A New Year's Resolution Suggestion from Batling Chris:
We, the Baseball Writers Association of America, do hereby resolve to get our act together and vote Bert Blyleven in the Hall of Fame. After years of shamefully ignoring his objective accomplishments, which are included below.287 wins, good enough for 25th all-time.
3,701 K's, good enough for 5th all-time. Incidentally, he's the only
player in the top 12 not named Roger Clemens or Randy Johnson that's
not in the Hall.60 career shutouts, good enough for 9th all-time. Everyone else in
the top 25 is in the Hall, except former Twin Luis Tiant (T-21st with
49).He was a workhorse: 13th all-time in IP (the top 12 are all in the
Hall, and he's ahead of guys like Seaver and Mathewson). 9th all-time
in Games Started.In addition, we resolve to take into account subjective
accomplishments and the extenuating circumstances leading to
Blyleven's failure to reach 300 wins, which would have led to his
enshrinement long ago.He had, by almost all accounts, the nastiest curveball around. Dave
Winfield (a pretty good ballplayer himself), called Bert's curve "a
bowel-locking, jelly-leg-inducing curveball."He just has to lead the all-time list in going the distance for a
team, keeping them close, only to watch Rivas-esque players ground out
weakly to short to lose another 1-0 game.He played for some pretty garbage teams in his day, including the
Twins, Rangers, Pirates, Indians, and Angels. Hence the Radke-like
run support.He pitched in a statistically significant amount of hitter-friendly
ballparks, turning a lot of warning-track fly balls into just-barely
home runs.In the 1979 season with the Pirates, Bert ran into an arm-saving
manager, Chuck Tanner, who routinely held top starters to seven
innings and often fewer. Not normally a problem, except that the '79
Pirates didn't have much of a pen (Tanner ignored the arm-saving
philosophy for the playoffs, and they won the Series). Bert lost five
games that year. He had 20 no-decisions (a record).For all these reasons and more, we apologize for screwing Bert over
for all of these years. Like clockwork, he was ignored in Cy Young
voting every year, and to ignore him again would be a crime beyond all
redemption. Bert, we're sorry. And we're sorry Rivas is still in
baseball. That guy totally sucks.