When a player makes the Hall of Fame, they fall into one of two categories.
The first is “All-Time Great.” Willie Mays, Henry Aaron, Randy Johnson, Mariano Rivera. Players in the conversation about being the best ever at their position. These are the guys about whom it is most often said, “If he isn’t a Hall of Famer, I don’t know who is.” There are rarely any questions about whether or not they should be in the Hall of Fame. If they don’t receive some votes when they first appear on the ballot, the writers who omitted them are criticized for not seeing what the rest of us can see.
The second category is everyone else. There’s debate about them. Cases have to be made. Narratives have to be developed. Those who want them elected have to explain why, while those who oppose them build cases for keeping them out. Sometimes those cases prove to be enough to get them into the Hall, and sometimes they don’t.
That second category is, by its nature, messy. Disagreements fester, and get revisited yearly. Some of the elected players are clearly worse than some who were passed over. There are differing methods of getting them into the Hall. Few of those in this category got 90+% of the votes during their first time on the ballot. Most of them waited a while, building their support over time. Some didn’t get in until the Veterans Committee (now Eras Committees) heard their cases, often several times, decades after they retired. They needed supporters spinning narratives about them to get elected.
Those narratives typically have some consistency. “He was a dangerous hitter,” is a common one. “He just knew how to win,” is another. But the most common, by far, is some version of “For X many years, he was the best player/hitter/pitcher in baseball.” That’s often modified, sometimes heavily. “He was the best relief pitcher in baseball.” Or, “He was the best right-handed hitter in baseball.” Or, “He was the best lefty starting pitcher in the National League in the late 1970s.” Some of these qualifiers can get pretty silly.
The one that always struck me as particularly weak was the frequent claim that “Jack Morris won more games than any starting pitcher in the 1980s.” It’s a true statement. Morris won 162 games in the 1980s, 22 more than Dave Stieb in second place. But that doesn’t tell us much more about Jack Morris than:
He was good.
He was durable.
He played for good teams.
His career peak just happened to fall when the calendar had a nice, round decade on it.
What that statement doesn’t do is tell us whether or not Jack Morris was ever the best pitcher in baseball. It doesn’t even tell us if he was the best pitcher in the league. Not even for a single season, let alone a decade.
That seems to be a pretty glaring hole in his Hall of Fame case. Tortured as that particularly narrative sometimes is, there’s inarguably some level of validity to a player’s Hall of Fame case if he really was considered the best at his position for a certain amount of time. Even a single year winning the MVP, or the Cy Young, or, in modern times, having the most WAR, means that he was seen by those who follow the game as the best. That’s exactly the sort of thing the Hall of Fame is intended to honor.
This glaring omission in Morris’ case was something I decided to look at a bit. Going back to the beginning of the Cy Young Award era, how many pitchers who made the Hall of Fame were actually seen as the best pitcher in baseball, or in their league? I don’t mean individual opinions, because those are a dime a dozen. I’m talking about consensus. Was it ever the collective opinion of award voters that a pitcher was the best?
We’ve got a couple of measures for that. The first is Cy Young voting, obviously. The other is MVP voting, since that sometimes doesn’t track the same. There have been instances when a pitcher received more MVP votes than any other pitcher in a given year, but didn’t win the Cy Young Award for some reason.
The window we’re looking at is from 1956 onward. That marks the first year the Cy Young Award was given. I will, though, look at all Hall of Fame pitchers who pitched any part of their career in the Cy Young Award era. At any point in their career, did the pitcher win the Cy Young, or the MVP, or receive the most MVP votes among pitchers? If so, we can reasonably say there was a consensus view that they were the best pitcher in baseball or in their league.
Thirty-one of the thirty-nine Hall of Fame pitchers from this era can make that claim:
Bob Feller: Barely qualifies since his final season was 1956, and he only threw 58 innings that year, so obviously he never won the Cy Young. But Feller was the top pitcher in MVP voting in three straight seasons, 1939 to 1941. Clearly, for at least those three years, observers considered Feller the best pitcher in at least the American League.
Early Wynn: Won the Cy Young Award and received the most American League MVP votes among pitchers in 1959.
Bob Lemon: Received the most MVP votes among pitchers in the AL in 1948, 1950, and 1954.
Warren Spahn: Won the Cy Young in 1957. Had the most MVP votes among pitchers in the NL in 1949, 1953, 1957 and 1958.
Hal Newhouser: Won back-to-back MVP Awards in 1944 and 1945. Received the most MVP votes among pitchers in the AL in 1946.
Robin Roberts: Received the most MVP votes among pitchers in the NL in 1952 and 1955.
Whitey Ford: Won the Cy Young in 1961. Had the most MVP votes among pitchers in the AL in both 1961 and 1963.
Jim Bunning: Received the most MVP votes among pitchers in the AL in 1957.
Sandy Koufax: Do I need to list them all?
Bob Gibson: Same.
Don Drysdale: Won the Cy Young in 1962, and had the most MVP votes among pitchers that year, too.
Gaylord Perry: Won a Cy Young in each league.
Jim Kaat: Most MVP votes among pitchers in the AL in 1965.
Fergie Jenkins: Won the Cy Young and had the most MVP votes among NL pitchers in 1971. Most MVP votes among AL pitchers in 1974, ahead of Cy Young winner Catfish Hunter.
Tom Seaver: ‘Nuf said.
Steve Carlton: Ditto.
Jim Palmer: Samesies.
Catfish Hunter: Cy Young in 1974.
Rollie Fingers: Cy Young and MVP in 1981.
Rich Gossage. Believe it or not, Gossage was third in MVP voting in 1980, the top vote-getter among AL pitchers, but he weirdly also finished third in Cy Young voting that year, trailing Steve Stone and Mike Norris.
Bruce Sutter: Cy Young winner in 1979, and got the most MVP votes among NL pitchers in 1982.
Dennis Eckersley: Cy Young and MVP winner in 1992. Top pitcher in AL MVP voting in both 1988 and 1989.
Lee Smith: Tops in NL MVP voting among pitchers in 1991.
Randy Johnson: Obviously.
Greg Maddux: Duh.
Tom Glavine. Sure.
John Smoltz. Win the Cy Young and had the most MVP votes among NL pitchers in 1996.
Trevor Hoffman: Odd, but true. He had the most MVP votes among NL pitchers in both 1998 and 2006.
Mariano Rivera: Most MVP votes among AL pitchers in 1996 and 2005.
Pedro Martínez: Yeah.
Roy Halladay: Two Cy Youngs (‘03 and ‘10) and two top MVP finishes among pitchers (‘10 and ‘11).
And here are the eight Hall of Fame pitchers from that era that can’t make that claim:
Hoyt Wilhelm: He doesn’t really fit this exercise since it’s very rare for relievers to be considered the best pitcher in baseball or in the league, but Wilhelm never was.
Juan Marichal: The victim of some terrible timing. In 1965 he was 3rd in MVP voting among NL pitchers behind only Koufax and Drysdale. In 1966 he trailed only Koufax. In 1968 he trailed only Gibson. He was just unlucky to be great while surrounded by other Hall of Fame pitchers.
Phil Niekro: Similarly unlucky. Second among NL pitchers in MVP votes behind only Seaver in 1969. And of course he had huge career milestones.
Don Sutton: This is the sort of guy I was looking for. Someone who never had any case for being considered the best pitcher in baseball or in his league. Just a consistently good pitcher for a long time, with some large career milestones as a result.
Nolan Ryan: Well this one is going to be controversial, isn’t it? While it’s true that Ryan was never voted the best pitcher in baseball or in his league using annual awards voting, I think it’s pretty obvious that he was considered a freak of nature, the best pure thrower of baseball during his time. He’s got the huge career milestones, obviously, and was also unlucky, like Marichal and Niekro, in that he had years (‘73, ‘74) when he was beaten for the Cy Young only by other Hall of Famers.
Bert Blyleven: Like Sutton, he never was voted the top pitcher in the league. But in 1984 he was voted the top starting pitcher in the AL, trailing only relievers Willie Hernandez and Dan Quisenberry in Cy Young voting. He also had the big career 3,000+ strikeout milestone to his credit.
Jack Morris: As suspected, Morris never came close to being voted the best pitcher in the league. Unlike most of the others in this group, he didn’t have any unlucky years when he was only beaten out by other Hall of Famers or relief pitchers. There wasn’t a single year in which voters clearly considered Jack Morris the best pitcher in the league. And, unlike Niekro, Sutton, Ryan or Blyleven, he didn’t have the big career milestones like 3,000 strikeouts or 300 wins, either.
Mike Mussina: Unlucky in that he had a second-place Cy Young finish in 1999 in which he only lost to Pedro Martínez.
Of the eight, there are really only two outliers. One is Wilhelm, the only reliever in the Hall of Fame who didn’t have at least one season when he was also voted the best pitcher in his league.
The other is Morris. He never had that unlucky year when he was only beaten by other Hall of Famers. He never got to the big career milestones. Excluding the four guys who reached the big career milestones, and Wilhelm since he was a reliever, Morris is clearly the worst of the remaining three Hall of Fame pitchers who were never voted to be the best pitcher in their league.
Jack Morris apparently got into the Hall of Fame based on durability on some great teams, one great postseason game, lots of Opening Day starts, and the fluke of having his career peak aligned with the decade of the 1980s. I guess the awesome mustache probably helped.
That’s great for him, but I understand why the narrative about his career didn’t include the claim that he was the best pitcher in baseball. It’s because no one ever thought he was.
Jack Morris was the Burleigh Grimes of the 1980s.
I was listening to Doc Gooden on the radio this morning and it struck me that his HOF case seems pretty underrated, all things considered. Since his career arc is viewed tragically, few rarely argue, "no actually, Doc IS a Hall of Famer." Gooden finished at 53 bWAR, which is low by HOF standards but exceeds guys like Jack Morris and Catfish Hunter. Morris was such a cause for so many years and Gooden never was. Why? It seems to be all about narratives and perceptions. The funny thing about Gooden v. Morris is that Gooden both had a ridiculously higher peak - his 1985 was, perhaps, the greatest season ever, and he carries that Koufax-level mystique for certain fans - and he managed to accumulate more value. He won multiple WS rings, so you can't call him a loser. Neither Morris nor Hunter hit big round numbers like Sutton (my father *hated* the idea of Don Sutton as a Hall of Famer) so their cases get even worse, the more you think about it.
I've become more sympathetic to the HOF as a place where great stories can be told. I get why Hunter and Morris are there - game 7 shutout, a great nickname and a lot of rings etc. But what of Gooden's story?