here's a fun question... if a player was the best pitcher in the league over a 10-year period, meaning, topping the cumulative WAR leaderboard for a period of 10 consecutive seasons, would you think that player sufficiently good to be considered a hall of famer? ten years is a long time. and to be the top performer at a position over that decade...? wow, right? and... it also accounts for shifts in usage and gameplay and all that because instead of comparing, say, roy oswalt to pud galvin, you're looking at gooden vs clemens vs maddux, etc. for the record, the current leader in this regard is max scherzer, with 47 fWAR from 2015-2024. pretty darned good! in fact, if we look at the top five, we'll see the following names in order: Cole, DeGrom, Kershaw, Sale. not a bad group! i dare say, the logic tracks. 1957-66? boom sandy koufax. 67-76? lookie there, tom seaver. 1900-09? cy young. i could go on... anyways... if i brute force it and look at some 10-year periods in the middles of their careers... what do you think i find? well, if i look at the number on e guy for each 10 year period from 1980-89 thru 2015-24, i get the following names: max scherzer (4x 12-21:15-24) clayton kershaw (5x 07-16:11-20) . . roy halladay (3x 01-10:03-12) randy johnson (7x 93-02:95-04 ; 97-06:00-09) pedro martinez (1x 96-05) greg maddux (4x 89-98:92-01) roger clemens (7x 82-91:88-97) nolan ryan (2x 80-89:81-90) these all look like clear hall of famers, antics and PEDs aside. who could possibly question those names, right? oh.. right. the gap. sorry. felix hernandez (2x 05-14:06-15) cc sabathia (1x 04-13) felix was also in the top five in four other decades: (#4 04-13, #3 07-16, #4 08-17, & #5 09-18) cc was top five in five other decades (#3 01-10, #2 02-11, #2 03-12, #4 05-14, & #4 06-15) it is very rare for non hall-of-famers to appear in this list. notable players with repeat appearances include kevin brown (6) bret saberhagen and dwight gooden (5) and roy oswalt (4) i'm certainly tempted to look at earlier dates, but i do have a life. i'll consider adding to my table in the future. but the point is, that it would be a noteworthy omission to consider the best pitcher for a given decade to be NOT a hall of famer. moreso to do it twice. it's worth stating that i was not expecting the results to be quite so stark. i'm half-tempted to expand my research into other positions around the diamond. but again, that takes time and effort.