Jesus, Pedro's 7 year peak from 1997 to 2003: 118-36 (again, .766 WP), with a 2.20 ERA, 11 shutouts, 1,761 Ks vs 315 BB in 1,408 IP. He allowed 6.4 hits per 9 IP, and compiled a 0.940 WHIP.

He won 3 Cy Young Awards (he also finished second in the Cy Young twice, and third once. He wasn't in the top 3 only once, because he only started 18 games in 2001), led his league in ERA five times (once in the NL when he played for Montreal, the others in Boston).

Greg Maddux, in his 7 year peak from 1992 to 1998: 127-53 (.706 WP), with a 2.15 ERA, 19 shutouts, 1,286 Ks vs 269 BB in 1,675 IP. He allowed 7.3 hits per 9 IP, and compiled a 0.968 WHIP. That 1.4 BB per 9 IP is just too good.

And Greg won 4 consecutive Cy Youngs.

Can Greg Maddux be a top tier Hall of Famer now? 355-27 career (.610 WP), 3.16 ERA, 35 shutouts, 3,371 Ks against 999 BB in 5,008.1 IP.

4 Cy Youngs, 18 Gold Glove Awards. He's eighth all-time in wins. He never struck out 200 hitters in a season. He did it with control.

Please tell me these guys are top tier.

I look at it the other way and think what would this country be like if men like Bob Feller and Ted Williams didn't serve in our military.

+1, and much to Feller's credit, he was the first MLB player to enlist after Pearl Harbor.

Devil's advocate question for those who give Feller 300+ wins due to loss of time while in the military.

Could you not argue he may have blown his arm out, pitching all those innings and they were long innings, lots of walks and strikeouts in there, and that the 4 years off saved his career from gross overuse?

But as for impact on the game, he was a huge legend at the time, throwing 100 mph, 17 years old and in the majors, strikeout titles and all, etc... and had a great career. He was always disappointed he never won a game in the 48 World Series.

Tip Tier Hall of Famers
 

FYI, my strong opinion is that Tom Seaver, Bob Gibson, Randy Johnson, Greg Maddux, and Pedro Martinez are ALL superior pitchers to Bob Feller and their statistics support that notion. You might also want to make an argument for Roger Clemens if it was truly determined when he started using performance enhancing drugs. Bill James always stated Tom Seaver may be the greatest post-war pitcher of them all and his incredible 2.62 ERA over his first 15 CONSECUTIVE 15 seasons (1967 - '81) stakes a claim to that notion (2.86 overall with 4,700+ innings pitched). NO pitcher can boast such a low ERA over that consecutive span of time averaging 230 innings pitched per season after 1920....an absolutely amazing statistic for a starting pitcher.

Joe T.

If you consider Ruth a top tier player, than yes you would have to consider a guy who struck out more than anyone a top tier player:

Strikeouts
1918 AL 58 (1st)
1919 AL 58 (2nd)
1920 AL 80 (2nd)
1921 AL 81 (2nd)
1922 AL 80 (2nd)
1923 AL 93 (1st)
1924 AL 81 (1st)
1925 AL 68 (2nd)
1926 AL 76 (2nd)
1927 AL 89 (1st)
1928 AL 87 (1st)
1929 AL 60 (4th)
1930 AL 61 (5th)
1932 AL 62 (9th)
1933 AL 90 (2nd)
1934 AL 63 (9th)
Career 1,330 (106th)

As far as Feller, I find myself going back and forth. The main point for yes for me is that he out ranks Christy Mathewson and a single poing behind Cy Young on the Black Ink test. He was simply the best in his era of playing and he very well would have lead more stats if he wasn't in the War as other's proposed, but there is no way to know so we only go off what we know. Even with that though it is enough to show he was just the best of his time.

Again, it comes back to the definition of top tier. Feller: top 5, no, top 15, yes.

+1

Same could be said for Spahn, Carlton, Seaver. Totally depends on how you define top tier. If he comes back from his injury and has a few more Cy Young type years, you could add Kershaw to the list as well.

A number of thoughts:

--I cannot judge a player on "what could have been had he not..."; simply opens too many cans of worms. Satchel Paige wasn't allowed to pitch in the Majors until he was about 41 years old. Martin DiHigo, Cool Papa Bell, Josh Gibson...and so on. Feller lost several years to the war but as is pointed out above he could have wrecked his arm, been killed in a car crash, etc.

--I do not divide HOFers into tiers as finely as others. I only ask myself whether or not I would have voted for him. I'd guesstimate that there are probably 25% of the HOF that I would not have voted to admit, mostly the Veterans' Committee selections from the worst cronyism period. A lot of the admits then were just very good players who were friends with the committee members.

--I'm not a big fan of the logic that runs "Player X is in, Player Z has similar career stats, so Player Z = Player X." There's more to it than that. Joe Morgan and Lou Whitaker may have had similar overall career stats but that run Morgan had from 1972-1977 is one of the great performances of the postwar era no matter how you slice the statistics. I ask whether a player was among the very best and for how long.

--When I think about pitchers I tend to focus even more on dominance than consistency/longevity than I do for a position player. Different duties and way different risks. Don Drysdale's WAR for pitchers is 52nd, Koufax is 82nd. If you have the World Series on the line, who would you start? I'd probably vote yes for Dizzy Dean for the Hall because he had that run of 6 dominant years where he was one of the three best pitchers in the game.

--All of which leads me to select the tippy top pitchers as a combination of dominance and consistency/longevity. I voted "yes" for Feller because he was pretty much the best pitcher in the game for seven years [38-41, 46-48]. The balance of his career was learning the ropes followed by being varying degrees of dangerous but not dominant. A run like that means a heck of a lot more to me than padding stats with mediocre seasons at the end.