Qualifications:
(1) Pitching ability, specifically from 1975 to 1985: With the exception of a one-year hiatus in 1976 as a starting pitcher, Gossage was the best relief pitcher in baseball during this stretch (better, in my opinion, than Hall-of-Famer Bruce Sutter). It’s hard to pick a favorite statistical year, but I’ll go with 1977, the year before Goose became a member of the world-champion Yankees:
133 IP, 151 K’s, 1.62 ERA, 243 ERA+, 0.955 WHIP
(2) Closer and set-up pitcher all in one: If Goose is voted in this year, in what “experts” call his best chance to date, he’ll probably be labeled as baseball’s fifth closer to enter the Hall. But, as evidenced by the above numbers, Gossage wasn’t just a closer as we think of it today. Sure, he accumulated that silly save statistic every season during his dominant stretch, but he also played the role assumed by today’s set-up man. To wit: Goose had 52 regular-season saves of seven or more outs (by comparison, Mariano Rivera — the greatest closer of this generation — only has one such save, which came when he was a set-up man in 1996).
(3) Wicked mustache: The more mustachioed men in the Hall of Fame, the better.
1 response so far ↓
MJ // January 5, 2008 at 4:03 pm |
Gossage absolutely belongs in the Hall of Fame. He, Sutter, and Fingers were contemporaries and all three revolutionized the game as the bridge to the concept of the modern closer.
A quick point regarding Sutter: although Gossage is arguably statistically superior, Sutter is in the Hall because he was the first pitcher to use the splitter as a regular pitch, much like Mo has used the cutter. Trailblazers such as Sutter make it to Cooperstown.