quote:
Originally posted by RJM:
"If stats are elevated by playing for winners there are a lot of players who need to be tossed out of the Hall of Fame."
That's not what I said. I said that pitcher "wins" are more a measurement of team success than individual success, and that there are much better measures of individual success out there. Yes, there are many players in the HoF who played with other great players. Whether they deserve to be "tossed out" or not shouldn't be measured by whether they played with other great players, but by whether statistics designed to measure individual success rather than team success show they deserve enshrinement.
I am trying to address that question, and I think if you look at the stats objectively, Morris comes up a bit short.
You, on the other hand, are trying to avoid that question, make my argument into something it is not so you can set up a straw man ("if it is somehow a negative to play with other great players, then a lot of guys need to be tossed out") that you can easily knock down. That's not that hard to do, and certainly a lot easier than addressing my argument on the merits, which is what I did with yours.
quote:
"Morris won 254 games. Viola won 176. Guidry won 170. Winning games has been the #1 criteria for pitchers entering the HOF. Morris has 254."
Again, you are not addressing my point, which was to refute that Morris was the best pitcher over a ten-year period, by showing how meaningless that can be, as two other guys who were the winningest pitchers in a decade within Morris' career (but by chance not having begun with a year ending in "0" and ending with a year ending with "9") - guys who nobody is suggesting are good or even marginal Hall of Fame candidates - were just as good as Morris was. That was designed to refute your argument that since Morris won the most games from 1980-89, therefore he was "the best pitcher of his era," and therefore he deserves enshrinement. But obviously, it isn't as simple as that.
Well, you say that's because Morris won 254 games, and these other guys are 25-30 wins short of 200. OK. So it is about wins and only wins, then?
Jamie Moyer has 267 wins. Moyer has a slightly worse (4.24 to 3.90) career ERA, though he played in more of a hitter's era, and when adjusted for league, era, and ballpark (ERA+), Morris and Moyer are very similar - Morris with a career 105 ERA+ (5% better than league average) and Moyer with a career 104 ERA+. Morris has a slightly better career winning percentage (.577 to .567), but not enough of a difference to be
hugely significant. Moyer has a little less than an average season's worth more innings pitched (4020.1 to 3284.0, 196.1 IP), which pretty nicely accounts for the 13 more wins he accumulated, since on average he won 14 games per a 162-game seasonal average in which Moyer typically pitched 208 innings.
But Moyer has a lot more career WAR (baseball-reference version) than Morris does - 47.3 to 39.3 - and if you want to look at their performance during peak years with the teams they are most known for, Moyer was better then, too: 32.4 WAR over 11 seasons and 2093 IP with the Mariners for Moyer, versus 34.5 WAR over 14 seasons and 3042 IP for Morris with the Tigers.
Here are each of Morris' and Moyer's 10 best seasons, as judged by WAR, best to worst:
MOYER MORRIS
5.7<===5.1
5.3<===4.9
5.2<===4.8
3.9===>4.7
3.7===>4.1
3.3===>3.4
3.1===>3.4
3.0====3.0
2.7===>2.8
2.6<===2.3
TOTAL TOTAL
38.5===38.5
That's right, in their ten best years, Moyer was a fair bit better in his three best, with Morris having a bit of an edge with better consistency in the middle,
but overall, they were dead even over their ten best years. That seems to be true whether you look at "old school" things like wins and winning percentage, or "new school" things like WAR and ERA+.
Compare Moyer and Morris here.
Is Jamie Moyer a Hall of Famer?quote:
"There are 28 HOF starting pitchers with less wins."
So? Wins are a poor stat to judge pitching excellence by, and the "Player X should be in the Hall of Fame because he is better than the bottom 10% or 20% of the Hall" argument is a pretty poor one, IMO.
How many Hall of Fame pitchers are there with a worse ERA than Morris' 3.90?
None. Among all pitchers who've pitched at least 1000 innings career, Morris' ERA ranks 738th. The highest ERA among Hall of Fame pitchers is Herb Pennock's (#500 on the list) at 3.598. Morris would be the highest, by a longshot.
Even if you want to look at newer stats, like ERA+ (to account for differences in era, league, and even ballparks), or WAR, it doesn't really help Morris' cause. Morris' career 105 ERA+
ranks 479th (where he is tied with 50+ other pitchers). Only one Hall of Famer ranks lower - Rube Marquard, at 103. It gets
a little better when you look at WAR, where Morris
ranks 141st at 39.3. However, the closest Hall of Famers to him are either relievers (Goose Gossage, above him at 40.0, and Bruce Sutter and Rollie Fingers below) or widely considered to be the bottom-of-the-barrel, worst pitching selections in the history of the Hall (Chief Bender, Burleigh Grimes, Herb Pennock, Catfish Hunter, Monte Ward).
There really is no way around it: Jack Morris has a very poor statistical case for the Hall of Fame, and if he were inducted, he would rank among the very worst pitchers in the Hall in nearly all of the most widely-accepted statistical measures of pitching excellence. Except maybe wins, which does more to explain why wins is a poor stat to judge a pitcher's candidacy by than anything I could ever say. Winning games may have traditionally been "the #1 criteria for pitchers entering the HOF," but that doesn't mean that it should ALWAYS be the #1 criteria, or even that it is a good or worthwhile criteria.
Like I said, it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world if Jack Morris was elected to the Hall. There are just more deserving candidates who should probably get there first.
