Baseball Hall of Fame: Starting Pitcher
Best—Chuck Finley, 55.7 fWAR, 61st among starting pitchers
Chuck Finley is right there with a few of these one-vote guys who could be in a “Hall of Very Good.” He pitched a similar number of innings and had similar career value to David Wells, Whitey Ford, and Billy Pierce. Wells received five Baseball Hall of Fame votes in his one year on the ballot. Pierce got seven votes. Ford made the Hall in his second year of eligibility. Pitching on so many successful Yankees teams gave Ford a spotlight the others did not have.
Finley pitched most of his career with the Angels before closing out his career with Cleveland and a final partial season with St. Louis. He’s the Angels franchise leader in wins; games started, innings pitched and WAR. He was an all-star five times and finished seventh in Cy Young voting in 1990 when he was 18-9 with a 2.40 ERA in 236 innings.
After a tumultuous five-year marriage to actress Tawny Kitaen, Finley was mocked when he took the mound in Chicago for a game in 2002. The stadium’s musical director played the song “Here I Go Again” by the band Whitesnake. This was in reference to the video that starred Kitaen that every teenage boy who grew up in the 1980s watched hundreds of times. The musical director was fired.
Others—Kevin Appier (85th), Burt Hooton (145th), Kenny Rogers (159th), Bob Welch (169th), John Candelaria (171st), Jose Rijo (176th), Bruce Hurst (192nd), Dennis Leonard (232nd), Aaron Sele (311th), Bill Gullickson (319th), Mike Krukow (324th), Todd Stottlemyer (334th), Mike Torrez (347th), Tim Wakefield (382nd), Pat Hentgen (437th), Ron Darling (474th), Jim Bibby (574th), Tom Browning (681st), Jim Deshaies (1189th)
Jim Deshaies had one above average season in his career when he was 15-10 with a 2.91 ERA for the 1989 Houston Astros. His career record was 84-95, and he had an ERA over 4.00. How did he get a Hall of Fame vote? He lobbied for one.
When he appeared on the Baseball Hall of Fame ballot five years after he retired, he launched a “One Man, One Vote” campaign that included a website: www.putjdinthehall.com. His campaign was done with tongue firmly planted in cheek. He knew he wasn’t Hall-worthy, but he did interviews pushing to get that vote anyway.
His efforts paid off when a Houston Chronicle columnist, John Lopez, voted for Deshaies. Lopez said, “It was a vote for the good old-fashioned guy that loved playing baseball, the regular guy.”