David Stieb

Dave Stieb made his only appearance on the writers' ballot for the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2004.

A case can be made with sabermetrics that Stieb - not Jack Morris - was the best pitcher of the 1980s and would be a worthy addition to Cooperstown. But by traditional measures, the former Toronto Blue Jays ace might have looked far short of a plaque, with sciatica and other ailments chasing Stieb away from the game in his mid-30s and limiting him to 176 wins. Stieb drew just 1.4 percent, or seven votes, of 506 votes cast in 2004 - and that was that.

On one hand, Stieb said he wasn't that surprised with the outcome.

"I said right off the bat, 'I don't belong in the Hall of Fame, I did not win enough games and so forth,'" Stieb told Sporting News in a recent phone interview from Reno, Nev., where he does land development work.

But there's a caveat.

"I surely did not deserve to be just wiped off the map after the first-year ballot," Stieb said. "It's like, please, amuse me and string me out for two, three years."

Hall of Fame voting can be brutal in this regard, with numerous fine one-and-done candidates from Stieb to Bobby Grich to Ted Simmons and many others.

"It's like an insult," Stieb said. "What it told me was in (the writers') minds, I didn't even do anything worth recognizing."

There's good news for Stieb, though. This fall, he'll be eligible for the first time as a veterans candidate on the Modern Baseball Committee ballot. Is Stieb about to be wiped off the map once more, or could delayed recognition come?

Why: A few significant hurdles remain for Stieb's Hall of Fame case. The first is that the Modern Baseball Committee ballot, which spans MLB figures who made their greatest contribution to the game between 1970 and 1987, looks like it will be packed.

Alan Trammell, Lou Whitaker and Dale Murphy will all be newly eligible. So will Morris, who spent 15 years on the writers' ballot and just missed induction through it. Stieb has heard, by the way, that some people think Morris was the best pitcher of the 1980s because he had the most wins of the decade at 162. Stieb, who had the second-most wins in the decade at 140, doesn't think the stat should be the decider.

"The biggest thing to look at is the kind of team he was on (the Detroit Tigers) and the kind of team I was on," Stieb said. "They were pretty much real good already in the whole '80s, '80 to '89, whereas we didn't really get good until like '84, '85."

Morris had the most wins, but Stieb had the lower ERA "and he wasn't even close to me, I think.

"To me, ERA is indicative of who's better," Stieb said.

Other statistics attest to this as well. Stieb had the highest Wins Above Replacement among pitchers for the '80s, by a wide margin at 48.6, while Morris ranked 12th at 30.4.

In case anyone's wondering, Stieb's heard of WAR.

"Pat Hentgen told me years ago, he goes, 'Man, you know how they're using that WAR a lot, that stat?' I go, 'Yeah.' He goes, 'They use that like crazy now to gauge how good someone really is.' He goes, 'If they looked at that when you were playing, you would have won four Cy Young Awards in a row,'" Stieb said, noting it would have been 1982 through 1985 when he led for WAR three consecutive years and finished second the fourth.

By Wins Above Average, the chasm between Stieb and Morris in the '80s is even wider: 28.1, best in the decade for Stieb; 9.0, 31st-best for Morris.

"He was an awesome pitcher," Stieb said. "He was an animal, a bulldog-like [workhorse], and wanted to win like no one else. I totally respect him and his skills and what he did. But if you had to look at everything, I think I was the best."

The problem, of course, is that Hall of Fame committees don't generally get too deep into the weeds with sabermetrics.

Injuries also played a role in curtailing Stieb's career and preventing him from accumulating more of the counting stats Hall of Fame voters so value. Stieb never went on the disabled list until excessive working out in 1991 gave him a herniated disk in his back, aggravated by a collision near first base that spring. This led to other issues, which ultimately culminated with Stieb's release from the Blue Jays after the 1992 season.

After a short stint with the Chicago White Sox and a six-week run with the Kansas City Royals' Triple-A club, Stieb went home to his family.

"I was living in Lake Tahoe and just loving life and being with my kids and stuff," Stieb said. "I just didn't even care about baseball while I was on the mend."

Instead, he spent a few years playing in the outfield for a local softball team as one of its home run hitters before the majors beckoned again for a short comeback in 1998.

Stieb wound up at 176-137 with a 3.44 ERA for his career, respectable numbers no doubt in his eyes but not Hall of Fame worthy. He takes the same hard stance with other candidates, even friends. Asked to assess the Hall of Fame chances of good friend and fellow '80s ace Bret Saberhagen, Stieb pulled up Baseball-Reference.com.

"He's like me," Stieb said, looking at Saberhagen's numbers. "He's got no chance."

Stieb noted Saberhagen's JAWS rating, the stat created by Jay Jaffe of Sports Illustrated which rates Saberhagen as the 66th-best pitcher in baseball history and Stieb as 67th-best. Stieb looked at some of Saberhagen's other accomplishments.

"All he's got on me is two Cy Young's and a World Series that he actually pitched in," Stieb said. "And I don't think that's enough to make it to the Hall of Fame."

What is Stieb's standard for Cooperstown?

"The Hall of Fame is more indicative of somebody having consistency throughout their whole career and dominating numbers throughout their whole career," he said.

If only Stieb gave himself more credit for accomplishing this.