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I saw Mike Mussina pitch exactly once in my life. This was in late September of 2000, during Mussina’s last season in Baltimore. It was a Sunday game at Fenway Park: the weather was gray and cold. The Orioles, well under .500 at that point, were just playing out the schedule. The Red Sox were third place in the AL East, seven games back of the Yankees.
I was in college at the time, plugging away at a dissertation on William Faulkner. The school had organized a trip to Fenway - a free ride and tickets for the first eight students who signed up – but the seats didn’t fill up. I signed on late, convincing a friend who had never seen a baseball game to come along. I promised to fill her in on the most pertinent details about the game.
I knew Mussina was pitching. I also knew that Tomo Ohka, a Japanese-born pitcher the Red Sox had acquired in 1999, was starting for Boston. I was slightly interested in seeing Mussina pitch, but I was very interested in seeing Ohka. At that moment in the team’s history, Ohka was the Red Sox best pitching prospect.
Tomo Ohka had a perfect first inning: groundout, pop out, groundout.
Mike Mussina is slightly less perfect: he strikes out Trot Nixon, and then allows a single to Jose Offerman. He whiffs Dante Bichette. Nomar Garciaparra flies out.
* * *
Sometime next week, the BBWAA will announce their voting for the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Greg Maddux will be elected, and Roger Clemens will not be elected. Both are superlatively great players, individuals who comfortably rate among the top-15 pitchers of all-time.
Tom Glavine, a 305-game winner, might get elected. So might Jack Morris, a 254-game winner. I wouldn’t bet on either of them making it this year: the voters are fickle, and it’s a really crowded ballot. But both players will get above the 50% mark.
Curt Schilling will not be elected to the Hall of Fame this year. He won’t cross the 50% threshold. He was at 38% last year….that should drop a bit.
And Mike Mussina will not get elected to the Hall of Fame this year. Like Schilling, he will not cross the 50% threshold. He’ll get half the votes that Jack Morris gets. There is a chance that he’ll slip behind Lee Smith in the inal tally.
* * *
In the top of the second, Jose Offerman makes an error on a groundball. I probably note to my friend that this is to be expected, as Offerman is a notoriously bad defensive player. The perseverant Ohka retires the next three batters.
Mussina’s second inning is an exact parallel of his first inning: strikeout, single, strikeout, out.
* * *
Mike Mussina was the salutatorian of his high school class. One of the seemingly apocryphal stories about him is that he intentionally failed an exam, so that the other student in the high school could finish ahead of him. The rumor is that Mussina didn’t want to give a speech at graduation.
Does this story seem likely to you? Are you buying it?
* * *
Third inning: Ohka’s no-hitter is broken up by a one-out single by Luis Matos. Matos steals second. Undaunted, Ohka strikes out the next two Orioles batters.
Mike Mussina strikes out the side. Twelve pitches.
* * *
Mike Mussina is not in the class of Roger Clemens, or Greg Maddux, or Randy Johnson. Here are some knocks about Mike Mussina:
-He never led the league in ERA.
-He never led the league in strikeouts.
-He never won a Cy Young Award. He was never thought of as the best pitcher in the league.
-His Black Ink – those catagories where he led the league, is small: he led in wins once. He led in innings pitched once. He led in shutouts once.
-His postseason record is a losing one: he went 7-8 in twenty-three playoff games, posting an ERA a few ticks lower than his career mark.
-He won twenty games exactly once.
It’s that last point that is, I think, the single greatest ding against Mussina. That was the constant criticism of Mussina throughout his career: he never won 20. He won 19 three times. He won 18 two more times. But he never won 20. Not until 2008, during his last year in the majors.
* * *
Fourth inning: Ohka is dealing. Fly out. Strikeout. Fly out.
I remember, around this point, realizing that a pitching duel is just about the worst introduction to baseball for a first-time viewer. There’s just not a lot going on….not a lot to keep the casual viewer entertained. And the bleachers are far away from home plate: all of the dynamic action between pitcher and catcher was happening at a distance too far to be engrossing.
Her: What pitch did Ohka throw there?
Me: I haven’t a clue. We’ll say fastball.
Mussina gives up a leadoff single to Dante Bichette. This brings up the heart of the Red Sox order. Nomar (No-mah!) strikes out. Troy O’Leary strikes out. And Lou Merloni –a man whose first name is ‘Governor’ within the greater Framingham region- he strikes out.
0-0.
* * *
There are positives about Mike Mussina. Lots of positives.
-He won a lot of baseball games. 270, to be exact.
-He didn’t lose many baseball games: his career winning percentage is .638, good enough for 41st all-time. He won 117 more games than he lost
-If his Black Ink is lacking, his Gray Ink (times finishing in the top-ten in the league) is superlative: he had a Gray Ink score of 250, which is the 21st best tally of –all-time.
-Advanced metrics all argue that Mussina was a Hall-of-Fame level player. His rWAR is83.0, good enough for 28th among starting pitchers. He has 270 Win Shares.
-While he never won the Cy Young Award, he received votes in nine seasons.
-He won six Gold Gloves.
The most important statistic here is 117: no pitcher in baseball history has ever retired with 100 more wins than loses, and not been elected to Cooperstown.
* * *
Ohka’s fifth inning is a fly-ball kind of inning: he gives up a deep fly out to Greg Myers, the Orioles DH. He gives up a fly ball to Mark Lewis. Someone names Fernando Lunar hits a line drive off the Monster, good enough for a single. Then Luis Matos flies out to deep center.
Mussina strikes out the first batter, Scott Hatteberg. Darren Lewis pops up a bunt. Rico Brogna grounds out.
The score is still 0-0. I offer to buy her a Fenway Frank, but she’s a vegetarian. I suggest to her that the hot dogs at Fenway have surprisingly little ‘meat’ in them. They’re 80% boiled cabbage, and everyone in Boston knows it.
* * *
It’s interesting that Mussina shows up on a ballot with Tom Glavine and Curt Schilling. As I see it, Schilling and Glavine represent the two significant challenges to our evaluation of Mike Mussina’s career.
Here are Mussina’s best seasons, according to Baseball-Reference’s WAR:
rWAR
|
Year
|
8.2
|
1992
|
7.1
|
2001
|
6.6
|
2003
|
6.1
|
1995
|
5.6
|
2000
|
5.5
|
1997
|
5.4
|
1994
|
5.2
|
2008
|
5.0
|
2006
|
5.0
|
1998
|
Those are Mussina’s seasons with a WAR over 5.0….what we’d call All-Star seasons. Mussina has nine of them.
Look at those years: they’re scattered. His two best years…the two years when he was a great pitcher …happen eight years apart. The rest is roller coaster: he was very good in 1994-95, 1997-98, 2000, 2003, 2006, and 2008. He was a great pitcher in 1992 and 2001.
Let’s compare that to Curt Schilling’s best seasons:
rWAR
|
Year
|
8.8
|
2001
|
8.7
|
2002
|
7.9
|
2004
|
6.3
|
1997
|
6.2
|
1998
|
6.0
|
2003
|
5.9
|
1992
|
5.5
|
2006
|
4.9
|
1996
|
4.8
|
1999
|
Curt Schilling was a monster of a pitcher between 2000 and 2004: three Cy Young-caliber seasons, and another All-Star year. He was very good in the four years leading up to that peak: he was an All-Star-level player in 1996-1999.
Mike Mussina didn’t have the peak of Curt Schilling: he didn’t come close to having the peak that Schilling did. At his very best, Curt Schilling was a better pitcher than Mike Mussina. If you are a voter who values peak performance, who wants to see the truly elite players in baseball history represented in Cooperstown, Curt Schilling is a better candidate than Mike Mussina.
On the flip side, Tom Glavine wasn’t really as good as Mike Mussina. Sure, Glavine won a few Cy Young Awards, but his year-by-year value isn’t as impressive as Mussina’s:
Mike
|
Mussina
|
*
|
Tom
|
Glavine
|
rWAR
|
Year
|
*
|
rWAR
|
Year
|
8.2
|
1992
|
*
|
8.5
|
1991
|
7.1
|
2001
|
*
|
6.1
|
1998
|
6.6
|
2003
|
*
|
5.8
|
1996
|
6.1
|
1995
|
*
|
5.5
|
1997
|
5.6
|
2000
|
*
|
4.9
|
2000
|
5.5
|
1997
|
*
|
4.8
|
1995
|
5.4
|
1994
|
*
|
4.1
|
2005
|
5.2
|
2008
|
*
|
4.1
|
2002
|
5.0
|
2006
|
*
|
4.0
|
2004
|
5.0
|
1998
|
*
|
3.8
|
1992
|
4.5
|
2002
|
*
|
3.6
|
2001
|
Leaving aside Glavine’s brilliant 1991 season, Mussina rates as a better pitcher, year-by-year. If we take 5.0 as being an All-Star level of performance, Mussina has ten All-Star seasons. Glavine has six, if we round generously.
But Glavine will receive more votes than Mussina does this year, because Glavine stuck around. Glavine tossed 4413.1 innings in the major leagues, while Mussina threw 3562.2 innings. Those eight hundred extra innings brought Glavine over the 300-win threshold.
I don’t mean that as a knock against Glavine: he was an excellent pitcher, and he deserves all the credit in the world for reaching 300 victories. Tom Glavine, late in his career, was as smart a pitcher as his teammate Greg Maddux is credited as being. He relied on every trick in the book to get to 300 wins, and I wouldn’t want to discredit that accomplishment. Tom Glavine deserves a spot in Cooperstown.
But pitch-for-pitch, inning-for-inning, Mike Mussina was a betterpitcher than Glavine.
So Mussina sits in the middle of Schilling and Glavine. He doesn’t have the peak of Schilling, but he had a longer (and more steadily excellent) career. He didn’t stick around like Glavine, but he was a better pitcher, inning-by-inning, than Tom Glavine.
* * *
6th inning:
Ohka: Strikeout. Fly out. Fly out.
Mussina: Fly out. Fly out. Strikeout.
It happens sometimes when you’re watching baseball: you’re paying attention to one thing, and then you realize that the thing you’re paying attention to isn’t the most interesting part of the game.
* * *
On September 18th, 1996, Roger Clemens took the mound against the Detroit Tigers. This was his last year in Boston, and it wasn’t a great season. He’d finished with a 10-13 mark, and a 3.63 ERA. Dan Duquette, the Red Sox then-General Manager, would predict that Clemens was entering the twilight of his career.
Clemens struck out twenty Tigers hitters that night. He made two more starts in a Boston uniform, before signing with Toronto.
Four years later, on September 24th, Mike Mussina went on the road in Fenway Park. This was his last year with his first team, his second-to-last start wearing the Orioles uniform. Like Clemens, Mussina’s career with his first team would end on a down note: Moose finished 2000 with an 11-15 mark, his first losing season since his rookie year.
* * *
Seventh inning now. The Orioles get a leadoff single from Cliff Richards, their first baseman. The next batter is Melvin Mora, who grounds into a fielder’s choice to the pitcher: Richards is out at second. Mora then tries to steal second, and is thrown out. The next batter grounds out.
The bottom of the seventh proves to be the most interesting half-inning of the game. Nomar Garciaparra leads off with a single. Troy O’Leary strikes out. The Governor hits a single to left, and Scott Hatteberg reaches on an error. The bases are now loaded, with one out.
Midre Cummings is brought in to pinch-hit. He strikes out. Two outs.
Rico Brogna strikes out. Three outs. Still goose eggs.
* * *
I don’t know exactly when I realized that Mike Mussina had tallied an astonishingly high number of strikeouts, whether I noticed it in the sixth inning, when he whiffed Dante Bichette, or the seventh, when Mussina struck out O’Leary. I think it was the O’Leary strikeout: I looked back to the big scoreboard and saw that that was Mussina’s 13th strikeout. Cummings was 14. Brogna was 15.
I tried to express what this meant to my friend: I told her what the record for strikeouts in a game was, and who had set it. I explained that Mussina was a really good pitcher, and that all of the ‘most strikeouts in a game’ record were held by really good pitchers: Clemens (AL) and Kerry Wood (NL). Bob Gibson (World Series). I might’ve mentioned that Steve Carlton and Tom Seaver each reached 19.
This was difficult: it is difficult to explain how significant an event might be, as that event is unfolding. I tried to get across just how remarkable it would be to see a 19- or 20-strikeout game, how staggeringly rare it is, and how fortunate we were to be witnessing this. I doubt that I convinced her.
The Orioles plated a run in the top of the eighth, off a couple singles and a sacrifice fly ball. In the bottom of the th the Orioles went to the bullpen, bringing in Mike Trombley to relieve Mussina.
* * *
It is very possible that Mike Mussina was tired. He had thrown 106 pitches at that point in the game, and a lot of the last pitches he threw were with the bases loaded. It was the end of the season, and the Orioles weren’t playing for anything. Maybe he was tired.
And maybe he didn’t care about the strikeout record.
This brings us back to the story about Mussina failing a test to become the salutatorian. I believe that story. Maybe it’s silly, but almost all anecdotal accounts of Mussina suggest that he’s the kind of person who doesn’t care about things just because he’s supposed to. What was the difference between first and second in his high school class? He had already been drafted by the Orioles, and he had already been accepted to Stanford….what was the difference between #1 and #2? Who does that matter to?
You can read the same philosophy into the end of his career: he is the rare pitcher to leave baseball a 20-game winner. He finished 20-9, with an ERA of 3.37. He was sixth in the Cy Young vote, 19th in the MVP vote. He could’ve asked for a three-year contract and gotten it, probably from the Yankees, and probably from half the teams in the league. He could’ve stuck around to get 300 wins.
But what’s 300? What’s so important about that? He wasn’t really great in his last year, and he had had three bumpy years in New York prior to that. Maybe 300 wins wasn’t worth the trouble.
Or maybe I’m reading too much into things.
Here’s what I know: on September 24th, Mussina struck out fifteen Red Sox hitters through seven innings of shutout baseball. He left the game having thrown 106 pitches.
Here’s something else I know: I know that Mike Mussina threw 137 pitches on April 29th of that same year….137. Over the 2000 season, Mussina had thirteen starts where he threw at least 115 pitches. He had seven starts when he was over 120 pitches. Pitching past 106 wasn’t rare for Mussina: it was par for the course.
I can’t tell you how frustrated I was when I saw Trombley come out of the bullpen for the 8th inning. I felt cheated out of seeing history, disappointed that I had lucked into a game that was nearing ‘historic,’ only to see a relief pitcher come out of the bullpen.
Now, I imagine that Mussina’s decision to leave that game without going for the record is a decision that fits entirely with the rest of his career. Mussina took a long time to have that 20-win season, because it just didn’t matter to him. He had lots of years where he was in the top-ten in multiple pitching catagories, but he almost never finished first in those catagories. He retired with 270 career wins, when 300 wins (and many millions of dollars) were on the table.
* * *
Someday, the Hall of Fame will open its doors to Mike Mussina, a fully deserving candidate. He will likely be elected after Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine and Pedro Martinez and Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling and John Smoltz. He might have to wait until after Roger Clemens gets in, and after the Jack Morris voters get their way. But he’ll get there.
And I’ll argue his case until he gets in. Because I’ve never seen a pitcher pitch as well as Mike Mussina did on that cold day at Fenway, where I counted K’s and followed pitches from the cheap seats, while trying to explain baseball to someone who had never seen the game, and didn’t know how remarkable a player Mike Mussina was.
Dave Fleming is a writer living in Wellington, New Zealand. He welcomes comments, questions and suggestions here and at dfleming1986@yahoo.com