RIP Luis Tiant
 

"I think I deserve to be in Cooperstown, but I have something to say to those who elect me. If you don't take me in life, don't try to elect me after I die, please," Tiant told....

IMO, He should have been in.


Have another 'Havana', Luis. You're pitching in good company tonight.


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In my opinion he certainly should be. Respectable amount of Wins and WAR. RIP to a great pitcher and a larger than life character.

I respect his sentiment. May he RIP.

Same wish Minnie Minoso told them but they put him in anyways. :(

I would call him borderline but with the dramatic lowering of standards for hitters, he should have been in. And yeah, eventually he will be in.

WAR
Tiant 66.1
Morris 43.5
Hunter 40.9

WTF.

It's a fun group of pitchers to explore, the Luis Tiant type. This period had a number of hurlers who finished with a win count in the low 200's, innings in the 3.2-3.8K range inning counts, and above league ERA's but not that far above the league, with very mixed HOF results for very similar pitchers in definable performance.


Drysdale - 209-166, 3,432 IP, 121 ERA+ - 67.1 WAR
Pierce - 211-169, 3,306 IP, 119 ERA+ - 53.2 WAR
Bunning - 224-184, 3,760 IP, 115 ERA+- 59.5 WAR
Tiant - 229-172, 3,486 IP, 114 ERA+ - 66.1 WAR
Koosman - 222-109, 3,839 IP, 110 ERA+ - 53.6 WAR
Pappas - 209-164, 3,186 IP, 110 ERA+ - 43.7 WAR
Blue - 209-161, 3,343 IP, 108 ERA+ - 45.1 WAR
Jim Perry - 215-174, 3,285 IP, 106 ERA+ - 41.6 WAR
Catfish - 224-166, 3,449 IP, 104 ERA+ - 40.9 WAR
Lolich - 217-191, 3,638 IP, 104 ERA+ - 48 WAR

3 are in, 7 are not in. WAR gives wildly different values, even though they all played fairly close together in history, through comparable inning counts, and were similarly effective at run prevention (with Drysdale being markedly better than the bulk). It is my bias that the measure of a pitcher is not this fantasy calculation with numerous weightings comparing to a fictional bar of comparison that does not actually exist, but rather a measure of their effectiveness at not giving up earned runs in context of time and place and for how long they did this.

Drysdale is in because he's a little too good for this 'type' - his ERA+ is over 120, and his raw ERA that voters actually would have used looks even better than that because he was a Dodger. Catfish is in on his 5 20 win stretch, a peak performance election from a period that liked wins and didn't use ERA+ - his raw ERA looks better than 104+. Bunning also achieved post baseball fame that I'm sure didn't directly get votes but having your name out there more makes it more likely you'll end up floating to the top. He also hurled more innings than his similar pitchers here except for Koosman.

Tiant anecdotally seems to be a generally more popular candidate than the others outside, and Pappas and Perry are never brought up even though they are difficult to distinguish in effectiveness from the others. I would probably pick Pierce foremost among the guys not in, he was a bit more effective at not giving up runs. Lolich is worse than the rest.

I think it would be very reasonable to argue that when you have clusters of numbers guys with very, very similar performances that this is the reasonable barrier line for separating the HOF from a hall of very good. However, Cooperstown has generally slipped below this line for awhile now. None of these guys would really be bad choices or lower the standard, but the narratives around them are very different. Where precisely and exactly one draws the line when you have these clusters of extremely similar overall performance is a fun game.

Tiant not getting in during his lifetime, like Minoso not getting in during his lifetime, is a shame.

I think if you lead the League in ERA twice, have a 60+ WAR, and pitch well in the postseason (small sample size, but Tiant was 3-0 with a 2.86 ERA, including 2 Word Series wins) then you should be in.

I do think Billy Pierce should also get more consideration, but his 53 WAR is nothing to write home about.

Lots of good analysis...thanks for sharing that.

I few years ago (if memory serves), I posted my hope that Three Cubans got in while they were still around.

Sadly, of those three, only Tony Oliva got to enjoy it.


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60 to 65 WAR seems to be the spot where becoming a Hall of Famer significantly increases.