Baseball Hall of Fame: Does Trevor Hoffman belong?

One of the more difficult questions when it comes to the Baseball Hall of Fame is the bar for entry for closers.

When it comes to the Baseball Hall of Fame, the most difficult position for me to judge is the closer. Actually, closer isn’t even a position; it’s just the name for the pitcher who pitches the late innings and picks up the save. It’s not a position; it’s a role. This role, the way we know it today, didn’t even exist in baseball until more than a century after the first professional game was played.

For most of the history of baseball, starting pitchers were expected to not only start the game but to finish the game as well. If the starter got knocked out, a lesser pitcher would come in to finish it off. There were a few exceptions along the way. One example is Firpo Marberry, who led the league in saves six times from 1924 to 1932, but no one knew it at the time because the save was not yet a statistic.

There were other pitchers who became known for pitching predominantly in relief since the days of Marberry, but they were a rarity. Jim Konstanty was the NL MVP as a relief pitcher in 1950. He was 16-7 and pitched 152 innings in 74 games that year. Roy Face famously went 18-1 for the Pirates in 1959. He pitched 93.3 innings in 57 appearances. These guys may have been the key men in the bullpen, but they weren’t used like current closers, so it’s hard to consider them comparables.

It wasn’t until 1969 that the save became an official MLB statistic, and it was another two decades before closers started to be used the way they’re used today. With the newness of the role and the changing way in which closers have been used over the years, it’s become very difficult to determine which closers deserve to be in the Hall of Fame. This can be seen by a taking a closer look at the current six relievers in the Hall of Fame.

The Current Six

There are currently six pitchers who pitched regularly in relief who are in the Baseball Hall of Fame. In 1985, Hoyt Wilhelm was the first reliever inducted. He did not pitch the way the current closers pitched. He started 52 games in his career and never saved more than 27 games in a season. He only had three seasons with 20 or more saves. He also pitched more than 2000 innings in his career.

Rollie Fingers made the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1992. He started 37 games in his career and had just two seasons with 30 or more saves. He averaged 1.7 innings per relief outing and pitched 1701 innings in his career. In his prime, Fingers pitched twice as many innings per season as current closers. He also once struck out Johnny Bench after first pretending to intentionally walk him.

Three closers made the Hall of Fame in the five elections from 2004 to 2008. Dennis Eckersley (2004 inductee) was dominant in relief, but also started 361 games and pitched 3285 innings in his career. Bruce Sutter (2006) was closer to the modern closer than Wilhelm, Fingers, or Eckersley. He never started a game in his career and only pitched 1042 innings. Goose Gossage (2008) was similar to Rollie Fingers. He started 37 games, pitched 1809 innings and averaged 1.6 innings per relief outing.

The most recent closer-ish inductee was John Smoltz in 2015. Smoltz is a Dennis Eckersley-like closer. He started 361 games and pitched more than 3000 innings. When you consider Smoltz and the others, it’s evident that only Bruce Sutter is remotely comparable to the closers of today. The other four either had significant success as starting pitchers or pitched many more innings than the guys finishing games in this era. This makes it very difficult to determine the standards for the relievers currently on the Baseball Hall of Fame ballot.

The Current Ballot

There are four closers on this year’s Baseball Hall of Fame ballot: Trevor Hoffman, Billy Wagner, Jason Isringhausen and Brad Lidge. Kerry Wood is also on the ballot, but he was only a closer for a couple of seasons. Let’s look at the statistics for these four closers. The Wins Above Replacement shown below is from Baseball-Reference. The statistic ERA+ shows how much better that pitcher was in ERA compared to league average. For example, Trevor Hoffman’s ERA+ of 141 means he was 41 percent better than league average.

• 1089.3 IP, 601 SV, 2.87 ERA, 141 ERA+, 28.0 WAR—Trevor Hoffman
• 903.0 IP, 422 SV, 2.31 ERA, 187 ERA+, 27.7 WAR—Billy Wagner
• 1007.7 IP, 300 SV, 3.64 ERA, 115 ERA+, 12.2 WAR—Jason Isringhausen
• 603.3 IP, 225 SV, 3.54 ERA, 122 ERA+, 7.8 WAR—Brad Lidge

Neither Isringhausen nor Lidge has received a Baseball Hall of Fame vote. This is appropriate because neither deserves a vote. They were fine pitchers who had some good moments in their careers but are not worthy of the Baseball Hall of Fame. What about Hoffman and Wagner?

Based on Baseball-Reference WAR, Hoffman and Wagner were nearly equal in value over their respective careers. Hoffman racked up more saves, but that has more to do with opportunity than anything. Hoffman also pitched about three seasons worth of innings more than Wagner, but Wagner was better at preventing runs by a significant margin.

This is important to note when it comes to these two pitchers. Hoffman pitched 1089.3 innings with an ERA of 2.87. Wagner pitched 903 innings with an ERA of 2.31. If Wagner had stuck around for three more seasons, he could have had an ERA of 5.56 in 186.3 innings and ended up with the same innings pitched and ERA as Hoffman.

In his final season, Wagner pitched 69.3 innings with a 1.43 ERA. He retired while still one of the best relievers in baseball (104 strikeouts in those 69.3 innings). Yet, he could have added three terrible seasons and ended up with the same run prevention numbers as Hoffman. That’s how much better he was at preventing runs.

Despite this fact, Hoffman currently leads Wagner in the publicly-released Hall of Fame ballots, 78.2 percent to 10.7 percent. This makes no sense at all. If a closer is worthy of the Hall of Fame, I don’t see how you can put Hoffman in and leave Wagner out. There’s not enough separating them to justify the discrepancy we see in their vote totals. This would be like putting the right Twix in the Candy Hall of Fame but leaving the left Twix out.

The real question for me is: do either Hoffman or Wagner belong in the Hall of Fame? Again, I go back to the idea that closer isn’t a position, it’s a role. The position is a pitcher. I prefer to compare relievers to all pitchers, which sets the bar for entry into the Hall of Fame much higher.

If you consider te closer not as a closer specifically but just as a pitcher in general, then it becomes a real question whether any closer is worthy of the Baseball Hall of Fame. This is particularly true for modern closers who generally only pitch around 60-65 innings each season, but it’s also true for a few of the six closers who are in the Hall of Fame already.

Rollie Fingers was worth 25.0 WAR, which ranks him tied for 385^th among all pitchers. He’s right there with Kelvim Escobar and Ron Reed. Bruce Sutter was worth 24.5 WAR, which ranks him tied for 405^th. That’s below Chris Bosio. Goose Gossage was worth 41.8 WAR, which puts him tied for 161^st. That’s below knuckleballer Tom Candiotti.

When compared to all pitchers, Fingers, Sutter, and Gossage just don’t make the cut. They don’t come particularly close, actually. None of the three pitched 2000 innings in their careers, which makes it difficult to compete with starting pitchers who threw more than 3000 innings.

Hoyt Wilhelm had more innings than the aforementioned three and finished higher on the all-time list of pitching WAR. He was worth 50.1 WAR, which ranks him 104^th among all pitchers. He’s just behind Mark Langston (50.3 WAR) and Jamie Moyer (50.1 WAR) and just ahead of Roy Oswalt (49.9 WAR). Langston, Moyer, and Oswalt were good pitchers for many years, but are they Hall of Fame pitchers? Nope, although two people did vote for Jamie Moyer this year (so far).

The two current Hall of Fame closers who have much better Hall of Fame resumes are Dennis Eckersley (62.5 WAR, tied for 46^th among all pitchers) and John Smoltz (66.5 WAR, 39^th). They were both starters for many years, and both pitched more than 3000 innings. In between them on the pitcher WAR leaderboard is Hall of Famer Bob Feller. Both Eckersley and Smoltz had more WAR than Hall of Famers Dazzy Vance, Juan Marichal, and Don Drysdale, among others. All of those innings make a difference.

When considering Baseball Hall of Fame worthiness with this method, Hoffman and Wagner don’t make the cut. They simply didn’t pitch enough innings. They are down there with Fingers and Sutter. Hoffman had 28.0 WAR, which is 317^th among all pitchers. Wagner, at 27.7 WAR, ranks tied for 325^th.

You might be wondering about Mariano Rivera, acknowledged as the most celebrated reliever of them all. Mariano was worth 56.6 WAR, which ranks him 76^th among all pitchers. That puts him in the mix with a group of starting pitchers that fall on both sides of the Hall of Fame line. Pitchers in the vicinity of Rivera who are in the Hall of Fame include Three Finger Brown, Whitey Ford, and Sandy Koufax. Pitchers who are in the vicinity of Rivera who are not in the Hall of Fame include Kevin Appier, Tim Hudson, and Dave Stieb.

Of course, plenty of people aren’t on board with WAR, so let’s set it aside for now and consider a different approach.

Show Me the Money

In his book, The Mind of Bill James, the Godfather of Sabermetrics wrote, “Dollars and cents are an incarnation of our values. Economic realities represent not what we should believe, not what we like to saw we believe, not what we might choose to believe in a more perfect world, but what our beliefs really are.”

With this in mind, we can look at how owners valued the pitchers in this discussion during their playing careers. How much was Hoffman valued, based on the money he earned, compared to the aforementioned starting pitchers? This can be a proxy for how their careers were valued and can be used as another consideration for the Hall of Fame.

There are different ways to look at this because of the overlapping careers involved and the fact that player salaries go up over time. A big picture look shows that Johan Santana earned roughly $162 million in his career, which is the most of this group of pitchers. The following total earnings come from each pitcher’s Baseball-Reference page:

• $162M—Johan Santana (2000-2014)
• $144M—Mike Mussina (1991-2008)
• $114M—Curt Schilling (1990-2008)
• $99M—Chris Carpenter (1997-2013)
• $93M—Billy Wagner (1995-2010)
• $84M—Jamie Moyer (1986-2012)
• $80M—Trevor Hoffman (1993-2010)

• $169M—Mariano Rivera (1995-2013)—not yet on the ballot

Santana has an advantage here because his career lasted at least four years beyond the end of many of the pitchers on the above list and he was handsomely compensated for those four years. So how about a snapshot of the three-year stretch from 2006 to 2008? This includes the final three years for both Mussina and Schilling when they were in their late 30s. Hoffman is also in his late 30s during this time, while Wagner is in his mid-30s and Moyer is in his mid-40s.

Total earnings from 2008 to 2010:

• $41.1M—Mike Mussina (ages 37 to 39)
• $38.7M—Johan Santana (ages 27 to 29)
• $34.0M—Curt Schilling (ages 39 to 41)
• $31.5M—Billy Wagner (ages 34 to 36)
• $24.0M—Chris Carpenter (ages 31 to 33)
• $19.0M—Trevor Hoffman (ages 38 to 40)
• $18.0M—Jamie Moyer (ages 43 to 45)

• $36.0M—Mariano Rivera (ages 36 to 38)—not yet on the ballot

Hoffman was still a good closer during this stretch. He led the NL in saves in 2006, with 46. He had 42 saves in 2007, then dropped to 30 saves in 2008. He even made the All-Star team twice. But his salary was comparable to Jamie Moyer, who was in his mid-40s. Hoffman didn’t come close to the salary of Mussina or Schilling, who were both roughly the same age as Hoffman. Fellow closer Billy Wagner also made significantly more than Hoffman, although he was four years younger.

Next: Trevor Hoffman: San Diego Padres’ most hidden gem

When he played, Hoffman wasn’t valued by his team as much as other pitchers on the current Baseball Hall of Fame ballot were valued. If his team paid Hoffman $23 million less than Mussina and $15 million less than Schilling over this three-year period, how can the voters think he’s more deserving of the Hall of Fame? Shouldn’t a Hall of Fame pitcher be paid more than a starting pitcher in his mid-40s?