Fire Joe Morgan has been doing a bang up job tearing apart the HOF rationalizations of various writers. I thought I’d point out something. A lot of ignorant writers are comparing Bert Blyleven unfavorable to Jack Morris, saying that Morris was a dominant pitcher while Blyleven racked up impressive totals thanks to a long but mediocre career. This is, like most things SMTs say, the complete opposite of the truth.

Courtesy of baseball reference, here are Morris’s *career* highs combined to a theoretical single best year:

21-8, 293 2/3 IP, 20 CG, 6 SHO, 232 K, 3.05 ERA 133 ERA+

ERA+ is a comparison of ERA to the league, to account for varying offense levels. So if you combined the best years of Morris’s career into one uber year, he was 21-8, 3.05, 33 percent better than the rest of the league.

Bert Blyleven had *ten years* in his career that were as good or better, except in the W-L column. Innings pitches, ERA, ERA+, strikeouts, whatever you want. There were ten years were Bert Blyleven was a better pitcher than Jack Morris on the best year of his life.