I question why Morris should be in. In a career that last 18 seasons, he was an All Star 5 times and received CY Young votes in 7 seasons ending at 3rd twice, 4th, 5th twice, 7th and 9th.
Per 162 games, he averaged 16 W/12 L and had a career ERA of 3.90 and WAR of 43 (about 2.5 per season).
Looking at his record the only thing that stands out was the number of starts. He had 11 years of 34 or more starts including 2 years with 37. However he only lead the Majors in innings once so I guess that may have been more normal back then.
If one measures Morris by today's sabermetrics stats, he may not seem worthy. The problem is he comes from a period where other things were more highly thought of, rightly or not. What stands out for me is that even though he only led the majors only once in innings pitched, he had 10 seasons in which he pitched 240 innings or more. Clayton Kershaw has never once pitched 240 inn. in a season and he probably never will. Morris pitched 175 complete games out of 527 games started ! Kershaw has pitched 25 CG in his career. Morris was a workhorse who pitched to contact ( he only had 3 seasons of a K/9 over 7); pitched to the score of the game, something a guy like Verlander has admitted he does, and had 10 seasons of 16 wins or more. Morris had 2 great WS appearances in '84 and '91, 2 CG in 2 GS in '84 and the MVP in '91. He had a horrible WS pitching for Toronto at the tail end of career. I'm not saying by any stretch of the imagination that he is as good as Kershaw; I have a problem when you start measuring other period's players with today's measurements and I am one big believer in saber metrics. For me from what I have heard, a lot of those people who were in this committee who elected Morris, were players who competed against him and are HOFers themselves and they voted him in. That's good enough for me.
I totally agree with your take on things, Jose. You can't use today's standards to evaluate yesterday's players. I listened to Morris on MLB.TV last night and he talked about facing batters for four and sometimes 5 times through the order and it goes to your point about pitching to contact. Nowadays, teams like the Rays are reluctant to let anyone other than Archer pitch more than twice through the order. Two different periods. Two times when the game was played very differently.
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