Tuesday, June 11, 2013
Silva: Did Pettitte’s 250 Lock Him for Hall of Fame?
(sportsmediawatchdog.com)
I accept responsibility for those two uhh three uhhh four uhhhh five days.
Read More...Andy Pettitte locked up his 250th career win this past weekend against the Mariners. It now could be said the win also locked up his Hall of Fame candidacy, something that many thought was dead and buried after his retirement in 2010.
The naysayers will point out how Pettitte is the anti-Hall of Famer. He is good, not great. He is more a model of consistency than dominance. You could even point out the advantages ...
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1 2 >Clearly, Morris's WOW facto was so wowy that there was wowverload, leading the people that most directly saw his legendary dominance to give Jimmy Key more Cy votes and overwhelmingly vote nay as soon as the chance to honor the wowness came.
Compare him to Jim Rice. My recollection (and I'm biased as a Red Sox fan of course) is that for a large portion of his career Rice WAS viewed as "future Hall of Famer" while Morris was not. Rice's lack of even a modest decline phase changed that perception some but certainly in the late 70s he was viewed as one of the game's elite. I don't remember Morris having that same narrative around him until 1991 and of course he didn't have much in the way of a decline phase either.
Do others who remember have the same recollection? I'm curious if my memory is wrong here.
(and note: I'm not making any claims as to the accuracy of these statements, just trying to get a feel for the conventional wisdom at the time)
Believe it or not, I am not adamant about voting based on the numbers. If you want to put players in the HOF for the WOW factor, then just be consistent about it and make sure you are supporting the players who gave us the most WOW.
Eric Davis and Dwight Gooden are the kind of guys who I could get behind if the argument was "don't look at the numbers, you had to have seen them play" Jack Morris? About as much WOW to me as his teammate Alan Trammell. At least Trammell did have the numbers.
And five years after he retired, roughly one in four voting writers agreed wholeheartedly with you.
Morris never struck me as actually being tough. He looked tough, had the tough nickname, and had durability going for him, which gave him the impression of being gritty, or something; don't impressive pitchers impress by missing bats, or in lieu of that demonstrating impeccable control? Morris did neither.
From age 33 on he was on average a below average pitcher (something I don't see mentioned often, but you could look it up). He had almost nothing going for him except durability. He was giving up more than a hit an inning. Looked nothing like a HOFer, which is why I think he got so few votes from the writers in the early going. It took more than a decade for the 254 wins to overwhelm the lousy last third of his career.
Damn numbers crunchers and their insidious plan to brainwash the members of the BBWAA to vote against Morris...
That matches mine. Those big years for Rice pegged him as something above. And I don't remember the FEAR thing so much, but there were lots of stories about his legendary strength (breaking golf clubs mid swing, etc.) which is part of what I always figured was the FEAR.
In contrast, I don't remember Morris being a WOW pitcher, or even regarded as such by many. Respected, definitely. People noticed the win totals and all the starts. I think it's telling that despite pitching in an era when wins were still so important for Cy Young votes that he received comparatively few votes despite wins being one of his strengths.
But he wasn't seen as just an innings eater, I think he was seen as a staff leader (I wish I could remember if he got the "ace" tag). Maybe Dave Stewart w/the A's is a good comparison? Though Morris didn't win 20 multiple seasons in a row, he had the big World Series performance which was like Stewart's playoff performances against Clemens.
Ya know, his early career was in the prime of my baseball wheelhouse (my teens), but most of his supporters seem to be at least a decade older than me. Shouldn't they be waxing rhapsodic over Vida Blue or Luis Tiant?
okayyyyyyyy - i guess in that famous game 7
but on that score, brandon backe was WOW - game 4 WS 2005, which of course, brad lidge blew. also in the sunday night game vs the giants on espn in which he threw a shutout and barry lamar didn't get a hit. and brandon also threw another shutout 8 innings in an 04 postseason game. you talk about your postseason pitcher.
i also don't go for that - ohhhhh, he started the first game of the year - stuff. when roger clemens was with the astros, roy oswalt always started the first game - didn't make him the better pitcher. although roy was a great pitcher until he really hurt himself a couple years back. ah LUUUUUUUUUUUUVVVs me some roy-o, although i know very well he has no business in the HOF
only a few (starting) pitchers have ever made me say WOWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!! and neither of them were carlos zambrano or matt cain, who no hit the astros in the past few years.
the first pitcher i remember seeing who really struck me was ace de al ace/future ace was roy-o in the 2000 olympics (where he was overshadowed by ben sheets who did NOT make me say WOWWWWWWW)
after that, it was francisco liriano when he was with the tigers and they came to the Box - his stuff was freaking unbelieveable. same thing with oliver perez when he was first with the pirates. i thought he was gonna make sandy koufax look mediocre. then, of course, tim lincecum when he first came up. didn't know how anyone managed to get anywhere near that baseball.
oh yeah - also taylor buchholz when he first came up with the astros (until he hurt his shoulder and he kept getting sent back out there) - i thought we had a superSUPER staH!!!! pitcher.
"Morris wasn't even the best regular season pitcher on any of those WS winning teams he played on."
Lana: "wow."
Jack Morris had strengths but the other kind, steady, underwhelming, and lasted. If he had 210 wins, no one would ever mention him; he exists as a candidate because he hung around and gave decent value for a long time. That's valuable but not WOW.
I like longevity and am not opposed to rewarding it. An HOF with Dennis Martinez and Kaat and Tommy John, that would be an HOF where I'd be cool with Jack Morris. And that HOF wouldn't bother me. That HOF would probably also have Harold Baines and maybe Vada Pinson, HOVG guys who had long careers. That's not implausible. But an HOF that has none of those guys does have Morris makes no sense at all.
In the last BB Abstract in 1988, Bill James wrote profiles of many of the game's top players, and included a Jamesian feature in them, called "In a Word." The word he chose for Dale Murphy was "Cooperstown." The word he chose for Morris IIRC was "Ace." Morris was the #1 pitcher on the 1984 Tigers and of course won Game 7 with the 1991 Twins; he made a big impact on the baseball of that time, and that is what guys like Ringolsby are focusing on.
But the wow pitchers of those days IMO were Ryan, Gooden, Carlton and Valenzuela, not Morris.
You pronounce it "oaf" in your head? hmmmm.
He may have been "No.1", but he wasn't the best.
It works if you read "HOF" by the letters; "an Aitch Oh Eff"
I had the same reaction as you initially.
As noted, Rice was at his peak. Bad HOF pick, but less mystifying than the Morris increasing support over time. Does seem like a defensive move against the straw man created here.
I went to about 15 of Dwight Gooden's starts at Shea in his best year - and virtually no other games.
I'll bet you'd be hardpressed to find anyone who ever went virtually exclusively to Morris starts in any season.
This might be the dumbest Morris voting pitch I've read in quite a while.
* - obviously, after his Game 7 shutout was a brief WOW - but mainly because it was shocking that he threw any shutouts, given his 3.90 career ERA.
I think it's more lacking in self-awareness than lacking in intelligence. This line of reasoning is based on the recognition that the stat geeks probably understand stats better than the BBWAA does. The writer doesn't take the next step, creating some cognitive dissonance, and thus we have a narrative that runs counter to reality. But this is an issue that can be resolved with time.
Other way around -- it wasn't surprising that he was the guy to pitch a Game 7 gem like that, even though his career ERA was 3.90. (*)
If Game 7 was a surprise, as opposed to confirmation, Morris's voter support would be much lower.
(*) Or wherever it stood in October 1991.
I grew up watching baseball in the 1980s; I saw the NBC no-hitter and got caught up like everyone else in the "Bless You Boys" Tigers of 1984. But to me the impression of Morris at the time was that he was finally living up to pretty high expectations and moving into the realm of elite pitchers. The wow pitchers of the time were Nolan Ryan, Steve Carlton, Fernando and Dave Stieb. Morris is nowhere near the 50th percentile of "Wow" factor among plausible recent HOF candidates. He might be ahead of someone like Rick Reuschel or Jim Kaat but far, far behind guys like Gooden, Guidry, Saberhagen, Cone, Hershiser. If you want to make a "wow" case for a marginal candidate, it works for Bruce Sutter and Dennis Eckersley, and yes, Jim Rice. Not for Morris.
"If Game 7 was a surprise, as opposed to confirmation, Morris's voter support would be much lower."
If Morris had pitched a complete-game, 6-3 win that day, including getting a double play with the bases loaded in the 8th at 5-3, THAT would have been a confirmation of the perception - "gutsy pitcher who finds a way to win."
Yeah. Because he was terrible. Please.
And that's another cheap shot. I guess he shocked you 28 other times as well.
Can we all just agree once and for all: Not a Hall of Famer, but a damned good pitcher that any team would've loved to have in their rotation.
Well, see #29, except it made him a lot better than non-terrible. But there's a huge gulf between terrible and "WOW." Morris was the kind of pitcher that really pissed you off if you were a fan of the team he was pitching against. He'd typically get in and out of trouble all day long, and beat your guys 7-4 or something. The feeling after losing to Morris was usually that your team had let him off the hook at least a time or two. Of course, he would throw dominant games on occasion, as any very good but not truly great pitcher will. But those occasions were not the expected result of a Morris start. "WOW" pitchers are the guys you expect to throw a gem every time. The only way a "WOW" pitcher is not a HOFer is if he just doesn't last long enough, and that was not Morris' problem.
Obviously. It isn't a one-word acronym like AIDS, or one that go either way, like "SAT" test.
I will keep my choice of the form of the indefinite article in mind the next time I use HOF though; it is probably technically correct to use "a" instead of "an" and this is clearly a key thing that I need to remember. Yes, I know this was another guy's post in this case, but I use "an HOF" as well.
As to the #1 thing, Petry (and Berenguer, actually) had a better ERA+ in 1984 than Morris did, but Morris was the better pitcher overall, the consensus #1 starter on those teams, and when people talked and wrote about those teams, it was always "Morris and Petry." That is the kind of thing that guys like Ringolsby focus on WRT to Morris and the HOF.
His voter support WAS lower - his first four years on the ballot he only received 22.2%, 19.6%, 20.6% and 22.8%, respectively. Four years and he was basically right back where he had started. No steady growth pattern whatsoever. Nobody considered him even remotely as a "WOW" legitimate HOF candidate. It wasn't until his 5th year on the ballot that he finally started to pick up a little traction to 26.3% and made it into the top 10 vote-getters for the first time. In fact, Morris didn't see his vote % start to jump until Bert Blyleven's did and he rode Blyeven's coattails for the next 8 years.
Not that it will matter much. If Morris doesn't get in next year via the BBWAA, the VC will probably put him in the HOF eventually. Then the BBWAA can point to his election as yet another example of the VC's loose policies letting in guys the BBWAA knew weren't fit to be elected.
not a guy that made the other team wonder how they lost. Read what Parrish and
His teammates and Sparky said.
I was in Detroit for the meat of his career (moved there in '81, left in '93), and the description in #6 is spot on. No one considered him as good as his best contemporaries, but he won a crap load of games by always walking away from that fine line unscathed.
He was a good, but not great, pitcher for a very long time. There's nothing wrong with that. He was rarely the best pitcher on his own team, let alone in the league as some now say (which is evidenced by his meager CYA support and his slow climb in HOF voting until very recently).
Morris was that annoying guy who wasn't going to let you win. He was that guy who would find a way to beat you when he didn't have his best stuff. He was the guy you thought you should be scoring tons of runs off of but seemed to always get the double play at the right time. He was never the fastest or the strongest, he was the toughest.
That's the Morris case. It is 100% grunt, 0% wow.*
*OK, it's 50% grunt, 50% BS but I'm trying to be nice here.
Huh ... it never sunk in for me before but Mac's first year on the ballot was the Gwynn/Ripken year. Man, that would have been a massive election. Anyway, Morris fell back 4% that year as it was so he'd have fallen back even farther if Mac had soaked up another 6 names per ballot or so. Worst-case scenario for the backlog would be McGwire not quite making it over the line -- not likely but possible given Gwynn/Ripken -- then he soaks up votes for two years. Of course it's possible some of the post-2007 Mac voters that didn't vote Morris would have if they hadn't been voting Mac but it doesn't seem likely there'd have been many of those. Still, Morris probably just bounces back fully after getting whacked harder in 2007.
Palmeiro came on the ballot in 2011 which was, oddly, a stagnant year for Morris. The other big new names were Bagwell and Walker, no reason to think they would cause Morris to stall. Obviously having Palmeiro soaking up another 65-70% wasn't gonna help him especially if Bagwell also soaks up more votes. Also if Palmeiro gets 75-80% in 2011, it's possible Blyleven doesn't quite make it across, leaving him on the 2012 ballot which likely keeps Morris from the big jump he made. Anti-roiding almost certainly helped in 2011-12.
And this year? What can you say -- unless they were going to ban Biggio, Piazza, Bonds and Clemens from the ballot, Morris had little hope of election.
I'm at a loss. I grew up watching Morris and the rest of the Tigers, and other than "Jack," I don't recall him having a nickname at all. Once in a great while, someone would refer to him as "Morris the Cat"--but that can't possibly be what you are talking about.
I, for one, have no interest whatsoever to discuss his candidacy anymore (67% of voters like him as a HoFer, but it looks like Morris has hit a wall, and next year's ballot almost certainly will overwhelm him. So that's that).
My memory of Jack Morris is mainly the 1991 season and mostly gone but my impressions of the 80s Tigers are all Trammell and Whitaker (with a smidge of Kirk Gibson). How about we elect Trammell and Whitaker instead?
Since Chass has already announced his intention to vote for Morris and nobody else next year, then stop voting afterward, I think you can consider your suspicions confirmed.
Not for morbid reasons (I bear no ill towards these people, not even old curmudgeons like Chass), but to find out how quickly the BBWAA membership is changing.
NLCS 1986, Game 6. A fantastic, unreal, amazing game. One of the tensest and most exciting post-season games ever. Why do I bring it up under Mike Scott's name when Scott never even appeared in that game? Because everyone was treating Game 6 as if it were the whole series. Had the Astros won Game 6, Scott would have pitched Game 7. And every fan I know was just conceding that potential Game 7 as an Astro win, all because of Scott.
That's domination. That was followed two years later by Hershiser '88, which is also a story of domination.
Stuff was similar, low 90's fastball and splitter.
Umm, OK, I guess you could call it that. A lot of people assume that abrasives had something to do with it.
"Because everyone was treating Game 6 as if it were the whole series. Had the Astros won Game 6, Scott would have pitched Game 7. And every fan I know was just conceding that potential Game 7 as an Astro win, all because of Scott."
This was so true; I remember it well also.
Yes and no. Chass is voting only Morris and then stopping as some form of pointless protest. He hasn't said that Morris deserves to go in before Maddux. To be honest, I'm not entirely sure Chass realizes Maddux is on the ballot next year. I would wager not a single voter thinks Morris should go in before Maddux; if there are any, they won't say so; and that other than Chass and one or two other open protest votes, not a single ballot will list Morris but not Maddux.
While Murray is certainly a stubborn curmudgeon and will probably follow through on it, you should never believe sportswriters HoF promises a year in advance. They're very flexible ... or the years of drinking have killed their memories. Chass could always say that Idelson's "we're fine with the voting" comment as "clear direction from the HoF that roiders don't belong" and vote accordingly.
MLBN was talking about this game with some of the Mets and I think it was Hernandez who expressed that exact thought.
I was not especially wowed by Strawberry. He had a hell of a lot of talent and a very productive start to his career. But even if he had fulfilled his potential, he wasn't going to be anything that hadn't been seen before. If Straw stayed clean and healthy, he's Reggie Jackson. A first ballot HOFer, but at a level below Frank Robinson and Hank Aaron.
Eric Davis and Bo Jackson wowed me in that they did things on the field that forced you to stretch your conception of what is humanly possible. Or to conclude they weren't human.
Sure. I was addressing Chass only; Morris vs. Maddux is a joke of a comparison.
Not that I mind doing it anyway. Maddux is Morris, plus almost 1200 innings of 0.75 ERA pitching. He also has about 3/4 of Morris's walks in about 4/3 of Morris's innings.
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