The baseball Hall of Fame added two new members to its fraternity today with Roberto Alomar and Bert Blyleven making it in after narrowly missing last year.
It’s been a long road for Blyleven to the Hall of Fame, as this was his last year of eligibility.
Bert has often spoken out about how he feels he belongs in Cooperstown, but his repeated campaigning didn’t pay off until this year. Now, Blyleven can be at ease knowing he will be among baseball’s greats, but does he belong?
Yes, yes he does.
When making Blyleven’s case for the Hall of Fame, you have to look no further than his 287 wins, which he compiled through 22 seasons on a number of bad teams. Blyleven wasn’t an electric pitcher and wasn’t the most exciting player to watch on the mound, from what I’m told.
I never did have the pleasure of watching Blyleven pitch, but from what I’ve read and looking at his stats, he had a hell of a case to make the HOF. Blyleven is most known for his “12-to-6” curveball, which was his out pitch.
In his 22 seasons, he pitched for five teams, was on two World Series winners and pitched a no-hitter in 1977. While many critics cite his lack of cultural impact on the game, his overall numbers are too hard to ignore.
Blyleven threw 60 shutouts over his career and finished with an ERA of 3.31. So why wasn’t he a first-ballot Hall of Famer?
Well, he did lose 250 games, which can be attributed to pitching on some poor squads. Blyleven also gave up an inordinate amount of home runs over his career—in 1986 and 1987 he gave up a combined 96 homers.
There are reasons why Blyleven shouldn’t make the HOF, but when you add everything up, there are plenty more why deserves to mentioned with the greats.
After 14 years chasing HOF glory, Blyleven can now sit back and relax knowing that what he did over 22 seasons was finally enough.
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