i still think there should be a hall of fame within the hall of fame..

like first ballot's versus the other guys

I'd say he won a lot more in year 2 - like 10 more wins maybe. My explanation: I looked it up.

Yes, Morris is borderline at best, but you can use statistics to prove just about anything. Just ask my kids why it's statistically in my best interest to pay 25 grand a year for each of them to go to the University of Michigan vs. a college that costs less than half that. :D

For all the talk of the HOF being watered down, there have been only 222 players (excludes managers, Negro leaguers, and pioneers) out of approximately 19,000 historical MLB players over 148 years, or like 1%, that have made it. To me, that is pretty exclusive.

Deserved The Hall
 

I had the pleasure of covering the Tigers during the careers of Trammell and Morris. Trammell, in my mind, was a Hall of Famer... as was Lou Whitaker, who I think will eventually get in. I'm told that what put Morris over the top Sunday was the fact he was the winningest pitcher of the 1980s and won three World Series rings. I agree that Ted Simmons and Dale Murphy should get in. But my biggest beef with the Hall of Fame is that Marvin Miller hasn't gotten in.

Gah! Forgot to say not to cheat!!

All Hall of Fames have the same problems. If you compare the top to the rest, the rest don't stand up. In music, you have Elvis , The Beatles and a few others,all the rest are a joke .

+1

This is the Baseball HOF and wins do matter to baseball players. This isn't the writers HOF or the Analytics HOF. Is a person a great baseball player or not?

When a starting pitcher does his job his team more than likely wins. Especially in the 80's when starters lasted more than 6 innings.

Of the hundreds of games I have started pitching in my lifetime, including college and current Federation league, I can probably count on one hand the number of losses I have taken that were not my fault. If I lose 1-0 then I shouldn't have given up that one run. Some people believe the team should have scored more, but that is not the mindset of a good starting pitcher or baseball players. All the analytics say it was a great start, but baseball players don't care....it wasn't a WIN.

Does that make a pitcher on a playoff team who wins 18 games with an ERA of 4.86 and WHIP of 1.44 a better pitcher than the guy who played for a 70 win team who went 11-13 with an ERA of 2.77 and a WHIP of 1.14?

Sounds like it does.

Yes...absolutely!

The guy who only won 11 games shouldn't have given up the runs in the situations he did or else he probably would have more wins.

Stats cannot paint an accurate or true picture on how runs were given up. The person with the higher ERA might have given up runs late in games that were already decided. He might have gotten roughed up on a day or two his arm was on fire. ERA doesn't factor in the guy who eats up innings, but gives his team a chance to win every time he takes the ball.

As a coach I take winners over stats guys all day every day. I've had players and teammates who rack up stats but choke in big situations or big games and cost us wins. They can't make the game winning shot or get the big out when it really matters the most. Players and coaches want to be around winners not stats guys.

That makes very little practical sense. Everyone knows you have to score more runs than the other team to win a game. A pitcher who is going to give up less runs, i.e. has a low ERA, is going to put his team in a better situation to win. A guy with a higher ERA means his team has to score more runs to win the games he pitches.

ERA tells the number of runs but not when they were given up. Not every run affects the outcome of the game the same. If we accept the idea that some people fold under pressure and others rise to the occasion, 2 people won’t the same ERA may be diifferent in how likely their team is to win.

A stat calculating win probability and the pitchers impact on it each time they give up a run could he’d light. I assume this exists somewhere...

So in 1908 you would take 21 year old Nick Maddox over 20 year old Walter Johnson then? Maddox won 23 games. Johnson just 14. Maddox was the better pitcher. Correct?

Stats in baseball are only indicators of expected outcomes. Too many other variables go into wins and losses.

Yeah. There's a stat for that.

Win Probability Added (WPA) captures the change in Win Expectancy from one plate appearance to the next and credits or debits the player based on how much their action increased their team’s odds of winning. Most sabermetric statistics are context neutral — they do not consider the situation of a particular event or how some plays are more crucial to a win than others. While wOBA rates all home runs as equal, we know intuitively that a home run in the third inning of a blowout is less important to that win than a home run in the bottom of the ninth inning of a close game. WPA captures this difference.

ERA is independent of a win or a loss. It looks like Baseball Reference has a stat called Win / Loss percentage with an Average Team too. Jack Morris' percentage for his career was 517, which meant he had just over a 50/50 chance of winning any game for any team over his entire career. That doesn't seem great. For comparison, Mike Mussina has a 590. Dave Stieb's percentage is 570.

Not surprisingly, Jack Morris' WPA isn't anything special, much like the rest of his body of work. Thus disproving the notion that "he only gave up runs late in games that were blowouts" or "he gave up most of his runs in games where his team scored a lot of runs anyway".

Nope.

WPA values for the players from my list whom I said were better pitchers than Jack Morris:

Mike Mussina 37.67
Kevin Brown 31.63
Bret Saberhagen 25.62
Kevin Appier 23.13
David Cone 23.03
Jimmy Key 22.34
David Wells 20.60
Dwight Gooden 20.19
Dave Stieb 20.11
Frank Viola 17.16
Steve Finley 16.84
Rick Reuschel 15.23
Jack Morris 14.08
Kenny Rogers 11.79
Mark Langston 11.73
Bob Welch 10.31
Frank Tanana 10.07

So Morris is anywhere from somewhat below to way below most of the players on my list when the context of play by play comes into frame.

Still not a Hall Of Famer by any stretch.

For 1908, this is a no-brainer. You take the 23 wins.

This is awesome! I just got a T206 Maddox (rubs hands together, laughs maniacally, and waits for value of the newly purchased Maddox card to exceed the big train...)

Robinson Cano will end up being one of the best 2nd in the game when he retires. He'll probably be a first ballot HOF.

He should be but I think he'll have the same trouble Vlad is. People will see him a tweener because he won't have any one benchmark.

.

So if you have those two pitchers switch teams what happens to the win totals of the pitchers?

Tom C

It seems we sometimes lose sight of just how good Cano is from an historical perspective.

Tom C

I have always thought the number of Hall of Famers was way too high and should be a much more exclusive club. It does get very complicated because you hear a lot of people talk about stats. Stats definitely are one of the primary ways of measuring worthiness, but don’t measure everything.

Maddox wins 2 games less than he did for his original team because he started fewer games. Being so close to his hometown in Maryland, Nick would meet up with his old school chums and carouse, often being in no condition to take his turn on the Boundary Field mound.

Johnson wins four games then gets hit in the left orbital bone by a comebacker in the 7th inning of a game in mid-May. Walter battles blindness and chronic headaches for much of the rest of his life and never pitches again. But Pittsburg was ahead at the time of the accident and the team was able to finish out the win, so 5 wins.

Ouch. That's a very Piratey outcome by the way. They have WaJo in the fold and he never gets a chance to become WaJo.

We obviously are not going to agree about metrics in regards to Morris being HOF worthy, which is ok. Tell me this...as a hitter, who would you least like to face from your list? Take all numbers out of the equation...as a baseball player who would be the toughest pitcher to face? Give me your top 3.

Mine would be:
Doc Gooden
Frank Tanana (in his prime)
Jack Morris

Pete Rose or Denny McClain I guess it pays to be a prim and proper citizen.

At the top of their game?

Gooden
Cone
Saberhagen
Mussina
Brown
Stieb
Key
Morris

Tanana before his arm fell off would have to be in there as well.

Tom C

Gooden's the only one who was outrageously good for more than a year (and not by much even in his case), so I'd put him first, then Mussina. Everybody else just seems like a regular good pitcher, no one to be particularly anxious about. I'd have Dave Stewart and Dennis Martinez and a dozen other guys like that in the same group, except that a few of them (e.g., Reuschel) sustained that level for long enough that I think they belong in the Hall. Not Jack though. He wasn't the best pitcher of his generation or his time-frame or whatever any more than Dave Stieb was.

I just found this (text copied below) in an Excel file I created several years ago. I knew I had done something like this at some point but couldn't remember where I'd left it. Anyway, here it is. I'm sure we'll all agree, and there will be no further discussion.


Pitchers better than Jack Morris but not in the Hall
Roger Clemens
Mike Mussina
Jim McCormick
Curt Schilling
Bob Caruthers
Kevin Brown
Charlie Buffinton
Tommy Bond
Rick Reuschel
Roy Halladay
Urban Shocker
Noodles Hahn
Tony Mullane
Luis Tiant
Dave Stieb
Ron Guidry
Frank Tanana
Mel Stottlemyre
Steve Rogers
Tommy John
Larry Jackson
Jerry Koosman
Johan Santana
Bobby Mathews

Kevin Brown was flat out filthy in terms of the quality of his pitches and the outcomes he generated. From 1995-2001 he was unreal. 102-54 1.07 WHIP 2.65 ERA 158 ERA+. At the height of the steroid era. The ball moved around like a whiffle ball every time it left his hand.

Cone was really nasty as well. Not as dominant as Brown but certainly moreso than Morris.

Saberhagen never sustained excellence but never had an ERA+ below 100 in any year where he made 10+ starts. He seemed to alternate ERA+ years of 150 with a 102 then a 110 then a 180. But at his best he was wicked.

Well, All Star voting should be something for later in the discussion about determining a player's Hall worthiness, not a baseline for their election. Lots of good players get excluded because they play for teams with smaller voting bases. Likewise, many players get voted in when they don't deserve it based on their reputation and past performance. Robin Yount was only an All Star three times. We're talking about arguably one of the five best shortstops to ever play the game. If he doesn't blow out his shoulder in 1984, there's no argument to even be made that he's not top five. I watched him in his prime, in person, and the guy was a spectacular. Between 1980 and 1984, he was worth 32.0 oWAR, and 7.6 dWAR, and that's with 53 games not played in 1981 because of the player strike. He didn't even get voted to the game in 1989 when he was the American League MVP for the second time--as a center fielder.

I think Trammel deserves it. Absolutely. And, I think Lou Whitaker deserved it long before Jack Morris. I'm sorry, dominant pitcher of his era? A near 4.00 career ERA in an era when scoring was down doesn't cut it for me.

Ted Simmons deserves to be in the Hall. He's a second-tier Hall catcher, in my opinion. My thoughts on his worthiness are summarized here

Dale Murphy? Great player, and in his prime he was one of the elites of the game. I think his later career kills his Hall chances. After 1987, his age 31 year, his career tanked. Still, back-to-back MVP Awards, five Gold Gloves (metrics show these can be debated, however), and four Silver Sluggers warrant consideration. Had a pretty good 1980 season (33 HR, 135 OPS +), and then after a down 1981, Murphy went on a tear. '82-'87, he had a 145 OPS +, scored 660 runs, hit 218 home runs, drove in 629 runs, stole 105 bases, and walked 542 times. Compare that to Mike Schmidt's production at the same time. 216 home runs, and a 152 OPS +.

A 46.2 career WAR is going to hurt Murphy. But how accurate are his defensive metrics? As has been referenced above, I'm finding some inconsistencies in historical dWAR metrics. You're going to tell me that Roberto Clemente in right field was only worth 12.1 dWAR for his eighteen year career, one with twelve Gold Gloves? I think not.

Interesting discussion, guys.

HOF - Morris
 

I am good with Morris getting in.... He had longevity at a high level with respect to his peer group in his era.

Multiple year All-Star Pitcher with 175 Complete Games (WOW!), Three 20 Win Seasons, Over 250 Wins, 4 World Series Pitched in, and 1 World Series MVP (10 Shutout innings in Game 7).

Pretty stellar to me. The 175 CG is incredible.

Good enough for 180th place on the career leaders list. Zowie!

He only led the league in complete games once, which means other pitchers were more incredible every year except one.

And since 1979, Morris is number 1. Second is Roger Clemens at 118. So, no other pitchers were any where close to Morris as a pitcher able to finish what he started in the current era.

What is outrageously good? Saberhagen won 2 Cy Young's and finished 3rd in another year during the "Jack Morris Era".

Not saying Sabs is a hall of famer but I don't take a lot of stock in this claim. He was the one I could easily think of off the top of my head.

I hope you meant Chuck Finley and not Steve Finley in this analysis...although Steve did pitch one inning in his career, and it happened to be for the World Series champion Arizona Diamondbacks in 2001. Perhaps that warrants a 16.84 WPA??

Having the best pitched season of anyone in the past 100 years. That is outrageously good. If you have a better adverb I'm all ears, but he was historically great at the start of his career, covering a span of 80 starts or so. Bret Saberhagen, who was my favorite pitcher at the time, was quite good but had nothing close to Gooden's peak.

Speaking of defensive WAR, Keith Hernandez had a 0.6 lifetime defensive WAR! Therefore, since I watched him for most of the 1980's and know how he impacted games with his defense, I can definitely conclude that defensive WAR is a VERY inaccurate measurement. Anyone who is considering revising their opinion of a player's value based on dWAR should proceed with caution.

I made the same point about Mattingly in another thread. He has 9 gold gloves, was universally thought of as an elite defender, and he has a negative dWAR for his career.

The problem is that they adjust for position. Also, for current players it is calculated differently than for older players. So, when you compare Hernandez to other first basemen from his time frame, it holds up better. You can't compare him to a shortstop like Alan Trammell.