They all just got voted in to The Hall of Fame. The table below shows their numbers and ranks in various career measures. They generally do not rank very high. Maybe peak value can justify their induction. I will discuss that for each player separately below.
|
|
BB Ref WAR & Rank |
Fangraphs WAR & Rank |
Win Shares & Rank Thru 2000 |
MVP/Cy Young Shares & Rank |
|
Hodges |
43.9 (287th) |
42.1 (292nd) |
263 (266th) |
0.65 (402nd) |
|
Kaat |
45.2 (133rd) |
70.9 (28th) |
268 (248th) |
0.06 (260th) |
|
Minoso |
53.8 (166th) |
50.8 (186th) |
283 (210th) |
1.90 (116th) |
|
Oliva |
43.0 (297th) |
40.7 (322nd) |
245 (318th) |
1.90 (116th) |
There are 269 players & pitchers in The Hall (including these four)
by my count (I used the Hall page from Baseball Reference). It looks like 188 position players, 79 pitchers and 2 what appear to me to be both or player/pitchers (Bullet Rogan & Leon Day).
A couple of things to keep in mind for all four: Their Win Share ranks (which I got from the original Bill James book) will be much lower now as recent players pass them. Also, it looks like 25-30 Negro League players are in The Hall. If we take them out, the we are down to 240-250 Hall of Famers and that makes the ranks for these 4 look even weaker as Hall of Fame credentials.
The Win Shares ranks includes both pitchers and position players in one group. The others are either just position player or just pitchers, depending on the case.
Hodges: None of his ranks are even close to the top 188 players (or even top 200 to leave a little elbow room). When he was playing, the writers gave him very little MVP support. 400 players are ahead of him and before 1931 there were just occasional MVP awards given out. He has only 3 top 10s in WAR for position players at Baseball Reference (7th, 7th, 9th). It looks like very little peak value. In OPS+ he two 6ths and two 8ths. Maybe his value as a manager helps but he really only had one good team, the 1969 Mets.
Kaat: His one high rank is 28th in WAR from Fangraphs (quite a bit lower than at BB Ref-see links at the end on how they each do WAR for pitchers-I don't see anything that jumps out at me to explain the difference easily). His Cy Young rank is low. But there was only one award for both leagues before 1967. This, however, probably does not help. If we gave him one full share (which is probably too much since his best WAR ranks before 1967 were a 3rd and 7th) it would bring him up to 1.06 and that would just be 60th and you have to remember that there was no award at all before 1956. He does have 3 top 5 finishes in WAR for pitchers at BB Ref (3rd, 4th, 5th) and 3 other top 10s. But those are all spread out over a 14 year period. It is not like he was the dominant pitcher in the AL for a 3-4 year period.
Minoso: Now his ranks are all generally good and he had some good years in the Negro Leagues before coming to the AL. From 1951-1959, he was in the top 10 in WAR for position players from BB Ref 7 times including a 1st, 4th, 4th and 5th.
Oliva: Only his MVP shares rank is high (he came in 2nd twice). In his first 8 seasons he led the AL in hits 5 times and average 3 times. In his first 7 years he had 4 top five finishes in WAR for position players from BB Ref (2 4ths and 2 5ths). But given his low career ranks, I think he would need to have been the dominant player for a 3-4 year period to make it. Unfortunately for him, injuries slowed him down his last five seasons and he was done at age 37.
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