It is my firm opinion that Mike Mussina is a no-brainer Hall of Fame worthy player. Yet, his candidacy starts off on shaky ground due to a logjam of other worthy players. A number of them have even more solid resumes than he does and played the same position - starting pitcher. This year alone, 300 game winners Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine will likely be inducted. Curt Schilling is still on the ballot and will possibly see his support grow (another HoF worthy pitcher, in my opinion). Jack Morris keeps inching towards the needed 75% to be inducted and may get the push he needs since it is his last year on the ballot. None of this even counts the elephant in the room that is 354 game winner Roger Clemens.
Keep in mind that HoF voters can only vote for a maximum of 10 people. With that in mind, and the knowledge that the ballot also contains legit candidates from other positions such as Frank Thomas, Mike Piazza, Craig Biggio, Jeff Bagwell, and others including a number of steroid guys, it is easy to see that there is a high probability of Mussina not gaining election this year. There has been much speculation that he may not even be able to get the required 5% to keep his name on the ballot going forward. Should he avoid that fate, he will still have to contend next year with more starting pitchers: Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez, and John Smoltz.
In a way, it is very apropos that his road to the Hall begins this way. These same pitchers have overshadowed him for virtually his entire baseball career. Honestly, they deserve it. For one reason or another they all became bigger names and with good reason. None of this changes the fact that Mussina should be inducted.
Enough of this crap, let's get down to the nitty-gritty on why he should make the Hall of Fame...
I'll start with the inspiration for making this thread...
Bert Blyleven made it.
Sabermetricians and curve-ball lovers united to finally get ol' Bert elected back in 2011. The real-deal truth is that Mussina compares very favorably to him.
Let's begin the mathematical part of this exercise with the more traditional numbers...
Blyleven: 287 Wins, 3.31 ERA, 3701 Ks, 4970 IP,
Mussina: 270 Wins, 3.68 ERA, 2813 Ks, 3562.2 IP
At first glance, it's all in Blyleven's favor. There are a few things to note, though. Blyleven pitched for 22 years to Mussina's 18. Blyleven also pitched most of his career during a pitcher's era while Mussina toiled through the steroid era. Also directly comparing them against their peers in traditional black ink/gray ink categories, Mussina was better...
Code:
Category Blyleven Mussina Top 5 Wins 2 7 Top 5 ERA 7 7 Top 5 SO 13 6 Top 5 Cy Young 3 6
Code:
Category Blyleven Mussina ERA+ 118 123 WHIP 1.198 1.192 SO/9 6.7 7.1 SO/BB 2.80 3.58 WAR/Pitchers 96.5 82.7 WAR7 50.7 44.5 JAWS 73.0 63.8 Black Ink 16 15 Gray Ink 237 250 HoF Monitor 120 121 HoF Standards 50 54
Since I mentioned Jim Palmer, let's just throw this little doozy onto the fire...
Code:
Service W L W-L% ERA ERA+ WHIP 18 Yrs 270 153 0.638 3.68 123 1.192 19 Yrs 268 152 0.638 2.86 125 1.180
Some common knocks on Mussina...
He didn't win a Cy Young. Neither did Blyleven.
He didn't win 300 games. Again, neither did Blyleven. It's certainly possible he would have had he elected to stick around. After all, his only 20 win season was his final one. And it wasn't one in which his offense propped him up for a bunch of wins, either. He finished top 10 that year in ERA, ERA+, WHIP, SO/BB, and WAR/Pitchers.
Won 20 games in a season only once. Guess who also did that.
Never won a World Series. Not his fault, but he did what he could in the post-season...
Code:
ERA WHIP H/9 SO/9 SO/BB 3.42 1.103 7.8 9.3 4.39
That's all I've got...
for now...
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