The Baseball HOF Class of 2009 thread

NDP · December 2, 2008, 1:09am

The 2009 candidates for the Baseball Hall of Fame were announced today. The final selections will be announced on January 12, 2009. Rickey Henderson is considered a near mortal lock to get in.

Is there anybody else who should be selected? Let’s discuss.

What_Exit · December 2, 2008, 1:19am

First impressions

• Harold Baines - NO
• Jay Bell - Hell No
• Bert Blyleven - No
• David Cone - No
• Andre Dawson - No
• Ron Gant - Hell No
• Mark Grace - Hell No
• Rickey Henderson - YES!
• Tommy John - Yes, it is time
• Don Mattingly - No
• Mark McGwire - No (Cheaters exemption, must wait!)
• Jack Morris - No
• Dale Murphy - No
• Jesse Orosco - Hell No
• Dave Parker - No
• Dan Plesac - Hell No
• Tim Raines - No (But I would not be upset if he made it)
• Jim Rice - No (But I would not be upset if he made it)
• Lee Smith - No
• Alan Trammell - No
• Greg Vaughn - Hell No
• Mo Vaughn - No
• Matt Williams - Hell No

Rickey Henderson should near 100% votes I hope.
Tommy John should be in for body of work and being the pioneer of baseballs most famous surgery.

Cubsfan · December 2, 2008, 1:20am

How do you say no to Don Mattingly? Do you mean no ever or just no this year?

Justin_Bailey · December 2, 2008, 1:28am

Not only is Rickey a mortal lock, but I await the verbal gymnastics that the writers who don’t vote for him will spew. Should be good for pinpointing the current jackasses on in the BBWA.

As for the rest of the list, I honestly don’t think anybody else gets in this year. However, McGwire will surely get in in the future and I would love it if Donnie Baseball gets his due for being the “baseball card hero” to a whole generation of kids.

What_Exit · December 2, 2008, 1:29am

Die hard Yankee fan here and I know Donnie Baseball falls short of the standards of the Hall. He is as good as a few other undeserving Hall of Famers* but he really does not qualify.

Kirby Puckett comes to mind.

Frank · December 2, 2008, 1:33am

Henderson and Raines.

Jimmy_Chitwood · December 2, 2008, 1:33am

Bert Blyleven. There’s no reason he shouldn’t be in.

I mean, I know the reasons he isn’t in, and I find them dumb. So I prefer to feign ignorance about them, and say, hey! Blyleven! as though we’re all considering it for the first time, because I’m an optimist.

Blyleven!

pseudotriton_ruber_ruber · December 2, 2008, 1:36am

Blyleven, Henderson, Raines, si!

McGwire, over my dead body. And you could just as well argue that Canseco, Clemens, Bonds et al belong in because they donated their bodies to medical science as you could argue that John deserves election because he pioneered a new type of surgery. I’d rather elect the doctor who performed the surgery, and the pusher who sold the steroids.

What_Exit · December 2, 2008, 1:38am

He is seriously overated by the handful that think he is worthy. Before he goes is worthier pitchers like Jim Kaat should be in. He was never anything special and Tommy John was.

What_Exit · December 2, 2008, 1:39am

How can you pick Blyleven over John? John was better in peaks and had better lifetime numbers.

Jimmy_Chitwood · December 2, 2008, 1:50am

I mean, OK. I believe that none of that is true, and some or all of it is very silly. How would you like me to persuade you?

What_Exit · December 2, 2008, 1:56am

Present your case for him. Tell me how he is more deserving than John to start.

kevja · December 2, 2008, 1:57am

• Harold Baines - No
• Jay Bell - No
• Bert Blyleven - Yes
• David Cone - No
• Andre Dawson - No
• Ron Gant - No
• Mark Grace - No
• Rickey Henderson - Yes
• Tommy John - No
• Don Mattingly - No
• Mark McGwire - No
• Jack Morris - Yes
• Dale Murphy - No
• Jesse Orosco - No
• Dave Parker - No
• Dan Plesac - No
• Tim Raines - Maybe next year
• Jim Rice - Yes
• Lee Smith - No
• Alan Trammell - No
• Greg Vaughn - No
• Mo Vaughn - No
• Matt Williams - No

gonzomax · December 2, 2008, 2:17am

In a way baseball owes a debt to McGwire. When he said he was using andro it was legal and practically unknown. I had him pegged as a steroid user,but andro was not against the rules. He brought it to the front . Baseball was happy to cover up use.
His performance in front of congress is my problem. He refused to do the right thing. His career however has hall of fame numbers. His home run fights with Sosa helped save the game. I suppose he deserves better treatment.
I thought Morris dominated for a long time. He has the numbers for me.
Henderson was an arrogant jerk. He deserves to be in the hall though.

Jimmy_Chitwood · December 2, 2008, 2:23am

Ah, missed this.

PEAKS:

John’s 5 highest ERA+ full seasons:
161
138
137
135
121

Blyleven’s:
158
151
144
142
140

Highest strikeout seasons: John 138, 138, 131 (never in top 10); Blyleven 258, 249, 233 (13 seasons in top 5).

Best 3 overall seasons arbitrarily selected by me:

John:
1968: 10-5 25 games 5 CG 1 Shutout 177.3 Inn. 49 BB/117 K 1.98 ERA 161 ERA+ 1.038 WHIP
1977: 20-7 31 G 11 CG 3 SO 220.3 50/123 2.78 138 1.248
1979: 21-9 37 g 17 CG 3 SO 276.3 65/111 2.96 137 1.205

Blyleven:
1973: 20-17 40 G 25 CG 9 SO 325.0 67/ 258 2.52 158 1.117
1974: 17-17 37 G 19 CG 3 SO 281.0 77/249 2.66 142 1.142
1977: 14-12 30 G 15 CG 5 SO 234.7 69/182 2.72 151 1.065

Also note that Blyleven continued to be at that peak for pretty much that entire period.

LIFETIME NUMBERS

Career ERA: John 3.34, Blyleven 3.31
Career ERA+: John 110, Blyleven 118
Career Innings: John 4710, Blyleven 4970
Career K: John 2245, Blyleven 3701
Career BB: John 1259, Blyleven 1322
Career Wins: John 288, Blyleven 287
Career CG: John 162, Blyleven 242
Career Shutouts: John 46, Blyleven 60
Career WHIP: John 1.283, Blyleven 1.198

I think the comparison speaks for itself without my even emphasizing certain numbers or putting them in a favorable order or anything at all.

Lamar_Mundane · December 2, 2008, 2:32am

Ricky will sail in.

This is the last shot for Jim Rice and Tommy John in their likely lifetimes. They have been on the ballot for 15 years and that’s all the chances you get until the Veterans Committee looks at your record years later. After getting some well deserved criticism for some of their selections, some rules were changed and the VC hasn’t approved a player in their last three chances (every two years).

I think that voters will take this into account, look at the thin group of candidates and put Rice in since he was so close last year. I don’t think Tommy John will get the same result.

pseudotriton_ruber_ruber · December 2, 2008, 2:36am

John played on better teams, got more run support, had better luck than Blyleven but he wasn’t a better pitcher. I’d love to link you to Bill James Online, but it’s a subscription-only site (well worth the 3 bucks per month, tho!) so I’ll try to excerpt judiciously from his intro and his conclusion and omit the supporting stats (which are the best part of course):

…

from James' INTRO:

The Bert Blyleven problem, simply stated, is that Blyleven’s won-lost record does not jibe with his innings pitched and ERA. Blyleven pitched just short of 5,000 innings in his career, with a 3.31 ERA. Other pitchers with comparable combinations won 300 games, 310, 320. Blyleven didn’t.

This shortfall is well known, and Bert Blyleven has been left out of the Hall of Fame because of it. Life isn’t always fair. Other pitchers with 280 wins, and some with 220 wins, and some with less, have made the Hall of Fame—and with the same ERA. Alright; life’s a bitch.

Bert Blyleven is an intriguing figure because he is the most conspicuous victim of what most of us regard as a malicious fiction. You ask any baseball writer from Blyleven’s era why Bert hasn’t been bronzed, and the guy will tell you “He wasn’t a winner. His team scored 3 runs, he gave up 4. They scored 1, he gave up 2. He had good numbers, but he didn’t win the tough games.”

Most of us don’t believe that this ability to win the close games really exists, and many of us kind of resent Blyleven being discriminated against because he fails a bullshit test. Still, in theory, Bert’s detractors could be on to something. Suppose that you have two pitchers. One, whom we will call Ferguson Winner, loses a game 6-0, but wins six others 1-0, 2-1, 3-2, 4-3, 5-4 and 6-5. The other, whom we will call Bert Loser, wins a game 6-0, but loses six others by the same scores (1-0, 2-1, etc.)

The run support for both pitchers is exactly the same: 21 runs in 7 games. Their runs allowed are exactly the same: 21 runs in 7 games. But Ferguson has gone 6-1 and Bert has gone 1-6, because Ferguson has matched his effort to the runs he has to work with. My point is, there could be something there that isn’t measured by run support and isn’t measured by runs allowed. We’ll call it the ability to match.

If Blyleven in fact had an inability to match the effort needed, it must be possible to document this by examining his career log game-by-game alongside that of comparable pitchers. Beyond that, it must possible to place a value on it, or to measure the cost of it. The Sabermetric Encyclopedia estimates that Blyleven was 344 runs better than an average pitcher over the course of his career. How many of those 344 runs should be offset because of this inability to match the effort needed?

As a rule of thumb, a pitcher can be expected to be about one game over .500 for each three to five runs that he saves. Luis Tiant was 57 games over .500 (229-172) and saved 172 runs. Carl Hubbell saved 355 runs—about the same number as Blyleven—and was 99 games over .500 (253-154). Roger Clemens through 2006 has saved 727 runs and is 170 games over .500. Pedro Martinez through 2004 has saved 506 runs and is 114 games over .500. Bret Saberhagen saved 241 runs and was 50 games over .500. These are normal ratios.

Blyleven, however, saved 344 runs but was only 37 games over .500. Among the 25 other pitchers in major league history who were at least 300 runs better than league in ERA, most (15 of the 25) were more than 100 games over .500, and all were at least 44 games over .500. Phil Niekro was only 44 games over, but the reasons for that are fairly obvious; Niekro pitched most of his career for bad teams, and also allowed more than 300 un-earned runs, many of them because of Passed Knuckleballs. Blyleven did neither of those things. He pitched for as many good teams as bad teams, and he allowed less than 200 un-earned runs.

If Blyleven were one game over .500 for each four runs saved, he would have finished with about 311 career wins (311-226). The Sabermetric Encyclopedia credits Blyleven with 313 “Neutral Wins” (313-224). He’s actually 287-250.

Blyleven’s won-lost record is about 196 runs worse than his ERA. He is 37 games over .500; that’s equivalent to 148 runs. He should be 344 runs better than average. That’s a 196-run discrepancy. These odd ratios create a prima facie case that Blyleven was guilty of the failure to match the effort needed. I’m skeptical, but. . .we’ll never know unless we how to look.

James then proceeds to look, in nine densely documented sections, each studying an area like bullpen support, performance in one-run games, offensive support, etc, and each of which is longer than the excerpt from the Intro I just quoted, at the conclusion of which he gives the following illustration from a typical Blyleven month to show Blyleven’s problem over the course of his career:

from James' Conclusion:

   Suppose that Blyleven has a seven-game stretch during which he wins games 13-0 and 5-2, but then loses 3-2, 4-3, 3-2, 7-4 and 3-2. Those are the actual scores of Blyleven’s games from May 3 to June 4, 1977. Blyleven was supported by 4.43 runs per game during that stretch and allowed 3.14, but he lost five of the seven games. 
One can look at that and say that Blyleven failed to match his efforts to the runs he had to work with—but why is that all Blyleven’s fault? Isn’t it equally true that his offense failed to match their efforts to Bert’s better games? It seems to me that it is.

So why do we hold Blyleven wholly responsible for this? Wouldn’t it be equally logical, at least, to say that this was half Blyleven’s fault, and half his team’s fault?

James’ case comes down to this: Blyleven pitched as well or better than the guys who won over 300 games, but he didn’t happen to accumulate that magic number, so people (who tend to focus on the W-L record to the exclusion of ten chapters of dense statistics) conclude he wrongly that he wasn’t quite as good a pitcher–the problem being, he was.

Besides which, he’s got the best Chris Berman name: “Be Home” Blyleven.

Justin_Bailey · December 2, 2008, 2:44am

I think Blyleven’s case hinges on the fact that he’s the poor man’s Nolan Ryan. They both played for pretty poor teams, but Ryan managed to put up better career numbers in nearly every “baseball card” category.

Ryan’s flashiness (7 no-hitters, single season strikeout record and bulldog toughness to hang on for 27 seasons) also overshadow Blyleven in these kinds of discussions.

Agreed.

Kiros · December 2, 2008, 3:05am

Henderson definitely, Raines solidly (but won’t get in), Blyleven probably (but won’t get in), Rice close but probably not (but will get in), no one else particularly close.

Yookeroo · December 2, 2008, 3:11am

How is Tim Raines not a mortal lock? He’s even more underrated than Blyleven.