Mark Buehrle faces long haul to Hall of Fame

This winter, Mark Buehrle gets his turn on the Hall of Fame ballot. His first goal is to remain on next winter’s ballot, because 75 percent of the vote is a steep uphill climb away.

Buehrle could have difficulty standing out, partially because voters are slow to warm up to most 200-win pitchers, and partially because he doesn’t have much of a peak to offset the shortage of other milestones. His first full season might’ve been his best year in the majors, and the remainder of his career involved maintaining those standards: 200 innings, double-digit wins, an above-average ERA. His ERA+ fell on the wrong side of 100 just twice, albeit within a rounding error, and he infamously fell four outs short of his 15th consecutive 200-inning, 10-win season thanks to errors by two future White Sox, Ryan Goins and Edwin Encarnación.

The incredible consistency for starting-pitcher benchmarks sets him apart, but if you don’t place a whole lot of importance on checking every box every year, his profile loses some of its allure. The number of pitchers who happened to be a little bit better than Buehrle over the first two decades of the 21st century now requires two hands to count.

Eight of the 10 pitchers on that list won a Cy Young. Hudson is the only one who didn’t, but he received Cy Young support in four seasons, including a runner-up in 2000. Buehrle only received votes in 2005, when he finished fifth. That’s why Buehrle is bringing up the rear in the peak column, and of the pitchers above him, he’s only close to Sabathia, who managed to compile just a little bit better across the board.

Assuming Scherzer climbs up at least one spot, it wouldn’t surprise me if voters draw a line between Sabathia and Buehrle, with Sabathia’s Cy Young and four other top-five finishes making the difference. It doesn’t help Buehrle that his FanGraphs’ WAR comes up seven short of his bWAR. The projection systems could seldom account for his personal role in defying fielding-independent metrics (suffocating the running game), nor could they trust his outlier-level durability. Considering he beat his FIPs in most seasons, I don’t think it’s cherry-picking to disregard his fWAR in favor of the higher number.

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The biggest advantage Buehrle possesses as he embarks on a course to Cooperstown? His case is going to age beautifully. The franchise’s previous fringe cases like Paul Konerko and Harold Baines also had problems with lackluster peaks, and it was compounded by their good-but-not-great output getting surpassed by more impressive hitters every season. Baines’ support topped out at 6.1 percent, while Konerko fell off the ballot after just 10 votes his first year (2.5 percent).

For Buehrle, time is only going to make him more of a unicorn. His ability to throw 200 innings every season will pop off the page as injuries and strategies diminish the impact of the starting pitcher. His rapid-fire delivery will be an elusive role model for everybody pained by the game’s pace-of-play issues. Those who didn’t watch Buehrle might soon forget what it looked like to throw a pitch every 16 seconds every start, or completing a game in 99 minutes, which is why I put together this video:

Should Buehrle be able to get any foothold in support, I can see him building momentum. Fans loved him for his everyman persona and reliability, and writers loved him because he helped them meet deadline. Voters might be unwilling to flock to a fringe case at the risk of lowering the bar, but Buehrle doesn’t pose much of a threat, because the combination of his statistical record, career highlights and personal style isn’t likely to be duplicated. It might not be enough to get him to 75 percent, but enough voter support can help make his case more appealing to whatever veterans committees handle his case down the line.

He could also get more of a head start because the ballot is finally opening up some. For the first time since 2013, the ballot features no locks among incumbents or first-timers. Buehrle probably has the best case of the latter group:

• Mark Buehrle
• Tim Hudson
• Torii Hunter
• Dan Haren
• Barry Zito
• Aramis Ramirez
• Shane Victorino
• A.J. Burnett
• Nick Swisher
• LaTroy Hawkins
• Michael Cuddyer

And among the holdovers, you probably have to go five spots before finding the first guy without a major obstacle:

• Curt Schilling (70%)
• Roger Clemens (61%)
• Barry Bonds (60.7%)
• Omar Vizquel (52.6%)
• Scott Rolen (35.3%)
• Billy Wagner (31.7%)
• Gary Sheffield (30.5%)
• Todd Helton (29.2%)
• Manny Ramirez (28.2%)
• Jeff Kent (27.5%)
• Andruw Jones (19.4%)
• Sammy Sosa (13.9%)
• Andy Pettitte (11.3%)
• Bobby Abreu (5.5%)

I figured Schilling would wear down the electorate at some point, but he manages to be a worse human just about every year he’s on the ballot. Clemens and Bonds have a healthy amount of hardliners against them because of their ties to performance-enhancing drugs, while Vizquel’s sabermetric case is far weaker than his counting numbers. Rolen is the first guy who merely faces the traditional path of hard-won appreciation — his case is one of those that looks far more impressive against other third basemen than it does against the whole of baseball.

(Pettitte’s 11.3 percent foreshadows headwinds for Buehrle, but Pettitte’s PED history clouds the comparison.)

When the combination of productivity and likeability is in such short supply, it’s possible that a guy like Buehrle can make an early dent. If he can pull double-digits in the first year, he might also make progress simply because there isn’t another comparable starting pitcher on the ballot until Sabathia in 2025. The fact that it takes four years for a better pitcher to show up on the ballot is another way to make Buehrle’s case, and I have a feeling that every anecdote, narrative and rhetorical angle is going to be needed to get him over the hump.

(Photo by Keith Allison)

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