Mr. SKIA gets caught up, Vol. I

Yes, I know it's been a long time since I blogged at ya, so I'm going to use the next several entries to get caught up on events I may have missed. Today, we start with baseball, and...

Andre Dawson: Hall of Famer?

The short answer, No.

And yet, there he is. My ballot would have looked like this, in order of HofF worthiness:

NO SHIT
Bert Blyleven
Tim Raines
Roberto Alomar

YES
Barry Larkin
Alan Trammell

HEY, IF THEY'RE LETTING THE LIKES OF JIM RICE IN, WHY NOT?
Dale Murphy
Edgar Martinez

CLOSE, BUT NO SWISHER SWEETS CIGARILLO
Andre Dawson
Dave Parker

SHIT NO
Lee Smith
Jack Morris

Bert Blyleven
It's a joke that Dawson finally got in this year while Blyleven will continue to wait. Blyleven is so far above the standards of the Hall of Fame that I can't even imagine how he feels when guys like Rice and Dawson get in. Actually, I can. I'm sure he feels the same way I did when I got knocked out in the first round of the playoffs in BOTH of my fantasy football leagues, after finishing with the best record and highest point total in each. No, that's not quite fair; my fantasy pain far exceeds his trifling Hall of Fame travails.

Nevertheless...

I think Blyleven has, in some quarters, been unfairly viewed as a 'compiler'; that is, a guy who just hung around for a long enough time to pile up some impressive career numbers. Like Jim Kaat or, if you prefer someone closer to (my) home, Harold Baines. But Blyleven was elite. Here are Blyleven's number of seasonal leaderboard finishes in his league in various categories:

	Top 5	Top 10
ERA	7	10
ERA+	7	12
WHIP	7	11
IP	6	11
K	14	16
K/9	9	14
K/BB	13	16
CG	6	12
Shutouts	9	10

Additionally, at the time of his retirement, Blyleven was third (3rd!) on the all-time strikeout list (he's since dropped to fifth) with 3701; every other eligible player in the top-15 is in the Hall. He was also ninth in shutouts, with 60; every other pitcher with 50 or more has been enshrined.

What's ridiculous is that in all likelihood, the biggest thing keeping Blyleven out is his failure to win 300 games (like Don Sutton), or have a signature postseason performance (like the markedly inferior Catfish Hunter). But Blyleven was 5-1 with a 2.47 ERA in the playoffs, including 2-1, 2.35 in the World Series. If only he'd gone by Barracuda Blyleven.

As far as the magical 300, wins are almost entirely team dependent, and Blyleven generally played on lousy teams -- and he still finished just 13 games short. Plus he has a better career ERA+ (118) than all but Tom Seaver among his 300-game-winning contemporaries: better than Gaylord Perry (117), Steve Carlton (115), Phil Niekro (115), Nolan Ryan (111), and Don Sutton (108). Toss in that Blyleven had a whopping 178 quality starts which he did NOT win, and keeping him out of the Hall for getting to 287 instead of 300 is absurd.

Granted, after garnering 74.2% of the vote, Blyleven should be in next year. But how in the world has he had to wait so long?

Tim Raines
Because he perhaps hung around a little too long, I think people forget how superb Raines was in the 1980's, when he was truly the NL's Rickey Henderson. And by that I don't merely mean he was the NL's best leadoff hitter, but that he was an absolute force at the top of the order who had a profound effect on the games in which he played. Just like Rickey.

Raines was an All-Star every season between 1981 and '87, a seven-year stretch in which he played in 1000 games (remember, the 1981 season was shortened by more than 50 games because of a players' strike*), banged out 1202 hits, posted a .310/.396/.448 (BA/OBP/SLG) line (for an OPS+ of 135), and walked 553 times while striking out 425. Not only that, but Raines also stole 504 bases while being caught just 74 times, a remarkable 87.2% success rate.**

* Raines '81: Playing in just 88 games (mostly because of the aforementioned strike), he nearly broke the rookie stolen base record (75, by Benny Kauff in 1914) with 71 (in only 82 attempts). He also batted .304 with a .391 OBP over 363 plate appearances, with 45 walks and just 31 strikeouts. Unfortunately, 1981 was also the rookie season of one Fernando Valenzuela, and between Fernando Mania and playing in Arctic France, let's just say Raines was a liiiiiiiiiiiiiiittle overshadowed.

** As a comparison, during Henderson's seven-season peak (1980 to '86) he stole over 100 more bases (627) but was caught more than twice as many times (155), meaning he was successful 80.2% of the time.

Building off that last asterisk but returning to non-italicized text, Raines' and Henderson's peaks are uncannily similar:

	Raines	Henderson
Games	1000	998
PA	4488	4445
Runs	719	813
Hits	1202	1086
Walks	553	674
Times on base	1772	1783
BB:K	1.30	1.29
HR	66	102
XBH	343	313
GIDP	56	56
BA	.310	.292
OBP	.396	.402
SLG	.448	.441
OPS	.844	.842
OPS+	135	138

Now obviously, Henderson had more sustained excellence. But there's no shame in being not-quite-as-good as Rickey Henderson, only one of the greatest players in baseball history. With a lifetime .294/.385/.425 line, with 2605 hits, 1330 walks, 1571 runs, and 808 steals -- the fourth-most all-time -- Raines more than qualifies for the HofF.

Just two additional points about Raines:

1. His career stolen base percentage of 84.7 ranks first all-time among players with at least 300 attempts, though he barely cleared that benchmark with a mere 952 attempts. Just to put that in perspective, while Raines ranks fourth all-time in stolen bases, he's just 22nd in caught stealings. The players he's bracketed by on the CS list, Delino DeShields and Luis Polonia, combined to steal fewer bases (784) than Raines did.

2. I don't know where I first saw a similar comparison -- perhaps it was Keith Law on ESPN.com -- but:

	Raines	Gwynn
PA	10,359	10,232
Hits	2,605	3,141
BB	1,330	790
BA	.294	.338
OBP	.385	.388

In a career with a very similar number of plate appearances, Raines actually reached base more times than Tony Gwynn (3,977 to 3,955). Oh yeah, and Raines also stole nearly 500 more bases (808 to 319) while being caught just 21 more times. Gwynn, in case you're wondering, sailed into the Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility, with 97.6% of the BBWAA vote. Raines received support from just 30.4% of the electorate this year, his best showing in his three years on the ballot.

Roberto Alomar
Quite simply, Alomar is undoubtedly one of the top-10 second basemen of all time, and if being top-10 at your position ain't enough to get you into the Hall, well... 12 consecutive All-Star selections, 10 Gold Gloves (most of them deserved), 4 Silver Sluggers, lifetime .300/.371/.443 with a 116 OPS+ and 474 stolen bases (in 588 attempts) from a premium defender at a premium defensive position sure sounds HofF to me.

There are only two reasons I can fathom for someone not voting for Alomar. The first is if a voter believes in some sort of First Ballot Mystique, and thinks that while Alomar is a Hall of Famer, he's not quite a first-ballot guy. The second is the John Hirshbeck spitting incident, which might have been a bit less dignified than most writers have come to expect from a Hall of Famer. In fact, it's possible that for some, Alomar's expectoration was exactly what prevented him from having First Ballot Mystique. Still, he got awfully close, and I'd bet a shiny new loogie he gets in next year.

More on the rest of my ballot to come.