pre 1876 HOF second chance round

[jalbright]

This will be one of three second chance round elections this week. What we'll do for the second chance election is a Yes/No vote requiring the greater of 6 or 75% of the votes to induct. The election will be limited to the listed nominees. The elections will only be open for a week--but there will be at least three or four days for discussion and new nominations. You can abstain from an entire ballot (player or contributor), but if you vote in that portion of the ballot, only the guys you expressly vote yes for get credit for a positive vote. The others in that section of the ballot will be considered to have gotten a "no" vote. There will be no limits on how many nominees you can vote for . I will also provide the nomination discussions for the nominees. The deadline for suggesting nominees is twelve hours before the election begins.


In this case, the election will not begin until Saturday, April 21 at 7 am EDT, and will end at 7 am EDT April 28. Nominations close 12 hours before the election begins, or April 20 at 7 pm EDT. Ballots not cast within the stated election time frame will not count.

This group has the following already inducted:

Inducted Players (11): Ross Barnes, Candy Cummings, Cal McVey, Dickey Pearce, Lip Pike, Al Reach, Al Spalding, Joe Start, Ezra Sutton, Deacon White, George Wright

Inducted Contributors (5): Doc Adams, Harry Chadwick, Jim Creighton, Bob Ferguson, Harry Wright

The list of nominees at present is:

Players
Cap Anson
Asa Brainard
Candy Cummings
Dave Eggler
Davy Force
Nat Hicks
Dick McBride
Levi Meyerle

[jalbright]

Beady posted this on behalf of Nat Hicks for the pre-1876 group:

Nat Hicks was a famously tough catcher, and a very good one. Toughness alone meant a lot when the catcher's equipment consisted at most of a pair of skintight gloves with the fingers cut off the right hand. Hicks caught Candy Cummings for two or three years in the NA and before that I believe with the Star club, and probably was instrumental in Cummings' spectacular success, because if you have a pitch nobody has ever seen before you need a good catcher to handle it.

[jalbright]

jjpm74 made the following presentation on Asa Brainard for inclusion among those honored for pre 1876 play:

Asa Brainard--Brainard started playing in 1860 for the Excelsiors where he showed a great deal of promise as a hittter. Brainard may deserve some war credit as he missed a great deal of 1860, all of 1861 and most of 1862 to Civil War service. Following Creighton's unfortunate death, Brainard replaced him as the team's pitcher and would remain in that capacity full time for 4 seasons. After finally being replaced by Cummings, Brainard moved on to pitch briefly for the Washington club where he played against the strongest professional teams. Before open professionalism was legalized in 1868, Brainard became the lead pitcher on the most successful of all the franchises (the Red Stockings) where he was likely paid under the table or with some kind of job incentive as most of the best players in that era were compensated. Once professionalism was legalized, Brainard was one of the first five to receive a salary and pitched 70% of the Red Stockings games in 1869 and 1870 when the franchise lost only the occasional game. Granted, Brainard had the benefit of being surrounded by many of the very best in the game during these years, but the fact remains that even with pitchers like Cummings in the picture, H.Wright wanted Brainard enough to lure him to his franchise.

I was and remain skeptical, responding:

If the logic you advocate wins enough support for either (or both) Brainard or Cummings, I will likely vote for them and thus avoid blocking their candidacies. However, both have unspectacular won/loss records or the issue of how much of their success came from their teammates. Brainard when with the Reds clearly had winning records in 1869 and 1870. Unfortunately, in both years he gave up a run an inning or more (405 in 338 IP in 1869, an even run per inning in 1870. That gives me pause, to say the least. From 1871 on Brainard wasn't anything special from what I can see.

[jalbright]

jjpm74 made this case for including Candy Cummings among the honorees for the pre 1876 era:

Candy Cummings--Cummings succeeded Brainard on the Excelsiors and was one of the game's best pitchers from 1865-1877. In the National Association, only Al Spalding had a better record and Cummings gets some bonus points for his use of the curveball. Whether or not he actually invented the pitch is disputed, but it is a fact that he was the first to use the pitch effectively.

I was and am not fully convinced, and responded with this:

If the logic you advocate wins enough support for either (or both) Brainard or Cummings, I will likely vote for them and thus avoid blocking their candidacies. However, both have unspectacular won/loss records or the issue of how much of their success came from their teammates. Cummings had some success 1872-1876, so I'm a little more sympathetic to his case.

[jalbright]

There was some discussion of Levi Meyerle's bona fides to be honored with the other stars of the pre 1876 era. It started with this from jjpm74:

Levi Meyerle--In the NA's first official organized season, Meyerle played for the Philadelphia team at third base where he led the league in slugging, batting average, and on base average. He had a reputation as being one of the game's fiercest hitters, albeit for a short time.

I seconded the case with this:

Looking more closely at Meyerle, from 1867-1869, he scored 286 runs and made 162 outs, a fine ratio of 1.77 runs/out. Combine that with some real success in the NA years, I'm persuaded to add him to my list.

Beady demurred with this:

.492 is an impressive batting average, and Levi Meyerle is actually a long-time favorite of mine, but I would encourage everybody to look at his fielding before voting for him. There used to be a joke about Jim Lemon of the old Senators that he could be expected to field he little better than he hit -- bat around .275, field around .300. In 1871 Meyerle hit a lot better than .275, but he just about made the Lemon joke a reality -- more errors than either putouts or assists. The book of newspaper notes on early baseball published by Preston Orem contains a phrase I have cherished for many years: "the attenuated and semianesthetized Meyerle."

Beady followed up with this:

My assessment of Meyerle is based partly on the numbers but also on the evaluation of contemporaries who knew him and their own game a lot better than we do. They certainly were well aware that he hit the ball very hard, and viewed him as a player worth having, but they understood the damage nearly two errors a game from one player could do, and I don't think he was ever regarded as a star of the first rank.

Money, money is the measure of how a player is regarded in an open labor market such as prevailed in the 1870's. I happen to have salary data for Meyerle, taken from from actual contracts, for the seasons of 1874 through 1876, in each of which he got between $1,200 and $1,500. good pay for the day. Unfortunately, reliable data for his contemporaries -- as distinct from questionable newspaper reports -- is not common. However, I do have contract transcriptions for Andy Leonard -- a fine player but one who has gotten no support here at all -- and he was consistently getting more than $1,500. Court records verify that Ross Barnes got $2,500 in 1877. The most conservative figure I've seen have McVey, White, Barnes and Spalding getting a total of $8,500 when they jumped from Boston to Chicago in 1876, with White promised an extra hundred if the club made money (and Spalding got a big 25% of the profits, but that was probably intended as compensation for his efforts as manager). Other reports have the players making more (up to $4,000 for Barnes, but since he only got $2,500 in 1877 that can't be correct).

While Meyerle's salaries were decent money by contemporary standards, I doubt whether any of these seasons passed when you couldn't find at least fifteen players making more. At the end of 1873 Harry Wright wrote a letter to William Hulbert that sums the situation up in general:

"Men who, three years ago, were offering their services at $500.00 and $600.00 for the season and found it difficult to get an engagement even at those figures, are now engaged at salaries ranging from $1200 to $1800, and after signing for these amounts and satisfied with their engagement, some other club makes them an offer of from $300 to $500 more, with an advance of so much cash."

Put in this context, it will be seen that a player who was getting from $1,200 to $1,500 a year was not in exceptionally high demand.

[dgarza]

Davy Force
NA Record :
.335/.348/.402
134 OPS+

Led League in :
Defensive WAR (1871)
Singles (1972)
Putouts at SS (1871,1875)
Assists at SS (1871)
Fielding % at SS (1871,1875)
Fielding % at 3B (1872,1873)

NA Career Records :
3rd in WAR

                            
Rk            Player WAR/pos
1        Ross Barnes    23.1
2      George Wright    18.8
3         Davy Force    14.9
4          Cal McVey    14.6
5       Deacon White    11.6

5th in WAR Runs Fielding
6th in Runs
7th in Hits, AVG (100 game min.), Times on Base

NA Seasons with 2.0+ WAR :

                                                   
Rk                 Yrs From   To                Age
1      Ross Barnes   5 1871 1875 21-25 Ind. Seasons
2    George Wright   4 1872 1875 25-28 Ind. Seasons
3        Cal McVey   4 1871 1875 21-25 Ind. Seasons
4       Davy Force   4 1871 1875 21-25 Ind. Seasons
5     Deacon White   3 1873 1875 25-27 Ind. Seasons
6      Jim ORourke   3 1873 1875 22-24 Ind. Seasons
7     Mike McGeary   3 1872 1875 21-24 Ind. Seasons
8      Dave Eggler   3 1872 1875 23-26 Ind. Seasons
9        Cap Anson   3 1872 1875 20-23 Ind. Seasons

NA Seasons with 5+ WAR Runs Fielding :

                                                     
Rk                   Yrs From   To                Age
1         Davy Force   5 1871 1875 21-25 Ind. Seasons
2       Bob Ferguson   5 1871 1875 26-30 Ind. Seasons
3        Ross Barnes   5 1871 1875 21-25 Ind. Seasons
4           Tom York   4 1872 1875 21-24 Ind. Seasons
5      Dickey Pearce   4 1872 1875 36-39 Ind. Seasons
6        Dave Eggler   4 1871 1874 22-25 Ind. Seasons

Force's .418 AVG in 1872 was the 5th highest seasonal AVG in the NA.
He is 1 of only 6 players to bat .400 in a season in the NA.

[dgarza]

Dave Eggler
NA record :
.322/.335/.407
132 OPS+
10.6 WAR

NA League Career Records :
3rd in Runs
5th in Doubles
6th in WAR, Extra Base hits, WAR Runs Fielding
7th in Games, Stolen Bases
8th in Total Bases
9th in Hits, OBP, Times on Base
10th in Triples, AVG, OPS+, Runs Produced

Led NA in :
Games (1871,1872)
PAs (1872)
Runs (1872)
Stolen Bases (1872)
AB/K (1874)
Putouts at OF (1872)
Assists at OF (1872)
Fielding % at OF (1874,1875)

Going to use an if-then argument here. If Lip Pike, then Dave Eggler.
Pike obviously had that flashy bat, but his defense was not much of anything.
Eggler also had a very good bat, although not as overwhelming as Pike. But his defense was much better. It actually evens the 2 out.
NA OF WAR :

                               
Rk           Player WAR/pos   G
1       Dave Eggler    10.6 266
2          Lip Pike     9.7 262
3       George Hall     8.7 244
4          Tom York     7.1 273
5      Andy Leonard     6.5 286
6    George Bechtel     4.6 205
7     John McMullin     4.2 244
8      Ned Cuthbert     3.2 252
9      Count Gedney     2.2 202
10      Jack Remsen     1.7 237
11     Fred Treacey     1.6 212

Eggler also played for the NY Mutals pre-NA.

It was said that when he played for Philly, he was highest paid OFer to date.

[dgarza]

Cap Anson
Anson was 1 of only 4 NA players to play every Position (excluding Pitcher) at least once.

NA Records :
.359/.376/.435
149 OPS+

NA Career Records :
2nd in OBP (200 game min.)
4th in AVG (200 game min.)
5th in Walks, WAR Runs Batting
6th in OPS+ (200 game min.)
7th in WAR, SLG (200 game min.), Runs Created
8th in Hits, Times on Base
9th in RBIs

Led League in :
OBP (1872)
Doubles (1871)
Assist at 1B (1875)
Putouts at 3B (1872)

Managed the 1875 Philadelphia Athletics for a short time.

Inducted into the Hall of Fame by Old Timers Committee as Player in 1939.