Mark Buehrle: Underrated

This article is a direct response to Harold Friend's weak piece from today, which makes the assertion that Chicago White Sox ace Mark Buehrle is not a Hall of Fame caliber pitcher.

Friend, in his passion for research, punched Mark Buehrle's name into baseballreference.com and asked it who, historically, Buehrle compared to best. It spit out a bunch of names, so he wrote an article.

Let's take a look at a more realistic assessment.

In Friend's article, he says Buehrle is not in the same class as long-time Atlanta Braves pitcher (and future Hall of Famer) Tom Glavine. Really?

Glavine was born on March 25, while Buehrle was born on March 23 just 13 years later. And no, that's not the only similarity.

Let's not look at the entire body of work for a guy in the middle of his career; that's both naive and thoughtless. Let's throw this one in the Way Back Machine and look at Glavine's career next to Buehrle's.

Buehrle is 30 years old this season, and, at the end of July, has 133 career victories to just 90 losses.

At the end of 1996, when Glavine was 30, he had 139 victories and 92 losses.

Currently, Buehrle has 1,159 strikeouts; Glavine had 1,212 at the end of 1996. Their ERAs are almost identical, neither walks many batters, and both works quickly.

Frankly, the Glavine-Buehrle comparison is well founded and fantastically accurate.

There are two points where Glavine outperforms are in 20-win seasons (3-0 Glavine) and the sexy factor. If the White Sox were as trendy as the Braves of the 1990s were, more people might care about Buehrle.

Let's not sell short that Buehrle has been in four All-Star Games to dates as well.

But, for those out there that won't accept just one point of comparison, let's look at Buehrle's contemporaries for further dialogue.

I'll start at the top of everyone's mind this July, with Blue Jays ace Roy Halladay. Halladay is two years older than Buehrle, and yet he's only won nine more games in his career than Buehrle. Halladay might have two 20-win seasons, but his ERA is only a third of a run better than Buehrle's for their careers.

How about the king of active left-handers, Johan Santana. He was also born in March of 1979, but hasn't won as many games as Buehrle. Though Santana's career has seen substantially more fanfare than Buehrle's, largely because he's more of a strikeout pitcher, consider this statistic: Buehrle has thrown 24 complete games in his career, while Santana has just nine.

Oh, and how many no-hitters does Santana have? Buehrle has two.

To use 20-win seasons as a blanket barometer for Hall of Fame induction doesn't hold as much weight as it used to; by that measure, Jon Lieber would have more to talk about than Mike Mussina.

There has been a lot of talk about the dying age of the 300-game winner. When Randy Johnson broke the barrier, many believed we had seen the last to reach that benchmark for perhaps 18 to 20 more years.

And yet back in 1996, Glavine was just as far away from the legendary sum as Buehrle is today.

The thought that he's just one of only two left-handed pitchers to have a no-hitter, perfect game, and World Series championship ring is amazing. When the other name is Sandy Koufax, it puts Buehrle into a class that seems too lofty for a guy from rural Missouri.

To praise Buehrle as the best thing since sliced bread simply because he threw a perfect game is inappropriate. But to sell him short because of bias or because you just didn't do the homework is also wrong.

My point is this: Buehrle's a great, consistent pitcher who gets ignored because he happens to pitch for the team the media likes to forget. He's not as sexy as Kerry Wood, Mark Prior, or Carlos Zambrano, but he's quietly lasting longer and more effective than all three.

Oh, and he's got something that Halladay, Santana, CC Sabathia, Wood, Prior, and Zambrano all can't claim: a World Series ring.