I'm sorry, is Grove "great" or "probably wouldn't even make a major league roster today"? Why do you discount his era?

I once had a guy that worked for me. After writing a conference paper but before turning it in for publication, he said "There is no one in the organization that is qualified to review my work." Strange thing is, no one in the organization would work with him. He had burned all the bridges and left scorched earth in his path. I'm getting that same feeling here.

Boys, this was a simple question from the OP. If there was a single definitive answer, then there would be no debate. But we each define 'best' by our own standards; some may regard longevity and consistency as key factors, others may regard a five or eight or ten year peak as the key metric. Or still others may revere strikeouts as king, or wins, or WAR or ERA+ or whatever you want. But I will wager this - If you asked 25 major league managers and GMs who they would choose for their top left handed pitcher for their expansion team, there will definitely be more than one answer. That, is what is great about baseball - the thread that goes from Kershaw through Johnson through Koufax through Spahn and to Grove. We can have these discussions, debates even, and everyone gets their say.

Now, who is the 'best' looking actress in Hollywood? Remember, there is only one right answer. ;)

Love the 62 Highlights of Ford.

He's not my pick for number 1, but he has to be high up there. I picked up this "card" for a whopping $5 shipped a couple days ago on eBay. Hard to beat the eye appeal of the image and 363 career wins for the cost of a fast food burger.

Elizabeth Hurley!
See, that one was easy!!

Are you talking about just her peak, or her career?

Not so fast. Elvira had a better WHiP.

To be fair, Kershaw had already had more great seasons than Koufax did by five years ago.

I think he falls short of being the greatest ever, at this point in time. I don't think that Koufax is what is keeping him back from that title at all.

Very nice! Those Auravision records have some unbelievable images. Have always marveled at how the colors just seem to jump out at you, and the clarity is just truly amazing. And the best part, as you noted, you can still get them for relatively next to nothing.

Have always felt they are way underappreciated, and get virtually no love.

The first one that says yes!!!!!!!!!!!!

Couldn't even keep your promise, could you? Post #740 you said you were done here, but it is only Post #747 and you're already back. Oh joy! So you lied about that. Not surprising, goes well with also being a hypocrite.

And besides not answering people's questions, belittling other's knowledge and opinions, completely ignoring common sense and logic in making arguments that are based on completely out of context situations, with this latest post you've now stooped to unwarranted insults.......well done!!!

I'm beginning to understand how you could be asked to leave another forum like Blowout...urrr, I'm sorry, Blowhard as you call it. Additionally, makes me wonder if the people over on that forum would consider your comments as a case of the pot calling the kettle black.

And no need to respond, would be happy to see you go back to keeping your promise.

Yeah and you don’t sound too bright either. The other factor here is PEDs. And did you notice the 400 meter hurdle record in the Olympics? Track surfaces have changed over time with technology. Stick to arguing about baseball. You obviously know nothing about track and field. And using the term “proof” in subjective arguments is proof of your own lack of intelligence.

How many Olympic records from 1910, or even 1950, still stand?

You’re missing the point. There’s a difference between fastest and best. The best argument for El Guerrouj, who was indisputably great btw, is that globalization has made it possible for guys from Africa and elsewhere to compete on an international stage and there might have been an El Guerrouj from Bannister’s era who never had the opportunity to compete. Guys in D1 colleges can run a sub 4 minute mile now. Even the occasionally high schooler goes sub 4. It doesn’t make them greater than Roger Bannister in the annals of track and field history. And there’s little doubt Bannister would have run significantly faster on modern tracks with modern equipment and modern training techniques.

Take the whole Nicklaus vs Tiger argument. Jack won more majors but Tiger played in a more competitive era. He won the Masters by 12 and the US Open by 15. I think Tiger was greater but there’s no definitive proof of this.

Bannister revolutionized middle distance training and was the best man during his time.

You make some good points and the same can be said of baseball, when you look at the color barrier holding truly great players out of the Majors during a guy like Grove's career. Now we have players participating from all races and many countries. I'm not saying there weren't great players in the past; in this discussion about left handed pitchers, my vote goes to Grove first, Spahn second. Both were done over 55 years ago.

When you compare golfers, can't you just compare their scores from tournaments played on the same courses?

My point was that athletes today are generally stronger and faster than in the past, with better training and diet. If track shoes make a big difference, how about weight lifting? I'm not familiar with it so I'm asking, what were the top lifters hoisting in 1910 vs. 1950 vs. now? I wouldn't think equipment would be much of an issue there.

Yes I agree athletes are stronger and faster than they used to be. It is true in golf as well, due to tech improvements in golf equipment and golf balls. So you can’t compare scores although it’s hard to dispute Tiger’s 97 Masters was the greatest performance of all time on that golf course. Because he won by 12 shots.

I think the most objective way is to compare relative dominance in one’s era but as you noted it doesn’t account for greater inclusion of races and nationalities, not to mention population growth. Based on that I suppose you can argue the best athletes today are more elite than the best athletes of yesteryear. Which is why best ever debates are pointless nonetheless reasonably entertaining ways of killing time.

Right. Plus they don't begin to account for intangibles - impossible to quantify skills. Like what Ty Cobb's daring base running and general intimidation did to distract and disrupt opponents. Or what effect Lou Gehrig waiting in the on deck circle had on the pitches hurlers were compelled to serve Ruth (when they would've preferred to just pitch around him.)

When people cannot agree on the definition of "greatest," they can't possibly agree on who deserves to hold that title.

This is such a big part of the game, and yet you so rarely see it mentioned.

Mays and McCovey too. I'd guess that if they'd been reversed in the lineup for all those years with the Giants, it would've been McCovey who hit around 660 HR and Mays in the career 500s instead

Mays averaged 37 HR a year before McCovey showed up. Not saying it didn't have an effect but maybe not quite as big as you think. better case might be with Eddie Matthews and Hank Aaron who overlapped for almost all of the early and prime part of their careers.

Yes but Mays had slowed down hitting them for five years straight (before McCovey got there and started to become established). Had 163 homers from 1956 to 1960. Then he hit 226 from '61 to '65.

So while my numbers before may have been exaggerated a little, I doubt it's by much!

I never thought about the Mathews example that much. Poor guy is just forgotten sometimes. And he sure shouldn't be

Re globalization: Abebe Bikila. 1960, I think? Kip Keino by the mid 60s. It's not new.

It has proliferated at a considerably slower pace than you are asserting with this comment. Up until 1988, an African had never won the Boston Marathon. Competition has increased dramatically since the time of Roger Bannister, which was my point. It has also increased dramatically since the 1960s.

You're neglecting the historical cause and effect with Mr. Mays. When the Giants moved to Frisco, everyone thought Willie would hit 50 homers a year. But the ballpark was situated in such a windy area, as in the wind daily blew in with gale force. Say Hey's power crumbled against the "anvil wind". His meager dinger totals upset the Frisco boo-birds, and they directed their fury on Willie with a vengeance. Say Hey was in a bad way; he couldn't take it.

Finally, he whined to the owner, Horace Stoneham, to move the fences in substantially to try to blunt the wind, and allow him to hit more home runs at home. Stonehom acquiesced the slugger's demands, and Willie finally reached 40 dingers in 1961, and did so essentially thereafter.

However, he wasn't a complete enough player to get the perennial Giant bridesmaids into the fall classic, save for '62, when the Giants played a humdinger of a Series against the Yanks, but fell short. Willie? No homers, one measly RBI, and a meager .250 batting average. He had his chance to prove something major to himself, his reputation, and his team----but failed miserably. --- Brian Powell

You could say the same thing regarding Ted Williams and the 1946 Series.

Ted, by the way, if he's had a Gehrig or McCovey behind him, might've converted some of those walks he got into hits, and who knows how many points higher his average might've been, or how many more home runs he would've hit.

Quite so, Mark. However, those Cardinals put that severe, audacious shift on Teddy during the Series. It seemed to tie him up in knots. If Ted had more of the power hitters the Giants had in those hardball 60s, he might have broken Babe's record!

Back to Willie on that line---for a time he shared the lineup with Orlando Cepeda, Willie McCovey, Jim Ray Hart, Felipe Alou, Tom Haller, and Ed Bailey---all capable of hitting 15+ homers a year, making it tough to pitch around Willie. But it wasn't enough, and Willie languished in great stats but no rings. But so what? My favorite player, Ernie Banks, never played in the Series, but that never stopped me from adoring him. Willie Mays fans have a LOT to be thankful for---he could and did do it all, and with gusto! That tiny video of him soaring for a flyball at the fence, with what seemed like 2 of his teammates trying to snag the ball, and somehow Willie got it makes me shake my head in awe every time I see it.

I adored his 1962 Topps card; he looked so joyous.

Cheers. --- Brian Powell

Willie Mays not a complete player? Uh, where was he deficient?

I agree on both counts.

I don't know that there's a legitimate ranking that would have Mays outside the top 5 all time, much less outside the top 10. Maybe he's just ribbing the Giants - can't imagine it's a serious argument.

Of course not. Equipment has changed significantly over the years. And course layouts are not static.

Mays hit just 10 more total HRs at home vs on the road (during that '61 to '65 period I quoted). So while the fences being moved in helped him some, he was hitting a lot more of them everywhere during that time period w/ McCovey than he had the prior five years (which include his final two years in New York)

I would say Kershaw is indeed a great pitcher, but he is no Koufax.

Look at his three Cy Young seasons where his numbers are just phenomenal, as well as his next two best seasons, and I'd be curious why you think they don't measure up to Koufax. PS If the issue with Kershaw is post season, yeah I agree with that.

Wow, John, just TEN more homers for that five-year period, after owner Horace Stoneham obliged Say Hey by moving in the outfield fences!?*! Makes me want to become an honorary Frisco boo-bird hearing that. I shan't do an impersonation of one, for I do not wish to upset Willie's many feverish fans. Moreover, I'm just teasing. Willie was awesome. And, I must add, it was Dodger Lou Johnson himself that said of Willie Mays's role at quelling the riot on the afternoon of August 22, 1965: "You can thank Mays that there wasn't a real riot out there. If it wasn't for Willie Mays, it could have been a lot worse. Willie did a hell of a job in stopping the battle." -- Brian Powell

I am from the old school where innings pitched, strikeouts, complete games and shutouts mean something. Yeah, he is no akoufax

Look at Kershaw's K/9 it's quite high. Higher than Koufax actually. As for the other stats, it's hardly Kershaw's fault that he pitches in an era that thinks differently about starting pitchers and days between starts and pitch counts.

Kershaw has pitched more innings (2,454) in his career than Koufax (2,324) did.

Kershaw (2,670) has more strikeouts than Koufax (2,396) did.

Kershaw has a better K/9 than Koufax, 9.8 to 9.3.

Koufax had 40 Shutouts, Kershaw has 15. Kershaw is the active leader, as complete games are dead (unfortunately, personally).

This old-school argument (which I don't think is generally invalid or necessarily bad, innings matter a lot I think, CG's not so much) doesn't seem to support Koufax over Kershaw.

I have no problem agreeing that wins might be an overrated stat and peak years can outweigh longevity. That said, when Spahn has 198 more wins than Koufax and 178 more wins than Koufax those numbers are just too astronomical for me to overcome. I mean those are would be really high win counts on their own but they are just the delta between Spahn and two greats.*

*Just purchased a PSA Type 1 autographed photo of Spahn from 1942 and am accordingly very biased.

I meant 178 more wins than Kershaw.

The old school argument, it seems to me, automatically discounts anyone from the past two decades or even longer. I get the romantic notion that men were men in the good old days and today's pitchers are wimps, but the game is what it is, today's pitchers don't choose to be rested more or to be on pitch counts.

Actually a lot of animals have drastically changed in her lifetime. Not evolution but selective breeding. Especially the ones we eat for dinner.

Best Lefty
 

Steve Carlton

I'm actually one of the last people to defend Mays (relative to how revered he is in general). Post season numbers and a couple other things I won't get into in this "best lefty" thread. My point about the batting order and McCovey is naturally a strike against him, not for him.

Anyway, back to eating popcorn while watching the debate about pitchers and who's better at crunching numbers

I think the argument of innings per game and complete games is not a very good one; the game is just different. I don’t think it should be dismissed because it’s not a pitchers choice; we hold things against pitchers for many reasons out of their control. It wasn’t Smoky Joe Wood’s decision to blow his arm out either. Any metric intended to exclude entire eras is, I think, unreasonable in the context of an “all time” argument. Yet this is the most frequent type of argument made; most all time arguments end up where people are attempting to structure an argument to simply effectively, if not explicitly, exclude eras they don’t like as much. Kershaw is a wimp, Grove sucked and the 19th century just doesn’t count for all time at all.

What I think is a better argument than the one posited, if one wants to go down this road and to attempt to exclude modernity, is total innings. If a pitcher pitches less innings in a game or season because teams want to avoid injury and extend careers (at least, that’s how I remember the arguments a couple decades ago) those innings should be effectively made up by that extended career. But we don’t see this. The last 20 years or so has seen plummeting innings (there is of course a general downward trend through all of baseball history) but pitchers don’t seem to ever make those innings up later in their careers, by extended careers with healthy carefully nursed arms. It seems pitchers are blowing out as fast as ever, though I’m too lazy to track down a dataset tonight.

I’m not saying I agree with this, but this seems the better way to dismiss modernity if one is so inclined: it’s not their fault, but they are used poorly and have less value because their careers are so needlessly short as a result.

Personally, I think “all time” is obviously a context centric argument, and all eras must be included and should generally balance out. An all time won’t balance perfectly because greatness is so very rare that samples of it will naturally fluctuate without bias or without era preference. One season may have 5 players have truly great seasons in context, and another only 1 because of random chance.

I would exclude modernity in the sense of active players, because we cannot reasonably evaluate the totality of something that is not complete. But all time should include 1876 to the most recently retired player, and generally see a fairly even number of players from each era in the conversation. People tend to gravitate to dead ball, the mid 20’s to early 30’s, the 50’s and 60’s, or the ultra modern and gloss over the other eras.

Personally, I think the modern way of using pitchers makes strategic sense but is boring and wimpy as hell and one reason I’ve lost most interest in the current game. The players as great as any other era, but it’s boring and baseball has lost the feel of a pastoral romance that made it the national pastime.

I agree with this.

I don't think the goal was to have pitchers extend their careers so much as to reduce injuries and always have a "fresh" arm on the mound. Back in the day, pitchers would pace themselves out of necessity. Not all of Christy Mathewson's pitches were his top effort. In his book, "Pitching in a Pinch," he says he didn't throw his fadeaway more than a few times per game because it was hard on his arm. So when you look at a statistic like strikeouts, for example, modern guys who are only expected to throw 65 or 70 pitches in their start can give 100% on every pitch. Grove and Spahn couldn't; they had to pace themselves. They would've much preferred getting a fly out with one pitch, than a strikeout with 5 or 6 pitches.

So, just as people argue that Grove/Spahn were great over a long period of time and Koufax is given an unfair advantage if the criteria is to only look at his best 5 seasons, I would also say that modern pitchers have an unfair advantage over the old-timers (including Koufax) on a per pitch basis, because every one of their pitches is their 100% best, while with the old-timers, maybe they were bearing down with 80% of their pitches, but easing up a bit, for expediency, 20% of the time.

I agree with this, especially the last paragraph.

It is not if Kershaw measures up to Koufax or not. I have seen Koufax pitch plenty of times as well as Kershaw. Koufax made me grin every time he struck some one out. That curve ball was sick. I am not a dodger fan but loved a great pitcher when I saw him and ,TO ME, he will always be the best. I can say the same for Mickey Mantle. I hated the yankees but loved to see Mantle at bat.

Grove

This is “my personal favorite” not “the best of all time”.

This is "my personal favorite AND "the best of all time!"

Your rationale suggests had you seen Grove go 28-5 in 1930 and 31-4 the following year (and 2-1 in the World Series each of those years) you'd say Grove.

I think it was in Jane Leavy's book, Mantle is quoted as saying to Roseboro the first time he sees Koufax's big curve, how in the *&^*( am I supposed to hit that?