Jack Morris has been on the Hall of Fame ballot for ten years, and so his Hall of Fame case has been...covered. Destroyed, really. I really don't want to be the next guy to harp on it yet again. But people keep insisting he belongs. So I feel I need to say something.

Incidentally, it seems like people have stopped trying to actually argue for him. They keep insisting, but they've stopped trying to say why, instead saying things like "there should be an investigation about why he hasn't gotten more support for Cooperstown" and "should have made it eons ago." And I guess that's not surprising, since every argument in his favor has been thoroughly demolished.
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• He may have been the "winningest pitcher of the 1980s," but he pitched for some really high-scoring teams. And do we really want to reward him for the fact that the best years of his career happened to fall in a nice neat "decade"? His 162 wins from 1980-1989 are nice and all, but Ron Guidry had 163 from 1977-1986, and Frank Viola had 163 from 1984-1993.
  
  
• His 3.90 ERA would be the highest in the Hall. His 105 adjusted ERA+ ties him with Bump Hadley and Mickey Lolich and puts him just behind the unforgettable Danny Darwin.
  
  
• His supporters say (and Morris himself now claims) that he "pitched to the score" -- his ERA was high because he didn't try as hard to get people out if he was already up by a bunch of runs. Well, that's not true. Morris may well have thought he was bearing down in tight spots and coasting in the less-tight ones, but it had no measurable impact on his actual performance. (And as an aside: even if it did, should we care? Isn't pitching about preventing runs from scoring, period? If this actually happened, how many times did Morris' team go up by four or five runs, only to see Morris coast toward the finish line and give up a few and have the bullpen blow it later?)
  
  
• He never even had a great season. In his first year as a mostly-full-time starter, he had a 133 ERA+ (though in just 197 innings). Otherwise, his second-highest ERA+ of 127, in his 21-win season of 1986, is equal to the career ERA+ of borderline-or-worse candidates Curt Schilling and Kevin Brown, and a tick ahead of Saberhagen, Smoltz and Mussina.
  
  
• One line is that Morris was the "ace" of three World Championship teams. And it's true that he started three World Series Game Ones, all of which were series his teams won. But was he really the best pitcher for any of those teams? In 1984, he was 19-11, 3.60 in 240 innings, and gathered 2.4 Wins Above Replacement (WAR); Dan Petry was 18-8, 3.40 in 233 innings, and 3.4 WAR. In 1991, Kevin Tapani blew him out of the water by any measure but win total (Morris won that 18 to 16, but took three more losses as well), and Scott Erickson went 20-8 with a better ERA (in 30 fewer innings). In 1992, Morris won 21 games and pitched a ton of innings, but with about an average ERA, and Jimmy Key and Juan Guzman were both just much better pitchers. So I'm not sure the "ace" thing gets you anywhere.
  
  
• His entire case ultimately comes down to one really great game in 1991. And it was a great game, but it was no Don Larsen 1956. And even with that game, his overall postseason record -- 7-4, 3.80 ERA in 92 innings -- just isn't the kind of thing that gets you a lot of extra credit.

Look, here's the thing: I have every reason in the world to be biased in Morris' favor (except for the fact that I've heard him try to call games on the radio -- that is ugly). We were born and grew up in the same city. I'm a Twins fan. I was at that game in 1991, and it's one of my favorite memories in the world. For some reason, I tend to like surly pitchers. I like Jack Morris. He was a very good pitcher for a fairly long time. But he's just not even close to being a Hall of Famer. There's no sensible argument that can be made. It makes even less sense than the case for Jim Rice or (dare I say it?) Bruce Sutter.

Yet, unfortunately, some of those people who keep insisting he belongs are members of the BBWAA. And their non-argument seems to be gaining followers -- 42.9% in 2008, 44.0% in 2009. It's far from a sure thing, but it's entirely possible that he could surge in sometime in the next five years.

I just can't get over how empty this case is. Here are just a few of the 25-30 pitchers since 1960 whose cases I think are about as good as Morris' (at least) who did not or will not get much Hall support (so I'm intentionally ignoring Blyleven and a few others, since that's just not even fair to Morris), and how their numbers stack up:

I focused more on the guys whose numbers just look really similar to Morris, but there are a bunch more in the David Cone "shorter career, much, much better performance" club, too -- Appier, Saberhagen, Viola, Guidry, others -- who I feel had careers that were as good as or better than Morris'. Now, not all these guys were exactly as good as, or better than, Morris. But really, how do you differentiate among Morris, Moyer, and Martinez? Does one great World Series game really turn Moyer or Martinez (who both probably pitched better in the postseason overall than Morris did) into a Hall of Famer? Seriously, how is it possible that people are still backing this guy?