Is Mike Mussina headed to the Baseball Hall of Fame?

Is Mike Mussina headed to the Baseball Hall of Fame?

 

Mike Mussina - Hall of Fame Material?

 

Currently 37 with 239 wins. Over the past three seasons Mussina has averaged roughly 13 wins per season. With 61 to go, Mike would need to pitch another four and a half seasons at his current level of production to attain 300 career victories.
 

Mike’s innings have been cut in recent seasons, but 2006 was his best season in years, tossing 197 IP, winning 15 games, placing ninth in AL K/9, and ranking third in AL Whip (1.10).

 

 

Playing in New York clearly gives him an added “rub”, and this if he had spent the early portion of his career in New York as opposed to Baltimore he might be on the fast track.

 

 

Eight times Mussina has placed in the top six in Cy Young voting, with a runner-up position in 1999 being the highlight. But he has never won 20 games in a season and has strangely only been on four all-star team rosters. He has a great adjusted ERA rank (65th all-time), but anything that is even remotley close to a sabermetrical statistic is lost upon the HOF voters, so let’s look at a few “hard” stats. Mike is 12th all-time in K/BB ratio, and is currently 17th in active career ERA (3.63) and 8th in active WHIP (1.177), which are strong statistics during the offensive surge of the last 10+ seasons.

 

Is 300 wins still a reasonable bench mark? From a practical standpoint, the answer is clearly no. Too many decisions are handed to the bullpen in today’s game of specialization. This ultimatley leads to a cut in innings pitched. Plus, if you add in modern pitch counts, the lost art of the complete game, and full five man rotations, wins can be hard to come by for a modern starting pitcher. But we can’t expect the HOF voting sports writers to take this into account.

 

 

I’m not looking to start or even enter this debate but the ongoing case of Bert Blyleven is a prime example. If Burt (287 W) wins an extra 13 games, he’s a no doubter for HOF inclusion. But to the out of touch writers with a vote, 300 is the be all, end all, minus a closet full of Cy Young awards.

 

 

So, does Mussina get his 300 and get a place in Cooperstown, or does he miss by a few wins and have to purchase a ticket to get in?

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4 replies on “Is Mike Mussina headed to the Baseball Hall of Fame?”
  1. says: Fake Teams

    Mussina won’t make it until bert Blyleven and Tommy John do. It will be analogous to Rollie Fingers breaking the reliever taboo. And then it took another 13 years for Bruce Sutter to make it.

  2. says: MooseFan

    The difference between Mussina and Blyleven is that, as mentioned before, Moose is doing all of this during the offensive era. Don’t forget that every inning he has pitched is in the AL East, which is by far the toughest division in baseball.

    I also think that they are definitely going to have to lower the standards for pitchers to get into the HOF. Even 250 wins is hard to come by. Mussina is currently 5th in active wins (behind Clemens, Maddux, Glavine, and Johnson), with Wells right behind him at 230. The next in line is Moyer, and there is a huge dropoff – he only has 216. Even Schilling and Martinez only have 200 wins. It is also highly likely that Moose will hit 3,000 strikeouts (he’s currently at 2,572), so that should help his case.

  3. says: Jim

    I would vote for Mussina and think he is deserving. He pitched well on some awful Baltimore teams and has racked up 256 wins as of 5/19/08. He’ll probably retire with at least 275 wins, and might be able to reach 300. I don’t know why he doesn’t get more respect – he’s had excellent control throughout his career. Mussina was far better than Blyleven, so that’s not even a fair comparison. Blyleven was a slightly above-average pitcher who managed to win 287 games solely because he was durable.

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