Maddux, Glavine, Thomas elected to Baseball Hall of Fame; Biggio just misses

Both are fair points.

 

"Only fools test positive"

http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/story/alex-rodriguez-anthony-bosch-biogenesis-suspension-ped-testing-flawed-011314

 

That's a fair answer and I understand how the CYAs are a big tic in Glavine's favor. Personally, when ranking the two of them, 305 wins in 22 seasons isn't really better than 270 in 18 seasons. It's a lower per-season average (as I noted) and Mussina could just as easily have hung on two more seasons (maybe three) to check off the 300-win milestone.

As for the ERA, I don't think Glavine's final season, in which he pitched just 63 innings, affected his career ERA very much.

To be clear, it is not my intent to turn this in a Mussina vs. Glavine debate. It's more that I'm curious how Glavine was such a slam dunk, while Mussina likely will never get in, despite the fact that he compares quite favorably to Glavine.

The difference in their ERA is 0.14, which is not a huge difference when you're talking about 4,000 IP, especially when you consider the leagues in which they pitched. FWIW, while you prefer not to account for league adjustments, Mussina's ERA+ is 123 - better than Glavine's 118.

Mussina is superior in most of the peripherals (and I do place importance on strikeouts when evaluating a pitcher) and he averaged more wins per season than Glavine. It is true that I don't consider Glavine's 800 extra innings as a big factor. As I noted above, Mussina could have pitched longer if he so chose. And despite pitching 800 fewer innings, Mussina finished with 200 more strikeouts, so I don't think the 800 IP make the case for a such a large disparity in voting.

Were two CYAs and a World Series worth 70 percent of the vote?

 

The true difference in comparing the two, I feel, are the 2 CYAs.

You probably summed it up better than I did before it turned into a pissing match yesterday, and for continuing that pissing match I apologize.

 

You mentioned the 800 innings pitched, but you didn't take them into account. Longevity matters and it should. That is also a major factor in Glavine's favor.

Regarding the peripherals, the importance of those is a fair place to reasonably disagree.

To your first point, it may not be your intention, but your question really does call for a comparison of Glavine and Mussina.

 

I agree that longevity matters, but to the extent that one player logged 18 seasons and the other 22, it's importance is diminished. A player who played just 12 seasons vs. a guy who played 20 would justifiably be knocked down a peg.

Also, the longevity factor would take on more importance if Mussina had limped into retirement and couldn't reasonably maintain a rotation slot. But he won 20 games in his final season and went out of his own accord. There's no reason to think he couldn't have pitched a minimum of two more seasons, so I'm not sure Glavine's 800 extra innings (about 300 of which were fairly poor) account for the massive gap in voting.

I'll definitely concede that longevity matters in a more indirect fashion than what I think you're saying, in that, had Mussina pitched 800 more innings, he would have reached 300 wins and been a lock. However, I don't think a voter looks at Glavine and thinks, he pitched 800 more innings and is, therefore, more deserving than Mussina.

Any of our resident BBWAA members are welcome to correct me if I'm wrong on that premise.

 

Oh, I'm sure the 300 victories had a greater impact than the 800 innings pitched, but I think the 800 innings pitched is a more legitimate mark in Glavine's favor.

Maybe Mussina could have done more, but he didn't. It is also possible, given his age, that his performance would have fallen off dramatically, as Glavine's did his final season-plus. He would have been 40 years old and you have to keep in mind that that while he was very good his final season, the year before that was Mussina's worst in the majors (5.15 ERA).

You can no more say Mussian would have simply improved his numbers if he had continued to pitch another 800 innings than you can argue that Glavine's ratios would have been even better had he stopped 800 innings sooner.

It's not that longevity was a negative for Mussina's career, but it was clearly an area of superiority in Glavine's.

 

I'll buy that, but again, I don't think it was a big enough factor to warrant a 70 percent vote differential.

Seems to me the CYAs and the World Series or, more likely, Glavine's reputation as part of the Braves vaunted pitching staff, had more to do with it. I wonder if he simply stuck out in voters' minds more than Mussina, who was more consistent, if not as spectacular over the course of his career.

Either way, the stats, to me, indicate that either Mussina and Glavine are both HOFers or neither of them are.

 

I fall somewhere in the middle. I do think Glavine was a better candidate, but not by that margin.

 

I think it's obvious that they both are Hall of Famers. Glavine had 800 more innings, but they were at best a league-average 800 innings (and some were even worse than that.) They don't help his case that much.

But yes, two Cy Youngs and a World Series MVP are going to earn you a much higher profile. 70% more votes? Definitely seems odd to me, but nothing makes sense about the voting in the past few years.

 

Like I said, I'd have voted for mussina if I had 11 spots. I assume he was No. 11 for a lot of people, so that accounts for some of the gap.

 

A counterpoint: Is it really guaranteed that those who voted for Maddux, Glavine and Thomas on this ballot, and didn't vote for Biggio, will automatically vote for Pedro, Randy and Smoltz? Or will they look at those three and think their cases merit more debate?

Maddux was really a no-brainer. Glavine and Thomas had a little room for debate, even if I thought said debate was nit-picking. But even though I don't have a ballot, I'd have to look closer at the cases for Pedro, Randy and Smoltz before I'd automatically put them on my "if I had a vote" ballot. Those with ballots might feel the same way and some might become more convinced about Biggio's case.