Damn. Part of that got swallowed. It should be:
Absolutely. If I had a pitcher who gave me a top-five 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.
I made the point about career strikeouts earlier. The next 9 players below Blyleven in career strikeouts are HOFers or 1st-ballot future HOFers. I think that pretty much speaks for itself, IMO. As for K’s per 9 IP…
K/9IP numbers are inflated currently. Just look at that alltime leaders list linked to in a post above. K/9 numbers are way up for today’s pitchers, current pitchers dominate the list. Why? I speculate that a large part of the reason is that today’s batters are constantly swinging for the fences, and no longer choke up on a 2-strike count. This makes it far more likely to turn what would have been an infield out into a strikeout, because the batter is using a more aggressive swing. 6.7 K/9, during that era, over a long career, seems very good to me. That’s within 0.1 of Seaver and Rollie Fingers, pretty good company. It’s only 0.5 below Gibson, the dominant hurler of his day. Blyleven’s career spanned the 70’s and 80’s, not exactly strikeout-laden eras.
That considered, I think Blyleven’s consistent performance in that statistic is impressive.
A qualification. I said:
“If I had a pitcher who gave me a top-five 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.” …Insofar as a single player can make you a contender, of course. (Mr. Hicks & Mr. Rodriguez, do you have something to say? Mr. Jenkins, perhaps?)
Gadarene, that was a wonderful post about the true “meaning” of wins and losses when evaluating a starting pitcher. Someday baseball fans will stop ascribing wins and losses (a team concept) to a single player who is by definition less than 50% responsible for their creation, in the same way that we’ve all come to stop claiming the Earth is flat.
But you may not be aware of just how unlucky Bert Blyleven was throughout his career. A few years ago Michael Wolverton from the Baseball Prospectus wrote a great article on the subject, and a related concept called Support-Neutral Wins. You can find the article here. An excerpt:
In that article, Wolverton has computed that Bert Blyleven is the 7th unluckiest starting pitcher of all time in terms of not getting run support from his teammates while pitching. With even league-average run support, he would have had a record of 312-225, and been a shoe-in for the Hall.
While I’m rambling about one of my favorite subjects (baseball in general, not support-neutral wins), I have to say this to any readers of this thread who ascribe to the way of thinking that ElvisL1ves seems to espouse: when you have a great passion for something, doesn’t it make sense to want to be as educated as possible about that thing? My desire to study of the stats of baseball was derived from my love of the game of baseball. The more I watched, the more I went to games and cheered my teams (Phillies and Red Sox), the more I wanted to know about the game. And the more I read, the more I realized that many of the conventional-wisdom-style “facts” that I heard on game broadcasts just weren’t true when analyzed using the stats. Does it make one less of a true fan to realize the inadequacies of Batting Average as a metric of how much a hitter contributes to his team scoring runs? (And as a result start looking at OPS instead.) Or to learn about park effects? Or Range Factors? How does it make one less of a fan to know more about the game? It’s a baffling attitude. Perhaps there are people in the world who have forgotten that no amount of stat-geekiness is as cool and fun as sitting in the Fenway bleachers screaming with everyone else when Nomar launches one into the net above the Monster. But from what I’ve read, none of those people are here participating in this debate.
Oh, and speaking of which, yes, I absolutely believe that Bert Blyleven should be in the Hall of Fame. He’s the best eligible pitcher not currently in, and he’s more worthy that many enshrined there already.
RTFirefly, from my many months of lurking on these boards, you’re one of my absolute favorite posters here. But I gotta disagree with you on this one.
thanks for listening,
-Parthol
Thanks again, and may I say that you’re holding up your end of the debate irritatingly well? 
No, I don’t believe that a pitcher can influence the level of his run support.
I think we have a philosophical difference about what we do with the info that a pitcher is pitching really well, but just not getting any runs from his teammates.
If I’m a MLB GM, and the pitcher’s still got some years left in his arm, I’m going to hope his lack of wins keeps his price tag down, the next time he goes free agent, so I can land him at a good price.
And if I’m a fan, I’ll take note of the fact that this guy’s better than he seems, so I won’t be surprised if he suddenly has a big year when his team scores some runs for him.
But if I’m a HOF voter, I’m going to say, “He deserved to have a more stellar career, and it wasn’t his fault that he didn’t have the sort of knockout accomplishments that get you into the Hall, but he still didn’t get them. This is the Hall of Fame, and his lack of keystone accomplishments kept him from being particularly famous, and fame isn’t always fair.”
Like I said, it comes down to a philosophical difference. You see the strikeouts, the innings, and the ERA as HOF-worthy by themselves. I don’t.
Yes and no. It is the job of a baseball team to win games. But pitchers are the only guys with W-L records on their baseball cards, and while we’ve come to a consensus that they’re of limited value in informing us about relievers, we still care about them in the case of starters.
Nolan Ryan, redux: once again, he’s not in the Hall because of his W/L %. He’s in there because of the 7 no-hitters, the single-season strikeout record, the, what, six seasons with more than 300 strikeouts, having cleared 300 wins by a healthy margin, and so forth. He’s certainly one of the worst pitchers in the HoF. (I won’t say the worst, because I’d like to kick Jim Bunning out first.) But he had a particular set of spectacular achievements that made him inarguably famous.
Other than the ERA, though, Blyleven’s achievements are lowercase versions of Ryan’s. Ryan’s 5700+ career strikeouts are a mile beyond anyone else. Blyleven’s 3700+ are nice, but largely a function of his longevity. Ryan had a 300-strikeout season at the age of 42, and won 71 games in his 40s. He was Mr. Astounding Longevity; Blyleven had a long career that fizzled out a bit earlier.
If you take five years off Ryan’s career, take away the no-hitters, and knock 75-100 strikeouts off of every season, you don’t have a HoF career. What you’ve got is something a lot like Blyleven’s.
That Blyleven’s demonstrated ability was greater than a bunch of HoFers, I’m not contesting. But ultimately, I’m not willing to support a player into the Hall primarily on the basis of stat-geek insight, even though I’m one of them. This is a bit different from a guy being less than well-known due to having played his career in Seattle and Houston, but once you point it out, the average fan can see that this was a HOF career. Maybe we’ll get to a point where ERA, by itself, will get you in. I think if he’d led the league in ERA in five seasons, there’d be a case - that would have provided the eye-popping factor required.
But what we have here, IMHO, is, if he’d played in different parks, and gotten better run support, he’d have numbers that any fan could see are HOF numbers. But he didn’t, and life just sucks sometimes.
I would say if he was clearly better than numerous HOFers in most of the stats that count (e.g. ERA et al) than he has to go in. If he’s better in some, worse in others, overall seems about the same, than a compelling case cannot be made that he has to go in - he might just fall on the wrong side of the cutoff. OTOH, if he does get in, a compelling case can’t be made that he belongs out, either. IOW, a borderline case - could go either way. There will always be some of those.
As long as we’re on the subject of unlucky pitchers, Jim Bunning was awfully unlucky. There are way, way worse pitchers in the Hall of Fame, guys like Jesse Haines and Catfish Hunter.
The problem is, we all know there’s a bunch of people in the Hall who shouldn’t be there. I’d disagree about Catfish, but I’ll see your Jesse Haines and raise you a Fred Lindstrom.
My feeling about Jim Bunning is that he’s been more than lucky enough. He parlayed his pitching career into a political career, which I’ll not comment on, and I certainly have the sneaking suspicion that his recent ascension into the HoF wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t become a Somebody in another line of work.
Hey, thanks for the compliment. And as far as disagreeing goes, this is one of those issues where it really comes down to your assumptions. I think Gadarene has made an excellent case from those assumptions, but I can’t buy into it for the reasons I’ve already given.
Looking at Blyleven’s record yet again, he has one career achievement of genuine note that hasn’t gotten much play here, and that’s his 60 complete-game shutouts. He’s ninth on the list, and the top 20 (everybody with 50+) are all in the Hall, except him. What’s more, the top 5 all pitched in the pre-Ruth dead-ball era; excluding them, Warren Spahn tops the list with 63, with Ryan and Seaver next with 61. If I were making the case for Blyleven, this is where I’d start.
RTFirefly:
Fair 'nough. 
Your argument has been well-reasoned and articulate and I think you’re right: it just comes down to our personal definition of the Hall of Fame and how heavily one should rely on context when determining the worthiness of a candidate. That is, how do you strike a balance between Cooperstown being solely a Hall of Fame and it being (as much as it can) a Hall of Merit as well. (Because “merit” must be judged and weighed, and is in its own way even harder to put one’s finger on than fame.)
I may respond further to your post after work, since I’m really enjoying this thread, but I think we’ve reached a point of cooperative equilibrium (apologies to John Nash). Thanks for the back ‘n’ forth, Rufe.
Parthol: Fantastic first post. I hope you post much more often.
I like the idea of a Hall of Merit. But while I think induction into the Hall of Fame should be restricted to meritorious players, fame should be a component as long as it’s part of the name.
It’s been fun, but yep, I think we’re there. Got any other good topics for a baseball argument?
Boy, do I. If I were to argue that Alan Trammell was a better player than Ozzie Smith and is as much if not more deserving of Hall of Fame induction, what position would you take?
Hmmmm…count one person here with “MO” after his city location who would have to disagree. But that’s really a discussion for another thread. If we’ve really said all we had on Blyleven (and thanks to RTFirefly for the stat on CGSOs), we ought to explore other baseball issues on a regular basis. Now that I know there are some intelligent baseball fans here, I feel much more at home here on this board…not that I was exacly timid before
And I was intrigued to find this was GD material. I really didn’t know where sports debates like this would go. They can get more in depth and serious than IMHO threads, but it’s not exactly “how do we end communism in China?” Of course, baseball has far more impact on my life than communist China, so perhaps GD is the place for it.
Agreed. Look for me to start that Trammell thread when I’ve got some time–and anyone else who wants to throw out a good baseball topic for debate should obviously do so! There’ve been some decent ones here before–my favorite being the Barry Bonds thread from a year ago. You’ll enjoy reading through that one, RexDart.
Glad to hear it! You’ve been a welcome addition to this board so far…and not just because you agreed with me about Blyleven.
Thanks for a great debate, everyone.
I don’t mean to prolong this debate further, since it seems the main protagonists have decided the matter closed. But I came into the discussion late, and wanted to respond just once more to one of the last opinions offered by RTFirefly.
In response to this:
…I’d say this: Decades ago, someone decided arbitrarily that W-L records could be used to measure a pitcher’s worth. Because no one thought to really question their value, others started listing them on baseball cards, and in newspapers, and so on up until Joe Morgan on ESPN last week. It’s been a snowball effect, but at the center of the snowball is a canard. (mixed metaphor alert!) We only “care” about W-L because that’s what people cared about 10 years ago, and they only cared because that’s what people said was important 10 years before that. Given enough evidence, people as a whole come to realize that the earth is really round, and that photons don’t behave exactly like particles, and that W-L is a lousy way to measure pitchers.
Well, yeah, I guess it does. But sometimes life sucks because it just has to be that way, and other times it sucks because we make it so. It’s that second kind that puts me in a snit.
Sorry to have beaten the dead horse. When I next get some free time, I’ll start doing some research on Alan Trammell and Ozzie Smith.
Oh, and thanks for the kind welcome, Gadarene. I’d like to post more, especially on baseball-related topics, though I barely have enough time to browse the SMDB, let alone post.
-Parthol
I don’t know what position I’d take on Ozzie v. Trammell, even having looked at their stats. First of all, I’d have to ask a bunch of questions to dispel some of my own ignorance, and then I might know enough to contribute an opinion.
I think sports debates in general fit better in IMHO, based on the forum descriptions (GD = “For long-running discussions of the great questions of our time” and IMHO = “For frank exchanges of views on less-than-cosmic topics”) and the actual content of those fora. But the mods don’t always move every thread that might should be moved, and I think that’s what happened with this thread.
RexDart - thank Baseball-Reference.com for the CGSO stat. Before this debate, I wasn’t really familiar with the site, but I am now. It’s amazingly, astoundingly good: it’s got everything a baseball stats site should have, and all linked together the way you’d hope. (It’s apparently done as a labor of love, but they do solicit contributions to keep the site maintained, and I’m planning on sending them a donation.)
In each player’s record, in addition to all the batting/pitching/fielding stats, it’s got all the instances of when (annually and careerwise) a player was in the top 10 in various statistical categories, and in awards voting. One of the categories was shutouts. One click from there, and you’re looking at the all-time leader list.
I could get lost in that site for days, and they’d have to send search parties out to find me again.
Parthol - welcome to this place! I hadn’t noticed that your previous post was your first on the SDMB until Gadarene pointed it out.
I agree wholeheartedly. But I also think you can wind up doing more harm than good if you fix things faster than people can be educated and adapt to a better understanding.
We’re making progress. Baseball commentators talk about run support now; they didn’t twenty years ago. And as a result, the fans understand that W-L records aren’t the be-all and end-all of how you rate starting pitchers, and we aren’t likely to give a Cy anymore to someone with a spectacular W-L record but a less-than-impressive ERA, the way we did with Lamarr Hoyt in 1983 or Steve Stone in 1980.
But OTOH, fans are a long way yet from being able to cut loose of W-L records as a major part of their understanding of the effectiveness of a starter. Can we educate the fans? Sure, over time, but it will take time. Can HOF selections help educate the fans? I think so, if they’re within the limits of what fans are capable of grasping. (Ozzie’s a good example - he got into the Hall on his glove, despite genuinely mediocre batting stats. We’re working toward a day when a player’s fielding value will be part of fans’ understanding of the worth of everyday players. Maybe we’ll even see a day when catchers and middle infielders have almost as good a shot at the Hall as first basemen and leftfielders.)
Right now, though, I think the logic for Bert Blyleven in the Hall is far too much of a stretch for most fans. And if somehow a sabermetric elite managed to get him in there, it would be analogous to the (occasionally true) caricature of liberal reformers pushing reforms through that most people don’t want or even understand.
Then I must not have been clear enough. I agree with you - stats can help illuminate what’s happening in the game, and I enjoy checking on them, too. My complaint is with those who get so deeply absorbed in numbers that they actually lose sight of the game, as I fear at least one poster in this thread (along with most of SABR) has done. They’re the folks who think that, just because something can be quantified, it’s significant, and, sadly, that anything that can’t be quantified cannot be significant - or at least they don’t know enough to care.
Baseball is especially prone to that, unlike more-flowing sports like soccer, or more plainly team-effort-based sports like football, precisely because it has so many aspects that numbers can be generated for. But that is a serious trap to fall into.
The disease is inherent, just to illustrate, in the stats of batting average or pitchers’ won-loss records - those numbers exist because they’re easy to get, not necessarily because they’re significant.
Just to illustrate the stat-geek issue further, using only a single topic, it’s been said here that a pitcher cannot influence the number of runs his team scores. To a stat geek, maybe that’s obvious. But to a fan, it’s clear that the greatest performers have an ability to inspire their teammates to perform at a higher level themselves - if you still are stuck with stats, compare Scotty Pippen with and without Michael Jordan alongside him, for instance, or the 1972 Phillies with and without Steve Carlton, or the Yankees with and without Roger Clemens last year, or Ferrari before and after Michael Schumacher. The reverse can be true, too - if a team has a superstar performer, it can be easy for his teammates to depend too much on him and to slack off a little. But I would suggest that such an ability to inspire teammates is a hallmark of greatness, and a major Hall of Fame qualification in any sport. Maybe Bill James can geek up an index that adequately describes it, probably not - but an actual fan knows it anway, and a stat geek does not. Anyway, yes, a pitcher can affect the number of runs his team scores - and that’s just one topic.
Darn right. Gotta be a fan of the game, not of the stats - or you’re going to embarrass yourself with geekery like claiming that good-but-not-great players really were great, despite what the fans and players actually saw. Maybe watching a good soccer game would help these poor sods.
RTFirefly, well said, every time. You clearly have your priorities straight.
And your argument that he belongs in the same Hall as them goes poof right there. A truly great player can do a lot to make his team a contender, and does not blow up when it counts the most, either. Now be sure to watch the next Red Sox game that Pedro Martinez pitches - maybe you’ll notice something.
Remind me to get you a sarcasm detector for Christmas, Elvis. I noted Blyleven’s extensive postseason experience and stellar performance while there in the OP. Blowing up when it counted? Hardly.
And of course, if we’re axing candidates based on postseason performance, I guess we’d better drop Ted Williams from the Hall… Geez. No Barry Bonds either. This time last year, that logic would have said no Randy Johnson. All of a sudden, a year later, he’s a decent postseason pitcher after all.
Look, the postseason is important, far more important than the regular season, and we all know that. But there’s this little thing called “small sample size,” which is a concept with which all y’all who feel that judging a player on postseason performance alone may wish to become familiar.