Snubbed: Revisiting: Johan Santana's One and Done Hall of Fame Case

I'm not in the corner that says Johan should for sure be in the HOF. But yes he should have been on the ballot of the next 8-10 years. But then again Harold Baines is in the HOF because he was good and played a long time. I've pretty much lost all interest in the HOF as its been watered down to it being the Hall of good.

Cliff Lee was really good and my memory was that he would be a fringy candidate but looking at his career he's got a Cy Young and two top 5 finishes so not really a great comp to 2 Cy Youngs and 3 top 5 finishes.    A better comp is a guy that I Have been calling for and that is Ron Guidry.   One Cy Young in about the most dominant seasons ever that ended in World Series Champion along with 3 top 5 finishes     Again, do you want a HOF of very good for a long time or great for a shorter time.    My HOF would probably have Santana and Guidry ahead of Blyleven and Morris.     I'm not going to be outraged no matter what. 

I was always a Guidry fan and he should have been in the HOF. Louisiana Lightning.

I love Johan Santana.  He was my favorite Twins player from when he first became a starter to the very end (especially after he ripped Twins management for putting "the future" ahead of right now).  That being said, I am not even trying to hear this "Sandy Koufax is the most overrated..." stuff.

 

It is this kind of stuff, quite frankly, that makes this place seem trite because it is sour grapes BS and Koufax doesn't deserve that.  Winning sure as heck matters and Koufax is referenced as the guy who probably had the best stuff and the best stretch a pitcher ever had in the modern era.  No reason to go to that tired refrain about Johan not garnering the necessary respect because he played in Minnesota.  It isn't a good look, in my opinion.

Koufax was great and that's a fact. So was Babe Ruth.

Thank you, mlhouse. After reading the article, I had planned on commenting, “Sandy Koufax is the most overrated baseball player of all time.” You beat me to it.

I hate comparing MLB players from different eras, anyway. It’s all relative to your competition, which is wildly different. The best players right now are the best players of all time. Period. Drop Johan Santana as he was in his prime back into the Koufax era, and he may not give up an earned run over his entire career. Take Babe Ruth how he was in his prime in today’s game, and he would never even step foot in an MLB ballpark as a player (hyperbole, but I think the point is conveyed). It’s like comparing one of today’s super cars to a Model T in terms of racing. Sandy Koufax is not a better baseball player than Johan Santana, he just played against worse baseball players. Pitchers in today’s era especially are screwed if you’re playing that game. The physicality and skill of the hitters isn’t even in the same ballpark. It’s like playing against a different species of human. Shouldn’t those things be considered, instead of just comparing ERAs (which is widely considered a useless statistic now, anyway)? Is a no hitter really that impressive when you’re facing a lineup with nobody in it? Just a quick search reveals that there was a 20+ point differential in league wide OPS in 1955 vs 2010.

Also, equipment differences (juiced balls), technological differences (endless scouting), smaller strike zones, smaller ballparks, differences in approach (people giving up more outs via bunting, etc.)

What you are missing is that to compare stats across time you need to adjust.  The juiced baseballs, the steroids, the height of the pitchers mounds.

BUT, the players themselves would all be amongst the best players of ANY era.The best baseball players from 1927 would be (you of course have to factor in integration) the best player of today.  Ruth, Cobb, Gehrig, Walter Johnson, would all be all-stars in any era.  Ruth just would have a different build with modern weight training, nutrition, and training.  

We'll just disagree with this which is fine.   To me a guy that pitches 20 seasons and gets 300 wins (for simplicity lets just go with that stat and all that goes with it) is less deserving than a guy that pitches 10 seasons and gets 200 wins.     If someone wanted to make the case for Fidryich or Valenzuela I would listen.   Their star shown so bright for a while they stood out above the crowd in what was a colorful era.   I would put them at least on equal footing with Harold Baines who had a very long career of good.    Maybe a lone voice in the wilderness here.

I think there's a big difference between someone like Johan (who played 12 seasons and was the BEST pitcher in baseball for 5-7 years) and Fidrych (who only played 5 years, and made fewer starts in his last 4 years combined than his first season). Realistically, Fidrych was a 1 year wonder, and while it was an amazing year (he should have won the Cy too, not just RoY) at the end of the day you can't put someone in the Hall for one year.

Fernando is a very different case and is closer to Santana in that he only had a run of about 7 years as an top pitcher...but Fernando wasn't in Johan's class. He was a reasonable pick for the Cy in '81, but it's hard to make an argument that he was ever the best pitcher in the NL again. He wasn't snubbed or screwed over for any awards and after the age of "26" he literally had 1 good season left in him despite playing 9 more years. Johan was simply a better pitcher during their peak runs. Fernando padded out his counting stats with a long period of pitching where he was just another guy. 

But I think it's fair to look at the guy who was brilliant for a shorter period as being at least as worthy as the guy who wasn't as good, but sustained it longer. Don Sutton was a fine pitcher who threw basically forever...but the only thing he has over Johan was health and he sailed in to the Hall. I'm not saying Sutton isn't deserving...just that Johan is too. When the peak is that high for that long, I'm more than willing to ignore not having an extra 4-6 mediocre years tacked on.

I think there's a big difference between someone like Johan (who played 12 seasons and was the BEST pitcher in baseball for 5-7 years) and Fidrych (who only played 5 years, and made fewer starts in his last 4 years combined than his first season). Realistically, Fidrych was a 1 year wonder, and while it was an amazing year (he should have won the Cy too, not just RoY) at the end of the day you can't put someone in the Hall for one year.

 

Fernando is a very different case and is closer to Santana in that he only had a run of about 7 years as an top pitcher...but Fernando wasn't in Johan's class. He was a reasonable pick for the Cy in '81, but it's hard to make an argument that he was ever the best pitcher in the NL again. He wasn't snubbed or screwed over for any awards and after the age of "26" he literally had 1 good season left in him despite playing 9 more years. Johan was simply a better pitcher during their peak runs. Fernando padded out his counting stats with a long period of pitching where he was just another guy. 

 

But I think it's fair to look at the guy who was brilliant for a shorter period as being at least as worthy as the guy who wasn't as good, but sustained it longer. Don Sutton was a fine pitcher who threw basically forever...but the only thing he has over Johan was health and he sailed in to the Hall. I'm not saying Sutton isn't deserving...just that Johan is too. When the peak is that high for that long, I'm more than willing to ignore not having an extra 4-6 mediocre years tacked on.

I'm not saying Fidyrich or Valenzuela make my HOF but I would listen.    I have never been to Cooperstown so maybe they already have something there but those two added such flavor to the game that it seems like they should be represented somewhere.    Less about stats and more about history.

If they had given it to Rivera, I could have accepted that they were comparing apples to oranges and the orange looked really good at the time. But comparing Johan to Colon was apples to apples, and the only metric that made Colon look like the better pitcher was the one that tells you the least about the pitcher - wins. Johan pitched more innings, had a much better ERA, ERA+, more strikeouts, higher WAR... It should have been no contest between the two.

Cy young voters didn't start looking at the non-win stats until later, the Felix Hernandez year when he won the Cy Young and went 13-12 on a Mariners team that lost over 100 games.  Of course, the argument is that Cy Young was a stat accumulator who won a lot of games, and that historically "wins" mattered to a pitcher who was considered for the Cy Young award. I'd rather the award go to the best pitcher, not "best pitcher on a good team who wins 20 ish games or more."

The problem is how the hall makes decisions, and if you have noticed the vet comity is putting in more players it would seem than before.  I believe Johan will get in via that route, despite being a 1 and done guy.  In this day in age judging pitchers against past is so hard.  Wins are such an overrated stat, but some voters still look at them like they are important.  Some pitchers like Bert got knocks for longevity, but then Johan gets it for not having it. 

Before I even started to read the full article I look up Koufax stats because he was put in the hall because of a few seasons where he was one of the best, but so many other players get negative treatment for the exact same thing.  Koufax, much like Puckett went out on top due to injury, but Johan tried to fight back.  Maybe that is the image that sticks in the voters heads, maybe it was because Koufax helped win WS, Johan did not.  Maybe it was because Koufax pitched in huge market of LA and in his Prime Johan was in MN.  Maybe it was because Koufax was white, and Johan was not. 

We will never know why two pitchers with almost idenitcal careers, minus the WS titles, which is out of a single starting pitcher control.  One gets into Hall of Fame on second year on ballot, if it was 5 years from last season played like it is now, and other gets voted off in one year.  

Was he snubbed?  Hell yes he was, he should have at least got to be on it for a few years to really look it. I am not saying he should be a hall of famer, but when Kofax is first or second ballot and Johan gets essentially no consideration and they were very much almost the same career, yes it was a snub.

It's not easy to be elected to the HoF.

I agree. But that doesn't change my opinion that it's too easy. I think the bar for enshrinement should be higher. There are many players in the Hall whose careers do not merit enshrinement. (IMHO, naturally.) Of course, those players can never be dis-enshrined, but their memberships then provide a standard for later borderline players. To me it cheapens the status of the truly great players.

I don't disagree with some of the premise of this post, that Santana perhaps isn't HoF caliber... but how you got there is kinda wrong.

 

Cliff Lee didn't have a prime anywhere near that of Santana. Johan had five full seasons of 150 ERA+ ball. Cliff Lee had two. Johan's "mediocre" 2007 season was basically how Lee pitched during his best seasons, minus the two 150 ERA+ outlier seasons.

Yeah, the comp was from the Baseball statistics site, it wasn’t mine.  If you subtract the name from someone well known to just stats the connection is still there; none of Johan’s peers are HOF worthy.  He had the chance to be better, but unfortunately had the mediocre year and not a long enough peak and/or long enough career.  He’s just not HOF quality.  Maybe in some future world where people are voted in only on statistical reasons, he’d have gotten in, but that’s not what voters are looking for today.  We can rage at the machine, but thems the rules...

Revisiting this thread because someone on instagram, as well as the general consensus, says Scherzer should be in the HOF if he retired today. If he retired today I think he's an interesting Santana comp.

Through their best seven seasons, guess who had the better era+? Johan. Innings pitched are almost equal, but Scherzer had a better WHIP and more strikeouts.

I'll concede that Scherzer's resume is better, plus he has postseason cred. He also has higher counting stats overall but their peaks are not that different if you give Santana the 2006 Cy he deserved. Both 3 Cy youngs. Scherzer had 7 straight years of top 5 in Cy young voting. Johan had 6/7 years where he was top 7.

Oh, and I agree- Scherzer should be in if he retires today. There's no way he shouldn't be in. 

As of now, the only eligible multiple Cy Young winners not in the HOF are Rogers Clemens, Brett Saberhagen, Denny McClain and Johan Santana.

However, that is going to be tested in the not too distant future. Verlander will make it. Scherzer and Kershaw are pretty good bets as well. Tim Lincecum is doubtful. Jacob deGrom has a bit of career left, so it’s too early to judge him yet.