Mike Mussina is not a Hall of Fame Pitcher

First, let me say that I am not hating on the Yankees or Mike Mussina.  I believe that Moose has been a quiet warrior for two ball clubs for the last 18 years.  However, I do not believe he is of Hall of Fame caliber at all.  Sorry Moose, no Cy, no plaque.  I will give you some facts.  All of my information comes from Baseball-Reference.

First, I know about the whole 270 wins and over a hundred more wins than losses blah, blah.  Yes, he has been an above average pitcher for quite some time.  He is a compiler.  

He has never won the Cy Young Award.  Not once.  He finished second once, and had a fourth, couple fifths, and some lower or not at all on the ballot.  That is only taking into the American League as well.  So in any given years there were a a few to a lot of pitchers better than he.  He had a bunch of very good years.  He has never been phenomenal, not even for one year.  Mussina often wasn't even the best pitcher on his team or in his division.  Over that span of time, names like Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez, Curt Shilling, Johan Santana, Roy Halladay, David Cone, Jimmy Key, and Derek Lowe, even had more dominant years and/or careers.  

Also, postseason stats are not there for Mussina.  Does he have a ring?  His lifetime postseason record is 7 wins and 8 losses.  Since 2003, he was 3 wins and 6 losses.  

Good pitcher, good career, nothing phenomenal.  Sorry Moose, you will have to go to someone else's induction to get to the Hall of Fame.

Comments

[Shawn]

With all due respect, this is stupid. Mussina is one of the great pitchers of the generation, and a true Hall of Famer. Apparently, you missed the Joe Posnanski blog entry that compared Mussina with Juan Marichal. Moose comes out pretty good in that one, too.

[Matt Decker]

When he gets there you are going with me right?

[James K.]

It's all well and good to say "he has never been phenomenal", but you fail to back it up with any statistics (i.e. hard evidence of his performance).

Cy Young voting should NOT be factored into his case (either for or against) because we have all seen how awful the voters for this award are - see Johan Santana losing to Bartolo Colon in 2005, Tom Glavine beating Greg Maddux and Kevin Brown in 1998.

An argument saying that David Cone, Derek Lowe, Jimmy Key, or Roy Halladay has/had a better career than Mussina is laughable. If you truly believe it, I'm curious to see evidence why (i.e. stats). We cannot vote on the HOF based on our perception alone - we need to look at statistics to back up our perceptions.

Take a look at the career stats for these 2 players, and tell me who is better:
Player A: 4413.1 IP, 118 ERA+, 1.74 K/BB, 1.31 WHIP
Player B: 3562.2 IP, 123 ERA+, 3.58 K/BB, 1.19 WHIP

Player A is Tom Glavine (who I'd assume is a 1st ballot HOF'er in your book) and Player B is Mussina. Glavine pitched a lot more innings but was absolutely less effective than Mussina. Over his career, Glavine's ERA was 18% better than league average - Mussina's was 23% better.