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Posted By: jay behrens

you need to go take a look at Eck's numbers as reliever, especially when he was MVP. It will be a long time before another reliever has that type of season. Here's Eck's MVP season: 7-1 48 saves, 63 games, 72 IP, 41 hits, 4 BB, 73 K, 0.61 ERA. He had an impact on over 1/3 of his teams games, as opposed to a starting pitcher today that barely impacts 1/5 of the teams games. I hate seeing pitchers given the MVP award beucase everyday players cannot win the Cy Young award, but this is propably the only time where I would agree that a pitcher was the MVP that year. Besides, the next best year by an everyday player was Puckett, and I would have voted to Eck.

Bringing up Eck reminded me of few other players that belong in the Hall, all relievers, Quisenberry and Sutter. Simply the dominant relievers of their time. Same for Eck, and he has the added bonus of having been a top notch starter before moving to the closer role.

Jay