'Cooperstown Chances' examines the Baseball Hall of Fame case of one candidate each week. This week: Jack Morris
Who he was: 2014 should have been the end. When Jack Morris fell short of Cooperstown for the 15th and final time with the Baseball Writers' Association of America, an optimist might have hoped for an end to all the polarizing talk regarding his candidacy. Aside from maybe Bert Blyleven, it’s hard to think of another Hall of Fame candidate from the past few decades who’s generated as much debate as Morris — interminable, cyclical and fairly pointless debate.
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It’s not to say that people never changed their minds on Morris. After all, he debuted on the BBWAA ballot for Cooperstown in 2000 with 22.2 percent of the vote and eventually drew 67.7 percent in his 14th year, just shy of the necessary 75 percent for enshrinement. It sometimes seems, though, that at this point, people have long since cemented their thinking on Morris and subject others to the same tired talking points each time his name comes up.
So we’re clear: Morris’s lifetime 3.90 ERA stemmed partly from where he played. Baseball-Reference.com’s stat converter shows if Morris had played his entire career for the Los Angeles Dodgers, he’d have a 3.54 ERA. But Morris’s ERA didn’t result from him pitching to the score, as he's sometimes claimed. Joe Sheehan debunked this myth for Baseball Prospectus in 2003, and people still trot it out. In addition, Morris’s complete game, 10-inning victory in Game 7 of the 1991 World Series, while iconic, is far from the greatest Fall Classic pitching performance.
Morris was by no means a bad pitcher or one to be derided. At the very least, he was an above average, durable starter who made the most of spending 15 of his 18 seasons on winning teams. Veteran baseball researcher Pete Palmer told Sporting News he ran a study comparing runs allowed and runs scored with wins and losses, finding Morris slightly better than would be expected. That makes sense in that Morris had a .577 winning percentage while his teams had a collective .539 winning percentage.
Morris’s 254 wins are tied with Red Faber for 43rd best in baseball history, with just 10 pitchers with more wins than Morris not enshrined. Morris fares less impressively by various sabermetric measures. His 43.8 WAR ties with Bob Caruthers, who was also a good position player, for 138th best. Adam Darowski’s Hall of Stats has Morris as the 162nd best pitcher all time, while he’s ranked 163rd best by Jay Jaffe’s metric JAWS. Neither Darowski nor Jaffe have Morris anywhere close to the Hall of Fame.
All of this might not make Morris worthy of Cooperstown, depending on how one gauges worthiness, but it also doesn’t make him anywhere near deserving of the mockery some have given his candidacy. At some point, this all stopped really being about Morris, for either side of the argument, and that’s unfortunate.
How 15 years of arguing about Jack Morris isn’t enough for some people defies reason. Whatever the case, though, people still care about Morris, a lot. He showed up at the recent World Series, is a popular broadcaster and gets mentioned on social media quite a bit. The following came from NFL Network and CBS Sports broadcaster Rich Eisen:
Jack Morris should be in the @BaseballHall of Fame. Period. It's madness he's not in it n
— Rich Eisen (@richeisen) November 2, 2015When Morris becomes eligible again for Cooperstown next year through the Expansion Era Committee, expect debates to rage anew. One can also reasonably count on Morris’s enshrinement at some point in the future, though it’s hard to say when it will occur.
Cooperstown chances: 70 percent
Why: Perhaps the most similar Hall of Fame candidacy to Morris is Gil Hodges, another sentimental favorite who fell just short of Cooperstown with the BBWAA and has been a bubble candidate for the Veterans Committee pretty much ever since. Hodges has been dead since 1972 and off the BBWAA ballot since 1983, but he still inspires legions of support. He supposedly missed induction by one vote in 1993 when Veterans Committee chairman Ted Williams wouldn’t let a hospitalized Roy Campanella vote by proxy. Hodges has come close with the Veterans Committee a number of other times as well. He’ll likely get in Cooperstown at some point.
As I wrote about Hodges, the key thing to understand with the Hall of Fame and its committees is they have no statute of limitations. The longer a player can stick around as a Hall of Fame candidate, the better a chance he has of eventually being elected. Deadball Era pitcher Vic Willis, for one, was considered by the Veterans Committee at least 23 times over five different decades before finally being enshrined in 1995. Nine of the other 14 men known to have been considered at least 10 times by the Veterans Committee between 1953 and 2001 are now enshrined. (A 900-player list I compiled about who the committee considered in these years can be found here.)
This all bodes well for Morris, whose greatest support comes from the type of veteran media and baseball establishment figures likely to be found on the Expansion Era Committee in the future. Count on Morris’s name getting brought up every time he’s eligible with the Veterans Committee, or whatever other name it’s calling itself down the road, for the foreseeable future. Morris’s cause could be helped as well if the committee honors former Tigers teammates Alan Trammell and Lou Whitaker.
It’s hard to say when Morris will get enshrined, because he can only be considered once every three years under current Veterans Committee rules. This practice has significantly slowed the rate of inductions by the committee and seems likely to be revised in the next 5-10 years. But, barring a change in voting rules that makes candidates permanently ineligible after a certain point, Morris will probably get in eventually. Will this put an end to all the debates? Less likely.'Cooperstown Chances' examines the Baseball Hall of Fame case of one candidate each week. Series author and Sporting News contributor Graham Womack writes regularly about the Hall of Fame and other topics related to baseball history at his website, Baseball: Past and Present . Follow him on Twitter: @grahamdude .