Doc's First Ten Years: Goodenough?

not good enough.

154 Wins is just not good enough

Koufax had only 165.

Koufax was more dominant, in Ks, ERA, and WHIP.

Gooden's career as a pitcher is similar to that of Roger Maris's as a hitter. A couple of transcendant seasons (84 to 86 for Gooden; 60 to 62 for Maris) surrounded by even more ordinary ones. If Maris isn't in the Hall, neither should Gooden.

nope, not enough.

his rookie year was definitely his best (in terms of strikeouts per inning). after his cy young year, his numbers were never near as dominant. that leads me to beleive he blew out his arm in some capacity by the age of 22-23.

I think one of the Anonymous Fanatics nailed the problem -- he had a lot of "ordinary" seasons. He had three great ones and seven OK ones. That's not going to cut it.

To whomever made the Gooden/Maris comparison: I think you're spot on.

I agree with Anonymous Fanatic. Although I think a 1.16 WHIP is more than acceptible, his ERA isn't stellar for the era he was pitching in. For a guy with a less-than-stellar ERA and not that many Ks, he needed more wins than he got. You need to balance out some of those weaknesses with strong points, and I don't think Gooden had it. I think he'll go down as a pitcher that was one of the best for the first three or four years of his career, but just couldn't sustain it.

In those 10 years, Gooden won 9 more games than he was expected to win based on the amount of runs he gave up and the amount his team scored. Koufax won 5 more than expected. So you could argue Gooden would be under 150 wins with 4 of those 10 years having an ERA+ of 101 or under. Take out the 1985 season and there would be no mention of Gooden's name in a Hall of Fame discussion.

man alive, that 1985 season was one of the best of all time.

gooden was no koufax stop...it is embarrassing to compare gooden to a hall of famer. he was good but a wasted talent. koufax was phenom whose ball dropped off the table.

racist

democrat

Comparing him to Koufax isn't doing him any favors in my opinion. He's a worse Koufax, and Sandy's already a borderline HOFer to me.

i hate the dodgers, but give me a break. there is no knowledgeable baseball fan or former player of that era that would agree with you. koufax is a hall of famer hands down. he absolutely dominated over a four year period 1963-1966. look at the stats, listen to former opposing batters...

sure, he's got four great seasons. other pitchers have had better seasons.

yeah, name a few that had four in a row with that domination and aren't in the HOF? 25 wins, 19 wins, 26 wins, 27 wins.

I agree that the comparisons to Koufax aren't good ones. The only reason they're making that comparison is time frame. But Koufax's numbers are better in that decade. And much as you'd like to ignore it, you can't ONLY look at the first ten years and pretend like he didn't have a career after that, especially when you consider how young he was when he began to slide. It's not like he got old and ran out of gas. Wasn't he 29 at the start of the 1994 season? He doesn't have great numbers, and the only way you make it in with that situation, in my opinion, is to be like other players that made up for it in other areas. Take Nolan Ryan. Bad numbers, but how can you deny a guy that shattered no-hit and strikeout records? Ozzie Smith was bad on offense, but he revolutionized the way people played shortstop. You have to be that kind of differencemaker to compensate for lackluster stats, and Gooden didn't have that.

well said aswaff

The problem is that anyone with a similar stretch of dominance also had very good other seasons. Koufax had nothing else.

do some research and see what his peers say about him...

Gooden needs to be remembered so people can learn how athletes should not be given everything in life so they don't feel the pressure to present a certain kind of image, which is what led to his substance problems. what better place than cooperstown, so people can see how baseball is real, hell Pete rose and shoeless joe jackson also need to be inducted. but not sosa and big man, they just plain cheated and nothing can be learned from them.

I realize this is an old post but as a life-long Met fan stumbling upon it I had to comment. Compare Gooden and Roger Clemens from 1984-1991. Amazingly similar stats. He was not like Maris in that he was just "transcendant" for 'two or three' years. In that eight season period Gooden was 132-53 (Clemens 134-61). How can being 79 wins over .500 in an 8 year period be described that way? Sure only one 20 win season , but 18, 19 and two 17's do mean something. Plus was a lock for another 18-19 (20?) win season in '89 when he got hurt. Seemed like Gooden just lost "it" in 1992. The "why" is hard to ever truly know. Rightly or wrongly (most likely rightly) Gooden's career is perceived as having been mostly destroyed by himself, not his pitching coach playing with his mechanics (leg kick to slide step), overwork when he was still young (from ages 19-21, 744 innings pitched) or his arm injury. One only wonders how well he actually took care of himself conditioning-wise. Gooden malingered on for 5 mostly sub-par seasons after his 1994-1995 suspension, that does not build any HOF stature. So tragic story of awesome talent struck down by addictions, yes. Hall of Famer no. Has anyone started the Pedro Martinez / Koufax discussion yet? He was 134-45 for the 8 season period from 1997-2004, will be interesting to see how many votes he gets, certainly deserves entry by the Koufax standard I think :)