Baseball Hall of Fame: Does Trevor Hoffman belong?

A Practical Approach

Tom Tango is a baseball analyst who often comes up with interesting ways to look at baseball questions. He recently posted a poll on Twitter asking the question: “Would you ever trade away Mike Mussina to get Trevor Hoffman?”

Tango’s question gets right to the heart of the issue. If you had Mussina and all the value he provided in his career, would you trade that for Hoffman’s career? Just five percent of respondents said yes. The overwhelming response was no (87 percent responded no, with eight percent choosing not to answer but still interested in the results). Tango followed up the post with this comment: “Sometimes, when it comes to subjective questions, there’s only one right answer. And this is one of those times.”

He’s right, and this makes perfect sense. Mussina pitched 3562 innings to Hoffman’s 1089. Hoffman was better at run prevention (141 ERA+ to 123 ERA+) but all of those above average innings by Mussina, including 11 seasons with 200 or more innings, made him much more valuable. Despite this, Hoffman is getting more Baseball Hall of Fame votes. Based on the Hall of Fame tracker, Hoffman has 78.2 percent of the vote and Mussina is at 70.1 percent.

You could take a similar approach with four other starting pitchers on the ballot. Would you rather have Curt Schilling’s career or Trevor Hoffman’s? Johan Santana’s career or Trevor Hoffman’s? How about Jamie Moyer or Chris Carpenter versus Hoffman?

I believe Schilling, like Mussina, is an easy yes. He pitched roughly three times as many innings as Hoffman and was well above average (127 ERA+), yet he trails Hoffman in Baseball Hall of Fame voting (currently at 59.0 percent on the tracker).

For me, Santana is also an easy yes over Hoffman. He didn’t pitch as many innings as Mussina or Schilling, but he pitched nearly double the number of innings as Hoffman and comes very close in run prevention (136 ERA+ versus 141 ERA+). Santana’s vote total is an embarrassment (1.3 percent). He’s likely to fall off the ballot altogether.

Choosing between Moyer and Hoffman or Carpenter and Hoffman when it comes to their overall careers is more difficult. I could see an argument on both sides with Moyer. He accumulated value by pitching for 25 seasons and throwing over 4000 innings, which is four times as many innings as Hoffman. I believe he had enough above average seasons that I would take his career over Hoffman’s, but others will disagree. Carpenter versus Hoffman would be an interesting debate as well.

You could even throw Billy Wagner into the mix. Hoffman has more than seven times as many votes as Wagner. If 100 people were asked to choose between Hoffman’s career and Wagner’s career, does anyone think seven times as many people would prefer Hoffman’s career?

The point being that Hoffman doesn’t compare to Mussina or Schilling and, for me, Santana. There starts to be an argument with Moyer and Carpenter. To me, that leaves him outside the Hall of Fame discussion.

One final way to consider Hoffman’s Baseball Hall of Fame case is financial. The world revolves around money and baseball is no different. Owners pay players based on the value they expect to get from them. What do the salaries of these players tell us about how they were valued?