The Baseball Hall of Fame is, among other things, a celebration of the game's storied history. The annual discussions about which players should be inducted give us a chance to reflect on how recent players stack up with the best the game has ever seen and to try to put what we saw into historical context. The Hall allows us to look back and appreciate baseball's past in a remarkable way.
But while I look forward to celebrating the impending induction of past stars like Jeff Bagwell and (hopefully) Tim Raines, it is time to talk about the Hall of Fame's future. Because without a significant shift in how the electorate evaluates the standard of worthiness, we're headed toward a future in which we simply don't elect starting pitchers to the Hall of Fame anymore.
According to the Hall's own site, there are 77 pitchers in the Hall of Fame, representing 31 percent of the 246 total players with monuments in the Plaque Gallery. Of those 77, five were inducted mostly for what they did in relief, leaving us with 72 starting pitchers who have been enshrined in Cooperstown. But because of the tools which have long been used to evaluate a pitcher's worthiness for the Hall of Fame, almost all of those 72 starting pitchers plied their trade at a time when baseball was very different from the game that is played today.