The Greatest Southpaws In American League History

I suggested in this post that Ron Guidry may be the fourth greatest lefthander in the modern (i.e., post-1920) history of the American League, behind only Grove, Ford and Gomez. The more I look at it, the clearer the case becomes. The only other lefthander who might conceivably crack the top four is Randy Johnson, whose AL statistics are remarkably close to Guidry's. Let's look at the Guidry/Johnson comparison, and rank the top 10 southpaws in modern AL history.

Did You Know That Ron Guidry...

...is the only pitcher to have won a Cy Young and received CY votes in five other seasons and be rejected by the Hall?

There have been twelve pitchers to do this and other than Ron Guidry each is already in the Hall or, barring unforeseen circumstances, will be a first ballot HOFer. The twelve are Tom Seaver, Jim Palmer, Ferguson Jenkins, Steve Carlton, Ron Guidry, Dennis Eckersley, Roger Clemens, Randy Johnson, Greg Maddux, Pedro Martinez, Tom Glavine and Johan Santana.

There are three more pitchers who have received CY votes in six or more years but never won a Cy Young Award: Mike Mussina (nine years), Nolan Ryan (eight) and Jack Morris (seven). Nolan's already in, Jack's knockin' on the door, and Mussina's candidacy is certain to be stronger than Morris'.

That makes fifteen pitchers who have received Cy Young support in six different seasons, and every single one received or will receive more than 40% support for the Hall of Fame, except one. You know the name of this lonely exception. I'll remind you that he never even received 9% of the vote.

Incomprehensible. Really, just inexplicable.

P.S. Another interesting Cy Young fact: Guidry's six seasons in which he received CY votes happened within a nine year span. Randy Johnson took only eight years to accumulate six such seasons. Carlton, Glavine, Jenkins, Eckersley, Ryan and Morris each took more than nine years to accomplish the feat.

How Long Does a Hall of Fame Career Have To Be?

How many wins must a Hall of Fame pitcher have? How many innings are enough, and how many not enough?

The most frequently cited criticisms of Guidry's HOF qualifications are "not enough wins" and "he didn't do it long enough." Most agree that in Guidry's case the quality was there, it's just a matter of quantity. It's certainly true that the duration of Guidry's career, and his number of wins and innings, would place him on the low end of the HOF pitching roster, but does he really fail to meet some informal minimum for the Hall?

It seems this debate always veers to a discussion of Koufax and Dean (who had 165 and 150 wins, respectively) and a discussion of an apparent exception for great pitchers who careers were prematurely ended by injury. But there are also six 20th century starting pitchers in the Hall with fewer than 200 wins who are not named Koufax or Dean and don't qualify for the prematurely-ended-career exception, and thirteen who won fewer than 220 games. Each of these pitchers pitched in times when 4-man rotations were the rule, complete games the expectation, and 20 wins and 280 to 300 innings common for elite pitchers.

Here's the question for the BBWAA and the Veterans Committee: if the five Hall of Famers pictured above (left to right, Lefty Gomez, Hal Newhouser, Bob Lemon, Don Drysdale and Happy Jack Chesbro) are Hall worthy despite win totals ranging from 184 to 209, are 170 wins too few for the Hall if attained in the age of five-man rotations and seven-inning starts?

Guidry v. Schilling

I'm ambivalent about Schilling's qualifications for the Hall, but let's face it - he's going in. His big game reputation and outstanding post-season record will put him over the top.

Schilling Shills generally acknowledge that his record is very erratic, his inconsistency and periodic arm issues resulting in numerous single-digit win totals and poor winning percentages throughout his career. The Shills fairly argue, however, that Schilling's peak years were excellent and deserving of HOF induction. Let's compare Schilling's peak years to Guidry's, doing a year-by-year comparison.

The following table lists Schilling's and Guidry's peak years in descending order of wins.

I've inserted a "G" or "S" in the middle column to indicate which pitcher, in my opinion, had the superior year. Here's my reasoning for each year.

A Note About Catfish Hunter

Online commenters and kibbitzers tend to disparage Catfish Hunter's HOF qualifications - only 224 wins, an elite pitcher for only a six or seven year span, rather pedestrian ERAs, and, they argue, a big winner only because he played for great teams that gave him excellent run support.

These observations from Catfish's critics may have some merit, but they don't detract from the following consideration. Catfish Hunter made 34 starts for the A's in Sept/Oct of '72, '73 and '74. Almost all of them were big starts because the A's won the AL West by narrow margins each year, clinching only in the last week of each season. His record in these 34 starts was 20-5 with a 2.38 ERA in 246 innings pitched. He was the unquestioned ace of the only non-Yankee team to win three consecutive World Series, and he went 7-1 in the six post-season series the A's played on their way to those three world championships.

The BBWAA obviously thinks that carries a lot of weight. I do, too. I should point out that the same community of online commenters who question Hunter's HOF bona fides generally seems to attach great weight to Curt Schilling's post-season record and reputation as a big game pitcher.

20-5, 2.38 ERA in 246 of the biggest innings in his career and in the history of the Oakland A's franchise. That positively shouts "Hall of Fame" to me. It's enough to put a five time 20-game winner with a Cy Young award and five world championship rings over the top and into the Hall.

More September Big Game Records

It occurred to me that I've somehow omitted any discussion of Blyleven's pennant race performances.

Bert participated in seven tight division races - '70, '77-80, '87 and '89 (again, I've defined a tight division race as one in which the race was within five games at some point in September prior to elimination or clinching, and the pitcher made at least one September start when the race was within five games). Bert's teams won two world championships, three division titles and had an average winning percentage of .562 (equivalent to 91 wins in a 162 game season). In other words, these were good teams, and yet Bert's September records in these races were as strikingly mediocre as the rest of his regular season performances for these teams. Bert made 40 starts in these seven races and had a 13-14 record and 3.04 ERA in 278 innings pitched.

The Thin Man

The following is the opening paragraph from an article on Guidry in Sports Illustrated's September 19, 1977 edition entitled "Getting Fat With The Thin Man," a reference to the slender Louisianan's emergence as the Yankee ace as the team surged past the Red Sox and Orioles to win the AL East title.

"From Aug. 7 through the end of last week, the Yankees won 28 of 34 games and moved from third place, five games out, to two ahead in the American League East...And when a team goes on a tear, there invariably is a starting pitcher high on the list of streakers. Because the Yanks' staff is loaded with the likes of World Series heroes Catfish Hunter, Don Gullett and Ken Holtzman, it is hardly surprising that New York found a hot arm. The astounding thing is that the limb is attached to the left shoulder of Ron Guidry, a pitcher whose reputation had been as puny as his 5'11", 158-pound body."

Guidry's epic performance during the '78 pennant - the win in the one-game playoff at Fenway, the back-to-back two-hit shutouts of the Sox in September - didn't come as a surprise in Yankee fans. In fact, it seemed very familiar, because Guidry had been almost as dominant during the Yanks' 41-13 charge down the stretch in '77. It's likely Guidry's '77 performance would occupy a more significant place in baseball lore but for the shadow cast by the legendary '78 season.

El Tiante v. Louisiana Lightning

Baseball Crank has an excellent evaluation of Blyleven, Morris, Kaat, John, Tiant, Guidry and others in a January 2001 post. It's a very detailed, incisive and fair assessment of the HOF qualifications of various pitchers, and I agree with his conclusions that Morris, John and Kaat fall short, if just barely. And I really applaud his support of Luis Tiant's induction, particularly his citation of Tiant's outstanding September records for the Red Sox in '70s pennant races. We differ on Blyleven, but Baseball Crank's evaluation of Blyleven is one of the few I've seen that candidly acknowledges the faults in Blyleven's HOF resume: the generally mediocre win totals and winning percentages even when pitching for solid teams.

I'll discuss on the next page Baseball Crank's discussions of Luis Tiant and Ron Guidry. I think Baseball Crank would agree that upon closer examination Guidry has many of the same qualifications as Tiant. I also think that Baseball Crank would agree (fair-minded fellow that he is) that in one instance he grossly mischaracterized Guidry's record.