Bert Blyleven, one more time

SI's John Heyman is not voting for Bert Blyleven for the Hall of Fame. Again.

Bert Blyleven's Hall of Fame case continues to be the most controversial and interesting one ever, certainly among those not tainted by the steroid issue. His candidacy has stirred more debate and arguments than any other player's, and it isn't even close.

This was the 14th straight year that I did not vote for Blyleven, and as a "no'' voter, I feel compelled to explain my decision...

But he's willing to talk about it, which is a good thing. He did this last year, and I addressed it, making the case that Heyman's argument essentially boils down to "Blyleven's teammates didn't score enough runs when he pitched." (He wouldn't express his argument that way - I would.)

I'm not going to go through all of the numbers, again. I want to look at it from a little bit different perspective.

Over a five year period from 1998 through 2002, Curt Schilling started 158 games for Philadelphia and Arizona. In that span, he pitched 1175 1/3 innings, allowing 1054 hits, and striking out 1229 while walking 222. He allowed 446 runs of which 435 were earned, for an ERA of 1.35. I think we can see that he was a very valuable pitcher during that stretch. There were only three pitchers in baseball for that period with 1000 innings pitched and a better ERA than Schilling. It's an excellent pitching performance.

And it's less than the difference between the career's of Bert Blyleven, whose HoF candidacy Heyman does not support, and Jack Morris, whose he does. To get to Blyleven's career numbers, you have to add 158 starts to Morris'. You've got to add 1146 innings and 1223 strikeouts. You've got to add 67 complete games, of which 32 are shutouts. You've got to add 214, of which 173 are earned, for an ERA of 1.36. And you still can't actually get there, because, despite the innings difference, Blyleven walked 68 fewer batters.

Blyleven perspective

	GS	CG	Sho	IP	H	R	ER	HR	BB	K	HBP	BK	WP	ERA	K9	BB9	HR9
Curt Schilling '98-'02	158	42	7	1175.33	1054	446	435	141	222	1229	16	0	30	3.33	9.41	1.7	1.08
Blyleven - Morris	158	67	32	1146	1065	214	173	41	-68	1223	97	-8	-91	1.36	9.6	-0.88	0.32

So essentially, Bert Blyleven had Jack Morris' career, plus five peak years of Curt Schilling's career. It's difficult to see how one could rationally think that Morris is a worthy candidate and Blyleven isn't.

Coakley on Schilling: "He's a Yankee fan"

For Scott Brown, Martha Coakley's the gift that keeps on giving...



So after dissing shaking hands outside of Fenway earlier in the week, she reveals that she doesn't know who Curt Schilling is.

Well played, Martha, well played...

Curt Schilling retires

To the surprise of pretty much no one, Curt Schilling has decided to call it a career. As a Red Sox fan who appreciates his contribution to two World Championship teams, I'll always have affection for him. There are those who think that he talked too much (and none, that I've ever heard, that think he talked too little) but that rarely bothered me. He was a great pitcher for while, and in the 2004 post-season, provided a seminal baseball moment when he took the field in game 6 of the ALCS with stitches in his ankle and blood on his sock.

So consider this a sincere "thanks, and good job" to number 38 as he gets on with his life.



Later this week, I hope to look at Schilling's career and Hall of Fame case, at least to make a decision for myself as to whether he belongs or not. Prior to performing that analysis, I think he's a borderline case, with a high enough peak but not necessarily a long enough career for that peak, but a case that's bolstered by post-season accomplishments. More on that later.

Curt Schilling

Schilling has announced this morning that he'll be having shoulder surgery on Monday, and will not be back in 2008. He probably won't be back at all, at any time.

There's a pretty decent chance that I've thrown my last pitch forever..."

Curt Schilling, 6/20/2008

There will time for retrospectives, and maybe I'll do one today. The short reaction, from a Sox fan point of view, is that Schilling was a huge part of the biggest baseball story of our lifetimes, and he will be remembered fondly for that, whatever else one thought of him...

Monday morning odds and ends...

• Dan Shaughnessy had a piece in the Globe yesterday arguing that the various Red Sox debacles (1978, 1986, 2003) were bigger disasters than Super Bowl XLII. The wounds are still too fresh for me to go into this fully, which I expect I'll do some day (probably in therapy) but let me briefly address Dan's point.
  
  Hogwash.
  
  There has never been a "collapse"/"choke"/"disaster"/"disappointment" to match it. Certainly not in Boston pro sports. Never. Not no way, not no how. Not when the stakes are considered. No comparison.



• An absolutely fantastic win for the Celtics yesterday, beating San Antonio without their starting power forward, starting center and backup center. I'd been looking forward to San Antonio as a measuring stick game, which it wasn't - there were too many important pieces missing on both sides - but it was a great win for the team anyway.



• Does Nancy Pelosi even realize how foolish she sounds?



• Sometime in the next couple of weeks, I'm going to put together a brief essay on Lewis' The Abolition Of Man and the apparently rapidly approaching end of Western Civilization in Great Britain. Here's a comment from The Way (which is the second of the three essays which makes up The Abolition of Man.):
  

  The practical result of education in the spirit of The Green Book must be the destruction of the society which accepts it.
  

  C.S. Lewis

  
  Lewis was a brilliant man, a great writer, a deep thinker, and something of a prophet...



• I'm torn on the Clinton campaign. There's part of me that thinks that the sooner she's gone, the better. The rest of me is pretty sure that McCain can beat her in November, while Obama is a) likely to be just as bad a President and b) far likelier to win. I think that the best case, for Republicans and people concerned about National security, is for Hillary to win at the convention on the basis of superdelegates, alienating the members of the Obama cult of personality.
  
  I certainly could be wrong (and I usually am) but that would, I think, make for quite an entertaining spectacle, and a fatally wounded candidate.



• Chris Lynch thinks that Curt Schilling's done. I wouldn't be surprised if he is, I wouldn't be surprised if made 10-12 starts after the All Star Game. If we've seen him for the last time, well, we saw great things from him.
  
  My concern is not that it leaves a big hole in the rotation, because I don't believe it does. But it leaves something of a hole, as I'm certain that they want to limit the innings of both Buccholz and Lester this year, and with Schilling gone, that will require more management. They remain, in my opinion, the best team in baseball, with or without him.

WEEI lies about Schilling

WEEI's The Big Show, primarily Glenn Ordway, hammered Curt Schilling yesterday. They hammered him for apologizing for his Barry Bonds comments, because WEEI is basically an all-steroids, Barry-Bonds-is-the-devil, all-the-time station right now. And they hammered on him for commenting that the 8:30 AM interview with Dennis and Callahan might not be the greatest format for him to be making inflammatory comments. All of which is fine, I suppose, if you're into that sort of thing. But they took a piece of his Tuesday appearance absolutely out of context, and validated the opinions of every athlete who ever hated the media.

Yesterday he mentioned the interview in his apology.

I’d love to tell you I was ambushed, misquoted, misinterpreted, something other than what it was, but I wasn’t. I’m thinking that waking up at 8:30 am to do the weekly interview we do with WEEI is probably not the greatest format and if you heard the interview it’s not hard to realize that I’m usually awake about 30-45 seconds before it begins.

During his Tuesday appearance, Schilling was asked about, and talked about, his blog, and how it enabled him to correct mis-impressions that press coverage created. In the process of doing so, he said:

This blog has allowed me to just about disappear from having to do anything other than my post-game media and this radio show, which is, this is absolute heaven for me.

Ordway played that clip, and hammered Schilling for inconsistency, basically saying that Schilling was talking about the radio appearance being heaven on Tuesday, and then deriding it on Wednesday. The problem is, that was clearly not what he did. Even in the clip that they played on the Big Show, it sounded like they were mis-representing it. If you listen to the whole thing, there's just no question whatsoever about it. He didn't say or imply that the radio show was heaven, but that the blog allowing him not to do any media was heaven. If you listen to the whole thing, there is no other interpretation to put on it.

I didn't listen long, and don't know whether anyone tried to set Ordway straight or not. I suspect not, and I suspect that even if someone had, it wouldn't have worked. But the Big Show is a noise machine, and they generated lots of it yesterday. A little bit goes a long, long way, but that was exceptionally dishonest yesterday afternoon, even for them...

(You can listen to Schilling's Tuesday appearance here. The relevant quote comes about 10:35 in. As I say, if you hear it in context, it really bears only one interpretation, and it isn't the one that Ordway used...)