Quote:
Originally Posted by G1911
Niekro, Gibson and Pedro are close in career WAR, but none of them are close in Innings. If anything, this seems to show it does reward career dominance and not just length, as Pedro with half the career service time is just a tad below Niekro.
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It only "rewards" Pedro's career dominance (when it comes to HOF quality pitchers like him/Koufax/Guidry who had a short career). And only to a certain extent, because Niekro's is still noticeably higher.
Pedro 2827 IP 83.9 WAR
Gibson 3884 IP 89.2 WAR
Niekro 5404 IP 95.9 WAR
Mostly just shows how unthinkably great Pedro was. rather than career WAR being always being a close enough metric of greatness when the career length/dominance dichotomy shows up. The main disagreement here is that when it comes to who was the "best", you put more weight on the career length side of that, while I do the same with the dominance side. And as you've mentioned, that balance is somewhat subjective as long as someone doesn't go too far one way or the other.
As far as Pedro goes, the above is not surprising though. Have always thought that he is the most talented and effective pitcher the game has ever seen.