Bert Blyleven, Roberto Alomar Elected To Baseball Hall Of Fame

As you’ve certainly heard by now, results of the 2011 baseball Hall of Fame voting are in, with both Bert Blyleven and Roberto Alomar earning election to Cooperstown. In Blyleven’s case, this is the end of a 14-year struggle, while, for Alomar, it took just two years to gain enough support. This is an exciting day for both of them, as they’re joining one of baseball’s most hallowed and exclusive groups.

But another aspect of the voting other than the players who got in is the list of players who didn’t, and how much support they received. It is by comparing this year’s voting results to results in previous years and to expectations that we can begin to identify players with positive momentum, players with negative momentum, and players with no momentum at all heading in to 2012.

Earlier on Wednesday, the 2011 Baseball Hall of Fame voting results were revealed, and two new players were elected into Cooperstown. Bert Blyleven picked up 79.7% of the vote, while Roberto Alomar blew by everybody in getting his name on 90.0% of all ballots. Alomar was clearly seen by the BBWAA as a very strong candidate, and in looking at his career numbers, it isn’t hard to figure out why.

Alomar’s .300 career average and .814 career OPS aren’t staggering in and of themselves. It’s that Alomar was able to hit that well while allegedly serving as a phenomenal defensive second baseman that made him so valuable. Whether right or wrong, Alomar is considered by many to have been one of the best glovemen at second in baseball history. That would’ve made him a good player had he hit even just a little bit. Instead, he hit a lot, ranking 55th all-time in hits, 78th all-time in total bases, and 100th all-time in walks. A statistic called Wins Above Replacement, which takes into consideration both offensive and defensive value, ranks Alomar’s career between those of Hall of Famers Al Simmons and Jackie Robinson.

Bert Blyleven is one of two players to be elected today to Cooperstown in the 2011 Baseball Hall of Fame voting, along with Roberto Alomar. And, by seeing Blyleven get elected, we finally get to wrap up what’s been a long-running and incendiary debate regarding his candidacy.

Blyleven received just 17.5% support in his first year on the Hall of Fame ballot back in 1998. He stayed around that level into the next decade, around which point a man named Rich Lederer started up a website called Baseball Analysts. Lederer - whose father was a Hall of Fame voter - saw Blyleven as a worthy candidate and wrote several lengthy articles examining his statistics and highlighting his value, and that got the ball rolling.

After a lengthy build-up, the results of the 2011 Baseball Hall of Fame voting are in. And, according to the announcement by Hall of Fame president Jeff Idelson on the MLB Network, Cooperstown is about to have its two newest members.

A surprisingly high 581 voting members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America have chosen to elect Bert Blyleven and Roberto Alomar into Cooperstown. Alomar received 523 votes (90.0%) in his second year on the ballot, while Blyleven received 463 votes (79.7%) in his 14th year on the ballot. Alomar and Blyleven received 73.7% and 74.2% support last year, respectively.

We’re about an hour away from finding out the results of the 2011 Baseball Hall of Fame voting. It’s expected that the 539 voting members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America will elect both Roberto Alomar and Bert Blyleven while failing to do so for others like Barry Larkin and Jeff Bagwell, but until 2pm ET rolls around, we can’t know for sure.

But we can get an idea, based on the voting ballots that have been made public by some of the writers. Several members of the BBWAA have written about the guys they’re voting for and the guys they’re not in print, online, or on Twitter, and this handy spreadsheet keeps track of just about all of them.