OT - I need a few opinions from baseball fans

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Posted By: Anonymous

The best comment may be...if you have to write a number of paragraphs justifying someone's inclusion, he doesn't belong.

Keep in mind, with the Wins - Mussina pitched 18 seasons, half for Baltimore during their more recent glory years, rarely finishing (as a team) below .500 when he was there. The Yankees have been to every postseason since he joined. Just like Whitey Ford - is it any suprise he has 100+ more Ws than Ls?

It was mentioned he got the short end of the stick - the guy won 19 games in '96 with a 4.81 ERA, and 11 games last year with a 5.15 ERA (only starting 28). He finished above 4th ONCE in Cy Young voting, a year (1999) that Pedro blew him away. In 18 seasons, he's received a grand total of 3 first place vots for the award - and every year there are 28 votes!

Don't get me wrong, the Cy Young awards are littered with players who haven't come close to the career value of Moose. Just since he's been pitching, the AL award has been won eight times by HOFers (Clemens x4, Pedro x2, RJ, Eck), but also three times by players with careers inferior to Moose (Blackjack McDowell, Cone, and Hentgen) - the last few winners are still too early to call. Note that Nolan Ryan never won a Cy Young award. But the bottom line is, Mussina has been "very good" at times, but never great, for some periods.

It is interesting to note his similarity scores do put him on the borderline for HOF induction, with half the players in, and the other half "good but not quite"

Juan Marichal (907) *
Curt Schilling (888)
Kevin Brown (885)
David Wells (884)
Carl Hubbell (864) *
Clark Griffith (863) *
Bob Welch (856)
Charlie Buffinton (850)
Catfish Hunter (849) *
Joe McGinnity (848) *

Mussina has the most wins, but the second worst ERA. Are there worst pitchers in the Hall? Yes. Is that a compelling argument? No.

Edit: Spelling.