Quote:
Originally Posted by Snowman
I think Grove was probably better than Spahn. But I can't say that with confidence without spending a significant amount of time making adjustments to control for the level of skill of the league in general during their respective eras.
But even leaving league adjustments aside, pretending that the league was every bit as strong when Grove was pitching (which it most certainly was not), Koufax still outperformed Grove's numbers across the board in the postseason, and it's not close. The only statistic that Grove was better at was BB/9, but Grove also had a larger strike zone to work with than Koufax did (top of the shoulders to bottom of the knees vs armit to top of the knees). Regardless, Koufax put significantly fewer batters on base, was scored on half as much, and struck out batters almost twice as often. What's there to compare? Koufax was significantly better than Grove in the postseason (and Grove was great).
Serious question. I don't know the answer, but was there any pitcher ever, right or left-handed, who was better in the postseason than Koufax with at least 50+ IP?
Either way, postseason performance isn't all that interesting to me. The sample sizes are just too small for it to be as meaningful as most people want it to be.
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If I'm reading a more recent post by member "Snowman" correctly, during 3 of Koufax' 4 WS years, he had the exact same strike zone as Grove.
But, if you use the "statistics in a vacuum" approach, which I was trying
not to do in my original post, you are correct: Koufax has better stats.