HOF: The Catfish
Hunter enjoyed a few hall-worthy seasons, but his career fell short of excellence
Catfish Hunter was touchingly humble when informed of his election to the National Baseball Hall of Fame on January 14, 1987.
“I don’t know if I deserve it,” he said. “I was a control pitcher who hit spots. I had players behind me to back me up. If I didn’t play on those teams, I wouldn’t have won as many as I did, and I wouldn’t have been in the World Series six times.”
He was absolutely right.
Hunter spent a decade (1965-1974) with the Kansas City and Oakland Athletics, followed by five seasons with the New York Yankees. Each of those franchises made the World Series three times. The A’s won all three, the Yankees two.
Hunter was an important cog in those championship machines. He won 224 regular-season games, another nine in postseason play.
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But two facts must be acknowledged. The Catfish benefited from the support of great lineups, as he admitted, as well as the comfort of pitching in friendly ballparks. The vast Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum remains a nightmare for hitters to this day, whatever its current name might be. And the old Yankee Stadium statistically favored pitchers during his New York tenure in the mid- and late 1970s.
Hunter, as a result, was 31 percent better at home (2.70 ERA) than on the road (3.92). No other Hall of Fame pitcher ever enjoyed such a decided home-field advantage throughout his career.
And yet, even under such favorable conditions, Hunter’s record wasn’t all that great. It’s true that he twice led the American League in wins, but he also allowed the most earned runs and the most home runs two years apiece.
“You can argue Hunter was a Hall-of-Fame-caliber pitcher for five seasons — and I’d agree — but other than that, he was either average or below average,” said Matt Snyder, a member of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America (BBWAA). His conclusion was buttressed by Hunter’s quality score (QS) of 30 points, which is right at the very bottom of the marginal range.
Eighty-three pitchers are currently enshrined in Cooperstown. Here’s how they’re slotted into the four QS ranges:
Excellent (60 points or more): 32 pitchers
Good (45 to 59 points): 25 pitchers
Marginal (30 to 44 points): 15 pitchers
Poor (29 points or less): 11 pitchers
Hunter outranks only the 11 Hall of Famers who occupy the very lowest rung, a group that includes such questionable inductees as Jack Chesbro, Jesse Haines, Waite Hoyt, Rube Marquard, and Mickey Welch. It could be argued that all of them, including Hunter, should have remained outside the plaque gallery.
And yet the BBWAA was quick to vote him in. Hunter made it to the hall in just his third year of eligibility, rising from 53.7 percent support in 1985 to 68.0 percent in 1986 and 76.3 percent in 1987, edging five votes above the 75-percent threshold.
What could the voters have been thinking?
Well, they were swayed by all of those World Series rings, of course, and by the extensive media exposure that Hunter received in his New York years. Peter Ueberroth jokingly suggested another factor, the bizarre and highly publicized behavior of the tyrants who owned the Athletics and Yankees back then.
“Catfish Hunter had the distinction of playing for both Charlie Finley and George Steinbrenner,” said Ueberroth, who was the commissioner in 1987, “which is enough in itself to put a player in the Hall of Fame.”
If the writers truly wanted to elect the best available pitcher in 1987, they should have focused on Jim Bunning, who had precisely the same number of victories as Hunter (224) and a quality score nearly twice as high (53 points).
But Bunning fell 21 votes short of induction in his 11th year on the BBWAA’s ballot. His support would erode slightly in the four elections to come, triggering the expiration of his eligibility in 1991.
It wasn’t until 1996 that the Veterans Committee, the hall’s version of an appeals court, ushered Bunning into the plaque gallery.
HOF box score: Catfish Hunter
Career: 1965-1979
Teams: Kansas City (American League), New York (AL), Oakland (AL)
Primary position: P
Career stats: G 500, W-L 224-166, SV 1, ERA 3.26
League leader: W twice, ERA once, CG once, ER (most) twice, HR (most) twice
Quality score: 30 points (marginal)
Selected to HOF: 1987
Selected by: Baseball Writers’ Association of America