Jack Morris and Bert Blyleven
Charlie looks at two of the top pitchers of the 80s.
Who the hell was Bert Blyleven? Bert Blyleven was a right-handed
starting pitcher, mostly in the American League, who played between 1970
and 1992. He pitched for Minnesota, Texas, Pittsburgh, Cleveland,
Minnesota again and California, and played on World Series winning teams
in Pittsburgh and in his second stint in Minnesota. Folks knew him to
have a great curveball.
Who the hell was Jack Morris? Jack Morris was a right-handed
starting pitcher, mostly for Detroit, who played between 1977 and 1994.
He pitched for Detroit, Minnesota, Toronto and Cleveland, and played on
World Series winning teams in Detroit, Minnesota and Toronto. He won the
most games of all pitchers in the 1980s, and won Game 7 of the 1991
World Series.
1. Was he ever regarded as the best player in baseball? Did
anybody, while he was active, ever suggest that he was the best player
in baseball?
I think it is safe to say that no one thought Bert Blyleven as the
best player or pitcher in baseball. Even for a pitcher, Blyleven did not
fare well in the MVP voting:
1973 AL 4/336, 26th
1989 AL 32/392, 13th
That’s it. Two seasons, 0.09 MVP award shares. If someone did think
Blyleven was the best player in baseball, he wasn’t telling the MVP
voters this.
It is the same tale for Jack Morris. Morris, like most pitchers of
the Cy Young Award era, did not garner many MVP votes.
1981 AL 17/392 15th
1983 AL 2/392 21st
1987 AL 5/392 20th
1991
AL 29/392 13th
1992 AL 18/392 13th
That’s 0.18 Award Shares. He did better than Blyleven, mostly
because he pitched on better teams, but Morris’s voting record is
nothing about which to brag.
2. Was he the best player on his team?
Usually not, though usually
the best pitcher. When Blyleven came to the majors, he joined a Twins
pitching staff that Jim Perry and Jim Kaat led, and Ron Perranoski was
the closer. Luis Tiant even pitched a half-season for the 1970 Twins. In
a few years, he was the Twins best pitcher, though he stood out more
for bulk totals than for anything else. In 1972, Blyleven threw 287.1
innings and had a 2.73 ERA—but finished 17-17 for a 77-77 team, and
the staff ERA was 2.84.
He kept pitching well though his win-loss numbers were not much better than those of his teammates in both
Minnesota and Texas.
His ERAs were usually better. He was likely the Pirates’ best pitcher in the Fam-I-Ly era, though he did not pitch much
better than his teammates. Those Pirate staffs had very good bullpens, and Blyleven pitched many no-decisions. In Cleveland, he was the best pitcher on the team when he was not hurt, which was most of 1982 and
much of 1983. He likely did not have the best stuff on the team, but the man who did, Len Barker, did not pitch to his full ability. These were his best years, and the poor Cleveland team and injuries masked this.
When he came back to Minnesota in the mid-1980s, Frank Viola, not
Blyleven, was the Twins ace.
In short, Blyleven was usually the best
starter on his team from 1971 to 1984. He had better ERAs than his
teammates, but not much better win-loss numbers. He was 21 Wins Above
Team for his career, and his teams were a bit worse than .500 when he
was not pitching. Some of those teams did have position players who were
better than Blyleven, like Harmon Killebrew, Rod Carew, Willie Stargell
and Dave Parker (at that time).
Morris was the best pitcher on the
Tigers, though Willie Hernandez won the MVP award in 1984. (Sparky
Anderson was the last manager to not use the one-inning closer, so the
thought that Hernandez was the best pitcher in the league in 1984 is
not outrageous.) Alan Trammell was a better player than Morris, and Lou
Whitaker may well have been too.
3. Was he the best player in baseball
at his position? Was he the best player in the league at his position?
Bert Blyleven was likely never the best pitcher in baseball or his
league. He did not fare well in the Cy Young Award voting:
1973 AL 1/120, 7th
1984 AL 45/140, 3rd
1985 AL 9/140, 3rd
1989 AL 9/140, 4th
Blyleven had two good showings in the
mid-1980s with Cleveland and Minnesota. Both of these teams were bad
when Blyleven pitched for them.
In his 1984 year with Cleveland, he went
19-7 with a 2.87 ERA for a team that won 75 games and lost 87. That was
likely his best year, and Willie Hernandez, a relief pitcher, won the
Cy Young Award.
Jack Morris never won a Cy Young Award, but did do well
in the voting.
1981 AL 21/140, 3rd
1983 AL 38/140, 2nd
1984 AL 1/140, 7th
1986 AL 13/140, 5th
1987 AL 3/140, 9th
1991 AL 17/140, 4th
1992 AL 10/140, 5th
That’s 0.74 Award Shares. He was never the best
pitcher in the league—in the 1981-1984 time frame, Dave Stieb was
the best pitcher in the AL, and after that, Roger Clemens was the best
pitcher. He was usually good, but never brilliant.
4. Did he have an
impact on a number of pennant races?
Blyleven usually did not pitch for
good teams, which made his win-loss numbers worse. Thus, you would not
think he would have pitched in many pennant races. He did pitch in
some, and pitched well when he did.
In 1970, Blyleven’s rookie year, the
Twins won the AL West by 9 games. Blyleven went 10-9 for this team,
which would have won its division with or without Blyleven. The Twins
did not play well for years after that, hovering around .500.
In 1977, Blyleven went 14-12 for a Texas team that went 94-68, good for second
place, 8 games behind Kansas City. For Blyleven to have pitched well
enough for the Rangers to have a more wins than the Royals, Blyleven
would have had to have won 23 games and lost 3.
From 1978 to 1980,
Blyleven pitched for Pittsburgh, which had good teams. Blyleven went
14-10 for a Pirates team that had a 88-73 year, 1.5 games out of first
place. In 1979, the Pirates won the World Series, and beat Montreal for
the AL East title by 2 games. In 1980, the Pirates fell to 83-79, 8
games out of first. Blyleven had a bad year, going 8-13, which was a big
reason the Pirates lost.
After 1980, Blyleven pitched for Cleveland,
which was in the middle of it swell-known 33 year funk that lasted from
trading Rocky Colavito for Harvey Kuenn to John Hart signing many young
players to long-term contracts. Thus, he did not pitch in any pennant
races.
The Twins of 1987-1988 were good. The Twins won the AL West in
1987 by 2 games, but that’s misleading. They lost their their last 5
games after clinching. Blyleven pitched well, 15-12. The next year, he
pitched poorly, 10-17 for a team that finished 91-71. It is unlikely
the Twins could have made up 13 games had Blyleven pitched better,
though they would have made it closer.
In 1989, Blyleven pitched for
California, which ended the year 8 games out of first place. Blyleven
had his last good year for this team, 17-5, and likely could not have
pitched well enough to make up those 8 games.
Looking at what Bill
James looked for Don Drysdale—how well Blyleven pitched against all
teams that ended the year within 10 games of the division winner in all
years Blyleven’s team ended the year within 10 games of the division
winner (save 1970), from 1 August until the division winner clinched
the division—we come up with these numbers:
GS IP H R ER HR BB SO W-L ERA
13 96.1 82 33 31 6 25 68 7-4 2.90
The years in the above
numbers are 1978-1980, 1987 and 1989. He threw two shutouts—16
August 1980 against Montreal and 24 August 1989 in Kansas City—and
two other complete games. He threw 9 quality starts, and had a mean
game score of 60. His worst game—a 7-1 loss against Montreal on 23
September 1980—scores at 36, which is good for a worst game of 13.
Furthermore, Bert Blyleven pitched well in the postseason, 5-1 with a
2.47 ERA in 6 starts and 2 relief games. Thus, in the 19 most important
starts of his life, Blyleven went 11-5 with a 2.86 ERA in 138.2
innings, and was 1-0 with a 0.00 ERA in 5 relief innings to boot, and
he did not have a really bad start.
That is good pitching, folks. Let’s
add Blyleven’s postseason starts:
GS IP H HR R ER BB SO W-L ERA
13 96.1 82 4 35 31 25 68 7-4 2.90
6 41.1 38 6 14 13 7 31 4-1 2.83
And,
with the Pirates down 3-1 in the 1979 World Series, Blyleven pitched 4
innings of scoreless relief to win Game 5. Damn you, Bert Blyleven.
Jack Morris started 24 times against pennant contenders—a team that
ended the season within 10 games of first place (or won the division by
less than 10 games) from 1 August until the clinch/elimination day—during his career. He went 12-9 in these games with a 3.78 ERA, about
what one would think a pitcher with Morris’s overall numbers would
have.
His best year down the stretch was 1983, a tight race where he
went 3-1 with 4 complete games in these games against New York, Toronto
and Baltimore.
His worst year in these games is, oddly, the most
well-known pennant race of these, the 1987 AL East race. Morris was 0-3
in 4 starts against Milwaukee and Toronto in this race, which Detroit
won on the last day of the year.
GS IP H HR R ER BB SO W-L ERA
24 188.1 161 18 79 68 73 141 12-9 3.78
13 92.1 83 10 39 39 32 64 7-4 3.80
Morris was 7-4 in 13 postseason starts, with a 3.80 ERA. One
of those wins was Game 7 of the 1991 World Series, as we all know, and
one of those losses came against Bert Blyleven. Bert beat Jack in Game
2 of the 1987 ALCS; Twins 6, Tigers 3.
Overall, he was as good as
Blyleven in the key regular season starts when you fix for era and
park and he was as good as Blyleven in the postseason. He has a big game
rep, which he warrants no more than Blyleven does. Neither pitched like
Bob Gibson did in the big games, but both pitched well.
5. Was he a
good enough player that he could continue to play regularly after
passing his prime?
Blyleven pitched until he was 41, and had many good
years after 30. He was 11-7 for a bad Cleveland team in 1981 and 19-7
in 1984, 17-16 with two teams in 1985, 17-14 in 1986 and 15-12 in 1987,
and 17-5 in 1989. So yes.
Morris had a long prime, so this is a little
hard to give an answer, but yes. Morris pitched until he was 39, and
won 21 games at age 37, though he pitched only OK.
6. Is he the very
best player in baseball history who is not in the Hall of Fame?
No for
both pitchers. Ron Santo was likely a better player, though in a
shorter career. Eddie Murray and Ryne Sandberg definitely were better.
7. Are most players who have comparable career statistics in the Hall
of Fame?
This is Blyleven’s best argument. Of his 10 best comps, all
are in the Hall of Fame save Jim Kaat, a former teammate of Blyleven’s,
and Tommy John, another pitcher from the same time. Both are popular
candidates. He is very similar, both in numbers and in non-statistical
arguments, to Don Sutton. Both pitched for many years and were good,
but not great, pitchers most of the time. Both won 20 games once, were
All-Stars 6 times together. Sutton has better numbers, and he pitched
for better teams, though Blyleven pitched much better in the
post-season. As a pitcher, Blyleven was similar to Robin Roberts and
Ferguson Jenkins—right-handed pitchers with great curveballs who
threw high in the strike zone.
Morris’s best comp, Dennis Martinez, is
not in the Hall of Fame and is not going into the Hall of Fame.
Martinez is the only pitcher who has a 900+ similarity score. Morris
was a better pitcher overall than Martinez, and had a much better peak,
though he was not a much better pitcher overall. Of the rest of his top
10, it has 7 Hall of Famers (Bob Gibson, Red Ruffing, Amos Rusie,
Burleigh Grimes, Bob Feller, Jim Bunning and Jim Palmer), one popular
candidate (Luis Tiant) and one man who is not yet eligible but will not
go into the Hall once he is eligible (Chuck Finley). Even though Morris
is clearly a better pitcher than Finley and is a bit better than
Martinez, his ERA+ is 105, worse than all his comps.
8. Do the player’s
numbers meet Hall of Fame standards?
Blyleven scores 50 on the HOF
Standards test, 113.5 on the HOF Monitor. His Black Ink is 16. Looking
at the top 200, there are 6 Hall of Fame pitchers who have lower Black
Ink scores than Blyleven: Pud Galvin, Eddie Plank, Herb Pennock, Hoyt
Wilhelm, Rollie Fingers and Candy Cummings (whom some say invented the
pitch of which Blyleven was the master, the curveball). He won 287
games. Of all the eligible pitchers who won between 270 and 300 games,
we have:
* 6 Hall of Famers (Lefty Grove, Early Wynn, Robin Roberts,
Fergie Jenkins, Red Ruffing and Burleigh Grimes)
* 3 great candidates (Blyleven, Tommy John and Jim Kaat)
* 2 19th-century guys whom no one remembers (Bobby Mathews and Tony Mullane).
Morris is on
the cusp. He has a Black Ink score of 20, which is low for a Hall of
Famer, and he meets 39% of Hall of Fame standards. He won 254 games in
his career, 38th all time, tied with Red Faber (a Hall of Fame
mistake).
Among the eligibles between 240 and 270 wins, 14 of 21
pitchers are in the Hall of Fame. Many of these men are borderline Hall
of Famers or outright mistakes (Eppa Rixey, Ted Lyons, Vic Willis, Herb
Pennock).
None of the seven men who are not in the Hall of Fame (Jim
McCormick, Gus Weyhing, Jack Quinn, Dennis Martinez, Jack Powell and
Frank Tanana) are candidates.
Morris was a better pitcher than the men
who are not in the Hall of Fame, though about as good as the borderline
folks.
9. Is there any evidence to suggest that the player was
significantly better or worse than is suggested by his statistics?
None
that I can tell. Blyleven was an average hitter and fielder. Morris
pitched one of the best postseason games of all time, a 10-inning
shutout against Atlanta in the seventh game of the 1991 World Series.
Overall, however, he was 7-4 with a 3.80 ERA in the postseason, which
is about as good as his regular season record. Morris came to bat only
once in the regular season; in fact, Morris was an outspoken booster of
the designated hitter rule.
10. Is he the best player at his position
who is eligible for the Hall of Fame but not in?
Well, let’s limit this
question to the starting pitchers on the ballot:
Blyleven, Rick
Honeycutt, Darryl Kile, Sid Fernandez, Danny Jackson, Morris, Fernando
Valenzuela, Tommy John and Jim Kaat. Only Blyleven, John and Kaat are
reasonable candidates, though some sportswriters will make arguments
for Morris, who has no business being a Hall of Famer.
It is hard to
pick the best of the three. Blyleven had 339 Win Shares, Kaat has 268
and John has 289. My gut feeling agrees with the Win Shares, ranking
them Blyleven, John and Kaat, in that order. If Blyleven is the best
eligible pitcher not in the Hall of Fame, Morris cannot be.
11. How
many MVP-type seasons did he have? Did he ever win an MVP award? If
not, how many times was he close?
Blyleven was never an MVP candidate,
which is common for a pitcher in the Cy Young Award era. He never won a
Cy Young Award, though he did have a good year in 1984 and the writers
picked him third in the Cy Young Award voting. The AL writers chose
Willie Hernandez, a relief pitcher. Dan Quisenberry, another reliever,
was second. Were we to limit the field to starting pitchers, I would
have picked Mike Boddicker or Dave Stieb myself. Like Don Sutton, he
did not have many big years.
Morris never won an MVP award, nor was he
close. Pitchers rarely won MVP awards in Morris’s time, though the AL
MVP voters often chose the MVP award winner out of a hat (which they
still do to this day, giving MVP awards to men who had no business
winning such an award, like Juan Gonzalez, Ivan Rodriguez and Miguel
Tejada). In Morris’s best year, 1986, Roger Clemens, another pitcher,
won the MVP award.
12. How many All-Star-type seasons did he have? How
many All-Star games did he play in? Did most of the other players who
played in this many go into the Hall of Fame?
Blyleven was an All Star
twice, a very low number. I do not have the numbers and do not care to
know how many folks were on two All Star teams, but I know many did and
most are not in the Hall of Fame.
Morris was an All-Star five times.
This is good, though not great.
13. If this man were the best player on
his team, would it be likely that the team could win the pennant?
Like
any great pitcher, only if either pitched one game and team took the
next three days off.
14. What impact did the player have on baseball
history? Was he responsible for any rule changes? Did he introduce any
new equipment? Did he change the game in any way?
Not that I know of.
15.
Did the player uphold the standards of sportsmanship and character that
the Hall of Fame, in its written guidelines, instructs us to consider?
Aside from some ill-timed words when the BBWAA voted for his old
teammate Kirby Puckett and not him, I know of no poor showings of
Bert’s personality. The man’s teammates liked him, and he was known to
be a funny man. He gave postgame interviews wearing a “Who Farted?”
T-shirt with holes in it.
As best I can tell, Morris meets these
standards. I have heard no one say that Morris does not meet these
standards.
Now, I understand what I am about to say may well shock most
Primer readers. Sit tight. More folks think Jack Morris was the better
of the two pitchers. When I told my father I was writing about these
two men, he told me that Jack Morris should be in the Hall of Fame, and
Bert Blyleven should not be. He is not alone. Most Primer readers would
not agree with that. Nor would I. Let us look at the pitcher-only
numbers:
Morris Blyleven Difference
3824 Inn 4970 1146
389 HR 430 41
1390 BB 1322 -68
2478 SO 3701 1223
0.92 HR/9 0.78 0.32
3.27 BB/9 2.39 -0.53
5.83 SO/9 6.70 9.60
See that Blyleven pitched
1146 more innings, but walked 68 fewer batters. Even if we look at the
other numbers, we see that Morris would have had to pitch for about 5
more years with Pedro Martinez’s numbers to match Blyleven. We need no
ERA fix; the two men pitched at the same time. Morris had an ERA+ of
105 (3.90 ERA against a mean ERA of 4.08), Blyleven of 118 (3.31 ERA
against a mean 3.90 ERA)
There is no way in the world in which we live
that Jack Morris was as good a pitcher as Bert Blyleven. Anyone who
says otherwise is wrong, and you should argue with him until he goes
mad. Why do folks think Jack Morris was a better pitcher than Bert
Blyleven? I shall show you some more numbers:
Morris Blyleven difference
254 W 287 33
186 L 250 64
.577 Pct .534 -.043
215 FWP 190 -25
3 20W 1 -2
1 G7W 0 -1
The last
three areas are “Fibonacci Win Points,” “Twenty Win Seasons” and “Wins
in Game 7 of the World Series.”
Morris won fewer games, but his other
win-loss numbers are better. His win-loss percent and Fibonacci Win
Points are better than Blyleven’s. He won 20 games two more times than
Blyleven, and he pitched one of the best games in baseball history in
Game 7 of the 1991 World Series. The gap in win-loss is having three
years of Hugh Mulcahy. You know the man. His nickname was “Losing
Pitcher.” Why does Morris have better win-loss numbers than Blyleven?
Here are more numbers:
Morris Blyleven difference
1515 TmW 1914 399
1297 TmL 1901 604
17 WAT 21 4
2557 TmR 2855 298
527 GS 684 157
4.85 R/GS 4.17 1.90
23 TmShO 42 19
51 10+R 40 -11
.261 $H .273 0.012
.264 Tm$H .274 0.010
35 $H+ 14 -21
Yes, I know Blyleven started 685
games. I missed one. It does not matter. Deal with it.
As you see, both
men were both about 20 games better than their teams. Blyleven’s teams
were about six more years of .398 baseball, which is the 2000 Kansas City
Royals. Those teams were four years of facing Sandy Koufax, 1963, when
we look at run support. Blyleven’s batters did not score a run 19 more
games than Morris’s batters, and scored 10 or more runs 11 fewer times.
Morris had a better $H, but most of that is because his fielders saved
about 40 hits a year. Morris did make better use of his run support,
beating his Pythagorean projection by 7.6 Wins; Blyleven missed his by
12 Wins. Even calling that skill (and it is within the range of luck),
Blyleven wins this matchup with sheer bulk numbers. (I used career
numbers, not season-by-season numbers, so those may be a bit
different.)
To give this article an ending, here are Morris and
Blyleven career, against each other, ten starts:
IP H HR R ER BB SO W-L ERA
Morris 70.2 63 7 34 34 30 48 5-5 4.33
Blyleven 64.2 63 10 29 28 18 32 3-3 3.90
The one postseason
start is in the above numbers. This means nothing, of course, as does
Jack Morris’s first career start being against Bert Blyleven. It is
like “A Bridge Too Far” proving the Caine-Hackman theory. I now know
Pigman’s joy. To add all this together, I know Jack Morris is not a
Hall of Famer. Bert Blyleven is, though he is not an inner-circle
member.
Charles Saeger
Posted: January 07, 2003 at 06:00 AM |
13 comment(s)
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1. Scott Posted: January 07, 2003 at 02:18 AM (#608108)Morris was an above-average pitcher who racked up a lot of wins pitching for good teams. That's all. He didn't show quite the longevity for merely "good" pitchers to make the Hall.
To lower the HOF bar to let Morris in, we'd have to first let in too many other guys. Blyleven, John, Kaat, Tiant, and the whole crop of relievers up for consideration (Gossage, Sutter, and probably Smith too). That's just off the top of my head. So Morris is at best the 8th-best pitcher not in the Hall. Not good enough.
Jack Morris, in bulk totals, is about four or five years of pitching like Sandy Koufax or Pedro Martinez or Roger Clemens behind Bert Blyleven. (Just to have an innings/ERA match, Morris's ERA in those innings would need to be 1.35.) Now, having such monster years would count a little extra, so maybe he'd need but three such years, maybe even two, to be the equal in value to Blyleven.
Thus, Jack Morris is three years of pitching like Sandy Koufax (peak Koufax, of course) behind Bert Blyleven. Blyleven would be a solid Hall of Famer, but at the bottom end of solid.
If you need three years of Sandy Koufax to catch Bert Blyleven, you're not a Hall of Famer.
As for anchoring some good staffs, so did Steve Blass, who also pitched a great Game 7. (One I saw recently on ESPN Classic, first time. He pitched so well I didn't feel so bad for the Orioles. It was hard telling myself they were going to lose, but I kept hoping Boog would have a longball 32 years later and the past would change.)
- Blyleven belongs in the HOF in my opinion and I'm not disagreeing that he's better qualified than Morris.
- I'm a Tiger fan and hence biased.
If you look at starting pitchers' win totals and W-L records (such as the discussion in Bill James' HOF book on Fibonnaci win points), it seems that eventually Morris (and probably everyone else above Tanana / D. Martinez) will eventually be inducted in the HOF or else the Hall is going to increase its historical de facto criteria for entrance. The Hall has been inducting Jim Bunning and Vic Willis the last few years -- that's the low-end dividing HOF pitchers from non-HOF pitchers. Pointing to pitchers with better statistics who have not been considered by the veterans' committee for 15-20 years doesn't reveal much about the de facto dividing line between HOF starting pitchers and non HOF starting pitchers.
If someone (and there's plenty of you out there!) wants to disagree with that last paragraph, there's several ways to do so.
- One could argue that the HOF should increase its de facto standard for admission. I can't really argue with that because it's a matter of aesthetics. I like a somewhat consistent standard across time eras rather than a Hall that has proportionately greater representation from 1900-1970 than it does from 1970-onward. If you want to advocate a more select Hall, then that's just a different assumption. However, I'd prefer that someone expressly state that assumption -- don't just dismiss a large number of Morris' comps as "borderline Hall of Famers or outright mistakes."
- Career Wins and W-L records aren't the appropriate way to analyze starting pitchers. This would be an especially fruitful line of analysis for Jack Morris given his career e.r.a. plus of 105. I'm more skeptical than most that the luck doesn't tend to even out after an entire career.
I'm not even aiming to convince others that Morris definitely should be in the HOF, but let's at least admit he's debateable, a borderline case in either direction. To state that he's not a reasonable candidate or has no business being a Hall of Famer seems to overstate the conclusion to me.
Of course, I did still enjoy both this individual article and the series as a whole.
NIBB/600PA K/600PA HR/600PA $H
Blyleven
40 105 15 0.300
36 105 12 0.288
40 112 15 0.261
Blyleven was pretty consistent, except when it came time to balls in play, either he crumbled, or his fielders did. He had 744 PAs in high-leverage situations.
Morris
37 88 15 0.246
46 91 15 0.261
55 97 15 0.268
Morris changed his pitching style as the pressure mounted. He drops hiss walks, drops his Ks, and the number of balls in play that turns into outs also drops. The last part may have to do with Morris changing his pitching style. He had 558 high-leverage PAs.
I checked over at BP (I did not look there when I wrote the article), and Blyleven was even after he joined Pittsburgh. I took a quick look at the Retrosheet logs for 1974 (he only pitched 4 no decisions that year, so it meant that those could not be the reason), and it looks like he may have had some weird support issues. His ERA in losses was about 3.90 that year, which is only a bit above league average (3.62).
Ha! Ha! Stop it, Paul! You're Kilgusing us!
Either you argue "Blyleven couldnt have been 1 in a 100 because the odds are, well 1-in a 100". Or you argue "Blyleven must be the 1 in a 100 because otherwise he wouldnt be Blyleven". I lean towards the latter.
As someone who remembers baseball in the 1980s, Morris was a good pitcher, sure, and he had a huge rep. But Roger Clemens had a bigger rep. Fernando! had a bigger rep. Dave Stewart had a bigger rep; maybe it is from the camera alone, but I always thought Stewart's stare as he threw the ball should scare the hell out of a hitter. Bret Saberhagen had a big rep, about as big as Morris's. Orel Hershiser had as big a rep as Morris's.
I think only one of those men is a Hall of Famer. It's not Morris.
I took a look at Bert Blyleven's numbers from 1970 to 1977, the time when BP shows him as being about 25 wins, more or less, worse than he should have been.
I went ahead and came up with PyW-L for each year based on the number of runs scored in Blyleven's starts, not the team overall number. There's about an 84 run shortfall, so Blyleven, when I look at it this way, is -17 wins, not -25. That tells us some of the flaw, but not enough.
I looked at each start from 1974 to 1977, and looked at Blyleven's numbers at each number of runs scored, and whether he won or lost.
When Blyleven won, 59 starts, he had a 1.43 ERA, 5.81 runs/game support, a $H of .239, HR/9 of 0.35, BB/9 of 2.11 and K/9 of 7.47. He threw 8.62 innings/start.
When Blyleven lost, 55 starts, he had a 4.24 ERA, 2.00 runs/game support, a $H of .302, HR/9 of 0.84, BB/9 of 2.94 and K/9 of 7.16. He threw 7.41 innings/start.
When Blyleven did not win or lose, 24 starts, he had a 3.54 ERA, 4.63 runs/game support, a $H of .305, HR/9 of 0.83, BB/9 of 3.07 and K/9 of 7.13. He threw 7.21 innings/start.
In the pitcher-only numbers, Blyleven's numbers did not change much whether or not he won, lost or did neither. Indeed, his ERA when he lost was not much worse than the AL overall mean in this time (3.62 in 1974, 3.78 in 1975, 3.52 in 1976 and 4.06 in 1977), even more so when you know that each year Blyleven played in a mild hitters' park (PPF always over 100).
He did walk more men and allow more home runs, but the differences in of themselves should only mean about another run of ERA. We still must look to see where 1.50 to 2.00 runs went, and that was because his fielders ($H) were worse when he lost. You would think that should be so, but this is where most of the difference is, this and run support. It isn't Bert throwing more groundballs -- his home run rate went up and his GDP rate (even fixing for runners and balls in play) plummeted.
Thus, Blyleven had 79 starts in this time when he did not win. That's about 2.5 years ... let's make that a line:
32 GS, 10 CG, 232 IP, 232 H, 986 BFP, 22 HR, 119 R, 104 ER, 77 BB, 184 SO, 4.03 ERA, 0-22 W-L.
Clearly, Blyleven was a tough-luck case. Still, Pythaport Won-Lost Percentage said he should have won more games ...
I think I found why. It's a bad skew with 4 runs of support. In those 14 games, Blyleven was 6-7 with a 4.24 ERA. Going 0 to 10 and over, that was his highest ERA at any number of runs scored except for his one start with 9 runs scored (he went 7.2 innings and allowed 4 runs, all earned).
He was 0-11 with a 2.65 ERA when his opponents shut him out, 11 games.
He was 6-11 with a 1.61 ERA when his teammates scored one run, 19 games.
He was 2-13 with a 2.75 ERA when his teammates scored two runs, 18 games.
He was 10-10 with a 2.61 ERA when his teammates scored three runs, 24 games.
Again, he was 6-7 with a 4.24 ERA when his teammates scored four runs, 14 games.
He was 9-3 with a 3.38 ERA when his teammates scored five runs, 19 games.
He was 18-0 with a 2.84 ERA when his teammates scored six or more runs, 25 games.
He didn't pitch all that well when his teammates scored four runs. When you see that he did pitch well when his teammates scored 3 and 5 runs (19-13), it is but a fluke. Blyleven's flaw in this time was that he was too consistent.
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