Since we are in the holiday season and since the hot stove is likely set to simmer, I thought I would tell a tale as old as time itself. Track any major invention and there is always a sordid tale about someone else that invented something similar at the same time. Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. Antonio Meucci invented something similar. We know about Bell, but don’t know much about Meucci.
According to baseball-reference.com, Jaffe developed his JAWS system in 2004. There have been
a number of different versions of the Hall of Fame Index that have come out in the same time frame. I officially published the first version of the book in 2011. He published the “Cooperstown Casebook” in 2017. My second edition of the Hall of Fame Index was published in 2020. I think you can see what is going on here. It isn’t so much as one person copying another as two people working on similar systems in a parallel universe.
His books sold thousands of copies. Mine sold dozens. JAWS is now a regular part of the baseball-reference.com website. Mine is still being calculated by hand. I think you get the idea. Jaffe is Alexander Graham Bell. I’m Meucci. However, I believe that the Hall of Fame Index is superior and I’m going to take a few moments of your time to explain why. Before I do that, I need to give a quick tutorial in how they are similar and how they are different.
JAWS takes the average of career baseball-reference.com WAR (BWAR) with the top seven year average. The Hall of Fame Index takes the combination of BWAR with Fangraphs.com’s WAR (FWAR) and adds top top ten seasons for those two numbers. That sounds veru similar and it usually ends up producing similar results. However, there are some instances where it doesn’t. Allow me to show you what happens when we look at Jose Altuve and Marcus Semien through the lens of both JAWS and the index.
The idea behind both theories is that you need to combine the career value and peak value of the player. If you imagine a career as a painting then having both career and peak value adds dimension to that painting. It adds perspective. What you see on the right is the ranking among second basemen. Both players look very similar. A part of that happens because the peak value takes only the top seven seasons where the index takes the top ten seasons.
I chose ten seasons because it is a larger sample and it takes ten years to be eligible for the Hall of Fame. It is a way to condense who we look at it and provides more data. The other major difference is that it includes only the components that BWAR includes which includes Rfield. Rfield is essentially defensive runs saved. Semien is a better fielder than Altuve and every single fielding metric says the same thing. However, they don’t all say how much better he is and that is why the index is different. The index includes a variety of components to get more of an overview of the sabermetric community and what it feels about a player.
So, we see two things going on at the same time. First, the shift from seven years to ten years changes the peak value portion even for BWAR. Altuve has enjoyed a slightly longer career and therefore gets the extra value when we shift from seven years to ten years. Secondly, we see these two going in different directions in FWAR. That is because the fielding components like Altuve more than the BWAR components and they like Semien less. Semien is still considered an above average fielder, but Altuve shifts from bad to merely below average.
Interestingly, it does not end up impacting Altuve’s standing among second baseman that much. With a normal healthy season he will likely surpass Willie Randolph on the all-time list. It is Semien that ends up tumbling down the board. He can come back up with two or three more productive seasons. That will likely be added to both his career and peak value numbers to help him gain some ground. However, we can never assume facts not in evidence.
I seriously doubt that teams are using the index or JAWS. I don’t even know if Jaffe is familiar with the index as I don’t know if Bell knew anything about Meucci. What I do know is that the debate about the components very much exists inside front offices. If you are big believer in defensive runs saved then you would be more apt to want to find someone to play second so that Altuve doesn’t have to. If you are a bigger believer in outs above average or fielding run value then you would rather stomach the below average defense to get the offensive boost.
What I do know is that getting more information adds that dimension and perspective to the mosaic that is a player’s career. The index looks at more information, so I believe the index to be superior to JAWS. Of course, every inventor would say the same thing. They are similar enough to use in tandem in most cases, but occasionally there are differences and we should keep in mind why those differences happen.
