Should Tommy John be Known as a Hall of Famer or Just a Surgical Procedure?

For the casual baseball fan under the age of 35, Tommy John is the name of a surgical procedure. Older fans remember the pitcher for whom the procedure was named, the left-handed starter whose ulnar collateral ligament in his left elbow was replaced by a new ligament harvested from a tendon in his right wrist. It was a ground-breaking operation performed on September 25, 1974, by the team surgeon of the Los Angeles Dodgers, Dr. Frank Jobe.

Today, the ulnar collateral ligament (UCL) reconstruction procedure is known simply as Tommy John Surgery.

That ultimately successful surgery has since extended the careers of hundreds of baseball players, mostly pitchers. Also, because pitchers today are throwing harder than ever before and more strain on their arms than ever before, Tommy John surgeries are being performed on players near the beginning of their careers and even on high school hurlers.

On Sunday, December 9th, Tommy John, the pitcher, will have another opportunity to be enshrined in the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York. John is one of eight candidates on the Hall’s Classic Baseball Era Committee ballot.

He, along with Luis Tiant, Dick Allen, Steve Garvey, Dave Parker, Ken Boyer, John Donaldson, and Vic Harris, will be considered for a spot in the Hall of Fame by a 16-member panel of Hall of Famers, baseball executives, historians, and media members. The 16 voting members will have the option of voting for a maximum of three out of the eight candidates. For any candidates to make it into the Hall, they’ll need to get 12 out of 16 votes (75%).

This is the fifth time that John has been on a “second chance” Era Committee ballot for the Hall of Fame. He’s never gotten remotely close to 12 out of 16 votes in four previous appearances.

In this piece, after a recap of John’s 26-year MLB career, I’ll assess the pros and cons of John’s candidacy for Cooperstown.

Cooperstown Cred: Tommy John (SP)

• Career: Indians (1963-64), White Sox (1965-71), Dodgers (1972-78), Yankees (1979-82), Angels (1982-85), Athletics (1985), Yankees (1986-89)
• Career: 288-231 (.555), 3.34 ERA
• Career: 62.1 WAR (Wins Above Replacement), 111 ERA+
• Career: 4,710.1 IP is 14th most since 1901
• 288 wins and 4,710.1 IP are 2nd most for any pitcher since 1901 who is not in the Hall of Fame (Roger Clemens)
• Won 20 or more games three times
• 4-time All-Star
• Two-time runner-up in Cy Young Award voting
• 6-3, 2.65 ERA in 14 post-season appearances

(cover photo: Dodgers Nation)

This is an update of a piece originally published in November 2017.

Tommy John: Early Professional Career

Thomas Edward John was born on May 22, 1943, in Terre Haute, Indiana. John was a two-sport star at Gerstmeyer High School, excelling at both basketball and baseball. He was recruited to play college basketball, but when it became clear that a professional hoops career was not in his future, John signed up with the Cleveland Indians at the age of 18. As a tall, lanky teenager, John had a great curveball in high school, but the scouting reports made it clear that he needed to develop his fastball skills.

John, at the age of 18, made his professional baseball debut in Dubuque, Iowa (a class D team in the Midwest League). The 6’3″ left-hander dominated the Class D hitters, going 10-4 with a 3.17 ERA and 99 strikeouts in 88 innings. In 1962, John was in Class A ball (Charleston, West Virginia, in the Eastern League); one of his teammates was Luis Tiant, the Cuban right-hander who would go on to win 229 games in the majors. (Tiant, who passed away last month, is also on the Classic Baseball Hall of Fame ballot).

John struggled in the early going. In essence, he was pitching the way most MLB pitchers do today, using maximum effort on every pitch. As he noted in his biography (The Sally and Tommy John Story: Our Life in Baseball), “I was rearing back on every pitch and firing with all my strength at the strike zone.” The result was too many balls and bad counts.

It was Steve Jankowski, a player-coach in the Indians’ system, who taught John to trust his defense and to use only 80% of his power to save himself for later innings. This was the type of game plan that most successful starters of John’s generation employed, allowing them to complete starts at rates that are unheard of in today’s game.

In early August, John was promoted to AAA Jacksonville in the International League. John split time between Charleston and Jacksonville in 1963. With a 15-10 record to go with a 2.60 ERA, he earned a promotion to the Indians in Cleveland in September at the age of 20.

1963-64: Cleveland Indians

Tommy John appeared in 6 games with the Tribe in September 1963, going 0-2 but with a 2.21 ERA. Indians manager Birdie Tebbetts was impressed, telling John “not to change your style up here. Make the hitters change to you” (from the Terre Haute Tribune). Tebbetts also referred to John’s fastball as “deceptive,” which might have referred to its natural downward movement. Throughout his MLB career, John was known as one of the great groundball specialists.

Unfortunately, Tebbetts suffered a coronary in early April 1964 and missed the first 72 games of the season while recovering. While Tebbetts was gone, the Indians’ coaches tinkered with John’s pitching approach. Pitching coach Early Wynn, a future Hall of Famer, told John to learn how to throw a slider, which messed up the young lefty’s mechanics.

Although John pitched respectably in his first 16 outings (he had a 2-9 record but with a 3.78 ERA), he got bombed in a July 16th start in Kansas City (giving up 5 runs on 3 hits and 3 walks in 0.2 innings). Now, with a 4.30 ERA, John was demoted back to Jacksonville and would not return until September, when he posted a 1.42 ERA in 8 appearances out of the bullpen.

John had seven quality starts (at least 6 IP, less than 3 ER) in 7 of his 9 losses in 1964. He received a grand total of 10 runs in support in those 7 starts; his record was 0-7 with a 2.92 ERA in those efforts.

In January 1965, John was traded to the Chicago White Sox as a part of a 3-team, 8-player deal that sent All-Star slugger Rocky Colavito from the Kansas City Athletics to the Indians.

1965-71: Chicago White Sox

In moving from Cleveland to Chicago, Tommy John went from a second-division squad to a contending team. Under future Hall of Fame skipper Al Lopez, the 1964 Chisox finished with 98 wins, just one behind the New York Yankees. After John’s first intrasquad outing, Lopez proclaimed that his 21-year-old lefty “LOOKS like a pitcher!”

John opened the regular season in the bullpen, making his first start for the White Sox in the team’s 7th game, on April 19th. John tossed 7 innings of 2-run ball. In total, John went 14-7 for the season with a 3.09 ERA, finishing the campaign with two complete-game, one-run outings. The team won 95 games, finishing 7 games behind the Minnesota Twins and Jim Kaat, another tall left-hander who would finish painfully shy of 300 wins in his career. (Kaat was finally elected to the Hall of Fame in 2022, perhaps lending hope that John will follow suit next month).

In 1966, pitching for new manager Eddie Stanky, John was honored with the Opening Day start and upped his game, going 14-11 with a 2.62 ERA in 223 innings and a league-leading 5 shutouts. In 1967, John went 10-13 but delivered a 2.47 ERA (4th best in the A.L.) but missed a month due to gastritis. Even so, he led the A.L. again with 6 shutouts.

John emerged as a legitimate ace in early 1968, going 7-0 with a 1.54 ERA in his first 13 starts. The fast start earned John his first All-Star berth. Facing two batters, he was the 6th and final pitcher for the A.L. in the Junior Circuit’s 1-0 loss in the Houston Astrodome. Always the ground ball thrower, John induced a double play from Tommy Helms after giving up a single to Ron Santo.

Tommy John’s First Shoulder Injury

Tommy John’s season ended on August 22nd when he injured his left shoulder in a fight with the Detroit Tigers’ Dick McAuliffe. The Tigers second baseman charged the mound when he thought John was throwing at him. McAuliffe jabbed his knee into John’s left shoulder, tearing some of John’s ligaments.

While John was done for the year, McAuliffe was suspended for five games before returning to a team that would win the ’68 World Series in a classic against the St. Louis Cardinals. John finished the season with a 10-5 record and a 1.98 ERA.

In 1969, John’s shoulder was healthy, but his performance was slightly off. While still effective, John would not regain the ’68 form that put him in the Mid-Summer Classic in any of his last three campaigns with the Chisox.

• 1969: 9-11, 3.25 ERA (119 ERA+)
• 1970: 12-17, 3.27 ERA (116 ERA+)
• 1971: 13-16, 3.61 ERA (100 ERA+)

To be fair, John can’t be blamed for his sub-.500 records. The White Sox in these years were not a good team, winning 68 games in ’69, a mere 56 in ’70 before a respectable 79 in ’71.

John was 27 years old at the start of the ’71 campaign, and his season started horribly; he was 3-7 with a 5.02 ERA in his first 14 outings. Although John finished strong (10-9 with a 3.04 ERA in his final 24 starts), the organization decided to part ways with their tall left-hander, trading him in December to the Los Angeles Dodgers in exchange for Dick Allen (also on next month’s Classic Baseball Hall of Fame ballot). The team needed a big bat, and John had been supplanted as the team’s top starter by knuckleballer Wilbur Wood, who won 22 games with a 1.91 ERA.

At the end of John’s tenure in Chicago, he had a career mark of 84-91 with a 3.00 ERA (a solid 115 ERA+). Although his 2.95 ERA with the Chicox was quite good (4th best in the A.L. from ’65-’71 for pitchers with at least 1,000 IP), his win-loss record for those years (82-80) did not get sportswriters to start writing the words “future Hall of Famer Tommy John.”

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1972-74: Tommy John in Los Angeles Part I

The trade of Dick Allen for Tommy John initially looked like a lopsided winner for the White Sox as Allen won the 1972 A.L. MVP Award. In the long run, the Dodgers fared better, and John had the career-saving coincidence of pitching for a team that had Dr. Frank Jobe as its team surgeon.

Back on a contending team under future Hall of Fame skipper Walter Alston, John joined a starting rotation that had four members who had tossed at least 200 innings in 1971: Don Sutton (another future Hall of Famer), Al Downing, Bill Singer, and Claude Osteen. John was clearly the 3rd best starter on this staff in ’72, behind 19-game winner Sutton and 20-game winner Osteen. In his first season in Dodger Blue, John went 11-5 with a 2.89 ERA. The team won 85 games, ten fewer than the N.L. West champion Cincinnati Reds.

John, in his age 30 season, had another solid campaign in 1973, going 16-7 with a 3.10 ERA. Again, he was the third-best starter on the Dodgers, behind Sutton and Andy Messersmith. The second half of 1973 featured the maiden voyage of the long-time Dodgers infield of Steve Garvey, Davey Lopes, Ron Cey, and Bill Russell. The Dodgers won 95 games in ’73, but that was still not enough to win the division; the Big Red Machine won 99.

The now-veteran left-hander got off to a fabulous start in 1974, winning his first five starts to go with a 0.86 ERA. Despite a mediocre outing in his sixth effort, John was the N.L. pitcher of the month, the first time in his career he was awarded monthly honors. After those first five starts, John went 8-3 with a 3.24 ERA until his season ended prematurely.

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“You’d Better Get Somebody In There”

Considering his strong first half, Tommy John was a surprising snub for the All-Star Game. National League manager Yogi Berra (the New York Mets skipper) claimed that a final spot on the N.L. staff had to be filled by second-year Montreal Expos righty Steve Rogers due to the rule that each team must have at least one representative.

Shortly after the Mid-Summer Classic, on July 17th, 1974, at Dodger Stadium, John took the hill with a 13-3 record and 2.50 ERA. On that night in Chavez Ravine, John was matched up against the Expos and Rogers and had a 4-0 lead in the third inning. With no outs and a runner on first, John attempted to throw his sinking fastball to induce a double play grounder.

“Right at the point where I put force on the pitch, the point where my arm is back and bent, something happened. It felt as if I had left my arm someplace else… I heard this thudding sound in my elbow, then I felt a sharp pain. My fingers started to tingle. The ball got to the plate somehow, high and away. I threw one more pitch, at about half speed, and felt the same sensation… I walked off the mound and met Walter Alston coming out of the dugout. ‘You better get somebody,’ I told him. ‘I just hurt my arm.’ “

— Tommy John (Sports Illustrated, August 1978)

The timeline from that moment on the Dodger Stadium mound to his surgery a little over three months later to his rehabilitation to his return to the mound in April 1976 is a tale of fear, uncertainty, courage, and determination.

The First Tommy John Surgery

Michael Fallon’s excellent biography about John on SABR tells the story of John’s road back to the majors in riveting detail. The short version is this. John was “extremely leery” of surgery because, in most of baseball history, going “under the knife” meant the end of one’s career. John, however, trusted Dr. Frank Jobe, who had cleaned out some bone chips in his left elbow two years earlier. Because John’s ulnar ligament was completely ruptured, the choice was surgery or retirement.

When Jobe did the surgery on September 25th, he made a decision on the fly to replace, rather than repair, John’s medial collateral ligament because there was nothing left to repair. Essentially developing a new surgical procedure on the spot, Jobe replaced John’s MCL with a new ligament harvested from a tendon in the pitcher’s right wrist.

The surgery had an unintended side effect; John’s ulnar nerve was damaged during the procedure, turning his left hand into a useless claw. Jobe performed another surgery in December to correct that problem.

“The second operation was the real kicker… If the first hadn’t succeeded, I would have been able to lead a normal life, I just wouldn’t have been able to pitch. If the second had failed, I would have had a hand like a claw. I wouldn’t have been able to open doors, swing a golf club… But God must have been looking out for me, because that nerve damage kept me from pitching in 1975, and that was the best thing that could have happened to my arm.”

— Tommy John (Sports Illustrated, August 1978)

John went through months of rehabilitation, fighting through the frustration of more than a half year of numbness in two paralyzed fingers. Feeling in his fingers eventually returned in July 1975, and by the start of 1976, he was back in the Dodgers’ starting rotation.

1976-78: John’s Final Seasons in Los Angeles

Tommy John, by all appearances, was almost as good as new as he started the 1976 campaign, his age-33 season. In 31 starts covering 207 innings, John went 10-10 with a 3.09 ERA. The Dodgers, in their first year under future Hall of Fame manager Tommy Lasorda, won 92 games, which was good enough for 2nd place in the N.L. West.

In 1977, John had arguably his best season since the aborted ’68 campaign. He won 20 games for the first time (going 20-7) with a 2.78 ERA. Although the modern metric of WAR lists John as the third-best pitcher on the ’77 Dodgers (behind Burt Hooton and Sutton), the writers recognized John and his “bionic” left arm with a 2nd place finish in the Cy Young balloting. John finished behind only Steve Carlton, who won 23 games for the N.L. East champion Philadelphia Phillies. (The term “bionic arm” is an homage to the ’70s hit series The Six Million Dollar Man).

John’s 20 victories helped propel the Dodgers to the postseason for the first time since 1974 when John missed the playoff party due to his surgery. In the National League Championship Series, after a lackluster outcome (a no decision) in a Game 1 loss, John out-pitched Carlton in Game 4, tossing a 1-run shutout to send the Dodgers to the Fall Classic for the first time since 1966. The 34-year-old lefty lost his only World Series start (in Game 3) in the New York Yankees’ 6-game series win.

John regressed slightly in 1978 but still had a solid campaign, going 17-10 with a 3.30 ERA. He made his first All-Star Game in a decade and finished 8th in the Cy Young balloting. The Dodgers matched up against the Phillies again in the NLCS. John started Game 2 and tossed a 4-hit complete game shutout, helping Los Angeles to a rematch in the World Series against the Yankees. The Dodger southpaw pitched well in the Fall Classic (5 ER in 14.2 IP), but the team fell again to the Bronx Bombers in 6 games.

All told, in his first three seasons after the surgery that would be named after him, Tommy John went 47-27 with a 3.05 ERA while helping his team to two pennants. Nice job, Dr. Jobe!

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1979-82: New York Yankees

In November 1978, in a span of two weeks, George Steinbrenner and the Yankees signed two free-agent pitchers from their biggest rivals during the season. First, they signed Luis Tiant from the Boston Red Sox just 10 days before his 38th birthday. Next, the Boss signed Tommy John to a 3-year, $1.2 million deal. At 35, John declared that he intended to pitch another 6 or 7 years. When a reporter asked how a 35-year-old could expect to pitch that long, John quipped, “My arm is only four years old.”

John’s first year in pinstripes was arguably the best of his career. He went 21-9 with a 2.96 ERA, all while setting career highs in innings (276.1) and complete games (17). John made his third All-Star squad and finished 2nd in the Cy Young balloting. The Yankee team, however, in part due to the devastation of the death of catcher Thurman Munson, missed the playoffs for the first time since 1975.

John had another excellent campaign in 1980 (a season in which the Yankees won 103 games and the A.L. West title). The now 37-year-old southpaw went 22-9 with a 3.43 ERA; it was good enough for another All-Star berth and 4th place Cy Young finish.

The Yankees dropped the first two games of the ALCS to the Kansas City Royals, forcing a “win-or-go-home” scenario in Game 3. John was tasked to win that game and, after 6 innings, helped the Yankees to a 2-1 lead. In the top of the 7th, after getting the first two batters out, John gave up a double to Willie Wilson. Yankees skipper Dick Howser brought closer Goose Gossage out of the bullpen, and the Goose, after giving up a single to U.L. Washington, yielded a towering three-run home run to George Brett in a memorable clash of future Hall of Famers. The Royals completed the sweep and advanced to the World Series.

The 1981 World Series

John went 9-8 with a 2.63 ERA in the strike-shortened 1981 campaign. After the Yankees navigated the first two rounds of the expanded playoffs, the team had its third matchup in five years against John’s former team, the Dodgers. The Yankees won the first two games, with John tossing 7 innings of scoreless ball in Game 2.

In Game 4, with the Yankees still up 2 games to 1, both offenses put multiple runs on the board. A total of 9 pitchers had been used by the middle of the 7th inning, a normal number today but a huge number of hurlers in one game at this point in baseball history. When Yankees reliever George Frazier loaded the bases with no outs in the bottom of the 7th, manager Bob Lemon brought John into the game out of the bullpen in a nearly impossible situation. John yielded a sacrifice fly to Steve Yeager and an RBI single to Davey Lopes; the Dodgers went on to win 8-7 to tie the series.

John was back four days later to pitch Game 6, which was now an elimination game for New York after the Dodgers finished sweeping all three games at home. In the bottom of the 4th inning, with the score tied at 1, the Yankees had a runner at second base with two outs. Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda walked the eighth-place batter to bring John to the plate. In what was a highly controversial move at the time, Lemon lifted John for pinch-hitter Bobby Murcer, who flied out to right field to end the inning. The Bombers’ next pitcher, George Frazier, had already been credited with losses in Games 3 and 4. Now, in Game 6, relieving John in the top of the fifth, Frazier promptly gave up three runs, essentially ending the game and the series.

In February 1982, John signed up for another two years in New York. Through the end of August, the now 39-year-old had a 10-10 record to go with a 3.66 ERA. John had a mid-season slump, and manager Gene Michael temporarily demoted him to the bullpen. John asked for a trade, and with the Yankees out of contention, his wish was accommodated at the August 31st trading deadline. He was sent back to Southern California in a deal with the California Angels.

1982-85: California Angels

Tommy John, at 39, fit right into Gene Mauch’s team of veterans. California had an entire lineup of 30-somethings, led by future Hall of Famers Reggie Jackson and Rod Carew. The Angels were 1.5 games behind the Royals at the time of the trade and finished the season with 93 wins, good enough for the franchise’s 2nd A.L. West crown. John went 4-2 down the stretch with a 3.86 ERA to help California to the title.

Mauch tabbed John to start Game 1 of the ALCS against the Milwaukee Brewers. John, facing another lefty (33-year-old Mike Caldwell), led the Angels to an 8-3 win, tossing a complete game. The Angels won Game 2 to get within one win of the World Series.

After Don Sutton (now a Brewer) won Game 3, John had an opportunity to close out the series in Game 4. In what would be his final postseason outing, John gave up 6 runs (4 earned) in 3.1 innings. The Angels lost 9-5 and also lost Game 5 the next day.

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All told, in his first 7 years after his ground-breaking surgery, John went 113-65 with a 3.15 ERA. These were the years that are the foundation of an argument for the Hall of Fame for Tommy John.

John’s inevitable decline began in 1983, his age 40 season.

• 1983: 11-13, 4.33 ERA (93 ERA+)
• 1984: 7-13, 4.52 ERA (89 ERA+)
• 1985: 4-10, 5.53 ERA (72 ERA+)

At the beginning of the 1985 campaign, John was a spot starter and occasional reliever. He pitched only 12 times (posting a 4.70 ERA in 38.1 IP) before being designated for assignment and ultimately released. It seemed like John’s career might be over, but a few weeks later, he was signed by the Oakland Athletics.

In 11 games (all starts) with Oakland, John went 2-6 with a 6.19 ERA. He was granted free agency after the season.

1986-89: Back to the Big Apple

Now 42 years old, Tommy John was invited to spring training by the New York Yankees. Characterized as a 1,000-to-1 shot, John might have made the team out of Spring Training but was shelved by back spasms. He kept himself ready and, when the need arose, signed on May 2nd. In his first six outings, John went 3-0 with a 2.37 ERA. The veteran lefty turned 43 during the strong start to his 22nd MLB campaign.

After two poor outings, it was discovered that John had an injury to his Achilles tendon. John returned in August and made five strong starts (2.16 ERA), the last being an 8-inning losing effort in which he gave up just one run. A few days later, he suffered a fractured thumb when he slipped on the bullpen mound in Oakland before the game, ending his season.

Despite his advancing years, John returned in 1987 for a highly useful campaign, going 13-6 with a 4.03 ERA (110 ERA+) in 33 starts. 1988 was not quite as good; he went 9-8 with a 4.49 ERA in 35 outings. John was released in November but was then invited back to spring training in February 1989.

Even though manager Dallas Green didn’t want a 45-year-old pitcher, John posted a 1.07 ERA in 17 innings of work in Spring Training and, remarkably, earned the Opening Day start. In that start, on April 4th in Minnesota, John was matched up against the ’88 A.L. Cy Young winner Frank Viola. John’s music was sweeter; he tossed 7 innings of 2-run ball, leading the Yankees to a 4-2 victory. John would go on to toss three more quality starts in his next four efforts.

In May, however, the wheels started to come off. John lost four straight starts while posting an ugly 7.83 ERA. On May 25th, two days after his 46th birthday, John pitched for the final time in his 26-year career. It was a 5.1-inning effort in which he gave up 5 runs and earned a no-decision. He finished the season with a 2-7 record and a 5.80 ERA.

On May 30th, Tommy John was released. He finished his career with 288 wins, 12 shy of one of baseball’s most magical numbers.

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John’s Hall of Fame Balloting History

In my Hall of Fame case for Luis Tiant, I detailed how Tiant, on the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA) ballots, suffered in comparison to a plethora of superb starters from the 1970s who were contemporaries of both Tiant and John. Tiant first appeared on the BBWAA ballot in 1988 and got 31% of the vote. That was the highest he ever got as Gaylord Perry, Fergie Jenkins, Jim Palmer, Tom Seaver, Phil Niekro, Don Sutton, and Steve Carlton all hit the ballot in the ensuing six years.

Tommy John hit the ballot in 1995 (with Sutton and Niekro still on it) and suffered by comparison, earning just 21% of the vote. The writers in the mid-70s were especially stingy with their Hall of Fame votes; Sutton (with 324 career wins) and Niekro (with 318) each had to wait five years before getting their plaques in Cooperstown. Either 300 wins, five or more 20-win seasons, or multiple Cy Young Awards were the new goalposts for a pitcher to enter the Hall of Fame; John, Tiant, and Jim Kaat were short of that elevated standard.

These are the credentials of the 12 top starting pitchers to hit the Hall of Fame ballot between 1988 and 1999.

WP Table Builder

You’ll notice that the only Hall of Famers who didn’t check the boxes of either 300 wins, five or more 20-win seasons, or multiple Cy Youngs are Kaat and Bert Blyleven. The Flying Dutchman had to wait 14 years before he made it in via the BBWAA.

The reason Blyleven made it to Cooperstown on the writers’ ballot while John, Kaat, and Tiant did not is because he had a stunningly high 96.5 career WAR (Wins Above Replacement). As that advanced metric started to percolate as a relevant number through the BBWAA electorate, a cause was created, and Blyleven finally made it. John (with a 62.1 career WAR), Tiant (65.6), and Kaat (45.2) did not benefit from the sabermetric revolution, although, as previously noted, Kaat made the Hall of Fame on the 2022 Era Committee ballot.

Anyway, John never got a constituency behind his candidacy. His voting support fluctuated from a low of 19% to a high of 32% (in 2009, his final year on the ballot).

He appeared on the 2011 Veterans Committee ballot and got nowhere. He was on the Expansion Era Committee ballot in 2014, but with managers Joe Torre, Bobby Cox, and Tony La Russa also on the ballot, none of the players had a chance to get 75% of the votes. In 2018, Jack Morris and Alan Trammell were elected to the Hall of Fame, while John’s total vote was not reported, meaning he had less than 6 out of 16.

Finally, on the 2020 Modern Baseball ballot, John once again got no reported votes (meaning that he had anywhere from zero to three); Ted Simmons and Marvin Miller were elected to the Hall of Fame on that ballot.

The Hall of Fame Case for Tommy John

The case is pretty simple. Other than the PED-linked Roger Clements, John has the most wins of any pitcher since 1901 who is not already in the Hall of Fame. He also accomplished this while being a guinea pig in a risky experimental surgery on his elbow. That’s the basic case: lots of wins and the name attached to the surgical procedure that is now central to the game of baseball. As far as two-sentence Cooperstown cases go, it’s a pretty good one.

At the time of John’s retirement, his 288 wins were the 7th most for any pitcher who began their career after World War II. The only six pitchers with more were his contemporaries, whom we saw in the previous graphic.

The only hurler in all of recorded baseball history with more wins than John absent a Cooperstown plaque is Bobby Mathews, who won 297 games from 1871-87. 237 of those 297 wins came against the inferior competition of the National Association (NA) and American Association (AA). There was another 19th-century hurler (Tony Mullane) who won 284 games, with 202 of them coming in the AA.

Speaking of the modern game (1901 and beyond), obviously, somebody has to have the most wins without a plaque. After John and his 288 wins, you have the crafty left-hander Jamie Moyer, who won 269 contests. Moyer took “pitching forever” to the next level, toeing the rubber until after his 49th birthday. Besides not getting close to the 300-victory finish line, Moyer’s career 4.25 ERA is also quite ugly.

After Moyer, the only modern game pitchers with 250 or more wins who aren’t in the Hall are the still-active Justin Verlander (262 wins), Andy Pettitte (256) and CC Sabathia (251), who is on the BBWAA ballot for the first time right now. Pettitte has gotten nowhere in six years on the BBWAA ballot, getting just 13.5% this January.

Pettitte’s case is complicated, but he has one of the same problems as John, as we’ll see shortly. The lefty from Louisiana was rarely one of baseball’s best. Some people disagree, but I think Sabathia (another southpaw) will make it, possibly even next year, on the first ballot. Verlander is a virtual certainty to make the Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility five years after he retires.

So, there you have it. There are only six modern pitchers with more than 250 wins who don’t have a plaque, and, other than Clemens, John is at the top of that list.

As for the pioneering factor, although it seems as if Tommy John surgery is as common today as the common cold, it is neither common nor assured that a pitcher will resume his career at the same level as before the surgery. John pitched a remarkable 14 seasons after that surgery, getting 164 of his 288 career wins after going under the knife. That remains a record for the most seasons pitched and the most wins for any hurler who underwent the same surgical procedure.

Only one pitcher (John Smoltz) who has undergone Tommy John surgery is in the Hall of Fame.

Should John be the second? If so, he’ll have to emerge from the strong list of candidates: his contemporaries Allen, Tiant, Kaat, and Garvey, 5-time Gold Glove winner Ken Boyer, and Negro Leaguers John Donaldson and Vic Harris.

This is a tough ballot. Every single candidate has a legitimate Cooperstown case. Although the Era Committee voters don’t ever seem to care about the metric, for whatever it’s worth, John’s WAR is the second-best on the ballot, behind only Tiant’s. He has all of those wins and the historical significance of the surgical procedure that bears his name.

The Case Against Tommy John for the Hall of Fame

The biggest knock against John’s candidacy is that he was the ultimate “compiler,” a term used to describe a player who keeps playing forever, long past their peak, in order to reach statistical milestones that are the benchmarks that usually result in a Cooperstown plaque. John’s problem as a compiler is that he pitched forever but still didn’t reach the big milestone (300 wins).

A spin-off to the compiler complaint is that John was rarely one of the best pitchers in baseball. He had a ton of solid years but only a handful in which he was a serious contender for his league’s Cy Young Award voting.

A corollary to the spin-off to the compiler complaint is that John did not have any five-to-seven-year peaks in which he was one of the top hurlers in the game. Let’s tackle each of these separately.

1. The Compiler Problem

Tommy John won 288 games in his 26-year Major League Baseball career. As we’ve already noted, other than Clemens, that’s the most wins for any pitcher outside the Hall of Fame since the start of the 20th century. We’ve also shown that only six modern (post-1901) hurlers have more than 250 wins and aren’t in Cooperstown. So, if John is at the top of that non-PED-linked shortlist, what’s the compiler problem?

The problem is that John needed 700 career starts (and 760 games pitched overall) to reach those 288 wins. Given the huge number of opportunities and that he pitched in the majors from age 20 to 46, shouldn’t he have crossed the finish line? Especially when you consider the fact that John spent many of his best years with playoff contenders in New York and Los Angeles, the simple answer is, “Yes, he should have made it to 300.”

It’s true he missed an entire season due to his UCL surgery, but it’s not uncommon for pitchers to miss an entire year (or nearly an entire year). And, of course, the surgery prolonged his career, allowing him to get from 124 wins to 288.

The Ratio of Starts to Wins

On the Baseball Reference “play index,” I did a game search for pitchers since 1908 ranked by the number of games started (GS). Next, on an Excel spreadsheet, I created a simple formula for the ratio of games started to wins. (Why “since 1908?” That’s the first year in which this particular search tool is available on Baseball Reference).

Anyway, I took a look at the 37 pitchers from 1908-2024 who have started at least 500 games and then ranked them by the ratio of starts to wins. John had 700 starts and 284 wins as a starter (he had four more victories in relief). That’s a ratio of 2.46 starts for every win. Out of the 37 hurlers with 500 or more starts, John’s ratio is the 5th worst, better than only Joe Niekro, Rick Reuschel, Jerry Reuss, and Frank Tanana, none of whom got remotely close to Cooperstown.

If John could have matched Sutton’s ratio (2.36 GS/W) or even Bartolo Colon’s (2.24), he would have had 300 wins. I noted earlier in the piece that in his rookie year (1965), John had seven losses in quality starts. That was bad luck. In the totality of his career, however, John pitched for a lot of good teams. We can’t blame his inability to hit #300 on his teams not being good enough.

700 Career Starts

In all of recorded baseball history, Tommy John’s 700 career starts are the 8th most; his 288 wins are the 26th most. On the career “games started” list, he’s behind only Cy Young, Nolan Ryan, Don Sutton, Greg Maddux, Phil Niekro, Steve Carlton and Roger Clemens. If you limit the lists to 1901 and beyond, he’s 7th in games started, and 18th in games won.

Do you see the problem? The pitchers ahead of John on the “games started” list all won 300 games. 5 of the 6 pitchers behind John on the list also won 300. The names: Gaylord Perry, Tom Glavine, Walter Johnson, Warren Spahn and Tom Seaver. The closest comparisons to John’s situation are Kaat (625 starts) and Bert Blyleven, who started 685 games and won 287.

Tommy John vs. Bert Blyleven

Since Blyleven is 3rd on John’s “Similarity Scores” list on Baseball-Reference and does have a Cooperstown plaque, how do these two compare?

WP Table Builder

If you’re wondering, I deliberately only included basic statistics here, the kind that members of the BBWAA were considering when John hit the ballot in 1995 and the Flying Dutchman hit it in 1998. The numbers are very similar. As you can see, Blyleven struck out a great many more batters but also gave up vastly more home runs. When he hit the ballot in 1998, Blyleven was 7th all-time in home runs allowed.

Even though Blyleven was (at the time) 3rd all-time in whiffs, clearly the writers held his gopher balls against him for a long time. When John hit the ballot in 1995, he got 21.3% of the vote; when Blyleven hit in 1998, he received 17.5% of the vote. John got more votes than Blyleven every year until 2003 when sabermetrics started to permeate the BBWAA. It took 14 years of ballots, but Blyleven finally made it to Cooperstown in 2011.

What people knew then that they didn’t in 1998 was that Blyleven had a career WAR of 96.1, the 13th best in baseball history for pitchers.

2. Rarely one of Baseball’s Best

Tommy John was a highly productive pitcher for a very long time, but he was rarely one of the best in the game. He made just 4 All-Star teams and only received Cy Young votes 4 times in his 26 years on the mound. In only 6 of his 26 campaigns did John finish in the top 5 of his league’s ERA leaders. If you combine both leagues and adjust for ballpark factors and the DH factor (ERA+ does this), John finished in the top 10 only twice in his entire career.

John’s ERA+ in 1968 was 161, good enough for 4th best in all of MLB. In 1979 his ERA+ was 137, which was the 3rd best in baseball. John did not have one other season in which he was even in the top 10 in the majors in ERA+.

Using WAR, only 3 times was John in the top 10 in MLB (he was 10th in ’68, 8th in 1970, and 10th in 1979). He was in the top 20 in pitching WAR for all of baseball just 4 times.

3. The Peak Problem

There are two ways one can look at a player’s peak. One way is to look at the players’ best five years, or best seven, or best ten and compare him to others. The other way is to look at a multi-year period of consecutive time to determine if said player was one of the best in baseball at his position during those years.

Using Baseball Reference, one can easily use its Play Index to calculate a variety of statistics over a fixed consecutive period of time. At this point, however, there is no formula on the site that can take a player’s “x” best years compared to another player’s “x” best years, except for the WAR7 formula in Jay Jaffe’s JAWS calculations. Jaffe’s JAWS formula combines a player’s career WAR with his “peak” WAR7, the best 7 years of his career.

Tommy John fares poorly in JAWS: he’s the 84th-ranked pitcher in baseball history. Because (as we saw in the section just above) John rarely had big years, he does terribly in WAR7, ranking 166th.

When it comes to consecutive years, you simply can’t find 5-to-10-year periods where John is in the Top 5 of any key statistical category other than ground ball double plays induced.

Some examples of where he gets close:

• 1966-70 (5 years): John was 8th in WAR, 8th in ERA, and tied for 5th in shutouts.
• 1977-82 (6 years): John had the second most wins (103) and was 5th in ERA+ (behind Ron Guidry, Steve Carlton, Steve Rogers, and Rick Reuschel). He was 9th in WAR during these 6 seasons.

That’s not bad, but not especially exciting. There is no Cooperstown-worthy peak we can point to.

A Long, Steady Peak (1966-81):

What if we acknowledged the fact that John was “slow and steady” and took a much wider view? Here is how John ranks in the 16-year period that starts in 1966 and ends in 1981, starting with basic counting stats:

• Wins (207): 9th (behind 8 Hall of Fame starters)
• IP (3,189.2): 10th (behind 9 Hall of Famers)
• K (1,650): 19th (behind 6 non-Hall of Famers)
• CG (127): T-21st (behind 7 non-HOF)
• SHO (40): T-11th (behind 10 HOF and Tiant)
• WAR (49.7): T-13th (behind 9 HOF, Tiant, Wilbur Wood & Jerry Koosman)

And now, some rate stats (with a 2,500 IP minimum):

• ERA (2.98): 5th (behind 4 HOF, ahead of 7 others)
• ERA+ (120): 7th (behind 6 HOF, ahead of 5 others)
• WHIP (1.223): T-13th (behind 9 HOF, Tiant, Vida Blue, Mike Cuellar)

The best news here is the ERA. Posting an ERA under 3.00 over 15 MLB seasons (remember, he missed 1975) is really good. His 2.98 ERA for these years was better than everyone but Seaver, Palmer, Perry, and Blyleven.

There is a caveat to this, however. Because John was a ground-ball pitcher and not a big strikeout guy, he was susceptible to more unearned runs than his peers simply because he gave his infielders many more opportunities to commit errors.

If you take his Runs Allowed per 9 IP instead of Earned Runs, his rank drops from 5th to 8th (out of 23 pitchers who logged 2,500 IP during these years). That final piece of intelligence pops the ERA balloon a bit and helps explain why his WAR is tied for 13th.

FanGraphs WAR

We’ve just shown that Tommy John got to his career win total in a less impressive fashion than most of his peers. We’ve also demonstrated that John had very few seasons in which he was worthy of Cy Young or All-Star consideration. And we’ve seen that he never had a stretch of dominance where he was clearly one of the top hurlers in all of MLB.

Is there any good news beyond the basic “288 wins and first UCL comeback kid” narrative? The answer is “yes.”  There is one sabermetric formula that shows that John might have been underrated for all of his years. If you’re a WAR skeptic, this is going to frustrate you and add fodder to the argument that WAR is a waste of time. If you’re a believer or at least believe that it has value if you attempt to understand why the numbers are what they are, you’ll get it but might still be exasperated.

When it comes to WAR (Wins Above Replacement), the two major sabermetric websites (Baseball Reference and FanGraphs) calculate it differently. This can be highly annoying. A pitcher has the same number of wins or ERA or strikeouts no matter where you look, but his WAR is different depending on the formulas created by the highly intelligent people who created them on those sites.

One of those two sites (FanGraphs) gives John a 79.6 WAR. That’s the 23rd-highest total in baseball history, behind 18 Hall of Famers, Clemens, Curt Schilling, and Verlander. FanGraphs uses a formula closely tied to FIP (Fielding Independent Pitching), a statistic that measures a pitcher’s ability at getting strikeouts and preventing walks, hit batsmen and home runs. The formula is deliberately agnostic as to what happens when the ball is put in play, and fielders have to do something, hence “Fielding Independent Pitching.”

Here is how the twosites rank John in their WAR calculations:

• FanGraphs (fWAR): 79.6 (23rd best all-time)
• Baseball-Reference (bWAR): 62.1 (58th all-time)

Why is the FanGraphs number so high? I can explain. It’s because John, as a groundball pitcher with a sinking fastball, has an uncommonly low home run rate. Among the 65 pitchers to log at least 3,000 innings since 1946, John’s HR9 rate of 0.58 long balls per 9 innings is the 4th best. That’s why the FanGraphs WAR formula likes him.

Here’s one more piece of good news if you want to ascribe hidden value to Tommy John. John’s 604 double play ground balls induced is by far the most in baseball since 1925, the first year Baseball Reference has data for double plays hit against pitchers. (Jim Kaat is a distant 2nd with 462). “Most double plays induced in baseball history” is text that would fit nicely on a Hall of Fame plaque. It’s not a commonly cited statistic for pitchers, but certainly relevant; the ability to get two outs on one pitch is a valuable skill.

However, John’s unusually high ground-ball rate also helps explain the fWAR/bWAR differential. John had more unearned runs allowed than most other pitchers because he gave his fielders more opportunities to make errors. The bWAR calculation takes unearned runs into account.

Conclusion

Since I am someone who believes that the players of the second half of the 20th century are significantly underrepresented in Cooperstown, I would have no problem if Tommy John were elected to the Hall of Fame but I’m not really sold. I’ve been on the fence with John for a long time. The basics (288 wins, surgical pioneer, premier DP inducer) are good, but for the reasons detailed above, the “compiler” rap is legitimate.

There are many other players from the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s who are also worthy of Cooperstown. As previously noted, five of those other players are with John on the Classic Baseball Hall of Fame ballot (Dick Allen, Steve Garvey, Dave Parker, Ken Boyer, and Luis Tiant). The members of the committee that will vote on these six players (plus Negro Leaguers Vic Harris and John Donaldson) are only permitted to select three names out of eight candidates.

Tommy John would be a fine addition to the Hall of Fame, but based on past votes, he looks like a longshot. In four previous Era Committee ballots, he’s gotten no recorded votes, while Allen, Garvey, Parker, Harris, and Donaldson have all registered voting support.

There will be sentiment in favor of Allen, who has fallen one measly vote short of Cooperstown twice. Also, with Tiant having passed away last month, there may be a strong consideration to honor him posthumously.

On the other hand, the 81-year-old John is one of only three living candidates on the ballot (the others are Garvey and Parker). That may work in his favor. Additionally, given that a previous version of the Era Committee elected Jim Kaat (283 wins) three years ago, it would be a simple conclusion to draw that John (288 wins) belongs in Cooperstown as well.

Thanks for reading. Please follow Cooperstown Cred on X @cooperstowncred or on BlueSky @cooperstowncred.bsky.social.

Chris Bodig

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