Nearly 20 years ago, Bill James dug into the Hall of Fame and its history to explore — and explode — how voting policies through the years, among other things, have influenced who is inducted. The result was a pointed book, "What Happened to the Hall of Fame?" and its 400-plus pages of dissection that was published in 1995.

"At that point, it felt, 'All right, I'm done," James said of the topic. "I'm done. I've said all I have to on the subject. Fifteen years later, I'm starting to get interested in it again."

The annual public bonfire of the voters and hand-wringing over how to handle the steroid era isn't what re-piqued James' interest. He believes that Mark McGwire will be admitted someday and that fan interest will ease players from the muscle age into Cooperstown. But that's not why he's interested in who's in and who isn't and who will be.

He thinks he has a way to measure who should be.

The creation of Win Shares has changed his view. In 2002, James detailed in his book "Win Shares" how he determined the number of team wins a player contributed to. The calculation is tricky, but in short it assigns three player wins for every one team win and apportions them based individual performance. Last season, the Cardinals won 86 games, and that means players on the team had 258 Win Shares to divide. According to James' 2010 Handbook, first baseman Albert Pujols had 32 Win Shares, his ninth consecutive season with at least 30.

James tracks career Win Shares, and that's where he found his answer to the Hall of Fame question.

"If a player has 300 career Win Shares or is 100 games better than .500 (with Loss Shares), then he is a candidate," James said. "If he's both, he's a Hall of Famer."

Since Win Shares relate directly to the number of games a player's team has won with him on it, James' thresholds are derived from standings. James equated a player's career to a team's season. The 2010 Cardinals, for example, had 6,349 plate appearances. In 10 years (the minimum required for Hall eligibility), Pujols has 6,782 plate appearances. James' argument is that a player with more than 300 Win Shares has the equivalent of a 100-win season, and that the measure of an elite team is also the measure of an elite player. Pujols has 347 career Win Shares.

Pujols is the equivalent of a 116-win team.

"That's the 'season' that we assigned to you, that you as a player had in your career," James said. "If you win 100 games, you win the pennant. It just works."