Last year, Curt Schilling received 70 percent of the Hall of Fame votes from the Baseball Writers’s Association of America. Putting him 20 votes shy of induction. Which makes it seem that in 2021 will become his year to celebrate.
Yet, it’s not so simple with him. He certainly is divisive especially with his posts on social media. He needed to delete his Twitter account in June of this year and he got fired from ESPN in 2016 for what got termed as “unacceptable conduct.”
With that being said. Being a good human being doesn’t have much bearing on being inducted. There are plenty of questionable characters in Cooperstown. So then why does Schilling not belong? Simply put he doesn’t have the numbers.
As a starter he registered only two seasons with a sub three era and had five seasons of 15 or more wins, His most dominant run went from 1997 to 2004 in which his record was 132-71 with a 3.24 ERA, he struck out 1,945 while walking 347. He also completed 55 games and threw 11 shutouts.
From 1988-1996 Schilling went 52-52 with a 3.49 ERA. He was up and down from that time frame with his best year being 1992 in where he made 26 starts and made 16 relief appearances. His era was 2.35 and he only struck out 147 while walking 59. The worst year for him was 1993 when he went 16-7 with a 4.02 ERA while striking out 186 and walking 57.
Schilling’s last three seasons didn’t help his hall of fame case. He went 32-23 with 4.30 ERA, while striking out 371 and walking 73. Overall he finished his career with a 216-146 record; a 3.46 ERA, 3116 strikeouts to 711 walks, completed 83 games and threw 20 shutouts.
Interestingly enough Schilling never won a Cy Young Award. Though the argument gets made that he did finish in the top 10 in ERA nine times though finished second twice and even more surprising only four seasons where he received voting for Cy Young finishing second three times. His walk to strikeout rate is also impressive, yet still not enough to get him in.
He was only the ace of the Philadelphia Phillies staff for three plus seasons. When he got acquired by the Arizona Diamondbacks and Boston Red Sox he was not.
On Baseball-Reference it shows similar pitchers to Schilling. Only one is in the hall of fame and that’s John Smoltz. The list includes Kevin Brown, Zack Greinke, Bob Welch, Justin Verlander (he might become the second one since his career is not over), Tim Hudson, Orel Hershiser, Freddie Fitzsimmons, Milt Pappas and Mark Buehrle.
When it comes to recent pitchers being inducted Pedro Martinez, Randy Johnson, Roy Halladay, Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and Mike Mussina, Schilling doesn’t have the numbers or the consistency.
Therefore Schilling doesn’t belong in the hall of fame.