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.

Subheading from Posnanski's round-up today (haven't read it yet): "Here’s a Depressing Thought: Six More Years of A-Rod."

For 80 or 90 years, there was a reason for not voting anyone in unanimously. It was a ridiculous, stupid reason, but it was a reason: if no one from the first class was unanimous (Ruth, especially), no one should be. Rivera's unanimous election ended that.

this kind of logic gets used for NBA MVP voting as well. when Derrick Rose won his MVP over a much more deserving LeBron the justification I saw was that Jordan never won three straight, so LeBron shouldn't either.

Cole Hamels comes on next year. I always find these eerily close comparisons fascinating (courtesty Posnanski):

Félix Hernández: 169-136, 3.42 ERA, 3.52 FIP, 2,729 innings, 2,524 K, 805 BB

Cole Hamels: 163-122, 3.43 ERA, 3.68 FIP, 2,698 innings, 2,560 K, 767 BB

Obviously, peak Felix was superior; Hamels got to the same place through durability.

https://i.postimg.cc/J0VThgCp/yjbzt9mod6ozn0dg7osi.jpg

There were some unusual HOF ballots in the 2010's.

Take 2016, Jim Edmonds finished 20th, one and done. I can't remember if there was any backlash for this. He had 60.4 bWAR, 393 HR, 132 OPS+, was generally regarded as a very good defender, etc. Pretty decent candidacy. How did he finish 20th??

About the nineteen players who finished ahead of him:
-- twelve were HOFers (two elected that year, ten more elected since)
-- Bonds, Clemens, McGwire, Sosa were all tainted by steroids and were never going to be elected, but drew significant support that could have been directed to other players in retrospect
-- Schilling, Sheffield, and Kent were all controversial players for various reasons, see previous comment

No marginal HOFer could stand a chance on that kind of ballot. I hope some of these guys get nominated through one of the nu-committees and get their cases heard properly.

How did he finish 20th??

this will sound like a goof, but i honestly think it's because he is so annoying. i'm not sure he's a hall of famer but he's right on the edge, and i bet he'll get in via committee at some point

well, all the factors you mentioned, NoTime, of course! those were probably the big ones. 2016 was a rough year to be a first-time candidate! but cherry on top, the thing that sealed the deal, was probably how annoying he is

Didn't the annoying-factor come about because of his broadcasting? Was he already on air then?

just a quick google, and it's mainly about his broadcasting, but most of this tracks. especially the one where he joked about his son's suicide watch text, during a game. i was watching that game and it was a true wtf moment when he blurted all that out (while baseball was happening)

https://www.reddit.com/r/Cardinals/comments/1igte71/i_must_be_out_of_the_loop_why_is_jim_edmonds/?rdt=65290

but yeah, to your point clemenza, i think as a "player" most of that stuff was forgiven since there are tons of bros like that. he'll probably get in at some point!

i wonder if the pandemic year will make a difference in anyone's chances like maybe how the strike year cost McGriff a likely induction via the writers. i think for example Jose Ramirez will get in on way or another, but if you calculate his .292/.386/.607 2020 performance out to a full season, he looks like a guy who had the necessary transcendent stat line to catch writers' eyes in 2037 or so -- 47 HR, 44 2B, 125 runs, 128 RBI, 87 BB, 28 SB.

I know there were a few guys who had a career-worst year--some recovered, some didn't--that may make a difference in a close call. One who comes to mind is Altuve. He's probably in the clear now, but if the cheating scandal keeps it close, his lost 2020 could come into play.

clem are you going to the canadian hof inductions this weekend?

I might try to get to the induction ceremony, which--if I'm reading their website correctly--is free. There's an opening night thing that costs $100, and other things (autograph session, golf tournament) that are expensive. But I might wander over Saturday afternoon and see how close I can get.

jos. a bats

I saw he was at leftfield today and sort of regretted not going

They always do something in Toronto on the Thursday, right? I think my collector friend always goes to that.

i met up with a friend before she headed to the Justice show nearby and was right outside Leftfield - place was packed solid.

I'll post later, but finally made it to Induction Day (a 10-minute walk from my house--thanks for the nudge, mookieproof). Some photos and video:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/kPhQb6PUbHG2dxSn7

nice!

Some of the people in attendance today: Fergie Jenkins, Larry Walker, Lloyd Moseby, Ernie Whitt, Pat Gillick, Paul Beeston, Gord Ash.

Sounds really cool, clem!