Five pre‑1970 Hall snubs modern metrics love (and five Hall of Famers the numbers would "trade")

The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown isn’t (and shouldn’t be) a pure spreadsheet exercise. But modern value stats do let us sanity-check old voting habits—especially for pre‑1970 careers, when context (parks, eras, roles) can hide greatness.

So here’s a modern-analytics argument for five pre‑1970-era players who aren’t in, built around WAR (all-around value) and OPS (with era-adjusted help from wRC+).

WAR has become a go-to “global” evaluator precisely because it combines batting, baserunning, defense, position, and era/park context in one framework. When you go to the ballpark these days, OPS is the most prominent stat flashing on the scoreboard – you sometimes have to search to find basic batting average.

Modern Metrics

Let’s use common modern metrics for our analysis:

• WAR: “How many wins did you add compared to a readily available replacement?” This is a great for catching defensive value and tough positions that old voters often underweighted.

  
  

• OPS: Simple and intuitive (on-base percentage (OBP) + slugging percentage (SLG), but raw OPS is era-dependent, so let's pair it with…

  
  

• wRC+: Rate production where 100 = league average, adjusted for league and park—basically an era-smart cousin of OPS+.

Five Players to Reconsider

Bill Dahlen

He’s the archetype of a player whose value was invisible to traditional milestones but loud in WAR—because shortstop defense and positional scarcity matter:

• Career WAR: 77.5

• Career batting line: .272 / .358 / .382 (OPS .739)

• wRC+: 108 (above average bat for a glove-first SS in his era)

Dahlen has repeatedly hovered near the doorstep via era-committee consideration—essentially “one step away” in Hall messaging terms. The modern view is straightforward: if you believe the Hall should include historically great shortstops—especially those whose defense carried enormous value—Dahlen is an overdue correction.

Sherry Magee

Sherry Magee’s WAR + rate hitting looks like an obvious Hall résumé:

• Career WAR: 63.4

  
  

• Career batting line: .291 / .364 / .427 (OPS .791)

  
  

• wRC+: 134 (that’s not “good for the era”—that’s star-level)

  
  

He’s also literally the subject of “greatest player not in the Hall” style research write-ups—exactly the profile of a historically great player who slipped through pre-sabermetric cracks.

A 63+ WAR player with a 134 wRC+ is not a “borderline” in modern terms; it’s a strong “yes,” even before you get into his era’s run environment and the way wRC+ already adjusts for it.

Ken Boyer

Ken Boyer is one of the best examples of a pre‑1970 position player who looks better and better as evaluation gets more complete (defense + position + context):

• Career WAR: 54.8

  
  

• Career batting line: .287 / .349 / .462 (OPS .811)

  
  

• wRC+: 116

His traditional résumé still holds up, too:

• The Hall’s own bio-style coverage notes his big career totals (2,143 hits, 282 HR, etc.).

  
  

• His awards-era case is strong: NL MVP (1964) and multiple Gold Gloves are part of his widely documented profile.

A 55-WAR third baseman with an above-average bat and a defense-forward reputation at a premium infield spot looks like the kind of player modern Hall standards should embrace.

Charlie Keller

Charlie Keller is the “shorter career, monstrous peak value and rate stats” test case—and modern metrics are much kinder to that profile than old-school counting-stat gates:

• Career WAR: 45.

  
  

• Career batting line: .286 / .410 / .518 (OPS .928)

  
  

• wRC+: 151

That .410 OBP jumps off the page: Keller wasn’t just a slugger; he was a run-creation machine.

He’s also a classic example of a great player whose candidacy never gained lasting traction because the career “shape” didn’t fit old templates. Even the Hall’s own storytelling about his October dominance makes clear he had a Hall-level “fame” peak.

If you believe the Hall should reward “dominant excellence” and not just longevity, a 151 wRC+ with that kind of OPS is exactly what you’d enshrine.

Francis Joseph O'Doul

Lefty O’Doul is the most interesting case here, because his Hall argument has two pillars:

1. He was an elite hitter at his peak and an extraordinary rate-stat bat overall.

   
   

2. He materially shaped the international growth of pro baseball—especially in Japan—in a way few individuals ever have.

   
   

   The on-field case (it’s better than people remember):

• Career WAR: 27.0

  
  

• Career slash line: .349 / .413 / .532 (OPS .945)

  
  

• wRC+: 141

  
  

And his “fame” peak is real: the Hall’s own history content highlights his 1929 season (including 254 hits and a .398 average) as historically exceptional.

Yes, his WAR is lower than the other four “by-the-numbers” snubs above—because he didn’t compile value for as long. But his batting greatness per plate appearance is unmistakable in the OPS/wRC+ profile.

His importance to Japanese baseball is where he becomes uniquely Hall-worthy -- O’Doul didn’t just do goodwill tours. He repeatedly went to Japan, taught the game, organized exhibitions, and helped shape the foundation of Japanese pro baseball:

• He named Japan’s first pro team the “Tokyo Giants,” which became today’s Yomiuri Giants.

  
  

• He helped form the first Japanese pro league in 1936, which later became Nippon Professional Baseball.

  
  

• He returned for postwar reconciliation tours, including bringing the San Francisco Seals to Tokyo in 1949 as part of baseball diplomacy.

  
  

• For those contributions, he was elected to the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame.

  
  

Even if you think his playing WAR alone is “small-Hall,” his combined résumé is exactly what “Hall of Fame” is supposed to capture: elite hitting peak + transformational global impact. If there’s a player who fits a “pioneer/ambassador” standard without being a commissioner or executive, it’s O’Doul. He is in Japan's Baseball Hall of Fame.

Players the Hall would “trade” under modern metrics

The Hall is not actually a roster with limited seats. But if you want to expose how uneven past selections were under modern evaluation, you can compare the foregoing candidates to some of the lightest Hall résumés by WAR and (era-adjusted) offense.

Here are five Hall of Famers whose FanGraphs value stats are notably thinner than the five cases above:

• Tommy McCarthy — 23.3 WAR, 105 wRC+

• Lloyd Waner — 25.4 WAR, 99 wRC+

• Rick Ferrell — 27.5 WAR, 98 wRC+ (career OPS .741)

• George Kelly — 29.2 WAR, 109 wRC+

• Freddie Lindstrom — 30.8 WAR, 109 wRC+ (career OPS .800)

  
  

The blunt numerical punchline:

• The five “add” candidates above total 268.4 WAR (77.5 + 63.4 + 54.8 + 45.7 + 27.0).

  
  

• The five “replace” Hall of Famers listed total 136.2 WAR.

That’s a gap of about 132 WAR—an enormous amount of historical value to leave outside the Hall while keeping weaker “by-the-numbers” selections inside.

Next Steps

The Hall’s era committees need to take modern evidence seriously and correct the most obvious pre‑1970 misses:

• Dahlen is a no‑brainer WAR correction.

  
  

• Magee is a deadball-era star whose value is plain once you look past HR totals.

  
  

• Boyer is the kind of complete 3B modern voters love.

  
  

• Keller is the test of whether you honor dominant greatness even without a “compiler” career shape. Sandy Koufax got into the Hall based on a short but dominant period of time (five years).

  
  

• Lefty O’Doul is the rare case where the Hall can honor both on-field excellence and one of the sport’s most consequential ambassadors abroad. As Japanese stars become more prevalent in the major league, Lefty O’Doul as the “Johnny Appleseed” of Japanese baseball must be properly honored – his effect on major league baseball has only grown over the years; even as his name recognition has decreased as a result of Hall exclusion.