Best Season ever by a ML pitcher?

[Topnotchsy]

Originally Posted by rats60

ERA+ is a bad measure to use. It assumes that the level of pitching is equal. The pitching in the AL in 2000 was pretty bad. Looking at the top 10, there are no other Hofers anywhere to be found with only Clemens as a decent starting pitcher. In 1968, there were 10 more Hof pitchers in the NL along with Gibson. The league ERA was lower not only because of the higher mound, but because of the high quality of pitchers in the league. Same with Koufax in 1965, 10 other Hof pitchers in the NL.

That's definitely an interesting thought. I'm curious (genuinely... not being sarcastic) how you are separate external factors from the quality of the players.

The reason I say this is because looking at the late 90's and early 00's, I feel like many of the best pitchers in that era are getting the short end of the stick because we compare their ERA and other stats to eras without steroids and other factors.

Just looking at the 2000 Cy Young Award race, you had Tim Hudson, Andy Pettitte and Mike Mussina. Only Mussina will likely make the Hall (and of course there's Pedro), but IMO when taking era into account, all 3 had a reasonable (albeit not overwhelming) case. In the NL that season players getting Cy Young votes include Randy Johnson, Tom Glavine, Greg Maddux and Kevin Brown. The first 3 are already enshrined, and IMO Brown deserved much more serious consideration.

We have the steroid era and we have an era where the mound was higher among other factors, and our basic metrics to compare players (wins, ERA etc) don't consider any difference in eras. Given this, it is not a surprise to me that the 60's had way more HOF pitchers.

I'm just not sure how much of that is tied to the players and how much is tied to the circumstances.