Mike Mussina for the HOF?

Mussina is on the hill today for the Yanks and, while I admire him and think he's a very good pitcher and a modest, intelligent, generally good fellow, I wonder about his Hall of Fame credentials. Dave Niehaus, the mellow-toned broadcaster, has repeatedly called him a shoo-in or a lock for the Hall during the game today, and it's made me wonder. To me, a player in the HOF represents someone who was genuinely and consistently feared (on the field, not off) during his career, the kind of pitcher that batters hated to face (and vice versa). And not for one year, but for several; you can be Sandy Koufax and be unhittable for four or five seasons (and merely outstanding for a handful more) or Nolan Ryan and be unhittable for twenty years.

But you can't be just really good for many years and make it into the Hall, and to me, Mussina fits this definition. He's got some strong career numbers, to be sure, 2600+ strikeouts and 250+ wins, one of a handful of pitchers to win ten or more games for fifteen straight years. Much of these stats, however, are due to his longevity and durability, a guy who's eaten innings with no major injuries for seventeen seasons. He played for some good teams, from the O's of the mid-nineties to the Yanks of the early oughties (those hard-to-name years in the first decade of this century/millennium), which have helped his win totals. His career WHIP, a measure of a pitcher's ability to throw strikes while missing bats, is 1.17, a very solid number. His five Gold Gloves are a good measure of his defensive excellence, and he's a five-time All Star (both awards, however, are often measures of popularity and/or tradition as much as merit)

On the downside, he's never won a Cy Young, never won a World Series, never won 20 games (with the asterisk of his two strike-shortened years of 94 and 95, when he likely would have reached that mark). His career ERA of 3.71 is mediocre, albeit diluted by his poorer years of late, but also indicative of the fact that he only posted a sub-3.00 ERA once, in 1992, his first full year in the bigs.

In the postseason, he has a 7-9 record, with a 3.42 ERA, a record that diminished the farther he went into the postseason. He's 5-4 with a 3.60 ERA in LDS, 2-3 with a 3.34 ERA in LCS and 0-2 record with a 3.00 ERA in World Series play. That his ERA dropped at each level might indicate his lack of run support, but wins are wins. He's never led the league in ERA or strikeouts and led it in wins once (but those years were against competition like Clemens and Pedro). His 19-win season in 1996 is marred by an awful 4.83 ERA, an average 1.36 WHIP and a concomitant 11 losses. His career average season is 16-9, 3.71 ERA and 1.19 WHIP. Only the last number sticks out as dominant and, while ERA is dependent upon the whims of official scorers and defensive glovework, it still tends to average out over time, and his numbers in that department are unacceptably high. 

In the category of intangibles, Moose is a Stanford grad who has never distinguished himself with unsavory acts off the field, who is by all accounts a great teammate and a standup guy, and were the league stuffed with pitchers like him, the game would be indubitably the better for it. He's got character, class and a great personal and team ethic. But so does my dad, and (sad to say) nobody's nominated him for any Hall of Fames yet (except for everyone in my family, of course). 

Character is a great trait to have, as is durability and consistency, but to me, he's never achieved the level of dominance and fear-inducement that the Hall of Fame demands. Bill James, as ever, has a handy HOF metric by which candidates may be judged. As with all James stats, it's both arcane and uncannily accurate, based on elements from the number of 20-win seasons or postseason wins to points assigned for strikeout and ERA thresholds, or for awards like the Cy or MVP. A 130 on this scale means a sure-thing HOF invite, while 100 means a good shot. Mussina earns a 114 on this scale (compare Clemens, with a 331 or Schilling with a 171). He ranks below John Franco (124) and above teammate Andy Pettitte (102), and is eleventh among non-eligible players. That he lands below Franco a durable and sometimes-dominant reliever and a skosh above Pettitte, a similar good-but-not-great pitcher with a few more years to go before his career spirals downward like Moose's has, is further indicative of his fair-to-middlin' status among today's pitching greats. Pettitte's been solid, too, but no HOFer in any conversation I've heard, and Franco's probably not going to make it, either.

Nobody gives me a vote for the HOF (yet), but I can't see Mussina in the Hall. He's a swell guy, and I'll holler my lungs out if he's on the hill for the Yanks (the price of tix at the old and new Yankees Stadium makes this scenario rather unlikely), and I'll argue all night with someone who thinks he's a jerk or someone who lacks heart. But--and it breaks my heart to say it, Moose--he's no Hall of Fame pitcher.