Hall of Not Bad, Volume 1: Alexander Pepper (and Brick Wahl!)

[Gustav 6,395]

When you don't know you get a doubles week AND the birthday bonus as two separate perks until you're hired as an updater

 

Some of you may remember a status update of mine from last week where I teased an article series. And, as you may have guessed, this is that article series. If you're reading this article, I'm going to venture a guess that you took a glance over my 13,000-word article from last week where I went over the best player from every draft class ever, and after spending more time than I'd like to admit writing that, I had the idea to continue looking over old draft classes, seeing who did what, and digging up names both familiar and unfamiliar to myself. In particular, I'm going to highlight good players who have not made the Hall of Fame. It's one thing to put together a bad career, but it's another entirely to find success and end up forgotten. I hope these articles bring back some memories for some and teach others about players that they missed.

 

Speaking of doing that last bit, I chose to lead off this series with an overview of Pepper because his agent (Sonnet, who's no longer with the league) was my first-ever VHLM GM in S65. I used to make fun of him for Pepper being the prototypical Hall of Not Bad player--a championship, a top-of-the-league season, and the feat of reaching 300 wins, but not quite being worthy of induction. The thing is, I'm not sure if I knew why he didn't deserve it, just that I knew that more established members had said so. Because of that, I chose to look into that question of why--something that you're about to find out as well.

 

S63 was a historically good draft class for the time, leading to a great number of active players in a period of league history where that still wasn't expected. Pepper was no exception--as a high-earning player going 10th overall, the Titans were getting more than what they'd usually hope for at that spot at the time, and knew it perfectly well. As one of the league's most dedicated, ambitious, and at times divisive first-gens of the time, Sonnet would craft a career that would take his player through S70 with the same team. An overview of Pepper's career is as follows:

 

302-169-40: the most wins out of any goalie not in the Hall of Fame and the only player (so far) to ever break 300 wins and not get in.

.917 SV%/2.59 GAA/30 SO

Career bests: 49-13-2 (S66), .922 SV% (S67), 2.39 GAA (S65), 7 SO (S64)

Continental Cup (S66)

Daisuke Kanou Trophy (S66)

Aidan Shaw Trophy (S66)

Player Page Here

 

Overall, Pepper's career is surprisingly consistent, something we'll see coming up later. His best-ever SV% was only .005 above his average, and his best-ever GAA only 0.20 below. His defining season was, of course, S66, which was his only definite claim to fame as the league's best. After that point, he would spend the remainder of his career trying to reach his peak again and (mostly) inevitably losing to Riga in the playoffs.

 

Which brings us to a comparison. What justifies Pepper making (or not making) the Hall of Fame? To figure this out, we're going to compare Pepper's career to three other goaltenders who started their careers in the S60s...

 

 

Kallis Kriketers: a HoF player. The face of Riga, and the league's best goalie for most of the decade, Kriketers finished his career with better overall numbers than Pepper in every category and took home a great number of awards, including the Clegane four times, the Shaw three times, a Slobo, an MVP, and a Cup in his rookie season.

 

Raymond Bernard: a HoF player. Bernard put up similar overall numbers to Pepper (and at a worse record), but reached a higher peak than Pepper and for a longer time. Winning the Shaw twice and MVP once, along with his own Cup and Kanou, Bernard compensated for poor team production early on with some of the league's best play later while Pepper almost always played for a decent team.

 

Brick Wahl II: NOT a HoF player. Finishing with a worse record than Pepper and slightly better career numbers in SV% and GAA, Wahl is also a deserving candidate for the Hall of Not Bad. Consistently in decent-but-not-great territory, it's understandable why Wahl will never make it as he never quite stood out enough--save for an MVP-winning campaign in S71 with Prague that one-ups Pepper in awards.

 

 

So, let's look at the numbers over the course of Pepper's career and see how they stack up to the others.

 

 

Wins are the defining stat of Pepper's career, and really present his strongest case for the HoF. He doesn't have enough of an award cabinet to get in (as evidenced by Wahl), but the win total says something. I've separated these stats by season, by the way, to show where each player was over the course of their career--overall numbers are one thing, but plenty of players in the HoF spent a few seasons being unimpressive before surging to the top, something that isn't reflected well as an overall stat. Here, we see that our crop of goalies and their ranking is fairly consistent, and this graph puts Pepper on top.

 

 

Here, we see that Pepper kept a higher SV% than Kriketers for the majority of his career. So, in fact, did Wahl, while Bernard had a long uphill battle to fight to get back with the group. At the end of each player's career, though, they were very much within reach of each other.

 

 

That is, until we look at each individual season put in by each individual player. Remember what I said about some players really taking off later? This chart clearly shows that Bernard's peak was far above Pepper's (and it also shows what Bernard had to get through to reach his final total). And while I agree with the general consensus that Wahl isn't quite HoF-worthy, Wahl's peak was above Pepper's as well. I'm somewhat surprised that Kriketers isn't more present on the left side of this graph, but he likewise had more dominant seasons than Pepper, who stayed almost woefully consistent.

 

 

The surprise that Kriketers isn't separate enough goes right out the window on this chart, though, which shows each player's GAA over the course of their career when compared to Pepper's career total. Kriketers is far and away the best of the bunch, while the other three stay pretty close together.

 

 

...and here's something truly amazing. Every Kriketers season has a lower GAA than any season from every other player here, and it's not even close. And while Pepper did start off with the worst season out of them all, coming back from that really didn't result in a peak like we saw from Bernard and SV%. In fact, Wahl and Bernard both managed to beat Pepper's best (Wahl three times).

 

 

So, what does this tell us? Brick Wahl (at least the second iteration of Brick Wahl) never even made the HoF ballot, let alone received any votes. And if Wahl isn't a HoF player (for a more mediocre record--only 3 players with fewer wins are in, and they played significantly fewer games--and the fact that only one season was truly special), then Pepper definitely isn't. The record is there, but he's beaten pretty clearly in other categories by players both in and out of the Hall.

 

So, is Alexander Pepper a Hall-of-Fame Player?

 

NO.

 

 

I hope to keep this series going when I have time for it--maybe I'll dig up someone who should be in at some point! Let me know what you think.

 

 

Alexander Pepper made the ballot for the Hall of Fame in S76, six seasons after the end of his career, and remained on it until being removed in S83. He would receive only one vote for induction, coming in S79.

 

Mentioned: @hedgehog337 @Mr_Hatter @BladeMaiden

[Gustav 6,395]

1,345 words, and I guess I don't intend to claim this beyond the doubles week? I want to but I realize that's generally not acceptable since I have 2 weeks left on last week's monster.

 

Also pinging @DoktorFunk because this kind of came up earlier 

[Spartan 4,375]

8 hours ago, Gustav said:

1,345 words, and I guess I don't intend to claim this beyond the doubles week? I want to but I realize that's generally not acceptable since I have 2 weeks left on last week's monster.

 

Also pinging @DoktorFunk because this kind of came up earlier 

Can have 2 outstanding multi-claims so you're fine

[N0HBDY 1,115]

[Mr_Hatter 1,608]

Great read! It's interesting to see how peaks and troughs can effect your HOF chances, with Bernard having a much easier time getting in thanks to said peaks despite the poor seasons early on. 

 

I think it helps too that the truly awful seasons were early on, before he really started to play consistently great for the remaining seasons