Bruce Sutter

Bruce Sutter made it to the Hall of Fame. While I can say his election won't deteriorate the "greatness" of the Hall of Fame (the election of the Rube Marquards and Ray Schalks did that years ago) he definitely isn't even close to what I would call great, nor is he any better then many of his contemporaries that haven't been elected yet to the Hall of Fame... such as Goose Gossage. The only merit that sets him a part from your standard good closer is the fact he popularized the splitter, but there is no indication that he was even the first person that used it.

Look at these statistics...

Player A: IP: 1809 1/3 Saves: 310 ERA: 3.01 WHIP: 1.23 (1972-1994)

Player B: IP: 1041 Saves: 300 ERA: 2.84 WHIP: 1.14 (1976-1988)

Player C: IP: 764 Saves: 330 ERA: 2.93 WHIP: 1.14 (1989-2000)

Player D: IP: 1128 1/3 Saves: 303 ERA: 3.30 WHIP: 1.24 (1982, 1986-2000)

Player E: IP: 1289 1/3 Saves: 478 ERA: 3.03 WHIP: 1.26 (1980-1997)

Which one of these pitchers deserve the Hall of Fame? To me they are all pretty much on the same level... Player A pitched for an extremely long period of time and pitched tons of innings, unfortunately this resulted in his rate stats being hurt because of his long decline phase. Player B and C did very good but for only a short amount of time before they retired... hence their rate stats aren't hurt by a long decline phase. Knowing player C played in a much tougher hitting era I'd say he was slightly better then Player B, (and possibly is the best of them all) but again not by much. Only one of these players is definitely worse then the others and that is player D, but he's certainly comparable to the others. Player E despite having tons of saves had his WHIP and ERA hurt by the decline phase...

Is it fair that only one of these players are in the HoF and two of the players fell off of the ballot with only a couple of votes?

Player A = Goose Gossage - got 64.6% of the votes
Player B = Bruce Sutter - 76.9% of the votes - new Hall of Famer
Player C = John Wetteland - only received 4 votes (tossed off ballot)
Player D = Doug Jones - only recieved 2 votes (tossed off ballot)
Player E = Lee Smith - 45% of votes

How can it be fair that a player who was just as good as the player elected to the HoF get such a small amount of support that they fall of the ballot? This just doesn't seem right.

Of course, I would have just made it fair by not electing any of them.

This year the nominations for the Hall of Fame were substandard. Jim Rice, and Bert Blyleven are the only two I could ever see as being at least borderline for the Hall of Fame. Out of Rice and Blyleven the only one I would think of voting for would be Blyleven, but even then there would have been only a 50/50 chance I would have voted for him.

The Bruce Sutter vote just proves there needs to be a baseball IQ test before handing out the Hall of Fame ballots.