Adam Wainwright and the Jan Bradys of years past

Adam Wainwright won his 20th game on Monday night. He finished second in the NL Cy Young voting last year, and he’s having an even better season this year. He should get strong consideration for second place in the Cy Young voting again. Let’s check in with the word on the street and see what everyone’s saying about Wainwright.

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See, I’m picturing that like Jan complaining about Marcia, but getting more and more frustrated and broken until her parents have to chloroform her and call the doctor. Everyone’s Kershaw this and Kershaw that, as they should be. But what of Wainwright? He’s the second fiddle. Again.

Which brings us to a search for the best second fiddles since 1980. At the risk of spoiling the ending, Wainwright still has a long way to go before catching the greatest second fiddle in recent history. Going position by position:

Crime: Being around at the same time as Mike Piazza

Punishment: 0.2% of the Hall of Fame vote

Oh, it’s not like Lopez should have merited serious HOF consideration. His career WAR ranks him 30th all time at the position, just ahead of Mickey Tettleton, and that’s with dWAR having a much better opinion of his defense than the scouts and the court of public opinion did. But he had a very, very nice career, with six 20-plus homer seasons, two 30-plus homer seasons, and a 40-homer season mixed in.

Alas, he played at the same time as the greatest all-hit, no-glove catcher in baseball history, with their careers overlapping almost perfectly. Lopez wasn’t the perennial All-Star he could have been, not with Piazza around. He was an integral part of a Braves team that won the division in every season in which he was the starting catcher. Except for the strike-shortened 1994, sure, but read that sentence again. He was on the Braves for 11 non-strike years, and they won the division every time. Seems like a catcher who helps with that would be feted more.

Crime: Being around at the same time as Don Mattingly

Punishment: 1.0% of the HOF vote

There were a lot of crimes committed by Hrbek. He was around at the same time as Eddie Murray. He was around at the same time as Fred McGriff and Will Clark and Mark Grace. But Mattingly stuck out because of this:

Player A
14 seasons, 7003 at-bats, 222 HR, .307 AVG, .358 OBP, .471 SLG, 127 OPS+, 42 WAR

Player B
14 seasons, 7137 at-bats, 293 HR, .282 AVG, .367 OBP, .481 SLG, 128 OPS+, 38 WAR

Which one is Hrbek and which one is Mattingly? I’m not telling. But one of them will be on the ballot for the full 15 years, peaking at 28 percent, and one of them got one percent before he was bounced.

Crime: Being around at the same time as Ryne Sandberg, sharing the limelight with his keystone partner

Punishment: 2.9% of the HOF vote

I’m not sure if I’ll ever be more disgusted with a Hall of Fame result. One and done. He received MVP votes in just one season and made just five All-Star teams, but there’s something to be said about staying healthy and productive for nearly 20 years. The end of his career gave a tantalizing look at what his career numbers would have looked like in a livelier era. If you put him the same run-scoring environment as the ‘96 Tigers, he looks a heckuva lot different. First ballot, even.

Instead, he’s doomed to be nestled next to Roberto Alomar and Sandberg in career WAR, but next to Vinny Castilla in career HOF votes.

I need to take a walk around the block. I’m not sure if there’s a Hall of Fame result that bugs me more.

Crime: Being around at the same time as Cal Ripken

Punishment: Waiting around for the Veteran’s Committee

Okay, back from my walk and ready to ...

/punches wall

I’ve written about this extensively here, but there’s no greater second fiddle than Trammell. Barry Larkin is in the Hall because there wasn’t a Ripken in his league. I’m convinced this is the case. There wasn’t anyone in Larkin’s class at short for most of his career, so he was the de facto All-Star most of the time. He had a great career, don’t get me wrong, but so did Trammell.

Ripken had one of the best careers of any shortstop in history, though, and their careers overlapped quite neatly. When Trammell was done, Ripken kicked around for a bit, setting records and becoming the face of baseball. It was easy to forget poor Alan Trammell.

Crime: Being around at the same time as Chipper Jones, getting hurt

Punishment: Unknown, but I’ll bet $5 in SB Nation bucks that he doesn’t get into the Hall for decades, if ever

Career WAR for third basemen, all-time:

Rolen will forever languish in the Graig Nettles zone -- good enough to make several All-Star teams and win Gold Gloves, not good enough to merit serious consideration for the MVP. Rolen’s problem wasn’t a low batting average, though, it was his health, with just seven seasons of 140 games played out of 17 seasons overall. It was also playing at the same time as Chipper Jones. This is a good spot to bring up Larkin again, as he also had troubles staying on the field. He also played in 140 games just seven times. The difference is that after Ozzie Smith, shortstops in the NL were scarce. Larkin stood out. Rolen did not.

Crime: Being around at the same time as Rickey Henderson

Punishment: Waiting around for the Veteran’s Committee

This one doesn’t even make me mad anymore. It’s just amazing. What are the odds that two players with the same skill set are around at exactly the same time, playing the same defensive position and hitting in the same spot in the order, except one of them is merely Hall of Fame quality, and the other one is inner-circle, top-tier Hall of Fame quality. There’s a lot more that hurt Rock -- drugs, injuries, collusion, the relative anonymity of the Expos -- but playing at the same time as Henderson was an amazing bit of bad timing.

Crime: Being around at the same time as Ken Griffey, Jr., switching teams a lot at the end of his career

Punishment: Waiting around for the Veteran’s Committee

This one’s a bit of a stretch, considering the two players had different talents, so you can take the aggregate pool of center fielders over Lofton. There was always someone better, someone more worthy of MVP votes and attention. Lofton was a marvel in his 10 seasons with Cleveland, and it’s worth noting that he hit .296/.367/.414 as a 40-year-old in his final season.

He’s also the reason teams take toolsy folks and stick with them; at 23, Lofton was doing well in A-ball, but still learning how to baseball. He didn’t get his first regular gig until he was 25, at which point he became one of the peskiest, most annoying, and most enjoyable leadoff hitters of his generation. How he never got a seven-year deal is a mystery.

Crime: Being around at the same time when Sammy Sosa was a respectable name, misunderstanding of park effects, injuries

Punishment: 10.2% of the HOF vote and falling

Larry Walker’s career average is .313. His career OBP is .400. His career OPS is .965, and he played a fabulous right field. He also played at a time where there was a right fielder hitting 60 home runs regularly -- regularly! -- and people were smitten.

Those numbers are Coors inflated, of course, but once you accept that, no, Walker probably wasn’t a true .379 hitter with a slugging percentage over .700, his numbers still looked mighty fine. Like Rolen, injuries are a problem here, but it’s probably the outright dismissal of Colorado numbers that hurt him more. If you magically transmute his numbers to current Dodger Stadium, he still grades out well.

Crime: Pitching to roided-up goons at the same time as Pedro Martinez and Roger Clemens

Punishment: 20.3% of the HOF vote and falling

In 2000, Mussina led the AL in innings and had a 125 ERA+, good for a six-win season according to Baseball-Reference. To give you a modern comparison, that’s almost exactly the season that Max Scherzer is having right now, the season that will make Scherzer the majority owner of Little Caesars...

...Except Mussina’s ERA that year was 3.79. Good for the time, bad for someone looking back at the stats through a 2014 prism. That was the year Pedro Martinez finished with a 1.74 ERA and a 291 ERA+. It was one of the greatest pitching seasons ever, if not the greatest pitching season ever.

Given that, Mussina seemed like just another guy, a No. 2, a very good pitcher to have around, but not the Hall of Famer that he actually was. Martinez (and to a lesser extent, an older Roger Clemens) set a bar for Mussina in the AL that made him seem like a second-tier pitcher. Which he was, compared to those two, but most Hall of Famers would pale in comparison, too.

Crime: Being around at the same time as Mariano Rivera and pitching for the Padres instead of the Yankees

Punishment: He’ll make the Hall, but he’ll never be the best reliever of his generation, which means no coffee mug with that inscription

No one will ever be like Rivera. When he was 43, he had a 2.11 ERA and a 54-to-9 strikeout-to-walk ratio. He pitched in 328 games after turning 38 and had a 1.80 ERA. He threw 141 playoff innings in his career, allowing just 11 earned runs. In 32 games in the ALDS -- 56 innings -- Rivera allowed two earned runs. A poorly timed blow-up here or there and the Yankees might not have advanced to the next round, which they always seemed to do.

Wait, though. Hoffman also had a magic pitch that he used far longer than he was expected to. His changeup wasn’t as sexy as the cutter, but it’s on a curated list of the greatest pitches in baseball history. It’s not his fault that he pitched just 13 playoff innings his career. He allowed as many runs in 6.2 innings in the NLDS as Rivera did in those 56 ALDS innings, but maybe his next 50 would have been scoreless innings. We’ll never know.

And so Hoffman will be doomed to be great, not that great. Which is a much better fate than almost any of the second fiddles above him, so don’t feel too bad.

Adam Wainwright is a superlative pitcher, one of the game’s best. He’s an absolute treat to watch, and his curveball is one of the best of his generation. With a few more seasons like this, he’ll have strong Hall of Fame support. He’s still a second fiddle, though, at least right now.

He’s not the biggest second fiddle in recent memory, though. He’s not especially close.