So for the small handful of you who have long followed the WPK you likely have seen earlier posts by me regarding Hall of Fame credentials and the various tools Bill James created years ago to explore this topic.
Today I'd like to briefly revisit his similarity scores tool in the context of the WPK. And in particular as it relates to retired WPK starting pitcher Chris Hernandez.
(Now there are many caveats I could offer here about the lack of any significant history in the WPK yet, about the antiquated nature of the metrics James used for this tool- given that he created this pre-internet and wanted to use stats the average baseball fan had access to in the baseball encyclopedias of the time, etc. But I'm going to dispense with most of that. Feel free to ask questions if you desire.)
First, let's take a quick look at Chris Hernandez. Hernandez was the second player chosen overall in the WPK Inaugural Draft. (The first was Andy "Lemonhead" Wilson, who will likely be the topic of a similar post in the near future.) He was already 29 years old when the first season of the WPK was played and therefore got a late start on his WPK career, which lasted to age 38. He was the 1971 SJL Pitcher of the Year, a season in which he led the league in ERA at 2.02 and a season that was sandwiched by 19 and 21 win seasons. He was a 6-time All Star and has one championship ring. Hernandez was a fan favorite and one of the hardest workers in the game. The big righty might have kept going a bit longer but he suffered a torn UCL in July of 1975 and it turned out to be a career ending injury.
Hernandez dwells in that strata of WPK pitchers of his generation just below the big 2, Jake Harris and Cheol-han Lee, who are likely if not sure Hall of Famers. Given his advanced age when the league began Hernandez didn't have time to put up the counting numbers one might expect of a Hall of Famer. His 51.4 JAWS and 69.7 WAR figures are a bit below what is average for an MLB starting pitcher in the HOF. His Black Ink and Gray Ink totals are in line with MLB HOF's while his HOF Monitor and Standards scores would indicate he is a borderline candidate.
All of which makes him in some ways an ideal example of the value of Similarity Scores and the Keltner list.
One of the lessons of James' Similarity Scores tool is that the best players are the least likely to have strong similarity scores with other players. Greatness, while not unique, is rare by definition. In Hernandez case there isn't a lot of history in the WPK to compare him to. When you run the numbers against the big 2, who are still active but very much on the wane, Hernandez scores 835.94 against the lefty Harris and a somewhat better 865.72 against fellow righty Lee. By James definitions that would put him somewhere between somewhat similar and essentially similar to Harris and solidly into the essentially similar range with Lee.
When we look at how Hernandez compares to the 9 other most significant starting pitchers (by JAWS score) who have retired from the WPK (Art McMartin, Daniel Torres, Juan Soto, Mike Sayers, Manny Carvajal, Jose Foskey, David Herrera, Ricky Diaz, and Miguel Chavez), his highest similarity score is with Jose Foskey at 867.64. Next is the largely unheralded David Herrera at 866.59.
Of the 10 most significant retired starting pitchers in WPK history thus far, Hernandez by far stands out as the least similar to the others. He is the only one who doesn't have at least one fellow pitcher in the list who scores at least a 900 (truly similar in James words) similarity score. And to a certain extent this actually favors his HOF argument a bit. His strong similarity to Lee also helps.
But how does he compare to a much broader base that we could look at, namely the MLB.
Let me state here that I created a few rudimentary tools to help me automate this tool a bit but I am no tech wiz and this is slow going and by no means a thorough approach and counts on me to first eyeball the most obvious candidates for comparison.
But having said that, the best similarities I can find for Hernandez in MLB history are as follows:
Eddie Lopat- 924.98
Roy Oswalt- 912.72
Dennis Leonard- 910.68
Don Newcombe- 901.81
Ron Guidry- 897.42
Schoolboy Rowe- 894.09
Dizzy Dean- 892.44
Some solid pitchers there, a few near HOF'ers, and one HOF'er who many believe doesn't really belong in the Hall but had a bigger than life presence (Dean.)
When we compare Hernandez to some MLB HOF'ers with a similar number of wins and innings pitched,etc, we get scores like this:
Roy Halladay- 848.06
Lefty Gomez- 846.79
Addie Joss- 846.08
Bob Lemon- 808.04
Pedro Martinez- 784.77
Catfish Hunter- 759.62
Whitey Ford- 741.63
So these scores range from just below the essentially similar range to below the vaguely similar range.
Not great evidence for Hernandez there.
I like Chris Hernandez. I would have loved to see what his career might have been like if he had started in the WPK at age 22 to 25 instead of 29. I think he should make it through several ballots of HOF voting and will be disappointed if he doesn't.
I won't go into the Keltner list right now (having taken too much of your time already) but suffice it to say that he scores pretty well but again not a slam dunk with that tool as well.
I don't think Chris Hernandez will be enshrined in the WPK Hall of Fame in Dubuque, Iowa. But he certainly will be one of the first great tests for the voters.