Major League Baseball will induct another Hall of Fame class this week, and almost certainly, Bert Blyleven will once again be left out.
The closest the Twins TV color man and 22-year veteran has come to the required 75 percent of the vote was in 2006, when he got 53.3 percent. That dropped last year to 47.7 percent.
I set out to compile a definitive report on why Blyleven should be a Hall of Famer, and when i did so, I began armed with mostly peripheral information: Lots of strikeouts, a good ERA, two World Series rings, and maybe the most legendary curveball in history.
The more research I did, however, the more clear it became and the angrier I got. It's a joke (or a travesty, depending on how serious you take this stuff) that Blyleven isn't in. In fact, he's exhibit A for the argument that too many of the sportswriters and other media covering this game are still clinging to prehistoric notions, and that the traditional methods used by the mainstream media to judge players' worth are far outdated.
These are the typical arguments for why Bert doesn't belong:
He didn't reach 300 wins (the arbitrary "magic number" made up by sportswriters in the middle part of the 20th century).
He was only 37 games over .500 (287-250).
He's 10th all-time in losses.
He only won 20 games once.
He never won a Cy Young award.
He only made two All-Star games.
Notice most of these excuses revolve around wins and losses. Writers love to smugly say things like, "It's not the Hall of Very Good", and then point to Bert's winning percentage.
This is stupid to the Nth degree. If you ever hear someone say something like this on TV, never listen to anything they say ever again.
Teams win games. Hitting, fielding, relief pitching, weather and ballpark dimensions all play a part in who wins the game. So judging a pitcher on just W's is obviously pointless when so many other outside factors are involved.
In 2007 for example, Johan Santana pitched 219 innings, struck out 235 batters, walked 52 and had a 3.33 ERA. Tim Wakefield pitched 189 innings, struck out 110, walked 64 and had a 4.76 ERA. Anyone with a clue would say Santana was the far better pitcher.
Does the fact that Santana went 15-13 and Wakefield went 17-12 change that fact? No, of course not. And I should mention that while yes, Blyleven is 10th all-time in losses, eight of the nine guys ahead of him are in the Hall, including Cy Young, Nolan Ryan, Walter Johnson and admitted cheater Gaylord Perry.
As for the lack of Cy Young's, that's an equally bad argument, because Cy Young's are voted on by the same idiots who vote for the Hall of Fame, and therefore tend to put way too much emphasis on team success and win-loss record.
All-Star appearances are just as meaningless, as they are largely popularity contests. Joe Torre once put a struggling Javier Vazquez on the AL all-star team in an attempt to boost his confidence.
Clearly all the excuses are bunk, but there are also plenty of overwhelming reasons why Bert does belong.
We always hear about "the ring" when players' greatness is in question. Bert has two, and he played a big part both times. In 10 career playoff appearances, Blyleven has a 2.47 ERA, and yes, a 5-1 record. By comparison, Whitey Ford, regarded as one of the greatest post-season pitchers ever, went 10-8 with a 2.71 ERA in his playoff career. Funny how that never comes up.
Blyleven was a horse, working 4,970 innings in 685 starts, 242 of which he completed.
Some have argued he simply pitched for a long time, but he wasn't just prolific, he was effective. His 3.31 career ERA passes for some good pitchers' best season. From 1970-1987, he failed to post a better than league-average ERA only once. He finished in the top 10 of the league in ERA 10 times, top five in the league in strikeouts 13 times. His 60 career shutouts are ninth most all-time. He won 15 1-0 games. For his career, Blyleven's ERA was 0.5 runs lower than the league average, the 19th biggest differential in history. And yes, everyone else in the top 20 on that list is in the Hall.
I could go on about how Bert was also regarded as a strong fielder of his position, was extremely popular with teammates and fans, and earned a reputation as one of the game's great pranksters, but then I'd just be like all the voters who will go to any length to find some stupid reason to vote (or not vote) for someone. The important numbers speak for themselves.
Bert was one of the greatest pitchers of his generation. A reliable ace whose 90-mph fastball and legendary curveball gave hitters fits. A workhorse who almost always pitched into the 8th or 9th inning, and who dominated in post-season play.
"He was as good as there was for a long time," Hall of Famer George Brett said recently. "Bert is up there with the toughest four or five guys I faced in my career. The writers never had to face him. If they did, they'd vote for him."
2 comments:
I couldn't have said it better myself SD. There is absolutely no reason Bert should not be in. Is there any question that had Bert achieved these numbers in New York, Boston, or LA that he would be in right now?
What gets me most about this fiasco is how Bert has become the villain. Every year it seems the national media and blogs paint Bert as a whiner, a guy who can't stop tooting his own horn. But that isn't it at all. Bert is simply getting desperate. He knows he should be in. He played well enough in his career that he shouldn't have to grovel to these damn writers. But yet, he isn't in. What else do you expect him to do?
I live in Chicago, SD. So 90% of the TV games I get to see the Twins play (not MLB.tv) is when they play the White Sox. And not a game goes by, NOT A GAME, where Hawk Harrelson doesn't give a five minute speech about how Bert belongs in the hall. You know it is bad when the biggest homer announcer in baseball is pushing the cause of a pitcher from a rival team.
The headline says it best SD, "Put him in the goddamn hall."
Lucky for Bert, this whole "circle me" gimic he has going may eventually land him in the hall as a color man.
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