I was going to take the break to look over some past entries and see how players Foment and I have talked about are doing. But now I can’t, because someone asked Reggie Jackson to be stupid.
In a recent SI article, Jackson said the following players are not hall of famers:
Gary Carter
Don Sutton
Phil Niekro
Jim Rice
Bert Blyleven
Kirby Puckett
Now, some of those people he has a good point about. Jim Rice is a borderline candidate, and not one anyone should have ever supported. Don Sutton I don’t know what to think of. On the one hand, a lot of his numbers are good but due to longevity. On the other hand, it’s pretty remarkable that in 23 years he never missed one start, and I do think that should be taken into consideration. The fact is he may not have ever had a truly dominant season (Think along the lines of RJ and/or Koufax and/or Carlton) he also never had a horribly awful season either. Borderline yeah, but close enough I don’t have a problem with him in. Phil Niekro...really? We’re debating him? The man had a WAR of 91.7 in his career. Yeah he pitched 24 years, but when your WAR is that high it means you’re a great pitcher. Incidentally, you know what Reggie’s WAR was? 68.4 in 21 seasons. Amazingly, he’s worse than one of the people he’s whining about. In fact, let's do a comp right here:
Name WAR WAR/yr
Jackson 68.4 3.2
Niekro 91.7 3.8
Sutton 62.9 2.7
Carter 66.4 3.5
Rice 44.3 2.8
Blyleven 90.7 4.1
Puckett 48.2 4.0
Hmm. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Someone should shut his trap before he
“I think [Pettitte] will get in.”
...embarrasses himself further. Well, too late for that. I just woke up so I’m gonna make this one quick and let Reggie himself answer this one:
“No. No, no, no, no. [Pettitte] wasn’t even the dominant pitcher of his era. It was [a bunch of people including Clemens, RJ, Maddux, Pedro, Schilling]”
That quote was actually about Blyleven. And he says Jack Morris was the dominant pitcher of his era. This Jack Morris/Bert Blyleven comp has been done a lot, by many better writers than I am. Look here for an excerpt from the deceased Fire Joe Morgan guys about the two. (The authors aren’t dead, just the site is.) For those that won’t go, I’ll summarize: It’s an asinine comparison, made by old time baseball minded people (like Reggie), but when you look at the better numbers Blyleven always comes out ahead by a considerable margin. As an aside, I once heard Al Leiter say about Morris that his ERA was high because he would always pitch to the score. “Pitch to the score” may be the biggest piece of crap line used in baseball. When someone says they “pitch to the score”, it means that his offense gave him a lot of runs and the pitcher alters his game plan because of it. For example, instead of trying to prevent a runner on third with less than 2 outs from scoring, he’ll have his infield move back and worry about getting that batter out instead. This is also called “INTENTIONALLY LETTING THE OTHER TEAM BACK IN THE GAME!” You’re allowing them to score more runs to your detriment just to hopefully get outs and get the game over quicker. It’s a bunch of crap and no one should ever do that.
So, all in all, Reggie’s a moron, he only listed two guys (Sutton and Rice) that were worth fewer wins per year than Reggie, and only one of those two really shouldn’t be inducted. He also embarrasses himself by saying that A-Rod’s numbers are tainted due to steroids, but that it’s OK for Pettitte to be inducted because he is “universally respected”. So we can now add hypocrite to the label bin for Reggie. Not your brightest moment.
That’s all I’ve got to say on this for now. I apologize for the length, but there was a lot of stupid in a short amount of space in regards to what Reggie said. There are a bunch of other places where he’s dressed down for his stupid comments too, but I always like joining in on the fun.
Enjoy the break guys!
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