Sutton, Niekro and Blyleven

My purpose here is to promote Ron Guidry's candidacy for the Hall of Fame, not deride Bert Blyleven's candidacy or anyone else's. I've raised the subject of Bert Blyleven in two posts for one very simple reason: Blyleven perfectly illustrates the difference between my conception of the Hall of Fame and the conception of those who focus almost exclusively on the accumulation of gaudy career statistics. In my view, the other camp is missing the forest for the trees. The best way to demonstrate the basic differences between the pro-Bert and anti-Bert camps (and, by so doing, describe how the two camps view the Hall of Fame differently) is to compare Bert once again to two pitchers whom Bert-Backers love to cite: Don Sutton and Phil Neikro.

The Bert Backers argue that Bert is essentially the same as Sutton and Neikro but with two important qualifications: Bert fell just short of the essentially arbitrary 300 win threshold, and Bert had materially better ERAs (in fact, Bert's advantage over Neikro in ERA+ is really not very significant - 118 to 115). These are fair and compelling arguments. Blyleven's statistics generally compare quite favorably to Sutton's and Niekro's.

But there's one area where the difference between Blyleven, on the one hand, and Sutton and Niekro, on the other, is quite striking. This difference virtually leaps from the pages of the baseball encyclopedias. Both Sutton and Niekro consistently and significantly outperformed their teams over an extended period while receiving run support comparable to that afforded the other pitchers on the staff. Bert Blyleven did not.

The Crux of the Matter

There is an army of Blyleven Backers deployed across the internet armed with three and four letter statistical acronyms - RSAA, WARP, RCAP - designed to demonstrate that Blyleven would have been a consistent big winner if only he'd played for better teams and received better run support. They purport to prove that Bert would have won 313 games with better run support, or that his mediocre .537 career win percentage would have been .570, or that he'd have won 20 games in a season more than once if only he had been backed by elite teams rather than also-rans. They have an explanation for everything, a rationalization for every glaring deficiency in Bert's Hall of Fame qualifications.

But there's one thing - one really big thing - that they just can't seem to explain: why wasn't Bert a consistent big winner when he actually played for good teams that gave him solid offensive support? Because it is a fact that Blyleven pitched for some very good teams that gave him very good support, and Bert still couldn't put up Hall of Fame numbers.

By my count Bert pitched eight seasons for teams that either won 90 or more games, were serious contenders for division titles, or both. These teams won two World Series, three division titles and finished 2nd three other times. They had a cumulative .562 winning percentage. Bert made 261 starts over these eight seasons and pitched more than 1800 innings. Here's his record for these eight seasons:

100-83, .546 win percentage, 3.55 ERA.

The simple fact is that Bert averaged 12.5 wins per season for these eight years and had a lower winning percentage - .546 - than the .562 winning percentage posted by his teams. But Bert's battalions tell us we should ignore what actually happened when Bert pitched for good teams and instead believe what they tell us Bert would have done if those mediocre Twins and Indians teams had been powerhouses.

The Biggest Games Of Their Lives

That's Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling after winning the 2001 World Series and being selected as co-MVPs. Here's what you get if you aggregate the September pennant race numbers and the post-seasons numbers for each pitcher, subtracting any games pitched after clinching or elimination.*

These were undoubtedly the biggest games in the careers of these pitchers. Again, it is notable that Guidry won more games in significantly fewer starts than Schilling or Johnson.

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* Schilling won games after his team clinched playoff spots in '93 and '05 and won a game after the D'backs were eliminated in 2000. Guidry won a game after elimination in '83. Johnson was blown out in a game after the D'backs had been eliminated in 2000.

Guidry in Sept/Oct = McLain '68

When Guidry's post-season statistics are added to his '77 to '85 September pennant race statistics they bear a striking resemblance to the historic season of another pitcher. It gives you some idea of exactly how dominating Guidry was in the biggest games in September and October.

The nominal ERAs aren't that similar, but the ERA+ is much closer (McLain's nominal ERA came in the Year of the Pitcher, after all).