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.

Part of Posnanski's column today (mostly about Murphy):

The thing that’s most shocking about Valenzuela being on here — and, for that matter, Delgado, and probably even Mattingly and Murphy as much as I love those guys — is that Dwight Evans and Lou Whitaker are not. I mean, we know the objections to Schilling. But what are the objections to Dewey and Lou?

I literally don’t understand. Dwight Evans appeared on the veteran’s ballot in 2020 and got FIFTY PERCENT OF THE VOTE. I mean, that’s a STATEMENT.

There are have been two Contemporary Era ballots since … and Dewey hasn’t been on either of them.

Like I say, I don’t understand it at all.

Whitaker, if possible, makes even less sense. Sweet Lou has 75 career bWAR. I mean, that’s DOUBLE Fernando’s total. It’s 30 more wins than Mattingly or Delgado, 15 more than Sheffield. He also appeared on the 2020 ballot, made a reasonable showing (37.5%), and they haven’t put him back on the ballot either. I can’t make any sense of it at all.

Color me baffled.The thing that’s most shocking about Valenzuela being on here — and, for that matter, Delgado, and probably even Mattingly and Murphy as much as I love those guys — is that Dwight Evans and Lou Whitaker are not. I mean, we know the objections to Schilling. But what are the objections to Dewey and Lou?

I literally don’t understand. Dwight Evans appeared on the veteran’s ballot in 2020 and got FIFTY PERCENT OF THE VOTE. I mean, that’s a STATEMENT.

There are have been two Contemporary Era ballots since … and Dewey hasn’t been on either of them.

Like I say, I don’t understand it at all.

Whitaker, if possible, makes even less sense. Sweet Lou has 75 career bWAR. I mean, that’s DOUBLE Fernando’s total. It’s 30 more wins than Mattingly or Delgado, 15 more than Sheffield. He also appeared on the 2020 ballot, made a reasonable showing (37.5%), and they haven’t put him back on the ballot either. I can’t make any sense of it at all.

Color me baffled.

He makes an interesting point about Murphy: the nine position players who had more WAR than him in the '80s are all in, as are a couple who didn't. What hurts him is that ALL his value is in that one decade. He had a negative WAR for his '70s years, and was just barely above 0.0 as he hung on a little into the '90s.

he must feel strongly about that, as he said everything twice!

Color me embarrassed.

i *try* to avoid this stuff -- i find the whole process capricious and hateful in the way it implicitly shits on great players who didn't quite make it

but also posnanski otm

I totally understand the 1,001 things wrong about the selection process, and how maddening it can be, and am quite aware of the many players who should be in (and some who shouldn't), but they have to do that, no--elect some players and not elect the rest? And many of the rest are going to be very good players, no matter how you go about it. (The worst guy in the league last year is a very good player when you take a step back.) What should the process be instead? The World Series consigns a lot of really good teams to the dustbin of history, but I don't want to do away with it.

If you don't think there should be a HOF period, sure, that's valid. I don't want that, but as the one way to absolutely get rid of all the politicization and arbitrariness, that would work. (I'm not being facetious--suspect the great majority of fans wouldn't care a bit.)

What should the process be instead?

*i* -- or perhaps we as ILB -- should choose

(barring that, maybe jay jaffe should choose)

i don't have a solution! i just have a hard time taking seriously a process that excludes the players posnanski mentioned yet admits harold baines

so i would prefer to ignore this process that i find lacking in credibility, yet here i am bitching about it once again : /

(that said, it *is* kind of weird how football/hoops/hockey rarely seem to generate this sort of angst about their HoFs)

the NHL is at least *finally* inducting alex mogilny

wait. he *wasn't* in the hockey hall of fame?!

yeah it's absurd

Mookie: whatever you feel about him now, I really recommend James's The Politics of Glory, his HOF book. (For one thing, it was written long before he started tweeting his opinions about politics and movies.) He was exasperated at the time too. The book looks at a whole bunch of things, including how to make the selection process better. Putting PEDs aside--which is a whole separate issue to me, even though it's become attached at the hip with the HOF--I do think the writers have gotten better over the years. And one day Whitaker and Evans will go in, I'm positive (hopefully soon, before they're dead--an awareness of that responsibility seems to be finally sinking in), and Omar Vizquel and Aroldis Chapman will never go in, because they crossed uncrossable lines, and all in all, injustices are corrected over time.

(barring that, maybe jay jaffe should choose)...If you go that route, though, cries of "IT'S NOT THE HALL OF STATISTICS (or WAR)" immediately ring out.

jay jaffe should NOT choose because it would take him 5 trillion words / 500 billion paragraphs for him to get to the goddamn point

oh god i’m sorry, i goofed.

jay jaffe’s the JAWS guy - i enjoy reading him!

i’m terribly sorry that i was thinking of jayson stark

I agree with mookie's point about the post-BBWAA process being influenced by cronyism and impossible to decipher, high-school clique-like political alliances. Why does Whitaker keep getting snubbed? I can only assume that he doesn't have the "right" friends, whereas someone like Harold Baines did.

However, righting some of the wrongs of past BBWAA elections is better than righting none of them. The selection/election process is flawed, but most of these players do deserve a closer look.

I have never really understood why the standards and arguments are completely different in other HOF's. Take someone like Jack Morris, I don't know who his NFL equivalent is, but whoever it is would be a slam dunk football HOFer. He was a "winner", was a star on three championship teams, he was a "gamer" with a good work ethic who always wanted the ball, was respected everywhere he played, and had a longer career than most of his contemporaries. There would be no disagreement.

i find the whole process capricious and hateful in the way it implicitly shits on great players who didn't quite make it

I'm sure it does feel like a slight (but short of an insult, I would think) to a lot of players who fall just short. As a fan, I know I've never, not even once, adjusted my view of a player based on HOF status. I don't elevate players who get in, and I don't downgrade anyone who doesn't--my views on near-misses such as Dave Stieb, or John Olerud, or Thurman Munson are the same as they ever were (and won't change should they one day get in). I agree that the near-misses tend to fade from the conversation over time.

It's like the Academy Awards. Most of my favourite films were never even nominated, much less won one, and I couldn't care less. When one does win something, I enjoy that without attaching any significance whatsoever.

Jack Morris is probably the equivalent of a running back who sticks around forever and never gets injured and averages 3.4 yards per carry.

i always thought Rich Gannon was the Dave Stewart of the NFL.

The official 2026 Hall of Fame ballot with 12 new candidates: Bobby Abreu, Carlos Beltrán, Ryan Braun, Mark Buehrle, Shin-Soo Choo, Edwin Encarnación, Gio González, Alex Gordon, Cole Hamels, Félix Hernández, Torii Hunter, Andruw Jones, Matt Kemp, Howie Kendrick, Nick Markakis, … Daniel Murphy, Dustin Pedroia, Hunter Pence, Andy Pettitte, Rick Porcello, Manny Ramírez, Álex Rodríguez, Francisco Rodríguez, Jimmy Rollins, Chase Utley, Omar Vizquel, David Wright.

I copied the above from Boob Nightengale so if anything is wrong above it’s his fault

Noted GREEK IN BASEBALL klaxon for clemenza with Markakis on the ballot.

Nick Markakis isn’t a HOFer but “Nick Markakis takes strike one” is a HOFer.

nick markakis is one of those surprising counting stat guys (2388 hits!)

if david wright could have had just oooooone more good year before injuries wiped out his career, he might have made it

(xposts) Thanks--he was actually my dad's (Greek) best friend's (non-Greek) player, or at least his favourite player on his favourite team, the Orioles...With A-Rod and Manny (presumably) still in purgatory, I guess the three to watch are Beltran, Utley, and Andruw. The hightest WAR debut is Hamels, and I can't see him ever getting in, fine pitcher though he was. Utley's obstacle is peak vs. career, Andruw's is the slower acceptance of defensive stats. vs. offensive stats. I'd say both those are moving in their direction and that they will get in--although Andruw only has this year and next. I think Beltran will go in this year.

Left out the first "favourite" there.