With the January 12 announcement of Rickey Henderson and Jim Rice as the two newest members of baseball’s Hall of Fame, yet another year was marked in which the name of Bert Blyleven remained absent from the list of inductees into the grand old game’s sacred shrine.
The durable right-hander, nicknamed “The Dutch Master” for his Netherlandian ancestry, is now in his twelfth year of eligibility and with each passing year has seen his vote total steadily climb towards the 75 percent that is needed for enshrinement.
However, to some in baseball it is an injustice that Blyleven does not already have a plaque in Cooperstown and an even greater injustice that he may never get one. Blyleven backers are mystified that voters continually look past the fact that their man compiled 287 wins and 3,701 strikeouts over a steady, reliable 22-year career. On the other hand, there are those who are just fine with Blyleven being left out, people who point to his near- .500 won-loss record and dearth of accolades as sufficient proof that while Blyleven should have a place in baseball history, that place should not be in Cooperstown.
As the years have progressed, and Blyleven has remained on the outside looking in, the debate over his candidacy has reached hot-button status among those who follow the game. It has become almost an annual rite of the offseason. Should he or shouldn’t he get in? Should Blyleven’s amazing durability outweigh his lack of total domination, or vice versa?
In the wake of this year’s Hall of Fame balloting, and with spring training still a good 4 weeks away, I thought I would try and break up the monotony of January by lending my voice, however insignificant it might be, to this debate. So without further adieu let’s take a plunge into the evidence.
Why he should be in
There is a lot to like about Blyleven. For starters, the man wielded what was quite possibly the nastiest curveball of his generation, one that is still used as a standard for comparison. Then there are his 287 wins, only one other eligible pitcher (Tommy John) has won that many and is not in Cooperstown. He also struck out 3,701 batters, good for fifth all-time. His 60 career shutouts are just one fewer than Roger Clemens and Pedro Martinez combined, and his 242 complete games are twice as many as Clemens. Blyleven threw those 242 complete games over the span of 685 career starts, so you could basically count on him going the distance once every three games. His ERA was better than the league average in 17 out of his 22 seasons. Blyleven only had one 20-win season but he had five 17-win seasons and one 19-win campaign. He also finished in the top five in ERA six times, threw a no-hitter, and helped two teams (the 79 Pirates and 87 Twins) win world championships.
Why he should stay out
While Blyleven’s complete game, strikeout, and shutout numbers are undoubtedly impressive, his resume is not without some glaring holes. First off, for most of his career Blyleven’s won-loss record hovered at or near the .500 mark. His 250 career losses nearly equal his win total of 287. Now there are some who say that had Blyleven not been stuck on some mediocre Twins teams and abysmal Indians teams during the early and middle parts of his career, his won-loss record would look very different. However, in my opinion there is no use in speculating what he might have done with other teams, we can only evaluate the numbers that are in front of us. It is also important to remember that Blyleven pitched in an era of four man rotations when the 20-win threshold was much more attainable than it is today. During the 1970s there were a whopping 96 twenty-game winners as opposed to 34 in the 1990s. However Blyleven has only one season of 20 or more wins to his credit. Also, perhaps underscoring his lack of dominance, Blyleven only received Cy Young votes in four years (never placing higher than third) and was only selected to two all-star teams.
Final Verdict
Out of all the borderline cases for the Hall of Fame, Blyleven’s is one of the toughest to call. Do you reward his amazing durability or punish his lack of sheer brilliance? Lying at the very heart of Blyleven’s case and all other borderline cases is this question. What standards determine a Hall of Famer? Your answer to this question will probably determine how you feel about Blyleven. If you feel that the Hall isn’t only reserved for the Sandy Koufax’s and Willie Mays’s of the world, that there is room for players such as Don Sutton and Phil Niekro, who compiled their stats over a long period of reliability but who lacked overwhelming dominance, then you will probably be inclined to let Blyleven in. This is a perfectly legitimate argument and there are many respected baseball people who share this view.
However, I believe that the Hall of Fame is reserved for, and only for, the elite, not the very good which is exactly what Blyleven was. He was a very good pitcher for a very long time but never an elite one. I believe that with each borderline case that gets let in (Sutton, Niekro, and Jim Rice) the Hall of Fame risks losing some of its prestige. Therefore, while I think that Blyleven was a very good pitcher, in my book his career falls just a tad bit shy of Cooperstown-worthy.
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Contact sports reporter Chris Rambo at [email protected].
