Don't Make a Group
How to Craft a Better Hall of Fame Argument
Through the years, there have been many instances where famed baseball analyst Bill James has been wrong. I’ve written about it before, so I won’t go through that again, but it’s been a somewhat common theme. More than you’d expect for someone with his reputation.
But he has that reputation because he was also right a lot, way, way more than he was wrong. And one of the things he was right about was his view on the erroneous Hall of Fame arguments people tend to make when advocating for a favorite player. Specifically, the argument James called “The We-Can-Make-A-Group Argument.” Here’s how he described that in his 1994 book, “Whatever Happened to the Hall of Fame?”
It is possible to form a similar group for any Hall of Fame candidate. There are literally millions of ways to slice up a group of players…and since every player is unique, you can always form a group of players, all of whom are in the Hall of Fame except our man. Using combinations of standards, like 5,000 at bats and a .320 batting average, you can focus on anybody…
Of course, the “in the group” argument is, at times, a valid argument; that’s why it fools people. The “in the group” argument may be valid if the player under discussion is in the middle of the group, if he is truly as good a player as the other members of the group...Because the group is defined only by minimum standards, no maximums, it places [the player] in a group with players who are vastly superior to him, while eliminating those who are only a little bit behind him.
