GC at Can’t Stop the Bleeding passes along this Marty Noble article about John Franco appearing on only 4.6% of Hall of Fame ballots, which means he drops off future ballots for good.

Franco is by no means a Hall of Famer, but he probably has a better case than some Mets fans realize. Franco is 17th all time in ERA+ among pitchers with 1000 or more innings pitched. Franco has a better rate over more innings than Hall-enshrined closer Bruce Sutter, though Sutter pitched far more innings per season (just way fewer seasons) and likely earned votes for both his reputation as inventor of the splitter and his possession of perhaps baseball’s best-ever beard.

Franco didn’t pitch nearly as many innings in relief as fellow Hall of Famers Rollie Fingers and Goose Gossage, plus he didn’t have nearly as cool a name. Also, for whatever it’s worth, Gossage was an All-Star nine times and Fingers won the Cy Young and MVP in 1981. Franco made only four All-Star teams and finished in the top 10 of Cy Young voting only once, in 1994.

Still, if Franco had managed to muster something like 15 more innings per season, a reasonable case could be made for his Hall of Fame worthiness. I’m blinded by bias, of course, but the guy was a very good reliever for a very long time and pitched through an outrageous offensive era.

Franco, quoted in Noble’s piece, sounds disappointed that he won’t stay on the ballot but resigned to his fate as a non-Hall of Famer. But the awesome thing about John Franco is you kind of know he thinks he’s a Hall of Famer no matter what anyone says. I once watched Franco throw four straight changeups — three of them right over the middle — to strike out Barry Bonds in the midst of Bonds’ ridiculous stretch of dominance.

I know a lot of Mets fans have soured on Franco for a variety of reasons, but I’ll forever think he was pretty sweet. Good pitcher, great mustache man, exemplar of New York-guy bravado.