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.
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Originally Posted by cubman1941
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.
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