Blyleven v. Ford

Using http://www.baseball-reference.com/play-index/

Spanning Multiple Seasons or entire Careers, From 1901 to 2010, Hall Of Fame Members, (requiring At least 2200 Innings Pitched), sorted by greatest Win-Loss %

Complete list, excluding Blyleven:

http://bbref.com/pi/shareit/qChRc

Whitey Ford (.690) has the highest winning percentage of any Hall of Fame pitchers since 1901, excluding those primarily relief pitchers, i.e., part time players. Includes Hoyt Wilhelm and Dennis Eckersley.

Bert Blyleven, elected two days ago, would have the sixth worst, #46 of 51: .534. Those lower:

47. Rube Marquard .532
48. Ted Lyons .531
49. Vic Willis .528
50. Nolan Ryan .526
51. Eppa Rixey .515

Of the bottom five only Ryan won 300 games: 324. Ryan also has several records including most no-hitters, most strike outs career (2,013 (54%) more than #5 Blyleven) and most strike outs in a season after 1886: 125 (48%) more than Blyleven's best. The others should probably be deducted from the Hall of Fame.

If there was a fixed number or percentage of players in the Hall of Fame and someone had to be deducted before a newer, better player could be added then maybe the writers would not elect players like Blyleven knowing that he would only be deducted in the near future.

The knee jerk reaction is: hey, Blyleven played for weak teams and Ford played for the Yankees, so sure Ford would have a higher winning percentage.

See details here:

https://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=0Ai3KONa1HbjDdDJ0Z0hzLWVGV0pIZzNjYjVaOTlYNlE&hl=en&output=html

win% Blyleven Ford
pitcher 0.534 0.690
teams 0.505 0.601
Dif 0.029 0.089
PctDif (Dif/teams) 5.74% 14.81%

Because Ford pitched very little in his final two seasons and the Yanks won 70 and 72 games in them I dropped the final season to get a more accurate Yankee winning percentage for seasons in which Ford pitched: .601 instead of .591. No, I did not weight the team seasons on innings pitched.

Ford's nearly 15% above his team's winning percentage is remarkable because the Yankee percentage was so high. A pitcher can only win so many games. It should be easier to have an individual winning percentage above one's team if the team winning percentage is relatively low. However, Blyleven cannot even take advantage of that to bolster his Hall of Fame credentials.