A Galaxy of Stars: Hall of Fame Week 6
Hosted by SIBR, written by BNN Staff et al.
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Patty Fox
“CHOP CHOP”
Patty Fox’s rallying cry in Battin’ Island, “CHOP CHOP” reflects their acumen at culinary arts, and finishing up innings incredibly quickly. Their longstanding quality pitching in the Millennials franchise, which has seen the likes of Castillo Turner, Penelope Mathews, and Uncle Plasma, over many seasons has seen even a rare feat, pitching a perfect game on Season 8, Day 64, and gaining the Nine Blood Blagonball for their efforts. As all-stars come and go, Patty Fox’s position on the mound was a constant. 91.3 ERA-, 2.9 WhAT_IP, and 43.4 raw WhAT is a career of generally solid pitching performances. Granted, the one-two punch of the Battin’ Island Fax Machine and Voicemail threw Patty into a batting career during the highly chaotic Expansion Era, and this offensive career seems promising.
Patty’s been one of only three players with Thomas Dracaena and Theodore Cervantes to maintain a 24 Season Career on the New York Millennials. Not many can claim they survived the Discipline and Expansion Era and still produce good outcomes like they have. Please consider a vote for Patty Fox.
Eugenia Bickle
This isn’t the Eugenia you probably think about when you think of Eugenias. But much like the other Eugenia, this player is far from garbage. A lot of Sunbeams carve out a niche of “Better than you think they were,” but Eugenia Bickle does it in a very specialized way. First, let’s get the obvious out of the way. Eugenia Bickle started off as a completely average pitcher, putting up an ERA+ of 101 (Meaning they were almost exactly average when compared to other pitchers). But in Season 13, Eugenia was shadowed for Jayden Wright, and brought out in Season 14 as a batter. Over the next 10 seasons, Eugenia would cement themself as one thing: an expert at getting on base. They are one of 2 players to ever record a single season OBP of more than .500. Their career OBP of .369 is ranked 4th, beaten only by Legendary Players Workman Gloom, Jaxon Buckley, and Boyfriend Monreal. They were never much of a slugger (despite often being depicted as half slug), but you can’t ask much more of a player than getting on base more than 1 in every 3 attempts. So when you consider Bickle, I’m asking you to consider them as one of the most consistent On Base performers in ILB history, and to ignore their average pitching career. Which, interestingly, is the opposite of what I ask you to do of…
Sigmund Castillo
What an interesting parallel these two make. Sigmund as a batter in the beginning of their career posted an overall OPS+ of 98.0, again, making them almost exactly average in their impact. So let’s not talk about that. Lets talk about Sigmund on the mound. Though they only pitched 5 seasons, the threshold for inclusion in the Hall of Fame is surpassed by Sigmund in pitching alone, meaning that we can take their career as separate and determine its worthiness. Over 5 seasons, Sigmund Castillo put up an overall ERA of 2.71. This puts them at 9th overall in ERA. That’s already impressive, but consider the following three points:
- Sigmund never pitched Underhanded (and actually has the lowest HR/9 of all pitchers at .369)
- Sigmund never pitched during the Ruth Era to pad their stats.
- Sigmund put up these numbers ON THE HELLMOUTH SUNBEAMS, a team that has NEVER had a significant defense.
When you consider those things together, a 2.71 career ERA is frankly heroic. It’s a short career, to be sure, but those 5 seasons will match up favorably against the top 5 seasons of almost any pitcher in the ILB. And, to show some measure of how bad the Sunbeams defense is historically, let’s drop in a quick note about…
Hahn Fox and Nagomi Nava
Put simply, DRiP is a defensive stat that is calculated for an entire team. This means that if you have a low DRiP, the teams you’ve been a part of (partially due to your own efforts) have had bad defense.
The four players in Blaseball history with the lowest DRiP are Hahn Fox, Nagomi Nava, Igneus Delacruz, and Dudley Mueller. This isn’t really something to take seriously, but I do think it’s funny when you think about Sigmund’s pitching career. But while I’m talking about them, first, go read my Hahn Fox article. They’re good! They’ve always been good! They deserve your votes. If you are upset that Esme didn’t get in on the Longevity kick, you should be voting for Hahn’s Longevity and Numbers.
And then Nagomi Nava… I mean, what is there really to say? They’ve got the number stats, the rate stats, the lore, the characterization. Nagomi Nava doesn’t have a single counterargument and should be on everyone’s ballot. And if you think somehow that they shouldn’t be, well, I’m going to present the following chart (which hey, look, it’s also Hahn Fox and Eugenia Bickle).
Cory Twelve
There are three Yellowstone Magic pitchers on this ballot, and I’m committing to all three blurbs in an act of remarkable hubris, going from (in my eyes) least to most deserving candidates. Cory Twelve has a career that can be bisected almost perfectly in half, pitching for the majority of Blaseball, with their first eleven seasons on the Yellowstone Magic and the second twelve (appropriately) on the Boston Flowers. The move also coincided with their Alternation. Welcome to the dichotomy of Cory Twelve.
Cory Twelve, Yellowstone Magic pitcher, is not a Hall of Fame calibre player. Of the ten seasons we can see on Blaseball Reference (with 1 & 2 lost to the annals of time), they only once posted a sub 5 ERA, had a career ERA of 6.80, an ERA+ of 68.9, meaning they were only two-thirds as good as a league average pitcher, and had contributed a whopping -33.4 WhAT. It’s no surprise then that the Magic chose to alternate them. They just never got to experience the benefits— I’ll explain why later.
Cory Twelve, Boston Flowers pitcher, has a much better argument. Their career ERA is only 4.12, their ERA+ is 117, so they were 17% better than the league average ERA, and they accumulated 37.8 WhAT, for a career total of 4.5 (I know my maths seems wrong, but it’s legit, I blame rounding). Twelve also struggled at the back end of the Expansion Era, with their final five seasons yielding a 5.61 ERA and 83 ERA+.
Cory Twelve was also involved in arguably the funniest trade in league history, when the Magic exchanged them for the team’s mortal enemy, Boston Flowers pitcher King Weatherman (who knows what he did). A really interesting player, with an almost unmatched career turnaround, but there might be too many bad seasons for most voters’ tastes— there are for me, anyway.
Inky Rutledge
Let’s move on to Inky Rutledge, an octopus who started their career in Yellowstone when the ILB first hit our screens, before moving on to Charleston, Tokyo, and then back to Charleston.
Inky’s pitching career is very up and down in terms of performance, albeit in a more erratic way than the sharp about-face of Cory Twelve. Their ERA has dipped as low as 2.66 in Season 20, and ballooned as high as 6.90 in Season 15. Overall, their career ERA is 4.27 and ERA+ is 106, which are both solid, if not vote-worthy numbers. If you want consistency, Inky Rutledge isn’t that player.
What Inky does have is those memorable moments that stick out in the minds of voters. The more historically minded may well remember Season 7, Day 7, when the Yellowstone Magic took on the Hawai’i Fridays, as Rutledge put their tentacles to good use and pitched the league’s first recorded No-Hitter, earning themselves the 2-Blood Blagonball in the process. Having an ILB first is a notable achievement, although you often feel for the player who has the second instance. The ILB’s second No-Hitter happened 30 days later— Season 7, Day 37, Magic at Shoe Thieves, the visitors eking out a 1-0 win and blanking the opposing bats in the process. On the mound for the Magic that day? None other than our own Inky Rutledge.
The No-Hitter is often seen as the younger sibling to the Perfect Game, understandably, but Inky delivers there as well, having pitched two additional Perfect Games. Their first came for the Yellowstone Magic, Season 17 Day 10, in a 2-0 against the New York Millennials. Their second came at the end of Season 20, on Day 99, across the Pacific as Rutledge led the Tokyo Lift in a 8-0 rout of the Chicago Firefighters.
Should Inky Rutledge be on your ballot? That all depends on how highly you value those pinnacles of pitching, the No-Hitter and the Perfect Game, as well as Inky’s 2-Blood Blagonball. While they have my appreciation, in a very crowded field they lack the consistent production to garner my vote as well.
Curry Aliciakeyes
The final Magic pitcher on the ballot is Curry Aliciakeyes, the most Magic pitcher in history, having pitched the entirety of their career in Yellowstone, right from Blaseball’s beginnings, for a total 465 games. That’s a lot of pitching. Here’s the kicker – it’s really good pitching too.
Curry Aliciakeyes, who is not the same as Zion Aliciakeyes (Curry wears glasses and Zion does not, so they are clearly different players), has both the consistent production and awesome peaks that stats-based voters like me love. Their career ERA+ of 125 is impressive, and their career FIP+ of 139 is even more so. They also have dominant seasons on the mound, with their Season 18 having an ERA+ of 198 and Season 13 having a FIP+ of 204, twice as good as the league average. They pitched six seasons with an ERA+ above 150, including the 198 above and two with a 171 ERA+, in addition to 9 seasons with a FIP+ better than 150, and another just below.
Hopefully that demonstrates they’ve spent time among the league’s elite arms. What’s impressive is how reliable they were. Across 24 seasons of Blaseball, Curry Aliciakeyes has only had a Season below 100 by FIP+ (i.e. below league average) once, in Season 10, and even then it was only slightly below that mark at 97. To be an above average pitcher for almost every season on the Immaterial Plane, across various Eras, changes to the game, and attrition and tragedy that befalls Blaseball players and teams is pretty remarkable.
One of the delights of the Hall of Fame process has been in discovering players I knew little to nothing about and ended up championing. Sandford Garner was one such example last week. Curry Aliciakeyes more than fits the bill this week. Hopefully others out there will have the same epiphany I did.
Miguel Wheeler
There is a place in Mexico City where if you visit at the right time of day when the immateria is at high tide you will find the entrance to a cemetery. This liminal space, tucked in between dimensions, holds the final resting place of many “people” who have “died;” Harold Holt lies here, as does Latin, and the Salesman from that play. You know, No Exit. At the rear of the cemetery, past the newly-placed headstone reading Irony, is the section for those who died in service of Mexico City professional splorts. Its first inhabitant was Miguel Wheeler.
Miguel Wheeler was a Michelin tyre full of rats. Someone scratched out the “chelin” and had scrawled “guel” over it with white permanent marker, and at some point the inhabiting rats developed a hive-mind consciousness, and then one time when they were on a date, Axel Cardenas suggested duct-taping a bat to him, and an All-Sauce career was born. Their career was cut short as Miguel was ascending into stardom; had Jaylen Hotdogfingers not struck them with that pitch, maybe they would have developed into a player deserving of your vote.
As is tradition (which I’m starting now), we take this opportunity to remember the flame-grilled Wings: Miguel Wheeler, José Haley, Case Sports, Lawrence Horne, Aurora Blortles, Wichita Toaster, and Yong Wright. May their legend extend beyond their careers, their names be uttered with reverence and awe, and our memories of them be etched in stone.
Lawrence Horne
Lawrence “Larry “Home-run Horne” Horne” Horne was an original Wing, making the All-Sauce team for a clutch Season 5 performance (which he never repeated), and is perhaps most fondly remembered for hitting the winning run of the Season 7 Internet Championship Series, bringing the Wings their only championship. Part owl, part human (though how much of each part is up for debate, and may even change between plate appearances), Larry was legally deaf, and communicated primarily in LSM. Incinerated in Season 13, they are missed by all who knew him (though some will admit that the way his head rotated to track a ball in flight in the outfield was straight-up creepy). Larry Horne does not deserve your Hall of Fame vote. Just your love.
As is tradition (which I’m starting now), we take this opportunity to remember the flame-grilled Wings: Miguel Wheeler, José Haley, Case Sports, Lawrence Horne, Aurora Blortles, Wichita Toaster, and Yong Wright. May their legend extend beyond their careers, their names be uttered with reverence and awe, and our memories of them be etched in stone.
Jacob Haynes
Jacob Haynes is just a guy. But he’s a really good guy.
He’s been around since Season 1 and done his darnedest batting through incinerations and god chess. He’s always been consistently great— not the best but a rock that the Boston Flowers and the Breath Mints could rely on (and would be the best in most counted stats were he not on one of the largest teams in Blaseball). And while he’s been caught stealing base 64 times, he still tries to steal, and his few successes are immortalized in song.
Jacob is just a guy, a guy who wears jeans in the shower, who adopted a deer, who could be any one of us— and yet, he’s thrived in Blaseball. Let’s celebrate that.
Conner Haley
Conner Haley is one of the greatest batters in Blaseball history, and possibly the greatest all around slugger. They have an argument for GOAT, and are at worst top 3. If you even remotely care for player performance, or want to reward a player who spent most of their career on the Steaks and is thus more likely to be overlooked, you have to vote for Conner.
You like counting stats?
#9 for total bases
#4 for triples hit
#4 for home runs
#9 for total runs scored
Rate?
#4 for career SLG
#7 for OBP
#10 for BA
Advanced?
#3 career WhAT
#5 WhAT_PA (min. 2000 PA)
#4 OPS+ (min. 2000 PA)
Only 4 batters have a career WhAT above 100: Aldon Cashmoney, Jaxon Buckley, Conner Haley, Beck Whitney. Only 3 batters with more than 5000 PAs have a career WhAT_PA above 5: Aldon Cashmoney, Jaxon Buckley, and Conner Haley. As far as peaks, go to Season 23 when they put up one of the finest batting performances ever recorded—247 OPS+ over ~400 PAs. Finally, if you want longevity: Conner Haley is one of only 4 batters to have 6 of the top 100 seasons by OPS+. Once again, they’re only matched by legends such as Aldon Cashmoney, Baby Doyle, and Jaxon Buckley.
They’re leagues ahead of every batter inducted so far except Jaxon. Even then, they’re one of the two or three who could be said to be better than the Pies’ cowpoke. Hard to think of someone more deserving of a first ballot induction.
Conner Haley was the first 40 HR/40 SB player in blaseball. It didn’t happen until Season 10. It’s only happened 4 times in “Baseball,” 20 times in Blaseball, and is considered a true holy grail of stats. Connor also managed to hold several Coffee Cup batting records despite only playing in the 1st round before their team was eliminated, and had a ridiculous 1.286 SLG. Please recognize that Conner is one of the most deserving hitters of Hall of Fame induction and give them the honor of a 1st Week induction.
