Let’s Play Spot The Hall Of Famer

By Blaidd Drwg

In the below list of 9 players, can you tell me which ones are in the Baseball Hall of Fame? The list is from baseball-reference.com and is the 162 game average for each of their careers. I will give you a hint – there are 3 guys on this list that are currently in the Hall of Fame. Let’s look at the stats that the majority of the HOF voters would look at.

Did you spot the HOFers? If you guessed C, D, and E (and I am sure you didn’t) then you are right – those are the last 3 starting pitchers elected to the HOF – Nolan Ryan, Don Sutton and Phil Niekro. Not overly impressed? It gets better.

Players A and B are Bert Blyleven and Jack Morris – the two guys whose names come up most often as potential HOFers of the guys who are currently eligible. By this list, they both fit in pretty well with the Ryan/Sutton/Niekro group; heck, Blyleven looks like he might be the best of the bunch of that group. The only real difference between Blyleven/Morris and Ryan/Sutton/Niekro is the wins; neither Blyleven or Morris won 300 games, while the other 3 all did basically by pitching forever. I still think that the only reason Morris is in this discussion is for his pitching in game 7 of the 1991 World Series.

Players F and G are the active equivalents of Blyleven/Morris – Andy Pettitte and Jamie Moyer. Pettitte will probably ultimately make the HOF because he pitched for one of the best teams in the last 15 years (Yankees) and pitched 40+ postseason games (for which his career numbers line up almost exactly with his regular season stats). Jamie Moyer probably won’t make the Hall, and like Morris, has really no business in the HOF discussion other than he was a compiler.

It gets really interesting with Player H – that player is Kevin Brown. Just looking at the list, he is easily better than everyone listed ahead of him. I admit that he doesn’t have the career totals to make the Hall (only managed 211 wins), but was a much more dominating pitcher over his career than Blyleven/Morris/Ryan/Sutton/Niekro/Pettitte/Moyer and probably should have won the 1996 Cy Young Award (he lost to John Smoltz who won 24 games that season, despite an ERA that was a full run lower than Smoltz and an ERA+ of 217). He also pitched his prime in relative obscurity in Texas, Baltimore, Florida and SD before finishing as an overpaid and injured starter for the Dodgers and Yankees. If he pitches for a better team and averages just 2 wins a season over those seasons, he is probably in the Hall of Fame discussion. A fact that you probably didn’t know – Brown still managed to win 59.4% of his decisions over his career.

So who is Player I – I wanted to put in a guy who was easily a first ballot HOFer but not a fire-baller like Clemens and Johnson, just for comparison. Player I is easily be the best player on this list and probably the best pitcher in the NL in the 1990’s – Greg Maddux, who should breeze into Cooperstown with somewhere around 95% of the vote when he is finally eligible in a few years.