The Unfounded BBWAA Love for Jack Morris

Jack Morris once again failed to gain entrance to Cooperstown today. He finished with 53.5% of the vote, about 150 shy of admission. He probably won't make the jump in one year, and the ballot gets overloaded in 2013 and his last year of 2014, so he's probably going to become a VC hopeful.

Still, Morris finished with the 4th most votes of anyone on the ballot finishing ahead of the far more deserving: Jeff Bagwell, Tim Raines, Edgar Martinez, Alan Trammell, Larry Walker, and Kevin Brown among others.

Brown is an interesting case because he got less than 5% of the vote making him a one-and-done player. But if you look at it, Brown was a vastly superior pitcher to Morris. Lets look at it, shall we?

Brown threw 3256.1 innings with a 3.28 ERA, 1.22 WHIP, 901 walks, and 2397 strikeouts for a 64.8 WAR and a 127 ERA+. Morris threw 3824.0 innings with a 3.90 ERA, 1.30 WHIP, 1390 walks, and 2478 strikeouts for a 39.3 WAR and a 105 ERA+threw d. In order for Brown to match Morris's innings, ERA, strikeouts, and walks, he would need to make a comeback and throw 568 innings with a 7.48 ERA, walk 489 and only strikeout 81. He would have to be pretty damn awful. Morris also put up lesser stats while pitching in a much easier era. I have tried to find a good article defending Morris, but the best may be Jayson Stark's piece:

"if we look back on Morris' career, it sure looks as though the teams he pitched for, and the people he played with and against, were trying to tell us something.

This man started on Opening Day 14 years in a row (1980 to 1993) -- for three different teams. The only pitcher to start more openers than that since World War II was Tom Seaver (16). Just real aces are allowed to do that. Don't you think?"

He goes on to say that Morris started 3 all star games, and 6 playoff series game ones. His argument seems to be that since Morris's teams/peers viewed him as the man, that he must have really been that good. This is akin to people basing their vote on past Cy Young/MVP/Gold Glove results which are obviously flawed. Yet, this is the BEST argument I've found for Morris. Morris's streak of opening days began in 1980, mostly due to a lack of options. He had a solid, but not spectacular 1979 and was clearly the best starter the Tigers had. Over the next 11 seasons with Detroit, while he did nothing to lose his role as opening day starter, he also didn't do a whole lot to cement the role. The Tigers just didn't ever have anybody jump up and take it from him especially after a great postseason in 1984 when he helped lead the Tigers to a World Series title. After his time with the Tigers, he was a veteran who would have been unhappy with not getting the ball on opening day. Even so, this is not a good way to judge his Hall of Fame merits.

Some writers even had the audacity to vote for Morris over Bert Blyleven. Jon Heyman was one of these. Like Stark, I respect Heyman as a writer. He is great at getting inside information and reporting it. But I flat out disagree with him here. His argument is basically that Morris was perceived as great while he was playing, but Bert was not. While he doesn't come out and say it, his arguments are largely predicated on the flawed statistic of pitchers wins. He talks about pitching to the score and how Blyleven "didn't win all that many more games than he lost".

To me, you either have to have great career totals or several great individual seasons. Preferably both. Morris has neither and thus Heyman champs his career impact, but does not go into career totals or individual seasons. With the exception of the 1984 and 1991 postseasons, Morris was never elite for a distinguished period of time, nor was he good-to-great for a long enough time to build up great career totals. Again, we can't put guys in the Hall of Fame for having a great run or two in the postseason. That's what postseason awards are for. No matter how much you were in awe with game 7 of the 1991 series, it does not make Morris a Hall of Famer.

The Best Postseason Pitchers of all time

Now were in the playoffs lets do a top 5 October Edition. Mo Rivera has the best postseason numbers of all pitchers, but we are going to focus entirely on starters here. Basically, if you could build a rotation of playoff studs, who would it be? All based on having to win one game.

The requirements:
1. Must have at least 50 innings pitched.
2. Must have pitched in and won at least 1 world series.
3. Must have been primarily a starter during said WS.
4. Must have started at least 2 WS games.

5. John Smoltz: 15-4, 2.65 ERA, 24 Postseason Series, 1 WS Ring
Smoltz has been downright nasty as both a closer and a pitcher, but his playoff career is filled with things he couldn't do. After doing enough to beat Jack Morris in game 4 of the '91 series, Smoltz went toe to toe with Morris again in game 7. The game, which is arguably the greatest game 7 ever in any sport, was a shutout of 9 innings. Smoltz threw 7 of those and pitched very well. Morris threw 10 and won 1-0. Morris did not have Smoltz's career numbers, but he had 3 rings and in 1991, he was certainly the best. Smoltz also got a tough luck loss in game 5 of the 1996 WS where he went 8, gave up 0 earned runs, struck out 10 and lost 1-0 despite outpitching Andy Pettitte thanks to a Marquis Grissom error. Strangely, Smoltz's worst playoff series was the 1995 World Series, which is the only one the Braves won.

4. Josh Beckett: 6-2, 1.73 ERA, 6 Postseason Series, 2 WS Rings
Okay, this may be a bit premature, but Beckett's postseason record speaks for itself: 2 postseasons, 2 rings, 2 postseason MVP awards, 2 world series his teams certainly would not have won without him. Heck, he's only had one bad outing in the playoffs! Game 1 of the Bartman series. We'll see if he can do it again in 2008.

3. Christey Matthewson: 5-5, 0.97 ERA, 4 WS, 1 WS Ring
Matthewson pitched the single greatest world series performance ever. Even better than Don Larsen's perfect game. Matty in the 1905 series threw 3 games, 3 wins, 3 shutouts. 27 innings, no runs. No one is that good. Matty never won another ring, but he pitched very well in 3 additional world series allowing just 11 earned runs in 74.2 more innings. Possibly the best pitcher ever too.

2. Sandy Koufax: 4-3, 0.95 ERA, 4 WS, 3 Rings
At his peak, no one was better than Sandy. In '63 and '65, Koufax was 4-1 and allowed 4 earned runs in 42 innings. How he lost that game is beyond me. The Dodgers however, won both series. They failed wo make it in '64, and in '66, Koufax and Drysdale were not enough to compensate for the fact that the Dodgers scored TWO RUNS in a 4 game sweep by the O's.

1. Curt Schilling: 11-2, 2.23 ERA, 12 Postseason series, 3 Rings
Schilling was great in the regular season, but absolutely phenomenal in the playoffs. He pitched in 12 series, his teams only lost two: the 1993 World Series, and the 2002 NLDS. Had it not been for Joe Carter that number might be only one as Schilling pitched an incredible game 5 147 pitch shutout to save an exhausted bullpen and extend the series. The Phils were in position to force a game 7 with Wild Thing Williams on the hill in the 9th, but we all know how that ended.

Schilling only lost 2 playoff games and only had 3 bad starts out of 19. His first loss was his first ever World Series start in 1993 when he was 26, his second was game 1 of the 2004 ALCS when he injured his ankle. His 3rd bad start was in the 2007 ALCS against Cleveland. In each case, he rebounded to dominate in his next outing. He went 1-4-7 in the 2001 Series against the Yankee dynasty, allowing 4 runs in 21 innings. He dominated all 3 games winning game 1, was in line for the win in game 4, and kept the Snakes close enough for the heroic comeback in game 7.

Honorable mention:

Bob Gibson: Excelled in 3 WS (2 wins) starting 1-4-7 in all of them and going 9 innings in all of them. He beat 31 game winning Denny McLain to win 1-4 of the 1968 WS, but McLain came back on 2 days rest in game 6 to force game 7 and Mickey Lolich and the Tigers finally beat Gibby.

Jack Morris: Great in the 1984, and 1991 playoff runs, not so much in his other 2 trips to the playoffs. Won 3 rings, pitching 2 excellent CGs in 1984, and the incredible 10 inning shutout in game 7 of the 1991 series to win the series MVP.

Randy Johnson: Not a great postseason career, but was 31 when he got there for the first time (oldest of anyone mentioned here). And his 2001 playoff run was better than anyone else's even Schilling and Beckett. Winning 5 games in the last 2 series including 2, 6, and 7 in relief of Schilling in the world series for his only ring.