Quote:
Originally Posted by Vintageclout
Steroid era? You forgot one major fact that most people neglect....pitchers weren't immune to taking steroids as well (let's start with Clemrvs who rescued his career with PEDs) and good pitching ALWAYS stops good hitting. I can prove that notion by a .300 average or 70% failure rate making a hitter a hall of fame candidate. Bottom line is when a statistical methodology places pitchers like Perry & Blyleven (I'll give you Ryan although he could NEVER measure up to Grove and Seaver...NEVER!) are rated ahead of the likes of Seaver, Grove, Pedro, Matty, etc., it's philosophy has more holes than a block of Swiss cheese!
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actually there aren't many people in the HOF with a 70% failure rate, because walks are important.
and you still don't understand WAR . WAR tells us their total wins above replacement accrued. It does NOT tell us who the best pitcher was when it comes to a career. (tho it may do this in a smaller sample such as 1 season)
if you don't get why Maddux is easily higher than Pedro and the others as far as total WAR. He pitched at high level for 20+ years, so did Perry ,so did Ryan.
examples:
Perry pitched 5350 innings and has 100.1 WAR
Mathewson has 4780 innings and has 90. WAR
that means Perry accumulated 10 more WAR over 570 MORE innings. It doesn't say Perry was the "better" pitcher.
HOWEVER, if you take WAR and analyze how many innings it took, you can get a pretty good idea of their value per inning pitched.
Maddux- 5008.1 innings 116.7 WAR = 0.0233 WAR per inning for their career ( or 23.302 WAR per 1000 innings)
Mathewson - 4780 inn, 90 WAR = 0.018 per inning or 18.82 (per 1000 innings)
Cy Young- 7354 inn, 131.5 WAR = 0.01788 per inn or 17.88 WAR per 1000 inn
Walter Johnson- 5914.2 inn, 117.1 WAR = 0.01979 per inn or 19.79 per 1000 inn
Seaver- 4782 inn, 92.4 WAR = 0.0193 per inn or 19.30 WAR per 1000 inn
Pedro- 2827 inn, 84.5 WAR = 0.02988 per inn, or 29.99 WAR per 1000 inn
NOW, it's well known Pedro had just about the greatest peak of all time, so it comes down to how do you judge pitchers? If it's by peak, then Pedro would be your man, if it's by length of career it's Cy Young, if it's by combination of the two? It's pretty obviously Maddux (unless you ignore Clemens and his double peak roid red flags)
confirmation bias and eye witness accounts don't carry much weight in sports, you need hard data, hand waving it away because it doesn't match your opinions does not improve the level of discourse. evidence does and I presented above that of the above ,oft discussed, top pitchers of all time, Maddux has the best combination of career length and performance.