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The Lee Smith Debate: 2015



This is the twenteth of our series where we here at Notinhalloffame.com, do what else?  Debate the merit of twenty-four men on the most loaded Baseball Hall of Fame ballot in our lifetime.

Joining me, the site's Committee Chairman, in this debate are D.K. of the site's Phillies Archivist blog and Darryl Tahirali of the site's DDT's Pop Flies blog.  This looks to be a very important part of our site, and we hope you will enjoy reading this as much as we enjoyed writing it.

Chairman:  I don’t know about the two of you, but my biggest turn around over the past ten years has been on Lee Smith, and not for the better.  I was all in on respect for closers and I was taken in by the 478 Saves (retiring with the all time Saves record) and four Saves Titles.  This is still an accomplishment to celebrate, but when compared to a true dominating closer like Mariano Rivera, he doesn’t come close.  Forgetting the Saves, we have Rivera’s 1.000 WHIP to Smith’s 1.242, Rivera’s 205 ERA+ to Smith’s 132, and a bWAR of 56.6 to Smith’s 29.4.  I haven’t even talked about how he shit the bed in his two playoff appearances.  What was I thinking?

Perhaps the writers are thinking the same as this is Lee Smith’s 13th year and like so many others here, he hit his low last year with a 29.9%, down from 50.6 two years ago.  I don’t think it is looking good for Mr. Smith. 

D.K.:  Lee Smith’s case for the Hall of Fame brings up an interesting topic. Should someone who once led a sport in a statistical category be a Hall Of famer if that record has been surpassed or even obliterated?  Smith’s 486 Saves was the record for at least a decade until that total was surpassed by Trevor Hoffman and Mariano Rivera.

Well you could say that before Babe Ruth came to prominence a guy named Gavvy Cravath was the all-time home run leader.  No one brings his name up for the Hall of Fame in the Pre integration (1871-1945) category. The same is true for other sports:

In the NFL Philadelphia Eagles 1950s and 1960s receiver/kicker, Bobby Walston was once the NFLs all-time leader in Scoring and Billy Howton another star of the 1950s and early ‘560s was briefly the all-time pass receiving record holder with 503 catches.

Today, however these NFL stars accomplishments have pretty much been forgotten.  Smith is likely to receive the same treatment from writers as sportswriters have given Cravath, Walston and Howton in the past.

To add to the gloom of Smith’s case you have to note that he finished his career 21 games below .500 (71-92), had a significant number of blown Saves (103) and led the league as often in Blown Saves as he did in Saves (four times in each category).

Darryl:  D.K. brings up a good point about pioneers who have since been surpassed, and Lee Smith I think is the prototype of the "one-inning closer." As such, he falls between two stools: One stool has the "firemen" from the previous eras—Hoyt Wilhelm, Rollie Fingers, Goose Gossage, Bruce Sutter—the relievers who stepped in to quell the rally and stayed in to finish the game, and the other stool has the lights-out closers who followed Smith including Dennis Eckersley (although technically Eckersley's career began before Smith's, Eck was a starter until 1987), Trevor Hoffman, Mariano Rivera—and Billy Wagner, who I think has a legitimate Hall case, but that is for another time. Smith may have blown 103 saves, but his .823 save percentage is still better than the four Hall of Fame relievers I just named.

And although the Chairman thinks the newly-instituted 10-year rule for ballot appearances is a conspiracy theory to eliminate the PEDs candidates, I think it is also to slough off clean guys like Smith, who have hung around year after year but who are stalled at a voting plateau and show only negative movement. In other words, in each of more than ten ballot appearances, Lee Smith has simply not been impressive enough to garner the three-fourths needed for election. And there is a very good reason why: Lee Smith was very good but not elite.

Chairman:  D.K., I like your analogy about holding an all-time major statistical category for over a year as a huge deal, and one that should be celebrated, but I personally don’t view the Save as a major stat anymore, and I don’t see it anywhere near as important as a Home Run.  A Home Run is not ambiguous, a Save can be obtained so many ways, and you frankly have a lousy two thirds of an inning, let in a run and allow three people on base, and still get a Save. 

At the end of the day, I just don’t see Lee Smith as an elite guy, just like Darryl states.  We have seen some relievers change the game; and Lee just isn’t that guy.

D.K.: If part of the reason that Lee Smith dropped from around 50% of the vote to about30% was because of the competition heating up with three first time eligibleMaddux, Glavine and Thomas reaching the Hall, then things won’t get any easier forhim this year.  Something tells me that the writers will definitely put Craig Biggio over the top after his near-miss last year.  Then you have Randy Johnson, John Smoltzand Pedro Martinez becoming eligible this year and with those factors plus the 10vote maximum per writer and you can see how lesser candidates like Smith could getsqueezed out.

After the rule change was adopted limiting new candidates to 10 years on the
ballot, Smith will be the last candidate to get a full 15-year run on the ballot, ending in 2017. The extra years probably won’t help him much.

Darryl:  Good point, Chairman, and not to put too fine a point on it, but while the game did change during Smith's tenure, to an interventionist bullpen capped by the one-inning closer, it was an institutional change and not as a result of Smith's impact. He was merely an instrument used for that change and not the catalyst for that change.

Chairman:  Here is where I like the extra time to think about it.  If I had a vote seven years ago, I would have said yes.  I would have been wrong, and I vote no.

D.K.:  NOPE

Darryl:  No.











Last modified on Thursday, 19 March 2015 18:48
Committee Chairman

Kirk Buchner, "The Committee Chairman", is the owner and operator of the site.  Kirk can be contacted at [email protected] .

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