Why Dennis Martinez Should be in the Hall of Fame
What does it take to be a MLB Hall of Famer
Introduction
It’s fair to say that it’s every MLB Player’s dream to be recognized in the Baseball Hall of Fame.
However, in all of the years professional baseball has been in existence, there are currently only 340 players (roughly 1–2% of all players) that have received the honor of being labeled as a “Hall of Famer”. These players have been known to have brought a great impact to the game of baseball and have “dominated” during their time playing the game.
Before I state my case for Dennis Martinez being admitted to the 2023 Hall of Fame, let’s cover two of the key points of eligibility status for a player to be considered for the Hall of Fame:
- Player must have played in the league for at least 10 seasons
- Player must have been retired from at least 5 calendar years preceding election
BBWAA
These players are voted on by active and honorary members of the Baseball Writers Association of America, who have been active baseball writers for at least 10 years. If a player does not get sufficient votes from the writers (more than 5%), they are removed from the ballots, but if they received more than the minimum they can remain on the ballot for at most 10 more times unless voted in (>= 75%).
Era Committee
Previously known as the “Veterans Committee”, this committee considers retired MLB players for Hall of fame status who are no longer eligible for the BBWAA elections, and whose greatest contributions to the game were realized in four eras. The four eras considered are known as the Contemporary Baseball Era (1980 to present), with two constituent groups:
Contemporary Baseball Era (1980 to present):
- Players
- Non-players
Classic Baseball Era (Prior to 1980)
- Players
- Non-players
For the following sections, you’ll find information and data that was researched using sources cited at the bottom of the post and by using a data programming package written in Python called PyBaseball.
Dennis Martinez
Dennis Martinez, nicknamed El Presidente, played 23 seasons in the big leagues from 1976–1998.
He spent 10 years with the Baltimore Orioles, 8 years with the Montreal Expos, 3 years with the Cleveland Indians, half a season with the Seattle Mariners and played his last season with the Atlanta Braves.
Below I’m going to mention some of the accolades he has received throughout his career.
Team, country and cultural Hall of Fame Inductions:
Career Accolades⁵
- 4-time All-Star (1990–1992, 1995)
- Twice Top 10 Cy Young Award (1981, 1991)
- Led league in wins (1981)
- Led league in ERA (1991) (still fell short of Cy young award)
- Led league in shutouts (1991)
- 6-time Top 10 in shutouts (1979, 1981, 1990, 1994–1996)
- Led league in games started, innings pitched and batters faced (1979)
- 9-time pitched 220 or more innings in a season (1978–1979, 1982, 1988–1993)
- 3-time oldest player in the majors (1996–1998)
- 60th on the strikeouts all-time list
- Set record for most wins by a Latin American pitcher (244 — August 9, 1998)
- Latin Pitcher with the most wins (from 1998–2018)
- Pitched the 13th perfect game in baseball history (July 28, 1991) with the Montreal Expos.
100 Games win in both leagues
There are currently only 10 pitchers in all of MLB history who have won 100 games in both the American league and National leagues.
Dennis Martinez is one of the players along with Hall of Fame players like Pedro Martinez, Randy Johnson and Nolan Ryan that have accomplish this success. (These players are mentioned only because they pertain to the Contemporary Baseball Era.)
Montreal Expos
During his stint with the Expos, Dennis experienced a renaissance with his career.
With his will of determination he was able to get past his struggles with alcoholism, affecting his last 4 seasons with the Orioles. According to the Baseball Reference, if Dennis had performed at his 162-game averages during those four seasons, he would have finished with a won-lost record of 268–191 and a 3.50 earned-run average. Needless to say, he’s a true inspiration and role model for folks getting a second chance.
He was signed by the Montreal Expos and played for their organization from 1986 to 1993, where he:
- Pitched the MLB’s 13th Perfect Game in history
- Was 3-time All-Star
- Was a top-5 Candidate for the Cy Young Award (1991)
- Was a top-20 League MVP (1991)
During his tenure there, Dennis had the 3rd lowest ERA among starting pitchers (pitchers must have thrown more than 1000 innings in total ranging from those years) only falling behind Roger Clemens and Jose Rijo, while ranking T-10 for Most wins during that time and having a WAR score of 29.5 (Ranked 8th in that time period).
For those unaware of what WAR is: “WAR measures a player’s value in all facets of the game by deciphering how many more wins he’s worth than a replacement-level player at his same position (e.g., a Minor League replacement or a readily available fill-in free agent)”²
WAR Scores for 1987–1993
What’s fascinating is that Dennis was able to stay among the top 10 in Wins will being in the top 3 for lowest ERA. He was able to accomplish this feat even though having an average RS/9 (Run Support over 9 Innings) of 10.97, the lowest of all those players in that list during that time frame. Let’s look a bit into one of Dennis’ highly effective years.
1991
Now, let’s break out the individual stats to strengthen the case for Dennis Martinez’s Hall of Fame induction.
During 1991 season, the Montreal Expos had an average scoring of 3.57 Run Support per game while the starting pitcher was in the game(RS/IP). With that mentioned, he was also ranked #5 in the Cy Young candidates. Now, this isn’t intended to say that Tom Glavine, the winner in 1991 wasn’t worth the award, but feels like Dennis could have had a better chance of winning in comparison to only getting 4.0 Vote pts.
Looking at this stat line for the Cy Young award winners, you can see that Dennis led the league in 4 categories: ERA, Shut Outs, Complete Games (tied with Glavine) and ERA+ (tied with Glavine). In addition to these statistics, Dennis recorded the 13th Perfect Game in MLB History, the 1st of all Latin born pitchers. However, what really stands out for Glavine is his WAR value but also the number of wins: 20. Nowadays, wins don’t have the same significance as they did back then, but nonetheless let’s take a look at some more stats.
Glavine reached 20 wins, while having 0 games lost by the bullpen and having an average of ~7.3 innings pitched per start. In addition, he the Braves on average gave starting pitchers 4.7 of runs support, which led to a better chance of winning a ball game. Dennis only won 14 games that year, averaging 7.2 innings pitched per start, with the examples giving starting pitchers an average of 3.5 of runs support in the games he pitched, but also had 3 games recorded where he left the game winning, but was blown by the bullpen. Taking this into account, his number of wins potentially could have been 17 wins. Still not at 20, but can see a significant jump. Another thing to think about is his league-leading ERA of 2.39.
During that year, Dennis had 13 games where the Expos only scored 0–2 runs, but managed to maintain an ERA of 1.70 and a W-L% of .364, while his counterpart, had 11 games with 0–2 runs score with an ERA of 2.74 and W-L% of .111. Furthermore, Glavine had 11 games where the Braves had scored 6+ runs while pitching, whereas Dennis had only six games. Both with a W-L% of 1.000.
Compared to the Braves that compiled an average scoring of 4.62 runs a game. Using the formula described here, we can calculate the number of wins Dennis was projected to win 13 wins (which he ended up winning 14 that year). He was able to do so with the lower run support provided by the Montreal Expos offense. Now this is where the “what-ifs” come into play. Using the formula described above, if we add in the same number of run support for that year, Dennis’s projected wins jumps up to 16 wins. In addition, if he had pitched the same amount of games Glavine did that year, his projection goes even higher: 19 wins.
I know these values are somewhat hypothetical but does make you think of the possibilities. If Dennis would have reached 20 wins, could he have had a stronger chance of being a Cy Young winner? And removing two of the accolades he was unable to achieve in his career.
Hall of Fame Similarities
As I scrolled through the list of Hall of Fame inductees, I looked at whom were the players that played around the same era as Dennis but also who else was voted in by the “Era Committee”. I used a dimension reduction technique called UMAP to visualize where Dennis would fit within the other players.
If you zoom in the bottom left of the graph, you’ll able to look at the pitchers that statistics can be correlated with those of Hall of Fame pitchers. One of the players that played in the same era and was also voted in by the Era Committee was Jack Morris. So I decided to compare the two careers and see if there were any similarities between the two.
Jack Morris had a great career playing the Detroit Tigers, Minnesota Twins, Toronto Blue Jays, and ended his career with the Cleveland Indians. He’s at 3-time WS Champion and was awarded the MVP award for the 1991 WS Champions Minnesota Twins.
One of the things Jack Morris was known for was that he was a “Innings Eater”.
From the table above we can see that Jack led the league in the most CG’s thrown from that time frame, in addition, you can also see Dennis Martinez is also in that list, following Bert Blyleven (another Hall of Famer). In addition to complete games, you can also find Dennis’ name in the list of players with that have gone deep in the ball game (going 8+ innings), which is something you really don’t see that much in today’s game.
Not a bad list to be part of as you can see the other names that are associated with these stats. Jack Morris, Greg Maddux, and Randy Johnson are all Hall of Famers, while Roger Clemens though not currently in the Hall of Fame definitely has the numbers to be inducted.
Where Dennis does seem to outperform Jack Morris is in the WAR (Wins Above Replacement) values. Jack has a higher WAR value in one category (Fans Graphs fWAR), but Dennis has a higher WAR value in both the Baseball Reference WAR calculation and Baseball Prospectus WAR calculation.
Conclusion
Dennis will be eligible for the Hall of Fame via the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee in 2023. It is now up to the 16 members from the committee which are made up of Hall of Famers, executives, baseball historians, and media to decide whether Dennis is worthy of being inducted into the Hall of Fame. From his statistics, it is fair to say, an argument can be made for him to be in the Hall of Fame.
I’d be interested in your thoughts on this, please feel free to share in the comments section.
Ricardo is the son of Dennis Martinez but works as a Data Scientist with a passion for baseball data.
[1]: Bodig, Chris. “Yes, Jack Morris Deserves His Hall of Fame Plaque.” Cooperstown Cred, 13 July 2020, https://www.cooperstowncred.com/jack-morris-deserves-his-hall-of-fame-plaque/.
[2]: Baseball Hall of Fame, https://baseballhall.org/.
[3]: MLB Stats, Scores, History, & Records | Baseball-Reference.com. https://www.baseball-reference.com/.
[4]: Zimmerman, Jeff. “Estimating Wins Using ERA and Run Support.” RotoGraphs Fantasy Baseball, 17 Dec. 2010, https://fantasy.fangraphs.com/estimating-wins-using-era-and-run-support/.
[5]: “Dennis Martínez.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 19 Aug. 2022, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Mart%C3%ADnez#Highlights.
