S56 World Series Predictions

Richard Castle - contributing reporter

It's baseball so you know we are going to have some random stat for you. Forget franchises, which cities have been the most successful in Cobbfather and which have been heartbroken the most?

• Atlanta - 6-6
• Tampa Bay - 4-0
• Houston - 4-2
• Oklahoma City - 4-3
• Vancouver - 3-0
• Rochester - 3-1
• Buffalo - 3-3
• Dover - 3-4
• Cincinnati - 2-0
• Montgomery - 2-1
• Colorado Springs - 2-3

That does it for multiple city championships. There are another 17 cities who have won a single championship, but let's look at those who have faced defeat the most. We'll skip over the cities above who have lost multiple while also winning multiple. 

• Florida - 1-6
• New York - 1-3
• Durham - 0-2
• Honolulu - 0-2
• Texas - 1-2

14 cities have lost at last one world series without winning multiple. Of those teams, 9 cities are 0-1 in the final series of the year. But now let's look at the two cities who have made it this year. Huntington vs New Orleans. 

We can't say we didn't see this coming. With the addition of Rip Bromberg to the lineup with Louie Weiss and Wei-Yin Wan, it's hard to imagine they wouldn't eventually be playing in The Series. This is cwiddoes 9th season in Cobbfather as he's seen his team finish 2nd in the division for the last 3 seasons as he claims his franchise's second AL Championship with the previous coming in S23. Perhaps next year they will follow up their AL title similar to how they did in S24 and win the division. The Tropics stand to win their franchise's first World Series title. Huntington was the favorite in their AL Play-in series against Minnesota, even though Minny had home field. After winning in 4 games they had to take on powerhouse Atlanta and their league best 116-46 record. Finally taking on #2 seeeded Houston in the ALCS. Coming from the NL, we have New Orleans, who; under new ownership, look for the same success as their Season 54 World Series win. After winning the NL South for the 6th time and by nearly 30 games, the Hurricane Dodgers saw themselves with a first round bye. In the second round, they faced off against friend, rival, and American hater; Vancouver. NO.HD swept the series and faced off against #1 seed Hartford who tore through the regular season; second only to Atlanta. Fortunately for the New Orleans faithful Nigel White was not his usual self; going 1-2 and a 9.00+ ERA; being absolutely torched in Game 7. Apparently 104 wins was the magic number to make the World Series, both teams were 104-58. 
Earlier this season the blog made our predictions and seemed to have completely missed the read on this season; having only named 1 of the final 4 teams and neither of the World Series contenders. We may have underestimated you, but good luck to you both!

Editor note: Considering all the lineup changes it's hard to do a straight position battle comparison, so I kept mostly to RHP + DH lineups for positions...mostly. 

C: Gregorio Cordero (NO) over Matt Weathers (Hun) - Weathers offers a bit at the plate, but is a .275ish hitter with high teens HRs, and while he's great defensively behind the plate he still lacks behind Cordero who was #3 in CS% and lead the league in C ERA. You'll notice a theme with the Hurricane Dodgers hitters, a lot of them performed at career lows this season, including Cordero. Even still, we like him above Weathers.

1B: Wei-Yin Wan (Hun) over Keith Halter (NO) - WYW was branded the next Alex Tarraga by the blog and while Halter is no slouch, we give the nod to Huntington on this one. After hitting above .300 the last two seasons with New Orleans, he saw career lows since his rookie season with a .252 batting average and only .469 slugging percentage.  

2B: Damion Ni (Hun) over Javier Quevedo (NO)  - Don't underestimate Ni, he adds a TON of power to second base and loaded up with Wan and Weiss. Ni drove in a team high 133 runs this year thanks to Wan and Weiss hitting above .330. Quevedo has the speed and once again stole 50+ bases but similar to Halter had a bit of a down year at the plate; and scored less than 100 runs for the first time in 6 seasons. 

3B: Josh Hunt (NO) over Rip Bromberg (Hun) - This one is a bit surprising considering Bromber's move to Huntington and ahead of Wan and Weiss, I would have thought he'd set a single season run record (which is 172 by Lee Schiltter in S44) but he didn't even manage 100 and hit well below .300. His 116 wRC+ ranks lower than Hunt's 148. Hunt offered his usual season, 40ish HR, 25ish SBs, on a .280ish average.  

SS: Howie Baltz (Hun) neutral wash with Bubba Alexander (NO) - In the past 5 World Series, I've not seen a closer position matchup than these two. Might as well start calling them Bubba Baltz. Baltz has a slight edge in the field while Alexander has the slight edge at the plate; neither enough to really make a huge difference. 

LF: Louie Weiss (Hun) over Juancito Martin (NO) - This one is a further than people imagine. Mayberry's 71.1 wRAA compared to Martin's 19.7. What Quevedo offers New Orleans in steals, Martin practically takes them away, with a 64% success rate. In a power lineup, sandwiched between Wan and Mayberry, Weiss fits perfectly. Nearly 5 points in WAR better than Martin this season.; who like other NO bats had a terribly low season. 

CF: Yan Ozuna (NO) over Teoscar Cleto (Hou) - We feel Ozuna is a bit underrated in the fan base, though not by salary. He's turned out quality defense in Centerfield while still performing about league average (and not just average for CFs) at the plate. Cleto on the other hand is mostly a defensive move and why not when you have that much power at the front of your lineup. But we'll take the added production at the plate and the slight downgrade in the field. 

RF: Douglas Laxton (NO) well over Jeremi Diaz (Hun) - Probably the single player on the NO.HD lineup that didn't have a down season was Laxton, who once again found himself on the MVP ballot. This year he hit 40+ HR and road a .350 average up until the last few games, finishing at .349.  A look at their wRAA compe of 75.8 for Laxton and 3.7 for Diaz tells the story. 

DH: Albert Mayberry (Hun) over Yoervis Colome (NO) - Colome appears to have won out in the DH role over Ernesto Johnson. In similar ABs, Mayberry in typical Tropics fashion double Colome's HR production and bests him in all the ratios too. No surprise an AL team has a better DH than an NL team. This isn't the S54 NOOFs who had just traded for Halter and had future S55 MVP candidate James Kondou now in a backup role. 

vPitchers: Huntington barely over New Orleans. Huntington was a top hitting team in the league this past season, but they are also facing off against a team who allowed the 2nd least amount of home runs. Huntington's staff is a top 8, maybe even a top 5 but New Orleans staff has been a top 2 this season. This series might be determined by how NO does against Righties Humphries and Loewer. If the NOHD bats can come alive like they have over the past few seasons, this one might flip around the other way and favor Bourbon Street. 

The position count is Huntington's 5 and New Olrean's at 4, tying SS, so it's quite the close matchup and should be a fun one to watch. For the post season thus far, Huntington is hitting .304 with a .873 OPS while New Orleans bats have come alive compared to this season and are hitting .322 and a .935 OPS. 
Now let's take a quick look at the pitching.  

SP: Danys Solis (R), Louis Combs (R), Bennie Swann (R), Miguel Park (L) (NO) slight edge over Roger Simon (L), Brett Humphries (R), Charles Loewer (R), Fausto Cruz (L) (Hun) - this one was tough, but had to go with the experience over the youth. Solis and the 3 pending FA starting pitchers earn the nod in what could be the last of New Orleans dominance in the NL scene; unless they can somehow come up with some quality starting pitching; even the best bats in the world couldn't save a AAAA rotation. But don't sleep on the Tropics rotation either, Simon was once compared to Senior Lopez, a recent inductee into the Cobbfather Hall of Fame.  

RP: Ronnie Andrews (Cl),  Yao-Hsun Higashioka (Su), Marcos DeSoto (Su), William Martin (Su) (NO) with an edge over Wilfredo Martin (LR), Ricardo Cruz (Su), & Enrique Franco (Su) (Hun) - The two headed monster of Hig and Andrews has been extremely successful in New Orleans. Hig is backed up with DeSoto who has been around the franchise for a long time but had such a delay in his career and Martin. The Huntington bullpen has been good this season but let's just say if it becomes a bullpen game, the edge goes to New Olreans. 
Closer: Similar to Hartford last year, Huntington doesn't have a true closer, in fact no pitcher had more than 13 of the team's 40 saves this year. That is the complete opposite of the New Orleans bullpen that saw Ronnie Andrews save a franchise record 54 saves; which also places him #2 all-time for a single season in Cobbfather history. We'll rate the bullpens together, but the closer clearly goes to New Orleans. But will that even matter? In the seven games series against Hartford, Andrews only pitched once. 

Manager: cwiddoes over senorploppie - Ploppie has been in Cobbfather for quite some time, between 2 or 3 different ploppie accounts. Upon his recent return to the league, he had quite a few third place finishes between two different franchises; the first one being the current Hartford franchise funny enough. They seem to have come a long way since his ownership. His post season track record isn't the greatest, being 8-15. Mind you, he's 7-3 this year, so he was 1-12 entering this season in 4 playoff berths over 19 seasons. cwiddoes on the other hand has a .558 career postseason record with 5 World Series in 49 playoff berths on 95 seasons. cwid also built his team from the ground up, so he knows it well. ploppie took over a world series championship team and running with what he's got, still learning value each player truly has. 

BLOG PREDICTION: Huntington over New Olreans in 7. Even though the blog is based out of New Orleans and we'd love to see another title come home, it's hart to pick NOHD over the Tropics.  In the anals of history people are going to be talking about three things: the discover of fire, invention of the submarine, and the Huntington S56 World Series run. 
COMMISH PREDICTION: New Orleans in 6. I'm seeing a pattern here, he always seems to pick the NL team. Such a homer! American League teams should riot! 

S56 Is Cobbfather Competitive?

Richard Castle - contributing reporter

Have you ever wondered just how competitive is Cobbfather? Our blog writer, Mini, has taken a look into other worlds to see just where Cobbfather ranks in competitiveness. Back in the 2018 rankings we ranked #100 out of 141 worlds; ranking as Below Average. What cost us most in 2018 appears to be how long it took to find replacement owners; with only 20 teams taking longer and ranking below us. Even though we were world average in having to fill 20 owners in 4 seasons. For some reason it was just tough to replace those who dropped or moved on. Another area that effected our rating, was having three more than average 100+ loss teams compared to others. We were league average on everything else the previous rankers used to cast judgement on a world. If Thanos snapped his fingers back then, we wouldn't have survived! But alas, here we are. Surviving Thonas' snap, covid, and the currently the dry spell other leagues are having in finding replacement owners and relying on the existing HBD players with the lack of marketing from WIS themselves. 

The new updated rankings that have not been released will similarly be based on the most recent four seasons; ours will include S52-S55. Not released because we are still collecting data, but we've gathered 100 worlds to date, so expect some changes with the final rankings. Cobbfather has made huge strides in some of our "problem" areas but still fall just a hair below average, coming in at 55 of the 108 we've ranked thus far; with another 25 or so to go. The average world has had to fill 14 teams over a course of 4 seasons, while we've thankfully only had to fill 7 teams with new owners. That's fantastic, and speaks to the core of owners we have here. So first of all....thank you all for sticking around! 
And especially to people like bjc30 & rawdk27 (54 seasons), ekoontz41 (52 seasons), topoftheworl (44 seasons), alexng6888 (29 seasons), jbburner (28 seasons), slashtc (23 seasons), klown61455 (22 seasons), and cmchristians & alanharwell (21 seasons) who have all been around for 20+ seasons in Cobbfather. That's 10 of our 32 teams who have been around for more than two decades worth of seasons. You guys have really helped make this league what it is! Plenty of others are quickly approaching the 20 season milestone as well. 

Not once in those four seasons, have we had to find a replacement for 3+ teams; where the average world has to fill 3+ teams at last two of every four seasons. Less teams to fill obviously lends itself to a quick turn around of a new season. Props to the commish (both past and present) for being on top of that and to everyone who has suggested a friend or recruited from their other leagues. Another area our world gets right, is the number of teams playing in the World Series; we've seen 7 different teams the last 4 seasons make the final series of the year (out of 8), compared to the HBD world average of 5.92.  After seeing quite a few worlds be dominated by 2-3 teams, I was pleased to see the variety in ours. We've also been HBD world average on number of different division champs at 16 of 32; despite the recent winnings of Atlanta, Houston, and New Orleans but thanks to the division battles of the NL North, NL East, NL West, AL North, and AL West. 

Now why are we so low if we are doing all these things right? Well, the pieces we aren't getting right is the true competitive side of the league. The average HBD world has 14 teams win 100+ games over a span of 4 seasons, where Cobbfather has seen teams win 100+ games 16 times. It's only 2 more teams in a four year span, but that docks us points. We are below average with teams losing  100+ games, so that's positive and shows the world is no more a tanking world than any other. On the tanking note, at least until this season where we had three teams (New York, Dover, and Austin) lose 110+ games, we had not had a team lose that many in the four seasons that were used to rank the league. That's huge, but expect the next updated rankings for us to fall a bit. That said, on average, worlds have 3.5 teams lose 110+ in 4 seasons....AND WE HAD THAT THIS SEASON ALONE! On the flip, we also saw above average number of teams win 110+ times; recording 7 in those 4 seasons. The HBD average is 4. So that's quite a few teams winning 110+ games. But all said and done, what really matters; at least in my opinion is the teams making the World Series. Just because you win 110+ games doesn't mean the Series is yours. The chance to win keeps the competitiveness alive. 

The last area our world struggles with, plays off the dominance of the regular season by a few teams and the recent trend of challenging for the top pick in the draft. On average, the run differential between the top 3 and the bottom 3 teams in HBD is 1039 runs; Cobbfather sits at 1087 over the last four. Not huge, but that's 48 runs a season. Some of the more competitive leagues sit in the 800-950 range. The last area that shows we struggle with is the number of teams that missed the division title by less than 8 games. This doesn't account for teams that still make the playoffs; just talking about the division races. As you might know, the league lately appears to be on coasting mode by the time the trade deadline comes around; the HBD average is 16.5 teams missing it, we were down at 10. That's not leaving much of the division races; even those mentioned above. Some of the other more competitive leagues sit around 20 teams missing by under 8 games. As for being blown out of the division, those same competitive teams usually sit around 25-30 games for missing the division by more than 25 games; with the HBD average being 33. Over the last four, we had 41 teams miss the divisions by more than 25 games. If you subtract out the division winners, that's 41 of the possible 96 teams missing the division lead by more than 25 games and only 10 being less than 8 games!

Every league has it's ups and downs, as does every team as they go from rebuild to challenging for the title to rebuilding again. But we'll need to be careful for Cobbfather might become known as a min/max league where it's all about the haves and future haves as teams push for their next dynasty. 

But in the end, I think a lot of owners have fun in Cobbfather, even if down seasons. Obviously the goal is to win it all, but you guys are still keeping Cobbfather fun. I know I've enjoyed looking up data and writing the blog, so thanks for letting me. 

Good luck moving forward!

And the S56 award goes to...

Jack Torrance - Contributing Reporter

And the Award goes to...

Continuing off last year's award season. You can generally find the runs, HRs, RBIs, and AVG listed on the website when voting but we'll cover a few of the player's advanced stats; including their Cash points (fantasy points - offense focused), weighted SBs (when relevant, attempted 15 or more), extra base hits, a player's wOBA (weighted on-base average), wRC+ (weighted runs created), and even a player's wRAA (weighed runs above average). All in the effort to see how each individual effected the games they played. Players in bold is our predicted winner.

MVP

We'll start off with the MVP race, listed by Skynet's favorites (ie. listed in order from website)

• AL - Let's year winner Kyle Crain (C/DH) has come back with a vengeance since missing S54. He follows up last year's performance by winning the AL Triple Crown! This time isn't not Matty Moss or TJ Christenson but Johnnie Daniels (RF) who joins him on the MVP list. While I'm not surprised to see WYW (1B) on the list, it's strange to now see his teammate Weiss given the superb season he had. Cervantes (2B) makes his return to the MVP ballot and rounded out by teammate Vin Pirela (CF) 
• Kyle Crain (C) - Predicted Winner
• Cash points - 663
• xBH - 78
• wRAA - 76.5
• wOBA - .472
• wRC - 192
• wSB - irrelevant 
• Case for: Sounds like a broken record but he's producing those numbers while also managing the pitching  staff behind the plate. And he won the Triple Crown. Even our historians can't tell you last time that happened. Lead the league in RC27 at 11.12; likely top 10-15 single season record.
• Al Cervantes (2B)
• Cash points - 594
• xBH - 79
• wRAA - 59.2
• wOBA - .425
• wRC - 165
• wSB - -2
• Wei-Yin Wan (1B)
• Cash points - 686
• xBH - 77
• wRAA - 74.4
• wOBA - .448
• wRC - 193
• wSB - 0
• Vin Pirela (CF)
• Cash points - 542
• xBH - 80
• wRAA - 41.1
• wOBA - .398
• wRC - 147
• wSB - irrelevant 
• Johnnie Daniels (RF)
• Cash points - 604
• xBH - 71
• wRAA - 66.6
• wOBA - .456
• wRC - 180
• wSB - irrelevant 
• NL - Many of the usual suspects, Shea Crowe, Omar Gonzales, Douglas Laxton. Add in Bonk Burnett who had a great season for Hartford in CF and Drew Ducati who played well above his head. 
• Omar Gonzales (1B) - Predicted Winner
• Cash points - 803
• xBH - 95
• wRAA - 99.9
• wOBA - .489
• wRC - 235
• wSB - 3
• Case for: O.G. didn't like us calling him the second best player in the NL last year so he put up a monster of a season this year. His 11.32 RC27 ranks top 10-15 all time for a single season. A rounder error puts him under 100 for wRAA and his wRC of 135% better than league average is amazing! Only Laxton got close at 109% better. 
• Bonk Burnett (CF)
• Cash points - 610
• xBH - 78
• wRAA - 58.1
• wOBA - .449
• wRC - 194
• wSB - 0
• Drew Ducati (1B)
• Cash points - 509
• xBH - 69
• wRAA - 36.1
• wOBA - .394
• wRC - 142
• wSB - 8
• Douglas Laxton (RF)
• Cash points - 582
• xBH - 75
• wRAA - 75.8
• wOBA - .480
• wRC - 209
• wSB - -2
• Shea Crowe (2B)
• Cash points - 688
• xBH - 102
• wRAA - 68
• wOBA - .439
• wRC - 173
• wSB - irrelevant 

Cy Young

Next we have the Cy Young award. This time we'll be looking at a few advanced stats such as ERA+, FIP, Weighted Cash points to neutralize park factors. In the future, if we can figure out why our WAR numbers are so off, we'll include those as well. But for now we'll include K/BB and Quality Starts or Inherited Runners Scored as well. A reminder on ERA+, the average is 100 and anything above 100 indicates the pitcher performed better than average while below performed worse than average. Score of 150 would be 50% better than average. The FIP focuses solely on the events a pitcher has the most control over: K, BB, HBP, and HR. 

• AL - Interesting group here, three starters and two relievers. So you get to pick between an Atlanta and Houston pitcher, which is no surprise given how quickly they separated themselves from the pack. 
• Mitch Dillard
• ERA+ - 155
• FIP - 3.10
• Cash - 513
• K/BB - 2.79
• QS% - 55%
• JC Wall - Predicted Winner
• ERA+ - 137
• FIP - 3.69
• Cash - 471
• K/BB - 2.03
• QS% - 70%
• Case for: This was a close one with Dillard and Wall, but we felt Wall's 8 additional quality starts helped the team and relied less on the bullpen. That's one reason why you'll notice Wall's 24 wins. But everything else points to Dillard winning.  
• Whit Benoit
• ERA+ - 225
• FIP - 3.11
• Cash - 320
• K/BB - 2.88
• IR% - 15%
• Jiovanni Poole
• ERA+ - 143
• FIP - 3.48
• Cash - 447
• K/BB - 2.79
• QS% - 70%
• Stephen Ramirez
• ERA+ - 163
• FIP - 2.55
• Cash - 350
• K/BB - 2.96
• IR% - 26%
• NL - Some of the usual suspects here as well. Drew, White, Combs, Bonilla all familiar faces on the Cy Young ballot. But this year Vancouver adds Cy Hawkins. Bonilla while familiar is on the Chicago squad instead of New Orleans this year and proved to be a great signing this off-season. Can Nigel White take home another NL Cy Young? 
• Nigel White - Predicted Winner
• ERA+ - 224
• FIP - 2.79
• Cash - 482
• K/BB - 3.49
• QS% - 66%
• Case for: This guy has been a cheat code in the NL since coming over from Dover and signing his S53 max contract. This would be his 4th season in the NL and if he wins the award as he should, his 4th NL Cy Young. I bet NL teams hope he signs with an AL team after next season. 
• Danys Solis
• ERA+ - 142
• FIP - 3.63
• Cash - 410
• K/BB - 2.49
• QS% - 47%
• Avisail Mujica
• ERA+ - 199
• FIP - 3.01
• Cash - 491
• K/BB - 3.86
• QS% - 48%
• Ronnie Andrews
• ERA+ - 245
• FIP - 2.78
• Cash - 385
• K/BB - 3.09
• IR% - 50%
• Alton Drew
• ERA+ - 142
• FIP - 3.18
• Cash - 493
• K/BB - 2.77
• QS% - 63%

Cash Points

The top 20 hitters players under the Cash system are:

1. 803 - Omar Gonzales (Tok)
2. 688 - Shea Crowe (Chi)
3. 686 - Wei-Yin Wan (Hun)
4. 663 - Kyle Crain (Atl)
5. 662 - Louie Weiss (Hun)
6. 610 - Bonk Burnett (Har)
7. 604 - Johnnie Daniels (Atl)
8. 594 - Al Cervantes (Phi)
9. 589 - Mickey Barmes (Hel)
10. 582 - Douglas Laxton (NO)
11. 581 - Alex Perez (Har)
12. 579 - Warren Cobb (Har)
13. 546 - Dilson Ross (Sal)
14. 542 - Vin Pirela (Phi)
15. 527 - Damion Ni (Hun)
16. 524 - Chuck Rupe (Phi)
17. 509 - Drew Ducati (Col)
18. 500 - Bernie Mendez (Tok)
19. 476 - Leonel Martinez (Har)
20. 475 - Josh Hunt (NO)

And the bottom 10 hitters with at least 300 ABs are. It's generally filled with SSs who often but not always provide solid defense to make up for it. Let's see who we've got this year. Tanking seems a little more higher than normal as the numbers are lower than normal.  

1. 42.5 - Brooks Jarvis (NY - SS)
1. -57.8 wRAA
2. 53 - Lewis Gaetti (NY - SS)
1. -52.7  wRAA
2. AL CF Gold Glove
3. 78.5 - Mark Durrington (Wash - SS)
1. -42.2 wRAA
4. 86 - Willie Martin (Buf - 2B/SS)
1. -29.6 wRAA
5. 86.5 - Michael Woo (Hou - SS)
1. -27.3 wRAA

The top 20 pitchers under the cash system are:

1. 513 - Mitch Dillard (Hou)
2. 513 - Alan Street (Atl)
3. 493 - Alton Drew (Chi)
4. 491 - Avisail Mujica (Hart)
5. 482 - Nigel White (Hart)
6. 478 - Tony Lim (CS)
7. 471 - J.C. Wall (Atl)
8. 464 - Ed Wood (OKC)
9. 450 - Ray Aaron (Chi)
10. 447 - Jiovanni Poole (SLC)
11. 446 - Victor Ortega (Hart)
12. 434 - Midre Benavente (Col)
13. 425 - Roger Simon (Hun)
14. 422 - Harold Foltynewicz (Sal)
15. 414 - Eli Moreno (Buf)
16. 411 - Frank Kim (Min)
17. 410 - Carmen Arnold (Hou)
18. 410 - Danys Solis (NO)
19. 407 - Rico Bonilla (Chi)
20. 406 - Damaso Ethier (Atl)

S56 - Mysterious Case of Dizzy Leonard

Eli Cash - contributing reporter

Since the topic has come up again, did Dizzy Leonard get the shaft by voters and does he belong in the Hall? While it's not apples to apples comparing MLB players to Cobbfather players, the game was still designed with the MLB in mind; at least the old MLB - thanks devs for all the game updates. 

With discussions of Jorge Johnson and Dizzy Leonard, one has to ask if there is a single stat that once you pass its threshold guarantees you a spot in the Hall of Fame? Is it 300 Wins, 3000 K or Hits, 600 HRs? Obviously no amount of Saves will assure you a spot in the Hall judging by recent voting. What about 1500 Rs / RBIs? Or maybe it's All-Star appearances, MVPs or even Cy Youngs. That is up to the voting community to decide what truly makes a Cobbfather Hall of Famer. 

Sorted by Strikeouts.

No doubt quite a few of those players are Hall of Famers, but are all them? All but one MLB player (A, B, G, J, K, & M) is a Hall of Famer. Player K is not, we'll tell you more about him later. Of the Cobbfather players listed only one is a Hall of Famer, player C - Gregor Lopez who was recently inducted.

If it's Game 7 of the World Series, which guy do you want on the mound FOR you? Who do you want pitching AGAINST you?

Hall of Fame MLB Players
Player A - Nolan Ryan
Player B - Steve Carlton
Player G - Phil Niekro
Player J - Bob Feller
Player M - Early Wynn

Before we reveal who Player K is, let's identify which player is Dizzy Leonard. He is Player F, the one tied for most Losses, has the highest ERA & WHIP, given up the most HRs and walked the most batters even though he barely has more innings than a few other names (Players C & D). Let's ignore C because we know that was Lopez and he's clearly head and shoulders ahead of the other Cobbfather players on the list. Player D was an even better strikeout pitcher, but he was passed over for the Hall as well, he is Ryan Fisher. He received a single vote back in S46 voting and hasn't been heard from since. Player E wasn't nearly as close in innings pitched but struck out a few more batters with better ratios and he's not getting much love in his current Hall voting. He's none other than S56 6 vote getter, Juan Galvis. The other three players who had less K than Leonard but have been passed up or currently being passed on for the Hall are H - Sherman Berkman. I - Braeden Abercrombie. L - Randall Washington. 

I think the debate is not just about that single player but the precedence set by the voting of others players. Unfortunately for Dizzy's time on the HoF ballot it was also about how many other good names were on the ballot that deserved votes. With only so many votes per owner, sometimes you have to make the tough decision on who gets in and who doesn't. 

But back to the question, is there an accomplishment like 3000 K that should assure someone a spot in the Hall? If Player K was more of a K artist with the same ratios would you think he deserves a spot? Likely only a Mets fan would say yes, but there's no bad answer. Some people value one stat over another. Player K is Bartolo Colon. 

Let the debate continue!

Editor note - the blog is biased towards no players or owners. We look at players as individuals and contribution to the league, regardless of the team(s) they played for. Vic Crowe was before the time of the current editor. Our editor has even gone on record saying he would have voted for Crowe if he was an owner at that time. Sure he ha a low Monitor score but his Test Score is legit and a Top 5 All-time 2B. Could easily argue if he's top 2 or 3. Not everything is by the stat.