Best pitcher of all time?

[Senser81]

Pretty surprised nobody brought up this guy:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/s/seaveto01.shtml

2.86 career ERA, 3 Cy Young's (w/two 2nd place finishes), 106 WAR, 98.8% HOF vote highest of all time

I started watching baseball when Seaver was nearing the end of his career in the 1980s. I just remember him as being an average pitcher. Won the WS with the 1969 Mets, but missed out on the Big Red Machine heydey. Did have great 1981 season when the Reds had the best record in the MLB but missed the postseason. I think if Seaver had pitched more in the postseason, he would have been remembered more. Kind of a forgotten guy now.

Was Seaver better than Steve Carlton? Probably.

 

[MVPete]

 

[Sven Draconian]

And again, we have stats that take all of the concerns you have Sven into account. They are era-neutral statistics. It doesn't matter that these guys faced 5'2 Irish dudes from Buffalo, that's accounted for and neutralized and yet still those guys stand out among the best.

I don't think you know what WAR is.

Really the fundamental issue with your question and how you're defending or arguing choices doesn't make sense. If you're asking for most talented pitcher of all time that's a different story. Yes, we get that Walter Johnson faced inferior competition to what Justin Verlander does. Yes, we understand that Kid Nichols had a different mound than Pedro Martinez, but why should we dock everyone who played under different rules? They still existed, they played the game how it was played at that time. It's not fair to strike everyone from 1960 and back because of they had different rules. They played to the rules of the game at the time. They shouldn't be punished in hindsight because of it.

There's a reason neutral-era statistics were created, to properly assess the skills of the players in the early part of baseball. The reason why Lefty Grove rises above the rest of his peers is because, he....well, rose above his peers when he played. You keep bringing up these guys having different rules, while yes, that's true, everyone else that played at the exact same time had those rules and yet still the aforementioned players rose to the top.

Yes, they absolutely should be punished in evaluations for not actually playing major league baseball in the same context it is played today. Honest question, have you ever read anything about early era baseball?

Neutral-era stats are nice as a relative gauge, but you are missing the bigger picture. I don't think there is any dispute that modern players are playing against the best competition possible. There isn't a bevy of major leagues who are not allowed in the game and toiling away in an independent league somewhere.

I don't understand what is hard to understand about that concept. Watch a baseball game, notice how many blacks/latinos/asians are playing. Replace them with white guys from the minors, or guys who flamed out a few years ago.

Trout posted a 10.9 WAR last year. #2, 4, 5, 6 would not have been allowed to play.This would would both increase Trouts numbers (inferior pitching and fielding allow him to be more productive himself) and his relative value (replacing good players with inferior players would increase the gap between great players like trout, and the "average" player).

The same holds true for Verlander. He posted a 7.8 WAR. #2 and #5 would not have been allowed to play. Since Verlander would get to face shittier hitters, he strikeouts more and walks fewer. His relative value goes up as well, since the gap between him and the #2 pitcher grows (since he can't play, #3 is now the the 2nd best pitcher).

Who cares? You're either the best, or you aren't. Its not like Walter Johnson finished 8th out of 8 pitchers. Are you infering that Johnson wouldn't have won 12 K titles if he played in a 14 team league as opposed to an 8 team league? Are you also inferring that in some of those years Johnson would have been beaten out of the title by the 5th starter on the Philadelphia Athletics, but teams only had 4-man rotations? .

Are you fucking kidding with this argument? Yes, leading a 14/15/16 team league in a category is much more impressive than leading an 8 team league. Yes, beating 60 "starting" pitchers is more impressive than beating 32. For example, if Walter Johnson had pitched in a 16 team league (all the majors) he does not win 12 strikeout titles, he wins 8 and his longest streak is 3 straight.

 

[Sven Draconian]

Sven seems to think that with league expansion that somehow magically the level of competition did not get diluted due to hundreds of additional roster spots needing to be filled. Did everyone somehow get exponentially better at baseball simply because there were more spots available?

I already did the math earlier. Read it. Allowing blacks/lations/asians into the game expanded the pool of talent much larger than expansion diluted it.

 

[Obst]

I heard Bob Feller threw 107 MPH once

 

[Sven Draconian]

I heard Bob Feller threw 107 MPH once

I heard Walter Johnson threw atleast 115.

 

[Glenbino]

I heard Josh Gibson hit over 100 HRs in a single season... TWICE!

 

[ram29jackson]

Note that I did not ask greatest, so GTFO with anybody who played before WWII. That era was not competitive enough to produce the "best of all time," even if they had greater levels of dominance.

you are a fucking idiot. That was the most competitive era-period. There were plenty of pitchers in the 60s and 70s also far superior to the ones you mention. Nolan Ryan for one.

Best/greatest..its the same thing. Cut it out with your retarded wannabe pseudo intellectual silliness. el oh el.

again, there is no best/greatest of all time. Theres just a couple who are better then the rest every 10 years and the cycle keeps spinning

 

[Sven Draconian]

you are a fucking idiot. That was the most competitive era-period. There were plenty of pitchers in the 60s and 70s also far superior to the ones you mention. Nolan Ryan for one.

Best/greatest..its the same thing. Cut it out with your retarded wannabe pseudo intellectual silliness. el oh el.

again, there is no best/greatest of all time. Theres just a couple who are better then the rest every 10 years and the cycle keeps spinning

See guys, now you have Rams on your side. Time for you to re-evaluate.

 

[shag773]

I heard Bob Feller threw 107 MPH once

I heard Walter Johnson threw atleast 115.

I heard Sid Finch could throw 168 mph.

 

[manchild24]

what about Danny Almonte

 

[FedEx227]

Yes, they absolutely should be punished in evaluations for not actually playing major league baseball in the same context it is played today. Honest question, have you ever read anything about early era baseball?

Neutral-era stats are nice as a relative gauge, but you are missing the bigger picture. I don't think there is any dispute that modern players are playing against the best competition possible. There isn't a bevy of major leagues who are not allowed in the game and toiling away in an independent league somewhere.

I don't understand what is hard to understand about that concept. Watch a baseball game, notice how many blacks/latinos/asians are playing. Replace them with white guys from the minors, or guys who flamed out a few years ago.

Trout posted a 10.9 WAR last year. #2, 4, 5, 6 would not have been allowed to play.This would would both increase Trouts numbers (inferior pitching and fielding allow him to be more productive himself) and his relative value (replacing good players with inferior players would increase the gap between great players like trout, and the "average" player).

The same holds true for Verlander. He posted a 7.8 WAR. #2 and #5 would not have been allowed to play. Since Verlander would get to face shittier hitters, he strikeouts more and walks fewer. His relative value goes up as well, since the gap between him and the #2 pitcher grows (since he can't play, #3 is now the the 2nd best pitcher).

First off, yes, I've read/watched/written tons about early era baseball. Thanks for asking though.

Again, you aren't understanding what neutral-era statistics do, so whatever. It's worthless at this point apparently. You're bringing up specific examples of specific players but forgetting AGAIN that we have statistics that take all of that into account and makes 1920 statistically neutral to 2013. Johnson's huge K gap is regulated towards league average at the time. So it stands to reason that if Walter Johnson benefitted from not having to face blacks, well so did every single one of his peers. So what do we do, we regulate Johnson's insane numbers and put them into the context of his era. We also do this for Verlander's and Trout and any other of the examples you brought up.

Yes. Walter Johnson was no good because he didn't face blacks. All he did was face the league he was given at the time and was so ridiculously dominant that even when we have statistics to make the era statistically similar to today's era that he still stands out among everyone else, but no totally.

 

[Senser81]

Are you fucking kidding with this argument? Yes, leading a 14/15/16 team league in a category is much more impressive than leading an 8 team league. Yes, beating 60 "starting" pitchers is more impressive than beating 32. For example, if Walter Johnson had pitched in a 16 team league (all the majors) he does not win 12 strikeout titles, he wins 8 and his longest streak is 3 straight.

You actually said nothing with this. You either were the best pitcher in baseball or you weren't. I don't see how its "much more impressive" to lead a 14-team league in Ks compared to an 8-team league, if each league has the best players in baseball. Your example is completely make-believe because the talent was divided up among the AL and the NL. The issue is where the talent is located, not in the number of teams. Simply adding more expansion teams to the 1916 American League wouldn't have really changed Johnson's achievement...in fact, he probably would have had more strikeouts facing worse batters.

The same holds true in your "rotation" theory, which you obviously ignored my response to. Teams had 4-man rotations, yet those 4 pitchers were their best. It wasn't as if those rotations were chosen by chance, so if you changed to 5-man rotations you'd have a whole new list of pitching leaders.

 

[Pitty]

Coal Hammel, all-time #1 Ace.

 

[Villain]

[youtube]9u1gg1FCaXI[/youtube]

:homer:

 

[dell71]

Sven, I think you're biggest issue is that you're defining greatest and best as the same exact thing without realizing it then compounding the error by saying pre-WWII players simply can't be the best.

Anyhoo, for post-WWII pitchers I'm going with Pedro Martinez.

 

[Sven Draconian]

Sven, I think you're biggest issue is that you're defining greatest and best as the same exact thing without realizing it then compounding the error by saying pre-WWII players simply can't be the best.

Anyhoo, for post-WWII pitchers I'm going with Pedro Martinez.

Walter Johnson is, without question to me, the greatest pitcher of all-time. He absolutely dominated. That is greatness, his level of achievement was outstanding relative to his peers.

His competition wasn't. That is part of the reason he is the greatest of all time. Along with the diluted talent pool of that era, you have the basic realities of how we have substantially improved athletically since that era. We're bigger, stronger and faster now then we used to be, and that is a trend that has been consistent since we've had any way reliable means to measure it. We lift more weights, we run faster over any distance interval, we jump higher, we throw things farther. We have also have highly trained athletic trainers to rehab and prehab injuries and athletes train year round, they aren't selling cars in the off-season to supplement their salaries.

If you put him in a time machine and stood him side by side to Justin Verlander I don't think it would be a competition.

We had this debate in the chatbox the other night over if Bob Feller threw 105 mph. Bob Feller was 6 feet fall and 170 pounds. Walter Johnson was 6'1 and 200 pounds.

Go ahead and look up the hardest throwers in baseball right now. Here's a shitty bleacher report list that's a couple of years ago. http://bleacherreport.com/articles/...e-25-hardest-throwers-in-the-majors-right-now .

Go through the top 10 or so and look up their height and weight. By and large we are talking about guys who are 6'3 + and around 220 pounds. You want to add in some guys like Joel Zumaya and Roger Clemens you get the same trend. Are there some exceptions? Sure, but they're usually relievers and they often throw their arms out. You want to credit Nolan Ryan (still 6'2, but only listed at 170) as a freak... ok.

This might be a shock, but being taller makes it easier to throw hard, the same way that being tall helps you generate more power when you swing. That observation is also consistent with data posted at fan graphs which shows a steady rise in average velocity every year for the past dozen years or so. It's also consistent with every other athletic event we have reliable recordings for.

Baseball is more then velocity. Pedro is my choice and he didn't throw as hard as Randy Johnson. Because pitching is more than just velocity the best pitcher could be from the 60s or 70s, unlike football in which I don't many players from anywhere before the 90s would crack a modern starting lineup. I think in the recent past the athletic gap is still small enough that those players are relevant, and they also had to play against a full talent pool (black/latin players).

 

[Sven Draconian]

You actually said nothing with this. You either were the best pitcher in baseball or you weren't. I don't see how its "much more impressive" to lead a 14-team league in Ks compared to an 8-team league, if each league has the best players in baseball. Your example is completely make-believe because the talent was divided up among the AL and the NL. The issue is where the talent is located, not in the number of teams. Simply adding more expansion teams to the 1916 American League wouldn't have really changed Johnson's achievement...in fact, he probably would have had more strikeouts facing worse batters.

The same holds true in your "rotation" theory, which you obviously ignored my response to. Teams had 4-man rotations, yet those 4 pitchers were their best. It wasn't as if those rotations were chosen by chance, so if you changed to 5-man rotations you'd have a whole new list of pitching leaders.

Facing a 14 team league that includes black, latin and asian players pulled from a baseball playing population that is 5 times as dense as the 1930s is significantly more impressive. No, simply adding teams in the 1930s would not have been a better achievement. Adding teams because the population has grown and the talent pool has expanded is.

Additionally, the 5 man rotation creates fewer innings for you to pitch. Pitching 200 innings creates more variability than pitching 330. When combined with the fact that a #5 pitcher today is more talented than a #4 pitcher in 1930, it is more impressive to "beat" them.

 

[Sven Draconian]

First off, yes, I've read/watched/written tons about early era baseball. Thanks for asking though.

Again, you aren't understanding what neutral-era statistics do, so whatever. It's worthless at this point apparently. You're bringing up specific examples of specific players but forgetting AGAIN that we have statistics that take all of that into account and makes 1920 statistically neutral to 2013. Johnson's huge K gap is regulated towards league average at the time. So it stands to reason that if Walter Johnson benefitted from not having to face blacks, well so did every single one of his peers. So what do we do, we regulate Johnson's insane numbers and put them into the context of his era. We also do this for Verlander's and Trout and any other of the examples you brought up.

Yes. Walter Johnson was no good because he didn't face blacks. All he did was face the league he was given at the time and was so ridiculously dominant that even when we have statistics to make the era statistically similar to today's era that he still stands out among everyone else, but no totally.

There is no statistics that can make 1920 to 2013 neutral. We have stats that can neutralize the run scoring enviorment (OPS+, ERA+). That doesn't make them era neutral. You can put Miguel Cabrera in AAA, watch him put up an OPS+ of 300, that doesn't make that a neutral stat. It makes it a normalized stat. We can attempt to quantify the differences in talent pools, but that is wishy washy at best. If we could accurate neutralize talent differences, we would be able to project the transition from Japan to the MLB better than we can, and we would be able to project the transition from AA --> AAA --> MLB better than we can.

While we can normalize the difference in production from an era to compare players, we can not normalize the fact that Walter Johnson didn't face the best players in baseball at the time. T

 

[dell71]

Walter Johnson is, without question to me, the greatest pitcher of all-time. He absolutely dominated. That is greatness, his level of achievement was outstanding relative to his peers.

His competition wasn't. That is part of the reason he is the greatest of all time. Along with the diluted talent pool of that era, you have the basic realities of how we have substantially improved athletically since that era. We're bigger, stronger and faster now then we used to be, and that is a trend that has been consistent since we've had any way reliable means to measure it. We lift more weights, we run faster over any distance interval, we jump higher, we throw things farther. We have also have highly trained athletic trainers to rehab and prehab injuries and athletes train year round, they aren't selling cars in the off-season to supplement their salaries.

If you put him in a time machine and stood him side by side to Justin Verlander I don't think it would be a competition.

We had this debate in the chatbox the other night over if Bob Feller threw 105 mph. Bob Feller was 6 feet fall and 170 pounds. Walter Johnson was 6'1 and 200 pounds.

Go ahead and look up the hardest throwers in baseball right now. Here's a shitty bleacher report list that's a couple of years ago. http://bleacherreport.com/articles/...e-25-hardest-throwers-in-the-majors-right-now .

Go through the top 10 or so and look up their height and weight. By and large we are talking about guys who are 6'3 + and around 220 pounds. You want to add in some guys like Joel Zumaya and Roger Clemens you get the same trend. Are there some exceptions? Sure, but they're usually relievers and they often throw their arms out. You want to credit Nolan Ryan (still 6'2, but only listed at 170) as a freak... ok.

This might be a shock, but being taller makes it easier to throw hard, the same way that being tall helps you generate more power when you swing. That observation is also consistent with data posted at fan graphs which shows a steady rise in average velocity every year for the past dozen years or so. It's also consistent with every other athletic event we have reliable recordings for.

Baseball is more then velocity. Pedro is my choice and he didn't throw as hard as Randy Johnson. Because pitching is more than just velocity the best pitcher could be from the 60s or 70s, unlike football in which I don't many players from anywhere before the 90s would crack a modern starting lineup. I think in the recent past the athletic gap is still small enough that those players are relevant, and they also had to play against a full talent pool (black/latin players).

While much of this is true, or at least makes sense, it has nothing to do what I was talking about. My point is that you say you're differentiating between "greatest" and "best" but you're really not. When you start comparing guys' career achievements side by side to see who's the "best" (i.e. post-WWII), you're doing the exact same thing as people who are trying to figure out who the "greatest" is. If you mean the most talented and/or physically gifted pitcher, then yes it will very likely be someone pitching within the last 2 decades. When you bring in their career records, ERA, ERA+, top 10s, etc you're merely comparing them to their peers which is what people do to discern "greatest." I think that's where the disconnect is.

And you're not being entirely truthful about who was excluded from MLB in those days. There were a number of Latin players, and the occasional Native American. Granted, almost all of them were light-skinned enough to not upset the apple cart, but they were there.