Re-Ranking the Hall of Famers: #104- Mike Mussina, SP5

Class of: 2019 (BBWAA, 76.7%)

Team: Orioles (and Yankees)

Key Stats: 270 Wins, 81.2 WAR, 3.68 ERA

The 2019 Hall of Fame election cycle will always be one of interest to me.  I remember going from the most disappointed I’d ever been with the Hall of Fame with the induction of Harold Baines in December, to the most enthused I’d ever been in January with the BBWAA election announcement, with four players that I loved watching as a kid getting the call.  Mike Mussina, who was tracking in the low 80% for most of the pre-ballot announcement, was probably the one I was happiest about.  I thought he would be marginalized due to not having the milestone stats that the writers love to vote for, but this time the BBWAA came through on many accounts and recognized one of the best pitchers of the 1990’s and early 2000’s.

Moose was a brilliant pitcher almost from his first season.  He came up with Baltimore in 1991, the year after he was drafted 20^th overall, and was worth 1.7 WAR in roughly one third of a season.  Following that rookie campaign, Moose was dominant for almost the remainder of his 18-year career.  From 1992 until 2008, Moose saw his WAR drop below 3.0 only three times and was north of 5.0 ten times as he did everything in his power to limit scoring during the best offensive environment of all-time.  Mussina struck out 150 or more batters 11 times in that stretch, cresting over 200 batters four times.  Like Greg Maddux and Curt Schilling, Mussina limited walks exceptionally well, with 14 seasons of 50 or fewer walks.  While with the Orioles, Mussina quickly became the team’s ace and led the O’s to the post season in 1996 and 1997 but never made it past the ALCS.  Mussina also developed a reputation as being a strong defender on the mound with four Gold Gloves during his time with the Orioles.

Following a 10-year run as the best pitcher the Orioles ever had (or second best to Jim Palmer), Mussina moved on to the New York Yankees in 2001 and continued to pitch at a high level for most of the next eight seasons.  While with the Yankees, he was rarely looked at as needing to be the ace as the Yanks still had Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte when he first joined them with other pitchers added afterwards (Kevin Brown, Chien-Ming Wang, Randy Johnson, Carl Pavano, etc.), unlike how he was the uncontested ace with Baltimore.  Mussina kept putting up great numbers and made another seven trips to the postseason.  His biggest moment came in the now infamous “Grady Little Game”.  In Game 7 of the ALCS in 2003, Clemens stumbled out of the gate with four runs allowed in the first three innings.  Mussina, for the first time in his career, was summoned in relief and threw three shutout innings that gave the Yankees offense time to wake up and make a comeback off of an insanely dominant Pedro Martinez, eventually ending in a walk-off win for the Pinstripes.

Mussina had a very brief, if any, decline period at the end of his career.  His worst year, 2006, was his penultimate season when his ERA ballooned over 5 for the first time ever.  While he didn’t strike batters out as frequently that season as he had in the past, he still had a low walk rate and even had a decent homerun rate, so maybe it was just some bad luck that year.  His final season was one of the best finales ever.  Moose won 20 games for the first time in his career, had a 3.37 ERA and was worth 3.6 WAR.  Moose knew that he probably could have hung around another couple of seasons for the Yanks and reached 300 wins, but he also knew that it wouldn’t change anything because he already compared well to his contemporaries and other already elected to the Hall of Fame.

To look at Mussina’s rankings during his career would be doing the pitcher a disservice.  Mussina never had the peaks of pitchers like Johnson, Clemens or Martinez, but he also avoided their declines as well.  Mussina is very much in the mold of a pitcher like Don Sutton, a guy who went out to pitch whenever he was called on and performed at a high level for a long period of time.  Mussina’s career is also one where context is needed to appreciate how excellent he was.  Pitching for 18 years in Baltimore and New York meant that most of Mussina’s starts came in three of the best hitters’ parks in baseball that are not stuck in the mountains.  Camden Yards, Yankee Stadium and Fenway Park accounted for nearly 60% of his starts, hence why despite a mediocre-looking 3.68 ERA, his career ERA- is an excellent 82 (and his FIP- is 79).  Because of the parks where Mussina pitched, he always was going to have a higher-than-typical home run rate, and averaged a homer allowed nearly every 9 innings.  However, because he was excellent at limiting contact (7.11 K/9), and preventing baserunners (1.98 BB/9, 1.19 WHIP), he kept that damage to a minimum and gave his team a great chance to win each game he pitched.

I think part of the reason why it took several times for Mussina to gain election (beyond not having 300 wins and/or 3000 K’s) was because there was no story to him.  Johnson, Maddux, Martinez, even Tom Glavine and John Smoltz had a good story to their careers, but Moose was just a guy.  When he got the call about being inducted, he was finishing a practice as head coach for his high school basketball team.  He’s a crossword enthusiast and works with student athletes in his hometown in Pennsylvania.  He was, to borrow a phrase, more everyman than superman.  However, Mike Mussina was always a great pitcher, he was just quieter about it than his peers.