Cooperstown In-Credible on WAR and more

I think that's the best name for the Cooperstown Cred baseball blog.

I'd looked at an occasional post of his before, but gave it my first hard look last month.

That was when I said Danny Murtaugh is WAY OVERDUE to be in as a manager. Two World Series. Had he lived, would have been the 1979 pilot as well. Re Murtaugh? An "interesting" piece here by Cooperstown Cred, who notes Murtaugh's health history and repeated retirements because of it, but does NOT take it into account in touting him. He links to Bill James, who likewise mentioned it but does NOT take it into account. (Bill James was great for giving us sabermetrics, as well as this managerial equivalent of sorts, but he's lousy on following where his own sabermetrics point in many cases. "We" took health into account with Roy Campanella, Sandy Koufax, and Dizzy Dean though not, sadly, Thurman Munson with his premature death. Why not Murtaugh?)

Cooperstown Cred guy doesn't fully understand WAR, IMO, with this observeration on his most recent Albert Pujols piece:

If you believe the calculation, the Angels could have plucked a player from their AAA affiliate in Salt Lake City and the team would have won two more games than they did in reality. I don’t personally believe that.

No, it wouldn't be an ANGELS replacement player, it would be an MLB average replacement player. WAR is compared MLB-wide. As for the realities of what Pujols' stats said? Your "cred" is undercut of you can't accept that. A .672 OPS and severely limited defensive range? If you're talking about "leadership" or "chemistry" or whatever, WAR doesn't account for that for ANY player.

But, it's not just there. He has issues with WAR on his Ichiro Suzuki piece. He also has a poor dichotomy when he said he ran a Twitter poll and the options in Ichiro were "great/unique" HOFer, "borderline" HOFer, or not at all. I commented, why not "solid" HOFer in the middle of the first and second options? (Ichiro would have had 80-85 WAR had he played his whole career in MLB. Among right fielders? That would put him ahead of the likes of Reggie Jackson, but behind Al Kaline and Roberto Clemente, let alone the actually "unique" at right field. It would also put him ahead of Pete Rose.

Dude also thinks Minnie Minoso belongs in the Hall with less than 55 WAR, and right at 50 WAR if we don't count Negro League stats. Which I am dubious about in general, and in his case, given his young age would have had him in MLB minors, even more so. Here's my deeper dive.

I think he also pushes Tony Oliva and Gil Hodges. I now have more detailed looks at the cases against  Oliva and Hodges.

Minoso shows how Chris Bodig, near my age, is clearly a "Big Hall" guy. (He's enough younger than me he should have a better grasp on the realities of WAR.)

Other than triples, he doesn't meet my eye test. (Well, he's got the negative eye tests of "out stealing" league leadership several times, along with poor SB percentage.) He did have one 8-WAR year and was robbed of an MVP. Other than that, though?

He's Hall of Pretty Good, and arguably Hall of Very Good. Not Hall of Fame. His relative lack of power wasn't serving teams well with primarily being played at LF, then 3B. In theory, you put a lower-power person like that in right, but he's below-average in range factor for the few games he did play there. And, that rules out CF.

Where Minoso REALLY belongs is the "Hall of Self-Aggrandizement" for the stunts (they were) of playing one game in 1976 and even worse, the one game in 1980. Of course, Bill Veeck was associated with both. Dunno who owned the ChiSox in 1980. (Oh, it was also a stunt, as I see it, by Nick Altrock, the other five-decade guy.)

Oh, per Chris? Rob Neyer's halfway enlightened about Minoso. "Borderline. At best."

Rob Neyer used to work at Red Satan, of course. And, its past and present baseball writers, with the possible exception of Jeff Passan, whom I haven't seen write about Cooperstown, are to a man, humongous bloated Big Hall guys. Right on cue, and behind the ESPN paywall (a sure sign that it's especially click-baity) Brad Doolittle fellates the case of Minoso.

Sadfly, the "Golden Era" Veterans Committee agrees with Big Hall fellators like Doolittle and odig on Mineso and several other undeserving candidates. I've thoroughly excoriated them.

No, WAR is not perfect, but, in an actually good piece at Red Satan, I quote:

The goal of WAR is to give the most complete sense of a player's value to his team, and it's perhaps the best piece of data to compare the greatness of one player to the next.

There you go. Couldn't have said it better myself. Now, get off my lawn.