My Top 60 Starters, 41-50

50. Jack Powell (.508 NW%, 106 ARA, +14 WAA, +75 WAR)
49. Rube Waddell (.561, 125, +32, +74)
48. Dazzy Vance (.596, 125, +32, +74)
47. Don Drysdale (.535, 118, +29, +77)
46. Gus Wynn (.531, 106, +13, +77)
45. Luis Tiant (.559, 117, +29, +78)
44. Joe McGinnity (.603, 119, +29, +77)
43. Hal Newhouser (.565, 125, +35, +76)
42. Jim Bunning (.547, 115, +27, +79)
41. Billy Pierce (.534, 121, +32, +78)

POWELL: His career record was 245-256, but he pitched for bad (.462 Mate) teams. His neutralized record of 255-246 is good for +59 WCR, but he does much better in a run-based analysis, coming at +75. He has no peak to speak of, especially for a pitcher of his time, but has a lot of value against a low baseline over the course of almost 4400 innings.

WADDELL & VANCE: As you can see, these two are almost a perfect match, except Vance’s W-L record is more impressive and he was sane (and right-handed). They were both strikeout pitchers, but have wildly different career paths. Waddell was done by age 33 and dead by 36. Vance had cups of coffee at ages 24 and 27, but didn’t establish himself until age 31. In the end, the shooting star and the late bloomer had pretty much equal value.

DRYSDALE: I know that I will catch flak, if anyone cares, for putting Drysdale ahead of Koufax. But from a career comparison against a replacement baseline, it is tough to avoid, as Drysdale has twelve more WAR and is only four behind in WAA. There is absolutely no question that Koufax was the Dodgers’ ace, but four or five years don’t override the career. Neither lasted much past thirty, but Drysdale pitched 1000 more innings.

WYNN: The lowest-ranking 300 game winner, and perhaps sliding him past Drysdale was inappropriate, but certainly a fine pitcher.

NEWHOUSER: Some people take away credit because two of his best seasons came during the war. 1945 was his best, but actually 1946 was a little better then 1944. Anyway, the principle here is that a major league win is worth the same no matter what. Top five years of +49.8 WAR is a dead ringer for Koufax. In fact, he had a six year string from 1944-49 of 10.7, 12.8, 11, 7.5, 7.5, 7.8.

PIERCE: Pierce is the highest ranking pitcher on my list not in the Hall of Fame who is either 1) eligible or 2) not through to the Vets Committee yet. There are two eligible pitchers ahead of him who have not yet been inducted, but they are both still on the main ballot.

Homers in (Win) Context

As Barry Bonds closes in on Hank Aaron’s record, there will surely be a lot of discussion about which player’s accomplishments are more impressive, who is more worthy of the record, etc. From a sabermetric perspective, there are a number of different approaches available to shed light on the comparison. These generally attempt to evaluate not only the raw totals but the context in which they were achieved.

One of the most basic examples is the use of relative or adjusted statistics, comparing the frequency of home runs hit by a player to that of his league, and using this to give a plus/minus figure against the league average, or to restate that figure as a new raw number of homers expected in a different context. These results might be based on the difference or ratio of the player’s performance to that of his league.

Another approach along the same lines is to look at the number of standard deviations away from the mean the player’s performance is. This has the presumed effect of accounting for league quality, with the theory that a lower standard deviation means a higher-quality league.

One can also look at ranks or percentiles of performance within the league. Under this approach, leading the league in home runs is considered equally impressive to leading the league in a different year. The best of a given time are assumed to be equal to the best of another time.

There are also more complex approaches that attempt to project performance in a different context while maintaining the same run or win value of the player’s overall performance. Examples of these approaches include Bill James’ “Willie Davis Method” and Clay Davenport’s Davenport Translations.

All of these approaches have their pros and cons. Relative methods are easy to understand, but often give results that are outlandish (ex. Babe Ruth would hit 100+ home runs in a modern context if he bettered the league home run rate by the same ratio as he did in his great seasons). Rank and percentile methods assume that leading a deadball league with 11 homers is inherently equivalent to leading a modern league with 55 homers.

The standard deviation and translation methods have less obvious flaws. The biggest hurdle to the translation methods is complexity; the principles behind Davenport’s have been explained, but not the details. The Willie Davis method is based on a flawed run estimator (basic Runs Created), which makes all of the results somewhat circumspect.

My approach is similar in spirit to those, but cuts out a good deal of complexity with maybe a small loss in theoretical purity. It is hardly a unique or revolutionary approach, and for all I know may have been published by another analyst in nearly identical form, but if it has I do not recall seeing it. As I have explained in previous posts on other subjects, I begin my analysis of baseball performance with the premise that a major league win today is worth the same as a major league win in 1961 is worth the same as a major league win in 1927…you are of course free to disagree with this premise, but it is where I am coming from.

Saying that a win is a win is not immediately helpful when moving away from comparing estimated win contributions of players to comparing player performance in specific component categories, like home runs. However, in a linear weight construct, we can put a run or win value on each home run that the batter hits. By comparing the win value of player’s home runs, we can avoid making any assumptions about how difficult it was to hit home runs in the given contexts, and focus on what the home runs the player actually hit were actually worth in his own context.

After all, home runs are only valuable because they contribute to wins. Hitting 70 home runs, even in a modern high-scoring context, contributes more wins to a player’s team then hitting 10 home runs to lead the league in the dead ball era. It may have been “harder” to hit the ten homers, they may have stuck out more from the other players in that time in terms of standard deviations or differences in frequency, but that does not matter from a pure value perspective. All that matters is the number of wins each player contributed via the home run in his own time and place. And of course we also started with the premise that a major league win is of equal value regardless of the year in which it was achieved.

So how does this approach work? Let’s assume that the run value of a homer is always 1.4 runs. This is obviously not correct; the coefficient of a home run is variable, although it is not nearly as variable as that of some other events. You could of course use Base Runs or some other approach to find a unique coefficient for the HR in each context, but I am going to just use 1.4, while acknowledging that it is imprecise.

Let’s look at Roger Maris’ 1961 season. His 61 home runs are estimated to be worth 1.4*61 = 85.4 runs. We will assume that the runs per win factor is equal to the total number of runs per game in the league that season. This again is imprecise, but not to too great a degree, and it makes things very simple. In 1961 the AL average was 9.06 RPG. We can also account for how Maris’ home park changed the value of runs in terms of wins. I have the ’61 Yankee Stadium PF at .94. That means that the prevailing RPW in Maris’ context was PF*RPG or .94*9.06 = 8.52. Putting it all together, the win value of Maris’ home runs was 1.4*HR/(PF*RPG) or 1.4*61/(.94*9.06) or 85.4/8.52 = 10.02 wins.

We can keep Maris’ figure at 10.02, but homer-wins are not in a scale that we are familiar with, and we can easily convert this into a number of homers in an average major league context of 9 RPG. All we have to do is figure out how many homers one would need in a 9 RPG context to get 10.02 homer-wins. The answer is 10.02*9/1.4 = 64.4, or we can easily express that New HR = HR/(PF*RPG)*9, since we are assuming that the home run is worth 1.4 runs, always.

We can now figure equivalent win-value home runs for all players. Let’s look at a Gavvy Cravath, leading the NL in longballs with 19 in 1913. The NL RPG was 8.3, and Cravath’s park had a PF of 1.04. Cravath therefore had 19.8 adjusted home runs. Since this is kind of a frivolous stat, I’ll give these adjusted home runs a less serious name, Gavvys. I’m using Cravath here because he is an example that leading the lead in home runs did not have the same value in 1913 as it did in 1961. Hitting home runs in 1913 was, as always, beneficial to the team, but 19 homers just do not produce that many wins. Again, it is feasible that Cravath’s performance was more difficult to achieve or more impressive then Maris’. Whether it was or not is irrelevant when considering the win value they had.

I calculated Gavvys for all of the members of the 500 home run club (through 2006, considering only performance up to 2006. Each season was evaluated individually and the totals were summed for a career). Here is the list sorted by Gavvys:



No player’s home runs have had a higher win impact then Hank Aaron’s, and he has a wide enough margin that his “record” may sustain Bonds’ challenge. Ironically, Bonds has 755 Gavvys, matching Aaron’s real total. Only Foxx and Williams played in high enough scoring environments to see their modified figures drop below 500. Here is the list again, this time sorted by Gavvys minus home runs.



The overall trend is for Gavvys>homers, which is most likely because 4.5 is not the true long term mean; we could use 1 as the mean, or 1000, or leave them in terms of homer-wins, and the order of the career leader list would hold, so 4.5 works just fine.

In order to find the best single season Gavvy performance, I also looked at the 50 home run club. Obviously, these seasons will not represent all of the best single seasons in terms of Gavvys, but doubtlessly the record-holder will be found. And the 50 in a season club is a natural one to consider, just like the 500 in a career. The list is sorted by Gavvys, and “DIFF” again is Gavvys less actual home runs:



Bonds’ 2001 and McGwire’s 1998 still top the list, with Maris’ 1961 holding against all of the other times McGwire and Sosa beat the raw total. Ruth’s single season luster fades a bit as does his career total, while multiple seasons tumble out of the 50 HR club.

Take Gavvys for what they are worth--they only focus on one single event and attempt to restate it as a win-equivalent figure in a certain context. They are based on the assumptions I discussed earlier and they are by no means the be all and end all of accounting for context in determining the best home run hitters. I do believe that they represent an interesting way to evaluate home runs while keeping an eye on the ultimate goal of the game (winning), and evaluating them in that light.

Let me stress again that Gavvys are not a projection of how many home runs a player would have hit in a nine RPG context, and do not attempt to adjust for how difficult it was to hit home runs in the player’s environment (RPG coupled with PF is to some extent a proxy for this, but that is not how it is being used here). What they are is a number of home runs in a 9 RPG context that would be equal in win value to the win value of the player’s home runs in his actual context.

My Top 60 Starters, 51-60

Here is the first group of 10:
60. Dave Stieb (.561 NW%, 120 ARA, +28 WAA, +68 WAR)
59. Jack Quinn (.526, 109, +18, +73)
58. Addie Joss (.616, 133, +33, +65)
57. Sandy Koufax (.633, 130, +33, +65)
56. Tommy Bridges (.570, 122, +29, +68)
55. Urban Shocker (.609, 126, +31, +68)
54. Waite Hoyt (.531, 111, +22, +74)
53. Rick Reuschel (.547, 114, +23, +73)
52. Wilbur Cooper (.551, 115, +25, +73)
51. Babe Adams (.567, 121, +29, +71)

I’m not going to discuss each pitcher, but will comment on some.

STIEB: He’s not a guy that you think of as one of the greats, but he had one of the best peaks of roughly cotemporary pitchers (Gooden, Saberhagen, Cone). Again, in this area of the rankings there is not a lot of distinction between the pitchers, so being #60, there are a lot of others you can make a case for.

QUINN: Jack Quinn might be the least known pitcher with 247 wins. Adjusting to his teams, his neutral record is 244-221. His runs allowed stats look similar, so he’s a guy who doesn’t do that great against average but could be ranked several spots higher if you focus on WAR. He only had one 20 win season, with the Baltimore Feds in 1914, and bounced around, with two main stints with the Yankees and one with the Red Sox and the A’s.

JOSS & KOUFAX: Many people will be stunned to see Koufax so low, but by career value, you have to start raising the baseline from replacement in order to even get him on the list. Koufax and Joss do have the highest WAA for any pitchers in this group, and were certainly brilliant. Koufax had better W-L records, but they are almost dead ringers in the other categories. The reason I’ve put Koufax ahead is that he was pitching fifty years later.

However, Koufax’s peak value is perhaps not as astronomical as some believe it to be, depending on how it is defined. His best five seasons by WAA are 1962-66, by WAR 1961 and 1963-66. Only four of those were truly brilliant, those being 63-66. His WAR over his top five seasons was +50, fifteenth best of the pitchers I’ve looked at, but within two and a half wins are Carlton, Maddux, and Clemens, while Gibson and Seaver both rank slightly higher then him. The difference is that the others did not string their peaks together as Koufax did.

So if your definition of peak is “top 3 or 4 consecutive seasons”, then Koufax is the greatest modern peak pitcher. But if you use other definitions, he’s just one of the best. This is a great example of the issues I have with peak value.

REUSCHEL: Another modern pitcher who nobody expects to see here, but the guy was good. He’s probably underrated by traditionalists because they don’t account for the fact that he pitched in Wrigley Field from 1972-81 when the PF was hovering around 1.08. For his career, he pitched in a 1.05 PF park on average. His peak is nothing to write home about, but that doesn’t count for much here. I believe Bill James had him around eightieth.

Discounted Team Championships

Here I’m just going to have a little fun with the idea of “discounted team achievements” I discussed in this post. The basic thing you need to know is that I decided to deflate past achievements by 3% per year, compounding. So a game won three years ago is now, in today’s equivalent, 1/(1.03^3) = .915 wins.

Here we are going to examine Discounted Team Championships, where the championships are of the World Series variety. There is no credit given for a pennant, a playoff appearance, or a good regular season. The base year is 2006, so the Cardinals’ win is worth a full 1 championship. The White Sox’ occurred one year prior to the base year, so it is worth 1/1.03. The Red Sox’ 1/1.03^2, the Marlins 1/1.03^3, the Angels 1/1.03^4, and so on. Then we just sum these for all of the teams that have ever won the World Series, and we have the franchise total.

For simplicity’s sake, I have defined the franchise as the entity, regardless of where they played, so the Boston/Milwaukee/Atlanta Braves are all considered “ATL”, the old(est) Senators are the Twins, etc. So which franchises fans should, under this model, have the most satisfaction from all of their teams’ championships?



Not surprisingly, the Yankees are #1, and the Cardinals, the only other team with double-digit WS wins and the defending champs are #2. The #3 A’s may seem surprising, but remember that they have won four titles in the last thirty-five years, which means that any A’s fan from 45 up should have experienced a good share of WS wins. On the flip side, it is not surprising that the Indians and the Cubs bring up the rear, as they have had the longest droughts and each have only one additional title to go along with the most recent.

An interesting question is how long would the Yankees have to go without winning the World Series in order to fall behind the Cardinals on this list? Of course, the Cardinals standing will change over that period, as will all of the teams, some up and some down. But the point is not to compare the Yankees to the Cardinals; it is to say “How long would the Yankees have to go before their fans’ satisfaction would be lower then the next-best alternative as of 2006?”

The answer is 2038. Now if the Yankees go another 31 years without winning it all, there are going to be a lot of angry New Yorkers. Which is an opportunity to emphasize again that the 3% rate is a figure chosen because it made sense to me. It may only model the way I think; I certainly wouldn’t claim that it is “correct” in any sense, or that others should think this way. From the sports culture, it would seem that Yankees fans (and even their owner) have a much higher deflation rate. Maybe Yankees fans set the rate at 10%, while Cubbies fans are more patient and would set it at .05%. Of course all of these would vary among the individuals that make up those fan bases as well.

The Yankees would also lead the list today over the Cardinals had they not won a title since 1977. The five that they have won since then have only served to advance their lead over the Cards from 3.82 DTC from 21 real titles to their current 7.43/26.

The point, again, is that this is an exercise done in fun, not to make any hard conclusions about everything. It’s just a different way of thinking about comparing team histories while placing more emphasis on recent performance.

There have been 102 World Series, and the sum of the discounted titles is 31.96. With this, we can see that the ratio is 3.2 real titles/discounted titles. We can multiply each franchise’s DTC by 3.2 to put it on an equivalent scale to actual titles. That gives us this list:



We can use either the ratio of actual titles to DTC or the difference between the actual titles and the DTC equivalents to find the teams that have gotten the most bang for the buck for their titles. The difference is easier to process as a number, but it also favors larger numbers for teams with large number of titles. The Yankees have 2 less DTC equivalent titles then actual titles; they still have 24 DTC equivalent, which is not going to cause anyone to shed any tears for them. So by ratio:



Looking at this list, we can see that the most fortunate teams are recent winners of their only championship(s), which is not exactly a surprise, but it accounts for the Angels, Diamondbacks, Marlins, Blue Jays, Royals, and Phillies. On the flip side, we can see that the Cubs and the Giants have the greatest disconnect between what it says in the record book and the amount of satisfaction their current fans have received from it. My Indians also stand out; I hope to see this rectified some time in the near future.

This is a nice sight

The Buckeyes, who needed a win over PSU on the last day of the season to even qualify for the B10 tournament, won four consecutive games against PSU, Michigan, and Minnesota twice to win the B10 tournament title as the lowest seed, the #6.

The Bucks have now won the regular season or tournament title in 12 of the 20 seasons that Bob Todd has been coach; three of those seasons included both titles. That said, a couple of his pitching moves today were a little weird. Cory Luebke, the B10 pitcher of the year, started on three days rest, which I don't object to, but then left him in as he got in trouble in the eighth inning. After he allowed the tying run, he replaced him with Jake Hale, who had made 140 pitches and was on just two days rest. But Hale got the last four outs, and Michael Arp untied the game with a two-run pinch hit double in the bottom of the eighth, and the Buckeyes are the champs.

My Top 60 Starters, Warmup

In the next installment I will get around to unveiling (a nice word to build suspense and anticipation where none should exist) spots 51-60 on my list; for now, I am going to discuss some of the pitchers who did not make the list and how the average and median Hall of Famer does.

Here are the figures for the average and median Hall of Famers:
CAT….NW%...WAT.…….WCR…...ARA……..WAA………....WAR………......Top 5
AVG….578…….33.9……...83.2……120……….35.3………...90.1………..45.6
MED….575…….29.2……..78.1…….116……….32.1………..83.2………..44.3

To me, anyone who is better then the median Hall of Famer should probably be there himself, no questions asked (all other things being equal). It is those below the median for whom there is a real debate. There are 31 pitchers with more career WAR then the median Hall of Famer, and all who are eligible are in the Hall with the exception of Bert Blyleven.

Now, let me tell you that pitchers 61-73 on my list, in rough chronological order are: Sam Leever, Ed Reulbach, Chief Bender, Carl Mays, Bob Shawkey, Dolf Luque, Burleigh Grimes, Herb Pennock, Bucky Walters, Jerry Koosman, Jim Kaat, Bret Saberhagen, and David Cone. To be honest, by the time I got to around 45 it was very difficult to make judgments on specific pitcher-to-pitcher comparisons; there are too many guys with similar WAR, similar WAA, similar ARA, etc.

Among pitchers who didn’t make it at all, there are few that I will discuss. The first is Eddie Cicotte. The numbers alone would have ranked Cicotte in the mid-40s, but I docked him the entire 1919 season, which was his second-best season, +11.8 WAR. That drops him from the mid-40s into the range of borderline top sixty, and I chose other pitchers ahead of him. If you throw the World Series, then you have in my eyes destroyed your body of work in the regular season. Add in the fact that his fourth-best season, 1920 (+7.6 WAR), has to be viewed with some suspicion given the fact that he had already knowingly thrown games at the time, and it’s easy to drop him past the very similar numbers of others in that group. On talent alone, Cicotte would belong.

Jack Morris is a pitcher whose reputation is just not matched by his performance. The reason he has been overrated is that he does well in W-L record; his +74 WCR ranks thirty-eighth all-time. But his career ARA was just 105; he was only +63 WAR for his career. He COULD be ranked in the top sixty, particularly if you want to give more weight to the W-L, but I can’t justify it myself.

Mel Harder is a guy who still gets Hall of Fame push, but maybe that is only my impression because I am from Cleveland and read old newspaper columnists wax poetic about the olden days of good old Mel. After all, the famous Bill James Keltner List was the result of old Keltner fans pushing him, and was discussed in the Indians essay of one of a Abstract. Mel Harder was a fine pitcher, no doubt; .534 NW%, 108 ARA, +58 WCR, +61 WAR. But what sets him apart from Milt Pappas (.550, 111, +60, +61)? Or Freddie Fitzsimmons (.572, 109, +66, +59)? Or Orel Hershiser (.567, 109, +63, +59)? You get the idea. There are too many pitchers with near identical characteristics. These are the guys who would make up the bottom portion of the Top 100. Excellent pitchers, not Hall of Famers.

Well, that is, except for the Hall of Famers who don’t make my top sixty. Leaving out Bender and Grimes, who were in my 61-70 range, they are: Lefty Gomez, Catfish Hunter, Bob Lemon, Jesse Haines, Jack Chesbro, Dizzy Dean, and Rube Marquard.

Gomez pitched for great Yankees teams, and ranks much better versus average then he does against replacement. Jimmy Key has very similar numbers, though, with the exception of Gomez’ higher peak. Nobody thinks of Key as an all-time great.

The late Catfish was by all accounts a great guy, and he pitched for six pennant winners. But his career was short, and if you compare him carefully to his teammate Vida Blue, it’s tough to pick one. Blue is viewed as a disappointment because of his brilliant early work, followed by fairly average pitching, but:
NAME……………..NW%....................ARA……………WAA………..WCR……….WAR
Hunter……………..558……………….107……………...+14…………+66………….+62
Blue………………..555……………….108……………...+16…………+61………….+62
Hunter did that in 3449 IP, Blue in 3343.

Bob Lemon had a short career (2850 IP). His teams had excellent records (.589, about the same as the .587 for Whitey Ford). He was a converted third baseman, so he wasn’t a bad hitter, but +61 WAR needs a lot of help to get into HOF territory. He could get some war credit, but he missed his age 22-24 seasons and was not a pitcher before he left, so that’s extremely iffy to me.

Jesse Haines was one of the Frankie Frisch crony choices, and has absolutely nothing to set him apart from the pitchers in the Mel Harder pack, as he was .549, 108, +59, +58 himself.

Jack Chesbro is probably in the HOF because of his tremendous 41-12 season in 1904. That was a legitamitely great season (+14.8 WAR), but he never again cracked double digits, so his peak is not THAT spectacular (+45 WAR in top 5 years ranks thirtieth). But if you focus on peak value, he has a case to be one of the greats.

Dizzy Dean was brilliant as well, but only for a brief time. His top 5 seasons are +42, good enough to rank 39th, so he’s a peak special. His rate stats are great (.625 NW%, 131 ARA), but he was 33 innings short of 2000. Just not enough career value for me.

Finally, Rube Marquard’s inclusion in the Hall of Fame is a joke. Marquard was slightly above average on a rate basis (.517 NW%, 104 ARA), and didn’t have a super-long career in order to provide that much value (+53 WAR). Compare him to Claude Passeau, who I doubt many have even heard of (.512 NW%, 110 ARA, +52 WAR). Marquard is, without any doubt in my mind, the worst pitcher in the Hall of Fame. He wouldn’t make my top 120.

Then there are the pitchers who are included in the Hall of Merit but not in my top sixty. These I will treat in more detail then the HOF snubs, because I think the HOM voters are much more qualified to do this task, and since there are not the personal politics of the Frisch-type that got us Jesse Haines.

Alright, I lied, there’s no “pitchers”. There’s a pitcher, singular, and that is Wes Ferrell. Let me start by giving you my evaluation of Ferrell, and then let’s look into arguments put forward in his favor. Luckily, Dick Thompson does not read my blog or know me from Adam, so we can do this rationally.

Ferrell has a great W-L record, there’s no doubt about it: .607 NW%, +35 WAT, +70 WCR (45th in WCR). However, his ARA is only 112, for +15 WAA and +52 WAR. He pitched only 2630 innings, and won just 18 games after the age of 30.

One pro-Ferrell point is that he had a fine peak, which is true, but given the ground rules here, is irrelevant. Another is that he was an excellent hitter. This we can quantify, so let’s get at it. Ferrell 1305 career PA, hitting 280/351/446. This is excellent, but not quite as good as it looks, as he played in a high-scoring context (N=5.22, PF=1.02). His RG of 5.60 is +13 runs versus an average hitter.

Of course, the standard should not be an average hitter, but an average hitting pitcher. The average pitcher hit at 40% of the league RG in the 1930s (a .138 OW%). Ferrell is +118 runs against this standard.

But in fact this is too much, because Ferrell should only be compared to a pitcher when he is actually pitching. Ferrell played in a total of 547 major league games, but only 373 of these were as a pitcher. That means that in 174 of those games, he needs to be compared to a replacement level hitter, not an average pitcher.

Unfortunately, we don’t know how many PA he had in those games, but let’s be conservative and assume it was just one per game. Sure, there may have been games in which he pinch ran or something and never hit, but there were also likely games in which he had multiple PAs. Ferrell played in 13 games in the outfield for the Indians in 1933, his only games in the field, and recorded 2.46 Total Chances/Game, versus a league average of 2.28, so it’s safe to say he was playing the majority of those games.

So we assume that Ferrell had 1131 PAs that need to be evaluated v. an average pitcher, and 174 that need to be evaluated v. a replacement hitter (73% of the league average, .350 OW%). Under this new standard, he is +110 runs, which translates to +10.5 wins.

These are extra wins that we can add in to his pitching performance, and so instead of being +52 WAR and +15 WAA, he can be +64 WAR and +26 WAA. This would definitely bring him closer to the top 60, however there are twelve pitchers with the higher or same WAR not in, and many others right behind them. The WAA fares better; there are only six in the neighborhood. So perhaps I should have put Ferrell in the 61-70 range, but he still doesn’t crack the top sixty.

Some of the other arguments for Ferrell centered around peak value by comparing him to Grove, which is not something I’m going to explore here because peak is not on the table at all. Another was that Ferrell had to pitch more against the better teams in the league because he was his team’s ace, and a poor team needed to throw their big gun to have a shot against the Yankees and the other contenders.

“Jonesy” provided in-depth data that he researched for 1932, which I rate as Ferrell’s fourth-best season (+6.8 WAR). Here are Ferrell’s IP v. each team, along with their RG:
NY: 42.1 IP, 6.42 RG
PHA: 41 IP, 6.37 RG
WAS: 44 IP, 5.45 RG
DET: 47.1 IP, 5.22 RG
SLA: 33 IP, 4.77 RG
CHA: 52.1 IP, 4.39 RG
BOS: 27.1 IP, 3.68 RG
Weighting each team’s RG by the percentage of his IP thrown against them, the true context Ferrell pitched against was 5.25 runs/game. The assumed context was 5.33 r/g, so this in fact hurts Ferrell, ever so slightly. The point of this data was supposed to be a comparison with Grove, but that is irrelevant here; the conclusion is that in 1932, at least, Ferrell’s assumed and actual contexts were essentially equal, and no adjustment is needed.

I don’t know if other data was compiled broken down by season, but if so I have not found it. The bottom line is that Ferrell is a borderline top 70 pitcher by my standards. He is not a HOFer by these standards.

Another Great Moment in Yahoo! Box Scores

Preakness

I wasn't planning on posting my picks, but I must admit surprise at the seeming consensus among prognosticators that Hard Spun is the one to beat. Sure, Street Sense got his "favorable rail-skimming trip"; but Hard Spun also had a nice time on the lead with no real challengers. I think Flying First Class and King of the Roxy will have something to say about that at Pimlico, and with only 9 horses in the field, the odds of Street Sense getting the kind of trip he likes are much better then they were in Kentucky.

But I have to go with Circular Quay as my pick. First, I think Todd Pletcher entering him late after there was very little talk of it indicates that he has probably looked good to him. Secondly, he has now had a >8.5 furlong test, and did pretty nicely for himself in Louisville. He could be the beneficiary of a hotly contested lead between Hard Spun and whoever goes with him.

Street Sense would be my second choice, as he was for the Derby. Curlin, Xchanger, and Hard Spun would round out my top five, although I must put in a good word for King of the Roxy. Despite being a sprinter or miler in reality, I will be pulling for him, as he and I share an important attribute, one not commonly seen in top-class thoroughbreds; he and I are both Ohio-breds.