General

Bert Blyleven Elected To Baseball Hall Of Fame On Strength Of Stats

Jan 5, 2011, 7:31 PM UTC

Bert Blyleven, Roberto Alomar Elected To Baseball Hall Of Fame

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.

Since then, Blyleven’s Hall of Fame candidacy has been among the baseball world’s most popular topics of conversation. Blyleven has fought against the perception that he didn’t really feel like a Hall of Famer during his career. It’s for that reason that his initial vote totals were so low. But over time, more and more people started to look at his numbers, and more and more people started to realize that his numbers are superb.

Year	Tm	W	L	ERA	G	CG	SHO	IP	H	HR	BB	SO	ERA+	WHIP	SO/BB	Awards
1970	MIN	10	9	3.18	27	5	1	164.0	143	17	47	135	119	1.159	2.87
1971	MIN	16	15	2.81	38	17	5	278.1	267	21	59	224	126	1.171	3.80
1972	MIN	17	17	2.73	39	11	3	287.1	247	22	69	228	119	1.100	3.30
1973	MIN	20	17	2.52	40	25	9	325.0	296	16	67	258	158	1.117	3.85	AS,CYA-7,MVP-26
1974	MIN	17	17	2.66	37	19	3	281.0	244	14	77	249	142	1.142	3.23
1975	MIN	15	10	3.00	35	20	3	275.2	219	24	84	233	129	1.099	2.77
1976	TOT	13	16	2.87	36	18	6	297.2	283	14	81	219	125	1.223	2.70
1976	MIN	4	5	3.12	12	4	0	95.1	101	3	35	75	116	1.427	2.14
1976	TEX	9	11	2.76	24	14	6	202.1	182	11	46	144	131	1.127	3.13
1977	TEX	14	12	2.72	30	15	5	234.2	181	20	69	182	151	1.065	2.64
1978	PIT	14	10	3.03	34	11	4	243.2	217	17	66	182	123	1.161	2.76
1979	PIT	12	5	3.60	37	4	0	237.1	238	21	92	172	109	1.390	1.87
1980	PIT	8	13	3.82	34	5	2	216.2	219	20	59	168	97	1.283	2.85
1981	CLE	11	7	2.88	20	9	1	159.1	145	9	40	107	127	1.161	2.68
1982	CLE	2	2	4.87	4	0	0	20.1	16	2	11	19	86	1.328	1.73
1983	CLE	7	10	3.91	24	5	0	156.1	160	8	44	123	110	1.305	2.80
1984	CLE	19	7	2.87	33	12	4	245.0	204	19	74	170	144	1.135	2.30	CYA-3
1985	TOT	17	16	3.16	37	24	5	*293.2*	264	23	75	206	134	1.154	2.75	AS,CYA-3
1985	CLE	9	11	3.26	23	15	4	179.2	163	14	49	129	128	1.180	2.63
1985	MIN	8	5	3.00	14	9	1	114.0	101	9	26	77	146	1.114	2.96
1986	MIN	17	14	4.01	36	16	3	271.2	262	50	58	215	107	1.178	3.71
1987	MIN	15	12	4.01	37	8	1	267.0	249	46	101	196	115	1.311	1.94
1988	MIN	10	17	5.43	33	7	0	207.1	240	21	51	145	75	1.404	2.84
1989	CAL	17	5	2.73	33	8	5	241.0	225	14	44	131	140	1.116	2.98	CYA-4,MVP-13
1990	CAL	8	7	5.24	23	2	0	134.0	163	15	25	69	73	1.403	2.76

1992	CAL	8	12	4.74	25	1	0	133.0	150	17	29	70	84	1.346	2.41
22 Seasons		287	250	3.31	692	242	60	4970.0	4632	430	1322	3701	118	1.198	2.80

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 1/5/2011.

Blyleven’s 287 wins rank him 27th all-time. He’s 14th in career innings pitched. He’s fifth in all-time strikeouts and ninth in all-time shutouts, and adjusting his ERA for context puts him right around Warren Spahn and Gaylord Perry. Blyleven was a phenomenal and durable starting pitcher for 22 years, and while he wasn’t one of the absolute best starting pitchers in baseball history, he was close enough to be worthy of induction.

His Hall of Fame voting support over the years reflects the progression of the argument in his favor. After starting out so low, he got up to 35% in 2004 and 63% in 2009. He fell just shy of election a year ago, but that put him in excellent position to be elected today, which, yeah.

See More: