Baseball Hall of Fame ballot released

You don't throw shutouts or strike a batter out simply by pitching a long time.

Striking out 200+ batters in six consecutive seasons is dominant, not durable. And what is a shutout if not a showing of a pitcher's greatness on that day?

 

Plenty were better. They're all in the Hall of Fame.

And plenty who were not as good as he was are there, too.

To be clear, I'm not arguing that Blyleven was the greatest pitcher ever. That would be absurd.

I am arguing that he is, without question, the best eligible pitcher not enshrined, and much, much better than others already there, to boot.

If he wasn't great, then there are only a handful of pitchers who were.

 

http://mlb.fanhouse.com/2009/12/18/for-first-time-ill-circle-bert-for-hall/

This guy, who is one of the smartest people ever to wear my underwear, reluctantly switched from No to Yes on Blyleven.

To summarize: Blyleven is not an easy pick because he was not at all dominant among the pitchers of his ERA (hence his poor showing in Cy Young balloting and All-Star games). However, his cumulative ERA and WHIP (which reflect the two most important jobs of a pitcher, preventing runs and getting outs) have him in the neighborhood of other HOFers, even if he's on the outskirts of that neigbhorhood.

 

(He also voted for Dawson).

 

Just wait until 2015, the year Bill James becomes eligible as an Executive and Pioneer.

 

What was his VORE?

 

Before you write that Blyleven's stats are "right there" and "in the neighborhood" with Warren Spahn's, don't you have to recognize that a couple of prime years in Spahn's career were spent in the military and that hanging on at ages 42. 43 and 44 fluffed up Spahn's career numbers a bit when he was clearly done as a pitcher? (In those days, players didn't have millions to retire on).

I get and appreciate WHIP and the other analytical stats, and I know that pitching victories are often a function of the team that surrounds the pitcher. Yet I can't help but notice this: Blyleven started 20 more games than Spahn did, yet Spahn had 76 more victories and five fewer losses.

 

Let's not act like WHIP is some new-fangled, Jetsons-style, Plaschke-enraging geek stat. It means walks and hits per inning pitched, and it's about as basic as it gets.

 

And I can't help but notice that Blyleven struck out 1200 more batters. And gave up 200 fewer hits.

Which leads me to believe that Blyleven actually pitched better than Spahn over the course of those games, but did so for much worse teams.

 

Blyleven has a career ERA+ of 118, which puts him in the neighborhood of Glavine, Spahn, Lemon, Guidry and a bunch of others. You can certainly make a case for his HOF candidacy, but I'm tired of hearing that it's some kind of travesty that he's not in there. He's a fringe guy. He barely registered in the Cy Young voting. He only made two all-star teams. He was good for a long time, great for a few seasons.

If he gets in, fine. If he doesn't, I don't see why it's a big deal.

 

So, uh, he's only in the neighborhood of guys like Glavine, Spahn, Lemon and Guidry, eh? Glavine is probably a no-brainer to get in, Spahn might be the best lefty of all-time depending on your feelings on Randy Johnson and some others, Guidry was a heck of a pitcher, and Lemon is in the Hall.