1985 was a great year for Mattingly, but as others pointed out, Brett had a better year. Mattingly had 145 RBI that year, but Eddie Murray was a better RBI guy that year despite being 21 behind...and Mattingly won MVP over Brett because of that RBI total.
Brett did have a better year, and so did Henderson. In 1985, Mattingly was not even the best Yankee.
The silly MVP notwithstanding, 1985 was not Mattingly's best season, 1986 was. But the MVP vote in 1986 was ridiculous. They gave the MVP to Clemens, which is sort of defensible, but the best player in the AL (and the majors) that year was Boggs, and he came in 7th (7th!!!) in the voting.
The moral of the story, as I've mentioned a couple thousand times, is do NOT pay any attention to who won which awards in which years. They go to the wrong people constantly. Think for yourself, look up the stats yourself, and you can see who the best players were for yourself.
This is for you @thisistheshow - Jim Rice was actually a pretty good player.
1985 was a great year for Mattingly, but as others pointed out, Brett had a better year. Mattingly had 145 RBI that year, but Eddie Murray was a better RBI guy that year despite being 21 behind...and Mattingly won MVP over Brett because of that RBI total.
Brett did have a better year, and so did Henderson. In 1985, Mattingly was not even the best Yankee.
The silly MVP notwithstanding, 1985 was not Mattingly's best season, 1986 was. But the MVP vote in 1986 was ridiculous. They gave the MVP to Clemens, which is sort of defensible, but the best player in the AL (and the majors) that year was Boggs, and he came in 7th (7th!!!) in the voting.
The moral of the story, as I've mentioned a couple thousand times, is do NOT pay any attention to who won which awards in which years. They go to the wrong people constantly. Think for yourself, look up the stats yourself, and you can see who the best players were for yourself.
Agree.
1986 Jim Rice finished higher than Boggs. That was the time when the most RBI on the winningest team got the nod...even though Boggs was better than Rice.
Henderson won Mattingly the MVP in 1985 by getting on base and scoring in front of him to such a high degree, but Mattingly got all the credit via the RBI stat.
Boggs is still the only player to get elected to the HOF twice. Once on his own accord, and the second time when Rice got elected(due to a later career RBI surge to pad his total just enough to eek in, thanks to Boggs).
Henderson may become the second if Mattingly gets in.
The revamped veterans committee would be made up of some peers of those 8 players up for election. I think many of them would be upset at voting for players with the stain of steroids, at least for now. Eventually, Bonds, Clemens, McGwire (once he makes the ballot), and Palmeiro will get in, but the committee probably does not want to go easy on them the first time they are on the ballot, I would think. I think this is Schilling's year and then maybe Murphy, Mattingly, and McGriff. Would the committee really put in more than one player this year?
"So many of our DREAMS at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we SUMMON THE WILL they soon become INEVITABLE "- Christopher Reeve
It's a bizarre ballot, with half the ballot having immense star power and the other half not being nearly as good, but at least officially untainted. I mean consider that Palmeiro, with 178 on the "HoF Monitor" had only the fourth best career of those on the ballot.
None of them should be voted in. Presumably the idea of the various committees is to enshrine those who have been overlooked by the BBWAA for whatever reason, but can anyone really suggest that Bonds, Clemens, and Schilling have been "overlooked" being rejected for the tenth time only last year? Palmeiro was good enough, but suffers greatly in comparison to the others under the PED cloud. The other four are not close to the HoF standard.
I think the Committees should only meet every ten years (could be convinced to go with every five) and mostly consider those in non-playing roles. There really are only a handful of players who were overlooked for some reason, like Grich or Whitaker, maybe a Dwight Evans, but they don't get (serious) consideration anyway. At some point maybe Joe Jackson, Rose, and the PED crowd will be considered by the Committees, but again we've seen what happens when players get a second bite at the apple. We're not putting in "just missed it"s like Tommy John, Dave Parker, Dave Concepcion, or Steve Garvey (none of whom are nearly good enough as players), but rather the likes of the immortal Chick Hafey who had the distinction of not only finishing 25th in MVP voting his only All-Star season, but also managed to be considered 12 times on the BBWAA ballot despite only reaching 5% of the vote twice.
A final word on Mattingly: for those who wish to excuse his mediocre (overall) career due to injury and compare him to Koufax. That only works if you play his career in reverse, omitting his first two seasons. It was possible to believe that Koufax (less so Munson and Clemente) went out at the top of his career, but Mattingly was no longer great for his last EIGHT SEASONS, and not even good for the last six. There is no one on earth who thinks, as could possibly said of Koufax or Puckett, that if he could just play another year or two that he'd be a unquestionable HoFer (because based solely on the numbers both Koufax and Puckett are horrific mistakes).
I always looked at Mattingly as the reverse of Koufax. Sandy was average at best the first half of his career and lights out the second half, which ended with injury.
Imagine if Mattinglys career had been similar. Take the second half, after he was injured and make that the first half. Imagine he finished with his 1984-87 seasons and then had a major injury and had to retire.
would his support have been much greater? I would imagine so. Had Koufax started out on fire and then gradually faded for 6 or 7 years to finish out, how would he have been viewed?
@craig44 said:
I always looked at Mattingly as the reverse of Koufax. Sandy was average at best the first half of his career and lights out the second half, which ended with injury.
Imagine if Mattinglys career had been similar. Take the second half, after he was injured and make that the first half. Imagine he finished with his 1984-87 seasons and then had a major injury and had to retire.
would his support have been much greater? I would imagine so. Had Koufax started out on fire and then gradually faded for 6 or 7 years to finish out, how would he have been viewed?
I don't understand the logic.
Mattingly comes into the Majors and in his second full season becomes an absolute stud, has 4 superb seasons then 2 good/great ones, has an injury, plays through it, improved, but loses power. Retires at 34.
Don's ability to hit for power was lost by a freakish injury, he had one terrible year then became a .290 hitter with about a 115 OPS+ for 4 seasons. His final year was not very good, but he did manage 32 doubles and a .290 BA.
Koufax comes to the Majors and is below average for SEVEN YEARS, has a very good year, then has 4 superb seasons (three of those four, he was not great on the road) and is done by the age of 30.
Doesn't make sense that Sandy's first seven years are ignored, then his road performance is overlooked.
His final year was a masterpiece though.
I can't ignore those 7 seasons where Koufax had all the ability in the world and was not a good player.
2013,14 and 15 Certificate Award Winner Harmon Killebrew Master Set and Master Topps Set
@craig44 said:
I always looked at Mattingly as the reverse of Koufax. Sandy was average at best the first half of his career and lights out the second half, which ended with injury.
Imagine if Mattinglys career had been similar. Take the second half, after he was injured and make that the first half. Imagine he finished with his 1984-87 seasons and then had a major injury and had to retire.
would his support have been much greater? I would imagine so. Had Koufax started out on fire and then gradually faded for 6 or 7 years to finish out, how would he have been viewed?
I don't understand the logic.
Mattingly comes into the Majors and in his second full season becomes an absolute stud, has 4 superb seasons then 2 good/great ones, has an injury, plays through it, improved, but loses power. Retires at 34.
Don's ability to hit for power was lost by a freakish injury, he had one terrible year then became a .290 hitter with about a 115 OPS+ for 4 seasons. His final year was not very good, but he did manage 32 doubles and a .290 BA.
Koufax comes to the Majors and is below average for SEVEN YEARS, has a very good year, then has 4 superb seasons (three of those four, he was not great on the road) and is done by the age of 30.
Doesn't make sense that Sandy's first seven years are ignored, then his road performance is overlooked.
His final year was a masterpiece though.
I can't ignore those 7 seasons where Koufax had all the ability in the world and was not a good player.
Its the Optics. one player sets the world on fire right out of the gates, gets injured, declines for 8 years and retires fairly quietly as a shell of his former self.
the other player starts very slowly, then ramps up and becomes one of the very best by the time he retires at 30 because of serious injury.
people do look at those two senarios differently. You know, the whole it is better to burn out than fade away.
I was asking how differently Mattinglys career would be viewed had he not faded away...
@JoeBanzai said:
I can't for the life of me understand how ONE PERSON would say that electing Puckett to the HOF is a mistake, much less to call it "horrific".
I dont have one problem with Puckett being in the HOF. if fame is part of the criteria, Kirby sure does pass muster.
I think some people look at his career out of context. in todays game, walks are valued very highly. not so much back in the 70s/80s. I fully believe puckett/gwynn/he who shall not be named, would all have improved their walk totals had they played the modern game.
@JoeBanzai said:
I can't for the life of me understand how ONE PERSON would say that electing Puckett to the HOF is a mistake, much less to call it "horrific".
I dont have one problem with Puckett being in the HOF. if fame is part of the criteria, Kirby sure does pass muster.
I think some people look at his career out of context. in todays game, walks are valued very highly. not so much back in the 70s/80s. I fully believe puckett/gwynn/he who shall not be named, would all have improved their walk totals had they played the modern game.
Its not quite that simple to wake up and decide that I'm going to walk more and also not lose my batting average and slugging percentage.
There were plenty of hitters back then who were great at drawing walks while also still hitting for elite power.
Its not something that can be easily changed as it is simply part of ones skill set. Understanding the value of it certainly can change though.
@JoeBanzai said:
I can't for the life of me understand how ONE PERSON would say that electing Puckett to the HOF is a mistake, much less to call it "horrific".
I dont have one problem with Puckett being in the HOF. if fame is part of the criteria, Kirby sure does pass muster.
I think some people look at his career out of context. in todays game, walks are valued very highly. not so much back in the 70s/80s. I fully believe puckett/gwynn/he who shall not be named, would all have improved their walk totals had they played the modern game.
Puckett was asked about why he didn't walk more, he replied that he wasn't "up there to walk, I'm up there hacking".
After becoming a starter early in his rookie season, Kirby pretty much played in every single game in the next 11years. He averaged 200 hits 40 doubles 20 home runs and was a STELLAR center fielder for about 7-8 of those years. He was improving as a hitter his last two years. Going blind in one eye tends to end a career. Oh yeah, but he didn't walk much.
Puckett was not Mantle, Mays or DiMaggio. He is a solid mid to upper level HOFer, just not up there with the best of the best.
People think it's great when a good hitter walks. Unless it's a leadoff or #2 guy, a good hitter, especially with some power, generally should be looking to drive the ball.
Lousy hitters should ALWAYS be trying to walk, since it's the only way they can help the team.
Walks were always undervalued but now the pendulum has gone too far the other way.
The analytics lovers want to make every player the same. Each player has their own strengths and weaknesses and plays a different role in the lineup.
2013,14 and 15 Certificate Award Winner Harmon Killebrew Master Set and Master Topps Set
@JoeBanzai said:
I can't for the life of me understand how ONE PERSON would say that electing Puckett to the HOF is a mistake, much less to call it "horrific".
I dont have one problem with Puckett being in the HOF. if fame is part of the criteria, Kirby sure does pass muster.
I think some people look at his career out of context. in todays game, walks are valued very highly. not so much back in the 70s/80s. I fully believe puckett/gwynn/he who shall not be named, would all have improved their walk totals had they played the modern game.
Puckett was asked about why he didn't walk more, he replied that he wasn't "up there to walk, I'm up there hacking".
After becoming a starter early in his rookie season, Kirby pretty much played in every single game in the next 11years. He averaged 200 hits 40 doubles 20 home runs and was a STELLAR center fielder for about 7-8 of those years. He was improving as a hitter his last two years. Going blind in one eye tends to end a career. Oh yeah, but he didn't walk much.
Puckett was not Mantle, Mays or DiMaggio. He is a solid mid to upper level HOFer, just not up there with the best of the best.
People think it's great when a good hitter walks. Unless it's a leadoff or #2 guy, a good hitter, especially with some power, generally should be looking to drive the ball.
Lousy hitters should ALWAYS be trying to walk, since it's the only way they can help the team.
Walks were always undervalued but now the pendulum has gone too far the other way.
The analytics lovers want to make every player the same. Each player has their own strengths and weaknesses and plays a different role in the lineup.
Lousy hitters do not walk a lot because pitchers aren't as concerned as living on the corners as they are to the elite hitters.
Some hitters walk a lot because of an extremely good eye skill set and some walk a lot because they don't have a choice because pitchers live more on the corners for them because of their great power ability(Schmidt, Mantle, Ruth). Some are a combination of both of those.
Walks have always been valued. Branch Rickey valued walks in the Jackie Robinson era.
Hitting .360 with no walks is not as good as hitting .360 with a lot of walks. (Prime Gwynn vs Prime Boggs)
Hitting 35 home runs with no walks is not as good as hitting 35 home runs with a ton of walks (Joe carter vs mike schmidt).
Its not like Joe Carter could just decide to walk 100 times and STILL hit 35 home runs. He wasn't capable of that.
Its not like Gwynn could just wake up and decide to draw 100 walks and still hit .360 and maintain his low strikeout total. He swung at a lot of pitches because he was good at making contact...but Boggs was a better hitter in their prime because Boggs could hit for the same average but also get on base more because Boggs had better plate discipline in addition to his elite skill set.
@JoeBanzai said:
I can't for the life of me understand how ONE PERSON would say that electing Puckett to the HOF is a mistake, much less to call it "horrific".
I dont have one problem with Puckett being in the HOF. if fame is part of the criteria, Kirby sure does pass muster.
I think some people look at his career out of context. in todays game, walks are valued very highly. not so much back in the 70s/80s. I fully believe puckett/gwynn/he who shall not be named, would all have improved their walk totals had they played the modern game.
Not quite so simple to just decide to walk more. It is a skill much like any other skill. Extremely good hitters will get more walks too by virtue of being so powerful that pitchers are more willing to live on the corners more so than other hitters.
The last ten years in MLB the walk rate is actually lower than it was for the decade of the 1980's. The understanding of the value of a walk is a bit higher though....although many valued walks back then and even as far back as Branch Rickey(and even further too).
Just common sense tells you that pitchers were told to NOT walk hitters forever....so you know they were always valued.
@JoeBanzai said:
I can't for the life of me understand how ONE PERSON would say that electing Puckett to the HOF is a mistake, much less to call it "horrific".
I dont have one problem with Puckett being in the HOF. if fame is part of the criteria, Kirby sure does pass muster.
I think some people look at his career out of context. in todays game, walks are valued very highly. not so much back in the 70s/80s. I fully believe puckett/gwynn/he who shall not be named, would all have improved their walk totals had they played the modern game.
Its not quite that simple to wake up and decide that I'm going to walk more and also not lose my batting average and slugging percentage.
There were plenty of hitters back then who were great at drawing walks while also still hitting for elite power.
Its not something that can be easily changed as it is simply part of ones skill set. Understanding the value of it certainly can change though.
of course players can train and change their skill sets. they do it in all sports. What is preached in MLB now? Launch angle and high Velo for pitchers. what are the players doing? they are working at swinging at max effort and improving their launch angles. that is why we dont see players with gwynn, boggs, carew skillsets anymore. they are not training for it.
Pitchers are trained to throw max effort for 1-5 innings. that is what we see happening. The human body has not evolved (if you believe in such things) enough in the last 50-100 years that players just started averaging 100mph on fastballs. they are training their bodies to perform such feats because they are valued at present.
look at NBA. they have moved from a center oriented post up game to launching 3's
NFL, has moved from big time defenses and featured backs to very throw heavy offenses.
Puckett is a low tier HOFer. This goes back many years, and I doubt anyone here remembers it, but I posted something about players who were "similar". For this purpose, two players that were 100% "similar" would have the same number of Win Shares in their best season, second best season, and so on throughout their entire careers. A slap-hitting shortstop might be similar to a power-hitting outfielder; the "similarity" is only in the number of Win Shares each season.
The ten players most similar to Puckett are, in order, Rocky Colavito, Bobby Bonds, Larry Doyle, Bobby Veach, Mickey Cochrane, George Burns, Boog Powell, Orlando Cepeda, Jimmy Collins, and Ken Boyer.
Now, there's not a bad player in that group, but there are only a few HOFers, and they are lower-tier HOFers (except Cochrane, but catchers are never comparable straight up to other players). Mostly, these are players that get talked about for the HOF but don't get in.
The 10 most similar players to Gwynn are Carew, Yount, Magee, Stargell, Killebrew, Burkett, Ripken, Raines, Bench, and Wheat. An entirely different class of players.
This is for you @thisistheshow - Jim Rice was actually a pretty good player.
@JoeBanzai said:
I can't for the life of me understand how ONE PERSON would say that electing Puckett to the HOF is a mistake, much less to call it "horrific".
I dont have one problem with Puckett being in the HOF. if fame is part of the criteria, Kirby sure does pass muster.
I think some people look at his career out of context. in todays game, walks are valued very highly. not so much back in the 70s/80s. I fully believe puckett/gwynn/he who shall not be named, would all have improved their walk totals had they played the modern game.
Its not quite that simple to wake up and decide that I'm going to walk more and also not lose my batting average and slugging percentage.
There were plenty of hitters back then who were great at drawing walks while also still hitting for elite power.
Its not something that can be easily changed as it is simply part of ones skill set. Understanding the value of it certainly can change though.
of course players can train and change their skill sets. they do it in all sports. What is preached in MLB now? Launch angle and high Velo for pitchers. what are the players doing? they are working at swinging at max effort and improving their launch angles. that is why we dont see players with gwynn, boggs, carew skillsets anymore. they are not training for it.
Pitchers are trained to throw max effort for 1-5 innings. that is what we see happening. The human body has not evolved (if you believe in such things) enough in the last 50-100 years that players just started averaging 100mph on fastballs. they are training their bodies to perform such feats because they are valued at present.
look at NBA. they have moved from a center oriented post up game to launching 3's
NFL, has moved from big time defenses and featured backs to very throw heavy offenses.
You can train an area sure, but no matter how much you do it, others with a better skill set in that area is going to be better. No matter how much he tries, Omar Vizquel isn't going to hit 50 home runs.
A batting eye is mostly engrained. Not a whole lot you can do to it without messing everything else up.
You are acting as if nobody drew walks in the 1980's or knew the value of it. Don Mattingly's own teammate was Rickey Henderson...and they all knew the value of a walk.
So Mike Schmidt knew the value of walks back then but Joe Carter didn't?
Wade Boggs knew the value of them but Tony Gwynn didn't?
It kind of reminds of how people say, "ichiro could have hit 30 home runs if he wanted to." Yeah, maybe he could have...but could he have done that while still hitting .350? No. If he could have he would have. If he could have and didn't then he would have been a moron. Home Runs were valued in 2001, no?
The reality is that Tony Gwynn could only hit .360 by being a high volume swinger while possessing great bat to ball ability. Any attempt to hit .360 and also draw 100 walks would most likely make his average plummet and completely screw himself up.
They are what they are. Schmidt hit for elite power and had elite batting eye to also draw walks. That makes him better than Dave Kingman who had elite power but not the ability to draw walks. You don't think Kingman would train to have Mike Schmidt's resume when he sees Schmidt winning MVP's and getting paid all that money? If he could he would.
Even today with the known value of walks, there are hitters who still cannot draw 100 walks while hitting for great power. They all know the value of hit, so why not do both?
Because guys who can have elite slugging percentage and elite on base percentage are known as the best hitters in the game . You can't just train your way to that when you aren't capable of it.
Three pointers have ZERO bearing on baseball hitting. zero. NO sport has an equal comparison to that sector. None.
@JoeBanzai said:
I can't for the life of me understand how ONE PERSON would say that electing Puckett to the HOF is a mistake, much less to call it "horrific".
I dont have one problem with Puckett being in the HOF. if fame is part of the criteria, Kirby sure does pass muster.
I think some people look at his career out of context. in todays game, walks are valued very highly. not so much back in the 70s/80s. I fully believe puckett/gwynn/he who shall not be named, would all have improved their walk totals had they played the modern game.
Its not quite that simple to wake up and decide that I'm going to walk more and also not lose my batting average and slugging percentage.
There were plenty of hitters back then who were great at drawing walks while also still hitting for elite power.
Its not something that can be easily changed as it is simply part of ones skill set. Understanding the value of it certainly can change though.
of course players can train and change their skill sets. they do it in all sports. What is preached in MLB now? Launch angle and high Velo for pitchers. what are the players doing? they are working at swinging at max effort and improving their launch angles. that is why we dont see players with gwynn, boggs, carew skillsets anymore. they are not training for it.
Pitchers are trained to throw max effort for 1-5 innings. that is what we see happening. The human body has not evolved (if you believe in such things) enough in the last 50-100 years that players just started averaging 100mph on fastballs. they are training their bodies to perform such feats because they are valued at present.
look at NBA. they have moved from a center oriented post up game to launching 3's
NFL, has moved from big time defenses and featured backs to very throw heavy offenses.
You can train an area sure, but no matter how much you do it, others with a better skill set in that area is going to be better. No matter how much he tries, Omar Vizquel isn't going to hit 50 home runs.
A batting eye is mostly engrained. Not a whole lot you can do to it without messing everything else up.
You are acting as if nobody drew walks in the 1980's or knew the value of it. Don Mattingly's own teammate was Rickey Henderson...and they all knew the value of a walk.
So Mike Schmidt knew the value of walks back then but Joe Carter didn't?
Wade Boggs knew the value of them but Tony Gwynn didn't?
It kind of reminds of how people say, "ichiro could have hit 30 home runs if he wanted to." Yeah, maybe he could have...but could he have done that while still hitting .350? No. If he could have he would have. If he could have and didn't then he would have been a moron. Home Runs were valued in 2001, no?
The reality is that Tony Gwynn could only hit .360 by being a high volume swinger while possessing great bat to ball ability. Any attempt to hit .360 and also draw 100 walks would most likely make his average plummet and completely screw himself up.
They are what they are. Schmidt hit for elite power and had elite batting eye to also draw walks. That makes him better than Dave Kingman who had elite power but not the ability to draw walks. You don't think Kingman would train to have Mike Schmidt's resume when he sees Schmidt winning MVP's and getting paid all that money? If he could he would.
Even today with the known value of walks, there are hitters who still cannot draw 100 walks while hitting for great power. They all know the value of hit, so why not do both?
Because guys who can have elite slugging percentage and elite on base percentage are known as the best hitters in the game . You can't just train your way to that when you aren't capable of it.
Three pointers have ZERO bearing on baseball hitting. zero. NO sport has an equal comparison to that sector. None.
look at it in the context of the times. I live in NE and remember well how many complained about Boggs standing at the plate with the bat never leaving his shoulder to take a walk. it was not looked at kindly. back then, most people wanted the best players to hit. especially with men on base. they wanted them to look to hit, even balls off the plate. it is just how it was viewed then.
@JoeBanzai said:
I can't for the life of me understand how ONE PERSON would say that electing Puckett to the HOF is a mistake, much less to call it "horrific".
I dont have one problem with Puckett being in the HOF. if fame is part of the criteria, Kirby sure does pass muster.
I think some people look at his career out of context. in todays game, walks are valued very highly. not so much back in the 70s/80s. I fully believe puckett/gwynn/he who shall not be named, would all have improved their walk totals had they played the modern game.
Its not quite that simple to wake up and decide that I'm going to walk more and also not lose my batting average and slugging percentage.
There were plenty of hitters back then who were great at drawing walks while also still hitting for elite power.
Its not something that can be easily changed as it is simply part of ones skill set. Understanding the value of it certainly can change though.
of course players can train and change their skill sets. they do it in all sports. What is preached in MLB now? Launch angle and high Velo for pitchers. what are the players doing? they are working at swinging at max effort and improving their launch angles. that is why we dont see players with gwynn, boggs, carew skillsets anymore. they are not training for it.
Pitchers are trained to throw max effort for 1-5 innings. that is what we see happening. The human body has not evolved (if you believe in such things) enough in the last 50-100 years that players just started averaging 100mph on fastballs. they are training their bodies to perform such feats because they are valued at present.
look at NBA. they have moved from a center oriented post up game to launching 3's
NFL, has moved from big time defenses and featured backs to very throw heavy offenses.
You can train an area sure, but no matter how much you do it, others with a better skill set in that area is going to be better. No matter how much he tries, Omar Vizquel isn't going to hit 50 home runs.
A batting eye is mostly engrained. Not a whole lot you can do to it without messing everything else up.
You are acting as if nobody drew walks in the 1980's or knew the value of it. Don Mattingly's own teammate was Rickey Henderson...and they all knew the value of a walk.
So Mike Schmidt knew the value of walks back then but Joe Carter didn't?
Wade Boggs knew the value of them but Tony Gwynn didn't?
It kind of reminds of how people say, "ichiro could have hit 30 home runs if he wanted to." Yeah, maybe he could have...but could he have done that while still hitting .350? No. If he could have he would have. If he could have and didn't then he would have been a moron. Home Runs were valued in 2001, no?
The reality is that Tony Gwynn could only hit .360 by being a high volume swinger while possessing great bat to ball ability. Any attempt to hit .360 and also draw 100 walks would most likely make his average plummet and completely screw himself up.
They are what they are. Schmidt hit for elite power and had elite batting eye to also draw walks. That makes him better than Dave Kingman who had elite power but not the ability to draw walks. You don't think Kingman would train to have Mike Schmidt's resume when he sees Schmidt winning MVP's and getting paid all that money? If he could he would.
Even today with the known value of walks, there are hitters who still cannot draw 100 walks while hitting for great power. They all know the value of hit, so why not do both?
Because guys who can have elite slugging percentage and elite on base percentage are known as the best hitters in the game . You can't just train your way to that when you aren't capable of it.
Three pointers have ZERO bearing on baseball hitting. zero. NO sport has an equal comparison to that sector. None.
look at it in the context of the times. I live in NE and remember well how many complained about Boggs standing at the plate with the bat never leaving his shoulder to take a walk. it was not looked at kindly. back then, most people wanted the best players to hit. especially with men on base. they wanted them to look to hit, even balls off the plate. it is just how it was viewed then.
To a degree yes it was....but that has nothing to do with the ability to change the way you hit and automatically learn to draw walks while maintaining a high BA/SLG. Hitters are what they are.
Understanding the value of hitters who can slug and walk, and scouting for ones to populate your team with, now that is a different story and more in line with what you were saying above.
Again, look at today's game. EVERYONE knows the value of a walk, so there is no excuse then for hitters to not be able to draw walks. I won't use Mike Trout as an example because people get confused because his team stinks.
So I will use Alex Bregman. He is a two time world champion and goes to the WS almost every year so I won't hear anything from that foolish "not a winner" crowd.
Knowing the value of a walk, if hitters had the ability to all of a sudden start drawing more walks, then why don't they?
Alex Bregman averages 28 home runs per 162 games and 89 walks per 162 games.
Why are there still other hitters only averaging 35 o4 40 walks a game?
Why doesn't Javy Baez just copy Bregman then?? Baez has the power. Why does he choose to walk only 15 times a year if walking more is a choice?
Because he can't. If he could he would. Just like everyone else who could, according to your point, just choose to walk 80-100 times a year.
Its not something you can change. If hitters could they would. So the notion that Puckett could have decided to be Mickey Mantle and add a .420 OBP to his resume is foolish.
Also, don't forget that the pitchers treatment of these hitters is a big part as well. Ted Williams got a lot of walks party from a great eye and the other part was he hit the ball so well that they were more willing to dance around him.
P:S any fan, even back then, that couldn't see Bogg's value due to his high OBP, probably should not have been in any real baseball conversation. Seems those fans are the ones yelling at a player to just move out of the way when a 99 MPH fastball hits him in the helmet because they see the replay in slow motion.
@1948_Swell_Robinson said:
Why does Mattingly get extra credit for accounting for injury but Fred Lynn or Pedro Guerrero don't? Or anyone else for that matter?
At least Mattingly was able to play with his injury. Others had to miss a lot of time and it hurt them more.
I agree with this. If one player gets credit for injury, they all should. or none.
I remember hearing how some people described Boggs as a mere singles hitter and really not a player that can be considered great. Their argument was that he had to hit with some power to be great. I never believed that, but there are people who stated this. Home runs may be flashy, but getting walks, singles and doubles also gets the job done, especially with the frequency that Boggs did it in.
As far as injuries go, it has to be analyzed in proper context. It does not entitle a player to bonus consideration, but it has to be taken into account as part of the conversation.
I appreciate all the analytical metrics Dallasactuary has presented. It is an important element to consider. Some other noteworthy ones would be baseball contribution or any innovation to the sport. For example, Bruce Sutter had an excellent 12 year career in MLB. What put him over the top to enshrinement is the fact that he was a pioneer in the split finger fastball. He popularized it.
First base had been typically a position where you put your worst defensive player with a great bat. When Mattingly and Hernandez came onto the scene, they revolutionized the position as something that had to be mastered and prepared for. It was no longer a dumping ground of defensive liabilities, but a place to put in the right player for the job. Since then, the position is looked at with more concern over the defensive abilities of a player. John Olerud, Mark McGwire, Kent Hrbek, Rafael Palmeiro, etc, who played beyond when both Mattingly and Hernandez retired, all had a decent glove and not considered defensive liabilities that needed protection or be hidden to cause the least damage.
The DH was a position popularized by Harold Baines. He made it into a position and not a fill in the blank position for each game. It was not a place to simply insert someone to take an at-bat like some glorified pinch hit opportunity or a place to put a baseball veteran with bad knees. It became an actual position occupied full time by one player. Edgar Martinez might have been the premier DH, but it all started with Harold Baines. This is why he was voted into the HOF. I know his metrics are a discussion sore spot, but I wanted to put it in perspective and under a different lens.
It is called the Hall of Fame, not the Hall of Sabermetrics. If it was the latter, perhaps we could develop artificial intelligence to do the induction for us.
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I agree with this. If one player gets credit for injury, they all should. or none.
And in the context of determining how good a player actually was, as opposed to how good he mighta coulda been, the answer is always "none".
To amuse myself, I looked at four players and their annual Win Shares from best season to worst:
First, notice how remarkably similar they are at the top; they even all have the exact same third best season, and virtual ties at best season and fourth and fifth best seasons. In any event, for 7 seasons they're virtually indistinguishable. But after that, the two guys on the left keep putting up quality numbers for five or six years while the guys on the right slide steadily out of the game.
One of the guys on the left is Hernandez and the other is Orlando Cepeda. One of the guys on the right is Mattingly and the other is Roy White. I'm a big fan of Roy White, and he was a very good player. But he was not as good as Orlando Cepeda, and he does not belong in the HOF. He was also indistinguishable from Don Mattingly.
This is for you @thisistheshow - Jim Rice was actually a pretty good player.
@JoeBanzai said:
I can't for the life of me understand how ONE PERSON would say that electing Puckett to the HOF is a mistake, much less to call it "horrific".
Not quite what I said. I said that on the numbers alone Puckett is a horrific mistake. If I told you that I had a slightly but noticeably below average defensive centerfielder with a .318/.360/.477 slash line (in the late '80s to early '90s) with a 124 OPS+, 207 HR, and 1085 RBI there is just no way you would say that guy is a superstar, much less an All-Time Great.
As far as defense goes, can we please put to bed the idea that Puckett was average, much less superb? Absolutely no doubt that Puckett was superb in 1984. Not 2002 Darin Erstad superb, but likely in the top 10-20 all-time best CF seasons. In 1985 he was still good to very good, and certainly better than the gold glove winners that year (nowhere near as good as Jesse Barfield's numbers but his are one of a very few I suspect). But from 1986 to 1995 he was just bad. Moving him to right field didn't help. So instead of saying he was superb, we should figure out what changed in the 1985-86 offseason. Well, in his first two years, Puckett just couldn't hit. His 86 OPS+ ranked 45 of 62 full-time outfielders in that period. His 4 home runs (in 1327 PA) was tied with, for example, Mike Greenwell (34 PA) for 43rd. His 105 RBI tied George Vukovich for 24th. In 1986 he hit 31 HR, with 96 RBI and a 142 OPS+.
From 1985 to 1986 he went from 175 pounds to 225. Please understand that I am in no way suggesting that Puckett used PEDs, but the weight gain and ensuing health problems would be coincident with expectations. I may be slightly overstating the time frame of the weight gain, but there is little question that he became much heavier, a much better hitter, and lost his fielding speed and agility around that tine. The reason people think he was a good fielder is because he played deeply enough to save some home runs (Game 6 of the 1991 World Series, for example) but how many singles dropped in front of him?
By the way, in his last decade he was eighth in the majors in "Batter Runs" behind Molitor, McGriff, and Will Clark, but his 3000 total bases was easily the most.
So, like I said, any case you can make for Puckett has to include his blindness and untimely loss of life. But a player with as many Batter Runs as Harold Baines or Ryan Klesko clearly needs something more (even a bunch of cronies on a Committee) to be enshrined. The numbers aren't nearly good enough.
I guarantee your getting your information from looking at numbers, and rarely saw what he could do in the outfield.
I saw his entire career and Puckett was a SUPERB fielder. Not too many singles dropped in front of him by the way.
Even if they did, taking away extra base hits and home runs and giving up singles makes him a BETTER fielder, not worse.
He robbed so many batters of home runs and extra base hits with his leaping ability (amazing for a 5'8" player), that there should be a stat for it. I'd like to see how much defensive "value" you get from turning an extra base hit or certain home run into an out. Not to mention the mental effect it has, on not only the other team, but your own.
After his first two years base runners quit running on him. He didn't have a Clemente arm, but it was above average and VERY accurate. Twins announcer Dick Bremer mentioned it in a game I was watching, when I had expected an opposing player to try to go from first to third on a single to center. I watched this for several years. Most guys didn't even try. Same thing on sacrifice fly's, if they weren't deep, guys were often held at third. More stuff you have no way of knowing.
Kirby got very muscular, (and pudgy) could he have used steroids? Maybe, the years his strength and power jumped were a little before the steroid era, but it's possible. I saw a photo of him flexing his arms once, his biceps were gigantic!
The explanation for Kirby's increased power we got here in Minnesota was, Tony Olivia told Kirby to try a "leg kick" to increase his power and it worked.
You see a guy get big and you automatically assume he's slow. WRONG, until his last couple of years, he was a terrific athlete.
You mention it yourself. The fantastic catch in 1991. Wasn't he old and slow by then? He could still go get it.
His last couple of years he was moved to right field and played very well there.
By all accounts he was hitting the ball better than ever just before he lost his vision, his SLG was over .500 his last two years.
There's no argument that his 12 year career was too short to have the numbers many like to see. Too bad, he was amazing for 10 of those 12 years.
He just didn't walk enough.....LOFL.
Can't find it on the stat sheet, but he was a GREAT leader, hard worker who kept the locker room loose. No doubt a key factor in both Twins World Championships.
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So instead of saying he was superb, we should figure out what changed in the 1985-86 offseason.
Obviously I agree with you on your larger point regarding Puckett and the HOF, but I do disagree with you regarding Puckett's fielding - he was great. Not just in his early years, but in lots of years.
What changed in the 1985-1986 offseason? Bert Blyleven got healthier, Frank Viola learned how to pitch much better, and the Twins dumped John Butcher. As a result, the Twins pitchers struck out 170 more batters. When there are 170 more strikeouts, there are 170 fewer chances for the fielders so they make fewer putouts and fewer assists. If you have a fielding system that does nothing more than count up putouts and assists - like WAR - then that system will conclude that the fielders got worse when they didn't. This, and for the same and other reasons at every position, is why WAR is complete and utter crap when measuring fielding.
That's the biggest factor, but there's also the flyball vs. groundball tendency of the pitchers. Blyleven was the king of the flyball pitchers, and in the years when he was on the Twins, that helped Puckett's putouts and assists; when he left, after the 1988 season, WAR also shows the Twins outfielders getting worse. But they weren't, there were just fewer balls hit to the outfield.
Like every outfielder ever, Puckett did slowly get worse as he got older, and putting on weight probably also played a part. But it wasn't any more dramatic for Puckett than for lots of other outfielders, and since he started at the level of "phenomenal", he stayed "great" or better for close to a decade.
Interesting and relevant sidenote - no matter how good or bad a team is, they will all record the same number of outs (with insignificant variation for extra inning games and games where there is no bottom of the ninth). This leads to what Bill James calls "the false normalization" of fielding statistics. If you have a system, like WAR, that merely counts up plays in the field, every team will have the same number of plays, and every team will appear to have roughly equal fielding ability. What variation there is will come from strikeouts and flyballs vs. groundballs; if you don't take those into account then the results, at the team level, for the fielders will depend almost entirely on things completely out of their control. Yes, better fielders will get to more balls than bad fielders, but that variation can get absolutely swamped by the variation in strikeouts and flyballs.
Consider a team made up of 8 fielders with among the greatest ranges of all time, and another team of 8 with among the worst ranges. If the 8 great fielders are equally great, and the 8 bad fielders are equally bad, then each and every one of them - great and terrible alike - will make an average number of fielding plays and they will all appear to be average fielders. Think that through if you don't get it the first time - I didn't at first, either. The team with the great fielders will win a lot more games, and their pitchers will have a much lower ERA, but the fielding will appear to be about the same on each team.
Team wins and pitcher ERA aren't proof of anything, but they are indicators of the fielding ability of the team. Teams that give up fewer runs field better than teams that give up a lot of runs, almost without exception. There is not, and probably never will be, a system that can precisely measure fielding ability. WAR is not even close to that system. Win Shares gets much closer because it recognizes all of the above, and tries its best to account for it.
This is for you @thisistheshow - Jim Rice was actually a pretty good player.
The only thing I would add/change is Blyleven was the king of strikeouts who also was a flyball pitcher.
In fact, he gave up the most HR in the league in both 86&87. These balls were hit so far, even Puckett couldn't catch them.
One more thing about Kirby, he didn't crash into the wall when he made these catches like other players, often resulting in injury. He had the knack of knowing where the wall was and jumped more straight up to make those catches.
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The only thing I would add/change is Blyleven was the king of strikeouts who also was a flyball pitcher.
In fact, he gave up the most HR in the league in both 86&87. These balls were hit so far, even Puckett couldn't catch them.
One more thing about Kirby, he didn't crash into the wall when he made these catches like other players, often resulting in injury. He had the knack of knowing where the wall was and jumped more straight up to make those catches.
Ug, Blyleven should not be in the HOF, great candidate for the Hall of very good.
Kirby was a dominant player who had a short career. In that short time he won two World Series Titles and received significant MVP votes as well as other major awards during most of the years. He is deserving of the HOF.
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@gorilla glue 4 said:
94.5 WAR and 5th All Time in K's isn't HOF worthy?
...and 60 shutouts...will anyone ever do that again?....another way to look at it: 21% of his wins were shutouts. I don't know if anyone has done that before, but I DO know it'll never be done again...plus he had 287 wins playing on a lot of bad teams ...how many guys with 287 wins are NOT in the hall?
I am a firm believer in a stricter HOF. 1/4 of the current players would not be in there. It's not meant for very good players like Bert!
I mean come on with your BS about have I ever watched Baseball holier then though crap. I have watched and played a ton and Bert was never recognized as a dominant, future HOF player. He had 4 good/great seasons, and the rest are just average to good. If you take away the 4 good/great seasons and he wouldn't even be a .500 pitcher. His record would be 214 wins and 215 losses.
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I'm an idiot. Could someone throw up win shares for Dwight Evans please? Also, does the win shares stat cover fielding at all, or is it only based on hitting?
@gameusedhoop said:
I'm an idiot. Could someone throw up win shares for Dwight Evans please? Also, does the win shares stat cover fielding at all, or is it only based on hitting?
Good question. I have a similar question. Where do we find Win Share stats of each player. I checked baseball reference, but found WAR. Maybe I overlooked something?
"So many of our DREAMS at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we SUMMON THE WILL they soon become INEVITABLE "- Christopher Reeve
Some of these modern metrics really make me want to puke. Players were judged on the classic categories for like 150 years. Those yardsticks are still good enough for me. Now get off my lawn!
"My father would womanize, he would drink. He would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark. Sometimes he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy. The sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament. Our childhood was typical. Summers in Rangoon, luge lessons. In the spring we'd make meat helmets. When we were insolent we were placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds - pretty standard really."
@Cakes said:
I am a firm believer in a stricter HOF. 1/4 of the current players would not be in there. It's not meant for very good players like Bert!
I mean come on with your BS about have I ever watched Baseball holier then though crap. I have watched and played a ton and Bert was never recognized as a dominant, future HOF player. He had 4 good/great seasons, and the rest are just average to good. If you take away the 4 good/great seasons and he wouldn't even be a .500 pitcher. His record would be 214 wins and 215 losses.
Let's not take anything away from a player and then say he was average.
Wins and losses is the worst way to determine if a pitcher is good or bad.
Instead, let's look at how many years Bert was in the Top 10 in some categories that indicate if he was great;
WAR for pitchers 13 times.
Strikeouts 15 times.
Strikeouts/Walks 16 times.
ERA 10 times.
Adjusted ERA+ 12 times.
Complete games 12 times.
WHIP 11 times.
Innings pitched 11 times.
Shutouts 10 times.
A little more than 4 good years.
Now let's compare some of his lifetime numbers to Steve Carlton;
Carlton ERA 3.22
Blyleven 3.31
Carlton ERA +115
Blyleven 118
Carlton WHIP 1.247
Blyleven 1.198
JAWS Carlton 72.2
Blyleven 72.4
Both pitchers were equal in that 63% of their starts were "quality".
Post season Carlton's record was 6-6.
Blyleven 's was 5-1.
Carlton is elected in his first year of eligibility with 95.6% of the votes.
Looks to me like Bert was a LOT BETTER than you give him credit for.
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@Cakes said:
I am a firm believer in a stricter HOF. 1/4 of the current players would not be in there. It's not meant for very good players like Bert!
I mean come on with your BS about have I ever watched Baseball holier then though crap. I have watched and played a ton and Bert was never recognized as a dominant, future HOF player. He had 4 good/great seasons, and the rest are just average to good. If you take away the 4 good/great seasons and he wouldn't even be a .500 pitcher. His record would be 214 wins and 215 losses.
Let's not take anything away from a player and then say he was average.
Wins and losses is the worst way to determine if a pitcher is good or bad.
Instead, let's look at how many years Bert was in the Top 10 in some categories that indicate if he was great;
WAR for pitchers 13 times.
Strikeouts 15 times.
Strikeouts/Walks 16 times.
ERA 10 times.
Adjusted ERA+ 12 times.
Complete games 12 times.
WHIP 11 times.
Innings pitched 11 times.
Shutouts 10 times.
A little more than 4 good years.
Now let's compare some of his lifetime numbers to Steve Carlton;
Carlton ERA 3.22
Blyleven 3.31
Carlton ERA +115
Blyleven 118
Carlton WHIP 1.247
Blyleven 1.198
JAWS Carlton 72.2
Blyleven 72.4
Both pitchers were equal in that 63% of their starts were "quality".
Post season Carlton's record was 6-6.
Blyleven 's was 5-1.
Carlton is elected in his first year of eligibility with 95.6% of the votes.
Looks to me like Bert was a LOT BETTER than you give him credit for.
I had already stated I am a firm believer in a stricter HOF. 1/4 of the current players would not be in there. It's not meant for very good players like Bert! I agree he was a very good pitcher, that helped multiple teams win the World Series but he wasn't a great player like the HOF should be reserved for.
IMHO if the Major sports continue to water down their HOF's they should consider having a special section for the greats! Respectfully people are not going to the HOF to see Bert. When they see his plaque they probably do a double take and say either: I didn't know he was in the HOF or damn how the hell did he make the HOF.
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Blyleven gathered up a lot of wins, a lot of losses and a whole lot of innings over 22 seasons. But what did he really do? He never won a Cy Young Award, never once led the league in wins, or ERA, and only once led in strikeouts (that came in 1985 when, somehow, nobody else punched out more than Blyleven’s 206). Finally, he only got named to two All-Star teams. Now think about that; an all-time “great” appearing just twice out of 22 seasons in the Midsummer Classic? Yes, Blyleven has two rings to vouch for, but people don’t recall the 1979 Pittsburgh Pirates and 1987 Minnesota Twins winning it all because of him. He was an ace to be sure, but his enshrinement in Cooperstown is an achievement in quantity, not quality.
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@gameusedhoop said:
I'm an idiot. Could someone throw up win shares for Dwight Evans please? Also, does the win shares stat cover fielding at all, or is it only based on hitting?
To the best of my knowledge, the only way to find Win Shares is to buy Bill James' book Win Shares. It has annual Win Shares for every major League player from 1876 through 2001. What separates Win Shares from WAR and every other system I've ever seen is that it does cover fielding, and it covers it as well as I think it can be covered with statistics.
Whether you are as fascinated with the mathematics of it as much as I am or not, I guarantee you will enjoy both Win Shares and Historical Baseball Abstract (where James ranks the top 100 at each position) immensely, and you'll return to them over and over again for reference.
This is for you @thisistheshow - Jim Rice was actually a pretty good player.
@Cakes said:
Blyleven gathered up a lot of wins, a lot of losses and a whole lot of innings over 22 seasons. But what did he really do? He never won a Cy Young Award, never once led the league in wins, or ERA, and only once led in strikeouts (that came in 1985 when, somehow, nobody else punched out more than Blyleven’s 206). Finally, he only got named to two All-Star teams. Now think about that; an all-time “great” appearing just twice out of 22 seasons in the Midsummer Classic? Yes, Blyleven has two rings to vouch for, but people don’t recall the 1979 Pittsburgh Pirates and 1987 Minnesota Twins winning it all because of him. He was an ace to be sure, but his enshrinement in Cooperstown is an achievement in quantity, not quality.
>
Blyleven is unique in the fact that the players he is most often compared to (Jenkins, Carlton, Palmer, Gaylord, Marichal, Sutton, Kaat and to a lesser extent Seaver) all started their careers well before Bert. It's only because he burst onto the scene so quickly and had that big early 70's success (on bad teams) that he was considered their peer. Everyone says Blyleven is just a stat collector but he didn't get the benefit those guys did in the late 60's with the 40-Start seasons. He would have collected even more stats. But, he still ended his career with 242 career complete games and 60 shutouts.
This is just a take and not necessarily a defense of Bert "Be Home" Blyleven's HOF credentials. I'm on the side of less is more in the HOF. I would definitely prefer that Blyleven/Kaat/Neikro/Smoltz/Perry/Mussina/Morris/ not be in the HOF.
I learned a long time ago that down the path of arguing with someone who leads off their side of the argument with W/L records lies nothing but pain, and when the rest of the argument relies on what other people think (awards, All Stars, etc.), the pain will be excruciating. Count me out, but I'm serious about teaching you how baseball works, if you decide you'd like to expand your knowledge into unfamiliar territory.
Also, regarding Win Shares, they don't really add much for pitchers since they depend almost entirely, as every meaningful pitcher stat does, on how many earned runs the pitcher allowed in his park/era context. Depending on how you weight peak vs. career, and how you view different eras, you can make adjustments in any number of reasonable ways, but the starting point for a "best pitcher" list is the career Adjusted Pitching Runs leader list on baseball-reference. It's measuring runs allowed in context, and measuring them over an entire career. The only pitchers who are in the top 40 who aren't in the HOF either aren't eligible (Kershaw, Verlander, Scherzer, and Greinke), cheated (Clemens), or have been royally screwed (Schilling, Kevin Brown).
This is for you @thisistheshow - Jim Rice was actually a pretty good player.
You brought out an interesting pitching stat: Adjusted Pitching Runs. I have to look into it more. I go by ERA+ to judge pitchers along with a few other metrics such as post-season performance and whether they led their team to a WS title.
From my own analysis and metrics, it does not surprise me that Schilling and Brown are in the same group with the top cluster of HOF pitchers. I think based on the behavior of HOF voters, Schilling will eventually be voted in and Brown will one day be too. Sometimes it takes decades to be voted in and I do see Kevin Brown getting in someday.
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@Cakes said:
Blyleven gathered up a lot of wins, a lot of losses and a whole lot of innings over 22 seasons. But what did he really do? He never won a Cy Young Award, never once led the league in wins, or ERA, and only once led in strikeouts (that came in 1985 when, somehow, nobody else punched out more than Blyleven’s 206). Finally, he only got named to two All-Star teams. Now think about that; an all-time “great” appearing just twice out of 22 seasons in the Midsummer Classic? Yes, Blyleven has two rings to vouch for, but people don’t recall the 1979 Pittsburgh Pirates and 1987 Minnesota Twins winning it all because of him. He was an ace to be sure, but his enshrinement in Cooperstown is an achievement in quantity, not quality.
Blyleven was the best starting pitcher in the AL 2 times and should have won Cy Young's in 1973 (when he finished SEVENTH) and in 1984 when he came in third behind a couple of relievers.
He was the second best pitcher in 1974 and 1985.
He finished second in strikeouts 3 times, twice behind Nolan Ryan.
I have no answer as to why he didn't make more all star games. Bert can be a jerk, maybe the writers didn't like him.
I'm not even going to respond to your wins and losses arguments,as they have no importance in a team sport.
He was every bit as good as Carlton. He struck out almost as many and walked a lot less batters, with a better ERA+.
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This is just a take and not necessarily a defense of Bert "Be Home" Blyleven's HOF credentials. I'm on the side of less is more in the HOF. I would definitely prefer that Blyleven/Kaat/Neikro/Smoltz/Perry/Mussina/Morris/ not be in the HOF.
You can size your Hall however you wish, but you just can't compare Blyleven and Niekro to Kaat and Morris. It's like saying there is no place in the Hall for Baines, High Pockets Kelly, Frank Thomas or Jeter. You can certainly build your hall that way if you like, but there are an awful lot of players in between that you (also) need to take out.
He was every bit as good as Carlton. He struck out almost as many and walked a lot less batters, with a better ERA+.
I didn't realize until just now how closely Blyleven's career matches Carlton's, and I reach the same conclusion: that Blyleven was slightly, but clearly, better.
Comments
Brett did have a better year, and so did Henderson. In 1985, Mattingly was not even the best Yankee.
The silly MVP notwithstanding, 1985 was not Mattingly's best season, 1986 was. But the MVP vote in 1986 was ridiculous. They gave the MVP to Clemens, which is sort of defensible, but the best player in the AL (and the majors) that year was Boggs, and he came in 7th (7th!!!) in the voting.
The moral of the story, as I've mentioned a couple thousand times, is do NOT pay any attention to who won which awards in which years. They go to the wrong people constantly. Think for yourself, look up the stats yourself, and you can see who the best players were for yourself.
Agree.
1986 Jim Rice finished higher than Boggs. That was the time when the most RBI on the winningest team got the nod...even though Boggs was better than Rice.
Henderson won Mattingly the MVP in 1985 by getting on base and scoring in front of him to such a high degree, but Mattingly got all the credit via the RBI stat.
Boggs is still the only player to get elected to the HOF twice. Once on his own accord, and the second time when Rice got elected(due to a later career RBI surge to pad his total just enough to eek in, thanks to Boggs).
Henderson may become the second if Mattingly gets in.
The revamped veterans committee would be made up of some peers of those 8 players up for election. I think many of them would be upset at voting for players with the stain of steroids, at least for now. Eventually, Bonds, Clemens, McGwire (once he makes the ballot), and Palmeiro will get in, but the committee probably does not want to go easy on them the first time they are on the ballot, I would think. I think this is Schilling's year and then maybe Murphy, Mattingly, and McGriff. Would the committee really put in more than one player this year?
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It's a bizarre ballot, with half the ballot having immense star power and the other half not being nearly as good, but at least officially untainted. I mean consider that Palmeiro, with 178 on the "HoF Monitor" had only the fourth best career of those on the ballot.
None of them should be voted in. Presumably the idea of the various committees is to enshrine those who have been overlooked by the BBWAA for whatever reason, but can anyone really suggest that Bonds, Clemens, and Schilling have been "overlooked" being rejected for the tenth time only last year? Palmeiro was good enough, but suffers greatly in comparison to the others under the PED cloud. The other four are not close to the HoF standard.
I think the Committees should only meet every ten years (could be convinced to go with every five) and mostly consider those in non-playing roles. There really are only a handful of players who were overlooked for some reason, like Grich or Whitaker, maybe a Dwight Evans, but they don't get (serious) consideration anyway. At some point maybe Joe Jackson, Rose, and the PED crowd will be considered by the Committees, but again we've seen what happens when players get a second bite at the apple. We're not putting in "just missed it"s like Tommy John, Dave Parker, Dave Concepcion, or Steve Garvey (none of whom are nearly good enough as players), but rather the likes of the immortal Chick Hafey who had the distinction of not only finishing 25th in MVP voting his only All-Star season, but also managed to be considered 12 times on the BBWAA ballot despite only reaching 5% of the vote twice.
A final word on Mattingly: for those who wish to excuse his mediocre (overall) career due to injury and compare him to Koufax. That only works if you play his career in reverse, omitting his first two seasons. It was possible to believe that Koufax (less so Munson and Clemente) went out at the top of his career, but Mattingly was no longer great for his last EIGHT SEASONS, and not even good for the last six. There is no one on earth who thinks, as could possibly said of Koufax or Puckett, that if he could just play another year or two that he'd be a unquestionable HoFer (because based solely on the numbers both Koufax and Puckett are horrific mistakes).
I always looked at Mattingly as the reverse of Koufax. Sandy was average at best the first half of his career and lights out the second half, which ended with injury.
Imagine if Mattinglys career had been similar. Take the second half, after he was injured and make that the first half. Imagine he finished with his 1984-87 seasons and then had a major injury and had to retire.
would his support have been much greater? I would imagine so. Had Koufax started out on fire and then gradually faded for 6 or 7 years to finish out, how would he have been viewed?
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
I don't understand the logic.
Mattingly comes into the Majors and in his second full season becomes an absolute stud, has 4 superb seasons then 2 good/great ones, has an injury, plays through it, improved, but loses power. Retires at 34.
Don's ability to hit for power was lost by a freakish injury, he had one terrible year then became a .290 hitter with about a 115 OPS+ for 4 seasons. His final year was not very good, but he did manage 32 doubles and a .290 BA.
Koufax comes to the Majors and is below average for SEVEN YEARS, has a very good year, then has 4 superb seasons (three of those four, he was not great on the road) and is done by the age of 30.
Doesn't make sense that Sandy's first seven years are ignored, then his road performance is overlooked.
His final year was a masterpiece though.
I can't ignore those 7 seasons where Koufax had all the ability in the world and was not a good player.
I can't for the life of me understand how ONE PERSON would say that electing Puckett to the HOF is a mistake, much less to call it "horrific".
Its the Optics. one player sets the world on fire right out of the gates, gets injured, declines for 8 years and retires fairly quietly as a shell of his former self.
the other player starts very slowly, then ramps up and becomes one of the very best by the time he retires at 30 because of serious injury.
people do look at those two senarios differently. You know, the whole it is better to burn out than fade away.
I was asking how differently Mattinglys career would be viewed had he not faded away...
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
I dont have one problem with Puckett being in the HOF. if fame is part of the criteria, Kirby sure does pass muster.
I think some people look at his career out of context. in todays game, walks are valued very highly. not so much back in the 70s/80s. I fully believe puckett/gwynn/he who shall not be named, would all have improved their walk totals had they played the modern game.
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
Its not quite that simple to wake up and decide that I'm going to walk more and also not lose my batting average and slugging percentage.
There were plenty of hitters back then who were great at drawing walks while also still hitting for elite power.
Its not something that can be easily changed as it is simply part of ones skill set. Understanding the value of it certainly can change though.
Puckett was asked about why he didn't walk more, he replied that he wasn't "up there to walk, I'm up there hacking".
After becoming a starter early in his rookie season, Kirby pretty much played in every single game in the next 11years. He averaged 200 hits 40 doubles 20 home runs and was a STELLAR center fielder for about 7-8 of those years. He was improving as a hitter his last two years. Going blind in one eye tends to end a career. Oh yeah, but he didn't walk much.
Puckett was not Mantle, Mays or DiMaggio. He is a solid mid to upper level HOFer, just not up there with the best of the best.
People think it's great when a good hitter walks. Unless it's a leadoff or #2 guy, a good hitter, especially with some power, generally should be looking to drive the ball.
Lousy hitters should ALWAYS be trying to walk, since it's the only way they can help the team.
Walks were always undervalued but now the pendulum has gone too far the other way.
The analytics lovers want to make every player the same. Each player has their own strengths and weaknesses and plays a different role in the lineup.
Mattingly should not be in the same conversation as Puckett. Dale Murphy, Keith Hernandez, Will Clark, Sure.
Lousy hitters do not walk a lot because pitchers aren't as concerned as living on the corners as they are to the elite hitters.
Some hitters walk a lot because of an extremely good eye skill set and some walk a lot because they don't have a choice because pitchers live more on the corners for them because of their great power ability(Schmidt, Mantle, Ruth). Some are a combination of both of those.
Walks have always been valued. Branch Rickey valued walks in the Jackie Robinson era.
Hitting .360 with no walks is not as good as hitting .360 with a lot of walks. (Prime Gwynn vs Prime Boggs)
Hitting 35 home runs with no walks is not as good as hitting 35 home runs with a ton of walks (Joe carter vs mike schmidt).
Its not like Joe Carter could just decide to walk 100 times and STILL hit 35 home runs. He wasn't capable of that.
Its not like Gwynn could just wake up and decide to draw 100 walks and still hit .360 and maintain his low strikeout total. He swung at a lot of pitches because he was good at making contact...but Boggs was a better hitter in their prime because Boggs could hit for the same average but also get on base more because Boggs had better plate discipline in addition to his elite skill set.
Not quite so simple to just decide to walk more. It is a skill much like any other skill. Extremely good hitters will get more walks too by virtue of being so powerful that pitchers are more willing to live on the corners more so than other hitters.
The last ten years in MLB the walk rate is actually lower than it was for the decade of the 1980's. The understanding of the value of a walk is a bit higher though....although many valued walks back then and even as far back as Branch Rickey(and even further too).
Just common sense tells you that pitchers were told to NOT walk hitters forever....so you know they were always valued.
I don't think it was mentioned in this thread, but for those looking for the date, the Era Committee votes on the candidates on December 4.
of course players can train and change their skill sets. they do it in all sports. What is preached in MLB now? Launch angle and high Velo for pitchers. what are the players doing? they are working at swinging at max effort and improving their launch angles. that is why we dont see players with gwynn, boggs, carew skillsets anymore. they are not training for it.
Pitchers are trained to throw max effort for 1-5 innings. that is what we see happening. The human body has not evolved (if you believe in such things) enough in the last 50-100 years that players just started averaging 100mph on fastballs. they are training their bodies to perform such feats because they are valued at present.
look at NBA. they have moved from a center oriented post up game to launching 3's
NFL, has moved from big time defenses and featured backs to very throw heavy offenses.
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
Puckett is a low tier HOFer. This goes back many years, and I doubt anyone here remembers it, but I posted something about players who were "similar". For this purpose, two players that were 100% "similar" would have the same number of Win Shares in their best season, second best season, and so on throughout their entire careers. A slap-hitting shortstop might be similar to a power-hitting outfielder; the "similarity" is only in the number of Win Shares each season.
The ten players most similar to Puckett are, in order, Rocky Colavito, Bobby Bonds, Larry Doyle, Bobby Veach, Mickey Cochrane, George Burns, Boog Powell, Orlando Cepeda, Jimmy Collins, and Ken Boyer.
Now, there's not a bad player in that group, but there are only a few HOFers, and they are lower-tier HOFers (except Cochrane, but catchers are never comparable straight up to other players). Mostly, these are players that get talked about for the HOF but don't get in.
The 10 most similar players to Gwynn are Carew, Yount, Magee, Stargell, Killebrew, Burkett, Ripken, Raines, Bench, and Wheat. An entirely different class of players.
You can train an area sure, but no matter how much you do it, others with a better skill set in that area is going to be better. No matter how much he tries, Omar Vizquel isn't going to hit 50 home runs.
A batting eye is mostly engrained. Not a whole lot you can do to it without messing everything else up.
You are acting as if nobody drew walks in the 1980's or knew the value of it. Don Mattingly's own teammate was Rickey Henderson...and they all knew the value of a walk.
So Mike Schmidt knew the value of walks back then but Joe Carter didn't?
Wade Boggs knew the value of them but Tony Gwynn didn't?
It kind of reminds of how people say, "ichiro could have hit 30 home runs if he wanted to." Yeah, maybe he could have...but could he have done that while still hitting .350? No. If he could have he would have. If he could have and didn't then he would have been a moron. Home Runs were valued in 2001, no?
The reality is that Tony Gwynn could only hit .360 by being a high volume swinger while possessing great bat to ball ability. Any attempt to hit .360 and also draw 100 walks would most likely make his average plummet and completely screw himself up.
They are what they are. Schmidt hit for elite power and had elite batting eye to also draw walks. That makes him better than Dave Kingman who had elite power but not the ability to draw walks. You don't think Kingman would train to have Mike Schmidt's resume when he sees Schmidt winning MVP's and getting paid all that money? If he could he would.
Even today with the known value of walks, there are hitters who still cannot draw 100 walks while hitting for great power. They all know the value of hit, so why not do both?
Because guys who can have elite slugging percentage and elite on base percentage are known as the best hitters in the game
. You can't just train your way to that when you aren't capable of it.
Three pointers have ZERO bearing on baseball hitting. zero. NO sport has an equal comparison to that sector. None.
Why does Mattingly get extra credit for accounting for injury but Fred Lynn or Pedro Guerrero don't? Or anyone else for that matter?
At least Mattingly was able to play with his injury. Others had to miss a lot of time and it hurt them more.
look at it in the context of the times. I live in NE and remember well how many complained about Boggs standing at the plate with the bat never leaving his shoulder to take a walk. it was not looked at kindly. back then, most people wanted the best players to hit. especially with men on base. they wanted them to look to hit, even balls off the plate. it is just how it was viewed then.
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
To a degree yes it was....but that has nothing to do with the ability to change the way you hit and automatically learn to draw walks while maintaining a high BA/SLG. Hitters are what they are.
Understanding the value of hitters who can slug and walk, and scouting for ones to populate your team with, now that is a different story and more in line with what you were saying above.
Again, look at today's game. EVERYONE knows the value of a walk, so there is no excuse then for hitters to not be able to draw walks. I won't use Mike Trout as an example because people get confused because his team stinks.
So I will use Alex Bregman. He is a two time world champion and goes to the WS almost every year so I won't hear anything from that foolish "not a winner" crowd.
Knowing the value of a walk, if hitters had the ability to all of a sudden start drawing more walks, then why don't they?
Alex Bregman averages 28 home runs per 162 games and 89 walks per 162 games.
Why are there still other hitters only averaging 35 o4 40 walks a game?
Why doesn't Javy Baez just copy Bregman then?? Baez has the power. Why does he choose to walk only 15 times a year if walking more is a choice?
Because he can't. If he could he would. Just like everyone else who could, according to your point, just choose to walk 80-100 times a year.
Its not something you can change. If hitters could they would. So the notion that Puckett could have decided to be Mickey Mantle and add a .420 OBP to his resume is foolish.
Also, don't forget that the pitchers treatment of these hitters is a big part as well. Ted Williams got a lot of walks party from a great eye and the other part was he hit the ball so well that they were more willing to dance around him.
P:S any fan, even back then, that couldn't see Bogg's value due to his high OBP, probably should not have been in any real baseball conversation. Seems those fans are the ones yelling at a player to just move out of the way when a 99 MPH fastball hits him in the helmet because they see the replay in slow motion.
I agree with this. If one player gets credit for injury, they all should. or none.
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
1948_Swell_Robinson,
I remember hearing how some people described Boggs as a mere singles hitter and really not a player that can be considered great. Their argument was that he had to hit with some power to be great. I never believed that, but there are people who stated this. Home runs may be flashy, but getting walks, singles and doubles also gets the job done, especially with the frequency that Boggs did it in.
As far as injuries go, it has to be analyzed in proper context. It does not entitle a player to bonus consideration, but it has to be taken into account as part of the conversation.
I appreciate all the analytical metrics Dallasactuary has presented. It is an important element to consider. Some other noteworthy ones would be baseball contribution or any innovation to the sport. For example, Bruce Sutter had an excellent 12 year career in MLB. What put him over the top to enshrinement is the fact that he was a pioneer in the split finger fastball. He popularized it.
First base had been typically a position where you put your worst defensive player with a great bat. When Mattingly and Hernandez came onto the scene, they revolutionized the position as something that had to be mastered and prepared for. It was no longer a dumping ground of defensive liabilities, but a place to put in the right player for the job. Since then, the position is looked at with more concern over the defensive abilities of a player. John Olerud, Mark McGwire, Kent Hrbek, Rafael Palmeiro, etc, who played beyond when both Mattingly and Hernandez retired, all had a decent glove and not considered defensive liabilities that needed protection or be hidden to cause the least damage.
The DH was a position popularized by Harold Baines. He made it into a position and not a fill in the blank position for each game. It was not a place to simply insert someone to take an at-bat like some glorified pinch hit opportunity or a place to put a baseball veteran with bad knees. It became an actual position occupied full time by one player. Edgar Martinez might have been the premier DH, but it all started with Harold Baines. This is why he was voted into the HOF. I know his metrics are a discussion sore spot, but I wanted to put it in perspective and under a different lens.
It is called the Hall of Fame, not the Hall of Sabermetrics. If it was the latter, perhaps we could develop artificial intelligence to do the induction for us.
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And in the context of determining how good a player actually was, as opposed to how good he mighta coulda been, the answer is always "none".
To amuse myself, I looked at four players and their annual Win Shares from best season to worst:
First, notice how remarkably similar they are at the top; they even all have the exact same third best season, and virtual ties at best season and fourth and fifth best seasons. In any event, for 7 seasons they're virtually indistinguishable. But after that, the two guys on the left keep putting up quality numbers for five or six years while the guys on the right slide steadily out of the game.
One of the guys on the left is Hernandez and the other is Orlando Cepeda. One of the guys on the right is Mattingly and the other is Roy White. I'm a big fan of Roy White, and he was a very good player. But he was not as good as Orlando Cepeda, and he does not belong in the HOF. He was also indistinguishable from Don Mattingly.
Not quite what I said. I said that on the numbers alone Puckett is a horrific mistake. If I told you that I had a slightly but noticeably below average defensive centerfielder with a .318/.360/.477 slash line (in the late '80s to early '90s) with a 124 OPS+, 207 HR, and 1085 RBI there is just no way you would say that guy is a superstar, much less an All-Time Great.
As far as defense goes, can we please put to bed the idea that Puckett was average, much less superb? Absolutely no doubt that Puckett was superb in 1984. Not 2002 Darin Erstad superb, but likely in the top 10-20 all-time best CF seasons. In 1985 he was still good to very good, and certainly better than the gold glove winners that year (nowhere near as good as Jesse Barfield's numbers but his are one of a very few I suspect). But from 1986 to 1995 he was just bad. Moving him to right field didn't help. So instead of saying he was superb, we should figure out what changed in the 1985-86 offseason. Well, in his first two years, Puckett just couldn't hit. His 86 OPS+ ranked 45 of 62 full-time outfielders in that period. His 4 home runs (in 1327 PA) was tied with, for example, Mike Greenwell (34 PA) for 43rd. His 105 RBI tied George Vukovich for 24th. In 1986 he hit 31 HR, with 96 RBI and a 142 OPS+.
From 1985 to 1986 he went from 175 pounds to 225. Please understand that I am in no way suggesting that Puckett used PEDs, but the weight gain and ensuing health problems would be coincident with expectations. I may be slightly overstating the time frame of the weight gain, but there is little question that he became much heavier, a much better hitter, and lost his fielding speed and agility around that tine. The reason people think he was a good fielder is because he played deeply enough to save some home runs (Game 6 of the 1991 World Series, for example) but how many singles dropped in front of him?
By the way, in his last decade he was eighth in the majors in "Batter Runs" behind Molitor, McGriff, and Will Clark, but his 3000 total bases was easily the most.
So, like I said, any case you can make for Puckett has to include his blindness and untimely loss of life. But a player with as many Batter Runs as Harold Baines or Ryan Klesko clearly needs something more (even a bunch of cronies on a Committee) to be enshrined. The numbers aren't nearly good enough.
I guarantee your getting your information from looking at numbers, and rarely saw what he could do in the outfield.
I saw his entire career and Puckett was a SUPERB fielder. Not too many singles dropped in front of him by the way.
Even if they did, taking away extra base hits and home runs and giving up singles makes him a BETTER fielder, not worse.
He robbed so many batters of home runs and extra base hits with his leaping ability (amazing for a 5'8" player), that there should be a stat for it. I'd like to see how much defensive "value" you get from turning an extra base hit or certain home run into an out. Not to mention the mental effect it has, on not only the other team, but your own.
After his first two years base runners quit running on him. He didn't have a Clemente arm, but it was above average and VERY accurate. Twins announcer Dick Bremer mentioned it in a game I was watching, when I had expected an opposing player to try to go from first to third on a single to center. I watched this for several years. Most guys didn't even try. Same thing on sacrifice fly's, if they weren't deep, guys were often held at third. More stuff you have no way of knowing.
Kirby got very muscular, (and pudgy) could he have used steroids? Maybe, the years his strength and power jumped were a little before the steroid era, but it's possible. I saw a photo of him flexing his arms once, his biceps were gigantic!
The explanation for Kirby's increased power we got here in Minnesota was, Tony Olivia told Kirby to try a "leg kick" to increase his power and it worked.
You see a guy get big and you automatically assume he's slow. WRONG, until his last couple of years, he was a terrific athlete.
You mention it yourself. The fantastic catch in 1991. Wasn't he old and slow by then? He could still go get it.
His last couple of years he was moved to right field and played very well there.
By all accounts he was hitting the ball better than ever just before he lost his vision, his SLG was over .500 his last two years.
There's no argument that his 12 year career was too short to have the numbers many like to see. Too bad, he was amazing for 10 of those 12 years.
He just didn't walk enough.....LOFL.
Can't find it on the stat sheet, but he was a GREAT leader, hard worker who kept the locker room loose. No doubt a key factor in both Twins World Championships.
Obviously I agree with you on your larger point regarding Puckett and the HOF, but I do disagree with you regarding Puckett's fielding - he was great. Not just in his early years, but in lots of years.
What changed in the 1985-1986 offseason? Bert Blyleven got healthier, Frank Viola learned how to pitch much better, and the Twins dumped John Butcher. As a result, the Twins pitchers struck out 170 more batters. When there are 170 more strikeouts, there are 170 fewer chances for the fielders so they make fewer putouts and fewer assists. If you have a fielding system that does nothing more than count up putouts and assists - like WAR - then that system will conclude that the fielders got worse when they didn't. This, and for the same and other reasons at every position, is why WAR is complete and utter crap when measuring fielding.
That's the biggest factor, but there's also the flyball vs. groundball tendency of the pitchers. Blyleven was the king of the flyball pitchers, and in the years when he was on the Twins, that helped Puckett's putouts and assists; when he left, after the 1988 season, WAR also shows the Twins outfielders getting worse. But they weren't, there were just fewer balls hit to the outfield.
Like every outfielder ever, Puckett did slowly get worse as he got older, and putting on weight probably also played a part. But it wasn't any more dramatic for Puckett than for lots of other outfielders, and since he started at the level of "phenomenal", he stayed "great" or better for close to a decade.
Interesting and relevant sidenote - no matter how good or bad a team is, they will all record the same number of outs (with insignificant variation for extra inning games and games where there is no bottom of the ninth). This leads to what Bill James calls "the false normalization" of fielding statistics. If you have a system, like WAR, that merely counts up plays in the field, every team will have the same number of plays, and every team will appear to have roughly equal fielding ability. What variation there is will come from strikeouts and flyballs vs. groundballs; if you don't take those into account then the results, at the team level, for the fielders will depend almost entirely on things completely out of their control. Yes, better fielders will get to more balls than bad fielders, but that variation can get absolutely swamped by the variation in strikeouts and flyballs.
Consider a team made up of 8 fielders with among the greatest ranges of all time, and another team of 8 with among the worst ranges. If the 8 great fielders are equally great, and the 8 bad fielders are equally bad, then each and every one of them - great and terrible alike - will make an average number of fielding plays and they will all appear to be average fielders. Think that through if you don't get it the first time - I didn't at first, either. The team with the great fielders will win a lot more games, and their pitchers will have a much lower ERA, but the fielding will appear to be about the same on each team.
Team wins and pitcher ERA aren't proof of anything, but they are indicators of the fielding ability of the team. Teams that give up fewer runs field better than teams that give up a lot of runs, almost without exception. There is not, and probably never will be, a system that can precisely measure fielding ability. WAR is not even close to that system. Win Shares gets much closer because it recognizes all of the above, and tries its best to account for it.
^Great post.
The only thing I would add/change is Blyleven was the king of strikeouts who also was a flyball pitcher.
In fact, he gave up the most HR in the league in both 86&87. These balls were hit so far, even Puckett couldn't catch them.
One more thing about Kirby, he didn't crash into the wall when he made these catches like other players, often resulting in injury. He had the knack of knowing where the wall was and jumped more straight up to make those catches.
Not walking enough(and replacing them with making more outs) is what keeps him out of the Hall of Fame elite...it doesn't mean he wasn't good.
Ug, Blyleven should not be in the HOF, great candidate for the Hall of very good.
Kirby was a dominant player who had a short career. In that short time he won two World Series Titles and received significant MVP votes as well as other major awards during most of the years. He is deserving of the HOF.
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94.5 WAR and 5th All Time in K's isn't HOF worthy?
How much did it sale for is one of the funniest and most ignorant things I've ever heard.
...and 60 shutouts...will anyone ever do that again?....another way to look at it: 21% of his wins were shutouts. I don't know if anyone has done that before, but I DO know it'll never be done again...plus he had 287 wins playing on a lot of bad teams ...how many guys with 287 wins are NOT in the hall?
Bert was an announcer for the Twins for a few years, and a good one, he was quite candid about his leading the league in HR's given up.
He pointed out that almost all of them were with the bases empty.
Looking further, he also led the league in innings and strikeout to walk ratio and pitching in the "Homer Dome".
He was throwing strikes in a park easy to hit in,
His ERA was a little high at 4.01, but half the pitchers in the top 10 had ERA 's around 3.5.
Bert is certainly a solid HOFer.
I would be happy to teach you how baseball works, if you're interested.
I am a firm believer in a stricter HOF. 1/4 of the current players would not be in there. It's not meant for very good players like Bert!
I mean come on with your BS about have I ever watched Baseball holier then though crap. I have watched and played a ton and Bert was never recognized as a dominant, future HOF player. He had 4 good/great seasons, and the rest are just average to good. If you take away the 4 good/great seasons and he wouldn't even be a .500 pitcher. His record would be 214 wins and 215 losses.
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I'm an idiot. Could someone throw up win shares for Dwight Evans please? Also, does the win shares stat cover fielding at all, or is it only based on hitting?
Good question. I have a similar question. Where do we find Win Share stats of each player. I checked baseball reference, but found WAR. Maybe I overlooked something?
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The consistent condescending tone some people have during subjective arguments always amazes me.
Carry on.
That's just always been the way that the guys with the TBFIB tattoos roll.
Some of these modern metrics really make me want to puke. Players were judged on the classic categories for like 150 years. Those yardsticks are still good enough for me. Now get off my lawn!
Let's not take anything away from a player and then say he was average.
Wins and losses is the worst way to determine if a pitcher is good or bad.
Instead, let's look at how many years Bert was in the Top 10 in some categories that indicate if he was great;
WAR for pitchers 13 times.
Strikeouts 15 times.
Strikeouts/Walks 16 times.
ERA 10 times.
Adjusted ERA+ 12 times.
Complete games 12 times.
WHIP 11 times.
Innings pitched 11 times.
Shutouts 10 times.
A little more than 4 good years.
Now let's compare some of his lifetime numbers to Steve Carlton;
Carlton ERA 3.22
Blyleven 3.31
Carlton ERA +115
Blyleven 118
Carlton WHIP 1.247
Blyleven 1.198
JAWS Carlton 72.2
Blyleven 72.4
Both pitchers were equal in that 63% of their starts were "quality".
Post season Carlton's record was 6-6.
Blyleven 's was 5-1.
Carlton is elected in his first year of eligibility with 95.6% of the votes.
Looks to me like Bert was a LOT BETTER than you give him credit for.
I had already stated I am a firm believer in a stricter HOF. 1/4 of the current players would not be in there. It's not meant for very good players like Bert! I agree he was a very good pitcher, that helped multiple teams win the World Series but he wasn't a great player like the HOF should be reserved for.
IMHO if the Major sports continue to water down their HOF's they should consider having a special section for the greats! Respectfully people are not going to the HOF to see Bert. When they see his plaque they probably do a double take and say either: I didn't know he was in the HOF or damn how the hell did he make the HOF.
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Blyleven gathered up a lot of wins, a lot of losses and a whole lot of innings over 22 seasons. But what did he really do? He never won a Cy Young Award, never once led the league in wins, or ERA, and only once led in strikeouts (that came in 1985 when, somehow, nobody else punched out more than Blyleven’s 206). Finally, he only got named to two All-Star teams. Now think about that; an all-time “great” appearing just twice out of 22 seasons in the Midsummer Classic? Yes, Blyleven has two rings to vouch for, but people don’t recall the 1979 Pittsburgh Pirates and 1987 Minnesota Twins winning it all because of him. He was an ace to be sure, but his enshrinement in Cooperstown is an achievement in quantity, not quality.
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To the best of my knowledge, the only way to find Win Shares is to buy Bill James' book Win Shares. It has annual Win Shares for every major League player from 1876 through 2001. What separates Win Shares from WAR and every other system I've ever seen is that it does cover fielding, and it covers it as well as I think it can be covered with statistics.
Whether you are as fascinated with the mathematics of it as much as I am or not, I guarantee you will enjoy both Win Shares and Historical Baseball Abstract (where James ranks the top 100 at each position) immensely, and you'll return to them over and over again for reference.
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Blyleven is unique in the fact that the players he is most often compared to (Jenkins, Carlton, Palmer, Gaylord, Marichal, Sutton, Kaat and to a lesser extent Seaver) all started their careers well before Bert. It's only because he burst onto the scene so quickly and had that big early 70's success (on bad teams) that he was considered their peer. Everyone says Blyleven is just a stat collector but he didn't get the benefit those guys did in the late 60's with the 40-Start seasons. He would have collected even more stats. But, he still ended his career with 242 career complete games and 60 shutouts.
This is just a take and not necessarily a defense of Bert "Be Home" Blyleven's HOF credentials. I'm on the side of less is more in the HOF. I would definitely prefer that Blyleven/Kaat/Neikro/Smoltz/Perry/Mussina/Morris/ not be in the HOF.
I learned a long time ago that down the path of arguing with someone who leads off their side of the argument with W/L records lies nothing but pain, and when the rest of the argument relies on what other people think (awards, All Stars, etc.), the pain will be excruciating. Count me out, but I'm serious about teaching you how baseball works, if you decide you'd like to expand your knowledge into unfamiliar territory.
Also, regarding Win Shares, they don't really add much for pitchers since they depend almost entirely, as every meaningful pitcher stat does, on how many earned runs the pitcher allowed in his park/era context. Depending on how you weight peak vs. career, and how you view different eras, you can make adjustments in any number of reasonable ways, but the starting point for a "best pitcher" list is the career Adjusted Pitching Runs leader list on baseball-reference. It's measuring runs allowed in context, and measuring them over an entire career. The only pitchers who are in the top 40 who aren't in the HOF either aren't eligible (Kershaw, Verlander, Scherzer, and Greinke), cheated (Clemens), or have been royally screwed (Schilling, Kevin Brown).
Dallasactuary,
You brought out an interesting pitching stat: Adjusted Pitching Runs. I have to look into it more. I go by ERA+ to judge pitchers along with a few other metrics such as post-season performance and whether they led their team to a WS title.
From my own analysis and metrics, it does not surprise me that Schilling and Brown are in the same group with the top cluster of HOF pitchers. I think based on the behavior of HOF voters, Schilling will eventually be voted in and Brown will one day be too. Sometimes it takes decades to be voted in and I do see Kevin Brown getting in someday.
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Blyleven was the best starting pitcher in the AL 2 times and should have won Cy Young's in 1973 (when he finished SEVENTH) and in 1984 when he came in third behind a couple of relievers.
He was the second best pitcher in 1974 and 1985.
He finished second in strikeouts 3 times, twice behind Nolan Ryan.
I have no answer as to why he didn't make more all star games. Bert can be a jerk, maybe the writers didn't like him.
I'm not even going to respond to your wins and losses arguments,as they have no importance in a team sport.
He was every bit as good as Carlton. He struck out almost as many and walked a lot less batters, with a better ERA+.
You can size your Hall however you wish, but you just can't compare Blyleven and Niekro to Kaat and Morris. It's like saying there is no place in the Hall for Baines, High Pockets Kelly, Frank Thomas or Jeter. You can certainly build your hall that way if you like, but there are an awful lot of players in between that you (also) need to take out.
I didn't realize until just now how closely Blyleven's career matches Carlton's, and I reach the same conclusion: that Blyleven was slightly, but clearly, better.