I get it that his totals are good, but before this season, we couldn’t count on him to show up in the post season. Guess everyone is ready to rewrite the past on Moose.

And you still believe that Wins and Losses mean something?

Man, it’s going to be great when you get a ballot. The rest of the BBWAA rejoices at yet another sheep joining their flock.

However, yes, Mussina does belong in the Hall of Fame. He belonged in the Hall of Fame BEFORE last year, but ofcourse, the rest of your BBWAA stooges felt very strongly that never having won 20 games was somehow indicative that Mussina just wasn’t that great.

The BBWAA everybody!

Much has been written about the year his bullpen blew his 20th win in his final game of the ’96 season.

But I’ve seen little or nothing written about the 2 previous strike-shortened seasons, in which he was arguably robbed of not one but TWO 20-win seasons in a row in his prime.

In ’94, he won 16 of just 24 starts — barring injury, does anyone think he would not have won 4 of the 10-12 starts he did not get? And in the 144-game 1995 season, he went 19-9 in 32 starts; in the 18 missing games, he would likely have started 3 or 4 more, and would almost certainly have won one of them.

If not for those lost starts, Mussina would have almost certainly have had three years in a row with 20-20-19 wins.
If he’d retired with three 20-win seasons instead of one, would naysayers feel differently?

If voting writers make allowances for injury-curtailed careers (Koufax, Puckett, and others), or seasons lost to wartime service, isn’t it reasonable to make allowances for games lost to a lengthy strike?

As for never having won a Cy Young — as you point out, voting for awards is subjective.

In ’94, Mussina could just as easily have won the Cy Young over David Cone, or finished second in the voting instead of 4th (or Jimmy Key, with the most wins, could have won it).

And winning championships has more to do with the whole team than a single pitcher — it’s not fair or logical to penalize one guy for a team failing. Had Mariano Rivera NOT made a bad throw to second, or had Joe Torre NOT played the infield in during that fateful final inning of game 7 in the 2001 heart-breaker, Mussina would have had a championship ring.

So I’m with you, Peter. I think Moose deserves the honor at Cooperstown!

No pitcher with 260 wins and a .600+ career winning percentage has ever failed to be elected to the Hall of Fame

No pitcher with 250 wins and a .600+ career winning percentage has ever failed to be elected to the Hall

Given that Mussina has 270 career wins and a 638% career winning percentage, it would be totally unprecedented for Mussina not to be elected to the Hall.

If the Hall isn’t going to pay attention to the standards they’ve set, what’s the point. I’m not a big fan of using pitcher won-loss record to measure a pitcher’s career performance, but this one isn’t even close.

No, Mussina wasn’t as good as Roger Clemens or Greg Maddux or Randy Johnson or Pedro. Just like most pitchers who’ve been enshrined in the Hall weren’t anywhere near as great as Walter Johnson or Lefty Grove or Tom Seaver. Mussina’s more on the level of Tom Glavine.

Yes, Mussina benefited from great run support for much of his career, and no, he did not have as great a career as his won-loss record suggests he did. But with the possible exception of Bert Blyleven, no starting pitcher has ever had a career as good as Mussina’s and not been elected to the Hall.