Alright, Elvis. You got me.
The real reason I vote Blyleven in is:
He was born in Zeist, Holland, in 1951. His real name is Rik Aalbert Blyleven.
[Johnny Cash voice]
Do you realize how hard life is for a boy named Rik Aalbert Blyleven?.
[/Johnny Cash voice]
Jesus Christ! Cut him some slack! Having Jimmy Dikes as his manager would have made it all worthwhile. 
Just as a side note, Robin Yount (believe it or not) only went to the All-Star game three times, but I recall no controversy at all when he was elected to the Hall.
Ferguson Jenkins, who went 285-226, won a Cy Young Award, and is in the Hall of Fame, also was in only 3 All-Star games. He, too, strikes me as being a rather obvious Hall of fame choice. The man had six straight 20-win seasons with the CUBS, for God’s sake.
Most great players went to at least six or seven All-Star games, but All-Star appearances can be funny that way. Catfish Hunter went to the All-Star game eight times, but he wasn’t nearly as great a pitcher as Fergie Jenkins. Bert Campaneris was in six All-Star games, twice as many as Robin Yount, but who thinks Campy was better than Yount?
I think being in only two games is a strike against Blyleven, but it doesn’t outweigh the other evidence. He was a great pitcher.
That should get him Coldfire’s vote. 
I was a baseball fan for pretty much all of the eons that Blyleven pitched, but I never saw him pitch live, and while I must’ve seen him on TV, I honestly don’t remember.
He had two standout years late in his career (1984 and 1989), but other than that, he was your prototypical second or third starter, not your stopper. He just did it for a lot of innings in a lot of years. The rest of the time, he was Claude Osteen. When I was listening to the radio, rooting for the Senators, and later, the Orioles, it never worried me to know that Bert Blyleven was the opposing starter.
In his playoff seasons, same deal. In 1970 (OK, his rookie year), he was #3/4 starter (with Luis Tiant) after Jim Perry and Jim Kaat. On the 1979 Pirates, Candelaria was the ace, and Blyleven was in a cluster for 2-3-4 starters with Bibby and Kison. In 1987, he was the solid #2 behind Frank Viola, with a 15-12 record. IOW, always supporting cast, never the main man.
So for me, it comes down to what are the criteria for putting people (pitchers or everyday players) in the Hall for longevity and consistency. I think the necessary requirement there is one of the Big Benchmarks: 300 wins, 3000 hits, 500 homers. Blyleven, despite pitching from 1970 to 1992, didn’t manage to win 300, falling a solid 12 wins short. I’d give him the thumbs-down.
[sub]I’m having a hard time with the argument that Blyleven was hurt by his clubs; he played with teams that, in balance, played slightly above .500 while he was with them. He played for a powerhouse Twins team in 1970, the 94-win Rangers of 1977, and the Pirates of 1978-80 that averaged 90 wins and won a World Series, dammit. He also played for an Indians team from 1981-86 that averaged about 74 wins, and the rest of his teams played about .500 ball, including the flukey 1987 Twins championship team. So it’s hard to see where his teams dragged him down overall.[/sub]
Gadarene, at the risk of seeming like I’m sympathetic by answering, which I’m not, I’ll simply give you a rolleyes smiley for that question. Here it is: :rolleyes:
Just for clarification, refusing to use only stats for a judgment does not mean refusing to use any stats. I understand how hard that concept must be for those inclined to believe that anything significant must be quantifiable, and that anything quantifiable must be significant. If you insist on that, I’m sure you like Rotisserie ball better than the real sport.
I thought it was quite clear that Blyleven isn’t in because he wasn’t quite good enough. That’s the judgment of the >>25% of the HOF electorate, most of whom saw more of him and his contemporaries in action and decided that his generation’s quota was already full before getting down to his level. Once Don Sutton barely made it in, anyone not as good shouldn’t, m’kay?
They’re the people you have convince that they really didn’t see all those losses, all those homers allowed, and only 2 All-Star selections by the people who really saw him the most closely, and that they really did see the Dutchman come up biggest when it mattered the most. So he played for a lot of bad teams? So did Walter Johnson, and he won a lot anyway. So did a number of other pitchers in the Hall. Note too, while you’re at it, the number and size of the excuses you’re having to make for Blyleven that didn’t have to be made for the other Hall members.
Reality bites, don’t it?
Now close that spreadsheet and your SABR books, put those Stratomatic cards away, leave your parents’ basement, and just go watch a few games, willya? Be a fan of the game, not the numbers. You’ll enjoy life a lot more.
Funny, I’ve never played Strat-O-Matic in my life.
RTFirefly:
I’ll respond to the rest of your post later, but I just wanted to examine this statement and see if it’s true. I’ve got no idea if it is or not. Let’s see:
1970 Twins: As a nineteen-yeard-old rookie, Blyleven was pretty clearly the #3 starter behind Jim Perry and and Jim Kaat. Third on the staff in games started, wins, and innings pitched, second in ERA and strikeouts for a playoff team.
1971 Twins: Probably the #1 starter (by this, by the way, I mean the best starter–as you say, the stopper. Not necessarily the guy who pitched first in the rotation). First in complete games, shutouts, strikeouts (by a huge margin), ERA (ditto), and innings pitched; his 16 wins were second-most on the team behind Perry’s 17. The team finished 74-86.
1972 Twins: Again probably the staff’s top starter. Blyleven led the Twins in wins, games started, complete games, innings pitched, and strikeouts (his strikeout totals will pretty nearly always dwarf the next-closest guy on the team; in this case, 228-150). He was one of four starters with an ERA between 2.62 and 2.73, behind Jim Kaat’s team-leading 2.06 (hell of a staff, even for that era). A .500 team.
1973 Twins: Easily the #1 starter. Led the team by an incredible margin in every conceivable category. 40 games started (next closest: 28), 20 wins (11), 2.52 ERA (3.95), 25 complete games (7), 9 shutouts (3), 325 innings pitched (181), 258 strikeouts (109). Again a .500 team.
I can keep doing this–a quick glance shows that Blyleven was the #1 starter for the '74 and '75 Twins, the #1 or #2 for the '76 Rangers, one of the top three for the '77 Rangers (Alexander, Perry, and Blyleven were basically indistinguishable), #1 for the '78 Pirates, #1 or #2 for the '79 world champions, #2 for the '80 Pirates, #1 (maybe #2) for the '81 Indians, injured in '82, #2 or #3 for the '83 Indians, #1 for the '84 Indians, #1 for both the '85 Indians and '85 Twins, and so on.
So for Blyleven’s first fifteen healthy major-league seasons (excepting '82), he was the clear #1 starter at least eight times, and arguably another four. While your description of him–“your prototypical second or third starter”–seems to fit the bill in only two or three instances, one of which was his rookie season at nineteen years old.
Care to reconsider the comment?
RTFirefly:
Can I ask why 3000 strikeouts should not be one of the “Big Benchmarks”?
Not that I’m necessarily on one side or the other of the Blyleven debate, but I’m curious as to why these three benchmarks, and no others, are important enough to make one an automatic for the Hall. I’d think that such a massive number of strikeouts indicates a pitcher with excellent control, and one good enough at his craft to earn such longevity.
Also on the subject of benchmarks: What about a batting average or ERA benchmark, given a decent number of plate appearances or innings pitched (say, league leader-qualifying amounts for at least 15 years)?
Ah, yes, the old “If you disagree with me, you must be a stupid geek” argument. I mean, that’s really all you have to say, isn’t it? “I don’t think he’s worthy and he hasn’t been elected, so you must be a stupid nerd.” It’s a stupid argument, the sort of argument you use when you have nothing worthwhile to say, but you’ve used it before, so we should have expected it.
I guess I could cite my extensive credentials as a real, honest-to-God fan of the game who also happens to think Blyleven’s a Hall of Famer, but I’d prefer to discuss the matter with people who actually enjoy watching baseball and talking about baseball, which evidently does not include you.
cmkeller:
Personally, I’m loathe to really give credit to anyone for “benchmarks.” How does 288 wins distinguish someone from 300 in a way 300 doesn’t distinguish them from 312? Because we’re counting in base 10?
The problem with benchmarks, of course, is that any arbitrary standard will not accurately reflect the changing nature of baseball. We live in an era where it’s now quite possible that someone will hit 500 homers who really isn’t a Hall of Famer, Richie Sexson or someone like that. The benchmark for career saves is going up by the year; it used to be that 300 was a remarkable career total, but obviously it no longer is. Complete games used to be a really important statistic, but the standards for that are now so different than they used to be that comparisons are pretty much impossible.
The other problem with benchmarks is that it really doesn’t tell you much about the player’s quality. A single statistic rarely encompasses a player’s entire value. I could certainly see how a pitcher might amass 3000 strikeouts but not be a Hall of Famer. It’s even possible a player could get 3000 hits and not be a Hall of Famer. Or a player might not get any of the Big Milestones - a .297 hitter with 495 homers - and be a Hall of Famer all the way. What popular milestones did Ozzie Smith achieve?
I don’t think any one number or combination of numbers is going to make the decision; it’s the weight of all the evidence.
Gadarene - I’m using a different concept than you are here, so while I won’t reconsider the statement, I’ll just say that you’re right by your definition, and I’m right by mine.
I was using a loose definition of #1 starter. For instance, I’d say that the Braves have had two #1s for a long time - both Maddux and Glavine, most years. I’d mentally ask, which starter had the best W-L record over a reasonably substantial number of starts and innings? (Before Bill James made a dent in the debate, and for awhile afterwards, that was unquestionably the standard - fairly or not* - e.g. Lamarr Hoyt in 1983.)
If so, was it by default, rather than by producing outstanding results? (I grew up on the last 6-7 seasons of the Washington Senators. Take their 1966 season - I’d call Pete Richert ‘ace by default’ rather than a true #1.) If not, would he have been the stud pitcher if you’d gotten rid of the other guy? (Maddux/Glavine.)
I’d call him a #1 in 1973, 1975, 1984, 1986, and 1989. The rest of the time that he was best on a staff, it was the best of a mediocre lot. And I’m still not exactly blown away by some of those ‘ace’ seasons: it should take more than 15-10 and 20-17 years to get you into the HOF, IMHO.
benchmarks: I don’t know why some stats are benchmark stats, and others aren’t. But it’s out there. You ask a bunch of baseball fans whether 300 wins should make a pitcher odds-on for the HoF, and you’ll get a quick response. Ask 'em about 3000 strikeouts, and they’ll have to think about it, and reach for their stat books to see who’s done it and who hasn’t.
I am not saying a player needs to attain one of those benchmarks to enter the Hall. Plenty of everyday players are in the HoF without either 3000 hits or 500 homers, or pitchers without 300 wins, and that’s as it should be: there are plenty of other ways to establish yourself as a dominant player or pitcher.
But attaining one of these three has made players heavy favorites for the Hall, whether or not they were otherwise dominating. 300 wins was probably Don Sutton’s ticket to the HOF, for instance. But if Dave Kingman had hit HR #500, he’d still be on the outside, looking in. And the HR glut of recent years will make that one iffier than in the past.
Are these benchmarks, used in this sense, fair? I dunno. Are they arbitrary? Sure. Are they real? You betcha. I’m not defending them; I’m just acknowledging their presence.
With regard to new information since the last time this argument broke out, Bill James’ new revised historical baseball abstract list Bert Blyleven as the 39th best pitcher all time, with 339 win shares, Tommy John ranks as the 63rd best pitcher all time, and Jim Kaat as the 65th best pitcher of all time.
What a “win share” is is defined in James’ other new book which I haven’t gotten around to buying yet.
I meant to insert that attaining a benchmark makes a player a heavy favorite for the Hall, but not a lock. That was my point in bringing Kingman into the discussion, but I neglected to state it.
That said, consider the HOF members that Blyleven is compared to. Six of them have 300+ wins (Carlton, Seaver, Sutton, Phil Neikro, Gaylord Perry, Early Wynn); the other two (Roberts and Jenkins) share another striking accomplishment - six consecutive 20-win seasons. (Not that Seaver or Carlton needed 300 to get into the Hall, of course.) Ryan was mentioned in the previous thread; he not only had 300 wins and was seemingly baseball’s answer to Lazarus Long for awhile, he also had those 7 no-hitters and a barnful of strikeout records. He may not have been the best player of his time, but he had standout accomplishments.
The problem with Blyleven is, in the absence of a benchmark like 300 wins, or a passel of 20-win seasons, where are the standout accomplishments? Well, he was near the top in this or that in those years, he’d almost stood up to the Chicken of Bristol, he had a 20-win season…you get the idea.
You know what Bill James said about players with sharply defined skills, who have two or three things they can do really well, versus players who don’t do anything particularly badly, but don’t excel in anything, either? Well, Blyleven had a career of the latter sort. He was good, no doubt about it. He pitched a lot of innings and lasted for a lot of seasons. He had ERAs that were very good without being outstanding. He had only two seasons with W-L records that catch your eye. He had a lot of strikeouts over his career, but good but not an outstanding total in any one season; it took longevity for the size of the pile to be at all impressive.
But it’s the Hall of Fame, not the Hall of the Above Average. Blyleven had a career that was well above average. But it never really got to famous, and it wasn’t just because he pitched for small-market teams.
“Strikeouts are boring – besides that, they’re fascist.”
–Kevin Costner as “Crash” Davis, Bull Durham
RTFirefly:
Be that as it may, every pitcher who has that many (with the exception of Blyleven) is in the HoF.
Chaim Mattis Keller
Elvis, put me down in the camp of those who believe analytic comprehension is no hindrance to sheer enjoyment of anything, whether it’s a sunset or a slugfest.
Let’s face it, numbers are crucial to understanding baseball. Even without getting into runs created, park adjustments, range factors, and the like (great tools, all), consider this: the difference between a .270 hitter and a .240 hitter - the difference between a regular and a backup - is one extra hit every eight or ten games. You have to do a lot of watching for enjoyment before the difference between one and the other will show itself.
You need the numbers to see this difference. There are other differences that different numbers bring to light. People like Bill James and Pete Palmer have been able to come up with ways of highlighting a player’s value (or lack thereof) to his team that ‘traditional’ stats didn’t show. Knowing some of them didn’t subtract from my enjoyment of the game any more than knowing about BA and ERA did. (Knowing that the Red Sox are really in a race with the Angels this year, rather than with the Yankees, does detract, but I digress.)
Yes, you can get too geeky. You can pore over numbers and forget about the game. You can get mired in esoteric stats that really don’t affect more than one game every three seasons. You can make a HOF case for Blyleven based on an unfamiliar stat, as the ESPN.com article linked to in the OP did, without explaining why it should matter, or bringing in more familiar stats to link it to.
But I don’t see any evidence that anyone’s doing that here.
RTFirefly: Fair points all (in your first post, not your response to RickJay, which he can tackle himself), but I think determining whether a pitcher is an “ace” or a #1 starter without looking at the relative performances of other players on his team or in his league is unreasonably subjective, especially when you make statements that brand someone as “a prototypical second or third pitcher.” Personally, I think that the already-quoted stat about Blyleven’s ERA+ (or rather, ERA relative to league ERA) shows that he was almost never “the best of a mediocre lot,” or an ace by default. That, given his ERA, his strikeouts, his complete games, his shutouts, he would have been the ace of almost any team in the league almost every year of his career. How can you get more HOF than that?
I take it you support Nolan Ryan’s expulson from the Hall of Fame, then?
Sorry, that was obviously in response to a post of yours a few back; I was having trouble getting it through the server. I take your point on Ryan–though the WL records for the two are strikingly similar–and want to compliment you on your most recent post. Really, really well-said.
The thing is, that’s going to be true, in all likelihood, for most non-benchmark stats: there’ll be some cutoff where there’s some HOFers, one non-HOF player, and then another HOFer or two.
For instance, every retired player with an OB% of .425 or better is in the HOF, except Bill Joyce. Every HOF-eligible player with a slugging average of .533 or more is in, except Richie/Dick Allen. Everybody with more than 4700 total bases, except Andre Dawson (and Pete Rose, but let’s forget him). You get the idea.
Trouble with that is that for Blyleven and strikeouts, it’s not a cut-
off–it’s a gap. There are twelve pitchers with 3000+ career
strikeouts. Since Blyleven is fourth all-time, that means that there
are eight pitchers who have less strikeouts than he does and yet still
have at least 3,000. Of the twelve with 3000+, two are active–Roger
Clemens and Randy Johnson–and will almost certainly be inducted into
Cooperstown. Every other player with 3,000 strikeouts is already in
the Hall of Fame. It’s not “some HOFers, one non-HOF player, and
then another HOFer or two”; rather, it’s a HOFer or two, a non-HOFer,
and then a bunch of HOFers. If Harmon Killebrew, sixth all-time in
home runs with 573, was not in the Hall of Fame, you couldn’t
rationalize this omission by saying that “there always has to be a
cutoff,” because he’s surrounded by Hall of Famers above and below him.
No problem. I kept emailing copies of my posts to my home email, as the hamsters struggled. Amazingly enough, everything eventually found its way here.
Thanks! I owe a deep intellectual debt to Bill James that only incidentally has to do with statistics, or even baseball.
Getting back to career strikeouts, the question becomes: how important are they? In Blyleven’s case, it’s 6.7 strikeouts per 9-inning game, over one shitload of games. What difference does getting 6.7 strikeouts a game matter, as opposed to, say, 4.2 strikeouts a game? If there’s evidence that that’s worth something, then you can say that 550+ repetitions of that is worth 550 times as much, and then you’ve got something. But if the individual accomplishment has minimal value, then 550 reps still doesn’t pile up very high. Anything about this in the sabermetric annals?
[sub]I see that 6.7 SO/G puts Bert at #80 on the all-time list, and that Ryan and Koufax are the only HOFers above #40. Makes you think.
(Another one that’ll do the same is the list of hitters who’ve drawn 1400+ walks. But I’ll shut up about this now.)[/sub]
This is a pretty serious point, and deserves a serious response. I’ve got a couple of thoughts.
The job of a starter is to win games. You may be right that Blyleven’s skills might have turned into wins with other teams. (Why didn’t he wind up with more good teams once free agency arrived? Anyone know?) But his teams, as I’ve pointed out, were around .500, so he had (IMHO) a fair chance to amass wins. He didn’t. And I don’t think you can put a pitcher in the HoF on the basis of accomplishments he might’ve had with another team, or if he’d gotten better run support, or whatever.
I’ll give you a less subjective (but still somewhat so) definition of ‘ace’: if this guy has this sort of season, and he turns out to be your #1 pitcher, what are your chances? Might you contend?
The only two definite ‘yes’ seasons for Blyleven, by this standard, are 1984 and 1989. In a few others, the answer is, “Maybe, in a weak division.” The rest of the time, it’s a no. If your ace is 16-15, 17-17, or 14-12, you’re most likely playing for pride. On a contender, these are third-starter records - and they’re Blyleven, year in and year out.
Great post again. One quick question, and then I’ll try to respond in depth later tonight:
Do you believe that a pitcher can influence how many runs his own team scores? (I’m obviously excluding the role of NL pitcher as batter here) In other words, do you believe that certain pitchers have a quality that translates into consistently better run support, and other pitchers have a quality that translates into consistently poorer run support, and that this should be taken into account when considering the overall quality of the pitcher?
If not, how does a pitcher’s seventeen losses take anything away from the job he did pitching (that is, trying to prevent runs and help his team win ballgames) when his ERA is a run and a half below league average, he strikes out 250 people, and he throws nine shutouts? (Blyleven in 1973) What more could he have done?
Or to put it another way: if a fly-ball pitcher spent his entire career playing for the Rockies and finished with, say, a 5.00 ERA at home and a 1.50 ERA on the road, would you judge him to be as good as any other pitcher with a career ERA of 3.25, or would you say that he was probably better at preventing runs than another player with a career ERA of 3.25 who pitched over the same span of years and for the same amount of innings, but at Chavez Ravine or PacBell Park instead, given the relative contexts?
Bert Blyleven, by and large, didn’t lose games because he allowed too many runs (relative to other league pitchers); he lost games because his teammates scored too few. Unless some pitchers naturally get more run support than others, what does that circumstance have to do with him and his merit as a baseball player?
No, it’s not. The job of a baseball team is to win games. The job of a starter is to pitch innings and prevent runs. Team achievement vs. individual achievement.
I kinda casually dropped the Nolan Ryan argument earlier, but his seasonal records are worth repeating:
0-1
6-9
6-3
7-11
10-14
19-16
21-16
22-16
14-12
17-18
19-16
10-13
16-14
11-10
11-5
16-12
14-9
12-11
10-12
12-8
8-16
12-11
16-10
13-9
12-6
5-9
5-5
For a total of 324-292.
Whole lotta double-digit loss seasons in there, aren’t there? Now, Ryan’s overrated by a lot of people (starting the All-Century Team? Please. Give me Johnson, Grove, Mathewson, Koufax, Martinez, or Maddux), but he was a hell of a pitcher. And there isn’t a single one of those seasons that looks, from the record, like it was pitched by an ace.
Win-loss record is but a single accomplishment you can point to. I’ve given loads of others that amply demonstrate Blyleven’s ability and achievements without any what-iffing necessary.
Absolutely. If I had a pitcher who gave me a performance in ERA, strikeouts, and shutouts with good control year in and year out, I’d say my chances of contending would be damn good. Wouldn’t you? It’s just a shame that Blyleven wasn’t on any teams that contended–or, if he was, that he blew up so horrifically in the postseason while facing the top talent from around the league. 
This went on longer than I thought; I will write more later.