I never said WHIP was some advanced metric that was sufficient for settling the debate. I used it as an example of a basic statistic that isn't normalized by how strong or weak the rest of the pitchers in the league are. I chose it because I figured you guys could at least understand it and used it as a contrast to normalized statistics. Stop taking my words out of context.
My top 3 are Koufax, Randy, and Kershaw, and not necessarily in that order. Grove was great, but I discount his era. Spahn was very good for his time, but would be above average at best today. Those are my opinions. Take them or leave them. I don't care.
Modern pitching is far superior to pre-war pitching. It's not even remotely close. As I stated above, wins is one of the worst predictors of a pitcher's future success. ERA is highly subject to variance (aspects that a pitcher cannot control). WAR is great for comparing pitchers in a similar era, so long as you understand that it is a counting statistic (and what that implies). However, if you understand how WAR is calculated, then you'd know that in an effort to control for variations in league wide hitting talent from year to year, it's creators adjust for how well someone pitches relative to their peers. The problem with this adjustment from a statistical theory standpoint is that it simply trades one form of variance for another by trading the variance in league-wide hitting talent for the variance in league-wide pitching talent. They have solved one problem by creating another. The clue for this is even in the name (wins above "replacement"). This means their WAR calculations depend on how good or bad replacement level pitching was in that era (or for a rolling 3 year window). If you instead used a 2021 replacement level pitcher as the baseline for Warren Spahn's stats, his WAR value would drop significantly. These are not my opinions. These are all facts that can be easily proven. Again, as stated above, this is also why I said WAR and wins should not be used to determine who was "best". If you want to have a real discussion around who was best, then we'd need to dive into some of the more advanced sabermetrics (and no, I'm not talking about WHIP). But I have zero interest in discussing that with you guys because you don't even understand basic statistics, let alone the statistical theory needed to have this discussion, as evidenced by Peter's cute little ridiculing formula above. Just because you can't wrap your heads around some of the more advanced sabermetrics doesn't mean they don't matter.
Anyhow, I'm done here. I'll let the net54 intelligentsia committee settle this debate. It sounds like you guys are in great hands. After all, there are data analysts, CPAs, and financial planners in here! And they are "good with statistics". Lol
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