Notes, quotes and comment

The Modern Era committee made its Hall of Fame selections and rejections Sunday.

It corrected one injustice by selecting Alan Trammell. It repeated another by leaving Marvin Miller out. And it committed a highly predictable error by electing Jack Morris.

That last is not a popular position in Minnesota. Morris was born and raised in St. Paul, he had that marvelous Game Seven to win the 1991 World Series, and he has a role in the Twins telecasts. (He's awful in that role, but that's the norm for FSN, which seems content to have analysts a generation behind the times.)

But the truth is, Jack Morris will be among the very worst pitchers in the Hall. (Rube Marquard and Jesse Haines are probably worse.) He was, as I said here, only once the best starting pitcher on the writers' ballot during the 15 years he was eligible. And he wasn't the best starting pitcher on the Modern Era ballot either. Both Tommy John and Luis Tiant have better credentials.

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The winter meetings officially begin today in Orlando, Florida, but two of the biggest moves of the offseason have already happened: Shohei Ohtani signed with the Angels, and (pending a physical) Giancarlo Stanton will be traded to the Yankees.

I really don't get the Stanton hysteria. Yes, he hit 59 homers. Yes, he's a top-of-the-charts power hitter. He also has a long history of injuries -- 2017 was only the second time he's played 150 games. And his presence, plus that of Aaron Judge, probably means the Yankees are not going to be contenders in the Bryce Harper derby next winter.

Given a choice between Stanton and Harper, I'll take Harper. And it's not close.

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Nor do I see Ohtani as a perfect fit with the Angels, although for his price tag imperfect fits are quite acceptable. Where do they get him the at-bats he desires? The outfield is pretty full with Mike Trout, Justin Upton and Kole Calhoun. DH? They're paying Albert Pujols $24 million a year though 2021, and he can't move anymore.

And if Mike Scoscia comes out of spring training saying, "We weren't really serious about giving him at-bats."  that's not a good look. They're going to give Ohtani a legitimate opportunity to play or have a grumpy Ohtani -- and a reputation for deceit.

But all that can be a useful problem, if they handle it right.

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Back to the Stanton trade. I snorted the other night at the office when I read the Associated Press lead to the trade story:

After helping the New York Yankees to five World Series titles, Derek Jeter might help them win another.

The notion that Jeter is being a sleeper agent for Brian Cashman is silly. The notion that Jeter is over his head in running a major league franchise is not.

And what is obviously true here is that Jeter's ownership group overpaid for the Marlins and are undercapitalized. Their primary goal this winter to unload debt, and the biggest piece of debt they inherited from Jeffery Loria's inept outfit was Stanton's contract.

Jeter tried to send Stanton to the Giants or Cardinals; Stanton, armed with his no-trade clause, refused. Ultimately, it came down to sending him to the Yankees for a pittance or having his contract on the books, and Jeter's group can't afford that contract.

Jeter may well have mishandled the trade talks by exposing his lack of alternatives, although that lack of alternatives was fairly obvious. The biggest mistake, however, was overpaying for a teardown project. They should have let Loria go bankrupt.

Jack Morris, in-demand analyst

Jack Morris will join the Detroit Tigers broadcast team as part of a three-man analyst rotation with incumbent Rod Allen and newbie Kirk Gibson.

My initial reaction to that news Tuesday was a combination of pleasure at the notion of being rid of Morris' old-school commentary and sorrow for Tigers fans, who will get the same. (I don't know Allen's work enough to speak to the quality of it, but he seems off my blog browsing and Twitter feed to be well-liked.)

Then I learned that Morris isn't leaving the Twins broadcasts. The idea seems to be that Morris will work on the Tigers broadcasts in midweek and the Twins broadcasts on weekends. And he will continue with his "special assistant" duties for the Twins as well.

Sigh.

I'm well-aware that I'm not the viewer the Twins and/or Fox Sports North worry about capturing. Teams and broadcast outlets tend not to trust the game to entertain the fans and want the announcers to be at least a fall-back for that purpose. For me, that just gets in the way. I'm going to be watching the games no matter who's on, and if the game is bad an announcer's shtick is merely annoying,

So I'm very likely to have the sound off, and Morris' vapid "analysis" (and, to be sure, that of Bert Blyleven) is very much a reason to regard the mute button as a blessing.

At least the Twins broadcasts haven't embraced the three-man booth concept, which is apparently part of the Tigers' plans. Three announcers is at least one too many, frequently two too many.

A quality major league announcer is good on his own. Vin Scully works alone; Bob Uecker's sidekick is apparently expected to stay out of his way during Uecker's innings. I have no doubt that Cory Provus would be a good soloist.

But nine innings is a long time for one man to keep up a stream of constant chatter, especially in an era when hitters stroll around the home plate cutout between pitches and Mike Pelfrey takes a half-minute to work up the nerve to throw his next pitch. There's going to be two announcers. That's reality.

I just wish they'd show me the game and get out of the way,

Curt Schilling vs. John Smoltz vs. Mike Mussina

John Smoltz was voted into the Hall of Fame on his first try. Curt Schilling, in his third year on the ballot, was not. Lagging even further behind was second-year candidate Mike Mussina.

Schilling responded by speculating that he is hurt in the balloting by being a Republican.

This notion brings to mind the adage about not attributing to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetency. Schilling should be particularly grateful for that adage, given the spectacular collapse of his electronic gaming enterprise, 38 Studios, and the $75 million hit that failure put on the state of Rhode Island's economic development fund. Adhering to that adage allows me to assume that Schilling was an incompetent businessman rather than that he was running a fraud.

And if something off field accounts for Schilling not garnering enough support for election, I think it more likely that the 38 Studios fiasco is responsible, not Schilling's politics. After all, Smoltz is a Republican too.

That said, I don't know why Smoltz drew instant enshrinement while Schilling and Mussina wait. It's one of those goofy BBWAA things, I guess.

Player A: 216-146 (.597), 3.46, 3,116 strikeouts. Postseason record 11-2, 2.23
Player B: 210-147 (.588), 3.26,  154 saves. Postseason record 15-4, 2.67
Player C: 270-153 (.638), 3.68. Postseason record 7-8, 3.42

Player A is Schilling. Player B is Smoltz. Player C is Mussina.

As far as I'm concerned, all three are deserving. I just don't see that Smoltz set himself apart from the other two.

And, for what it's worth, Player D, Jack Morris, now off the ballot:

254-186 (.577), 3.90, Postseason record: 7-4, 3.80. Mussina, Schilling and Smoltz are all clearly better.

The return of Jack Morris

A few weeks ago, the Chicago Cubs hired Ron Coomer as the analyst for their radio broadcasts. This opened a role on FSN, where Coomer did a great deal of the pre-game and post-game studio (or in-stadium) blather (switching off with Roy Smalley and Tim Laudner).

On Friday the Twins announced that Jack Morris was joining the broadcast team, presumably in the Coomer role.

Sigh.

Morris was, a few years ago, a radio fill-in for the Twins. Like Dan Gladden, he came off as a stubborn old-timer convinced that there is no new knowledge to be gleaned. What he knew -- or merely thought he knew -- when he was playing is all that one can know, or needs to know, today.

I specifically remember a game in which Morris went on a lengthy rant about how foolish teams were to shift Jim Thome as a dead pull hitter in the infield while playing him straight away in the outfield. Morris didn't know Thome's hit charts. Thome hit maybe two groundballs a year toward left field, but hit fly balls that way regularly. Morris didn't know that, and didn't care to know that. The problem was, he then inflicted his ignorance on his audience.

The Twins broadcast teams have been riddled for years with this failing. Bert Blyleven. Gladden. Morris. In an era in which most team's decision makers are delving deeply into statistical analysis, the Twins' broadcast analysts either cannot or will not learn enough about it to inform their audience. One possibility, of course, is that the broadcasters accurately reflected the organization's interest in the subject.

One of Paul Molitor's duties on the coaching staff will be defensive positioning, and he has said that he expects to employ more elaborate overshifts and to rely heavily on hit chart data. It will be interesting to see how this plays out with the traditionalists in the broadcast booths. The Jack Morris I heard a few years ago would be baffled.

Running to stand still

Frank Thomas dons a Hall of Fame cap
after his election.

The writers did better than I expected: They elected three players to the Hall of Fame, all first-timers: Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and Frank Thomas.

They came two votes shy on Craig Biggio, and that somehow was the big initial story, that Biggio just missed. In the context of the argument over the 10-vote limit, Biggio matters; there were plenty of writers who said, Well, if I could go over 10, yeah, I'd have voted for Biggio. The problem I have with that is: How the devil, even on this loaded ballot, do you get 10 guys better than Biggio? Answer: You don't. Not if you're being serious in your thinking.

I suspect those who would have voted for him didn't leave him off because they thought there were 10 better choices on the ballot. They were strategic voting -- giving votes to players they feared might fail to get the 5 percent they need to stay on the ballot. But Biggio, who in most of the late predictions was seen to be just on the edge of election, was the wrong guy to do that with.

Biggio will (probably) get in next year, although the backlog of highly qualified candidates isn't getting smaller. Yes, Maddux, Glavine and Thomas are off for 2015, and so is Jack Morris, who has been bypassed for the 15th and final time by the writers. But next winter the BBWAA ballot will include Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez, John Smoltz and Gary Sheffield.

The upshot is: I saw 18 legitimate candidates on this ballot; four of them have been cleared off, and there will still be 18 legitimate candidates next winter. Even when electing the most players they have since 1955, the writers were simply running to stand still.

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Here in Minnesota, of course, the big angle was Jack Morris not getting in. As you know, I don't have a problem with that. He wouldn't have been in my 10 if I had a vote.

Jack Morris and win points, part II

The real reason Jack Morris' Hall of Fame candidacy has persisted so long is this: At this point, NO starting pitchers whose careers began after 1970 (Bert Blyleven's rookie season) are in the Hall.

None.

Now, everybody expects Greg Maddux to be elected when the votes are announced later today, and possibly Tom Glavine as well, but they didn't gets started until the mid-80s. There's a giant gap, essentially a generation of pitchers, without Hall representation.

Morris was the biggest winner of the pitchers of that gap, which, not coincidentally, corresponds with the start of the DH era. So he winds up the standard bearer for the late Baby Boomers.

But should he be? In the post linked to above, I suggested that Ron Guidry or Rick Reuschel might be better choices. Let's apply the win points formula, explained in Tueday's post, to those two:

Reuschel: 214-191, .528 winning percentage, 23 games over .500: 136 win points.
Guidry: 170-91, .651, 79: 190

Yes, Morris (215) beats those two, Reuschel handily, Guidry by a smaller but still substantial margin. And Big Daddy and Louisiana Lightning beat Black Jack by a wide margin on ERA.

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This has nothing to do with Morris, but with fresh speculation this week about the possibility of Johan Santana signing with the Twins, I thought I'd run win points on Jo-Jo at this stage of his career.

Santana: 139-78, .641, 61: 150.

Despite a four-year run in which he was universally deemed the best pitcher in baseball, Santana's record doesn't match Guidry's (a rather comparable pitcher) and Guidry never cracked 10 percent on the writers ballot. I think Guidry was unjustly overlooked, but his precedent suggests that Santana will need a substantial comeback to be a serious Hall candidate.

Jack Morris and win points, Part I

With a crowded ballot on his
final chance with the writers,
Jack Morris isn't likely
to be elected to the Hall of Fame
this year either.

There are seven eight starting pitchers on this year's Hall of Fame ballot, plus a handful of relievers. I said here, soon after the ballot was announced, that Jack Morris was at best the sixth best starter on the ballot,  and that was giving him the benefit of the doubt over Kenny Rogers.

As I see it, Morris has only once in his 15 years on the ballot been the best starter listed. In this, his final chance on the writers ballot, he ranks (in my eyes) behind Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, Roger Clemens, Mike Mussina and Curt Schilling.

The argument for Morris essentially boils down to two points: Wins and durability. But how does Morris' 254-186 won-loss record really compare to these rivals?

In his 1994 book on the Hall of Fame (which, as I said in a previous post, I am rereading in the wake of my Cooperstown visit last month), Bill James offers a formula he called "win points": Career wins times winning percentage, plus games over .500.

The merit of win points in evaluating won-loss record in the context of a Hall of Fame debate, he said, is that it pushes the likes of Sandy Koufax and Dizzy Dean — with short, brilliant careers — forward while downgrading longevity guys with lots of decisions, such as Tommy John and Gus Weyring.

Win points, for a variety of reasons, never caught on as a factor in HoF debates. But I thought it worth working the math in the context of Morris, whose candidacy I have long been skeptical of.

Take Maddux as an example. He was 355-227. Multiply 355 by his .610 winning percentage, and add 128 for his games over .500, and you get 345 win points.

Morris actually scores better on this scale than I expected: 215, the same as Phil Niekro, who is in the Hall. Chief Bender, the first Minnesota native to be inducted into the Hall, scores 214. There are non-Hall of Famers in the same area (Tommy John, for example, is at 217), but Morris isn't surrounded by non-Hall guys.

But in this specific company, Morris doesn't do so well. Going top to bottom:

• Clemens: 403
• Maddux: 345
• Mussina: 289
• Glavine: 285
• Morris: 215
• Schilling: 199
• Rogers: 190
• Hideo Nomo: 79

I still rate Schilling ahead of Morris; while the won-loss record is important, there are other factors, such as ERA and strikeouts, and Schilling has much the advantage in those areas. Of the top seven, Morris has the lowest winning percentage (.577).

The guy who really gets a boost in my estimation here is Mussina. I knew he had 270 wins. But I didn't realize that he had a .638 winning percentage. That's mighty impressive. There is really nothing Morris offers that Mussina doesn't trump, other than Game Seven. There's really no excuse for anybody with a vote opting for Morris over Mussina.

Kenny Rogers vs. Jack Morris

Jack Morris' last shot at the
Hall via the writers ballot
has plenty of competition.

The BBWAA on Tuesday released its Hall of Fame ballot. It's stuffed with Cooperstown-worthy players -- overloaded, really.

Giving the list a quick once-over Tuesday, I counted 12 players I would certainly vote for, and several others I might be willing to vote for. But the voters are limited to 10 names. If I did have a vote (and I don't), I'd have to discard a couple of players I'm sure belong.

There are four former Minnesota Twins on this year's ballot. Jack Morris (in his final year of eligibility) is joined by first-timers Jacque Jones, Todd Jones and Kenny Rogers. The two Joneses will probably get shut out, and Rogers is unlikely to get enough support to remain on the ballot in 2014.

Morris might get in this time, but I doubt it. He is at best the sixth-best pitcher on the ballot (behind Roger Clemens, Tom Glavine, Greg Maddux, Mike Mussina and Curt Schilling) and that's giving him the benefit of the doubt over some others.

Rogers, for one. The Gambler doesn't have Morris' Game 7, but Black Jack doesn't have Rogers' perfect game either. Morris has more wins; Rogers has the better winning percentage. Rogers's ERA+ for his career was 107, meaning he was 7 percent better than league average; Morris' was 105. Rogers had 51.1 career WAR (wins above replacement); Morris was 43.8.

I wouldn't vote for Rogers, not with this field. There are too many better candidates to vote for. But I'd vote for him before I'd vote for Morris.

Hall of Fame: Barry Larkin is in

Barry Larkin is the 25th
shortstop elected to the
Hall of Fame.

It took three years, but the baseball writers finally elected Barry Larkin to the Hall of Fame.

Now if they'd just wise up to Alan Trammell and Tim Raines ...

Jack Morris got 66.7 percent, a new high for him, 48 votes short. That historically would be a very good sign for his eventual election -- it's more support than Larkin got last year -- but the historic precedents don't know what loaded first-year classes lie immediately ahead, and I suspect this will be Morris' high-water mark. He only has two more years on the writers' ballot.

Other former Twins on the ballot: Brad Radke got two votes, and Terry Mulholland, Phil Nevin and Ruben Sierra got shut out. The closest thing to a surprise there is that Radke got two votes. All four, obviously, are one and done on the ballot (players need at least 5 percent to stick).

Jack Morris, the DH rule and the Hall of Fame

Jack Morris's 1987 card.
He went 18-11
for the Tigers that year.
He also led the
American League
in wild pitches.

The veteran baseball writers who make up the Hall of Fame electorate are wrapping up their ballots for the Hall's Class of 2012.

This election, as I said here almost a year ago, probably represents Jack Morris' last best shot at the Hall via the front door. It's the one year in which Black Jack is certainly the best starting pitcher on the ballot; there's always been Bert Blyleven on the ballot in his previous years, and next year there'll be Roger Clemens and Curt Schilling, and for the 2014 class there'll be Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine.

I regard Morris as a dubious candidate. A good pitcher, absolutely, just not rising to HoF status. The ERA is a bit too high, and the claim made by his supporters that he "pitched to the score" just doesn't hold water when examined closely. Almost every post-1901 pitcher with 250 or more career wins is in, but (a) that's drawing a line just after Morris and (b) by that standard, Jim Kaat and Tommy John have better claims that remain ignored (neither is on the writers' ballot).

But here's something that occurred to me last week as I was setting the blog on autopilot for the holiday weekend:

The American League established the DH rule in 1973. That's almost 40 years ago. I will now list the starting pitchers to debut since then who have made the Hall of Fame:

(blank)

That's right. Zero.

Now, as a practical matter, we're basically saying there were no HoF starters to debut between 1973 and the mid-80s, when guys like Maddux and Clemens started showing up. Call it a 12-year drought if you will. That's still historically large.

The institution of the DH was the single biggest help-the-hitters rule change since the abolition of the spitball (1921). In the 10 years that followed the spitball ban, future Hall of Fame starters Lefty Grove, Carl Hubbell, Red Ruffing, Ted Lyons and Lefty Gomez debuted. Make it 15 years, and we pick up Dizzy Dean and Bob Feller. There's nothing like that wave of talent in the wake of the DH rule.

Dave Stieb — 176-134 with a
3.44 ERA for his career — had
his last good season at age 32.
He was one-and-done on
the writers ballot.

There were plenty of quality pitchers beside Morris (who debuted in 1977) to enter the majors in 1973-1985. Fernando Valenzuela and Mark Fidrych. Ron Guidry and Doc Gooden. Frank Tanana and Don Gullett. Mike Flanagan and Dennis Martinez. Dave Stieb and Bret Saberhagen and Teddy Higuera and Frank Viola and Orel Hershiser and Rick Rueschel ...

They all fell short. Most had full careers, but some got hurt, some blunted their lives on chemical abuse, some blunted their talents on overuse. None of them got elected to the Hall; none drew enough support to stay on the writers' ballot.

The coming wave of big-number pitchers from the Selig Era (aka the Steroid Era) -- Clemens, Maddux, Glavine, Schilling, Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez, Mike Mussina, John Smoltz -- differ from the Morris era group thusly:

• They worked in five-man rotations;
• Had pitch counts for much of their careers;
• Spent much, if not all, of their careers, in the non-DH league.

Look at the 14 guys I listed in the 1973-85 debut category. Nine of the 14 established themselves in the DH league. Look at the second list. Mussina spent his entire career in the AL. Clemens (who debuted in 1984) spent most of his in the AL. Johnson established himself in the AL (but had his best years in the NL). But Maddux, Glavine, Smoltz, Martinez and Schilling all established themselves as starters in the National League, with Maddux and Glavine spending their entire careers in the senior circuit.

I'm not convinced, even after going through that, that Jack Morris is/was the best Hall of Fame choice from that period. Guidry or Rueschel might be better picks. But Morris appears to be the consensus pick as the best career among starters to debut in the immediate DH era, a period of time that took a tremendous toll on young starters. That counts for something.

Jack Morris' fading Hall of Fame candidacy

Time is running out for the hero of Game 7. (In Minnesota, there is only one Game 7 -- the 1991 World Series finale, 1-0 in 10 innings, with St. Paul native Jack Morris going the distance.)

Jack Morris' 3.90 career ERA
is worse than that of any
pitcher currently enshrined
in the Hall of Fame.

Jack Morris is about as divisive a Hall of Fame candidate as sits on the writers ballot. Statistically, he is a marginal candidate -- one has to draw the lines just so to get him in. He's the "winningest pitcher of the '80s" -- but 1980-89 just happens to be about the weakest 10-year span for pitcher wins you can find. A good pitcher, clearly; not a great one, at least in my estimation and that of about half the electorate.

Anyway: Morris got 53.5 percent of the vote this year. That's up very slightly from 2010. He has just three years of eligibility left with the writers (Blyleven had one year left when he got in). He needs to get to 75 percent.

Next year is a thin crop of newcomers to the ballot; Bernie Williams is probably the most viable candidate. But in 2013: Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa, Mike Piazza, Craig Biggio, Curt Schilling, Kenny Lofton ... that crew will suck all the oxygen out of the discussion. And in 2014: Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, Mike Mussina and Frank Thomas. Those classes will leave little room for backlog candidates to emerge in the voting.

For Morris, it's 2012 or wait for the veterans committee.

Anticipating the Hall of Fame announcement

The results of the BBWAA voting on this year's Hall of Fame candidates are to be announced Wednesday.

Chris Jaffe — the guy who wrote the book on managers that was the basis of my Monday post — has his prediction of how the vote will go here.

This is a bit like reading a public opinion poll after the voting is over but before the vote is counted; we want to know the winner, but patience will bring the numbers that matter.

But Jaffe's put enough work into understanding how this particular electorate works that one of his points — that Jack Morris either goes in this year (unlikely) or in 2011 or not at all through the writers' vote — strikes me as particularly intriguing.

Morris is an exceptionally marginal candidate. There are worse pitchers in the Hall of Fame, and a number of superior pitchers who have been left out. I see no reason to put Morris in when Jim Kaat and Tommy John are out.

I've made this observation before, but I expect this to be my last chance to do so with these four names: Only four of the eligible pitchers in the modern era (since the formation of the American League in 1901) with at least 250 wins are not enshrined in Cooperstown: Bert Blyleven, Kaat, John and Morris.

Morris is really the odd duck in that group — he's at 254 lifetime wins. Blyleven, Kaat and John are all in the 280s. Morris barely makes that 250-win cutoff;  the other three are comfortably above it.

One other thing those four have in common: They've all been broadcasters for the Twins. It's a conspiracy, I tell you.

Poll stuff: Pitchers and catchers

On the previous poll: Twenty-three people participated in the Hall of Fame question.

Sixteen (69 percent) think Jack Morris should be in; eight (39 percent) voted for Jim Bunning; five (21 percent) for Jamie Moyer; one each (4 percent) for Rube Marquard and Jesse Haines; zero for Ted Lyons.

Personally, I rank them Bunning, Morris, Lyons, Moyer, Haines and Marquard, and probably draw the line after Morris, but perhaps after Lyons.

The new poll, on Wilson Ramos, is up.