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There is an army of Bert Backers deployed across the internet armed with three and four letter statistical acronyms – RSAA, WARP, RCAP – designed to demonstrate that Blyleven would have been a consistent big winner if only he’d played for better teams and received better run support. They purport to prove that Bert would have won 313 games with better run support, or that his mediocre .537 career win percentage would have been .570, or that he’d have won 20 games in a season more than once if only he had been backed by elite teams rather than also-rans. They have an explanation for everything, a rationalization for every glaring deficiency in Bert’s Hall of Fame qualifications.

But there’s one thing – one really big thing – that they just can’t seem to explain: why wasn’t Bert a consistent big winner when he actually played for good teams that gave him solid offensive support? Because it is a fact that Blyleven pitched for some very good teams that gave him very good support, and Bert still couldn’t put up Hall of Fame numbers.

By my count Bert pitched eight seasons for teams that either won 90 or more games, were serious contenders for division titles, or both (’70 Twins, ’77 Rangers, ’78 – ’80 Pirates, ’87-’88 Twins, ’89 Angels). These teams won two World Series, three division titles and finished 2nd three other times. These teams had a cumulative .562 winning percentage. And Bert made 261 starts over these eight seasons and pitched more than 1800 innings. Here’s his record for these eight seasons:

100-83, .546 win percentage, 3.55 ERA.

The simple fact is that Bert averaged 12.5 wins per season while pitching for these teams, and had a lower winning percentage – .546 – than the .562 winning percentage posted by these teams.

But Bert’s battalions tell us we should ignore what actually happened when Bert pitched for good teams and instead believe what they tell us Bert would have done if those mediocre Twins and Indians teams had been powerhouses.

Why couldn’t Bert do what Jim Kaat did in ’74 and ’75, when he put together back-to-back 20 win seasons for a White Sox team that was sub-.500 over these two seasons and gave him less than average run support? Why couldn’t Bert do what Tommy John did from ’77 to ’80 when John averaged 20 wins per year for good teams? Granted, John’s Dodger and Yankee teams had a .594 winning percentage compared to the .561 compiled by the good teams Bert pitched for in the eight seasons we’ve examined, but does that explain the difference between John’s 20 wins per season and Bert’s 12.5 wins, or John’s .696 winning percentage during this period and Bert’s .546?

This is the crux of the matter. Bert couldn’t establish himself as a consistent winner even when pitching for good teams. True, had had very good ERA’s for many mediocre teams, but compiled won-loss records that were too often no better than mediocre pitchers who received even less run support than Bert did. And when Bert pitched for good teams, he continued to compile mediocre won-loss records. This is the problem for Bert’s army of backers and their arsenal of esoteric statistics. They can’t explain why Bert didn’t win consistently for good teams. They can’t explain how Bert could receive better run support than Twin pitchers like Joe Decker and Jim Hughes and Dick Woodson and compile records no better than these mediocre pitchers.

Here’s the task for the Bert Backers. Explain how this putative Hall of Fame pitcher could receive an average of 4.39 runs/game from these good teams, whose overall scoring average was 4.34 runs/game over these eight seasons, and yet have a lower winning percentage than his teams? The average pitcher on these teams received slightly less run support than Bert and yet had a higher winning percentage – was the average pitcher on these Pirate, Twin and Angel teams a Hall of Famer?

@thomas c,

Player GS ERA ERA+ CG ShO Ks WHIP

Ryan 773 3.19 111 222 61 5714 1.247

Seaver 647 2.86 127 231 61 3640 1.121

Carlton 709 3.22 115 254 55 4136 1.247

Blyleven 685 3.31 118 242 60 3701 1.198

Nuff said

THE SOLUTION TO THE BERT BLYLEVEN-COOPERSTOWN
STATEMATE IS ACTUALLY QUITE SIMPLE:

Either Mr. Blyleven is, at long last, rightfully inducted into
baseball's Hall of Fame… or, to level the playing field, the
plaques of several others with less-impressive career statistics
should be removed from Cooperstown.

Since the latter will obviously not be acceptable, those who are
entitled to vote this honor should, in all fairness, carefully
compare the records this man compiled during a career spanning two
decades with those pitchers already inducted. It is a gross
injustice to continue to deny this extraordinary athlete his due.

Unfortunately, the distinction and the integrity of the esteemed
Hall of Fame is diminished by the omission of Mr. Blyleven.

–Ron Howe
Erskine, Minnesota

Blyleven should not have made the Hall of Fame. Very good pitcher. May be a nice guy, when he isn't caught dropping F-bomb tirades. Bottom line is that the people that saw him play all those years gave the guy 17%, 14% votes and so on. Over the years his politicing and whining and people playing with his stats, some how boosted him. Truth is, that if the steroid era wasn't shutting out players right now Blyleven would not be in. The steroid users be damned and they never need to get in. But if people were using their votes for McGuire, Palmeiro, etc. Blyleven would have never gotten 75%.
He had a couple of very good seasons. That does not make a great career. 13 wins and 11 losses ave is not great.
Baseball, until the last couple of years seemed to understand what Hall of Fame meant, more than the NFL that seems to think they need to put in 6 – 7 people a year.