Quote:
Originally Posted by struggles_mightily
Good point, TribeFan: Koufax was a name I was going to bring up in defense of Berger. It doesn't sound like Berger was quite as dominant as Sandy, but Koufax is a no-brainer for the Hall, and so sets a good precedent as regards playing time.
I'm not sure about guys like Joss, though. The Veteran's Committee is like the Universal Boxing Federation of baseball-honour giving (or something -- I hate analogies).
At least in an OOTP context, MVP awards mean something. They usually do get given to the best offensive player every year. If you asked OOTP about the AL MVP last year, I'm pretty sure that it wouldn't have cared about Joe Mauer being on the non-playoff-getting-to (and small market) Twins. In the real world, MVP awards are a bit more dubious due to the nature of the dummies who award them.
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The Veterans Committee has some truly dubious selections. Joss probably isn't one of them though.
Joss had an ERA+ in the top ten in every big league season he pitched:
1902 AL--124--7th
1903 AL--130--6th
1904 AL--160--2nd
1905 AL--130--7th
1906 AL--151--3rd
1907 AL--137--3rd
1908 AL--205--1st
1909 AL--149--3rd
Except for 1910, when he didn't qualify. 1910 wasn't a bad season; he pitched his second no-hitter on April 20.
He contracted tubercular meningitis prior to the season and died before the one-year anniversary of that 1910 no hitter.
Joss and Puckett are players who were probably afforded some leniency because the nature of their injuries were not baseball-related.
J.R. Richard didn't get that treatment after suffering a stroke that ended his career, possibly (rightly or wrongly) because he was suffering the strokes and the effect of the strokes while he was on-field. In the end, he only had five outstanding seasons and fans do recognize the loss that Richard was to baseball.
Munson didn't seem to get much thought for the HOF though when he died in a plane crash in 1979. I looked a little futher and, despite the fact that he was a very good catcher, I may have found a reason why. When Munson died, he was 32 years old.
It's possible that at the time that most voters didn't believe that Munson had put up numbers worthy of a HOF career to that point. And in the 60s and 70's, catchers productivity declined to the point that it was exceedingly rare to have a catcher performing past 32 years old. From 1961-1980, there were only 4 players who were primarily catchers that had more than 1,000 plate appearances - Smoky Burgess, Elston Howard, Johnny Roseboro and Johnny Edwards. In comparison, from 1981-2000 there were 19 such players.
In fact, there are 47 catchers that had more than 1000 PA after 32 from 1876 to 1980, and 41 from 1981 to 2009. So in the next season or three we'll have seen more old catchers in the past 30+ years than were seen in the first
century of baseball.
I'm tempted to say no for Berger, especially since he had an on-field injury to end his career. But at the same time, any player winning 4 MVPs is almost unprecedented.