Fair enough.

Ok, I'm going to conclude the discussion on deGrom so we can move on to some other names.

I think after careful consideration of points from both sides the consensus is that we don't have enough info yet on deGrom. If he gives us 2.5 more years of dominant pitching without any injuries I think this discussion would be much easier.

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This week's discussion is kind of the anti deGrom... but in some ways also linked with him.

Tommy John

He missed out on being elected by the veteran's committee last December, and now has been passed over 20 TIMES for the hall of fame.

His raw numbers though are pretty impressive but he is definitely a compiler, pitching for 26 years in the majors.

288 Wins
3.34 ERA
61.6 WAR
162 Complete Games
46 Shutouts
3 time 20 game winner
4710 innings pitched

He was also a finesse lefty, only striking out 2200 in those 4700 innings and having some insane years late in his career like in 1983 when he threw 234 innings and only struck out 64 guys all year.


So here are my initial thoughts.

In general I'm anti compilers. His last 7 years in the bigs he went 51 and 60 with a 4.43 ERA and only 6.5 WAR. If you take away those 51 wins he's at 230, far away from the magic number of 300 and no one even considers him for the Hall based purely on his pitching. Advanced stats aren't kind to him and he rates essentially as a slightly above average pitcher for most of his career by some of the metrics that we look at today. Career ERA+ of 111, compare that to deGrom at 157 for his career and Kershaw at 155 for what great numbers are, Sabathia who I thought was lucky to get in has a 116)

On the other hand though, he lost 1.5 years of his career being the first successful guy to have Tommy John surgery and would have definitely got to 300 (likely meaning he'd be in) if not for his injury. He was also much more of a strikeout pitcher pre injury so maybe he'd be remembered differently if he didn't become such an extreme finesse guy in the second half of his career.

Finally, I think we have to consider impact on the game beyond performance here, and his name remains ubiquitous today because of the procedure that extended his career and that should count for something.

Taken altogether, my initial position here is that I hope he gets in on the next veteran's committee vote. He's 81 now and will be 84 then, and it'd be nice if he gets in while he still has a chance to enjoy it with his family. The fact that he's been passed over 20 times makes a strong statement that no one really thinks of him as a Hall of Fame pitcher, but I think with the added bump for the surgery being linked to him, it's not egregious to let him in.

Read this entire thread tonight - absolutely fascinating dialogue about DeGrom and today's modern pitcher in general. Had me going back and forth the entire time. Good stuff gentlemen let's keep this up.

I'd give it to him for the name alone.

I laughed when I went to his Baseball Reference page and saw this for the year he missed:

• 1975--Did Not Play: Eponymous Surgical Procedure

Not to be too reductionist, but if Jim Kaat is a HoFer, then I think Tommy John is worthy as well. I think they're both certainly in the "compiler" category: Their careers were essentially during the same era (Kaat 1959-1983, John 1963-1989), making it easier to compare them.

Wins: John 288, Kaat 283 (another close parallel: John had 519 decisions, Kaat 520)
ERA: John 3.34, Kaat 3.45
Shutouts: John 46, Kaat 31
Neither won a Cy Young

The one area where Kaat stands above John was fielding his position...he won 16 Gold Gloves, John did not win any.

I will also add that the DeGrom discussion was interesting to read for the most part. As far as this discussion, I'll let others pick things apart further, but I thought the Kaat-John comparison would be a good start.

https://www.mlb.com/news/tommy-john-surgery-50th-anniversary

More info on John and the surgery. He agreed with some of posters here on the value of the win.

I like the Kaat comparison, contemporaries with similar careers. I'd be interested to hear from someone who saw him pitch on if he passed the eye test. I was born in 1984 so I don't have any memories of him at all.

Tommy John was automatically disqualified from the HoF when he made 3 errors on one play in 1988.

Official scorer must have caught Tommy John with his wife giving him 3 errors there. The first two should have really been one error IMO. Usually the scorer doesn't stick it to a guy like that and would award the hitter a 1B for the swinging bunt. Then the E for the throw down the line of course, and then the last throw into the dugout when he idiotically cut off Winfield's throw.

Still though, funny stuff and I like the announcer's commentary trying to get Tommy John to just stay out of the way.

Bonfired said:

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I laughed when I went to his Baseball Reference page and saw this for the year he missed:

• 1975--Did Not Play: Eponymous Surgical Procedure

Not to be too reductionist, but if Jim Kaat is a HoFer, then I think Tommy John is worthy as well. I think they're both certainly in the "compiler" category: Their careers were essentially during the same era (Kaat 1959-1983, John 1963-1989), making it easier to compare them.

Wins: John 288, Kaat 283 (another close parallel: John had 519 decisions, Kaat 520)
ERA: John 3.34, Kaat 3.45
Shutouts: John 46, Kaat 31
Neither won a Cy Young

The one area where Kaat stands above John was fielding his position...he won 16 Gold Gloves, John did not win any.

I will also add that the DeGrom discussion was interesting to read for the most part. As far as this discussion, I'll let others pick things apart further, but I thought the Kaat-John comparison would be a good start.

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16 GGs is pretty damn impressive

16 is impressive but I seem to remember that for a while you'd get a reputation as a good defender and then you'd win the gold glove every year after that.

The most egregious one I remember was one year when Rafael Palmeiro won the gold glove at 1st despite playing 28 games in the field. The assumption at the time was that he won it based on reputation because he'd won the previous 2 years.

https://www.sbnation.com/2011/12/2/2604446/rafael-palmeiro-1999-gold-glove

This doesn't mean that Kaat wasn't a great fielder, but at a certain point surely he wasn't really worthy of winning 16 straight.

Someone already did the research for me.

https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2108198-jim-kaats-reputation-as-a-fielder-doesnt-fit-like-a-gold-glove

Seems like I was correct in assuming that maybe the 16 consecutive gold gloves might not have all been deserved.

You can't ding the writers of the 60s and 70s for not "studying the numbers" enough. Even with the AP wire in those days, you weren't getting this crush of data every day outside of a few key stats unless you physically went to the ballpark to see 2 teams play as a member of the working press. By the time divisional play started in 1969, the teams not in your division only came to town for 2 series a year, so there's a likelihood you never saw Jim Kaat at all. No ESPN, no Internet, no Intraleague play, limited TV - what were those guys supposed to do other than vote by reputation and what they had seen with their own eyes?

Kind of dovetailing off the deGrom discussion... Is Shohei Ohtani a Hall of Famer if he retires today? 3X MVP, ROY, finished top 4 in CY. On the flip side, he doesn't even have a thousand hits yet. Clearly he's a generational talent, who has lived up to every bit of the hype, but also, it's only his eight season. What if tomorrow morning he wakes up and says, "F, it. If I can't gamble, this game is no fun," and then he retires. Would he make The Hall?

Didnt we establish that the only people allowed in have to have 300 wins, 3,000 strikeouts, 500 HR and 3,000 hits?


(My real answer is yes)

By technicality the answer is no.

You have to have 10 years of service time to be eligible for the Hall of Fame.

But in reality, even if the Monstars came down and stole his talent, as long as he gets 2 more years of service time even if he sucks doing it, then yes he's getting in to the Hall of Fame.

We can talk Ohtani a bit I guess since Tommy John as a point of discussion kind of flopped.

But Ohtani is likely to finish with 500 HRs as a hitter and 1000 Ks as a pitcher in his career barring injury.

He's also going to finish with like 250 SBs

He obviously is super unique and none of the traditional magic numbers apply to him because he's in his own world statistically. Now if he'd just play LF for a couple of years and won a gold glove also he could fully take his place as god of baseball.

speaking of 500 HR's...

is Giancarlo Stanton a hall of famer?

sure doesn't seem like it -- however he's 70 homers from 500

will probably come up a little short of that number, but how close to 500 is close enough?

Giancarlo Stanton is not a hall of fame in my opinion.

Even if he gets to 550 he's way too much of a one trick pony.

He's also a classic case of what happens when the narrative about you as a player is overwhelmingly negative. No one has ever thought of him as a winning player and between injuries and his high salary there's just been a long term negative vibe about him. The Yankees couldn't give him away to another team if they wanted too, and that's been the case for several years. IMO if no one else in the league wants you, no way could you call that guy a hall of famer.

W said:

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speaking of 500 HR's...

is Giancarlo Stanton a hall of famer?

sure doesn't seem like it -- however he's 70 homers from 500

will probably come up a little short of that number, but how close to 500 is close enough?

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There are quite a few guys with 500 HRs who aren't in the Hall. They are primarily thought of as steroid guys, but I still think voters will say, "Well, we didn't put McGwire in, and he's got a hundred more HRs." Carlos Delgado is the highest non steroid guy not in the Hall at 473. He played in the era, though, but I don't remember his name coming up in rumors. If you're going to throw out everyone from the era, then Dave Kingman is next on the list with 442. Nelson Cruz has 464, but isn't eligible yet. I doubt he gets in, though.

Fred McGriff and his 493 homers never got voted in by the BBWAA. Had he hit 7 more homeruns, they would have. He's the perfect example of how silly arbitrary numbers are. 500, 300, 3000 it's all meaningless without context.

I like numbers, it's part of what makes baseball so awesome, but these arbitrary numbers for the HoF were established by players that played more than 100 years ago and can't exactly be verified.

_lefraud_ said:

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Fred McGriff and his 493 homers never got voted in by the BBWAA. Had he hit 7 more homeruns, they would have. He's the perfect example of how silly arbitrary numbers are. 500, 300, 3000 it's all meaningless without context.

I like numbers, it's part of what makes baseball so awesome, but these arbitrary numbers for the HoF were established by players that played more than 100 years ago and can't exactly be verified.

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How can they not be verified? You have the box scores. Either a guy hit a home run or didn't. Either a guy struck out 15 hitters in a game or didn't.

If you're talking about StatCast or radar gun stuff then sure but otherwise the numbers are there and verifiable.

going back to the comment about Ohtani and less than 1,000 hits...

this is a potential HoF issue for many current players who are concerned about "load management" and frankly not interested in playing 162

there are several former Astros...who are considered excellent players, but have surprisingly low hit totals despite playing for 10 or more years

barely averaging 120 hits per season

I'm talking about the recording of hits/errors from say 1912. Sure, it's always been subjective, but how reliable and stringent are these box scores?

_lefraud_ said:

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I'm talking about the recording of hits/errors from say 1912. Sure, it's always been subjective, but how reliable and stringent are these box scores?

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I can't say definitively but there's more than a few ex-MLB players these days who claim that scoring of hits vs. errors is more lax these days and it takes a lot for a play to get called an error sometimes.

And I've seen videos from the 60's (and maybe earlier, I can't recall for sure) where hitters would check their swings but go so far around it's insane and have the ump call it "no swing" and a ball vs. today where they're pretty strict and it's almost like if they even think about swinging they'll say they went. How many more Ks would Ryan or Koufax or Gibson or Siever have if a lot of those check swings were called like they are today.

It's also how lots of analytics folks today claim Jeter was below average defensively. Personally, I don't buy that. He may not have had spectacular range, especially to the glove side, but watching him play he was a premier defensive shortstop.

In regards to defensive metrics that's one of the things I think has really revolutionized the game.

We used to think guys like Jeter were good defensively because they did well on balls hit in their general direction. But now we can see with much greater accuracy who gets to balls that other fielders can't.

St Louis should suck this year, but they've built the best defense in the league by analytics.

https://www.vivaelbirdos.com/st-louis-cardinals-sabermetrics-analysis/2025/5/25/24436758/the-cardinals-have-the-best-defense-in-major-league-baseball

I have great memories of the crime dog with the Braves... but he's definitely a compiler. Classic case of a good player who played for a long time. Top MVP finish was a 4th place finish and he was only a 5 time all star.

If you all can't tell by now, my hall of fame consists of guys who were GREAT, even if their primes were shorter and they didn't hit any magic numbers. Great means Cy Young winners, MVPs, All Stars all get bumps from me over the compilers because they've proven to be above their peers.

Guys like McGriff are good ball players but no one is remembering him as the best of an era.

I'm in the same camp

AggieEP said:

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In regards to defensive metrics that's one of the things I think has really revolutionized the game.

We used to think guys like Jeter were good defensively because they did well on balls hit in their general direction. But now we can see with much greater accuracy who gets to balls that other fielders can't.

St Louis should suck this year, but they've built the best defense in the league by analytics.

https://www.vivaelbirdos.com/st-louis-cardinals-sabermetrics-analysis/2025/5/25/24436758/the-cardinals-have-the-best-defense-in-major-league-baseball

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I think the real game changer isn't the measurement of those defensive metrics so much as it is scouting and positioning. Even though it's restricted now, when did shifting really come into vogue? I think it would have to be after 2010, right?

As for Jeter, remember that he was 34 when StatCast and all that came into play so he was on the downside of his prime. He wasn't the defensive wizard that a guy like Omar Vizquel was in that era, who was probably the best defensive SS of that era but the recent conventional wisdom that Jeter was a subpar defensive SS is patently absurd.

AggieEP said:

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I have great memories of the crime dog with the Braves... but he's definitely a compiler. Classic case of a good player who played for a long time. Top MVP finish was a 4th place finish and he was only a 5 time all star.

If you all can't tell by now, my hall of fame consists of guys who were GREAT, even if their primes were shorter and they didn't hit any magic numbers. Great means Cy Young winners, MVPs, All Stars all get bumps from me over the compilers because they've proven to be above their peers.

Guys like McGriff are good ball players but no one is remembering him as the best of an era.

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McGriff is a borderline case for me and I loved him as a player. He's overshadowed some by the steroid era offense of a guy like McGwire and not good enough defensively to make up for it. He's like reverse Mark Grace who was a top-tier defensive 1B and hit for a great average but not a lot of pop. Grace only had 173 HR but had 511 doubles in his career though.

There seems to be a lot of first basemen through the 80's, 90's, and early-00's who fall into the "Hall of Very Good" - McGriff, Grace, Don Mattingly, Will Clark, Keith Hernandez (though he started in the 70's), and then there are the guys who won't get in anytime soon because of steroid (McGwire & Palmeiro).

That being said, guys like Grace are immortal for his bestowing the term "slump buster" upon our general consciousness and Thrill for stories like this:

Will Clark’s batting practice story had @byrnes22 and @TheMayorsOffice IN TEARS 💀😂 @WillClark22 pic.twitter.com/NUQCqa8fBz

— No Filter Network (@NoFilterNet) October 24, 2024

AggieEP said:

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In regards to defensive metrics that's one of the things I think has really revolutionized the game.

We used to think guys like Jeter were good defensively because they did well on balls hit in their general direction. But now we can see with much greater accuracy who gets to balls that other fielders can't.

St Louis should suck this year, but they've built the best defense in the league by analytics.

https://www.vivaelbirdos.com/st-louis-cardinals-sabermetrics-analysis/2025/5/25/24436758/the-cardinals-have-the-best-defense-in-major-league-baseball

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You don't think Derek Jeter was a good defensive shortstop?

TarponChaser said:

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The Original Houston 1836 said:

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AggieEP said:

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In regards to defensive metrics that's one of the things I think has really revolutionized the game.

We used to think guys like Jeter were good defensively because they did well on balls hit in their general direction. But now we can see with much greater accuracy who gets to balls that other fielders can't.

St Louis should suck this year, but they've built the best defense in the league by analytics.

https://www.vivaelbirdos.com/st-louis-cardinals-sabermetrics-analysis/2025/5/25/24436758/the-cardinals-have-the-best-defense-in-major-league-baseball

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You don't think Derek Jeter was a good defensive shortstop?

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I won't speak for @AggieEP but there are plenty of analytics nerds who claim defensive analytics show Jeter wasn't good defensively and to me that just points out the absurdity of over-reliance on analytics.

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Yeah, again I don't know that EP is saying that, but I feel like a major component missing from data analysis is "watching guy play with one eyes".

Going back to Jacob deGrom...

I asked ChatGPT who had the fewest wins in the Hall, and after Satchel Page and the obvious reasons there, you get a guy named Addie Joss. So then I asked to compare him to deGrom. Interesting comparison.

His played like 9 years (died at age 31) and has a better ERA, slightly worse ERA+, better WHIP and similar WAR. (For some reason ChatGPT only took deGrom's stats through '23)

Joss didn't strike out as many, but walked fewer. Only started 12 games (and completed 9 of them) in his 9th season...and still had a career WAR of 47.7

That's why I like deGrom's candidacy so much, anyone that you comp his numbers too is GREAT. Addie Joss was elected to the hall of fame without the 10 year minimum required, so he's kind of a unicorn like deGrom will be when he's considered for the hall.