Editing Dave Stieb (section)

== Hall of Fame consideration ==
Stieb became eligible for the National Baseball Hall of Fame in {{bhofy|2004}}, but received only seven votes (1.4%) and fell off the ballot in his first year.<ref name=":1" /> He was omitted from the [[Veterans Committee|Modern Baseball]] ballots in {{bhofy|2018}} and {{bhofy|2020}} and the Contemporary Baseball ballot in {{bhofy|2023}}.

Since falling off the ballot, Stieb's candidacy has attracted renewed interest.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Stoeten |first1=Andrew |title=How Dave Stieb was robbed of the 1982 AL Cy Young award, and what it's still costing him today |url=https://theathletic.com/1317127/2019/11/07/how-dave-stieb-was-robbed-of-the-1982-al-cy-young-award-and-what-its-still-costing-him-today/ |agency=The Athletic |date=Nov 7, 2019}}</ref><ref name="g123">{{cite web | last=Matheson | first=Keegan | title=Blue Jays' best players not in the Hall of Fame | website=MLB.com | date=2022-01-30 | url=https://www.mlb.com/news/blue-jays-best-players-not-in-the-hall-of-fame | access-date=2025-01-01}}</ref> Part of the reason has been the emergence of advanced [[sabermetrics]]; among starting pitchers in the 1980s, Stieb leads the decade in [[wins above replacement]] (WAR) and [[adjusted ERA+]].<ref>{{cite web |title=Jack Morris, Dave Stieb and Most Wins/WAR of the 1980s |url=https://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2010/8/27/1653657/jack-morris-dave-stieb-and-most |publisher=SB Nation |date=Aug 27, 2010}}</ref><ref name="historians" /> Writing for ''[[The Athletic]]'' in 2020, [[Joe Posnanski]] listed Stieb as one of the 100 best players not in the Hall of Fame. Posnanski called Stieb "a master at being underrated and underappreciated," noting that Stieb has a higher [[Jaffe Wins Above Replacement Score|JAWS]] score (measuring a player's merit for induction into the Hall) than [[Dennis Eckersley]], who was also on his first ballot in 2004 and inducted with 414 votes.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Joe |first1=Posnanski |title=The Outsiders: The best baseball players not in the Hall of Fame, 40-31 |url=https://theathletic.com/2250196/2020/12/10/the-outsiders-the-best-baseball-players-not-in-the-hall-of-fame-40-31/ |website=The Athletic |access-date=19 May 2023 |date=Dec 10, 2020}}</ref> Jay Jaffe of [[Baseball Prospectus]] (the creator of JAWS) wrote that Stieb, along with [[Orel Hershiser]], was the best pitcher from "[a] very underrepresented era of pitchers" in the Hall of Fame, adding that his career "[fits] well within the range of many Hall of Fame starters whose places in Cooperstown don’t keep us lying awake at night."<ref>{{cite web |last1=Jaffe |first1=Jay |url=https://blogs.fangraphs.com/cooperstown-notebook-born-in-the-fifties/ |date=March 3, 2022 |title=Cooperstown Notebook: Born in the Fifties |website=Fangraphs}}</ref>

In their ''Captain Ahab'' documentary series, Alex Rubenstein and [[Jon Bois]] suggested that Stieb's brief comeback in 1998 hurt his candidacy; by "restarting the clock" on the five-year retirement period necessary before consideration, Rubenstein and Bois argued, Stieb guaranteed that the [[Baseball Writers' Association of America|BBWAA]] members voting in 2004 would barely remember his dominant seasons of the early 1980s.<ref name="Ahab" />

In 2017, Stieb told ''The Sporting News'' that, based on the traditional metric of wins-and-losses, he knew that he didn't belong in the Hall of Fame. However, he added that he felt he did not deserve to be "just wiped off the map" after one year on the ballot. "It's like an insult," he said. "What it told me was in [the voters'] minds, I didn't even do anything worth recognizing."<ref>{{cite news |last1=Womack |first1=Graham |title=Dave Stieb on Hall of Fame: 'I surely did not deserve to be just wiped off the map' |url=https://www.sportingnews.com/us/mlb/news/dave-stieb-stats-hall-of-fame-case-interview-toronto-blue-jays-jmlb/15lhsyein7hj116xw137h58urx |access-date=19 May 2023 |agency=The Sporting News |date=Feb 21, 2017}}</ref>