Jobu's Altar: Tom Tepid

Posted by Rob Rabies on 04.11.2007

A lot of people believe that 300 wins is axiomatic of Hall of Fame ability. Although it necessitates induction, Rob Rabies explains to you why the next member of the 300 club should not be enshrined in Cooperstown.

I doubt that any of you remember my first column, but in it I emphasized the importance of small ball and the stress that it places on a defense. Last night was a perfect example. In the bottom of the 8th inning of a game that they trailed 3-1, the Rangers' Kenny Lofton was up to bat against the completely inept Red Sox reliever/failed closer/failed starter Joel Piñero. After walking the first two batters with an assortment of sliders in the dirt and sinkers low in the zone, Lofton dropped a gorgeous bunt to the third base side of the line. Mike Lowell charged and made a good play on the ball, but second baseman Alex Cora, who should have been covering first, made a late break to the bag and as a result the bases were loaded with no outs.

Kevin Youkilis then dropped a line drive to allow a run come in, cutting the gap to 3-2, with runners on the corners and one out. Francona then went to Papelbon to save his bacon yet again, which he promptly did. But, lest we forget, this is the same Papelbon who had to be shut down last year due to shoulder fatigue. You can't keep forcing a young closer to get 5 out saves and expect him to hold up over the course of a 6 month season.

Once again proof of the importance of both small ball and defense for major league clubs that is so often overlooked by fans and management.

With that little qualm aside, I'd like to move on to the jist of my argument today.

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As false of an accomplishment that 500 homeruns has become over the past 15 years, 300 wins has gained all the more recognition for its difficulty. Current commentators/talking heads/failed GM's who'd bring up the ass-end of any casual fantasy baseball league lament that Tom Glavine and Mike Mussina may be the last active pitchers to ever achieve the aforementioned plateau. In an age of pitch counts, dead arms, Tommy John surgery, and 6'5" 200 lb. specimens made of micrometer-thin glass, it's fallacious expecting any hurler to have the longevity of a Maddux or Mussina over the course of a 20 year career. Durability seems to be a lost art, and that one trait holds necessity over all else in reaching said achievement.

With that being said, the next entry into the 300 win club will (barring severe injury) Glavine. Much like the 500 homer milestone, 300 wins has been considered a bellweather of automatic enshrinement in the Hall of Fame. So, how good is Tom Glavine? He's no doubt a great athlete—he won multiple silver slugger awards (being the best hitting pitcher), and was drafted by the L.A. Kings. Is he among the greatest pitchers of all time—worthy of immortality and the eponymous bronze bust? It's a close call, but definitive:

Tom Glavine is not a Hall of Fame-caliber pitcher.

Aside from bomb-proofing my mailbox from your general 7th Train-riding Met fans and the three people who follow the Braves, I'm going to show you why:

Glavine is 462nd in Career WHIP. Now, many of the names on the list can be discounted because of the era they played in (dead ball), or their role (reliever). But here are just some of the active pitchers who are ahead of Glavine in career WHIP:

CC Sabathia, Derek Lowe (spent some time as a closer but was horrible), Freddie Garcia, Jarrod Washburn, Odalis Perez, Matt Morris, Javier Vazquez, El-Duque, Jon Lieber, Tim Hudson, Mark Buerhle, Brad Radke, Kerry Wood, David Wells, Kevin Millwood, Barry Zito, Roy Halladay, Mike Mussina, Roy Oswalt, John Smoltz

Now, there are some other actives I left off the list, like The Big Unit, Schilling, Pedro, Clemens, Ben Sheets, and Johan Santana. These guys are either too young to honestly evaluate, or are flat out better than Glavine.

But you object. Perhaps Glavine's WHIP isn't indicative of his overall ability. We'll entertain that thought and proceed…

He's 30th in career strikeouts with 2483. Not too shabby at all. By the end of the season, he'll probably be 22nd-24th. But what was his K/9 ratio?

He's 91st among active pitchers with an average of about 5.377 K/9, and that doesn't include every Johnny come lately…you have to have at least 3000 PA, 100 decisions and 1000 IP to qualify. You could argue that relievers have inflated stats, and perhaps they do but if you look at this list, http://www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/SOp9_active.shtml, you will see that at least ¾ of the pitchers above Glavine are starters.

Well, strikeouts aren't everything. In fact, a wise man named Crash Davis once said that they are fascist. Ultimately, pitching is supposed to be about how many runs you don't give up, and how that improves your team's chances to win. Let's take a look at his ERA in relation to the league in which he played. This stat is known as ERA+

Glavine is in an 18-way tie for 100th with a Career ERA+ of 120. That means Glavine would give up an ERA 1.2 runs better than the league average in which he played. Is that good? Yeah. Is it Hall of Fame? Well, he's tied with the likes of Kevin Appier, Jose Rijo, and Derek Lowe.

I don't know if that is Hall of Fame company either.

His career averages would give you an mean season of 15-10, 222 IP, 132K, 72 BB, and an ERA of 3.46.

Are those Hall of Fame stats? The IP is nice, as is the ERA. But the ERA is by no means great. Those stats are what you would want out of a top of the line #2 starter, or a middle of the road #1, not a man whose career is so great that it should be immortalized. Furthermore, his profile is enhanced because he had the benefit of playing on some truly loaded Braves teams and a currently loaded Mets ballclub. We would also be remised to not mention that he has had access to the greatest pitching coach of the last 25 years—Leo Mazzone—the ultimate of turd polishers.

The only thing that Tom Glavine has ever done truly great is stay healthy.

His durability has helped him rack up 55 career complete games, but that still puts him behind these names: Tom Candiotti, Dwight Gooden, Orel Hersheiser, the utterly psychotic Joaquin Andujar, Mike Mussina, Jack McDowell, and David Cone.

Aside from Hersheiser (which is still a MAJOR stretch) and Mussina (stretchish), none of those guys are Hall of Famers, although some definitely had HOF ability and one was a knuckleballer (Candiotti) that helped to inflate his CGs.

When it comes to coming out every 5 days and making a start, you can't do any better than Tom Glavine. But mere durability should not be a qualification for the HOF.

There are four active pitchers with clear HOF standards: Clemens, Johnson, Martinez, and Maddux. Curt Schilling is one more solid season away from being a lock. To me, Glavine exists on the next tier, with guys like David Wells, John Smoltz, Mike Mussina and Kevin Brown.

Are they all good pitchers? Yes. Are they great? I doubt you could get many to say that any were great. Smoltz is border-line. I'm open to suggestions on him, but still not totally convinced.

Maybe there are some other things that could sway you in Glavine's favor, like his postseason career. Was he ever a true big game pitcher? He pitched a gem in the clincher against the Indians in 1995, but Jeff Weaver just did the same thing against the Tigers, and no one this side of Weaver's contact high believes that he is a true "big gamer".

Let's look beyond that one great World Series. He has a career postseason record of 14-16, and an ERA of 4.61. Some of the ERA can be excused due to the quality of the competition he faced (like Dante Bichette's Rockies ), but 14-16 speaks for itself. Just like Clemens, he has a tendency to come up small in the postseason. The difference between the two is that the Rocket is so overwhelming in the regular season that one can overlook his postseason maladies.

But here is the elephant in the room with Glavine—the sonofabitch has never intentionally thrown a strike. Now, I can't say that I blame the guy, it's a hell of a lot easier to have success against major league pitching if you don't give them anything to hit. But Glavine's incredibly liberal strike zone has allowed him success that he would have otherwise lacked. If one looks at how his career floundered for several years after the Questec/K-Zone era, it's easy to see why. When he didn't get that extra four inches outside and/or low, he wasn't nearly as successful.

Now, I would like all of you to realize that just because I'm advocating against Glavine, I'm not saying that everyone currently in the Hall of Fame deserves to be there either. Part of this argument is an argument against the process of selection. The Hall of Fame is bloated with players with pretty stats whose single greatest asset towards their candidacy was their durability.

Let's say you're a big league GM. Over the course of a season, a series, even a single at-bat, would you rather have Eddie Murray or Jim Rice? Murray has the better stats, but he wasn't the better hitter, regardless of whether he's one of a handful of players with 3000 hits and 500 homers or not. Those stats look pretty, but all they prove is that Murray was good over a long period of time. He was never great and that's what the Hall of Fame should be about.

Tom Glavine was good, very good, but in the mind of Rob Rabies, not Cooperstown worthy.

Note: special thanks to baseball-reference.com and hardballtimes who provided all the stats