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#1
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Here's a question:
If Kershaw never comes back from his back issues is he a HOF'er? (I would say no, but only because of less than 2000 innings bugs me, tho I can see the Koufax argument being made)
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"The large print giveth and the small print taketh away."- Tom Waits |
#2
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If he retires now, no. He has only pitched 9 years. If he tries to pitch next year and does poorly, I think he does.
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#3
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If he retires now, he's absolutely a Hall of Famer.
We're giving far too much credit to guys who had long careers. Longevity should be a factor, but not nearly as big a factor as dominance. Clayton Kershaw has been, hands down, the best pitcher in the game the last six seasons. And he was pretty darned good the two before that amazing six year run. And, like Koufax, he had inarguably his best season at the end. If this is it for Kershaw (it won't be), he's one of the greatest to ever play his position. That he dominated at a ridiculous level as a left handed pitcher only adds to his stature. He was a rookie at 20, and had a 4.29 ERA. In the eight seasons since, he's never had an ERA above 3.00. He's led the league in ERA five of the last six seasons, and the one he didn't lead, his ERA was 2.13. How good has he really been? Through the history of baseball (with complete statistics going back to 1901, so 115 years of the sport), only two pitchers have been more dominant through their first nine seasons (1,000 innings pitched, minimum): Walter Johnson and Pedro Martinez. Career ERA + through nine seasons: Walter Johnson 176 Pedro Martinez 168 Clayton Kershaw 158 Then, let's look at FIP. Again, FIP (fielding independent pitching) measures only the things a pitcher can control: home runs surrendered, hit batsmen, walks, and strikeouts. Through nine seasons, Clayton Kershaw ranks 32nd of all starting pitchers in FIP (again, 1,000 innings pitched, minimum). But here's the caveat. All thirty-one pitchers on the list ahead of Kershaw played in the dead ball era, when home runs were rare. They should have a lower FIP metric than Kershaw because the game was different. This means that, when considering only things a pitcher can control, eliminating things like wins, runs allowed, hits allowed, etc, all of which the team behind the starter can heavily influence, Clayton Kershaw is the best starting pitcher of the modern era. Not top ten. Not top five. Number one. 2,000 innings pitched, or 3,000 innings pitched is some arbitrary number picked out at random because people like nice ever numbers. 3,000 hits. 3,000 strike outs. 500 home runs. As if Frank Robinson would be judged differently if he'd somehow managed 57 more hits to reach 3,000, or Fred McGriff would suddenly be a Hall of Famer if he'd hit 7 more home runs. Clayton Kershaw has thrown 1,732 innings in the Major Leagues, more than enough time to demonstrate how he throws the ball, and more than enough time for Major League hitters to adjust, if they could, and improve their fortunes against him. Nine years into his career, not only have they not figured him out, but Kershaw is getting better. In the past six seasons, he's won an MVP, three Cy Young Awards, and he's finished second and third in the voting once each. If the season ended today, he'd be a unanimous Cy Young winner for 2016. Look at his past three seasons, and how spectacular his numbers are. 48-12 (an .800 winning percentage), 1.92 ERA, 552 IP, 13 CG, 8 SHO, 685 K, 82 BB, 190 ERA +, 1.85 FIP, 0.839 WHIP, 11.2 K/9 IP, 1.3 BB/9 IP, 8.35 K:BB. Look at his Hall of Fame metrics: Black ink: 65 (16th all-time), average HoF 40 Gray ink: 154 (92nd all-time), average HoF 185 Hall of Fame Monitor: 123 (64th all-time), average HoF 100 Hall of Fame Standards: 46 (48th all-time), average HoF 50 He's already met the Black Ink and Hall of Fame Monitor metrics in nine seasons. He's 4 points off the Hall of Fame Standards, and 31 points off of Gray Ink. All in, being accurate, 8.5 seasons as a starter. I don't see an argument that could be made keeping Kershaw out of the Hall of Fame. He's simply one of the most dominant starters the game has ever seen. If the Hall of Fame rewards true excellence, how can he be kept out?
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#4
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By the way, a minor disc herniation is not a major injury. They've been trying to rehab the injury without surgery. It's been unsuccessful. Most minor herniations will heal themselves. If they do shut him down for the remainder of the season, I'm 99% sure he'll be at 100% to start Opening Day in 2017.
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#5
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Quote:
B- 2000-3000 innings isn't some arbitrary number, it's a solid gauge to use due to the number of prior pitchers in the HOF. If you don't set some sort of standard what then? put in a guy who had 3 great seasons then his arm fell off? C- Longevity matters, I can see the Koufax argument being made for Kershaw (even if I am not 100% sold on it ) but at the same time supporters of it must admit that it is hedging the bet as the player never had to deal with the inevitable decline once 31-32 rolls around which makes a player's numbers appear better than they might have otherwise. The larger the sample size the more it tends to regress toward the mean, peaks are nice and all, but tend to only be used by people who have an agenda so they can ignore all the other stuff they don't like. It's also why Pedro isn't a top 10 pitcher. cherry picking the parts of a career you like and ignoring the other parts is intellectually dishonest. D- to buttress above, who was more valuable in his career? a guy who pitches 10 years with an amazing 8 year peak? or the guy who pitches 18 years without ever posting sub 2 WAR seasons even in his late 30's and early 40's?
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"The large print giveth and the small print taketh away."- Tom Waits Last edited by bravos4evr; 08-01-2016 at 10:59 AM. |
#6
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A. No, Awards are not meaningless. They have merit. Just because sometimes they've gone to the wrong player, based on analysis with newer tools, does not completely invalidate the awards that have been handed out, especially the MVP ad Cy Young votes. Gold Gloves are more subjective; until recently, voters have not had a great set of metrics to draw knowledge from. I would assume that with early Gold Gloves (and, apparently, when it came to Derek Jeter), reputation and bias played a large role. And even now, defensive metrics are not what I would consider great. But voters weigh things like Cy Youngs and MVP awards, right or wrong, in considering induction to the Hall of Fame. And there have not been a lot of pitchers with more than three Cy Young Awards.
Say he didn't win in those three seasons. He only finished second, or third. That's five top three finishes in five years, and an historic half season in 2016 where he was the best in the game. When examining his numbers, he still clearly deserves heavy consideration for Cooperstown. B. Where did I say that there should not be some standard? Did you read what I said? 3,000 is the benchmark for hits. Does a great player who ended his career 50 hits short of 3,000 hits get excluded because he came up short? Does a good, but not great player automatically get into Cooperstown because he got 500 home runs? You're going to see fewer and fewer players hitting 300 wins, or 3,000 hits, going forward. These old benchmarks are becoming less important with today's advanced evaluation methods. C. Of course longevity matters. I didn't say it didn't. But longevity alone does not merit induction to the Hall of Fame. Anybody who plays 18 years in the Major Leagues has obviously done something right. Making the Majors, alone, is hard. Playing nearly two decades is a feat in and of itself. It means some team, or teams, thought you could contribute enough where the team would be improved. But a long career of good play should not warrant a place among the immortals. Jim Kaat played 25 years. He was obviously good enough to stay in the bigs. He won 283 games. Hell, if a few things had gone differently for him, he might have crossed that magical 300 win threshold (meaning you'd automatically put him in based on your "solid gauge" argument, right?") But the guy was never a truly great pitcher. He had a couple very good seasons; finished in the top 5 of the MVP once, and 4th in a Cy Young vote. But I don't see a lot of greatness. Every player being considered for baseball immortality needs to be carefully examined. As I have said repeatedly on this forum, context is everything. A pitcher that only wins 140 games might warrant induction if he dominated the game, but played on an average team. So, too, might a guy that got 3,000 hits not warrant induction if he played 22 years, and averaged only 140 hits a season. And I don't see any cherry picking when it comes to Pedro Martinez. He was the best pitcher in the game, and pitched at an historic level, for seven seasons. And for two years after that, he was still a top ten pitcher in the Majors. That's about a decade of greatness. This isn't Dwight Gooden in his first couple of years, we're talking about. Martinez had a 213 ERA + from 1997 to 2003. Quote:
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#7
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I don't put much stock in awards. Writers do, because they vote for them, but I think it's pointless twaddle as far as gauging HOF worthiness. You either have the numbers or you don't. we have learned that pitcher wins is a pretty lousy stat so no,I don't put much stock in the magical "300 " wins and because we now know that the 3000 hit threshold is also kinda pointless as far as gauging a hitter's quality, I don't put much stock in that either. I would rather have Jim Thome or Frank Thomas's bat over Tony Gwynn or Pete Rose because they were better hitters (and power matters) It's like the argument FOR McGriff, people say he should get in because he has 493 HR's, but i don't think he deserves to be in because he is 31st in 1b WAR all time, 36th in wRC+ for 1b all time yet is also 13th in plate appearances. and his 57 career fWAR just isn't high enough for me. (but I think Kaat deserves to be in as he is the Eddie Murray of pitchers, really good for a really long time) I am a "small hall" guy, iMO there are far too many guys in that don't deserve it (Jim Rice, Mazeroski...etc) so no, I probably wouldn't vote for Kershaw due to his short career, and tho he has been good, it would be tough for me to vote for a guy with so few innings pitched. but ymmv
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"The large print giveth and the small print taketh away."- Tom Waits |
#8
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I agree with Nick that awards should not be considered when voting for the HOF. The stats already tell you if a player had a great season and a voter that considers both stats and a resulting award is, in a way, giving extra credit to the player for that season. On the flip side, a player that should have or could have won an award but didn't is unfairly penalized by voters. An example is the aforementioned Jim Kaat. That he never won a Cy Young award was as much a result of bad timing as it was the quality of his pitching. If Cy Young voting had been overhauled in 1966 instead of 1967 he would have won the AL award that year, probably unanimously. It still wouldn't make him a hall of famer but he likely would have received more votes.
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#9
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For me, an award like the MVP is the starting point in my examination. Quote:
Quote:
You'll never convince me about Kaat, though. I don't know if I'd call him really good. He had three seasons with an ERA + over 130, and another at 129...in 25 years of baseball. And his best season by ERA +, 157, was in 1972 when he made only 15 starts. He was a good pitcher who had a couple of strong, if unspectacular seasons. I mean, look at the prime years of his career. Here's what I see: 1963, age 24, 87 ERA + 1964, age 25, 112 ERA + 1965, age 26, 126 ERA + 1966, age 27, 131 ERA + 1967, age 28, 115 ERA + 1968, age 29, 107 ERA + 1969, age 30, 106 ERA + 1970, age 31, 107 ERA + 1971, age 32, 107 ERA + If a 100 is league average, he's 6-7% better than the league average starter in a lot of those seasons. For that nine year span, his ERA + is only 112. That's not what I would call Hall of Fame-worthy. You say McGriff's career 57 fWAR isn't high enough for you. Well, Kaat has a career 45.3 bWAR, and a 70.9 fWAR, for a guy that played 25 years, seems low to me, too. Quote:
I do agree that there are far too many players in Cooperstown as it is, though I'm not sure if I'd boot Mazeroski. I think the best to ever play a certain position, defensively, should be in. Metrics won't support that argument, but I think historic defensive metrics are pretty piss poor.
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#10
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Addie Joss died tragically during spring training of his 10th year. It took 41 years for them to give him a wavier and only by arguing that Joss pitching during spring training in his 10th year before becoming ill and that he should be credited for that service. The idea that Kershaw or Trout are already locks for the hof just shows a lack of understanding of its rules. They don't just elect guys with less than 10 years of service because they have had great careers for 6 or 9 years. Longevity and the 10 years of service very important. |
#11
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I know the Hall requires ten years for him to be voted. There's no lack of understanding of the rules on my part. The question was, if he never comes back from his back injury, is he a Hall of Famer? That would seemingly infer that he made the attempt to come back, but failed, and thereby appeared, at least briefly, in a tenth season. If the question had been "if he never plays again, is he a Hall of Famer?" would have been different altogether.
Based on performance, Kershaw is already one of the all-time greats to play the game. What the BBWAA do with his eligibility is not at all up to me. But he's deserving of Cooperstown. Quote:
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