Player Name HOFm HOFs Yrs WAR WAR7 JAWS Jpos
Mark Buehrle 52 31 16 59.2 35.8 47.5 61.5

Buehrle is not yet an in for me. But he is VERY close, such that he will likely be as in as the HOM elects more players, it's concentric circles (currently at 24 hitters and 80 pitchers) will widen out, pushing him over the line.

I wish he would have pitched another three-four years and gone after 250 wins.

Not likely going to ballot for me but my set of Mark Buehrle memories:

No-hitter AND perfect game to his credit: When control was on he was something even without overpowering stuff.

Great fielder - the 4 Gold Gloves was an indication & he was in the running most other years.

The pickoff move - finished with 100 career pickoffs. That's a lot, close to Andy Pettitte for example. The difference is that his pickoff move was so good that it meant people didn't even try to steal off him. Buehrle gave up 59 steals IN HIS CAREER! His career caught stealing percentage was 58% during a time where league average CS was 29%. Going back to Pettitte, who had a similar number of innings pitched during a mostly overlapping career: 98 pickoffs, 189 steals, caught stealing percentage of 33%.

Buehrle's ability to pick runners off of first and suppress the running game seems like a clear example of instance that would call for an adjustment of an FIP-based analysis of pitchers' merit.

I don't know that anyone in the electorate is doing strict FIP at this point. If so, what do you think about accounting for Buehrle's pickoff move?

(Fangraphs shows him as having 5.1 LOB-wins in his career, which is an outcome consistent with the idea that he was good at suppressing advancement from first base.)

Great fielder - the 4 Gold Gloves was an indication & he was in the running most other years.

A good reason to ignore his FIP and use the traditional stats

Chaleeko, I also was very sad when Buehrle retired, as I thought he had another 2-3 solid years left if he wanted to continue. And I think it would have done a lot for his HOF resume if not necessarily his HOM resume as much. However, when the Loria Marlins pulled their absurd sign-and-dump spree and Buehrle was very upset being caught in the middle of it, I knew the writing was on the wall for his career because he had talked about retiring even before that - he didn't seem to be one to hang on for every possible second if he wasn't in the situation he wanted.

Buehrle was definitely a great fielder and one of the best at holding runners probably ever. Also, aesthetically nice in that he was one of the fastest working pitchers in MLB throughout his career. He'll definitely make my ballot and will be pHOM this year or next at worst.

Mark Buerhle looks like he's pretty unlikely to make my ballot. Using the weighting system I kind of like today (but may well change tomorrow), he's around top-70 or 75, depending on how many pre-1918 and Negro Leaguers I would slot in there. He's not a BAD candidate - I tried to set my weights so around 100 would be the in/out line for my pHOM and Buerhle's at 97.5 - but I can't see him making my ballot.

Using my preferred weights from the link in the previous paragraph (one-year, treat SP and RP as different positions w/ positional averages based on pitchers who did both in the same season), I get Buerhle at 25.8 eWOPA and 28.6 pWOPA.

Baseball-Reference has him at 28.4 WAA (29.4 pitching, -1.0 batting). Using BB-Ref's WAR-WAA gap and applying it to Fangraphs' WAR, Buehrle has 20.8 FIP-WAA and 29.9 RA9-WAA.

So, we all seem to be in the same general ballpark here. Buerhle had a great pickoff move, threw very few wild pitches, and fielded his position very well - all of which Player won-lost records acknowledge, and all of which would lead Buerhle to out-perform his FIP. And, indeed, all of his BB-Ref WAA, his eWOPA, and his pWOPA end up better than his FIP-WAA but not quite as good as his RA9-WAA.

Beyond the numbers, my view of Buerhle is basically that he's a career candidate who didn't have enough of a career - Tommy John if he'd retired a decade earlier. And while I'm one of Tommy John's biggest fans here (maybe his biggest), he definitely needs that last decade of his career to be a serious HOM candidate.

FIP-WAR is my primary metric of choice, although I do use a combination of RA9-WAR, BPro WARP, and Kiko's PWORL and eWORL, which should get Buehrle some credit for his defensive contributions.

At face value, my system spits him out well off ballot. 152nd best eligible player. Now if I give him full credit for his LOB numbers in fWAR, assuming his skills are responsible for all of it, he still ends up only at about 110th.

I think Kiko is right that he's a career candidate without enough career. He could really have used another couple of 2-3 WAR seasons.

I basically have him tied with Gooden, Finley, and Appier. All are worthy in my system, as they are in the 71-75 range for starting pitchers. It's interesting to compare those four, though. Gooden and Appier were higher quality on a per inning basis, but Buehrle and Finley have a bit more career value. But I'd be okay with any of them. And surrounding them are Tommy John, Eddie Cicotte, Vic Willis, and Urban Shocker.