Part II: Hall of Fame “Today’s Game” Ballot (the Players)

On Sunday, the first members of the Class of 2017 for baseball’s Hall of Fame will be announced. The Hall’s board recently revised their “Veterans’ Committee” voting procedures, creating a set of “Era’s” categories with the purpose of inducting non-playing members and players previously overlooked by the Baseball Writers Association of America.

This year’s vote is, at least for now, a quite narrowly defined “Today’s Game” era, consisting of players and others who had their greatest impact in 1988 or beyond. There are five players, two managers, one owner, one General Manager, and one Commissioner on the first “Today’s Game” ballot. For the players nominated, the rules state that, besides having had their greatest impact in 1988 or later, the player must have been retired for at least 15 years (and thus no longer eligible for the writers’ ballot). For at least this first go-around, the pool of available players was fairly limited for this reason.

This year’s 10 nominees are:

• MLB Commissioner Bud Selig (also the former owner of the Milwaukee Brewers)
• Yankees Owner George Steinbrenner (now deceased)
• Royals and Braves General Manager John Schuerholz
• Mets, Reds, Orioles, Dodgers and Nationals Manager Davey Johnson
• Yankees, Reds, Mariners, Devil Rays, and Cubs Manager Lou Piniella
• Dodgers, Indians, Giants and Mets pitcher Orel Hershiser
• Indians, White Sox and Orioles outfielder Albert Belle
• White Sox, Rangers, A’s, Orioles, and Indians designated hitter Harold Baines
• Giants, Rangers, Orioles and Cardinals first baseman Will Clark
• A’s and Cardinals first baseman Mark McGwire

Unlike the mail-in ballot procedure for the writers’ vote, involving several hundred votes, the “Era’s” voting is done by a sixteen-member panel, who all meet as a group. Each member has the ability to make the case to the group about why they feel an individual is worthy or unworthy of the honor of enshrinement into Cooperstown. Each of the sixteen panelists can vote for as few as zero or as many as four individuals, with 75% (or 12 votes) required to be inducted.

At first glance, the ballot seems a bit underwhelming, almost as if the ballot was stacked for the purposes of making sure that former Commissioner Selig would get the necessary votes to breeze into the Hall. Unlike two years ago, when managers Joe Torre, Tony La Russa and Bobby Cox were all elected unanimously, there is not one obvious no-brainer selection here, even Selig. Obviously, the big news regarding this ballot is the presence of McGwire, who was on the writers’ ballot one year ago for the 10^th and final time. Big Mac was the first of many PED-tainted players who would otherwise have been obvious Hall of Fame selections but who fell far short because of their links to steroids.

I’m going to go through each candidate separately but first, it’s important to know who is doing the voting, because the voters change every year. This year’s 16-member committee includes Hall of Fame members Roberto Alomar, Bobby Cox, Andre Dawson, Dennis Eckersley, Pat Gillick, Ozzie Smith, Don Sutton and Frank Thomas; Major League executives Paul Beeston (Blue Jays), Bill DeWitt (Cardinals), David Glass (Royals), Andy MacPhail (Phillies) and Kevin Towers (Reds); and veteran media members/historians Bill Center, Steve Hirdt and Tim Kurkjian (from ESPN).

In Part 1 of this three-part series, I took a look at the managerial careers of Davey Johnson and Lou Piniella. You can access that post by clicking here. The conclusion was that, while each had very good careers and managed some great teams, they each fell a little bit short of what they should have accomplished with the players they were fortunate to manage.

In Part 2 of this three-part series, we’ll examine the careers of the five players on the ballot.

 

Mark McGwire:

In a normal baseball universe, one without steroids, Mark McGwire would have been a shoo-in for the Hall of Fame. Consider his accomplishments:

583 home runs: 11th best all-time

Career .588 slugging percentage: 7th best all-time

Career .983 OPS (on-base% + slugging%): 9th best all-time

Ballpark and year-adjusted OPS+ of 163: 13th best all-time

Made 12 All-Star teams

Set all-time single season home run mark with 70 in 1988 (since surpassed by Barry Bonds)

Career 10.61 at bats per home run: #1 in MLB history (yes, better than Babe Ruth)

Big Mac (standing 6 feet 5 inches tall) was born to hit a baseball a long way. In his rookie season (with Oakland, in 1987), before (we think) he ever used a Performing Enhancing Drug, McGwire pounded out a league-leading 49 home runs, leading to a Rookie of the Year trophy. After three more solid seasons with the Athletics, McGwire’s career looked like it was going downhill. He hit just .201 in 1991, with a career low 22 taters and 75 RBI (in a full season of 154 games). McGwire rebounded in 1992 with a 42 home run campaign before enduring two injury plagued seasons.

When McGwire came clean about his steroid use in early 2010, he admitted that he used them briefly between the 1989 and 1990 seasons and then started using more seriously after the 1993 season (in which he missed all by 27 games), the purpose of which was to get back on the field more quickly. That is one of the biggest reason athletes use steroids: they allow you to work out harder and longer, and get stronger more quickly. In his 30’s, Big Mac became the Incredible Hulk. He was a big man to begin with but steroids turned him into a behemoth.

In 1995, McGwire began a five-year stretch of home run hitting never seen in Major League Baseball since the days of Ruth. He smashed 39 long balls in just 104 games in ’95, followed by 52 in ’96, 58 in ’97, his then record-setting 70 in ’98 and 65 in ’99. It was during the ’97 campaign that McGwire was traded to the St. Louis Cardinals, where he would spend the final four and half years of his career.

McGwire, in his interview with Bob Costas in which he admitted having used steroids, also emphatically claimed that his power to hit home runs was God given and that the drugs did not help hit the ball out of the park. I can understand why he would say that and in many ways he is correct. He did hit 49 home runs as a skinnier 23-year old rookie.

But what many players will tell you about steroids is that it helps you with two things: improved eyesight and the ability to work out longer. McGwire said that using PED’s didn’t help his hand-eye coordination or have anything to do with his natural ability to hit home runs. I can’t know for sure or course about the improved eyesight (this is something John Kruk told me recently) but it doesn’t take a scientist to see that the use of steroids has been linked to increased home run totals.

Think of the logic, even if you acknowledge that hitting a baseball 450 feet is a unique skill that can’t be scientifically engineered. If using steroids decreases the recovery time you need from a workout, it means you can work out longer. It means you can stay strong longer. If it helps you recover from injuries, that helps you stay strong during the dog days of August when most players are dragging. I am absolutely certain that Mark McGwire could have easily hit 500 or even 550 career home runs if he had not taken PED’s but he would have hit fewer than the 583 he actually hit. He might have broken Roger Maris’ single-season home run record of 61, but he would not have hit it out of the park 70 times.

McGwire had a keen batting eye. His 1,317 bases on balls are 42nd most all-time. His rate of one walk per 5.8 plate appearances is 7th best all-time. His high OPS is earned and deserved.

I tend to me a little more liberal about whether PED users should be in the Hall of Fame. I absolutely see the side of the argument that says “no way, they cheated, they can’t get into Cooperstown.” I look at it a little differently, especially with respect to players like McGwire, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens. These were truly great players. Steroids did not make them great, they made them better than great. But they were still terrific players and they made important contributions to the game.

McGwire told the Associated Press (in early 2010), “I wish I had never played during the steroid era.” I believe him. He knows he was born to hit home runs. And he knows that the temptation of steroids, which were tacitly allowed by the permissive culture in the game during the 1990’s, led him down the dark path that will forever cloud his legacy in suspicion and shame instead of the glory he should have had.

I would put McGwire in the Hall of Fame if it were up to me. On his plaque, I would make prominent note that he used performing enhancing drugs during his career. What he accomplished is an important part of the history of the game of baseball. It deserves to be recognized in the museum in Cooperstown that chronicles the game’s history, not just in a small exhibit about the PED era.

But it is clear that my opinion is the minority one. McGwire first appeared on the writers’ ballot in 2006 and earned just 23.5% of the vote, not even a third of what he would need to gain induction into the Hall. He would never get more than 24% of the vote, and got just 12% in his 10th and final year on the ballot this January. His partner in crime in the great home run chase of 1998 (Sammy Sosa) has fared even worse, garnering just 12.5% of the vote in his first try and just 7% earlier this year.

Just as McGwire was the first test of the writers’ feelings about PED-linked players, he will also be the first test for the modern Veterans’ Committee. It would be a big surprise if the outcome was any different. If the accumulated body of sound bites is evidence, most of the players currently enshrined in the Hall of Fame take a dim view on the use of steroids. In particular, the presence of Frank Thomas on this committee will likely kill Big Mac’s chances. Thomas, as a player, was one of the biggest proponents of PED testing at a time when most of the players’ union just didn’t want to deal with it. It is human nature for a great player who played clean to not want to admit someone who played dirty into their exclusive club.

It’s possible that McGwire may have some allies on the committee. Bill DeWitt, the owner of the Cardinals, would be an obvious one. Dennis Eckersley, a former teammate in Oakland, might be another, although he has a history of making anti-steroid comments. ESPN’s Tim Kurkjian voted for McGwire on the BBWAA ballot in the past before realizing it to be a futile endeavor.

The guess here is that McGwire will fall far short of the 12 votes he needs to get into the Hall.

 

Will Clark:

Just as McGwire burst onto the scene in Oakland in 1987, Will Clark did the same on the west side of the Bay with the San Francisco Giants in 1986. Will the Thrill looked like a future Cooperstown inductee in his first seven years in the Bay Area. He made five All-Star teams and finished in the top 5 of the MVP voting four different times.

Take a look at how Clark ranks among all MLB hitters during his best six years (from 1987-1992).

WAR (Wins Above Replacement): 31.8 (7th, behind Barry Bonds, Rickey Henderson, Cal Ripken, Wade Boggs, Ryne Sandberg, Ozzie Smith)

OPS+ (adjusted on-base + slugging%): 152 (3rd, behind Fred McGriff, and Bonds)

Home Runs: 151 (14th, behind 12 non-Hall of Famers and Andre Dawson)

RBI: 595 (6th, behind Joe Carter, George Bell, Ruben Sierra, Jose Canseco, McGwire)

Runs: 539 (8th, behind Henderson, Brett Butler, Bonds, Paul Molitor, Boggs, Sandberg, Puckett)

AVG: .303 (10th, behind Puckett, Tony Gwynn, Boggs, Molitor, and 5 non Hall of Famers)

Remember, these were Will Clark’s best years. It is in the advanced metrics that he fares best. In more traditional statistical categories, Clark’s numbers just weren’t especially thrilling. This might help explain why the writers were unimpressed when he joined the BBWAA ballot. Clark got just 23 votes (4.4%) out of the 390 needed and was dropped from the ballot after his first try.

It is a peculiar quirk of fate that, in the year after Clark’s 1986 debut, three other prominent first sackers had their official rookie campaigns: McGwire, Fred McGriff and Rafael Palmeiro. The fates of Clark and Palmeiro are intrinsically intertwined, because Clark replaced Palmeiro in Texas in 1994 (Rafael went to Baltimore) only to trade places again in 1999, with Palmeiro back with the Rangers and Clark with the Orioles.

Anyway, because they all burst on the scene at around the same time, the comparison between Clark, McGriff and Palmeiro is interesting. I’m going to leave McGwire out of this because he is a case unto himself.

Here are the numbers for the first full seven years of each of the three first sackers’ careers (1986-to-1992 for Clark, 1987-1993 for McGriff and Palmeiro):

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In the beginning, Palmeiro was the inferior player and the one who displayed the least amount of home run power. Now let’s look at the next seven years of each’s career (1993-1999 for Clark, 1994-2000 for McGriff and Palmeiro):

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Palmeiro found his power stroke (maybe with a little help) while Clark mostly lost his and McGriff chugged along.

Finally, here are the career numbers for each. Clark only played one more season after 1999 and retired at the age of 40. McGriff, the Crime Dog, famously ran out of power hitting gas and finished seven shy of the magic number of 500 home runs, tying Lou Gehrig with 493. Palmeiro, of course, remained productive until his career ignominiously ended with a PED suspension in 2005.

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What’s interesting here is that Palmeiro, despite his 569 home runs, has the lowest OPS+ of the three first basemen. He was the classic “compiler” and finished with his high HR total and over 3,000 hits because he stayed healthy and played a ton of games. He’s tied for 17th all-time with 12,046 plate appearances. Every player ahead of him on the all-time PA list is also in the 3,000 hit club.

Anyway, unlike McGwire, Palmeiro has never admitted using steroids but he was named in Jose Canseco’s books Juiced and Vindicated, flunked a drug test and was considered a player suspicious enough to have been called to testify in front of Congress. The BBWAA conferred judgment and drummed him off the ballot in his fourth year of eligibility.

I’ve written before that I believe Fred McGriff belongs in the Hall of Fame. He is still on the writers’ ballot, but he’s getting crowded out by the rule that limits the writers to ten choices. The presence of so many qualified players (and the continued ballot-clogging presence of Bonds and Clemens) has squeezed the Crime Dog out of the conversation.

So if McGriff belongs, does Clark? The advanced metrics of WAR and OPS+ say “yes.” Clark’s WAR is higher despite nearly 2,000 fewer plate appearances. He was a .303 career hitter and hit almost the exact number of doubles despite the PA disparity. But among Hall of Fame first baseman, 284 career home runs is a really low total, especially for a player with only one Gold Glove and no World Championships to his credit.

Among first baseman (those who played 50% or more of their games at 1st) who debuted in 1986 (Clark’s rookie campaign) or later (including those who are active), his 284 home runs ranks 21st, his 440 doubles ranks 10th, his 56.2 WAR (while an excellent number) ranks 7th and his 137 OPS+ ranks 7th. These ranks, incidentally, do not include Frank Thomas because he was a DH more than 50% of the time during his career.

So I say “no” but he’s close, very underrated, and I wouldn’t have a problem with if he made it.

The argument for Clark is essentially the Don Mattingly argument, that his early dominance during a six-year peak is enough for a Cooperstown plaque despite a career that fizzled out early. For yucks, let’s look at Donnie Baseball’s six-year peak (1984-1989) and put it up against Will the Thrill’s six top years (1987-1992):

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Pretty similar, yes? The difference (in Clark’s favor) is that he actually had several productive years with the bat after that peak and Mattingly was nearly an offensive zero after ’89 (although he did win an additional four Gold Gloves, giving him 9 for his career). Likely because of the added benefit of being a New York Yankee, Mattingly fared better on the writers’ ballot than Clark but still never got remotely close to Cooperstown. He started out with 28% of the vote on the 2001 ballot but never matched that total in 14 subsequent votes, finishing at 9% in 2015.

 

Albert Belle:

The Hall of Fame argument for Albert Belle is essentially the same as the Clark/Mattingly argument except his peak lasted longer. The mercurial Belle entered the league in 1989. His career got off to a slow start but he became a full-time and highly productive player in his age 24 season in 1991.

Belle was a five-time All-Star and should have won the 1995 MVP Award (he led the league with 50 home runs, 52 doubles, 126 RBI, 121 runs scored and a .690 slugging percentage) but lost to Mo Vaughn, most likely due to his conflict with the media. He became the fourth player in the history of baseball to have eight straight seasons of 30 HR and 100 RBI (joining Babe Ruth, Jimmy Foxx, and Lou Gehrig and since matched by Albert Pujols and Alex Rodriguez). Nice company!

For ten seasons, Belle was simply one of the most feared hitters in baseball. But Belle was also subject to wild mood swings. He was one of the most controversial players in the game, due to his fierce temper and also a corked bat suspension in 1994.

Belle was also reluctant to talk to the media, even openly hostile at times, although the reason was an extreme shyness and nervousness when the cameras were turned on. I met him in 1997 while producing the Up Close show on ESPN. It was a rare (for Belle) long-form interview and somewhat of a coup that we had him on the show.

Belle could not have been more pleasant to all of us on the production staff but it was readily apparent why he rarely did interviews. After taping the show, we counted that Belle said “you know” several hundred times during the approximately 22-minute interview.

You know, Belle hit, you know, 381 home runs, you know, in his, you know, career.

I’m not kidding. It was like that. I felt badly for him and my attitude about him shifted 180 degrees. For me, he went from villain to the kind of underdog that you root for.

Anyway, on the diamond, Belle was simply one of the best in the game for that ten-year peak. Unfortunately, his career was over at the age of 33 due to a degenerative hip condition.

If you’re one of the top 10 hitters in the game for a 10-year period, that deserves a serious look for a Hall of Fame plaque.

Here is how he ranks in several key offensive categories from 1991-2000 (minimum 4,500 plate appearances):

Home Runs: 373 (4th, behind Ken Griffey Jr., Bonds, McGwire)

Hits: 1,673 (6th, behind Palmeiro, Mark Grace, Roberto Alomar, Thomas, Craig Biggio)

Doubles: 381 (most in MLB)

Total Bases: 3,207 (most in MLB)

Runs Batted In: 1,199 (most in MLB)

Runs Scored: 951 (10th, behind Bonds, Jeff Bagwell, Biggio, Thomas, Chuck Knoblauch, Griffey, Palmeiro, Alomar, Kenny Lofton)

OPS+: 146 (9th, behind Bonds, McGwire, Thomas, Bagwell, Edgar Martinez, Mike Piazza, Griffey, Gary Sheffield)

Runs Created: 1,183 (6th, behind Thomas, Bonds, Bagwell, Griffey, Palmeiro)

WAR: 40.2 (18th, behind many including Knoblauch, Kenny Lofton, Robin Ventura, John Olerud)

So, for an entire decade, if you’re fourth in home runs behind three of the ten greatest home run hitters who ever lived and you lead the majors in doubles, total bases and RBI, you’ve got a pretty good case for Cooperstown. Belle’s OPS+ is 9th best and the players ahead of him are either Hall of Famers, should be (Bagwell and Edgar) or would be (Bonds) if it weren’t for PED issues and Sheffield (who probably should be in but has a PED issue as well).

Ahhhh, but there is WAR. Albert is probably wondering what it is good for. Being 18th is not as great. He trails many of the players on the list because of his poor defensive metrics. The players I listed (Knoblauch, Lofton, Ventura, Olerud) were all superior defensive players and/or base-runners and (except for Olerud) also occupied more important positions on the defensive spectrum.

Let’s look at it another way: imagine that Belle’s hip condition didn’t end his career at 33. Imagine if he was able to DH for six more years, adding just 20 home runs per season, a low amount that assumes time spent on the DL and reduced effectiveness. That would have put him over 500 home runs and a career without any PED tarnish. Would that make him a Hall of Famer? I think so. Sometimes the difference between a Hall of Famer and a non-Hall of Famer is five to eight years of mediocrity at the tail end of one’s career.

Of course, we can’t give Albert credit for games he didn’t play but just acknowledge what he did accomplish before he was clearly on a Cooperstown track. There are two outfielders who are currently on the writers’ ballot whose early careers look similar to Belle’s. These are Gary Sheffield and Vladimir Guerrero. Check out their respective numbers through their age 33 seasons.

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Sheffield, of course, would go on to hit over 500 home runs in his career but he languishing not much above the Cooperstown Mendoza line, garnering just 12% of the vote in his first two tries with the BBWAA. An admitted link to the BALCO steroid case does not work in Sheffield’s favor.

Guerrero is on the ballot for the first time this year and is considered a very strong candidate. His story is similar to Belle’s in that his career ended prematurely, although he lasted until the age of 36 and finished with 449 homers with a .318 batting average. Vlad the Impaler also had fairly good speed and was a decent outfielder, blessed with a cannon for an arm, which partially made up for leading the league in errors 8 times.

Anyway, I’d rather look at what Belle was (one of the greatest hitters of the 1990’s) than what he wasn’t, a mediocre defensive left fielder. If he were on the BBWAA ballot today, he wouldn’t make my top 10 and his career accomplishments are clearly behind Sheffield’s and Guerrero’s. But that’s not a knock. I count 17 players on this year’s ballot who belong in Cooperstown. Belle isn’t in competition with them this week. He’s in competition with Bud Selig, George Steinbrenner, John Schuerholz, Davey Johnson, Lou Piniella, Orel Hershiser, Will Clark, Harold Baines and Mark McGwire.

In that group, he’s right in the middle, maybe one of the top four, maybe not. I don’t think there’s any chance whatsoever that the panel of 16 will put him into Cooperstown but he definitely an interesting candidate.

 

Harold Baines:

Harold Douglas Baines was a very good hitter and may surprise but getting some significant support from the “Today’s Game” committee, but he is the one person on this ballot for whom I can’t make a favorable case for the Hall of Fame.

Baines was a highly touted player in high school and was the overall #1 player selected in the 1977 draft. Baines began his major league career in 1980 at the tender age of 21, as a right fielder with the Chicago White Sox. After two slow years, Baines blossomed in 1982, posting 25 home runs with 105 RBI. It was the beginning of a four-year stretch in which he averaged 24 dingers with 103 RBI. He would finish in the top 20 of the MVP voting each of those four seasons, peaking with a 9th place finish in 1985, a season in which he hit .309 with 113 RBI, good enough for fourth the American League.

Baines would go on to a productive 22-year career, in which he was named to 6 All-Star teams. Baines changed teams (either by trade or free agency) eight times but always seemed to “go home.” He had three different stints with both the Baltimore Orioles and with the White Sox, with whom he finished his career at the age of 42.

When evaluating a player for the Hall of Fame, there are generally two different types of cases one can make. One is the “peak value” case, where a player was one of the very best at his position for an extended period. That’s case for Will Clark and Albert Belle (and, as we’ll see shortly, Orel Hershiser).

The other is the “career value” case, where a player has a long and productive career. This might be a player that you don’t think about as a Cooperstown caliber player but when they’re finished and you look at their career statistics, your eyes are opened. Sometimes a player under consideration for the Hall of Fame on a “career value” case may be referred to as a “compiler,” a good but not great player who simply lasted long enough to compile benchmark career totals.

What makes Baines’ presence on this ballot puzzling is that there really isn’t either a “peak value” or “career value” case to make. There isn’t a 6-to-7 year period of time where he was one of the dominant hitters in the sport, nor are his career numbers what you would expect from a Hall of Famer who played 22 years and was primarily a designated hitter. The one and only statistical category where Baines is in the Top 20 all-time is in games played, where he is 19th best with 2,830. This is one behind Rafael Palmeiro, who has also been denigrated as a “compiler” (albeit one with a PED suspension). The difference is that Palmeiro compiled 569 home runs (compared to Baines’ 384) and 3,020 hits (to Harold’s 2,866).

Wait a minute. I found a statistic in which Baines is in the Top 10 all-time! On May 3rd, 2001, during the 2,813th game of his career, the White Sox were in Anaheim to take on the Angels. In the 2nd inning, with a runner on 2nd base, Baines grounded into his 298th career double play, breaking a 3-way tie with Brooks Robinson and Rusty Staub to take sole possession of 10th place on the all-time list.

OK, that’s a cheap shot, I’ll admit it. I’m sorry. I never met him but from everything I’ve read, Baines was a nice, humble man and a good teammate. He was also a solid, consistent performer, a .289 career hitter with a .820 OPS. Baseball Reference has an array of situational stats and categorizes every at bat as either High, Medium or Low Leverage. In the high leverage situations, Baines’ average is .309, with a .862 OPS so he delivered more often in crucial at bats than in others.

If there’s one number that makes a case for Baines it’s this: over a twenty-year period (1980-1999), he accumulated 1,583 RBI, second only to Hall of Famer Eddie Murray for that period. However, I’ll be the first to say that a statistic is a bit gerrymandered. It gives him advantage over players who have twenty-year segments that began in the years before 1980 or finished in the years after 1999.

Other statistical leaderboards are not as kind. The totality of his offensive, defensive and base-running metrics place him 48th on the Wins Above Replacement (WAR) list for that two-decade span.

Baines himself, incidentally, was surprised when he learned that he was on “Today’s Game” ballot and has acknowledged that he has been surpassed (twice) as the most prolific DH in the 43-year history of the position.

“I would think Edgar (Martinez) would hopefully get in before [David Ortiz] does. Edgar’s had strong numbers. Not to take anything away from David, he has this great career. He’s played on a lot of world championships, his numbers speak for themselves. So he’s definitely a Hall of Famer in my book.”

–Harold Baines (in The Sporting News, October 25, 2016)

In the same Sporting News interview, incidentally, Baines also called Martinez one of the best hitters he ever saw and considers Bud Selig and John Schuerholz “shoo-ins” on the “Today’s Game” ballot.

Baines was a very good player with a long and productive career. It was not a Hall of Fame caliber career but one that he can be very proud of.

 

Orel Hershiser:

Just as it is for Will Clark or Don Mattingly, the Hall of Fame case for Orel Hershiser is all about his peak. After pitching 8 innings in 1983 as a September call-up, Hershiser opened the ’84 season in the bullpen. After a spot start on June 7th, the man they called “Bulldog” joined the rotation on June 29th and promptly threw a complete game in a 7-1 victory, followed up by a shutout in his next start. For the rest of the season and the five years that followed, Hershiser was a mainstay of the Dodgers rotation and one of the top pitchers in baseball.

The following chart shows the leading starting pitchers from 1984-1989, using only hurlers who pitched at least 1,200 innings (essentially all six seasons). I’m ranking the pitchers by ERA and also including ERA+ (which takes into account ballpark effects) and WAR. I’ve included anyone who was in either the top five in ERA, ERA+, Wins, Strikeouts, WHIP, Complete Games or WAR. Remember that an average ERA+ is 100 so, someone with an ERA+ of 130 is theoretically 30% better than average.

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What leaps out from this chart is the presence of three other pitchers who, early in their careers, looked as if they were on Hall of Fame tracks, only to be short-circuited by injury, drug abuse or middling performance. I’m speaking specifically about Bret Saberhagen, Dwight Gooden and Frank Viola. Saberhagen won two Cy Young Awards during these 6 years, Viola won one and Gooden’s ’85 Cy Young campaign (at the age of 20) was one of the two or three best pitching seasons in the prior 100 years.

In consecutive seasons, each pitcher was the ace of a World Championship staff, Saberhagen with the Royals in 1985, Gooden with the Mets in ’86, Viola with the Twins in ’87 and Hershiser with the Dodgers in ’88.

Take a look now at the post-1989 numbers for Hershiser, Gooden, Viola and Saberhagen, where you’ll see the decline phase for each:

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And, finally, the career statistics for these big four young guns from the 1980’s.

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Based on their peak value in the 1980’s, one could make a case for any of these four hurlers to be inducted into Cooperstown. But based on their career numbers, it’s obvious why none of them last more than two years on the writers’ ballot (Hershiser is the only one to survive past the first go-around).

The matter at hand is whether Bulldog is worthy of selection to the Hall of Fame, in particular as it relates to the other luminaries on the “Today’s Game” ballot. I’m inclined to answer in the affirmative.

I look at the Hall of Fame a little bit differently than most. There are some obvious selections based on career numbers. When it comes to the not-so-obvious, I look for extraordinary accomplishments and championships. Hershiser finished his 1988 Cy Young campaign with a major league record 59 consecutive scoreless innings. He followed it up with 8 scoreless innings in the first game of the NLCS against the Mets before a ground ball single by Gregg Jefferies and an RBI double by Darryl Strawberry broke the string at 67 innings pitched.

In that same LCS, Bulldog came out of the bullpen on ZERO days rest to get the final out (with the bases loaded, no less) in the 12th inning of the pivotal Game 4. Oh, and then he tossed a shutout in Game 7, sending his Dodgers to the World Series.

And, oh by the way, Jack Buck may not have believed what he just saw when Kirk Gibson hit a game-ending home run off Dennis Eckersley in Game 1 of the World Series, but he surely believed Hershiser’s Game 2 shutout and his 9 innings of two-run ball in the Game 5 series clincher. Overall, in the last two months of the season (including the post-season), spanning just over 101 innings, Bulldog went 9-0 with a 0.44 ERA.

It is absolutely true that, in the years that followed his six-year peak, Hershiser was an average pitcher. Literally average; his 4.17 ERA translates into a 100 ERA+, which is as average as it gets. But he still created value to his teams in those “average” years. He was the MVP of the 1995 ALCS (winning two games), leading the Cleveland Indians to their first World Series appearance in 41 years. His overall record in the Tribe’s post-season run that year was 4-1 with a 1.53 ERA.

It’s a close call and the argument that his overall career doesn’t add up to Cooperstown is valid but, to me, Orel Hershiser is a Hall of Famer.

Thanks for reading.

Chris Bodig