Thoughts On Billy Martin and the Hall of Fame

by Dusty Writes

June 18, 2026

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When we discuss whether or not Billy Martin should be in the Hall of Fame, most fans and media are only focusing on Martin's managerial stats. I believe we should evaluate all of Martin's contributions to baseball, not just his managerial career.

Martin was not only a player and manager, he was also a scout, coach, general manager, advisor, and batting, fielding, and baserunning instructor. Martin's career was very complex and we need to combine all aspects of his career contributions, not just his managerial career.

Martin was the Yankees primary second baseman for 3 world championship teams during the Yankees greatest period of dominance.

Although not a great player, his teammates have said he was a good clutch player, and Casey Stengel was quoted as saying Martin was clutch. In the World Series, Martin was a fantastic player. He had 33 hits for a .333 batting average, with 5 homers and 19 rbi in 28 games. His spectacular catch in Game 7 of the 1952 World Series was very instrumental in the Yankees winning that game. In 1953, Martin won the Babe Ruth Award as best player of the World Series. 

Several of the Yankees fantastic 5 straight world championships (1949-1953) was accomplished in part by Martin's great World Series play.

Besides his one year as manager of the Twins in 1969, in which the Twins won the Western Division championship, his contributions to the Twins are more than that one season. Many, if not most fans, don't realize that Martin was a scout and coach for the Twins before he was their manager.

According to author, Bill Pennington, who wrote the book, Billy Martin: Baseball's Flawed Genius, Martin, who spoke Spanish, supplied the Twins with some good Hispanic players, while Martin was a scout.

In this book, it said Martin was also a great talent evaluator. Martin wanted the Twins to sign a young pitcher. Martin had worked out the details and was set to sign this pitcher, but the Twins owner didn't want to spend the $ 50,000 to sign him. The pitcher the Twins owner didn't acquire was HOF Jim Palmer.

Interestingly, Martin took the Hispanic players under his wing and was a mentor to them. This was at a time where there were many racial stereotypes and many non-Hispanic managers and coaches didn't always have a good relationship with Hispanic players.

Rod Carew said Martin had a better relationship with the Hispanic players than the rest of the team. It is difficult to believe that Martin actually unified a team, as opposed to all the dissension he created on some of his other teams.

Carew the great HOF player, who won 7 batting titles and had a career .328, with 3,053 hits has said that Martin was very instrumental in his career. Martin taught Carew how to bunt, how to drastically improve his defense and how to steal bases, including home. Carew became one of the greatest bunters in history and improved his fielding. He also was a great base stealer. Martin taught Carew not to hit the ball in the air so often. Carew's first two seasons he batted .292 and .273. In 1969, Carew's third season and Martin's first and only season as Twins manager, Carew won his first batting title, batting .332.  Carew and Martin developed a close relationship even after Martin left the Twins organization.

Tony Oliva, another HOF player, said Martin taught him much about how to observe and analyze the game. Martin gets credit for improving Cesar Tovar's career. The Twins wanted to trade infielder Zollo Versalles before the 1965 season, in part because he clashed with the manager and coaches. Martin worked with Versalles and Versalles won the 1965 AL MVP, including his second Gold Glove Award.

Manager Sam Mele, who took the Twins to the seventh game of the 1965 World Series said Martin should get a tremendous amount of credit for the 1965 Twins success. Unfortunately, the HOF voters, and many fans and media either are not aware of a scouts' or coaches' contributions, or they don't put much emphasis on these contributions.

Martin would have a much better chance to get voted into the HOF if his contributions as a coach, instructor, scout, GM and player were taken into account. Martin did greatly improve the Twins in his one season as manager as the Twins in 1968 won 79 games but with Martin as manager in 1969, the Twins won 97 games. 

Martin's greatest contribution to the Twins organization was the players he developed or improved that had excellent careers long after Martin left the Twins.

Martin then took over as Tigers manager in 1971 and improved the Tigers win total from 79 wins to 91. In his next season, Detroit won the Eastern Division and came within one run of winning the pennant vs Oakland. Ironically, Reggie Jackson stole home in a very big play as the Oakland A's won the pennant by one run vs the Tigers in 1972. Amazingly, that season, due to the shorter season, the Tigers won the division by only 1/2 game. Detroit and Boston both lost 70 games, but Detroit won 86 and Boston won 85. That had to be one of the most unusual division championships, as the Tigers won the division based on playing and winning one more game than the Red Sox.

Martin was fired in 1973 before the season finished with a record of 71 wins and 63 losses. While Detroit regressed that season, they were still an above average team, finishing with 85 wins.

In 1974 with the Texas Rangers, the Rangers had surprisingly, the 3rd best record in the league as they won 84 games while losing 76. According to author Bill Pennington, the Rangers became the first team in history to finish with a winning record after losing 100 or more games the previous two seasons. The Rangers regressed the next season as Martin was fired with a record of 44 wins and 51 losses.

Jim Sundberg, who won 6 Gold Gloves as a catcher and three time all-star, gave Martin credit for promoting him to the majors when other managers wouldn't have done so as quickly as Martin did.

Mike Hargrove was a solid .290 career hitter with an on base percentage of .396 with 1,614 hits, gives Martin some credit for his career.

With the Yankees, Martin had very good success winning a pennant in 1976 and a world championship in 1977. Although he usually doesn't get any credit whatsoever for the 1978 Yankees world championship, he should still get some credit, at least partial credit for that team's success. Before being fired the Yankees won 52 games and trailed the Red Sox.  It is true that at the time Martin was fired, the Yankees were trailing the Red Sox by 10 games. He did however, win enough games to keep the Yankees within range of Boston when Bob Lemon took over.  

Let's say an NBA player scored 15 points and fouled out of a game midway in the 3rd quarter. The player who fouled out left the game with his team trailing by 10 points. His replacement plays spectacular and rallies his team to a one- point victory. Should we dismiss the 15 points scored of the player who fouled out? Shouldn't the player who scored those 15 points get some credit for the win?  Bob Lemon, as far as won/loss record goes, was the better manager that season, plus his managerial style and personality, much different than Martin's, may have been exactly what the Yankees needed at that point. But Martin did win more than half of the Yankees total wins that regular season and should be given some credit for that.

In 1979, Martin replaced Bob Lemon as manager during the season and this time Martin with a record of 55-40 did better than Lemon who had a 34-31 record.

Martin's 3 other seasons as Yankees manager (1983, 1985, 1988) did not result in any championships. Those 3 teams however had very good records: 91 wins in 1983 and 91 wins in 1985. In 1985, he took over for Yogi Berra who got fired after only 16 games as the Yankees lost 10 of the first 16 games. After Martin took over, from that point on, the Yankees had the best record in the league winning 97 games and finishing only 2 games out of first place. Perhaps if Martin was the manager the entire season, the Yankees may have won the division. Martin rarely, if ever, gets credit for the fact that when he took over, the Yankees had the best record in the league for the remainder of the season.

In 1988, after 3 straight walk -off losses, the Yankees fired Martin, even though the Yankees had an excellent 40-28 record. In an interview in 1994, Steinbrenner said he should have kept Martin as manager that season, rather than fire him. The Yankees that season finished only 3 1/2 games out of first place. Who knows, maybe Martin would have won another division championship if he wasn't fired too soon? After Martin was fired in 1988, the Yankees played poorly, winning 45 and losing 48. We can't predict what would have happened had Martin not been fired, but I would guess that the Yankees would have played better the 45-48 record.

What about the intangibles, things that cannot be quantified that many fans and media don't put much emphasis on? 

First, I'll mention Martin's negative intangibles: First, he overworked his pitchers throughout his managerial career. Some pitchers regressed after this workload. While some of the pitchers did have some good seasons, they weren't at the level they were before Martin's heavy workload. For example, while Martin was the Detroit manager, in 1971, Mickey Lolich pitched an incredible 29 complete games in 45 starts. He led the league in starts, complete games and innings pitched with 376! The next season, with teams only playing about 155 games or so due to the strike, Lolich pitched 327.1 innings. The season after that, Lolich pitched 308.2 innings. Lolich was still a good pitcher up until age 36, but not quite as dominant as the 1971 and 1972 seasons. 

Joe Coleman was another workhorse pitcher for Martin from 1971-1973.  He was a big winner in those three seasons, winning 20,19, 23 games. If not for the shorter season in 1972, he may have won 20 games in three straight seasons. In those 3 seasons, Coleman's innings pitched totals were 286, 280, 288.1 In 1974, at age 27, he had his last season of winning more than 10 games. Coleman regressed and was mostly used as a relief pitcher, winning very few games until he retired.

When Martin took over as Yankees manager, Catfish Hunter in 1976 pitched 298.2 innings. The season before, with Martin as manager for part of that season, Hunter led the league with an incredible 30 complete games and 328 innings pitched. In one game, Hunter pitched against Frank Tanana of the Angels and both pitchers pitched 13 innings. Both pitchers pitched a shutout for 13 innings and the Yankees won the game in the 15th inning. It was one of the greatest pitching exhibitions of all time. While Hunter regressed as a Yankees pitcher, he still would sometimes have stretches where he was a big contributor to the Yankees both in the regular season and postseason, but after his first season as a Yankee, he never was as dominant as he was with the A's.

Sparky Lyle who had an incredible 1977 season winning the Cy Young Award and pitching a ton of clutch innings in that postseason as the Yankees won the World Series, also regressed after that season, though he still had  two good seasons after that great season. He was never the dominant relief pitcher as he was in 1977.

Gene Michael, in an interview, said all organizations overworked their pitchers back in the day, so he didn't criticize Martin for overworking pitchers because that was the policy in that era.

The A's in 1980-1981 showed great improvement when Martin took over, going from 54 wins in 1979 to 83 wins when Martin took over. The next season, Martin led the A's to the Western Division championship.

In 1982 the A's regressed tremendously as Martin's A's had a poor 68-94 record.

However, the A's had a promising starting five rotation that regressed quickly. In 1980, Martin's A's led the league with an incredible 94 complete games. The next highest total in the league was Milwaukee with only 48 complete games. Martin's A's had almost twice as many complete  games as the runner up !

In the strike shortened 1981 season in which teams played about 110 games, Martin's A's led the league with 60 complete games. The runner up in the league that season had 33 complete games.

Interestingly, most of the A's rotation all said that they wanted to pitch all those innings and Martin didn't encourage them to pitch that many innings. 

The criticisms of Martin are his overworking of his pitchers, he only had 11 full seasons as manager, and not many managerial wins compared to other Hall of Famers, and his teams didn't have long lasting success.   His one world championship as a manager is not overly impressive.

The positives of Martin's career was his development of players such as Rod Carew and Rickey Henderson, both of whom said Martin had a tremendous influence on their careers. Henderson mentioned Billy Martin in his HOF speech. Martin taught Henderson how to read pitcher's moves, and was very instrumental in Henderson base stealing abilities.

What did rival managers say about Billy Martin? Bobby Cox and Tony LaRussa, both HOF managers, said Billy Martin should be in the HOF. LaRussa, known as a manager with one of the highest baseball I.Q. in history said that Martin knew much more about baseball than LaRussa did.

Buck Showalter said Martin taught him a tremendous amount about how to observe a game. Showalter, known as a very high I.Q. manager said that Martin pointed out things to Showalter, that Showalter never even was aware of. Showalter said that he believed he knew baseball until being taught by Martin.

Willie Randolph, Graig Nettles, Lou Piniella and other Yankees all said how great a manager Martin was. Beyond statistics, Martin passed on his influence to other managers who played for him such as Don Mattingly, Lou Piniella, Willie Randolph and others. While GM and manager of the A's, I'm not sure if he had any influence in the A's drafting Jose Canseco. If so, Martin's contributions to the A's extend beyond his Oakland managerial career.

Author Bill Pennington endorses Martin for the HOF. He points out that Martin has a higher winning percentage than many HOF managers. Pennington points out that if the expanded playoffs existed in Martin's career, like they do today, Martin's teams would have qualified for the postseason 6 more times, with 6 more chances to win another World Series. 

Bill James, acknowledged by many as the "Father" of modern baseball stats, says Billy Martin was the 3rd best manager of his generation.

In Bill Pennington's book, he said the Elias Sports Bureau, one of the most influential and renowned statistical organizations, spent years devising a managerial formula. Elias concluded that based on managers who managed 1000 or more games, Martin had the highest score in history. Martin averaged 7.45 more wins per season than expected in his 16 seasons. The next best manager averaged 6.38 wins. An Elias statistical analyst wrote, "Billy Martin happens to be the best manager in the history of Major League Baseball."

Martin greatly influenced the managerial careers of Buck Showalter, who, according to Baseball Almanac, won the 1994, 2004,2014 Manager of the Year Award and Lou Piniella, who won the 1995 and 2001 Manager of the Year Award.

In conclusion, do Martin's positive accomplishments outweigh the negative? 

I would say that Billy Martin is a Hall of Famer, not necessarily solely based on his managerial career. When all his contributions are added up - his managerial success, post season success as a player, a great instructor in all phases of baseball fundamentals, his dual role as manager and GM of the A's, his contributions as a scout, his influence on players' careers after he left the organizations he started with, and the influence he had on many other future managers, who played on Billy Martin's team when Martin was manager. Also, in only about 11 full seasons, Martin won an incredible 4 Associated Press Manager of the Year Awards.