Quote:
Originally Posted by OhioLawyerF5
Ask yourself the question, if you had to win a single game, it's all or nothing, are you putting Nolan Ryan on the mound or Gaylord Perry? We can twist 20 years worth of statistics into anything we want them to be, but at the end of the day, greatness is a much simpler thing.
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I don't know how many times I can say, and of course nobody can really counter the claim actually made because it is pretty obviously true, that Ryan and Perry produced "pretty similar" value over their careers, arriving there by being different types of pitchers. Of course it is twisting to look at career values (a thing we do not object to when evaluating players performance until and unless it does not suit what we demand to conclude).
Let's just pretend a single game basis is what I said, even though it's not whatsoever. I know Ryan fans believe the single game will be one of his 7 no hitters instead of a game he walks in a bunch of runs, but if I have 1) a player who performed 17% better than average and 2) a player who performed 12% better than average, over basically the exact same very large sample size, I would probably roll the dice with the guy who did 17%. As a rate, Perry was slightly more effective at not giving up runs in context, so of a single game in which I do not have special knowledge of future events or who is at the moment on a hot or cold streak, it makes sense to go with the one slightly better at not giving up runs in context.