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1/1/2025 It’s a Hall of great careers, not a Hall of long careersI’ve gotten tired of typing up comments about Virgil Hancock’s Hall of Fame worthiness (or lack thereof) every off-season, so I’m posting this. Until he either gets elected or stops getting any votes, I’ll just post a link to this article when appropriate. Virgil Hancock won 432 games, fourth most all-time, which intuitively sounds like a Hall of Fame accomplishment. Problem is, he lost 35 more games than he won. I would think everyone already knows this, but I’ll say it just in case: there are no starting pitchers in the real Hall of Fame with losing records. I know there are many other statistics we can use to judge pitchers, and I know sometimes a good pitcher will go 12-18 because his team is crappy or he gets real unlucky. But… you can’t lose 35 more games than you won by having two or three tough-luck seasons. You have to have a lot of losing seasons to do that. Virgil Hancock had 11 losing seasons. If anyone thinks he had a losing record because he pitched for bad teams, it’s not true. He pitched for some bad teams, but over the course of his career his teams were 1952-1776, a .524 winning percentage. Hancock’s winning percentage was .481. Over the course of his career, Hancock’s teams won at a higher clip when someone other than Hancock was pitching. If you think won/lost records are overrated, let’s look at another statistic. Hancock’s career ERA of 3.20 is better than that of three of Hall of Famers—Clay Easton (3.22), Clay Gillespie (3.23), and Chuck Hathaway (3.35)—and close to a few others. The problem with counting that as a point in Hancock’s favor is that all of those guys pitched decades later than Hancock, when ERA’s were much higher. Clay Easton pitched half of his career in the 1930’s, when the league ERA was almost always well over 4.00. For all but a few seasons of Hancock’s career, the league ERA was anywhere from about half a run to a full run lower than that. Compared to his contemporaries who are in the Hall of Fame, this is how Hancock stacks up, ERA-wise:
Those are just the guys whose entire careers, or 90% of their careers, were concurrent with Hancock’s. There are additional pitchers in the Hall of Fame who pitched during the early part of Hancock’s career (Tom Sanders, 2.34; George Stonge, 2.27) or during the tail end of his career (Jacob Norwood, 2.07; Matthew Sullivan, 1.96) who make Hancock look even worse by comparison. Let’s make another comparison. I don’t think a pitcher with a losing record should be in the Hall of Fame, period, but there’s one guy who’s in with a record that’s only a smidge above .500, John Deloge. Is Hancock a good match for Deloge, despite Hancock’s worse record? No, he isn’t. I didn’t vote for Deloge, and was a little dubious about his qualifications when he was selected. I’m glad that I took a closer look recently; I am now more convinced he was a worthy selection. First of all, despite pitching in an era when ERA’s were much higher than they were in Hancock’s time, Deloge still finished his career with a slightly lower ERA than Hancock. Like Hancock, Deloge spent the best part of his career with Detroit, but it was about a half-century later. When Deloge was with Detroit they were a friggin’ tire fire. In his 12 years with that sad-sack team, they never got close to finishing .500, losing 93 or more games 11 times and posting an overall winning percentage of .391. Deloge’s winning percentage during his time with Detroit was .505. He finished over .500 for them five times, twice winning 20 games in a season. One year he went 21-10; the team was 44-83 for other pitchers. Another year he went 20-10; when he wasn’t getting a decision they were 51-87. Even in the years when Deloge finished under .500 he was consistently winning a higher percentage of his decisions than the rest of his Detroit teammates. Hancock, on the other hand, posted an overall .497 winning percentage during his 16 years with Detroit… but the Wolverines were a good team at that time; their winning percentage during those 16 years was .526. In that sense, Deloge was the opposite of Hancock; he pitched for far more bad teams than good ones, but still won more games than he lost, whereas Hancock pitched for more good teams than bad ones, but lost more games than he won. Of the two, which one sounds like a Hall of Famer, and which one doesn’t? Another comparison: Virgil Hancock versus a pitcher who has been eligible for the Hall of Fame for a few years, but has never received a vote and most likely never will: Ray Hayes. In Ray Hayes’ Royal Ricketts Award-winning season of 1953, he led the league in ERA, Wins, Winning Pct., and WHIP. Hancock never had a season that good, but like Hayes, he did lead the league in Wins twice and in ERA once. Hayes was in the Top 5 in Wins six times (Hancock was in the Top 5 five times), in the Top 5 of WAR three times (Hancock was in the Top 5 four times), in the Top 5 of ERA three times (Hancock was in the Top 5 four times). Pretty similar accomplishments, except… Hayes did all that in a career that spanned only 13 years, about half of which were severely injury-shortened… Hancock pitched for 26 years. As a result of pitching twice as many years in an era when pitchers threw far more innings than in Hayes’ time, Hancock threw well over three times as many innings as Hayes, but only accumulated about twice as much WAR. Hayes ranks 16th all-time in WAR/IP. Hancock ranks 87th. And Hancock, as I have mentioned and will continue to mention, finished well under .500 in his career. Hayes finished 90 games over .500 for his career. I’m not suggesting that Ray Hayes should be in the Hall of Fame. What I am saying is, what did Virgil Hancock do that Ray Hayes didn’t? Well, Hancock won a lot more games, granted. Hancock won 260 more games than Hayes, which is a huge number. But at what cost? He lost 386 more games than Hayes. 386 is a lot huger than 260. There was one thing Virgil Hancock was better at than Ray Hayes: sticking around. But what was he doing during the “sticking around” years? Losing, mostly. I remember one of our members pointing out that Hancock’s career ERA+ was 100, which is dead average. We generally don’t want to put average players in the Hall of Fame, do we? In some ways that ERA+ of 100 is misleading; Virgil Hancock wasn’t an average pitcher for 26 years. He was a good pitcher sometimes, a bad pitcher sometimes, and an average pitcher sometimes. But what was he most of the time? You can sort his career this way:
Basically, he had four real good years. And the rest of the time he was either average, bad, or hardly pitching. Take away his four good years, and he would be about 70 games under .500. Long career. Not particularly good for most of it. |