Sutter's in the Hall!

[yendi]

Wow. Bruce Sutter -- a player who I freely admit I've changed my mind about any number of times -- finally got elected to the Hall of Fame. Good for him.

That said, the fact that Jack Morris wasn't even close is a fucking crime. I don't care if he wasn't the nicest guy in the game. He belongs in the Hall.

Full voting here, where you can read that two of the voters smoked enough crack to vote for Gregg Jefferies (we can only assume they live in an alternate universe in which he lived up to his 1988 potential) and five voted for Hal Morris (confusing him with Jack, I assume).

Comments

[zeyr.livejournal.com]

Can you sell me on Jack Morris? I know he had a lot of wins, but W-L is often a measure of run support, longevity/health and good teams behind him, honestly. Nothing else about him said Hall of Fame to me, though I haven't looked at his stats in depth for a year or two.

I'm still on the fence for Jim Rice and he was a clearly dominant player for a few years, looking to me much better in comparison to his fellow hitters than Morris was in comparison to fellow pitchers.

[yendi]

W-L isn't everything, but when you lead an entire friggin' decade in wins (the '80s), that's something. He's also in the top 40 all-time in wins and top 30 in strikeouts, and frankly, he pitched for some truly dreadful teams during his career (which was mostly in Detroit).

Which would be enough by itself, but then he went to the Twins in '91 and not only pretty much pitched them into the Series (this was a team that, for all intents and purposes, had three #1 starters and two #17 starters, so Morris, Erickson, and Tapani were all vital), and then pitched the second greatest game in World Series history.

A lot of what he had isn't summed up by numbers, but if you ever saw him pitch, you saw a master.

[sainthuck.livejournal.com]

Hey! I feel the need to defend Jack here, at least on the 'dreadful teams' tangent.

The Tigers had a wire-to-wire championship in 1984, and had another playoff run in 1987. During the 80s, when Morris was the ace, they were usually very competitive in the AL. The bottom didn't drop out until the early 90s.

Being a Tiger fan, I loved having the uber-competitive Morris on our team. I remember watching his no-hitter against the Sox on NBC in 1984. And later, you're right - he pitched one of the greatest World Series games of all time.

But as a fan, I have a hard time separating what I saw and loved about Morris from the objective facts of his career. And one of those facts is that, if inducted, he would have the highest ERA of *anyone* in the Hall. (3.90) But, 254 wins and a few legendary performances, plus a couple World Series rings as the ace of the staff? Yeah, he deserves his run.

But then, so do Trammell and Whitaker, and Alan barely got a sniff this year (and Sweet Lou got dropped after only one year).

[crwilley.livejournal.com]

Is there any way they can nominate Trammell and Whitaker as a duo? I think it's a clear case of the whole being even greater than the sum of the individually great parts.