Quote:
Originally Posted by jgannon
And I've never said that Chavez didn't help Koufax. But you ignore that he became a better pitcher outside of that. And none of his teammates achieved what he did at home.
People are arguing that Koufax's greatness was due largely to external factors, saying he had a great run soley because of those factors, and that he was just so-so on the road. His road E.R.A.'s were better than in the early part of his career. And 1.96 his last year.
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Again, ignoring every other year, and again, the evidence does not support the conclusion that when the strike zone was expanded, he moved into a pitcher friendly home park and his road stats stayed flat, he learned some new mechanic and that was responsible for the change instead.
Nobody is arguing his teammates were better, as discussed before, so that is irrelevant to the question of the thread.
The math shows his home road splits are extremely unusual with one of the most extreme home park heavy splits of all baseball history. There is no reason to think that so many favorable factors aligning are not the primary cause of his success only when circumstances heavily favored him. It was not until Expansion, a heavy pitcher park and an expanded strike zone he improved at home. The argument this is random chance and not the cause is disproven by the huge gap in his splits.
A logical, fact-based or statistical case for Koufax that does not pretend inconvenient facts simply do not exist would be interesting to undertake.