Wow - Wills never broke 20 doubles in a season once. No wonder he had so many steals.
Edit:
Runs:
Raines - 1571; Wills - 1067
Blyleven never won a Cy Young, and was only even chosen a frackin’ All-Star (even in years when he was on bad teams that still needed a token representative) twice (how many Hall members match that?). IOW, he was never considered a dominant performer during his career, as a Hall member must. He lost an impressive 250 games, too, with some eye-popping home run totals. Bigtime Moments: Um, well, not as such. Sportsmanship: Not bad, but there were incidents.
See, you can make a case the other way, too. Almost 40% of the HOF electorate still seems to agree, remarkably, or perhaps that’s the “If you have to think about it, the answer’s No” approach. Frequent team changes probably hurt his image, sure, but that’s because you have to wonder why that was - were all of his managers GM’s simply ignorant of his Hallness too?
Raines and Dawson both ruined their knees playing in Montreal, and that kept them from having the HOF careers they might have had. Damn shame, but it happened.
Why should we be shackled to what a bunch of (now) old sportswriters thought of Bert? He was also notorious for being better in the 2nd half of the season (34 points of ERA better), which means the barn door’s already closed WRT the AS game. Future generations have an obligation to right past wrongs, including honoring a player who was criminally underrated in his own time.
And the wins are a red herring. It’s been documented that his teams didn’t score as many runs for him as they did overall-he can’t win if they don’t score any runs. With more typical run support he likely would have cleared 300 wins easily (scroll down towards the bottom). Another angle on Bert’s worthiness-which also includes a discussion on Morris too.
That’s a ridiculous standard-plenty of Hall members have been traded, typically for sound reasons unrelated to their ability.
As for Raines, it is a bit unfair to apply the standards of 'Roid Era Ball to that of the Astroturf Era-I doubt Ryan Braun, to name one, would be able to survive playing LF in a turf park (much less Adam Dunn-and yes I know about Greg Luzinski).
For what it’s worth, here are my picks:
Roberto Alomar - Were it not for the spitting incident, his productivity ending suddenly, and for the fact he became a clubhouse cancer, he’d be an almost automatic first balot selection. Unfortunately, those negatives are what most people remember him by (especially the spitting incident) and that may keep him out for a few years.
**Bert Blyleven **- My opinion on whether he belongs in the HOF has gone back-and-forth. While he was playing, he was rarely mentioned among the other top pitchers of his era (e.g., Seaver, Ryan, Palmer, Carlton, etc.). However, his lifetime stats now look bigger in the rear-view mirror. Let him in.
Andre Dawson
Barry Larkin
Edgar Martinez - As someone who spent the vast majority of his career as a DH, his selection would be without precedent. The closest I can think of is Paul Molitor who, due to injuries, ended up spending about half his career as a DH. I’d vote for him but I’m a Mariner fan so I’m biased.
Alan Trammell - Ranked among the top shortstops in baseball but his productivity ended a bit suddenly. Still, there has to be somebody from the 1984 Detroit Tigers in the Hall. Why not Trammell?
Mixed feelings: Fred McGriff, Mark McGwire, Jack Morris, Dale Murphy, Tim Raines, and Lee Smith - I think Morris would be in were it not for his high ERA (3.90).
Nolan Ryan lost 292 games; Blyleven is further over .500 and has a better winning percentage. They won the same number of Cy Young Awards and for all the homers Blyleven gave up, Ryan was walking more people than an eager Boy Scout on a corner full of old ladies.
I don’t see many people arguing that Nolan Ryan shouldn’t be in the Hall of Fame, and Blyleven was just as good.
Maybe you never saw Blyleven pitch and saw that curveball. Us real baseball fans who watched him pitch could tell how great he was. Your obsession with numbers is blinding you to the truth.
Watching Alomar and Vizquel man the middle infield for the Indians was an absolute joy. Those guys would routinely turn double plays without even using their gloves. I say Alomar deserves to get in.
I know that I’m a biased source, so I’ll just admit it up front.
BUT: I believe I would say this about anyone. “How can you punish someone for doing something that was not against the rules or the law? That’s why we have rules and law. If we’re supposed to guess at what will be politically incorrect in the future, we’re on a very fine line. He didn’t own slaves or rape servants. He used a hormone precursor that was legal and available to everyone.”
I wish McGwire had gone to Congress with something more like that argument rather than just dodging. It made him look like Alberto Gonzales.
Strikeouts and no-hitters are remembered, too, and for good reason. Add those to the list.
I strongly doubt Blyleven himself would make that claim.
Oh, I did see him. And so did most of the Hall voters who aren’t convinced (and have seen a hell of a lot more baseball than either of us), and so did the All-Star managers who only twice thought he was even of that caliber. Maybe you should go tell *them *they didn’t really see what they saw, okay?
Please. :rolleyes:
If they ever rename the place the Hall of VORP, there might be a good argument for Blyleven.
Blyleven certainly does well on strikeouts.
As for no hitters, since when was pitching no-hitters considered in Hall of Fame voting? Seriously, name one pitcher in the Hall of Fame for whom no hitters are a tipping point, or show me a pitcher who’s been left out for not having thrown any. Steve Carlton never pitched a no hitter; neither did Tom Seaver, IIRC. You never heard anyone say “Dunno about this Seaver guy, he never pitched a no hitter.” On the other hand nobody’s calling for Dave Stieb or Mike Witt to be in the Hall because they tossed a no-hitter.
Blyleven was a great pitcher. Anyone can see that. So he’d get my vote, and that’s that.
As to the Roberto Alomar thing, I’m still amazed people aren’t saying “Well, obviously, Alomar goes in.” Holy shit, does nobody remember how good he was? He had on ugly incident with John Hirschbeck - who of course started the incident by using racial slurs, and has long since forgiven Alomar. That one thing should keep him out? Juan Marichal hit a guy in the head with a bat. Babe Ruth was involved in any number of ugly incidents. Ty Cobb was a psycho. Paul Molitor was a coke fiend. If Alomar had a long history of being a terrible player to have on your team that’d be one thing, but he doesn’t.
Of course there’s the “not on the first ballot” thing, which is stupid. Alomar either is a Hall of Famer or he is not; the plaque doesn’t tell you what ballot they were voted in on.
Meh - I agree with it. No one wants to see 7 players go in in a year, only to have a dearth of candidates somewhere down the line. Controlling the influx is good for the sport. Plus, it allows arguments for particular players to be built over the years. Voters are incredibly dumb, and need an incredible amount of hand-holding. If you vote in McGwire, Alomar, and Martinez, then Blyleven starts to lose ground again because no one wants to vote for someone that’s been on the ballot for X years when the new guys get voted in before him. Yes, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, but it works (mostly).
On Blyleven: One thing people don’t remark on very much is that he had two shots at the postseason as a starter (not counting when he was a 19-year-old relief pitcher); both times, he won the World Series; he has a 5-1 postseason record with a 2.47 ERA.
Alomar should be in as well; one of the greatest second basemen of his era, with a better peak than Biggio even if he didn’t have the longevity, and a fantastic postseason player.
I’d vote in Larkin as well, for the World Series and the year-in, year-out outstanding play.
I’d also vote in McGwire.
RickJay:
Tom Seaver pitched a no-hitter on June 16, 1978.
But it wasn’t as a Met, so it doesn’t count. 
And Blyleven’s two World Series wins came neither with nor against a New York team, so I suppose those don’t really count, either.
“Better than Ryan”? :dubious:
Hello? Ryan.
And with good reason. 
Nevertheless, there is a fine display there devoted to all the no-hitters ever thrown in the majors. You will, in fact, find those names there, along with the many other (non-Mets) who had a very good day once. Ever been there? I recommend it.
He was a very, very good one, like many others who fall just a little short.
Can anybody name a Hall member who was named to fewer All-Star teams?
No, not on balance, but it’s reasonable grounds to slow him down a little. It really shouldn’t be necessary, but here, for review, are the criteria the voters are required to use:
You won’t see it on display if you ever make it to Cooperstown, but there’s certainly many “stupid” fans who persist in recognizing an inner circle of members, whether or not that’s the same as the list of first-ballot inductees. There have been threads about that very thing right here, IIRC (weren’t you yourself the OP on the “Best 3 Players of All Time” thread?). Or maybe you really do think Dazzy Vance was as good as Cy Young?
Whoosh.
Meta-whoosh.
Trammel to Whitaker was a thing of beauty. I want Trammel in.
Write a poem about them. It worked for Tinker and Evers.
Again (since you ignored my reply on this point):
BB, pre-ASG: 150-140, 3.44
BB, post-ASG: 137-110, 3.10
That’s why they “ignored” him for the ASG. No other reason.
Are you thus against any such evidence then that advanced metrics can provide us? Why? Now, I have my quibbles with VORP (Blyleven does come in 13th all-time among pitchers according to one such list), but here you’re just being disingenious at best.
Fine, you want an item-by-item comparison of these two? Here we go, Ryan 1st, Blyleven 2nd:
Innings: 5386, 4970
Win %: .526, .534
ERA+: 111, 118
K’s: 5714, 3701
BB’s: 2795, 1322
HR’s: 321, 430
CG’s: 222, 242
SHO’s: 61, 60
Ryan has about 1 1/2 extra seasons on Blyleven. Winning percentage almost identical, Ryan has the K’s, but Blyleven was no slouch there. Blyleven has 100 more homers allowed (part of that I suspect is park effects). Bert has a huge edge in walks, which is the main reason why his ERA+ is better. An interesting study awaits someone who tries to find out why Bert had a lower % of decisions despite a higher % of CGs and innings/start, but that too probably isn’t any fault of his. And the Shutouts include the no-no’s: certainly your entire case doesn’t rest on them? Putting it all together, Ryan’s extra innings decisions just about counterbalances Blyleven’s higher ERA+, so they look pretty even to me.
Surely you’re aware of the number of people who get picked based mainly on lifetime achievement, or on being the only top player on a bad team.
Look up the “excluded middle fallacy” sometime. Preferably right after reviewing the official standards for voting, which are what they are and not what anybody might prefer them to be instead.
Do the actual standards mean anything to you at all? (and it’s “disingenuous”, btw).
I did list the major negatives against Blyleven already. Feel free to continue ignoring them if you like.