Tim Hudson, perennial runner-up, is on the big stage

Tim Hudson has never been to the World Series before. He’s thrown 3,071 innings in the majors between the regular season and playoffs, made 468 starts and two relief appearances in his 16 years in the bigs, and yet, not a single one of those came in the Fall Classic. He’s been to the playoffs before -- in 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2005, and 2010 -- but his clubs never even won a playoff series until 2014 despite all of those chances. It wasn’t Hudson’s fault, either, as he was his usual productive self on his non-Giants playoff clubs, with a 3.46 ERA over 10 games.

Hudson’s entire career has been like this. He’s quietly been one of his generation’s greats, but he’s never won a Cy Young award nor had a chance to hold the Commissioner’s Trophy aloft. When one of his teams was famously the subject of both a book and a movie in Moneyball, Hudson (and Mark Mulder and Barry Zito) was pushed to the side in favor of things like profiles on never-was Jeremy Brown, or extended segments of Chris Pratt trying to learn to play first base. Both of those decisions made sense to the plot of both book and movie, but it was still unfortunate for Hudson, whose rise through the A’s system and to the top of their rotation helped make Billy Beane’s ways worth exploring to begin with.

He’s in the World Series now, though, and he’s making his first-ever start there on Friday night in Game 3. Hudson has a chance to put an exclamation point on a career that needs one so people will maybe notice it for what it is. He finished fifth in the Rookie of the Year vote in 1999, finished second for the Cy Young in the next season and received votes in four different years, and he’s made the All-Star team only four times in 16 seasons. You would think that would mean he’s just been a guy who has had a few good seasons, someone who has already received all the recognition they need, but Hudson is much better than the lack of accolades shows. He’s one of just two pitchers since his debut season of 1999 to amass at least 3,000 career innings: Mark Buerhle, another underrated hurler from Hudson’s generation, is the other. Hudson is just one of 109 pitchers to ever reach the 3,000 inning threshold since 1901: 8,135 different pitchers have taken a Major League Baseball mound in that time frame, putting Hudson in some elite, one-percenter company. He’s baseball’s active wins leader with 214, and while wins are a problem stat all their own, it takes a lot of talent to stick around long enough to compile them like that.

Maybe most important, though, is how Hudson stacks up against the other pitchers his career has intersected with. Since 1999, minimum 2,000 innings -- so we can include those who came both before and after Hudson to a reasonable degree -- Hudson ranks sixth in ERA+ at 122. He’s behind only Randy Johnson, Johan Santana, Felix Hernandez, Roy Halladay, and Roy Oswalt, and ahead of CC Sabathia, Cliff Lee, Greg Maddux, Mark Buehrle, teammate Jake Peavy, Andy Pettitte... the list (courtesy of Baseball Reference) goes on, and Hudson was better than most of them.

Hudson might not be a Hall of Fame pitcher, but who knows: maybe he sticks around for a few more seasons and starts to look better both to traditionalists and those who make their decisions through the lens of wins above replacement. That’s not what matters, though, especially since it’s all so speculative. What we do know is that Hudson was one of the best pitchers of his generation. He was a dominant force in his youth, with a 134 ERA+ from the moment he stepped into the bigs in 1999 through 2005 at the age of 29. Hudson turned 30 the next season, and briefly struggled with what that meant for his stuff and his career before reviving it one season later to start a six-year stretch of brilliance that ended in 2012. He’s been average the past two years, but he’s also in his late-30s: average is an accomplishment worth recognizing at an age when the game’s goal is to push you out of it through an onslaught of stronger, faster, and incessantly younger opponents.

Now he’s in the World Series for the first time, with a chance to give the Giants a 2-1 lead in front of a San Francisco crowd. Hudson might never receive the recognition he deserves for a career worth more attention, but he’s got a chance to do something everyone will remember on the game’s greatest stage. Maybe, for once, things will go his way there.