To those that said CY Young, he struck out a guy every 3rd inning, gave up the most hits / most losses. He's the Favre of baseball, some nice records, but when you throw a complete game every time out there you're bound to get some records. Don't get me wrong 511 wins is amazing, but over 300 losses is pretty bad.

I'm a sucker for stats so I picked Cy..

the best I ever saw would be Tom Terrific.. and having never seen the pre war guys its hard to get a feel for them vs simply looking at the stat line.

I love it when the subject of unbreakable records comes up and folks overlook CYs 511 wins.. I simply point out that a pitcher could win 20 games for 20 years in a row and still be 100 wins shy of CY.. that is the MOST unbreakable record IMO of any record in sports...

Greatest Pitcher Ever
 

I typically break these type of questions into 2 categories: (1) Peak Value and (2) Overall 10+ year career. My peak value choice is easily Sandy Koufax who from 1963 - 1966 was the benchmark that all pitchers will forever be measured against. He was virtually un-hittable. (Peak value honorable mention candidates include Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez, Greg Maddox, Grover Alexander, Walter Johnson and Mathewson).

Over a 10+ year career it would have to be Walter Johnson who remarkably won 417 games with a 2nd division ball club. Honorable mention goes to Christy Mathewson and Tom Seaver with Seaver Bill James' choice as the arguable premier post WWII pitcher.

Greatest pitcher Ever
 

Jay,

Interesting article but it leaves out one critical pitching perspective aspect. You CANNOT compare a pitcher who NEVER has to throw more than 2 innings to a pitcher that has to go 6 - 9 innings. Starting pitchers simply cannot throw at 100% capacity every pitch of every inning. A relief pitcher is afforded the luxury of "blowing" on every pitch. True, Rivera's dominance as a relief pitcher has truely earned him #1 relief pitcher status, but you cannot compare a one inning pitcher to a hurler required to throw "at a minimum", 70 - 80% of a full game. Starters and relievers have to be placed in separate buckets, and it is impossible to compare the two.

FYI, this in no way diminishes what Rivera has accomplished with basically one pitch. He is a remarkable first ballot Hall of Famer who, in a relief pitching role, we may never see the likes of again!

Regards,
Joe T.

I am amazed, baffled and perplexed at how people rate Rivera as the greatest pitcher of all time. I don't doubt is greatness, but let's take a look at his greatness compared to others.

His job is to get THREE outs a game. Can you imagine Bob Gibson if he needed to get only three outs each time he pitched. He would drill the first guy in the back, then strike out the next three. Seriously, I would love to ask Gibson the question if he only had to close, and he did that excellently, that he would be considered the greatest pitcher of all-time. I think he would chuckle. One season, Gibson pitched 302 innings and had a 1.12 ERA! I know that you all know that stat but please read that again. Rivera has pitched more than 80 innings in only one season during is career. Now read that stat again.

Another point about a closer, especially Rivera. For a team to win a game, the team must score more runs than the other team. It becomes far more difficult when the team is behind and has to come up with runs to come from behind to win the game. How many times has Rivera helped his team come from behind to win a game? You can probably count this number on one hand.

Also, the point that Hank Thomas brought up is one that is so overlooked. Whitey Ford is considered on of the greatest pitchers of all time. But he never had to pitch against his Yankees, the dominant team by far of his time. Mariano Rivera never had to pitch against the dominant team of his time. The Yankees over the past 17 years are clearly the best team of this era, especially the hitters. Rivera never had to pitch against these guys. What would is stats be if he had to close against this group one out of 6 times?

And finally is a big deal to end the game 3 outs early? I don't minimize this, but saying that he is the greatest pitcher of all time is like saying that the guy who watched Michael Jordan for the last minute of 5 games is more valuable than the guy who watched him for the first 47 minutes of those games. Maybe this player did a great job at crunch time. But each basket counts no matter when it is scored. Likewise, each run counts no matter when it is scored.

Rivera is a great pitcher, but when he only averages 78 innings per year, this is not close to the best of all time. Let me quote you some other stats. Walter Johnson had a career record of 417-279 in 5914 innings. (Rivera pitched 1207 innings.) But of those 279 losses, Washington was shut out in 65 of those games. SIXTY-FIVE of is losses occurred because is team did not score a single run. Give him the Yankees hitting and there would never be a discussion of who the greatest pitcher of all time was.

So it baffles me when writers state that a pitcher who gets three outs each time he works is better than this?

Cy

Pedro...
 

If we are not focusing on longevity, it's Pedro, hands down. Everyone talks about Koufax's last five years as if they are untouchable, but Pedro was actually better than Koufax over a seven year stretch from 1997-2003; and Pedro was pitching in an era dominated by hitters, while Koufax pitched in an era dominated by pitchers.

Here are Pedro's stats from 1997-2003:
118-36, 2.20 ERA, 0.94 WHIP, 213 ERA+

Pedro in his prime was the best pitcher I have ever seen and I'm a NYY fan. If I had to win one game, I'd give the ball to Pedro, circa 1999-2000.

Pitchers in my lifetime
 

I saw Koufax, Gibson and Maddux in person many times. They are the three best pitchers in my lifetime. I'm not much of a stat guy and can only go on what I witnessed. Of the three I believe Gibson was the best

He had 511 wins. His winning percentage was actually very good. Compare his winning percentage to other greats and he's in the top bunch. The record he holds for the most losses gives him an impression that he had a low winning percentage. .618 is not low.

Giving up the most hits is just a novelty stat. Same thing with strikeouts. Because he pitched the most innings of any pitcher, he is going to have some of these records. If you want to go that route, he also has the record for games started, innings pitched, batters faced, complete games and earned runs. You can make an argument that ERA means something, but an out is an out whether it's a flyball at the wall or a strikeout. Also, three and a half strikeouts per game was not that low in those days.

Don't undermine his RBI!

I've said it before, but I think you guys are being very shortsighted about Rivera. What he is able to do is incredible. You and I will never see a more dominant pitcher in our lifetimes. Rivera is a gamer. I wouldn't give the ball to any other pitcher in history in the ninth inning of game 7 of any World Series.

Rivera's post-season numbers:

8-1 with an 0.71 ERA in 139 IP with 42 saves, 86 hits allowed and only 21 walks.

I'm not saying Mariano is the best pitcher of all time. But I would agree that he is the most dominant pitcher ever to step onto the mound.

Here's another interesting stat concerning Walter Johnson vs. Mariano Rivera.

Mariano Rivera pitched in 1200 innings, total. Walter Johnson pitched 110 complete game shutouts. Plus Walter lost 26 complete games 1-0. That means that Walter pitched more complete game shutout innings plus 1-0 loss innings than Mariano pitched in his entire career (1224-1200).

Cy

What do the hitters say?
 

This is an almost impossible task to determine by the stats, but why should we even try? First, who did the hitters from each generation name the most often? That should give you one pitcher from each generation, more or less. Then take what the hitters say about the pitchers they've seen pitch during their lifetime, especially the old-timers who stayed in the game a long time as managers, scouts, coaches, etc. That should boil it down to a select few. Then get out the numbers and start crunching them if you want. And I don't think you can compare relief pitchers to starters. As others have said, we have no idea what it would have been like for Walter Johnson or Bob Feller, for example to only have to get through one inning at a time. Then there's the element of criteria: are we talking about the pitcher with the nastiest stuff, or the most effective pitcher? All this is great fodder for discussion.
Hank Thomas

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Eddie Feigner/ Rich Hoppe, faced both and Hoppe's pitches sounded high to me, but were called strikes.

Rawn

Lol! I watched my Dad's team play against them once in the mid-late 80's. It was a great show and Feigner was awesome.

Mario's a "non-starter"
 

With all due respect, gentlemen, Rivera's not even lined up in the starting blocks against guys like Grove, Johnson, Koufax, Martinez, Mathewson, Alexander and Spahn (13 20-win seasons?? Imagine having your staff ace every year for 17-18 years!!!). Sorry, Rivera's out of his element here, and simply a non-starter (pun intended!).

Makes for some good controversy, though, albeit quite short-lived!

Larry

Late entry
 

I heard about one pitcher who could top them all ... named Sidd Finch

I think the fact that Rivera threw just 1-1/3 innings in a 5-game LDS series against the Tigers and had absolutely zero impact on the outcome of the series, pretty much puts to rest the idea that he - or any other reliever - is even in the discussion as "greatest pitcher ever".

Tabe

Had Walter Johnson been a closer instead of a starting pitcher, today we would be referring to Rivera as the second best closer ever!
Val

I think the polls closed and my vote would be for Walter Johnson (no big deal), followed by Lefty Grove or Cy Young

... The best season ever?
Well, even though the game was really different I'd go with Old Hoss in '84 (1884). He won 59 games in the regular season and the triple crown. He lost 12 with 441 Ks and an ERA of 1.38. He also "single-handedly" (his right, to be specific) carried Providence to the National League crown, pitching almost every game down the home stretch.

Then, in the earliest precursor to the World Series, he led the "Grays" over the New York Metropolitans winning all three games played with an ERA of 0.00. The "Mets" back then had another future HOFer, Tim Keefe, who Hoss beat in two of the games.

The pitching numbers back then are really hard to compare to anything . For example no relief pitching -- Radbourn led the league with 2 Saves. The Sabermetric numbers are equally out of whack; Radbourn's WAR was about 20.

But Radbourn didn't just win a lot -- a whole lot -- of games that season. He carried his team all the way and then dominated in the post-season like a combination of Johnson & Schilling in 2001...

Only two pitchers in the history of baseball have ever won the pitching triple crown three times: Walter Johnson and Sandy Koufax. Let's compare Ron Guidry to Koufax again.

Johnson & Johnson
 

Has to be The Big Train and The Big Unit.

I'd have to vote for 'The Big Train'

Respectfully,

Dave