Saturday, May 24, 2014
Jack Morris for Hall of Fame - Negative
Living in Minnesota has brought me a number of years of horror as local sports "experts" continue to push for Jack Morris' election into the baseball HOF. Jack Morris was great in the 1991 playoffs. He completed a lot of games. He even threw a few shutouts. He also had a 3.90 ERA. Four runs per 9 innings? Really? That's a HOF career? The closest ERA is 3.80 and that belongs to Red Ruffing, a guy who played at the turn of the 20th century. The funniest part of this whole thing is the whining that Morris himself does around HOF voting time. This year he proclaimed that he would have allowed less runs had a coach told him to have a lower ERA. WHAT? Does that even make sense? Wouldn't a pitcher always strive to have the lowest ERA possible? It is my understanding that giving up 0 runs per game guarantees a pitcher a perfect record. The funniest thing about this whole thing is that usually you hear arguments from advanced statisticians that a player was undervalued by traditional stats... Not Black Jack. He was average in terms of WAR as well as ERA and other categories. According to Pro Baseball Reference, Jack Morris isn't even on the list for top 25 WAR of all time that are not in the HOF (http://www.baseball-reference.com/blog/archives/6195). He was beat out by the likes of Dave Stieb, Chuck Finley, Tommy John, and Jerry Koosman (!) who is mostly famous for sharing a rookie baseball card with Nolan Ryan. Was he a workhorse? Yes. Was he a Hall of Famer? No.
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Out of curiosity, does Blyleven--who gained momentum in part because of advanced statistics--ever shill for Morris? That would be interesting. Anyway, I think Morris has become a bit of a symbol for people rejecting advanced statistics--a way to argue those stats are inadequate, don't capture a player's true value, etc. Morris didn't get close to getting in when he hit the ballot in 2000, and that's when ERAs were ballooning (and he retired in 1994, just as that trend was picking up). So even in comparison to guys playing when he appeared on the ballot, he didn't look like that strong a candidate. I think he had a good, long career, with great moments, and he deserved to be on the ballot and feature in a long conversation (though I see that as a celebration/appreciation, not the torture some make it out to be), but I agree--I wouldn't vote him in.
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