Baseball Generations: A New Look at the Hall of Fame and Rating the Greatest Players of All Time

In baseball today Wins Above Replacement or WAR is the go-to tool for measuring player value. But WAR is limited in how it compares different eras how it handles certain fielding positions and by the fact that its a pure compiler stat. Career Value Index (CVI) the new analytic tool developed by David Gordon in his book Baseball Generations expands on and enhances WAR in a new and compelling way that puts players from Old Hoss Radbourn to Pedro Martinez Bill Dickey to Johnny Bench Nap Lajoie to Joe Morgan and Ty Cobb to Mike Trout on the same statistical plane. Baseball Generations blends cutting-edge number crunching with a witty narrative style reminiscent of Bill James totake readers through every era of major league baseballs 150+ year history-from the founding generation to the analytics generation and everything in between. The result is detailed yet breezy history of the game accompanied by a new ranking of the best to ever play the game.Like every good review of baseballs all-time greats the Hall of Fame is central to the discussion. Gordon recaps the history of the BBWAA and Veterans Committee selections and in the framework of the current Hall of Fame uses CVI to identify the upper-tier stars the solid members the borderline cases down to the flat-out undeserving-along with the best players on the outside looking in. No matter how many Hall of Fame analyses youve read or arguments youve heard or had some of the conclusions in Baseball Generations will surprise you. But even if you disagree with Gordons rankings the power of CVI and the thorough context-driven analysis will make them impossible to ignore.