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Friday, January 07, 2005 |
Another Pointlet In Blyleven's HoF Bid
Rich mentioned that one of the complaints some of the Blyleven skeptics have leveled was that "Blyleven wasn’t a dominant pitcher in his era." One thing Rich didn't look at in his extraordinarily thorough reviews of Blyleven's career was his strikeout rate. Recall the first table of career strikeouts he presented, and that all its members -- save the ineligible Randy Johnson and Roger Clemens, first-balloters if ever there were ones -- are in the Hall. Well: let's look at their career K/9 rates and re-order:
Even here, Blyleven falls right into the middle of this group. Okay, you say, how did he do against his peers? Stacked up against pitchers with 150 or more innings pitched, he was always in the top third of pitchers ranked by K/9 from 1970 through 1988 -- all but three years of his career -- and in the top ten twelve years of his career! The "not dominant" argument just doesn't hold up to even the most elementary review...K/9 Randy Johnson 11.17 Nolan Ryan 9.58 Roger Clemens 8.66 Steve Carlton 7.12 Tom Seaver 6.87 Bert Blyleven 6.72 Don Sutton 6.11 Gaylord Perry 5.96 Phil Niekro 5.62 Walter Johnson 5.34
Update: Mike's Baseball Rants has an analysis of the vote. His verdict for Blyleven is that he'll only get in via the Veteran's committee "unless [his bid] gathers steam" -- which it has. He also notes that only "3 men out of 1571 have gained election after receiving less than 50% of the vote in the previous year". Despite that, Blyleven's Hall chances "seem to be gaining momentum steadily each year." Jumping ten percentage points or so in a single year is a good sign.
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