Among more statistically savvy fans, the standard benchmark for assessing a pitcher is the ratio of his earned run average to that of a typical scrap heap fifth starter

Uh no, not quite. I believe he's trying to get ERA+ here but using the 5th starter instead of the league average. Compared to the 5th starter the HOF says hello to Jack Morris....

Well, that would be an "over replacement" measurement, as opposed to an "over average" one like ERA+, right?

I haven't RTFA, but I assume the endorsement holds even with standard deviations considered, right?

He's doing replacement level:

So, for example, such a pitcher would have had a 5.55 E.R.A. in the American League in 2008, compared with Mussina’s 3.37. Over Mussina’s 200 1/3 innings, that represents a difference of 49 earned runs.

5.55 is 27% (not 20%) above the league average of 4.36 (which is also around the level I use).

As for Morris, he ends up with less wins above replacement (WAR) than Dave Stieb and Dennis Martinez. HOF is not saying "hello", but "please hold".

Mussina was a very good pitcher for a long time, and that's not quite good enough--he's Juan Marichal, just without the peak. He's a tick below Schilling, and again Mussina is missing the dominant years or the postseason prowess. For length of career to put him over he would have to get to 4000 IP, and he's decided not to try that route. That said, if he goes in he lowers the bar by all of a hair.

Would Mussina get this push if he pitched for the Angels for half of his career instead of the New York Yankees?

Would Mussina get this push if he pitched for the Angels for half of his career instead of the New York Yankees?

Yes. He has 270 wins.

Would Mussina get this push if he pitched for the Angels for half of his career instead of the New York Yankees?

It seems that the supposed "New York bias" that influences all MVP and HoF votes will never die.

Here are the five most recent Yankees elected to Cooperstown:

2007: Goose Gossage (6 seasons)
2001: Dave Winfield
1993: Reggie Jackson (5 seasons)
1974: Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford

Throw in Boggs, if you think the horse ride put him over the top.

When Yogi Berra is the 6th-most recent Yankee to pick up 75% of the vote, it may be time to retire the "New York bias" meme.

When Yogi Berra is the 6th-most recent Yankee to pick up 75% of the vote, it may be time to retire the "New York bias" meme.

Im not so sure. Perhaps the bias shows up in supposedly unqualified candidates like Mussina getting more consideration than they should/would otherwise. There's no reason to believe the bias - if it does exist - would only show up in those who were eventually elected.

Another example would be Don Mattingly. I think most would agree he's not Hall-worthy, but he has been discussed a great deal.

Hmm, that is pretty interesting about the lack of Yankees. Rickey, who played on the Yankees almost as long as Reggie did, is going to make it another one this year. I agree that there does not seem to be much evidence for the "New York bias"; the explanation for the relative dearth of Yankees since Berra is, unsurprisingly, that the team was for the most part not that great for an extended period of time, brief 1970's greatness notwithstanding. Since 1996, a wave of Hall of Famers have played on the Yankees. Rodriguez, Rivera, and Jeter are all locks, and Clemens would be without the steroids business. Mussina will probably get in, or at any rate should. Bernie Williams will probably see some support, even if he falls just short. Applying an appropriate catcher bonus makes Posada a very serious candidate. And there are a number of other people (Sheffield, Giambi, Abreu, Johnson) who are either not quite hall of famers or not quite Yankees, but who certainly contributed. It is hardly surprising that the superior Yankees teams of the last decade plus have coincided with more great players playing on the team, but it is still a very impressive collection of talent.

I wish Dan had worded that point about replacement level differently; he is not considering the ratio of the ERA's, as ERA+ does, but is instead considering the difference, as becomes clear when starts talking about career runs above replacement. Phrasing it as he did is a little confusing for us sabre-folk, since it conjures up incorrect associations with ERA+.

Im not so sure. Perhaps the bias shows up in supposedly unqualified candidates like Mussina getting more consideration than they should/would otherwise. There's no reason to believe the bias - if it does exist - would only show up in those who were eventually elected.

Another example would be Don Mattingly. I think most would agree he's not Hall-worthy, but he has been discussed a great deal.

The Mattingly discussion-to-support ratio is lopsided, agreed. He's only been hovering in the low teens and won't be moving up. Meanwhile, Alan Trammell was a better player, and is in the same voting boat, but gets less press about it.

But saying Mattingly's not Hall-worthy, though true, doesn't account for his persona. He's a player like Steve Garvey or Dale Murphy (and, many would argue, Jim Rice) who was, for whatever reasons, an iconic figure for a franchise. And at their peaks, each was widely considered to be one of the truly elite players-- or in Mattingly's and Murphy's case, THE elite player. Those types of stars are always going to be disproportionately discussed. And perhaps disproportionately voted for.

Past Don Mattingly, another example would be... well, nobody. The only Yankees who won't go away are Tommy John and (until last time) Rich Gossage.

A Bronx favorite like Paul O'Neill would be a better test case for the alleged bias to come out. But O'Neill was one-and-done, receiving 12 votes (2.2%). Ron Guidry bopped around for nine ballots, but only peaked at 8.8%. Graig Nettles lasted four ballots, topping out at 8.3%. Thurman Munson, with his powerful combination of New York bias AND the sympathy vote, made it through all 15 ballots-- but except for his initial appearance, never hit 10%. Sparky Lyle held on until his fourth vote.

You have to go back to Roger Maris to find an undeserving Yankee who was a ballot force. But even death and onrushing ineligibility couldn't boost him higher than 43%. The oddest case I found was Don Larsen, who hung on for 15 ballots. He generally got about 30 votes to survive another year. Maybe Jack Morris would do the same, if Morris only had 81 wins.

But in the last two decades, players like Key and Piniella and Brosius and Wetteland and Rivers and Dent and Righetti (and tangentially, Justice and Abbott and Knoblauch and Fielder and Strawberry and Gooden) haven't sniffed a second ballot. Some have gotten 0 votes.

The last 40 years of Yankee/Met MVPs and CYA winners looks a lot like the above list of the most recent Cooperstown Yankees. "New York bias" at awards time is one of those things that feels right, but is awfully hard to locate. Maybe it's all the more insidious for never showing its face.

There is definitely a New York bias. It just maybe overstated, but it's still there. And no, the standard is not simply recent HOF players. It is also not necessarily winners only either, it mostly appears in fringe players getting significant support in various awards and recognition that they would otherwise never got, if not for NYC.

I do address the stdev question directly in the article.

The 5.55 ERA figure was derived by dividing the lgERA of 4.44 on his baseball-reference page (Yankee Stadium has a 102 PF this year) by 0.8, 20% below league average.

The 774 was calculated thusly: baseball-reference says the league ERA was 4.51 during Mussina's career, so dividing that by .8 gives 5.64, or .626 earned runs per inning, times 3562.7 innings is 2232 earned runs for a replacement pitcher, minus his actual 1458 ER is 774. It's just basically ERA+ minus 80 times IP. What I didn't mention in the piece was that instead of using Ford/Marichal/Drysdale's actual earned runs allowed, I just used their ERA+ to calculate how many ER they would have allowed in a 4.51 ERA league, to keep the runs/wins ratio constant.

One data point: Moose is top 10 all time in RSAA for AL pitchers.

I generally try not to respond to this stuff, but did Beano just say, "There is NYC media bias. You can't see it in anything quantifiable, and only I am qualified to behold it. I'll tell you when something's unfair. Evidence? Trust me."

I conducted a strawpoll of two friends; one a Red Sox fan and one a Yankee fan. Both said yes to Mussina in the Hall.

I think Blackadder makes the best point: there are (and will soon be) a lot of Yankee HOFers because the Yankees have had a disproportionate number of good players. The "bias" is more retrospective than current, really, because the Hall includes guys like Lazzeri and Combs; it seems like all you used to have to do was wear pinstripes to get in, but as Gonfalon points out, that hasn't been the case with the long stretch from the mid-60s through the mid-90s, when the Yankees were only briefly (1976-81) a champion.

Dan, how did you arrive at the 50 points of ERA conclusion for 2003? Did you use your own methodology or is it something like FIP - ERA?

2007: Goose Gossage (6 seasons)
2001: Dave Winfield
1993: Reggie Jackson (5 seasons)
1974: Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford

1994: Phil Rizzuto
1991: Tony Lazzeri
1987: Catfish Hunter (5 seasons)
1981: Johnny Mize (4.5 seasons)
1977: Joe Sewell (3 seasons)
1975: Bucky Harris (2 seasons as manager)

Mize and Sewell hardly count. Harris had a short career, but it delivered his second world title, without which he might not get in.

I'm guessing you weren't counting VC selections and either missed or decided not to include Hunter. I don't see why you wouldn't include VC picks - they get a plaque just the same. At any rate, if you only compare BBWAA picks to the Hall of Fame's overall standards, of course the inductees will look good. Based on the structure of Hall of Fame voting (BBWAA gets first pick, VC selects from the rest) the BBWAA will have higher stands than the overall Hall).

1994: Phil Rizzuto
1991: Tony Lazzeri
1987: Catfish Hunter (5 seasons)
1981: Johnny Mize (4.5 seasons)
1977: Joe Sewell (3 seasons)
1975: Bucky Harris (2 seasons as manager)

Don't forget 1997: Phil Niekro. Those two glorious years with the Yankees finally put him over the top.

I'm not sure why Gonfalon left out Phil Rizzuto (inducted in 1994) and Catfish Hunter (inducted in 1987 after five season in pinstripes). That said, though, it's pretty obvious that the New York bias does not exist. If you look at some of the more dubious recent inductees - Hunter, Brock, Puckett, Tony Perez - what strikes you is that they played disproportionately on postseason teams. But even accounting for the fact that New York teams have played in the postseason a lot, there doesn't seem to be any slant toward those teams.

As for Morris, he ends up with less wins above replacement (WAR) than Dave Stieb and Dennis Martinez. HOF is not saying "hello", but "please hold".

What happened to Steib anyways? I'm assuming an arm injury.

Dan, when you say:

"which tends to be about 20 percent higher than the league average"

If the (park-adjusted) league average is 4.44, then 25% higher than that is 5.55.

When you do "1/.80", that's "x 1.25". Either you say that the league average is 20% below replacement level, or that the replacement level is 25% above league average.

What happened to Steib anyways? I'm assuming an arm injury.

Back injury involving a collision while covering first base - I think it was against the White Sox, and may have involved Frank Thomas. It took him about a year to recover from back surgery, and then a change in his motion caused by the surgery led him to have all sorts of problems with tendinitis - wikipedia says it was with his shoulder, but I remember it being with his elbow. It wasn't until he was helping the Jays out in spring training about 6 years after his first retirement that he was again able to throw pain-free, which is when he made that comeback at age 40.

If not for that collision, he probably finishes with close to 250 wins, and we don't have to hear nearly as much about Morris during Hall of Fame discussions.

Mussina was a very good pitcher for a long time, and that's not quite good enough--he's Juan Marichal, just without the peak. He's a tick below Schilling, and again Mussina is missing the dominant years or the postseason prowess. For length of career to put him over he would have to get to 4000 IP, and he's decided not to try that route. That said, if he goes in he lowers the bar by all of a hair.

That sentence comparing him to Schilling makes no sense. Mussina is well ahead in W, W%, and IP. Schilling is slightly ahead in ERA+. Their top 5 seasons (ERA+) are M 163,157,145,142,137 vs. S 159,157,150,143,142, so if Moose doesn't have the dominant years, neither does Schilling.

The only thing Schilling has over Mussina is the "postseason heroics".

From the purely technical side, I would prefer that the analysis started with "runs allowed" rather than "earned runs allowed". The poor ink-stained wretches never have enough bandwidth!

I also treat "st dev" analysis with a fair degree of skepticism. Variations in st. dev. can be attributed to both changing conditions in the game (increased use of the bullpen, shorter starts, more three true outcomes in the 90s and aughts, say) and random bursts of talent (Clemens, Maddux, Johnson and Pedro would have been the greatest concentration of pitching ability in any era).

None of this detracts from DanR's conclusion that Mussina qualifies. He'd actually be right in the middle of Hall of Fame pitchers, in my view. I haven't done the Blyleven/Mussina comparision- I am guessing that Blyleven comes out ahead, but other than Blyleven, I'd venture a guess that Mussina would be ahead of any other starter not in the Hall of Fame.

Another example would be Don Mattingly. I think most would agree he's not Hall-worthy, but he has been discussed a great deal.

Mattingly consistently got less votes than Garvey (a comparable but distinctly inferior player) when both were on the ballot at the same time.

The only recent NY honoree I can think of as benefiting from a pro-NY bias is the Scooter.
But then again the Scooter has been rising in stathead circles lately as people have been more closely examining old fiedling numbers... he's still not a HOfer imho but...

it mostly appears in fringe players getting significant support in various awards and recognition that they would otherwise never got, if not for NYC.

Recognition, yes - in the sense that NY players tend to get mentioned a lot in the media where other players might not be. But significant support for awards that they wouldn't get otherwise? I don't see it.

-- MWE

Thanks, Ryan. Steib's injury happened during my Army days and I was in a relative baseball blackout then; esp towards the end when I was in the Middle East.

benefiting from a pro-NY bias is the Scooter

There may be a slight "announcer" bias there as much as anything. Broadcasters know everyone in baseball and are by profession not boat-rockers; they tend to be popular guys. Waite Hoyt and George Kell would also be examples, possibly Dizzy Dean and Lou Boudreau, too. Richie Ashburn, possibly (though he started to gain ground when people looked more at his fielding stats, too). Don Drysdale stayed visible as an announcer over the ten years it took him to reach the Hall.

It's no problem, TPOT. To be honest, I'm just pleased to find out that I largely remember something which happened 16 years ago, even if the specific details are a little bit on the fuzzy side (As noted, I think there was a collision, mostly because I remember Stieb going flying after covering 1B, but I'm not 100% sure - it's possible he just tripped on the bag too while trying to avoid a collision). Either way, I'm sure about the back injury part.

Rizzuto's case reminds me a lot of Buck ONeil's. Rizzuto's baseball career was more Hall-worthy than O'Neil's, but they both stayed around baseball forever, making friends with everyone and promoting the game in their own unique way. O'Neil's not in yet, but an awful lot of people think he should be.

benefiting from a pro-NY bias is the Scooter

There may be a slight "announcer" bias there as much as anything.

I was trying to throw a bone to the guys who claim there's a Pro-NY bias in awards voting.
I'm with MWE- there's a definite "recognition" bias in favor of NYC players, but it doesn't seem to translate to awards voting etc.

was trying to throw a bone to the guys who claim there's a Pro-NY bias in awards voting

Nor was I trying to contradict you :) Actually Rizzuto was so visible and audible, doing commercials in the NYC market, that he stayed in the public eye a lot more even than other announcers, so I think there is a New York bonus in his case.

It wasn't just the NYC market. I still remember the commercials for the Money Store here in Connecticut.

There is definitely a New York bias. It just maybe overstated, but it's still there. And no, the standard is not simply recent HOF players. It is also not necessarily winners only either, it mostly appears in fringe players getting significant support in various awards and recognition that they would otherwise never got, if not for NYC.

I generally try not to respond to this stuff, but did Beano just say, "There is NYC media bias. You can't see it in anything quantifiable, and only I am qualified to behold it. I'll tell you when something's unfair. Evidence? Trust me."

Beano will have to get back to you on that one after he consults with Sarah's speechwriter.

The only thing Schilling has over Mussina is the "postseason heroics".

That's not really fair. Schilling has a lot more in his favor, particularly in a HOF discussion.

Schilling has a lot more black ink. More CY shares. More all-star appearances. More career strikeouts. Fewer career walks. Better career WHIP and ERA+. More CG.

Schilling also has a 4-year run that is pretty spectacular. His peak is better than Glavine's.

That's not an ounce of credit for postseason heroics.

If anyone wants to run a more serious test on whether New York bias might affect HoF votes, why not simply run through a list of HoF inductees who didn't make it past the HoM, and see what percentage of them played most of their careers for New York teams? And if you want to refine it further, run a similar test for players like that who had roughly the same amount of postseason exposure and years of being behind the mike.

Do all that and then see what you find. That "New York bias" is a bit like this year's Bradley effect: It's not that it doesn't exist among a very small number of voters, but it's made up for by other voters with countering sets of biases, and it's impossible to pin down any overall net effect.

I'm pretty sure Connecticut is part of the NYC market. Sorry.

Perhaps (at least Fairfield County is), but I wasn't watching NY stations. We lived on a hill so my parents never got cable. We got Hartford stations and Springfield stations. Was The Money Store a national thing or a regional thing?

IIRC (and I'm not sure I do), Bill James already looked into NYC effect on HOF voting years ago and didn't find one.

We were "blessed" with Money Store commercials in Philly, which is decidedly not the NY market. :) I'm guessing it was an East Coast thing. Why they thought Phil Rizzuto would work as a pitch man in Philly is beyond me.

Can you imagine in the 30 years, having Jimmy Rollins as a pitch man in NY? "Hi, this is Jimmy Rollins for Robot.com. Type in your specs and a custom robot will knock on your door in 24 hours. My favorite is the Chase Utley model; he comes in G and R ratings."

Monsieur Valentin, that was calculated by using a weighted average of UZR, Dewan's Plus/Minus, and a few other metrics at some specific positions, plus throwing arm runs as a weighted average of AROM, MGL, and Fox, and double play runs and catcher defensive runs per AROM.

Tango, I agree it's confusing. In my original draft I had put "worse than average," thinking of an ERA+ of 80; that got edited to "higher than average." That said, if this is the worst mistake in a story of mine in my career as a journalist, I'll be a happy camper.

Mike Green, I am writing for an audience accustomed to using ERA--and furthermore, even statheads use ERA+ as a shorthand. But when I make my own assertions about pitcher value (e.g., Mussina deserved the 2001 Cy and half of the 1992 one), that's park, league, and defense-adjusted RA.

As for stdevs, I don't know how familiar you are with my work over at the Hall of Merit, but I think there is a good chance I have studied the issue (in terms of baseball) in greater depth than anyone else out there. There is no way I am going to get into all of my methodology in an 800-word NYT column. But in fact, the way I do these calculations is a regression analysis over all of baseball history to determine the league factors (such as run scoring, season length, expansion, and strikeout rate) that correlate to the standard deviation of pitching wins above average, and then use the regression-forecast figure rather than the actual figure as the basis for my adjustment. Some years were difficult to dominate as a pitcher, but hurlers happened to overcome it and did so anyway (like the stacked 1902 AL, which had looted the NL, or the 1966 NL featuring Koufax, Marichal, Bunning, and the shooting star of Jim Maloney), while others were easy to dominate but no one took advantage (like the 1923 AL, where TK led the league with a TK ERA+, or the 1937 AL, in which TK topped the league at TK).

JPWF13, Rizzuto gets strong HoM support. The consensus of the group so far is that he is a borderliner, and I suspect that he has a good shot to get in eventually.

"thinking of an ERA+ of 80"

Just add your name to the never-ending list to which ERA+ (*) has felled the best.

(*) ERA+ uses the nonsensical method of putting the league baseline in the numerator contrary to all other indexes. It wouldn't be so bad, except for all the mistakes people do in using ERA+.

None of the other candidates had a hit song like the Scooter.

HAHAHAH, I forgot to fill in the TK's on those leaderboards!! In the 1923 AL, Coveleski's 144 ERA+ was tops, and the fourth-place finisher posted just a 126. I'm not quite sure why the stdev for the '37 NL comes out as so low, as the ERA+ leaderboard looks fairly normalish.

About the RA vs. ERA, I figured as much, Dan. Hence, the "poor ink-stained wretches" comment.

One of the common misconceptions, perhaps more prevalent among the writers than among the more-than-casual fan, concerns the overall quality of starting pitchers presently in the Hall of Fame. Leaving aside the Pennocks and Hoyts, the run-of-the-mill Hall of Fame starter like Fergie Jenkins or Robin Roberts or Hal Newhouser just wasn't that overwhelmingly good.

Jenkins, having come up at the time of Gibson, Marichal and then Seaver, is a nice comparison point, in a way, for Mussina.

ERA+ uses the nonsensical method of putting the league baseline in the numerator contrary to all other indexes. It wouldn't be so bad, except for all the mistakes people do in using ERA+.

I'm not a huge fan of the stat myself, but are you proposing a system where a lower relative ERA is better?

I'm not really sure what you mean by "that overwhelmingly good"--they were what they were--but Roberts is a good two cuts up from Jenkins and Newhouser. He was one of the greatest workhorses of all time. From 1950-55, his IP ranks were 2-1-1-1-1-1, while his ERA+ ranks were 5-6-4-2-4-4. (He was second in IP in '56, too, but didn't pitch well). And then he tacked on two more big years in '58 and '62. He is not an inner-circle pitcher, but he is only one step removed from them.

but are you proposing a system where a lower relative ERA is better

People have no problem understanding that a lower ERA itself is better. Why then would they have a hard time understanding ERA/lgERA, and that lower is better?

Here is a post on ERA+ on my wiki

Yeah, you could, I'd just have to learn a new set of benchmarks. Appropos of little, relative stats remind me of the CPI (does the govt still use that?)

That said, if he goes in he lowers the bar by all of a hair.

By what possible standard do you make this claim? As I see it, Mussina easily fits in the top half of HOF pitchers.

Top *half*? That sounds a bit strong to me, Srul Itza, although I'll admit I haven't checked. What is your chosen metric, and what is the Hall median? Are there really THAT many Jesse Haineses?

With Roberts, it's really difficult to suss out what happened, as his peak occurred immediately before the Retrosheet years. He was a flyball pitcher with excellent control, who arrived at the same time as a young Richie Ashburn. The Phils played in a large park and Ashburn posted otherworldly range numbers.

The last year of Roberts' prime was 1956, the first year of Retrosheet. That year he was excellent at home, and totally mediocre on the road, where opponents hit .300.

It is not clear to me how much of Roberts' success in the early 50s (including both performance and innings pitched totals) to attribute to him and how much to context, including Ashburn. My own view is that he's one-and-a-half steps up from Catfish Hunter and no better than Fergie Jenkins.

Mussina would not lower the bar of the Hall of Merit, which is higher, or at least more consistent, than that of the HOF. Mussina is as good as, or better than, Bunning, Wynn, Stieb, Pierce, Wes Ferrell, several others. Well, Ferrell was a much better hitter, but Mussina has a bunch of Gold Gloves.

Ashburn posted otherworldly range numbers

Of course, the converse could be true: Ashburn was posting the numbers because Roberts (with some help from the rest of the staff) was always allowing fly balls. Probably it's a little of both, but the "initiative" in the equation is with the pitcher; behind a staff full of groundball pitchers, Ashburn wouldn't have had much of anything to catch.

(I)f you see Pedro with an ERA+ of 300 and a league average pitcher with an ERA+ of 100, then the arithmetic mean (simple average) of the two will end up looking like an ERA+ of 200.

People average pitcher's stats like that?

Mike Green,

Retrosheet now has NL play by play going back to 1953. I did write a bit about Ashburn and his putout totals for this year's THT Annual, though my focus was on Ashburn, Roberts gets a mention.

I'm not sure why Gonfalon left out Phil Rizzuto (inducted in 1994) and Catfish Hunter (inducted in 1987 after five season in pinstripes).

I left out the Scooter because he was a VC choice and it'd be like judging Oscar voting patterns by including the Thalberg Award. I left out Catfish because he only had one stellar season out of five as a Yankee, and was obviously elected for his Oakland numbers. Calling that a NYcentric vote would be like giving the Mets undue credit for Pedro's eventual election.

Well, Scooter's in as much as anybody else. They don't put the VC picks in a closet down the hall.

In post 18 Dag also missed Enos Slaughter, who spent parts of five seasons with the Yanks and got in in 1985.

Thanks, Rally. I am looking forward to the next updating of BBRef to make use of this new information.

Bob "Jugement" Dernier, will you be changing your name to Bob "Repas" Dernier in memory of Jim Mattox? You are, of course, absolutely right about the Ashburn/Roberts conundrum. The salient point to me though is that Roberts' environment assisted him in posting the impressive innings pitched totals during his peak/prime, whereas Jenkins' environment worked against him. For instance, when Jenkins threw 308 innings in 1968, 2nd in the league behind Marichal and ahead of Gibson, Perry and Seaver, that was awfully impressive in context. Fergie usually made about 40 starts a season as Roberts did during his prime, but did face somewhat fewer batters per year.

It is not clear to me how much of Roberts' success in the early 50s (including both performance and innings pitched totals) to attribute to him and how much to context, including Ashburn.

Well, the counter to that was that prior to 1956 he'd been worked like a dog. Also what spiked from 55-56-57 was his HR totals. Then his GS/IP totals began sliding and getting erratic.... all of which points to age as the culprit.

BTW compared to other 50s pitchers- his K/BB numbers look remarkably good* - but he did struggle with gopheritis.

*Led the league 5 times, 2nd 4 times,
1950-59, K/BB 1000+ IP:
nt Player K/BB IP F
+----+-----------------+-----+------+----+----+-----+
1 Robin Roberts 2.89 3011.2
2 Harvey Haddix 2.64 1572
3 Don Newcombe 2.32 1773.2
4 Warren Hacker 1.86 1097.1
5 Warren Spahn 1.85 2822.2
6 Johnny Podres 1.82 1027.1
7 Johnny Antonelli 1.79 1721.1
8 Billy Pierce 1.77 2383
9 Camilo Pascual 1.76 1028.2
10 Frank Sullivan 1.71 1351.2
The curve was pretty much flattening out between 1.2 and 1.7, Roberts was essentially lapping the field, save Haddix, who was effective for far shorter than Roberts. I'm probably not the first person to note that Roberts *may* have been more effective if he pitched out of the zone more. MY guess is that if he had pitched post 1993/94 he would have to have adjusted and changed his approach- or he would have become Eric Milton.

I dunno why you say that--the let's-see-you-hit-my-best-fastball, high K/low BB/high HR flyball pitcher is a very successful modern archetype. Curt Schilling and Ben Sheets leap to mind.

Though not many think of him as a great postseason pitcher, Moose was pretty fantastic in the playoffs, and probably a bit unlucky

140 IP, 145:33 K:BB, 3.42 ERA

Mussina would not lower the bar of the Hall of Merit, which is higher, ...

Neither would Kevin Brown. We'll have decided Brown's case before Mussina or Schilling are eligible. We just started out 2009 election, and I don't really think Appier is going to make it, but we are talking even about him. (And Saberhagen is in, if you feel like adding him to the list you ended that sentence with.)

Well, Ferrell was a much better hitter, but Mussina has a bunch of Gold Gloves.

Those are two different things. If a pitcher is, in fact, a superior fielder, then that will show up directly in his RA - you don't need to account for it separately. As I understand it, even such defense-adjusted measures as DERA are only trying to account for the general defensive efficiency of the team, as shown by their performance behind all or the team's pitchers, which would dilute the effect of one outstanding fielding pitcher. (The one place where fielding wouldn't show up is in DIPS - but I don't know that many people who are using DIPS retrospectively in arguments like this.) But Ferrell's hitting does not show up in his RA; rather it changes the overall run environment he pitched in. One way to deal with that might be to compute his RA+ against a higher average RA. I'll also mention that Ferrell's hitting was not incidental to his HOM candidacy; without that, he wouldn't have been elected.

Wow, those ARE terrific peripherals, esp. given the superior playoff offenses. I had no idea. He was a whale of a pitcher.

Brown will be elected to the HoM on the first ballot. I'll bet anyone.

I dunno why you say that--the let's-see-you-hit-my-best-fastball, high K/low BB/high HR flyball pitcher is a very successful modern archetype. Curt Schilling and Ben Sheets leap to mind.

But Roberts gave up A LOT of homeruns.
Of the 63 pitchers with 1000+ IP from 1950 to 1959, Roberts was 54th in HR/9 (Haddix was worse)

Of the 101 pitchers with 1000+ IP from 1999 to 2008, Schilling was 64th in HR/9, Sheets 42nd.

Relative to league Roberts had a significantly worse gopher problem than Schilling.

> Are there really THAT many Jesse Haineses?

HoF, not HoM (17)

Bender, Chief
Chesbro, Jack
Cooper, Andy
Day, Leon
Dean, Dizzy
Gomez, Lefty
Grimes, Burleigh
Haines, Jesse
Hoyt, Waite
Hunter, Catfish
Joss, Addie
Marquard, Rube
Pennock, Herb
Smith, Hilton
Sutter, Bruce
Welch, Mickey
Willis, Vic

That's 23%.

These guys are the middle of the pack for the HoM (who has elected fewer pitchers than the HoF):

Brown, Ray
Clarkson, John
Coveleski, Stan
Drysdale, Don
Ford, Whitey
Foster, Bill
Keefe, Tim
Lyons, Ted
Marichal, Juan
Mendez, Jose
Newhouser, Hal
Pierce, Billy
Walsh, Ed
Wilhelm, Hoyt

I'd say Mussina slots in there somewhere. Kevin Brown is somewhere in there also.

Mussina was a very good pitcher for a long time, and that's not quite good enough--he's Juan Marichal, just without the peak. He's a tick below Schilling, and again Mussina is missing the dominant years or the postseason prowess. For length of career to put him over he would have to get to 4000 IP, and he's decided not to try that route. That said, if he goes in he lowers the bar by all of a hair.

That sentence comparing him to Schilling makes no sense. Mussina is well ahead in W, W%, and IP. Schilling is slightly ahead in ERA+. Their top 5 seasons (ERA+) are M 163,157,145,142,137 vs. S 159,157,150,143,142, so if Moose doesn't have the dominant years, neither does Schilling.

The only thing Schilling has over Mussina is the "postseason heroics".

It makes sense if, as I do, you don't put too much emphasis on W and W%. As for IP, which my post clearly mentions,

ERA+
Mussina 163 (in 176.3 innings), 157, 145, 142, 137, 134. 3562.7 IP, Career ERA+ 123
Schilling 159, 157, 150, 150, 143, 142 3261 IP, Career ERA+ 127

Schilling is a better pitcher than Mussina during the regular season. It's not a big edge, but it's a definite edge. Mussina's argument is that he's pitched more innings. Almost exactly 300 innings more. But for their ERA+s to converge at 3562.7 innings pitched, Schilling would have to throw 301.3 innings of really, really bad baseball.

Certainly I could have been clearer, and written "the dominant years that would compensate for Mussina's less than stellar career ERA+". Too, ERA+ doesn't always give us the entire context. Schilling has three second-place Cy finishes. Mussina doesn't. Schilling was better, in the sense of more dominant, in the context of seasons as they were actually played. And notice that I didn't write "postseason heroics". The bloody sock doesn't impress me, fwiw--millions of people work in more pain than that every day. Rather, I wrote "postseason prowess". In another thread the argument was over whether postseason work should even be considered wrt to the Hall. Here, given that both Moose and Shill had almost identical IP in the posteason, that question is moot. Small but definite edge in the regular season to Schilling. Large and definite edge to Schilling in the postseason. These, to me anyway, are the differences between a HOFer (Schilling) and the guy who needed to reach 300 wins or 4000 IP to get in (Mussina).

Yes, that is definitely Brown and Mussina's cohort, no doubt. We just had a ton of great pitchers. Then again, there were more teams.

> Schilling would have to throw 301.3 innings of really, really bad baseball

My guess is he'll keep throwing as long as someone keeps paying him. There's still a chance!

What is your chosen metric, and what is the Hall median?

Upon further review, Dan, I may have overstated my case. I would say he is firmly in the gray middle third of HOF pitchers, based on a combination of ERA+ and IP.

ERA+
Mussina 3562.7 IP, Career ERA+ 123
Schilling 3261 IP, Career ERA+ 127

Schilling is a better pitcher than Mussina during the regular season. It's not a big edge, but it's a definite edge. Mussina's argument is that he's pitched more innings. Almost exactly 300 innings more. But for their ERA+s to converge at 3562.7 innings pitched, Schilling would have to throw 301.3 innings of really, really bad baseball.

He'd need about 300 innings of 88/89 ERA+ pitching
That's NOT "really, really bad baseball"- "really really bad baseball" would be the 563 ip of 51 ERA+ pitching he'd need to match Jack Morris.

Schilling is a better pitcher than Mussina during the regular season

Schilling had higher highs -- and lower lows.

He had something of a checkboard career, due to recurrent injuries:

Yr.........Age......IP.......ERA+
1988.....21.......14.7........40
1989.....22........8.7.........61
1990.....23........46........151
1991.....24......75.7.........91
1992.....25.....226.3.....150
1993.....26.....235.3.......99
1994.....27.....82.3.........96
1995.....28.....116........118
1996.....29.....183.3.....134
1997.....30.....254.3.....143
1998.....31.....268.7.....134
1999.....32.....180.3.....135
2000.....33.....210.3.....124
2001.....34.....256.7.....157
2002.....35.....259.3.....142
2003.....36.....168........159
2004.....37.....226.7.....150
2005.....38......93.3.......80
2006.....39.....204........120
2007.....40.....151.......122

After two years as a reliever, his "breakout year" was his age 25 season in 1992, but he did not have another full, HOF-class year until 1996. He then reeled off his run of excellent years from 1996 to 2004, another injury-marred relieving year in 2005, and then two more good years.

This is one of the reasons that, until his late career post-season heroics (and PR), Schilling was not thought of as HOFer -- the shape of his career made it hard to see. It helps that most of the good stuff was concentrated at the end.

Mussina had what was perhaps a more typical career curve. He has been strictly a starter during this time (one relief appearance):

Yr..............Age..........IP..............ERA+
1991..........22..........87.7.............138
1992..........23..........241..............157
1993..........24..........167.7..........100
1994..........25..........176.3..........163
1995..........26..........221.7..........145
1996..........27..........243.3..........103
1997..........28..........224.7..........137
1998..........29..........206.3..........129
1999..........30..........203.3..........134
2000..........31..........237.7..........125
2001..........32..........228.7..........142
2002..........33..........215.7..........109
2003..........34..........214.7..........129
2004..........35..........164.7............98
2005..........36..........179.7............96
2006..........37..........197.3..........129
2007..........38..........152...............87
2008..........39..........200.3..........132

How much you value dependability and consistency may weigh into your evaluation of Schilling and Mussina.

The general consensus at the HoM is that the more up-and-down career is more valuable, holding total career value constant, since it means a higher peak and therefore more Pennants Added.

I'm echelons above what I normally talk about here, but I thought that David Gassko did a study about Pennants Added that concluded that inconsistency was overrated.

Concerning DL from MN's list of HOF not HOM pitchers in post #67: I'd split that list into four parts.

1. Negro League pitchers not selected: Andy Cooper, Leon Day, Hilton Smith. (We got pretty binary with these guys - it tended to be in or out. Only Jose Mendez and Dick Redding lingered near the boundary.)

2. Not HOM - yet - but of continuing interest (career division): Burleigh Grimes, Mickey Welch, Vic Willis.

3. Not HOM - yet - but of continuing interest (peak division): Dizzy Dean, Lefty Gomez, Addie Joss. Maybe I also list Bruce Sutter here - I've seen him get a vote or two.

4. Not even in the discussion: Chief Bender, Jack Chesbro, Jesse Haines, Waite Hoyt, Catfish Hunter, Rube Marquard, Herb Pennock. For a while, "Happy Jack Chesbro" was a running joke with us, always posting to ask if he'd won.

Some of the "middle of the pack" guys on his second list were barely elected in backlog years after many years of candidacy.

Baseballreference had this to say today. I was impressed by some of the stats:

Start with the fact that his HOF standards are 54, as compared to 50 for the average HOFer. His HOF Monitor is 121, with a likely HOFer being over 100. His gray ink is 244, 23rd highest all-time for pitchers, with an average HOFer at 185.

He is 33rd all-time in wins. Among pitchers with at least 200 career wins, he has the 12th-best winning percentage. He has the 15th-most wins in baseball over the last 50 years.

Of the 68 pitchers to throw at least 3500 innings since 1876 he’s got the best K/BB ratio of all. And he has the 13th-best K/BB ratio of all-time for ALL pitchers.

He has won 7 Gold Gloves.

For pitchers active in 2008, he has the 3rd-most career IP for a pitcher with a WHIP under 1.200. The only guys ahead of him are future first-ballot HOFers Randy Johnson and Greg Maddux.

"He'd need about 300 innings of 88/89 ERA+ pitching"

92 of "ERA+".