People throwing out all these numbers and stats and newfangled nonsense arguing about Blyleven, and there’s still one simple unassailable fact:

ONLY FOUR GUYS HAVE EVER STRUCK OUT MORE BATTERS.

(And a bunch of guys who pitched as long or longer than Bert aren’t among those four.)

Actually, there is something extraordinary about Blyleven’s 20-17 season in 1973, to take one example. At age 22, he led the league in shutouts, adjusted ERA, and strikeout/walk ratio, finishing 2nd in WHIP. He even got votes (7th) for Cy Young. (The next year, when Mike Cuellar finished 6th in Cy Young voting, Blyleven pitched more innings, had a better ERA [2.66 to 3.11], a better ERA+ [142 to 111], more strikeouts [249 to 106], a league-2nd best WHIP [1.14 to 1.26], and nearly [but not quite] matched Cuellar in shutouts and CG’s. But the Twins were a losing team when Bert didn’t pitch, and Cuellar went 22-10 for the first-place O’s.)

You bring up ERA, contending that Cuellar’s (for a shorter career) is superior. But ERA needs to be seen in context, compared to the league ERA’s for each year. Blyleven’s career ERA+ is 18% better than that of the average pitcher of his time. Cuellar’s is 9% better.

For Mike Cuellar’s six outstanding years (1969-1974) with Baltimore, his W-L record was 125-63. Without him, the O’s went 461-311, .597. As Ian points out, W-L “isn’t a great way to evaluate a pitcher,” but let’s notice that Cuellar played for first-place teams. Cuellar was 62 games over .500 and the Orioles were 150 games over without him.

Blyleven’s first six years (1970-1975) overlap Cuellar’s top six. Bert’s record is 95-85, which includes his 10-9 age 19 season. Even with the 164 innings of that teenage year, he nearly matches Cuellar’s innings pitched (Blyleven 1611, Cuellar 1665). Without him as the pitcher of record, the Twins went 393-386. Blyleven was 10 games over .500 and the Twins were 7 games over without him.

But wait! These weren’t Blyleven’s six best years — those were 1973, 1974, 1977, 1984, 1985, and 1989. These (1970-1975) were just his age 19-24 years, the ones closest in time to Mike Cuellar’s peak success. Between ages 19-24 (well, 20-25) Mike Cuellar had a won-loss record of 41-51 in Triple-A. No harm in that, but no reason to disparage what Blyleven was doing in the majors at the same ages, either.

Wasn’t sure if that was sarcasm or not but you know wins isn’t a great way to evaluate a pitcher, right? And all of his other numbers – IP, CG, Sho, ERA, ERA+, K, WHIP are more then HOF worthy. Adjusting for leagues, Blyleven put up the same ERA as Warren Spahn. 12 times in 21 seasons he was top 10 in era+. Only 6 pitchers in baseball history have more seasons like that. Four of them (Young, W. Johnson, Alexander, Grove) stopped pitching before WWII. The other two are Clemens and Seaver. He was a better pitcher then HOFers like Ryan, Jenkins, Hunter, Drysdale etc.

As for CGs = saves…sure, if a reliever could have come in in the 9th and gotten a save. If it was a CG loss, no. If it was a CG and the team won by 10, no. That’s not “saving” the bullpen from the possibility of losing the game, it’s just saving their arms a little. If that is, why not give an 8-inning start a percentage of a save? Or give a negative save to a pitcher who comes in without recording an out? If it would have resulted in a save had a closer come in, then yeah, good job. However, there is probably a much smaller number of “saves” for those complete games than the total amount of CGs.

Sure, the guy won 287 games. But…the REAL reason he remains a viable HOF candidate in the eyes of some misguided souls is, simply, this: He was a good but not great pitcher, who started a lot of games and got a lot of decisions, for a long, long time.

That’s it. Period.

Consider his first 10 years in the league: 10-9, 16-15, 17-17, 20-17, 17-17, 15-10, 13-16, 14-12, 14-10, and 12-5. Other than the fact that he probably set some sort of unofficial record for most consecutive seasons with 17 losses, there is nothing extraordinary about any of these seasons. Sure, he won 20 games in ‘73, but so did about 10 other guys.

What if I told you there was a pitcher during the same time frame who had a six year run of 23-11, 24-8, 20-9, 18-12, 18-13, and 22-10? Your initial impression would probably be “whoa, this guy’s in the HOF, right?” It is true his numbers are pretty darn good. Especially when you consider this guy’s career ERA of 3.14 (Blyleven’s, by the way, was 3.31).

Well, this guy is named Mike Cuellar. And the reason he isn’t in the HOF discussion, and Blyleven is (thanks to our friend Joe Posnanski), boils down to the central theme of this comment: Blyleven pitched longer.

Durability counts for something, but it’s not enough, in my humble opinion, for the HOF.

Paul

The highest SDs in the history of the post-1900 game were posted in the 1920s. So it’s not too surprising that people looking at that era see so many outstanding players — there WERE more outstanding players. Not BETTER players than in another era, but better for their time, by the numbers.

BUT…there’s another thing about SDs. They are, to some extent, determined by the limitations of the numbers being measured. If you’re measuring the SD for ERA, for example, there is a lower limit to ERAs — nobody is going to go much below 2.00, ever — but there is a variable upper limit. In an era of low scoring, that upper limit is, say, 5.00 — anyone who’s over that by much is out of the league. Not so today, of course. The upper limit is somewhere well up in the sixes. This means that the SDs for ERA will be higher in eras of high run scoring and lower when runs are hard to come by.

In other words, high run scoring eras will produce larger SDs simply because there are more degrees of freedom for the numbers involved. And therefore, when you have a combination of small ball parks and a juiced baseball — which is what you had in the 1920s — you’re going to get greater extremes in performance than in eras like the 1960s, when offense is less.

And I think that’s why the 1920s show so damn many HOFers. When you have a guy like Freddy Lindstrom getting 231 hits in a season, TWICE, and hitting .311 lifetime, it kind of jumps out at you. In the 1960s, Lindstrom probably would have gotten 180 hits in those seasons and hit .280 lifetime, and nobody would even think about putting him in the HOF.

It’s the ball, stupid.