It's Cold

And Baseball gossip isn't picking up.

Alas, Mike Mussina has decided to retire. There are two questions:

1) Is he hall worthy; and
2) Would he go in as an Oriole/Yankee

There is no debate in my mind about the first question. There is considerable debate about the second.

Hall Worthy:

In today's game, having a winning record over 500 starts is impressive. Gone are the days of 60 starts a season.

In today's game- winning 20 games is really hard. There is a lot of debate about whether or not Tom Glavine will be the last 300 game winner. Tom Glavine will certainly be in the Hall. Compared to most pitchers in Cooperstown, he does not have the numbers to get in. There are a lot of pitchers in Cooperstown who wouldn't last through the first two innings of todays game.

That is why it is SOOOOO hard to compare players from different eras - and that is why Moose has to be compared against his peers - not against Sandy Koufax. When compared to today's crowd- Moose stands out.

Moose, however, did two different things. First, he pitched his ENTIRE career in the Hitting Heaven known as "The American League East." The fact that his ERA and WHIP are so low is impressive on its own. Second, he changed his style as he aged.

Unlike most power pitchers, once he lost his velocity, he started to pitch to spots. He proved he could do both things.

Yanks/Orioles:

I am pretty ambivalent about this - I think it is tough to win 5 world series games and countless playoff games and not have that be the resonating aspect of your career.

I also wonder how hard it was for him to lose those same types of games.

Oriole or Yankee- I think we should let the player decide. Gary Carter played his best years in Montreal, but he wanted to go into the Hall as a Met. Why? That is where he won his world series title. It is his career afterall, right?

I think that Moose should decide how he goes in.

And while they are at it, they should put Pete Rose in too.