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12 Dec 2008 |
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Although I am still not quite sure whether Gabe's last article argued that Mussina shouldn't, as opposed to wouldn't, make the HOF, I am on the "should" side of the debate, as heard during the Roundtable show on Tuesday. I will never get into an argument as to whether a player will be voted into the HOF or receive some end of season award, because we know how ignorant the voters are so it seems kind of pointless to try to guess what they are thinking. I'd rather argue who should get voted in or win an award, so that's all I'm going to talk about here. Mike Mussina, on his own merits, should be voted into the HOF. I'm not going to argue whether he's a first ballot Hall of Famer, 2nd, 8th, or a veterans' committee inductee, nor will I be comparing him to others who haven't made it into the Hall like Jack Morris, who with a career 105 ERA+ has no business even being mentioned in the same breath as "Hall of Fame". Judging by Gabe's article, it appears that most of the arguments against Mussina are based on stories and team-dependent statistics. I don't care how many wins Mussina had (or the fact he just enjoyed his 1st 20-win season, whoopee), I don't care whether he was lucky enough to play on a team that surrounded him with other good players that took him into the playoffs or World Series, and I am not at all interested in whether or not he caused batters to shake in fear at the thought of facing him. What I do care about however in discussing Mussina's candidacy is what he accomplished on the field. Let's take a look at some meaningful career statistics, with career rank in parentheses: 123 ERA+ (85th) I admit it, the above statistics do not show an absolutely dominating, elite pitcher. However, we all know that you don't have to perform at that level to get into the Hall. Mussina's career statistics would place him toward the bottom rung of HOF pitchers, but they are still good enough to get him in. If you want to compare him to current members of the Hall using previous voting patterns, we could consult the 4 Bill James tests to get an idea of how likely Mussina is to actually get voted in. Although this isn't what I'm interested in, it does help to directly compare his stats with other HOFers. Black Ink: Pitching - 15 (141) (Average HOFer ≈ 40) He passes 3 of the 4 tests fairly easily, with only the Black Ink test coming up significantly short. This is primarily because as I discussed above, Mussina was never the best pitcher in baseball, so he didn't lead the league in many categories that the Blank Ink test requires to award points. I think the bottom line with Mussina is that he was a very good pitcher, not a great one, and pitching in the American League for his entire career inflated his ERA to 3.68 which doesn't typically make one shout "Hall of Famer!". Many think that the Hall shouldn't be for just very good players, and I would probably agree, but unfortunately that's just the way it is. When guys like Red Ruffing (109 ERA+), Jesse Haines (108 ERA+), Waite Hoyt (111 ERA+), and Herb Pennock (106 ERA+) are inducted, then certainly Mussina and his 123 ERA+ should be. If you could get yourself to ignore the fact that there may have been a lack of storylines or memorable moments from Mussina's career and all the other stuff that vaults a player into legendary and mythical status, and rather focus on how he actually performed on the field, then Michael Cole Mussina should be elected into the Hall of Fame. Questions, comments, criticisms, praise, expert league invitations? Email me at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
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