Quote:
Originally Posted by Scott Garner
Keith,
I may be wrong, but I believe in the case of Blyleven it was simply a matter of the HOF classes being strong in many of the years that he was eligible. He almost made it last year and he didn't face much tough competition in 2011.
IMHO 287 wins, 60 or 61 shutouts, 3701 K's (which placed him at 3rd overall in the major leagues for a career when he retired) and his postseason play get him there. The times that he did play in the postseason he was a winner and prevailed. In the last 40 years not many pitchers ever possessed the devastating "yellow hammer" that Blyleven had in his arsenal. Although his win-loss record was not terrific (slightly better than .500), I wonder if it wasn't really more a function of the teams that he played on not scoring a lot of runs for him (ala Nolan Ryan)? The dude could pitch!
|
I believe I read an article a while back, that evaluated every start in both Blyleven and Jack Morris' careers. Using season by season league average run support for comparison, they figured that Blyleven would've won something like 40 more games, while Morris would've won 25 less games in their careers.. Basically they deemed that Blyleven was hurt by playing on bad teams, and Morris was helped by playing on good ones.
Basically last years MLB season help improve Bert's case alot, as far as forcing people to look at that inevitable truth....Who was the better starting pitcher last season.
Phil Hughes: 18-8, 4.19 ERA.
Felix Hernandez: 13-12, 2.27 ERA.
or in '05 for the Indians...
Was if fair that Kevin Millwood led the league in ERA with 2.86 and had a record of 9-11, while Cliff Lee was 18-5 with a 3.79 for the same team?
Hell, Rodrigo Lopez had 15 wins for the O's that year with a 4.90 ERA.