Interesting view of Jack Morris

As a longstanding member of the Baseball Writers Association of America, I have a Hall of Fame vote. I often wish I didn't. I'm not sure any of us are qualified to judge who belongs in the Hall. I don't really want the responsibility, and I frequently disagree with my brethren about judging athletes linked to steroids or rumored to have used steroids, and about our fitness to judge the ``character" of a candidate.

But I vote because I feel it is my responsibility. In recent years, I've been voting for Jack Morris. I felt that even though his statistics make him a borderline candidate, I recognize him as a dominant pitcher who performed his best in big games and ate up an incredible number of innings. I greatly value innings, because having your ace on the mound is a great advantage to your team. Call it VORP: Value over Relief Pitcher.

While I've voted for Morris, I have not campaigned for him, because I understand the arguments against him: He did not dominate in vital categories like ERA and strikeouts, and he pitched for mostly good teams, which elevated him in the dubious category of pitcher victories.

In a piece writte by Stuart Miller for the New York Times baseball blog, Miller notes that Morris may be about to get his lucky break. He's on the same ballot as a number of players tainted by steroid use or rumors. Morris, who received 66.7 percent of the votes last year, may make it because he is viewed as a clean player.

I disagree with that approach. I will vote for players regardless of their reputations because I don't believe I, or any of my peers, are qualified to discern who used performance enhancing drugs and who didn't. We just don't know and we shouldn't pretend that we do.

More interesting about Miller's piece is that he writes something that contradicts what I've heard from many sabermatricians.

The longstanding argument in favor of Morris has been that he pitched just well enough to win, meaning he would pitch to the situation, giving up more runs and hits when he was far ahead, which could damage his stats without hurting his team.

Here's the key portion of Miller's piece:

``(Morris) has fallen short for 13 years because he is a classic borderline case, with plenty of arguments both for and against him. He never was dominant in terms of E.R.A., WHIP or strikeouts — in the American League, he finished in the top 5 in E.R.A., WHIP and strikeouts per nine innings just twice each — but he knew how to win. That sounds a bit like an intangible, and it is, but Morris won 254 games by pitching to the situation — when his team gave him more run support he pitched to contact, striking out and walking fewer batters, allowing more hits and more runs.

The closer the game, the lower the opposing team's batting average against him. And most significant, he rarely missed a turn and almost always went deep into games, averaging 33 starts and nearly 7 1/3 innings per start from 1979 through 1992.

That also was invaluable to his teams, since he kept lesser starters off the hill and allowed the bullpen to rest. (This was a guy who rang up 64 complete game losses.) He also led the 1984 Detroit Tigers and the 1991 Minnesota Twins to World Series, turning in one of baseball's greatest performances with his 10-inning Game 7 shutout in 1991."

That is the best summation of Morris' career I've ever seen, and it bolsters my reasons for voting for Morris for the Hall of Fame.