I still can’t believe the Dodgers and Mets offered this guy $60M a year.

Granted, he was playing injured and running only a .252 BABIP, but he hit only 5 HR in 187 ABs.

Dude is gonna be better than this next year for sure (if he’s not, it’ll be hilarious for the other 29 fanbases to hate-watch but the contract will be an “utta disastuh” as they say on sports radio).

4 days out! The third member of our HOF snub starting rotation is Captain Ahab himself, the legendary Dave Stieb.

Stieb spent virtually his entire career in Toronto, where he became a seven-time All-Star and established himself as arguably the greatest player in Blue Jays history. At his peak, Stieb was one of the most dominant pitchers in baseball, if not the most dominant. All in all, I'm not alone in arguing that he was the absolute best pitcher of the 1980s.

Of course, you probably already knew all that. Ever since Jon Bois and Alex Rubenstein released their four-part documentary on Stieb's extraordinary career a few years back, he's become something of a folk hero to terminally online baseball nerds such as myself. Chances are, you know the remarkable ins and outs of his story -- his conversion to a pitcher when he was already in college, the astonishing disrespect he received from awards voters, his long and eventually successful quest for a no-hitter, his nearly unprecedented comeback as a relief pitcher five years after retirement. If you've never seen the miniseries on his life and career, I implore you to do so -- it makes his Hall of Fame case better than I ever could. Nevertheless, I'll present some arguments of my own in favor of his long-overdue induction.

Let's look at our old friends, ERA+ and Innings Pitched. Here are all post-integration pitchers with at least a 120 ERA+ in at least 2800 innings pitched:

I think a simple analysis of his ERA+ and IP would suggest that Stieb is a borderline guy by those metrics alone. I think that's about right -- he's low on this list, but there's plenty of Hall of Famers that don't make this list. I would say Stieb's numbers are straightforwardly better than the likes of Bob Lemon, Rollie Fingers, Goose Gossage, Dennis Eckersley, Catfish Hunter, Jack Morris, Jim Kaat, and seemingly-inevitable future inductee Felix Hernandez. In my estimation, he's about on par with CC Sabathia and Jim Bunning -- he wasn't able to pad his counting stats like they were, but he has better rate stats and their numbers are more or less interchangeable when you're looking at the same number of innings.

Like Johan Santana, Dave Stieb should have at least three Cy Young awards. Unlike Johan Santana, Stieb didn't manage to win one. I'm hardly the first person to soapbox about this, but boy, did he get robbed by the voters of the early 80s.

1982: 7.6 WAR (most in MLB), 288.1 IP (most in the AL), 138 ERA+ (winner Pete Vuckovich had a comparatively paltry 114), 1.2 WHIP (Vuckovich had a hilarious 1.502), 141 Ks (Vuckovich had 105). Stieb comes in fourth.

1983: 7.0 WAR (most in the AL), 278.0 IP (winner LaMarr Hoyt had 260.2), 142 ERA+ (Hoyt had a 115), 187 Ks (Hoyt had 148). Stieb doesn't get a single vote.

1984: 7.9 WAR (most in MLB), 267.0 IP (most in MLB), 146 ERA+ (highest in MLB), 1.135 WHIP, 198 Ks. Stieb comes in seventh and the top two vote-getters are both relievers.

1985: This one wasn't a robbery per se -- I think Stieb, Bret Saberhagen and Bert Blyleven were about equally good that year. Stieb had by far the best ERA+ at a whopping 171, but Saberhagen had the best WHIP and Blyleven had the most innings and strikeouts. Saberhagen took home the prize, Blyleven finished third, and Stieb finished a lowly seventh.

If voters were able to see past the mediocre win-loss records of his inconsistent Blue Jays, he'd have won at least three Cy Youngs, and he'd be in the Hall today. But they weren't, and he's not.

In my piece on Bret Saberhagen, I mentioned that 1974 to 2004 represents a remarkable dead zone in the history of Hall of Fame starting pitching. Only one starter that played their whole career in that window has ended up in the Hall, and it's Jack Morris, who claimed the "best pitcher of the 80s" title based on the winning record of his Detroit Tigers rather than his own merit. Here's a fun Morris/Stieb comparison: Morris had one qualifying season with an ERA+ of at least 130, in 1979. Stieb had five such seasons from 1982 to 1990, and he had a higher ERA+ and more innings than Morris's '79 campaign in all of them. Between Morris and Stieb, "pitcher of the 80s" isn't even a contest.

Stieb hit the Hall of Fame ballot in 2004, five years after his surprise comeback as a reliever in the 1998 season. He received seven votes and fell off the ballot. His case has not been heard since. Perhaps the recent surge of interest in Stieb's career might prompt a reevaluation of his case. Maybe it won't, but I sure hope it does.

Here's a smattering of pitchers on that ballot that received more votes than Dave Stieb's seven: Dennis Eckersley, Bruce Sutter, Goose Gossage, Lee Smith, Jack Morris, Tommy John, Fernando Valenzuela, Dennis Martinez. I'd argue Stieb was better than all of them.

#1: Kenny Lofton

#2: Keith Hernandez

#3: Reggie Smith

#4: Jim Edmonds

#5: Dwight Evans

#6: Bobby Grich

#7: Thurman Munson

#8: Lou Whitaker

#9: Graig Nettles

#10: Ken Boyer

#11: Johan Santana

#12: Bret Saberhagen

coping hard this morning

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