Looey, Catfish and Kitty

When I was a kid, Luis Tiant was a god in Boston. Despite playing in a town with a vast array of problems with race relations at the time, Luis had no trouble making the people of Boston embrace him. It didn’t matter that he was a dark-skinned Latino, he had enough style and charisma to overcome all that, charming the pants off even the most ardent racists in Southie. From his whirlybird delivery, to his shimmying glove when he came set from the stretch, to his monster cigars during post-game interviews and the shifting nature of his birthday, Looey was utterly beloved in that town.

Character aside, it should be remembered that Tiant was a damn good pitcher, too. His 1968 season in Cleveland was one of the finest in terms of raw numbers in the history of the sport; 21-8, 264 strikeouts, a league-leading 1.60 ERA and nine shutouts. Denny McLain’s monster year prevented Luis from not only winning the Cy Young but also from receiving a single vote, but he was tied for fifth in the MVP voting while playing for a team the finished more than 16 games out of first place, and that speaks volumes for his performance.

Only wicked arm trouble and prehistoric sports medicine allowed Luis to come to Boston, where he become both famous and utterly critical to the success of the late ‘70s Red Sox, a club that was stacked with offensive talent and always finding itself one pitcher short of the playoffs. In his first full year with the club, 1972, Tiant was their best pitcher, and would be for five straight years. In three of those, 1973, 1974 and 1976, he was also their best overall player, leading a club that was above .500 every year, and would win one pennant and miss the playoffs on the season’s final day another two times.

In his only post-season appearance in Boston, Tiant was masterful. He started four games and the Sox won all of them, with Tiant himself going 3-0 with a 2.65 ERA. He threw a complete game three-hitter to open the 1975 ALCS and followed that up with a complete game, five-hit shutout against the Big Red Machine to open the 1975 World Series. The legendary rumor about his Game Four win had him throwing 163 pitches, and he was the starter in the epic Game Six as well. Very few players have won the World Series MVP Award in a losing effort, but Looey was one of them.

Tiant did all of this despite being, by some accounts, well into his 40s in his final seasons in Boston, and despite playing in one of the more harsh environments possible for a pitcher – Fenway Park before the press box was expanded. The park factors in Fenway during Tiant’s seven full seasons there were 105, 105, 106, 108, 111, 111 and 109, meaning it was not only a hitters’ park but one of them more severe hitters parks in history. Despite that, Tiant never posted an ERA higher than the overall league average, and was generally 20% or more better than average, even winning his second league ERA title in 1972. He was, without question, an outstanding pitcher.

Fans of Luis Tiant weren’t terribly surprised that he wasn’t elected to the Hall of Fame on his first ballot in 1988. He wasn’t one of those automatic immortals who would sweep in without objection. Still, the only pitcher on the ballot to outvote him was Jim Bunning, and by garnering over 30% of the voted on his first ballot, things looked pretty promising for his ultimate election. Up until that 1988 ballot, every single player except one who garnered 30% of the votes cast on his first appearance on the Hall of Fame ballot was ultimately elected. The overwhelming majority of them were elected by the BBWAA, with the rest being inducted by the Veterans’ Committee. Maury Wills was the lone player who failed to have either body induct him.

In such cases, the typical scenario was for the player to get a healthy percentage on his first try on the ballot, with that serving as a signal of sorts to other writers that maybe they should reexamine the players’ qualifications. Over the next few years, more and more writers would shift their stance and cast votes for the player, whose support would steadily increase until they either were voted in outright, or had so much support and publicity by the time they fell off the ballot that they were shortly elected by the Veterans’ Committee.

With Tiant, there was absolutely no reason for anyone to expect this scenario to change. Just the year before, the BBWAA had elected Catfish Hunter, a contemporary of Tiant’s who posted extremely similar career statistics:

Hunter – 224 wins, .574 winning percentage, 2012 strikeouts, 42 shutouts, 3.26 ERA, 104 ERA+
Tiant – 229 wins, .571 winning percentage, 2416 strikeouts, 49 shutouts, 3.30 ERA, 114 ERA+

Hunter had started on the ballot in 1985 with nearly 54% of the votes cast. That was a much better start than Tiant, but it was easily explained by the fact that Hunter played much of his career for outstanding, high-profile teams that won five World Series. On top of that, Hunter had won a Cy Young Award in 1974, barely outvoting Fergie Jenkins, so his Hall of Fame case looked a bit better on its surface. In truth, it was Tiant who actually had the better career, given the difficult pitching conditions in the home parks he played in. This is reflected in the respective career WARP3 scores of the two men; 98.0 for Tiant, 70.7 for Hunter. (In fact, in Hunter’s Cy Young season of 1974, Tiant actually had the better WARP3 score – 10.6 to 10.1). But none of that was discussed back in 1988. At the time, the fact that Looey got a few less votes than Hunter his first time out and might take a bit longer to be elected was perfectly understandable.

What made no sense at all was what happened on the following year’s ballot.

When the 1989 Hall of Fame voting results were announced, Luis Tiant was no longer the second-best pitcher on the ballot, in the voters’ eyes. He trailed not only Bunning in the final voting, but also newcomers Gaylord Perry and Fergie Jenkins. That’s not too shabby, though, since both men won over 300 and would be elected in the near future. Unfortunately, Tiant also trailed newcomer Jim Kaat, and found himself tied with Roy Face and Mickey Lolich, two players he had easily outvoted the prior year. In fact, no player on the ballot saw a bigger drop in his vote total than Luis Tiant, whose support dropped from 132 votes to just 47. An astonishing 85 voters, nearly two-thirds of Tiant’s supports, suddenly decided that he was no longer worthy of their vote.

Okay, said the Tiant supporters, let’s not panic. A lot of good players were eligible for the first time, maybe this was just a temporary glitch. Within the next couple of years, Jenkins and Perry would be elected, the theory went, and Tiant’s support would come back. His route to the Hall might be a bit longer, but he’d still get there. There was still reason to hope.

At least, there was until the 1990 voting results were announced, and Tiant’s support had dropped yet again. It dropped even further in 1991, to just 32 votes, or 7.2%, and never really recovered. While his totals crept back up a bit over the years, they generally lingered around 12%, topping out at 18% on his last year of eligibility.

Meanwhile, Jim Kaat jumped onto the ballot in 1989 at nearly 20% and never really saw his support change at all. It dropped to 14% at one point, and rose to over 29% at another, but for the most part Kaat saw his yearly support stay within a couple of percentage points of the 20% where he started. He never once reached a level of support that could match the nearly 31% Tiant collected in his very first year on the ballot, and yet he outvoted Tiant in every single one of the 14 years they appeared on the ballot together.

Why? Your guess is as good as mine. During their respective primes, Kaat was never considered as good a pitcher as Tiant. Thanks to his longevity, plus the fact that Tiant, despite great numbers in the minor leagues and Mexican League, didn’t get to the big leagues until he was 24, Kaat won 54 more total games than Tiant, but 36 of those extra wins came in prime number-padding time, when Kaat was as an ineffective starter and long reliever after he passed his 38th birthday. Pretty much every other number favors Tiant:

Winning Percentage: Tiant, .571; Kaat, ,544
Shutouts: Tiant, 49; Kaat, 31
ERA: Tiant, 3.30; Kaat, 3.45
ERA+: Tiant, 114; Kaat, 107
WARP3: Tiant, 98.0; Kaat, 94.4

Now, in truth, I don’t really think Luis Tiant should be in the Hall of Fame. His career really only compares well to existing Hall of Famers like Hunter, who are borderline themselves. But I know Tiant was better than the likes of Jim Kaat and Tommy John, pitchers who amassed higher win totals by throwing a half-dozen mediocre-to-bad seasons in their geriatric years, and were otherwise inferior to Tiant in every way. Yet both of them handily outvoted Tiant in Hall of Fame voting, results that paint a stark portrait of the BBWAA’s inability to figure out what makes a good pitcher and what doesn’t.

Even more interesting to me is the massive drop in support Tiant suffered after his first season on the ballot. No player had ever received that much support on his first ballot appearance and then suffered such a steep decline in his vote total. Part of the funky result can be blamed on an untimely influx of better pitchers onto the ballot, starting with Jenkins and Perry, and continuing with Jim Palmer and Tom Seaver and Phil Niekro and Steve Carlton. Following established BBWAA voting practices, lesser lights like Kaat and John and Don Sutton stole even more votes, so it’s pretty clear there was never any real chance that Tiant would be elected.

Still, I’d love to ask some of those 85 voters who dropped him from their ballots after just one year exactly what the hell they were thinking. Didn’t a player as good and as charismatic as Luis Tiant deserve a little better?