|
|
#4
05-24-2004, 10:50 AM
|
||||
|
||||
|
Hoyt's very, very far from the best pitcher in the Hall, and he's definitely below the median -- almost certainly in the bottom quartile. But he's far from the worst pitcher either.
He had very little black ink, as you note, but in gray ink he is exactly at the HOF average. He was never great, but he was a very good, extremely durable pitcher for a long (21 year) career, running from 1918-1938 -- possibly the most grueling era in history to take the mound. (Except perhaps now, but then again now we have 5-man rotations and relief specialists.) If you've got a real high standard for the Hall, maybe he doesn't belong, but as it's currently constituted, Hoyt doesn't seem terribly out of place in Cooperstown to me.
|
|
#5
05-24-2004, 01:50 PM
|
||||
|
||||
|
Someone probably decided the great Yankee team needed a pitcher in the Hall as well.
__________________
 This is the old left hander, rounding third and heading for home. "And this one belongs to the Reds!"
|
|
#6
05-24-2004, 02:08 PM
|
||||
|
||||
|
While I agree that Hoyt may not be the worst pitcher in the hall, he is not as good as a number of non-elected players on the ballot, including the aforementioned Bert Blyleven and Jim Kaat, and probably Jim Morris and Doc Gooden, as well. Hoyt was the best pitcher on the best team ever, true, but it's sort of like those Big Red Machine team pitchers(besides Seaver): they didn't really affect their team's overall performance. How much worse do you think those Yankees teams would've done without Hoyt?
Pumpsie
|
|
#7
05-24-2004, 03:16 PM
|
||||
|
||||
|
I'm going to say they would have lost at least one pennant they otherwise won.
In 1922 the Yankees only beat the Browns by one game. Hoyt went 19-12 in 265 innings. I'm willing to bet there's at least two games that season that he won that a lesser pitcher would have lost. There were a couple other seasons where they only won by 2.5 or 3 games, but I think I've made my point.
|
|
#8
05-27-2004, 06:40 PM
|
|||
|
|||
|
Quote:
There are a couple of other factors to consider: 1) His career win total of 237 is a lot,folks. Once you get up that high, there has to be some major flaw in certain aspects of your game to prevent your election. Compare his ERA vs. the league's to those players with higher win totals who are not in the Hall. Playes such as Tanana and Dennis Martinez both have higher ERAs despite lower league ERAs. If we're going to say that hitting totals were inflated during that era and that therefore certain batters were not worthy, then shouldn't an excellent pitcher be given more credit? 2) The guy was clutch. Keep in mind this was that inflated hitting era that everybody loves to mention. Despite that, while hurling for the Yankees the guy had a 1.62 World Series ERA in 77 2/3 innings pitched. You can give Ruth and Gehrig all the credit in the world that you want, but he made a huge difference in those games. Also keep in mind that for many years he held or shared a great number of WS pitching records. 3) Several of his numbers have been taken out of context. Yes, he only had one season leading the league in wins and one leading it in saves. Yet that one year that he led in saves he was also third in wins only one behind the leaders of Grove and Pipgras. When you add his save totals, he factored in on 31 wins for the Yankees that year. Overall he was a huge factor in helping one of the greatest dynasties to win titles. Combine that with his individual accomplishments and he is definitely Hall worthy.
|
|
#9
07-21-2006, 07:39 AM
|
||||
|
||||
|
Whether Hoyt would be in the HOF if he were with a non-marquee team is open to question.
If Hoyt posted the same record with the St. Louis Browns, he well may not be in the HOF, although a case could be made under those circumstances that he was a better pitcher than racking up the same record with the Yankees. If Hoyt won one less game in 1927 and added to his 1921 totals and one less game in 1928 and added it to his 1922 totals, he'd be a four-time 20 game winner, and without anything else changing, a lot of the discussion of his unworthiness for the Hall would cease. Hoyt isn't someone I would advocate for if he were not in the HOF, but he's not someone whose plaque I want to rip out of Cooperstown, either. Much of the arguments about Hoyt can apply to Herb Pennock. Both of these guys are in the HOF because they won over 200 games. Bill James once wrote an essay about how Pennock and Hoyt are in the HOF while Bob Shawkey and Urban Shocker are not. The reason, James speculates, is that Shawkey and Shocker finished just under the 200 win mark, while Hoyt and Pennock exceeded it. Shocker, especially, has a much more impressive record; his FOUR 20 win seasons came with the Browns, and his ERA vs. league is the most impressive of the four. Shocker died late into his career, in 1928, just short of 200 wins. His case is significantly better than Hoyt's and Pennock's
__________________
"I do not care if half the league strikes. Those who do it will encounter quick retribution. All will be suspended and I don't care if it wrecks the National League for five years. This is the United States of America and one citizen has as much right play as another. The National League will go down the line with Robinson whatever the consequences. You will find if you go through with your intention that you have been guilty of complete madness." NL President Ford Frick, 1947
|
|
#10
07-21-2006, 08:58 PM
|
|||
|
|||
|
Hoyt wasn't really a Hall of Famer, but he announced for the Reds for many years, was famous for his great stories about Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and the 1920s Yankees during rain delays. It kept his name alive, and eventually the Veteran's Committee put him in.
|
|
#11
07-21-2006, 09:32 PM
|
||||
|
||||
|
I have Hoyt ranked # 84 all-time and Pennock ranked #86, both relativley close, but neither good enough for my Hall of Fame (my cut-off number at this point is 74 pitchers)
__________________
1885 1886 1926 1931 1934 1942 1944 1946 1964 1967 1982 2006 1887 1888 1928 1930 1943 1968 1985 1987 2004 1996 2000 2001 2002 2005 2009 The Top 100 Pitchers In MLB History
|
|
#12
06-20-2009, 12:35 PM
|
|||
|
|||
|
Waite Hoyt's grave site, Spring Grove Cemetery, Cincinnati, OH
http://www.tokyoroserecords.com/mp3s&jpgs/WaiteHoyt.MP4
|
|
#13
06-21-2009, 10:37 AM
|
|||
|
|||
|
Quote:
|
|
#15
06-23-2009, 04:45 PM
|
|||
|
|||
|
Too cool. That's a nice touch leaving the baseball.
|
|
#16
06-23-2009, 04:58 PM
|
||||
|
||||
|
Hoyt by PCA:
Code:
Yr Lg Off Def Pit O-M D-M P-M Wins 1927 AL -0.08 0.42 6.96 -0.9 0.6 10.5 7.30 1923 AL -0.35 0.53 6.43 -1.3 0.8 9.7 6.61 1934 NL -0.49 0.07 6.53 -1.4 0.0 10.4 6.11 1921 AL -0.30 0.15 5.91 -1.3 0.0 7.8 5.76 1928 AL 0.00 0.14 5.45 -0.7 0.0 7.2 5.59 1922 AL -0.19 0.44 4.15 -1.0 0.7 4.7 4.40 1926 AL -0.27 0.09 4.52 -1.1 0.0 6.0 4.34 1925 AL 0.44 0.14 3.08 0.3 0.0 2.7 3.66 1924 AL -0.56 0.17 3.62 -1.7 0.1 3.7 3.23 1937 NL -0.86 0.14 3.73 -2.2 0.1 4.7 3.01 1929 AL -0.11 -0.02 2.73 -0.8 -0.2 2.7 2.60 1936 NL -0.17 0.07 2.39 -0.6 0.0 3.2 2.29 1935 NL 0.06 0.16 1.93 -0.2 0.2 1.6 2.15 1919 AL -0.33 0.04 2.42 -0.9 0.0 3.4 2.13 1933 NL -0.08 0.07 1.83 -0.4 0.0 2.0 1.82 1920 AL -0.38 0.11 1.92 -1.0 0.1 2.1 1.65 1932 NL -0.61 0.18 1.58 -1.5 0.2 1.4 1.15
|
|
#17
06-23-2009, 05:51 PM
|
|||
|
|||
|
Quote:
|
|
#18
06-23-2009, 06:19 PM
|
||||
|
||||
|
Hoyt's post-season record came against a series of teams from the National League who made the world series on the strenght of their defense and pitching and NOT on the strength of their offense. Literally, the OPS+ of those teams, in order:
1921 NYG: 104 1922 NYG: 101 1923 NYG: 104 1926 STL: 101 1927 PIT: 101 1928 STL: 101 1931 PHA: 102 All slightly above average hitting teams with well above average defenses. The NL in the 20s was also well weaker in terms of league quality than the AL and the representatives in the WS reflect this...a whole series of very marginal playoff teams with pretty darned marginal records. It's important to keep in mind that those post-season pitching performances from Hoyt didn't come against the level of competition that guys like Clemens and Maddux' records.
|
|
#19
06-23-2009, 07:12 PM
|
|||
|
|||
|
Quote:
Let's look at those 1921 Giants for example. This is the squad that Hoyt completely obliterated and pitched 27 innings against without yielding single earned run: Over the course of the regular season they had a team batting average of .298. In the World Series, that average dropped way down to .269. One might jump to the conclusion, that, therefore, the Yankees were much stronger than the National League competition that the Giants batters faced on a regular basis. However, let's take Hoyt's numbers out of the mix. Suddenly you have the Giants squad hitting .335 against the American League champs. A squad that Hoyt annihilated. It also sounds good on paper to say that the Giants were a weak hitting team until you start naming their lineup. A lineup with George Kelly, Dave Bancroft, Frankie Frisch, Ross Youngs, George Burns,and Irish Meusel wasn't exactly a bunch of pushovers. If I were an opposing pitcher, I'd be a lot more intimidated by that lineup than the 1997 Marlins or 1995 White Sox that Clemens faced. If you take the anomaly/monster/super-human entity that was called "Ruth" out of the Yankees lineup and replace him with virtually anyone else in the American League, the two teams have quite similar batting numbers over the course of the season. One might even, dare I say it, label the Giants as the superior hitting squad. Ruth single-handedly skews all the stats. As far as the two leagues go, even with Ruth, the A.L. clubbed a grand total of 17 more homeruns than the National League that year and had a .003 higher batting average. Ruth manages to skew the entire A.L. up an extra point in batting average all by himself. Not to mention , that if you take his round trippers out of the equation, I'm not so sure that the league still looks all that superior in the hitting department? Hoyt did all his post season damage against two semi-dynasties (the Giants and Cardinals of the 1920s) and the great '27 Pirates team. I'd hardly say that these were weak teams.
|
|
#21
06-23-2009, 07:27 PM
|
|||
|
|||
|
Quote:
|
|
#22
06-23-2009, 08:18 PM
|
||||
|
||||
|
Quote:
3-0 Yanks 3-0 Yanks 13-5 Giants, but 8 of those runs came in one horrible 8th inning melt-down primarily sparked by two of the Yankees' scrub pitchers 4-2 Giants 3-1 Yanks 8-5 Giants (they seemed to have their way with Shawkey) 2-1 Giants 1-0 Giants and the run was unearned 0, 0, 13*, 4, 1, 8, 2, 1...that's not a team winning games by outslugging the slugging Yankees. You need to look at how these teams got the wins they did...the Giants were a defensively gifted squad...Kelly, Frisch and Bancroft comprised one of the best defensive infields in the game at that time. That said, it's fair to say OPS+ misses some value since they were also an aggressive club on the bases and their OPS+ doesn't suggest they should have been scoring 840 runs...so they were perhaps more of an offensive club in '21 than I'm giving their credit for. But their high BA and even higher net OPS probably owes more to the hitter's haven they called home. In '22 the same story applies...on the surface the offense looks impressive but adjust out the huge advantage their park gave them and they're an average (but well balanced) offense that manufactured runs on the basepaths. They won that world series 3-2, 3-3 (T), 3-0, 4-3, and 5-3. That's a defensively gifted team beating an offensively gifted team. That's not a team that should scare Hoyt.
|
|
#23
06-23-2009, 10:19 PM
|
||||
|
||||
|
Quote:
Do you EVER consider post season stats towards a player's HOF candidacy? Or are you of the modern stats guys theory that it was just a coincidence that he happened to be great in those 83.2 innings? You can't do much better than Hoyt did in the world series. The other poster was a little off, he actually had a 1.83 ERA in 83.2 WS innings. W-L record was just 6-4 in 11 starts thanks to 11 unearned runs allowed. He pretty much singlehandedly kepot the Yankees in the 1921 WS, allowing no earned runs with 2 unearned runs in 27 innings against McGraw's Men that year.
|
|
#24
06-23-2009, 10:28 PM
|
||||
|
||||
|
I consider post-season appearances with the same weight I consider every other inning pitched. A game of baseball is just a game of baseball.
And I also think it's very important to recognize what the context is with any statistic...Hoyt's 1.83 ERA in the post-season is certainly a nice stretch of innings, but Jeff Weaver dominated the Tigers in 2006...does that mean Jeff Weaver is clutch? Yankees fans would argue that he was ANTI-clutch given how badly he handled NYC. Yes...I do think 82 innings is a small sample...too small to draw significant conclusions. Post-season performance should be counted within the regular season tallies and will be added to the regular season analysis on my next pass at PCA...but that's all it is to me...a game between two good teams (luckily my methods account for strength of schedule).
|
|
#25
06-23-2009, 10:53 PM
|
||||
|
||||
|
Quote:
Have you ever been involved in any way (player, coach, manager, umpire) in a post season or tounament or any other kind of "big" game? Anyone who has will tell you that those games are not just like any other "game of baseball." Not only the pressure involved and not only the magnitude of the games, but I'm sure you realize that teams play those games differently. They don't "rest" players, they don't bring lesser pitchers into the game, they don't take a look at a new player, etc....every team plays their optimum lineup and only uses their best pitchers in the series, barring starnge circumstances, like blowouts, or long extra inning games etc... If you don't think that emotions can affect players (and managers and umpires), you probably never watched Ankiel pitch near the end. You probably never watched Mackey Sasser try to throw the ball back to the pitcher near the end. Sometimes players choke. It happens. Sometimes certain players can step it up a notch in big games. It happens. 90% of this game is half mental.
|
 |
| Thread Tools | |
| Display Modes | Rate This Thread |
|
|
Linear Mode
