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Blue Jays Discussion: The trade deadline has passed. Time to see what this can do (most acquisitions expected to be present Thursday in Minnesota)

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The Nemesis said:
Nobody's saying Jack Morris was bad. Merely that his perceived talent level was boosted by the fact that he won a lot of games and people tend to conflate team success with specific individual performance.

Jack Morris won a ton of games because:

a) he was a pretty good pitcher

b) he spent most of his career on pretty good Tigers teams (including the 1984 WS winners) along with mercenary stop-overs on the WS-winning 91 Twins and the back-to-back champion Jays (he is inconsistently credited as winning the 93 WS in spite of not pitching in that post season after a terrible regular campaign)

c) He received a fairly strong amount of run support from those good teams

and

d) He generally pitched a ton of innings, leaving him in games for longer and giving him a greater chance of being the winning pitcher.

Basically all of his HOF candidacy and major modern plaudits rest on the fact that he won several world series and racked up a ton of wins. But this ignores that outside of that he was very good, but not that good. He was only an all-star 5 times. He never won a Cy Young nor finished higher than 3rd in the voting. His only times leading the AL in a major pitcher stat that wasn't wins/IP/starts were a year where he led qualified starters in walks and a year where he led in strikeouts (which was also the year he led in IP and batters faced and wasn't even his best year by K/9). If you look at Jack Morris' results based on individual performance he probably shouldn't have been a HOF pitcher. He didn't significantly prevent runs on his own (and the idea that he "pitched to the score" has been researched heavily and found lacking) and he was never the kind of dominating mound presence that's usually identified with HOF-caliber pitchers.

Heck, it's been pointed out that his HOF case sort of initially limped along, getting decent voting traction but never threatening the admissions threshold until he and Bert Blyleven became the pitcher flashpoint in the sabermetrics debate. With Blyleven identified as the pitcher emblematic of the limitations of traditional stats and whose career was grossly overlooked because he didn't rack up wins or WS victories, Morris became the traditionalist rallying point, hyping up his gritty, gamer, intangibles-laden nature and spinning the narrative of him as this magic victory totem who breathed in oxygen and exhaled winning in concentrated form. when the SABR war hit its early peak, Morris' HOF vote totals rose, buoyed by curmudgeonly writers who were going to put a "real" pitcher in the HOF over spreadsheet nerd hero Blyleven and his non-winning ways.

Honestly, a reasonable case can be made that Dave Stieb was a better pitcher than Jack Morris, he simply had the poor fortune to play for some garbage Jays squads in the 80s and see his career fizzle out due to injury. But because he didn't put up gaudy win totals or trudge through a slow decline phase where he continued to accrue IP and counting stats, he was one-and-done on the HOF ballot while Morris got himself within a hair's breadth of induction on vote totals before he aged out and was subsequently put in by one of the small standing committees that do special inclusions (including stupid special inclusions like Harold freaking Baines)

The point of that last paragraph is that most people probably wouldn't make a super strong case for Stieb in the HOF. He's probably considered mid to upper echelon "hall of the very good". And yet there's less that separates him from Jack Morris than separates Morris from his now-contemporaries in the hall.

None of this is to say he's not a good pitcher, or even a great one. He's just not nearly as good as he gets lauded for being if you stop associating his win totals with his personal worth/success as a baseball player. Wins are a team stat decided by total team performance. Crediting them to a single guy who doesn't even interact with half of the equation for earning victories is a disservice to accurately reflecting the impact that players have.

Further Reading

www.si.com

Revisiting Jack Morris's Controversial, Never-Ending Hall of Fame Debate

Jack Morris has become the poster child for old-school vs. new-school Hall of Fame debates. His candidacy gets another inspection, and it's plenty complicated.
www.si.com www.si.com

blogs.fangraphs.com

“The Cooperstown Casebook” Excerpt: The War on WAR

Read an excerpt from Jay Jaffe’s new book, “The Cooperstown Casebook.”…
blogs.fangraphs.com blogs.fangraphs.com

bleacherreport.com

The Case Against Jack Morris

Is Jack Morris a great pitcher? His 254-186 record is pretty similar to Hall of Famers Bob Gibson (251-174), Red Faber (254-213), Vic Willis (249-205), and Herb Pennock (240-162)...
bleacherreport.com bleacherreport.com

mopupduty.com

The Dave Stieb vs. Jack Morris Hall of Fame Debate

Hall of Fame voting is almost here, and again the case is being made for Jack Morris to be inducted into the Hall of Fame. Jack Morris’ career is being compared to the careers of pitchers in…
mopupduty.com

I think there honestly used to be more easily available links discussing Morris' career and the reckoning htat occurred when the statistical revolution happened, but googling Morris now turns up more results for the firestorm surrounding his offensive antics in the Tigers' broadcast booth that got him suspended last season.
Click to expand...

Absolutely Morris' regular season career isn't HHOF-worthy and absolutely Stieb was a better regular season pitcher with a better regular season career.

BUT

Jack Morris had two absolutely towering postseasons for WS-winning teams in 1984 and 1991, and those completely change his legacy from just looking at his regular season WAR.

It's like comparing Glenn Anderson and Bernie Nicholls. Nicholls was a better player than Anderson, but Anderson's incredible record of clutch goals for winning teams means that Anderson was a more *important* player than Nicholls and has a substantially greater legacy. And that's why Anderson is in the HHOF and Nicholls isn't.

Stieb should probably also be in the BHOF though.
 
MuadDib said:
Might be worth seeing what he ends up signing for before we start worrying about hypothetical failures.
Click to expand...
I am not saying we won't sign him, but this trend of signing your elite talent young and early has literally already passed for the Jays. He is entering his Arb years now. The important thing is getting him signed. I really don't care what the number is, just keep him away from the open market.
 
Blitzkrug said:
Maybe I'm high off my own supply but I think Cleveland is primed for a deep run.

The term is overused a lot but they're scrappy as shit. Like Eyedea said, they don't strike out. All of their hitters, while not particularly intimidating outside J-Ram are all incredibly strong fundamental guys where they will make your pitchers work their asses off which usually ends in a bloop hit.

They hit well for contact, can work the count, steal bases at an aggressive clip and are backed up by an great pitching staff and elite bullpen. Teams who can manufacture runs are the ones who generally get stuff done come October and Cleveland does it better than almost anyone. Not to mention the guy steering ship has been there done that in Francona.

Of the three options I think I'd want to face the Guardians the least. I legitimately would rather have home field against the Rays or face Seattle than that team.
Click to expand...

Team A:
.269/.322/.412
.144 ISO (21st)
99 wRC+ (10th)
15.9% K (best by a mile)
6.3% BB (worst)
139 HR (24th)
104 SB (5th)

Team B:
.252/.314/.385
.133 ISO (25th)
100 wRC+ (18th)
18.3% K% (best by a mile)
7.4% BB (26th)
99 HR (29th)
81 SB (5th)

Team A = KC 2015
Team B = CLE 2022

Definitely some similarities offensively. KC was really annoying and this Cleveland team is no different.

Their ERAs are close as well but Cleveland's underlying stats are much better. I'll take their rotation and bullpen over KC's.
 
EpochLink said:
Vladdy about to get a big ass extension.
Click to expand...
I'd be trying to lock him in now in what people are qualifying as a down year.
Seath The Scaleless said:
Team A:
.269/.322/.412
.144 ISO (21st)
99 wRC+ (10th)
15.9% K (best by a mile)
6.3% BB (worst)
139 HR (24th)
104 SB (5th)

Team B:
.252/.314/.385
.133 ISO (25th)
100 wRC+ (18th)
18.3% K% (best by a mile)
7.4% BB (26th)
99 HR (29th)
81 SB (5th)

Team A = KC 2015
Team B = CLE 2022

Definitely some similarities offensively. KC was really annoying and this Cleveland team is no different.

Their ERAs are close as well but Cleveland's underlying stats are much better. I'll take their rotation and bullpen over KC's.
Click to expand...
2015 KC was the first team I thought of but they were way, way more aggressive on the basepaths than Cleveland is.

I would take the Guardians rotation but that trio of Holland/Herrera/Davis KC had in the backend of their pen was lethal.
 
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MS said:
Absolutely Morris' regular season career isn't HHOF-worthy and absolutely Stieb was a better regular season pitcher with a better regular season career.

BUT

Jack Morris had two absolutely towering postseasons for WS-winning teams in 1984 and 1991, and those completely change his legacy from just looking at his regular season WAR.

It's like comparing Glenn Anderson and Bernie Nicholls. Nicholls was a better player than Anderson, but Anderson's incredible record of clutch goals for winning teams means that Anderson was a more *important* player than Nicholls and has a substantially greater legacy. And that's why Anderson is in the HHOF and Nicholls isn't.

Stieb should probably also be in the BHOF though.
Click to expand...

That's a terrible way to add weight to a guy's credentials though. "Hey, you probably weren't good enough 95% of the time, but you had the good fortune to be very good a couple of times in a limited sample that's also largely tied up in the deified narrative of one single game, so we'll just give you a few bonus points on the test and round up"

He was awful in his other two post-season runs and was bad enough in 93 that the Jays didn't even carry him on the post-season roster. So basically he succeeded at like a 40% clip in terms of post-season appearances (possibly less so because he was kind a mediocre to bad with the Twins vs the Jays in the 91 ALCS before he had that ridiculous WS performance) and he gets kudos for it.

It's also not really here nor there, but character is also supposed to matter and Morris doesn't have the best track record of not being a massive asshole.

It still suffers from the fatal issue that it's conflating a lot of factors beyond the control of the player himself. It's not Stieb's fault he doesn't have Morris' playoff track record. He played for some dumpster fire Jays squads and so he only got two kicks at the can. One where he was decent and one where he was bad. If he had gotten 2 more cracks at it on great teams like Morris did maybe we'd be singing a different tune. But it was Stieb's bad luck that he was too broken by the Jays' WS years to be relevant.
 
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Morris wasn't even good during the regular season for the Jays in '92. League average pitcher who got the best run support in the league.
 
That doesn't seem that great for the Mariners. They're paying 200 million for 8 years of which 6 would have been team control and fairly cheap anyway just to get the option to tack on either an 8x25 at the end if he's bad to average or 10x35 at the end if he's good to great so it's not even like the team option is all that amazing if he performs like you hope. But also if he bombs out not only are you paying 200 million for the 8 years 6 of which would have been cheap but he has the choice to take 5x18 more if he wants it.

If he's amazing you get essentially get 18 year x 30.5 million dollar contract. If he's terrible he gets a 13 year x 22.3 million dollar contract regardless, and then there's a whole whack of middle ground some of which is good but there's very little great deal in there, and they give up the cheaper pre-arb and arb years.

I get it, pay your stars, but if I'm paying my starts before they're a star I want a little better of a deal. Julio is very quickly becoming a star, and might already be there, but that amount of guaranteed money without a ton of great value potential still makes me uneasy at this point
 
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The Nemesis said:
That's a terrible way to add weight to a guy's credentials though. "Hey, you probably weren't good enough 95% of the time, but you had the good fortune to be very good a couple of times in a limited sample that's also largely tied up in the deified narrative of one single game, so we'll just give you a few bonus points on the test and round up"

He was awful in his other two post-season runs and was bad enough in 93 that the Jays didn't even carry him on the post-season roster. So basically he succeeded at like a 40% clip in terms of post-season appearances (possibly less so because he was kind a mediocre to bad with the Twins vs the Jays in the 91 ALCS before he had that ridiculous WS performance) and he gets kudos for it.

It's also not really here nor there, but character is also supposed to matter and Morris doesn't have the best track record of not being a massive asshole.

It still suffers from the fatal issue that it's conflating a lot of factors beyond the control of the player himself. It's not Stieb's fault he doesn't have Morris' playoff track record. He played for some dumpster fire Jays squads and so he only got two kicks at the can. One where he was decent and one where he was bad. If he had gotten 2 more cracks at it on great teams like Morris did maybe we'd be singing a different tune. But it was Stieb's bad luck that he was too broken by the Jays' WS years to be relevant.
Click to expand...

It isn't the Hall of Statistics or the Hall of Career WAR.

The playoffs matter. Hugely. They're what people remember. Dominating in big games to win a championship is exponentially more important than playing well in the regular season with your team 15 games out.

Every sports HOF is like this. You can complain about it all you want, but it's the way the world works. And it sucks for guys who played on bad teams but again ... that's the way the world works.

It's absurd to pretend the playoffs somehow don't exist. The fact that Morris had two 'Conn Smythe-level' playoffs changes his legacy hugely compared to if he was the same pitcher and those years didn't happen.
 
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