Morris was the ace of the 1991 Twins and 1984 Tigers. Even if Petry and Erickson had better seasons, Jack was the guy who started game1 of both ALCS and WS. The ALCS being more telling, since the WS rotation can depend on how the long the previous series goes and who's rested.

Those who are anti Morris's HOF case should take care not to distort the facts. They are on our side.

"He is, but not by too much. Who would be the offensive equivalant of Morris? Harold Baines?"

Take Jim Rice's career and add Joe Carter's homer, and you've got it.


Maybe in overall value (though I still doubt it), but I don't think Rice is a good comp since they achieved their numbers in opposite ways. Rice is a pure peak candidate; while he didn't last as an elite player long enough to warrant election in my opinion, at least he really was a legit MVP caliber player for a 3 year span (1977-1979). Morris OTOH, definitely had the longevity of a HOFer, but he had virtually no peak to speak of; he was never a truly elite CYA caliber pitcher, not even for a single season. I still think Baines is a better comp, or maybe Andre Dawson if you want to be generous.

I still think Baines is a better comp, or maybe Andre Dawson if you want to be generous.

Vinny Testaverde?

Morris was the ace of the 1991 Twins and 1984 Tigers. Even if Petry and Erickson had better seasons, Jack was the guy who started game1 of both ALCS and WS. The ALCS being more telling, since the WS rotation can depend on how the long the previous series goes and who's rested.


Sure, but if Morris was the ace of his teams pitching staffs for the majority of his career like his supporters claim (and he was), that kinda just proves that either: A) His teams had some pretty mediocre staffs, or B) His managers overrated his ability. And neither really seems like a major point in his favor. But that's kinda Morris's entire HOF argument; it revolves much more around how good people THOUGHT he was rather than how good he ACTUALLY was.

Orel Hershiser did not win 250 games. He won 204; to be specific, 204-150 compared to Morris's 254-186, which makes the difference 50-36 in Morris's favor. (We know, of course, that Morris didn't pitch well enough to have that kind of W-L record in neutral conditions - see comments above about Trammell, Whitaker, Evans, Gibson, et al.) Hershiser wasn't on two WS winners because the '95 Indians lost in Game 6 and the '97 Indians lost in Game 7. And Hershiser wasn't really the ace of those Indian teams ahead of Nagy and Martinez (Dennis Martinez, whose career record is every bit as good as Morris's.) But on the '88 Dodgers, Hershiser was an ACE in a way that Morris never was for any team in his career.

Chuck Finley only had a 200-173 career record and never appeared in a WS. But give him Trammell and Whitaker instead of Dick Schofield/Gary DiSarcina and Johnny Ray/Luis Sojo and we'll see who the pitcher is. Finley is another one that I'd take as the equal to Morris or maybe slightly better.

Those who are anti Morris's HOF case should take care not to distort the facts. They are on our side

Exactly right. And tone matters: those opposed to Morris are much more likely to prevail by saying "I understand why Morris appears Hall-worthy, but let me tell you why I think a vote for him is ultimately a vote to lower the HOF's standards," as opposed to, say, "only an idiot could vote for Morris."

And if I were in charge of a "stop Morris" campaign, I would tell my troops one other thing: spend most of your time making an affirmative case for Curt Schilling, and comparing him to Morris, rather than just tearing down Morris. I'm convinced by Posnanski's argument that a player needs to be the best at their position on the ballot to clear 75% (unless they are an automatic first ballot guy). The only way to stop Morris -- who may also benefit next year from the "clean" contrast with Clemens -- is to convince a lot of voters that Schilling is a clearly stronger candidate. If voters can see that Morris is clearly inferior to Schilling, who himself will not be seen as "first ballot material" by many voters, then it becomes harder to vote for Morris. And even voters who are totally comfortable denying Clemens entry based on PED use may find it hard to justify electing only the third-best starting pitcher on their ballot. And if Morris doesn't make it next year, I think there's a good chance he falls short the following year too.

Exactly right. And tone matters: those opposed to Morris are much more likely to prevail by saying "I understand why Morris appears Hall-worthy, but let me tell you why I think a vote for him is ultimately a vote to lower the HOF's standards," as opposed to, say, "only an idiot could vote for Morris."

And if I were in charge of a "stop Morris" campaign, I would tell my troops one other thing: spend most of your time making an affirmative case for Curt Schilling, and comparing him to Morris, rather than just tearing down Morris.

All true. As we've mentioned before, human nature being what it is, any positive campaign stands a better chance of being persuasive than a negative campaign. It gains a more genuine, less defensive hearing.

I see Schilling as reasonably comparable in value (although often quite different in shape or style) to:

Jim Palmer
Fergie Jenkins
Nolan Ryan
Don Sutton (Note: my opinion of Sutton seems to be much higher than most people's opinion of Sutton)
Whitey Ford

That does put him behind the Gibson/Carlton/Perry/Blyleven class, but, to go the other direction:

Some pitchers I'd take Schilling ahead of:

Marichal
Newhouser
Kevin Brown (OK, that's not going to convince anyone outside of our circles)
Bunning
Eckersley

Does that sound like a Hall of Famer to you?

If I try to do the same thing for Morris, I wind up comparing him to the likes of Finley, Dennis Martinez, Guidry, Vida Blue, Jimmy Key, Frank Tanana, Hershiser, Viola. It's a different list.

On seeing the name Jenkins on the list above, I realize that Jenkins and Schilling do share one important attribute: they're both from the "just throw strikes" school of pitching.

One should also note what we're really saying when we compare Morris to the likes of Finley, Martinez, or Tanana: those were some very, very good pitchers, and that's not an insulting comparison at all.

And 600 people can be wrong.

Agreed. Plenty more than 600 people voted for Richard Nixon to be president -- three times, in fact.

Hey, God, in his infinite wisdom, put Richard Nixon on this earth. To bring to us his heritage, one of priceless worth.

Over 700 people have given the movie Ed with Matt LeBlanc more than 6 stars on IMDb.

"All true. As we've mentioned before, human nature being what it is, any positive campaign stands a better chance of being persuasive than a negative campaign. It gains a more genuine, less defensive hearing."

A negative campaign won't be effective because all it does is keep Jack Morris's name in the columns all year. You want to fight his induction? Best strategy is to try to ignore him as much as possible. Like mainstream media and Ron Paul.

That's exactly what the steroid hardliners and discounters have been doing all along. Making up their own numbers based on what they assume would've/could've/should've happened if said player hadn't juiced rather than going off statistical facts of what actually DID happen.

And yes, true absurdity is as good a way of describing it as any I've heard.

What also DID happen was these gentlemen pumped themselves full of illegal drugs. Yeah, yeah, TEH GREENIES, but people hate steroids. Deal with it.

You want to fight his induction? Best strategy is to try to ignore him as much as possible.

Disagree. As it stands, there will be two HOF stories next year: 1) will Morris make it?, and 2) how will the PED guys get treated? And to the extent Clemens gets debated, that probably only helps Morris. Morris has only a 1-year window to make it -- in his last year of eligibility, Maddux, Glavine and Mussina join the ballot, and Morris will become the 6th-best (at best) starting pitcher on the ballot.

So, the only way to stop Morris IMO is to really elevate Schilling a lot, and make him part of the 2012 story. And it's an interesting story, because Schilling too has a "window" next year, and will probably lose ground when Maddux/Glavine/Mussine arrive (though he might well make it eventually). I would try to make Schilling, rather than Morris, the "clean" anti-Clemens, so anti-steroid voters feel good about supporting him. It's really a more logical contrast than Morris-Clemens anyway: they are more similar pitchers, and you have the Darth/Luke angle that Clemens mentored Schilling.

What does Rich Lederer think about Schilling? He's got time now......

I do like Schilling, and I think he's 100 deserving of HOF. But thinking of him as on the right side in the battle of good vs. evil is impossbile to me. You wear a Red Sox uniform, you're tainted in my eyes.

What also DID happen was these gentlemen pumped themselves full of illegal drugs. Yeah, yeah, TEH GREENIES, but people hate steroids. Deal with it.

I never said they didn't. I'm just saying that projecting out their careers based on assumptions and guesses on what they WOULD have done if they hadn't juiced and basing your opinion on that is just ridiculous. By the same logic, you could rank Koufax as a top 15-20 all time player based on the extra 10 years of superstar pitching seasons you think he may have had if he didn't get that arthritic shoulder. But that condition did happen, and his career value changed because of it. Likewise, the roiders did take those illegal PED's, and their career values changed because of it. Whether or not they should be elected to the HOF because of their choices is a completely separate argument, but when people are talking about greatness and value produced, WHY they were able to produce that value is irrelevant.

So, the only way to stop Morris IMO is to really elevate Schilling a lot

I'll play!

Two highly similar careers:



Two other highly similar careers:



Question for potential Hall of Fame voters: who's greater, Jack Powell or Carl Hubbell? :)

when people are talking about greatness and value produced, WHY they were able to produce that value is irrelevant.

Why? To pick your example, there are plenty of people (not so many on this site, I would guess) who think Sandy Koufax is one of the 10 "greatest" pitchers in major-league history. There are many ways to define "greatness": peak, prime, career, well-roundedness, and the WHY of the value can become extremely relevant depending on how you're defining your terms. If you think "greatness" is defined by one's best "natural" true-talent level at the "natural" peak of one's abilities, that can quite easily and logically lead to giving Sandy Koufax a very high ranking and discounting the accomplishments of Bonds, et al. as "unnatural".

If you define "greatness" as total career value, regardless of how it was achieved, obviously Bonds is in the conversation for best ever and Sandy Koufax falls out of consideration completely because of the arthritic shoulder. But there's no reason why one HAS to define "greatness" that way.

57, 59 & 65, ok, so now to keep Morris out of the HoF we have to talk-up Schilling?

Mind you, Schilling (and Mussina, who I am a big fan of) should go into the HoF, but if keeping Morris out of the HoF means talking up that blowhard Schilling, well that's a bridge too far for me.

BDC had me look up Jack Powell. He gave up a slew of unearned runs. He did know how to win (245 wins), but he also knew how to lost (254 losses.) He was a side-armer. Given all those unearned runs, I guess he was probably a groundball pitcher, if one could make that distinction for Deadball Era pitchers.

Morris is going in next year, I think that is pretty much a given. Even talking up Schilling isn't going to stop that Bataan march.

I'm almost to the point that the effort to get Trammell(aint happening) and Raines in(eventually it will happen) is a better use of resources. It just galls me, because Morris case, as mentioned in other threads, is anti-intellectualism at it's finest.

[72] Morris is going in next year, I think that is pretty much a given. Even talking up Schilling isn't going to stop that Bataan march.

No hope for a repeat of the Jim Bunning experience?

What other pitcher in baseball history has won 250 games and has been the ace pitcher on two World Series winners?The problem with this is that Morris doesn't qualify here either. Morris was NOT the ace of the 1991 Twins. Nor the 1984 Tigers. Erickson and Petry both got more votes for the Cy Young. The writers misremember their own narrative because Morris stayed around longer than Erickson and Petry, but both of those pitchers were thought BY THE WRITERS to be better than Morris in 1991 and 1984 respectively.

You're using a very specific definition of ace, and then throwing out the argument because Morris doesn't match your definition of ace. He started game 1 of the WS in both series. Heck, he started games 1, 4 and 7 in 1991. Come on, that's an ace of a World Series winner. Erickson won 20 games and Morris 18, so Erickson was higher on the Cy ballots, but Morris was clearly the ace.

No hope for a repeat of the Jim Bunning experience?

It's always a possibility I guess, but I just don't see the guys who are currently voting for Morris, changing their vote, and I think we've already seen a couple of ballots in which the writers who didn't vote for him this year have said they will vote for him next year. Bunning had the unfortunate situation of having better candidates on the ballot no matter how you look at it, Morris vs Schilling gives Morris the career edge, and Clemens is just going to help people who played before the age of roids.

You're using a very specific definition of ace, and then throwing out the argument because Morris doesn't match your definition of ace. He started game 1 of the WS in both series. Heck, he started games 1, 4 and 7 in 1991. Come on, that's an ace of a World Series winner. Erickson won 20 games and Morris 18, so Erickson was higher on the Cy ballots, but Morris was clearly the ace.


He pitched Games 1 of the LCS and World Series in 1992 also. He was the ace of three World Series champions, by any serious definition. The only possible ambiguity is 1992.

For HoM purposes, I've always used RA+, not ERA+. So when someone says that Jack Powell allowed a lot of unearned runs, my react is to say that we'll just look at his RA like I looked at everyone's RA.

For Powell, I get an equivalent record of 263-225. Taken at face value, that's considerably better than Morris's 226-199, since 37-36 has significant value. There are still adjustments you probably want to make to that, the most significant being to ask how good his defensive support was, and the second most significant being to ask how good a hitter he was.

I don't particularly like what Bob Dernier Cri did in #68 in comparing by number of starts - since, of course, Hubbell pitched more innings per start than Schilling did. That's a condition of the times, but the conditions of Schilling's times also included more highly effective, 38, 40, 42 year old pitchers than Hubbell's times. That's its own opportunity.

Going by IP, I have Hubbell's equivalent record as 249-150, which puts him in or almost in the Gibson/Carlton/Blyleven cluster, while Schilling's 227-135 clocks in at about one Cy Young quality season behind, and brings up the names I mentioned in post #59.

Pursuing the comparison to Palmer is difficult, because you can only make that comparison by adjusting for Palmer's defensive support. But comparing Schilling to Whitey Ford? Go for it. Compare Schilling to Ford and Morris to Milt Pappas.

Furthermore, how ABOUT those 49ers!

(Sorry.)

Why? To pick your example, there are plenty of people (not so many on this site, I would guess) who think Sandy Koufax is one of the 10 "greatest" pitchers in major-league history.

There's also plenty of people who think Jack Morris is a HOFer and a "clutch" pitcher, even though the numbers don't support it. Doesn't make them right. And I'm fine if people want to define greatness as peak ability only and include Koufax on a short list of the best pitchers ever; what I meant that I wouldn't be okay with is if they were defining it by career value and they included him anyway based on what could've but didn't happen. The reverse of that is exactly what people are doing with the roiders, and it doesn't make any sense.

If you think "greatness" is defined by one's best "natural" true-talent level at the "natural" peak of one's abilities

Do you know anyone who says they define greatness as a players "natural true talent level at the natural peak of ones abilities" like you suggested above? That's a lot of variants that are deliberately put in to frame the question to favor the candidate they want to support. In simpler terms, cherry-picking.

And again, it's a different statement entirely to say that Bonds (for example) WASN'T really as good as his 2001-2004 numbers than to say that he WOULDN'T have been that good without steroids. The second statement is debatable, but certainly understandable. The first statement is flat out false.

To use an example I used last time I had this debate on BTF (an example the other debater completely ignored), if you were to create a list of the tallest baseball players of the 90's, would you leave Randy Johnson off if you found out he was using some bizarre growth hormone that gave him an extra six inches of height? Wouldn't he still be the tallest player, regardless of how he gained that height? It's a statistical fact. And that's what I argue against in the steroid debates. It's a different argument to say that Bonds WOULDN'T have been as great as Aaron and Mays without roids (and I'd probably agree with that), but to say that he WASN'T as great as them because he took roids is flat out inaccurate.

Cross posting from another thread, Morris is no Andy Pettitte. That's for sure.

Morris wasn't in Pettitte's zip code as a pitcher. 105 to 117 in ERA+. Huge edge to Pettitte in winning percentage. Pettitte has more CY shares in fewer years. Pettitte's postseason ERA is almost identical to Morris's, but Pettitte pitched in a much higher run scoring environment. He keeps almost that exact 117 to 105 ERA+ edge in the postseason, but in almost three times as many innings.

To have credibility a Morris voter would have to admit Pettitte should go into the Hall first, well ahead of Jack.

"To have credibility a Morris voter would have to admit Pettitte should go into the Hall first, well ahead of Jack."

Only if time has no meaning. If you think both are worthy, you vote Morris in now and Pettitte 5 years from now. When Morris will be off the ballot one way or another.

Morris wasn't in Pettitte's zip code as a pitcher.

Only if zip codes have no meaning.

Continuing from the other thread:

Pettitte is actually the pitcher that Morris supporters claim Morris was. I'm not saying Pettitte is a HOF, but he has a better case than Morris.

He at least had a real peak, although they were spread out, but his entire career was one big prime. Other than his 98 ERA+ in 2008, he never had an ERA+ under 100 and only two other years under 110 in 16 seasons.

That's pretty damn impressive.

That's an excellent point. (As is noting that Morris couldn't muster 200 innings at an average or better ERA in half his seasons--that's some ace!) Give Pettitte one Game Seven studliness, and with Pettitte's overall much superior postseason record you have the pitcher Morris supporters think Morris is. Pettitte pitched in the shadow of Sabathia, Clemens, Mussina, Cone, even David Wells and Black Jack McDowell, all pitchers (certainly the first four, and in their better seasons the latter two) who were clearly superior to Morris. In fact, on a lot of those Yankee teams Morris would have been the very durable, slightly above average third starter (and in a few years, the fourth starter). Nothing wrong with that, but no manager going by quality pitches Morris ahead of Ace, then Pettitte.

*****

Morris wasn't in Pettitte's zip code as a pitcher.

Only if zip codes have no meaning.

Well, Jack does share the first digit of 105 versus 117 (consider that their respective ERA+'s for both the regular season and the postseason).

"To have credibility a Morris voter would have to admit Pettitte should go into the Hall first, well ahead of Jack."

Only if time has no meaning. If you think both are worthy, you vote Morris in now and Pettitte 5 years from now. When Morris will be off the ballot one way or another.

Fair enough--do you think Andy Pettitte is a HOFer?