Cooperstown Questions: What Makes a Hall of Famer?

The 2008 Hall of Fame ballot, one so strong as to include legends like Jose Rijo and Todd Stottlemyer, will fall into the hands of baseball writers this week as they vote on their choices to join the immortal. On Tuesday, Hall of Fame hopefuls will wait anxiously by their phones to see if Cooperstown will call. It likely won’t. 2008 may see Jim Rice and Goose Gossage enter the Hall of Fame after more than a decade on the ballot, while writers balk on Mark McGwire and laugh at names like Rijo, Stottlemyer, David Justice, Chuck Knoblauch, Chuck Finley, and Brady Anderson. The only new addition to the ballot who warrants consideration is Tim Raines, and he is certainly not a first ballot Hall of Famer.
The two major criteria for Hall worthiness, as far as I am concerned, are numbers and longevity. Numbers are law and lord in baseball. They are how players are compared through the ages and are how players judge themselves and each other. They objectify a subjective game and help substitute reason for passion when deciding who makes it to Cooperstown. Longevity is also crucial. Thousands of players have dominated for a year or two or five. Far fewer have had the staying power to maintain Hall-worthy careers over fifteen or twenty years. Fifteen years is my general cutoff for a few reasons. First, fifteen years into their careers, players are in their mid-to-late thirties and are usually on the decline. Second, aside from Barry Bonds or Roger Clemens, fifteen years of a player’s career gives you an idea of the shape of his entire career, and is when his numbers begin to add up to Hall status or something short of it.
Numbers and Longevity. Those are my two criteria and I think the Hall does a pretty good job of enforcing those boundaries. Of course, the Hall is not completely full of players who played two decades or reached the magical numbers of 3000 hits, 500 home runs, 300 wins, or 3000 strikeouts. There are exceptions and, rightfully so, discretion is used. This discretion, though, often leads to players being inducted whose career stats are far lower than the Hall usually considers worthy. Sometimes this is acceptable. Often, it is not. I have broken these down into a few categories and have come up with rules and explanations of how players with sub-par career stats end up in the Hall of Fame.
The Koufax Corollary:
If a player completely and utterly dominates enough over a 5 or 6-year period so much that he transcends that game, he is considered for the Hall. Koufax only ended up with 165 career wins and 2396 strikeouts, but during the period between 1961 and 1966, he was far and away the best pitcher in baseball and maybe the best pitcher ever. In that period, he won 129 games, struck out 1713 batters, and had an earned run average of 2.24. In six years.
I have only been able to come up with two more recent examples of players who would fall into the Koufax Corollary, Pedro Martinez and (more-so) Mariano Rivera. However, both players’ careers have lasted long enough by now to give them Hall numbers anyway, thus rendering the Koufax Corollary irrelevant in their cases.
The Maris Rule to the Koufax Corollary:
Hitters are virtually exempt from the Koufax Corollary. Maris’s 61 home runs in 1961, his back-to-back MVP awards, and his 3 World Series championships were not enough to get him into the Hall. I pretty much agree with his exemption but I think it is worth using his case as a benchmark for future players: you need to dominate for a long time. Many, many hitters have dominated the sport for short amounts of time, but prior to the steroid era, no non-Hall of Famer has transcended the sport over a short period like Maris. His exemption from the Hall virtually excluded hitters from the Koufax Corollary. Hitters, even moreso than pitchers, must be judged on longevity.
Another note: Neither Johnny Vandermeer, who pitched back to back no hitters, nor Don Larsen, who pitched a perfect game in the World Series, are Hall of Famers. It’s about your career, not a season or a single event.
The Puckett Problem:
As I said a few sentences ago, hitters must be judged on longevity. One thing that angers me more than anything else is when fans tout the Hall credentials of 27-year old players. Countless players start their careers with a string of Hall of Fame seasons only to a) fall off or b) get injured or die. An all-star team of these players, “Hall-of-Famers-turned-average-players,” would look like this:
C: Thurmon Munson (died)
1B: Don Mattingly (hurt his back)
2B: Chuck Knoblauch (mental errors)
SS: Nomar Garciaparra (fell off)
3B: Matt Williams (fell off)
OF: Darryl Strawberry (drugs)
OF: Tony Conigliaro (hit by pitch)
OF: Albert Belle (insanity)
OF: Kirby Puckett* (health problems/hit by pitch)
P: Dwight Gooden
*inducted anyway, for reasons beyond rational understanding

All of these players were once considered Hall of Fame material but fell off due to a variety of reasons. It can happen to anyone. Albert Pujols right now is in the best position of any 27-year old who has ever played the game. His first seven seasons have far surpassed the first seven seasons of any player, ever. But he is not a Hall of Famer. Not yet. If he gets hit by a bus tomorrow, he will finish his career with fewer than 300 home runs and less than 1400 hits, far from Hall of Fame credentials. He’ll almost certainly get there one day, but let’s not crown him yet. A problem occurs when the Hall balks on the longevity/numbers boundary and gives a pass to a player who may not be deserving. Let’s call this the Puckett Problem.
Kirby Puckett is now a Hall of Famer with 2300 hits, 207 home runs, and 1085 RBI’s. His .318 average is unbelievable, but that’s because his career didn’t have a back-nine, when his numbers could fall. Don Mattingly, in comparison, finished his career with 2153 hits, 222 home runs, and 1099 RBI’s. His .307 batting average, still incredible, fell only after he battled back problems for the better part of a decade. I’m not saying Mattingly deserves to be in the Hall of Fame – he doesn’t. But neither does Puckett. When you put Puckett in the Hall of Fame, it lends credibility to Mattingly’s cause. When you let one player into the Hall who has sub-Hall numbers, it opens the debate for other players with short careers and/or subpar career numbers.
In addition to the players with superb short careers are the players with long, decent careers. Fred McGriff and Juan Gonzalez are probably are not Hall of Famers, even though their numbers suggest some consideration. McGriff, .284, 2490, 493, 1550 over 19 seasons and Gonzalez, .295, 1936, 434, 1404 over 17 seasons, had great careers, but neither is probably Hall-worthy. Those are great numbers but for a first-baseman and an outfielder, respectively, they don’t get you into the Hall of Fame. And neither have the defensive qualifications of an Ozzie Smith to push them over the top. Often, players hang on too long and inflate their numbers to Hall of Fame range, even when they are not quite at that level.

The Gossage Dilemma:
Another phenomenon of the Hall of Fame is when changes in the game following a player’s retirement affect that player’s Hall of Fame chances. Goose Gossage might have been the best relief pitcher of his era but his was an era when relief pitchers were not given as much credit. Closers pitched two or three innings a game and saves were far rarer than they are today. Trevor Hoffman’s 500 saves and Mariano Rivera’s heroics have made the closer into a priceless commodity. If Gossage pitched today, he would surely have been used differently and his stats would be exponentially higher. But should this speculation qualify him for admission? The game is constantly changing and it is seemingly impossible to compare players across generations. Pitchers once pitched both ends of a double header. How can you compare Roger Clemens’ 354 wins with Cy Young’s 511? Or, for that matter, Gossage’s 310 saves with Hoffman’s 524? The answer is that you can’t. You just can’t. So should the writers consider this when they vote on older players like Gossage? Yeah, I think they have to. It’s not easy and it’s not clear, but I think they have to measure a player based on the standards of his day, not the current era. No player in Gossage’s era could possibly measure up to today’s save totals. But he was the most dominant of his era and his stats were the best of his era. What more can you ask of a player?

This week, Gossage and Jim Rice will likely be elected to the Hall of Fame. Gossage should get in for the reasons listed above. Rice, I think, falls just a bit short. He played 16 seasons, satisfying the longevity criteria, but his numbers just aren’t there. Rice never dominated the game like Koufax did and while .298, 2452, 382, 1451 are all good numbers, they are certainly not GREAT numbers. The Hall shouldn’t settle for anything less.