Quote:
Originally Posted by Snowman
I should have put Kershaw on my list as well. For some reason, I was just thinking HOFers, not active players. But ya, Randy Johnson, Sandy Koufax, and Clayton Kershaw.
However, as perhaps the only statistician in the room, I feel like I have to ask; what stats are you guys looking at that makes you think Lefty Grove and Warren Spahn are even in the conversation? I don't get it. Are you only looking at games played or something? Lol. Wins? Complete games? Warren Spahn was an above-average pitcher, at best, for a really long time. The one year he won the Cy Young in, the only statistical category he led the league in was Wins, a near meaningless statistic when evaluating how good a pitcher is.
Lefty Grove had like 5 strikeouts per 9 innings pitched (and he led the league in Ks his first 7 years in the league). That's indicative of how terrible pitchers were back then, not of how great he was. Nobody threw their arms out back then because pitchers in the 1920s & 30s were effectively playing catch, not because they had superior genetics or throwing motions. They were only concerned with ball placement, not throwing heat ("top right corner! haha, he'll never see THAT coming"). Lefty Grove probably wouldn't even make a major league roster today. The guy's career WHIP is 1.278! That's not good. If he was your starting pitcher on a fantasy baseball roster, you'd lose money.
The only argument against Randy Johnson is that he was a late bloomer. He had serious control issues until he was about 29 years old. But after that, he was as dominant as they come, right or left-handed.
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Are you serious? First of all there are like 500 posts on this topic in this thread. Look at WAR, ERA+. Compare Grove’s figures to the league, number must be put into the context of time and place. Grove won 7 consecutive K crowns, are we really going to use strikeouts as an argument against him? He led the league with the lowest WHIP 5 times. A statistical argument should incorporate context. He dominated his time and place like no other lefty, and he produced pretty good counting stats.
The argument for Spahn is his extremely long career and consistently excellent but not great seasons.
Just read the thread.