Does Mike Mussina need to finally win 20 games to punch his ticket for the Coop? I hope not (though I'll certainly be an interested observer when he tries on Sunday, weather permitting). Yesterday Roch Kubatko talked to Hall of Famer Jim Palmer about Mussina's Hall of Fame candidacy …
I just got off the phone with Jim Palmer, not realizing that he's on the West Coast and I was catching him pretty early in the morning. Not that he seemed to mind. Anyway, put down Palmer as a "yes" vote for Mussina's induction.
Palmer actually did a little research to aid his argument, placing a call to Elias and obtaining Mussina's ERA differential vs. the rest of the league during the former Orioles' career.
"He was 0.81. That's significant," Palmer said. "He was in the top five or six in his era. And he did pitch in the steroid era. He was pitching against cartoon characters. And he did pitch in a bandbox. Look what happened when Jamie Moyer got out of here. David Wells didn't want to pitch here. Sterling Hitchcock said they should bomb the place.
"Now, (Mussina) did play on some good teams early on, but he wasn't playing on great Oriole teams. Mike came up in '91 and he was a dominant pitcher of that era. He was the most consistent, along with maybe (Greg) Maddux. He pitched in the American League, which is arena baseball compared to the National League. Mike would have been even better if he had been over there."
The argument against Mussina is he's never won 20 games, though he'll go into Sunday's finale with 19, and hasn't won a Cy Young or championship.
"Twenty wins doesn't have the same cache as it once did," Palmer said. "If you came up in '91 and pitched 17 or 18 years, and they said you were going to be one of the top five pitchers year in and year out, you'd be pretty pleased, wouldn't you?"
Mussina's last start produced his 269th career win, moving him past Palmer on the all-time list.
"I always said I thought he was every bit as good as I was," Palmer said.
He wasn't. Jim Palmer won three Cy Young Awards and finished with 268 wins and a 126 career ERA+. Mussina's got 269 wins, zero Cy Young Awards, and a 122 career ERA+.
Mussina did pitch against cartoon characters. He did not pitch in a bandbox. From Day 1, Oriole Park has been hung with that reputation, but it's never really been true. Relative to the other American League ballparks, Oriole Park was roughly neutral during Mussina's time in Baltimore.
As for Mussina's run differential vs. the rest of the league, it's interesting but only moderately useful, because the higher the league ERA, the easier to post a high differential vs. the rest of the league. And the league ERAs were significantly higher in Mussina's era than in Palmer's.
All of which isn't to suggest that Palmer isn't right about Mussina, generally. He's won 269 games, he's got a brilliant winning percentage, and I'm not sure what else a voter would need to know.
Rob Neyer
