Best lefty off all time? My vote is Koufax!

[G1911]

I don't think Whitey is the greatest, or the second greatest, but he deserves more consideration than he usually gets.

I think his .690 winning percentage is a poor argument, because it is largely a reflection that he played on a team that was, by several miles, the best in the league for most of his career.

However, Ford's 2.75 ERA, a 133 ERA+ over 3,100 innings is quite impressive and has nothing to do with his team. In fact, if the stories are true that Stengel really did tend to save Ford to face the better teams in the league (I haven't done an in depth check of the game logs), his ERA is hurt by this and still exceptional. 133 ERA+ is 29th all time, and many of those ahead are relief pitchers that I would argue should be considered in a separate category.

Even in his waning years, his ERA is fantastic. He posts a 3.24 in his last full season, his poorest showing as this looks excellent but was only 5% better than the league that year, and then his last 2 partial seasons he posts 135 and 192 ERA+'s.

His peak years are great, though his famous 1961 is actually one of his worst seasons, 25-4 is amazing but his percentages are not. Again, pitching for a team that annihilated the league with ease makes his record highly misleading.

3,170 innings is not very many in the context of all-time rankings and hurts him greatly, I think. At his best, he is equal to Spahn and his averages are a good deal better in many ways, but Spahn must rank over him for pitching 2,000 more innings and doing so very effectively. Johnson should rank better, Plank is probably ahead on innings. Grove and Hubbell are ahead, I think. I'm not sure I'd take Carlton over Ford with Carlton's inconsistency and Ford's clocklike consistency.

I have a very difficult time seeing why he barely squeaked into the Hall. He is not the best ever, but he has always appeared as an obvious hall of famer to me. Easy top 10 lefty, I think.