Curt Schilling's Baseball Case for the Hall of Fame
First let's deal with the elephant in the room. Curt Schilling is a controversial figure. This post is not about politics. But it would be disingenuous not to acknowledge that his opinions, especially when it comes to the media in particular, might very well have impacted his vote totals while on the BBWAA HOF ballot.
Nonetheless, Schilling is among eight players on the Hall of Fame Contemporary Baseball Era Ballot. The others are Albert Belle, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Don Mattingly, Fred McGriff, Dale Murphy, and Rafael Palmeiro.
The committee will be comprised of 16 members, including eight Hall of Fame players, MLB executives, historians, and veteran writers.
Schillings case can be vexing for many. Despite 3,261 innings and 3,116 strikeouts, his 213 wins and 3.46 ERA don't look quite up to Hall of Fame standards to either the casual fan or the traditional writer who eschews modern methods of analysis.
There is a huge disconnect for some between those traditional stats and modern metrics such as WAR. Schilling's 80.5 Pitcher WAR ranks 26th all time. The only pitcher ahead of him not in the HOF is Roger Clemens. It's notable that right behind him on the list at #27 is Justin Verlander with 78 WAR. Verlander is widely viewed as a first ballot hall of famer. Contemporary John Smoltz lags behind Schilling with 66 WAR, yet sailed into the Hall.
How can those rankings be reconciled with the more traditional way of evaluating a pitcher's career? In order to understand that we need to take a closer look at the perfect storm of factors and events that leads to this disconnect. These include:
- League Run Environments
- Ballpark Factors
- ERA+ vs ERA
- Unearned Runs
- Injury Disruption
- Comparison to Elite Tier
League Run Environment
Schilling was a starting pitcher through the highest scoring era of the last 42 years. After working the first four years of his career from 1988-1991 as a reliever, he became a starter in 1992. From that time until the end of his career in 2007, MLB runs per game were about 10% higher than the decades immediately before and after:
1980-1991 MLB runs per game = 4.3
1992-2007 MLB runs per game = 4.8
2008-2022 MLB runs per game = 4.4
Hitters Ballparks
A Park factor of 100 means a ballpark was neutral, favoring neither the hitter or the pitcher. Over 100 favors the hitter, under 100 favors the pitcher. The pitching park factor for Schilling from 1992-2007 was 104, or about 4% more runs than the league average. For his absolute peak between 1998-2004 his pitching park factor was 106, or 6% higher.
Pitching in the most hitter friendly era, in very hitter friendly ballparks, especially Arizona and Boston, resulted in a distortion of his ERA relative to history. We can see this very easily when we look at ERA+, which adjusts ERA for the league and ballpark environments and much like the park factors, sets it to a scale where 100 equal league aveage. In this case the higher the ERA+ the better the pitcher's true ERA was. So what is the result of this?
ERA+ vs ERA Comparison
Since the live ball era began in 1920 there have been 170 pitchers to log at least 2500 innings. Among that group, Schilling's 127 ERA+ ranks 13th, but his raw unadjusted 3.46 ERA ranks 71st.
That alone should be a stunning differential to make one take notice, but wait, there's more.
Unearned Runs %
ERA+ of course is based on ERA, which does not take unearned runs into account. But in fact the pitcher's ability ability to suppress unearned runs is an extremely important factor in evaluation too. It's why Baseball-Reference uses Runs against per 9 IP, (RA-9), as the basis for their WAR metric.
Curt Schilling simply did not allow unearned runs. His ability to throw strikes, get strikeouts and ground balls, coupled with a very low walk rate was the perfect combination to mitigate defense mistakes. His UER% of just 2.5% is not only the lowest all time, but the gap between him and the second lowest, Adam Wainwright at 3.2% is almost as big as the gap to number 11, John Smoltz who had a 4.0%. UER rate. The average in our sample of 170 pitchers with 2500 innings total is 6.1%.
Another way to look at this is simply the raw unearned runs totals. The only pitcher with fewer unearned runs is Wainwright, who had one fewer, 64 vs. 65 for Schilling, and Wainwright had over 700 fewer innings. The next closest pitcher with over 3000 innings pitched is Mike Mussina, who allowed 101 unearned runs. John Smoltz, just mentioned above, had 107 unearned runs.
Injury Disruption
There is a natural bias towards players that have their peak seasons consecutively. Despite pitching 3,261 innings, Schilling did have his share of injuries, and they came in between his great seasons.
He broke out in 1992 with the Phillies, posting a 2.35 ERA and a 150 ERA+ while leading his team to the World Series. He was not quite as good in 1993, despite going 16-7.
Then from 1994-96 he was able to make just 56 starts, a combination of injuries and the strike of 94-95 costing him games. He posted a 119 ERA+ during that time, but went just 18-23 on bad Phillies teams.
It was in 1997 that he became truly dominant however, leading the league in games started 35 and strikeouts with 319 and posting 6.3 WAR. The next year he lead the league in starts, innings pitched, complete games, and strikeouts with his second straight 300 K season. He was having a third straight spectacular season in 1999, but missed all but four starts after the all star break due to a shoulder injury. He still ended up 15-6 with a 136 ERA+ however. It should be noted those were bad Phillies teams, finishing under .500 each year.
He was traded to the Diamondbacks in mid 2000, and in 2001 and 2002 he had back to back career years, winning 43 games, striking out 600 batters and posting 17.4 WAR.
In 2003 he missed nearly six weeks of the season due to appendicitis and an appendectomy. When he did pitch, he was great, posting a 2.95 ERA and a 159 ERA+
Schilling rebounded to have one more great season with the Red Sox in 2004, going 21-6 with a 148 ERA+, breaking an 86 year old curse with the help of some staples and a bloody sock.
Had his best 10 seasons been closer to consecutive he would probably still be in the Hall of Fame, but the periodic disruptions changed the narrative somewhat.
Comparison to Elite Tier
Schilling was always being compared to Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez, Greg Maddux, and Roger Clemens. Not being as good as those four does not disqualify one from being a Cy Young or Hall of Fame caliber pitcher. Schilling had a least three Cy Young caliber seasons, posting 8.8 and 8.6 WAR in 2001-2002 but finished second to Johnson both times. He posted 7.8 WAR in 2004 but finished second to Johan Santana. He also finished in 4th behind Martinez in 1997.
SUMMARY
I've barely mentioned his post season exploits. It's ironic perhaps that many felt at the time his 2004 post season was the cherry on top of a surefire Hall of Fame career. In 19 post season starts he went 11-2 with a 2.23 ERA. His post season WPA, or Win Percentage Added of 4.1 is second behind only Mariano Rivera. His co-world series MVP in 2001 with Johnson and the aforementioned 2004 and 2007 post seasons with the Red Sox are the stuff that legends are made of.
If one chooses not to support his candidacy for non baseball reasons, that is their choice. Everyone gets to have an opinion. But if you are basing your opinion on his worthiness for the Hall of Fame on baseball factors alone, hopefully this article helps illustrate that Schilling was a great, dominating pitcher, easily top 25 all time.
