The concept for my birthday piece, in which I selected the best team of ballplayers who share my December 25 birthday (compiled via Baseball-Reference's birthday feature), has been spreading around the baseball blogosphere like wildfire, with folks like Baseball Blog's Aaron Gleeman, The Cub Reporter's Christian Ruzich, Only Baseball Matters' John Perricone and Bobby's Sports and News Bloggy's Bob Mong chiming in with their own teams. With the above link, it's officially reached Cluch Hit status, and now everybody can weigh in. Way cool!
No slouches here. Murphy was a Gold-Glove centerfielder who was shifted to rightfield when he got older. Ditto for Dawson, except he kept winning Gold Gloves after the shift. Parker was a Gold Glove rightfielder who became a DH, Rice a mediocre leftfielder who became a DH. Murphy and Rice petered out early; Rice at 36, Murph at 37. Parker had some drug problems, but had a mid-career rebound which gives his candidacy some extra muscle.
Dawson's MVP award in 1987 with the last-place Cubs is one of the more dubious of all-time, but he was also a two-time runner-up, including once to Murphy, who got big help from his park that year. On the road in '83, Dawson went .322/.351/.615 while Murphy went .266/.356/.503. In general, Murphy was helped greatly by his home parks (.284/.374/.511 with 206 HR at home vs. .251/.329/.445 with 170 on the road; the splits from Retrosheet are incomplete but not far off). Rice got big help from Fenway (.323/.379/.539 with 156 HR at home vs. .271/.327/.456 with 127 HR on the road). Parker was helped a bit (.297/.346/.495 with 134 HRs at home, vs. .276/.327/.445 and 127 HRs on the road). Dawson is pretty much even (.278/.331/.477 with 147 HR at home vs. .288/.327/.508 and 180 HR on the road). We're missing bigger portions of Parker, Rice, and Dawson's splits than the Murphy; the biggest gap is two years of Dawson at Wrigley Field.
Each of these guys has his knocks. Rice has the short career, the least defensive value, and the most park help. Murphy has the short career and some serious park help. Dawson has the low OBP. Parker's on the lower end defensively and he's got character issues (though he was seen as an asset during his late-career days in Oakland). None of them have very good postseason resumes, and Parker's the only one with a ring.
Here's another look, via their Baseball Prospectus numbers:
This isn't clear-cut by any stretch. My first impulse would be to rule out the guys with shorter careers and heavy park effects -- Rice and Murphy. Except that Rice's hitting really was a hell of a lot better than the other three, even once the park effects are stripped away. In order of career OPS+, they are: Rice 128, Parker and Murphy 121, Dawson 119. You could spin these around any which way and still, there's not much difference other than Rice coming out on top.
Short of running the BPro numbers for all the Hall of Fame outfielders to see where these guys slot in -- something I'm not inclined to do at this late juncture in part because I wasn't especially satisfied with the payoff in doing so for other positions -- I'm left to my gut call on each of these four:
• The hole the middle of Parker's career (1980-1984), largely of his own making, kept him from 3000 hits, probably 400 HRs as well, and bona fide Hall of Fame status. His defensive value was just about gone by the time he returned to productive playing. Out.
• Murphy's rapid decline is much more mystifying, but just as troubling. His park splits are disconcerting, as well. Out.
• Rice declined early as well, but he was a head above the others as a hitter, and he had a 12-season string that's almost without blemish. In.
• Dawson's longer career gives him a boost as well. In.
So this time around, without further evidence I'm going to pull the lever for the Hawk and Jim Ed, and let the Cobra and the Murph wait for another day. Next year, when all four will likely still be on the ballot, we'll do it again with whatever's stats are the state of the art at the time.
Oh, there are three other oufielders on the ballot as well: Brett Butler, Vince Coleman, and Danny Tartabull. You don't need me to tell you that neither Coleman nor Tartabull were HOFers, because their numbers do it for them:
Butler doesn't look too great at first, but his Prospectus numbers open my eyes a bit: .286 EQA, 570 BRAR, 434 FRAR and 108.3 WARP3. Despite the fact that he was nowhere near the heavy hitter that the previous foursome was, his ability to get on base and good defense in centerfield (something Win Shares backs up as well) bump up his value to equal with theirs. But it troubles me that he was so unheralded in his time, no Gold Gloves and only one All-Star appearance. With more time to study the issue, and more comfort with BP's defensive metrics, I might warm to his case enough to consider voting for him, but I'm going to pass this time around. This leaves eight men on my ballot: Blyleven, Carter, Dawson, John, Murray, Rice, Sandberg, and Trammell.
Sandberg was an excellent all-around second baseman who combined power, speed (344 steals in his career), and glovework. He scored over 100 runs seven times, drove in 100 twice, and hit 25 or more homers six times, topped 30 steals 5 times (as high as 54) and 20 another 4 times, and won 9 straight Gold Gloves. He keyed the Chicago Cubs to two NL East flags, and hit well in the postseason (.385, 1107 OPS) despite losing causes. Bill James ranks him 7th all-time among second basemen, behind only Joe Morgan, Eddie Collins, Rogers Hornsby, Jackie Robinson, Craig Biggio (!), and Nap Lajoie. Is there even an argument that he doesn't belong in the Hall of Fame?
Actually, there is. The case against Sandberg starts with how inflated his stats were by Wrigley Field. Retrosheet's home/road data, which covers the first 9 seasons of Sandberg's career (61% of his total plate appearances), shows him with a .309 AVG/.366 OBP/.504 SLG at Wrigley, and only .266/.319/.401 away. We don't have post-'90 data, and it's worth noting that Wrigley became a less extreme hitters park in that timespan, judging by the Park Factor numbers over at Baseball-Reference.com, so it's possible that split evened out a bit. Overall, he didn't walk much, which kept his OBP down; five times in his 15 seasons it was below .330. He had a few monster years, which camouflage some mediocre ones, and he was done at 37 after coming back from a year-long retirement at 35. His Gold Gloves might be inflated as well; Win Shares shows Sandberg as the top 2B three times, and #2 at least twice (James lists only the #1 up to 1989). Baseball Prospectus holds his fielding in high regard, showing him at 597 FRAR and 190 FRAA (Fielding Runs Above Average).
Overall, Sandberg's case isn't iron-clad. But it's clear that he spent a solid decade far above average -- and sometimes great -- on both sides of the ball, at a position not known for heavy hitters. That's good enough for me.
Alan Trammell was similar to Sandberg, a very solid hitter who more than held his own in the field and on the bases. Though the Ryno had more power, Trammell was better at getting on base. His numbers aren't far off, taken in context. For his career, Sandberg's OPS+ (OPS normalized to the league on a scale with 100 being average, as ERA+ is to ERA) is 114; Trammell's is 110. Like Sandberg, he combined some monster seasons with some fairly middling ones, but those monster seasons really drove his ballclub. He should have been the MVP of the American League in 1987, when he went .343/.402/.551 with 28 HR and 105 RBI, yet he barely lost the vote to 47-HR outfielder George Bell. Win Shares illustrates the injustice: 35 for Trammell, 26 for Bell. His four Gold Gloves may be overstated (but then whose aren't?); Win Shares shows him as the best in the league only once, and considerably below average among players with as many innings logged at shortstop: 5.04 Fielding Win Shares per 1000 innings, compared to an average of 5.72 for shortstops with over 10,000 innings. Baseball Prospectus holds a kinder view of his fielding, as I'll get to in a moment. Bill James ranks him 9th overall, right behind Joe Cronin, and ahead of Pee Wee Reese, Luke Appling, Lou Boudreau, and Luis Aparicio--all Hall of Famers. Welcome to flavor country: he's in by my vote.
Trammell spent 15 of his 20 seasons as the Detroit Tigers' regular shortstop. He was one of four prospects the Tigers came up with at almost exactly the same time (debuting in 1977 and sticking in '78) who went on to long, stellar careers that wind up on the fringe of the Hall of Fame -- Trammell, his keystone partner Lou Whittaker, Jack Morris, and catcher Lance Parrish. They, along with Kirk Gibson, were the nucleus of the '84 champs and their '87 team, which had the best record in baseball but went to an early playoff grave at the hands of the 85-win Minnesota Twins. Had the Tigers at least reached a second World Series, all of their candidacies would be helped thanks to the increased exposure, with Trammell having the most to gain. Instead, the fact that they didn't win more often may be held against them. Whittaker, who is otherwise inseparably linked with Trammell, was bumped off the ballot in his first year by failing to garner the necessary 5% vote (Trammell got 15.7% in his first season of eligibility, not great but not horrible). Lou's candidacy, while not a slam-dunk, deserved at least a longer look. He places 13th on James' list, ahead of enshrinees Nellie Fox, Tony Lazzerri, and Bobby Doerr. He hit .276/.363/.426 with 242 career dingers, and was generally good for about 20 HR and 70 RBI. He won three Gold Gloves and made five All-Star teams. He might not be good enough for the Hall, but he's not far off.
Davey Concepcion was the shortstop for one of the greatest teams in history, the Big Red Machine, as they won five divisions, four pennants, and two World Series during the 1970s. He wasn't much of a hitter (his career OPS is below 700), although he wasn't a total loss with the bat; at his best he put up a few .350 OBP/.410 SLG seasons. But he was a defensive wizard, a sheer pleasure to watch, whose sabermetric stats back his case: five times he posted the best Fielding Win Shares total among NL shortstops, and with an excellent 6.37 WS per 1000 innings. Baseball Prospectus' Fielding Runs holds him in similarly high regard. Here he is, along with Trammell for comparison:
G BRAR FRAR RAR RAR/162
Concepcion 2488 275 637 912 59.4 (17.9/41.5)
Trammell 2293 546 567 1113 78.6 (38.6/40.1)
This chart actually illustrates the flaw with Concepcion's case; the two are pretty even with the glove by this measure, but Trammell dusts Concepcion with the bat. Davey was a key component of those Cincy teams, but he doesn't belong in Cooperstown alongside the big Reds (Joe Morgan, Johnny Bench, and Pete... oh, wait). So, to recap: no on Concepcion, and yes on Sandberg and Trammell, joining Bert Blyleven, Tommy John, Gary Carter, and Eddie Murray on my ballot thus far.
• • • • •
I was apparently a bit too optimistic in trying to get through the Hall of Fame ballot in a single weekend, as the voting results will be announced on Tuesday before I can weigh in on my outfield and reliever picks for the ballot. But I've already "cast" my vote at the Internet Baseball Hall of Fame, and I'll continue to weigh in on my choices in the next couple of days.
AS is All-Star appearances, GG is Gold Gloves, WS is Win Shares, and Top 5 is Win Shares in a player's best five consecutive seasons. Murray's case is so strong that he's got not just one but two "magic numbers" for enshrinement: 3000 hits and 500 homers. In fact, only two other ballplayers can claim both of those milestones: Hank Aaron and Willie Mays. You may have heard of them... Murray was a machine, annually good for about a .300-25-100 season for about the first 17 years of his career, and still valuable after that. He never won an MVP award, but he placed in the Top Ten in the voting eight times. He played in three World Series, and though he didn't do especially well (.169, 4 HR) he was overall pretty solid in the postseason (825 OPS). He's second all-time in grand-slam homers (19), tied for 6th in all-time games played (3026), 8th in total bases (5397), 8th in RBI (1917), 12th in hits, 14th in extra-base hits (1099), 17th in doubles (560), and 17th in homers. Since he didn't talk to the media his profile wasn't very high, and some writers will probably hold it against him, but there's absolutely nothing but Hall of Fame written all over his candidacy.
The same, alas, cannot be said about the other three candidates. All three have their merits, no question about it -- one way or another, they were thought of as among the best in the game in their time. But in a position crowded with Hall of Famers, they don't quite measure up. I'm of the opinion that with last year's election of Tony Perez, there are too many first basemen already in to be adding those with 2100 hits and less than 225 HRs. Mattingly's injury-shortened career works against him, Garvey's low OBP works against him, Hernandez's lack of power works against him.
Garvey is a candidate that always gives me some pause. He was the matinee-idol star of my favorite team as a kid, and he put up some nice shiny numbers primarily in the context of a lousy hitters' park, Dodger Stadium. Basically, Garvey did the things that tend to impress Hall of Fame voters -- he scores at 131.0 on the Hall of Fame Monitor thanks to his clockwork ability to rap out 200 hits, hit .300 with 20 homers, drive in 100 runs, make the All-Star team, and have perfectly coiffed hair in doing so. He was great in the postseason overall (.338/.361/.550 with 11 HR and 31 RBI) in helping -- no, leading his teams (he never hit less than .286 in an LCS or division series) -- to five World Series, he won an MVP award (though Win Shares shows that it was a dubious one, with eight players higher in the same season), four Gold Gloves, played in ten All-Star games and set the National League record for consecutive games played. His career totals (2599 hits, 272 HRs) are certainly better than Mattingly or Hernandez, though he didn't have as high a peak. The knocks against him are that he didn't get on base enough (only a .329 OBP despite a .294 AVG), or have enough power (.446 SLG, never topping .500). He's not a popular candidate thanks in part to his post-retirement zipper problems. Bill James ranks Garvey only 31st among first basemen, while he places Mattingly 12th and Hernandez 16th (Murray is 5th). Goodbye.
Mattingly and Hernandez get their names mentioned a lot because of the New York factor. Both had creepy moustaches. And both get a lot of ink for their glove work. How much does it help them? James' Win Shares book has Mattingly leading AL 1Bs in Fielding Win Shares only once, with at least three other Top Three finishes (which only cover from 1989 on). Hernandez led the NL only once as well (no Top Threes listed). Garvey cleans up here, leading the NL seven times, including a big chunk of Hernandez's career. Overall, Garvey scores 2.12 WS per 1000 innings, Mattingly 2.06, and Hernandez 2.02; not a lot to separate them except that Mattingly has about 3000 fewer innings. Here's a look at the Baseball Prospectus RAR numbers, both fielding and batting:
Garvey doesn't do so well here with the leather, while Hernandez jumps further ahead. Overall, on a rate basis, both Hernandez and Mattingly were superior to Murray, thanks to their defense. But Murray's total production was about 24% more than Hernandez and 41% more than Mattingly, and that's gotta count for something as well.
Baseball Prospectus provides another way of crunching those numbers by boiling them down to Wins Above Replacement and adjusting for season length and league difficulty. Here are the WARP3 numbers for all of the HOF 1Bs (except for Negro Leaguer Buck Leonard):
WARP3
Cap Anson 144.6
Lou Gehrig 140.3
Jimmie Foxx 132.1
Roger Connor 123.0
Willie McCovey 109.3
Johnny Mize 103.7
Dan Brouthers 101.8
Harmon Killebrew 99.5
Tony Perez 97.8
Orlando Cepeda 87.5
Hank Greenberg 84.4
Bill Terry 76.9
Jake Beckley 75.8
George Sisler 73.8
Jim Bottomley 61.7
Frank Chance 46.0
George Kelly 39.1
Eddie Murray 127.3
Keith Hernandez 103.5
Don Mattingly 89.7
Steve Garvey 80.8
Like the catchers, we've got some dubious selections at the low end. None of our four candidates look terrible by comparison, and in fact Hernandez starts to look especially good. Of course, there are a dozen others outside the Hall who I haven't listed who would place well on this chart: Rafael Palmeiro 124.8, Jeff Bagwell 112.5, Frank Thomas 106.8, Mark McGwire 106.7, Will Clark 99.2, John Olerud 98.4, Fred McGriff 97.2, Mark Grace 92.3, Dick Allen 87.3, Norm Cash 85.6, Mickey Vernon 74.7, and Gil Hodges 72.7.
The high totals of the recent players, though, have me questioning the validity of this measure -- while it SHOULD be adjusting sufficiently for context (park and league), I don't know enough about the nuts and bolts of the method to equivocally state that it IS. For all that I'm tossing these numbers around, I don't profess to say that they're the answer. And given the way two elaborate systems (Prospectus and James) are contradicting each other regarding fielding, I'm inclined to take each with a grain of salt.
I didn't vote for any of the Garvey-Hernandez-Mattingly trio last year, and I'm not going to this year. But I'm warming to the possibility that Hernandez belongs. It would take a lot of convincing that BP's fielding measures are more reliable than James', and hence enough to elevate Hernandez, before my vote swings. So: yes on Murray, no on the other three, but my ears are still open.
I was never a fan of Gary Carter. For some reason, I always found him annoying, though I can't really put my finger on why. It probably had something to do with his earnest, gung-ho attitude combined with the fact that I rooted against the '86 and '88 Mets as hard as any teams I ever rooted against. That said, I am absolutely convinced that Gary Carter is a Hall of Famer. I had an unshakeable feeling of watching a Hall of Famer in the prime of his career when I watched him, and I'll wager that was a consensus perception among those of you reading this right now. If you thought about the question of who was the best catcher in the National League after Johnny Bench declined, there simply wasn't any other credible answer besides Gary Carter.
Keeping in mind that as a catcher his hitting stats are a bit deflated, Carter still scores well on the James Standards and Monitor methods (41.3 HOFS, 135 HOFM). By his Win Shares method, Carter is fourth among catchers in terms of career value, and in the middle of the top 10 in peak value as well -- James rates him eighth overall. Carter hit 324 HRs for his career, topping 20 nine times. He topped 80 RBI eight times and 100 four times -- that's some serious production for a catcher. While he only hit .262 for his career, he was about at a .280 AVG/.360 OBP/.485 SLG level at his peak. He played in eleven All-Star Games (winning the MVP award twice), and won three Gold Gloves. He had a great '86 World Series, driving in 9 runs, and went for .280 AVG, 4 HR, and 21 RBI in 30 postseason games overall. Everywhere you look, there is evidence of his greatness. Along with Bert Blyleven and Ron Santo (who's long since fallen off the BBWAA ballot), he's got a claim on being the best player in baseball history eligible but not yet elected to the Hall of Fame. Carter missed last year by eleven measly votes, but he should have been in several years ago.
Three other catchers are on this year's ballot: Darren Daulton, Mickey Tettleton, and Tony Pena. While all three have their merits, none of them stack up to being HOFers. Here's a chart, tossing Carter in as well:
AS is All-Star appearances, GG is Gold Gloves, WS is Win Shares, and Top 5 is Win Shares in a players best five consecutive seasons. Daulton and Tettleton were hitters first, catchers second. Both had low batting averages, but high OBPs and SLGs -- efficient but underrated offensive threats out of the Gene Tenace mold. In other words, sabermetric darlings. Each had some very good seasons, and Daulton at his best helped propel the Phillies to the '93 World Series, but neither had the longevity required of a HOF catcher. Peña is a horse of a different color, a defensive whiz who had a reputation as being one of the best handlers of a pitching staff. His offensive contributions are a thin gruel compared to the meaty chunks offered up by the other two. Does his D make up for it? Not via Win Shares, it doesn't. Pena's longer career and good glove doesn't offset Tettleton's value with the bat, and Tettleton isn't close to being a Hall of Famer.
Here's a look at the candidates using another measure: Baseball Prospectus Runs Above Replacement (BRAR is Batting Runs Above Replacement, FRAR is Fielding Runs Above Replacement, and RAR/162 boils it down to a per season rate with the batting/fielding breakdown in parentheses):
Carter is clearly at least one or two heads above the other three. He's the only one of the bunch who combined the offense/defense package (Daulton doesn't fare too badly, actually) and did it for much longer than the rest.
Though he's not on the ballot, a catching contemporary of Carter ought to be in the Hall as well: Ted Simmons. Here's a comparison of the two:
H HR RBI AVG OPB SLG AS GG HOFS HOFM WS Top 3 Top 5
Carter 2092 324 1225 .262 .335 .439 11 3 41.3 135.0 337 33,31,30 141
Simmons 2472 248 1389 .285 .348 .437 8 0 44.5 125.0 315 30,28,28 127
G BRAR FRAR RAR RAR/162
Carter 2296 514 649 1163 82.1 (36.3/45.8)
Simmons 2456 565 328 893 58.9 (37.3/21.6)
Simmons was a slightly better hitter than Carter, and for a longer time. He topped 20 HRs six times, 90 RBI eight times, and at his peak carried around a 900 OPS. His James numbers are right there with the Kid, and he's ranked 10th in the NBJHA among catchers. Older than Carter, he suffered in comparison with Bench, particularly on defense. That he played a good portion of his career as a DH (279 of his 2456 games) has more to do with his being a good enough hitter to keep in the lineup than it does with his being a lousy defensive catcher (though the DHing hurts his numbers in the RAR analysis). How does he compare to the other HOF catchers? Here's a chart, sorted by career RAR:
Props to blogger Bob Mong, who did this number-crunching over at Baseball Primer; I'm presenting it in slightly different form. This is a tough mix to grapple with, in part because it includes a couple of the Hall's more dubious selections in Ferrell (whom Veterans Committee voters apparently thought was his brother, pitcher Wes) and Bresnahan, whose candidacy was aided by him dying a few weeks before the election, garnering a swell of sympathy. We've got five legitimately great two-way catchers with long careers, two more every bit as great but with injury-shortened careers (Campy and Cochrane), a good-hit/no-field (Lombardi), a good-field/no-hit (Schalk), the dubious two (who end up pretty even with the one-way guys), and Josh Gibson, who's no help here.
There's a chasm between those top five (or seven) and the next tier, both in terms of career value and rate. Carter fits squarely in the top group, with the highest career value and tied for the third highest rate; in other words he's not only a Hall of Famer, but a Hall of Famer with a claim on being the all-time best at his position (I'm not saying he IS, just that he's up there). Somewhere in that chasm belong Simmons, Joe Torre at 905 and 66.4, and Bill Freehan at 796 and 72.7. That distinction is really a problem for another day. None of them are on the BBWAA ballot, but Carter is, and he gets my vote.
Before I delve into this, a few caveats. The Hall of Fame is a deeply flawed institution which has been particularly sullied by dubious choices on the part of the Veterans Committee, especially when it comes to the hitter-happy 1930s. So I'm not of the opinion that arguing that so-and-so was better than this or that dubious choice makes one a Hall of Famer. Having said that, my tastes in the Hall of Fame tend to run towards the inclusive, rather than the exclusive, especially among players whose careers I've seen. I'm not saying that's necessarily a good thing, but it is a bias of mine. Hand in hand with that bias, I tend to place more weight on career value than peak value -- I do think that longevity counts for something. Finally, my choices are guided by several tools invented by Bill James, but I don't promise any rigidly consistent methodology in the choices I've made.
Twenty men have won 300 games in the big leagues and every single one of them is in the Hall of Fame. On the career wins list, of the next group of 23 pitchers, going down to 249 wins, 13 are in, two (Maddux and Clemens) are mortal locks, and four are nineteenth-century freaks of nature whose pitching stats bespeak a much different ballgame. This leaves four pitchers from that group sitting outside the Hall. Three of them are fairly similar in terms of their basic career statistics and their careers overlap considerably: Bert Blyleven, Jim Kaat, and Tommy John. The fourth pitcher is Jack Morris.
Wins and losses you're familiar with. ERA+ is the ratio of the pitcher's ERA to a park-adjusted league average, multiplied by 100. A 100 denotes a league-average performance (adjusted for park), a 120 represents a performance 20 percent better than league average. HOFS is short for Hall of Fame Standards, a metric Bill James invented which awards points to players based on their career accomplishments ("One point for each 150 hits above 1500, limit 10," etc.). One hundred is the maximum score; 50 is an average Hall of Famer. HOFM is short for Hall of Fame Monitor, another Jamesian metric which attempts to assess how likely an active player is to make the Hall. Like the Standards system, it awards points based on accomplishments. A score of 100 means a good possiblity of enshrinement, a 130 is a lock. Baseball-reference.com computes scores in both of these systems for every player, and lists the criteria here.
The next four columns relate to Bill James's new metric, Win Shares, which he introduced a year ago in his New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract. I'm not about to go into detail here about Win Shares except to summarize that it boils down the value of a player's season (based on runs created or allowed, plus defense, and their context) to a simple integer. A score of 30 represents an MVP-candidate season. WS is the player's career total in Win Shares; the Top 3 are his top 3 seasons, the Top 5 is a total of his five best consecutive seasons, and the AVG is projected to 43 starts per season (a high total given all of these pitchers spent most of their careers in 5-man rotations).
Of Blyleven, John, and Kaat, none are overwhelming on the basis of their peaks; Kaat and John each had three 20-win seasons, Blyleven just one. But all had extremely long careers, John at 26 years, Kaat at 25, and Blyleven the baby of the bunch at 22. All of them come from a time period which is somewhat over-represented in the Hall; six 300-game winners (Carlton, Ryan, Sutton, Niekro, Perry, and Seaver), plus Hall of Famers Fergie Jenkins (285-226, 115 ERA+, seven 20-win seasons in an eight-year span), Jim Palmer (268-152, 125 ERA+, eight 20-win seasons in a nine-year span), and Catfish Hunter (224-166, 104 ERA+, five straight 20-win seasons). Those three all had longer (and higher) sustained peaks than these three, not to mention hardware in the shape of Cy Young Awards (three for Palmer, one each for Jenkins and Hunter), while our fair trio won none.
So these three are not clearly better than the bottom ranks of the enshrined from their era. But each of them has their additional merits which warrant consideration.
Blyleven ranks number five on the career strikeout list, having been passed by Roger Clemens in 2001 and Randy Johnson in 2002. He is also in the top 10 in shutouts (#9, with 60). He came up big in the postseason (5-1, 2.47 ERA , with World Series wins for champions Pittsburgh in '79 and Minnesota in '87). And his curveball had the reputation as being the best in the game. He spent most of his career with some mediocre (but not horrible) Minnesota and Cleveland teams, and rarely outperformed them by significant margins in the Won-Loss columns -- he was an inning-eating horse who stuck around for the decision most of the time. But his ERAs relative to the league were excellent, as was his consistency -- outperforming the league average by 15 percent or more (that is, an ERA+ of 115 or better) for the first nine years of his career and fourteen times overall. He won in double figures seventeen times, and won 17 or more games seven times. He is the best pitcher eligible for the Hall of Fame who isn't in yet. He gets my vote.
John was a much different type of pitcher than Blyleven -- a finesse pitcher who relied on ground balls rather than strikeouts and gave up more than his share of hits. A prototype, in fact, of certain breed of successful left-handers (Bill James calls them the Tommy John family of pitchers). He had a fairly concentrated peak, winning 80 games over a four-year span from 1977-80 and reaching the World Series three times. In the six-year span from 1977-1982, his teams made the postseason five times, and he was the best or second-best starter on his team (using Win Shares) in all but the last of those seasons, when the Angels acquired him late in the season. What's amazing is that span started when he was 34 years old and had overcome an unprecedented surgical elbow-reconstruction procedure which now bears his name. He did very well in the postseason (6-3, 2.65 ERA) and was subjected to one of the most questionable pitching moves in World Series history, being pinch-hit for in the fourth inning of a 1-1 Game 6 (at a time when his ERA on the series was 0.69). The next two Yankee relievers allowed seven runs in two innings, allowing Tommy Lasorda's Dodgers to finally best the Yanks in the Fall Classic. He had an ERA+ of 115 or better eleven times. He won in double digits 17 times. He's got a huge intangible hanging beside his name. His case isn't as strong as Blyleven's, but it's strong enough to get my vote.
Kaat was a remarkably consistent performer for the Minnesota Twins for a 12-year span, a teammate of Blyleven's for the better part of four seasons (their 1970 division-winning rotation also included Jim Perry and Luis Tiant -- a foursome with at least 215 career wins apiece). Had the Cy Young Award been given in both leagues instead of just one overall, he likely would have won in 1966, when he went 25-13, 2.75 ERA, and he would have been in the mix in '65, with an 18-11, 2.83 for a pennant-winner. Until David Cone won 20 games in 1998, Kaat held the record for the longest drought between 20-win seasons (eight years). He won in double digits 15 times (he lost in double-digits 16 times), won 17+ games six times, but had a 115 ERA+ or better only six times. A lefty, he tacked on a successful second career as a middle reliever, which enabled him to set a record for the longest gap between World Series appearances (1965-1982). Oh, and he also won 16 straight Gold Gloves, though a look at his raw fielding stats suggests several somebodys weren't paying attention--five times in that span his Fielding Percentage was below .930, though his range factors were always 50-100 percent higher than the league average at the position.
I've voted for Kaat before in the Internet Baseball Hall of Fame balloting, and advocated him elsewhere. And from the hundreds of games I've watched that he's been doing color commentary for the Yankees, I think he's a helluva guy. But the more I examine his case, the more I'm convinced he falls behind Blyleven (which is obvious) and John (which is less so). What separates John from Kaat, in my mind, is that John's peaks elevated his teams to the postseason, and Kaat's did not. Kitty's teams made it twice while he was a starter, but they weren't close to being his best seasons. In his best seasons with the Twins (1962 & 1966), they were second in the American League, but several games out of first. In his best seasons with the White Sox (1974 & 1975), they were at best a .500 club. It's bad luck and bad timing, but it does count for something in this hair-splitting contest. So, out.
Morris had a shorter career than that trio ("only" 18 years), but his peaks were fairly high. He was the de facto ace on three World Champions(the '84 Tigers, the '91 Twins, and the '92 Blue Jays), and he put up some stellar performances in the postseason (7-4, 3.80), most notably a 10-inning 1-0 complete game in Game 7 of the '91 Series -- a performance which, in my mind, rates as high as any no-hitter I ever saw (and as a matter of fact, I did watch Morris's no-no, on April 7, 1984 against the White Sox). He won 20 or more games 3 times, topped 17 victories eight times, and was in double-digits 14 times. He had an ERA+ of 115 or better seven times. And unlike the above three pitchers, he had a very clearly identifiable peak in terms of W-L and ERA+ that lasted awhile. From 1983-87 he was 94-54 with an ERA+ of 120. But... Morris's career ERA and ERA+ are nothing to write home about, and they especially took a hit during the last two years of his career, raising his overall ERA from 3.73 to 3.90. And he got tagged pretty hard in the 1992 postseason, though the Jays won it all.
Prior to last season's exercise, I could see voting for Morris, and I have argued vehemently in his favor in the past. Guys who win 254 games in their career don't grow on trees (after Clemens and Maddux, who've surpassed that mark, the next closest active players are Tom Glavine at 242 and Randy Johnson at 224). He's not a horrible choice, though his raw ERA would be the highest of any Hall of Famer -- higher than Burleigh Grimes (3.53 ERA, 107 ERA+), Waite Hoyt (3.59 ERA, 111 ERA+), Herb Pennock (3.60 ERA, 106 ERA+), Jess Haines (3.64 ERA, 108 ERA+), Ted Lyons (3.67 ERA, 118 ERA+), Red Ruffing (3.80 ERA, 109 ERA+). With the exception of Grimes and Ruffing, those guys don't do very well on James's older metrics -- in the low 30s on the HOFS and the 70s or lower on the HOFM (which is NOT to say that those were bad pitchers).
What swayed me against Morris was examining his Win Shares pattern (which I didn't have at this time last year). The seasons where he looks big by traditional measures (wins, mainly) don't make as big a dent as far as Win Shares. He earned only 14 WS for the '84 Tigers (behind Dan Petry's 16), only 18 for the '91 Twins (behind Kevin Tapani's 21 and tied with Scott Erickson), and only 15 for the '92 Jays (behind Juan Guzman's 16). The main reason Win Shares penalizes him is the same reason his candidacy otherwise sticks out awkwardly; it's the runs, stupid. His ERA+ in those three seasons is only 112; nothing to be ashamed of, just not particularly impressive if you're trying to make a case for him carrying a team to victory. It's simply tough to make a case for him as an elite pitcher with the high ERA. I'm going to pass on him as a candidate for now.
There are a handful of other starting pitchers on the ballot -- Sid Fernandez, Danny Jackson, Darryl Kile (RIP), and Fernando Valenzuela -- but none have a shot at being elected. Fernando is the only one who's got a case (his phenomenal 1981 season and his role at bringing Latino fans to the game are his two prime qualifications), and Eric Enders does a good job over at Baseball Primer of making it via the Keltner Test. I wish Fernando had enough juice, but a 173-153 record and a 103 ERA+ doesn't cut it in Cooperstown by any standard.
I was going to squeeze relief pitchers into this piece, but I decided it needed a bit more homework than just a quick revision of last year's analysis. So that will come in a later installment (greaaaat, another open-ended series for me to keep up with). Back soon.
