The Accidental Hall of Famer | Baseball Bits

hey new channel go subscribe to foolish bailey where i'll be posting baseball content that isn't baseball bits it already has a new video [Music] the accidental hall of famer is a player by the name of bobby wallace it's okay if you haven't heard of him he retired over a hundred years ago you might be tempted to look him up but i'm gonna specifically ask you not to do that i'll tell you everything you need to know about bobby wallace starting now [Music] here's some frequently asked questions about bobby wallace question number one what's his deal well he was a shortstop who played for a long time a long time ago bobby wallace played in 25 seasons between 1894 and 1918. fun fact well not fun if you're bobby wallace bobby wallace played the most seasons in mlb history without appearing in a world series the 25 seasons thing is somewhat misleading though despite the fact that wallace is tied for fifth all time in seasons played he ranks 114th in career played appearances that's because he played over a hundred games in only 15 of 25 seasons question number two where did he play uh he played shortstop i just told you that oh like what teams did he play for bobby wallace started his career with and i'm just so excited to say it the cleveland spiders when spiders owner frank robeson tanked the team by transferring all the good players like cy young a 25 year old bobby wallace moved to st louis where he would spend the rest of his playing days wallace played five seasons with the st louis cardinals of the national league and 15 seasons with the st louis browns of the american league he once served as the browns player manager it didn't go well when he wasn't playing he also served as an american league umpire hopefully he was better at that than managing question number three what were his stats keep in mind this is a video about a bizarre hall of fame case we need to understand how bobby wallace was viewed statistically in baseball's early days let's break out the traditional stats when batting average was king bobby wallace hit 268 for his career that's not terrible but at a time when hitting 300 meant you were a good player bobby wallace only did it twice in 25 seasons heck there were guys who could still hit 400 back then to give you all a better idea of just how much batting average was appreciated by early hall of fame voters ty cobb received more votes in the first induction class than babe ruth nuff said but wallace did play a long time maybe he was able to accumulate his way to an impressive hit total as it stands right now once you account for pete rose and steroid guys like rafael palmeiro every candidate with at least 2 800 career hits has eventually gotten into cooperstown sadly wallace only managed 2 309 hits topping out at 178 in the season that's 500 hits short and he wasn't a maniac on the base paths either among the 28 hall of fame hitters who overlapped with wallace's career only jimmy collins had fewer stolen bases one newspaper even wrote that as a player bobby had one shortcoming he was not a fast man on the bags seeing as wallace never even won a pin it it's hard to build a case for him that would excite old school hall of fame voters but maybe i'm judging too soon let's see if i can learn anything by comparing him to similar hall of fame candidates after all there's a player on the hall of fame ballot right now that's basically the modern bobby wallace [Laughter] [Music] it's at this point in the video that i should remind you all that hall of fame voters are about as inconsistent as rogneto d'or very similar players can produce shockingly dissimilar outcomes in terms of voting results just look at first ballot hall of famer kirby puckett and one and done candidate jim edmonds context matters yes but the numbers tell an interesting story as well one player that bobby wallace was similar to is a shortstop by the name of gary templeton templeton played in the 70s and 80s for the cardinals and padres and put up similar numbers to wallace in terms of batting average slugging hits and steals albeit with less playing time unfortunately for templeton he received just two votes in his first year of hall of fame eligibility and promptly fell off the ballot a better comp is probably dave concepcion concepcion put up staggeringly similar numbers to wallace while also growing his national profile as a member of the big red machine concepcion was part of a dynasty wallace never won a pennant and while concepcion stayed on the hall of fame ballot for 15 years he topped out at a 16.2 percent share of the vote yet wallace got in and then there's omar vizquel omar ended his career with about 2 400 more played appearances than wallace but their rate stats like batting average and slugging are quite similar more so these two have similar legacies they were both light-hitting shortstops who played for a long time in fact when visquel became the oldest shortstop in mlb history at age 45 he broke a record that belonged to wallace vasquel and wallace were both beloved for their defense the scale won 11 gold glove awards wallace didn't play when the award existed but he would have won plenty a newspaper in 1915 wrote that wallace was the greatest of all fielding shortstops it seems like omar vizquel has a good chance to get in perhaps on the back of reaching that 2 800 hit mark he's won over 50 percent of the voting share in just three years on the ballot perhaps he's one of the few benefiting from such an arbitrary process after all it's harder to get into cooperstown now than ever before while some feel that the hall of fame standards are dropping that's actually completely untrue in bobby wallace's time 10 to 20 of all mlb plate appearances were taken by eventual hall of famers for players in the 1980s that number has dropped to between six and seven percent when someone laments the weakening of cooper's town they're comparing mike mussina to walter johnson or larry walker to stand mutual in essence they're only remembering the top tier hall of famers from the past they should also remember the lousy ones lousy is relative of course these aren't bad players just bad hall of famers third baseman pie trainer was elected by the baseball writers association of america in 1948 he had a 320 career batting average in an era of great offenses but a more saber metric analysis of his career reveals that he's basically a ramus ramirez catcher ray schalk is also in cooper's town and i'd really like to know what he's doing there with an 83 ops plus across just 6 000 plate appearances how did players of this quality reach the hall in the first place well hall of fame voting was even more of a mess in its infancy than it is today bobby wallace was inducted in 1953 when chaos ruled the ballot voters from the bbwaa could vote for any player who had retired between 1928 and 1951. they had absolute free reign not a set list of names to choose from as a result 83 players received votes that year that's preposterous and 40 of them eventually made the hall of fame with that setup it was extremely difficult to get any player up to 75 percent of the vote although two did dizzy dean and al simmons as you can imagine the results were pure comedy joe dimaggio in his first year of eligibility ended up with just 44 percent of the vote he's one of the most popular baseball players ever hank greenberg one of the greatest right-handed sluggers landed just 30 percent and arkey vaughan statistically one of the best shortstops of all time got just one vote point four percent it's clear that the writer's vote was creating a logjam and the solution was two of the most diabolical words in baseball the v word and the c word [Music] [Applause] by now you've probably figured out that bobby wallace wasn't elected by the writers they never gave him the time of day as he topped out at just 2.7 percent of the vote see wallace was elected by the veterans committee a small group of important baseball people who convened to vote on older players the writers may have missed on historically speaking the veterans committee is responsible for most of the really that guy hall of famers harold banes is the most recent example seeing as the committee is a small group of people voting on their peers it serves as a breeding ground for cronyism hall of famer frankie frisch is the best example of this he ran the committee in the 60s and 70s using it to sneak his giants and cardinals teammates into cooperstown this included dave bancroft chick hafey jim bottomley and high pockets kelly good players not exactly legends of the game yeah high pockets but low standards am i right the 1953 convening of the veterans committee was a precursor to this bobby wallace had a few key supporters of his cause the most important of them all was branch rickey who was teammates with wallace had managed him on the st louis browns and ran the crosstown cardinals in the 20s and 30s developing the modern farm system in the process his most famous accomplishment was helping integrate mlb by signing jackie robinson overall branch ricky is one of the most important baseball men in the game's rich history and i think he would have been in wallace's corner alongside ricky was baseball writer jg taylor who was publisher of the sporting news and you guessed it st louis although his name isn't as recognizable to fans rest assured that he's a big deal the bbwaa annually awards the jg taylor award for meritorious baseball writing baseball executive warren giles was also in the room as gm of the cincinnati reds he had once hired wallace to manage his ball club so wallace had some strong connections he was also still alive at the age of 80. if he's ever going to be a hall of famer might as well make sure he lives to see the day it happens right so that's how bobby wallace respected in his time but not statistically in the mold of a hall of famer made his way to cooperstown while actual deserving candidates like dimaggio greenberg and vaughn languished on the writer's ballot wallace's cronies on the veterans committee found a way to let an undeserving player in through the back door that'd be an interesting story but in this particular case it's not entirely true bobby wallace fell short of the traditional markers needed to reach the hall of fame but thankfully we've developed new ways to measure a player's contribution since then wallace finished his career with a 690 ops which would be mediocre for most eras of baseball not his though bobby wallace played from 1894 to 1918. the entire dead ball era was contained within his career what we can do now is adjust for this low offensive environment with ops plus over his 25 year career wallace had a 105 ops plus so while his batting average on base percentage and slugging are nearly identical to say omar veskel wallace was actually an above average hitter for his time his defense shined as well defensive metrics from back then are really primitive but we can do simple range factor math to reveal that bobby wallace made about 237 more outs than the average shortstop across his entire career he also began his career as a pitcher where he tossed 400 innings with a 125 era plus all in all baseball reference currently credits wallace with drumroll please 76.3 wins above replacement that's a lot the average hall of fame shortstop is worth 67.5 war bombie wallace didn't just make the hall of fame he made it better in fact once you account for pete rose every candidate with as much war as wallace has eventually been inducted the veterans committee voters didn't know or care about his ops plus range factor math or war that type of thinking did not exist they were just doing their boy a favor but in doing so they accidentally voted in a player who was overlooked yet completely deserving there are players like him who weren't so lucky namely his peers jack glascock and bill dallin wallace could have ended up like these poor saps but he didn't there is still a path for glascock and dallin though the hall's early days committee will reconvene in a year look hall of fame voting is a mess there's still no definitive answer on what to do with the steroid users bbwaaa voters are too stringent and the committees are sometimes too loose but way back in 1953 they got something right for the wrong reasons bobby wallace was enshrined in cooper's town at the age of 80. turns out the accidental hall of famer completely deserved it all along thank you so much to my patrons for supporting the work i do to see your name here head to patreon.com foolish baseball also be sure to check out the video i posted on the new channel [Music] hey it's me again just here to record a quick off the top of the dome thank you message for my end screen people you're clearly dedicated if you made it this far so i'll just say happy holidays and thank you so much for an amazing 2020. take care

Channel: Foolish Baseball

Views: 358,717

Keywords: bobby wallace, bobby wallace baseball, MLB hall of fame, hall of famer, hall of fame shortstop, dead ball era, cooperstown, veteran's committee, cleveland spiders, worst mlb hall of famers, bbwaa, dave concepcion, omar vizquel, branch rickey, st. louis cardinals, st. louis browns, st. louis browns baseball, hall of fame voting, mlb hall of fame voting, baseball, mlb, foolish baseball, baseball bits, the accidental hall of famer baseball bits

Id: NEiSV9C2rmI

Length: 14min 0sec (840 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 19 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

Dude is a gift to Internet baseball fandom...this was his best video yet

That twist ending was incredible

[u/burntnotes]

Bailey does great work. I love how he spends the entire video getting you to believe "yeah this guy sucks I can't believe he's a HoFer" and then flips you on your ass.

[u/stupidnatsfan]

Definitely one of my favorite Baseball Bits

[u/MankuyRLaffy]

He's a case where the VC got it right, I'd like to hear more stories about that sort of thing.

[u/Philbob99]

mentioned offhand in this video but Jim Edmonds being a one and done on the HOF ballot continues to be very stupid

[u/polishblunder5]

Cool def worth watching

[u/Noy_Telinu]

What a twist!

[u/cspbird]

This was fantastic. Thank you.