Quote:
Originally Posted by jacksons
It’s a fun debate for sure. I would be shocked though if deadball hurlers topped 100mph, and I don’t think they even needed to. 95 was fast enough against those bats of the time. Johnson’s delivery and arm slot may have helped his velocity but his locked left leg on plant probably didn’t. Either way he was likely the fastest of his era.
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It is fun to discuss, for sure, and especially for me. Walter held the strikeout record for 63 years, through so many great pitchers, and as I said, he didn't have an outpitch. This against "Punch and Judy"-type hitters for most of his career, only a few years in the free-swinging home run era ushered in by the Babe. If you apply the percentage of batter K's today to his time, he ends up with something like 7,000. Again, no curve, no slider, no forkball, not much of a changeup. Fastballs, just fastballs, one after the other. They all said you knew what was coming and you knew where it was going to be because his control was so good, and you still couldn't hit it. Imagine if he had been with the Red Sox, Athletics, or any of a number of other good teams of his time instead of the lowly Senators. The mind boggles.