How Much Is Enough to Make the Hall of Fame?
If his career ended today, Ross Stripling wouldn’t be elected to the Hall of Fame. I know this isn’t breaking news, and that some of you don’t even know who Ross Stripling is, but indulge me for a bit, okay?
There are two very obvious reasons why Stripling wouldn’t make the Hall of Fame. The first is that he hasn’t played long enough to even be eligible. Stripling is in his 8th major league season, and the minimum needed to be eligible for Hall consideration is 10 seasons.
The second reason is that he’s pretty much a league-average pitcher. His career record at the moment looks like this:
A won-loss record of 38-40, which is a .487 winning percentage.
An ERA of 3.95, which is 4% better than league-average.
8.3 strikeouts per 9 innings.
704.1 career innings.
He did make an All-Star team in 2018, but he lost that game by giving up three runs in the 10th inning, including back-to-back solo home runs by Alex Bergman and George Springer.
So, yeah, no one is fitting Stripling for a plaque anytime soon. You knew this before started reading.
But…
What if I told you that Stripling’s career to date is extremely similar, and even somewhat better, than a bonafide, first-ballot Hall of Famer through the same point in their careers?
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Here’s the Hall of Famer, through his first 6 seasons. I’ll put Stripling’s full career next to it:
Pretty close, right? Stripling is even a little bit better, isn’t he? Sure, he gave up a few extra homers, and he didn’t strike out quite as many, but his run prevention was better, and he’s walked fewer than half as many hitters. That’s all reflected in the slight WAR advantage Stripling has.
So, am I trying to say that Ross Stripling is on his way to a Hall of Fame career?
Uh, no.
What I am saying is that this Hall of Famer had absolutely nothing going on in the first 6 years of his career that adds to his case for Cooperstown. In fact, I’d go even further. Let’s add his seventh season, and compare that to another pitcher:
Anyone want to give me odds on Anthony DeSclafani making the Hall of Fame someday? I mean, yes, he’s about a win-and-a-half short of the Hall of Famer’s WAR total, but otherwise they’re very close. (That ERA difference is essentially none, by the way, given the context of the eras and parks they pitched in. Each has an ERA+ slightly above average, 102 for DeSclafani and 105 for the Hall of Famer.)
Just to make my point even further, let’s add the Hall of Famer’s eighth season to the mix and see what we get:
Mike Stanton may make the Hall of Fame someday, but it won’t be the Mike Stanton in this comparison. It will be Giancarlo Stanton, who used to go by Mike, and only if he gets healthy. Mike Stanton, the longtime relief pitcher, who made one All-Star team, won three World Series, and had a very nice career, was already considered for the Hall of Fame. He was on the ballot in 2013, and didn’t received a single vote.
You can see why. There’s nothing wrong with Mike Stanton’s career, but it doesn’t stand out among the all-time greats. The same could be said for the Hall of Famer we’re comparing him to.
This isn’t a completely fair comparison. Stanton was a reliever who made one All-Star team and never led the league in anything while the Hall of Famer was a starter who (to this point in his career) made two All-Star teams, won an ERA title and a strikeout title. But the larger point is still true. This Hall of Famer had decent but unspectacular numbers for the first 8 years of his career.
So what did he do to reach Cooperstown? Did he go on a crazy 12-year run of 20-win seasons? Or even 10 years? Or 8?
No. It was four.
He only played four more years after the “meh” eight that I already listed. Which means you’ve probably figured out that I’m talking about Sandy Koufax.
The greatness of Koufax’s final four seasons was so overwhelming that it blotted out the middling nature of the first two-thirds of his career. He was elected into the Hall of Fame on his first and only ballot, and rightfully so. Since we’ve played this game with his first 6, 7, and 8 seasons, let’s show you the totals for those final 4 seasons, and the folks that did anything that could compare to it:
There are other comparisons, but you get the idea. Anyone who put together four years (or equivalent - modern starters throw less innings per year, pre-WWII starters threw more) like the final four of Koufax’s career is an all-time great. Appreciate Clayton Kershaw now, folks, because he’s doing historic things.
All of this has me wondering if we really need to see a player for 10 years in the major league before they can be considered for the Hall of Fame. If these had been Koufax’s first 4 seasons, then he retired for the exact same reason, arthritis in his pitching elbow, wouldn’t his case for the Hall of Fame be exactly the same? His first 8 years, as we’ve seen, weren’t anything special. The don’t add anything to his impact on baseball, or the reason why he’s remembered as an all-time great.
There’s long been a debate about whether a player should be judged on their overall career value or on their peak performance. Jay Jaffe has even quantified this in his JAWS system, giving some weight to the full career, some weight to the peak, and coming up with an overall score. It’s really valuable work, but it still seems to require a longer period of dominance because he sets a player’s peak at their best 7 non-consecutive years. You can read his explanation for more on that, but, as Koufax’s case illustrates, that might be too long. Maybe 4-5 years is all we really need.
And, in that case, maybe we should start looking at some players differently. For instance:
Look how valuable Wilbur Wood was from 1971 to 1974. True, it was largely because he was a rubber-armed knuckleball pitcher, but 35.5 WAR in four seasons is rare.
For Dave Stieb and Johan Santana I added a fifth season for each to approximate the innings thrown by Koufax. Look how similar Santana in particular is to Koufax’s big four years. And, for Stieb, recall that A) He did this for a franchise that literally didn’t exist 5 years earlier and was still adding talent, and B) He lost about a third of the 1981 season to a strike. Extrapolate that season out to a full 162 games and you have to add 6 wins and 2.3 WAR to his totals.
And then there’s Curt Schilling. His five best seasons that approximated Koufax’s workload weren’t consecutive, but, as noted by Jaffe, there’s no reason why they have to be. Put those five together and you have a pitcher who, in roughly the same amount of innings, was a bit more valuable than Sandy Koufax was in the four years that got him elected to the Hall of Fame.
We could do the same for hitters. For instance, here’s the full list of everyone in the history of the sport who had at least 100 career plate appearances and a career OPS+ that was at least 75% better than the league average:
That’s a list of ten Hall of Famers and two guys you’ve probably never heard of, Ed Steele and Charlie Smith, slotted between Babe Ruth and Ted Williams. I’ve written about Smith before, and I probably will again, but Steele deserves some attention, too. A lot of Negro Leaguers do, but, because the statistics kept at the time are scarce, and not all of their seasons are considered “major league”, we see these dominant numbers and simply discount them.
That’s a mistake, in my view. The example of Sandy Koufax’s dominant final seasons should make us look more closely at smaller slices of each player’s career, to find the dominant parts that are worth remembering. Maybe that’s not enough to induct all of them into the Hall of Fame, but, in some cases, it should be.