Hallitosis

Langstaff has a pretty neat wrap-up of this year's Hall of Fame class over at Corsairs Affairs (formerly One Man Band). I'm pretty much in agreement with his ambivalent feelings towards Bruce Sutter and his picks for more deserving candidates (Goose Gossage, Bert Blyleven and Alan Trammell). I really wanted to see those three make the cut; I wouldn't be upset if Jim Rice was in the mix, too. None of the other folks on the ballot did much for me as HOF candidates. As Lang suggests, it's all about the split-finger fastball, which may or may not be asignificant enough innovation to merit includsion to the Hall. Sutter's Cy Young season is a nice line item on his resume, though by no means an arbiter of a reliever's ultimate worth: Hoyt Willhelm didn't have one, and he's in the Hall. Whereas fellow closer Mark Davis did get the hardware in his 1989 season, the only standout in an otherwise unremarkable career.

Maybe 8 excellent seasons (1976-82, 1984) is enough: Sutter tossed between 80-100 innings and had ERAs way below league average (his career ERA is a full point below league average, too). All this compares favoravly to, say, Mariano Rivera (who will still a better choice when all is said and done). On raw numbers alone, why not Lee Smith with 178 more saves over his career? I dunno. Over at Hardball Times, Aaron Gleeman takes a much more defiant stance and says "no way." I'd ignore the portion where he compares Sutter and Blyleven because it gets a little goofy: "Broken down to the most simplistic terms possible, would you rather have 4,970 innings of a 3.31 ERA [Blyleven] or 1,042 innings of a 2.83 ERA [Sutter]? Would you rather have 300 saves and 68 wins [Sutter] or 287 wins [Blyleven]?"

Gleeman's completely on point here, but his argument is strongest in the Sutter-to-Gossage comparison. Gossage has more saves, more innings, more wins, more win shares. It's a travesty that he's not already in the Hall. Goose could certainly help his cause by not being a total fucking douchebag about it, but maybe the incessant bitching and moaning about wussy modern-era closers is what saw his vote tally increase from 55% to 65% on this year's ballot. He'll make it in sooner rather than later. As will Jim Rice. Blyleven and Andre Dawson have decent shots if they can stay on the ballot long enough. Isn't this pretty much the M.O. with the hall voters: first- or second-ballot induction or you rot for 8-12 years? As for Alan Trammell, the bedrock of some terrible Tigers teams throughout the 1980s and 90s, I dunno what the voting committee is doing, but I'll try to talk about it at length in the next post. I'm still shaking cobwebs off.