hall of fame, next vote...

See this is where I get the impression that cold-dispassionate analysis of the stats lies a little. For 5 years (71-75), Hunter was probably hands down the most feared pitcher in baseball. No he might not have been Koufax, but he was still by all accounts pretty amazing. Those five years count for more to me than 20 some odd years of just pretty good workmanlike pitching (I will admit that these breakdowns of Blyleven's stats are making a pretty case that he was better than that.) (I do have to wonder WHY if Bert was so great, he um didn't get snatched up by better teams? I mean that can't all be bad luck, right?)

Postseason Pitching

Year Round Tm Opp WLser G GS ERA W-L SV CG SHO IP H ER BB SO
+------------------+-----+--+--+------+-----+--+--+---+-----+---+---+---+---+
1970 ALCS MIN BAL L 1 0 0.00 0-0 0 0 0 2.0 2 0 0 2
1979 NLCS PIT CIN W 1 1 1.00 1-0 0 1 0 9.0 8 1 0 9
WS PIT BAL W 2 1 1.80 1-0 0 0 0 10.0 8 2 3 4
1987 ALCS MIN DET W 2 2 4.05 2-0 0 0 0 13.3 12 6 3 9
WS MIN STL W 2 2 2.77 1-1 0 0 0 13.0 13 4 2 12
+------------------+-----+--+--+------+-----+--+--+---+-----+---+---+---+---+
3 Lg Champ Series 2-1 4 3 2.59 3-0 0 1 0 24.3 22 7 3 20
2 World Series 2-0 4 3 2.35 2-1 0 0 0 23.0 21 6 5 16
5 Postseason Ser 4-1 8 6 2.47 5-1 0 1 0 47.3 43 13 8 36
+------------------+-----+--+--+------+-----+--+--+---+-----+---+---+---+---+

He didn't get many chances, but Blyleven pitched well in the playoffs and was a part of two World Series Champions.

Many of his best years came before free agency, so he didn't have much choice in the matter.

Even with free agency, it's only during the last ten years or so that all the best players end up on big-market winning teams at some point, since eventually those are the only teams that can afford them. If Jaret Wright can bounce around for a while, have one good season after a slew of crappy ones, and end up with a multi-year deal from a perennial contender, then Blyleven would have ended up playing for more winning teams too, if he was playing today.

Even so, every era has a few great players who toil away in relative obscurity. Look at Bobby Abreu, or even Carlos Delgado. If Delgado goes to the Mets, maybe in 20 years people will be saying "if he was so good, why did his teams always finish in third place?"

Alex, nobody's saying Hunter wasn't GOOD, just that Blyleven was better for MUCH longer, and that "good press" shouldn't be a measure of excellence. And I don't see Hunter '71-75 being "amazing" ... His most "impressive statistics" are wins (ie, having good teammates) and innings pitched (which blew out his arm, as MIR says). I think he got extra credit for the pennants and the sexy nicknames. And it's cute how you use high Cy Young finishes as relevant to Hunter, not relevant for Blyleven. (Also, I don't see Hunter's status as the first Big Splash free agent being relevant; see Marvin Miller's book for how clownishly Catfish handled that situation.)

The "cold-dispassionate analysis of the stats" is the most reliable evidence there is. Not "what you heard" (from Joe Morgan?). And it isn't so much that Blyleven toiled for bad teams (they were more often mediocre), but pitched in hitters' parks.

I hope it happens soon so that he lives to attend his own induction.

It's not lookin' good for Marv, MIR -- when the Vets voted last in '03, no one came close to getting 75% ... and of the 60 votes required for election, Miller got 35. He got three FEWER votes than Walter O'Malley -- or as we call him in Brooklyn, Satan.

Miller and other non-players are on the "composite" ballot. Here's this year's players' ballot:

http://www.baseballhalloffame.org/hofers_and_honorees/veterans/2005/2005_vc_candidates.htm

The only one I'm sold on is Santo, but Dick Allen and Tony Oliva have decent cases -- as does Curt Flood for courage and legal pioneering.

Mickey Lolich won't get in the Hall, but his pitching in the 68 World Series may be the best performance ever in the fall classic by a starter. The guy out pitched Bob Gibson in Game Seven on TWO days rest. ESPN Classic was showed that game a few months back and it was great. Harry Caray was doing the play by play.

While I don't know if he is good enough player to make the hall, Al Oliver had a pretty good career and never gets put on these kind of lists.

My general point is that "b...b...but he was a bit of an asshole" is a criticism that's used far too often despite being irrelevant most of the time. As long as the guy didn't compromise the game of baseball (Pete Rose being the most obvious example) then I couldn't care less if he was moody and didn't get along with everybody. If he could bring it on the field, then that's the most important thing.

(xpost)

Haha I need to learn to check baseballreference.com before I say stuff sometimes.

Example #2: replace "Reggie Jackson" with "Barry Bonds" in the above paragraph.

Or consider the Yankees and Red Sox of the last few years. When the Yankees were winning, they were "professional" and "disciplined". Their lack of comaraderie was viewed as an asset, i.e. "they're all business when they take the field". OTOH, the Sox were drama queens who didn't know how to win when it counts.

Fast forward to this past year. The Yanks are up 3-0 and they're winning because they're the professionals who respect the game and know how to win. Five days later, the exact same guys are described as "cold" and "unemotional" and that's why they lost. In the meantime, Manny and Pedro's weird quirks and selfishness are ignored, and suddenly all the drama becomes an asset because the Sox are "loose", "having fun", and "relaxed", and that's why they won.

"So we're supposed to believe that Reggie was a poison when his team lost, and a leader when they won?"

I don't think anyone really said Reggie (or Barry or Albert Belle) was a leader at any point though (well maybe Reggie when he got older.) They just said when they won that they were very good players (which obv all three were) and at times very clutch players. That doesn't mean that they also didn't cause some problems in their respective clubhouses/franchises (which all three obv did.)

Great players are great players irrespective of their teams. You can be a great player on a good team or on a bad team. Similarly, if someone is a clubhouse cancer, then that should also be independent of the quality of the team. But it isn't. The same guy who is a cancer when the team loses is a leader when the team wins.

This doesn't mean that team chemistry doesn't count for anything. But it counts for a lot less than player performance.

Haha watch out conventional wisdom! Barry's coming after ya!

Next thing you know, I'll be claiming that there's no such thing as a clutch hitter!!

Reggie's championship teams in both Oakland and the Bronx were filled with hot heads, both on the team, the managers and owners. It was a crazy atmosphere, yet they won, mostly because they were freakin' loaded with talent top to bottom. One thing I find interesting about both of those clubs is that they both won titles with two managers, the A's with Dick Williams and Alvin Dark, the Yanks with Billy Martin and Bob Lemon. Both clubs had complete freak owners with big checkbooks with King George and Charlie Finley.

70s baseball was cool. You had both of these clubs and the Big Red Machine. KC, Baltimore, Philly, LA and Pittsburgh all also won their division more than once in 70s.

Yeah, for purpose of analyzing a player's career worth, it all should come down to stats, or as I prefer to call them, FACTS. We can all spin our own fantasies of who's a "clubhouse cancer" -- one of my first choices would be late-career Saint Cal Ripken -- and it doesn't prove a damn thing.

I agree Mr. Cal could be pretty detrimental to his team by that point too, but Mr. Morb WHY if everything is so easy to calculate based on the "facts" (haha) do we even bother having votes then? Why isn't there just a formula?

2. I'm not advocating a fucking formula, but INTERPRETING the record of the player's career.

Took me a second to figure this out--I thought he was still playing for somebody--but I-Rod's "officially" retiring:

http://cnnsi.com/2012/baseball/mlb/04/19/rodriguez.retires.ap/index.html#?sct=mlb_t11_a2

I guess he goes into the Bagwell group: automatic first-ballot if they vote on stats alone, some undetermined amount of time in limbo otherwise.

thought the same thing when i saw he's retiring. who else are you putting in this group?

Bret Boone...just kidding. Those are the first two that come to mind--let me think about it.

Thome, too. Got any others? The cloud-of-vague-suspicion group...

Piazza?

was Pudge on any sort of nefarious "list"? a coworker of mine seems to think so.

p sure he was named in the mitchell report but didn't have to testify?

came to camp 30 pounds lighter when they started testing

tbh, I just assume anyone on the mid-90s Rangers was using (note: don't care)

Canseco said he used too (note: also don't care)

I remember people pointing fingers on the basis of some drastic offseason weight loss a few years ago ...

I was looking at his B-R player page and was wondering

1) he had a negative dWAR for three straight years from 2002-4. I don't get it ... he was great defensively, then bad for three years, then great again?

2) he had a 67 career WAR, which barely puts him in the top 100 all-time. I don't know, doesn't that seem a bit low for one of the best catchers ever (and probably the best ever defensively). It would suggest that either a) catchers aren't all that valuable (because they usually aren't among the league's best hitters) or b) a catchers' value isn't well represented by current metrics.

catchers have shorter careers and their position takes a bigger toll when it comes to hitting
comparing his WAR against everyone is less meaningful than comparing him to other catchers

BB-Ref ranks his 67 WAR at...67th place, coincidentally. That definitely doesn't seem too low to me.

and #2 among catchers, #11 among catcher WAR/game

10th if you eliminate Jack Clements since he was pre-modern

tbh, I just assume anyone on the mid-90s Rangers was using

One exception:

http://s.ecrater.com/stores/68455/495a38266a0b5_68455n.jpg

Refused to take anything stronger than Flinstones vitamins.

"a catchers' value isn't well represented by current metrics"

From what I understand this is very true on the defensive side of things. All the traditional catcher stats are really hard to isolate as individual achievements (SB, CS, PB/WP) and those are the things that a catcher does that actually appear on a stat sheet.

interesting, olson’s career totals:
42.2 bWAR
33.3 fWAR

the main difference is that fangraphs grades him out as a below average defender across his career, while baseball reference’s defensive metrics have him as average.

(xpost) Ha! Good point...I will offer up a meek defense: 1) Killebrew must have been fourth or fifth on the career HR list when he retired; 2) hitting .256 through the '60s was probably like .270 at any other time (mind you, the people who voted him in may or may not have made that mental adjustment--probably didn't); 3) he looked like Popeye, and everybody loves Popeye.

573 HR, 12th all time. dude probably could have had a .225 AVG and still gone into the hall, no prob. have to scroll all the way down to #34, Carlos Delgado (473) who isn't in the hall or linked to steroids (tho I think there wasn't much linking Gary Sheffield to anything beyond similar rumours as Ortiz)

Perfect timing--even HOF'er Eddie Collins agrees.

https://i.postimg.cc/Xqm46zzv/olson.jpg

Posnanski's closely monitoring ILB:

Do we need to start talking about Matt Olson as a Hall of Fame candidate? I mean, you don’t want to jump the gun, but he just hit his 300th home run, he’s played in like 800 straight games, and he’s leading the league in doubles, RBI and total bases. He’s at 42 or so WAR — four or five more good seasons puts him pretty much on the Paul Goldschmidt road to Cooperstown.

There probably wasn't a whole lot of doubt after 2024's Cy Young, but Chris Sale is a lock now. He's crossed 150 wins this year and brought his career ERA under 3.00; that's a formidable combination. The ERA will quite likely end up over 3.00, but 3,000 strikeouts is not out of reach (37, needs 304 more). The only question now is whether he's first-ballot or not, and he's pitching great right now.

character clause for cutting up his uniform/drake laroche fiasco

(ok not really!)

honestly i'm surprised that more players don't go apeshit about all the different uniforms they're forced to wear. not for gay pride reasons but rather for OCD reasons -- few people on earth are more locked into their routines than pro athletes, and i can totally see that anything messing with that would be intolerable

like, the travel sucks and yr sleep patterns are endlessly fucked with, and *then* you have to wear a uniform that doesn't fit right? infuriating

Is that one and the same or two separate incidents? I remember the uniform--seems like a million years ago.

i don't remember either!

but my latter two paragraphs are absolutely serious

I had written him off as too injury riddled/prone to be notable (4.6 combined bWAR from 2019-2023) but he definitely proved me wrong the past 3 seasons. Stories of hobbled and broken-down late-middle-age players reclaiming career-best glory in this day and age are usually accompanied with rumors/accusations but I have not heard much w/r/t Sale.

150 wins you say!!

right between mark baldwin and dan haren

https://www.reddit.com/r/whitesox/comments/oguk8q/can_someone_explain_the_2016_laroche_ordeal_i_am/

This gets into the Drake saga a bit more, with lots of tidbits.

Drake feuds with everybody...ignoring everything else except for three of the most old-school benchmarks, Sale actually slots in nicely alongside the two most famous abbreviated HOF pitcher careers, Koufax and Dizzy Dean:

Koufax - 165-87, .655, 2.76
Dizzy - 150-83, .644, 3.02
Sale - 154-94, .621, 2.97

Johan Santana falls short of 150 wins, else he'd be in there too.

Koufax - 165-87, .655, 2.76
Dizzy - 150-83, .644, 3.02
Sale - 154-94, .621, 2.97

but...but the different hitting environments, the pre-integration stats, the "win" as an empty/misleading stat, the winning percentage w/ the same problem

for ERA, why not use ERA+ (similar to wRC+ or OPS+ where 100 is average for that players in that season)?

Dean career ERA+ 131
Sale career ERA+ 143
Koufax career ERA+ 131

you see, chris sale is much better than sandy koufax

...ignoring everything else except for three of the most old-school benchmarks

sorry clem, i see you were already acknowledging the old-schoolerness of the benchmarks

Yeah--I know it's a highly flawed snapshot. And I was pretty sure that Sale would come out better than Koufax in ERA+; pitching in Chez Ravine in the mid-'60s was about as favourable as it got. (Dizzy pitched in the best hitting decade outside of steroids, so he gets better in context.)

Three HR for Bregman yesterday. 32, will hit 50 bWAR next year (5.6/162 games). I thought his age-31 Similarity Scores would have at least two or three HOF'ers, but suprised to find none.

Similar Batters through 31
Eric Chavez (953.4)
Bobby Bonilla (923.1)
Kyle Seager (910.1)
Robin Ventura (908.6)
Howard Johnson (908.4)
Ketel Marte (905.9)
Torii Hunter (905.7)
Alfonso Soriano (903.7)
Ken Boyer (900.3)
Gary Gaetti (897.6)

Except for the COVID year, and maybe the year after, he's never had a bad season.

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/49692404/yankees-giancarlo-stanton-suffers-setback-2026-return-jeopardy

referring to him as a "potential Hall of Famer"...feels like it requires "once a" before it.

trivia i guess, but he has 456 HR - who (other than PED players) has more HRs and is not in the hall of fame?

Canseco? (I don't think PEDs are keeping him out...otherwise, Edwin?)

Damn close. Of the two non-PED guys ahead of Canseco, I'm convinced one will go in, the other no.

Delgado