Bill James created the Black Ink test in "Whatever Happened to the Hall of Fame." The test awarded points for players who were first in key statistical categories.
Hitters received 4 points for leading the league in batting average, RBI or home runs; 3 points for leading the league in runs, hits or slugging percentage; 2 points for leading the league in doubles, walks or stolen bases; and 1 point for leading the league in games, at bats and triples.
Pitchers received 4 points for leading the league in wins, ERA or strikeouts; 3 points for leading the league in innings, win pct or saves; 2 points for leading the league in complete games, fewest walks per 9 innings or fewest hits per nine innings; and one point for leading the leauge in games, starts or shutouts.
At some point, sabermetricians developed grey ink, which awarded the same points, but based it on a top ten finish, rather than leading the league. A player's career black ink and grey ink appears as part of Baseball Reference.com.
I went with the grey ink test, but faced three problems. First, because James was trying to predict who would be in the Hall of Fame, not who should be in the Hall of Fame, he used categories the Hall of Fame considered important. In some cases, the stat categories do not do a good job representing player quality. I changed the categories in some cases, although not in a purely sabermetric way.
For hitters, the four point categories and two point categories are the same. In the three point category, I replaced hits with on-base percentage. In the one point category, I replaced games with hits, and at-bats with Power/Speed number, another Bill James "toy" for which you can see the leaders on Baseball Reference.com. I made no category changes to the pitchers.
The second problem was that the numbers were not park-adjusted when developing league leaderboards. I adapted my database to this problem, using the park factors on Baseball Reference.com. I can now generate park-adjusted leaderboards for every category except stolen bases, power/speed number, saves, complete games, games pitched, starts and shutouts.
The third problem was figuring out how to assign grades. Again, those on the left end of the spectrum get higher grades with lower grey ink scores. I informally calculated the grey ink for Hall of Famers and developed ranges for my grading system. There's a separate scale for each position.
Before my Grey Ink test was park adjusted, it got 1/2 the normal weight in the GPA. Now that it is park-adjusted, it gets the normal weight in the GPA. This is the test that takes the longest for me to calculate, because I have to generate leaderboards for every year after making the park-adjustments.
