Lee Smith is Elected to the Hall of Fame

Today in Las Vegas, at the MLB Winter Meetings, Lee Smith and Harold Baines were elected to the Hall of Fame.

The Today’s Game Committee, a panel of 16 living Hall of Famers, baseball executives and media members, voted on Smith, Baines and 8 other candidates to become members of the Hall of Fame’s Class of 2019.

Smith earned 100% of the vote (16 of the possible 16 votes), far surpassing the 75% threshold necessary to secure a Cooperstown plaque. He will join Harold Baines and (almost certainly) Mariano Rivera and Edgar Martinez in he Hall of Fame Class of 2019. Baines was elected “on the number” by the Today’s Game Committee, earning the minimum 12 votes needed for a Cooperstown plaque.

The other candidates on this ballot were players Orel Hershiser, Albert Belle, Will Clark, Joe Carter, managers Lou Piniella, Davey Johnson and Charlie Manuel, and the late George Steinbrenner, longtime owner of the New York Yankees. Piniella, who got 11 votes, fell one shy of a Cooperstown plaque for himself.

The names of the 16 members of the Today’s Game Committee, a super-majority of whom voted for Lee Smith and Baines:

• Hall of Fame players: Roberto Alomar, Bert Blyleven, Greg Maddux, Joe Morgan, Ozzie Smith
• Hall of Fame managers: Joe Torre, Tony La Russa
• Hall of Fame executives: Pat Gillick, John Schuerholz
• Other MLB executives: Andy MacPhail, Jerry Reinsdorf, Paul Beeston, Al Avila
• Longtime media members: Claire Smith, Tim Kurkjian, Steve Hirdt

The deliberations of these committees are notoriously secret but it’s obvious that none of the committee members were moved by sabermetric arguments that have been made against Smith’s candidacy. When the members of the committee were announced, I wrote about which of those members were likely to be in Smith’s corner. Chief among them certainly was Joe Torre, Smith’s manager in St. Louis during some of his best years. Another Smith (Ozzie) was big Lee’s teammate with the Redbirds.

While people who study baseball statistics tend to look at the “save” as a silly statistic, players and managers don’t. Nothing demoralizes a team more than losing a lead in the 9th inning. Smith was a reliable (if not spectacular) 9th inning option for multiple teams for 14 of his 18 years in the majors.

Portions of the balance of this piece are edited from a piece published on November 11 which was written to recap Smith’s long and productive career and to examine his Hall of Fame candidacy. 

Cooperstown Cred: Lee Smith

• Career: 71-92, 3.03 ERA, 478 Saves (3rd most all-time)
• Career: 132 ERA+, 29.4 WAR (Wins Above Replacement)
• Converted 82% of his 581 career Save Opportunities
• 7-time All-Star
• Finished in the Top 10 of Cy Young voting 4 times
• Saved 25 or more games in 13 different seasons

(cover photo: Associated Press)

Career Highlights

Lee Arthur Smith was born on December 4, 1957 in Jamestown, a small town in northern Louisiana about 35 miles east of Shreveport.

As a child, until he was 11 years old, he went to an all-black school. From his SABR Bio, after Louisiana integrated its schools in 1969, Smith had to cross picket lines of protesting students and parents to arrive at class.

Six times in his senior year in high school, all-white schools forfeited basketball games rather than complete against a team with a black player.

After his senior year, Smith had planned to play basketball at Northwestern State but (at the suggestion of Negro League legend and scout Buck O’Neil) he was drafted by the Chicago Cubs as a pitcher in the 2nd round of the 1975 player draft.

For a $50,000 signing bonus (plus $8,000 to pay for a future education), Smith signed with the Cubs.

The Heir to Sutter in Chicago

In Bruce Sutter’s final season in Chicago (1980), Lee Smith made his major league debut.

On the mound, Smith was a hard thrower and a bigger and taller version of Goose Gossage; at 6 foot 5, 220 pounds, he looked like he could have played linebacker or tight end in the NFL.

“There’s no doubt in my mind he’s the hardest thrower in the game,” said Cubs catcher Jody Davis. Catching Smith “was scary, very scary!” said Keith Moreland.  Dusty Baker of Los Angeles admitted, “I don’t run from anybody, but the opinion around the National League is that you’re in no real hurry to get to him.”

— From his SABR Bio (by Neal Poloncarz)

What made Smith scary in the minor leagues was that he was wild (he walked 213 batters in 259 innings in AA ball in 1978-79). It was in ’79 that he was converted from a starting pitcher to relief pitcher and he liked the opportunity to pitch as a “stopper.”

Cubs Closer

After his 1980 big league debut and his official rookie season as a set-up man, Smith became the Cubs’ closer in 1982 and achieved stardom the following year.

In 1983, Smith appeared in 66 games, went 103.1 innings, saved 29 games and posted a 1.65 ERA (adjusted for a 229 ERA+).

1984 was an off year for Lee Smith (a 3.65 ERA) but a great year for his team. It was Ryne Sandberg’s MVP season and the team acquired two excellent starting pitchers (Rick Sutcliffe and Dennis Eckersley) for the stretch run.

There was an enormous amount of excitement in Chicago for the Cubs’ first post-season appearance since 1945. Things got off to a great start for the Cubbies in the NLCS, with a 13-0 Game 1 rout over the San Diego Padres behind Sutcliffe.

Game 2 was closer but resulted in a 4-2 Chicago victory, with Smith coming out of the pen to get the final two outs and the save.

The Padres won Game 3 fairly easily before the epic Game 4. The Cubs were down 5-3 entering the top of the 8th inning but scored two runs off the Pads’ Gossage to tie the score at 5.

Smith came out of the pen, in the 5-5 tie, to pitch the 8th inning and, after a dribbler infield single and an error by Sandberg, got out of the inning. The Cubs loaded the bases in the top of the 9th but Craig Lefferts got out of that jam by getting Cubs’ third baseman Ron Cey to ground out to 2nd.

In the bottom of the 9th, Smith got Alan Wiggins on strikes to start the inning. Tony Gwynn followed with a single. Then, on the 2nd pitch of the next at bat, Steve Garvey hit a 2-run home run to deep right-center field to give the Padres the walk-off 7-5 win.

The Padres would go onto win Game 5 and advance to the World Series and the Chicago Cubs would have to wait another 32 years before getting back to the Fall Classic.

A Brief Trip to an Alternate Reality

Lee Smith pitched 1,022 regular season games in his career (with four more in the post-season). He won 71 games and saved 478 more, all with a 3.03 ERA.

But sometimes, especially when you’re a relief pitcher, one game defines your career and, for Smith, Game 4 of the NLCS is that defining moment. Suppose things had transpired differently? What if Smith had gotten Garvey to hit into a double play and the Cubs went on to win the game?

What if the Cubs had then gone up to upset the mighty Detroit Tigers in the World Series and the iconic image of Smith’s career was him hugging catcher Jody Davis after a World Series win with fans going bonkers at Wrigley Field? Would Smith have been in the Hall of Fame years ago if that October script was a little bit different? I think that the answer might be “yes.”

Remember, Gossage was also a goat in the 1984 postseason. He blew the save in Game 4 that set the stage for Garvey’s game-winning blast. In addition, Gossage was on the mound for Kirk Gibson‘s Game 5 home run that sealed the Padres’ World Series defeat.

The difference is that Gossage already had his World Series ring, with the 1978 New York Yankees.

Final Years in Chicago

With the brief trip to an alternate reality out of the way, let’s return to Lee Smith’s career highlights.

The ’84 Cubs were a one-hit wonder, dropping from 96 wins in ’84 to just 77 in 1985. Smith’s three seasons after the NLCS disaster were good, but not great.

If you take the 1984-87 seasons (which should have been the prime of his career), Smith’s adjusted ERA+ of 125 was just 10th best among all relief pitchers with at least 300 innings for those four years.

He was still piling up the saves and striking out over a batter per inning but a ERA of 3.24 over 4 years is not what you would expect from a future Hall of Fame closer.

Using a different metric, however, Smith fares better. Thanks to his high strikeout rate, Smith’s 10.0 WAR from ’84-’84 was third best (behind Dan Quisenberry and Dave Righetti).

Traded to Boston

After the ’87 season, Smith was traded to the Boston Red Sox in exchange for Al Nipper and Calvin Schiraldi, a fairly low haul for someone who was considered an elite relief ace. From his SABR Bio and Fran Zimniuch’s book Fireman: The Evolution of the Closer in Baseball, there were organizational concerns about his weight, thus the trade.

The deal to Boston did give Smith something he wanted, a chance to play for a winning team and the ’88 Sox were the champions of the A.L. East. Unfortunately, they ran into the juggernaut Oakland A’s and were swept in 4 games. Smith entered Game 2 in the 9th inning of a tie game and gave up the run that was the margin of victory.

Smith had a 2.80 ERA in his first season in Boston but just 3.57 ERA in 1989 and, in the off-season, the team decided to sign another closer (Jeff Reardon) to a free agent contract.

Reardon was coming off a World Series title in 1987 and an All-Star season in 1988 and, although he was two years older, the Sox decided that he was their guy. Smith was traded in May 1990 to the St. Louis Cardinals.

Renaissance years in St. Louis

Lee Smith pitched a little over 3 1/2 seasons in St. Louis (mostly for manager Joe Torre) and saved 160 games (out of 186 opportunities for an impressive 86% rate).

In St. Louis, freed for the first time from home ballparks named Wrigley and Fenway and armed with a new pitch (a forkball), Smith had his best campaign since 1983, finishing with a 2.06 ERA between his games with the Red Sox and Redbirds.

It was a mid-career renaissance that earned him three consecutive All-Star berths (out of his seven total), a 2nd place N.L. Cy Young vote in 1991 and a 4th place Cy Young vote in 1992.

In 1992, both Smith and Reardon passed Rollie Fingers for the most saves in history, with Reardon finishing the season two ahead of Smith (357 to 355).

It didn’t take long for Smith to pass Reardon; he did it in his fourth appearance of the next season, on April 13th, 1993. Smith would remain the game’s all-time leader in saves until Sept 24, 2006, when he was passed by Trevor Hoffman.

Designated Closer for Hire

In 1993, with free agency looming and the Cards out of contention, Smith was dealt late in the season to the New York Yankees. After spending September in New York, Smith signed a one-year free agent contract with the Baltimore Orioles.

In the strike-shortened 1994 campaign, Smith led the majors with 33 saves, which was good enough to place him 5th in the A.L. Cy Young vote.

His last year as a “designated closer” was in 1995, when he saved 37 games (2nd in the A.L) with the California Angels. After a couple of middling partial seasons as a set-up man in Cincinnati and Montreal, Smith retired as a player in the spring of 1998 at the age of 40.

How Lee Smith Spanned Two Distinct Generations of Closers

Lee Smith’s years as a closer spanned two relief pitching eras, the “relief pitchers go multiple innings era” and the “closers just pitch the 9th inning era.”

For Smith, we’ll cut his career into two 9-year halves, the “multiple inning” half (1980-1988) and the “9th inning only” half (1989-1997).

By downloading his career game logs from Baseball Reference, we can see how his usage pattern shifted dramatically in the second half of his career, comparing how he was used in “clean” one-inning-to-get-the-save situations compared to all others.

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As a relief pitcher, Smith is a unique Hall of Famer in that he began his career as a contemporary of Fingers, Gossage and Sutter (the multi-inning closers) and finished his career as a contemporary of Eckersley (who was a prototype one-inning closer).

Smith’s final years also intersected with the early years of the careers of mostly one-inning stoppers Rivera and Hoffman.

It’s a credit to the big right-hander that he was able to succeed in both eras of closer usage.

Lee Smith’s Hall of Fame Vote in Quicksand

For 13 years, 5 months and 11 days, Lee Smith was the all-time saves leader in Major League Baseball. When he hit the Hall of Fame ballot in December 2002, he had 56 more career saves than anybody else (John Franco had 422) and that was enough for Smith to get 42% of the vote, an impressive tally for a first-year candidate. By comparison, Bruce Sutter debuted with 24% of the vote in 1994; Rich Gossage got 33% in his first year on the ballot in 2000.

Historically, a voting trajectory that starts with 42% in your first year traditionally ends with a plaque in Cooperstown. Now that Smith actually will get that plaque next summer, the only player who debuted on the BBWAA ballot with over 40% of the vote and never made it into the Hall of Fame is, drum roll please, Steve Garvey, the man responsible for the low point of Smith’s career.

Anyway, let’s get back to 2002. Smith (at 42.3%) actually got one vote more in 2003 than Gossage (42.1%), who was on the ballot for the 4th time. Sutter, in his 10th year, was at 53.6%.

Three years later (the 2006 vote), Sutter was in the Hall of Fame; Gossage had climbed to 64.6%; Smith trailed them both at 45.0%.

Two years after Sutter’s induction, Gossage climbed over the threshold and was a part of the Hall of Fame Class of 2008 while Smith continued to languish far behind at 43.2%.

In the four years that followed, Smith continued his tortoise-like progress towards the Hall of Fame, peaking at 50.6% in 2012. The 2013 ballot, however, began a cycle of super-stacked ballots in which voters had a hard time whittling their choices down to the maximum of 10.

The Stacked Ballots Arrive in 2013

In just 3 years (2013-2015), names like Bonds, Clemens, Sosa, Schilling, Biggio, Piazza, Maddux, Glavine, Thomas, Mussina, Johnson (Randy), Martinez (Pedro), and Smoltz joined the BBWAA party.

With so many new big names, plus holdover candidates Bagwell, McGriff and Martinez (Edgar), writers had a harder time finding room for Lee Smith with a 10-vote limit.

In Smith’s final two years on the ballot, he was joined by Trevor Hoffman, who’s 601 career saves made Smith’s 478 seem less significant.

Smith petered out with 34.2% of the vote in 2017, while Hoffman was inducted into the Hall in 2018 and will certainly be joined there by Mariano Rivera in 2019.

The Hall of Fame Case for Lee Smith

For over thirteen years (early in 1993 until close to the end of 2006, when he was passed by Trevor Hoffman), Lee Smith was the sport’s all-time leader in saves.

On 8 different occasions Smith was first or second in his league in saves.

Smith was a 7-time All-Star.

Four times he was in the Top 10 in the Cy Young Award balloting; in three other seasons he was in the Top 5.

He finished his career with a 3.03 ERA despite spending his first eleven seasons pitching half of his games in Wrigley Field or Fenway Park.

Smith never got hurt and, until his very last, he never had a bad year. For fourteen consecutive years he was entrusted with the precious final inning of his teams’ ballgames by fourteen different managers and not once did he fail to convert on at least 75% of those opportunities.

Using WAR (Wins Above Replacement), Smith’s career total of 29.4 is third best among relief pitchers in the last 50 years, behind only Rivera and Gossage. This ranking is for pitchers who logged at least 80% of their career appearances out of the bullpen.

Anyway, it sounds like I just laid out a pretty good case for a Hall of Fame plaque.

On November 11, I also laid out a fairly substantial “case against” Lee Smith’s induction into Cooperstown. It really doesn’t matter anymore now that he’s going to be in the Hall but it’s an interesting case study on the different paths a player can take to Cooperstown. You can read it by clicking here.

Finally a Hall of Famer

What more than half of the BBWAA didn’t see for 15 years was valued by the Today’s Game Committee. Lee Smith is finally in the Hall of Fame.

Without knowing exactly what was in the hearts and minds of the committee members, it’s a good guess that the former players and managers clearly appreciated the fact that Smith was a reliable 9th inning option for a long period of time. As a player or manager, there’s nothing more devastating than blowing a 9th-inning lead.

From his SABR Bio, Smith said that Joe Torre once gave him the greatest compliment a closer could ever receive, telling him “Lee Smith is one of two relievers I never had to worry about, and the other is Mariano Rivera.”

Lee Smith belongs in the Hall of Fame, period… I really don’t understand why he’s not in…  Plus, he didn’t just do one inning. He started out doing two or three innings… Why are people not voting for him? What is the knock against him? C’mon, he led the world in saves before Mariano and Hoffman.

— Goose Gossage (Fireman, by Fran Zimniuch, 2010)

It’s plainly clear that Gossage’s view was, in some form, shared by all of the members of the 16-person Today’s Game Committee. Lee Smith, at the Hall of Fame press conference, indicated that he was moved to tears at the congratulatory phone call he received from the Goose.

When Lee Smith strode in from the bullpen during his 18-year career, you could time his strides with a sundial. Smith was slow and deliberate. Once it was time to throw a pitch, he was fearsome. He was never truly great as a relief ace but he was really good for a long time. More importantly, he was dependable for a very long period of time.

Sometimes players make the Hall of Fame thanks to peak years in which they were one of the best players in the game. Others make it to Cooperstown based on their longevity. Smith is in the latter category. It took 21 years after his retirement to make it but Lee Smith is now a Hall of Famer.

Congratulations Lee!

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