Hmmm… looking at his rankings:
ERA: 100th 
GS: 2nd 
IP: 5th
W: 14th
BB: 1st
SO: 1st
WHIP: 142nd:
AVG: 1st
I dunno, seems like having the most ever strikeouts and the best ever opponent batting average means something.
It gets you in the Hall of Fame which is not too shabby.
2 Likes
batting average means little, where does his OBP rank?
Maddux got guys out w/o a tremendous number of Ks. Not all outs are created equal, but Ks get way too much consideration.
better
Koufax
Clemens
Carlton
Pedro
Maddux
Randy
Palmer
and need to think about actives
Kershaw
Verlander
Scherzer
1 Like
When I wrote this, I did not realize it was Kyle Farnsworth day. Happy for those that celebrate the occasion
I couldn’t find that, but WHIP is going to closely parallel it. I don’t think his HBP was unusually high or low, nor the fielding errors when he was pitching, so I assume he’s ranked between 100-150 for OBP.
14th for wins is pretty good too, although that’s admittedly influenced a lot by run support and bullpen strength… factors beyond the pitcher’s control.
I’m not saying that I think he’s definitely the best living pitcher… just thought he should be part of the conversation. I don’t have a strong opinion.
missed you had WHIP. Yeah, good indicator.
Ryan is a certain HOfer, but i never had him as highly ranked as others.
1 Like
Yeah Ryan was tremendous and deserving of the hall but he never won the Cy young, though he might have deserved it in 87 but voters couldn’t get past the 8-16 record. I think there are something like 7 or 8 living pitchers who have won 3 or more Cy young awards including the 3 active pitchers P mentioned earlier.
Wins mattered a lot until recently - DeGrom?
and for a reliever to win, it usually meant he was record setting or no starter was great.
Ryan had an excellent ERA, & Ks, but Sutcliffe and Scott beat him on WAR (looking at the numbers not sure why, that should look at Wins)
His BB wasn’t even that bad that year.
6-16 is hard to overlook, especially with another guy on the team at 16-13
Actives are going to be held to some different standards in the future. We may not see a 300 game winner again, or at least not for a long time.
1 Like
agreed, but as I can state Koufax is the greatest living Pitcher, I feel we can judge by their prolonged height, rather than just accumulation
Felix Hernadez is when the W stat largely went away as i recall. Pretty sure WAR wasn’t a stat that was readily available in 1987 but if you want to go there Bob Welsh who had a 7.1 WAR lead all pitcher that season and finished 8th. I’m not saying Ryan should have won the 87 cy-young but I think he was the first and possibly still only pitcher to lead the league in ERA and Ks and not win the award and that was a year that with a little better offensive support he easily could have won it. At any rate Bedrosian winning the award was something of a travesty but I guess voters decided no starter was quite dominant enough to deserve the award that year.
1 Like
Seaver - '70 (7th)
Seaver - '71 (2nd)
that was easy
1 Like
Kofax peak from 1962 - 1966 was amazing and he hung it up while still the best pitcher in baseball at the time, but the first half of his career he was league average pitcher at best and he only logged 2,324 MLB innings in his career.
Pedro’s peak from 1997-2003 was every bit as impressive and Kofax as was Maddux’ from 1992-1998 but Pedro went on to throw 500 more innings than Kofax and Maddux more than double at just over 5,000.
Career ERA+
Pedro 154 highest of any retired starter with 2,500+ innings
Maddux 132 but probably suffered from ~1,000 IP of league averageish ball he threw after age 37
Kofax 131 (the same a Justin Verlander who has 1,000 more IP)
For actives it is
Kershaw 157 (2,700)
DeGrom 155 (1,300)
Sale 137 (1,800)
Scherzer 134 (2,800)
Verlander 131 (3,300)
Cole 140 (1,800)
If you allow for steroids, I think Clemons has a case to be made as much as Bonds, but my vote is to not allow either into the discussion. Ditto for A-Rod, Sosa, McGuire, Palmeiro
KG Jr is at least worthy of being in the discussion.
Bench was over-rated. Great player. HOF worthy. Best catcher of his generation, but not all-time great worthy.
Trout and Verlander, though still active, are worthy of consideration. Both are clear HOF worthy as of 2024.
I think Ricky Henderson might be the living leader in career WAR for anyone not accused of being on the juice.
My vote would be Pujols. He was just so dominant as a Cardinal, even though he was just slightly-better-than-average as an Angel for a long time.
Yep. He hung around for a long time.
His ERA+ was 163 with ATL over 11 seasons and 2526 innings. That includes his age 37 year at 108.
I did love the way he put a beat down on Robyn Ventura. He gets an upvote for me just for that!
Rough month for former Giant Hall of Famers first the Say Hey Kid, now the Baby Bull.
RIP Orlando Cepeda
On a side note I had his grand daughter on my summer softball team one year, good kid. Though I never met her grandfather.
2 Likes