Quote:
Originally Posted by G1911
I've never argued that modern athletes are not superior in many ways. You take it to extreme lengths, and apply it very inconsistently where it is true for one pitcher and not true for his exact contemporary. All you do is make up some crap, fail to back up any of it, and insult people.
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You interpret my claims as being extreme because I say something like "I'm taking Hyun Jin Ryu over Warren Spahn any day". Obviously, I said that knowing it would get a rise out of you, but I'm also not joking. Hyun Jin Ryu has better stuff than Warren Spahn had. Ryu is a pretty good pitcher. He was 2nd and 3rd in CYA voting in 2019 and 2020, and he led the league in ERA+ with 179 in 2019 as well, and he had an ERA+ of 198 the year before that. In contrast, Warren Spahn's top 3 ERA+ seasons were 188, 170 and wait for it... 130! Yes, that's right, the year Warren Spahn won the CYA his ERA+ was 130. That's a staggering statistic. 130 is NOT great. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that no other pitcher since has won the CYA with a lower ERA+ than that. And ERA+ is better than ERA (though still not as good as xFIP or SIERA). ERA+ adjusts for ballparks and peers. It's less useful when comparing across different eras, as you'd need to control for other variables too, but it's still useful when examining performance within a single season. You can interpret an ERA+ of 130 as meaning he was 30% better than an average pitcher that season. However, it fails to account for luck. But you can get a pretty good sense of that just by looking at a pitcher's BABIP during that season as well. It should come as no surprise then, that the two seasons where Spahn had his best ERA+ values of 188 and 170 were also his two luckiest seasons where batters only hit 0.243 against him on balls in play (pretty damn lucky). In contrast, Ryu wasn't so lucky when he had 198 and 179 ERA+ values, as his BABIPs were 0.282 and 0.303 those seasons. This means that Ryu's two best seasons were not just a little bit better. They were better despite Spahn benefitting from being extremely lucky those two seasons and Ryu not. Add in that level of luck to Ryu, and his ERA+ jumps significantly. Or conversely, take away the luck that Spahn benefitted from those two seasons and his ERA+ values drop signficantly. And remember, these values are relative to the overall talent level of the league that season.
So in Spahn's BEST season, he was 88% better than the average 1953 MLB pitcher AFTER benefitting from a significant amount of good luck. In Ryu's best full season, he was 79% better than the average 2019 MLB pitcher WITHOUT benefitting from good luck. Once you adjust for luck and for how much better the average 2019 pitcher was than the average 1953 pitcher, then it's really not even close at all if you're asking who had the better peak or who had the best "stuff". Obviously, I fully realize that Ryu's overall career is hardly a shred of Spahn's overall career, and that there is tremendous value in being an above average pitcher for a very long time. But if you could teleport Ryu back to the 1940s and 50s, he's would absolutely terrorize the league. We'd probably all be talking about him being the GOAT right now. The same is true of any other top 10 pitcher in the league today. They would just absolutely rape hitters from the 40s and 50s.
As far as your claim about me being "inconsistent", again, that's nonsense. You're the one who keeps claiming I only discount Grove's era and Spahn's era but not Koufax's. That's nonsense. You made that assumption and keep perpetuating it. I said no such thing. Koufax's numbers would absolutely suffer from any statistical model I would build. He pitched in a pitcher's park (so did Spahn), he pitched from a high mound, he pitched from an expanded strike zone in his best 4 years, he also had a lucky BABIP (though the entire league had a low BABIP at that time). His numbers would absolutely suffer from controlling for these variables. The reason I haven't focused on that fact is because it simply doesn't matter. I don't need to discount Spahn's era in order for Koufax to have a better peak 4, 5, or 6 years. Koufax's numbers themselves are simply miles better than Spahn's, WIHTOUT demoting Spahn for having pitched in a weaker era. But even if I did make the necessary adjustment to be able to compare apples to apples, Koufax's numbers would go down, Spahn's numbers would go down even more, and Grove's numbers would go down even more than Spahn's. The talent pool of the league gets worse the further back in time you go, not better.
Here's a glimpse of a few stats from Spahn's best 5 year peak and Koufax's best 5 year peak that are actually predictive, unlike Wins and ERA.
Spahn - 136 ERA+ average
Koufax - 168 ERA+ average
Spahn - 3.21 FIP average
Koufax - 2.02 FIP average
Spahn - 1.18 WHIP
Koufax - 0.94 WHIP
Spahn - 2.8 BB/9
Koufax - 2.1 BB/9
Spahn - 5.2 K/9
Koufax - 9.5 K/9
Spahn - 1.9 K/BB
Koufax - 4.6 K/BB
These differences are remarkable. There is no amount of adjusting (sizes of strike zone, talent level of their contemporaries, mound heights, ballparks, BABIP, etc) that you could possibly implement that would put these 5-year numbers on an even remotely similar playing field. Perhaps you should read those deltas again if you're not getting this. The differences between 5-year-peak Koufax and 5-year-peak Spahn are difficult to exaggerate. I could probably find 100 pitchers between them value-wise. That's how far apart these guys were. The only possible argument anyone could ever make for Spahn is by looking at cumulative career value. He was an above-average pitcher for a very long time. Value adds up, and WAR gives him extra credit because his peers sucked. But he was never even the best pitcher in a single season. Not even when he won the CYA, and not even in his best two seasons.