Schilling’s case for Fame
Curt Schilling’s October heroics loom large
USA TODAY is counting down the top 24 candidates on the Baseball Hall of Fame ballot in advance of the election results Jan. 24. The countdown is based on balloting by our power rankings panel, which includes five Hall voters.
No. 7: Curt Schilling
A late bloomer traded three times before his age-25 season, Schilling became one of baseball’s great workhorse starters and spent most of his 30s establishing a reputation as a dependable ace and one of the sport’s most bankable big-game pitchers.
Schilling worked in an era that included Hall of Famers such as Greg Maddux, Pedro Martinez and Randy Johnson and never won a Cy Young Award, but he finished second in his league’s voting three times and earned six All-Star Game nods in an eight-season span from 1997 to 2004. He struck out as many as 300 batters three times in that stretch and led the National League in strikeout-to-walk ratio every year from 2001 to 2004.
But Schilling’s regular-season accolades pale in comparison to his October heroics. A fiery competitor and arguably the best postseason pitcher since Christy Mathewson, Schilling appeared in four World Series and his teams won three of them. In the Red Sox’s 2004 American League Championship Series comeback against the Yankees, Schilling famously battled through an ankle injury that bled through his sock while he pitched. He became part of Boston folklore forever when the club went on to beat the Cardinals in the World Series to end the Curse of the Bambino.
The case for: Schilling’s career 80.7 Wins Above Replacement (WAR) ranks 26th all time among pitchers, and the only guys above him on the list not yet enshrined in Cooperstown are ballotmates Mike Mussina and Roger Clemens. Clemens is also the only other pitcher with more than 3,000 strikeouts who has not been elected.
Schilling retired as the modern-era leader in strikeout-to-walk ratio. Across
19 postseason starts, he went 11-2 with a
2.23 ERA and 120 strikeouts against 25 walks in 1331⁄ innings. Beyond the 3 bloody sock’s role in postseason history, Schilling earned MVP honors in the 1993 National League Championship Series with the Phillies and the 2001 World Series with the Diamondbacks.
The case against: The only real statistical knock on Schilling is that because of a late start, some bum luck and a couple of early-career arm injuries, he racked up 216 career regular-season wins — fewer than contemporaries Kenny Rogers and David Wells, both of whom fell off Hall ballots after one year. And, again, while Schilling was often among the best pitchers in his league, he was never quite as transcendentally dominant in the regular season as Maddux, Johnson or Martinez.
Among players never closely associated with performance-enhancing drug use, Schilling is one of an extremely few who has seen his Hall candidacy questioned because of the ballot’s character clause. Though he developed incredible control on the mound, Schilling has yet to do so on social media, and his aggressive use of that forum has likely hurt his chance of election. Schilling was fired from a role as an on-air analyst at ESPN over his dissemination of an anti-transgender meme and cost himself votes from some writers by jokingly endorsing the lynching of journalists.
X factors: Now a Breitbart News Radio host, Schilling has at times claimed he will run for the Senate in Massachusetts, though there is little indication that a successful congressional bid implies praiseworthy character. Rapidly shifting societal standards for propriety might help or hurt his cause.
Consensus: Though now better known to many for his political views than for his baseball abilities, Schilling was a Hall of Fame-caliber pitcher untainted by steroid allegations. His case appeared to be gaining steam before some especially outspoken and contentious online behavior before the 2017 balloting; his vote percentages have increased and decreased in alternating years, peaking at 52% before dipping to 45% last year. That said, the Baseball Writers’ Association of America electorate is growing to include more voters likely to appreciate his statistical contributions who have long since been blocked from seeing his latest hot takes on Twitter. He won’t get in this year but could wind up on a plaque by 2019.