There's certainly a lot of news to read today, with Randy Johnson's retirement last night and with the Hall of Fame announcement only an hour or so away. It's a big day, and I have no doubt that I'll have something to say about it in the near future. In the meantime, though, I just wanted to share this little bit of research that I did yesterday. The findings are interesting in of themselves, I think, but I'm writing this more to comment on just how easy things are these days and how lucky we are to live in the future.

Yesterday afternoon, a Twitter friend of mine - @TheRealDavidK - asked this question:

Wondering if any batter has ever made all 3 outs in an inning. Seems unlikely to even get 3 PA. Anyone? @wezen_ball? @robneyer?

I didn't know the answer and I was at work (though it was lunchtime), so I wasn't able to run a query on my Retrosheet database. It seemed like a question that was probably researched before, but a quick Google search didn't turn anything up for me. And, like David said, it seemed unlikely that anyone would even have three plate appearances in an inning.

Then I remembered that The Sporting News has their 2008 Complete Baseball Record Book available online for free. It always did a great job of breaking records down by career, season, game, and, in some cases, inning. I pointed David to that book and told him to check out page 18, where the "most plate appearances in an inning" was listed. Seventeen names in ten games since 1893 were listed.

David did a little exploring of the Retrosheet site for those ten games and was able to conclusively dismiss 15 of the 17 names. The only two names he couldn't dismiss were Marty Callaghan, who had three plate appearances in the fourth inning of a August 25, 1922, Cubs-Phillies game, and Ted Williams in a July 4, 1948, Red Sox-A's game.

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There's an old article in the Bill James Online archives where Bill tries to determine who the best player in baseball was for any given year. He used Win Shares and a four-year weighted average to calculate the top-five players for every year, beginning in 1904. I actually wrote about his article over a year ago, when the blog wasn't even a blog. From that post:

Without going too deep into the method or the findings (that's what Bill's site is for, after all), I'll say that Bill used a player's four-year (weighted) average of Win Shares to see who was the best player over those past four years (in the "mirror" article, he looked ahead to the next four years, using real numbers of course, not predictions). The method seemed pretty sound to me, and gave some really fair and mostly expected results (Babe Ruth rules for a few years, then Gehrig, then Williams, etc, with Bonds ruling for much of the last 10-12 years, even before BALCO).

What makes the list most interesting, I think, are those years between the true greats, when the historically great players are either too old or too young to have dominated the league for three straight years. The players who emerge during these times as the "best player in baseball" make you pause for a minute but, upon further reflection, seem sensible. These players include: Ron Santo in 1967; Bobby Murcer in '72; Dave Parker in '78-'79; Tim Raines in '87; and Will Clark in '89-'91.

I still find myself thinking back to that article when I hear people debate the best player of a given era (such as Cyril Morong's look at the mid-1960s and Ron Santo from last week). It's such a simple and effective way to measure the top players in a short timeframe that I find myself drawn to it. The problem, though, is that, with its reliance on Win Shares, the article has quickly become dated. Wins Above Replacement, or WAR, does a much better job of quantifying a players full worth and, as such, has become the preferred way to measure something like this (as you can see by the numerous WAR articles I've written recently).

But we can fix that. With the Rally WAR database and a little bit of SQL, I was able to replicate Bill's process for every year between 1904 (when we first have four year's worth of data available) and 2009. The best part of the data is how easily it breaks the last century down into different eras, by the dominant players of the time. You can click here to view the five best players for every year from 1904-2009, or read below for the breakdown by era.

1904 - 1919: The Early Greats

Aside from Hall of Famer Joe McGinnity sitting in the number one spot in 1904, there isn't a single year where Honus Wagner, Ty Cobb, or Walter Johnson isn't considered the best player in baseball in this early era (Eddie Collins is tied for first with Walter Johnson in 1915). Which sounds just about right to me. Others finding themselves in the top five in this era are: Nap Lajoie, Christy Mathewson, Rube Waddell, Ed Walsh, Pete Alexander, and Tris Speaker. If you look close, you'll see pitcher Babe Ruth creeping up the list in those last couple of years.

Oh, and a note about the charts... Sorry for not being to give you something a little more flashy. When it comes to charting data, I'm kind of stuck with my old copy of Excel, and it's not too great when it comes to this kind of thing. Still, I think this does a pretty good job of showing just how much better the top one or two players were compared to the rest of the list from year to year. The points are coded by rank, with the #1 ranked player always a red dot, the #2 always a blue, and so on. If anyone has any better suggestions, please let me know.

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Last New Year's Day, the Terrific Girlfriend and I were having lunch and a drink at a bar downtown after a good workout that morning. Marquette was playing Villanova in their Big East conference opener and we were decked out in some gold t-shirts as we watched the first half on one of the tvs. As we finished up our beers and our sandwiches at half-time, the manager came up behind us and said, "You two look like Marquette fans. How would you like to use the owner's seats for the rest of the game?"

We looked at each other with a certain glee in our eyes and quickly said yes. We took the tickets and ran over to the Bradley Center. The tickets said "Row AAA", which sounded great, but we weren't prepared for just how great they were. It wasn't until the usher showed us to our seats that we completely realized where we were: we were sitting in the front row, just behind Villanova's bench. It was a truly awesome spot to watch the big Marquette victory, and a fantastic way to start the year.

And 2009 proved to be a great year. True, the Brewers played terribly in the second half and failed to return to the playoffs, but there was a lot more to the year in sports that made it one to remember. Here are a few of my highlights from the calendar year:

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As we did back in October with the various postseason awards (oh, and sorry for never getting around to that MVP post...), members of the Baseball Bloggers Alliance like myself are offering their votes on who does and who doesn't belong in the Hall of Fame. The rules are simple: using the players who are on the official ballot for Cooperstown, BBA blogs will choose those who they believe deserve to be in the Hall, with no more than 10 players selected per ballot. I officially cast my vote in this election last week. My choices are below, with a little bit of explanation.

I actually did a similar post last year at about this time. I didn't look at who I had on my ballot last year when I cast my votes this year, so there was always a chance that I changed my opinion on someone in the meantime (Andre Dawson, for example). When I did finally look at that ballot, though, I was pleased to see that I was 100% consistent from last year to this. As I explain myself today, you'll have to forgive me if I say the same thing as last year. The reasons are still just as true today as they were then, after all.

Guys who I think should definitely be in the Hall

Roberto Alomar: I know Alomar probably isn't as good defensively as we all made him out to be in the mid-90s. Still, his mix of offense and defense easily made him one of the best second-basemen of all-time and he, along with Craig Biggio and Jeff Kent, made this almost a golden-age for second-base. His sudden and precipitous drop in 2002 is troubling, but his 14 prior years of a 121 OPS+, .306 AVG, and Gold Glove defense puts him in. (Here's a series on Alomar, Kent, and Biggio that I did earlier in the year.)

Bert Blyleven: I'm feeling pretty good about Blyleven's chances of finally getting elected. As I said last year, I'm a little too young to have seen him play, but there is very little evidence in his statistics that he wasn't one of the best players of his time or that he isn't better than a half-dozen or more HOF pitchers already.

Barry Larkin: I don't know what it is, but, for as much as writers fell in love with shortstops over the last 25 years or so (Cal, A-Rod, Jeter, etc.), they certainly failed to latch onto one of the best in the game with Barry Larkin. As Bill James said when he ranked Larkin as the 6th greatest shortstop of all-time (back in 2001), Larkin is "one of the ten most complete players in baseball history." Average, power, speed, defense, intelligence... Larkin had it all.

Edgar Martinez: There's a whole lot of discussion going on about Edgar and his place in the Hall. Everyone acknowledges that he was a great hitter, but the debate seems to hinge around whether he was a "great enough" hitter, considering his primary role as a designated hitter. Personally, I'm of the opinion that even if Edgar put up Pujols-like numbers for his entire career, people would be asking the same questions. Certain people seem to have a hard time accepting a player who doesn't contribute to the defense, though no one has yet explained to me how a terrible fielding first-baseman/corner outfielder is better than a DH. I'm not 100% sure that writers are ready to elect a DH to the Hall of Fame, but Edgar should be the first.

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Forgive me for a second while I say something that just might blow your mind. Please don't take it personal: every year, the writers get the Hall of Fame vote wrong.

Every year.

Like I said, don't take it personal. This is not a call to take the vote away from the writers. And it's not a call to give the vote to the stat-heads. And this is not a response to the Jon Heyman-vs.-the-world Twitter-spat from last night (of which I partook somewhat). This is just an observation: every year, the Hall of Fame vote is wrong.

Yes, I understand the subjective nature of the Hall of Fame. I actually love that about the institution. The debates on the merits of players like Edgar Martinez and Andre Dawson and Dale Murphy are some of the most fun that you can have as a fan (for the record, those three are: above the line, at the line, and below the line, respectively). But just because there is some room for debate every year, that doesn't mean that the voters cannot be flat-out wrong.

This shouldn't really be all that bold of a statement. Just this last year, for example, there were 28 voters who did not place Rickey Henderson on their ballot. I'm sure if you asked each of them individually what their reasons were, they'd be able to give you some sort of justification for it that they believe in (assuming they didn't tell you that they just "forgot" to mark his name). That's all well and good, and many people might even defend those voters' right to have a different opinion, but, the truth of the matter is, Rickey Henderson is the very definition of a Hall of Famer and those who did not vote for him are plain wrong. It might be harsh, but it's true.

And what about the six voters who didn't vote for Tom Seaver in 1992? Or the nine who didn't vote for Hank Aaron in 1982? Willie Mays? Ted Williams? Babe Ruth? No one has ever been a unanimous choice and, when you're talking about the five, ten, or even twenty-five greatest players ever, that is a mistake, pure and simple.

But not every player deserves to be a unanimous selection, and not every mistake is of that nature. The other most common mistake that you'll find in the Hall of Fame voting year-in and year-out is the failure to elect a clear Hall of Famer. For some reason, there is a certain population of Hall voters who have made a distinction in their minds between regular Hall of Famers and "first-ballot" Hall of Famers. And when one of these voters comes across someone who they feel belongs among the former but not the latter, they do the most asinine thing imaginable: they leave that player off their ballot, with the expectation of voting for him the next year.

The strict first-balloters aren't the only reason the Hall of Fame vote is wrong every year, of course, but they certainly don't help. The main reason is too hard to pinpoint. It's more a collection of the writers' foibles than anything else: voting for players they like and not voting for players they don't; voting for players based off of nebulous concepts like "grittiness" and "fear"; failing to account for league, ballpark, and era adjustments; relying on poor memories or magnifying minor gaffes; or just plain not putting enough effort in making their choices. It's the nature of giving a subjective ballot to 400+ people of different ages, generations, attitudes, and experiences, I suppose. Human nature or not, though, it is wrong.

Let's take a look at the Hall of Fame voting from the early-1980s as an example.

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I just wanted to take a minute today to wish everyone a merry Christmas and happy holidays. I hope everyone is warm, happy, and enjoying your time off with friends, family and loved ones.

As a Christmas treat, I'd like to link you back to my Christmas post from last year. It probably shouldn't come as a surprise that it's a look back at some old Peanuts gems. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, everyone, and enjoy A Charlie Brown Christmas.

It's the afternoon of December 23. For some reason, I don't think many people will be reading blogs all that much the rest of the week. But will I let that stop me from posting something interesting? Never.

In a nice long discussion over at BBTF yesterday about Albert Pujols' current place on the greatest players of all-time list - does he belong in the top 10 after only nine years? how do we know he won't spend the next ten years in a body cast? Frank Thomas! - commenter Joe C. said this (in reply to zonk):

Maybe - but it didn't drag his peers down... Or - to put it this way - if we only took the first 9 seasons of what I'm saying are his peers, would Pujols stack up? I think so.

That's not the right comparison to make, IMO. You should (not to say you should actually do this) be comparing Pujols to others' best first nine seasons. Yeah, all of the guys who are in the top 10 all-time in OPS+ or whatever who aren't active all maintained that level, sure - but how many guys had those rates at their peak, and were brought down (relatively speaking) by their decline phase?

I don't know the answer, just throwing that out there.

That intrigued me. Who are the players with the best nine-year starts to their careers, and how well did they keep it up? Who are the players who plummeted the most?

In Joe C.'s question, he seems to be wondering about a player's standing on the all-time charts, like OPS+. It's a good question, but not one that I think I can realistically answer. However, if we instead decide to rank players using Wins Above Replacement at (and after) their first nine-years, it becomes very answerable and should be a fair compromise - after all, what's the good of a stat that encompasses a player's total worth if we don't use it?

The only real problem I came across when trying to gather this data was deciding what counted as someone's ninth season. Do you count from the season that he made his debut, or when he became a full-time player? And what do you consider a full-time player? What about partial seasons after that "first" season, where he might only play in 25 or 30 games due to injury or something - do those count towards the nine seasons? I decided to count the first "full-season" as season #1, and then any seasons after that as season #2 or #3, and so on, regardless of games played. In Thomas' case, he played in 60 games in 1990 and then averaged 146 games played from 1991 to 1999. His first year, then, was 1991 (the cut-off for a "full season" was 81 games). For someone like Hank Greenberg, though, who had 12-game and 19-game seasons in the '30s, all of his seasons after his first full season were counted toward the nine-season limit, putting his ninth season at 1941. Any value that the player may have added in those initial partial seasons is included, however.

So who are the leaders in WAR after their ninth season? Here's the list (hitters only, using Rally's Historic WAR Database):

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It's been a few months since I last checked out the Google Books archives of the illustrious Weekly World News and, with the Christmas lull about to hit this week, it seemed like a great time to check in with it again. The last time we checked out the WWN, I said this:

For those of you who don't remember, the WWN was one of the most outrageous and uncompromising of the supermarket tabloids, printing steady updates on the goings-on of Bat Boy and many other unbelievable stories. What made the WWN so fun, though, was how it consistently told those ridiculous stories without a hint of irony or self-awareness. It was a weekly joke told with the straightest of faces. How could you not at least appreciate something like that?

And it still holds true. There are many, many more magazines that write more interesting or worthwhile articles than the WWN did when it was still around, but there are few that match it in its commitment to camp.

For today's article, we go to the Jan. 17, 2005, issue and famed psychic Dr. Carleton Misteri-O who "brings you celebrity interviews from beyond the grave!" In this case, the celebrity interview from beyond the grave is none other than Babe Ruth. Let's get right to the good stuff.

Q: Babe, have you been following the steroid flap surrounding Jason Giambi, Barry Bonds, and other major league ballplayers?

BABE: Of course. ESPN comes in loud and clear in the afterlife.

Q: Then tell me, oh Sultan of Swat, what is your take on today's steroidal sluggers?

BABE: What wimps! In my day, all we needed to power up before a game was a few beers and a friendly broad. Sometimes I would be out all night, and so hung over the next day I couldn't see straight. But that didn't stop me from hitting homers. I didn't need no steroids. If you ask me, which you are, steroids are for girlie men.

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I just wanted to take the quick opportunity here to point out that Sean Smith now has the Rally WAR Data for the 2009 season up over at his site, BaseballProjection.com. He actually announced this in a blog posting last week. You can use the website to view individual players' data, or even compare the Top 500 players of all time.

But, even better, he has also updated the downloadable data to include the 2009 season. For those who already downloaded the original data, you can pay $5 to download the year-2009 update. And, if you haven't yet purchased the data, the $15-for-one-file or $25-for-both are still available, complete with the 2009 data.

I know I already spent yesterday talking about some great resources available, but I had to do it again. The Rally WAR database is just too fantastic of a tool. Go take a look if you're at all interested in the data.

I'm excited to be going to the Lakers game tonight, so I probably won't have anything up tomorrow. Enjoy your day, and be sure to check out the Rally WAR database.

For those of you who might have read my earlier pitch for SABR but decided to think on it a little more, here's a little more information for you to consider. Last month, after a long wait, SABR finally got access to the Paper of Records digital archives, including 117 years worth of Sporting News issues. This is fantastic news for baseball fans because it gives everyone - well, SABR members at least - an easy way to access one of the best and more comprehensive sources of baseball reporting and writing from decades long gone. From SABR's press release:

The Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) has made available to its dues paying members access to The Sporting News (1886 to 2003) online, along with dozens of other newspapers, including some years of the Baltimore Afro-American.

This resource will help members with their baseball research and provide more opportunities to fill in player pages at the soon-to-be soft-launched (to members only) SABR Encyclopedia.

This is something I've been hoping for for a while now, and I can't be more pleased to see it. The Paper of Record website has some user-interface issues and could be a little more friendly to researchers, but there's no denying its wealth of information. And all for the price of a SABR membership (remember, 30-and-younger get a discounted membership rate)? Well worth it!

Poking around with the site over the weekend, I thought I'd look for the first time Bill James, the celebrated sabermetrician, not one of the various ballplayers by that name, found himself in the Sporting News. It should probably come as no surprise that his first appearance came years before his work took off, in the "Voice of the Fan" section. After all, if you were as big of a fan of baseball as Bill James was in the 1960s and 1970s, chances are pretty good that you were reading the Sporting News on a regular basis. Bill's first appearance came in the January 12, 1974, issue of the Sporting News, as a letter. It was as informative as you'd expect:

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