Want proof the best ways to get into the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame is to be a “good guy,” pitch for 20 years and to be buddies with sports reporters?
Look no further than Bert Blyleven.
Blyleven, after years of being kept out of the Hall of Fame, finally got in after years of alleged injustice against him.
Sports writers have long attempted to get Blyleven in the Hall – I’m convinced one of the job requirements at Sports Illustrated, for example, is to believe Blyleven is a slam dunk Hall of Famer.
Still, good for him. By all intentions, he wasn’t a bad guy and he was a good pitcher.
However, here’s why he would not have been on my Hall of Fame ballot.
• His 162-game average each season was 14-12. Averaging 14 wins isn’t bad. Averaging 12 losses a year isn’t Hall worthy. I don’t care if he pitched on bad teams or not. Archie Manning isn’t in the NFL Hall of Fame, after all.
• Only twice in his career did he have enough wins in a season to rank in the Top 5 of all MLB pitchers. However, in five separate seasons, he was in the Top 5 in terms of having the most losses for a starting pitcher.
• He lost at least 16 games six times.
• He won 20 games once during his career. Fun fact – Paul Splittorff, along with 12 other pitchers, won 20 games that year. It should be noted Blyleven lost 17 games that year as well.
• During a two-season in 1986 and 1987, Blyleven gave up 96 home-runs to opposing batters. NINETY SIX!!
• He finished top three in the Cy Young voting a whopping two times. He finished in the Top 7 just four times and never finished higher than third place. I realize individual awards can be overrated somewhat. However, they reflect who was a dominant pitcher in an individual season. Blyleven barely registered on the radar most seasons.
• Blyleven had six losing seasons in his career – with four of them coming before the age of 32. In other words, he wasn’t like Willie Mays in a Mets jersey. He had losing seasons during his prime.
In all due respect, Blyleven is not a Hall of Famer.
