In the late 1980s, Orel Hershiser was one of the best pitchers in Major League baseball. People compared Greg Maddux to him, not the other way around. Nolan Ryan joked he was afraid of him. So why isn’t Orel Hershiser in the Hall of Fame?
Orel Hershiser: the proto-Greg Maddux
When Greg Maddux emerged as a star pitcher in 1988, he drew comparisons to Orel Hershiser, a cerebral finesse pitcher who relied on outsmarting hitters rather than trying to overpower them.
And in 1988, Hershiser was arguably the best pitcher in the game. He broke Don Drysdale’s 20-year-old record for the most consecutive innings pitched without giving up a run. And Nolan Ryan made a joke at the end of a commercial, saying “I hope Orel Hershiser doesn’t get wind of this.” The implication being that whatever product Nolan Ryan was pitching was the secret to his records.
When Orel Hershiser retired at the age of 41, he had won 204 games in his career. On the low side for a Hall of Fame pitcher, but not a showstopper. Roy Halladay is a Hall of Famer, and he won 203.
But Roy Halladay was more dominant over the course of his entire career than Hershiser had been. Hershiser certainly had a period of dominance, but Halladay’s period of dominance was longer. For that matter, so was Greg Maddux’s.
But I think the comparison to Greg Maddux is useful. Their careers followed a similar trajectory, but there were two key differences.
The Dodgers didn’t know what they had
The key difference between Maddux and Hershiser is the way their two teams saw them. The Cubs saw Maddux as a top-of-the-rotation starter. The Dodgers saw Hershiser as a relief pitcher, and not necessarily a high-end relief pitcher at that.
So when Hershiser made the team for good in 1984, the Dodgers used him as a reliever. It wasn’t until the Dodgers lost two starting pitchers to injury that Hershiser got a chance to start. When he had the opportunity, he was a revelation. His 11-8 record wasn’t earth-shattering, but it was a winning record with a double digit win count. His ERA was better than the league average, and he had some fine moments, including a shutout victory against the Chicago Cubs and the eventual Cy Young winner that year, Rick Sutcliffe. That’s impressive on its face, but it may have carried a little extra weight for Hershiser. You see, Sutcliffe and Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda had a history. Winning a game against him was a good way to get Lasorda’s attention.
The irony is that Sutcliffe had been another pitcher Lasorda and the Dodgers saw as a reliever rather than a starter, and that was crux of their bad blood. After trading him to Cleveland out of spite, he emerged as a top of the rotation starter. Maybe seeing Hershiser beat him triggered something in Lasorda’s mind so he wouldn’t make the mistake again. Or maybe spite got in the way of logic and it just scored Hershiser more points than beating some other team’s ace pitcher.
How overuse derailed Orel Hershiser’s career and Hall of Fame chances
So instead of repeating the Sutcliffe mistake, Lasorda repeated the Fernando Valenzuela mistake instead, and it caught up with the Dodgers and Hershiser four starts into the 1990 season. In 1990, Dr. Frank Jobe said Hershiser’s right shoulder looked like it had been pounded repeatedly with a hammer, as a result of overuse. Jobe performed reconstructive surgery on the damaged shoulder, but Hershiser missed the rest of the 1990 and part of the 1991 seasons, and he may not have been fully recovered until sometime in 1994. 1994 added an additional complication, with a player strike ending the season early.
Utilized more appropriately, he might not have won quite as many games in his peak seasons. He pitched that many innings because Lasorda didn’t trust his bullpen, and he trusted Hershiser with the late-inning leads more than he did his relievers. But he wouldn’t have lost four seasons to injury and recovery, so it’s not unreasonable to estimate he might have won 50 more games if he had been as healthy as Greg Maddux.
Maddux was younger when he came up, so Hershiser never would have won as many games as Maddux did in total. But he was a borderline Hall of Fame case with 204 wins. Getting to 250 wins probably would have put him over the edge.
Hershiser’s late career renaissance
For whatever reason, the Dodgers decided that Hershiser was done at age 35 and they asked him to retire and become a coach. Other major league teams disagreed, and Hershiser signed with Cleveland because he saw them as an up and coming team that could make the postseason. He pitched exactly how one would expect a finesse pitcher in his late thirties to pitch. Between age 36 and age 40, Hershiser’s statistics look very much like Greg Maddux. His days of winning 20 games in a season were behind him, but he could reliably win 14 or 15, still good enough to be a very productive mid-rotation starter on a contending team.
Their paths didn’t really diverge until age 41. Both of them were roughly league-average pitchers at age 40, which is nothing to sneeze at. Maddux remained approximately league-average at age 41 and 42 and then retired. Hershiser re-signed with the Dodgers hoping to end his career where he started, got off to a rough start, and the Dodgers decided he didn’t have anything left and released him at midseason.
Is Orel Hershiser a Hall of Famer?
Going strictly by the numbers, Hershiser would be a below average Hall of Fame pitcher. That’s whether you use traditional statistics or modern advanced statistics. He’s in the same category as Don Mattingly in that regard.
I think the wild card in Hershiser’s case is his record of 59 consecutive scoreless innings pitched. The record he broke stood for 20 years, and now he’s held the record for 35. For some reason it’s easy to forget how long ago 1988 was. So he has the Roger Maris factor going for him, but along with a longer and more prolific career than Roger Maris.
His ultimate Hall of Fame fate is in the hands of Hall of Famers. As more pitchers get inducted and they realize Hershiser did something in 1988 that none of them ever did, and his career numbers are awfully close, and he did it while pitching the bulk of his career in the steroid era, I think there’s a chance he gets in eventually. Of course I don’t get a vote, but I don’t see his presence in the hall diluting the value of other players being there either.
David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He started his career as a part-time computer technician in 1994, worked his way up to system administrator by 1997, and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He invests in real estate on the side and his hobbies include O gauge trains, baseball cards, and retro computers and video games. A University of Missouri graduate, he holds CISSP and Security+ certifications. He lives in St. Louis with his family.