A thought
 

Ray Halladay's numbers:
W 203 l 105 ERA 3.38 G 416 GS 390 SV 1
Winning percentage 66% of decisions
Winning percentage 49% of Games started

is projected to be a lock to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

What will the numbers have to be in the future for a pitcher to be elected to the Hall given the current trend to have starting pitchers pitching less and less innings thus giving them less and less wins/losses etc.? Just a thought.

When I first saw the numbers I was thinking Doc Gooden. Not too different.

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Rog that so why did he not get more support?? Just wondering?

There would probably be a way to rearrange Gooden's wins and losses over 15 years and create at least a marginal HOFer. But as is, his career arc spells disappointment more than anything else, and disappointments are rarely celebrated.

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i agree with that and, you are right, disappointments are rarely celebrated but, in all fairness, just looking at records - he is close to Halladay.

To me you can’t compare Halladay and Gooden because they pitched at different times. Goodens career ended in 2000 when Roy was just starting. This is especially true for pitchers because the pitchers role is evolving. That’s why there is a 5 year wait - to put the players career in perspective. Goodens career numbers are most similar to David Cone which is an excellent comparison to his era.

Adam, I agree with you BUT comparisons are are made all the time by voters for the HOF. Thus my original thought - what will voters think of pitchers in, say, 2030, when careers that have ended in 2025 are looked at. I suspect the day of the 200 win pitcher is gone if the current trend continues.

I don't think voters should some numbers as really being automatic, 300 wins, 3000 hits because that gets players elected who should not be (Don Sutton and Craig Biggio) and leaves some out because they just miss those milestones.

HOF membership has to be made by taking the players career as a whole, the position they played and the era in which they played and how dominant they were. You can’t compare pitchers today with pitchers from the past - and you can’t compare pitchers of the 80s to pitchers from the 10s and 20s. You can’t hold the numbers of Carlton and Ryan up to Young Johnson and Mathewson - no one else would ever get in. Halladay is the first of this generation and will become the standard going forward.
A victim of these comparison and his era has been Dick Allen. He was one of the best in the 60s and early 70s. His career numbers don’t look great because he played his prime years of his career in the era of the pitcher before they lowered the mound. So when compared to others his numbers don’t look that great - but they are. These are the things voters should be taking into account but they don’t always.

Absolutely but given the trend today a pitcher could pitch in 500 games, have 500 innings and an ERA of 0.00 and no wins. I do not think this would ever happen but some managers are toying with the idea of a different pitcher every inning. My point is that it will be interesting to see (I won't be around) in 2040 what the criteria will be for a HOF pitcher.