[Luis_Rivera]

Originally Posted by Johnny Slick

1. Selectively picking out the worst of the worst doesn't leave one with a good picture of the whole, which is that most of the time the sportswriters do a pretty good job of picking the best pitcher and most valuable player in the leagues. Obviously, they're far from perfect, and IMO I could do better - you could too, I'm sure - but they're not horrendous by any means.

Now, you do make a good point that I did selectively pick out the worst of the worst. I did do that to make a point, because well.. it'd require a bunch of studying by me on awards and how bad/good they have been over the past 70 years or so. This is on my list of things to do eventually, but for now, the emphasis that they put on counting stats, w-l record, hits, and the blatant New York bias (although that probably has a lot more to do with the VC than the writers) in the HoF has made me lose a ****load of respect for them.

The more I learn about baseball, the more I realize I don't know which is why I love it so much... Even moreso, the more I learn about baseball, the more I realize that most of the guys I'm bashing know even less... but it's assumed by the general public they do because they're in charge of it.

But he's not being faulted. It's just that, if you're going to make a merit-based argument, you need to compare him to guys who are in based solely on their merit. Whitey Ford is not. Whitey is in the Hall in large part because he won a lot of pennants with the Yankees.

Ok, well I compared him to Whitey because his name was brought up by you as a guy who had a similar career and got in based on his "dominance over a relatively short career."

My contention is that Mussina is playing in a different era where he pitched a similar amount of games and about 300 less IP. I'm not sure if his career is relatively short to this era, but if it is, it couldn't be relatively shorter than Whitey's. In the time Moose has played, he was more dominant than Ford was in the time he played. So, shouldn't Moose be in based on "dominance over a relatively short career" as well? This is assuming your definition of dominance is also statistical. I can't see how you could label a pitcher as more dominant if the only thing on his side is playing on a more successful team.

This brings me to my second point. You say you're not faulting Moose for not playing on a great team (in retrospect "faulting" was probably the wrong word... I'm sure you get what I'm saying though). However, everything is relative. If you give Whitey some sort of assumed benefit for playing on those pennant-winning teams, you're essentially hurting everyone who hasn't had a chance to play on those great kinds of teams. Everything is relative. (I couldn't find a way to articulate that point as well as I would have liked, do you see what I'm saying?)

Not necessarily, no. I'm one of those Philistines who think that Tinker, Evers, and Chance are bona fide Hall of Famers, but I also think it's disingenuous to mount a campaign for, say, Carlos Guillen just because he's a better hitter than Tinker (against his era or any other way you want to put it).

Personally, I think Tinker, Evers and Chance get a little too much credit for the success of those great Cubs teams (ironically, related to this discussion probably because of the romantacising by the writers and the fact that they probably were stellar defensively - idk... I haven't exactly looked too deep into the numbers for those teams), but I guess that's just an illustration of the differences in our philosophies.

Yes, but if you make a retarded argument comparing him against Jackie Robinson (not saying you're doing it, but you are IMO doing the equivalent with Whitey Ford).

Haha... hey man, you're the one who brought up Whitey's name. I just went with it!

No, they are not. However, both are in the Hall primarily for fame-based reasons, not merit-based ones. (As it stands, Jackie Robinson was an extremely good player, too; so was Whitey Ford.)

Well Robinson is in primarily for fame based reasons only because his "fame based reason" is of such a great magnitude that it overshadows even his stellar numbers. Had he not gotten his start in the majors at age 28, he would have been a HoFer regardless.

I don't think you're giving Ford quite enough credit statistically, though. While he's not a top-echelon HoFer, a good comparable is Juan Marichal IMO. This is looking at career value, of course. Marichal had a higher peak, so he's probably percieved to be better by most.