Posted on 01/10/2006 11:09:01 AM PST by commish
Edited on 01/10/2006 12:59:51 PM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
NEW YORK -- Bruce Sutter was elected to the Hall of Fame on Tuesday, just the fourth relief pitcher given baseball's highest honor.
Sutter, the first pitcher elected to the Hall with no career starts, was listed on 76.9 percent of the ballots cast by 10-year members of the Baseball Writers' Association of America. The split-finger pioneer collected 400 of a record 520 ballots.
"It was the call you always hope for, but you never really expect it to happen," Sutter said, adding that he cried when he received the notification. "I can't tell you what in means to me, in words."
Players needed 390 votes (75 percent) to gain election. Boston Red Sox slugger Jim Rice fell 53 short, finishing second with 337 votes (64.8 percent), one ahead of reliever Goose Gossage.
Sutter was on the ballot for the 13th time, the first player elected so late since Ralph Kiner in 1975. Rice was appearing for the 12th time and has three years remaining on the writers' ballot. Gossage was on the ballot for the seventh time.
It might be difficult for Rice and Gossage to gain votes next year, when Cal Ripken Jr., Tony Gwynn and Mark McGwire appear on the ballot for the first time. Each voter may select up to 10 players.
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| Bruce Sutter during his pre-beard, 1979 days with the Cubs. (AP) |
Andre Dawson was fourth with 317 votes, followed by Bert Blyleven (277), Lee Smith (234), Jack Morris (214), Tommy John (154) and Steve Garvey (135).
Pete Rose, baseball's banned career hits leader, received 10 write-in votes in what would have been his final year of eligibility. Stricken from the ballot after going on the banned list for betting on Cincinnati while managing the team, Rose was written in on 249 of 7,207 ballots (3.5 percent) over 15 years.
Sutter was a six-time All-Star and the 1979 NL Cy Young Award winner, compiling 300 saves during a 12-season major career with the Chicago Cubs, St. Louis and Atlanta. He is 19th on the career saves list.
Sutter said fellow relievers Gossage and Smith also should be in the Hall.
"I just think sometimes the voters try to compare us with the starting pitchers," he said. "Without us, it's tough to win."
When he first appeared on the ballot in 1994, Sutter received 109 votes (23.9 percent). His percentage rose to 66.7 last year, when Wade Boggs and Ryne Sandberg were elected and Sutter fell 43 votes short.
Rice's percentage increased to 64.8 from 59.5 last year, and Gossage's rose to 64.6 from 55.2, which bodes well for the pair. The highest percentage of votes gained by a player who wasn't elected in a later year was 63.4 by Gil Hodges in 1983, his final time of the ballot.
Albert Belle received 40 votes (7.7 percent) and was the only player among the 14 first-time candidates to receive 5 percent, meaning he will remain on the ballot next year. Among those dropped were Will Clark (23 votes), Dwight Gooden (17), Willie McGee (12) and Chicago White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen (5).
Sutter will be inducted into the Hall during ceremonies on July 30 in Cooperstown, N.Y. The Veterans Committee doesn't vote this year, but a special Negro leagues and pre-Negro leagues selection committee meets Feb. 27 in Tampa, Fla. AP NEWS
The Associated Press News Service
I wonder why not Blyleven ?
he's 5th all-time in strike outs.
Thanks very much for troubling to enlighten me. I didn't know that the low number of votes in his first year of eligibility eliminated Henke from further consideration until 2016. I surely can't disagree with any of your picks, and I would only add one to the ones you have highlighted: Tony Fernandez (and maybe, just maybe, Devon White).
thanks for the stats. I have a Saints autographed baseball from when Stawberry and Morris were both playing for them.
I admit I was swayed by a fabulous piece by Bill James in the new, indispensable "Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2006."
James couldn't figure out why a guy with Blyleven's stats won "only" 287 games, or ended up "only" 37 games over .500. So he walked through Blyleven's career, start by start, and then compared it to the careers of the best Hall of Fame candidates of that era.
He found Blyleven had the worst run support of any pitcher in the group except Don Sutton and accumulated the most "tough losses," a stat James invented personally to measure losses in which pitchers deserved better. There is zero doubt Blyleven already would be a Hall of Famer if he'd won 300 games. And that research helped explain the mystery of why he didn't.
But I might have voted for Blyleven anyway. After a summer of arguing, during last year's fun-filled Cy Young debates, that "wins" were overrated by way too many people, I already had convinced myself to look past them in Blyleven's case.
After all, we live now in an age that offers us many more incisive statistical tools. So why not use them? And we're especially lucky to have gizmos like Lee Sinins' new Sabermetric Baseball Encyclopedia CD-ROM -- which provided a stat that probably did more to propel me into Blyleven's voting bloc than any other fact.
According to that encyclopedia, Blyleven allowed 344 fewer runs in his career than the average pitcher of his day. In the live-ball era, only eight pitchers have done better in that department. And those eight comprise a group that essentially consists of the best modern pitchers who ever threw a baseball: Roger Clemens, Lefty Grove, Greg Maddux, Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez, Tom Seaver, Carl Hubbell and Bob Gibson.
If you look more closely at that stat, you also find it wasn't just a tribute to longevity. Blyleven had six seasons in which he allowed at least 30 fewer runs than the average pitcher. That's as many seasons like that as Tom Seaver -- and more than Steve Carlton, Sandy Koufax, Juan Marichal or Jim Palmer.
So does that sound like a Hall of Famer to you? In the end, it did to me.
And it sounds like a Hall of Famer to me, too.
2010: Andres Galarraga, Edgar Martinez, Robin Ventura
Mark Grace? No way. And I don't think Galaragga, Martinez or Ventura gets in first ballot either, and maybe not ever. Rickey Henderson is the only lock I see.
By the way, I don't think there is a veterans committee vote this year. Weren't the rules changed a few years ago so the veterans committee will vote every two years on players, and every four years on non-players? I remember reading that somewhere. I think there is a vote on negro league players scheduled, so some of them may make it in.
work = word
5% is the criteria for qualification for next year.
Not even close. He has 2247 hits. He won't get in.
Gossage and Dawson should probably be in for prolonged excellence. Blyleven and Smith may deserve to go in, but not right away. Trammell and Concepcion should go in as excellent shortstops but get slighted for their lower overall batting totals. Morris and John are borderline.
Garvey, Parker, and Murphy come up just short. Mattingly was great for about 5 years, but that's it. He shouldn't make it.
YES!
I love stuff like this. I really think when you crunch the numbers, and come up with groupings like this, you're sorta onto something. ;-) Thanks for the post!
You're switching to their opinions but not mine?!!!
For a minute there I thought you were arguing with yourself and I thought I'd better stay out of that!
Some things come through on paper and some things you see with your eyes. You could see how great Blyleven was on many occasions. Like a lot of pitchers, he tailed off after six or seven innings, probably around 100 pitches. Mauch would leave him until he lost the lead, when anyone in the ballclub could see had had lost his best stuff two-three batters earlier.
Remember Greg Gagne's error costing him a win in the 1987 World Series?
People like you guys remind me why I ever loved baseball. I have to admit, looking at the sport with adult eyes makes it hard to love, but discussions like this are what it's all about.
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