HOF ’09: Jack Morris

It’s a way to stay alive, a way to survive as a pitcher. If you didn’t do it, you either had phenomenal control, or you didn’t last.

Jack Morris

I admit, I didn’t know a whole lot about Jack Morris until doing research for this article.  The one thing I DID know as most baseball people do, is that Morris won more games than any pitcher in the 80’s.  Yes, wins aren’t a perfect stat but let’s keep that in mind. 

First and foremost, Jack Morris was a Tiger.  He was drafted by them in 1976 and played for them for 14 of his 18 years.  He was a workhorse by today’s standards, pitching over 240 innings nine times.  Not only that, he had 175 complete games (remember those?). 

Morris hit the 20 mark in wins three times in his career all pretty much spaced out over his career… 1983, 1986 and 1992.  It’s actually pretty amazing that he holds that 80s record but you can attribute to consistent play throughout the decade (aside from 1989 when he only garnered 6 wins). 

Due to his high inning totals, you’ll see Morris up there in the all-time leader boards.  He’s 14th in home runs allowed (389), 36th in GS (527), 8th in wild pitches (206) and 19th in walks (1390). 

But he also has 254 wins (to 186 losses) to which kinda surprised me when I looked it up.  Not only that, he had a tasty 7-4 record in the postseason.  Morris helped the Tigers win the World Series against the San Diego Padres in ’84.  His experience was helpful for Minnesota in 1991 when they went all the way and the next year, Toronto rented his services and won another crown.  

Morris’ career 3.90 ERA is a bit high.  It’s actually higher than the league average when he was playing.  But no doubt about it, he was a winner. 

	Hall of Fame
	Hall of Very Good
	Why is he even on the Ballot?

While we wait for January 12 ballot results, The Baseball Zealot will be profiling those players who are on the 2009 Baseball Hall of Fame ballot.  Read the rest the of the profiles.