Three Quick Things About the Moose
Considering that Mussina retired 8 months ago is it too much to hope that his official website might be updated to reflect this? The site’s rather well designed front page still reads:
As a starting pitcher with the New York Yankees, “Moose” has proven himself to be a committed and dedicated team leader. With over 235 career victories, 6 Gold Gloves, Mike is one of today’s biggest stars.
Despite that fact that it does say “over 235 career victories” this obviously needs a bit of fixing. In particular we demand full recognization for the gold glove Mussina won last year.
Patrick and I will glady volunteer to update and maintain the official Mike Mussina site if anyone cares to ask us.
In other news the State of Pennsylvania honored Mussina with a resolution on June 3rd. Thanks to reader Jenny for this neat little link. Check out the resolution for a great history of Mussina’s high school sporting accomplishments and some interesting facts about his life in PA.
Lastly, for some reason I can’t decipher, Mike Mussina’s baseball-reference page has not been updated to reflect his most similiar players post-2008. The list is the same as it was when 2008 began. It includes pitchers (with the exception of Jim Palmer) who won around 250 games and therefore were similar to Moose after 2007. Now the list is still pretty nice as it includes five hall of famers in the top nine and a very strong candidate in Curt Schilling at number 3. However it also lists David Wells at number 2, despite Mussina’s 31 career win advantage.
Jack Morris and Andy Pettitte, two boderline Hall of Fame candidates also make the list. I argued for Morris in December and his vote percantage this year was a decent 44% good enough for 6th (only 0.5% behind Lee Smith). Petitte is still writing his resume at 37 with 222 career wins and a nice bounce-back year (7-3 104ERA+) Petitte has averaged 17 wins per season during his career and even giving him an age-reduced average of 14-15 could be at 260+ wins in two and half more years. Throw in the fact that’s he a lefty and there’s no reason he can’t play beyond 2011 if he stays healthy and wants to play (think Jamie Moyer, Kenny Rogers or Randy Johnson who only had 200 wins at Petitte’s age!). If Andy does that he’s almost certainly Cooperstown bound with 275 or more wins. Now of course a lot of that depends on his effectiveness and who he’s playing for as the Yankees are unlikely to continue to employee him for many years to come. I could certainly see a trip to LA and Mr. Torre in his future. But enough about Andy.
The point here is that with a little bit of consistency and legacy from Andy Petitte, Mike Mussina could have 8 of his most 10 similiar pitchers elected to the hall of fame (though obviously only 6 or 7 might be in the hall before him).
Now consider that this is of course actually based on Mike Mussina of 2007, before he won 20 games in 2008. If and when baseball-reference updates Mussina’s similarity scores, we’ll probably see 7 or 8 present or inevitable hall of famers included.
