The Dutchman and Other HOF Thoughts

Well, now. I no longer have to apologize (not that I ever did) for championing Bert Blyleven as a Hall of Famer, which I've done for about the previous decade. He finally made it in his final try with the Baseball Writers Association of America.

Blyleven turns out to have been something like Don Sutton — his greatness kind of snuck up on you, and then you re-evaluated the evidence as it was, objectively enough. He was a career-value Hall of Famer who really did look better and better once you plumbed past the surface and most of the pure counting statistics.

Perhaps the most asinine of the arguments in either direction was comparing Blyleven, the alleged non-impact pitcher, to Jack Morris, who has a very inflated image as a big-game pitcher. That image probably rests singularly on Morris's 1991 World Series performance, and there's no question about it: in that Series, and especially in Game Seven, Morris pitched like a Hall of Famer and the Twins wouldn't have won without him.

But did you know that a Bert Blyleven team went up against a Jack Morris team in a postseason, and that Blyleven's team beat Morris's team? Blyleven himself went against Morris himself in that set, Game Two of the 1987 American League Championship Series ... and Blyleven beat Morris. For once in his life Blyleven got the kind of support Morris was only too accustomed to getting: the Twins battered Morris for 6 runs, not one of which was surrendered by the Detroit bullpen, while Blyleven's 3 earned runs surrendered came by way of an early 2-run bomb (Chet Lemon) and a late-game solo shot (Lou Whitaker).

As a matter of fact, Blyleven lifetime in the postseason was actually deadlier than Morris. Ask yourself this: for the one game that you absolutely must win, no questions asked, who would you rather have taking the mound for you — a pitcher with a lifetime 2.47 ERA, 1.08 WHIP, and 5-1 won-lost record, or a pitcher with a lifetime 3.80 ERA, 1.25 WHIP, and 7-4 won-lost record. The former is Bert Blyleven's lifetime postseason pitching record. Now tell me how anyone can call him a low-impact pitcher.

If you absolutely insist on comparing Blyleven to Morris, still, tell me why you think a Blyleven who won more games and posted a half-run lower lifetime ERA, and who walked 68 fewer batters even pitching 1,146 more innings than Morris, not to mention throwing 60 shutouts to Morris's 28, isn't the pitcher Morris was? Well he wasn't the pitcher Morris was — he was better. You want to hold Blyleven's tendencies toward surrendering the long ball against him? Ask yourself why he should be condemned for surrendering 430 lifetime and 0.8 per nine innings, but Morris should get a pass for surrendering 389 and 0.9 per nine while surrendering the same average per 162 games (25).

When I first discovered Blyleven had a bona fide Hall of Fame case, I took a close look at his record including the parks in which he pitched. From that, I concluded that if he could have played just three seasons, maybe four, in neutral home parks, never mind pitcher-friendly home parks, Blyleven would have won 300 games, even pitching as he did for most of his career for bad or at least barely-competitive teams.

His biggest problem is that he doesn't have the kind of counting statistics that make you think he's a Hall of Famer before you begin plumbing deeper. His second-biggest problem may have been that he didn't put up a gaudy, stick-it-in-your-face single season or single stat (counting or otherwise, though he probably should have won the 1973 American League Cy Young Award) other than those 60 shutouts.

But what a stat that is. Think about this: Bert Blyleven is ninth on the all-time shutout list ... but fourth if you exclude deadball era pitchers. Sixty shutouts, pitching mostly in an era in which relief pitching became so much more prominent a presence that Blyleven himself chafed when Pittsburgh manager Chuck Tanner (for whose "Fam-I-Lee" Pirates Blyleven pitched, helping them win the 1979 World Series) made a fetish of lifting his starting pitchers whenever the games were close either way. That's a slightly surreal accomplishment.

If you exclude the deadball era pitchers, Blyleven would trail only Warren Spahn (63) and Nolan Ryan and Tom Seaver (61 each). Include them and those four trail Walter Johnson (110), Grover Cleveland Alexander (90), Christy Mathewson (79), Cy Young (76), and Eddie Plank (69). Until this year, Blyleven was the only one of the top ten/four shutout pitchers not to be in the Hall of Fame.

P.S. Not even his worst critics ever accused Bert Blyleven, who could have sued most of his teams for non-support, of pitching strictly to the score.

What of everyone else on this year's ballot?

ROBERTO ALOMAR — He's a no-questions-asked Hall of Famer, it was absolutely right to vote him in this year with the highest vote total, and he should have gone in on his first ballot last year.

I haven't had any reason to change my mind. He's the greatest second baseman ever to play the game who wasn't named Joe Morgan; he was certainly the brainiest. But I've learned never to underestimate the potential for vapour lock among the voting writers, not that Alomar's was the first such disgrace by any measure. (It took Willie Mays two years; it took Robin Roberts a decade.)

And anyone who says the Hirschbeck incident didn't loom large enough (when Alomar's final three sad seasons didn't) is probably full of it, which tells you how much they listened to John Hirschbeck himself.

CARLOS BAERGA — Didn't this guy look for most of the world to see like a Hall of Famer in the making in those first few Cleveland seasons? As a matter of fact, a lot of people remember when he looked like he had the chance to become Alomar's only real competition as the game's best second baseman, this at a time when Jeff Kent hadn't yet come into his own as a run producer.

There were few sights sadder in the 1990s than seeing Baerga proving that looks weren't everything so far as that went. For all his talent, he peaked too soon and had a long, sad slide downward. Nowhere near a Hall of Famer.

JEFF BAGWELL — He, too, should have been a first-ballot Hall of Famer. (By the Bill James measurements for meeting Hall of Fame standards and rating on the Hall of Fame batting monitor, Bagwell's a slightly above average Hall of Famer.)

So why wasn't I surprised that he'd be told, more or less, to wait his turn, too? About the only real knock on Bagwell — other than speculation about a certain issue, regarding which it's time we got through our thick skulls that suspicion isn't evidence — is that his bat made him look like a better all-around first baseman than he really was.

Well, so did Lou Gehrig's. Defensively, Bagwell was about average. So was Gehrig. Maybe a tick either way.

HAROLD BAINES — Take a very, very close look. Then ask yourself how Baines could be considered a Hall of Famer when he pulls up shorter than anyone likes to remember. He was one hell of a hitter for a long enough time, but he never quite crossed the line from good to great more than a very few times.

BRET BOONE — Not even close. Three Hall of Fame-caliber seasons in a 14-year career isn't even Harold Baines.

KEVIN BROWN — Mr. Warmth just might have finished off with a Hall of Fame career if he hadn't been a little too ornery and injured a little too often for his own good. He was a great pitcher for quite a few seasons — he dealt with a few too many injuries during his tenure with the Dodgers — and I'd bet to this day about half the people who read the damn thing and knew Brown well enough still can't figure out how the hell he ended up named in the Mitchell Report. He was ornery before he was a suspect, and he was also posting ERAs under three before he was a suspect.

Unfortunately, this is the memory most people have of Brown other than that groundbreaking Dodger contract: he was murdered when the Yankees handed him the ball to start Game Seven, 2004 American League Championship Series. That's enough to nullify his having been part of two previous pennant winners and a World Series winner, even if his postseason record prior to 2004 doesn't look like it belongs to the same pitcher he once was.

JOHN FRANCO — A great pitcher who wasn't strictly a three-and-done closer, but short enough of a Hall of Famer. Barely.

JUAN GONZALEZ — Thanks to Jose Canseco, Juan Gone's credibility has been compromised to a small extent. Barring any unexpected revelation from sources more credible and less self-serving than Canseco, I think Gonzalez on his own merit pulls up just short and almost borderline as a Hall of Famer.

Some might argue that his stats were inflated otherwise by yummy home parks, but Gonzalez was a dangerous hitter for a long enough time and does have a pair of MVPs for his trouble, even if he may not have deserved one of them. Had he been a better defensive player (he was mediocre at best, alas), his Hall of Fame case might be stronger.

MARQUIS GRISSOM — He was a better player than you probably remember him being. Or was he? I'm having a very difficult time accepting that an early-in-the-order man with a lifetime .318 on-base percentage was a better player than he's remembered to have been, though he was a terrific defensive outfielder and could turn a ball game into a track meet when he did reach base. (One thing that probably hurt him was how weak he was at drawing walks.)

Solid player but not even close to a Hall of Famer. Not even in the same time zone, really.

LENNY HARRIS — Baseball's all-time pinch hit leader got to become a great pinch hitter because he wasn't really good enough to do anything else regularly. And most of his pinch hits were singles that didn't really mean all that much to his teams in the big picture. (Did you know: his lifetime slugging percentage is .349.)

It was a dirty job, and somebody had to do it, but even Manny Mota and Smoky Burgess had better slugging percentages and were good for producing about a hundred runs per 162 games.

BOBBY HIGGINSON — I can think of only one reason why he's on the ballot: it's been five or more years since he retired. And while he was once the best player on some of the worst teams ever to wear Detroit Tigers uniforms, that's about the best you can say for him.

CHARLES JOHNSON — Brilliant defensive catcher. Could do a little bit of everything when right. Did not enough of it to make a Hall of Fame case.

BARRY LARKIN — I'd vote for him even though I don't think he'll get in for another couple of years. He was probably overshadowed badly enough by Cal Ripken and Alex Rodriguez, but Larkin was the best all-around shortstop you barely heard of in his time and place. (He was also the first shortstop to hang up a 30-30 season, incidentally.)

AL LEITER — He probably got overworked out of producing a solid Hall of Fame-caliber performance, but Leiter was a terrific pitcher — good enough to pitch for three World Series winners, in fact — especially when he was healthy.

He once earned Sandy Koufax's friendship and personal tutelage when Koufax told him quietly, at a Mets spring camp, "You should be better," and Leiter replied honestly, without flinching, "I know."

EDGAR MARTINEZ — I know he's just about the greatest designated hitter who ever swung the bat. And that's just about all I know. He was only a serviceable defensive third baseman and couldn't hack it when he was tried at first base, but his bat was just too valuable.

On the Jamesian measures, Martinez as a hitter shakes out as an average Hall of Famer. The DH bias probably keeps him from getting in for a good while, though I could be wrong about that, too.

TINO MARTINEZ — As valuable as he was to quite a few Yankee championship teams, Martinez actually wasn't quite as great as he's sometimes remembered to have been. He was a fine defensive first baseman and a solid enough hitter who had a couple of big enough seasons, but he actually had a modest postseason career: his postseason on-base percentage was 23 points below his regular-season mark, and he batted 38 points lower in the postseason than he did in the regular season.

That isn't necessarily a mark against a player — quite a few Hall of Famers didn't hit in the postseason the way they did in the regular campaign — but Tino Martinez is well enough short of the Hall of Fame's zip code.

DON MATTINGLY — His back ended up keeping him from solidifying the Hall of Fame career he looked to be posting in those first few Yankee seasons, but there were reasons why he earned the nickname Donnie Baseball.

FRED McGRIFF — What's probably killing the Crime Dog most as a Hall of Fame candidate isn't that he fell short enough of five hundred bombs but that he wasn't even close to being as good a hitter in late-inning pressure, or when the games were close, as he was when it wasn't the late innings or the games were within less than four runs. I'm on the fence with McGriff, but I could always be persuaded one way or the other.

MARK McGWIRE — He'll get in sooner or later. There's just too much evidence in favor of the argument that McGwire didn't need actual or alleged performance-enhancing substances to do the things he did at the plate, and that they probably didn't do a damn thing for him other than just what he says, help him recover quicker from injuries. There may be a swell of keeping him from getting in until maybe his final year of eligibility, and McGwire himself has said that coming clean was more important to him than making the Hall of Fame, but I think he gets there in due course.

One huge point in his favour: McGwire didn't spend his years in exile protesting that he was baseball's wronged man.

RAUL MONDESI — Talented, troubled, troublesome. Good hitter, good outfielder, a couple of 30-30 seasons, terrific arm, but didn't keep himself together well enough to get to within an ocean's length of the Hall of Fame. Essentially, Mondesi had Roberto Clemente's tools but nowhere near Roberto Clemente's drive and togetherness.

But he sure did seem more comfortable in the field than at the plate and to know how to get a standing O whenever he hit one of his patented bellybust slides in the outfield...

JACK MORRIS — Genuinely great pitchers do not pitch just to the scoreboard. That's probably the biggest barrier between Morris and Cooperstown, but it's a barrier profound enough when you're not measurably enough better than your teams.

DALE MURPHY — If all you need is character, Murphy would have been a Hall of Famer already. He, too, got robbed of an absolute Hall of Fame career by injuries.

But let's cease with the overstatement, as some Murphy supporters still indulge: Calling him the best player of the 1980s is fatuous when his contemporaries, for damn near the entire decade, included Mike Schmidt, George Brett, and Cal Ripken, Jr. Dale Murphy was a great player, but he wasn't that close to their league.

JOHN OLERUD — Famous for wearing a batting helmet even in the field, following recovery from a brain aneurysm. Solid hitter, solid first baseman, one of the best in the business in his time, and they probably still think the Mets made a big mistake in not trying to re-sign him for 2000.

But while he was one of the most underrated players of his time, and a guy you absolutely wanted on your side in a pennant race (and he has the World Series rings to prove it, with the 1992-93 Blue Jays), he's not even close to a Hall of Famer. Kind of like Murphy and Mattingly, though, Olerud is one of those guys you wish you could make a Hall of Famer.

RAFAEL PALMEIRO — He was more or less the Bert Blyleven of position players, even with counting stats to burn: He snuck up you when you weren't looking, until that one positive steroid test (after he finger-wagged his denial before the House Committee for the Dissemination of Great Messages to Kids, thank you again Mr. Will) — just days after he nailed his 3,00th career base hit (he already had 500+ bombs and 1800+ runs batted in) — blew his reputation to smithereens.

The problem is: Palmeiro really may have turned up positive for stanozolol by way of a tainted vitamin B12 ingestion. The problem further is: Palmeiro tested negative in 2003; he tested negative again almost a month after the positive test that would smash his reputation to bits — a negative test he took a fortnight before the positive was disclosed.

And it gets better: Palmeiro passed a polygraph test that indicated he'd offered no responses "indicative of deception." Even the House Committee for the Dissemination of Great Messages to Kids concluded there was nothing to tie Palmeiro to actual or alleged performance-enhancing substances before Palmeiro appeared before it.

As a matter of fact, the committee's then-chairman, Republican Tom Davis, has since begun beating a soft but profound drum on Palmeiro's behalf. Davis will tell anyone who will listen that the committee didn't doubt he was telling the absolute truth at the infamous hearing, and that Palemeiro just might be getting a bum rap over one mistake — a mistake that actually may not have been of Palmeiro's deliberate making.

That probably won't help him reach the Hall of Fame on his first try this year, or in quite a number of years to come, but it probably will help clear his way in due course. He will probably prove the absolute most quiet superstar to make it to Cooperstown if he gets in. And, unlike a lot of instances of debatable wrongdoing, it actually does seem as though the closer you look at Palmeiro, the less wrong there is to see.

Something else of which to make note: Palmeiro spent the bulk of his career playing for bad or at least teams just short of competitiveness, none of which was his fault. He was particularly lethal in the middle innings of games, and very capable in late inning pressure situations, but just what good is it when nobody else around you steps up often enough or keeps the other guys from stepping higher in those situations often enough?

Until that certain issue decimated his reputation, Palmeiro looked like he was going to be Ernie Banks without the extroverted personality — a bona-fide Hall of Famer who'd been sentenced unconscionably to performing most of his career for teams that didn't necessarily deserve him. He actually did get to two postseasons in a 20-year career (Banks never did), and he performed decently enough when he got there, but those teams — the 1996-97 Orioles, who would not have gotten there without him in the first place — didn't get past the League Championship Series in each instance, and it wasn't even close to his fault that they didn't.

Like Mark McGwire, Palmeiro hasn't spent his life away from the game lamenting that he's baseball's wronged man. Until or unless you ask him. Even then, he says it simply and lets it drop at that.

Do you know or remember: Rafael Palmeiro finished his career with more walks than strikeouts? He struck out 100+ times only once; he walked 100+ times thrice; he finished his career with 5 more walks than strikeouts overall; and only once in his career (1997, when the difference was 42+ strikeouts) did he ever strike out twelve or more times more than he walked. His final lifetime average per 162 games was exactly the same — 77 walks, 77 strikeouts.

DAVE PARKER — Almost, but not quite. Invaluable in the clubhouse once he got his act together, though. It's probably no coincidence that the late-1980s Oakland powerhouses went to three straight World Series and won only one of them — the one on which Parker was on the roster and probably the most effective clubhouse enforcer, up to and including his once-well-chronicled threat to turn yappy Jose Canseco into a den trophy if Canseco so much as breathed above a whisper.

TIM RAINES — I'm just going to repeat what I wrote last year: Don't knock the Rock.

You may wish to murder me for this, but Allen Barra (in Clearing the Bases) was absolutely right: Raines's 15 best seasons shake out as being better than the 15 best of a should-be Hall of Famer who was practically his exact skills match, a switch-hitter with a little power who extorted his way on base and hit early in the lineup.

The player is Pete Rose.

Citing Total Baseball's estimate of the 15 best seasons by Rose and Raines, Barra shook them out thus: it took Rose 204 more games to reach base 34 more times a season than Raines in the career shakeout, and to produce 9.3 more runs a season:

That Rose had to play in 204 more games to do that convinces me that Raines was, perhaps, more skilled than Rose in the art of producing runs. The question is, does Rose's durability automatically make him more valuable? After all, he did accumulate more total runs.

Actually, the question is a great deal more complex than that. First of all, although he played alongside some fine hitters in Gary Carter and Andre Dawson, Raines had nothing like the career-long quality of teammates that was afforded Pete Rose. Rose played nearly all his best years on the Reds with teammates such as Johnny Bench, Joe Morgan, Tony Perez, and Dave Concepcion, and on the Phillies, he batted in front of Mike Schmidt and Greg Luzinski. Given Raines's greater home run total and far superior speed, I think if he batted in front of the same hitters Rose had, he would have produced not only more runs but significantly more runs per season — and remember that's in 200 fewer games. Second, think of how many fewer outs Raines would have used up to produce those runs, and how many more runs those outs would have produced spread around the lineup.

This isn't even beginning to consider the point that Raines probably hung up an uncounted extra parcel of runs by his more consistent ability to go first to third or second and even first to home on elementary base hits, an ability Rose didn't always have despite his reputation as diving Charlie Hustle.

The Rock's big problem is that he, too, didn't leave a glaring statistical benchmark by which to judge him, not even the 200-hit season. On the other hand ... so what of it? Do you think a decade of 200-hit seasons equals an automatic, no-questions-asked great hitter? Then why would you consider as mediocre hitters one Hall of Famer who had six measly 200-hit seasons; a second Hall of Famer who had three such seasons; a pair of Hall of Famers who had exactly one such season; and another pair who had exactly no such seasons?

Now, tell me you plan to argue that Pete Rose was a greater hitter than Stan Musial (the six), Babe Ruth (the three), Willie Mays (one), Frank Robinson (one, too), Ted Williams (never), or Mickey Mantle (neither did he).

Better, still, tell me why you would think Pete Rose was a better hitter than a guy who was his near-equal skill-set player but, over their 15 best seasons each, reached base more often, used less outs to get there (ponder, too, that Raines was so good at wringing out walks he wouldn't have put up three thousand hits even without losing so much time to cocaine addiction — to which he copped and sought treatment on his own — and lupus), hit with a little more power, produced quite a few more runs, and had hugely superior speed?

"Simply put," Barra concluded, "all the indications are that under the same conditions and in the same situations, Tim Raines would have produced at least as many and probably more runs than Pete Rose. That's not going to make him as hot an item on the autograph circuit as Pete Rose, but it ought to be good enough to get Tim Raines a plaque at Cooperstown."

Indeed. But you don't have to make him a might-have-been case. What was should be enough.

And, just for the record, I bet you didn't realize that Tim Raines also reached base more and scored more runs than Tony Gwynn, with only 62 lifetime games' difference between the two.

KIRK RUETER — Woody (memory check: his resemblance to the Toy Story character earned him the nickname) was a nice guy and a fine pitcher. He won more than he lost but he wasn't a Hall of Famer on the best day of his life. See Bobby Higginson, sort of.

BENITO SANTIAGO — Had a shotgun for a throwing arm behind the plate at his best. Managed to get 20 years out of his often-compromised body. Solid but not Cooperstown solid, with or without the Mitchell Report.

LEE SMITH — I'm still on the fence with Smith. I don't really know whether he is Hall of Fame material, but I don't really know that he isn't, either. He was as good as it got in his prime and often better, but why did it seem as though one or two of his teams couldn't wait to get rid of him for reasons having nothing to do with his salaries or his abilities?

If I'm missing something that would secure Smith as a no-questions-asked Hall of Famer, I'm willing to be persuaded all the way into the camp.

On the other hand, here's a stat that might be causing him a little trouble: lifetime, he has a .299 batting average against him on balls in play. This may or may not be as much an effect of his defenders, but that ain't The Mariano (.263). It also isn't Bruce Sutter (.262), the just-retired Trevor Hoffman (.266), or Goose Gossage (.277).

B.J. SURHOFF — Had a nice career. Retired five years and on the ballot. That's all, folks.

ALAN TRAMMELL — I'm still where I was last year: unconvinced that he's a Hall of Famer, unconvinced that he isn't. But if he isn't the greatest shortstop in baseball history, or even the greatest shortstop of his time, he's no questions asked the greatest shortstop in the history of the Tigers.

P.S.: I DON'T KNOW JUST WHAT THIS MEANS, BUT I'll SAY IT — Eight of the players on this year's ballot put in time (or served sentence with, depending on your point of view) with the Orioles: Roberto Alomar, Harold Baines, Kevin Brown, Charles Johnson, Rafael Palmeiro, Tim Raines, Lee Smith, and B.J. Surhoff.