Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? Historically, those who’ve thrown 3,000 innings with an ERA+ above 120 have done very well in Hall of Fame voting. Among those who meet that threshold and have appeared on a Hall ballot, only Kevin Brown, Will White, and Silver King have failed to garner induction.
Alas, with that 119 ERA+, Pierce falls just short of that admittedly arbitrary mark. This of course doesn’t mean he isn’t Hall-worthy, but it is somewhat representative of how I view his career in regards to Cooperstown. The lefty was often an all-star and award vote-getter, but rarely the dominant pitcher in his league. He had one excellent season but was otherwise merely above average. No statistic of his stands out as spectacular; his ERA, ERA+, WHIP, strikeouts, and even WAR are nice but nothing shiny enough to anchor a Hall of Fame candidacy. By any measure he was a very good pitcher, and by no measure was he a Hall of Famer.
In the end, Billy Pierce just missed earning a spot on my ballot for the 50 best players not in the Hall of Fame, just missed earning a spot on the list of 3,000 IP/120 ERA+ hurlers, and falls just short of deserving a spot in the real-life Hall. He seemed just qualified enough to write about here but turned out not interesting enough to say much about; no one will comment here claiming Billy Pierce’s lack of induction a travesty, and no one will comment here claiming me crazy for considering his worthiness. Long-tenured guys who last with one team and post impressive but unspectacular numbers get their faces displayed on their team’s outfield wall, but they don’t always get (or deserve) their faces carved into a Hall of Fame plaque.
Repoz
Posted: May 22, 2012 at 04:25 PM |
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1. thetailor Posted: May 22, 2012 at 05:07 PM (#4137990)Vida Blue fell a few points short.
Call them the "Crayola" group
I'm old enough to remember the 1950s. The statement is, of course, not literally true. It's close enough that Andrew isn't just being an idiot, but it's not ENTIRELY true. There were always people like Roy McMillan and Kluzewski, who were very very good for a few years, but not HoF material. But there were a lot of HoFers in those AS games, and there's a reason why. In the 1950s, there developed two practices: 1) Voters would vote for a HoF guy, even when he was past his prime and not the best guy at his position THAT YEAR, and 2) The managers would fill out the roster with HoFers, even if they were past their prime. In addition, the first class of Negro leaguers had reached their primes, so there was an influx of HoFers from that group, all active in the 50s.
So you had Willie Mays and Jackie Robinson et al, along with 40-year-old white guys who were going in the Hall. And if the fans didn't elect a declining superstar, like Stan Musial, the manager would put him on the roster anyway. He probably wasn't one of the top outfielders by the middle of the decade, but he was always on the All-Star team, even when he was 40 and about finished.
The most interesting AS roster to me, was the 1957. In that year, as in others before, fans voted for the starting lineups, by mail. Cincy newspapers printed filled-in ballots with every single Cincy starter already voted for, and ran them every day. There being no limit to how many votes you could send in, the AS manager was soon confronted with a voted AS starting lineup that had all the Cincy starters, except that the fans did vote enough, in other cities, to elect Stan Musial, who was past his prime, although not a horrible pick for the AS team. The Comissioner, or the president of the NL, overrode the votes, so that Hank Aaron and Willie Mays could start, instead of Wally Post. But the entire Cincy infield started the AS game, except for, if I remember right, Musial at 1B. Cincy had not won the 1956 pennant or anything; their roster was not full of HoFers. It is true that their infielders were all quite good, but there were better infielders out there. That's both the syndromes I mentioned above. You vote for a fading superstar like Musial, and then your starting outfielders are replaced by a couple of early-arrival black superstars.
We don't do that any more. We tend,now, to elect the best guys that year, so we sometimes get early-season flukes on the AS team, and we seldom get the sentiment votes for superstars in their late 30s and 40s, who are now just very good. - Brock Hanke
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