Bruce Sutter elected to Hall of Fame

[Puffy]

Jim Deshaies

from LeMoyne College

[RedsBaron]

I don't have a problem with Sutter making it, but I can't come up with a rationale for keeping Gossage and Smith out now that he's there.

Bill James has written that one good argument for inducting someone into the HOF is that he is the most qualified person at his position not in the Hall. By that standard, the line for relief pitchers should have began with Gossage IMO. Until the Goose went in, Sutter should not have been inducted.
Sutter's election should really open things up for relievers ASSUMING the writers are consistent---but they won't be.

[Falls City Beer]

I've always felt that Sutter doesn't belong; I've always felt, however, that he'd be voted in.

[RFS62]

Its re-freakin-diculous that Blylevan isn't in the Hall yet. If he had just 13 more wins, just 13 (one years work) he'd have 300 wins and be a guarantee.

He has the K's, the complete games, the better than league average ERA and the wins, if they bothered to look.

Its a crying shame.

He had the greatest curveball ever thrown too.

He got jobbed again.

[Unassisted]

Blyleven's clearly got the numbers to get in. Unless it's the 250 losses vs. 287 wins that are keeping him out.

So is there a non-baseball reason Blyleven keeps getting the stiff-arm?

Was he a jerk to reporters? I seem to remember Blyleven being a prickly interview.

His Chris Berman nickname was a painful pun? (Bert "Be In" Blyleven)

Deep-seated prejudice against the Dutch?

[MrCinatit]

congrats, Bruce. IMHO, it is deserved.

[M2]

Blyleven's clearly got the numbers to get in. Unless it's the 250 losses vs. 287 wins that are keeping him out.

So is there a non-baseball reason Blyleven keeps getting the stiff-arm?

Was he a jerk to reporters? I seem to remember Blyleven being a prickly interview.

His Chris Berman nickname was a painful pun? (Bert "Be In" Blyleven)

Deep-seated prejudice against the Dutch?

I think Blyleven was fairly well-liked. He had a rep as a practical joker, one of the masters of the hot foot, iirc.

Honestly, I think his problem is he spent the bulk of career pitching in the midwest. Alan Trammell's got the same problem. They played outside the limelight and mostly before Sportscenter became a national phenomenon.

[Cyclone792]

Neyer's column today regarding Sutter, Gossage and relievers. If you read only one paragraph of the column, read the bolded one.

http://insider.espn.go.com/mlb/insid...rob&id=2286632

I'm writing this in the middle of the night, just a few hours before the Hall of Fame announces who -- if anybody -- the Baseball Writers Association of America has elected this year. All the indications are that if anybody is elected, it will be Bruce Sutter.

If so, he might already know. If not, he already knows that, too.

If so, then I congratulate him. If not, then I'm happy to know that at least 25 percent of the voters are paying attention. Because a Hall of Fame that does contain Bruce Sutter but does not contain Rich Gossage really doesn't make much sense.

As Joe Sheehan of Baseball Prospectus noted Monday, if you take Sutter's career numbers and remove them from Gossage's numbers, Gossage still has 767 innings (277 earned runs), a 3.25 ERA and 56 wins, nearly 30 "wins above a replacement [major-league average] pitcher." And one could argue, if one were in less than a charitable mood, that neither did enough to merit a plaque in Cooperstown.

No, I'm not going to argue that relief pitchers don't belong in the Hall of Fame, any more than I'm going to argue that designated hitters don't belong in the Hall of Fame. Not today. But let's be honest about this, friends: There are three things about relief pitchers that nobody talks about but are nonetheless true. We'll call them Neyer's Rules for Relievers (until their legitimate originators step forward).

Rule 1: Relief pitchers, because they throw a relatively small number of innings, don't have the same impact on winning and losing that starting pitchers (let alone hitters) have.

Rule 2: Nearly every great relief pitcher was a failed starting pitcher.

Rule 3: Most good starting pitchers could be great relief pitchers.

Rules 1 and 2 are facts. Rule 3 is speculative, but in the same way that it's speculative to predict that Kansas City won't win the World Series in 2006.

If you believe in Rule 2, as I do, then we might guess that many, many pitchers over the years would have put together Hall of Fame-caliber careers as relievers, if only their managers had been willing to use them in that role. Which should make you wonder just how valuable a great relief pitcher really is.

I make all these points not -- as I mentioned earlier -- to argue that relief pitchers don't belong in the Hall of Fame. I believe they do. But I also believe the standards for Hall of Fame relievers should be incredibly high, just as they are for kickers and punters in professional football.

There are zero punters in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. There is one pure kicker (Jan Stenerud) in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, which is approximately how many pure relief pitchers are in the Baseball Hall of Fame (two: Hoyt Wilhelm and Rollie Fingers). I think that's about right. There probably should be two more kickers -- Morten Andersen and Gary Anderson, when they're eligible -- in the Football Hall of Fame, and maybe Mike Vanderjagt should someday join them. There should probably be one more reliever -- Gossage, naturally -- in the Baseball Hall of Fame, and someday Mariano Rivera and Trevor Hoffman should probably join him.

Meanwhile, Bruce Sutter pitched in the major leagues for 10 full seasons. In two of those seasons, he wasn't good. That leaves eight good (or great) seasons, and I challenge you to identify a Hall of Fame hitter recently elected on the strength of only eight good (or great) seasons. And good (and great) hitters are more valuable than good (and great) relief pitchers.

The voters certainly can't be supporting Sutter because of his value; if they were voting for value, they would have Gossage ahead of Sutter, because Gossage so obviously was more valuable than Sutter. They must be voting for Sutter as a "pioneer" -- a pioneer of the split-fingered fastball (even though he didn't invent the pitch) and a pioneer of the save situation (even though he was just following orders). Voting for Sutter but not voting for Gossage is simply an irrational act. Nothing personal; I act irrationally at least a couple of times a year, so I can't exactly hold that against my esteemed colleagues.

But the Hall of Fame voters, as a group, generally are quite rational (even if it sometimes takes them a few years to get there; see Gary Carter and Ryne Sandberg). So when they do something -- again, as a group -- so obviously irrational, it leads to a great deal of curiosity among those of us who believe the facts are mostly what matter. And as we read the facts, there's one more rule:

Rule 4: Bruce Sutter was just two-thirds the pitcher that Goose Gossage was.

[RedsBaron]

Good column by Neyer. As I posted earlier, the line for relievers under consideration for the Hall of Fame should have begun with Gossage, not Sutter.

[MrCinatit]

hopefully, Sutter's induction will lead the way for others such as The Goose and Smith - but i said that several years ago when Fingers was inducted.
had Blyleven played in New York or (we can always dream) The Big Red Machine, he would have made it the first year. but in playing with low-estemed teams such as Texas, Minnesota and Cleveland, the man gets no respect.

[RedsBaron]

If one accepts the arguments Neyer made in his column, then one can also question certain decisions the Reds have made regarding pitchers.
If you have a young pitcher with a ten million dollar fastball, a ten cent brain, and not much else (paging Rob Dibble), developing that pitcher as a relief pitcher makes some sense as a reliever can be dominant with just one great pitch, and Dibble was dominant for a few seasons. Even then, if the young pitcher can develop another pitch or two, train him to be a starting pitcher.
However, if you have a young pitcher without one dominant pitch but a variety of pitches, maybe greater effort should be made to see if he can develop into a starting pitcher before he is put on the reliever track.
Neyer's column does argue against the wisdom of expending a number one draft choice on someone who is clearly a relief pitcher, nothing more, such as Ryan Wagner. Number one drat picks should be used for only two types of players IMO: stud starting pitchers, preferably with some college experince, and stud hitters. If you feel compelled to draft slick-fielding middle infielders with questionable bats, speed merchants with questionable bats, catchers with great gloves and questionable bats, or relief pitchers, do it in the latter rounds, not in the first or second rounds of the draft.

[NJReds]

Well, the Goose wasn't earning any points with writers yesterday. I agree he should be in before the other two relievers (Fingers/Sutter), but I think he hurt his chances yesterday. It may not matter, because with Ripken and Gwynn on the ballot next year, guys like Rice, Blyleven, Morris and Gossage will be shut out again.

Goose Lets Loose (NY Post)

January 11, 2006 -- YOU would not want to get into the batter's box yesterday against Goose Gossage.

The greatest closer of his era, the right-hander who did double and triple the work of today's closers, fired high hard ones after receiving word he did not make the Hall of Fame.

"I just don't get it," a frustrated Gossage said in Colorado yesterday, moments after he was told fellow reliever Bruce Sutter would be the only man going into Cooperstown this summer. "I'm at a loss for words."

Not really.

"I just can't believe Sutter got in before me," Gossage added. "He deserved it. I was hoping Sutter and I could go in together. ... I don't know if I ever will make it."

Once again the Baseball Writers Association of America embarrassed itself by keeping the likes of Gossage and Jim Rice out of the Hall. The writers who did not vote for Gossage will say numbers kept him out, but Gossage collected 10more saves than Sutter, 56 more wins and 948 more strikeouts than the split-fingered specialist.

Gossage challenged those who have deemed him not worthy to come forward to debate him.

"You know what, I never hear from these guys who don't vote for me," Gossage said, his voice rising. "But I'll take on any writer, anywhere, on any show, and I will bury him."

Gossage, 54, was talking about burying those writers verbally, although you could be sure he would do the same thing in any back-alley fight.

Make no mistake, Gossage is disappointed because he didn't make Cooperstown but he feels just as badly for fellow stars Rice, Andre Dawson and Bert Blyleven, who also did not get the heavenly nod.

"I'm not a campaigner," he said. "I'm just asking questions. The only reason I have ever spoken out is that you hate to see injustices."

As for Rice, Gossage said it was a "joke" that Kirby Puckett was a first-ballot Hall of Famer while Rice is now 0-for-12 in Hall of Fame voting.

"If Jim Rice had played in the Metrodome, he would have torn the place down, and that's nothing against Kirby Puckett, that's just the way it is," Gossage said.

Gossage said comparing the modern-day reliever, pitchers like Mariano Rivera and Trevor Hoffman, to him is like comparing apples to oranges.

"The job is so easy because they're only pitching one inning," said Gossage, who would go two or three innings for many of his 310 saves. "Writers have forgotten how the role has changed."

Don't get him started on Barry Bonds, and the bulked up home-run hitters of this PHE - Performance Enhanced Era.

"Hitting in a game is no different than hitting in a home run contest," Gossage said. "It [ticks] me off to say Barry Bonds is the greatest hitter. He's playing in a wussy era. The game is soft. You never get thrown at today. Last thing a hitter has to worry about today is getting hit. The first thing Hank Aaron had to worry about is: Am I going to survive this at-bat because I'm black."

Gossage shot up from 55.2 percent to 64.6 percent this year in the voting. He collected 336 votes, falling 54 short. He is closing in on the needed 75 percent, but next year's class features Cal Ripken, Tony Gwynn and Mr. Andro, Mark McGwire. Gossage could get lost in the spotlight. He said the voting system is flawed and new criteria should be used to measure Hall of Fame quality.

But he is not about to lose any sleep over the snub.

"There are more important things in life to worry about," Gossage said. "Some of my best friends have lost kids to drug overdoses in just the last couple of months. That's how I keep the game in perspective. The war in Iraq, great kids are losing their lives over there. That's the stuff that really matters.

"Real life," he said, "sets me straight."

Chalk that up as one more great close for the man they call Goose.

[RedsBaron]

While I don't know if Jim Rice would have actually put up any better numbers had the Metrodome rather than Fenway Park been his home park, for the most part I agree with Gossage.
Kirby Puckett probably does deserve to be in the HOF, but he made it as a no-doubt-about-it-first-ballot-Hall of Famer, because at the time he had a beloved image. I've previously posted that there is not a great deal of difference in Puckett's HOF qualifications and those of Don Mattingly.
Jim Rice? Yes, I'd vote for him.
The Goose? Yes, if any reliever on yesterday's HOF ballot should've been elected, he was the guy.

[savafan]

Hey, after reading that, I'd campaign for Goose to be the next commissioner.

One problem is that some of these baseball "writers" were kids back when the guys on the ballot were still playing.

[NJReds]

Hey, after reading that, I'd campaign for Goose to be the next commissioner.

One problem is that some of these baseball "writers" were kids back when the guys on the ballot were still playing.

And the older writers don't think relievers belong.