Afternoon Baseball

Bert Blyleven...Original post and complete player list
We dismissed the pretenders and spelled out the contenders. Here, we analyze each with a mix of stats and baseball POV from a dedicated fan.

Bert Blyleven, P, Minnesota (1970-1976, 1985-1988), Texas (1976-1977), Pittsburgh (1978-1980), Cleveland (1981-1985), California (1989-1990, 1992).
This year: No.
Deserving: Sadly no. And I love pitchers.
Will writers think he's deserving?: He's got big numbers. Not necessarily great, but big. Writers love that.
Stay on ballot: Yes.
Veteran's Committee: Yes. In his lifetime.

Bert Blyleven pitched many games. Completed a lot. Threw a lot of innings. Won a lot of games. Also lost a ton. People say he played for terrible teams. Well, he did win two World Series and made the playoffs a third time (1970). So they couldn't have been that bad. Walter Johnson won 400+ games with the Senators, right?
Here's my thing. His ERA+ is only 118, which is nice, but that ranks him below Kevin Appier, Derek Lowe, and Andy Pettitte among active players (to be fair, it puts him a whisker ahead of Bartolo Colon, Mark Mulder and Matt Morris, but they aren't HOFers either).
Also, wins and losses have diminished in value, and rightly so, in this computer age, but how can we elect a guy who won 20 games but once, but lost 17 four times? "He threw tons of innings and lots of complete games!" Great, but in 1985, maybe he could fallen short of 24 CG and 293 2/3 innings and the bullpen could have helped him go better than 17-16. His teams were atrocious that year, though.

Alright, so we're looking at a tough case here. Do we recognize that no one will be throwing 270, 290 innings any time soon? Certainly not in their mid-3os. He also struck out 3701 batters, but no one remembers him for that. Nor should we. His K/9 is 93rd in history, and he led the league in Ks once, but with a 6.31 K/9 ratio.
I've got to draw a line. I'll take dominant, slightly fragile pitchers (Pedro, a slightly better Schilling) over workhorses (Don Sutton, Jim Kaat) who just stuck around a long time picking up 14 wins a year. Nolan Ryan is in the Hall for his dominance that overcame his longevity and losses and walks and lack of great playoff performances. Blyleven never had that dominance. Even a silly stat like All-Star games (2?!?!) betrays that truth.
Don't say 287 wins. If that's the case, we're 40-50 wins away from David Wells being a consensus pick. And Mike Mussina. But we're still ignoring relievers.
Sorry, Bert. You're better than a number of pitchers in the Hall. But we can't let you in.

Labels: HOF