Hall of Fame Breakdown: Pitchers

OK, well, we have A LOT of pitchers to cover today as we wrap up our Hall of Fame series before Tuesday’s announcement, so we’re going to be a little bit briefer today (I hope). That’s OK, because I have a rather massive Hall of Fame pitcher post coming in the next week or so, revolving around an idea that Tom Tango threw out to me a couple of days ago. Tom, some of you may know, tends to believe that pitchers have been getting short shrift in the Hall of Fame voting. But we’ll get back to that soon enough.

Tomorrow, we’ll have our full rundown of what to expect in the Hall of Fame voting (super exciting!), and then we’ll have a post-Hall of Fame wrap-up, maybe a video.

Pitchers

One more time, a reminder: The percentage included after the comma comes from the JoeBlogs Hall of Fame survey of a couple of weeks ago. Oh, for time/space, I’m putting starting pitchers and relief pitchers all in one pile:

Fully qualified Hall of Famers

1. Roger Clemens, 80.2%

Strong Hall of Fame candidates

1. CC Sabathia, 73.7%

2. Tommy John, 66.9%

3. Curt Schilling, 62.8%

4. Luis Tiant, 63.3%

5. Johan Santana, 58.2%

6. Orel Hershiser, 51.8%

7. King Felix Hernandez, 50.3%

Fringe candidates

1. Dan Quisenberry, 48.3%

2. Fernando Valenzuela, 47.9%

3. Smoky Joe Wood, 47.6%

4. David Cone, 47.0%

5. Dave Stieb, 36.5%

6. John Donaldson, 36.1%

7. Bret Saberhagen, 35.0%

8. Dwight Gooden, 33.3%

9. Kevin Brown, 32.7%

10. Ron Guidry, 31.0%

Admirable but not Hall of Fame careers

1. Tug McGraw, 21.9%

2. Sparky Lyle, 21.8%

3. Mark Buehrle, 20.6%

4. Joe Nathan, 16.7%

5. Rick Reuschel, 15.4%

6. Billy Pierce, 12.5%

7. Wes Ferrell, 10.0%

On this year’s ballot