NFL HoF

[slotdirt]

I caught this recent article and thought Cannon would appreciate the Catfish Hunter reference:

http://www.cbssports.com/mlb/blog/ey...hall-of-famers

Starting pitcher - Catfish Hunter (1987, BBWAA)

In addition to the obvious cool nickname factor here, we have the overvaluation of pitcher wins. Catfish won at least 20 games in five consecutive seasons. Of course, four of those five teams made the playoffs and three of those teams were World Series champions. They were great teams. Great teams win games and when a workhorse pitcher (Hunter was an animal, averaging 294 innings pitched in those five seasons) pitches, he's bound to rack up wins. And Hunter still amassed only 224 wins in his 15-year career while basically being a league-average pitcher in terms of run prevention (104 ERA-plus). You can argue Hunter was a Hall-of-Fame caliber pitcher for five seasons -- and I'd agree -- but other than that, he was either average or below average. Is five years enough peak? Or rather, if Tim Lincecum had one more great season followed by eight league-average seasons, he'd have a similar resume to Hunter.