3 Red Sox players being screwed out of their rightful spot in the Hall of Fame
The Baseball Hall of Fame and their voting process is an inexact science at best. There are plenty of deserving players who have yet to be inducted, and some undeserving ones who have made it to Cooperstown. Let's take a look back on some great Red Sox performances of the past, and wonder why they aren't currently Hall of Famers.
The hallowed halls of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown are where every player sets their sights when they make their way to the big leagues. Being part of that select few, that cream of the crop, the best of the best is an intoxicating pursuit that all endure and most, sadly, fall short on.
The Boston Red Sox, as a franchise, have had 44 separate inductees that have BOSTON A.L. written on their plaques, with 12 of them using the Red Sox as their primary team on the plaque (i.e. which hat they're wearing), most recently being David Ortiz in 2022.
While it is amazing to think of the droves of legendary talent that has come through Fenway Park for the home team, a lot of fans like to harken on the ones who should be placed in the same echelon as those who have been inducted. In an age where the qualifications of who is a sure-fire Hall of Famer is in flux and more advanced statistics are being used to determine who deserves the call, let's take a look at three guys who deserve to be in the Hall of Fame.
No. 1: Roger Clemens
Now, before anyone says anything about Clemens' PED usage and dives into the never-ending debate of whether players who used PEDs deserve to be included in the Hall of Fame, I will offer you a compromise. It has been reported that Clemens first took HGH in 1998 (if he did take any sort of steroid) in the infamous Mitchell Report, so let's take all of Clemens' stats post-1997 out of consideration, and look at the case built by the stretch of his career from 1984 to 1997. I'm going to compare Clemens to another pitcher who is in the Hall of Fame, and go from there.
HOF Pitcher: 165-87 record, 2.76 career ERA, 2,396 strikeouts, 53.1 career pitching WAR, 3 Cy Young awards, 1 MVP award, 6 All-Star selections
Roger Clemens, 1984-1997: 213-118 record, 2.97 ERA, 2,882 strikeouts, 92.7 pitching WAR, 4 Cy Young awards, 1 MVP award, 6 All-Star selections
Just looking at the statistical breakdown, Clemens should be a Hall of Famer just based off of his pre-steroid output. With far more wins, strikeouts, pitching WAR, and an extra Cy Young, the case against Clemens being in the hall because of reported usage after this period should be a moot point. That mystery Hall of Famer? First-ballot inductee Sandy Koufax. Of course, comparing across baseball eras is a slippery slope, but just looking at the numbers, it makes no sense why Clemens (and any of the steroid guys, to be honest) shouldn't be considered based off their numbers pre-usage.
No. 2: Dwight Evans
Steering away from tip-toeing the steroid line, let's focus on the Baines Line. For those who are unfamiliar, the Baines Line refers to Harold Baines, recent inductee into the Hall of Fame through the Today's Game Era Committee, and who has become the poster child for the undeserving Hall of Famer.
Baines collected a career WAR of 38.8, and fans like to use this number as reasoning for many more players who have accumulated more WAR than Baines to find their way into the Hall. Many players work using this framing, but I'm going to focus on one of Baines' contemporaries -- Dwight Evans.
Dewey may genuinely be one of the most underrated players in baseball history, and I think that had he hit more of the traditional statistical milestones that voters look for in position players, Evans would have been enshrined long ago. Evans fell just short on the WAR milestone of 70 that usually serves as a guarantee that someone will make the Hall of Fame at 67.2, while also coming up short of big milestones in traditional counting stats such as hits (2,446) and home runs (385).
Evans racked up eight Gold Glove awards, two Silver Slugger awards, and was named an All-Star three times throughout his career for the Red Sox. If someone like Baines can end up in the Hall of Fame, someone who had fewer individual accolades than Evans, whose counting stats are very similar to Evans, and seemingly was rewarded for his longevity (while Evans played 20 years!), then Cooperstown should be able to find a slot for Dewey to slide into.
No. 3: Luis Tiant
Luis Tiant's career in terms of statistics was a blind spot for me before I set out on this piece. I knew he was a very good pitcher: he was a part of the 1975 rotation with Bill Lee, and he had a wind-up that seemed like he was going to corkscrew himself into the ground. However, once I looked at his actual stats a bit, the fact that he hasn't made his way to Cooperstown is shocking. Even Tony Oliva agrees.
Throughout his career, Tiant performed as one of the top pitchers in the MLB. I want to pinpoint in on his 1968 season, while he pitched for Cleveland. In 1968, Tiant went 21-9, led the American League with 9 shutouts, an ERA of 1.60, and a (retroactive) ERA+ of 186, while striking out 264 batters as well for a Cleveland team that won 86 games. Tiant was named an All-Star and finished 5th in MVP voting, a year that would usually result in more fanfare.
However, 1968 was the "Year of the Pitcher", and no one could overlook Denny McLain's 31 wins for Detroit when it came time to vote for the Cy Young and MVP awards (even though Tiant generated more WAR than McLain in 1968). The MLB was flush with amazing pitching talent in the 1960s and 1970s, so it was easy for Tiant to get lost among guys like Bob Gibson, Juan Marichal, Sandy Koufax, a young Nolan Ryan, Gaylord Perry, Fergie Jenkins, Tom Seaver, etc. (that list could be 20 names long, that's how deep the pitching talent was). However, Tiant was still able to put up some great stats and be able to establish himself as a top talent.
By the end of his career, Tiant had racked up 66.1 WAR, 229 wins, 2,416 strikeouts, and an ERA+ of 114, which places him as a really good pitcher throughout the entirety of his 19-year career. I think Tiant has the same issue as Evans, where he falls just short in some of those traditional counting stats for the older baseball writers to vote for him, and also just short in the advanced metrics for the new-age baseball writers to push for Tiant to make it into the Hall retroactively.
However, I think that marrying the two viewpoints should make people realize that Tiant was a Hall of Fame-caliber player. Hopefully he ends up as being picked by the Veterans' Committee, because El Tiante has earned it.
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