Should Wes Ferrell Be In The Hall Of Fame?

He is 161st in career WAR among all players (pitchers included). By my count, there are 215 players & pitchers in the Hall who played in MLB. So that rank of 161 looks good. Click here to see the rankings.

He had some decent peak value. In an eight year period, he had six top 5 finishes in WAR for pitchers, including four 2nd place finishes (and 3 in a row, from 1930-32, trailing Lefty Grove each time).

He also led the AL in WAR for all pitchers and players in 1935 with 11.0. That was a year when Grove, Gehrig, Foxx and Gehringer were all still very good or in their primes. Here is the top 10 from that year

1	Ferrell (BOS)	11
2	Grove (BOS)	8.8
3	Gehrig (NYY)	8.7
4	Foxx (PHA)	8.3
5	Gehringer (DET)	7.8
6	Greenberg (DET)	7.7
7	Harder (CLE)	7.1
8	Appling (CHW)	6.7
9	Myer (WSH)	6.1
10	Vosmik (CLE)	5.9

Since 1920, there have been 33 seasons of 11 or higher in WAR. I count 23 players & pitchers in that group. The only ones not in the Hall besides Ferrell are Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Dwight Gooden and Dizzy Trout (whose year was 1944, a war year).

Ferrell was 5th in ERA+ that year (1935) while not being in the top 10 in FIP ERA. What helped his WAR was the IP total and the fact that he had a 141 OPS+ (.347 AVG, .427 OBP and .533 SLG). His career WAR is 61.6 and 12.7 of that comes from offense. His career OPS+ is 100. Very, very good for a pitcher.

Ferrell was 3rd in overall WAR the next year (1936). His career after age 29 did not amount to much (maybe because of injuries or behavioral issues-Click here to read the SABR biography by Mark Smith). Only 216 of his 2,623 IP came after age 29.

He led the AL in IP from 1935-37. In 1935 he had 322.1 and 2nd place Mel Harder had 287.1. Ferrell had 7 top 10 finishes in ERA+ and 3 in FIP ERA.

I counted about 100 Hall of Famers who trail him in career WAR. Here are the pitchers (if it is not all of them, it is close). The + means they are Hall of Famers and the number in parentheses is numbers of years played.

Early Wynn+ (23)
Stan Coveleski+ (14)
Dazzy Vance+ (16)
Jim Bunning+ (17)
Rube Waddell+ (13)
Joe McGinnity+ (10)
Whitey Ford+ (16)
Mordecai Brown+ (14)
Eppa Rixey+ (21)
Burleigh Grimes+ (19)
Waite Hoyt+ (21)
Chief Bender+ (16)
Sandy Koufax+ (12)
Bob Lemon+ (15)
Hoyt Wilhelm+ (21)
Dizzy Dean+ (12)
Herb Pennock+ (22)
Addie Joss+ (9)
Rich Gossage+ (22)
Jack Chesbro+ (11)
Catfish Hunter+ (15)
Rollie Fingers+ (17)

Now some notable position players who trail Ferrell in WAR

Harmon Killebrew+ (22)

Yogi Berra+ (19)

Hank Greenberg+ (13)

Willie Stargell+ (21)

Joe Gordon+ (11)

George Sisler+ (15)

Bill Dickey+ (17)

Joe Medwick+ (17)

Enos Slaughter+ (19)

Bill Terry+ (14)

Willie Keeler+ (19)

Gabby Hartnett+ (20)

Mickey Cochrane+ (13)

Kirby Puckett+ (12)

Orlando Cepeda+ (17)

Tony Lazzeri+ (14)

Larry Doby+ (13)

Ralph Kiner+ (10)

Jim Rice+ (16)

Lou Brock+ (19)

Using Runs Relative To Average To Determine The Best All Around Careers (Part 2)

Click here to see Part 1.

I thought of another way to measure this. Since the  running and fielding ratings were converted to rate stats to be like the hitting stat (OPS+), and that average was 100 once the geometric mean was applied, I could use 80 as replacement level. Then 80 was subtracted from each player's rating and multiplied by the number of seasons they played (a full season was 700 PAs). Then that would give me an all-around rating above replacement level. That way, guys whose careers ended early did not have the advantage of missing their decline years. So here is the top 25

Rank	Player	OPS+	Run	Field	Rating	Seasons	WAR
1	Barry Bonds	182	102.2	110.9	127.2	18.0	850.5
2	Hank Aaron	155	101.9	105.2	118.4	19.9	764.1
3	Willie Mays	156	104.4	111.6	122.0	17.9	749.8
4	Babe Ruth	206	98.4	105.5	128.8	15.2	740.1
5	Ty Cobb	168	102.6	99.3	119.6	18.7	739.9
6	Stan Musial	159	99.2	102.6	117.3	18.2	678.2
7	Tris Speaker	157	99.4	105.7	118.1	17.1	652.7
8	Carl Yastrzemski	130	99.2	110.2	112.4	20.0	647.3
9	Honus Wagner	151	101.7	105.3	117.3	16.8	626.5
10	Rickey Henderson	127	108.3	103.3	112.4	19.1	617.6
11	Frank Robinson	154	101.8	100.9	116.5	16.8	611.7
12	Mel Ott	155	98.9	103.0	116.4	16.2	590.0
13	Ted Williams	190	99.5	96.6	122.2	14.0	589.5
14	Eddie Collins	142	102.1	101.7	113.8	17.2	581.1
15	Al Kaline	134	101.9	110.2	114.6	16.6	572.6
16	Rogers Hornsby	175	98.5	104.1	121.5	13.5	561.5
17	Lou Gehrig	179	98.4	99.5	120.5	13.8	558.9
18	Mickey Mantle	172	103.5	95.9	119.4	14.2	558.2
19	Alex Rodriguez	143	103.5	101.2	114.4	16.2	557.0
20	Albert Pujols	162	100.5	111.8	122.0	13.2	555.0
21	Pete Rose	118	100.0	96.5	104.3	22.7	552.7
22	Eddie Murray	129	98.7	103.3	109.5	18.3	540.4
23	Nap Lajoie	150	98.4	105.9	116.0	14.9	538.3
24	George Brett	135	101.8	102.7	112.1	16.6	533.2
25	Mike Schmidt	147	99.2	109.8	116.9	14.4	531.1

Click here to see the complete rankings.

Using Runs Relative To Average To Determine The Best All Around Careers

See Using Runs Above Average To Determine The Best All Around Careers for a similar analysis.

The idea is to reward balance. I used the Baseball Reference Play Index in the post mentioned above.

In that study, I called up all the seasons with at least 0.1 in each of the following stats: fielding runs (Rfield), base running runs (Rbaser) and batting runs (Rbat). Those are all above average (no seasons came up from 1876-1885, maybe because they don't have SB data for those years).

Then all three stats were multiplied by each other. Then I took the cube root to get the geometric mean.  But that means that any seasons with a negative number or a zero in any of the three stats did not count.

If I use career totals, then there can still be negatives and zeroes so using the cube root probably does not make sense. So here I tried to convert each stat into a rate stat (the explanation is at the end in technical notes). It involved OPS+ and turning the running and fielding stats into something like OPS+. Also, OPS+ itself was adjusted to be an "above replacement" stat. The others were not as it is probably easy to find average runners and fielders in the minors.

That meant that OPS+ went up for most players (if not all). They got credit for more runs and that increased their estimated OPS+. If a player had negative fielding runs, his fielding OPS+ would be less than 100. If positive, above 100 (100 is average in OPS+). Then I found the geometric mean of all three stats. I used all players with 5000+ PAs and their career stats.

Here are the top 25. I don't know if this is better than the other method. Just different. If you look at the complete lists, some players move up quite a bit.

Rank	Player	OPS+WAR	Run	Field	Rating
1	Babe Ruth	227.71	98.40	105.51	133.15
2	Barry Bonds	197.59	102.22	110.86	130.76
3	Albert Pujols	184.56	100.50	111.81	127.46
4	Willie Mays	176.96	104.45	111.61	127.24
5	Ted Williams	214.00	99.49	96.58	127.10
6	Rogers Hornsby	198.70	98.54	104.06	126.71
7	Lou Gehrig	206.75	98.36	99.49	126.42
8	Billy Hamilton	177.94	105.10	102.60	124.20
9	Joe DiMaggio	180.51	100.93	104.63	123.93
10	Ty Cobb	186.43	102.64	99.32	123.81
11	Tris Speaker	179.95	99.40	105.70	123.59
12	Mickey Mantle	190.49	103.48	95.88	123.58
13	Jimmie Foxx	188.39	98.93	101.30	123.53
14	Dan Brouthers	197.65	97.42	97.80	123.43
15	Larry Walker	166.61	103.47	109.05	123.36
16	Hank Aaron	175.33	101.89	105.15	123.33
17	Shoeless Joe Jackson	187.26	98.55	100.93	122.98
18	Jeff Bagwell	175.24	102.06	104.05	122.94
19	Roger Connor	177.86	97.75	107.03	122.94
20	Hank Greenberg	182.26	100.15	101.64	122.82
21	Jackie Robinson	160.59	103.71	110.95	122.65
22	Stan Musial	181.03	99.17	102.58	122.51
23	Mel Ott	179.95	98.93	102.99	122.33
24	Chase Utley	148.97	104.06	118.24	122.32
25	Mike Schmidt	166.69	99.20	109.84	121.95

Click here to see the complete rankings.

Technical notes: I ran a regression with OPS+ as the dependent variable and batting runs above average per PA as the independent variable. Here is the equation

OPS+ = 832.14*BattingRuns/PA + 99.32

So for all three stats, the runs per PA was plugged into this equation.

Using Runs Above Average To Determine The Best All Around Careers

Using the Baseball Reference Play Index, I called up all the seasons with at least 0.1 in each of the following stats: fielding runs (Rfield), base running runs (Rbaser) and batting runs (Rbat). Those are all above average (no seasons came up from 1876-1885, maybe because they don't have SB data for those years).

Then all three stats were multiplied by each other. Then I took the cube root to get the geometric mean. Each player then had their individual seasons added up. Here are the top 25

1	Willie Mays	197.0106
2	Rickey Henderson	174.8769
3	Barry Bonds	150.7554
4	Al Kaline	111.9025
5	Hank Aaron	103.7591
6	Roberto Clemente	90.52869
7	Kenny Lofton	87.87493
8	Jeff Bagwell	87.33088
9	Chase Utley	85.69787
10	Larry Walker	84.28949
11	Alex Rodriguez	82.69314
12	Albert Pujols	80.61014
13	Honus Wagner	79.79136
14	Eddie Collins	78.96287
15	Ichiro Suzuki	76.79083
16	Frank Robinson	76.45436
17	Carl Yastrzemski	73.22376
18	Jackie Robinson	72.24035
19	Ty Cobb	69.82541
20	Scott Rolen	68.84928
21	Max Carey	68.3932
22	Frankie Frisch	67.90673
23	Joe Morgan	65.48298
24	Ken Griffey2	65.37055
25	George Brett	65.01004

Click here to see the complete rankings

Using Runs Above Average To Determine The Best All Around Seasons (Part 2)

See Click here to read Part 1. I used the Baseball Reference Play Index and stats that measured batting, fielding and running. Balance mattered and I measured that with a geometric mean.

The new part here was to take all the the seasons with an all around rating of 10 or higher and see which players had the most. There have been 272 such seasons. A 10 would result if a guy had 10 runs above average in all 3 stats or any combination that resulted in 1,000 when they were multiplied by each other (the cube root of 1,000 is 10).

Here are the leaders in seasons with a rating of 10 or higher.

Willie Mays	12
Rickey Henderson	9
Al Kaline	7
Barry Bonds	7
Alex Rodriguez	5
Hank Aaron	5
Albert Pujols	4
Carl Yastrzemski	4
Chase Utley	4
Eddie Collins	4
Frankie Frisch	4
Jackie Robinson	4
Joe Morgan	4
Roberto Clemente	4
Ty Cobb	4

It seems like all these guys were or will be (or could have been except for suspected PED use), first ballot Hall of Famers except for Utley (it is also hard to tell with Frisch but it did not take long for him to get in). Maybe he should be, too. His WAR credentials are pretty good. He is 111th in career WAR among position player and had 5 straight years in the top 3 in the NL. He ranks 13th among 2Bmen right now. With 5.4 more WAR, he would crack the top 10. And his all-around ability shows he might have excelled in any era.

Now getting to Willie Mays, who is often said to be the greatest all-around player ever, he has a significant lead over Henderson and Henderson did go over 10 in 1981, a strike year of about only 108 games. Henderson had about 7.5 in the 1994 strike season and that might pro-rate to at least 10. But even so, Mays is still 2 ahead.

Here are all the guys who had 3 seasons of a 10+ rating. There are not many of those either, so what Mays did is pretty incredible.

Brian Jordan	3
Cal Ripken	3
Carlos Beltran	3
Duke Snider	3
George Sisler	3
Honus Wagner	3
Hughie Jennings	3
Ichiro Suzuki	3
John McGraw	3
Ken Griffey	3
Kenny Lofton	3
Ross Barnes	3
Tim Raines	3
Willie Wilson	3

Technical note: This time I called up all the of the following seasons using the Baseball Reference Play Index:

Seasons with 10+ batting runs, 0.1+ fielding runs, 0.1+ base running runs
Seasons with 0.1+ batting runs, 10+ fielding runs, 0.1+ base running runs 
Seasons with 0.1+ batting runs, 0.1+ fielding runs, 10+ base running runs