The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2019 Hall of Fame ballot. It was initially adapted from The Cooperstown Casebook, published in 2017 by Thomas Dunne Books, and then revised for SI.com last year. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.
It happened so quickly. Freshly anointed the game’s top prospect by Baseball America in the spring of 1996, the soon-to-be-19-year-old Andruw Jones was sent to play for the Durham Bulls, the Braves’ Hi-A affiliate. By mid-August, he blazed through the Carolina League, the Double-A Southern League, and the Triple-A International League, and debuted for the defending world champion Braves. By October 20, with just 31 regular season games under his belt, he was a household name, not only the youngest player ever to homer in a World Series game — breaking Mickey Mantle’s record — but doing so twice at Yankee Stadium.
Jones was no flash in the pan. The Braves didn’t win the 1996 World Series, and he didn’t win the 1997 NL Rookie of the Year award, but along with Chipper Jones (no relation) and the big three of Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, and John Smoltz, he became a pillar of a franchise that won a remarkable 14 NL East titles from 1991-2005 (all but the 1994 strike season). From 1998-2007, Jones won 10 straight Gold Gloves, more than any center fielder except Willie Mays.
By the end of 2006, Jones had tallied 342 homers and 1,556 hits. He looked bound for a berth in Cooperstown, but after a subpar final season in Atlanta and a departure for Los Angeles in free agency, he fell apart so completely that the Dodgers bought out his contract, a rarity in baseball. He spent the next four years with three different teams before heading to Japan at age 35, and while he hoped for a return to the majors, he couldn’t find a deal to his liking after either the 2014 or 2015 seasons. He retired before his 39th birthday, and thanks to his rapid descent, barely survived his first year on the Hall of Fame ballot.
The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2019 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.
Baseball at high altitude is weird. The air is less dense, so pitched balls break less and batted balls carry farther — conditions that greatly favor the hitters. Meanwhile, reduced oxygen levels make breathing harder, physical exertion more costly, and recovery times longer. Ever since major league baseball arrived in Colorado in 1993, no player put up with more of this, the pros and cons of playing at a mile-high elevation, than Todd Helton.
A Knoxville native whose career path initially led to the gridiron, ahead of Peyton Manning on the University of Tennessee quarterback depth chart, Helton shifted his emphasis back to baseball in college and spent his entire 17-year career (1997-2013) playing for the Rockies. “The Toddfather” was without a doubt the greatest player in franchise history, its leader in every major offensive counting stat category save for triples, stolen bases, caught stealing and sacrifice hits, none of which were major parts of his game. He made five All-Star teams, won three Gold Gloves, a slash line triple crown — leading in batting average, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage in the same season — and served as a starter and a team leader for two playoff teams, including its only pennant winner. He posted batting averages above .300 12 times, on-base percentages above .400 nine times, and slugging percentages above .500 eight times. He mashed 40 doubles or more seven times and 30 homers or more six times; twice, he topped 400 total bases, a feat that only one other player (Sammy Sosa) has repeated in the post-1960 expansion era. He drew at least 100 walks in a season five times, yet only struck out 100 times or more once; nine times, he walked more than he struck out.
Because Helton did all of this while spending half of his time at Coors Field, many dismiss his accomplishments without second thought. That he did so with as little self-promotion as possible — and scarcely more exposure — while toiling for a team that had the majors’ sixth-worst record during his tenure makes it that much easier, and as does the drop-off at the tail end of his career, when injuries, most notably chronic back woes, had sapped his power. He was “The Greatest Player Nobody Knows,” as the New York Times called him in 2000, a year when he flirted with a .400 batting average into September.
Thanks to Helton’s staying power, and to advanced statistics that adjust for the high-offense environment in a particularly high-scoring period in baseball history, we can see more clearly see that he ranked among his era’s best players — and has credentials that wouldn’t be out of place in Cooperstown. But like former teammate Larry Walker, an even more complete player who spent just 59% of his career with the Rockies, Helton will likely struggle to make headway with voters. He deserves better than that.
Most of the time, we’re just hoping to look one trade into the future. This weekend, we had the rare opportunity to look two trades into the future. We knew that, barring catastrophe, the Mariners were going to finalize a big trade with the Mets. And then word got out that, after that, the Mariners were going to finalize another big trade with the Phillies. That Mets trade is complete, as the Mariners have lost their second baseman and their closer. Now that Phillies trade is also complete, as the Mariners have lost their shortstop.
On the Mariners’ end, it feels light. It feels like there should be some kind of young third piece. Segura is 28 years old and affordably under contract another four years, and since 2016 he’s had about the same WAR as Carlos Correa. You’d think that, from a value perspective, Segura would be more comfortably in the black, and traded accordingly. But for one thing, Segura is dogged by an unflattering reputation. For another thing, Crawford is an intriguing unknown. And for a third thing, take a look at the shortstop market out there. There wouldn’t have been many buyers.
No matter what retooling the Indians do in 2019, Francisco Lindor is a franchise mainstay (Photo: Erik Drost)
Coming off three consecutive division wins and a World Series appearance that fell short of the championship by a single run, this offseason has started differently, with the Indians talking about trading a piece or two from their core. In a weak division with two teams rebuilding, a third team with some big holes left to fill, and a fourth trying to rebuild without rebuilding, can the Indians still maintain their hold on the AL Central for the time being?
The Setup
In the last quarter-century, the Cleveland Indians have gone through a significant generational change: the franchise is no longer defined by ineptitude. As losers go, it was the Cubs that got the “lovable” label; Cleveland’s forays into last place felt more sad than anything else. The John Hart era changed all this and after more than 40 years without a playoff spot — indeed, without even a finish above fourth place during the divisional era — Cleveland won the Central in six of seven years, starting in 1995. Cleveland has had two other periods of success since, each with different player cores, and the latest one finds the team at the forefront of sabermetric thought.
The end of Cleveland’s 2017 season was a frustrating one. The Indians won 102 games, the most in the American League and behind only the Los Angeles Dodgers overall. It was a team that was built for playoff success, with dangerous arms at the top of the rotation and bullpen. After the aforementioned World Series appearance the previous season, it was a bit humiliating to exit October in a backdoor sweep, losing a 2-0 series lead over the Yankees on seven unearned runs in the final two games and a team offense that only hit .171/.263/.287.
Baseball losses don’t necessarily teach you a lesson — even the 2018 Orioles dealt better teams 47 losses this season past season — and it was a good thing the organization didn’t panic and decide they lost the ALDS to the Yankees due to some fatal construction flaw.
But maintaining a core can be expensive. Cleveland lost seven players in free agency after the 2017 season (Carlos Santana, Bryan Shaw, Jay Bruce, Austin Jackson, Joe Smith, Boone Logan, Craig Breslow) to contracts totaling $150 million, and while only Santana and perhaps Shaw had been key long-term pieces for the team, the departures constituted some real value lost.
The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2019 Hall of Fame ballot. Originally written for the 2013 election at SI.com, it has been updated to reflect recent voting results as well as additional research, and was expanded for inclusion in The Cooperstown Casebook, published in 2017 by Thomas Dunne Books. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.
A three-time batting champion, five-time All-Star, and seven-time Gold Glove winner — not to mention an excellent base runner — Larry Walker could do it all on the diamond. Had he done it for longer, there’s little question that he’d be en route to a plaque in the Hall of Fame, but his 17 seasons in the majors were marred by numerous injuries as well as the 1994–95 players’ strike, all of which cut into his career totals.
Yet another great outfielder developed by the late, lamented Montreal Expos — Hall of Famers Andre Dawson, Vladimir Guerrero, and Tim Raines being the most notable — Walker was the only one of that group actually born and raised in Canada, though he spent less time playing for the Montreal faithful than any of them. He starred on the Expos’ memorable 1994 team that compiled the best record in baseball before the strike hit, curtailing their championship dreams, then took up residence with the Rockies, putting up eye-popping numbers at high altitude — numbers that, as we’ll see, hold up well even once they’re brought back to earth.
The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2019 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.
They don’t make ’em like Roy Halladay anymore. An efficient sinkerballer at the crossroads of changing patterns of usage, his statistics, compiled in a career that ran from 1998 to 2013, look like numbers from another planet, or at least a bygone era, when viewed from today’s vantage. Consider, for example, that in an age of pitch counts, times through the order concerns, and increasingly specialized bullpens, all major league starters combined for 42 complete games in 2018, and 59 in 2017. Halladay — “Doc,” after Old West gambler, gunfighter and dentist Doc Holliday, lest the pitcher’s link to a dusty past escape anyone — had 67 for his career, 13 more than the next-highest total in that 16-year span, by Hall of Famer Randy Johnson (who completed an even 100 in a career that stretched from 1988-2009), and 29 more than the active leader, CC Sabathia. Halladay needed fewer than 100 pitches in 14 of those compete games, five of which were completed in under two hours. The last time any pitcher threw such a game was in 2010.
Halladay’s other numbers, which testify to his elite run prevention and value, are impressive as well, outdoing just about every active pitcher except Clayton Kershaw. Alas, our distance from those numbers is intensified by tragedy, because his whole life is now past tense. Just over a year ago, on November 7, 2017, Halladay crashed his Icon A5 light sport airplane into the Gulf of Mexico while flying solo. The toxicology report, published two months later, found that he was impaired by high concentrations of the morphine, opiates, and Ambien in his system. All of that seems foreign as well, given the model of control he appeared to be during his heyday.
It wasn’t always that way, though. The extraordinarily economical style that enabled Halladay to go the distance so frequently, to throw as many as 266 innings in a season, and to throw at least 220 in a season eight times — three more than any other pitcher in this millennium — owed to an exceptionally humiliating season. In 2000, five years removed from being a first-round draft pick, the 23-year-old righty was pummeled for a 10.64 ERA in 67.2 major league innings, still the worst mark for any pitcher with at least 50 innings in a season. He was demoted all the way to A-ball the next season, where, as Sports Illustrated’s Tom Verducci documented, minor league pitching coach Mel Queen spurred him to change from an over-the-top delivery that was so methodical Queen nicknamed him “Iron Mike,” in reference to the popular brand of pitching machines.
Queen instructed Halladay to switch to a three-quarters delivery, to speed it the hell up, and to shift his repertoire from a four-seam fastball/curve combination to a sinker/cutter combo, “two pitches that appeared the same to the hitter, except one would break late to the left and one to the right,” explained Verducci. The result: fewer deep counts and strikeouts, and one of the game’s highest groundball rates. Halladay’s improved command and late-career addition of a split-fingered fastball pushed his strikeout rates higher; four of his five seasons with at least 200 strikeouts came from 2008 onward, in seasons where he averaged 242 innings.
While those heavy innings totals — particularly the 1,007.1 he threw between the regular season and postseason from 2008-2011 — may have hastened Halladay’s departure from the majors at age 36, his body of work is exceptional. Though he never led his league in ERA, he finished second three times and placed in the top five seven times — remarkable, given that he only qualified for the title eight times! He led his league in WAR four times, and had four other top-five finishes, including one in a year that he threw just 141.2 innings due to a broken fibula. He made eight All-Star teams, and won Cy Young awards with the Blue Jays in 2003 and the Phillies in 2010, making him just the fifth pitcher to claim the award in both leagues. In that magical 2010 season, he not only threw a regular season perfect game (against the Marlins on May 29), but became just the second pitcher to throw a postseason no-hitter, doing so on on October 6, in the Division Series opener against the Reds.
Though the brevity of Halladay’s career left his traditional statistical totals rather short, his advanced stats frame a solid Hall of Fame case, particularly as the era of the workhorse starter fades, and the shape of his career stands in marked contrast to the other pitchers on the 2019 ballot. He may not have been viewed as an automatic, first-ballot choice before his early demise, but if he’s elected this year, he wouldn’t be the first candidate to gain baseball immortality in short order after the hard fact of human mortality was underscored.
2019 BBWAA Candidate: Roy Halladay
Pitcher
Career WAR
Peak WAR
JAWS
Roy Halladay
64.3
50.6
57.5
Avg. HOF SP
73.9
50.3
62.1
W-L
SO
ERA
ERA+
203-105
2,117
3.38
131
SOURCE: Baseball-Reference
Born on May 14, 1977 in Denver, Colorado, Harry LeRoy Halladay III was groomed to be a pitcher by his father, Roy Jr., a similarly strapping commercial pilot. He grew up in the nearby suburbs of Denver, first Aurora and then Arvada, in houses with basements big enough to allow him to throw baseballs indoors, into mattresses hung on the walls, during the snowy winter months. Roy Jr. even made sure that their Arvada home had a basement that could accommodate a regulation 60’6″ distance, and soon a pitching machine and a tire to throw through. Roy III became known for his combination of velocity, command, dominance, and “the meticulous quietness with which he went about his game,” as childhood friend Robert Sanchez remembered in 2017. “Roy was a third-grader who could play like a middle-schooler, but he never lorded his gifts over anyone. He and his father knew he was special in ways no one else would become, but they didn’t say it.”
Halladay’s dominance continued through high school, when he perfected a knuckle curve to go along with a 93-94 mph fastball. At Arvada West, where he also played basketball and ran cross-country, he was a three-time first team All-Conference and All-State selection, and two-time league and state MVP. He led his team to the Class 6A state championship in 1994, and never lost a game in the state of Colorado. He eschewed the showcase circuit of club ball and travel ball, choosing instead to work with his high school coaching staff, his father (who was still catching him in the basement during his prep years), and a man named Robert “Bus” Campbell, a local legend who coached or scouted 115 pitchers who reached the majors, including Hall of Famer Rich Gossage and All-Stars Jay Howell, Mark Langston, Brad Lidge, and Jamie Moyer.
Campbell was 69 years old and scouting for the Blue Jays when he began mentoring the 13-year-old Halladay, so it wasn’t surprising that the team chose him with the 17th pick of the 1995 draft (nine picks after Todd Helton, who himself would leave his mark on Colorado baseball and debut on the 2019 ballot). Bypassing a scholarship to the University of Arizona, he signed for a $895,000 bonus and began his professional career by striking out 48 in 50.1 innings in the Gulf Coast League.
After a big age-19 season at High-A Dunedin in 1996 (15-7, 2.73 ERA, 6.0 K/9), Halladay was ranked 23rd on Baseball America‘s Top 100 Prospects list in the spring of 1997. He scuffled at Double-A Tennessee and Triple-A Syracuse that year, but after a stronger showing at the latter stop in 1998, the 21-year-old righty made his major league debut on September 20 of that year, throwing five innings of two-run ball with five strikeouts against the Devil Rays. A week later, he no-hit the Tigers for 8.2 innings before Bobby Higginson’s pinch-homer spoiled the party, though he hung on for a 2-1 win.
After placing 12th on Baseball America’s list in the spring of 1999, Halladay spent the entire season in the majors, making 18 starts and 18 relief appearances. His 3.92 ERA (125 ERA+) in 149.1 innings earned him a three-year, $3.7 million extension, but his 5.36 FIP and 82-to-79 strikeout-to-walk ratio were ominous portents of things to come. In 2000, the AL’s highest-scoring season since 1936 (5.30 runs per game), Halladay struck out 44 and walked 42 in 67.2 innings while being torched for a record-setting 10.64 ERA. He couldn’t straighten out in two stints at Syracuse, and after scuffling in the spring of 2001, was sent back to Dunedin. Far from the spotlight, Queen helped Halladay adjust his mechanics to get away from a fastball that was 97 mph but “straight as a string,” and provided a tough-love challenge to the pitcher’s mental approach that he termed “vigorous leveling.” A book purchased by wife Brandy Halladay, The Mental ABC’s of Pitching by sports psychologist Harvey Dorfman — whom Halladay would meet in 2002 — keyed further changes in his mental approach. As Brandy told Verducci in 2010:
“[Dorfman] really taught Roy to focus on one thing at a time. When he gave up a hit, he learned to think about the next hitter. He helped him deal with those mental stumbling blocks every person has to deal with. The book and [Dorfman] helped his pitching career, our marriage, the way we looked at life in general…. It absolutely saved his career.”
After stops at the Blue Jays’ top three minor league affiliates, Halladay returned to the majors. Though cuffed for six runs by the Red Sox in a first-inning relief appearance on July 2, he struck out 10 Expos without a walk in his first start five days later, and finished the year with a 3.16 ERA (and 2.34 FIP) in 105.1 innings. That set the stage for a breakout season, during which Halladay went 19-7 with a 2.93 ERA (157 ERA+) and AL bests in innings (239.1), home run rate (0.4 per nine) and WAR (7.3). He made his first All-Star team but was ignored in the Cy Young voting; Barry Zito (23-5, 2.75 ERA, 7.2 WAR) won.
Halladay avoided the mistake of not winning 20 games the next year, going 22-7 with a 3.25 ERA (145 ERA+). He cut his walk rate in half, to a microscopic 1.1 per nine while leading the league in starts (36), innings (266), complete games (nine), K/BB ratio (6.38) and WAR (8.2) and striking out 204 batters. Again an All-Star, he took home the AL Cy Young, receiving 26 out of 28 first-place votes.
Halladay signed a four-year, $42 million extension in January 2004, but a shoulder strain and a comebacker-induced fractured left fibula limited him to 40 starts and 274.2 innings over the next two seasons, cutting into his effectiveness in the former, though he did make the AL All-Star team and rack up 5.5 WAR (in just 141.2 innings) in the latter, good for third in the league and the seventh-best total of his career (thus part of his peak score). Returning to a full workload in 2006, he remained healthy over the remainder of his run in Toronto, aside from brief stints on the disabled list for an appendectomy (2007) and a groin strain (2009).
As Verducci reported, in 2007 Halladay improved his command to the point that he could throw his signature cutter and sinker to both sides of the plate. “You see two different pitches coming at you the same speed from the same release point,” the Orioles’ Brian Roberts told Verducci, “but you don’t know which way it’s going to break. Think how hard that is to hit.”
Over the 2006-2009 span, Halladay averaged 32 starts, 233 innings, seven complete games, a 3.11 ERA (142 ERA+) and 5.5 WAR. He won 20 games in 2008, led the league in innings that same year (246), and in complete games three times (twice with nine). He made three All-Star teams, starting for the AL in 2009; placed among the league’s top five in WAR three times in that span, with a high of 6.9 (second) in 2004; and placed among the top five in Cy Young voting all four years, including second behind future teammate Cliff Lee in 2008.
Halladay had signed a three-year, $40 million extension in January 2006, covering the 2008-2010 seasons. But for all of his strong work, the Blue Jays remained in a competitive rut, unable to overtake the powerhouse Yankees and Red Sox, not to mention the upstart Rays; they hadn’t finished fewer than 10 games out of first place since 2000, and hadn’t returned to the postseason since winning their second straight championship in 1993. In what proved to be his final season, general manager J.P. Ricciardi explored trading Halladay at the July 31 deadline in 2009. Talks with the defending champion Phillies, reportedly centered around pitchers Kyle Drabek and J.A. Happ and outfielder Domonic Brown, did not come to fruition, and Philadelphia instead traded for Lee, who helped them return to the World Series (they lost to the Yankees).
Incoming Blue Jays GM Alex Anthopoulos revived the talks with the Phillies, and on December 16, 2009, traded Halladay for Drabek and two other prospects, catcher Travis d’Arnaud and outfielder Michael Taylor. As part of the deal, Halladay agreed to a three-year, $60 million extension covering 2011-2013. That same day, the Phillies traded Lee to the Mariners for three prospects in a separate deal.
After escaping the AL East and moving to the non-DH league, the 33-year-old Halladay turned in the best season of his career, going 21-10 with career bests in ERA (2.44, third in the NL), ERA+ (167), strikeouts (219) and WAR (8.6), that last figure led the league as did his win total, his 250.2 innings, his nine complete games, four shutouts, 1.1 walks per nine, and 7.3 K/BB ratio. On May 29, 2010, he retired all 27 Marlins he faced, striking out 11 and completing the 20th perfect game in major league history.
After helping the Phillies win 97 games and their fourth straight NL East title, Halladay made history in his first taste of postseason action. Facing the Reds in the Division Series opener, he yielded only a fifth-inning walk to Jay Bruce and completed just the second no-hitter in postseason history, after Don Larsen’s 1956 World Series perfect game.
The Phillies’ sweep of the Reds meant Halladay didn’t start again for 10 days. When he did, in the NLCS opener against the Giants, he was touched for a pair of solo homers by Cody Ross as well as two additional runs in a 4-3 loss. He pitched six solid innings of two-run ball at AT&T Park in Game 5, sending the series back to Philadelphia, but the Giants advanced with a Game 6 win. Halladay’s consolation prize was a unanimous Cy Young win that placed him in the company of Gaylord Perry, Pedro Martinez, Randy Johnson, and Roger Clemens as pitchers to win the award in both leagues (Max Scherzer has since joined the club).
With Halladay, homegrown Cole Hamels and mid-2010 acquisition Roy Oswalt already in the fold, the Phillies responded to their early exit by re-acquiring Lee via a five-year, $120 million deal, producing a rotation for the ages. Indeed, despite the offensive nucleus of Ryan Howard, Jimmy Rollins, and Chase Utley in decline, the team won a franchise-record 102 games and a fifth consecutive division title in 2011. Halladay set new career bests with 8.8 WAR (the NL high), a 2.35 ERA (second, but with a league-best 163 ERA+), and 220 strikeouts (third). With a 19-6 record, he could have easily won a third Cy Young, but Kershaw’s 21-5 mark with a 2.28 ERA and 248 strikeouts captured the voters’ attention, and Halladay had to settle for second place.
He made two strong starts in the Division Series against the Cardinals, allowing three runs in eight innings in their Game 1 victory and then just one run in eight innings in Game 5. Alas, that run — produced by back-to-back extra-base hits to start the first inning — proved to be the game’s only score. The Phillies were eliminated on Chris Carpenter’s three-hit shutout.
Aside from a 1.95 ERA in five April starts in 2012, it was downhill for Doc thereafter. Roughed up for a 6.11 ERA in May as his velocity diminished, he spent seven weeks on the disabled list with a strained latissimus dorsi and only briefly returned to form. Over his final eight starts, he was lit up for a 6.20 ERA and an uncharacteristic 1.4 homers per nine. He was even worse in 2013, with four disaster starts (more runs than innings) out of his first seven, though his eight-inning, one-run performance against the Marlins on April 14 gave him career win number 200. Diagnosed with a bone spur in his shoulder as well as a partially torn rotator cuff and fraying in his labrum, he underwent surgery on May 16. He returned in late August, a remarkably quick turnaround, and had spots of superficial success, but left his final start after just three batters, unable to push his fastball past 83 mph.
In December 2013, Halladay signed a one-day contract with the Blue Jays and announced his retirement, citing major back issues including two pars fractures, an eroded lumbar disc, and pinched nerves. Changes in mechanics had transferred the stress to his shoulder, he could no longer pitch at the level to which he was accustomed, and he wanted to avoid fusion surgery — all understandable choices, particularly for a father of two.
Halladay had largely receded from view when the jarring news of his death in a plane crash broke. As testimonials to his playing career, his tireless work ethic and hischaracter poured in from around the industry, so did calls for him to appear on the 2018 ballot. A Hall of Fame and BBWAA rule enacted after the special election of the late Roberto Clemente in 1973 allows a deceased candidate to bypass the five-year post-retirement waiting period, but he can’t appear on a ballot until at least six months after his death. Hence, Halladay’s eligibility is on the same schedule it would have been otherwise.
If Halladay were to be elected in amid the aftermath of his passing, he wouldn’t be the first player to do so. As I noted in the introduction to this series, Roger Bresnahan and Jimmy Collins (both elected in 1945), Herb Pennock (1948), Three-Finger Brown (1949), Harry Heilmann (1952) and Ron Santo (2012) were all elected shortly after their respective demises.
…
Going strictly by his traditional stats, Halladay does not appear to be a particularly strong choice for the Hall. While there are 12 starters enshrined who pitched fewer than 3,000 innings (one of whom, Monte Ward, spent a good chunk of his career at shortstop), Pedro Martinez is the only one who’s been elected since Sandy Koufax in 1972. Save for a one-game cameo by Dizzy Dean, only two others, Bob Lemon and Hal Newhouser, even pitched after World War II, and both were done by the late 1950s. As a three-time Cy Young winner and a member of the 3,000 strikeout club, Martinez faced little resistance from voters, receiving 91.1% in 2015. He joined fellow 2015 honoree John Smoltz — also a member of the 3,000 strikeout club — as just the second and third starters elected with fewer than 300 wins since 1992.
Halladay finished well short of both 300 wins (203) and 3,000 strikeouts (2,117), with “only” two Cy Youngs. Where seven of the 10 pitchers with three Cys have been elected (all but Roger Clemens and the still-active Kershaw and Scherzer), only three of the nine two-timers have been elected, namely Bob Gibson, Tom Glavine, and Gaylord Perry. Of the rest, Corey Kluber and Tim Lincecum are still active, but none of the other three besides Halladay — Denny McLain, Bret Saberhagen, and Johan Santana — ever received even 5% of the vote. Santana went one-and-done just last year, though with just 139 wins and 1,988 strikeouts in 2,025.2 innings, it’s understandable why voters didn’t give him the time of day, particularly on a crowded ballot.
Halladay has better career numbers than Santana, and in some regards, better numbers than the other starters on the ballot who will draw consideration. While his win and strikeout totals can’t match those of Clemens, Mike Mussina, Andy Pettitte, or Curt Schilling, his run prevention was superior to all of those besides Clemens. He never won a season ERA title, but his career 3.38 mark — even with his brutal 2000 season and a 5.73 mark after his 2012 shoulder strain — is 10th among pitchers with at least 2,500 innings since 1980. Five of the nine ahead of him are in Cooperstown, led by Martinez at 2.93. Adjusting for park and league scoring levels, his 131 ERA+ at those same cutoffs is fifth, behind Martinez (154), Clemens (143), Johnson (135), and Greg Maddux (132), all enshrined save for the Rocket. He’s ahead of Schilling (127), Mussina (123), and Pettitte (117), not to mention Smoltz (125) and Glavine (118), as well as Justin Verlander (126), the active leader. Kershaw (159) has only 2,096.1 innings, well short of this particular cutoff.
Halladay’s command and control were part of that. Even despite his early struggles, his career 3.58 strikeout-to-walk ratio is in a virtual tie with Mussina for fifth since 1893, when the pitching distance was set at 60’6″. Only Schilling (4.38), Martinez (4.15), Greinke (3.82), and Saberhagen (3.64) were better in that regard. Three times, he finished with fewer walks than games started, his stated goal for any season. Seven times he walked fewer than 2.0 batters per nine while qualifying for the ERA title.
Despite his shortages of innings and strikeouts, Halladay stands tall relative to his peers with regards to the advanced stats. His score of 127 on Bill James’ Hall of Fame Monitor, a metric that gives credit for awards, league leads, milestones and postseason performance — things that historically have tended to appeal to Hall voters — is 127, where 100 is a likely Hall of Famer and 130 is “a virtual cinch.” More than five years removed from his final pitch, his 65.2 WAR from 2001 onward is the highest total of the millennium, though Verlander (63.8), Sabathia (62.2), and Zack Greinke (61.5) have closed the gap. His 62.6 WAR over the course of his brilliant 2002-2011 stretch — 6.3 WAR per year, even given his injury-shortened 2004 and -05 — is 12.2 more than the second-ranked Santana. His overall total of 64.3 WAR is about nine wins shy of the Hall standard for starters (73.4), but he still outranks 29 of the 63 enshrined, including 300-game winner Early Wynn, 1960s star Juan Marichal, Yankees dynasty staple Whitey Ford, and strikeout whizzes Dazzy Vance and Jim Bunning. More tellingly, his total is ninth among pitchers who debuted since 1973 — 25 years before he did — behind Clemens, Maddux, Johnson, Martinez, Mussina, Schilling, Smoltz, and Kevin Brown, all of whom beat him to the majors by at least six years and, with the exception of Martinez, threw at least 500 more innings.
Via his seven-year peak score, Halladay’s 50.6 WAR surpasses that of the average Hall starter (50.3) and ranks 40th all time, ahead of 33 of the 63 enshrined; just four above him (Johnson, Maddux, Martinez and Clemens) debuted since 1973. Of those who debuted after, only Kershaw (49.6), Greinke (47.3), Scherzer (47.2), Verlander (46.2), and Santana (45.0) are with seven wins — one per year — of that peak score.
Halladay’s 57.6 JAWS isn’t as high as Schilling’s (64.1, 27th all-time) or Mussina’s (63.8, 29th), but it’s still eighth among that post-1973 set. He’s 43rd all-time, 4.3 points below the Hall standard but ahead of 32 enshrinees, with a career/peak/JAWS line that closely resembles Marichal (63.0/51.9/57.5), who needed 757.2 additional innings to get there. Among active pitchers, Kershaw (57.1), Greinke (56.5), and Verlander (54.8) could overtake Halladay as soon as next year, but having spent the past 12 months scrutinizing all of their cases, they appear to be on their way to Cooperstown as well.
While that last trio of pitchers isn’t done, there are no givens when it comes to shoulders, elbows, and backs. What Halladay accomplished before his body told him it was time to quit pitching was remarkable, and unique for his time. Mussina and Schiling aside, Hall of Fame voters aren’t going to see his like for awhile. He belongs in the pantheon of all-time greats, and hopefully, the BBWAA electorate recognizes that with the same efficiency that was the hallmark of Halladay’s career.
The A’s outperformed their projections despite a rotation that lost key pieces to injury. (Photo: DR. Buddie)
The Red Sox may have won the World Series, but in many ways, it was the Oakland Athletics that were baseball’s hot summer jam. Winning 97 games, the most since the heady Moneyball days of yore, Oakland returned to the penthouse from the outhouse. And quite literally, given that the 2018 version featured stories of a possible privately financed new ballpark rather than tales of raw sewage befouling the clubhouse. No, their…stuff…doesn’t yet work in the playoffs, but getting there is half the battle.
The Setup
The A’s were largely a victim of their own success, with their stathead shenanigans and a movie in which their GM was played by an A-list actor helping to usher in a new era in baseball, one in which every team in baseball has embraced modernity to at least some extent.
Much of the praise Oakland received 15 years ago had to do with a front office that was largely playing in a world in which many of their opponents didn’t know all the rules. Once the people you’re playing Monopoly with realize that they too can build houses and hotels on properties, things get a lot harder.
Baseball got a lot smarter and the A’s saw their edge harder to maintain. It’s one thing to be smart while the other guy is rich, but what happens when the rich teams are also smart?
Times have been lean in Oakland since the frustrating finish to the 2014 season, when the team lost ten games to the Angels over a two-week period in late summer, falling from a first-place battle to nearly missing the playoffs entirely.
The A’s have generally been content to just survive on a yearly basis, holding their head safely above baseball’s true pits of despair, but never keeping together enough of a core to win consistently. The front office is far from incompetent and has continued to cleverly acquire under-appreciated talent like Blake Treinen and Khris Davis, even if it’s frequently more expensive to do so than it used to be.
The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2019 Hall of Fame ballot. Originally written for the 2014 election at SI.com, it has been updated to reflect recent voting results as well as additional research, and was expanded for inclusion in The Cooperstown Casebook, published in 2017 by Thomas Dunne Books. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.
Unlike 2014 Hall of Fame honorees Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine or 2015 honoree Randy Johnson, Mike Mussina didn’t reach 300 wins in his career. Nor did he ever win a Cy Young award, in part because a teammate practically stole one out of his hands on the basis of superior run support. For as well as he pitched in October, his teams never won a World Series, because even the best relievers sometimes falter, to say nothing of what happens to the rest of them.
Though lacking in those marquee accomplishments, Mussina nonetheless strung together an exceptional 18 year career spent entirely in the crucible of the American League East, with its high-offense ballparks and high-pressure atmosphere. A cerebral pitcher with an expansive arsenal that featured a 93-mph fastball and a signature knuckle-curve — and at times as many as five other pitches — he not only missed bats with regularity but also had pinpoint control.
In a prime that coincided with those of the aforementioned pitchers — as well as 2015 inductees Pedro Martinez and John Smoltz and ballotmates Roger Clemens, Roy Halladay, and Curt Schilling — “Moose” never led the AL in either strikeouts or ERA, but he ranked in the league’s top five six times in the former category and seven times in the latter. He earned All-Star honors five times and received Cy Young votes in eight separate seasons across a 10-year span, at one point finishing in the top five four times in five years. He even did a better job of preventing runs in the postseason than he did in the regular season, though it wasn’t enough to put his teams over the top.
The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2019 Hall of Fame ballot. Originally written for the 2013 election at SI.com, it has been updated to reflect recent voting results as well as additional research, and was expanded for inclusion in The Cooperstown Casebook, published in 2017 by Thomas Dunne Books. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.
All Edgar Martinez did was hit — the statement is almost entirely true in both the literal and figurative sense. Even after adjusting for his high-scoring surroundings, Martinez could flat-out rake. A high-average, high-on-base percentage hitting machine with plenty of power, his numbers place him among the top 30 or 40 hitters of all time even after adjusting for the high-offense era. Martinez played a key role in putting the Mariners on the map as an AL West powerhouse, emerging as a folk hero to a fan base that watched Ken Griffey Jr., Randy Johnson, and Alex Rodriguez lead the franchise’s charge to relevancy, then skip town for more lucrative deals. But while Griffey and Rodriguez were two-way stars at key up-the-middle positions and Johnson a flamethrowing ace, Martinez spent the bulk of his career as a designated hitter. In that capacity, he merely put a claim on being the best one in baseball history.
More than 40 years after it was introduced — in the most significant rule change since the AL adopted the foul strike rule in 1903 — the DH continues to rankle purists who would rather watch pitchers risk injury as they ineptly flail away (Bartolo Colonexcepted). In 2004, Paul Molitor became the first player elected to the Hall after spending the plurality of his career (44% of his plate appearances) as a DH, while a decade later, Frank Thomas became the first elected after spending the majority of his career (57% of his PA) there. By comparison, Martinez took 72% of his plate appearances as a DH, while David Ortiz — whose 2016 victory lap spurred plenty of Hall of Fame discussion — took 88%.
Kris Bryant’s injury-marred 2018 contributed to a 95-win Cubs season that managed to somehow disappoint. (Photo: Minda Haas Kuhlmann)
Some may say it was choking. Some may say it’s a new curse. Some may even say it was due to only scoring two runs in 22 innings of two must-win games against the Brewers and Rockies. However it happened, the Cubs were the first team dispatched of the ten playoff teams, baseball’s answer to the point-of-view character in the first chapter of a George RR Martin book.
The Setup
This may be a bit of obscure trivia, but the Chicago Cubs won the World Series in 2016, a matchup against the Cleveland Indians that determined which team could waste enough cheap beer to fill a very disappointing swimming pool.
Following up on a World Series championship is always a bit of a tricky problem to approach for a team. Since new seasons start every year–a very fortunate fact for those of us employed as baseball writers–there’s no final happy ending in which everyone walks off into the sunset. Even championship teams have difficult decisions to make, often centered around how much you’re willing to tinker with a winning roster while also keeping the team’s core more-or-less together.
