alexlegge

Let's say, just for fun, that Johan wasn't injured at the end of 2010, and instead ended up playing 11 more years, staying relatively healthy but pitching substantially worse overall. Let's say he doubled his career innings, averaging the following stats over that stretch: 9-8 record, ERA of 4.00 and an ERA+ of 110 (approximate midpoint of Patrick Corbin's and Chris Archer's ERA+ from this year, since they both had ERAs just barely over 4). Then, overall, Santana's career numbers would look like this: 238-166 (.589), 3.60 ERA, 123 ERA+ Even if he never won a World Series, those numbers look Hall-of-Fame worthy to me. By comparison, Mike Mussina's career numbers are: 270-153 (.638), 3.68 ERA, 123 ERA+ Also: Don Drysdale's career ERA+ was 121, John Smoltz's was 125. You get the idea. ... And now compared to Jack Morris: 254-186 (.577), 3.90 ERA, 105 ERA+ 3 points to be made of all of this: 1) Johan's candidacy is in a different league than Morris. Morris is really only relying on slightly above-average pitching, win totals, and 2 great postseasons (leaving aside the crappy postseasons he had). As a Twins fan, I'd find emotional satisfaction in Morris getting elected, but he's well below the admittedly-subjective 'standards' for the hall. Let's also not forget that most of Morris' wins came before the steroid era. Santana, by comparison, could have had 11 more years of mediocrity and his career numbers would still far exceed those of Morris. 2) If Johan doesn't get elected (which he won't) and perhaps even falls off the ballot (a distinct possibility), then he will basically have been penalized for not having 11 years of middle-of-the-rotation caliber pitching. Is that really what we want the Hall of Fame to be about?? In my personal opinion, a player that has a 4-5 year stretch of awesomeness (like Johan) is just as solid of a candidate as someone who was steadily above average for a long time (like Mussina), and both of those players are very worthy selections. 3) The saddest part, I believe, is that Johan's candidacy is being reduced due to market sizes. He was arguably better than peak Sandy Koufax from 2003-2007 with the Twins, but there was slightly less national attention paid to that because it happened in Minnesota. Then he went to the biggest media market in the US and had 1 great season. Hence, the lasting image from the NYC market perspective is more focused on the guy whose Mets career sadly faded due to injuries than the guy who was a monster for 5 years in Minnesota. Unfortunately, that's the perspective of most HoF voters too

First time I've ever seen someone strike out on a pitch that almost hit him in the face. Talk about adding insult to injury.

I'd say DiMaggio's is the most improbable, but CRJ's is the most impressive. Also: Pete Rose's 4,256 hits The game is evolving away from singles and big hit totals. Most career hits since this was Jeter, who was almost 800 short of the record. Sorry, I can't count Ichiro.

Thanks for a well-written and thought-provoking article. However, I can't say I agree. As mentioned by other commenters, Prior's entire development would have been different in the Twins system. In my opinion, the best-case scenario is that we would've ended up with a Radke clone. You could make a decent argument in favor of that over Mauer only if Prior stayed healthy as long as Radke, but it only applies to the regular season. Your argument is based on the postseason, which is a complete roll of the dice. Remember that in the 2002 ALCS, Santana was lit up out of the bullpen while the only memorable Twins start was Joe Mays in Game 1. Mauer has been our best position player on four additional division series teams after Prior’s injury bug, not to mention the 2008 tiebreaker team (would Prior have even topped Nick Blackburn’s sparkling performance in that?). Let’s review the 4 division series: - 2004: This is probably the only instance where you could make a solid argument that Prior would have helped us overcome the Yankees. We would’ve had a better shot at leaving NYC up 2-0. - 2006: Santana lost Game 1. Bonser pitched extremely well in Game 2, which we only lost because of Hunter’s misplay. Prior wouldn’t have fared much better under those circumstances. Also, Mauer was incredible this season in a 3-team division race. - 2009: The team was exhausted from the play-in game and played like crap the whole series. Maybe we would have won the division more easily with Prior, but not without Mauer. - 2010: Another great season for Mauer. And even in an ideal world, we wouldn’t have had Liriano’s Game 1 start (which was sub-par but gave us a reasonable chance to win). Bottom line: No question that 2002-2003 would have been different with Prior, but how different? Probably not much, and it’s impossible to speculate beyond that. Ultimately, Cubs fans could make a much much much stronger argument in favor Mauer propelling them to the World Series in 2007-2008.