Blyleventh Heaven

On Tuesday, I mentioned the new website www.BertBelongs.com, and I was glad to find out today that the site is in its developmental phase, and plans to add more features in the future. I’m hoping for a petition, and it would not surprise me to see some noteworthy people sign it if word got out. Sometimes I feel like the magnitude of Blyleven’s snub gets overlooked because he is a bit of a good-natured clown, and does not react harshly to being jobbed. I believe Blyleven has been refused admission to Cooperstown because his success was spread out over a long period and his style was not particularly intimidating. He absolutely belongs in the Hall anyway, and I think his eventual election is inevitable.

First, Blyleven and Don Sutton provide an interesting historical parallel. According to www.Baseball-Reference.com, Sutton is the historically most similar player to Blyleven, and he was elected to the Hall in 1998, the first year in which Blyleven appeared on the ballot. That year, Sutton received 386 votes (81.6%) to Blyleven’s 83 (17.5%). That means that 303 respected baseball writers thought that one of these two extremely similar players belonged, but not the other. Seven years later, Blyleven has been on the ballot longer than Sutton was before his election, and he is still well short of the election. What is the line that so clearly divides the two in the minds of many writers? Sutton played one more year, pitched about 300 more innings, won 324 games to Blyleven’s 287, gave up 42 more HRs, walked almost exactly as many batters (1343 to Blyleven’s 1322) and struck out almost 250 fewer. Sutton’s ERA was 3.26 largely in the NL, good for 8% better than league average, while Blyleven finished at 3.31, but the run environment in the AL makes him 18% better than league average. Sutton spent most of his career with a solid Dodgers’ squad, going to the postseason five times and the World Series four times (thrice with LA). Blyleven made the postseason three times, winning two pennants. Curiously, Blyleven has two rings to Sutton’s zero. The extra regular season wins from being on a better team, though, coupled with the pitcher friendly nature of Chavez Ravine, makes up for much of the difference in total wins between the two. Still, I fear that many voters look only to the cumulative totals and not the circumstances in which they were achieved. Just like hitters are given a break for playing the ‘60s, Blyleven should get a pass for pitching for 8 winning teams in 22 years.

Also, Blyleven was very good for a very long time; a style which Bill James claims hurts candidates. ESPN.com’s Bill Simmons makes one of those arguments against Blyleven, saying that he was never the type of player for whom fans turn out to watch play. But that argument is silly, because fans buy tickets for bobble heads and pinch-hitting little people, but they are not Hall of Famers. Similarly, if a player played in empty stadiums his whole career and hit 900 HRs, he would also deserve to be in the Hall.

To be fair, Jay Jaffe points out that a high peak may have more value to a team than sustained solid play, since it can help push a team over the top in one season, all other things being equal. Blyleven is not a borderline case for whom this argument is important, though. He won 20 once, 19 once and 15 five times. He had eight 200 strikeout seasons, and nine sub-3.00 ERA seasons. From 1971-76, he threw at least 275.3 innings every season, topped out at an even 3.00 ERA, struck out at least 219 batters a year and averaged better than 16 wins a year. That’s a pretty solid peak. The fact that he threw 325 innings in ’73 and over 240 14 times and remained effective enough to go 17-5 with a 2.73 ERA at age 38 (and continue pitching until age 41) is downright astonishing.

Blyleven’s pitching style and personality have also conspired against him, as he does not meet the classic intimidator prototype that grizzled baseball writers talk about while chewing tobacco. He threw one of the greatest curveballs of all time, but some writers use that against him, as if it isn’t a manly enough pitch. They say he was an average pitcher with a freakish curve, but Nolan Ryan was an average pitcher with a freakish fastball, and that worked pretty well for him. More importantly, Blyleven got wonderful results, but in some of the wrong categories. Despite his durability, he only finished in the top five in the league in wins twice, top ten six times, a result of his sub-par teammates. Meanwhile, he finished in the top seven in strikeouts every year from ’71-’81, missed time in two years with injuries, then finished in the top eight from ’84-’87, including a league lead in 1985. All of this success came around the time when Crash Davis got away with telling his charge that throwing strikeouts was a bad idea because it brought the rest of the team down. Even though he was incredibly effective at striking batters out and had above average command (never finishing in the top 6 in BBs in spite of his copious inning totals), he only made two All-Star games because people did not appreciate the value of his skill set at the time. Even today, Twins fans are familiar with his jovial style in the booth, almost to the point that it makes it difficult to take him seriously. It isn’t difficult to infer how writers would react to a personality like his.

According to a couple of Bill James’s Hall of Fame predictor metrics, Blyleven rates as an average to above average Hall of Fame pitcher. There are 62 current Hall of Fame pitchers. Allowing for a couple of mistakes by the Veterans Committee and some margin of error in the metric, Blyleven is better than at least 25 current Hall of Fame pitchers. To continue excluding him is a mistake.

On the bright side, I think Blyleven is headed on the right track. In the 2005 voting, he received 211 votes (40.8%), needing 75% for election. The players ahead of him who were not elected (meaning they will reappear this year) were Bruce Sutter, Jim Rice, Goose Gossage and Andre Dawson. Sutter and Rice are close, possibly within a year or two of admittance. Gossage needs a change of heart about relief pitchers, but probably deserves a spot and will have one in time. Dawson is nowhere near Hall of Fame worthy, another reflection of a time in which fans did not correctly allocate value to certain abilities. And then comes Blyleven. Voters usually vote for about 6.5 candidates out of 25 on the ballot. With no new entries seeming likely to pass Blyleven on the list this year, the election of a couple of those in front of him would leave Blyleven in prime position for election the next couple of years, giving him plenty of time to be elected with seven more years of eligibility.

To learn more, visit www.BertBelongs.com and write to Hall voters. Bert’s cause may not be vitally important to anyone’s survival or well-being, but as long as baseball is a worthwhile diversion, Bert’s candidacy is worth endorsing.