Two Tigers were on the ballot this year, and one came pretty close while another wallows in below-50-percent territory (75 percent is necessary for induction). The odd thing about this is that the more deserving player is the one who gets the lower vote totals.
Finishing second to Barry Larkin, the only player elected this year by the writers, was Jack Morris, who garnered two-thirds of the vote, falling 48 short, in his 13th year on the ballot. He has two more tries--only one player (Gil Hodges), has gotten more than 50 percent of the vote and not gotten elected to the Hall. But Morris faces stiffer competition in the next two years, particularly from pitchers like Curt Schilling, Gred Maddux, Roger Clemens, and Tom Glavine, who will be new to the ballot.
Morris pitched for 14 years in Detroit, winning 198 game for the Tigers (254 in total), and more games than anyone in the 1980s. He was the ace of three different World Series winning teams ('84 Tigers, '91 Twins, '92 Jays) and pitched one of the most brilliant games in World Series history, the seventh game of the '91 series.
Yet I'm not entirely in the Morris boat--I have one foot in, one out. The detractors cite his 3.90 E.R.A., which would be the highest of starting pitchers in the Hall. He never won a Cy Young (he did finish third twice and fourth once). But Hall of Fame credentials are notoriously selective. For example, it can be said of Ted Simmons: More RBI than Bench, more runs that Carter, more hits than Berra or Fisk. But Ted Simmons is no Hall-of-Famer, and has never come close in a vote.
I'm not patient enough or statistician enough to delve deep into the numbers. Joe Posnanski, a writer for Sports Illustrated, is, and has voted thumbs down on Morris, comparing him to Dennis Martinez, who came nowhere close to election. Indeed, baseball-reference.com marks Martinez as closest to Morris. Martinez was 245-193 with 3.70 E.R.A., and a 1.26 WHIP. Morris was 254-186, 3.90 E.R.A., 1.62 WHIP. However, Morris averaged 16 wins and 12 losses to Martinez's 13-10, and of course Morris pitched on a bigger stage more often. Then again, Morris' post-season record of 7-4, 3.80 wasn't exactly Christy Mathewson-like.
But sometimes numbers don't tell the whole story. Defenders cite that his E.R.A. was due to "pitching to the score," i.e., if his team had six runs, he would try to make sure the opposition didn't score more than five. That sounds like rationalization to me. But Morris was a battler and a workhorse--he finished in the top five in innings pitched six times and in games started eight times.
Morris jumped fourteen percentage points last year. All signs point to him being elected eventually, but given who's coming up it may not be by the writers. Would I vote for him. Eh...I'm not sure.
Yet Trammell garnered only about half as many votes as Morris, 36 percent. That's up 14 points, but he's still got a long way to go. He's got four more years, so there's time, but not much.
Let's compare him to Larkin, who baseball-reference.com cites as his second closest match (his first is Edgar Renteria, admittedly not a feather in his cap). Trammell had 2,365 hits, 185 home runs, 1231 runs, 1003 RBI, and hit .285/.352/.415. Larkin numbers in those categories: 2340, 198, 1329, 960, and .295/.371/.444. Larkin had 379 steals to Trammell's 236, a big edge.
When I look at fielding statistics, I see categories that baffle me, but I don't think anyone would say that Larkin was significantly a better fielder than Trammell. Larkin has a slight edge in offensive categories over all, but not enough to justify his election while Trammell bobs around the 30 percent mark. Larkin did win an MVP award, but as Posnanski pointed out, Trammell should have won the 1987 MVP, and he was MVP of a World Series.
A similar and worse fate befell Trammell's double-play partner, Lou Whitaker, who appeared only once on the ballot and got 2.9 percent and promptly fell off.
So, my question is, to those who voted for Larkin and not Trammell, why not?
No comments:
Post a Comment