So, here's something fun: I broke down the pitchers in the Hall of Fame by the year they were born. This idea was loosely based on a comment made by Brilliant Reader Disco*.
*Talk about a great name for a band ... Brilliant Reader Disco.
My idea, though, was more to get a sense of what historically makes a Hall of Fame pitcher. That is to say: Where must a pitcher rank in his era to be a Hall of Famer?
But as I did this, what I think I've found is that this is probably the wrong question. It seems to me that when it comes to the Hall of Fame, pitchers are not compared to other pitchers of their era but, instead, to pitchers of all eras. The standards for pitchers in the Hall of Fame are not always easy to follow -- and there are some glaring exception. But, in general, they are pretty consistent. Lots of wins. Good ERA. Maybe some strikeouts.
The round numbers -- 300 wins, 3,000 strikeouts especially* -- tend to override everything. Every eligible pitcher with 300 wins or 3,000 Ks since 1900 is in the Hall of Fame. And the players coming with 300 wins or 3,000 Ks will all sail into the Hall of Fame with the possible exceptions of Clemens (and any other pitcher deemed to be PED stained) and Schilling (who has 3,000 Ks but only 216 wins which makes him borderline).
*I've thought of something that might or might not make sense, but it seems to me that the magic numbers in baseball all are based on 15 years of excellence. All of them. Think about it:
300 wins = 15 years of 20 wins.
3,000 strikeouts = 15 years of 200 strikeouts.
3,000 hits = 15 years of 200 hits.
By this thinking, 450 home runs probably should be the standard (15 years of 30 homers is 450) but that's not a good round number like 500. Anyway, 500 is 15 years of 33.3 homers which might be a better standard of yearly excellence than 30 homers a year.
Thinking about it this way might make it easier to shift our expectations per era. For instance, if you are one of those who still likes wins as a standard (and if you are ... why are you reading this?) then you would probably concede 17 or 18 wins probably stands for excellence now since almost nobody wins 20. A So maybe your standard could be 255-to-270 wins. A 15-win per year look would make the standard 225 career wins.
Then, you might think that because hitters strike out more than ever, 200 strikeouts per year is no longer good enough. Maybe you move the strikeout total to 225. That would make our excellence standard 3,375 Ks.
This is really mostly something to think about with home runs. We all know that home runs became much more common in the Selig era. For numerous reasons, a 33-homer season no longer represented excellence. Maybe for the era we raise the level to 38 homers -- that would be 570 homers, which is actually one more than Rafael Palmeiro hit. If you raise it to 40 homers per year, that's 600 as a standard.
Just something kind of goofy to think about.
Sorry. Back to pitchers. I'm about to give the most amazing fact you will read today, maybe the most amazing fact you will read this week assuming that you stay shut in your house and turn off all communication methods. Are you ready for this? Because this thing absolutely blew me away. Are you ready? Here we go:
Pitchers in the Hall of Fame born 1900 or before: 31.
Pitchers in the Hall of Fame born after 1900: 31.
Think about that now. We are talking about 1900 here. There are exactly as many people in the Hall of Fame born in the 50 or so years leading up to 1900 as in the 110 years since. It's crazy, right?
Of course, this is partially an optical (or auditory?) illusion. Nobody born in the last 50 years is in the Hall of Fame yet, for obvious reasons -- their time has not come up yet. So it's kind of a trick ... after all it's not quite as impressive to say:
Pitchers in the Hall of Fame born 1900 or before: 31
Pitchers in the Hall of Fame born between 1901-1960: 31.
Still, this isn't JUST an optical illusion. It's also an illusion of context. There seems little question to me that men who pitched mostly before the end of Deadball in 1920 are overrepresented in the Hall of Fame (just like high average 1930s hitters are overrepresented in the Hall of Fame). Before 1920, teams hit many fewer home runs and scored many fewer runs ... so ERAs were low. Pitchers started every third of fourth day, and they tended to pitch deep into games ... so win totals were high. It's obviously easier to go fast on a bicycle when going downhill. Hall of Fame voters tended to give credit for that speed to the cyclist rather than the hill.
There are eight pitchers in the Hall of Fame who were born before 1870 -- Old Hoss Radbourn, Cy Young, Jesse Burkett, Clark Griffith, Kid Nichols, John Clarkson, Amos Rusie and Pud Galvin. I'm not here to talk about how good these pitchers were because, surprising as this may seem, I did not see any of them pitch. But it's clear that they played a very different game from the baseball we think about now. And it's also clear that there is only one starting pitcher in the Hall of Fame born between 1951 to 1960, and it took one hell of an effort to get Bert Blyleven voted in.
For fun, I thought I would go through the decades of birth years and show you the Hall of Famers, some of the more prominent players who were left out, and maybe a thought or two about what it might mean. And for additional fun, I've included the pitchers who are in Baseball Think Factory's excellent Hall of Merit:*
Pre-1870
(7) Old Hoss Radbourn, Cy Young, Clark Griffith, Kid Nichols, John Clarkson, Tim Keefe, Pud Galvin.
Hall of Merit (9): Radbourn, Young, Griffith, Nichols, Clarkson, Galvin, Keefe, Al Spalding, Bob Caruthers.
Comment: Spalding is in the Baseball Hall of Fame too but listed as an "executive." From 1871-76 he went 251-65, which doesn't really mean what it looks like since the game was very different then but still looks impressive. Bob Caruthers went 218-99 in a 9-year career that twice included 40-victory seasons. Tim Keefe won 300 games just between 1880-1890 -- he won 32 or more every year from 1883-1888.*
*Made a mistake here ... put Keefe in the wrong category. All seven of the Pre-1870 Hall of Famers are also in the Hall of Merit .. plus Spalding and Caruthers.
A touch surprising to me that there are actually more Hall of Merit pitchers born before 1870 than Hall of Fame pitchers.
1871-1880
(9) Amos Rusie, Christy Mathewson, Eddie Plank, Three Finger Brown, Rube Waddell, Vic Willis, Iron Joe McGinnity, Addie Joss, Jack Chesbro.
Notable absentees: Jack Powell, Noodles Hahn, Sam Leever, Deacon Phillippe.
Hall of Merit (6): Rusie, Mathewson, Plank, Brown, Waddell, McGinnity.
Comment: This decade and the next make up the heart of the era we now think of as Deadball. Not surprisingly, most of the really weak Hall of Fame pitchers will be born from about 1870 to about 1900. The weakest of this decade's group is probably Jack Chesbro, who is basically in the Hall of Fame because of one season, 1904, when he started 55 games, completed 51, and went 41-12. He did not win 200 games despite that 41-win season and his 2.68 ERA sounds better than it was -- his ERA+ of 111 is certainly good but not great.
Vic Willis never led the league in wins, but did twice lead the league in losses, including 1905 when he went 12-29 for the spectacularly bad Boston Beaneaters*.
*Though his teammate, the rather spectacularly nicknamed Kaiser Wilhelm, went 3-23 that same year.
Addie Joss is a fascinating case. He only pitched nine seasons, which technically does not even meet the minimum Hall of Fame requirement of 10 years. He squeezed a lot into those nine seasons, including a perfect game (on supposedly just 74 pitches) and a remarkable 1908 season where he had a 1.16 ERA. The veteran's committee elected him in 1978, some 68 years after he threw his final big league pitch.
1881-1890
(7) Walter Johnson, Pete Alexander, Red Faber, Ed Walsh, Stan Coveleski, Chief Bender, Rube Marquard.
Notable absentees: Jack Quinn, Eddie Cicotte, Urban Shocker, Dolph Luque.
Hall of Merit (5): Johnson, Alexander, Faber, Walsh, Coveleski.
Comment: Well, in this 10-year period we might have the best pitcher in the Hall of Fame (Walter Johnson) and the worst (Rube Marquard). Marquard had three strong years in a row, from 1911-13. He won at least 23 each year, and overall went 73-28 with a 2.51 ERA. It was not a historic three years, but it was darned good. The rest of his career? He went 119-131 with a 97 ERA+. How did he get into the Hall of Fame? Well, I'm guessing a bit here, but it seems that his star turn in Lawrence Ritter's incomparable "The Glory of Their Times" played a huge role. Marquard was funny and thoughtful and charming in his interview, and he had three good years, and at various times in history baseball's veteran's committee seemed determined to put in their favorite people into the Hall of Fame.
Marquard had three nice years, but even with them he was an average pitcher at best. When people say there must be at least 50 pitchers not in the Hall of Fame who were better than Rube Marquard, they are probably underselling it.
1891-1900
(8) Lefty Grove, Ted Lyons, Dazzy Vance, Eppa Rixey, Waite Hoyt, Burleigh Grimes, Herb Pennock, Jesse Haines, (also Babe Ruth).
Notabe absentees: Dolf Luque, Carl Mays, George Uhle.
Hall of Merit (4): Grove, Lyons, Vance, Rixey.
Comment: We've got some doozies here -- Jesse Haines, Herb Pennock, Burleigh Grimes, Eppa Rixey, Waite Hoyt -- it's like a Who's Who of Questionable Hall of Famers. Only three of these players (Grove, Lyons and Vance) were voted into the Hall of Fame by the Baseball Writers. The rest were veteran's committee choices and, frankly, they cloud the whole idea of what really is a Hall of Fame pitchers. A Small-Hall -- someone who thinks standards should be really high -- would have none of the five in. A Big-Hall person might think to include Rixey and Hoyt, the former because he was a good pitcher who lost a peak year fighting in the Great War and two more trying to regain his game, the latter because he told good Babe Ruth stories.
Lefty Grove has a case as the greatest pitcher in baseball history.
1901-1910
(4) Carl Hubbell, Red Ruffing, Lefty Gomez, Dizzy Dean.
Notable absentees: Wes Ferrell, Tommy Bridges, Bobo Newsom, Mel Harder, Fat Freddie Fitzsimmons.
Hall of Merit (3): Hubbell, Ruffing, Ferrell.
In many ways, Red Ruffing has gotten a bad rap. People tend to include him on the worst Hall of Famers list, largely because of his pedestrian-looking 3.80 ERA. Two things:
1. His ERA was somewhat better than it looked -- his career 109 ERA+ is better than a handful of big league pitchers even if his actual ERA is the worst in the Hall of Fame. He pitched in a big-time hitters era.
2. Most of that high ERA was compiled in the first half of his career, when he mostly played for dreadful Boston teams. From 1934-47, he went 176-89 with a 3.38 ERA -- that's a sparkling 123 ERA+. He was a truly great pitcher after he turned 29, and he lost two-plus years to World War II or he certainly could have won 300 games. As is, he won 273. Throw in his excellent World Series record (7-2, 2.63 ERA, big part of six World Series champions) and he has a much better Hall of Fame case than generally expressed* -- his place in the Hall of Merit should remind people of that.
*People with a sense of history will sometimes use Ruffing's Hall of Fame election (on his 18th ballot including run-offs) as a good comparison for Jack Morris. I don't think that's the right comp to use. Ruffing, it seems to me, was a markedly better pitcher with a better peak than Morris.
Only four pitchers from this 10-year era made the Hall of Fame, and as mentioned Ruffing has been a much criticized pick. Two others -- Dizzy Dean and, to a lesser extent, Lefty Gomez -- don't really measure up historically as Hall of Famers either because they had brilliant but brief careers.
Dean from 1934 to 1938 went 102-43 with a 142 ERA+. Gomez from 1931-37 went 133-64 with a 134 ERA+. Those few years really make up almost all the value of their careers. Short bursts of brilliance would probably not impress the voters now. It didn't really impress the voters then -- Dean, despite being one of the most famous players of the time, needed 10 ballots before the writers voted him in. And Goofy Gomez never got more than 46.1% of the writer's vote.
Which tells you that what Doc Gooden needs -- Gooden was 91-35 with a 135 ERA+ from 1984-88 -- is a little myth-making, a few mentions of his cute nickname, and a benevolent veteran's committee.
1911-1920
(3) Bob Feller, Early Wynn, Bob Lemon.
Notable absentees: Dizzy Trout, Virgil Trucks, Sal Maglie, Allie Reynolds.
Hall of Merit (3): Feller, Wynn, Lemon.
Comment: Found so many cool things doing this rather pointless exercise -- but probably nothing cooler than finding that only three big-league pitchers born from 1911-1920 made the Hall of Fame, and all three pitched predominantly for the Cleveland Indians of the 1940s and 1950s.
1921-1930
(5) Warren Spahn, Robin Roberts, Hal Newhouser, Whitey Ford, Hoyt Wilhelm.
Notable absentees: Billy Pierce, Bob Friend, Curt Simmons, Lew Burdette.
Hall of Merit (6): Spahn, Roberts, Newhouser, Ford, Wilhelm, Pierce.
Comment: I hope you have been looking at the notable absentees of each decade ... there are some very good pitchers there. But I suspect that there probably are not too many pitchers you think should be in the Hall of Fame. Among players born from 1870 to 1920 or so, probably the only non-Hall of Famer with any spark of Hall of Fame momentum is Wes Ferrell, whose numbers are a victim of historical context. His 4.04 ERA does not seem good enough, but his 117 ERA+ suggests that he was one of the best pitchers of his time. And, of course, Ferrell was a famously good hitter (for a pitcher).
Billy Pierce has a strong Hall of Fame case that has been widely and enthusiastically ignored. He was, I think, the best pitcher in the American League in the 1950s -- and if there had been an American League Cy Young award he probably would have won it at least twice*. He only won 211 games in his career, and his 3.27 ERA, while good on its own, doesn't really do him justice (his 119 ERA+ is better than Steve Carlton or Nolan Ryan). The Hall of Merit recognizes his excellence.
*Though which two years he would have won it are up for debate. He was, by WAR, the best pitcher in the league in 1955 and 1958. But he won 20 games in 1956 and 1957. Depends on which voters we are talking about.
1931-1940
(7) Phil Niekro, Gaylord Perry, Bob Gibson, Don Drysdale, Juan Marichal, Jim Bunning, Sandy Koufax.
Notable absentees: Luis Tiant, Jim Kaat, Mickey Lolich, Larry Jackson.
Hall of Merit (7): Niekro, Perry, Gibson, Drysdale, Marichal, Bunning, Koufax
Comment: Notice how the pitcher numbers go up now -- we are now dealing with pitchers who came of age in the second great pitcher's era, the 1960s and '70s.
Not to keep bringing up Jack Morris -- he will make one more appearance before we're through here -- but it's quite striking how similar his case is to Mickey Lolich. They were both predominantly Detroit Tigers, they both played on good Tigers teams that won one World Series, they both had career 105 ERA+. They both won more than 200 games, though Lolich's 217 is not as impressive as Morris' 254. They were both workhorses, with Morris completing 175 games and Lolich 195. And they both had extraordinary postseason performances -- Morris' highlight being Game 7 of the 1991 World Series, Lolich's highlight being the entire 1968 World Series when he won three times with three complete games.
Interesting enough, both of them started about the same in the Hall of Fame voting. Morris got about 22% of the vote his first year, Lolich got about 20%. They progressed at about the same pace for a while. In their fourth years of voting, Morris got 26.3%, Lolich 25.5%.
And then, their paths diverged. In 1989, big-winners Gaylord Perry, Ferguson Jenkins and Jim Kaat all hit the ballot at the same. And suddenly Lolich's 217 wins didn't look so hot. He and the grimly unlucky Luis Tiant (with his 229 career wins) both tumbled dramatically in the polls. They both dropped to 10.5%. Lolich never again got even 11% of the vote.
Morris, meanwhile, jumped to 33.3% in his fifth year, and he has steadily climbed to 53.5% of the vote this year.
1941-1950
(8) Tom Seaver, Nolan Ryan, Steve Carlton, Fergie Jenkins, Don Sutton, Jim Palmer, Catfish Hunter, Rollie Fingers.
Notable absentees: Tommy John, Rick Reuschel, Ron Guidry, Vida Blue.
Hall of Merit (7): Seaver, Ryan, Carlton, Jenkins, Sutton, Palmer, Fingers,
Comment: Lots and lots of wins in the 1960s and '70s -- there are four 300-game winners in the lot.
Unquestionably, the shakiest Hall of Fame choice of pitchers born in the last hundred or so years was Catfish Hunter. He really had EVERYTHING go right for him as a Hall of Fame candidate.
-- He pitched at the perfect time -- when hitting was almost non-existent. His career 3.26 career ERA looks good, but his 105 ERA+ does not. That's because teams did not score runs then. Take 1968. Hunter went 13-13 with a 3.35 ERA in '68, which looks darned good to the naked eye. But clothe that eye with just a little bit of perspective and you see that the nobody hit in the American League in 1968, and Hunter pitched in an extreme pitcher's park in Oakland. His ERA+ was 84, which is terrible. He actually had a negative WAR. With that perspective, you can see that Hunter was probably the worst pitcher in the league to throw 200 innings.
-- He had a high profile. He was a very good pitcher for three years -- 1972, 1974 and 1975 -- and probably a below-average pitcher the rest of his career. But, the Oakland A's won the World Series two of those years, and as I missed before the third was his first year as a high-profile free agent with the Yankees. This made his good years look even better.
-- He was wonderfully likable, not only as a man but as a pitcher ... he was extremely efficient, didn't strike out or walk too many, came after hitters (even if it meant giving up a homer or three), threw a lot of innings. As Bill James wrote once, he didn't make things any harder than they needed to be.
-- He had a great nickname.
-- He retired at precisely the right time so that he beat the rush of great pitchers to hit the ballot in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Hunter made it into the Hall in 1987.
There is no question, based on all 62 pitchers in the Hall of Fame, that Catfish Hunter does not meet the Hall of Fame standards set by the voters. Writers voted him in because they liked him or because they were blind to the context of the time or because he just felt like a Hall of Famer in the gut. Hunter was a likable enough soul that nobody should feel too bad personally about him being in the Hall.
The negative is that Hunter's name can be used to make the case for almost anybody, really. There are 150 pitchers in baseball history with a higher WAR than Hunter's 32.5. Nobody wants Catfish Hunter to be the Hall of Fame standard ... except, of course, when it comes to their favorite pitcher.
Do you know, by the way, which of the notable absentees has by far the highest WAR? That would be Rick Reuschel. In fact, Reuschel's 66.3 WAR is the best for ANY eligible non-Hall of Famer. It's a career that you might want to review. He probably should have won the Cy Young in 1977 too.
1951-1960
(4) Dennis Eckersley, Goose Gossage, Bruce Sutter, Bert Blyleven.
Notable absentees: Jack Morris, Dave Stieb, Frank Tanana, Dennis Martinez, Mark Langston, Orel Hershiser.
Hall of Merit (4): Eckersley, Gossage, Blyleven, Stieb.
Comment: Let's be blunt about it -- it's hard to imagine that there was only one Hall of Fame starter born from 1951 to 1960. That's just a difficult thing to wrap our minds around. It's even more stark because Blyleven really belongs to the decade before -- he was born in 1951, and he came up when he was just 20. This gap -- perhaps as much as anything -- I think drives the Jack Morris for Hall of Fame talk.
There's just a gnawing belief, one that makes a bit of sense, that SOME starting pitcher has to represent this general time period in the Hall of Fame. The Hall of Merit chose Stieb, whose basic numbers (176-137, 3.44 ERA, 1669 career Ks) do not do him justice. He was, by WAR, the best pitcher in the American League in 1982, '83 and '84, and he was second best in the bookend years of 1981 and 1985. He had the Hall of Fame misfortune of wasting some of those years on terrible teams, and the Hall of Fame misfortune of spending just about his entire career in Canada where he often went unnoticed, and the Hall of Fame misfortune of having his greatness obscured by bland won-loss records. His 123 ERA+ is right in line with the better Hall of Famers.
The now-majority of Hall of Fame voters have instead backed Morris, who has the most wins of the 1980s, a reputation as a gritty competitor, and that famous Game 7. The problem with Morris, as has been brought up endlessly, is that he was not especially good at preventing runs from being scored. His career 39.3 WAR ranks 12th among pitchers born in this decade, behind such decidedly non-Hall of Famers as Tom Candiotti, Bob Welch, Frank Viola, and Mark Langston. He also ranks 65th in WAR among all non-Hall of Famers.
We don't want to keep doing Morris comparisons because he doesn't ever come out looking especially good in any of them. But almost any way you look at it:
-- Orel Hershiser had four seasons better than Jack Morris' best season.
-- Dave Stieb had five years better than Jack Morris' best season.
-- Mark Langston had four seasons better than Jack Morris' best season.
And so on. None of these pitchers received much Hall of Fame support, not even a high profile guy like Hershiser. Morris was not a Hall of Fame pitcher, not by the general standards, but there is an understandable desire to fill what feels like a gap. It's hard to concede that we had a strange little eight or nine year drought where there was not a single Hall of Fame starting pitcher born.
1961-1970
Nobody in yet.
Hall of Fame near certainties (6): Roger Clemens, Greg Maddux, Randy Johnson, Tom Glavine, John Smoltz, Mariano Rivera.
Serious Hall of Fame contenders (3): Trevor Hoffman, Mike Mussina, Curt Schilling.
Notable absentees: Kevin Brown, Bret Saberhagen, Jamie Moyer, David Wells, Kenny Rogers, Chuck Finley, Dwight Gooden, Jamie Moyer, David Cone.
Hall of Merit (2): Bret Saberhagen, Kevin Brown.
Comment: And suddenly there are A LOT of terrific pitchers -- including four (Clemens, Maddux, Johnson, Rivera) -- who have a case as the greatest ever at what they did. This decade was so pitching rich that the voters brushed off a pitcher with a 127 career ERA+ (Brown) and barely glanced at a two-time Cy Young winner (Saberhagen), and shook their heads sadly at perhaps the best young pitcher in the history of baseball (Gooden). None of them were even close to making it to a second ballot.
If I had to guess, I would guess that all three of my serious Hall of Fame contenders will eventually make the Hall of Fame, though I think Mussina and Schilling will have a harder time than Hoffman. So I think nine from this decade will get into the Hall of Fame. Is nine too many for a decade? I don't think so. There were at least seven worthy candidates born between 1941 and 1950, and the game has expanded pretty dramatically so that there is a much larger pool of players to choose from, and there are more teams and more opportunities to show excellence.
1971-on
Nobody in yet.
Hall of Fame near-certainties (2): Pedro Martinez, Roy Halladay.
Hall of Fame contenders (6): Johan Santana, CC Sabathia, Tim Hudson, Roy Oswalt, Andy Pettitte, Mark Beuhrle.
Others to watch: Felix Hernandez, Cliff Lee, Zack Greinke, Matt Cain, Tim Lincecum, Adam Wainwright, Jon Lester, Justin Verlander, etc.
Comment: I have been surprised how often I have found myself in discussions about whether or not Roy Halladay is already a Hall of Famer. The discussions are surprising because he's pitching great and is signed for three or four more years, and there's no reason to believe that he's going to leave the stage any time soon. That said, I still say if he retired tomorrow, yes, he should be a Hall of Famer. His impressive but somewhat spare 169-86 won-loss record should not obscure that he has been the best or second best pitcher in his league six or seven times. He has been a force of nature for a long time now. Maybe Dizzy Dean should be in the Hall of Fame and maybe he shouldn't be, but what Dizzy Dean did for five years, Halladay has done for 10.
I should say that I didn't even want to put the Hall of Fame contenders in a list, but I thought Pettitte deserved to be up there ... and Santana and Sabathia are well on their way. Hudson is a great case (and one of my favorite pitchers). Go look him up. You might be surprised how terrific he has been.
Fantastic read as always, Joe.
ReplyDeleteOne correction, however- Jesse Burkett was an outfielder, not a pitcher. I believe he may have tossed a few innings over the course of his career, but that was sort of the norm for players of that era.
Tim Keefe is in the Hall of Fame.
ReplyDeleteWhat, no love for Jamie Moyer?
ReplyDeleteExcellent read on an issue I never would've thought of myself. It's interesting that there's a tremendous new wave of young pitchers that've hit the scene in the past few years but what about guys like Chris Carpenter, Tim Hudson, Derek Lowe and Roy Oswalt? Carpenter is 35, Lowe is 37, Hudson is 34 and Oswalt is 32... and as good as they have been they're on the wrong side of 30 and well short of even 200 wins (Hudson leads that quartet with 165) and I wonder how many more phenomenal years they'll have to put together to sniff the Hall of Fame. With all of the new analytical tools we have at our disposal, what will the new standards be?
With all the Hall of Fame Pitching articles that have cropped up recently, one name continues to be overlooked: David Cone. Not that he'll ever make it to the Hall, or even that he should - although, he does have some arguments to make, I think. He even stacks up favorably to Tom Glavine (leaving out the wins of course)!
ReplyDeleteGlavine: 4413 IP, 3.54 ERA, 118 ERA+, 25 SHO, 2607 K, 1.314 WHIP, 1.74 K/BB, 67.0 rWAR
Cone: 2800 IP, 3.46 ERA, 121 ERA+, 22 SHO, 2660 K, 1.256 WHIP, 2.35 K/BB, 57.5 rWAR
In nearly 1500 more innings, Glavine compiled only 9.5 additional rWAR and 3 SHO, while Cone still had more K. Think about it this way: Cone earned 1 rWAR every 50.4 IP; Glavine earned 1 rWAR every 65.9 IP. Seasons with an ERA+ above 125: Cone 9, Glavine 10. Cone had 2 seasons (3 if you count his short 1996) with an ERA+ better than Glavine's best ERA+ season.
With only 2800 IP to his credit, David Cone will probably never make the Hall of Fame. But he was damn good when he did pitch, and he deserves to be mentioned at least among the Jamie Moyers and David Wells of the world - he's definitely got a better case than those two, at the very least.
Why does there have to be balance over decades? What's wrong with some years having better hitters than pitchers or vice versa? Trying so hard to balance this out as if talent is required to be passed out evenly sounds akin to PC run amok.
ReplyDeletewhere's satchel paige
ReplyDeleteRe: career numbers being calibrated to that player's era being "Just something kind of goofy to think about."
ReplyDeleteI actually think this is the kind of definable, objective standard that the HOF should articulate and hold its voters accountable to. Was the player one of the best of his era, as compared to the statistics of the other players in his era? I’m not saying a long, excellent career as measured by stats should be the only criterion that gets a player into the HOF. But we also know that there are no permanent, unchanging criteria for the “glamour” stats, like Home runs, wins, ERA, etc. So when a player becomes eligible, the HOF should publish the player’s ranking for the years he played, and not leave it up to individual voters to determine if they should be comparing the player’s stats to the all time greats of all eras, or the greats of just the era he played in.
Buehrle has to win 300 to get in unfortunately, Jim Kaat might have the strongest case amongst the non HoF and HoM members. Even if Buehrle wins every gold glove for the next 10 years he has to average over 15 wins to get to 300. Though by the time he retires I suppose it's possible standards will have changed quite a bit.
ReplyDeleteCatfish's A's won the World Series in 72,73, and 74. He pitched for the Yankees in 75.
ReplyDeleteJoe, didn't mean to sound ungrateful, had issue submitting. Great job, interesting stuff. Was there a reason Paige isn't included? Thanks again.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I would love it if Mark Buehrle made it, but I know others would hate it given his profile. He's given up 9.5 H/9 over 2200+ innings, but he does have a 120 ERA+. And if he decides to keep playing (he's hinted at early retirement several times), there's no reason he couldn't play for another 10 years at a similar level based on his craftiness. Or he could fall off a cliff once he can't reach 85 on the heater. Hard to say.
ReplyDelete@Bob: I'm not taking from this that there has to be balance over decades, but that the statisitcs a player produces are tied to the era in which he played. The first 5 HOF players elected had overlapping careers from 1897 to 1935. Fairly easy to pick out the 'best' from a limited number of teams (and skin colors) from a 38 year period. Now we have alot more teams, different rules, different equipment, different fields, different travel, no color barrier, international players, etc. Should the HOF voters just judge the stats of a guy who played from 1890 to 1910 straight up against a guy who played from 1990 to 2010 (or any other 20 year period)? Seems to me the early HOF inductees were measured mostly against their contemporaries, and that standard should still apply.
ReplyDeleteI'm really not trying to defend Jack Morris. I'm not, I don't think he's a HOFer. But he was a very good pitcher from 79-87, his age 32 season. He was ok at 33. Morris' problem was that he wasn't much of a pitcher after his age 33 season. He had two good years after that - 91 and 92. He actually has more 4 WAR seasons than Pettitte and they have the same number of 3 WAR seasons. Pettitte's big advantage seems to have been his ability to remain a solid pitcher as he aged (cough - PEDs - cough).
ReplyDeleteBut Morris did have a nice run from 79-87 where he avg 17-11, 3.51 era (116 ERA+) 250ip, 14cg, 2 sho, 3.6 WAR seasons. He was constantly in the top ten in wins (8x), era (5x), whip (5x), k (6x), IP (6x), CG (6x), and pitcher WAR (5x). (And a very dominating 1984 postseason which was overshadowed by his 1991 postseason). It's not quite HOF worthy but it's very good. That's a better nine year run than current "aces" like John Lackey, Josh Beckett, Cliff Lee, Chris Carpenter have had. But his last six seasons, only 91 pops up as a really good season. Basically, his career looks like a lot of pitchers who hit the wall in their early mid thirties. His reputation and a strong bounceback season in 91 let him stick around longer but it makes people forget he did have a legit run as a top line starter.
I was surprised to see Tim Keefe not in the Hall of Fame with 300 wins. Turns out he was inducted by the Veteran's Committee in 1964.
ReplyDeleteOne question I have for Joe, and this builds on the Pettite post, is if he weighs raw statistics as heavily in his thinking/voting as he does in his writing.
ReplyDeleteClearly, looking at the accumulated totals is an important measure of a players long-term abilities, but there are a lot of factors outside of what they personally did on the field that determine if they get in. Starting from the proposition that the Hall of Fame should give a casual fan (or even a non-fan) who visits a better informed view of the game's history, it seems to me that two identical players who have similar personal numbers, but one toiled in obscurity and the other played a leading role on a perennial contender, matters quite a bit when determining who gets in. In other words, Chuck Finley may have been a good pitcher, but he is pretty unimportant in the context of the game. Andy Petitte was a stalwart of one of the best teams over the past decade and a half and made a lasting impression in big moments. If you wanted a history lesson of 1990s-2000s baseball, it is clear to me that based on this, Pettite is more famous than Finley in ways that will not show up in the numbers.
The way Joe writes about this sometimes gives the impression that he primarily crunches numbers in a spreadsheet to determine who gets in. To follow up with a controversial case, I can't imagine how Curt Shilling would not be considered an important figure in the recent history of the game. I think voters should take a step back in some of these cases and ask themselves a simple question, if there were a history written of the game (and the museum we call the HOF is a form of history), would player A have to be included or not for someone to intelligently discuss the era in question? If a historian could not rely on the hall of fame as a primary source for what players, coaches, teams or other figures mattered to the game, then it simply falls short as a museum or hall of fame.
So here's a statistical challenge for those who have time to waste ...
ReplyDeleteTry to match up Joe's 8 near-certain-HOFers born in 1961 or later (Roger Clemens, Greg Maddux, Randy Johnson, Tom Glavine, John Smoltz, Mariano Rivera, Pedro Martinez, Roy Halladay) with the stats they compiled during their rookie season (the year in which they forfeited their MLB rookie status, technically) as listed here:
5W-3L 5.51ERA 19G 10GS 0SV 67IP 71H 30BB 51K
8W-7L 3.92ERA 36G 18GS 1SV 149IP 156H 79BB 82K
10W-5L 2.61ERA 65G 2GS 2SV 107IP 76H 57BB 119K
6W-14L 5.61ERA 30G 27GS 0SV 156IP 181H 74BB 101K
7W-13L 4.82ERA 29G 28GS 0SV 161IP 147H 96BB 130K
2W-4L 5.54ERA 9G 9GS 0SV 50IP 55H 33BB 20K
9W-4L 4.32ERA 21G 20GS 0SV 133IP 146H 29BB 126K
2W-7L 5.48ERA 12G 12GS 0SV 64IP 74H 33BB 37K
(see baseball-reference for answers)
For what it's worth, the average "rookie" season of those 8 near-certain HOFers would be:
6W-7L 4.61ERA 28G 16GS 0SV 111IP 113IP 54BB 83K
... which is fairly comparable to the numbers posted in 2011 by rookie Jake Arrieta (and non-rookies Luke Hochevar, Ben Sheets, Jair Jurrjens, and Homer Bailey).
Joe,
ReplyDeleteYou are a dork.
David Cone & Jerry Koosman are both notable omissions from the list of contenders.
ReplyDeleteIt seems like WAR was used to tabulate the list of pitchers on this list and Both Cone & Koosman rank in the top 50 WAR all time so their omissions seem odd.
Kevin Appier, Jimmy Key & Steve Rogers also seem like omissions to go along with the other contemporary pitchers on this list.
Justin:
ReplyDeleteInteresting argument, but I have a question for you. If a tree falls in the woods, does it make a sound? Similarly, if Dave Stieb is a better pitcher than Andy Petitte, but pitches in Canada, does that make him less Hall of Fame worthy than Petitte?
Your standard ends up with a lot of Bernie Williams' (and Earl Combs) in the HOF and not so many Lou Whitakers.
Joe:
ReplyDeleteOne other factual correction. Amos Rusie was born in 1871, so he belongs in the 2nd group, not the first one.
I wish we would have gotten more knowledge dropped on us about Dolf Luque.
ReplyDelete"Your standard ends up with a lot of 'Bernie Williams' (and Earl Combs) in the HOF and not so many Lou Whitakers."
ReplyDeleteI wasn't proposing a catch-all standard, just pointing out a single factor among many that can be lost or severely under-appreciated in all the number crunching. Is it fair to the players who by no fault of their own toiled in obscurity for small market, non-competitive teams? No, but if the point of the HOF is to tell a history of the game, then its still acceptable with apologies to said players.
I suspect that some portion of pushback on what I am saying would not be to question the validity of a historical standard, but in the hard to pin down, completely subjective nature of determining who is noteworthy in an era and who is not. The five year period gives time to sort that out though and figure out who is actually historically significant and isn't.
It is also for this reason that I think its ridiculous to exclude Roger Clemons. Imagine this scenario: in fifty years, someone tries to write a history of pitching in the game. They start at the HOF and get a list of the games greatest pitchers to begin their research. Then, upon doing further research, they discover that there are no traces of one of the best pitchers of all time in the HOF. That, at least to me, seems like a ridiculous and likely scenario.
Bobby:
ReplyDeleteDolf Luque was a Cuban born pitcher. Probably because of his Hispanic background he got a late start in the major leagues, not really getting much of a chance until 1919 when he was 28 years old (OTOH, he probably counted himself lucky that he wasn't too dark and completely excluded from the ML). He pitched for the 1919 world champion Reds (and pitched very well in the Series, although there is obviously a question as to how hard the opponents were trying). He pitched until 1935 when he was 44. Even with the late start he went 194-179 with a 3.24 career ERA (ERA+ 118), mostly with middling Reds teams in the 20s. He was spectacular in 1923, when he was 27-8 with a 1.93 ERA (ERA+ 201) in 322 innings. He also pitched well in the 1933 Series with the Giants, winning the close out Game 5.
I cannot WAIT for Old Hoss Radbourn's take on this analysis. Hopefully Joe survives it.
ReplyDeleteHere is s fun bit... Virgil Trucks is related to both Derek and Butch Trucks of the Allman Brothers (Derek also has quite the solo music career).
ReplyDelete"Wes Ferrell, whose numbers are a victim of historical context. His 4.04 ERA does not seem good enough, but his 117 ERA+ suggests that he was one of the best pitchers of his time."
ReplyDeleteSounds a little like Andy Pettitte, right down to the 117 ERA+. Just a little.
I'm pretty sure the only way I'd need Andy Pettitte to tell the story of baseball is if I wanted to provide a counterpoint to Greg Anderson regarding loyalty to one's friends.
ReplyDeleteI think there's something to Joe's "gap" theory. I think Jim Rice benefited from the depressed hitting stats in the era right before he came up. It had been a while since there'd been a guy with that combination of average and power, so people were more impressed than they otherwise would have been.
ReplyDeleteIMO the subjective bias in the voting is toward guys that captured the public imagination a bit. Might be guys who are stars on great teams (like Hunter, Drysdale, Perez) or guys who have one particular skill that's historically great (Lou Brock or Ozzie Smith).
BTW, when you look at this, I think it helps to separate the BBWAA guys from the others. The Veteran's Committee has been much more arbitrary. With the writers, the de facto standard is pretty clear- it changes (slowly) and you get the occasional head-scratcher, but for the most part they've been pretty consistent. For instance, if you answer the question "was this pitcher better than Jim Bunning" you'll get a pretty good idea of whether the BBWAA will elect him (Bunning just missed).
Unless he was expelled from the Hall when no one was paying attention, I believe Candy Cummings, reputed inventor of the curveball (and member of the pre-1860 birthday club), was left out of the discussion here as well.
ReplyDeletePicking up on the theme of the Hall as caretaker of the game's history and spirit to which one of the commenters referred, I find it hard to see how it would be improved by not having Dizzy Dean as a member. In looking through some of my old books recently, mostly published in the 60s and 70s, I was reminded of what an icon he was, not merely baseball-wise, but of the whole popular culture of the Depression era, more so than any baseball player is, or probably can be, in today's world. I agree that he probably does not get voted in to the Hall without this exaggerated persona even though his contemporaries seem to have been in pretty much unanimous agreement that for 4 1/2 years he was one of the great pitchers of all time up to that point in baseball history (which perspective is also important to remember).
I love Bill James and the revolution in statistical analysis has been for the most part a positive but I think--I think--even he would agree that throwing Dizzy Dean out of the Hall of Fame to make room for Dave Stieb might be carrying the rational approach a bit farther than most fans of baseball history would really want to see (though I don't expect to see this verified on the internet).
I'm disappointed to see Jerry Koosman and his 44th best all-time pitcher's WAR not make the list of notable absentees.
ReplyDeleteThere was a real good article on Dolf Luque in the Elysian Fields Quarterly Magazine a few years ago. The article's author (as I recall) reluctantly concluded that he was not a hall-of-famer. The article is available for purchase on line...or you can read part of the article at http://www.efqreview.com/NewFiles/v20n1/onhistoricalground.html
ReplyDeleteIt is not surprising either that the Hall would be overrepresented by figures from the early history of the game (especially the era in which the institution was founded) and grow stingier in its admissions as time went on. It's the same in every field--poetry, novels, movies, rock songs, academic scholarship--in the earliest stages you are inventing the form, and the standards, and the work of the earliest practitioners must have reasonably interesting and noteworthy or else they would not have attracted imitators and commentators who then carry the endeavor forward, raise the skill level, innovate, create a mythology, etc, and as long as the history is short and the prospect of novelty high there is a somewhat larger space open to make a mark in than there is when the history is more mature, and the established classic figures and achievements reach the point that it starts to become difficult for anyone to keep even them all straight in the mind, it becomes harder to make an impression that one has done anything especially noteworthy, as well as calls into question such achievements of the past as once appeared notable but now are regularly equalled or excelled without inspiring much enthusiasm from any quarter. This seems to be the point that the Hall of Fame has now reached.
ReplyDeleteSorry for the long unbroken paragraph.
Justin, there's a school of thought that the Hall of Fame does not reward fame, it confers it. I tend to agree with that.
ReplyDeletePart of the story of baseball was that pitchers such as Stieb went un-hailed as they toiled in relative obscurity. Their greatness was overlooked by most fans and most writers. It is only with the benefit of hindsight and with better ways of evaluating performance that we can appreciate them. That story can be told in the Hall as well.
I have to think Paige isn't mentioned because he was kept out of the majors until he was 42 and so his "official" stats are not readily available to compare to those who should have been his peers. Joe has said in numerous other articles that Paige was among the greatest.
ReplyDelete"spectacularly nicknamed Kaiser Wilhelm"
ReplyDeleteJust brilliant
Catfish Hunter is in the Hall for the same reason Herb Pennock, Dazzy Vance, Ted Lyons, Dizzy Dean, and Bob Lemon are -- leading the major in wins over a five-year span. Dugout Central posted an article I wrote about it:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.fannation.com/blogs/post/223140
Career value for a pitcher is measured by the 300-win indicator, and peak value is measured by wins over a five-year period. Remarkably, no other guidelines are needed – all the BBWAA electees (except for Don Drysdale) fall into one or both categories.
Mickey Lolich.
ReplyDeleteI had the exact same question, but where you work well with numbers, I do better with pictures, so I made some (shameless plugs):
ReplyDeletePitcher WAR by Era
I also did the same for position players over at Fangraphs:
Baseball Prehistory | Deadball Era | Liveball Era | Post-War
Expansion | Free Agency | Modern Era
Thanks for the shout out Joe!
ReplyDeleteI just want to say the real credit should go to Tom Tango. I first saw his rule of thumb on his blog and took his framework for birth eras and selected the players myself.
Phil, thanks for posting that link. That makes a lot of sense. It sure explains Catfish hunter with his 5 straight 20+ win seasons (bookended by 17- and 18-win seasons).
ReplyDeleteI suppose if Sabathia wants to ensure himself a HoF spot he should knock off 3 straight 18+ win seasons. He's already got two (19 and 21 wins), three more would push him over 200 wins and give him that 5 year win total that HoF voters seem to like.
Of course, things might be changing, with Felix Hernandez Cy Young win as a prime example. But I don't think it hurts to be among the win leaders year after year.
@Mark Daniel:
ReplyDeleteGlad you enjoyed it. My article is a little outdated (but perhaps prescient?) now that Blyleven has been elected. Sabathia has actually already earned the resume credit -- here are the recent 5-year winners:
2004-2008 Santana & Oswalt (86 wins)
2005-2009 Sabathia (82)
2006-2010 Halladay (90)
CC is also two wins ahead of Halladay and ten in front of Verlander for the 2007-2011 span.
I like to think that Rube Waddell is in the Hall of Fame for biting a man's nose off. I have no idea if that's true, but like I said, I just like to think that.
ReplyDeleteJoe's comment at the top that Halladay has probably already earned the HOF is interesting, because the two pitchers who have the highest similarity scores are Guidry and Hudson. Guidry will never make the Hall, and Hudson would have to do a lot more to be taken seriously. This isn't to derogate Halladay-he's a phenomenal pitcher, but, implicit in Joe's piece is an underlying assumption-that either Halladay will continue to perform at least a competent level (better than Catfish Hunter), or, that he will have some career ending injury (per Koufax), that will excuse the lack of cumulative statistical accomplishments that are presently reflective of his shorter career. There's every reason for Joe to assume this, but what the Halladay example does for us is highlight what we tend to excuse. Hypothetically, let's say Halladay loses effectiveness as he ages. If he performs the way Greg Maddux did the last four years of his career (just about league level), his qualitative stats (era+, whip, etc.) will take a small hit, but no real damage will be done to his chances. His final stats would look a lot like Schilling's, but his peak would have been far more impressive. But if he really loses it, the impact would have a far greater one than it did to Maddux. Halladay has fewer than 2300 innings pitched right now-Maddux ended at 5008. As AJ Burnett showed vividly last year, it's quite possible to be very talented, and be completely awful. In that case (a bad year, followed by age related decline), his cumulative stats would start to resemble Andy Petitte's, except with fewer wins and losses. Still first ballot?
ReplyDeleteBurleigh Grimes isn't a bad HOF pick-what, all those 20 win seasons, pennant chases and 270-212 record doesn't do it for ya? Gimme a break. Not everyone is gonna have the pretty K-W record you guys want. Grimes is a solid pick.
ReplyDeleteAs for Catfish Hunter-what, those 20 win seasons for a great, multi-WS winning team don't work for you? Please don't mention Drysdale, Bunning or Schilling then. Hunter=El Tiante. Both should be in.
Jack Morris. I hope he goes in. I think he's Joe Poz' current Jim Rice-a guy who he REALLY is rooting against making the Hall. Sad. Find someone to root FOR, that makes for better reading. Dave Steib? Really? Sure.
i'm only a third of the way through this but this statement so clearly crystallizes the argument of value with regards to context, i had to stop and comment about it:
ReplyDeleteIt's obviously easier to go fast on a bicycle when going downhill. Hall of Fame voters tended to give credit for that speed to the cyclist rather than the hill.
it makes you wonder. why is it SO hard to for people to grasp that adjustments need to be made to the numbers when evaluating a player's value?
Joe, I'd even boot Early Wynn from the Hall of Merit as well as the Hall of Fame. Poor ERA+. Horrible WHIP.
ReplyDeletere bob: "Why does there have to be balance over decades?"
ReplyDeleteI agree with (and enjoyed) Joe's column - it's just another way of looking at it. However, just to be devil's advocate: Has it ever occurred to anyone that it's possible that the pitchers in the 60s were really really good and the hitters really really bad?
Always underpinning all this stuff is the assumption that there's some norm to adjust to, that actual real abilities of pitchers and hitters (when adjusted for park, longer era, etc) are always in the same proportion. Why, necessarily? We hear about "the year of the pitcher", well, okay, but adjusting to a base year means there's no such thing. Does that really entirely make sense?
I'm not really proposing this as fact, I'm just saying that Bob has a point.
Addie Joss has always fascinated me.
ReplyDeleteHe has the fewest strikeouts of any HoF starting pitcher, 920. Below him are reliever Bruce Sutter (861), that Ruth fellow (only 488 K's, but the hitting may have helped him a bit), the great Satchel Paige (with only 288 "official" K's in MLB), and two pioneers (Candy Cummings and Al Spalding). Joss is tied with Monte Ward, who moved to the middle infield in his 20's and derived more of his value as a position player.
Just ahead of him are Clark Griffith (955), Stan Coveleski (981, but led the AL in 1920 with 133 K's, and twice led in ERA+ and shutouts), and Jesse Haines (also 981, and one of the more egregious Vet's Committee inductions. He never gained even 9% of the HoF vote).
Ray Romano has a bit where he talks about driving with his son, who's lost in thought. Ray asks him what he's thinking about, and the boy dreamily replies "candy". I have a feeling this scene is repeated time and time again in the Posnanski household between Joe and Mrs. Joe, though the former's answer is inevitably "the Hall of Fame".
ReplyDeleteYour colleague Phil Taylor wrote a point after a few weeks ago, Joe, in which he put forth his case to be made the arbiter of the Hall of Fame. When I saw it my first thought was "You're crazy. You're not qualified. Poz was born for that job. Nobody cares about this stuff more then him."
To NerdMan26 - To be fair, the BBWAA has an unfair advantage over the Veterans' Committee, because the BBWAA gets the first shot at everybody. The VC never got to vote on Babe Ruth or Hank Aaron or Walter Johnson, or even on guys who were lesser players but still clear Hall of Famers such as, say, Reggie Jackson or Willie McCovey.
ReplyDeleteThe VC has made its share of questionable picks (as has the BBWAA), but has also corrected a handful of egregious errors by the writers (Arky Vaughan, anyone?) Given what they've had to work with, they haven't been terrible.
I think it's a mistake to only look at stats over a full career as a measure of greatness and HoF worthiness. There's also the issue of overall impact and impressiveness, even for a relatively short period of time. That's why Koufax is considered one of the all-time greats, despite his short career and unimpressive career stat of only 165 wins. Everyone who watched Koufax pitched felt they were watching one of the best ever, and his impact on the game was immense. Joe seems to acknowledge that.
ReplyDeleteFor the same reason, someone like Dizzy Dean is to me an obvious and unquestionable HOF pick. True, his career stats aren't great, especially after his injury. But his impact on the game was just immense. Everyone who watched him during his prime felt they were watching one of the best ever. And for that reason, his "Fame", makes him a true Hall of Famer.
It's worth examining that name "Hall of Fame". It isn't "Hall of the best career stats". It's really about Fame, reputation, impressiveness, impact on the game. And that I think has to always be kept in mind. There are guys like Early Wynn who slogged along accumulating impressive career stats along the way without every developing an impact on the game. Yes, he won 300 games, but who really thinks he's a great and famously impressive pitcher? If we put people like that in the Hall, then certainly we should put people in who were much more impressive in their heyday, but whos lifelong stats might not be so great.
It's about Fame, in other words, not just about career totals. Who were the really great players? Yes, not everyone had a run as impressive as Koufax, so maybe those with somewhat lesser numbers require a longer time to be impressive, but it's not just career totals that matter. A very impressive ten year run that has a real impact on the game is much more important than a 20 year run of steady but not terribly great performance.
So Catfish Hunter belongs, I think, despite his rather mediocre career numbers, because of his impact on the game while he was at his best, which lasted for a good while and led him to a bunch of world series wins and the fame that went with that. Again, its the Hall of FAME. And Catfish was about as famous and heralded as a pitcher of his time was. Yes, he petered out but he's still highly remembered by everyone who still recalls that period. So as far as I am concerned he belongs, even if part of the reason he belongs has to do with his personality and charisma. Those things matter.
Same with Jack Morris. Everyone knows Morris because he made an impact. But David Cone? It's not that he wasn't a very good pitcher, it's that he just never stood out as one of the greats when he was pitching. He didn't create that kind of impact. Same with Beuhrle (I can't even spell his name, he's that insignficant). It's about FAME. Impact on the game. Not that career stats don't matter, but they only matter in the relative sense of helping us see what kind of impact is there. They aren't the decisive element. Unless, of course, the stat itself designates fame. Roger Maris belongs in the hall just for his famous run in 1961 and the years surrounding it. Who's more famous in baseball than Roger Maris? Not many people.
But I assume mine is a minority opinion.
Dave Stieb is still so unknown that most people spell his last name 'Steib'. Pet peeve.
ReplyDeleteI think Hunter was probably helped some by his perfect game. So was Joss. Stieb lost two consecutive no-hitters plus an additional perfect game on the 27th out. I've always wondered what those three pitches did to his legacy. Similarly, Mussina in 2001 missed a perfect game and a WS ring by one pitch each... a few years from now, will his lack of a defining moment (other than, perhaps, the feud with Cito Gaston at the '93 All-Star Game) lead a significant number of voters to think of him as merely a compiler? After this year, that certainly won't be a liability for Halladay.
ReplyDeleteJoe's comment about Catfish Hunter being "a very good pitcher for three years -- 1972, 1974 and 1975 -- and probably a below-average pitcher the rest of his career" is a statistically-based piece of hyperbole that is simply unjust, and feels related to Joe's discomfort with the Jack Morris HOF case (Morris just happens to have the same career ERA+ of 105 as Hunter). Hunter's HOF case isn't a good one, just as the one for Morris is not. However, the phrase "below-average pitcher" applied to Hunter is a kind of libel, and enough to get me to post a comment here for the first time after years of quietly appreciating Joe's amazing writing and thoughts.
ReplyDeleteHunter's prime lasted from 1967 to 1976, during which time he pitched no less than 234 innings in a season, and 6 times was in the AL top ten in innings pitched. In 7 of those 10 seasons, his ERA+ was over 100, and thus above-average, by definition, especially given the value of his ERA+ while pitching a large number of innings. During the 3 "below-average" seasons with an ERA+ under 100, Hunter pitched a perfect game at age 22 (1968), won 18 games while starting 40 games and being named to the All-Star Game (1970), and won 17 games while throwing 298 innings, making the All-Star team, and having an essentially 'average' ERA+ of 98 (1976). The vast plurality of major league pitchers never achieved 3 such "below-average" seasons. The prime of Hunter's career was clearly of above-average value, and that is not even taking into account his postseason exploits, which were many and justifiable famous.
Broken Yogi summed up my feelings on how the HOF clearly and justly has a place for players with shorter periods of excellence in their careers, especially pitchers. Koufax is by far the best example, and Dean is another good one. Catfish Hunter is not exactly in that same category because his prime lasted roughly 10 years, but Broken Yogi's points as to why Catfish belongs in the HOF seem accurate to me.
All that said - great piece, as usual, Joe. Thanks for this one and all of the others.
The funny thing about baseball is if you look at one of Catfish Hunter's below average years, for example 1968, he had a 3.35 ERA in 234 innings. But his ERA+ that year was only 84. That's just amazing to me. A 3.35 ERA and an ERA+ of only 84.
ReplyDeleteIn 2010, Rick Porcello (ERA+ 85) and Kevin Millwood (ERA+ 83) were near that 84 number that Catfish had in 1968. Their ERAs were 4.92 and 5.10, respectively. AJ Burnett had an ERA+ of 81 and a 5.26 ERA last year. I can't speak for Millwood, but everybody in Detroit seemed to be wondering, "What's wrong with Porcello?" and in NY Burnett was largely considered a disaster.
So I wonder if fans in 1968 considered Catfish's 3.36 ERA a disaster. I would think not, though I really have no idea.
@Mark Daniel: Let's take a look at his own team's stats. Only one other pitcher on his team who threw more than 33 innings had a worse ERA than Hunter on the '68 A's.
ReplyDeletePick any other team from that year, too. Here's the number of starters of each team that had a better ERA than Hunter in 1968 (min 12 starts):
(In Team Final Standings order)
Tigers: 4 out of 5
Orioles: 4 out of 5
Indians: 3 out of 5
Red Sox: 4 out of 6
Yankees: 4 out of 5
A's: Last (5)
Twins: 5 out of 5
Angels: 2 out of 6
White Sox: 3 out of 6
Senators: 3 out of 6
So, at best, his pure numbers could make him the number 3 or number 4 starter on three of the league's worst teams that year. Like you, I have no idea how the fans in 1968 viewed him, but if they were looking simply at ERA, they should've at least considered it a down year for Hunter.
stephen: Thanks for the effort!
ReplyDeleteIt just seems out of whack for a guy to have a 3.35 ERA and it to be subpar. But that's the way it was. Looking at 1968, Hunter had the 31st ranked ERA out of 35 pitchers who qualifed for the ERA title. Clearly, he was one of the worst starting pitchers in the league. Again, amazing.
It seems like many of the hitting stars of the 1980s fell just a bit short in their HOF credentials, but it also seems like many of the pitchers also fall short.
ReplyDeleteIs it possible the overall competitive balance in baseball during the 1980s, and right before the hitting explosion of the 1990s, was so even, that it was difficult for either hitters or pitchers to truly excel? If so, maybe we need to reevaluate many of these players.
Schilling is going to sail in
ReplyDeleteSuppose Hunter had retired after he turned 30 (after 1976) and suppose Koufax had to pitch his final eight seasons off a lower mound, and six of those seasons had been in a league with the DH. Would we think differently about each of them now?
ReplyDeleteCatfish Hunter's 5 year prime: #1 starter on three WS champs, 300 innings per year, 111-49 with a 2.66 ERA and a 1.03 WHIP. I think it's fair to ask what more he possibly could have done. Yet 40 years later people are saying publicly that he really very good based on something called WAR. And that he's taking a spot in the HOF that rightfully belongs to Bobby Grich. I call b.s.
ReplyDelete