Dave Stieb has been retired for nearly 30 years, and he still hasn't lost the edge that defined his career.
The former Blue Jays ace was back in Toronto over the weekend for the club's celebration of the 1992 and 1993 World Series champions, and he made clear he's still bothered by how his career got remembered.
Stieb remains the franchise leader in almost every major pitching category, and he's one of the best pitchers in history to never win a Cy Young or reach the Hall of Fame.
"That's all I've got," Stieb said Saturday about owning multiple Jays records. "I have no Cy Young Awards, no Gold Gloves, no '83 all-star game MVP, the records are all I've got and I'm thankful for that."
His numbers back up the frustration. From 1980 to 1985, Stieb pitched at least 205 innings every year but one, posting a 3.07 ERA while leading the majors in quality starts.
Retroactive WAR calculations show he led all of baseball from 1982 to 1984. His 56.5 career WAR is better than more than 30 Hall of Fame pitchers, including Mariano Rivera, Sandy Koufax and Whitey Ford.
Stieb has a theory about why none of that mattered to voters.
Why he still points to playing north of the border
"I feel like I've been slighted, and the cruel thing about it is that I think it's because I played in Canada, which is ridiculous," Stieb said. "That's how we were looked at back then, those baseball writers didn't want to give anybody that played in Canada an award."
Voters at the time prioritized wins over advanced metrics, an approach that hurt Stieb given Toronto never finished within nine games of first place during his peak WAR years from 1982 to 1984.
He finished his career 176-137, a record that looked ordinary by the era's standards even as his underlying numbers said otherwise.
When his name hit the Hall of Fame ballot in 2004, Stieb received just 1.4 percent of the vote, a number so low it eliminated him from future ballots entirely.
His only remaining path now runs through the contemporary era committee, though Stieb isn't holding his breath after being passed over so many times already.
It's a bit like watching someone's masterpiece get dismissed by critics only for a new generation to finally recognize it decades later, appreciation arriving long after the moment it mattered most.
Does Stieb's theory about regional bias hold up, or does the era's obsession with wins alone explain the snub without needing to bring geography into it at all?
Do you believe Dave Stieb was overlooked for the Hall of Fame partly because he played in Toronto?
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