Pedro Martinez’s Hall of Fame Candidacy
Buster Olney of ESPN often makes snap judgements without preparing the proper analysis. This can be frustrating, and he continued his trend yesterday morning in declaring Pedro Martinez a first-ballot Hall of Famer:
I don’t necessarily disagree with Buster, but comments like that need some sort of objective backing. Anyone who has read my pieces before knows I like to analyze a player’s Hall of Fame potential as they complete or near the completion of their careers. I’ve done so for Call to the Pen regarding Jimmy Rollins, and previously regarding Lance Berkman and Ichiro Suzuki.
In my opinion, there are three categories that need to be analyzed in order to determine a player’s Hall of Fame candidacy:
1) The player’s overall career
2) The player’s peak performing years
3) How that player compares to Hall of Famers of the same position
As I did with Jimmy Rollins, our first stop will be Baseball-Reference’s Hall of Fame Monitor. Remember, a rating of 100 means the player is a likely Hall of Famer and a rating of 130 or above is a virtual lock. Pedro Martinez rates at an impressive 206. So with that in mind, let’s see how Pedro’s career panned out.
He finished his career with a 219-100 record, a 2.93 ERA, and 3,154 strikeouts. Pedro accumulated 75.9 WAR in his career and was a three-time Cy Young award winner. Pedro was an 8-time All Star and finished in the top five of MVP voting twice. All said, Pedro Martinez had a remarkable career.
From 1997-200.0, there may not have been a better pitcher in all of baseball. Pedro’s WAR totals for those years were 8.2, 6.6, 8.4, and 10.1. He had ERA’s of 1.90, 2.89, 2.07, and 1.74. He struck out a total of 1,153 batters in this four-year stretch. He was the American League Cy Young in three of those years and finished second in the other year.
Now let’s compare Pedro to some of the current Hall of Fame pitchers. These players were selected randomly. We will compare WAR because it’s the easiest comparison for pitchers. The other stats are hard to compare because each pitcher derives his talent from different strengths. For one, strikeouts may be a strength. For another, ERA. We’ll compare WAR by age, and cumulative WAR.
WAR by Age:
Pedro’s peak WAR ranks just third here behind Steve Carlton and Bob Gibson. His WAR by age puts him in pretty rare company. Now, let’s look at his cumulative WAR.
Cumulative WAR:
Again, Pedro finishes behind just Steve Carlton and Bob Gibson in cumulative WAR for ages 20-37. His numbers clearly stack up nicely with other Hall of Fame pitchers.
In this case, Buster Olney’s original thought was correct. Pedro Martinez will be a first ballot Hall of Famer. It’s just nice to have the numbers to support it.