Why I would vote for Jack Morris for the HOF and not Bert Blyleven
By Historical Archive ~ January 15th, 2009. Filed under: Hall of Fame.
Nothing brings out long discussions like why certain players should be in the Hall of Fame and why others shouldn’t. I wrote a piece the other day about Tim Raines, and I mentioned during our internal ballot at NYBD, I voted for Rickey Henderson, Jim Rice and Jack Morris. A reader posted a comment and asked me why I think Jack Morris is a Hall of Famer but not Bert Blyleven.
Too many people are so wrapped up in statistics, especially the new stats that seem to spew out of every sabermetric bloggers mouth. Those bloggers are guys who mostly never played the game at any decent level above Little League, but they know the OPS+ of every guy not in the HOF but should be based on WARP 3.
If you are looking for sabermetric statistical evidence for my HOF thoughts, you are not going to get it. I have much disdain for the VORP and WARP stat heads who attempt to play the game of baseball in a computer when the game is actually played on the field.
The only WIN SHARE that matters is the game that is won on the field. Stats don’t win games, baseball players win games.
The game is played not to attain statistics, but to win games and championships. Therefore, wins and winning percentage for a pitcher are more important to me than ERA or WHIP or RSAA. Saving runs against average pits you against all other pitchers in the league, but DURING THAT GAME you are currently in, only winning that game matters.
WIN GAMES, NOT ERA or RSAA TITLES.
When a pitcher plays for a good period of time and wins a lot of games, he is on the radar for the HOF. Twenty win seasons and consistent Cy Young votes during his career are also important. Both Jack Morris and Bert Blyleven fall into that category.
What is also important to voters is what a player does to get his team into the post season, and how he performs. Not all players get to play in the post season, but in the voters eyes, it adds to the players aura and mystique. Reggie Jackson is a perfect example, as is Catfish Hunter. Great post season numbers could be the deciding factor in Curt Schilling’s chance for induction.
But, a player who played in the modern era also needs to dominate the era he plays in, and then compare favorably to other post World War II pitchers in the games history.
If he dominates his era first, then if he compares favorably to many of the games greats, then he is a no-brainer for the Hall.
Jack Morris was the best pitcher of his era, won 20 games three times and had seven top ten finishes in the Cy Young voting.
Bert Blyleven wasn’t close to the best pitcher of his era, won 20 games once and had four top ten CYA finishes.
Most HOF pitchers have 10 to 12 good years, then have several years when they are older they hang on and double digit win seasons. Basically, the win padding years. Very few modern pitchers are of the Maddux, Clemens, Randy Johnson mold when they consistently put up 15-20 wins for 15 plus years.
So, I like to take a ten year period for winning pitchers, and see how they stack up against the competition.
Morris’ best 10 year period was from 1979 thru 1988, when he went 173-112. This averages basically a 17-11 season. That type season makes a pitcher $20 million in today’s games. After that 10 year period, Morris had an injury-plagued off year, and then won 15, 18 and 21 games during the next three seasons, averaging an 18-12 record.
One thing I like about baseball-reference.com is they break down a player’s stats into an average 162 game season. Morris’ 162 game record is 16-11, slightly below his ten best year period. This average also compares very favorably with top pitchers Bob Feller (17-10), Juan Marichal (17-10), Tom Seaver (16-10), Greg Maddux (16-10) and Catfish Hunter (15-11).
By the way, the best modern 162 game career record belongs to Whitey Ford with a 17-7 full season mark.
Morris also dominates the records of all the top pitchers of the 1980′s such as Frank Viola, Bret Saberhagen, Dwight Gooden, Orel Hershiser and even Dave Stieb, Fernando Valenzuela and Dave Stewart.
He was also the ace on three World Series winners, and although he got rocked during the 1992 Series, he was 4-0 in his five starts in the 1984 and 1991 World Series.
And, of course, he pitched the second best World Series game in history, beating John Smoltz 1-0 in 10 innings during Game 7 of the 1991 Series. That game likely gets Morris many votes. My big recollection from that game is Tom Kelly was going to take out Morris after 9 complete, and Jack telling him to, “Go down to the other end of the @^#*%@& bench, this is my game,” and Kelly went back to the other end of the bench.
Bert Blyleven was a really good pitcher who is the perfect example of how a young pitcher can go nine innings per game and 250+ innings per season. Blyleven came up at age 19 and during a six year period from ages 20 thru 25, he AVERAGED 291 innings per year.
I reference Blyleven all the time when the pitch count and innings limit dummies begin their rants.
But, although he was good, he did not dominate his era the way other pitchers did. What really hurt Blyleven was constantly wearing out his welcome with franchises, and then demanding trades. Except for the Pittsburgh Pirates, he was always traded to bad teams. He pitched well during his two post season appearances, but did not have a signature moment the way Morris did.
Blyleven’s 10 year best was from 1971 thru 1980 when he went 146-132. His 162 game record is a pedestrian 14-12. A plus is that he did have four more 17+ win seasons late in his career, including 19-7, 2.87 in 1984. Those later years basically put Blyleven into the Hall discussions, because his overall numbers were higher.
I know he won more games, struck out more people and had a better ERA than Morris, but he wasn’t dominating and was never considered one of the best of his generation. Putting up a lot of numbers over a longer period of time doesn’t garner my vote, but it obviously does get votes from other guys.
I also want to add that while Blyleven started his Major League career at 19, Morris did not get to start in the majors until age 24, when the Tigers started their youth movement. Blyleven was drafted out of high school, while Morris went to Brigham Young. If a pitcher is worried about putting up HOF numbers, I suggest he sign a contract out of high school.
Many people feel that a pitchers ERA, RSAA and WHIP, etc. are great indicators of a pitchers performance. They do help a team win games, but are just really good fantasy baseball statistics. Morris’ career ERA was 3.90, and he still won 254 games, and had a 21 win season with an ERA just over 4.00.
There was an interview with Morris a while back where he said that many times with a big lead late in a game; he just threw the ball over the plate to get guys to swing the bat. Sometimes you give up runs that way, but your team still wins the game.
Morris was dominating over a period of time, and was the winningest pitcher of the 1980’s. He was the ace of three World Series winning teams, won 254 games and pitched the most pressure packed Game 7 in World Series history.
I wouldn’t vote Blyleven into the Hall, but a lot of other voters will. He ended up at 62.7% of the vote this year and during the next three years, some good players will be eligible for the first time, but not really any lock-down, first ballot guys.
That helped Jim Rice get more votes in 2000, and will help Blyleven (and Morris) the next few years.
January 16th, 2009 at 12:34 am
Wow. Just. Wow.
January 16th, 2009 at 12:36 am
Wow. Thank goodness you don’t actually have a vote.
January 16th, 2009 at 1:37 am
Nice. You bash people who use statistics, then cite year by year win totals (stats that are very much dependent on offense and other contextual variables that the pitcher doesn’t control) ad nauseam to bolster your inane case for Morris over Blyleven. Well done, sir. This almost reads like bad FJM-style satire mimicking a scared, number-phobic blog troll. Tell me, you bash sabermetrically-inclined ppl for never playing above Little League (a very nice, inaccurate generalization, btw) – what pinnacles of athletic greatness did you reach to speak from such a condescending level of expertise?
January 16th, 2009 at 7:55 am
You are entitled to your opinion and I completely disagree with it. Basically, you are putting Jack Morris into the HOF because he had a better average 162 game season record [there is a useful statistic
] and because he had a post-season moment.
Maybe you can write an article in support of Joe Carter for the HOF (he was a tremendous RBI guy and had a post-season moment too).
January 16th, 2009 at 8:15 am
Fail.
January 16th, 2009 at 9:44 am
“I have much disdain for the VORP and WARP stat heads who attempt to play the game of baseball in a computer when the game is actually played on the field. ”
My questions to you Joe:
1) Would you want your stockbroker make his decisions based on stats, numbers, historical performance, etc. or gut instinct and the fact that he “just knows it when he sees a good stock”?
2) Would you want your doctor to make his diagnosis based on objective MRI’s, X-Rays and statistical medical research or subjective instinct and hunches?
I’m sure you’d prefer the objective stats based approach for both. So why should baseball be any different. And we’re not even talking VORP, WARP etc. for Blyleven vs. Morris – Blyleven pitched more innings, a better K rate, a lower BB rate, a lower HR rate and a MUCH lower ERA. He had better postseason numbers than Morris as well.
Basically this is just one fat fail.
January 16th, 2009 at 10:01 am
I literally just removed this website from my favorites and un-subscribed from the podcast because of this post.
January 16th, 2009 at 10:32 am
I should have made it more clear that I like regular stats like Runs, RBI’s, Hits, 2B’s, HR’s, Wins, SB’s, etc.
Joe Carter had a really good career but GOT ROOKED when it came to the voting, and was overshadowed by other guys much of his career. He was the type of guy who should of received about 17-20% of the vote and slowly climbed up until he hit the Andre Dawson/Jim Rice category of should he be in or shouldn’t he be in?
When guys hit that 65 – 70 % range, some writers feel bad about not voting for a guy and then vote for him near the end of his 15 year period. That is one reason why guys who are close (like Jim Rice) get in after 15 years.
Who wants to be the writer who left Rice off the ballot, when he only misses by a few votes?
Those same writers will eventually come around and vote for Dawson, which will eventually get him in.
It just takes some players longer, which was mentioned in my original Raines piece. Duke Snider only received 17% of the vote his first time. Also, in the first election in 1936, active players were eligible, and LOU GEHRIG only received 22% of the vote. Lou Gehrig!
You sabermetric guys would of had a field day back then!
Carter probably was hurt because of his low OBP. While that is not high on the priority list to me when I pick candidates during mock elections, it likely cost Carter enough votes to stay on the ballot and then gain some momentum.
What would be important to me towards Carter’s candidacy is his 10 seasons of 100+ RBI’s. Truly dominating during the main portion (ages 26-34) of his playing career.
Carter’s career is very similar to Tony Perez’ and Dale Murphy’s. Perez is in while Murphy still gets much support. Perez had many more runs, hits, RBI’s plus gets the aura of being part of the Big Red Machine, while Murphy had very simialr numbers to Carter, plus the two consecutive MVP years. Not saying that’s right, but it is what it is.
Winning games and championships, plus MVP finishes go a long way in a voters mind. Again, not saying that’s right, but it is what it is.
Bill,
I am not putting Morris in because of his 162 game record, but said it COMPARES FAVORABLY to most other post WWII pitchers. I would vote for Morris because he DOMINATED more than Blyleven.
Also, while that HR off of Mitch Williams was Series winning and was Carter’s signature moment, there is no way you can compare a single play in a Game 6 with pitching a 10 inning, 1-0 shutout over John Smoltz in a Game 7.
All the vitriol over Blyleven is funny, because I believe Blyleven will likely get in over the next couple seasons, while Morris will be left out.
January 16th, 2009 at 10:51 am
The misconception here is that baseball players don’t win games. Ever. Period. No baseball player has ever won a game. The idea that that happens is total nonsense. Teams win games. Players do not. And you cannot come to any conclusion about a player based on whether his teams win games.
No soldier has ever won a war. Armies – military forces do. You can’t tell anything about an individual soldier based on whether his side won the war.
When one company out executes another company in the marketplace, you can’t tell anything about the individuals at those companies, not even the presidents or ceos.
The outcome tells you that the groups won. It tells you nothing particularly definitive about any of the individuals involved. (And it doesn’t even told you which side was better, only which side won. Wars and business clashes often turn on luck, just like baseball games. Just like human lives, for that matter)
The idea of assigning wins and losses to individual pitchers is ludicrous. It’s philosophically incompatible with assigning them to teams. You can’t have a a team and an individual winning a a game, because the latter implies that everyone else on the team is of no importance whatsoever in the outcome, which means there was no reason for anybody but the individual to be involved in the game in the first place.
This has nothing to do with statistical analysis or sabermetrics. It’s Logic 101.
Bert Blyleven threw 60 shutouts during his career. That’s ninth on the all-time list. #1,#2,#3,#4,#5,#6,#7,#8,#10, #11,#12, #13,#14, #15, #16, #17, #18, #19, and #20 are all in the Hall of Fame. Blyleven isn’t.
Morris threw only 28 career shutouts. There are only 10 pitchers in the Hall of Fame with less than that, and all of them are either A) relief pitchers b)pitchers from the 19th century, when there were tons of errors and thus shutouts were rare because of unearned runs or 3) pitchers from the 1930s, who pitched when offense was at an all-time high (comparable to 1994-present) (for those interested those 4 include 2 Yankees who are in because of run support, Lefty Gomez and Waite Hoyt, Dizzy Dean, who started only 230 games in his career, and Ted Lyons (and my guess is that Lyons would have twice the number of career shutouts in his career if you counted games in which he pitched 9 innings of shutout ball that were lost by the White Sox in extra innings as shutouts)
Shutouts aren’t, of course, generally the only think you have to look at, of course, and pitchers are hardly the only factor in shutouts, but in this case it tells you all you really need to know about Blyleven and Morris – that Blyleven was a far more dominant pitcher than Morris for far longer. And that nobody in the history of baseball has pitched like Blyleven has and not gotten in the Hall of Fame, while lots of moundsmen have pitched like Jack Morris and not goten into the Hall of Fame.
January 16th, 2009 at 11:01 am
e Murphy had very simialr numbers to Carter,
Yeah, in the same way that chicken salad is similar to chicken $hit.
I’m extremely impressed to find someone dumber than Corky Simpson. I think Randal was talking about you.
January 16th, 2009 at 11:09 am
Joe, I bet you still think the earth is flat.
How the heck can you possibly say Morris dominated while Blyleven didn’t? As some others posted above Blyleven had:
- a much lower ERA than Morris
- a better K rate than Morris
- a better BB rate than Morris
- a better HR allowed rate than Morris
- a better postseason ERA
Yeah, I think I just deleted this from my favorites as well. If you fancy yourself some sort of journalist, I’d recommend keeping an open mind and maybe learning about this stuff rather than dismissing it in the same way a bully dismisses the “math geeks” on the schoolyard. Silva should kick you off the site.
January 16th, 2009 at 11:52 am
I’m really tired of the whole “mother’s basement dwelling nerd” generalization of sabermetricians. People that do this just don’t take the time to understand some of the more advanced ways of looking at baseball statistics.
Look, VORP, WARP, wOBA etc are just things that some really smart people developed to understand the game better. You shouldn’t dismiss a statistic because you don’t understand it, which is sadly the case with your post. The worst part is that as doctaK showed above, your argument is flawed and useless even while using traditional statistics.
It’s sad that a large portion of the HOF voters think like you do, because you’re cases for electing fringe players consist of the following:
1) Insult knowledgeable baseball fans
2) Build argument around some arbitrary un-provable “fact” (i.e. he was feared, he was clutch etc..)
Using these makes you:
1) Sound like an idiot
2) Lose credibility
3) See 1.
Do yourself a favor and stop being lazy…try and understand some of these advanced statistics before you insult them and the people that use them.
January 16th, 2009 at 12:07 pm
LOL, the btf boys are ripping him 5 new ones.
January 16th, 2009 at 12:29 pm
Pitchers DO NOT SCORE RUNS. How hard is this to understand? It almost makes me wonder if you wrote the article *because* it would get flamed, gaining you precious site hits.
January 16th, 2009 at 12:41 pm
Drew,
What is wrong with you? Don’t you know that a pitcher can will his offense into scoring runs with toughness and grit? Blyleven must’ve been such a douchebag, hated by so many of his teammates, that they simply refused to score runs for him! How can anyone vote for such a tool? Get out of your mother’s basement!
jk
January 16th, 2009 at 12:44 pm
(wades through 38 potato-chip backs towards his pants)
January 16th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
Guys, Joe DelGrippo played for D-III Marietta College. Therefore his opinion matters more.
We should all defer to his baseball wisdom and be grateful for his writing.
January 16th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
“Stats don’t win games”
You’re right Joe, stats don’t win games. Fuck home runs, strikeouts, and OBP, games are won with pine tar, dirt and David Eckstein.
“Those bloggers are guys who mostly never played the game at any decent level above Little League”
Joe you’ve got me there – I didn’t realize you played at the prestigious baseball powerhouse D-III Marietta College. You’re opinion about the HOF matters more to me now.
January 16th, 2009 at 1:36 pm
I guess the only qualification for writing articles on this site is a complete inability to comprehend statistics.
I ask again: are you the biggest idiot ever?
January 16th, 2009 at 1:47 pm
So, an article that responds to a readers question is responded to many times over, mostly to disagree. Most of the higher responded to pieces on this site is because those readers disagree with the author.
So, since most of my other pieces on http://www.nybaseballdigest.com have very few, if any, comments, is it safe to say that most readers agree with those thoughts and facts?
January 16th, 2009 at 1:53 pm
So, since most of my other pieces on http://www.nybaseballdigest.com have very few, if any, comments, is it safe to say that most readers agree with those thoughts and facts?
———————————————————–
No. The only reason people care enough to mock you is that BTF linked to you. Otherwise, your article would just go to unmourned cybernetic oblivion.
January 16th, 2009 at 1:54 pm
I think it’s fair to say that the absurdity of your writing compelled me to comment on this terrible, illogical article. The fact that you insulted the educated baseball fans that like to read blogs such as this probably didn’t help either.
January 16th, 2009 at 4:17 pm
“I should have made it more clear that I like regular stats like Runs, RBI’s, Hits, 2B’s, HR’s, Wins, SB’s, etc. ”
Last I checked, K’s, BB’s, runs allowed, and HR’s were all ‘regular stats’. If you compare Blyleven and Morris in all of these categories, Blyleven is far superior.
Your argument is based solely on W-L % and a game 7. It’s as if you decided Morris was a HOF before looking at any stats then cherry picked the stats that support his case.
In other news, as a commenter already posted, did you know the earth isn’t flat Joe?
January 16th, 2009 at 4:18 pm
This is the dumbest ‘logic’ I’ve seen in a while. So you’re going to fill the Hall with Yankees & guys from other big hitting teams, but a great pitcher who never goes to a big team doesn’t have a shot at the Hall? Pitchers don’t really WIN games. They only give their team an opportunity to WIN.
Honestly, you need help.
January 17th, 2009 at 3:59 am
Joe,
You understand that “pitchers wins” is a made up stat, and it’s not the same as team wins. Pitchers get wins because their offense outscored the other offense. A worse pitcher can get more “pitchers wins” than a good pitcher can if his bullpen protects his leads better, and his offense scores more runs, than the good pitchers bullpen and offense does.
Bert Blyleven was 17-16 in 1985, when his ERA was 3.16 over 293 (!) innings, in a year where the average ERA was 4.15. How does a starting pitcher who gave up a run less than average while leading the league in innings by a hefty margin, only get one more “pitchers win” than he got “pitchers losses”? Pretty simple, he pitched for two of the worst offenses in the AL.
How did Jack Morris go 21-6 in 1992, when his ERA (4.04) was barely below league average (4.11)? Might it have something to do with playing for the 2nd best offense in the AL that year? Morris had 4 wins in which he gave up 5 runs or more. Why should he, his team gave him 5.56 runs per start.
In 1985 Bert had zero wins when he gave up 5 runs or more, and only 1 win when he gave up 4 runs. He also lost 2 games where he only gave up 1 run. His team gave him 4.2 runs per start.
You don’t have to adopt new fangled stats. But please stop using discredited old stats like “pitchers wins” that don’t mean what you think they do.
January 17th, 2009 at 5:44 pm
nonono! Jack Moris had more WINS. he Won da games. He went out by himself and won all of those games….BY HIMSELF!
January 18th, 2009 at 6:03 am
Oh Joe, please don’t ever bust Bender’s chops again. Blyleven had over 1100 more innings pitched, and gave up a half a run per game less. The trait that Morris had, was that he was a WINNER, plain and simple. But Blyleven’s body of work over a 20 year period puts him above Morris for HOF credentials.
July 8th, 2009 at 6:34 am
Didn’t Blyleven actually have more wins than Morris? Not that it matters, but the crux of your argument is even factually wrong.