I had drafted most of this but hadn't finished it before the vote. Might as well submit what I've got.
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I need to view this question in the context of the 8-person
"contemporary era" slate that the Eras Committee is evaluating.
West feels more HOF-worthy than Ed Montague, the other umpire. Montague was crew chief for 4 world series, but for me, just working a lot of games shouldn't make you a HOFer. If an ump was known for particularly judicious, accurate or dispute-calming tendencies in a game, that strikes me as worth honoring a handful of them. Tim McClelland is a name that comes to mind in that regard. West has in his corner the testimony of a lot of umpires who learned from him, even sought out being in his crew to learn from him. Red Sox fans know what he did in the 2004 ALCS, which has made a lot of us forget the calls (plenty of them questionable) that he had made against us over the years (including
ejecting Papelbon). He had
a cameo in The Naked Gun. He sued Paul Lo Duca for defamation (and won), after Lo Duca
claimed on a podcast that he and other players would bribe umpires including West for favorable calls.
The executives, Hank Peters and Bill White, what did they do?
Hank Peters: GM, KC Athletics (1965); AGM, Cleveland Indians (1966-1971); President of MiLB ("National Association"), 1971-1975, wherein he originated the system of MLB "co-op", with the minors taking on big-league prospects. GM, Baltimore Orioles (1975-1987) incl 1983 WS title; President/COO, Cleveland Indians, 1987-1991. Main contribution to the game appears to have been "saving the minors" with the farm-team system.
Bill White: Had a very impressive (but not HOF-worthy)
career as a player, including 4 years with MVP votes, 5 ASG selections and 7 GGs as a 1B. Was the play-by-play announcer for the Yankees for 18 years (1971-1988), and then was NL President from 1989-1994, during which time the NL added the Marlins and Rockies. He was the first black executive to hold a position that high in baseball. He is himself a former member of the HOF Veterans Committee, so I expect them to put him in just for that.
And 4 managers.
Cito Gaston: TOR manager 1989-2001, WS titles in 1992 and 1993. First black manager to win a World Series, following an 11-year playing career.
Davey Johnson: 13-year playing career as a 2B including the Orioles dynasty 1966-1971 <snip>
<...>
Now, back to West specifically, he umped up through 2021 - we have data. How did West do at calling balls and strikes? On balls in play, how often were his calls challenged, and how often overturned?
West's profile at a site devoted to umpire actions gives a bunch of data on his ejections, things that happened (like a 3-game suspension for
making a joke at Adrian Beltre's expense). But for contextualized data:
- Over at
UmpScoreCards, their data (on
pitch calling only) goes back to 2015 (towards the end of West's career), so from 2015-2021, when West was aged 63-69.
- By that, West was absolute bottom of the 122-ump list for Correct Calls Above Expectation, near the bottom for accuracy % (worse than Angel Hernandez! who was only like 30th percentile)
- West was middle of the road in "consistency", their measure of how often umps made calls consistent with
their strike zone, as established in the game, regardless of the actual one.
- By the measure of how much his bad calls (of balls and strikes) impacted the game, based on runners/outs game state, he had an average amount of favoritism toward the home team, but a well above average amount of total run impact on the game (his bad calls really affected lots of runs). And he racked up a lot of these stats over the course of time.
- Over at
Close Call Sports, they have an "Umpire Ejection Fantasy League" and have given out annual awards to umps since 2006. Joe West won their Honorable Umpire of the Year award in 2009 and shared it with Angel Hernandez (yes, I know) in 2020; you can read their rationales at the link.
- I'm trying to get full replay-overturn-rate data, will edit when I do.
Overall, I'm not seeing Joe West someone who was HOF level at umping. Just someone who stuck around for a while and was viewed as a mentor by some other umps. Give me the guy who umped for 30 years and raised the bar for what umps can achieve in consistency, fairness, and managing a game, over a guy who umped for 46 but was - if we're being generous - mediocre at his job. We're just lucky we got him on one of his best days.