Trivia Time – Roving Hall of Famers
Posted by Raphy on December 17, 2009
EDIT: The original question posted here was phrased using a search since 1901. I have revised it to include all players since 1871.
A quick search of the Season Batting Finder reveals that there are 229 members of the Hall-of-Fame who batted in the major leagues. Of those 229, 215 played at least 50% of their career games at a single position (OF positions are counted separately when available), 14 did not. 2 of the 14, Whitey Herzog and Dick Williams, were elected as managers.
Can you name the 12 8 12 HOF players who didn't play at least 50% of their games at any one position (4 2 4were 19th century players) ?
December 17th, 2009 at 3:53 pm
Pete Rose
Stan Musial
Paul Molitor
Harmon Killebrew
Jackie Robinson
Roger Bresnahan
Tommy Leach (actually, he might not be in the HOF)
Honus Wagner (probably not, but not thinking of any better answers right now)
December 17th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
Johnny- You hit on
23 . Molitor and Killebrew.Leach and Rose are not in the HOF.
Musial
might be right, but his career goes too far back to have the OF positions counted separately.is correct also.December 17th, 2009 at 4:06 pm
You undoutably changed it from 1901 to 1871 due to me requesting on another blog that the topic of that blog go back to 1871, instead of 1901.
December 17th, 2009 at 4:26 pm
Two corrections -
Johnny was right. Musial is on the list.
Also change the number to 11. One player on my list does not belong. I don't know why he was excluded by the PI.
December 17th, 2009 at 5:07 pm
How about Ernie Banks and Frank Robinson?
December 17th, 2009 at 5:13 pm
...and my all-time favorite, Rod Carew. I didn't think he was one, but I just looked him up and proved myself wrong.
December 17th, 2009 at 5:38 pm
JdV is correct on all 3.
December 17th, 2009 at 5:42 pm
I'm going to say that all the 20th century players have been named. There are 2 more 19th century players. The definition of an OF prior to the retrosheet era is what's causing the confusion. I'm sorry that I keep changing it.
December 17th, 2009 at 5:52 pm
Haha, Pete Rose was a brilliant guess on my part. Jeez....
December 17th, 2009 at 6:11 pm
Add Buck Ewing, King Kelly, and John Ward
December 17th, 2009 at 9:43 pm
Ewing and Ward, but not Kelly. Although it is probably true for Kelly,officially his outfield games are not split so he has 750 G in OF out of 1455 career games.
That's all 8. Great job everybody!
December 17th, 2009 at 10:47 pm
Cool list.
It looks like the OF positions splits by game are all here. But I don't know if the play index picks it up because the fielding stat-lines are not split. King Kelly's OF-split is 2-8-742 so he doesn't make the list even with the split.
Babe Ruth does, though. His 2241 games in the OF splits to 1057-64-1131. Of course he pitched a bit too, so his total games was 2503 games.
Kiki Cuyler has a 331-700-796 OF out of 1879 career games.
Jim O'Rourke - OF 770-463-218 - ~2000 games. His game counts are a bit odd. He fielded more games than he batted? I didn't think that was possible. I thought you always got a batting line even if you didn't get a plate appearance.
Hugh Duffy - OF 574-676-437 - 1737 G.
There's probably more. I'm just hunting and pecking for these.
Making the list due to OF-split is less interesting than making it without that help, but we're all about little details here.:)
December 17th, 2009 at 10:53 pm
David - I had these guys on my original list,but couldn't find the splits, so I thought that they were mistakes in the PI. Where do you see the splits?
December 17th, 2009 at 10:57 pm
Now I see them. They are listed in separate column.
The modern players have each position listed separately in their totals.
That's what threw me off.
With David's names my original list is now complete with all 12 players.
Thanks everybody.
December 17th, 2009 at 11:42 pm
For your convenience - Here are the 12 players.
Paul Molitor
Rod Carew
Frank Robinson
Harmon Killebrew
Ernie Banks
Stan Musial
Kiki Cuyler
Babe Ruth
John Ward
Buck Ewing
Jim O'Rourke
Hugh Duffy
December 18th, 2009 at 8:52 am
>>>Ewing and Ward, but not Kelly. Although it is probably
>>> true for Kelly,officially his outfield games
>>> are not split so he has 750 G in OF out of 1455 career games.
His fielding games indicate 1610. What's that about?
December 18th, 2009 at 11:42 am
# mebejoe Says:
His fielding games indicate 1610. What's that about?
----------------------------
Its the same thing I mentioned about O'Rourke in #12. Its just the sum of games at each position instead of the total number of fielding games (games where a player shifts position in mid-game are double counted). That looks like a bug. I think it only applies to certain eras. I didn't notice this issue in my spot-checks of 20th century guys. Retrosheet has the same data as here, but they don't have a "total" line.
December 18th, 2009 at 11:46 am
Mebejoe...I had the same question a while back. The fielding totals are the sum of all the position totals, so if a player played more than one position within any games, those games are logged two (or more) times.
December 18th, 2009 at 12:15 pm
Oh. My bad. The sums aren't different from one era to the next. I checked a current player that shifts positions in mid-game a lot (Denard Span) and his fielding game totals also add up to more than his batting game totals. Its consistent. Sorry for suggesting there was a bug.