Just in case anyone missed the month old occurrence, the BBWAA elected their Hall of Fame class for 2010.
Standard for the course, a lot of anger resulted from the public this year over some noteworthy omissions. Robbie Alomar was one, and Bert Blyleven was denied admission to the Hall in his next to last go around.
Blyleven, in a weird way, has become a folk hero to the SABRmetric crowd. He was respected in his playing days, but never gained the acclaim that most future Hall of Famers receive, as evidenced by only being selected to 2 All Star games —the same as "legends" like Scott Cooper —never winning a Cy Young or MVP award, only winning 20 games once, and often finding himself on mediocre to bad teams.
As such, he was an underwhelming candidate when he first hit the ballot, not breaking 25% of the electorate until his fifth time on.
Many analysts have revisited Blyleven's career, and began to promote his case for the Hall of Fame, most notably Rich Lederer of The Baseball Analysts .
Frequent items cited are his strikeout totals (5th all time), complete games (91st), shutouts (9th), innings pitched (14th), his 10 times of being in the top 10 in ERA, and how he led his league three times in K/BB, which reflect a sustained period of excellent performance.
Also, his baseball reference page shows that 8 of his 10 most similar pitchers are already enshrined —the two that are not, John and Kaat, Blyleven was better than.
On the opposite end of the spectrum is Jack Morris. A pitcher who had a good, but not truly great career, was a stable of some good Tigers teams in the 80's, and then cemented his legacy by being on two consecutive World Series winners, including his memorable 1991 World Series performance.
Because of this, his support has been similar in pattern to Blyleven's on the ballot. Blyleven, however, was a much better overall pitcher than Morris.
Which brings up the point many Morris backers or Blyleven bashers seem to have: that Morris' rate stats were more of a product of pitching to the score than a discrepancy of talent.
Which made me think: is there any relevance to this? Did Morris bear down more when it was close, or did Blyleven tail off?
Thanks to baseball-reference.com again, accessing the split statistics for each pitcher is simple. With some quick spreadsheet math, the results for each pitcher can be found here .
By looking in the labeled tabs (the ones with the word margin in them), we can see how each pitcher was hit in his career given the run differential.
One thing both pitchers have in common is a "peak" formation in their run distribution, or when the run difference is zero or greater than four, saw each pitcher at their best. That, however, is where the difference seems to end.
The most notable aspect of these numbers? Blyleven was better in every split. A quick look at this runs per plate appearance chart proves this:
Not only was Blyleven's runs allowed better in each split, his OPS percentage against was also better than Morris's.
So, according to the statistics, Blyleven was a better pitcher in every significant game score scenario. The fact that we still have men tasked to choose the best of all time who argue for Morris' inclusion, but Blyleven's exclusion, shows how unfortunate it is that old perceptions die hard.
Later on, I will write again about the second argument for Jack Morris and why it is also a roundabout support of Blyleven: Bert's big postseason moment.
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