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HOF-Morris v Mussina
markj111
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in Sports Talk
From Baseball Prospectus
Prospectus Today
Moose Tracks
by Joe Sheehan
It was something of a surprise that Mike Mussina retired last week. Mussina, famously coming off of the first 20-win season of his career, seemed to have a lot of innings left in his arm. He was one of the ten best starters in the AL last season, and had established a new approach to his craft that could have allowed him to be an effective pitcher with a diminished fastball. ESPN's Keith Law had him at 29th on his free-agent list, which would seem to have portended an eight-figure salary for two seasons, at least.
Then again, I would refer back to last week's piece about the intensely personal decisions that people—not players, people—make at times like this. Mussina weighed the money, and his opportunity for personal milestones or a championship, against his desire to continue playing and traveling and forgoing other aspects of his life, and he chose to walk away. It's a little hard for me to separate my personal feelings about this—Mussina has long been one of my favorite players—from the professional aspects, but I think it's fair to say that Mussina's decision means that he walks away from the game, rather than it walking away from him.
Now, it comes time to evaluate that career. Mussina should be a Hall of Famer—he's been that good for that long, and the biggest thing working against him is that his career happened to overlap that of some of the greatest pitchers in baseball history. Just judged on his merits and the established standards of the room, Mussina belongs in the Hall. He had career value, a Hall of Fame peak, solid secondary markers such as Gold Glove Awards and post-season performance, so he loses nothing in any of those areas.
The whole "20 wins" thing was always a ridiculous concept, and the focus on his attempt to win 20 in 2008 was misplaced. Pitcher wins are a terrible evaluative tool, and in an era in which starting pitchers get fewer starts and fewer decisions than at any time in baseball history, Mussina's career isn't just something to admire, it's something to teach off of: Hall of Fame pitchers from the 1980s onward are simply not going to have the win totals of their predecessors, and you have to evaluate them in other ways. Using 20-win seasons, or 300-win careers, as any kind of standard will lead you to the wrong answers.
Mike Mussina is a Hall of Fame pitcher, and he was before he took the mound on the last day of 2008, and for that matter, before he took the mound for his first start of the season. Mussina has performed the actual job of a starting pitcher—preventing the other team from scoring—better than many Hall of Famers ever did. That the accounting didn't add up in his favor is irrelevant.
Just to illustrate the point about how good Mussina has been, let's compare him to one of the top starting pitchers currently on the ballot, and a controversial choice himself, Jack Morris.
Hurler W L Pct. ERA ERA+ IP K PRAA PRAR
Mussina 270 153 .638 3.68 123 3,562.2 2813 312 1302
Morris 254 186 .577 3.90 105 3,824.0 2478 -52 897
In wins and winning percentage, the areas where Morris is supposed to be strongest, Mussina beats him handily. I would not at all build a case for Mussina on these data points, but the comparison to Morris makes the point that even in Morris' best categories, Mussina is the better choice. When you look deeper into the record... it gets ugly. Mussina prevented more than 400 additional runs than Morris did, or about 24 per 200 innings over the course of their careers. That's the difference between a number one starter and a number two starter, not just in one season, but in every season for 17 years.
It's the difference between belonging in the Hall of Fame and not.
Put another way, Morris had Mussina's career... and then he threw another 260 innings and allowed about 256 runs. You can't set replacement level low enough to make that valuable, which is one reason why Mussina's edge over Morris becomes larger (405 runs) when you compare to replacement rather than average (364 runs). The differences between the two in Morris' favor are usage patterns, run support, and bullpen support. Mussina did his job—preventing the other team from scoring—better than Morris ever did.
Is there a peak argument for Morris? Here are the two pitchers' best ten seasons by PRAR, in descending order:
PRAR Morris: 85 81 80 80 74 69 61 58 53 49*
PRAR Mussina: 104 94 92 90 89* 88 80 80 80 78
*indicates strike-shortened season
Mussina's top six seasons are better than Morris' best, which I suppose gives us another way of comparing the two: Mussina had Morris' career, but with four seasons of Cy Young-caliber pitching tacked on, which accounts for the 400-run difference between the two in PRAR. This is a massive gap, both in peak and in career value. If you were to look at this from a "pennants added" perspective (both Bill James and Michael Wolverton have done this as a means of determining the season-level value of different career shapes), you'd find that Mussina's performances would have done more to push his teams toward championships than Morris' did. That they didn't in real life is entirely about each players' teammates, not some particular talent or deficit in the two pitchers.
One significant marker that Morris' advocates will bring up is his post-season work, which is really a proxy for Game Seven of the 1991 World Series. Post-season performance should be a positive marker for players who deserve it, and a signature game like Morris' 10-inning shutout in the ultimate game should work in his favor. Like Roger Maris' 61-home-run campaign, however, it merely raises a player not good enough into consideration, rather than pushing a nearly qualified player over the top. Morris' entire post-season career is bolstered by that start, but on the whole, he was ordinary: 3.80 ERA in 13 starts and 92 1/3 innings. He made seven World Series starts with a 2.96 ERA. That's very good.
Mussina, however, was better. Helped by the expanded postseason, Mussina made 23 post-season appearances, 21 of them starts, throwing 139 2/3 innings with a 3.42 ERA. He pitched more, and more effectively, than Morris did even in the postseason. In Mussina's only two World Series, he made three starts—two of them effective, one a disaster—for a total line of a 3.00 ERA in 18 innings. Morris had Game Seven, but Mussina had a number of post-season starts like that:
10/5/97: Seven innings, allowing just two hits and one run to beat Randy Johnson and send the Orioles to the ALCS.
10/11/97: Seven innings, one run, 15 strikeouts in Game Three of the ALCS.
10/15/97: Eight shutout innings and ten strikeouts on three days' rest in Game Six of the ALCS, an elimination game.
10/13/01: Seven shutout innings in Game Three of the ALDS, another elimination game.
11/1/01: Eight innings, two runs, and ten strikeouts in Game Five of the World Series.
10/16/03: Three shutout innings of relief, enabling Grady Little and Aaron Boone and Mystique and Aura. In another elimination game.
The point to make here isn't that Mike Mussina has some special ability to pitch in the postseason. The point is that while he doesn't have Jack Morris' signature moment, he has a whole bunch of October moments that line up just behind it. Mussina's 1997 ALCS against the Indians was one of the dominant performances of the three-level era in playoff history. Look at his work in some of those elimination games: Andy Pettitte has the reputation as the post-season go-to guy, but Mussina went to the mound with the season on the line and didn't allow a run on three separate occasions. There are a lot of guys who can't make that claim. His post-season track record is a huge positive for him, and the fact that his "record" is 7-9 is as misleading as anything you'll find.
Comparing Mussina to a pitcher who is not in the Hall of Fame may not seem like a worthwhile exercise, but when you consider the reputations of the pitchers involved, the reason for choosing the two becomes clear. Mussina, with his lack of 20-win seasons, without a championship team to his name, and pitching with two of the five greatest pitchers ever in his peer group, is perceived as less than he actually was. Morris, who was the second- or third-best pitcher of his comparatively weaker era, is considered the best of his time, has an outsized reputation as a winner which had more to do with run support than any objective reality, and one of the greatest moments in baseball history. From a narrative standpoint, the two are complete opposites, and because of that, it may be hard for the voters—233 of which inexplicably think Jack Morris belongs in the Hall of Fame—to see past the narrative to the performance. The performance is what matters, and Mike Mussina performed not only better than Morris did, but much, much better than Morris did.
It will be interesting, in five years, to see how well that lesson sinks in.
Prospectus Today
Moose Tracks
by Joe Sheehan
It was something of a surprise that Mike Mussina retired last week. Mussina, famously coming off of the first 20-win season of his career, seemed to have a lot of innings left in his arm. He was one of the ten best starters in the AL last season, and had established a new approach to his craft that could have allowed him to be an effective pitcher with a diminished fastball. ESPN's Keith Law had him at 29th on his free-agent list, which would seem to have portended an eight-figure salary for two seasons, at least.
Then again, I would refer back to last week's piece about the intensely personal decisions that people—not players, people—make at times like this. Mussina weighed the money, and his opportunity for personal milestones or a championship, against his desire to continue playing and traveling and forgoing other aspects of his life, and he chose to walk away. It's a little hard for me to separate my personal feelings about this—Mussina has long been one of my favorite players—from the professional aspects, but I think it's fair to say that Mussina's decision means that he walks away from the game, rather than it walking away from him.
Now, it comes time to evaluate that career. Mussina should be a Hall of Famer—he's been that good for that long, and the biggest thing working against him is that his career happened to overlap that of some of the greatest pitchers in baseball history. Just judged on his merits and the established standards of the room, Mussina belongs in the Hall. He had career value, a Hall of Fame peak, solid secondary markers such as Gold Glove Awards and post-season performance, so he loses nothing in any of those areas.
The whole "20 wins" thing was always a ridiculous concept, and the focus on his attempt to win 20 in 2008 was misplaced. Pitcher wins are a terrible evaluative tool, and in an era in which starting pitchers get fewer starts and fewer decisions than at any time in baseball history, Mussina's career isn't just something to admire, it's something to teach off of: Hall of Fame pitchers from the 1980s onward are simply not going to have the win totals of their predecessors, and you have to evaluate them in other ways. Using 20-win seasons, or 300-win careers, as any kind of standard will lead you to the wrong answers.
Mike Mussina is a Hall of Fame pitcher, and he was before he took the mound on the last day of 2008, and for that matter, before he took the mound for his first start of the season. Mussina has performed the actual job of a starting pitcher—preventing the other team from scoring—better than many Hall of Famers ever did. That the accounting didn't add up in his favor is irrelevant.
Just to illustrate the point about how good Mussina has been, let's compare him to one of the top starting pitchers currently on the ballot, and a controversial choice himself, Jack Morris.
Hurler W L Pct. ERA ERA+ IP K PRAA PRAR
Mussina 270 153 .638 3.68 123 3,562.2 2813 312 1302
Morris 254 186 .577 3.90 105 3,824.0 2478 -52 897
In wins and winning percentage, the areas where Morris is supposed to be strongest, Mussina beats him handily. I would not at all build a case for Mussina on these data points, but the comparison to Morris makes the point that even in Morris' best categories, Mussina is the better choice. When you look deeper into the record... it gets ugly. Mussina prevented more than 400 additional runs than Morris did, or about 24 per 200 innings over the course of their careers. That's the difference between a number one starter and a number two starter, not just in one season, but in every season for 17 years.
It's the difference between belonging in the Hall of Fame and not.
Put another way, Morris had Mussina's career... and then he threw another 260 innings and allowed about 256 runs. You can't set replacement level low enough to make that valuable, which is one reason why Mussina's edge over Morris becomes larger (405 runs) when you compare to replacement rather than average (364 runs). The differences between the two in Morris' favor are usage patterns, run support, and bullpen support. Mussina did his job—preventing the other team from scoring—better than Morris ever did.
Is there a peak argument for Morris? Here are the two pitchers' best ten seasons by PRAR, in descending order:
PRAR Morris: 85 81 80 80 74 69 61 58 53 49*
PRAR Mussina: 104 94 92 90 89* 88 80 80 80 78
*indicates strike-shortened season
Mussina's top six seasons are better than Morris' best, which I suppose gives us another way of comparing the two: Mussina had Morris' career, but with four seasons of Cy Young-caliber pitching tacked on, which accounts for the 400-run difference between the two in PRAR. This is a massive gap, both in peak and in career value. If you were to look at this from a "pennants added" perspective (both Bill James and Michael Wolverton have done this as a means of determining the season-level value of different career shapes), you'd find that Mussina's performances would have done more to push his teams toward championships than Morris' did. That they didn't in real life is entirely about each players' teammates, not some particular talent or deficit in the two pitchers.
One significant marker that Morris' advocates will bring up is his post-season work, which is really a proxy for Game Seven of the 1991 World Series. Post-season performance should be a positive marker for players who deserve it, and a signature game like Morris' 10-inning shutout in the ultimate game should work in his favor. Like Roger Maris' 61-home-run campaign, however, it merely raises a player not good enough into consideration, rather than pushing a nearly qualified player over the top. Morris' entire post-season career is bolstered by that start, but on the whole, he was ordinary: 3.80 ERA in 13 starts and 92 1/3 innings. He made seven World Series starts with a 2.96 ERA. That's very good.
Mussina, however, was better. Helped by the expanded postseason, Mussina made 23 post-season appearances, 21 of them starts, throwing 139 2/3 innings with a 3.42 ERA. He pitched more, and more effectively, than Morris did even in the postseason. In Mussina's only two World Series, he made three starts—two of them effective, one a disaster—for a total line of a 3.00 ERA in 18 innings. Morris had Game Seven, but Mussina had a number of post-season starts like that:
10/5/97: Seven innings, allowing just two hits and one run to beat Randy Johnson and send the Orioles to the ALCS.
10/11/97: Seven innings, one run, 15 strikeouts in Game Three of the ALCS.
10/15/97: Eight shutout innings and ten strikeouts on three days' rest in Game Six of the ALCS, an elimination game.
10/13/01: Seven shutout innings in Game Three of the ALDS, another elimination game.
11/1/01: Eight innings, two runs, and ten strikeouts in Game Five of the World Series.
10/16/03: Three shutout innings of relief, enabling Grady Little and Aaron Boone and Mystique and Aura. In another elimination game.
The point to make here isn't that Mike Mussina has some special ability to pitch in the postseason. The point is that while he doesn't have Jack Morris' signature moment, he has a whole bunch of October moments that line up just behind it. Mussina's 1997 ALCS against the Indians was one of the dominant performances of the three-level era in playoff history. Look at his work in some of those elimination games: Andy Pettitte has the reputation as the post-season go-to guy, but Mussina went to the mound with the season on the line and didn't allow a run on three separate occasions. There are a lot of guys who can't make that claim. His post-season track record is a huge positive for him, and the fact that his "record" is 7-9 is as misleading as anything you'll find.
Comparing Mussina to a pitcher who is not in the Hall of Fame may not seem like a worthwhile exercise, but when you consider the reputations of the pitchers involved, the reason for choosing the two becomes clear. Mussina, with his lack of 20-win seasons, without a championship team to his name, and pitching with two of the five greatest pitchers ever in his peer group, is perceived as less than he actually was. Morris, who was the second- or third-best pitcher of his comparatively weaker era, is considered the best of his time, has an outsized reputation as a winner which had more to do with run support than any objective reality, and one of the greatest moments in baseball history. From a narrative standpoint, the two are complete opposites, and because of that, it may be hard for the voters—233 of which inexplicably think Jack Morris belongs in the Hall of Fame—to see past the narrative to the performance. The performance is what matters, and Mike Mussina performed not only better than Morris did, but much, much better than Morris did.
It will be interesting, in five years, to see how well that lesson sinks in.
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Comments
However, the entire concept of the HOF shoud be recalled. It is NOT a Hall of best stats, there are no magic numbers or levels one must have had. Fame itself is somewhat reflective of popularity and enduring imprints on the game of baseball. That is why CY awards, league leading seasons, memorable post season feats, and the like, do influence a voter.
Long and steady performance does have its merits, however flashes of true dominance, do as well. I feel Jack Morris was quite good a few seasons, and really sparkled brightly one World Series, though all in all, not enough for election. No player ever generated more "fame'or general public interest in baseball, than Roger Maris did, and actually for two separate seasons, as he was also on a HR record breaking pace, part of 1960. If the Hall may omit Maris, perhaps rightfully, there can be no Jack Morris included.
After all, he does compare VERY favorably with Honus Wagner in many certain key areas...
TOp Five HR Seasons...
Kingman 48, 37, 37, 36, 35.
Wagner..10,10, 9, 7, 7, 6.
Highest Total Bases in a single season...
Kingman 326
Wagner..308
Number of times leading the league in HR
Kingman TWICE
Wagner ZERO
Highest Slugging PCT. in a season
Kingman .613
Wagner .573
Career average in RBI per 162 games
Kingman 101
Wagner 100
Yes, those are REAL runs too!!!!!!
Career average in HR per 162 games
Kingman 37
Wagner 6
HR are the best hit. No need to walk when you can hit that many HR.
Career Home Run Frequency.
Kingman One HR every 15 at bats
Wagner ONe HR every 101 at bats
And HR Frequency is not directly expressed in OPS+. Nowhere in the OPS+ forumula do I see HR/ab. So this is just another perspective on one of the newer stats guys like to use(like OPS+). I'm not completely discounting OPS+, but rather showing another person's view on how to look at it.
All Time Record for Most HR in last season, Kingman: 35. I may be wrong on this record, but it sounds right.
The longest HR on record at Wrigley Field
Kingman: three houses past Waveland.
Wagner: never crossed Waveland.
TheVon, you seem to be on board with these new stats as well, as is Winpitcher. You guys have to be drooling over the fact that Kingman has a higher number of RBI than Wagner per 162 games for his career. Those are REAL runs too! I feel like part of the group now! This is great.
Yeah, I know they played different positions, but that isn't the point. The point is that Kingman compares very favorably with Wagner in MANY key areas, and even holds some records that Wagner does NOT, and Wagner is a HOFer. Since Kingman compares so favorably in many Key areas with a HOFer, it makes his induction sensible. If you dont belive me, just look at those lists. If you STILL dont belive me, I CAN POST THEM AGAIN FOR YOU!! These are the facts.
PS. In Kingman's stint with the Yankees he had an OPS+ of 208! Had he played his full career there, we are in Ruth Territory. Wagner nver had an OPS+ of 208!!!!
However, Morris was in the top 10 of ERA+ only 4 times in his career. Mussina was in the top 10 of ERA+ 11 times (top 5 seven times) in his career (Blyleven had 12 in more years pitched).
Mussina was stood out more during his era than Morris did in his using a very telling stat like ERA+
I think it would be tough to keep Mussina out of the HOF. Since sabermetrics helped Blyleven get in, by the time Mussina goes on the Ballot, he should be helped too. The Joe Sheehan article reveals that Mussina was a great post-season pitcher too, but did not get the notoriety for it.
Also, no one can deny Mussina's sportsmanship and for being one of the good guys of the game.
Tom Glavine was in the top 10 of ERA+ 10 times, led once
Greg Maddux was in the top 10 of ERA+ 12 times, led 5 times
John Smoltz was in the top 10 of ERA+ 9 times
Randy Johnson was in the top 10 of ERA+ 9 times, led 6 times
David Cone was in the top 10 of ERA+ 7 times
Pedro Martinez was in the top 10 of ERA+ 8 times, led 5 times
Sandy Koufax was in the top 10 of ERA+ 6 times, led twice
Maddux, Johnson and Martinez really dominated MLB making Mussina look worse. Mussina did not dominate in the same manner, but he was top 5 seven times and was consistent longer when those guys are averaged. This exercise also reveals how truly exceptional Maddux was. He was dominate and consistent.
Now that Blyleven is in the HOF, the next starting pitcher worthy seems to be Morris unless Mussina and company go on the ballot. You have to give the green light to Glavine, Smoltz, Maddux, Johnson, Martinez before letting Morris in. If Morris is to get in, he has to do it quickly before these other pitchers come.
BST: Tennessebanker, Downtown1974, LarkinCollector, nendee
Hof yes, Jack Morris, no.
<< <i>Skip your are an ass. >>
You already called me an ass in 2008...when this was posted.
Though that post still exemplifies the goofiness of the method of evaluation used in the Murray/Rice debates, LOL...the one that attempts to compare Rice to Murray. All one has to do is change the names, and change some of the other random criteria, and it is quite similar.
Heck, the method was used again fairly recently.
worthy
<< <i>Is someone obsessed with Jim Rice? Holy Crap. >>
Nope, just obsessed with fighting conclusions that are derived from poor research, misinformation, ignorance, and bias. Rice backers often make claims that fall into those categories, so it is only natural Rice is at the center of it.