Quote:
Originally Posted by cardsagain74
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.
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Pedro was the best peak of my lifetime, I think, but I would pick Maddux, Johnson and Clemens over him of his direct contemporaries anyways.
There are reasonable different values one can make on peak vs. career, but I don't think it matters that much to the question here. Grove's peak is the equal of Sandy's, AND he has a much, much longer peak and career. Kershaw's peak is superior, I think, as well. It's not like Sandy is unique and unbeatably the best peak lefty and we are picking a guy like Niekro over him. We are picking other dominant pitchers that also pitched twice as long as he did.