Pleading Blyleven’s Case

Rich Lederer at Baseball Analysts has been making the case for Bert Blyleven’s inclusion into the Hall of Fame for some time. He’s got two new pieces up — one directed at writer Buster Olney and another more general article that compares Blyleven to his contemporaries. There’s a lot of good food for thought in both, and it’s a shame that a talented guy like Rich has to spend so much time and energy trying to explain why Blyleven belongs, but I’m glad someone is making the effort.

Rich nails the issue in that second article:

The whole thing is rather silly. It’s really all about wins (and little else). A pitcher is deemed dominant because he won games, or so goes the conventional wisdom. Sorry, but a pitcher should be deemed dominant because he prevented the other team from scoring runs. If a pitcher works deep into games and keeps runs off the board, he has performed his job. It’s no more complicated than that.

I’ve always found it odd that pitchers are measured in terms of something they cannot control. Pitchers can prevent runs and put their team in position to win games, but they cannot actually win games without a lot of other things going right. Too bad the voters seem to miss this when looking at Blyleven.