I can’t say I’m surprised, considering it’s the BWAA, but still, when it came down to it, I was actually pretty sure that Roberto Alomar was going to get into the Hall on his first ballot, if only because he obviously deserves to be in and because the ballot was so thin this year, at least relatively speaking. But I obviously underestimated the extent to which the baseball writers fetishize this whole “first ballot or not” thing, and the extent to which some of them still hold the spitting incident against Alomar, despite the fact that Hirshbeck and Alomar have long since made up, are now friends, and Alomar has actually raised money for Hirshbeck’s charity.

Where does Alomar rank all time?

Oh well.

But in any case, after what I felt was the success of my recent experiment with “crowdsourcing” the ranking of the best players of all time to random internet websites, I decided to see where Roberto Alomar might (or might not) rank among the best second basemen of all time, at least according to the collective wisdom of ye internets.

Again, my method was, I randomly searched google to find the first top-10 lists that came up, on the presumption that if they come up first on google, than the clicks and links of millions web surfers must have decided that these are the best, and then aggregated the results.

Actually in the case of second basemen, though, I could not find even the ten top-10 lists that I was hoping to find, so I had to go with just the eight lists of top-10 all time second sackers that appear to be all that exists on the internet. So in order to make the scores similar to my shortstop ranking, and have them still be out of 1000 possible points, I “normalized” the points allocation so that each 1st place ranking would be worth 125 points, where as each 10th place ranking would be worth 116 points.

In total, only 15 second basemen were ranked across the 8 lists. Here’s what resulted…

Top 15 Second Basemen of All Time

(Total number of points out of 1000, with number of first-place votes in parentheses)

1. Eddie Collins – 992 (5)
2. Rogers Hornsby – 992 (2)
3. Joe Morgan – 984 (1)
4. Nap Lajoie – 855
5. Charlie Gehringer – 841
6. Jackie Robinson – 840
7. Ryne Sandberg – 831
8. Craig Biggio – 712
9. Roberto Alomar – 711
10. Rod Carew – 591
11. Frankie Frisch – 587
T12. Bobby Grich – 235
T12. Jeff Kent – 235
14. Bobby Doerr – 118
15. Lou Whitaker – 116

Once again the internets, at least collectively, basically got this one exactly right. The top three at second base are very close and you can almost go with any combination, but you basically can’t really argue with those three guys being on top.

There were several really close races this time. Eddie Collins and Rogers Hornsby were exactly tied on points, with Collins getting the edge due to his 5 first place votes to Hornsby’s 2. Meanwhile, Charlie Gehringer just barely edged out sentimental favorite Jackie Robinson for 5th place by one point, while Biggio’s longevity edged out Alomar’s superior peak also by just one point. Rod Carew was rightly dropped down the list for having played more games at first base than second, but he still was a heck of a second baseman for a long time, and enough people gave him credit to keep Frankie Frisch out of the top 10 by a mere 4 points.

There was a pretty big dropoff in points after Frisch at number 11, though. It seems that there is a near consensus on who the top 11 second basemen are, if not the exact order.

As for Alomar, he got ranked 9th all time, which seems about right: good enough to be in the top 10 ever and thus an easy case for the Hall of Fame, but definitely outside the true inner circle.

So yeah, it’s a good list, although soon to be outdated, obviously, if Chase Utley keeps churning out MVP-esque seasons year after year.

Original Lists

“The Best 11 Second Basemen of All Time” (Bleacher Report)
“Top 50 Second Basemen of All Time” (The Baseball Page)
“MLB’s 10 Greatest Second Basemen of All Time” (Bleacher Report)
“Top 10 Second Basemen” (About.com)
“Rating the Top Baseball Players of All Time” (The Baseball Guru)
“All-Time Top 100s: Second Base” (Seth Speaks)
“Top Keystone Sackers” (Baseball Think Factory)
“The 25 Second Basemen with the Best Careers” (Seamheads.com)

Recently, as I was writing my post on why Barry Larkin deserves to be a first-ballot hall-of-famer, I got to wondering who the top 10 shortstops of all time are. In order to get an answer, I decided to crowdsource my question to the internet!

What I did was I went to Google and looked up the first ten top-10 rankings of shortstops that I could find, and tallied up their rankings to get a final top-10.

Honus is still the king.

As for the question of whether the first ten random top-10 lists I found are reliable or not, I crowdsourced that too, in a manner of speaking – because these lists were the ten highest ranking according to Google’s PageRank formula, by some definition they are the best lists, because they are the lists more people want to link to.

Taking each player’s ranking from each of the ten top-10 lists, I subtracted that number from 101 to get a point total, which I added to their score. In other words, a first place ranking on a list was worth 100 points, for a theoretical maximum of 1000 points over the 10 polls, and a 10th place ranking on a list was worth 91 points. This ensured that appearing low on two lists was still worth more than appearing high on just one list. If lists listed more than 10 players, I did not give points for any ranking after 10, in order to ensure that all lists were weighted equally.

So without further ado, here are the top ten shortstops of all time, according to the average of ten random internet top-10 lists, along with total final score and total “first place votes” in parentheses:

1. Honus Wagner – 992 (5)
2. Cal Ripken Jr. – 974 (1)
3. Alex Rodriguez – 885 (2)
4. Derek Jeter – 858
5. Ozzie Smith – 765 (2)
6. Robin Yount – 669
7. Ernie Banks – 671
8. Barry Larkin – 657
9. Luke Appling – 562
10. Arky Vaughan – 561

Amazingly, given the rather ridiculous method I used, this is not a bad list at all. In fact, it is pretty close to a list I might have made myself using some sort of advanced statstics-based measures. A-Rod got left off of one ballot on account of his time at third base, so his ranking of #3 seems fair, especially given that by the end of his career he will almost certainly have more innings played at third base than at shortstop (not to mention his admitted steroid usage).  Even if we leave A-Rod out, assuming he is going to wind up remembered more as a 3B, it’s pretty hard to argue with a top 5 of Wagner, Ripken, Jeter, Ozzie, and Yount.

Ernie Banks was similarly left off some ballots since he played more games at first base, so it’s right for him to not be in the top five, but given that he still played 1125 games at shortstop, was one of the first power-hitting shortstops, and is best remembered as a shortstop, #7 doesn’t seem like a bad spot to have him at.

All in all, I find myself quite encouraged by this little experiment in crowdsourcing, as this is really a pretty decent result. If people are interested, it might be worth doing this for other positions, and seeing what comes up.

By the way, altogether across the ten top-10 lists, 20 different players appeared at least once.  Although I was mostly interested in the top ten, where outliers were not likely to appear, in case you are interested the next best ten shortstop according to the average of these lists were:

11. Luis Aparicio – 369
12. Lou Boudreau – 373
13. Joe Cronin – 279
14. Omar Vizquel – 187
15. Alan Trammell – 184
16. Phil Rizzuto – 183
17. Dave Concepcion – 94
18. Pee Wee Reese – 93
19. Nomar Garciaparra – 93
20. George Davis – 91

Here are the ten lists I used (again, these were the first ten lists to come up on Google):

“Top 50 Shortstops of All Time” (The Baseball Page.com)
“Top 10 Greatest MLB Shortstops Of All Time” (Bleacher Report)
“Top 10 Shortstops In Baseball History” (About.com)
“Best Shortstop of All Time?” (FanIQ)
“Top Ten Shortstops of All Time” (World in Focus)
“MLB’s 10 Greatest Shortstops of All Time” (Bleacher Report)
“FSN Sports Top 10 Shortstops” (Baseball Fever)
“Greatest Major League Baseball Shortstop All-Time” (Rankopedia)
“All-Time Top 100s: Shortstops” (SethSpeaks)
“Best Shortstops in History” (RateItAll)

This year UmpBump continues its annual tradition of honoring the greats by casting our vote for who we think deserves to be enshrined in the National Baseball Hall of Fame. As always, we vote not just on players currently eligible for Hall of Fame voting under baseball’s arcane eligibility rules, but for any and all players retired at least five years and not currently in the Hall of Fame.

In 2008, we inducted Goose Gossage into the UmpBump version of the Hall of Fame, and last year, we inducted Rickey Henderson and Tim Raines. Although Raines is not yet in the real Hall, since he’s already in our Hall we didn’t include him in the voting this year, although judging from the number of UmpBump voters who put him on their ballot anyway as a sign of solidarity, we gladly would have voted him in again this year.

Voters this year included Umpbumpers Sarah, Alejandro, Zvee, Paul, Coley, and Nick, and distinguished guest voters Melissa, a longtime UmpBump reader, and Tyler Hissey, editor of the blog “Around the Majors.”

Here are this year’s results, in order of total number of votes received:

Roberto Alomar – 7
Barry Larkin – 6
Bert Blyleven – 5
Ron Santo – 5
Shoeless Joe Jackson – 4
Pete Rose – 4
Alan Trammell – 4
Andre Dawson – 3
Edgar Martinez – 3
Mark McGwire – 3
Buck O’Neill – 3
Fred McGriff – 2
Jack Morris – 2
Dick Allen – 1
Harold Baines – 1
Albert Belle – 1
Dwight Evans – 1
Gil Hodges – 1
Minnie Miñoso – 1
Dale Murphy – 1
Ted Simmons – 1
Lou Whitaker – 1
Maury Wills – 1

With 8 voters, this years UmpBump Hall of Fame enshrinees are Roberto Alomar with 87.5% of the vote, and Barry Larkin, just edging in with exactly 75% of the vote.

Edgar Martinez, who many consider a sure bet for eventual enshrinement, only got 3 votes from on his first year of eligibility, perhaps a sign of the mild distaste for the DH that many of us seem to share.

Bert Blyleven and Ron Santo just missed again, but held steady at the 5 votes they received last year. Andre Dawson, however, plummeted from 5 votes last year to 3 votes this year, which may not bode well for his future chances at gaining entry to the UmpBump Hall.

Meanwhile, Joe Jackson, Pete Rose, Alan Trammell, Mark McGwire, and Buck O’Neill all gained ground from last year.

See you next year!

UmpBump Hall of Fame Inductees by Year

2010 – Roberto Alomar, Barry Larkin
2009 – Rickey Henderson, Tim Raines
2008 – Goose Gossage

To my mind Barry Larkin is a stone cold lock for the Hall of Fame, even though there are probably enough people with short memories or who are just not paying attention among the BWAA to insure that he doesn’t get in this year.

Larkin had the complete package. An outstanding hitter with an .815 career OPS and a 116 OPS+ at a position where offense is at a premium, he was also no slouch with the glove, was always talked about as one of the better defenders in the league, and even won three gold gloves once Ozzie Smith retired.

Plus, Larkin was outstanding on the basepaths, averaging 28 stolen bases per 162 games, and thus, with his .371 on-base percentage including a career-high .410 in 1996, Larkin was not only one of the best shortstops of his era, but also one of the best leadoff men.

The one knock against Larkin, in my view, is that he had some struggles staying healthy and on the field. Nevertheless, he managed to remain a starting shortstop in the major leagues from age 23 until his final season, at age 40 (when he put up a very respectable line of .289/.352/.419 and made the All-Star team), and his games played totals look worse than they should because two of his prime seasons were cut short by strike.

Of course, many people are comparing Larkin in their minds to guys like Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter, but Larkin played half his career in the non-steroid era whereas A-Rod is a confirmed steroid user, plus people seem to forget that A-Rod will have played well over half his career as a third baseman and not a shortstop.

As for Jeter, even if Derek Jeter retired today he is already in the top five shortstops of all time. Barry Larkin was better than about half the shortstops currently in the Hall, and is almost certainly in the top 10 of all time. He deserves to be in.

But what really seals it for me, even more than the numbers, is Larkin’s reputation at the time he played. I still remember back when Larkin signed his last big contract with the Reds in the 2000 offseason, everyone kept referring to him as “future hall-of-famer Barry Larkin.” At that time, pretty much everyone in the game thought of him as a lock for the Hall, yet somehow, in the ensuing 10 years, people have somehow forgotten Barry Larkin’s greatness, and he has somehow become not so much of a lock.

Given the eye-popping, steroid-fueled numbers of those ensuing 10-years, it kind of makes sense, but it also makes no sense at all, since we all know a lot of those numbers were created unnaturally. Barry Larkin needs to be remembered in the context of his times, in which he was the best shortstop in all of baseball for about 5 years, the best in the National League for almost a decade, and among the top 3 or 4 for his entire career.

The 2003 Los Angeles Dodgers had one of the greatest pitching staffs the game of baseball has ever known. At the height of the steroids era, in a season when 104 players would test positive for performance enhancing drugs, the Dodgers hurlers posted a 3.16 ERA, good enough for an insane 128 team ERA+, and in total allowed a ridiculously low 556 runs.

Kevin Brown, in one of the only good seasons the Dodgers got out of him during the course of the bone-headed 7-year, $105 million contract given to him by Kevin Malone, somehow remained on the field for 32 starts and 211 innings, posting a 2.39 ERA, and Hideo Nomo, in his second go-round with the Dodgers and in the twilight of his career, somehow located the fountain of youth and briefly recaptured his old greatness for one last, shining season, posting 16 victories and a 3.09 ERA.

But the real heart and soul of this team was its bullpen, which was simply the best bullpen I have ever seen. At a time when most teams were already relying on a rotating group of at least 7 relievers out of the pen at any given time, with the Dodgers amazingly gave almost all of their relief innings to only 5 relievers, and the same 5 guys, all season long.  Moreover, the top three relievers, by innings pitched, all posted ERAs in the 1’s.

Eric Gagne, in his single greatest season, and perhaps the greatest season ever by a relief pitcher, racked up 55 saves and posted a 1.20 ERA, while striking out 137 batters in 82.1 innings and posting an incomprehensible 0.69 WHIP. His ERA+ was 335, and he won the NL Cy Young award going away, with a 91% share of the votes. Meanwhile, Guillermo Mota added a 1.97 ERA in 105 innings, and Paul Quantrill chipped in with a 1.75 ERA in 77.1 innings of work. Even the “worst” reliever of the five, Tom Martin, posted an ERA of “only” 3.53 while striking out 51 batters in 51 innings.

So how did this team not even make the playoffs?  Well, in the very same year that the Dodgers had one of the greatest pitching staffs ever, they also posted one of the worst offensive performances in history, scoring a mere 574 runs, and wound up with a record of 85-77. This good enough for second place in the NL West, but was a distant 15.5 games behind the San Francisco Giants, who won 100 games that season behind Barry Bonds and Jeff Kent, and 6 games behind the wild-card Florida Marlins, who would go on to win the World Series.

The stunning lack of offense was actually quite sudden and bizarre, because over the previous three seasons, the Dodgers had averaged 756 runs, and they would average a very similar 755 runs over the following three seasons. But somehow, in 2003, every single hitter on the team had a down year, all at once, and whenever somebody was hitting well they immediately got hurt.

Rightfielder Shawn Green, who had hit 42 and 49 homers the previous two seasons, mysteriously hit only 19 homers in 2003, despite not missing any time, and would never be a power hitter again. Third baseman Adrian Beltre, who the very next season would bat .334 and post a 1.017 OPS, somehow only mustered marks of .240 and and .714. And the Dodgers’ big free agent signee, first baseman Fred McGriff, who had racked up 30 homers and 103 RBI with a healthy .858 OPS just the season before with the Cubs, suddenly aged about 30 years overnight, playing poor defense, losing all of his foot speed, and limping his way to a .249 batting average before the Dodgers finally allowed him to save some face by disabling him.

Outfielders Brian Jordan and Dave Roberts performed well early on, but both got hurt and never recovered, and the Dodgers couldn’t get any production out of fill-ins. Finally, in desperation, they traded three prospects to the Mets for Jeromy Burnitz, and signed Ricky Henderson, both on the same day, July 14. But Burnitz’s OPS, which had been a robust .925 with the Mets, immediately plummeted to .643 for the rest of the season once he entered the becursed Dodgers lineup, and Henderson, at age 44, had almost nothing left, batting .208 and only stealing 3 bases the rest of the way, in what would be the final major league games in his long and storied career.

The final results were dismal. The 2003 Dodgers had a .243 team batting average and a .303 team OBP.  They hit a mere 124 homers, and compiled a .294 team wOBA. Their 574 runs were by far the fewest in all of baseball, 17 runs fewer than the execrable Detroit Tigers, who had lost 119 games.  If the Dodgers had somehow been able to muster even replacement-level offense, they would have been a surefire playoff team, given their inconceivably good pitching, but instead, they were consigned to the dustbin of what-could-have-been.

Okay, so at a time when most people are debating whether or not the Washington Nationals can even break .500 next season, this is going to sound more than a little crazy, but I think the Nats have an outside chance at contending next season.

I’m not saying it’s going to happen, but I am saying that it could.

Let’s look at the positives.  First of all, the Nationals definitely have a high-powered offense. By most measures they’ve had the fourth or fifth-best offense in the National league this season, right up there with hard-hitting teams like the Phillies, Brewers, and Dodgers.

Second of all, the Nationals finally have a real GM. Mike Rizzo has just recently had the “interim” label removed from his title, and deservedly so, as he has done just about everything right since taking over for the hilariously incompetent Jim Bowden. Rizzo also has a track record of success as the scouting director of the Diamondbacks during the period they developed many of their current stars, and has a proven eye for talent.

Third, the Nationals have actually been quite “unlucky” this season by several measures, not least of which is their run differential, which suggests that they should actually have about 10 more wins than they’ve actually recorded.

Fourthly, the areas where the Nats most need to improve – the bullpen and on defense, are the areas most easily improved from season to season. In this way, it is possible to make a comparison between the 2009 Nationals and the 2007 Devil Rays. Both were terrible teams with terrible defense and terrible bullpens that drastically underperformed against an already terrible run differential. As you will recall, that Tampa Bay team went to the World Series the following year.

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Pujols polishes his wood

We here at Umpbump have done quite a few all-time teams. We’ve also cataloged quite a series of Hot Baseball Wives. In this post, I will attempt the acrobatic feat of bridging the twain. Yes, reader: The All-Hot Team.

For reasons of attention span, or specifically, the lack of it, I am focusing on current major leaguers. However, I’m happy to take your all-time hot nominees (and anyone I may have inadvertently left off) in the comments. The only criteria? A player needs to be physically attractive as well as moderately talented. After all, we want Team Hottie to be able to old their own against Team Canada, or the All-Mormon Team. Not to mention the All-Ugly Team, which is next on my list.

Without further ado, I give you:

1B: Albert Pujols (he’s pretty easy on the eyes, but his OPS is still the hottest thing about him)
2B: Chase Utley (would have been Ian Kinsler but Chase finally cut off this mess)
SS: Derek Jeter (one for the gentlemen out there!)

New life goal: be that t-shirt

3B: David Wright (yes…you can actually call him “Mr. [W]Right”)
RF: Nick Markakis (pronounced properly, it’s Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmarkakis)
LF: Ryan Braun (thanks to these Bette Davis eyes)
CF: Jacoby Ellsbury (thanks to…well…everything)
DH: Pat Burrell (soley on the basis of this photo and the fact that Ladies… proclaimed his ass the best in all of baseball. And I trust their judgment.)
C: Joe Mauer (more like “Joe Mrowr”)

Bench: Gabe Kapler, Curtis Granderson, Grady Sizemore, Torii Hunter, Ichiro*

*Don’t know what it is about outfielders, but apparently most of them are hot. This led to something of a logjam (so to speak), and hence a disproportionate number of OFs on the bench. Your suggestions for “hotility infielders” welcomed in the comments.

So hot, he's Cole

P1: Roy Halladay (likes to play “Doc”)
P2: Cole Hamels (the ace of the “staff”)
P3: Andy Pettitte (wants to know if you want to “Pettitte”)
P4: Rich Harden (Huh huh huh…his name is “Harden.” Heh heh, I said “Harden.”)

CL: Huston Street (nevermind the crooked grin; the name alone sounds like a Harlequin hero: “Oh Mr. Street!” she whimpered, melting into his arms. “Darling, he huskily murmured, “Call me Huston.”)

Our fifth starter is still up for grabs (so to speak…) so leave your nominations in the comments. The future of the All-Hot team is in your hands (so to speak).

(So to speak.)

The rate at which home runs have been flying out of the new Yankee Stadium has been a hot topic since the first weeks of the season, but up to now the statheads have been urging caution and calm. “Small sample size” they have cried.

But as we close in on the two month mark, it is becoming increasingly more clear that New Yankee Stadium is one of the greatest home run parks of all time.

Indeed, in only its first season, the stadium is already on pace to smash the mark for most home runs hit at a ballpark in a single season.  The current record was set at pre-humidor Coors Field in 1999, when 303 homers were bashed (making Coors only stadium ever to surpass 300 thus far). But with 82 homers hit at Yankee Stadium already in only 22 games, the stadium is on pace for a ridiculous 317 homers this year.

Averaged out, an astounding 3.91 homers per game have been hit in the Bronx so far this season. By comparison, 1.98 homers were hit per game at Old Yankee Stadium last season, which is right around the typical American League average of about 2.00 per game.

What went wrong

So what exactly is wrong with New Yankee Stadium?  Well, recent wind studies have demonstrated that the new ballpark is about 20% more likely than the old one on any given day to have a wind blowing out to the outfield of 10 mph or more, with the likelihood increasing even further in the spring and fall. Given that a tail wind of 10 miles per hour will cause a typical borderline homerun ball to travel about 25 feet further, a significant assist that is only increased as the windspeed goes up.

Just watching the highlights of the homers hit out of New Yankee Stadium so far, this wind assist is plain to see. Anything hit fairly high in the air takes off once it gets into the wind, especially to right field. Guys are hitting home runs one handed, or even when they get jammed or get too far under the ball.  And when players actually do hit the ball right on the screws, they are hitting monstrous bombs.

Only adding to the homer woes, the stadium designers pulled a fast one with the dimensions in right field.  Although the most often cited dimensions, such as down the foul lines and to straightaway center are the same as the old park, thus preserving “Yankee tradition,” the designers flattened out the sharp dogleg in the right field wall, meaning that in some places, the right field wall is as much as nine feet closer to home plate in the new stadium.

This is pretty huge, and very significant when the old stadium was already legendary for having one of the shortest right field porches in the entire game (allegedly designed for the Babe).  Already this season somewhere in the region of ten homers have been hit out to right field that would not have gone out in the old stadium, just judging by distance alone, before wind is even taken into account.

What to do now

It’s obviously a little too late to go back and fix a $1.5 billion stadium.  And I’m actually of the opinion that having different stadiums that play differently is one of baseball’s charms, unlike football or basketball where the dimensions are always identical.

But what the Yankees do need to do is build a team that will be best suited to their stadium. And they need to start now.  Here are my recommendations:

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