Friday, May 24, 2013
MLB: Don Sutton never shy about voicing his opinion
(mlb.mlb.com)
Sutton: Because that’s where the defaced money is.
Read More...The outspoken Sutton—who came up with the Dodgers in 1966 and pitched with them for 16 of his 23 seasons—has his own opinion about everything.
He said in an interview last week that he hates pitch counts.
“I say it with a laugh in my voice when I broadcast: ‘That’s 100 pitches. On the next one, he’s going to turn into a troll.’ At 101, you just disappear. Poof, you’re gone,” Sutton said.
...MLB.com: Did you cheat?
Sutton: No, I never got ...
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1. Eric Chalek (Dr. Chaleeko) posted on December 23, 2012 at 09:22 AM # hit 0 | hit 0Only in sportswriting, kids. Only in sportswriting.
Since there is little new to offer on this topic I'm curious how many people here saw Morris pitch? I'm 42, 1976 is my first conscious memory of a baseball season and 1978 is when I remember being glued to TV or newspapers so I remember basically his entire career. 84 is a vivid memory as of course is 91.
And I don't think Morris is a hall of famer.
That's my fervent hope. Next year:
Bonds
Clemens
Piazza
Bagwell
Biggio
Schilling
Maddux
Thomas
Glavine
Mussina
10 no-brainers, leaving off
Trammell
Raines
McGwire
Sosa
Kent
Walker
and probably a few other deserving players.
With a little over 8% of the vote in...Bagwell leads with just 69.9%
Morris' did have Hall of Fame stuff, but he really didn't have Hall of Fame command. A bit like Mark Langston from the same era, but Langston had better stuff and was overall probably a little better pitcher (whose best years early were for bad teams).
Generous umps did wonders for him, strict ones caused him problems.
Repoz, could you make a ballot submission thread? As in a place to post writer's ballots as we find them. And make the intro an up to date counter. (as well as a list of which sportswriters ballots you have so that we don't submit duplicates) I've been submitting every new ballot I find as a thread, but many of them don't have anything new to say.
I recall seeing him lose to Righetti and the Yankees at the Stadium on a weeknight in '83. I watched all nine innings of his no-hitter one year later, albeit on NBC.
I'm a Blue Jays fan whose baseball memory starts around 1990. So on the one hand I have the 1991 World Series, and on the other I have his tenure with the Jays. The 8 year old version of me (who had not yet grasped the notion that players age and don't have an intrinsic skill level that remains constant for all eternity) had a very difficult time reconciling those two Morrises
I usually put the sticky HOF thread up about 10 days before the announcement...but seeing that this year's ballot is the BIG ONE! Bigger than Samuel Fuller's red one...even bigger than Milton Berle's! I'll be putting it up earlier...so we can dump all findings there. Any help is appreciated.
You can say that again. Morris has the highest rate of wild pitches per inning of any pitcher who (a) has at least 2500 innings pitched, and (b) played as much as one major league game in which foul balls were counted as strikes.
There's actually a two-part trivia question that comes out of this if anyone wants to bite.
Part 1: Which modern pitcher has the most innings pitched with a wild pitch rate higher than Morris's?
Part 2: Which active pitcher is poised to blow past Morris in this category, provided he lasts through the two relatively healthy years he'll need to clear 2500 innings?
What part of Bill Madden's 40-for-40 "never once was he not the best pitcher in the game that day" don't you understand?
The Jack Morris of my childhood was a guy who was one of the best, always around, a "workhorse" - but I never thought of him as the best pitcher in the AL, or the scariest pitcher my Red Sox would face. There was always somebody who was at least a little bit better at a given moment, like:
Dave Stieb
Steve Rogers
Joacquin Andujar
Fernando
Scott McGregor
Steve Carlton
Rich Dotson
Blyleven
Ryan
Saberhagen
Clemens
Viola
Boddicker
Niekro
JR Richard
Mike Norris
Mario Soto
Rhoden
Floyd Bannister
Charlie Lea
Blah, blah...I'm not saying I thought these guy were better, overall - I'm just saying that at any given moment, I never really thought Morris was the best pitcher in the league, or in baseball. But he kept sticking around, when most of the guys on the list above didn't stick around. I know a lot of people on BBTF say, for example, that Stieb was clearly better than Morris...except Stieb didn't stick around, and there is value to being able to stick around.
I still don't think Morris is a HOF'er, but as a child of the early 1980s, he was one of a couple of guys who was performing when I was a little kid, and still performing when I was out of high school. Not too bad.
A.J. Burnett?
Stieb 1979-1990 - 2666 IP 126 ERA+
Morris 1979-1990 - 2891 IP 109 ERA+
Stieb did very little post 1990. Morris had 2 good years and 2 utter crap years. So yeah, he stuck around, for a measly 2 more years. Yes, that has value, but you're really overstating the case.
Now, if all this nonsense leads to a change in the rules, fine. But if you're going to break the rules, why not form a pact with numerous other writers and commit to sending in blank ballots until something changes - a clarification on the integrity clause, an increase in the number of allowed choices, etc? That, in essence, is like an organized strike, and would hold a lot more power than just this voter and that voter tooting their own horns.
Nobody did. He got only a handful of first-place CYA votes in his career and only a handful of votes period. He only made 5 AS games -- generally you only had to be considered one of the 5+ best starters in the league for that honor although there may have been years the Tigers asked for him to not be selected due to his rotation schedule. (i.e. they usually wouldn't pick guys who started Sat/Sun) He did start 3 AS games which suggests the manager that year thought he was the best. One of those three was for Sparky.
And why would anybody think he was dominant? He only led the league in wins twice, IP once (not the same season), Ks once (the same season as IP), shutouts once and, despite his workhorsiness, CGs only once. He never finished better than 5th in ERA.
Morris's HoF case, such as it is, has absolutely nothing to do with dominance. His case is strictly about endurance -- endurance that pales in comparison to lots of pitchers before him and some of the good pitchers after him but, for whatever reasons, did stand out among his contemporaries.
I saw Morris pitch - hell, I still have his Topps rookie card.
He was known as a bulldog, a gamer, a gritty guy who battled. A guy you liked well enough to start on Opening Day to set the right tone (unless you had a truly great pitcher).
I never thought of him as a Hall of Famer, and neither did most of the voters when he first hit the ballot.
That's the thing. No one thought of him as a HOFer when he was actually pitching. He managed to accumulate 250+ wins for some good teams, but no one thought, "holy crap, this guys is one of the greats"
At least with Saberhagen and Fernando, you'd watch them and just from a casual fan's distance, you could see something special. You'd be thinking, geez if this guy sticks for 15 years, he'll be a HOFer. Morris never elicited this type of sentiment when on the mound.
As 27 points out, the case is terribly selective with the World Series game, the 80's wins, the accumulation of those wins, and now the ridiculously sublime argument of opening day starts! Well if the Tigers had any of those names listed in #17 on the staff in the 80's, I'm sure Morris would have started a lot less opening days.
Now attempting to fix my post.
The "Save" button in edit mode does absolutely nothing.
Posts are only editable for a few minutes, but the edit button doesn't go away like it should when the time is up.
Don't forget early 90's salary.
Alright. Morris has 527 career regular season starts. 408 for Detroit, who were in the AL East for the entirety of Morris' career. Morris had 13 career postseason starts, but based on Madden's specificity in identifying his attention to Morris as only in Detroit, I think we can safely rule out all but the 4 he started for the Tigers.
In 1984, he started game 1 of the ALCS against the Royals, who started Buddy Black - who had a 128 ERA+ that year in 257 innings (as against Morris' 109 in 240), though to be fair Black gave up 4 ER in 5 IP that day. Then he started Game 1 of the WS against San Diego, who started Mark Thurmond, who had pitched to a 121 ERA+ in 179 IP that year. Though, to be fair, Morris craftily and presciently pitched to the score that day, giving up 2 runs in the first after being staked to a 1-0 lead in the top of the inning, eventually recording the win when Detroit scored 2 in the fifth.
He also started Game 4 of that WS against Eric Show, who was alright, but got killed that day. He also started Game 2 of the '87 ALCS against the Twins and Bert Blyleven. Madden probably didn't catch that game.
So in 4 career postseason starts for Detroit, Morris pitched against one guy he was clearly better than, two guys who have arguments for having pitched better in the season in question, and Bert Blyleven.
It might be interesting to see how many of Morris' 408 regular season starts for Detroit Madden didn't see. Might be interesting, though almost certainly not worth the effort. Also interesting to note that he only saw 10% of the games started by a guy that he was clearly interested in and thought was terrific. In contrast, I'm 100% sure that I watched more than 10% of, for example, Pedro Martinez's 201 starts for the Red Sox, and I don't cover sports for a living.
Also worth noting that Madden has served on the Historical Overview Committee (selection committee for the VC, per wikipedia), and so has a somewhat greater obligation than the average sportswriter to know of what he speaks in this arena.
a) He said "at least 40."
b) That figure is probably referring to the games he saw him throw at the ballpark, rather than a combination of in-person and TV games
c) Considering Jack made 43 career starts against the Yankees, he's probably seen somewhere in the plus-40 neighborhood of live Jack starts.
d) Madden's still a nitwit.
To move these proceedings along, prosecution will stipulate to suppositions (A), (B), (C) and especially (D). However, argument remains that regardless of the percentage of any players games directly observed every BBWAA member given the opportunity to vote for the Hall of Fame has an obligation to consider what the player did in all their games and the only way to do that is to examine the record of happened. We have a fancy word for that Record of What Happened - stats or statistics (if you prefer). Madden's failure to even do a cursory examination of Morris' career is obvious dereliction of duty. Prosecution rests.
Rk Player IP WAR ERA+ From To1 Bert Blyleven 4970.0 90.7 118 1970 1992
2 Frank Tanana 4188.1 52.6 106 1973 1993
3 Dennis Martinez 3999.2 45.1 106 1976 1998
4 Jack Morris 3824.0 39.3 105 1977 1994
5 Charlie Hough 3801.1 34.8 106 1970 1994
What a disgrace.
Late response on my part. Burnett is indeed correct; he has a career average of 12.4 WP per 200 innings, which easily clears Morris's 10.8. The other answer is Sudden Sam McDowell, who averaged 11.2 WP per 200 over a career that lasted 2492.1 innings.
So Morris's supporters can add this to their campaign posters: Better command than Sam McDowell and AJ Burnett!
I completely agree but Morris's supporters don't portray him as Niekro or Sutton. They did comp him fairly often to the loser Blyleven when they were both on the ballot.
It would be interesting to know how Morris voters voted on those other guys. Certainly lack of dominance was trotted out against Blyleven and Sutton as reasons not to vote for them (Niekro not so much to my memory). Stat geeks are the only people who ever made a dominance argument for Blyleven and that was all Ks and shutouts. Niekro, Sutton and Blyleven got into the HoF based on endurance, not domination, and I don't recall many arguing much differently.
An honest argument for Morris goes something like this:
From the mid-70s through 80s, there were a number of very good pitchers who didn't achieve greatness. There were some pitchers who showed flashes of greatness but whether injury, drugs, bad luck, they didn't sustain it. The pitcher of that era who had the best combination of quality and quantity was Morris. On its own, his case is borderline at best. But, as the best of his era and a guy with a few great, memorable games and a great reputation, he deserves to be waved in.
That's still a case we can argue strongly against but at least it fits with some facts -- including his early vote totals which are pretty similar to Blyleven, John, Kaat and others who were good but not great and didn't make it to 300 wins.
By the way, CYA votes and especially finishes are pretty much useless as any indicator. CYA awards, strong 2nd place finishes, fine. But they only got to vote for 3 in Morris's day. A couple of second-place votes and 5 third place votes (out of 28 top 3 votes) is enough to get you a 5th place finish in a CYA. Most seasons you and I finished in a tie for 8th place in CYA voting. One suspects that if we looked at Morris's vote totals from writers outside Detroit, they would look pretty meager.
You probably expect a little too much from Bill Madden. See if you can guess the year each Bill Madden column appeared in the NY Daily News?
A. "A Six-pack Vote For The Hall"
B. "Shut Out Of Hall, They Still Make Their Pitch"
C. "Time To Deck The Hall"
A. 1999
B. 2001
C. 2003
More wins
Fewer losses
A lower ERA (and a lower proportion of unearned runs allowed)
More strikeouts (at a higher rate)
Fewer walks (at a significantly lower rate)
More Cy Young support, including a second-place finish (albeit behind a unanimous winner), despite being matched against a more impressive set of contemporaries
A comparable postseason record, if you can bring yourself to look deeper than GAME SEVEN!
The level of ridiculousness of the columns explaining the inevitably enormous number of Morris yes, Mussina no ballots would reach historic proportions.
He would also a garish full-length mink coat on early-season road trips.
I vote no, on behalf of dead minks everywhere.
Well, to be fair, the bands only had a little bit of overlap - though there's little doubt in my mind that Roy Wood was a significantly superior talent to Jeff Lynne. Heck, his solo album 'Boulders' is top-50 material.
WE
ARE
RIGHT
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