It's Hall of Fame voting season, again. This means that you will be subjected to countless writers who are writing about who they think is worthy of the Hall of Fame. One of the players a lot of these writers will mention is Jack Morris. Obviously, since I'm writing on the internet, I do not support Jack Morris' Hall of Fame qualifications. I actually believe that when people argue about Jack Morris and the Hall of Fame, they are actually arguing about two completely different views on the Hall of Fame, which I'll touch on later. However, since people still want to write things like Jack Morris is a very worthy candidate for the Hall of Fame. We are here to poke holes in the argument.
The first argument for Jack Morris is that he was the ace of three World Championship teams. What does that really mean? Usually, when people talk about being an ace that means that they are a) the best pitcher on the team and b) the one the teammates look to to beat losing streaks or otherwise be the most important pitcher on the team. This argument doesn't mean that much to me, if you look at the supposed aces of different World Championship teams. You would have a list of good but not great pitchers or pitchers who are great for one season. This is not even addressing the idea that it takes more than one pitcher to win the World Series. In fact, it takes 25 players, maybe more.
But I digress. In 1984, the Detroit Tigers won 104 games and the World Series. There has been talk of Jack Morris being the ace of that great team. It is important to note that that the writers of that time didn't consider Morris the best pitcher on the team. This is important to bring up because often these same voters who argue about Morris' greatness will say something to the effect of everyone who watched him play knew how great he was. Anyways, Willie Hernandez was voted by the writers as the winner of both the American League Cy Young Award and the MVP award. There have been claims by writers, nowadays, that only revisionist history has shown Morris not to be the ace of this team. However, we can clearly see that the writers during that time didn't consider Morris to be the best pitcher on his team, much less the league. If we decide, then, that relief pitchers are not worthy of being the ace of the team or that Morris was clearly the best starting pitcher on that team, then we must look at the statistics of the different pitchers. We can see that there is another pitcher who might be worthy of the ace role.
Jack Morris: 19-11 3.60 ERA 240.1 IP 148 K 87 BB 109 ERA+ 1.282 WHIP
Dan Petry: 18-8 3.24 ERA 233.1 IP 144 K 66 BB 121 ERA+ 1.275 WHIP
Even without going to far into advanced statistics, it looks like Petry is ahead of Morris. In fact, with rWAR Petry is at 3.2 and Morris at 2.3. It certainly would appear that Petry had a better season than Morris for that season thus being more deserving of the "ace" status. Morris did have a particularly good postseason so I suppose you could give him extra points for having a good postseason but it would certainly seem that Morris was not the ace of that particular team.
In 1991, the Minnesota Twins won 94 games and won the World Series in seven games over the Atlanta Braves. Was Morris the ace of that team?
Jack Morris: 18-12 3.43 ERA 246.2 IP 163 K 92 BB 125 ERA+ 1.289 WHIP 4.1 rWAR
Kevin Tapani: 16-9 2.99 ERA 244.0 IP 135 K 40 BB 143 ERA+ 1.086 WHIP 6.0 rWAR
Scott Erickson: 20-8 3.18 ERA 204 IP 108 K 71 BB 135 ERA+ 1.278 WHIP 4.2 rWAR.
Either way you look at, through traditional stats of wins and ERA or with advanced statistics, Morris is not the ace. If you're more inclined to look at the tradtional stats, you would be inclined to say Erickson was the ace. With advanced statistics, you would probably say that Tapani is the ace. Of course this was the season where Morris pitched so brilliantly in the postseason and had his virtuoso Game 7 appearance.
In 1992, the Toronto Blue Jays became the first team not located in the United States to win the World Series. Morris is now being considered the ace of this team, as well.
Jack Morris: 21-6 4.04 ERA 240.2 IP 132 K 80 BB 102 ERA+ 1.255 WHIP 2.8 rWAR
Jimmy Key: 13-13 3.53 ERA 216.2 IP 117 K 59 BB 117 ERA+ 1.218 WHIP 3.6 rWAR
Juan Guzman: 16-5 2.64 ERA 180.2 IP 165 K 72 BB 156 ERA+ 1.146 WHIP 5.2 rWAR
Duane Ward: 7-4 1.95 ERA 101.2 IP 103 K 39 BB 211 ERA+ 1.135 WHIP 3.2 rWAR
While Morris won 20 games during this season, he had an extremely high ERA and it looks unlikely that Morris was any more than an average pitcher throughout the season. Morris had a terrible postseason, this year, so if you give him extra points for his postseason performances you would have to discount it here because of the terrible postseason.
It's important to note that the 1993 Toronto Blue Jays won the World Series. However, Morris 7-12 6.19 ERA and did not pitch in the postseason, at all.
In my ruling, even if the claim that Morris was the ace of three World Series chamionship teams meant anything, which I assert it doesn't, it does not even appear that Morris was the ace of those teams. The only one that an argument could really be made that he was the ace is 1991 and that's if you gave him lots of extra points for his postseason performance. Even if he was the ace of that team, history is filled with World Series champion teams who had good pitchers on their team but nowhere near Hall of Fame quality.
The next argument that is typically made is that Morris won 254 games, most pitchers who won 250+ games are in the Hall of Fame. If we ignore the obvious problem, which is that pitcher wins are essentially useless. As Keith Law has stated that if a pitcher has won 20 games, all it says is that the pitcher appeared in 20 games. Pitcher wins are among the most useless stats in the history of baseball.
However, if we ignore this, we can focus on a different line of reasoning. There is no benchmark for the Hall of Fame in terms of wins. Although most pitchers who have won 250+ games are in the Hall of Fame, it does not mean that this is a benchmark. It is only ther until pitchers stop getting elected at that number, which might be happening already.
If you claim that Morris is worthy because of his 250 wins, then you must also recognize that other pitchers who have won 250+ games belong in the Hall of Fame. If that is the case, then they must have supported Blyleven (to give one example) which for the most part they did not. Other pitchers who have won 250+ games not in Hall of Fame that this reasoning would say is worthy of the Hall of Fame. Gus Weyhing (264), Jim McCormick (265), Jamie Moyer (267 and counting), Mike Mussina (270, although I think Mussina is a Hall of Famer), Jim Kaat (283), Tony Mullane (284), Tommy John (288), and Bobby Mathews (297). Since most would argue that at the very least Kaat and John are not Hall of Famers and they are close enough to contemporaries to Morris, that it appears that this reasoning is also wrong.
The third argument is that Morris was such a terrific postseason pitcher that he belongs in the Hall of Fame. This argument goes hand in hand with the fourth argument which is the Game 7 argument. This is the final line for Morris' postseason performances:
7-4 3.80 ERA 64 K's 32 BB's 1.245 WHIP.
Morris had some great post-season performances. We'll break it down year-by-year.
1984 ALCS: Morris had one start, 7 innings, 5 hits, 1 Earned run 4 K's 1 BB's.
1984 World Series: 2-0 2.00 18 IP 0.889 WHIP
1987 ALCS: Morris pitched in one game which was game 2. He pitched 8 innings and had 6 earned runs. He lost the game.
1991 ALCS: 2-0 4.05 ERA 13.1 IP 7 K's 1 BB
1991 World Series: 2-0 1.17 ERA 23 IP 1.174 WHIP
1992 ALCS: 0-1 6.57 ERA 12.1 IP (It would have been two losses but the Blue Jays scored 5 runs in the last two innings to send the game into extra innings, which thy won).
1992 World Series: 0-2 8.44 ERA 1.781 WHIP. He lost the only two games that the Blue Jays lost in that World Series.
Morris had two great post seasons and two awful post-seasons. It's hard to see how that it's a good argument for Morris being such a great post-season pitcher.
The other argument focuses on Game 7 of the 1991 World Series. The argument basically states that since Morris pitched arguably the greatest game in post-season history, he should be in the Hall of Fame. Well, then Don Larsen should be in the Hall of Fame because he pitched a perfect game in the World Series. Johnny Podres had a very similar post-season in 1955 that Morris had in 1991, Podres also pitched a great game 7, which led the Brooklyn Dodgers to their first World Series victory during that time. After Game 7 of the 1975 World Series, Sparky Anderson said that Don Gullet would go to the Hall of Fame. Livan Hernandez had a great post-season performance in 1997. Josh Becket had a great World Series performance in 2003 over the Yankees. There are a lot of players who had great post-seasons but are not good enough to be in the Hall of Fame. It's hard to see how great post-season performances are good enough to get you into the Hall of Fame.
The next argument is that Morris had a stunning moustache. There is no argument here.
The final arguments are that Morris' statistics don't capture him because he pitched to the score and that he was such a great pitcher that statistics do not necessarily capture him accurately. This is a risky argument because you are effectively discrediting any evidence against your argument and only accepting the evidence which proves your argument. In doing so, you leave others to be able to discredit your argument by claiming that it is weak. If you accept that certain records do not encapsulate a player fully but other records do, you are leaving the historical record up for debate. These are the same claims conspiracy theorists make when they talk about the assasination of John F. Kennedy, the Roswell incidents, etc. In these cases, people accept only aspects of the historical record that prove their argument or that do not show up in the official historical record but in their own revisionist or unofficial records.
If Jack Morris was able to pitch to the score, there should be records of that somewhere. While Morris had high innings total relative to the rest of the league and finished routinely in the top 10, it is not enough evidence that pitching to the score even exists. If that is all the evidence that you need, then pitchers who finish in the top 10 in innings pitched each year routinely pitch to the score.
Pitching to the score implies that a pitcher will save his best stuff for when he really needs it. This also implies that his best stuff will only be used during that time. If the best stuff will be saved during this time and a pitcher can routinely turn it on and off, it would seem that a pitcher would have a higher winning percentage and a lower ERA because he would use better stuff to allow less runners to score.
Pitching to the score is a dangerous argument because in theory if a pitcher who had a higher ERA because he pitched to the score, it would imply that he is giving up runs when he does not need to. If this is the case, there is a higher chance that a higher leveraged situation will come up with a lesser pitcher because of the whole pitching to the score. For example, if Morris' team was up 5-0 in the 7th inning, he pitches in the 7th and gives up 3 runs because he is taking stuff off of his pitches. It is now 5-3 in the 8th or in the 9th. Do you really think the manager is going to let Morris finish out the game or is he going to bring in the closer? Wouldn't it have been better if Morris kept pitching hard at 5-0.
The last argument against pitching to the score is Occam's razor. When presented with two competing theses, you should choose the simpler one. In this situation, Morris has a high ERA because he is simply not an outstanding pitcher. If you believe in pitching to the score, it is because he is giving up runs because he is pitching to the score and he is actually a pitcher who can turn it on and off consistently. Occam's razor states that we should accept the simpler thesis. The simpler thesis is that Morris is not an outstanding pitcher.
All in all, I don't think Morris is a Hall of Famer. I hope this post will help you in case you run into someone who thinks Morris is a Hall of Famer and uses one of these arguments. There are other arguments that people use to try and convince you that Morris is a Hall of Famer but they run along the same lines that we've focused on, already.
No comments:
Post a Comment