would Herb Score make the hall of fame?

[yest]

what if he ducked?

[KCGHOST]

Due to the injury Score's career was basically over after two fine seasons at age 23. Considering the odds of pitchers staying healthy I would say he had a shot but not a great one.

[Seattle1]

Well, he did have a blazing fastball, but I had to vote for 0-25% sure. Too hard to say.

[LouGehrig]

Score is an excellent example of a pitcher who was one of the all time greats with respect to talent.

The ability Score had until May, 1957 (maybe) was almost on a par with the great pitchers of all time. Score never had the chance to develop into a pitcher, rather than a pitcher-thrower.

I heard the play on the radio in 1957, and often listened to Score when he broadcast Indians games on WWWE, Cleveland.

He claimed many times that it was NOT the McDougald shot that ruined him. He claims that soon after he came back from the injury, he was pitching on a cold, rainy night in Chicago, and as a result, developed a sore arm.

Some may claim that there is no way of knowing if Score were rationalizing or if he were telling the truth. Based on his reputation, he was telling the truth, but the dramatic event and so called "psychological problems" explanation is easier to believe that the fact that Score simply developed a sore arm.

[Ytown Tribe fan]

Um, are we talking as a pitcher or as an announcer?


Just askin'

[Fuzzy Bear]

What if he had blown out his arm in 1958? Not an impossible event.

A pitcher is different than a position player, in that so many look good, but hurt their arms their first couple of years in the bigs. Some make it back, some don't. Arm injuries are one reason of many that pitchers' careers are not as predictable as position players' careers.

[Dalkowski110]

I ran him through my beefed up version of Sammy Sosa High Heat Baseball 2001 (I REALLY tweaked it) using his real-life, pre-May 1958 stats to see how he would do against a league that's very similar in quality to the batters he was facing. Score had a poor rookie season, being dogged by control problems and giving up too many homeruns. But he quickly improved, even having a 25-6 season where he obviously won the Cy Young Award. Unfortunately, with the arm I gave him, it increased his chances for injury. Score blew out his arm at age 32, with a 9 year career behind him. He had gone 184-108, his career ERA being 2.56.

[THE OX]

I went with 50-75%. Score was sort of the leading edge of the strikeout pitchers who ruled the major leagues from the late 1950s thru the mid-1970s.

Even had he blown his arm out after 9 years as in the simulation mentioned above and finished with a 184-108 record, I'd still put him in the HOF because his brilliance was truly something to behold.

With Don Mossi and Ray Narleski in their prime as Cleveland's ace relief pitchers in the late 1950s, he wouldn't necessarily have blown out his arm from overwork and high pitch counts.

[Dalkowski110]

Well, the simulation (which, incidentally, has a Hall of Fame of its own, but I can't choose which players go in and which ones stay out) evidently disagreed. He didn't get put in. Probably because it thought 9 years wasn't enough and automatically disqualified him.