Oh, come on. Mark Buehrle's Hall of Fame chances?

[the 'stache]

Originally Posted by clydepepper

As always, we are fortunate to have you on the board, Bill. I saw the ESPN headline, but did not waste my time reading it. Your take on Buehrle is much more accurate.

Being 'an old lefty' myself, I have a natural appreciation of all things 'wrong-handed' and thus have long been a fan of pitchers like Buehrle.

But he doesn't belong in the conversation with Glavine and the other HOF lefties. I would place him a peg below Moyer and more like the later-career version of Frank Tanana...an entertaining pitcher for sure, but a .500 pitcher after all is said and done.

Still, I enjoyed watching his perfect game and his miraculous defensive play a few years ago that gave the world 'The Buehrle Meter' is still firmly affixed to my memory when many more important things have migrated elsewhere.

Let's put him in the Hall of Good Memories instead.
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Firstly, thank you, Raymond, for the compliment. I'm just a big baseball nerd, and I have a lot more free time than anybody else here. Combine that with a compulsion to read baseball stats, and you have instant conversations. There are people here far more knowledgeable than I, though I am working to close that gap. I am working hard to gain a better understanding of these newer metrics. They fascinate me, especially because they are a still evolving methodology. I think these statistics that have been created by Sabermetrics help us to gain a better understanding of, and a new appreciation for, the game we all love. So, though there's a lot to learn, and I want to be evenhanded, what I discover while researching is fun, and often surprising. And it's truly interesting how I'll be looking at one player, and consider something when looking at them that I did not consider when looking at somebody else. So, occasionally, I end up reversing myself, somewhat, on the other player.

We always need to remember how rare a great lefty truly is. I've grown to love the movie Million Dollar Arm, and the lefty with "juice" is referred to repeatedly with reverential tone. I think Buehrle is a gamer. He's a guy I'd love to have on my staff. He's a consistent pitcher, and he's a workhorse. Fourteen years in a row he's started at least 30 games. Now, certainly there are better lefties, but how good are they if they're out for the year nursing an arm post Tommy John surgery? Their potential is great, but that potential's not helping the team then. Buehrle learned how to battle over and over, pitch well, and not get hurt. That earns big time points in my book.

Not to be overlooked, too, is that he really helps his own cause by being a very good fielder. 4 Gold Glove Awards is nothing to sneeze at.

Originally Posted by 1952boyntoncollector

Andy Pettite is way over him and Andy has an uphill climb

Agreed. Pettite is an interesting guy statistically. You look at his second season in the Majors, and he's a Cy Young runner up. Ok, he won 21 to lead the AL. 1996 marked the beginning of the new Yankee dynasty. They won the World Series that season, though they won only 92 games. But the guys were all there. Pettitte in his second year. Jeter was a started for the first time. Mariano Rivera was in his second year.

You look at Andy's numbers, and a 3.87 ERA seems a little high. But in two starts, 3.2 IP, he gave up 18 earned runs. The rest of the season, he had a 3.16 ERA. That's why pitchers, especially, who are limited to 30-35 starts, can often have misleading numbers. Smaller sample size, and one terrible start can skew the whole season.

Originally Posted by Econteachert205

I'd let in David wells or Kenny Rogers first lol.

Both those guys had the tools, they were just inconsistent. I came to Texas the same time Kenny Rogers started out with the Rangers. I thought he was going to be the bomb. He was pretty good. Real good at times. Even though he won 219 games, he was never as good as I thought he would be.

Wells was a solid pitcher, too. Hard to believe that Rogers and Wells started almost 1,000 games between them. They were around forever.