The Hall of Fame Case for Jim McCormick, Forgotten 19th Century Star – by Jay Wiley

Have you heard the name Jim McCormick? If not, it’s understandable. He was a 19th century pitcher who is not in the Hall of Fame. McCormick, the son of Irish parents,  was born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1856. His family settled in Paterson, New Jersey in 1865, coming to America after the Civil War. McCormick pitched for just 10 seasons (1878 to 1887) in the old National League and Union Association, piling up 265 wins in those 10 seasons.

The key focus of this website (“Cooperstown Cred”) is to examine the qualifications of players who are not currently in the Hall of Fame. The vast majority of articles are about current BBWAA candidates, Veterans Committee and active players who are on a Hall of Fame track. Also, all but one of the pieces on this site have been written by the site’s founder, yours truly, Chris Bodig.

Over the last few months, on Twitter, I’ve made a new acquaintance, one who has done an extraordinary amount of research on the career of Jim McCormick. Therefore, I proudly submit the work and research by Jay Wiley on why McCormick deserves serious consideration for the Hall of Fame.

Why Jim McCormick Fell Short of 300 Wins & the Hall of Fame, by Jay Wiley

The average sports fan doesn’t exactly get thrilled about Nineteenth Century baseball. It’s easy to poke fun at those swashbuckling mustaches and antiquated rules. We often see baseball’s early days as relics with little usefulness to today’s game.  The Phillies probably won’t be promoting Ed Delahanty bobblehead day at Citizens Bank anytime soon.

But today’s game stands on the shoulders of those Nineteenth Century pioneers who toiled in relative anonymity, and played on fields and with equipment that would make today’s average little leaguer turn up his nose.

I’m thankful the Baseball Hall of Fame exists to draw us closer to baseball’s rich history. Their stated mission is to “preserve the sport’s history, honor excellence within the game and make a connection between the generations of people who enjoy baseball,” a worthy mission. My two boys and I have made the trip to Cooperstown for Hall of Fame induction weekend an annual ritual. Writers infinitely more eloquent than I have spilled vast amounts of ink capturing Cooperstown’s magic so I won’t attempt it.

Like a lot of baseball fans, I’ve been guilty of skimming past the 19th century names on pitching leaderboards, but I recently became intrigued by one name that stands out near the top of those boards time and time again: Jim McCormick.

Who was this guy? Why didn’t I know a thing about him? I looked into his career and discovered something amazing: Jim McCormick wasn’t just a great pitcher, he was historically great. News accounts of the day reveal just how revered McCormick was across the baseball world. The Boston Globe called McCormick “a master of the curve ball, and no one has shown more cleverness.”^[1]  A New York paper called McCormick “second to none as an effective and puzzling pitcher, and his record in that position is worthy of the most extended praise.”^[2] Indeed, McCormick was called “the best pitcher in the world.”^[3]

Over 130 years after his last pitch sailed across home plate, McCormick still ranks among the all time greats in nearly every major category. The more dust I blew off this old photograph, the clearer it became: Jim McCormick should be in the a Hall of Fame.

Cooperstown Cred: Jim McCormick

Pitched 10 seasons for 6 teams in the National League and Union Association:

• 265 Wins (39th most all-time)
• 2.43 ERA (4th all-time for pitchers with 400 decisions, 9th for pitchers with 3,000 IP)
• 1.132 WHIP (8th best for pitchers with either 400 decisions or 4,000 IP)
• 2.88 FIP (Fielding Independent Pitching) (6th best for SP with 400 decisions or 4,000 IP)
• 466 Complete Games (11th most all-time)
• 4,275 IP (34th most all-time)
• 118 ERA+ (16th best for pitchers with 4,000 IP)
• 76.0 WAR (Wins Above Replacement) (27th all-time for pitchers)
• 68.7 WAR7 (best seven seasons of WAR) (6th all-time for pitchers)
• 72.4 JAWS (18th all-time for pitchers)
• 43.1 WAA (Wins Above Average) (22nd all-time for pitchers)
• 195 Hall of Fame Monitor Score (24th all-time for pitchers)

McCormick led the league in WAR among pitchers 3 times, including twice across all players regardless of position. McCormick led the league in ERA twice, Wins twice, Complete Games 3 times, and ERA+ twice, numbers that would fit nicely on a plaque.

There are only 4 pitchers in baseball history with 4,000 IP and a 2.50 ERA or lower: Christy Mathewson, Eddie Plank, Walter Johnson, and Jim McCormick. The only pitchers with more WAR not in the Hall of Fame are Roger Clemens and Curt Schilling. Higher JAWS than McCormick? Only Clemens.

Why is Jim McCormick not in the Hall of Fame

When I learned McCormick has not been on any Hall of Fame ballot for at least 60 years (or perhaps ever), I knew he needed an advocate. From the research of Graham Womack (formerly of The Sporting News and currently on the Oral History Committee of SABR), McCormick was nominated on four ballots in the 1950’s but it’s unclear whether that nomination ever gave a single soul an opportunity to vote for him.

I joined with his family members and other Hall of Fame enthusiasts to start McCormickForTheHall.com, a campaign to get Jim McCormick into Cooperstown where he belongs.

All of McCormick’s 19th century Hall of Fame contemporaries have one thing in common: 300 Wins.

Does 265 Wins kill McCormick’s Hall chances?  It shouldn’t. Of the 66 Hall of Fame starting pitchers, 43 did not achieve 300 Wins.

For comparative analysis, I have set aside 66 pitchers who have been elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame for their body of work as starting pitchers. I have excluded Hoyt Wilhelm and Dennis Eckersley who both made many starts but were not inducted based on their success as starters. I do not include Satchel Paige because we do not have Negro League statistics with which to measure his career. Al Spalding and Candy Cummings had success as starting pitchers but were inducted to the Hall of Fame for their contributions to the game as pioneers. John Ward was inducted primarily for his work as a shortstop.

Let’s take a quick look at Hall of Fame voting history. By the time the Baseball Hall of Fame was established in 1936 few had witnessed the 19th Century greats play. Voters were rightfully occupied with the election of the Ruths and Cobbs, then the Hornsbys and Keelers. It wasn’t until the mid-1940s and 1950s before Hall of Fame voters had cleared enough players off the board to begin exploring the forgotten greatness of so many 19th century players.

John Clarkson and Tim Keefe, arguably the greatest 19th century pitchers, weren’t elected until 1963 and 1964 respectively, followed by Pud Galvin in 1965 and Mickey Welch in 1973.

By the 1950’s, almost no one alive had seen the stars of the 19th century play the game. The “Win” had been the defining pitching stat for a century so voters can be forgiven for simply looking up Win totals, only electing those with 300, and calling it a day.

For the record, I think the Win is a worthwhile statistic. But we now have many more useful ways to appraise pitching greatness. In fact, evaluating 19th century players requires us to lean on advanced metrics more than usual because no one walking the planet saw them play one single inning of baseball. These players need context and meaningful analysis.

One thing is irrefutable: If Jim McCormick had reached 300 Wins he would have a plaque hanging at 25 Main Street, Cooperstown, NY right now.  So why didn’t he reach that milestone?

There are two key reasons McCormick fell short of 300 Wins.

Retirement at Age 30

Jim McCormick pitched in only 10 big league seasons. This sounds odd today but it was not unusual for 19th century pitchers to burn out by age 30, no doubt due to their enormous workloads. And McCormick was a workhorse. He averaged 26.5 Wins, 48 starts, 47 complete games, and 428 IP per season during his 10-year career.

McCormick’s 26.5 Wins per season is 4th all time behind Al Spalding (36.0), Old Hoss Radbourn (28.1) and John Clarkson (27.3).  McCormick’s 46.6 complete games per season is #1 all time and his complete game rate of 96.1% is 3rd all-time behind Hall of Famer Old Hoss Radbourn and fellow 19th century great Will White. McCormick’s 427 innings pitched per season is #1 all time.

By the spring of 1888 there was much chatter about who would have the privilege of McCormick’s services for the season, but his wife Jennie was gravely ill with tuberculosis. She died that summer and an inconsolable McCormick, now widowed with a small child, closed the book on his baseball career. Weeks after Jennie McCormick died, Pud Galvin punched his future ticket to Cooperstown by becoming the first to reach the 300 Win plateau.

News accounts of the day reveal McCormick had grown weary of the annual battle with ownership over salary and the particularities of the Reserve Clause. McCormick was a vocal opponent of the Reserve Clause, which prevented players from entering into contracts with other teams even after their current contract expired. He switched teams 4 times from 1884-87 over quarrels with owners.

McCormick ran a profitable saloon back home in Paterson, New Jersey toward the end of his career that had grown harder to manage while spending half the year playing baseball. This was a time when baseball was not necessarily considered a prudent career choice for men in their 30’s with families. Players needed off-season jobs to make ends meet and would need to learn a whole new trade once baseball was over. McCormick’s saloon was more lucrative than baseball by the twilight of his career.

“I have a prosperous little business at home in Paterson, N.J.,” McCormick told the Chicago Tribune in 1885.  “(I)t is profitable enough to enable me to live nicely without the wear and tear of a ball-player’s life.” 

— Jim McCormick, Chicago Tribune (Oct. 28, 1885)

The five Hall of Fame pitchers of McCormick’s era (Clarkson, Galvin, Keefe, Radbourn, Welch) all pitched well into their 30’s and all reached 300 Wins.

Sabermetric pioneer Bill James outlined 6 distinct eras of professional baseball. The “Pioneer Era” encompassed the years 1871-1892. In 1893 the pitching distance was moved to 60 ft, 6 in. Clarkson, Galvin, Keefe, Radbourn, and Welch’s careers all took place largely within that era. Amos Rusie was close, with his median year being 1893.  In all, most of Rusie’s career took place after the distance change so I include him in Bill James’ “Deadball Era” (1893-1919).

Was McCormick’s career too short for the Hall of Fame?

Of the 66 starting pitchers elected to the Hall of Fame, only three have 10 or fewer major league seasons: Addie Joss, Joe McGinnity, and Rusie.

Joss is a unique case, having died two days after his 31st birthday with only 9 major league seasons. Joss was a force on the mound with a 142 ERA+.  His 1.89 ERA and high win percentage prompted Hall voters to grant an exception to the 10-year minimum rule. The Veterans Committee elected Joss to the Hall of Fame in 1978.

McGinnity and Rusie are the only Hall of Fame starting pitchers with the minimum 10 seasons of big league playing time. McGinnity, famous for often pitching in both ends of a doubleheader, had 246 Wins and a 2.66 ERA.  He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1946.

Rusie, famous for his blazing fastball, intimidated batters unlike almost any other pitcher of his time. It is said that the threatening fastball of “The Hoosier Thunderbolt” helped convince baseball to move the pitching distance to its current 60 ft. 6 in. in 1893.  Rusie, at age 27, suffered a freak arm injury attempting to throw out a baserunner and his career was effectively finished with 246 Wins and a 3.07 ERA.  The Veterans Committee elected Rusie to the Hall of Fame in 1977.

How does McCormick stack up against the short-timers who made the Cooperstown cut?

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When you put McCormick side-by-side with Joss, Rusie, and McGinnity, he compares very favorably in every category except ERA+.  McCormick has more Wins, games started, complete games, and innings pitched than Joss, McGinnity, and Rusie.

Next, let’s look at at these four hurlers in terms of WAR (Wins Above Replacement from Baseball Reference) and three metrics devised by Bill James: his Hall of Fame Monitor (devised in the 1980’s), Win Shares (created about 20 years ago), and Hall of Fame Value (a new metric with the simple formula of Win Shares + 4x bWAR).

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McCormick, by the sheer volume of his work, looks great here too.

Short careers did not keep Joss, Rusie and McGinnity out of Cooperstown, and should not hinder McCormick’s Hall of Fame candidacy.

But there’s more.

Jim McCormick’s “Tough Luck” Career

Jim began his major league career in 1878 with the Indianapolis Blues of the National League.  The team relocated to Cleveland the next year and McCormick followed.  He would spend 6 1/2 years of his 10-year career with the Blues, a franchise that routinely finished dead last in the NL in almost every offensive category.  The Blues offense was so bad in 1884 that McCormick was moved up to fifth in the batting order.^[4] Lack of run support and perennial losing led McCormick to consider shopping his talents around the league. But the NL’s Reserve Clause kept players yoked to their team.

By 1884 McCormick had enough and defected to the insurgent Union Association League mid-season. The Blues franchise folded two months later. The defection angered NL owners and McCormick was blackballed.  But the upstart UA folded after that season and McCormick implored the de facto NL boss Al Spalding for reinstatement in the more stable league. Spalding relented and brought McCormick to his Chicago White Stockings (who would later become the Cubs) in time to secure the NL Championship. His year and a half stint with the White Stockings would be the only time McCormick pitched for a consistently winning team.

While McCormick toiled for cellar dwelling teams, his future Hall of Fame peers pitched for juggernauts. Tim Keefe and Mickey Welch both starred for the New York Giants along with a who’s who of 19th century baseball greats, including Hall of Famers Buck Ewing, Roger Connor, John Ward, and Jim O’Rourke (profiled here).

John Clarkson pitched several seasons for the White Stockings with future Hall of Famers Cap Anson and King Kelly. Clarkson then joined fellow Hall of Famer Old Hoss Radbourn with the Boston Beaneaters (who would become the Braves franchise), where they also enjoyed the talents of Hall of Famers Joe Kelley, Dan Brouthers, King Kelly, and wunderkind Kid Nichols.

Pud Galvin pitched much of his career for the more obscure Buffalo Bisons but still had the help of Hall of Famers Brouthers, O’Rourke, and Deacon White.

McCormick would not play with a single future Hall of Famer until his 8th season when he joined Spalding’s White Stockings.  The talent around a player does not make or break a player’s Hall of Fame argument, but when evaluating how many opportunities a pitcher had to accumulate a team-dependent statistic like Wins, I would argue it is relevant. It also underscores the obscurity in which McCormick toiled while his future Hall of Fame peers starred for teams in Boston, New York, and Chicago, with resources, press coverage, and an expectation of winning McCormick did not enjoy for most of his career.

A dig through the game logs (on Retrosheet) of McCormick’s career reveals that in his 10 year career McCormick’s team was shut out an eye popping 39 times when he pitched.  Pud Galvin’s teams were shut out more often (4 more) in his career, but it took him 5 more seasons and more than 1,700 more innings to match McCormick’s tough luck.  McCormick’s teams had 1.8 shutout losses every 200 innings, far more than any of his Hall of Fame peers.

For perspective: Jacob deGrom won the 2018 NL Cy Young Award after famously receiving very little run support throughout the season. The baseball world clutched its collective pearls over deGrom’s wasted excellence. Even when announcing the Cy Young award after the season, BBWAA President Jack O’Connell underscored what we all knew: “Receiving more support from the writers than his teammates, Jacob deGrom was the runaway winner of the National League Cy Young Award.” O’Connell was dead on: the Mets were shut out in 9% of the games deGrom pitched.

McCormick’s teams surpassed the Mets’ 2018 shutout percentage in 4 of his 10 seasons. Add to that the 32 times McCormick’s team scored only 1 run for him and we begin to get a full picture of the uphill climb McCormick had to achieve a respectable Win-Loss record, the only real metric for success in his time.

Wins Above Average Adjustment

We can measure McCormick’s bad luck in more in-depth ways. Bill James attempted to get to the bottom of what a pitcher’s win-loss record might look like if the team behind them were better.  He devised waaWL% (Wins Above Average Adjustment) to determine what a pitcher’s win percentage should be with a league average team. Henry Chadwick is credited with devising ERA but it didn’t catch on until the 20^th Century. It was not officially computed in the National League until 1912. 

McCormick had a career .553 win percentage, but his .588 waaWL% is significantly higher. If we apply James’ method and multiply McCormick’s career decisions by his .588 waaWL%, McCormick would have won 16 more games in his career if he had only played for average teams. How does this rank among Hall of Fame pitchers throughout history?

The following graph shows McCormick alongside all 66 Hall of Fame starting pitchers organized by the disparity between their Win% and their waaWL%, or how many Wins each pitcher “lost” by playing on below-average teams. Most pitchers fall below zero on my graph because they actually gained Wins pitching for strong teams. A casual glance will confirm what most probably suspect. Whitey Ford, who had the fortune of pitching for all those great Yankees teams, is dead last in Wins “lost.”  Mathewson, Spahn, Palmer, and Glavine all largely played for winning teams and they are firmly in the bottom half of the chart while Walter Johnson and Nolan Ryan famously played for some really bad teams, taking their places at the top of our graph.

The text here is very small. If you can’t read the names, take our word for it that McCormick’s name is on the top with the red line.

Jim McCormick “lost” more Wins than any Hall of Fame pitcher in history.

Another Way to look at Jim McCormick’s Lack of Offensive Support

I poured over every Hall of Fame starting pitcher’s career year-by-year, team-by-team to find out what each pitcher’s team OPS+ averaged out to over the course of their career. I prorated each team’s OPS+ to the pitcher’s number of starts that season. For instance, if a pitcher got traded from a 100 OPS+ team to an 80 OPS+ team in August of that season, the pitcher’s team OPS+ for the season would calculate much closer to 100 for that season because that pitcher made more starts for the 100 OPS+ team. I have also prorated each pitcher’s career number. If a pitcher threw 300 innings in Season A for a team with a 100 OPS+ and only 150 innings in Season B for a team with an 80 OPS+, the average OPS+ of the two seasons would be closer to 100 because the pitcher threw more innings in Season A: everything is prorated.

Again, the text is small but you’ll see McCormick (in red) near the very bottom.

Only 2 Hall of Fame pitchers had worse offensive output from their teams over the course of their careers than Jim McCormick.

McCormick managed to scratch out a hefty 265 Wins despite terrible run support and a career that was short by Hall of Fame standards. He won 20 games 8 times, 30 games four times, and 40 games twice. McCormick was the career leader in pitching WAR and strikeouts when he retired. Hall of Famer Cap Anson, perhaps the greatest player of the Nineteenth Century, called McCormick “one of the best men… that ever sent a ball whizzing across the plate.”^[5]

Sadly, Jim McCormick fell on hard times later in life. A series of financial misfortunes left him out of work, living with his adult son, and ill from severe arthritis and cirrhosis of the liver. Famous evangelist Billy Sunday, a teammate of McCormick’s in Chicago, would hold revivals in Paterson, New Jersey and frequently visit McCormick, always leaving him a small amount of money to manage his expenses.^[6] Jim McCormick died on March 10, 1918 at the age of 62. Even his tombstone is a sad commentary. It reads “McCormack” with an a — the only occurrence of this spelling.^[7]

Conclusion

I’m not a “big hall” guy.  I simply want the best in the Hall of Fame.  McCormick’s induction would actually improve the Hall of Fame’s average in many categories.

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There is hope for McCormick’s Hall of Fame candidacy on the horizon.

In December 2020 the Baseball Hall of Fame’s Early Baseball Committee will meet to consider pre-1949 candidates.  They have an opportunity to evaluate one of the game’s greats and further fulfill the Hall’s great mission to “honor excellence within the game.” Committees like the Early Baseball Committee exist to put context to a player’s career, to consider what may have been missed by others. That is exactly the kind of analysis Jim McCormick’s career deserves, and has been denied for too long.

Thanks for reading.

For more on McCormick, please visit McCormickforthehall.com or follow the McCormick for the Hall page on Twitter. Also, please follow CooperstownCred on Twitter @cooperstowncred.

^[1] Boston Globe, October 10, 1885

^[2] The New York Clipper, May 20, 1882

^[3] Boston Globe, October 10, 1885

^[4] SABR bio

^[5] William McMahon, “James McCormick,” Nineteenth Century Starts (Cleveland:  SABR, 1989), 85.

^[6] Alfred R. Cappio, “Patterson’s Jim McCormick, Forgotten Man of Baseball”.  The Passaic County Historical Society, 1962.

^[7] Alfred R. Cappio, “Patterson’s Jim McCormick, Forgotten Man of Baseball”.  The Passaic County Historical Society, 1962.