Quote:
Originally Posted by jchcollins
You can basically blame it on the rule that baseball greatness does not always equal baseball card greatness.
Vintage pitchers are at a disadvantage to start with in terms of card popularity, because the hitters are always so much more popular. Add to that the strange and unspoken rule since about the year 2000 that people don't want to celebrate pitchers so much for preventing runs and winning ballgames, but only for the sexy things like striking out a lot of batters and accumulating a record number of no-hitters. (Remember that even for Nolan Ryan, the number of no-hitters he threw in comparison to the total rest of his career represents a scant fraction of his innings on a major league mound...) The result is that the Nolan Ryan and Sandy Koufax cards remained valuable, and a lot of other pitchers who were top tier HOF'ers in their day are largely forgotten about - at least besides their rookie cards. I think Carlton falls into that category. As others have pointed out, his unwillingness to cooperate with the media after about 1973 probably also has something to do with his image taking a beating, and then he was the classic example of a pitcher in his 40's who hung around too long after he had pretty much lost his stuff. Still, that is no excuse to me today for a kid who wasn't even alive in the 1970's or 80's being able to quote Nolan Ryan stats to you - yet they have never heard of Carlton and his '72 season, or can't tell you anything about Tom Seaver or Jim Palmer. Just doesn't add up. But I guess that is the way society has gone now.
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Absolutely true about vintage pitchers being at a disadvantage. They are faced with an often extreme, modern bias, brought on a lot by modern statistics, and how the game is now played in regard to pitchers. Younger people only know starting pitchers typically going 5-6-7 innings in MLB games, and everyone worrying about pitch counts, strike outs, and the like. As statistician's and the like keep touting today, wins are not that important a factor in looking at and determining how good a pitcher really is in the modern game. But older, vintage pitchers were much more likely to be pitching in the games they started till the very end. As a result, their impact on the eventual outcome of those games was hugely increased over what it is for modern pitchers. But because the younger generation only truly know and see how the game is played today in regard to pitchers, they can't really get beyond thinking like that in terms of all MLB pitchers, regardless of when they pitched. They honestly don't know any better.
I still laugh out loud whenever I remember a comment I got on here once from a long since blocked/ignored member, claiming that Hyun-Jin Ryu is a so much better pitcher than Warren Spahn could have ever hoped to be, and that it wasn't even close how much better Ryu supposedly was. Last I looked, Ryu has now completed 9 seasons of MLB pitching, and has a 75-45 record, with a cumulative 3.27 ERA and a cumulative career WAR of 19.5, over 1003.1 innings pitched. Meanwhile, over his first nine seasons pitching in MLB, Spahn had a record of 145-98, with a cumulative ERA of approximately 2.93 to go along with a cumulative WAR of about 49.8, over 2149.2 innings pitched. And then over the last 14 years of his career, Spahn added another 218 wins, and 50.3 WAR. Ryu for the 2022 season had a 2-0 record, but with a WAR of -0.3. Something tells me to not put any money on Ryu and expect him to have anywhere near the success over the rest of his career like Spahn had. Ryu is going to be turning 36 this coming March, and I don't see him improving much more at this age.
And probably the most stunning difference between the two pitchers is that in the 174 games Ryu has started in career, he has only 4 complete games, and only 3 shutouts. Meanwhile, Spahn in his first nine seasons has 268 starts, of which 166 ended up being complete games, and 32 of those were shutouts. Oh, and Spahn also had 12 saves during his first nine seasons, to Ryu's only 1 save, so he helped his team as more than just a starter when called upon.
These modern statistician types keep saying how starting pitchers are not all that consequential when it comes to wins, which makes perfect sense for someone like Ryu who only completed about 2% of the games he ever started, and only averages about 5-6 innings pitched per start. Meanwhile, over his first nine seasons Spahn completed about 62% of the games he started, while averaging around 8 innings pitched per game. I think Warren had a little bit more to do with all those wins his teams had, and is probably worthy of a bit more credit for all his wins than someone like Ryu could ever hope for. Just saying!