Bert gets Hosed

As I am sure you are aware of by now, Bert Blyleven once again was denied entry to the Baseball Hall of Fame, this time by a mere five votes (I heard it was six somewhere else but I'll roll with five because that sounds more dramatic).  I am still not sure why there are people not voting for him, but I'm pretty sure it's because sportswriters are idiots.  (Exhibit B would be Roberto Alomar not getting in, simply because he "isn't first ballot material" which is the dumbest shit I've ever heard.)  It's clearly because they are hung up on him not having 300 wins and/or not winning a Cy Young award.  Ok, fine.  Dumb, nonsensical, but fine.  You're an idiot.

There are also a lot of people voting for Jack Morris, who got 52% of the vote.  I also disagree with this, but whatever, you people are entitled to your own opinion even if it's stupid.  But what really boggles the mind is the people who are voting for Morris over Blyleven.  "What?", you are probably saying, "No way did anybody vote for Black Jack over Bert."  Oh but it's true.  I have proof.  Here is the ballot submitted by the ESPN writers.  Notice anything?  Buster Olney, who I thought was a pretty smart guy, voted for Morris but not for Blyleven.  At least the other three guys who didn't vote for Bert had the common decency to leave Morris off as well.  I just don't get it.

WINS:  Blyleven 287, Morris 254
ERA:  Blyleven 3.31, Morris 3.90
ERA+:  Blyleven 118, Morris 105
WHIP:  Blyleven 1.20, Morris 1.30
Strikeouts:  Blyleven 3,701, Morris 2,478
K/9:  Blyleven 6.7, Morris 5.8
K/BB:  Blyleven 2.8, Morris 1.8
Shutouts:  Blyleven 60, Morris 28
Complete Games:  Blyleven 242, Morris 175
Winning Pct:  Blyleven .534, Morris .577
Cy Young top 3 finishes:  Blyleven 2, Morris 2
Cy Young top 10 finishes:  Blyleven 4, Morris 7

I will grant that Morris's seven top-10 finishes in the Cy Young voting is impressive, but outside of that for what reason could you possibly think Morris is a more worthy candidate than Blyleven, leaving aside whether Morris is worthy or not in the first place?  He won three wings, Bert won two - that's a function of playing on better teams, as is the winning percentage and actually many of the Cy Young top 10s as well, since four of the seven times he finished that high in the voting he wasn't even in the top 10 of the American League in ERA.


Yes, the game 7 of the 1991 Series performance was still one of the greatest things I've had the pleasure of watching, and I will always love Black Jack for it and won't complain if he gets in, even though I don't think he should.  But to vote for him over Bert because he started a bunch of opening days in a row and had the most wins in an arbitrary 10-year period (and make no mistake, despite our base-10 obsessed culture a decade is still an arbitrary span of years) is ludicrous.


How could you Buster Olney?  You broke my heart.