At threshold of Hall

FORT MYERS, Fla. -- When a Boston radio talk show last month floated the idea of Curt Schilling running for a US Senate seat against incumbent John Kerry, the idea evoked only mild interest from the Red Sox pitcher, who said he was uncertain of his interest in politics as a future calling.

That may not have been an unhappy development for the Commonwealth. Jim Bunning, a pitcher who is in his second term as a US senator from Kentucky, was once ranked one of the nation's five worst senators by Time magazine. The magazine chided Bunning for, among other things, having little interest in subjects that didn't involve baseball.

Of potentially greater benefit, at least to those registered voters who are Sox fans, was Schilling's recent declaration of his intentions to spend 2008 still engaged in his current vocation, countermanding his previous insistence that he would be calling it quits after this season.

Assuming he does not suffer a significant drop-off from his bounce-back performance in 2006, when he won 15 games, pitched 204 innings, and led the starting staff with a 3.97 ERA and 183 strikeouts, Schilling can only enhance his chances in an election of some greater personal significance -- for baseball's Hall of Fame.

Schilling, 40, enters this season with 207 wins, which ranks him 94th all-time. He already has as many wins as two Hall of Famers, Bob Lemon and Hal Newhouser, more wins than Sandy Koufax (165), and is within reach of six more Hall of Famers this season: Don Drysdale (209), Jesse Haines (210), Chief Bender (212), Stan Coveleski (215), Catfish Hunter (224), and the senator, Bunning (224).

Last August, Schilling became the 14th pitcher in big league history to reach 3,000 strikeouts. Of those 14, the only retired pitcher on that list not in the Hall is Bert Blyleven.

A terrific index for measuring a pitcher's dominance as well as his control is his strikeouts-to-walks ratio. Schilling's ratio of 4.38-1 strikeouts to walks is the best for any modern-era pitcher (post-1900) with 2,000 innings or more. Pedro Martínez (4.28-1) is the only other pitcher with a ratio over 4-1.

Bill James, the statistical analyst and Sox senior baseball operations adviser, devised a couple of systems to evaluate potential Hall of Famers. They assign points for various achievements in a number of statistical categories, as well as rankings in awards voting, All-Star Game appearances, and performances in the postseason.

"Before the recent events, I had actually thought of writing a letter to Curt -- who I don't really know at all -- urging him not to retire because, in my opinion, he is poised on the high wire relative to the Hall of Fame," James wrote in an e-mail. "Pitchers with 200, 210 career wins don't normally go into the Hall of Fame, but they do sometimes, if they have enough to sell otherwise. Schilling has a great deal to sell outside of the 200 wins -- more than almost anyone."

Schilling is a six-time All-Star. He was the MVP of the NLCS for the Phillies in 1993, and shared with Randy Johnson the World Series MVP for 2001. He never has won a Cy Young Award as his league's best pitcher, but he finished in the top five in voting four times, finishing second in 2001, '02, and '04.

Nine times he finished in the top 10 in ERA, finishing second twice. Five times he finished in the top 10 in wins, leading the league in '01 and '04. Six times he was in the top 10 in winning percentage, finishing first in '04.

Nine times he was in the top 10 in strikeouts, twice leading the league. Seven times he was in the top 10 in innings, twice leading the league, and five times he was in the top 10 in starts, leading the league three times.

His postseason performance, both by the numbers and on a dramatic scale, rank him among the best who ever have pitched. Schilling has pitched in nine postseason series; his teams have won seven of those series. He has a record of 8-2 with a 2.06 ERA; take away his abortive start against the Yankees in 2004, when his bum ankle robbed him of any chance of being effective, and that ERA drops to 1.61.

He matched Roger Clemens in one of the great Game 7 duels in Series history in 2001, shutting out the Yankees until Alfonso Soriano's two-run home run in the eighth inning of a game the Diamondbacks rallied to win in the ninth. And, of course, there was the bloody sock game.

On the James scale, Schilling scores quite well. On the standards test, he scores a 46, with the average Hall of Famer scoring a 50. On the monitors test, which projects a player's Hall chances, Schilling scores a 167. Any player with a score of 100 is a good possibility; a score of 130 or better suggests a cinch.

That might be a reach. He's certainly not a cinch like other great pitchers of his era, e.g. Clemens, Randy Johnson, Greg Maddux, Mariano Rivera, and Trevor Hoffman. Many people would add Pedro Martínez to that list as well.

But Schilling certainly deserves a strong place in any Hall conversation, and should he end his career with a strong finishing kick, he, too, should be a lock.