What Is a Compiler?

As you'll note from my last post, I've been playing around with a group of 500 players and assessing their worthiness for the Hall of Fame. One of the things that has always irked me about the Hall is when people talk about "compilers." Seriously - what's a compiler? Someone who sticks around forever and keeps putting up decent stats. Why is that bad? Isn't it good to have a long career? Well, of course it is. I do understand the perspective that if a guy gets 100 hits for 30 years to get to 3000, it's not the same as a guy who got 200 hits for ten, then 150 for 5 years, 100 more, then retired and fell short of 3000. But usually, when people argue against "compilers," it's really just a coded argument for, "The stats don't match my opinions, so I'll throw out a derogatory term to slight the player, instead of reconsidering my underlying assumptions." And that's really not what you want, especially from Hall of Fame voters.

Anyway, I don't just want to rant against Hall voters (though, really - who doesn't enjoy that?). What I'd like to propose is a quick mathematical model to see who the "compilers" really are. As in my last post, I'm using WAR as calculated on The Baseball Gauge. The method is simple: Take "peak" to be the player's ten best seasons. Then do some quick division: peak/career. Since I already had a pool of Hall-of-Fame-type players, I thought to just do the calculation quickly on them. I looked at the bottom thirty players - those for whom peak value was 68.4% or less of their career value. Here they are, in descending order:

Warren	Spahn
Al	Kaline
Lou	Whitaker
Gaylord	Perry
Stan	Musial
Red	Ruffing
Honus	Wagner
Phil	Niekro
Pete	Rose
Bert	Blyleven
Jack	Quinn
Mel	Ott
Greg	Maddux
Rickey	Henderson
Tris	Speaker
Frank	Robinson
Hoyt	Wilhelm
Jim	O'Rourke
Barry	Bonds
Tommy	John
Babe	Ruth
Willie	Mays
Ty	Cobb
Roger	Clemens
Dennis	Eckersley
Don	Sutton
Nolan	Ryan
Cap	Anson
Cy	Young
Hank	Aaron

That's right. The #1 compiler of all time is . . . Hank Aaron? Well, actually, it makes a lot of sense. Aaron was lauded for his consistency as a player, even when you adjust for ballpark, era, etc. So only 59% of his career value is wrapped up in his peak. Likewise, the next three players had such long and excellent careers that they can't be blamed for putting up value in those others seasons. There are some other odd outliers, too. Eckersley, for example: the reason he shows up is because most of his value was as a starter, but his seasons as a reliever were so good that they were quite valuable, too. So he shows up, but probably not the way it's meant. So here are the classic "compilers," as the argument is made, who show up in this cursory survey (Player, Rank; Peak WAR, Career WAR, %):

Don Sutton, #6; 52.0, 86.8, .599
Tommy John, #11; 37.4, 59.7, .626
Bert Blyleven, #21; 64.9, 97.0, .669
Pete Rose, #22; 54.1, 80.3, .674
Phil Niekro, #23; 68.7, 101.4, .678
Gaylord Perry, #27; 65.2, 95.5, .683
Lou Whitaker, #28; 45.8, 67.1, .683

So, it actually appears that there may be some validity to this criticism of these players, after all. Particularly, there is a lot of question about John, because his peak was pretty unspectacular. However, I would say that, excepting an extreme case like his, the "compiler" argument doesn't hold water, because most of the greatest players of all-time were compilers, too. I guess I just don't see, "You have a lot in common with Hank Aaron" as being that bad of a criticism, is all.

Thanks to The Baseball Gauge for the data (see above for link.).