Examining the Credentials of the Current and Future Candidates for the Hall of Fame
This evening, Adrian Beltre, Joe Mauer, and Todd Helton were elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York. The 385 voting members of the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA) elected Beltre with 95.1% of the vote, Helton with 79.7%, and Mauer with 76.1% in an election that requires […]
On Tuesday at 6:00p ET, the Hall of Fame will announce the names of any players who got at least 75% of the vote on the BBWAA (Baseball Writers Association of America) ballot for the Baseball Hall of Fame. Adrian Beltre, the brilliant third baseman for the Texas Rangers and others, is a lead-pipe cinch […]
As the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros faced off in the 2019 World Series, we witnessed one of the greatest collections of starting pitching in the history of the Fall Classic. As I noted in this piece posted last week, there are anywhere from two to five future Hall of Famers in the rotations of […]
For the first time since 2001, the Hall of Fame Eras Committee (previously known as the Veterans Committee) has inducted a new living member into the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York. Not only did this committee (known as the Modern Baseball Committee) finally elect a living ex-player, they elected […]
In the seventh and final part of this series on the history of relief pitching, we’ll provide food for thought on both sides of the following Hall of Fame arguments? What’s the appropriate number of relief pitchers for the Hall compared to the number of starting pitchers and position players with plaques in Cooperstown? Which […]
Comparing baseball players from different eras is always an endeavor that requires we acknowledge that, in the history of the sport, some periods of time favored hitters, others favored pitchers. We also know that ballparks are different. You can put the best pitcher in baseball on the Colorado Rockies and he’s going to struggle to […]
(Photos: New York Times (Rivera) & Sports Illustrated (Fingers)) It’s a theme throughout this seven-part series, the importance of having a quality relief ace in post-season baseball. There is no role in which a player has the “hero or goat” possibilities more often in October than in the role of a closer. A position player […]
1988-Present Day: The Era of the One-Inning Closer In this “History of Relief Pitching” series, we’ve talked a lot about the “Save,” a statistic first made official in 1969 but applied retroactively by Baseball Reference to every pitcher in history. During the glory years of relief pitching (the 1970’s and most of the ’80’s), bullpen […]
In Part Three of this history of relief pitching series, we’re going to delve into the golden age of relievers, when closers were multi-inning specialists. We’ll discuss the careers of Hall of Famers Rollie Fingers, Goose Gossage and Bruce Sutter. Although Dennis Eckersley also pitched in this era, his main claim to the Hall started […]
(Photo: Chicago Tribune) 1946-1968: The Emergence of the Bullpen Specialist In Part One of our seven-part series on the history of relief pitching, we chronicled how a significant percentage of the relief appearances in Major League Baseball were made by starting pitchers, coming out of the bullpen in between their starts. In the first 75 […]
There is no role in baseball whose value is more difficult to assess than that of a top relief pitcher, a closer, and this is especially true when deciding which relief aces are worthy of entry into the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. There are two schools of thought when it comes to […]