Rich Lederer pushes back against Jon Heyman on the subject of Bert Blyleven and the Hall of Fame.
My probabilistic view of why Bert should be in the Hall is here. Note that while he won fewer games than expected, he lost a lot more games than his game scores predict.
David, as usual your links, stats and insights have made me think about my own stance of Bert. I am in my 40’s and remember Bert vividly as he had THE BEST CURVEBALL ever. In fact he had 3 types if memory serves correct and why he always had high strike out totals. I never thought of him as HOF but of Hall of Very Good as I never considered him to be a dominant pitcher. That being said, I have poured over his stats and compared them to other comparable pitchers-Morris, Sutton, Pettitte and Musina. I would argue that Mussina and Blyleven both deserve to be in while Sutton should be tossed out and Andy and Jack sitting in the stands watching Bert and Moose giving their thank you’s. The ERA+ on baseball reference is a good start for those who need information and perspective.
@dondbaseball: I’m glad you brought up Mussina. We’ll see how much only one 20-win season counts against him when he’s up for a vote.
A few years ago I was working on a project for a customer who can’t be named on pitchers. They brought up Mussina as an example of an outlier because he was described as having eight + pitches.