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.

I think the most graceful CF I've ever seen. Not a highlight reel--long strides, good jump, there before he needed to dive or leap (he did need to leap on the triple play*).

amazing outfielder, great baserunner/stealer, had some solid pop for the time. it's a shame he couldn't take more walks. what hurt him, in terms of not being as well known as his WAR might demand, is that his batting average was not the best. career .263 and never once went higher than .283.

xpost
i think he is without a doubt the best CF the jays ever had

Posnanski's pushing hard for Johan Santana today; think he's started to pick up some momentum the last couple of years.

I've been slowly moving homepage stuff from Tripod--yes, Tripod--over to Blogger, something I expect to take about a year. Was looking at a HOF piece I wrote in 2001. At the end, I picked the 31 players I thought would go in:

PITCHERS -- Clemens, Maddux, Johnson, P. Martinez, Glavine, Rivera;

POSITION PLAYERS -- Piazza, I. Rodriguez, McGwire, Bagwell, Palmeiro, Thomas, Thome, Helton, Alomar, Biggio, Ripken, Larkin, Jeter, A. Rodriguez, Garciaparra, C. Jones, Henderson, Gwynn, Bonds, Griffey, Sosa, Gonzalez, Ramirez, Guerrero.

HITTER -- E. Martinez

A lot of those are obvious, I know, but overall, pretty good. 22 correct; 7 PED guys who almost certainly would have gone in otherwise. Gonzalez probably was a PED guy who, if he'd kept playing and hit 500-600 HR, may or may not have evaded detection--but he fell off a cliff at 33 because he probably was a PED guy. (Ditto Albert Belle.) The only out-and-out wrong guess, I'd say, was Garciaparra.

At the other end, though, I had three prominent guys coming up short who ultimately went in: Baines, Mussina, and McGriff.

Baines was a fluke thing no rational human could have predicted

Yeah, missing Baines was no big deal. I was a little too fixated on traditional benchmarks with Mussina (20-win seasons; he hadn't done it yet) and McGriff (500 HR; looked certain he'd fall short), but then most people were at the time.

I wasnt discerning enough in 2001 to have an opinion on this set but it looks like you did a good job, even before the modern stats and the PED stuff

really weird probably only for me, but yesterday i was gifted a totally rando starting lineup figure (person had no idea and just picked a fun looking one for me), and it was devon white! a really fun one, where he’s leaping over the wall which is included, and there’s a little pin that makes it so devon white is floating in midair. it’s also really fun to flip him upside down so his head is hovering just above the ground

best of all, when they gave it to me i was like “yeah he just made the canadian baseball hall of fame a few weeks ago” and everybody was like ‘how does he know that'

In 2001, hardly anyone was considering Mussina as a future HOFer. That's partly due to comparison with his contemporaries, you had 4-5 inner circle HOFers pitching at the same time as him, and he was kind of taken for granted because he wasn't in that tier.

The piece is here: https://phildellio.blogspot.com/2026/03/over-under-sideways-down.html

Looking closer, I realize I posted it towards the end of the 2001 season, not after. Specifically, looking at what I wrote and looking at Mussina's game logs, sometime between August 17 and August 22. He pitched extremely well the rest of the way: 5-1, 1.47, 55 IP, 31 H, 59 K, 9 BB. That wouldn't have changed my conclusion that he was going to fall short, but I probably would have framed what I wrote differently.

even before the modern stats

We used abacuses and crystal balls back then.

I might be inclined to reserve that spot for someone out there just starting to make a case for himself: Albert Pujols, Tim Hudson, somebody like that.

I always think of those guys together.

In 2001, Clemens went 20-3 (but was 20-1 at one point), making him the runaway Cy Young winner. However, Mussina led the league in WAR (which didn't exist then) but even in conventional stats, he had a lower ERA, more IP, and more K's. He was the better pitcher that year, and remember that many stats-minded people noticed. But it still didn't put him in the serious HOF discussions, at least not yet.

Strange time to do it, I know, but wrote my first HOF round-up since 2018.

I didn't mention Matt Olson in the roundup above, but he might be on radar now. The bar's high for first basement, so still a ways to go, but:

- 42.2 bWAR at age 32
- 300 HR, including the big 54-HR season
- the consecutive-game streak (still alive, I think, somewhere around 700 games)
- having his best season ever, very much in line for an MVP if he can keep it up: leads the league in bWAR, doubles, HR, RBI

Again, long way to go--no first baseman's going into the HOF with a career VA of .260. But if he grabbed an MVP and Atlanta went on to win the WS, there's already a foundation.

VA = BA

His game streak is at 817.

I'm sure he's zeroed in on a 1,000 then (seven players):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Major_League_Baseball_consecutive_games_played_leaders

i always like to look at a guy's career 162/g bWAR average, and his is pretty damn good thus far AT 5.4.

as a comparison point here are some other corner IF guys who are/will be in the HOF -- Beltre was 5.2, Helton 4.5, Pujols 5.3, Thomas 5.1. Obviously with several of them we are including a pretty steep decline phase, which might happen at some point, but maybe Olson will wind up somewhere in the mix. this season he's on an 11 bWAR/162 game pace.

no first baseman's going into the HOF with a career BA of .260.

the killer would like a word with you. privately. down at the river, around the bend where no one else can see. *halloween music plays*

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