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Friday, July 6 Brown on pace to become a Hall of Famer By Joe Sheehan Special to ESPN.com | ||||||||||||||||||
Talk about likely Hall of Famers among current starting pitchers, and the two names that come up as locks are Roger Clemens and Greg Maddux. Those two aren't just the best pitchers of this era; they're among the best pitchers of all time, combining excellence and longevity, and doing at least part of their great work in one of the game's great eras for offense.
Beyond those two, though, the arguments begin. Randy Johnson started late -- he didn't have his first really good season until he was 29 -- but his last four seasons have boosted his win total and made him a strong candidate for Cooperstown. Tom Glavine has five 20-win seasons and three Cy Young Awards, the kind of lines Hall of Fame voters like to see on a resume. Those two are in good shape.
David Cone looked like he was in the late stages of a Hall of Fame career 18 months ago, but his brutal 2000 season indicates that he will not be able to reach 200 wins, a failing that will make him a long shot. The same can be said of John Smoltz, whose elbow problems appear to have short-circuited his career at 32. And as amazing as Pedro Martinez has been, his persistent battles with his body mean we can't consider him a lock, not with a mere 132 career wins.
With pitchers like Cone and Smoltz dropping off the pace, opportunities open up for other pitchers. After all, it's not realistic to expect just three or four Hall of Fame pitchers from the post-Steve Carlton/Tom Seaver era. My favorite candidate to step into the void is Kevin Brown.
2. John Smoltz (941) 3. Dave McNally (931) 4. Ron Guidry (928) 5. Ed Lopat (920) 6. Mike Cuellar (915) 7. Jimmy Key (913) 8. Lon Warneke (910) 9. John Candelaria (908) 10. Urban Shocker (905) There are no Hall of Famers on that list. Ron Guidry has received some support, and both Saberhagen and Smoltz are pitchers who might have been Hall of Famers had they been blessed with better health. The scores are also indicative: Hall of Famers tend to have fewer close comps than non-Hall of Famers, and as you can see, all of Brown's closest comps score above 900. That's a sign that he's not yet a Hall of Famer. The Hall of Fame Standards List uses the pool of existing Hall of Famers to determine what Hall of Fame performance actually is. The system is designed so that the average Hall of Famer scores at exactly 50 (on a scale of 0 to 100). Brown currently sits at 34 on this scale; above 35 is where a player becomes a viable candidate, so Brown is close to becoming a viable Hall of Famer, much the same way Guidry is now. The Black Ink test measures how often a player led the league in a statistical category (it's named as such because of the practice of boldfacing a league-leading total in a player's record). The test is weighted --it's better to lead the league in ERA than in starts -- and provide a clue as to how much the player in question dominated. Brown has 16 points of black ink through 2000, mostly on the strength of his two ERA titles. That's not all that impressive, just 11th among active pitchers, and it would be almost an all-time low for a Hall of Famer. The Hall of Fame Career Monitor awards points for doing things that are seen as characteristic of being a Hall of Famer. It's a more informal tool than the ones above. One hundred points is the cutoff: the system predicts that a player with 100 points by this method will make the Hall; below that, he won't, with some allowances for a gray area around 100. Brown's score of 77 puts him at the low end of the gray area. Fibonacci Win Scores are simply a way for sportswriters to get to say "Fibonacci," which is really a lot of fun. OK, they're actually James' method for evaluating a pitcher's won/lost record in a way that accounts for both excellence and longevity, calculated as (wins times winning percentage) plus games over .500. Brown's score of 148 win points is below the level of almost all Hall of Famers; most viable candidates are in the high 100s, and above 200 is where election becomes likely. These measures are all alarmingly consistent. Using them, we can conclude that if Brown were to retire tomorrow to practice yoga in the Himalayas, he wouldn't make the Hall of Fame. However, Brown is close enough on many of these scales to accumulate points rapidly, to move himself from a highly-suspect candidate to one whose credentials are strong. On the other hand, his candidacy would be ended by a serious injury or sudden loss of effectiveness. In other words, he's in pretty much the same place Cone and Smoltz were a couple of seasons ago. Of course, Brown has a number of things going for him: a higher established level of performance than the other two had, a better record of health, and an excellent environment in which to pitch. I expect Brown to reach 200 wins in 2002, separating himself from the pack and putting himself on pace for the Hall of Fame. The team of writers from the Baseball Prospectus (tm) will be writing twice a week for ESPN.com during the baseball season. You can check out more of their work at their web site at baseballprospectus.com. Joe Sheehan can be reached at jsheehan@baseballprospectus.com. |
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