Curt Schilling

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Curt Schilling

2020 Hall of Fame Ballot Series: Curt Schilling

Five facts about Curt Schilling:

Curt Schilling was named to six All-Star teams. He was the starting pitcher for the National League in the 1999 and 2000 All-Star games.

Schilling finished second in Cy Young voting three times in four seasons: 2001, 2002, and 2004.

Schilling is the only pitcher in major-league history to earn a pitching win in the World Series for three different franchises: the Phillies (1993), Diamondbacks (2001), and the Red Sox (2004 and 2007).

In 2001, Curt Schilling pitched a major-league leading 256.2 regular-season innings. He then pitched 48.1 innings in six postseason starts, giving Schilling a total of 305 innings pitched in meaningful baseball games. Schilling is the last pitcher to have pitched 300 combined regular-season and postseason innings within a single season.

Curt Schilling's final major-league appearance was Game 2 of the 2007 World Series. Schilling started the game, pitched 5.1 innings, allowing 1 run on 4 hits, earning the traditional pitcher win in the game. Curt Schilling is the only pitcher in major-league history whose final appearance was a World Series game in which he started and won the game.

The first two tables below present Curt Schilling's career as measured by Player won-lost records, in and out of context.

Season	Team	Age	Games	pWins	pLosses	pWORL	pWOPA

Basic Player Won-Lost Records
						Value Decomposition
1988	BAL	21	4	0.9	2.0	-0.8	-1.0
1989	BAL	22	5	0.3	0.7	-0.3	-0.4
1990	BAL	23	35	1.6	2.0	-0.1	-0.4
1991	HOU	24	56	3.7	4.0	0.2	-0.5
1992	PHI	25	42	12.7	11.1	3.9	2.4
1993	PHI	26	34	14.2	12.8	4.0	2.3
1994	PHI	27	13	4.4	5.9	-0.5	-1.2
1995	PHI	28	17	6.2	6.2	1.2	0.4
1996	PHI	29	28	11.5	11.1	2.8	1.4
1997	PHI	30	35	17.0	14.6	5.5	3.5
1998	PHI	31	35	17.5	14.5	6.3	4.3
1999	PHI	32	24	12.6	10.3	4.4	2.9
+– 2000		33	29	13.7	11.9	4.4	2.8
	ARI		13	6.7	5.4	2.5	1.8
	PHI		16	7.0	6.5	1.9	1.0
2001	ARI	34	35	19.2	12.4	10.0	8.0
2002	ARI	35	36	18.1	13.1	8.4	6.4
2003	ARI	36	24	10.8	8.3	4.6	3.4
2004	BOS	37	32	14.7	9.0	7.6	6.0
2005	BOS	38	32	5.7	5.6	0.9	0.0
2006	BOS	39	31	12.1	9.3	4.4	3.0
2007	BOS	40	24	8.9	8.0	2.2	1.0
			------	------	------	------	------
CAREER (reg. season)			571	205.8	172.8	69.2	44.5
			------	------	------	------	------
PostSeason (career)			19	9.3	5.5	5.2	4.3
			------	------	------	------	------
COMBINED			590	215.1	178.3	74.4	48.7

Season	Team	Age	Games	eWins	eLosses	eWORL	eWOPA

Expected Player Won-Lost Records
						Value Decomposition
1988	BAL	21	4	0.9	2.0	-0.9	-1.1
1989	BAL	22	5	0.4	0.6	-0.1	-0.1
1990	BAL	23	35	2.0	1.6	0.6	0.3
1991	HOU	24	56	3.9	3.8	0.8	0.1
1992	PHI	25	42	13.0	10.9	4.5	2.9
1993	PHI	26	34	13.5	13.5	2.8	1.1
1994	PHI	27	13	4.8	5.5	0.3	-0.4
1995	PHI	28	17	6.7	5.7	2.3	1.5
1996	PHI	29	28	12.2	10.4	4.0	2.6
1997	PHI	30	35	17.1	14.4	6.0	4.0
1998	PHI	31	35	17.8	14.3	6.7	4.7
1999	PHI	32	24	11.5	11.4	2.5	1.0
+– 2000		33	29	14.1	11.5	5.2	3.6
	ARI		13	7.1	5.0	3.4	2.6
	PHI		16	7.0	6.5	1.8	0.9
2001	ARI	34	35	17.2	14.4	6.4	4.4
2002	ARI	35	36	18.0	13.1	8.2	6.2
2003	ARI	36	24	10.8	8.3	4.6	3.4
2004	BOS	37	32	14.2	9.4	6.7	5.1
2005	BOS	38	32	5.8	5.5	1.2	0.3
2006	BOS	39	31	11.8	9.6	3.9	2.4
2007	BOS	40	24	8.8	8.1	2.1	0.9
			------	------	------	------	------
CAREER (reg. season)			571	204.5	174.1	67.6	42.9
			------	------	------	------	------
PostSeason (career)			19	8.5	6.3	3.7	2.7
			------	------	------	------	------
COMBINED			590	213.0	180.3	71.2	45.6

This is Curt Schilling's eighth year on the Hall-of-Fame ballot. I have been writing articles about Hall-of-Fame candidates since 2013 - Curt Schilling's first year on the ballot. Much of these earlier articles are somewhat obsolete due to changes to my Player won-lost records over time. But, for the sake of posterity, these old articles are linked at the end of my general article on Player won-lost records and the Hall of Fame.

Vote Prediction

Curt Schilling had the highest vote total of any player not elected last year, with 259 votes or 60.9%. The next table compares the vote totals of Curt Schilling and Mike Mussina year by year.

Year	Votes	Percent

	Curt Schilling		Mike Mussina
2013	221	38.8%	-	-
2014	167	29.2%	116	20.3%
2015	215	39.2%	135	24.6%
2016	230	52.3%	189	43.0%
2017	199	45.0%	229	51.8%
2018	216	51.2%	268	63.5%
2019	259	60.9%	326	76.7%

Schilling debuted one year earlier than Mussina, on a slightly less crowded ballot, and, for his first four years, was basically one year ahead of Mussina in terms of votes. Then, in the 2017 vote (in Fall of 2016 - so, three years ago), Schilling took a big step back for character-related reasons.

Meanwhile, Mussina's 2017 vote total almost exactly matched Schilling's vote total from one year earlier.

In 2018, Schilling mostly recovered the votes he had lost in 2016, and Schilling's gain from 2018 to 2019 - 43 votes, 9.7% - was similar to Mussina's gains the year before - 40 votes, 8.8%. In other words, Schilling and Mussina had flipped places, with Schilling now trailing Mussina by a year.

So, how might Schilling do this year? A good guide might be too look at how Mussina did last year - which, at a superficial first glance, would seem to bode very well for Schilling, since Mussina was, in fact, elected to the Hall of Fame last year. That said, Mussina's vote percentage in 2018 (i.e., two years ago) was slightly better than Schilling's vote percentage last year (63.5% to 60.9%) and Mussina was barely elected to the Hall of Fame with a mere 76.7% (Mussina got 7 more votes than the minimum needed). So, Schilling would have to gain more votes than Mussina - both in terms of number of votes and percentage - to be elected this year. And I suspect he won't do that.

The other question, of course, is whether his controversial remarks three years ago might have permanently lowered Schilling's vote ceiling and, if so, by how much.

Last year, Mike Mussina increased his vote total by 58 votes with Schilling increasing his vote total by 43 votes. This year's ballot is probably an easier ballot than last year's for a pitcher to gain traction - in addition to generally being a less crowded ballot, last year's ballot included two pitchers who were elected on their first ballot. So, it's not inconceivable that Schilling could gain 60 or 65 votes - which would probably be enough to get him elected to the Hall of Fame (Schilling missed election last year by exactly 60 votes). My best guess, though, is that the character issues hold him back just a bit from that: let's call it an additional 55 votes - let's call that 13% - and Schilling just misses election with just under 74% of the vote.

Player Won-Lost Records and Curt Schilling

As noted above, Curt Schilling's final major-league appearance was a win in Game 2 of the 2007 World Series. This was quite appropriate as Curt Schilling was one of the best postseason performers in major-league history. Schilling pitched in the postseason five times. Four of the five teams for whom Schilling pitched in the postseason made the World Series with three of them winning it all. Schilling earned two postseason MVP awards, the 1993 NLCS and the 2001 World Series (where he shared the MVP award with teammate Randy Johnson).

For his career, Schilling pitching in 19 postseason games (all starts), pitching 133.1 innings. He struck out 120 against only 25 walks with a 2.23 ERA and a traditional won-lost record of 11-2.

As you would expect, those numbers translate into an impressive record as measured by Player won-lost records. The next table shows the top 10 players in postseason pWins over positional average for whom I have calculated Player won-lost records.

		Postseason pWins over Positional Average Top 10 Players
	Player	pWins_ps	pLosses_ps	pWOPA	>pWORL
1	Mariano Rivera	12.9	3.5	9.1	10.7
2	Albert Pujols	12.2	6.9	4.6	5.6
3	Curt Schilling	9.3	5.5	4.3	5.2
4	Lou Gehrig	6.5	2.3	3.9	4.4
5	Derek Jeter	21.3	18.4	3.9	5.8
6	John Smoltz	12.3	9.3	3.7	5.1
7	Paul O'Neill	11.8	7.9	3.4	4.4
8	Andy Pettitte	17.0	14.2	3.4	5.5
9	David Ortiz	9.6	6.1	3.2	4.2
10	Justin Turner	8.8	5.4	3.1	3.8

Article last updated: December 22, 2019

2020 Hall of Fame Ballot Series

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