[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by G1911

Because he's KOUFAX. Logical consistency doesn't matter. Math doesn't matter. Context doesn't matter. He's KOUFAX. It's irrelevant that Spahn pitched 11 of Sandy's 12 years, Spahn and Grove must be dismissed as pitchers of antiquity, for the dominant pitcher of modernity, Koufax, who hasn't pitched in 55 seasons. But even though our argument centers on defining the best of "all time" as the best of an arbitrarily and completely inconsistently decided modernity (hence, it's not really of "all time", now is it?), we will dismiss Kershaw too, who is the obvious choice if the modernity argument is made sincerely because....

Well I'm sure there's a super advanced statistical argument you and I are too stupid to understand, even though no actual statistical argument has been given, simply a series of fallacies, references to common unadjusted statistics that are then walked back, and an appeal to statistical authority.

I am waiting, in vain perhaps, for the affirmative showing why Koufax is the "best" and by what definition. In particular I would like to know how that argument accounts for the half of his career where he clearly was mediocre, the Dodger Stadium factor, and so forth. As stated, I also would like to understand why Grove is too prehistoric to consider but Koufax, only 14 years removed from Grove but 55 years removed from the present, is not. But I guess as John Updike put it, gods don't answer letters. Speaking of Updike and that quote, his famous piece on Ted's last game starts with a bit of statistical analysis of Ted's career. I am 100 percent sure, Updike being a non-statistician, and launch angles and BABIP not yet being in vogue (or even WAR), the analysis was pathetic.