Who is the best pitcher of all time?

@XXSpadeMasterXX,

and i have heard as far as the best ever from older gen. that bob gibson was the best i dunno...u got to remember those guys back then pitched on less rest so no one will ever touch the wins record. and i agree that maddux is easily on of the top 10 prolly higher because he didn't have the power means he had to use his mind and finess that much more. i compare him to a modern day Halladay and i compare johnson to a modern day lincecum. only Johnson was a beast in his prime, where as we will see because lincecum is still very young and has all the talent to be THE best ever. Johnson is single handedly the reason why the d backs won the 01 world series. He with the aid of schilling ended the rain of the yanks in this modern era. Clemens had the offense, and johnson had the arm and a much weaker team. and johnson won. if kim didnt blow 2 saves the series was over in 5 games. i didnt see dwights year that was mentioned but i remember johnson in 01 and o2 just flat out dominant. and there was no one even close to him . too bad he got hurt witht the astros or he prolly would have 6 cy's just my take. also nolan pitched for a long time if randy didnt get hurt and basically play just to get to 300 wins and was still randy like we knew him he would have been atleast in the 5000k club and much closer to nolan maybe even higher who knows

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@XXSpadeMasterXX,

I'd still take Walter Johnson over Randy, but the overall nod from me goes to Christy Mathewson.

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@CowDoc,

for modern-day pitchers, i'm going with greg maddux...

Quote:

Maddux is the only pitcher in MLB history to win at least 15 games for 17 straight seasons.
In addition, he holds the record for most Gold Gloves with eighteen. A superb control pitcher,
Maddux won more games during the 1990s than any other pitcher, and is 8th on the all-time
career wins list, with 355. Since the start of the post-1920 live-ball era, only Warren Spahn (363)
recorded more career wins

wiki

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@XXSpadeMasterXX,

XXSpadeMasterXX wrote:

lincecum is still very young and has all the talent to be THE best ever.

He may have the talent, but he's not putting up the numbers. Not only has Lincecum never won 20 games in a season, he has never even led the league in wins -- or in ERA. He's a very good pitcher to have at the top of the rotation, but one of the best ever? Time will tell, but I sincerely doubt it.

XXSpadeMasterXX wrote:

too bad he got hurt witht the astros or he prolly would have 6 cy's just my take. also nolan pitched for a long time if randy didnt get hurt and basically play just to get to 300 wins and was still randy like we knew him he would have been atleast in the 5000k club and much closer to nolan maybe even higher who knows

If.

Dwight Gooden probably had as much or even more raw talent than Randy Johnson, but he pissed it all away. If he hadn't snorted most of his salary up his nose he could have won 6 Cy Young awards too. Heck, if Herb Score hadn't been hit in the face by a line drive, he might have been the greatest pitcher ever. Nobody gives out awards for all the things you could have accomplished.

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@joefromchicago,

to me wins are the most overrated stat in baseball...look at felix last year. no doubt the best in the al. but yet only 13 wins...wins are subject to your team and how many runs they give you in support...as for lincecum not winning 20 games...he hasn't YET. but look that the support they give him in San Fran. last time out 8 in pitched...no runs etc

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Best pitcher of all time . . .

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_vNrV6YLt5xw/TB_eVYPyVxI/AAAAAAAAARM/cV4I_a5gcpo/s1600/beer-pitcher.jpg

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@Setanta,

nice! lol

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@XXSpadeMasterXX,

XXSpadeMasterXX wrote:

to me wins are the most overrated stat in baseball...look at felix last year. no doubt the best in the al. but yet only 13 wins...wins are subject to your team and how many runs they give you in support...as for lincecum not winning 20 games...he hasn't YET. but look that the support they give him in San Fran. last time out 8 in pitched...no runs etc

There's something to be said for not counting wins so highly -- which is a good thing for Lincecum, who, even in this era where it is increasingly difficult for pitchers to get 20 wins, is averaging only around 15 wins a season. Yet the great pitchers managed not only to put up solid ERA and strikeout numbers (as Lincecum has done), but also put up a lot of wins as well. There is, in other words, some sort of correlation there. Granted, a great pitcher can still pitch for a lousy team, and that will affect his win totals, but a great pitcher is supposed to make a lousy team not so lousy. Steve Carlton, for instance, won 27 games for the 1972 Phillies, and they finished with a 59-97 record. In contrast, Lincecum finished with a 16-10 record last year for the Giants, who won 92 games. I'm sure for every game that he lost because he didn't get enough run support, he won just as many because he was playing for a very good team. It all evens out in the end. In short, he had a very good season, but does it rank up there with some of the greats? Not by my reckoning.

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@joefromchicago,

i agree with a lot of what you have posted but explain to me the case of felix hernandez last year only winning 13 games and having a 13-12 record...and I am most assured that a season like steve carlton's will probably NEVER happen again...proof Nolan Ryan. led the league in era and strikouts but never won a cy young and his win loss record wasn't all that impressive...

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Hello? Anyone ever hear of Sandy Koufax? IMHO, Koufax certainly figures somewhere into this discussion mix of best pitchers. His 5 years of total dominance occured during the learly and mid-'60s, a very high-quality era of baseball (before a round of league expansion), before injuries forshortened his career.

Earlier there was a discussion of Walter Johnson. In my mind there was some confusion in the thread perhaps whether there was a reference to Randy Johnson or Walter. However, as for evaluating Walter Johnson, it's very hard to do so accurately as his time overlapped eras from the famous dead-ball era into the 'modern' era.

Also one of the best pitchers of any era it has been said (by baseball experts) to be a black pitcher who never got a chance to pitch more than a few times after he was way past his prime in MLB...Satchel Paige. There are so many MORE pitchers to consider.

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@XXSpadeMasterXX,

XXSpadeMasterXX wrote:

i agree with a lot of what you have posted but explain to me the case of felix hernandez last year only winning 13 games and having a 13-12 record...

That's easy to explain: he played for Seattle. The hard thing to explain is why he won the Cy Young Award with a 13-12 record. I can understand that, in the past, too many voters placed too much emphasis on the W-L record, but then it's also possible to place too much emphasis on ERA, which is the only major category in which Hernandez led the AL. In this respect, Hernandez was helped by playing for Seattle, since the Ms led the league in unearned runs. The Mariners' pitching staff gave up 698 runs, of which 70 were unearned. So about 10% of their run total was unearned. Hernandez, however, gave up 80 runs, of which 17, or 21%, were unearned. Hernandez, in other words, gave up, on average, twice as many unearned runs as his mound colleagues. So either Hernandez was the uniquely tragic victim of Seattle's inept fielding, or else his pitching was contributing to the mess. Without a more in-depth analysis, it would be difficult to say.

Nevertheless, it helps to put his ERA numbers into some perspective. If all those runs had been earned, his ERA would have been 2.89, not 2.27, which would have put him below Dave Price's 2.72 ERA, and Price had a 19-6 record for a team that went into the playoffs. In sum, should Hernandez be penalized for having a mediocre W-L record while playing for a truly terrible team? No more so than Price should be penalized for having eight players on the diamond who could actually catch a ball.

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@Ragman,

Ragman wrote:

Hello? Anyone ever hear of Sandy Koufax? IMHO, Koufax certainly figures somewhere into this discussion mix of best pitchers. His 5 years of total dominance occured during the learly and mid-'60s, a very high-quality era of baseball (before a round of league expansion), before injuries forshortened his career.

I'm not sure about the early and mid-60s being a very high-quality era of baseball, but then I'm a Cubs fan, so my view is somewhat suspect. I am confident, however, that the early to mid-60s was an era of pitcher dominance in the major leagues, so to say that Koufax was a good pitcher in the early 60s is like saying Chuck Klein was a good hitter in 1930 -- a year when everybody was a good hitter. In other words, it doesn't tell us much.

As you point out, Koufax had five really great years (actually six -- 1961-66). But how far ahead of the competition was he? When he had a 2.04 ERA in 1965, for instance, Juan Marichal had a 2.13, and Vern Law(!) had a 2.15. In 1966, his 1.73 ERA wasn't that much different from the 1.98 put up by Gary Peters of the White Sox. Koufax, in short, was racking up some great pitching stats in a pitcher's league. In isolation, those numbers look awesome, but in comparison to his competition, they start to look a little less awe-inspiring.

And besides, if you're looking at peak performance for a short period of time, then Dutch Leonard was better than Koufax. There's a guy who pitched 224 innings in 1914 and had a 0.96 ERA. That's not a misprint -- his ERA was below one.

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@joefromchicago,

yes but he also led the al in innings pitched, 7th in al in ks per nine, 3rd in bb per nine, 6th in hr per nine, 4th in babip, 5th in lob %, 5th in gb %, 21st in hr/fb, 1st in era, 4th in fip, 3rd in xfip, 3rd in war

hers price's stats...15th in inn pitched, 9th in al in ks per nine, 35th in bb per nine, 8th in hr per nine, 7th in babip, 2nd in lob%, 25th in gb%, 9th in hr/fb, 3rd in era, 8th in fip, 16th in xfip, 13th in war...

price has felix beat in 2 categories, and price's 35th in bb/nine with felix pitching 41 more innings did him in...the only thing that even makes it a debate is wins which you and I have both stated they put too much emphasis on wins/losses...so no comparison between the 2...actually looking over the stats justin verlander should have been higher in the mix for the al cy young last year...

hers verlanders stats...4th in wins (price btw was 3rd and felix was 18th so 3 categories) 3rd in innings pitched, 4th in ks per nine, 21st in bb per nine, 4th in hr per nine, 21st in babip, 22 in lob %, 29 in gb%, 2nd in hr/fb, 11th in era (prolly what did him in) 3rd in fip, 6th in xfip, 2nd in war...

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@XXSpadeMasterXX,

also felix was second in Whip ratio, price was 9th, and verlander was 5th...felix had 6 complete games 1 shutout, price had 2 complete 1 shutout, and justin had 4 complete no shutouts... you be the judge. i need to take a break my eyes hurt from starring too much lol...also if you are adjusting era based on unearned runs you would have to do the same for price's stats also which would be felix lower also...because i am sure price had atleast 7 or 8 runs that were unearned and he pitched 41 less innings...

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@XXSpadeMasterXX,

yes i checked price had 8 more runs that wern't earned...it would bring price's era right around 3.02 if i did my math right...

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@joefromchicago,

Hey Guy, you don't know what the hell you are talking about. Gary Peters!! You've got to be kidding me. I'll take Sandy any day of the week. Simply the BEST EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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from the start of 2001 to the end of 2002 this is what Randy Johnson did....in a baseball Hitters park (bank one) and in a steriod era....

pitched 2 full seasons....45-11 record, won 2 Cy young's, he tied the record with 20 k's in a game, he pitched a perfect game, won the world series, and was world series co MVP (though he probably deserved himself alone)...in 2 yrs!....

give some more facts that show more dominance than that....from any pitcher ever!....

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@XXSpadeMasterXX,

What comes to my mind would be Pedro Martinez. Although Pedro Martinez may not have had the longevity or durability of some of baseball’s other pitching greats, there is little doubt that his peak years were some of the best, if not the best, that any pitcher has ever produced

Taking a block of time from 1997-2004 (leaving out 2001..injury year). Yes, he helped win 2004 World Series, too.

"He is an eight-time All-Star, three-time Cy Young Award winner, and 2004 World Series champion. At the time of his 200th win in April 2006, Martínez had the highest winning percentage of any 200-game winner in modern baseball history (he has since slipped .003 behind Whitey Ford."

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@Ragman,

Wow, I didn't know Whitey came back so strong.

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@XXSpadeMasterXX,

XXSpadeMasterXX wrote:

the only thing that even makes it a debate is wins which you and I have both stated they put too much emphasis on wins/losses

Let me be clear: I didn't say that they put too much emphasis on wins/losses, I said that they can put too much emphasis on wins/losses. Wins and losses still matter because ultimately the pitcher's job is to win games, and wins/losses are still the best measure of a pitcher's performance in that respect.

As for my point regarding Felix Hernandez's unearned runs, it was merely an observation that Hernandez's ERA was helped by Seattle's bad defense. It would take a far more sophisticated analysis than I am able to offer to determine how much Hernandez was helped, but it's something to bear in mind.

1 Reply

Who is the best pitcher of all time?

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