Criteria for baseball rankings

The eightteen criteria for batters are as follows. In all except the Hall of Fame and Golden Glove, a player's number of points for that criterion is, on a 0 to 10 point basis, his number of points as a fraction from the lowest scorer to the highest.

• MVP, weight 4. Each time a player wins the MVP, he receives 12, 11, or 10 points depending on whether the ratio of his number of votes to that of the second place finisher is greater than 1.6 (12 points), between 7/6 and 1.6 (11 points), or less than 7/6. Each time a player comes in second in the MVP voting, he receives 6, 7, or 8 points, according to the ratios just described. Each time a player comes in third in the MVP voting, he gets 5 points if he got at least half the maximum possible number of votes, and 4 otherwise. Each time a player comes in 4th or 5th, he gets 3 points. Each time a player comes in 6th through 10th, he gets 2 points. Each time a player gets at least one vote for the MVP but does not placein the top ten, he gets 0.5 points. These points are totalled for each player. The highest in this category was Barry Bonds with 106 points, including seven firsts, two seconds, and four other top tens. The lowest rated player was Scott Rolen with 3.5 points. Then, for example, Ernie Banks, who had 34 MVP points, scores 2.98 in this criterion since 34 is .298 of the way from 3.5 to 106.

• TPR, life, weight 1.5. This "Total Player Rating" is the rating used by Palmer and Thorn in "Total Baseball" to determine their Top 100 Players. Each season a batter gets Adjusted Batting Runs, Base-running Runs, and Fielding Runs. Each of these are based on intricate formulas, including Ball Park factors which take into account whether or not they played half of their games in a hitter-friendly park. These statistics are supposed to represent how many additional runs the player earns for his team compared to an average player in his league that year. The batting, base-running, and fielding runs are added to obtain the total number of runs gained, and then this is divided by a season-dependent factor to yield the number of additional wins due to the player, compared to an average player. I total this for each year of a player's career. For the 2004-2007 seasons, I had to guess the player's TPR since I don't know the precise formula and do not have access to Palmer and Thorn's results until they publish a new volume of Total Baseball. I did this primarily by comparing a player's statistics with those of a comparable player in previous seasons. The relatively low weight which I give to this is in part due to some uneasiness with Palmer and Thorn's fielding ratings. In this rating, lifetime TPR, Bobby Grich comes out 25th of alltime (as of the year 2003), and 13th of my ranked players, including pitchers, who have an analogous Runs Saved rating. This does not seem at all consistent with his reputation, and calls into question the validity of this as an overall criterion.

• TPR, top 5s, weight 1.5. This gives 5 points for each time a player has the highest TPR in his league, 4 for each second,..., and 1 for each fifth.

• RC and TA, top 5s, weight 3. This is similar to the previous criterion, but is based on top-5 finishes in the league in Runs Created (Bill James's formulation for run contribution from a variety of batting and baserunning stats) and Total Average (Tom Boswell's formulation for offensive contribution from a variety of batting and baserunning stats). My giving this a higher weight than the TPR top5's is in part due to my uneasiness with the fielding component of the TPR and in part due to TPR's being involved in two criteria with total weight 3.

• BR, life, weight 1.5. This composite statistic is BtnRuns taken from baseball-reference.com. I used to take it from Total Baseball, but that is four years behind. It seems that the one used now does not include SB as much as the old one did. That is why I have added a new category for SB. It is a comparison with an average player, so it is possible to have a negative number (e.g. Ozzie Smith and Nellie Fox).

• BR, best 5, weight 1.5. This adds the player's best five years of the BR statistic just described. I think this is important as it measures Peak Value as opposed to Career Value. Note that these are based on comparisons with an average player of that year, and so are not affected by the inflated batting statistics in recent years.

• Major All Star, weight 1. At the end of each season Sporting News and/or the Associated Press names the best player at each position in the major leagues. I think this (i.e. number of times named to this team) is a good statistic, and I would give it a higher weight if I had a consistent measure of it. I have the AP team for each year since 1982 (except 1997 and 2003-7) and the Sporting News team for years prior to that. Unfortunately, during quite a few of those years, TSN named All Star teams for each league, and not, as far as I know, one for the majors. For those years, I selected the league all star who did better in his league's MVP voting. If a player is named best Designated Hitter, I give 0.7 points, since he is only competing against one league. I give more than the 0.5 that logic might dictate, to reward the player as The Best. For 1997, I guessed the Major League team based on MVP votes, and for 2003-7 I used various composite statistics to guess it.

• All Star, weight 1. This is the number of times named to the league All Star team. This does not distinguish whether the player was named to the first team by the fans or selected for the squad by the manager. I don't think it is a great statistic, but it measures something about the player's name recognition. It certainly rewards longevity. Hank Aaron is first with 21 and Robin Yount last with 3, of my rated players. Yount's poor performance in this criterion is surprising, considering his two MVP selections and first-time Hall of Fame selection.

• Golden Glove, weight 2. Here I just count the number of times a player is given his league's Golden Glove award at his position. This criterion is a poll of players, based on fielding prowess. This one is a slight deviation from my policy of rating players linearly between the lowest and highest point-getters. I think it is significantly better to win one such award than zero, since the one award suggests that the player is probably close to winning on other occasions. So I give 2 points for 1 selection and rate players with at least one selection linearly between 2 points for 1 and 10 points for 16, which is the number of times Brooks Robinson received this award. Despite its fairly low weight of 2, this criterion is a huge differentiator. The reason is that most other criteria are highly correlated, so that the differences between the scores of comparable people will usually be small, but Golden Glove is not correlated with hitting at all. Willie Mays gained 19 total points on Ted Williams in this category and only beat him by 6 points overall. I felt that it needed to be given a weight as high as 2 in order that Brooks Robinson and Ozzie Smith would come out anywhere near what you would expect from their reputation. The GG was just instituted in 1957. For prior years, I guess the winner based on reputation and Fielding Runs according to Palmer and Thorn.

• Lifetime RRBIs, weight 0.5. This is the sum of a player's runs and RBIs for their career. Palmer and Thorn dismiss these statistics as meaningless to a player's contribution because it is so dependent on teammates. That is why I gave it such a low weight. It certainly rewards longevity.

• RRBI, best 5, weight 0.5. This is the player's best 5 years of runs and RBIs. However, this is weighted by the average runs per game in the player's league during those years. This compensates for the higher number of runs scored in recent years compared, say, to the late 1960's.

• OPS, weight 1. This is a combination of the player's On Base Average and Slugging Percent, adjusted to incorporate the league average, averaged over the player's career. It is taken from baseball-reference.com.

• Hall of Fame, weight 2. I would weight this one higher if I knew how to treat current players fairly. For players elected during their first year of eligibility, I consider the ratio of the number of votes the player received divided by the number of votes needed to be elected. This would be 1.33 for a player who got every voter's vote, which has never happened. For rated batters, the highest was Cal Ripken with 1.31. For players elected the first time eligible, I give them their ratio minus .31 and then multiplied by 10. Thus a person who just barely made it on their first try would receive 6.9. Players who made it, but not on their first try, receive from 4 to 6.6 points. Six points is for making it on the 4th try, 5 for making it on the 8th, and 4 for being selected by the Veterans' Committee. Players who haven't made it get roughly their maximum number of votes divided by 100. For players not yet voted upon, I make a conservative estimate of what I think might happen. It is hard to guess, when you consider that Dick Allen got at most 89 votes (with about 350 needed to elect), Dale Murphy at most 116, and Keith Hernandez at most 52. These three players did quite well in most of my categories. Because of this, many current players who are not superstars with huge name recognition only received 1 or 2 points. Most current or recently-retired players will probably end up doing much better than my estimates, except for the uncertainty regarding how voters will respond to steroid-use allegations. In recent years, people like Ryne Sandberg and Eddie Murray have made a big jump in my ratings when they received a strong first-time election to the Hall of Fame.

• Win Shares, total, weight 2. The next three criteria are based on Bill James' all-purpose statistic. A player's win shares during a season are a complicated combination of various batting, fielding, and baserunning statistics, and are described in detail in James' book "Win Shares." Unlike Palmer & Thorn's ratings, win shares can never be negative, and so the total win shares reward longevity.

• Win Shares, best 4 years, weight 2. In James' 2000 rankings of players at each position, he includes best 3 years of win shares and best 5 consecutive years. Mine is a compromise between these two.

• Win Shares, top 5s, weight 2. For each year, I take the top five non-pitchers in the majors in Win Shares. I use Palmer & Thorn's Player Rating to break ties, and MVP votes to break players who are tied in both. I give 7 pts for each time first, 5 for each 2nd, down to 2 for each 5th.

• Fielding runs This is taken from baseballprospectus.com. It is a comparison with an average player, and so can be negative, which it is for many of our sluggers. I added this statistic in 2007 because I felt that fielding was underrepresented in my ratings.

• SB, lifetime Added in 2007, because I felt that the new measure of Batting Runs that I was using did not account for SB as much as the earlier one did. This is merely the lifetime total.

Now we describe the criteria for pitchers.

• Runs, total, weight 3. This is a simple statistic which Palmer and Thorn feel is the best measure of pitching value, and I agree. It is the difference between the average league ERA and that of the pitcher, multiplied by the number of innings pitched divided by 9. Thus it is the number of runs saved over the course of the season compared to an average pitcher. This is how Palmer and Thorn compare pitchers' runs earned with those of batters. There is an adjustment for home ballpark; i.e. a compensation is made for a pitcher whose home park is a hitter's park.

• Runs, best 5, weight 3. The pitcher's five best seasons of runs saved are totaled. This is a measure of Peak Value, as opposed to Career Value. Since this is a comparison with an average pitcher of that season, no compensation needs to be made for eras of high or low ERA.

• Runs, best 2, weight 1. This is really a Peak Value, just the best two years. Pedro Martinez's years in 1999 and 2000 and Clemens in 1997 were the best by anyone in this era. Bob Gibson's 1.12 ERA in 1968 and Sandy Koufax's three years of 1,2,2 in the MVP and twice named AP Athlete of the Year did not fare so well because the average ERA was very low during that era.

• Cy Young, weight 3.5. I give 6 points for each time the player wins his league's Cy Young, 5 for each second, down to 1 for each sixth place finish. For years prior to 1970, when the current voting methods were adopted, I use a combination of the existing Cy Young vote, together with MVP votes for pitchers.

• Top 5's, weight 3. I give 5 points for each first, down to 1 point for each fifth, in the pitcher's league each year in each of six categories. These are strikeouts, adjusted ERA, opponents on-base average, adjusted starter runs, total pitcher index, and total player ranking. In the latter, pitchers are compared with batters, as well as other pitchers. All but the first of these are highly correlated. This is a combination of peak and career statistics. You have to have a great year to get a first in these, and you have to have lots of great years to come out tops in this category, as Clemens does by a large margin.

• MVP, weight 2. I give this less weight for pitchers than for batters, because it seems that often pitchers don't get a lot of respect from MVP voters. I give 10 for each first down to 1 for each 10th, plus 0.5 for each time receiving some votes but not in the top ten. Sandy Koufax was first in this with 25.5 on a 1, 2, and 2, plus three mentions, but Roger Clemens just pulled ahead of him.

• Hall of Fame, weight 2. This is done almost exactly the same as for batters, except that for first-time namers it is ratio of votes to cutoff minus .32 times 10, to reflect Tom Seaver and Nolan Ryan receiving 1.32 times the cutoff number of votes.

• W-L, weight 1.5. For each year I compute the pitcher's wins minus (his team pct) times (his number of decisions). This is the number of extra games that he won compared to an average pitcher on his team. This seems like a good statistic, although I think it rewards the pitchers on a bad team a little bit too much. Tom Seaver is tops in this with 65.8 additional wins, while Bob Lemon and Don Drysdale are last with only 3.9. Note that they played for good teams. Steve Carlton had by far the best single season in this statistic in 1972 when he was 27-10 for a team with a .372 winning percentage.

• K's, total, weight 0.5. This is just career strikeouts. Palmer and Thorn do not feel this is important to helping the team win, hence my low weight for it. It has a lot of fan appeal, at least. Nolan Ryan is, of course, highest with 5714, while Bob Lemon is lowest with 1277. The next K statistic is adjusted for the average number of K's per game in the league, but this one is not. Career totals are career totals, plain and simple.

• K's per inning, weight 0.5. Take the pitcher's number of strikeouts per inning over their career. Then, for each year the pitcher is active, compute the league's total (both teams) number of strikeout per game, and average this over the pitcher's career. Take the ratio of the first number to the second and multiply by 100. Nolan Ryan is tops in this, too. Although Randy Johnson and Pedro Martinez have a higher number of strikeouts per inning than did Ryan, there are many more strikeouts per game in recent years than there were during Ryan's era. Ryan's rating of 101 in this is approximately 1 strikeout per inning in an era when there were on average ten strikeouts per game, while in 2000 that average was up to 13 per game.

• Opponents on base, weight 1.5. This is the pitcher's career opponents on-base average divided into the league average OOB for each year that the pitcher is active.

• Win Shares, total, weight 2. See comments for batters.

• Win Shares, best 4, weight 2. See comments for batters.

• Win Shares, top 4s, weight 2. Each season I find the top four pitchers in the majors based on Win Shares, breaking ties as I did for batters. I give 4 points for each time first, 3 for each second, 2 for each third, and 1 for each 4th.