What about Bert?

As you all probably know by now, Andre Dawson was the only one inducted to the Hall of Fame in this year's balloot. As you probably know too, there has been a lot of debate over wether Dawson was a HOF player or not. Traditional/old-school people usually say he was because he had a lot of power, was a good RBI man, played very good defense, had some speed,won an MVP, a ROY, and several Gold Gloves and Silver Sluggers. Stat guys will say he didn't get on base at all, wasnt all that impressive according to OPS-plus, and might also not give him as much credit for his defense for the lack of advanced metrics to account for it.

As for the defense part, based on the avaliable defensive stats I consider more reliable, It seems to me he was an outstanding defensive Centerfielder, but I also leave room for doubt, since I neither saw him play nor have all the defensive metrics I'd need to make some kind of evaluation. On the offensive side, I see the stat guys' point, to some extent. Andre Dawson was very bad at getting on base, and I know that wasn't what he was asked to do, but I think the other parts of his offensive game were not good enough to make up for his low OBP. He was inconsistent from season to season, and unless he was hitting in very weak lineups, I don't think he was that much of an RBI guy. Still, taking into account both his offense and his defense, i think he was probably deserving of the induction.

The problem with all of this is that Byleven did not get in. I know there have been a lot of pitchers better than him, and that there have been quite a few to which he can't even be compared, but I think his body of work is better than Dawson's. In some seasons, he was more dominant than Dawson ever was, and his career stats are better. His candidacy has probably been unfairly hurt by his relatively low win total and win percentage, as he pitched almost five thousand innings and didn't even reach 300 wins. Still, his win total was severely damaged by a terrible lack of run support and/or good relief pitching. The best example of this might be his 1971-1976 seasons. In this period of time, he pitched 1745. innings, had a 2.76 ERA, a 133 ERA-plus......and a 98-92 record. I don't spend a lot time looking at stats, but I don't think I've ever seen a six-year stretch in which there is such a big contrast between a pitcher's performance and the help he gets from his team. With some real support, he could've easily won 30 more games in that stretch alone. There's a very real chance that this guy could've won 350 games or something close to that, and I doubt voters would be so reluctant to vote for him if that was the case. That's why I think it's not fair at all to vote for Dawson and not Byleven. He was a really, really good pitcher with some really, really bad run support who is being kept out because of a number he couldn't really control.