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Old 09-03-2019, 05:42 PM   #1
scott1964
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1934 Hall Of Fame

For my inaugural Hall of Fame. I picked 6 pitchers from the past, sort of committee. Comments


James Burke: Played from 1882 to 1898 for the New York Mutuals/Giants. 10 POY, 3 Pitching Triple Crowns. 396-227 record

Ice Box Chamberlain: 1886-1903 for Louisville/Boston Americans. 377-269 record.

Charlie Ferguson: 1884-1900 for Providence/St Louis Cardinals. 364-309 record.

Jim Handiboe: 1886-1908 with Boston Beaneaters/Doves/Braves. Won 30 games in 1890. 404-427 record.

Bill Sweeney: 1882-1899 for Chicago White Stockings/Cubs. 409-287 record. Won over 33 games twice in his career. 3 time POY.

Cy Young: 1890-1910 for Syracuse Stars/Washington Senators. Most wins by any player with 511. 6 POY awards. Won over 40 games twice (1892 and 1893). 57 career shut outs.
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Old 09-04-2019, 12:41 AM   #2
joefromchicago
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In 1936, when the members of the BBWAA voted for the Hall of Fame's inaugural class, there were already eleven pitchers who had compiled 300 or more wins in their careers. The writers picked two of those guys for the HOF. Since 1936, there have been just thirteen more pitchers who have won 300 or more games, and the way things are going there will never be another one.

I don't get the sense that 300 wins impressed people in 1936 the way that it does today. The writers voting for the Hall probably thought that 300 wins wasn't that big of a deal, especially for pitchers in the nineteenth century who were pitching three or four times a week. Pud Galvin didn't get inducted until 1965. Mickey Welch had to wait until 1973. Both were picked by the veterans' committee, as were other 300-game-winners Kid Nichols, Tim Keefe, Eddie Plank, John Clarkson, and Hoss Radbourn.

OOTP, on the other hand, loooooves 300-game winners. Any pitcher who notches his 300th win gets an automatic pass from the OOTP voters into the hall of OOTP fame, no matter what era he played in. But the 300-win plateau wasn't really a thing back in the early years of baseball, just as 3000 hits wasn't a thing either (Sam Crawford famously retired in 1917 with 2961 hits because reaching 3000 just wasn't a big deal back then).

OOTP, however, is always applying modern standards when judging greatness. In my experience, that's why the HOF is stacked with pitchers early on. Unlike pitchers, hitters from the nineteenth century couldn't compile stats that would impress modern voters. Only one hitter had 3000 hits before 1900 - Cap Anson - as opposed to six pitchers with 300 wins by the turn of the century. The shorter seasons hurt the hitters, while the pitchers put up fantastic numbers because they were starting 40-60 games a year (and completing most of them).

So, would the real-life BBWAA voters have chosen the six pitchers in your inaugural class for the HOF? Maybe. Eventually, they all would have gotten in, one way or another. Would they have composed the entire debut class? I doubt it.
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Old 09-04-2019, 10:34 PM   #3
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Another observation: your Jim Handiboe certainly had a remarkable career. He had an overall 404-427 mark, which is certainly noteworthy in a number of respects. Cy Young holds the record for most decisions (827), which is four less than Handiboe achieved in your game. That's quite an achievement for someone who also had a losing record.

Which got me to thinking: who is the pitcher with the most wins while still having a losing record? In other words, who is the winningest losing pitcher of all time? I'll save you the guessing - it's this guy:

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That's Jack Powell, who retired in 1912 with a 245-255 career record. He was actually pretty good early in his career, but then he got stuck with the St. Louis Browns and, in the final eight years of his 16-year career, he had only one winning season.

Why do I bring up Jack Powell? Well, because in my experience there are a lot more Jack Powells in OOTP than there are in real life. Even though, as Casey Stengal said, you have to be a good pitcher to lose 20 games in a season, it only takes a few 20-loss seasons to convince teams that maybe the guy losing all those games isn't so good after all. Mark Maroth, the last pitcher to lose 20 games in a season, did that in 2003 and was gone from MLB by 2008.

Ball clubs typically won't stick with a pitcher who can't win on a regular basis. That's true now, and it was true in the nineteenth century as well. The second-most winningest losing pitcher in history was Bobo Newsom, who, perhaps not coincidentally, also played for the Browns. In fact, he played for everybody en route to a career mark of 211-222. Nobody else besides Powell and Newsom has ever won more than 200 games and ended up with a losing record.

So it would take an unprecedented combination of events to have a pitcher win over 400 games in a career and still lose more games than he won. Why, then, do losing pitchers with over 200 wins happen with some regularity in OOTP? That's a hard question to answer. Powell and Newsom played on a bunch of losing clubs, but then so did Walter Johnson, and he finished with a .599 winning percentage. Good pitchers are supposed to raise the performance of their teams.

You'd think a GM would, at some point, ask himself why he's keeping a historically mediocre pitcher on the roster when there's got to be somebody better that could take his place. That's what happens in real life, and that's what has happened throughout the history of the game. Maybe OOTP creates too many mediocre pitchers, so that there really is nobody better out there. I don't know. It's just something to think about as we admire the career of Jim Handiboe.

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Old 09-04-2019, 10:49 PM   #4
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Here is Jack Powell in my world


And Jim Handiboe
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Old 09-05-2019, 10:34 PM   #5
joefromchicago
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Quote:
Originally Posted by scott1964 View Post
Here is Jack Powell in my world
Very interesting. But Powell was born in Bloomington IL, not Bloomington MN. I'll have to talk to the roster team about that
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Old 09-06-2019, 09:12 AM   #6
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Good stuff, Joe. Very informative as always.
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