Tommy John Marquee

He pitched twenty-six seasons, 1963 to 1989, and won 288 games against 231 with a 3.34 earned run average across 4,710 innings. He started 700 games and finished 162 of them, and he led his league in shutouts three times. Four All-Star selections in twenty-six years is a small number, and it is the shape of the career: durable rather than dominant.

In 1974 he tore the ulnar collateral ligament in his pitching elbow, which until then had simply ended pitchers. Frank Jobe replaced it with a tendon taken from his other forearm. The 1975 season is absent from his record because he spent it recovering. He then won 164 more games, against the 124 he had won before the injury.

The operation is now done on pitchers by the thousand and carries his name, so he is invoked far more often as an elbow than as a pitcher. The writers gave him fifteen ballots and he peaked at 32 percent in 2009. Committees have considered him five times, most recently in 2025, when he had seven votes from a panel of sixteen that requires twelve.