Cooperstown Candidates: Tom Glavine and Mike Mussina

Though he didn't achieve historical dominance, Tom Glavine is universally accepted as a Hall of Fame pitcher. He won 305 games in a career that spanned over two decades and almost 4,500 innings. He had a 3.30 ERA in 35 postseason starts. He was a two-time Cy Young Award winner and the 1995 World Series MVP. He was an excellent pitcher for a long time, and chances are he's about to become a first-ballot Hall of Famer, inducted alongside former teammate Greg Maddux and former manager Bobby Cox.

Objectively, Mike Mussina was just as good as Tom Glavine. He may have been even better. And yet, it will be years before Mussina makes it to Cooperstown, if he ever gets there at all.

There are three likely reasons for this discrepancy in perception between these two pitchers, and not one is satisfactory:

Career Wins
Glavine: 305
Mussina: 270

Cy Young Awards
Glavine: 2
Mussina: 0

World Series Titles
Glavine: 1
Mussina: 0

First of all: the wins. Glavine having more of them doesn't make him the better pitcher. Glavine has 35 more wins because he pitched almost 1,000 more innings than Mussina. And those innings have value. But the higher win total reflects a longer career, not a better career. Consider the fact that Mussina's winning percentage (.638) was better than Glavine's (.600), and better than most Hall of Fame pitchers, too.

Similarly, Glavine had five seasons in which he won at least 20 games; Mussina only had one such year. Again, this would seem to imply that Glavine was better, when actually, Mussina was just terribly unlucky. In the two strike-shortened seasons ('94 and '95), Mussina won 16 and 19 games. Had those been full seasons, he almost certainly would have reached the arbitrary plateau of 20. He won at least 18 games in four other seasons. A few breaks here and there, and Mussina could've easily had as many 20-win seasons as Glavine.

Then there's the Cy Young issue. Glavine won twice, and Mussina never won. There are a couple of problems here. One: Glavine only deserved one of those Cy Youngs (1991). In 1998, he only ranked fifth in the league in pitching WAR, and fourth in ERA. Along the same lines, Mussina probably should have won the Cy Young in 2001, when he led the league in pitching WAR and ranked second in ERA. Instead, Roger Clemens got the award because he won 20 games. So had the Cy Young Awards been doled out fairly, Glavine and Mussina would have each won one.

And lastly: the postseason. Glavine boasts an illustrious playoff career, including a 3.30 ERA in 35 postseason starts and the 1995 World Series MVP. Mussina's October record is mostly ignored. But it exists, and it's worth discussion. His 1997 playoff performance, for instance, was legendary. In four starts for the Orioles, he gave up a total of just four runs across 29 innings pitched, striking out 41 hitters. Those four starts came against the Seattle Mariners (their lineup included Ken Griffey Jr., Edgar Martinez, and Alex Rodriguez) and the Cleveland Indians (their lineup included Manny Ramirez and Jim Thome). The Orioles somehow lost both of Mussina's starts in the ALCS -- even though he surrendered just one run total across 15 innings -- so the impressive streak could not continue into the World Series.

With the Yankees, Mussina quietly enabled two of the most memorable postseason moments in baseball history. Derek Jeter's famous flip play, which preserved a 1-0 lead in Game 3 of the 2001 ALDS, would have had no meaning without Mussina's seven scoreless innings. And Aaron Boone's walk-off home run in Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS might have never happened without Mussina, who threw three scoreless innings out of the bullpen in the first relief appearance of his career. Altogether, he had a 3.42 ERA in 21 playoff starts (23 appearances) -- a better postseason ERA than the likes of Andy Pettitte and Jack Morris.

Glavine's only legitimate edge over Mussina is career length. He threw about 900 more innings. But Mussina's innings were of a higher quality. He struck out 7.1 batters per nine innings; Glavine only struck out 5.3. So despite Glavine's large innings advantage, Mussina actually had more career strikeouts (2,813 to 2,607). Mussina also had the better walk rate (2.0 to 3.1) and the better WHIP (1.19 to 1.31).

Even though Mussina was clearly better at notching strikeouts and preventing baserunners, Glavine's ERA (3.54) was nominally better than Mussina's (3.68). That's not unexpected, given the contexts in which they pitched. Mussina spent his entire career in the brutal AL East; Glavine had the benefit of facing the pitcher every time through the order, and Andruw Jones was his center fielder for over a decade. Unsurprisingly, Mussina had the slightly-better ERA+ (123 to 118), confirming the idea that he was likely the better pitcher.

That 3.68 career ERA may not look Hall of Fame-worthy at first. But for a pitcher who spent his entire career in the AL East during the Steroid Era, it's an excellent number. In 2000, for example, Mussina's ERA was 3.79 -- not a spectacular figure by normal standards. But in 2000, that was the third-best ERA in the league; the average ERA in the AL that year was close to 5.00. Mussina's ERA ranked in the top five in the league seven different times; Glavine, five times. Mussina's ERA ranked in the top ten in the league 11 different times; Glavine, eight times.

After factoring in everything, Baseball Reference prefers Mussina's career:

Career WAR
Mussina: 82.7
Glavine: 74

Mike Mussina is the pitching version of Jeff Bagwell on this Hall of Fame ballot. He's vastly underrated, mostly because he was plagued by terrible luck. He spent his entire career pitching against good offenses in small ballparks during the most hitter-friendly era in history. He didn't win the Cy Young he deserved. He finished tantalizingly short of 20-win seasons on multiple occasions, partly because of the untimely strike. He had a historically good winning percentage, yet never won a World Series. The year he pitched well enough to carry his team to a championship, his offense forgot to score runs for him. The Yankees won titles in 2000 and 2009 but Mussina was a Yankee from 2001 to 2008. Once, he even came within one strike of finishing a perfect game at Fenway Park -- until Carl Everett's last-second single:



Mussina and Glavine were both consistent, durable, and excellent pitchers throughout an era dominated by hitters. They should both be inducted into the Hall of Fame as soon as possible. But knowing Mussina's luck, he probably shouldn't hold his breath.

My Ballot So Far:
1. Barry Bonds
2. Roger Clemens
3. Greg Maddux
4. Jeff Bagwell
5. Frank Thomas
6. Mike Mussina
7. Tom Glavine