For whom the Bell tolls

It is time for this bell to toll for
Trevor Hoffman.




There was excited. Then hopeful. Now there is, essentially, Zen.
“I’ve had a different take each year,” Trevor Hoffman said.
Yes, he hopes to gain a percentage point. But he knows he isn’t getting another save.
If five more voters are going to decide he deserves to be in the Hall of Fame, it won’t be because of anything Hoffman does now.

So he attended baseball’s Winter Meetings, will play some golf, make some appearances, hang with the family.

“That’s all you can do,” he said. “The numbers aren’t going to change.”
That ability to basically just let it be is why Hoffman got those 601 saves with a fastball that was hardly fast and a go-to pitch that is called something that makes you think it doesn’t know what it wants to be.
Certainly, nothing called a change-up should be so lethal that it makes you one of the very best in the world at what you do.

But that was what made Hoffman so effective, and it made Hoffman even more of a stud than he gets credit for.
But it really doesn’t matter how he got the job done. What matters is that he got the job done. He did so as well as almost anyone in history.
That’s why he belongs in the Hall of Fame. His kind is who the Hall of Fame is for.
He missed induction by a percentage point last season, getting 74 percent on his second year on the ballot.

History says he’ll get in eventually, probably this year, a part of the Class of 2018 that will be announced Jan. 24. Every player who ever got 67 percent their first year of eligibility, as Hoffman did, and at any point received 74 percent of the vote, has eventually made the Hall.
The contentions keeping Hoffman out of the Hall so far — and which seemingly in the minds of some make his candidacy iffy even now — are so subjective as to be ridiculous.
So let’s just meet these arguments head on.
First, Hoffman wasn’t great in the postseason. It might be generous to call him average. He blew two of his six save opportunities and had a 3.46 ERA in 13 innings.
The postseason is important. How one performs when it really matters is a factor in determining greatness. And only greatness belongs in the Hall of Fame.
Hoffman pitched in just four postseasons. Not his fault. He also saved three games during the Padres’ 1998 postseason run to the World Series.
Another “knock” on Hoffman is that he converted “just” 88.8 percent of his save opportunities. That ranks eighth among those with at least 100 career saves. Eighth, the argument goes, is not Hall of Fame material.

But talk about making stats say what you want in order to make a point. Why is 100 saves the benchmark when talking about a great closer? Hoffman had six times that many, plus one.
Sure, Eric Gagne converted 91.7 of his save chances — 187 of 204.
There is a monster difference between 187-of-204 and 601-of-677.

You can’t assume Gagne would have continued at a clip of almost 92 percent. Hoffman’s conversion rate after 487 saves (end of 2006) was 89.1 percent. So it went down a few ticks over his final four seasons.
Again, he saved 601 games. That’s second-most ever – 51 behind the arguably incomparable Mariano Rivera, who will almost certainly be a first-ballot Hall of Famer next year – and 123 more than the next-closest total.
Hoffman was a closer for 16 full seasons (not counting 2003, which he largely missed due to shoulder surgery). Most closers last five or so seasons in that role.
He had 30 or more saves in 14 of 15 seasons starting in 1995. His nine seasons of 40-plus saves is tied with Rivera for most in history. (The next-highest total is five seasons.)
Longevity is a facet of greatness. It at least enhances it. That isn’t to say every middle reliever who pitched 15 years automatically gets a plaque in Cooperstown. But a player producing at an elite level for 16 seasons is far more impressive than one who did so for seven or eight or even 10.
Now, it’s true that Dennis Eckersley, Rollie Fingers, Rich Gossage, Bruce Sutter and Hoyt Wilhelm, the five Hall of Famers who were primarily relief pitchers, all threw many more multi-inning saves than Hoffman. He had just 55 saves in which he worked more than three outs.
Those guys were horses from a different era. Kudos to them. But because the current Hall of Famers worked longer for many of their saves does not mean Hoffman doesn’t deserve to join them. Neither does the fact Fingers went four outs or more for 201 of his 341 saves mean he would have had hundreds more saves had he not been asked to get the extra outs he did.

Assumptions shouldn’t keep Hoffman out of the Hall. He did the job he was asked to do as well as anyone in his era. And again, his era was equivalent to at least a couple eras for most closers.
There is also the wins above replacement argument.

Among those who made at least 600 relief appearances, Hoffman ranks seventh with a 28.0 WAR. That’s not even half of the WAR value for Eckersley (63.0) or Rivera (57.1), is much lower than Wilhelm (47.3) and Gossage (42.0) and ranks one spot behind Lee Smith (29.6), who is not in the Hall of Fame. However, it’s five spots ahead of Fingers and seven spots ahead of Sutter.
Willie Mays’ career WAR was 156.2, so by the logic that WAR is some magic measure it’s sort of amazing Eddie Murray got in with his 68.3 WAR.
Finally, speaking of comparisons, it can be extremely tough on Hall of Fame voters to fit everyone they deem worthy into one ballot. They are limited to voting for a maximum of 10 players, and there is no minimum. Discerning voters are what keep the Hall special.
So if we graciously assume voters felt compelled to get Tim Raines and Jeff Bagwell in last year, there is no such crowd that has to get in ahead of Hoffman this year.
At most, there are five other players on the ballot as/more deserving than Hoffman. And that would be setting aside PED concerns over Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens. Chipper Jones and Jim Thome are good shots to make it in their first year of eligibility, and Vladimir Guerrero got 71.7 percent last year.