2015 Baseball Hall of Fame induction: Five things to know – CBSSports.com – CBSSports.com

Hall of Fame Sunday is upon us, and it’s time for Cooperstown to fete Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez, Craig Biggio, and John Smoltz. To prime us for one of the best baseball days of the year, let’s run down a few things to know about this year’s Baseball Hall of Fame induction class …

1. This class, in terms of total career value, is one of the strongest ever. This year’s four inductees team up for a total career WAR of 321.9. When it comes to WAR (read more on WAR here before you starting whinging about it), the 2015 has the highest cumulative tally since … 1938! Indeed, 1938, the second-ever Hall of Fame ballot. On that one, electees/inner-circle luminaries Nap Lajoie, Tris Speaker, and Cy Young teamed up for an absurd total of 409.6 WAR. That’s second only to the inaugural class of 1938, when Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner, Christy Mathewson, and Walter Johnson yielded a motherlode of 712.4 WAR. To repeat: 712.4 WAR. Fawning over that long-ago assemblage aside, this year’s class is one of the best ever when it comes to our best measures of total value.

2. But the Big Unit is the greatest of the 2015 class. This isn’t exactly a shocking declaration, but let’s declare it just the same. Johnson checks in with a career WAR of 104.3, while Martinez, Smoltz, and Biggio register 86, 66.5, and 65.1, respectively. What about peak? The JAWS system isolates a player’s peak by looking at his total WAR from his best seven seasons. Here’s how this year’s inductees rank in terms of the WAR sum from their best seven years: Johnson – 62; Martinez – 58.2; Biggio – 41.6; Smoltz – 38.8. No surprise that Pedro gives the Unit some serious competition when it comes to peak, but one can argue quite plausibly that Johnson just noses him out. Given that Johnson won five Cy Youngs and three other times finished second in the balloting, that’s not a stretch (as great as Pedro was at his best). If there’s one thing that sums up Johnson at his very best, it’s this: From 1999-2002, he struck out 1,417 batters. That’s an average of 354 strikeouts a year. Mull that over for a bit. In the end, the totality of Johnson’s greatness becomes even more remarkable when you consider that through his age-28 season he was 49-48 with an ERA+ of 101.

3. Pedro Martinez may be the ultimate undersized pitcher. At a listed five feet, eleven inches tall and 170 pounds, Pedro was slight of frame, especially by the standards of right-handers. To say the least, such paltry dimensions didn’t get in the way of his appointment with greatness. Among players less than six feet tall (minimum 1,000 innings), Pedro is the all-time leader in strikeouts by a margin of more than 900 over fellow Hall of Famer Eddie Plank. When it comes to WAR, Plank noses out Pedro by a margin of 86.5 to 86. Plank though began his career in 1901, and needless to say the level of competition was vastly greater during Pedro’s run. And what of weight? Among pitchers listed at 175 pounds or less, Pedro ranks fourth in WAR behind Greg Maddux, Warren Spahn, and Plank. In strikeouts among such baseball fly-weights, Pedro’s behind Nolan Ryan and Maddux.

4. Biggio’s a rarity among franchise lifers. Biggio rather notably was a “cradle-to-retirement” Astro. The team chose him with the 22nd-overall pick in 1987 out of Seton Hall, and he played on their watch until his retirement following the 2007 season. In all, Biggio played 20 seasons in the majors, all with Houston. As it turns out, Biggio is one of just 18 players to play at least 20 years in the bigs all for the same team (Derek Jeter is the most recent to join this exclusive brotherhood). Of those, just three — Jeter, Mel Harder and Alan Trammell — aren’t in the Hall of Fame. The wild guess here is that Jeter makes it.

Oh, as an aside, here’s how Biggio fared in his career versus his four classmates …

Versus Johnson: .000/.125/.000, 16 PAs
Versus Martinez: .250/.250/.500, 4 PAs
Versus Smoltz: .239/.297/.316, 2 HRs, 128 PAs. Of note: Only Maddux faced Biggio more than Smoltz did.

5. Without his late-career return to the rotation, Smoltz probably doesn’t make it. Smoltz was of course a dominating starter before elbow problems led to his three-year-plus cameo as a shutdown closer. After that run, Smoltz persuaded the Braves to return him to the rotation at age-38 and with a grim recent injury history. Here’s how his first start back when, on Opening Day 2005 …

But here’s how his second start of the season unfurled …

(Screengrabs via Baseball-Reference)

As it turned out, Smoltz would go on a three-year-plus, late-career run as a starter for the Braves that saw him go 47-26 with 3.20 ERA (136 ERA+) and 613 strikeouts. Coming into 2005, Smoltz was sitting on 163 wins and 2,398 strikeouts. Had he retired after 2004 when his contract was up or had he continued on as a closer, Smoltz very likely wouldn’t have compiled the counting stats needed for election to the Hall. Smoltz, though, defied the aging curve (and his injury history) in a big way. And here he is.

Congrats to these four worthy gentlemen. Here’s to a day they’ll never forget.