Path to Cooperstown looking clear for Mussina
USA TODAY is counting down the top candidates on the Baseball Hall of Fame ballot in advance of the results next Wednesday. The countdown is based on balloting by our power rankings panel, which includes five Hall voters.
No. 6: Mike Mussina
Pedro Martinez had his day in Cooperstown. So did Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, John Smoltz and Randy Johnson. The path might be clearing for Mussina to soon join them.
All pitched through a suffocating offensive era and flourished. While Mussina lacks the slam-dunk Hall of Fame credentials of his enshrined contemporaries, his support is on the upswing, and his résumé seems to take on more shine as workhorse starters become more of an endangered species.
The case for: You like wins? Mussina compiled 270 of them over his career, shy of that magic 300 number but good for 33rd all time. He’d won at least 18 games five times but never 20 until his last season, when, at 39, he went 20-7 with a respectable 3.37 ERA in 2008. He never led the American League in ERA but produced 11 top-10 finishes and six times finished in the top five of Cy Young Award voting.
While not known as a strikeout artist in the mold of Martinez or Johnson, Mussina punched out at least 200 in four seasons, and his 3.58 strikeoutwalk ratio easily exceeds the average Hall of Famer’s mark of 2.04. While consistency was his hallmark, some of his better years are more impressive viewed through a modern lens. Mussina went 17-11 with a 3.15 ERA in 2001, his first season with the New York Yankees. That seemingly ordinary season gains a little more credence when you consider he tied for the AL lead in ERA-plus (143) and led the circuit in Fielding Independent Pitching (2.92).
An excellent athlete and cerebral mound presence, Mussina won seven Gold Glove Awards and made five All-Star rosters, all with the Baltimore Orioles from 1992 to 1999.
The case against: There is that 3.68 ERA, well above the 2.99 mark for an average Hall of Famer and weaker than that of Martinez (2.93), Maddux (3.16), Johnson (3.29), Smoltz (3.33) and Glavine (3.54), who pitched through a similarly power-charged era. While durability was his hallmark, Mussina was not indomitable. He gave up at least 200 hits in seven seasons. In his final seven seasons, he was only a bit better than a league-average pitcher, racking up 106 wins but accompanied by a 4.00 ERA and 111 ERA-plus.
X factors: Mussina is one of the greatest pitchers in modern Orioles history and jumped to the Yankees when they were in the midst of four World Series titles in five years. Yet he never won a ring. He pitched capably in the 2001 playoffs when the Bombers won three of his four starts before losing Game 7 of the World Series.
He did his part to lift Baltimore to the Fall Classic. In the 1997 AL Division Series, he twice beat a Seattle Mariners club featuring Ken Griffey Jr., Alex Rodriguez and Edgar Martinez, allowing 10 baserunners over 14 innings, striking out 16. In the AL Championship Series, he was even more dominant, striking out 25 Cleveland Indians and giving up four hits in 15 innings. But he received two no-decisions for his handiwork; the Orioles lost both games in extra innings and the ALCS in six games and did not reach the playoffs again until 2012.
Mussina also pitched his entire career in the AL East, going up against those vaunted Yankee squads early in his career and even more loaded Red Sox squads in the 2000s.
Consensus: Mussina is heading in the right direction. After a ballot debut at 20.3% in 2014, he zoomed to 52% last year and is at 73% in early totals this year. He shared that first ballot with Maddux and Glavine, but now Curt Schilling is the only viable starting pitcher candidate. Soon, Roy Halladay and Andy Pettitte will join the chase, but it seems highly likely Mussina will hit that 75% mark before any other starter.