Chicago White Sox: Mark Buehrle’s Hall of Fame case

If you list the greatest pitchers of the last 30 years or so, that list likely doesn’t start with Mark Buehrle and it may be a while before you get to his name. Heck, if you listed the top five pitchers on the 2022 Hall of Fame ballot, you might not even get to the former Chicago White Sox great. There are no Cy Young awards, no 20-win seasons, and no big accolades that usually come with being one of the greatest of all time. However, there’s something about Buehrle that is compelling. The more you look at his career numbers, the more you might be able to be convinced.

Taking a look at the Hall of Fame case for Mark Buehrle

On the surface, Mark Buehrle’s numbers are good but not great. His 214 wins are tied for 92nd all-time with Rick Reuschel. He’s 97th on the career innings pitched list and 107th on the strikeout list. He made five All-Star teams and won four Gold Glove awards, but he was never really considered even close to the best pitcher in the league in any season. Only one time did he receive Cy Young votes, 2005, when he came in fifth.

So how did he make it over the vote threshold last year to return to the ballot for a second year, let alone receive 11% of the vote? Two reasons: consistency and defense.

Here’s the list of players that have thrown 200 innings pitched in 14 consecutive seasons since 1901: Warren Spahn (17), Gaylord Perry (15), Don Sutton (15), Phil Niekro (14), Greg Maddux (14), Christy Matthewson (14), and Buehrle. Notice anything about the other six? They are all enshrined in Cooperstown. If Buehrle had just recorded four more outs in his final season, his streak would have run 15 seasons and he would be in a class of four rather than seven.

Mark Buehrle got outs. A lot of outs. No one recorded more outs than Mark Buehrle from 2001-2015. His 3,232 innings pitched over that span are the most by a wide margin. Nobody else has 3,000 innings pitched and only two pitchers (CC Sabathia and Tim Hudson) are within 500 innings pitched. That’s a full season’s worth of innings more than anyone else and two full seasons more than nearly all of the most productive pitchers in the game.

How did Buehrle get so many outs? It wasn’t from preventing hits. He led the league in hits allowed four times, the most times he ever led the league in a major pitching category. His career 9.5 H/9 and 1.281 WHIP are average at best. His strikeout rate of 5.1 K/9 is significantly below average for the time period. Buehrle’s 4.11 FIP (Fielding Independent Pitching) is considerably higher than his career 3.81 ERA, suggesting he was quite lucky during his career … but he wasn’t lucky. His BABIP (Batting Average on Balls In Play) was essentially league average for his career.

Perhaps the greatest skill of Buehrle’s, his truly elite talent, was minimizing the baserunner’s ability to advance. He did this in a few ways: double plays, pickoffs, and eliminating the stolen base.

The average ground ball rate for a pitcher during Buehrle’s career was 43%, his was 44.5% … slightly above average but not far off. Yet he induced the most double plays of all pitchers since 1995. By comparison, Tim Hudson’s ground ball rate was 56% for his career during the same era and he recorded double plays less frequently than Buehrle. This could be explained away as chance in a short time period but over 3,000-plus innings something else has to be the reason.

If you made it to first base against Mark Buehrle, it was almost impossible to make it to second base without someone else getting a hit. Buehrle didn’t walk many people (2.0 BB/9) but, most importantly, he held runners close. In baseball history, there are two pitchers that recorded 100 pickoffs in their career: Buehrle and Steve Carlton.

Players that didn’t get picked off pretty much never stole a base on Buehrle either. Of baserunners who attempted to steal against Buehrle, 58% were caught stealing. The league average for his career was 29%. Only 59 bases were ever swiped when he pitched. By contrast, Doc Gooden allowed 60 stolen bases in 1990 alone! Players rarely attempted to steal on Buerhle and, if they did, more often than not they regretted it.

So maybe that’s the reason why Buehrle got so many double plays. Tim Hudson picked off about one batter a year and was league average at preventing steals. Players couldn’t get a good lead on Buehrle and, if a ball was hit on the ground, the lead runner, at the very least, was getting out.

The last part of what made Buehrle truly special was his defense. Yes, he only has four Gold Gloves, but it’s not like those awards have necessarily been representative in the past. Jim Kaat won a Gold Glove in 1969 while making eight errors and having a .826 fielding percentage but, in the 60s and 70s, he basically won every Gold Glove in the AL. Buehrle, on the other hand, was never worse than fifth in assists in any season and his 87 DRS (Defensive Runs Saved) are the best of any pitcher since the stat’s creation.

The most compelling reason to select Buehrle into the Hall of Fame is that he may be the greatest combination of defender and holding baserunners in history. His overall pitching statistics are borderline Hall of Famer. His career numbers rate 70th all-time for pitchers in bWAR, about the same as Andy Pettitte or Bret Saberhagen. His perfect game, no-hitter (where he faced the minimum after picking off the lone base runner), and World Series title certainly help his cause. As does the fact that Jim Kaat was just elected by the veteran’s committee with fewer career WAR and about 50% more innings pitched than Buehrle, in large part due to his defensive accolades.

It’s unlikely that Buehrle gets in any time soon. Andy Pettitte probably has to get elected before Buehrle, as they have very similar career numbers and Pettitte has more postseason success. In any case, he was a truly unique player who had a lot of success for a long time.