The Hall of Fame

It's that time of year again, and the guys at ESPN are going crazy with their who deserves to be in the Hall columns. Since this is a Pirate blog, I'll stick to the Pirate candidates.

First up is Bert Blyleven. For years lots of people have been making the case for ol' Rik Aalbert Blyleven. Jim Caple does the chore for ESPN this year. The case really makes itself, 287 wins (everyone with more is in the Hall except Tommy John), 60 shutouts, 3,701 strikeouts (behind Nolan Ryan, Steve Carlton, Roger Clemens, and Randy Johnson), and maybe Chris Berman's best nickname ever, Bert "Be home Bly-eleven" (of course, if it encouraged him to keep going with the nicknames, that's negative points). The problem is 250 losses and a 22 year career that helped make those stats look so impressive (though a high loss total and a looooong career didn't count against Nolan Ryan). There's also the nagging feeling that he was never a true ace, as illustrated by Gene Collier a couple weeks back when he said:

Here's my formula. If I'm managing a decent club that's going into Pittsburgh for a weekend series in July of 1979 and the Pirates are sending Bert Blyleven, John Candelaria and Bruce Kison to the mound, is there a pitcher among them that I think I might not be able to beat? Yes, and it's Candelaria, who is not a Hall of Famer.

I'd be shocked if Bert gets in, mostly on the "Hall of Fame, not Hall of Very Good" philosophy. Blyleven was very good, though I'm not sure if enough people will qualify him as an all-time great to get enough votes to get in.

Next up are the sluggers. I'm not so much interested in who the writers ARE making cases for, but instead in who they AREN'T. Sean McAdam makes his case for Jim Rice, who a lot of people believe would be in already if he wasn't such a jerk to the media. Rice gets a lot of attention for his '75-'86 stretch in which he lead the American League in 12 different categories over those 12 years. Phil Rogers argues for Andre Dawson, that Dawson should be in if Kirby Puckett, Tony Perez, Gary Carter, Ryne Sandberg, and Ozzie Smith are. Who isn't getting a national case made for him? Dave Parker(though he is getting one made for him on Pirates.com). I realize his involvement in the drug trials probably make him a taboo for voters, but he's managed to stay on the ballot for quite a while and he measures up pretty favorably to Rice and Dawson. His career batting average of .290 is smack in between Dawson's .279 and Rice's .298, while his career OPS of .810 is higher than Dawson's .806 and close to Rice's .854. He trails in homers and RBIs (which always seem to count for more than they should with the voters) but also had a cannon for an arm and using Baseball Reference's range factor was an above average fielder his entire career and won three Gold Gloves (Dawson won 8, Rice won zero). He won an MVP, just like the other two, and ended up with more career MVP votes than either of them. He won two batting titles, to zero for the other two combined. He won two World Series ('79 Pirates, '89 A's) while the other two won none. In fact, which player is the third most similar batter to Dawson and the sixth most similar batter to Rice (using the Baseball Reference comparison system)? Dave Parker.

Keep in mind that I'm not making a case against Rice and Dawson or a case for Parker. And I know what a stain the drug trials put on both baseball and Parker. I'm simply saying that if the other two deserve serious consideration for the Hall, so does the Parker.