A simple one vote poll and feel free to explain your vote or argue over others.
I used WAR, Wins & Winning Pct in this list of 20.
A simple one vote poll and feel free to explain your vote or argue over others.
I used WAR, Wins & Winning Pct in this list of 20.
Uh, Koufax?
Oh shit. Well he didn’t qual via any of the 3 criteria I used. Which of course means my criteria kind of sucks I guess.
Or that Koufax wasn’t one of the top 20 pitchers of all time.
So why Clemens on this list and no Bonds on the LF list?
Vote for Pedro.
I think I’d have to put Clemens second despite the cheating.
I wouldn’t have used wins at all in determining pitching effectiveness, since so much of wins is about whether or not your offense scores runs, too (I saw Randy Johnson give up one run in four different complete games (I think it was four games in a row that he did this, but it’s years ago now and the memory is hazy) for the Diamondbacks and STILL lose all of them).
I’d have used criteria more along the lines of ERA, BF/G, WHIP, and general dominance over the course of the career.
Because if Bob Feller isn’t on a list that’s supposed to be about the 20 greatest pitchers, IMHO, something’s wrong with the list.
Apologies for the snark; didn’t see that you were pulling the lists from a previous thread.
Wow, 4 votes for Pedro? I actually thought about it, but his era of dominance just wasn’t sustained for long enough. He certainly had a span of about 5 seasons that you could put up against anyone that ever pitched.
To me, I can only vote on what I’ve seen with my own eyes when it comes to pitchers and I think its Greg Maddux for his ridiculous control, pinpoint accuracy and variety of pitches. Plus the guy could hit.
I wanted so bad to vote for Randy Johnson. 6 foot 10 lefty, mullet-equipped 100mph pitchers are indeed fearsome.
I voted for Pedro because during the height of his run (1997-2002) he was the best pitcher in baseball history. He was that good. While other league leaders were putting up ERAs in the upper 3s, Pedro was posting 1.8, 2.0 numbers. His 2001 ERA was almost one third of the league average. One third!
Of course, he also had absurd K/9, BB/9 and K/BB ratios.
I chose to vote based on peak rather than longevity; if forced to choose the latter, I would probably go with Johnson.
Voted for Gibson, in the absence of Koufax. Maybe it’s just well enough established he was the best, and this is the poll for second place?
Koufax’s best five seasons (in ERA+, or ERA relative to his league) are 190, 188, 160, 159, 142.
Walter Johnson’s fifth- through ninth-best seasons are 191, 183, 173, 164, 149. He had four other seasons that were better than that.
Exactly. And he did it at the height of the steroid era.
Walter Johnson, who managed to win over 400 games playing most of his career with a terrible team (and at a time where wins meant something, since the pitcher usually pitched a complete game). By all measurements, he dominated.
Much as I respect Koufax, he was only a great pitcher for about six years; Johnson was one for two decades.
I respectfully disagree. He was not.
Pedro had amazing ERAs relative to his league but was doing so pitching 180 to 240 innings a season. He always missed some starts to injury and rarely worked deep into games.
Here are his WAR for his 1997-2003 years:
1997: 8.2
1998: 6.6
1999: 8.4
2000: 10.1
2001: 4.6
2002: 5.7
2003: 7.4
That’s a hell of a run but other pitchers have had similar runs. Tom Seaver was every bit as good; his first seven years in the majors are just a tick better, in fact. Roger Clemens put up astounding numbers as well. Bob Gibson’s best 7-year run matches Pedro’s. (Yes, even when accounting for the difference in context.) And that’s just restricting us to a 6- or 7-year interval; if you look for all peak years whether consecutive or not many other pitchers have similar peaks. Like it or not, how many innings you pitch matters, or else the most valuable pitcher of all time would be Mo Rivera and it wouldn’t be a close call.
And for a single season I believe Steve Carlton’s 1972 is the post-war record.
My gut says to vote for Koufax, but that’s honestly based on truthiness, not analysis. Koufax comes off as a demigod to his fans because they never saw his decline. Had Koufax’s career followed a more normal progression, it is unlikely that so many shrines would be built to the man.
Very good points about Pedro above. It is difficult to rate so many pitchers over time because their role has changed so dramatically. To use Koufax as an example, Walter Alston would never have dreamed of pulling him in the late innings as a matter of course. To call a guy a “seven-inning pitcher” before 1980 was essentially a way of telling him he’d better look for another job.
Satchel Paige may have been the greatest of all time, but skeptical Negro League afficianados will admit that he was riding on reputation for a long time. In a typical Monarchs exhibition from the mid-30s on, Satchel would start to get the gate, go three innings, then hand the ball over to Hilton Smith or somebody. He was a great pitcher into his forties, but perhaps not as great as the legend.
I’m going with Walter Johnson. As Tom indicates, the man was a damn monster.
Yep.
Here’s an honorable mention for Hub Pruett:
Anyone who can give the Babe fits deserves a mention.
Gosh, Pedro was ridiculous in his time. Tied with Christy Mathewson Best career WHIP among pitchers with over 70 WAR (1.054) since 1901. (Go back before then, and Cy Young starts to make an appearance. He’s not in the list of superlatives I’m about to rattle off, because much of his career is before the 1901 cutoff that BR uses. Career 1.130 WHIP, 138 ERA+, 146(!) WAR.)
Back to Pedro, best career ERA+ among the same pool (154). He just didn’t do it as good for as long as Johnson or Clemens. I feel like Lefty Grove should be in the conversation too, even despite his poor (for these guys) WHIP of nearly 1.3.
I’ll go with Walter Johnson, for being as high as he is on so many of the metrics we use to evaluate pitchers. 127.7 WAR (only behind Clemens’s 128.4), 147 ERA+ (third, behind Grove’s 148 and Pedro), 1.061 WHIP (third, behind Mathewson and Pedro).
Koufax, FWIW: 54.5 WAR, 131 ERA+, 1.106 WHIP. I don’t know how you begin to compare Young’s numbers to even the post WW1 era, never mind the present day, but his years in Boston (1901-1908, age 34-41) had an ERA+ of 147.
What the heck is Nolan Ryan doing on this poll? (Yeah, I know, a lot of wins, and a high WAR because he pitched forever. That’s worth something, but he’s not even close to the conversation for best Starting Pitcher of all time.
Lefty Grove’s not getting enough respect - I think of him and Walter Johnson and 1A and 1B, but I voted for Grove since I knew he’d get shorted.