Mike Mussina was drafted in the first round (20th pick overall) by the Baltimore Orioles in the 1990 draft. After pitching 28 games in the minor leagues, he was called up to the major leagues and made his debut on August 4, 1991 with the Orioles. Mussina spent the first 10 seasons of his career pitching for the Orioles and spending the last eight seasons pitching for the New York Yankees.
Pros:
Mussina was consistently an above-average pitcher for the majority of his career. He had an ERA+ above 100 for the first 13 seasons of his career. Even though, he was never the best pitcher in baseball at any point in his career (with the possible exception being 2001 when he led the AL in FIP), Mussina was one of the better pitchers in baseball over an extended time period. During his career, he was in the top 10 in WAR in the AL five times. When you isolate this down to Pitchers only, he was in the top 10 in WAR for AL Pitchers 11 times.
In WAR for Pitchers, Mussina ranks 24th all time. He is ranked higher in this category than several other Hall of Famers such as Bob Gibson, Tom Glavine & Don Sutton just to name a few. Yet, Mussina only received 24.6% of the vote last year. So far, voters have been somehow unconvinced that Mussina should be in the Hall of Fame.
For what it’s worth, Mussina did get plenty of opportunity to pitch in the post-season. While his win-loss record wasn’t that great (7-8), he more than held his own during his post-season appearances with a 3.42 ERA.
Cons:
While Mussina was consistently one of the top 10 pitchers in the American League during his career, he was never considered THE best pitcher of his generation. For a voter who will vote for someone who was very good for a long time, Mussina has a good chance of getting their vote. However, if they believe only the best of a given generation is deserving of Hall of Fame induction, Mussina would unlikely to be voted for under this standard.
In looking at the pitchers with the most similar profile to him on his baseball-reference page, there are three pitchers already in the Hall of Fame (Juan Marichal, Jim Palmer & Carl Hubbell) plus another pitcher (Curt Schilling) that is also on my Hall of Fame ballot.
However, this comparison section does not lend itself to being a slam dunk case for Mussina. Mussina’s most similar pitchers list is also populated with pitchers such as David Wells, Tim Hudson & Bartolo Colon who while all having very solid careers are not quite Hall of Fame Caliber.
HoF Prognosis:
2016 will mark the third year that Mussina has been on the ballot. In 2014, he received 20.3% of the vote and was up to 24.6% of the vote last year. Going on these trends, it is possible that Mussina is one of those players who slowly gains momentum and possibly gets inducted several years into the voting cycle.
There are a lot of things I personally disagree with the Hall of Fame Voters (i.e. why are Barry Bonds & Roger Clemens not in, it’s the Hall of Fame not the Hall of Ethics) but this case falls outside the scope of Hall of Fame voters acting like moral guardians. The bottom line is that Mussina is on my ballot because he stacks up favorably with many other pitchers that have already been inducted. With how behind the time some of these voters are, I would have thought that his 270 career wins would have been enough to get him more votes. However, this does not yet appear to be the case. While Mussina deserves to be inducted this year, it is highly unlikely that he will get in.
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