Jack Morris and Bert Blyleven are both making serious bids for the Hall of Fame. Blyleven polled 63% of the vote last year and has the kind of momentum that should take him across the 75% goal line in the next few years. Morris got 44% last year in his tenth year of eligibility, which is about where Blyleven was two years ago in his tenth year of eligibility. Morris appears to have established a clear foothold in the 40s, a position of strength in Hall of Fame voting that almost always leads to induction (by the veterans committee if not the baseball writers).

Ron Guidry, by contrast, received less than 5% vote support in 2002 (his ninth year of eligibility) and was dropped from the ballot in accordance with HOF rules. It's now up to the veterans committee now, and I believe Guidry becomes eligible for consideration by the committee next year.

To be blunt, it is positively absurd that Blyleven and Morris are on the fasttrack to Cooperstown while Guidry has already washed out. Let me explain why.

Let's begin with an analysis of the peak years. Conveniently, each pitcher had a nine-year period of peak productivity, after which each experienced a precipitous dropoff in performance and consistency. Morris and Blyleven each had two years following their peak period where they approached, but did not equal, their peak period performance, but in each case these two years occurred in the midst of a marked decline. Here are the numbers for their respective peak periods:


The first thing that leaps off the above table is the fact that Blyleven has the best ERA and ERA+ but a distinctly worse winning percentage than either Morris or Guidry. I'm sure the immediate reaction of most is along the lines of "sure, Guidry was pitching for perennial pennant winners, Morris was pitching for good but not great Tiger teams in the '80s and Blyleven was saddled with some terrible Twins and Rangers teams." But the record shows something quite different. The Yankees weren't as consistently good during this period as many recall, and the teams Morris and Blyleven pitched for were much better than one might assume.

Guidry's teams had a .575 winning percentage during his peak years, Morris's teams had a .554 winning percentage and Blyleven's a .514 winning percentage. However, each of these figures includes the contributions of the pitchers we're examining. We should be looking at their records without the contribution of our pitchers in order to assess the relative strength of these teams. After subtracting the won-loss records of our pitchers we see that Guidry's teams had a .552 winning percentage when he didn't get the decision, Morris's teams had a .540 winning percentage and Blyleven's teams a .509 winning percentage.

These records confirm that Guidry did indeed pitch for the best teams and Blyleven the worst, but the differences in these team records don't begin to explain the vast disparity in the winning percentages of our three pitchers. Quite simply, Guidry's record was 26.5% better than his team's, Morris's record was 13.9% better, and Blyleven's was 5.5% better.

There is the conviction among sportswriters and commentators that Blyleven was a "hard luck" pitcher, as if a black cloud followed him from the Twins to Texas to the Pirates to the Indians and back to the Twins and finally the Angels, and it rained on poor Bert steadily for 22 years across nearly 700 career starts and 5000 innings. But an examination of Bert's record shows that he had his share of luck, he just never knew what to do with it.

It is true that the Twins were the essence of mediocrity after winning a division title in Blyleven's rookie year, but Blyleven's record was mediocre right along with them. After leaving Minnesota after the 1975 season Blyleven spent the next four years with Texas and Pittsburgh teams that averaged more than 90 wins a season and provided Blyleven with better than average run support, the net effect of which on Blyleven's record was...more mediocrity. He averaged only 12 wins a season despite making an average of 33 starts a year for some of the best teams in baseball, and while his teams played .560 ball during this period Bert managed only a .545 winning percentage. Bert's winning percentage might have been substantially worse, too, but for the fact that the 1979 World Series winning Pirates team had an astounding 13 comebacks in games where Blyleven left the game behind, thereby saving Bert from an additional 13 losses!

After Bert's peak period he pitched another 12 seasons, winning 139 and losing 122 for a .533 winning percentage. The astute reader will notice that this winning percentage is only slightly lower than during Bert's alleged peak period. However, Bert's ERA during this period was 3.80, which tranlates to an ERA+ of 108 as compared to the 131 ERA+ during his peak years in the '70s. He won 10 games or fewer in half of those 12 seasons and had a .500 record or worse in five seasons. As I mentioned earlier, Bert had two excellent seasons in the midst of these 12 years of drought, going 19-7 in 1984 for a Cleveland team that was bad but provided Blyleven with excellent run support, and 17-5 for a good Angels team in 1989 that also provided excellent run support that year.

The Cy Young voting during Blyleven's career suggests that Bert is held in far greater esteem by today's HOF voters than he was by those who cast their ballots for the Cy Young award during his career. In 22 seasons, in 16 of which he pitched more than 200 innings, Bert received votes for the Cy Young award in only four years, and received serious consideration in only one year - 1984. His career Cy Young award shares totalled 0.45, as compared to Guidry's 1.91 in a career barely half as long (Morris had a 0.73 shares).

Blyleven was a prime example of a pitcher who was at his very best in situations in which the game was not on the line and tended to pitch worse in critical situations. A host of situational statistics confirm this, and the striking statistical contrast with Morris in those situational statistics explains how Blyleven could have had a much better ERA than Morris but a distinctly inferior record.

Blyleven, like Sutton and Niekro, amassed impressive career totals over a lengthy career. Unlike Sutton and Niekro, however, Blyleven never demonstrated that he could be a consistent winner while pitching for average or good teams. Despite reservations about Sutton's and Niekro's Hall of Fame qualifications, I can understand how a reasonable person could favor their inclusion. Blyleven's election, however, would be truly troubling, and even perverse in view of Guidry's dismissal by HOF voters. If Blyleven makes it, the Hall of Fame should take a second look at pitchers like Tommy John and Jim Kaat.