by Keith Law
By Wins Above Replacement, Sutter is the worst pitcher in Cooperstown, coming in 0.5 WAR below Rollie Fingers and 12 WAR below Catfish Hunter. Sutter’s election is a modern embarrassment, an overvaluing of the save stat combined with the dysfunction of the current system; he was elected in 2006, the only player to earn enough votes that year, which sort of demonstrates that timing can indeed be everything. Had he been on the ballot with other, more qualified candidates, he probably wouldn’t have squeaked by with 77 percent of the vote that year and may very well have fallen short entirely.
Sutter’s main problem as a candidate for Cooperstown is that he just didn’t pitch enough. It’s hard to do anything in a thousand innings to justify your inclusion even against modern starters who have lower workloads relative to starters from before 1990; Sandy Koufax, whose career ended at age thirty due to arthritis in his left elbow, reached 2,324 innings, and Pedro Martinez, handled gingerly for most of his career due to his slight frame, still reached 2,827 innings. Sutter couldn’t even reach half that, and most modern closers can’t do so, either.
Trevor Hoffman became eligible for the Hall of Fame after the 2015 season and appeared on 67.3 percent of ballots that winter. The following year he reached 74%, making it inevitable that he’ll be elected to the Hall in the next vote. Hoffman was, with some reason, considered the best one-inning closer in the National League for about a decade. He’s one of only two closers to cross the 600-save mark, limping across that threshold and grabbing a very temporary hold on the all-time saves mark in his final season in 2010, where he posted an ERA just under 6.
Hoffman pitched in 18 separate seasons, only missing a significant chunk of one of those due to injury, and yet barely creaked past Sutter in the innings-pitched department with 1,089. His ERA of 2.87 ranks 14th among pitchers with at least 1,000 innings who pitched after World War II (eliminating all of the pitchers whose ERAs reflect time pitching in the low-offense, dead-ball era before 1921):
The man atop this list can wait just another moment while I dispense with Hoffman, as he deserves his own discussion. Hoffman’s performance, even before we discount it for the time he spent pitching in San Diego’s two incredibly pitcher-friendly stadiums, Petco Park and its predecessor Qualcomm Stadium, is just not that remarkable for a modern reliever. Quisenberry fell off the Hall ballot in one year. So did Hiller. So did Tekulve. Messersmith lasted two years but only appeared on three ballots each time. Sparky Lyle lasted four years, peaking in his first run by appearing on 13.1 percent of ballots. In fact, Hoffman’s career totals, without the saves, look a lot like that of a good starter who blew out early in his career:
Pitcher X lasted only seven years, spending his whole career with a team that played in one of the majors’ best hitters’ parks. He won a Cy Young Award in his fourth year in the majors, then finished second in the voting in the next two seasons. The following year, he made one four-inning start on April 6, went on the disabled list with a serious shoulder injury, and never made it back to the majors. I’ve never heard anyone suggest that Brandon Webb, who didn’t pitch in the required ten seasons to even appear on a ballot, deserves some sort of consideration for the Hall of Fame, yet his body of work is at least equal to that of Trevor Hoffman.
I told you that story so I could tell you this one, however, as Hoffman’s eventual election appears to be a fait (or fault) accompli. But there is one modern reliever whose case for the Hall stands up to even the fairly strict scrutiny to which I’d subject all Hall candidates, based on his body of work in the regular season, boosted by his body of work in the postseason, and, I think, made even a bit easier for voters because of the player’s outstanding reputation for character on and off the field.
Mariano Rivera was another failed starter, promising but frequently injured in the minors, and posted a 5.51 ERA in 1995, his rookie season with the Yankees, making ten starts and nine relief appearances. The following year, the Yankees made him their setup man, often allowing him to handle the seventh and eighth innings ahead of Proven Closer™ John Wetteland, a combination that helped the Yankees win the World Series that fall and ensured that Rivera would never start another game in the majors. From 1996 until his final season of 2013, Rivera threw 1,216.2 innings, all in relief, with a 2.03 ERA—and did nearly all of it by throwing just one pitch, a cut fastball that hitters on both sides of the plate would just pound into the ground. Rivera was hard to hit, and even harder to take deep—he gave up just 60 homers after that first season—and he had outstanding control, walking 245 batters (excluding intentional walks) in his entire career, fewer than one every five innings.
Even with that first season of poor performance included, Rivera’s career puts him well above that of the best of his peers among short relievers. The chart above shows that his ERA is the lowest for any pitcher with at least 1000 innings from 1947 onward, and it’s not particularly close. (Also, how freaking good has Clayton Kershaw been? He could retire right now and have a strong Hall of Fame case just on half a career of work.) Other relievers have been better in short stints, but no reliever in this era of the one-inning closer, roughly defined as 1980 to now, has been as good as Rivera for as long as Rivera was:
(Fangraphs’ version of WAR rates Rivera a good bit lower, at 39.7 for his career, because it normalizes his BABIP rather than assuming or accepting that Rivera’s career BABIP of .263 was the result of skill. Over a season or two, we might look at a low BABIP and say that it’s luck or randomness, or that it’s the result of playing in front of a good defensive unit. Rivera allowed more than 3,500 balls in play in his career, a sample large enough that we can say with a high degree of confidence that we think his low BABIP was the result of skill, or mostly the result of skill.)
Rivera doubles every other modern closer in WAR except Smith, who threw almost exactly the same total number of innings and gave up 135 more runs than Rivera did. As for Hoffman, Rivera’s most direct contemporary on the list, Rivera gave up fewer runs in almost 200 more innings pitched. To get from Billy Wagner’s career to Rivera’s, you need 380 innings and 78 runs allowed, which is roughly equivalent to Sandy Koufax’s final season plus about 17 more scoreless innings.
There are 75 MLB pitchers in the Hall of Fame as of this writing, and Rivera’s WAR total of 56.5 would put him 49th among them. Rivera’s ERA of 2.21 would rank 9th, behind Walter Johnson, who pitched from 1907 to 1927, and seven guys who pitched in the dead-ball era.* Sutter’s election can’t simply open the door for every reliever who was better than he was to waltz into Cooperstown, but if he’s in, Rivera, who pitched more than Sutter and pitched far more effectively, certainly has a case.
Of course, the narrative of a player’s career can matter as much as his performance, and Rivera’s narrative is a strong one. Mariano Rivera owns the lowest postseason ERA in major-league history, and it’s not just a tiny sample: he threw 141 innings in the playoffs in his career and gave up 13 runs, 11 earned, for an ERA of 0.70. No other pitcher in the live-ball era has thrown 100 postseason innings with an ERA below 1.00. Only six pitchers in MLB history have thrown more innings in the playoffs than Rivera did, all of them starters, and the lowest ERA of the group was 2.67, nearly two full runs allowed per nine innings more than Rivera allowed. What he did in October over the course of his career sets him above every other pitcher who had the opportunity to pitch in the postseason.
Many great pitchers never had the same opportunity that Rivera had, or they simply had less of an opportunity, so I’ve never liked the idea of putting a player into the Hall primarily because of his postseason work or keeping a player out because he struggled in the postseason. Hoffman wasn’t great in the playoffs, with two blown saves and a 3.46 ERA overall . . . in a whopping 13 innings, such a tiny sample that it’s best to just ignore it rather than hold it against him in any way. Rivera, however, got that opportunity, enough that we couldn’t hand-wave it away as a fluke, and excelled. If you felt like his regular-season body of work made him a borderline Hall
candidate—while that’s not my view, I think it’s quite fair given his relatively low innings total—then his playoff résumé should be enough to convince you he’s a Hall of Famer.
Among pitchers not yet in the Hall of Fame, Roger Clemens, still on the ballot as of the 2016–17 off-season, is the all-time leader in WAR, with a ridiculous total of 139.4 that has him only behind Walter Johnson on the list of pitchers in or out of Cooperstown. Clemens’s statistical case is rock solid, but accusations of performance-enhancing drug use have led some voters to omit his name, enough that he seems unlikely to get into Cooperstown via the BBWAA vote.
The next-best WAR total among pitchers not in the Hall belongs to Mike Mussina, who ranks 19th overall with 82.7 WAR, was never suspected of PED use, and even had the kind of career won/lost record that would typically impress voters (270 wins, 153 losses). But through his first four years on the ballot, he hasn’t exceeded 52 percent, which he just reached in the 2016–17 off-season.
Some of the subjective arguments against Mussina are valid if you believe these things matter for enshrinement: he never won a Cy Young Award or came close, he only made a few All-Star teams, and he won 20 games only once in his career, in his final season. That last one is a bit disingenuous, since he won 19 games in the strike-shortened year of 1995, but it’s also just stupid because pitcher wins are useless.
The real problem with Mussina’s candidacy, in my view, is that he spent his entire career in the high-offense era and voters have a hard time mentally adjusting their thresholds to reflect how tough that environment was for pitchers. Mussina’s career ERA of 3.68 would be the second highest of the modern era to land its owner in the Hall of Fame, ahead only of Red Ruffing’s 3.80. But Mussina’s ERA came almost entirely in the go-go 1990s and early 2000s, when run-scoring in baseball reached all-time highs, so he was above the league average in run prevention every year of his career but one:
That’s a very simplistic look at the matter, comparing just the American League’s runs allowed per team per 9 innings (R/G) to Mussina’s runs allowed per 9 innings. Mussina pitched in the very difficult American League East for his entire career, facing some potent Yankee lineups in the 1990s and Red Sox lineups in the 2000s, without getting any help from his home ballpark in Baltimore or in the Bronx, so if anything this probably understates how good Mussina was relative to the league—but you can see here he was average at worst, above average frequently, and several years was well above average. In fact, he finished in the AL’s top ten in earned run average eleven times, in the top ten in Fielding Independent Pitching twelve times, in the top ten in strikeouts ten times, and in the top ten in fewest walks allowed per 9 innings fifteen times.
That’s why Mussina’s advanced stats paint a more favorable picture of his career than his traditional stats do. Wins Above Replacement, regardless of which formula you use, is built around an estimate of Pitching Runs allowed that is adjusted for its era, because the replacement player in question would give up more runs in a high-offense era and fewer in a low-offense era. It moves like the average would move, and if you want to use the average as your baseline instead, please do: Baseball-Reference has Mussina’s career Wins Above Average total at 48.6, which would put him behind only eleven Hall of Famers, guys like Seaver and Maddux and Pedro and a couple of dudes named Johnson.
Smoltz sailed into the Hall in his first year on the ballot, deservedly so; he was one of the best pitchers of the last twenty-five years, and had a solid postseason résumé to boost his candidacy. (So does Mussina, but that’s not necessary to make his case.) Mussina pitched 90 more innings and, once you account for the differences between their leagues—Mussina spent his entire career in the AL, while Smoltz threw 99 percent of his career innings in the NL, where pitchers hit for themselves and offense can be up to half a run lower per game—he pitched a little bit better than Smoltz did. If you take the league difference into account, Mussina even outpitched Tom Glavine on a per-inning or per-year basis, although Glavine, who was also elected on his first ballot, threw an additional 900 innings.
Mussina did nearly double his support in his third year on the ballot, and cross 50% in the most recent tally, so I’m cautiously hopeful about his candidacy. Now that Tim Raines, who entered his tenth and final year of eligibility after the 2016 season, is safely enshrined, Mussina might find himself the next cause célèbre among stat-savvy baseball fans.
Oh, there are more cases we could discuss here—the media campaign for Jim Rice, one of the least qualified players in the Hall of Fame; the gap between Tony Perez’s credentials by traditional statistics and advanced ones; the loud camp (of which I was a part) opposing Jack Morris’s candidacy—but that kind of talk could take up a whole book, and it has, by others more qualified than me. Bill James covered it in his Whatever Happened to the Hall of Fame? in 1995 and revisited many of the debates in his updated Bill James Historical Abstract in 2001. Jay Jaffe has written numerous pieces for Baseball Prospectus and Sports Illustrated on the same topic. I won’t rehash all of these debates here; my point is that having reliable, context-independent statistics for valuing player performance makes these debates possible. We’re no longer arguing about feelings and memories, but about whether this level of production meets the threshold for enshrinement. That’s a much more fruitful and less frustrating conversation to have.
16
No Trouble with the Curve:
How Scouting Works, and How the Statistical Revolution Is Changing It
One of the great false dichotomies of baseball coverage today is “stats versus scouts.” The claim that these two sides don’t or can’t get along was a key part of the mythology of the book Moneyball, which chronicled the Oakland A’s search for inefficiencies to exploit in the market for players, leading them to become one of MLB’s earliest adopters of statistical analysis. The problem with the story is that it’s not true: scouts and analysts aren’t at odds, and just about every MLB front office now expects both departments to work together to improve their decision-making in all aspects of player acquisition, from trades to free agency to the draft. Over the next few pages, I’m going to describe what scouts actually do, dispel some myths about the practice, set up the explanation of what MLB’s new Statcast data measures, and show how the nature of scouting has changed as a result of the statistical revolution.
The depictions of baseball scouts in the popular media over the last fifteen years haven’t been kind to the scouts or at all helpful in educating the lay audience on their role. The execrable film Trouble with the Curve, which starts with a shot of Clint Eastwood urinating and only goes downhill from there, painted some false-romantic notion of scouts as lone wolves driving back roads and identifying future stars with a quick look and a gut feel. (The film was rife with inaccuracies, but perhaps none was as absurd as the idea that Eastwood, playing a local scout, was the only employee from his team to see the player they were considering for the number-two pick in the entire draft. A team picking second would likely have a dozen people go watch every candidate for that pick.) A scout’s job is far more methodical than these books and films might lead you to believe, and his output in the form of scouting reports is more detailed and concrete than you’d otherwise think.
The specifics of a scout’s report do vary by the type of player he’s evaluating. An area scout’s report on an amateur player for the draft or to be signed as a free agent out of the Dominican Republic or Venezuela will focus much more on what the player is expected to become, including a long-term projection on his physical development, than a pro scout’s report on a prospect in double-A, which still includes some prognostication but will invariably weigh the player’s present baseball skills more heavily.
Org charts differ somewhat from team to team, but there is a common structure to most amateur scouting departments (still sometimes referred to by the dated term “free agent” scouting, even though players in the draft are anything but free). Each team will divide up the country in
to territories called “areas,” usually twelve to fifteen or so, including Canada and Puerto Rico since they’re also folded into the draft along with the United States. Each area has a scout called—you guessed it—an area scout, who is responsible for seeing all players in his area potentially worthy of a draft pick in that year. This role is probably closest to the scout of myth, driving 30,000 miles every spring to cover his territory and see a bunch of players who might be worth a pick in the 15th round or might not be worth the gas money spent to go see him. These areas can be huge—most teams assign one scout to cover the entire Four Corners region of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah, sometimes giving the same scout responsibility for El Paso and/or Las Vegas as well. Doing this job well requires organization skills, networking, and a commitment to chasing down a lot of players who might never spend a day in pro ball in the hopes of finding a Chris Carter (White Sox, 15th round, 2005), Ryan Roberts (Blue Jays, 18th round, 2003), or Jarrod Dyson (Royals, 50th round, 2006).
Between the area scouts and the scouting director who oversees the department (and, in theory, is responsible for making the actual draft picks) will be one or two layers of scouts known as cross-checkers or “supervisors,” some national and some regional. These scouts spend most of their waking hours between Valentine’s Day and Memorial Day on airplanes, and they’re responsible for seeing the best players in each of the areas they oversee—for example, a national cross-checker’s mandate could be to see every player that area scouts have turned in as worthy of a pick in the first three rounds of the draft. These cross-checkers have two main functions: to provide a second evaluation on every player who might merit a high pick or large signing bonus, and to provide comparisons of such players across different areas.