HoF Candidate: Curt Schilling

On the eve of tonight’s Hall of Fame announcement. Curt Schilling spent a handful of games with the Charlotte Knights in 1988.

(via BaseballReference.com)
Curt Schilling enters his 8th year on the ballot and has maintained a steady growth in vote share, reaching a peak of 60.9% last year. Schilling will be in baseball lore no matter what for his participation in the World Series victories of the 2000s Diamondbacks and Red Sox, the latter being enhanced by the occurrence of an actual red sock. Over the course of his postseason career, Schilling provided more Win Probability Added than any other starting pitcher in MLB playoff history. During his 2001 run for Arizona, he recorded 56 strikeouts, more than any other pitcher in a single postseason.

In the regular season, he also had several measurements that strengthen his Hall of Fame case. Among pitchers in the Expansion Era (since 1961) with at least 2000 innings pitched, Schilling has the best strikeout to walk ratio of anybody, still holding on despite threats from Max Scherzer and Clayton Kershaw who are pitching in a strikeout-friendlier era. Going by the pure strikeouts number, Schilling got to 300 in 3 different seasons, something only Randy Johnson, Nolan Ryan and Sandy Koufax have done in the Expansion Era.

By Wins Above Replacement, from 1988 to 2007, when Schilling was active, he finishes 5th among pitchers in that time span, trailing Roger Clemens, Greg Maddux, Randy Johnson and Pedro Martinez, but finishing ahead of big names like Tom Glavine and John Smoltz. During his career, Schilling finished 2nd place in Cy Young voting 3 times but never actually won the award. All in all, he’s reached enough pitching milestones to score 171 on the Bill James Hall of Fame Monitor, a scale where 130 indicates a case that would usually be a cinch for eventually getting in.

Baseball-Reference: Curt Schilling’s MLB career stats