Comments on: WAR Data: Best Starting Pitchers Not In the Hall of Fame

By: Kevin

Kevin — Mon, 31 May 2010 16:18:32 +0000

It may be worth mentioning that Eddie Cicotte is technically not eligible for the HOF, as he was banned from baseball following the Black Sox scandal.

By: Kerry Malakosky

Kerry Malakosky — Mon, 31 May 2010 04:14:21 +0000

This is a good list, but I would add Allie Reynolds to it, too. When Allie was with the Yankees he won SIX World Series rings and had a 7 - 2 World Series record. He was a consistent pitcher who was also great in the clutch. Compare to Whitey Ford who was 6 - 5 in World Series play. Whitey was 10 - 8 as a WS pitcer.

By: Rich

Rich — Fri, 28 May 2010 09:00:49 +0000

Zeff is really showing his knowledge of the game with things like "who would you hand the ball to?" and naming how many all-star games he's been in.

By: steven register

steven register — Fri, 28 May 2010 02:00:19 +0000

where's jim kaat in all of this?..283 wins and 16 gold gloves..he should be right up there with blyleven in terms of who earned his way to the hall of fame and has been kept out the the longest

By: Sam

Sam — Wed, 26 May 2010 05:09:55 +0000

Since they aren't labelled, the vertical axis is WAR, and the horizontal is season, with 1 being that players best season, 2 his second-best, and so on.

By: Sam

Sam — Wed, 26 May 2010 05:08:16 +0000

"Question - how does Blyleven's peak, I dunno, 10-15 years compare to these guys?"

"Blyleven would be stuck carrying Pedro's briefcase in their best years. That's how they compare."

Well, the yearly WAR data is available on their pages, so I decided to do just that.

Here's their ten best years, by WAR:

http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/5337/peak10.png

And their fifteen best:

http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/1153/peak15.png

Looks to me like Blyleven holds his own okay.

By: An open letter to Baseball-Reference and the statistical powers that be | Baseball: Past and Present

Sun, 23 May 2010 07:22:40 +0000

[...] the heels of a pair of great Baseball-Reference blog posts this week ranking the best pitchers and position players not in the Hall of Fame based on their Wins Above Replacement data, I may have [...]

By: Graham Womack

Graham Womack — Sun, 23 May 2010 04:01:40 +0000

WAR is an interesting way to track players not in Cooperstown who perhaps should be. I wrote a post for my blog this evening about another way to do it, a stat I named Hall of Fame +/-. It measures how many future Hall of Famers a ballplayer finished in front of in Cooperstown voting compared to how many non-members beat them out. I would love to see this stat added to Baseball-Reference if possible.

By: Jeff James

Jeff James — Sat, 22 May 2010 17:10:05 +0000

Blyleven was probably the best pitcher in his league in 1973, and had 6 years of 134 ERA+ or better, not sure what more you want. He pitched mostly for small market teams and was overlooked for All-Star.

Hunter's accomplishments are mainly TEAM ones (see how he stacks up with Blyleven in INDEPENDENT stats).

And why no love for Jim McCormick?

By: JeffW

JeffW — Sat, 22 May 2010 16:19:44 +0000

Sometimes, it's just tough to get noticed. Maybe we don't really appreciate the pitching impact of the '70's-'80's era. There were so many great pitchers that guys who posted 280+ victories -- cream of the crop in the annuls of the game -- aren't getting the props of their previous generations. I've posted in another blog thread that maybe there was just a overabundance of great pitchers. Seaver, Carlton, Hunter, Blyleven, John, Sutton, Niekro, Morris (top winner for an entire decade, let's remember), Ryan, Palmer, Saberhagen, Dennis Martinez (when he was sober), Jenkins. This class is so good, that we ignore flameouts like Gooden, and never give a second look to guys like Key, Steib, Tanana, Vida Blue, even short-burst studs like Dennis Leonard, Wilbur Wood (138 wins, 52 saves, '68-'75), or J.R. Richard. Valenzuela? For all his short-term impact, he's largely forgotten, as is Hershiser. Frankie V? 126 wins in six years. Ron Guidry, anyone? Dave Stewart? Got his life straightened out and became the terror of the American League for four magnificent seasons. Of course, he couldn't even get the props when he was doing it (Cy Who?). These guys were better than we give them credit for, when Dave Stewart couldn't cop a Cy Young in any of his four 20-win seasons. Take it back the other way, and look at guys like Stottlemyre, Mickey Lolich, Mike Cuellar, Ken Holtzman (134 wins in eight seasons). Now, I'm not promoting Smoke for the Hall. But let's consider that many of these short-burst guys -- even the ones who couldn't win the Cy -- took (and still take) the attention away from some of the guys who performed year-in and year-out over an extended period (Blyleven, John) and compiled the appropriate numbers. Many of the borderline cases may not be the Babe Ruth or Willie Mays of the pitching pool, but they are very much comparable to the Tony Perez or Billy Williams types.