Bert Blyleven has every reason to be upset.

Another year has gone by and another Baseball Hall of Fame vote has left him on the outside of Cooperstown, N.Y. looking in. Even Blyleven is left speechless as to why members of The Baseball Writers’ Association of America continue to leave him off their ballots.

“I really have nothing to say. I am actually tired of defending my career numbers whether I should be in or not! Have a great day.”

Blyleven’s response to The Associated Press this week after finding out he received 62.7 percent of the vote is probably the tamest thing I would have come up with.

Baseball is a game where numbers seem to matter the most to get into the coveted Hall of Fame and it’s also a game where you can be overwhelmed by statistics.

A casual look at Blyleven’s numbers shows a pitcher who should have already been inducted. Blyleven won 287 games in 22 major league seasons with teams that weren’t exactly near the top of the standings. He pitched for the Minnesota Twins, Texas Rangers, Pittsburgh Pirates, Cleveland Indians and California Angels.

During his career, he accounted for roughly 18 percent of those teams’ victories. Blyleven was the ace and was forced to contend with the likes of Nolan Ryan, Tom Seaver and Ron Guidry each time pitched.

For many of the baseball writers, the magic number of wins for pitchers to be rubber stamped into the Hall of Fame is 300. Blyleven’s 287 is just short of that mark but he missed nearly 2 1/2 seasons due to injuries or because of the strike-shortened season of 1981.

He started only four games in 1982 before being sidelined with an elbow injury. Blyleven was 31 at the time and was in the prime of his career. The year before, he was 11-7 with a 2.88 ERA for the lowly Indians. Blyleven could have easily won at least 10 games that year.

And on the backside of his career, Blyleven was sidelined again with a rotator cuff injury, shelving him for the entire 1991 season. He was the ripe age of 40 that year, but managed to come back the next year and win eight games for the Angels.

In addition to his win total which should be enough to put him into the Hall of Fame, Blyleven is fifth in career strikeouts with 3,701. When you look at the list of players ahead of him: Ryan, Randy Johnson, Roger Clemens and Steve Carlton, his name seems out of place. But this only proves even more that Blyleven is a remarkable pitcher.

And he is the only retired member of the 3,000 strikeout club not in the Hall of Fame.

Baseball’s Hall of Fame has been looked at as the most exclusive club to join. A player has to receive at least 75 percent of the vote to be enshrined. It is not uncommon for writers to only vote in one player a year.

I have to question how one writer will look at a set of numbers and feel a player is worthy of a vote, while another will see the same statistics and dismiss the player.

As I said earlier, baseball statistics can fill your mind with meaningless numbers like what a certain player hits on a Thursday with 10 mile per hour winds from the west, facing a left-handed pitcher from Indiana.

If numbers were the only factors to judge, then the Pro Football Hall of Fame would be hard pressed to have offensive linemen enshrined because what statistic is tied to linemen?

Blyleven will be on the ballot for the next three years before his name is removed and forwarded to the Veteran’s committee for review.

Hopefully, this time next year Blyleven will not have to respond to questions about why he wasn’t elected, but instead how it feels to be mentioned with the likes of Cy Young, Bob Gibson and Sandy Koufax.