I should clarify something. I think my readers got the impression that I might believe that Moose should go in and Blyleven shouldn't. That is not the case. I think both pitchers should go; I simply believe that Moose is a better candidate than Blyleven and is more worthy.
Based on Scott's comment...
Blyleven pitched for crappy teams most of his career. Mussina benefits from many years on large market and talented teams. As all of fantasy geeks know, Wins are most flaky of measures of pitching success....I think I may have given the impression that I think Moose is an elite HOF candidate and Blyleven is a so-so pitcher.
I'm not well versed on adjusted ERA but what does a difference of 5 points in this measure really represent? It appears much of Mike's argument rests on +123 = elite and +118 = meh.
Again, I think both are Hall of Famers. I was merely using the adjusted ERA metric as an admittedly rough yardstick to try and size up Moose to Blyleven. Using this measurement, Moose fell in with the elite 250-299 game winners who are in the Hall while Blyleven fell in with the pitchers in the Hall who are good/very good 250-299 game winners but certainly aren't the pitchers you're taking your kids to Cooperstown to see.
5 comments:
Any measure that suggests Jack Morris = Jamie Moyer is seriously flawed.
Mike, I accept your follow up response on Blyleven, but your initial post said 1) you've had a paradigm shift on him and 2) Moose's Adj ERA puts him "up among the elite no-brainer cases".
We all agree that HOF discussions are lots of fun, and opinions tend to be strong. That's what I love about baseball.
The shift on Blyleven is that I've gone from thinking that he definitely, positively should be in to something more along the lines of "I think he should be in, but it's not a crime to me if he isn't."
I stick with what I said about Moose. In the context of adjusted ERA, he's up with the elites. During his own era, he's up with or close to the elites he pitched with as well. I think Moose is more of a shoo-in than many realize.
I enjoy the analysis, Mike. I think era+ is an excellent way of comparing players across the years. But I dislike the "If X then Y" type of arguments for the HOF. I prefer to hold them to the standard: "Were they a DOMINANT player of their era?"
Moose was a very good pitcher for 18 seasons. I guess I'd need to be convinced that he was dominant amongst his peers. As someone said (Bill James?), "It's not the Hall of Very Good".
Unfortunately, Dr. Hibbert, that is exactly what the Hall of Fame is becoming...a microcosm of the mediocrity that we accept in America.
I didn't want to talk about Jack Morris, but I guess I will.
Jack Morris never had an ERA below 3.27. He had 8 seasons with an ERA over 4. His ERA+ is 105; he never had a "dominant" year, though 1979, and 1985-1987 were very, very good.
Moyer, in fact, has had a more dominant year than Morris ever had in his career, and has had two similar nice runs (1996-1999 and 2001-2003). Interestingly, Moyer's low water ERA mark is also 3.27.
Moyer is an accumulator, without a doubt, but the comparison is more apt than you might think at first glance.
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