Era he might have thrived in: With his durability, good for at least 240 innings ten times in his career, Morris might have been well-suited for the 1960s. The pitcher-friendly era might take somewhere close to one run off his ERA, and on the 1968 Tigers, Morris could stand in for Mickey Lolich who had postseason brilliance of his own that year, winning three games in the World Series. That all might be enough for Cooperstown.
Why: Hall of Fame voting doesn’t always deal in context. Morris could take his exact same abilities, his 105 ERA+ and 39.3 WAR which rank near the bottom for enshrined pitchers and have passable surface stats in the right era. Playing his best years in the 1960s, this could mean an ERA somewhere in the lower half of the 3.00s. If that didn’t satisfy the Baseball Writers Association of America in its Hall voting, Morris would at least probably be honored by the Veterans Committee.
There’s a tool on Baseball-Reference.com that converts stats between different eras based largely on average number of runs scored. Since earned run average directly relates to this, it’s a good tool to see how Morris’s ERA might fare with the ’68 Tigers. In short, he’d do well with them for any number of seasons from his career. Take 1986, where Morris went 21-8 with a 3.27 for Detroit; that’d be good for 16-13 with a 2.60 ERA in 1968. Or there’s the strike-shortened 1981 season where Morris led the American League with 14 wins against seven losses and a 3.05 ERA; in 1968, that would come to 20-14 with a 2.53 ERA.
Whatever the case, it’d be a huge benefit for a man who, in real life, never had a season with a sub-3.00 ERA. Then there’s the fact that playing prior to 1980 when four-man rotations were common, Morris might get enough additional starts over the course of his career for 300 wins. Heck, Morris wouldn’t need a fairytale ten-inning shutout in Game 7 of a World Series for his plaque. Fans would have to find another non-enshrined player to get angry about.
Reader Comments and Retorts
Go to end of page
Statements posted here are those of our readers and do not represent the BaseballThinkFactory. Names are provided by the poster and are not verified. We ask that posters follow our submission policy. Please report any inappropriate comments.
1. Something Other Posted: December 17, 2011 at 01:50 PM (#4018343)(Wait, wouldn't Morris's ERA+ still be stuck at 105?)
I eagerly look forward to part two of this article, where the author explains that it's merely fair to adjust Morris's stats until they look as good as possible while not changing anyone else's numbers for the better (or in effect adjusting the rest of the world's numbers downwards).
Explain to me how trading a 21-8 season for a 16-13 one improves one's HOF chances.
But is there a pitcher from the '60's that has similar adjusted numbers to Morris and got in b/c of superficial numbers? I can't think of one.
I think Morris' whole case rests on "winningest pitcher of the 80's" and Game 7. If he was 9th winningest pitcher of the 60's, he wouldn't get a 2nd thought.
Are there pitchers who wouldn't be well-suited to pitching in that era?
Maybe guys that just couldn't physically handle the IP?
I'm thinking a slight, often injured pitcher like Pedro. Maybe the run environment lightens the stress, and he can give you 40 GS, and 275-300 IP.
But maybe his body just can't take it (and back then, no manager was going to monitor his workload) and he burns out young.
Plus, any guy that needed Tommy John surgery.
That is a practical aspect of the question I hadn't considered before. From that perspective Smokey Joe Wood or Ray Chapman might benefit hugely from switching eras to the 21st century.
Catfish, though he's more of a 70's guy.
Dean Chance might be an example. He had a sort of Koufax Lite career as it was, and by the age of 28 he was effectively done.
Re: Chapman, I don't know if this is what Greg was thinking, but 21st-century medicine might at least have saved his life. He was not killed on the field; IIRC he walked off, conscious and talking. Today he'd be immobilized right away and careflighted to a trauma center. Who knows?
I was thinking more a helmet might have helped him, but better medicine too why not.
I guess I should have been clearer, I meant the practical differences in play (helmets, surgeries etc.) rather than just the statistical context of eras.
#9 mentions Catfish. Other somewhat similar guys are Bunning, Sutton and Robin Roberts. Of those, only Bunning is a 60s pitcher really and all of them are better than Morris. It's a question of whether you think Morris could have held on for 300 wins. I'm not seeing a good reason why he would have in that era. I see no reason to think he would have lasted longer (in terms of seasons) or better (in terms of late-career effectiveness) under the heavier usage. So, at best, you're probably talking 60 more starts in his career, he won less than half his starts so, at best, I think he gets to 280.
The main reason it wouldn't have mattered, as #5 alludes, is that Morris ends up looking worse in this comparison. Morris only stands out at all because he was one of the few very good starters of his era and one of the most durable. If he was a contemporary of Marichal, Perry, Koufax, Gibson, Seaver, Carlton, Jenkins, etc., he'd be lucky to be as remembered as Lolich or Tiant.
On the other hand, if he'd been on the Tigers in the 60s, I suppose they could have traded him to the Reds for Frank Robinson. :-)
I think the problem is that you could do this with LOTS of guys.
Put Jose Cruz Sr. on the 1930 Boston Braves for his whole career, and he retires with 2734 hits and a 330 / 404 / 487 line - and probably goes into the HOF.
Drop Ron Santo into 1930 Wrigley and he ends at 315 / 405 / 527, 2592 hits with 392 home runs - and in the Hall a long time ago.
Exactly. Putting Morris in a higher-IP / lower-ERA context is very, very unlikely to change the key factor in his HOF support: pitcher wins. As #3 says, there's simply no way he can get a low enough ERA that he'd benefit from trading 21-8 seasons for 16-13 seasons. Of the 300-game winners of the 1960-70's era, Don Sutton was perhaps the worst of them (no disrespect to Sutton, 300-game winners are a damn elite group in general). He started over 200 more games than Morris and pitched more than 1,400 more IP. I don't see how you could possibly make era adjustments that get Morris that many more starts or that many more innings, or anywhere close to it. Sutton won 15 games as a 41-year-old. Jack Morris had an ERA of 6 as a 38-39 year-old and was out of baseball after that.
If you move Jack Morris to another era, but leave his basic context-neutral stats (ERA+, WAR) unchanged, he would almost certainly end up with a much worse won-lost record, and if his won-lost record was even a little bit worse, his Hall-of-Fame candidacy would be dead on arrival.
Yes, but that's the whole point of the series. This isn't about just finding the right era for Jack Morris to thrive, but selecting various players and seeing if better eras were more favorable.
Oh, I have no doubt that he could have done exactly that. But if you move him to a team with a worse defense or a worse offense or give him a little bit worse luck in the transfer, the extra 3 wins he gets a year from those extra 5 GS / 40 IP per year will be more than offset by being able to get fewer 6-5 wins where he's bailed out by his offense or 3-2 wins where his Gold-Glove caliber shortstop and CF save him a couple of runs with brilliant defense behind him.
That's kind of what that translation of his 1986 season shows, from 21-8 to 16-13. For example, the 1986 AL scored 4.6 runs per game, a seasonal average of 746. Translate his 1986 to 750 runs per game and his record is 16-12.
Cue SBB to explain that he gave up once the Tigers were out of the race and gave up a bunch of runs in meaningless games. Not that the Tigers were ever in the race. The closest they got after Jul 1 was 4.5 games out briefly in early August.
No but I didn't assume any such thing in my post. But a couple of things to clear up. First, it was pretty rare for pitchers in those days to make 40 starts (except some of the knuckleballers). From 1960 to 1980, there were only 72 such seasons. A quick eye-balling says Drysdale (5), Wood (5) and Lolich (4) were the only guys to do it more than 3 times. Generally speaking a full-time starter of that era got about 37-38 starts under regular usage. And that's assuming Morris would be basically his team's #1 starter.
Now, Morris was in that transition era. In his big usage years, he made 34-37 starts anyway. He wasn't a 32-start pitcher like we have today. So, realistically speaking, you can't add more than 4 starts per season and even that is a stretch. He had essentially a 15-year career, so at most you can add 60 starts. To add more than 60 starts, you have to start getting into extending his career (and you can add 2-3 if you ignore strike years) which doesn't seem a reasonable assumption. For his career, he made 527 starts and won 254 games (some may have been in relief) so he won less than half his starts. So give him 60 more starts max, that's less than 30 more wins max and he ends up around 280.
For comparison, from 79-94, Morris made 514 starts; from 67-82, Jenkins (the workhorse of workhorses) made 553. In maybe 1.5 fewer seasons, Bob Gibson made 50 fewer starts than Morris. 60 starts is generous to Morris. It's not entirely clear he would gain any starts pitching earlier.
Basically, move him back 15 years, give him 60 more starts and he's Jim Kaat at best.
Or not playing at sunset without lights and with a gray/brown ball.
You must be Registered and Logged In to post comments.
<< Back to main